Regain Your Brain – for $79!!

Would $79 and 12 hours be too much for you to spend to avoid Alzheimer’s?

If so, kill this blog and return to – whatever.

Too close to home

Alzheimer’s recently became a reality for my wife and me when the wife of a dear friend, half of a close 40-year friendship, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

We feel fortunate that it hasn’t occurred in our immediate or extended family, and that, so far, this is a single incident within our reasonably normal-sized circle of friends.  Nonetheless, this single incident has validated all that we’ve read or heard about the devastating impact of this brain disease – and more.

The speed with which this has transformed a beautiful, wonderful woman into one that we can’t recognize or who can’t recognize us has been stunning – and deeply saddening.

Following this development, I have had my radar up for any information related to answers to solving this devastating disease.  What I have found, until very recently, has been pretty grim.  This summarizes some of what I’ve found:

• It’s generally accepted that 1 in 3 of us will develop Alzheimer’s in America.
• While medicine has made significant progress against heart disease and several types of cancer, progress against Alzheimer’s has remained elusive. Time after time, a “promising” new drug has failed to come through.
• Industry-research service EvaluatePharma revealed in a 2017 study that of the 20 most promising future drugs coming to market, none are aimed at Alzheimer’s.
• Many of the major pharmaceutical industries are reducing or eliminating entirely their departments in the area of Alzheimer’s and dementia research!
• In January of this year, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals ended their research to discover new medications for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. They laid off over 300 scientists in their labs and closed down the entire division.
• In an interview, one recently laid-off neuroscientist said, “The current medication for Alzheimer’s disease is approved, essentially, because it’s better than nothing. There’s nothing else at the moment.”
• The reason? Shareholder value.

There’s much more I could share, but I realize that I only have people’s attention for about 1200 words/six minutes if I’m lucky, even on a life-and-death issue.  So let me cut to the chase.

We’re getting answers

About 10 days ago, a promo-email hit my mailbox that my radar picked up immediately – a “free” 12-episode video series entitled “Regain Your Brain: Awakening From Alzheimer’s”. 

Being cheap and a knowledge-accumulator, I was all over it.  I just completed about 20 hours of watching and taking extensive notes from this series.   It’s a collection of interviews with some of the top neurologists, psychologists, neurosurgeons and functional medicine physicians in the country.

I’m going to try to summarize my key takeaways from the series below – a tough task because there are so many.  Just let me say first that we are getting answers to solving the Alzheimer’s puzzle, but they aren’t going to come from your doctor’s office or from your local pharmacy.

More on that in a moment.

Invest in your healthy future

Here’s the deal.

The free version of the series went away – they left each video up for 24 hours.  But the entire series, plus a plethora of other supplemental information is available in three different packages ranging from $79 to $189.  It’s all explained here.

At a minimum, own the DVD of the video series ($79 package) and find twelve hours at your leisure to digest the information therein.

Disclaimer: 

Please know, that I have no affiliation with the producing organization, nor do I stand to benefit one nickel if you purchase the series.  With very few exceptions, I found it highly credible and thought-provoking.  It unveils a lot of information we aren’t going to hear from our hospital-system-ensnared, insurance-company-directed primary care docs.

It addresses some questions a lot of us may be asking ourselves, such as…

• Why haven’t I heard of these therapies before?
• Why have I been led to believe we’re hopeless in the face of these diseases?
• Why hasn’t my doctor made me aware of these methods of prevention and recovery?
• Why does the media insist that there’s “no cure” for Alzheimer’s or dementia?
• Why do the drug companies ignore this research, coming up short again and again?

Sadly, the answer to all of these questions comes down to money.

My takeaway

I’ll try to briefly summarize my take away from this experience.  You may draw different conclusions should you invest in the series.

1. Dementia and Alzheimer’s, in particular, is a preventable disease. Reversal of advanced stages of Alzheimer’s remains out of reach, although the series references examples of reversal of early onset.  The central message is that Alzheimer’s is preventable because we now know, through extensive brain research, what brings it on.  The brain is susceptible to the very same lifestyle-initiated pathogens that keep heart-disease our #1 killer and diabetes as the greatest threat to our national health.   Namely, poor diet, lack of exercise, hormonal imbalance, vitamin deficiency, exposure to toxins, amongst other factors.
2. Your primary care physician doesn’t (care to) know this stuff. I respect my primary-care doc – I’ve been with him for 25 years.  But he’s a traditional “drug it or cut it” doc.  He’s never initiated a conversation about my homocysteine levels, asked me about my diet, suggested I visit a Vitamin Shoppe for some key missing vitamin supplements, had me tested for toxins in my system, or for hormonal imbalance.  The blood tests he is authorized to authorize by his hospital system and covered by my insurance is cursory at best.  He and his hospital system are paid to cure, not to prevent.  Prevention doesn’t pay.
3. Big pharma isn’t likely to help. As noted above, Big Pharma is bailing out. And that’s a good thing.  The industry only knows to try to catch the horse after it has left the barn, not preventing the horse from leaving the barn.  Functional/Personalized Medicine is beginning to demonstrate that there are myriad of effective natural remedies that Big Pharma won’t bother with because of, well – no shareholder value.
4. Functional/Personalized Medicine is the future. A growing segment of our healthcare system is Functional Medicine – referred to also as Holistic Medicine or Personalized Medicine.  It is within this emerging area of medicine that analysis and testing are taking place that isolate the pathogens, toxins, hormonal deficiencies and lifestyle habits that result in Alzheimer’s.  You can learn more about Functional Medicine at this site.
5. We control our “dementia destiny”. Twenty years ago, the brain was considered a fixed, unalterable organ that was destined for deterioration over time.  We now know, unequivocally, that this is false.  Our brain is a “use or lose it” organ that can grow new cells at any age (neurogenesis) and is alterable (neuroplasticity) based on lifestyle decisions that we make.  WE CAN DIRECTLY AFFECT OUR CHANCES OF DEVELOPING ALZHEIMER’S.

I think I hear what you’re thinking.  OK, I’m 55/60/70 – isn’t it too late?  Maybe.  But, as with many things, it’s never too late to start but always too early to quit.  If you are reading this and making some sense of it, then I say it’s not too late.  This series helped me appreciate the fact that there are now ways to know if we are headed toward this disease and to take the steps to head it off and even reverse the early symptoms.

The research has been done, the treatment pathways for prevention have been laid out.  But we will have to go outside our traditional disease-care system to participate.

I hope you’ll invest in this series.  If you do, drop me a note or scroll down and leave a comment with your impression or with any thoughts that you have along these lines of dementia prevention.

I plan to dig more into this area of Functional Medicine and to publish more articles in the future on this emerging dimension of healthcare.