24ME02 - The Dementia Epidemic: Evolution, Causes and the Role of Botanical Medicine

Speaker: Jason Miller, DACM, LAc  In recent years, technological advances have increased human life expectancy worldwide. However, our increased lifespan has not equated to an increase in our health span. In this lecture we explore the relationship between our minds, our microbiota, and the ecological networks that we live in to help us uncover some of the key physiological mechanisms underlying the development of mild cognitive impairment and the 4 most common forms of dementia: Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy body, and frontotemporal dementia.

We also dig into the powerful role that botanical medicine has to play in the management of the dementia epidemic. Combined with nutrition, lifestyle, dietary, and spiritual medicine, it is an essential part of both the prevention and treatment of cognitive decline, as well as a synergistic therapeutic strategy that can work in concert with symptomatic pharmaceutical medications.