A Major Shift in the Treatment of Alzheimer's
Thirty-four years... thousands of studies... and hardly anything to show for it.
The Alzheimer's treatment fiasco dates back to 1991.
John Hardy, a professor at Imperial College London, discovered genetic evidence connecting Alzheimer's disease to an abnormal buildup of something called amyloid-beta.
That's a protein that forms toxic plaques in the brain.
This "amyloid hypothesis" spurred a tidal wave of biomedical research geared around flushing this protein from the brain.
Harvard University, Eli Lilly, Amgen, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Institutes of Health all believed that getting rid of these "amyloid plaques" would prevent the onset of Alzheimer's.
They spearheaded dozens of clinical trials targeting them.
But they didn't succeed in preventing Alzheimer's. In fact, some of these drugs even accelerated the progression of the disease.
By 2006, a growing group of skeptics was grumbling about moving past the amyloid hypothesis.
That's when a team of scientists at the University of Minnesota delivered a breathtaking experiment... one that breathed new life into the faltering hypothesis.
In a 2006 Nature study, they showed that when you inject a previously unknown amyloid molecule called "amyloid-beta star 56" into rats, it instantly impairs memory function.
Suddenly, these rats could no longer find their way around a water maze they'd navigated a hundred times.
According to investigative journalist Charles Piller, the author of Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's, "the results seemed like a smoking gun for the amyloid hypothesis."
They earned Karen Ashe, the lead author of the study, the $100,000 Potamkin Prize – the "Nobel Prize of neurology" – and a $5 million donation from a wealthy Alzheimer's advocate.
Over the next 15 years, the paper was cited thousands of times. It spurred countless other studies. And it triggered hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funding.
Nevertheless, few of the trials panned out with meaningful clinical results.
So in 2021, Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist and physician at Vanderbilt University, took a hard look at this influential study...
It turns out, hundreds of the images had been doctored, manipulated, and apparently falsified.
In other words, the very foundation of the renewed interest in the amyloid hypothesis was built on a house of cards.
This bombshell inspired a media firestorm.
But now that the truth is out in the open...
The stage is set for a paradigm shift in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
There's still so much out there that we don't know when it comes to Alzheimer's. But what we do know is that one lifestyle factor is a major contributing factor to it.
The Alzheimer's Society, a leading voluntary health organization focused on Alzheimer's care, says that obesity between the ages of 35 and 65 can increase dementia risk in later-life by about 30%.
This statistic comes from an analysis that combined 19 different long-term research studies.
A study using data from the U.S. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey found obesity to be the No. 1 "modifiable risk factor" to reducing the risk of developing dementia.
So while there's no truly effective treatment for Alzheimer's, there are still companies whose work could make this a livable, manageable disease – from breakthrough blood tests to drugs that could lower your risk of getting this form of dementia later in life by fighting obesity...
I just released four new reports detailing these breakthroughs... plus a brand-new e-book with the best tips I've uncovered in my 30 years of medical experience to help build healthy habits. These are things that anyone can do on their own. They're easy to fit into your everyday routine. And some can prevent or even reverse cognitive decline.
To learn how to get immediate access to all of it, click here.
Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,
Dr. David Eifrig and the Health & Wealth Bulletin Research Team
September 29, 2025