The End of Alzheimer’s

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The instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller

A groundbreaking plan to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s Disease that fundamentally changes how we understand cognitive decline.
 
Everyone knows someone who has survived cancer, but until now no one knows anyone who has survived Alzheimer’s Disease. 
 
In this paradigm shifting book, Dale Bredesen, MD, offers real hope to anyone looking to prevent and even reverse Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive decline.  Revealing that AD is not one condition, as it is currently treated, but three, The End of Alzheimer’s outlines 36 metabolic factors (micronutrients, hormone levels, sleep) that can trigger “downsizing” in the brain. The protocol shows us how to rebalance these factors using lifestyle modifications like taking B12, eliminating gluten, or improving oral hygiene.
 
The results are impressive. Of the first ten patients on the protocol, nine displayed significant improvement with 3-6 months; since then the protocol has yielded similar results with hundreds more. Now, The End of Alzheimer’s brings new hope to a broad audience of patients, caregivers, physicians, and treatment centers with a fascinating look inside the science and a complete step-by-step plan that fundamentally changes how we treat and even think about AD.”Alzheimer’s is a disease for which there is no cure. Dr. Bredesen’s experimental program gives me hope that there are actions we can all take to care for our brains and keep Alzheimer’s at bay.” 
—Maria Shriver, Today Show
 
“The End of Alzheimer’s is a monumental work. Dr. Bredesen completely recontextualizes this devastating condition away from a mysterious and unsolvable process to one that is both preventable and, yes, reversible. Pinning our hopes on pharmaceutical research to develop a miraculous wonder drug has left both physicians and patients empty handed. But now, this comprehensive approach offers solid results, bringing hope to so many.”
—David Perlmutter, MD, Board-certified neurologist and author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain, and Brain Maker

“The End of Alzheimer’s, for the first time, synthesizes the latest science into a practical plan that can reverse Alzheimer’s and dramatically improve brain health and function. If you have a brain, read this book.”
—Mark Hyman, MD, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eat Fat, Get Thin

“This book represents a major turning point in our approach to Alzheimer’s disease, from viewing it as a mysterious and incurable affliction that is governed almost exclusively by our genes, to understanding it as a multifactorial condition that can be prevented and even reversed largely through nutrition and lifestyle change. For the first time ever, patients and families affected by Alzheimer’s—as well as those at high risk for this devastating disease—truly have a reason to be hopeful.”
—Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac Founder, Kresser Institute for Functional & Evolutionary Medicine, Author of the New York Times best seller The Paleo Cure
 
“The End of Alzheimer’s is a masterful, authoritative, and ultimately hopeful patient guide to functional medicine for your brain. It will help you prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s disease, whether you have the ApoE4 gene or not. My patients fear Alzheimer’s more than any other diagnosis. This is the book to transmute fear into action.”
—Sara Gottfried, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Younger

“Having spent several years implementing many of Dr. Bredesen’s insights in my patients, I can assure you that following his advice can save yourself, your loved ones, and your friends from suffering from this preventable and reversible curse.”
—Steven Gundry, MD, author of the New York Times bestseller The Plant Paradox

“Dr. Dale Bredesen is a world class neuroscientist/neurologist who through his innovative and exacting research has discovered a safe and effective approach to the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease that will revolutionize the way we think about the disease.”
—Jeffrey Bland, PhD, FACN, FACB; President, Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute
 
“The End of Alzheimer’s offers a new beginning in Medicine — changing the focus from a singular disease to recognizing the systems-based approach required to care for the whole person. Dr. Bredesen translates the knowledge of science to the wisdom that helps to heal our people . . . and provide a vision for the end of Alzheimers!”
—Patrick Hanaway, MD, Founding Medical Director, Director of Research, Center for Functional Medicine, Cleveland Clinic
 
“In this engaging, heartfelt, and insightful book, Dr. Bredesen elucidates a bold new approach to Alzheimer’s, rooted in decades of his own pioneering research.  A must read for anyone wondering what can be done for this dread disease, whether for themselves, a loved one, or a patient.“
—Nathan Price, PhD, Professor & Associate Director of the Institute for Systems BiologyDale Bredesen, M.D., is internationally recognized as an expert in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. He graduated from Caltech, then earned his M.D. from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He served as chief resident in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) before joining Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner’s laboratory at UCSF as an NIH postdoctoral fellow. He held faculty positions at UCSF, UCLA, and the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Bredesen directed the Program on Aging at the Burnham Institute before coming to the Buck Institute in 1998 as its founding president and CEO. He is the chief medical officer of MPI Cognition.Meet Kristin.
 
Kristin was suicidal. Years before, she had watched in despair as her mother’s mind slipped away, forcing her to enter a nursing home after she could no longer recognize family members, let alone care for herself. Kristin had suffered along with her mother, who at the age of 62 had begun an 18‑year decline into Alzheimer’s disease. And at the end Kristin had suffered alone, for her mother was no longer sentient.
 
When Kristin was 65, she began to experience her own cognitive problems. She got lost when driving on the freeway, unable to remember where to get off and on, even on familiar routes. She could no longer analyze data critical to her job, or organize and prepare reports in a timely fashion. Unable to remember numbers, she had to write down even four digits, not to mention phone numbers. She had trouble remembering what she had read, and by the time she reached the bottom of a page had to start at the top again. Reluctantly, Kristin prepared her resignation. She began to make mistakes more and more frequently, often calling her pets by the wrong names and having to search to find the light switches in her own home, even though she had flipped them on and off for years.
 
Like many people, Kristin tried to ignore these symptoms. But they got worse and worse. After two years of unremitting cognitive decline, she consulted her physician, who told her she was becoming demented just as her mother had, and there was nothing he could do for her. He wrote “memory problems” on her chart, and because of that, she was unable to obtain long-term care insurance. She underwent retinal scanning, which revealed the Alzheimer’s-associated amyloid. She thought about the horror of watching her mother decline, about how she would live with progressive dementia and no long-term care, about the lack of treatment. She decided to commit suicide.
 
She called her best friend, Barbara, explaining, “I watched what my mother went through as she slipped away, and there is no way I will allow that to happen to me.” Barbara was horrified to hear Kristin’s saga. But unlike when other friends had fallen victim to dementia, this time Barbara had an idea. She told Kristin about new research she had heard about, and suggested that rather than ending her life, Kristin travel several thousand miles to the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, just north of San Francisco. In 2012, Kristin came to see me.
 
We talked for hours. I could offer her no guarantee, no example of any patient who had used the protocol—nothing more than diagrams, theory, and data from transgenic mice. In reality, Barbara had been premature in sending her to the Institute. And to make matters worse, the protocol I had developed had just been turned down for its first proposed clinical trial. The review board felt that it was “too complicated,” and pointed out that such trials are meant to test only a single drug or intervention, not an entire program (ah, if only diseases were that simple!). So all I could do was to go over the various parts of the protocol and recommend that she take these to her physician back home, asking him if he would work with her. She did that, and so began what has become the ReCODE protocol.
 
Three months later, Kristin called me at home on a Saturday to say she could not believe the changes in her mental abilities. She was able to work full-time again, to drive without getting lost, and to remember phone numbers without difficulty. She was feeling better than she had in years. When I put the phone down, what rushed into my mind were the decades of research, the countless hours at the whiteboard with lab members and colleagues, the arguments with myself about each detail of the theory and treatment approach. All of this had not been in vain; it had pointed us in the right direction. Of course Kristin was only one person—as they say, an “n of one”— and we needed to see similar results in thousands and ultimately in millions. I thought back to the doctor who told his patient, “You are just an anecdote; you are not statistically significant.” To which his patient replied, “Well, my family says that I am significant. Besides, I’m healthy once again, so I don’t care about statistics.” Indeed. Every fundamental change needs to start somewhere—every successful approach must start with Patient Zero—and Kristin was Patient Zero.US

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