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What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

quantamagazine.org

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Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#121

Post by Narretz »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #32

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…

What if the underlying mechanism causing Alzheimer's is responsible for the deterioration in sleep quality in the first place? If you put it simply like "bad sleep causes Alzheimer's" you make almost exactly the same mistake as the researchers who came up with Beta-Amyloid thesis: there are plaques, they must be responsible for destroying the cells. But as time has shown, the real causality is much more complex.

I agree that all directions should be explored. I wonder if there's already a database of Alzheimer patients that includes sleep quality measurements?

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#122

Post by xenospn »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #117
t-writescode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Make it a misdemeanor to use inhalable nicotine products indoors and near residential buildings. Make people go for a walk to smoke or vape.

They tried adding 10 cents to the price of a large soda to make people drink less sugar and couldn’t even make that happen.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#123

Post by literalAardvark »

nordsieck wrote: post #99
xwdv wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 d…

For staving off disease you just need decent fitness, not 3x bw.

You can absolutely get to 2x bw squats from home with nothing but a chair as gear.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#124

Post by DoreenMichele »

Narretz wrote: post #121
DoreenMichele wrote: post #32

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…

What if the underlying mechanism causing Alzheimer's is responsible for the deterioration in sleep quality in the first place? If you put it simply like "bad sleep causes Alzheimer's" you make almost exactly the same mistake as the researchers who came up with Beta-Amyloid thesis: there are plaques, they must be responsible for destroying the cells. But as time has shown, the real causality is much more complex. I ag…

I agree that fixing sleep quality is not simple and that getting to the root causes of lack of sleep quality for a specific individual is the optimal means to pursue this. (I am certainly not interested in, say, promoting sleeping pills as an answer.)

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#125

Post by chpatrick »

fabian2k wrote: post #13
g42gregory wrote: post #2

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.

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 improveme…

I thought the promising results of lecanemab were supportive of the amyloid hypothesis.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#126

Post by xenospn »

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #105
Ekaros wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I really hope that’s not a choice you have to make someday.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#127

Post by xenospn »

incongruity wrote: post #64
mongol wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably right. How would a list look like? In no particular order, perhaps: Cancer ALS Alzheimer Diabetes Covid AIDS ?

I’d add obesity, and depression/anxiety to that list

Obesity can 100% be prevented and/or reversed. It’s not a medical problem but a cultural one.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#128

Post by Andrex »

ericmcer wrote: post #72
personalityson wrote: post #68

"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-...

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.

Maybe the expectation that technology will solve all our problems has been and will always be false. Techno-utopianism is a shallow dream.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#129

Post by matwood »

nordsieck wrote: post #99
xwdv wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 d…

If you want to go really cheap, buy a kettlebell. When that becomes too easy, buy a heavier one. Unless the goal is actual powerlifting, buying a kettlebell every time you need a heavier one will carry a person a very long ways.

If a person has more money and the space, they can do the same thing with dumbbells.

It's really not complicated, but people make it so.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#130

Post by mikenew »

There's a lot of articles recently on how we're "rethinking" Alzheimer's, and what is utterly baffling to me is the way none of them seem to mention that it has recently come to light that much of the foundational research on Alzheimer's was falsified: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...
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