The Genesis Zone with Dr Brian Brown

Arousing New Alzheimer's Treatment

December 09, 2021 Dr. Brian Brown Season 2 Episode 58
The Genesis Zone with Dr Brian Brown
Arousing New Alzheimer's Treatment
Show Notes Transcript

EVERY HEARD OF THE LITTLE BLUE PILL, VIAGRA? Unless you live under a rock, you have. I’m sure of it. But, what does this little blue pill and Alzheimer’s have in common? Listen in to today’s show, and I’ll share the details.

SHOW NOTES
3:36 Diabetes Type 3 -Alzheimers is the 5th leading cause of death
4:10  Just in: Bombshell study of 7.2 million patient records reveals a potential Alzheimers prevention 
6:07  What could cause a 69% reduction in risk of Alzheimers?
7:30  Study results, know the difference between correlation v causation
11:08 Is there a preventative treatment for Alzheimers?

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 ITZ_EP58_Arousing New Alzheimer’s Treatment

KEYWORDS

Alzheimer, Viagra, observational study, treatment, nitric oxide, proteins, epigenetics, neuron, tangles, optimizing, rogue, nerve growth

Dr Brian G Brown  00:01

The mission is simple to help high achievers naturally eliminate emotional and physical obstacles, so they can optimize their life for higher achievement. Welcome, you just entered Genesis zone. Good day and welcome to the Genesis zone show. This is Dr. Brian Brown, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us on this beautiful Thursday. Have you ever heard of the little blue pill? Viagra? Unless you've lived under a rock for the past 20 years or 30 years? I'm sure you've heard of it. 

 

But what does this little blue pill and Alzheimer's have in common? If anything? In today's show, I'm going to share the details on what researchers have discovered in the relationship between the two. 

 

But first, I want to give you an update on my book called Health Hijackers. Earlier this year, I had created a personal deadline for myself to have the book turned into the publisher by Christmas of this year, the clincher was the publisher wanted me to expand the content on epigenetics, not just a little bit, but a lot. I knew this would mean a tremendous amount of work, because I'd already pretty much written the entire book. And it would mean creating new content, and then making sure that all the bridges were there to make the content fit the new content fit.

 

Dr Brian G Brown  01:32

I already had plans for a second book that was going to be about epigenetics. But I had not started any of the writing yet. So those of you who've ever done any kind of writing, whether it's blogging, or whatever, you know that you need a distraction and interruption free environment. And when possible, an inspirational environment is a big bonus. 

 

So, with my final writing intensifying over the past several months, and the deadline fast approaching, it became obvious that if I did not do something drastic, I was not going to meet my deadline. So, I brainstormed options of places to go, that would be really quiet. And everything kept circling back to being somewhere warm. Maybe it's because it's the time of year and it's been cold here and preferably being near an ocean. If I'm being totally honest with you, I like the desert, I like the mountains, but the ocean is a very, very special place for me. Warm places on the ocean totally recharge my batteries and inspire me beyond what words can even say. 

 

So, with that in mind, I just returned from a book writing sabbatical in the Dominican Republic. And I'm proud to say that the second draft of the book with all the new content is finished and turned into the publisher. 

 

Next is the editing process. But that'll go pretty quickly. And with fingers crossed, I should be releasing my book by the end of the second quarter, or third quarter 2022. So, stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

 

Now on to today's topic. As the title of today's show says we're going to be talking about a new treatment for Alzheimer's or at least a new potential treatment. I'll explain what I mean by that in a minute. According to the American Journal of Managed Care, as published in August of last year, 

 

Alzheimer's is the fifth leading cause of death among persons over age 65 and currently cost Americans around $305 billion annually with 66 billion of that being direct out of pocket expenses to health consumers. Now, if that's not bad enough projections over the next 15 years reveal that the cost of Alzheimer's will soar to over $1 trillion annually. 

 

A bombshell study was published just three days ago, in the Journal of nature aging. Researchers from Cleveland Clinic analyzed an unbelievable amount of data just over 7.2 million patient records for the incidence of Alzheimer's. They cross reference this information with nearly 1600 existing pharmaceutical medications that are FDA approved for various reasons, in the hopes that they would find an existing pharmaceutical treatment that's already being used that showed promise for slowing the onset of Alzheimer's. 

 

The data was reviewed over a six-year period. Now the researchers use gene mapping with each of the pharmaceutical drugs for their abilities to disrupt the formation of what an Alzheimer's research we call rogue proteins. And these rogue proteins are amyloid and tau, tau being

 

Dr Brian G Brown  05:20

the exact 19th letter of the Greek alphabet tau. And these amyloid and tau proteins are involved in causing the neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of persons with Alzheimer's. You may have heard them referred to his plaques. They're not like plaques inside your artery, these neurofibrillary tangles are protein plaques that cause the cause of the nerves and the neurons to just get tangled. Therefore, they can't get signals through. 

 

So, if we were able to figure out a way to disrupt that rogue protein process, then we've got a foothold on Alzheimer's. But they discovered something that was quite shocking when they did their analyses. 

 

When all the data was back, believe it or not Viagra or the generic name Sildenafil was a clear winner and not by little, it was a clear winner by landslide. They found that Viagra was significantly associated with reduced incidences of Alzheimer's disease, to the tune of 69% reduction in incidence of Alzheimer's for those who take Viagra. 

 

Now, they also found that Viagra did two major things related to Alzheimer's reduction. It caused new nerve growth, specifically in the little finger light tentacles called neurites, which branch off of nerve cells called neurons. And it caused a reduction in tau protein formation, which is what they were hoping for. Now allow me to translate this into layman's terms. 

This is huge, because if Viagra can enhance neuron growth in the brain, and stop the formation of tau, rogue protein, neurofibrillary tangles, then the Alzheimer's process either drastically slows down or it stops altogether. 

 

This was obviously an observational study. What do I mean by that? An observational study draws correlations or connections between A and B or between A and D, F. Okay, so he draws these correlations and connections. And you've heard me say this before, it's been a while since we've talked about an observational study. But you've heard me say this before, correlation does not mean causation

 

With a correlational study like this, it's difficult to know if there are other factors that could have caused the reduction in Alzheimer's risk. I will tell you from personal experience in reading, a lot of observational data, observational studies, a 69% reduction, and a clear pathway and understanding how Viagra actually decreased these rogue proteins and caused more neuron growth.

 

Dr Brian G Brown  08:26

It sounds like they're onto something, and especially with numbers as high as 69%. This is very, very significant. So, let's say that they do find other factors that were causing this reduction in Alzheimer's risk, it's probably only going to mean a three or four or 5% difference. So, we're still in the in the 60% range for reduction in Alzheimer's risk. 

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with an observational study. In fact, it's generally how new studies are born. Bigger studies, deeper studies are more, but with some of its drawbacks. This is major, but even with some of its drawbacks, this is a major win for Alzheimer's research because scientists have been working feverishly on a treatment or even a cure for Alzheimer's over the past three decades. In that time, they pretty much come up empty handed to find an existing treatment that could be repurposed for Alzheimer's is a major win. 

 

No matter what you're looking at, no matter what you're trying to treat, to have an existing therapeutic that could be repurposed is huge, and taboo. There's already a plethora of data on Viagra and its safety profile and so on so forth. 

 

The obvious, I think it goes without saying that there's a major gap here in this new information, women hands down, are more likely than men to develop Alzheimer's. For obvious reasons Viagra is predominantly a male specific prescribed drug. 

 

This brings up the question, will Viagra have this same Alzheimer's risk reduction effect among women? Well, time will tell, but it doesn't look like we're gonna have to wait very long. Because the good news is that the Cleveland Clinic is currently working out the details for a double blind, placebo-controlled study that would allow us to be able to look in greater detail and compare, say Viagra in both men and women against existing treatment. 

 

Early indications are that the control group will be the treatment as usual group who received standard of care for Alzheimer's that we're doing right now, and the active treatment group will be the Viagra group.

 

In time, here's what I think we're going to find:

 

·         Viagra will likely prove effective for the prevention of Alzheimer's onset. 

·         And I think it's going to be recommended as a standalone preventive treatment.

·         Additionally, I think Viagra will be used for those with active Alzheimer's disease, in addition to their current therapy.

 

So, in other words, the treatment as usual group will have the Viagra added to it. In fact, if Cleveland Clinic does what I think they're going to do, a really good study design is to do what we call a crossover design. And in a crossover design, they would start the study with two individual groups. One the treatment as usual group, as I've just described, and the other is the Viagra group. And then what they would end up doing is ended up crossing over and giving the treatment as usual group Viagra to see if it made a difference in the latter half of the study. 

 

They will probably do that, if not this time, they'll do it in their next study. But it could easily be set up in this study, no doubt. And I wouldn't be surprised if they did that. 

 

So these speculations that I have are just a hunch, but having practiced psychiatry for nearly 24 years…psychiatry, when it comes to adopting new research into clinical practice, psychiatry is very forward thinking and it wouldn't surprise me if “off label” use of Viagra starts sooner rather than later across the world to be to be quite honest with you. 

 

So that's enough. That's the update. That's the exciting news that I've got about Viagra possibly being this wonder drug that can decrease the incidence of the occurrence of Alzheimer's. I mean, man, that's huge. And you know me,  I'm more of a natural type of person.

 

Dr Brian G Brown  13:19

But in this particular case, when we look at how Viagra potentially works, in that it's a nitric oxide enhancer, and nitric oxide, don't get that confused or laughing gas, which is nitrous oxide. Nitric oxide actually increases oxygen oxygenation to tissues. So, it makes sense that with nitric oxide being boosted, and we do have some really good studies with nitric oxide enhancers, amino acids and things like that, that can boost nitric oxide throughout the body. 

 

We do have some good data that it can increase blood flow. In general, I don't know that we have any specific data I've not been able to find any related to natural nitric oxide boosters, and its effect on the brain. But it makes sense if we can increase that oxygenation, but I think there's something there with Viagra, that's a little bit different that is able to stop the formation of these neurofibrillary tangles halt the process of these proteins, these rogue proteins and just stopping them dead in their tracks and then actually causing some new nerve growth. 

For our next in the zone segment, where I'll be sharing the latest research and my insights about that research as it relates to optimizing your physical emotional wellbeing as it relates to optimizing your genetics, most informed most trust and I'm most grateful you spent this time with us today. 

 

Until next time, stay in the zone. I'm Dr. Brian Brown.