The BWC For Horse Lovers Brain Body Wellness Program!

By Cate Cummings APRN, FNP, IFMCP, ReCODE 2.0 Certified Practitioner

Alzheimer’s Disease is now the third leading cause of death in America (heart disease is first and cancer is second) and is predicted to afflict approximately 45 million currently living Americans (Bredesen, 2020, p 10). Almost everyone knows of at least one person who has unfortunately suffered this all-too-common fate. It does not have to be this way – thanks to Dr. Dale Bredesen, M.D.

The world is indeed very fortunate that Dr. Dale Bredesen has devoted his life to unravelling the true causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. Through his tireless efforts, he has discovered how to successfully prevent or even reverse cognitive decline. By following Dr. Bredesen’s advice we can help this scourge become a RARE disease instead of it being the very common devastating affliction that it is today (Bredesen, 2020, p 4-5).

Alzheimer’s Disease causes tremendous suffering to not only the person who is experiencing the progressive decline in cognitive function, but also to their immediate and extended family members. Very often, this largely preventable condition becomes a huge financial burden for families as well, and this very devastating situation is only predicted to rise further to staggering levels. Dr. Bredesen states that if we do not work to stop the rising increase in Alzheimer’s Disease incidence, by 2050 there will be 13 million demented Americans resulting in the financial ruin of many of these families; Medicare will become bankrupt; and there will be a multi-trillion-dollar global burden (Bredesen, 2020, p 27).

I am very excited to announce that BWC For Horse Lovers has a new program which will become available by April 1, 2021. This program is dedicated to helping stop the suffering of Alzheimer’s Disease. This new program is called

                              BWC For Horse Lovers Brain Body Wellness!

This program is specifically designed to help people prevent cognitive decline, and whenever possible, reverse cognitive decline. If you know of a family member or friend who is having problems with their memory and who resides within the states of Idaho, Colorado, or Texas, or, if you yourself notice that your memory is not as good as it used to be, I would like to invite you to consider working with me and my two wonderful Functional Medicine Coaching Academy Certified Health Coaches, Deborah Cox and Melanie Rathbun, to help prevent and possibly reverse cognitive decline. The earlier a person decides to get help, the better their outcomes will likely be!

I have personally witnessed what a tragic, long, tortuous, and demoralizing end a person can experience while slowly advancing toward cognitive decline and finally dying from it. As a result, I am very committed to helping people avoid this unnecessary fate.

Several years ago, my own dear mother died of Alzheimer’s Disease at the age of 87. It was not a quick decline, but rather her demise took place over many years during which, at least in the earlier years of this disease, she knew she was losing her mental abilities. I don’t think there could be a worse fate than losing one’s cognitive awareness and intelligence after living a life with great mental sharpness. She experienced a gradually decreasing cognitive ability as she got into her late 70’s and 80’s. Most likely she had increasing hints of her failing memory for more than one decade. I am sure she suffered in silence early on as she realized she was not her usual mentally sharp self. Just the stress of knowing this is happening to one’s self (and not knowing where to turn for help) can increase one’s internal stress level which can further accelerate a decline in mental functioning. So, this can become a vicious cycle. But, now through Dr. Bredesen’s monumental work – there is HOPE and there are concrete measures people can take to avoid dementia and live a fulfilling life with high-functioning mental abilities in their later years!

Cognitive decline is very often a gradual, insidious phenomenon which can silently creep up on a person and destroy their life. My mother’s steepest descents into worsening cognitive decline occurred as a result of receiving anesthesia for two osteoporotic bone fracture surgeries. After each of these events, even though the surgeons did a great job of repairing her bones, her mental abilities took a marked nosedive which she could not overcome. Her doctors had nothing to offer her as happens with so many, many victims of dementia. She was well-cared for thanks to my great family members and was always able to live in her home which she very much wanted, but after many years of worsening dementia she literally died as a shrunken, very aged, and essentially non-functioning shadow of her once great self!

Unfortunately, I was not able to help my mother during those years because I lived far away from her and her medical care was determined by others who followed the conventional medical path which had so little to offer. Also, her mental decline occurred during a time period when there was very little understanding of what the true cause(s) of dementia really are as compared to now in 2021 when we know much better how to prevent and reverse cognitive decline.

I have thought long and hard about why this happened to my mother. I realized that she was a person who had not had the critical support that older people need to assist them into a graceful and healthy aging of mind and body. She had an early hysterectomy in her mid-30’s with no hormone support thereafter for her brain or her body to offset the sudden drop in vital hormones needed for a woman to maintain good brain and bone health. She was diagnosed as being osteoporotic by her early 70’s. She had taken antibiotics off and on in her adult years and ate the Standard American Diet (although not as bad a form of this diet as many Americans eat). But the net result was most likely sub-optimal nutrition to keep her skeleton strong and her mental faculties intact. Her teeth had many silver amalgam fillings in them. It is now known that these silver fillings leach mercury vapor over many years and now science has revealed that the mercury vapor from amalgams can be transported to the brain where it becomes a strong risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s (Bredesen, 2020, p 58). In addition, she was likely predisposed to dementia from a genetic standpoint as I now have identified that I too have genetic risk factors for dementia as well. Since we inherit our genes from our parents, there is a high likelihood that she was genetically at risk for dementia.

We now know that genetic risk factors do not have to determine one’s destiny, but by knowing your genetic risk, you are able to be proactive and successfully mitigate those risks through diet, lifestyle, and other factors (Bredesen, 2020 p 16-17). That is what the BWC For Horse Lovers Brain Body Wellness is all about!

You have to have a healthy body in order to have a healthy brain and visa versa! Even though dementia seems to be a ‘brain’ problem, it is also most often a ‘body’ problem as well because everything works together within us. Even though the brain is a bit ‘separated’ from the rest of the body by the Blood Brain Barrier, there is tremendous communication going on every second between the brain and the body (2). So, in order to fix the brain, while we do have to work directly to support the brain, and we also have to diligently work to support the rest of the body.  

Deborah, Melanie, and I are dedicated to guiding and helping increase the likelihood of a person who is experiencing cognitive decline to return to a long, healthy life with excellent cognition by partnering with that person (and their caregiver if present) in the BWC For Horse Lovers Brain Body Wellness Program!

Most sadly, my mother had accumulated multiple serious reasons as to why her brain could no longer function as it used to in its remarkable way. She was a very bright and accomplished woman and a great Mom! She was a private pilot, a registered nurse, a fun and beautiful person devoted to her family. In her later years, before the cognitive decline set in for good, she was very active socially (travelling all over the world, working as a Literacy Volunteer of America, and volunteering at her church). She loved to read and do crossword puzzles very often, too!. Yet she had to stop doing those activities as time went on because she was losing her mental abilities. This was very depressing for her I am sure, although she never showed it outwardly. I remember her telling me on the phone one day that she was getting lost driving on familiar routes and one time could not remember where she had parked her car for a long time after leaving a place she had driven to. Thank goodness she did eventually remember or she would not have been able to get home! This was in the days before everyone carried a cell phone with them. It was very sad to witness her gradual yet steady decline!

Dr. Bredesen has worked tirelessly to get to the bottom of cognitive decline. He is the author of four valuable books on this subject:

• The End of Alzheimer’s : The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline
• The End of Alzheimer's Program: The First Protocol to Enhance Cognition and Reverse Decline at Any Age
• The First Survivors of Alzheimer's: How Patients Recovered Life and Hope in Their Own Words
• Summary of The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline.

Dr. Bredesen has created Apollo Health, which is the premier international resource for people worldwide to get the necessary help they need to avoid and hopefully reverse cognitive decline! I could not wait to take the revamped practitioner training which just became available in November 2020. Now I am most grateful to be a ReCODE 2.0 Certified Practitioner. I and my two Health Coaches, Deborah and Melanie (who have already been through an earlier training of the Bredesen protocol and who are going to receive the updated training beginning March 2021), are committed to helping prevent and reverse, to the fullest extent possible, this devastating disease!

I am so grateful to Dr. Bredesen for giving all interested people a clear path forward that empowers us to explore all the possible reasons why a person could become afflicted with cognitive decline. He has developed a very comprehensive program to either prevent cognitive decline (PreCODE) or reverse cognitive decline when possible (ReCODE).

The Bredesen protocol does require a lifelong commitment by the client to embrace and carry out the necessary changes in order to correct the underlying causative factors within their life that are promoting their cognitive decline in the first place. If the client has a caregiver, then this person needs to learn how to support the client in carrying out these changes, too. Most often, the client needs to work with a healthcare team so that they get the necessary lab testing, hormonal support, health coaching, and other means and methods necessary for optimizing cognitive function. Being enrolled in an Apollo Health membership is also essential (either PreCODE or ReCODE depending on the need of the client) because this is where the client can receive pertinent educational resources for making the needed lifestyle adjustments, ongoing objective cognitive analyses, brain training to improve cognitive abilities, communication with other members in the programs, and even the ability to ask Dr. Bredesen himself questions that they may have. No other resource provides such a well-rounded and effective program to help a person prevent or reverse cognitive decline!

Much of Dr. Bredesen’s recommendations revolve around creating an environment which will enable a person who is concerned about cognitive decline to be as successful as possible in preventing this very undesirable end to their lives. Dr. Bredesen recommends clients work with a healthcare team that practices personalized functional medicine so that every aspect of their unique situation is fully evaluated and addressed in a compassionate manner. By doing so, the underlying causes of exactly what is driving a particular person’s cognitive decline can be identified and corrected. Ideally this healthcare team is also trained as Certified ReCODE 2.0 Practitioners which is Dr. Bredesen’s most up-to-date protocol for success. And, his program is showing fantastic results as people are recovering from Alzheimer’s! How incredibly great is that!

I completely believe in Dr. Bredesen’s recommendations to prevent and reverse cognitive decline. If this knowledge had been available to the people in charge of my mother’s healthcare as she was beginning to show signs and symptoms of cognitive decline, I firmly believe that she could have lived the last 15 years of her life as a very happy, active, and high-functioning individual like she had been doing up until she began having symptoms of cognitive decline! And, she most likely could also have lived an even longer happy life as well. That is because everything that Dr. Bredesen has discovered about helping a person stay cognitively healthy is also very often the exact same lifestyle and dietary factors that help human beings stay free from other diseases. This is another significant blessing of the Bredesen protocol – by following the Bredesen Protocol (aka the B7), you can significantly reduce the risk of all degenerative diseases.

My two Health Coaches, Deborah Cox and Melanie Rathbun, and I are committed to helping people who are at risk for developing cognitive decline, or who are currently suffering from cognitive decline. We are here to guide and help you take charge of your destiny and bring your life back to your best, most productive, and happiest cognitively healthy self!

Please consider working with us. We will be honored to partner with you as a compassionate, knowledgeable, and devoted healthcare team to help you on your journey back to health! We have developed a special program, BWC For Horse Lovers Brain Body Wellness, and special pricing for those people who are interested in working with us at BWC For Horse Lovers. Please note, you do not have to be a horse lover to work with us – it is open to everyone. 😊

Thank you.

Catherine (Cate) Cummings APRN, FNP, DC, LAc, IFMCP, ReCODE 2.0 Certified Practitioner

Reference

1 Bredesen D. E. (2020). The End of Alzheimer’s Program. The First Protocol To Enhance Cognition and Reverse Decline At Any Age. Penguinrandomhouse.com.