Alzheimer's and the future

[Amethyst]

I wonder if OP had any idea he was setting off yet another round of "Eat This, Not That"?

People are so hung up on foodage!

 

[imoldernu]

I wonder if OP had any idea he was setting off yet another round of "Eat This, Not That"?

no

 

[bmcgonig]

I wonder if OP had any idea he was setting off yet another round of "Eat This, Not That"?

People are so hung up on foodage!

Maybe cos foodage is considered important by those who spend their life studying the problem. And since the disease starts 20 years or so before it shows signs, then that's the very best we can do.

Don't understand why people are so hung up on knocking it [emoji4]

 

[robnplunder]

I wonder if OP had any idea he was setting off yet another round of "Eat This, Not That"?

People are so hung up on foodage!

... b/c our eating habits can have impact on one's future with AZ? My wild guess .

 

[WestUniversity]

My friend had a slow progression even though she got it young. It was the only last 3 years of her life where you couldn’t leave her alone at night. She died at 65 from cancer that was not treated due to her advanced Alzheimer’s.

DM’s progression from the beginning to the end was about 6 or 7 years, but she only needed around the clock care the last 2 to 3. I read somewhere at that time that the average duration was about 8 years. DM didn’t quite make it that long...

 

[audreyh1]

This is the only beef we eat at home. Outside of our home, we are at the mercy of the beef being served. in a big scheme of things, it is probably insignificant toward what it does to AZ. I sure hope there are more legitimate studies and researches on the topic.

We don’t eat out much in the US. Food sourcing would be a concern if I did eat out a lot.

 

[audreyh1]

I wonder if OP had any idea he was setting off yet another round of "Eat This, Not That"?

People are so hung up on foodage!

For good reason IMO.

 

[Amethyst]

It's been said, we are what we eat. So, naturally, diet is important for health, especially in the case of a known metabolic illness (e.g. T-2 diabetes).

What puzzles me is how "eat this, not that" becomes so fervent, with "camps" for each type of eating. And also why ETNT comes up so often. But I suppose that is like asking why some people want to pay off their mortgages early, while others Frown on that practice.

Maybe cos foodage is considered important by those who spend their life studying the problem. And since the disease starts 20 years or so before it shows signs, then that's the very best we can do.

Don't understand why people are so hung up on knocking it [emoji4]

 

[audreyh1]

It's been said, we are what we eat. So, naturally, diet is important for health, especially in the case of a known metabolic illness (e.g. T-2 diabetes).

What puzzles me is how "eat this, not that" becomes so fervent, with "camps" for each type of eating. And also why ETNT comes up so often. But I suppose that is like asking why some people want to pay off their mortgages early, while others Frown on that practice.

From what I’ve been reading lately, Alzheimer’s is thought to be due to insulin resistance of the brain, where the brain is not able to get sufficient fuel due to insulin resistance. So - another variant of a common metabolic disorder.

 

[tmm99]

Personally I think it’s better to avoid the inflammation in the first place. Who knows how much anti-inflammatory medicine you need, and some have side effects.

Apparently my very low-carb/ketogenic diet is a low inflammation diet, so I’m hoping I see some reduced inflammation results.

I have been taking turmeric as an anti-inflammatory for well over a year, but it hasn’t helped my thyroid auto-immune condition much. It may have helped with other problems.

I've been taking turmeric for a while now also, initially as a pain-reliever, but after finding out that people from India have a very low rate of Alzheimer's, I have been taking it more religiously. I am hyperthyroid and the turmeric hasn't helped at all in that department either, but I don't follow any specific diet. There is evidently such a thing as an autoimmune diet (The one book on the topic I read resembled the paleo diet with the elimination of nightshade vegetables, eggs and some other things), but that's a bit restrictive.

 

[Winemaker]

My great grandmother, grandmother, and great aunt, all poor immigrants from Gottschee, ate a strict vegetarian diet. Meat was served every other Sunday, and I'm sure it wasn't filet. All three had dementia in their post 70 years. Beans, homemade bread, rutabagas, beets, potatoes, apples, grapes, berries, tomatoes, and peas were the staples.

 

[tmm99]

FYI

A recent discovery by a Japanese researcher who discovered the health benefits of fasting.

He won the Noble prize for medicine. Therefore... fasting has merit.

Click the following link and watch the youtube video.

I am already fasting to reduce my weight and improve my health. Fasting detox your body. I am also hoping that fasting will help me avoid Alzimier's disease by getting rid of any plaque within my brain.

Great video by the way. Thank you for posting this.

I am surprised to find in the video that vegetarians do not lack animal protein in their body, and that we should have animal protein free days from time to time so that the body will use the protein from dead cells via the process of autophagy.

Anyway, I understood the benefits of fasting before, but this is the first piece I encountered that explains the mechanism.

 

[HenryD]

DW is concerned about her risk given that she has one of the APOE e4 genes. I have none. She's been reading up on it and we are what she considers to be a protective diet. Anyone else know their APOE gene status?

 

[audreyh1]

I've been taking turmeric for a while now also, initially as a pain-reliever, but after finding out that people from India have a very low rate of Alzheimer's, I have been taking it more religiously. I am hyperthyroid and the turmeric hasn't helped at all in that department, but I don't follow any specific diet either. There is evidently such a thing as an autoimmune diet (The one book on the topic I read resembled the paleo diet with the elimination of nightshade vegetables, eggs and some other things), but that's a bit restrictive.

I have been on various elimination diets but they haven’t made a difference. I’m sub-clinical hypothyroid (Hashimoto’s). Thyroid is still functioning adequately- TSH is normal, last was under 2. My thyroid antibodies may be somewhat lower compared to a few years ago, but still well above normal.

I’ve been off dairy for years, but added it back due to the ketogenic diet and noticed, surprisingly, that it wasn’t causing any digestive problems on a low-carb diet.. We’ll see with the next blood panel.

I had a bad bout of sudden autoimmune hair loss a couple of years ago. That’s when I started taking turmeric. I also used topical treatments and later added saw palmetto. My hair loss resolved completely, thank goodness, because I had a particularly bad case. I wonder if something like entering menopause may have triggered it. Anyway - maybe turmeric helped, probably the topical treatments helped speed the recovery. It may have resolved on its own. Hard to know. I’ve continued with the turmeric.

 

[razztazz]

Scientists spend years doing nothing but studying Alzheimers.
They find that diet definitely plays a part.
What's fetishist about that?

More to your point... no, the "Scientific community" is still out as to what what causes it and how much impact any specific eating or not eating of certain nutritional vectors might have, Now that is a scientific fact.

And "diet playing a part" doesn't mean there is any real answer to preventing or curing it. What part? how much? Which diet? And genes do play a part. This nouveau-think that's come up recently due to some "study" that seemed to imply genes do not influence health or longevity is totally misguided.

You can play spin-the-wheel and guess right. We all do. Much of this forum is based on the premise: "Stats: Take 'em or Leave 'em". But the doctors and scientists working on it these things are just spreading rumours. Maybe they will be right some day.

 

[misanman]

Anyone else know their APOE gene status?

According to 23andMe, DW and I do not have that gene variant.

 

[tmm99]

I have been on various elimination diets but they haven’t made a difference. I’m sub-clinical hypothyroid (Hashimoto’s). Thyroid is still functioning adequately- TSH is normal, last was under 2. My thyroid antibodies may be somewhat lower compared to a few years ago, but still well above normal.

I’ve been off dairy for years, but added it back due to the ketogenic diet and noticed, surprisingly, that it wasn’t causing any digestive problems on a low-carb diet.. We’ll see with the next blood panel.

I had a bad bout of sudden autoimmune hair loss a couple of years ago. That’s when I started taking turmeric. I also used topical treatments and later added saw palmetto. My hair loss resolved completely, thank goodness, because I had a particularly bad case. I wonder if something like entering menopause may have triggered it. Anyway - maybe turmeric helped, probably the topical treatments helped speed the recovery. It may have resolved on its own. Hard to know. I’ve continued with the turmeric.

I was losing hair at an alarming rate myself at the height of my hyperthyroidism. It was nerve-wracking! Glad to hear that that's no longer a problem for you and that your thyroid is still functioning. Mine was diagnosed as Graves after my antiboy test. My pulse was running at around 120 beats/min at resting, and I lost about 20 lbs in a short time until the anti-thyroid medication kicked in. (My TSH was almost non-existent.) That was over 10 years ago. I only take a tiny amount of anti-thyroid med twice a week now - It's been stable for the last several years.

I believe menopause has something to do with it too, although my TSH didn't change much when I got on NHRT.

Yeah, the elimination diet is not something I would be willing to do, but it sounds like you tried different things to avoid medication. I was given thyroid removal, iodine radiation treatment and medication as options, so being on medication wasn't such a bad choice. (I used to have to take 7 times more medication than I am taking now.)

 

[tmm99]

According to 23andMe, DW and I do not have that gene variant.

I personally don't want to find out, until we are at the point where we can cure the disease or prevent it.

 

[WestUniversity]

There are some interesting inroads being made into the causes and prevention of Alzheimers in the nutritional community. Amy Berger's work would be one example. She's basically arguing that Alzheimer's is another example of insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, and that it can be prevented or forestalled by low-carb approaches. She refers to it as Type 3 Diabetes. I haven't investigated it enough to know the science thoroughly, but I'll offer her name here for anyone who might be interested. She wrote a book called The Alzheimers Antidote and a number of interviews with or speeches by her can be found on Youtube. One example:

Thanks so much for this post. She makes a compelling case. In a lot of respects this reminds me of an episode of, I think it was NOVA, that I saw many years ago. In that episode they looked at the incidence of diabetes in one of the Indian tribes in the American southwest.

This tribe had a statistical incidence of diabetes that blew away the incidence in the U.S. population as a whole. What was determined was that these people, who were throughout their history hunter gatherers, that their bodies had developed/strengthened a "thrifty gene" that milked all of the sugar out of any food they ate, so that their bodies were able to get enough glucose to survive.

Fast forward to current day and the high levels of glucose in our diets. That combined with the "thrifty gene" became a perfect storm for developing diabetes. Elements of this presentation echo that work...

 

[ncbill]

DW is concerned about her risk given that she has one of the APOE e4 genes. I have none. She's been reading up on it and we are what she considers to be a protective diet. Anyone else know their APOE gene status?

You need TWO copies of APOE-4 to face a significantly higher risk of not only dementia but other nasty diseases & IIRC only ~2% will have both.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

The reason researchers often emphasize diet is because they do studies that point to diet. In one on colon cancer, researchers had 20 Africans from rural south Africa swap diets with 20 African Americans.....After two weeks on the African diet, the American group had significantly less inflammation in the colon and reduced biomarkers of cancer risk. In the African group, measurements indicating cancer risk dramatically increased after two weeks on the western diet (the opposite of how the groups started out.)

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428125038.htm

 

[HenryD]

You need TWO copies of APOE-4 to face a significantly higher risk of not only dementia but other nasty diseases & IIRC only ~2% will have both.

Yes, and DW is very happy she only has the one.

 

[audreyh1]

I was losing hair at an alarming rate myself at the height of my hyperthyroidism. It was nerve-wracking! Glad to hear that that's no longer a problem for you and that your thyroid is still functioning. Mine was diagnosed as Graves after my antiboy test. My pulse was running at around 120 beats/min at resting, and I lost about 20 lbs in a short time until the anti-thyroid medication kicked in. (My TSH was almost non-existent.) That was over 10 years ago. I only take a tiny amount of anti-thyroid med twice a week now - It's been stable for the last several years.

I believe menopause has something to do with it too, although my TSH didn't change much when I got on NHRT.

Yeah, the elimination diet is not something I would be willing to do, but it sounds like you tried different things to avoid medication. I was given thyroid removal, iodine radiation treatment and medication as options, so being on medication wasn't such a bad choice. (I used to have to take 7 times more medication than I am taking now.)

I don’t need thyroid medication until my TSH goes too high. My thyroid is still functioning normally even though it’s being attacked by antibodies.

My hair loss was not thyroid related. It was a different autoimmune condition called Alopecia areata where one or more completely bald spots suddenly develop. I ultimately lost hair on well over 50% of my scalp (fortunately not on the very top) and also on my arms and legs.

 

[audreyh1]

DW is concerned about her risk given that she has one of the APOE e4 genes. I have none. She's been reading up on it and we are what she considers to be a protective diet. Anyone else know their APOE gene status?

This article might help. It talks generally abound Alzheimer’s and insulin resistance, but it goes on to say that you aren’t doomed by your DNA.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...alzheimer-s-disease-could-be-easier-you-think

 

[Moemg]

My hair came out in clumps during my illness last year . I started taking biotin regularly and using a keratin shampoo and it has resolved .