“This study tested the hypothesis that people with APOE 3/4 and 4/4 would have a reduced risk of cognitive decline and dementia with higher meat intake, based on the fact that APOE4 is the evolutionarily oldest variant of the APOE gene and may have arisen during a period when our evolutionary ancestors ate a more animal-based diet,” says first author Jakob Norgren…
The study followed more than 2,100 participants in the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care, Kungsholmen (SNAC-K) for up to 15 years. All were aged 60 or older and had no diagnosis of dementia at the start of the study…
At lower meat intake, the group with APOE 3/4 and 4/4 had more than twice the risk of dementia than people without these gene variants. However, the increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia in the risk groups was not seen in the fifth of participants who consumed the most meat.
“However, the study is observational and needs to be followed up with intervention studies that can better demonstrate causal relationships.”
What needs to be followed up, have a control group getting their protein from plant source. Is the lower meat consumption off set by more carb intake? More processed carb which is definitely bad? The mentioned lower processed meat ratio having a lower dementia risk.
So is it a meat or protein question. I’m leaning towards a protein question.
This would be ideal, but designing controlled study is next to impossible.
Why?
Because AD is (on average) a disease of aging, one has to assume that the effect of meat consumption on Alzheimer’s disease is cumulative. This means that one would have to design a research study that feeds both the meat and non-meat group for 10/20/30 (?) years, then compare the two groups. That is clearly not possible just like we do not have comparative controlled studies for cancer.
If we were to develop interim markers of AD that change within a short period of time, we could do a controlled study of the effects of meat on AD. An example of an interim disease marker is blood glucose as a maker for diabetes, or blood pressure as a marker for future heart attacks/strokes etc.
I read a while back that some recent research is pointing to ALZ being an autoimmune condition. Your immune system is attacking brain cells. Don’t know how far this hypothesis has gone, but it would be a breakthrough if true.