After years of promoting coconut oil for Alzheimer's, Dr. Newport backs off

[gleeson]

For several years, Dr. Newport was everywhere touting the near miracle that happened with her Alzheimer's afflicted husband Steve when she started giving him coconut oil. She did a video with Pat Robertson that attracted over 5 million viewers. She wrote a book -- Alzheimer's Disease: What If There Were A Cure? -- gave interviews, did other video. Others climbed on the bandwagon which resulted in a coconut-oil craze among the afflicted and their families as well as the rest of us who want to ward off this dreadful disease. Then suddenly -- a year of silence amid reports that Steve had suffered health setbacks. Now she's back with a post on her blog that clearly indicates she's no longer promoting coconut oil as a cure for AD. She also reports on what's been going on with Steve. His AD history doesn't make much of a case for coconut oil as a cure. For the text of her post and some comments by me, see bit.ly/1twi4Cm

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I read the article and do not interpret as "backing off". Possibly more to"

"So far so good. I can't fault Dr. Newport for doing the research and coming up with a plausible theory that initially appeared to work for Steve. Her use of coconut oil isn't much different from my use of the serotonin-booster 5-HTP, which I've found very helpful. But there is real scientific evidence supporting my use of 5-HTP. That kind of evidence has been conspicuously absent in the coconut-for-AD arena.

There's also a big difference between us in the way we discuss our "miracle" supplements. Whenever I've talked about my 5-HTP benefits, I note that I haven't seen reports about other people experiencing similar results... that my response seems pretty unique. I regularly describe Parkinson's as a very idiosyncratic disease, and -- as a result -- those of us with PD are apt to produce very different anecdotal reports about therapies. Here's somethings else: I am not making any money from my blog posts about 5-HTP."

[Hikoi]

From my reading Steve was also taking alzheimer medication throughout his two good years. I dont know the type or expected result from taking this but it certainly makes it difficult to separate conventional drug treatment results from use of coconut oil.

[pauline19 in reply to Hikoi]

The timeline of Steve Newport's use of both "conventional" AD meds plus ketones makes me think that the AD medications were the ones which are no longer considered useful for AD anyway. A family member of mine also had AD at the same time as Mr. Newport. Her neurologist told us at the time that the drug companies whose research which yielded these drugs had "bet on the wrong horse". When our loved one went into full time care, EVERYONE there was on those medications, all were as abysmally declining. You'll notice there are not television advertisements for AD drugs anymore.

Most neurodegenerative diseases are highly individual mostly because of poor understanding of their etiologies. We shouldn't condemn Dr. Newport. Like the mothers of autistic children, medicine has no " fix". We (and they) are on what is called "The Bleeding Edge of Medicine."

[Hikoi in reply to pauline19]

Thanks for your comments Pauline". I know very little about alzheimers or the treatment so did not know some drugs were not considered useful, I presume that means they are no longer used. I am not able to comment really except what i have read on sites such as Mayo Clinic

mayoclinic.org/diseases-con...

The advertising of medications to consumers only happens in the USA and NZ . I have never been exposed to AD ads so dont know about that.

I think our knowledge of neurological diseases has exploded in the past 10 years with the use of neuro imaging and the discovery of genetic links but we are just at the begining. So i dont see medicine as fixing us, treating yes and sometimes we regain health but not always. Its an interesting topic. Thanks for your response.

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etiologies - the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition