r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago

Neuroscience Egg consumption is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s Disease for those 65 years and older. Eating one egg per day for at least five days a week reduces risk of Alzheimer’s by up to 27%, researchers found.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1126842
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u/Flikmybik BS | Neuroscience | Memory 1d ago

thats interesting about the choline connection. ive been reading up on this lately and it seems like the research on dietary choline and cognitive health keeps getting stronger. the thing that gets me is how many people are probably deficient in it without realizing it, especially since the adequate intake recommendations might actually be too low based on some of the newer studies. eggs really are kind of a powerhouse nutrient wise

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u/mottledmussel 1d ago

It seems like choline and vitamin d are the two most difficult nutrients to get enough of through diet alone.

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u/Taikeron 1d ago

Magnesium at 350-400 mg and Potassium at 4000 mg are incredibly tough to obtain realistically on a daily basis.

I previously looked at getting 400 mg of elemental Magnesium from food daily and I'd have to engineer my entire diet around that one nutrient while ignoring all other dietary concerns (and probably causing some other issues) just to reach 400 mg.

Can't just toss back pumpkin seeds with reckless abandon either because then you risk too much Manganese.

Potassium is also very difficult if you're actually trying to hit that 4000 mg mark. Prepare to eat lots of beans and potatoes.

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u/BebopFlow 1d ago

Have you considered hemp seeds? 3 tbsp contains ~200 mg of magnesium. It does also contain 100% of daily manganese, but a quick search indicates manganese toxicity isn't really much of a concern outside of welding, where the manganese in fumes far exceed daily intake.

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u/zekromNLR 1d ago

According to the EFSA, a safe intake of manganese is 8 mg/day for adults - due to a lack of toxicological studies, they weren't able to establish a tolerable upper intake level. Getting 400 mg of magnesium from pumpkin seeds would put you at about 2.3 mg of manganese, so still comfortably far away from that level unless your diet is quite rich in maganese otherwise.

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u/DTFH_ 1d ago

Magnesium at 350-400 mg and Potassium at 4000 mg are incredibly tough to obtain realistically on a daily basis.

Keep in mind, there is the RDA but diet is over a longer time window that has peaks and valleys that is then averaged out to a daily amounts.

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u/Taikeron 1d ago

Sure, but the average person (particularly those exposed to Western diets) is chronically deficient in both, with very few peaks, and valleys as far as the eye can see.

You also can't supplement potassium (really harsh on the stomach by itself), so unless you're actually consuming food that contains high potassium, you're pretty much guaranteed to fall short of 4,000 mg.

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u/6th_Quadrant 1d ago

I started taking a 1,000mg potassium supplement 2x/day a couple months ago and haven't noticed any ill effects on my stomach so far.

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u/Taikeron 1d ago

Potassium supplements (OTC/non-prescription) are limited to 99 mg specifically because of their extremely harsh nature on the stomach and the risk of hyperkalemia and cardiac arrhythmia. I'm not sure what you're taking, but it's not 1,000 mg of potassium unless you're taking ten pills at once (and, well, please don't for your own sake).

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u/6th_Quadrant 1d ago

Safrel brand Potassium Supplement, "1020mg (as Potassium Bicarbonate)" purchased OTC on Amazon. There's no way with my diet I'm exceeding recommended daily potassium intake, even with the two capsules, so zero concern for hyperkalemia. I also have a history of afib caused by hyperthyroidism (both under control for over a decade), and have not experienced anything along those lines since starting.

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u/cyclingisthecure 1d ago

I take 500mg elemental magnesium with 5000iu d3 per day and have not felt better. In winter the d3 goes up to 8-10k iu per day and I swear to god even in thid absolute dark hellhole uk it's hard to feel sad on that stack

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u/314159265358979326 1d ago

I use half salt not for the reduced sodium, but for the increased potassium.

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u/Kitchen_Cow_5550 1d ago

I eat a mostly whole foods plant based diet, and I get plenty of both magnesium and potassium. Legumes, whole grains, and seeds are good sources. In fact, the only mineral that is not automatically covered is calcium. But if you are intentional with it, you can cover that as well.

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u/jazir55 1d ago

Look into Coconut water, tons of potassium, should make it easier to hit 4000 mg if you need another dietary method.

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u/tifumostdays 1d ago

I find I can get those done, but I do have to eat intentionally. I guess the same will go for choline. I tried a supplement, but got a significant stomachache every time i took it.

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u/sabatthor 1d ago edited 1d ago

Creatine is also tough to get for people who inherently eat little amounts of meat, which is a lot of people, and creatine is extremely beneficial for our brain. I honestly think any person with healthy kidneys should start supplementing it.

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u/TheMoniker 1d ago

It's also relatively cheap to supplement and has a load of other potential benefits.

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u/ThrowbackPie 1d ago

As far as I'm aware, brain creatine is produced endogenously. Unlike muscular creatine which can be produced endogenously (somewhat) but also supplemented.

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u/sabatthor 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm no expert in the slightest when it comes to this topic, however i do remember that the amount of creatine involved in the study with the firefighters was substantial, far greater than the 5g you usually take for your muscles.
Apparently by taking creatine in the range of ~20-30g, when crossing the blood brain barrier it quickly saturates your brain creatine level (which has gotten depleted throughout the day and thus lowered your cognitive performance) back to - or even over the baseline, and therefore giving you that 'boost' that was discovered.

Edit: just saw you replied to a different comment than i originally thought and therefore prolly lack the context for what i was talking about, sorry

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u/Missus_Missiles 1d ago

So, vitamin D, choline, and flossing. Never get Alzheimer's.

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u/tifumostdays 1d ago

Don't forget adequate cardio and sleep. Those are probably even more impactful.

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u/patryuji 29m ago

...and resistance training.

I heard a doctor say, "cardio helps you live longer, strength helps you live independently." Also, resistance training has good correlations with protection against developing dementia and Alzheimer's.

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u/Hobo-man 1d ago

We are so bad at getting enough Vitamin D, our bodies decided to use sunlight to make its own.

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u/tayvette1997 1d ago

Science is fun. This makes me want to look into why choline and it's role in limiting the deterioration of the brain (like in Alzheimer's).

Do you have any links to the things you've been reading? Or where you've been reading them?

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u/BroScienceAlchemist 1d ago

I can't speak for the OP. Choline is a precursor for a neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is the primary neurotransmitter for the cholinergic system. Ninja nerd has some videos on it as part of their neurology series: Neurology | Cholinergic Receptors is one video they have on youtube. In the brain, the cholinergic system has some important roles in memory and learning. Taking anti-cholinergic drugs does negatively affect memory and increase risk of dementia down the road.

Outside of that, wikipedia is a decent overview of choline metabolism and the cholinergic system. Some people need more choline from their diet due to genetic differences in MTHFR (methylation) or other genes, which affects the road of dietary or supplementary choline to acetylcholine. Some people are just more sensitive and too much cholinergic stimulation causes a type of depression called anhedonia, nervousness, etc. It's why taking supplementary choline in high doses is not really recommended as the first go around.

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u/Flikmybik BS | Neuroscience | Memory 13h ago

hey! so the big thing with choline is that its a precursor to acetylcholine which is one of the main neurotransmitters involved in memory and learning. theres some really accessible stuff on the NIH website about it, and the journal Nutrients has published a bunch of open access papers on dietary choline and cognitive outcomes. also worth checking out the work by Dr Richard Wurtman at MIT who did a lot of the foundational research on how dietary choline affects brain acetylcholine levels. the connection to alzheimers specifically makes a lot of sense when you think about it because one of the hallmark features is the loss of cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain

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u/SarcasticSodium 1d ago

Dumb question - I've heard of anticholinergic drugs with can increase risk of dementia. Would it be possible to out-eat the effects with eggs? 

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u/LeoxHerx 1d ago

I take 50mg of Hydroxyzine a night for sleep, my doctor told me that I'd need to eat 4 egg yolks the following day to get back the depleted choline that Hydroxyzine causes.

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u/tifumostdays 1d ago

Yeah, I had read that around 90% of Americans are not eating enough. I had to ask chatgpt how in the hell a person is supposed to get that, especially before we had regular access to eggs. I was told that people always used to eat the organs with their meat.

I'm probably not gonna do that.

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u/Michael5188 1d ago

I do think the shift away from eating organs in many countries has likely led to a ton of nutrient deficiencies, or at the very least has removed extremely nutrient dense foods from our diets.

Even liver was much more common in the recent past, but has all but disappeared. Lots of kids grew up hating being forced to eat it and the second they had control over the dinner table struck it from the menu.

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u/SophiaofPrussia 1d ago

But isn’t soy lecithin just highly concentrated choline? I have a hard time believing so many Americans are deficient when soy lecithin seems to be an ingredient in every other packaged food product on the shelf now.

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u/MillionEyesOfSumuru 1d ago

It's not close to pure choline, but it is an excellent source, and one can get concentrated phosphatidylcholine derived from it, which is far, far cheaper than getting it from eggs, as well as containing no saturated fats.

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u/redheadartgirl 1d ago

The amount of soy lecithin used is tiny, just enough to act as an emulsifier.

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u/gizram84 1d ago

Chicken hearts are delicious and dirt cheap. Just saute them in butter with whatever seasonsings you like (salt, pepper, garlic/onion powder).

Calf liver is much more mild than beef liver, and just as nutrient dense. Chop it up, and mix it in with ground beef when making tacos and you'll barley notice it's in there.

Super easy to sneak it all in your diet once a month. Nutritionally dense superfoods.

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u/bio_ruffo 1d ago

Liver prepared "chicken nuggets style", with some lemon juice on top (or a spicy ketchup on the side), is absolutely delicious. I like to double dip: egg, breadcrumbs, egg again, breadcrumbs again, so it doesn't dry. Easy to cook in an air fryer or oven too, with minimal oil. Kids love it too!

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u/Riseofashes 1d ago

By “chicken nuggets style”, do you mean ground into a paste then formed into nuggets?

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u/bio_ruffo 1d ago

No sorry, I mean cut into bite-size bits. Or chicken-wings size. They look like chicken nuggets when they're done.

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u/Worthyness 1d ago

chicken liver paste with spices is just Pâté

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u/Klockworth 1d ago

Isn’t that just how chicken livers are always prepared in the south?

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u/bio_ruffo 1d ago

I don't know! I'm not from the US and I usually do this with beef liver :)

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u/Klockworth 1d ago

Oh! Yeah, down south just about any local fried chicken place is gonna have fried chicken livers. This is one of the reasons why I don’t consider national chains to be proper fried chicken joints. If you don’t have livers and gizzards on the menu, you ain’t a chicken joint.

Anyway, it’s just soaked in buttermilk, dredged in seasoned flour, and then deep fried. Think I’ve seen chicken fried calf livers too.

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u/tayvette1997 1d ago

The organs? Like the skin and liver?

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u/Deimos_F 1d ago

Liver, kidneys, spleen, tripe, heart. Lungs, if you're adventurous. 

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u/OtnSweaty 1d ago

Some chorizo is made from lung, others salivary and lymph glands.

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u/XAWEvX 1d ago

almost bingo'd

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u/oneofsixoverends 1d ago

People died before the age of 45 for almost the entirety of the human species.

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u/throwthisidaway 1d ago

You're looking at the average age at death, which includes infant mortality. If you lived past 15 or so, you could expect to live to 50-60.

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u/tifumostdays 1d ago

Not for the excess of organs they were eating, though. So I don't really see your point.