Fortunately, it also reveals a way to prevent and maybe even reverse it…

—-Important Message—-

Alzheimer’s discovery sending shockwaves through the medical establishment

It appears we have finally uncovered what exactly triggers Alzheimer’s through a shocking brain scan…

And it’s NOT old age, genetics or vitamin deficiencies…

And now that we know the trigger, we can protect ourselves against Alzheimer’s and other memory diseases and possibly even reverse them…

The most surprising thing is that you can start preventing and possibly even reversing Alzheimer’s right now simply by using this one method…

———-

Shocking brain scan reveals the true cause of Alzheimer’s disease

The outdated, yet still common, idea that people’s mental abilities are somewhat “fixed” has finally diminished in recent years.

More and more people are becoming aware that humans are less influenced through genetics than by their environment, which is constantly changing.

People are heavily influenced by both the foods they eat and people they know.

Nutrition is huge. Eating behaviors affect nearly every process in the body, including the mind, and the supplements a person decides to take can make a world of difference.

The idea that people are rigidly ‘fixed” is somewhat of a carry-over from aristocratic rule, where such things as bloodlines and “the divine right of kings” had been used to give priority.

19th, 20th, and 21st century science has shown that genetics is important — yet even more important is the vitamins we ingest daily, weekly, and monthly.

While true that vitamins exert a primary influence, there are also enzymatic cofactors that although we can actually synthesize we’d often do better with more — e.g. tetrahydrobiopterin, choline, α-lipoic acid.

Alpha-lipoic acid is an essential enzymatic cofactor synthesized in the mitochondria using caprylic acid (8∶0), inorganic sulfur, lipoyl synthase, and the enzyme lipoic acid synthetase.

Lipoic acid is also called thioctic acid because it’s made from caprylic acid (a.k.a. octadecanoic acid), which has eight carbons.

The precursors for α-lipoic acid are pretty much always available, in degrees, yet human synthetic capacity isn’t 100% due to α-lipoic acid also being found in foods.

That is to say: we have never evolved an optimal capacity to synthesize lipoic acid because it’s readily obtainable through an unrefined diet, which of course also varies by food type. 

Nonetheless, experiments do show that people can do better with a little more α-lipoic acid.

As humans age they often have a progressively diminished capacity to produce these much-needed cofactors, and hence diet becomes more important every year.

Lipoic acid has been shown to enhance cognition, promote memory, and delay Alzheimer’s disease. 

The mechanism in which it does this actually appears to be three distinct ones, each operating simultaneously to protect and upregulate the mind:

Alpha-lipoic acid…

1. Reduces lipid peroxidation in the brain, being both fat-soluble and redox-active (Nickander, 1996)
2. Acts as cofactor for carboxylase enzymes, thereby producing acetate needed for acetylcholine synthesis (Jordan, 1997)
3. Has actually been proven to act as cofactor for the enzyme choline acetyltransferase, thereby increasing brain acetylcholine in a second way (Haugaard, 2001)
4. has been shown to decrease the brain iron accumulation seen with aging (Suh, 2005), which would almost certainly reduce lipofuscin formation.

The ability of α-lipoic acid to act as a cofactor for pyruvate decarboxylase is its classic function, yet far less-known is its surprising relationship to the enzyme choline acetyltransferase. 

This is a more direct effect besides, although its role in pyruvate decarboxylase also acts to increase acetylcholine.

Choline acetyltransferase is the most downstream, direct, and indispensable enzyme involved in acetylcholine synthesis.

This simple study had included the crucial enzyme choline acetyltransferase, into which in a dish had been added: choline, acetyl-coenzyme A, and physostigmine — a cholinesterase inhibitor to prevent breakdown of any acetylcholine formed.

The acetylcholine formed by this process had first been separated and then determined using a scintillation counter. This had been made possible because they’d used radioactive acetyl-coenzyme A. 

This is perhaps the most accurate method possible because mass spectrometry cannot determine between acetylcholine or its free constituents, acetate and choline, and ELISA is somewhat dubious for small molecules such as this.

They had found that dihydrolipoic acid, the reduced form, had exhibited a striking ability to enhance acetylcholine formation:

The authors of this study used lipoic acid’s synonym, thioctic acid, throughout the article.

This is important because acetylcholine is highly involved in cognition, the very reason why nicotine — an acetylcholine mimetic — has consistently been shown to increase reaction time and focused attention (Hahn, 2002).

‘At the highest concentration of 2.4 mM there was a 6-fold increase in acetylcholine formation.’ ―Haugaard

Thiamine also works for this because it’s needed to create the acetate group for acetyl-coenzyme A, via pyruvate decarboxylase, a cofactor and precursor of acetylcholine.

Acetyl-coenzyme A had in fact been used in this study, along with choline, to allow the enzyme to synthesize acetylcholine.

Yet α-lipoic acid functions to increase acetylcholine twice, first through pyruvate decarboxylase — along with thiamine — and then again via choline acetyltransferase. 

Acetylcholine also increases strength by creating the action potential of nerves controlling the muscles.

This had been a good study yet simple and brief. The two authors had, however, done a follow-up which had confirmed the initial observation and had helped elucidate some finer details:

This study had used the exact same materials and methods as the former, yet had included dialysis equipment and a few other reagents.

They had found that after the purified enzyme had been dialyzed it’d lost it’s activity, implying that some necessary factor had been removed.

‘Dialysis of the preparation for 24 h caused almost complete loss of activity.’ ―Haugaard

The enzyme choline acetyltransferase had no known cofactor at that time, so this had come somewhat as a surprise.

Yet despite its initial inactivation, the enzyme had regained function upon the addition of dihydrolipoic acid:

They had also tested some other biological “reducing agents” for activity, yet glutathione, vitamin C, and NADH all failed to increase acetylcholine.

This rules out the possibility that dihydrolipoic acid was simply acting as a nonspecific electron donor, although no electrons are consumed in the process of acetylcholine synthesis.

‘It can be seen that the activity of the enzyme is quite low compared to the activity that can be reached after addition of dihydrolipoic acid.’ ―Haugaard

The authors had eventually come to the conclusion, and perhaps rightly so, that lipoic acid had been acting a coenzyme — its well-established function in five other enzymes.

In two of the five known lipoic acid enzymes — i.e. pyruvate decarboxylase and acetoin dehydrogenase — an series of enzyme-bound dihydrolipoic acid molecules carry acetyl groups from thiamine to coenzyme A.

And in oxoglutarate dehydrogenase it transfers the similar butyl group.

So based on all things known about α-lipoic acid and dihydrolipoic acid, you’re almost forced into the same conclusion as the authors:

‘These findings give strong support to the view that dihydrolipoic acid is acting as a coenzyme of choline acetyltransferase. As a working hypothesis we believe that it is most likely acting as a carrier of the acetyl groups as is its function in the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex.’ ―Haugaard

This of course means that α-lipoic acid could be indispensable for acetylcholine synthesis, which implies that supplementing should enhance such things as cognition and reaction time.

Yet we don’t have to speculate too much on this, as there’s actually proof of this happening:

This study had tested α-lipoic acid in a rat model on vascular dementia, a condition where memory loss is caused by low cerebral blood flow.

Vascular dementia occurs during atherosclerosis as the arteries gradually lose their internal diameter. 

This sounds awful, yet probably not something to worry about for people avoiding omega-6 fatty acids and consuming enough vitamin C (~2 ^g⁄_day).

So they had ligated the carotid arteries of two groups of rats to restrict blood flow using silk thread, one of which had been given α-lipoic acid.

There had also been two “sham operation groups” that’d been incised yet not ligated, with only one of them given the coenzyme.

They had of course found, rather expectedly, that rats made to have reduced cerebral blood flow would function relatively poorly on standard rat tests — e.g. the Morris water maze.

Perhaps more interestingly, yet still somewhat expected, was that the α-lipoic acid groups had done quite well by comparison.

The rats that had been ligated and also given α-lipoic acid had nearly the same function as normal rats, almost as if they’d been left alone.

Alpha-lipoic acid was also shown to reduce lipid peroxidation in this study, as determined by malondialdehyde.

Yet many other things can also do this, like selenomethionine, ascorbyl palmitate, and α-tocopherol.

Yet what the others cannot do is to increase brain acetylcholine, something which α-lipoic acid can. 

This dietary factor has been described as “multimodal” by Alzheimer’s researchers (Maczurek, 2008), and for good reason.

They showed an increase in brain acetylcholine, choline acetyltransferase (the enzyme that makes it), as well a decrease in acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme responsible for breaking-it-down.

‘Additionally, alpha-lipoic acid raised the level of acetylcholine (ACh) and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and decreased the activity of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in the hippocampus.’ ―Zhao

So the in vitro effects noted by Haugaard do in fact carry over into live animals.

Alpha-lipoic acid acts as a brain-soluble antioxidant, a heavy metal chelator, and a modulator brain acetylcholine concentration.

This is important because nothing is so correlated to strength and cognition as proper acetylcholine levels.

Choline and thiamine (B₁) are two molecules also shown to increase acetylcholine, while folate (B₉) and cobalamin (B₁₂) likely would as well by increasing methylation.

Choline has three methyl groups, all of which need to be obtained from somewhere during its synthesis from serine. 

Methylation is also necessary for the synthesis of epinephrine, which is another pro-energetic molecule.

Similar to choline and thiamine, α-lipoic acid has also been shown to increase brain acetylcholine levels. This is despite the fact that it can be synthesized de novo, at least to a degree, yet the same is true of choline.

So this is just one manner in which diet can influence cognition, by supplying the necessary vitamins and cofactors needed for proper nerve flow.

There is no reason why a person cannot enhance cognition should they choose to, and all that needs to be done is keep abreast of science. 

Most of what needs to be known has been proven already, yet is often ignored or suppressed for profit.

Many natural, safe, and unpatentable molecules are surprisingly effective at accomplishing certain things.

‘It should be emphasized that the fact that dihydrolipoic acid and lipoic acid so strongly influence the activity of the enzyme that synthesizes acetylcholine in the body indicate that these substances may exhibit distinct pharmacological properties.’ ―Haugaard

—-Important Message—-

Scientists find way to make human cells young again — I’ve made it better

Researchers at the University of Exeter and University of Brighton have discovered it’s possible to rejuvenate the cells through something called “gene splicing”:

So instead of the cells dying off, they can be regrown with splicing.

But splicing is complicated…and expensive…

So I’ve taken this gene splicing idea and made it even better, specifically for men…

I’ve found it’s possible to rejuvenate the cells using the same science — but without complicated laboratory experiments…

So through the right combination of simple supplements, men can rejuvenate their cells all over the body…

Like down in testicles, where the Leydig cells can produce more testosterone…

And in the pancreas, where more healthy beta cells can boost the metabolism…

Even down in the male member, where younger cells equal better rockiness…

Here’s how I’m making my cells young again at home using these safe supplements (men only)

———-

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Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.