AARP: A majority of Americans believe dietary supplements improve brain health, despite the lack of evidence

_____ New Report Dis­cour­ages Adults From Using Brain Health Sup­ple­ments (Pre­ven­tion): “This morn­ing, the Glob­al Coun­sel on Brain Health released a report con­clud­ing that dietary sup­ple­ments do not improve brain health or pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, or Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The report, released by the AARP, flat­ly rec­om­mends that most con­sumers do not take sup­ple­ments for…

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Cognitive Training or Gingko Biloba to prevent cognitive decline and dementia? New comprehensive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine clarifies priorities for public health and for future research

Evi­dence Sup­port­ing Three Inter­ven­tions That Might Slow Cog­ni­tive Decline and the Onset of Demen­tia Is Encour­ag­ing but Insuf­fi­cient to Jus­ti­fy a Pub­lic Health Cam­paign Focused on Their Adop­tion (Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing, and Med­i­cine): “Cog­ni­tive train­ing, blood pres­sure man­age­ment for peo­ple with hyper­ten­sion, and increased phys­i­cal activ­i­ty all show mod­est but incon­clu­sive evi­dence that…

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Study: Enhancing brain functioning, and preventing cognitive decline, via diet, exercise and cognitive training

  Healthy eat­ing, exer­cise, and brain-train­ing pro­gram results in slow­er men­tal decline for old­er peo­ple (Sci­ence Dai­ly): “A com­pre­hen­sive pro­gram pro­vid­ing old­er peo­ple at risk of demen­tia with healthy eat­ing guid­ance, exer­cise, brain train­ing, and man­age­ment of meta­bol­ic and vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors appears to slow down cog­ni­tive decline, accord­ing to the first ever ran­domised con­trolled trial…

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Update: A Fresh Look at Enhancing Brain & Mental Health Across the Lifespan

Time for Sharp­Brains’ May 2013 e‑newsletter, which fea­tures a vari­ety of arti­cles offer­ing a more opti­mistic and evi­­dence-based approach to brain and men­tal health than cur­rent prac­tices. First of all, let us high­light that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can just pub­lished an excel­lent review of our new book. The author sums it up by say­ing that “…I wish I had read…

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Vitamin D and Cognitive Decline: What’s the Relationship?

The role of vit­a­min D in the brain appeared evi­dent in the 1980s when researchers found key pro­teins in the brain involved in vit­a­min D metab­o­lism. A lot of clin­i­cal evi­dence has accu­mu­lat­ed since then sug­gest­ing that low vit­a­min D lev­els may poten­tial­ly result in cog­ni­tive decline. Nonethe­less the results are mixed and not all…

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January Newsletter: Let’s Talk Brain Fitness, Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Reserve

Let us first announce an upcom­ing Vir­tu­al Book Club Dis­cus­sion focused on Brain Fit­ness, to take place on Mon­day March 14th in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week 2011 (March 14–20th). Let’s dis­cuss burn­ing issues togeth­er: Why care about neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it offers to enrich our qual­i­ty of life? What does cog­ni­tive reserve research…

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