"Can Alzheimer's Disease Be Reversed
with a Plant Based Diet?" Dr. Dean Ornish was
the first to show, in a randomized
controlled trial, that a plant-based diet
and lifestyle program could apparently reverse
the progression of our number one killer,
heart disease. Opening up arteries without
drugs, without surgery. Then, he showed the same
plant-based program could potentially
reverse the course of early-stage
prostate cancer and also elongate
telomeres, suggesting an anti-
aging effect as well. But when he told me
he was going to see if he could reverse the progression
of Alzheimer's disease, I was skeptical. Surely, he was biting off a little
more than he could chew. Dementia is the most
feared condition of later life. There’s a common
misconception that we have no control over whether we
develop dementia, but the good news is that although Alzheimer’s
may be incurable, at least it is preventable. There is an emerging consensus that “what’s good for our hearts
is also good for our heads,” because clogging of the
arteries inside the brain with atherosclerotic plaque
is thought to play a role in the development of
Alzheimer’s dementia.

This is what our cerebral
arteries should look like: open, clean, and
allowing blood to flow throughout our brain. This is what atherosclerosis
in our head looks like: clogged with cholesterol,
closing off our arteries, and clamping down
on blood flow. What kind of brain arteries do
you want in your head? Too much cholesterol
in our blood is unanimously recognized
to be a risk factor for the development
of Alzheimer’s disease. Those with a total cholesterol
of 225 mg/dL or more may have nearly
25 times the odds of ending up with amyloid
plaques in their brain 10 to 15 years later. After all, what is the
Alzheimer’s gene, APOE? It codes for the major cholesterol
carrier inside the brain. This may explain the
so-called Nigerian paradox: They have among the highest
rates of the Alzheimer’s gene but some of the lowest
rates of Alzheimer’s disease. How is that possible? Genes load the gun,
but lifestyle pulls the trigger. The paradox may be explained
by their low cholesterol levels, probably due to their
diets low in animal fat. So, in terms of dietary guidelines
for the prevention of Alzheimer’s, we should center our
diets around vegetables, legumes, fruits,
and whole grains.

In other words, the dietary
pillar of lifestyle medicine: whole food,
plant-based nutrition. Or, if that’s too complicated,
"plants, plants, and more plants." That may help explain
why vegetarians may be up to three times less likely
to become demented later in life. But it’s not all-or-nothing. Even just substituting 5%
of animal protein with plant protein appears to significantly reduce
the risk of dying from dementia. But prevention isn’t sexy. When prevention works,
nothing happens, but the same diet and lifestyle
that helps prevent heart disease was proven to
help reverse it. Until then, it was believed
that heart disease progression could only be slowed,
not stopped or reversed, similar to how Alzheimer’s
disease is viewed today. So, what if you put
people with Alzheimer’s on the same plant-
based program? You don’t know until
you put it to the test. A randomized,
controlled, phase 2 clinical trial to see if the progression
of Alzheimer’s disease may be slowed, stopped,
or perhaps even reversed.

They randomized about
50 men and women diagnosed with early-
stage Alzheimer’s to either make no lifestyle
changes for 20 weeks or eat a whole food,
plant-based diet (with supplements
like vitamin B12), moderate exercise (like walking half
an hour a day), stress management (like relaxing with
breathing exercises), and getting group
support (over Zoom). They measured
standard tests of cognition and function
before and after in each group, as well as objective
experimental biomarkers of disease progression. On the Clinical Dementia
Rating Global scale, which is used to stage
the severity of dementia, the control group
continued to get worse, but the diet and lifestyle
group started to get better. People diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s getting better? The same seemed to
happen when measured with the Alzheimer’s Disease
Assessment Scale, though this did not reach
statistical significance. Using what’s called the Clinical Dementia Rating
Sum of Boxes scoring, both groups
continued to deteriorate, but the decline was significantly
less in the healthy living group. Overall, using
what’s called the Clinical Global Impression
of Change scoring, most of the people in the
control group kept getting worse and none showed any improvement,
which is what you'd expect with Alzheimer's, whereas about 40% of those
in the diet and lifestyle group appeared to be getting
better within five months of eating and
living healthier.

Why did some get
better and others not? Well, the more they complied
with the recommendations, the greater the beneficial impact
on their cognition and function. This helps to
explain why studies of less-intensive
lifestyle interventions were not sufficient to
stop disease progression, let alone actually improve
cognition and function. The biggest limitation
of the study is that, unlike drug trials where
you can give people a disguised placebo
sugar pill, when a study involves major
diet and lifestyle changes, you can’t rule out
the placebo effect, especially for self-
reported, subjective “How’s your memory been?”
type-questions. But the researchers
also measured objective investigational biomarkers
of disease progression and saw the same
trajectory— improvements in the
interventional group and worsening in
the control group, with the same apparent
dose-response effect, meaning the more they improved
their diet and lifestyle, the more dramatic the effect.

Compare that to the
latest Alzheimer’s drugs, which may not
even work at all. All you may get
for your $56,000 is a one-in-three chance of
swelling or bleeding in your brain. When the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration approved the
drug anyway, the head of the American
Geriatrics Society replied, “My head just exploded.” The bottom line is
there is only one diet that's ever been shown to help
reverse our leading cause of death, heart disease,
in the majority of patients: a plant-based diet. If that’s all a plant-
based diet could do— reverse the number one
killer of men and women, then shouldn’t that be the default
diet until proven otherwise? And the fact that it
can also be so effective in preventing, arresting,
and reversing the progression of
other leading killers, like high blood pressure,
type 2 diabetes, and now maybe even early-
stage Alzheimer’s disease would seem to make the
case for plant-based eating simply overwhelming..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube