brain cells and cranberries

It seems to be a theme of the week. Memory loss and brain cell damage. Yesterday I attended a lecture at the University of PEI. This was the second lecture of this nature that I had attended. The subject of this second lecture was Cranberries. The subject of the first lecture was Blueberries. And in the last hour on one of the three stations available without cable, I watched tow TV shows involving the brain. The subject of the first, ethanol and its effects on REM sleep and the second show, Dogs.
It seems so strange that all four of these subjects could possibly be related but I will try and convey the relation ships here. I’ll start with yesterday and add in each item as I can.
Yesterday I listened and watched a lecture given by a professor of the University of Dartmouth-Massatuchets. She showed us slide after slide of about the chemical contents of Cranberries. The contents are numerous but the big guy of interest here was flavanoids. This are molecules which are relatively simple in there structure and have some specific properties. They are anti-oxidents. An anti-oxidant is a molecule which mops up free radicals. Free radicals are small molecules with charges properties and are often associated with aging and cell death.
Aging as well all know is a normal strait forward part of life. We can all remember being younger, a fair number of us can remember having more energy and if we talk to those people we know who are a bit older we can all remember times when there skin was tighter or their eye sight was better or even their hearing was better. These are all common visible or noticeable signs of aging. One that unfortunately we see with the elderly is memory loss, and even worth is one form of dementia. And something that happens to people as they get older and the risk increases which may speed along the memory loss or other functions of the brain is a stroke. We know that strokes kill brain cells by preventing areas of the brain from receiving enough oxygen.
The professor at UPEI went into a detailed discussion of the experiments she ran on the brains of rats and the effects of feeding the rats a diet including cranberries. She found a few interesting things. One thing I found interesting was the decrease in the number of cell which died after a stroke in her rats were fed cranberries. I can’t give you exact details of this work (my own memory isn’t that good and I did not take notes) , but she did find that the benefits of cranberries where fantastic. The tests on aging are still not complete but knowing that the flavanoids collect up free radicals created during the stroke is encouraging. But that does not mean that cranberries are the fountain of youth, just a step in the correct direction.
Last year I attended a lecture where a professor at UPEI explained very similar properties with blueberries. The experiments were similar to those in the cranberries, but the results where more conclusive. AT that lecture I used a bit of common sense and asked the question; how many blueberries should we eat then? Her response was ¼ of a cup.
These lecture are amazing ideas that go with the hypothesis I have about diet. I have a strong believe that a large amount of the things that go wrong in our bodies can be lessened by diet or even prevented. A few other health benefits of the cranberries were, anti carcinogenic, help prevent urinary tract and immune booster.
Now this morning when I woke up hung over from a night of drinking with some co-worker there was a bit on TV about how if you drink before sleep you mess up your REM sleep. This relates well this morning because it also mentions that if you REM sleep is disrupted you don’t remember things you just learned as well. They suggested that some people loose about 30-40% of the things they learned the previous night by sleeping. They go on to explain that the drinking can affect information learned up to 2 days previous to the drinking. So my in ability to give exact details of the cranberry talk may be related to this.
Lastly the dogs and the discussion on the aging brain of a dog. They were worked with a lot of dogs, ranging from puppy to 15. They used control groups and broke dogs up into groups on age, stimulation and diet. They found a number of things that has been thought to be true with humans but seen for sure in these dogs. The group of dogs which had the best memories was the dogs that were tested and stimulated by their memory on a continual basis and were fed a diet rich in fruit extracts. I won’t bother to go in to huge amount of detail because my post is getting long. We know that animal studies have been done and used as human models for long time and in the scientific world we have learned that we just are not that different at least in terms of how we age from dogs and rats.
But in my own conclusion I think there is something to be said about the food we eat and I guess keeping the brain and memory healthy involves taking care of it by feeding it correctly and stimulating it. I doubt I will be convincing a world of people to eat blueberries and cranberries and not to drink before you go to bed. I don’t even think I am convinced to perfect to these conditions but adding a few blueberries to my oatmeal or cereal not to hard to do.