Dementia, Alzheimers Disease

Definition:

Dementia - not a disease itself, but group of symptoms that characterize diseases and conditions; it is commonly defined as a decline in intellectual functioning that is severe enough to interfere with the ability to perform routine activities.

Alzheimer’s Disease - a progressive brain disorder that is characterized by deterioration of mental faculties resulting from the loss of nerve cells and the connections between them.

Dr Damien Downing on Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease:

It is entirely possible that Alzheimer’s is simply caused by metal toxicity (particularly mercury) in people with certain genetic make-ups that make them more vulnerable to it. Nobody has yet come forward to fund the medical research necessary to prove or disprove this; the laboratory science makes it look more likely every year. Whatever the truth may be, people with Alzheimer’s can certainly benefit from both nutritional interventions and from help with the removal of toxins from the body, particularly of course the brain.

Vulnerability to Alzheimer’s appears to be linked to genetic make-up, in particular to a particular form of the gene for a molecule called Apoliporotein E. About 15% of the population have either one or both copies of this gene in the ApoE4 variant, and having two copies raises your risk of Alzheimer’s 15 times. The reason is that the protein is a ‘housekeeping’ molecule in the brain, which removes toxins so they can be cleared from the body; but the ApoE4 version cannot do this nearly as well.

Ecological medicine can help in Alzheimer’s by improving nutrition and the functioning of all parts of the body, not just the brain; by supporting the genetic make-up you do have, and by working around problems such as ApoE4 to help you to detox by other means