Regrowth of Brain and Beta Cells

Five years ago there was the article in Scientific American about some birds, warblers, in Upper New York State that were taken in from the cold and given all the food and shelter they could ask for. Their brains shrunk one-third. Was it the atrophy of retirement? The investigators then released the warblers into their environment to fight for food and shelter and their brains increased in size to the prior levels.

Two years later a similar to experiment was done to see if it was regrowth of brain or just reinflation. It was regrowth of brain cells.

University of Florida has just published a paper about human brain cells regrowing as well. If they could start regrowth of brain cells that certainly has the potential for finding help for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, stroke and a host of other brain disorders. They not only regrew brain cells but brain cells that could differentiate into other specialized cells from a common brain cell.

Now as I watch the beta cell mass increase with the treatment with Byetta I don't see anything unusual about this new growth of the beta cells. It looks like we are going to be able to reverse many degenerative diseases by just plain growing the cells back.