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:

• Practice intermittent fasting
• Consider taking metformin
• Enjoy using a sauna

(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:

7 Keys To Healthy Longevity

This is Dr. Luigi Fontana. He’s a research professor of Geriatrics & Nutritional Science, and co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

What does he want us to know?

He has a many-fold approach to healthy longevity, most of which may not be news to you, but you might want to prioritize some things:

Consider caloric restriction with optimal nutrition (CRON)

This is about reducing the metabolic load on your body, which frees up bodily resources for keeping yourself young.

Keeping your body young and healthy is your body’s favorite thing to do, but it can’t do that if it never gets a chance because of all the urgent metabolic tasks you’re giving it.

If CRON isn’t your thing (isn’t practicable for you, causes undue suffering, etc) then intermittent fasting is a great CR mimetic, and he recommends that too. See also:

• Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
• Fasting Without Crashing? We Sort The Science From The Hype

Keep your waistline small

Whichever approach you prefer to use to look after your metabolic health, keeping your waistline down is much more important for health than BMI.

Specifically, he recommends keeping it:

• under 31.5” for women
• under 37” for men

The disparity here is because of hormonal differences that influence both metabolism and fat distribution.

Exercise as part of your lifestyle

For Dr. Fontana, he loves mountain-biking (this writer could never!) and weight-lifting (also not my thing). But what’s key is not the specifics, but what’s going on:

• Some kind of frequent movement
• Some kind of high-intensity interval training
• Some kind of resistance training

Frequent movement because our bodies are evolved to be moving more often than not:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

High-Intensity Interval Training because unlike most forms of exercise (which slow metabolism afterwards to compensate), it boosts metabolism for up to 2 hours after training:

How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

Resistance training because strength (of muscles and bones) matters too:

Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

Writer’s examples:

So while I don’t care for mountain-biking or weight-lifting, what I do is:

1) movement: walk (briskly!) everywhere and also use a standing desk
2) HIIT: 2-minute bursts of hindu squats and/or exercise bike sprints
3) resistance: pilates and other calisthenics

Moderation is not key

Dr. Fontana advises that we do not smoke, and that we do not drink alcohol, for example. He also notes that just as the only healthy amount of alcohol is zero, less ultra-processed food is always better than more.

Maybe you don’t want to abstain completely, but mindful wilful consumption of something unhealthy is preferable to believing “moderate consumption is good for the health” and an unhealthy habit develops!

Greens and beans

Shocking absolutely nobody, Dr. Fontana advocates for (what has been the most evidence-based gold standard of healthy-aging diets for quite some years now) the Mediterranean diet.

See also: Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← this is about tweaking the Mediterranean diet per personal area of focus, e.g. anti-inflammatory bonus, best for gut, heart healthiest, and most neuroprotective.

Take it easy

Dr. Fontana advises us (again, with a wealth of evidence) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and to get good sleep.

Not shocked?

To quote the good doctor,

❝There are no shortcuts. No magic pills or expensive procedures can replace the beneficial effects of a healthy diet, exercise, mindfulness, or a regenerating night’s sleep.❞

Always a good reminder!

Want to know more?

You might enjoy his book “The Path to Longevity: How to Reach 100 with the Health and Stamina of a 40-Year-Old”, which we reviewed previously

You might also like this video of his, about changing the conversation from “chronic disease” to “chronic health”:

!

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later

Take care!

When it comes to working smarter, not harder, there’s plenty of advice and honestly, it’s mostly quite sensible. For example:

(Nice to see they featured a method we talked about last week—great minds!)

But, as standards of productivity rise, the goalposts get moved too, and the treadmill just keeps on going…

• 49% of entrepreneurs say they’ve struggled with some kind of mental illness
• Millennial women are one of the workforce groups at the highest risk of anxiety
• About 7 in 10 millennials experience burnout at work

Not that these things are confined to Millennials, by any stretch, but Millennials make up a huge portion of working people. Ideally, this age group should be able to bring the best of both worlds to the workplace by combining years of experience with youthful energy.

So clearly something is going wrong; the question is: what can be done about it?

Workers of the World, Unwind

A knee-jerk response might be “work to rule”—a tactic long-used by disgruntled exploited workers to do no more than the absolute minimum required to not get fired. And it’s arguably better for them than breaking themselves at work, but that’s not exactly enriching, is it?

This is Brittany Berger, founder of “Work Brighter”.

She’s a content marketing consultant, mental health advocate, and (in her words) a highly ridiculous human who always has a pop culture reference at the ready.

What, besides pop culture references, is she bringing to the table? What is Working Brighter?

❝Working brighter means going beyond generic “work smarter” advice on the internet and personalizing it to work FOR YOU. It means creating your own routines for work, productivity, and self-care.❞

Brittany Berger

Examples of working brighter include…

Asking:

• What would your work involve, if it were more fun?
• How can you make your work more comfortable for you?
• What changes could you make that would make your work more sustainable (i.e., to avoid burnout)?

Remembering:

• Mental health is just health
• Self-care is a “soft skill”
• Rest is work when it’s needed

This is not one of those “what workers really want is not more pay, it’s beanbags” things, by the way (but if you want a beanbag, then by all means, get yourself a beanbag).

It’s about making time to rest, it’s about having the things that make you feel good while you’re working, and making sure you can enjoy working. You’re going to spend a lot of your life doing it; you might as well enjoy it.

❝Nobody goes to their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time at the office❞

Anon

On the contrary, having worked too hard is one of the top reported regrets of the dying!

Article: The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying

And no, they don’t wish they’d “worked smarter, not harder”. They wish (also in the above list, in fact) that they’d had the courage to live a life more true to themselves.

You can do that in your work. Whatever your work is. And if your work doesn’t permit that (be it the evil boss trope, or even that you are the boss and your line of work just doesn’t work that way), time to change that up. Stop focusing on what you can’t do, and look for what you can do.

Spoiler: you can have a blast just trying things out!

That doesn’t mean you should quit your job, or replace your PC with a Playstation, or whatever.

It just means that you deserve comfort and happiness while working, and around your work!

Need a helping hand getting started?

• Create your own self-care plan to avoid burnout
• ⏳ Complete your first “time audit”
• ❣️ Zip through to self-awareness with bullet-journalling

Like A Boss

And pssst, if you’re a business-owner who is thinking “but I have quotas to meet”, your customers are going to love your staff being happier, and will enjoy their interactions with your company much more. Or if your staff aren’t customer-facing, then still, they’ll work better when they enjoy doing it. This isn’t rocket science, but all too many companies give a cursory nod to it before proceeding to ignore it for the rest of the life of the company.

So where do you start, if you’re in those particular shoes?

Read on…

*straightens tie because this is the serious bit* —just kidding, I’m wearing my comfiest dress and fluffy-lined slipper-socks. But that makes this absolutely no less serious:

The Institute for Health and Productivity Management (IHPM) and WorkPlace Wellness Alliance (WPWA) might be a good place to get you on the right track!

❝IHPM/WPWA is a global nonprofit enterprise devoted to establishing the full economic value of employee health as a business asset—a neglected investment in the increased productivity of human capital.

IHPM helps employers identify the full economic cost impact of employee health issues on business performance, design and implement the best programs to reduce this impact by improving functional health and productivity, and measure the success of their efforts in financial terms.❞

The Institute for Health and Productivity Management

They offer courses and consultations, but they also have free downloadables and videos, which are awesome and in many cases may already be enough to seriously improve things for your business already:

Check Out IHPM’s Resources Here!

What can you do to make your working life better for you? We’d love to hear about any changes you make inspired by Brittany’s work—you can always just hit reply, and we’re always glad to hear from you!