Causes of Dementia

The causes of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health, are largely connected with aging. A small, but significant factor is extreme chronic alcohol abuse. According to a study referenced in the PubMed(1), both men and women are affected equally. More education seems to be a protective factor.

The prevalence of dementia ranges from 5% of those aged 71-79 up to 37.4% of those 90 and older. (These figures are all taken from a U.S. study(1).)

Deciphering the causes of dementia has been a major factor influencing my quest to adopt a healthy, whole-foods diet. For me, it is not some distant, text-book concept that only the medical professionals are familiar with. No, I have lived with family and friends as they slowly became irrational and lost their personality. Then, they required years of round-the-clock nursing care at great expense.

My mother (who never smoked and rarely had a social drink)developed dementia over a ten year or fifteen year period, perhaps helped along by all the pharmaceutical drugs she was provided to deal with numerous symptoms that seemed unrelated at the time.

My aunt, a wonderful cook who did smoke, was another fine upper-middle class lady who had all the medical care she wanted, loving relationships, close friends and family -- a close to ideal life by most standards -- was fine in 1989 and hardly knew me when I saw her next in 2001.

I am now watching the rapid disintegration of a woman only a year or two older than me, who appeared normal only a year ago.

It is frightening, because there is a resistance of these people, as they sink into cognitive impairment, to making any changes relative to the apparent causes of their dementia.

I offer here my observations and personal conclusions about the causes of dementia, leavened with reading medical research and conversations with my mother's doctors over many years.

The one common factor that I see in these three cases I know best is the growing preference of these three women toward a daily diet centered around refined sugar and less and less of the whole foods that our bodies require for repair and optimal functioning. A few years of eating little but pablum and ice cream seems to render a person incapable of reasoning, memory, or any higher thought processes.

A book I recently read, "Suicide By Sugar", by Nancy Appleton, PhD and former sugar-addict provided research that confirmed my suspicion about the influence of sugar on dementia. She ties in all the many ways that sugar disrupts our body's hormonal, mineral, and cognitive functions to leave the victim throughly addicted to this seemingly innoccuous white poison we feed our kids.

It is an eye-opening book you should read, if you haven't already.

My Personal Belief Re: the Causes of Dementia

Apart from the lack of healthy nutrients necessary to maintain a bright, alert, and interested mind, there has been found to be a restricted flow of oxygen to the brain due to cardiovascular disease(vascular dementia). This leads to a series of small or large strokes, which cause further death of brain tissue, eventually shutting down major functions of speech, mobility, and memory.

Cigarette smoking is another factor that contributes to reduced blood flow to the brain(as well as inflammation and free radical damage) and should be included in the causes of dementia.

I have recently been reminded that inflammation is really the key that turns cholesterol into the "bad actor" that has become the perception shared by many laymen.

Drs. Esselstyn, T.Colin Campbell, and McDougall -- at least in my understanding of their positions -- seem to view dietary cholesterol as the principal cause of cardiovascular disease and their solution is to remove all sources of animal-based foods in our diet.

I generally agree that animal fats and the excessive cholesterol contributed by meats and dairy products provide the building blocks of plugged arteries and veins. What causes them to stick to the walls of our circulatory system, however, is a process known as inflammation. (I will go back and write a new page linked to my older page on Reversing Heart Disease to explain this key concept of inflammation.)

Dr. Ray Strand has written extensively on inflammation, which is tied to the free radical theory of disease initiation. See his work in the book, "What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine Might Be Killing You".

Interestingly, as relates to the causes of dementia, is that fact that sugars and the overabundance of insulin in the bloodstream are implicated in the cause of chronic inflammation.

So, the twin bugaboos of the Western diet composed mainly of fats and refined carbohydrates, work together to leave the "victim" increasingly incapable of figuring out the cause and solution to their declining faculties.

As those who have cared for someone who is impaired by dementia will know, it is nearly impossible to encourage them to eat properly. As a result (compounding the problem, in my experience), their doctor is only too happy to prescribe a growing list of drugs to *try* to mask the symptoms of the real problem, which is poor nutrition.

Of course, treating the symptoms doesn't remedy the underlying problem, but it does sell a lot of drugs.

The individual suffering from dementia is, more than anything, an unsuspecting victim of the degradation of our food supply. If one buys into the belief that it is okay to eat whatever we like for pleasure, rather than considering the long term effect of our totally unnatural, man-made, foods that contain less of the God-given nutrients and more of the artery-plugging "bad stuff" every passing year, then it should be no surprise that we should lose our God-like ability to think and become purposeless, infantile robots as a result.

It seems to me that one of the prime causes of dementia is modern man's growing isolation from the healthy influences of the Natural World -- the sunlight, the fresh air, physical exertion, and a variety of plant foods that grow in healthy soils.

To put this another way: I trust Nature to know how to feed me; I don't trust profit-motivated Corporations, with few exceptions.

Stories of Grand-Dad, who ate a lot of meat, fried everything in bacon grease, smoked, and lived to 92 years old with a sound mind are used by many people to defend that laissez-faire way of eating. What they don't consider are the new factors of mineral depletion of our farmland caused by industrialized farming, our highly processed foods that further destroy or refine away nutrients, and then our half-pound-a day sugar consumption thanks to dependence on someone in a factory or fast food restaurant doing most of our cooking for us.

Grand-Dad, at least, ate real food raised on healthy soils for most of his life, and didn't eat large quantities of chemical residues and refined sugars. He may have avoided dementia and died peacefully, but he could have lived another thirty years in good health, if he had known more about the optimal science and spiritual-based diet that I call the Healthy Planet Diet.

The final scene in the book, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, summarized the two conflicting trends that explain many of the conflicts in our world today. It made a big impression on me when I read it in college, forty-three years ago. It seems prophetic now. We are being offered a counterfeit world, full of artificial foods, and drugs administered to disconnect us from the inevitable pain and emptiness we experience when we abandon the natural world and healthy whole foods made by nature. You see all around you the puzzling results of people with all the best medical care and food choices that money can buy -- and they die of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, obesity, ALS, and dementia in spite of (or perhaps BECAUSE of) it all.

My conclusion is the causes of dementia and these other unnatural diseases are increasing as a result of our moving away from a natural, whole-food, organic diet with minimal sugar and fats.

We have the choice of educating ourselves and then avoiding the unhealthy foods and bad habits that are the causes of dementia, or "Living Large" and taking our chances, hoping medical care will be able to undo the damage and keep us out of pain at the end of our life.

From what I've seen of the lack of success doctors and modern medicine have at providing remedies for the innate weaknesses of our diet, I'll put my bet on a natural diet.

My Answer To The Causes of Dementia Is The Healthy Planet Diet (1) NIH Study Showing Prevalence of Dementia in USA