June 17, 2022
Ted S.
The first benefit from following the Bredesen Protocol is hope. In my case, a description of the journey to help my wife is the testimony that supports my belief in the value of what I found in “The End of Alzheimer’s” by Dale Bredesen, MD. The next best benefit is that hope became reality and saved my wife’s life.
Our journey began with thorough testing of my wife by a psychologist in December 2018. In January 2019 he told us that my wife had a major neurocognitive disorder probably due to Alzheimer’s disease, which was confirmed by her neurologist in February 2019. My contacts with local and national agencies, as well as numerous readings of articles and books, all advised me that I should prepare for the worst – inevitable decline until death. The official stand was that there is no way to stop or reverse Alzheimer’s. Available drugs only slow the progression. Then in May 2019 my wife suffered adhesions that blocked her small bowels. She had laparoscopic surgery to remove the adhesions, and then she had an abscess from a nick of the bowel. She came home after nearly a month in the hospital only to return through the emergency room for an incision surgery to clean out the abscess. This time she was not eating and was fed intravenously, which resulted in her transfer to a long-term care hospital. She returned home near the end of June 2019 weighing only 95 lbs. and eating only a few spoonsful of food each meal. The Alzheimer’s had accelerated during the two months of hospitalization, but she was not returning to baseline as we expected. The home health professionals arranged for her to be in a supportive care program, a preliminary to hospice. I thought I had lost her.
Fortunately, I had learned that these days, experts disagree. So, I began searching for other experts, and I found one, Dr. Dale Bredesen, and his protocol. The challenge for me was to overcome the standardized advice of no hope. When I learned that there was a local Bredesen Protocol Practitioner available, I took my wife to his office and made the decision leap to try the Bredesen Protocol program. We began the program in August 2019 with nutrition, purified water (equipment installed in our home), and exercise. I found that health style changes fit better than lifestyle changes because we were doing more than changing our life patterns with things like the Ketoflex diet with coconut oil and dairy and gluten free foods. My wife’s new doctor added thyroid armour and bio-identical hormones to her regimen, and we eventually identified the role her lifelong bouts of fever blisters had in her disease so that her doctor approved the addition of a supplement called Monolaurin to combat that HSV-1 virus. Also, her other health issues began to stabilize, as well. Her progress was confirmed when a nurse evaluated her and decided that she no longer qualified for supportive care. In October 2019 home health was discontinued because it was no longer necessary. Her weight was then more than 100 lbs.
As my wife’s conditions improved and stabilized, her memory began to come back. She had not been able to remember any of her hospitalizations, but one day she did remember that I had given her a dozen yellow roses for our 57th wedding anniversary while she was in the hospital. I call these sudden recalls “bluebird moments,” for they are truly like little bluebirds of happiness.
