Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, and other chronic diseases; biomarkers, lifestyle, supplements, drugs, and health care.
mike
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 851
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:55 pm
Location: CA - Sonoma County

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by mike »

TheresaB wrote:1. APOEε4s are ancestral genes, we should eat in a way that makes our genes comfortable. Our ancestors were the original humans who had evolved from the apes living in trees and eating a mostly vegan – tree leaves diet with occasional grubs and insects added in for animal protein. We were hunter-gathers, we wandered the savannah, ate whatever was available, when it was available, sometime hunted (meat) sometimes gathered (plants). Our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah. There’s a theory that thinks APOEε3 came about as an adaptation when more meat was introduced to the human diet.
Theresa, this is an old theory that doesn't hold up to current research. According to the primer, E3 appeared around 220,000 years ago. There is now evidence that early man controlled fire as early as 1 million years ago (mya) and was cooking food .5 mya. This is far prior to E3. Also, between 1.8 mya and .5 mya early man's brain size increased from 600 ml to 1,000 ml. So brain size increased during period of additional cooked foods...and likely meat, a very dense energy source. E3 is more likely a response to a new food source, like carbs. Why would man need a larger brain? To hunt for veggies?
Last edited by mike on Mon Jun 24, 2019 9:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Sonoma Mike
4/4
User avatar
Julie G
Mod
Mod
Posts: 9187
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2013 6:36 pm

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by Julie G »

Theresa, this is an old theory that doesn't hold up to current research. According to the primer, E3 appeared around 220,000 years ago. There is now evidence that early man controlled fire as early as 1 million years ago (mya) and was cooking food .5 mya. This is far prior to E3.
Mike, read Theresa's post again. She suggests that our E4 ancestors ate "whatever" was available including meat. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and very likely ate both plants and meat.
Also, between 1.8 mya and.5 mya early man's brain size increased from 600 ml to 1,000 ml. So brain size increased during period of additional cooked foods...and likely meat, a very dense energy source.
Actually brain size reached a peak with Cro-Magnun (Homo Sapiens) about 30,000 years ago at a whopping 1,500cc. Researchers hypothesize that it began to shrink to our current 1,300cc average with the advent of grains 10,000 years ago.
E3 is more likely a response to a new food source, like carbs. Why would man need a larger brain? To hunt for veggies?
I think the prevailing hypothesis comes Professor "Tuck" Finch from USC, suggesting that E3 is most likely the meat adaptive gene.
circular
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 5565
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 10:43 am

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by circular »

I think I’ll sit back and wait for the data we have on early evolution, diets and genetics about 20 years from now 8-)
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
User avatar
TheresaB
Mod
Mod
Posts: 1607
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:46 am
Location: Front Range, CO

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by TheresaB »

Julie G wrote:
Theresa, this is an old theory that doesn't hold up to current research. According to the primer, E3 appeared around 220,000 years ago. There is now evidence that early man controlled fire as early as 1 million years ago (mya) and was cooking food .5 mya. This is far prior to E3.
Mike, read Theresa's post again. She suggests that our E4 ancestors ate "whatever" was available including meat. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and very likely ate both plants and meat.
Also, between 1.8 mya and.5 mya early man's brain size increased from 600 ml to 1,000 ml. So brain size increased during period of additional cooked foods...and likely meat, a very dense energy source.
Actually brain size reached a peak with Cro-Magnun (Homo Sapiens) about 30,000 years ago at a whopping 1,500cc. Researchers hypothesize that it began to shrink to our current 1,300cc average with the advent of grains 10,000 years ago.
E3 is more likely a response to a new food source, like carbs. Why would man need a larger brain? To hunt for veggies?
I think the prevailing hypothesis comes Professor "Tuck" Finch from USC, suggesting that E3 is most likely the meat adaptive gene.
It certainly is a tidy theory which would explain why E3s handle saturated fats so much better than E4s.
-Theresa
ApoE 4/4
mike
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 851
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:55 pm
Location: CA - Sonoma County

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by mike »

Julie G wrote:I think the prevailing hypothesis comes Professor "Tuck" Finch from USC, suggesting that E3 is most likely the meat adaptive gene.
I looked this up, and it what I found was from around 2004. Archaeology / Early man science has made great strides since then. Yes, man continued to grow its brain, but I was giving a period of dramatic brain growth that corresponds to the time that it is now believed that early man started eating meat in larger quantities, and cooked. Yes, in the last 10,000 years, brain size has decreased, likely do to agriculture, apparently. It has since rebounded, though not in some isolated pockets (If you don't need it, why waste the resources)... The main point here is that while we obviously continued to eat whatever we could make use of, it was the increase in meat consumption that most likely gave early man the extra energy needed to grow the brain larger. And frankly, we resemble carnivores more than herbivores https://www.livescience.com/53466-carnivore.html
Though carnivores come in many shapes and sizes, they share a few similarities. Most carnivores have relatively large brains and high levels of intelligence. They also have less complicated digestive systems than herbivores. For example, many herbivores have multiple stomachs, while carnivores only have one, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Sonoma Mike
4/4
User avatar
TheresaB
Mod
Mod
Posts: 1607
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:46 am
Location: Front Range, CO

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by TheresaB »

mike wrote:he main point here is that while we obviously continued to eat whatever we could make use of, it was the increase in meat consumption that most likely gave early man the extra energy needed to grow the brain larger.
Meat or ketones gave man the energy to grow a larger brain? I think both, in a leader-follower relationship. No other mammal goes into ketosis deeper or faster than the human. It is thought this adaptation aided early man in hunting, since they would go for long periods with no or minimal food while stalking their prey or waiting for the seasonal animal migration. The ability to run on ketones during periods of food paucity enabled early man to remain alert with energy to ultimately hunt down their prey. This also might help explain why, as Dr Bredesen has observed, that APOEe4s absorb fat longer, and do better in starvation conditions.

It does appear that the meat our ancestors brought home from the hunt added evolutionary “fuel” to brain development, because at that same period our intestines shrunk significantly.

Most animals with big brains have the ability to enter ketosis, but none do it as well as humans. Obligate carnivores typically don’t enter ketosis, they mostly use gluconeogenesis for their energy needs, and have they haven’t developed the large brains that humans have. Humans have brains 2.5 to 3 times as large as primates and primates (mostly herbivores with insects on occasion) have brains 3 times as large as most other mammals.

In looking at human brain development over a lifetime, the brain grows most rapidly during the first year, when the infant is getting a nice dose of ketones from breast feeding and then from their own fat stores (baby fat, aka brown fat, different than adult white fat). Human babies are much fatter than primate or other mammal babies.) That baby fat contains 8-10% short- and medium-chain fatty acids facilitating ketogenesis after weaning, necessary for a human baby, because unlike most other mammals, it is still very still dependent on mom. Human babies use 60% of their energy for their brain! That compares to adults who use about 20-25%. See the thread Babies and ketosis viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4734&p=54346&hilit=babies#p54346
-Theresa
ApoE 4/4
User avatar
Julie G
Mod
Mod
Posts: 9187
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2013 6:36 pm

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by Julie G »

Further supporting Theresa's hypothesis that it may well have been ketones, not exclusively meat, that contributed to the evolution of humans and extended our longevity is this paper. It's several years old, but still holds water, same as Finch's theory. Intense periods of exercise would undoubtably have lead to ketone production.
mike
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 851
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:55 pm
Location: CA - Sonoma County

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by mike »

I do envy your writing Theresa. Yes, before carbs, both protein and fat of course. Where do you suggest the fat came from if not from animals 600,000 years ago in sub-Sahara Africa? It is easy now to get your EVOO from Costco, but much so less back then...
TheresaB wrote:Meat or ketones gave man the energy to grow a larger brain?

It does appear that the meat our ancestors brought home from the hunt added evolutionary “fuel” to brain development, because at that same period our intestines shrunk significantly.
Thanks for this, I had wondered, but didn't know. As the article that I quoted in my last post stated, the intestinal shift means man was adapting to a much more carnivore diet. You need the larger intestine to extract enough from plants, whereas carnivores tend to grow larger brains and shrink their intestines.
Sonoma Mike
4/4
mike
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 851
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:55 pm
Location: CA - Sonoma County

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by mike »

What I'm trying to say - Man's shift to a more carnivore diet came too early for E3 to have been the meat adaptation. Genetic change is faster than that, since we are talking about 500,000 years likely between the two events.
Sonoma Mike
4/4
User avatar
jgilberAZ
Senior Contributor
Senior Contributor
Posts: 60
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:15 pm
Location: Chandler, Arizona
Contact:

Re: Zero carb diet will help prevent Alzheimer’s

Post by jgilberAZ »

TheresaB wrote:It certainly is a tidy theory which would explain why E3s handle saturated fats so much better than E4s.
Define "better."


If LDL is protective against all-cause mortality, I would argue that higher is better.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29895699
Neither LDL-C nor TGs were associated with CV death, and HDL-C was associated with lower CV risk. Higher LDL-C and HDL-C were associated with a lower risk of death from infection or other non-CV causes. LDL-C was associated with reduced all-cause and infectious, but not CV mortality, which resulted in the inverse association with all-cause mortality..
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2012/930139/
The data did not show a higher risk with high levels of TC, LDL-c, and TG. However, they showed higher mortality among older adults with low TC.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38461-y
Reverse causality has been suggested as an explanation of higher mortality associated with low cholesterol levels. However, a long term follow-up study in a Japanese-American population showed that individuals with low cholesterol levels maintained over a 20-year period had the worst all-cause mortality, and concluded that reverse causality was unlikely to account for the higher mortality associated with low cholesterol entirely.

https://cholesterolcode.com/lipoprotein ... ne-system/


https://cholesterolcode.com/a-provocati ... mortality/
Apoe 3/4
My Website
Post Reply