Are Alzheimer’s and diabetes the same disease?

 Recently a article came out in the New Scientist Magazine and website with the above noted title. First they explain “This kind of diabetes occurs when liver, muscle and fat cells stop responding efficiently to insulin, the hormone that tells them to absorb glucose from the blood. [insulin resistance] The illness is usually triggered by eating too many sugary and high-fat foods that cause insulin to spike, desensitising cells to its presence. As well as causing obesity, insulin resistance can also lead to cognitive problems such as memory loss and confusion.”
To read the entire article go to: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029453.400-are-alzheimers-and-diabetes-the-same-disease.html?full=true#.Uqf0aNJDsef

If you’ve attended my class this should be déjà vu for you. Here is another interesting coincidence. You will recall from class that I talked about the research by Dr. Suzanne Craft from University of Washington on insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s. See: http://www.hbo.com/alzheimers/the-supplementary-series.html (Just arrow down – hers is the second down on the right: The Connection Between Insulin and Alzheimer’s.

However, this author does not cite that research but notes another 2005 study by Susanne de la Monte’s group at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who identified a reason why people with type 2 diabetes had a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. “In this kind of dementia, the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, seemed to be insensitive to insulin. Not only could your liver, muscle and fat cells be “diabetic” but so it seemed, could your brain.

Feeding animals a diet designed to give them type 2 diabetes leaves their brains riddled with insoluble plaques of a protein called beta-amyloid – one of the calling cards of Alzheimer’s. We also know that insulin plays a key role in memory. Taken together, the findings suggest that Alzheimer’s might be caused by a type of brain diabetes.” She even goes on to talk about the link to oligomers that I mentioned in class. And notes, as I illustrated, that the oligomers prevent insulin binding to its receptors in the hippocampus (thus resulting in insulin resistance where memories are made). 

The articles also talks about research with rats conducted by Ewean McNay at the University at Albany in New York. To investigate whether beta-amyloid might also be a cause of cognitive decline in type 2 diabetes, McNay and colleagues fed 20 rats a high-fat diet to give them type 2 diabetes. As expected, the diabetic rats had weaker memories than the healthy ones. However, after receiving antibodies specific for oligomers, their memories improved. ‘The cognitive deficit brought on by their diabetes [was] entirely reversed,” says McNay. 

Of course we know that diabetes or insulin resistance is not the only cause of Alzheimer’s, but it is a major cause. And Although their research approached this from different directions, both Suzanne Craft and Susanne de la Monte arrived at the same conclusion that the brain, and more specifically the hippocampus, can become resistant to insulin. And by controlling the forces that lead to diabetes via insulin resistance, i.e. by avoiding a high fat high sugar diet and getting more exercising (or as McNay advises: “Go to the gym and eat fewer twinkies”) most people should be able to avoid this route to Alzheimer’s.

I plan on doing another post later on this month on an orchid extract that has been shown to aid in insulin resistance and neuro-regeneration, and then in early January I plan on doing a more comprehensive review of nearly a dozen ways to avoid or overcome insulin resistance. So stay tuned. Or you can read about those in our book.