Of course, no mention of what causes the obesity: excess carbohydrate intake.

http://www.startribune.com/study-mi...er-s/323562031/

Obesity is linked to insulin resistance (usually) which is linked to diabetes and is also linked to Alzheimers... and so on.

No big surprise here.

Nancy, yes. In Grain Brain, Dr Perlmutter goes into great detail about the links from Type 2 Diabetes to Alzheimer's, and the vastly increased potential for developing the second if you have the first.

MickiSue - unfortunately, these "health" articles have a way of avoiding the facts! You're right, no mention of any causation of the initial condition leading to Alzheimer's. Might have been valuable information to suggest ways to prevent obesity and lower BMI rather than the following anemic statements:

My parents were both overweight carboholics and type 2 diabetics. My mom developed early-onset Alzheimer's beginning at about age 56. By the time she was my current age (63) she basically had not idea who anyone was anymore and was totally helpless to be on her own - but was lucky to have my dad who devoted himself utterly to her care 24/7.

Anyway, it's a horrible disease, especially having to watch someone close to you go through it, and of course my sisters and I have always worried about possible genetic links though we are all older now than mom was when her symptoms started and we are all still mentally here - but one reason I really want to try to overcome IR.

My dad kept all his marbles though, as least until age 75 when his doctor decided that, since he was a diabetic, he needed to be on statins even though his cholesterol was only mildly elevated by the medical standards (about 203) and not even elevated at all according to most folks here!

And withing six months he went from a 75-year-old who was strong, sharp and vigorous to one who was an old man, stooped and hunched over, shuffling when he walked, developing short-term memory loss, developed congestive heart failure (and his heart had always been strong and in great shape too).

I was clueless about it all at the time, but my sister did some research and decided it was due to the statins. She got him to come off them but the damage was done. HE recovered a little bit but was still a stooped old man with occasional memory problems for the remaining 6 1/2 years of his life. But at least he didn't have Alzheimer's! That one is so scary to think about.

So why do trim people like Rita Hayworth get Alzheimers? Come to think of it, when Alzheimers was first identified, everyone was trim.

You can have insulin resistance, and be Type 2 diabetic, and still be slim. Obesity is an outward sign that you need to pay attention to, but it's not the only sign.

There are plenty of slim people who eat tons of carbs, but because they burn them quickly, stay slim. That doesn't, however, mean that they don't have excess glucose flowing through their veins.

I worry about our two nephews, who both have Type 1 diabetes. If Dr Perlmutter's research is even close to accurate, FBS that is much lower than the goal with insulin injections is the safe line for deterioration of the brain. But with diabetic retinopathy, peripheral neuropathy and other secondary issues to diabetes, how many, if any, endocrinologists are looking at the major neuropathy of cognitive issues?

It could be that fat is the body's protection against excess carbohydrate. Thin people don't have the protection of fat so the carbs do damage elsewhere.

That seems to be supported by the quote below.

MedPage Today on the same study -
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurolo...rsDisease/53368

Because trim people also get T2 diabetes and insulin resistance. In fact, it is usually worse for them because getting fat is your body's way of dealing with high blood sugar. Those who can't shunt it away into fat cells have higher BG longer.

It gets complicated the longer I think about it. It's obvious insulin and BG are involved in both obesity and Alzheimer's. But it's not obvious how they're involved. According to my paradigm, obesity is easy to explain. The liver somehow can't degrade insulin fast enough, fasting insulin rises, fat tissue grows bigger. I think I got it. For Alzheimer's, the brain remains much more insulin sensitive, to in turn respond much more by degrading all that insulin on site, but with the same enzyme that otherwise works to degrade amyloid, which now accumulates instead. In both cases, the liver is resistant, it can't degrade insulin fast enough, fasting insulin rises, but the brain takes over the insulin-degrading with Alzheimer's, fasting insulin drops, fat tissue doesn't grow as big. However, keep that up and eventually the brain becomes resistant, can't degrade insulin as fast, fasting insulin rises again, fat tissue eventually grows bigger.

This gives me the idea that we can predict risk by determining where insulin is degraded most now. If the liver, then greater risk of future obesity. If the brain, then greater risk of future Alzheimer's. We could find out by looking at insulin-degrading enzyme activity in either tissue. Is this possible?

Funnily enough my mom weighed 220 pounds when she first had Alzheimer's symptoms at age 56, and at her death 21 years later she was 112 pounds despite being completely bedridden (eg zero exercise) and being fed enormous amounts of foid every day, far more food that she ate at 220 pounds.

A specialist who saw her told my dad that as Alzheimer's patients slowly forget things their bodies do too, and one of the things the body "forgets" is how to metabolize food. He attributed my mom's long life from the onset of symptoms to my dad's care and feeding of her ~ and said that the vast majority of Alzheimer's patients who are institutionalized and fed "normal" amounts of food actually die of starvation and malnutrition.

True? I never followed up on his statement but I never forgot it either.

Well, if Alzheimer's is a disorder where insulin is involved, it's possible that at some point insulin signaling breaks down. It happens with cancer, obesity, diabetes. When insulin signaling breaks down, all functions regulated by insulin break down too. So for example, insulin (signaling) is required to maintain protein synthesis, and without insulin (signaling) lean tissue wastes away.

I'm so sorry to hear. And it can happen so fast! Statins truly are evil drugs. Thanks goodness my mother is seeing a doctor who doesn't want her elderly patients on statins. Because she is of the era where if a doctor said to stand in front of a train to make her bones stronger, she'd do it.

While society derides the fat folks among us, they are simply metabolic examples of how carbs can be shunted to fat tissue to protect the body from high blood glucose.

The clues are right in front of them, having been studied for decades, and they still wander around like lobotomized sheep, muttering "calories in, calories out."

Perlmutter (and likely others) often call Alzheimer's "Type 3 Diabetes."

How awful. What a terrible thing dementia/Alzheimer's is. We have taken ourselves off statins and our brains have "woke back up." We no longer have CRS (can't remember stuff). We are 66 & 72. We play bridge and when someone says, "oh dear, I just couldn't remember what cards were played..." I automatically say, "You must take statins?" "Why yes, how did you know?" This scenario has played out countless times. I wish I had a buck for every time it did. Sad. And deplorable--physicians and Big Pharma are lining their pockets. But don't get me started...