Kerry Briggs had a hard time keeping a trace of the supplements. To help her husband John Briggs created a spreadsheet with rows for Ashwagandha, omega-3 and curcumin extract. There was ginseng, mushroom of the lion mane and antioxidant liposomal glutathione too.
Kerry Briggs, 64, had started to take the supplements in July, a daily diet that grew up to include 34 capsules and tablets as well as two powder balls. When it has become too much, John Briggs started to mix them in a shake, to which he added brown food coloring, so he looked less like his natural “sick” olive.
Kerry Briggs took them all because a doctor had told him that with enough supplements and changes in lifestyle, the symptoms of his Alzheimer could not only be slowed down, but inverted.
It is an idea that has become the object of television specials, podcasts and popular conferences; The sale behind mushroom supplements and self-assistance books.
But the suggestion that Alzheimer’s disease can be reversed by lifestyle adjustments indignant the doctors and scientists of the medical establishment, who have repeatedly declared that there was no or no evidence for such an assertion and expressed its concern that the idea could harm a large group of vulnerable Americans.
John Briggs had met the idea after learning Dale Bredesen, who had carried out a series of small and unconventional studies through which he claimed to have designed a set of directives to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer.
“Very, very few people should never get this,” Bredesen told an audience in July, referring to the cognitive decline. His business has made bracelets with the “Alzheimer’s sentence is now optional”. His land has won an audience. The Bredesen Book in 2017, “The End of Alzheimer’s”, sold around 300,000 copies and has become a best-seller of the New York Times.
Many doctors encourage Alzheimer’s patients to modify their diet and exercise schemes in the hope of slowing down the progress of the disease, said Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the California University of the University of California. “The question, however, of reversal is very different.”
“It’s one thing to say that you reversed a disease because someone says they feel better and another to prove it,” said Miller. “We don’t have proof.”
Bredesen, 72, was also a high -level neurologist at the University of California in San Francisco, but he has not had an active medical license for many of the last three decades and no longer sees patients. It has become skeptical about the approach of the medical and pharmaceutical industries to treat Alzheimer’s disease and has devoted itself to an alternative method focused on food, supplements, lifestyle adjustments and detoxification treatments.
The central idea was that there was no “miracle solution” – no pill or intervention – which could cure Alzheimer’s disease. Instead, Bredesen believed by pulling a “silver buckshot” (a reference to sprayed pastilles that come out of hunting rifle shells) by modifying 36 factors simultaneously. Its strict protocol could be personalized after large laboratory tests, but generally involved a low -carbohydrate, intermittent fasting diet, supplements and, sometimes, interventions such as hormonal treatments and mold correction.
For Briggs, who live in North Barrington, Illinois, the adjustments are not cheap: $ 1,000 per month for supplements, $ 450 per hour for a specialized doctor and other costs, which has totaled up to $ 25,000 in eight months.
But Kerry Briggs wanted to do something to help find a treatment for illness, and John Briggs wanted to help his wife.
An unconventional idea causes a concernIn the United States, more than 7 million people – around 11% of 65 years and over – have Alzheimer’s disease, the main cause of dementia in the world. Despite decades of research and the development of some drugs with modest advantages, a cure for the disease has remained elusive.
The Alzheimer’s association, which has helped finance the previous and more conventional research in Bredesen, considers its recent approach as insufficiently rigorous. His tests have suggested that her protocol could improve cognition, but Maria Carrillo, the main director of organizational sciences, said that they “did not lack what the research community” would consider convincing enough to suggest to patients, because they lack control groups and are small, with the number of participants ranging from 10 to 25.
Others expressed similar discomfort. In 2020, Dr. Joanna Hellmuth, then a neurologist at the University of California in San Francisco, published an article in Neurology Lancet highlighting a number of “red flags” in Bredesen studies, including “the substantial potential of a placebo effect”. Dr. Jason Karlawish, co -director of Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the research and recommendations of Bredesen do not adhere to medical standards. The Alzheimer’s Society of Canada went so far as to say that Bredesen offers a “false hope”.
Bredesen argues that the results of his program can be remarkable, although he recognizes that it is less successful for people with more visible symptoms: “It surprises me how people fight against something really helps,” said Bredesen.
He linked the New York Times with patients who said they had benefited from his recommendations. Sally Weinrich, 77, in South Carolina, said that she forgot her wallet or miss the school’s collection window for her grandchildren, but now thinks more clearly. Darrin Kasteler, 55, in Utah, who had struggled to tie a tie and drive, said the two had become easier.
To supporters of Bredesen, testimonies are proofs of promise. But what divides Bredessen from the medical establishment is not the emphasis on lifestyle adjustments; It is the audacity of his assertions, his unconventional and strict processing plan and the company he builds around the two.
Yes to hormone therapy, no apples and bananasIt was one of Kerry Brigg’s sisters, Jennifer Scheurer, who first noticed that something was off.
In 2021, during the visit of Scheurer in Oregon, Briggs repeated the same story a few times in one day, and had trouble finding words and playing board games. Scheurer also found Briggs standing in his kitchen, apparently lost. It was particularly strange; Briggs was an architect and she had designed the kitchen herself.
Briggs has undergone a series of tests, ending with a vetbral valve, which showed evidence of Alzheimer’s. She was 61 years old.
The news was devastating, but Briggs told her husband that she wanted to register for a clinical trial to help others. But none of the trials admitted it. She weighed too little and her illness was already too advanced.
Then a friend recommended “the end of Alzheimer’s”. John Briggs read this book and follow -up, “the first Alzheimer’s survivors”. Excited, he contacted the Bredesen company, Apollo Health, to see what could be done for his wife.
Bredesen had developed a paid plan called “recode”, a portmanteau of the expression “inversion of cognitive decline” and a training program for health practitioners such as doctors, chiropractors and naturopaths to learn to implement it. On the Apollo Health website, the Bredesen program is announced as “the only clinically experienced program to reverse the cognitive decline at the start of Alzheimer’s disease”.
In January 2024, John Briggs paid costs of $ 810 to reach Apollo Health, who gave Kerry Briggs access to a personalized plan and twinned with Dr. Daniel Laperriere, doctor in Louisville, Colorado.
In the recommendation of Laperriere, the Briggsses began to eat a modified keto diet which was low in sugar and rich in plants, lean proteins and healthy fats. The Briggsses were not allowed the most fruit – no apples, bananas, peaches or grapes (“all these things we love,” said John Briggs), although the couple made an exception for the Blueberries. To see if Kerry Briggs was in a metabolic state of ketosis, where fat is used for energy instead of carbohydrates, John Briggs experienced with his finger twice a day to test his blood.
In accordance with the general directives of Bredesen, Kerry Briggs began to work with a therapist to manage stress and tried the brain training games recommended by the protocol, although she had trouble playing them. Laperriere gave John Briggs unconventional instruction to take dust samples at home to determine if the “toxic mold” was present (only traces were) and ordered laboratory tests to see if Kerry Briggs suffered from an inability to empty her organs (she was not).
He also prescribed Briggs hormonal therapy, in the hope of improving his cognition.
Briggs’ primary care doctor has raised concerns about risks, said John Briggs, but she still took hormones.
The decision to leaveBriggs understood that the protocol would be unlikely to restore Kerry Briggs to his old self. But he was determined to see him for at least six months.
Last September, however, John Briggs struggled to notice many advantages. Kerry Briggs could no longer keep the conversations with his therapist, who suggested that he stop the sessions. The following month, John Briggs began to visit memory care facilities for his wife. In February, after about eight months, they completely left the protocol.
Bredesen said he rarely said people not to try his program, even if the chance to help is small, due to the possibility of improvement. But he considered Kerry Briggs’s “non -representative” experience of the results he obtained in the trials and retrospectively declared that “you could somehow say in advance” that she did not do well.
Bredesen has urged potential patients to start his program preventively or early in the progression of the disease. It is difficult to help patients who are already experiencing a significant drop, like Briggs, told him and Laperriere.
“People are more encouraged to enter when they are more distant,” said Bredesen. “And it’s a real dilemma, that’s why we say to people:” Don’t wait because we can do much more. “”
However, he added, he wants Briggs to have not abandoned.
John Briggs does not regret the money he spent. It reassures him that he tried everything. But the program had focused on them. In January, a few weeks before the Briggs decided that it was time to stop the program, they had made a road trip to see family and friends.
Along the way, the couple shared fries, a violation of the protocol. It was a relief to see his wife enjoying it, said Briggs, and he had a thought that remained with him.
“I think that when I left with her, I would honestly do it,” he said, “than to continue.”