Dr. Richard Johnson
speaker
152 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Dr. Richard Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Just to talk about Alzheimer's just for a few minutes, we talked about the focus being on amyloid plaques and tau protein. And in the very beginning, everyone said, well, maybe that's the cause of Alzheimer's, these plaques. And if we can figure out how to remove the plaques or to prevent the plaques, we can treat the disease.
And so much of the focus of the big pharma has been to try to develop ways to block that. And as you have already mentioned, you know, there's been like 40 different drugs that have gone to trial and only a few have succeeded and they only work partially at best. And so people said, you know, there must be something that starts this whole disease.
Let's, you know, let's go back to when the disease is just beginning. Can we actually identify, you know, factors that seem to be important? And some of the factors that were important, you know, it's associated with diabetes and obesity, and these are diseases that I study. So I was interested in that. And it's also associated with insulin resistance in the brain.
And they do these studies where they can show that there's an impairment of glucose being taken up in the brain. If you do special scans, you can show that there's an impairment in the ability for the brain to take up glucose. It's like the brain is becoming insulin resistant.
Okay, so the brain uses glucose as its primary fuel and it loves glucose. Glucose is the main carbohydrate that's circulating in our blood. If our glucose levels are high, we call it diabetes. If the glucose levels are low, we call it hypoglycemia. But glucose is like the primary fuel and it's a major fuel the brain uses.
But in early Alzheimer's, there seems to be an impairment in the neurons being able to utilize the glucose. So insulin is a hormone that helps drive glucose into cells. if you become insulin resistant, you have trouble getting glucose into those cells. A lot of the brain, it doesn't require much insulin at all, and glucose can go in pretty easily.
But there are certain regions of the brain that are insulin sensitive, and those parts of the brain, if you become insulin resistant, you can't deliver the fuel as well. And that's associated with the second problem that you see in Alzheimer's, which is the the mitochondria are these little factories in the cell that make energy. They make ATP.
And there seems to be some problems with these energy factories in early Alzheimer's. They're not making as much ATP as they should. There's seems to be some stress going on with the mitochondria over time. There can be a loss of mitochondria. And so you have a problem with the energy factories, you have a problem with them taking up glucose to make energy, and you have low grade inflammation.
And I thought to myself, you know, this is actually what I study, but not in the brain, but what I'm studying in the circulation, what I'm studying in the systemic systems. You know, I'm looking at what drives insulin resistance, and I have personally linked it with energy production and inability for these energy factories to make ATP. And I thought, oh my gosh, there's a connection there.
And some people call early Alzheimer's brain diabetes because of this insulin resistance. And so I knew that there had to be some kind of link between those two diseases. you know, between obesity and diabetes. And people who are obese and diabetic have an increased risk for developing it.
But there seem to, it isn't a match, you know, it isn't like if you're overweight, you're going to get dementia. But there is this association. A strong correlation. Yeah, a correlation. And so I started thinking,
thinking about what our work shows in the body and I started thinking about how that system might work on the brain and I had this kind of aha moment where I suddenly realized that I could explain how Alzheimer's develops.
So everybody who's looking at me, please don't, you know, it's not like I'm saying this is the cause, but I would like to present you the evidence because it's very strong.
Exactly. And so just like currently, there are different groups that are saying, okay, they've got insulin resistance in the brain. How about if we give insulin through the nose, through the nostrils, where it can actually get to the brain directly? And can we treat the disease? Can we improve things? And there are early studies saying that might help a little bit.
And there are people giving anti-inflammatories that can block the inflammation in the brain. They're seeing a little bit of protection. But the problem, Drew, with all these kinds of problems, of these approaches, is they're trying to patch They're trying to put out the fire, but they're not trying to figure out what's causing the fire.
And what's fantastic about this story that I'm going to share with you is that I'm going to try to show you how it happens and how we can prevent it. And at the end, let's talk about all the ways and the evidence that we can actually reverse or block early Alzheimer's and so forth, because it's a very exciting area.
You're absolutely right. So we have identified two mutations that have occurred in the past, both kind of interesting stories that make us more susceptible to obesity and diabetes. and at the same time may also have a role in increasing our risk for Alzheimer's. But the fundamental issue is not just those mutations, but what is this pathway that's causing obesity and diabetes?
So what I'd love to do is to take you through that part and then we can then hit the mutations and the survival pathway in the past as well.
So I was very interested in what was causing obesity and diabetes and through a series of adventures and research adventures related to doing different studies, we came to the observation that uric acid was very important in obesity and diabetes. And uric acid is a substance that circulates in our blood and it's like a breakdown product of energy. So when energy breaks down, energy is
we call energy ATP. And that's what we use to do everything we want. So the mitochondria, these energy factories, produce ATP. And the ATP is what gives us the energy. There's really two types of energy. There's the active energy, which is the ATP. That's for, you know, talking, running, jumping.
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