Download Alzheimer`s Summary and Synthesis MC2

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Alzheimer’s articles summary and synthesis—MC2
As we get older, or we see our loved ones get older, nothing may bring more
nightmares than the thought of a scenario where a beloved family member is still physically
fit, but the mind is entirely gone. What do you do when the soul and the spirit of the person
you loved is gone, but the body remains? This is the nightmare of Alzheimer’s, a debilitating
mental disease which has been steadily rising in incidence during the last thirty years. The
specter of this disease is even more frightful due its seeming randomness. Who will get it and
when can seem like a mystery, or more like a horror story, to the general population.
However, those in the medical profession postulate a link between diabetes and Alzheimer.
Mark Bittman, an opinion and food columnist for the New York Times, reports that
medical researchers began conjecturing that Alzheimer’s is a type of diabetes, a third type.
Type 1 diabetes is the kind of diabetes that children are born with, while Type 2 diabetes was
commonly referred to as “adult onset” diabetes, meaning that it was the kind that people got
later in life, as adults. Then it became so common in children that the “adult onset”
designation had to be scrapped. Now Bittman reports that medical researchers began to view
Alzheimer’s as a third type of diabetes in 2005.
So how is Alzheimer’s similar to diabetes? In a normal body, insulin is produced in
response to the presence of glycogen, a form of sugar, in the blood as part of the normal
process of moving the sugar out of the bloodstream and into cells, and converting the sugar
into energy. A Type 1 diabetic is unable to produce the needed insulin due to an immune
system malfunction that damages the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. In Type 2
diabetes, our own lifestyle choices override the functioning of a normal pancreas. By
constantly flooding our bloodstreams with excess sugar from soft drinks and other processed
foods, we reset our cell’s response to insulin. The cells resist the uptake of excess sugar,
requiring the pancreas to produce more insulin to push the sugar out of our blood. In return,
cells become ever more resistant to insulin, until finally, we exhaust our pancreas’s ability to
produce sufficient insulin to process the excess sugar. The end result is diabetes, and a
number of related health problems including heart disease, and Alzheimer’s when the cells in
our brains become resistant to insulin.
Dr. Suzanne DeLaMonte, a Neuropathologist at Brown University’s Alpert Medical
School and Rhode Island Hospital calls Alzheimer’s “a brain form of diabetes” because
“Even in the earliest stages of disease, the brain’s ability to metabolize sugar is reduced.”
Your brain cells will “starve to death” as they lose the ability to take in sugar from the blood.
This means you brain needs to create more insulin to facilitate the transfer of sugar to the
brain; however, this excess insulin can also damage the small blood vessels in the brain.
While not all diabetics are destined to contract Alzheimer’s disease, DeLaMonte
informs that there is “considerable overlap between Alzheimer’s and diabetes” with diabetics
having double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. DeLaMonte also explains that Alzheimer’s
is risk related to lifestyle choices, not genetics. The incidence of Alzheimer’s is rising in all
age groups of American society, a change too rapid to be caused by genetics. Instead,
DeLaMonte points the finger of blame at nitrites, preservatives found in many processed
foods like ham, sausages, and beer that are converted into nitrosamines, a well-known
carcinogen also found in cigarette smoke, after they are ingested by the body. DeLaMonte’s
research find that nitrosamines injected onto the brain triggered insulin resistance and
Alzheimer’s. She concludes that extended low level exposure to nitrosamines could lead to
insulin resistance and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.
Bittman reveals the magnitude of a future Alzheimer’s epidemic. As the rates for Type
2 diabetes have tripled in the last 40 years, a concurrent increase in Alzheimer’s patients will
mean that the present 5.4 million Americans (with a cost of $200 billion in medical care) will
balloon to over 115 million Alzheimer patients worldwide in forty years, costing over a
trillion of our present day dollars in medical care.
So what steps can we take to avoid this health care crisis? Bittman encourages us to
“put down that soda!” and avoid the fat and sugar filled standard American diet. DeLaMonte
suggests that we go organic, eat more locally produced meats and vegetables, and read labels
carefully to avoid processed foods that include sodium nitrate as an ingredient. If we better
control how we procure and cook our food, we can make the healthy choices that give us a
better chance of living long lives, both physically and mentally.