I do not want to get your hopes up, but I think you would be very interested in reading it. He describes decades of proven, published, and replicated research that has led to his conclusions, in addition to the intricacies of exactly how Alzheimer's works.
I'm trying to personally reply to everyone who is worried for themselves or their loved ones, this disease is terrifying. Please feel free to PM me if you want and I can either try to answer questions about the book you may have, or help you acquire a copy. Take care
Before reading further, I beg you to please keep an open mind. The information in his book is based on research beginning in the early 90's, with key studies being repeated (with duplicate results!) multiple times. Remember that as you read. I saw comments earlier saying "please stop spreading false hope," in response to others. Know that I am not trying to create false hope. I only want to introduce people to information that they may not know about (this book just came out in August)! You should be skeptical. The author, Dr. Bredesen, encourages you to be skeptical of everything inside his book. I firmly believe in always questioning everything of this nature. But given that the currently held belief is that there is no cure, why immediately dismiss a new approach without fully engaging with it first? The alternative is to resign yourself to watching your loved ones slowly succumb to this terrible disease, and resigns them (and possibly you) to a descent into darkness worse than any other. IMHO, there is nothing to lose and everything (you and your wonderful families) to gain. That said, to the science!
TL;DR - Alzheimer's can be treated by decreasing inflammation and toxic substances, and increasing brain supporting molecules. Drugs have been generally ineffective because they can only affect 1-2 molecular processes that lead to Alzheimer's, when there are about 40. Dr. Breseden has helped 250+ patients reverse their Alzheimer's and return to their normal lives.
In the book he describes why conventional tactics have been unable to find a cure. Essentially, the hope has been that we'll be able to identify one phenomenon across all Alzheimer's patients that we can stop, make a drug to do just that, and then Alzheimer's will be cured. Drugs are really good at acting on one specific process in our body, i.e. inhibiting certain chemicals in the brain or stimulating others, but only one at a time (in general, sometimes a few more).
However, Dr. Bredesen has been researching this since the early 90's and has come up with 36 (potentially plus a few more) molecular mechanisms that can contribute to development of Alzheiemer's. In contrast, the best drug he and his team found only affected 4 of these 36 factors (4 is incredible for a drug). It is called tropisetron, typically used in cancer patients to reduce nausea from chemotherapy, but was noticed to improve memory loss. His analogy is to imagine your house's roof with 36 holes in it, and it's raining. Patching up 1-4 of those holes (drugs) leaves the 32 other holes (molecular factors) that may go unnoticed, and your house still floods. Consider that everyone is different and patients may have different combinations of these 36 factors contributing to their Alzheimer's, and it becomes clear to see why we currently think Alzheimer's is untreatable.
So what do we do about that? He states that "Alzheimer's disease is what happens when the brain tries to protect itself from three metabolic and toxic threats:
Inflammation (from infection diet, or other causes)
Decline and shortage of supportive nutrients hormones, and other brain supporting molecules
Toxic substances such as metals or biotoxins (poisons produced by microbes such as molds)"
All 3 of these can trigger those 36 molecular mechanisms to go haywire and spur an individual towards Alzheimer's. These 3 threats can come from one's genetics or the environment, or a combination of both. So the way to prevent Alzheimer's is to decrease 1 and 3 as much as possible, and increase 2. The reason Alzheimer's is a slow descent is that these threats affect us chronically over decades. When we're young the balance of those three threats is not yet negatively skewed, but if they continue unchecked, if they affect enough of those 36 factors, we may experience cognitive decline, eventually developing Alzheimer's.
Now for the good news. At the time of writing, the author had helped 250+ patients in different stages of the disease. Whether they were just starting to lose their memory or were only just starting to experience cognitive decline, he was able to reverse the trends of the 36 mechanisms gone haywire. The treatment plan is called ReCODE (Reverse COgnitive DEcline), and includes changes to diet, how to avoid the toxins mentioned above, and how to increase the number of good molecules in the body and brain.
The book goes into a lot more technical detail, and summaries are available online if you google "recode alzheimer's" or something similar. With a little bit of google-fu you could find a free pdf somewhere if buying the book is not an option. It is my firm belief that we don't need to be afraid of Alzheimer's anymore.
There may be a way to prevent/reverse Alzheimer's. I wrote a comment towards the bottom of the page in response to someone asking about the current state of research. If you're interested, you should check it out. I did my best to summarize a new book (Aug 2017!) by Dr. Bredesen, MD called The End Of Alzheimer's . In it he dives into exactly what Alzheimer's is at a molecular level, why drug treatments have been generally unsuccessful so far, and what may actually help treat it.
I do not want to get your hopes up, but I think you would be very interested in reading it. He describes decades of proven, published, and replicated research that has led to his conclusions, in addition to the intricacies of exactly how Alzheimer's works.
I'm trying to personally reply to everyone who is worried for themselves or their loved ones, this disease is terrifying. Please feel free to PM me if you want and I can either try to answer questions about the book you may have, or help you acquire a copy. Take care
Take a look at Dale E. Bredesen's book The End Of Alzheimer's .
Before reading further, I beg you to please keep an open mind. The information in his book is based on research beginning in the early 90's, with key studies being repeated (with duplicate results!) multiple times. Remember that as you read. I saw comments earlier saying "please stop spreading false hope," in response to others. Know that I am not trying to create false hope. I only want to introduce people to information that they may not know about (this book just came out in August)! You should be skeptical. The author, Dr. Bredesen, encourages you to be skeptical of everything inside his book. I firmly believe in always questioning everything of this nature. But given that the currently held belief is that there is no cure, why immediately dismiss a new approach without fully engaging with it first? The alternative is to resign yourself to watching your loved ones slowly succumb to this terrible disease, and resigns them (and possibly you) to a descent into darkness worse than any other. IMHO, there is nothing to lose and everything (you and your wonderful families) to gain. That said, to the science!
TL;DR - Alzheimer's can be treated by decreasing inflammation and toxic substances, and increasing brain supporting molecules. Drugs have been generally ineffective because they can only affect 1-2 molecular processes that lead to Alzheimer's, when there are about 40. Dr. Breseden has helped 250+ patients reverse their Alzheimer's and return to their normal lives.
In the book he describes why conventional tactics have been unable to find a cure. Essentially, the hope has been that we'll be able to identify one phenomenon across all Alzheimer's patients that we can stop, make a drug to do just that, and then Alzheimer's will be cured. Drugs are really good at acting on one specific process in our body, i.e. inhibiting certain chemicals in the brain or stimulating others, but only one at a time (in general, sometimes a few more).
However, Dr. Bredesen has been researching this since the early 90's and has come up with 36 (potentially plus a few more) molecular mechanisms that can contribute to development of Alzheiemer's. In contrast, the best drug he and his team found only affected 4 of these 36 factors (4 is incredible for a drug). It is called tropisetron, typically used in cancer patients to reduce nausea from chemotherapy, but was noticed to improve memory loss. His analogy is to imagine your house's roof with 36 holes in it, and it's raining. Patching up 1-4 of those holes (drugs) leaves the 32 other holes (molecular factors) that may go unnoticed, and your house still floods. Consider that everyone is different and patients may have different combinations of these 36 factors contributing to their Alzheimer's, and it becomes clear to see why we currently think Alzheimer's is untreatable.
So what do we do about that? He states that "Alzheimer's disease is what happens when the brain tries to protect itself from three metabolic and toxic threats:
All 3 of these can trigger those 36 molecular mechanisms to go haywire and spur an individual towards Alzheimer's. These 3 threats can come from one's genetics or the environment, or a combination of both. So the way to prevent Alzheimer's is to decrease 1 and 3 as much as possible, and increase 2. The reason Alzheimer's is a slow descent is that these threats affect us chronically over decades. When we're young the balance of those three threats is not yet negatively skewed, but if they continue unchecked, if they affect enough of those 36 factors, we may experience cognitive decline, eventually developing Alzheimer's.
Now for the good news. At the time of writing, the author had helped 250+ patients in different stages of the disease. Whether they were just starting to lose their memory or were only just starting to experience cognitive decline, he was able to reverse the trends of the 36 mechanisms gone haywire. The treatment plan is called ReCODE (Reverse COgnitive DEcline), and includes changes to diet, how to avoid the toxins mentioned above, and how to increase the number of good molecules in the body and brain.
The book goes into a lot more technical detail, and summaries are available online if you google "recode alzheimer's" or something similar. With a little bit of google-fu you could find a free pdf somewhere if buying the book is not an option. It is my firm belief that we don't need to be afraid of Alzheimer's anymore.
There may be a way to prevent/reverse Alzheimer's. I wrote a comment towards the bottom of the page in response to someone asking about the current state of research. If you're interested, you should check it out. I did my best to summarize a new book by Dr. Bredesen, MD called The End Of Alzheimer's . In it he dives into exactly what Alzheimer's is at a molecular level, why drug treatments have been generally unsuccessful so far, and what may actually help treat it.
Know that I'm with you. It sounds scary as hell. But after reading it myself I honestly feel hope again.