Review: The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline

The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline by Dale Bredesen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Before summarizing Dr. Bredesen’s matchless research on treatment protocols for aggressive cognitive decline, I need to recap where we stand as a country in the face of this disease, which threatens the stability of our medical systems, our communities, and our family units.

We all know someone who has survived cancer, but no one knows a single person who has survived Alzheimer’s. There is no treatment for it. After a diagnosis, there is a clear message conveyed – You are not going to get better. This is the beginning of the end. It will probably be awful.

In America, only two medications are currently prescribed to “slow the decline of neural degeneration”. (Everything else offered is a knock-out pill of one kind or another.) If you know someone in the throes of neural degeneration, you also know that slowing things down and prolonging the exquisite decimation of this human being’s neural real estate, is no blessing.

No new Alzheimer’s drug has been approved since 2003. That’s 15 years of nothing. We are making great strides in cancer and in molecular biology, generally. Meanwhile, death by dementia is rapidly increasing. It robs victims of their humanity – sometimes over decades – it terrorizes and bankrupts their families, and we have no effective treatment. What? While the technology industry makes startling advances in Artificial Intelligence almost weekly, we have stood by and watched the human intelligence of our seniors wither away appallingly. This situation seems ghoulish to me.

You have likely heard neuro-specialists parroting the amyloid plaque hypothesis. In fact, only those toeing the amyloid line can get funding for their research. Meanwhile, amyloid plaque is also found in the brains of perfectly healthy individuals. Amyloid is only one piece of a very complicated puzzle. Scientists and doctors investigating the root causes of cognitive decline and braving the icy waters of non-amyloid based research are mostly ignored.

In this book, Dr. Bredesen addresses the other pieces of the dementia puzzle and lays out his protocol, which has helped many hundreds of people reverse their cognitive decline.

This book is 70% understandable to the average reader (like me) and 30% rather technical and sciencey. There were two chapters I had to read twice and, yes, I took notes. His protocol is rooted in lots of common sense but there are many supplements he recommends, after the patient has had extensive blood work done so that there is a detailed, personalized blueprint of the patient’s overall metabolic flexibility (or lack thereof). He connects his reader with support groups (which I have visited) where extensive help is offered in determining your cognitive health – he calls this a “cognoscopy”.

My best take-aways:

1. Exercise almost every day. Sweat. Make it count. 30 to 45 minutes. This stimulates BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) which supports new neuron growth.
2. Stop eating sugar. It is poison for neurons.
3. Protect your sleep. 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep is imperative.
4. Vitamin D3!!! Take it. (Or, be outside in the sun without sunblock every day, if possible. No, not for hours. No, don’t let yourself fry.)
5. Fresh, organic vegetables with every single meal, and lots of them.
6. Lots of good fat – coconut oil, avocados, fatty fish (like salmon), nuts, and grass fed beef or chicken, but in small servings
7. Eliminate gluten.
8. Get your BMI in a good range.
9. Exercise your brain by challenging yourself, move around throughout the day, and get out and socialize.

The supplementation he recommends is rather extensive and it is keyed to your health blueprint. You need to follow through on extensive bloodwork in order to know exactly how much inflammation your body (hence your brain) is dealing with and where you stand with insulin sensitivity. These two things – inflammation and insulin senstitivity – are dire enemies of cognitive health. And environmental toxins….he spends plenty of time talking about this, too.

He urges those with cognitive decline to try to maintain a mild state of ketosis by eating lots of fat, some protein, but very little carbs. This makes the brain use fat as its main source of energy, which optimizes cognitive health. This is a widely-accepted practice and many people without any cognitive decline at all eat a ketogenic diet for better performance in life.

Dr. Bredesen’s entire program is called ReCODE (Reversing Cognitive Decline). His results, which he details in the book, have been astounding. I have personally joined some of the online groups using his protocol – it is the real deal. It does not look easy. It looks like a big commitment. It looks like work.

In chatting with one of my kids about this, he said: “Well, easy choices – hard life. Hard choices – easy life. Right?” Right….

If someone you love is battling cognitive decline, read this book. Do not wait for a new drug because anything new is going to be targeting only ONE of the many things which cause cognitive decline. You want a solution with addresses the whole mess.   Acting early has changed the outcome for many.


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Review: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was thoughtfully suggested to me by the pattern-seeking gremlins who live in my computer and who seem to know me better than I know myself. Uhhh…read a book about checklists? Could anything be more banal? Although apprehensive, I decided to trust the algorithmic gremlins.

I bought it. I read it. I loved it.

The author, Atul Gawande, is a surgeon and a writer. He got hooked on the idea of improving outcomes for patients by getting the professionals in the operating theater to use checklists. He starts out with some harrowing tales of failures and near-failures caused by simple human error – the kind of human error that many of us think is unavoidable – the kind of human error we don’t like but we seem to accept.

Gawande does not seek perfection. However, he is deeply committed to eliminating as much ineptitude as possible by getting decision makers to submit themselves to the most pedestrian of life’s tasks – using a checklist. He is particularly focused on life/death situations, where the most trivial slipup will kill one or many people. Using examples from hospital operating rooms, pilot cabins of commercial airplanes, and skyscraper construction sites, Gawande shows how taking less than a minute to consult a thorough “read-then-do” checklist saves lives and also many millions of dollars.

Creating good checklists and using them does not require a professional to learn a new skill. There are no special classes or certifications to chase down and no hard effort to add to an already hard job. Nothing is required at all, except a very brief subjugation of self .… to the list. All that is needed is an admission that our complicated, busy and important tasks can be reduced to a checklist, and errors, especially errors which take lives, can be minimized.

It is a tough sell, apparently. People want improvement and solutions, he learned, but prefer them to be more convoluted or complex. Getting people to use checklists, as easy as it sounds, is anything but. Yet, he persists and with extraordinary outcomes. In his multi-hospital study, where a 9 item checklist was used in the operating rooms, post-surgical complications were reduced by 36%....without spending one dollar.

Technology continues to add speed and distance between us and the things we do and produce. As this trend continues, taking 30 human seconds to look at a list sounds like a very good idea to me.


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Review: The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain by Steven R. Gundry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author is exceptionally accomplished in his field - heavy on the practice side (heart transplants) and heavy on the research side. The claim he makes sounds batty....at first. I'm glad I hung in there and kept reading.

Essentially, he has discovered how lectins (the large proteins found in plants) make people ill. Not all vegetables, mind you, but a boatload of them are toxic and interrupt messaging between cells creating serious inflammatory reactions (think: celiac, rheumatoid arthritis, acid reflux, lupus, IBS, and much more). Actually, since there really is nothing new under the sun, I'm sure someone in the past has noticed this, but until Gundry devoted himself to deep research on this, it hasn't been given much air time.

His discussion on the systems which plants have devised to NOT be eaten is fascinating. It turns out they know when they are being assaulted - picked or eaten - and they immediately produce more toxins in response to this, and it has been measured! This is one of the many surprising things I learned while reading this.

He is neither anti-vegetarian, nor pro-carnivore. The book does list everything you should and should not eat, and fish is most prominently featured along with healthy fats and cruciferous vegetables, but he recommends eating poultry and meat daily in moderation, as well.

The book is very well researched and accessible to the non-scientist. The data he presents -
unassailable. Lectins are now on my radar....permanently.



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