The AD Damaged Brain Can Regenerate Lost Pathways and New Brain Tissue

Picture of me advocating the passage of the Legislative Act

Alzheimer's 2020

The joy of writing on the subject of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) for the past four years is seeing some of what I asked in the arena of “why not?” It is being validated by “can do!” I have asked in numerous Posts “If the brain can be regenerated by Stroke Therapy why can’t the same therapy be applied to the brain damaged by AD?”

Regeneration of the brain occurs with stroke therapy, viz., the brain generates new pathways and new tissue to take over functions lost to damage. This should be possible with the progressive degeneration of the mind due to AD.

Finally an answer in a book entitled Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being by Rudolph E. Tanzi, Deepak Chopra

Excerpts (edited by me) from the first part:

Our… destination is the enlightened brain, which goes beyond the four roles you play. It is a rare kind of relationship, in which you serve as the observer, the silent witness to everything the brain does. Here lies transcendence. When you are able to be the silent witness, the brain’s activity doesn’t enmesh you. Abiding in complete peace and silent awareness, you find the truth about the eternal questions concerning God, the soul, and life after death. The reason we believe that this aspect of life is real is that when the mind wants to transcend, the brain is ready

Even though your brain doesn’t come with an owner’s manual, you can use it to follow a path of growth, achievement, personal satisfaction, and new skills. Without realizing it, you are capable of making a quantum leap in how you use your brain.

When the brain is injured due to trauma in a car accident, for example, or due to a stroke, nerve cells and their connections to each other (synapses) are lost. For a long time it was believed that once the brain was injured, victims were stuck using whatever brain function they had left. But over the past two decades, a major discovery was made, and studies too numerous to count have confirmed it. When neurons and synapses are lost owing to injury, the neighboring neurons compensate for the loss and try to reestablish missing connections, which effectively rebuilds the damaged neural network. The neighboring neurons step up their game and undergo “compensatory regeneration” of their main projecting parts (the main trunk, or axon, and the numerous threadlike branches, or dendrites). This new growth recoups the lost connections in the complex neural grid of which every brain cell is a part.

It’s true that the central nervous system cannot regenerate with the same robustness and rapidity of the peripheral nervous system. However, due to “neuroplasticity,” the brain can remodel and remap its connections following injury. This remapping is the functional definition of neuroplasticity, which is now a hot-button issue.

Your brain is remodeling itself right now. It doesn’t take an injury to trigger the process—being alive is enough.

You can promote neuroplasticity, moreover, by exposing yourself to new experiences. Even better is to deliberately set out to learn new skills. If you show passion and enthusiasm, all the better.

What really invigorates an older person, though, is acquiring a new purpose and something new to love. Neuroplasticity is better than mind over matter. It’s mind turning into matter as your thoughts create new neural growth. Neuroplasticity overcame a rough start to become a star.

The book’s description on Amazon.com describes the book in the following way:

… Super Brain shows you how to use your brain as a gateway for achieving health, happiness, and spiritual growth. The authors are two pioneers: bestselling author and physician Deepak Chopra and Harvard Medical School professor Rudolph E. Tanzi, one of the world's foremost experts on the causes of Alzheimer’s. They have merged their wisdom and expertise for a bold new understanding of the “three-pound universe” and its untapped potential.

In contrast to the “baseline brain” that fulfills the tasks of everyday life, Chopra and Tanzi propose that, through a person’s increased self-awareness and conscious intention, the brain can be taught to reach far beyond its present limitations. “We are living in a golden age for brain research, but is this a golden age for your brain?” they ask.

The book applies its message to AD. It is but another step in asserting the need to prime the pump of ourselves to contain AD as it develops. It is not a cure, AD happens, its only result is death, preceded by loss of mind and loss of functions of the body. Until you die it is a living hell. I know because I am there but am not living it’s built in hell. With the grace of god I have taken a positive approach which has included both making the best of having AD and using my experience to do good writing, speaking and advocating.

The built in hell of it can be reduced by the positive approach such as I was led to take, it is reduced by simple things such as following the so-called BEST PRACTICES:

Eat Right, Exercise Daily, Get Involved in Stimulating Intellectual, Social and Creative Activity, Take your Medication.

The built in hell can be reduced by concentrating on Stimulating Intellectual, Social and Creative Activity. They work; the book confirms this, describing it as one of the better tools to initiate regeneration of the brain, especially for older people.

The built in hell can be reduced by exercise. I have posted an article by Bob DeMarco carried on The Alzheimer’s Reading Room. It can be accessed by clicking on its title in ARR viz. Can Exercise Slow Memory Loss and Alzheimer's Onset? Or by clicking on Archive and going to where I have posted it, to read it.

There are many programs that can produce Stimulating Intellectual, Social and Creative Activity. Those of us with AD need help with this. We need to have concentration on funding and organizing programs for us that will produce the stimulation needed. In the most recent past this was not being done. It is now starting to happen and I cannot encourage enough of it.

It is this that will not only enhance our quality of life. It will keep us out of the high cost areas of Help at Home, Assisted Living or Institutional Care. These are intolerably expensive. Unless we are the very rich they are such to break us and our country financially.

This book is a wonderful and further step along the way.