Preventing Alzheimer's Disease: 7 Risks to Consider

As someone who has loved many loved ones, including my father, to Alzheimer's, I think a lot more attention needs to be given to how diet may play a role in the disease. Why just take the fatalistic view that nothing can be done?

This interview with Dr. Pham Liem gives some insight into how High Fructose Corn Syrup could be implicated in Alzheimer's:

http://arkansasmedicalnews.com/avoidance-of-fructose-could-do-double-duty-preventing-type-2-diabetes-and-alzheimer-s-cms-913

“Insulin resistance is the cause of type 2 diabetes, and insulin resistance was recently found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, also,” said Dr. Pham Liem, associate chief of staff for geriatric medicine, Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System. “In recent years, large amounts of fructose have been added to the diet of Americans. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links increased consumption of fructose with higher rates of obesity. Higher rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes are a consequence of the fat cell dysfunction that causes inflammation. It also causes high blood pressure and high lipid cholesterol.

“We call this metabolic syndrome. It appears this series of risk factors may also be related to the type of Alzheimer’s we have seen of late. We believe Alzheimer’s is a type of insulin resistance just like insulin resistance outside of the brain.”

...The average American consumes 41.5 pounds of HFCS per year. The problem is the liver can only handle a limited amount of fructose—25 grams maximum per day—about the amount contained in one 12-ounce soft drink.

“The body takes in glucose and makes the energy necessary to live,” Liem said. “Fructose doesn’t go into that pathway and becomes a free fatty acid. Some, like triglycerides, go into the blood stream. Either it builds up fat in the belly, or it goes into other areas where it doesn’t belong like muscles and other tissues. It becomes a problem because the body tries to react against it. It creates an inflammation reaction. These inflammation reactions are very bad for tissues including the insulin receptors.”

Becky Gillette of AR 8:33AM October 26, 2010

The Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and Science and Environmental Health Network have documented the causes of Alzheimer's (and Parkinson's) disease. They have also suggested an extensive list of recommendations as to how to prevent them. See http://www.agehealthy.org/. Their report is free to the public.

Frank Cook of OR 12:05PM June 15, 2010

Very interesting. This discovery is one more piece of evidence that indicates that autism and Alzheimers are one and the same entity. I also read somewhere that Vitamin D is involved in the body's production of glutathione which binds to toxins like mercury and help to flush it out. The reason why this matters is that mercury is also implicated in causing amyloid plaques. I'd like to know how curcuminoids fit in.

Birgit Calhoun of CA 11:05AM June 15, 2010

Alzheimer's is obviously a reduction in the brain's ability to function due to a loss of neurons, but what causes these neurons that constitute our memories to die off?

The most common problem is a decreased access of the brain to the nutrients it needs in the blood stream. Saturated fats, cigarettes, high fructose corn syrup, these all lead to a hardening of the blood vessels' walls, allowing less blood and fewer of the nutrients it carriers into the delicate and very hard working brain. The brain uses a disproportionately high amount of energy, some research pegs it at 15% of the entire body's energy use, while it only consitutes ~2% of a person's body mass. If something disrupts blood vessels, the brain will most likely enter decline long before another organ.

The reason exercise and education decrease your risk for Alzheimer's is because both of those activities cause new blood vessels and the nutrient conveying capillaries to grow in your brain. These two activities cause a stress on your brain, increasing its demand for blood. When this happens, the healthy brain tells new blood vessels to start growing in order to compensate.

Alzheimer's has also been linked, but only in a very limited sense, to some infections, but the disease of brain loss from infections is less like Alzheimer's Disease and more akin to a general dementia. Toxoplasm ghondi is a bacteria that lives in the intestinal tract of cats, which if it enters a human's body through the handling of feces will travel directly to the brain and set up life long residency there. In old age when the immune system weakens, this bacteria from cats can start causing harm ... resulting on the popular "crazy old cat-lady" syndrome as many people jokingly call it. Also, the common cold sore virus, herpes, also resides in the brain and can similar cause some small level of brain damage in old age. In old age, the brain relies on a different, less precise immune function to clear infections which also causes damage to the surrounding tissue. It is not even the infection itself that causes the damage, but the elderly body's already declining function that exacerbates the problem. HIV is also commonly known to cause brain damage by this very same secondary mechanism of inflammation within the brain, but thanks to current therapies it is mitigated to the point that it is rarely seen today.

Is it possible that these infections actually cause Alzheimer's disease? Yes, but these factors are not anywhere nearly as strongly linked to Alzheimer's disease as smoking, eating too much sugar or saturated fats, and not exercising. If your body stays healthy and challenged by regular activity, it will not enter this state of decline that activates your body's own indiscriminate immune mechanisms to fight infections and causing brain damage. The body evolved with the preference to stay alive and be able to pass on its genes to the next generation, not to keep every memory we've ever made.

James Sonne of KY 9:03AM June 15, 2010