What are the latest treatments for early dementia?

Senior health
1

My wife has been diagnozed with dementia in the very early stages.  She's just having trouble with names of people, pets, and things like tools, etc. She has lost an amount of money a couple of times, just can't find it. But, she still does the family bookkeeping including a bi-weekly payroll,  so she's not impaired at all hardly but it is noticable to everyone who has known her for awhile. Since Alzheimers is the most common form and her father suffered with it I fear that it will evntually develop that way.

We have seen a nuerologist twice, last time he diagnosed the problem as dementia, which simpy means "problems with memory" then he said come back to see me in four months. It doensn't appear that he intends any early treatment so I wonder why not is there nothing that can be done in the early stage?

I have had great success, actually truly amazing success, in finding treatment for my own medical difficulty by seeking advice from other sufferers who share their experience in these forums.  So, how about it, are there any treatments that have worked for your patients or loved ones? Any advice at all is welcome as I am just beginning the quest for the latest and best early treatments.    

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Hi Ron. My Mum has it too. When she developed it I found she was averse to taking any medication so I  looked into what dietry things could help her poor memory, anxiety, uncooperativeness, withdrawal from social situations. I researched in a huge biomedical database as I didnt want to just clutch at straws, I wanted things that had a proven beneficial effect across Alzheimers research studies. Well one thing that kept coming up was the ketogenic diet with coconut oil  as the source of the ketones. So I cut out all the carbs in her diet and started giving Mum  coconut oil several times a day.  Well a few months further on and she is in a much better place, less stressed and calmer, more cooperative, All I can say is we feel we have wound the clock back on Mum, she's much more like her old self. Just try it. What have you got to lose? Gill

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The best options are diet changes and regular exercise.

They are outlined in this protocol.

Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program

The main aim of the protocol is to minimize inflammation and improve insulin sensitivity. 

It would help if you both followed the same protocol as it's important to prevent as well as treat cognitive decline. 

You'll find the examples quoted in the paper above are encouraging and similar to the reports WhiteCliffs has found. 

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Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program

http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n9/full/100690.html

Have put the link in a separate post to avoid reply getting lost in moderation

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The link I've put to the free full text paper in my reply to RonTexan

"Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program"

will when/if it passes the moderator give you more ideas for improving cognitive function. 

Keeping Vitamin D3 level at or above 125nmol/l 50ng/ml is important as it's at that level that Vitamin D3 is most effective as an anti inflammatory agent. Please don't ever use vitamin D2 Ergocalciferol as unlike Vitamin D3 Cholecalciferol that actually helps clear amyloid from the brain the D2 Ergo form causes amyloid aggregation that makes it harder to clear and makes disease progression more likely. 

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Hi Ted Thanks for that info. I have put  Mum on Vit D3 5,000iu plus Super K with advanced K2 complex. Plus I got her onto Omega3 for the anti inflamatory nature of it. The removal of carbs was really to get her body and brain to burn fat as fuel.(AD brains are insulin resistant I believe) She is much improved as a result. When you think about it logically though, our bodies were designed back in the cave days - we were never meant to live sedentary lives in front of various screens, eating a high carb processed diet. No wonder so many of us get AD by the time we are 80. Its like feeding an ape on little other than cakes and pasta and shutting it in a cage, the creature is bound to get fat and sick.....but thats what we are unwittingly doing to ourselves. Gill

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Uncontrolled diabetes tied to poorer brain power

Diabetes in Midlife and Cognitive Change Over 20 Years:A Cohort Study

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1983393

Cognitive decline is mostly about failure to control blood glucose levels.

Diabetes in midlife was associated with a 19% greater cognitive decline over 20 years

 Cognitive decline was significantly greater among persons with prediabetes

Participants with poorly controlled diabetes had greater decline than those whose diabetes was controlled

 Longer-duration diabetes was associated with greater late-life cognitive decline.

This is why the protocal I've linked to earlier is all about reducing blood glucose levels by reducing reliance on refined carbohydrates and sugars. 

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Thanks, Ted this is exactly what I was looking for; a system proven to work in actual test cases. It looks daunting in the degree of lifestyle change required, even considering that we live a healthy lifestyle compared to most of our peers. Obviously what we have been doing is not enough as my wife has mild cognitive decline and I know it will just get worse unless we change our lives drastically. I agree that we both need to follow the program, just as she quit smoking to help me quit thirty years ago. Again, thank you very much, I'll see what we can do to get into this lifesyle.    

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Ted and Whitecliffs, I could tell you of a seven-month journey through these forums seeking a solution to an enlarged prostate by one, myself,  who was going, come-what-may, to find the best solution for my specific problem and to be determined by me alone. It took six months of finding, examining, discarding some and being disqualified for others until I found, in these forums, the perfect solution. I had the procedure done at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and it was off-the-chart-successful.

I expect to find the perfect solution for my wife as well. It's a journey of daily twists and turns but our best minds with the finist facilities are   dedicating their lives to finding practical medical solutions that work. I expect to find that breakthrough in these forums. Your input, Ted, is typical, although much more expert, of the posts I have been reading since last May. Your solution, if we follow through, will definitely change our lives for the better in many ways and I thank you again, it gives us a direction to begin our journey.

Wish us luck and good luck to you too, Whitecliffs. 

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Hi Ted,  That was very  interesting thankyou. In addition to reducing blood sugars and cutting out all the refined carbs  we also need to replace the fuel we burn with healthy fats.(Coconut oil, olive oil, butter) Probably 50-85% of our calorific intake should really be from healthy fats. Really good article, thanks. Gill

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You've got it.

The low fat recommendations for healthy eating underlie the increase in diabetes, demenatia and cancer incidence.

If we take health natural saturated fats like butter and coconut oil out of our diets and substitute more refined carbs and sugars to make food palatable we not only eat more calories (because our satiety hormones are not triggered) but also raise our blood glucose levels. 

We should never have been told that skim milk or semiskimmed milk is a healthier choice. All the evidence shows that full fat dairy is healthy.

"Associations between dairy intake and metabolic risk parameters in a healthy French-Canadian population."

"No association was found between HF dairy consumption and the risk factors studied. In conclusion, dairy intake is inversely associated with glycaemia and blood pressure"

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Hi Ted, You post some interesting articles. Thank you. I had read one on the same subject about the Swedish officially adopting the high fat diet now and turning their back on the low fat mantra of the last 4 decades. Unfortunately though, here  in Uk, our government and the doctors are a bit behind the curve and are still preaching Low Fat to us all...........despite the burgeoning waistlines of the nation.  Friends look on in disbelief when I put a spoonful of coconut oil in my coffee and feel absolutely  no hunger at the sight of them eating a Danish pastry with theirs. Gill

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My wife and I are seeing a local GP tomorrow to enlist his opinion as to how to find some help with this program.  We have an excellent YMCA here in our small town and we have been members for some time. So we can handle the exercise part. The GP practices with a large multi-location hospital in central Texas and they have dieticians on staff so we may be able to obtain dietary help from that source. Some of the vitamins and minerals, herbs, chemicals, etc may be obtainable without prescription so we can handle that ourselves except for dosages.  That leaves the prescription meds and a regimen to be determined in dosage amounts and frequencies. I don't know how we will sort that out.

All that we need to make this endeavor a success is to find some medical service provider who can see the potential in this protocol and realize that it may have the potential impact on the community of finding a cure for breast cancer!

Will we find an organization willing to allocate time and thought to get behind an endeavor like this? Doubtful, I think it will be on us to find the routines, fund the treatment, manage all of it among skeptical healthcare professionals and make it happen ourselves if we can figure it all out.  The more I study the Approach column, page 711,  the more I realize that there is a wealth of missing data that I will need to help my wife effectively. 

Dr Bredesen states in the Abstract of his paper that "a larger, more extensive trial of this therapuetic program is warranted".  If all of the procedures and results are truly presented then that is certainly very true.

Any suggestions are certainly appreciated. 

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Hi Ted, it's been a disappointing month since we corresponded. I had a hard time understanding that Dr Bredesen is now involved in pure research, not patient care and that the ten subjects of his study were just tha; subjects of research, and only that. I've taken my wife to two neuros, one old, ready for retirement and the other very new, bright-eyed. eager to begin his profession but amazingly I got the identical reaction from both; total disinterest, wouldn't even read the paper beyond learning that it has not been peer-reviewed, tested by  double-blind scientific procedures, equal numbers of actual test case patients and those with placebos, you know the routine. They showed not even any interest when it wasn't ready to implement (and be approved by the FDA, Medicare, Medicaide, private insurance, etc, I'm sure).

They were both ready to offer the drugs that don't help in the slightest, though but nothing unproven, please, horrors!

I also saw our local gp and his reply was " I don't even know what those tests are".

Ok, I went thru Dr Bredesens therapy and picked out what we can do ourselves from the thirty six or so different things in his therapy,  

We are sleeping eight hrs per night,

we have eliminated gluten and simple suger from our diet,

we are exercising strenulously 5-7 times weekly,

we are losing a few pounds,

we are eliminating stress as much as possible,

we are taking all of the vitamins and minerals, herbs etc that we can pick out of the therapy and estimate the levels to take. 

She works crossword puzzles to help stay sharp

There's not much more that we can do and I'm not optimistic that, without testing to determine problem areas, that our shotgun approach of unknown levels will help much beyond just getting in better condition. She's always been in great shape so there won't be much change. .

So, Ted tell me if you can, what sort of medical provider should we look for for help in testing, prescribing, ordering scans, etc. GPs are out as are Neuros. I'm not versed in the various medical disciplines, obviously,  and I'm at a loss. Thanks, Ron