For this blog cycle, I have been writing about Alzheimer’s disease. To be upfront, I started writing this blog because I wanted to learn more about the awful disease that has started replacing my Gran with a stranger. Unfortunately, she has developed the disease in a time period where the research into treatments and cures is still too early to translate into recovery. Still, I’ve kept writing about the disease because its relative mystery is extremely interesting. I want to look at what we do know and see how my generation can avoid Alzheimer’s as best as we can.

In past blogs, I explored some genetic influences of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). But according to the University of California San Francisco Memory and Aging Center, “Less than 5% of AD is caused by dominant genes that are transmitted through families.”So what does cause Alzheimer’s? Once again, the answer is we sort of might know. Here’s a list of things that the New York Times and the Alzheimer’s Association have listed as potential factors that you can influence to an extent:

• Past Head Trauma: people who have previously sustained head injuries (including concussion) are more at risk of AD
• Education: People with lower levels of education—or more accurately low levels of mental stimulation—are more likely to develop AD (see here)
• Heart Health

See here for source.

I want to focus in on Heart Health as a potential contributor, because it has HUGE implications! According to the CDC, almost 25% of the people that die every year in the US are dying of heart disease. Further, the CDC states, about 33.5% of American adults have “bad cholesterol” and 31% have high blood pressure.

About twenty years ago–nearly the amount of time it takes for a person with pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s to develop full-fledged AD (see the alz.org for more)– Dr. Larry Sparks and other researchers found that there is a link between vascular problems and AD. I read through their 2000 summary of their second round of research. I thought the many different animal tests and human tests were conducted properly and served as valid evidence for a link. Sparks concludes essentially that bad cholesterol levels can affect a person’s metabolism of certain proteins, which leads to overproduction of b-amyloid. b-amyloid is a protein that when overproduced, builds up in plaques in the brain causing AD. And while high blood pressure doesn’t affect whether or not a person develops AD, it can affect how advanced the AD will be if they do get it.

What You Can Do: The strong evidence saying that poor vascular health can lead to AD is enough to motivate me (and hopefully you) to try to kill two birds with one stone. Advice from the New York Times and the Alzheimer’s Association:

• Exercise regularly
• Try to maintain a healthy weight (that does not mean skinny necessary)
• Eat a low-cholesterol and low-fat diet.

Perhaps the most reflective comment on the disease as far as research and treatments go is the concluding line of Spark’s research: “Time will tell.”