If you’ve ever met someone with Alzheimer’s disease, you know how devastating this horrible problem can be. The grieving person gradually loses everything that had made him who he was. Their soft memories. Your ability to relate to others, even your closest family members, erodes. Ultimately, they are in complete isolation and are completely unable to take care of themselves.

As bad as it is for the person with Alzheimer’s, in some ways it is even worse for the family. It is horrible to see how this slow deterioration occurs. Caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s have extremely high rates of depression.

It would be great if we could prevent this disease. We may be progressing in that direction.

While we don’t have a perfect answer yet, a recent study in The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reports some interesting findings. The study shows that two safe and readily available supplements can help prevent Alzheimer’s.

Plus …

I’ll tell you about the study and these supplements in a moment, but first I want to give you a little information.

We really don’t know what causes Alzheimer’s. About 25% appear to have a genetic component. For the other 75% of victims, we really don’t know what the cause is. It appears to be a combination of predisposition and environmental factors, possibly including diet.

Some research suggests that chronic low-grade inflammation plays a role.

Whatever the cause, the hallmark of Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of a polypeptide called amyloid in the brain. As amyloid accumulates, it forms plaques that lead to the typical cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s.

The body has some degree of protection against the accumulation of amyloid. Specialized white blood cells can differentiate into cells called macrophages that can remove amyloid as it forms. The study I mentioned earlier was designed to see if nutrients could enhance macrophages’ ability to remove amyloid.

Previous studies have suggested that vitamin D (specifically vitamin D3) and curcumin it can be protective against Alzheimer’s disease. In the recently reported study, researchers collected white blood cells from nine Alzheimer’s disease patients, as well as some normal volunteers. They incubated the white blood cells of both groups in the presence of amyloid.

They then added vitamin D and curcumin to the mix, both individually and together, and watched what happened.

The results were dramatic. Both supplements increased the ability of macrophages to ingest and remove amyloid.

With the white blood cells of some patients, one of the other supplements had a greater effect. In others, the effects were synergistic: the results of adding vitamin D and curcumin were more than the additive effects of each individual.

In their usual conservative form, the researchers noted that this is a preliminary study and are not making any clinical recommendations.

However, we would have to wait a long time to make a decision based on robust clinical trials. From my point of view, both vitamin D and curcumin (a main component of spiced turmeric) are safe enough and have enough other beneficial effects that I find it very reasonable to start supplementing with them now.