[HN Gopher] Study Suggests Fructose Could Drive Alzheimer's Disease
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Study Suggests Fructose Could Drive Alzheimer's Disease
Author : elorant
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-02-16 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.cuanschutz.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.cuanschutz.edu)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Maybe treating AD as a singular disease is confusing researchers
| into thinking there is a single factor causing this. It's a
| spectrum disease, damn do we have to remind them this?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| This is an area of active research and it's misleading to claim
| that there is any kind of consensus that AD is a spectrum
| disease. If anything, the recent success of anti-amyloid drugs
| has pushed the consensus the other way.
| narrator wrote:
| High fructose corn syrup is also contaminated with mercury[1]. It
| comes from contamination of the caustic soda used to process the
| corn.
|
| [1] https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-
| in-...
| jxramos wrote:
| I've long been curious about understanding the processes
| involved in creating our processed food and just what sort of
| chemicals and treatments the raw material pass through to get
| to what we know and identify on the grocery shelves.
| unglaublich wrote:
| A classic is: How It's Made - Hot Dogs
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzUm7UEEIY
| giantg2 wrote:
| Just another theory. I swear this domain is mostly people
| throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if diet is one of many factors involved.
| But I really don't see much value by most of the studies at this
| point. Maybe we'll get to see who's right in a decade or two.
| tomrod wrote:
| This is why the scientific method exists, thankfully!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| So many ailments rely on multiple states occurring at the same
| time, and yet our way of studying seemingly has no way to
| factor this in.
|
| Kind of sad. But we got a lot of lower hanging fruit plucked by
| figuring out cures and preventative measures for single state
| ailments.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I expect Alzheimers is caused by a combination of factors.
| That is why trying to correlate one factor with it has been
| fruitless.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Maybe fruitless is a good thing in this case
| polalavik wrote:
| I've been saying this for a while - science is great at
| breaking things down to the atomic level and figuring out
| what does what, individually. But science sometimes is not so
| good at the systematic, or synergistic view of multiple
| variables. We keep trying to break things down to one
| variable that cures all when it's probably a mixture of a lot
| of things + different for people with different genetic.
| eggnet wrote:
| Some problems are harder to solve than others. It usually
| stems from a long testing period. Try X, wait. Try Y, wait.
| If the wait period is decades, you have a problem.
|
| Broadly, statistics and large sample sets are used to
| combat that.
|
| Human understanding, or lack thereof, for a given problem
| also contributes to suboptimal theories.
|
| Ultimately, hard problems are hard.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I wonder if its as fundamental as needing a different
| "scientific method".
| airstrike wrote:
| Blockchain, DeSci, science3.0
| whatshisface wrote:
| You can't get to the systematic view of multiple variables
| until you know the individual variables.
| sys32768 wrote:
| My mom got Alzheimer's at age 58. She was trim, ate organic,
| exercised daily, never smoked or drank, and had a happy social
| life.
|
| She was always a super light sleeper though, and had her own room
| because dad would wake her up at night. I wonder whether her
| brain's lymphatic system was working.
|
| Only other thing that stuck in my mind is not long before her
| symptoms, she had like six metal fillings removed and replaced
| with porcelain all at the same time.
|
| Her aunt got it early too and was a health nut juicer for years
| who lived a healthy lifestyle.
| sdwr wrote:
| Scary stuff! Thanks for the story.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| There are links between plaque found on teeth and the
| alzheimers plaques. There are some studies that introduction
| into the bloodstream may cause issues.
| https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/large-study-links-gum-disease-d...
| el_benhameen wrote:
| That study was what got me to start routinely flossing after
| many years of off-and-on attempts. Read it, have flossed
| basically every day since. I'm aware that they didn't show a
| causative link and that evidence for flossing itself is
| limited, but my gums feel better and don't bleed anymore, so
| I figure it can't be a bad thing either way.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Have you ever been checked for familial early-onset Alzheimer's
| genes?
| sys32768 wrote:
| No, I just assume I'll get it in a few years, although
| neither of her siblings got it.
|
| I'm less healthy than she was at my age (52). My exit plan
| doesn't involve long term health care insurance, that's for
| sure.
|
| Mom's still alive at 75, so that's a long run with this
| disease. I would say it's been about three years since she
| has declined to that stage where no mentally well person
| would want to be alive.
| criddell wrote:
| Is that the kind of information a 23-and-me test will give
| you?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Not reliably. Best would be to seek consultation with a
| medical geneticist.
| lhh wrote:
| 23andme will tell you your APOE genotype, one of the
| variants of which is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's.
| alfor wrote:
| Did she spend a lot of time outside?
|
| Lack of infrared exposition is linked to inflammation and
| Alzheimer.
|
| https://youtu.be/wadKIiGsDTw links to medical papers in the
| video description.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Yes, daily long walks with her dog.
| [deleted]
| alfor wrote:
| Lack of infrared exposition
|
| Each of our mitochondria need infrared to remove oxidative
| stress.(inflammation)
|
| They use infrared to do that but we now live inside more and more
| (especially elderly and sick) and thus we are in a constant
| crisis of chronic inflammation.
|
| I know it sound new age, but the research is there, like Vit-D
| with the sun must have sounded ridicule at the time, the need for
| infrared was not apparent when most people worked outside.
|
| https://youtu.be/wadKIiGsDTw (medical papers in the video
| description)
| unglaublich wrote:
| You confuse IR with UV light.
| alfor wrote:
| No UV and vit-d is well know
|
| The need for infrared is just starting to get understood,
| huge potential to improve the lives of people.
| msie wrote:
| A theory easy enough to test.
| manmal wrote:
| Unfortunately not, because fructose is also produced
| endogenously. As mentioned in other comments here, whole fruit
| consumption seems to not even be the real issue.
| msie wrote:
| "The study said more research is needed on the role of fructose
| and uric acid metabolism in AD." - we need more money.
| themitigating wrote:
| Yes, because that's how research is done.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| It many ways it is. If your livelihood is based on your
| research then it's necessary for you to frame your research
| as important. Existentially important is even better. This
| way it outcompetes other studies/research/etc for funding
| from various sources. Why would anyone support your research
| if it wasn't urgent and important, etc?
|
| This is how incentives work. It's why, for instance, you have
| gain of function research occurring in many cases. SARS was
| really interesting but it turns out it was never going to be
| a large risk for society. Who is going to continue to fund
| research into it? So, your incentive is to find a way to
| convince people that fund things that it could in fact find a
| way to be a global pandemic and gain of function "research"
| is a great way to do this. Of course you justify it by saying
| "it could happen and if it did happen then we'd want to know
| how to prepare for it so lets find the worst ways it could
| get to that state before it does itself". Now that you've
| created something terrifying, it's much easier to get gobs of
| funding for your research.
|
| This is how it works.
| themitigating wrote:
| Most people's livelihood hood is based on their job.
|
| Money as a motivation is in no way sufficient to make an
| accusation of corruption. So much so I didn't even read
| your argument
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm not saying things are corrupt. Just how they are
| because of how incentives are structured. For instance,
| who would fund a climatologist that says climate change
| probably won't be too bad based on his models? You'd be
| far better off trying to find the model that predicts
| disaster. That will turn heads and open wallets.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| This seems overly cynical. You're taught as a freshman science
| student that a research paper should describe its own
| deficiencies and point to next steps. It's a pretty basic part
| of writing about research.
| scavenger5 wrote:
| This is a junk study. Here is the link:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...
|
| If you look at the evidence hierarchy, this study is at the
| lowest form of evidence (it's a narrative review -i.e expert
| opinion), they didn't even run a study.
|
| The ultimate study would multiple randomized controlled trials
| showing sugar/fructose when controlled for calories, causes
| increased Alheimer's disease. Since we haven't seen that, we
| should not draw conclusions.
|
| As the saying goes 'correlation does not imply causation'. We
| don't even have correlation yet, the headline is an overreach.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| hummm, many Alzheimer patients are insulin resistant...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34576151/
| profstasiak wrote:
| how do you expect we will ever get a randomized control trial
| controlling for fructose in diet?
|
| Your right, but RCT would take how long? 50 years? How can you
| make people not eat fructose or limit that for 50 years?
|
| Wouldnt call the article junk sciensce. We also need hypothesis
| builing articles. I think they are proposing a specific
| mechanism of action about how fructose might cause Alzheimers.
|
| I believe there are other clues also pointing in this
| direction, which I wont bore you with.
|
| Just want to note, that I think everyone would prefer high
| powered RCTs, but I dont believe they are feasible to fund and
| run
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| We won't. That's why nutrition epidemiology studies are so
| bad and mostly useless. It's ok to simply say "let's not do
| this study which we know won't add anything to our knowledge
| of how nutrition affects health outcomes in real people". See
| David Chapman for an entertaining review:
| https://metarationality.com/nutrition
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I predict HN will look on this favorably anyway, because my
| experience is that a rather large number of them are
| practitioners of ketogenic or other high-fat low-carb diets and
| 'fructose bad' may as well be part of their religion.
| azubinski wrote:
| Well, at least something is in order :)
| exfatloss wrote:
| I would say this comment is a bit unfavorable. The study
| details some metabolic pathways that were recently discovered
| and are activated by fructose intake. They then explore a
| hypothesis as to why this could lead to certain outcomes like
| Alzheimer's.
|
| Not exactly a "junk study." It's step 1 in a chain of studies
| that could validate this hypothesis.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| A review article is not necessarily junk science. This sort of
| paper is the first step in allowing us to conduct the more
| interventional studies you recommend.
| crazygringo wrote:
| True, it's the headline that's junk. It calls it a "study"
| which implies running an experiment and observing the
| results.
|
| A review article is a review article. It isn't a study.
| XFrequentist wrote:
| Agree that it's a poor headline and that the
| fructose/Alzheimer's hypothesis is quite speculative, but I
| don't think calling it a "junk study" or gesturing at evidence
| hierarchies is particularly helpful.
|
| Theory (almost) always precedes evidence, and coming up with a
| novel, biologically-plausible explanation for a common ailment
| is absolutely a valid, useful scientific contribution.
|
| Your general point, that drawing firm conclusions would be
| radically premature, is spot on. I just stiffen up a bit when I
| encounter "RCT or GTFO" type arguments; where in the world do
| you think the ideas for which RCT to run come from?
| colincooke wrote:
| While I agree that these theory based papers are useful, and
| are often the precursor to experiments, I believe the general
| understanding of "study has found X" in pop culture is that
| there is "hard evidence" of the finding being tauted.
| Theories are risky to place too much credence in without
| being steeped in the field yourself (is this a theory that
| most people in the field agree with, or is the one suggesting
| it an outlier?).
|
| As usual science communication is never done as well as we
| could all hope, but I personally like this "hierarchy of
| evidence" approach in understanding if something is ready to
| be consumed by the general public, rather than requiring
| further discussion with the scientific community.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Agreed. At this point I am also not willing to just let
| science off the hook and blame it all on the press: If our
| smartest people can not find ways to differentiate between
| ideating and good results in a way that a sensationalist
| press can't simply ignore, then just maybe they are not
| trying all that hard.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I wish sci comms practice would have a standard set of
| terms for stages of development/belief. Here the headline
| should be something like "theory proposed that ..."
| birdman3131 wrote:
| We have that term already. Hypothesis.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with research like this per se. I think
| the way it's publicised is the main issue. Broadly I think
| there are two types of papers: those who are only relevant to
| other researchers, and those who are interesting to the
| public as a whole. This is very much in the former category.
| a4isms wrote:
| _Theory (almost) always precedes evidence, and coming up with
| a novel, biologically-plausible explanation for a common
| ailment is absolutely a valid, useful scientific
| contribution._
|
| This is the case in physics and astronomy. People make
| predictions that are not only untested, but we have to invent
| equipment to test them.
|
| _One of the great early accomplishments in science was when
| astronomers, observing our Sun, noted an unknown yellow
| spectral line signature. In 1868, Norman Lockyer predicted
| that it must be created by a hitherto unknown element, which
| he named "Helium" after the Greek Titan of the Sun, Helios._
|
| _In 1895, two Swedish chemists detected helium in ore
| samples here on Earth, and in the great tradition of the
| scientific method, we had a theory, a prediction, and a
| confirmation of the theory by test._
|
| http://braythwayt.com/2017/12/29/crown.html
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" This is a junk study"_
|
| I hope you're damn-well right. I love fruit and eat lots of it!
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Comments like this are why I love hacker news. Thank you for
| saving me the minutes I would spend trying to wade through this
| stuff myself.
| rising-sky wrote:
| You probably still want to at least look at the research
| yourself, trusting other "off-hand" comments is, uh,
| ironically, akin to the moral from the "off-hand" parent
| comment in this case
| themitigating wrote:
| Let's hope the poster isn't lying or wrong
| labster wrote:
| We can always have Bing read the study for us and ask what
| it thinks.
| Shared404 wrote:
| It thinks that we're bad users :(
| labster wrote:
| But it's such a good Bing :)
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Trusting a random commenter to dismiss the contents of an
| article for you seems almost as bad as only reading the
| headline. In both cases you're putting full faith in someone
| else to summarize the article in a way that serves their
| interests more than yours.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Sometimes it's just the way they do it, that counts.
| exfatloss wrote:
| I skimmed the abstract and would say the comment isn't quite
| fair to the study. I'm glad I spent the time checking it out
| myself.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I personally find the parent comment to be way too
| dismissive. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
| craigyk wrote:
| Thanks for the DD, I spent 30 secs scanning the article before
| thinking "this sounds like drivel, I'm going to check the
| comments"
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I've spent about 10 years doing research into brain metabolism
| and Alzheimer's. This is an interesting paper! It explains a lot
| of observed phenomena in the novel context of fructose
| metabolism. I certainly am convinced that fructose has short-term
| effects on regional brain activity and whole-body metabolism.
|
| However they don't make great links between fructose and known AD
| pathology. Beta-amyloid buildup is now pretty convincingly a
| critical step in the progression of AD. They link a few low-
| quality papers claiming fructose increases amyloid, but the
| evidence is pretty weak. Similarly, APOE genotypes are well
| documented AD risk factors. The authors aren't really able to
| explain APOE's role in the context of fructose.
|
| Fun read (for me, anyway), but not particularly convincing.
| Hopefully it provokes some more research to try to fill in some
| of the missing links.
| Baloo wrote:
| "...other foods can also stimulate fructose production in the
| body and induce features of metabolic syndrome. These include
| foods that provide the glucose substrate for the polyol pathway,
| such as high glycemic carbohydrates, and foods that stimulate
| aldose reductase, such as *salty foods and alcohol*. Umami foods
| (especially processed *red meats, organ meats, shellfish, and
| beer* that is rich in yeast extracts) also engage the purine
| degradation pathway leading to uric acid.
|
| The second more proximate factor has been the dramatic rise in
| the intake of added sugars that contain fructose and glucose,
| such as *table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup
| (HFCS)*."
|
| And...
|
| "Interestingly, *whole fruits tend not to activate this pathway*
| owing to a relatively low fructose content in individual fruits
| and the presence of neutralizing factors (such as fiber, vitamin
| C, potassium, and flavanols) and because the small intestine
| metabolizes some fructose before it reaches the liver and brain."
|
| So basically processed meats, table sugar & high-fructose corn
| syrup are bad for you. I'm shocked /s
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| honey also
| unglaublich wrote:
| Yes, most forms of sugars contain 40-60% fructose.
| unglaublich wrote:
| > So basically processed meats, table sugar & high-fructose
| corn syrup are bad for you. I'm shocked /s
|
| The interesting part of the research is that the authors
| identified a common player that might progress the development
| of chronic diseases: high uric acid levels.
|
| Uric acid has historically been associated with gout. But more
| recently, there has been growing interest in the role of uric
| acid on the development of chronic diseases like metabolic
| disease, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer.
|
| An interesting (imo) pop-medscience video by Dr. David
| Perlmutter - Uric Acid: A KEY Cause of Weight Gain, Diabetes,
| Heart Disease & Dementia
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6jPCcFNa8
| avastmick wrote:
| Uric acid may be a complex symptomatic expression rather than
| a cause.
|
| My own journey may reflect this. I suffered from gout and
| also other worrisome blood work markers that indicated
| metabolic syndrome. I am now largely vegan, alcohol free and
| avoid sugar and processed food. I have not had a gout attack
| for a long time. Then in a recent blood test my uric acid was
| through the roof. My (excellent) doctor first wanted to raise
| the amount of allopurinol I was taking but I suffer from side
| effects and was reluctant. My doctor did some research and
| found that uric acid levels are raised during periods of
| weight loss.
|
| So it's complicated and not well understood.
| unglaublich wrote:
| With regards to gout, I don't think it's symptomatic:
| actual uric acid crystals are causing the inflammation that
| is called gout. The crystals are deposited when the serum
| level of UA goes above ~400umol/l.
|
| But it's fascinating to hear your story, where you have
| high UA serum but no gout attack. Were you on 300mg allo or
| more?
|
| With Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease, there is much
| uncertainty, agreed!
| ralala wrote:
| I have fructose malabsorption and when I eat or drink too much of
| it, I get brain fog (slow reaction, dizziness etc.) for one or
| two days. Would be interesting to see if fructose malabsorption
| and Alzheimer's correlate.
| saool wrote:
| If you haven't yet, check out Dr Richard Johnson on the
| fructose metabolism.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson2/
|
| https://drhyman.com/blog/2022/05/18/podcast-ep540/
| joenathanone wrote:
| Diabetes and Alzheimer's, quite the combo if true.
| shagie wrote:
| The link has been an area of study for a while.
|
| https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...
|
| https://www.alz.org/media/documents/alzheimers-dementia-diab...
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/whats-the-relationship-b...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/
| wtetzner wrote:
| Some researchers have started calling Alzheimer's "Type 3
| Diabetes".
| exfatloss wrote:
| Anecdata, but haven't people with dementia (not just
| Alzheimer's) been found to have very strong sugar cravings
| too? I've heard the term "Diabetes of the brain" for it.
| spacephysics wrote:
| Someone with more domain knowledge, does this study hold water?
| Even perhaps as a reason to look further into the relationship
| between diet and Alzheimer's?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I watched an interesting presentation on YouTube about how
| fructose is digested in the body, its totally different to
| glucose, and arguably more harmful becuase the liver can only
| handle so much, there are various metabolic products which also
| need to be dealt with... So I do believe this may be very
| plausible.
| chasebank wrote:
| "This leads to the overeating of high fat, sugary and salty
| food prompting excess fructose production."
|
| Perhaps I'm reading this wrong but the article suggests that
| it's not from digested fructose, rather the body is producing
| fructose. I'm confused.
| Py-o7 wrote:
| if you read Johnson's work, it's typically both. Direct
| fructose consumption as well as the polyol pathway being on
| and your body converting 'extra' glucose into fructose.
|
| excess fructose (in particular in ultra-processed forms)
| causes metabolic derangement but consuming too much of
| those other 3 esp from ultra processed foods, also
| activates the "switch" leading to endogenous fructose
| production and more derangement.
|
| The role of sedentarism in all this is somewhat under-
| explored though.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Glucose can be converted to fructose in the body via the
| enzyme glucose-6-phosphate isomerase.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_isomera
| s...
| abosley wrote:
| Agreed....the part where it states that "Fructose produced
| in the brain could possibly lead to inflammation..." made
| me eye-roll...really hard.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Hwang JJ, Jiang L, Hamza M, Dai F, Belfort-DeAguiar R,
| Cline G, Rothman DL, Mason G, Sherwin RS. The human brain
| produces fructose from glucose. JCI Insight. 2017 Feb
| 23;2(4):e90508. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.90508. PMID:
| 28239653; PMCID: PMC5313070.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28239653/
| lab14 wrote:
| Would you mind sharing said YouTube presentation?
| VLM wrote:
| Probably "Sugar The Bitter Truth" by Lustig 2009 which was
| "controversial" at the time but more than a decade later
| its pretty much mainstream.
|
| You're always going to have members of the general public
| and docs who don't keep upon on continuing nutritional
| education (snark, there isn't any) saying stuff that was
| out of date decades ago but I'd say the stuff in that video
| is pretty much mainstream now.
| [deleted]
| snshn wrote:
| I am convinced that boredom is the main cause of Alzheimer's and
| many other neurological ailments.
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