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Comment by aussieguy1234 | Hacker News Reader

Since the study was done on Seventh Day Adventists, it's worth noting that they are all vegetarian, so no meat based protein options here...

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Adventists are okay with meat as long as it’s kosher generally.

I think the bigger factor is that they’re teetotalers.

My data points, though: two of my vegetarian teetotaling Adventist family members died of Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle is clearly not a cheat code for defeating dementia.

I guess I gotta be the one to ask -- so do you recall if they ate eggs ?

I grew up SDA. We ate eggs. Meat (beef, chicken, fish with scale and fins) was not forbidden but it was looked down upon. Potlucks were the worst since i was (am) a picky eater. No meat in sight. Mostly grey lumps in white gravy-ish sauce. I would survive on shells and cheese, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad.

It's possible we were just bad SDAs though. I've met some hardcore SDAs. I imagine how I felt about them was how "regular" Christians felt about me.

Sorry, this is way more information than you asked for...

They do. These days generally the main prohibition is pig derived products, but plenty of SDAs still choose to be vegetarian. I'm not an SDA, but my daughter is.

A core part of the scientific method is that you attempt to isolate a single variable at a time. If anything, all this suggests is that this was a better diet-controlled sample population for measuring the correlation of eggs and Alzheimer's than the general public. That said, the methodology of this study does not allow for inferring a relationship between Alzheimer's and meat consumption in either direction.

It is very difficult to do that in biological systems where doing A in isolation can have the opposite effect of doing A while also doing B.

There could be an interaction with the diet though. For example, what if the nutrient in eggs that prevents Alzheimer's is something that also occurs in meat?

Also, it seems likely that among this population many of those who don't or rarely consume eggs are vegan or almost vegan, so it might be more accurate to say that veganism is correlated with Alzheimer's.

1. They ran a sensitivity analysis that removed vegans yet still got the same result, so the egg gradient is still there among non-vegans.

2. They modeled swapping eggs for nuts/seeds/legumes and saw the same risk reduction. (Table 4)

>2. They modeled swapping eggs for nuts/seeds/legumes and saw the same risk reduction. (Table 4)

I think the table isnt clear, but I think the claim for 2 is that nuts(ect) did not show the same reduction - the egg finding held up.

> Substituting eggs for nuts/seeds or legumes in the diet was associated with a similarly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

About half of the study participants were non-vegetarian, IIUC. I wonder if they found any correlation after slicing by vegetarianism?

eggs are a highly concentrated natural source of choline. meat does contain choline but nowhere near as much as eggs.

drawing the connection between cholinergic activity and alzheimers is left as an exercise for the unaware reader.

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