A new opportunity to prevent dementia-vitamin B complex? !

Vitamin supplements can sometimes help prevent disease from getting worse. And this time I will explore the relationship between vitamin B complex and Alzheimer's disease! However, at the beginning of the article, we must first clarify a concept:

Alzheimer's disease (AD) ≠ Dementia

Strictly speaking, there are many types of dementia: degenerative, vascular, and mixed. There are many different diseases in the degenerative type. Alzheimer’s disease is one of them, and in Alzheimer’s disease In the process of hair, it is often found that certain areas of the gray matter of the brain will shrink and degenerate.

Past studies have found that homocysteine (Hcy, homocysteine for short), a substance in the blood, is highly correlated with the degradation of gray matter in the brain.The higher the concentration of Hcy in the blood, the faster the atrophy of gray matter in the brain, And high-dose vitamin B group therapy seems to have the effect of slowing down atrophy.

Refer to papers published in PNAS journals:"Preventing Alzheimer's disease-related gray matter atrophy by B-vitamin treatment"; In the experimental design of this study, the subjects were divided into a control group (using only placebo) and an experimental group (using high-dose vitamin B group), each group was divided into two groups according to the level of blood Hcy concentration, and Two years later, an MRI scan was used to check the subject's brain degeneration.

The results found that: for subjects with low blood Hcy levels, there was no significant difference in whether or not to use vitamin B group therapy. The author said that perhaps it was because subjects with low levels of Hcy in the blood had slow brain degeneration. However, the study also found other findings:

For subjects with high levels of Hcy in the blood, there is a significant difference in the results of whether to use vitamin B group therapy!
Control group (using only placebo)The degree of degradation is 5.2%
test group(Using high-dose vitamin B complex) the degree of degradation is 0.6%
The gap between the two groups is more than 8 times! It shows its effect!

In addition, in order to confirm whether the gray matter degradation of the brain really affects actual life skills, the researchers also arranged for the subjects to undergo neuropsychological testing, and used regression analysis to correct and discuss the results. The results confirmed the degradation of brain gray matter and poor neuropsychological test scores. There is a high degree of relevance.

Therefore, if you are getting older in the future, or if there are some cognitive memory deterioration in your elders in your family, it is suspected to be Alzheimer’s disease, you may wish to consider a blood test of Hcy. If the blood concentration is high, it means that your brain is degrading faster. Come on, you can consider supplementing with vitamin B complex, maybe it will help!