by Richard
Nothing to do with a gecko. I just wrote it for some reason. I forgot what, but I’m sure it was important. Something about. . . Right! Cognitive decline in your kidneys brains. And can we stall it by taking ginko biloba? Turns out, not so much.
Older adults who used the herbal supplement Ginkgo biloba for several years did not have a slower rate of cognitive decline compared to adults who received placebo, according to a new study.
“Ginkgo biloba is marketed widely and used with the hope of improving, preventing, or delaying cognitive impairment associated with aging and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer disease,” the authors write. “Indeed, in the United States and particularly in Europe, G biloba is perhaps the most widely used herbal treatment consumed specifically to prevent age-related cognitive decline.” However, evidence from large clinical trials regarding its effect on long-term cognitive functioning is lacking.
Which means that just because they say it’s so, that doesn’t make it so.
In a perfect world, now would be the time that all those natural-is-better hippie-hangovers would acknowledge that this particular herb (heh, heh, I said herb in connection with hippies) does not work and they’d stop talking and talking and talking about how great it is. We don’t live in a perfect world.
Even this won’t stop them.
In this study, the largest randomized controlled trial of G biloba to report on outcomes to date, the researchers found no evidence for an effect of G biloba on global cognitive change and no evidence of effect on specific cognitive domains of memory, language, attention, visuospatial abilities and executive functions. They also found no evidence for differences in treatment effects by age, sex, race, education or baseline cognitive status (MCI vs. normal cognition).
I think it’s another sign that our pills-cure-everything society might want to give that sort of attitude another look. How about working out your brain like you work out your abs. Notice I said you and your, not me and my. Trust me. There’s a reason for it.
Learn new things. Practice difficult cognitive tasks. (I’m looking at you, sudoku.) Don’t just sit and veg in front of the tv.
We might want the perfect pill to cure everything, but it’s not happening, so we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.
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