Health

Insulin May Treat and Prevent Alzheimer's Disease

by Terri Potratz | February 2, 2009 at 03:56 pm

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A research team from Northwestern University has found that insulin may combat Alzheimer's disease by protecting brain synapses from harm. After emerging theories that Alzheimer's may actually be a third form of diabetes, this new relationship between Alzheimer's and insulin treatment provides compelling evidence toward the link between diabetes and dementia.

In a study of neurons taken from the hippocampus, one of the brain's crucial memory centers, the scientists treated cells with insulin and the insulin-sensitizing drug rosiglitazone, which has been used to treat type 2 diabetes. (Isolated hippocampal cells are used by scientists to study memory chemistry; the cells are susceptible to damage caused by ADDLs, toxic proteins that build up in persons with Alzheimer's disease.)

The researchers discovered that damage to neurons exposed to ADDLs was blocked by insulin, which kept ADDLs from attaching to the cells. They also found that protection by low levels of insulin was enhanced by rosiglitazone.

ADDLs (short for "amyloid beta-derived diffusible ligands") are known to attack memory-forming synapses. After ADDL binding, synapses lose their capacity to respond to incoming information, resulting in memory loss.

If synapses can be protected from the deteriorating effects of AADLs then the onset of memory loss might be prevented or prolonged. The findings will be published in the Proceedings of the National Aceademy of Sciences journal.

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harringtola

at 17:44 on February 2nd, 2009

This is a very encouraging and informative report. Thank you.

patgarcia

at 18:48 on February 2nd, 2009

I wonder what the relationship of insulin resistance is to all this. Thanks for posting.

Roy C

at 19:06 on February 2nd, 2009

From what I have read the insulin aspect is that there is a lack of sensitivity to insulin in the brain that helps cause Alzheimer's. Here is a link: Alzheimer's and Secondary Diabetes.

I had heard about the amyloid and the problem is that the amyloid chokes off the usual biochemical path for making ATP, so the brain uses an inferior pathway, the glucose-phosphate shunt.

Anyway, to prevent Alzheimer's in myself, I use DMAE to prevent the buildup of lipofuscin, the pigment we see in our skin that as we age. In experiments, rats given extra DMAE, a precursor to the vitamin choline, which can be changed to acetylcholine, the DMAE acted as a surfactant, something like the way soap allows fat and water to mix, and removed the pigment extending the life of the rats by more than 25%.

Animals given anti-oxidants in high doses tend not to accumulate amyloid.

There is also a lot of experimentation pointing to adding acetyl-l-carnitine arginate to restore dendrites, the branches of the neurons. I am going to be adding that one to my vitamin regimen.

I get my information from Life Extension Foundation and Vitamin Research Products. I have been reading about this stuff since my mid-twenties and taking anti-oxidants since I was 21.

Terri Potratz

at 19:26 on February 2nd, 2009

Thanks for your comment!

I wonder though about antioxidants - what are your thoughts on the recent studies that have debunked the free radical theory?

patgarcia

at 20:09 on February 9th, 2009

Roy C.

Thanks for all these valuable information!

Roy C

at 21:52 on February 2nd, 2009

Really, "debunked the free radical theory". I will have to read that article.

We know that free radical scavenging enzymes such as SOD and glutathione peroxidase are the two enzymes that keep us living longer, and that the animals that have the most of this, live the longest.

SuperOxideDismutase uses zinc as a co-factor and the glutathione uses selenium. Next time you have some allergic reaction in your eye, or conjunctivitis, try some vitamin B2 and some selenium selenite together. The selenium lets the glutathione work and the vitamin B2 recirculates the glutathione refreshing as the co-factor of glutathione reductase. Your allergies will reduce quickly and your conjunctivitis will virtually disappear. You need the liquid form of selenium, though.

The National Cancer Institute of the National Science Foundation did a study of the relationship of the quantity of selenium in the diet of Americans and their cancer rate.

They found that 200 micrograms of selenium will add seven years to the life of the average American by preventing or delaying all cancers, acting as the co-factor of glutathione.

BHT extends the life of animals as an anti-oxidant. I could go on and on. It also works on herpes. The BHT dissolves itself in the fatty coat of the herpes virus, the fatty coat that makes it difficult for the immune system to detect it. The coat comes off as a result and the immune system kills the virus.

When BHT was added to the American diet in a cereal, our stomach cancer rate went down. This was about 1950 or so. BHT prevents the nitrosomines that are the natural result of digestion in the stomach from becoming free radicals damaging the stomach and causing stomach cancer. Vitamin C, a weak antioxidant, also helps prevent stomach cancer the same way.

Roy C

at 21:47 on February 2nd, 2009

Most of the aging process now is seen as the result of inflammation caused by prostaglandins fueled by a diet too rich in the less desirable polyunsaturates which have the omega-6 fats in them.

Safflower oil and all those oils pushed by Norton Simon commission that said we should buy and use the soybean oil that Norton Simon was selling. Instead you should use olive oil or canola oil because they are neutral and use fish oil and flax seed oil in your diet to help promote the synthesis of the anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Anti-oxidants help lessen the problems of inflammation but taking omega-3 oils in sufficient amount will do more.

BHT, a synthetic anti-oxidant, extends the life of experimental animals and if the animal strain is cancer prone, the extension could risteto forty percent from the twenty-five percent that has been demonstrated in normal rats, for example.

That article overstates the case. Somebody didn't like Denham Harmon and wanted to do him in.

You see this all the time. The New York Times will have an article about how vitamins don't work.

They don't tell you that the Vitamin E works fine on preventing cancer if you use co-enzymeQ10 with it or that doctors now give massive doses of Vitamin D to heart patients.

The free radical theory was always more complex that this article implies.