Vitamin E and The Aging Brain

The potential benefits of vitamins E and C

in helping our body minimise the risk

of some forms of Dementia.

Dementia is the second leading cause of death of all Australians. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the major cause of dementia. This will affect all of us directly or indirectly at some point in our lives. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present some of the ways we may be able to prevent or at least minimise the risk of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases using relatively safe, low cost methods.

Personal Background: I have taken vitamins C and E regularly for close to 30 years. My goal is to take it every day.  My father started experiencing significant signs of heart disease at age 50 with a blue nose that his doctor said represented a condition stemming from low oxygen content in his blood known as “cyanosis” due to heart disease.

He ate sensibly with what he knew at the time, but still had a heart attack at age 56 and triple bypass surgery a few years after that. Thankfully, he lived many more years thanks to surgery and medication, but his confidence, energy and activity levels were greatly diminished and died at age 79 of cancer.  

Since that time, I have read a lot of research that provides strong evidence for vitamin E and vitamin C being able to support cardiovascular health. My father also started getting serious memory issues in his 70’s so I read more about ways to support brain health. I don’t think taking supplements like vitamin E and C can guarantee that we won't get those types of degenerative diseases, but evidence such as what I will present to you here from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, does renew my enthusiasm for these powerful antioxidants.  

Most of what I have read about vitamin E and vitamin C in the past related to their support for cardiovascular health. But this article titled “The role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: evidence from animal models”, focuses on ways we may be able to support our brain as we age. As always, the sooner we start, the better the results are likely to be.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), what is it and how does it affect us?

“Health and lifestyle factors that may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease include:

What age will it be ok by you to no longer take care of your finances or organise a holiday?

• physical inactivity

• lack of mental exercise

• smoking

• obesity

• diabetes

• high cholesterol

• high blood pressure.”

“Dementia is the second leading cause of death of all Australians and provisional data is showing that dementia will likely soon be the leading cause of death.”

( https://www.dementia.org.au/about-dementia/types-of-dementia/alzheimers-disease. Accessed 20 Nov 2023) 

That same dementia.org website states “In 2023, it is estimated there are more than 400,000 Australians living with dementia. Without a medical breakthrough, the number of people with dementia is expected to increase to more than 800,000 by 2058.”  Please note the site does have a section called “Risk reduction resources” which looks very helpful.

After receiving honours in neuroscience, way back in 1990, I was offered a scholarship to do a PhD on the role of heavy metals in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Instead of doing the PhD, I went to the US to finish my chiropractic training, but for clinical, academic and personal reasons, I have had an interest in antioxidants ever since. I remember seeing a documentary on the subject in the late 1990s while living in the USA. I was saddened and frustrated at the end of that documentary when it had only discussed the latest pharmaceutical solutions and the need for a “medical breakthrough”. It did not at all cover any of the environmental causes, and therefore other potentially safer and less costly solutions to dementia which I had read about while considering that PhD offer. The documentary was calling dementia the next pandemic, and from the statistics I've just quoted above, we can see that over twenty years later, it is indeed a pandemic. It's just that it is a slow and insidious type of pandemic that is not getting people in a panic. Let’s not panic, but this is still a very imminent and serious issue that has already or will likely impact us all in some way. 

I think if we are looking for “breakthroughs”, they might be right in front of our nose in the form of things we can do that are safe and potentially effective (at least for some of us), which is why I was interested in reading this particular article on the role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Making This Article Easier to Understand

I will be sharing a few statements from this 21 page research paper, but it will be a lot more interesting and helpful to you if we go over a few terms first: 

1. Alzheimer’s disease is a neuro degenerative disorder representing the major cause of dementia. 

2. “Dementia is diagnosed only when both memory and another cognitive function are each affected severely enough to interfere with a person's ability to carry out routine daily activities.” _{The Journal of the American Medical Association}

3.     Free radicals are chemicals which can react with cells in your body, potentially damaging them.  A free radical is an oxidant which is “an especially reactive atom or group of atoms that has one or more unpaired electrons”. _{(Miriam Webster dictionary. Accessed Nov 2023)} It is highly charged and acts like a missile that can injure anything in its path, including brain cells and DNA. Free radicals are a byproduct of animals needing to utilise oxygen. Excessive free radicals in the body can speed up the aging process.

4.     Antioxidants: The body has a mechanism to “extinguish” free radicals, called antioxidants. This process can be assisted by eating plants rich in antioxidants and taking antioxidant supplements. There are hundreds of different kinds of antioxidants.

5. Oxidative stress is a process that occurs when there is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants and results in damage to cells. .

6.     Amyloid-B is a protein which accumulates in the brain as somebody develops Alzheimer’s disease and is used in medicine as “marker” of the disease. It is something that occurs in all of us, but some of us are able to clear the Amyloid-B while others are not as efficient at doing this. Therefore, exploring safe, low-cost ways to enable us to clear Amyloid-B more effectively, such as vitamin C and vitamin E, has great potential health benefit for some of us and may improve quality of life and possibly even assist with longevity.

Alzheimer’s Disease, what can we do about it?

Key Points From This Research Article: Now that we understand those terms, here are some of the key points from the research article titled “The role of vitamin E in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: evidence from animal models”. Any text here in quotation marks is from that article:

• “Oxidative stress represents one of the main factors involved in Alzheimer's disease initiation and progression.”                       Implication: This research paper looks at the role of vitamin E as one way to reduce oxidative stress and potentially Alzheimer's disease.

At what age will you be willing to give up reading a book to yourself or your grandchildren?

• Vitamin E can reduce oxidative stress caused by Amyloid-B and is “also able to improve memory and cognitive deficits”.                                            
  Implication: Research looking at the extent to which this improvement can occur in humans, and which of us are most likely to benefit, might not yet have been done in order to provide us with definitive conclusions, but given it is a relatively safe and inexpensive thing that we can do to potentially reduce the risk of a range of degenerative diseases, it is worth careful consideration.

• ·Naturally occurring alpha tocopherol is the most common form of vitamin E used in supplements and has been shown to have some success in managing and possibly helping to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. However, other kinds of vitamin E called tocotrienols have also been shown to contribute in this important area of holistic health care. For example, these scientists state in their concluding remarks “Even if alpha-tocopherol is the most investigated member of the vitamin E family, also tocotrienols showed good results in AD animal models, exerting in some cases, a stronger action than alpha-tocopherol.”                                                                               
  Implication: This is why I recommend a vitamin E formula that includes many different types of vitamin E. Most brands available on the market only provide one type of vitamin E and sometimes that is not even the natural form, but the isomer (manufactured mirror image) of the natural vitamin E. This is legal as it has the same chemical formula as the natural kind, however, there is evidence that it does not function in all the same ways. The lesson here is to buy from a truly reputable brand, not just a highly advertised and “popular” brand of supplement. My favorite brand is one of the very few that has its own mass spectrometry lab, staffed by trained scientists. They use this multi-million dollar device to test every batch of ingredients they buy to make sure they are what the label says they are. Sadly, they often find falsely labeled ingredients that they return. The good news is that you now don’t have to unknowingly ingest those "nutrients".
  

• “Seeds and other oils are high in tocopherols and tocotrienols” but “fruits and vegetables have scarce quantities”.
  Implication: I consider that the trouble with getting our vitamin E largely from oils is that most oils can contribute to heart disease in some people, especially in people already predisposed. If you would like more information on that, please feel free to contact me. There are lots of good studies showing that heart disease is the number one killer in the Western world due in large part to our ‘modern’ diet. For example, there are some parts of the world with different diet which have almost no heart disease. Vitamin E supplementation can therefore be very important for some people who have a particular need to avoid progression of heart disease, and the same could be true for Alzheimer’s disease.

• “Vitamin E is an essential micronutrient for humans, useful for maintaining the integrity of cell membranes.”   

Implication: “Cell membranes are crucial to the life of the cell.” _{(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21055/ Accessed 20 Nov 2023).} Implication: When these scientists say Vitamin E is essential, it means we must have it in our diet. When we don’t get enough, various degenerative processes in the cell membrane and within the cell are at risk of being negatively impacted.
Implication: When these scientists say vitamin E is useful for maintaining the integrity of cell membranes, it shows how important vitamin E is to have in abundance in our diet. That’s because cell membranes have many vital functions, which if impaired, can detract from health, contribute towards premature aging. When we don’t get enough vitamin E or C, various vital metabolic processes can suffer. For me, anything I can do that can significantly improve any vital function of the body is worth doing regularly.

 

You may be wondering "What is the right dose of vitamin E?" The research article by Gugliandolo et al., discusses the dose dependent effect of vitamin E supplementation.

The article reports that in the past there had been some concern that high doses of vitamin E greater than 400 international units per day (400 IU/Day), might increase risk of mortality. However, two followup studies found that not to be the case. On page 12 of this article the reported one of those studies concluding that it “...did not find an increase in mortality rate in AD patients receiving vitamin E compared to those receiving placebo, on the country, it was reduced.” The other study found patients taking high doses of vitamin E (2000 IU/day) “... did not increase mortality.” Instead it stated that these patients survived longer, compared to those not given any supplement.                               
Implication: It's important to know the dosage needed for any particular supplement. Some supplements have particular benefits that are best used temporarily to achieve specific objectives and then it is ideal to stop using them. An example would be immune boosting supplements. Some, however not all, immune boosting supplements are used on an ongoing basis, for example in cases where people are immune compromised. From my reading of the literature, I believe vitamin E is beneficial to take every day. Taking the recommended dose written on the bottle is a good idea, unless there is a special short-term need as determined by your healthcare professional, and if so the research quoted above showed no problems even at very high doses such as 5500 IU. The vitamin E I recommend most often is 500 IU per capsule and just one is sufficient for most people.

• “There is a synergistic relationship between vitamin C and E, because vitamin C recycles vitamin E radicals regenerating its antioxidant properties.” And "... vitamin E dose with vitamin C treatment improved spatial memory deficits in mice.  Implication: About 500 IU per day with vitamin C is likely to be sufficient. Both vitamin E and vitamin C are important in maintaining skin strength and elasticity and potentially to minimising wrinkle development. Similar benefits also apply to what is technically “skin” on the inside of the body; the lining of the arteries and digestive tract. Therefore, when both vitamin C and E are taken together it may lead to greater benefits than when they are taken independently.

Cardiovascular health and Vitamin E and C

I'd like to share a few words on vitamin E, vitamin C and cardiovascular health. Supplementing with these nutrients is certainly not the only thing that I do to try to protect my heart and cardiovascular system. On January 25, 2023, I saw a cardiologist because I was struggling to ride my bike and was getting tightness in my chest after just 50 metres on the bike. A few months earlier, I had been racing my bike all the way around the base of Mt Ainslie from Mt Majura and back. I'm sure some of you can do it more quickly, but I had it down to 45 minutes. Therefore, "How could I have heart problems?" I thought to myself. "It can't be my heart, I've been taking care of it.” I had convinced myself that the tightness in my chest was coming from my lungs, so I thought it was a side-effect from my 24 hours of Covid symptoms. But the cardiologist smiled and said “That's called crushing chest pain without the pain.” Especially when it was due to a blockage of my right ventricle which supplies the lungs. He said that just after I had miserably failed the Cardiovascular stress test. I'm so grateful I went to the cardiologist because it shocked me out of my delusion that I was okay and that I was doing enough for my heart health.

I had been feeling fine and just like so many of my own patients had then allowed myself to became really slack in taking vitamin C and E, along with the other things which had improved my cardiovascular blood work markers in the past. But nothing had improved me to a near perfect blood work results I had only a few moths after that failed 'street test'. I achieved that from a new diet that I found out about from another cardiologist who has been working in this area for over 30 years. Three consecutive good blood test results led my GP to say that my cardiovascular bloodwork markers are now the best I’ve had in over 20 years. I have done this without any medication. Be warned, it takes effort, discipline and consistency at levels most people don’t want to commit to. I'll share that detail in a future article, but first I need to gather up all my bloodwork results, create some graphs and do even more reading on the subject. In the meantime, feel free to set up a time for a consultation with me if you would like to discuss this with me.

Conclusion

Please always keep up your GP appointments, I’m glad I did! The issues at stake are too high not to be monitored carefully by your GP. I still see my GP every 2 to 3 months to monitor and discuss my cardiovascular health status with her.

Hopefully this has been a thought-provoking read, which will help inform your decisions when it comes to vitamin intake and more ways you can care for your body, mind and future.

Jaosn W. Barritt B.Sc (Hons) DC Chiropractor

Reference: Gugliandolo, A., et al. (2017) Role of Vitamin E in the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence from Animal Models. Int J Mol Sci. 2017 Nov 23;18(12):2504.

If you would like to read the scientific article yourself it can be found here:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5751107/  

To learn more about the Alzheimer's and dementia I recommend taking a look at this page.

The purpose of pain

The purpose of pain

Some would argue that back pain is the worst kind of pain possible. It always comes at the most inconvenient times and can drag on for days, months, or even years. However, as aggravating and exasperating as it can be, pain has a purpose.

What is your body trying to tell you?

Pain in your spine isn’t necessarily something that needs ‘fixing’. Surprising as it may be, pain isn’t normally an isolated incident—it’s typically connected to your life circumstances.

Fixing the pain and restoring your frame to its former wellness may seem like the best option, but it’s not the only solution. 

Consider this: Your pain may, in fact, be your body’s way of telling you that your lifestyle or circumstances need a change.

By seeking chiropractic help, but then returning to your longstanding lifestyle, you’re inviting the pain to return again (often repeatedly). 

Benefits of pain

If you find yourself suffering from spinal aches and pains, consider it an opportunity to do an inventory of your life choices. 

What needs to be done differently in order to enable you to the live the kind of life you REALLY want?

In addition to seeking chiropractic help, use the pain to your benefit by pinpointing undue sources of stress and doing everything you can to eliminate them. It will definitely pay off in the long run.

The secret to feeling younger!

To learn how to act younger, feel younger and perform like a youngster again, you must understand the process of aging. There are many mysterious phenomena in reversing the aging effect, but we are going to try and make it very simple, by sharing one secret here! When you understand what the aging process is all about, you can learn how to slow this process. What's even better is that ANYBODY CAN ACHIEVE IT IF HE OR SHE SO DESIRES.

The SECRET about the Ageing process

Here’s the first SECRET: You get old because you are not disposing of all your internally generated wastes and toxins, and you accumulate the leftovers within your body. For your body to function effectively and to maintain body temperature, you burn nutrients within your cells.
 
The main ingredients of all foods, expensive or inexpensive, gourmet or junk, vegetable or meat, alkaline or acid, are either carbohydrates, proteins or fats. They are made primarily from a combination of four elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen.
 
After these nutrients are burnt (oxidized) in your cells, they all turn into organic acids: carbonic acids, uric acids, lactic acids, fatty acids, etc.

FACT: Fats are acidic even before oxidation. These acidic wastes and toxins are disposed of in liquid form, as urine or perspiration, after first being dissolved in your blood. Every element within your body was placed there by your blood and can come out, first by being dissolved into your blood and then by excretion.
 
If anyone loses 5 kilograms by any dietary means, it can be said that most of that 5 kilograms came out through the urine. Unfortunately, due to our lifestyles and environments (i.e., too much ingestion, overwork, overindulgence, not enough rest, staying up late, not enough exercise, inadequate water consumption, smoking, pollution, etc.), your body cannot get rid of all the acidic waste products that it generates within. This acid starts to accumulate!
 
You accumulate these leftover waste products within your body, in your fat tissues. This is the process of getting old. To make matters worse, mixed with these organic acids are inorganic acid minerals such as chlorine, phosphor, and sulphur that come in with most of our acidic foods: meats, grains, and root crops.

In addition, if your hormones are out of balance or low (after age 30), this will also affect your body’s ability to get rid of toxin and therefore accelerate the aging process.
 
If you don't eat enough alkaline foods, such as fruits and vegetables that contain inorganic alkaline minerals: calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, etc.., you need to drink more water, at least 1.5 litres of high pH (alkaline) water, daily. This slows the aging process, detoxify the body by assisting with elimination, and helps us to build the immune system, become healthier and feel young again. 
 
If you have questions about alkaline water, talk to one of our chiropractors.

Stress Series: My body is made of concrete

Previously, I have discussed how stress has both negative and positive effects on our body and mind. To read this introduction to the Stress series, click here.

I would like to delve a further into ‘chronic stress’ and how it manifests in our body physically. It should be noted that the discussion around this topic will refer specifically to stress related malfunction and does not consider people that may have an acute injury or muscular related disease.

One of the things many people coming in to our practice are concerned about is having sore shoulders and neck, feeling tight/stiff and lacking flexibility. The effect of retained chronic stress (see Stress introduction) has created a new baseline for the body, meaning that tense muscles become the new norm. This is primarily driven by the brain, which is receiving and sending messages to the rest of the soft tissues (muscles, tendons, fascia) to tighten up in response to the bombardment of incoming stress. This might also explain why the effects of a massage can be so short lived.

So, what’s the biggest driver in this process?

A continual barrage of mental, emotional and/or chemical stressors that trigger a ‘fight-or-flight’ response, resulting in your body functioning in a hyper-tensed state. You may have already figured out that your muscles are much tighter when you’re stressed - nothing new here. However, most people have physical signs that suggests that you’re in a stressed state, without having conscious awareness of it. Over a prolonged period, these physical changes typically lead to dysfunction and pain. This is the result of a retained chronic stress response.

This accumulation of stress lowers our tolerance threshold. This means the more frequently our nervous system gets overwhelmed, the easier it becomes for our brain to trigger the stress response. Our body generally responds to this in a couple of ways depending on the nature of the stressful stimulus; superficially (physical interference) or at a deeper level (facilitated interference).

Superficial stress is generally attributed to physical traumas, for example, sports injuries or whiplash. These traumas typically require manual therapy and some rehabilitation, but generally have a good prognosis when it comes to healing. The deeper level stress affecting the spinal cord accumulates in conjunction with the shift in ‘fight-or-flight’ threshold, and typically requires a different approach.

Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), also known as Network Care, has shown to be a great tool in reducing the effects of deeper levels of stress, for example, a study conducted by Blanks et al. (1997) had over 2,800 participants who undertook a course of Network Care, and showed improvement in over 100 quality of life scores. These encompassed physical, mental and emotional improvements in health, including how they handled stress, which was unmatched in the group not receiving Network Care. This has been the basis of the work in our practice, allowing a ‘stressed out’ nervous system and tensed body to ‘recalibrate to a state of greater ease, resulting in improved quality of life and overall health.

Here are some things you can do to help you overcome stress:

Take a time out – We often get absorbed in our busy week that results in the feeling of ‘burn out’. Schedule some time in your week dedicated to doing the things you love so you can consciously remove yourself from the weekly grind.

Breathing exercises – Breathing properly is one of the most effective ways for your brain and nervous system to regulate stress and tension. Meditation and yoga promote deep, slow breathing and allow for a more relaxed state of being.  

Exercise – This has so many benefits, for example studies consistently show that regular exercise helps to improve mood and stress levels. 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise (something that gets thee heart rate up!) is a great way to help you fight off those blues.

Nervous System Health – The NSA Chiropractors at Body Mind Empowerment Centre in Lyneham can assess your nervous system health and see to what extent chronic stress has already impacted your physical body and if we can help bring more flexibility to your body! If you’re unsure about where your nervous system health is at, book in a complimentary appointment to find out whether we can help you.

Dr. Bilal Adhami
Chiropractor

Feeling better? Or better feeling?

Health care, as we know it in this country, is largely focused on stomping out symptoms and conditions. This is something most of us have been conditioned to do from a young age - if something was hurting, your Mother would kiss it to make it better. When we become independent, and the health issues become more significant than a scraped knee, we reach for over the counter medication to dull or block symptoms or conditions out. If we are disturbed, we reach for caffeine, television, alcohol, food or other substances all in the attempt to silence what we are feeling.

Is this instinctual habitual behaviour in our best interest? 

All of your senses are necessary; from seeing and hearing, to touch. What you sense allows you to respond, to react, and to adapt. If you put your hand on a hot stove are you better off to feel it or not? In fact, some very serious conditions, such as leprosy, involve the state of not being able to feel. You have the most intricate and sensitive autonomic and sensory nerve system of any creature on the planet. This has evolved over millennia to create a being that is the most fit to survive.

Spinal subluxations are literally blown neural circuits. They are where your nerve system has failed to adapt to a physical, chemical or emotional event. From the fall over your bicycle handlebars as a kid, to the upset you experienced with the loss of a loved one. They are a short-term survival strategy that is effective for you to move on with your life. However, as these distortions fragment your nerve system, it leaves you disconnected from who you truly are and living up to your quality of life potential.

The traumas of your past literally alienate, isolate, separate part of your physiology from one another. You end up living in a body armor of your history. As your nerve system chooses to wake up, it sends messengers for you to pay attention. The aching shoulder, the bulging waistline, your lack of energy and so on. The healthier you are the more subtle the messenger and the quicker you respond.

The sicker you are the louder the messenger and the more destructive it is to how you live your life. If you were in the jungle, would it be more advantageous to recognise a lion by its roar or its breath? Sometimes waking up is hard to do and the longer you hit the snooze alarm the harder it is to wake up.

Returning you to the state you were in before you had this symptomatic situation that is chaotic to your life has been the focus of health care. But that is not good enough because that is the state that put you to the situation you are in, to the symptom you are experiencing, the condition you have.

Health care, wellness care, is about better connection to the perfection within you so you can feel everything.

Health is wholeness. Healing is the process of becoming more whole. As you have a greater connection to your source, you will feel more. You may feel the parts of you that have been numb throughout your life, the unexpressed emotional upset, the detoxification of the chemical exposures you have experienced, the physical traumas that you drugged. Perhaps you will feel for the first time in your life! Our senses are here to be felt and used, so that you can be the very best version of yourself. Are you going to keep them switching off, or are you ready to wake up to better health?

by Dr. Bilal Adhami 

Your Heart & Your Nervous System

We all know how important it is to take care of our spine and our nervous system, but how does it all tie in with our heart? 

Your heart rate variability has been proven to give a real-time accurate depiction of the status of your nervous system.  Several studies have shown that individuals with heart disease have reduced parasympathetic nerve activity of over one-third!

Your nervous system, linked to every aspect of your health, is controlled by your brain and it even senses internal and external environments.  That’s right—your nervous system adjusts the functioning of your muscles and organs in accordance with the things happening inside and outside your body. And an unhealthy nervous system is definitely unhealthy for your heart.

Keep it all in check.  Since research now shows that heart disease is directly linked to deficiencies in the nervous system, it’s critical to nurture and protect this system.  How?  By nurturing and protecting yourself!  Take care of your spine, get adjustments when needed, and stay on top of your evaluations.  A happy spine, heart, and nervous system will definitely create a happier and healthier YOU!

By:

Dr. Bilal Adhami
NSA Chiropractor