When it comes to diet and cognitive decline
I talked previously about glycotoxins,
which are created when high fat, high protein foods are exposed
to high dry heat like broiling or roasting.
In this video, we look at endotoxins which are inflammatory components
of bacteria that can end up in our blood stream.
How might the presence of these toxins
relate to Alzheimers? Watch to find out.
"The Role of Endotoxins in Alzheimer’s and Dementia"
Having a high cholesterol level in your early 40s is associated
with an increased risk of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia decades later.
And your cholesterol doesn’t have to be that high to increase dementia risk.
A 57 percent higher risk of developing Alzheimer's
at a total cholesterol of 240 compared to under 200.
I’ve done a bunch of videos talking about the clogging
of the cerebral arteries inside of the brain
with the same atherosclerosis that causes heart attacks and strokes,
choking off blood flow to the memory centers in the brain.
This may be why higher saturated fat intake was found
to be associated with the development of worse global cognitive function
and memory decline, an apparent acceleration of brain aging
as if you were six years older.
How can we cut down on saturated fat?
By cutting down on cheese, cake, ice cream, and chicken,
essentially the top sources in the American diet,
but also pork, burgers, and beef in general.
In my video on the role of glycotoxins in cognitive decline,
I profiled this study, showing that just five days of a high-fat,
low-carb diet impairs energy metabolism in the heart
as well as cognitive function, concluding such diets
are detrimental to the heart and brain.
Now, they were thinking the impaired energy production
may have accounted for the brain dysfunction as well,
but high levels of dietary glycotoxins, so-called AGE’s,
are also associated with cognitive decline,
so we may want to cut down our intake
of baked, broiled, or grilled meat, chicken, or fish,
as well as certain dairy products.
But there’s another possibility.
“Metabolic Endotoxemia: A Potential Underlying Mechanism
of the Relationship between Dietary Fat Intake
and Risk for Cognitive Impairments.”
Endotoxins are highly pro-inflammatory components
of certain types of bacteria like E. coli
that are released when bacteria die,
and can end up being absorbed through our gut wall
and end up in the bloodstream, resulting in what’s called endotoxemia.
The highest levels of these endotoxins are found,
not surprisingly, in foods like meat that are contaminated
with bacteria, both red meat and white meat.
And having elevated levels of endotoxin circulating
in your blood stream may be detrimental for healthy aging,
associated with a large range of diseases,
such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and depression.
Put people on a high-fat, low-carb diet for five days,
and endotoxin levels in the blood stream roughly double.
Endotoxin levels before and after a few days
on a high-fat diet.
In fact, even a single meal can do it.
Give people some sausage and egg McMuffins
with hash browns, and you can get a significant increase
within hours after the meal.
How do we know it wasn’t the refined carbs in the muffin or something?
Because the control meal had a muffin too,
but lower fat and no sausage and egg.
In fact, you can have people chug straight sugar water
and no change in endotoxin levels,
whereas there was a big jump within hours drinking straight cream,
which is pretty much straight fat.
And not just any kind of fat, but mostly saturated fat.
A double-blind, randomized crossover trial demonstrated
that a single meal high in saturated fat
can impede attention (meaning the cognitive ability
to distinguish target stimuli from distractors in a computer game),
compared with an identical meal high in the kind of fat
found in nuts, seeds, and avocados.
And this cognitive deficit was present five hours after the meal,
and who knows how much longer after that.
There are two ways to cut down on endotoxin bursts after meals.
One is to not eat so many in the first place.
But if you do eat meat and dairy, the addition of fiber-rich foods
can blunt the endotoxin surge.
Same sausage and egg McMuffin endotoxin bomb
but with or without Fiber One cereal,
which would be like 30 grams of fiber,
and it seemed to glom onto the endotoxins,
preventing the bump of endotoxemia three hours after the meal.
The fiber also reduced the oxidative stress,
the free radicals generated by such a meal,
showing clearly that the addition of fiber to the high-fat, high-calorie meal
had profound effects on metabolic
and inflammatory events after the meal.
And over time, meal after meal, this could have long-term implications.
Recent investigations reported higher abundance of endotoxins
in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease
on autopsy—endotoxins building up in the memory center of the brain,
the region of the brain that develops the earliest
and most profound neuropathology in Alzheimer’s.
Some advanced Alzheimer's patients had up to a 26-fold increase
in endotoxin levels over age-matched controls without dementia.
And where were the endotoxins concentrated?
Smack dab in the middle of the amyloid plaques,
a pathology characteristic of Alzheimer's.
The endotoxins are staining red here and the amyloid staining green.
You can see how they superimpose right over each other,
suggesting endotoxins may be playing a role in the formation
of these plaques, like happens in the brains of other animals.
For these and other reasons, proper nutrition has been proposed
as a promising non-medical strategy
to prevent cognitive decline and subsequent dementia.