Category Archives: aging

We’re depressed, allergic, overweight, alone, and demented. What causes what?

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Among the wonders of the western world is how many people are allergic to nuts compared to a few decades ago, and to gluten, and to a host of other things that hardly anyone was allergic to 50 years ago. Perhaps it’s a change in perception, but it doesn’t seem that way.

When I was in public school in NY, back in the 1960s, there was a subsidized lunch program serving, every day, peanut butter sandwiches. Peanut butter is nearly totally fat. It was ladled each day, from a giant tub, provided by the USDA, and slathered on USDA bread along with jelly from some other vat. The smell filled the lunch area, and the fats and sugars filled our stomaches. No one seemed bothered by the nuts, and no one showed obvious signs of passing out. And despite the ill diet, we were less obeease than today. Even today, in poor countries, thy still serve massive peanut butter dishes, or bread covered in lard, and these countries show fewer allergy problems, and less obesity in general.

Perhaps it is the lack of exposure to peanuts in the US that caused the allergy (sounds almost plausible), and maybe it’s the dietetic food that causes obesity, and the glut of non-gluten that causes gluten allergies. These connections may be false, but If true, it would suggest we’re in for many more problems.

Moving to depression and dementia. We’re seeing more and more of both, and at earlier ages. In our era, virtually everyone over 80 shows signs of clinical dementia, often Alzheimer’s dementia, but the rates are rising, especially in those 55-70, and it seems most every adult is depressed. I don’t know why, though lots of people on the internet have speculative explanations. There are also cures, and perhaps some work. The research behind at least one of the best hopes for an Alzheimers cure was shown to be falsified, just made up. Not that funding was stopped quite, highlighting another problem that is becoming more common: people in trust positions no longer behave in a trustworthy way. Nor are they punished for lying. Strange to add that an anti-obesity drug, Metformin, seems to actually work at weight loss, and helps against Alzheimers dementia. Then again, from other research, it seems that obesity protects from dementia.

Some of the problem seems to be societal, a lack of friendship and companionship. I could imagine that isolation leads to dementia, depression, and weight gain. Another thought, pushed by RFK Jr., is that new drugs and vaccines are responsible for allergies and ADHD, along with changes in diet. It’s possible. At least some comes from early diagnosis, and a change in the definition of dementia. Perhaps that’s the reason for the significant difference state to state. Yesterday’s curmudgeon is redefined as depressed, and drugged (more in some states than others), and becomes isolated (again more in some communities). The disoriented, lonely patient is then given anti anxiety drugs and classified as a dementia patient. It happens in some cases, but there seems to be a rise in real dementia too: the sort of stumbling and blankness that reflects general brain deterioration. As for ADHD, I’m still not convinced this is a new real disease; it could be that’s how boys always behaved.

Would we be less depressed or demented or less autistic with different vaccinations, or different foods, or with more human interaction? Would people be less isolated if they were less depressed or autistic? RFK’s family now claims that RFK Jr is demented himself for even asking these questions. My guess, totally unsupported is that the rise in allergies, dementia, obesity, and depression are related somehow, but I’m not convinced that RFK Jr. has picked out the right connection. What causes what? Perhaps someone can use statistics, or biology experiments to help untangle this stuff. It seems horribly important to the majority of Americans.

Robert Buxbaum, Sept 10, 2024. There was a. bit of a joke in the last comments: my daughter got a degree in epidemiology, and is employed in part to answer just the sort of questions I’ve posed.

To make social security fairer, raise the ceiling.

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For most working folks, the majority of your taxes are social security, certainly the majority of your federal taxes. The tax structure of SS is strongly weighted to help the rich. This is a fact that politicians have created and typically hide. Both parties proclaim tax help for the middle class, by instituting income tax changes that barely affect anyone, and really sticking it to the low wage-earner and middle class by a highly recessive SS tax that charges 14.2% off the top for a self-employed person, or 7.1% for an employee, but only to a cut-off of $160,000.

Anyone making more than this pays nothing on the overage, with the result that high earners, on a percent basis, pay essentially 0% tax. The rest of the high eaters income is generally protected by deductions. His car is a work expense, rented from the company, his travel is too. The working plumber benefits from these same deductions, but ends up paying 14.2% because of Social Security, while someone earning $1.6 million ends up paying 1.42% effectively.

People earring more than $1.6 million gain credit for other exemptions. Bill Gates has been buying farm land and claims the depreciation of the land value. Land does not actually depreciate, but you can claim it does because people like him get to fix the tax code (Donald Trump gets the same deduction, BTW on his gold courses). Less rich folks can still deduct the high cost of country club membership, of travel, entertainment, and meetings in exotic places (you can claim some of that too). Because so much of what you pay is Social security, it will come out that, while the executive may pay more in absolute tax, he or she will pay far less as a percentage. Many rich folks claim to find this offensive, but neglect to suggest the most obvious correction raise the ceiling on social security and (ideally) lower the the %.

I strongly suspect that we could bill for social security at 5% and 10% if we raised the ceiling to $2,000,000 per year. I suspect that SS would then be more solvent too. The net result would be drastically fairer.

Robert E. Buxbaum, April 23, 2023

The Ukraine war could go for years. Don’t make a famine.

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Russia is a collapsing, corrupt state with no meaningful elections. It is also the biggest exporter of food, fertilizer, gas, and oil. Nearly 2 years ago, it invaded Ukraine, another collapsing, corrupt, food-exporting state with suspended elections.

Both countries are in the midst of demographic collapse, with Ukraine worse off. Ukraine was invaded though, and thus has the better claim to our support. Then again Russia has atomic bombs. It’s also the largest exporter of wheat (or was), while Ukraine is only the 5th largest (or was before the war). The other three big exporters are the US, Canada, and France. They have benefitted financially, but don’t have near enough output to make up for lost Russian and Ukrainian production.

Ukraine’s grain terminals in flames, Odessa..

Food and energy prices have gone up, world wide, and will probably continue to rise as the war stretches on. This could lead to a global famine and mass starvation, particularly in the poorest areas of Africa, the Mid East, and India. Unfortunately, the war is popular and patriotic, in Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and the US. It’s good business for our armaments industry, and for our recent mega-farmers (like Bill Gates). Also, for our political and spy class. They spend with little government oversight, and just recently misplaced $16 billion. Surely some of that lost money snuck back to the CIA and our politicians’ pockets. We’d have oversight, but “there’s a war on.”

As wars go, the death toll is low, a total of 354,000 dead and injured on both sides, as revealed by recently leaked documents. This is a small fraction of the countries population. Russia has lost 223,000 soldiers killed or wounded, 0.2% of the population, while the Ukrainians had lost 131,000. That’s 0.3%, many of them civilians. The death rate in the two countries during this time was 3.1 million people, 1.8% of the total, mostly from heart disease, accidents, and alcoholism.

The Ukrainian population. Lots of retirees, few kids, very few of military age. This is a disaster, not a country.

Even more destructive to Russia and Ukraine is the demographic collapse. The fertility rate in Russia is 1.5 child per woman, up fro 1.2 in 2000. For a stable population at low infant death, you need about 2.1 children per woman. Russia has had this low rate for a generation, at least 30 years. The net result is that we can expect that Russia’s population will drop by a third or so over the next generation, about 50 million. In Ukraine the fertility rate is even lower, 1.21 per woman, up from 1.1. It’s been this way for 30 years, the equivalent of killing off 1/2 of the population. Aside from leaving the countries full of old people, with no one to do the work, the demographic collapse is producing a cultural shift that virtually guarantees the breakup of Ukraine and the Russian federation. Europe also has this problem, but they have immigration, and that helps a little. Russia has no immigration, and recently resorted to kidnapping Ukrainian children.

The loss of Russian and Ukrainian exports means famine for the poor importers and food inflation for all.

The coming food and energy shortage is likely to lead to mass migration, I expect. Europe has stopped taking delivery of Russian food and energy, in solidarity with Ukraine. Meanwhile Russia has been destroying Ukrainian fields and food infrastructure. Russia ruined a dam last month, flooding Ukraine’s fields, and yesterday destroyed the grain terminals at the port of Odessa,. This was tit-for-tat since Ukraine destroyed a key bridge, and Crimea’s irrigation canal. What’s more, evidence suggests that Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipeline — a key source of finance for Russia and Germany. This sort of tit-for-tat escalated to WWI, fueled by a belief, on both sides, that they would win “decisively and quickly.”

The result of WWI is that Germany was the biggest loser, losing men and land, and suffering a killing famine in 1916. It militarized to prevent it happening again, leading to WWII. Germany is the biggest loser of this war, I’d say, aside from Ukraine. I fear it will militarize. Russia invaded Ukraine but claims a need to militarize. Biden’s promise that Ukraine’s will join NATO is a threat to Russia, as is our delivery of F16s, missiles and cluster bombs. We are killing Russians, and Putin doesn’t like it. Add to this, that Ukraine’s claim for independence rests mostly on its Nazi collaboration. For the good of everyone, maybe we can stop adding gasoline to this fire.

Ukraine deserves our support, I think, but that support need not go beyond small-ish arms, energy deliveries, and tariffs on Russian goods. I think we should Ukraine and Russia export food and energy. Even without WWIII, a world famine and a military Germany does no one any good.

Robert Buxbaum, July 20, 2023. When I was a teen, it was a given that war was bad. Now, for some reason, the kids are in for war, especially the more liberal classes. I find this absolutely bizarre.

Canada’s doctor-assisted suicide killed 10,064 in 2021

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Canada’s healthcare is free to the user. It’s paid for by taxes, and it includes a benefit you can’t get in the US: free, doctor assisted suicide, euthanasia. This is a controversial benefit, forbidden in the Hippocratic oath because it’s close to murder, and includes the strong possibility of misuse of trust. Assistance by a trusted professional can be a bit likes coercion, and that starts to look like murder — especially since the professional often has a financial incentive to see you off.

From Charlie Hebdot (a French, humor magazine): The medical association refuses to participate in euthanasia — Why? People are already dining quite well on their own waiting in the emergency room.

In 2021, according to Statistics Canada, Canada assisted the suicide of 10,064 people, 3.3% of all Canadian deaths. There were about 4,000 more, non-assisted suicides. In Quebec, the Canadian Provence where Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is most popular, 5.1% of deaths result from MAID. The Netherlands has a similar program that results in 4.8% of deaths. In Belgium, it’s 2.3%. These countries’ suicide rates are far higher than in the US, and account for far more deaths, per capita than from guns in the US. My guess is that suicide is common because it is free and professional. It’s called “Dignity in Dying,” in Europe, a title that suggests that old folks who don’t die this way are undignified.

In Canada, about 80% of those who requested MAiD were approved. A lot of the remainder were folks who died or changed their mind before receiving the fatal dose. If you attempt suicide on your own, it’s likely you won’t succeed, and you may not try again. With doctor assisted suicide, you’re sure to succeed (even if you change your mind after you get your lethal shot?)

In Canada you don’t have to be terminally ill to get MAiD, you just have to be in pain, and extreme psychological pain counts. Beginning March 17, 2024, depression will be added as a legitimate reason. According to Canadian TV news, depressives are lining up (read some interviews here). Belgium and Netherlands allows elders to be euthanized for dementia, and children to be euthanized on the recommendation of their parents. France passed similar legislation, but the doctors refused to go along, see cartoon. I applaud the French doctors.

Rodger Foley says he’s being pressured to ask for medical suicide, picture from the NY Post

There have been persistent claims that Canadian doctors and nurses push assisted suicide on poor patients, telling them how much bother they are and how much resources they are using. There has been an outcry in British and American newspapers, e.g. here in the Guardian, and in the NY Post, but not in Canada, so far. Rodger Foley, a patient interviewed by the NY Post, recorded conversations where his doctors and nurses put financial pressure on him. “They asked if I want an assisted death. I don’t. I was told that I would be charged $1,800 per day [for hospital care]. “I have $2 million worth of bills. Nurses here told me that I should end my life.” He claims they went so far as to send a collection agency to further pressure him. In another case, a disabled Canadian veteran asked for a wheelchair ramp, and was told to apply for MAiD.

Even without outside pressure, many people seeking MAiD often cite financial need as part of the reason. A 40 year old writer interviewed by Canadian television said that he can’t work and lives in poverty on a disability payment of just under $1,200 a month. “You know what your life is worth to you. And mine is worthless.”

The center of the argument is the value of a person in a social healthcare state when their economic value is less than the cost of keeping them alive. Here, Sabine Hossenfelder, an excellent physicist, argues that the best thing one could do for global warm and to preserve resources is to have fewer people. Elon Musk says otherwise, but Ms Hossenfelder claims this only shows he is particularly unworthy. There’s a Germanic logic here that gave us forced euthanasia in the 1940s.

I find euthanasia abhorrent, especially when it’s forced on children, the elderly, and depressed folks. I also reject the scary view of global warming, that it is the death of the earth. I’ve argued that a warm earth is good, and that a cold earth is bad. Also, that people are good, that they are the reason for the world, not its misfortune. It seems to me that, if suicide aid must be provided, state-funded hospitals should not provide it. They have a financial incentive to drop non-paying, annoying patients. That seems to be happening in Canada. A patient must be able to trust his or her doctor, and that requires a belief that the doctor’s advice is for his or her good. Unfortunately, Canadian politicians have decided otherwise. I say hurray for the doctors of France for not going along.

Robert Buxbaum, April 25, 2023. The medical profession is shady even when you pay for services, see Elvis Presley’s prescription. There’s always a financial interest. Even based on old data, the US is not a particularly high-murder country if suicide is considered murder.

Of walking sticks, canes, scepters, and wands.

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Franklin’s walking stick, willed to General Washington. Now in the Smithsonian.

Many famous people carried walking sticks Washington, Churchill, Moses, Dali. Until quite recently, it was “a thing”. Benjamin Franklin willed one, now in the Smithsonian, to George Washington, to act as a sort of scepter: “My fine crab-tree walking stick, with a gold head curiously wrought in the form of the cap of liberty, I give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington. If it were a Scepter, he has merited it, and would become it. It was a present to me from that excellent woman, Madame de Forbach, the dowager Duchess of Deux-Ponts”. A peculiarity of this particular stick is that the stick is uncommonly tall, 46 1/2″. This is too tall for casual, walking use, and it’s too fancy to use as a hiking stick. Franklin himself, used a more-normal size walking stick, 36 3/8″ tall, currently in the collection of the NY Historical Society. Washington too seems to have favored a stick of more normal length.

Washington with walking stick

Walking sticks project a sort of elegance, as well as providing personal protection. Shown below is President Andrew Jackson defending himself against an assassin using his walking stick to beat off an assassin. He went on to give souvenir walking sticks to friends and political supporters. Sticks remained a common political gift for 100 years, at least through the election of Calvin Coolidge.

Andrew Jackson defends himself.

I started making walking sticks a few years back, originally for my own use, and then for others when I noticed that many folks who needed canes didn’t carry them. It was vanity, as best I could tell: the normal, “old age” cane is relatively short, about 32″. Walking with it makes you bend over; you look old and decrepit. Some of the folks who needed canes, carried hiking sticks, I noticed, about 48″. These are too tall to provide any significant support, as the only way to grasp one was from the side. Some of my canes are shown below. They are about 36″ tall, typically with a 2″ wooden ball as a head. They look good, you stand straight, and they provides support and balance when going down stairs.

Some of my walking sticks.

I typically make my sticks of American Beech, a wood of light weight, with good strength, and a high elastic modulus of elasticity, about 1.85 x106 psi. Oak, hickory, and ash are good options, but they are denser, and thus more suited to self-defense. Wood is better than metal for many applications, IMHO, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. The mathematician Euler showed the the effective strength of a walking stick does not depend on the compressive strength but rather on elastic constant via “the Euler buckling equation”, one of many tremendously useful equations developed by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783).

For a cylindrical stick, the maximum force supported by a stick is: F = π3Er4/4L2, where F is the force, r is the radius, L is the length, and E is the elastic modulus. I typically pick a diameter of 3/4″ or 7/8″, and fit the length to the customer. For a 36″ beech stick, the buckling strength is calculated to be 221 or 409 pounds respectively. I add a rubber bottom to make it non–scuff and less slip-prone. I sometimes add a rope thong, too. Here is a video of Fred Astaire dancing with this style of stick. It’s called “a pin stick”, in case you are interested because it looks like a giant pin.

Country Irishmen are sometimes depicted with a heavy walking stick called a Shillelagh. It’s used for heavier self-defense than available with a pin-stick, and is generally seen being used as a cudgel. There are Japanese versions of self defense using a lighter, 36″ stick, called a Han-bo, as shown here. There is also the wand, as seen for example in Harry Potter. It focuses magical power. Similar to this is Moses’s staff that he used in front of Pharaoh, a combination wand and hiking stick as it’s typically pictured. It might have been repurposed for the snake-on-a-stick that protects against dark forces. Dancing with a stick, Astaire style, can drive away emotional forces, while the more normal use is elegance, and avoiding slips.

Robert Buxbaum, April 20, 2023.

Birth dearth in China => collapse? war?

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China passed us in life-expectancy in 2022, and also in fertility, going the other way. In China lifespan at birth increased to 77.3 years. In the US it dropped an additional 0.9 years, to 76.8. US lifespans suffered from continuing COVID and an increase in accidents, heart disease, suicide, drugs, and alcohol abuse. Black men were hit particularly hard, so that today, a black man in the US has the same life expectancy as he would in Rwanda. China seems to have avoided this, but should expect problems due to declining fertility and birth rates.

China passed us in life expectancy in 2022.

Fertility rates will eventually burden the US too, as US fertility is only slightly greater than in China, 1.78 children per woman, lifetime, compared to 1.702 in China. But China has far fewer people of childbearing ages, relatively, and only 47% are women. Three decades of one child policy resulted in few young adults and a tendency to abort girls. Currently, the birthrate in China is barely more than half ours: 6.77 per 1000, compared to 12.01 per 1000. And the proportion of the aged keeps rising. China will soon face a severe shortage of care-givers, and an excess of housing.

Years of low birthrate preceded the “Lost decades” of financial crisis in Japan and the USSR. Between 1990 and 2011, business stagnated and house prices dropped. China faces the same; few workers and more need for care: it’s not a good recipe.

Beginning about 1991, Japan saw a major financial collapse with banks failing, and home values falling. China seems over-due.

Few children also signals a psychic lack of confidence in the country, and suggests that, going forward, there will be a lack of something to work for. Already Chinese citizens don’t trust the state to allow them to raise healthy children. They have stopped getting married, especially in the cities, and look more to have fun.

Affluent women claim they can’t find a good man to marry: one who’s manly, who will love them, and who will reliably raise their standard of life. Women seem less picky in China’s rural areas, or perhaps they find better men there. However it goes, urban women get married late and have few children, both in China and here. China produces great, sappy, soap operas though: a country girl or secretary in a high-power job meets a manly, urban manager who lovers her intensely. A fine example is “The Eternal Love” (watch it here). It involves time travel, and a noble romance from the past. Japan produced similar fiction before the crisis. And a crisis seems to be coming.

While Japan and Korea responded quietly to crisis and “the lost decades,” allowing banks to fail and home values to fall, Russia’s response was more violent. It went to war with Chechnya, then with Belarus and Ukraine, and now with NATO. I fear that China will go to war too — with Taiwan, Japan, and the US. It’s a scary thought; China is a much tougher enemy than Russia. There is already trouble brewing over new islands that they are building.

Robert Buxbaum January 25, 2023. If you want to see a Korean soap opera on the Secretary – manager theme, watch: “What’s wrong with Secretary Kim”. (I credit my wife with the research here.) I suspect that Americans too would like sappy shows like this.

Almost no one over 50 has normal blood pressure now.

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Four years ago, when the average lifespan of American men was 3.1 years longer than today, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology dropped the standard for normal- acceptable blood pressure for 50+ years olds from 140/90 to 120/80. The new standard of normal was for everyone regardless or age or gender despite the fact that virtually no one over 50 now reached it. Normal is now quite un-common.

By the new definition, virtually everyone over 50 now is diagnosed with high blood pressure or hypertension. Almost all require one or two medications — no more baby aspirin. Though the evidence for aspirin’s benefit is strong, it doesn’t lower blood pressure. AHA guidance is to lower a patients blood pressure to <140/90 mmHg or at least treat him/her with 2–3 antihypertensive medications.4 

Average systolic blood pressures for long-lived populations of men and women without drugs.

The graphs shows the average blood pressures, without drugs in a 2008 study of the longest-lived, Scandinavian populations. These were the source of the previous targets: the natural pressures for the healthiest populations at the time, based on the study of 1304 men (50-79 years old) and 1246 women (38-79 years old) observed for up to 12 years. In this healthy population, the average untreated systolic pressure is seen till age 70, reaching 154 for men, and over 160 for women. By the new standards, these individuals would be considered highly unhealthy, though they live a lot longer than we do. The most common blood-pressure drug prescribed in the US today is atenolol, a beta blocker. See my essay on Atenolol. It’s good at lowering blood pressure, but does not decrease mortality.

The plot at left shows the relationship between systolic blood pressure and death. There is a relationship, but it is not clear that the one is the cause of the other, especially for individuals with systolic pressure below 160. Those with pressures of 170 and above have significantly higher mortality, and perhaps should take atenolol, but even here it might be that high cholesterol, or something else, is causing both the high blood pressure and the elevated death risk.

The death-risk difference between 160 and 100 mmHg is small and likely insignificant. The minimum at 110 is rather suspect too. I suspect it’s an artifact of a plot that ignores age. Only young people have this low number, and young people have fewer heart attacks. Artificially lowering a person’s blood pressure, even to this level does not make him young, [2][3] and brings some problems. Among the older-old, 85 and above, a systolic blood pressure of 180 mmHg is associated with resilience to physical and cognitive decline, though it is also associated with higher death rate.

The AHA used a smoothed version of the life risk graph above to justify their new standards, see below. In this version, any blood pressure looks like it’s bad. The ideal systolic pressure seems to be 100 or below. This is vastly too low a target, especially for a 60 year old. Based on the original graph, I would think that anything below 155 is OK.

smoothed chart of deaths per 1000 vs blood pressure. According to this chart, any blood pressure is bad. There is no optimum.

Light exercise seems to do some good especially for the overweight. Walking helps, as does biking, and aerobics. Weight loss without exercise seems to hurt health. Aspirin is known to do some good, with minimal cost and side effects. Ablation seems to help for those with atrial fibrillation. Elequis (a common blood thinner) seems to have value too, for those with atrial fibrillation — not necessarily for those without. Low sodium helps some, and coffee, reducing gout, dementia and Parkinson’s, and alcohol. Some 2-3 drinks per day (red wine?) is found to improve heart health.

I suspect that the Scandinavians live longer because they drink mildly, exercise mildly, have good healthcare (but not too good), and have a low crime rate. They seem to have dodged the COVID problem too, even Sweden that did next to nothing. it’s postulated that the problem is over medication, including heart medication.

Robert Buxbaum, January 4, 2023. The low US lifespan is startling. Despite spending more than any other developed countries on heath treatments, we have horribly lower lifespans, and it’s falling fast. A black man in the US has the same expected lifespan as in Rwanda. Causes include heart attacks and strokes, accidents, suicide, drugs, and disease. Opioids too, especially since the COVID lockdowns.

Coffee decreases your chance of Parkinson’s, a lot.

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Some years ago, I thought to help my daughter understand statistics by reanalyzing the data from a 2004 study on coffee and Parkinson’s disease mortality, “Coffee consumption, gender, and Parkinson’s disease mortality in the cancer prevention study II cohort: the modifying effects of estrogen” , Am J Epidemiol. 2004 Nov 15;160(10):977-84, see it here

For the study, a cohort of over 1 million people was enrolled in 1982 and assessed for diet, smoking, alcohol, etc. Causes of deaths were ascertained through death certificates from January 1, 1989, through 1998. Death certificate data suggested that coffee decreased Parkinson’s mortality in men but not in women after adjustment for age, smoking, and alcohol intake. They used a technique I didn’t like though, ANOVA, analysis of variance. That is they compare the outcome of those who drank a lot of coffee (4 cups or more) to those who drank nothing. Though women in the coffee cohort had about 49% the death rate, it was not statistically significant by the ANOVA measure (p = 0.6). The authors of the study understood estrogen to be the reason for the difference.

Based on R2, coffee appears to significantly decrease the risk of Parkinson’s mortality in both men and women.

I thought we could do a better by graphical analysis, see plot at right, especially using R2 to analyze the trend. According to this plot it appears that coffee significantly reduces the likelihood of death in both men and women, confidence better than 90%. Women don’t tend to drink as much coffee as men, but the relative effect per cup is stronger than in men, it appears, and the trend line is clearer too. In the ANOVA, it appears that the effect in women is small because women are less prone Parkinson’s.

The benefit of coffee has been seen as well, in this study, looking at extreme drinkers. Benefits appear for other brain problems too, like Alzheimer’s. It seems that 2-4 cups of coffee per day also reduces the tendency for suicide, and decreases the rate of gout. It seems to be a preventative against kidney stones, too.

There is a confounding behavior that I should note, it’s possible that people who begin to feel signs of Parkinson’s, etc. stop drinking coffee. I doubt it, give the study’s design, but it’s worth a mention. The same confounding is also present in a previous analysis I did that suggested that being overweight protected from dementia, and from Alzheimer’s. Maybe pre-dementia people start loosing weight long before other symptoms appear.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, and C.M. Buxbaum, December 15, 2022

The main building block of Alzheimer’s research was faked. Now, what.

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Much of health research is a search for simple, bio-molecular causes for our medical problems. These can result in pill-solutions. Diseases tend to be more complex, but Alzheimers seemed to work that way, until this summer when it turned out that the data supporting the simple theory was faked. Alzheimer’s is a devastating cognitive disease that is accompanied by a degenerating brain, with sticky, beta-amyloid plaques and tangles. About 16 years ago, this report, published in Nature seemed to show that a beta-amyloid, Aβ*56, caused the plaques and caused cognitive decline independent of any other Alzheimers indicators. 

The visual difference between an Alzheimer brain and a normal brain is that the former has shrunk. Maybe fat is relevant, fat body leads to a fat brain, and less AZ, maybe?

We were on the way to a cure, or so it seemed. Several studies by this group backed the initial results, and much of Alzheimer’s research was directed into an effort to fill in the story, and find ways to reduce the amount and bonding of this amyloid and others like it. Several other groups claimed they could not find the amyloid at all, or show that amyloids caused the symptoms described. But most negative results went unpublished. The theory was so satisfying, and the evidence from a few so strong, that the NIH poured billions into this approach, over $1B in this year alone. The FDA approved aducanumab, a drug from Biogen, on the assumption that it should work, even though it showed little to no benefit, and had some deadly side effects. Other firms followed, asking for approval of related anti-amyloid drugs that should work.

When news of the fraud came out, detected by Matthew Scragg and a few lone curmudgeons, stock prices plummeted in the drug companies. It now appears that the original work was made up, presented to journals and to the NIH using photoshopped images. For the group that did the fake work, it may mean jail time, for most other groups, the claim is that their work is still relevant. Doctors still prescribe the medications as they have nothing better to offer (Aducanumab therapy costs $50,000 per year). Maybe it’s time to start looking at alternative approaches and theories, sidelined over the last 16 years.

Some alternative theories posit that another molecule is responsible, particularly tau, associated with the tangles. Another sidelined theory is that amyloids are good. For example, that it’s the loss of soluble amyloids that causes Alzheimer’s. Alternately, that inflammation is the root cause, and that the amyloid plaques and tangles are a response to the inflammation, a bandage, perhaps. These theories could explain why the anti-amyloid drugs so often resulted in patient death.

It could be that high bmi protects from dementia. Either that or the diseases that cause weight loss cause dementia. It’s debated here.

It’s also possible that the inability of nerve cells to dispose of waste is the cause of AZ. In heathy people, waste is removed through acidic enzymes within lysosomes. Patients with decreased acid activity have a buildup of waste that includes amyloids. Perhaps the cure is to restore the acid enzymes.

My favorite theory is based on statistical data that shows that fat people are less likely to develop Alzheimers. This might lead to a junk-food cure. The fitness industry is very much against this theory–It’s debated here. They tend to support the inflammation model, claiming that diseases cause Alzheimer’s and cause patients to loose weight first. Could be. I note that Henry Kissinger is the only active politician of my era, the early 70s, still alive and writing intelligently.

Robert Buxbaum, November 17-19, 2022. I hope that Matthew Schragg comes out OK, by the way. Ben Franklin pointed out, that “No good deed goes unpunished.”

A great modern artist, Duchamp becomes a great modern chess player, and returns to art.

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I’d written previously about Marcel Duchamp’s early work as a founder of the Dada school of modern art, a school that aims to say nothing about anything except about itself. Duchamp hung a urinal as art and called it “fountain.” It was comic, insulting, and engaging — an inspiration for many modern arts to follow , and much bad modern art, too — the collections of string and found objects and paintings of squares or squiggles. But the story of Duchamp is interesting. In 1925, M. Duchamp gave up on art, at least this type of art and became a chess player. As with art, he was very good at it, and became the French chess champion. Now that’s an unexpected turn.

What sort of chess did Marcel Duchamp play? Modern. Very modern. While tradition chess had focussed on the center. He developed at the sides, a strategy that was called an “Indian attack”, named (I assume) after American Indians attacking a stage-coach. Instead of attacking directly, the popular image of an Indian attack is attack from the sides, or behind trees. In chess, it involves typically a “fianchettoed bishop.” Other modern chess players of the time attacked from the side too (Réti, Alekhine) but they generally worked form one side or the other with some central presence. Duchamp worked from both, often with no center.

Position after white’s 13th move

Here is a dramatic example, a position from a game with an American great, GM George Koltanowski. It’s 13 moves in, with Duchamp, is black, generally considered the weaker side. He has fianchettoed both of his bishops, and given up the center to Koltanowski. It’s Duchamp’s turn to move/ He will win in three moves.

Notice that Koltanowsi’s bishops point outward, as a cowboys guns might point, or as from a British fighting square. Meanwhile, Duchamp’s bishops point inward, with his queen -bishop almost directly at the white king. The game proceeded as follows. 13…, Nxd5 14.Nxd7, Nxf4 15.Nxf8, Bd4, 0-1..

The full game, seen here,. It might prove instructive if you want to explore in Duchamp’s footsteps. While I play traditionally, I sometimes fianchetto, and do not find it racist that such side-attacks are called “Indian attacks.” Perhaps that’s because I’m old and used to such things, or because they very often work.

Please Touch. M. Duchamp 1947
Self-portrait, M. Duchamp, 1957 (torn paper on black velvet).

As M. Duchamp’s chess skills waned, he returned to the art world, going in the opposite direction of Dali. Duchamp’s last works are small, and simple. They are still arresting but more dream-like. Dali’s works grew bigger and busier as he got older.

That Duchamp could be both a great artist and a great chess-player suggests there is such a thing as general intelligence. It’s a touchy subject, I’ve pondered on here as intelligence appears to be inheritable.

Robert Buxbaum, September 23, 2022.