A few years ago at the age of 67, Sarah (not her real name) was planning suicide because she was starting to have the same problems her mother suffered from as she developed Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t remember phone numbers or what she had just read and even finding her way around the familiar roads near her […]
Do doctors treat pensioners with snake oil?
August 24, 2014 by 13 Comments
A cheering and optimistic story about dementia at HealthInsightUK.org.When Obhi Chatterjee’s dad was diagnosed, Obhi set about researching the most plausible supplements and diets to help him. The piece tells you what they are and why they might work and also has useful advice for anyone wanting to follow his example. Two of the biggest […]
Just relying on drugs won’t beat Alzheimer’s
July 7, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Is putting all our eggs in the drug basket really the best way to beat Alzheimer’s? Just as we can’t rely on drug companies alone to beat antibiotic resistance, so we can’t rely on a pharmaceutical silver bullet for Alzheimer’s. Tackling antibiotic resistance needs heavy investment in drugs that will be used sparingly for a […]
Time to get serious about prevention. Remove a pump handle.
December 10, 2013 by 10 Comments
Like transparency, equality and democracy in politics, prevention of disease is a motherhood and apple pie issue in medicine– everyone is in favour of it, so long as it doesn’t involve actually doing anything as committed as mounting a serious public health programme or spending millions on research. This truism takes on a new urgency […]
Benzos: Beware the baddest drugs in a doctor’s armoury.
August 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Benzodiazepines are the serial offenders of the drugs’ cabinet with a cluster of pharmaceuticals ASBOs to their name. They’ve been around since the 1960s and are generally given if you are complaining of the likes of insomnia or anxiety – family names include temazepam (for sleep) and the tranquillizer valium. They have a charge sheet that […]
The Alzheimer’s charities are in a hole but they keep digging
July 13, 2013 by 11 Comments
Earlier this week I won freelance consumer journalist of the year at the Medical Journalists’ Association awards which was fantastic. You had to send in three features to enter and two of mine each focused on a different non-drug treatment that might help with Alzheimer’s. I mention this because looking at them again I was freshly shocked […]
Alzheimer’s: we want a cure but please don’t mention B vitamins
May 21, 2013 by 54 Comments
The article in today’s Daily Mail about B vitamins and Alzheimer’s is the story of the triumph of dogged scientific persistence – do read it first if you can because this blog would become impossibly long if I repeated all the details. But behind it is another story of indifference and prejudice that is preventing […]
Treating disease with diet – new possibilities
March 19, 2013 by 3 Comments
There were several reasons I got interested in the low-calorie liquid diet I’ve written about in today’s Daily Mail – mainly the fact that evidence is mounting that it can reverse diabetes and other conditions such as arthritic knees. But also because together with the alternate day diet I think it holds out possibility of […]
Ten top tips to boost your disease free survival
March 7, 2013 by 5 Comments
In quieter moments, pondering the end of your life, how many years to you think you might be effectively house-bound with a number of chronic diseases before you pop off? The jargon for describing this unappealing state is YLD (Years of Living with Disability) and according to a big report in the Lancet earlier this […]
Coconut outtakes: what the Mail didn’t say
January 8, 2013 by 13 Comments
So you’ve read the Daily Mail story today about how it’s possible that coconut oil can help with some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. No one knows for sure because the idea has never been properly tested but there is a good reason why it might work – by supplying the brain with a natural […]
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