[PLUG-TALK] Fwd: [IP] Study: Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Wed Nov 5 22:01:46 UTC 2014


On Tue, Nov 04, 2014 at 03:16:10PM -0800, Bill Barry wrote:
> This talk
> http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep?language=en
> suggests some of the reasons why  sleep  might be important for combating Alzheimer's.

Jeff Iliff is at OHSU.  While sleep is indeed as important as he says,
it is unclear that CSF flow stops in waking humans the way it does in
mice.  Mouse brains are 30 time younger, and a thousand times smaller.
Mice are cheap to study, but they have proved lethally misleading in
some cases. http://edge.org/response-detail/25429
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124758/

Iliff did not mention that the reason that the CSF moves along the
outside of the blood vessels (on the other side of the blood-brain
barrier, BTW) is that the blood vessels expand and contract with
the blood pressure pulses, and this moves the CSF by peristalsis,
kinda like an inside-out intestine.

If the blood vessels are too rigid, because of inflammation and
atherosclerotic plaque, then they don't pump the CSF quickly,
which means beta amyloid can get dense enough to clump and form
plaques.  So for that and many other reasons, get exercise and
don't eat or drink inflammatory crap food.

You can estimate the status of your blood vessels with a Carotid
Intima Media Thickness ultrasound scan (CIMT).  This test is a few
hundred dollars cash at Canyon Medical Center west of Sylvan. 
http://www.canyonmedcenter.com/

A cholesterol test is cheaper, but it is an indirect, surrogate
outcome and for some people is a poor predictor of vascular health.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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