Alzheimer's is a common form of dementia (senility) affecting almost 5 million Americans. As our population ages, this is an area that drug companies believe may be quite profitable, so there is heavy advertising being done for the medication...
The pharmaceutical companies have spectacularly failed to move beyond the 'chemical imbalance' view of Alzheimer's disease. But new evidence points to brain poisoning-by processed foods and heavy metals-as likely causes, and many alternatives offer...
Dietary intake of antioxidants, particularly vitamins C and E, may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, according to recent evidence.
The maverick practice of off-label prescribing - giving drugs for unapproved conditions/patients - is once again in the limelight. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning against using ‘atypical antipsychotics’ to treat...
Doctors in nursing homes prescribe antipsychotic drugs with the same lack of thought that the service staff employs to place the order for tomorrow's newspapers. Most of the elderly residents have dementia, or so the doctors conclude, and so an...
If I had more money than morals, the first thing I’d do is plough every last red cent of mine into a drug company. No other profession, to my mind, has such total success in inventing a dubious solution, manufacturing the market to peddle it to and...
HRT: Its days as a ‘just-in-case’ are numbered
It never rains but it pours for the HRT industry. One of the most lucrative drugs markets came crashing down with the sudden stopping of the Women’s Health Initiative trial when, last year, it was discovered that oestrogen plus progestin...
If you're worried about losing your mental abilities as you get older, start walking. It might be all you need to do to ward off dementia, memory loss and the like.
No, memory loss is not inevitable as we age, but we’d be very fortunate to avoid it happening. Memory starts to decline imperceptibly in early adulthood (Alzheim Dis Assoc Disord, 2003; 17: 162-7); by age 65, about 40 per cent of us will have...
