Regimen for Alzheimer's - Specific to Down Syndrome
My daughter is 7 years old and has Down syndrome. It occurred to me when listening to recent episodes on Alzheimer's that she (and others with Ds) might be a person for whom a specific AD prevention regimen, like the one described in the Lauren Miller Rogen episode, would make sense. Given the high risk (or even inevitability) of Alzheimer's for people with Down syndrome, what steps would you recommend they take at any early age or throughout life to prevent/delay the onset of AD? Or, does AD work differently in people with Ds such that the usual steps may not make any difference? Or perhaps more likely, we don't really know because the data isn't there, but the same steps are generally pro-health and certainly wouldn't take regardless despite the dearth of data? Thank you!
Guest Suggestion: Personalized Nutrition Scientists with PREDICT and
A regular theme in Peter's analyses and thinking is the importance of looking at the individual patient and how he or she actually responds to different interventions, including diet and exercise, rather than coming in with a dogma or one-size-fits-all prescription. It would be great to have an episode interviewing Tim Spector, who has done both twin studies and large-scale dietary studies in the general population (PREDICT1 and PREDICT2) documenting the wide individual responses to different diet compositions, and factors that influence that variability. These are similar to the Weizmann group's studies that Peter has mentioned a couple of times, but much more extensive. Additionally, these studies looked not only at glucose metabolism (which was the focus of the Weizmann scientists, and into which Peter has looked deeply) but also lipid metabolism, including postprandial lipid metabolism, which is still a bit more of a black box (no equivalent to the CGM and less understanding of its impact): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0934-0 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-01183-8 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00383-x https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100082/ The Weizmann study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.11.001 (The PREDICT studies are the same as the "Zoe Insights program" mentioned by another person's AMA submission). Something like this are a major part of the future that Peter is envisioning and working toward.