Headshrinking is alive and well
A review of 31 recent clinical trials of Alzheimer’s disease drugs concluded that rather than protect patient’s brains, the drugs accelerated brain atrophy! OOPS!
This points out the failure of the orthodox medical approach to Alzheimer’s disease. The conventional drug-oriented medical approach targets a substance called Beta Amyloid, which is something that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. However, it turns out that Beta Amyloid deposits are actually a symptom of brain degeneration, not the cause. Therefore, trying to block Alzheimer’s symptoms like Beta Amyloid without dealing with the causal factors that create it won’t stop the processes of degeneration, disease, and ultimately, dementia. Sadly, this is true in most conditions.
Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia are frightening to anticipate in ourselves and to witness in our loved ones. It would be great if all we would have to do to forestall such a fate is to take a pill. But things aren’t so simple and easy. Fortunately, there are ways of working on the causes of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
In his book, “The End of Alzheimer’s Program,” Dale Bredesen, MD
outlines the truth about the causes and treatments of Alzheimer’s disease
Bredesen explains that, like most chronic degenerative health conditions, Alzheimer’s disease develops as the result of the damaging effects of a variety of factors that can stress and deplete our brains and immune systems over time. Some of the causal factors he mentions are, in addition to genetic predisposition, stress, blood sugar instability and diabetes, various chronic infections, toxic insults from mold and other environmental sources, rampant inflammation, head trauma, circulation deficits, faulty diet, imbalanced hormones, and nutritional deficiencies. There are ways of addressing these things.
It is Bredesen’s contention that giving a drug or drugs to address the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease without stopping the onslaught of these causative factors has no chance of healing dementia patients. However, his functional medicine approach has had success, and he recounts several inspiring patient case histories.
This is another example of the difference between conventional medicine and the functional medicine approach to promote wellness
While in life-or-death situations and acute injuries it is necessary to control symptoms with whatever tools are most expedient, in chronic degenerative health conditions that approach by itself is not enough. These problems, like Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, irritable bowels, sinus congestion, headaches, fibromyalgia, etc require the discovery of what underlying dysfunctions have produced them, and then correcting those dysfunctions, enabling the body to heal.
Is there a way to prevent the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease?
Even though I believe that we are all somewhere on the gradient between optimal brain function and dementia, hopefully, most of us are not too far along that gradient. But none of us is free from exposure to environmental pollutants, most of us eat diets that could stand to be healthier, our lifestyles involve more stress than we would like, global warming has increased the infections we are susceptible to, many of us have been exposed to more of the causal factors, and many have genetic risk factors.
All of this means that, rather than despairing and surrendering, we can and should employ the same functional interventions that are available to be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. These things can serve as part of a general preventive lifestyle and health-support program. Such a program is not just for Alzheimer’s disease. The same kind of things are helpful for many other chronic health problems.
If not now, when?
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