No doubt about it…I’m getting old. And that’s a good thing. It means, for starters, that even though I’ve not always had the best daily health practices, and intermittently,  throughout my adulthood, those less than ideal practices have caught up with me, I’ve had enough good behaviors that I’m not dead yet. And, if you’re not dead, and you’re willing to make significant changes in your lifestyle, this miraculous body we have been given has a shot at not only keeping you moving forward but also taking you to a level you didn’t consider realistic when finding yourself at the three-quarter mark of a century of life.

In recent years, I’ve felt a definite decline in my body and mind. My dad had a fatal heart attack at age 64. My mom died at age 72 after at least a decade of decline with Alzheimer’s. It appeared that I had one foot in my father’s history and one in my mother’s. Thirty-eight years after my father’s heart attack, I had one—and survived. I started changing my eating and lifestyle habits and lost about 20 pounds. Plus, I had the advantage of modern cardiac therapies that didn’t exist in my dad’s day. Trickier, I thought, was that I inherited the Alzheimer’s gene from my mother.

I discussed that pesky gene with my personal physician and requested a basic cognitive test for dementia. She didn’t want to do it. “There’s nothing you can do about it if you have the gene,” she told me. Still, I pressed her. She finally had her nurse administer a test that was beyond simple—not because my brain functioned so well, but because a ten-year-old could have passed it.

Still, I knew something wasn’t right. I remembered how my brain used to function. I could recall anything. My favorite example was in a job in the seventies (pre-computer) with a company providing home care services. The coverage schedule was 25-30 pages, with some patients who had three shifts of care and some with three hours a few days/week. If someone asked me to check the schedule for “Mrs. Jones on Tuesday first shift”, I didn’t need to look at the schedule. I could retrieve every patient on every page, every shift, all from my own brain—a memory that I now see was not fully appreciated by me.

Anyone who has had the sad experience of a loved one fading away into the fog of Alzheimers knows there simply is no drug in current use, current testing, or on the horizon that truly addresses the complexities of the causes of brain fog and Alzheimers.

I wanted my old brain back. I started reading everything I could on brain function. It turned out, the brain function relies on the condition of other parts of the body in order to function well.

First book was Good Energy, by Casey Means, MD. It introduced me to the critical importance of metabolism and gut health on every other organ of the body, including the elusive brain.

Quite coincidentally, I read about Dr. Dale Bredesen. His first book on the subject, “The End of Alzheimer’s, was encouraging, but limited, and published in 2017—a lifetime ago in the medical science world. It described a dietary lifestyle that was prescribed to a group of ten women and men with measurable cognitive issues. A majority (8 of 10, if I’m recalling accurately) showed significant cognitive improvements and were able to return to demanding jobs and associated travel. How long did their improvements hold, I wondered. Dr. Bredesen has since written follow-ups (that original group continued to improve and many others were added to the story) and trained medical personnel throughout the country on his protocol (which has advanced over the years). Each new book expands on the original protocol, as well as the number of the participants. And currently, Dr. Bredesen leads a multi-site study—not a small accomplishment, given most medical studies are financed by pharmaceutical companies, but there are no potential prescription drugs being tested. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t going to pay for that.

So, just when I thought Dr. Bredesen was the only one focusing on this, I discovered the error of my assumption. There is at least a handful of physicians writing about their experiences with more natural approaches to cognitive clarity. It turns out that the stomach and intestines—specifically, the microorganisms that inhabit the gut–play a huge role in the health of our brains. Just today I started reading Brain Maker, by David Perlmutter, MD. If chapter one is any indication, Dr. Perlmutter (who has collaborated with Dr. Bredesen in the past) is expanding on the “gut” details that I’ve read in Dr. Bredesen’s books.

If anyone out there is interested, I will continue to report on my readings and the miraculous potential these medical pioneers are demonstrating—and the best part (to me) is it’s not based on yet another pharmaceutical product.

Have I chosen to pursue one of the available programs? Yes. And in four months I improved the score on a monthly cognitive test by over 25 points. And I haven’t even scratched the surface of the possibilities.