(dramatic music)

- Some time ago, a Germanscientist named Alois Alzheimer

identified a mentalcondition that his patients

had suffered from, and it'snow known as Alzheimer's.

It's a horrible disease.

It steals people's liveslong before they die.

It takes their memories,their relationships,

and their very identity.

It's now the third leading cause of death

in the United States.

But as medical reporterLorie Johnson tells us,

there's a new treatment offering hope.

- [Lorie] Two big pharma powerhouses

recently threw in the towel on testing

their highly touted Alzheimer's drugs.

At the same time, the Journal of the

American Medical Associationwarned against the

pseudomedicine of Alzheimer supplements.

Despite those hits, there's still hope

for today's Alzheimer's sufferers

and those destined to develop it.

Newly published researchproves 100 patients

enjoyed significantmeasurable symptom reversal

using the protocol developedby Dr. Dale Bredesen,

making a huge gain over theinitial 19 success stories.

Currently, thousands of people practice

Dr. Bredesen's protocol, whichhe describes in his book,

The End of Alzheimer's, nowtranslated into 28 languages.

The treatment involves being tested

for three dozen Alzheimer's risk factors,

resulting in an individualized treatment

which includes lifestylechanges like diet and exercise.

- We welcome Dr. Bredesenback to the show.

Doctor, it's good to have you back.

Thank you.- Thanks.

Thanks so much for having me back, Pat.

- Apparently, there wereplaques in people's brains

that people have saidis a result of a disease

called Alzheimer's, and those plaques

were the cause of this mental problem.

Your research has gone contrary to that.

What have you discovered?

- So what we found is that,when you produce this amyloid

that is present in the brain,

this is actually a protective response

to several different problems.

So for example, if you haveongoing systemic inflammation,

whether it's because ofproblems with your gut

or problems with an infectionsuch as Lyme disease,

or whether it's becauseof insulin resistance,

a number of factors, toxin exposure,

you're actually makingthis amyloid as a response.

So in fact, when you go to a doctor,

the doctor says you have Alzheimer's,

but doesn't tell you why you have it.

Well, because you have amyloid.

Well, why do you have the amyloid?

So what we're looking at,is why did you get it.

That's the key.

- You found three factors.

What are those three factors?

- So the main thing, thisis what we call type one,

type two, type three.

So one thing is anything thatcauses chronic inflammation,

such as infections, such as leaky gut,

such as poor dentition.

All of these things cancontribute, bad diet.

The second one is decreasein nutrients, hormones,

or trophic support, growthfactors in your brain.

So if you have poor nutrition,you are at increased risk.

If you Vitamin D is very low,you are at increased risk.

If various hormones are very low,

you cannot support thattremendous neural network

that you have inside your brain.

And then the third one is toxins.

So so many of us are exposed to everything

from mold-related toxins to mercury,

whether from our dentition or from eating

things like tuna fishand things like that.

These things can all contribute.

And so these are actuallythe underlying factors.

And what we find is peopletypically have more than one,

often between 10 and 25 different factors

that are contributing.

- You brought your analysisto the Board of Medical,

whoever certifies these things,

and they said we're sorry, Doctor,

you've got to have onepill that'll do the job.

They wouldn't take a wholecomplex of treatment.

- Yeah, isn't that interesting?

So the idea here is that everybodywants you to have a trial

where you have one thing or no thing,

and in fact, that's notthe way the disease works,

so the trials are not set up,

which is one of the reasons they failed.

As you probably know, Aducanumab,which was the big hope,

just failed a couple of weeks ago.

So in fact, the idea ofgoing after something complex

with one drug actually makes no sense.

- There is no drug onthe market at present

that somebody says this isthe cure for Alzheimer's.

It doesn't exist inpharmacology, is that correct?

- That is absolutely right.

And our argument, in fact, is that

well, let's test these drugs.

We're asking them to do too many things.

We're asking a drug to dodozens and dozens of things.

Let's test it on the backboneof addressing the very things

that are causing the problem.

- Well the inflammation, teeth, leaky gut.

We've been talking about gut flora.

That's an important thing, isn't it?

But that's for feeding.

It's the absence of this good nutrition.

- And isn't it amazing?

When I went to medical school,

people didn't talk about leaky gut.

And in fact it's come out, as you know,

in the last 10 or 15 years,

very common problem.

Many of us suffer from it.

We often don't realize it.

And yet, what happens?

We get things likerheumatoid arthritis or lupus

or inflammatory gut disease,all of these things,

and it turns out things likeAlzheimer's and Parkinson's

can also be related to theinflammation that occurs

when your gut leaks.

So we should all be tested for it.

We should all make sure that we heal.

- Why don't they teachthis in medical school?

I've dealt with doctorstoo, and they get angry

when you start talking about nutrition.

They hate it, I meanthey literally hate it.

- Yeah, so I talked to one person

who leads one of the major medical schools

in the United States,and he said, you know,

we should teach this stuff,but we can't teach it

until all the doctors accept it,

and all the doctors won'taccept it until we teach it.

So this is, this is notthe way to go forward.

- Actually, it's thepharmaceutical companies

that are paying the bills and that's

what they're looking for?

- That's exactly right.

And the reality is thesedrugs will work better

if, in fact, we address the very things

that are causing the problem.

- Well let's go with the inflammation.

Now the diet that people eatis very inflammatory, isn't it?

- That is exactly right.

So the big ones, and Iknow you just interviewed

Dr. David Perlmutter,my friend and colleague,

just a few weeks ago.

- [Pat] Yeah.

- And so, as you know,the common problems are

we tend to eat a diet thatis not the diet that we ate

thousands of years ago, and in fact,

we have too much in terms of grains,

as David has pointed out.

We have too much in terms of dairy,

and we have too much,the biggest one of all,

simple carbohydrates, sugars.

Sugars are in everything, as you know.

And these three factors tend to be ones,

and occasionally alsothings called lectins,

that's the fourth factor.

These things tend to inflame the gut,

tend to make it leaky and therefore,

the very things that you eat are leaking

into your bloodstream.

And so you don't know it until you develop

things like arthritis or Alzheimer's.

- What should somebody eat?

Let's just take the typical American.

They start out with the breakfast.

What is wrong with whatthey eat to start with

and the rest of the day?

What do they do wrong?

- That's a great point.

So first of all, thereshould be a fasting period

of 12 to 14 hours or even up to 16 hours

between when you finish your dinner

and when you start your breakfast.

You wanna have that time because

it's actually a healing time.

And the second thing is youwanna minimize those three,

the grains, the dairy, andthe simple carbohydrates,

the sugar, things like that.

And the third thing is what you wanna do

is you wanna have a plant-rich,

so we were meant to eat mostly plants.

Plant-rich, relatively high in good fats,

things like avocado and nutsand seeds and things like that.

And meat is fine, butsmall amounts of meat.

And to have these, as ifyou're going to have chicken,

pasture chicken, ifyou're going to have beef,

then grass fed beef, becausewhat's happened of course,

our animals are not eatinga natural diet either.

And the fact that they'reeating the wrong things,

and they're full of antibiotics,and hormones, and things,

that's hurting us, this iscontributing to our own diseases.

- Well, so, it's really tough to find,

you've got to get free range chicken,

and you've got to get, what?

Grass fed beef, and you'vegotta get cage free eggs

and stuff like that.

You really gotta work at it, don't you?

- So part of this isbecause we've made all

these assumptions over the years.

Hey, well, it's just asgood to have things grown

in a cafo, that sort of thing.

And in fact, it's not so good for you.

So back to the way we wereeating when you and I were born,

back there, that was actuallya better way of eating

and we've changed things over the years

in a way that has becomemore inflammatory.

In a way that has caused moreof the leakiness of our guts,

in a way that has caused,look, the obesity epidemic.

The epidemic for type twodiabetes, Alzheimer's,

the same thing, we areseeing more and more people

in their 50's developing Alzheimer's.

That's nothing that we didn'tsee when I was training.

We see it all the time now.

- I'm a opponent of highfructose corn syrup,

it seems like it's into everything.

The corn people got deals through the FDA

and through Congressto support themselves.

And it's into everything.

- That's exactly right,and of course that's one of

the main reasons thatwe've got such a high sugar

content in our diet.

It's very sweet, it's damaging,it will raise your glucose.

One of the biggestproblems in our country,

80 million American'shave insulin resistance.

This means that your sugarhas been so high for so long

that you've poured outinsulin to deal with this,

and in so doing, your cells have literally

turned down the volume.

It's as if your son wasplaying music, it was so loud,

you put on a headset and nowyou can't hear Brom's lullaby

that your wife plays.

So that's exactly what'shappened with insulin resistance.

We need to get rid of that.

- How does diabetes coincidewith brain problems?

- That is actually oneof the biggest problems.

If you have type two diabetes,

you have more than double therisk for Alzheimer's disease

and in fact even having prediabetes,

increases your risk forAlzheimer's markedly.

And the reason is becauseinsulin is something

that deals with sugar as you know,

but it also is a critical factor

to support the synapses in your brain.

Therefore, when you areresistant to the insulin,

you literally are not responding.

You have problems bothwith your blood sugar

and with your brain.

Then the sugar that's increased,

actually gloms on to your proteins,

we measure this ishemoglobin A1C of course.

But it actually interactswith hundreds of proteins,

just like remoras on a shark.

So that you now change all these proteins,

they do not function aswell as they did before

and they've changed their shape,

so they now become inflammatory.

You recognize them with your immune system

and make antibodies against them.

So all of these things contributed.

Diabetes is an important contributor

and prediabetes to Alzheimer's disease.

- Do you recommend that, for example,

some of these proposals thatyou have various compounds

that the restore the gut floor,

do you think it's importantto take pills and do that?

- Absolutely, so again whatwe wanna do number one,

you wanna heal your gut.

There are a number of things to do that.

That's a relativelystraightforward thing to do.

You can do it, typicallywithin even less than a month.

Then once you heal that you do wanna

have probiotics and prebiotics.

And you can get these in your food.

So, fermented foods, of course,

which people have eatenfor thousands of years.

Very good, even things like sauerkraut,

kimchi, things like this,quite good for your gut.

And then prebiotics thatactually support these.

They feed the good bacteria in your gut.

This is a critical part andthe most important thing of all

is that the people thatwe've seen improvement in,

and we've had many now,

hundreds and hundreds of these people,

now they sustain their improvement

because you've actually targetedthe things that cause it.

- Give some for examplesof people he dealt with,

I notice your book you gotsome people who've suffered

from various conditions andyou put them on this diet.

- And we have a whole program.

We actually look at 150different variables in people.

We look at all the thingsthat are contributing

and then we get people on theappropriate program for them.

And you'll remember lasttime we talked about Sally,

by the way, I just got anfrom email from her yesterday,

she's now three years into the program.

She's still scoring perfect 30out of 30 on her mocha test.

She's doing absolutely great.

We've had many many stories like this

with people improving on the program.

You have your book, how manycells do we have in our brain

and how many synapses?

It's in the quintillions, isn't it,

when you put them all together?

- Right, so you have about ahundred billion brain cells

and in fact neurons, 10 to the 11th.

And then each one has onaverage between a thousand

and 10,000 connections.

So as you say we have about

almost 1 quadrillion connections,

it's 10 to the 15th in our amazing skulls.

So a tremendous supercomputeryou've got in your brain.

- Is there some reserve?

When somebody gets older,we talk about senile,

dementia and all of those stuff.

I mean that it doesn't riseto the level of Alzheimer's

but people do lose braincells as they get older.

- So their synapses can decrease overall

but in fact they theydon't necessarily have to.

And you're right there is acognitive reserve as you said,

and so people who have more reserve,

who learn to speak languages,are doing other things,

Sudoku and things likethat, doing more exercise,

keeping their inflammation at bay,

having the appropriate program.

In fact have that reservethat you need so that

as you get a littleolder, you do very well.

- So an old guy like me still hope.

- Absolutely and in factProf. Mike Merzenich and

you probably know Dr. Merzenichfrom the San Francisco.

Showed that in fact even as we age,

we are capable of makingand storing new memories,

of making new synapses.

So neural plasticitycontinues throughout our life

which is the great news.

- So there's real hope for everybody.

- Tremendous hope.

Here's the thing Pat, we think of leprosy

as a biblical disease.

This is something thatwas a scourge in the past.

When 1950s polio was the scourge.

The current scourge is Alzheimer's.

This is the beginning, you'reseeing with these people,

the beginning of the end of that scourge.

You won't worry aboutAlzheimer's in the future,

any more than you worryabout polio or leprosy today.

That's where it's headed.

- The best news, I mean thiscall of the end of Alzheimer's.

And man if you found the secret,

you should be hailed byall the medical people.

Are they nice to you or they beat you up?

- The thing is, we wanna getpeople as early as possible

and you're absolutely right,

I trained and you know that there was

the article on pseudomedicine recently

which was written by myfriends and colleagues,

who are upset because we'regoing in a different direction.

But we spent 30 years, mylaboratory was open for 30 years,

looking at the fundamentalmechanisms of neuro degeneration.

And what we realized is thatthe way this actually works,

says that a single drugshould be accompanied

by the rest of the program.

So we're just coming from the test tube.

This is what the research showsthat this is the way to go.

So yeah, we've had a lot of pushback.

This is always the way it iswith something new as you know.

- The three things though is inflammation,

we've gotta get hold of inflammation

and you gave the causes for that

and then the support, theprobiotics, prebiotics

and other things to support the brain.

And then the other thing is,

is the toxins in the atmosphere.

How do we get free of them, by the way?

- It's a great point Pat, andthis has been a real problem.

We are exposed now tohundreds of different toxins.

Lots of studies on air pollution show

that being in air pollution,

increases your risk forAlzheimer's disease.

The people who were inthe World Trade Center,

the first responders,

13% of them have alreadydeveloped cognitive decline.

So, in fact, that sort of exposure,

any sort of ongoing exposure to toxins,

increases your risk for cognitive decline.

So there are lots ofthings you can do to detox,

just as you saw with Sally.

She's getting out there on the water

and doing some kayaking,she's getting out.

We really weren't meant to spend all day,

in our homes indoors.

Get out, do some exercise,

get out in the wilderness out there,

get away from the air pollution.

If you've got mold, it turns out that

mold actually produces neurotoxins,

so you wanna get away from those.

Do some detox, there'sa wonderful new book out

by Dr. Joseph Pizzornocalled The Toxin Solution.

I recommend it highly for everybody

and it tells you howto detox, very helpful.

- Doctor this book, ladies and gentlemen,

it's called The End of Alzheimer's,

some of it's a little complicatedto some of very simple.

But it's something it's availablewherever books are sold.

Doctor, groundbreakingand congratulations.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you very much Pat.