[HN Gopher] What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking t...
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What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer
Author : i13e
Score : 162 points
Date : 2022-12-10 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| stevev wrote:
| Tylenol
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What about it?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Acetaminophen has numerous well-known risks and is probably
| more dangerous than most people appreciate, and is overused,
| over-marketed, and too-readily available. BUT, like some other
| too-simple hypotheses on this thread, it isn't giving you
| Alzheimer's directly. It may be part of a complex network of
| causes. Or not.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > Faced with the choice of either chasing cures based on amyloid
| or pursuing a nebulous something-more-than-amyloid, the medical
| and pharmaceutical communities made what seemed like the rational
| choice.
|
| No one should accept this as an excuse. They weren't rational,
| they chased the shiny.
|
| I'm not sure "visibility bias" already has the right meaning, but
| if not we need a term for this pervasive problem where people
| just choose to not believe or otherwise ignore factors that don't
| leap out to them, even if they're just as if not more important
| in reality. More abstractly we see it with Alzheimer's hypotheses
| here: Hypotheses with greater uncertainty suffer the same
| treatment, where not having as clear an idea about what it is
| causes it to be entirely discounted, for years, in favor of the
| clearer action plan.
| chami114 wrote:
| this is a good article to spotlight on..
| snshn wrote:
| could be prions from eating meat, could be genetic... it's likely
| similar to "what causes cancer?"
| ethanbond wrote:
| AFAIK Alzheimer's is a single disease, whereas cancer is kind
| of a catch-all category for a huuuuge set of different
| disorders caused and treated by different things.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I wanted to argue against this, but the strongest
| interpretation of what your saying could hold up to reason.
|
| Perhaps there are some kinds of prions, or other, maybe
| similar, infectious agents, we haven't isolated yet.
| snshn wrote:
| I think it's extremely likely it's caused by something either
| unknown or previously considered to be safe for humans. Would
| be nice to study groups of people and see their rates of this
| illness. Multi-group elimination diet, with HTMA and blood
| and bone marrow tested for presence of metals, oxidants, etc.
| l2silver wrote:
| Did anyone read "The end of Alzheimers" by Dr. Bredesen? In the
| book he claims to have the cure, but no one has really talked
| about his approach. Was it debunked? I'm confused.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've read it. It's about healthy diet, exercise, and sleep.
| Even if Dr. Bredesen is wrong, having a healthy diet, exercise,
| and sleep program is still going to be good for you.
| wutheringh wrote:
| No one talks about it because it's too ridiculous to be taken
| seriously by anyone with credentials
| l2silver wrote:
| What's ridiculous about it?
| zfi20921 wrote:
| Was there ever an examination of this[1]? I'm somewhat confused
| about how such a long article never mentioned it...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/23/alzheimers-s...
| carls wrote:
| The article does in fact mention this event in the below
| paragraph:
|
| " _The hypothesis took another hit last July when a bombshell
| article in Science revealed that data in the influential 2006
| Nature paper linking amyloid plaques to cognitive symptoms of
| Alzheimer's disease may have been fabricated. The connection
| claimed by the paper had convinced many researchers to keep
| pursuing amyloid theories at the time. For many of them, the
| new expose created a "big dent" in the amyloid theory, Patira
| said._ "
| g42gregory wrote:
| In many scientific research projects the same dangerous theme
| keeps surfacing: monolithic thinking, with "no alternatives
| allowed". I feel this is very detrimental to both scientific
| progress as well as to the broader society.
| clairity wrote:
| that's true for any sociopolitical system, and the reason why i
| push back on dichotomous thinking, especially "left-right" or
| "democrat-republican" in political discussions. this is the
| central exploration of _Wisdom of Crowds_ , which i recommend
| to everyone even though it's considered 'old' now.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think unjustified "monolithic thinking" in this instance was
| bad. I'd say that's because in medicine, so many maladies are
| multifactorial and thus one shouldn't declare victory till your
| model shows strong effectiveness in the field.
|
| But "monolithic thinking" is also accepting established theory.
| Unlimited diversity can open the door to all sorts of crap - I
| don't want "diversity" in whether a doctor accepts the germ
| theory of (some) disease, the existence of viruses, etc.
| manicennui wrote:
| Welcome to market driven science.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| This is driven by grant writing. That's the literal opposite
| of market driven
| jackmott wrote:
| simmerup wrote:
| You'd think that after a decade of failed results, someone
| would go back to the drawing board and start again. But it
| never seems to happen.
| Tagbert wrote:
| We have only recently had any drugs that could reduce the
| beta amyloid. While they do reduce the amyloid, they do not
| see to have an equivalent impact on the actual disease. That
| failure IS prompting people to reconsider other root causes,
| again.
| fabian2k wrote:
| This discussion about the cause of Alzheimer's is not new, it
| has been going on for something like 10-15 years at least. What
| is triggering the publicity now is that two drugs targeting
| amyloid failed to produce real improvement even though they
| were effective at reducing amyloid. Especially the newer one
| produced very large and measurable reduction of amyloid, but
| only very small (but measurable) cognitive improvement.
|
| In any case the whole amyloid system is involved somehow, I
| think that much is very likely. Just not in the way that the
| visible amyloid fibers are the cause, but might just be another
| symptom. This is not anything like heretical talk, this
| suspicion was pretty much mainstream when I studied
| biochemistry ~15 years ago. It was only a hypothesis, but it
| certainly wasn't suppressed.
| eganist wrote:
| Deeper reading into one such alternative:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7660461/
|
| There's a follow-up study on the herpes angle currently in
| progress (https://www.alzheimers.gov/clinical-
| trials/valacyclovir-mild...) after this one
| (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13311-018-0611-x) in
| Taiwan, for instance.
| jleyank wrote:
| Remember they need new ideas and then they need animal models
| with which they can test these new ideas. They had one, they had
| drug candidates that satisfied the model and yet nothing
| happened. We've just seen the various tries run down and smell
| the smoke of billions of dollars burning to ash.
|
| It's research not engineering and we can't experiment on people.
| Huge unmet market need will keep companies trying.
| wwwtyro wrote:
| I'm fine with most researchers pursuing a particular direction,
| but I get concerned when incentives align that provide a
| significant pressure for them to research what they wouldn't
| naturally want to research. It seems like there should be a
| distribution of research directions, not everyone in lockstep.
| It's hard to gauge from the outside to what degree that is
| happening in our research institutions today.
| caycep wrote:
| In theory, that's where a lot of individual NIH grants are
| supposed to do - K level and R level grants. However, NIH
| people tend to have gotten risk adverse so they look to certain
| parameter to "vet" whoever gets the money amongst all sorts of
| applications. The idea is one thing, but also - whose lab
| you're being mentored in, prior funding success, etc etc play
| an equal if not more important role.
|
| I think the problem then is...if you have some promising
| directions from preliminary work, to test an idea in clinical
| trials, it is not cheap. You have to hire a large army of
| clinicians, nurses, research people, etc etc to manage all the
| patients/subjects x 10,000 or 50,000. So there has to be at
| least some politicking to steer where all the research funds go
| to. And people who are better at "finessing" scientific review
| boards tend to bubble to the top
| pbj1968 wrote:
| Nobody gets a K award on their own merits. Unless your
| mentoring committee is well funded and walking lockstep with
| conventional wisdom, your application is dead in the water.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Ya a more accurate headline might be "wealth inequality found
| to be major cause of Alzheimer's research failures" or
| "Alzheimer's research failures reveal defects in western
| medicine".
|
| If the fundamental problem is misallocation of research
| dollars, then that's what should be tackled first. I'd vote to
| do something like a git bisect and isolate the failures first.
| The scale of the failures suggests that the problems go back to
| the beginning. So I'd start by halving the funds that go to the
| big players and distributing the remainder amongst smaller
| groups and individuals trying a wide array of different
| approaches.
|
| That said, I'd predict that as theory and simulation improve,
| especially in areas like big data, machine learning and AI,
| strong correlations will be found soon (probably within 5
| years, certainly 10). They'll probably discover something that
| the article hints at, that the problem is actually inside cells
| and that the amyloid protein is a symptom (not a cause). It's
| probably something like a subtance in food confusing the immune
| system or a multi-cause effect related to living a lifetime
| under acute stress far above and beyond what we'd encounter
| while living in a hunter-gatherer society, or simply that we
| get no exercise compared to what our bodies evolved for so
| maybe the cellular repair mechanisms generated by our muscles
| aren't there to repair the nervous system (no blame here - it's
| hard for older folks to get enough exercise when they're
| hurting).
|
| All wild speculation on my part as a computer geek who doesn't
| know the first thing about medicine, I'm the first to admit!
| macrolime wrote:
| There's a couple clinical trials with various variations of young
| blood or blood plasma being given to Alzheimer's patients. Should
| be interesting to see how that goes.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Did Peter Theil fund this research?
| macrolime wrote:
| Not sure who's funding what
|
| Most recent one I saw is this one that I think is funded by
| the Norwegian government
|
| https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/9/e056964
|
| Then there's startups like Alkahest
| https://www.alkahest.com/pipeline/akst-grf6019/
|
| Clinical trials of sorts has been going on since at least
| 2017 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22930
| optimalsolver wrote:
| ...again.
| dang wrote:
| There are too many Alzheimer's threads to list but these seem to
| be the ones related to the amyloid hypothesis:
|
| _Decreased proteins, not amyloid plaques, tied to Alzheimer 's
| disease_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33096228 - Oct
| 2022 (3 comments)
|
| _A Positive Amyloid Trial, Finally?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010078 - Sept 2022 (49
| comments)
|
| _Faked Beta-Amyloid Data. What Does It Mean?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32224823 - July 2022 (168
| comments)
|
| _Two decades of Alzheimer's research was based on deliberate
| fraud_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32212719 - July
| 2022 (298 comments)
|
| _Potential fabrication in research threatens the amyloid theory
| of Alzheimer's_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32183302 -
| July 2022 (256 comments)
|
| _Alzheimer's amyloid hypothesis 'cabal' thwarted progress toward
| a cure (2019)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31828509 -
| June 2022 (307 comments)
|
| _Tau PET imaging beats amyloid-based approach in battle against
| Alzheimer's_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21970903 -
| Jan 2020 (15 comments)
|
| _How an Alzheimer's 'cabal' thwarted progress toward a cure_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 - Dec 2019 (382
| comments)
|
| _Robert Moir, 58, Dies; His Research Changed Views on
| Alzheimer's_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21859212 -
| Dec 2019 (3 comments)
|
| _Why Do We Keep Investing in Anti-Amyloid Therapies for
| Alzheimer's Disease?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496402 - March 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Alzheimer's Drug Failure Leaves Scientists Seeking New
| Direction_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468987 -
| March 2019 (76 comments)
|
| _Scientists discover why many Alzheimer's drugs fail, identify
| one that may work_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18030200 - Sept 2018 (9
| comments)
|
| _The amyloid hypothesis on trial_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17618027 - July 2018 (43
| comments)
|
| _Is the Alzheimer 's "Amyloid Hypothesis" Wrong? (2017)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214 - July 2018 (109
| comments)
|
| _Researcher says we have Alzheimer 's wrong_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9509808 - May 2015 (27
| comments)
|
| _An Outcast Among Peers Gains Traction on Alzheimer 's Cure _ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4766983 - Nov 2012 (11
| comments)
| jprd wrote:
| dang - you are an Internet Treasure.
| personalityson wrote:
| "Scientists researching possible candidates for treating
| Alzheimer's disease found exercise outperformed all tested drugs
| for the ability to reverse dysregulated gene expression."
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-22179-z
|
| "High fitness in middle age reduces the chance of dementia by
| ninety percent" https://www.ergo-log.com/high-fitness-in-middle-
| age-reduces-...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Not to be pedantic, but the number appears to be (up to) 88%,
| and the study involved women only.
|
| Incredible results but I think the specifics are worth using
| when they're available.
|
| Also, there is no cause and effect here, though vascular origin
| dementia as noted seems almost certainly to be reduced by
| better cardiovascular fitness, as are many other vascular
| issues. Having said that, vascular and arterial lining damage
| due to diet appears not to be resolved by exercise, and could
| very easily be a culprit here as well. Fitness is a great tool
| for general well-being, but it doesn't appear to be the
| singular cause of increased wellness here.
| [deleted]
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > High fitness in middle age reduces the chance of dementia by
| ninety percent
|
| Not to be a sourpuss but I believe that a reasonable theory on
| this is that physical activity, especially activity that uses
| brain power, causes neuronal development which reroutes
| function around damage, without necessarily preventing or
| mitigating damage itself.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I hate this because I want to believe technology and AI and
| will result in modern medicine where everyone has long healthy
| lives.
|
| The reality that just eating right, sleeping and exercising is
| still our best health advice is humorous and disheartening.
| burnerburnito wrote:
| Modern medical tech and practices _are_ keeping us alive
| healthier and longer. Being disheartened by the fact you
| still need to eat right, sleep, etc. is like being
| disheartened that you still need to do regular maintenance on
| your car and treat it well.
|
| The simple fact is that if you sabotage your body, you'll
| have more issues cropping up sooner and with greater
| severity, and if you keep it strong all that medical
| advancement actually has an opportunity to help you in the
| cases where your body can't help itself. It doesn't discredit
| medical advancement, only reminds us that many people's
| lifestyles can often be more destructive than we realize.
| api wrote:
| Humans are a very long lived species already at least when
| compared to most other large high metabolism mammals. That
| means evolution already did a lot of optimization for
| longevity, possibly driven by the high value of grandparents
| in child rearing and passing on valuable knowledge.
|
| This is also why lots of mouse longevity research doesn't
| translate well to humans. Mice are not a particularly
| longevity optimized mammal so it means there is more low
| hanging fruit there.
|
| For us all the low hanging fruit is likely picked.
| xwdv wrote:
| That should be encouraging, not disheartening. The best
| methods for keeping healthy just involve easy simple things
| anyone could do for free everyday. That's better than any
| dependence on shitty expensive drugs.
| irrational wrote:
| I don't understand why it is disheartening?
| dmarlow wrote:
| That's not a realistic view though. Technology and AI aren't
| some magical things that remove the need to have a balanced
| life. At the end of the day, we are living/breathing animals
| that depend on the things around us to grow and thrive.
| t-writescode wrote:
| If we prioritized walkable cities and outdoor time in our
| lives, would that be so bad?
|
| I find it American culture and decades of bad city planning
| to be a greater harm for living healthy than most other
| sources of not living healthy.
| expert_here wrote:
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I wish gyms were less expensive, and had places, even a table
| perhaps, that kids and tweens could use. It would make
| exercise more accessible for me and my lifestyle.
|
| In university, I had an indoor track I could use, it was
| fantastic and had plenty of room for families and people
| exercising.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This should be in every city. The only way I could reliably
| exercise when my kids were babies was by running them in a
| stroller.
|
| Apart from the mental health aspect (lack of agency, no
| time or space to yourself), you can't always subject your
| kids to the weather of the day or they're uncooperative to
| the point that the run isn't feasible. Not to mention the
| multitude of reasons people can't run, from disabilities to
| simply having no safe place to run with a stroller. Smooth
| sidewalks with space are kind of a luxury.
|
| With a lifestyle and/or restrictions like that, no wonder
| people get out of shape. We can't rely on our communities
| having space and accommodation for kids and so, well,
| without a family network we're on our own.
| hgomersall wrote:
| No, we need cities and towns that are designed around
| active transport. Exercise should not be a "thing you do",
| it should just be part of life. If you want to "do
| exercise" it needs to be in addition to the normal every
| day base level of exercise everyone gets for free.
|
| That said, you don't need to wait to be given those
| opportunities. Look for every opportunity for unnecessary
| expenditure of energy - you'll find there are plenty.
| xwdv wrote:
| You don't need a gym, those are just excuses. You can do a
| lot right at home, and more frequently as you don't need to
| go all the way to the gym every time.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > You don't need a gym, those are just excuses.
|
| Sort of.
|
| Physical fitness for good health has 2 components:
| aerobic fitness and strength. You can improve your
| aerobic fitness and your upper body strength at home
| (rings and/or handstand pushups are enough for all but
| the most advanced strength athletes).
|
| Core/lower body strength is another matter entirely.
| People tend to quickly progress to 1x body weight squats
| and deadlifts. And someone who is more advanced will
| probably be in the 2x-3.5x range. Without access to
| serious weight, lower body training is usually pretty
| ineffective, strength wise.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| The big corporate gyms are dirt cheap and typically have
| onsite daycare for a small fee. My wife and I pay $55 a
| month for a family membership at LA fitness, and daycare is
| $5 per visit or $15 extra per month. No indoor track,
| though.
| fma wrote:
| Planet Fitness is like $10 a month and usually 24/7. I'm
| sure someone will criticize planet fitness because it
| doesn't have x,y,z...but I don't think you can get better
| value for an average person.
| dxuh wrote:
| More likely people might criticize that Planet Fitness
| does not exist in every country. Or it might not be close
| enough to everyone. Where I live the cheapest gym
| membership is 24EUR/mo and that gym is shady as hell
| (really bad reviews everywhere).
| kace91 wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that Alzheimer's research tend to hit the
| front page much more than other medical news? I've been wondering
| why for a while.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is one of the five or six big medical problems of our time.
| mongol wrote:
| You are probably right. How would a list look like? In no
| particular order, perhaps:
|
| Cancer ALS Alzheimer Diabetes Covid AIDS
|
| ?
| incongruity wrote:
| I'd add obesity, and depression/anxiety to that list
| hollerith wrote:
| You left out the biggest killer: heart disease.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| That and covid deaths and a big chunk of cancer are all
| caused by obesity
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Senescence is the primary one, by a large margin.
| ebiester wrote:
| Heart Disease, Cancer, Stroke, Alzheimer's, and Diabetes
| would be an easy top 5. Covid was the third leading cause
| of death last year, and considering the effects on some, it
| likely deserves more work as well.
|
| source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-
| death.htm
| tsol wrote:
| HN workers probably tend to be highly educated and the idea of
| slowly sinking into dementia is especially terrifying for them.
| The whole amyloid hypothesis has been debated for decades as
| well, so by now a lot of people are more familiar with
| alzheimers research vs others
| natchathum wrote:
| From the comment right below yours:
|
| > As someone who has a close relative diagnosed with this
| disease, I'm always on the lookout for new information. So this
| is interesting.
|
| AD is, sadly, rather common, as well as a really devastating
| disease: you can do nothing but watch as your loved ones become
| shells of themselves in front of your eyes. You can consider
| yourself lucky for not having gone through it personally.
| kace91 wrote:
| >You can consider yourself lucky for not having gone through
| it personally.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I've lost relatives to it. It just seems
| overrepresented vs, say, cancers. But it might just be my
| impression.
| kens wrote:
| Yes, I've noticed that Alzheimer's seems to be unusually
| popular on HN. I think much of it is the appealing narrative of
| those silly scientists and their amyloid hypothesis when the
| cause is obviously (pick one)
| sugar/inflammation/herpes/aluminum/tau/bacteria/immune/etc.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Seems rational that there would be so much interest in a
| devastating, widespread malady that's cause is not well
| understood.
| perardi wrote:
| Probably because, barring completely antibiotic resistant
| bacteria or some super-virus, if you live in a high-income
| area, you are either looking at dying due to your heart giving
| out, or your brain.
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-...
|
| _"Deaths due to Alzheimer's disease and other dementias have
| increased, overtaking stroke to become the second leading cause
| in high-income countries, and being responsible for the deaths
| of 814 000 people in 2019."_
|
| And given the nominally cerebral bent of this forum: kinda
| makes sense we're freaking out about our brains throwing a
| kernel panic someday.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think the third one is cancer. And I think there is quite a
| bit of press releases on new possible methods and drugs on
| it.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| We've made an obscene amount of progress on cancer, and
| we're getting better daily. We've made 0 progress on
| Alzheimer's in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.
|
| I would rather have AIDS and Ebola at the same time than
| Alzheimers.
| runjake wrote:
| Because it's a particularly terrifying and relatively
| untreatable killer.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| *completely untreatable killer
| kyaghmour wrote:
| As someone who has a close relative diagnosed with this disease,
| I'm always on the lookout for new information. So this is
| interesting.
|
| One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to
| diabetes. It's a factor that I found being mentioned here and
| there in some references. In the immediate case that interests
| me, there's a 20+ year history of type 2 diabetes and a recent
| scan showed severe bilateral hypocampal atrophy. When googling
| for a link between the two I found this: "Lower insulin secretion
| was significantly associated with HPGA (hippocampal and
| parahippocampal gyrus atrophy) in patients with type 2 diabetes
| mellitus. The results of this study support the hypothesis that
| insulin-signaling abnormalities are involved in the
| pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease."
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8504906/
|
| Yet, the mechanism of this, if indeed there's causality (not just
| correlation) does not seem to be known.
| eirikurh wrote:
| From the article: "A report in the July 2020 issue of The
| Lancet listed the variety of known risk factors for dementia,
| ranging from air pollution to repetitive head trauma to
| systemic infections." The article doesn't mention diabetes or
| sugar.
| uplifter wrote:
| Actually, that 2020 report[0] does mention diabetes:
|
| >Overall, a growing body of evidence supports the nine
| potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia modelled by
| the 2017 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention,
| intervention, and care: less education, hypertension, hearing
| impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical
| inactivity, diabetes, and low social contact.
|
| [0] Full report from July 2020 issue of The Lancet: https://w
| ww.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| kyaghmour wrote:
| Thx for this!
| kyaghmour wrote:
| I'm aware that the parent article doesn't refer to diabetes.
| I never said it did. As a general comment regarding this
| disease I shared what my current state of mind on this was.
| Is there a link between diabetes and the mechanism explored
| in the parent, maybe? I don't know. But maybe, just maybe, if
| enough paths are explored we'll eventually find the right
| one. Diabetes seems to be an interesting one for me ... but
| I'm by no means an expert. Just an interested observer that
| is doing a genuine effort to understand.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _There's a strong correlation between Alzheimer's disease and
| high blood sugar levels._
|
| https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-dementia-
| diab...
| kyaghmour wrote:
| Wow. Thx for this. Greatly appreciated.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There's also a lot of research out there that links
| diabetes to inflammation. Inflammation can be due to diet
| (chemical derangement) or infection or both. Inflammation
| is implicated in a lot of brain issues as well.
| lucidrains wrote:
| in some medical circles, alzheimers is referred to as "type 3
| diabetes"
| thevulcanlogic wrote:
| so why don't Alzheimer's patient take diabetes medication and
| problem solved?
| nradov wrote:
| Certain medications such as metformin and SGLT2 inhibitors
| can be fairly effective in treating type-2 diabetes, but
| they don't really correct the underlying pathology.
| Lifestyle changes including increased exercise and greatly
| reducing carbohydrate consumption will do more over the
| long run and should be the first line therapy for patients
| with metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes. Of course that
| won't be sufficient for some patients, and others are
| unwilling to make the necessary lifestyle changes.
| piyh wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_3_diabetes
|
| Interesting to find out it has it's own wiki page
| [deleted]
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to
| diabetes.
|
| Sugar.
|
| I think the correlation is more so to sugar.
|
| I too had a loved one with Alzheimer's, and there was
| definitely strong reason to believe sugar was a contributing
| factor.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It may be the stuff we eat that raises _blood_ sugar levels,
| which can be simple carbs as well.
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-017-4541-7
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _I think the correlation is more so to sugar._
|
| I believe there are quite a few scientists that agree with
| you. Some are trying to rename Alzheimer's to Type-3
| diabetes. There are some articles sprinkled throughout
| nih.gov _PubMed_ on this topic.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I consume a lot of sugar. I'm not diabetic or pre diabetic. I
| would suspect underlying inflammation leads to some nasty
| effects. The same for heart disease.
| simmerup wrote:
| Are you balding?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| No.
| simmerup wrote:
| Thanks
| 6nf wrote:
| Why do you consume a lot of sugar?
| tejtm wrote:
| evolved preference v.s. targeted marketing v.s.
| agribusiness subsidies
|
| ... just kidding they all work together
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I think I like the buzz. I go hard on hot sauce too. The
| endorphin rush from hot sauce is amazing. I bring a fresh
| bottle with me every time I go to a new restaurant.
| Sometimes when I leave it's empty.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I like candy. I eat 500 to 1000 calories a day usually. I
| have a pretty demanding workout routine and that helps
| absorb the energy.
|
| In the past I have eaten a fruitarian diet to fuel my
| workouts. And sometimes I consumed pure sugar.
| simmerup wrote:
| The excess of sugar in our diets and the inflammation it can
| cause is linked to so many diseases. I'm not surprised to
| hear Alzheimers is one of them.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| What was the strong reason?
| nradov wrote:
| Research has shown that many type-2 diabetes patients can put
| their disease into remission, or at least reduce the need for
| exogenous insulin, through nutritional ketosis.
|
| https://www.virtahealth.com/research
|
| It's unknown whether that would reduce the risk of Alzheimer's
| disease. Worth a try anyways.
| r930 wrote:
| My speculation, as with others, is that Alzheimer's disease (as
| well as many other slow progressing diseases) is just a
| metabolic disease, inline with the "type 3 diabetes" comments.
|
| Look into supporting mitochondria health [0] and the glymphatic
| system [1]: good diet (with fasting), light to moderate
| exercise, sleep and wake at the same time each day for
| circadian rhythm training, reduce unnecessary stress.
|
| Once the basics have been implemented, some supplements could
| help to further support cell function if needed: Longevity
| supplements that Dr David Sinclair takes [2], boosting cellular
| glutathione stores, with NACET, glycine, selenium [3]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684129/ [1]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7698404/ [2]
| https://novoslabs.com/best-anti-aging-supplements-that-harva...
| [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889054/
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The brain "takes out the trash" when you sleep.* From what I have
| read, the accumulation of both amyloid beta and tau are linked to
| sleep deprivation. They may be markers of sleep deprivation and
| treating the sleep deprivation may be the best thing to do,
| though that probably won't get someone famous for some billion
| dollar drug discovery, so no one will likely pursue it.
|
| (Yes, I am aware that some of the research is possibly fraud,
| other avenues of investigation have been suppressed, etc. I've
| read quite a few articles about Alzheimer's, my late father had
| Alzheimer's and ...etc.)
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090
| lalalandland wrote:
| I read a few years back about a new discovery of lymphatic
| system connecting to the brain. Small lymphatic veins help
| clean out these substances, especially during the night. One
| doctor cured his wife from MS using vein balloons like they use
| in heart conditions on these veins. I can't verify if this was
| real of fraudulent information.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The following titles fit with your remarks:
|
| How a newly discovered body part changes our understanding of
| the brain (and the immune system) (2016)
|
| https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/how-a-newly-
| discover...
|
| Edit: Ah, yes. I thought it sounded familiar: Previously
| discussed on Hacker News:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25426185
|
| Brain's lymphatic system, just recently discovered, now
| linked to aging and Alzheimer's (2018)
|
| https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/brain-s-recently-
| disc...
|
| Edit: Quote from the above linked piece:
|
| _"As you age, the fluid movement in your brain slows,
| sometimes to a pace that's half of what it was when you were
| younger...We discovered that the proteins responsible for
| Alzheimer's actually do get drained through these lymphatic
| vessels in the brain along with other cellular debris, so any
| decrease in flow is going to affect that protein build-up."_
|
| Lymphatic Vessels Discovered in Central Nervous System (2015)
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/lymphat...
|
| Brain cleaning system uses lymphatic vessels (2017)
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/brain-c...
| manmal wrote:
| Disturbed sleep should IMO also be looked at - eg UARS and
| sleep apnea. You can sleep 8h every night and still feel crappy
| waking up. Maybe disturbed sleep is even worse than lack of
| sleep? I can feel better after 6h of good sleep than after 9h
| of disrupted sleep (eg when I know I've been snoring, eg due to
| throat infection).
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| To my mind, they are both a form of sleep deprivation. I
| would say that sleeping poorly, no matter how long you lay
| there, still constitutes _sleep deprivation_.
|
| And as people get older, they tend to both sleep less and
| also sleep less deeply.
| manmal wrote:
| Maybe it's worse than that. If eg a long term lack of REM
| sleep lead to Alzheimer's (it seems to create dementia
| patterns at least), and people with disturbed sleep get
| virtually none of that, then they might be worse off than
| someone with just 5h of sleep.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Having had some very serious sleep issues in the past due
| to health issues, I would not disagree that sleep quality
| matters more than how many hours you sleep per se.
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