Lots of comments dismissing this out of hand because of lack of evidence, but there aren’t any conventional treatments that are very helpful for Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle adjustments suggested in the protocol are largely healthy, not that hard to do, and offer other health benefits. They are also relatively uncommon so it’s not impossible that a broad based adoption of specific habits along with testing for mycotoxins and heavy metals, etc could provide some marginal benefits. Aside from maintaining your spare tire and fatigue from not getting enough sleep and exercise, there’s not much reason to ignore the main advice.
Anyway, here’s a Rhonda Patrick interview with Bredeson for the curious. So few people will actually do the protocol, time will tell if there’s anything to it.
Similar claims were also made by Dr. Lustig’s book Metabolical earlier this year, which of course is more concerned with the diabetic aspects but indeed considers Alzheimer's etc. metabolic disorders.
Not seeing Bredesen on the bibliography so I think the research is independent, some related citations from that bibliography:
G.J. Biessels and F. Despa. “Cognitive Decline and Dementia in Diabetes Mellitus: Mechanisms and Clinical Implications,” Nat. Rev. Endocrinol. 14 (10) (2018): 591. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0048-7
B.J. Neth and S. Craft. “Insulin Resistance and Alzheimer’s Disease: Bioenergetic Linkages,” Front. Aging Neurosci. 9 (2017): 345. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2017.00345
S.S. Dominy et al. “Porphyromonas gingivalis in Alzheimer’s Disease Brains: Evidence for Disease Causation and Treatment with Small-Molecule Inhibitors,” Sci. Adv. 5 (1) (2019): eaau3333. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau3333
M.P. Pase et al. “Sugary Beverage Intake and Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease in the Community,” Alzheimers Dement. 13 (9) (2017): 955. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2017.01.024
V. Berti et al. “Nutrient Patterns and Brain Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease in Cognitively Normal Individuals,” J. Nutr. Health Aging 19 (4) (2015): 413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-014-0534-0
S.M. Raefsky and M.P. Mattson. “Adaptive Responses of Neuronal Mitochondria to Bioenergetic Challenges: Roles in Neuroplasticity and Disease Resistance,” Free Radic. Biol. Med. 102 (2017): 203. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08915...
So the claim is that ultraprocessed food is essentially making your mitochondria sick, and the recommended diet adjustment is not very different from
Bredesen’s approach.
> Lots of comments dismissing this out of hand because of lack of evidence, but there aren’t any conventional treatments that are very helpful for Alzheimer’s.
These are harmless until they become harmful. What if we develop a good cure for Alzheimer's in 10 years, this method gets debunked but the method makes many refuse to use the conventional treatment? That isn't a made up scenario, it happens all the time. Announcing that something is a cure without evidence is hurting people.
It would be better if the article described it as a general cognitive decline without a diagnosis of AD. A lot of symptoms we attribute to AD could very well be caused by other factors which are reversible, such as inflammation, lack of sleep, poor diet, metal toxicity, or a deficiency of CoQ-10 or Ubiquitol due to statin use.
Anecdotally, I experienced a rather severe cognitive impairment after statin use, which, when discontinuing the statin was reversed. I believe this could be attributed to mitochondrial damage. Were I an older individual, this might be improperly diagnosed as age-related cognitive decline.
In another example, 60 Minutes ran a story on a group of people who were suffering from late-stage AD. After autopsy, some showed amyloid beta plaques in some cases and the total absence of it in others. This leads me to believe that AD, as it is currently understood, is better classified as a syndrome which may have no single definitive cure.
Sure that's possible. But it's also overweighting potential harms in an imaginary future scenario over potential benefits today. One can come up with other imaginary scenarios, not to be too dramatic, but the same arguments were likely made against Semmelweis [0] when he promoted hand washing before delivering babies, or the people who discovered the ketogenic diet helped manage epilepsy in the 1920s. [1]
Scientific progress has often been speculative and messy. The few thousand people with ApoE4 genes who read his book and then actually commit to time-restricted feeding, exercising 4 times a week, sleeping 8 hours, and semi-ketogenic diets might have better outcomes a decade from now than those who don't. If that discourages another few tens of thousands of people from taking a potential blockbuster drug in the early years after its release, fine. It's worth the natural experiment to find out because millions of people are not getting much relief from current treatments [2]. This is even more true given that Alzheimer's isn't communicable.
Anyway, here’s a Rhonda Patrick interview with Bredeson for the curious. So few people will actually do the protocol, time will tell if there’s anything to it.
https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/dale-bredesen