Preventive Neurology

Public Health vs. Sugar Lobby. Who will win in a world that is anti-science and fuelled by alternative facts? #PoliticalSpeak #SugarTax  A targeted sugar tax works. The study below in California shows that one year following implementation of the the US's first large sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) tax, prices of SSBs increased in many, but not all, settings, but more importantly SSB sales declined, and sales of untaxed beverages (especially water) rose.  What is now needed is to assess whether this SSB tax has an impact on the health of the population; i.e. does shifting people away from SSBs to 'healthy beverages' result in loss of weight and improvement in population health, i.e. less obesity and a lower incidence of the metabolic syndrome and diabetes. If yes, a sugar tax will ultimately reduce cardiovascular mortality and potentially all cause dementia later in life.  I suspect the US Corn Refiners Association and other bodies with vested interest...

Should we redefine ageing as a disease? #BrainHealth #ProfG #HealthyAgeing Most of neurologists equate amyloid deposition in the brain with Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study questions this assumption and suggests that amyloid deposition is simply a part of normal ageing. Demographics, the APOE genotype and midlife dyslipidaemia was associated with amyloid deposition. In comparison obesity, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac and metabolic conditions, but not intellectual enrichment, were associated with greater AD-pattern neurodegeneration.  These results in elderly individuals supports the hypothesis that tackling common lifestyle factors obesity, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac and metabolic conditions could prevent, or at least, delay the onset of symptomatic AD and is consistent with the falling incidence of AD in both the Cambridge and Framingham cohort studies.  Please note that although the incidence (number of new cases per 100,000 pe...