Adding strawberries to your patient’s diet, yoga, and movement-tracking devices can help with cognitive decline, recent studies say.
Three new studies on dementia are showing encouraging predictive and preventive measures that providers and caretakers alike can utilize.
Protect Your Brain With Berries
Strawberries may help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, researchers from Rush University Medical Center have found. A bioactive compound found in strawberries called pelargonidin has anti-inflammatory properties, which can reduce overall neuroinflammation.
Specifically, the study found the pelargonidin within the fruit to be associated with a low presence of “tau tangles,” which are described as a “hallmark” for the disease.
“While pelargonidin should be examined further for their role in maintaining brain health in older adults, this gives a simple change that anyone can make in their diet,” Puja Agarwal, PhD, one of the study’s authors said in a statement.
Find Your Seat and Your Center
A recent study out of Florida Atlantic examined a remotely supervised online chair yoga class for older individuals with dementia, assessing the individuals’ “pain interference, mobility, risk of falling, sleep disturbance, autonomic reactivity, loneliness.”
While chair yoga isn’t a necessarily a new preventive measure, the pandemic has kept many adults with dementia from being able to participate in an in-person setting.
Results showed the remotely supervised class to be a “feasible approach” for managing the physical and psychological symptoms in socially isolated adults with dementia.
“This finding is important, as older adults with dementia and their caregivers may be challenged in attempts to attend chair yoga programs at community facilities,” Juyoung Park, PhD, senior author of the study, said in a statement. “Our telehealth-based chair yoga intervention was found to be convenient for both participants and their caregivers because it was easily accessible from home and did not require transportation or getting dressed which reduced caregiver burden and stress.”
Tracking Changes
Movement-tracking devices may be helpful in detecting the early stages of cognitive decline, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found.
In a study of more than 600 participants wearing activity monitors, they noted significant differences in the movement patterns of participants with normal cognition and those with a mild impairment, or Alzheimer’s disease.
“We tend to think of physical activity as a potential therapy to slow cognitive decline, but this study reminds us that cognitive decline may in turn slow physical activity,” Amal Wanigatunga, PhD, MPH, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “And we might someday be able to monitor and detect such changes for earlier and more efficient testing to delay and maybe prevent cognitive impairment that leads to Alzheimer’s.”
Jasmyne Ray is the revenue cycle editor at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Strawberries have a bioactive compound that with anti-inflammatory properties that can decrease neuroinflammation.
Virtual, low-impact fitness classes such as chair yoga provide individuals with dementia and their caregivers another option to stay active.
Movement-tracking devices may be helpful in detecting the early stages of cognitive decline.