Beatroot Juice for Blood Pressure?

Not really sure that eating lots of nitrates to control blood pressure is a good idea. As the news item states the nitrates are converted to nitric oxide, which is very important in inducing relaxation of the blood vessel muscles, thereby reducing blood pressure. There are 3 major enzymes for producing nitric oxide, iNOS,nNOS,eNOS. i=inducible, typically associated with inflammatory events, n=neuronal, nitric oxide being very important for neural transmission, 3=endlothelial NOS, that which helps the blood vessels relax. Nitric oxide concentrations are tightly regulated and with good reason: it is a potent free radical. Nitrates are a substrate for boosting nitric oxide, perhaps generally, so while it may help with blood pressure it may also upset nitric oxide regulation, induce inflammation, cause free radical damage, and over activate the immune responses, thereby setting the stage for atherosclerosis ... . I suspect it would be better to focus on arginine intake(esp. vs. lysine?) and the let the body work it out. The effect in the below study was within 24 hours, which suggests a strong response. All the more reason to worry.

Climate Change, Ecological Novelty, This is not the Age of Aquarius

Generally I prefer to stay away from debates about climate change. I try to perceive the issue in an ecological setting rather than some argument what is going to happen in 50 years if we don't or do do A or B. I have little confidence in our ability to predict the future but I often get the impression that arguments from sceptics and advocates appear predicated on the idea we can make reasonable predictions about future outcomes with sufficient degrees of confidence so as to justify actions A or B. Logically speaking we can't have such confidence, practically speaking if we try we learn something. We might even learn something useful but that's a long shot.

Can Diet Reverse Alzheimers?

Hope springs eternal, except when you're dead. (With no Arrow of Time is one eternally dead or eternally alive? Or am I in a box and if God happens to look inside will my fate then be decided? God, don't look!) On the internet there is a cure and conspiracy for everything. Such is the nature of human cognition, a ramshackle attack on reality that through brute force manages to get enough things right amidst the a multitude of errors and disasters. I read Camus in another life and I really must try to start forgetting him.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

The Myth of Sisyphus, page 24

I seriously doubt there can ever be a cure of Alzheimers. (At the end of this post though I do suggest one idea that is worthy of serious consideration.) By the time diagnosis is made the damage tends to be extensive. Take Parkinsons Disease as an example, the individual can lose up to 60% of the neurons in the substantia nigra before symptoms arise. In dementias generally, by time of diagnosis a vicious physiological cycle of destruction has become established and at present there is no obvious solution to that problem. There is an increasingly detailed understanding of these processes and in time it will be possible for individuals to institute strategies that can seriously arrest the progression of even advanced dementia; though at that stage of dementia I'd rather take a bullet than pills. Such treatment expectations however are for another generation.

In our time, studies like this point to strategies that *may* help us. All things considered, it will not be a matter of single strategies or golden elixirs, but rather a lifestyle that incorporates a variety of strategies to minimise the risk of dementia.