The End of Alzheimer's

What @M1 said.

When my sister was first diagnosed, my brother found The Bredesen stuff. To be honest it feels like Bredesen is throwing everything at the wall in hopes that something sticks.

Bredesen's comments about best practices are good - diet, exerciese, and sleep are all hugely important, but he phrases it as if he invented best practices. He didn't. The keto diet stuff will certainly cause you to lose weight, if that's what you're after (my sister lost a good amount of weight herself after being on that diet), but it didn't do anything for her Alzheimer's.

Then there are the scammy parts. In order to participate, you have to sign up for their $75 a month newsletter, which looked to me like articles pulled off of the internet, and prettied up into newsletter form. And you have to subscribe for a year before you can unsubscribe (ah yes, this is now reminding me to contact the CA state AGs consumer fraud office).

If you decide to go with one of Bredesen's "practicioners", it'll cost you. I spoke with one of them and got all of their materials. If we had gone with that guy, it would have been about $5,000 just for the first month (because vitamin/mineral supplements) and other things.

I guess I believe at its core, there are some useful bits of information, and his studies are probably useful. But man, it's all done in just the most scammy way possible.

The reason why I know all of this is because my brother hounded me to have our sister go with the Bredesen protocols. When I did all of my due diligence on this topic, I even went deep into the wellness community. I found several personal website with people who were on the Bredesen protocols literally bragging that they'd spent $10,000 one month or $15,000 another month, and how great they all felt.

I know these folks were acting out of fear and that's how they were justifying spending large sums of money over the course of the year. Most of them seemed to have some version of the APOE gene (based on what they said in their blog posts) which increases your chances of getting Alzheimer's.

So yeah, in my opinion Bredesen is seeing a money making opportunity and acting on it.

If it worked this site would not exist but go ahead. Let us know how it is going.

Don’t do it. They prey on people who are looking for the magic cure, which does not exist. There is so much good, free information out there. I’m with all the others, beware of something that is too good to be true, and costs money to get it.

This one! As you’ve noticed, everyone has chimed in with their replies and stories. Anytime someone needs help or encouragement or information, everyone shares what they know. Overall it’s a caring group of people who are in this journey together.
As for the protocol, a friend of ours who was diagnosed at the same time as my DH and followed it for several months. Other than the benefits of healthy lifestyle as recommended, everything else was money down the drain. I spoke with his wife about it later in the progression of the disease, and she admitted that it was a Hail Mary attempt out of fear. Wasted time and money until they could accept the reality of the diagnosis and get onboard with the appropriate treatment plan.

Eli, sadly this remains an untreatable disease. Most of us go through at least some diagnostic steps to make sure there is nothing else going on. Then it is a matter of individualized steps to live with the present symptoms and prepare for the future-most of the heavy lifting done by the primary caregiver. I personally have not seen benefit from any of the current dementia medications (others here would disagree) but think that many symptoms can be relieved by appropriate use of antianxiety and antipsychotic medications as the disease progresses. So each person's treatment plan will vary. No one here has enough experience with the new anti-amyloid medications (Aduhelm, Leqembi) to render an opinion yet.

For them it was getting under a doctor’s care and taking what medication helped slow it down as long as possible. Once they did that, they were able to focus on the time they had left together.

‘appropriate treatment plan’.

Translation: a care plan that attempts to keep them safe and cared for the rest of their life as they progess down the path that is dementia.

There’s no cure, no treatment, although there are medications that may mask or control some symptoms for a time. Symptoms such as memory, anxiety, depression, agitation, insomnia.

Then there’s the part of the plan that keeps them safe and cared for: caregivers, aids, AL or MC facilities, locks, gates, etc.

This is an excellent support group - but I think you might be asking about zoom meetings - and I don’t know of any of those. One of the pluses of this group is I can ask my question or vent at my convenience and other people can reply at theirs. 24/7/365. Anonymously. In my pajamas.

Like others here, we tried the Bredeson protocols when DW was first afflicted. It made sense to us, a pair of highly educated professionals. We went to a practitioner of the protocol, paid for the tests, bought some of her supplements, used them for a while. It was not easy, nor did we notice any improvements. And we ended up feeling as if we had fallen for charlatans, both Bredeson and this doctor. I recommend against it.

Tyrone

Doesn’t Bredesen have recommendations for an online support group? I’d think all those invested in his treatment plan should have a place to share, compare and vent that’s facilitated by the doctor’s staff.

This forum is the best, IMO. You can find local support groups in your area and virtual groups through the Alz Assoc at this link:

https://www.communityresourcefinder.org/

Direct experience here - we tried the Bredesen protocol around 7 years ago when it was relatively new, worked with a local practitioner and traveled to see a neurologist practicing combination of regular and functional medicine as well. Did all the expensive supplements, true keto diet (daily blood checks like diabetic patients do), brain exercises, electrode stimulation, 2-3 month blood tests from lab to check everything was getting “optimized”. I did the diet with DW for support and because it would have been hard for me to manage different meals between us. It was a lot of effort without expected results. They openly say the program fails for 50% of participants and do not know why. I suspect failure is much higher. Bredesen has faced some harsher criticism more recently for less than rigorous science.

I still have some belief the combination of everything we did helped in some way to slow or delay progression in earliest stages but certainly did not stop or reverse it. Hard to say if we had just done a more relaxed Best Practices and vigorous exercises if it would have come out the same in the end. I don’t regret trying everything we could do at the time but would hesitate to endorse it today.

Eventually progression accelerated. DW age 59 entered memory care mid stage 6 a month ago, 7 years after diagnosis

eli…you are not going to find a more informative, supportive or honest support group than this one.

I applaud you for your advocacy for your husband as well as for yourself. Go ahead and try the protocol. I do not think it is harmful to anything except your finances.

Please do report back if there is a support group for the program.