I Just Met Two of My Heroes

I’ve spent the past two days attending the NIC Assisted Living conference in Nashville, TN. They actually invited me to speak to a whole lot of industry operators, investors and vendors for the assisted living industry.

I was very excited. It’s great that people are interested in more healthy diets and lifestyles for assisted living.

The talk went well. There was a lot of interest in what I was doing.

That’s not the subject of this newsletter. It’s what happened in my free day in Nashville before my event.

A couple of months ago I received a call from someone in Knoxville, TN. His name is Dean. The conversation ran something like this:

“Hello. A Paradise for Parents. This is Hal”

“Hi. My name is Dean. You don’t know my but I want to thank you. Because of you I have my wife back.”

That kinda threw me for a loop. I asked him to elaborate. Turns out Dean’s wife Jodie was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at age 58. She had been fired from her job as a nurse. She couldn’t read. She couldn’t fold a dish towel, do laundry or cook anything. The doctors told them the typical stuff.

“Nothing you can do. Get her affairs in order.”

Dean watched some videos about Alzheimer’s. How the people just become worse and worse. Both he and Jodie were devastated and hoping for a miracle.

Dean kept Googling. He typed in ‘Alzheimer’s survivors’. The first page of Google had lots of articles saying there are no survivors. This is a terminal disease.

So he kept scrolling. After a couple of pages he saw articles about Dale Bredesen and the Bredesen Protocol. He also saw a video of Dale Bredesen interviewing some Alzheimer’s survivors.

That’s what he needed to see. He thought if there were a few people who came back from Alzheimer’s, then they had a shot at doing it themselves.

More research. He came across Dr Mary Newport. Dr Newport used Coconut oil and MCT oil to help her husband. Her husband improved a lot but then started going downhill and eventually died of it.

They added coconut oil and MCT oil to his wife Jodie’s diet.

He kept typing into the internet. He came across some of my podcasts. They listened. They implemented what I said we were doing in my homes:

• A very low-carb, carnivore diet

• Fasting

• Saunas

• Exercise

• Cut out all sugar

• Cold showers (I’m having a hard time convincing residents to do this one)

When she was diagnosed, Jodie had a MoCA score of 14. Fast forward a couple of years and her MoCA score is now 24.

She had lost 75lbs in weight. Dean was following her in this journey. He lost 155lbs. They feel amazing.

On Monday I spent the day with them. We walked around the Parthenon and Andrew Jackson’s estate (the “Hermitage”). We had dinner together.

I could not tell that Jodie had any memory issues at all.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you should give up. When faced with a terrible health condition, fight for your life. Even if you lose the fight, you went down swinging.

Be an inspiration to others. Jodie and Dean are an inspiration to me.