Egg consumption inversely correlated with Alzheimer's

Egg consumption inversely correlated with Alzheimer's(pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

54 points by natbennett 3 hours ago | 33 comments

I’m copying this comment from discussion two months ago

> Caveat:

> > Funding [...] The analyses in this study were supported by an investigator-initiated grant from the American Egg Board. [...]

Jimmc414 27 minutes ago | |

Agreed that seems like a potential conflict that should be scrutinized, but it highlights a real problem in health research. Who else would fund a 40,000 participant 15 year study about egg consumption and Alzheimer’s? How many studies are not conducted because no one is interested in funding them?

fooqux 12 minutes ago | | |

> Who else would fund a 40,000 participant 15 year study about egg consumption and Alzheimer’s?

Your government. Health insurances. A university. Any of the thousands of billionaires on this planet.

bwat49 41 minutes ago | |

So one of those egg council creeps got to you too huh?

bitwize 38 minutes ago | | |

(Sonic voice) Foiled your plans again, Eggman!

ChiMan 1 hour ago |

Quality of this study aside, and n of 1 here, my own state of mind, clarity of thought, and sleep are all noticeably better when I'm eating 2 or 3 eggs a day, 3 to 5 days a week. (I might go 7 days, but an independent value placed on dietary variety prevents that--perhaps foolishly when I notice what I'm eating on off days instead of the eggs.)

Regardless, this whole eggs-are-evil thing has probably done more to harm the health of Westerners than any other dietary advice, with the possible exception of the fat-is-evil nonsense.

al_borland 1 hour ago | |

Do you think the eggs are causing the better sleep, or are you more likely to have the energy to make eggs in the morning if you’d had a good night’s sleep?

ChiMan 44 minutes ago | | |

It seems the eggs improve the sleep, because after poor sleep, eggs the following day seem to have an effect on breaking the poor-sleep doom loop (which is: poor sleep elevates cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, junk-food cravings, and the need for caffeine--all of which contribute to another night of bad sleep). Not sure if it's the choline, which eggs have a lot of, or the egg-generated satiety that helps prevent eating too much. I think it may be the choline because when I'm otherwise eating high-choline foods such as red meat, my sleep is also better.

hallole 41 minutes ago | |

Given that a great number of Westerns are overweight, it's probably appropriate for them to act as though "fat is evil" due to calorie density. Plus: saturated fat should be avoided; this is another thing Westerners are likely to be getting too much of.

ChiMan 28 minutes ago | | |

Except that three saturated-fat-laden strips of bacon for breakfast prevents the need for lunch, leaving my daily caloric intake lower than if I had eaten a bagel for breakfast and been hungry at lunch. The longer period between meals--snack-free--afforded by the bacon also means that post-meal insulin (the energy-storing hormone) has a chance to drop off, leaving glucagon (the energy-burning hormone) a path for liberating stored energy to power physical and mental activity.

willis936 1 hour ago |

Why would having alzheimer's reduce people's desire to eat eggs?

pinkmuffinere 1 hour ago | |

I know you’re joking, but possible causal path here: People with Alzheimer’s lose ability to use stove -> eat simpler less involved breakfasts -> eats less eggs

krackers 1 hour ago | | |

You can make eggs in a microwave (critically so long as you don't do it in the shell)

adjejmxbdjdn 2 hours ago |

> In addition, to evaluate potential bias because of unmeasured systematic differences between consumers and nonconsumers, we conducted a sensitivity analysis excluding vegans. Vegans comprised a substantial portion of the zero egg consumption group, which could disproportionately influence this group, and they often differ in other lifestyle or health-related characteristics.

So they eliminated vegans from the sensitivity analysis despite them comprising a substantial portion of the no-egg group.

If the analysis doesn’t hold with vegans included, it’s probably saying a lot about dairy rather than eggs.

ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago |

Some previous discussion 2 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038873

aussieguy1234 3 hours ago |

Since the study was done on Seventh Day Adventists, it's worth noting that they are all vegetarian, so no meat based protein options here...

mullingitover 2 hours ago | |

Adventists are okay with meat as long as it’s kosher generally.

I think the bigger factor is that they’re teetotalers.

My data points, though: two of my vegetarian teetotaling Adventist family members died of Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle is clearly not a cheat code for defeating dementia.

aorloff 1 hour ago | | |

I guess I gotta be the one to ask -- so do you recall if they ate eggs ?

beering 3 hours ago | |

About half of the study participants were non-vegetarian, IIUC. I wonder if they found any correlation after slicing by vegetarianism?

anonym29 2 hours ago | |

A core part of the scientific method is that you attempt to isolate a single variable at a time. If anything, all this suggests is that this was a better diet-controlled sample population for measuring the correlation of eggs and Alzheimer's than the general public. That said, the methodology of this study does not allow for inferring a relationship between Alzheimer's and meat consumption in either direction.

thayne 2 hours ago | | |

There could be an interaction with the diet though. For example, what if the nutrient in eggs that prevents Alzheimer's is something that also occurs in meat?

Also, it seems likely that among this population many of those who don't or rarely consume eggs are vegan or almost vegan, so it might be more accurate to say that veganism is correlated with Alzheimer's.

adrianN 2 hours ago | | |

It is very difficult to do that in biological systems where doing A in isolation can have the opposite effect of doing A while also doing B.

thin_carapace 2 hours ago | |

eggs are a highly concentrated natural source of choline. meat does contain choline but nowhere near as much as eggs.

drawing the connection between cholinergic activity and alzheimers is left as an exercise for the unaware reader.

ece 52 minutes ago |

Would be nice to see a similar study for dairy products.

bastard_op 1 hour ago |

I tried to look, but the google captcha wouldn't let me, finally gave up trying.

tfwnopmt 2 hours ago |

Cancer is also inversely correlated with alzheimer's.

Phrased another way, egg consumption is correlated with cancer.

recursivecaveat 1 hour ago | |

Not necessarily. Looking before crossing the street is inversely correlated with getting hit by a truck. Getting trucked is inversely correlated with getting mauled by a lion (most places with wild lions are light on road traffic). Doesn't mean that looking both ways will increase your odds of becoming lion chow though.

tfwnopmt 1 hour ago | | |

I'm not sure what this strawman is going on about, but the cancer-alzheimer's inverse correlation is a well known phenomenon

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00442-1

iwantitez 1 hour ago | | |

Correlation is not causation