4.27.2005
Why doesn't Mickey Mouse have Alzheimer's?
>
Mickey Mouse has been known to us since 1928 - 77 years ago. Since Mickey was 7 when he made his debut in Steamboat Willie (1928), he is now 84, but still gets around pretty well.
One can only assume that Mickey's high level of physical activity (exercise) plus regular cognitive exercise (he's memorized lots of scripts) and use of MemCheck have been beneficial. Buy MemCheck now if you have not already!) We hope Mickey stays hale and healthy.
At UC-Irvine, only a short distance from Disneyland in Orange County, researchers have just reported that Mickey's cousins and siblings, all of them mice resisted Alzheimer's when given strenuous physical exercise, according to the Journal of Neuroscience. In fact, here is what they reported: Regular exercise can slow the development of Alzheimer's disease by changing the way brain-damaging proteins take up residence in the brain, researchers said Wednesday.
Their study of mice helps explain a growing body of evidence that keeping busy, physically and mentally, and eating certain foods can delay or even prevent the brain-destroying illness.
Paul Adlard and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine tested genetically engineered mice that begin at the age of three months to develop the clogs of amyloid protein, called plaques, that characterize Alzheimer's.
Half the mice were put into cages with running wheels.
Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers said the animals allowed to exercise learned to navigate a water maze faster than mice kept cooped up without a wheel. When they killed the mice and looked at their brains, the scientists found the animals that exercised had significantly fewer plaques and fewer bits of beta-amyloid peptides that are also associated with Alzheimer's.
