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Keeping your skin soft with a moisturizer can also help keep your brain healthy, suggests new research associating skin care with the risk reduction of Alzheimer's disease.
Inflammation has become a hot topic in the field of Alzheimer's research in recent years. Scientists now believe that chemicals called cytokines, which are released to repair inflamed areas, could contribute to Alzheimer's disease.
As you get older, the skin begins to degrade and ignite. Skin being the largest organ of the body, even minor skin inflammation attracts high concentrations of cytokines.
Since skin is the body's largest organ, even minor inflammation – in the form of red or dry skin – could generate high levels of immunity chemicals.
But the moisturizer can help keep the skin firm and repaired even when cytokines can not, helping to reduce inflammation – and perhaps the concentrations of chemicals increasing the risk of Alzheimer's, suggests the new study from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
A new study suggests that hydration of the skin helps reduce the levels of immune chemicals involved in Alzheimer's disease and could help reduce the risk of dementia.
Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States – and it will likely increase in ranks here and abroad with the aging of the population.
Alzheimer's disease in one in ten American adults, but its cause and treatment are still poorly understood.
Current theories predict that the accumulation of destructive protein plaques in the brain and inflammation are underlying essential components of Alzheimer's disease that can even be causative.
In fact, scientists increasingly suspect that inflammation is involved in a host of chronic diseases.
Inflammation is a crucial part of the body's immune response.
The inflammatory response causes the swelling of endangered or damaged tissue to help solve the problem and isolate a possible cause of the problem. It acts as a distress call to immunity chemicals that fight infection and repair the damage.
Among the hurry rescue cells are cytokines. Normally, cytokines help reduce inflammation and repair damage, but if the damage can not be repaired, it continues to circulate and can become destructive.
Older skin is more difficult to repair in part because it does not usually retain moisture, which means that it can not get rid of problematic pathogens.
Thus, the cytokines keep pumping the skin, trying to repair something that exceeds their ability to repair. Finally, some of this deluge of cytokines can enter the bloodstream and even enter the brain.
There, cytokines reject a number of neurochemicals and scientists believe they could inadvertently stimulate the production of harmful beta-amyloid plaques typical of Alzheimer's disease.
And researchers have observed high levels of cytokines in patients with Alzheimer's disease (as well as other forms of dementia).
Even a slight inflammation of the skin can trigger a long and important defense of cytokines.
And the skin is a huge organ, which means that even the slightest change can introduce a significant amount of cytokines, thus eliminating inflammation.
But as water is one of the main reasons why cytokines can not do their job, UCSF scientists have suspected that helping to keep skin moist and healthy could help to reduce circulating cytokines.
They recruited 33 older people who needed to be "treated" daily with a moisturizer and compared them to older unhydrated people and a cohort of young volunteers.
In the older group using moisturizers, scientists found that the rates of two cytokines linked to Alzheimer's disease returned to a "normalized" level and that a third type of cytokine levels "a considerably decreased.
A "treatment" that is so simple and available, which seems to have a totally new potential, is something fundamentally exciting, but the experts recommend not to be caught up in this promise.
"To put it simply: Mr. A can know Mr. B, and Mr. B may know MC But that does not necessarily mean that Mr. C knows Mr. A," says Dr. James Ellison, Chair of the Foundation Swank on Memory Care and Geriatrics at Christiana Care Health System in Delaware.
In other words, the study shows that the moisturizer reduces cytokines, and we know that these cytokines are related to Alzheimer's disease, but that does not mean (necessarily) that the cream moisturizing reduces the risks of Alzheimer's disease.
But it could.
This is not the first time that Alzheimer's disease and skin are linked, notes Dr. Ellison. People with dry skin and skin conditions such as rosacea and psoriasis have a higher risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.
"But we do not know if the increased risk comes from an inflammation or autoimmune [nature of psoriasis]Dr. Ellison said.
"No study to my knowledge says that wet skin reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The hope for these researchers is that wet skin reduces the cytokines involved in aging diseases, including Alzheimer's. & # 39;
In the meantime, he says we'd do better to reduce Alzheimer's risks by making more well-demonstrated lifestyle changes, like getting exercise, getting enough sleep, being socially engaged and having a healthy diet. , like the Mediterranean or MIND diets.
But that does not mean you should not go ahead and lotion.
"Beautiful skin is your own reward for reducing itching and redness," says Dr. Ellison.
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