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Comment by drooby | Hacker News Reader

Would we potentially expect lower rates of Alzheimer's among Muslims then?

Am just a hobbyist with some personal investment in AD, but the genetic basis for Alzheimer's seems like too strong a confounding factor to be looking for behavioral differences between ethnic/religious groups IMO.

There does seem to be some kind of link between GLP-1s and Alzheimers: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11242057/

Some people also seem to like nicotine-related hypotheses: https://discoveries.vanderbilthealth.com/2019/09/nicotine-to... and hypotheses with other kinds of drugs that have appetite suppressant characteristics: https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/93/10/1080

The whole field is kind of a gigantic mess these days, though. Seems like everyone and their cousin has a pet theory.

I don't think daily fasting heals the body. I believe it has to be multi-day. The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair was a nice introduction to the topic for me.

Depends, I'd say. The research fraud around amyloids aside, there is still a strong chance that Alzheimer has a genetic link, and in that case you might have to differentiate between Arabic, African, Asian and Western Muslims first.

Only if you find similarities in lower Alzheimer rates among all of them, you can draw a conclusion pointing to something in Muslim culture helping to reduce Alzheimer rates (say, the yearly fasting acting like keto diet, or not eating pork, or not drinking alcohol/consuming other drugs), but if it is only found in specific heritages I'd assume a genetic component... or environmental factors similar to higher natural lithium content in the water leading to lower suicide mortality [1].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32716281/

Not an expert, but two differences that most Muslims have which non Muslims don't:

- They don't drink alcohol

- They fast every year

No idea if these help or not.

They are only doing intermittent fasting (from sunrise to sunset), and a lot of them binge eat as soon as the sun is set. Not sure if this can be used as a baseline for a study.

This was my initial thought.

Is the month of Ramadan enough have an effect on Alzheimer's or is more frequent fasting required?

There is a (relatively small) subset of Muslims that fast every Monday and Thursday, in addition to fasting the month of Ramadan. Perhaps that’s a better population sample to study?

And how much fasting?

Is intermittent enough? 12 hours? 18 hours?

Or do we need frequent (e.g. weekly or 2-3 times weekly) 24-hour fasting?

14 hours every day is considered great (don't eat late, skip breakfast), a solid 48 hour fast every month or so is also great. Small human studies, for example, have measured 5x to 10x increases in HGH after 48 to 120 hr fasts respectively. Free steroids, basically; the body repairing itself while not being drowned in food all day every day. Telomeres too!

Fasting during Ramadan is only during the daylight hours, so hardly even enough to be considered intermittent fasting.

You have to fast for a long time before your body starts fueling you from ketones.

I don't think that is true. Some expert (Dale Bredesen maybe) said somewhere that a healthy person lacking the bad habit of eating late in the evening will tend to start producing and burning ketones during sleep every night.

Also, many experts are saying that if your body cannot burn fats and ketones, which is unhealthy, you can get it start being able to again by restricting carbs for a while.

Yes there's a lot of hormonal / circadian rhythm effects at play in the evening and early morning. Additionally, you fast while you sleep, so extending that period before and after (not eating late, plus skipping breakfast) helps; 14 hours is a solid fasting amount if you keep it up every day.

You don’t need to fast, you just need to stop eating carbs.

Own a strict ketogenic diet right. Feeling absolutely great. Gotta cut down before the Christmas fattening.

The usual Ramadan regimen for Muslims involves carbo-loading with dates and sugars in the morning, so it is unlikely to get to ketosis by iftar.

If you've eaten at even a moderately good memory care center you'd expect lower rates from Alzheimer's patients too. Blech.

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