Thoughts from this week: 2024/01/17

Surprising New Study

Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a particularly horrible neurodegenerative disease. When I first met my neighbor in Connecticut, he was a nice, friendly guy who had just retired, and was looking forward to enjoying the rest of his life with his wife.

The next time I saw him, he was in a motorized wheelchair, with a full-time aide looking after his needs, which included going out on the street for some sun.

Within six months of my first meeting him, he was dead.

Many neurodegenerative diseases show signs of oxidative stress (OxStr) being a part of causation, and my understanding of OxStr is that it’s typically a short-hand for seed oil poisoning.

I haven’t looked much at ALS, as opposed to Alzheimer’s, which is the most common form of neurodegeneration. (The fellow who ran the camp I went to as a kid came down with Alzheimer’s disease. He was an incredibly capable individual, as you needed to be in the North Maine Woods, yet he was reduced to a toddler in one year, and was dead in three.)

So I was interested to see this recent Master’s thesis about ALS (Jacobs, 2025):

“In conclusion, the intricate network of pathologic pathways implicated in ALS necessitates a comprehensive therapeutic strategy. Given that singular pathway modulation often results in compensatory mechanisms that perpetuate neurodegeneration, a multitarget approach or combination therapies emerge as imperative. By concurrently addressing multiple pathways, these strategies hold the potential to effectively disrupt the cascade of neurodegenerative events in ALS, offering a more promising avenue for altering the course of the disease.”

Upon a cursory review, many of the pathways described have obvious links to seed oil consumption.