Many of you are aware of recent studies of neurogenesis. When I went to medical school, admittedly a long time ago, they taught us that you developed no new brain cells after birth. That was the one thing they knew for sure. Now we know there are new nerve cells being created every day and that process of neurogenesis can be influenced and modified by hormonal manipulations and other stimulation. This is an exciting, brave, new world for the development of new nerve cells and, in fact, new brains.
Some approaches are already available to modifying senescence in the brain.
Estrogen, while it may not prevent or even slow the onset of Alzheimer s Disease certainly has been shown, in postmenopausal women, to influence and improve a number of cognitive functions, such as verbal memory, verbal learning, and several other aspects of learning in late life. Exciting studies also show that we can change the muscle changes that occur with advancing age. Not surprisingly, when you look at the muscles of an older person, you see more slow fibers, and fewer so-called fast fibers. They are quite easy to discern because of the staining characteristics. This study showed that after this intervention, there was no reduction in fast fibers, and there was no increase in slow fibers, offering evidence that the senescence of musculature potentially can be prevented.