A Dietary Approach to Alzheimer's

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Dialogue with the Experts William B. Grant: A Dietary Approach To Alzheimer's By

Peter Barry Chowka

William B. Grant, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist who conducts atmospheric

studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley

Research Center in Hampton, Va. On June 19, 1997, an article he researched and

wrote on his own time about Alzheimer's disease and its link to dietary fat was

published in the medical journal Alzheimer's Disease Review.1

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic, degenerative condition that leads to

progressive mental and physical debilitation, dementia and ultimately death. It

afflicts roughly 2 million people in the United States, including former

President Ronald Reagan. AD strikes 5 percent of people older than 65.

Currently, it ranks third only to heart disease and cancer in the amount of

money spent on care for its sufferers--at least $100 billion annually.

Only two drugs have been approved in the United States for Alzheimer's

treatment. Neither is considered curative and neither targets the processes

behind the loss of brain neurons and synapses that rob AD victims of their

memories and dignity.

Grant's findings about Alzheimer's disease stand in stark contrast to the

conventional medical community's beliefs that Alzheimer's is somehow genetically

linked and that successful treatments will involve new pharmaceutical drugs.

Grant's article is novel not only because of its original conclusions about the

cause and treatment of AD, but because it appeared in a journal that is

published exclusively on the Internet. Many of the media reports about Grant's

article, including Dan Rather's on the CBS Evening News, implied that " published

on the Internet " is the equivalent of lacking credibility. But the journal in

question is peer reviewed and is published by the respected Sanders-Brown Center

on Aging at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

PETER BARRY CHOWKA: Could you summarize your Alzheimer's Disease Review article?

William B. Grant, PhD: I used data from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and

North America as well as dietary supply data from the United Nations Food and

Agriculture Organization in a multicountry statistical approach. For the 11

countries, I found that dietary fat and total calories had the highest

association with Alzheimer's disease. In looking at just the seven European and

North American countries, I also found that fish consumption reduced the risk of

developing Alzheimer's disease. Both fat and total calories are associated with

oxidative stress, and most fat leads to inflammation. Fish oils reduce

inflammation as do nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which also

have been shown to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's.

CHOWKA: Your article reminds me, in terms of its potential influence, of the

seminal epidemiological work during the 1970s that began to show an unequivocal

link between diet and cancer.

Grant: I think you are correct that this paper should represent a historic

turning point in the study of Alzheimer's disease. There have been a number of

cases in history when someone from outside a field made a major impact on that

field: Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk who was also a geneticist; Richard

Feynman, the late CalTech physicist who discovered the O-ring problem on the

space shuttle Challenger; and Louis Alvarez and Walter Alvarez (respectively,

the Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist at U.C. Berkeley and his son, a

geologist) and the bolide impact theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

CHOWKA: And you can add Linus Pauling and nutritional medicine. Could you share

more detail about your own background?

Grant: I have a Ph.D. in physics from U.C. Berkeley, 1971. I learned to do a

thorough literature search in any field, not to be afraid to tackle new fields,

and to try to work for the good of humanity. My professional work has been with

the development and application of laser-based instruments for the remote

measurement of atmospheric constituents.

My work on diet and disease was inspired by John Weisburger, M.D., and Ernst

Wynder, M.D., of the American Health Foundation in New York, who in 1991 sent me

some of their papers on the link between dietary fat and cancer. [They are among

the researchers who in the 1960s and 1970s found dietary association with cancer

using the multicountry analysis approach.] At that time, I was trying to

determine whether an apparent correlation between latitude and cancer was

influ-enced by sunlight. Their work showed that fat was the driver and people

eat more fat at higher latitudes. When I learned that Japanese-Americans have

2.5 times the AD rate of Japanese living in Japan, I said to myself, " It must be

the American diet and I can prove it using the tools I developed studying acid

rain and forests. "

CHOWKA: I understand you had a personal inspiration for looking into

Alzheimer's.

Grant: My mother, who is 80, developed Alzheimer's disease five years ago. She

grew up on a dairy farm and was overweight as a young adult. She is very frail

now. Her mother and grandmother also had Alzheimer's disease.

CHOWKA: What is the importance of your work to people who may be concerned about

preventing Alzheimer's disease and also to people who may already have the

condition? Is it possible for people to make changes in their lives that might

affect AD?

Grant: Yes! My statistical associations are backed up by the vitamin E study by

Mary Sano, Ph.D., of Columbia University,2 the NSAID study by Walter F. Stewart,

Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health that showed NSAIDs fight

inflammation,3 and the linoleic acid/fish study by Sandra Kalmijn, M.D., Ph.D.,

department of epidemiology and biostatistics, Erasmus University Medical

School.4 Also, Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., Ph.D., who directs the Alzheimer's

Prevention Foundation in Tucson, Ariz., where the main treatment tools are

low-fat diet, juices, supplements (trace minerals and antioxidants), and perhaps

one or two pharmaceuticals and exercise, is treating about 50 people with

cognitive impairment or symptoms of the early stages of Alzheimer's. His

approach has yielded good results.5

One of the surprises of my study, and the research of David Snowdon of the

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky,6 is that

Alzheimer's disease can be considered a vascular disease. These signals are so

strong that I am convinced the medical profession will confirm my findings using

their approach.

My study shows that a person's diet a few years prior to the development of

Alzheimer's was a much more important risk factor than his or her diet earlier

in life. This finding also has been confirmed through case-control studies.

Therefore, people older than 60 should carefully watch their intake of fat and

calories. In addition, dietary supplements like antioxidants and trace minerals

and exercise also are important.

CHOWKA: Is there other similar or confirmatory work going on in this area that

you are aware of?

Grant: Mark Smith, Ph.D., departments of pathology and nutrition at Case Western

Reserve University in Cleveland, published case-control study data in

Alzheimer's Disease Review confirming that diet after the age of 60 is most

important, and that people with Alzheimer's maintained the caloric intake they

consumed before age 60, while the controls reduced their intake by 400

calories.7 Kalmijn just published the results of the Rotterdam study on

dementia,8 in which fat and total calories were found to be risk factors for

Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, while fish reduced the risk.

CHOWKA: What has been the reaction of Alzheimer's " experts " to your work?

Grant: I can't point to any acceptance by the " establishment " medical community.

The Alzheimer's Association rejected my work at the outset due to allegations of

" flawed methodology. " However, a number of people concerned about the effect of

nutrition on health have endorsed the work, including Robert Goldman, M.D.,

chairman of the board and vice president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging

Medicine, Chicago, Ill.; Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D., father of the free radical

theory of aging from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha; Dharma

Singh Khalsa and Mark A. Smith, previously mentioned; Roy Walford, M.D., of the

UCLA medical department; and Andrew Weil, M.D., well known for his work in

nutritional medicine. My study is being translated into Chinese and Italian, and

I prepared an update on the work upon the invitation of the Journal of

Naturopathic Medicine9 after my keynote address at the August 1997 annual

meeting of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). I also

presented my results to the National Institutes of Health's Alzheimer's Interest

Group, where we had a lively exchange of ideas.

CHOWKA: Are you satisfied with the emphasis that conventional medical science

places on potentially beneficial strategies for AD and other chronic

degenerative diseases involving, for example, dietary modification?

Grant: Are you kidding? In my view, the food processing industry wants to sell

food, the medical profession wants to sell treatments, the pharmaceutical

industry wants to sell drugs, the nursing home industry wants to sell services,

and our government is supporting all these industries. There is very little

incentive to prevent disease. It is primarily the nonprofit organizations and

book authors who are trying to prevent disease caused by diet. The medical

profession has very little inkling or inclination to do anything about nutrition

and health, in my opinion, particularly when it comes to Alzheimer's disease.

CHOWKA: At the AANP convention, you expanded your field of view to include other

diseases. What have you found in your application of similar research techniques

to the causes of other conditions? Do your findings in other areas suggest a

summary view of how we can better prevent and treat chronic degenerative

diseases?

Grant: My studies showed that meat and sugar have the highest association with

the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis and can be explained by biochemical

changes in the digestive tract, the " leaky gut " hypothesis and an impaired

immune system.

Diet seems to be linked to about half of the heart disease in this country. For

heart disease, I've found that men are most affected by both animal fat and

sugar, while women are mostly affected by sugar. It was known in the 1960s that

sugar generates cholesterol, but since the studies on heart disease in those

days were done only on men, it could not be shown convincingly that sugar played

a role.

What my work indicates is that the modern American diet, with many refined foods

and high in fat, meat and sugar, is a high risk factor for many degenerative

diseases. My work shows that cereals, vegetables, fish (despite the fact that

they are being exterminated and also contain bioconcentrated toxins), beans and

fruits, along with essential fats and oils, are elements of the most healthy

diets.

In reading the literature on Alzheimer's disease and heart disease, I've come to

realize that people with the apolipoprotein allele epsilon4 [the genetic

predisposition to difficulty processing fats in the blood, and the factor

implicated in the risk of developing AD] are at greater risk for both diseases

because of their reduced ability to handle dietary fat. Thus, genetic screening

would be useful in identifying those individuals who should carefully watch

their diets long before age 60.

I brought my work to the attention of the Office of Research on Women's Health

at the NIH in Bethesda, Md., and have indications that they will be expanding

their investigation into dietary links to degenerative disease with an eye on

how to improve prevention of such diseases.

CHOWKA: How much of a health risk is the high consumption of sugar in the United

States?

Grant: Sugar represents 550 daily calories out of 3,700 in the United States'

per capita food supply (about 75 percent of these calories are actually

consumed). My data show that no deaths can be attributed to sugar supplies below

150 calories per day. My findings implicating sugar in heart disease and

rheumatoid arthritis, and earlier studies indicating that immune-system response

is impaired by sucrose, strongly suggest sugar will soon join nicotine and fat

as a major health risk. I fail to understand how the medical profession could be

so blind as not to recognize the adverse health impacts of sugar.

CHOWKA: What are the greatest obstacles that stand in the way of people and our

society at large, including the medical powers-that-be, to keep them from making

the kinds of changes in diet and lifestyle that your work suggests would benefit

health?

Grant: I think the basic problem is that we have a system where convenience,

ignorance and pleasure are primary driving forces, with thoughts of the future

being less important. Thus, we see how food processors can offer food that

tastes good (by containing excessive fat, salt and sugar) and is convenient to

prepare and consume. The media, beholden to their advertisers, do not provide

enough of the information people require to make informed decisions regarding

nutrition and health. The medical profession and pharmaceutical industry stand

by ready and able to treat any and every malady using the " infectious disease

model, " waiting until disease happens, which may work on the immediate problem

rather than the underlying cause.

Many other economic forces in society are quite happy with the status quo, since

they are profiting from it. It is difficult to make money on the prevention of

degenerative disease, because it would involve using more natural foods, eating

less, etc. My heroes in prevention are those who write books and newsletters on

the relation between diet and disease, nutrition and health. Unfortunately, I

don't think their work reaches enough of the population, especially those at the

lower economic rungs of society. It breaks my heart to see someone pay for soft

drinks, potato chips, candy and other junk food with food stamps. I'd like to

see nutritional information given out in the food assistance program.

© 1998 Peter Barry Chowka

Peter Barry Chowka is a journalist, medical-political analyst, lecturer and

consultant. He has been a consultant to network television and the U.S. Congress

and was appointed to the first advisory panels of the NIH Office of Alternative

and Complementary Medicine.

 

REFERENCES1. Grant, W.B. Alz Dis Rev, 2: 42-55, 1997.

2. Sano, M., et al. N Engl J Med, 336: 1216-22, 1997.

3. Stewart, W.F., Kawas, C., et al. " Risk of Alzheimer's disease and duration of

NSAID use. " Neurology, 48: 626-32, 1997.

4. Kalmijn, S., Feskens, E.J.M., et al. Am J Epidemiol, 145, 33-41, 1997.

5. Khalsa, D.S., with Stauth, C. Brain Longevity. New York: Warner Books, 1997.

6. Snowdon, D.A., Greiner, L.H., et al. JAMA, 277: 811-17, 1997.

7. Smith, M.A., et al. Alz Dis Rev, 2: 58-59, 1997.

8. Kalmijn, S., Lauher, L.J., et al. Ann Neurol, 42: 776-82, 1997.

9. Grant, W.B. submitted to J Naturopathic Med.

 

This interview was first published in Nutrition Science News (March 1998) and

Health & Nutrition Breakthroughs (May 1998).

 

 

 

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