ROYAL WEDDING GALLERY (19 PHOTOGRAPHS)
The Royal Bride and Bridegroom exchange wedding vows at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
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Research reveals a healthy diet helps to stave off dementia
RESEARCH
Dementia fighting foods. Research reveals a diet that is rich in these foods can lead to a bigger brain which reduces the likelihood of contracting dementia.
EATING healthily could ward off dementia and make your brain more than six months younger.
Researchers say people who eat a diet rich in vegetables, fruit, nuts and fish have bigger brains.
The findings are the latest evidence that ‘what is good for the heart is good for the head.’
A healthy diet, long known to protect people from heart problems, was found to add to brain volume, boosting people’s grey matter and the volume of their hippocampus – the brain’s memory centre. Across more than 4,500 people aged 45 and older, eating well was found to give people an average extra brain volume of two millimetres.
That is the equivalent of a brain being more than six months younger, as it shrinks with age. Having a larger brain is thought to ward off memory loss, which can often be followed by dementia.
Dr Meike Vernooij, co-author of the Dutch study from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said: ‘People with greater brain volume have been shown to have better cognitive abilities, so initiatives that help to improve diet may be a good strategy to maintain thinking skills in older adults.’
He called for more research to ‘examine the pathways through which diet can affect the brain’. A healthy diet is believed to strengthen connections in the brain and ward off inevitable age-related decline.
The latest study, which was first published in the journal Neurology, involved people with an average age of 66 who were dementia-free. They were questioned on their diet, which was ranked with a score of zero to 14. The best were judged high in vegetables, fruit, nuts, whole grains, dairy and fish.
Participants then had MRI scans to determine their brain volume. Even considering brain-shrinking activities such as smoking and failing to exercise, those who ate well had an average of two millimetres more brain volume than those who did not.
Dr Sara Imarisio, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said brain size was a useful indicator of brain health but the study did not allow any ‘firm conclusions’ about how diet quality relates to the development of dementia.
But she added: ‘Research suggests a healthy diet may help to reduce the risk of dementia, and Alzheimer’s Research is supporting pioneering research into ways we can encourage people at risk to adopt a Mediterranean diet.’
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Lateral Thinking Drama & Whodunnit: The Caryatids
LATERAL THINKING DRAMA: PUZZLE CONUNDRUM
TAKING a deep breath, Oliver James knocked on his father’s office door and went in.
“Ah, there you are, m’boy.” At 6ft Cameron James was just a little shorter than his son, but where Oliver was trim, his father had the broad power of a man who’d spent most of his life handling large amounts of stone and brick. “Come in, come in. Jacob and I were just discussing ornamentation for the Southwell building. Thought maybe you could lend a hand.”
Oliver winced, and braced himself. Cameron still hadn’t come to terms with his son’s preference for architectural design over actual construction, and the lectures about his future were getting tediously frequent.
“Do you remember Pick & Sons, Oliver?” Now in his forties, Jacob York had been his father’s right-hand man for as long as Oliver could remember. He at least was on Oliver’s side regarding architecture.
Oliver nodded.
“Cruz has a line on a couple of Roman statues at a very good price,” Cameron said.
“Maybe too good,” Jacob added.
“Maybe, maybe,” said Cameron. “But if not, they’d fulfil Southwell’s requirements for the frontispiece and then some, considerably under budget as well. You’ve got a good eye, Oliver. I thought maybe you’d give us your opinion on the matter.”
A relieved Oliver said he’d be delighted to help.
“Pull up a seat,” Cameron said, waving at the pile of paperwork on his desk.
A pair of Diocletian caryatids.
Oliver sat down and ran his eye over the details. According to the papers, the statues were a matched pair of elegant caryatid columns from the region of the Roman emperor Diocletian, in surprisingly good condition. The date of construction was clear, since the sculptor had marked the bases with his own name, Emperor Diocletian’s full titles, and the year, AD 302. That year marked the start of the emperor’s bloody persecution of the Christians, during which every Roman citizen was compelled to offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. Some venues had undoubtedly been constructed for the purpose, and caryatids – supporting columns in the form of a woman – while not common in Roman times, were not unheard of either.
From the pictures that had been included, the statues looked as if they were made from marble. There was some wear and tear – it would have been miraculous if there hadn’t been – but even so, the pieces could quite easily have been in a museum.
Oliver looked up. “Where did Pick find them?”
“He got them from a Turkish fellow,” Cameron said. “The man said that they’d been sold to him by an Ottoman pasha who’d fallen on hard times, having had them in his family since the time of the Seljuks in the 13th century.”
“There is some supporting documentation,” Jacob said.
“Well, it’s not totally impossible for a couple of Diocletian pieces to have survived in private collections,” Oliver said. “Diocletian was in Antioch for several years, up to AD 302 at least. I can see temples being raised in his name, and then statuary being purloined later, as the empire shrank. In this case, however, I feel comfortable saying that those pieces are absolutely and definitely fakes. Sorry, father.”
How can Oliver be so sure?
