Fructose, Sunscreen, Statins and Flu Shots: a Recipe for Alzheimer's Disease.

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A Recipe for Alzheimer's Disease

by Stephanie Seneff
Senior Research Scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Fructose, Sunscreen, Statins and Flu Shots: a Recipe for Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's is a dreaded diagnosis that immediately causes a patient to confront the frightening fact that the rest of their life will be defined by steadily eroding memory and cognitive function. Alzheimer's is alarmingly on the rise, and has been so for the past several decades. The cost to society, both financially and emotionally, is staggering.

Much research effort has been devoted to the search for a "cure" for Alzheimer's, most of it predicated on the notion that the characteristic amyloid-beta plaque and tau tangles are causative. Indeed, some drugs that attack the plaque have made it to phase III clinical trials, and, although they do indeed shrink the plaque, they unfortunately also accelerate the rate of decline [1].

I think a better tactic is to look for a cause rather than a cure. Together with colleagues, I published a paper this year on a theory for the cause of Alzheimer's [2], which was based on the idea that a key contributor is insufficient cholesterol in the brain.

Indeed, a recent article has shown that serum levels of cholesterol as well as the ability to synthesize cholesterol are inversely associated with mental decline in the elderly [3]. Furthermore, another study directly comparing Alzheimer's patients with age-matched controls showed a reduced serum level of LDL in the Alzheimer's patients, with the more severe cases showing further reduction in LDL [6].

When you look back to the earliest stages of Alzheimer's, the principle defect that is observed is an impairment in glucose metabolism in the brain [4]. Neurons ordinarily depend heavily on sugar as a fuel source, but sugar is toxic to cells if it's not carefully managed.

The cells have developed a mechanism for controlling the entry of glucose to be restricted to certain "gates" - regions of the cell membrane called lipid rafts that are heavily enriched in cholesterol and sphingomyelin. When cells don't have sufficient cholesterol in their membranes, they have fewer lipid rafts, and this leads to defective glucose uptake, and therefore increased risk to glycation damage from the glucose.

The proteins in the cell get gummed up with sugar and can no longer perform their functions. Fructose is far more damaging than glucose, and fructose consumption has steadily increased in the last decades. In our paper, we described ways in which amyloid beta can actually pitch in to try to divert neurons to alternative fuel sources, in order to minimize the damage caused by wayward sugars.

Since writing that article, I have discovered some compounding factors that I think make the situation much worse. Essentially all cells in the body are surrounded by an exterior coat made up of complex molecules called "GAGs" - glycosaminoglycans.

These contain sugars, proteins, and a large population of attached ions, particularly sulfate anions. These serve, I believe, an important role in helping to safely break down sugar. Simply stated, the sulfur atom deflects the reducing actions of sugars away from the vulnerable proteins.

The sulfate anions also provide a negative field around the cell, which is very useful for keeping bacteria out, because bacteria are also negatively charged, and hence repelled by the cell's negative electric field. So cells with lots of surrounding sulfate are afforded protection from invasive bacteria.

If a bacterium does get in, the cell will have to release oxidizing agents to kill it, and the cell itself will suffer damage from exposure to its own defense system. The fats in the cell membrane are more vulnerable to oxidative damage when there is insufficient cholesterol to protect them.

I now think that depletion of sulfate supply to the brain is another important contributor to Alzheimer's, and I further think that sulfate is supplied to the brain principally by sterol sulfates like cholesterol sulfate as well as their derivatives like vitamin D3 sulfate.

Both cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D3 sulfate are synthesized in the skin upon exposure to sunlight, and it is theorized that the skin is the major supplier of these nutrients to the body [5]. This is why I believe that excess sunscreen use and excess sun avoidance are another principal causative factor in Alzheimer's disease.

Statin drugs interfere with cholesterol synthesis in the liver, but the lipophilic statin drugs (like lovastatin and simvastatin) also interfere with the synthesis of cholesterol in the brain. This would then directly impact the neurons' ability to maintain adequate cholesterol in their membranes.

Indeed, a population-based study [7] showed that people who had ever taken statins had an increased risk to Alzheimer's disease, a hazard ratio of 1.21. More alarmingly, people who used to take statins had a hazard ratio of 2.54 (over two and a half times the risk to Alzheimer's) compared to people who never took statins.

What I think is happening is that the doctor is taking the patient off the statin drug once memory problems are noted, suspecting that the statin may be causing the problem. But it may well be too late at that point to recover. In my own studies on patient-provided drug side effect reports [8], I found a statistically significant increase in the mention of words and phrases associated with memory problems (p=0.011) in the statin drug reports compared to age-matched reports on a variety of other drugs.

Finally, I want to talk about flu shots. The elderly are greatly encouraged to renew their flu shots every single year, and I think this is another major factor that is steadily increasing their risk to Alzheimer's disease. This is mainly due to the aluminum contained in the flu shot.

It has been demonstrated without a doubt that aluminum in the water used in dialysis fluid eventually leads to dementia in dialysis patients, if care is not taken to extract all but trace amounts of aluminum from the water [9].

A very compelling article recently appeared on all the myriad dangers associated with aluminum in vaccines, and aluminum penetration into the brain as well as cognitive damage have both been well demonstrated in animal studies. The aluminum in the Hepatitis B vaccine is a likely source of the association found between this vaccine and autism [10], and I believe that the effects on the infant's brain and those on the elderly person's brain are similar and equally damaging.

The good news is that all of these factors are easy to correct, so the individual can become empowered to lead a lifestyle that will minimize the likelihood of having to face Alzheimer's as they age. The only challenge is to convince yourself that the misguided advice widely espoused by the medical establishment is dead wrong.

Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Website at MIT: people.csail.mit.edu/seneff
Blog: stephanie-on-health.blogspot.com

References

[1] Eli Lilly and Company, 2010 PR Newswire, Lilly Halts Development of Semagacestat for Alzheimer's Disease Based on Preliminary Results of Phase III Clinical Trials, August 17, 2010, http://newsroom.lilly.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=499794 (accessed on September 24, 2011).

[2] S. Seneff, G. Wainwright, and L. Mascitelli, "Nutrition and Alzheimer's Disease: the Detrimental Role of a High Carbohydrate Diet," European Journal of Internal Medicine 22(2):134-40, Apr 2011.

[3] R.S. Tilvis, J.N. Valvanne, T.E. Strandberg and T.A. Miettinen, "Prognostic significance of serum cholesterol, lathosterol, and sitosterol in old age; a 17-year population study," Annals of Medicine, 2011; Early Online, 110

[4] E. Steen, B.M. Terry, E.J. Rivera et al. "Impaired insulin and insulin-like growth factor expression and signaling mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease-is this type 3 diabetes?" J Alzheimer's Dis 2005;7:63-80.

[5] C.A. Strott, "Cholesterol Sulfate In Human Physiology: What's It All About?" J Lipid Res 44, 1268-1278, 2003.

[6] P. Presecki, D. Mückseler, N. Mimica, et al., "Serum Lipid Levels in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease," Coll. Antropol. 35 Suppl. 1: 115120, 2011.

[7] T.D. Rea, J.C. Breitner, B.M. Psaty et al., "Statin Use and the Risk of Incident Dementia: The Cardiovascular Health Study," Arch Neurol. 62, 2005

[8] J. Liu, A. Li and S. Seneff, "Automatic Drug Side Effect Discovery from Online Patient- Submitted Reviews: Focus on Statin Drugs," Proc. IMMM, Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 2011.

[9] M.R. Wills and J. Savory, "Water Content of Aluminum, Dialysis Dementia, and Os- teomalacia" Environmental Health Perspectives 63:141-147, 1985.

[10] Gallagher OM and Goodman MS, "Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997-2002." J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2010; 73(24):1665-77.

October 2011
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See also Stephanie's health blog here.

Why Statins Do More Harm Than Good - Stephanie Seneff

Why Statins Do More Harm Than Good

by Stephanie Seneff
Senior Research Scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Americans have been well trained over the past few decades to avoid dietary fat and cholesterol and to stay out of the sun. Their conscientious implementation of this misguided advice has led to an epidemic in obesity and heart disease, along with a host of other debilitating conditions like arthritis and Alzheimer's disease.

Cholesterol is to animals as chlorophyll is to plants. Cholesterol, absent from plants, is what gives animals mobility and a nervous system. It is therefore not surprising that statin drug side effects mainly impact muscles and the nervous system.

The heart, as a muscle, is not exempt from statin toxicity. This is why the incidence of heart failure has steadily risen in step with the widespread adoption of statin therapy, now displacing cardiovascular disease as the number one killer. In this article I am going to take you on a whirlwind tour of the 60,000 foot view of my understanding of the principle causes of the current health crisis in America.
My extensive research has caused me to hypothesize a remarkable feat that the human body can perform in the presence of sunlight, which is to extract sulfur from hydrogen sulfide in the air and convert it to sulfate, taking advantage of the sun's energy to catalyze the reaction.

This process takes place in the skin upon sun exposure, and also in the endothelial cells lining blood vessels, and in the red blood cells, platelets, and mast cells in the blood. This feat is performed by a very interesting molecule called "endothelial nitric oxide synthase,'' a misnomer, since its main responsibility is to synthesize sulfate rather than nitric oxide.

The sulfate so produced plays a huge role in cardiovascular health, both by preventing blood clots and by keeping pathogenic microbes (bacteria and viruses) at bay. But it also plays another role that is just as important, which is to give cholesterol (as well as vitamin D and other sterols) a free ride through the blood stream.

Vitamin D3 (a highly touted nutrient) is synthesized in the skin from cholesterol (a highly demonized nutrient) and its chemical structure is almost identical to that of cholesterol. By attaching to cholesterol or vitamin D3, sulfate makes the molecule water soluble, and this means that it no longer has to travel packaged up inside an LDL particle. LDL, as you probably know, is the so-called "bad'' cholesterol, which will cause doctors to prescribe statins if the level is too high.

A great way to lower LDL levels is to get adequate sun exposure. It's not going to work to take a vitamin D supplement: you have to go outside and soak up the sun, because supplements are never sulfated and vitamin D is not cholesterol. Raw cow's milk is the only dietary source I know of that actually supplies sulfated vitamin D3, but even that is still not cholesterol sulfate.

Because most Americans have inadequate cholesterol in their skin and grossly inadequate amounts of sun exposure, they suffer from a huge deficiency in cholesterol and sulfate supply to the tissues. Not surprisingly, most impacted are the muscles and nervous system.

Because the heart muscle is indispensible, the body has developed a back-up strategy to give it special treatment, which is to synthesize cholesterol sulfate from LDL and homocysteine in the fatty deposits (plaque) that build up in arteries supplying the heart. The macrophages in the plaque extract cholesterol from damaged small dense LDL particles, and export it to HDL-A1. The platelets in the plaque will only accept cholesterol from HDL-A1, which they then convert to cholesterol sulfate.

They obtain the sulfate through yet another process which requires energy and oxidizing agents, extracting the sulfur from homocysteine. With insufficient homocysteine, the sulfur will most likely be extracted from cartilage, which gets its strength from extensive disulfide bonds. This, in my view, is the main cause of arthritis -- depletion of sulfur from the cartilage in the joints. So now you have both cardiovascular disease and arthritis as a consequence of a low-fat diet and aggressive sun avoidance.

Statin drugs dramatically lower LDL levels by interfering with cholesterol synthesis, and this wreaks havoc on the liver, the main back-up supplier of cholesterol to the tissues when cholesterol intake and cholesterol sulfate production are down. With the American diet, the liver has another huge task, which is to convert fructose to fat.

The fat cannot be stored or shipped (via LDL) if there is insufficient cholesterol. As a consequence, the liver abandons this task, and the fructose builds up in the blood, causing extensive glycation damage to blood proteins. One of the impacted proteins is the apoB in LDL, which interferes with LDL's ability to deliver its goods to the tissues, including cholesterol, fats, vitamins A, D, E, and K, and antioxidants. So LDL levels fall sharply with statins, and so does the bioavailability of all these nutrients.

Muscle cells come to the rescue, heroically, by extracting excess fructose from the blood and converting it to lactate, using anaerobic metabolism. They have to switch over to anaerobic metabolism anyway, because coenzyme Q10, another casualty of statin therapy, is in low supply. Coenzyme Q10 is crucial for aerobic metabolism.

Lactate is a great fuel for the heart and liver, but the problem is that the muscle cells get wrecked in the process, due to massive overdoses of fructose, in the context of inadequate cholesterol, which would have offered some protection. This is a principle contributor to the excessive muscle pain and weakness associated with statins. Eventually, the muscles can't do it any more, and you're now on the verge towards heart failure.

People on long-term statin therapy start to notice that their hair is receding faster, they're developing cataracts, they can't hear as well as they used to, they keep forgetting things, they can't open the pickle jar any more, and perhaps they'll need rotator cuff surgery soon, as their shoulders are so sore. They think it's just because they're growing old, but these are all side effects that my research, together with my students at MIT, has uncovered, by comparing statin drug side effects with side effects associated with other drugs in age-matched reviews.

Even more alarming are the rare but debilitating and even life-threatening side effects we've detected, such as ALS and Parkinson's disease, heart and liver failure, neuropathy and severe muscle damage. A 17-year study on the elderly confirmed what I already suspected: low serum cholesterol is associated with increased frailty, accelerated mental decline, and early death. (Ref 1.)

Statins are not the answer for anyone seeking to avoid cardiovascular disease. The answer, instead, is to modify the diet to include foods that are rich in cholesterol and saturated fat, to avoid empty carbohydrates, especially high fructose corn syrup, to eat foods that are good sources of sulfur, and, most especially, to spend plenty of time outdoors in the sun.

Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
She has a Batchelor's degree from MIT in biology with a minor in food and nutrition, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, also from MIT. Her website at MIT: people.csail.mit.edu/seneff
Her blog: stephanie-on-health.blogspot.com

Ref 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21254906

September 2011
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