When we live with MS, there can be dozens of symptoms, and they can interfere with our lives, our ability to work, and our quality of life. In this video, I am going to go over five common MS symptoms that I have and some tips and evidence-based ways to help us manage symptoms and improve our quality of life. These symptoms include fatigue, Uhthoff’s phenomenon, cog fog, spasms, and weakness.
Age-related brain atrophy refers to the gradual loss of neurons and shrinkage of brain tissue, which is a natural part of the ageing process. This condition can contribute to cognitive decline and various neurological issues. While ageing itself cannot be prevented, recent research from an 18-month dietary intervention provides hope that lifestyle and dietary changes may help slow down brain ageing.
Brain age, determined through MRI measurements of the hippocampus and lateral ventricles, reflects the biological aging of the brain, which may differ from a person’s chronological age. Chronological age is simply the number of years a person has lived, while brain age indicates the actual health of the brain. Generally, as we age, the hippocampus tends to shrink, and the lateral ventricles tend to expand, which serve as indicators of brain ageing. Some individuals may have a brain age that is younger or older than their chronological age. A younger brain age suggests better cognitive health, whereas an older brain age may indicate accelerated ageing and an increased risk of cognitive decline.
The study found that a decline in HbA1c and key markers of long-term blood sugar levels is associated with significant positive changes in specific brain regions commonly affected by age-related atrophy. It suggests that improved blood sugar control could be one of the most important factors in slowing down age-related brain changes.
Previous research has shown the benefits of the Green Mediterranean (Green-Med) diet, particularly its positive effects on blood sugar control. This diet is rich in polyphenols from plant-based sources such as Mankai—a high-protein aquatic plant—and green tea, while being low in red and processed meats. The current study reinforces these findings, suggesting that the Green-Med diet not only supports metabolic health but may also have protective effects on brain structure and function.
A new study has found that a low-sugar diet in utero and in the first two years of life can meaningfully reduce the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood. This provides compelling new evidence of the lifelong health effects of early-life sugar consumption.
A study published in the journal Science reveals that children who had sugar restrictions during their first 1,000 days after conception faced up to a 35% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and a 20% reduced risk of hypertension in adulthood. The research indicates that low sugar intake by mothers during pregnancy was sufficient to lower these health risks, and maintaining sugar restrictions after birth further enhanced the benefits.
Using an unintended “natural experiment” from World War II, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, McGill University in Montreal, and the University of California, Berkeley, examined how sugar rationing during the war influenced long-term health outcomes.
The United Kingdom introduced limits on sugar distribution in 1942 as part of its wartime food rationing program. Rationing ended in September 1953.
The researchers used contemporary data from the U.K. Biobank, a database of medical histories and genetic, lifestyle and other disease risk factors, to study the effect of those early-life sugar restrictions on health outcomes of adults conceived in the U.K. just before and after the end of wartime sugar rationing.
“Studying the long-term effects of added sugar on health presents challenges,” explains Tadeja Gracner, a senior economist at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research and the study’s corresponding author. “It is difficult to identify situations where individuals are randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life and tracked over a span of 50 to 60 years. The end of rationing provided us with a unique natural experiment that helped us overcome these obstacles.”
On average, during rationing, sugar intake was about 8 teaspoons (40 grams) per day. When rationing ended, sugar and sweets consumption skyrocketed to about 16 teaspoons (80 grams) per day.
Notably, rationing did not involve extreme food deprivation overall. Diets generally appeared to have been within today’s guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization, which recommend no added sugars for children under two and no more than 12 teaspoons (50g) of added sugar daily for adults.
The immediate and large increase in sugar consumption but no other foods after rationing ended created an interesting natural experiment: Individuals were exposed to varying levels of sugar intake early in life, depending on whether they were conceived or born before or after September 1953. Those conceived or born just before the end of rationing experienced sugar-scarce conditions compared to those born just after who were born into a more sugar-rich environment.
The researchers then identified those born in the U.K. Biobank data collected over 50 years later. Using a very tight birth window around the end of sugar rationing allowed the authors to compare midlife health outcomes of otherwise similar birth cohorts.
While living through the period of sugar restriction during the first 1,000 days of life substantially lowered the risk of developing diabetes and hypertension, for those later diagnosed with either of those conditions, the onset of disease was delayed by four years and two years, respectively.
Notably, exposure to sugar restrictions in utero alone was enough to lower risks, but disease protection increased postnatally once solids were likely introduced.
The researchers say the magnitude of this effect is meaningful as it can save costs, extend life expectancy, and, perhaps more importantly, improve quality of life.
In the United States, individuals with diabetes face average annual medical expenses of approximately $12,000. Additionally, an earlier diagnosis of diabetes is associated with a significantly reduced life expectancy; specifically, for each decade that diagnosis occurs earlier, life expectancy decreases by three to four years.
The researchers note that these numbers underscore the value of early interventions that could delay or prevent this disease.
Experts continue to raise concerns about children’s long-term health as they consume excessive amounts of added sugars during their early life, a critical period of development. Adjusting child sugar consumption, however, is not easy—added sugar is everywhere, even in baby and toddler foods, and children are bombarded with TV ads for sugary snacks, say the researchers.
“Parents need information about what works, and this study provides some of the first causal evidence that reducing added sugar early in life is a powerful step towards improving children’s health over their lifetimes,” says study co-author Claire Boone of McGill University and University of Chicago.
Co-author Paul Gertler of UC Berkeley and the National Bureau of Economics Research adds: “Sugar early in life is the new tobacco, and we should treat it as such by holding food companies accountable to reformulate baby foods with healthier options and regulate the marketing and tax sugary foods targeted at kids.”
This study is the first of a larger research effort exploring how early-life sugar restrictions affected a broader set of economic and health outcomes in later adulthood, including education, wealth, and chronic inflammation, cognitive function and dementia.
Brain endurance training (BET), a combined cognitive and exercise training method developed for athletes, boosts mental and physical abilities in older adults.
According to a new study by researchers at the Universities of Birmingham, UK, and Extremadura, Spain, brain endurance training (BET) can improve attention, executive function (cognition), physical endurance, and resistance exercise performance. BET is a combined exercise and cognitive training method that was initially developed to increase endurance among elite athletes.
The research has significant implications for healthy aging. Previous studies have shown that mental fatigue can impair both cognitive and physical performance, leading to issues such as poorer balance control, and increased risk of falls and accidents. This study, published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, is the first to examine the benefits of BET for both cognitive and physical performance in older adults.
Corresponding author Professor Chris Ring said: “We have shown that BET could be an effective intervention to improve cognitive and physical performance in older adults, even when tired. This could have significant implications for improving this population’s health, including reducing the risk of falls and accidents.”
In the experiment, 24 healthy sedentary women aged between 65-78 were allocated to one of three training groups: brain endurance training (BET), exercise training, and no training (control group). The first two groups each completed three 45-minute exercise sessions per week over eight weeks. Each session included 20 minutes of resistance and 25 minutes of endurance training. While the exercise sessions were the same for each of these groups, the BET group also completed a 20-minute cognitive task before exercising.
All three groups completed a series of cognitive (reaction time and colour-matching tests) and physical tests (walk, chair-stand and arm-curl tests) to assess performance at the start and end of the study. Participants in the BET group outperformed the exercise-only group in the cognitive tasks, with a 7.8% increase in cognitive performance after exercise, compared to a 4.5% increase in the exercise-only group. Regarding physical performance, the BET group achieved a 29.9% improvement, compared to 22.4% for the exercise-only group.
“BET is an effective countermeasure against mental fatigue and its detrimental effects on performance in older adults,” added Professor Ring. “While we still need to extend our research to include larger sample sizes including both men and women, these promising initial findings show we should do more to encourage older people to engage in BET to improve brain and body activities.”