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, January 7, 2022

alzheimers news-one day there may be choices

ALZHEIMERS NEWS-ONE DAY THERE MAY BE CHOICES

when you go to treat someone with high blood pressure today you have a lot of choices
eg
if you have someone with migraines and with hypertension you might consider using a beta blocker or a calcium channel blocker eg propranolol or verapamil since these will treat both problems
if someone has kidney disease and hypertension you might use something like an ace inhibitor eg lisinopril
there are lots of options to use based on a patients medical history 

now
one day maybe we will be there with alzheimers
this article linked here from being patient discusses 9 new alzheimers vaccines that are coming available soon or are in clinical trials now
if you are in the alzheimers world the being patient web site is a good site for alzheimers information
you can sign up for their weekly articles

there are also other drugs that attack the chemical pathways that are involved in the development of alzheimers disease that may slow down or maybe prevent the disease

one day you will be able to pick and choose a treatment for the alzheimers patient like we do for those with hypertension

the one drug in the being patient article is the only one available now for use
thats aduhelm or aducanumab the one that i am on now
medicare will decide whether it will approve paying for it in 2-3 months
my guess it will approve it but will be restrictive in how it covers it
eg
if it approves it i will probably qualify since my amyloid pet scan is positive and my spinal fluid is positive and i have been on it now for 14 doses and i am early in the disease process

soon maybe as soon as this year the three other meds that work similar to aduhelm will start to seek approval
these drugs are lecanemab donanemab gantenerumab
my guess is they all will be approved but with strict criteria like with the aduhelm
i might even switch drugs if one appears to work better than aduhelm

some of the other drugs mentioned in the article work by stimulating your immune system to remove the amyloid or tau from the brain
one of these drugs is protollin that i wrote about in a recent blog
its comes in a nasal spray
it stimulates the immune cells in the lymph nodes in the neck to work on a biochemical pathway in the brain
its starting a phase one study 

my drug and the other three use monoclonal antibody infusions to remove the amyloid

its exciting to read this article and know that in my lifetime there will be multiple drugs to use against alzheimers

yes
there is hope in the future for us

update
my headaches arent worse
my wife she has now developed them just like i have
i told her she was just having sympathy pains

so
its a good chance my headache is not from the microbleed or aria i mentioned in my wednesday blog
its may be environmental or other causes

the headaches are well controlled as long as i stay on acetaminophen
if my mri scan is normal next week hopefully i will probably be able to restart my aduhelm infusions next week

like i said 
we in the alzheimers world will take hope anytime

the oganicgreen doctor

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