New Alzheimer’s treatments bring hope — and reminders of those we have lost
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Andia/Getty Images
A complicated picture
For decades, the dominant scientific theory treated Alzheimer’s as a single-villain story: amyloid plaques accumulating in the brain. One cause; one target. It was neat and tidy.
It was also completely wrong. Researchers now describe a far more complicated picture. Tangled Tau proteins. Genetic vulnerabilities. Metabolic failures. Disruptions originating in the gut, of all places.
The brain fails as part of a longer story. The first forgotten name is never the beginning, but only the moment the beginning becomes impossible to ignore. Medicine, in other words, spent decades treating the final chapter as the only one worth reading.
Newer treatments show modest results. They slow the decline, but they don’t reverse it. They don’t put a man back at his kitchen table, telling a story his family has heard so many times they could recite it backward, about meeting his wife at a dance, and making it feel, on the 43rd telling, like something worth leaning in for.
The current scientific ambition, at least, has grown more honest: attack the disease across every front simultaneously. Target the proteins, the aging cells, the metabolic dysfunction, and the genetic predispositions. Treat the system, not the symptom.
Bone-deep
My grandfather would have grasped this without a single journal article. He understood, bone-deep, that everything connects. Soil quality shapes the crop. Weather shapes the soil. The animals depend on both. You can’t fix a failing field by fixating on one plant.
There is something resembling hope in this shift. It arrives too late for him and for her. But the possibility exists that fewer families will sit across from someone they love and watch recognition drain from a familiar face. Over 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s. The people who love them number considerably more, and their suffering doesn’t appear in the statistics.
My grandfather carried me when I was too tired to walk and when I was too sick to stand. In return, I carry him. The man who never gave anyone a reason to be forgotten. It is the least I can do and nowhere near enough. And I will do it anyway, gladly, until I no longer can.
New Alzheimer’s treatments bring hope — and reminders of those we have lost
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Andia/Getty Images
A complicated picture
For decades, the dominant scientific theory treated Alzheimer’s as a single-villain story: amyloid plaques accumulating in the brain. One cause; one target. It was neat and tidy.
It was also completely wrong. Researchers now describe a far more complicated picture. Tangled Tau proteins. Genetic vulnerabilities. Metabolic failures. Disruptions originating in the gut, of all places.
The brain fails as part of a longer story. The first forgotten name is never the beginning, but only the moment the beginning becomes impossible to ignore. Medicine, in other words, spent decades treating the final chapter as the only one worth reading.
Newer treatments show modest results. They slow the decline, but they don’t reverse it. They don’t put a man back at his kitchen table, telling a story his family has heard so many times they could recite it backward, about meeting his wife at a dance, and making it feel, on the 43rd telling, like something worth leaning in for.
The current scientific ambition, at least, has grown more honest: attack the disease across every front simultaneously. Target the proteins, the aging cells, the metabolic dysfunction, and the genetic predispositions. Treat the system, not the symptom.
Bone-deep
My grandfather would have grasped this without a single journal article. He understood, bone-deep, that everything connects. Soil quality shapes the crop. Weather shapes the soil. The animals depend on both. You can’t fix a failing field by fixating on one plant.
There is something resembling hope in this shift. It arrives too late for him and for her. But the possibility exists that fewer families will sit across from someone they love and watch recognition drain from a familiar face. Over 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s. The people who love them number considerably more, and their suffering doesn’t appear in the statistics.
My grandfather carried me when I was too tired to walk and when I was too sick to stand. In return, I carry him. The man who never gave anyone a reason to be forgotten. It is the least I can do and nowhere near enough. And I will do it anyway, gladly, until I no longer can.
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