This report describes a novel, comprehensive, and personalized therapeutic program that is based on the underlying pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, and which involves multiple modalities designed to achieve metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration (MEND). The first 10 patients who have utilized this program include patients with memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), or subjective cognitive impairment (SCI). Nine of the 10 displayed subjective or objective improvement in cognition beginning within 3-6 months, with the one failure being a patient with very late stage AD.<\/p>\n
Six of the patients had had to discontinue working or were struggling with their jobs at the time of presentation, and all were able to return to work or continue working with improved performance. Improvements have been sustained, and at this time the longest patient follow-up is two and one-half years from initial treatment, with sustained and marked improvement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sustained and marked improvement?\u00a0 Six of 10 patients able to return to work?\u00a0 Why wasn\u2019t this all over the news?!\u00a0 Perhaps because there\u2019s no miracle drug involved.\u00a0 The therapeutic program employed here was mostly about diet and other lifestyle changes.<\/p>\n
The paper opens with a long discussion of the biology of Alzheimer\u2019s and the history (not an impressive one) of drug therapies.\u00a0 Let\u2019s skip those and get into the therapies employed with these patients.\u00a0 Here are two examples:<\/p>\n
Patient One<\/strong><\/p>\nA 67-year-old woman presented with two years of progressive memory loss. She held a demanding job that involved preparing analytical reports and traveling widely, but found herself no longer able to analyze data or prepare the reports, and therefore was forced to consider quitting her job. She noted that when she would read, by the time she reached the bottom of a page she would have to start at the top once again, since she was unable to remember the material she had just read.<\/p>\n
She was no longer able to remember numbers, and had to write down even 4-digit numbers to remember them. She also began to have trouble navigating on the road: even on familiar roads, she would become lost trying to figure out where to enter or exit the road. She also noticed that she would mix up the names of her pets, and forget where the light switches were in her home of years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sounds a lot like my dad around the same age.\u00a0 Long before we realized he was suffering from Alzheimer\u2019s, my mom complained to me that my dad just wanted to vegetate in front of the TV at night and didn\u2019t read anymore \u2013 which seemed odd, given that he used to devour books and could quote facts from them years after reading them.\u00a0 His driving also became so erratic, we had to talk him into giving it up before he killed someone.\u00a0 Later, of course, we realized he\u2019d stopped reading because he couldn\u2019t remember what he\u2019d just read.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the therapy for Patient One:<\/p>\n
As noted above, and following an extended discussion of the components of the therapeutic program, the patient began on some but not all of the system: (1) she eliminated all simple carbohydrates, leading to a weight loss of 20 pounds; (2) she eliminated gluten and processed food from her diet, and increased vegetables, fruits, and non-farmed fish; (3) in order to reduce stress, she began yoga, and ultimately became a yoga instructor; (4) as a second measure to reduce the stress of her job, she began to meditate for 20 minutes twice per day; [5] she took melatonin 0.5mg po qhs; (6) she increased her sleep from 4-5 hours per night to 7-8 hours per night; (7) she took methylcobalamin 1mg each day; (8) she took vitamin D3 2000IU each day; (9) she took fish oil 2000mg each day; (10) she took CoQ10 200mg each day; (11) she optimized her oral hygiene using an electric flosser and electric toothbrush; (12) following discussion with her primary care provider, she reinstated HRT (hormone replacement therapy) that had been discontinued following the WHI report in 2002; (13) she fasted for a minimum of 12 hours between dinner and breakfast, and for a minimum of three hours between dinner and bedtime; (14) she exercised for a minimum of 30 minutes, 4-6 days per week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
No simple carbs.\u00a0 Ditch the gluten.\u00a0 Exercising, some over-the-counter supplements, more sleep and more exercise.\u00a0 Now here are the results:<\/p>\n
She began System 1.0, and was able to adhere to some but not all of the protocol components. Nonetheless, after three months she noted that all of her symptoms had abated: she was able to navigate without problems, remember telephone numbers without difficulty, prepare reports and do all of her work without difficulty, read and retain information, and, overall, she became asymptomatic. She noted that her memory was now better than it had been in many years. On one occasion, she developed an acute viral illness, discontinued the program, and noticed a decline, which reversed when she reinstated the program. Two and one-half years later, now age 70, she remains asymptomatic and continues to work full-time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Big Pharma, eat your hearts out.\u00a0 No drug has come close to those results.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at one more case history.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what the paper says about Patient Two:<\/p>\n
A 69-year-old entrepreneur and professional man presented with 11 years of slowly progressive memory loss, which had accelerated over the past one or two years. In 2002, at the age of 58, he had been unable to recall the combination of the lock on his locker, and he felt that this was out of the ordinary for him…. He noted that he had progressive difficulty recognizing the faces at work (prosopagnosia), and had to have his assistants prompt him with the daily schedule. He also recalled an event during which he was several chapters into a book before he finally realized that it was a book he had read previously. In addition, he lost an ability he had had for most of his life: the ability to add columns of numbers rapidly in his head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here\u2019s his therapy:<\/p>\n
The patient began on the following parts of the overall therapeutic system: (1) he fasted for a minimum of three hours between dinner and bedtime, and for a minimum of 12 hours between dinner and breakfast; (2) he eliminated simple carbohydrates and processed foods from his diet; (3) he increased consumption of vegetables and fruits, and limited consumption of fish to non-farmed, and meat to occasional grass-fed beef or organic chicken; (4) he took probiotics; (5) he took coconut oil i tsp bid; (6) he exercised strenuously, swimming 3-4 times per week, cycling twice per week, and running once per week; (7) he took melatonin 0.5mg po qhs, and tried to sleep as close to 8 hours per night as his schedule would allow; (8) he took herbs Bacopa monniera 250mg, Ashwagandha 500mg, and turmeric 400mg each day; (9) he took methylcobalamin 1mg, methyltetrahydrofolate 0.8mg, and pyridoxine-5-phosphate 50mg each day; (10) he took citicoline 500mg po bid; (11) he took vitamin C 1g per day, vitamin D3 5000IU per day, vitamin E 400IU per day, CoQ10 200mg per day, Zn picolinate 50mg per day, and \u03b1-lipoic acid 100mg per day; (12) he took DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) 320mg and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) 180mg per day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And his results:<\/p>\n
He began on the therapeutic program, and after six months, his wife, co-workers, and he all noted improvement. He lost 10 pounds. He was able to recognize faces at work unlike before, was able to remember his daily schedule, and was able to function at work without difficulty. He was also noted to be quicker with his responses. His life-long ability to add columns of numbers rapidly in his head, which he had lost during his progressive cognitive decline, returned. His wife pointed out that, although he had clearly shown improvement, the more striking effect was that he had been accelerating in his decline over the prior year or two, and this had been completely halted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ditch the processed foods, eat real foods.\u00a0 Exercise and get enough sleep.\u00a0 Take some supplements to replace the nutrients that were plentiful in hunter-gatherer diets, but are missing in modern diets.\u00a0 Next thing you know, the guy can add columns of numbers in his head again.<\/p>\n
I think we\u2019re seeing why Alzheimer\u2019s was rare in hunter-gatherer societies.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t some harsh sentence handed down by fate or genes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a condition caused by (in many cases, anyway) the same garbage diet that makes people fat and diabetic.<\/p>\n
So no, I don\u2019t believe The Older Brother and I will succumb to the disease that caused our dad to fade away in front of our eyes.\u00a0 I expect to be blogging and making wisecracks at age 97 \u2026 with The Older Brother sitting in when I need a vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve mentioned this story a couple of times before, but given the topic of this post, it bears repeating: The Older Brother and I had a conversation some years back… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-science","category-real-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8854,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions\/8854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}