Wow-Healthy Teeth With Health Brain

 Wow-Healthy Teeth With Health Brain

New study has shown keeping your gums and teeth healthy may have added benefits for your brain health.

Preliminary research, set to be presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference next week, suggests adults who are genetically prone to poor oral health could be at a greater risk of showing signs of declining brain health.

Since the results are preliminary, the researchers say more evidence, including through clinical trials, and a more diverse pool of subjects, is needed.

"What hasn't been clear is whether poor oral health affected brain health, meaning the functional status of a person's brain, which we are now able to understand better using neuroimaging tools such as magnetic resonance imaging or MRI," study author Dr. Cyprien Rivier, a postdoctoral fellow in neurology at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., said in a news release from the American Stroke Association.

"Studying oral health is especially important because poor oral health happens frequently and is an easily modifiable risk factor — everyone can effectively improve their oral health with minimal time and financial investment."

The American Stroke Association pointed to previous studies that have shown gum disease, missing teeth, poor brushing and lack of plaque removal can increase the risk of stroke.

Gum disease and other oral health issues are also linked to conditions such as high blood pressure, the association says.

For the latest study, researchers between 2014 and 2021 looked at 40,000 adults enrolled in the biomedical database known as the U.K. Biobank.

Forty-six per cent of the adults were men and their average age was 57. None had a history of stroke.

The researchers screened the participants for 105 genetic variants that would make them more likely to develop cavities or missing teeth or need dentures later in life.

They also screened the individuals for signs of poor breath health using MRI.

The researchers found that those who were genetically prone to poor oral health had a 24 per cent increase in white matter hyperintensities, or built up damage to the brain's white matter which can affect memory, balance and mobility.

Individuals with poor oral health also showed a 43 per cent change in microstructural damage, or the amount of "fine architecture" in the brain that has changed compared to a healthy adult of a similar age, the researchers say.

Dr. Joseph P. Broderick, a professor at the University of Cincinnati Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said in the same news release from the American Stroke Association that while the study does not show dental hygiene improves brain health, the findings are "intriguing" and warrant further research.

"Environmental factors such as smoking and health conditions such as diabetes are much stronger risk factors for poor oral health than any genetic marker — except for rare genetic conditions associated with poor oral health, such as defective or missing enamel," Broderick said.

"It is still good advice to pay attention to oral hygiene and health. However, since people with poor brain health are likely to be less attentive to good oral health compared to those with normal brain health, it is impossible to prove cause and effect.

"Also, genetic profiles for increased risk of oral health may overlap with genetic risk factors for other chronic health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, stroke, infections, etc. that are known to be related to brain imaging markers."

The researchers highlighted certain limitations of the study, including that the Biobank only includes those who live in the U.K.

Ninety-four per cent of participants in the Biobank are white and the researchers say research involving people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds is needed. 

How our brain become Addicted to Drug, smoking, gambling etc…

 

Wow this is very good research which will help use to know how our brain want us to do things again and again.

What drives addicts to repeatedly choose drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, overeating, gambling or kleptomania, despite the risks involved? Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have pinpointed the exact locations in the brain where calculations are made that can result in addictive and compulsive behavior.UC Berkeley researchers have found how neural activity in the brain’s orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex regulates our choices. These astonishing new findings could pave the way for more targeted treatments for everything from drug and alcohol abuse to obsessive-compulsive disorders. ‘The better we understand our decision-making brain circuitry, the better we can target treatment, whether it’s pharmaceutical, behavioral or deep brain stimulation,” said Jonathan Wallis, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley and the principal investigator of the study to be published in the Oct. 30 online issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.Wallis was inspired to look into the brain mechanism behind substance abuse when he observed the lengths to which addicts will go to fulfill their cravings, despite the downside of their habit: He asked, “What has the drug done to their brains that makes it so difficult for them not to make that choice? What is preventing them from making the healthier choice?”In the new study, he and fellow researchers targeted the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex –- two areas in the frontal brain — because previous research has shown that patients with damage to these areas of the brain are impaired in the choices they make. While these individuals may appear perfectly normal on the surface, they routinely make decisions that create chaos in their lives. A similar dynamic has been observed in chronic drug addicts, alcoholics and people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

“They get divorced, quit their jobs, lose their friends and lose all their money,” Wallis said. “All the decisions they make are bad ones.”To test their hypothesis that these areas of the brain were the key players in impaired decision making, the UC Berkeley researchers measured the neural activity of macaque monkeys as they played games in which they identified the pictures most likely to deliver juice through a spout into their mouths. The animals quickly learned which pictures would most frequently deliver the greatest amount of juice, enabling researchers to see what calculations they were making, and in which part of the brain. The brains of macaques function similarly to those of humans in basic decision making. The exercise was designed to see how the animals weigh costs, benefits and risks.

The results show that the orbitofrontal cortex regulates neural activity, depending on the value or “stakes” of a decision. This part of the brain enables you to switch easily between making important decisions, such as what school to attend or which job to take, and making trivial decisions such as coffee versus tea or burrito versus pizza. However, in the case of addicts and people with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, the neural activity does not change based on the gravity of the decision, presenting trouble when these individuals try to get their brains in gear to make sound choices, the findings suggest. As for the anterior cingulate cortex, the study found that when this part of the brain functions normally, we learn quickly whether a decision we made matched our expectations. If we eat food that makes us sick, we do not eat it again. But in people with a malfunctioning anterior cingulate cortex, these signals are missing, and so they continue to make poor choices, Wallis said.

“This is the first study to pin down the calculations made by these two specific parts of the brain that underlie healthy decision-making,” Wallis said. A clearer understanding of how people with addictions make decisions may help remove some of the stigma of this condition, Wallis said. However, Wallis warned that these findings should not be used as a rationale for addicts to maintain unhealthy habits. Chronic drug and alcohol use changes the brain circuitry, and that can lead to unhealthy choices, he said.

If anything, he said, the findings offer hope that, through understanding the mechanism of addiction, treatment can be targeted at these risk-weighing, decision-making centers of the brain. (Nature Neuroscience.).