Aloe Polysaccharides and Memory: A Conversation With Dr. Robert Lufkin
Polysaccharides, Immune Signaling, and Brain Health
Watch: YouTube / RobertLufkinMD.com
Aloe polysaccharides and memory sit at the center of the research I have done for most of my career. Robert Lufkin, M.D., invited me onto his program to talk through that work in plain language. The interview covers what our published studies measured, where they stop, and how that work shaped the formula I later designed. I take the formula that grew out of that research every day.
Most people hear the word sugar and think of something to avoid. Dr. Lufkin and I spent this conversation on a different class of carbohydrate. The long, information-dense chains in aloe vera and rice bran behave less like fuel and more like biochemical signals.
We covered what my colleagues and I measured in our published clinical research. That includes immune markers such as CD4 and CD8 ratios and markers of inflammation. I describe what we observed in study participants rather than what it proves. I also say plainly that none of this work establishes that a dietary supplement can treat, cure, or prevent a disease.
We also took up the question I am asked most often, which is whether ordinary food supplies these compounds in meaningful amounts. Aloe gel is mostly water, and milling removes rice bran in the production of white rice. The amounts a normal diet supplies therefore remain small.
What Our Twelve-Month Study Measured
The study we discussed was a pilot, and its limits come before its results. It was open-label, it had no placebo arm and no blinding, and it enrolled 34 adults already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. A design like that shows what changed in the people studied, but it cannot show what caused the change.
Each participant took four teaspoons daily of the formula we studied, an aloe-based multinutrient complex, for a full year (Lewis et al., 2013). The main cognitive measure was the ADAS-cog (i.e., the gold standard for assessing cognition). In those adults with Alzheimer’s disease, the mean ADAS-cog score was clinically and statistically significantly better than baseline at the 9-month and 12-month visits (Lewis et al., 2013).
The same study measured cytokines (i.e., chemical messengers of the immune system) in blood before the study began and again at its end. In those adults, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-2, and interleukin-4 decreased significantly (Lewis et al., 2013). Tumor necrosis factor-alpha is an inflammatory signal, and the routes by which such signals reach memory are the subject of inflammation and brain health.
Vascular endothelial growth factor, a signal involved in blood vessel growth, also decreased in those adults (Lewis et al., 2013). What that growth factor and its partner do in the brain is a subject of its own, covered in the immune system and brain function. A single open-label result cannot tell us whether that change was helpful, harmful, or neutral for any one person.
We later analyzed the Th1/Th2 ratios in the same Alzheimer’s disease subjects compared to a group of healthy adults (Lewis et al., 2023). Five of six measured Th1/Th2 ratios fell across the year in those people with Alzheimer’s disease. What that immune balance means, and why it interests me, is the subject of the Th1/Th2 ratio.
These studies have hard limits, and I state them plainly. Neither was placebo-controlled, and neither shows that a supplement can treat, cure, or prevent Alzheimer’s disease or any other condition. My fuller account of every measure, including the ones that did not change, is in summary of memory-related research.
From Lab Bench to Daily Brain Care
Read: Robert Lufkin, M.D.
Dr. Lufkin also published a written version of our conversation on his Substack. It reframes the instinct to avoid sugar through the polysaccharides in aloe and rice bran. It then traces how the published research led to the formulation of Daily Brain Care.
Learn more about Daily Brain Care or read more about Dr. Lewis.