What Causes Alzeihmers?

   Well there are many contributing factors but let me add one.   A report in the recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience found that patients with Alzheimers mention changes in sleep patterns for months before it is diagnosed.  They nap longer and more fitful. They were high on the sleep disturbance index.  This offers us a correlation index but does not help us make a diagnosis of generating causes.

   Another piece: sleep apnea is also associated with this disease.  Those with chronic apnea are twice as likely to develop Alzheimers later on.  They have high levels of beta amyloid which clump around nerve cells and affect proper nerve transmission.
So we have hyperactive brains, combined with long daily naps and sleep apnea to produce Alzheimers Disease.

  Now my contribution:  I have seen apnea in my patients when they relive birth, consistently.  They lose their breath and seem “dead” for a minute or so.  No attempt at breathing.   Put a mirror to their mouths and there is nothing there.  It happens right after reliving a drugged birth.  It seems to have been part of the birth process where due to a massive input of anesthesia during the birth process their breathing was shut off for a minute or two.  They seem to relive it again and then with a sudden jerk they come out of it an begin what I term “locomotive” breathing.”  Is raspy and hoarse and lasts many minutes as the system tries to recuperate from its oxygen deprived trauma. But that apnea seems to become chronic, an imprint, that the follows the person throughout life.  It seems to stop when patients relive the birth process over and over again with all of its anoxia.   In short, they no longer are driven by the imprinted memory of oxygen deprivation to re-create the early trauma.

   There is something else these early traumas produce, and that is a hyperactive brain as it tries to overcome the imprint of death threatening events.   It is an imprint that must be combatted over and over again as the system is under attack by oxygen deprivation—by a memory of deprivation in the same way that the brain remembers deprivation of love.  And of course as the brain is driven  constantly there is bound to be dementia eventually as it has been working overtime for a very long time.   The top level brain cells have been recruited into battle too many times all due to the imprint, which is why a feeling therapy, a reliving, is essential to stopping the onset of the disease.   We need to slow it down.

   Sleep disturbance is a marker for Alzheimers because it signifies an overactive brain, a brain that is driven by lower-level imprints that keep the top level busy.  It won’t allow a drop into deep sleep levels because of the imprinted pain there.  That is why there is the use of sleep aids that suppress some of the pain and allow a descent into the unconscious.

  Since sleep apnea is highly correlated with later Alzheimers we need to ask the question about why, and for that we need to know where apnea comes from and what to do about it.   My guess is traumatic birth is a major factor; this is not a simple speculation.  I have seen it in the relivings of patients with heavily drugged birth.  It becomes a key marker for the appearance of the disease.  Let us not neglect it.