A Mind For All Seasons
Nuance in the pursuit of ending dementia and Alzheimer's disease
My last newsletter left a few readers scratching their heads, curious about my suggestion that preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s is a straightforward or simple endeavor. I still stand by this belief, but wanted to add some nuance to what understandably sounds like a controversial statement.
First off, it was a letter to the editor, which in my mind called for a bit of an attention-grabber. So there’s that. Another reason for the optimism within the Letter to the Editor post was the result of having recently met with Eric Collett, the co-founder and CEO of A Mind For All Seasons, a brain health diagnosis and treatment center located in Boise, Idaho. Given my recent focus/interest in prevention of cognitive decline, I found it serendipitous—almost humorous—that the facility is barely a three-minute drive from where I live.
A Mind For All Seasons utilizes what they call “The Enhance Protocol”, which largely stems from Dr. Dale Bredesen’s research and book The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline. Randy Vawdrey, Eric Collett’s business partner, is the other half of the executive partnership, having personally trained under Dr. Bredesen’s expertise.
My conversation with Eric centered around those health and nutrition markers that aren’t met by most Americans and elderly citizens. Eric’s main focus seemed to be the sugar-heavy Standard American Diet (SAD) and the resulting systemic inflammation, which floods the circular system with sugar and leads to insulin resistance and presence of Type 2 diabetes. There is a growing body of evidence supporting a link between diabetes and future dementia. With the circulatory system in mind, many of the treatments at A Mind For All Seasons focus on ways to promote blood flow, such as sauna use and various red and near-red light therapies. Dr. Michael Hamblin and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine are pioneers in the field of photobioregulation.
Other nutrition markers of interest were things like vitamin D and B-12 (B-12 deficiency is known to cause psychiatric problems, including psychosis, which can present remarkably similar to dementia). It seems absurd to diagnose someone with dementia, without first accounting for such a seemingly simple diet/supplementation adjustment.
A lack of sleep—the ever-so-precious balance between NREM and REM sleep—also increases one’s risk of developing dementia. During our nightly respite, our glymphatic system essentially “cleans” beta amyloid plaques from our brain—hallmark signs of Alzheimer’s disease—which build up throughout the day. If only our business-centric society didn’t glorify constant productivity and lambast those who emphasize rest, leading to our current situation where the average American now receives less than 7 hours of sleep. (More about the wonders of sleep in a future newsletter.)
Eric was clear not to call the methods of A Mind For All Seasons a cure—he called the facility a “proof of concept” site—but his countless anecdotal stories spoke for themselves. Anecdotes don’t equate to evidence, but it’s often a wise place to start in the search for effective health interventions.
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Although The Enhance Protocol gives an option for those later in life and is inherently a force of good—as would be any pharmaceutical drug specialized for dementia prevention—my personal aspirations in the field of public health and dementia prevention are further upstream. America/capitalism love to have something tangible and quantifiable to show as results—the intervention X led to this change in Y—but it’s far trickier to measure the downstream impact of early preventative measures. Prevention implies the absence of some future ailment or health condition, whereas treatment is the later-stage removal of said ailment/condition. There’s a level of trust that must be put toward evidence-based research interventions, allowing more than one fiscal year to show positive results in a dynamic world that is constantly changing and growing.
The fact that different countries around the world exhibit varying rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s suggest social, cultural, and behavioral factors are at play, perhaps far more than hereditary factors. Perhaps some percentage of humans will always be destined for severe cognitive decline due to genetics, but I refuse to accept complacency with the rising prevalence we’re seeing today.
Again, just because the solution is obvious doesn’t mean the implementation is anywhere near easy. To make a climate change analogy, we know that decreasing our use of fossil fuels and limiting greenhouse gas emissions will go a long way toward reducing climate change. Yet, actually instilling those changes in a commodity-driven capitalistic society obsessed with accumulation, achievement, and innovation is a completely different challenge.
The task of avoiding dementia and Alzheimer’s faces many of these same issues which lie at the core of how haphazardly we’ve structured our society and communities, particularly in America and other Western countries. I believe fundamental changes to these structures and systems are in order if we want to eradicate dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and many other leading causes of death.
Thanks for reading :)
-Kyle