Driving drives Dementia

Cars, don’t you love them? They cost a lot of money, they run people over, they allow cities to sprawl out over the countryside. Now comes evidence that the pollution that they cause, along with many other sources of pollution it has to be said, may be causing a special form of dementia called Lewy Body Dementia. [1] Ian Sample of the Guardian reports on a massive study of 56.5 million patients carried out by Dr Xiaobo Mao of Johns Hopkins University in the United States. The team found that fine particulate matter called PM_2.5 (LSS passim) caused proteins in the brain to form toxic clumps which slowly destroy nerve function leading to cognitive decline characterised by to memory loss, poor attention spans, visual hallucinations and sleep disturbance. The team went further and found the deadly particles induced similar symptoms in mice, confirming their evidence from population studies in humans .

When we did out background research for this article we were quickly overwhelmed by the amount of available evidence. This report [2] by the UK Government waxes lyrical on the different types of air pollutants-particulates, NO₂ SO₃, ammonia. and many more.. as well as the many symptoms the pollution causes in the human body. And this from the Alzheimers Society [3] puts the ball in the polluters’ court when it comes to neurodegenerative diseases particularly. We weren’t ever going to fit all that in paragraph two of a three paragraph blog, so we won’t try

What we will do instead is ask where does all this pollution comes from. Cars? Sort of. Factories? In a way. But the real source is a set of misguided economic policies which value growth numbers above all else. You have to have more growth than your neighbours or younare not reaklly worth anything at all. There must be more new cars, new washing machines new mobile phones, bright new shiny anythings, so that we can create a frantic cycle of production and consumption to prove how rich and clever and successful we are. But is the definition of the good life really to drive an overpriced automobile over concrete flyovers for a few years, followed by a long cognitive decline into dementia, really such a good life? Answers please-we’d love to hear them.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/04/fine-particulate-air-pollution-trigger-forms-dementia-study-lewy-body

[2]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution

[3]https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-risk-of-dementia/reduce-your-risk-of-dementia/air-pollution

#automobiles #pollution #dementia #health # neurology

More good news on dementias

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Dementia is our own internal pollution. Clear that pollution away, and the brain may start to function well again. If the systems which clear it slow down with age, then of course you won’t think so well. That is the startling new research reported today in the Mail by the admirable Syeeda Saad. [1] According to Syeeda and the rather clever scientists whom she channels, the brain is well equipped with these clearance systems when we are born. [2] They go by such recondite names as microglia, glymphatic and lymphatic systems. They clean up all the horrible waste we produce as we think-bits of cells, proteins, toxins, what have you. If they don’t, you accumulate all this detritus and your brain slows down, exactly like a sewage system blocked with fatbergs (yuck!-ed) [3]

Essentially the ingenious researchers target lymphatic networks outside of the brain in order to boost the clean-up systems within it. And get this-they have found new pathways called T Cell gateways which let them overcome the blood brain barrier, a wall that has bedevilled researchers for decades. [3]

All in all rather hopeful. Though as everyone admits these discoveries are at the early, tentative stage. Meanwhile there are lots of proven methods we can apply in order to reduce the risk of developing dementias. Including unpleasant ones like eating less junk food, drinking less booze and getting more exercise. There’s a thought. And here’s another to close. The team of scientists who did all this useful, public spirited, and one day profitable research are based at Washington University in the United States of America, What will become of them and their University in the financial and intellectual climate currently prevailing in that fallen country?

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14560527/neuroscientist-remove-brain-waste-prevent-dementia-age.html

[2]https://www.vice.com/en/article/clearing-brain-waste-could-prevent-dementia-in-the-future/

[3]https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14432

#alzheimers #dementia #brain #t cells #lymphatic #medicine #health

Did your long-ago BCG Vaccine save you from Dementia?

Ask elderly readers of this blog about their BCG vaccine and they will recall an age of 45rpm records, Ben Sherman shirts and George Harrison‘s Concert for Bangladesh. But they still bear tiny marks, high on their left arms from they day they lined up outside the school dispensary. Ostensibly, the vaccination was against TB. But it may have been doing something else which concerns them very much here and now. It may actually have been protecting them against dementia. Get this from an excellent article by Amy Fleming of The Guardian:

…...BCG vaccine was originally used against tuberculosis, but it is also often part of a treatment programme for bladder cancer. “It stimulates the immune system,” says Lathe. A team of researchers in Jerusalem, he says, decided to look at patients who survived bladder cancer and compare dementia prevalence among patients treated with BCG and those who weren’t. “Do they differ in the rate at which they get Alzheimer’s disease?” The answer is yes – the BCG group appeared to get 75% protection against Alzheimer’s. A number of studies have now found varying levels of protection from BCG, with an average, according to one meta‑analysis, of 45%. [1]

And that is only the tip pf the iceberg, gentle readers. For what Amy’s article is really all about is a set of discoveries that the brain’s privileged position as a microbe-free zone is now under serious challenge. It was a position suspected by no less a scientist than the great Alzheimer himself. But was then rather complacently dismissed for many following years. It’s a theme which we’ve alluded to here before (LSS 14 9 24) following leads by the excellent team at the New Scientist. If so, we could at least be on the verge of real cures for all kinds of mental disturbances. And when we think of the terrible suffering such illnesses inflict both on the immediate victim, and their families and carers, we see that as a step forward indeed.

The patient careful thought of researchers and scientists offers the only real hope of ameliorating the human condition. How sad to live in an age when it is eclipsed by the passionate emotion of savage, ignorant mobs. That’s a theme we shall return to, as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-brain-microbiome-could-understanding-it-help-prevent-dementia?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#bcg #vaccines #dementia #alzheimer #immune system #brain #microbiology ]#new scientist

The Startling Truth about early-onset dementia

Of course it’s terrible when a family hears the dread news that Alzheimer’s disease, or dementia, has started to afflict one of their members. But until today, when we spoke with a most educated young woman from Alzheimer’s Research UK, we thought it was a disease of the elderly. We had no idea that it can affect relatively young people, that is to say, in their thirties or forties.

But it can and does, as our links for you make abundantly clear. [1] [2]. We apologise for using UK statistics, but Alzheimers UK estimate that there are 70, 800 cases of one of the various dementias in people who are under 65. You can scale that up or down according to the size of your own country with a simple calculator app (UK population 2024=67.33 million) Meanwhile, we invite you to browse the links, as you will be riding on the frontier of one of the great unresolved research questions of our time.

And what to take away from all this? Firstly, you never know when you will learn something unexpected. Especially when you have access to intelligent people. (If you can’t find any to hand right now, we hope this blog will go some way to ameliorating the deficit) Secondly, keep your brain alive. Puzzles, maths, learning a foreign language or even studying the rules of logic might help. Or at least stave the thing off, for a while [3]. So might keeping fit. And finally-if by some miracle we save the scientific method from the various fanatical culture warriors who are currently afflicting the globe, we might just one day find a method to find that no one ever has to live with it again.

[1]https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/dementia-information/types-of-dementia/young-onset-dementia/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early-onset_Alzheimer%27s_disease

[3]https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-physical-or-cognitive-activity-prevent-dementia-202109162595

#Alzheimer’s disease #dementia #Alzheimer’s Research UK #scientific method #neurology #age