Will the real Alzheimer's Disease Please Stand Up?

Is Alzheimer’s Disease Real? And more importantly to me and to 5,000,000 + other people like me,  will a yes or a no or a maybe answer change my life for the better?

Last week I was speaking in Ohio and someone told me the authors of “The Myth of Alzheimer’s” were also speaking nearby at another conference. I secured a ride over to their conference and heard them and then WOW!

We sat down and talked for two hours.

Earlier I had spoken with them on the phone, they were reading my book as I was reading their book, and we both wished we could speak to each other.

I spent the afternoon with these two brilliant, thoughtful, thought-filled, caring, and very sensitive brains, authors, human beings - thinking out-loud, listening, talking, and getting to know them.

 The provocative title of their book (The Myth of Alzheimer's) is of course a double edged sword. It probably draws as many people to read the book as it draws as many people to not read the book, but think they know what it is all about by the title.

They challenge what we thought we knew about the disease and how we think about the disease. They are searching, as are we for answers to questions which seem to come from a growing consensus that the claim/hope/hype coming from the pharmaceutical industry and organizations deeply invested in the idea that Alzheimer’s is a discrete disease and there is and will be a pill to cure it, is not in fact true!. All we have to, they keep shouting, is to spend enough money (NOW!) to discover (stumble across) the formula for the pill that will cure the disease. And in the mean time let’s also spend more money on pills to maybe slow down the progress of the disease (even though we really don’t know how or what we mean by the progress of the disease, nor how to measure it).

These authors are in my opinion and I think in theirs also, works and minds in progress as is the book.

When I was a young man I was always amazed that whenever the Beatles came out with a new album it reflected exactly where I was. We (they and yours truly) sort of evolved together, but many miles and dollars apart! These two researchers/thinkers aren't modern day Beatles, but they sure parallel my own thinking process about Alzheimer's disease, symptoms, syndrome, condition, and/or whatever and however you want to characterize the condition!

Although the bottom line for us who are somewhere in the midst of the disease process is how to cope with it, how to maintain a sense of purpose, how to stay in the moment - in today, it is useful to understand how others have framed for us what is wrong with our brain vs. the brains of others. The book wonders aloud how and why we got where we are. What part of this process is generated by what others tell us and what part is generated from within? And, how do these two streams interact? Are we victims of a disease or participants in the natural aging process of the human brain which varies from person to person depending on genes, our education, what we eat, the air and water we inhale and drink, and on and on and on.