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Egg consumption inversely correlated with Alzheimer's
- aussieguy1234 3mo agoSince the study was done on Seventh Day Adventists, it's worth noting that they are all vegetarian, so no meat based protein options here...
- beering 3mo agoAbout half of the study participants were non-vegetarian, IIUC. I wonder if they found any correlation after slicing by vegetarianism?
- anonym29 3mo agoA core part of the scientific method is that you attempt to isolate a single variable at a time. If anything, all this suggests is that this was a better diet-controlled sample population for measuring the correlation of eggs and Alzheimer's than the general public. That said, the methodology of this study does not allow for inferring a relationship between Alzheimer's and meat consumption in either direction.
- adrianN 3mo agoIt is very difficult to do that in biological systems where doing A in isolation can have the opposite effect of doing A while also doing B.
- thayne 3mo agoThere could be an interaction with the diet though. For example, what if the nutrient in eggs that prevents Alzheimer's is something that also occurs in meat? Also, it seems likely that among this population many of those who don't or rarely consume eggs are vegan or almost vegan, so it might be more accurate to say that veganism is correlated with Alzheimer's.
- hombre_fatal 3mo ago1. They ran a sensitivity analysis that removed vegans yet still got the same result, so the egg gradient is still there among non-vegans. 2. They modeled swapping eggs for nuts/seeds/legumes and saw the same risk reduction. (Table 4)
- s1artibartfast 3mo ago>2. They modeled swapping eggs for nuts/seeds/legumes and saw the same risk reduction. (Table 4) I think the table isnt clear, but I think the claim for 2 is that nuts(ect) did not show the same reduction - the egg finding held up. > Substituting eggs for nuts/seeds or legumes in the diet was associated with a similarly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
- mullingitover 3mo agoAdventists are okay with meat as long as it’s kosher generally. I think the bigger factor is that they’re teetotalers. My data points, though: two of my vegetarian teetotaling Adventist family members died of Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle is clearly not a cheat code for defeating dementia.
- aorloff 3mo agoI guess I gotta be the one to ask -- so do you recall if they ate eggs ?
- EdwardDiego 3mo agoThey do. These days generally the main prohibition is pig derived products, but plenty of SDAs still choose to be vegetarian. I'm not an SDA, but my daughter is.
- keanebean86 3mo agoI grew up SDA. We ate eggs. Meat (beef, chicken, fish with scale and fins) was not forbidden but it was looked down upon. Potlucks were the worst since i was (am) a picky eater. No meat in sight. Mostly grey lumps in white gravy-ish sauce. I would survive on shells and cheese, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad. It's possible we were just bad SDAs though. I've met some hardcore SDAs. I imagine how I felt about them was how "regular" Christians felt about me. Sorry, this is way more information than you asked for...
- thin_carapace 3mo agoeggs are a highly concentrated natural source of choline. meat does contain choline but nowhere near as much as eggs. drawing the connection between cholinergic activity and alzheimers is left as an exercise for the unaware reader.
- tfwnopmt 3mo agoCancer is also inversely correlated with alzheimer's. Phrased another way, egg consumption is correlated with cancer.
- recursivecaveat 3mo agoNot necessarily. Looking before crossing the street is inversely correlated with getting hit by a truck. Getting trucked is inversely correlated with getting mauled by a lion (most places with wild lions are light on road traffic). Doesn't mean that looking both ways will increase your odds of becoming lion chow though.
- tfwnopmt 3mo agoI'm not sure what this strawman is going on about, but the cancer-alzheimer's inverse correlation is a well known phenomenon https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00442-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00442-1
- thin_carapace 3mo agoalzheimers must be a byproduct of some process the body uses to fight cancer. thank you so much for sharing this article, it is the most interesting physiological discovery I've heard in a long time. next steps we need to identify whether this hypothetical anti cancer mechanism is selective or constantly active. the plaques were a dead end but not a dead end!!!
- iwantitez 3mo ago[dead]
- adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago> In addition, to evaluate potential bias because of unmeasured systematic differences between consumers and nonconsumers, we conducted a sensitivity analysis excluding vegans. Vegans comprised a substantial portion of the zero egg consumption group, which could disproportionately influence this group, and they often differ in other lifestyle or health-related characteristics. So they eliminated vegans from the sensitivity analysis despite them comprising a substantial portion of the no-egg group. If the analysis doesn’t hold with vegans included, it’s probably saying a lot about dairy rather than eggs.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoThey said it held up with and without vegans, getting the same result. > Results from the sensitivity analysis excluding vegans remained very consistent with the primary findings (Table 3). The HR for consuming eggs 5 or more times/wk, compared with never/rare consumption, was 0.73 (0.60, 0.89).
- bastard_op 3mo agoI tried to look, but the google captcha wouldn't let me, finally gave up trying.
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoSome previous discussion 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038873
- willis936 3mo agoWhy would having alzheimer's reduce people's desire to eat eggs?
- pinkmuffinere 3mo agoI know you’re joking, but possible causal path here: People with Alzheimer’s lose ability to use stove -> eat simpler less involved breakfasts -> eats less eggs
- krackers 3mo agoYou can make eggs in a microwave (critically so long as you don't do it in the shell)
- ajross 3mo agoYou can, but people don't as a general rule. It's a traditional food prepared traditionally. And importantly, another thing early Alzheimers cases don't do is learn new cooking hacks.
- b3lvedere 3mo agoWorks surprisingly good indeed. Just get a bowl, stir some eggs, add seasonings of choice and pop it in. Be sure to stop the microwave on time, because the mixture expands a lot.
- seanhunter 3mo agoThey would forget where they put them. Joking aside, (and I speak as someone who has lost 2 close members of my family to dementia), as soon as people start to experience any form of dementia, there is a sort of coping mechanism that kicks in where they stop doing “complex” things as much as they used to, because there is a huge amount of anxiety that is caused by losing short-term memory (you are constantly thrown into situations where you can’t make sense of what’s going on). So my mother-in-law for example, stopped cooking for herself long before some of the other symptoms really became apparent. She told everyone she was “bored of it”, and when cooking for a larger group she wolud constantly check and recheck the recipe. At the time it drove me crazy but then later when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s it all started to make sense.
- pinkmuffinere 3mo agoI’m copying this comment from discussion two months ago > Caveat: > > Funding [...] The analyses in this study were supported by an investigator-initiated grant from the American Egg Board. [...]
- aziaziazi 3mo agoAlso, buried in the article: > Substituting eggs for nuts/seeds or legumes in the diet was associated with a similarly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
- bwat49 3mo agoSo one of those egg council creeps got to you too huh?
- bitwize 3mo ago(Sonic voice) Foiled your plans again, Eggman!
- unknownfuture 3mo agoAw, you've got it all wrong bwat49. It's not like that!
- Jimmc414 3mo agoAgreed that seems like a potential conflict that should be scrutinized, but it highlights a real problem in health research. Who else would fund a 40,000 participant 15 year study about egg consumption and Alzheimer’s? How many studies are not conducted because no one is interested in funding them?
- fooqux 3mo ago> Who else would fund a 40,000 participant 15 year study about egg consumption and Alzheimer’s? Your government. Health insurances. A university. Any of the thousands of billionaires on this planet.
- ChiMan 3mo agoQuality of this study aside, and n of 1 here, my own state of mind, clarity of thought, and sleep are all noticeably better when I'm eating 2 or 3 eggs a day, 3 to 5 days a week. (I might go 7 days, but an independent value placed on dietary variety prevents that--perhaps foolishly when I notice what I'm eating on off days instead of the eggs.) Regardless, this whole eggs-are-evil thing has probably done more to harm the health of Westerners than any other dietary advice, with the possible exception of the fat-is-evil nonsense.
- al_borland 3mo agoDo you think the eggs are causing the better sleep, or are you more likely to have the energy to make eggs in the morning if you’d had a good night’s sleep?
- ChiMan 3mo agoIt seems the eggs improve the sleep, because after poor sleep, eggs the following day seem to have an effect on breaking the poor-sleep doom loop (which is: poor sleep elevates cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, junk-food cravings, and the need for caffeine--all of which contribute to another night of bad sleep). Not sure if it's the choline, which eggs have a lot of, or the egg-generated satiety that helps prevent eating too much. I think it may be the choline because when I'm otherwise eating high-choline foods such as red meat, my sleep is also better.
- hallole 3mo agoGiven that a great number of Westerns are overweight, it's probably appropriate for them to act as though "fat is evil" due to calorie density. Plus: saturated fat should be avoided; this is another thing Westerners are likely to be getting too much of.
- ChiMan 3mo agoExcept that three saturated-fat-laden strips of bacon for breakfast prevents the need for lunch, leaving my daily caloric intake lower than if I had eaten a bagel for breakfast and been hungry at lunch. The longer period between meals--snack-free--afforded by the bacon also means that post-meal insulin (the energy-storing hormone) has a chance to drop off, leaving glucagon (the energy-burning hormone) a path for liberating stored energy to power physical and mental activity.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- sph 3mo agoTo the egg lovers among us: what percentage of the mass you ingest over the lifetime do you think eggs total up to? Shall we say 5%? Suppose the remaining 95% is healthy vegetables, or a ludicrous amount of junk food. Do you think you can attribute any effect to eggs over the course of a lifetime? Of course not. However that is how dietary research works, and together with the blatant conflict of interest in this case, still call themselves a science whose findings get readily published in social media and newspapers. If I were king of this place, the first thing I would do would be to ban papers on nutrition, and nothing of value would be lost.
- KashifNY 3mo agoseems as if most of the daily necessities in peoples lives are having some sort of issues and with recent findings are having people avoid them.