Posted 3/5/25
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matt 11:28-30
I have been working on a way to quickly explain what likely causes Alzheimer’s Disease. This is a rough draft of my take. What causes it? Lots of things…
(LINK)
Does this illustration make sense? The frustration is I get emails all the time from well-meaning folks that share that they read that ____ causes dementia and have some solid rationale for it. Aluminum deodorant, saccharine, dyes, vitamins, lack of vitamins, foods, water, lack of water, oral health issues, (a bunch of things on the risk factor list,) illegal drugs, lack of drugs, the wrong drugs, air quality, and so on ad nauseam. What is my response? Hmmm… could be a factor. Truth is, we really don’t know 100% for sure what causes it and we never have. We KNOW Beta Amyloid plaque factors because, when we remove it from the brain with one of the new MAB drugs (Leqembi, Kisunla) it slows the disease. We know the brain also has a protein called Tau that get tangled as another marker of problems. We are very sure many things are bad for the brain. The tendency is to think of every one of these possible cause lists as being the cause, merely an effect, or neither. But what if, like I suppose, lots of things weaken the brain until it hits the tipping point after which there is no return?
That is my take. The brain keeps taking hits until it can’t take any more…then it starts a cascade of failure. I realize this isn’t a particular novel idea, but I hope it helps us not discount the many things we can do in a positive way to protect the brain. I hope it also helps us know that many things contribute to the disease and we should treat them seriously as well. Always beware of the simple. I realize that Occam’s razor screams that problem-solving principles should favor simple explanations over complex ones. My blog is dedicated to such. However, this problem truly is complex.
What think you?
#EndALZ
Update on my June Longest Day event: I had a wreck in the late summer and had to do shoulder rehab. It has slowed by event training so much that when I tried to hurry to catch up I messed up my knee. Therefore I am going to switch up my event to an extreme mental event this year. How many hours can I read in a row? Maybe a multi-task reading for 4 hours, then writing out the numbers 1 to 100,000, then reading another 4 hours? What would you like to see me try in this same realm? My minimum event length will be 36 sleepless hours, but I will consider any ideas. 🙂
Here is my event link:
https://act.alz.org/site/TR?pg=personal&px=14575499&fr_id=18274
Just really getting started on the fundraising part of the event. This is a critical year due to funding cuts from DOGE on the NIH and other entities. I am NOT making a political statement here, nor giving an opinion on the need to cut a $35T national debt, this is just a matter of fact: It takes money to find a cure. It just does. The Alzheimer’s Association is the best of any cause tied to a health condition at prioritizing research that would put themselves out of business! The Association has hundreds and hundreds of millions invested in research. The show must go on! Thank you for giving early and often to my harebrained fundraisers over the years! 🙂
We will #EndALZ