The Effect of Polysaccharides on Brain Health and Immune Function in Persons with Significant Memory Disorder and Cognitive Dysfunction

So many people are ill today; typically with more than one chronic disease at the same time, as all of these diseases typically come from the same path, but result in different outcomes in different people. With proper nutrition and exercise, it is possible to prevent those diseases in the first place in most cases and to reverse them if changes are applied thoroughly and consistently. No one wants to lose mental or physical capacity. In particular, we want to ensure that our mental faculties remain intact, and we are able to remember our lives that we have shared with our family and friends. Preserving our ability to think clearly, maintaining our memory, and being able to focus on every aspect of life and living are just as important as every feature of what we consider as a high quality of life.

Let us talk about neurodegenerative disorders and particularly that of Alzheimer’s disease. The United States currently has approximately 14 million Americans with some type of dementia and about 6 million of those have Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is currently the 6th leading killer of Americans, has no known preventative strategy, and conventional medicine can do virtually nothing but delay the inevitable decline for a few months with the five FDA-approved medications for dementia. Alzheimer’s today is like HIV was 30 years ago. If you are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s today, it is essentially a death sentence that has no known efficacious conventional remedy. In addition to the suffering of both the victim and the family members, particularly the primary caregiver, Alzheimer’s is annually costing the US over $500 billion in formal and informal costs of care, more than the costs of caring for heart disease and cancer combined. In addition, the future projections are ominous. As we are an aging population, the Alzheimer’s Association predicts that by 2050, 115 million people worldwide are expected to have Alzheimer’s with a cost of care over $1 trillion!

Given that no current strategy is known to prevent Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer’s cannot be cured, you might ask yourself what can you do to keep your brain healthy? Additionally, is it possible to help someone who has already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? Can you supply the brain and all of its cells the nutrients they need to function properly? The answer is yes! The brain is just like every other organ and needs essential and important nutrients to function properly.

We have conducted some very exciting research that relates to protecting your brain. We recently a sample of patients who had moderate to severe memory disorder. All patients in the study had been diagnosed with the disorder for a minimum of one year and for an average of about 3 years. After being enrolled in the study, we drew their blood to assess the immune system functioning and markers of inflammation. We wanted to study the immune system to see if we could demonstrate that changes in its functioning are related to changes in cognitiom, given that our immune system is responsible for creating our adult stem cells that are our ultimate source of repairing damage anywhere in the body. An effective immune system is necessary to create enough stem cells to repair areas in the body where damage needs to be corrected. Markers of inflammation are also important to study because cognitive dysfunction is similar to every other chronic disease that is marked by higher levels of inflammation. We used a neuropsychological battery of tests to measure all aspects of cognitive functioning. At that point, each patient took Daily Brain Care, a dietary supplement formula of polysaccharides (sugars), antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and other important phytonutrients, for 12 months. They came back in for quarterly neuropsychological assessments and at 12 months they also had their blood drawn for re-assessment of the immune system and inflammation.

What we discovered at the end of the study was nothing short of remarkable. Our team demonstrated in memory disorder patients perhaps for the first time: (1) significant and sustained improvements in cognitive function over a one-year period; (2) a significant improvement in overall immune function; (3) a significant improvement in inflammatory status, which may lead to reduced neuroinflammation; (4) a significant increase in the production of stem cells, which may lead to repair of affected neuronal areas; and (5) a correlation between clinical (cognitive) and physiological (immune) function! Our results were truly astounding, and to date they have not been exceeded by any nutritional or pharmaceutical product.

We noted many impressive anecdotal changes as well. For example, the study neuropsychologist noted, “I have never seen more impressive changes in cognitive function in response to the dietary supplement in this trial compared to all of our other memory disorder studies.” One of the clinical coordinators noted, “I have observed multiple subjects dramatically improve in this study after taking the supplement by their ability to recall me and other items, to speak when they did not talk previously, and in the case of one subject, to actually begin walking again after being confined to a wheelchair for years. The improvements in many of our subjects were amazing.” One caregiver said, “After 1 month in the study, my husband began speaking again in full sentences, recalled my name, and became much more engaged in details about our family and our surroundings. The only change in our routine that was made was taking the dietary supplement.” Another caregiver said, “Within 3 months of being in the study, my wife began to talk about past experiences that were once familiar to her, she began to give me directions to places while we were in the car, and she began to ask for certain things that she hadn’t asked for in years, such as a soda after lunch. She has had a remarkable response to being in the study.”

Thus, as you can imagine, we were pleased beyond our best expectations regarding what our study showed. Additionally, I want to be clear that the study demonstrates the power and capability of nutrition. We did NOT treat, cure, manage, or mitigate disease, but we showed the ability of the body to repair and regenerate itself when given the proper raw materials (i.e., nutrients) to do so. This is the power of nutrition and is part of a fundamental principle that says that supplying the body the nutrients it needs that are typically missing in the diet today will allow the body to heal itself. Given the body’s innate intelligence, it can utilize important nutrients, particularly these important polysaccharides (sugars), to repair the damage that a lifetime of poor diet, lack of exercise, and chronic inflammation can cause.

Providing these sugars to someone, as we did with the subjects in our study, enables the body to utilize these substances in ways that scientists have started to understand over the last 30 years. These sugars do much more than just provide an energy source, which is what we commonly think that sugars do. In fact, they enable our cells to create all sorts of beneficial compounds in our body to turn on the "bioengineering of life." We showed a dramatic increase in adult stem cells, while simultaneously lowering levels of inflammation. These two important changes were crucial to showing the improvement in cognitive function, thus demonstrating links between how the immune system functions and its effect on the brain. Our study demonstrates how Daily Brain Care supplies the body significant amounts of sugars and other phytonutrients to enable it to repair itself.