Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most profitable diseases in history. It is no coincidence that it is also one of the most over diagnosed and over promoted.
There are currently over 300 drugs designed to combat Alzheimer’s in the global pipeline. If you are a drug company executive and you need to add another ten billion dollars to your bottom line then you definitely need a new Alzheimer’s drug. It doesn’t matter if it’s safe or effective, of course. For drug companies those are optional extras.
Sadly, tens of thousands of people who have been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s have been mis-diagnosed. And they are being mistreated.
There is a massive amount of trickery and deception involved with Alzheimer’s.
You won’t be surprised to hear that money is involved all the way down the line – right into the doctor’s surgery.
In the UK, for example, GPs have been paid huge bonuses for diagnosing patients as having Alzheimer’s. In 2014, the NHS announced with great pride that GPs would be given £55 for every patient they diagnosed as suffering from dementia. You can guess what happened. Any patient who couldn’t multiply 82736 by 2827 in their heads or remember the name of the Prime Minister of Indonesia in 1957 was instantly labelled as having Alzheimer’s.
That’s another £55 please. By falsely diagnosing just 50 patients with Alzheimer’s a ruthless doctor could earn herself a very nice family holiday – and leave patients and relatives permanently stuck with a ruinous and destructive label.
Today, the words `Alzheimer’s’ and `dementia’ are often thought to be the same thing. The result is chronic illness and huge profits for drug companies.
It is vital to remember that although the words ‘Alzheimer’s’ and ‘dementia’ are frequently used as if they were synonymous they are not.
It’s vital to remember that Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia are NOT the same thing.
People who are profiting from the growth in the incidence of Alzheimer’s (this includes drug companies, doctors, care homes and scores of charities which have close links with drug companies) want you to believe that the two are the same.
If everyone who is demented is assumed to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease then the profits for drug companies flogging medicines for the ‘treatment’ of Alzheimer’s patients will soar.
And drug companies and charities linked to them will get even richer.
The truth is that ‘dementia’ is a word like ‘cancer’ and ‘infection’.
There are many causes of cancer.
There are many causes of infection.
And there are many causes of dementia: some of which are curable.
The best guess is that in the UK there are around 80,000 patients who have been diagnosed as suffering from incurable Alzheimer’s disease but who are suffering from CURABLE causes of dementia – most notably the often overlooked normal pressure hydrocephalus.
Around the world there are probably 5,000,000 patients who are alleged to have incurable Alzheimer’s disease but who are curable. Many of those are in the United States of America.
That’s a scandal.
But, inevitably, no one in the medical profession or the media cares.
My short book `The Dementia Myth’ is subtitled `Most patients with Dementia are Curable’ and in the book I explain why and how I believe that most cases of dementia could probably be cured in a week or two.
Drug company executives and members of the bought-and-paid-for medical establishment hate this book.
But readers find it enlightening.
You can buy a copy via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
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Bodypower: The Secret of Self-Healing
Dr Vernon Coleman
The following is the introduction to Vernon Coleman’s global bestselling book `Bodypower’:
`It began in the autumn of 1980
I was in Vienna and the weather was freezing cold. Outside in the street the wind cut through my thin raincoat as if it wasn’t there. I walked with my shoulders hunched and my hands stuffed deep inside my coat pockets. My fingers felt numb. I was so cold that I could hardly think; even my brain felt frozen. I was shivering involuntarily and uncontrollably.
It was dusk. The skies were dark with rain to come and in the early evening gloom the bright lights of the cafe seemed especially warm and promising. I love the cafes of Vienna and Paris. They remind me of the sort of places where Dr Johnson might have talked with friends in London a couple of centuries ago. Through the open curtains I could see the dark wooden tables and chairs, the racks of newspapers neatly folded around wooden sticks and the plump Austrian waitress hurrying about with vast cups of cream-topped coffee.
I went in, found a table near to the window and sat down. Inside the cafe it was cosy and comfortable. Old-fashioned radiators and a log stove gurgled pleasantly and the air smelt of ground coffee beans and rich chocolate cake. The waitress approached and smiled at me. I gave her my order, took my hands out of my pockets and tried to rub them together. They were white with cold and I could hardly move my fingers.
I cupped my hands, held them up to my face and blew on them. Slowly the feeling came back into them. Slowly the colour returned. Gingerly I flexed and extended my fingers; gradually I regained the movement I had lost. As I watched my frozen fingers changing colour I suddenly became aware of something that was to change my life. I suddenly became conscious of the remarkable powers of the human body to adapt itself to cope with its environment. Outside in the bitterly cold autumn air the blood had left my fingers to reduce the amount of heat lost in order to try to maintain my internal body temperature. My body had been prepared to sacrifice my fingers to save itself. Inside, in the warmth of the cafe, the blood had rushed back into my hands. Once my body’s internal thermometer had recognised that the temperature inside the cafe was warm my body no longer had to fight to keep me alive.
I’d been qualified as a doctor for ten years and for most of that time I’d been working as a General Practitioner in a small town in central England. To begin with I’d enjoyed the work I did, but for several years I’d been growing more and more worried by the fact that too often I was finding myself interfering with illnesses when it seemed to me that my patients would probably get better by themselves if only I and they were prepared to wait.
Sitting in that cafe in Vienna I realized that the human body has far more extensive, protective and self-healing powers than we give it credit for. I realized that all of us, doctors and patients, tend to be too quick to rush for the medicine cabinet when things go wrong. I remembered a book I’d read when I was at medical school. Called The Wisdom of the Body, it was written in 1932 by a physiologist called W. B. Cannon, who believed that the body’s abilities to protect itself from change and threat are comprehensive and far-reaching. And I remembered conversations I’d had with a friend, Tony Sharrock, who was convinced that too often doctors ignore the fact that in illness the body knows best.
Your body contains many automatic self-healing and defence mechanisms. If you cut yourself blood will flow for a few seconds to wash away any dirt. Then special proteins will quickly form a protective net to catch blood cells and form a clot to seal the wound. The damaged cells will release special substances into your tissues to make the area red, swollen and hot. The heat kills any infection remaining and the swelling acts as a natural splint — protecting the injured area. White cells will be brought to the injury site to swallow up any bacteria. And, finally, scar tissue will build up over the wounded site.
If you lose a lot of blood you will faint. This is a deliberate technique used to ensure that your brain gets a good supply of food. When you are standing your blood has to travel upwards to reach your brain. When you faint you automatically lie down and make it easier for blood to get to your brain — your most important organ.
When you have an infection your body temperature goes up. This is no coincidence. Your temperature goes up to help kill the bugs causing the infection.
If you eat something which contains toxins or poisons or infective organisms your stomach will eject it. You will vomit. If the dangerous substance or organism gets past your stomach you will develop diarrhoea. Both vomiting and diarrhoea are vital mechanisms used to get infections out of your body as quickly as possible.
Your body is also equipped with an appetite control centre designed to keep your weight stable. Most people ignore it or overrule it but it’s there.
Sitting in the café in Vienna, I took out my notebook and pencil and immediately wrote down the outline for a book I knew I wanted to write. I called it ‘Bodypower’. I wanted to try to teach doctors as well as patients that the human body has far-reaching powers that we ignore far too often. I wanted to try to persuade patients to learn to listen to their own bodies and I wanted to show both patients and doctors that we all underestimate the remarkable healing powers of the human body.
A few days later I got back home full of excitement and found a publisher.
Getting off of statins (and all pharma products for that matter) is a step in the right direction. People are reversing dementia just by changing their diet too.