Alzheimer Patients Have "aged" Adrenals, Higher Cortisol And Estrone

haidut

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Ray has written several times about the changes that occur in the adrenals with aging and stress/hypothyroidism. The adrenal layers change in structure and activity in a way that favors zona glomerulosa, which results in higher production of cortisol and estrogen.
This study seems to confirm both of these points and states that parallel changes are seen in diabetes type II. This is not surprising as Alzheimer is now being reclassified as diabetes type II and the role of cortisol and estrogen in diabetes are well known.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26704533

"...Some authors using rat models suggested that b-amyloid induced cognitive insufficiency may follow a reduction of certain neuroactive steroids such as pregnenolone and progesterone and elevation of estradiol in brain tissues. Moreover, the expression of inflammatory mediators stimulated by b-amyloid may be dose dependently reversed by progesterone with simultaneous improvement of cognitive abilities."


"...The main outcome of the study was finding an attenuated activity of adrenal zona reticularis in women with AD involving substantially weakened activity of CYP17A1C17,20 lyase metabolic step, attenuated sulfotransferase SULT2A1 activity at considerably higher activity of the CYP17A1 17-hydroxylase step."

"...Concerning the estradiol but not estrone, our data are in line with the study from Cunningham et al. [130], who reported significantly higher levels for estrone but not estradiol in women with AD."

"... However, the long-term effect of estradiol in the pathophysiology of AD seems to be negative [142] particularly in senescence as estradiol may increase the leakiness of the blood–brain barrier [138]."

"...Cortisol levels significantly positively correlated with AD presence but they were only slightly higher in AD group (598 (530,676) nmol/L) when compared with controls (503 (456, 556) nmol/L, mean with 95% confidence limits). This difference reached significance when using ROC analysis but not ANCOVA (Tables 2 –4). The above mentioned results are in accordance with the data from other authors who also reported elevated cortisol levels in serum [111,112] and cerebrospinal fluid [103] of patients with AD."
 

Tarmander

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Would caffeine then be harmful for AD patients as in the short run it can cause a raise in stress hormones? But then perhaps in the long run be helpful as it lowers those same stress hormones. That would be good to know if you were trying to get an AD relative on coffee or something.
 
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haidut

haidut

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Would caffeine then be harmful for AD patients as in the short run it can cause a raise in stress hormones? But then perhaps in the long run be helpful as it lowers those same stress hormones. That would be good to know if you were trying to get an AD relative on coffee or something.

Did you search the forum? There are quite a few studies showing caffeine to be therapeutic in AD. The stress hormone connection is logical but the chronic effects of caffeine are very unlike the short term ones and it should actually reduce stress hormones when taken for more than a week. There is a study on that too.
 

Tarmander

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Did you search the forum? There are quite a few studies showing caffeine to be therapeutic in AD. The stress hormone connection is logical but the chronic effects of caffeine are very unlike the short term ones and it should actually reduce stress hormones when taken for more than a week. There is a study on that too.

Yeah I have seen those studies about the difference in short term and long term effects. I was thinking more of the angle of getting AD patients to take caffeine. Knowing it can seem to make things worse at first is useful in explaining what's going on.
 
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haidut

haidut

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Yeah I have seen those studies about the difference in short term and long term effects. I was thinking more of the angle of getting AD patients to take caffeine. Knowing it can seem to make things worse at first is useful in explaining what's going on.

Right, but the evidence so far is overwhelmingly on the side of caffeine being beneficial for AD even IF it raises stress hormones initially.
 

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