Dr. Mercola: Might Alzheimer’s Disease Be “Foodborne”?

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By Dr. Mercola

Mounting research shows there’s a compelling link between a particular kind of protein and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's, and Lou Gehrig's disease.

What’s so intriguing about that is this protein, called TDP-43, behaves like toxic and infectious proteins known as prions, which are responsible for the brain destruction that occurs in Mad Cow and Chronic Wasting Disease;¹ two types of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Mad Cow Disease affects cows, while Chronic Wasting Disease is a neurological disease found in deer and elk. As explained in Scientific American:²

“Prions are misshapen yet durable versions of proteins normally present in nerve cells that cause like proteins to misfold and clump together, starting a chain reaction that eventually consumes entire brain regions.

In the past 15 years, scientists have learned that such a process may be at work not only in mad cow and other exotic diseases but also in major neurodegenerative disorders...”

As Many as Half of Alzheimer’s Patients Have Prion-Like Proteins

According to research³ published in 2011, TDP-43 pathology is detected in 25-50 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, particularly in those with hippocampal sclerosis, characterized by selective loss of neurons in the hippocampus, which is associated with memory loss.

Research presented at the 2014 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) also revealed Alzheimer’s patients with TDP-43 were 10 times more likely to have been cognitively impaired at death than those without it.^4,5

But how do you end up with TDP-43?

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