Against any narrow-minded Ignorance: Intervention Studies and Information Sources on Dementia
You go to a doctor – usually a neurologist – ask about natural or lifestyle-oriented therapeutic methods for dementia – and you often look into blank eyes, at worst into an aggressively wrinkled forehead “Don’t give me that, all dangerous nonsense, there are only a few pharmacological approaches that may really work!”
In your journey of self-directed prevention and treatment of cognitive impairment and dementia you will often, probably even frequently, encounter this incredible narrow-mindedness among many medical doctors who question lifestyle-related causes and risk factors, and denigrate a causal therapeutic approach based on changes in lifestyle, the supply of vital resources and the reduction of pollutants as a story from the “realm of fantasy”. Hopefully you have not experienced it personally.
How do you deal with it? You try to inform yourself more broadly, for example via the websites of Kompetenz statt Demenz, but of course you may still wonder, where is the evidence?
For this reason, we have provided a selection of current studies and reviews on the page “Alzheimer Research” and listed them chronologically together with the conclusions drawn by the authors. The studies listed there clearly show that targeted interventions, whether with micronutrients, sport and exercise, sleep hygiene or mental measures, may indeed help to regain lost cognitive abilities. They thus provide you with an important support for your argumentation on your difficult way through the narrow-mindedness and helplessness of the conventional medicine. The studies are sorted by category and the most recent studies are listed first.
Intervention studies – also double-blind placebo-controlled – are the most interesting ones, as they directly assess the effects of a treatment. However, it does not always have to be a double-blind placebo-controlled study, because effects become visible even without blinding and some interventions cannot be blinded by the authors anyway (e.g. in the area of movement or mental interventions).
Meta-analyses are interesting in the sense that they “pool” several or even many individual studies. However, the “pooling” of several studies is difficult and can contain statistical errors, and the selection of studies can also exhibit a “bias” (systematic error). A positive result of a metastudy at least provides additional safety.
Reviews are also very helpful, as they look at a topic from an overview perspective and summarise it.
So if you are interested in a brief overview of the background of different therapeutic approaches and their scientific background, just go to this page: Alzheimer Research
You will also find direct links to the studies on Pubmed and some are also available free-of-charge in the full version. If you want to print the whole thing to go, just click on the right mouse button and “Print” and you will get the page in a quite clear print format.
A final note: Science never makes absolute statements “ex cathedra” but reflects the state of current research. Studies may be incorrect or even manipulated and their content may be overtaken by new findings. Therefore it is important to stay up to date and we at “Kompetenz statt Demenz” continuously follow up the relevant topics. For this reason, the most recent studies always come first and some may disappear from the list over time, but this is the sign of the further development of scientific knowledge.
Conclusion: Don’t let yourself be confused on your own path of self-responsible treatment and prevention of dementia and make up your own mind as much as possible! Use reliable sources of information to support your decision for any type of treatment and do not allow yourself to be discouraged. We at ‘Kompetenz statt Demenz’ hope to make our contribution!
PS: And if you happen to come across an important paper, please send us the link!
Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash
