Category: Dementia

The peanut butter test for Alzheimer’s requires only a dollop of peanut butter and a ruler.

Using only a ruler and a teaspoon of peanut butter, researchers at the University of Florida are developing a test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (Stamps et al, 2013).

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia.

The test relies on the fact that one of the first areas of the brain to be affected by Alzheimer’s is the sense of smell.

In the test, a patient blocks their right nostril and a teaspoon of peanut butter is moved upwards towards their nose while they breathe normally.

This is then repeated for the other nostril.

Peanut butter was used because it is a well-known smell in the US, that is both unique, and difficult to mix up with anything else.

Peanut butter test for Alzheimer’s

In the study, people without cognitive problems could smell the peanut butter when it was, on average, 17cm below their left nostrils.

However, those with suspected Alzheimer’s couldn’t smell the peanut butter until it was 5cm away.

This difference in smell was only seen when those with suspected Alzheimer’s breathed through their left nostrils.

Breathing through their right nostrils, they performed the same as the control group.

The reason that it’s the left nostril, rather than the right is:

• The olfactory network is mostly found in the left half of the brain, and it’s the left hemisphere that often degenerates more than the right in Alzheimer’s.
• In contrast to other senses, smells detected by the left nostril are mostly processed by the left side of the brain.

Cautions about this study

The test could provide a cheap and reasonably easy addition to other methods of detecting Alzheimer’s, which are often expensive or invasive.

The challenge, however, will be whether it can distinguish between Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia, which also cause problems with the sense of smell.

Critics of this study have pointed to the small sample size and the fact that another study on the peanut butter test for Alzheimer’s has failed to find the effect (Doty et al., 2014).

[Note: the test has not been fully investigated and is not designed for home use. Also, it’s normal to have some differences in the sense of smell through each nostril.]

Image credits: University of Florida

Some meats increase dementia risk, others reduce it, new research finds.

A single rasher of bacon each day raises the risk of dementia by 44 percent, a study finds.

In fact, eating just 25g of any processed meat per day was linked to increased risk.

Common processed meats include sausages, corned beef, salami, and dried meat.

Processed meat refers to anything that is not sold fresh, with processing including curing, salting and smoking.

However, not all meat is bad in this context.

People who ate 50g of unprocessed (fresh) red meat per day, including pork, beef or veal, had a 19 percent reduced risk of developing dementia.

Dementia affects up to one in 12 people over 60, with Alzheimer’s being the most common form, accounting for around 60 percent of cases.

Ms Huifeng Zhang, the study’s first author, said:

“Worldwide, the prevalence of dementia is increasing and diet as a modifiable factor could play a role.

Our research adds to the growing body of evidence linking processed meat consumption, to increased risk of a range of non-transmissible diseases.”

The study used data on almost half-a-million people from the UK Biobank.

The Biobank is a long-term project that tracks the well-being of volunteers in the UK, including genetic and health data.

Risk factors for developing dementia include being older, poorer, smoking, and being less physically active.

There are also genetic risk factors.

On top of these, though, eating more processed meat increased the risk of dementia substantially.

Ms Zhang said:

“Further confirmation is needed, but the direction of effect is linked to current healthy eating guidelines suggesting lower intakes of unprocessed red meat could be beneficial for health.”

This study is believed to be the first to link increased dementia risk to specific amounts of processed meats.

Professor Janet Cade, study co-author, said:

“Anything we can do to explore potential risk factors for dementia may help us to reduce rates of this debilitating condition.

This analysis is a first step towards understanding whether what we eat could influence that risk.”

→ Read on: Beat Dementia: 8 Changes Your Brain Will Thank You For

The study was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Zhang et al., 2021).

Adopting just one of these healthy habits reduces the rate of dementia by one-quarter.

A 35-year study reveals that people who followed four or five out of five healthy habits had 60 percent lower levels of dementia and cognitive decline with ageing.

The five behaviours are:

1. Taking regular exercise.
2. Non-smoking.
3. Maintaining a low body weight.
4. Having a healthy diet.
5. Low alcohol intake.

The most important of these factors, the researchers found, was taking regular exercise.

Exercise provided the largest protective effect against cognitive decline and dementia.

The study’s lead author, Professor Peter Elwood, said:

“The size of reduction in the instance of disease owing to these simple healthy steps has really amazed us and is of enormous importance in an aging population.

What the research shows is that following a healthy lifestyle confers surprisingly large benefits to health — healthy behaviors have a far more beneficial effect than any medical treatment or preventative procedure.”

Good for heart and head

Even managing just one of these lifestyle changes would be enough to cut the risk of developing dementia by one-quarter.

The conclusions come from a study of 2,235 men from the UK who have been followed over a 35-year period (Elwood et al., 2013).

One of the main aims of the study was to look at the connections between lifestyle, cognitive decline and disease over 35 years.

Along with the benefits to the brain of these five lifestyle changes, there were considerable physical health benefits.

Dr Doug Brown, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said:

“We have known for some time that what is good for your heart is also good for your head, and this study provides more evidence to show that healthy living could significantly reduce the chances of developing dementia.”

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Nine years before memory changes, this can signal problems.

Changes in sense of humour could be an early sign of dementia, a study finds.

A shift to preferring slapstick humour — like Mr Bean — over satirical or absurdist comedy, such as Monty Python, could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s.

Friends and relatives of those with dementia reported seeing changes around nine years before the more typical memory problems.

Dr Camilla Clark, who led the study, said:

“As sense of humour defines us and is used to build relationships with those around us, changes in what we find funny has impacts far beyond picking a new favourite TV show.

We’ve highlighted the need to shift the emphasis from dementia being solely about memory loss.

These findings have implications for diagnosis – not only should personality and behaviour changes ring alarm bells, but clinicians themselves need to be more aware of these symptoms as an early sign of dementia.

As well as providing clues to underlying brain changes, subtle differences in what we find funny could help differentiate between the different diseases that cause dementia.

Humour could be a particularly sensitive way of detecting dementia because it puts demands on so many different aspects of brain function, such as puzzle solving, emotion and social awareness.”

The study included data from 48 friends and relatives of people with dementia.

Some of the most striking findings were for frontotemporal dementia, the most common cause of dementia in the under-55s.

People with this type of dementia began to laugh at events inappropriately many years before their eventual diagnosis.

For example, they would laugh at a badly parked car or a barking dog.

One man began laughing when his wife scalded herself badly.

People who went on to develop Alzheimer’s did not laugh in this way.

Dr Rob Buckle, Director of Science Programmes at the MRC, said:

“As we come to understand more about the symptoms of dementia we realise that the complex disease is about much more than memory loss.

Such insights will allow us to build up a full picture of the changes that people experience in the early stages of dementia and as the disease progresses, guiding both improved and earlier diagnosis and the delivery of care.

Recognising the behavioural patterns the disease follows will also help researchers discern different forms of the disease and identify suitable people for clinical trials to test new interventions.”

The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Clark et al., 2015).

Just one cup a day is enough to reduce the risk.

Drinking tea is linked to a dramatic reduction in the risk of cognitive impairment in older people, research suggests.

A single daily cup of tea reduces cognitive decline in those over 55 by 50%, the Chinese study found.

Among those with a genetic susceptibility to Alzheimer’s, though, this risk reduction increased to 86%.

It did not matter which type of tea people consumed: green, black or oolong.

The only thing that mattered was that the tea was brewed from tea leaves.

Dr Feng Lei, the study’s first author, said:

“While the study was conducted on Chinese elderly, the results could apply to other races as well.

Our findings have important implications for dementia prevention.

Despite high quality drug trials, effective pharmacological therapy for neurocognitive disorders such as dementia remains elusive and current prevention strategies are far from satisfactory.

Tea is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world.

The data from our study suggests that a simple and inexpensive lifestyle measure such as daily tea drinking can reduce a person’s risk of developing neurocognitive disorders in late life.”

For the research, 957 Chinese people were followed from 2003 to 2005.

They were regularly tested for signs of cognitive ageing.

Dr Feng explained why tea is likely to be beneficial:

“Based on current knowledge, this long term benefit of tea consumption is due to the bioactive compounds in tea leaves, such as catechins, theaflavins, thearubigins and L-theanine.

These compounds exhibit anti-inflammatory and antioxidant potential and other bioactive properties that may protect the brain from vascular damage and neurodegeneration.

Our understanding of the detailed biological mechanisms is still very limited so we do need more research to find out definitive answers.”

The study was published in The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging (Feng et al., 2016).