B-vitamins & the brain.Older people with low levels of some B-vitamins perform poorly on certain tests of thinking ability, says a new study from the Jean Mayer Jean Mayer (February 19, 1920 – January 1, 1993) was a renowned French-American nutritionist and the tenth president of Tufts University from 1976 to 1992. During his lifetime, Mayer was known as a leading expert and activist on hunger issues. U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University Tufts University, main campus at Medford, Mass.; coeducational; chartered 1852 by Universalists as a college for men. It became a university in 1955. Jackson College, formerly a coordinate undergraduate college for women, merged with the College of Liberal Arts in in Boston. Karen Riggs and colleagues gave a battery of cognitive tests to 70 men aged 54 to 81 who participate in the Boston Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study. Then she compared their test scores to the levels of folate folate /fo·late/ (fo´lat) 1. the anionic form of folic acid. 2. more generally, any of a group of substances containing a form of pteroic acid conjugated with l-glutamic acid and having a variety of substitutions. , vitamins B-6 and B-12, and homocysteine Homocysteine Definition Homocysteine is a naturally occurring amino acid found in blood plasma. High levels of homocysteine in the blood are believed to increase the chance of heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and osteoporosis. in their blood. (Consuming too little B-6, B-12, and--most commonly--folate can lead to excess homocysteine, which appears to increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.) Men with low levels of folate or B-12--or high levels of homocysteine--had poorer scores on a spatial copying test. figures like crossed rectangles, a The men were asked to copy with the diamond, a cube, and a tapered box.) In fact, the men highest homocysteine levels--12.6 or more--scored as poorly as people with mild Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (ăls`hī'mərz, ôls–), degenerative disease of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex that leads to atrophy of the brain and senile dementia. . Only one in five of them was able to copy the cube correctly. Men with the highest B-6 levels scored better on two of the six memory tests. None of the other test scores--measuring spatial reasoning, language, and perceptual speed or attention--were linked to the vitamins. "This is not conclusively study," cautions Riggs. "But it suggests that a good, healthy diet would help people maintain cognitive function cognitive function Neurology Any mental process that involves symbolic operations–eg, perception, memory, creation of imagery, and thinking; CFs encompasses awareness and capacity for judgment as they age." And don't rush out to buy megadoses of B-6, she adds. "The highest B-6 levels were those you can get from a good varied diet " What's more, it could be something other than B-6 that explains those higher scores on the memory tests. |
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