Day 195 of 365 - Treatment Outside the Box
Today I listened to an interesting presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who is considered as a founder of the field of functional medicine. A functional medicine approach seeks to find the root causes of an illness and to address them in a holistic way, rather than focusing purely on treating symptoms.
Dr. Bland felt moved to make a video in response to a recent editorial article in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled The Rise of Pseudomedicine for Dementia and Brain Health. The authors criticized those who promote to the public approaches outside the realm of traditional therapies.
Neurodegenerative diseases which cause cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's are on the rise. The traditional thinking about Alzheimer's has been that it is caused by amyloid plaque formation in the brain and that if that can be targeted the disease can be arrested. Billions of dollars have been spent to date researching and developing drugs for that single purpose, which have been unsuccessful. It seems reasonable to consider that another approach might be warranted.
Dr. Dale E. Bredesen, a reputable and respected expert in neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer's has chosen to investigate a multimodal approach to treatment. His theory is that for any chronic disease, you are looking at a network of physiological imbalances. The idea of going after these with a single drug is not optimal. There are already examples of multi-pronged approaches in other areas of medicine such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and HIV.
Dr. Bredesen created a novel, therapeutic program based on over thirty different interventions. Many of those are lifestyle based. On that foundation, certain drugs have a better chance of success. The approach has been customized and personalized to enhance outcomes. This work is now demonstrating reversal of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease such that participants are able to resume many of their daily living activities when they stay the course with the foundational program which is tweaked on an individual basis.
Dr. Bredesen calls his approach a silver buckshot approach, as opposed to a silver bullet. You want to hit everything contributing to your illness in the hopes of stopping it and getting it to reverse itself. It's about all those interconnected pathways of physiological imbalance. Dr. Bredesen wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline, outlining the interventions he has been investigating.
The article referred to earlier in this post, criticizing what they called pseudomedicine, was criticizing just this kind of approach. The old guard of traditional medicine is threatened by modern doctors and scientists like Dr. Bredesen and Dr. Bland taking their work directly to the public in this way and giving people 'false hope'.
It seems to me that rather than being given a terminal diagnosis with no hope of recovery, our culture would be very interested in learning new information which can be rationally tested out. It has been proven to be an efficacious approach in other diagnostic areas and should be given an equal opportunity in the neurodegenerative disease spectrum as well.
Patients and families have the right to information, the right to question treatment approaches and the right to choose treatments outside the box of the traditional realm. Maybe some medical egos need to come down off their pedestals and open their minds.
Dr. Bland felt moved to make a video in response to a recent editorial article in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled The Rise of Pseudomedicine for Dementia and Brain Health. The authors criticized those who promote to the public approaches outside the realm of traditional therapies.
Neurodegenerative diseases which cause cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's are on the rise. The traditional thinking about Alzheimer's has been that it is caused by amyloid plaque formation in the brain and that if that can be targeted the disease can be arrested. Billions of dollars have been spent to date researching and developing drugs for that single purpose, which have been unsuccessful. It seems reasonable to consider that another approach might be warranted.
Dr. Dale E. Bredesen, a reputable and respected expert in neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer's has chosen to investigate a multimodal approach to treatment. His theory is that for any chronic disease, you are looking at a network of physiological imbalances. The idea of going after these with a single drug is not optimal. There are already examples of multi-pronged approaches in other areas of medicine such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and HIV.
Dr. Bredesen created a novel, therapeutic program based on over thirty different interventions. Many of those are lifestyle based. On that foundation, certain drugs have a better chance of success. The approach has been customized and personalized to enhance outcomes. This work is now demonstrating reversal of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease such that participants are able to resume many of their daily living activities when they stay the course with the foundational program which is tweaked on an individual basis.
Dr. Bredesen calls his approach a silver buckshot approach, as opposed to a silver bullet. You want to hit everything contributing to your illness in the hopes of stopping it and getting it to reverse itself. It's about all those interconnected pathways of physiological imbalance. Dr. Bredesen wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline, outlining the interventions he has been investigating.
The article referred to earlier in this post, criticizing what they called pseudomedicine, was criticizing just this kind of approach. The old guard of traditional medicine is threatened by modern doctors and scientists like Dr. Bredesen and Dr. Bland taking their work directly to the public in this way and giving people 'false hope'.
It seems to me that rather than being given a terminal diagnosis with no hope of recovery, our culture would be very interested in learning new information which can be rationally tested out. It has been proven to be an efficacious approach in other diagnostic areas and should be given an equal opportunity in the neurodegenerative disease spectrum as well.
Patients and families have the right to information, the right to question treatment approaches and the right to choose treatments outside the box of the traditional realm. Maybe some medical egos need to come down off their pedestals and open their minds.
right on!
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