HUGE News : Alzheimer ? s Reversed for the First Time By Featur ed Columnist Ellen Wood
In the past decade hundreds of clinical trials , at an aggregate cost of over one billion dollars , have been conducted to find the ONE cure for Alzheimer ? s Disease . But they all came up empty .
It turns out that there is a cure for early Alzheimer ? s ? but it ? s not one particular drug or toodling with one specific gene . In fact , it ? s not ONE thing at all .
In a small joint study , scientists from UCLA Mary S . Easton Center for Alzheimer ? s Disease Research and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging found that memory loss may be reversed , and improvement sustained , using a lifestyle program that involves comprehensive changes in diet , brain stimulation , exercise , meditation , supplements and multiple additional steps that affect brain chemistry .
Sounds almost exactly like the program I developed for myself in 2004 when evidence of my mental decline became progressively worse . My symptoms were very much like the early part of Alzheimer ? s Disease that had claimed my mother ten years before : I was making copious notes because my short term memory was fragile ; I didn ? t ask a question because I couldn ? t remember if I had just asked it ; and my tongue kept tripping on words , if I could even find the word .
Some of the ten participants in UCLA / Buck Institute ? s study had symptoms similar to mine . For example , patient 3 ? s memory was so bad that she used an iPad to record everything , then forgot her password . Her children noticed she commonly lost her train of thought in mid-sentence , and often asked them if they had carried out the tasks that she mistakenly thought she had asked them to do .
The study was conducted by Dr . Dale Bredesen , UCLA ? s Augustus Rose Professor of Neurology , director of the Easton Center and the paper ? s author . Although other chronic illnesses such as heart disease , cancer and HIV have been improved through the use of combination therapies , this is the first time a clinical trial has been conducted for Alzheimer ? s by combining a number of therapies .
Dr . Bredesen theorized that , rather than a single targeted agent , the solution might be a multiple-component system approach . ? The existing Alzheimer ? s drugs affect a single target , but Alzheimer ? s Disease is more complex . Imagine having a roof with 36 holes in it , and your drug patched one hole very well ,? he said . ? The drug may have worked , and a single hole may have been fixed , but you still have 35 other leaks , and so the underlying process may not be affected much .? Dr . Bredesen added that although the findings are ? very encouraging ,? the
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