We don’t need to be sitting ducks for Alzheimer’s

Psychiatrist Professor Georgia Ede has that message because there’s one big risk factor we can do something about.

We might feel like sitting ducks when we’re told that ageing and being a woman put us in the firing line for dementia, but what we should be told more often is that 80% of Alzheimer’s patients have insulin resistance.

Usually we link this with diabetes, and diabetes occurs when our body is insulin resistant, but Alzheimer’s occurs when the brain is insulin resistant.

So what’s insulin resistance and how do we avoid it or turn it around?

I’ve referred to this in another post this month, and in a nutshell, when we eat sugar and starch these break down into glucose (sugar) in our blood stream. Insulin is released by our pancreas to let that glucose into our cells. It tells our muscles and our liver to store the glucose away for future use.

But if this happens over and over, our cells eventually become so used to high insulin that they stop responding to it and ignore its signals. Glucose keeps accumulating and the pancreas keeps releasing insulin, trying to get the cells to respond.

Professor Ede refers to this state as public health enemy #1. While there are a lot of potential contributors to chronic disease, the biggest, most common one is insulin resistance, whether we’re talking about heart disease, cancer, dementia, non-alcoholic fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, or a number of others.

Where Alzheimer’s is concerned, insulin resistance causes dysfunction of our two hippocampi (one is a hippocampus), the small (about 5 cm long), curved structures on either side of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

As well as working as a psychiatrist in Massachusetts, Professor Ede is the author of a book published last year called Change your Diet, Change your Mind. In addition, she’s a world leader of the conversation around how what we eat affects our mental health.

She says deterioration in the modern diet has gone hand-in-hand with a deterioration in our mental health. As well as Alzheimer’s she works with conditions such as MS, depression, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy.

Clearly, there’s a strong connection between metabolism and mental health, and it’s in our interests to know how we’re going in relation to insulin resistance.

While there’s no specific test for it, there are two ratios that tell us what we need to know. These are the waist:height and triglycerides:HDL ratios.

Here’s a link to Bupa’s waist:height calculator. You need both measurements in cms. Enter them into the calculator and it does the rest. You’re after a ratio of less than 0.5. Above that, the risk of insulin resistance is increased.

https://blua.bupa.com.au/waist-to-height-ratio

The tape should be at the level of your belly button, midway between the bottom of your ribs and the top of your hips. Not too loose and not too tight.

While this is a useful measure, also bear in mind that we can be insulin resistant without carrying excess weight.

Your triglycerides:HDL ratio can be calculated from a general blood test that includes cholesterol measures. Here’s a calculator — just change it to ‘Standard International’ (not Conventional US) units then put in your two measures and click on Calculate. The ideal ratio is 1.5 or less. A ratio of 3 is considered a sign of insulin resistance.

https://www.optimaldx.com/calculators/triglyceride-hdl-ratio

If either of those measures is getting into unhealthy territory, adjusting the way we eat is our best strategy for getting back into the healthy zone.

Thankfully, this is the same thing as eating for a healthy brain.

You might be thinking: OK, here we go again, the Mediterranean diet.

Ah, no.

Professor Ede’s concern is that it can be aligned with the message to eat a plant-based, low-fat diet rich in grains (bread, pasta, cereal, etc) and legumes, plus red wine. Starchy foods push up our blood sugar, so a Mediterranean diet that looks like that isn’t suitable for anyone with insulin resistance.

As for red wine, if we already have concerns about our brain it’s best left alone.

Not surprisingly, she recommends avoiding seed oils and refined carbs. Animal foods (meat, fish, eggs, dairy — if we tolerate them well) stabilise the brain’s chemistry and our blood sugar.

Of course, shifting to a low (or lower) carbohydrate intake can be a tall order. Carbs are inexpensive, convenient, and taste good. They can also be addictive. Sugar, for example. (A clear, easy-to-follow book on reducing carbs is Dr Peter Brukner’s The Diabetes Plan. Or check out the program on the Defeat Diabetes website.)

Professor Ede would say the shift is worth it, that we don’t have to be sitting ducks waiting around to see if Alzheimer’s Disease will happen to us.

Armed with this dietary information, she says, we can be “proactive, swimming ducks sporting a big, beautiful hippocampus and get to keep every single one of our marbles for the rest of our lives”.

Photo Source: Bigstock