Diabetes can age the brain by up to four years, a new study based on MRI scans shows. There was one silver lining: Healthy lifestyle changes could help prevent that neurological aging, the Swedish researchers said. “Having an older-appearing brain for one’s chronological age can indicate deviation from the normal aging process and may constitute an early warning sign for dementia,” warned study lead author Abigail Dove. “On the positive side, it seems that people with diabetes may be able to influence their brain health through healthy living,” added Dove, a graduate student of neurobiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Her team published its findings Aug. 28 in the journal Diabetes Care. As Dove’s group noted, type 2 diabetes has long been acknowledged to be a risk factor for dementia. However, the impact of prediabetes and diabetes on the brain health of people without dementia wasn’t known. The new study sought to remedy that, analyzing MRI brain scans of over 31,000 people ages 40 to 70 who were all enrolled in a British database called the U.K. Biobank. Dove and her colleagues used AI technology to gauge the relative “brain age” for each individual. They found that folks whose medical records showed them to be in a prediabetic state had an average brain age that was half a year older than people without the…  read on >  read on >

The trees and shrubs in your neighborhood could be giving you a big health boost, a new study finds. People have lower levels of inflammation in neighborhoods where the number of trees and shrubs is more than doubled compared to other nearby locales, University of Louisville researchers reported this week at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology annual meeting in Santiago, Chile. “Trees are beautiful, but these results show that the trees around us are also beneficial to individual and community health,” said University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel. For the study, researchers added more than 8,000 large trees and shrubs to some neighborhoods in Louisville, Ken., but not others. The plantings occurred from 2019 through 2022 within a four-square-mile section of south Louisville, in low- to middle-income neighborhoods. The team then compared 745 residents’ health data, to see how more greenery might have improved their overall well-being. Results show that residents in the greener neighborhoods had 13% to 20% lower levels of a biomarker associated with inflammation called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP). Higher levels of this marker are strongly associated with heart risks, and can be an even stronger indicator of an impending heart attack than cholesterol levels, researchers noted. It also indicated a higher risk of diabetes and some cancers. The reduction in hsCRP found in greener neighborhoods corresponds to a 10% to…  read on >  read on >

People with multiple sclerosis appear to have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests. MS patients are far less likely to have elevated blood levels of toxic proteins that form amyloid plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, researchers report. “Our findings imply that some component of the biology of multiple sclerosis, or the genetics of MS patients, is protective against Alzheimer’s disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Brier, an assistant professor of neurology and radiology with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “If we could identify what aspect is protective and apply it in a controlled way, that could inform therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease,” Brier added in a university news release. Researchers undertook the study after noticing that MS patients under their care didn’t develop Alzheimer’s as they grew older, even if they had a family history of the disease. “I noticed that I couldn’t find a single MS patient of mine who had typical Alzheimer’s disease,” said senior researcher Dr. Anne Cross, chair of neuroimmunology at the Washington University School of Medicine. “If they had cognitive problems, I would send them to the memory and aging specialists here at WashU Medicine for an Alzheimer’s assessment, and those doctors would always come back and tell me, ‘No, this is not due to Alzheimer’s disease,’” Cross said.…  read on >  read on >

Researchers now have a better idea where love resides in the human brain — and which types of love are the most powerful. MRI scans show that love mainly resides in areas of the brain associated with the processing of social cues, researchers reported Aug. 26 in the journal Cerebral Cortex. Love for one’s children generated the most intense brain activity — so intense that it actually bled over into other parts of the brain, researchers found. “In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain’s reward system in the striatum area while imagining love, and this was not seen for any other kind of love,” said researcher Parttyli Rinne, at Aalto University in Finland. Romantic love also generated lots of brain activity, but that activity confined itself to the social regions of the brain, researchers found. Love of nature and animals activated the reward system and visual areas of the brain, but not the social regions involved in love of other humans. “We now provide a more comprehensive picture of the brain activity associated with different types of love than previous research,” Rinne said in a university news release. For the study, researchers asked 55 parents involved in loving relationships to mull over brief stories related to six different types of love. “You see your newborn child for the first time. The baby…  read on >  read on >

You’ve noticed your young child complains of headaches and rubs their eyes a lot. Does that mean it’s time to get glasses? It could, says a Baylor College of Medicine expert, and noticing these signs early is critical for young children because their schoolwork could suffer or they could lose their vision completely. “There is a period — approximately the first eight years of life — when the brain and the eye are learning to work together, and the visual system is still developing,” said Dr. Christina Weng, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Baylor. “During this time, parents should watch out for behavioral changes because they can be a sign of potential eye problems.” “When children have trouble seeing, they often act out or exhibit other signs of stress, and it can be challenging to determine the cause of their behavior,” she explained. “It is very helpful for parents to pay attention to what situations trigger their behavior.” For instance, does your child become upset when watching a movie far away from the screen? Or does he or she avoid reading or other forms of near-sight work or seem to ignore people or objects in the distance? Any of those scenarios could point to potential vision trouble, Weng said. Additional symptoms associated with vision loss include: Frequent headaches Excessive eye rubbing Holding a book, phone…  read on >  read on >

Women who suffer frequent migraines don’t have any increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, finds a new study that refutes earlier research. “These results are reassuring for women who have migraine, which itself causes many burdens, that they don’t have to worry about an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease in the future,” said researcher Dr. Tobias Kurth, director of the Institute of Public Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. For the study, researchers tracked more than 39,000 women, of whom more than 7,300 had suffered migraines. During a follow-up of 22 years, 685 of the women were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — 128 with a history of migraine and 557 with no migraine. After adjusting for other factors that can affect Parkinson’s risk, researchers found that women with migraine were no more likely to develop the neurodegenerative disease than those without. It didn’t matter if a woman had frequent migraines, or if she experienced visual auras prior to a migraine headache — the result always was no association between migraine and Parkinson’s, researchers said. However, more research is needed to confirm the lack of a link between migraines and Parkinson’s, researchers said. The findings were published Aug. 21 in the journal Neurology. “Since this study involved only female health professionals who were primarily white people, more research is needed to determine whether the…  read on >  read on >

High levels of fluoride in drinking water may dim the intelligence of children, a new U.S. government report shows. Based on an analysis of published research, the potentially controversial report marks the first time a federal agency has determined there is a link between drinking twice the recommended amount of fluoride and lower IQs in kids. “Since 1945, the use of fluoride has been a successful public health initiative for reducing dental cavities and improving general oral health of adults and children,” the report stated. “There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources, including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts.” Importantly, “the determination about lower IQs in children was based primarily on epidemiology studies in non-U.S. countries such as Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Mexico where some pregnant women, infants and children received total fluoride exposure amounts higher than 1.5 mg fluoride/L of drinking water,” the report authors stated. “The U.S. Public Health Service currently recommends 0.7 mg/L, and the World Health Organization has set a safe limit for fluoride in drinking water of 1.5 mg/L.” One expert welcomed the findings. “I think this [report] is crucial in…  read on >  read on >