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What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

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

#141

Post by SirensOfTitan »

l2silver wrote: post #38

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.

Bredesen's protocol is essentially: exercise, sleep, keep your mind engaged, control any correlated issues [like sleep apnea, diabetes], treat correlated infective illness [like EBV] and take some supplements that could positively affect some cause of the illness. I think it's likely that a huge portion of his protocol will prove worthwhile in preventing Alzheimers based on probable causes outside of the AB hypothesis.

... with that all being said, my mother has early onset Alzheimer's disease (hardly over 60), and getting her on any mitigative attempts like elucidated by Bredesen is effectively impossible. She's still independent enough to live and do most things on her own, but injecting new habits has proven really challenging, as apathy is one of the most pervasive symptoms of the disease. She also had years of obstructive sleep apnea that she refused to treat, as she hated the CPAP machine.

Sure, Breseden is likely a bit of a scam artist, and it's very unlikely his protocol reverses the illness as he claims, but his ideas piecemeal are hardly "unproven" as elucidated by folks here. I think it's very unlikely that Alzheimer's finds a "cure" in a pill or some easy treatment--it seems like it's a disease that emerges after years of dysfunction, potentially from many causes, and you can't rebuild Rome overnight. I'd guess that the future of Alzheimer's research will be in prevention.

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

#142

Post by im3w1l »

burnerburnito wrote: post #88
ericmcer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 adv…

The thing with eating and sleeping right etc is that we know the limits of it: it can keep you alive into your 90's at best, and more realistically into your 80's. Technology on the other hand is completely uncapped. A pill that keeps a degenerate bum alive into the 80's might be really hard to achieve, but the kicker is that once you do, it's just another step or two to keeping him alive until 200.

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

#143

Post by fragmede »

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.

To be fair, for a lot of human history we didn't long enough to see it, so we can't blame them for it.

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

#144

Post by heavyset_go »

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.

What is scary is that society is structured to ensure that many people can't get enough sleep, exercise and healthy meals.

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

#146

Post by discordance »

bitexploder wrote: post #138
ericmcer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define: eating right. It’s really hard. Sleeping and exercise are easier.

It varies slightly from person to person, but generally “lots of vegetables and minimize highly processed foods. Those are the common denominators of a healthy diet. From there, you can fill in the blanks to suit your tastes and your unique physiological needs by adding your choice of high-quality fats (nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, fatty fish), carbohydrates (whole grains, fruit, starchy root veg­etables), and plant- or animal-based protein (legumes, soy, fish, lean sustainably raised meat, poultry, eggs, dairy).”

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-does-a-h...

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

#147

Post by heavyset_go »

fma wrote: post #98
adamredwoods wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It's not 24/7 outside of cities.

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

#148

Post by nordsieck »

angrais wrote: post #139
literalAardvark wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can you get 2x bw squats at home? What are you squatting? Your fridge and oven?

> How can you get 2x bw squats at home?

You can't.

I assume your parent was confused about notation. You can get 1x body weight squats (that is to say your actual body + 1x your body weight as additional load) by doing one legged squats off of a chair.

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

#149

Post by irrational »

im3w1l wrote: post #142
burnerburnito wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adv…

The thing with eating and sleeping right etc is that we know the limits of it: it can keep you alive into your 90's at best, and more realistically into your 80's. Technology on the other hand is completely uncapped. A pill that keeps a degenerate bum alive into the 80's might be really hard to achieve, but the kicker is that once you do, it's just another step or two to keeping him alive until 200.

Isn’t genetics more important? There are families where everyone dies young - look at the guy who popularized jogging. All the men in his family die young. He tried to beat it be exercising, eating healthy, etc. Still died young. Same age as his father.

Others families live into their hundreds without any effort. It would seem the first thing to do is to figure out a way to fix DNA.

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

#150

Post by homeland221 »

hgomersall wrote: post #91
adamredwoods wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 th…

Basically Singapore. Unfortunately that country can't be model in any western countries due Chinese inherent concept of devine right to rule (mandate from heaven). The system depends on people believing in a single party in overwhelming majority (>65%) and mandatory voting. Western countries depends on majority of voters being lazy and bot involved and let a small subset of vocal minority to control the government with small margin of winning votes (~55% out of say 60% voters turnout). For a city to be designed around active lifestyle, you need strong and consistent government with good resources to implement. Even some Nordic countries that are well ran compare to say a messy western country like USA, still can't implement the active lifestyle properly and consistently across more than a single election.
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