Is Nutrition Really Worth Spending Time On in the Context of Neurodegeneration?
Here I'll point out an article on research into nutrition and some of the aspects of aging that contribute to neurodegenerative conditions, such as chronic inflammation. The article discusses one representative program in a broader field that devotes significant resources to the study of nutrition and aging, something that I think is a waste of potential given what could be done instead with all that time, training, knowledge, and funding. We are in the midst of a revolution in biotechnology. Are investigations of altering diet really worth it? I think not.
It is my conjecture that there is a deep conceptual chasm separating science from the application of science. Science in medicine is the business of mapping what is, the bounds of the present situation, how things progress, how things work. The application of science to construct new medical technologies is all about changing all these things for the better. People enmeshed in the scientific community, the research funding community, and the ethos of the scientific method are largely absolutely terrible at stepping beyond what is to what might be. I think that's probably true of the population at large, as well, but in this particular portion of the larger human endeavor the result is a selection of very inefficient, stumbling strategic approaches to the application of science.
One of these, I think, is any attempt to consider nutrition a useful approach to manipulating aspects of aging. It is true that this is probably helpful if you are interested in mapping metabolism and the way in which metabolism and aging interact to cause disease and death due to accumulating damage and dysfunction. It provides points of comparison, slightly different paths of progression, and that's always a benefit when trying to decipher a very complex system. Calorie restriction research has certainly produce mountains of data on this front. But it has also failed to produce meaningful ways to extend healthy life after billions of dollars and two decades of research. In principle the approach of developing calorie restriction mimetic drugs cannot do more than slightly slow aging in humans, even if that line of research was going anywhere these days, and this is the absolute best of what can be done with altered nutrition. We have examples all around us, a century or more of very good data on what exactly the bounds of the possible are in terms of altering human aging via diet. The results are marginal, tiny in the grand scheme of things.
In summary these are all distractions. They are not legitimate paths towards healthy life extension, but in reality bad strategic choices by people who have not stepped beyond their primary goal, the scientific goal of obtaining more data on how aging happens here and now, in the present situation. If you don't like how aging happens today, then you need to look elsewhere for people who are trying to do something about it, such as to SENS research.
There has been widespread speculation that stem cells could be used to repair neurons damaged by degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. In other cases, however, these cells could be part of the problem. "They do try and repair disease and aging. But when they do that too much, they can lead to brain tumors." The question was how could these neural stem cells be stimulated to produce more healthy cells without overproducing and creating tumors - and how could they continue to make cells as they aged? "Their aging involves many, many gene and protein networks, and to try and get a handle on that influence through a single gene or protein is very difficult." While some drugs have been shown to be effective in stimulating growth of new brain cells, results have been inconsistent.A few years ago, the researchers began investigating a new angle: nutrition. "Food is medicine. Nutrition has the ability to affect many of those pathways at the same time. When we went looking for a director for our new laboratory, we were looking for a translational scientist who was conducting cutting-edge research related to nutrition and prevention of age-associated cognitive impairments - someone who would bring in new areas of research to the center and help move the field of nutrition and brain disease forward. I believe we found exactly the right person we are looking for. What's become very clear is that the regenerative capacity diminishes as you age. The question we will probably ask and answer is how do these nutritional requirements change and how do they tie into the regenerative ability. Once we answer that question, we can ask how we alter nutrition to achieve that."
To home in on those questions, researchers have focused on the role that inflammation plays in the aging of stem cells, as well as in neurodegenerative diseases. Research has shown that inflammation produces small proteins, or cytokines, in brain cells. Two of these types of proteins - amyloid and tau proteins - have been associated with Alzheimer's disease. "Particular genetic mutations can't process these proteins very well. The cells try and spit them out to get rid of them, but when they can't do that, the cells themselves can die." When they are able to expel them into the environment in the brain, they can affect other cells, which may not function properly, contributing to Alzheimer's. A similar protein called alpha-synuclein may be associated in a similar way with Parkinson's. The researchers have focused on the role that inflammation plays in the aging of stem cells, as well as in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. By changing diet and nutrition, patients may be able to limit inflammation of brain tissue and prevent or even reverse these degenerative diseases by giving neural stem cells the ability to heal the damage.