It’s fairly well established that exercise can reduce progression to full-blown dementia in elderly folks with mild memory impairment, and that Ginkgo Biloba does nothing of the sort.

How about puzzles, memory tricks and brain twisters? Can these so-called cognitively-stimulating activities prevent or delay progression of dementia?

Americans spend $80 million per year on these things, which is an astonishing 40-fold increase in just 5 years, but Peter Snyder and colleagues have just concluded there’s no evidence they work in the healthy elderly.

Truth be told however, there’s not much evidence one way or another.

Snyder’s team did find a few randomized, controlled trials of structured cognitive intervention programs in the literature, and they were negative: that is, there was no evidence they delayed or slowed progression of cognitive decline in elderly healthy people.

But all the studies had methodological problems and it was hard exclude the possibility that longer interventions might have been beneficial.

Plus, each study tested a different memory protocol so it wasn’t possible to roll-up the results into a meta-analysis which might have generated enough statistical firepower to detect something subtle.

The last meta-analysis on anything remotely relevant to the subject was published in 1992 which we think was before the Internets and the Googles, and for the record it was negative.

The investigators, who hail from Brown University and Lifespan, published their findings in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
 
“The brain aging products sold today can be a financial drain, decrease participation in more proven effective lifestyle interventions like exercise, and potentially undermine cognitive health by frustrating the worried well if poorly designed,” Snyder told BurrillReports.
 
 “More randomized clinical trials in cognitive training need to be conducted with sufficient follow-up time that can actually measure changes in daily functioning.”

One day after UBS agreed to hand over the names of 250 wealthy US account holders as part of a $780 million settlement with US prosecutors on a tax-evasion probe, the Justice Department sued the Swiss banking giant to hand over 52,000 more.

The Feds have been on UBS’ tail since 2007 when a former executive told them the bank was representing to US customers that it didn’t have to disclose their identities to the IRS, according to the Wall Street Journal.

US prosecutors believe UBS has stashed a minimum of $20 billion and perhaps several times that, on behalf of US clients. The accounts generated a minimum of $200 million in annual revenues for the bank.

It was the first time in centuries that Swiss regulators permitted a bank to reveal account holders’ identities. Some Swiss lawmakers opposed the move on grounds it would destroy the Swiss banking industry.

“Client confidentiality, to which UBS remains committed, was never designed to protect fraudulent acts” such as violating the US tax code, UBS Chairman Peter Kurer told the Journal.

UBS acknowledged as part of the settlement that some of its managers knowingly cooked-up a scheme to assist US taxpayers looking to evade paying taxes.

The original 250 names had been identified in conjunction with a criminal investigation, but the larger roster is being sought by Justice as part of a separate civil probe.

The marked expansion in the number of names sought by US officials could be disastrous for the Swiss financial sector if large numbers of those 52,000 accounts turn out to involve tax evasion. Swiss banks generate 10% of the nation’s GNP and employ 5% of the work force.

In 2005, Wal-Mart employees had to work 2 years before qualifying for the company health plan, which most considered to be an expensive joke, anyway.

Then, an activist group publicized a confidential company memo saying that health expenses could be cut by not hiring sick people.

This was going down just when towns were protesting store openings, unions were underwriting nasty campaigns, teachers were telling students to take their back-to-school business elsewhere and the company’s stock price was languishing.

But the world’s largest company has made great strides since then.

First, Wal-Mart cut the wait to enroll in the health plan to one year for part-timers and 6 months for full-timers. That made 50,000 more employees eligible in one year.

Then it expanded the menu of insurance coverage options and extended to some employees a credit of up to $500 to offset any health-related expense.

Next, it extended its popular $4 generic drug plan from the 350 drugs available to consumers to greater than 2,000 for employees.

The retailer subsequently cut a preferred-provider deal with Mayo Clinic of all places to cover transplant services for its employees.

The company’s latest foray, Life with Baby, targets premature birth rates among Wal-Mart employees, which are twice the national average.

Expecting moms get paired with a nurse who advises them on diet, smoking, stress reduction and the like. Lactation counseling and vaccination programs are available to moms after that.

“Wow, it was really good. It helped me so much,” Cristina Majano told the Washington Post. The 23-year-old new mom works for Wal-Mart in Virginia.

Nowadays, only 5.5% of Wal-Mart employees lack health insurance. That’s much lower than the national rate, which is 18%.

Nice job fellas!