Make an Allopathic, "Traditional Diagnosis" first.

• It is important that you see a Neurologist who is a Dementia Specialist and obtain a correct “Traditional Medicine” diagnosis. This is not always easy to do. When I took my mom in 2009, to see a Neurologist in her hometown, he specialized in Dementia; that was during the time when there were not many neurologists who did. Medical training and public health associations had no idea of this looming crisis and had ill-prepared the medical community to serve the American public. In fact, the neurologist she saw in my hometown specialized in sleep disorders. He proved to know very little about dementia and was no help other than prescribing her a medication that had been proven not to help long term. There I was, back then, on my own like so many of you!
• In 1996 I had read Osler's Web by Hillary Johnson. Amazon's review states "In a masterful effort of investigative reporting, freelance journalist Hillary Johnson reveals for the first time how Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was allowed to grow over the course of a decade into a major public health threat under the disbelieving and ultimately blind eye of the American medical research establishment."
  By 1999 I had found Functional Medicine and had graduated from Dr. Bland's second class, "Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice".
  Thus in 2009, I too felt the American medical research establishment had been blind to this public health crisis of dementia and current physicians ill-prepared for this potential deluge of dementia; but my brain had been prepped, and I was searching for a source.
  I thought I was ready to take on this dementia. I tried many of the protocols I had learned in Functional Medicine on my mother, but it was too late in the disease's history. The therapies helped stabilize her dementia, but it still progressed. So, just like we experienced with COVID-19, the death rate early in COVID-19 was higher than the death rate two years later.
  She died in 2015 not even aware of what was happening or why. I had an idea of what was happening, but I too was stumped for why and had exhausted my therapeutic knowledge. I had no way to slow her ultimate demise and felt crushed that I had no way to stop its advancement.
  
• Then in 2017 & 2019, I found the books:
      - The End of Alzheimer's by Dale E. Bredesen, 2017 and
       - The Complete Book of Ketones by Mary T Newport, MD, 2019.I highly recommend both books.
  Dr. Newport's book is especially complete for people who want to know firsthand the life of a medical professional who finds herself trying to discover what her husband's condition was when no other professional around her knew! It also is very explicit about the proper way to do a Keto-Diet and how important ketones are in treating dementia.
  Dr. Bredesen's book relates the history of his RECODE protocol that has become the Holy Grail of his dementia protocol. It was immediately taken up by the Functional Medicine Community because we "got it". I tried doing this with some of my patient's; but like everything that is not on social media, the masses were hesitant and starting with a Keto-Diet, too involved. They wanted a pill, but we had no pill; and the pills we had were continuing to show no improvement in Alzheimer's.
• When I first wrote this page in 2022, 40 million people worldwide had dementia and by 2050 it was projected that there would be greater than 115 million with the disease. We now know that much can be accomplished by early recognition and prevention of “root causes” of dementia.  Dementia, like so many disease processes, is easier to slow the progression than turn the hands-of-time backwards once the dementia takes hold of the brain. Knowing as soon as possible if you have a proclivity towards it is important, and because of this, many companies are trying to come up with the “lab test” that diagnoses Alzheimer's.
• Today in 2024, we now do have a lab test that is being offered by Genova Labs to help diagnose and monitor dementia therapies.
  It is called p-tau 217. It is a prion that manifests in the plasma as dementia takes control of the brain. If your Allopathic Neurologist diagnoses some possible early signs of dementia, ask for a p-tau 217 plasma test. These tests should not be performed at LabCorp or Quest right now because they have no baseline normal values, and their results may not be interpreted correctly.
  The Genova Testing is in conjunction with a lab that has this data. This means that if your Genova test is positive, you have some sort of dementia; and if it is negative, you don't. For the 15-20% of intermediate values there is a 50 to 50 chance of either diagnosis and repeating the test in 6 months is recommended.
• If your Allopathic Neurologist does not know about this test, just find that Functional Medicine doctor who should or ask your PCP and do the test with them; because this p-tau 217 can also be used to monitor improvement or not of the RECODE protocol !
• Traditional Medicine's therapy for dementia is looking for the "pill" to counter Alzheimer’s; however, Alzheimer's downside is that it seems to have multiple “triggers" with a threshold needing to be reached that then opens the flood gates.
  Once disease presents itself, Allopathic practitioners are able to diagnose a disease; but they have no workable therapies, and we know that that's too late to truly help.
  This is why we need to find a Functional Medicine practitioner to help us find and treat the triggers that are contributing to their dementia.
  To the Functional Medicine Practitioner multiple contributors to this dementia is an "upside" because they have been trained to deal with multiple “triggers” and big concepts like “inflammation” and what to do with it. Functional Medicine is not caught in that “one disease, one pill” training mode and we know the earlier you identify the process the sooner you may be able to slow it down.
• Traditional medicine in 2024, has developed anti-AlphaBeta therapies BUT during a presentation by Dr Bredesen on Genova's website this slide was presented.
  When his RECODE protocol works so well, do the below drugs really work? and do we need their cost added to dementia care??

Unlocking Alzheimer's: The Power of p-Tau217 | Genova Diagnostics

• Therefore, I recommend seeing both types of practitioners; a Neurologist who can make a diagnosis of the disease state and then a Functional Medicine practitioner who understands multiple triggers, can monitor them and knows how to deal with them.
  
  Either way, the bottom line is, there still is no “cure”.  The advantage of Functional Medicine is that rolling back the clock on Dementia makes caring for the person with Dementia easier.   For now, the “cure” still seems to be in its “prevention.”
  
  
• Then, Make a Functional Medicine Diagnosis.