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Vitamin E Seen as Potential Alzheimer's Weapon
Cambridge
MA, 21 March 2002
Scientists
at Harvard University list Vitamin E as a potential weapon in the
fight against Alzheimer's disease.
Symptoms
and causes of dementia
Discussing
dementia in a report on aging, the Harvard Health Letter
in its March issue distinguishes between Alzheimer's, "an insidious
disease which means it starts and get worse for a time without apparent
symptoms," and vascular dementia, which "actually does come on suddenly."
Symptoms
of vascular dementia vary, depending on the areas of the brain affected
by "what are in essence tiny strokes," the publication of the Harvard
Medical School said. "People usually decline in discrete steps,
in contrast to the slow, gradual losses of Alzheimer's patients."
Alzheimer's
is the leading cause of dementia, a persistent loss of memory, believed
to be a consequence of a physical disease that has attacked the
brain, among people over 60 in the United States. Alzheimer's accounts
for 60 percent to 70 percent of the dementia cases; the next leading
cause is vascular dementia.
"Even
if the root cause is early Alzheimer's disease," the Health Letter
said, "there's hope." Vitamin E was cited, with the article reporting
that "some doctors believe that Vitamin E . . . may help."
Medications that boost acetylcholine levels in the brain are also
under consideration, the Health Letter said, in addition
to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs like ibuprofen.
Vitamin
E can help mental function & reduce risk of dementia
In
studies, Vitamin E has been found to help lower the risk of vascular
dementia. A long-term research project in Hawaii determined that
men who took supplements of both Vitamin E and Vitamin C had an
88 percent lower risk for vascular dementia than those who didn't
take the vitamin supplements.
The
University of California at Berkeley recently termed antioxidants,
including Vitamin E, as "friends of memory" in a report on a study
of older adults in Newfoundland which found that healthy people
over 65 improved their mental capabilities when they took nutritional
supplements including Vitamin E.
Source
Foods
for the Future, via PR Newswire, 21 March 2002.
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