A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
Everyone knows cancer survivors. Few know Alzheimer's survivors. That's changing fast.
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste” was the iconic slogan in an advertising campaign that debuted in 1972, to encourage kids to go to college. The kids who initially followed those ads are now approaching the age when many of them will begin suffering the ravages of Alzheimer's Disease, wasting the minds they nurtured and developed over all those decades. The purpose of this article is to inform people who have recently seen symptoms of dementia in themselves or loved ones that there is hope.
The CDC reports there were 5.6 million Americans with diagnosed Alzheimer's in 2020, and they expect that number to grow to 14 million by 2060. It’s an affliction of old age, and the likelihood of having it doubles every five years after age 65. The medical consensus is that it’s incurable, unpreventable, and inevitable. But they also say life itself is fatal, a terminal illness. So what’s one more problem?
Recent research and clinical results are proving the consensus wrong. Those who have loved ones with an Alzheimer's diagnosis, or who hope to avoid it themselves, should learn about this research. As to life being fatal, that’s being questioned, too. We’ll discuss that soon. For now, we need to focus on one problem at a time.
I lost both of my parents to Alzheimer's, and with the rest of the family, we watched them decline, eventually losing all awareness of their surroundings and ability to care for themselves. We’ve learned a lot since then. My own medical quests, documented in other articles in this series, have been primarily driven by a focus on avoiding that fate. But I haven’t directly focused an article on it until now, partly because I’m uncomfortable discussing it, partly because it’s a complex topic which I might not address correctly. I found motivation to try last week when my accupuncture doctor held a conference with several dozen of her patients to discuss her studies of Alzheimer's, relating it to the traditional Chinese medicine approaches we all see her for.
My interest became more focused when my cardiologist tested me two years ago for a gene variant associated with Alzheimer's risk — ApoE4. I have one copy of that gene, which increases my risk, leading us to revised treatment for some of my other conditions. I don’t have any Alzheimer's symptoms, but I’m successfully treating conditions that we know can lead to it. I’m confident I can handle it if I do get it, and I subjectively feel sharper based on the actions I’ve taken so far.
This gene was only discovered in 1995, and affects the brain's ability to clean out waste proteins — the dreaded amyloids that are found in autopsies of Alzheimer's brains. Most people don’t have this gene, having a related gene ApoE3 that handles brain cleaning fast enough that most people die of other causes before the inevitable accumulations become noticeable. ApoE4, or its relative ApoE3, are inherited from our parents — two copies of ApoE3 if both parents have them, or one copy of ApoE4 from one parent, or two copies if both parents carry it. With no ApoE4, our lifetime risk of Alzheimer's is about 9% (nobody is completely safe). With one copy, that rises to 30%, and with two copies, over 50% chance (nobody is guaranteed to get it). It’s never a certainty, either way, since genes are not destiny, just a predisposition. We can control the outcomes predisposed by our genes with correct management of our environment and lifestyle.
An excellent guide to overcoming that risk is found in The End of Alzheimer's by Dale E. Bredesen (2107). He describes the details of the biology of Alzheimer's, the indicators of the disease, and the solutions. His protocols have been used successfully in hundreds of patients and have been published in medical journals. But the medical industry is uninterested in procedural cures, only in seeking that “magical” pill that will eliminate the disease and produce great profits. A search on “Alzheimer's treatment” doesn’t mention Bredesen in search results, but a growing list of failed patented medicines. The book explains that, too.
Not everyone accepts Dr Bredesen’s success. A California neurologist complained in a 2020 editorial that his approach is a scam to take advantage of desperate patients and families. As with most of the medical industry, they demand formal tests of individual therapies, typically a single molecule medicine, comparing results with standard treatments. But not every problem is that precisely defined. Dr Bredesen has shown us that Alzheimer’s is such a disease. A complex disease requires a complex treatment. Dr Bredesen has developed a treatment protocol that works. One might guess that those who ignore clinical success but value unattainable theoretical success, have other interests in mind than their patients.
Dr Bredesen recently published a new book, The First Survivors of Alzheimer’s (2021), which describes a lot of those successes. He began his research in 1989, and prescribed his new protocol to his first patient in 2012. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and was deteriorating quickly. Three months later, she reported her life had become normal again. As his first book was written five years later, she was active and healthy. She had stopped the program briefly four times, and each time felt the mental decline returning, but again recovered when she got back on the program.
No one on standard medical care has recovered. Ever. The conventional medical industry has a perfect record of failure in treating Alzheimer's. Real patients probably don’t want to wait for them to get it right, when Dr Bredesen has already figured it out.
Several medicines have been approved for treating Alzheimers. All are very expensive. None work. The most recent, aducanumab, marketed as Aduhelm, was given “accelerated approval” by FDA in July, 2021. In February, Medicare announced they won’t cover it. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times called it another major failure, both for research and for government regulators.
The Food and Drug Administration’s surprise approval of Aduhelm for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease last year was a mess on practically every level. Three agency advisors resigned, and skeptical doctors such as myself were left to advise patients — all desperate for hope — that, yes, it is a treatment option but, no, we have no idea whether it will work.
And by the way, it is extraordinarily expensive.
This is not where you want to be when dealing with this mysterious and relentless disease that takes a person’s life only after stripping away memories and every other vestige of who we are as individuals.
Dr Bredesen describes his audience as those who have already been diagnosed, and those who have the ApoE4 gene, and for everyone over 40. That covers a lot of people. He should also have added anyone who cares about anyone with those circumstances. It’s especially important for families and caregivers to understand what to look for and how to deal with it, since the patients quickly lose their capacity to even recognize their decline. Those who want to avoid Alzheimer's should not expect much help from the pharmaceutical industry, or from the FDA, or from their family doctors. I’ll stick with Bredesen for now.
What Is Alzheimer's?
Alzheimer's is a slow motion disease, caused by an accumulation of mistakes. It takes decades to become a big enough problem to seek treatment, then another decade or so of worsening symptoms and eventual decline to oblivion.
It is not a single disease, subject to a single solution. There are three main types of Alzheimer’s, each caused by different problems, each treatable with different protocols. Careful analysis can distinguish them.
Unlike most diseases, Alzheimer’s is not a failure of a body system, like heart disease or cancer. Alzheimer’s is a normal protective function where the brain reacts to problems we encounter. For acute problems, like a blow to the skull, it takes the necessary protective measures and restores itself as the injury heals. With chronic injuries, the protection becomes entrenched and causes progressive deterioration.
The most common problem is inflammation, caused by many factors, mostly nutritional.
Another problem is deficiencies in nutrients the brain requires to operate.
Some cases are caused by toxins, either consumed or in our environment..
Dr Bredesen, MD, is a clinician who treats patients. He developed his protocols through observation, research, and testing on real patients. He has refined our understanding of this disease through an understanding of the biology and careful observation.
Another perspective is provided by Dr Paul Saladino, MD, in his book Carnivore Code. Dr Paul is a psychiatrist, but has developed detailed understanding of human metabolism from assiduous research and observation of what works. His book cites 700 published references. Like Dr Bredesen, he arrived at his understanding in spite of his medical training and clinical experience, not because of it. Traditional medical practice has totally failed to understand and treat many problems like Alzheiner's. New approaches won’t be found in orthodox medical practice.
Dr Paul describes Alzheimer's, as Dr Bredesen does, as insulin driven. He has taken an anthropological perspective to medicine, studying hunter-gatherer tribes to determine why they don't suffer any of the chronic diseases that are so common in modern western societies. He has determined that the ApoE4 gene that is common in early onset Alzheimer's patients is actually protective against infections, at the cost of slowing metabolism of insulin. People on high carb diets and high stress lifestyles chronically flood their systems with insulin, producung persistent damage from type 2 diabetes, and the dementia sometimes called “type 3 diabetes” -- Alzheimer's. People who live on low carb diets, and get exercise and nutrients and rest their brains require, don’t have problems with Alzheimers or any other chronic diseases associated with metabolic dysfunction.
What Causes Alzheimers?
Dr Bredesen provides an amusing tale of how we give ourselves Alzheimers. I won’t quote it directly, but here’s a summary:
Sugary late night snacks to spike insulin
Insufficient sleep, to reduce the brain housekeeping
High stress activities all day, and gobbling proton pump inhibitor meds to control the stomach acids, limiting nutrient absorbtion
Sugary breakfast to keep insulin flowing
Inflammatory foods like dairy
Taking statins to reduce cholesterol, producing atrophy of the brain
Eating and snacking continuously, preventing cleanup of brain and other cells
No time for exercise, or time in the sun
Mercury laden tuna and other fish
Diet sodas to damage gut microbes
Smoking tobacco, decreasing oxygen and adding toxic chemicals
Poor dental hygiene, producing systemic inflammation
Anything sound familiar? Me, too. Bredesen considers 36 factors that produce Alzheimer’s, all voluntary, all reversible. Since the book was published, he has added a few, but he believes those are all the important ones.
The important insight is Alzheimers is not a malfunction of the brain, like cancer or heart failure. Alzheimers is a natural protective reaction of the brain to allow it to clean up and restore itself after an acute problem. The symptoms appear when those problems become chronic, producing a vicious cycle of attempted repairs with our mad rush to poison ourselves, making the symptoms of brain destruction permanent. Preventing or reversing this disease is as simple as identifying the problems we cause and correcting them.
How Do I Recognize It?
The stages of Alzheimer's are defined as subjective cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's. The clinical diagnosis is determined by interactive memory tests, with a numerical score giving the determination of the disease stage. But patients always recognize their decline fairly early, they just chalk it off as a natural symptom of age, and ignore it or work around it until the problems become unmanageable. We shouldn’t do that. The sooner we start, the easier it will be to correct it.
A trained doctor will use cognition tests to diagnose the likely type of dementia. These can be confirmed with analysis of spinal fluid or retina scans — the eye is connected to the brain with a short nerve, so brain conditions quickly become visible inside the eyes. We don't yet know how to look into a living brain without considerable risk.
More advanced tests include blood tests, and MRI to determine shrinkage of the brain.
How Do I Treat It?
Don’t count on a pharmaceutical solution. The industry has spent a lot of money testing over 200 candidate medicines that all turned out to be ineffective for correcting Alzheimer's symptoms. As of 2017, Dr Bredesen had used his protocol to restore 200 Alzheimer's patients to normal cognitive abilities.
The Bredesen protocol is called ReCODE, for Reversal of COgnitive DEcline. It begins with comprehensive tests he calls a cognoscopy to establish specific chemical and metabolic factors that point to a diagnosis, then treating the specific problem areas with diet or supplements. He often weans the patient from prescription drugs like statins, which tend to exacerbate the brain deterioration. The only failures have been those who waited too long and had already suffered irreversible damage. He’s working on that, too.
A primary target is insulin, especially the metabolic dysfunction of insulin resistance seen in a very large portion of western populations.
Conclusions
Everyone has some risk of getting some form of dementia during a lifetime. Some have higher risk than others, either by lifestyle or by genes. It is important that we learn what our risks are, and to recognize the symptoms so we can get treatment. Those already enduring symptoms of cognitive decline should know two things: (1) Conventional medical care won’t prevent continued decline. And, (2) The Bredesen ReCODE protocol can stop the decline and, in mild cases, reverse the damage already inflicted. For everyone else, we need to learn our risks and take active steps to prevent the onset of cognitive decline. You might be told that absent mindedness and forgetting where you put your keys are normal parts of aging. Don’t accept that. It’s not necessary, and it will get worse. Our cognitive abilities are what makes us human, what makes us alive. Protect it above all others.
Those who think they need help, or have reasons to think they might need it later, can find a ReCODE doctor at apollohealthco.com.
Support groups are available at neurohub.org and facebook.
Thanks. This is good content for me, as I'm getting on in years, and noticing mild changes.
Thank you for sharing this