Affect of alcohol consumption on Alzheimer's disease and dementia risk
I recently read a book, “Eat to Beat Disease”, by William W. Li MD. In the section on Beer, page 116, he identifies a study that found drinking a certain amount of alcohol resulted in a 60% reduction in the risk of dementia and an 87 % reduced risk of being diagnosed specifically with Alzheimer’s disease. He identifies the study as “S. Weyerer et al., “Current Alcohol Consumption and Its Relationship to Incident Dementia: Results from a 3-Year Follow-up Study among Primary Care Attenders Aged 75 Years and Older,” Age and Ageing 40, no. 4 (2011): 456-463. I Googled the study and easily found it on the internet. I believe the optimum amount was 20 grams of alcohol per day from varied sources. If true, this seems miraculous, better than most drug treatments for any disorder. What is your opinion on this study, and the effect of consumption of alcohol on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Blood glucose spike VS TRF
There seems to be a bit of a trade off between time-restricted feeding and reducing blood glucose spikes. In an ideal world I guess we time restrict our feeding and eat low GI food when we do it. However, I'm a skinny guy, I don't want to lose any more weight, I generally just eat as much of whatever is available, and that often includes rice or bread (wholegrain, but still spikes my glucose). I'm wearing a a CGM and generally spike just above 7.8 (140) once a day. I know you recommend getting those spikes down to fewer than 3 a week. I'm trying to work out whether I need to make significant changes to what my family eats, or whether I'm better off trying to eat regular during my feed window.
Daily water intake
What are your thoughts on drinking too much water? Any advice on weaning off it? I'm habitually drinking a lot of water every day, easily more than 4-5L, even on days I don't exercise. Most of that I drink in the first half of the day, and I find that on days when I don't drink as much water as I usually do I get headaches. In situations where I have limited access to water (for example while hiking, skiing, working in a lab), it seems like a real disadvantage to me that my body is used to a certain amount of water and frequency of water intake. I'd like to wean off it and get to somewhere around 2-3L a day instead. How much of my "daily water requirement" is due to habit and how much to actual metabolic/physiological dependency?
This is your brain, this is your brain on statins
I would love to hear your opinions on the current state of the research data on statin therapy and cognitive "problems". I hear conflicting advice on "there's no signal of harm" for lowering LDL-C (apoB really), there's incremental/linear benefit to CVD risk even going from LDL-C of 35 to 25; to be careful to avoid over suppression of cholesterol synthesis because it can lead to cognitive issues. From the 1st statement it would be natural to assume to take the biggest, baddest dose of statin you can tolerate to get that LDL-C down into the 20's.... but now I'm questioning that.