The results of a new study suggest that a diet that includes pseudocereals, also known as sea sprays or sea jets, helps treat and prevent some of the key signs of aging in laboratory animal experiments, Neuroscience News reported.
Rich in “plasmalogens”
The study, which is the first of its kind to examine the anti-aging effect of sea sprays, involved researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Liverpool, Stanford University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Chinese Academy of Sciences University.
Sea sprays can be eaten raw and contain substances called plasmalogens, a subclass of phospholipid ethers that are vital to the functions of the human body. Plasmalogens are found throughout the human body naturally, particularly in the heart, brain, and immune cells, but with age, their levels decline, which researchers believe is a feature of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
improve learning capabilities
To see if increasing levels of plasmagens can prevent the effects of aging, researchers studied the effects of adding plasmalogens to the diet of elderly mice, and found that supplementation had profound effects on the learning abilities and physical symptoms of these mice.
Professor Li Fu, corresponding author on the study, said: “The research indicates that plasmalogens can not only halt cognitive decline, but can reverse cognitive impairments in aging brain, to the extent that aged mice fed with plasmalogens developed new, more black hair. Thicker and shinier than aged mice, which were not fed the supplement.”
Forming new neural connections
The effects of a plasmalogen supplement on learning and memory were tested by training rats to use the Morris Water Maze, a pool of water containing a platform that serves as a resting area. In general, mice do not like to swim, so following five days of training, they remember where the platform is and swim directly to it as soon as they are in the pool. But older mice take longer to find the platform following the same amount of training.
Amazingly, when elderly mice were fed plasmalogens, the elderly mice performed much like the young mice, finding the platform much faster than the control group of elderly mice, which were not given the supplement.
Then the researchers took a closer look at the changes that occur inside the brain, where they discovered that mice that were fed the supplement Plasmalogen had a higher number and quality of connections between neurons, compared to the elderly mice that were not given the supplement.
Synapses are an essential part of our neural networks, and thus are essential for learning and memory. Our synapses tend to be very plastic like children, but they decrease in number and deteriorate with age and in obstetric neurodegenerative diseases, resulting in cognitive impairment.
Reduce encephalitis
Another characteristic of aging is encephalitis, which is believed to be an important factor in neurodegeneration. Severe inflammation can have a negative effect on cognitive ability, as the brain’s immune system becomes overactive and turns itself on, attacking neurons and preventing synapses from working properly.
Among other study findings, elderly mice were found to have a significantly reduced inflammation compared to those on a normal diet, providing some insights into why they perform better on learning and memory tasks.
“Oral administration of plasmalogens might be a feasible therapeutic strategy for improving cognitive function in the elderly,” said Professor Fu.