Dale Bredesen

Our Functional Medicine Doctor

/ Shirleyjdietz / Leave a comment

December 4th was the long awaited appointment time with the functional medicine practitioner.

Dennis was very excited about the book “End to Alzheimer’s” by Bredesen and wanted to find a doctor who would put him on that protocol. The book pointed us to a website of functional medicine doctors and lo, one of the ones listed was in our medical group.

Armed with all his records, and having filled out numerous detailed questionnaires, we made the 90 mile trip to Duluth for our morning appointment. Dr. Nancy Sudak, who is also a family medicine practitioner, spent 90 minutes with us! That is more than we could have hoped for, but even with all that, she had to tell Dennis to stop his stories and let her get to pertinent facts (in a kind, respectful way).

We liked her demeanor, and she was patient with Dennis. She did allow him to talk about his spirituality, his words from God, etc… without making him feel demeaned or demented. At the conclusion of the interview she even approached the subject of needed changes by asking him to ask God about the changes. Would God want him to consider going gluten free or dairy free in his diet? I thought that was pretty clever.

She also had heard of Dr. Bredesen’s protocol and was interested in it. She ordered some of the pertinent tests which we remembered from the book. (GImap, bloodwork) She also was able to recognize the measures Dennis had already implemented and encouraged him in them.

Overall, it was a good start. The only disappointment was that she had basically nothing to recommend until the test results returned and couldn’t give another appointment time until February. It will be a tele conference this time, so we won’t have to go so far.

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Finding Hope

/ Shirleyjdietz / Leave a comment

9-8-2019

I am excited to learn that what is happening in LBD is really the body’s attempt to defend itself. God has designed us marvelously and if we treat our bodies right, they will heal themselves. Sometimes, that is the miracle.

Originally, I started this blog site with the word “hope” in the title because I believed that God would help us through whatever was ahead with Lewy Body Dementia, or maybe even heal Dennis of it completely. I thought a miraculous healing was the only way that would happen. The medical specialists we encountered gave no other hope from their side of things. I was even a little shocked that having been given the diagnosis, and a prescription for a drug that could maybe help cognitive function for “a little while”, we were dismissed with no recommendation for follow up of any kind.

Dennis did some research shortly after that which started him on a different track. He believed, or wanted desperately to believe, that he was going to turn this disease around. Several things made him think that, one of which was a report that claimed cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s Dementia had been reversed in a small study. The patients involved responded to the therapy and regained what they had lost, went back to work and normal functioning.

Since then, the researcher, a UCLA based physician, has written a book detailing the therapy. He also shares the story of how the research progressed to develop a new understanding of cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases. I love this quote from the book:

“Now, often the most interesting and revealing experiments – the moments when an invisible chemical or an inconsequential cell can move the Earth – are not the ones that succeed as expected, nor are they the ones that fail outright: they are the ones that yield results that are just the opposite of what you expected.”

I can feel his excitement from the beginning of his search right up to the present. Hundreds of people have benefitted from this protocol which has been named ReCode and word is spreading quickly, thanks more to the web than anything else. Dr. Dale Bredesen and those who have gotten their life back after Alzheimer’s have a passion for conquering this devastating disease. He writes “…for if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then perhaps passion is its father.”

I have finished most of the book, finally. We have had it for some time but there have been so many things to cope with, so many surprises, so many caretaking problems to solve, that I have been overwhelmed. Fortunately, we have been learning about and doing some of the things in the protocol. Even though I was skeptical of some of Dennis’s practices of magnesium supplementation, of autophagy, and his extremes of fasting and avoiding electricity, we have been doing a lot of it. Maybe that has been responsible for staving off further decline.

I am hopeful. Everyone should know about this because Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, LBD and other dementias are becoming epidemic and they can be prevented. As Bredesen and his researchers agree, no one should die like this and they don’t have to. Read the book. Find hope.