I'm a new member, introducing myself

Newcomer introductions, personal anecdotes, caregiver issues, lab results, and n=1 experimentation.
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Barry Pearson
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I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Barry Pearson »

My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his early 70s and died 5 years later, before 80. I've suspected for a decade that I might therefore be at elevated risk. I've just used 23andMe and I have a single copy of ApoE variant 4. (My mother died at 92 without Alzheimer's).

I'm 70. Even without this complication, diseases are queuing up to kill a 70-year-old man over the next 10 years! So I've already been transforming my lifestyle to reduce the odds for all the other diseases, such as type-2 diabetes, CVD, cancer, etc. I've never smoked, (but neither did my father), and I've been eliminating chronic stress, ensuring I get good sleep, and sorting out my food and exercise.

Now I have to reduce the odds for Alzheimer's, but without raising the risk for the other diseases. So I am trying to establish a comprehensive healthy lifestyle that works for everything. Since my goal is to have an active quality life into my 90s, this is obviously a major challenge! (The only guarantee is that if I don't make the attempt, I will certainly fail).

Pretty well all my lifestyle choices are intended (among other things) to avoid insulin resistance (and metabolic syndrome). So my basic food-lifestyle is "low carbohydrate, moderate protein, high fat". In fact, I've been in nutritional ketosis for months, and I'm keto-adapted. I find it reasonably easy to eat to stay in ketosis nearly all the time, and I find the metabolic flexibility is convenient.

My exercise-lifestyle is a short period of high intensity exercise each day, (interval training or one of a variety of types of resistance training), being careful not to over-train particular muscle-groups. For much of my life I've been pretty much a "10 stone weakling", but I'm gradually overcoming many years of sarcopenia. (I'm an ectomorph; my BMI is about 19. I'm "thin on the outside", and pretty sure I'm "thin on the inside").

In order to be able to evaluate my lifestyle using NHS health-check results (etc), I stopped all medication, (prescribed or over-the-counter), in 2015. (But I've had the flue-jab). I think my health-check results are good. I'm sure that my lipid-panel would cause concern for people who still think that LDL is "bad cholesterol"! But my triglycerides and small-dense LDL are low, and the rest is satisfactorily high. My HbA1c is OK; (IFCC 31, DCCT 5.0%). Blood pressure is not ideal, at 130/78. "Healthy Heart Age " at QRISK2-2017 is 66.

I have lots of questions, some of which I don't even know yet! And I'm sure that many people would find problems with the lifestyle I've described above, which is why I've gone into a fair amount of detail.

Thanks for this splendid website, and thanks in advance for any help!
Starfish77
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Starfish77 »

Hello Barry, I'm an 80 year old female E4/E4. I'm impressed with your positive actions toward good health. That you are a normally slender person and do exercise voluntarily is also great. I'm normal weight now, but was not for most of my life. I've changed my diet a lot since finding the forum. I've increased the good fats, lowered my weight and saw my LDL drop and my HDL increase. Being in this group has helped me stay on target for my health goals. I'm working toward those healthy 90's too. I'm glad you found us.
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by ajackson »

Hi Barry,
Welcome to the website and the forums. You look like you are pretty well educated on the subject of Alzheimer's and are very active in taking positive steps for your health. You also might check out our Primer It has a lot of great information including some of the diet topics you mentioned.
I have not done the genetic testing but my dad died of Alzheimer's in 2009 and I am an advocate in taking any prevention steps we can to keep healthy. I hope you will find the support and answers you are looking for!
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Barry Pearson
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Barry Pearson »

Starfish77 wrote:Hello Barry, I'm an 80 year old female E4/E4.
That puts my lesser problem into perspective.
Starfish77 wrote: I'm working toward those healthy 90's too.
I wish you luck! Thanks for your words of encouragement.
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Barry Pearson
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Barry Pearson »

ajackson wrote:You look like you are pretty well educated on the subject of Alzheimer's and are very active in taking positive steps for your health.
I was originally taking the active steps mainly for all the other things queuing up to kill me! (And I've been concerned about the humanitarian and economic crises of obesity and type-2 diabetes across the world. I actually know far more about the causes and reversal of type-2 diabetes, which I'm not at risk of, than about Alzheimer's).

But obviously I learned quite a bit about the consequences of Alzheimer's from my father's suffering. I bought (and read) Amy Berger's "The Alzheimer's Antidote: Using a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet to Fight Alzheimer's Disease, Memory Loss, and Cognitive Decline" just in case. (I'm a compulsive reader!) Then last week I got the results from 23andMe, so here I am.

I've pre-ordered two more books: "The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Programme to Prevent and Reverse the Cognitive Decline of Dementia" by Dr Dale Bredesen (22 August 2017), and "In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's" by Joseph Jebelli (25 January 2018). I think some of Bredesen's material is on this website.
ajackson wrote: You also might check out our Primer It has a lot of great information including some of the diet topics you mentioned.
Thanks. Yes, I've had a look, and I've also found a number of interesting papers via the Science and Research forum. I'm noting how many gaps there are in general understanding, and (as expected) that sometimes there is disagreement about details. (For example, fats, alcohol, interpretation of lipids, etc).

Thanks for the pointers.
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Ladyjane »

Thanks, Barry, for noting these books. I knew about Berger's but not the other two books, especially Bredensen's. Am ordering them immediately!

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Barry Pearson
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Barry Pearson »

Ladyjane wrote:Thanks, Barry, for noting these books. I knew about Berger's but not the other two books, especially Bredensen's.
That raises the question: is there a list of potentially useful books on this website?
(I'm new here, and don't know my way around yet. Perhaps those books should be in the list, although since they haven't been published yet we can't be certain of the quality).
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Post by Ladyjane »

I am also a new member. As a holistic nutritionist, I am constantly reading nutitional research books. I don't know if this group has compiled such a list. If not, we certainly could take advantage of a book, research paper, and podcast compilation.
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by SusanJ »

We don't have a list of books. Many have been suggested in various threads. Feel free to start a new thread "Books" and list your favorites.
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Re: I'm a new member, introducing myself

Post by Ladyjane »

I need an assistant. Never enough hours in the day. Maybe I can eventually. . .
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