There can be no cure for advanced Alzheimer's disease, since the brain's limited reconstruction facilities cannot replace large swaths of destroyed neurons with new cells with all right characteristics and connections.
Prevention - not cure or drugs - is the only way to thwart this and numerous other neurodegenerative diseases. The word…
There can be no cure for advanced Alzheimer's disease, since the brain's limited reconstruction facilities cannot replace large swaths of destroyed neurons with new cells with all right characteristics and connections.
Prevention - not cure or drugs - is the only way to thwart this and numerous other neurodegenerative diseases. The word "drug" appears 34 times in this article, but there is no mention of nutrition or vitamin D.
Without proper vitamin D3 supplementation, such as (for 70kg 154lb body weight without obesity, 0.125 mg 5000 IU a day) or recent extensive UV-B skin exposure, most people only have 5 to 25 ng/mL circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), which is made in the liver from vitamin D3. The immune system needs 50ng/mL (125nmol/L) or more to function properly - to mount full innate and adaptive responses to cancerous cells, viruses, bacteria and fungi and to reduce the chance of self-destructive inflammatory responses.
Inflammation is an indiscriminate cell destroying immune response primarily intended for multicellular parasites, such as intestinal worms (helminths). Our ancestors were ubiquitously infected with helminths, which long ago evolved compounds which downmodulate our inflammatory responses. The human immune response today evolved over millions of years to be overly-strong to counter this downmodulation. Now we are all dewormed, our inflammatory responses are overly-strong, with some people having genetic variations which gives them especially strong and inappropriately triggered inflammatory responses which cause psoriasis, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and the various neurodegenerative diseases.
Low 25(OH)D levels make this inflammation much worse. Many elderly people have only 1/10th to 1/4 of the circulating (25(OH)D) their immune systems need. So excessive, dysregulated, self-destructive, inflammation is easily triggered.
Ogura et al. 2021 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405650221000617 report that compared to healthy controls, whose 25(OH)D levels averaged 26.8ng/mL, Parkinson's disease (PD) sufferers averaged 13.4ng/mL and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) sufferers averaged just 10.5ng/mL. PD, MSA and Dementia with Lewy Bodies are closely related, since they involve different patterns of misfolding of the alpha-synuclein protein (Ayers et al. 2022 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2113489119).
AD's etiology is somewhat different from that of PD/MSA/DLB but the details are unimportant from the point of view of prevention. What is needed is stronger innate and adaptive immune responses and especially better regulation of the inflammatory responses which are prone to being excessive, due to our lack of helminths. This requires at least 50ng/mL 25(OH)D, which most people can only be attain with proper vitamin D3 supplementation at levels above what most MDs think is required.
You won't read about this from drug companies, or from most professional researchers - whose goal must be to induce the funding of further research - since prevention (to a very large extent) of these neurodegenerative diseases involves better nutrition, especially regarding vitamin D, omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium and probably boron. To many MDs and PhDs, this sounds impossibly simple, but it is true. This knowledge and approach to prevention leaves no place for them as highly qualified, highly paid, gladiators against an enormous and poorly understood threat to health.
The scarily large "5000 IU" vitamin D a day requirement for average weight adults people is a gram every 22 years. Pharma grade vitamin D3 costs about USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory. There's no need for drugs or more research.
Please read the research articles concerning vitamin D, the immune system, sepsis, influenza, COVID-19, autoimmune diseases, autism and neurodegeneration cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ .
About 14 years ago, I discovered vitamin D as a very useful additional supplement for my depression. Its effect on my depression is slightly different from my lexapro, and it makes a tremendous difference.
I had been taking 4000IU in winter, 3000IU in spring and fall, and 2000IU in summer. But one spring a few years ago, my doctor finally decided to check my D level (I suspect she was worried that I was taking too much), and she discovered that my D level was on the low end of normal. So she said that I should not drop down to 2000IU for the summer, and could even increase.
Presently, I take 5000IU in summer and 6000IU in winter. Every time I turn around I see another health aspect that has been found to be benefited by vitamin D. Including Covid.
Apparently, different people have different abilities to absorb D orally. I participated in an informal study my doctor was conducting after testing low like you did. She had me taking 10,000 IU for a month and then retested me. Didn't even move the needle. So she wrote me a prescription for 100,000 IU for a month and retested. That moved the needle for me, but it was still below where she said it was supposed to be. She did not want me to continue at that level - not sure why. I think I take 10k IU a day now and have for awhile.
I highly recommend you drop the SSRI. But slowly. And read "Anatomy of an Epidemic".
Lexapro has been literally a magic drug for me. I take a fairly small dose (10mg), and the effect on my depression (I started taking it in 2004) was instant. I'm not willing to take a risk with that result, especially having experienced the pain of living with untreated severe depression for decades.
But I know that SSRIs do not help everyone with depression. My daughter has yet to find one that helps her the way Lexapro helps me.
Just by the luck of reading the right article at the right time I convinced my partner (and myself) to take up to 2000 IU of D3 a day, since what I had read was that patients having higher concentrations of D3 in their systems appeared to be doing much better against Covid than those who had less (this was early on in the pandemic). Not sure if it's helped us (though we seem to be less affected by colds etc..and never got Covid), but we're not letting go of it now.
When you look at a U.S. map of cancers/ disease... you see that multiple sclerosis is concentrated mainly in the northeast. I’ve always wondered if lack of sun /vitamin D played a role.
It isn't just in the U.S. I've seen maps of Europe that show it consistently more concentrated in the northern latitudes. Instead of seeing a vitamin D connection though, they typically postulate a "Germanic gene" for it.
I'm no scientist but my partner and I are definitely living a life that focuses on nutrition and food as medicine and a big focus on D3. Thank you for this I believe you have offered, as Bruce says below, certainly more alternative explanations than most scientists caught up in DRUGS have offered of late.
I'm not sure you have THE answer but your alternative explanation is certainly a better alternative than the masking of symptoms which appears to be the modus operandi of pharma and the medical schools which are now almost entirely in their grasp.
There can be no cure for advanced Alzheimer's disease, since the brain's limited reconstruction facilities cannot replace large swaths of destroyed neurons with new cells with all right characteristics and connections.
Prevention - not cure or drugs - is the only way to thwart this and numerous other neurodegenerative diseases. The word "drug" appears 34 times in this article, but there is no mention of nutrition or vitamin D.
Without proper vitamin D3 supplementation, such as (for 70kg 154lb body weight without obesity, 0.125 mg 5000 IU a day) or recent extensive UV-B skin exposure, most people only have 5 to 25 ng/mL circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), which is made in the liver from vitamin D3. The immune system needs 50ng/mL (125nmol/L) or more to function properly - to mount full innate and adaptive responses to cancerous cells, viruses, bacteria and fungi and to reduce the chance of self-destructive inflammatory responses.
Inflammation is an indiscriminate cell destroying immune response primarily intended for multicellular parasites, such as intestinal worms (helminths). Our ancestors were ubiquitously infected with helminths, which long ago evolved compounds which downmodulate our inflammatory responses. The human immune response today evolved over millions of years to be overly-strong to counter this downmodulation. Now we are all dewormed, our inflammatory responses are overly-strong, with some people having genetic variations which gives them especially strong and inappropriately triggered inflammatory responses which cause psoriasis, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and the various neurodegenerative diseases.
Low 25(OH)D levels make this inflammation much worse. Many elderly people have only 1/10th to 1/4 of the circulating (25(OH)D) their immune systems need. So excessive, dysregulated, self-destructive, inflammation is easily triggered.
Annweiler et al. 2013 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad121432 report a strong relation between low 25(OH)D levels and AD. Only some of this would be due to the disease depleting the levels or reducing the person's exposure to UV-B light.
Ogura et al. 2021 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405650221000617 report that compared to healthy controls, whose 25(OH)D levels averaged 26.8ng/mL, Parkinson's disease (PD) sufferers averaged 13.4ng/mL and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) sufferers averaged just 10.5ng/mL. PD, MSA and Dementia with Lewy Bodies are closely related, since they involve different patterns of misfolding of the alpha-synuclein protein (Ayers et al. 2022 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2113489119).
AD's etiology is somewhat different from that of PD/MSA/DLB but the details are unimportant from the point of view of prevention. What is needed is stronger innate and adaptive immune responses and especially better regulation of the inflammatory responses which are prone to being excessive, due to our lack of helminths. This requires at least 50ng/mL 25(OH)D, which most people can only be attain with proper vitamin D3 supplementation at levels above what most MDs think is required.
You won't read about this from drug companies, or from most professional researchers - whose goal must be to induce the funding of further research - since prevention (to a very large extent) of these neurodegenerative diseases involves better nutrition, especially regarding vitamin D, omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium and probably boron. To many MDs and PhDs, this sounds impossibly simple, but it is true. This knowledge and approach to prevention leaves no place for them as highly qualified, highly paid, gladiators against an enormous and poorly understood threat to health.
The scarily large "5000 IU" vitamin D a day requirement for average weight adults people is a gram every 22 years. Pharma grade vitamin D3 costs about USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory. There's no need for drugs or more research.
Please read the research articles concerning vitamin D, the immune system, sepsis, influenza, COVID-19, autoimmune diseases, autism and neurodegeneration cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ .
About 14 years ago, I discovered vitamin D as a very useful additional supplement for my depression. Its effect on my depression is slightly different from my lexapro, and it makes a tremendous difference.
I had been taking 4000IU in winter, 3000IU in spring and fall, and 2000IU in summer. But one spring a few years ago, my doctor finally decided to check my D level (I suspect she was worried that I was taking too much), and she discovered that my D level was on the low end of normal. So she said that I should not drop down to 2000IU for the summer, and could even increase.
Presently, I take 5000IU in summer and 6000IU in winter. Every time I turn around I see another health aspect that has been found to be benefited by vitamin D. Including Covid.
Apparently, different people have different abilities to absorb D orally. I participated in an informal study my doctor was conducting after testing low like you did. She had me taking 10,000 IU for a month and then retested me. Didn't even move the needle. So she wrote me a prescription for 100,000 IU for a month and retested. That moved the needle for me, but it was still below where she said it was supposed to be. She did not want me to continue at that level - not sure why. I think I take 10k IU a day now and have for awhile.
I highly recommend you drop the SSRI. But slowly. And read "Anatomy of an Epidemic".
Lexapro has been literally a magic drug for me. I take a fairly small dose (10mg), and the effect on my depression (I started taking it in 2004) was instant. I'm not willing to take a risk with that result, especially having experienced the pain of living with untreated severe depression for decades.
But I know that SSRIs do not help everyone with depression. My daughter has yet to find one that helps her the way Lexapro helps me.
Very informative, Robin. Thanks.
Just by the luck of reading the right article at the right time I convinced my partner (and myself) to take up to 2000 IU of D3 a day, since what I had read was that patients having higher concentrations of D3 in their systems appeared to be doing much better against Covid than those who had less (this was early on in the pandemic). Not sure if it's helped us (though we seem to be less affected by colds etc..and never got Covid), but we're not letting go of it now.
When you look at a U.S. map of cancers/ disease... you see that multiple sclerosis is concentrated mainly in the northeast. I’ve always wondered if lack of sun /vitamin D played a role.
It isn't just in the U.S. I've seen maps of Europe that show it consistently more concentrated in the northern latitudes. Instead of seeing a vitamin D connection though, they typically postulate a "Germanic gene" for it.
I'm no scientist but my partner and I are definitely living a life that focuses on nutrition and food as medicine and a big focus on D3. Thank you for this I believe you have offered, as Bruce says below, certainly more alternative explanations than most scientists caught up in DRUGS have offered of late.
I'm not sure you have THE answer but your alternative explanation is certainly a better alternative than the masking of symptoms which appears to be the modus operandi of pharma and the medical schools which are now almost entirely in their grasp.