Having gone through three parents+in laws including one we actively caretook in home with this terrible disease I'm not surprised. The progression seemed unstoppable and sickened us while not aiding the parents. The allusion to the victim in a train barrelling through a dark increasingly confusing countryside is so apt.
I'm no expert, but the association I had was a podcast I listened once with someone interested in life extension (I think it was on a Tim Ferriss podcast). They spoke about "mTOR activation" (IIRC), the basic idea was that having muscles is good (because they increase the need for glucose, helping the pancreas and the liver in regulating it), but building muscles is potentially harmful, because it causes a release of growth hormone, and essentially speeds up metabolism (and hence aging).
Don't quote me on this, and I'm sure there's better sources of this information out there than me. Does this ring a bell to anyone?
> ADAS-cog results run on a scale from 0 to 70, with higher scores suggesting greater impairment. The usual-care group had an average score of 23.8, compared with 25.2 for the exercise group (adjusted estimate -1.4, 95% confidence interval [CI] -2.6 to -0.2).
They have to repeat the study with more patients to be able to reduce the error estimation in the average. (Or run study for a longer time so the increment or decrement effect accumulates and it's easier to measure.) But if the first study had no interesting result it may be more difficult to get the foundlings for another similar study.