Can a Fast-Food Diet Hasten the Onset of Alzheimers ?
Monday, December 29, 2008 Junk food high in fat, cholesterol and sugar could hasten the onset of Alzheimer’s, new research suggest. Those are the findings in mice from new research out of Europe showing that the typical fast-food diet is bad for the brain. Scientists at the Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Sweden, studied mice that were bred to develop a predisposition to a disease resembling Alzheimer’s in people. The mice carried a gene that resembles the APOE-E4, for apolipoprotein E, gene in people. People who carry this gene, which regulates the transport of cholesterol in the body, have an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. But carrying the gene does not guarantee that someone will become demented and many people with Alzheimer’s do not have the E4 gene. The current research showed that after nine months, the mice eating a fatty, sugar-rich diet developed brain defects that resembled those that occur in people with Alzheimer’s. On examining the brains of these mice, we f
