Satire, Humor, Health

PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLYFISH: A CASE STUDY OF MY MEMORY

To think, perchance remember, ay there’s the rub: for in thinking, but not remembering, is fucked up — This Guy

Where’s my phone? Can’t find my keys!

I can’t remember what day it is, but I can hammer out TV theme songs all day long. Such eclectic standards as Gilligan’s Island, The Addams Family, Cheers, Friends, and The Simpsons, loiter in some inescapable brain lesion only to randomly rear their ugly notes to catch an occasional breath (never bothering to tell me where my phone and keys are).

I’ve seen the Prevagen miracle memory cure commercials a thousand times (can’t remember the rest). The special ingredient, a protein found only in jellyfish, demanded self-experimentation.

Don’t know much about the neurochemistry of jellyfish. I have a fleeting recollection of my friends peeing on me after I was stung by a jelly while surfing. I read a story about a genetically modified lamb with jellyfish protein named Rubis who was sold as meat in France!

Beware! If the bones in your rack of lamb bend like a circus contortionist, you got a Rubis on your plate!

I live on the central coast of Oregon. Rather than shell out sixty bucks a month to Prevagen for eternity, I went to the source. When the Moon Jellyfish come to town, they hit the beach in the thousands. These moonies appear to contain the green fluorescent protein used by Prevagen. I was on my way to being the best version of a human elephant!

Jellies have been around for 160 million years, which begs the question of what took us so long to dine on them. I suppose we simply forgot, choosing instead to throw butter, broth, and red sauce on muscles, oysters, and clams.

On the other hand, penguins chow down on jellies and can navigate the globe and even remember the faces of specific humans for decades. Annoyed sharks eat jellies. Wily foxes and scavenging seagulls eat them. The Prevagen folks had to be on to something or were just outsmarted by the penguins.

Decision made — I’m going to eat these invertebrates until I memorize every word, with all definitions and senses, in the Oxford English Dictionary.

There must be recipes out there? Yep — jellyfish salads with soy sauce and sesame oil, salted jellyfish, jellyfish noodles, fillet of jellyfish, boiled jellyfish, fried jellyfish, and jellyfish jerky. You can also mix them with other stuff, which I did. They are particularly tasty in cornbread, pimento cheese, and chocolate gravy!

After a couple of weeks of this high protein, nutrient-rich diet, I opened the OED. First word, “A” was a no-brainer, or so I thought. There are thirty-three senses of the word. I got lost once the Å as the symbol for Angstrom came up. Heard of Nordstrom’s but not this department store.

To my chagrin, all theme songs rang loud and true, but my phone and keys continued to hide in a concerted effort to drive me nuts.

Another six months and still no change. Maybe I was mistaken. I started shoving jellybeans down my throat at the speed of light. No progress but I gained a needed 200 pounds.

What about all those people in the Prevagen ads? Every one of them has the memory of a black hole. Not a single recollection can escape the gravitational pull of their brains.

A hiking couple can now find their way back home without a helicopter rescue.

Another guy gives motivational speeches, presumably having forgotten how to speak or motivate.

Cherrie says her memory got better and now “all the pieces fit together.” I guess she’s upping her jigsaw puzzle skills.

A recent college graduate now remembers how Nestle’s Quick dissolves in milk!

Was I going about this all wrong? I’m sure vegan and meat haters applauded my effort, though I’m not sure if a jellyfish is meat, seafood, or a plant. Jellies have no brains. Wonder if the can they feel pain when sliced, diced, and deep fried? Kinda’ hope so.

I decided to give the pills a shot. At least I can improve my hiking, speech giving, and jigsaw puzzling. The Prevagen box said its concoction improves memory and supports healthy brain function, sharper mind and clear thinking. But it also says these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Nothing is mentioned about phones and keys!

After weeks of swallowing these pills (which don’t taste any better with soy sauce), the results: theme songs — yes, phones and keys — no!

I was lost and forgotten. I turned to Google, a health expert, who said jellyfish pills are regarded by the FDA as a food, not a drug. That means they are not tested before they are put on the market. It’s also one reason the supplement industry is now worth more than $40 billion!

Many medical experts say research has not found solid evidence that any supplements are effective at preventing neurological diseases that cause dementia. And they say that better treatments for the normal memory gaps often experienced with aging include exercise and a healthy diet. Martha M. Hamilton, Does the supplement Prevagen improve memory? A court case is asking that question, Washington Post, September 11, 2021.

According to a 2019 JAMA article, some supplements stray into what is called pseudomedicine. Pseudomedicine refers to supplements and medical interventions that exist within the law and are often promoted as scientifically supported treatments but lack credible efficacy data.

With neurodegenerative disease, the most common example of pseudomedicine is the promotion of dietary supplements to improve cognition and brain health.

The article was prompted by a discussion among the faculty at the Memory and Aging Center in the Department of Neurology at the University of California at San Francisco. They talked about how heartbreaking it was seeing vulnerable dementia patients and their families being swept up in the marketing of brain health supplements, considering the likely false promise of hope and the financial drain.

Lawsuits have been filed against Prevagen on its claim of scientific proof that its pills improve memory.

In 2020, Prevagen settled a nationwide class action suit for false advertising, agreeing to pay $36 million into a fund to reimburse claims by folks who downed their pills by the shitload. Further, Prevagen was required to add language to its advertising and labels noting that its claims are based on a clinical study of subgroups of cognitively normal or mildly impaired individuals i.e., healthy, older adults! Kinda’ sketchy to me.

Americans are gullible as hell, probably the reason for our buying millions of dollars of this crap. The rest of the world — not so much. Europeans, Chinese, Russians, and even Australians keep their money in their pockets when it comes to memory supplements. They must have monster recollection capacities or haven’t yet learned how to buy tons of shit on Amazon.

After all this, I’m feeling much better about myself and my uncanny ability to remember theme songs and lose my phone and keys. I gave up jellyfish pills.

The Mayo Clinic (not the mayo factory run by the Hellmann’s), affirms the view that memory supplements don’t help much in the memory game. Good enough for me! I’m going with its recommendations:

Moderate aerobic exercise of about 2 ½ hours per week. I’m a walking machine and a speed demon with a fork!

Stay intellectually active. Just finished a five-piece jigsaw puzzle and have taken up learning new TV theme instrumentals (House of Cards and Succession).

Eat a diet full of fruits, vegetables, fish, healthy oils like olive oil, whole grains, and less meat and saturated fat. Those jellyfish noodles were not half bad with a loaf of garlic bread and a bottle of wine.

That said . . . what did I just say?

Thanks for reading. Gotta go! Can’t find my phone or keys!

References

2019 Mayo Clinic Article, Mayo Clinic Minute: Dietary supplements don’t reduce dementia risks , but three tips do. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-dietary-supplements-dont-reduce-dementia-risk-but-3-tips-do/

JAMA Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579869/

Washington Post 2020 Article, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/prevagen-memory-loss-does-it-work/2021/09/10/53e5d3e8-f3a6-11eb-a49b-d96f2dac0942_story.html

Class action: Collins v. Quincy Bioscience, USDC, Southern District of Florida, Case No., 19-cv-22864-COOKE/GOODMAN