Up close with a brain expert

MANILA, Philippines - The latest breakthrough in terms of brain research led to the discovery of an amazing active ingredient, thanks in large part to the Brand’s Brain Research Center that is definitely leading the way in terms of brain research.

According to Dr. Paramjeet Singh, Ph.D., chief scientist at the Brand’s Brain Research Center and Brand’s Health Science Center based in Singapore, said Brand’s is at theforefront of conducting brain research in all its aspects and focuses on two key aspects — brain health and brain fitness.

As described by Singh, a Singapore-based scientist with almost 20 years of life science research experience, “brain health is the freedom from, and avoidance of, brain disease,” while “brain fitness is the ability to apply the brain’s cognitive (thinking) capabilities to the task at hand.”

He said their concern is the development of brain diseases related to age like Alzheimer’s disease, caused by the accumulation of aberrant protein deposits called “amyloid plaques” in the brain.

“We have research targeted at preventing or reducing amyloid plaques through the consumption of specific bioactive peptides like Carnosine to maintain brain health,” he said.

For brain fitness, Singh said the way people think is largely dependent on components such as “attention, learning, memory and decision making.”

“How these components perform is mostly related to the way we live and the food that we eat. This is the reason why we focused our research on optimizing or enhancing the brain’s thinking capabilities through diet that contains bioactive compounds,” he said.

Fortunately, through painstaking and meticulous research done at the Brand’s Brain Research Center for more than a decade, scientists led by Singh discovered how bioactive peptides like ProBeptigen and Carnosine that are present in Brand’s Essence of Chicken, a fat-, cholesterol- and preservatives-free food supplement, can help maintain the health and fitness of the brain.

Singh shared that brain fitness can be affected by many lifestyle factors, with stress being a major culprit. The chronic, cumulative stress of normal, everyday life can cause a gradual decline in the levels of a particular brain chemical, the neurotransmitter serotonin.

This stress-induced suppression of serotonin levels is associated with a loss of motivation to learn, potential memory impairment, and an overall decline in brain performance.

Through many years of research, the scientists at Brand’s Brain Research Center have discovered that ProBeptigen is able to combat the stress-induced suppression of brain serotonin levels.

Hence ProBeptigen helps maintain optimal levels of brain serotonin even under conditions of stress, sustaining the motivation to learn and the resultant cognitive performance.

Their preliminary human clinical studies indicate that even under non-stress conditions, ProBeptigen can improve performance in clinical tests of learning and memory.

On the other hand, the other peptide, Carnosine in Brand’s Essence of Chicken, protects the brain’s health by reducing the protein deposits (amyloid plaques) in the brain, making it more resistant to these protein deposits and help maintain a healthy brain.

“It was not really easy doing brain research. However, the research approach we applied that led to the discovery of ProBeptigen will now serve as a benchmark for reviewing current food efficacy research. We hope that understanding the mechanism of ProBeptigen will guide future research in discovering other bioactives that have similar ProBeptigen or complementary brain benefits,” Singh said.

He added that with the discovery of ProBeptigen, they will now focus their attention on using this peptide as an ingredient in new and enhanced Brand’s products in the future.

As to the possibility of another scientific breakthrough after ProBeptigen, Singh said the Brand’s Brain Research Center is now in the process of working on two new and promising brain activities that are associated with Brand’s products.

“Definitely, once these bioactive compounds are identified, we will make the appropriate announcement,” he said.

Brand’s Essence of Chicken is the only scientifically proven product of its kind, backed by over 20 years of extensive scientific and clinical research with findings documented in 30 scientific journals published in collaboration with scientists from universities in the United Kingdom, Japan, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Brand’s is also one of the pioneers in the health food industry to invest in scientific and clinical research to prove its product benefits and investigate the mechanisms on how the products work.

Brand’s Essence of Chicken is available in 42-gram and 70-gram bottles and is sold at Mercury Drug stores in Metro Manila. For more details on Brand’s Essence of Chicken, visit www.brandsworld.com.