New Use For An Old Drug to Prevent Alzheimer’s

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    Alzheimer's

    By Kennedy Shelley

    A great deal of work to prevent Alzheimer’s disease is focusing on blood circulation.

    Because there is no cure for the disease, most of the work is going towards prevention or slowing down the onset of the disease.

    Freedom Health News has already reported on the problems with variable blood pressure and future dementia.

    The newest research which came out in early October of 2019 shows some serious promise in mice tests.

    Use of an older anticoagulant shows some promise for preserving brain function.

    Anticoagulant drugs prevent clotting, the hope is here that it will improve blood flow in the brain.

    The researchers looked into this because they noticed the research shows that Alzheimer’s patients tend to have poor blood flow, especially in the brain.

    The paper appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Cardiology.

    The results are promising.  The mice had no drop in brain blood flow, function or memory when they received the treatment for a year.

    There was a 23% reduction in the plaques that tend to build up in the brain that cause loss of cognition associated with dementia.

    Other biomarkers that show brain damage dropped over 30% in the mice that received the blood-thinning agents.

    These indicate reduced inflammation markers that tend to make the disease worse.

    Many people have referred to Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes because the inflammation associated with it not only affects the heart and kidneys but the brain itself.

    This also makes sense because atrial fibrillation or irregular heartbeats tend to stir up clotting agents in the blood which often get stuck in smaller arteries and capillaries in the brain.  This is treated with anticoagulant drugs (blood thinners).

    The researchers used the drug Dabigatran to thin the mice blood.  It is one of the newer generation of blood-thinning drugs.

    The drug has had some controversy when the British Medical Journal attacked its manufacturer of not providing information to doctors about maintaining proper blood plasma levels in its materials.

    These drugs do have risk, especially in the cases of emergencies and surgery.  Patients do not have enough clotting factors to stop their own bleeding.

    This is one of the warnings for those who take vitamin K1 and warfarin.

    But it is a manageable risk that may be worth taking to ward off Alzheimer’s disease.

    More and more studies keep pointing out the link between inflammation, blood circulation, and brain health.

    Generally speaking by keeping insulin levels down by reducing carbohydrates and sugar intake, you reduce overall inflammation in the circulatory system, which maintains brain health.

    Blood-thinning spices and herbs may help those who have a family history of dementia which can be used now as research progresses.

    Garlic, cinnamon, onion, turmeric can all help thin the blood which this research suggests is a good thing for maintaining brain health.

    But unlike the prescription drugs, there is not such an extreme blood thinning that it puts you at risk of uncontrolled bleeding.