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Writer's pictureFranco Cavaleri, BSc, Ph.Dc

Cognitive Health: Thinking Ahead of Dementia

Updated: Oct 16, 2023

Blended excerpts from Potential Within A Guide to Nutritional Empowerment

Authored by Franco Cavaleri ISBN 0-9731701-0-7

Original post: December 10, 2010



This article is composed of multiple excerpts to result in tone and content shifts and reference numbering that may be out of order.


Thinking Ahead of Dementia


Diseases of cognition such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis are

characterized by inflammation of myelin and other tissues. Colitis, Crohn’s

disease, and other gastrointestinal disorders are inflammatory afflictions

that involve uncontrolled immune activity. Allergies are distinguished by

overactivity of the immune system and inflammatory process. General

subclinical symptoms of aging are typified by inflammation. Inflammation

begets inflammation; one diseases often increases the risk for a secondary

disease.


Cognitive Health: Thinking Ahead of Dementia

Brain health, too, is highly influenced by inflammation. The key to better health management is control of the chemistry involved at the root of inflammation.

If NF-kappa-B is at the center of inflammatory activity, then it can be linked to all of the above diseases. If we can better control inflammatory activity, we can down-regulate the rate of biological aging and this includes brain aging.


The prostaglandin hormones that promote inflammation and cardiovascular disease are the same ones that block thermogenesis, our built-in ability to burn fat, which means they advance obesity, as well. The genetic influence of NF-kappa-B causes inflammatory hormones such as prostaglandins and similar hormones (eicosanoids) to be produced at unnatural levels, creating unnatural biological results. We’re not able to eliminate this negative genetic influence completely, but we can restrict it, which suggests we can lessen the intensity of an inflammatory condition and even decrease the incidence of cardiovascular disease and brain damage associated with it. In most cases these conditions can be quite easily reversed.


Our recent understanding of these effects has inspired a new era in health

care that’s changing the way health and fitness are treated. This knowledge

has only come about in the past few years and isn’t likely to be part of our

global mainstream health-care programs for some time to come, but we

can begin to apply it now.


Cognitive Health: Thinking Ahead of Dementia

NF-kappa-B is able to induce its negative effect on the genetic code only if it can get to the DNA, which is shielded in the nucleus of the cell. The nucleus is a highly protective storage compartment for our delicate genetic material. I-kappa-B binds to NF-kappa-B in the cell’s cytosol (outside the nucleus in the cell’s body), and when tightly bound the dual complex can’t enter the nucleus because the former is too large to penetrate the nuclear pore.


Essentially free radicals facilitate gene expression, and overexpression causes

disease. Oxidation and its concomitant stress have a compounding degenerative

influence, sparking genetic manipulation as well as the nonspecific demolition

of vital molecules, cells, and tissues. Brain tissue is the most vulnerable.

Antioxidant supplements even the score.


Many people say supplementation isn’t natural and that the food we eat

furnishes everything we need. Not so. We’re faced with unnatural levels

of free radicals and chemical poisons. Each day the degree of free-radical

toxicity becomes more dire. Our only hope is to increase antioxidant

potency to proportional protective levels, and food alone won’t cut it.

Protecting our cells from uncontrolled free-radical ricochet will reduce

the risks associated with the NF-kappa-B protein complex. Although

antioxidants of all sorts are required to initiate complete protection

throughout the body, alpha lipoic acid is especially effective because of its

size and chemical nature, which allow it to move freely within the body

and its cells. Alpha lipoic acid and its different forms work in both the

fatty and aqueous tissues of the body protecting cells inside and out.


Cognitive Health: Thinking Ahead of Dementia

A supplement mix which includes apha lipoic acid, phosphatidyl

serine, glycerylphosphorylcholine and l-carnitine provides powerful

antioxidant protection for the delicate cells which make up the brain and the peripheral neural network which stems from the brain.


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