Sharp as a tack? You could still wind up on an Alzheimer’s med

Remember this date: February 15, 2018.

That’s when FDA head honcho Scott Gottlieb proposed that drugmakers won’t have to show that any med sent to the FDA for approval to treat Alzheimer’s disease actually does anything to help patients.

His new guidelines would also allow those drugs to be given to people of sound mind and body — which means that practically every single person in the U.S. over a certain age will soon be in jeopardy of innocently walking into their doctor’s office and leaving with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Even if you show no actual signs or symptoms!

You can ace your friends and family at Jeopardy!… finish the New York Times crossword before your second cup of coffee… take piano lessons… and still be at risk of this devastating diagnosis.

It’s a brand-new era we’re entering, one in which the FDA – and even physicians – may well be playing exclusively by Big Pharma’s rulebook.

EZ pass to approval

As an eAlert reader, you already know about Big Pharma’s utter failure to develop a drug to treat or prevent this mind-robbing disease, even in its earliest stages. Billions have been spent on R&D for meds that fizzle out like week-old bottles of opened soda pop.

So, enter the FDA to lower the bar practically down to the floor!

The agency even came up with a definition for what’s called a “Stage 1” Alzheimer’s patient: No complaints about forgetfulness or memory loss, no problems with day-to-day activities, and even no diagnosis of “detectable abnormalities”!

Gottlieb unbelievably calls all of this a way to modernize the FDA and “promote innovation.”

What it really is, however, is nothing more than an EZ pass for drugmakers to flood the market with ineffective and risky meds that seniors will be scared silly into taking… in order to keep their nonexistent Alzheimer’s from advancing!

It’s mindboggling!

But Alzheimer’s is just the beginning. This new free-for-all in drug development is also going to impact the FDA’s approval for meds used to treat ALS and other brain diseases.

The sad truth is that while all this is going on, tried and true brain-savers that are readily available to all of us are being left by the wayside. But maybe that’s because not one of them will be coming from a Pfizer, Merck, or AstraZeneca.

Just a few weeks ago, I told you about some of the best discoveries in safeguarding your brain from the ravages of these neurological diseases.

And one of the most promising has to do with putting a lid on chronic inflammation, which is now believed to both trigger and help spread those amyloid plaques that are thought to be the hallmark signs for the development of Alzheimer’s.

But, as I said, we don’t need a pill for that! There are loads of inflammation-busters that can be found not in your pharmacy, but on your dinner plate – such as, nuts, fatty fish (including tuna and wild-caught salmon), cold-pressed flaxseed oil, and olive oil, to name just a few.

Another way to lower inflammation is with omega-3 fatty acids that you can load up on by having an extra helping of fish every week or taking a high-quality fish-oil supplement.

And how about including coconut oil, another proven friend of your brain, in your diet? Medium-chain fatty acids, like those found in coconut oil, have been shown to be able to “postpone aging processes” and help Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients.

And in one small (but amazing) breakthrough, researchers at UCLA were able to actually “reverse” symptoms of dementia in 9 of 10 volunteers! They did that with a multi-pronged approach that included raising vitamin D levels, improving gut health through probiotics, adding more fresh fruits and veggies, and ditching risky additives by eliminating processed foods.

Now is not the time to loosen Big Pharma’s reigns so that it can dump all of its failed dementia drugs on us, but to recognize that Mother Nature has provided us with the means to keep our brains functioning normally.

What we definitely don’t need is to pop some obscenely priced pill that will no doubt do much more harm than good.

“The FDA may be opening an Alzheimer’s can of worms” Max Nisen, February 15, 2018, Bloomberg, Bloomberg.com