Today we’ll visit Science Daily and a new study on dementia and Alzheimer’s and how unused glycogen (stored glucose) can cause tau-related damage that causes or progresses these so-called “diseases.”
“A new study from scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging has revealed a surprising player in the battle against Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia: brain sugar metabolism. Published in Nature Metabolism, the research uncovers how breaking down glycogen — a stored form of glucose — in neurons may protect the brain from toxic protein buildup and degeneration.”
To easily make sense of this, let’s focus on the brain’s ability to store glycogen and why it does this.
The brain can use glucose and ketones as fuel. It does work better with a lot of ketones, but glucose is still the larger “fuel” source. Remember, humans are obligate hyper carnivores and we are supposed to be fat adapted and be in various states of ketosis for most of our lives. In ketosis, we rely on fat as our main source of fuel and we produce both glucose to cover our needs and also ketones that are a more efficient fuel than fat and glucose for the brain, and also the heart and our muscles.Â
Glycogen is a stored form of glucose, and while the brain does contain glycogen, the amount is quite small compared to other tissues like the liver or skeletal muscles.
The liver, for instance, acts as the body’s main glycogen reservoir, storing glucose to regulate blood sugar/glucose levels and support the brain indirectly. In contrast, the brain’s glycogen is limited, but it’s still present — why would the brain need its own glycogen if it can use ketones and rely on gluconeogenesis for glucose? Simple. It’s an immediate backup mechanism for low ketone levels.
In ketosis, ketone levels can fluctuate depending on factors like fat intake, fasting duration, or metabolic demand (hard physical activity.) If ketone production lags or energy needs spike, the brain’s small glycogen stores can be broken down quickly to provide glucose, much quicker than absorbing blood glucose that is present due to gluconeogenesis. This acts as an immediate energy buffer, ensuring the brain isn’t left vulnerable during transitions or shortages in ketone availability.
If you understand this, and likely you already did, you have already figured out why the breakdown of glycogen is normal and healthy, while the opposite, not utilizing this glycogen and the glycogen stores always being full may cause damage — and why this happens, which should not be hard to figure out considering the backwards modern diet and today’s retarded pseudo-scientific diet recommendations.
“Glycogen is typically thought of as a reserve energy source stored in the liver and muscles. While small amounts also exist in the brain, particularly in support cells called astrocytes, its role in neurons has long been dismissed as negligible. This new study challenges that view, and it does so with striking implications, says Professor Pankaj Kapahi, PhD, senior scientist on the study. Stored glycogen doesn’t just sit there in the brain; it is involved in pathology.”
I explained all this above. The glycogen is a backup mechanism, an emergency fuel source. If ketones suddenly drop, it will need to be replaced by the less favorable energy source, that of glucose.
And it’s not really pathology, as that indicates the causes, processes or development of a disease, and while indoctrinated imbeciles might call dementia or Alzheimer’s a “disease,” that is not a correct scientific definition. And we’ll get to that in a bit.
“The research team, led by postdoc Sudipta Bar, PhD, discovered that in both fly and human models of tauopathy (a group of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s), neurons accumulate excessive glycogen. More importantly, this buildup appears to contribute to disease progression. Bar says tau, the infamous protein that clumps into tangles in Alzheimer’s patients, appears to physically bind to glycogen, trapping it and preventing its breakdown.”
Excessive glycogen. And what causes excessive glycogen? Yes, abnormally elevated blood glucose levels, as in consuming carbohydrates. And even worse, if this is repeated several times a day, every day for the most of your life — the damage will be immense on your whole body, as we already know, and the brain is not excluded, as we now can see.
The tau protein is a microtubule-associated protein (MAP) that plays a vital role in neuronal stability and function in the healthy brain. It is primarily expressed by neurons in the brain and is involved in stabilizing microtubules, which are essential for maintaining the structure and function of axons, and their dysfunction is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, leading to tangles that impair brain function. And if tau proteins react with glycogen, that is bad news for those who constantly elevate their blood glucose above normal levels (maintained by gluconeogenesis) by consuming carbohydrates.
If high carbohydrate intake keeps the brain in a glucose-dependent state, preventing ketosis, and if unused glycogen contributes to tau-related damage, then long-term carbohydrate diets will increase neurodegenerative risk.
“When glycogen can’t be broken down, the neurons lose an essential mechanism for managing oxidative stress, a key feature in aging and neurodegeneration. By restoring the activity of an enzyme called glycogen phosphorylase (GlyP) — which kicks off the process of glycogen breakdown — the researchers found they could reduce tau-related damage in fruit flies and human stem cell-derived neurons.”
Again, if there is an abundance of glucose there is no need for that stored glycogen. It will simply sit around and cause damage to the tau proteins. However, if you follow our natural human species-specific and species-appropriate diet of animal fats and protein, you will rely on fats, ketones and glucose manufactured via gluconeogenesis, and every time you move about or go without food for a while, ketones might drop a little and that glycogen in the brain will be used up while adjusting to use more of the blood glucose instead. In other words, our natural state is to fill up and deplete these glycogen stores on a continuous basis, minimizing any damage to the tau proteins. However, someone consuming carbohydrates and keeping blood glucose high and shutting down ketone production, well, that is a recipe for disaster as previously mentioned.
In most of the remaining review, the researchers only mentioned how this “discovery” about glycogen phosphorylase (GlyP) can help with these “diseases,” which is backwards thinking.
Using drugs to activate or supply glycogen phosphorylase (GlyP) is only a band-aid solution. The problem is that you run on an unnatural fuel source, as in carbohydrates. If you eat according to your species, as in being fat adapted and in ketosis, this will never happen. Your brain will be perfectly safe and protected. So, switch to our natural diet instead and start healing. Simply trying to force glycogen phosphorylase (GlyP) to work while still consuming carbohydrates and keeping blood glucose high will only be a temporary solution for the brain, but as we know, elevated blood glucose damages all our soft tissues and organs, so overall bodily damage will still continue to accumulate, which is extremely retarded.
“Kapahi says this study not only highlights glycogen metabolism as an unexpected hero in the brain but also opens up a new direction in the search for treatments against Alzheimer’s and related diseases. By discovering how neurons manage sugar, we may have unearthed a novel therapeutic strategy: one that targets the cell’s inner chemistry to fight age-related decline, he says. As we continue to age as a society, findings like these offer hope that better understanding — and perhaps rebalancing — our brain’s hidden sugar code could unlock powerful tools for combating dementia.”
The brain’s glycogen metabolism only works when you are in your natural fat adapted state and in ketosis, which is what we are built for. While we can tolerate carbohydrates as a back-up fuel when facing lack of proper food or a famine, we are not meant to consume carbs or any plant matter for longer periods of time. It’s an emergency solution and every time we reach for it we will inflict damage since it’s not our natural diet. Simply because we can tolerate something short term does not mean that we should consume it all the time. Unfortunately, that is what most of humanity has been deceived into doing, and now we pay the price with hundreds of “modern diseases” that were unheard of only a century ago.
Now, some imbecile might cry out in their mom’s basement that “not everyone on a high-carb diet develops dementia or Alzheimer’s.”
Sure, if you’re active and only consume a few meals a day of carbohydrates, allowing for a fasted window during sleep, the damage to the brain will be much less and you will likely not develop dementia or Alzheimer’s before you die, but the damage done to other parts of the body will still be severe and totally unnecessary. And this is why we see these “diseases” more and more among the elderly who previously were perfectly healthy, as they become inactive and rely more on convenient foods than nourishing foods, especially if placed in an elderly home where the food is atrocious. And that brings us to another important component.
While following an inappropriate diet and never entering ketosis will slowly damage the brain, another important factor in the development of dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain-related conditions are nutrient deficiencies, and especially the lack of animal fats such as cholesterol and omega-3. If you do not get enough cholesterol and omega-3, your brain cannot heal, nor can it function properly. And if you already are damaging your brain and tau proteins with constant filled glycogen stores, the lack of animal fats will stop any healing and these conditions will progress much faster. Again, look at many elderly today and their poor diets while becoming sedentary.
I have covered this in several articles. And again, it simply shows that humans are obligate hyper carnivores, as these problems are only the result of an inappropriate diet high in carbohydrates and lacking in animal-based foods. Simple, logical, and common sense.
And this is why we should not call these conditions “diseases” or put them into pathology, as they are driven by toxic damage and nutrient deficiencies from following an inappropriate diet.
Disease is defined as an abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation, environmental factors, or genetic defect, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs, symptoms, or both.
They’re not diseases, they’re caused by your choice of diet and lifestyle. Perhaps we should call the self-inflicted conditions.
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