I want to try to be realistic here with this discussion. So first of all I want us all to fully recognize that no, there is NOT a cure for alzheimers and most other forms of dementia. And, we do not know if there ever will. But thats not going to stop anyone from continuing the journey to cure it, or any other disease. I'd like to talk about the latest news in that journey though. And maybe have some realistic speculation as to where we could go with it. Ideally your someone whose got a good scientific background if your adding to this thread. Anyway, I took a course on dementia recently. Heard some pretty exciting things. There was a vaccine developed that would cause the immune system to clear amyloid beta plaques that buildup in the brain of people with alzheimers. It went through clinical trials, but they were stopped due to 6% of the participants getting encepholopathy from it. Then there was some other approach the researchers tried that would use monoclonal antibodies that did the same thing, helped clear amyloid beta plaques. The damage done to the brain is irreversible, but the neat thing is, the brain is always able to produce new brain cells and form new connections. Scientists used this vaccine on rats with the alzheimers gene, and they end up being completely clear of amyloid beta plaques after the vaccine is used. Heres a few questions I have that I would like to discuss on this topic: 1) If you had been diagnosed with alzheimers, would you risk dying to get it cured? 2) Is it realistic that someone could make an attempt at treating their own alzheimers by purchasing this vaccine "in the black market"? Ive seen websites that sell things like, cellular receptors, viruses, peptides all kinds of microbiological things that are mainly used for researchers. These websites are not black market by the way... but what are the restrictions on purchasing an amyloid beta vaccine/monoclonal antibody? These things are not scheduled(meaning narcotic or illegal drug in the USA) I did find the vaccine on one of these sites. Its extremely expensive yes, and no im not a doctor, its risky im self medicating if I do this, but is the law here in the USA going to get in the way of me purchasing a peptide, vaccine, or antibody? 3) Have you heard about the new vaccine that is shorter and wont recruit T-cells in the process of clearing amyloid beta thus preventing cytokine release in the brain which causes encepholopathy? What other news have you heard that may bring us closer to treating this disease?
Haven't heard about the vaccine but I have seen one or two stories of alzheimer's being "nearly" cleared with diet and lifestyle changes. If I was diagnosed or someone whose health I was in charge of, I would certainly try to look into changing basic lifestyle and nutritive norms for that person, making sure they were getting all the nutrients they needed, getting lots of rest and leading a low stress life, so as to avoid the stress that can overload the brain. Not super-scientific because I have in some ways rejected a lot of "science" myself, due to personal experiences, but I still have respect for the scientific method. I think it's a matter of chemical/hormonal imbalance played out over a long period of time.
The way I see it, diet and exercise and stress reduction improves all aspects of a person's life. But im one that holds the strong belief that none of these things will treat or cure disease. Unless your disease is something like osteoporosis(the exercise and HRT is going to do way more than the vitamin/mineral supplements in this case) or some kind of "deficiency" which im not sure is even classified as a disease.. or is it? When it comes to diet and exercise, I feel that it is highly overrated. Modern fitness industry is the biggest scam out there. You wont get the body you want going to the gym 20 minutes to an hour a day three days a week and drinking creatine and protein powder. You will "get in shape" but the picture on the ad and in the bottle is very misleading. To really get the job done, you need the real stuff, which is usually something thats pretty intense and involves side effects. You have to go against nature in other words. Nature only allows us to live so long, to be so strong, and it doesn't allow us to look the way we want to look. It also doesn't allow us to stay young or garuantee us that we will not get cancer. To be honest nature actually involves disease, starving, famine, cancer, and not being 100% happy with what we see in the mirror. In other words, nature quite literally sucks. Lets get back to the main topic now though... I do believe that there likely is some lifestyle choices that can prevent dementia. For example, not becoming an alcoholic is going to prevent you from having troubles down the road. Ive seen a few individuals who have been locked up in nursing homes at fairly young ages due to frontal lobe deterioration caused by alcoholism. Lead I hear can contribute to dementia. So any alcohol made in a lead still would fry your brains. Theres also vascular forms of dementia.. Diet and exercise are definitely good for healthy blood flow to the brain. So it certainly can reduce your chances of having any vascular forms of dementia. I doubt it will protect you from alzheimers though. If thats in your genes, your future is pretty bleak. Though, just because your grandpa has it doesnt mean that you also carry the gene.
