How to Prevent Alzheimer’s Dementia

Dr Dale Bredesen and others top Alzheimer’s Dementia researchers such as Australians Professor Ralph Martins and Professor Bryce Vissel (Martins et al, 2018; Morris et al, 2014) believe that preventative strategies play key roles in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. By waiting until you notice symptoms such as memory loss, confusion or the loss of the ability to undertake daily living tasks you have really missed an important opportunity to stop the disease that is recognized, in late-onset form, to begin literally decades before a diagnosis of dementia (Issacson et al, 2018).

To protect us from the following risks we need to look at investigating these various imbalances and dysfunctions. Luckily these sorts of chronic risks and conditions respond so very well to lifestyle and dietary changes in our lives. They can be changes to your diet, exercising, sleeping better, addressing stress and toxic load, managing infections and poor digestion and are all part of the program.

Here is a bit of a list of these ‘modifiable’ risks:

• Inflammation,
• Oxidative stress,
• Mitochondrial dysfunction,
• ‘Unhealthy’ diet,
• Alcohol,
• Smoking,
• Type 2 Diabetes (T2D)/ Metabolic syndrome/ Insulin Resistance
• Obesity,
• High blood pressure,
• High cholesterol,
• Head trauma/ neuronal damage and
• Cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Just like Alzheimer’s dementia these are not caused by single things but can have many different inputs that control the complex systems of our body.

References:

1. Barnes, D. E., & Yaffe, K. (2011). The projected effect of risk factor reduction on Alzheimers disease prevalence. The Lancet Neurology, 10(9), 819–828. doi: 10.1016/s1474-4422(11)70072-2
2. Isaacson, R. S., Ganzer, C. A., Hristov, H., Hackett, K., Caesar, E., Cohen, R., … Krikorian, R. (2018). The clinical practice of risk reduction for Alzheimer’s disease: A precision medicine approach. Alzheimer’s & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, 14(12), 1663–1673. doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2018.08.004
3. Lourida, I., Hannon, E., Littlejohns, T. J., Langa, K. M., Hyppönen, E., Kuzma, E., & Llewellyn, D. J. (2019). Association of Lifestyle and Genetic Risk With Incidence of Dementia. Jama, 322(5), 430. doi: 10.1001/jama.2019.9879
4. Martins, R. N., Villemagne, V., Sohrabi, H. R., Chatterjee, P., Shah, T. M., Verdile, G., … Masters, C. L. (2018). Alzheimer’s Disease: A Journey from Amyloid Peptides and Oxidative Stress, to Biomarker Technologies and Disease Prevention Strategies—Gains from AIBL and DIAN Cohort Studies. Journal of Alzheimers Disease, 62(3), 965–992. doi: 10.3233/jad-171145
5. Morris, G. P., Clark, I. A., & Vissel, B. (2014). Inconsistencies and controversies surrounding the Amyloid Hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Acta Neuropathologica Communications, 2(1), 135. doi: 10.1186/preaccept-1342777270140958
6. Norton, S., Matthews, F. E., Barnes, D. E., Yaffe, K., & Brayne, C. (2014). Potential for primary prevention of Alzheimers disease: an analysis of population-based data. The Lancet Neurology, 13(8), 788–794. doi: 10.1016/s1474-4422(14)70136-x