October 11, 2024
2. Trackling Neuroinflammation and Oxidative Stress: A Multimodal Approch to Congnitive Health
One thing this and many other studies showed are, consistency and following in all categories (called multi modal) every day is better than once in a while and following only few categories. So the change has to be broad. The side benefit is heart attacks have similar improvements as they share similar pathologies. The above particular research goes on to say “the onset of dementia in Alzheimer’s patients is slowed, stopped and further reversed in a 20 week study”. That’s remarkable!
Neuroinflammation and oxidative stress response are two factors related to cognitive impairment. Neuroinflammation is essentially a good thing gone too far. Various brain repair that does on a daily basis, due to inflammation goes too far, attacking it’s own cells leading to neuronal loss. Oxidative stress is too many free radical molecules that are reactive causing damage to cells. Neuroinflammation is caused by Amyloid Beta (AB) peptide complexes interacting with various receptors on microglia and astrocyte cells which generally provide immunity and repair the neuronal cells. Inflammation is caused by the interaction of the AB with the receptors of the above cells, releasing inflammatory chemokines, cytokines and oxidative products degenerating the neurons.
Free radicals or reactive oxygen species (ROS) are the result of not enough antioxidants to neutralize them. The brain consumes 20% of oxygen of the body, so has a higher potential for oxidative stress. NRF-2 is an important molecule that controls when the genes need to produce antioxidants. When this molecule malfunctions, oxidative stress results.
So our strategies are to reduce neuroinflammation and oxidative stress. How this can be done in a multimodal fashion will be the topic of interest moving forward.