A dear Alzheimer’s lifestyle plan offers a false hope, say the experts

Kerry Briggs had a hard time keeping a trace of the supplements. To help her husband John Briggs created a spreadsheet with rows for Ashwagandha, omega-3 and curcumin extract. There was ginseng, mushroom of the lion mane and antioxidant liposomal glutathione too.

Ms. Briggs, 64, had started to take the supplements last July, a daily diet that grew up to include 34 capsules and tablets as well as two powder balls. When it became too much, Mr. Briggs started to mix them in a shake, to which he added the brown food color so that he looked less like his natural “sick” olive.

Ms. Briggs took them all because a doctor had told him that with enough supplements and changes in lifestyle, her alzheimer’s symptoms could not only be slowed down, but reversed.

It is an idea that has become the object of television specials, podcasts and popular conferences; The sale behind mushroom supplements and self-assistance books.

But the suggestion that Alzheimer’s disease can be reversed by lifestyle adjustments indignant the doctors and scientists of the medical establishment, who have said on several occasions that there was no or no evidence for such an assertion and said it was concerned about the fact that the idea could harm a large group of vulnerable Americans.

Mr. Briggs had met the idea after learning Dale Bredesen, who had carried out a series of small and unconventional studies through which he claimed to have designed a set of directives to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer.