In February 2026, a report was released of a clinical trial using ‘Precision Medicine’ – lifestyle changes without drugs – to treat dementia. The results were impressive: improvement in cognition, memory, executive function and more, but it wasn’t the first time this approach had worked.
Main Points
- ‘Precision Medicine’ was first used to treat dementia patients in 2014;
- The rationale was to remove ‘insults’ from the brain and rebuild neural pathways;
- In that study, all patients showed some improvement in memory & thinking;
- Other researchers have since used similar approaches and showed similar results.
For brevity, I’ll refer to this 2025 trial as the Bredeson 2025 RCT (Randomised Controlled Trial) and provide a link to the full report, if you’re thirsty for detail: Precision Medicine Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease: Successful Randomized Controlled Trial. By the way, the report is a ‘pre-print’; the report hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published yet. That may take another six to 12 months.
(If you’re curious about the latest research says about the causes, contributors and how to avoid dementia without drugs, you may like to check what’s inside my plain-English eBook, Dementia: Keep Your Marbles.)
The First Signs Of Reversing Dementia
The Bredeson 2025 RCT isn’t the first time ‘precision medicine’ has improved memory and thinking in dementia patients; it’s just the first time it’s been done under strict clinical trial conditions.
Neurologist and researcher, Dr Dale Bredesen from the Pacific Neuroscience Institute, in California, USA, first published case studies of dementia patients whom he treated with precision medicine in 2014, 2016 and 2018. In the last and largest study, all 100 patients showed improvements in memory and thinking; some even went back to work. (Other researchers like Sherzai and Toups have shown similar results since then.) At the time, these results were dismissed by the medical establishment.
Bredesen’s Approach
Bredesen’s precision medicine approach, then and now, doesn’t involve drugs. It’s a whole-person approach designed to:
- Remove what he calls ‘insults’ to the brain (toxins, infections, inflammation, insulin resistance, hormone imbalances and nutrient deficiencies); and
- Rebuild the brain’s neural pathways and so restore brain function.
In short, this approach removes unhealthy influences on the brain, and nourishes and rebuilds it.
(By the way, precision medicine is not ‘personalised medicine’ – a term you may have heard of – which analyses a person’s genetic profile before attempting to design a unique treatment regime. That is far more complex and exploratory.)
Precision medicine may be the purest, simplest form of personalised medicine: understanding each patient’s metabolism and designing a precise treatment regime. In the case of the brain, Bredesen’s approach starts with removing toxins, infections and stress, then adds optimized nutrition, exercise, sleep, brain stimulation and diet supplementation.
This may sound very ‘ho hum’ but the power is in the precise customisation, particularly removal of the ‘insults’ to their brains that most people don’t know about.
The improvements documented in the 100 patients reported here provide support for the performance of a prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial, especially given the current lack of effective treatment for this common and otherwise terminal illness.
Response From Others
By the time Bredesen published his 2018 study, billions of dollars had already been spent worldwide on developing dementia drugs, over 400 of them without success. Almost all the drugs had failed to impact dementia, had severe side effects, or both (more on drugs later).
Even so, the notion that lifestyle interventions could reverse dementia was so outrageous, that Bredesen was pilloried, his methods criticised and his results dismissed.
Here are some quotes from the day. These may be the only times you’ve heard the name Dale Bredesen before now:
- New York Times: ‘… the suggestion that Alzheimer’s can be reversed through lifestyle adjustments has outraged doctors and scientists in the medical establishment, who have repeatedly said that there is little to no proof for such a claim, and expressed concern that the idea could harm a large group of vulnerable Americans.’
- Alzheimer Society Canada: ‘the Bredesen Protocol offers false hope of reversing Alzheimer’s disease,’
- Dr Joanna Helmuth from UCSF Memory and Aging Center in The Lancet: ‘…To date there is no evidence that intensive, costly regimens of dietary supplements are effective…the evidence does not support its claim to prevent and reverse cognitive decline…’
Perhaps unwisely, Bredesen gave his protocol a name, ReCODE (Reversing Cognitive Decline), wrote a book about it, The End of Alzheimer’s, and shared it with functional medicine practitioners worldwide. These actions garnered condemnation, and accusations that ReCODE was commercial, pricey and unproven. In 2018, it cost USD1,400 a year. In 2026, ReCODE is still under $2,000 including assessments, lab tests and practitioner visits. In another post, I compare price and performance of ReCODE with the current drugs.
One criticism was that patient case studies lacked the rigour of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT) – the gold standard of clinical trials. That’s undeniable, and it’s why Bredesen foreshadowed the need for an RCT and then put ReCODE through RCT methodology. The report of that trial, dated December 2025, is the one that’s just been released.
You can read the full analysis of that trial here.
…the suggestion that Alzheimer’s can be reversed through lifestyle adjustments has outraged doctors and scientists in the medical establishment..’
In Summary
The ‘Precision Medicine’ approach, which removes negative impacts on the brain and encourages neural pathways to rebuild, has previously shown promising results. ‘Precision Medicine’ is the title given by Bredesen, but others like Sherzai and Toups have shown similar results, using similar protocols with different names. The names are possibly less important than the principles, perhaps.
The Bredesen 2025 RCT report, released in February 2026, provided even stronger evidence for this approach, and was produced under stringent clinical trial conditions. You can read the full analysis here.
It’s likely we haven’t heard the last of this type of drug-free approach to treating dementia, and other chronic conditions.
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(If you’re intrigued by the often strongly-worded and strongly-defended opposing views on dementia treatment, you may like to see what’s inside my eBook, Dementia: Keep Your Marbles. It explains the evolution, treatments and controversy and the practical steps you can take to prevent, delay or reverse the disease, explained in everyday English.)
DEMENTIA:
KEEP YOUR MARBLES
How you can prevent, delay, even reverse Alzheimer’s Disease
