When I was searching for people with other stories like mine, I encountered a woman who seemed to be delaying the progress of her Alzheimer's disease through a variety of strategies. These included exercise and diet, but also aroma therapy. This surprised me. I had not heard of aroma therapy used as a treatment for dementia, and I wasn't sure how seriously to take her. But maybe I was wrong to not investigate that further.
One of the Internet algorithms recently decided that I should know more about this. It brought me to some research finding that smelling menthol may well affect the progress of Alzheimer's disease. Or at least, it did with our old friends, the mice.
We talked before about the strengths and weaknesses of "mouse models." Mice can be genetically engineered to have a condition that resembles Alzheimer's disease in humans -- although it's not really the same thing. It's also easy to train mice and measure changes in their cognitive function. But they're not people, and their condition is not really Alzheimer's disease. Some researchers have been led astray by inappropriately drawing conclusions from the results of research with mice. Nevertheless, we can learn a lot from them -- such as how powerfully physical exercise can moderate progress of the disease.
The research, "Improvement of cognitive function in wild-type and Alzheimer´s disease mouse models by the immunomodulatory properties of menthol inhalation or by depletion of T regulatory cells," was published in the April 2023 issue of the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
The premise of the research was that there is a complex relationship between the olfactory system and the central nervous system. And it's not just about being able to detect things in your environment. According to this article, the olfactory bulb in your nose acts to actually referee and direct different signals, signals associated with different smells, to areas of the brain where the information can be used. Such as information that a dangerous but smelly animal is about to jump you.
Each molecule floating in the air has a specific shape, and there are electric charges on different points of that shape. Nerves in your nose that are there to detect a specific molecule are shaped like a negative impression of the molecule and with opposite electric charges. (Remember, opposites attract.) Since the shape of the molecule fits the nerve ending, and since the charges correspond, the molecule in the air will get stuck to the nerve ending the way a party balloon will stick to the wall. The nerve will signal the brain, "Hey, I just captured a menthol molecule." This message causes a reaction in the brain. So there are nerves designed to detect specific molecules in the air you might encounter.
One thing the researchers noted is that there is often a loss of sense of smell with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. They noted a previously recognized association between the nervous system and the immune system. There is then a complex but, so far, rather mysterious interplay between the olfactory system (for smelling), the nervous system, the immune system, and Alzheimer's disease. They wrote, "The link between impaired [sense of smell] and immune system in neurologic diseases remains to be understood but it opens the door for its potential use in therapies for [neurodegenerative] diseases."
So what did they conclude about what happened with the mice? They wrote, "Exposure to menthol for 6 months (1 week per month) prevented the cognitive impairment observed in the ... mouse model of Alzheimer's. ... These data suggest an association between the immunomodulatory capacity of smells and their impact on the cognitive functions of the animals, highlighting the potential of odors and immune modulators as therapeutic agents for [neurodegenerative] diseases."
Here's another discussion of this research.
This, of course, is very early research on the topic. But it certainly sounds promising. Smell menthol for one week per month for six months to stop Alzheimer's disease? Beats going to the gym.
No comments:
Post a Comment