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New Blood Test Offers Early Warning for Alzheimer's Onset
Georgetown researcher (and executive dean of Georgetown's medical school) Howard Federoff has taken a "systems" approach to diagnostics for certain chronic diseases. By comparing blood samples taken from patients who subsequently developed Alzheimer's to blood samples after the disease has manifested, Federoff has identified markers and created a blood test that is described as "90 percent accurate" (the BBC article does not delve into the ratio of false positives to false negatives) in predicting whether a currently healthy patient is likely to develop Alzheimer's in the following three years. Understandably, this raises some ethical and practical questions. What would you do differently if this test came back positive for yourself? Or for a parent? Here's the (paywalled) paper, at Nature Medicine.
I would change my diet very quickly and take up jogging:
Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...
Also, I would look specifically at anti-inflammatory diets, because Alzheimers, like many chronic modern diseases, is linked to chronic inflammation (in this case, in the brain):
> Since the late 1980s, various studies have found hints that the chronic inflammation found in Alzheimer’s hastens the disease process
See the connection?
http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/...
Inactivity and obesity increase the risk for diabetes, but exactly how is unclear. Recent research suggests that inflammation inside the body plays a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.
The good news: An "anti-inflammatory" diet and exercise plan can help prevent and treat type 2 diabetes.
The effects of inflammation are familiar to anyone who has experienced a bug bite, rash, skin infection, or ankle sprain. In those situations, you will see swelling in the affected area.
With type 2 diabetes, inflammation is internal.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Heh... Easy question, unfortunately.
Top priority: prepare an easy and painless way out. Guns are illegal here, so it would take a bit of thinking, organizing, saving money, etc. Probably the best solution would be an international trip to a clinic that will help me, but I would need a backup plan if someone decided to stop me. Better do it early and be ready for later, with a plan simple enough to execute when the illness already has a significant effect (but before it makes me forget I have that option). Later I may not be able to do this and noone will help me. Hell, I wouldn't even ask for it, I don't want that helpful person to go to jail.
Oh, I could have other priorities, if I could achieve this just by making my wish clear. But as long as euthanasia is not legal here, I'd have to rely on myself, so waiting too long would be risky. I will not reach the final, infant-like stages if I can help it. I prefer to keep my dignity, thank you.
So, this is the most important thing. Number two is obvious too - research into current best practices and applying them (diet, activity, training, whatever). Even if it buys me just a few more months of mostly normal life, it's worth it.
Not to suggest that anyone should do the same. If your views or priorities are different, feel free to do whatever you want.
If I knew you were to develop a demence, I'd suggest you settle your pending issues right away, but I don't see a reason not to do that, anyway, You don't know what awaits you at the turn of the corner.
It's not so much "pending issues" I'd want to settle it's more a case of holidays. Having had a father who died of alzheimer's last year my mum was trapped at home with him for several years and got very few trips away. If my dad had known that he was going to develop the disease in a few years then they would likely have taken more holidays, visited family etc. a lot more because there was a limited window to do so. As it was it was about a one year window from diagnosis to my dad being too confused to travel.
This is not the sort of thing that you would do without knowing knowing that you were developing alzheimer's since, if you took all that travel at once, you'd be stuck at home for several years afterwards. So if there is still no cure when I get to the age to worry about alzheimer's I would certainly find a 3 year advance warning useful - it gives you time to visit the family and travel while you know what you are doing. It's also easier to put your affairs in order before you start to suffer from the symptoms since financial matters are hard enough to get right with your full mental faculties.