Slashdot Mirror
Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimer's
lurking_giant sends along a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice. "'On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain,' [said] Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center... 'We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's.' ... These mice showed chemical changes in their brains, indicating an abnormal build-up of the protein tau as well as signs that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another protein called Arc involved in memory storage."
All this leftover halloween candy... Well... I guess I'm screwed then.
About what?... I forget
Sounds like absolute hogwash to me. Now I have to head for the candy machine and get me one of those ... you know ... what are they called? ... things.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
My wife will probably tell me she saw this story on Ophra...
. . . fed on a diet of nicotine and alcohol, behaved in a way described by Dr. Akterin as "ladish", and taunted her with "tits out for the mice!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The United States has a Food and Drug Administration. Think about it.
Of course they're in it together. Ever wonder why the US has a 100% mortality rate?
This guy's the limit!
Wrong. Ever hear of Walt Disney on ice? Hint. It doesn't include Nancy Kerrigan.
Why'd you take your tinfoil hat off?
Wait... they've gotten to you!
Just wondering, who do you think you that you can run around getting government involved in everything? Seriously, tax it? Where did that come from? Because more government is all we need, right? If people want to put crap into their bodies, so be it.
Are you going to tax healthy restaurants too? Which menu items will you tax? I hope you won't tax the Salad+Vinegarett combos. I suppose if you support universal healthcare then you could make a case for taxing unhealthy foods. I love people that think we need the government to baby our citizens into behaving and eating well.
On a side note, I haven't RTA, but my guess is they correlate these two, and do not find the cause.
IANABiologist, but I've read some papers that make a fairly convincing case that Alzheimers is simply diabetes in the brain.
Fast foods (and candy of course) are terribly rich in starch. The starch/sugar-> glucose process takes very little effort on behalf of your body, and is very fast. Result is tons of glucose spikes in your blood, which over time decreases insulin sensitivity of your (muscles, brain). That's not even mentioning the free radicals (cancer agents) released when processing the starches.
So the answer is not a blanket "avoid fast food" (or, heaven forbid tax it) but when you go out to eat, choose what you eat carefully. Stay away from the simple carbs like fries, get proteins and fibers.