CNN

By Jessie Yeung, CNN

(CNN) — Didarul Islam, a 36-year-old New York Police Department officer, was among four people killed Monday when a gunman stormed the lobby of a sprawling office tower in Midtown Manhattan and opened fire.

A Bangladeshi immigrant hailed as a hero by city officials, Islam leaves behind two young sons and his wife, who is pregnant with their third child.

Islam had been off duty but in uniform working security in the building when he was shot and killed by Shane Devon Tamura, 27, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Tamura also shot a security guard and three others before fatally shooting himself, police said.

Islam “was doing the job that we asked him to do,” Tisch said at a news conference Monday night. “He put himself in harm’s way, he made the ultimate sacrifice – shot in cold blood, wearing a uniform that stood for the promise that he made to this city. He died as he lived, a hero.”

Islam had served in the NYPD’s 47th precinct in the Bronx for 3 1/2 years, Mayor Eric Adams said at the news conference.

He was his father’s only son, said Adams, who met with Islam’s family Monday night and told them, “He was a hero and we admire him for putting his life on the line.”

“Everyone we spoke with stated he was a person of faith and a person that believed in God and believed in living out the life of a godly person,” the mayor said. “He was saving lives. He was protecting New Yorkers. He embodies what this city is all about. He’s a true-blue New Yorker, not only in a uniform he wore.”

Messages honoring the fallen officer and expressing condolences to his family have flowed in from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and police departments as far away as Los Angeles.

“Police Officer Didarul Islam represented the very best of our department,” the NYPD posted on X. “He was protecting New Yorkers from danger when his life was tragically cut short today. We join in prayer during this time of incomprehensible pain. We will forever honor his legacy.”

Just past midnight Tuesday, officials lined the streets outside a hospital to perform a “guard of honor” as Islam’s body was transferred to an ambulance. Some saluted, while others held their hands over their hearts as he was wheeled out.

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

Dr. Uri Manor feels like much of his early life was blessed by fate.

Born with genetic hearing loss that enables him to hear only about 10% of what others might, Manor was diagnosed at age 2, when he happened to be living in Wichita, Kansas – the home of what he describes as “one of the most advanced schools for children with hearing loss, maybe in the world.”

“It wasn’t clear if I would ever learn language, if I would ever be able to speak clearly,” said Manor, now 45. “So I was very lucky, really weirdly lucky, that we were living in Wichita, Kansas, at the time.”

Working in Wichita with experts at the Institute of Logopedics, now called Heartspring, Manor learned to speak.

That same sort of serendipity led Manor into an unexpected career studying hearing loss himself, first at the US National Institutes of Health and, now, leading his own lab at the University of California, San Diego, where his research into ways to restore hearing was supported by a major five-year NIH grant.

But that’s where Manor’s luck ran out. His grant was terminated in May by the Trump administration as part of its policies targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives; Manor’s funding had been awarded through a program that aimed to promote workforce diversity, for which he qualified because he has hearing loss.

Now, Manor’s research is in limbo, like that of thousands of other scientists whose work is supported in large part by the federal government and who’ve been affected by grant terminations. And the halt comes as research into hearing loss, which affects as many as 15% of American adults and 1 in 400 children at birth, had recently shown signs of rapid advancement.

Manor as a child at the Institute of Logopedics in Wichita, Kansas, where he learned to speak. Courtesy Chava Manor

‘I fell in love with the hair cell’

It was intense curiosity about the world that led Manor into a career in science, where early on, fate seemed to strike again. As a researcher at the NIH and Johns Hopkins working toward his Ph.D., Manor hoped to find an adviser interested in how magnetic fields could influence cells – an obsession that stemmed from a fascination with animals’ ability to navigate using magnetic fields of the Earth.

“I was describing that to a physicist PI [primary investigator] at the NIH, and he goes, ‘Yeah, I can’t support that project, but what you’re describing sounds a lot like the hair cells of the inner ear. You should go talk to this PI, who studies hair cells,’” Manor recalled.

Despite spending much of his time at the audiologist’s office, he said, “I’d never thought about the ear.”

That PI, Dr. Bechara Kachar, showed him microscope images of hair cells in the inner ear, which enable us to hear, and Manor remembers being stunned.

“I fell in love with the hair cell, these mysterious cells in our ear, because the system was so amazing, how it all comes together and how it all works,” Manor said. “I got goosebumps. I have hearing loss, and I never thought about studying it. But now I was in this room falling in love with this system. I was like, ‘What if this is like my destiny? What if this is what I’m supposed to be doing?’”

In 2023, Manor received his first R01 grant from the NIH, a major five-year award that would support his lab’s work on ways to restore hearing. Again, serendipity had struck; the R01 grant process is intensely competitive, funding only a fraction of the applications the biomedical research agency gets. Young researchers are advised to apply to research funding programs where they may have a unique edge, to improve their odds, Manor said.

There was one that seemed a perfect fit; he was encouraged by mentors to apply to a program at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders that aimed to promote workforce diversity. It was specifically designed to support early-stage researchers “from diverse backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups,” such as people with disabilities. Manor qualified because he has “congenital severe-to-profound hearing loss,” he said. “It felt right.”

“I fell in love with the hair cell, these mysterious cells in our ear, because the system was so amazing, how it all comes together and how it all works,” Manor said. Pictured here: a microscope image of mouse hair cells from Manor’s lab. The pink tips show the result of gene therapy helping the hairs grow. Uri Manor and Yuzuru Ninoyu

Even at the time, Manor said, he acknowledged the risk that government initiatives supporting DEI may not always be popular. His biggest concern, though, was that he might not be able to renew his grant through the same program after its five years were up.

But his luck turned. In late May, he received notification from the NIH that, only two years in, his five-year grant had been canceled. The reason: The Trump administration was targeting programs promoting DEI.

“Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness,” the notice read. “It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize such research programs.”

No more funding would be awarded, it continued, and all future years on the grant had been removed.

“No one ever imagined that a grant could be canceled in the middle of an award period,” Manor said. “It might be naïve and incorrect, but when you get a five-year grant from the NIH, that’s a five-year contract, and you make plans based on five years. … That’s really kind of rocked our world.”

A spokesperson for the NIH told CNN: “The study itself has value, however unfortunately it was funded under an ideologically driven DEI program under the Biden Administration. In the future, NIH will review, and fund research based on scientific merit rather than on DEI criteria.”

Manor spent the next two weeks sleeping two to three hours a night, writing new grant proposals to try to replace the lost funds. But the termination meant his lab had to stop experiments, some of which had taken years to set up. Manor took that measure in an attempt to avoid having to lay off staff members – which he ultimately had to do as well.

An issue affecting millions

Hearing loss affects more than 30 million people in the US, with prevalence rising as people age. Recently, the field has taken leaps forward, with trials of gene therapies, which deliver working copies of genes to make up for mutated ones that cause deafness, helping children hear for the first time.

“We’re at the threshold of a brave new world, so to speak,” said Dr. Charles Liberman, a senior scientist and former director of the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass Eye and Ear, one of the largest hearing research laboratories in the world. “It’s pretty incredible, the progress that’s been made in the last 10 or 15 years, on understanding what goes wrong in the ear and having a pretty good handle on what kinds of approaches might work to cure sensorineural hearing loss.”

Liberman anticipates breakthroughs in the next five to 10 years in slowing age-related hearing loss as well and, “perhaps farther in the future, to actually reverse age-related hearing loss.”

Liberman said Manor – with whom he’s collaborated in the past – is contributing to the field’s advancements.

“He has not been in the field for terribly long, but he’s already made a big impression because of the incredible sort of computational approaches he takes to analyzing data from the inner ear,” he said.

“His grant got cut because it was a diversity initiative,” Liberman continued, “but Uri’s research is top quality, and I’m sure it would have been funded just on its own merit.”

Dr. Uri Manor warns about the effects of funding cuts on scientific progress. “No matter what your political leanings are, you have a 1 in 400 chance of having a child with hearing loss,” he said. Courtesy Uri Manor

A reversal of fortune

Manor’s was one of thousands of NIH grants cut by the Trump administration, amounting to almost $3.8 billion in lost funding, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Others canceled under the banner of combating DEI ideology include those focused on HIV, where researchers reported receiving notification identical to Manor’s.

But recently, Manor’s fortunes seemed to have changed again. A federal judge ruled in June that it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants in areas including racial health disparities and transgender health. Manor’s is among the grants included, and he received notice that the funding should come through.

Still, he said he worries about whether that decision will hold through future court challenges. And he, like so many other scientists affected by the administration’s drastic cuts to research funding, warns about the effects on scientific progress.

“No matter what your political leanings are, you have a 1 in 400 chance of having a child with hearing loss,” he said. Anyone dealing with medical conditions “will benefit from the amazing advances of science and our biomedical research force.”

But he also emphasized the importance of recognizing that research like his is supported by taxpayers, some of whom “are struggling to pay their own bills, who are struggling to pay their kids’ doctors bills.”

“And some of their taxpayer dollars are coming to my lab,” he said. “That’s a huge responsibility and privilege, and we have to make sure we’re doing good with it. For me, that’s a really powerful motivating factor, and I would like to believe that we’re doing it.”

“I honestly thought I was losing my mind, and the fear of losing my mind was frightening,” Maida told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the 2024 CNN documentary “The Last Alzheimer’s Patient.”

After 20 weeks in a randomized clinical trial designed to drastically change her diet, exercise, stress levels and social interactions, Maida’s cognition improved. She was able to read and recall novels and correctly balance spreadsheets again. A blood test even found levels of amyloid, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, were retreating in her brain, according to the study published in June 2024.

“I’m coming back. It was really good — like I was prior to the disease being diagnosed,” Maida, now 68, told a researcher on the study. “An older but better version of me.”

Maida’s cognition showed additional improvement, however, after she completed a total of 40 weeks of intensive lifestyle changes, said principal investigator Dr. Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and creator of the Ornish diet and lifestyle medicine program.

Ornish gave a study update on Tuesday at the 2025 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto.

While not everyone in the 26-person interventional group benefited, 46% showed improvement in three of four standardized tests, he said, including one that measures changes in memory, judgment and problem-solving as well as the ability to function at home, practice hobbies and practice personal hygiene.

“An additional 37.5% of people showed no decline in cognition during those 40 weeks,” Ornish said. “Thus, over 83% of patients improved or maintained their cognition during the five-month program.”

The new findings mirrored those of other studies on lifestyle interventions, he said, including the recent US POINTER study, the largest clinical trial in the United States to test moderate lifestyle interventions over two years in people who are at risk but do not yet have Alzheimer’s disease.

“Our study complements these findings by showing, for the first time, that more intensive lifestyle changes may often stop or even begin to reverse the decline in cognition in many of those who already have Alzheimer’s disease, and these improvements often continue over a longer period of time,” Ornish told CNN.

And unlike available medications for Alzheimer’s, he added, lifestyle changes have no side effects, such as bleeding and swelling in the brain that may occur with the newest class of drugs.

EmblemHealth, a New York-based insurance company, announced Tuesday that it will be the first health insurer to cover the Ornish lifestyle medicine program for patients who have early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

‘Eat well, move more, stress less and love more’

The lifestyle intervention Ornish created — which he calls “eat well, move more, stress less and love more” — has been tested before. In 1990, Ornish showed for the first time in a randomized clinical trial that coronary artery disease could often be reversed with nothing more than diet, exercise, stress reduction and social support.

The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, declared in 2010 that Ornish’s program for reversing heart disease was an “intensive cardiac rehabilitation” and that it would be eligible for reimbursement under Medicare.

Additional research has shown the same four-part program can lower blood sugars and heart disease risk in patients with diabetes, reduce prostate cancer cell growth, improve depression and even lengthen telomeres, the protective caps of chromosomes that are worn away by aging.

During the Ornish intervention, one group of people consumed a strict vegan diet, did daily aerobic exercise, practiced stress reduction and engaged in online support groups. The rest of the participants were in a control group and were asked to not make any changes in their daily habits.

Therapists led hour-long group sessions three times a week in which participants were encouraged to share their feelings and ask for support. Meditation, deep breathing, yoga and other ways to reduce stress took up another hour every day. The program also encouraged participants to prioritize good-quality sleep.

Supplements were provided to everyone in the intervention group, including a daily multivitamin, omega-3 fatty acids with curcumin, coenzyme Q10, vitamin C and B12, magnesium, a probiotic, and Lion’s mane mushroom.

In addition to online strength training led by a physical trainer, people in the intervention attended hour-long video classes on vegan nutrition hosted by a dietitian. Then, to ensure a vegan diet was followed, all meals and snacks for both participants and their partners were delivered to their homes.

Complex carbs found in whole grains, vegetables, fruits, tofu, nuts and seeds made up most of the diet. Sugar, alcohol and refined carbs found in processed and ultraprocessed foods were taboo. While calories were unrestricted, protein and total fat made up only some 18% of the daily caloric intake — far less than the typical protein intake by the average American, Ornish said.

Working harder pays off

People in the intervention group who put the most effort into changing their lifestyle have the most improvement in their cognition, said Ornish, founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and coauthor of “Undo It! How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.”

“There was a statistically significant dose-response relationship between the degree of adherence to our lifestyle changes and the degree of improvement we saw on measures of cognition,” Ornish said.

The 25 people in the study’s original 20-week control group — who did not receive the intervention — had shown further cognitive decline during the program. They were later allowed to join the intervention for 40 weeks and significantly improved their cognitive scores during that time, Ornish said.

It all makes sense, said co-senior study author Rudy Tanzi, an Alzheimer’s researcher and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“If you picture a brain full of damage as a sink full of water, when you just turn off the tap, it takes a long time for that sink to slowly drain, right?” Tanzi told CNN in 2024. “If you want the amyloid to go down in 20 weeks, as we found on one blood test, you’re going to need a Roto-Rooter.”

Additional blood testing may offer insights

In the 2024 study, a blood test called plasma Aβ42/40 showed a significant improvement in the original intervention group. Aβ42/40 measures the level of amyloid in the blood, a key symptom of Alzheimer’s.

Tests that measure amyloid in different ways, however, did not show improvement, Dr. Suzanne Schindler, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who specializes in blood biomarkers told CNN at the time.

There was no significant change in a test for amyloid called p-tau 181, considered to be a superior measure of Alzheimer’s risk, said Schindler, who was not involved in the study. Nor was there any change in glial fibrillary acidic protein, or GFAP, another blood biomarker that seems to correlate reasonably well with Alzheimer’s disease.

“If one of these markers improves, you typically see all of them improve, so the fact they did not makes me wonder whether this effect is real,” Schindler said. “If they were to repeat the study with a much larger population for a longer period of time, perhaps more change could be seen.”

Over the complete 40-week program, however, a number of people in the intervention group did continue to improve their Aβ42/40 scores, according to the study update.

“Changes in amyloid — as measured as the plasma Aβ42/40 ratio — occur before changes in tau markers such as p-tau 218, so this is not surprising after only 40 weeks,” Ornish said.

For Ornish, who has watched members of his family die from Alzheimer’s disease, the study’s results are important for one key reason — hope.

“So often when people get a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s, they are told by their doctors that there is no future, ‘It’s only going to get worse, get your affairs in order.’ That’s horrible news and is almost self-fulfilling,” Ornish said.

“Our new findings empower patients who have early-stage Alzheimer’s disease with the knowledge that if they make and maintain these intensive lifestyle changes, there is a reasonably good chance that they may slow the progression of the disease and often even improve it,” he said.

“Our study needs to be replicated with larger, more diverse groups of patients to make it more generalizable,” Ornish said. “But the findings we reported today are giving many people new hope and new choices — and the only side effects are good ones.”

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

Download Transcript Episode Transcript

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:00:00 There are nearly 7 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. Chances are you probably know someone who’s been affected by it. It’s the most common neurodegenerative condition in the world. I’ve been reporting on this for more than two decades, and any progress in the field has seemed incremental at best, leaving most patients and their loved ones with few options. But in the process of filming a recent documentary called The Last Alzheimer’s Patient, I saw some incredible signs of hope. Meeting people all across the country who had been diagnosed with or at high risk of the disease. And I saw Alzheimer’s slowed, prevented and, yes, even sometimes reversed. Importantly, it wasn’t always about new, expensive or experimental drugs, but lifestyle changes instead. I know it’s hard to believe. So I think you just need to hear it for yourself. Here’s part one of my documentary, The Last Alzheimer’s Patient.

Cici Zerbe 00:01:16 I could use a strong cup of coffee.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:01:28 This is Cici Zerbe and her husband John, back in 2019.

Cici Zerbe 00:01:33 When you come see Grandma

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:01:37 Cici is best described as the matriarch of a huge tight knit family.

Cici Zerbe 00:01:43 Reunion. Yeah.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:01:47 Over her 80 years on Earth, she has created a rich life filled with love and lasting memories.

Cici Zerbe 00:02:00 Oh my goodness.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:02:01 But in early 2018, her family began to notice something had changed.

John Zerbe 00:02:12 She would forget things. Couldn’t remember what we were supposed to be doing. And it slowly got worse until she would repeat herself about three times.

Cici Zerbe 00:02:27 What did I drive you crazy about so much?

00:02:30 At first, she didn’t believe us that she had it. No, that’s no big deal. Just repeat myself once in awhile. Who cares?

Cici Zerbe 00:02:41 John being the kindest husband in the world, He said, to you, do you do your part yourself a lot? But there is something more too. He said, Let’s just go see a doctor.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:03:03 A neurologist diagnosed Cici with mild cognitive impairment and dementia due to Alzheimer’s. And scans soon confirmed the worst. Her brain showed signs of the disease. Now, Cici was no stranger to Alzheimer’s. She had had loved ones she watched wither away slowly from it.

Cici Zerbe 00:03:26 My grandmother. She would sit for ever and just twiddle her that and stare into space and wouldn’t talk too much.

John Zerbe 00:03:39 Her mother. They finally put her in a home because her father couldn’t take care of her. My greatest fears were that she would end up like her mother and grandmother where I couldn’t take care of her.

Cici’s granddaughter 00:03:51 It was a hard word to hear: Alzheimer’s. It hit really deep. You know you don’t want to lose your grandma.

Cici’s daughter 00:04:02 The worst part was seeing my mom being uncomfortable going to parties and not being herself. The person that we love and not be confident in herself like she was.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:04:19 When the doctor told you and you got your cognitive testing, how did they tell you?

Cici Zerbe 00:04:25 Well, I had an office visit to get all the results of the tests. And he said, well, there is a memory problem, but I have the best place for you. And that was here in Sausalito.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:04:45 And that’s where I first met Cici and John five years ago. I’ve made my way to Sausalito, California. I’m going to spend time here with this world renowned doctor who believes he’s figured out a way not just to prevent Alzheimer’s, but to reverse it.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:05:03 When people get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it’s a progressively isolating experience.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:05:09 In 1990, Dr. Dean Ornish changed the medical world with his groundbreaking work on heart disease. His randomized clinical trial was the first to show that coronary heart disease could be reversed with nothing more than stress reduction, social support, diet and exercise.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:05:28 Part of the value of science is to increase awareness.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:05:31 While Ornish’s approach has sometimes been criticized for being too strict, not practical enough. Some others have pointed out a lack of research showing that plant based diets could definitively decrease disease. But Ornish turns to his decades of work as proof.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:05:49 You really can eat more and weigh less if you know what to eat.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:05:52 That what is good for the heart is almost certainly good for the brain.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:05:56 These same lifestyle changes could reverse high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type two diabetes. Obesity. Early stage prostate cancer can be slowed, stopped, even reversed. And now we’re hoping to show that these same lifestyle changes may reverse the progression of early stage Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:06:15 Five years ago, in the early stages of the study, do you remember what you’re experiencing before your diagnosis?

Alzheimer’s patient 00:06:23 I couldn’t formulate words.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:06:26 I spent some time with patients and their support partners for their four hour long three day a week meetings.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:06:35 And I got a really detailed look at the Ornish Lifestyle Intervention program:the exercise, he yoga and the meditation regimen, socially sitting in on their support groups and eating the provided plant based meals. What do you tell the participants in the tribe?

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:06:57 What we tell them that we don’t know if this is going to work, but we hope that it does. If you’re trying to give people the message that you can reverse something, that you need to have really solid science from randomized trials before doing that.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:11 It all matters. Preserving, even restoring the memories of a life well lived.

Cici Zerbe 00:07:18 That no matter what happens, if I don’t get better, just know that somewhere deep down outside my brain, I will always love him.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:33 After the break, Dr. Ornish is ready to release his findings. It seems like a lifetime has passed since I first met Dr. Dean Ornish in Sausalito, California. It was five years ago, but since then, a global pandemic shut down the world, drove up loneliness, drove up disconnection. But in 2024, we finally got word that Dr. Ornish was ready to release his findings to us. Five years ago, one of the things that you were trying to figure out is could those lifestyle changes in some people actually lead to a reversal of Alzheimer’s disease?

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:08:12 Yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:13 What’s the answer?

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:08:14 The answer is in many people it did.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:16 I mean, it’s extraordinary in reversing something that seems so preordained. It’s fixed. This is my life now. It sounds extraordinary.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:28 It is the first randomized controlled clinical trial showing that some Alzheimer’s patients could experience cognitive improvement in just five months, with intensive lifestyle changes alone. .

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:43 And importantly, those who did not make any changes in the trial worsened.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:08:49 So the more you change, the more you improve. But to get reversal, you have to make really big changes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:08:56 Which again, the big change is we’re talking about a vegan diet.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:09:00 Yeah. And it’s not just a vegan diet. You know, Twinkies are vegan. You know, it’s a healthy vegan diet. It’s fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products as close to possible as they come in nature.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:12 Half an hour to an hour of moderate or brisk activity or three times a week. And groups support. And there was yoga slash meditation. You could do it in a secular way or you could do it however you wanted to do it.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:09:25 For an hour a day, for an hour. It’s a big commitment.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:29 A big commitment, but also doable. She did it and now I wanted to see how she was doing. It has been five years since she first joined that study. How are you?

Cici Zerbe 00:09:46 I’m good. I’m better. Yes, I’m.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:50 Good to see you.

Cici Zerbe 00:09:51 Same here in five years. I can’t believe it.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:58 How have you been?

Cici Zerbe 00:09:59 I’ve been great. I’ve been fine. I live with this man who has the patience of a saint. And that helps. That helps.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:10:10 Cici is doing very well. She goes out in the morning, she’ll go for a walk almost every morning. She was for a walk. I think she’s doing very well. Does it surprise you?

John Zerbe 00:10:19 Yes. After seeing her mother and grandmother? Yes. Because I was certain by this time she’d have been at home or something.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:10:25 How are you doing now? Do you think, as compared to five years ago?

Cici Zerbe 00:10:31 Much better. Much better.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:10:34 Did this help reverse some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s?

Cici Zerbe 00:10:37 Yes. Yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:10:40 I guess the question is why? Right. What do you attribute this to?

Cici Zerbe 00:10:45 The program. The meditation, The diet. The exercise. My choice of a meal. Before this was a breaded veal cutlet. I haven’t had 1 in 5 years.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:11:01 And there is this other crucial element. Got to have a partner. John did every step of the program right alongside Cici. The food was a little bit hard to get used to.

John Zerbe 00:11:16 I miss my biscuits and gravy. Just doing without for now.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:11:22 Cici is now 85 years old. John 92.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:11:28 For Cici, she was initially randomly assigned to the comparison group of our study, so she didn’t make changes for the first 20 weeks and she got worse and then she crossed over, got the program. Since then, she’s shown improvement in three of the four tests and no change in one of them.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:11:44 So for the first 20 weeks, she was sort of living her life and everything worsened.

Dr. Dean Ornish 00:11:50 It also shows you how dynamic these biological mechanisms are in both directions. You can get better quickly and get worse quickly.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:11:57 Okay. And really good. I got to say, this is a good looking family here. I had a chance to sit down with a few members of the Zerbe family. Cici’s done well.

Cici’s daughter 00:12:08 That we know.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:12:09 We’re including their daughters, Frannie and Alisha. Alisha, I don’t want to overstate the impact of this or understated. I want to be just really fair about this for people who may be dealing with this. How would you describe the impact that this program has had on Cici?

Alisha 00:12:26 Tremendous. It’s really helped. It’s, I think, slowed it down. It’s just amazing, in my opinion. I mean, how many people five years into dementia get to go outside and go for a walk by themselves every day? Not very many. Take a moment to gather your awareness in this body, in this moment.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:12:49 Cici I remember when we spoke back in 2019, you were very clear with me that one of your greatest fears was going through the same thing you had seen with your mom and your grandma. Do you still fear that?

Cici Zerbe 00:13:02 No. I think I passed that a long time ago.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:13:06 That’s kind of incredible.

Cici Zerbe 00:13:07 Yeah. And here I am.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:13:20 So we’ve made our way to Miami now. By the year 2050, it is expected that more than 152 million people around the world will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It’s part of the urgency of these researchers and why they’re working so hard and so fast to try and get things done. That vital work is happening at places like the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. So every brain that we’re seeing here, we inhabit or have these brains at one point had Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. David Davis 00:13:55 Is that right? That’s correct. The majority of these brains. Yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:14:01 You know, the most amazing thing is when I was in medical school in the early 1990s, the conventional wisdom was you got a certain number of brain cells and that was it. Over your life you could drain the cash. Things like alcohol might speed up that process. But you got what you got. By the time I finished in the year 2000, everything had changed. We realized that you could continue to grow new brain cells, which was kind of incredible.

Dr. David Davis 00:14:30 Our goal is to make sure that we get high quality donations that could be used by investigators all around the world.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:14:38 Dr. David Davis is the associate director of the Brain Endowment Bank.

Dr. David Davis 00:14:42 All in the cause of better understanding the progression of the disease and potentially, hopefully finding therapies and cures.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:14:50 I started training in neurosurgery 30 years ago, and still every time I look at the human brain, I am still filled with honor. Everything we are is located right here. Every love, every memory. Every desire. All here in this enigmatic three and a half pounds of tissue.

Dr. David Davis 00:15:13 How are you, Memory?

Patient 00:15:14 Not so good.

Doctor 00:15:16 Are you able to remember my name, for example?

Patient 00:15:20 No. I guess my.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:15:23 What you are watching is from 1966. Fact is, we’ve been talking about Alzheimer’s disease for a long time now. The first known case of the disease was reported in 1906. But before the early 2000s, there was only one way to be sure someone actually had the disease or not. The only way.

Doctor 00:15:41 To definitively diagnose the disease is by an autopsy after death.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:15:47 So we’ve come a long way since then. We can now peer into the brain when the patient is very much alive.

Doctor 00:15:55 These are Pet scans that pick up the two proteins in the brain that define Alzheimer’s disease amyloid and tell the redness indicates that the amyloid protein is present. So that’s the protein that makes up the plaque, one of the defining features.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:16:12 Dr. Ronald Petersen is director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Dr. Ronald Petersen 00:16:17 The amyloid protein that gets laid down in the brain, this can happen up to ten, 15, 20 years before a person becomes symptomatic. So many people are out there walking around with some amyloid in the brain, but they’re doing fine clinically.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:16:35 Connie Grumdahl is one of those people. Lots of amyloid in the brain, but zero symptoms.

Connie Grumdahl 00:16:43 So I know that I do have plaque in my brain. I don’t understand how that affects some people and not others. Nice to meet you as well.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:16:52 We first met Connie at Dr. Peterson’s clinic five years ago in 2019. And at the time, 69 year old Connie was halfway through a highly anticipated Alzheimer’s study called the A4 trial. It was designed for those with plaque in their brains, but so far living a normal life.

Connie Grumdahl 00:17:11 So I’m one of 19 children. Wow. Number 18.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:17:15 Okay.

Connie Grumdahl 00:17:16 And three of my sisters have died. I have two in memory care. So it’s personal.

Connie Grumdahl 00:17:22 Hi. Hello. How are you? You look so beautiful today. You have a lot of pictures from today.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:17:32 We listen in on an extraordinary visit to the memory care ward.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:17:37 Connie has come to see her sister, Vera, who is 12 years older.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:17:45 Again in a family of 19 children.

Connie Grumdahl 00:17:54 This is what you wrote a long time ago for your doctorate. When you read this, I put it in here. Yep. This is all your work? Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:08 Vera was once a trailblazing psychology professor at the University of Minnesota. A loving mother. Grandmother. About seven years ago, though, her memory started to fade and the decline was steep.

Connie Grumdahl 00:18:22 One night, she left the house in the middle of the night, and we didn’t find her until noon the next day. Today with Vera? It was one of the most special days that I’ve had in a long time with her. Looking at my family history. My brothers are fine. My sisters are not. But some of my sisters are. Will I be a lucky one? I don’t know.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:47 Those confusing unanswered questions are what fuel, Connie, and what fuels the scientists who are caring for her?

Connie Grumdahl 00:18:55 Yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:56 In 2019, she was midway through the four and a half year study to try and prevent what she had seen happen to her older sister.

Connie Grumdahl 00:19:04 Yes.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:19:06 Even during the pandemic, Connie would drive more than an hour each way from her home in Minneapolis to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She would undergo cognitive, motor, and general health testing.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:19:32 And almost every month, she would receive this IV transfusion.

Connie Grumdahl 00:19:38 So this is, what, about an hour? It’s time consuming. I feel like I’m contributing, even if it’s not for me. It’s for research. And it might help my kids, might help my grandkids or the greater good.

Dr. Ronald Petersen 00:19:50 When you’re dealing with people who get enrolled in a clinical trial, it’s important to really be realistic. Say, we’re hopeful that the drug that you may receive is going to help us with treating this underlying disease. But there’s a possibility it could go in the other direction.

Connie Grumdahl 00:20:08 You either agree to that risk or you don’t. I don’t have an alternative right now. I love you.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:20:20 In September 2022, Vera passed away after her long battle with Alzheimer’s. Then in 2023, news came after a decade of research. After tracking more than 1100 study participants.

Dr. Risa Sperling 00:20:40 I’m Dr. Risa Sperling and the principal investigator of the A4 study.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:20:44 The long awaited results were finally in.

Dr. Risa Sperling 00:20:46 We did not, unfortunately, slow the cognitive decline with this particular antibody.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:20:55 Disappointing findings for patients like Connie, who is now 74 years old.

Dr. Risa Sperling 00:21:00 The fourth study. It turned out that the approach is right. The drug was not the right one.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:21:07 Lessons learned that laid the foundation for newer drugs like one you may have heard of Lecanimab

Dr. Risa Sperling 00:21:13 A potential breakthrough this morning for millions of Americans affected by Alzheimer’s. A new antibody treatment for the disease could slow the progression of cognitive decline by 27%.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:21:26 There has not been a significant treatment that has had this degree of improvement in these patients really in a long time. If ever. Lecanimab or Leqembi is part of a new class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies. They are given every other week. A similar drug, Donanemab, is administered monthly and is expected to be approved by the FDA later in 2024. Let me show you how they work. Remember beta amyloid? That’s the sticky compound of protein fragments that can accumulate in the brain and can clump together to form amyloid plaques, disrupting cellular communication and eventually cause neuronal death. Well, these new drugs stimulate the immune system to attack some of the building blocks of these amyloid proteins and eventually break up the plaques. But it is important to note that there are potential side effects.

Dr. Risa Sperling 00:22:20 Some of those adverse events were side effects in a small percentage of the Larkana, Mab group, including brain swelling and brain bleeding.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:22:28 It’s not a home run, but there’s been so little progress when it comes to Alzheimer’s. This incremental progress is important.

Dr. Ronald Petersen 00:22:35 Look at them have slowed the rate of progression by about 27%.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:22:41 27%. It’s enough for someone like 73 year old Barbara

Jim 00:22:48 So are you ready for this year?

Barbara 00:22:50 I am ready.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:22:52 Alongside her husband, Jim, she is here for her second Alzheimer’s treatment with Lecanamab.

Barbara 00:23:02 I never thought this would happen to me. Let’s go.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:23:08 She’ll be coming here every other week for the next eight months.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:23:17 Both retired teachers. She and Jim read to one another to pass the time.

Barbara 00:23:22 Kate sat by the fire pit, the flames lighting up her face. Well, I hope to see that my memory is steadfast and everything is in place.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:23:38 So far, there are approximately 2000 people using the drug in the United States. And it’s not cheap. This price for the medication is $26,500 per year. But Medicare does often cover a good portion of it.

Jim 00:23:52 This is the number one priority. So, you know, if we have to sell the place or the house or whatever we have to do if this is a priority. We don’t expect that that’s going to happen. But we do what we’re going to do.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:24:06 Their teachers. So no surprise, they’ve studied all the data, all the papers, and they know the odds. But here’s the thing. They’re looking for more time to spend together. And a chance for more scientific breakthroughs, maybe even a cure.

Jim 00:24:24 If, in fact, you can continue pushing this back. Right. Right. That maybe who knows that maybe that will be opened and you and others can be better.

Her depression worsened until the day her 33-year-old son sadly told her, “Mom, I didn’t think I would have to be your caregiver at this stage in your life.”

“For me, that was the wake-up call,” Jones, now 66, told CNN. “That’s when I found the POINTER study and my life changed. What I accomplished during the study was phenomenal — I’m a new person.”

Phyllis Jones improved her brain and outlook on life by making significant lifestyle changes. Patty Kelly

The Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk, or US POINTER study, is the largest randomized clinical trial in the United States designed to examine whether lifestyle interventions can protect cognitive function in older adults.

“These are cognitively healthy people between the ages of 60 and 79 who, to be in the study, had to be completely sedentary and at risk for dementia due to health issues such as prediabetes and borderline high blood pressure,” said principal investigator Laura Baker, a professor of gerontology, geriatrics and internal medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Approximately one-half of the 2,111 study participants attended 38 structured team meetings over two years in local neighborhoods near Chicago, Houston, Winston-Salem, Sacramento, California, and Providence, Rhode Island. During each session, a trained facilitator provided guidance on how to exercise and eat for the brain, and explained the importance of socialization, the use of brain-training games, and the basics of brain health. The team leader also held the group accountable for logging blood pressure and other vitals. Physical and cognitive exams by a physician occurred every six months.

At six team meetings, the other half of the study’s participants learned about brain health and were encouraged to select lifestyle changes that best suited their schedules. This group was self-guided, with no goal-directed coaching. These participants also received physical and cognitive exams every six months.

The two-year results of the $50 million study, funded by the Alzheimer’s Association, were simultaneously presented Monday at the 2025 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto and published in the journal JAMA.

“We found people in the structured program appeared to delay normal cognitive aging by one to nearly two years over and above the self-guided group — people who did not receive the same degree of support,” Baker said. “However, the self-guided group improved their cognitive scores over time as well.”

Olive oil was a key part of the nutritional changes in the POINTER study. MarianVejcik/iStockphoto/Getty Images

Exercise, diet and socializing are key

Exercise was the first challenge. Like the other groups across the country, Jones and her Aurora, Illinois, team received YMCA memberships and lessons on how to use the gym equipment. Jones was told to use aerobic exercise to raise her heart rate for 30 minutes a day while adding strength training and stretching several times a week.

At first, it wasn’t easy.

The study participants wore fitness trackers that monitored their activity, Jones said. “After that first 10 minutes, I was sweating and exhausted,” she said. “But we went slow, adding 10 minutes at a time, and we kept each other honest. Now I just love to work out.”

Four weeks later, teams were given a new challenge — beginning the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, or MIND diet. The diet combines the best of the Mediterranean diet with the salt restrictions of the DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

“They gave us a refrigerator chart with foods to limit and foods to enjoy,” Jones said. “We had to eat berries and vegetables most days, including green leafy veggies, which was a separate item. We had to have 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil once every day.”

Foods to limit included fried food, processed meat, dairy, cheese and butter. Restrictions were also in place for sugary sweets. “But we could have dessert four times a week,” Jones added. “That’s awesome because you’re not completely depriving yourself.”

Another pillar of the program was requiring study participants to familiarize themselves with their vital signs, Wake Forest’s Baker said. “If at any point we asked them, ‘What’s your average blood pressure?’ they should be able to tell us,” she said. “We encouraged people to monitor their blood sugar as well.”

Later came brain training, via memberships to a popular, Web-based cognitive training app. While some scientists say the benefits of such online brain programs have yet to be proven, Jones said she enjoyed the mental stimulation.

Becoming better at socializing was another key part of the program. The researchers tasked teams with assignments, such as speaking to strangers or going out with friends.

Phyllis Jones and her bestie, Patty Kelly. Phyllis Jones

“I found my best friend, Patty Kelly, on my team,” Jones said. “At 81, she’s older than me, but we do all sorts of things together — in fact, she’s coming with me to Toronto when I speak at the Alzheimer’s conference.

“Isolation is horrible for your brain,” she added. “But once you get to a point where you are moving and eating healthy, your energy level changes, and I think you automatically become more social.”

As the study progressed, the researchers reduced check-ins to twice a month, then once a month, Baker said.

“We were trying to get people to say, ‘I am now a healthy person,’ because if you believe that, you start making decisions which agree with the new perception of yourself,” she said.

“So in the beginning, we were holding their hands, but by the end, they were flying on their own,” Baker added. “And that was the whole idea — get them to fly on their own.”

‘Brain health is a long game’

Because researchers tracked each team closely, the study has a wealth of data that has yet to be mined.

“On any given day, I could go into our web-based data system and see how much exercise someone’s doing, whether they’ve logged into brain training that day, what’s their latest MIND diet score, and whether they’d attended the last team meeting,” Baker said.

“We also have sleep data, blood biomarkers, brain scans and other variables, which will provide more clarity on which parts of the intervention were most successful.”

Digging deeper into the data is important, Baker says, because the study has limitations, such as the potential for a well-known phenomenon called the practice effect.

“Even though we use different stimuli within tests, the act of taking a test over and over makes you more familiar with the situation — you know where the clinic is, where to park, you’re more comfortable with your examiner,” she said.

“You’re not really smarter, you’re just more relaxed and comfortable, so therefore you do better on the test,” Baker said. “So while we’re thrilled both groups in US POINTER appear to have improved their global cognition (thinking, learning and problem-solving), we have to be cautious in our interpretations.”

It’s important to note the POINTER study was not designed to provide the more immersive lifestyle interventions needed for people with early stages of Alzheimer’s, said Dr. Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Ornish published a June 2024 clinical trial that found a strict vegan diet, daily exercise, structured stress reduction and frequent socialization could often stop the decline or even improve cognition in those already experiencing from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, not just for those at risk for it.

“The US POINTER randomized clinical trial is a landmark study showing that moderate lifestyle changes in diet, exercise, socialization and more can improve cognition in those at risk for dementia,” said Ornish, creator of the Ornish diet and lifestyle medicine program and coauthor of “Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.”

“It complements our randomized clinical trial findings which found that more intensive multiple lifestyle changes often improve cognition in those already diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease,” Ornish said. “But the US POINTER study showed that more moderate lifestyle changes may be sufficient to help prevent it.”

In reality, two years isn’t sufficient to track brain changes over time, said study coauthor Maria Carillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“We really want to make recommendations that are evidence based,” Carillo told CNN. “That’s why we have invested another $40 million in a four-year follow-up, and I believe over 80% of the original participants have joined.

“Brain health is a long game,” she added. “It’s hard to track, but over time, change can be meaningful.”