According to recent research, stress appears to be related to
the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, by triggering a degenerative
process in your brain and precipitating disruption of your
neuroendocrine and immune system
The researchers found that nearly three out of four Alzheimer's
patients had experienced severe emotional stress during the two
years preceding their diagnosis, compared to just over one in
four in the control group
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts about 5.4 million
Americans, including one in eight people aged 65 and over
Research suggests the best hope is in prevention focusing on
diet, exercise and staying mentally active
Avoiding gluten and casein appears to be of critical importance,
as is making sure you’re getting plenty of healthful fats
(including demonized saturated fats). Fasting also has a
remarkably beneficial influence on your brain health
By Dr. Mercola
The connections between stress and physical and mental health
are undeniable. Studies have found links between acute and/or
chronic stress and a wide variety of health issues.
This includes reduced immune function, increased
inflammation, high blood pressure, and alterations in your brain
chemistry, blood sugar levels and hormonal balance, just to name
a few.
According to recent research, stress also appears to be
related to onset of Alzheimer’s disease, which currently
afflicts about 5.4 million Americans, including one in eight
people aged 65 and over.1
It is projected that Alzheimer's will affect one in four
Americans in the next 20 years, rivaling the current prevalence
of obesity and diabetes. There is still no known cure for this
devastating disease, and very few treatments.
Alzheimer's drugs are often of little to no benefit, which
underscores the importance of prevention throughout your
lifetime.
Fortunately, there’s
compelling research showing that your brain has great
plasticity and capacity for regeneration, which you control
through your diet and lifestyle choices.
Avoiding gluten and casein, or wheat and dairy primarily,
appears to be of critical importance, as is making sure you’re
getting plenty of healthful fats (including demonized saturated
fats).Casein
is the primary protein found in dairy, and can be problematic
for dairy intolerant individuals.
However, it’s also found in human breast milk. Additionally, raw
dairy is generally well tolerated by casein sensitive
individuals, but contraindicated for those with a severe
allergy.
Fasting also has a remarkably beneficial influence on your
brain health. At the end of this article, I share my best tips
for maintaining healthy brain function well into old age.
Stress May Be Related to Clinical Onset of Alzheimer’s Disease
Researchers in Argentina recently presented evidence
suggesting that stress may be a trigger for the onset of
Alzheimer’s disease. The research was presented at the annual
World Congress of Neurology in Vienna. According to lead author,
Dr. Edgardo Reich:2
"Stress, according to our findings, is probably a
trigger for initial symptoms of dementia.
Though I rule out stress as monocausal in dementia,
research is solidifying the evidence that stress can trigger
a degenerative process in the brain and precipitate
dysfunction in the neuroendocrine and immune system. It is
an observational finding and does not imply direct
causality. Further studies are needed to examine these
mechanisms in detail."
The study found that 72 percent—nearly three out of
four—Alzheimer's patients had experienced severe emotional
stress during the two years preceding their diagnosis. In the
control group, only 26 percent, or one in four, had undergone
major stress or grief. Most of the stresses encountered by the
Alzheimer’s group involved:
Bereavement; death of a spouse, partner, or child
Violent experiences, such as assault or robbery
Car accidents
Financial problems, including “pension shock”
Diagnosis of a family member’s severe illness
When you consider all the adverse biological effects that
stress and anxiety causes, it might not be such a stretch that
severe stress could trigger Alzheimer’s. For example,
researchers have found links between emotional distress and
physical pain,3
chronic inflammation4
and even stillbirths.5
It can also
wreak havoc on your gut health, which is critical to
maintaining mental and physical health. Most recently,
Forbes6
reported the findings of a study7
exploring the role of stress in rewiring your brain—in this
case, altering your sense of smell:
“Two brain circuits that don’t typically “talk” to
each other—one linked to our sense of smell and another
linked to emotional processing—can become cross-wired when
we experience stress-induced anxiety. The result is that
stressful experiences transform normally neutral odors into
bad ones...
‘After anxiety induction, neutral smells become
clearly negative,’ explains Wen Li, a professor of
psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman
Center, who led the study. ‘People experiencing an increase
in anxiety show a decrease in the perceived pleasantness of
odors. It becomes more negative as anxiety increases.’”
How Stress Causes Disease
When you're experiencing acute stress, your body releases
stress hormones like cortisol, which prepare your body to fight
or flee the stressful event. Your heart rate increases, your
lungs take in more oxygen, your blood flow increases and parts
of your immune system become temporarily suppressed, which
reduces your inflammatory response to pathogens and other
foreign invaders.
When stress becomes chronic, however, your immune system
becomes less sensitive to cortisol, and since inflammation is
partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity
heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation
to get out of control.
This is in large part how stress “predisposes” you to getting
sick in the first place. And, in the event you do get sick,
emotional stressors can make your symptoms worse, especially if
the stress is severe or longstanding.
For example, research presented at this year’s annual meeting
of the American Psychosomatic Society in Miami, Florida, found
that ruminating on a stressful incident can increase your levels
of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in your body.8
It was the first study to directly measure this effect.
Inflammation, in turn, is a hallmark of most diseases, from
diabetes to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
Tips for Reducing Work Stress
Polls have shown that work is the number one source
of stress in people’s lives. In a recent survey9
of more than 2,000 people, 34 percent of respondents reported
that their work life was either “very” or “quite” stressful. One
in five people also reported developing anxiety due to
work-related stresses. In a related article, Forbes
magazine10
lists nine tips to reduce work-related stress, such as:
Adding personal touches to your work space, such as
photographs or art work, and live plants
Keeping your work space clean and organized
Learning to handle or ignore interruptions
Incorporating relaxation exercises into your work day
Improving your communication skills
Conquer Your Stress and Anxiety with Energy Psychology
While it’s not possible or even recommended to eliminate all
stress from your life, you can provide your body with
tools to compensate for the bioelectrical short-circuiting that
takes place when you’re stressed. Using energy psychology
techniques such as the
Emotional
Freedom Techniques (EFT) can help reprogram your body’s
reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday life, thereby
reducing your chances of experiencing adverse health effects.
Exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and meditation are
also important “release valves” that can help you manage your
stress.
EFT was developed in the 1990s by Gary Craig, a Stanford
engineering graduate specializing in healing and
self-improvement. It’s akin to acupuncture, which is based on
the concept that a vital energy flows through your body along
invisible pathways known as meridians. EFT stimulates different
energy meridian points in your body by tapping them with your
fingertips, while simultaneously using custom-made verbal
affirmations. This can be done alone or under the supervision of
a qualified therapist.11
By doing so, you help your body eliminate emotional
“scarring” and reprogram the way your body responds to emotional
stressors. Since these stressors are usually connected to
physical problems, many people’s diseases and other symptoms can
improve or disappear as well. For a demonstration, please see
the following video featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman,
in which she discusses EFT for stress relief. However, for
serious problems it is far preferable to see an experienced EFT
therapist as there is a significant art to the process that
requires a high level of sophistication if serious problems are
to be successfully treated.
Tips for Maintaining Healthy Brain Function and Avoiding
Alzheimer's Disease
The beauty of following my
optimized nutrition plan is that it helps prevent and treat
virtually ALL chronic degenerative diseases, including
Alzheimer’s disease. Remember, while memory loss is indeed
common among Westerners, it is NOT a "normal" part of aging, and
cognitive changes are by no means inevitable.
As explained by neurologist
Dr. David Perlmutter in a recent interview, Alzheimer’s is a
disease predicated primarily on lifestyle choices; the two main
culprits being excessive sugar and gluten consumption. Another
major factor is the development and increased consumption of
genetically engineered (GE) grains, which are now pervasive
in most processed foods sold in the US. His book,
Grain Brain, provides a powerful argument for
eliminating grains from your diet.
Knowing that it is a preventable disease puts the power into
your hands. People who experience very little decline in their
cognitive function up until their deaths have been found
(post-mortem) to be free of brain lesions, showing that it's
entirely possible to prevent the damage from occurring in the
first place… and one of the best ways to do this is by leading a
healthy lifestyle.
Avoid Sugar andfructose. Ideally,
you’ll want to keep your sugar levels to a minimum and your
total fructose below 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams
per day if you have insulin resistance or any related
disorders.
Avoid gluten and casein (primarily wheat and
pasteurized dairy, but not dairy fat, such as
butter). Research shows that your blood-brain
barrier, the barrier that keeps things out of your brain
where they don’t belong, is negatively affected by gluten.
Gluten also makes your gut more permeable, which allows
proteins to get into your bloodstream, where they don’t
belong. That then sensitizes your immune system and promotes
inflammation and autoimmunity, both of which play a role in
the development of Alzheimer’s.
Optimize your gut flora by regularly
eating fermented foods or taking a high quality probiotic
supplement.
Increase consumption of healthful fats,
including animal-based omega-3. Beneficial
health-promoting fats that your
brain needs for optimal function include organic butter
from raw milk, clarified butter called organic grass fed raw
butter, olives, organic virgin olive oil and coconut oil,
nuts like pecans and macadamia, free-range eggs, wild
Alaskan salmon, and avocado.
Also make sure you’re getting enough animal-based omega-3
fats, such as krill oil. (I recommend avoiding most fish
because, although fish is naturally high in omega-3, most
fish are now severely contaminated with mercury.) High
intake of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA help by preventing
cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease, thereby slowing
down its progression, and lowering your risk of developing
the disorder.
Reduce your overall calorie consumption, and/or
intermittently fast. Contrary to popular belief,
the ideal fuel for your brain is not glucose but ketones,
which is the fat that your body mobilizes when you stop
feeding it carbs and introduce coconut oil and other sources
of healthy fats into your diet. A one-day fast can help your
body to “reset” itself, and start to burn fat instead of
sugar.
As part of a healthy lifestyle, I prefer an
intermittent fasting schedule that simply calls for
limiting your eating to a narrower window of time each day.
By restricting your eating to a 6-8 hour window, you
effectively fast 16-18 hours each day. To learn more, please
see this previous
article.
Improve your magnesium levels. There is
some exciting preliminary research strongly suggesting a
decrease in Alzheimer symptoms with increased levels of
magnesium in the brain. Unfortunately, most magnesium
supplements do not pass the blood brain levels, but a new
one, magnesium threonate, appears to and holds some promise
for the future for treating this condition and may be
superior to other forms.
Optimize your vitamin D levels with safe sun
exposure. Strong links between low levels of
vitamin D in Alzheimer's patients and poor outcomes on
cognitive tests have been revealed. Researchers believe that
optimal vitamin D levels may enhance the amount of important
chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells by
increasing the effectiveness of the glial cells in nursing
damaged neurons back to health.
Vitamin D may also exert some of its beneficial effects
on Alzheimer's through its anti-inflammatory and
immune-boosting properties. Sufficient vitamin D is
imperative for proper functioning of your immune system to
combat inflammation that is also associated with
Alzheimer's.
Keep your fasting insulin levels below 3.
This is indirectly related to fructose, as it will clearly
lead to insulin resistance. However other sugars (sucrose is
50 percent fructose by weight), grains and lack of exercise
are also important factors. Lowering insulin will also help
lower leptin levels which is another factor for Alzheimer’s.
Vitamin B12: In
addition to the research presented above, a small Finnish
study published in the journal Neurology12
also found that people who consume foods rich in B12 may
reduce their risk of Alzheimer's in their later years. For
each unit increase in the marker of vitamin B12, the risk of
developing Alzheimer's was reduced by two percent. Remember,
sublingual methylcobalamin may be your best bet here.
Eat a nutritious diet, rich in folate,
such as the one described in my
nutrition plan. Vegetables, without question, are your
best form of folate, and we should all eat plenty of fresh
raw veggies every day. Avoid supplements with folic acid,
which is the inferior synthetic version of folate.
Avoid and eliminate mercury from your body.
Dental amalgam fillings, which are 50 percent mercury by
weight, are one of the major sources of heavy metal
toxicity. However, you should be healthy prior to having
them removed. Once you have adjusted to following the diet
described in my optimized
nutrition plan, you can follow the
mercury detox protocol and then find a biological
dentist to have your amalgams removed.
Avoid aluminum, such as
antiperspirants, non-stick cookware,
vaccine adjuvants, etc.
Exercise regularly. It's been suggested
that exercise can trigger a change in the way the amyloid
precursor protein is metabolized,13
thus, slowing down the onset and progression of Alzheimer's.
Exercise also increases levels of the protein PGC-1alpha.
Research has also shown that people with Alzheimer's have
less PGC-1alpha in their brains and cells that contain more
of the protein produce less of the toxic amyloid protein
associated with Alzheimer's. I would strongly recommend
reviewing the
Peak Fitness Technique for my specific recommendations.
Avoid flu vaccinations as most contain
both mercury and aluminum, well-known neurotoxic and
immunotoxic agents.
Eat blueberries. Wild blueberries,
which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content, are
known to guard against Alzheimer's and other neurological
diseases. Like any fruit though, avoid excesses here.
Challenge your mind daily. Mental
stimulation, especially learning something new, such as
learning to play an instrument or a new language, is
associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer's. Researchers
suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain,
making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with
Alzheimer's disease.
Avoid anticholinergic and statin drugs.
Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system
neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of
dementia. These drugs include certain nighttime pain
relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain
antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and
certain narcotic pain relievers.
Statin drugs are particularly problematic because they
suppress the synthesis of cholesterol, deplete your brain of
coenzyme Q10 and neurotransmitter precursors, and prevent
adequate delivery of essential fatty acids and fat-soluble
antioxidants to your brain by inhibiting the production of
the indispensable carrier biomolecule known as low-density
lipoprotein.