HEALTH COACH - What you need to know about Alzheimer's Disease (and there is hope)

HEALTH COACH -

 What you need to know about Alzheimer's Disease (and there is hope)  
 
 
 
 My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease three years ago, when I was editor at the Wall Street Journal. My journalist instincts began and I sought to find as much information about the disease and especially, understand what the diagnosis meant for my family. 
 
 Confused by the information available, I have done what most reporters will do. I went back to basics - mapping the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, starting with amyloid beta plaque in the brain, evolving later in tau protein spots and finally, inflammation. What I found surprising is that it is only when the inflammation appears in the brain that people with Alzheimer 's disease begin to see them symptoms. 
 
 I have also embarked on a journey to truly understand where the research is today and why after 115 years after the first identification of the disease, we still have no cure . I have so far interviewed dozens of scientists (I am launching an information site on Alzheimer 's disease called Being Patient in the summer of 2017 to share the " Information) and I understood the disease very much. 
 
 The most important is the fact that research has proven symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are present long before a person does not recognize having the disease. This fact was supported by a study conducted by Dr. Michael Weiner of UCSF. He swept the brain of more than 1500 patients across the United States and Canada and found that 30 percent of the average person in the 1970s, who had no symptoms of 39 Alzheimer 's, had a brain filled with amyloid beta plaque 
 
 My quest For information also led me to understand that this is a disease where healing could come from a place where Many scientists have not been traditionally sought. Once many drug trials have failed, there are also non-invasive non-invasive clinical trials that are taking place. An example is a recent study in the rat of Dr. Li-Huei Tsai of MIT, who found that a simple light therapy led to a significant reduction in amyloid plaque in the mouse brain. Illuminating light therapy increased the gamma frequency in the brain of mice (gamma is associated with higher level cognitive thinking) and activated microglia cells, known as the "concierges" of our brain, eliminating deposits Of plates. This study is now moving to humans with the first clinical trial launched in San Francisco. 
 
 It is difficult to navigate all the information that exists on Alzheimer 's disease and to understand what is credible and what is not . The more I dig, the more I realize that there are things you can do to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The most important is the role of aerobic exercise. I asked Dr. Rudy Tanzi of Harvard to know what the important things we can do to prevent Alzheimer's disease and the top of his list was exercise. The reason why it was explained in neuroscientific studies, which show that the only way to produce new neurons in the brain after birth and during the life of a person, is aerobic exercise. Nerve cells appear to regenerate in the region of the brain hippocampus, or the area responsible for learning and memory. 
 
 Alzheimer's disease affects 47 million people around the world. Factoring in the longer aging of the population today, this number will rise to more than 150 million by 2050. With genetic testing more and more widespread, there is also a community of People who wear the APOE4 variant, which puts them at a higher risk of getting Alzheimer's Disease The impact of this disease is amazing and will affect not only an individual but an entire family unit . 
 
 I did not know much about Alzheimer's disease until my mother was diagnosed. I have now joined the millions of people exposed to the cruel reality of living with Alzheimer's disease and watching a piece of your love slip with each passing day. I hope that I can provide people affected by the disease with the tools needed to navigate the information and connect them to experts who hold some of the answers.