High saturated fat diet associated with dementia and alzheimers

health
(Ian Keith) #1

I’ve been doing keto diligently since the begging of the year and was curious about your thoughts on this subject. The science is interesting but there is evidence that a high sat fat diet may play a critical part in alzheimers, However these studies give no molecular mechanism for this. So though there is room for skepticism i believe there is some concern for the long term effects of a keto diet in association with dementia and alzheimers.

I have currently made a point to limit my saturated fat intake to 20g a day and still have energy and weight loss.

Thank you for your thoughts.

#2

I’ll say this, I lived in Europe for 14 years where people farmed and grew their food. I don’t remember anyone having either 2 of those diseases. I believe that they are mostly due to bad chemicals in our foods.

#3

That study is over 20 years old.

(Ian Keith) #4

That is a possibility, as there are fat soluble chemicals that can get into the food. thanks for sharing your experiences and beliefs it has led me to look into what kind of fat soluble chemicals the ag industry might be using.

(Ian Keith) #5

yes and it seems to be popular in newer studies as well. As if it broke the grounds on this research. It is referenced heavily in almost all recent studies.

(Jay AM) #6

I don’t see where they say anything about what other foods people were eating. Just about the fat. We all know that high fat and high carb together is dangerous. And, dementia is starting to be tentatively referred to as type 3 diabetes. We don’t get diabetes from fat, we get it from insulin resistance due to excess carbohydrate consumption (except type 1 diabetes obviously). Also, we don’t see dementia in tribal populations who have a majority consumption of animal protein and saturated fat. Where we do see dementia and Alzheimer’s rising now is in populations that are traditionally high carb, low fat, low protein like many Asian countries. When animal foods became more readily available, they didn’t drop their traditional diets either which caused a high carb higher fat diet. Western populations are very well known for rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s, where the typical diet is high carb high fat. It’s something like this, “Having your cake and eating it too will make you forget you had any cake at all.”

(TJ Borden) #7

It says right in the abstract that it was a questionnaire study, in other words, no actual science. Besides, this has already been debunked.

Just search the Show Me The Science category for saturated fat.

(Brian) #8

I see too much Alzheimer’s in the low fat vegan / vegetarian groups to take his remarks all that seriously.

(Ron) #9

My mother has this disease and has for many years. It has progressed to extremely high levels.
I never saw it in my grandparents or great grandparents or any one else in my family that I can think of.
Here is the thing - my mother was overweight most of her life and from as long as I can remember was a Weight Watchers activist. I would watch her loose 150lbs and then put it back on, turn around and do it again and again.
I now consider this the common denominator for the state of being she is currently suffering now!

IMHO!

(Ian Keith) #10

can you link the study of groups please?

(Rob) #11

THIS - almost anything that is based on questionnaire/associational study is almost automatically BS. If it is right, it more likely by accident than design. The key thing is that these studies can be made to say whatever the researcher wants them to say, often irrelevant to the scientific “truth” and entirely based on the bias of the author.

Remember, “lies, damned lies and statistics!”

Harvard (T H Chan Nutrition Center) makes its money and reputation on manipulating a huge survey many times a year to create click-bait that is demonstrably crap. The whole red meat is bad and bacon gives you cancer came from the same kind of sources and has been roundly debunked. It’s appalling “science”.

The much better alternative theory is that hyperinsulinemia, high blood sugars and the consequent chronic inflammation makes the neurons glucose resistant and liable to shrink until they are too far apart for signals to pass. It is more consistent to see this shrinkage in dementia/AD than amyloid bodies etc. This is nothing to do with saturated fat.

You need to push your research further rather than asking us to debunk this. If the “saturated fat is bad” garbage is real, we’d all be dropping dead of heart attacks and going mad. It doesn’t apply to CVD, and it doesn’t apply to the brain as much as the plant-based lobbies would dearly love it to be.

Or just keep up your 20g limit. It’s your WoE.