Make Alzheimer’s a campaign issue
Re “No meeting of the minds -- yet,” Dec. 27
The Times article on Alzheimer’s disease mentions the role of mutation of the ApoE protein, which destroys cholesterol. The nation’s longest-running heart health study, the Framingham Heart Study, has found that high cholesterol correlates positively with maintaining high cognitive functioning as people age. The higher the cholesterol levels, the better is memory, attention and concentration.
Our brains are largely composed of cholesterol, so perhaps the mutated protein is removing too much cholesterol from the brain, thereby causing the changes observed in Alzheimer’s. Perhaps the rising incidence of Alzheimer’s is the result of older people being placed on diets and medications that drastically reduce cholesterol.
Cholesterol might be necessary for maintaining cognitive functioning. The bad rap cholesterol has regarding heart health might actually be caused by other blood serum factors that are found in the company of cholesterol, and it is those factors, not the cholesterol, that need to be reduced for heart health.
John F. Rossmann
Tustin
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Perhaps the title of this article should have been “No meeting of the minds -- but there could be with sufficient research funding and elected officials who truly understood the crisis that is Alzheimer’s.”
It’s true that “the rising costs of treating the disease coupled with reduced research funding is ... a foreboding combination.”
Foreboding indeed -- it’s downright horrifying. The toll on families living with Alzheimer’s may be well understood, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating.
I’m waiting to hear from the presidential candidates that Alzheimer’s is a priority for them.
I’ve been waiting a long time.
Sherrie Matza
San Francisco
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The myth that Alzheimer’s disease is a singular condition separate from brain aging that we can cure is no longer a viable clinical, research or business strategy.
What we now label “Alzheimer’s disease” encompasses multiple processes (vascular changes, oxidative stress, inflammation, the formation of abnormal proteins, etc.) that are intimately related if not identical to severe brain aging. Thus, to cure Alzheimer’s, we would literally have to arrest these processes, which seems at best quixotic and at worst deceitful.
The Alzheimer’s field needs a significant shift in its thinking and its values.
With the new year, and the start of the next century of research in what we used to call Alzheimer’s disease, we are presented with an opportunity to push through the mental roadblocks that have limited our intellectual and ethical thinking about brain aging and can ultimately tell a better story about what it means to be an elder whose body and mind will invariably change over time.
Peter Whitehouse MD
Danny George
Cleveland
The writers are coauthors of “The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis.”
