Dr. Bredesen explains the difference between 20th and 21st Century medicine. Previously, patients waited until their symptoms could be easily identified by the doctor who then labeled the disease and treated it with the corresponding drug. Today, in many cases as a result of our western diet and exposure to toxins, chronic illnesses are much more complex. No longer will a monotherapeutic drug be able to treat a multi-factored disease. The shift in medicine today is to find out “why” the patient is ill – discover the underlying causes.
After 30 years of research, Dr. Bredesen discovered Alzheimer’s is a disease with at least 36 contributing factors. The ReCODE ProtocolTM he developed, addresses whatever has contributed to a person’s cognitive decline. The proper testing must be done first to identify the causes and the Alzheimer’s subtype. Then a customized treatment plan can be prescribed for the patient. The goal is not just to bring levels into the normal range, but to optimize those levels, giving the patient the best chance of halting and reversing their cognitive decline. Find out more about The Bredesen ProtocolTM here.
Dale E. Bredesen, M.D., UCLA and Buck Institute | Professor of Neurology, Easton Laboratories for Neurodegenerative Disease Research | David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Founding President and CEO, Professor Emeritus, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, Dr. Bredesen received his undergraduate degree from Caltech and his medical degree from Duke. He served as Resident and Chief Resident in Neurology at UCSF, then postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Prof. Stanley Prusiner. He was a faculty member at UCLA from 1989-1994, and was then recruited by the Burnham Institute to direct the Program on Aging. In 1998 he became the Founding President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and Adjunct Professor at UCSF. Then in 2013, he returned to UCLA as the Director of the Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research.
The Bredesen Laboratory studies basic mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative process, and the translation of this knowledge into effective therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, leading to the publication of over 220 research papers. He established the ADDN (Alzheimer’s Drug Development Network) with Dr. Varghese John in 2008, leading to the identification of new classes of therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Bredesen’s group has developed a new approach to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. This approach has led to the discovery of subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease, followed by the first description of reversal of symptoms in patients with MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) and early Alzheimer’s disease, with The ReCODE (reversal of cognitive decline) ProtocolTM, published in 2014 and 2016. His book, The End of Alzheimer’s, is a New York Times Bestseller and is shown below.
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The protective response causes APP (Amyloid Precursor Protein, the long molecule that protrudes from neurons) to be cut into four fragments, including amyloid-beta, that downsize the neural network and eventually destroy synapses and neurons. When the APP molecule is cut into those four pieces, it is not cut into the two pieces that nourish and maintain synapses.
Alzheimer's disease is a state of the brain in which there is an imbalance between the reorganization of synapses that have outlived their usefulness (and which the brain can stand to lose - healthy destruction) and the maintenance or creation of existing and new synapses (which the brain needs to sustain old memories and form new ones, as well as perform other cognitive functions). That imbalance comes from too many of the synapse- and neuron-destroying quartet of molecules snipped from APP and too few of the synapse- and neuron-sustaining duo of molecules snipped from APP.