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Post by marchesarosa on May 6, 2012 11:59:36 GMT 1
Alzheimer's Disease: What If There Was a Cure? The Story of Ketones by Mary T. Newport, MD Non-hydrogenated Coconut Oil! www.coconutketones.com/Improves overall health,apparently. |
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Post by striker16 on Sept 3, 2012 17:56:29 GMT 1
Frankly, things like Alzheimer's Disease is nature's way of telling us we are mortal and have but a limited time on earth.
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Post by fascinating on Sept 4, 2012 18:46:44 GMT 1
No it isn't. We can tell we have a limited time on Earth due to the observation that everybody, with or without Alzheimer's, eventually dies.
From the few things I have read about it, Alzheimer's disease appears to have its root cause in inflammation, which takes hold after some head trauma, and which may have happened decades before the disease makes an appearance. I am rather dubious about this coconut oil suggestion, but on the other hand I would not be surprised if excellent nutrition, using natural foods, is able to arrest the progress of the inflammation and help prevent the disease.
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Post by marchesarosa on Sept 4, 2012 19:36:43 GMT 1
I was watching an "innovations" programme on Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago and there is a terrific amount of research going on to understand how/why the brain changes.
I should not be surprised to find that pretty soon there will be a revolution in treating/preventing Alzheimers. And what a huge impact that will have for an ageing demographic structure with the possibility for a massive reduction in the costs of care for those now afflicted with Alzheimers and the possibility of a truly enjoyable retirement or even a prolongation of working life for many people.
Just as treatment for cancer is becoming ever more effective I think Alzheimers will see the same sort of progress.
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Post by fascinating on Sept 5, 2012 7:41:18 GMT 1
I also believe progress will be made in treating Alzheimer's, and I look forward to that happening, but I don't think that will have as huge an impact as you think. Alzheimer's is just one form of dementia. Worldwide 26 million are affected by Alzheimer's. As population ages, it is estimated that 1 in 85 people will have it by 2050 (barring medical breakthroughs). Caring for Alzheimer's sufferers costs the US about 100 billion dollars a year.
I think dementia is a wasting disease which occurs as a result of the decline of the quality of the blood vessels of the body, including the brain, and the basic reason for that happening is decades of poor diet and lack of exercise, in my opinion. Many other factors are involved of course, including the terrible effects of social isolation that so many old people suffer from.
Prolongation of working life for the aged is a good idea, but not really feasible when you have over 2 million unemployed of working age. Solve that problem first.
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Post by striker16 on Sept 5, 2012 8:15:19 GMT 1
No it isn't. We can tell we have a limited time on Earth due to the observation that everybody, with or without Alzheimer's, eventually dies. From the few things I have read about it, Alzheimer's disease appears to have its root cause in inflammation, which takes hold after some head trauma, and which may have happened decades before the disease makes an appearance. I am rather dubious about this coconut oil suggestion, but on the other hand I would not be surprised if excellent nutrition, using natural foods, is able to arrest the progress of the inflammation and help prevent the disease. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it the case that this disease, in common with many others, tends to strike people when they are of an advanced age? If this is so, it would seem that the deterioration of the body, that is, ageing, is the main determinant of the onset of this condition. |
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Post by fascinating on Sept 5, 2012 9:33:48 GMT 1
Alzheimers mostly occurs in older people, and becomes more prevalent the older people get; one in six over-80s have it. So ageing is an important factor, but note that most of even the over-80s don't get it, and some people much younger do get it, so there must be factors, other than ageing, which actually determine whether a person will be a victim of the disease.
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Post by striker16 on Sept 5, 2012 9:46:12 GMT 1
Alzheimers mostly occurs in older people, and becomes more prevalent the older people get; one in six over-80s have it. So ageing is an important factor, but note that most of even the over-80s don't get it, and some people much younger do get it, so there must be factors, other than ageing, which actually determine whether a person will be a victim of the disease. Oh yes, I would not dispute age is only one factor, although an important one. I seem to remember a discussion about the possible efficacy of stem cell research in connection with this subject. Do you know anything about this? |
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Post by fascinating on Sept 5, 2012 17:09:36 GMT 1
I can't remember reading anything about stem cell therapy helping with this. I think it may have been tried with Parkinson's, but of course that is a quite different brain disease.
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Post by marchesarosa on Sept 6, 2012 8:51:00 GMT 1
The Bloomberg discussion I watched was about all forms of dementia, but obviously, Alzheimers is the most common form. And, apparently, it is diagnosable 15 years before any overt symptoms appear so there are clear grounds for optimism in treatment to delay or stop the decline..
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Post by striker16 on Sept 6, 2012 11:15:07 GMT 1
I did have a quick look online about this and if the website is correct, embryonic stem cell treatment might be a useful weapon against Alzheimer's in the longer term only as this disease affects more parts of the brain than Parkinson's.
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Post by mrsonde on Sept 6, 2012 13:49:39 GMT 1
I'm closely involved with an Alzheimer's charity and follow the research on it closely. It has a vastly complicated aetiology, but some factors are becoming very clear. The main one is that it's a prion disease, or so closely associated with that form of infection that it must be a principal correlative factor. Secondly, there are associated environmental influences that exacerbate its progress, or inhibits the body's defences against it. There is a strong implication of aluminium and other metal contamination (commonly used in deoderants, anti-perspirants, sunscreen etc.) for example. This is not a causative factor, but it seems clear it's influencing the normal cell maintenance in the brain, preventing what must be seen to be the usual process of combating fairly widespread plaque formation. There are extremely complicated metabolic processes involved in this - and ketones are very probably an essential ingredient, somewhere along the line. The evidence is unequivocal that very significant regression of the disease can occur, in as short a time as a few weeks.
A couple of other points:
The very alarming clear trend for Alzheimer's to develop in younger and younger people would argue against this conclusion.
Neuron regeneration having a significant impact on plaque and tangle density is another clear indication that the main cause of the disease is a breakdown in the normal cellular maintencance defences.
(Incidentally, it's now possible to easily revert bone marrow and other types of cell to stem cells - no need for embryos any more.)
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Post by striker16 on Sept 6, 2012 15:31:10 GMT 1
Very interesting, mrsonde, but what is a prion disease?
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Post by mrsonde on Sept 6, 2012 15:58:53 GMT 1
Broadly, a disruption of normal organic processes by an invasive protein that either has some reproductive (limited RNA) capacity of its own or, like a virus, can hijack its hosts own DNA. It's the most primitive "lifeform" yet identified. If the infected body can't for some reason identify and kill it, it's reproduction and agglomeration, like a cancerous tumour, is a runaway metastatic process. In Alzheimer's these primitive protein chains entangle normal neurone chains or accumulate as sheets (plaques).
Other now familiar prion diseases are Mad Cow Disease, KJD, Scrapie. There is some evidence that various forms of cancer are also at root prion infections.
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Post by mrsonde on Sept 6, 2012 16:14:00 GMT 1
One very interesting and immensely provocative finding is that nicotine has at least some efficacy at killing, or at least dissolving, the Alzheimer's protein. So far this finding has been thoroughly quashed in the scientific literature, for obvious reasons, but it's had the beneficial effect of making Dunhill one of the largest funders of Alzheimer's research, which I'm pleased to say the charity I'm involved with has been a grateful recipient of. Thus the world goes.
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