By Dr. Ron McCluskey
You may be wondering what a prion is and why you should care.
Well, your ears might perk up a lot if you hear the words -
'Mad Cow Disease'. That disease is caused by a transmissible
prion.
Prion related diseases have been recognized for years. However,
until recently we did not realize what caused them.
What we did know about them is that they caused dementia.
People gradually lost their ability to reason and remember
things. We also noticed that there were typical changes in the
brain when looked at during autopsy.
Prions became famous when Kuru was found among the Fore people
of New Guinea. In this disease, people would get unsteady gait,
tremors, and slurred speech. The interesting thing was that only
women and children seemed to get the disease.
It was finally noticed that when a person died, his family
would eat him as a way to honor the dead. But only the women
and children participated in this practice. Scientists found
that by stopping this practice, the incidence of the disease
suddenly plummeted.
Further research in Kuru found that the cause was a protein -
not a bacteria or virus. Furthermore, there was no way to
destroy this protein by filtering or cooking. Proteins are
formed as a long molecule that then folds over and over. The
shape of the folded molecule determines how it functions.
It also determines what enzymes in the body are needed to break
it down when it is no longer needed. The prion works by causing
a protein in the brain into the wrong shape. Therefore it does
not work and the brain makes more and more of the chemical -
trying to make enough of the protein to fill the need of the
body.
The real devastation of the disease though is that the
resulting misshapen chemical does not have enzymes in the body
that can break it down! So the protein builds up in large
amounts that become toxic to brain cells and finally cause them
to die.
Once scientists realized the cause and effect of this prion,
several other known diseases were found that fit this pattern.
These included scrapie (found in sheep), chronic wasting
disease (found in deer and elk), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and
fatal familial insomnia in humans, and bovine spongiform
encephalopathy in cattle (also known as mad cow disease).
What is not known is if there is a connection to prion disease
and Alzheimer's disease. We have recognized several genetic
mutations that can cause Alzheimer's disease and form prions in
the body of the person with the mutation. However, this does not
account for the total number of those with Alzheimer's disease.
One piece of evidence that is suspicious. It is known that
people who habitually eat meat more than four times a week have
three times as much chance of getting Alzheimer's disease than
vegetarians. However, at least some of this statistic could be
related to increasing arteriosclerosis (hardening of the
arteries) in those that eat meat.
If there is a prion that causes Alzheimer's disease that you
can get from eating meat, why can't you easily prove or
disprove it? Well, here is the problem. The currently know
prions cause disease fast enough that you can put the prions
into lab animals like white mice and they get the disease.
However, have you ever seen a mouse live as long as someone who
has Alzheimer's disease? Of course not.
We do know that prions come in strains that vary widely in the
amount of time that it takes to cause the disease. So, here is
the big question. What if there were a prion that caused
disease in humans, but it took longer to cause problems than
the lifespan of the animal that it came from? For instance, if
cows live 10 years but it takes 50 years for the disease to
show up, you would never - ever see the disease in cows even if
they carried the disease. The same goes for chickens, sheep and
pigs. You see the problem?
At this point, we do know that one fact - that you get only 1/3
as much dementia if you are a vegetarian. Until more is known
about what is really in fact safe to eat, vegetarians have a
leg up on carnivores on this issue.
About the Author: Dr. Ron is an Emergency Room physician with
over twenty years experience in the health care field. He often
treats people for problems with their weight. Come to
http://balanceddiethealth.com now for more great resources.
Source: http://www.isnare.com
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