Old Dogs, New Tricks

It’s true – you can teach old dogs new tricks – if you give them antioxidants. At least, that’s the claim made by authors of a study reported in the January 2005 issue of the Neurobiology of Aging. Researchers at the University of Toronto gave one group of elderly dogs a regular diet combined with normal daily experiences (the controls); another group received a diet fortified with antioxidants (vitamins C, E, and beta-carotene) with normal daily experiences; another group got a normal diet but had ‘behavioral enrichment’ (greater interaction with other dogs, humans, and the environment); and the fourth group had both an enriched diet and enriching experiences. The treatments were continued for 2 years.

As you’ve probably guessed, the combined treatments (the fourth group of dogs) produced significant benefits on the dogs’ ability to learn, compared to either treatments on their own. Dogs, like humans, lose some of their ability to learn new information as they get older, and suffer from both long- and short-term memory lapses. It’s known that the aging human brain’s decline can be slowed by ‘behavioral enrichment’, whereas antioxidants have not proved so successful. However, a combination of antioxidants with an enriched lifestyle may prove to have additive effects, as in dogs. It can’t help to try, provided one keeps the antioxidant intake below toxic levels . . .