So my father has been dealing with some slowly progressing age related mental decline for some years now. We're not 100% sure it is Alzheimer's given the slow progress to date but after seeing him today I fear that may be what we're looking at.
Naturally, I'm looking for anything that might be of use that I can get my hands on. I'll be posting a more generic request for help elsewhere when I have done a bit more reading, but I'm interested if there is any evidence that C60oo might be useful for Alzheimer's. I'm particularly interested in any anecdotal information from anyone giving C60oo to an Alzheimer's suffer as I suspect I'm not going to find a lot of research at this point in time.
Thanks,
ETA: Father is 75, not overweight, non smoker. Borderline diabetes (perhaps metabolic syndrome) which is controlled by diet. Fairly active. Heart bypass at 65.
Edited by Daniel Cooper, 09 November 2014 - 05:55 AM.
Apart from C60 and niacinamide (as mentioned on another thread), you might try gluthathione, which is the endogenous antioxidant in mitochondria and the most abundant antioxidant in the brain. The reduced form appears to be well absorbed when taken orally. I take 500 mg once or twice a day with a gram or two of C, with good results, second only to C60. My sister has smoked since her teens, and a year of 500 mg has knocked ten years off her appearance, at least. (She tried C60 too, but found it did nothing for her.)
My friend has dementia. I suspect Lewy body but my second guess would be Alzheimer's, as they share similar PET scan features in the early stages. c60oo was started last month, as I explained in this thread on 10/26/2014. It's hard to tell how much it has helped vs. other aspects of the therapy, but based on other people's anecdotes and also my own experience, it may be responsible for my friend's olfactory improvements. My own use as monitored by Lumosity demonstrated fairly clear evidence of efficacy at improving mental function. In fact, my scores waned about a week or two after pausing c60oo. A few days after resuming it, my scores continued to increase. I've since made faltering attempts to combine it with high quality cacao, with some success; my current score is 1533 (LPI 93%, memory 96%).
My father also has serious memory problems, although not quite to the point of obvious Alzheimer's. He appears to have plateaued on Lumosity, so I'm thinking of doing another ministudy with him as well, of which c60oo would be one component.
In the article on glutathione, it looks like they were using an indirect method to upregulate it, as opposed to a lipidation technique like the one the one mentioned in this article. Nonetheless it sounds like a good idea if it actually succeeds in upregulating glutathione in the brain.
Edited by resveratrol_guy, 09 November 2014 - 03:29 PM.
Hi, I am sorry about your father. Here are experimental treatments for Lewy Body & other neurodegenerative disorders I've run across over the last few days.
https://www.youtube....r/robertrowenmd, I would be interested to hear if others in the Longecity community have any added information on the purported telomer activation with O3 treatment, or if this is just snake oil.
While living in Pittsburgh my neighbor, who was Michael Keaton's Sister, had her carotid artery cleaned or replaced... I don't remember the details. Suddenly she was brighter mentally she said. I asked around at the airlines and about 8 other pilots said they had relatives misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's and once the carotid artery was replaced they all got smarter. It was blood flow blockage.
http://www.lifelinescreening.com/ travels around to various cities and they ultrasound scan this artery as one of their basic test. I recommend it.
I was also told people with Alzheimer's are deficient in Choline - a B vitamin that makes 3 brain chemicals. 750 mg 1-2 x day for 7-14 days to see results.
had her carotid artery cleaned or replaced... I don't remember the details.
This sounds like total BS to me. K2 MK-7, a low LDL/HDL ratio, EDTA chelation, and other "big hammer" indirect methods should be the only ways to clear arteries. OTOH, for all practical purposes, the latest stenting procedure carries lower risk and results in larger lumen, regardless of whether they actually clear out any plaque at all, so in effect you are correct. As to replacement... vessels should be easy to culture from the right stem cells, relative to other tissues, but I'm not sure it's physically possible to replace such a critical artery at this point.
So your point is particularly relevant in cases where the cause of dementia is unclear; carotid ultrasound would be relatively cheap and informative as part of the diagnostic procedure. But I think it has an even more important role in preventing stroke. And clearly, both of these goals are related, to the extent that microstrokes increase susceptibility to dementia.
But this also reminds us of the empirical fact that Alzheimer's is not a disease, any more than "lung cancer" is a disease; it's a categorization of many diseases with similar symptoms but substantially different underlying pathologies, especially in its early stages.
Edited by resveratrol_guy, 26 November 2014 - 04:34 PM.
If you haven't already seen it, there's some research suggesting that vitamin D taken with curcumin has positive benefits with Alzheimer's.
Masoumi, A., Goldenson, B., Ghirmai, S., Avagyan, H., Zaghi, J., Abel, K., . . . & Fiala, M. (2009). 1α, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D _ {3} interacts with curcuminoids to stimulate amyloid-β clearance by macrophages of Alzheimer's disease patients. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 17(3), 703-717. doi:10.3233/JAD-2009-1080
Well, they seem to have used many curcumin analogs, per Table 2, which is good. Unfortunately, they also seem to have been so capitivated by the chemistry and the petri dish macrophage interactions that they forgot to design a study to demonstrate clinical effectiveness, even in primitive organisms. I think it's pretty clear at this point that D3, curcuminoids (especially lipidated ones like Longvida), and other compounds such as EGCG play a role in amyloid clearance. But what does that do to MMSE, let alone higher intellectual function? In particular, I'm concerned that removing amyloid might be like dying gray hair black: things look healthier, but tau is still tangled all over the place and memory still isn't happening.
Studies like this are quite frustrating: scientists are dedicating substantial time, mental space, and money to drug research in vitro and even in silico (computer simulation) without first taking an empirical approach, looking at results in real organisms before wasting too much time worrying about the atomic interactions. This is the familiar minimum-effectiveness history of pharmacology: find something that hits one target and fixes one problem, only to discover that it has all manner of undesired systemic effects, and does little to ameliorate a multifaceted disease.
To be sure, D3 and (lipidated) curcuminoids sounds quite promising. But "test first, explain later" is a faster success path, and ultimately a more conservative one with respect to health maintenance, in the social aggregate.
Edited by resveratrol_guy, 27 November 2014 - 02:46 PM.
Worth noting that only one study ever managed to do something about Alzheimers so far. Fight aging has a good take on it.
There is primary aging and there is secondary aging. The former is a side-effect of the operation of metabolism, an accumulation of damage about which little is done at present. The latter is the consequence of an unhealthy lifestyle, which at the most obvious end of the spectrum includes the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes caused by becoming sedentary and fat. Over the years numerous studies have shown that some of the declines of aging taken as inevitable are in fact self-inflicted by our own indulgences in this age of comparative leisure and low-cost calories. There is a modest difference to be made here, it is true, but you can't do much about primary aging. That requires new medical technologies capable of repairing the cellular and molecular damage that causes primary aging.
Here researchers demonstrate that the modest difference of a good lifestyle extends to the progression of early stage Alzheimer's disease, which is probably not surprising given the established risk factors for this condition include lack of exercise and being overweight. The methodology employed in this study included mild calorie restriction and exercise, which have been shown to improve pretty much anyone's general health at even advanced ages. Given the size of the effects of those two items demonstrated in past studies of health, I suspect the rest of the regimen is all window dressing. I'd like to see this run again with just the exercise and calorie restriction, and I'd wager the results would be much the same.
Overall this should be taken as a reminder that letting health maintenance slip in later years has a measurable cost, and in an era so close to the development of ways to treat primary aging, every year counts:
In the first, small study of a novel, personalized and comprehensive program to reverse memory loss, nine of 10 participants, including the ones above, displayed subjective or objective improvement in their memories beginning within 3-to-6 months after the program's start. Of the six patients who had to discontinue working or were struggling with their jobs at the time they joined the study, all were able to return to work or continue working with improved performance. Improvements have been sustained, and as of this writing the longest patient follow-up is two and one-half years from initial treatment. These first ten included patients with memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), or subjective cognitive impairment (SCI; when a patient reports cognitive problems). One patient, diagnosed with late stage Alzheimer's, did not improve.
[The] approach is personalized to the patient, based on extensive testing to determine what is affecting the plasticity signaling network of the brain. As one example, in the case of the patient with the demanding job who was forgetting her way home, her therapeutic program consisted of some, but not all of the components involved with [the] therapeutic program, and included:
(1) eliminating all simple carbohydrates, leading to a weight loss of 20 pounds; (2) eliminating gluten and processed food from her diet, with increased vegetables, fruits, and non-farmed fish; (3) to reduce stress, she began yoga; (4) as a second measure to reduce the stress of her job, she began to meditate for 20 minutes twice per day; (5) she took melatonin each night; (6) she increased her sleep from 4-5 hours per night to 7-8 hours per night; (7) she took methylcobalamin each day; (8) she took vitamin D3 each day; (9) fish oil each day; (10) CoQ10 each day; (11) she optimized her oral hygiene using an electric flosser and electric toothbrush; (12) following discussion with her primary care provider, she reinstated hormone replacement therapy that had been discontinued; (13) she fasted for a minimum of 12 hours between dinner and breakfast, and for a minimum of three hours between dinner and bedtime; (14) she exercised for a minimum of 30 minutes, 4-6 days per week.
Has your father ever been tested for mercury toxicity? Does he have mercury amalgams? Does he eat much large fish, like tuna or swordfish or shark?
It turns out that mercury in the brain creates the same sort of neurodegeneration of neuron ends and the telltale "tangles" that are characteristic of alzheimers:
It does this by forcing the tubulin to detach from the neurites, forcing the neurite structures to collapse. It is critical to the research argument above to understand that other types of heavy metals did NOT cause tangles. Mercury had unique ability to degenerate the neurite structures rapidly.
There are some not-stupid people who think that a significant percentage of alzheimers is being caused by accumulated mercury toxicity in the brain.
By far the best mercury toxicity test is the Quicksilver Mercury Tri-Test. They test hair, urine, and blood at the same time, then speciate organic and inorganic mercury forms. They do calculations of how well your body disposes of it. I think it costs $350. Once you get the test done you can publish results and I'll have a lot of experience to share if he needs to act. Do NOT rush into chelation as it can be extremely dangerous when done wrong. Starting to get mercury out at his age is difficult as a lot of damage would already be done, but absolutely if you want to try it needs to be done very delicately and with the most conservative protocols (of which IV glutathione is NOT one). Prognosis I have seen for curing someone with developed alzheimers would not be good. But he appears to be pre-alzheimers, and I just don't have data given his age and already noticeable decline.
I would test him with very low doses of liposomal glutathione before allowing anyone to attempt IV glutathione. About 40% of mercury toxic people get a sulfur food sensitivity, which is actually about thiol sensitivity. Glutathione is a single-thiol and a very weak chelator. What it does is bind mercury, move it around, and then lets it loose, where it then settles into different tissues and causes even more symptoms. Glutathione can make mercury toxic people extremely sick, and you want to test that with a low dose before exposing him to a high dose. Every naturopath that hangs out a shingle saying "detox" loves IV glutathione because it is expensive and they make money on it. But there is no good research showing that IV glutathione clears mercury from the body more rapidly than no IV glutathione.
If you are ambitious enough, I would recommend both books written by Dr Andrew Cutler, a Princeton PhD chemist who was mercury toxic himself, and came up with a very conservative and unique protocol for chelation. His unique insight is to give very low and well tolerated doses of the chelator every half-life (roughly every three to four hours) continuously for three days. By observing the three hour rule, you are preventing the mercury from resettling in new tissues and causing new symptoms, and maximizing flow out of the body. It's worth emphasizing: you NEVER chelate with mercury amalgams in your mouth and hidden under crowns. The chelator goes into saliva and causes even more mercury into your body.
Up to 95% of organic mercury excreted from the liver as bile is reabsorped in the intestine, making liver disposal of mercury a very slow process for some people. Quicksilver has an interesting product named "IMD Powder" that is a silica covalently bound to many thiols, which the patient eats with food and it then binds to the bile and guarantees a trip out. They have good data showing rapid declines in blood mercury using that product, and it is much more benign than a chelator. The risk would be that the thiols break off, get absorbed, and take mercury with them.
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