“Alzheimer’s fight falling flat.”
I came across that headline in a recent news report. And sad to say, it was right on target.
Granted, some scientists have begun to step outside their laboratories to pursue some new lines of thinking about the causes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). And they’ve even begun to investigate why elephants, known for their keen memory, don’t develop this devastating disease.
I’ve got some ideas as well about this interesting line of research. And I’ll tell you all about them in a moment. But first, let’s back up to examine the scope of the current state of Alzheimer’s research…
Worldwide scourge on the brain continues
AD is among the greatest afflictions of our time. Worldwide, about 7 percent of people over age 65 suffer from it or another form of dementia. And that rate rises to 40 percent by age 85. Plus, the World Health Organization expects the number of people living with AD to triple by the year 2050.
In terms of costs, annual spending on AD reaches an estimated $818 billion — or about 1 percent of the global gross domestic product. And by 2030, those costs are expected to double.
Furthermore, big pharma has spent decades and billions of dollars chasing down failed drug cures for AD. In fact, just this past year, big pharma’s major players (including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Janssen Biotech, Merck, and Japanese giant Takeda) have either failed to find — or simply halted their searches for — a drug cure. Dr. Marie Sarazin, director of neurology at Saint-Anne Hospital in Paris, said that scientific research has been on “the same track” for decades.
And U.S. government research is no better…
It’s wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on worthless government research projects. In fact, we endured two failed, government-funded “Decades of the Brain” big science programs.
Despite all the spending and hype, the cause of the disease — much less a cure — remains as elusive as ever to the mainstream.
It’s even more tragic that most mainstream experts steadfastly ignore all the evidence showing how natural approaches can prevent — and even reverse — AD and dementia.
For example, a few years ago in my Insiders’ Cures newsletter, I told you about the UCLA clinical trial that found 90 percent of men and women with Alzheimer’s disease experienced substantial improvements in their memory by using 18 natural approaches.
This memory boost was so significant, the participants returned to their jobs or continued working with marked improvements. The only person who didn’t have increased memory was a woman who was already in the late stages of Alzheimer’s.
(You can find that article, “The all-natural Alzheimer’s cure hiding in plain sight,” in the February 2016 issue of my Insiders’ Cures newsletter. Subscribers have access to all of my archives via www.DrMicozzi.com. Not yet a subscriber? No worries. Now’s the perfect time to get started.)
New insights on AD from the animal world
As I mentioned at the beginning of this Daily Dispatch, there’s a new theory about a possible cause of AD. To develop this theory, scientists began looking at elephants, which have legendary memory capacities — even in advanced old age.
In fact, in the wild, elephants live up to 86 years. And the oldest matriarchs of the herd remember specific, far-flung locations that they had only visited many decades before. Plus, the matriarchs pass along this information to the next generation!
It turns out, elephants’ brains are almost three times bigger than human brains. And they hold as many as 260 billion neurons. By comparison, the human brain contains about 100 billion.
Scientists also note that elephants don’t suffer from mental decline. Specifically, they don’t seem to suffer brain cell loss or degeneration as humans do. Nor do they develop amyloid plaques, the protein the mainstream still blames as the cause of AD.
No real evidence to support amyloid plaque theory
The amyloid/AD connection never made any sense to me.
And that’s the point where the whole line of thinking falls apart…
For one, pathologists routinely find amyloid all over the body as people get older — not just in the brain. Plus, in recent years, autopsy studies have shown that half the people with dementia DIDN’T have amyloid build-up in the brain. And half the people who DID have amyloid build-up in the brain DIDN’T have dementia.
In the end, these studies failed to turn up any cause-and-effect relationship between amyloid and AD. Which is probably why all the new drugs that block amyloid plaque production really don’t do anything to thwart AD’s progress, much less reverse it, which should be the ultimate goal of any treatment.
In my view, there’s a far more logical reason why elephants probably don’t develop memory problems…and it has nothing to do with amyloid.
The benefits of being part of a herd
Elephants are strongly social herd animals. They congregate for life in tight family networks, over many generations.
Many human studies also support the idea that strong social networks reduce cognitive decline. On the flip side, social isolation in humans worsens mental decline. It’s also a strong risk factor for heart disease and other chronic diseases. (In fact, some experts claim social isolation poses a bigger danger than heavy smoking, as recently reported.)
In my view, today’s skyrocketing rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia may reflect our frayed social fabric and lack of contact among extended, multi-generational families — as opposed to some mysterious chemical or pathobiological factor.
My advice?
Get together with your parents, aunts, uncles, and older neighbors. Especially at this time of year.
As Dr. Seuss writes in the classic children’s’ book, Horton Hatches the Egg, “I meant what I said, and I said what a meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent!”
P.S. – You can learn all about UCLA’s clinical protocol as well as many additional cutting-edge, natural treatments in my comprehensive, online learning protocol, the Complete Alzheimer’s Cure. To learn more, or to enroll today, simply click here.
Source:
“What Elephants Can Teach Us About Alzheimer’s Disease,” Fortune (fortune.com) 8/3/2018