Vitamin C and Alzheimer’s Disease
23 Aug 2010
What causes Alzheimer’s Disease? No one knows the answer. But a recent report in the journal, Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, claims there is an important link between heart disease and Alzheimer’s Disease. The link is atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries). What amazes me is that since it’s been shown that vitamin C can reverse atherosclerosis in coronary arteries, why isn’t any one advocating its use in trying to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?
Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center in Oakland, California, and the University of Kuopio in Finland, tracked 10,000 people for 40 years. They found that high blood cholesterol was associated with a 66 percent higher risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. More worrying was that those with borderline levels of blood cholesterol were 52 percent more likely to develop this mental disorder.
Johns Hopkins University, along with the Universities of Minnesota, North Carolina and Mississippi, followed 11,000 people to see how lifestyle factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes affected the brain. And how many of these Americans would be hospitalized for the treatment of dementia.
After tracking this group for 14 years they discovered that smokers were 70 percent more likely to develop dementia than nonsmokers. Those suffering from hypertension were 60 percent more likely to develop dementia than those with normal pressure, and patients with diabetes were 50 percent at greater risk of dementia than non diabetics. But no association was found between midlife obesity and dementia.
Dr. Alvaro Alonso, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, said, “If we can find risk factors for dementia, maybe we can develop new treatments to prevent the risk of dementia later in life.”
Alonso added that post-mortem studies show that the brains of patients suffering from dementia often show damage to small vessels. These arteries may have triggered small strokes that eventually lead to brain damage.
Doctors normally start to treat patients with Alzheimer’s Disease and other brain disorders such as dementia when symptoms first appear. But buy this time it’s usually a hopeless task.
I recently witnessed first hand the slow insidious deterioration of a friend suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. He no longer knows me and no therapy will help him. The big question is whether a change in lifestyle or high doses of vitamin C could have prevented this tragedy if it had been started earlier.
Since atherosclerosis is a possible culprit in causing Alzheimer’s Disease, the work of Dr. Sydney Bush an English researcher is worth y of recognition. I mentioned in a previous column that he has proven that large doses of vitamin C along with the amino acid lysine, can reverse atherosclerosis in retinal arteries of the eye.
This is a huge finding because if large doses of vitamin C can dissolve atherosclerosis in retinal vessels, good sense tells us it can have the same effect on coronary arteries and those in the brain. And if treatment can be started earlier in life, vitamin C could have an immense impact on these diseases.
Currently I’m not aware of any research being done on the use of Vitamin C and Alzheimer’s Disease. And Dr. Bush’s research is going unrecognized in Canada. I’m not an eye doctor but I’ve arranged to have a Toronto optometrist take retinal photos of patients and send them to Dr Bush for analysis, to determine if atherosclerosis is present. If these photos show dangerous amounts present that could result in heart attack then patients can decide, in consultation with their own doctor, whether or not to start large doses of C and Lysine. The amino acid Lysine helps to inactivate bad cholesterol in the blood.
Currently this option is available only in Toronto. But it is hoped that before too long other eye doctors in Canada and the U.S. will provide this test.
Patients who are interested in learning more about this test can send an e-mail to info@cardio-retinometry.org or call the number 416-917-4396.
