Inflammation is the body's response to just about any insult, from physical injury to infection. It exists to serve a protective function, but quickly begins causing serious damage of its own. In recent years, inflammation has been found to play a role in exacerbating just about anything that goes wrong in the human body, including in Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, an important dietary target for treating Alzheimer's disease is reduction of inflammatory foods, especially refined flour and refined sugar.
Recent research increasingly associates depression with inflammation, and, according to the Alzheimer's Association Facts and Figures Report, depression is an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease. As I wrote in Beating the Dementia Monster, one of my first symptoms was frequent, brief occurrences of mild depression. It's not surprising that we find inflammation, depression, and Alzheimer's disease together.
Professor Edward Bullmore chairs the department of psychiatry at Cambridge University and writes on the flood of new research on inflammation. In a recent article in The Guardian ("From Depression to Dementia, Inflammation is Medicine's New Frontier"), he discussed the link between autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases, and inflammation.
In our recent post on salt and dementia, we discussed the blood-brain barrier and the immune system in the brain that is separate from the immune system protecting the rest of the body. Professor Bullmore contends medical science is learning that the the two immune systems communicate with each other far more than we had believed. And so, inflammation plagues them both. He further believes that focusing research on inflammation will lead to breakthroughs in treatment of many other diseases, because inflammation is involved in so many of them.
In February 2019 we posted regarding a link between gum disease and the advent of Alzheimer's disease. Professor Bullmore sees an important link between gum disease and inflammation, and he believes inflammation is then the link from gum disease to Alzheimer's disease. He cites ongoing research that may lead to improvement in how we treat Alzheimer's disease by treating gum disease.
In my book, "Beating the Dementia Monster," I describe what has occurred since 2015 when I first knew I had memory problems. (You can find it on Amazon.com.) I have experienced remarkable improvement, and I’m certain that I can share valuable information with many others. In this second edition I continue my story to 2020 and provide greater understanding of how Alzheimer's advances and why what I did worked.
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