Table Of ContentAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2020 by Dale E. Bredesen
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free
speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for
complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any
form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish
books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bredesen, Dale E., author.
Title: The end of alzheimer’s program: the first protocol to enhance
cognition and reverse decline at any age / Dale E. Bredesen, M.D.
Description: New York: Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2020] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000690 | ISBN 9780525538493 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525538509 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Alzheimer’s disease—Prevention. | Alzheimer’s disease—Treatment.
Classification: LCC RC523.2 .B735 2020 | DDC 616.8/311--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000690
Illustrations by Joe LeMonnier
Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the
individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a
substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical
supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage
allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
This book is dedicated to
Julie G. and the 3,000+
members of ApoE4.Info,
who embrace the twenty-
first-century approach to
health and are together
offering hope to the more
than one billion people at
high risk for Alzheimer’s
disease worldwide.
Contents
Foreword
PART ONE
Alzheimer’s: The Final Generation?
CHAPTER 1
A New Kind of Vaccine
CHAPTER 2
An Inconvenient Sleuth
CHAPTER 3
Man Bites Dogma: Lessons Learned
PART TWO
The Handbook Section 1: Reversing Cognitive Decline
CHAPTER 4
Enhancing Cognition with KetoFLEX 12/3
CHAPTER 5
Put Out the Fire
CHAPTER 6
Feed Your Head: The Brain Food Pyramid
CHAPTER 7
Pyramid Level 1: Clean House
CHAPTER 8
Pyramid Level 2: Indulge Freely
CHAPTER 9
Pyramid Level 3: Upgrade Your Gut
CHAPTER 10
Pyramid Level 4: Choose Wisely
CHAPTER 11
Pyramid Level 5: Risky Business
CHAPTER 12
Big Little Details
CHAPTER 13
Exercise: Whatever Moves You
CHAPTER 14
Sleep: Divine Intervention
CHAPTER 15
Stress: Trim Your Sails
CHAPTER 16
Brain Stimulation: Upsizing
CHAPTER 17
Oral Health: The Whole Tooth and Nothing but the Tooth
CHAPTER 18
Translating Data into Success
PART THREE
The Handbook Section 2: More Silver Buckshot
CHAPTER 19
Dementogens: Swimming in the Alzheimer’s Soup
CHAPTER 20
Of Microbes and Microbiomes
CHAPTER 21
Supplements: My Kingdom for a Source
CHAPTER 22
Troubleshooting: If at First You Don’t Succeed
EPILOGUE
The Triumph of Twenty-First-Century Medicine
Acknowledgments
Index
Visit endofalzheimersprogram.com to see every reference in this book.
Foreword
At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a
thousand men assigned to guard the past.
—MAURICE MAETERLINCK
N
EVER BEFORE HAS THE practice of medicine been as polarized by the
dichotomy between reductionism and holism as exists today with relation to
the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Reductionism, as it is applied to the practice of medicine, takes the
position that in order to best understand a disease process and ultimately
formulate and implement an appropriate therapeutic intervention, both the
disease and the intervention need to be reduced to the simplest operative
parts and mechanisms. Many have credited the sixteenth-century French
philosopher René Descartes with codifying this paradigm. Descartes, in part
V of his Discourse, described the world as being nothing more than a
clockwork machine that could be understood in its entirety through an
exploration of its individual components. And clearly the progress of the
science of medicine historically and in the present is deeply punctuated by
landmark advances characterized by dedication to this approach.
Whether we are speaking of Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek, using a
single-lensed microscope to discover animalcules (microbes), or the
sequencing of the human genome, the underpinnings of Western medicine
continue to honor the notion that looking deeper and deeper at constituent
parts will ultimately provide a knowledge base that will reveal sought-after
solutions to challenging disease processes.
To be sure, microscopy led to an understanding of pathophysiology that
directly resulted in wondrous advances leveraged for salubrious outcomes.
But myopically engaging a philosophy centered on drilling down to unity in
terms of parts and processes inevitably segues to sanctioning a therapy
equally centered on the validation of the singular. Simply stated, embracing
reductionism in medicine supports the ideology of monotherapy, the idea
that the goal of modern medical research should be the development of
single, magic bullets that are designed and marketed to counter single
diseases.
As Harvard physician Dr. Andrew Ahn put it in a paper exploring the
limits of reductionism in medicine:
Reductionism pervades the medical sciences and affects the way we
diagnose, treat, and prevent diseases. While it has been responsible for
tremendous successes in modern medicine, there are limits to
reductionism, and an alternative explanation must be sought to
complement it.
As of this writing, no disease process highlights the limitations of a
reductionist approach as it relates to therapy more than senile dementia of
the Alzheimer’s type. To be sure, the deep dive to unravel the etiology of
this now-epidemic disease has been under way for decades and
underwritten by hundreds of millions of dollars. Applying a reductionist
approach has indeed revealed fascinating mechanisms that are likely
involved in what ultimately manifests as this disease that now affects 5.5
million Americans. But alas, no single or combination pharmaceutical
therapy has any effect whatsoever on modifying the inexorable course of
Alzheimer’s disease.
As a testament to the tenacity of the pharmaceutical industry, several
drugs are marketed to Americans and indeed globally with the idea that
they somehow “treat” Alzheimer’s disease. But while these medicines may
minimally affect Alzheimer’s symptoms, again they provide no benefit
whatsoever with respect to actually improving the ultimate outcome. As Dr.
Michal Schnaider-Beeri recently revealed in an editorial in the journal
Neurology: “Despite great scientific efforts to find treatments for Alzheimer
disease (AD), only 5 medications are marketed, with limited beneficial
effects on symptoms, on a limited proportion of patients, without
modification of the disease course.”
More recently, the concern for the lack of efficacy of these medications
was overshadowed by a report appearing in The Journal of the American
Medical Association revealing that not only do the commonly prescribed
Alzheimer’s drugs lack efficacy, but their utilization is actually associated
with more rapid cognitive decline.
In contradistinction to reductionism, holism places more value on
exploring the forest as opposed to focusing on the single tree. To be sure, a
holistic approach to health and disease absolutely embraces the discoveries
of deep scientific pursuits, but the fundamental difference in comparison to
reductionism is found when examining how science is utilized as it relates
to actually treating a malady. Whereas reductionism looks for the one
home-run solution, holism considers any and all options available if there’s
something positive to offer.
As you will soon discover in the pages that follow, for the first time ever
a therapeutic intervention has been developed that successfully treats
Alzheimer’s disease. The protocol developed by Dr. Bredesen is by
definition holistic. His program incorporates the discoveries of research
across a multitude of disciplines that have bearing on Alzheimer’s
pathogenesis. Our most highly respected scientific research has clearly
delineated the specific mechanisms whereby a vast array of seemingly
unrelated processes contributes to the ultimate manifestation of this disease.
And it is precisely because Alzheimer’s disease manifests from the
confluence of multiple factors that its remediation requires the orchestration
of diverse instruments.
