New - what a great site!

Newcomer introductions, personal anecdotes, caregiver issues, lab results, and n=1 experimentation.
Fiver
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New - what a great site!

Post by Fiver »

It said this was the place for introductions, so....

I have a mother suffering with AD, and several grandparents who had AD or something similar. Family history of CVD too. So, yes, I worry about that. I'm a scientist, I love my work, and I really want to keep working as long as I can late in life. I'm determined that my wife won't ever become an AD caregiver. I'm a biochemist - I actually study plant products that are potential supplements or drugs - so I've tried to put my knowledge help my mother find good treatment options for my mother. I convinced my mother's doctor to become acquainted with Dr. Bredesen's work. He did, reluctantly, because he assumed there was no effective treatment for AD. Amazingly, Dr. B wrote back to my father (which meant a lot to us) and she is following some of the basic plan (though her age, arthritis (quite bad), and multiple hip replacements makes it difficult especially with the exercise). Along the way, I decided to follow much of the basic plan myself. We do some if it together, and that helps. I find that for me most of it isn't hard. I just track diet, exercise, supplements, test results, etc on a spreadsheet - just because I like working with data. I think this site is wonderful, and have been reading all the posts. What's on my mind? What can I do for my mother who is in her 70s with difficult to control inflammation from arthritis and can't follow much of the program? And do I get APOE tested? I've also always wondered about peanut butter - good or bad? No one has ever been able to answer that one for me - but I eat a lot. I live in an area famous for bad air quality too. Mostly PM 2.5 stuff. So I read that work on air pollution and AD with interest. I'll end of a good note: when I began following the very basic plan (diet, fasting, fish oil, no/low meat, regular exercise) I found out my vitamin D3 level was 9! Ouch. It's now up to 40. So that alone was great. Looking forward to following along here....
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KatieS
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by KatieS »

Welcome Tom. We appreciate your understanding of plants from the biochemical aspect and your family's experience following Dr. Bredesen's protocol.

Does your mother have rheumatoid or osteoarthritis? Some describe benefits from dietary alternations or supplements. Non-weight bearing water exercises can provide aerobics with social interactions. However, my 3/4 mother won't consider this option to preserve her hairdo.

Since I still like nut butters, I've switch to grinding almonds instead of peanuts. Almond butter seems to have the nutitional edge. Some commercial PB have lots of sugar.
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Julie G
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by Julie G »

Welcome, Tom! You may have already read our primer, written by Stavia, one of our ApoE4 homozygote moderators. If not, it's a terrific starting place. You ask so many great questions. Re. APOE testing, I think, on balance, we know enough that it's probably worthwhile to get tested. With your maternal family AD history, you're already at an increased risk. Given that CVD also runs in the family, you may very well be an ApoE4 carrier. Knowing your status may be very motivational in terms of lifestyle and diet modifications ;). Your expertise is very welcome here. I look forward to learning from you.

Hw wonderful that your Mom is trying to practice Dr. Bredesen's protocol. Your adopting it as well will be incredibly supportive and helpful to her. Has she started curcumin yet? My guess is that it may be very helpful for her pain issues as well as potentially neuroprotective. I recently upped my dose to 1,500mg based upon this RCT in humans. I think it's made a positive difference.

I’m unsure it peanuts are healthful or not, but I’ve read enough (aflatoxins, etc.) to give me pause and I usually try to to avoid them. I like to use almond butter instead. The crunch variety is really good. I like it on celery and with other veggies.

LOL, Katie :lol:. The fact that your Mom is worried about her hair at age 99(?) is a great sign. My grandmother is the same age and could care less about hers.
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by Starfish77 »

Hello Tom. How fortunate your mom is. to have such a caring and resourceful son. You have done such a good job in finding Dr. Bresden and his research. Many of us are following it. I got my APOE4 tested through 23andme. I had joined for the genealogy information and at that time health information was included as well. I am an E4/E4 age 80 female. We are delighted having another scientist joining us.
You scientific folk are very useful in helping us ordinary folk understand some of the technical research. Our Stavia, who
wrote our "Introduction for Newcomers" for our forum is specially gifted in communicating difficult information, in simple terms.
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circular
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by circular »

Juliegee wrote:LOL, Katie :lol:. The fact that your Mom is worried about her hair at age 99(?) is a great sign. My grandmother is the same age and could care less about hers.
My mom has a penchant for buzz cuts. Loves the rehab pool and doesn't have to worry about hair that way :lol:

Tom, so happy to have you with us :) It's great you are able to work with Dr. Bredesen's protocol. I remember in one interview he mentioned that it works even when not all the aspects are adhered to. I'm sure this varies by person, but if we can tip the balance from neurodegenerative to neurogenerative (is that a word?) then that's the key, and the more the better but some is better than none.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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TheresaB
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by TheresaB »

Tom, Welcome!
Tom, you wrote regarding your mom, multiple hip replacements makes it difficult especially with the exercise…What can I do for my mother who is in her 70s with difficult to control inflammation from arthritis and can't follow much of the program?
Have you checked out your local recreation center? We are blessed with a wonderful rec center near where we live. I have a bum foot and after my last surgery I would use the “lazy river” at the rec center to practice my walking. It provided resistance but kept the pounding on my joints down. I often found myself surrounded by folks in their 70s and 80s (I felt so young! :D ) Similarly, they offer drop-in aquatics exercise classes for those with arthritis and other non-aquatic classes aimed at “the young at heart.” There’s one class that’s so popular that my rec center has to set aside two of the three basketball courts in the gym and many of the exercises are done on chairs. Going to “the gym” can be intimidating, but I’ve seen folks who are morbidly obese, attached oxygen bottles, and/or needing canes or walkers at the rec center and I personally admire each and every one.

Regarding inflammation from arthritis, read on…
Tom also wrote, I've also always wondered about peanut butter - good or bad?
Regarding the peanut butter question, the answer, as so many answers on this forum is, maybe.

Now for my longer answer (I have a talent for long answers). Peanuts are legumes and legumes are among the foods that are forbidden on the diet that some those of us who follow Dr Steven Gundry follow. If you do a search on his name in this forum, you’ll see he’s discussed quite a bit, but in fairness, I will add not everyone on this forum accepts what he says about lectins.

A little background on Dr Gundry. My husband (ApoE3/4) and I (ApoE4/4) sought him out because he’s a practicing doctor who probably has more hands-on knowledge/experience of ApoE4 than any other doctor in this country. He’s not an “Alzheimer’s doctor” rather Dr. Gundry is a heart surgeon/inventor who’s been fascinated by genetic diet evolution since his undergraduate thesis at Yale. When he quit his position at Loma Linda University to form his own institute to concentrate on restorative medicine, he got interested in the ApoE4 gene because of its connection to cardiovascular disease and started testing for it 15 years ago (unheard of). He says he has since successfully minimized the negative effects of the ApoE4 gene in thousands of patients.

In the patients he consults, he reviews pages of bloodwork and advises on diet and supplements. The diet he advised us to follow is tailored to our ApoE4 gene as well as other genetic findings and lab results. Based on our inflammatory markers, he advised us to restrict major sources of lectins.

The main sources of lectins are dairy products, beans and other legumes, wheat and grains, and specific vegetables and fruits. Lectins are how a plant tries to protect itself from being eaten and causes toxic or inflammatory reactions in the body, although these reactions can be imperceptible or subtle, thus easily ignored (that was the case with me). But over time consumption can lead to such conditions as leaky gut, autoimmune disease, chronic digestive disorders, heart disease, and weight gain. Everyone is probably sensitive to a degree, but some more than others.

He determined my sensitivity through my adiponectin level. As I understand it, adiponectin is mostly a “go/no-go” indicator that lectin sensitivity exists. He also tracks the inflammatory marker, TNFalpha. In my first blood test, my TNFalpha inflammatory marker was in the “yellow zone” at 3.3. After removing lectins from my diet, my TNFalpha has gone down into the “green” at 1.8. I do feel better, although nothing drastic. The results for my husband were more marked, his congestion has got better and the beginnings of rheumatoid arthritis has completely gone away.

But why should an ApoE4 be concerned with lectins? Glad you asked. First things first! There are more important things that an ApoE4 should be concerned with regarding their diet. Lowering insulin resistance is first and foremost (insert sound of a foot stomp here.)

But with that said, as you are probably already aware, ApoE4s tend to be more susceptible to inflammation, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease. First, lectins tend to cause inflammation and we may be more susceptible to the effects of lectins, especially since many of the plants that he labels as “forbidden” are ones that, evolutionarily speaking, have only started to be eaten in “recent times” specifically, North American plants, such as tomatoes.

Regarding Alzheimer’s, Dr Gundry cites the Harvard nurses study that showed that thin women with elevated levels of Adiponectin had very high incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, and they were screened for ApoE4, so that didn't distort the findings. In this paper, http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/129/Suppl_1/AP354 Dr G writes there is a strong association of elevated Adiponectin and TNF-alpha levels in thin women with dementia, osteopenia, and/or coronary artery disease.

Regarding CVD, Dr Gundry has said we all (not just ApoE4s) have a sugar molecule lining our blood vessels, the endothelial of our blood vessels, which we share with elephants, chickens, shellfish, and fish. Plant lectins, particularly of the grass family, have an affinity to bind to this sugar molecule which he says explains why elephants who have been fed grain and/or grass tend to have a greater incidence of coronary artery disease than the non grain/grass eaters.

You mentioned Dr Bredesen, we follow him too. Dr Bedesen and Dr Gundry dietary recommendations overlap in many ways, but to my knowledge, Dr B has not raised the lectin flag. Dr B does, however, caution on grains (a lectin subset) and maintaining a healthy gut biome (which lectins can interfere with). Regardless of where you determine you fall on the lectin “controversy” reducing grains is probably a very good idea for ApoE4s.

Along the lines of grains, Dr Gundry expressed has expressed a concern with wheat germ agglutin. During his Q&A session with us (a small gathering of ApoE4.info followers) at the Ancestral Health Symposium this past August, he said that a person can have a normal gut lining, no leaky gut, and yet wheat germ agglutinin can get through because it is a very tiny protein. Gluten is a huge protein, in general it cannot get through the gut lining unless it turns on zonulin (sp?) and breaks the gut lining, but wheat germ agglutinin can get through the gut lining without any problem. The wheat germ agglutinin can bind to sialic acids on your blood vessels and to insulin receptors. When the wheat germ agglutinin binds to insulin receptors in the muscles a person gets sarcopenia (aging muscle loss) and when it happens in the brain it blocks the affect of insulin. Dr Gundry feels a lot of what we think is Type 3 Diabetes [Alheimer’s] is actually the accumulation through the years of wheat germ agglutinin.

In the grand scheme of prioritizing dietary strategies, eliminating lectins is probably not important as other strategies for ApoE4s, but in rank order, I'd start with reducing/eliminating grains. Eliminating other lectins, such as peanuts, humus, delicious tomatoes, peppers, etc. can be very tough, so one last note...de-seeding and de-skinning is very helpful, the seeds and skins of lectin “vegetables” (they’re actually fruits) are where most of the lectins are contained. Fermentation destroys lectins to a certain extent (we eat tempeh, which is fermented soy). Pressure cooking does a decent job of destroying lectins except in grains, the lectins in grains can’t be destroyed. I do, on occasion, for example when I meet friends for lunch/dinner and can’t control what is served, take a Dr Gundry product called “Lectin Shield” which protects from the negative effects of lectins.

Whew! You still awake? And all you wanted to know was if peanut butter was okay. :oops:
-Theresa
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circular
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by circular »

Theresa that's a great overview of Gundry in our context. As another female with high adiponectin who is also thin (thus worried about the dementia association) I look forward to hearing more about his perspective from his book too. I haven't been as strict about his diet in 2016 because of a number of obstacles to being able to focus on it, but I've also noted that my TNF-alpha was good when I tested with him, and at that time I was eating lectins other than gluten and dairy and for all practical purposes legumes (including peanut butter, to keep this on topic ;) ). Those last items I'd been off of for years. So it does make me wonder if strict lectin avoidance is necessary in thin women with high adiponectin, or just enough avoidance to keep markers in line. I think there must also be biomarkers in addition to TNF-a that reflect lectin-induced inflammation, but with so many inflammatory triggers in our world, it can be hard to ferret out what's triggering what biomarkers.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by Fiver »

Thanks everyone. So much to learn! I'm not sure I have any special expertise. Like everyone else, I read a lot and try to make sense of things as best I can.
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TheresaB
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by TheresaB »

Tom wrote,
I've also always wondered about peanut butter - good or bad?
Even though it’s a couple years old, I just ran into this article, “The Case Against Peanut Butter. Why even Organic Peanut Butter is Bad for You”
http://fitlife.tv/the-case-against-pean ... nut+butter

Here are the “Cliffs notes”
  • -Grown below ground, susceptible to toxins, especially aflatoxin, a type of mycotoxin, carcinogen. (Hmmm, wonder if it’s also a “dementigen”)
    -Contains lecins, shown to strip away mucous from the small intestine, one of the main culprits and cause of autoimmune diseases
    -Causes allergic reactions
    -Causes inflammation, loaded with Omega-6s that disrupt our Omega-3 to -6 ratio leading to health issues
    -Often pesticide contaminated, so if must buy, buy organic or go with other, better, nut butter options
-Theresa
ApoE 4/4
Fiver
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Re: New - what a great site!

Post by Fiver »

I suspected as much. (Where is the sad face emoticon?) I'll have to learn to like almond butter I guess.

I might need to list all the various lifestyle changes that work and rank them so I can start at the top and focus in the "biggies".
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