No cure for Alzheimer's

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Thursday, January 5. 2023

This is a naive article: The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s. Medicine had nothing to offer my father and millions of other Americans. I set out to find out why.

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 09:14 | Comments (14) | Trackbacks (0)

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They have no idea what causes Alzheimers. It is probably mostly genetic. The waters are muddied by various non-medical interests who eagerly offer non-medical answers. We have seen some them posted here on Maggies Farm; exercise, diet, yadda, yadda, yadda. But no one knows what causes it or what might cure or prevent it. The difficulty is that it would require extensive and intrusive human studies and that would never be legal. Short of a breakthru or a miracle we won't cure it.

#1 OneGuy on 2023-01-05 09:33 (Reply)

I suspect there is a cure for it, just like there are cures for various cancers. But TPTB make too much money from us being sick.

#2 Maniac on 2023-01-05 09:53 (Reply)

There isn't really a "cure" for various cancers. The options are to cut, burn or poison. Sometimes these work and sometimes they don't. Worse is they way we judge a "cure" for cancer which essentially boils down to "you didn't die in 5 years. But because we identify cancer years earlier now instead of dying in 5 years people are dying from their cancer in 6 or 7 years (because they were discovered a couple of years earlier than they would have been under older methods) and they are being counted as "cured". A better way to refer to cancer treatment than saying "cured" might be "mitigated". As in yes you still die from it but first we make you go through years of suffering and expense and then you die from a massive cancer in all organs and your last 6 months are hell on earth.

#2.1 OneGuy on 2023-01-05 10:50 (Reply)

Dr. Dale Bredesen has developed an approach that seems to slow down, and to some extent, reverse the cognitive decline. It is not a pill: It is a complete lifestyle change — exercise, meditation, diet, and supplements. And it makes sense that our crappy diets, lack of exercise, and high-stress lifestyles would have some adverse impact on us. Of course, UCLA treats him like a nutjob, despite his credentials. (And they are very impressive.)

Google him.

#3 Lee Also on 2023-01-05 10:03 (Reply)

Yes he is a nutjob. I cannot imagine any thinking person believing that meditation cures or prevents anything. As for diet, well join the massive club of people who actually believe your body gives a shit if you eat white rice or brown rice. Talk about stupid! There are none as stupid as those who blame diet for everything and simultaneously believe diet can cure everything. I'm 80 years old and I have outlived all the quacks and frauds who claimed diet would make you healthy and extend your life. Yes there are new much younger bunch of quacks and frauds scamming the ignorant and foolish but some things never change. Exercise? Yeah, same as diet, a bunch of bullshit in gym shorts.

Here is the one and only thing that you can do to live a long and healthy life: Select genetically healthy parents. If you didn't do that then you are shit out of luck and all the good diet and Pilates in the world aren't going to save you. Meditate on that!!

#4 JustMe on 2023-01-05 11:00 (Reply)

Whelp.

I guess we’d better stop calling British sailors ‘Limeys’ then.

Sigh. Another tradition lost …

#4.1 Adriane on 2023-01-05 15:36 (Reply)

I would hope that in todays world you would see the difference. Before we knew what a human's MDR (minimum daily requirement) was people suffered from a lack of these essential. Today you could get it all in one whopping serving of any regular ceral sold at the super market. It's all there.

The irony is thick here. The "healthy cereals, the granola's and specialties, are severely lacking in the vitamins and minerals you need. But the cereals made for kids and grownups provide it all. Funny huh!

But now we know what the MDR's are and now it is really about trying to convince the gullible that they need to buy your 1000 MG vitamin D pill or to buy the super expensive beet stuff whatever it's called. Or to eat Quinoa or some other grain/berry you never heard of. And your body doesn't know or care if you eat chips and salsa or meat and potatoes as long as you are getting your MDR's. We think food is magical or poison or whatever the "barkers" yell at you one those hour long infomercials. So we are predisposed to think everything and anything that is wrong with you or your loved one's is because you ate meat or white rice or fats or rutabagas or whatever the bad boy of foods is that moment. But your body doesn't care because it doesn't put rutabagas into your bloodstream it puts SUGAR into your blood stream (or proteins or fats and vitamins and minerals). It doesn't know if the sugar came from white rice or quinoa. It doesn't know if your vitamin C came from a lime or from a pill. Feel free to buy that expensive supplement and actually believe you will live forever or that you are curing your cancer/diabetes/whatever. But you won't and you aren't. It's all a lie designed to get your money into "their" pockets and it is also an intelligence test which most of us fail.

#4.1.1 JustMe on 2023-01-05 16:20 (Reply)

I think we know now that amyloid plaque is not the cause. No drug based on that theory works. The problem is capture of the research establishment. There are promising theories, for example herpes virus and absence of certain beneficial gut bacteria. There is likely more than one cause or differs based on genetics or other difference among individuals. I have looked at Bredesen but I don’t think he is credible. There are some dementias that can be reversed but not Alzheimers.

I care deeply about this as my husband is in the late stages and he and our children carry the gene that creates higher risk. So I follow the research and hope that my children now in their 40s won’t face a world with no treatment available. Late onset is awful, but being diagnosed in your 70s is not as terrible as in your 40s and 50s with early onset.

#5 Lhfry on 2023-01-05 12:17 (Reply)

Very sorry to hear that. Genetics don't amount to certainty, either.

#5.1 DeGaulle on 2023-01-05 14:10 (Reply)

The Big Pharm care system wouldn't want to lose a customer with a cure.
Anyone who did come up with one would vanish quickly.

#6 Simon Says on 2023-01-05 15:38 (Reply)

I believe genetics has as much to do with dementia as anything else. My mother-in-law died with dementia, and she was energetic and smart as a tack into her 70s until her 80s. She wasn't overweight or slothful, and the only thing that might have factored was the fact that she was uneducated, but she wasn't stupid by any stretch. Her mother died with dementia. So did all her brothers. And now her son, my husband, is showing early signs. The one doctor who diagnosed her dementia told us she had had a series of small, undetectable strokes that gradually ate away at her brain, so it wasn't technically Alzheimer's. The point is, they haven't figured out a way to stop what seems to be inevitable, and may never figure it out, and when your time comes, it comes.

#7 RebeccaH on 2023-01-05 16:05 (Reply)

Stumbled across this long and interesting read on Alzheimers (and more) on substack yesterday. Check it out if you like.

https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/what-causes-alzheimers-disease

#8 Tim S on 2023-01-05 19:42 (Reply)

I would not describe the article as naive. There is no question that the money and time spent on the amyloid hypothesis has been mostly futile, except in the sense that we are now in a pretty strong position to say "Well, it wasn't that..."

Alzheimer's is difficult. No one really understands how cognition arises in the brain, so researchers are stuck with trying to compare the brains of those affected with those who are not. Unfortunately, you can only do that after they are dead, when the brain is not in tip-top condition. Also, it is late-onset and often has a slow progression, at least at first. It is a hard way to do research and slow progress is only to be expected, if not welcomed.

The human body did not come with a Theory of Operation manual. We have no clear idea how many popular pharmaceuticals actually work (e.g., statins for heard disease. They seem to reduce heart attacks and lower cholesterol, but other drugs that lower cholesterol do not reduce heart attacks. So there's something missing in our understanding there).

It seems to be slowly dawning on Alzheimer's researchers that the amyloid hypothesis, as currently understood, is a dry well. As Max Planck allegedly said, "Science advances one funeral at a time". Unfortunately, while the process slowly self-corrects, most of the funerals will be among the patient community.

#9 Hairless Joe on 2023-01-06 09:41 (Reply)

When Aduhelm was approved and they decided it to be covered by medicare to the tune of $56,000 the gov't raised medicare rates to cover it-reason for the high increase in premiums last year. Now that it's been sidelined the premiums should come down a bit this year.

#10 S.Lynn on 2023-01-14 22:56 (Reply)

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Thursday, January 5. 2023

No cure for Alzheimer's