The Secrets of a Healthy Brain

Secrets of a Healthy Brain - Nov 2022 (final)

 

 

[Image appears of text on a black screen: The CSIRO Alumni network presents Secrets of a Healthy Brain, Professor Cassandra Szoeke and Professor Louise Bennett with Peggy Stasinos, 30 Nov 2022]

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the Healthy Ageing Project and University of Melbourne logos, and text appears: Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing, The Hormone Story, Professor Cassandra Szoeke]

 

Professor Cassandra Szoeke: Welcome to this CSIRO Alumni event on the Secrets of Healthy Ageing and today we’re going to be talking about, all about the brain story. Today is all about healthy brains. Now, I’m very excited because this of course as a Consultant Neurologist is my favourite all time area.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: Overview, Neurodegeneration, Cognition and memory, Stroke and vascular damage in the brain, Anxiety and Depression, Fatigue and Sleep, Cutting edge research – Meet Professor Bennett, Q & A]

 

So, I’m going to talk about neurodegeneration because that's probably what most people are scared of. I’m going to talk about cognition and memory. Also about stroke and vascular damage in the brain. I’ll then talk about mental health and the overlaps with cognitive health, talking about anxiety, depression. And of course cannot leave without talking about fatigue and sleep because in fact fatigue and sleep can impact anxiety, depression, stroke, cognition and memory. And then we’ll transition to some cutting edge research, very exciting by the amazing Professor Bennett who is in the area of chemistry and we’ll talk about the essential oils.

 

[Image changes to show a picture comparing a normal coronary artery, an artery affected by Atherosclerosis, and an artery affected by Atherosclerosis with a blood clot, and text appears: Example of therapeutic window]

 

Brain diseases tend to occur over decades. So, what you’re looking at here is blood vessels. The normal vessel, the vessel that’s a bit clogged, and then the vessel that’s completely occluded. This process takes a decade at least.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a healthy brain on the left and a brain with severe Alzheimer’s Disease on the right, and text heading appears: Example of therapeutic window]

 

When you’re looking at the brain with severe Alzheimer’s disease, brain on the right, and a healthy brain on the left, we now know this process takes three decades.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a diagram of “Brain cell loss over time before diagnosed disease which occurs over 65 years of age”]

 

Now, the problem is if we only look say at most research which is five years in duration, or, you know, maybe only 12 months in duration, we can’t pick up these things that are happening 30 years ago which actually set off this disease process.

 

[Image shows an image of half a bridge appearing over the slide, and then the image changes to show a horizontal bar graph showing the Baseline Ages of Longitudinal Studies Collecting Detailed Cognitive Data below the text heading: Studies recruit over 70, in order to see the cognitive changes that only manifest over 70]

 

And, you know, because we’re blind to that, we therefore only get half the picture and that’s also why we haven’t really got that many good treatments for neurodegenerative diseases yet.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing comparative bar graphs showing the Prevalence of Dementia for 1911, 1961, 2000, and 2051]

 

Of course, it’s really important to look at neurodegenerative diseases because these actually double. Every five years after 50 your chance of getting a neurodegenerative disease doubles, and of course the population’s ageing.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an article Dementia Is Not Inevitable – A Population – Based Study of Danish Centenarians]

 

But, but there’s good news because it’s not inevitable, and if you get to those older age groups, probably because you’re healthier you actually have less chance of dementia. So, this was proven in this study. I always put this up because it says what I want to say. Dementia is not inevitable.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: Preventing Dementia]

 

So, what do we know about preventing it?

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing two diagrams showing Risk Factors For Dementia, and text appears: Lancet Commission Prevention]

 

Well, there’s the Lancet Commission, and they’ve done two now, updated themselves, which is looking at really global research where we have good evidence about modifiable risk factors, and they started with a few modifiable risk factors, and they’ve increased them over time.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of three older people having a coffee together, and information about how to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease, and text appears: Scientists do not yet know if these healthy habits can directly prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease or age-related cognitive decline, As research continues, it’s important to note the many benefits these habits have for overall health and well-being]

 

Scientists do not yet know if the healthy habits can directly prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease or age-related cognitive decline because of this 30 year prodrome.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an image of a blood clot in a brain, and then a close view of a blood clot, and text appears; Stroke Mechanism]

 

So, what about stroke? I’ve talked a lot about dementia, what about stroke? So stroke is when you have a blood clot in a vessel that’s feeding the brain.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a diagram showing the stages of stroke in a person to the point of calling 911 on a Smartphne, and text appears: Stroke, BEFAST, Balance, Eyes, Face, Arm, Speech, Time to call 911]

 

And you might recall I earlier said that, you know, three seconds of no, no blood supply and the brain cells start dying.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing 10 Dementia warning signs, Memory loss, Difficulty performing familiar tasks, Problem with language, Disorientation to time and place, Poor or decreased judgement, Problems keeping track of things, Misplacing things, Changes in mood and behaviour, Trouble with images and spatial relationships, Withdrawal from work or social activities]

 

Dementia warning signs are of course memory loss, difficulty performing familiar tasks, having problem identifying things, and problem with language, getting disoriented, having poor judgement, problems keeping track of things or misplacing things more than usual, and changes in mood and behaviour, or having trouble finding where you are. People also start to withdraw from work and social activities.

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: Healthy Brain]

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of a person looking up at the sun, and text appears: Can Sunshine Help your Brain?, New research suggests adequate Vitamin D in midlife may help women maintain at least some of their brain power as they age]

 

So, you know, without further ado what can we all do? Well, you know, in fact sunshine can help your brain. So, Vitamin D is just so important for obviously our bones but also our cognition in mid-life.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing information about the Mediterranean Diet in relation to Alzheimer’s Disease]

 

We also know that diet’s really important.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an older men playing soccer, and text appears: Health – Activity, Is this the key to preventing dementia?]

 

So, everyone’s heard of Mediterranean Diet, and how you can lower your odds of Alzheimer’s disease by 20% to 26%, saying, you know, the key to preventing dementia is physical activity.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of a female lifting weights, and text appears: Brain Health – Physical Activity, Exercise May be #1 Way to Prevent Dementia, Futurity June 2016, Exercise in Your Middle Age Helps Protect Memory When You Are Older, Parent Herald June 2016, Women’s Study Says, Exercise in middle age key to preventing cognitive decline – Australian study, China Daily June 2016]

 

Exercise seems to be the most important for your brain health.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an article “Modifiable Risks for Cognitive Decline” by Maria T. Caserta, underneath the text heading: Brain Health – Risk Factors]

 

So, some of the important things that people took away from our work, this is an editorial on that paper, they were saying you can make up for the negative influence of age.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: One Organ – Brain, Overlap – Cognition and Mood]

 

You know, the brain is one organ,

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an image of a brain with different thought symbols surrounding it, and text appears: Brain & Mental Health – Overlap]

 

and it’s all coming from this one organ, the brain.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an article from the Neurology, Psychiatry and Brain Research]

 

There’s a huge overlap in mental health.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an article from Social Science & Medicine, showing the Group versus individual approach]

 

So, in all of the intervention studies they’ve shown that groups do much better in their cognitive health than people who are on their own.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an iceberg above and below water, and the small tip above water is labelled “VRF, Activity, Diet”, and the large submerged part is labelled, “Society, Community, Engagement”]

So, whilst I’ve focused on vascular risk, activity and diet, there’s this huge area of society, community, engagement, that we’re only just starting to understand.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: Fatigue and Sleep]

 

So, as I said, I cannot depart without discussing fatigue and sleep.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a brain in a bed, and on the right a scan of a brain in REM, and an awake brain can be seen, and text appears: Brain Health – Sleep]

 

Sleeping is so important for the brain. You can see in the picture I’ve got up there, that’s brain metabolism. REM is when you’re sleeping, the other one is when you’re awake. You can see from the picture, entirely different patterns of brain activity.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an image of a brain, and research information on the right from the Global Council on Brain Health, and text appears inside: It’s Time to Act, The Challenges of Alzheimer’s and Dementia]

 

So, you know, when should we be doing something about our brain health? We should be doing it now.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the ageHAPPY study, and text appears: Join the ageHAPPY Healthy Brain Initiative, https://sphinx.org.au/limesurvey/index.php/786831lang=en]

 

And I’ll just end with that ageHAPPY study that everyone should join.

 

[Images flash through of a slide of Further Reading on Alzheimer’s Disease, and then the image changes to show a new slide showing bottles of essential oils on the right and cogs inside a brain, and text appears: Understand the relaxation effects of Essential Oils and opportunities for therapeutic optimisation, Healthy Ageing Webinar Series, Professor Louise Bennett School of Chemistry, Monash University, 30 November 2022]

 

So, without further ado, may I hand over to the brilliant chemist, and someone who just led one of the best programmes in CSIRO while I was there, and is now a full academic professor at Monash.

 

Professor Louise Bennett: So everything I talk about will be the work that was done by my PhD student who is now a Post-doc, Minoli Aponso. I worked at CSIRO about, more than five years ago now in the preventative health flagship area, where we were trying to discover healthy and bioactive factors out of foods that could have an impact on neurodegeneration, or protective impact on neurodegeneration. And what we learned was that the most bioactive fraction were the polyphenolics in these secondary plant metabolites that had mostly antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. But the big challenge with those, that set of compounds was their size and their lack of bioavailability to the brain. So, if we move to the next slide Cassandra.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing the brains links to various essential oils and text appears: EOs are bioavailable/bio-functional in brain, Long history of use in Traditional Medicine, Cross blood brain barrier, Affect mood, blood pressure, heart rate, Multiple stress effector pathways implicated, Mechanistic pathways – anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, enzyme inhibition, receptor – mediated effects]

 

So, one of the things I got very interested in when I moved to Monash was the idea of this subclass of plant secondary metabolites that are called essential oils. So, there’s over 300 of them. They’re typically low molecular weight and, and that chemical property means that they’re volatile. And that volatility, the nice thing about that is that’s the opportunity for uptake by inhalation, and of course we all know about aromatherapy, and the beauty of Essential Oils, unlike many of these other bioactive factors we studied out of food, is that they go straight into the brain.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing an image of a brain with cogs turning inside, and text appears: Mechanisms studied? Neurotransmitter receptor binding, EEG responses, Regulation of ascorbate-mediated production of H2O2 (ROS), Enzyme inhibition, Regulation of cysteine, Regulation of gene expression?, Neuroregeneration]

 

So, this brings me to our, our focus, the focus of the research that Minoli and I did together, and remember the point of this work is now we want to be able to, to characterise chemical and functional properties of essential oils so that we can compare them, and so that we can start to, to select for the ones that we want to act in particular pathways.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing two diagrams showing the functional effects of essential oils below the text heading: EEG responses of neuroactive pharmaceuticals versus Eos]

 

So, that brings me to our final piece of work which was to try to understand that the, the overall functional effects of these essential oils in comparison with these neuroactive pharmaceuticals.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing text: Where to from here?, Characterise properties of EOs by mechanistic assays, Compare clinic effects, Optimise for wellness, anti-disease applications]

 

So, where to from here, is a lot more research needed to characterise the properties as I said to understand mechanisms, and to, to monitor what that’s doing with nice brain imaging, and also link that then with clinical effects.

 

[Image changes to show a new slide showing a photo of Minoli Aponso in the centre, and an inset of Thank You written in many different languages, and text appears: Acknowledgements, Featured PhD research of Dr Minoli Aponso, Co-supervisors – Prof Tony Patti, Prof Milton Hearn]

 

And what we want to be able to do is to understand the, the dose, which EO is the best one, and how much of it do you need.

 

[Image changes to show a black screen, and text appears: For details of our Healthy Ageing series and PDF downloads please visit: https://alumni.csiro.au/create-an-event/the-secrets-of-healthy-ageing-series/]