A few months ago, I put a pistol (Sig Sauer P320 for the gun people out there) on a bedside table to remind me to clean it.

But I didn’t get to it right away. And then one day it was gone. After a frantic hour spent checking every possible part of the floor and bed where it could have fallen, I concluded that it had been stolen — probably by one of the heat pump repair guys who had recently been here.

Without proof of any kind, I couldn’t accuse anyone. So I called the sheriff’s department and reported the pistol “lost or stolen”.

Fast forward to this week. As I was organizing a messy closet, I pulled out a random box, and there was my pistol. I had no memory of putting it there, so my reaction was mixed: I was happy to have my favorite gun back. And spooked by the apparent memory glitch.

In other words, was this just a random “senior moment” with no lasting implications, or was it the beginning of a long-term decline that leaves me unable to recognize my kids?

Time will tell, but the broader point is that baby boomers are entering a stage of life when memory lapses stop being funny and start being scary. And we are apparently not alone:

Chris Hemsworth, Alzheimer’s and why Hollywood is suddenly obsessed with caregiving

(USA Today) − Chris Hemsworth is joining a growing list of Hollywood stars opening up about caring for their aging and sick loved ones.

Care advocates gathered at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5 for a screening of Hemsworth’s new documentary, “A Road Trip to Remember,” which follows Hemsworth and his father, Craig Hemsworth, on a motorbike trip across Australia. Craig Hemsworth is one of over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

“I just find myself wanting to spend more time with him,” Hemsworth says in the film’s trailer.

Hemsworth’s documentary will premiere on National Geographic and be available for streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu on Nov. 23, just six months after Bradley Cooper‘s “Caregiving” documentary released on PBS in June. Emma Heming Willis has become the face of spousal caregiving through various media appearances and her new book, “The Unexpected Journey,” where she talks about caring for her husband Bruce Willis. Seth Rogen produced a documentary that released in January 2025, “Taking Care,” which brought viewers inside his family’s life as he and his wife cared for his wife’s mother.

“For many years, people just didn’t talk about it,” said Jane Root, CEO and founder of Nutopia, the film production company that made Hemsworth’s documentary. “And suddenly, influential people like Chris and Seth and people are suddenly, like, this is something that needs to be talked about. We need to stop being scared of it, we need to take away the stigma of it.”

Big Pharma is Useless

Thirty million baby boomers vegetating in long-term care facilities for a trillion dollars a year is a future we absolutely have to avoid. And there is hope, though of course not from the pharmaceutical companies which have never, to my knowledge, actually cured anything. Here’s an excerpt from a possibly useful post by A Midwestern Doctor, who is gaining an audience on Substack:

Reversing Alzheimer’s — The Forgotten Causes and Cures Big Pharma Buried

Alzheimer’s dementia is one of the most significant medical challenges our country faces (e.g., it places an incredible burden upon society, e.g., last year it was estimated to cost the United States 360 billion dollars).¹ Yet, despite spending billions for research each year, cures remain elusive, something many believe results from the flawed belief that eliminating the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s will fix it. In turn, as I showed here:

• Decades of amyloid therapies have never produced a beneficial treatment.

• The newest “breakthrough” amyloid-eliminating monoclonal antibodies, at best slightly slow the progression of Alzheimer’s while simultaneously causing a host of side effects, including brain bleeding and swelling in over a quarter of recipients.

• The entire amyloid industry rests upon a fraudulent study no one wanted to retract due to how much was invested in the amyloid hypothesis.

In short, the money behind this juggernaut has caused research into the real causes of Alzheimer’s to be suppressed. For example, here I highlighted how coconut oil MCTs (safely) do more than any of the costly amyloid drugs — yet virtually no one knows this.²

Dale Bredesen’s Discovery

Many are also unaware of a 2022 study that should have revolutionized the entire Alzheimer’s field:

That protocol was based on Dale Bredesen’s insightful realizations that:

• Amyloid protein is a protective mechanism the brain uses to protect itself from stressors that endanger brain tissue — making attempts to treat Alzheimer’s by eliminating it doomed to fail.

• The brain is designed to be able to adapt to the needs of life, so it is always creating or pruning neural connections and brain cells. Alzheimer’s results from the loss of signals that sustain brain cells and the dismantling of neural connections, outweighing the formation of new neural connections, a process that gradually compounds over the decades.

• Rather than there being one type of Alzheimer’s, there are actually multiple types that each require different treatment approaches.

Note: Beyond the 2022 trial, which showed individually targeted therapies could shift the brain’s momentum from neurological degeneration to regrowth, a 2018 report of 100 patients from numerous providers also showed it treated Alzheimer’s, as did a 2024 case series of patients with remarkable results, and there are now neurologists around the country administering Bredesen’s protocol with success.

The 6 Types of Alzheimer’s Disease

As this understanding of Alzheimer’s has produced tangible results, this suggests the causes of Alzheimer’s that Bredesen identified indeed play a key role in the disease — particularly since many other datasets corroborate their contribution to Alzheimer’s. They are as follows:

Read the rest of Midwestern Doctor’s article here.

How Should Non-Experts Approach This?

We’re in a unique situation. The public health establishment is so riddled with corruption and conflicts of interest that nothing it says can be trusted. But alternative treatments seem to be mostly anecdotal and therefore not ready for prime time.

There may already be useful ways to prevent dementia and live well right to the end. But it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not. So… watch the studies as they’re published with an eye to things that might work. And try to keep track of your guns.

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