Discover how certain diets may contribute to dementia. Uncover the medical mystery behind nutrition and cognitive health in this eye-opening article.
Uncovering the Surprising Link Between Unconventional Eating Habits and Cognitive Decline
A middle-aged construction worker named David faces a bewildering array of unexplained symptoms that drastically alter his life. As he navigates his daily routines, the potential causes of his distress become a complex puzzle. Is it merely stress from his demanding job, or could it be an underlying infection? The narrative unfolds to reveal that David’s limited diet, compounded by financial difficulties, creates a backdrop for a surprising medical revelation. This case underscores the significant impact that nutritional choices can have on health, illustrating how seemingly innocuous decisions can lead to serious consequences.
This story delves into the intricate relationship between nutrition and health, highlighting the importance of understanding how our everyday habits can influence our well-being. David’s journey serves as a reminder that health issues can arise from unexpected sources, and it emphasizes the need for awareness regarding dietary practices. The exploration of his medical mystery not only captivates the audience but also educates them about the potential repercussions of neglecting proper nutrition.
Unlocking the Brain’s Secrets: The Surprising Link Between Unusual Diets and Cognitive Decline
Meet David a 45-year-old construction worker who was struggling financially week after week he spent most of his paycheck on sports betting and he kept losing money too proud to go to a food bank and limited by his gluten sensitivity he ended up eating a very restricted diet focusing on cheap calorie-dense foods that he could buy in.
Bulk one day when he was getting ready for work he noticed that his skin was turning a dark brown color and starting to peel particularly on his face neck and forearms he figured it was just sun damage from working outside and since he couldn’t afford sunscreen he just ignored it a few months went by and then something unusual happened in the middle.
Of a workday David wandered off the construction site without a word to anyone and just disappeared he never answered his phone when his supervisor called to check in so his job was given to someone else and David’s whereabouts remained a mystery about a month later one of its co-workers was walking downtown and noticed a disheveled man.
Muttering and talking to himself could that be David they called the police and when they arrived David was clearly agitated and Confused concerned for his safety the police brought him into the emergency department to be assessed in triage his vitals were stable with no fever but he looked emaciated and the.
Emergency Physician noted dark peeling skin on his face neck and forearms the same thing David had noticed a few months ago David was confused his thoughts were disorganized organized and he was very slow to answer questions it was also clear that he was hallucinating reacting to things that he was hearing and seeing that weren’t actually there.
At one point in the assessment he covered his head with a sheet and started laughing uncontrollably in a situation like this you might assume that it’s related to substance use or a mental health condition like schizophrenia and while that can often be the case there’s also a long list of possible medical causes that need to be.
Considered from liver disease to brain infections autoimmune diseases and even some vitamin deficiencies so to check for some of these causes David’s doctor ordered these tests now this list of Investigations is taken directly from the published case I will say that if I were the one looking after David at this point I also would have ordered a CT.
Scan of the head thyroid testing and a urine drug test in any case all these tests came back normal and the Emergency Physician suspected that the primary issue was a mental health condition so David was admitted to the inpatient psychiatric unit with a diagnosis of psychosis nyd not yet diagnosed and the psychiatrist started him on a low-d do.
Antis pycho medication but just 3 days later the psychiatrist urgently paged the internist on call David’s condition had seriously deteriorated he had developed severe diarrhea and vomiting and his blood pressure was dangerously low and to make matters worse his mental status hadn’t improved at all it had just.
Changed DAV David was in a nearly catatonic State not speaking not eating and barely moving so he was urgently transferred to the acute medical unit where he was stabilized with fluids and electrolytes urgent blood work was ordered which showed some signs of dehydration but no other Clues finally they ordered a CT scan of his head which.
Showed abnormalities of the cerebral cortex and diffus spots around the cerebral ventricles definitely abnormal but also not pointing to a specific diagnosis so the internist combed through David’s chart looking for Diagnostic Clues and that’s when the pieces of the puzzle started coming together dermatitis that darkening of.
His skin altered mental status and now diarrhea could it be they ordered one last test that they hoped would confirm the diagnosis a few days later a 24-hour urine collection showed an undetectably low level of n methyl nanomite which confirmed their suspicion David had pellagra which is caused by severe nasin.
Deficiency you’ve probably heard of nasin by its other name vitamin B3 although it’s not a vitamin we think about often because it’s found in so many things like meat fish nuts nutritional yeast whole grains and fortified foods and yet n deficiency or pelra used to be a global Health crisis with serious outbreaks all around the.
World including in the United States but more on that later so what exactly makes nasin so important well after it gets absorbed in the small intestine nasin gets converted to NAD which I like to think of as the body’s energy helper it’s involved in more than 400 enzyme reactions to turn food into energy fueling everything from your muscle.
Movements to thought processing NAD is also needed to repair damaged DNA and to maintain the health of our cells in short nyin is vital for our survival and you know it’s important when our body has a backup plan in case there’s a nasin deficiency your body can convert the amino acid tryptophan into nin with the help of vitamin B6 B2 and iron.
Unfortunately this conversion is really inefficient it takes about 60 Mig of tryptophan to make just 1 milligram of niin and David’s Ultra lowcost gluten-free diet was also deficient in tryptophan which is what led him down this dangerous path when nyson is missing the consequences are severe and you can recognize the four DS of pgra.
Just like we saw with David the first symptom to usually show up is dermatitis this is because the skin has really high energy demands without enough NAD skin cells can’t generate enough energy to repair themselves this leaves the skin vulnerable to things like UV damage so it usually starts with a rash on sun-exposed areas like the face or on.
The arms and it may actually look like a sunburn at first but over time it’ll become dark rough and scaly and this is actually where the condition got its name pgra comes from the Italian term for rough skin and one classic skin finding is called kazal necklace which is a dark hyperpigmented band around the neck but pagora doesn’t stop at the skin.
The cells lining our intestines also replicate really quickly and have high energy demands so they’re really sensitive when there’s not enough NAD and when those cells don’t function properly you also don’t absorb nutrients as efficiently this leads to abdominal pain nausea and severe diarrhea which then makes nutritional deficiencies even.
Worse which puts you in this really vicious cycle and it just keeps getting worse the lack of energy for important neural Pathways in our brain leads to dementia with confusion memory loss and even psychosis as we saw in this case and if it’s left untreated It ultimately leads to the last D.
Death okay now I’ve got to tell you about the drama in the scientific Community when pel’s true cause was uncovered I’ll warn you that some of the experiments in this story had questionable ethics but the results actually shaped our understanding of the connection between nutrition and disease today if you love this kind of content.
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Get back to the video back in the early 1900s people thought thought pelra was an infectious disease like the plague and with a 40% mortality rate people were terrified of catching it part of the reason they thought it was infectious is because cases were geographically clustered in poor rural areas of the Southern United States this.
Is Dr Joseph goldberger a physician and public health official who made a really important observation he noticed that in orphanages and asylums where pgra was rampant the caregivers weren’t getting sick which is not what you would expect if the condition was contagious he also noticed a significant difference in their diet the orphans and patients were.
Typically surviving on calorie dense foods like cornmeal molasses and a bit of pork fat which was the typical diet for poor Southerners at the time in contrast the caregivers were eating a really well-rounded diet and he suspected this was the root of the issue so he tested his theory by improving their diets and adding fresh milk fresh.
Meat and vegetables and the results were incredible people started recovering from pelra and in some cases people’s mental status improved so much that they were able to be discharged home from the Asylum which was a really rare thing in those days but despite these amazing findings nobody listened to him he couldn’t convince the medical.
Establishment that pagro was a nutritional deficiency and not an infection so his next study was a bit more dramatic and it definitely wouldn’t get research ethics board approval today he enlisted prisoner volunteers to eat a nutrient poor diet and what do you know many of them developed pelra but people were still skeptical so he devised the.
Most outrageous experiment you could imagine he held what he called filth parties where he injected the blood of patients with pgra into the deltoid of healthy volunteers including himself and his wife and he took it even further than that he also mixed bodily fluids from patients with pellagra into their food and they ate it not once did they.
Do a party like this but seven times so gross but you know it was in the name of science unfortunately Dr goldberger didn’t live long enough to see his theories confirmed and I understand that’s not because of the parties 16 years after those Infamous filth parties researchers isolated n in the lab and they were finally able to.
Prove without a shred of doubt that pagro was caused by a nutritional deficiency but here’s the weird thing do you remember how I told you that the people who were getting pigra were eating a lot of of corn-based foods well corn technically contains enough nasin to meet your nutritional needs so why are these people getting sick okay so.
Here’s some culinary science and the last piece of our puzzle unlike other grains niin in corn is bound tightly to compounds inside the corn making it nearly impossible for a body to absorb it for nasin to be released the corn needs to be soaked and cooked in a special alkaline solution a process called NYX talization this technique.
Dates back to the Aztec and it remains an important part of Mexican Cuisine dried corn kernels are boiled and then soaked in water mixed with lime a type of calcium which softens the kernels and makes the nutrients more accessible this is actually how the dough for tortillas and tamales is made and it’s because of this practice that Mexico didn’t suffer.
Widespread epidemics of pgra unlike parts of Europe and the United States where people ate untreated corn and couldn’t absorb the nasin but this all changed in the 1940s when the FDA mandated that certain vitamins and minerals get added to flour including vitamin B1 B2 B3 and iron so if you’re eating something or baking something.
That has enriched flour in it you can be reassured that you’re getting nin and because of policies like this around the world these days it’s exceedingly rare to see pgra in developed countries we typically only see it in cases where people are really malnourished like alcohol abuse post bariatric surgery anorexia or a malabsorptive condition so.
How much nasin do you actually need in general it’s about 16 Mig per day for men and 14 Mig per day for women that’s about 3 to eight servings of plant-based foods like nuts and legumes or two to three servings of meat and fish or 10 slices of fortified Wonderbread so let’s go back to David and consider his diet he primarily ate oatmeal white rice with.
Margarine and sometimes some rice noodles and unlike wheat flour most gluten-free flowers aren’t fortified with nin so David wasn’t getting anywhere near the amount of nasin that he needed for fortunately his condition was diagnosed before it was too late he was treated with niin supplements in addition to a bunch of other vitamins.
And minerals because he was so malnourished his recovery was a long process but a few weeks after the supplements were started David’s mind started becoming more clear he was speaking again and the dark patches on his face and arms started to fade in the end it took six long months in the hospital overcoming physical and.
Psychological challenges along the way before David had recovered enough that he could go home David’s story is a powerful reminder of how closely our health is linked to what we eat and for people facing Financial challenges it can be really difficult to prioritize nutritious food when less healthy options are often more affordable.
Especially if you have food allergies or sensitivities so when we’re talking about nutritional deficiencies we’re not just talking about health and isolation we’re talking about much bigger issues that we’re facing in society and that’s just as relevant today as it was in the 1920s now if you enjoyed this video check out this one next it’s a real.
Published case where a really picky eater developed serious brain damage after only eating bread french fries and Cheerios stay curious stay healthy and I’ll see you in the next one so bye for now
