Customer Reviews

Alzheimer's Disease

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Please be careful. Alzheimer Disease is a devistating disease and it is not fair to offer families false hope. There are so many things we have learned over the years to help make this disease easier to understand, however, to steer individuals this way is wrong.

Don't be fooled into buying this book because it claims that Alzheimer's can be prevented. There is NO prevention methods available as of this date, nor is there a cure for Alzheimer's. There may be some good information in the book, but do not buy it because the word prevent/able is in the cover letter

Author claims to present Alzheimer's "as it really is," but instead offers a book filled with questionable, disputed, or even debunked findings (e.g. "fingerprint patterns are significantly predictive of Alzheimer's disease years before its onset") passed off as facts. Watch out for the 50 "revealing facts" listed in the first chapter; many of them are not facts at all. Fact #5 in his list is: "Alzheimer's can be prevented." If that's true, you won't learn how in this book. He also misrepresents possible correlations as proven "causes." For example, there's some evidence that educational level and brain size correlate inversely with Alzheimer's. But that's not how he presents it. In his words: "Interestingly, higher educational levels and increased brain size delay the onset of Alzheimer's." And then there's the claim that "near-miraculous strides in treatment enable doctors to retard the progression of Alzheimer's, slowing even advanced cases." The book is filled with WILD overstatements. Apart from that, there is some reasonable information about the progression of the disease, what's going on with plaques and tangles, stuff like that. The back cover says that the author "has entered the field of research" after 40 years of private practice. I'm not sure what kind of "research" he's doing, but all I can say is that if he ever came up with any evidence to back up his claims he'd win the Nobel Prize.

The book is loaded with useful information in an exceptionally thorough and well organized manner.

THIS BOOK PRESENTS RESEARCH AND POSSIBLE INTERVENTONS IN EASY TO UNDERSTAND LANGUAUGE. I FOUND IT TO BE INTERESTING READING, BEACUSE I AM A CAREGIVER TO MY MOTHER WHO HAS THIS DISEASE. THIS BOOK IS NOT THE DEFINITIVE ANSWER TO THE DISEASE, BUT IT DOES CONTAIN "INTERESTING" INFORMATION TO CONSIDER FOR MYSELF AS WELL AS MY MOTHER. AT THIS TIME THERE IS NO CURE, AND ONLY THROUGH RESEARCH WILL THERE BE ONE.