How many nose-holes must a man go down?

Bad Habits

Stop it! Do yourself a favour, put out that cig, dispose of that vape, flush your snus and don't buy any more bag (obviously finish off what you already have, but just don't buy anymore).... OH and for the love of god, blow - don't pick. And if you really have to, wrap it up in rubber and be in and out as fast possible.

Are you Confused?

Well as they say on so many podcasts after 15 minutes of adverts & banter.....

"Lets get right into it!"

I'll start by setting out a few assumptions, which are largely settled in the field of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

1. The disease is currently an incurable and progressive neurodegenerative disorder. The rate of cognitive decline can indeed be slowed and drugs can be prescribed to support cognition, thereby delaying the need for assisted living - but the damage is irreversible.

2. Damage to the hippocampus - the area responsible for memory creation, consolidation and recall - is synonymous with perhaps the most renowned symptoms of the disease.

3. Beta-Amyloid 'plaques' and Tau 'tangles' - bundles of protein, were previously thought to convey no putative biological benefit nor purpose, but yet have been observed for decades in abundance in patients with AD.

4. It's recently been discovered that these protein bundles actually initiate a programmed form of cell death, known as necroptosis.

5. Glial cells (the supportive gluey cells that hold everything together) and the so-called 'glymphatic' system - armed with Beta-amyloid likely plays a protective role in the brain, sweeping up invaders. The life of a glial cell is not glamorous, its certainly not exciting but its crucial.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

This is starting to sound a whole lot like an auto-immune disease like Arthritis, MS or even Parkinson's. In essence - an overzealous endogenous defence unit - trained, equipped and programmed to fulfil its function in such an uncompromising fashion that collateral damage is not just possible, but across a lifetime, inevitable.

For many years it was thought that the lymphatic system drained pathogens from the body but such an equivalent system appeared to be entirely absent in the CNS. I remember being told in A-level Biology that glial cells lacked any known functionality. Keep in mind, collectively this mass of cells physically makes up the majority of your brain. It was shunned as glorified polystyrene. Thats so weird, right? Thankfully however, Dr Maiken Nedergaard put two and two together and blew this whole thing WIDE OPEN!

Lets give a big welcome to...Your Brain Sanitation Consultants, Cerebral Refuse Engineers, Neuro-Garbologists. Call it what you will, the collective function of glial cells and beta-amyloid is clear(ish). That is, preventing the accumulation of metabolic waste and other potentially toxic baddies like invasive pathogens. Incidentally, mostly while you're fast asleep - just like a bin-man.

Giving Mice Chlamydia

Chlamydia aka C. pneumoniae aka Clam aka Dutch Disease. Just kidding, thats an economic term but Amsterdam has frequently laid claim to the highest Chlamydia prevalence in Europe.

Chlamydia loves moist, clammy, warm areas. It thrives equally as well in the respiratory tract as it does in the genitals. Just a few weeks after intranasal inoculation, that is, deliberately putting chlamydia up their tiny noses, mice develop a CNS infection.

This infection was found to be localised to the vicinity of the olfactory bulb and trigeminal nerves. Collectively this machinery mediates taste and smell. Incidentally, damage to the olfactory bulb was implicated in the loss of smell and taste with people who contracted Covid. In any case, within 28 days of infection, aggregations of beta-amyloid were observed in this tissue, suggesting that it was playing a role in getting things under-control.

Another possible mechanism is that C. pneumoniae infects the glial cells themself, using the olfactory bulb / trigeminal nerves as its preferred highway in. If this disrupts the normal formation of the beta-amyloid proteins then they are unable to properly do their job and instead tangle up - wreaking havoc.

The olfactory bulb apparatus has numerous nerve projections into the pre-frontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is implicated in working memory and higher-executive function. Damage to this area in AD helps to explain both the well-known early-stage disruption in memory formation as well as the deterioration of emotional processing and manners.

Disclaimer

Academically just two things reduced me to tears - EU Law and Neuroscience. Both inordinately complex systems with causes, connections and outcomes which remain poorly understood even by people at the very height of their discipline - not least me.

So disclaimer, not only is half of the stuff in this article still up in the air - but for me to make it both entertaining, informative and truly accurate just isn't possible.

Take all of this with a pinch of salt or in latin, cum grano salis.

Speaking of cum, if you do happen to get it up your nose. Flush it out asap.