Biography
Biography: Yuanlong Pan
Abstract
Food and nutrition have profound impact on health and longevity in people and pets. Both Mediterranean diet and Okinawan diet promote health and longevity and reduce risk of chronic diseases. Dietary antioxidants, omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and B vitamins have been shown as protective factors against cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Brain aging is an inevitable process, but the rate of brain aging differs significantly among individual people and pets, depending on the genetics, food, nutrients and lifestyle. As a result, there are two primary outcomes of brain aging. In cases of healthy brain aging, elderly people or senior pets manage to maintain relatively normal brain function due to mild to moderate brain atrophy. The 2nd outcome of brain aging is accelerated brain aging. Seniors with accelerated brain aging suffer from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or dementia including AD in people or Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome (CDS) in pets. Since brain atrophy is not a reversible process, AD and CDS are not curable. More efforts should be focused on developing nutritional interventions to promote healthy brain aging. Our studies have shown that diets formulated to address known risk factors for AD are able to enhance cognitive function in normal aging dogs, cats and improve clinical symptoms of dogs with CDS. Those data suggest that similar nutritional solutions may be developed to enhance cognitive function, promote healthy brain aging, reduce the incidence of AD and manage clinical symptoms of AD in people.