Alzheimer’s was not invented last Tuesday

Last week, a friend sent me a video of a young man who works as a personal trainer and nutritionist. The video was posted on Instagram, in which he claims that Alzheimer's disease is an invention of greedy pharmaceutical companies selling false hope and that he can cure it through diet and a regular exercise programme. What startled me was not the claim itself but the number of likes and comments beneath it, as I saw several people agreeing with him and asking how they could buy his training package.

I felt obliged to reply, so I commented on his post that I believed he was misleading his viewers. Alzheimer's disease has been with us for a very long time. What has changed is not the existence of the disease but our ability to detect it. Physicians of earlier generations had few tools to separate it from what was casually believed to be a normal part of ageing, and fewer people lived long enough for Alzheimer's to become common. I also reminded him that an unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity are documented risk factors for dementia, and I cited medical journals for him to read. He promised to edit his video but kept trying to sell me what he claimed was an Alzheimer's treatment package.

The frustrating part is that some of what he was saying was true. Large scientific reviews suggest that a substantial share of dementia cases worldwide are linked to risk factors we can modify. These factors include inactivity, obesity, diabetes, smoking, hearing loss, and social isolation. Exercise and a sensible diet genuinely matter. But there is a big difference in distance between saying "this reduces your risk" and "this cures the disease", as the latter is clearly misleading.

During my clinical work, I sat with families who stopped a relative's medication because someone online promised a natural cure and who then blamed themselves when the decline continued. I have also seen households spend their savings on supplements and programmes that do not work.

The Internet has always been a marketplace for bad ideas; some of these are less harmful than others. What troubles me is the newer species of misinformation where people who hold a real qualification in one field quietly extend its authority into another. A certificate in nutrition and personal training is a genuine achievement, yet it is not a licence to make a diagnosis, prescribe, or to tell a frightened family that a neurodegenerative illness will be cured by a meal plan.

This is why I read with interest that China's Internet regulator now requires creators posting on medicine, law, finance and education to submit degrees, licences or certifications for verification, with platforms responsible for checking them. While this regulation prevents the public from being scammed, there are those who worry that it allows the government to easily censor independent analysts, economists, or journalists who question official state narratives.

In my opinion, the answer is not to silence the unqualified but to crowd them out. Many professionals who hold the relevant training are not active on social media and then complain about what fills the space they abandoned. If we do not explain Alzheimer's disease to the public in clear, generous language, someone will certainly be selling false hopes.