welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Friday, June 14, 2013

heart healthy?, does it or doesnt it

HEART HEALTHY?

if you look at our family tree and trace back some medical history
youll see that there is a lot of strokes and heart attacks as the 
cause of death or disability 

this is because we have high cholesterol and have a tendency to have
hypertension and yes if you look at old photos youll see some degree
of obesity 
in fact my father had high blood pressure high cholesterol and had
a bypass graft done at 68 and was slightly overweight
in his last years he developed some issues that when i look back i 
think he probably had some dementia that was probably alzheimers 
disease
knowing that vascular dementia and alzheimers disease gets intertwined
sometimes

ive thought of his health and i have the same risk factors except for the 
obesity
now that im on aricept (donepezil) for possible alzheimers disease which
slows down symptoms of the disease but not the disease itself
and i have blood pressure and weight and cholesterol and exercise and 
diet under good control 
i think sometimes well im just making myself live longer so that the 
alzheimers can just reach its full effect

although in some studies not controlling your blood pressure can increase
production of that beta amyloid that may be the cause of alzheimers disease
which can make the disease occur earlier in life

my dad died in his mid 70s of a heart attack sparing us and my mom and 
himself the last years of a demented life
which is worse i wonder
dying early with a heart attack to get it over with or 
dying later with alzheimers allowing your family to suffer with you as the
alzheimers disease takes you away 

if i could chose i would go for early heart attack every time
i always tell my wife she if you ever come home and find me lying face
down here at the country n know that i died happy and died where i 
wanted to die and the way i wanted to go  

then this week i read about how aricept (donepezil) actually may be good 
for your heart
if i have alzheimers disease i could be on aricept (donepezil) for over
15-20 years if im  lucky?
it may decrease the heart attack and death rate by 35%
thats a significant number folks
but
it does somehow seem cruel if we cant at the same time come up 
with a prevention or treatment for alzhemers disease

so for now ill just take my aricept (donepezil) and keep everything under
control but when or if i get alzheimers disease and i get more advanced
my wife she has been instructed to take me off all my medications
so everything will speed up and get it over with 

DOES IT OR DOESNT IT
im always being asked about coconut oil
does it help or not with alzheimers disease
my response had been probably not but it doesnt really hurt to 
take it 
my younger brother took it and it didnt help him any 

there is a medical food 

(thats a category thanks to good lobbying by
pharmaceutical companies to bypass the fda since their products arent
medicines but food-doesnt quite sound right does it)

thats called axona it a medium chain triglyceride that in some early studies
appeared to maybe help improve memory which have not
been able to be duplicated by followup non drug company sponsored 
research

i actually tried this for a month and decided to not take it 
i decided to put my efforts to controlling those things mentioned in the 
above section on heart healthy?

so coconut oil is similar to this stuff
the thinking is that by taking this stuff axona you get ketosis 
think acetone
which the body can use as an energy source so those alzheimers 
damaged cells can use this stuff for a food source instead of sugar which 
it cant seem to be handled well by these damaged cells

so thats the thinking

now a researcher has gotten money to do an actual 
controlled scientific study using placebos in one group and then using 
coconut oil in another group and then will follow them over time to see if 
it works

(you can go to this link also to get information to be in the study)

simple experiment thats not really ever been done
why 
you can get this stuff cheap at walmart target your grocery store health food store
so no drug company can make millions off it 
so its never been scientifically tested 
just anecdote stories

so we should know soon does it or doesnt it

folks we just need a cure dont we

the organicgreen doctor

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