It’s Time to Counterattack Mild Cognitive Impairment

It appears research administrators do not have much confidence a solution to MCI and AD will be found before the current generation of heavily funded investigators retires or dies off. Why is there not instead insistence on saving this generation of MCI and AD patients?

Put plainly, you’re going to have to consider the reported list of substances and actions as possible helps for MCI and design your own menu of those you’re willing to try. The two main criteria should be (a) that they are reported in reputable medical and science journals to help cognition in at least a few people and (b) they pose little risk to most people (remember, consult your own doctor about their suitability for you). Promising results in laboratory animals can sometimes also be considered.

However, there is usually not available deluxe, “gold-plated” evidence, such as placebo-controlled, “blind” clinical trials with large numbers of participants. Why not? Probably because the substances being tested are usually non-patentable and not very expensive, so no drug company can justify the major effort and expense of a full-scale clinical trial.

But, please note that the labels and literature for the commercially available products are careful to make no specific claims of preventing, diagnosing, treating, or curing any disease, including MCI, lest they run afoul of the FDA and its “drug” regulations. So, you have to ferret out from journal articles, or informational websites like this one, the possibility that they might be of help.

But if we can spotlight a substance or activity that might help 10 percent of MCI patients slow or avoid further mental deterioration, and it does little or no harm to the other 90 percent who try it, we are thrilled! Reason? Nobody has anything better to offer that 10 percent right now. And that achievement in even 10 percent may provide clues for ways to help the other 90 percent.

So, please understand few if any of the substances or activities we spotlight for MCI are “proven” to help according to the most exacting academic and statistical standards. But if your physician clears you to try one or more, and these agree with you, you have little to lose. By these self-motivated explorations you’ve at least got a chance, even if only a slim one, that you might be one of the lucky people whose genetics and metabolism happen to match up perfectly with the items you elect to try.

And we cannot know your individual medical history, situation, and possible bodily peculiarities. Thus, we insist that before you take any substance or action you check with your doctor or other healthcare provider. Also, you must read and accept our DISCLAIMER.

So, can we promise a “cure” for lost cognition? Or even a “halt” in deterioration? Or reversal? Absolutely not. The best we can offer is a definite “maybe.” But right now, where else is even that possibility available?

Why would we dare urge fighting back against MCI instead of surrendering to it? Isn’t this a futile battle? Absolutely not. There are many indications success is possible, though not guaranteed.

If you search carefully in the credible scientific journals for several years, as we have done, you will find numerous peer-reviewed reports that certain substances and tactics produced promising results in fending off, delaying, or even pushing back deteriorating cognition. Thus, many people with MCI could—and should— fight back, or as we prefer to say, counterattack.

Meanwhile, the hundreds of thousands of seniors dying each year from AD are considered civilian collateral damage that must be tolerated until basic research and clinical trials produce The Bomb. A parallel is the English civilian deaths from Nazi V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks before the source was found and abolished.

Though many consider this battle a “war to save minds,” there are few 12-hour days and little weekend work at funded research laboratories, government agencies, or advocacy groups. So, cognitive dissonance prevails; we are in a desperate battle to protect brains, but we are not on a war footing.

The currently available “weapons” to counterattack MCI may be divided into two groups, substances and activities. Potentially helpful ones will be individually considered, in detail, over the coming months in the new information service and clearinghouse, MCI911.COM.

There are many nuanced and expansive definitions of propaganda, but few would dispute this summary: “Propaganda is the systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols such as words.”

Estimates indicate there are about 5 million people in the U.S. presently afflicted with AD. All or most of them passed through, or are currently coping with, MCI. Despite these huge numbers, only platitudes are offered; there is an almost complete lack of agitation for faster progress on the MCI front.

For example, even though MCI that leads to AD is uniformly fatal, the word “death” is almost nonexistent in the document. On pages 18-20, tables present various words not to be used. These include: epidemic, hopeless, tragic, misery, living death, demented, sufferer, afflicted, patient (if not in hospital or doctor’s office), etc.³

In fact, the entire emphasis of the UK Society and other Alzheimer’s advocacy and support groups, including those in the U.S., is “You’re ‘living with’ Alzheimer’s disease. You and we can cope.” MCI, and the AD which it may evolve into, are made to seem almost as innocuous as rheumatism, or even dandruff. A bother, yes. But no big deal. Certainly nothing to stir anger or unrest.

But if after all those explorations, the verdict is you have “plain old simple run-of-the-mill MCI,” what’s to be done? The message of this Whitepaper is to not sit back feeling you must be passive and wait a couple of years to see if it progresses into AD. Rather, it is a call to arms and action in your own self-defense.

On your own initiative, perhaps aided by family and friends, you can search and find various non-harmful substances and activities that right now may well give you a fighting chance of delaying or preventing MCI’s deterioration. (Many of those will be spotlighted at MCI911.COM.) Also, if possible find a physician who is at least open to considering evidence not yet “gold-plated.”

But can you also help other victims?

Another provocative comparison is with the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s. It was a previously unknown disease, with no preventive or curative drug. How did a group of gay activists, previously ignored or shunned by many in society, bring about faster development of diagnostic tests and mitigating or curative treatment?

Their successful but disruptive tactics can be found in the book by David France, How to Survive a Plague.⁵

NPR reports that France felt the two prongs of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)’s strategy were equally important. The aggressive protests got them a foot in the door, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if they hadn’t done the homework needed to offer insightful and viable proposals once they did get a meeting. “What made this work was not just the anger. But the anger coupled with the intelligence,” (the latter referring to knowledge about the government, especially Congress and the FDA, and the pharmaceutical industry).⁶