I began to hear that people were calling Alzheimer’s Disease “Type 3 Diabetes” a few months ago. My grandmother died from Alzheimer’s disease at age 97. While I was able to help her move into the first dedicated Alzheimer’s care home in California, resulting in a good quality of life in her later years, she missed her great-granddaughter’s toddler and early school years.
As her ability to remember lessened, at first, she thought I was my mother, and Meredith was me. Then, the sad day came when she no longer recognized me at all.
Physically, my grandmother seemed perfectly healthy right up to the end. At the same time, her mind deteriorated, and she became like a small child. Her memories were like a child’s storybook, all mixed up and many made-up.
Looking back, she was probably battling the disease for at least 20 years before symptoms became obvious to me and others.
Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating condition — I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t fear it. I know of no one who would ever want to have it strike themselves or a beloved family member.
But if Alzheimer’s is “Type 3 Diabetes,” it can also be prevented or at least, improved.
Diabetes: Lose Your Leg, Lose Your Sight, Lose Your Mind
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “age increases risk,” but it is “not a direct cause of Alzheimer’s.” What is a known risk for Alzheimer’s disease? Type 2 diabetes.
The Mayo Clinic says, “It’s an accepted fact that people with Type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Insulin resistance in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Some researchers suggest this is an “independent cause” of “cognitive dysfunction,” but this insistence is more likely a feature of neuroscientists focusing on physical brain changes as opposed to overall body systems: i.e. classic Western medical reductionism.
The same insulin resistance that causes damage to the circulatory and nervous systems in Type 2 diabetes also harms neurons and other cells in the brain. Glucose metabolism is what makes our brains run.
If I could editorialize: only an idiot or someone paid to ignore facts would refuse to consider the role of glucose metabolism in a brain disorder when diabetes-caused tissue and cell destruction is well-documented in other parts of the body. Probably these researchers are gobbling Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as they accept their checks from Mr. Reese, Mr. Mars, and Mr. Nestle.
Just as with other diseases which have increased rapidly over the past two decades, Alzheimer’s disease has a metabolic component. As Type 2 diabetes has increased in prevalence, so too has Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2019, 9.3% of the world’s population had Type 2 diabetes, or half a billion people. Of those who have diabetes, more than half don’t know that they have it. Their numbers are expected to increase to 700 million by 2045.
As of 2021, Alzheimer’s disease was the 7th leading cause of death in the United States and the 6th leading cause of death among people over age 65. Diabetes, directly, is right behind Alzheimer’s disease on the CDC’s leading cause of death list.
There is a genetic component to the disease. The “Alzheimer’s gene,” APOE4, limits the brain’s ability to use insulin, which can lead to cell starvation and death. People with Type 2 diabetes who have this gene have a 10 to 15 times higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who do not have the gene — or Type 2 diabetes.
It seems clear that one important way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease or delay its onset is to prevent Type 2 diabetes.
But that would require selling and consuming less Frankenfood. And the U.S. economy has run on Frankenfood for longer than 95% of us have been alive.
Healing After Pre-diabetes and Diabetes
I know from my Zoe Nutrition tests that if I consumed the same types of foods that the majority of Americans eat every day, I would be pre-diabetic. I also know that if I accelerated those foods and became sedentary, I would quickly become a Type 2 diabetic.
Organizations like the Diabetes Association recommend diets that, if followed to the letter, such as the ADA 1500 diet, will make the majority of people who consume them fatter and sicker than they were when they started. My experience has been that consuming any massively processed foods is a poor idea for any person with any metabolic disorder. This includes substitute foods like “gluten-free pasta” and it should go without saying, any “sugar-free” product. The body reacts to sugar substitutes similarly to sugar and these chemical products do untold damage to the microbiome.
Adopting a healing diet is the best thing that anyone who has prediabetes and diabetes can do for themselves. Many parts of the mechanism that causes insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes are well-understood. Our bodies are not well-prepared to digest and metabolize the large amount of highly-processed, additive and preservative-laden foods which comprise 90% of our food system.
Processed Frankenfoods are served to toddlers in preschool and children in school. They are all made from the most highly-subsidized crops that the U.S. promotes: corn, wheat, and soy. Many of the coloring agents and chemical additives in this food are made from petroleum. And the food that has made 75% of American adults overweight or obese, with nearly 10% formally diagnosed with diabetes is processed and packed in plants by workers who are poorly-paid and poorly-treated. It is delivered to our supermarkets and fast food establishments by truck. It should go without saying: they don’t treat hard-working truck drivers too well, either.
As I’ve written before, the most effective and all-around beneficial thing anyone can do to improve their health is to improve their diet. People have gotten fat, sick, and nearly dead because they are eating too many processed Frankenfoods, too often. An occasional “treat” isn’t going to cause obesity, diabetes, or Alzheimer’s disease. Consumed daily, over decades? These foods are certain to result in metabolic illness. We see the results all around us every time we leave our homes.
Above all: everyone should immediately stop counting calories and start consuming foods containing enough fiber, vitamins, and minerals to heal their bodies and their resident population of friendly microbes: the microbiome.
As I’ve written before, I am using Zoe Nutrition to discover the exact foods and combinations that can improve my microbiome’s diversity and function. I have already eliminated IBS symptoms — and if you have IBS? Last night I ate 1 cup of black beans and half a cup of asparagus. No negative symptoms. Oh, I forgot! I also ate half an apple. A couple of days ago? A baked pear. As recently as five years ago, these foods would have been impossible for me to consume without several days of severe cramps and pain.
If you would like to try Zoe Nutrition, here is a link for $35 off the initial kit and four months of membership (I do not earn money from this — you’ll just save money if you are interested). They are continuously improving their app and I notice that my food “scores” are changing too, improving and becoming more accurate every day. They have also added a beta function of importing any recipe from the internet and nutritionally scoring it for your microbiome. I imported a recipe for black beans that was basically the way I’ve always made them (Oaxacan style) and it scored it highly for me — I ate a cup of them last night.
This would have been impossible for me as recently as a year ago. My overall health hasn’t just improved: using Zoe Nutrition and eating highly-scoring foods and meals has eliminated any symptoms of my lifelong irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
I now believe that our food system, combined with Western medical “reductionism” — in other words, the false yet persistent belief system we were all raised and educated in: i.e. treatment of symptoms not underlying disease or dysfunction, and the false belief that any single “chemical” or molecular intervention can “cure” — or surgery is the only curative approach … I could go on. The same is true of first-generation genetic medicine.
There are between 20,000 and 25,000 genes in the human genome. In contrast, there are 3.3 million unique genes in the human gut microbiome, consisting of approximately 1,000 species. And the gut microbiome is individual, even between identical twins.
We are just learning about our interdependency on the planet — and interdependency on the microbes inside our own bodies. By healing these, we can certainly make an impact on Alzheimer’s disease: a ticking, terrifying time bomb for all of us as we grow older.
I do not want my daughter to have to care for me as I did my grandmother. I don’t want her to get a phone call at 2:00 a.m. as she’s changing her own baby’s diapers — to come get me down at the police station because once again, I’ve run away from home in the middle of the night because I no longer recognize where I live.
Sources:
CDC/National Center for Health Statistics. “Leading Causes of Death.” 23 January 2023, url: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
Douda, Dennis. “Mayo Clinic Minute: Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?” 7 November 2017, url: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-is-alzheimers-type-3-diabetes/
Mergenthaler, Philipp, Ute Lindauer et. al., “Sugar for the brain: the role of glucose in physiological and pathological function,” Trends in Neuroscience, 20 August 2013, url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900881/
Nguyen TT, Ta QTH, Nguyen TKO, Nguyen TTD, Giau VV. “Type 3 Diabetes and Its Role Implications in Alzheimer’s Disease,” International Journal of Molecular Science, 30 April 2020, url: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/
Saeedi P., Petersohn I., Salpea P., Malanda B., Karuranga S., Unwin N., Colagiuri S., Guariguata L., Motala A.A., Ogurtsova K., et al. “Global and regional diabetes prevalence estimates for 2019 and projections for 2030 and 2045,” Diabetes Res. Clin. Pract., 10 September 2019, url: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31518657/
Vetter, Christina and Zainab Abbas. “Foods to eat and limit if you have diabetes, and why personalization is key,” Zoe Nutrition, 8 February 2023, url: https://joinzoe.com/learn/foods-for-diabetics
Zhu, Baoli, Wang Xin, Lanjuan Li. “Human gut microbiome: the second genome of the human body,” Protein & Cell, 28 August 2010, url: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21203913/