Vitamin B 12 may protect against brain shrinkage

Having higher vitamin B12 levels may protect against brain shrinkage in elderly people, according to a study at the University of Oxford. The researchers called their findings striking, but said more information is needed before recommending that people take vitamin B12 supplements to guard against the loss of brain volume and possibly prevent declines in thinking and memory. The study involved 107 healthy people aged 61 to 87 who underwent scans to measure brain volume and gave blood samples to assess vitamin B12 levels once a year for up to five years. All of those in the study had vitamin B12 levels classified in what is considered the normal range, the researchers said. The study, published in the journal Neurology, did not look at whether taking vitamin B12 supplements would slow the rate of brain shrinkage, the researchers said. They said that high vitamin B12 levels could be achieved by eating plenty of foods that are a good source of the vitamin such as milk and other dairy products, fish, meat and fortified breakfast cereals.

Poor sleep causes old women to lose balance
Poor sleep makes women 70 or older more likely to fall down, a major cause of injury and death among the elderly, a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine said. The study involved nearly 3,000 women aged 70 and above who were followed for a number of years. Women in the study who slept no more than five hours per night had a 50 per cent higher risk of having two or more falls over the course of a year than those who slept more than seven hours, the researchers found. For those who slept from five to seven hours, the risk was 40 per cent higher than for the longest sleepers.

Obesity makes asthma worse
For people with asthma, those who are obese are nearly five times more likely than their non-obese peers to be hospitalized for asthma, new research indicates. The findings come from a study of 1,113 members of a healthcare organisation who were at least 35 years of age and had active asthma. In examining the impact of obesity on asthma outcomes, researchers from Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Oregon, adjusted for a number of factors known to affect such outcomes, including smoking, oral steroid medication, and gastric reflux disease. Compared with normal weight subjects, obese individuals were 2.7 times more likely to have poor asthma control, and 4.6 times more likely to have a history of asthma-related hospitalisation.