"I Don't Want to Get Alzheimer's"
This thought has gone through my mind ever since I watched my grandmother deteriorate from the disease 25 years ago.
And it's become a daily thought now, as I'm now helping to care for a close family member who has early Alzheimer's.
The good news? There's some relief that my family member has been stable for two years. Low-dose GLP-1 and daily exercise have made a real difference (even without following every lifestyle change I've recommended!).
The bad news? The memory slips are getting harder to ignore, especially behind the wheel. And I'm learning firsthand how hard it is to ask someone to change their habits when their brain prefers pleasure-seeking activities. (Try convincing someone that buying ice cream every day from the ice cream shop down the road could be accelerating their memory loss!).
Watching and experiencing the daily nuances of someone who I love struggle with words and memories has taken my fears from an abstract thought to something more personal — and it sent me to look at the research with a different kind of urgency.
That's how I ended up down a rabbit hole over the last 6 months, digging through PubMed on one specific mechanism that kept showing up as a suspected contributor to Alzheimer's disease: intestinal permeability (aka "leaky gut"). My functional medicine education didn't go into detail on this topic, and I wanted more evidence (especially human-based evidence) and more tools to address it.
And because I can't not teach what I learn, I turned all of it into a course (because there's too much to put into a 1 hour workshop or series of emails), which launches on Monday, August 10th!
I made this course like no other course I have taken. Inside, I'll cover:
- The current evidence on leaky gut and metabolic endotoxemia (with an emphasis on human trials, meta-analyses, and reviews, not speculation)
- The "protocol" I now use with my own patients, built from this research and years in clinic
- A concise 2-page clinical reference guide you can pull out mid-appointment
- A live Q&A and discussion on September 1st, where we can dig into your specific questions
If you've ever felt like you were guessing when a patient asks about "leaky gut," or you also wanted more evidence-based information on this topic, this is the course for you.
I put together a short intro video at the end of this email (fair warning: I'm still not a natural on camera!), or you can click the button below to learn more and register!
Note, if you are already a member of the Collective, you get access to this and all other courses.
Registration at this price ($197) closes August 14th.
This is the first course I've ever launched, and this topic mattered enough to me to make it happen. I hope you'll be there.
P.S. I don't like to sell anything through these emails, so I apologize for the nature of today's email. But because I want to continue to provide education, here's a link to a 2023 PubMed article on Alzheimer's and the gut connection!
