Is Alzheimer's Reversible?

In the United States, Alzheimer's disease has become the third leading cause of death, just behind heart disease and cancer. A woman's chances of developing Alzheimer's disease are now greater than her chances of developing cancer. Alzheimer's disease inevitably leads to death, but only after years of increasing disability. Alzheimer's disease alone portends decimation of the United States Medicare budget as soon as 2050.

Treatments for Alzheimer's disease have been mostly disappointing. There is no magic bullet, no single pill that stops or even reliably slows the course of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Remissions and reversals of Alzheimer's disease are almost unheard of, but Dr. Dale Bredesen of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research for the Department of Neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles reports nine exceptions to the rule. A tenth patient who was started on treatment probably too late could not be helped, but a combination of interventions in Dr. Bredesen's care seemed induce remission in five others.

What kinds of patients got better in Dr. Bredesen's program? Here are a few.

• A 67-year-old woman who still enjoyed her job as an analyst found that she had memory loss that was a lot more than just being "senile." She couldn't not remember what she had read by the time she got to the bottom of a page. She began to confuse the names of her pets. She couldn't remember where to take the exit on her drive home from work. She could not find light switches in the house where she had lived for many years. After three months on the first therapeutic system described below, she, in the words of the doctor "was able to navigate without problems, remember telephone numbers without difficulty, prepare reports and do all of her work without difficulty, read and retain information, and, overall, she became asymptomatic. She noted that her memory was now better than it had been in many years." Two and one-half years later, when her doctor's report was being written, she was still doing well.

READ Alzheimer's Dementia: Signs, Symptoms and Treatment Options

• A 55-year-old attorney experienced progressively worse memory loss after her 50th birthday. She would leave items cooking on the stove when she left the house. She would forget meetings, and schedule multiple meetings at the same time. She tried to cope with her clients by using her iPad to take copious notes, but then she would forget the password to her iPad. After five months on the second program described on the next page of this article, she was able to stop using her iPad to take notes but still remembered what her clients told her, started taking Spanish lessons, and gained certification in a new legal specialty.

• A 69 year-old businessman had been suffering progressive memory loss attributed to early-onset Alzheimer's for 11 years. Brain scans had already shown changes characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. He could not remember faces, and he could not function at work. After six months on his own individualized treatment program, also described on the next page, he was able to function normally at work, and even lost 10 pounds.

Now let's take a look at what worked for these three very fortunate people.

What Works in Treating Alzheimer's?

If there is anything that a layperson can gain from reading Dr. Bredesen's papers, it's that no single treatment works for everyone who has Alzheimer's. In fact, single treatments don't do much good for anyone at all. However, combinations of simple interventions can, essentially, work wonders.

Let's look at what the doctor ordered for each of the patients mentioned on the first page.

• The first patient was the 67-year-old analyst who couldn't remember what she had read and couldn't remember how to get home. For her, the doctor ordered elimination of sugar and all simple carbohydrates from the diet, elimination of gluten, daily yoga practice, daily meditation time, increasing sleep from four to five hours per night to seven to eight hours per night with the help of melatonin, vitamin D, fish oil, CoQ-10, hormone replacement therapy, fasting overnight (no midnight snacks), flossing, and six half-hour sessions of light exercise every week.

• The second patient was the 55-year-old lawyer who forgot her meetings with her clients. For her, the doctor prescribed fasting overnight, elimination of sugar and processed foods from the diet, avoiding farm-raised fish, no meat, exercising four to five times a week, reducing stress by relaxation and meditation, taking a small dose of melatonin to be able to get eight hours of sleep every night her schedule permitted, activated forms of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine-5-phosphate) and vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin), CoQ-10, vitamin D, DHA and EPA (but not fish oil), bioidentical hormone replacement, and reducing her use of antidepressants.

• The third patient was the 69-year-old businessman who had had memory problems for 11 years. He made a habit of fasting overnight, increased his consumption of fruits and vegetables, limited his consumption of chicken and beef to organic varieties, took coconut oil, took probiotics, took ashwagandha, turmeric, and bacopa, took vitamin C, vitamin D, and vitamin E, took methylcobalamin 1mg, methyltetrahydrofolate 0.8mg, and pyridoxine-5-phosphate 50mg, and took CoQ-10, DHA, EPA, zinc, and alpha-lipoic acid.

What is important to understand about these three patients is that they did not follow their doctor's orders perfectly. There might be days they failed to take a particular supplement and weeks they failed to follow a lifestyle recommendation. None of these recommendations, however, required anything approaching the financial outlay required for medication. None of them had serious side effects (although one person Dr. Bredesen worked with was sufficiently advanced in the disease that it was difficult to swallow all the capsules, and this person did not get better). There was no single magic nutrient that erased Alzheimer's, but taken altogether, they seem to have arrested the disease.

READ 6 Alternative Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease

This study represents the first time Alzheimer's disease has ever been reversed. The ironic finding is that there are many equally valid approaches to nutritional support for Alzheimer's disease. Together, they may do things that no single medication can do. The key is to start nutritional intervention while symptoms are still somewhat manageable, and just to keep doing the best you can. Perfect compliance with nutritional programs isn't necessary. Making your best effort sometimes works wonders.