Systemic metabolic dysfunctions, not just biomarkers, drive Alzheimer’s—early blood tests risk obscuring root causes of dementia
Original framing: “Blood biomarkers could detect earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease – and slow its progression” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalized communities bear the highest burden of Alzheimer’s due to environmental racism, food apartheid, and lack of healthcare access, yet their knowledge is excluded from mainstream research. Black Americans are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as white Americans, yet only 4% of clinical trials include diverse participants. Indigenous elders, who often hold the most nuanced understanding of cognitive health, are rarely consulted in policy discussions, reinforcing epistemic injustice.
The Alzheimer’s epidemic is not a biomedical anomaly but a predictable outcome of industrial capitalism’s assault on metabolic and ecological health, with its roots in colonial food systems, environmental racism, and the commodification of aging.
Mainstream narratives, by fixating on biomarkers, obscure the fact that 90% of cases are preventable through systemic changes—yet these changes threaten the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries that dominate health discourse. Indigenous knowledge, which frames dementia as a symptom of relational and ecological breakdown, offers a more holistic path forward, but is systematically excluded from policy. The trickster’s insight reveals the absurdity of seeking a 'cure' while perpetuating the systems that cause the disease. True prevention requires dismantling the metabolic monoculture that defines modern life, restoring biodiversity in both ecosystems and diets, and centering the wisdom of those already navigating these crises—Indigenous elders, Black farmers, and Global South communities who have long understood that health is inseparable from land and lineage.