The Unknown Unknowns In Everyday Health— And the "Corporate Capture" of Medical Knowledge

I happened upon this conversation between an energetic, crusading reformed cardiologist from Manchester and our one and only Mark Hyman last week. The interview is about seven months old.

There are so, so, so many bits to unpack from their exchange, but two (okay three: cortisol/insulin & meditation, for up-coming posts) I can't seem to get out of my mind.

I had never heard the phrase, the concept before, not even among the IFM elders: the idea of the "corporate capture" of medical knowledge. Even among those purportedly caring for us.

Explains alot.

His prescription for our collective way out of this mess is "humility" (they need to be able to admit that what they're doing is not helping-- and more often than not, harming) and "curiosity" (they need to be open to new learning, new ways of seeing/thinking). And probably also time; at least, time for all the required new thinking.

I know, I know: "good luck with that."

In the meantime, I counsel people to stay away from most run of the mill MDs and even nurses and nutritionists, until they can be sure they have unlearned most of what they were taught both in school (and then among their peer groups).

I applauded Dr. William Davis' book "Undoctored" when it came out in 2017 and still follow him on YouTube-- even if even he doesn't always get everything, to my mind, just quite right.

I had also just discovered and interview Dr. Sally Weinrich, one of Dr. Dale Bredesen's "First Survivors" from an Alzheimer's diagnosis. I frequently come back to neurocognitive decline both because it, aside from maybe cancer, is kind of the big bogie man out there for many of us, but also because I have found that the approaches (& quite frankly discoveries) Dr. Bredesen and his growing network of collaborators apply to neurocognitive decline are broadly, broadly applicable (and I hereby predict will eventually prove effective) to just about any chronic disease: cardiovascular, metabolic, autoimmune, psycho-emotional. (Remember Terry Wahls?)

So here, Sally Weinrich.

Sally is a PhD nurse who spent a significant part of her professional life conducting prostate cancer research. Her husband Martin, a PhD biostatistician, teaches. Or taught. Sally was 76 at the time of this interview; he was 82.

Sally reports having “Alzheimer’s” on both sides of the family. No details on how they were definitively diagnosed, but senile dementia or even presenile dementia this day gets diagnosed as Alzheimer’s oftentimes only after struggling to draw a clock that displays the time ten minutes to eleven— or a 3D cube—or to competently count backwards from 100 serially subtracting 7. Although the hours-long neuropsych evaluation a neurology department might insist on performing is also of little value and mostly just a billing boondoggle. To be super conservative here, let’s just say she had a family history of dementia on all sides.

When she started experiencing cognitive issues in her late 60s, she too was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

She actually went the drug route at first. That’s where the MDs send you. But she got worse not better. And in 2016 she discovered Dr. Dale Bredesen.

In her own telling, of Dr. Bredesen’s then “36 holes” in the metaphorical “roof,” Sally had 35. (No history of Lyme or Lyme co-infections.) He has since kind of whittled those down to just 10 or so.

So she got busy with testing.

Her vitamin D was low. Her zinc was low. More surprisingly, on no meds, her cholesterol was low, at just 130. (Both women & men her age do best with TCs closer to 200.)

She had admirably bucked the WHI hysteria and insisted on bHRT upon menopause but to that, respecting Dr. Bredesen’s published optimal target ranges, added testosterone (cream), Dhea and pregnenolone (the “hormone of memory”).**

It took 30 days before she started to notice positive changes.

Sally also had set-backs.

A knee replacement turned out to be flooding her body with plastic.*** She got it removed.

Sally turned out to be one of the approximately 25% of humans who cannot clear mycotoxins from their bodies— and she had mold in her home. So that took some time to address.

Initially scoring in the 25th percentile on the CNS Vital Signs cognitive test (the only diagnostic that has ever impressed me, and apparently now “doable” from a home computer), she worked her way up over a year or so to the 61% percentile. Once that mold issue was addressed... 86% percentile.

All in all, it took two years. And today on camera she gleefully reports that it was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." And remember, she did a PhD!

And then there were these fun knock-on effects that just thrill me to death, as one of my grandmothers or aunts would say.

It’s pretty much the EXACT OPPOSITE of the knock-on effects from prescription medicine (and surgeries).

I first experienced it in the clinic not so much with acupuncture but with Chinese herbal medicine: you treat the “chief complaint” and suddenly two or three other long-standing conditions also inexplicably resolve. Only it’s not really inexplicable: you are restoring foundational health. (In the case of acupuncture, you’re just kind of bestowing an intense parasympathetic reset.) Little surprise that other health complaints improve.

With Sally, as soon as she got her vitamin D* into range, her depression lifted.

And once she “cleaned up” her diet (no wheat, no grains, folks), all her joint aches— what many people would call “arthritis” or “osteoarthritis”— magically disappeared. (Is it too late to un-replace that knee??)

Yes, this is my kind of “medicine.”

And just to close, here’s what REALLY blew me away:

Towards the end of her sit-down with Nadu, Dr. Weinrich is asked “what were the 1 or 2 pieces of the Bredesen program that seemed to have the biggest impact?”

Are you sitting down?

1. The decision to “do this.” The commitment to put in the work. To be patient. Maybe even to enlist the participation of one’s S.O.

2. Adding in exercise

3. Fixing/allowing more time for sleep (8 hours instead of 6)

4. Twice daily meditation (10-20 mins each)

I say “blew my mind” because this is all so DOABLE!

No equipment. No infusions. No informed consents. Not even any Sudoku or Wordle.****

Sleep. Exercise. Meditation.

Clean eating.

And okay, getting her vitamin, mineral and hormone levels within the required ranges.

Getting the good stuff in;

The bad stuff out.

Anyone can do this.

This doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars.

No doctor visits or ICD-10 or CPT codes. No specialized medical practices. No drug or device company blockbusters.

No newly christened Memory Wings.

Ouch.

And no one wants you to know that you don’t know that this is an option.

That Dorothy-Scarecrow-Glinda “You’ve always had the power” scene always seems to creep into my consciousness at this point in the story:

"She had to learn it for herself"

An incensed Ray Bolger: Why didn’t you tell her?

Burke: “Because she wouldn’t have believed me; she had to learn it for herself.”

And numerous trillion-dollar industries (doctors-drugs-packaged foods-beverages-cereals-hospitals-insurance cos.-the medical research & medical education & "continuing medical education" industries) would make no money on it.

Around 30:15 of the video interview Sally’s husband, Professor Martin Weinrich, comes on. If I hadn’t cried away my entire bio-available reservoir of tears these past six or so days (heck, six months) over all that is happening in this country, in the world, I would have likely teared up here. Here’s his understated & gratitude-streaked take:

"It’s difficult to prove this the way you would prove something with randomized, controlled clinical trials. This is a case report of a single patient. But when that ’patient’ is your wife— when you see it with your own eyes— you know it’s the real thing. You know it actually happened. And it is nothing short of a miracle."

I also would not give this such credence had I not seen or heard this again and again and again and again. Not always. This is in no way 100%. But it might be 50%. In their admittedly tightly managed studies, it approaches 75%. That is not nothing. And everything (or almost everything) else improves along the way. That’s why we do this. That’s why we won’t give up.

*The actual functioning of both vitamin D and also vitamin A depends on zinc-dependent enzymes. As well as a component for no fewer than 3,000 proteins in the human body. And to some extent on magnesium. So don't underestimate these guys.

**Estrone, or “E1,” said to be the primary estrogen of menopause, also tends to be elevated in men, especially men on the overweight side or in poor metabolic health generally. It is inflammatory. Since an excess of any estrogen (independent of testosterone levels) has been associated with mental decline in men (and prostate cancer for that matter), it might be wise for men, if in doubt (or fall into one of the aforementioned categories), to check all three of the main estrogens: estrone, estradiol, estriol. Or at least E1 and E2.

***I’ve seen off-the-chart high molybdenum blood levels, that appeared to result in hallucinations, tracked back to knee replacement. And while Mo-fueled hallucinations are rare, excess Mo (&  excess Cu) can sap your T. So please do your homework with implants—including follow-up screenings. In case it needs saying, anyone with mercury (aka “silver”) dental amalgams and signs of neurocognitive decline (or chronic tiredness or chronic arthralgias) might want to see if s/he improves after having them (carefully) removed.

****In fact, a recent, very well designed/executed study (SMART) in Australia found that "brain training" folks actually did worse than controls-- and it was the resistance training (slash progressive HIIT) group whose brains grew; specifically, the posterior cingulate cortex or "PCC," said to be a very highly metabolically active area. More stunning still, the effect lasted out to their last measurement point (18 months) even though the resistance training was for only 6 months!