I. Dementia
About 5-8% of all people over the age of 65 have some
form of dementia, and this number doubles every five years above that
age.
Dementia is the loss of mental ability that is severe enough to
interfere with
people's every life and Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of
dementia
in aging people. American typical diet contains high amount of saturated
and trans fat, artificial ingredients with less fruits and vegetable
which can lead to dementia and other kind of diseases.
II. Treatments
C. In traditional Chinese Medicine Perspective(1)
In the study to evaluate the effect of TCM in dementia at the Unilever
R&D Shanghai, and Unilever R&D Vlaardingen, Dr. and the team of
researchers indicated that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has a 3000
years' history of human use. A literature survey addressing traditional
evidence from human studies was done, with key result that top 10 TCM
herb ingredients including Poria cocos, Radix polygalae, Radix
glycyrrhizae, Radix angelica sinensis, and Radix rehmanniae were
prioritized for highest potential benefit to dementia intervention,
related to the highest frequency of use in 236 formulae collected from
29 ancient Pharmacopoeias, ancient formula books, or historical archives
on ancient renowned TCM doctors, over the past 10 centuries. Based on
the history of use, there was strong clinical support that Radix
polygalae is memory improving. Pharmacological investigation also
indicated that all the five ingredients mentioned above can elicit
memory-improving effects in vivo and in vitro via multiple mechanisms of
action. And according to Ancient Records on TCM for Cognitive Decline.
The scientists wrote that dementia is as a result of
1. Deficiency of Energy, mainly from the kidney, heart, and spleen, especially from the kidney.
Deficiency of energy is similar to “Qi” deficiency in TCM. According TCM
lore Qi is the essential substance that makes up the body and maintains
various physiological activities, similar to flow of energy in the
body. The energy is mainly from the kidney, heart, and spleen,
especially from the kidney. In TCM, the energy from the kidney is
called kidney essence which can produce marrow including cerebral
marrow, spinal cord, and bone marrow. The cerebral marrow can nourish
the brain and maintain the physiological functions of the brain. If the
kidney essence is insufficient, the production of cerebral marrow will
be reduced, leading to various symptoms, such as headache, dizziness,
amnesia, and retard response.
2. Blood Stasis
Normally the blood is pumped by the heart to flow in the vessels. If
blood circulation is stagnated or slowed down by certain factors such as
cold, emotional disorder, aging, consumptive disease, and overstrain,
it will result in retention of blood flow in the vessels or organs, a
pathological condition named blood stasis. The cognitive function will
decline, due to long-term global hypo-perfusion in cerebral blood flow
or acute focal stroke in memory-related cerebral parenchyma.
3. Toxins
As the function of internal organs in the elderly decline, the balance
between host defense and external toxins in the body is disrupted.
Pathological or physiological products occur and form toxin including
waste of “water” and “endogenous fire”, which result from the poor
digestion, accumulates into phlegm and retention of fluid, and caused by
mental disorder, attack from pathological factors, and imbalance within
the body, respectively. If such toxins can not be eliminated quickly
the blood circulation and mental acuity will be affected, eventually
contributing to the onset of dementia.
Finally, the authors summarized "in TCM philosophy, AD is assumed to be
induced by kidney essence vacuity and toxin (turbid phlegm). The
amnestic mild cognitive impairment in elderly population has been
disclosed in a clinical investigation to correlate with kidney essence
vacuity and turbid phlegm blocking upper orifices. The whole cognitive
function may worsen because of the aggravation of kidney essence
vacuity, deficiency of blood and qi, phlegm and heat toxin and may
eventually lead to multiple cognitive domains impairment, even dementia"
Further to the article, the authors also indicated that Catalpol, an
iridoid glycoside, isolated from the fresh Radix rehmanniae and existed
broadly in many plants all over the world has many biological functions
such as anti-inflammation, promoting of sex hormones production,
protection of liver damage, and reduction of elevated blood sugar.
Recently, catalpol has been identified as a vital active with robust
cognitive potential (Figure 4). Behaviour studies exhibited that
catalpol reversed brain damage and memory deficits in mice induced by
lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and D-galactose and in gerbils by cerebral
ischemia. The nootropic and neuroprotective efficacy of catalpol
probably resulted from a variety of underlying molecular mechanisms
(Table 7).
(i)Antioxidant activity: catalpol promoted endogenous antioxidant enzyme
activities, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase
(GSH-Px), and antioxidant glutathione (GSH), cut down malondialdehyde
(MDA) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in PC12 cells and
astrocytes primary cultures, exposed to oxygen and glucose deprivation
or H2O2, and in senescent mice induced by D-galactose [79–81, 86, 89,
91, 92].
(ii)Anti-inflammatory activity: catalpol significantly reduced the
release of ROS, TNF-α, nitric oxide (NO) and inducible nitric oxide
synthase (iNOS) expression after Aβ (1–42)-induced microglial activation
in primary cortical neuron-glia cultures, and LPS-induced nuclear
factor-kappa B (NF-κB) activation in mice [78, 87].
(iii)Neurogenetic activity: catalpol can enhance axonal growth of
cortical neurons cultured in vitro from 24 h newly born rat, at
1–5 mg/mL and ameliorate age-related presynaptic proteins decline
(synaptophysin and GAP-43), and neuroplasticity loss in the hippocampus
of the aged rats, by upregulating protein kinase C (PKC) and
brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) [85, 88].
(iv)Antiapoptotic activity: catalpol not only suppressed the
downregulation of Bcl-2, upregulation of Bax, and the release of
mitochondrial cytochrome c to cytosol, but also attenuated caspase-3
activation, poly-ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) cleavage, and eventually
protected against H2O2-induced apoptosis in PC12 cells and in the
ischemic dorsal hippocampus of gerbils subject to CCAO [82–84, 90].
(v)In addition, the function to stimulate the production of adrenal
cortical hormones, which increases the production of sex hormones, is
likely implicated into the cognitive benefit of catalpol in menopausal
women [92].
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Sources
(1) http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2012/692621/
Health Researcher and Article Writer. Expert in Health Benefits of Foods, Herbs, and Phytochemicals. Master in Mathematics & Nutrition and BA in World Literature and Literary criticism. All articles written by Kyle J. Norton are for information & education only.
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