Episode 461: Dr. Dale Bredesen: How to Reverse Alzheimer's and Detect Brain Decline in Your 20s

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

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This is actually an episode that I've been very highly anticipating.

I finally have Dr.

Dale Bredesen on the podcast.

And this is a treat because Dr.

Bredesen is the leading, he's a pioneer in the research for Alzheimer's and reversing.

He was the first, your group, and you were the first to even do any research on how you can reverse Alzheimer's, correct?

And so, this is a conversation I've been really, really excited to have.

So, thank you for being here.

Thanks so much for the invitation.

Great to be here.

Thank you.

So, the first thing I want to ask you, it's because it's, you don't hear very often about how you hear that sometimes when you get diagnosed with Alzheimer's, that like it's basically that is the death sentence.

There's no way to reverse those symptoms.

But you are the first and the only to basically say that's actually that information is not true, that you can actually reverse Alzheimer's.

We are seeing it all the time now.

And there are other groups now doing it.

We've trained over 2,000 physicians in 10 countries and all over the U.S.

And you can look actually on Judy Walks, the very first patient I reversed, which was back in 2012, is now 13 years doing very well.

And she's walking across the United States at the age of 80, by the way.

She's walking across the United States from San Diego to St.

Augustine, Florida, to raise awareness that, in fact, this can be reversed.

And of course, it's easier even to prevent the problem.

There are new blood tests, which have been fantastic, which will tell you if you're headed for this problem.

There's a better understanding now of the phases that you go through.

Alzheimer's, the dementia part is the last.

There was just an article showing you can pick up changes in the 20s.

So we can see this coming earlier and earlier.

We can do something about it.

And the bottom line, Jen, virtually nobody should get this problem.

This should be a rare problem.

The statistics, as they are, that 45 million Americans will, of the currently living Americans, will die of Alzheimer's disease.

It's horrible.

It's now the number one killer of women in the UK and number two killer in the UK as a whole.

So it's a huge problem, but it doesn't have to be.

Wow.

How did you kind of stumble?

How did you stumble upon this in a way, right?

Because we hear a lot about prevention.

Yeah.

We hear a lot about how to maintain, like how to, there's like, there are some drugs, I guess, that people say that may or may not even be effective in treating it.

How did you kind of reverse engineer the idea that you can actually reverse

this?

horrible, horrible disease.

Great question.

It was a 30-year stumble.

So we stumbled, but it took us a long time.

Long stumble.

30 years of stumbling.

So I ran a basic research lab for 30 years, and we studied what are the molecular mechanisms that drive this phenomenon of neurodegeneration, because this is the area of greatest medical failure.

Everyone knows a cancer survivor, as they'll say, but nobody knows an Alzheimer survivor until now.

And actually, we have a book called The First Survivors of Alzheimer's.

So when we were studying this and looking at what are all these molecules and how they interact, and how come you have all these synapses?

You've got 500 trillion synapses in your brain.

Why are you losing them at certain times?

And why do some people get to 100 and they're doing great and other people are having problems in their 40s?

Happens all the time.

And so what we found was really interesting.

What we found is that when you go through evolution,

we have these amazing brains.

We've evolved these brains to have maximal effectiveness.

They're incredibly highly tuned, but it's at the expense of durability.

So during your evolution continued to select for performance over durability.

And so your various networks, they have Achilles heels.

And in Alzheimer's, what happens is anything that reduces your energetics over your, as you're getting a little older, and as I said, you know, you can see beginning to see changes in 20s now.

But so lower blood flow, lower oxygenation.

So people with sleep apnea, for example, are at increased risk.

Lower mitochondrial function, lower ability to make ketones, for example, all of these things are on the energetic part.

Second part is inflammation.

So changes in the oral microbiome, chronic sinusitis, leaky gut, blood-borne organisms, like, for example, from a tick bite.

All of these things put drag on that incredible network you've got.

You can store more than 2,000 home computers in your brain.

So you have an amazing supercomputer inside your skull.

And this thing, it's like operating a Maserati at 240 miles an hour.

It's going, going, going.

The third of the three big ones is toxicity.

And so it's microplastics and it's glyphosate and it's air pollution.

Unfortunately, the California fires, they will result in increased people with Alzheimer's disease.

COVID is another big player, as you know.

So we started seeing that this is a network insufficiency, this old-fashioned idea that your brain made some amyloid, some of the stuff in your brain, and that hurt your brain, or you had a protein that misfolded.

These are outdated notions.

This is a network insufficiency.

And now we can look at the features of the network.

We can measure them.

There are some fantastic new blood tests to catch this before you ever have symptoms so that you don't ever have to get it, and then to be able to change.

So, we're going to increase the supply, we're going to reduce the demand, we're going to deal with these toxins, deal with these infections.

Everything works great.

So,

you said so much in

that thing.

I've got a million questions.

Number one, could you say you started with this?

You said that you could even detect signs of it in your 20s.

Yes.

So, what are some of the things that people can see in their 20s that would give them a detection that this is something that Alzheimer's or cognitive decline is something that can happen to them?

Right.

So, the study that just came out that looked at people in their 20s was looking at biomarkers.

So, there are biochemical changes in the brain that you can pick up in the the blood.

And here's an example.

There's one that's called P tau217.

P stands for phospho, so it's phospho-tau.

Tau is this amazing molecule.

It's T-A-U.

And tau is this amazing molecule.

It's like a bolt.

So it bolts your microtubules in your neurons in place so that you can now put out these nice connections and everything's good, right?

Right.

So it is, it will hold these down.

Now, when you are in a situation where there's not enough support or there's too much inflammation and you literally, your brain is switching from connection mode to protection mode.

When it does that, your tau becomes phosphorylated.

So you literally put phosphorus and oxygen on your tau at amino acid 217.

So P-tau 217.

When you do that, it changes the charge and it changes the shape and it changes the function.

This is an amazing thing.

So this thing pops off your microtubules, which allows them to to collapse, unfortunately, and it then goes and it becomes an antimicrobial protein.

So it is actually going out and finding these infections that you have and things like that and helping you to kill them.

So it's switching now to protecting you.

So you're literally, what we're seeing is this disease is associated with your brain's trying to protect itself.

So that's one of the common ones.

And by the way, there's a new one coming out called Super PTAU217 coming out in August.

Very exciting.

This will take it even earlier so that we can see this because knowledge is power when you know that you're headed for these.

Just like it's just like finding out your hemoglobin A1C is inching up a little bit.

And oh my gosh, you could have diabetes in five years.

Let's make sure you never get diabetes.

That's where we are now with Alzheimer's.

There are other things.

This particular paper also looked at lifestyle changes.

It looked at vascular risk factors.

They looked at other biomarkers, such as one called NFL, which is for neurofilament light.

So there are a couple of other things you can do, but PTAU is probably the best indicator.

Then you can go and take the next step and say, why?

What is doing this?

And you can look at things like your methylation status, homocysteine, your HSCRP, which is looking at inflammation, and find out why are you on this pathway toward cognitive loss.

What's this?

I've heard about the methylane.

How do you test for that?

What is it?

So, because that word's been kind of very buzzy lately.

Yeah.

What does it really mean?

What is that?

How do you test for that?

And what does that mean?

Can you explain that?

Yeah.

So, what, so methylating something simply means you're putting on a carbon and three hydrogens.

So, that's a methyl group.

Okay.

When you add that to any molecule.

And it turns out your body uses that a lot of different ways.

It uses it to change the way you're reading your DNA, for example.

It uses it as part of your metabolism, as part of your dealing with toxins.

So if you are a poor methylator, you're not as good at dealing with the toxins you're exposed to.

So if I'm a poor methylator, that could increase my chances of getting Alzheimer's.

Exactly.

So that's why you should be tested to see if you are a good methylator or a poor methylator.

Exactly right.

And when you're in your 20s, you can have that PTAU 217 test to see if you are somebody who will have a problem later on.

Exactly.

And we recommend just get it every five years.

You don't need to get it every year.

Get it every five years.

And if you then, let's say, you know, you're 35 or 40, whatever, you're starting to go along.

You say, oh, wait a minute, you know, this is inching up a little bit.

Again, just like your hemoglobin A1C, you can then say, why?

What are my things?

Am I a poor methylator?

Do I have ongoing inflammation?

Do I have changes in my oral microbiome?

The great news is there's something to deal with each of these contributors.

So, you know, in the past, we were told there's no, the armamentarium is zero.

There's nothing you can do for this.

You got Alzheimer's.

I hear this all the time.

Someone went to a major medical center and they were told, oh, you're getting Alzheimer's.

Talked to a guy the other day, 53 years old, went to a very famous medical center.

They told him, you got Alzheimer's, there's nothing you can do.

He's now gone on our protocol.

He's done very well.

We see it all the time.

So there is something you can do and you can find out these things like your methylation status, your inflammatory status, your hormonal status.

That turns out to be important as well.

So there are a lot of contributors.

It seems like there's a ton of contributors.

Like, there's a lot, but so what I guess I'm still stuck on is if you have, like, the way in your, how you figured it out, you're like, basically, the way you could reverse it is basically changing

once you like your lifestyle choices.

So, like, if my question to you was like, one of my questions was, like, what are the main causes of cognitive decline?

Yep.

You already, you already cut it.

You, you bullet pointed it, but let's go through it one at a time.

Okay.

So you first said that one of them is toxins, let's say.

So environmental toxins, like the fires.

What are other toxins that people are not even aware that they could be exposed to that could be causing them?

Yeah, great point.

Great point.

So, yeah, then the bottom line is there are several causes, great, the groups, we can

check those, and then they lead directly to what you actually do about it.

Right.

So you mentioned the toxins.

So the toxins are in three groups, the inorganics, the organics, and the biotoxins.

On the inorganic side, so these are the ones without carbon.

These are things like air pollution, great example.

Things that are, as you said, fires, another big one.

Mercury is another big one.

From the amalgams or from a lot of seafood, you don't want to eat those big fish that have long lives with the big mouth, things like tuna fish.

Heavy metals.

Heavy metals.

That's one group.

Then you can, again, you can measure those, you can address them, you can reduce them.

I had a guy a few years ago who had become very successful.

He came in with early Alzheimer's.

He'd already been told, yet Alzheimer's, nothing to do.

Turned out this guy, when he became successful, started eating tuna sushi almost every single day of the week.

Yeah.

And he came with the highest mercury level I've ever seen.

Right.

And he did great.

He got his mercury level down over time and he's, he's done very, very well.

You know, it's funny that you, it's not funny, ha ha, but a couple of things.

I think people who eat, like, that's the thing, right?

Like a lot of my friends eat sushi every night.

They They think that they're like doing something good for their bodies.

They're eating clean.

They're eating, you know, they're eating like protein.

But the truth of the matter is, like, they're actually doing themselves a disservice, right?

Because eating fish, that's like tuna, stuff, even eating fish every day, like even salmon, like there's all those PCBs and everything else, like it's actually very, it's very toxic for your body.

If you do too much, that's right.

So fish give you a lot of great things, and especially wild caught.

And then we think about the smash fish, as you said, salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring.

Even salmon, though, is like is you got to be careful, and you don't want to have the farm salmon, right?

That's not good for you, right?

And you're right.

And of course, the other issue we've got to worry about now is these fish are bringing microplastics to us, unfortunately.

And we're getting those in the air, we're getting them in the water, we're getting them in fish and other foods that we eat.

And you're eating, most of us are exposed to about one credit card worth, which is about five grams per week.

It's incredible.

And so just recently, what has been found is

of microplastics.

What's been found is that it concentrates in the brain more than the liver, more than the kidney.

And the higher level in your brain is associated with greater risk for cognitive decline.

Now, it's not clear what's cause and effect there yet, but it's clear that there is an association between microplastics in the brain and cognitive decline.

So that brings on the organics.

It's the microplastics, the glyphosate, the toluene, benzene, formaldehyde, all those sorts of things.

And then the third group is the biotoxins, as I mentioned.

And the common ones are ones from mold species.

And most people don't realize, you know, the molds are trying to survive.

What happens is molds are competing typically where they live with bacteria.

Well, the bacteria have an advantage because they grow much faster than the molds.

So what do the molds do to respond?

They say, okay, we're going to make these toxins that damage the bacteria.

Unfortunately, we have inside of us lots of important important bacteria, but we also have mitochondria, which came from bacteria.

And so our powerhouses of our cells are being affected by these mycotoxins.

And it's a relatively common reason for cognitive decline.

So again, you can measure it, you can identify that it's there, and you can wash them out.

And we see it all the time, and people get better as they reduce their mycotoxin burden.

When you say wash them out, I mean, how about can you do chelation to get the heavy metals out too?

Is that like a thing that they do?

You can do that.

Yeah.

There's also an approach of increasing your NRF2.

So you're basically improving the body's ability to detox itself.

You know, one of the things, Jen, I see most commonly is people with low glutathione levels.

And glutathione is an important antioxidant.

It's an important detox for our bodies.

And we need to keep that up.

And with things like sulforaphanes and cruciferous vegetables, you can take things like N-acetylcysteine to increase it or S-acetylglutathione.

Some people want

N-AC.

That's what I take.

Do you?

Okay, great.

You can take that.

Isn't that the precursor to glutathione?

But I also heard, though, if your system isn't working well, that your body may not convert NAC to glutathione.

Is that true?

Yeah, for some people, they're not particularly good.

And that's why I say you can supplement that with things like S-acetylglathione, which is a more direct way to get it.

Or some people will actually get IVs with glutathione in them.

What's that thing you just said?

The NAC, what's that thing that you just said before the IV?

You said

S-acetyl glutathione.

Yeah, what is that?

So that's a supplement?

Yeah, so yeah, exactly.

It's a supplement you can get.

Some people will take liposomal glutathione.

That's another supplement you can get.

The difference is, as you said, that the NAC is the precursor, whereas the S-acetyl and the liposomal, those are direct ways, as well as, of course, the IV is even a quicker way, but less convenient.

Right.

I mean, listen,

I get those glutathione pushes sometimes.

Yeah.

But most people are going to have access to that, right?

Exactly.

So what would you say the best ver, if you had to tell somebody to take one form or do something to increase their glutathione, what would you say to do?

Well, it depends on what their need is.

So for the people who are really toxic, I recommend IVs.

For the people who are just doing it, you know, and they want to just keep theirs high, great.

I recommend cruciferous vegetables, things like Brussels sprouts, you know, and cabbage and stuff like that, you know, and broccoli.

These things are all wonderful for you.

And then, for example, for myself, I tend to take some NAC, but also some S-acetyl glutathione.

It's a good way to get it to you, or liposomal glutathione.

Those are good ways to get it as well.

And then, again, every few years, check your glutathione level.

If you're heavily toxic, it's very possible that your glutathione level is quite low.

I wonder if California, like in general, because of the pollution in the air, the 405,

I mean, you probably had the stats on this.

Are there more people per capita in LA or California, Los Angeles, who have Alzheimer than other places around the country?

This is such a good point.

In fact, the worst seems to be in the southeast, and it seems to be because of very pro-inflammatory diets and a lot of metabolic syndrome, a lot of type 2 diabetes, and a lot of obesity.

LA actually does fairly well, but as you said, the air pollution is definitely a risk factor.

And with the fires and with the COVID, there's going to be an increase coming.

And we hear about it a lot.

So this is a problem.

And again, it's why all of us should be

girding up against this disease.

Well, because you're saying the other things besides toxins were, what were the other two that you said?

The other two big ones are inflammation and energetics.

And energetics.

Of all the three, which one is the most,

I mean, they're all bad, but which one affects your cognitive ability the most?

Is it the energetic?

Is it the toxins?

Or is it the inflammation?

Boy, they're all pretty much equally bad.

Those are the big three.

And then there are more mild three, which are neurotransmitters, things like getting enough choline in your diet so that you make acetylcholine.

And most people don't get enough choline.

You know, the big, the big five in our diet that we're almost all low in.

We're mostly low in zinc, We're mostly low in magnesium, choline, iodine.

It's another big one.

And the, you know, the omega-3s.

And then many of us are low in potassium as well.

So those are the major ones that we're mostly low in.

And so making sure that you have that very, very helpful.

Now,

so as I say,

the more modest three are the neurotransmitters, the neurotrophins.

So things like hormones, optimizing your hormones and your nutrients.

And then interestingly, stress.

You know, and as a scientist, I always thought, oh, stress, come on now, this is woo-woo stuff.

Yeah.

It turns out it's very important.

And in fact, if you just look at people who have increased levels of stress, they actually have smaller brains.

So you actually, stress causes your brain to shrink.

There's no question.

And when we were looking in the lab years ago at what's the best way to develop a drug for Alzheimer's, one of the things that we found is that there are specific receptors related to stress, corticotropin releasing factor receptor one, specifically, that actually impacts your amyloid and your tau, the very things that are important in Alzheimer's disease, the things that are mediators of it.

So, those are the things.

Now, as far as what's the worst, I would say if you had to pick one, it would probably be energetics.

Because if you don't have enough blood flow, if you don't have enough insulin sensitivity, if you don't have the ability to get ketones to your brain, to be metabolically flexible, you cannot support a brain this is all about supporting 500 trillion synapses wow okay so let's start with the energetics part right because you were saying the two things you said oxygenation yes so how do we know how we're oxid like oxidized oxy

oxygenating yes right and does that mean like a hyperbaric chamber would be something that helps prevent Alzheimer's then because that gets your body to oxygenate really high, right?

Sounds like you've been reading the book.

This is great.

This is not my first rodeo.

This is great, yeah.

Yes, you know this.

I've done my homework.

Good for you.

So the answer is there under certain circumstances, yes, hyperbaric can be very helpful, especially for people with some vascular disease or with some head trauma, for example.

I happen to like a similar one called EWAT, exercise with oxygen therapy, because although it doesn't give you that pressure as much, it gives you better better blood flow at the same time as the better oxygenation.

So a lot of people find it very, very helpful.

But the way this works is really interesting.

You've got to get that oxygenation.

And what happens is either you have a time where you go to sleep at night and you start getting some sleep apnea.

It's a very common and it's underdiagnosed.

It's been claimed that about 80% of sleep apnea in the United States goes undiagnosed.

And so this is where wearables have really been helpful.

You can look, you know, track yourself.

Each night, you want to get at least seven hours of sleep with at least a 94% saturation of oxygen.

You don't want to be down in the 80s.

And we even see people in the 70s.

It's incredible.

Their brains are starving for that oxygen.

And you want to have one and a half hours of REM at least and one hour of deep sleep.

So you're saying,

because The sleep apnea really threw me, right?

So a friend of mine told me that sleep apnea causes a lot of issues told me this like 18 19 years ago and i poo-pooed i'm like what are you talking about people who snore badly like yeah you did i didn't connect the two the dots and it turns out he was actually right like so sleep apnea is that could be a sign that like you are going to have it like your your your chances of of getting alzheimer's is way increased because of it it absolutely increases your risk for cognitive decline you're not you know the energetics are going down.

You're not supporting there.

In fact, you know, there was an interesting study done a few years ago where they just looked at your average oxygenation during your sleep.

And then they correlated that with the size of different nuclei within your brain, showing that the less oxygen you have while you're sleeping, the smaller these various regions of your brain are, including your hippocampus, which is a critical region for memory and for Alzheimer's disease.

So this is an important thing to do.

And, you know, you can look at it.

You can look at it on your watch.

You can look at your aura ring, or you can have a sleep study and look to see and make sure.

So your friend was right.

Not only does it increase risk for cognitive decline, but it's also for GERD, also for hypertension, also for esophageal carcinoma.

So all these things going on, if you're not getting good sleep, this is actually hurting you in a number of ways.

A number of ways.

Like sleep is such a big thing right now.

I do so many podcasts just on sleep health and sleep hygiene.

How does someone fix their sleep apnea, though?

Oh, yeah.

So the good news is many, many ways, and there are new ways.

The classic, of course, is CPAP.

Yeah.

And a lot of people, I say, one guy said to me, I would rather die than have sleep.

If that's what's causing my Alzheimer's, I'm going to die.

Exactly.

Like,

they'd rather like

kind of like live it out that way.

I get it.

Yeah.

So, you know, you can, so there are other ways.

You could, there are, for people who have mild sleep apnea, there are dental devices.

You literally stick it in at night.

It keeps your airway open yeah there are also some implantable these are things where you can actually do it's a little bit like when you have a retainer after braces you there's essentially an internal retainer that holds that open and over several months you can actually expand the airway and you can prove that way there are dental procedures there are ent procedures so there are multiple ways to address sleep apnea it's not just about cpap the main thing is find it and if it's there address it what about insulin resistance?

Yeah, very, very common.

Over 80 million Americans have insulin resistance.

When we used to grow brain cells in petri dishes in the lab, that was part of what we would do.

And then we'd put all these various things on them, see what kills them and what causes them to commit suicide.

Remarkable.

Wow.

When you do that, you have to include insulin because insulin is such an important factor to create survival in brain cells.

So you can imagine what happens.

The insulin, you have an insulin receptor, and and then you've got signaling molecules downstream from that.

And you can actually measure the changes.

A beautiful study done a few years ago to see when you begin to get insulin resistance.

You change your phosphorylation.

It's like methylation, but it's a different thing, phosphorylation, like what we talked about P-TAU on your IRS-1.

So insulin resistance comes from the fact that we're all eating too much simple carbs.

And so we've got these, you know, if you measure your insulin resistance, you get what's called a HOMA IR score.

And you can see from your fasting insulin and from your fasting glucose.

And if your HOMA IR is above one, if you're up at one and a half, two, people get up to three, four,

you are insulin resistant.

And so here's the problem.

Your brain is like a Prius.

It's only got two things to go on.

In this case, it's glucose and ketones, right?

Right.

So as you started

getting insulin resistance, you lose the ability to metabolize the glucose optimally.

And because of the high insulin, because it's trying to get past that resistance, you now lose the ability to make ketones.

So most people who are beginning to have some cognitive decline or at risk are sputtering.

Their brains are sputtering because they don't have optimal use of glucose and they can't make their own ketones.

Because ketones is one of these things where like intermittent fasting and fasting,

it's kind of, again, one of these things where it works for some people.

It doesn't work for everybody.

They're saying that for women, it doesn't, it's not as good for hormonal health as it is for men.

Men react better.

So it's like, it feels kind of like what, you know, you're, you're helping one situation to like, to basically create an issue and a problem in another situation.

Does that make sense?

Like, like, for example, like these GLP1s, right?

People are taking all these GLP ones to basically lose weight, right?

But also some say, well, it all helps.

It helps with your inflammation.

It can help with this and this and that sounds to me like a glp1 if it helps with inflammation and insulin resistance could be a really good thing to take to prevent alzheimer's it can be and there are studies ongoing looking at that very thing oh okay maybe i should be a doctor

maybe you should be the bottom line though is you you have to be careful because there are other things that can drive it so for example if you're doing glp1s but your main problem turns out to be that you have a high exposure to mycotoxins that's not going to help you very much right but for those who have the metabolic type of Alzheimer's, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely.

That can be helpful.

But you have to remember, we don't, nobody so far has long-term data on GLP1s.

Right.

So be careful.

We don't know.

It is a very non-physiological approach.

You're taking something that normally is evanescent and you're now making it forever.

Yeah.

And so it's not clear what's going to happen in the long run.

I mean, we already know it can increase, you know, it can increase parathyroid tumors and things like that.

So you got to be a little bit careful.

You know, As they say, if you've got multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, you don't want to take the GLP ones.

So that is something called medullary carcinoma of the thyroid.

So don't take it if you've got that.

But for many people, you're right.

So what we recommend is: look, try the other things first.

Try the things that are more physiological.

If those don't work for you and you do have some extra pounds and some extra fat to burn, okay, try it for three to six months.

It will curb your cravings, no question about it.

It will help you get on the right path.

But be careful about doing it longer than that, because we just don't know the long-term outcomes from these things yet.

What about a glucose monitor?

Fantastic.

Again, all of these things we're able to do, these various wearables, there's going to be soon ketone monitors as well.

You can finger prick now or you can do breathalyzers now, but there will be a CKD, just like there's a CGM, there will be a CKM, which is fantastic.

So yes, these are great.

And they really show, not only do they show the peaks, someone, you know, eats a potato and boom, they're up at 200.

So like, okay, don't do that again, but it also shows the troughs.

And so we have these people who will go to bed and they say, gee, I keep waking up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning and I have no idea why.

And sometimes my heart is pounding.

Yes, because your adrenaline is on, because your glucose is 42.

Right.

Now they do the CGM and like, oh my gosh, now I see.

So they've got to smooth out.

That is bad for your brain having these peaks and troughs.

So you can smooth it out with a high good fats, a plant-rich, mildly ketogenic, you know, high good fats, high plants, and, you know, and as we talked about earlier, good fish and, you know, grass-fed beef and pastured chicken, pastured eggs.

Those are all fine.

That smooths out your glucose curves.

Well, I heard you say somewhere that I don't know where I heard you say it, but that meat should be used as a condiment, not as a main course, though.

Yes, then it's fine.

You know, it's fine to have

several ounces.

You know, we don't want to look at about a, you want to look at somewhere around a 20% of your intake for calories is coming from protein.

You know, people will talk about having a gram per pound.

That is fine for people who are muscle building or for people who are actively detoxing or people who are not absorbing very well.

But for most people, more like a gram per kilogram is more what most people gives them the best outcomes in terms of their cognition.

So it's fine.

When we say condomin, what we're really saying is don't forget that plants should be the main source of your, you know, the main, the main thing on your plate should be nice, colorful plants.

And yet, beyond that, sure, some fish, some meat, some chicken, some eggs, all that, all those are good.

Chicken, though, has arsenic, I heard.

Absolutely.

And so does rice.

Both of those are two sources of arsenic.

And so you do have to be careful.

You don't want to be eating chicken every day.

And it's also, of course, famous for its linoleic acid.

So you got to be careful about that.

And of course, it's also famous for being very dirty.

So if you're going to eat chicken, make sure it is clean pastured chicken.

See, that's the thing.

So that's what I meant when I said, like, you're doing, you do one thing to you think you're optimizing your health in one way by eating chicken and rice and clean and lean.

And yet, like, you can be like really doing your body some harm and like creating a toxic environment because a lot of people especially in the health and fitness world they're eating chicken twice a day yes if not three times a day and copious amounts of it and pro hardcore protein protein protein yeah and yet if you don't know the source of that chicken and you have a lot of arsenic in that chicken that can cause your brain to basically decline

in years to come.

No question.

Arsenic is one of the toxins.

And of course, it just makes it harder for you to detox from all the others.

You know, as they say, your tub is full.

So,

yes, you want to keep the oxygen.

And the good news, again, easily measure that.

So we have a set of labs called Recode Labs that everyone can look at for their cognition.

Also, the P-TAW that I mentioned earlier, you can get on something called Brain Scan.

Easy.

You can do these things directly.

I had it done at my kitchen table a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah.

So you don't even need necessarily to go to your provider.

You can get these directly now and find out.

I want to talk all about those tests, especially in today's time with the medical system, they have to take the onus on them to, I guess, to make sure that they're going to be fine because the medical system here, to find a doctor, is almost next to impossible.

And a test can take six months.

So the fact that they can do it on their own is really important.

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What were the other main causes of cognitive decline?

You said insulin resistance.

Yeah.

We talked about that.

We talked about a few other, the toxins.

And sleep apnea.

We talked about that one.

Oxygen to your oxygenation.

Right.

What was the other few that we said in that space before we get into inflammation?

Right.

So you're talking about toxins, you talk about metabolic.

Oh, we kind of talked about both the toxins and the antibiotics.

So for the the toxins, we talked about the three different groups.

And those are the, and you know, a lot of people don't realize they're being exposed to these things.

So get it checked out.

If you're being exposed to trichothesines, which are some of the mycotoxins, okratoxin A, gleotoxin, all these are measurable.

You can find out if you've got this.

Very important.

And then, as you said, the other piece on the energetics.

Yes, find out if you have sleep apnea.

Find out if you have insulin resistance.

That's a big problem.

Find out if you've got metabolic syndrome.

These are all

very accessible to understand.

And And this is also about like, you know, when they're not eating properly, like, you know, high-carb diet, less sugar.

By the way, what about eating too much fruit?

Yeah.

So a very interesting group in the University of Colorado, Professor Rick Johnson.

And actually, he, along with David Perlbunter and myself, published a paper just two years ago.

And this was really mostly Rick's work over the years, beautiful work, where he looked at what happens with fructose in comparison to what happens with Alzheimer's.

And the parallels are shocking.

So high fructose corn syrup is likely part of this metabolic syndrome and it is likely a common and important contributor to cognitive decline.

Now, having said that, when he talks about eating too much fruit, he's talking about

you have apes that go out and eat 90 pieces of fruit because it's because fall is coming, that sort of thing.

If you eat an apple or things like that, this is not a problem because you you have the fiber that goes with it.

What you want to be careful of is these sweet fruit juices that have no fiber in them.

And so you get this rush.

You know, again, this is where CGMs are helpful.

You're going to see a bump in your glucose for many of these things.

Of course, it doesn't measure fructose, but just these things will alter your glucose as well.

So you have to be careful.

You know, if you're going to have anything that's going to bump up that fructose markedly, like fruit juices, that is, again, increasing your risk for metabolic metabolic syndrome, for weight gain, for cognitive decline, for inflammation, for uric acid.

Of course, David Perlwater wrote a wonderful book on this called Drop Acid.

And so, so, no question, these things are important.

But even if you're not drinking the fruit juice, let's say you have like two pounds of grapes and 10 mangoes.

I'm asking for a friend here, not for

like, can that be a contributor?

If you're eating nothing else,

not even, not that I'm not, not, oh, my friend, not that, not that they're not eating anything else,

but like they just love fruit.

I, they just love fruit and they can eat fruit day and night.

So, here's what I would recommend: simply check your metabolic parameters.

As long as you're not seeing that jump up, your bodily is body is handling it pretty well.

You know, it's interesting.

If you look at our humans meant to be from, because of how they descended, are they meant to be carnivores, omnivores, you know,

herbivores?

The thing that fits closest is frugivores.

So we actually were, we were descended from the simians,

who basically survive on fruit.

So to some extent, we're made.

Now, here's the problem.

People kept on saying, but we want to sell more fruit.

So how do we sell more fruit?

We're going to develop fruit that has more sugar in it because people like that.

So the problem is that what we were evolved to eat is not the stuff that's there today.

We were evolved to eat lesser sweet fruit.

So again, check your metabolic markers.

As long as you're there doing well, you're probably not eating too much fruit.

Okay.

That's

for your friend.

For my friend, exactly.

I'll tell them that.

Thank you.

Please tell.

I will.

How about inflammation?

Okay, inflammation and also what part of genetics play a role in getting Alzheimer's or dementia down the road?

Yeah, great point.

So there are about 100 different genes that are associated with Alzheimer's risk, but only three of them, APP, presenillin I, and presenillin II, are ones that you basically get it each time.

In other words, they are more like a fate.

We believe that even those, and we've got some beginning examples where people can do very well even with those, but those, everyone in the family who has the gene gets it.

The others of these hundred are all just like having high cholesterol for heart disease.

In other words, it's your proclivity, but it is not your fate.

And the most common one that everybody talks about and is critical in terms of the many people with Alzheimer's in the United States is APOE4.

So APOE comes as the typical ones are two, three, or four.

So for example, I checked myself, I'm an APOE3, three.

I got a copy of three from my mother and a copy of three from my father, so I'm a 3-3.

So if your risk, if you're APOE4 negative, which is three-quarters of the population, your risk is 9% for your lifetime.

If you have a single copy, and that's 75 million Americans, your risk is 30% during your lifetime, clearly higher than if you have none.

If you've got two copies, your risk, and that's 7 million Americans, your risk is 90% during your lifetime.

In other words, most likely you will get it.

But the good news is

get on active prevention.

Nobody needs to get it.

There's a wonderful website called apoe4.info that our friend Julie Gregory set this up years ago.

She herself is a 4-4.

She actually wrote a chapter and wrote a large part of the second book, The End of Alzheimer's Program.

She's amazing.

She had in her late 40s already begun her cognitive decline.

She's now in her 60s, 13 years out.

She's doing absolutely great.

She's brilliant.

And she is a real activist and citizen scientist when it comes to Alzheimer's and cognitive decline.

And she is the founder of ApoE4.info, which dispenses fantastic information to thousands of people who are APOE4 positive.

So I encourage everyone, find out your status, get on there.

It's part of what we say to everyone who's 35 or over should get a cognoscopy.

With, you know, with this new research talking about the 20s, we always said wait till 35, maybe even earlier, maybe when you're 25.

But nobody should be getting this disease.

It should be a rare problem.

You know, I think about my mom who I told you was diagnosed with Alzheimer's recently.

She's 81.

And she was so meticulous in everything in terms of like, honestly, ahead of the times in a lot of ways, like wouldn't about microplastics, about not even using a microwave and pesticides on fruit and

all these things that you were actually mentioning.

Like, it, like, how often does it happen where people can do things seemingly doing everything right

and still get the disease?

Great point.

And it does lower your risk a lot.

I mean, it may be that she has a genetic predisposition and she would have gotten it at 61.

We don't know.

The good news is you can find out.

So you can look at her genetics.

You can look at her biochemistry.

You can look at these various parameters and find out where does she stand.

It may be, for example, that she's got more exposure to specific toxins than she realizes.

It may be that she's not a good methylator and she doesn't realize that.

There are a lot of possibilities.

And so she can find out.

And also, what part of this could be that you get it?

You could be doing everything right, but then then loneliness, isolation, having really little community, all these kind of ancillary things that are just more emotional.

Yes.

What's the impact of those things on getting Alzheimer's?

Large.

And so, you know what's happened is this whole field of brain stimulation has turned out to be very important.

And social interactions, that's just a part of it.

Brain training is another related part.

Photo biomodulation.

So all this light therapy that people are doing, it's actually helping.

Micro,

yes, even, and especially the things like VLIT or origin or neuronic.

These are all things that have specific frequencies.

The gamma frequency looks like, and this was the gamma frequency work came out of MIT, that looks like it has had the most positive impact on cognition.

So these are all different approaches that can be important.

Brain stimulation, you know, even things like people have talked about, you know, go learn a new language or anything that is giving that stimulation.

And part of that, just as what you said, is the social interaction, not the loneliness, is a problem for the brain.

By the way, loss of hearing, another big one, loss of sense of smell, loss of vision.

These are all things that are critical for optimal cognition.

You want to deal with those things for optimal cognition.

Really?

Absolutely.

So if you can't hear or see very well or smell very well, how does that affect your brain?

Because your brain isn't getting stimulated the way it should.

In fact, I just came from a meeting where there was a discussion on cochlear implants and how important these are for people who are having trouble with their hearing.

Absolutely and critical to get that stimulation.

You know, your brain has this beautiful plasticity, but it's like a car.

You know, you just let the car sit there for 10 years.

It's not going to run the same way as if you're out there using it and keeping it oiled and all these sorts of things.

Right.

Keeping it tuned up.

Right.

You don't use it, you lose it.

Exactly.

How about just in terms of how does exercise impact brain health?

One of the biggest impactors.

In fact, you know, as people have said, if you could put exercise in a pill, it would be a multi-billion dollar drug.

Totally.

And we feel the same way.

The protocol that we developed is getting people better all the time.

If this were a drug, this would be a multiple hundred billion dollar drug.

Thankfully, you know, you don't have to go and have the side effects of a drug to do the right things.

So exercise has multiple mechanisms.

If you're looking at the strength training, that's particularly good for insulin sensitivity, for ketosis, and things like that.

If you're looking at the aerobic part, that is really good for blood flow.

It's really good for your

oxygenation.

By the way, one of the ways to get your oxygenation up and get rid of the sleep apnea is just reduce your inflammation.

People will find just by changing their diet that that can be helpful.

And then, of course, another big one is HIIT, the high-intensity interval therapy.

That's also really, really helpful to reduce risk for cognitive decline.

So, exercise is a big one, and most people aren't getting enough.

So, people will say, well, I go for a walk several times a week.

Okay, but you got to get the heart rate up, get your strength training in.

You'll find so many benefits of this.

I was going to ask you if all the exercises out there that we just talked about, would you say walking is more important than strength training or strength training more important than walking when it comes to your cognitive abilities, your brain health, and getting Alzheimer's?

If you had to just choose one,

it would just be hit.

It would be hit.

That's the one that seems to have the best impact.

And if you could do it

while using EWAT, that would be even better because that combination of the blood flow and the oxygenation seems to be very, very helpful for your brain.

How does an 80-year-old do hit training, though?

Yeah, so very, very important.

You have to remember these are personalized.

Right.

So don't hurt yourself.

Right.

You know, one of the common things we run into is people who are underweight versus overweight.

People who have some extra fat to burn tend to be the easier ones to help.

They can burn that fat.

They can get it insulin sensitive.

They do great.

The frail ones are harder.

They try to now do some fasting and they go downhill instead of uphill.

So we got to give them the exogenous ketones.

We got to build them up.

That's sort of true.

That's true.

Think about it.

You know, I used to have this weight weight loss show years ago.

And, you know, you have these people who are morbidly obese and they can lose 30 pounds in a week because there's so much weight to lose.

But the people who had not that much weight to lose, it's a pain.

To lose two pounds is very difficult.

It's easier to work with somebody who has more fat on their bodies than they're too frail because they can, you know.

So for 80-year-olds, what we recommend is start by getting a calcium score.

Find out just to make sure because you don't want to have something where you're going to start and now you're going to hurt yourself and you have a myocardial infarction.

So, yeah, but the woman who's walking across the patient Zero that I saw back in 2012 is currently walking across the United States from

ocean to ocean.

She is just about to turn 81 and she does very well and does all sorts of exercise.

But yeah, and she's done, you know, 100-mile bike rides and marathons and stuff.

But you're right.

Biological systems were not made to function in square wave jerks.

You don't go from couch potato to running a marathon in one day.

No.

You work up, and then the same thing, if you're going to quit a medication or something like that, you work slowly off.

Slow up, slow down,

take your time.

And that way, you'll make sure that you don't have people who have now vascular risk factors that hurt themselves.

What are other,

how are other ways are people getting, like having inflammation besides what we just said, like that they can look for, that they, what causes inflammation?

Yeah.

The most common thing actually turns out to just be a lousy diet and some and some leaky gut.

So I would say, you know, people not looking carefully enough at the gut is a really common problem.

That's

a common one.

And then, of course, you get inflammation from air pollution.

That's another big one.

And then from metabolic syndrome.

And then you get it from mild infections.

We see it in people, for example, who have recurrent herpetic outbreaks.

You know, most of us are harboring various herpes family members, HSV-1, HSV-2, HHV6A, Epstein-Barr, CMV.

These are all important ones.

And that herpes causes.

Oh,

it's a very strong correlation.

So, for example,

Professor Ruth Itzaki is a woman from the UK, professor in the UK, who has spent her career looking at the relationship between herpes simplex 1,

the outbreak you get on your lip

and Alzheimer's disease.

And you know, this thing climbs up your into your trigeminal ganglion and then can project centrally.

It can cause brain inflammation.

And in a study out of Taiwan, what they showed was people who treated their outbreaks of lip herpes actually had a much reduced risk of cognitive decline later in life.

So that's another common way to get some inflammation.

And then tick-borne illnesses.

So many people don't realize that they might have been treated for Lyme, for example, but they miss the bartonella or they miss the Babesia or they miss the ere lickia.

So

when you get infected from a tick, not only do you get Lyme, but in the majority of cases, if you got Lyme, the majority of cases, you also got a co-infection, such as Babesia or Bartonella, things like that.

Another common way to have inflammation.

Wow.

All these things that you would never correlate together.

Exactly.

That's what's so, it's fascinating.

Yeah.

So what are some ways we can reverse it now?

Now we know about all these things that can cause it that maybe we didn't know before.

We know there's a few tests that you could take to see if where your biomarkers are to see if you're a candidate.

What are some of the things, besides exercise, right?

Besides HIIT training, even walking, you know, even strength training, got that.

What are other ways that we can help reverse them?

Yeah, great point.

So there are seven.

Now that we understand what's driving it, as you said, there's all these different factors.

How do they relate?

They all relate in one way.

You're changing the balance between supply and demand in your brain.

It's that straightforward.

So there are seven basics and there are two specifics.

Okay.

So the seven basics are the diet we talked about, which we call KetoFlex 12.3.

And you can actually get these meals now from Trifecta.

And they're so you can that you they can bring them to your house if you don't want to go out and do it yourself or you can go out yourself and get the right things.

No problem.

Exercise, we talked about.

Sleep, we talked about the parameters of sleep that are important.

Stress, and we talked about stress as well.

Brain training, and there are different ways to do that.

Brain HQ does a particularly good job.

In our ongoing clinical trial, which by the way, the interim analysis, fantastic results with that, we are using brain HQ as part of the brain training for this.

Then detox.

Everybody should have some degree of detox, getting your glutathione level up, high-fiber diet, making sure getting sweating, followed by a shower with a non-toxic soap like a castile or something like that.

And then some targeted supplements.

You know, there are lots of great things out there.

Resolvins, different for each person.

The armamentarium is huge.

So those are the seven specific soap and basics.

There are two specifics.

Those are look for and treat ongoing infections.

You'll be surprised at how many people don't realize this.

One of the people who came to me years ago said, you know, I've done well for a while, but I'm going backwards now.

Something's not quite right.

I said, okay, let's look and see what it is.

And it turned out that she had babesia.

It had never been diagnosed.

She didn't know she had it.

What is it?

It is a parasite.

It's actually, so babesia is a cousin of malaria.

And it's carried in ticks.

And she had had a tick bite.

She'd been treated for Lyme.

They never looked for the babesia.

And that's what she, and she'd had it for years.

Treating that helped her.

She then turned out she had some mycotoxins as well.

She's done really well.

So it's looking for and treating the various infections, of which there are many.

And then it's looking for and treating the various toxins that we talked about earlier.

If you've got a high level of trichothesines, you are going to have trouble and you've got to get out.

You've got to get out of the place that's giving you that exposure, or at least get out while they are remediating it so that you can get back in and not have that exposure.

As long as you've got this equation where you're higher on the demand side and too low on the supply side, you are going to downsize.

That's That's all you can do.

So

you said something that I thought was interesting.

Soap, the kind of soap you use.

Castile is a good one, is one of the good ones.

What is that?

It's a non-toxic soap.

So it doesn't have all the emollients and stuff.

You got to be careful about all the.

Carabins.

Yeah,

all these cosmetics.

You know, Dr.

Heather Sanderson, who is getting fantastic results, amazing physician in San Diego, and took training a number of years ago, and she published her own trial, beautiful results.

She did recently something very interesting.

She looked at toxin status in a woman before and after hair coloring and she found, I mean, you can see the difference.

I mean, so the various cosmetic things that we are using can contribute to that.

So again, what did she find?

I want to know.

She found multiple things like phthalates and stuff that were, you know, multiple.

And you mentioned the parabens, things that had increased with this.

I will urge her to get this stuff published.

It's very interesting.

You can see this.

So, you know, again, you want to be doing it at appropriate intervals with appropriate, as healthy as possible cosmetic approaches and continuing to have good glutathione levels, good detox, all these things to keep to a minimum.

We can't get away from the fact that we do live in a toxic world,

but we can minimize the exposure and maximize the reduction in our bodies.

It's interesting because my mother wouldn't color her hair either because she thought it was bad for her.

She knew it was bad for her.

She was right.

That's what I'm saying.

She did everything.

She was ahead of the curve.

She was, yeah.

And look at the result anyway, you know.

But so that's interesting.

So, women who are like make people wear a lot of makeup, do their hair with like all the hair dyes are at a higher risk of getting Alzheimer's for all those toxicity reasons.

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Okay, what about the sauna?

Yeah.

How helpful is it?

Is it just moderately helpful?

Is it remarkably helpful?

There was a study done in Finland several years ago where they simply looked at, this happened to be in men, but they simply looked at men who had few saunas or many saunas.

And interestingly, in Finland, few saunas is two or fewer per week.

Wow.

Yeah.

So they didn't have anything.

Finished people like their saunas.

Thank goodness.

Yeah.

Because it definitely helps.

And the ones who were

doing five and six saunas per week clearly had a reduced risk for cognitive decline compared to those who were doing two or fewer.

So we poor Americans who are doing zero per week are presumably at even greater risk than the Finnish men who are just doing two a week.

Wow.

So the ones who, how about the men who did two a week versus the Americans who did zero?

Was there an uptick of that?

Well, no one's looked at that directly.

But I do have to say, if you look at all the countries in the world and ask who has the most Alzheimer's, the highest incidence overall turns out to be Finland.

So they've got exposure to a number of other toxins.

They've also got a lot of mycotoxin exposure in Finland.

And in some cases, it's not clear why.

I think over the years, as people are measuring these things, they'll find out more.

But right now, it is clear that Finland does have a slightly higher incidence than other places.

If there's a place with a little lower incidence, it's some of these, of course, blue zone sites seem to be better.

And interestingly, in India, it's been suggested that it may be due to the curcumin, the turmeric that is used, which is actually quite a nice anti-inflammatory effect and quite a nice anti-amyloid effect.

It actually binds to the amyloid that is part of the Alzheimer's pathology and pathophysiology and helps to reduce it and helps you to get rid of it.

But then what about all the pollution in India?

Like talk about pollution and toxins and toxicities.

So the turmeric balances out the

air pollution?

Well, so the air pollution is in specific areas but across is not as bad across the country

yeah well it's in it's in you know it's in the different areas urban areas yeah this is yeah this is crazy it's very interesting to me all these things how about an ice like an like a cold plunge that that doesn't do anything no that does help

because it helps with the inflammation so what the so well what it does is it's stimulating your mitochondria so one of the biggest players here is your mitochondria they are the batteries of your cell as you know they're they have come come originally, they descended from bacteria that entered our cells many, many millions of years ago.

And they help us.

They produce this wonderful energy.

We support them.

They support us.

As we begin to get older, they don't function as well.

And especially if we're doing these various damaging things, the mycotoxins are particularly pernicious to those mitochondria.

And so what happens?

We want to support those mitochondria.

And how do we do that?

We get them the appropriate glucose and the appropriate ketones and make sure that we are insulin sensitive.

This is where red light is helpful.

This is where the cold plunges, the cold plunges are basically saying, oh my gosh, you know, I'm cold, so I've got to rev up my heat production.

Well, what does that mean?

That means revving up my mitochondria.

I also like things like urolithin A, which helps you turn over your mitochondria, and things like PQQ, which helps you increase your mitochondrial number.

So there's a whole set of things you can do for mitochondria, and I go into it in the book on the ageless brain.

What about, yeah, this book is, I mean, I can only imagine given the fact that I loved your other books.

And so like there's so much information that you give that I think it's so helpful, it's so educational.

How about NAD?

Because that's also mitochondrial.

Absolutely.

And NAD is an it's a great point you make because we've got these amazing brains and there are so many pieces to it.

Yeah.

You want to bump those energetics.

You want to get that energetic.

And, you know, I can't tell you how many times we'll see people who are just not thinking very well.

And they're here because they have either early Alzheimer's, pre-Azheimers, those sorts of things.

And we look at these parameters and say, look, you're a mess.

You don't have appropriate energetics.

You've got inflammation.

You clean up those things and they come back and they're different people.

They're with it again.

They're sharp again.

They're quick again.

The most common thing I hear from their spouses and their family members, they're so much more engaged.

part of the conversation again.

So, yes, everything from cold plunges, NAGD, as you mentioned, a very good thing.

And there's multiple ways to increase that.

Nicotinamide riboside is one good one.

NMN, nicotinamide.

I'd say true niogen.

Do you know what that is?

Of course.

Taking it myself, great stuff.

Niacinamide can also be good.

Some people will get NAD IVs.

Yeah, I got it.

They can be a little unpleasant at times.

They're so uncomfortable.

But you think they're good and they work.

So, again, what we do is go, the more the problem, the pushier you have to be on the solution.

Right.

Where we recommend NADIVs is for people who have chemo brain.

People who've had chemotherapy, who've had some brain degeneration, they really come back with NADIVs.

For the rest of us, we probably don't need to go that far.

And with what you mentioned, you know, true niogen or other, you know, nicotinamide riboside, NMN, niacinamide, these are all good ways to to get energetics.

Another big one, I'm sure you know about this, and as an athlete, is creatine.

So, creatine is another great way.

I was going to ask you about creatine.

What's the most, it's the most documented researched supplement, right, on the planet?

And that's what they say, anyway.

I was not aware that it was the most documented.

It was supposed to be the most documented.

That's what we heard today.

I hear this every day.

Creatine wasn't something that women ever used until very recently because only recently has it been like talked about as like a cognitive

helper.

It used to be just for like men and muscles and blah, blah, blah.

So you're saying there's a, there are direct correlations from your studies that creatine help with cognitive decline.

Absolutely.

It is one of the ways to boost those energetics.

So yeah, that's a key way.

And there are other great supplements.

I happen to like the resolvins.

Resolvins are fantastic.

What's that?

Resolvins.

So there's, this came out of Harvard, came out of a professor there, Charles Searhan, who was doing work over the years saying, what does the body do to resolve, instead of just an anti-inflammatory, if you've already got inflammation going on, how do you resolve it?

And it turns out that there is a set of molecules that he discovered.

that are called resolvins.

He named resolvins.

And these things are essentially cousins of the omega-3s.

So, as he pointed out, when you're taking omega-3s, you're getting more resolvins because they are biochemically related.

And you can get them as SPM active or as specialized pro-resolving mediators.

There are a number of ways you can get these.

You can get them.

These are simple supplements you can get, and they help to resolve ongoing inflammation.

So those are fan.

I think they're really helpful.

And we see people improve their status with that.

Where do I get those from?

You can get Metagenics, for example, makes SPM active

is a one good one.

Metagenics doesn't pay me anything.

So I'm just saying that because we're interested in best outcomes.

What can we do?

You have to remember, when we started this years ago, nobody got better.

Everybody died.

And so we just said, look, we want to do anything possible, whatever it takes, let's find out.

Now we're seeing people get better all the time.

So we're always looking for what is the best you can do.

And so, yeah, we include creatine for better energetics.

We include stress reduction.

A lot of people like things like heart math.

You know, we include things like the resolvins, all these things that you can get.

And the brain tests that you were saying earlier, what are the ones that people can take to see where, like,

what are the tests that they add?

Yeah.

So

basically, you look at three different things here.

One test looks for your...

current cognition.

So you can get a free online test.

Go to my cognoscopy.

Sorry, to go to my CQ test.

My cognoscopy is to get the blood testing.

But if you go to my CQ test, so the CQ is cognitive quotient, there's a free test you can do online and it will tell you, are you in good shape?

Because what will happen is people will have mild changes that they won't really notice it.

They'll think, oh, maybe I just am getting a little older or something.

So that is the one that tells you where your cognitive status is.

Then the one that tells you that you're ongoing brain biochemistry is called brain scan.

So you can, and it's called brain scan, but it's just a blood test.

So it's easy.

And you can get it done at a draw center or you can get it done in your home.

You can do mobile phlebotomy.

So you can go on getabrainscan.com and you can get it there.

And that gives you three things.

It's giving you your phosphotal that we talked about earlier, your neurofilament light, which tells you if you've got any damage to neurons from any cause.

And then it tells you your GFAP, which is glial fibrillary acidic protein.

That gives you complementary information saying, does your brain have any ongoing inflammation?

And does your brain have any ongoing repair?

So that's the one that's telling you your current status.

Then the third piece is: what are your risk factors?

And we talked about ApoE4 earlier, and that's part of the RICO report or part of myCognoscopy, where you can get blood tests that look at what we've been talking about: homocysteine, which is for your methylation, HSCRP, your heavy metals that you mentioned earlier, other toxin status.

What about your hormone status?

What about your glycemic status, your HOMA IR?

All those things will then give you a beautiful profile that says,

here are the risk factors for your brain.

That's great.

And then, like you said, you have this clinic or you're working with...

Where are you working?

Working.

Yeah, it's a great point.

So several years ago, we looked at, you know, there really needs to be a precision brain health center.

There hasn't been such a thing.

So we thought we need to set up the first precision brain health center in the world.

This is going to look at all these things.

And so I'm now working with Pacific Neuroscience Institute.

So the founder, Dr.

Dan Kelly, who's a neurosurgeon, and Dr.

David Merrill, who is a psychiatrist trained in this approach.

Some fantastic functional medicine physicians, Dr.

Heather Sanderson, Dr.

Rachel Husner, are all working there.

Dr.

Karen Miller, who's a world-class neuropsychologist,

Chanel Elhalu, who's another neuropsychologist, a fantastic team.

They're also working with Dr.

Cyrus Raji, who is one of the world's leading neuroradiologists, specifically looks at the neuroradiology.

He calls himself a preventive neuroradiologist, which I think is a great point.

He's looking at things like what does obesity do to your brain and things like that.

And do people go there when they have Alzheimer's to get it reversed or help them get it?

Both.

They go there when they're thinking if there's a family history.

They're like, okay, get me checked out.

Make sure.

We can basically make sure that people don't get this now.

It's amazing, which nobody could do that 10 years ago.

So things have really changed.

Where is it at?

This clinic?

It's in Santa Monica.

That's in Santa Monica.

Pacific Neuroscience Institute.

Yeah.

And you're there full-time?

No, I come down.

So I'm a consultant there.

So this is, yeah, so this is run by Dr.

David Merrill.

And then all the team that I mentioned is all part of that.

Then we have our weekly meetings.

So actually, I just came from there just a few minutes ago.

So we have our meetings there and go over.

And, you know, you can now look, there's tremendous imaging.

In addition to all these blood biomarkers that we've been talking about, you can get such an accurate look now at what's going on in the brain and to be able now to make sure that people don't have cognitive decline or if they have some degree of decline, that they reverse it.

So, my last question should have been my first question,

but

like brain fog, right?

So, if you don't, sometimes people think, oh, I'm just like you said, I'm getting old.

I just have my brain, or I've got so much on my mind, it's brain fog.

Are there specific differences between brain fog and early signs of Alzheimer's?

I'm really glad you asked that because this is a huge issue, especially since COVID.

People have been hyper-aware of brain fog and things like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and tick-borne illness.

Of course, with long COVID and chronic, all these things, you get this brain fog.

And people have, you know, the neurologists and my colleague neurologists have always said, oh, well, it's probably not Alzheimer's.

And then they just keep telling you that until it is Alzheimer's.

And then they say, sorry, it's Alzheimer's and we can do nothing.

It's been horrible.

It's such an antiquated approach.

So it is important.

And please take it seriously.

If you have any degree of brain fog, go in, you can find out, because what happens is the very factors that you and I have been talking about, those factors also create brain fog.

So you can look at brain fog.

Now, people say, well, don't get worried about it because it's not Alzheimer's.

Well, it is a pre-pre-pre-Alzheimer's, basically.

It is saying your cognition is not hitting on all cylinders right now.

And if you don't do something about it and continue on that pathway, you may indeed develop Alzheimer's down the road.

So you want to be able to correct that brain fog.

And so therefore, you look at the same things, you address the same things.

And as I said, you know, long COVID is one of the big players.

And there are a number of groups now doing a very good job with how do you reverse that brain fog with COVID and long COVID and things like arterosil, very helpful for your vessels, and nitric oxide can be very helpful.

And natokinase, all of these things can be very helpful for the vascular part of long COVID.

So what are some of the symptoms that would make someone think, oh,

I have early signs of Alzheimer's or even brain fog?

Like what are some of the things that people can look at if they're listening to this show?

Yeah.

So you break them down into two main things.

For most people, it's about memory.

And so, because that tends to be the thing that starts to be impacted first.

And people will notice, hey, I can't remember phone numbers the way I used to.

I can't remember addresses the way I used to.

But in an in and it's interesting because that, it looks like the brain is basically saying, if I don't have enough energy, I can do very, very well with the things I've learned learned until now.

So the first thing that goes is adding new things because you do very well for very long.

But the second group is the group that has what we call non-amnestic.

So they're not the ones that come first with the memory change.

They're the ones that start first with executive function.

So planning.

They're the ones, by the way, that have the most trouble.

They lose their jobs quickly.

They can't plan things anymore.

They often can't calculate.

They can't figure out a tip.

They can't do their checkbooks anymore.

They will get lost driving, things like that.

They don't recognize faces sometimes.

Sometimes they'll have problems with visual analysis or they'll have problem coming up with words.

Those are fairly common and often happen relatively young.

So if you have any of those things, get serious, get evaluated, get on treatment.

Don't wait until you're really late in the process.

Because the other thing is, because of what our world's different now, right?

We rely on our phones for phone numbers.

When I was a kid, I had to memorize everybody's phone numbers.

Now it's in my phone.

I'm like, call, you know, Mike, call Dale, you know, like, I don't know anybody's phone number.

Nobody does.

And you become like, our brains are becoming mentally lazy, right?

Well, not necessarily in that they're doing other things.

You know, you look at the things you're doing, you're learning to use your phone and you're learning all these things to do.

You look at the things you've, you know, look at what you've developed over the years, what you've learned from all the people you've talked to.

So it's just that you're, you're doing different things with your brain.

So you make a good point.

You don't have to remember phone numbers.

Well, I think people are like, they're also, you know,

scrolling TikTok and Instagram.

And that's their brains are becoming silly putty, right?

Because they're not using it.

They're like wasting that time that we would otherwise, when we were younger or in a different time, we would have to read, we'd have to go outside, we'd have to do something.

Now we're like, like just scrolling.

It is a very good point that anything that doesn't take your brain power to do it, which is just, you know, scrolling on things,

where you're not actually learning from that, does put you at risk because you're not stimulating.

As you said earlier, you don't use it or lose it.

That's been said for many, many years.

It's the same for your muscles.

You got to keep going.

You got to keep things well oiled.

Yeah.

Keep things rolling.

So you're right.

That is why having some specific time and say, okay, I'm going to learn a new language or I'm going to learn a new instrument or I'm going to do something specifically.

Write the next book, write the next paper, whatever you do, read the next paper, figure out something new.

That's going to be good for you.

Is there anything I didn't ask you that

you're like, oh, you should have asked me about this that that's really helpful for people?

I think you've touched on, you know, really well on touched on all the key issues that happen for our brains.

And I think that the main point here is you don't have to wait for it anymore.

We can reduce the global burden of dementia.

It is a huge global, this is a trillion dollar global problem that has not been addressed appropriately.

The one thing I would say is the gap between what is currently being practiced as standard of care and what is now available has never been larger.

So we need to be able to get these new things out there.

It is amazing.

There is a huge gap there between what people are practicing on an everyday practice and what is now available.

I wanted to ask you this.

What's the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's?

Right.

So dementia just means global cognitive decline.

And there are several things that cause it.

The number one cause of dementia is Alzheimer's.

It represents the majority.

However, you can also get dementia from Lewy body disease.

There are a million Americans who have Lewy body disease, and it looks a lot like Alzheimer's, but there are some specific differences.

By the way, what we're doing also helps that.

There is vascular dementia, another common one.

So for people who have vascular problems, they can develop dementia.

There is frontotemporal dementia.

There is progressive supranuclear palsy, which can also be associated with dementia.

There's one that strikes elderly people in their 80s and 90s called late, which is another form of dementia.

So there are a number of ways to get dementia, but far and away, the number one is Alzheimer's disease.

Got it.

So in your new book, The Ageless Brain, is there any new foundings, findings that you put in here that are not, that you didn't know about five years ago?

Or

in, yeah, what are some of the things that you the reason for writing this book was actually twofold.

Number one, I wanted to get this out to everybody because the other books were about Alzheimer's.

And now we're saying, look, everyone can save synapses.

So we wanted that the whole goal of this book is to make it so that your brain span is as long as your lifespan.

It is a problem that is so common that our lifespan, whether it's 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, is longer than

our brain span.

Our lifespan, you know, we might live to 90, but spend 20 years in a nursing home.

That's horrible.

So we want to make everyone's brain span be as long as their lifespan.

That's the idea of the ageless brain.

We want to make sure that, and we now know how to do that.

So that's the critical piece.

And then we wanted to put in new things.

So there are, there's stuff in here about new peptides, for example, new testing.

There's summaries of, you know, here are the tests that are, yeah, things like the new biomarkers, the new blood tests that weren't available just a couple of years ago.

These are all crucial.

And then it goes through kind of decade by decade.

Where do you want to stand?

Things on epigenetics of aging itself.

How do you know if your brain is aging or not?

You couldn't find that out five years ago.

Now you can find that that out.

So there's a lot of stuff here.

This is the next step on making it so that we can all live our entire lives with sharp brains.

What about peptides?

Is there a peptide to help with Alzheimer's?

So

there are a number of them, actually.

Is it the BPC 157?

That's one of them.

But there's also, so things like epitalon, for example,

you know, thymus and alpha-1 and

beta-4.

And those are other good ones.

One of the ones i'm interested in is called adnp activity dependent neuropeptide and there is something called divunatide which is a fragment of that now it was tried a number of years ago just as a monotherapy intranasal and i think intranasal approaches are the future because these get into your brain intranasal glutathione gets into your brain you were asking earlier about glutathione it's a good way to take it gets into your brain so there are a number of ways to do this and with this when they tried it alone it didn't.

It didn't have a big impact, but they didn't do everything else that they should have been doing in association with it.

So there's a lot new to discuss in this.

The field is progressing.

You know, as we had the first examples of people 10 years of sustained improvement.

And interestingly, we know when they have a little bit of backslide, we can find out what's causing it.

We can address those things.

So this book is a book for everyone to save synapses.

It's amazing because longevity is a huge thing.

Right now, everybody wants to live forever.

But if you're going to live and not have

your brain functioning properly, what's the point, right?

Exactly.

So you're basically talking about how we can have optimum brain power.

Exactly.

And everyone should have it.

Even when you're at 90.

Absolutely.

And to give a couple of examples at the end, which are

long

patched together from various people I've interacted with.

So they're illustrative examples.

But it's people going through decade by decade and saying, okay, where do I stand?

How can I keep things going?

And how can I make sure I have a good brain span?

I wanted to ask you one more thing, actually.

Besides blueberries and salmon,

what are some of the top foods?

What is the diet that someone should eat daily for optimal brain health?

Yeah, such a good point.

So we call it KetoFlex 12.3.

And actually, Julie G, who founded the ApoE4.info, has been a big proponent of this and has been doing it herself for years and was heavily involved in the development of this.

So it is a plant-rich, mildly ketogenic diet, high in phytonutrients, high in fiber, great for detox, improving your gut microbiome, giving you appropriate antioxidants and things like that.

And it is where you are living basically clean.

You don't want to have any of these CAFO foods or any of these farmed salmon or any of that stuff.

And we talked about before, pastured eggs,

pastured chicken, grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, typically the small fish, all of those things and

seafood and those sorts of things.

That is the one that has worked best overall.

You can take a look at it, as I mentioned, at KetoFlex.

You can actually get it from a group called Trifecta.

So you can take a look at their meals and see what they're doing.

The reason why I was asking again is because Mediterranean diets were the most popular in terms of like having rich oils, avocado, olive oil.

Yes.

Is that now been kind of debunked?

No, not at all.

No, and those are great and no question.

You know, high good fats, you know, avocados being a great example.

And, you know, a certain amount of fruit.

You just don't want to go crazy on super sweet fruit like pineapple and stuff.

My favorite.

Those are all good.

And there's nothing wrong with Mediterranean diet.

However, the one thing it lacks in terms of, you know, we're just coming from the biochemistry of Alzheimer's.

What makes your synapses work?

What makes your brain stay functional?

When you look at that, the one failure of the Mediterranean diet is it doesn't give you that intermittent ketosis that's helpful.

So

over time, it will get you more insulin sensitive, and that's the positive.

And it does give you a lot of plants, a lot of good oils, a lot of good fats and things like that.

All that's good.

Where I think we can do a little better is with getting the ketones and even starting with some exogenous ketones.

I like to start with exogenous ketones because you remember you've lost the two major sources of energy for your brain when you're having, when you're sputtering, if you've got some brain fog, for example, you want to restore both of those.

And part of that is starting with some exogenous ketones as you're getting back to being insulin sensitive again.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being on this podcast.

I very much enjoyed this conversation.

I learned a lot.

I love what you've done with your life.

What you're working on is so helpful.

And like I said, I really am grateful that you came on the show.

So thank you.

Thanks so much, Jen.

I love what you're doing, and I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.