The Sitting Epidemic
How inactivity fuels your risk for Alzheimer's disease
Ric Edelman: It's Thursday, February 15th. On today's show, the latest in the fight against Alzheimer's. Hey, I want to tell you something. Are you sitting down? Well, get up. A new study from the journal General Psychiatry shows that the more time you spend sitting down or laying down, the greater your risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. It's all about telomeres. These are the things that are at the tips of your chromosomes. And the longer your telomeres, the better off you are. But in this study of patients between ages 37 and 73, those who had shorter telomeres were 28% more likely to wind up with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. And the people ages 60 or older who spent more than 12 hours a day just laying around were a whopping 63% more likely to get Alzheimer's than people who were physically active.
Or maybe it's not sitting down that's causing Alzheimer's. Maybe it's a fungus living in your brain. Candida albicans. It's an ordinary yeast. We've all got it. It's on our skin, it's in our mouth, it's in our intestines. But when this yeast gets out of whack, it can lead to an infection called candidiasis. You know it better as vaginal yeast infection and diaper rash. Now, research at Baylor University says the fungus can enter the brain, and when it does, it can lead to Alzheimer's. If this thesis proves true, they now have an opportunity to develop new research to cure it.
Meanwhile, I bet you heard the news about Biogen. They have canceled sales of its Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm. This drug was controversial from the start. The drug had questionable medical value. It had lots of side effects, including brain swelling. And it cost an astonishing $56,000 a year. Insurance companies wouldn't pay for it. The VA wouldn't pay for it. Medicare wouldn't pay for it. Finally, Biogen has stopped selling it. It'll be off pharmacy shelves in November. Only 2,500 people worldwide have been using it. Biogen says it's working on other treatments instead, including Leqembi, which has shown far greater benefits.
And now there's another drug, Simufilam, that's made by a drug company in Texas. And this drug is in advanced clinical trials. But now there are accusations about a neuroscientist who's a professor at the City College of New York, his studies of the foundation of this drug's development, that his studies were severely flawed. The university says he was reckless in his failure to maintain his data properly, an offense that amounts to significant research misconduct. Experts on Alzheimer's disease say they've seen irregularities in his research, and journals that published his papers have made it their own inquiries, with two of them saying they have expressions of concern regarding his integrity and accuracy.
One journal has already retracted five papers that this scientist wrote. You know, it's really bad enough that we haven't had effective medication available for Alzheimer's, despite billions of dollars and decades of effort now to see that scientists are fabricating their data, falsifying their information. Well, this certainly isn't generating any enthusiasm in the Alzheimer's world.
But here's the good news. There's a database called the Global Burden of Disease. And it shows that the number of people with dementia is stabilizing, even though the number of old people is rising.
This is a very big deal, because the widespread assumption has been that while we have 6 million Americans, 50 million people worldwide who have Alzheimer's, there's been widespread concern that these numbers were going to grow dramatically as the number of old people grows, because it's generally old people who get Alzheimer's. But this apparently doesn't seem to be the case. The number of people who have this disease is stabilizing. The reason researchers say we're taking medication to control our blood pressure and cholesterol. We're drinking and smoking less, and these better behaviors just might be preventing people from developing Alzheimer's. We can certainly hope that that's true.
Meantime, more good news. There are now 187 clinical trials underway involving 141 drugs. We're kind of hoping that something here proves to be successful in preventing, treating, or perhaps even reversing and curing Alzheimer's. So until those drugs get proven one way or the other, until there are treatments available in the market, what you need to be doing is just keep on doing what you're doing and get off the sofa.
You know, for years my wife Jean has said that personal finance is more personal than finance, and that's why Jean has her own weekly podcast, Self-Care with Jean Edelman. Every week, Jean helps us reflect on how we're living our lives, and she tells us how we can see people and the world around us in a more positive, caring way. From life's simple issues to our bigger questions, Jean helps us find quiet and balance by turning inward. By looking at how we live our lives, we can discover the lessons that help us cope with our daily challenges. Jean's latest episode comes out every Thursday, so you can listen today.
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