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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

#221

Post by marricks »

eloff wrote: post #168
marricks wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Says the guy hypocritically from his smartphone. How is it hypocritical? Opposed to any other times in human history you can’t give up on society and live a peaceful life in a community. We’re born into it along with all our families and friends. Telling someone to go off and live in the woods is a life of solitude and probably harsh run ins with the law. There is no choice nowadays and saying “ha but you live in s…

The Amish get by all right. Seriously, if you really believe you're better off without technology, you can live that way without going and living in the woods. Saying you're better off without technology from a smartphone is hypocrisy. I double down on that.

Because the Amish are a Christian organization that’s been around for over a hundred years.

Also, you still have to give up all your family and friends and live by strict Christian values. Not everyone’s cup of tea, especially if one happens to be different in some way.

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

#222

Post by jcampbell1 »

macrolime wrote: post #70
jcampbell1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Peter Theil fund this research?

Not sure who's funding what Most recent one I saw is this one that I think is funded by the Norwegian government https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/9/e056964 Then there's startups like Alkahest https://www.alkahest.com/pipeline/akst-grf6019/ Clinical trials of sorts has been going on since at least 2017 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22930

It was a joke as Peter Theil has been jokingly called a vampire because he gets blood transfusions from young people in an effort to maintain his youth.

That being said, thanks for the links. I read them all.

Here is the results of the Phase II from Alkahest. Not a game changer thus far. https://www.alzforum.org/therapeutics/grf6019

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

#223

Post by hackeraccount »

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.

People who obsess over how health care is delivered - Public, Private or whatever - should really take this to heart. The things that really make a difference to populations (as opposed to individuals) - don't over eat, don't smoke, drink moderately, get some exercise, get vaccinated - are pretty much all (except for the last one) outside the purview of doctors, nurses and hospitals. A Dr. will always tell you about those items but they have no chance of getting you to do any of that.

The people in this thread saying we should have walkable communities are being unrealistic but I'll concede that that what they're saying is better then any idea I have.

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

#224

Post by SamPatt »

stubish wrote: post #170
can16358p wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand it makes so much sense. We're the result of hundreds of millions of evolution on this planet, and we're very optimized for the actions that we can take in nature (e.g. Walk, swim, hunt an animal/grap a fruit, eat, reproduce). No wonder why these are good for us, because these are our true traits. Modern medicine, on the other hand, is a few hundred years old at best and generally work as a band-aid…

Exercise always seems counterintuitive. After all, things tend to wear out and break when you use them. You don't use the good scissors for most things or they won't be good when you need them. We would be a lot less grumpy if the way to build muscle was to take it easy, and you only needed to exercise if you were overbulking and needed to wear some out. So we want a pill that triggers the regenerative effects of exe…

Our body is breaking down constantly, but it's also rebuilding itself. It's not an inanimate object which wears down until it breaks.

I view exercise as giving your body, and brain, proof that the rebuilding is still needed, and information on where to direct resources.

If you never take a walk, why expect your body to rebuild itself to be good at walking? Eventually it'll lose its capacity because it (correctly) "learns" that isn't important to you.

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

#225

Post by hnthrowaway8493 »

kyaghmour wrote: post #12

As someone who has a close relative diagnosed with this disease, I'm always on the lookout for new information. So this is interesting. One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to diabetes. It's a factor that I found being mentioned here and there in some references. In the immediate case that interests me, there's a 20+ year history of type 2 diabetes and a recent scan showed severe bilateral hypoc…

It doesn't directly contradict the paper you linked, but figured it's worth mentioning - the hypothesis about a diabetes-Alzheimer's link might have originally stemmed from fraudulent work. From the "related story" at the bottom of the linked Science article about fraud https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio... (related story is titled "Research backing experimental Alzheimer’s drug was first target of suspicion", also available in their reader here: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.ade0181?ado...)

> The most influential Cassava-related paper appeared in The Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2012. The authors—including Wang; Arnold; David Bennett, who leads a brain-tissue bank at Rush University; and his Rush colleague, neuroscientist Zoe Arvanitakis—linked insulin resistance to Alzheimer’s and the formation of amyloid plaques. Cassava scientists say Simufilam lessens insulin resistance. They relied on a method in which dead brain tissue, frozen for a decade and then partially thawed and chopped, purportedly generates chemical signals.

> Schrag and others say it contradicts basic neurobiology. Schrag adds that he could find no evidence that other investigators have replicated that result. (None of the authors agreed to be interviewed for this article.)

> That paper supported the science behind Simufilam, Schrag says, “and spawned an entire field of research in Alzheimer’s, ‘diabetes of the brain.’” It has been cited more than 1500 times. Schrag sent the journal’s editor his analysis of more than 15 suspect images in two groups. The editor says the journal analyzed high-resolution versions of the images in the first group. It could not corroborate his findings and therefore did not investigate further.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by NLPaep »

ckw wrote: post #196
credit_guy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true. Fancy drugs save lives. Big time. My Mom had cancer and was treated with Rituximab. She's doing just fine 10 years later. That type of cancer would have been a death sentence 30 years before. There are lots of other anti-cancer drugs like Rituximab, and they save lives every day.

Despite these advances, life expectancy in the US is declining. If you google for something like ‘life expectancy change if cancer cured’ you’ll find that estimates of the effect on life expectancy of curing heart disease and cancer don’t exceed more than several years each. And looking into the far future, even if all disease is cured, and aging eliminated, life expectancy only increases to around 1000.

1,000 is a number definitely pulled out thin air.

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

#228

Post by kupopuffs »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #215
SamBam wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rerouting is mitigating. If the end result is lack of dementia, that's what's important. The fact that some percentage of the neurons are damaged is not a problem. The elasticity of the brain is an evolved trait, rerouting is what the brain does to keep working.

Well no. Is it not obvious that if you could prevent the damage that would be better than patching it over?

Depends on what negative effects actually manifest

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

#229

Post by eloff »

marricks wrote: post #221
eloff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amish get by all right. Seriously, if you really believe you're better off without technology, you can live that way without going and living in the woods. Saying you're better off without technology from a smartphone is hypocrisy. I double down on that.

Because the Amish are a Christian organization that’s been around for over a hundred years. Also, you still have to give up all your family and friends and live by strict Christian values. Not everyone’s cup of tea, especially if one happens to be different in some way.

Sure, but I'm not recommending anyone join the Amish, just pointing out it is possible to live without a lot of technological informed in your life if you truly believe you'd be better off that way. It would be extremely dumb, but it's possible.

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

#230

Post by cactusplant7374 »

angrais wrote: post #140
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like candy. I eat 500 to 1000 calories a day usually. I have a pretty demanding workout routine and that helps absorb the energy. In the past I have eaten a fruitarian diet to fuel my workouts. And sometimes I consumed pure sugar.

I'm confused. Do you eat 500-1k calories of sugar a day or calories overall?

Sugar. Overall I do 2500-3500.
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