It’s in The Gamma
It was a few years ago that the pharmaceutical/medical complex came together and said that the main problem in dementia is either the synuclein tau or amyloid proteins form tangles in the neurons in the brain. You might say that these proteins short out the electrical circuitry of the brain. The research has gone into how we can rid the brain of these three proteins and if we can get rid of these then the dementia should be greatly improved.
Recently I had a patient who was in one of the studies that was lowering the levels of the amyloid protein in her brain. She had mild to moderate dementia and she had large amounts of amyloid proteins in her brain. The study involved taking a drug that reduced the amyloid levels to almost zero. The results from the study showed that nothing happened. In fact, the family said the patient might actually have gotten worse. It got me thinking, let’s say if your house was to flood you can get rid of the water but your still left with moldy carpets, warped floors, and moldy walls. In other words, there is more to dementia then just getting rid of a protein. How do you actually repair the electrical circularly of the brain?
Every week it seems there are more interesting articles looking at the pharmacological interventions being tried for dementia and I am not that impressed with the results. Lately though there are a few studies looking at the electrical aspect of dementia. Some of these studies have several hundred patients involved in the study. In one they took people with mild to moderate dementia and they looked at the gamma electrical oscillations in the brain. Which we do know are involved in memory, most of these studies showed very promising results. So I did a little deeper research and discovered that the potassium channels in the brain are very vital in controlling the gamma oscillations. It is the potassium channels that are key to electrical activity of the brain and my feeling is that it’s the electrical activity of the brain that is really causing the dementia. In my own clinic over 50% of our patients have shown improvement in cognition where they are able to drive a car now and have meaningful conversations with their families and able to enjoy life. The more I look at the dementia the more I feel the answer is not so much in drug manipulation but in the electrical manipulation of the brain. As I said in a recent article titled “It is the electrical system stupid” there is hope!
