How far are we from Alzheimer's disease if we love staying up all night and are addicted to sweets and salty foods?

September 21st of every year is World Alzheimer's Day, and this year is the 27th year. At least 50 million people in the world suffer from various forms of dementia, and one person is diagnosed every 3 seconds. About 60 to 70 percent of them are Alzheimer's disease. Because this disease is directly positively correlated with age, with the intensification of global aging, the number of Alzheimer's patients will increase significantly to 125 million by 2050.

Alzheimer's disease (AD for short) is like an eraser that can erase the brain's memory. Once a person becomes ill, his memory begins to be cleared bit by bit, from mild to severe. The person gradually loses basic work and social skills, then slowly loses the ability to survive, and eventually falls into a chaotic world.

I recently saw a report about Alzheimer's disease. A couple has been together for many years. The husband, who used to be diligent and methodical, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease shortly after retirement. Since then, he has gradually lost track of the road, himself, and his relatives. The wife heard about a new brain-computer interface technology reported online. If there is a glimmer of hope for a cure, she can implant a chip in her husband. But after consulting a doctor, she learned that it is too early for this technology to be tested on humans, and it is even more difficult to predict whether it can treat Alzheimer's disease.

Such a choice is indeed moving and discouraging. There is still no effective drug or treatment for Alzheimer's disease, which seems to be a natural byproduct of the extension of human life span. However, from the current scientific research, humans have a certain understanding of Alzheimer's disease and are trying to find out the cause of this disease.

Research shows that although this disease usually occurs in middle-aged and elderly people, its root cause may have begun long before. Modern people's bad habits in diet, sleep and some lifestyle are the accomplices of Alzheimer's disease.

In the future, whether Alzheimer's disease can be conquered by humans is still a great unknown. Instead of pinning our hopes on cutting-edge black technologies such as "brain-computer interface", it is better to pay attention to the relevant causes and prevention strategies of this disease in advance.

No matter how far we are from Alzheimer's disease, it is always better to know than to ignore.

Alzheimer's disease: a mystery

People often refer to Alzheimer's disease as "senile dementia", but there are actually two major misunderstandings here. Not all dementias belong to Alzheimer's disease. It only accounts for 60% to 80% of the "dementia" type. In addition, "dementia" does not only occur in the elderly. Patients with early-onset AD may show symptoms in their forties or fifties.

(Damage to neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain responsible for learning and memory)

Alzheimer's disease is a degenerative disease that causes cognitive dysfunction, reduced daily living ability, and mental and behavioral abnormalities in patients. There is still no definite conclusion on its cause. The current mainstream theories include the genetic factor hypothesis, the β-amyloid protein hypothesis, the tau protein hypothesis, etc., but none of them have been clearly confirmed, and the corresponding treatments have no significant effect.

For example, experimental evidence for the amyloid-β hypothesis continues to grow. One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease is the appearance and deposition of amyloid-β (plaques) in the brain. In response to this hypothesis, the treatment methods given by the medical community focus on clearing these β-protein plaques, but various attempts have had little effect.

The latest study comes from the Technical University of Munich in Germany. The research team found that the clue to the impairment of learning and memory in Ad patients is the "overactivity" of neurons caused by the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate in the brain.

The study, published in the journal Science, is the first to reveal the mechanism of cellular dysfunction in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, revealing that long before memory impairment occurs, the pathological neurons are overactivated, causing the brain's neurons to constantly receive erroneous signals, resulting in impaired signal processing.

Glutamate is the most important chemical in neurotransmitters that help transmit signals between neurons. It is responsible for activating and connecting neurons. Researchers have found that in the synaptic cleft of overactive neurons, glutamate concentrations are higher and last longer. This is also due to the "mischief" of beta-amyloid molecules, which prevent glutamate from being transported out of the synaptic cleft. Moreover, the overactivity of glutamate formed by this neurotransmitter blockade is formed when the beta-amyloid molecules are in the early soluble medium period. That is, after the plaques are formed, it is too late.

However, this study itself is still speculative, and if the treatment is successful, it may be possible to reversely confirm this research hypothesis. But for us, we don’t have to know all the causes of Alzheimer’s disease. Perhaps if we know what causes the formation of beta-amyloid protein molecules and tau proteins, we can effectively reduce our chances of developing AD.

It is said that changing what can be changed and accepting what cannot be changed, and distinguishing between the two, is our rational choice.

In a macro sense, the cause of Alzheimer's disease is determined by lifestyle and environment, and part of it is caused by specific genetic lesions. Familial Alzheimer's disease caused by genetic inheritance only accounts for a small part of the patient population, but this is also where many people need to pay attention and be vigilant. You can check whether you also have related pathogenic genes based on whether there are AD patients in your family. The vast majority of them are caused by aging. The main risk factors for Alzheimer's disease are age, gender (women are more likely to get sick), positive family history, Down syndrome, head trauma, chronic diseases, less brain use, less social interaction and bad living habits.

We will not discuss many pathogenic factors that are difficult to change, but we can seriously understand the modifiable factors such as bad living habits. According to the latest research, bad sleeping and eating habits are the main causes of brain lesions and the production of pathogenic factors such as β-amyloid molecules.

Poor sleep may lead to Alzheimer's disease

Recently, a study by the University of California, Berkeley was published in Current Biology, a journal of the Cell journal. The research team found that in healthy people, people with poor sleep quality will accumulate more beta-amyloid in their brains after a few years. In the four-year follow-up study, although the participants did not develop clinical symptoms such as cognitive decline, the results showed that participants with less deep sleep and more fragmented sleep in the previous sleep assessment accumulated beta-amyloid in their brains faster in the following years, which indicates the silent occurrence of Alzheimer's disease.

Lack of sleep is now becoming a major problem for teenagers and many middle-aged people. Busy schoolwork has become the main killer of young people's sleep. Originally, 8-10 hours of sleep a day was needed to ensure the physical development of teenagers, but according to a survey, nearly half of teenagers in the United States sleep less than 8 hours, and this phenomenon is becoming more and more common in China. Middle-aged people are also suffering from work pressure and electronic products that compress their sleep time.

According to a study by the University of Hong Kong, compared with healthy people, Alzheimer's patients have a shorter total sleep time (<6.5 hours/day), a longer waiting time to fall asleep, and lower sleep efficiency, which leads to significant changes in sleep structure and stability, that is, a decrease in deep sleep, which leads to atrophy of the thalamus responsible for sleep regulation. Poor sleep is closely related to the severity of these patients' symptoms. This is also one of the reasons why more and more middle-aged people are diagnosed with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Why does this happen? A study by a Boston University scientific team published in Science magazine at the end of last year revealed this secret: only when you are asleep will the brain turn on the "auto-cleaning" mode to clear the memory-impairing proteins accumulated in the brain during the day.

Research has found that during sleep, neuronal activity in the brain becomes less intense, blood periodically flows out of the brain, and a watery fluid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows in and rhythmically washes the brain. CSF is a "cleansing agent" for the brain. CSF helps clear the clearance of beta-amyloid protein, thereby slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

On the contrary, as people age, some people experience decreased sleep quality, staying up late, insomnia and other problems, which will affect blood flow to the brain and reduce the fluctuation of cerebrospinal fluid during sleep, leading to the accumulation of toxic proteins and a decline in memory ability.

It is true that staying up late may feel good for a while, but it will lower your IQ and even cause Alzheimer's disease to come knocking on your door.

Mediterranean-ketogenic diet: a new attempt to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease

The onset of Alzheimer's disease is also closely related to eating habits. Some studies have shown that certain foods containing a lot of sugar, fat and carbohydrates, including noodles and bread made from refined rice flour, processed meat, and high-sugar beverages, can accelerate brain degeneration and dementia, while high-salt foods can lead to phosphorylation of tau protein in the brain, followed by deposition of insoluble tau protein, which in turn leads to cognitive impairment.

Among them, we know that excessive intake of carbohydrates and sugars will lead to insulin resistance, which means the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and in fact, these will also increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease. You should know that most of the foods mentioned above are what we often eat in our daily lives, and the intake of carbohydrates, high sugars, and high salt in Asia is higher than in other regions.

The researchers found that adjusting the diet structure will affect the intestinal flora and improve the symptoms of early AD patients. Because they found that the flora in the intestine has a direct impact and regulation on the central nervous system, and the intestinal fungal flora structure of Alzheimer's patients with early mild symptoms has this high similarity. The researchers found that through a modified version of the "Mediterranean-ketogenic diet" (MMKD), the intestinal flora of these early patients will change, and the biological indicators of Alzheimer's disease in the patient's cerebrospinal fluid can also be reduced accordingly.

The so-called Mediterranean diet is mainly characterized by the presence of a variety of fish and olive oil. Olive oil, as a healthy oil, is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids. The ketogenic diet is a very low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet. Traditional diets are usually digested and absorbed by the human body through carbohydrates, converted into glucose to provide energy for the human body, while the ketogenic diet allows the body to break down "excessive" fat intake to provide energy for the body, and then ketone bodies will be produced in the body.

The researchers speculate that the ketogenic diet may change the intestinal bacterial flora, and its metabolites may inhibit the growth of a particular Candida fungus, which can improve various intestinal inflammations and stimulate the brain-enteric nerves to slow down or inhibit the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

However, this method has not been fully confirmed, that is, the result may be the opposite. It is the lesions of Alzheimer's disease that lead to changes in intestinal flora. The Mediterranean-ketogenic diet may improve the early conditions of Alzheimer's disease through another mechanism, which in turn affects the changes in the flora.

In addition, the ketogenic diet is not just a matter of "wasting money". Excessive accumulation of ketone bodies in the human blood can lead to ketone body poisoning, causing headaches, nausea, anxiety and other symptoms. At the same time, high fat intake can also aggravate the occurrence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Therefore, the ketogenic diet needs to be practiced with caution.

In addition to lack of sleep and poor diet, our mentality and psychological state are also related to the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease. A new study found that repetitive negative thinking (RNT) in life is related to cognitive decline and the accumulation of two harmful proteins that lead to Alzheimer's disease. In other words, long-term bad mood and negative emotions will also accelerate the course of Alzheimer's disease.

Of course, the causal relationship may be very complicated. For example, fewer social relationships and poor family relationships will bring about these negative emotions, which in turn will worsen social relationships, which will lead to bad living habits and corresponding cardiovascular and heart diseases, all of which will naturally aggravate AD symptoms.

In general, eating well, sleeping well, and being in a good mood are the most important things in life, and these are the three magic weapons to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. But unfortunately, most of the time it is difficult for us to do so.

It’s not that the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease are not serious enough, nor that we don’t understand the importance of good living habits to physical health, but that most of the time we can only see what is in front of us, focus on the enjoyment of the moment, and ignore long-term risks.

We know the harm of staying up late for a long time, but who would not want to set aside a little more time to relax and have fun, or continue to study after work, so that they can enjoy more dopamine, or a greater sense of accomplishment. We also know that the intake of high-sugar, high-salt, and high-calorie food and beverages will lead to a series of physical problems. Obesity is almost a problem we fight all year round, but under the coercion of a hungry brain, who can take care of the right amount of intake and a balanced diet.

A big misunderstanding now is that we expect to find a specific drug to directly cure this disease, and medical research institutions and pharmaceutical companies are working hard to develop drugs for Alzheimer's disease, but from the current progress, most drugs have failed, or some drugs have a certain effect on alleviating Alzheimer's disease. However, these are just a kind of "repair after the sheep have been stolen" work.

For those of us living in modern life, we all understand the importance of a proper schedule, a balanced diet, adequate exercise, and a positive attitude. However, our bodies still live in a way that seeks pleasure and avoids pain. Alzheimer's disease is like a mockery and revenge for our unconscious lifestyle as our life span increases. It pushes us into the abyss of life little by little by erasing our memories.

Faced with the enjoyment that is readily available at present and the possibility of suffering from AD in the future, the decision-making power lies in every choice we make now.