In a leafy London suburb, there’s a smart little clinic that promises miracles. Run by Dr Andrew Greenland, an NHS consultant in emergency medicine, the Greenland Centre claims to be able to do something that the drug industry has failed to, despite spending billions on research over several decades: “Reverse the cognitive decline of early Alzheimer’s disease.”
The centre runs a protocol which claims patients can expect to see results within six months. And, according to its website, “to maintain improvements and prevent further cognitive decline, participants should consider the program as a long-term prospect”. This miracle treatment — the Bredesen Protocol — doesn’t come cheap. Patients are charged almost £3,000 for their first three appointments with any additional consultations costing another £475.
But with questions hanging over the effectiveness and harms of the two new Alzheimer’s wonder drugs, lecanemab and donanemab, expected to arrive on the market soon, any treatment that claims to reverse cognitive decline would be worth paying over the odds for. And right now, people are queuing up to pay. There are 21 practitioners and centres across the UK offering the Bredesen Protocol — or treatment plans based on his approach — charging anywhere up to £6,000 for consultations. Two say they are at “capacity”: suffering patients and their families are desperate to find something that might help their loved ones.
Desperation feeds exploitation and the Bredesen Protocol has been described by some scientists as quackery. The Alzheimer’s Society UK told us the regime was “not supported by scientific evidence”, while in Canada it is described as “offering ‘false hope”; and across various medical journals, academics suggest its use and promotion is ethically questionable.
Dr Dale Bredesen, however, claims that Alzheimer’s is “literally becoming optional”. A professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA, he has identified the 36 multifactorial “contributors” to the disease, and targets them “with a precision medicine type of approach”. This involves regular brain-training exercises, stress reduction plans and a ketogenic diet.
Deborah was diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment aged 49 and told she was likely to develop Alzheimer’s. She had been having difficulty recognising people’s faces and switching words for a few years. After her sister-in-law discovered Dr Bredesen’s protocol, she signed up and was prescribed a plant-based diet, with virtually no red meat and plenty of intense exercise which she does on her Peloton bike. “All of a sudden, my brain started to work clearly. It was like the light went back on,” she says.
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