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American Morning
House Call: New Research on Alzheimer's, Dyslexia
Aired July 22, 2003 - 09:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news right now. Going to page Dr. Sanjay Gupta back with us on our "House Call" right now. Sanjay, good morning again to you. Two topics to get to. One is dyslexia. Put that on a back burner for a second. There's a connection out there between certain fish and Alzheimer's. What are you finding out?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's interesting, Bill. I guess we don't need another good reason to eat food that's good for us, but if we do, here it is. Talking about fish, specifically the omega 3 fatty acids in fish, and it's linked to Alzheimer's.
Now there's been a study now looking at over 800 people who did not have Alzheimer's and monitor their dietary habits. What they found over time was that people who ate fish at least once a week were found at least a 60 percent decrease in the incidence of Alzheimer's disease later on.
Now people who eat fish at least once a week also may have been eating fruits and vegetables. Most likely it's the omega 3 fatty acids that seemed to improve the way the neurons sort of live in the brain and how long they'll last and fire appropriately in the brain. Perhaps that's the reason. But yet another good reason for fish and healthy foods, Bill.
HEMMER: Foods to avoid?
GUPTA: Well, the same foods we know to avoid the same always. Foods that are high in saturated fats. Those are the foods that are going to be most likely to decrease some of the functions both in the heart and the brain. So obviously, avoid those for all sorts of reasons.
HEMMER: That we will.
Dyslexia. What are you learning right now? Obviously there's a strong brain connection right now where new research is showing certain things to help certain individuals.
GUPTA: You know, it's interesting. First of all a few facts about dyslexia. First, it's the most common learning disorder. It is genetic. It tends to run in families.
And there's a lot of people that you and I both know who have it. Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg. So people can have very, very successful, prominent lives even with dyslexia. Important point, always important to mention when we're talking about this: there's been a new study now out of "The Journal of Neurology" looking at exactly the way the brain sort of fires in people with dyslexia. This is something that people can actually objectify now by looking at the scans.
Take a look at a couple of them now. These are scans of the brain of both -- in someone who doesn't have dyslexia and someone who does dyslexia. The one on the left is a normal brain. The one on the right, this is a brain after someone has undergone some learning instruction.
Now, important point here, and this is a little difficult for people who aren't used to looking at MRIs. But the brain on left obviously showed all kinds of different activity there. The brain on the right showed increase in activity in those same areas with significant reading instruction.
And is very important of a point, Bill, because for so long you see kids who actually might improve with this reading education. But how long does it last? And there's some way to actually quantify how well this is working.
Well, researchers think they might be there now looking at these MRI scans. These seem to be an indicator that children actually improve with this learning instruction, reading instruction.
HEMMER: Are you finding that all children improve with these learning techniques?
GUPTA: It's not necessarily all, and there's certainly different learning techniques for different children.
I'll give you an example. If you look at the word "builder" and the word "corner". Most people immediately know that the "er" associated with builder is associated with the word "build".
Now "er" in the word "corner" is not associated with the word "corn", but it may take someone a much longer period of time to sort of figure that out, based on looking at those words.
Dyslexia is a very -- it's a large disorder encompassing a lot of different facets of reading and pronunciation. And sometimes you know, really targeted therapy might be the key here. These MRIs incidentally might help with that.
You know another thing, Bill, important to point out is that the spoken word is hundreds of thousands of years old. But really, the written word and being able to interpret the word only 5,000 years old. Our brains as a human race still sort of hard-linking to make sure that everyone can translate that written word into spoken words.
HEMMER: Can you do adults in 15 seconds or less? We're almost out of time.
GUPTA: Adults' brains, not as plastic as children. So probably not going to see as big a benefit, although the authorities we spoke with on this said still worth a shot in terms of trying to improve those areas of the brain, same as children.
HEMMER: Well done. Thank you, Sanjay.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired July 22, 2003 - 09:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news right now. Going to page Dr. Sanjay Gupta back with us on our "House Call" right now. Sanjay, good morning again to you. Two topics to get to. One is dyslexia. Put that on a back burner for a second. There's a connection out there between certain fish and Alzheimer's. What are you finding out?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's interesting, Bill. I guess we don't need another good reason to eat food that's good for us, but if we do, here it is. Talking about fish, specifically the omega 3 fatty acids in fish, and it's linked to Alzheimer's.
Now there's been a study now looking at over 800 people who did not have Alzheimer's and monitor their dietary habits. What they found over time was that people who ate fish at least once a week were found at least a 60 percent decrease in the incidence of Alzheimer's disease later on.
Now people who eat fish at least once a week also may have been eating fruits and vegetables. Most likely it's the omega 3 fatty acids that seemed to improve the way the neurons sort of live in the brain and how long they'll last and fire appropriately in the brain. Perhaps that's the reason. But yet another good reason for fish and healthy foods, Bill.
HEMMER: Foods to avoid?
GUPTA: Well, the same foods we know to avoid the same always. Foods that are high in saturated fats. Those are the foods that are going to be most likely to decrease some of the functions both in the heart and the brain. So obviously, avoid those for all sorts of reasons.
HEMMER: That we will.
Dyslexia. What are you learning right now? Obviously there's a strong brain connection right now where new research is showing certain things to help certain individuals.
GUPTA: You know, it's interesting. First of all a few facts about dyslexia. First, it's the most common learning disorder. It is genetic. It tends to run in families.
And there's a lot of people that you and I both know who have it. Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg. So people can have very, very successful, prominent lives even with dyslexia. Important point, always important to mention when we're talking about this: there's been a new study now out of "The Journal of Neurology" looking at exactly the way the brain sort of fires in people with dyslexia. This is something that people can actually objectify now by looking at the scans.
Take a look at a couple of them now. These are scans of the brain of both -- in someone who doesn't have dyslexia and someone who does dyslexia. The one on the left is a normal brain. The one on the right, this is a brain after someone has undergone some learning instruction.
Now, important point here, and this is a little difficult for people who aren't used to looking at MRIs. But the brain on left obviously showed all kinds of different activity there. The brain on the right showed increase in activity in those same areas with significant reading instruction.
And is very important of a point, Bill, because for so long you see kids who actually might improve with this reading education. But how long does it last? And there's some way to actually quantify how well this is working.
Well, researchers think they might be there now looking at these MRI scans. These seem to be an indicator that children actually improve with this learning instruction, reading instruction.
HEMMER: Are you finding that all children improve with these learning techniques?
GUPTA: It's not necessarily all, and there's certainly different learning techniques for different children.
I'll give you an example. If you look at the word "builder" and the word "corner". Most people immediately know that the "er" associated with builder is associated with the word "build".
Now "er" in the word "corner" is not associated with the word "corn", but it may take someone a much longer period of time to sort of figure that out, based on looking at those words.
Dyslexia is a very -- it's a large disorder encompassing a lot of different facets of reading and pronunciation. And sometimes you know, really targeted therapy might be the key here. These MRIs incidentally might help with that.
You know another thing, Bill, important to point out is that the spoken word is hundreds of thousands of years old. But really, the written word and being able to interpret the word only 5,000 years old. Our brains as a human race still sort of hard-linking to make sure that everyone can translate that written word into spoken words.
HEMMER: Can you do adults in 15 seconds or less? We're almost out of time.
GUPTA: Adults' brains, not as plastic as children. So probably not going to see as big a benefit, although the authorities we spoke with on this said still worth a shot in terms of trying to improve those areas of the brain, same as children.
HEMMER: Well done. Thank you, Sanjay.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
