'Freezing cold water may protect against dementia'

This article appeared on the BBC News front page today. It claims to have identified a particular protein which is released in healthy persons, after being immersed in cold water, and which seems to protect against Alzheimers or other types of dementia in later years.

Quote:

Cold water swimming may protect the brain from degenerative diseases like dementia, researchers from Cambridge University have discovered. In a world first, a "cold-shock" protein has been found in the blood of regular winter swimmers at London's Parliament Hill Lido. The protein has been shown to slow the onset of dementia and even repair some of the damage it causes in mice. Prof Giovanna Mallucci, who runs the UK Dementia Research Institute's Centre at the University of Cambridge, says the discovery could point researchers towards new drug treatments which may help hold dementia at bay. The research - although promising - is at an early stage, but it centres on the hibernation ability that all mammals retain, which is prompted by exposure to cold.

The protein concerned has only been tested on mice so far, although its release in the bloodstream of healthy persons after a cold swim that lowers their inner core temperature to <35° C can be measured and shows a strong release of same.

Quote:

Prof Mallucci believed a drug which prompted the production of RBM3 might help slow - and possibly even partially reverse - the progress of some neuro-degenerative diseases in people. RBM3 had not been detected in human blood, so the obvious next step was to find out whether the protein is present in the human population.

Knowing the feeling of invigoration after a cold swim or a freezing cold shower after a hot sauna, this interested me. Some kind of dementia runs in my family (however, only on the male maternal line [before you start nodding your head knowingly] having affected two uncles and a cousin in recent years). Not sure what type of dementia they had, as it is very common in Finland, and is believed by some scientists to be to do with some kind of organism in the forest biome, specific to this country, which has a lot of wetlands, swamps and bogs, although why this should be gender-specific may point to a genetic propensity towards it.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/31mxsaF