An Underrated Tool Against Alzheimer’s

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• It’s well-known that bilingualism offers brain benefits, but most people would be hard-pressed to name what, specifically, those brain benefits are.

  • Today’s main feature looks into a unique new study that mapped out very precisely some of the brain benefits—most notably, a preservation of hippocampal volume (i.e., the part of the brain responsible for memory in general, not merely language knowledge) even in adults who have Alzheimer’s

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured book outlines a dietary protocol that in an 8-week interventional study reduced DNA methylation (a marker of biological aging) equivalent to being 3 years younger. Check it out!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

5 Ways To Make Your Smoothie Blood Sugar Friendly (Avoid the Spike!)

You might guess one of the ways, from the thumbnail 😉 but what about the other 4?

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Wildcard Wednesday

An Underrated Tool Against Alzheimer’s

Dementia in general, and Alzheimer’s in particular, affects a lot of people, and probably even more than the stats show, because some (estimated to be: about half) will go undiagnosed and thus unreported:

Alzheimer’s: The Bad News And The Good

At 10almonds, we often talk about brain health, whether from a nutrition standpoint or other lifestyle factors. For nutrition, by the way, check out:

Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

Today we’ll be looking at some new science for an underrated tool:

Bilingualism as protective factor

It’s well-known that bilingualism offers brain benefits, but most people would be hard-pressed to name what, specifically, those brain benefits are.

As doctors Kristina Coulter and Natalie Phillips found in a recent study, one of the measurable benefits may be a defense against generalized (i.e. not necessarily language-related) memory loss Alzheimer’s disease.

Specifically,

Read in full: Bilinguals show evidence of brain maintenance in Alzheimer's disease

This is important, because while language is processed in various parts of the brain beyond the scope of this article, the hippocampi* are where memory is stored.

*usually mentioned in the singular as “hippocampus”, but you have one on each side, unless some terrible accident or incident befell you.

What this means in practical terms: these results suggest that being bilingual means we will retain more of our capacity for memory, even if we get Alzheimer’s disease, than people who are monolingual.

Furthermore, while we’re talking practicality:

(L2 = second language)

This is important, because it means you don’t have to have grown up speaking multiple languages, you don’t even have to speak it well, and you don’t have to be using your second language(s) on a daily basis, to enjoy benefits. Merely having them in your head appears to be sufficient to trigger the brain to go “oh, we need to boost and maintain the hippocampal volume”.

We would hypothesize that using second language(s) regularly and/or speaking second language(s) well offers additional protection, and the data would support this if it weren’t for the fact that the sample sizes for daily and high-level speakers are a bit small to draw conclusions.

But the important part is: simply knowing another language, including if you literally just learned it later in life, is already protective of hippocampal volume in the context of Alzheimer’s disease.

Here’s a pop-science article about the study, that goes into it in more detail than we have room to here:

Bilingualism linked to greater brain resilience in older adults 

Want to learn a new language?

Here are some options where you can get going right away:

Duolingo | Babbel | Lernu

If you are thinking “sounds good, but learning a language is too much work”, then that is why we included that third option there. It’s specifically for one language, and that language is Esperanto, arguably the world’s easiest language and specifically designed to be super quick and easy to get good at. Also, it’s free!

Do, kial ne lerni novan lingvon rapide kaj facile? 😉 

Want to know more?

For ways to reduce your overall Alzheimer’s risk according to science, check out:

Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between dates and banana—we picked the dates (click here to read about why), as did 53% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

If you’re interested in healthy aging—as most of our readers are!—then you might also like Midlife & Beyond; it’s a free newsletter focused on getting the most out of exactly that. Check them out!

One-Minute Book Review

Younger You: Reduce Your Bio Age and Live Longer, Better – by Kara Fitzgerald

First, a note about the author: she is a naturopathic doctor, a qualification not recognized in most places. Nevertheless, she clearly knows a lot of stuff, and indeed has been the lead research scientist on a couple of studies, one of which was testing the protocol that would later go into this book.

Arguably, there’s a conflict of interest there, but it’s been peer reviewed and the science seems perfectly respectable. After an 8-week interventional trial, subjects enjoyed a reversal of DNA methylation (one of various possible markers of biological aging) comparable to being 3 years younger.

Where the value of this book lies is in optimizing one’s diet in positive fashion. In other words, what to include rather than what to exclude, but the “include” list is quite extensive so you’re probably not going to be reaching for a donut by the time you’ve eaten all that. In particular, she’s optimized the shopping list for ingredients that contain her DNA methylation superstars most abundantly; those nutrients being: betaine choline, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, quercetin, rosmarinic acid, and vitamins B9 and B12.

To make this possible, she sets out not just shopping list but also meal plans, and challenges the reader to do an 8-week intervention of our own.

Downside: it is quite exacting if you want to follow it 100%.

Bottom line: this is a very informative, science-based book. It can make you biologically younger at least by DNA methylation standards, if the rather specific diet isn’t too onerous for you.

Click here to check out Younger You, and enjoy a younger you!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday full of wellness,

The 10almonds Team