by Patrick Holford
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Drugs won’t prevent dementia.
Last week’s Lancet Commission on dementia prevention is facing mounting criticism, for favouring targets for drugs including lowering cholesterol and amyloid and completely ignoring quick and easy wins such as supplementing omega-3, homocysteine lowering B vitamins and reducing sugar intake. A very recent report from Cambridge University scientists says that the benefits of new anti-amyloid treatments may be outweighed by the costs and risk of side-effects such as shrinking brain matter.
US National Institutes of Ageing researcher Dr Madhav Thambisetty warned that trial participants lost up to three teaspoons of brain volume. ‘It is far from clear these drugs can ever significantly reduce dementia morbidity at scale’ report the scientists in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia and reported in the Telegraph this week.
The Lancet Commission completely ignored, for the third time since 2017, the indisputable evidence that inexpensive B vitamins, given to those with raised homocysteine (half the older population) reduced brain shrinkage in a year by up to 73%, the highest effect being in those with sufficient omega-3 DHA, as well as the substantial evidence in favour of omega-3.
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Our scientists in the Alzheimer’s Prevention Expert Group are actively preparing response letters to the Lancet – and once done, we will give a full report. Against this backdrop of minuscule effect that ‘is so small it would not be recognisable by doctor or patient’ and the need for specialist brain scans with each injection due to one in four getting brain bleeding or swelling we see press-mongering dressing up drugs as prevention; press reports ‘big up’ these unethical drug approaches, as yet unlicensed in the UK, in the guise of prevention – ‘UK needs Covid-style push on dementia drugs’ reports the guardian.
Prevention does not mean drugs, it means tackling the root causes of cognitive decline and brain shrinkage, which is what we are doing at Food for the Brain through our FREE Cognitive Function Test.
“We sent them the indisputable evidence and they ignored it.” Here’s how the Lancet Commission halved the true impact of dementia prevention, says our Founder, Patrick Holford.
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Thank you for reading!
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