Saturday, August 11, 2018

Sage, caspase-3, and possible cognitive protection in aging

My mother turns 78 years old soon. She is quite worried about developing Alzheimer's disease, so I've looked to see if there is any overlooked thing she can add to her diet to try to help protect her from age-related cognitive decline. She doesn't want to eat horseradish (see my hypothesis paper about horseradish and its possible connection to protection from dementia at https://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(17)30123-8/fulltext), so I looked for another diet element with potential to help her.

In Greece, there is an island called Ikaria where the people tend to live healthily to an old age, mostly retaining their cognitive abilities for a much longer time than do people who live in America. (See https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html.)

Reporters looking at their dietary habits have noted that sage tea is a daily drink for many on Ikaria. (See https://www.dianekochilas.com/herbs-as-medicine-on-ikaria/.) Sage is high in the oil eucalyptol (also known as 1,8-cineole), which has been observed to reduce caspase-3 activity in neuron-like cells. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27352445.) This is relevant to Alzheimer's disease because caspase-3 cleaves tau and is implicated in early Alzheimer's disease (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21151119, http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-2440097_59262.htm, http://www.pnas.org/content/100/17/10032).

So my mother is now putting lots of sage in her soup and bread. Will it make a difference in her cognitive ability? I don't know. She and I both think it worth the try, though.

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