As part of my commitment to the field of medicine, I have taken a personal and professional oath to continue learning and advance my knowledge of therapeutics and techniques throughout my career. In fact, this Continuing Medical Education (CME) is legally mandated by state medical licensing boards and requires physicians to spend quite a bit of time learning from others.

As such, I have added a new category to the website and will be occasionally posting thoughts about seminars, webinars, talks, panels, and other sorts of learning experiences I have along the way. It is my hope that I will be able to introduce you, dear reader, to broader medical terms and horizons while cementing certain important information in my mind.

The first installment in this series is a webinar I attended tonight about Mild Cognitive Impairment and a proposed medical intervention. Mild Cognitive Impairment is a relatively benign condition, but has been strongly linked to Alzheimer’s disease, which is obviously devastating to many individuals and families. It has been proposed that early intervention of metabolic management can help to prevent the disease from progressing as quickly as it might if it had gone undetected.

Okay. Early intervention makes sense. But what the heck is metabolic management?

It has been proposed that an imbalance in the metabolites that help neurons in your brain communicate with each other may cause or accelerate symptoms of Mild Cognitive Impairment by inducing brain atrophy. It’s the old “use it or lose it” mantra. If you can’t use those neurons, they will stop working.

This is the first time in my medical career that I have been introduced to the term “medical food”. Apparently a drug can be considered a medical food if it meets several criteria including the fact that it must be used for management of distinctive nutritional needs in an individual that otherwise lacks the ability to get that nutrition from normal food.

Cerefolin is a medical food that was originally designed to meet the nutritional needs of patients that were lacking in methylcobalamin that helps the body break down homocysteine. What the heck are methylcobalamin and homocysteine? Doesn’t really matter, but not having enough of one or too much of the other is virtually incompatible with life. It has also been suggested by scientific research that lower levels of homocysteine help protect the brain from atrophy by promoting neuron communication. In turn, Cerefolin may help prevent or slow Mild Cognitive Impairment by preventing brain atrophy by decreasing levels of homocysteine.

Are you at risk of developing Mild Cognitive Impairment? Only your age, family history, and genetic make-up can really answer that question. They are also the three main factors that will determine if Mild Cognitive Impairment develops (deteriorates) into Alzheimer’s disease. If you are getting older, have a parent or grandparent that experienced memory loss in their later years, and are currently worried about recent memory problems, you should speak to your primary care doctor.