The Alzheimer's Revolution
Overview
Overview for The Alzheimer’s Revolution
by Joseph Keon
The Alzheimer’s Revolution challenges the misguided and disempowering belief that Alzheimer’s disease cannot be prevented or slowed. Author Joseph Keon offers readers a research-based program that can dramatically reduce the risk of this devastating condition.
Alzheimer’s disease is the number-one public health crisis of our time. Approximately 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. In the United States, 48 percent of the population are expected to develop Alzheimer’s by the age of 85. In the last twenty years, the death rate from neurologic diseases – including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS – has tripled among men aged 75 and older and has jumped fivefold among women of the same age. And brain diseases are now striking a full decade earlier than they were twenty years ago, affecting people as early as in their forties. Every single one of us will be touched by this disease, whether we receive a diagnosis ourselves or we witness one in a parent, spouse, sibling, or friend.
The United States already lacks the public health infrastructure to meet needs for care and treatment, which will only continue to grow. According to well-regarded economists, Alzheimer’s disease alone could overwhelm the medical system and ultimately bankrupt Medicare when it becomes a trillion-dollar disease in 2050. Meanwhile, despite billions of dollars poured into research on treatments, the 243 drugs tested since 2000 have resulted in only a few FDA approvals for medications that can only offer a 6 to 12-month window of doing a little better. Other than that, modern medicine has little more to offer an Alzheimer’s patient today than it did when the disease was discovered 110 years ago.
It’s time to turn our attention and resources toward prevention. In this book, Keon reveals that over half the Alzheimer’s cases today could be prevented by addressing just seven lifestyle factors that are within everyone’s ability to control.
Why haven’t we focused on prevention before now? Many people – not just the general public, but healthcare providers as well – mistakenly believe that AD is largely genetic or that it is a natural consequence of aging. Furthermore, the medical community often approaches illness by focusing on treatment of symptoms rather than primary prevention. The combined effect has been to leave Americans uninformed about the steps they could take to protect their health.
The author begins by explaining both conventionally accepted risk factors for Alzheimer’s (such as traumatic brain injury, hypertension, obesity, and lack of cognitive stimulation) and emerging risk factors not discussed by any other authors, including our growing exposure to heavy metals, the newly discovered risk posed by alcohol, and the growing presence of brain toxins in the aquatic food chain.
Keon then offers a comprehensive program showing readers how to eat a brain-healthy diet, take the right supplements, minimize exposure to toxins, manage stress, improve sleep, get the right kind of exercise, increase cognitive stimulation in effective and enjoyable ways, and build community. Readers are given clear recommendations that are easy to put into practice.
This book details more science-supported, modifiable risk factors than any other book in print and includes over 900 citations from the scientific literature. Although the book focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, many of the lifestyle changes will have a similarly positive effect on risk for heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and obesity, improving readers’ general well-being.
From start to finish, The Alzheimer’s Revolution empowers readers to take charge of their own health and dramatically reduce the risk of suffering with this tragic disease.
