You may ask “Alzheimer’s disease, what is it…”. It is is a progressive loss of cognitive functioning over a long period of time due to senile plaques in the cerebral cortex and the subcortical areas of the brain.
These senile plaques have been and still are the subject of very interesting research. Hopefully this will at some point in the future lead to new therapeutic approaches. Experiments on mice have been done where one group served as a non treated control while the treatment group had been treated for seven days with the antioxidant spice Curcumin. The result showed that the amount of the plaques deposited on micro nutritional vessels that supply the brain cells with nutrients was significantly reduced in the treatment group (Ref.16).
At the present time we are extremely limited with regard to any effective therapy that would halt the process of this type of dementia. The common form of Alzheimer’s starts beyond the age of 60 years, only about 5% start before that. The majority of these early start cases are due to one or more inherited genetic mutations at the chromosomes 1, 14, 19 or 21.
In the older Alzheimer’s patients only up to 20% seem to be inherited, the rest are called “sporadic” cases, which may have some genetic predisposition, but likely are somehow triggered by the environment in ways that are not yet fully determined. The patient loses more and more of the cognitive functions over the years until the patient usually has to be admitted to one of the care homes that specialize in the care of the wandering and eventually completely incapacitated Alzheimer patient.
Alzheimer’s is part of the aging of the whole body. It develops parallel to diabetes, hardening of the arteries, is associated with the metabolic syndrome and lack of exercise. In the last decade it has been shown that chronic inflammation in the body can cause Alzheimer’s disease (for a review see Ref. 18). This paper shows that pro-inflammatory mediators that circulate in the blood can trigger chronic inflammatory processes in microglia and astrocytes (translated into English: connective tissue and brain cells) . This in turn leads to the deposit of beta-amyloid substance and of neurofibrillary tangles, which in turn causes a vicious cycle of more brain cell destruction and causes further inflammation.
Alzheimer’s Disease, What Is It…
Fish oil and other health measures can slow down and even prevent Alzheimer’s. As is discussed elsewhere (click back to “Alzheimer, Dementia and delirium”, then “Alzheimer’s research”) nitric oxide (=NO) seems to be the missing link. When the brain does not get enough NO, Alzheimer’s disease develops. When the heart is not getting enough NO, we get a heart attack (Ref. 17). The key to maintaining normal brain function is to detoxify the body (if mercury is present, chelation therapy), to avoid toxins by eating as much organic food as possible, to exercise, to supplement with ginkgo biloba and phosphatylserine (PS) and molecularly distilled omega-3, and to keep balanced hormones through bio-identical hormone replacement. All these preventative measures are anti-inflammatory, cell and mitochondria stabilizing and overall are more powerful than curative attempts at a stage when Alzheimer’s is established.
Also see how top nutrients keep your brain young: https://nethealthbook.com/news/top-nutrients-keep-your-brain-young/
References:
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12. C Puckett et al. Am J Hum Genet 1991Aug49(2):320-329.
13. M Haltia Ann Med 2000 Oct 32(7): 439-500.
14. Ferri: Ferri’s Clinical Advisor: Instant Diagnosis and Treatment, 2004 ed., Copyright © 2004 Mosby, Inc.
15. Rakel: Conn’s Current Therapy 2004, 56th ed., Copyright © 2004 Elsevier
16. Dr. Brian Bacskai (thanks to www.massgeneral.org for link):Alzheimer’s disease researcher.
17. Nathan S. Bryan, PHD and Janet Zand, OMD: “The nitric oxide (NO) solution. How to boost the body’s miracle molecule to prevent and reverse chronic disease”. Neogenis, published 2010.
18. Imrich Blasko et al. Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. “REVIEW:How chronic inflammation can affect the brain and support the development of Alzheimer’s disease in old age: the role of microglia and astrocytes”. Aging Cell (2004), pp169–176
