{"id":80,"date":"2019-11-10T20:07:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T03:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/?p=80"},"modified":"2019-11-10T20:07:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T03:07:31","slug":"a-new-hope-for-old-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/?p=80","title":{"rendered":"A New Hope for Old Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"

The future I have been living into looks bleak.\u00a0 Toward the end of my mother\u2019s life, she recognized me and didn\u2019t remember that I was her only child.\u00a0 I was her \u201cgood friend\u201d. Her three sisters and four brothers also suffered from cognitive decline toward the end as well.\u00a0 Over a hundred medications intended to address alzheimer\u2019s have been evaluated in clinical trials and none have been shown to be effective. Since there are genetic markers that predict your likelihood of developing alzheimer\u2019s, it seems evident that my chances might be better than average for slowly losing brain function.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, there\u2019s a new hope.\u00a0 It turns out that even though there\u2019s no silver bullet, there appear to be steps we can take to arrest or reverse alzheimer\u2019s. Although some of the authorities seem to be reluctant to jump on the bandwagon for implementing lifestyle changes as remediation, even the NIH is now talking about clinical trials for this approach.\u00a0 Dale Bresden\u2019s book \u201cThe End of Alzheimer\u2019s\u201d is a thoughtful and compelling treatise on mitigating the variety of factors that contribute to this disease, and his approach is to tailor a program specific to the patient. These range from nutritional deficiencies and dietary choices to stress reduction and getting enough sleep.\u00a0 There is evidence that toxins in our environment can contribute to the brain\u2019s self destruction, so it would make sense to eliminate them from our households and guard against exposure in the workplace. Inflammation appears to be a significant factor, so any changes we can make to reduce inflammation are worth pursuing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Bresden\u2019s approach is targeted.\u00a0 It attempts to identify the dominant factors in each of the 3 dominant types of Alzheimer\u2019s and eliminate them.\u00a0 I\u2019m left with the question why a broader approach shouldn\u2019t be employed. A plant based diet with restrictions on refined sugar and wheat have been shown to reduce inflammation, the risk for diabetes and heart disease and are just better for the planet.\u00a0 And why not remove heavy metals and toxins?<\/span><\/p>\n

Intermittent fasting has been beneficial for me personally, and I can see that autophagy is a normal healthy metabolic cycle that has fallen away in our current culture with the tradition of three meals a day and our proclivity to snacking between meals.\u00a0 Autophagy allows for cellular cleanup. In 2016, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries into the mechanisms of autophagy. These have led to a better understanding of diseases such as Parkinson’s and dementia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long story short, it is worth reading Dr. Bresden\u2019s book and looking into alternative therapies to reverse cognitive decline.\u00a0 There is a new hope for old brains.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future I have been living into looks bleak.\u00a0 Toward the end of my mother\u2019s life, she recognized me and didn\u2019t remember that I was her only child.\u00a0 I was her \u201cgood friend\u201d. Her three sisters and four brothers also … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,26],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-health","tag-neurology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galacticvoice.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}