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Comment by vfc1 | Hacker News Reader

A plant-based diet is naturally anti-inflammatory and thought to be a great way to prevent and help reduce the symptoms of Alzheimer - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5TLzNi5fYd8E6GHQcmIW...

I wonder if Alzheimer, just like heart disease and diabetes is mostly a western diet-related disease.

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Vegetarian propaganda would say so. But Western societies are far from the biggest meat-eaters out there. Do the Maasai and the Inuit suffer from inordinate rates of Alzheimer’s?

The common factor in the diseases you mention is sugar.

The inuits did have high artero esclorosis and heart disease, as seen in 500 years old mummies.

The idea that inuits are healthy despite their high meat diet is a myth, have a look here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LvGiiZyn-M

Just spitballing here, but the Inuit eat a lot of omega-3 which is anti-inflammatory.

There are a number of fallacies in your statement. 1) Western societies are large populations that eat meat and eat meat more than other large populations, by far.

2) Inuits live 10 on average less than the local nearby populations and 900 year old Inuit mummies also show signs of advanced osteoporosis.

3) Processed sugar is not a health product and is not the polar opposite of meat. It is in the same category of meat as 'unhealthy' and 'causes inflammation'

4) A whole-foods low-GI plant-based diet has been show to open up arteries and that is important for Alzheimers as people with that disease do show blocked arteries to the brain post-mortem. So while not a 100% prevention, it certainly reduces risk and may even reverse issues.

The "pro meat" (or should I say "meat health and environmental damage negationists") circle jerk on HN is sure strong, looking at your post and below's slowly fading away. I'm amazed everytime how the majority here, people who seem in other conditions able of logical reasoning, are just impermeable to unpleasant facts. You bring up good arguments.

So the tens of thousands of people who have successfully used a keto diet to induce autophagy and lose weight are all just.. making it up, in your mind?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

Maybe you should admit it's a bit more complicated than you seem to realize.

"Long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients".. read the first line. Its 16-24 weeks. Thats not exactly long term. Also, the study was done for people at home, not in a clinical ward.

Try this 8 year study instead https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20592131 Or if you want a long term RCT, try this 74 week one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19339401

Does keto diets have anything to do with the arguments presented by above poster, that could explain the downvotes ? Did I mention keto diets ? What is your point ?

Discussing a "circle jerk" (not a term consistent with the standards of discussion here) amongst an unnamed deluded majority that "seems to" exist is a rhetorical strategy that I will downvote, despite my generally vegetarian/sustainable meat consumption leanings

Do you have another explanation as to why the post which I responded to is solidly downvoted, with no answer or contest of its arguments which could explain this phenomenon ?

There is a range of research to suggest that Alzheimer's is a metabolic disorder with high level similarities to type 2 diabetes. You might look up "type 3 diabetes" - which is not an official designation, but sufficiently discussed in the research community and associated with Alzheimer's disease that when a different form of (definitely) age-related diabetes was discovered recently, it had to be called type 4.

Equally, don't look for single causes. There are multiple contributing factors, all of which interact with one another, and many of which have multiple causes. E.g. amyloid buildup can be in part failure of clearance by immune cells, in part failure of drainage of cerebrospinal fluid through the cribiform plate, in part generation by lingering spirochete infection, etc.

Well, sugar does cause inflammation, and the western diet is kind of built on sugar

Thats not true. Western diet is build on processed foods - which includes lots of processed sugars and processed fats together.

Example, I don't see people eating teaspoons of white granulated sugar all day long.

Doughnuts and ice-cream on the other hand...

Why Western diet? Cultures other than western eat meat

Western diets have more meat and less plant material. Meat consumption (and plant consumption) isn’t boolean-valued, unlike (for example) vegetarianism.

In this context I wonder whether the problem is meat per se, or the heavily processed nature of much of the meat consumed in the West.

Modern "western" meat is very lightly processed compared to what we were eating a hundred years ago. Refrigeration has removed the need for carcinogenic preservatives and has nearly eliminated stomach cancer.

>> I wonder if Alzheimer, just like heart disease and diabetes is mostly a western diet-related disease.

Nope.

One of the professors I worked with in grad school did some groundbreaking Alzheimer research on Germans from Russia:

We have studied 28 kindreds with familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD) that are all descended from the ethnic group of Germans from Russia. Eighteen families were of Volga German ancestry, originating from the same two villages and containing 132 demented individuals.

These families represent a model of genetic heterogeneity when compared with other reported FAD kindreds. Because of their common, isolated ethnic background, the Volga German families are likely to represent the founder effect and a single, as yet unidentified, autosomal dominant mutation. The Black Sea German kindreds may represent additional heterogeneity.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-46776-9_...

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