I just watched a recent presentation by Stephen Cunnane at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), which is available on their Youtube channel. The theme of his talk was the potential therapeutic effect of ketones in Alzheimer's Disease.
Going through different personal and other people's research studies, Cunnane referred to this paper that I'm suggesting in this post. It was a paper published in 2016 by Cunnane et al. (2016) in which they investigate whether or not ketones may help rescue brain fuel supply later in life.
They start from the premise that energy deficit in the brain is an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease. And they have four rationales for this argument:
- Lower glucose uptake in the frontal cortex of people > 65 years old.
- Regional deficit in brain uptake in younger people with genetic or lifestyle predispositions to AD.
- Glucose uptake is impaired in the brain, but ketone uptake is not in AD.
- Interventions to increase ketone uptake show favorable outcomes.
Each of these rationales are being given sufficient detailed attention in the paper. And at one point, Cunnane et al. (2016) develop on the idea that ketones may be the preferred fuel for the brain - and they make the case for what happens in starvation:
"That ketones are the main reserve fuel for the adult human brain when glucose supply is compromised by starvation was convincingly demonstrated in the now classic studies of medically supervised long-term starvation reported by Owen et al. (1967) and Drenick et al. (1972)." [source]
Overall, a very interesting paper for those interested in the subject of aging and maintaining brain health - not only for what happens in Alzheimer's Disease. The paper is available in full for free. See the link below.
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Cristi Vlad Self-Experimenter and Author