In Berlin, 2016
Now that he is dead, I don’t have to concern myself any more about his dementia, his health, do I? It is over and all I can do is assure myself, whenever I feel sorrow and self-reproach that I didn’t do more, that I did do my best.
It wasn’t an easy task. Amidst this push to help support and improve his health, I had to nevertheless utilise what wisdom I possessed in acknowledging and accepting that he was (in spite of his dementia) a man of independence, a man with autonomy and intelligence, a man of pride, dignity and stubbornness, and therefore it was not in MY remit to make him choose anything. I could only offer.
I knew that it was difficult for him, as a father, to accept new (perhaps questionable) knowledge from his own daughter, a daughter he already considered somewhat eccentric! I knew for sure he had no real conviction that food, diet, was important in the make-up and functioning of our bodies.
I got that, because I was the same for most of my life. Food was food … it was there for us to enjoy, to relish, and although I knew that nutrition was important, I rather ignored that fact when it was suggested that I could perhaps improve my health by giving up something I was in love with or, rather, was addicted to. It was pure cognitive dissonance. And maybe greed.
This fit, adventurous man was first diagnosed with osteoporosis in January 2020. This was a shock in itself.
But it was my concern and horror when, in March 2021, he was then diagnosed with dementia with Lewy Bodies, a horrible and apparently incurable disease (and I am glad now that his GP did give us the gruesome details), that made me go and research ways in which we could help him mitigate it, or even stabilise it. I didn’t really imagine there was anything that could cure it.
But what did I know? Nothing, it turned out. Nothing. And when I saw that there was something, more than something, and that something involved diet, I was immediately able to throw away my past resistance (“Don’t make me give up pasta for goodness’ sake!”) and plunge straight into this world of beauty!
Because it is beautiful! The understanding I gained, that each and every component of the food we eat can feed, strengthen and renew each cell, the entire the structure of our bodies and that it can also poison and bring degeneration to those same cells, that same body, was miraculous to me!
This image shows a single cell, magnified umpteen times. An awe-inspiring thing of beauty!
Why hadn’t I realised this before?
Because I was not interested. Because I didn’t want to give up things I had come to love. Because I was young and felt invincible. Because I didn’t care for myself enough. Because I couldn’t be bothered.
But I cared about my father, and it was that care, that protectiveness, that horror at knowing what he was in for, that woke me up and made me bother.
And now he is dead.
But I did, to give myself credit, encourage him and I did succeed in arranging a visit to a nutritionist for advice. And she affirmed what I had learned, that sugar, refined flour and refined carbohydrates were best cut right down to help reduce insulin resistance & inflammation, and that the nutrition from bone broth (containing minerals and collagen for bone health), good ruminant meat, eggs, the glorious Omega-3 oil in salmon and sardines, coconut oil and MCT oil, with non-starchy vegetables, could only enhance his health, and certainly his brain function. More protein keeps muscles strong, and would guard against any sarcopenia, which would help avoid falls and thus fractures.
She agreed vehemently that there may have been important nutritional deficiencies caused by the over-prescription of the PPI, Omeprazole. She agreed that we should ensure he particularly had enough Vitamin B12, via animal-based foods and supplements, to replace any that had been lost.
Here is a Youtube video, put up as recently as 20 November 2023. It is a presentation by Dr Patrick Holford (www.foodforthebrain.org) and hosted by the B12 Deficiency Support Group.
'Is B12 deficiency Driving Cognitive Decline and Mental Illness?'
In the video, Dr Patrick Holford touches on the subject of Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs), a drug prescribed for stomach/digestive issues.
Look at this research he shows, published on 31 October 2023, regarding these 'dirty' (Dr Holford's word) drugs:
I've kept the above image big because it is so damned important, and so heartbreaking for me to realise that our father did take this drug, not only for weeks but for years. A canny doctor took him off it when she realised he was likely developing dementia. Too late I am afraid.
This hurts. It hurts multiplied by two because osteoporosis is also a side effect from taking this very dirty drug.
But getting back to the positive, to diet. I was heartened when he really endeavoured to reduce his sugar and flour intake! He wanted to lose the weight around his middle more than anything, and I didn’t blame him. He wanted to be able to wear his stylish trousers again!
A dandy in Darmstadt, May 2018, three years
before his dementia diagnosis.
I was glad, not only for that optimistic reason, but also because reducing any visceral fat could only help in reducing inflammation in his body. And hopefully his brain!
He could not longer cook, and happily neither could his live-in carer, and so my sister and I, who took over the care at weekends, were given the task of preparing the food for each coming week.
And I took such joy in learning to how to make bone broth, and in cooking the hearty stews he loved, using tallow or coconut oil rather than processed oils, and without resorting to commercial stock cubes and sugar-infused flavourings.
I learned to make flour-less muffins, rather like weeny pastry-less quiches, using eggs and salmon. I loved making Omega 3-loaded mackerel pate, as well as chicken liver pate.
Both my sister and I experimented and tried to produce healthy desserts (or, at least, healthier than bought versions) with no flour, and no sugar. My chocolate mousse, my truffles, made with coconut oil, cream, eggs, organic cacao powder (or, sometimes, very dark chocolate), and softened blueberries or prunes (to add at least some sweetness), were divine. And he loved them.
Did this culinary push make any difference? We'd been told that the prescribed drug, Donepizil, would work to hold the dementia at bay for only about a year before a gradual but untreatable decline would then start. But by mid-April 2023 he'd reached the two year mark! And so I felt a constant springing of hope in my heart that the dietary measures, and the B12 supplements, were doing something positive! Two years!
He did, though, gradually fall back into eating the alluring biscuits and pastries and, again, although it disappointed me, I could not blame him. His life had become smaller and I of all people knew what it meant to compulsively reach for comfort at difficult times. He had been doing well, though and, on top of the healthier meals, I did feel that the reduction in sugar and refined, processed products had been keeping him at least stable. Wishful thinking? I don't know.
Newspaper on pause, he stops to listen to a particular favourite (was it Layla, or Baker Street?) on Johnny Walker’s Sounds of the Seventies on Radio 2, October 2022.
But he was still doing his best to keep moving, keep reading, keep listening to music. We all celebrated his 90th birthday at his favourite dive in April 2023. He was eagerly anticipating a trip (by train, tube and bus) to The Proms with his helpmeet, his only grandson Sam, later in the year.
And it makes me weep, with hot tears that sting my eyes, but also with an inner anguish, to think that our efforts were, perhaps, too little, too late.
I use the word “perhaps” because around this time we did start to notice very small signs that the dementia was starting to leak through. Was it the increased sugar and flour? It is possible.
But then in May, a month after his final Covid 19 booster, he walked alone to the Co-op with the help of his walker, Giovanni. He had a 'freezing' episode whilst there. He also had a very avoidable accident/fall when his carer came to assist him. He was checked over a couple of days later at the hospital, with no apparent injuries apparent. However, by the end of the week, we realised he had had a stroke at some point during those few days. He had to be hospitalised.
During his two months there in hospital, I sat and watched my work being undone because he had to be fed manufactured liquid food via naso-gastric tube, along with supplements made with processed oil and sugary desserts. After the naso-gastric tube was removed, ready-cooked (pureed) food from Wiltshire Farm Foods were served. They were of reasonable quality ("Our meals contain none of the following ✗ Artificial Flavours ✗ Artificial Colours ✗ HVOs (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils) ✗ GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms"), but by then he could hardly eat anything.
Even though I sought to bring him some bone broth and MCT oil infused mousses, I knew it was a futile attempt.
So how will I ever know? Because, in spite of two months in hospital, he declined and then died five days after he was discharged.
Typing those words brings tears immediately. I repress them and instead my nose gets all painful and itchy and I sneeze uncontrollably. I sneeze out the pain. Little droplets of regret and agony spreading through the air around me.
But perhaps that is what I must do! Spread it! Just because he is dead, it does not mean that I can’t spread that knowledge, that information, that real hope that your fathers, your mothers, your loved spouses and siblings and precious friends, need not suffer! They need not suffer and they could even come to realise and accept that these ‘degenerative’ diseases are not inevitable at all! Or that, if already experienced, could be at least alleviated, if not cured!
Dr Bredeson's research suggests that the 'amyloid plaques' and protein tangles characteristic in dementias are not the cause but are rather a defence mechanism provided by the immune system to protect the brain against dangerous assaults. In fact, it was revealed recently that the 'amyloid plaque' hypothesis was founded on faulty research. https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/what-now-for-the-amyloid-hypothesis-15611. Some researchers are, in fact, calling dementia 'Type 3 Diabetes'. All interesting to consider!
Please, for pity’s sake, try and open your mind to this. Health is more than waiting until your body breaks down and then accepting drugs to deal with that breakdown. Health is potentially a radiant and vibrant state, reflecting your inner self. An inner self based on respect for and adoration of the incredible machine that is your body. Independence of mind will not just accept decline. Independence of mind is a refusal to believe everything you hear and read, without researching for yourself its validity!
Yes, that applied to me too. I knew I couldn’t take this information about diet and health without verifying it was from reputable and supported sources. I would have been naive otherwise, and foolish.
Even if my work in the kitchen could not overcome any damage already done by the drugs mentioned above, the reduction of sugar and inflammatory foods at least gave him a bit of chance to maintain his general health. It is something I have done and would recommend to anyone in any case.
Although occasionally I felt that I was on a fool's errand, I do give myself credit for being brave enough to at least consider things beyond my comfort zone.
Until now. Hah! My comfort zone! Now that he is dead, I have been avoiding information, whether via research paper, article or video, that may remind me of what I started to do and didn't finish.
Information that reminds me that, when in the hospital, I actually mourned the loss of my place in his kitchen, cooking him nourishing stews and soups. I had to give all that up and witness, over two months in the hospital, the absolute opposite approach to his nourishment. It bloody well hurt, and it felt very much like grief.
I have been avoiding such information because I have feared that I might read yet more recent research that would prove beyond doubt, real-life improvement in people similar to my father. I feared I would not be able to bear that. Too late for him, and too late for me to make a real difference.
Then this morning I saw a particular Youtube video entitled ‘Her Dementia is Gone!’. No thank you, I said. Please don’t remind me of what I couldn’t do!
I saw then that it was an interview between a very reputable (and very handsome!) carnivore-recommending doctor, Dr Anthony Chaffee, and the proprietor of a chain of nursing homes in the USA who has been seeking to improve his clients’ health through dietary adjustment. And some of his residents are getting better! So I watched it.
I had actually heard of this man whilst my father was still alive. As a result, I’d started to dream that, once my father was ensconced in his nursing home following his discharge from hospital, that I might be able to have some input at the home, for him primarily, but which might also start to improve the health of all the old people!
But have I got the emotional energy to keep on with that crazy dream now that he, the precious focus of my efforts, is dead? You see, his death was not an easy one. It left me and my sister full of agony, mostly because we had to surrender our own caring input, firstly to a hospital that was not run well and then, rather too late as it turned out, to a nursing home.
We had to make a decision, once he'd left hospital and was immediately seen to be coming to the end of his life, as to whether he should be hospitalised again when he contracted aspiration-associated pneumonia two days later. God forbid! There was no question about it!
And so we had then to decide whether we wanted him to actually be treated, in situ, for the pneumonia (he was dying anyway; was there any point?), and at the same time whether we wanted to see him in the terrible discomfort caused by his dementia or whether, alternatively, we could agree to the head nurses’s suggestion: that he be given ‘end of life care’.
End of life care equals the administering of drugs that ease the person from life to death.
Yes. We did agree, and he was unaware of anything, as far as we can tell, during his final hours. We were there when he died, and we were glad it was all over.
His suffering was over. From that point of view, there are no regrets. There are whispers occasionally, in my resting mind, that we may have robbed him of what a natural death would have given him, soul-wise. Did we rob him of something he needed spiritually at the end of his journey on earth purely because we could not bear to see him suffering bodily any more?
These are ethical, spiritual, religious, personal questions. Not everyone cares or thinks about such things. But many do, and I want to address them. Life does contain suffering, yes, but I believe it is our sacred duty to be awake, through our oft-expressed love, to information that may relieve or avoid suffering in our families, that may improve their lives!
Do we hold an unexamined belief that suffering is always inevitable? Or, put another way, can we believe that actually life is meant to be joyful, evolving and not devolving? Is deterioration natural or is it avoidable?
If we can address all these issues, perhaps we won’t be left with the pain of seeing a loved one suffering so badly, and certainly won’t be so likely to have to make life-and-death decisions (frankly, to be cruelly blunt, to feel like judge and executioner) at their end.
I would like to be able to help people avoid such a situation. I don’t care if I am seen to be unrealistic, or naive. I am proudly idealistic. I want to be part of this new movement, worldwide, led by compassionate doctors and researchers, who want to help us regain our health and our joy and who want to remind us that we are naturally designed to thrive. And that the food we eat is so incredibly important if we are to thrive.
If we unquestioningly choose the products of the commercially-driven processed food and pharmaceutical companies then, as these doctors point out, we will likely not thrive.
Big Food and Big Pharma’s profits, however, will.
So this is why I will keep on researching, and sharing, even though he, my treasured father, is dead.
THE END