Everything We Know About Alzheimer’s Is Wrong

Much of what doctors have been taught about Alzheimer’s is wrong. Not slightly outdated. Fundamentally off.

For decades, the dominant story has gone something like this: Alzheimer’s is genetic, inevitable, and mostly out of our hands until the brain is already in trouble. That story has encouraged a kind of clinical shrug. And it hasn’t served patients, families, or society particularly well.

Here’s the part that should change the conversation.

Fewer than one percent of Alzheimer’s cases are primarily genetic. Which means the rest — the overwhelming majority — are driven by biology that actually responds to intervention. What people eat. How they live. How well they metabolise fuel. Whether their brains are supported, protected, and repaired over time.

 

This is awesome news, imo. This is empowering! This means we have a lot of control over our body – a lot!

This isn’t fringe science finally getting its moment. This is evidence-based medicine doing what it does best, when thousands of studies are viewed together, through a systems lens, instead of in isolation.

Homocysteine isn’t an innocent bystander. Omega-3 status matters for neuronal integrity. Insulin resistance quietly starves the brain of fuel. Oxidative stress accelerates damage. Hormonal shifts, poor sleep, and vascular strain all compound risk — often decades before anyone thinks to make a diagnosis.

Amyloid and tau proteins are not the cause, they are signs of underlying issues

Or, put more bluntly: the amyloid and tau protein build-up are signs, warnings. They are not the source of the problem.  

Dr David Perlmutter states a rather provocative and confronting truth: that becoming an Alzheimer’s patient is almost always a choice.

To be clear though, this isn’t a choice individuals make – the functional medicine field makes this assertion squarely to the medical profession. The evidence for prevention is now strong enough that continuing to treat Alzheimer’s as largely unavoidable is no longer scientifically defensible.

Prevention doesn’t begin in old age, when symptoms finally take hold. It starts in midlife. And the biology that protects against Alzheimer’s is the same biology that supports brain resilience, cognitive performance, and wellbeing across adult life.

If you want to take control of your symptoms instead of being lead by them, drop me a message, book in a call, and let's start confronting this together.

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