#41

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#42

A good vaccination program like the one we have here in Sweden, which since 2020, includes HPV vaccination, for boys. My son got it last week. Today’s vaccination protects against nine different cancers. Besides this, we have focused on a long period of breastfeeding and giving extra omega 3 when they were infants and up to age 2-3. When the kids could tolerate it, we made eggs to be a staple food to be included in most breakfasts. This and an age-relevant multivitamin is what we have done. Besides that, we try to teach them good behavior when it comes to food, homework, money, exercise, and sleep. I will encourage them to start anti-aging whe they are in their 30s.

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#43

Newborn vitamin D deficiency linked to higher risk of ADHD, schizophrenia and autism

Newborn babies with a vitamin D deficiency have a higher chance of later developing mental disorders such as ADHD, schizophrenia and autism, a major study involving the University of Queensland has found.

In the largest population study of its kind, researchers examined the vitamin D status of 71,793 people, many of whom had a mental health disorder diagnosed during childhood and early adulthood.

The research is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

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#44

This sounds a heck of a lot more plausible than the vaccine/autism link. Maybe someone should send RFK Jr. this report???

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#45

Dementia prevention starts early…

Many lifestyle-related dementia risk factors emerge during the teenage years, then persist into adulthood. For example, 80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults. The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.

This poses two potential issues when considering middle age as the best starting point for dementia-prevention strategies. First, altering health behaviour that has already been established is notoriously difficult. And second, most high-risk individuals targeted in middle age will almost certainly have been exposed to the damaging effects of these risk factors for many decades already.

As such, the most effective actions are likely to be those aimed at preventing unhealthy behaviour in the first place, rather than attempting to change long-established habits decades down the line.

The roots of dementia

But what about even earlier in people’s lives? Could the roots of dementia stretch as far back as childhood or infancy? Increasing evidence suggests yes, and that risk factor exposures in the first decade of life (or even while in the womb) may have lifelong implications for dementia risk.

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#46

Dementia risk begins in childhood, not old age, scientists warn

Many of these risk factors – which include things like obesity, lack of exercise, and smoking – are traditionally studied from middle age (around 40 to 60 years old) onwards. As a result, several of the world’s leading health bodies and dementia charities now recommend that strategies aimed at reducing dementia risk should ideally be targeted at this age to reap the greatest benefits.

We argue, however, that targeting even younger ages is likely to provide greater benefits still. But how young are we talking? And why would exposure to risk factors many decades before the symptoms of dementia traditionally appear be important?

Many lifestyle-related dementia risk factors emerge during the teenage years, then persist into adulthood. For example, 80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults. The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.

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#47

Congratulations! You have a newborn baby. She has plump cheeks, a round little belly, and the right number of fingers and toes. Everything seems just dandy. But unbeknownst to you, a risk is hiding in her DNA: some percent chance that later in life she’ll develop high cholesterol and have a heart attack in her 40s. Maybe it’s a 5 percent chance. Maybe it’s 80.

Would you want to know?

Robert Green would. Green is the director of Genomes2People, a research program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School that explores the impacts of using genomic information in medicine and in society at large.

Until genomic sequencing, Green said, the possibility of moving beyond treating sick patients and toward precision and preventative medicine was largely impossible.

“Genomics is sort of the tip of the spear, because you can actually profile some of the vulnerabilities that a child will have for their entire lifetime at the moment of birth through their DNA,” he said. “You’re not going to capture every illness; you’re certainly not going to capture illnesses that might have more environmental or lifestyle causes. DNA isn’t a crystal ball for every kind of illness by any means, but there’s a surprisingly large amount of human health that we can now probabilistically look at in the DNA of a newborn child or really a child at any age.”

Green’s team found that about 12 percent of babies carry a disease-associated genetic mutation. Some of them are considered rare diseases, but in the aggregate, they’re not rare at all.

Just having the mutation doesn’t guarantee a baby will get the disease, and many conditions can vary greatly in their severity. But, Green said, early detection means you can screen regularly, start diet or lifestyle choices early, or even benefit from clinical trials or novel cell therapies that weren’t available a few years ago.

The cost, he says, is not zero. There’s the cost of genomic testing itself, which can range from $200-$600. And then there’s the cost of preventing, managing, or treating what is discovered.

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