you can decrease you likelihood of Alzheimer’s by reducing your risk of chronic inflammation. Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly, and maintaining healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels are good ways to start.
EARLY SIGNS OF ALZHEIMER’S
The Alzheimer’s Association lists these ten early signs of Alzheimer’s:
Memory loss that disrupts daily life
Challenges in planning or solving problems
Difficulty completing familiar tasks
Confusion with time or place
Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships
New problems with words in speaking or writing
Misplacing things and lacking the ability to retrace steps
Decreased or poor judgment
Withdrawal from work or social activities
Changes in mood and personality
Alzheimer’s disease begins slowly. Individuals with the disease may quickly forget information they just learned or the names of people they know. The disease worsens over time, and those patients may not recognize family members or may forget how to brush their teeth or comb their hair. They may begin to have trouble reading or even speaking. See the nearby sidebar for a more complete list of early signs of Alzheimer’s.
In early 2019, researchers from Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine found that people who experience high levels of chronic inflammation in middle age are more likely to have memory loss and problems with cognitive function later in life.
After studying 1,500 people over the course of 21 years, researchers found that those with high levels of C-reactive protein — an inflammation marker we discuss more in Chapter 7 — had a 12 percent steeper decline in thinking and memory skills than those with lower levels.
Though it’s the most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease isn’t a normal part of aging; only about 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s, and about a third — 32 percent — of those over the age of 85 have the disease. There is no cure, but treatments are available.
Probing Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is an attack on the nervous system that starts gradually, affecting your movement, your expressions, and even speech. Early symptoms can be as little as a barely detectable tremor in one hand, but they’re often accompanied by a stiffness in movement.
As the disease progresses, your face may stop showing signs of expression, and your arms may not swing when you walk. Speech will become difficult and slurred.
In the past, scientists didn’t see a connection between Parkinson’s disease and inflammation. Now, however, researchers are seeing chronic inflammation as a potential cause for the disease, and not a result. An abnormal accumulation of certain proteins is believed to trigger an inflammatory response, which then allows the disease to progress.
Early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease include the following:
Tremors
Slowed movement (bradykinesia)
Rigid muscles
Impaired posture and balance
Loss of automatic movements
Changes in speech
Changes in writing
Here are the risk factors for Parkinson’s disease:
Age: Parkinson’s disease generally starts in midlife, with the chances increasing as you get older. It rarely occurs in young adults.
Your genes: Having a close relative with Parkinson’s disease increases your chances of getting the disease as well. Still, unless you have several relatives with the disease, your chances don’t increase that much.
Gender: Parkinson’s occurs most often in men.
Environmental toxicity: Those regularly exposed to pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides have a greater likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Investigating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, meaning it starts slowly and gradually worsens. Also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS works against the nerves in your brain and spinal cord that control your muscles, inhibiting muscle movement and function.
As the disease progresses, it causes your muscles to continue to weaken, eventually leading to paralysis of your muscles — making not only walking and talking impossible, but also eating and breathing.
ALS happens when the motor neurons in your brain stop sending messages to your spinal cord, which then means your muscles aren’t getting the message, either. These messages control voluntary movements, like reaching for your phone or standing up, but also involuntary movements, like breathing and swallowing. The nerve cells stop communicating because they begin to break down and die. When your muscles stop working, they become weak and begin to atrophy.
There is no cure for ALS, and the typical lifespan post-diagnosis is three to five years, although some with the disease have lived ten years or longer.
Scientists are unsure what exactly causes ALS; only 5 to 10 percent of cases are genetic. Researchers have found links between ALS and the following:
Problems with the immune system: Though scientists stop short of calling ALS an autoimmune disease, some believe the brain’s main immune cells, the microglia, might be destroying healthy neurons.
Glutamate buildup: Glutamate is like a chemical transmitter, sending signals to and from the brain and nervous system. In people with ALS, glutamate builds up around the nerve cells and causes damage.
Oxidative stress: Some of the oxygen your body uses for energy may actually work against you and form free radicals (unstable molecules that have electrons that react with your tissues and can damage them).
Inflammation: In a 2017 study from Minzu University of China, researchers found that levels of pro-inflammatory molecules are increased in people with ALS, particularly in the central nervous system.
Assessing Huntington’s disease
Huntington’s disease is a fatal disorder that affects both physical and mental abilities and generally attacks right in the mid years — symptoms begin to appear between the ages of 30 and 50 and worsen over the next 10 to 25 years. It’s a genetic disease; if one parent has Huntington’s disease, each child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the bad gene.
Huntington’s disease takes the worst features of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS and brings them together into one disease. It causes depression and changes in personality, and it hampers the ability to walk and causes involuntary movements. Other symptoms include slurred speech and difficulty in swallowing.
The disease is incurable, and most who are diagnosed live 10 to 20 years after diagnosis, although some have lived 30 to 40 years.
Chronic inflammation has often been found in the nerve cells of those with Huntington’s disease, and researchers believe it may be one