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 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| TX: 22.11.05 - Dementia: Alternatives PRESENTERS: JOHN WAITE AND PETER WHITE |
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| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WAITE Now there may be nothing we can do about some of the biggest risk factors for dementia, such as growing old, but there are plenty of home remedies that would have you believe that they can help people to lower their chances of developing the condition or to slow its progress once it's been diagnosed. Drinking green tea, doing a daily crossword, eating oil fish, even drinking red wine will all supposedly help to keep the mind shipshape and so keep dementia at bay. But are any of these claims true? Claudia Hammond's been hunting for the evidence. ACTUALITY Right then, what do you think we should have for our tea? Would you like some fish? Yeah you got fish you got today, what was it? I got mackerel today. Mackerel, yeah we'll have that. Would you like mackerel? And some green vegetables? Yeah. HAMMOND Maureen and Dennis from Warrington in Cheshire have adopted a healthy diet since Dennis was diagnosed with vascular dementia eight years ago following heart problems and a stroke. ACTUALITY Den? Yeah. Tomorrow - tomorrow - not today, not now - later on - we're going to go to the gym. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. Then we can go in the hydro pool after? Yes we can go in the hydro pool. Just for a short time in the hydro pool. Just for an hour. But we can have a little swim - no not an hour. HAMMOND Each time he has a mini stroke Dennis, who's 70, finds that his memory gets slightly worse to the extent that today he can't be left alone in the house. DENNIS Can't read, I can't write - spell. And you put the wrong shirt on and the wrong trousers, you put a blue sock and a black sock on. And I often say to Maureen I could do that a week ago, what's wrong? HAMMOND But he and his wife are trying to prevent further damage through a healthy diet of oily fish and plenty of exercise. DENNIS I like to swim and I like to go to the gym and do exercise at the gym. The rowing machine, the bicycle, I lift a couple of weights but not many. I feel a lot better when I've done it. MAUREEN I also feel that his exercise helps him, as far as the mini strokes are concerned. Once we started to exercise again I saw a vast difference in him, I've learnt about the diet and what I can use in the diet. Mackerel, tuna fish, kippers and chicken. I think for Dennis it's prolonged his life and it's helped his arteries. HAMMOND The Omega 3 fatty acids found in oily fish are causing a lot of excitement at the moment. A big study in Chicago found that people who regularly ate oily fish reduced their chances of developing Alzheimer's by 60%. But we can't be certain that it was the fish that made a difference, perhaps the people who liked eating lots of fish had healthier lifestyles in other ways to. So now Professor John Harwood, head of the school of biosciences at Cardiff University, has just started a control study to see whether fish oils might even reduce the severity of the symptoms in those who already have Alzheimer's. HARWOOD We're using a mouse which actually suffers from Alzheimer's. And what we're doing is we're feeding different diets to the animal and then studying the behaviour and also doing various biochemical tests to try and look at the molecular mechanisms by which fish oils could actually alleviate Alzheimer's. HAMMOND And do we know exactly what these Omega 3 fatty acids might actually do that protects against dementia? HARWOOD Well in general terms they're anti-inflammatory, so in fact all chronic inflammatory diseases - and that would include arthritis or cardiovascular disease - these benefit from Omega 3 fatty acids in the diet. HAMMOND Is there enough evidence at the moment to suggest that this is something people should be doing regularly for the sake of this? HARWOOD Yes, yes there's extremely good evidence for a number of diseases including cardiovascular disease, arthritis and Alzheimer's Disease. We believe that if people take the Omega 3 fatty acids from a young age it will strongly lessen the chances of getting dementia in later life. HAMMOND But what about some of the other so-called treatments and breakthroughs heralded by the press. PRESS CLIPS Use it or lose it. How crosswords can beat Alzheimer's. Drinking tea helps prevent Alzheimer's. Exercise now to cut dementia risk. HAMMOND Professor Clive Ballard, director of research for the Alzheimer's Society, says people need to be wary when they read about the things that might reduce or prevent dementia. BALLARD I think sometimes the claims are overstated and I think there's unlikely to be one magic alternative thing which is going to completely wipe out Alzheimer's Disease. But I think a number of these things might be important and if we can understand their effects that will help us make progress. HAMMOND Some people talk about keeping your mind active and doing crosswords and things like that, is there any truth in that? BALLARD I think the evidence is very limited, I mean it's clearly a sensible thing to advice people to do but I think the actual evidence that it's helpful is fairly marginal. I think probably what's clearer is that it appears that education is beneficial and that people who have better education are slightly less at risk, although it's possible that people who are better educated might be slightly better at doing the type of memory tests that people have to complete in clinics and things. FRANK I've got used to the fact now that my memory's [indistinct words] HAMMOND Frank also has Alzheimer's Disease. FRANK I mean things like arithmetic, I used to be brilliant at it, I used to know all the answers. Now if I say six fives are thirty five plus six fours I've already forgotten the number I'm going to add on to. HAMMOND He's taking part in a control trial of Ginkgo Biloba, run by James Warner, a consultant in old age psychiatry at North West London Mental Health Trust. WARNER It's an extract of a tree, it's the maidenhair tree and it's thought to have a number of different properties that might help in treating dementia. For example, it reduces blood stickiness, so it might improve blood flow through the brain. Ginkgo is also what's known as a free radical scavenger and what that means is that toxic chemicals that are produced by the body itself are rapidly neutralised by Ginkgo. It's thought that some of these toxic chemicals, these free radicals, might actually do cell damage in the brain to destroy or to kill of neurones and it's the death of these neurones that probably is the main problem with dementia. HAMMOND So does that mean that there might be a role for Ginkgo preventatively, as well as once people have been diagnosed? WARNER The short answer is yes, probably, the long answer is it's quite difficult to show that in any clinical trials. HARWOOD Prevention trials are incredibly hard to do because obviously it's a disease which evolves slowly over a long period of time and if you're really going to prevent the disease you might need to treat people for 20 years or longer and that type of trial would clearly be almost infeasible to do. HAMMOND Some families hope that vitamin pills might give them their best chance of warding off the possibility of dementia. Regular use of vitamin C, vitamin E and folic acid have all been suggested but the problem is the lack of long term control trials to show that they really can make a difference. HARWOOD The evidence really comes from large community studies where large groups of people have been looked at, their diets have been recorded and then they've been followed up to see how many people develop Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias. And in those kind of studies, things like high dietary intake of vitamin C, other things that are antioxidants like green tea and red wine, do seem to be related to about a 20% reduction in the rates of developing Alzheimer's disease. I think the difficulties with the interpretation of those studies because often people who have healthy lifestyles will do more than one thing that's healthy, so they might also be protecting their hearts and their brains in other ways too. WARNER It's sad in a way that every now and again we see articles in the press that some magical new treatment is emerging and dementia's such a distressing condition, not only for the individual but for their carers, that they will grasp at straws and sort of see these articles and think - yes this is perhaps the thing that's going to change my life. I think we're a long, long way from that. FRANK I feel that by taking part I'm helping and that gives me a little pleasure. HAMMOND And do you think it made any difference? FRANK Yes I do, I think it's helped me become calmer to start with. MAUREEN I think that we're all rather desperate and we would like to turn the clock back and we will do anything, anything that would make a change. If we could all of us with vascular dementia, Alzheimer's or one of the other many dementias, if we could find the magic that would make it alright again we will all try as much as we can. WAITE Maureen ending that report from Claudia Hammond. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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