Prior to sitting down to write this article, I spent hundreds of hours preparing and researching for a seminar I once gave entitled, “Neurodegenerative Disease: Unraveling the Mystery.” Although I won’t bore you with all of the science and details that I discovered, I will try to enlighten you into what I think is behind the increase in neurodegenerative disease- Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s.
Traveling West on Fletcher Avenue in Tampa, Florida from I-75 lies a beautiful and pristine white multi-story building with a boldly visible sign: “The Alzheimer’s Research Center.” I thought to myself: The buildings keep getting bigger and more expensive. Yet, the rate of neurodegenerative diseases keeps growing and growing.
In fact, the National Institute on Aging, a subsidiary of the National Institute of Health states “Once considered a rare disorder, Alzheimer’s disease is now seen as a major public health problem that is seriously affecting millions of older Americans and their families.”
They also say that it is “not part of normal aging.” That implies that it is part of pathologic aging. A term that I coined several years ago when referring to the way we age in America.
Amongst the frightening statistics is the fact that scientist estimate that around 4.5 million people now have the disease, and that for every 5-years beyond age 65, your chance of getting it doubles. And if that is not enough, by 2050, 13.2 million older Americans are expected to have Alzheimer’s disease. That means that one of every two of us over 65 will get the disease, if no preventive treatments become available.
As the National Institute on Aging continues to “Unravel the Mystery” by informing us as to who will get it, when we will get it, and what the brain will show when you get it, they offer no help in telling us how we can prevent it.
Of course they mention the pharmaceutical drugs such as Aricept, that are out there to minimize the bad effects once you get the disease, we are reminded by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, that Aricept doesn’t work.
So what do we do? It’s not suppose to be a part of normal aging, yet I’m told that at age 65 years old I can expect to be one of two people that will get it.
Naturally, as an Antiaging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine physician this notion disturbed me greatly. To think that I must accept this as fact is absurd. I needed to research for the reasons why these diseases are becoming so prevalent in America in the first place. Then perhaps I could gather up ways to medically reverse the root cause.
In the Journal of Neuroinflammation I discovered that there are biomarkers that correlate closely to the increase in neurodegenerative diseases.
Simply stated, many of the markers are very sensitive predictors of most of the neurodegenerative disorders we face today. One of the markers is Homocysteine, were to persist at a value of greater than 14, will double your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Another, C-Reactive Protein, if greater than 3.0, will increase the risk to 500 times the norm. These two markers are amongst those tested in the BioAge Analysis.
The good news is that there are natural ways to reverse these markers. Through bio-identical hormone replacement, nutrition, supplementation, neurotransmitter balancing, reduction of oxidative stress, mitochondrial support, heavy metal removal, IV free radical reduction and adrenal stress control, the harmful effects of these biochemical markers of pathologic aging can be thwarted.
In summary, as scientists are eagerly researching new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease & Parkinson’s, I believe it’s best not to get it at all, and reverse the biochemical precursors that will ultimately lead to the destruction of brain cells and the advent of neurodegenerative disorders altogether.