Growing Younger Everyday What Works For Me
Alzheimer’s was a brand-new disease in the early 1900’s, Dr. Alois Alzheimer at a conference in 1906 presented it as a single case study.
That was the first mention of Alzheimer’s/Dementia or anything else like it by any other name in the literature. There wasn’t any recorded diagnosis prior to this.
So, this is still something that is new, 100 years in terms of history is nothing.
50 to 60 years ago we did not see the numbers we see today.
Why are more and more people getting ii when no one got it before.?
Why is it people are getting Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other forms of dementia younger and younger now? And throw in diabetes, PCOS and fatty liver younger and younger.
New studies have raised some interesting theories about the cause, but more research needs to happen.
Some areas researchers are looking at are metabolic health, excessive carbohydrates, sugar, vegetable oils and lack of saturated fatty acids.
Today, we ingest man-made unnatural chemicals that have been destroying our body and brain. The graphs are in sync with disease and processed food consumption.
Vegetable oils have only been around 100 plus years and exploded in foods about 50 years ago when our diseases started rising.
Old View about Alzheimer’s
The original view on Alzheimer’s was it was a disease of plaque accumulating in the brain.
That view has shifted because of new drugs that reduce plaques in the brain and it doesn’t help, and we now have evidence from autopsies.
Some people who have died without Alzheimer’s disease displayed a lot of plaques in their brain. They didn’t have any cognition issues before death, so it’s not the plaques.
New View about Alzheimer’s
These results opened the door to look at Alzheimer’s from the metabolic health angle.
Researchers believe Alzheimer’s could be insulin resistance of the brain.
They say, when you eat too many carbohydrates over time and have developed insulin resistance the brain has become affected.
The brain can’t use insulin as it should to open the glucose transporters to fuel the brain.
A compromised brain glucose uptake means the brain starts to go hungry and that matters because the brain has a very high metabolic rate and if it can’t get all its energy from glucose now you have an energetic gap.
And you can’t use ketones to fuel the brain, which is the preferred fuel for the brain, not glucose, because you are insulin resistant and have hyperinsulinemia so you can’t make ketones.
Insulin inhibits ketogenesis and so the brain is full of glucose that it can’t use and it’s calling out for help in the form of ketones that insulin simply won’t let the brain so your brain can’t get what it needs, and it slowly atrophies.
New View about Alzheimer’s
These results opened the door to look at Alzheimer’s from the metabolic health angle.
Researchers believe Alzheimer’s could be insulin resistance of the brain.
They say, when you eat too many carbohydrates over time and have developed insulin resistance the brain has become affected.
The brain can’t use insulin as it should to open the glucose transporters to fuel the brain.
A compromised brain glucose uptake means the brain starts to go hungry and that matters because the brain has a very high metabolic rate and if it can’t get all its energy from glucose now you have an energetic gap.
And you can’t use ketones to fuel the brain, which is the preferred fuel for the brain, not glucose, because you are insulin resistant and have hyperinsulinemia so you can’t make ketones.
Insulin inhibits ketogenesis and so the brain is full of glucose that it can’t use and it’s calling out for help in the form of ketones that insulin simply won’t let the brain so your brain can’t get what it needs, and it slowly atrophies.
Dietary Fat
We have been following this low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet since the 1970’s and our brain is fat.
The brain requires a 22-carbon chain fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid and a 20-carbon chain fatty acid called arachidonic acid. They only come from animal fats not plants.
Our brains grew to their greatest size by eating fatty meat, which has these fatty acids.
We make some, but not enough to thrive on.
So, for the last 50 plus years we have cut our fatty meat consumption, and our brains are decaying. Our brains are lacking the essential fatty acid building blocks for maintenance and repair.
Today, MRI scans show aging brains that have atrophied and shrunken inside the skull,
Child, adolescent, and early adult MRI scans show every corner of the skull full and packed in with brain mass.
As time goes on the spaces inside the brain, which are small slits in youth begin to widen and brain mass decreases. There’s a lot of neurons wasting away.
This would be a combination of not getting enough energy to the brain in the form of ketones and not enough prized long chain fatty acids.
A brain deprived of these two things leads to neurological problems.
We are starving our brain of essential nutrients, and we wonder why we have anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc.
Not getting these two items would also contribute to all the mental health issues we have today but that is for another article.
Just a note on this there is psychiatric literature on vegan diets that depression and suicidality both go up.
A paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution said that dietary carbohydrates are essential and were essential to our ancestors in the development of their brain.
This was factually wrong, a counter to that in the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. stating that the lower limit of carbohydrates is ZERO.
In other words, there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate.
The idea that the human brain evolved because our ancestors ate a lot of carbohydrates is utterly ridiculous.
The brain does appear to have some demand for some glucose but at low levels which we can make through gluconeogenesis in the liver.
If the brain has any preference for fuel, it is absolutely for ketones.
Just look at infants after eating. Within one hour after eating, they are in a deeper state of ketosis than an adult would be after fasting for 24 hours.
If there is any natural state it is ketosis.
Humans are such unique animals where we are the only land-based mammals born obese and the only animal who has a brain that is larger than the birth canal – poor moms.
Very big hunger brains and all this chubby baby fat that is just producing ketones like crazy to fuel the brain growth.
And if you have a baby that is born pre-mature and lacks sufficient adipose tissue, it is much more likely that they are going to develop neurological disorders.
More reason to chubby up that baby as quickly as you can.
Helping People with Alzheimer’s
There are cases where you give an Alzheimer’s patient ketone esters, you can improve their cognition and they do start to perform better.
It’s not a cure but it can move things back a bit. It also proves the point the brain is starving.
So, if someone already has it, try to talk to the doctor about trying some ketones.
There are studies going back 10 to 15 years that interventional trials in humans that a high fat ketogenic diet was a better treatment for Alzheimer’s than any medication ever trialed.
If you don’t have it, focus on keeping your brain insulin sensitive by feeding it natural ketones through dropping your carbohydrate intake so you can make ketones, which is the brain’s preferred fuel.
Also, people with higher LDL cholesterol had lower rates of Alzheimer’s.
LDL cholesterol is protective against Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s and other forms of dementia.
It makes sense your brain is made of cholesterol, and we make it, it’s a natural substance in our body and you’re not going to make something in your body in a correct physiological state that’s going to kill you unless you’re in a disease state.
Just thinking as a non-scientist, why did we not have these diseases before all these processed foods? And we ate one way for millions of years then in a split second evolutionarily we started eating chemicals.
So, hmm
It’s not that they were dumb in the 1700’s and 1800’s and missed it.
There will be documentation. Those doctors have tons of literature, and they all wanted their names on diseases.
Our rampant diseases of today did not exist then.
The first case of Alzheimer’s 1906, the first heart attack around 1912, Type II diabetes late 19th century. Vegetable oil in foods started around that time.
Hmm, again.
I hope I have given you something to think about.
