CHICAGO: Music, dance, diet and exercise may be keys to slowing down dementia by up to five years, a New Zealand research group believes.
Brain Research NZ, a new collaborative center of research excellence led by Auckland and Otago Universities, wants to recruit people later this year who have the first signs of dementia so that they can start a five-year “holistic” program.
“I’m not just talking a single-drug therapy,” said the center’s co-director Professor Richard Faull. “We know there are some drugs which may help to prolong and slow down degeneration.
“But we also know that certain foods – vitamin B, omega 3 – and exercise, music and cognitive therapy, if you put all those together, we know from overseas studies and our own studies that they can actually slow down the progression of the disease.”
He said it would take two years to enrol about 150 patients and carry out blood tests, psychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging of their brains…