Name: 如何延緩大腦衰老兩年 (How to Slow Brain Aging by Two Years)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:00:40.000Z
Duration: 5 min 7 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

A plant-based diet is thought to have played   a significant role in human evolution.

And the consumption of whole plant  foods and even just extracts

has repeatedly been associated with a  decreased risk of aging related diseases.

And by healthy aging I’m not  talking preventing wrinkles.

Two of the most dreaded consequences  of dementia with aging

are problems moving around and  difficulty remembering things.

Dementia robs older adults of their  independence, control, and identity.

Well, fruits and vegetables help reduce  the risk of other chronic diseases,

might they work for  brain diseases as well?

There has been a proliferation  of recent interest

in plant polyphenols as agents  in the treatment of dementia.

There are 4,000 different  kinds found ubiquitously

in foods of plant origin,  but berries are packed with them,

possessing powerful antioxidant,  anti-inflammatory properties,

and there’s a subset of a  subset called anthocyanidins,

natural blue-purple pigments  uniquely and specifically capable

of both crossing the  blood–brain barrier

and localizing inside brain regions  involved in learning and memory.

The brain takes up less than  like 2% of the body weight,

but may burn up to 50%  of the body’s fuel,

creating a potential  firestorm of free radicals.

So maybe these brain-seeking  phytonutrients in berries

could fight oxidation, inflammation,  and increase blood flow.

So, this raised a  thought-provoking idea.

Maybe a nutritional intervention  with blueberries

may be beneficial in forestalling  or even reversing

the neurological changes  associated with aging.

So did researchers give blueberries  to people and see what happened?

No, as I noted in an earlier video,  they gave blueberries to rats.

It would be a decade before  the first human trial.

"Blueberry Supplementation  Improves Memory in Older Adults"

suggesting that consistent  supplementation with blueberries

may offer an approach  to forestall or mitigate

What other blue/purple  foods can we try?

Concord grape juice  had a similar benefit,

suggesting that supplementation  with purple grape juice

may enhance cognitive function in  older adults with early memory decline.

Why use juice and not  whole concord grapes?

Because then you couldn’t  design a placebo

to rule out the very real  and powerful placebo effect.

And also, because it was funded by  the Welch’s grape juice company.

This effect was confirmed  in a follow-up study ,

showing for the first time an  increase in neural activation

in parts of the brain associated with  memory using functional MRI scans.

But this brain scan study was  tiny, just 4 people in each group.

And same problem in  the blueberry study –

Why haven’t large population-based  studies been done?

on where these  phytonutrients are found.

We know how much vitamin C  is in a blueberry,

but not how much  anthocyanidin, ...until now.

followed the cognitive function of  more than 16,000 women for years,

and found that higher, long-term  consumption of berries

was associated with significantly  slower rates of cognitive decline

even after careful consideration of  confounding by socioeconomic status,

meaning even after taking into account the  fact that rich people eat more berries.

The first population-based  evidence that greater intakes

of blueberries and strawberries  were highly associated

The magnitude of associations  were equivalent

to the cognitive differences  that one might observe

in women up to 2 and a  half years apart in age.

In other words, women with  higher intake of berries

appeared to have delayed cognitive  aging by as much as 2 1/2 years.

Why not just take some kind of  anthocyanidin supplement?

Because there hasn’t been a single study  that found any kind of cognitive benefit

just giving these single  phytonutrients. In fact the opposite.

Whole blueberries appear to be more  effective than individual components,

showing that the whole is greater  than the sum of its parts.

These findings potentially have  substantial public health implications,

as increasing berry intake represents  a fairly simple dietary modification

to test in older adults for  maintaining brain function.