Fish oils and memory: How to protect 132x more people than Adulhelm

For anyone who has suffered or has been the caregiver for someone with cognitive decline, dementia or Alzheimer’s knows it’s an awful thing to happen to anyone.

Luckily, we know SO MUCH about what contributes to this slow loss of brain function.

The problem is that the damage starts decades before the symptoms. Ongoing inflammation and poor blood vessel health lead the charge in damaging brain cells related to memory.

I do believe strongly that we will never have a cure for these conditions because the damage has been ongoing for decades before anyone is aware there is even a problem.

But that doesn’t stop drug makers from spending BILLIONS trying to hit a home run for dementia.

Aduhelm from Biogen is one such attempt.

How, this drug was NOT shown to improve outcomes, but merely improve a marker of Alzheimer’s (beta amyloid plaques).

And it’s VERY expensive. $56,000 / year. The approval at the FDA was controversial and led to three FDA advisors to resign.

It was expensive enough for Medicare rates to go up in fear of its use.

To complicate matters further, “patient advocacy” groups are pushing for Medicare to cover the drug. You can BET that some of these “advocacy” groups putting pressure on Medicare to cover the drug get funding from the drug company (in this case Biogen, who is listed as a major donor for UsAgainstAlzheimers).

It was well-established that drug companies unwittingly use “patient advocate” groups to push agendas that favor them.

What patient advocacy groups are not doing is promoting the very long list of lifestyle factors that have been demonstrated to protect the brain from cognitive decline.

In this case, fish oil supplements, which were shown in this UK study of 215,083 people to lower the risk of dementia by 13%. Not just cognitive decline, but actual dementia.

At typical costs for good quality fish oils, you could treat 132 people for every ONE who gets Adulhelm. Which might not actually work.

Find out more in the video.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261561422000048