The professor says one thing can protect you from Alzheimer’s disease

A dementia expert says it is possible to prevent Alzheimer’s, thanks to research on people with the disease without symptoms. Professor Michael Hornberger says people who are ‘resistant’ to Alzheimer’s could hold the key to protecting against the disease.

And Professor Applies Dementia Research from the University of East Anglia says there are things we all know to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Writing for The Conversation, Professor Hornberger said: “Some people appear to be more resistant to developing Alzheimer’s despite having the biological characteristics of the devastating disease. For obvious reasons, scientists are very interested in studying this particular group of people.

“Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is thought to begin due to the accumulation of two proteins in the brain: amyloid and tau. Once these proteins accumulate, for reasons that have not yet been determined, they become toxic. to brain cells (neurons) and these cells begin to die. As a result, people develop symptoms like memory loss because the brain can’t function properly with all these dead neurons.

“This cascade of events has been known for many years and is how the disease progresses in most people with Alzheimer’s. Most people, except for a special group, who are more resistant. But why are they resistant?

“A recent study in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications investigated whether our genes could influence how resistant we are to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease when there are high levels of amyloid in our brains.

“Scientists conducted a study on the brains of three groups of people. The first group included people who died with Alzheimer’s disease. The second was healthy people who died of natural causes. And the third included people who had high levels of the protein Alzheimer’s in the brain, but he never developed symptoms of the disease during his life – or at least he never had an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.

“The last group, they considered resistant to Alzheimer’s because they had the protein in their brains, but they didn’t have symptoms or a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s during their lifetime.

“The scientists found that genes related to immune system activity appeared to be more active in the Alzheimer’s resistance group. This would make sense since it is well established that the immune system helps clear excess proteins from the brain, hence the genes. that help this process could make us more resistant to developing disease symptoms.

“It’s great if you inherited these genes from your parents, but what does it mean for the rest of us who don’t have those genes? Is there any way we can make ourselves more resistant to developing Alzheimer’s disease, regardless of our genes?

” ‘Yes’ is the short answer.

“There is now good scientific evidence that lifestyle changes and medicines can reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in the future.

“In particular, physical activity has been shown to reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer’s, probably because it has a well-known beneficial effect on our immune system and therefore helps clean up those rogue proteins that build up in our brains . This means being more physically active. it could have the same effect on our resistance to Alzheimer’s as those lucky people who have the “right” genes.

“Interestingly, we don’t know how physically active the resistant people in the study were and how that might have influenced their resistance to Alzheimer’s disease.

“As so often in science, it is not clear whether nature (genes) or nurture (lifestyle) contributed to their resistance. The other interesting aspect is that the resistant people in the study died of a cause other than Alzheimer’s disease, but they might have developed Alzheimer’s disease eventually if they had lived longer.”