Continued from Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts? The Niacinamide Experiment Part 2

A Compromised Gut and Aging

Suppose we throw out the acetaldehyde-in-the-blood-and-brain hypothesis. Even if the liver can keep up with the load, the process of breaking down acetaldehyde into a harmless acetate itself will upset the NADH/NAD balance.

NAD (nicotinamide adenoid dinucleotide) is the most important co-enzyme in the body. Aldehyde dehydrogenase depends on it to break down toxic aldehydes. SIRT1 depends on it to keep cells from committing suicide. It is the key to glucose metabolism. Etc.

A shortage of NAD is a normal part of aging:

Once pancreatic β cells and neurons start having functional problems due to inadequate NAD biosynthesis, other peripheral tissues/organs would also be affected through insulin secretion and central metabolic regulation so that the metabolic robustness would gradually deteriorate over age at a systemic level. This cascade of robustness breakdown triggered by a decrease in
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When dealing with Parkinson’s, sometimes one symptom can dictate behavior and end up causing a cascade of physical problems.
Symptom and consequence in point: hand tremors can lead to decreased liquid consumption (because the Parkinson’s patient is embarrassed to spill every time he drinks), and decreased liquid consumption can exacerbate constipation and possibly lead to impacted bowels in a Parkinson’s victim.
In dealing with Dad, we found that one solution to this cascading problem is a spill-proof sipping container. Dad used to spill everything on himself, the table, the floor. Now when his shaking is bad, we put all liquids in the spill-proof water bottle, and he is no longer embarrassed to drink.
The nice thing about the Camelbak water bottle is it’s sleek, sporty design which makes Dad feel like he fits in more with our physically active family.
So if you are having a hard time coming up with a Father’s Day gift for your Parkinson’s dad, this is my suggestion.

Yesterday Bloomberg Businessweek published an article titled Mouse Study Suggests Alzheimer’s-Linked Protein Can Migrate Into Brain.
The story is this: researchers took brain matter from mice that had beta amyloid plaque (were genetically modified to have such plaque), injected it into the stomachs of normal mice, and months later found beta amyloid plaque in the brains of the normal mice.
If all you read is the headline of this story, the conclusion is that the beta amyloid from the sick mice got into the bloodstream of the healthy mice and passed through the blood brain barrier to take up residence in the healthy brains.
But if you read to the end of this article, it is suggested that there could be all kinds of reasons the healthy mice ended up with beta amyloid plaque in their brains, such as maybe there is some chemical in the plaque brain sample that passes through the blood brain barrier and causes a chain reaction that produces beta amyloid plaque—which would negate the headline altogether.
Now, watch the news and see how many people with take only the headline of this story and pass it off as scientific fact.

The moral of the story: be careful what you read and how you read it.

Trying to follow Alzheimer’s research sometimes feels like walking through an Escher exhibit: the contradictions can border on the absurd.
Take the new findings on SIRT1 and its relation to Alzheimer’s. Research after research shows that SIRT1 apparently protects against Alzheimer’s:

25 July 2010. The sirtuin protein SIRT1 is emerging as an important player in learning and memory, and may have potential as a therapeutic target in Alzheimer disease. Fresh on the heels of a July 11 Nature paper that demonstrated a crucial role for SIRT1 in memory (see ARF related news story on Gao et al., 2010), two new papers add to the growing body of evidence that SIRT1 helps keep brains healthy. In a paper appearing July 21 in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers led by Valter Longo at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, show that a SIRT1 knockout mouse has numerous defects in learning and memory. This finding implies that SIRT1 could have a protective role in AD, and indeed, in a July 23 Cell paper, researchers led by Leonard Guarente at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, report that overexpression of SIRT1 can decrease Aβ production and the number of amyloid plaques in a mouse model of AD.

You’d think, then, that more SIRT1 is better for Alzheimer’s and less is worse. But:

Michán and colleagues also examined a transgenic mouse that overexpressed SIRT1 16-fold in the brain. On this normal mouse background, the authors found that this massive SIRT1 overexpression conferred no improvements in learning or memory, and that synaptic function was unchanged except for a slight increase in neuronal excitability.

And though less is worse, vitamin B3 in the form of niacinamide has been shown to “cure” Alzheimer’s in mice by decreasing the expression of SIRT1: Nicotinamide Restores Cognition in Alzheimer’s Disease Transgenic Mice via a Mechanism Involving Sirtuin Inhibition and Selective Reduction of Thr231-PhosphotauWe evaluated the efficacy of nicotinamide, a competitive inhibitor of the sirtuins or class III NAD+-dependent HDACs in 3xTg-AD mice, and found that it restored cognitive deficits associated with pathology. Nicotinamide selectively reduces a specific phospho-species of tau (Thr231) that is associated with microtubule depolymerization, in a manner similar to inhibition of SirT1. Nicotinamide also dramatically increased acetylated -tubulin, a primary substrate of SirT2, and MAP2c, both of which are linked to increased microtubule stability. .

When asked about this contradiction, Dr. Greene, one of the researchers on this paper says,

You are correct – there are contradictions between the role of Sirt1 in AD. Regardless of these, nicotinamide has good effects in the preclinical models, and has been shown to now be effective for other neurodegenerative diseases as well. Sirt1 may be beneficial at some stages of the disease, and not others – we cannot [reconcile] these differences at this stage, but our research says that nicotinamide is highly effective in preclinical models and that inhibition of Sirt1 plays a role in these effects.

Say, what?

My mind wants to hyperventilate with the contradictions, but then I remember the story of the three blind men describing an elephant and realize the contradiction exists only because we do not yet fully understand.

And that’s what drives research onward.

RELATED POSTS:

Alzheimer’s and Glucose Metabolism: the Niacinamide Experiment Part 1

Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts? The Niacinamide Experiment Part 2

Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts? (Continuation)

I was listening to Terry Gross interview David Linden on Fresh Air about his book The Compass of Pleasure, and something kept nagging at the back of my thinker throughout the interview. Something familiar. Something that seemed to connect with all the reading and writing I’ve done on Alzheimer’s and the brain this past year.

So I re-listened to the Fresh Air segment today, then did some quick digging through articles I’ve seen online on the brain, stirred it all around, let it simmer some more, and here is the reduction I got.

Maybe our addiction to the pursuit of happiness is contributing to brain aging. It’s not an umbrella cause, of course. You would never have been able to say that Mom led a hedonistic lifestyle. And Ronald Reagan pursued a lot more things than happiness. But still… The connection between what Dr. Linden was saying and what I’ve read makes me suspicious.

In David Linden’s Compass of Pleasure, he talks about the pleasure area of the brain as being that part that–in response to certain activities or substances–produces dopamine. Dopamine is the “feel good” neurotransmitter in the brain. It is activated when we engage in certain activities or thought processes, but it is also activated when we injest/inject food, alcohol, narcotics.

Some things that produce dopamine are completely healthy. Like a good run, the enjoyment of friends, reading a stimulating book.

Some things are borderline good. Like food. Everybody needs it. The pleasure of good food produces dopamine. But when pleasure is sought after for pleasure’s sake, “the brain’s dopaminergic circuitry gets blunted. In all cases of producing pleasure in the brain, it takes increasing levels [of a thing] to produce the same level of pleasure” (quoting Dr. L). So with food, you eventually get overweightness if the pleasure of food is pursued beyond the body’s need for it. Obesity is contributing to an epidemic of Diabetes, which is strongly linked to brain aging. By indirect means, then, the pursuit of a happy palate can lead to brain aging.

Then there are things that produce dopamine (or cause its production) that are not healthy. Like alcohol, nicotine, cocaine. This falls in with the acetaldehyde hypothesis I wrote about in Does Alzheimer’s Take Guts. Alcohol, cocaine, and especially cigarette smoke have–at some point in their metabolic breakdown–the toxic aldehyde acetaldehyde. Very destructive to the brain. Dopamine is produced as the end-process of breaking down harmful aldehydes into harmless acids. It’s the brain’s “Yahoo!” after saving the day from the bad guys. That “Yahoo!” may be a good thing, but again, in order to get it a second, third, and nth time, you have to increase the attack on the body. [Interestingly, Disulfiram's use to treat alcohol and cocaine addiction works by inhibiting ALDH2 (aldehyde dehydrogenase) which is the enzyme that metabolizes acetaldehyde. It lets the toxin do its full work rather than disabling it by metabolizing it into a harmless acid. So the brain does not get its "yahoo!" And if you get no yahoo, you don't repeat the action.]

The problem with focusing on happiness above all else is that we may end up using the short-cut and more harmful methods of getting that dopamine high.

Dr. Linden’s solution? “Try to take your pleasures broadly: exercise, meditate, learn, have moderate consumption of alcohol, moderate consumption of food.”

I would add: pursue friendships, do charitable work, tend a garden, read a good book (get more ideas at Changing Aging).

As Captain Kirk once said, “There are a million things you can have and a million things you can’t have. Choose the million you can.”

See also:
Ethanol and acetaldehyde action on central dopamine systems: mechanisms, modulation, and relationship to stress.

Age-Dependent Neurodegeneration Accompanying Memory Loss in Transgenic Mice Defective in Mitochondrial Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 2 Activity

On Saturday, August 21, 2010, God took Dad home. God did not wait until we were ready for this. He waited until Heaven couldn’t stand Dad’s absence any longer.

I’m posting this video about how we deal with death in our current culture because I think our attitude of denial in the face of death needs to change. Considering my family’s immediate reaction of trying to revive Dad–even though he requested a DNR–I’m speaking from experience. Our natural tendency is to hold on as long as possible. But this isn’t necessarily the best for those we love.

Letting go is so stinking hard!!
All the more reason to think and plan ahead for the death of those you love.

Deep In The Brain is a cerebral self-examination written by a philosophy professor who was riding the top of a success wave when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Talk about the relationship between mind and brain! Here is one who, thanks to his training, steps outside himself to make an objective assessment of his behavior even as he battles the attachment he has to that self.
In this book, Helmut Dubiel analyses his response to the personal and social implications of his Parkinson’s disease. He does not blame or excuse. Rather, he tries to put his and other’s reactions in context of the overarching laws of social interaction.
There is pain in this book. There are lies and pity and anger and judgment. But mostly, there is acceptance of the facts of disease and an acknowledgement of man’s irrepressible will to live and to thrive.

Yesterday as I read this book to Dad, I noticed him fidgeting more than usual. I stopped and asked him what was the matter. He said, “It seems like you’re reading about me.” I explained that this was a philosophy professor writing about himself. Dad calmed back down and listened with interest. Dad doesn’t talk about his inner battles much, so this would logically be painful for him. But good. I think this was one of Professor Dubiel’s hopes–that through his honest self-examination, others would feel released from the need to hide from their disease and, in so doing, find relief.

I’ve often asked people, “Which would you prefer: to lose your body or to lose your mind?” Given that I live with one parent with Alzheimer’s and the other with Parkinson’s, this question has personal weight. In his book, Professor Dubiel clearly expresses his preference for holding onto the self despite the ostracism brought on by the physical distortions of Parkinson’s. Knowing you are being unfairly rejected is still preferable to knowing nothing at all. On the other side, in Still Alice the protagonist affirms this appreciation for the self when–in a lucid moment–she acknowledges “I didn’t meant to get this way. I miss myself.” The mind is a far greater gift than the body.

Of course, in the end, Parkinson’s takes the mind as well.

My take-away? Pray for a cure for both diseases; forgive my and others’ shortcomings; enjoy today.

The first thing you have to know about Mom is that she is the biggest sweetheart on the planet. She has always said “yes” to anyone who asked her for a favor or a meal or a ride or even cash. We used to berate her over some of these decisions. “Mom, you’re just enabling them to go get drunk,” or whatever. We’d rather keep our boundaries intact. Keep safe. Not Mom. She’d rather “do onto others” as Jesus wanted her to do–and let Jesus take care of punishment if the recipient abused the gift.
With that in mind, it puzzles me that these days, the word most frequently pulled out of her tiny residual vocabulary (5-10 words at present) is the word “no.”

“Mom, shall we get up?”
“No.”
“Mom, isn’t this music pretty?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
“No.”

Here’s the curious part. Her body language still says “yes.” So why the verbal “no”?
I’m thinking that this knee-jerk negation is her last recourse to individuality. Having lost most of what makes her a person, she is resorting to negation as a way to distinguish herself from others.
Think about it. “Yes” blends us into other people. It’s a unifying word. It accepts. It serves. It hugs and becomes one with the other.
“No” on the other hand, puts up a wall between the self and the other. It says, I am me and you are you and it’s going to stop there.
It’s Mom’s only way, I believe, to retain a feeling of self.
And that revelation changes how I look at the world. You wonder why some people just can’t play nice in the world arena; why they have to say “no” to constructive engagement; why they have to strap bombs around themselves and “no” themselves and other people into oblivion.
Perhaps it’s because those people feel that a “yes” will blend them into the will of the other–a will that is unacceptable to their idea of a healthy self. A ”no,” they feel, is the only way they’ll be seen.
Do you see what I’m saying? The ego’s boundaries collapse under yes. “No” is the last bastion of the tormented ego.

Here's a fun little fact about joint caregiving: it can turn a tiny disagreement into a full-blown I'll-move-to-the-North-Pole and you-move-to-Antarctica fight. The constant demands, the inability to comprehend half of those demands, the lack of time off, lack of perspective and sundry other issues will wind the coil so tight that a slight breeze or feather of conflict between those sharing the caregiving responsibilities can cause a mighty painful snap.
Funny how that commercial for Pristiq antidepressant gets it wrong. The last thing in the world we Alzheimer's victims (on both ends) need is a big old hand winding us up even more! Yikes! A better image would be seeing that key spin in the opposite direction, letting that purple-clad lady relax completely. Now there’s a pill I'd buy!
It’s ads like that that take me back to Princess Bride and Wesley’s pronouncement: "Life is pain, highness! Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something." A lot of people have to put up with a lot of pain. It's not just us.
So perspective helps some.
Here are some other things that help:

• A good cup of coffee in the morning
• Music (it's amazing how music can change the mood)
• A five minute sit on the porch
• A hot shower
• A good cry
• Painting
• Blogging
• A long primal scream

One thing Parkinson’s can’t take away from a man is all he has passed on in his lifetime. Here is Dad, rock-hounding Parkinson’s style. The fact that he can’t stand up on his own or kneel and claw through the dirt to get to the jasper or petrified wood doesn’t detract from the fact that he instilled the love of nature and science in his children. It’s in our blood now to visit all the national parks we can and to dig for fossils wherever there be beds.
He’s taught his children so many good things, and Parkinson’s can’t take that away from him.

Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Teach Your Children Well”

More on the brain’s default network:

The default network in the brain is considered a “second brain” because it turns on when the rest of the brain is at rest, and turns off when the rest of the brain is at work. Normally, that is. As people age, the default network is less and less capable of shutting down when the mind is concentrating on some difficult cognitive task as it would do in a younger adult’s brain. Since the default network uses 30% more resources than the rest of the brain, you can see how the resources available for cognitively challenging tasks decreases as we age.

In Alzheimer’s, you get the extreme case of this aging effect: the default network doesn’t shut down at all when it’s supposed to (same as in Schizophrenia–which is probably why they use antipsychotic drugs meant for Schizophrenia in Alzheimer’s patients) until that part of the brain eventually dies.

The default network is not very developed in children. It gets more active as we grow into adulthood. That makes me wonder if language is the software that runs the default network. Think about it: the default network is the part of the brain that sorts, categorizes, and edits/deletes memories, and language is the software that sorts, categorizes, and edits/deletes meaning. With language also comes prejudice, and prejudice does not exist in the very young. Also, in Alzheimer’s the default network eventually atrophies, and language ceases (just further argument that the default network is inextricably tied to language).

All of which brings me to the point of this post. Last week there were articles all over the news saying that having more than one language guards you against the worst of Alzheimer’s. Mom spoke four languages and fell prey to Alzheimer’s in her sixties–with no family history of early Alzheimer’s. Dad spoke three
Read more

The other night I attended an author’s reading of a first-time novel.
The main character in the novel is an immigrant computer programmer with terrible social skills trying to navigate his way around the American culture. His mistakes are endearing and a good mirror into the idiosyncrasies of American culture.
In the question and answer period of this reading, someone shot up their hand and asked if the main character suffered from Asperger’s Disease because of his mental brilliance and social ineptitude.
I think the author’s answer was something along the lines of “uh…” which mirrored my own reaction to the question. I’d smiled at the word Asperger’s and felt my stomach lurch at the word Disease. I’ve always thought of Asperger’s more as a cool color to be rather than a disease. Besides, why the need to label?

Why can’t we just accept a different package of assets and challenges in a person and enjoy their uniqueness rather than feel the need to cubbyhole folks into categories?
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I found this short documentary film yesterday while browsing another blog about Alzheimer’s. It’s in French with English subtitles and you can watch it for one euro online. Worth the euro and then some (you can click on the picture to go to the website). The film is done by the son of an artist with Alzheimer’s, and the documentary marries his own artistic and filial sensitivity well.
As an artist whose artistic mother also has Alzheimer’s, this movie hit home for me. It was like watching my own mother lose all her nouns, then her knowledge of interpreting nouns on a canvas, and finally her knowledge of self.
In this film, the mother’s sorrow and fear are mitigated by the son’s desire to hang out with her. I only hope his desire lasted beyond the making of the film. For the sake of all those with Alzheimer’s, I hope love lasts beyond the time the disease is an interesting artistic or scientific curiosity. I hope it lasts beyond the time a diseased person has anything at all to offer.

Is it ever right to lie to a person with Alzheimer's? If so, when?
If you click on the picture at left, you'll hear the loveliest little story about a nursing home in Germany that decided to install a fake bus stop in front of their facility for patients to go to and "de-stress." Folks would go out to the bus stop thinking they'd get on a bus and go home. But after a few minutes of waiting, they'd forget why they were there and go back inside, no longer agitated and afraid.
So, if lying achieves a good end, is it OK?
Looking at it another way, is the aim of interaction to be correct or to be kind?
In the bus stop story, think about what it is the patient really wants when he waits for the bus. He wants home and family. But why? He wants these things because they mean acceptance and love.
So if the bus stop allows a patient to calm down enough for a staff member to have a soothing, friendly visit with them, is it not giving them what they were after in the first place? And is this not Truth?
This is the same rationale for communicating with Alzheimer's patients even when they are home with family. The point isn’t to constantly correct your loved one ("no, it’s not morning, it’s evening;" or, "no, my name isn’t Mary, it’s Marty"). We’re not here to elicit factual correctness from each other, but to honor each other as full-fledged beings created in the image of God—regardless to what extent we are broken.
And, no, I'm not a post-modernist saying there are no facts, or that facts are what we want them to be.
Just saying, facts aren't the point. Love is.

We are continually hearing that Medicare is going to go bankrupt by mid-century thanks to the skyrocketing costs of an aging population in need of prescription drugs and dementia care.
Medicare Part D costs to the government in 2010 were $62 billion and are projected to climb to $150 billion by 2019. And Medicare costs for Alzheimer’s care will increase more than 600 percent, from $88 billion today to $627 billion in 2050.

Here is a double-barreled solution to the costs of Medicare Part D and Alzheimer’s care: replace prescription drugs with equally effective placebos and employ mildly-cognitively-impaired individuals as healthcare enhancement agents.
This is not a joke. Here is why this would work and save the federal government billions:

Regarding Placebos

Placebos—if delivered properly—could potentially be more effective and considerably less costly than many current prescription drugs.
Here is an example of an experiment with placebos for a “purely physical ailment”:

One group was simply put on a waiting list; researchers know that some patients get better just because they sign up for a trial. Another group received placebo treatment from a clinician who declined to engage in small talk. Volunteers in the third group got the same sham treatment from a clinician who asked them questions about symptoms, outlined the causes of [their ailment], and displayed optimism about their condition.
Not surprisingly, the health of those in the third group improved most. In fact, just by participating in the trial, volunteers in this high-interaction group got as much relief as did people taking the two leading prescription drugs for IBS. And the benefits of their bogus treatment persisted for weeks afterward, contrary to the belief—widespread in the pharmaceutical industry—that the placebo response is short-lived.

It has been found that placebos can sometimes work even better than the leading prescription drug for any given disease, with certain factors contributing to their effectiveness:

Yellow pills make the most effective antidepressants, like little doses of pharmaceutical sunshine.

Red pills can give you a more stimulating kick. Wake up, Neo.

The color green reduces anxiety, adding more chill to the pill.

White tablets—particularly those labeled “antacid”—are superior for soothing ulcers, even when they contain nothing but lactose.

More is better, scientists say. Placebos taken four times a day deliver greater relief than those taken twice daily.

Branding matters. Placebos stamped or packaged with widely recognized trademarks are more effective than “generic” placebos.

Clever names can add a placebo boost to the physiological punch in real drugs. Viagra implies both vitality and an unstoppable Niagara of sexy.

If you’re thinking that the suggestion of using placebos is unethical, check out this study:

“Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had ‘placebo’ printed on the bottle,” says Kaptchuk. “We told the patients that they didn’t have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills.”

The participants were monitored for three weeks and, at the end of the trial, 59% of the patients given the placebo reported ample symptom improvement as compared to 35% of the control group. Furthermore, participants who took the placebo had rates of improvement about equal to the effects of the most powerful IBS drugs.

Deception is unethical. Honesty is not. If there is a joke it’s in the current medical practice of prescribing expensive drugs that are sold without the most important ingredient that made them effective in the trials—the same ingredient that makes placebos effective.

As we would all imagine, the most important factor in the effectiveness of placebos is the doctor’s bedside manner. That is, the presence of compassion in the treatment of an ailment.

Regarding a Cognitively Impaired Workforce

The double-barreled solution in employing people with mild dementia as healthcare enhancement agents is that we would save on prescription drugs, hospital recovery times, and also be assigning purpose to people with mild cognitive impairment. Folks whose initial downward slope in the aging process is a bit early are not an “unproductive force in the economy.” There is richness of intellect, creativity, and compassion that could be tapped rather than stomped on per our current dementia stigmatization.

There was a time when people with physical disabilities couldn’t get jobs. But we’ve come a long way in learning of the tremendous contribution that the disabled can give, and have accommodated the workplace for such individuals with ramps and wider doorways and elevators in order to reap this benefit. Why not do the same for MCI individuals? Why are we instead discarding this tremendous resource?

In reading blogs of people with early-onset Alzheimer’s, one of the biggest stresses for both the sufferer and the government is issuance of social security disability benefits. Why not offer employment rather than cash benefits? If compassion at the bedside of a sick person dramatically speeds the healing process, think of the savings accrued by employing love & joy-givers in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes?

In his book The Gift of Pain, Dr. Brand lists the factors that enhance pain and prolong the healing process: fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, boredom, helplessness. He then describes how perfectly suited many institutions are in promoting these feelings with their sterile settings, uncommunicative doctors and nurses, boring surroundings (and now that nurses spend all their time at computer terminals per our new streamlining guidelines, these factors are further compounded). Healthcare institutions could cut their costs by employing people to:

Design and paint interesting scenes on hospital ceilings
Play instruments in institutional corridors (not just harps, please!)
Make dolls for nursing home patients
Read aloud to patients, or simply visit
Reupholster institutional furniture with fun fabrics
Take certified dogs into institutions for cheery visits

The savings in dollars would be compounded all around, and the savings in dignity for all healthcare users a welcome change for our society.

As near as I can figure, these are the five stages of elder caregiving that correspond to the Kubler-Ross states of grief:

1. DELUSION. This is where you have boundless energy and think two lives are possible: one with you as caregiver, and one with you as successful entrepreneur.

2. FRUSTRATION. This is where you realize you have been delusional and have to make a choice between the two yous. The results are tress and guilt. Stress because your intentions are still lofty, but your body is getting tired. And guilt because you know you have to give up your own agenda, but want to keep it.

3. ANGER. This stage starts with resentment. You may start thinking part of what’s going on is on purpose—that your loved one is intentionally “pretending” some of the sickness. Or you think they’re not trying hard enough to cooperate with your care. You are in constant correction mode here, and getting angrier because your [barely] loved one keeps repeating the same frustrating behaviors (see Elder Rage).

4. DESPAIR. You finally get it that it’s not their fault. You accept that the disease is controlling your loved one and getting worse. You stop blaming them, and instead heap all the blame on yourself because you still think you ought to gain control over this caregiving business but can’t. Along with despair you have increased guilt and exhaustion.

5. RELEASE. In this stage you finally give up control. You realize you cannot do this entirely by yourself. You delegate care (maybe for a day or two of day care, maybe institutionalization). The result is considerably less stress; even joy; and certainly wisdom.

e all know, even without reading research papers, that music has emotional benefit: it can excite and calm and induce a wonderfully cathartic weeping session. This applies whether you’re healthy or sick; whether you have Parkinson’s or autism or Alzheimer’s.

But studies have found that music can also be of cognitive benefit: it helps people remember things better.

What exactly does this mean, and what specifically does it mean for an Alzheimer’s patient? Does it mean that if you play the oldies station in the background all the time, your Mom will wake up one day and remember everything again?

Let’s look at the evidence:

First of all, "music" is a pretty general term. Are we talking about singing? Playing a guitar? Listening to Mozart? Listening to Bobby McFerrin’s improvisational jazz? Believe it or not, these are all different things.

According to a study reported by Time Magazine,("Music on the Brain")

Different networks of neurons are activated [in the brain], depending on whether a person is listening to music or playing an instrument, and whether or not the music involves lyrics.

In another study, quoted in Neuroscience for Kids,

researchers have recorded neuronal activity from the temporal lobe of patients undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy. During this study, awake patients heard either a song by Mozart, a folk song or the theme from "Miami Vice". These different kinds of music had different effects on the neurons in the temporal lobe.

Also, from Time'“Music on the Brain”

Experimental Audiology in Germany has shown that intensive practice of an instrument leads to discernible enlargement of parts of the cerebral cortex, the layer of gray matter most closely associated with higher brain function.

As you can see, different music affects different parts of the normal brain in different ways.

People are always studying the music-brain connection, trying to understand the mystery of it. There was a particular study done in 1993 that tried to see if music affected memory. The researchers used a song by Mozart for their experiment, and their results seemed to show that this composer’s music improved test-taking. This became widely known as The Mozart Effect, and people started playing Mozart to their unborn babies thinking it would give them a head start in learning.

Though later studies failed to duplicate the Mozart Effect (perhaps the only real effect is that Mozart helps relax the body right before a test), that original research sparked further research into music-as-memory-aid. A recent study, for example, found that Alzheimer’s patients can remember new information if it is sung to them much better than if it is spoken (as opposed to healthy people who can remember it equally well when sung as opposed to spoken).

We also know without reading studies that music helps trigger old memories. For example, when I hear the song "Dust in the Wind," I am immediately transported back to our family van as we drove across the country in 1977. I remember my oldest sister introducing this song to me, and how it resonated with the angst of my teenage years, etc. A whole cascade of memories brought on by a single song.

In a study reported by the Telegraph in 2009, researchers found that this recall effect is due to the fact that music is processed in the same area of the brain that forms vivid memories. They furthermore found that such memories appear to be immune to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. And this could lead to a unique kind of therapy:

Because memory for autobiographically important music seems to be spared in people with Alzheimer’s disease, …making a "soundtrack of someone’s life" before their mind is too damaged, and playing it back to them could help form a resistance to the disease.

Love the idea! Plus I have a variation on this idea from watching this next video of Bobby McFerrin (at a conference called "Notes and Neurons"), and from observing Mom as I play the piano. First, here’s Bobby:

What Bobby is doing here is getting the mind to go in a familiar direction (the pentatonic scale), then leaving an auditory blank and letting the mind fill it in. I mean, aside from jumping around, that's what he's doing. He’s giving the mind a puzzle to solve. He’s making the mind work. And working the mind is better than not working the mind if you want to keep it.

The next part of my idea came from playing the piano for Mom and watching her reaction. You should know Mom hasn’t spoken but a few words in a couple years, and she no longer sings intelligible tunes. You should also know that I don't play the piano. I used to when I was seven, but now my playing is reduced to guessing the notes with my right hand. I can play fast enough for the tune to be recognizable. Barely. Fortunately for Mom, the tune is always a hymn—something she is very familiar with. Unfortunately for Mom, I mangle the tune. And that's where the puzzle comes in.

See, when my finger's can't find the right note, Mom gets exasperated and sings it out loud to help me find the dang thing. I'm even wondering if this puzzle-solving exercise is a factor in Mom's recent awakening.

So here is my variation on the soundtrack idea. Try this exercise (for an Alzheimer’s patient) with the following video clip:

Play it once. It will probably be familiar to the listener already, but there are enough repetitions in this piece that parts of it will quickly become familiar if they aren’t already. Play the video again, but pause the video every so often. There are a ton of repeated theme snippets. Pause before a theme is repeated and see if the listener is prompted to supply the missing piece. If they do, you've got a good puzzle to use.

Then, if you do this with that "Life Playlist", you should be able to double the benefit in fighting that Alzheimer’s monster.

Related Posts:
Music and Caregiving—Pandora to the Rescue
Alzheimer’s and Music: Stimulating the Brain into Action
Related articles:
Posit Science Blog, Your Brain on Jazz
American Music Conference, Music and the Brain

Rose Lamatt recently sent me her book Just a Word: Friends Encounter Alzheimer’s—the true account of her best friend’s rapid decline after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and of the author’s life as a caregiver. After reading (or should I say “crying”) my way through this book, I decided I had to recommend it to all my readers as well.
I read and liked Still Alice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Just a Word when it comes to describing the wretchedness of Alzheimer’s and of caregiving and of life in a nursing home after home-based caregiving is no longer an option. Just a Word may not be as polished a work as Still Alice (my editor’s eyes kept making corrections until the story sucked me in), but this book will give you the real thing: Alzheimer’s with poop and bruises and the constant anguish of those trying to love and care for its victims (unlike the sanitized version in Still Alice).
In all my reading on Alzheimer’s, I have not found anything so powerful as this book to stir a desire to rid this disease from the face of the earth!

The other night I watched the movie Limitless. I thought it was a typical heart-pounding thriller with a touch of fantasy—in this case about a guy who discovers a drug that turns him into a genius. I thought the plot was moving toward the inevitable crash he would suffer when his supply ran out (as happened to everyone else in the movie whose supply ran out).
Then came the twist at the very end that made me laugh out loud. OMG, what Pretty Woman was to prostitutes, Limitless is to drug addicts and the whole drug industry.
If you’re smart enough, it says, you can make the perfect brain drug; you can take the last dose of the perfect drug to a lab and figure out how to reverse engineer and reproduce it; and you can figure out how to tweak it downwards in a perfectly safe manner (all within very short time periods); then you can wean yourself from a phenomenally addictive drug; and finally, you can train your brain to retain all the benefits of said drug once you have weaned yourself off it.
HA HA HA HA HA.

I think the whole problem I have with the drug industry is that, except in this extreme pharmacofantasy, it is additive rather than subtractive. You add one drug to treat a condition, then you add another to deal with the side effects of the first drug, then you add an nth drug to deal with the side effects of the combination of all the previous drugs.
Why not start with subtraction?
What are we injesting that we should cut out? Sugar? Preservatives? Smoke? Alcohol? Pesticides?
How often/much are we eating that we should cut back? Are we inhibiting certain enzymes—such as the anti-aging SIRT1—that only activate during fasting hours?
Maybe less is more?
Let’s start by removing the offending substances first, because once you start adding, it’s not you who benefit. It’s the industry that initially did have your brain in mind but now needs you to need them more and more.

Yesterday I took Dad in to see a back specialist. She was to tell us whether or not Dad would be a good candidate for surgery for his spinal compression fracture.
It's just one doctor after another these days…
We barely got to the clinic and we were both already exhausted: Dad from getting dressed, fed, squeezed into a jacket, compressed into the car, ejected from the car, and hung in a wheelchair. Me from doing all that to him without the cooperation of his muscles. We didn’t even want to go into the clinic. I told Dad that what we should do is write a children's book about aging and how fun it is. Dad laughed. I said we could describe how you get to ride around in a cool scooter—even inside the house. And how you get to have cool leopard print all over your skin without paying a cent for it. And how if you get skin cancer on your ear, you have to have a chunk cut off (like Dad) and then you can fit right in with the folks at Rivendell or Lothlorien.
Big smile.
I really see some potential there.
Might as well take this big old lemon and make lemonade.
(P.S. If you have any more ideas for the book, let me know)

All my life I considered myself an introvert, a private person, ungifted in the art of validating people.

In my early forties (a couple minutes ago), I bought a small restaurant, and all this changed. I grew by leaps and bounds in my fascination with people of all stripes and in my ability to dig beneath the surface and find the gold within. I grew in my ability to remember names, know faces, discover connections, and find new ways to validate people. I got high on it—on my ability to validate. It validated me in return.

Then one day this abruptly ended. I crashed. I had been working seven-day weeks for two and a half years, and my body and mind couldn’t take it anymore. The first scary sign of stress was when some of the music I played every day at the cafe lost its familiarity. I was evidently unable to learn new music. Then it was faces. New ones wouldn’t stick, and old but infrequent ones were a struggle to recall. I was filled with doubt when in conversation: what had we talked about the previous time? Did they just come from Europe, or were they going to Europe? I couldn’t remember.

Stress fried my brain, and my validation skills went with it. Nothing, but nothing hurt as much as having a newly-made friend appear and me not know who they were for ten or twenty seconds. The eager look on their face faded instantly, and nothing could bring it back. No amount of remembering in a few seconds would make up for my initial inability to validate them. I died a little bit every time it happened.

I wanted to resign from life. Retreat. Embrace my pre-cafe, introverted self. I wanted to be given a chance to explain (there is no such thing). I cried, prayed angrily, tried to bargain with God.

How do you love people when the principal organ of love—the brain—is shot?

I realized eventually that I was mourning my ego, not my lost ability to validate people—because I hadn’t lost the ability. I’d only lost the ability to do so in a way that would make me look good. There were and are plenty of opportunities to extend kindness and touch people’s souls even if we can’t immediately recall a face. It just takes an awful lot of something to give up the craving for reciprocity.

This also showed me that validating was not my natural gift. To meet someone for whom it is, you must meet Jan Petersen. This afternoon I watched the video Jan’s Story: Love and Early-Onset Alzheimer’s again and re-discovered a true hero. Even with severe dementia, Jan knows how to seize each day and touch each person she meets. Jan’s is both a heart-wrenching and heart-warming story. Many people go through life mentally intact yet unable to see the goodness that surrounds them. Then you meet someone like Jan whose indomitable spirit sheds significance on everything and everyone she sees—regardless of her inability to name things.

The validation breakdown begins with us who think Jan’s story is nothing but a tragedy. But I tell you, if I could pick one trait to take with me on the dark road into oblivion, I’d pick Jan’s ability to validate without requirement; to love without strings attached; to milk each moment and each encounter.

That is the validation breakthrough!

Here are four more of my current heros—people with early onset Alzheimer’s who put themselves in the crosshairs of the stigma-tazers so they can help the rest of us see a little bit of the road ahead:

Kris Bakowski
Chuck Donofrio
Richard Taylor
Bill Craig

After writing my last post regarding the stress of caregiving, I had to drive somewhere, and in the course of the short trip, I caught a clip of a Haydn symphony on the radio. I don’t know how, but there are sections in there that make me feel as though this exhausted, shriveling heart of mine is actually quite expansive and able not only to cope, but to bring beauty out of the brokenness around me. You know how sometimes you see a scene or a photograph that makes you certain that the universe is true and right and good? Well, music does that, but with thrice the emotion. Music can rewire a frazzled or finished outlook into one of hope. And hope can take you a looooooong way down a very dark road.
All to say that music—in addition to being a fantastic tool for treating Alzheimer's—is a very inexpensive way to get your groove back when you’re done in from caregiving. Or from living a regular life-is-pain-highness kind of life.
To prove this, I'm giving you a little tool in this post that some people may not know about. The tool is called Pandora—an internet service that lets you create your own radio station online.
The extra cool thing about this service is that you can create multiple radio stations, all with different moods—colored by different genres or artists—to suit your changing needs. Sometimes I don't even know what my need is or what it is that will trigger a brighter outlook, so having multiple "moods" to choose from is very useful.
Cutting to the chase, here are four stations I created to get you started. Click on any one of them and follow instructions to log into Pandora. From there, you can tweak the station by "adding variety" (a specific music piece or musician) to the station. You can also "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" any piece that you hear, and the station will remember to pick similar music or not to play that piece in the future. Talk about tailored just for you!
So here goes—four different flavors for your listening pleasure:

Jazz. You know, the good stuff with Stan Getz and Louis Armstrong and Bobby McFerrin and Michael Buble…
This is a fusion of old hymns and contemporary Christian pop. Nice, especially for Sunday mornings.
My personal favorite: spicy Latin mix. Makes you want to jiggle and dance and go crazy! A great stress-reliever.
Classical is music to transport the soul.

A couple more tips: if you want to play this music off your sound system without leaving the kitchen table, you can buy a $4 wireless FM transmitter and send the station to your main tuner. You can also "send the station" to the radio that sits on your mother's side table in the bedroom while you’re working on the laptop in the kitchen. Just a whole lot of things you can do with Pandora!
Do have fun, and come back and post a station of your own creation if you dare!

I just finished reading Peter Whitehouse and Daniel George’s book The Myth of Alzheimer’s.

How dare you! you want to say when you first see the title. My mother went through hell with this disease, and you’re saying it’s all imaginary? HOW DARE YOU!

Then you read the book and understand.

I’m not sure I agree with the entire revision of the story of Alzheimer’s, but I did like the tenor of the book. It’s compassionate toward those who suffer from dementia and even more so toward those who suffer from the stigma of dementia. It is angry at Big Pharma—the machine that markets fear of dementia so they can sell their mostly ineffective drugs. And it is angry at the medical establishment that succumbs to that marketing—toward doctors who accept gifts (in disguise) in exchange for prescribing Big Pharma drugs to their patients.

Dr. Whitehouse stresses that he was one of the cogs in that machine. His research helped write the story of Alzheimer’s as a disease, and his advice was sought after by pharmaceutical companies as they worked to develop drugs like Aricept and Namenda.

He was part of the machine until he realized he had helped create a monster that now feeds on the stigma of dementia such that no one is allowed to age with dignity if aging includes any level of dementia. The stigma of dementia has been blown up so large that anyone with a tinge of it is considered finished. People are no longer a mixed bag of assets and deficits. Once a person’s memory starts to go, he has no value unless the “deficit” is “fixed.”

Dr. Whitehouse points out instead that even with cognitive deficits, human beings still have plenty of assets to draw from in living fully satisfying lives.

So what is the myth?

The myth is that Alzheimer’s is a disease you “get” all of a sudden most likely because of some genetic time bomb you happen to be carrying. The myth is that we will find a cure if we pump enough money into drug R&D.

The truth, according to Whitehouse and George, is that aging causes physical and mental decline; the truth is that you can have beta amyloid plaque with dementia, dementia without plaque, and plaque without dementia; the truth is that everybody’s brain ages at different rates, and we are seeing increasing dementia because there are a lot more people aging these days, because we’re not living healthily, and because we keep extending man’s lifespan.

All researchers agree that age is the single most important factor in the onset of Alzheimer’s, so why not just call it what it is: brain aging?

Sadly, the biggest truth hidden by the myth is that you can have a full life despite some mental deficits (and Dr. Whitehouse tells story after amazing story to prove it).

Throughout most of this book I felt hugged and calmed.

That said, I have some questions after reading The Myth.

According to this book, the first “Alzheimer’s” patient was a young-ish woman code named Auguste D. Auguste D. was in her late 40′s when she started showing symptoms of dementia and aggression. Dr. Alzheimer thought it very odd that someone so young should succumb to dementia. He autopsied her when she died at 50-something and found the famous amyloid plaques and tau tangles in her brain. The average age of death at the time was 51.

My question is, if the average age of death was 51, why did Dr. Alzheimer think Auguste D. shockingly young? If people’s bodies aged quicker in 1906 than they do now, why not also expect that their brains would age quicker? And if we have managed to extend the body’s lifespan, why hasn’t the mind followed, given that the two are interconnected? (I suppose the simple answer is that back in the day, people died of other causes than age?)

I also have a problem with part of Dr. Whitehouse’s perspective. From the advice given in the book, it seems that he deals mostly with older people suffering from the beginnings of dementia; people who are retired and don’t have to make a living anymore. The advice to keep mentally vibrant by volunteering, reading, and traveling is laughable if you consider the segment of the population that is hit with early-onset dementia and can’t afford to keep their homes or feed their families without an income, let alone travel!

People with dementia lose jobs. It’s not pacifying to say they don’t really have a disease; that their brain is simply aging a little bit faster than the norm. There is something terrible about losing your mind in your prime.

For anyone in this category, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s can be the only way to get financial and medical help. And until someone comes up with a more accurate diagnosis that is recognized by the system, let it be Alzheimer’s.

To be fair, on this point Dr. Whitehouse agrees, and he does reluctantly offer a diagnosis of dementia as disease (Alzheimer’s) to those who need insurance coverage even as he encourages these patients to look beyond the label and make the waning years count.

But there’s a certain amount of circular reasoning in Dr. Whitehouse’s argument. From page 37:

We can still pursue every treatment available—including drugs—while shaping a gentler and more holistic brain-aging narrative.

Problem is, if you dismiss Alzheimer’s as a myth, there is no basis for research into drugs that may help the condition. By dismissing Alzheimer’s as a label that can be abused by Big Pharma, you also remove the basis for funding into understanding the aging brain. Sure, greed feeds on money, but so does genuine altruistic research.

Does anyone have a better perspective? Unfortunately, the question of Alzheimer’s as either “normal aging” or “disease” is still unanswered in the research community at large.

This week I attended a webinar that discussed a new hypothesis of Alzheimer’s as an accelerated process of aging set off by an initial injury such as a head trauma or infection. The hypothesis acknowledges that the pathology of Alzheimer’s is the same as normal aging, yet it allows for an unnatural first cause, thus making it a “disease.”

This new story of Alzheimer’s didn’t seem to make lift-off because there was a lack of definition for “initial injury.” One panelist proposed that instead of a single event, the initial injury could be a cumulative set of factors. It was agreed that this could be so, which brought the hypothesis right back to the paradigm of normal aging.

Still, I agree with researchers looking for that elusive element that makes some people appear to jump tracks in the aging process. Dr. Whitehouse uses the hand with its five extended fingers marking different trajectories to illustrate the differences in aging curves. I want to ask him, what of those whose trajectories start at the elbow? Do we really chalk up early-onset dementia as one of several normal aging trajectories?

I saw my grandparents age close-up. All but my father’s father (who died at 81–too young to fall prey to senile dementia) drifted into dementia at a ripe old age (late 80′s to mid 90′s). None of them seemed particularly perturbed by the process. They were loved and well cared for.

But my parents suffered debilitating cognitive loss while still relatively young (my mother from her mid 60′s and my father in his mid 70′s). Dr. Whitehouse talks about a “matrix of causal factors” leading to dementia. My parents were models of the mental health matrix:

They were highly educated
They loved books
They were surrounded by people of all ages
They volunteered
They stayed away from alcohol and nicotine
They traveled
They were teachers, and when they could no longer speak, they were kept on as consultants
They were given to prayer and meditation
They had no history of early dementia in their families
They spoke multiple languages
My father tended orchids, my mother painted portraits
They drank high anti-oxidant tea and ate lots of fruit

Their example is baffling. You would think they wrote the book on cognitive longevity. Why did they fall prey to dementia so early? What went on differently for them than the normal aging process, and is that “extra component” something that can be stopped in its tracks?

I don’t blame researchers who believe there is such a component and persist in looking for it.

[My pet theory for my parents' cases? Toxins! Environmental toxins (pesticides, insecticides), medical toxins (antibiotics overuse), and emotional toxins (stress from difficult years as foster parents)---all exacerbated by sugar]

As for dealing with the social stigma of the dementia label (stigma-tazing, as I call it), here, too, is circular talk.

I belong to a Facebook group for early-onset Alzheimer’s sufferers and their caregivers. The group shares the whole range of human experience on a daily basis. They share their anguish, elation, silliness, and deep wisdom. The overarching goal is to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s, and particularly of early-onset dementia in order to erase the life-sucking stigma of this condition.

One of the group’s mottos is “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Those on the site with dementia are not asking for society to accepted them as normal because they’re not. They wish for society to accept them as they are—broken, but still carrying a zest for life.

Sometimes I wonder if this fight for awareness is asking people who are busy living to get busy dying a little. If it is, why would we expect perfect strangers to chose death if our own goal is to shut the door on dying and get busy living?

The last chapter in The Myth of Alzheimer’s touches precisely on this point, and expresses what I think is the most important truth of all: we all have to die before we can truly live. We have to come to terms with our mortality, with the fact that we will age and break down, before we can devote ourselves to living fully. And we have to die so others can live. In the world of aging and dementia, caregivers are very busy dying so that their loved ones can keep on living.

Dying and Living is not an either/or question. We need to enter into the death of those who are suffering so that, together, we may live.

Eleanor Cooney’s Death in Slow Motion: a Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer’s is not just one book. This is two tales in one: a memoir of desperate caregiving and a biography. The memoir part follows Eleanor’s hyperventilated, drug and alcohol-sustained trek through the five stages of Alzheimer’s caregiving for her mother, Mary Durant, and the biography chapters relate the story of her mother prior to Alzheimer’s (think Dorothy Parker with abundant sex and alcohol) ending with a very rare love story between Mary Durant and Michael Harwood (her third husband). Having the story weave through these two windows makes the reader feel the compounded tragedy of the beast called Alzheimer’s.
You will laugh, clench, oggle, envy, and cry as you read this literary gem.
As a bonus, Cooney includes a previously unpublished short story written by her mother (in a style I would call Flannery O’Connor cum wicked smirk).
Buy it. Read it. Pass it on.
P.S. People who read this book will probably also buy and read Mary Durant and Michael Harwood’s On the Road with John James Audubon. Mine is already in the mail.

John Thorndike’s The Last of His Mind is a work skinned in the devastating story of Alzheimer’s, but shows what an unexpected gift caregiving can be for a child who longs to understand the one who shaped so much of his own understanding of life and relationships.

In these pages, John Thorndike gives up the comforts of his normal life in Ohio to care for his father in the last year of his battle against Alzheimer’s. John takes this time to examine himself in the light of the two people who shaped him most—his proper, emotionally absent New England father and his passionate, dissatisfied mother. “No wonder I study my parents,” he says. “Within the compass of their lives, everything is foretold.”

More than anything, the author wants a peek at his father’s heart, but finds it impossible to reach through the shining armor that encases him. In the end, though, he finds that it’s not his father’s armor that shines, but his character. And in the end, the year of loneliness and frustration yields the sweetest of fruit: a softer, mended heart.

John Thorndike brings out the True by exposing the Fraud, and it’s contagious. I feel wholly exposed after reading this book, yet more able to forgive myself, to love Dad—imperfections and all, and to accept the inherently flawed but courageous effort we all make in loving those closest to us.

True, this book is about the beastliness of Alzheimer’s, but it should be read by anyone who hungers to know a parent and to find themselves healed in the acceptance of an imperfect knowledge.

AC6BTV7AQCKPToday I stopped at a light and to my right was a truck hauling what looked like a small, complete house all wrapped in white plastic. I wonder if it was one of these “Granny Pods” that are becoming a hit all over the country. I don’t know what people are bellyaching about. I think these are a great idea! It would be like playing house and you wouldn’t have to put up with any teenagers blaring music from their room as you would if you lived in the real house. Think I’ll order one with a Japanese soaking tub when I get around to needing one.
AC6BTV7AQCKP

The U.K. recently decided that Aricept and other acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drugs can be prescribed for mild Alzheimer’s cases (in addition to moderate cases. See article U.K. Reverses Stance On Alzheimer’s Drugs NICE is now recommending that three drugs known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors—Aricept from Pfizer Inc. and Eisai Co.; Reminyl from Shire PLC; and Exelon from Novartis AG—be considered for use in patients with “mild” forms of Alzheimer’s, in addition to the patients with “moderate” forms of Alzheimer’s for whom NICE previously endorsed the drugs.). The more obvious reason is that these drugs should be getting cheaper once their patents expire, and therefore easier on the state’s prescription coverage budget. The less obvious reason is the relative ignorance Brits have regarding the sport of baseball.
I’ll explain:
First, you have to know how neurons and neurotransmitters work. Here is a short animation that shows how neurotransmitters work in the brain:

The cycle is a fantastically efficient one. Neurotransmitters are shocked into action, released into the synapse where they interact with receptors on the other side of the synapse, then swept up to make room for the next wave of neurotransmitters.
In Alzheimer’s, the favorite neurotransmitter tagetted by drug companies is acetylcholine because it is crucial for the formation of new memories. In the Alzheimer’s brain, there is an increasing shortage of acetylcholine, making it harder and harder for the brain to form new memories. The enzyme that recycles acetylcholine is acetylcholinesterase. What Aricept (an acetycholinesterase inhibitor) does is inhibit this recycling process, so the neurotransmitters hang around longer in the synapse and interact more often with memory-forming receptors.

Here is a video of a different neurotransmitter (serotonin) and its recycling inhibitor. It’s a good picture of the process that takes place with acetylcholine and acetycholinesterase inhibitors:

All of this is easier for Americans to grasp, because it can be compared to baseball: in baseball, players are stored in the dugout, called into action on the field, then recycled back into the dugout when their action is no longer called for.

Suppose that a team were to lose all but four of its players. Someone would have to block the dugout so the players wouldn’t sit back on the bench but rather take up the bat once more.

The players are the acetylcholine, the rule that sends them back into the dugout is the acetycholinesterase, and the person blocking the dugout when there is a shortage of players is the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.

This also, by the way, illustrates why Aricept et al eventually fail: the four players get tired of playing the whole game all season long and quit.

Someone must have finally explained baseball to the Brits.

The Alzheimer’s Research Paradigm

If you’ve every studied philosophy of science, you’ll recognize that current research in the field of Alzheimer’s Disease is battling paradigms. The funny thing is, the Alzheimer’s field hasn’t even reached the level of robust theory, yet there is strife in the ranks of researchers fighting over the direction inquiry should take:

“Kill the amyloid plaque“Beta amyloid is a protein fragment snipped from an amyloid precursor protein (APP). In a healthy brain, these protein fragments are broken down and eliminated. In Alzheimer’s disease, the fragments accumulate to form hard, insoluble plaques.”!”
“No, viva le beta amyloid“Most people think abeta is junk,” a toxic byproduct of other activity in the brain, said Rudolph Tanzi, director of genetics and aging at Massachusetts General’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease. “This says tread carefully. It may play a normal, essential role in the brain and be part of the way the brain protects itself.”!”
“Forget amyloid. It takes tauThe appearance of elevated tau in CSF is important, but merely a reflection of the disease process. What is not at all touched upon and in fact routinely neglected in the press, is that the tau protein drives neurodegeneration in a very direct way, much more so than the beta-amyloid protein, which is the target of the cited study. In fact, without abnormalities of tau there is no Alzheimer’s disease. Many older individuals develop beta-amyloid deposits in their brains and never experience Alzheimer’s disease, another aspect generally not mentioned. Conversely, if only tau is abnormal, and beta-amyloid is not involved, there is always a terminal neurological disease. to tangle.”
“Ha! The biomarkerThe thing with biomarkers is that they only work/make sense if the biological processes behind a disease are fully or at least largely understood. Only then is it possible to choose a proxy (the biomarker) for the final result (optimally a cured patient). Since the processes behind Alzheimer’s (more generally in the CNS) are badly understood this area is not well suited for biomarkers emperor has no clothes!”
“Wait. Isn’t it all about insulin resistance?A new short-term trial of intranasal insulin in Alzheimer’s patients and people with mild cognitive decline showed benefits on certain memory and functioning tests”
“Nix all the above. Just get quality sleep,“Levels of the protein increased in mice during the night — when mice are mostly awake — and fell during the day when mice sleep. The longer the mice stayed awake, the more amyloid-beta levels increased, the team found. The team also measured amyloid-beta levels in the cerebral spinal fluid of some healthy young people and found the same pattern observed in the mice — amyloid-beta levels increase when people are awake and fall during sleep.” and you’ll be fine.”

If you think this is funny, these basic statistics will sober you up:
* As of 2010, there are 5.4 million people in the US with Alzheimer’s
* Almost half the people over 85 have Alzheimer’s
* When the baby boomers come of Alzheimer’s age, the costs of care for this disease alone will cripple Medicare and Medicaid
* Federal funding for research into a cure is dropping fast
* YOU will be paying for either your own care or for that of a loved one if a cure is not found. And YOU will either be grossly neglected when this disease hits you, or you will die the slow death of stress from caregiving for someone else.

Bottom line: research into Alzheimer’s—its cause(s), treatment, and cure—is alarmingly urgent and terribly underfunded.

There are plenty of people out there who believe we shouldn’t put money into research at all, because so far nothing has been found to stay the course of “Alzheimer’s” dementia, and the whole drug industryAnother new frontier for drug companies’ illicit profits. Vaccines, invented “syndromes” and now, allegedly predicting who will come down with what disease and medicating them for decades before the possible advent of that disease. With no certainty the disease will manifest this is pure sham. And the pharmas will profit double from their con job — think of the so-called “mind drugs” that will be prescribed to mediate the untold psychological effects on people given future death sentences regarding this or that disease! is just a ploy to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical fat cats. If you’re in that group, you can stop reading this now. If, however, you would really like to see your Mom or Dad or Yourself able to have a meaningful conversation with your loved ones and know who you’re talking to—hopefully for the rest of your life—read on, because the question isn’t whether or not to research. The question is where do we put our research dollars?

Not a simple answer when you consider that the reigning paradigm for Alzheimer’s research is serious question.

Let me explain with recent findings from my own readings:

A couple weeks ago I attended a Cure Alzheimer’s Fund webinar presented by Dr. Rudy Tanzi (of Massachusetts General’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease) on Alzheimer’s research and drug development.

Beta Amyloid: Clues From Our Genes

Dr. Tanzi’s group is in the “clues from our genes” pool (looking at the genes as a starting point rather than, say, looking at diet first). The dominant belief in this pool up until recently is that beta amyloid plaque accumulation in the brain, followed always by tau tangles, are the two main biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease. That is, where there is Alzheimer’s, there is an overabundance of beta amyloid plaque and destruction caused by tau in the brain. Also, a higher load of plaque correlates with a higher degree of dementia (see slide from webinar). Plus, as this accumulation progresses and moves to different parts of the brain, there is a parallel manifestation of symptoms.

The connection seems pretty obvious. And Dr. Tanzi certainly has the credentials: back in the 80’s when he was studying Down’s Syndrome, he realized they had isolated the gene responsible for amyloid “plaque” deposits in the brain, and—given that all Down’s Syndrome sufferers end up with Alzheimer’s—thought to make a link between this gene and other cases of Alzheimer’s. From there it was one success after another, with Dr. Tanzi participating in the discovery of three of the four known gene mutations causing early-onset Alzheimer’s (these are the genes that guarantee you will get Alzheimer’s). Granted, early-onset AD accounts for only 5% of Alzheimer’s cases, but it does give weight to the conviction that Alzheimer’s has a genetic link. More recent studies looking at family history suggest that up to 80% of Alzheimer’s cases are genetically influenced (see slide from Tanzi’s presentation).

The presentation is convincing enough until you start reading the commentary in the field and start learning that current direction of research into the causes of Alzheimer’s“It’s one reason why the so-called amyloid hypothesis, which holds that to cure Alzheimer’s you have to curtail Aβ, is in question these days: There’s little evidence so far that fighting Aβ leads to a functional difference to patients.” is highly questioned.

Researchers coming on the scene today, for example, would argue that the plaque theory is circular reasoning. You can’t say that plaque leads to Alzheimer’s if you first define Alzheimer’s as “dementia with plaque.” And when your theory states that plaque accumulation leads to Alzheimer’s, the automatic null hypothesis is that where there is plaque (in copious amounts) you will always find dementia, and when plaque is cleared, dementia will go away.

But this has not born out. It is now known that “roughly one-third of all elderly adults have such plaques in their brains yet function normally.” It has also been proven that the elimination of beta amyloid plaque (achieved by the “Alzheimer’s vaccine”) does not cure dementia.

Thus the paradigm shake-up. Why continue with the biomarker research when the facts don’t bear an airtight connection? Is the “clues from our genes” group too heavily invested financially and psychologically in this line of research (as some suggest) to give it up as dead?

Dr. Tanzi responds to these fears in his recent presentation. He didn’t use the word per se, but nuance was the main come-back. All theories undergo refinement, and this plaque-causes-dementia theory is no exception. Looking at the genes may have lead to wrong conclusions in the past, but there are still some pretty interesting clues to follow going forward.

Here is a crude rendition of the protein-level pathology in Alzheimer’s:

Beta amyloid (Aβ) is cut off from its precursor protein; Aβ links to other ab in small clusters; Aβ kills nerve synapses; Aβ accumulates into plaques

For the past twenty years, research has focused on improving the symptoms of dementia by eliminating the final clusters of beta amyloid (plaques). Looking at the little diagram above, different drugs targeted the beta amyloid at different points on the linear progression toward plaque: Flurizan targeted the process that snipped the Aβ off its precursor protein; Alzemed tried to block the aggregation of Aβ; Dimebon was designed to protect the neurons from Aβ; one drug successfully immunized the brain against Aβ (resulting in clearance of plaque from the brain, inflammation in the brain, and progressive dementia); and finally, drugs were developed (Aricept and Namenda) to act at the symptomatic level.

None has had any significant effect“No treatment is available to slow or stop the deterioration of brain cells in Alzheimer’s disease. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved five drugs that temporarily slow worsening of symptoms for about six to 12 months, on average, for about half of the individuals who take them.” on the brain’s function in memory tests.

Tanzi’s response? Perhaps the reason drug trials fail is that the potency of the drug is off—either too weak or too strong—and funding for a subsequent trial is cut off. Or perhaps researchers need to stare at the diagram a little longer and find out whether beta amyloid needs to be left to do some mission, then cleared before it wreaks havoc on the synapses.

Which is exactly what happened with Dr. Tanzi—a little stroll through the lab, a light-bulb moment, and Tanzi discovers that beta amyloid kills bacteria and yeast like nobody’s business. Beta amyloid is a good guy? The plaques themselves are just “a field of bullets” left over from some major battle?

Definitely worth an investigation. A new direction.

To Fund Or Not to Fund

So it turns out that looking at clues from the genes is not a paralyzing avenue of research after all. Is the paradigm really dead, or just needing refinement? In the new direction of Alzheimer’s research, Dr. Tanzi’s findings have lead to a more recent drug (PBT2) that takes the “antibiotic” role of beta amyloid into account as it tries to clear its toxic leftovers. Do we pull the plug on funding just when the story is getting really interesting?

The competition out there is fierce. You would think from some of the stinging accusations aimed at the “old school” research that funding for groups such as Tanzi’s should be questioned. Yet, as the webinar pointed out, “the vast majority of our knowledge about AD and AD drug discovery has been based on studies of the four known AD genes over the past two decades.” That’s old school success.

On the down side, “about 70% of AD genetics is unexplained by the four known AD genes.” On the further down side, it’s going to take A LOT of funding to find the genetic culprits for the rest of Alzheimer’s cases. And genetics is still only one of several approaches to studying this disease! (Besides, paradigms don’t die until a better one supersedes it, and there is no airtight theory out there yet).

Do we put all our eggs in one basket? What if there aren’t enough eggs to spread around to the different baskets?

Frankly, I don’t know the answer to this question.

There are a couple good reasons I think the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund group is worth supporting, though. One reason is the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund website itself. The Internet has plenty of faults, but it also has the advantage of open criticism. If you look at the comments sections of one of the papers put out by Tanzi’s group on the Alzheimer’s Forum, you’ll see an open debate. It’s free collaboration. It’s crowdsourcing at its best. I think it multiplies the value of your funding dollar.

Another reason is that I’ve suspected my own mother’s caseStay tuned for a post on this topic to be of possible bacterial/fungal originAt a speculative level, one alternative explanation would be that some cases of AD could result from a persistent CSF infection, or from a transient infection that went away but engendered a permanent Aβ response and its attendant immune modulation. and am dying to see what this group finds in their new line of research. The only thing I fear is the psychological barrier to this new approach.

A Taboo Research Project?

To be specific: the two agents being considered by Tanzi’s group as possible aggressors in the beta amyloid battle are Chlamydia and Candida Albicans. But looking at Candida Albicans as a possible cause of anything is TABOO in mainstream medicine. Just browse the comments section of a recent article in the New York Times about Candida Albicans, and you’ll see what I mean.

Will Tanzi’s group have the courage to fight all the enemies of research at the same time: tainted motives (the desire for personal glory), psychological entrapment (continuing in a line of research simply because it’s been going on for so long), and mainstream opinion about what is acceptable research (we do not look at X)?

I guess it’s going to take a lot of money to find out. Which brings us back to the basket issue.

Do we have to duplicate Alzheimer’s research at the Federal and State levels? The state of Texas, for example (being one of the top three states that will go broke paying for Alzheimer’s care in the future), is spreading its research egg money into several baskets:
* Science
* Prevention and Brain Health
* Disease Management
* Caregiving
* Infrastructure.

Why repeat this with every state, plus private groups on the side? Is there a way to get more collaboration between research groups? The well of needed funding is infinitely deep, so why are we digging multiple wells?

I guess part of the answer is that individual motivation for research (even if it is for personal glory) is the strongest kind you can find, and therefore the best engine for finding a cure. And likewise, education plus individual conviction will drive donations. There is certainly enough information available at one’s fingertips to give no one who is interested in a cure an excuse to sit on the sidelines!

So what will you do?

Because where there is a will, there will be a way to end the increasingly long goodbye.

For further reference:
Beta-Amyloid: An Antibiotic? (with a slew of interesting comments)
Alzheimer’s Brain Tangles Offer Clue To Worsening
Alzheimer’s Disease: No End to Dementia
New Potential Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease Detected
Alzheimer’s Scary Link to Diabetes
Follow the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Ride journal
An video report on several intriguing theories of Alzheimer’s.

Today a nice physical therapist came to assess a treatment program for Dad—to help him regain his balance and mobility and in so doing help him milk the summer ahead of us.

A couple hours later, while sitting at the table Dad asked me in an unusually clear voice, "What's the agenda?"

I looked up from the computer, slid my glasses down, and asked back, "Agenda for your physical therapy?"

"No."

"Agenda for life?" (I thought I’d go for the gusto).

"Yes." He smiled.

"Ah. Well. The agenda for life is to live more fully. You are going to get back to being more fully you. We are going to visit the local museum, go see the natural wonders around us, go to the big city to check out the OMSI exhibit."

He smiled more broadly. We're on the right track.

Shoot, this Parkinson's is going to be a nuisance, but we are going to live one shaky bite, one shuffling step, one tough lesson, one adventurous ride, one grateful day at a time.

This week I started wearing the monovision contact lens that I got three years ago. This is the lens that you wear in one eye to correct for reading while leaving the other eye free to focus on things in the distance.
I tried this lens years ago but found it unacceptable. Everything was at once blurry and sharp, and I couldn’t tolerate the tiniest bit of blur in my vision.
I realized it was a mental adjustment—I would have to learn to choose the sharpness of one eye over the blurriness of the other at any distance until all I saw was sharpness. But I was impatient and gave up on the adjustment period, resorting instead to donning and doffing reading glasses when in need.
Now my close-up vision has gotten so bad that when I tried the monovision lens this time, my mind was quite happy to accept the gift of semi-sharpness without the need to scout around for glasses. It took a very short time, in fact, for my brain to adjust and see all things in focus at all distances.
Remarkable how the brain can do that.
I learned a similar lesson in life with the attitude of gratitude. I was going through a very stressful, heart-rending period when nothing seemed to be “working” for me. One day I plopped down on the floor and began to say “thank you” for every part of my life. It was a turning point in my stress level. I began to see not problems but challenges; not curses but blessings. And what a difference it made!
Alzheimer’s and other devastating diseases, I’m noticing, can be lenses that change the way we see life; they change what we think is important; they bring into focal clarity the gift of family, friends, community, connection. I’m amazed as I surf the blogs written by sufferers and caregivers to see the softness that takes over when anger ends. I’m amazed, for example, with Michael J. Fox’s attitude toward his Parkinson’s, calling it a “liberating” gift. I’m touched by the may bloggers who share of the immense struggle of caregiving and the eventual gratitude it produces in them.
It’s always a choice the person makes to see disease differently. Or rather, to see the value of the person despite the disease.
In this season of Thanksgiving, it is good to see the change that Alzheimer’s and other diseases have brought to our self-centered culture.
So, thank you to all of you who write and share of your struggles, forming a new community that chooses to rise above bitterness and embrace even the bleakest, darkest days of life for the goodness they produce.

In my research on Alzheimer’s and glucose metabolism, I ran across a fascinating article about the brain’s default system–that part of the brain that is affected in Alzheimer’s Disease; that part of the brain that hogs glucose like no other part of the brain.

In The Secret Life of the Brain, Douglas Fox brings together research on the default network beginning with Dr. Sokoloff who, in his attempt to find out why the brain uses so much glucose (20% of the body’s supply), discovered that the brain uses as much energy while “at rest” as it does while performing tasks.

Later, a neuroscientist named Marcus Reichle discovered a kind of “brain within the brain” that works its butt off when it’s supposedly in “idle mode.”

Raichle and Shulman published a paper in 2001 suggesting that they had stumbled onto a previously unrecognised “default mode” – a sort of internal game of solitaire which the brain turns to when unoccupied and sets aside when called on to do something else. This brain activity occurred largely in a cluster of regions arching through the midline of the brain, from front to back, which Raichle and Shulman dubbed the default network (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 98, p 676).

It was found that some parts of this network devoured 30 per cent more calories, gram for gram, than nearly any other area of the brain. Since part of this default system is in constant communication with the hippocampus (which records every day memories), Reichler speculated that its function was to sort, evaluate, and categorize memories in such a way that would allow the brain to use the past as an “inner rehearsal” for considering future actions and choices.

Brilliant. Just when you think daydreaming is a waste of time, it turns out it’s crucial for living.

Raichle now believes that the default network is involved, selectively storing and updating memories based on their importance from a personal perspective – whether they’re good, threatening, emotionally painful, and so on. To prevent a backlog of unstored memories building up, the network returns to its duties whenever it can.

In support of this idea, Raichle points out that the default network constantly chatters with the hippocampus. It also devours huge amounts of glucose, way out of proportion to the amount of oxygen it uses. Raichle believes that rather than burning this extra glucose for energy it uses it as a raw material for making the amino acids and neurotransmitters it needs to build and maintain synapses, the very stuff of memory. “It’s in those connections where most of the cost of running the brain is,” says Raichle.

Reichler later attented a lecture by an Alzheimer’s specialist and was shown a map of beta amyloid plaques (those clumps found in Alzheimer’s autopsies) in the brain. The picture looked exactly like the default network!

Raichle, Greicius and Buckner have since found that the default network’s pattern of activity is disrupted in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. They have also begun to monitor default network activity in people with mild memory problems to see if they can learn to predict who will go on to develop Alzheimer’s. Half of people with memory problems go on to develop the disease, but which half? “Can we use what we’ve learned to provide insight into who’s at risk for Alzheimer’s?” says Buckner.

That got me thinking…

Maybe one reason we lose memories is that our lifestyle doesn’t allow for much rich idle time like when we would sit on the porch sipping sweet tea on a hot afternoon. So the default network can never do its work of sorting and categorizing memories, and consequently we lose them.

And if this is a problem with the present generation, how much moreso for the upcoming generation. We are consumed with having something to pay attention to all the time. Just look at TV screens these days: not only do you have the main screen, but there’s the pop-up ad for the “next show,” a caption for what’s going on on the screen, and a ticker at the bottom of the screen for what’s happening elsewhere.

Maybe part of the solution for AD is the “quiet space” to be incorporated in school, at work, and at home. Hmm, come to think of it, I offered this very solution in a comment to an article in Time Magazine back in 09 (Turn Off, Tune In, Log Out):

I predict that the twitterification of our society is going to lead to an exponential increase in early-onset Alzheimer’s. We’re increasing the rate of input to our brains and decreasing the time for processing information, and our brains are going to revolt. That, in turn, will lead to the next big industry: de-twitterification rooms where you can sit alone and unconnected, with nothing but a giant aquarium and a beanbag. -Marty

SEE ALSO Language and the Brain’s Default Network in Alzheimer’s

The topic of fasting and Alzheimer’s has been on my mind lately because, well, Alzheimer’s is always on my mind and because recently a friend of mine got on this diet where you’re supposed to eat six small meals a day to trick your body into not storing fat.

Since intermittent fasting has been shown to slow body and brain aging, I wonder (the fat part aside) what this continual eating is doing to the brain.

From Psychology Today (2003):

It has been known for years that sharply restricting the calorie intake of laboratory animals increases their life span. But a new study by researchers from the National Institute on Aging found
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The following describes the knowledge gained by Sharlene in the course of caring for both her parents with Alzheimer’s. It is not necessarily a reflection of my views, but I thought it good to publish the research of someone who has an insider’s view of Alzheimer’s dementia.

Sharlene Spalding is a naturopathic consultant in the village of Casco, ME. She is a former primary caregiver for two parents with AD. She holds a master’s degree in natural wellness. Sharlene is an excellent resource in natural healing and a hound dog when it comes to research. Because of what she knows now, she is committed to a pharmaceutical-free home that revolves around organic foods and herbs. You can visit her website at The Village Naturopath.

When I Knew Better, I Did Better

The receptionist had left me on hold too long. I had hoped to talk to my mom and dadʼs alzheimerʼs doctor, but I could hear my parents downstairs arguing. I quickly switched options and left my message. “Hello Dr ____. This is Sharlene Spalding. We wonʼt be making our appointment next month or any months. My parents are living with me now. The trip is just too far, and my dad will most likely refuse to go see you anyway.” Cheerfully I added, “Give us a call sometime!”

It is true the trip was much longer now. It is true that my father would have fought about going to see the doctor. But the real reason–after seven years of the three of us dutifully keeping our appointments–was that I had determined the doctor visits were pretty much a big waste of time and energy. My energy was better spent either engaging my parents or studying this Alzheimer’s disease.

For seven years I had been studying how the broken brain still works, as well as how it fails. My motivation stemmed from the Alzheimer’s diagnosis of my parents. My obsessive study evolved for two other reasons: 1) I was working on my master’s degree as a naturopath and the study gave me endless material to write papers on, and 2) I was (and still am) determined to prevent Alzheimer’s for myself. With two parents and both my motherʼs sisters with Alzheimer’s, I did not need a genetic test to determine if I carry the genetic marker for Alzheimer’s.

Epigenesis is the study of gene expression. The molecular basis of epigenesis is complex. It involves modifications of the activation of certain genes, but not the basic structure or sequence of DNA. The proteins associated with DNA can be activated or silenced. This theory claims environmental and other choices can influence these proteins, therefore influence a set of observable characteristics. It is a relatively new scientific study.

Everyone is searching for the one thing that causes diseases like Alzheimer’s. The three of us did anyways, but we no longer think Alzheimer’s is caused by one thing or can be fixed by one pill. Believe me, no one has to tell us how complex this disease is. We live it every day. We know there are lots of multiple factors from our lifestyle and environment that interact with our genes. As complicated as it is, we have decided to tackle all factors to help rewire our brains:

• We believe foods tell our cells what to do and how to repair DNA. One of us studied that DNA is a nucleic acid. Always self-replicating from new amino acids. Fancy name for protein molecules. We believe we can influence these molecules and therefore our cells of the DNA. Therefore, we eat almost all organic food, certainly all vegetables, most fruit, coffee and milk. All our meat is from local farms. We believe that pesticides are toxic to our cells and our digestive system. We believe all our genes get confused from all the toxins. We would never eat farm-raised fish. We never eat anything that is reduced fat or salt, cholesterol free, enriched, fortified or artificially sweetened. We avoid all foods that man has altered. We believe God intended for our time here on earth to be healthy, and He placed everything we need to be able to do just that. We see all medications as toxic, and got off all meds. No more anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, statins or high blood pressure meds. Nothing, zero. One of us was a little bit fat and lost 10 lbs and reduced cholesterol numbers significantly once off their statin. Psychoses and anxieties disappeared when we settled into our new environment. For one of us, depression still occasionally reared its ugly head every time “she” remembered “she” could no longer remember. Blood pressure was never really a problem for any of us (not sure why those doctors had any of us on that).

• We live spiritually, and make extra effort to center and harmonize our energy. We exercise. We play in the lake. We listen to music. We love to listen to a live piano player. We tell the Jesus birth story from November till January over and over. We listen and sing Christmas songs over and over too. We sometimes go across the street to a special service for old people who want to hear about Jesus. We sometimes recite the “ Our Father” together. We talk and play with our cat even though one of us thinks it is a dog.

• We get ample amounts of vitamin D, always striving for more vitamin D through sunlight without any use of sunscreen. Sunscreen blocks 97% of vitamin D. We think the daily requirement for vitamin D is around 500 IU. We get closer to 5000. We use relaxation techniques. Techniques such as lavender aromatherapy, valerian root, medical marijuana in brownies. Brownies and ice cream time is always a favorite for us three.

• Turmeric. Some one told the three of us that there are areas of rural Nigeria that show a much, much lower incidence of Alzheimer’s. High amounts of the turmeric are eaten in curry in these areas. As these natives move closer to the cities and eat more westernized diets, the incidence of Alzheimer’s rises. Turmeric is a famous anti-inflammatory. Autopsy of Alzheimer’s brains always show a great amount of inflammation. Different studies have claimed inflammation is the root cause of all diseases.

• Omega 3. We choose pure Krill Oil. Omega 3 is the main structure of our brain cell membranes. There is no way a brain can be healthy without healthy brain cell membranes. The benefits of omega 3 are just too numerous to mention.

• Hemp Seed. Hemp seed is probably the most complete amino acid food on earth. Acetylcholine is amino acid molecular structure. Acetylcholine is the famous neurotransmitter that fails in Alzheimer’s Disease. Thousands of them are situated on the brain cell membrane.

• Milk Thistle. This herb promotes glutathione production. Glutathione is also required genetically for synthesis and repair of DNA as well as a powerful antioxidant that neutralizes free radicals that go around damaging cells. Immune function, nerve function and cell signaling functions are also heavily influenced by glutathione.

• Coconut Oil. We know coconut oil to be a Medium Chain Fatty Acid. MFCAʼs stimulate metabolism and glucose absorption to the cell. Glucose needs to enter and feed the cell through the mitochondria. The mitochondria is where the earliest transformation of food to fuel occurs in the cell. Most foods require insulin for this job. Coconut oil does not. MCFAʼs can penetrate the mitochondria membrane even in absence of insulin. It is extremely low on the Glycemic Index table. Certainly all diabetics and people with Alzheimerʼs should know about this extremely efficient delivery of glucose to the cell. FYI- extremely delicious in a pineapple-banana smoothie.

• Cholesterol. We all eat moderate amounts of animal saturated fat. We love crock pot beef stew with vegetables from the garden. It is a favorite with homemade bread and real butter (one of us occasionally tried to butter her napkin thinking it was bread). Cholesterol is the lipid that makes up a big part of the brain cell membrane–second after Omega 3. It is also needed for countless hormonal actions.

• Barley Grass. We eat organic barley grass in capsules. Barley Grass does not contain every nutrient, but it comes closer than any other food. All the B complexes, C, E, beta carotene, betaine, biotin, boron, copper, iron, lutein, magnesium, manganese, zinc, niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, methionine, valine, chlorophyl, glutamic acid, linoleic acid, potassium, selenium, calcium, and more. Two of us complain about these capsules but most of the time cooperate in taking them.

My mom died August 22nd, 2011. She fell and broke her hip on July 27th and although she made it through the surgery well, her Alzheimer’s was too advanced for rehab. She died in hospice with me by her side. My mom always knew there was something terribly wrong with her brain and she verbally agonized about it till the day she stopped talking, which was toward the end of hospice. Above is a true presentation of goals we strived for everyday. Me, my mom. my dad. They moved in with me on Oct 26, 2009. We had incredibly difficult days, especially at the beginning. We had some incredibly good hours and some days that would be good from start to finish. Obviously on many levels my caregiving was really “out of the box” and “off the cuff.” But I never waffled from the fundamental commitment to nutrition each day. My goal was always to maximize our metabolisms and balance our energy fields, so our brain cells would behave intelligently and cooperatively. I hope I donʼt have to tell you how fundamental the love was, although there were hours I did not even like them. Just today, when I reflected back, I thought, “I wish I knew then what I know now.” I have done that almost everyday for seven years. I do know that when I knew better, I did better. I know I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.

My dad is doing wonderful. It is miracle how well he is doing. And by the way, the doctor never did call us back.

I am Sharlene Spalding, a naturopathic consultant in the village of Casco, ME. I am a former primary caregiver for two parents with AD. I hold a master’s degree in natural wellness. I am an excellent resource in natural healing and a hound dog when it comes to research. Always “out of the box” research. Because of what I know now, I am committed to a pharmaceutical-free home that revolves around organic foods and herbs. You can visit my website at http://www.thevillagenaturopath.com.

In continuation of Alzheimer’s and Glucose Metabolism: The Niacinamide Experiment Part 1

This post is simply me mulling over things I’ve read in light of Mom’s dementia and my own experience with stress and mental short-circuiting, with the conclusion that in some cases of Alzheimer’s, intestinal flora could be greatly to blame. My conclusion also points to the possible way niacinamide could function in correcting one of the malfunctions in the gut-brain axis.

The Gut-Brain Axis

In-depth studies of human intestinal microbes are just now coming into maturity. The Human Microbiome Project is fueled by the increasing belief that the population of bacteria and yeasts that inhabit the human digestive tract is greatly responsible for how the body and mind develop and how they continue to function or malfunction as we tinker with the balance of flora in our gut:

Visionaries are hoping for cures for some forms of obesity and anorexia along with various forms of cancer, asthma, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, lupus, and most of the major psychiatric diseases. In the future, Blaser [of the infectious-disease research lab at New York University] says, pediatricians could help prevent these diseases by infecting babies with a starter kit of friendly bacteria. “Bottom line, humans and our fellow animals have been colonized by microbes for a very long time, going back a billion years. The microbes that we carry have been selected because they are helpful to us. They participate in human physiology. They are a compartment of the body, like the liver or the heart.” (1)

When the BP oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico, we were all
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