(Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle)

There Is a Cure For This Global Tragedy

Five years ago after leaving office, former president Ronald Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer's disease.

In the ensuing years while living in California, he and his wife Nancy invited famous evangelist Billy Graham into their home. While conversing with Billy Graham, Reagan would stand up every few minutes and go to the window.

After a few trips to the window, Nancy finally asked her husband what he was looking for. Ronald Reagan responded, "Well, Billy Graham is coming by today."

Margaret Thatcher served three terms as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was the first woman ever to hold that office.

Margaret's daughter Carol now discloses painfully that her mother can't finish a sentence because she forgets how she started it.

Eventually Margaret forgot that her husband Sir Denis died in 2003. "I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again," said Carol mournfully.

When I go over my mother's house, I generally use the computer which sits on a table near a window with an air conditioner in it. Sometimes my mother will ask me if there is too much air on me.

Minutes later she will ask me the same question again. Other times she will ask if my wife is home. Sometimes she will repeat the question, forgetting that she asked it a few minutes earlier.

Alzheimer's is a dreaded disease which is escalating globally. Currently, 5,300,00 Americans suffer with it. That number is expected to increase to over 14 million by 2050!

Worldwide cases of Alzheimer's disease are now hovering at 26.6 million. That number is predicted to grow four times to over 100 million people by 2050!

The Alzheimer's Association is saying that one out of every eight Baby Boomers are doomed to develop Alzheimer's. This is scary since I am a baby boomer.

Alzheimer's disease is the number four cause of death in America. It was formerly number 6 but has climbed steadily. Heart disease, cancer, and strokes are the three leading causes of death in America.

Presently there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. Pharmaceutical companies have their synthetic formulations that are advertised to "treat" the disease. There also exist natural compounds which offer legitimate partial relief of symptoms, and some which slow down or prevent further damage.

The primary pharmaceutical drug to treat Alzheimer's is Aricept. However, Aricept's website admits: "Alzheimer's is an illness that gets worse over time ... Slowing the symptoms of Alzheimer's may mean still being able to dress, make phone calls, or bathe without help a while longer."

Some of the natural alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs are curcumin, lecithin, DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid,) alpha lipoic acid, Huperzine A, acetyl choline, acetyl-L-carnitine, DMSO, resveratrol, and organic coconut oil.

An example of studies supporting natural substances having a dramatic impact on Alzheimer's disease is the one performed by scientists on turmeric (the main compound in curcumin.) Animal studies show that turmeric reduces the amyloid plaque that develops in the brains of Alzheimer's disease victims by a whopping 40 percent!

Medical doctors now say that if you are over 65 years of age, there is a one in ten chance that you already have Alzheimer's. If something is not done, statistics say that you'll die from the disease about eight years after your diagnosis. (The number of years will vary though from two to twenty.)

Forty seven percent of Americans who reach the age of 85 have Alzheimer's disease. And now people are living longer than at any previous time in American history.

But you and your loved ones don't have to suffer any longer. There is a CURE for Alzheimer's which you will not hear about on the six o'clock news or CNN.

Kim N. Green, Ph.D. and Frank M. LaFerla, of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine are pioneering Alzheimer's research.

These two men discovered that niacinamide (vitamin B3) led to an increase in the good proteins that strengthen the scaffolding in brain cells along which information travels (this scaffolding is known as microtubules.)

When this scaffolding collapses, brain cells can die - and lead to Alzheimer's disease-type dementia.

"Microtubules are like highways inside cells. What we're doing with nicotinamide is making a wider, more stable highway. In Alzheimer's disease, this highway breaks down. We are preventing that from happening."

Niacinamide works by clearing the jumbled bad protein in brain cells known as tau. In Alzheimer's patients, the protein becomes poisonous and contributes to dangerous clogging inside brain cells.

The scientists tested laboratory mice's memory by placing them in a big pan of water, and seeing if they could remember the location of a hidden platform they could climb up on to get out of the water.

Healthy mice had no trouble finding the platform; the mice with Alzheimer's just paddled in circles trying to find it.

The mice's short-term and long-term memory over time was tested by the scientists. It was found that niacinamide treated mice performed at the very same level as the normal mice!

The dosage of niacinamide is very critical in CURING Alzheimer's. It was discovered that the human body can only absorb 250 mg of niacinamide at any one time

Also, people with Alzheimer's need to take 3,000 mg of niacinamide daily. This translates to 250 mg taken twelve times a day!

I currently have my mother on this regimen. If you don't have Alzheimer's, and want to prevent it from attacking, and you want to improve your memory, take half this dosage (250 mg, 12 times a day for a total of 1,500 mg.)

I will keep you posted on my mother's progress on this ground-breaking discovery.
Source: New Health. Summer 2011. Dr. David G. Williams, Editor, Alternatives.

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