Fish Oil and Alzheimer's Disease: Decreased Incidence of the Disease in Inuit Populations.

[NNadir]

Recently I stumbled across some synthetic information related to isoprostanes, compounds involved in, among other things, inflammation reactions owing to a cascade connected to the fatty acid arachadonic acid. This cascade is related to the anti-inflammatory workings of drugs like aspirin - still one of the most important drugs ever invented - as well as certain famous and infamous COX-2 inhibitors, including Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra.

Arachadonic acid is an unsaturated fatty acid, and is related to the famous omega-3 fish oils one hears about, although chemically, omega-3 fish oils are slightly different.

I'm not big into dietary supplements of any kind, if you must know, especially after learning of the case some deaths connected with semi-synthetic tryptophan dietary supplements, tryptophan being an amino acid that is common, among other places in casein, in milk protein.

From my perspective the DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health "Education" Act) is nothing more than a scheme by certain pseudoscience types to engage in quackery. Lord knows, pseudoscience does a lot of damage even without a law to protect it.

(I would repeal DSHEA were I dictator, but I'm very, very, very certain that no one would want me for dictator, and I'm not running for the office... I happen to think that the FDA does a pretty good job, even though the FDA is hardly perfect, but the FDA need not be perfect to be better than working without the FDA. Working with the FDA merely needs to better than working without the FDA, which it is.)

All that said it is well known that some diets are better than others.

It is well known, for instance, that cardiovascular disease is reduced in diets that are rich in 3-omega fish oils.

Anyway.

In connection with something else I was doing, I ran across a paper related to something else I was doing, and came across a paper related to the total synthesis of a particular isoprostane. The abstract of this paper is here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo051916x">J. Org. Chem., 2006, 71 (4), pp 1370–1379

You may need to have an interest in chemistry - and Lord knows many people aren't interested in chemistry at all, as I recently noted in another thread here - to appreciate what this paper is supposed to be about, a particular asymmetric synthesis. The paper is entitled "Total Synthesis of 8,12-iso-iPF3r-VI, an EPA-Derived Isoprostane: Stereoselective Introduction of the Fifth Asymmetric Center." Blah, blah, blah...

But you don't need to know much chemistry at all, to be intrigued by this remark in the introduction of the paper:

Lipid peroxidation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of several diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, and other neurodegenerative diseases.1-4 Recently, a new class of natural products, the isoprostanes (iPs), isomeric with the enzymatically produced prostaglandins (PGs), has been discovered.5,6...

Following a reference in this paper, I came across another paper that has this interesting remark, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T38-46MBJ9H-V&_user=1082852&_coverDate=09%2F01%2F2002&_rdoc=8&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%234940%232002%23999669994%23334479%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=4940&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=21&_acct=C000051401&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1082852&md5=c9471bf6bcaa894e928318cd46911b4e">Free Radical Biology and Medicine Volume 33, Issue 5, 1 September 2002, Pages 620-626, where free radical does not refer to the former state of Ira Einhorn, violent murderous misogynist but to the chemistry of oxygen in flesh. (In any case Einhorn is not a free radical anymore but will, in fact, serve the rest of his life in prison.)

This paper has all kinds of stuff about the relationship between oxidative stress and the incidence of Alzheimer's disease.

Finally this paper lead me to ARCH NEUROL/VOL 60, JULY 2003, 923-924. http://archneur.highwire.org/cgi/content/full/60/7/923">You may be able to read this one's full text.

Here's an excerpt:

Fish Consumption and the Risk
of Alzheimer Disease. Is It Time to Make Dietary Recommendations?


IN THIS ISSUE of the ARCHIVES, Morris and colleagues 1 report data from a remarkable prospective study of Alzheimer disease (AD) in a biracial community in Chicago, Ill (815 people, aged 65-94 years). They found that subjects who ate fish once a week or more had a 60% lower risk for developing AD than those who consumed fish less frequently. The data were statistically adjusted to correct for the effects of age, sex, ethnicity, education, stroke, hypertension, heart disease, apolipoprotein E (apo E) genotype, total caloric intake, and consumption of other fats or vitamin E. Intake of long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and docosahexaenoic acid (omega-3) was associated with a reduced risk of developing AD over the 4 years of the study. Intake of
-linolenic acid or eicosapentaenpoic acid was not associated with disease after adjustment. Intake of
-linolenic acid, found in vegetable oils and nuts, was protective only in people with the apoE
4 allele, and total n-3 fatty acid intake was protective only in women. These data and other work in the area1,2 suggest that consumption of PUFAs found in fish, vegetable oils, and nuts may reduce AD risk

Alzheimer's disease, apparently, has a low incidence among the Inuit, who famously eat a lot of fish, particularly salmon.

I am not qualified to make medical recommendations in any way, and as an environmentalist, I'm not sure I want to get people involved in eating even more fish, but that said, there probably is something here worth thinking about. It can't hurt to include these sorts of things in one's diet and it may, in fact, help.

(Nuts, apparently work, but I would avoid eating any of the anti-science nuts who hang out at E&E, particularly the fat heads with the wind and solar powered Teslas. They may be contaminated with heavy metals.)

Esoteric, but cool, I think.

[tabatha]

1. Thanks.

I had seen that article and have read others about fish oil, etc.

Also, chia has good levels of Omega3 for those worried about mercury in fish.
Small fish are OK to eat - such as sardines.
Walnuts are good too - not all nuts have as much Omega3 as walnuts.


Here is something about inflammation - and also Alzheimer's.

1: Nutr Hosp. 2009 May-Jun;24(3):273-81.Click here to read Links
Plant-derived health: the effects of turmeric and curcuminoids.
Bengmark S, Mesa MD, Gil A.
Institute of Hepatology, University College London Medical School, London.

Plants contain numerous polyphenols, which have been shown to reduce inflammation and hereby to increase resistance to disease. Examples of such polyphenols are isothiocyanates in cabbage and broccoli, epigallocatechin in green tee, capsaicin in chili peppers, chalones, rutin and naringenin in apples, resveratrol in red wine and fresh peanuts and curcumin/curcuminoids in turmeric. Most diseases are maintained by a sustained discreet but obvious increased systemic inflammation. Many studies suggest that the effect of treatment can be improved by a combination of restriction in intake of proinflammatory molecules such as advanced glycation end products (AGE), advanced lipoperoxidation end products (ALE), and rich supply of antiinflammatory molecules such as plant polyphenols. To the polyphenols with a bulk of experimental documentation belong the curcuminoid family and especially its main ingredient, curcumin.
This review summarizes the present knowledge about these turmericderived ingredients, which have proven to be strong antioxidants and inhibitors of cyclooxigenase-2 (COX-2), lipoxygenase (LOX) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappaB) but also AGE. A plethora of clinical effects are reported in various experimental diseases, but clinical studies in humans are few. It is suggested that supply of polyphenols and particularly curcuminoids might be value as complement to pharmaceutical treatment, but also prebiotic treatment, in conditions proven to be rather therapy-resistant such as Crohn's, long-stayed patients in intensive care units, but also in conditions such as cancer, liver cirrhosis, chronic renal disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease

[NNadir]

2. Well thanks for that. It happens that I have a huge black walnut tree on

my property, but it's a lot of work to get to the nuts and usually I let them rot.

As it happens, this tree is an allelopathic tree and one of the plant toxins - harmless obviously to humans - is jugalone, a phenolic quinone that is almost certainly an anti-oxidant.

Maybe I'll do the work to obtain some nuts from the tree, although damn if that tree's nuts don't stain your hands pretty bad when you try to harvest them.

[tabatha]

3. I think that may be a different type:

The Nut of the Black Walnut
It is the black walnut’s English cousin that is most commonly sold for cracking and eating. The black walnut, more bitter, is nonetheless a popular ingredient in desserts, pestos and dips. For a delicious example, see Hammons Products Company’s recipe for Black Walnut Fancy Cake, touted as a Missouri State Fair winner (iced with Black Walnut Butter Cream Frosting).
http://trees.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_black_walnut_tree

The article includes other industrial uses for the tree.

[NNadir]

4. Actually, the nuts aren't all that bad tasting, if you do the work, but the tree is mostly

valued for its use in making furniture.

A large black walnut can be worth quite a bit of money.

[tabatha]

5. Interesting.

Seems as though all types have Omega3.