Alzheimer’s Disease, Memory, and Hormones

It is predicted that by the year 2050, 14 million people in the United States will have Alzheimer’s disease. It is a type of dementia with cognitive decline.

        

The exact cause of Alzheimer’s is unknown. It may be a combination of factors, different for every individual, that contribute to the disease. During your lifetime, you lose approximately 20% of your brain cells, but in Alzheimer’s Disease brain cell death is so extensive that the brain can no longer direct the your bodily activities.

           

The chances of acquiring Alzheimer’s disease increases with age. Two to six percent of the population over age 65 is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Half of the population over age 85 has Alzheimer’s, and it is responsible for half the nursing home admissions in the United States.

           

Alzheimer’s is more common in women, and is four times greater if someone in your family has the disease.  In the early stages, a person becomes increasingly forgetful and has difficulty carrying out complex thought processes. The onset can take one to ten years with severe and continual decline for which no other cause can be identified.

           

Contributing factors to the disease may be genetic predisposition, abnormal calcium regulation in the brain cells, or toxic levels of aluminum, lead, iron, or some other heavy metal in the body. Malnutrition, decreased blood flow to the brain, extensive free radical damage, and environmental toxins also can have an effect.

           

Alzheimer’s patients have abnormal fibrils surrounding the brain cells eventually ensnarling the brain cells until they die. There are also dead cellular waste products called senile plaques composed of beta-amyloid.

           

Cognitive decline is not hopeless or inevitable. You can improve the circuitry in your brain by eating wisely, taking appropriate vitamins, minerals, and smart medications, exercising your body and mind, balancing your hormones, and controlling your response to stress in your life.  Certain pharmaceuticals (sedatives, painkillers, and anti-depressants like Valium, Darvon, Percodan, and Elavil), alcohol, cigarette smoking, environmental toxins, and allergic substances can harm the brain and should be avoided. Keep your brain busy and active to improve memory, awareness, alertness, and concentration.

 

Hormone replacement is important in preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Hormones That Prevent and Improve Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Growth Hormone improves memory, mood, anxiety, tension, vigor, and cognitive performance. Growth hormone improves memory in Alzheimer’s disease.

 

It increases glucose utilization, neurogenesis, and blood vessels in brain. It decreases beta-amyloid neurotoxicity, especially in hippocampus.

 

The first improvement is in 2-4 months. The last improvement is in the next 3 years.

 

 

Melatonin deficiency can cause memory loss. Deficiency in melatonin produces reduced anti-oxidant activity in the brain. It protects the brain against toxic free radical damage.

 

 

Pregnenolone is a neurosteroid synthesized in the brain, neurons, and peripheral nerves by the neurons. Deficiency causes decreased memory and attention. Alzheimer’s patients have low pregnenolone.

 

Pregnenolone increases memory, increases spatial memory, decreases alcohol amnesia, and benzodiazepam (Valium, Versed, triazolam) amnesia.

 

It increases acetylcholine in the hippocampus, and decreases beta amyloid and glutamate neurotoxicity.

 

 

Thyroid Hormone – decreased thyroid hormone causes increased memory loss. Deficiency can also slow down mood reaction, fatigue, depression, excessive nervousness, decreased IQ, decreased attention, decreased space orientation, slow thinking, short and long memory loss, and decreased cognitive function. Alzheimer’s patients have low thyroid hormone.

 

Characteristics of thyroid memory loss are worse in the morning or inactivity, better in the evening, and slow to find word.

 

Mechanisms of memory enhancement with thyroid hormone are increased brain blood flow, increased brain excitability, increased dendrites and synapses.

 

With treatment, first improvement is in 2-4 months, and last improvement is in the next 8-12 months.

 

 

DHEA  - decreased serum DHEA causes increased memory loss. Alzheimer’s disease patients have decreased DHEA. DHEA therapy increases memory. It improves mood in depression and may protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Mechanism of protection is that it enhances the survival and differentiation of neurons and glial cells by increasing the expression of protein.

 

It takes 4-6 months to get the first memory improvement. The last improvement is in the next 8 months.

 

 

Cortisol – decreased or increased cortisol can cause memory loss.

 

There is more memory loss during stress, especially at the end of the day. Memory is paralyzed or confused in stress situations, especially short term memory when you feel overwhelmed by what is happening and may have dramatized reactions. Improvement may occur in 24 hours with cortisone supplementation. The last improvement is in 2-3 months.

 

Chronic stress and increased cortisol can rob the brain cells and neurotransmitters of glucose causing brain cell death. Too much cortisol can damage your neuro-endocrine system which is the connection between your mind and body.

 

 

Estrogen – Decreased estrogen causes increased memory loss, disturbances of mood (depression, fatigue, poor libido), poor concentration.

Estrogen deficiency decreases the blood supply to the brain and reduces EEG electrical activity. Estrogen replacement reduces the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Estrogen increases memory in women, increases visual memory in men.

 

Characteristics of memory loss is short and long term memory poor throughout the day, permanent memory loss,  and talks less.

 

Estrogen increases brain blood flow, increases neuron connections, decreases  beta-amyloid production and neurotoxicity, decreases brain ischemia.

 

After treatment first improvement is in 2-4 months, last improvement occurs in the next 8-12 months.

 

Testosterone – memory loss is a frequent complaint of decreased testosterone. Alzheimer patients have decreased testosterone.  People with higher free testosterone have a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s. Testosterone improves memory in normal and Alzheimer patients. Testosterone improves learning, memory, spatial memory, mathematical performance.

 

Mechanism – increases neuron connections, increases the size and numbers of dendrites, increases the numbers of connections between neurons. Decreased testosterone causes decreased estrogen which produces cognitive complaints. Testosterone increases brain blood perfusion, decreases beta-amyloid secretion, and decreases beta-amyloid toxicity.

 

Memory loss from testosterone deficiency is worse in the second half of the day and after physical activity.  Memory is better in the morning. Hesitation with words is a characteristic of testosterone loss.

 

First improvement with treatment is 2-4 months. Last improvement is in the next 8-12 months.

 

If you are having memory problems or fear Alzheimer’s disease, it is crucial to have your hormones checked, and replaced if deficient.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heather Locklear - Hormone Imbalance?

 

 

Heather Locklear was arrested yesterday for driving under the influence of a controlled substance, presumably the pharmaceutical medication she is taking for anxiety and depression.

 

In July, she spent a month in a spa-like treatment facility in Arizona for anxiety and depression. Articles implied she was already on medication and needed it adjusted. Certainly her recent public divorce is a reason for situational depression.

 

With all due respect, I have one question. Has Heather had her hormones checked?  Now this might bring a collective groan, but think about it. Locklear is almost 47, well into the perimenopause and hormone loss. She looks young and beautiful, but our bodies have a relentless “biological clock” that cannot be ignored. We know that testosterone and progesterone are the first hormones to decline. Testosterone is linked to maintaining emotional shield and may prevent panic attacks. Progesterone deficiency causes irritability, mood swings, depression, and insomnia. Progesterone has a calming effect on the body by stimulating the calming GABA receptors in the brain. Add a little loss of estrogen which stimulates calming serotonin production (the same as those antidepressants are supposed to be doing), and emotional lability, weepiness, and depression can follow.

 

The FDA has warned that anti-depressants may increase depression and suicidality.

 

Medications like hormonal birth control or Prempro only make matters worse because progestins in these medications inhibit the production of the body’s progesterone and occupy progesterone receptors. I have had several patients lately on hormonal birth control come in with depression. They are on things like Mirena and Nuvaring, both of which secrete potent progestins (not progesterone) in the circulation that occupy progesterone receptors and deplete progesterone thereby preventing the calming effect of progesterone and natural hormonal balance. This effect may be more pronounced as we get older, since we are also losing our progesterone by our ovaries beginning to shut down. Post-partum depression is associated with a drop in progesterone after childbirth. Giving progesterone post-partum can prevent this depression.

 

Stress makes matters worse. When we have stress our adrenal glands increase our production of cortisol which is our hormone that controls our daily sleep-wake cycle and our fight or flight response. The body will use all its resources to make cortisol, a hormone we cannot live without.  The body uses progesterone to help make cortisol, so stress situations may make progesterone levels lower. This may be the connection between stress and infertility. Chronic stress gives way to fatigue as the body struggles to keep up with the stress demand. Both adrenal stress and fatigue can further intensify depression through fluctuations in cortisol and progesterone. Relaxation may allow temporary improvement, but the perimenopausal body still continues its relentless progesterone and estrogen decline.

 

Suzanne Somers’s has called anti-depressants, sleeping pills, and pain medicine, the “menopause cocktail”. As a former member of that club, I can attest to the truth of it. Initially, being uninformed and thinking I was still “young”, I did not put it together. It was only through proactive seeking that I found what was missing and that was my hormones. I recommend a good reading of Suzanne Somers’s “Breakthrough”. With bioidentical hormone replacement we can treat the underlying cause of our mid-life perimenopausal emotional changes and be ourselves again.

 

I have treated women who were able to throw their antidepressants and sleeping pills away and say “bye-bye” to their therapists once their hormone were replaced and balanced with bioidentical hormones.

 

Heather, check it out. Your body is changing and yes, you are getting older and losing your hormones. It happens to all of us. Replace and balance your hormones with bioidenticals and you might be able to get off all that pharmaceutical, controlled substance stuff, save yourself the embarrassment of negative publicity and mug shots, and be your lovely self again. What have you got to lose?

 

 

 

 

 

Bioidentical Hormones are Safe

Estrogen-Natural Bioidentical Hormone Replacement

    

You need to think about starting natural estrogen bioidentical hormone replacement therapy when approaching menopause in your late 40’s and early 50’s. Why? Well, for relief of symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and low libido among others, nothing works better than estrogen.  Long term benefits of estrogen bioidentical replacement therapy include prevention of memory loss, maintenance of heart health, prevention of heart disease, bone production (prevention of osteoporosis), prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, prevention of cataracts and macular degeneration, maintenance of mood and prevention of depression, and quality and youthfulness of your genital tissues and skin. Vitamins and herbs cannot do all these things (although they may temporarily improve some symptoms like hot flashes). Quite simply, estrogen keeps women’s cells healthy. Only estrogen in women can prevent disease and improve quality of life…and only bioidentical transdermal estrogen!

 

 

 

 

Progesterone Deficiency

 

Although the traditional definition of menopause is 12 months without a period, hormone loss can start 10-15 years before this happens. Testosterone starts declining first, and then progesterone. Estrogen is the last to go and is often signaled by the infamous “hot flash” we’ve all heard about.

Most women start feeling differently from their younger selves in their 40’s when progesterone starts declining. But even young women can have decreased progesterone which can manifest as PMS (premenstrual syndrome), often associated with stress or hormonal birth control. The most common symptoms of decreased progesterone include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Irritability
• Insomnia
• Mood swings
• Osteoporosis
• Pain and inflammation (aching joints, back)
• Increasing HDL cholesterol
• Excessive menstruation
• Weight gain or inability to lose weight.
• Fibroids
• Fibrocystic disease of the breast
• Breast tenderness
• Bloating
• Indigestion
• Gas
• Snoring
• Migraine headaches

There are other causes of decreased progesterone besides decreased production. These include:

• Stress
• Antidepressants
• Sugar
• Saturated fats
• Deficiency of vitamins A, B6, C, and Zinc
• Decreased thyroid hormone
• Taking progestins (a synthetic progesterone) in birth control pills and birth control devices, or in Prempro (synthetic hormone replacement)

Natural bioidentical (same molecular structure as in the human body) progesterone

has many beneficial effects including:

• A calming effect
• Helps sleep
• Balances estrogen
• Lowers blood pressure
• Helps the body metabolize fats
• Lowers cholesterol
• Increases scalp hair
• Is a natural diuretic
• Is a natural antidepressant
• Increases metabolic rate

 

If are experiencing the symptoms of progesterone deficiency, it is important to be tested by a knowledgeable physician to see if you need replacement. Natural bioidentical progesterone replacement may be all you need to start feeling yourself again.