Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating disease that arguably affects the people closest to the afflicted as much as it affects the afflicted. What if I told you that with the eating habits and rampant obesity present in our great country, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s is going to skyrocket?
In our article that we read in Neurochemistry this week, we read about a pathway named the PI3 kinase pathway. This hardly means anything to me and I have studied science for quite awhile now. What it does mean though, in simple terms, is that it is a pathway of biochemical signals in the brain that control a process called phosphorylation (Foss-four-ill-ation). Phosphorylation is essentially the primary way that different pathways in our bodies are “turned” on and off. Now some pathways in our body we want to have on, some we want to have off, and most we want to have a balance between on and off. Phosphorylation, therefore, is an incredibly important process to have control over.
One of the major problems with Alzheimer’s is that our PI3 kinase pathway is constantly activated. When this pathway is activated too much we phosphorylate too many things, which leads to accumulation of tangles and bundles of proteins and plaques. The tangles and bundles then go on to cause the neurodegenerative effects that we associate with Alzheimer’s. When this pathway has its proper balance these tangles and bundles are degraded, but when the pathway is activated we not only continue to aggregate bundles and tangles, we also lose our ability to degrade the bundles and tangles. Double whammy.
So how does all of this fit into diabetes? Type II Diabetes is essentially body-wide resistance to insulin. This can be caused by a poor diet. A poor diet can also cause something called Type III Diabetes. Never heard of it? Sure you have, you’ve just heard of it being called its other name: Alzheimer’s disease. By overeating we are constantly activating the P13 kinase pathway, and by constantly activating this pathway we cause an insulin resistance in the brain. Insulin is the healthy activator of the P13 pathway, and an insulin resistance essentially shuts down our “off” switch ability.
Reading this article and discovering that there indeed is a significant link between Alzheimer’s and poor diets was incredibly alarming to me, and I would question anyone who is not alarmed by it. Obesity is incredibly prevalent in our society, which is ridiculous and sad when we consider the recklessness with which we consume resources—especially in light of the fact that there are millions of starving individuals throughout the world. This disparity between obesity and hunger is disregarded by many of the public because it affects “them” and not us. But I am here to tell you that we will also see many negative consequences from our gross overeating. With the recent connections made in the neurochemistry article it is easy to see and predict that a scary percentage of Americans are currently, as we speak, eating their way into Alzheimer’s.
Eating Ourselves Into Alzheimer's
