What I Wish People Knew About Dementia – by Dr. Wendy Mitchell
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We hear a lot from doctors who work with dementia patients; sometimes we hear from carers too. In this case, the author spent 20 years working for the NHS, before being diagnosed with young-onset dementia, at the age of 58. Like many health industry workers who got a life-changing diagnosis, she quickly found it wasn’t fun being on the other side of things, and vowed to spend her time researching, and raising awareness about, dementia.
Many people assume that once a person has dementia, they’re basically “gone before they’re gone”, which can rapidly become a self-fulfilling prophecy as that person finds themself isolated and—though this word isn’t usually used—objectified. Talked over, viewed (and treated) more as a problem than a person. Cared for hopefully, but again, often more as a patient than a person. If doctors struggle to find the time for the human side of things with most patients most of the time, this is only accentuated when someone needs more time and patience than average.
Instead, Dr. Mitchell—an honorary doctorate, by the way, awarded for her research—writes about what it’s actually like to be a human with dementia. Everything from her senses, how she eats, the experience of eating in care homes, the process of boiling an egg… To relationships, how care changes them, to the challenges of living alone. And communication, confusion, criticism, the language used by professionals, or how things are misrepresented in popular media. She also talks about the shifting sense of self, and brings it all together with gritty optimism.
The style is deeply personal, yet lucid and clear. While dementia is most strongly associated with memory loss and communication problems, this hasn’t affected her ability to write well (7 years into her diagnosis, in case you were wondering).
Bottom line: if you’d like to read a first-person view of dementia, then this is an excellent opportunity to understand it from the view of, as the subtitle goes, someone who knows.
Click here to check out What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, and then know those things!
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New Alzheimer’s Test Makes Diagnoses 94.5% Accurate
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We’ve written before about early Alzheimer’s screening by means of blood tests:
So, what’s the latest?
Protein P-Tau217 has something to say
Researchers (Dr. Sara Matarranz-González et al.) followed 200 consecutive new patients aged 50 and older with adverse cognitive symptoms to test whether adding a blood biomarker (p-tau217) improves Alzheimer’s diagnosis in routine clinical settings.
In few words: elevated levels of this protein in the blood are one of the most accurate early warning signs of Alzheimer’s.
What it actually is: phosphorylated tau 217 (so, p-tau217) is a form of tau protein that becomes abnormally modified and forms tangles in the brain, inconveniently disrupting communication between neurons, and/but conveniently serving as a highly accurate biomarker of the underlying Alzheimer’s pathology (and thus, a top-tier diagnostic clue).
We wrote a bit about tau tangles before, here: Spermine vs Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s!
As for the accuracy of p-tau217 test results as a predictor of Alzheimer’s disease, accuracy rose from 75.5% using standard clinical evaluation alone to 94.5% accuracy after incorporating p-tau217 blood test results.
For those who like more detailed numbers:
- Confidence levels: neurologists’ average diagnostic confidence increased from 6.90 ± 1.74 to 8.49 ± 1.68 on a 10-point scale after seeing the biomarker data.
- Clinical findings: benefits were seen in both general neurology clinics and specialized memory units, and across all stages—subjective cognitive complaints (38.5%), mild cognitive impairment (47.5%), and dementia (14%).
- Agreement stats: pre-biomarker diagnoses matched final diagnoses in 71 of 200 cases (75.5%, kappa = 0.576), while post-biomarker diagnoses matched in 189 of 200 cases (94.5%, kappa = 0.906).
About that “kappa”: this is about Cohen’s kappa coefficient, a statistical measure of agreement. And in this case…
- Pre-biomarker diagnosis: kappa = 0.576, which indicates moderate agreement.
- Post-biomarker diagnosis: kappa = 0.906, which indicates almost perfect agreement.
So in other words, after adding the p-tau217 blood test, doctors’ diagnoses didn’t just improve in percentage accuracy, they also aligned much more strongly with the final confirmed diagnosis, far beyond what would be expected by chance.
And as for how much difference all this makes in real-world terms, 51 out of 200 patients had their diagnostic category changed after clinicians reviewed the p-tau217 results, correcting both false positives and missed Alzheimer’s cases.
In summary, a simple blood test for p-tau217 can provide a more accessible, less invasive alternative to expensive brain scans or deeply unpleasant spinal taps, improving early and accurate Alzheimer’s diagnosis and with it, improving people’s chances of getting a head start on managing the condition.
You can read the paper in full, here: Impact of blood p-tau217 testing on diagnosis and diagnostic confidence in cognitive disorders: a real-world clinical study
Want something more accessible than the latest blood tests?
People often forget and/or get confused about what the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s are, especially when it comes to forgetting and/or getting confused.
For example, dementia-related memory loss is less “where did I put my car keys?”, and more“what is this thing for?” (it’s your car keys). Or at a less advanced stage: “whose are these car keys?” (they are yours).
To learn more about this sort of distinction, see:
Is It Dementia? Spot The Signs (Because None Of Us Are Immune) ← If you’d like an objective test of memory and other cognitive impairments, this article also has a link to the industry’s gold standard test (it’s free)
(The Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam (SAGE) is designed to detect early signs of cognitive, memory or thinking impairments)
Want to learn more?
For a much more in-depth coverage of the topic of Alzheimer’s treatment on the level of the personal rather than the molecular, you might like this excellent book we reviewed a while back:
…and if you just want to reduce your risk, then check out:
Take care!
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Macadamias vs Hazelnuts – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing macadamias to hazelnuts, we picked the hazelnuts.
Why?
In terms of macros first, hazelnuts have 2x the protein, and slightly more carbs and fiber. We call this a win for hazelnuts.
When it comes to vitamins, macadamias have more of vitamins B1, B2, and B3, while hazelnuts have more of vitamins A, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and E. Notably, 28x more vitamin E, so that’s not inconsiderable. Also 10x the vitamin B9, and 5x the vitamin C, and the rest, more modest wins. In any case, clearly a strong win for hazelnuts here.
In the category of minerals, macadamias have more selenium, while hazelnuts have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. Another clear win for hazelnuts.
In short, hazelnuts win in all categories. However, by all means enjoy either or both (unless you have a nut allergy, in which case, obviously don’t).
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
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Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean Diet is considered by many to be the current “gold standard” of healthy eating, and with good reason. With 10,000+ studies underpinning it and counting, it has a pretty hefty weight of evidence.
(For contrast, the Ketogenic Diet for example has under 5,000 studies at time of writing, and many of those include mentioning the problems with it. That’s not to say the Keto is without its merits! It certainly can help achieve some short term goals, but that’s a topic for another day)
Wondering what the Mediterranean Diet consists of? We outlined it in a previous main feature, so here it is for your convenience 😎
To get us started today, we’ll quickly drop some links to a few of those Mediterranean Diet studies from the top:
- Definition of the Mediterranean Diet; a Literature Review
- Mediterranean Diet In Healthy Aging
- Cancer and Mediterranean Diet: A Review
- Impact of Mediterranean Diet on Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases and Longevity
- Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
- Adherence to Mediterranean diet and health status: meta-analysis
The short version is: it glows, in a good way.
The anti-inflammatory upgrade
One thing about the traditional Mediterranean Diet is… where are the spices?!
A diet focusing on fruits and non-starchy vegetables, healthy oils and minimal refined carbs, can be boosted by adding uses of spices such as chili, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek, and coriander:
The gut-healthy upgrade:
The Mediterranean Diet already gives for having a small amount of dairy, mostly in the form of cheeses, but this can be tweaked:
Mediterranean diet with extra dairy could be a gut gamechanger
The heart-healthy upgrade
The Mediterranean Diet is already highly recommended for heart health, and it offers different benefits to different parts of cardiovascular health:
The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet can boost it further, specifically in the category of, as the name suggests, lowering blood pressure.
It’s basically the Mediterranean Diet with a few tweaks. Most notably, red meat no longer features (the Mediterranean Diet allows for a small amount of red meat), and fish has gone up in the list:
Description of the DASH Eating Plan
The brain-healthy upgrade:
The MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet combines several elements from the above, as the name suggests. It also adds extra portions of specific brain-foods, that already exist in the above diets, but get a more substantial weighting in this one:
MIND and Mediterranean diets linked to fewer signs of Alzheimer’s brain pathology
See also: The cognitive effects of the MIND diet
Enjoy!
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How To Make Disease Disappear – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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We’ve previously reviewed a number of other books by Dr. Chatterjee, all of them good. This one’s perhaps his most generalized book that we’ve read, though it has a lot of overlap with his “Four Pillar Plan”, and indeed, each of those four pillars (relax, eat, move, sleep) gets a section in this book, each section getting 5 chapters on how to optimize the thing in question.
You may be wondering why “relax” and “sleep” don’t get one section between them; the idea of “relax” is about stress management, mindfulness (especially mindful eating), and so forth. Thus, it does connect to the other sections, but is very much its own topic also.
The premise is, as per the title, to “make disease disappear”. The way to do that, he argues, is through engaging in progressively healthy habits to accumulate chronic good health. With the 20 things you will be doing from the first four sections of 5 chapters each, you will be soon be well on your way, and he finishes up with “finding your balance”—because the trick, he says, is not to focus unduly on one, two, or even three of the pillar(s) as the expense of the other(s), but to ensure a good balance between them.
The style is light pop-science with a focus on readability; there are many personal accounts and examples, but nothing brash or self-serving, simply, illustrative. Indeed, he shows his mistakes as much as his successes, that we may learn from them.
Bottom line: this is, in essence, a rehash of his Four Pillar Plan, but tailored for an American audience. As such, American readers may find it more easily applicable than the previous book. Either way, the quality is just as good, so by all means take your pick between them.
Click here to check out How To Make Disease Disappear, and make disease disappear!
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The Metabolism Reset Diet – by Alan Christianson
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
The liver is an incredible organ that does a very important job, but what’s not generally talked about is how we can help it… Beyond the obvious “try to not poison it too much with alcohol, tobacco, etc”. But what can we do that’s actually positive for it?
That’s what Alan Christianson offers in this book.
Now, usually when someone speaks of a “four week cleanse” as this book advertises on its front cover, it’s a lot of bunk. The liver cleanses itself, and the liver and kidneys between them (along with some other organs and processes) detoxify your body for you. No amount of celery juice will do that. However, this book does better than that:
What it’s about, is not really about trying to do a “detox” at all, so much as supporting your liver function by:
- Giving your liver what it needs to regenerate (mostly: protein)
- Not over-taxing your liver while it does so
The liver is a self-regenerating organ (the mythological story of Prometheus aside, here in real life it can regenerate up to 80% of itself, given the opportunity), so whatever the current state of your liver, it’s probably not too late to fix it.
Maybe you’ve been drinking a little too much, or maybe you’ve been taking some meds that have hobbled it a bit (some medications strain the liver rather), or maybe your diet hasn’t been great. Christianson invites you to draw a line under that, and move forwards:
The book gives an overview of the science involved, and explains about the liver’s role in metabolism (hence the promised weight loss benefits) and our dietary habits’ impact on liver function. This is about what we eat, and also about when we eat it, and how and when our body metabolizes that.
Christianson also provides meal ideas and recipes. If we’re honest (and we always are), the science/principles part of the book are worth a lot more than the meal-plan part of the book, though.
In short: a great book for understanding how the liver works and how we can help it do its job effectively.
Click here to check out “The Metabolism Reset Diet” on Amazon today!
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Turmeric: Raw Root, Powder, Tea, Or…?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝Is turmeric infused water better or chewing half an inch of raw turmeric better? I am trying to work on my immunity as this year I have suffered the most with my allergies in the last 20 years. In case you can guide me, I will be thankful.❞
Great question! First of all, a quick recap of the properties of turmeric (and its relevant active compound, curcumin)
Let’s do a quick run-down:
- It fights inflammation, and thus helps fight many diseases where inflammation is a factor (ranging from atherosclerosis to arthritis to Alzheimer’s and more)
- It has powerful antioxidant effects too
- It boosts brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and thus improves memory and attention
- It helps protect against heart disease…
- …and can give a 65% decreased risk of experiencing a heart attack
- It can help prevent cancer, and reduce cancerous lesions by 40%
- It’s also good against depression
- It even slows aging
If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).
Note: you mentioned an infusion or chewing the root, so perhaps you are not having black pepper with either of those. That’s fine, but try to have it near to black pepper (for example, perhaps while cooking a meal in which you use black pepper, so you take the turmeric and then you eat the meal).
Extra note: in fact, that’s ideal, because curcumin is fat-soluble, so having it with (or near in time to) consuming fats (such as perhaps used in cooking) is a great way to do it.
Curcumin vs allergies, specifically
For any thinking “that wasn’t on the list”… It was hidden! It comes with curcumin’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers.
See for example:
- Modulation of the Immune Response to Allergies Using Alternative Functional Foods ← turmeric is one of the functional foods discussed
- Turmeric extract alleviates airway inflammation via oxidative stress-driven MAPKs/MMPs pathway ← this is important to dial down an inappropriate immune response, e.g. an allergy
- Dietary Polyphenols, Plant Metabolites, and Allergic Disorders: A Comprehensive Review ← again, turmeric is a key player
- Development of fast-dissolving sublingual nanofibers containing allergen and curcumin for immune response modulation in a mouse model of allergic rhinitis ← allergic rhinitis = “seasonal allergies” and similar respiratory allergic responses
- DES/O microemulsion for solubilizing and delivering curcumin via the nasal administration to treat acute asthma ← similar mechanism of action
food vs supplement
You didn’t ask this, but it’ll be helpful for understanding if we quickly cover this first.
- Turmeric root is just that: a root, which contains abundant phytochemicals, and/but is not at all standardized in dosage
- Curcumin extract, on the other hand, have been standardized, optimized, and are metabolized much more quickly
…which latter can be a problem, because it’s been taken apart and used for scrap metabolites faster than the body could actually make use of the curcumin as-is.
The black pepper hack fixes this, by the way, because of how it improves absorption.
You may be thinking: isn’t this going to cause the same problem you were just talking about, and cause it to be metabolized too quickly? And the answer is: no! How piperine works is almost the opposite; it protects the curcumin in the turmeric from our digestive enzymes, and thus allows them to get absorbed without being broken down too quickly—thus increasing the bioavailability by slowing the process down.
In short: food is best, but supplements are fine for anyone whose local supermarkets don’t sell turmeric root. Make sure to get it from a vendor who has transparency about their processes and has reputable certifications against heavy metal contamination though, because that’s especially common in cheap turmeric/curcumin supplements.
The different ways of taking it
There are a few more options than those you mentioned, so let’s quickly note:
- Infusion: the chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we drink the hot water (sometimes called “turmeric tea”) and discard the solids
- Suspension: the dried, powdered root is mixed in water, which we then drink in its entirety
- Decoction: the finely chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we consume this in its entirety, which most people don’t find pleasant
- Mastication only: chewing the root, spitting out the fibrous remnants
- Solid ingestion: eating the root
All of these will allow you to gain the benefits of curcumin (wherever that yellow-red pigment goes, so goes the curcumin), but only those which include consuming the solids will give you the full benefit (as otherwise, you are discarding a large amount of the curcumin with the solids that you discard).
So, we can remove both of the methods that you mentioned (infusion and chewing, assuming you meant chewing only, and not eating).
Things tend to lose potency with drying and grinding processes, not to mention long-term storage, so we can also remove suspension from the list.
That leaves decoction and solid ingestion. Since solid ingestion is not comfortable for most people without cooking the root, that leaves decoction as the superior method unless you personally are happy to just eat raw turmeric root.
However!
Out of the two you presented, infusion can be improved if a) you make the infusion very strong, by grating the root before steeping, and letting it steep for a good while, and b) if practical, throw the grated root (after pouring the tea) into a dish where its flavor will be appropriate. If this seems strange, like throwing a waste product into your meal, then remember that that’s only a matter of convention: physically, what it is is cooked (boiling is cooking!) grated turmeric, nothing more nor less.
At the end of the day though, the way that works best will be the way that you enjoy most (or if that’s not an option, dislike least), and thus will do more often.
Want to know more?
Check out:
Turmeric (Curcumin) Dos and Don’ts With Dr. Kim
Enjoy!
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