You can live about 3 minutes without air.
Air... (Oxygen, O2)... is pretty darn essential to life. Few people have survived having air cut off for more than 3 minutes. Breathing is usually an involuntary process, until it's cut off.
When we began closely examining our home environment, looking for things that we could do to identify and fix environmental problems in our home, we became aware for the first time of what was in the air we were breathing at home. Home seems like a safe place to be and yet as we looked at the facts my eyes were open to things I had not previously considered.
The EPA says that indoor air quality is 10 to 100 times worse than outdoor air quality. An article in the latest issue of Poplular Science magazine (November 2009) highlights dozens of sources of toxins in our homes that bombard us every day, it points out that the odds of inhaling concentrated toxins are 1,000 times greater indoors than outdoors.
Energy costs have led us to seal up any cracks in our homes and offices. Since the first energy crisis in the 1970's we have sealed our homes and offices tighter and tighter, keeping doors and windows tightly closed and rarely opening them, all to keep the warm air in and the cold air out in the winter or the cool air in and the warm air out in the summer. Typically there are two times of the year when we open up and air-out our homes usually for a few weeks in the Spring or Fall. In the process we've sealed in a concentration of toxic soup.
Toxins, heavy metals, man-made chemicals, mold, mildew, viruses and bacteria have become particulates or are attached to particulates floating in the air. Particulates are tiny microscopic particles of pollen, dust, mold, smoke and things that would make you shudder if you saw them under a microscope.
If you've ever noticed a sunbeam through a window in the early morning or late afternoon as it highlights those particulates in the air... you can "see" what you're breathing. If you think about it, its not just that way where the sun-beam is, its that way right in front of your face.
From the moment you wake up in the morning you're exposed to toxic or potentially toxic chemicals... chlorine in the shower water, chemicals in the soap or shampoo, bacteria on a razor, chemicals in the towel from the dryer sheet, soaps and fabric softeners used to wash the towel and make it smell so good. Lotions, hair spray, toothpaste, deoderant, anti-persperant and the clothes that were washed the same as the towel or may have been exposed to toxic dry-cleaning chemicals.
Then there's the kitchen, the scratched teflon frypan, the coffee maker, the plastic containers you stored the left-overs in, that new counter-top and cabinetry you had installed a couple of years ago... all giving off toxins.
Out in the car for your commute to the office, a safe sanctuary for travel, a cocoon for thought or listening to a CD or radio show. But that film that has to be cleaned off the inside of the windows when you wash the car... that's toxic plastic emissions from the dash, carpeting and upholstery or "new car" smell you had sprayed in at the last trip through the car wash.
Finally at the office, one or more people have come to work sick. Sneezing, coughing, touching surfaces in the break area, coffee pots, faucet handles, vending machines... you name it.
You've probably thought of several other things I didn't mention and if you carry this on through the rest of your typical day, you can probably think of hundreds of places you come into contact with man-made chemicals, bacteria, potential viruses, mold, mildew, exhaust, cigarette smoke, and the list goes on and on.
We breathe in and out all day long, rarely thinking about it unless something happens to restrict the flow or an illness that makes it difficult or uncomfortable to breathe.
Is there anything that can be done? Yes! You have a significant amount of control over the toxins in your home, in your car and even at the office.
The first step is to get rid of the particulates in the air. Most people think of air filter's, and a good hepa-filter on your forced air unit is essential... but filters don't get everything because you can't buy a big enough fan to circulate ALL of your air through the filter.
The best solution we've found is what is known as an Air Purifier. An air purifier sends to solution to the polution, just like mother nature, it does not require that you move the dirty air through it for it to do it's job. One air purifier in particular uses a technology developed in conjunction with NASA to kill pathogens by replicating Earth's natural processes that keep air clean outdoors. It was developed to keep the air pure in the International Space Station and most specifically to keep plants in the Space Station's "Green-House" alive and healthy.
One company has taken that technology and made it available to anyone for use in their home, office and automobile. It's been given the trade-name ActivePure and awarded the "Space Certified" award from NASA. The company that produces these air purifiers is EcoQuest, a U.S. based company that has placed more than 6 million air purifiers in homes and offices in the last 20 years.
Once I experienced the nearly instantaneous improvement in our own home air quality, I knew it was special. Scientific studies prove that not only does the technology completely eliminate particulates from the air, it also KILLS mold, mildew, bacteria and viruses... killing them not only in the air, but on surfaces through out your home... doorknobs, counter-tops, faucet handles, and other surfaces you don't think about, like the edges of doors.
And, yes, in the interest of full disclosure... I eventually became a dealer of the EcoQuest products after using them for several years. EcoQuest's air purifiers are in use in the Pentagon, the Whitehouse fitness center, the ground-zero museum, the liberty bell museum, and many Department of Defense buildings. They are also of the highest quality... I'm often reminded of the quote most people attribute to John Ruskin that you'll find on the wall of Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlors: "There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey."
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Talking Detox: Taking Out Your Body's Toxic Trash
Since you're here, you are most likely....
1: Dealing with a possible diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
2: Helping someone else deal with a Alzheimer's.
3: Just interested in healthy solutions, ideas and alternatives.
If you're reading this blog, you are probably already aware that my wife was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2005 at age 53. That it's onset was determined to have occurred a year earlier at age 52. That we determined her Alzheimer's was NOT hereditary and did not run anywhere in her family.
At a low point in our battle, I posted an entry entitled "When the Battle is Lost". Feeling, at that time, that we had exhausted every possible solution and scenario and were relegated to just "riding it out".
If Alzheimer's is not hereditary (not coded into the DNA), then what is it? I have come to understand the answer to that question lies in one word... Environmental.
Now that I've said the "E" word, let's talk about that for a moment, because there are many charged feelings that come along with that word. You are either ready to read on in anticipation or ready to write me off as another environmental whacko.
But the truth is... we have a lot of control over our personal environment. We are not totally at the mercy of greedy corporations, corrupt doctors and political madmen.
There is Something You Can Do, right now, to change your outcome and the outcome of someone you love.
Here it is:
Most often, we go about life ignoring little aches and pains and shrugging off seemingly minor ailments. Until we are significantly uncomfortable to go to the doctor, we treat ourselves with less care than we do our automobiles.
I'm really no different, we ignored and shrugged off warning signs of my wife's impending, life altering disease until we were forced to seek medical advice.
The trouble with "medical advice" is that it is now so entrenched in the realms of phamaceutical treatments and research for pharmaceutical solutions that you can no longer put all of your confidence into a trusted medical professional... Most just don't know what's going on outside of pills and surgery, and they are (for the most part) entrenched in feeding "that" system. Like my father used to say "If the only tool you've got is a hammer, you will try to fix everything with the hammer".
You need a full tool-kit...
So now what? If you can't trust your doctor for the best solution to a medical problem, who in blue blazes CAN you trust?
Here's the hard part. You've got to trust yourself... you already know the basics for what affects your health:
What you breath, what you drink, what you eat, how you think, and how you respond to that knowledge... pretty much in that order.
You can live about 3 minutes without air, about 4 days without water, about 5 weeks without food, and if your able to think you can conceive a solution to all of that, and then you have to act on it.
Bad air can kill you, bad water can kill you, bad food can kill you, not thinking can kill you and making the wrong choice can kill you.
So lets think about something basic here. If you choose to control what you have the power to control, you might just solve your own health issues.
You have some control over the air you breath... at least for a large chunk of your day. Statistics show that we spend more than 70% of our time indoors... mostly at home or in an office. There are solutions for ensuring you are breathing clean air without viruses, bacteria, mold or mildew.
You have even more control over the water you drink. There's probably no trucks or busses driving past you pouring bad water down your throat... so you have a choice. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of choices and few of them are actually good for you. Here's a shocking statement: Drinking only the "most pure" water... can kill you... or at least rob your body of some things it needs to keep you healthy. We now know that water from distillation systems and reverse-osmosis (RO) systems actually eliminates essential nutrients from our water. But there ARE solutions that produce clean "pure" water without robbing it of those essential nutrients.
And now the psychological biggie... the food you eat (or don't eat). This is a whole discussion of it's own, but you learned in elementary school the "four food groups" and why it's important to have something from all of them. That's called a balanced diet. Too much or too little of even a balanced diet, however, can tip the scales in an unhealthy direction. There are more solutions available to this than the library of congress can hold.
OK... So now you've got all of the basics to healthy living from this point forward...
BUT... what about all that toxic trash that has accumulated in your body up to now? How can we effectively escort those poisons, heavy metals, and other unseemly chemicals out of our system? I don't mean pie-in-the-sky theories... I mean... WHAT DO WE KNOW THAT WORKS?
Obviously, I've got some ideas and solutions of my own, having invested several years of research after learning that my wife's affliction was not hereditary. In this discussion, I'd like to share some of those solutions with you and open your eyes to the fact that they exist. I'm not about presenting my own bias to match the bias of the medical profession.
One thing I want to interject before closing though, in light of the current fury over flu vaccines and most notably the swine-flu vaccine. In 2003, my wife faithfully got her 6th annual flu shot on the college campus where she worked. This time, however, she had an immediate reaction which dropped her into a chair for an hour or so. She was given some juice or a soda to drink and apparently recovered well enough to continue about her day. That puts the flu-shot into a position of being the most likely candidate or at least strong contributing factor for her onset of Alzheimer's less than 6 months later. There is now a proven link between flu vaccines and Alzheimer's.
What do YOU think? What have YOU found? What is YOUR experience?
1: Dealing with a possible diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
2: Helping someone else deal with a Alzheimer's.
3: Just interested in healthy solutions, ideas and alternatives.
If you're reading this blog, you are probably already aware that my wife was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2005 at age 53. That it's onset was determined to have occurred a year earlier at age 52. That we determined her Alzheimer's was NOT hereditary and did not run anywhere in her family.
At a low point in our battle, I posted an entry entitled "When the Battle is Lost". Feeling, at that time, that we had exhausted every possible solution and scenario and were relegated to just "riding it out".
If Alzheimer's is not hereditary (not coded into the DNA), then what is it? I have come to understand the answer to that question lies in one word... Environmental.
Now that I've said the "E" word, let's talk about that for a moment, because there are many charged feelings that come along with that word. You are either ready to read on in anticipation or ready to write me off as another environmental whacko.
But the truth is... we have a lot of control over our personal environment. We are not totally at the mercy of greedy corporations, corrupt doctors and political madmen.
There is Something You Can Do, right now, to change your outcome and the outcome of someone you love.
Here it is:
Most often, we go about life ignoring little aches and pains and shrugging off seemingly minor ailments. Until we are significantly uncomfortable to go to the doctor, we treat ourselves with less care than we do our automobiles.
I'm really no different, we ignored and shrugged off warning signs of my wife's impending, life altering disease until we were forced to seek medical advice.
The trouble with "medical advice" is that it is now so entrenched in the realms of phamaceutical treatments and research for pharmaceutical solutions that you can no longer put all of your confidence into a trusted medical professional... Most just don't know what's going on outside of pills and surgery, and they are (for the most part) entrenched in feeding "that" system. Like my father used to say "If the only tool you've got is a hammer, you will try to fix everything with the hammer".
You need a full tool-kit...
So now what? If you can't trust your doctor for the best solution to a medical problem, who in blue blazes CAN you trust?
Here's the hard part. You've got to trust yourself... you already know the basics for what affects your health:
What you breath, what you drink, what you eat, how you think, and how you respond to that knowledge... pretty much in that order.
You can live about 3 minutes without air, about 4 days without water, about 5 weeks without food, and if your able to think you can conceive a solution to all of that, and then you have to act on it.
Bad air can kill you, bad water can kill you, bad food can kill you, not thinking can kill you and making the wrong choice can kill you.
So lets think about something basic here. If you choose to control what you have the power to control, you might just solve your own health issues.
You have some control over the air you breath... at least for a large chunk of your day. Statistics show that we spend more than 70% of our time indoors... mostly at home or in an office. There are solutions for ensuring you are breathing clean air without viruses, bacteria, mold or mildew.
You have even more control over the water you drink. There's probably no trucks or busses driving past you pouring bad water down your throat... so you have a choice. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of choices and few of them are actually good for you. Here's a shocking statement: Drinking only the "most pure" water... can kill you... or at least rob your body of some things it needs to keep you healthy. We now know that water from distillation systems and reverse-osmosis (RO) systems actually eliminates essential nutrients from our water. But there ARE solutions that produce clean "pure" water without robbing it of those essential nutrients.
And now the psychological biggie... the food you eat (or don't eat). This is a whole discussion of it's own, but you learned in elementary school the "four food groups" and why it's important to have something from all of them. That's called a balanced diet. Too much or too little of even a balanced diet, however, can tip the scales in an unhealthy direction. There are more solutions available to this than the library of congress can hold.
OK... So now you've got all of the basics to healthy living from this point forward...
BUT... what about all that toxic trash that has accumulated in your body up to now? How can we effectively escort those poisons, heavy metals, and other unseemly chemicals out of our system? I don't mean pie-in-the-sky theories... I mean... WHAT DO WE KNOW THAT WORKS?
Obviously, I've got some ideas and solutions of my own, having invested several years of research after learning that my wife's affliction was not hereditary. In this discussion, I'd like to share some of those solutions with you and open your eyes to the fact that they exist. I'm not about presenting my own bias to match the bias of the medical profession.
One thing I want to interject before closing though, in light of the current fury over flu vaccines and most notably the swine-flu vaccine. In 2003, my wife faithfully got her 6th annual flu shot on the college campus where she worked. This time, however, she had an immediate reaction which dropped her into a chair for an hour or so. She was given some juice or a soda to drink and apparently recovered well enough to continue about her day. That puts the flu-shot into a position of being the most likely candidate or at least strong contributing factor for her onset of Alzheimer's less than 6 months later. There is now a proven link between flu vaccines and Alzheimer's.
What do YOU think? What have YOU found? What is YOUR experience?
Monday, February 16, 2009
Detox Revisited
I have several on-going automated web searches that keep me informed whenever specific keywords show up on web pages. There's enough chaff in the responses I get already that I hesitate to mention the keywords I search on. Suffice to say that whenever a pharmaceutical company, a bio-chemist, an alternative medicine guru or a vitamin company post anything that could be of significance in relation to Alzheimer's... I get notified.
I also subscribe to publications such as those from Health Sciences Institute and the Blaylock Report. Some of these things like to use "shock value" headlines to generate interest in reading what is usually a very long article. Sometimes it's useful information but rarely is it new news. It's that kind of information that has spurred me to try Huperzine-A, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Niacin and some other things. I've always run these past our doctor first, but it's important to have a doctor who is knowledgable in not only prescription drugs but also nutritional and alternative treatments.
So... with all of that going on, you'd probably swear that I would have learned about the most effective agent for heavy-metal detox in the world from one of my sources, right? Wrong!
Nope, not one of those sources identified what I'm about to share with you in any way.
Now... forgive me if I wind up appearing to be taking you down the garden path that I warned you about in a previous post. But I want you to learn about this pretty much the same way I did, though I can't duplicate that exact scenario through this blog.
I'm afraid that if I don't take you down the revelation and resource path that put this in front of me, you may miss something very important.
And so... in the interest of mystery and intrigue, and to put you on a journey that may just save your life or the life of someone you love, I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation here. I'm going to do something quite out of character for myself. Rather than spill my guts with a brain-dump of everything I've learned, I'm simply going to point you to a website with a video.
You decide whether to take the trip or not.
The website? http://www.waiora.com/products/pro_ncd.php
Note: The website originally posted in this blog has not been up since 2013. The product to go check out is NCD (Natural Cellular Defense) from Waiora. It is, by leaps and bounds, the most effective treatment for getting rid of heavy metals in the body. Do NOT be fooled by imitation products, the effectiveness of Waiora's Liquid Zeolite is far superior because of the patented refining process that make NCD many times more effective than its competition.
The life you save, may be your own.
I also subscribe to publications such as those from Health Sciences Institute and the Blaylock Report. Some of these things like to use "shock value" headlines to generate interest in reading what is usually a very long article. Sometimes it's useful information but rarely is it new news. It's that kind of information that has spurred me to try Huperzine-A, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Niacin and some other things. I've always run these past our doctor first, but it's important to have a doctor who is knowledgable in not only prescription drugs but also nutritional and alternative treatments.
So... with all of that going on, you'd probably swear that I would have learned about the most effective agent for heavy-metal detox in the world from one of my sources, right? Wrong!
Nope, not one of those sources identified what I'm about to share with you in any way.
Now... forgive me if I wind up appearing to be taking you down the garden path that I warned you about in a previous post. But I want you to learn about this pretty much the same way I did, though I can't duplicate that exact scenario through this blog.
I'm afraid that if I don't take you down the revelation and resource path that put this in front of me, you may miss something very important.
And so... in the interest of mystery and intrigue, and to put you on a journey that may just save your life or the life of someone you love, I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation here. I'm going to do something quite out of character for myself. Rather than spill my guts with a brain-dump of everything I've learned, I'm simply going to point you to a website with a video.
You decide whether to take the trip or not.
The website? http://www.waiora.com/products/pro_ncd.php
Note: The website originally posted in this blog has not been up since 2013. The product to go check out is NCD (Natural Cellular Defense) from Waiora. It is, by leaps and bounds, the most effective treatment for getting rid of heavy metals in the body. Do NOT be fooled by imitation products, the effectiveness of Waiora's Liquid Zeolite is far superior because of the patented refining process that make NCD many times more effective than its competition.
The life you save, may be your own.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
When The Battle is Lost
It's been several months since I last posted to this blog. The last time was in October of 2007, the one-year point in a very expensive treatment that has produced very promising results for most of the people who have been on it... IVIg (Intravenous Immunoglobulin).
A followup exam in December revealed that our treatment had most likely made significant improvements in my wife's functional skills such as dressing, buttoning, zipping, clasping, etc. On the functional scale improvement was back to a 4 from a previous 6a back in March. This improvement had been noted in October as well and had remained stable.
Immediate comprehension of speech also improved. While driving in the car and playing a CD of jokes, my wife got many of them and laughed, sometimes guffawed and knee-slapped. The jokes ranged from innuendos, play-on-words, puns, and... well you get my drift... and she "got them" and laughed at the appropriate times. Talk about encouraging! That behavior continues to this day. Some things are actually retained for a few moments, but then fall away.
The final IVIg treatment in October had been traumatic for her. For reasons beyond our understanding, nobody could seem to find a vein to administer the plasma. After going through five nurses and about two-dozen attempts to get a needle into her vein, none had succeeded. My wife was crying, the nurses were crying, and I finally said to the sixth volunteer that I was calling it quits because of the trauma and the fact that once a vein is found it's still 5 hours to completion. To this day, my wife recalls the pain of that event and tears-up at the sight of a needle.
By February of this year, she had lost some continuity of thought in the shower and could no longer shower herself if it involved shampoo, so I took over shampooing her in the shower, rinsing, conditioning and rinsing. That worked well for several weeks, but another phenomenon was taking place... recognition of who I am failed at times, usually in low-light, but most notably once in the shower where she suddenly panicked thinking I shouldn't be there. She was all lathered up with shampoo and the resulting struggle scared me. I was afraid one of us was going to fall through the glass. If it was me, she would have been incapable of calling 911 for help.
Though Functional capabilities had improved during the IVIg treatments, cognitive ability had continued to decline and had fallen from a 3.5 the previous March to a 1.0 in February.
By March, I began searching for assisted living facilities that had memory care areas... still thinking we were several months away from actually needing one, but aware that waiting lists can be quite long and finding one that is not only available but has high quality help, a reputation for reliable care and affordable, can be a daunting task.
Finally, after finding what I now believe is the best choice, I placed her into an ALF that provides her with constant activities, a regimen, three meals a day, two snack-times, and some very compassionate and respectful residential aids.
Putting her in there was about the most traumatic thing I have ever had to do. I grieved and sobbed... uncontrollably for a couple of days. I called every shift, learned the names of every med-aid and residential-aid that had anything to do with her and asked every conceivable question about how she was doing.
Miraculously she began to help other people, pushing those in wheelchairs to their rooms or to the dining hall, kneeling and smiling at them and introducing herself to them. She began asking to help the staff with things and, where she could, they let her help.
Most of the time now, after nearly a month in the facility, she is happy. She anticipates my visits and runs to me when I come in the door to give me a big hug and kiss. I'm able to take her out for outings to get something to eat, get her hair done and even see a movie.
The week before I took her to the facility, she had wanted to see the new Indiana Jones movie so I took her to the theater after a doctor's appointment. That did not go so well, she cried through most of the movie. I surmised that it was because she was not following it at all.
A month later, we were by the same theater getting an ice-cream cone when she said she wanted to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I mentioned that she had already seen it, but she did not recall having seen it and was excited about seeing it now... so guess what... we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. This time she seemed to follow and enjoy the whole story, applauding and laughing at the end of the wedding scene.
She is now happy to return to the facility, feels she has many friends there and knows that she is being treated compassionately. Her favorite words now are "compassion" and "compassionate".
Though emotions still run high for me, I now feel that I have done the right thing on her behalf and have a sense of peace in knowing that I selected a place for her that I can be proud and pleased to have found.
I have continued to look for clinical trials she might be able to participate in. Just this week I went through the pre-screening process for her on the new phase 3 trial code-named AAB-001. I was shocked that she was disqualified because she can no longer read and write nor articulate a sentence of more than a few words.
The longest sentence I have heard her say an many many weeks is "I miss you so much".
She also says "Still in Love" and "Forever and Ever, Amen".
A followup exam in December revealed that our treatment had most likely made significant improvements in my wife's functional skills such as dressing, buttoning, zipping, clasping, etc. On the functional scale improvement was back to a 4 from a previous 6a back in March. This improvement had been noted in October as well and had remained stable.
Immediate comprehension of speech also improved. While driving in the car and playing a CD of jokes, my wife got many of them and laughed, sometimes guffawed and knee-slapped. The jokes ranged from innuendos, play-on-words, puns, and... well you get my drift... and she "got them" and laughed at the appropriate times. Talk about encouraging! That behavior continues to this day. Some things are actually retained for a few moments, but then fall away.
The final IVIg treatment in October had been traumatic for her. For reasons beyond our understanding, nobody could seem to find a vein to administer the plasma. After going through five nurses and about two-dozen attempts to get a needle into her vein, none had succeeded. My wife was crying, the nurses were crying, and I finally said to the sixth volunteer that I was calling it quits because of the trauma and the fact that once a vein is found it's still 5 hours to completion. To this day, my wife recalls the pain of that event and tears-up at the sight of a needle.
By February of this year, she had lost some continuity of thought in the shower and could no longer shower herself if it involved shampoo, so I took over shampooing her in the shower, rinsing, conditioning and rinsing. That worked well for several weeks, but another phenomenon was taking place... recognition of who I am failed at times, usually in low-light, but most notably once in the shower where she suddenly panicked thinking I shouldn't be there. She was all lathered up with shampoo and the resulting struggle scared me. I was afraid one of us was going to fall through the glass. If it was me, she would have been incapable of calling 911 for help.
Though Functional capabilities had improved during the IVIg treatments, cognitive ability had continued to decline and had fallen from a 3.5 the previous March to a 1.0 in February.
By March, I began searching for assisted living facilities that had memory care areas... still thinking we were several months away from actually needing one, but aware that waiting lists can be quite long and finding one that is not only available but has high quality help, a reputation for reliable care and affordable, can be a daunting task.
Finally, after finding what I now believe is the best choice, I placed her into an ALF that provides her with constant activities, a regimen, three meals a day, two snack-times, and some very compassionate and respectful residential aids.
Putting her in there was about the most traumatic thing I have ever had to do. I grieved and sobbed... uncontrollably for a couple of days. I called every shift, learned the names of every med-aid and residential-aid that had anything to do with her and asked every conceivable question about how she was doing.
Miraculously she began to help other people, pushing those in wheelchairs to their rooms or to the dining hall, kneeling and smiling at them and introducing herself to them. She began asking to help the staff with things and, where she could, they let her help.
Most of the time now, after nearly a month in the facility, she is happy. She anticipates my visits and runs to me when I come in the door to give me a big hug and kiss. I'm able to take her out for outings to get something to eat, get her hair done and even see a movie.
The week before I took her to the facility, she had wanted to see the new Indiana Jones movie so I took her to the theater after a doctor's appointment. That did not go so well, she cried through most of the movie. I surmised that it was because she was not following it at all.
A month later, we were by the same theater getting an ice-cream cone when she said she wanted to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I mentioned that she had already seen it, but she did not recall having seen it and was excited about seeing it now... so guess what... we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. This time she seemed to follow and enjoy the whole story, applauding and laughing at the end of the wedding scene.
She is now happy to return to the facility, feels she has many friends there and knows that she is being treated compassionately. Her favorite words now are "compassion" and "compassionate".
Though emotions still run high for me, I now feel that I have done the right thing on her behalf and have a sense of peace in knowing that I selected a place for her that I can be proud and pleased to have found.
I have continued to look for clinical trials she might be able to participate in. Just this week I went through the pre-screening process for her on the new phase 3 trial code-named AAB-001. I was shocked that she was disqualified because she can no longer read and write nor articulate a sentence of more than a few words.
The longest sentence I have heard her say an many many weeks is "I miss you so much".
She also says "Still in Love" and "Forever and Ever, Amen".
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Genetic or Environmental: how to find out and what to do
So if there's a possibility you really have Alzheimer's...
Why? How did you get it? Does it run in the family? Did you do something wrong, eat the wrong thing, spray too much insecticide in your back yard?
A laboratory in Massachusetts, Athena Labs, is one of the few places that will actually run a genetic blood test to see if you are genetically predisposed to getting Alzheimer's. It's called the APOe test, and checks for some specific chromosomes dealing with not only your likeliness to contract the disease, but also your genetic ability to fight it.
It's a blood test worth getting if you have any question. Either way, it will give you an answer that will either allay your fears or give you a heads up to begin fighting it with some urgency.
In our case, as it turns out, my wife had the best genetic results we could hope for. Not only is she NOT predisposed to getting it, she also has the best combination to fight it... So our next question was, why did she get it?
If it's not genetic, then it must be environmental.
So I began diligently scouring the web for answers... and found that the first skill I needed to develop is sifting the legitimate doctors from the snake oil salesmen an the old, outdated, information from the new.
Believe me, there are a ton of snake oil sales solutions to Alzheimer's, and any other ailment you might have. To make matters more interesting, there can be some significant truths in what you will learn from reading the snake oil sales pitches... I mean to say, there are always some significant truths built into any good lie. When you're reading these pitches, they've got to get you thinking 'yeah! I believe that!' to several points before they sneak in the twisted or false statements, and frankly, many times the writers don't believe they are sending you down the guilded path at all... they actually believe it themselves. So, the only real solution is to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I can't tell you how to do that, I just can (most of the time) and I think it just comes from life experience and reading a "whole bunch" of both truth and fiction.
Here are some clues: If just one product from one source will save your life and you can get rich selling it... If you can find no corroborating information from other sources or find it difficult to validate specific case studies cited... If there seems to be only one medical guru in the world who knows the secret... well, you catch my drift.
Here's what I've learned:
The primary environmental causes of Alzheimer's, as determined by autopsy of people who died from complications of Alzheimer's (I don't think anyone actually ever dies of Alzheimer's itself) are:
Heavy Metals:
Poisons:
Foods:
Any of these can be significant contributors to the onset of Alzheimer's and many can be avoided, some can be reversed and none are actually proven to be THE central cause.
Let's take heavy metals, for example:
Mercury: Well, canned tuna is a prime source. So if you lived on a diet of significant amounts of fish, most notably canned tuna for some period of your life, maybe mercury is the culprit. As a kid, did you ever play with a silvery slimy ball of mercury from a broken thermometer? Maybe that's were the level of exposure came from. One of the most innocuous sources is those silver colored fillings in your teeth... what the dentists call Amalgam fillings. There's a significant amount of mercury in those fillings.
Lead: Did you grow up in an old house and eat paint chips off a hand-me-down crib or off the porch rails. Did you chew pencils in school (even the paint on the outside may have contained lead to make the paint shiny). Did you handle a lot of fishing tackle with lead weights? Chew wooden or metal toys with shiny paint?
Aluminum: Did you cook with aluminum cookware? Teflon covered aluminum frypans where the teflon had been scratched through to the aluminum? What about soda or beer in aluminum cans? Foods stored or re-cooked in aluminum foil?
OK... some sources will tell you that you are chicken little running around saying the sky is falling if you jump on the heavy metal bandwagon. Still, we were not about to take any chances.
1: We removed my wife's Amalgam fillings and had them replaced with composite fillings.
2: We found a method to detox the body of heavy metal poisoning... which *could be* snake oil medicine, but we had it from multiple sources that taking a high dosage of chlorophyll was a natural solution to help the body reduce or eliminate stored amounts of heavy metals, most notably mercury, and that chlorella (available in any health food store) was the most effective treatment, so we went through several weeks of taking the highest recommended dosage of these little green pills. The only negative side effect of which was (as it said on the bottle) that it makes you a bit *windy*. An understatement in our experience.
Poisons:
We couldn't find any Arsenic in our garage or under our sinks, or any use of pesticides that would have been significant enough for us to focus on poisons, though we stopped doing ANY of the spraying of insecticides ourselves. I even checked city tap water records for Arsenic in the cities where my wife had lived and, for the years where they measured it, it was virtually non-existent.
Also, if farmers in the heartland of America who spray insecticides on acres and acres of crops are not a significant pool of people with Alzheimer's, it does not seem that spraying a few rose bushes could really be the culprit.
Foods:
Here we have to do some serious evaluation of our eating habits.
My wife was a big fan of anything that said "Low Fat" or "Fat Free" on it for years. Little did we realize that most of the food items with those words meant that some man-made chemical concoction was used to make the phony food taste like real food. This was often a chemical soup of trans-fats, artificial sweetners and preservatives.
When you realize that most of these food additives, preservatives and artificial sweeteners have only been in use in the last 30 or 40 years and that the rates of people with some debilitating diseases have increased significantly over the last 30 to 40 years, it's hard not to lean towards a conclusion that there may be some correlation.
There's a good possibility that we have replaced so many natural ingredients in our foods with synthetic ingredients that we have actually become malnourished in specific nutrients that used to be in our diets but that we have engineered out.
Even so-called *vitamins* and *multi-vitamins* are often synthesized chemical concoctions that may bear little resemblance to their natural counterparts. So even though we feed our kids formula and cartoon character chewables, they could be starving for vitamins and minerals that would have been in a natural diet and short-changed the development of natural balance or immune systems that would stop the development of diseases like diabetes, autism, multiple-sclerosis and Alzheimer's.
Maybe we've been doing that long enough that the occurrance of early onset Alzheimer's for baby boomers is at an astounding high.
I began carefully evaluating foods we were consuming. Looking at labels, and looking for *natural* food supplement choices... Trying at nearly all costs to avoid a chemical diet and embrace a *natural* diet.
Such a proliferation of non-natural foods exists that whole store chains have sprouted that claim only to sell natural foods, or have mostly all natural foods. (You've got to read the labels everywhere).
We still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But the bread is multi-grain, the jelly (or jam) is Smucker's Simply Fruit, and the peanut butter is Laura Scudder's Natural (so what if I have to stir it the first time we open the jar?).
We're careful to use real butter, or butter substitutes with natural oils and flavors. We have nearly eliminated all diet soda and stick with water or Tropicana Fruit Juice (which seems to be OK with 10% real fruit juice for flavor).
Our source of vitamins is from natural sources. I personally like either Lassen's vitamins based out of Ventura, California or Swanson Vitamins, based out of Fargo, North Dakota. For Omega-3 I like Nordic Naturals out of Watsonville, California.
Whether your short-term memory problems are based on factors that can be changed with some detox and vitamins or not, you owe it to yourself to examine what you are or have been consuming.
Why? How did you get it? Does it run in the family? Did you do something wrong, eat the wrong thing, spray too much insecticide in your back yard?
A laboratory in Massachusetts, Athena Labs, is one of the few places that will actually run a genetic blood test to see if you are genetically predisposed to getting Alzheimer's. It's called the APOe test, and checks for some specific chromosomes dealing with not only your likeliness to contract the disease, but also your genetic ability to fight it.
It's a blood test worth getting if you have any question. Either way, it will give you an answer that will either allay your fears or give you a heads up to begin fighting it with some urgency.
In our case, as it turns out, my wife had the best genetic results we could hope for. Not only is she NOT predisposed to getting it, she also has the best combination to fight it... So our next question was, why did she get it?
If it's not genetic, then it must be environmental.
So I began diligently scouring the web for answers... and found that the first skill I needed to develop is sifting the legitimate doctors from the snake oil salesmen an the old, outdated, information from the new.
Believe me, there are a ton of snake oil sales solutions to Alzheimer's, and any other ailment you might have. To make matters more interesting, there can be some significant truths in what you will learn from reading the snake oil sales pitches... I mean to say, there are always some significant truths built into any good lie. When you're reading these pitches, they've got to get you thinking 'yeah! I believe that!' to several points before they sneak in the twisted or false statements, and frankly, many times the writers don't believe they are sending you down the guilded path at all... they actually believe it themselves. So, the only real solution is to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I can't tell you how to do that, I just can (most of the time) and I think it just comes from life experience and reading a "whole bunch" of both truth and fiction.
Here are some clues: If just one product from one source will save your life and you can get rich selling it... If you can find no corroborating information from other sources or find it difficult to validate specific case studies cited... If there seems to be only one medical guru in the world who knows the secret... well, you catch my drift.
Here's what I've learned:
The primary environmental causes of Alzheimer's, as determined by autopsy of people who died from complications of Alzheimer's (I don't think anyone actually ever dies of Alzheimer's itself) are:
Heavy Metals:
- Mercury
- Lead
- Aluminum
Poisons:
- Arsenic
- Pesticides
Foods:
- Additives
- Trans-fats
- Artificial Sweeteners
- Preservatives
Any of these can be significant contributors to the onset of Alzheimer's and many can be avoided, some can be reversed and none are actually proven to be THE central cause.
Let's take heavy metals, for example:
Mercury: Well, canned tuna is a prime source. So if you lived on a diet of significant amounts of fish, most notably canned tuna for some period of your life, maybe mercury is the culprit. As a kid, did you ever play with a silvery slimy ball of mercury from a broken thermometer? Maybe that's were the level of exposure came from. One of the most innocuous sources is those silver colored fillings in your teeth... what the dentists call Amalgam fillings. There's a significant amount of mercury in those fillings.
Lead: Did you grow up in an old house and eat paint chips off a hand-me-down crib or off the porch rails. Did you chew pencils in school (even the paint on the outside may have contained lead to make the paint shiny). Did you handle a lot of fishing tackle with lead weights? Chew wooden or metal toys with shiny paint?
Aluminum: Did you cook with aluminum cookware? Teflon covered aluminum frypans where the teflon had been scratched through to the aluminum? What about soda or beer in aluminum cans? Foods stored or re-cooked in aluminum foil?
OK... some sources will tell you that you are chicken little running around saying the sky is falling if you jump on the heavy metal bandwagon. Still, we were not about to take any chances.
1: We removed my wife's Amalgam fillings and had them replaced with composite fillings.
2: We found a method to detox the body of heavy metal poisoning... which *could be* snake oil medicine, but we had it from multiple sources that taking a high dosage of chlorophyll was a natural solution to help the body reduce or eliminate stored amounts of heavy metals, most notably mercury, and that chlorella (available in any health food store) was the most effective treatment, so we went through several weeks of taking the highest recommended dosage of these little green pills. The only negative side effect of which was (as it said on the bottle) that it makes you a bit *windy*. An understatement in our experience.
Poisons:
We couldn't find any Arsenic in our garage or under our sinks, or any use of pesticides that would have been significant enough for us to focus on poisons, though we stopped doing ANY of the spraying of insecticides ourselves. I even checked city tap water records for Arsenic in the cities where my wife had lived and, for the years where they measured it, it was virtually non-existent.
Also, if farmers in the heartland of America who spray insecticides on acres and acres of crops are not a significant pool of people with Alzheimer's, it does not seem that spraying a few rose bushes could really be the culprit.
Foods:
Here we have to do some serious evaluation of our eating habits.
My wife was a big fan of anything that said "Low Fat" or "Fat Free" on it for years. Little did we realize that most of the food items with those words meant that some man-made chemical concoction was used to make the phony food taste like real food. This was often a chemical soup of trans-fats, artificial sweetners and preservatives.
When you realize that most of these food additives, preservatives and artificial sweeteners have only been in use in the last 30 or 40 years and that the rates of people with some debilitating diseases have increased significantly over the last 30 to 40 years, it's hard not to lean towards a conclusion that there may be some correlation.
There's a good possibility that we have replaced so many natural ingredients in our foods with synthetic ingredients that we have actually become malnourished in specific nutrients that used to be in our diets but that we have engineered out.
Even so-called *vitamins* and *multi-vitamins* are often synthesized chemical concoctions that may bear little resemblance to their natural counterparts. So even though we feed our kids formula and cartoon character chewables, they could be starving for vitamins and minerals that would have been in a natural diet and short-changed the development of natural balance or immune systems that would stop the development of diseases like diabetes, autism, multiple-sclerosis and Alzheimer's.
Maybe we've been doing that long enough that the occurrance of early onset Alzheimer's for baby boomers is at an astounding high.
I began carefully evaluating foods we were consuming. Looking at labels, and looking for *natural* food supplement choices... Trying at nearly all costs to avoid a chemical diet and embrace a *natural* diet.
Such a proliferation of non-natural foods exists that whole store chains have sprouted that claim only to sell natural foods, or have mostly all natural foods. (You've got to read the labels everywhere).
We still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But the bread is multi-grain, the jelly (or jam) is Smucker's Simply Fruit, and the peanut butter is Laura Scudder's Natural (so what if I have to stir it the first time we open the jar?).
We're careful to use real butter, or butter substitutes with natural oils and flavors. We have nearly eliminated all diet soda and stick with water or Tropicana Fruit Juice (which seems to be OK with 10% real fruit juice for flavor).
Our source of vitamins is from natural sources. I personally like either Lassen's vitamins based out of Ventura, California or Swanson Vitamins, based out of Fargo, North Dakota. For Omega-3 I like Nordic Naturals out of Watsonville, California.
Whether your short-term memory problems are based on factors that can be changed with some detox and vitamins or not, you owe it to yourself to examine what you are or have been consuming.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Picking a Physician: steps to diagnosis
To diagnose Alzheimer's, you'll probably need to consult with more than one source.
In our case, we have an excellent long time family physician, which was our starting point. When it was clear to him that we may need to consult a neurologist, he referred us to one in the same building complex, who ultimately did not work out for us, but he then referred us indirectly to another neurologist who specializes in Alzheimer's, and he was a good match. Dr. William Rodman Shankle, co-author of the book Preventing Alheimer's.
Preventing Alzheimer's
Ways to Help Prevent, Delay Or Halt Alzheimer's
by William Rodman Shankle, Daniel G. Amen - Health & Fitness - 2004
You need to have a physician and a neurologist that you feel comfortable with and has the level of knowledge and concern that will lead to the most compassionate direction for your particular situation. We directed our neurologist to send copies of everything he prescribed and diagnosis to our primary physician so that there would be one central repository. When it came time to justify our situation with insurance companies or the Social Security Administration, this proved to be a brilliant decision, since they could get everything they needed from one source.
A neurologist who is not only familiar with medicines produced by pharmaceutical companies but also clinical trials for new treatments, alternative treatment solutions, and food supplement or nutrient solutions is a must. If your neurologist does not have knowledge in these areas, then he cannot adequately advise or prepare you for what you are going to need to do to fight this disease.
Cognitive testing is a must:
There are a couple of standardized cognitive testing processes used by most legitimate neurologists or clinics to diagnose cognitive challenges in the brain. This can involve 3 to 5 trips to a clinic, usually working with an MD or PHd to do the testing and evaluation, in sessions lasting from 1 to 3 hours. The results of this testing will be helpful not only to you, but to your physician, neurologist and to establish your situation with insurance companies and the Social Security Administration.
Cognitive testing helps to determine the level of cognitive impairment, the areas of the brain that are affected, and (to some degree) the possible cause, which might not be Alzheimer's, but something else, like a mild stroke, a tumor, or other situations.
Scans, Tests and Studies:
Since the problem could be something like a stroke or a brain tumor, it is imperative that the neurologist get a good look at the inside of your head.
We started first with an MRI, then a CAT scan, a Spectroscopy an a Pet Scan. Each of these shows a different level of detail and provides a different perspective of your brain to the technicians and physicians who examine them. Not every physician knows how to interpret what they are seeing in these scans, another good reason to pick highly qualified doctors.
The drugs you are currently taking:
This is key, because your whole problem could be that you are taking a drug for some other ailment that is negatively affecting your brain. Discontinuing that drug, or switching to a different drug to accomplish the same thing in a different way might just solve your whole problem.
Most notably, some blood pressure medications can actually cause symptoms that mimic or exacerbate short term memory loss. Stopping your blood pressure medicine, however, can put you at risk for a stroke, so you don't want to just stop your blood pressure medications without first consulting your physician and possibly substituting a different blood pressure medicine that accomplishes the same task in a different way.
Just as some people are allergic to drugs that other people are not, so too might some people have a reaction or side effect to a medicine that other people do not. So careful attention to medications that you are taking for one ailment could be causing another.
This is true for over-the-counter drugs, and even some food additives or vitamins as well, so if you are consuming a lot of anything in particular, even if it seems innocuous (for example, diet soda or fat-free donuts), consider stopping consumption of those things to see if the problem changes or even goes away. More on this in another post.
For some reason, physicians seem reluctant to stop a drug once they've prescribed it. so take a good look at the drugs you've been prescribed and try to determine if you can actually stop one or more of these drugs.
In the case of my wife, we were able to stop a couple of things she had been taking because the problem for which she was taking the drug had gone away, and did not return when we stopped the drug. It is best to consult a physician before stopping any drug and in some cases you will simply want to scale it down over a couple of weeks instead of stopping cold-turkey.
In our case, we have an excellent long time family physician, which was our starting point. When it was clear to him that we may need to consult a neurologist, he referred us to one in the same building complex, who ultimately did not work out for us, but he then referred us indirectly to another neurologist who specializes in Alzheimer's, and he was a good match. Dr. William Rodman Shankle, co-author of the book Preventing Alheimer's.
Preventing Alzheimer's
Ways to Help Prevent, Delay Or Halt Alzheimer's
by William Rodman Shankle, Daniel G. Amen - Health & Fitness - 2004
You need to have a physician and a neurologist that you feel comfortable with and has the level of knowledge and concern that will lead to the most compassionate direction for your particular situation. We directed our neurologist to send copies of everything he prescribed and diagnosis to our primary physician so that there would be one central repository. When it came time to justify our situation with insurance companies or the Social Security Administration, this proved to be a brilliant decision, since they could get everything they needed from one source.
A neurologist who is not only familiar with medicines produced by pharmaceutical companies but also clinical trials for new treatments, alternative treatment solutions, and food supplement or nutrient solutions is a must. If your neurologist does not have knowledge in these areas, then he cannot adequately advise or prepare you for what you are going to need to do to fight this disease.
Cognitive testing is a must:
There are a couple of standardized cognitive testing processes used by most legitimate neurologists or clinics to diagnose cognitive challenges in the brain. This can involve 3 to 5 trips to a clinic, usually working with an MD or PHd to do the testing and evaluation, in sessions lasting from 1 to 3 hours. The results of this testing will be helpful not only to you, but to your physician, neurologist and to establish your situation with insurance companies and the Social Security Administration.
Cognitive testing helps to determine the level of cognitive impairment, the areas of the brain that are affected, and (to some degree) the possible cause, which might not be Alzheimer's, but something else, like a mild stroke, a tumor, or other situations.
Scans, Tests and Studies:
Since the problem could be something like a stroke or a brain tumor, it is imperative that the neurologist get a good look at the inside of your head.
We started first with an MRI, then a CAT scan, a Spectroscopy an a Pet Scan. Each of these shows a different level of detail and provides a different perspective of your brain to the technicians and physicians who examine them. Not every physician knows how to interpret what they are seeing in these scans, another good reason to pick highly qualified doctors.
The drugs you are currently taking:
This is key, because your whole problem could be that you are taking a drug for some other ailment that is negatively affecting your brain. Discontinuing that drug, or switching to a different drug to accomplish the same thing in a different way might just solve your whole problem.
Most notably, some blood pressure medications can actually cause symptoms that mimic or exacerbate short term memory loss. Stopping your blood pressure medicine, however, can put you at risk for a stroke, so you don't want to just stop your blood pressure medications without first consulting your physician and possibly substituting a different blood pressure medicine that accomplishes the same task in a different way.
Just as some people are allergic to drugs that other people are not, so too might some people have a reaction or side effect to a medicine that other people do not. So careful attention to medications that you are taking for one ailment could be causing another.
This is true for over-the-counter drugs, and even some food additives or vitamins as well, so if you are consuming a lot of anything in particular, even if it seems innocuous (for example, diet soda or fat-free donuts), consider stopping consumption of those things to see if the problem changes or even goes away. More on this in another post.
For some reason, physicians seem reluctant to stop a drug once they've prescribed it. so take a good look at the drugs you've been prescribed and try to determine if you can actually stop one or more of these drugs.
In the case of my wife, we were able to stop a couple of things she had been taking because the problem for which she was taking the drug had gone away, and did not return when we stopped the drug. It is best to consult a physician before stopping any drug and in some cases you will simply want to scale it down over a couple of weeks instead of stopping cold-turkey.
Alzheimer’s Drug and Vitamin Regimen
Note: This drug and vitamin regimen is informational only, it is the regimen used by a specific individual and should not be construed as a recommended treatment for anyone else. Consult your own physician and neurologist before starting a regimen of your own or for anyone else.
PLEASE ALSO BE AWARE THAT THE FOLLOWING ARE BEING TAKEN IN CONJUNCTION WITH ANOTHER EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE TOTAL TREATMENT PROGRAM FOR THIS INDIVIDUAL.
Instructions for loading the Pill-Minder trays *
Morning and Evening (am and pm)
- Exelon (2) 9.5mg patches – Anti-Alzheimer’s (with food)
leave patches on for 48 hours, change patches every 24 hours
this means there will always be 4 patches on. - Curcumin 1800mg – prevents ALZ *tangles*
- CoQ10 100mg – anti-oxidant/cardio-vascular
- Vitamin E with mixed tocopherols 400iu
- Omega-3 3000mg (3 gels) - anti-oxident/cardio-vascular
- R-Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) 100mg * - carb metabolism / glucose level
Morning Only (am)
- Exelon Patch 4.7mg – Anti-Alzheimer’s 3 hours after morning capsule
- Vitamin C 500mg - with rose hips
- Namenda 20mg – short term memory
Evening Only (pm)
- Vitamin B12 1000mcg – cardio/general health (Shankle)
- Huperzine A 100mcg – cognitive ability
* Apex 70059 Twice-a-Day Weekly Pill Organizer (Amazon.com)
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