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The good news is there are simple strategies you can use to partially break down or reduce the formation of these proteins that age you prematurely. One of the best things you can do is to boost autophagy, your body’s recycling program, by consuming more of the foods you will read about in the next chapter. This will help break down these proteins so they don’t end up forming harmful plaques. So will fasting.

Gordon Lithgow, PhD, a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, has also found that vitamin D helps prevent proteins from losing their shape and sticking together. With vitamin D deficiency so widespread,²¹ this raises the question of whether Alzheimer’s rates are increasing in part because people do not have enough vitamin D to slow amyloid plaque formation.

There is also a clear connection between toxic heavy metals and amyloids. A study from the Society for Neuroscience found that excess copper prevented the body from clearing protein aggregates on its own.²² You need copper for many functions in the body, but too much of it is toxic. Medical research shows that the blood vessels and brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease contain excess copper. Cadmium, another heavy metal, increases the formation of protein aggregates in the brain and appears in greater amounts in brain tissues of patients with Alzheimer’s disease than in healthy brains.²³ You’ll learn how to avoid and detox from these metals and others later in this book.