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Comment by atum47 | Hacker News Reader

My aunt started showing symptoms of Alzheimer's. My grandfather passed from it. Is there any thing to do in order to prevent or delay the disease?

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This is a shot in the dark.

My dad passed from dementia. That’s the best diagnosis we got. He wouldn’t go in under an MRI machine.

He had horrible , infected teeth. They were badly infected.

There’s linkage of poor oral hygiene and Alzheimer’s.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/good-oral-healt...

If I had know this sooner, I would have pushed harder for him to have those bad teeth extracted and had him start using a water pik.

I worry that what he died of was preventable.

Could the consumption of too many carbohydrates have led to your dad's teeth issues?

I'm not sure blaming yourself for this situation is healthy. You might want to talk through this with a professional.

First it would be good to know if you have genetic predisposition. I think mosts comercial DNA tests available test for APOE4 variations.

Second I would read on the research of Dr. Dale Bredesen. He has been studying how to map all the underlying factors that can lead to Alzheimer and how to test/treat markers that are associated with the disease.

According to him Alzheimer's disease is like a roof full of holes. You need to test and treat each individual hole to make sure it's not leaking.

This is good advice. Be aware that while APOE variants are the most well known and common causes of a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s, there are several others, including some 100% penetrance, dominant gene mutations that cause it. Unfortunately I have very significant experience with one of these. Generally it would be common enough in your family (roughly 50% of people getting it), that you’d have reason to suspect one of these gene mutations.

Even if Dr Bredesen is misdiagnosing the causes of Alzheimer's, his recommendations are still just the basics of healthy living. Like exercise, getting enough sleep, good dental hygiene, etc.

> My aunt started showing symptoms of Alzheimer's. My grandfather passed from it. Is there any thing to do in order to prevent or delay the disease?

Similar to ASCVD it takes decades to manifest and lots of the traditionally healthy lifestyle activities help delay or prevent it (diet, sleep, exercise). Unfortunately once someone is showing symptoms it's very late in the game.

I try to follow that lifestyle and push my mom and dad to it, they both workout and exercise. I don't think they work their brain that much though. I've been pushing them to take a course or something like that.

Leqembi is the only FDA-approved disease-modifying agent. There are a few others that delay the progression of dementia by about 6 months.

There was a paper years ago saying in some Autopsies they found signs of Alzheimer's being 'repaired' in people who stayed mentally active. Anecdotally the people in my family that had it stopped engaging their brains in deep ways before it happened. Surely that's no silver bullet or everyone would do it, but thought I'd share

Vaccines. Many of them, seemingly unrelated. Not to delay, but to prevent. I wonder how that links in with this finding.

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