Theorizing that the Brain is Destroyed by the Pulse

It is uncontroversial that the age-related deterioration of the vascular system leads to damage to the brain, causing cognitive decline and then dementia. Progressive stiffening due to cross-links and calcification and inflammation-driven remodeling of blood vessel walls reduces structural integrity at the same time as it causes hypertension, raised blood pressure that puts more stress on those same blood vessel walls. This paper presents a novel way of looking at this contribution to the aging process:

The brain and its blood vessels are very different tissues. The nerve and glial cells of the brain (its processing machinery) develop from the ectoderm of the embryo; the brain's blood vessels (its system of oxygen supply and metabolite removal) develop from mesoderm, growing from the heart to surround and then penetrate the developing brain. By birth, vessels have branched through every millimeter of brain tissue, and they become involved in most, if not all, diseases or injuries of the brain.

Age-related dementia has seemed, to Alois Alzheimer and to most observers since, to be a degeneration of the brain, of its nerve cells. This review brings together two bodies of evidence, from which we propose that the dementia is primarily vascular, caused by the destructive effective of the pulse on cerebral blood vessels, with the loss of neurons occurring secondarily to vascular breakdown. We argue, further, that dementia is age-related because the pulse becomes more intense and m...

Source: Fight Aging! - March 23, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs