Pearls of Wisdom
BETTER MEMORY, ANYONE? Reversal of Cognitive Decline Has Arrived by Nancy Lonsdorf, MD and Mimi Guarneri MD FACC
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VER FORGET A NAME, BLANK out on a word or walk into a room and forget why you’re there? Sure, we’ve all done it, and most of you under 40 don’t think twice about it. For the rest of us, such slipups can leave us wondering, worrying, rationalizing, and otherwise wasting precious energy trying to convince ourselves that we are NOT careening down the slippery slope of no return called “Alzheimer’s disease.”
Game-Changer Ahead
Fortunately, the memory changes of Alzheimer’s vs. “normal aging” are readily distinguishable, and most “senior moments” are not harbingers of decline to come. For example, a lapsed name, word or item popping into your mind later is a good indication you’re exhibiting “normal aging” only. Yet, the grounds for deeper Alzheimer’s fear relief is here. The impossible-- slowing, stopping or reversing memory decline-- has now become a reality. Yes, you heard us correctly, research now suggests that Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is reversible, especially if you act early. And the solution is not the usual high tech medical breakthrough of expensive drugs, immune or gene therapy you might think. Rather, the effective approach is an amazingly low tech, multimodality, natural approach that is within reach of every individual right now.
The First Patient
Sound unbelievable? We would never have believed it either, if we hadn’t first heard it directly from a close colleague of Dale Bredesen, MD,
the pioneering UCLA Professor and Alzheimer’s researcher who discovered it. Under the soft southern California sky, dining at dusk, she related the dramatic story of her best friend, “Patient Zero” (PZ.) In short, PZ is a globe-trotting, high-level consultant who speaks seven languages, yet called her friend (BFF) one day in a panic—she couldn’t remember what country she was in. PZ’s eventual diagnosis was not good. She had early Alzheimer’s disease (AD.) Devastated. PZ confessed she was going to commit suicide rather than suffer, as her mother had, a long, protracted death from AD. As a result of her friend’s urgent referral, Dr. Bredesen agreed to try his multimodality research protocol for the very first time, with PZ. Amazingly, within a few months, her memory began to recover, and she
eventually returned to her high-level job fulltime.
Medical Mind Bend
Soon after hearing this medically mind-bending story, Dr. Lonsdorf had the fantastic opportunity to study in person with Dr. Bredesen at the Institute of Functional Medicine’s Advanced Clinical Training in Reversing Cognitive Decline. To Dr. Guarneri, Dr. Bredesen was already a colleague, and had seen videos of his patients before his work became world renown. In fact, Dr. Guarneri has featured Dr. Bredesen at the annual Natural Supplements conference and has him scheduled to speak in San Diego at the AIHM conference September 2018. While we both had helped reverse memory loss in a handful of patients with heavy metal toxicity, B12 deficiency or memory-damaging medications, to learn a reliable protocol with
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