This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show broadcast on 1560TheGame. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Houston and Sugar Land, TX. Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment.
Here’s the transcript of the fifth portion of the Show with Dr. Theodore S. Piliszek as a guest expert. Dr. Piliszek is a graduate of King’s College School of Medicine of the University of London and his practice is at Willowbrook Medical Center in Houston. Here’s a link to the previous portion of the show.
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| PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer’s disease (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
BENNETT – Right, so there should be an emphasis on exercising. And I wanted to go ahead and ask you, disease prevention is a big part of your business and what you do and obviously that’s the big thing now in regards to the government and what they’ve been talking about – everything is in regards to prevention – so I’m going to just name some diseases for you and if you could tell me the new cutting edge type of issues regarding prevention.
Now the first one that’s on the list is the neurologic diseases, the cognitive diseases such as
Alzheimer’s or multiple sclerosis. What is out there exactly in regards to the research that shows you can actually prevent something like this from happening to you?
PILISZEK – Well, regarding the cognitive types of decline, Alzheimer’s but specifically Parkinson’s has been linked to Alzheimer’s many times, and the approach to both is going to be very similar. What we are now finding, the latest developments in fact, is that Alzheimer’s starts in our early thirties. This is a mind blowing discovery. But it is a very low level in our brain and the changes take a long time, up to about 30 years before they start showing themselves. In most of the Western culture societies it shows up in the early sixties, peaking at about 72 to 75 and then declining into the eighties. But it takes about 30 years to show itself. I feel that’s a very positive thing to know because that means we can do something about it in those first 30 years. As to the biomarkers of it, they’re being avidly sought at the moment but they’re not that easy to define. We do know from a biochemical point of view and a genetic point of view, we do have certain biomarkers such as the Apolipoprotein E genotype, which shows that you can be at risk for cognitive decline in later years especially if you’ve got the E-44 or the 34 markers in your body. We also have homocysteine, which is a fairly new discovery and which is an amino acid dealing with methylation in the body, that is also, if that’s high that could be a significant factor in the development of cognitive decline especially Alzheimer’s. And we’re now seeing that there are certain remnants of the same changes taking place in the brain – in the medial temporal lobes – of the type of abnormal proteins that are produced there when the brain deteriorates. We’re now being able to pick those up at an early stage in the cerebral spinal fluid. That means in fact that you’ve got to do a cerebral spinal puncture which is not something that you’d like to do on a regular basis. But from an imaging point of view, they’re now bringing up very important Spec scanning where you look at the brain metabolism of glucose and it is being shown more and more often, with different markers of course, so unfortunately you are pumping in this abnormal radioactive marker into a patient’s body but it’s a small amount; you hope it doesn’t last too long, it’s supposed to have a very short half-life, but it shows those areas of the brain where Alzheimer’s can develop at a much earlier stage, maybe five to 10 years before you see definite evidence of cognitive decline.
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| Drawing comparing how a brain of an Alzheimer disease patient is affected to a normal brain (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
BENNETT – That’s incredible that it’s come so long because at one time it was considered just one of these unknown kinds of diseases and there is so much more information that we’ve come up with these days in regards to that. One thing I wanted to ask you Dr. Piliszek is the Vitamin D connection with these cognitive disorders.
PILISZEK – There haven’t been too many papers published about this but one particular aspect where Vitamin D plays a co-factor role is in the manufacture of Acetylcholine in the brain and Acetylcholine is one of the main neurotransmitters so it is associated with co-factor work with Acetylcholinesteras, which helps to acetylate choline. So that’s a very, very important factor. In fact, if you are low on Vitamin D 3 then you are not able to effectively make Acetylcholine and that means you are short of a certain neurotransmitter.
If you have questions about sports nutrition, wellness, or sports medicine, call us at 281-633-8600 or send us an email.
