The Surprising Link Between Type 2 Diabetes & Alzheimer’s
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The Surprising Link Between Type 2 Diabetes & Alzheimer’s
This is Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She’s a biomedical scientist with expertise in the areas of aging, cancer, and nutrition. In the past five years she has expanded her research of aging to focus more on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as she has a genetic predisposition to both.
What does that genetic predisposition look like? People who (like her) have the APOE-ε4 allele have a twofold increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease—and if you have two copies (i.e., one from each of two parents), the risk can be up to tenfold. Globally, 13.7% of people have at least one copy of this allele.
So while getting Alzheimer’s or not is not, per se, hereditary… The predisposition to it can be passed on.
What’s on her mind?
Dr. Patrick has noted that, while we don’t know for sure the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, and can make educated guesses only from correlations, the majority of current science seems to be focusing on just one: amyloid plaques in the brain.
This is a worthy area of research, but ignores the fact that there are many potential Alzheimer’s disease mechanisms to explore, including (to count only mainstream scientific ideas):
- The amyloid hypothesis
- The tau hypothesis
- The inflammatory hypothesis
- The cholinergic hypothesis
- The cholesterol hypothesis
- The Reelin hypothesis
- The large gene instability hypothesis
…as well as other strongly correlated factors such as glucose hypometabolism, insulin signalling, and oxidative stress.
If you lost your keys and were looking for them, and knew at least half a dozen places they might be, how often would you check the same place without paying any attention to the others?
To this end, she notes about those latter-mentioned correlated factors:
❝50–80% of people with Alzheimer’s disease have type 2 diabetes; there is definitely something going on❞
There’s another “smoking gun” for this too, because dysfunction in the blood vessels and capillaries that line the blood-brain barrier seem to be a very early event that is common between all types of dementia (including Alzheimer’s) and between type 2 diabetes and APOE-ε4.
Research is ongoing, and Dr. Patrick is at the forefront of that. However, there’s a practical take-away here meanwhile…
What can we do about it?
Dr. Patrick hypothesizes that if we can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, we may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s with it.
Obviously, avoiding diabetes if possible is a good thing to do anyway, but if we’re aware of an added risk factor for Alzheimer’s, it becomes yet more important.
Of course, all the usual advices apply here, including a Mediterranean diet and regular moderate exercise.
Three other things Dr. Patrick specifically recommends (to reduce both type 2 diabetes risk and to reduce Alzheimer’s risk) include:
(links are to her blog, with lots of relevant science for each)
You can also hear more from Dr. Patrick personally, as a guest on Dr. Peter Attia’s podcast recently. She discusses these topics in much greater detail than we have room for in our newsletter:
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Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
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Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
Resveratrol is the compound found in red grapes, and thus in red wine, that have resulted in red wine being sometimes touted as a heart-healthy drink.
However, at the levels contained in red wine, you’d need to drink 100–1000 glasses of wine per day (depending on the wine) to get the dose of resveratrol that were associated with heart health benefits in mouse studies.
(if you are not a mouse, you might need to drink even more than that)
Further reading: can we drink to good health?
Resveratrol supplementation
Happily, resveratrol supplements exist. But what does resveratrol do?
It lowers blood pressure:
Effect of resveratrol on blood pressure: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
It improves blood lipid levels:
It improves insulin sensitivity:
It has neuroprotective effects too:
Resveratrol promotes clearance of Alzheimer’s disease amyloid-beta peptides
Is it safe?
For most people, it is generally recognized as safe. However, if you are on blood-thinners or otherwise have a bleeding disorder, you might want to skip it:
Antiplatelet activity of synthetic and natural resveratrol in red wine
You also might want to check with your pharmacist/doctor, if you’re on blood pressure meds, anxiety meds, or immunosuppressants, as it can increase the amount of these drugs that will then stay in your system:
Resveratrol modulates drug- and carcinogen-metabolizing enzymes in a healthy volunteer study
And as ever, of course, if unsure just check with your pharmacist/doctor, to be on the safe side.
Where to get it?
We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience
Enjoy!
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How we can prepare for future public health emergencies
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The U.S. is experiencing an increasing number of disease outbreaks and extreme weather events. While state and national preparedness for public health emergencies has improved in some areas, dangerous gaps remain, says a recent report from Trust for America’s Health.
Titled, “Ready or Not 2024: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism,” the report identifies gaps in national and state preparedness for public health emergencies and provides recommendations for improvement.
Using nine key indicators, the report categorizes all U.S. states and the District of Columbia into three readiness levels: high, medium, and low. The writers hope the report will help policymakers in under-performing states improve public health infrastructure.
Read on to learn more about what the research found and how we can individually prepare for future public health emergencies.
There’s work to be done
The report highlights areas with strong performance as well as those that need improvement.
Some areas with strong performance:
- State public health funding: Most states and the District of Columbia either maintained or increased their public health funding during the 2023 fiscal year.
- Health care labor force preparedness: Most states have started expanding the health care labor force for improved emergency response. As of 2023, 39 states participated in the Nurse Licensure Compact, which allows nurses to work in multiple member states without the need for additional state licenses.
Some areas that need improvement:
- Hospital safety scores: Only 25 percent of acute care hospitals earned the highest patient safety grade in fall 2023. These scores measure health care-associated infection rates, intensive care unit capacity, and other metrics. More high-scoring hospitals would improve preparedness for future public health emergencies.
- Access to paid time off: From March 2018 to March 2023, only 55 percent of U.S. workers used paid time off. Access to paid time off is important for reducing the spread of infectious diseases.
We can all do our part by staying up to date on vaccines
While the report focuses on policy changes that would improve emergency preparedness, Trust for America’s Health’s research identifies one way that we can individually prepare for future public health emergencies: staying up to date on vaccines.
The report found that during the 2022-2023 flu season, only 49 percent of those eligible for the flu vaccine received it. Public health experts are concerned that false claims about COVID-19 vaccines have resulted in overall vaccine hesitancy.
A decline in vaccination rates has led to an uptick in life-threatening, vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles. Increasing vaccine uptake would prevent the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases and reduce strain on hospital systems during public health crises.
Make sure that you and your children have received all recommended vaccines to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death. Learn more about recommended vaccines for adults and children from the CDC.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally
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Dr. Michelle Jorgensen, dentist, explains:
The bare-bones details:
Teeth cannot be regrown (yet!) but can be remineralized, which simply involves restoring lost minerals. When we’re talking about health, “minerals” is usually used to mean elemental minerals, like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, etc, but the specific mineral that’s needed here is hydroxyapatite (a calcium phosphate mineral, the same as is found in bones).
Not only can acids from food and bacteria dissolve the minerals from the teeth, but also, the body itself may extract minerals from the teeth if it needs them for other functions it considers more critical and/or more urgent.
Cavities occur when acids create porous holes in teeth by dissolving minerals, which allows bacteria to invade, which means more acid, and cavities.
Remineralization can be achieved by doing the following things:
- Use hydroxyapatite-based products (tooth powder, mouthwash).
- Improve gut health to ensure proper mineral absorption.
- Reduce acidic food and drink intake.
- Maintain good oral hygiene to prevent bacteria build-up.
- Eat foods rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K, which help direct minerals to teeth and bones.
For more on all of the above, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Less Common Oral Hygiene Options
- Fluoride Toothpaste vs Non-Fluoride Toothpaste – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Managing Major Chronic Diseases – by Alexis Dupree
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Our author, Alexis Dupree, is herself in her 70s, and writing with more than three decades of experience of surviving multiple chronic diseases (in her case, Multiple Sclerosis, and then a dozen comorbidities that came with such).
She is not a doctor or a scientist, but for more than 30 years she’s been actively working to accumulate knowledge not just on her own conditions, but on the whole medical system, and what it means to be a “forever patient” without giving up hope.
She talks lived-experience “life management” strategies for living with chronic disease, and she talks—again from lived experience—about navigating the complexities of medical care; not on a legalistic “State regulations say…” level, because that kind of thing changes by the minute, but on a human level.
Perhaps most practically: how to advocate strongly for yourself while still treating medical professionals with the respect and frankly compassion that they deserve while doing their best in turn.
But also: how to change your attitude to that of a survivor, and yet also redefine your dreams. How to make a new game plan of life—while working to make life easier for yourself. How to deal, psychologically, with the likelihood that not only will you probably not get better, but also, you will probably get worse, while still never, ever, giving up.
After all, many things are easily treatable today that mere decades ago were death sentences, and science is progressing all the time. We just have to stay alive, and in as good a condition as we reasonably can, to benefit from those advances!
Bottom line: if you have a chronic disease, or if a loved one does, then this is an immensely valuable book to read.
Click here to check out Managing Major Chronic Diseases, and make life easier!
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Widen the Window – by Dr. Elizabeth Stanley
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Firstly, about the title… That “window” that the author bids us “widen” is not a flowery metaphor, but rather, is referring to the window of exhibited resilience to stress/trauma; the “window” in question looks like an “inverted U” bell-curve on the graph.
In other words: Dr. Stanley’s main premise here is that we respond best to moderate stress (i.e: in that window, the area under the curve!), but if there is too little or too much, we don’t do so well. The key, she argues, is widening that middle part (expanding the area under the curve) in which we perform optimally. That way, we can still function in a motivated fashion without extrinsic threats, and we also don’t collapse under the weight of overwhelm, either.
The main strength of this book, however, lies in its practical exercises to accomplish that—and more.
“And more”, because the subtitle also promised recovery from trauma, and the author delivers in that regard too. In this case, it’s about widening that same window, but this time to allow one’s parasympathetic nervous system to recognize that the traumatic event is behind us, and no longer a threat; we are safe now.
Bottom line: if you would like to respond better to stress, and/or recover from trauma, this book is a very good tool.
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The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
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How Good Is Your Sleep, Really?
This is Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Director of Columbia University’s Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research.
The focus of Dr. St-Onge’s research is the study of the impact of lifestyle, especially sleep and diet, on cardio-metabolic risk factors.
She conducts clinical research combining her expertise on sleep, nutrition, and energy regulation.
What kind of things do her studies look at?
Her work focuses on questions about…
- The role of circadian rhythms (including sleep duration and timing)
- Meal timing and eating patterns
…and their impact on cardio-metabolic risk.
What does she want us to know?
First things first, when not to worry:
❝Getting a bad night’s sleep once in a while isn’t anything to worry about. That’s what we would describe as transient insomnia. Chronic insomnia occurs when you spend three months or more without regular sleep, and that is when I would start to be concerned.❞
But… as prevention is (as ever) better than cure, she also advises that we do pay attention to our sleep! And, as for how to do that…
The Six Dimensions of Sleep
One useful definition of overall sleep health is the RU-Sated framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:
- regularity
- satisfaction with sleep
- alertness during waking hours
- timing of sleep
- efficiency of sleep
- duration of sleep
You’ll notice that some of these things you can only really know if you use a sleep-monitoring app. She does recommend the use of those, and so do we!
We reviewed and compared some of the most popular sleep-monitoring apps! You can check them out here: Time For Some Pillow Talk
You also might like…
We’re not all the same with regard to when is the best time for us to sleep, so:
Use This Sleep Cycle Calculator To Figure Out the Optimal Time for You To Go to Bed and Wake Up
AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
- Aspirin may make your breathing worse
- Taking naps for more than 30 minutes may raise your metabolic disease risk
- How to ease back into exercise after surgery
- Study provides evidence that breathing exercises may reduce your Alzheimer’s risk
- No one in movies knows how to swallow a pill
More to come tomorrow!
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