Study Suggests Fructose Could Drive Alzheimer's Disease
news.cuanschutz.edu
news.cuanschutz.edu
If you look at the evidence hierarchy, this study is at the lowest form of evidence (it's a narrative review -i.e expert opinion), they didn't even run a study.
The ultimate study would multiple randomized controlled trials showing sugar/fructose when controlled for calories, causes increased Alheimer's disease. Since we haven't seen that, we should not draw conclusions.
As the saying goes 'correlation does not imply causation'. We don't even have correlation yet, the headline is an overreach.
Your right, but RCT would take how long? 50 years? How can you make people not eat fructose or limit that for 50 years?
Wouldnt call the article junk sciensce. We also need hypothesis builing articles. I think they are proposing a specific mechanism of action about how fructose might cause Alzheimers.
I believe there are other clues also pointing in this direction, which I wont bore you with.
Just want to note, that I think everyone would prefer high powered RCTs, but I dont believe they are feasible to fund and run
Theory (almost) always precedes evidence, and coming up with a novel, biologically-plausible explanation for a common ailment is absolutely a valid, useful scientific contribution.
Your general point, that drawing firm conclusions would be radically premature, is spot on. I just stiffen up a bit when I encounter "RCT or GTFO" type arguments; where in the world do you think the ideas for which RCT to run come from?
As usual science communication is never done as well as we could all hope, but I personally like this "hierarchy of evidence" approach in understanding if something is ready to be consumed by the general public, rather than requiring further discussion with the scientific community.
This is the case in physics and astronomy. People make predictions that are not only untested, but we have to invent equipment to test them.
One of the great early accomplishments in science was when astronomers, observing our Sun, noted an unknown yellow spectral line signature. In 1868, Norman Lockyer predicted that it must be created by a hitherto unknown element, which he named “Helium” after the Greek Titan of the Sun, Helios.
In 1895, two Swedish chemists detected helium in ore samples here on Earth, and in the great tradition of the scientific method, we had a theory, a prediction, and a confirmation of the theory by test.
Einstein predicted things we’re still confirming empirically, but then again, he started by asking himself how the speed of light could be constant for every observer, which was the result of an experiment that failed to confirm a different theory.
Not exactly a "junk study." It's step 1 in a chain of studies that could validate this hypothesis.
A review article is a review article. It isn't a study.
I hope you're damn-well right. I love fruit and eat lots of it!
The second more proximate factor has been the dramatic rise in the intake of added sugars that contain fructose and glucose, such as *table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)*."
And...
"Interestingly, *whole fruits tend not to activate this pathway* owing to a relatively low fructose content in individual fruits and the presence of neutralizing factors (such as fiber, vitamin C, potassium, and flavanols) and because the small intestine metabolizes some fructose before it reaches the liver and brain."
So basically processed meats, table sugar & high-fructose corn syrup are bad for you. I'm shocked /s
The interesting part of the research is that the authors identified a common player that might progress the development of chronic diseases: high uric acid levels.
Uric acid has historically been associated with gout. But more recently, there has been growing interest in the role of uric acid on the development of chronic diseases like metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer.
An interesting (imo) pop-medscience video by Dr. David Perlmutter - Uric Acid: A KEY Cause of Weight Gain, Diabetes, Heart Disease & Dementia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6jPCcFNa8
My own journey may reflect this. I suffered from gout and also other worrisome blood work markers that indicated metabolic syndrome. I am now largely vegan, alcohol free and avoid sugar and processed food. I have not had a gout attack for a long time. Then in a recent blood test my uric acid was through the roof. My (excellent) doctor first wanted to raise the amount of allopurinol I was taking but I suffer from side effects and was reluctant. My doctor did some research and found that uric acid levels are raised during periods of weight loss.
So it’s complicated and not well understood.
But it's fascinating to hear your story, where you have high UA serum but no gout attack. Were you on 300mg allo or more?
With Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease, there is much uncertainty, agreed!
She was always a super light sleeper though, and had her own room because dad would wake her up at night. I wonder whether her brain's lymphatic system was working.
Only other thing that stuck in my mind is not long before her symptoms, she had like six metal fillings removed and replaced with porcelain all at the same time.
Her aunt got it early too and was a health nut juicer for years who lived a healthy lifestyle.
Lack of infrared exposition is linked to inflammation and Alzheimer.
https://youtu.be/wadKIiGsDTw links to medical papers in the video description.
I'm less healthy than she was at my age (52). My exit plan doesn't involve long term health care insurance, that's for sure.
Mom's still alive at 75, so that's a long run with this disease. I would say it's been about three years since she has declined to that stage where no mentally well person would want to be alive.
However they don't make great links between fructose and known AD pathology. Beta-amyloid buildup is now pretty convincingly a critical step in the progression of AD. They link a few low-quality papers claiming fructose increases amyloid, but the evidence is pretty weak. Similarly, APOE genotypes are well documented AD risk factors. The authors aren't really able to explain APOE's role in the context of fructose.
Fun read (for me, anyway), but not particularly convincing. Hopefully it provokes some more research to try to fill in some of the missing links.
I wouldn't be surprised if diet is one of many factors involved. But I really don't see much value by most of the studies at this point. Maybe we'll get to see who's right in a decade or two.
Kind of sad. But we got a lot of lower hanging fruit plucked by figuring out cures and preventative measures for single state ailments.
Broadly, statistics and large sample sets are used to combat that.
Human understanding, or lack thereof, for a given problem also contributes to suboptimal theories.
Ultimately, hard problems are hard.
Each of our mitochondria need infrared to remove oxidative stress.(inflammation)
They use infrared to do that but we now live inside more and more (especially elderly and sick) and thus we are in a constant crisis of chronic inflammation.
I know it sound new age, but the research is there, like Vit-D with the sun must have sounded ridicule at the time, the need for infrared was not apparent when most people worked outside.
https://youtu.be/wadKIiGsDTw (medical papers in the video description)
The need for infrared is just starting to get understood, huge potential to improve the lives of people.
I do have some gut bacteria imbalances, that might increase the bad effects of sugar, but still, I could not function if I wont avoid added sugars, which is pretty hard task today.
So I'm not surpised by this study, cause I feel it immediatley how the sugar disables my brain.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-in-...
This is how incentives work. It's why, for instance, you have gain of function research occurring in many cases. SARS was really interesting but it turns out it was never going to be a large risk for society. Who is going to continue to fund research into it? So, your incentive is to find a way to convince people that fund things that it could in fact find a way to be a global pandemic and gain of function "research" is a great way to do this. Of course you justify it by saying "it could happen and if it did happen then we'd want to know how to prepare for it so lets find the worst ways it could get to that state before it does itself". Now that you've created something terrifying, it's much easier to get gobs of funding for your research.
This is how it works.
Money as a motivation is in no way sufficient to make an accusation of corruption. So much so I didn't even read your argument
Why was your example the opposite. Who makes more money a scientist or exxon?
Fructose DOES NOT metabolise to uric acid. This means the whole article is fake/scam.
You're always going to have members of the general public and docs who don't keep upon on continuing nutritional education (snark, there isn't any) saying stuff that was out of date decades ago but I'd say the stuff in that video is pretty much mainstream now.
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong but the article suggests that it's not from digested fructose, rather the body is producing fructose. I'm confused.
excess fructose (in particular in ultra-processed forms) causes metabolic derangement but consuming too much of those other 3 esp from ultra processed foods, also activates the "switch" leading to endogenous fructose production and more derangement.
The role of sedentarism in all this is somewhat under-explored though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_isomeras...