What Is Alzheimer’s Disease?

Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that destroys memory and other important mental functions. At first, someone with Alzheimer’s disease may notice mild confusion and difficulty remembering. Eventually, people with the disease may even forget important people in their lives and undergo dramatic personality changes. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia — a group of brain disorders that cause the loss of intellectual and social skills. In Alzheimer’s disease, the brain cells degenerate and die, causing a steady decline in memory and mental function.

How does the Oxford Recovery Method help with the treatment of Alzheimer’s?

Many approaches to treating Alzheimer’s involve using medications, such as Cholinesterase inhibitors, which increase neurochemicals called acetylcholine which are depleted by Alzheimer’s disease. Sadly, for many, these medications often have little effect. And while various kinds of therapies can be helpful, these therapies do not address the root cause of underlying brain imbalances.

So, what are the root causes of Alzheimer’s? Recent advances in neuroscience reveal the root causes include a lack of blood flow and oxygen to the brain, lack of specific brain chemicals, and brainwave imbalances.

Let’s look at all these causes a little more in depth: Inside the brain, we have billions of brain cells, called neurons, sending electrical signals to each other, which we measure as brainwaves. These electrical signals cause the brain cells to release small chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline.

This vast network of brain cells is fed with oxygen and other nutrients by blood from over 100,000 miles of blood vessels inside the brain. For people suffering from depression, there is often not enough of these blood vessels supplying oxygen and important nutrients.

This lack of nutrients begins to cause brainwave imbalances, as measured by an EEG scan. This, in turn, causes a downstream effect on brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, meaning that the brain cells start producing too little or too much of the chemicals they need. These neurotransmitters imbalances are further exacerbated by nutritional deficiencies in the person’s diet, especially of key vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids.

So, how do we start correcting a potentially multifaceted problem?

One of our most important tools at Oxford Recovery Center is called hyperbaric oxygen. This therapy actually causes new blood vessel growth in the brain and causes the brain to generate new stem cells which turn into new brain cells. (See our video about hyperbaric oxygen here.)

Another important tool is neurofeedback therapy. We use neurofeedback to scan your brain’s electrical signals and reset them with non-invasive feedback in the form of sound. (See our video about neurofeedback here.)

And finally, neurotransmitter therapy and dietary coaching is used to correct nutritional deficiencies which are underlying the brain chemical imbalances—imbalances that we can find through laboratory testing we provide.

We strive to offer the most comprehensive research-based recovery program available for Alzheimer’s, and we are happy to serve you by taking as much time as we need to answer your specific questions.

Research

Please look at the following research articles in regards to the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on Alzheimer’s:

• Hyperbaric Oxygen and Ginkgo Biloba Extract Inhibit Aβ25-35-induced Toxicity and Oxidative Stress in vivo: A Potential Role in Alzheimer’s Disease: This study shows how mixing hyperbaric oxygen with Aβ25-35 may help treat Alzheimer’s. The results of this study showed that hyperbaric oxygen therapy reduced cell toxicity and oxidative stress in Alzheimer’s disease.
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Alzheimer’s Disease:This article explains how hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help treat Alzheimer’s and how this occurs.
• Influence of hyperbaric oxygen on serum estrogen level in patients with Alzheimer’s disease: This article will show how increased serum estrogen levels may help treat Alzheimer’s. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy helps treat Alzheimer’s and this may be because of the increase in serum estrogen.