No wonder people are confused

I'm sceptical about this article and not just because it's in the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413873/Alzheimer-s-cause-discovered-Poisonous-algae-freshwater-lakes-reservoirs-UK-fuelling-dementia-epidemic-afflicting-1m-people.html#ixzz3y9MDkzK4

I also read in latest issue of 'The Week' an article which quotes Professor John Hardy telling the Royal Society about 'drugs to halt AD within a decade'. The Week article and also contains this 'fact' (though it's not clear where it comes from):

Since 1980, there has been a 20% drop in dementia incidence (in Britain), possibly as a result of people taking actions to reduce their cholesterol levels.

I've never seen this before and most statistics suggest a growing problem. The Mail article talks of 'increasing rates of Alzheimer's'.

And even if it is true I think his possible reason is pretty implausible.

So much of the stuff you read about AD, even when you discount the massive amount of obvious twaddle, contradicts other stuff. And the media never delve into these matters in any detail at all but just wait for the next press release to come along.

Finally, so many of the articles and news items talk about dementia and Alzheimer's as if they are one condition with one cause (whatever that happens to be this week).

Pure ignorance across the board.

That nasty virus rears its head again

The link below is to a research project that links HSV-1 (the 'cold sore' herpes virus) to cholesterol accumulation:

Journal of Biological Chemistry

I would stress that I have not read the whole article.  It is highly technical.  The abstract at the start gives you the gist.

The reason for drawing attention to it here is that it is yet another example of this very common virus being implicated in the kind of damage to the body (in this case to 'hardening of the arteries') that could lead to dementia.

Regular readers of AWD will know that I have posted about herpes viruses a number of times. This link will take you to these posts.

I should stress again that I have no medical training and have made no 'discoveries' myself.  Such research as I have undertaken has been via Google!

A convincing case against statins?

The link below will take you to a very interesting website. Scroll down and then download the 'fact sheet 1'. The other resources will also give you food for thought:

Statin Nation

Are statins being overprescribed?

I was shocked to be told by a pharmacist that there's an 'unwritten principle' that everyone over 60 should be put on statins.  I know that statins have a number of possible side-effects, including memory loss (as I've mentioned previously).

A few days after my conversation with the pharmacist, I read this article:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/22/butter-cheese-saturated-fat-heart-specialist

For those who may not have time to read the article, this extract will give you a flavour:

"In the UK eight million people take statins regularly, up from five million 10 years ago," he writes. "With 60 million statin prescriptions a year, it is difficult to demonstrate any additional effect of statins on reduced cardiovascular mortality over the effects of the decline in smoking and primary angioplasty [a technique used by doctors to widen the arteries].

In the original trials carried out by drug firms, only one in 10,000 patients given statins suffered a minor side-effect. But among 150,000 patients in a "real world" study – people who had been routinely given statins by their GP – 20% had side-effects that were so unacceptable to them that they stopped taking the pills, including muscle pains, stomach upsets, sleep and memory disturbance, and erectile dysfunction."

Naturally the medical and pharmaceutical establishment disagree, but it's possible that the tide is starting to turn in favour of a more cautious approach to the prescription of 'statins for all'.

Oct 28th:  I'm adding to this post because I have learned that the British Medical Journal has come out against 'statins for all' (in this case, all over 50).  This article seems to me to explain the debate very clearly:

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6412