This doctor reversed heart disease. Now he wants to do it for Alzheimer’s

Ed1937

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/30/health/dean-ornish-lifestyle-study-alzheimers-wellness/index.html  

M1

I wish him luck but remain a skeptic. The brain is much more than a muscle.  Not practical for most people.

harshedbuzz

That headline is worthy of the National Enquirer. His heart study had 27 participants engaging in a program that would be difficult for many to sustain given the limited diet and time commitment to yoga, strength training and aerobic exercise required. 

I question how a caregiver is supposed to make something like this happen when:

1)  Your LO has anosognosia and doesn't realize they've had a cognitive shift that needs addressing through changes in lifestyle and activity.

2) Your LO craves only sweets and you're plying them with milkshakes to deliver calories and necessary medications. 

3) Your LO's brand of dementia features gait or balance issues or a desire not to move from the recliner.

It feels like this protocol has the potential to be one more thing for loving caregivers to feel guilty about if they can't make it happen reliably.

HB

Ed1937

That;s what I thought. But I'll take anything that has a chance at all.

storycrafter

It would be great if it could be so straightforward with wonderful benefits for all. Very difficult to do on your own over time. I'm also curious how many other researchers have duplicated the results mentioned in the article, and with what segment of the population?

I have a friend whose husband developed Alz. She leaped on the research and information bandwagon and found a homeopathic doctor knowledgable about special diets to prevent dementia. They went gung ho with all the food and supplements. For a while her husband did improve and it looked very hopeful. A few months into it he began declining in various ways and went downhill. She learned first hand the limits of diet.

There are benefits for everybody from such a rigorous regimen, especially if started years before onset. The brain is an extremely complicated organ, genetics is complicated science, the environment is intricately complex in our biology. I'm sure the methods espoused in the article are beneficial prior to any onset of disease. I too, am skeptical of the word, "prevention." Delaying the process is perhaps feasible. "Prevention" is another thing altogether.

Paris20

My husband is a case history of one but I am quite skeptical about Ornish’s leap in reasoning. My husband had been overweight, inactive, and ate sweets incessantly. When we hit our 30s, we both changed our behaviors. We ate healthfully, worked out regularly, and got to normal weight. In just a few years, my husband’s numbers eliminated him from the high risk cardiac danger categories he was headed for. 

 Forty years after our healthy changes,  my husband saw a neurologist because I was worried about some behavioral problems. He told us that my husband was doing everything right. DH should continue his life style, but know that he had MCI. He now has AD, as his grandmother did. Although all his other grandparents, his father, and his brother all died of heart attacks, it looks like DH’s change in lifestyle helped prevent a heart attack but seems to have had little impact on the development of AD. Maybe it gave him a few extra years. We’ll never know. What we do know is that his cause of death will be complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

billS

These kinds of theories sound reasonable and seem to make intuitive sense. However if lifestyle was really an important factor in dementia, why do many people with very healthy lifestyles develop dementia and many people with horrible lifestyles escape it? Interesting too that the Bredesen program which emphasizes many of the same lifestyle and diet changes strongly pushes a ketogenic very low carbohydrate, high fat diet as one of its essential components, whereas Ornish recommends a very low fat and high carb diet, just the opposite. It reminds me of different religions that all claim to have the one true answer, but in so doing cancel out each other's claim.

Iris L.

Dr Ornish is talking about Best Practices, which we have already been promoting for years for early stage patients and MCI patients.  The purposes of Best Practice are to improve functioning and to prolong the early stages.  I think Best Practices can work for patients if they are practiced in the early stages.  This will allow time to get affairs in order, to modify the home environment and to make whatever other preparations are desired. 

Never has Best Practices been promoted as a cure for any of the dementias.  

The problem that I see is that many patients are at mid-stage by the time they are diagnosed, even though many caregivers believe they are in early stages.  Also, many mid-stage patients are diagnosed as MCI by their doctors.  

When I attended scientific conferences about ten years ago, the focus seemed to be on prevention of dementia in the pre-clinical stage.  This has the potential to work, because there are several modifiable risk factors for Alzhrimer's Disease.  Clinical trials with large groups of patients are needed, like the Framingham study.

Iris

alzsarah2

I would think that the lifestyle changes would be more effective for prevention than reversal of dementia. We are trying the changes in diet and exercise and stress management. Been following about a year and have not seen significant cognitive improvement in my DH. We will keep trying.

billS

Color me very skeptical. My wife and I are lifelong non-smokers, lived a very active rural lifestyle, grew lots of our own food, ate mainly low fat fresh unprocessed food, lots of exercise, were both very active socially and professionally, wife authored a book, did crossword puzzles like a fiend, etc. and she developed dementia around age 70. So I just feel claims of dementia preventative or reversing lifestyle changes are at best overstated. The real causes are clearly still not known. That said, of course we would all be better off by maintaining healthy diet and exercise and lower stress lifestyles.

Crushed

The heart is a pump , a reliable pump but a pump none the less. We transplant hearts and make artificial ones

its TINKERTOYS compared to the brain

Alzheimers is QUACK central even for doctors 

sunshine5

Thanks Ed for sharing the link.

It’s hopeful to know that there is a possibility that AD could be reversed.

My own findings &!mantra- MEMSA helps with MCI.

Music

Exercise

Meditation 

Socialization 

Aromatherapy 

Thanks 

Crushed

One reason it is  QUACK central  is that many things give symptomatic improvement without affect the underlying disease

And the LIES give hope to the hopeless

 

Stuck in the middle

David Atkins proved that coronary artery disease can be reversed by diet and exercise many years ago.  He had a heart attack, which shows he had CAD, but his autopsy (many years later, after he committed suicide) showed his coronary arteries to be completely free of disease.  His program worked to reverse CAD.  It did nothing to prevent leukemia, which is the death he avoided by suicide.  

A disease caused by bad practices can be reversed (in many cases) by best practices.  AD is not caused by bad practices, as noted above, and there is no reason to think best practices will reverse it.

A friend recently returned from service as a medical missionary in Cameroon told me there were two diseases they never saw in their clinic there; CAD and snakebite.  They never saw CAD because the patients didn't have cheeseburgers, cars, or cigarettes.  They never saw snakebite because the snakes were so lethal that no one made it to the clinic.

Aroberson

It makes sense. The human brain is nearly 60 percent fat. We've learned in recent years that fatty acids are among the most crucial molecules that determine your brain's integrity and ability to perform. Hence the reason MCT oil seems to help and getting the body into ketosis. I have been on a ketogenic diet for about 6 months and am almost at my ideal weight. I tried to get my mother on it but can’t be there all the time and she forgets and will eat crappy carb filled foods. I can tell you now I’m clinically smarter in a ketogenic state. There’s 0 brain fog or feeling as you’re not fully awake. I wish I had found keto 20 years ago.

Iris L.

This is an old thread from 7/22.

Iris