Alzheimer's Hat Draws Skepticism

Jan. 28, 2008— -- What if the secret to stopping the progression of Alzheimer's disease — and perhaps even reversing its ravages — lay in the use of a special hat?

Too crazy, too goofy, too good to be true, warn experts on the debilitating disease.

Nevertheless, a team of British researchers is showcasing a bizarre-looking contraption that they say could stimulate the healing and regeneration of brain cells using a specific wavelength of infrared light — a category of radiation most often associated with heat energy.

And human trials on the Alzheimer's hat are even scheduled to begin this summer.

Dr. Gordon Dougal is one of the developers of the Alzheimer's hat. Dougal is also a director of Virulite, a U.K.-based medical research company that has in the past developed a machine to treat cold sores using the same infrared technology from which the hat is said to derive its benefits.

"From our perspective, anything that actually improves the cell function and resilience is going to have a long-lasting effect on the performance of the individual," he says.

The basis for his argument is a study performed by researchers at the University of Sunderland in the U.K. on a total of 30 rats, 20 of which were deemed to be experiencing middle-aged mental decline. The researchers found that by treating 10 of these rats with a specific wavelength of infrared light, the animals' performance improved in a maze-related task.

"Exposure to the rays improved the memory function of these rats to that of young rats," Dougal says. "We're now looking at a delivery system for a therapeutic dose of this light to activate the cellular repair cycle."

But Alzheimer's researchers not affiliated with the work say the chances that the hat would actually work for human patients is remote at best.

"I have not heard of anything along these lines before. Who knows what it is? But it sounds more hocus-pocus than anything," says Dr. Ronald Peterson, director of the Alzheimer's research center at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He adds that he has not seen any legitimate reason why exposure to infrared rays would lead to a halt or reversal of mental decline —