Ooowee, did you pick a couple of enigmas: Alzheimer’s, and alcohol.
Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases so loaded with what looks like obvious clues that it should be easy to solve, but finding a solution to it is terribly difficult.
For example, in some ways it seems to be just the opposite of schizophrenia, almost mutually exclusive of each other. If someone gets one, they almost never get the other. The blood of schizophrenics is loaded with naturally occurring nitrous oxides, in Alzheimer’s patients, far less than normal, almost none. But then, a dead end. The parallels and opposites just seems to be coincidental. Maybe.
Metals, such as aluminum, seemed to be a “smoking gun” with Alzheimer’s. Very obviously. But they didn’t pan out, either. No real relationship. One of its big symptoms are plaque in the brain. But the plaque can be treated, yet the Alzheimer’s remains.
The same with genetics. Childhood diseases. Adult and family diseases. Ethnic groups. Diet, exercise, intelligence, even age. They all seem to have *some* relationship, but it doesn’t work when you check it out.
So, they keep looking.
As far as alcohol goes, I once listened to a very entertaining rant by a biochemical psychiatrist against alcohol. In short, the brain has a lot of minute chemicals, perhaps hundreds (we don’t know), that are immensely powerful, and very interrelated with each other. Some of them only last a fraction of a second but can change our lives.
And alcohol is the only known substance that can mess them all up.
He would work with a patient for months with a whole selection of very specific drugs, trying to find the one that would help them out. And then they would go on a drinking bender, and everything would be scrambled. So they would have to start over.
Take these hundreds of brain chemicals, add the 50 or so liver chemicals, the 150 or so cytokines, the various hormones (only a decade ago we discovered that the heart actually secretes a small amount of a hormone—what it does, we don’t know.) And you’ve got a puzzle on your hands.
One scientist pointed out that the reason everything is so complicated is because people are too cold. “If we were just 200 degrees warmer, everything, all these chemical processes, would be easy!”
But it was only a few months ago that they discovered that Caffeine was the "magic bullet" in rats/mice, for reversing the plaques.
And a couple weeks ago there were reports that veterans who experienced PTSD have a far greater chance to develop a dementia later in life.
There is also some interesting items about dementia unblocking repressed memories -- and there are some elderly patients who never had PTSD, but who are currently having violent nightmares about their experiences during WW II.
Then there's this VERY peculiar article, which is way too politically incorrect to appear in the Western press, I don't know what to make of it.
Breaking News:
Heavy drinking 'cuts dementia risk'
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4940183,prtpage-1.cms
People who drink up to 28 drinks a week in later life are less likely to develop dementia than people who abstain from alcohol consumption, according to a new study.
Professor Kaarin Anstey, from Canberra's Australian National University, and colleagues compiled data from 15 international studies, including responses from more than 10,000 people.
They found that drinkers are better off when it comes to developing diseases affecting cognitive function, reports the Daily Telegraph....