Anesthetics may increase Alzheimer’s risk

Could anesthetics used during surgeries trigger Alzheimer’s disease in elderly patients? Several new test tube and animal studies raise the question. >>

Virus may affect memory loss decades later

A family of viruses that cause a range of ills from the common cold to polio may be able to infect the brain and cause steady damage, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reported.

“Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits”. >>

Seniors who eat more vegetables have better brains

“Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive decrease slow by roughly 40 per cent,” study author Martha Clare Morris of Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago said.

They also found that the older the person, the greater the impact of eating more than two servings of vegetables a day.   Researchers said they were surprised that fruit showed no link to reducing memory loss. >>

Marijuana slows memory loss

New research suggests that marijuana may contain compounds that slow memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease. >>