Conquering Cognitive Decline & Making Alzheimer’s Optional – with Dale Bredesen

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Dale Bredesen. Now I hope you are familiar with Dr. Bredesen ‘s work, because he is a pioneer not only in brain health research, but specifically in dementia and Alzheimer’s. And a large reason why I wanted to bring him to you all is that we now have more evidence or evidence than ever before, that Alzheimer’s and dementia is optional. And you’re going to hear him talk about this, that there are actually seven different lifestyle tools, we can look at behaviors, health habits we can look at, that will change the game in the direction of your brain health and whether you get Alzheimer’s or you don’t. So on this episode, I wanted him to walk through what are the early warning signs? How can we know because I if I know you’ll hear it in the episode. I know as I’ve gone through my menopausal journey, there have been moments where I’m wondering if I am losing some ability to hold on to memory. And then the minute I clean up my lifestyle, all of a sudden that memory comes back and you’ll hear him talk a little bit about that. So I wanted him to go through early warning signs. I wanted him to go through the seven steps you’ll hear one of them is metabolic flexibility. So those of you that are fasting, it’s really interesting what he has to say about the power of ketones on the brain. And then I wanted him to talk about some new emerging things like psychedelics, what do we know about psilocybin? What do we know about ketamine some of these emerging techniques or therapies that are being revisited. So this was such a beautiful conversation, we went through everything from nutrition to detox to, to sleep to exercise, and then landed on psychedelics. It was a beautiful conversation, and I’m so excited to share it with you. As always, if you love this, please leave a review, share it out into the world and we all can work together to make Alzheimer’s and dementia optional. When you follow the steps that Dr. Bredesen lays out for us here, enjoy a doctor Vinnie hair and Welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Here’s where I want to start this conversation. And by the way, welcome to my podcast this is we’ve had some great guests. Yeah, and your your your knowledge, your passion for helping women prevent Alzheimer’s is so needed. So I’m really excited to bring you to my off my audience. So thank you for joining me today.

Dale Bredesen  

Thank you so much for having me. And you know, there’s so much we can do love to talk at some point about we have a patient recently, a woman who’s in her early 70s, who’s just had just these dramatic improvements, which we can see on MRI and on her testing. And every time people get better we’ve had you know, 1000s Now, it’s just so great to see it that it never gets old.

Dr. Mindy  

I bet I bet. Well, let’s let’s start this part of the conversation because I think a lot of the women in their 40s and 50s We’re starting to think about Alzheimer’s and dementia now. Yeah. What are the early warning signs? Because I think we dismiss memory loss and inability to hold on to information as an aging thing. But are there are there things we can go wait a second, this is a big red flag, you’re gonna want to do something about this?

Speaker 2  

Yeah, I think it’s important to kind of string together a couple of important facts. So the first thing is, as I said earlier, that you know, this is now Alzheimer’s is optional. People should not be getting this, it should be a rare disease. If we would all get on active prevention at the age of 40. Or if you’re over 40, please get on active prevention or if you’ve got symptoms on earliest treatment. And here’s why. If you actually look at the changes, for example, on a PET scan, you can begin to see PET scan changes even in some people in their late 20s and 30s. So when I was training in neurology, we’ve thought of Alzheimer’s as a disease of our 60s 70s 80s 90s. But it’s really starting 20 years before a diagnosis. So it’s really a disease of your mid to late 30s 40s and 50s. That just gets diagnosed 20 years later, that’s the first thing to understand. The second thing to understand is you go through four stages, and especially in the first first two stages, it’s really easy if you know what to do. So The first stage you go through is a pre symptomatic stage, you don’t know you have problems. And this is typically occurring, as I said, you know, in the 30s 40s, where you don’t know that you have problems. But if you were to do spinal fluid, or if you were to do a PET scan, you’d already begin to see changes in many people. And just for numbers, this dwarfs the pandemic, we’ve had over a million people who have died from the COVID 19 pandemic, about 45 million of the currently living Americans will die of Alzheimer’s, if we all don’t get on active prevention, early treatment. So that’s the important thing to know. The second stage is subjective cognitive impairment, you know, there’s something wrong, but you’re still able to test in the normal range. And this is just what you were talking about where your doctor is saying to you, well, this is just normal aging. I hear this all the time, and it kills me to hear it. Because when someone knows that something’s changed, we should listen to them. What they’re telling you is that something has happened. And I had a great example a few months ago, where a physician himself was saying, Something’s wrong. His wife, who’s also a physician, said, Yes, something’s wrong, they took him to a neurologist. I mean, this guy actually had already gone into stage four, which is, which is actual dementia. And the doctor said, this is just you’re getting a little older, this is normal for your age, oh, my gosh, that was just completely wrong. And actually, this guy turned out to have normal pressure hydrocephalus. So that you just cannot miss these things. So it’s important to listen to people when they tell you something’s not right, with their memory, with phone numbers, with getting lost with just not feeling comfortable with not being as responsive with not being as quick. These are all the common things. And the way to break this down is you think about about two thirds of people that are having cognitive decline. It starts with an amnestic problem. So in other words, you’re having memory problems. And the most common one is yes, you can, you may remember the name of your first grade teacher. So long term memories stay for a long time. But the new ones are having trouble. So they’ll say, you know, yeah, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast, or I don’t remember we patient zero, the very first person that we started with, who did beautifully and by the way, is still doing well and is now a brain health coach came to see me in April of 2012. And she had gotten on a plane, and she got to the other end, and she doesn’t she didn’t remember what she had gotten into the plane for she actually got on the plane and went home. She didn’t know what she was there to do. So now some people will say Some neurologists will say for example, if you don’t remember where your car was parked, you’re okay. But if you don’t remember that you came in a car, you’re in trouble, but Well, yeah, but that’s a later stage. When you don’t remember that you came in a car. If you don’t, if you start to you know, if you normally remember where you parked your car, and now you’re not remembering where you parked your car, that is a concern. Things that have changed. If you were typically good for your life at remembering phone numbers, and now you’re not remembering phone numbers. That is a problem. And so again, you have the interesting thing, this SCI subjective cognitive impairment lasts about 10 years. So we have a wonderful area a window of opportunity to help so many people. And yet those people that people who are in that SCI phase, virtually 100% of them, we can make better. You look at what’s causing it, you look at the appropriate blood test, which is why I recommend everyone please get a Cognos copy, check these things, because what happens is what ultimately becomes Alzheimer’s and starts often as brain fog, or starts as things aren’t quite right. something’s not quite right, really, in the lab, we can boil it down to two major players. This is a network insufficiency of your brain, you’re not able to support that 500 trillion synapses network that you are supporting for the last 40 5060 7080 years. And it boils down to two big things. One is the innate immune system. So it’s ongoing inflammation, which are a drag it’s a little bit like you know, you can’t run as well anymore because you’re wearing lead slippers, you know, it’s just it’s your your, your your slow down so the inflammation is huge and it can be from leaky gut, poor oral microbiome, herpes simplex on your lip. It can be from a poor diet. It can just go on and on and on. It can be from tick borne illnesses, exposure to mycotoxins, so all these different things that are creating this ongoing drag by activating your innate system. So you’ve got to figure out what those are, you got to address them. And that’s what we do. Then the second piece, which is equally important, is energetics. So you have again, you use a lot of energy to keep that synaptic network going, you know, how you feel when you haven’t slept in a few days? Oh, yeah. And I remember I remember from when I was an intern, you go a few nights without sleep, and you’re just the energy is gone. You need that energy, and that is cerebral blood flow. And that, of course, vascular disease, one of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s. Second thing it is oxygenation. SPO to your saturation of oxygenation, which is why people who have sleep apnea are at such an increased risk, it is a huge issue. So just another case I just dealt with over the weekend. The woman had done well, she was actually one of the ones who wrote her wonderful story in the book, the first survivors of Alzheimer’s. This was Sally, she did a great job. She’s now in her seventh year doing really, really well. She’s HIV for positive she has the genetic predisposition doing very well. And then she started noticing over the last six months or so, kind of taken a backward step something is not right. So okay, we got to go back and look what’s been missed. Do you have new exposures? And one of the things was she did have some new water intrusion into the house. So okay, we’re dealing with that. Do you have an activation of your innate immune system? So I said, you know, you really haven’t checked to see sleep apnea. Well, you know, I’m not not snoring. I’m not set up for sleep apnea. It’s more common in men. That’s fair. Okay. It’s more common in short, thick neck men. Okay, that’s fair. And men who snore, okay. But when she did, then I encouraged her, please get it checked out. She had severe sleep apnea

Dr. Mindy  

undiagnosed, so she wasn’t getting oxygen when she sleeps. Exactly.

Speaker 2  

So her oxygenation is going down. And not only is the oxygenation going down, of course, your adrenaline is pushing to get you Oh, my God, wake up, you know, something’s wrong here. And so Okay, now we’ll see how she does, she’s ending up now starting on some CPAP. We’ll see how she does. But the key is, you’ve got to look at the energetics for your brain. And that, as I said, blood flow, it’s oxygenation. It’s mitochondrial function. If your mitochondria are not doing well, you’re not doing well. And some beautiful work, please check out the paper. And it’s I believe it’s freely available online, beautiful work from Professor Rick Johnson, who published this just a couple months ago. He’s from University of Colorado, and I’m actually a co author on this, and so is David Perlmutter, and several others. And what Rick found over the years, is that fructose has a very interesting impact on your system. Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat an apple, this means you shouldn’t have a ton of high fructose corn syrup. And this goes back to our evolution. And what he discovered was, okay, if you’re a primate and you’re getting ready for a winter, you need to store fat, and you need to turn down the energy. So even though fructose is a sugar, what he found is, it’s actually turning down your ATP by something like 15% or so. So here, you got a system that’s already right on the edge. And now you’re pushing it down further. And what he pointed out, which I thought was brilliant, was that you just go right down the list, the things that we accept as proof of Alzheimer’s, the PET scan changes, and and the changes in biochemistry and the changes in specific areas of the brain. These are the same ones that fructose hits. So there is a beautiful correlation there. And I do think it’s one of the reasons that so much high fructose corn syrup has hurt us over the years. And as he points out, you can get to the same place by pushing up your glucose chronically as well. And of course, it’s always been known insulin. Insulin resistance has been a big problem, it dramatically increases your risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Metabolic Syndrome, which includes insulin resistance is one of the common contributors to Alzheimer’s. So that’s the third piece and then the fourth one is your ketone level, because you’ve got to have something for your for your mitochondria to burn, and that’s either going to be glucose or ketones. In a perfect world. You are metabolically flexible, as you know, you can go back and forth. And of course what happens for people who are beginning to have brain fog and things like that they’ve lost both because they’ve lost because of the insulin resistance. We can’t burn glucose the way we were once able to, but because of the high insulin as part of insulin resistance that prevents you from Making ketones. So when I see people who are now having brain fog and going on to cognitive decline, that’s an energetic emergency, we need to get back their insulin sensitivity. And we need to get back their ability to make and use ketones. So we usually just start with some exogenous ketones, just to get rid of that emergency Yes, Hill, they can naturally get into this metabolic flexibility. So again, yeah, back to this and realize nobody should be getting dementia, but 15% of our population is dying of it. It’s huge.

Dr. Mindy  

So would you say that if there was one first step in to preventing Alzheimer’s, it’s metabolic flexibility, like, let’s just start with this, this system to be able to be able to bring glucose down after you eat and switch over into a fat burning state to make ketones is that at the core, a foundational place that everybody could start?

Speaker 2  

Everybody? Yeah, that’s the best way to start. But you have to remember, because this is a complex network, there will be people who will respond beautifully to that. And others where that’s not the rate limiting step, it’ll be their sleep apnea, or it’ll be their leaky gut, or it’ll be their sudden loss of este estradiol. And so as you know, for women, this was a beautiful study out of the Mayo Clinic a number of years ago, for women who had undergone an oophorectomy so who, who may have had trauma, or things like that, at the age of 40, or younger, and didn’t have HRT, and of course, we recommend BHRT. But for people who didn’t have HRT, they ended up doubling their risk for Alzheimer’s, even though the Alzheimer’s was years later, they were already beginning those biochemical changes that lead to Alzheimer’s. So this is, again, why I encourage everyone get things optimized, you never have to get to that point where you are now downsizing the network.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, and the interesting thing on estrogen that I’ve noticed is as estrogen declines, you become more insulin resistant. And so women start to notice it in their weight. But what I’m hearing you say is, hey, we got to pay attention to what is happening in the brain. So And can you talk a little bit, you know, I can tell you as a 53 year old woman, that I’ve had moments where I’m like, can’t remember where I parked my car, can’t remember why I walked into a room. And then I come back to my foundational lifestyle tools and say, Am I doing this? Am I doing this? And I clean that up? Yeah. So it what’s the difference between just age appropriate moments like that? And hey, you’re heading towards Alzheimer’s? How can we tell the difference? Or do we need to have some kind of bigger test to know?

Speaker 2  

Yeah, so the bottom line is yes, but here’s the thing. Don’t ignore that people keep seeing the neurologist, keep telling us Oh, and my colleagues, it kills me. They say, Well, you know, it’s probably not Alzheimer’s, so don’t worry about it. Well, then you come back the next year, and they say, Oh, now it is Alzheimer’s, and there’s nothing we can do. So don’t be passive. Even if it’s just a little brain fog, you can fix that. And yeah, you know, you want to be functioning better. So it goes back to you know, the old Alec Baldwin always be closing, this is always be optimizing. So keep on optimizing, get your your make sure you’re metabolically flexible. We think in this in terms of the seven basics, and then the specifics for if you’ve got a certain infection. So the seven basics are diet, exercise, sleep, stress, brain training, detox, and some targeted supplements. Get those get your ducks in a row there. And you would be amazed at how many people they’re looking for that crystal on the forehead, that new thing that is just out there, and it’s never proven. And then if they what they miss is the basics, just what you’re talking about. You go back to the basics. Yes. You do need some extra dial. Yes, you do need some progesterone. Yes, you do need pregnenolone. You do need appropriate thyroid, you do need appropriate insulin sensitivity, you do need to make sure that your gut is healed. You know, the gut is involved in so many of these neurodegenerative diseases from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s. And on and on ALS. You just you name it. And so and we don’t don’t give that enough, you know, enough attention.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I think one of the challenges is that there’s when you hear all the things you have to do, what for women, we come screaming into our 40s we have no idea about our hormones, we have no idea what’s ahead of us. And then all of a sudden, we start feeling different than we have years ago. And then we look at those seven things and we’re like, oh my gosh, like, I’ve been living the wrong lifestyle. And I and my big message is the lifestyle you lived at 35 does not serve you at 45. You’ve got to change and do something different when you go into those Peri menopausal years.

Speaker 2  

But the great news is just start with one One, you know, as you said, just optimize your diet, get a, so we call a Keto Flex 12. Three, it’s a plant rich, mildly ketogenic diet, with appropriate periods of fasting, typically 12 to 16 hours overnight, you will have more energy, you will have better brain function, you will feel better, you will sleep better start there. And then you can just, you know, add something new every few months. And it will it also gives you, it gives you that feeling gives you positive feedback. And once you get that positive feedback like wow, okay, this really helps. It really supports you. And you know, I want to go back to it because I didn’t finish answering your question. Apologies for that. You said, what are the early signs, as I mentioned, two thirds of people, it’s memory, but the other 1/3, it’s what we call a non amnestic presentation. It’s the non memory things. And it’s planning, these are the people that lose their jobs the quickest, they can’t plan the way they did, they can’t carry out their jobs, and they get fired. And this can be in your 40s. We see this all the time, or loss of calculations, they can’t figure a tip, or loss of recognizing faces, or getting lost with driving. These are the sorts of non amnestic things word finding. That’s another common was like wait a minute, my What happened to my vocabulary, and I just can’t come up with these things. And sure, you can always say, well, it’s probably not Alzheimer’s, but 20 years down the road, it may be. So get it while it’s early and you never get to the point that you have to worry about Alzheimer’s, my argument has been I mean, I’m now just turning 71. So I’m an old guy. But my generation is the last to fear Alzheimer’s, your generation, our our daughters are now in their early 30s. Their generation and your generation are the first not to have to fear this disease. It is now optional, get evaluated get on active prevention, and we can make dementia rare, that doesn’t mean that nobody in the world will ever get it. But it means it will be much more rare. It is now the number one cause of death in women in the UK. It’s incredibly common. Wow. We can do a lot about that. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

I will tell you as I went through my 40s Trying to balance my own menopausal symptoms, the two things that move the needle on my brain the most were detoxing, so get heavy metal detoxing, and metabolic switching. So I’m getting my more ketones to my brain. And the big thing that I noticed was I stopped losing my train of thought when I was talking to people, there was no longer arms, I no longer like just stopped mid sentence, it seemed like I had a more continual, directed thought pattern. So just from those two of the seven, are there ones that move the needle quicker? Or are they all equally as important.

Speaker 2  

So it’s interesting, it depends on you are if you’re more of an inflammatory person or an energetic person. And so we just had a great example of someone with posterior cortical atrophy, PCA. And this is a patient of a health coach. Carrie Mills Rutland, in New York is doing a fabulous job really impressed with Carrie and all the things she’s doing. And this person actually was improving. And it turned out have to have some detox and to have some, and it turned out to have the infection as well. But when she started ie what exercise with oxygen therapy, she went from this to this. So it depends a little bit on where it now I see the big improvements are people when they get into ketosis, and that starts with exogenous but then switching over to endogenous. And when they become as you said, metabolically flexible, so they’re now using the energy appropriately. And the other one I see is with E wat I see big improvements in people time and time again, because the oxygenation is now getting to the furthest reaches. There was a beautiful study out of Israel, about two years ago, where they were showing that they were they were using H bought the hyperbaric oxygen, but that doesn’t give you the Yeah, that the problem with that game is great. I like it, but it doesn’t give you the exercise part of it. Whereas the Ewok gives you both. In any case, yes, those things that helped to get the oxygenation to the furthest reaches. And as we get a little older, that’s an issue. So you know, things like for the inflammatory side, things like resolvins SPM, active from Professor Charles Sirhan of Harvard who discovered resolvins and worked with metagenics to develop these and I don’t work for any of those people. I have nothing to do with it. Nobody pays me to say it’s good. We’re just always interested in the best outcomes. And so far, this approach with these resolvins has been very helpful for people with inflammation of course then you have to find out what What’s causing the inflammation? You know, is it a leaky gut? Is it a poor oral microbiome and you have to address those things. We have people where they unknown abscesses, where cone beams will find the abscesses. So the bottom line is, dig until you find it. But there are some basic things you can do, as you said, starting with becoming metabolically flexible.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. And if you decide to go down the path of HRT, or BHRT, or are you immune from having to make those seven lifestyle changes? Like does it lessen the intensity that you need to focus on your lifestyle,

Speaker 2  

it improves things. So each of these so what happens is, imagine that you have a network, it’s a little bit like thinking about a country. So what happened in early 2020, we all heard there was a new insult to our country, it turned out to be COVID-19. And so we were told shelter in place, socially distanced, don’t go into work, you know, pull things back. And of course, the country went into a recession. That’s exactly what your brain is doing. It is experiencing these different insults, and dropping hormones is one of them. But it’s also experiencing things from your oral microbiome, the neural pathologists have found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, oral organisms, things like pee gingival is that’s a big one, Candida, fungi, molds, yeast, things like this. All sorts of bacteria. And interestingly, the amyloid that we associate with Alzheimer’s disease is actually an anti microbial. And this was first described by Professor Robert Moyer, and Professor Rudy tansy from Harvard several years ago. And I think it was a wonderful find. This is showing us this amyloid is not there to give you Alzheimer’s, it’s there fighting these insults. And of course, other insults, losing the oxygenation, because of things like sleep apnea, or upper airway resistance syndrome, and things like that. So all of these things are critical.

Dr. Mindy  

So with the mouth does it become this is an interesting one, because every time I’ve worked with a patient to detox them, and we get to the mouth, it’s very complicated, especially if you’ve had multiple root canals, you’ve got silver fillings, I mean, you’re talking a very expensive route to unwinding that. Are there some preventative dental hygiene tricks that we can do to keep our oral microbiome in a good place? So it doesn’t lead to what you’re talking about?

Speaker 2  

Absolutely. And of course, there are more and more dentists who have become oral systemic specialists, and who are interested in the fact that, you know, the oral microbiome is associated with atherosclerosis is associated with cognitive decline is associated with cancers. And they’re actually finding these organisms in these various places. So there is unfortunately, communication with the rest of the body. So number one, I recommend everyone get an oral DNA test. You There are a couple of groups that do it. Now my perio path is one of them. But there are others as well check your oral DNA and see do you have really high on some of the things like P gingival, S and T DeNicola, and P intermediate and fuser bacterium nucleatum, and things like that. So that’s the first thing and then secondly, find out if you have high mercury levels, as you indicated, and as you said, if you’ve got root canals, these can get infected. So see an oral systemic specialist and see and it may be that it’s pretty minimal. One thing you can do is to take some oral probiotics, you know, these are now available, and they can be very helpful. And then things like dental, Sidon, you know, bio Sidon, which we recommend for people that were treating with cognitive decline, you know, we published a clinical trial, it’s freely available online, it’s in Journal of Alzheimer’s disease from last year. And you can see that in our clinical trial, 84% of the people actually gotten better. And these are people in stage three and four, MCI and dementia stages, not just the first two, those are easy. And we’re now actually starting a new trial, a randomized controlled trial at six different sites a Hollywood, Florida and Cleveland, Nashville, Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco. So we’re really enthusiastic about that. And there’s, again, amazing oral oral microbiome improvement is fundamental to this. And there’s a lot you can do without being too expensive or too complicated. But you’re right. If you have infected root canals, that’s a different story. If you’ve got a lot of mercury in your mouth, that’s a that’s a concern as well. The good news is what is causing our brain fog and what is causing our cognitive decline are these things are identifiable, addressable and remediable. And of course, COVID-19 and long COVID And COVID really aided brain fog, this is a huge issue and is going to be a problem for years to come.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, talk a little bit about that, because we have ace two receptor sites in our brain, right? So if you if you had COVID, which they say all of us dead, at some point that that created a lot of brain fog, I saw that in my community in such a big way. So I want to make sure we highlight that because a lot of people are experiencing that.

Speaker 2  

Absolutely. So what’s already been published is number one, people who had COVID are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s, unfortunately, and it fits perfectly with the model that you and I just talked about, yeah, you are changing their inflammatory profile. And it’s now there’s all lots of interesting research going on now. Is it? Because you’ve got fragments of the virus in your gut? That’s one idea. Is it because there are auto immune activation? Is it because you’ve got spike protein still present? Is it because of other things? And the answer is probably some of all of the above, there are some auto antibodies that people get. Interestingly, you know, people have been taking things like a high dose natto kinase. For this. And there, I think there are improving protocols for long COVID. And so we recommend for anyone who’s had COVID, and I had it myself, I think despite vaccination, and I think, you know, as you said, most people have had it, then please, again, get evaluated, get on active prevention, or if you’ve already got problems with cognition, get on active treatment, of course, the treatment is more extensive than the prevention, no surprise, but if everybody would get on prevention, just a few people would then fall through the cracks and then go to the next step. Okay, now you have a more extensive evaluation, more extensive treatment. Great. And let’s make it so that nobody ever gets to that late stage where you actually get dementia.

Dr. Mindy  

And so the prevention is just so we’re clear as the seven things you highlighted that

Speaker 2  

prevention is Yeah, is the basics, looking at those things and addressing and find out? You know, do I have we know, what’s my HS CRP? Do? I have active inflammation. How does my oral microbiome look? Do I have a leaky gut? Do I use you mentioned toxins? You know, I was never taught as a neurologist that toxins are a common cause of Alzheimer’s, but they are one of the most common causes. And it’s whether you’re talking about the inorganics things like air pollution and Mercury, the organics things like Tallinn and benzene and formaldehyde and glyphosate, more unfortunately, probably the worst is the biotoxins, the Traco, theses, okra toxin, a glio toxin. These are real concerns. And unfortunately, the if you want to trigger someone’s innate immune system, while you’re going to use the beta glucans, from you know, from molds, I mean, that’s like the right way to trigger it. Yeah, well, that’s a concern.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the toxic conversation is so vast, it’s another one that’s like overwhelming. Do you have any any tips when when we’re looking at our toxic environment? Like, let’s just take a woman’s home? Are there some basic tips she should do to minimize the toxins that would affect Alzheimer’s?

Speaker 2  

Absolutely. And so first of all, you want to get an Urmi score, you know, this is easy to do, you can do it online, or hurts me to score any of these scores that will give you a score of how bad is your home with respect to the major molds now, there are lots of moles that that are not such a problem. But the big five, you know, Stacie buttress, Aspergillus, Penicillium? ketone, me I’m gonna Alenia. Those are the big five that, unfortunately, produce toxins that are activating your innate immune system, damaging your brain, damaging your immune system as well often damaging your kidneys, increasing your cancer risk. This has been a problem again, something where we’re all used to having processed food, not realizing Yes, it is killing you. We’re all used to sitting there in molds, and not realizing Yes, this really is killing you. So you know, get outside more. It’s easy. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that’s going to help us all is wearables. So where you can now see what is my heart rate variability? Am I under constant stress? There you go. Yeah. How was my sleep last night? Did I get into stage three, four deep, you know, slow wave sleep. So all of these things. So, so helpful.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. And so got move into sleep. That was what I wanted to talk about next. Because again, I look at all of this through a 53 year old woman’s lens. And when I look at that, I say, Okay, I know sleep is important, but I’ve hit a point where if I put my head on the pillow asleep is not as easy as just closing your eyes and going to sleep. So menopausal women really struggle even when we’re on BHRT and doing all the things so How can we get a better the best night’s sleep possible? And what should we be looking for in deep and REM sleep and total sleep?

Speaker 2  

Yeah. And as you know, and I’m sure you’ve probably had Professor Matthew Walker on Mad is a great guy who did this wonderful book, why we sleep and talks about these various things. So you know, you want to get about an hour and a half of REM sleep at night, and about an hour of deep slow wave sleep per night, and a total of somewhere seven to eight hours of quality sleep per night. Most of us don’t, as you know, as you indicated, it is a struggle. And so there’s a whole you know, sleep hygiene. Is it dark, is it quiet, I’d say that, you know, mine, I’m definitely bad in this area. So the area of sleep hygiene, getting up to sleep, so I’m working on the emails, and you know, watching the latest, listen to the latest podcast or whatever. And then it’s like, okay, now time for sleep, it doesn’t happen that way. You know, it, slow down, get your blue blockers on, don’t be looking at excitatory light. And by the way, blue light, very bad for macular degeneration. We’re now taking the protocol we developed for cognitive decline and adapting that with appropriate modifications for macular early macular degeneration. These things are bad, blue light, bad at night, horrible. Get your get your red light and start to wind down. Do some deep breathing, get your heart rate variability up so that when you kind of fall into sleep and ease into sleep, that’s great. And there are all sorts of good things. You know, you might like to take a little bit of melatonin as you indicated ba appropriate BHRT progesterone, low progesterone is associated with poor sleep. And guess what else it’s associated with poor detox. So you need that you need that progesterone for good detox, you need it for good sleep. You need it for calming down your sympathetic nervous system, as you know. So you’re absolutely right. Sleep is key.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, um, I now guard sleep like she’s my best friend. I like I’ve stopped doing red eye flights anywhere, like I just have prioritized sleep. Because once you get a good rhythm with it, you never want to break that, right. And I see such an improvement in my brain the next day. But I also know that there’s so many menopausal women that are really struggling to have a good night’s sleep. And it’s there’s an art to it, like you said, so yeah,

Speaker 2  

I was gonna say, you know, you mentioned you’re a 53 year old woman, and I think is very important to point out when I was training back in the 80s, as a neurologist that we never saw people in their 50s. With dementia, this was an older person’s disease. Now, it’s one of the most common things we see. And there are publications from epidemiologists over the last few years that have shown the increase in dementia in young people. And that’s 40s and 50s, has just dramatically increased, it’s not yet clear why some of this may have to do with changes in diet. Some of it may have to do with leaky gut, some of it may have to do with toxin exposure, some of it may have to do with menopausal changes, we don’t know. But the bottom line is 40s. And 50s is a very tough area now as far as cognition and so a common one I see it when I pick up a you know a chart and look through the all the different things and it’s a 52 year old woman who is having a specially a non amnestic presentation, problems with planning things like that. This is very, very common. And so again, another reason to get on that active prevention earlier. So this is a huge issue.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I call it an evolutionary mismatch. I feel like we’re at a moment where our female bodies are not copacetic with the modern world. And the more the modern world gets more physical, emotional, chemical stress, the more we’re seeing women suffering with their Hormonal Health or brain health, like we’re the ones where this is the age group that’s getting it the worst because the modern world has has so many interferences into our own natural healing state. That’s the way that’s the way I look at it. Yeah. Do you feel like there’s an exercise so the other thing that I learned as I’ve gone through my own menopausal experiences, you know, I can’t run like I used to I take shorter runs, I gravitate more to walks and hikes. I’m looking at building muscle more I do more yoga, like I was a competitive athlete in my 20s. And I really have dramatically shifted the way I work out in my 50s because of the change in my hormones. Do you think we as women, we need to all do that and are there certain exercises that are best for brain health?

Speaker 2  

It’s a great point. And if you know if If I were to say a few things that are the best for brain health one is Ewok. So exercise with oxygen therapy, because you’re getting perfusion, you’re getting kind of getting a three, four, because you’re getting that, you know, vascular effects, you’re getting oxygenation effects, and then you’re also getting some muscular effects as well. So it really does really does help him in multiple ways. But as you pointed out, muscle training is equally important in a different way. Because it is giving you that insulin sensitivity, you improve that as you get some muscle muscle. And the fact of the matter is, yes, okay, the we know from professional athletes, there are very few Tom Brady’s out there. Most athletes do their best in their 20s. You can even look there, there are old charts on baseball averages across all baseball players. And the average, you know, just starts to go down with each year. You don’t have everything you did you know, at 22 when you’re 42. Okay, yeah, but the good news is, we should all be able to get to 100 and stay sharp to 100. Right now, as I mentioned, 15% of us are dying of Alzheimer’s disease. That’s a huge number crazy, it is crazy. And it should not be and it’s because we’re not doing the very things that you’re doing. So it rather than saying it’s a problem, you’re not doing, you know, the whatever the severity, the you know, these huge things that you were doing as a as a competitive athlete, and were you a sprinter, were you a swimmer? What

Dr. Mindy  

were you I was a tennis player, I played on a tennis scholarship in college. So a lot of you know, that’s a lot of its type.

Speaker 2  

And you’re plus you’re planting and changing really quickly. And it’s coordination. By the way, it’s one of the things that’s best for your brain, because muscles, its oxygenation, and its strategy, you know, this idea of your thinking, and I was just at a wonderful exercise facility run by Ryan gladden town in southern California last week. And as Ryan’s pointed out, it’s this double this, you’re exercising, and you’re doing the cerebral things, that’s actually really good for you. Why we love things like ping pong, and why we love things like tennis, and ballroom dancing. You know, that’s the thing to me, you know, as I’ve, you know, I’m now an old guy, okay, it’s fun to do get out and play some pickleball get out and play some tennis or golf, whatever, enjoy it. Okay, I’m not going to be the Sprinter with that I was, you know, years and years ago. That’s okay. If I can keep my cognition, good until 100. I will have one. So that so that’s great. And yes, II want. And then the second thing is, have you ever used kaatsu bands? So these were used by some of the Olympic athletes, but what these are, these are restriction bands. Yes, I have some arms and legs. Don’t make it so tight that you have no blood flow, but you’re restricting it a little. And what happens is, and by the way, very good for people who are elderly, you know my age and older, where you are getting more bang for your buck. You don’t have to do as much as you did before. And you actually get more bang for your buck. So if that’s another great way to go.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, we do that. And I have a membership group of a bunch of menopausal women. And we work out together on Saturdays. And I started using those bands. And and they’re really interesting. And what I had heard is actually the metabolite that gets made from breaking down the muscle actually goes up into the brain and supports BDNF production. Live, you heard that?

Speaker 2  

Absolutely. And also, you are making more ketones when you do that, and the key was, so it’s very interesting. The ketones actually interact with histones and remove the inhibition of production of BDNF, and this was published out of Cornell several years ago, very nice study, and they’re showing that this effect of ketones to increase BDNF, very interesting. So yes, you know, again, there are so many mechanisms that all feed into optimization, we all know it kind of intuitively, when we’re out exercising when we’re getting good sleep. All of these things are helpful. I think it’s been unfortunately, it’s so many of us, as researchers have said, Yeah, but we just want that silver bullet. We just want that deal to give to you. It’s going to clear out your amyloid well. Clearing out amyloid turns out not to be very helpful to people, as we found from the amyloid clearing drugs, they don’t make people better. They don’t even keep you where you are. At the best they slow the decline in people with Alzheimer’s a little bit in the best yet is they slowed it by about 1/3. So that is not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for people to actually get better and most importantly, stay better. That’s the key. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

this is becoming quite trendy for all kinds of brain Health and mood disorders and and a lot of attention and research has been brought to psychedelics, specifically psilocybin MDMA. I know that our government here in America said it will be decriminalized and and legalized for therapy type setting. Where does that fit in as a potential improvement for something like Alzheimer’s? Because it does create neurogenesis?

Speaker 2  

Yeah. So this is a great point, so many of these things, it’s knowing when to use it, and how to use it. And so for some people, that’s going to be a wonderful experience. And yes, the idea is you said neurogenesis. And the other thing is, neuroplasticity, so of creating the ability for new experiences, and basically new synapses. So I am intrigued to see over the next few years as the research comes out, because now as you said, it’s trendy, but there’s not a lot of research. And so I do worry, you know, some people don’t do so well on these things, and became what about people who are frail, who are older, so you have to be careful. But yeah, where I’m hoping that it’s going to prove to be very effective is, once we get rid of all the things that are actually driving the decline, we find out what infections you have, what is your hormonal status? What is your gut status, let’s fix all those things. And now we’ve gotten rid of what’s driving the decline. Now we want to improve the synapses. Rob, you’ve lost some synapses, okay, with all these drivers, how do we get those back, and it’s going to be stem cells, and it’s going to be intranasal, trophic factors, and it’s going to be BHRT. And things like this, that help you to reestablish those synapses, my hope is that some of these psychedelics are going to be helpful things like is going to be, you know, is it going to be a ketamine experience? Is it going to be low dose psilocybin, you know, we’ll see. But I’m intrigued by this, because they may, in fact, help you to bring back some of those synapses. So again, you’ve got to observe and you’ve got to be, you’ve got to be adhering to the biochemistry, this is not magic. This is synaptic biochemistry. And there are things that can be harmful, you know, too much, too much exercise, too much stress, these can be harmful. One of the common things we have is, people have just been under massive stress, and they think they’re doing it for all the right reasons. You know, they’re winning a court case, whatever, but they are damaging their brains over this time. So as you said, it’s this this mismatch, you know, it’s an evolutionary mismatch, you’re missing this, you’re should be living in a way that we were evolutionarily designed to live, not in something where you’re going outside that because that’s breaking things down. So again, using them in the right ways, could be very exciting.

Dr. Mindy  

I think what I really want to highlight and I so 1,000% agree with you on this is that we are always looking for the magic pill. And when it comes from what I understand from dementia and Alzheimer’s there is there’s the magic pill doesn’t even exist. So you’re only left with lifestyle as your opportunity to start to change things is do you? Is that what I hear you say? Because I don’t want people to lose sight of how it’s going to take work if you want your brain to continue to work for you.

Speaker 2  

And to be fair, this goes far beyond lifestyle. But you’re right, it starts with lifestyle. So those seven things I mentioned, but then you want to find out, okay, if I’ve got an ongoing infection with Bartonella. That’s a common one or Babesia. And again, here’s another example a woman who has a billy for four had done great, she went from 35th percentile to the 98th percentile. So she she was one of the co authors on my second book, she’d done a great job. She then started having some backsliding. And it was like Well, wait a minute, you know what’s going on here. And she ended up having Baba and these chronic infections, you have to look carefully for them. And unfortunately, doctors aren’t doing that. So it is it starts with lifestyle and diet, exercise, sleep, stress, those sorts of things. But then it looks at specifics for what’s actually driving the problem. And again, you know why we talked earlier about sleep apnea, that’s another common one that’s picked up. And another common one is just massive stress. As long as your amygdala is sitting there saying, you know, I am under stress, I’m under threat. It is not going to go back to that over a year. You literally have two modes where your neuro plastic part of your brain functions. One is the mode of things are good. I did not too much inflammation, I’ve got enough hormones, I got enough nutrients. I’m not under stress. I’m going to build and maintain. I’m going to get new memories. I’m going to do all that. The other mode you switch into is I am under assault. I got to pull back. I’m going to start making things More I’m going to live in a smaller brain so that I can put my resources into fighting the insults. As long as you’re stuck on that side, you’re not going to be improving.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, yeah. And and in that vein, one thing that I don’t feel like it’s been highlighted enough as an important physical and mental health tool is human connection, and the power of people coming together and community. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because like, if we look at the longest study ever done on happiness, it shows that when you’ve had good positive relationships over a long period of time, that is one of the greatest tools you can use for your overall happiness. Do we have the same thing with Alzheimer’s and dementia? Does it matter how we connect with others.

Speaker 2  

So again, it’s not just my opinion, it’s been published by excellent epidemiologists, people who had social networks, people who are interacting, these people did better, they were at lower risk. Now, again, it’s not a cure by itself. But it definitely helps. And of course, you are stimulating new connections, you have to remember, go back to this as a network insufficiency, you’ve got this amazing network within your brain that is able to take experiences and build and maintain new new interactions, new synapses, new connections, or activate ones that are there. So when you are not feeling that when you’re demanding too much, too many insults, or when you are simply in a sedentary lifestyle. And by the way, depression is another part of this. This is something that, of course increased with COVID-19. Another unfortunate consequence of COVID 19. This is, you know, pulling you back this is this is associated with more inflammation with more cognitive problems. And I would add another thing because this has come up recently with some of the some of the patients, it was noted that a lot of these people will note that they have something that’s very much like adult add, they just don’t, they don’t attend to things. They don’t focus the way they did before. And therefore they’re not setting up memory storage the way it should be set up. So it’s important when someone’s having memory issues, to determine is this more about the maintenance of the memory? Is this more about the consolidation, after they’ve learned something? They’re remembering it the next day? Or is this more like ADD, they’re just all over here. And they’re there to do this for one minute. And that for when they can’t really attend to anything? Because there are different ways to approach each of these.

Dr. Mindy  

How much does this this play apart? The phone and social media? I mean, I can tell you, I will not touch tick tock because my brain gets so like it can’t it can’t come back from tick tock. Yeah. So I have to be careful how much I allow those short bursts of information coming into my brain, they will rewire it in the wrong ways. Yeah. So do we need to be aware of things that that can damage our brain on our phone?

Speaker 2  

Yeah, I mean, there’s no question. I mean, that you probably saw just last week, a report came out saying, you know, social media can be a problem. So there are lots of positives about social media. But there are also some negatives. So you have to be careful. And yes, things that are flipping you here, then there, then there, it’s you know, it gets harder and harder for people to read a book, for example, take some time, focus on things, you know, you don’t have to do it all day, take some time. So again, these there are positives and negatives, and you want to be able to use these in the right way at the right time. Find something that you love and focus on that, whatever that happens to be. And that’s another thing that we find with the patients unearthing what it is that, you know, one of the most common thing I hear as they start to get better, is that the spouse will say, there’s so much more engaged, you know, they were kind of not part of the conversation, or like looking to, to, to him or her for answers. And now they’re like they’re back there, you know, they’re engaged again. And that’s so important. So get engaged, get involved, and get that point where you can now be part of, of what’s going on.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I love that. Well, let me finish up on this. So this we asked every season I have a different theme and this year or this season was self love. And in that I have asked all my guests do you have a self love practice that you do every day? And what do you think your superpower is that you bring to the world because part of self love for me is owning what you’re really good at? So what do you think your superpower is and do you have a self love practice?

Speaker 2  

That’s a great point. You know, I don’t have a super I don’t have a self love practice. And and I think it’s great that you mentioned that I think it’s a good thing. It’s something that I that I need to learn. It’s a great point. So, my to me, you know my superpower you They used to make fun of the fun of me in college for this is seeing things that are that other people don’t see as similar seeing them as being similar. And that’s how we did. That’s how we originally saw my laboratory colleagues and I originally saw that Alzheimer’s disease is fundamentally a network insufficiency driven by those two things. It’s how we develop the first protocol that actually reversed cognitive decline. And so, you know, my goal is, and I actually was just down in Southern California last week, I’m working with Dr. David Merrill, we are hoping to set up the first program in the world that will allow people to have hope, with all sorts of neurodegenerative illnesses, as you know, if you have it today, there’s nothing you can do ALS, Frontotemporal dementia, you know, there’s no hope these are all terminal illnesses. So taking precision medicine protocols, looking at all the things that are driving this. So so my superpower is just that I’m interested in this stuff. I you know, I think about this all the time, I it keeps me up at night. And it’s so exciting to see people actually get better from what I was taught is a terminal illness. Because you know, the world is going to be better when we have less dementia in it. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

well, we’re grateful for all your work and for writing books and sharing it with the world. Talk about where people can find you, and specifically the UK, what did you call it a cog. NOSC, a cog,

Speaker 2  

gossipy. So I just say, we all know that we get a colonoscopy when we turn 50. Yeah, 40 year over, please get a cognitive scuffie. Because understanding where you stand is so helpful, it’s relatively easy to do get some blood tests that unfortunately, most doctors are not doing. You get some simple online cognitive screening. And then if you’re already having symptoms, you want to include an MRI with volumetrics. But it’s easy to do, go to my Cognos cuffie.com. You can also saw you can see me on Facebook, Dr. Dale Bredesen, on Twitter on on Instagram, all the usual sites. Yeah. And so that’s probably the easiest way. And as you mentioned, a couple of books out the end of Alzheimer’s, for example. And it’s available in 33 languages. So whatever you like, you can get it.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, so grateful for you. Thank you, and we will send everybody your way. So we’re super thankful for all the work you’re doing in the world. We really need more voices like yours. So thank you.

Speaker 2  

Thank you so much for the work you’re doing. It’s fantastic. Thanks for helping so many people. My pleasure. Take care.

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.