Alzheimer’s and the link with meat
The idea that Alzheimer’s disease is an inevitable and natural accompaniment to old age is widespread. It’s a myth, says Tony Wardle, as he investigates…
Twenty years ago I researched the needs of carers for the Kings Fund, a body which advises the Government on health policy. Carers perform a vital task in looking after disabled relatives and friends at home and those I interviewed were dealing with many different disabilities. But there was one group of carers who stood out from the others for one overpowering reason – they seemed virtually shell shocked. It was those coping with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The average life span from diagnosis to death of AD is eight years and the demands, unpredictability and sleep disruption, increases remorselessly, as does the sorrow and despair at witnessing a loved one’s inexorable mental decline and the cruel erasure of their personality – and being able to do nothing about it.
Last week it felt like groundhog day when Woman’s Hour debated the same subject – 20 years on, carers are still asking for support. One reason they haven’t received it is cost – with AD rapidly approaching plague proportions, the exchequer is determined that the burden of caring will continue to be borne by relatives.
There are several different types of dementia and all are increasing but none so fast as AD, which accounts for 55 per cent of all cases. It wasn’t even diagnosed until 1907 and it took until 1948 for the number of cases to rise to 150, increasing to 648 by 1978. The rate then exploded and currently there are almost 500,000 cases in the UK, 4.5 million in the US and 250,000 in Canada.
About three per cent of men and women aged 65 to 74 have AD in the UK
but nearly half of those aged 85 and older may have it. In the US it is
even worse, affecting between eight and 10 per cent of those over 65. Not
surprisingly, medical interest has become frenzied, with the number of
scientific articles increasing 5,000 fold over a 30 year period. Someone,
somewhere is extremely worried.
You almost have to kick yourself to remember that despite these staggering
figures, AD is not a normal part of the ageing process. Something has gone
seriously wrong and this new epidemic is rapidly assuming similar proportions
to the AIDS pandemic. One big difference is that it is the developed world
which has the largest number of cases of this cruel, brain-rotting disease.
But not for long, as AD is becoming one of the West’s most rapidly
growing exports, along with its consumer-based lifestyle.
Symptoms are very similar to that other brain-destroying infection, Creutzfeltd Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease. So what’s the difference between them? Very little according to a new book by Dr Murray Waldman, Toronto’s coroner, who claims that AD may well be caused by a rogue protein called a prion in much the same way that vCJD is (Dying for a Hamburger, Piatkus). He also believes the source of vCJD and Alzheimer’s is identical – meat!
Waldman sets out his reasons. In all prion diseases it is the brain which is affected by dense deposits and dementia is the major symptom. In most cases these symptoms don’t show until later in life and prior to that there are no indications that people are incubating the disease. There is no way of reversing it once it starts. Prion diseases were first described in medical literature around the start of the 20th century. The majority of cases are in the developed world with very few in countries such as India, Bangladesh and Nigeria. All these factors are also true for AD.
Waldman charts the growth of the meat industry and meat eating and relates this directly to the number of cases – the more meat, the more cases of AD. The World Health Organisation’s figures for meat consumption correlate almost exactly with Waldman’s theory.
The organisations which were set up to represent AD victims must surely have made a similar connection? It seems not.
“Both diseases involve proteins in the brain that somehow change shape and cause damage,” says Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research for the Alzheimer’s Society. “But they are different proteins and the diseases have a different biochemistry and a different pathology.”
So what is the cause? “Many of the risk factors for heart disease also apply to Alzheimer’s”, adds Sorensen.
It still puts meat squarely in the frame as those risk factors are saturated fat, cholesterol, high levels of a substance called homocysteine and high blood pressure, all caused largely by animal products.
Such an immediate rejection of the idea that prions may be involved seems a little arrogant considering that the man who discovered them, and won a Nobel Prize for his efforts, Prof Stanley Prusiner, believes they may well be.
If this eminent professor’s instincts are correct then the way to avoid Alzheimer’s entirely is to stop eating meat. If he’s wrong and Dr Sorensen is right, the way to dramatically reduce your risk is to stop eating not just meat but dairy products also, along with seafood and eggs. You won’t find much encouragement to do this on the Alzheimer’s Society website. In fact, its advice on preventing AD is feeble and contradictory – and that’s being polite.
The Society admits that: “Several studies suggest that raised blood cholesterol levels can dramatically increase the risk of developing AD.” Not half!
So what is cholesterol? It’s a sterol (a waxy, solid substance)
made by the liver and present in every cell in animal’s
and human’s bodies. High levels are found in meat, dairy, eggs, fish
and seafood. It is not required in the diet. Too much cholesterol leads
to blood vessel (vascular) damage through deposits in the artery walls
and is one of the prime risk factors for heart disease. The situation is
made far worse by eating animal (saturated) fat, which causes the liver
to produce even more cholesterol. The main way vegetable fats carry guilt
is when they’ve been altered by the food industry and hardened (hydrogenated)
to prolong the shelf life of products. Palm oil and coconut oil do contain
saturated fat but they also contain high levels of healthier, unsaturated
fat and there is evidence that they are metabolised differently by the
body and can actually reduce cholesterol levels.
According to the World Health Organisation, 70 per cent
of people in the affluent West have dangerously high cholesterol levels
and it is in no doubt that the cause is animal products. The answer,
it states, is for people to
junk these products in favour of plant foods.
High cholesterol levels can increase the risk of AD by more than two-and-a-half
times, unless you have specific genes, when the risk increases 16 fold.
The Alzheimer’s Society’s advice, if you’re worried about
cholesterol, is to go and see your doctor! Wow – that’ll work!
With virtually no training in nutrition, he or she will probably tell you
to reduce red meat in favour of white meat, cut away visible fat and replace
butter with marg. And that will reduce cholesterol levels by only about
five per cent, still leaving you in the danger zone! Going veggie reduces
cholesterol levels far more, despite
the fact that many veggies still consume saturated fat through dairy products.
The third risk factor for heart disease is homocysteine (Hcy), which can also increase the risk of AD threefold. It’s produced by something called methionine, which in turn is a product of the protein you eat – or rather the animal protein. The more meat you eat, the more Hcy you’re likely to have and a 100 gram portion of grilled chicken contains 12 times more than tofu. It acts similarly to cholesterol and causes arterial deposits that restrict blood flow.
What brings Hcy levels down is folate, found almost exclusively in plant
foods, particularly asparagus, green leafy veg and citrus fruits. It works
in conjunction with B12, the vitamin which the meat industry constantly
claims can be found only in animal products. It is in meat and dairy but
clearly doesn’t do its job very well as heart disease is remorselessly
increasing, as is AD. The most readily absorbed B12 is that sprayed on
breakfast cereals and in fortified yeast extract, soya products, margarine
and soya milk or obtained in supplements (Framingham study). A lack of
it increases the risk of AD more than fourfold.
The fourth risk factor for heart disease and AD is high blood pressure
and again, animal fat is a guilty party, as is salt. Blood pressure seems
to increase inexorably as people get older – except for some. Vegetarians!
There’s no argument about what causes heart disease and is a major factor in AD – and there shouldn’t be any argument about how to reduce the risk of both but there is. “People sometimes ask whether keeping the heart healthy can protect against AD specifically. The answer to that is that we don’t yet know… Indeed, there may be no link.” That’s the Alzheimer’s Society, who are currently terribly excited about research they’re doing into fruit flies, genetically modified to carry human genes. Do the words ‘Rome’ and ‘fiddling’ come to mind?
With 34 million cases predicted globally by 2025, action and strong, clear advice is needed today because this figure is almost certainly a gross underestimate. According to the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (2000), most children are now eating an appalling diet – too much animal protein and fat with 10 per cent already showing raised cholesterol levels. When these kids reach adulthood, the rates of heart disease, cancer and strokes are set to soar – as is AD.
It isn’t just the Alzheimer’s Society that seems crippled with inertia but all the big cancer and heart charities as well. All of them should be echoing Viva!’s calls for a change in diet, they should be at our roadshows, persuading the public of the need for change and shouting about the dramatic effect that diet can have on health. I don’t know why they’re largely silent but with industry holding the research purse strings I can hazard a guess. There’s no money in prevention – a cure on the other hand…
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone actually bit the bullet and brought together all this advice into a recommended diet to avoid the devastating disease that is Alzheimer’s? Fortunately they have!
Dr Margaret Rayman (Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing – Optima) has produced a menu for us to eat to beat Alzheimer’s – and what a treat it sounds. It is, of course, entirely vegan and contains no animal products at all. Hooray!!