The Key to Protecting our Brains from Age-Related Disease

 Prior to sitting down to write this article, I spent hundreds of hours preparing and researching for the seminar I recently gave entitled, “Neurodegenerative Disease: Unraveling the Mystery.”  Although I won’t bore you with all of the science and details that I discovered, I will try to enlighten you into what I think is behind the increase in neurodegenerative disease (i.e., Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s).

Traveling west on Fletcher Avenue in Tampa, Florida from I-75 lies a beautiful and pristine white multi-story building with a boldly visible sign:“The Alzheimer’s Research Center.”   I thought to myself:  So much building.  So much money.  Yet, the rate of neurodegenerative diseases keeps growing and growing.

In fact, the National Institute on Aging, a subsidiary of the National Institute of Health states “Once considered a rare disorder, Alzheimer’s disease is now seen as a major public health problem that is seriously affecting millions of older Americans and their families.”

They also say that it is “not part of normal aging.”  That implies that it is part of pathologic aging.  A term that I coined several years ago when referring to the way we age in America.

Amongst the frightening statistics is the fact that scientist estimate that around 4.5 million people now have the disease, and that for every 5-years beyond age 65, your chance of getting it doubles.  And if that is not enough, by 2050, 13.2 million older Americans are expected to have Alzheimer’s disease.  That means that one of every two of us over 65 will get the disease, if no preventive treatments become available.

As the National Institute on Aging continues to “Unravel the Mystery” by informing us as to who will get it, when we will get it, and what the brain will show when you get it, they offer no help in telling us how we can prevent it.

Of course they mention the pharmaceutical drugs such as Aricept, that are out there to minimize the bad effects once you get the disease,  we are reminded by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, that Aricept doesn’t work.  

So what do we do.  It’s not suppose to be  a part of normal aging, yet I’m told that at age 65 years old I can expect to be one of two people that will get it.

Naturally, as an Antiaging and Functional Medicine physician this notion disturbed me greatly.  To think that I must accept this as fact is absurd.  I needed to search for the reasons why these diseases are becoming so prevalent in America in the first place.  Then perhaps I could gather up ways to medically reverse the root cause.

To my surprise, most of the answers were in my BioAge ™ blood panel that I designed at the daSilva Institute.  This exhaustive laboratory evaluation was devised to show markers of pathologic aging.   Those markers that would predict heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, body breakdown (catabolism) and more.

In the Journal of Neuroinflammation I discovered that many of the markers currently offered in the BioAge ™ panel to predict chronic diseases, correlate closely to the increase in neurodegenerative diseases.  

Simply stated, many of the markers existing in the BioAge ™ blood panel, are very sensitive predictors of most of the neurodegenerative disorders we face today.  One of the markers, which I will refer to as HM, were to persist at a value of greater than 14, will double your risk of Alzheimer’s disease.  Another, CR, if greater than 3.0, will increase the risk to 500 times the norm.

The good news is that there are natural ways to reverse these markers.  At the daSilva Institute, programs are already in place to regenerate the body to an optimal state and reverse all harmful markers of pathologic aging.   

Through bio-identical hormone balance, nutrition, supplementation, neurotransmitter balancing, reduction of oxidative stress, mitochondrial support, heavy metal removal, IV free radical reduction and adrenal stress control, the harmful effects of these biochemical markers of pathologic aging can be thwarted.  

Intravenous protocols adopted from David Perlmutter, MD and others from the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM) are also employed at our facility.

In summary, as scientists are eagerly researching new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease & Parkinson’s, I believe it’s best not to get it at all, and reverse the biochemical precursors that will ultimately lead to the destruction of brain cells and the advent of neurodegenerative disorders altogether.