• About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • DMCA
  • Sitemap
  • Write For Us
Friday, February 26, 2021
Daily illinois - USA | News, Sports & Updates Web Magazine
  • Covid-19
  • News
    • All
    • Education
    • Politics
    • Sports
    • World
    Sandals sit in the dirt following an attack on a Nigerian school

    Nigeria’s Zamfara school abduction: Hundreds of girls missing

    Black Americans have disproportionately suffered from pollution. It’s time for a new policy.

    Black Americans have disproportionately suffered from pollution. It’s time for a new policy.

    Pelosi mistakenly refers to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as 'Don Johnson'

    Pelosi mistakenly refers to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as ‘Don Johnson’

    What's wrong with UVa? Explaining the defending champs' fade before Selection Sunday

    What’s wrong with UVa? Explaining the defending champs’ fade before Selection Sunday

    Top 20 New Hampshire Union Leader RSS Feeds

    Markets rebound as inflation worries fade – business live

    Tucker Carlson Suggests QAnon Doesn't Exist Because He Can't Find Its Website

    Tucker Carlson Suggests QAnon Doesn’t Exist Because He Can’t Find Its Website

    Tiger Woods completed one of sport's greatest comebacks. Can he do it again?

    Tiger Woods is awake and recovering from surgery after serious accident

    US aviation body orders urgent probes of some Boeing 777 engines

    US aviation body orders urgent probes of some Boeing 777 engines

    Sangamon Auditorium - PHOTO COURTESY UIS VIA YOUTUBE/UISTUBE

    Letters to the editor 2/18/21

  • Science & Tech
    • All
    • Mobile
    How will NASA's Perseverance rover engineers pilot first helicopter on Mars?

    How will NASA’s Perseverance rover engineers pilot first helicopter on Mars?

    Sir David Attenborough narrates the "exhibits" in this AR iPhone app

    Sir David Attenborough narrates the “exhibits” in this AR iPhone app

    There's a secret code in the Mars rover's parachute

    There’s a secret code in the Mars rover’s parachute

    Spotify reveals HiFi tier, 80-country expansion, new exclusive podcasts

    Spotify reveals HiFi tier, 80-country expansion, new exclusive podcasts

    ‘Follow the Sun’ is a new Mac app to automate brightness and color temperature of HomeKit lights - 9to5Mac

    ‘Follow the Sun’ is a new Mac app to automate brightness and color temperature of HomeKit lights – 9to5Mac

    Democrats ask cable and streaming providers about their role in spreading misinformation ahead of Capitol riot

    Democrats ask cable and streaming providers about their role in spreading misinformation ahead of Capitol riot

    Bradley Voytek

    The Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Be Meaningful After All

    This Android's under-display selfie camera isn’t great, but it's a sign for future phones

    This Android’s under-display selfie camera isn’t great, but it’s a sign for future phones

    'Diagrams' Mac app updated with palette customization and M1 Macs support - 9to5Mac

    ‘Diagrams’ Mac app updated with palette customization and M1 Macs support – 9to5Mac

    Portland Apple Store ready to reopen after nearly nine months - 9to5Mac

    Portland Apple Store ready to reopen after nearly nine months – 9to5Mac

  • Entertainment
    • All
    • Gaming
    • Movie
    • Music
    Gary Oldman, left, and Ben Affleck joined a Hollywood Reporter roundtable on COVID-19 and the movie

    Ben Affleck And Gary Oldman Reflect On The Changing Business Of Moviemaking During COVID-19

    Tobias Ighofose, Founder of BisonPlay

    Meet Tobias Ighofose: Entrepreneur Creating Diverse Mobile Games Inspired By His Daughter

    What’s playing at the drive-in: 'Minari,' 'Tom & Jerry,' a Billie Eilish doc and more

    What’s playing at the drive-in: ‘Minari,’ ‘Tom & Jerry,’ a Billie Eilish doc and more

    Dennis Stroughmatt's Cajun-Creole Trio entertains at Hill Prairie Winery near Oakford this Saturday evening for a Mardi Gras celebration.

    February finals

    Woman drinking coffee and using laptop at home

    How To Stay Focused While Working From Home

    One Good Thing: Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia is so much more than a Gilmore Girls rip-off

    One Good Thing: Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia is so much more than a Gilmore Girls rip-off

    How did 'Drivers License' become the song of 2021? By exalting in the power of teen-girl melodrama

    How did ‘Drivers License’ become the song of 2021? By exalting in the power of teen-girl melodrama

    null

    Disney Plus: Everything to know about Disney’s streaming app

    'Superman & Lois' flies back to the Man of Steel's 'Smallville' roots

    ‘Superman & Lois’ flies back to the Man of Steel’s ‘Smallville’ roots

    Actress Mara Wilson empathizes with Britney Spears being sexualized as a child

    Actress Mara Wilson empathizes with Britney Spears being sexualized as a child

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • Food
    • Travel
    Shockingly Real Tom Cruise Deepfakes Are Invading TikTok

    Shockingly Real Tom Cruise Deepfakes Are Invading TikTok

    L.A. Affairs: Swiping for Mr. Right while freezing my eggs

    L.A. Affairs: Swiping for Mr. Right while freezing my eggs

    This sweet image, taken by South African photographer Brent Stirton, shows Itsazo Velez, the director at the Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Centre in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), introducing two new rescued baby chimps to the juvenile enclosure. This image has helped Stirton earn shortlisted status in the wildlife and nature category. He said: 'The chimps will be closely monitored by the keepers who live with the juvenile and baby chimps 24/7 in their enclosure and at night in their night dormitory. These chimps are all rescues and come from the bushmeat trade in DRC after their mothers were killed for bushmeat. The babies are often taken for sale and sometimes for pets. As a result, many of these chimps have lived lives of isolation, suffering and cruelty'

    Sony World Photography Awards 2021: Stunning images from shortlisted professional photographers

    pA tailored look from fallwinter 2021 Armani by way of New York.p

    Angelo Urrutia Picked a Hell of a Year to Launch His Brand—and He Wouldn’t Change a Thing

    New research reveals British pig farming is reducing carbon footprint

    'That Vegan Teacher' says TikTok ban won't silence her following petition, controversies

    ‘That Vegan Teacher’ says TikTok ban won’t silence her following petition, controversies

    Feed your moths and hide your trousers: the expert guide to making clothes last for ever

    Feed your moths and hide your trousers: the expert guide to making clothes last for ever

    L.A. Zoo reopens for the second time during the pandemic

    L.A. Zoo reopens for the second time during the pandemic

    These Beautiful Photos Celebrate Diversity In The Most Joyful Possible Way

    These Beautiful Photos Celebrate Diversity In The Most Joyful Possible Way

    Nestlé’s Cookie AI Looks Creepy As Hell, But Could Improve Your Baking

    Nestlé’s Cookie AI Looks Creepy As Hell, But Could Improve Your Baking

26 °f
Chicago
38 ° Sat
37 ° Sun
30 ° Mon
33 ° Tue
No Result
View All Result
Daily illinois - USA | News, Sports & Updates Web Magazine
No Result
View All Result
Home Health

‘End of Alzheimer’s’ Doctor’s Pricey Memory-Loss Program Draws Questions

by Staff Writer
December 15, 2020
in Health
Reading Time: 7min read
0
‘End of Alzheimer’s’ Doctor’s Pricey Memory-Loss Program Draws Questions
493
SHARES
1.4k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


By Linda Marsa, Kaiser Health News

Related posts

Coronavirus in Illinois updates: United Center to serve as COVID-19 vaccination site, sources say; more than 130K vaccine doses administered as state blows past previous daily record

Coronavirus in Illinois updates: United Center to serve as COVID-19 vaccination site, sources say; more than 130K vaccine doses administered as state blows past previous daily record

February 26, 2021
Social distancing signs on machines at Gold's Gym in East Northport, New York, on Aug. 19, 2020, ahead...

CDC Urges Stricter Gym Precautions After COVID-19 Outbreaks Linked To Facilities

February 26, 2021

When her husband was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease in 2015, Elizabeth Pan was devastated by the lack of options to slow his inevitable decline. But she was encouraged when she discovered the work of a UCLA neurologist, Dr. Dale Bredesen, who offered a comprehensive lifestyle management program that he said would halt or even reverse cognitive decline in patients like her husband.

After decades of research, Bredesen had concluded that more than 36 drivers of Alzheimer’s cumulatively contribute to the loss of mental acuity. They range from chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes to vitamin and hormonal deficiencies, undiagnosed infections and even long-term exposures to toxic substances. Bredesen’s impressive academic credentials lent legitimacy to his approach.

Pan said she paid $4,000 to a doctor trained in Bredesen’s program for a consultation and a series of extensive laboratory tests, then was referred to another doctor, who devised a stringent regimen of dietary changes that entailed cutting out all sugars, eating a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and adhering to a complex regimen of meditation, vigorous daily exercise and about a dozen nutritional supplements each day (at about $200 a month). Pan said she had extensive mold remediation done in her home after the Bredesen doctors told her the substance could be hurting her husband’s brain.

But after two years passed, she said, her husband, Wayne, was steadily declining. To make matters worse, he had lost more than 60 pounds because he didn’t like the food on the diet. In April, he died.

“I imagine it works in some people and doesn’t work in others,” said Pan, who lives in Oakton, Virginia. “But there’s no way to tell ahead of time if it will work for you.”

Bredesen wrote the best-selling 2017 book The End of Alzheimer’s and has promoted his ideas in talks to community groups around the country and in radio and TV appearances like The Dr. Oz Show. He has also started his own company, Apollo Health, to market his program and train and provide referrals for practitioners.

Unlike other self-help regimens, Bredesen said, his program is an intensely personalized and scientific approach to counteract each individual’s specific deficits by “optimizing the physical body and understanding the molecular drivers of the disease,” he told KHN in a November phone interview. “The vast majority of people improve” as long as they adhere to the regimen.

Bredesen’s peers acknowledge him as an expert on aging. A former postdoctoral fellow under Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner at the University of California-San Francisco, Bredesen presided over a well-funded lab at UCLA for more than five years. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 1989 and also founded the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Marin County. He has written or co-authored more than 200 papers.

But colleagues are critical of what they see as his commercial promotion of a largely unproven and costly regimen. They say he strays from long-established scientific norms by relying on anecdotal reports from patients, rather than providing evidence with rigorous research.

“He’s an exceptional scientist,” said George Perry, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas-San Antonio. “But monetizing this is a turnoff.”

“I have seen desperate patients and family members clean out their bank accounts and believe this will help them with every ounce of their being,” said Dr. Joanna Hellmuth, a neurologist in the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF. “They are clinging to hope.”

Many of the lifestyle changes Bredesen promotes are known to be helpful. “The protocol itself is based on very low-quality data, and I worry that vulnerable patients and family members may not understand that,” said Hellmuth. “He trained here”—at UCSF—“so he knows better.”

The Bredesen package doesn’t come cheap. He has built a network of practitioner-followers by training them in his protocol—at $1,800 a pop—in seminars sponsored by the Institute for Functional Medicine, which emphasizes alternative approaches to managing disease. Apollo Health also offers two-week training sessions for a $1,500 fee.

Once trained in his ReCODE Protocol, medical professionals charge patients upward of $300 for a consultation and as much as $10,500 for eight- to 15-month treatment packages. For the ReCODE protocol, aimed at people already suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive decline, Apollo Health charges an initial $1,399 fee for a referral to a local practitioner that includes an assessment and extensive laboratory tests. Apollo then offers $75-per-month subscriptions that provide cognitive games and online support, and links to another company that offers dietary supplements for an additional $150 to $450 a month. Insurance generally covers little of these costs.

Apollo Health, founded in 1998 and headquartered in Burlingame, California, also offers a protocol geared toward those who have a family history of dementia or want to prevent cognitive decline.

Bredesen estimates that about 5,000 people have done the ReCODE program. The fees are a bargain, Bredesen said, if they slow decline enough to prevent someone from being placed in a nursing home, where yearly costs can climb past $100,000 annually.

Bredesen and his company are tapping into the desperation that has grown out of the failure of a decades-long scientific quest for effective Alzheimer’s treatments. Much of the research money in the field has narrowly focused on amyloids—the barnacle-like gunk that collects outside nerve cells and interferes with the brain’s signaling system—as the main culprits behind cognitive decline. Drugmakers have tried repeatedly, and thus far without much success, to invent a trillion-dollar anti-amyloid drug. There’s been less emphasis in the field on the lifestyle choices that Bredesen stresses.

“Amyloids sucked up all the air in the room,” said Dr. Lon Schneider, an Alzheimer’s researcher and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at USC.

Growing evidence shows lifestyle changes help delay the progress of the mind-robbing disease. An exhaustive Lancet report in August identified a long list of risk factors for dementia, including excessive drinking, exposure to air pollution, obesity, loss of hearing, smoking, depression, lack of exercise and social isolation. Controlling these factors—which can be done on the cheap—could delay or even prevent up to 40 percent of dementia cases, according to the report.

Bredesen’s program involves all these practices, along with personalized bells and whistles like intermittent fasting, meditation and supplements. Bredesen’s scientific peers question whether data supports his micromanaged approach over plain-vanilla healthy living.

Bredesen has published three papers showing positive results in many patients following his approach, but critics say he has fallen short of proving his method’s effectiveness.

The papers lack details on which protocol elements were followed, or the treatment duration, UCSF’s Hellmuth said. Nor do they explain how cognitive tests were conducted or evaluated, so it’s difficult to gauge whether improvements were due to the intervention, to chance variations in performance or an assortment of other variables, she said.

Bredesen shrugs off the criticism: “We want things to be in an open-access journal so everybody can read it. These are still peer-reviewed journals. So what’s the problem?”

Another problem raised about Bredesen’s enterprise is the lack of quality control, which he acknowledges. Apollo-trained “certified practitioners” can include everyone from nurses and dietitians to chiropractors and health coaches. Practitioners with varying degrees of training and competence can take his classes and hang out a shingle. That’s a painful fact for some who buy the package.

“I had the impression these practitioners were certified, but I realize they all had just taken a two-week course,” said a Virginia man who requested anonymity to protect his wife’s privacy. He said that he had spent more than $15,000 on tests and treatments for his ailing spouse and that six months into the program, earlier this year, she had failed to improve.

Bredesen said he and his staff were reviewing “who’s getting the best results and who’s getting the worst results,” and intended to cut poor performers out of the network. “We’ll make it so that you can only see the people getting the best results,” he said.

Colleagues say that to test whether Bredesen’s method works it needs to be subject to a placebo-controlled study, the gold standard of medical research, in which half the participants get the treatment while the other half don’t.

In the absence of rigorous studies, said USC’s Schneider, a co-author of the Lancet report, “saying you can ‘end Alzheimer’s now and this is how you do it’ is overpromising and oversimplifying. And a lot of it is just common sense.”

Bredesen no longer says his method can end Alzheimer’s, despite the title of his book. Apollo Health’s website still makes that claim, however.

This story was produced by KHN (Kaiser Health News), which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.



Source by www.thedailybeast.com

Tags: Alzheimer's diseaseNeurologyScience
Share197Tweet123Share49
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Van Morrison teams with Eric Clapton for anti-lockdown song

Van Morrison teams with Eric Clapton for anti-lockdown song

December 19, 2020
Sen. Rand Paul's ‘Festivus Report’ claims $54B in tax dollars was 'totally wasted'

Sen. Rand Paul’s ‘Festivus Report’ claims $54B in tax dollars was ‘totally wasted’

December 23, 2020
'Zombie' greenhouse gas lurks in permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean

‘Zombie’ greenhouse gas lurks in permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean

December 24, 2020
Sandals sit in the dirt following an attack on a Nigerian school

Nigeria’s Zamfara school abduction: Hundreds of girls missing

0
Fact check: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he would defer his annual raise

Fact check: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he would defer his annual raise

0
Swedish government sidelines epidemiologist who steered country's no lockdown experiment as deaths rise

Swedish government sidelines epidemiologist who steered country’s no lockdown experiment as deaths rise

0
Sandals sit in the dirt following an attack on a Nigerian school

Nigeria’s Zamfara school abduction: Hundreds of girls missing

February 26, 2021
Black Americans have disproportionately suffered from pollution. It’s time for a new policy.

Black Americans have disproportionately suffered from pollution. It’s time for a new policy.

February 26, 2021
Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders says Democrats will try to devise a backdoor to implement a $15 minimum wage after major stimulus setback

February 26, 2021
Daily illinois - USA | News, Sports & Updates Web Magazine

Copyright © 2020 Dailyillinois.com.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • DMCA
  • Sitemap
  • Write For Us

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • About Us Page
  • Contact
  • DMCA Policy
  • Home 1
  • Privacy Policy
  • Submit, Guest Post, Write For Us and Become a Contributor
  • Terms of Use

Copyright © 2020 Dailyillinois.com.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.