Diabetes & Alzheimer’sThe Truth About “Type 3 Diabetes” and How You Can Avoid It

Is Alzheimer’s Really Just Advanced Insulin Resistance?

Dementia is a big problem and growing every day. Ten percent of 65-year olds, 25 percent of 75-year

olds, and 50 percent of 85-year olds will get Alzheimer’s disease. This age group is the fastest growing

segment of the population, and it is predicted Alzheimer’s will affect 106 million people by 2050. The

number of people with Alzheimer’s is predicted to triple in the next few decades. It is now the seventh

leading cause of death.i The cost to society of this scourge on memory and quality of life is

tremendous—$60 billion a year to be exact.

What you may not realize is that Alzheimer’s is now being called type 3 diabetesii by a growing portion

of the medical community. Why? Pioneering new research has proven that insulin resistance—what I

call diabesity—is a major factor in starting the cascade of brain damage that robs the memory of over

half of people in their 80’s leading to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

But you don’t even have to wait until your 80’s to start feeling the effects that insulin has on your

memory. Many people now have what is being called “pre-dementia”—a condition that goes hand with

pre-diabetes. You can think of this as early Alzheimer’s. Recent studies have shown that diabetics have a

four-fold risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and patients with pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome have a

dramatically increased risk of pre-dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI).You don’t have to have

diabetes to have brain damage and memory loss from high insulin levels and insulin resistance. Having

pre-diabetes can give you pre-dementia.

Recent studies have found that as your waist size goes up, the size of your brain goes down.iii Your brain

function is also impaired. One extraordinary brain imaging study by Dr. Daniel Amen and his colleagues

found that obesity was associated with decreased blood flow in your frontal cortex (the portion of your

brain that controls executive decision making; “should I have that donut right now or not?”).

Another study of 2632 men and women over 5 years published in the Journal of the American Medical

Associationiv found that those with metabolic syndrome (or insulin resistance) and inflammation had

dramatic declines in cognitive function. This happens well before a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease has

been made. In fact, new brain imaging techniques called PET scans (positron emission tomography),

which look not at brain structure like a CT scan or regular MRI but at brain metabolism (cellular function

and activity), found altered and damaged brain function that occurs far in advance of the diagnosis of

dementia.v Some say that changes can be identified decades before diagnosis. This process of decline,

which is in intimately related to insulin resistance, starts in childhood and adolescence. Given the

epidemic of childhood obesity and the fact that we are seeing heart disease in 20 year olds, will we soon

see an epidemic of Alzheimer’s when (or if) these kids turn 40?

Let me tell you, this is far more serious than just forgetting your keys. Mild cognitive impairment is a

significant problem for some, and we have very little data on the personal, social, and medical costs of

this silent epidemic. What’s more, the connection between MCI and Alzheimer’s is clear. What we are

facing is a generation of people doomed to the horror of slowly, yet systematically, losing their memory.

This is all the more tragic because most of this suffering is avoidable and even reversible. You see, the

brain responds to all the same insults as the rest of the body — stress, poor diet, toxins, lack of exercise

or sleep, nutritional deficiencies, and more.

Most doctors today still don’t realize how deeply connected the brain and the body are. In fact, they are

not two separate systems, they are one elegant continuous ecosystem. What you do to the body affects

the brain and what you do to the brain affects the body.

A New York Times report on Alzheimer’s echoed research that makes it clear how powerfully our

lifestyle impacts brain aging and how much we can do to reverse it:

“For years, the prevailing notion was that Alzheimer’s was a disease of brain-cell death…. But now, many

researchers are asking if that old hypothesis is correct. If they are right, it may be possible to stop

Alzheimer’s, and reverse the memory loss, if treatments begin before brain cells die.” vi

I believe this tide of memory loss is preventable, that we can slow this trend and even reverse it. All we

have to do is give the brain a tune-up and we can see miracles. Later in this report I will give you nine

tips that will allow you to do that. But first I want to explain why just naming a disease — whether it is

dementia or anything else — is becoming increasingly unhelpful (unless you just want to match the drug

to the disease which is the only thing doctors are trained to do).

21st Century Medicine: The End of Diseases

Disease and diagnosis as we know it will soon be an obsolete concept, an artifact of medical history, like

bloodletting or phrenology (the art of diagnosis based on the shape of your skull, popular in the 19th

century). The reason is simply this …

Naming a disease does nothing to help us identify and treat the underlying causes of the disease. We

must address these causes if we have any hope of helping individuals heal.

We have to think about individuals, not diseases. In medicine, our genetic differences are more

important than our similarities.

Sometimes the practice of medicine lags behind the science, and sometimes the practice gets ahead of

the science. Genetic testing puts us squarely in the middle of that dilemma. We are at a crossroads,

where the old ideas we have about disease and diagnosis become less meaningful as we understand

more and more about the importance of individual differences in determining illness. We are at the

dawn of an era when personalized medicine will replace medicine based on diagnosis and disease.

Once we abandon the concept of “disease” and look at the underlying, upstream causes of the

symptoms so many suffer from, something becomes immediately clear: There are very few end causes

of all chronic illness. And among the most important of these in today’s world is insulin resistance.

Assuming that’s true (and it is), and assuming we can reverse insulin resistance (which we can) what

would the outcomes be on conditions like Alzheimer’s and MCI? Could we actually reverse dementia?

After all, we once thought that heart disease and artery-clogging plaques couldn’t be reversed (and now

have proof that this does happen), I believe dementia can be reversed…

I believe it, because I see this happen all the time in my practice. When I put people on The Blood Sugar

Solution, their dementia often fades away like a bad dream. I’ll tell you a story about one of these

patients later in this report. But first I want to spend a little time analyzing the underlying causes of

Alzheimer’s disease—which starts with too much sugar on the brain.

Sugar, Insulin Resistance, and Your Brain on Fire

Pioneering work by neurologist Dennis Selkoe,vii who has linked sugar and its ability to create insulin

resistance, metabolic syndrome (or pre-diabetes), and diabetes to Alzheimer’s. The links in the

biochemical chain from over consumption of sugar to Alzheimer’s disease is actually strikingly clear.

Here is what happens:

1. Overconsuming sugar leads to diabesity.

2. Diabesity leads to inflammation

3. Inflammation leads to further insulin imbalance and more weight gain

4. Which leads to more inflammation

5. And this systemic inflammation eventually effects the brain

There are other factors at stake too like environmental toxins, oxidative stress, excess cortisol from too

much stress, horomonal imbalances, and more, but this basic chain of events from eating sugar to

inflammation in the brain is very direct.

And when we look at an autopsy of an Alzheimer’s brain what we see is a brain on fire. The

inflammation story is repeated over and over in all disease, and dramatically so in aging and the brain.

This is why sugar, trans fats, saturated fat, stress, infections, lack of exercise, autoimmune disease,

diabesity, vitamin deficiencies, celiac disease (from eating wheat and gluten) and colitis which are

inflammatory digestive diseases, all increase the risk of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases like

Alzheimer’s.viii They all promote inflammation. It is also why anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil, may

reduce the risk of dementia. But don’t take them to reduce your risk. Over 100,000 a year end up in the

hospital and 16,000 die every year year from intestinal bleeding cause be these medications.

Everyone is searching for the one thing that causes diseases like Alzheimer’s. But there is no one thing.

A complex interaction of multiple factors from your lifestyle and environment interacting with your

genes create problems. We have to address all the factors to succeed in helping the brain become

healthy and recover.

The inflammatory markers or cytokines that we see in almost all disease are now being discovered in

Alzheimer’s and other neurological and psychiatric diseases. But cytokines are just the smoke signals.

The real question is what causes the cytokines to send messages of inflammation and spread the fire.

The list is short.

1. Our inflammatory diet, which consists of enormous amounts of sugar (150-180 pounds per

person per year), refined flours, as well as trans fats and saturated fats.

2. Food allergens—mostly delayed reactions to food or hidden allergens that lead to “brain

allergies” (allergic reactions in the body that cause inflammation in the brain)

3. Imbalances in digestive function and the gut immune system that produce widespread systemic

effects

4. Toxins such as mercury and pesticides (and the 85,000 mostly untested toxins in our

environment) which have been linked to immune dysfunction and autoimmune diseases

5. Low grade, hidden, or chronic infections such as HIV-associated dementia, syphilis and Lyme

disease which can cause many neurologic and psychiatric “diseases”, or PANDAS that leads to

OCD.

6. Stress—emotional or physical such as trauma

7. Sedentary lifestyle

8. Inadequate sleep—less than 7 hours a night

9. Nutritional deficiencies such as vitamin C, B vitamins, vitamin D, zinc, and omega-3 fats

Of all of these by far the most important factor in brain aging and inflammation in America is sugar. The

sheer flood of sweet things and processed refined foods into our bodies is a tidal wave that leaves

destruction everywhere we look. The insulin triggered by this flood of sugar sets into motion an entire

inflammatory parade that can eventually leads to Alzheimer’s as well as a sea of disease beyond the

brain—heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and rapid aging. The evidence is overwhelming and

irrefutable.

Aside from its effects on insulin, sugar (or anything that quickly turns to sugar, the “white foods” such as

potatoes and pasta) is an enormous stress on the body, triggering a surge in stress hormones like

cortisol and adrenalin. If you notice your kids bounce of the walls after a big sugar load it is because the

sugar produced a jolt of adrenalin. And the surge of insulin in the body that goes along with this

overconsumption of sugar turns on cellular switches that increase the inflammatory cytokines, just as

happens when you have the flu. Except it doesn’t go away, but persists for decades doing its damage

slowly.

There is no scientific controversy here. The evidence is in. Sugar causes inflammation. The insulin

resistant fat cells you pack on when you eat too much sugar produce nasty inflammatory messengers

(cytokines) like TNF , and IL-6 spreading their damage to the brain.

The damage doesn’t only lead to Alzhiemer’s. Researchers have suggested calling depression “metabolic

syndrome Type II” because instead of just have a fat swollen belly, you also get a fat swollen (and

depressed) brain.ix And psychiatrists are starting to treat depression and psychiatric disorders with anti-

DIABETIC drugs like Actos!x These drugs lower blood sugar, lower insulin AND reduce inflammation.

How could we really believe that our brains could tolerate half a pound of sugar a day on average and be

healthy?

The good news is that reversing this process is possible, and it’s not particularly difficult. You just have to

control your insulin and balance your blood sugar. Doing this is critical not only for overcoming diabesity

but for balancing your mood, focusing, having energy, and preventing all the age-related brain diseases

such as Alzheimer’s.

All of the steps are built into The Blood Sugar Solution. However, in this report I want to give you nine

steps that will help you rebalance your blood sugar and begin reversing dementia today. But first, I want

to tell you the story of one of my patients, George, who was able to swim out of the darkness of

dementia by following a few simple steps. Here is his story.

Treating Individuals, Not Diseases: George’s Story

George and his wife came to see me because he could no longer manage his business affairs, had

become increasingly unable to function at home, and had to withdraw from family and social

relationships. He was desperate as he felt himself slipping away.

There is no effective known treatment for dementia. But we do know a lot about what affects brain

function and brain aging: our nutrition, inflammation, environmental toxins, stress, exercise, and

deficiencies of hormones, vitamins, and omega-3 fats.

It is not just one gene, but the interaction between many genes and the environment that puts someone

at risk for a chronic disease such as dementia. And we know that many things affect how our genes

function — our diet, vitamins and minerals, toxins, allergens, stress, lack of sleep and exercise, and

more.

Even though no long-term studies have been done to look at treating dementia based on genes, there

are so many scientific threads that weave together a picture of how and why our brains age and what

genes are involved. This leads me back to George …

For this man, whose mind and life were evaporating, I looked deeply into his genes and the biochemistry

his genes controlled and found places where we could improve things.

He had a gene called apo E4, which is a high-risk gene for Alzheimer’s diseasexi and also made it hard for

him to lower his cholesterol and detoxify mercury from his brain.xii He also had a version of a gene for

detoxification of metals and other toxins (glutathione-S-transferase, or GST)xiii that was very inefficient,

making him accumulate more toxins over his lifetime. Having the combination of a problem with GST

and apo E4 puts people at even more risk for dementia.xiv,xv In another study, people with an absent GST

gene were likely to have much higher levels of mercury.xvi

George had another gene called MTHFRxvii that made him require very high doses of folate to lower his

blood levels of homocysteine, which is a substance very toxic to the brain. Lastly, he had a gene called

CETP that caused his cholesterol to be high, which contributes to dementia. Combine this gene with the

apo E4 gene and your risk of dementia goes way up.xviii

We found that George had high levels of mercuryxix and helped him detoxify with foods such as kale,

watercress, and cilantro, herbs such as milk thistle, nutrients such as selenium and zinc, and medications

that helped him overcome his genetic difficulties by getting rid of toxins.

We lowered his cholesterol with diet and herbs. We lowered his homocysteine with high doses of folate

and vitamins B6 and B12.

What happened then was impressive …

After a year of aggressive therapy that was matched to his genes, not his diagnosis, he had a remarkable

and dramatic recovery. Before I saw him, he could not manage his business, nor did his grandchildren

want to be around him. After matching his treatment to his genes, he was again able to function, and his

grandchildren loved being with him again.

While this area of genetic testing and nutrigenomics is new, and more research is needed to help us

refine our understanding and treatment, there are ways to look through new doors into an entirely new

era of medicine that no longer focuses on the disease, but on the person and their uniqueness. Here’s

another example of how we can do that.

A woman named Christine was eighty and was experiencing severe memory loss and cognitive decline.

Her family was obviously concerned, so she was tested with hours of neuropsychological testing and

found to have dementia.

Her neurologist offered her words of comfort, but told her and her family there is no treatment truly

effective to stop or reverse the progression of dementia. That’s when her daughter brought her to see

me.

We discovered many subtle changes in her health that on their own wouldn’t explain dementia, but

when added all together put a strain on her brain function. All we did was correct those problems — low

thyroid function, mercury toxicity, inflammation, and deficiencies in vitamins B6 and D, folate, coenzyme

Q10, and omega-3 fats — and improved her diet overall. I encouraged her to exercise, because exercise

can help improve cognitive function and prevent dementia.

Six months later, she had the extensive memory tests repeated. Her psychologist was surprised to

report that her scores got BETTER!

To put this in perspective, mental decline happens progressively, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly,

but NEVER gets better — according to our traditional medical thinking.

But just like we once thought that heart disease and artery-clogging plaques couldn’t be reversed (and

now have proof that this does happen), I believe dementia can be reversed (if caught early enough) by

attending to all the factors that affect brain function – diet, exercise, stress, nutritional deficiencies,

toxins, hormonal imbalances, inflammation, and more.

It is really quite simple. You get rid of the bad stuff, put in the good stuff, and the body heals. It’s

common sense, but we are so far from that in the way we treat chronic illness with conventional

medicine.

Now let’s look at some ways you can prevent or reverse memory loss today.

9 Steps to Reversing Dementia

Start by looking hard for correctable causes of memory loss. They include:

Pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome—this may be the biggest factor of all. Go on The Blood

Sugar Solution to reverse metabolic syndrome.

Low thyroid function

Depression

Deficiencies in B vitamins, especially vitamin B12

Omega-3 fat deficiencies

Mercury or other heavy metal toxicity

Vitamin D deficiency

High cholesterol

Unique genes that predispose you to nutritional or detoxification problems

Doctors who practice Functional Medicine and follow the principles I talk about can help you find these

problems.

Once you identify the underlying causes of the imbalance, here are a few things that can help your mind

get a tune-up:

1. Balance your blood sugar with a whole foods, low glycemic diet

2. Exercise daily — even a 30-minute walk can help

3. Deeply relax daily with yoga, meditation, biofeedback, or just deep breathing

4. Take a multivitamin and mineral supplement

5. Take an omega-3 fat supplement

6. Take extra vitamin B6, B12, and folate

7. Take vitamin D

8. Treat thyroid or low sex hormones

9. Get rid of mercury through a medical detoxification program

This is just a start, but it can go a long way to giving your brain the chance to heal and recover if you

have memory problems. Even if you aren’t suffering from cognitive decline, you should take these steps

because they can help you prevent the aging of your brain and obtain lifelong health.

References

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syndrome, inflammation, and risk of cognitive decline. JAMA. 2004 Nov 10;292(18):2237-42. iii Stein JL, Jack CR Jr, Weiner MW, Toga AW, Thompson PM; Cardiovascular Health Study; ADNI. Obesity is linked

with lower brain volume in 700 AD and MCI patients. Neurobiol Aging. 2010 Aug;31(8):1326-39 iv Yaffe K, Kanaya A, Lindquist K, Simonsick EM, Harris T, Shorr RI, Tylavsky FA, Newman AB. The metabolic

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Alexander GE, Schapiro MB, Jagust WJ, Hoffman JM, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Alavi A, Clark CM, Salmon E, de Leon MJ, Mielke R, Cummings JL, Kowell AP, Gambhir SS, Hoh CK, Phelps ME.Positron emission tomography in evaluation of dementia: Regional brain metabolism and long-term outcome. JAMA. 2001 Nov 7;286(17):2120-7. vi NY Times January 14, 2003

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