Vitamins are often scoffed at, as having no research behind them. Nothing can be further from the truth.
My dear friend and colleague spent his life putting a huge collection of studies, over 1550 pages, all published in peer review, all demonstrating nutritional efficacy for a wide variety of conditions. This must-have home reference is called Nutritional Medicine by Alan Gaby MD.
Presently, our food is often deficient in nutrients, from current farming methods and soil depletion, even basic rain is now filled with chemicals, to the time it takes to get it packaged, (what it is packaged in) and into stores.
Our planet is rife with chemicals that can further rinse out nutrients, or bind them up.
Healthy Hippocampus Volume
Keeping cognition bright is hugely a matter of keeping our hippocampal volume healthy like it was when we were younger.
The hippocampus is the “physiologic analogy of our soul” as this is the part of us that makes us feel like Popeye, “I am who I am”. This is the exact part of the brain that terrifyingly and excessively shrinks before Alzheimer’s disease. A disease in which we literally lose ourselves.
The hippocampus is the part of the brain, shaped like a sea horse, that stores memory. It consolidates thoughts, motivation, and mood.
Natural aging, without huge nutritional and hormonal support, finds the hippocampus losing about 1 to 2% of volume per year after age 40.
However, nutrients to the rescue. Nutrients bolster hippocampal volume.
Magnesium
A recent article in the European Journal of Nutrition demonstrated that out of 6001 participants, dietary magnesium intake was associated with larger brain volumes in gray and hippocampal areas. The more magnesium, the less damage to the brain in the form of white matter lesions.
The nutrient magnesium is neuroprotective.
The authors conclude that higher dietary magnesium intake is related to better brain health in the general population, particularly in women.
Stress rinses magnesium out of the body.
Highly processed foods contain less magnesium and thus when we eat more processed foods, our tissues become less robust with magnesium. As well as other protective nutrients.
Daily Multivitamins
Columbia University and Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard published a study showing that a daily multivitamin helps slow age-related memory decline, and protects the brain.
"Cognitive aging is a top health concern for older adults, and this study suggests that there may be a simple, inexpensive way to help older adults slow down memory decline," says study leader Adam M. Brickman, Ph.D., professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
They looked at 3,500 adults (mostly non-Hispanic white) over age 60 and randomized them to take a daily multivitamin supplement or placebo for three years.
At the end of each year, participants performed a series of online cognitive assessments at home designed to test the memory function of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is affected by normal aging.
The COSMOS-Web study is part of a large clinical trial led by Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard called the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS).
By the end of the first year, memory improved for people taking a daily multivitamin, compared with those taking a placebo.
The researchers estimate the improvement, which was sustained over the three-year study period, was equivalent to about three years of age-related memory decline.
The effect was “more” pronounced in participants with underlying cardiovascular disease.
The results of the new study are consistent with another recent COSMOS study of more than 2,200 older adults that found that taking a daily multivitamin improved overall cognition, memory recall, and attention, effects that were also more pronounced in those with underlying cardiovascular disease.
Yet, do your docs still shake their heads at vitamins?
Do they not know that your precious brain is sensitive to, and needs, healthy nutrition?
"The finding that a daily multivitamin improved memory in two separate cognition studies in the COSMOS randomized trial is remarkable, suggesting that multivitamin supplementation holds promise as a safe, accessible, and affordable approach to protecting cognitive health in older adults," says co-author JoAnn Manson, MD, chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Many of us in the health field have been saying for years that exploring the root cause of disease and making sure the entire body is filled with great basic building blocks, and nutrients are part of staying well and huge tools in healing.
Still, these researchers call the benefits of nutrition remarkable, as if this were a brand new concept.
But hey, anyway, if we can get sound nutritional motivation out to our citizens, I’m all for it.
But never let any doc be arrogant or scoff at the benefits of multivitamin minerals.
Your brain wants healthy nutrition - to keep all of you healthy.
Healthy food, along with some nutritional support. Ideally with the help of an in-the-know practitioner. This all makes better sense that staying velcroed to a conveyor belt of yet more medications.
Knowledge is power.
Especially brain power.
Dr. B.
References:
Dietary magnesium intake is related to larger brain volumes and lower white matter lesions with notable sex differences. Eur J Nutr. 2023 Mar 10. doi: 10.1007/s00394-023-03123-x. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36899275.
Multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults: a randomized clinical trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.05.011
This is such important and crucial info
Thank you for this. Will be so helpful to my clients
Great article, I love the Velcro part :) so true!