Remarkable news, about Alzheimer’s
In the video Below, Dr. Mary Newport discusses ketone bodies, an alternative fuel for your brain which your body makes when digesting coconut oil, and how coconut oil may offer profound benefits in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.
This is truly remarkable news, Backing up her claims is the remarkable recovery of her own husband.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
“Brain Starvation” is a Hallmark of Alzheimer’s Disease
One of the primary fuels your brain needs is glucose, which is converted into energy.
your brain actually manufactures its own insulin to convert glucose in your bloodstream into the food it needs to survive.
Now, when your brain’s production of insulin decreases, your brain literally begins to starve, as it’s deprived of the glucose-converted energy it needs to function normally.
Diabetes is the condition where your body’s response to insulin is weakened until your body eventually stops producing the insulin necessary to regulate blood sugar, and your body’s ability to regulate (or process) blood sugar into energy becomes essentially broken.
This is what happens to Alzheimer’s patients — portions of their brain start to atrophy, or starve, leading to impaired functioning and eventual loss of memory, speech, movement and personality.
In effect, your brain can begin to atrophy from starvation if it becomes insulin resistant and loses its ability to convert glucose into energy.
It is now also known that diabetics have a 65 percent increased risk of also being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and there appears to be a potent link between the two diseases,
It seems quite clear however that both are related to insulin resistance – in your body, and in your brain.
Alternate Brain Food Can Stop Brain Atrophy in its Tracks Coconut oil
Fortunately, your brain is able to run on more than one type of energy supply, and this is where coconut oil enters the picture.
There’s another substance that can feed your brain and prevent brain atrophy. It may even restore and renew neuron and nerve function in your brain after damage has set in.
The substance in question is called ketone bodies, or ketoacids.
Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy. And a primary source of ketone bodies are the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) found in Coconut oil!
Coconut oil contains about 66 percent MCTs.
The benefits of ketone bodies may also extend to a number of other health conditions, according to Dr. Newport:
“Further, this is a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), drug resistant epilepsy, brittle type I diabetes, and diabetes type II, where there is insulin resistance.
Ketone bodies may help the brain recover after a loss of oxygen in newborns through adults, may help the heart recover after an acute attack, and may shrink cancerous tumors.”
Medium chain triglycerides (MCT) are fats that are not processed by your body in the same manner as long chain triglycerides. Normally, a fat taken into your body must be mixed with bile released from your gallbladder before it can be broken down in your digestive system.
But medium chain triglycerides go directly to your liver, which naturally converts the oil into ketones, bypassing the bile entirely. Your liver then immediately releases the ketones into your bloodstream where they are transported to your brain to be used as fuel.
In fact, ketones appear to be the preferred source of brain food in patients affected by diabetes or Alzheimer’s.
“In Alzheimer’s disease, the neurons in certain areas of the brain are unable to take in glucose due to insulin resistance and slowly die off, a process that appears to happen one or more decades before the symptoms become apparent,” Dr. Newport states in her article.
“If these cells had access to ketone bodies, they could potentially stay alive and continue to function.”
The Ketonic Diet – Why Avoiding Grains Also Protects against Neurodegeneration
Another way to increase ketone production in your body is by restricting carbohydrates.
This is what happens when you go on a high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate diet: Your body begins to run on fats instead of carbohydrates, and the name for this is ketosis.
This is also why you don’t starve to death when you restrict food for weeks at a time, because your body is able to convert stored fat into ketones that are used as fuel instead of glucose.
Consuming medium chain triglycerides such as coconut oil is a better option, however, because the ketones produced by ketosis are not concentrated in your bloodstream, but are instead mostly excreted in your urine.
MCTs and Alzheimer’s Research
The mechanism of this MCT-ketone metabolism appears to be that your body treats MCTs as a carbohydrate and not a fat. This allows the ketone energy to hit your blood stream without the normal insulin spike associated with carbohydrates entering your bloodstream.
So in effect coconut oil is a fat that acts like a carbohydrate when it comes to brain fuel.
Therapeutic levels of MCTs have been studied at 20 grams per day. According to Dr. Newport’s calculations, just over two tablespoons of coconut oil (about 35 ml or 7 level teaspoons) would supply you with the equivalent of 20 grams of MCT, which is indicated as either a preventative measure against degenerative neurological diseases or as a treatment for an already established case.
Remember though that people tolerate coconut oil differently, and you may have to start slowly and build up to these therapeutic levels. My recommendation is to start with one teaspoon, taken with food in the mornings. Gradually add more coconut oil every few days until you are able to tolerate four tablespoons.
Coconut oil is best taken with food, to avoid upsetting your stomach.
You Also Need Dietary B12 for Optimal Brain Health
According to a small Finnish study recently published in the journal Neurology, people who consume foods rich in B12 may also reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s in their later years. For each unit increase in the marker of vitamin B12 (holotranscobalamin) the risk of developing Alzheimer’s was reduced by 2 percent.
However, I strongly disagree with the dietary advice published by CNN Health on this topic, which included fish and fortified cereals.
Fortified cereals are most definitely NOT a good source of dietary B vitamins. They also have inorganic iron added. This is the worst type of iron to use as a supplement and it will raise already elevated iron in those that don’t need it, like most adult men and postmenopausal women.
Elevated iron levels will actually increase your risk of Alzheimer’s
Additionally, most fish are today so contaminated, I cannot recommend increasing the consumption of fish either. One exception would be sardines, which are high in B12 and small enough to typically be less contaminated, compared to larger fish.
Instead, your ideal dietary sources of B12 vitamins would include:
* Liver from organic calf
* Wild-caught salmon
* Organic, grass-fed beef
* Lamb (which are typically grass-fed even if not specified as organic)
* Organic, free-range eggs
Vitamin B12 is present in natural form only in animal sources of food, which is one of the reasons I advise against a strict vegetarian or vegan diet. The few plant foods that are sources of B12 are actually B12 analogs. An analog is a substance that blocks the uptake of true B12, so your body’s need for the nutrient actually increases.
There are many well-documented cases of brain abnormalities in strict vegetarians, resulting from vitamin B12 deficiency.
Foods to AVOID to Keep Your Mind Sharp
These four foods in particular can be pinpointed as enemies of optimal brain health:
1. Sugars, especially fructose — Excessive sugar and grain consumption are the driving factors behind insulin resistance, and the strategies that protect your brain are very similar to those for avoiding diabetes.
There is simply no question that insulin resistance is one of the most pervasive influences on brain damage, as it contributes massively to inflammation, which will prematurely degenerate your brain.
Ideally, you’ll want to restrict your total fructose consumption to below 25 grams a day. This includes refraining from eating too many fruits if you normally eat a lot of them. If you consume more than 25 grams a day of fructose you can damage your cells by creating insulin and leptin resistance and raising your uric acid levels.
Berries tend to be lower in fructose, and wild blueberries, for example, are also high in anthocyanin and antioxidants and are well known for being beneficial against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
2. Grains – Even whole, organic grains will convert to sugar in your body and spike your insulin levels.
3. Artificial sweeteners – Aspartame, for example, is an excitotoxin that can literally destroy your brain cells. There are many studies showing the dangers of aspartame. For example, one study published in 2000 found that aspartame shortens the memory response, impairs memory retention and damages hypothalamic neurons in mice.
4. Soy — Unfermented soy products are another common food that should be avoided if you want to maintain healthy brain function.
One well-designed epidemiological study linked TOFU consumption with exaggerated brain ageing.
Dr. Kaayla Daniel has written an excellent book, The Whole Soy Story, which covers the health dangers of soy
Clearly, the best-known “treatment” for Alzheimer’s disease is prevention, not drugs.
There is no question that insulin resistance is one of the most pervasive influences on brain damage as it contributes massively to inflammation, which will prematurely degenerate your brain — just as it destroys the rest of your body and contributes to degenerative and chronic diseases of all kinds.
As a general rule for optimal physical and mental health, you’ll want to keep your fasting insulin levels below 3.
Interestingly, normalizing your body’s insulin and leptin levels will typically help raise your production of brain insulin, which is a good thing.
In addition to the dietary recommendations already discussed above, the following seven guidelines can further help you prevent Alzheimer’s disease and keep your mind sharp as you age:
1. Optimize your vitamin D levels through safe sun exposure, a safe tanning bed and/or vitamin D3 supplements.
2. Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat. I recommend consuming high-quality krill oil to meet the optimal amount of omega-3 fats needed to achieve good health and fight Alzheimer’s. I recently did an interview with Dr. Rudi Moerck, an industry expert, which goes into great detail as to why I am strongly recommending krill.
3. Exercise. You probably know that exercise is good for your cardiovascular system, but studies have found that exercise can also protect your brain, thereby warding off Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
4. Avoid and remove mercury from your body. Even trace amounts of mercury can cause the type of damage to nerves that is characteristic of the damage found in Alzheimer’s disease.
Dental amalgam fillings are one of the major sources of mercury, however, you should be healthy prior to having them removed. Once you have adjusted to your improved diet, you can follow my mercury detox protocol and then find a biological dentist to have your amalgams removed.
Other sources of mercury include most seafood, thimerosal-containing vaccinations and flu shots, which contain both mercury and aluminium.
5. Avoid aluminium.
Aluminium has been widely associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Your main sources of exposure are likely through drinking water and antiperspirants. Soy is the worst plant for sucking Aluminium up from the soil
Aluminium cookware may also be a source of exposure. Although aluminium pots are probably less problematic than the sources mentioned above, I personally would not use aluminium cookware.
6. Challenge your mind. Mental stimulation, such as travelling, learning to play an instrument or doing crossword puzzles, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
7. Avoid anticholinergic drugs. Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of dementia. These drugs include certain night-time pain relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and certain narcotic pain relievers.
A recent study found that those who took one drug classified as a ‘definite anticholinergics’ had a four times higher incidence of cognitive impairment. Regularly taking two of these drugs further increased the risk of cognitive impairment.
Final Thoughts on Combating Alzheimer’s with Coconut Oil
The damage done to your brain from the wrong foods and from unbalanced insulin and leptin levels actually begins decades before you show any of the telltale signs of Alzheimer’s. So it’s vitally important to make healthy decisions now, before you unwittingly do decades of damage to your brain and nerves that you may not be able to reverse.
GO ORGANIC, If you undertake a Coconut oil or MCTs therapy protocol, be sure to start slow with the oil, and always take it with food to minimize stomach discomfort. If it takes you a few weeks to work up to the four tablespoons of coconut oil required for a therapeutic dose, that’s normal. Not everyone can tolerate so much coconut oil in a single dose right from the start.
The coconut oil or MCTs should also be taken in the morning, as it takes a minimum of three hours for the oil to convert to ketones and reach your brain. Repeating the dose of four tablespoons of coconut oil twice a day may be beneficial for those already suffering from pre-Alzheimer’s or Alzheimer’s conditions.
With 15 million cases of Alzheimer’s predicted in the United States by the year 2050, you can help ensure you are not one of the victims of this tragic disease by taking steps now to take charge of your health.
