copyright March 4, 2011 D.W. Gregg
Dedication
This paper is dedicated to Irene,my friend who over the past year or so developed increasing levels of confusion that were uncharacteristic and could only be explained as early Alzheimer’s disease. This shocked both of us. I viewed it as divine intervention where I felt that God assigned me the task of identifying what will be the first successful treatment, saving Irene and many others. I accepted the assignment.
SUMMARY
1. The herpes simplex virus has been identified as the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease.2. The most promising primary treatment is lysine, a proven treatment to arrest the herpes simplex virus. This attacks the root cause directly. (Google: lysine, herpes).3. The backup treatment is coconut oil. (Google: Alzheimer’s, coconut oil). This was first discovered and demonstrated by Dr. Mary Newport in her effort to find a treatment for her husband’s Alzheimer’s disease. It was profoundly effective. Dr. Newport identified part of the biochemical mechanism and this paper is expanding on it to identify important and useful additional insights.4. Nutrition: Nutritional deficiencies have been credited with causing dementia later in life, which is indistinguishable from herpes caused Alzheimer’s without an autopsy.5. and 6. Glycolysis and Cancer: The Alzheimer’s treatment will profoundly inhibit glycolysis, which should in turn inhibit both Alzheimer’s and cancer.
1. The herpes simplex virus has been identified as the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease.
Definitive work evaluating the herpes simplex virus as the root cause of Alzheimer’s Disease has been done by Drs. Ruth Itzhaki and Mark Wozniak in the UK. (Google: Dr Mary Newport, Alzheimer’s disease). They have published numerous papers on this from 2005 through 2009.
This virus has also been shown to cause fever blisters, shingles and genital herpes.
Herpes simplex lives within the nerves to the face around the mouth that originate deep in the brain. This is strong evidence that the virus infection is present and deep in the brain where Alzheimer’s originates.
Does such an outbreak signal a vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease later in life?
Most people carry this and other viruses by the time they reach old age. People who are ApoE4+ are more likely to suffer from episodes of fever blisters and develop Alzheimer's Disease.
Researchers have found the herpes simplex virus in 90% of the beta-amyloid plaques in the autopsied brains of those who died of Alzheimer’s disease. This strongly suggests that beta-amyloid is there to defend the brain from the virus. It is part of the brain’s immune system. Testing this anti-virus assumption, one group found that beta-amyloid killed all the microbes they tested. (Soscia “The Alzheimer’s Disease-Associated Amyloid b-Protein is an Antimicrobial Peptide” PLOS March 2010, Volume 5, Issue 3, e9505: www.plosone.org )
As further evidence they have also found in animals that the herpes virus increases production of beta-amyloid and also induces Alzheimer”s Disease -- like tau phosphorylation (production of tangles).
They wanted to study whether known methods of suppressing the herpes virus would be beneficial to people with Alzheimer’s . They suggest lysine as well as lauric acid and capric acid which are found in coconut oil. These all kill the herpes family of viruses. The mechanism is believed to work by dissolving the lipid capsule around the virus. (The Coconut Oil Miracle, Bruce Fife.C.N.,N.D.)
This explains why the coconut oil alone was so successful for treating Dr. Newport’s husband. It directly attacked the root, herpes-simplex cause, of Alzheimer’s disease .
So far, in my search of the internet, almost all of the articles identified herpes simplex as the root cause of Alzheimer’s and also identified lysine as a possible treatment. However, the information stops there. No one was able to obtain funding to carry out live human studies
2. Lysine
Lysine inhibits, and arginine promotes, the production of the herpes virus. They compete. At high enough lysine intake it dominates by displacing the arginine and arrests herpes production. All foods contain both lysine and arginine. However, the concentration of each varies widely between foods. For example, the concentration of lysine is highest in yogurts (dairy products), and the concentration of arginine is highest in seeds and nuts. (See the table at my old web site krysalis.net). It is the ratio that is important. This means that one would have to treat with a far greater dose of lysine for a person who consumes walnuts, than one who consumes yogurt. This is not a small issue.
When treating with lysine it is important to minimize the consumption of seeds and nuts.
3. Coconut Oil
Dr. Mary Newport discovered the benefits of coconut oil for treating Alzheimer’s while searching for a treatment for her husband. (Google: Alzheimer’s, coconut oil). (Her discovery is discussed in detail and can be found on the internet by searching “Alzheimer’s, coconut oil,” on Google.) The results were profound. She credited the benefits as primarily due to coconut oil. It is a source of a high energy fuel, ketones, that can nourish the brain independent of glucose, the usual source of brain energy. It is important to expand on this step. All food goes through metabolism to turn it into energy. The primary processing step that prepares all foods for energy production is called the Kreb’s Cycle. However, foods have to be preprocessed to enter the Kreb’s Cycle.
Glucose has to be preprocessed by a step called Glycolysis. This elaborate step converts glucose into pyruvate. The pyruvate then enters the Kreb’s Cycle for further processing and energy production. All carbohydrates follow this path.
Oils follow a different path, which is more direct and does not require glycolysis. Oils bypass the glycolysis step. Coconut oil is a unique oil: it produces ketone bodies which are a high-energy fuel that nourishes the brain. Such ketones are the only alternative to glucose. They are not carbohydrates and do not require glycolysis for the brain to utilize them. Thus a person is able to consume a diet low in glucose (sugar) without the brain demanding (craving) it. Glycolysis is thus minimized.
The ketones from coconut oil appear to be very special in that they are the only source of energy that can replace glucose to power the brain, and most importantly they are a fat, not a sugar. It appears that other vegetable oils will not achieve the same result. Coconut oil is a unique option for a substitute for glucose to energize the brain.
4. Dementia/Nutrition Deficiency
Significant vitamin deficiencies have been reported to result in dementia, often mistakenly diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. The root causes of dementia and Alzheimer's are distinctly different. Specifically, deficiencies in vitamins D, B12 and B complex have been implicated for dementia. However, this could include a deficiency of any of the many nutrients necessary for good health, for the body and brain function, both vitamins and minerals. Herpes has not been implicated. (Google) The best possible solution is likely to be in a multi-vitamin & mineral supplement combined with a healthy diet. A diet specifically designed for an individual may be needed. Unfortunately, we rarely have the data we would like to have for individual foods.
It is also reasonable to assume both nutritional (dementia) and herpes (Alzheimer’s) diseases could be active in the same person at the same time. If so, treatment for both would be needed. Treatment for only one would leave the other still active. Treating them both at the same time should be possible unless the individual has some unexpected conflict.
5. Glycolysis:
Glycolysis is a complex chemical process that can produce many products. It is my belief that it plays a key role in the synthesis of the herpes virus. Glycolysis is shut down by the switch of metabolism from sugar to oils. The shutting off of glycolysis is another way for the body to arrest the production of the virus. This would make three distinctly separate mechanisms for arresting the virus, one from lysine, and two from coconut oil. Each takes a different, independent path making the combination more potent than either alone.
6. Cancer:
Cancer also requires the glycolysis step to synthesize more cancer cells. Thus, if the arresting of glycolysis by coconut oil is a valid aspect of the use of coconut oil, it will not only serve to impede the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease, but it will also inhibit a broad range of cancers. Upon noticing this surprise possibility, I did a search on Google: (cancer, coconut oil) and found a number of papers that stated “coconut oil had successfully treated a number of cancers”. This confirmed my prediction. I believed that that outcome was inevitable.
There is a competition between oils (fats) and carbohydrates (sugars) for providing energy. How is the distribution determined? I suspect the biochemical selection is not based just on the concentration of each in the diet. I will propose that preference will be given to oils because they go directly to the Kreb’s Cycle. The carbohydrates would be slower because they require the preprocessing of glycolysis before entering the Kreb’s Cycle. Could this bias the final ratio towards oils? If so, a relatively small amount of coconut oil may be able to override the effect of a considerably higher concentration of carbohydrates in the diet. This may explain in part the exceptionally high benefit reported by Dr. Mary Newport. She treated Alzheimer’s by blending a single tablespoon of coconut oil in a bowel of oats for her husband’s breakfast. If there is such a selection bias, favoring coconut oil over carbohydrates, it would have profound implications. A strong bias would greatly enhance the ability of coconut oil to treat Alzheimer’s in the presence of carbohydrates. It might also reduce a hunger for sugar.
I did a search on Alzheimer’s and cancer to find out if there was any evidence that the herpes virus caused cancer. I found a surprise. It appears that people with Alzheimer’s rarely get cancer. Could it be that since both require glycolysis, the competition limits only one to prevail, shutting down the other?
The only current proven method for diagnosing Alzheimer’s is after death, by autopsy. The incentive for a reliable diagnostic method for a living person is that it could be used to evaluate Treatment Drugs. However, if the proposed treatment presented here is safe and effective for simply slowing the progress of either Alzheimer’s or cancer, that may be sufficient to still be important. Given the common advanced age of most patients for both diseases, they could die of something else first. That would make the need for a more potent drug less urgent.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation for the help of: Richard Vankonynenberg, Ph.D, for reviewing and commenting on the technical content of this paper.
And Viola Litt Callaghan, M.A. for carefully reading and making excellent editorial recommendations.
