Dementia, drugs and ultra-processed adolescents
The pharmaceutical industry featured prominently in March’s health research. It is busy finding new uses for old drugs and defending ultra-processed foods from bad press.
It’s an ongoing trend. Over the years, there have been regular news announcements of medications that can be prescribed for conditions other than the ones they were created for.
Aspirin, for example, doesn’t just cure a headache, it can help prevent heart attack and stroke if taken in the long-term. Statins lower cholesterol levels, but now can be taken to reduce dementia risk, in the long-term. This one I find particularly curious, considering that one of the side-effects of statin use is memory loss, and cholesterol is essential for brain function.
Anyway, we now learn that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can also lower the risk of developing dementia, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
NSAIDs are anti-inflammatory medications commonly prescribed for pain relief. In this study of 11,745 people, the findings were that long-term use of NSAIDS (over two years) resulted in a 12% reduction in dementia risk. Short- or medium-term use did not have the same effect.
But, as the researchers state, these results do not justify long-term use of NSAIDs because of the side effects, which can be brutal and make you wonder why you would even consider researching this in the first place. The main adverse reactions include stomach pain, ulcers, bleeding and perforation. There are many others, too many to list here, but ranging from heart to kidney problems.
This study does however highlight the involvement of inflammation in the development of dementia. Toxic accumulation of plaques and tau proteins leads to over production of pro-inflammatory substances called cytokines and brain cell death.
NSAIDs are anti-inflammatory and this is where the link comes in: inflammation in the brain can cause a range of neurological problems, from depression to Alzheimer’s.
Neuroinflammation is a prevalent feature in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
Inflammation is undoubtedly the key to finding both causes and solutions. A year before this paper was published, and to much less media attention, a study in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging, that involved over 16,000 people aged 60 or above, found that the habitual use of fish oil supplements resulted in a 24% lower dementia risk among those people. That’s twice as good as NSAIDs.
Fish and fish oil are the source of much-underrated anti-inflammatory substances, and not just with regard to Alzheimer’s.
We also learned in March, and not for the first time, that a high dietary intake of lean and oily fish ‘may slow the progression of disability in people with multiple sclerosis (MS)’. That was the finding of a study published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
This was a study of over 2,700 newly diagnosed MS patients in Sweden. Those with the highest fish consumption at diagnosis had a 44%-45% reduced risk of worsening and progression of the condition, compared with people who ate no or very little fish. This remained the case even when lifestyle factors like weight, smoking, alcohol and sun exposure were taken into account. The more lean and oily fish consumed, the lower the risk.
Lean fish (i.e. white fish) contains very little oil, so why should it have any positive effect? The researchers suggest it’s because of the high level of taurine in lean fish. Taurine is an amino acid, found abundantly in the brain, that has antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects.
Staying in Sweden, another study published in March yielded less good news. This one evaluated the relationship between the dietary habits of teenage girls and their iron (ferritin) status. The 475 female school students involved in the study self-reported as either omnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian or vegan.
The results of their blood tests revealed that the omnivores had the highest ferritin (19.6 µg/L) level, which was significantly higher than that of the pescatarians (14.7 µg/L) and vegans/vegetarians (10.9 µg/L).
The conclusion was that ‘This study highlights a higher prevalence of iron deficiency among Swedish teenage girls adhering to plant-based diets.’
Adolescents are the population group most likely to follow a plant-based diet, so it is no coincidence that iron-deficiency anaemia is highly prevalent among adolescents, especially girls.
As if matters weren’t bad enough for the young, we also learned in March about the seemingly unstoppable rise in obesity. One in six children and adolescents across the world will be obese by 2050. A third will be overweight. These snowballing rates suggest that ‘current approaches to curbing increases in obesity have failed a generation of young people.’
If they don’t eat meat or fish, what do they eat? In the UK, adolescents obtain around two-thirds of their calorie intake from ultra-processed foods. That figure is the same for US adolescents.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe where none of this matters, we discovered at the same time that the parent company of weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegova, Novo Nordisk, has plans to fund research into developing ‘a more nuanced version’ of the current classification of ultra-processed food. They don’t like this classification because it makes UPF look bad.
The current system, called the Nova classification, was created by Professor Carlos Monteiro and his team at the University of São Paulo in 2009. It classifies food into four groups:
Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fresh meat, fish. Anything simply dried, crushed, fermented)
Processed culinary ingredients (like cooking oil, salt, vinegar)
Processed foods (made or preserved through boiling, canning, baking etc)
Ultra-processed foods (all the unrecognisable stuff of indeterminate origin).
Nutritionists and food scientists raised concerns about Novo Nordisk’s plans, what with certain people involved in the project having links to the food industry. It does make you wonder why on earth a pharmaceutical company would take such a keen interest in redefining ‘how the world understands ultra-processed foods.’ What have they to gain from keeping everyone fat and sick on junk food?
I don’t think you need me to answer that.
March has taught us that in an ideal corporate world, we’ll all eat nothing but UPFs and manage the diseases they create with medications. Better still, we’ll take preventive medicine in the form of a ‘polypill’, one that combines statins and other drugs in one handy format.
We are up against one problem: how can we continue to eat all of these foods that we know are bad for us and make us unhealthy? Isn’t there a magic pill so we can ignore our poor food choices and live in a fairytale world where fast food and sugar are GOOD for us?
Please, drug companies, help us be delusional!
Reducing inflammation levels without using drugs with adverse side effects will also reduce the risk for development of vascular disease. This will also reduce the risk of vascular dementia.