Squueze yourself smart ?
A little-known treatment for heart failure, developed more than half a century ago and refined in the '70s, may have legs as a potential therapy for Alzheimer's patients. The treatment is called external counterpulsation (ECP), and it compresses the lower body using squeezable cuffs around the calves, lower thighs, and buttocks.In recent years, preliminary evidence suggests that ECP may have uses beyond the heart; it could also improve blood flow to the brain. In cases of dementia, blood flow to the brain is known to be reduced, with some regions receiving as much as 50 percent less blood flow. What's more, hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease in the brain are often closely related to vascular health.
As you can imagine, it's a bit hard to fake that someone's legs aren't being squeezed, so the 'placebo' was tricky to disguise. As a compromise, half the group was randomized to receive full-pressure ECP synchronized with their heartbeats, while the other half received a sham treatment, involving low-pressure, unsynchronized pulsations
... Show more...Squueze yourself smart ?
A little-known treatment for heart failure, developed more than half a century ago and refined in the '70s, may have legs as a potential therapy for Alzheimer's patients. The treatment is called external counterpulsation (ECP), and it compresses the lower body using squeezable cuffs around the calves, lower thighs, and buttocks.In recent years, preliminary evidence suggests that ECP may have uses beyond the heart; it could also improve blood flow to the brain. In cases of dementia, blood flow to the brain is known to be reduced, with some regions receiving as much as 50 percent less blood flow. What's more, hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease in the brain are often closely related to vascular health.
As you can imagine, it's a bit hard to fake that someone's legs aren't being squeezed, so the 'placebo' was tricky to disguise. As a compromise, half the group was randomized to receive full-pressure ECP synchronized with their heartbeats, while the other half received a sham treatment, involving low-pressure, unsynchronized pulsations.
In the end, the sham treatment still seemed to provide some benefits, but to a lesser extent. In the full-pressure group, researchers report that 84 percent of patients showed improvements in cognitive function during the six-month treatment period.
Six months after the last ECP treatment, 75 percent of those who received the real treatment still showed cognitive improvements from the start of the trial. "To our knowledge," the authors write, "this is the first demonstration of a therapy causing an actual improvement over baseline in cognitive and functional abilities in this population."
It would be interesting to see if this also happens in a healthy population. And "Does squeezing your butt make you smarter ?" has definite IgNobel potential...
#Science
#Health
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