Why me?

Why did I get Alzheimer's disease?  It's not something that sticks out in the family tree, although it's possible my mother's father had it.  They looked for it in my Dad's autopsy and couldn't find it.  My mom is still doing quite well, although she complains about forgetting words and names.  Who older than 60 doesn't?  I'm the oldest of nine, and no one else has been diagnosed with it, at least so far.  23andMe says I do not carry the APOE4 gene which most often correlates with the "sporadic" form of the disease that I have.   

The APOE4 gene is not the only gene associated with Alzheimer's disease.  There are probably more than 30.  But none of these genes, including the APOE4 variant, directly causes the disease.  They simply set up conditions that favor the disease, most notably by making the brain more subject to inflammation.  So things you do that fight inflammation (like staying away from refined sugar and refined flour) help prevent the disease from starting.  Diet and exercise when you're young can make a difference.  And research presented at the Alzheimer's Association 2020 Conference found that lifestyle choices in your teens and twenties are shown to strongly affect your vulnerability to the disease. 

One of those lifestyle choices is how well you care for your teeth.  As we wrote in Beating the Dementia Monster and in posts on this blog there are some who believe all Alzheimer's disease can be traced to gum disease.

Therefore, there are a couple of things in my past lifestyle that may have contributed to my disease, starting from my teen years.

After I got my first job and had some money to spend, I spent a lot of it at McDonald's.  There was little about my diet to discourage inflammation (or that other problem, oxidation) until I was in my 60s.

What about my teeth?  After I left home at 18, I didn't see a dentist until I was in my late 20s.  And I didn't take flossing seriously until I was probably in my 50s.  Bleeding gums are evidence of gum disease, and I've had plenty of that.

Alzheimer's disease is increasingly considered a preventable disease.  How preventable depends on who you ask, but the prevention needs to begin when you're young. 

I remember when I was in the 8th grade and we had an assembly in school to talk about cigarette smoking.  As was common at the time, my father had been advised by his doctor to start smoking to help raise his low blood pressure.  But the correlation between smoking and cancer was becoming very clear, and a presenter had come to the school to warn us about the health risks from smoking.  When he started talking about the bad things that could happen to you in your 50s and 60s, I remember saying to myself something like, "who cares?"  That was so far off.  (But I never started smoking anyway.)  So would warning teenagers that poor lifestyle decisions may cause Alzheimer's disease in 50 years going to make a difference?  Probably not.

Of course, the things I've done since 2015 to fight inflammation, to fight oxidation, to fight gum disease, and to strengthen my cardiovascular system have had spectacular benefit.  But it would have been good to start earlier ... a lot earlier!