As you know, my Dad is slowly succumbing to the effects of Alzheimer's. He is still at home, and he still knows who we are, but many of his life-long abilities are gone.
Of course, we are hyper-alert to anything and everything that appears in the media about Alzheimer's. Every day we read things like this:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/herpes-viruses-implicated-in-alzheimer-s-disease-64246and this:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322463.phpHerpes Simplex (cold sores) increase chances of experiencing Alzheimer's, but aggressive anti-virus treatment of people with herpes simplex reduces their chances of experiencing Alzheimer's.
Or this:
http://norwaytoday.info/everyday/bad-sleep-brings-dementia/Sleep problems in early and mid adulthood lead to Alzheimer's.
Or this:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/higher-brain-glucose-levels-may-mean-more-severe-alzheimersHigher brain glucose levels lead to more severe Alzheimer's.
It is overwhelming and contradictory and preliminary. Like cancer, efforts to find "a cure" are not being successful, and the current medical remediation is limited and short-term.
I have recently read a book that was ultimately disappointing - but not because it is wrong. I think the preventions recommended in the book could be useful to those of us who are likely to inherit tendencies. But nothing in it will allow my Dad to regain any of his skills.
The book is The End of Alzheimer's by Dale E Bredesen:
https://www.banyen.com/products/end-alzheimersUnfortunately, the style of the book is heavy woo. While there are scientific studies for all the information in the book, these are not forefronted and there is an excessive reliance on anecdotal stories. It would be easy to discount him as a medical entrepreneur - except - I think he is on the right track. Too impatient for the geologic time scale used by the medical profession for change[1], but essentially correct.
His broad thesis is that Alzheimer's is not a singular disease with one cause (cue cancer and schizophrenia and depression and a number of other grab bag terms for groups of illnesses that share some but not all symptoms). He believes that the plaques formed in the brain are the body's healing response that has been triggered by an insult to the brain and/or that this system may have become out of balance and over-productive, like autoimmune misfunction - or even similar to my Dad's multiple myeloma and the excessive production of normally useful cells. Attacking plaque is like attacking T-cells because they keep showing up when the body is diseased.
His supporting thesis is that treatment needs to be multi-pronged: something to deal with the initiating insult (or insults), and something to deal with the unbalanced repair response, and something to deal with the tertiary tolls on the body (nutrition and self-care etc).
He views Alzheimer's as three broad subtypes: (a) genetic - there are two versions of a gene that increases one's likelihood of experiencing Alzheimers, especially if the person has two copies of the more lethal version; (b) life-style - such as those things which increase inflammation, including compromised microbiome, food choices, sleep behavior, and exercise; and (c) injury - such as mercury exposure or head trauma.
He has developed a treatment protocol that aims at reducing insulin resistance, inflammation and infections, nutrition imbalances, toxins (current in the environment and stored in the body from the past), and loss of synapses. It is very comprehensive and aims to be tailored to each person.
In idealistic theory, this seems like an excellent approach. Each and every one of us wants our doctor's full attention to the details of our woes, and the promise that someone has the tools and time to fine tune a treatment plan especially for us is very appealing.
In his anecdotal accounts he has had some success in reversing - not just halting, but *reversing* cognitive losses. In broad strokes the protocol seems simple to implement: make sure that every night there are 12 uninterrupted hours where you do not eat anything - if you eat at 7:00 am, finish your evening meal by 7:00 pm. Make sure that you do not eat for the last three hours before you go to bed - if you fall asleep at 10:00 pm, finish your last food at 7:00 pm. East primarily vegetables, with cruciferous vegetables dominating. Do not eat foods that have a list of ingredients. Eat only eggs that come from hens permitted to wander at will in a pasture, and eat only chickens permitted to wander in a pasture - and only eat grass fed beef - and neither eggs nor meat very often. Eat cheese even less often. Etc.
Some of the food guidelines are more restrictive if you have one or more of the Alzheimer's fostering genes. And then there are the supplements: mid chain fatty acids, curcumin, ashwagandha, reservatol, nicotinamide riboside, liposomal glutathione ..... and zinc (but only picolinate). I haven't listed everything.
His star anecdote is someone who has clawed their way back to acceptable quality of life, and is holding back the tide of the cognitive loss with iron-willed regimentation. It's working for this person - but this is all they do (the impression is that they don't have time for anything else). His other anecdotes have less success in relation to how little of the protocol they are able to adopt consistently.
I have joined a Bredesen Protocol unaffiliated support group (seeking a trained practioner in our area), and there is a lot of distress about how hard the whole protocol is to follow - and some people are not seeing any change (neither halting nor improvement). The protocol and the group are in the US, so the Protocol originators have a business model for sharing expertise, and the group has sporadic access to funds for all the testing and supplementation and consultation required.
Of course, it is all very well to say that perhaps the protocol originator has tried to do things too quickly - but no one else is offering anything useful at all. He may have a business model, and offer personalized care only for a fee, but the bare information is freely available - and some people are having some success. It may not be ideal that people - especially people starting to experience cognitive losses - are trying to tie all of this together by themselves. But it is certainly problematic that the only help currently offered by traditional medicine is that people are told to go home and get their affairs in order while they still can - and don't dawdle.
The author says that the third subtype - injury - is the least likely to respond to the protocol because the issue is damage to the brain tissue, and even if further damage is prevented, the present damage is not amenable to change through diet or lifestyle (similar: a knife to the heart will not respond to better LDL numbers).
So, aside from a family history of cognitive decline in his maternal uncles that we would now recognize as Alzheimer's, and aside from some of the recently identified risk factors: crappy sleep, cold sores, told to substitute sugar for fat by his heart specialist in the 80's 90's and beyond, my Dad spent his working life in natural gas measurement stations long before anyone thought anything about protecting anyone's hearing from the high pitched continuous whine - or from any other threats to squishy human beings. I remember seeing a small puddle of mercury on the floor of one of the stations. My Dad scooped up a bit for me inside a pill bottle, but later took it away. People knew liquid mercury wasn't safe for children - but it was perfectly okay for adults to handle it "responsibly". I'm sure there were other things - oh yes - I remember handling lead pellets that were used to seal the wires on gas meters. The pellets thudded so interesting on the desk. I played with them a couple of times for a few minutes. Somebody spent their whole working life handling them every day all day.
My Dad was also forever hitting his head. Braining himself on low-slung pipes, fridge doors, and similar. He also fell a lot and hit his head (unconscious at least once). His most recent fall was just two months ago, and he fell so hard he cracked his cheekbone and there was blood in the brain. Scans recently show that everything is healing well.
So, for my Dad the protocol would just be a lot of angst for very little payoff. The brain atrophy is already present. The likelihood of him never hitting his head again is zilch. He is currently on meds for his heart, as well as his LDL/HDL ratio, and he is receiving chemo for his multiple myeloma. Adding supplements to this routine is just unreasonable.
So, really, the value of the book to me is for me. If I can adopt some of the lifestyle recommendations (but I like my snack before bedtime), maybe I can fend cognitive decline off until some other family tendency (heart) gets me first. I wonder if it would be any use to be treated with anti-virals for herpes simplex when I've had it all my life (got it from me Mom shortly after birth).
[1] if you haven't read about Ignaz Semmelweis before now, acquaint yourself with him. Medical profession - not known for its iconoclasm.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
