Memory Loss and Alzheimer’s: Practical Steps Towards Mental Clarity
It’s easy to forget (no pun intended) what a significant role our cognitive function plays in our overall health. It’s important to eat right, exercise daily and do our best to provide our bodies with the proper nutrients, but what does it look like to feed and exercise your brain? Are there certain supplements or activities that we should be focusing on?
In this episode Ed takes a quick look at the devastation that Alzheimer’s disease can cause, how it affects the brain, and why we’re seeing diseases more frequently in younger generations. Tune in to learn how to leverage healthy living, supplementation, and blood chemistry against the aging brain!
Some Topics We Discussed:
Why does Alzheimer’s affect the body and why do we tend to see more cases of Alzheimer’s and memory loss today? (1:14)
What contributes to people getting Alzheimer’s? (4:01)
What are some things you can do to check yourself to see if your memory is lapsing? (12:06)
What is the holistic protocol to address memory loss? (17:03)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Alzheimer’s is the third leading cause of death. (1:24)
Alzheimer’s is often referred to as Type 3 diabetes. (4:07)
Intermittent fasting can help turn off the gene that is commonly found in Alzheimer’s patients. (9:33)
There’s 36 medical reasons why people get Alzheimer’s. (18:53)
Products & Resources:
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:11 Hello, friends and welcome to another episode of the Holistic Navigator Podcast, where we believe the body has the ability to heal itself. As we look towards the New Year, many of us are setting health goals to achieve in 2019. You know, the most typical resolutions are centered around weight loss. But your health is more than just diet and exercise. We sometimes overlook the importance of cognitive health. And we'd like to spend a little time today dressing the rising concerns of memory loss and Alzheimer's disease. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Ed can you speak about how and why Alzheimer's affects the body and why there seems to be more and more incidences of this disease and memory loss occurring today?
Ed Jones 01:24 Well, thank you for that. And it is a very, very important topic. You know, Alzheimer's is now the third leading cause of death behind heart disease in cancer, it used to be the sixth leading cause of death. Before that it was not even on a list. Now some of that could have been because of poor diagnostic tools. However, it is very clear to anyone who has any open mindedness and intelligence that we are going down a slippery slope. So what is Alzheimer's? You've got the brain cells. And I think we all have a good idea what that looks like. And in that brain of all of ours, we have these neurons and the neurons are what talk to each other and share electrical information. And it works marvelous. It's a system that you know, no man could ever designed. There's no doubt about that. And up to a point is just perfectly like a computer that you just purchased from the store. But things happen, many things happen. We're not talking one single entity here. Have you ever mixed up a protein drink, and I'm sure you have, where you kind of forget your little special cup that you have the blending cup and or you don't, you're not at home and you have no access to anything but a cup and a spoon. So you put the powder in your water your milk and you start stirring as rigorously as you can, many protein powders are still going to clump up. And it's you know, it's just not pleasant to drink. This is what's happening in the brain because we were starting to get clumping of something called beta amyloid, when those these things in your brain are very well mixed up. It's not going to form a clumping type of mechanism. But due to many mechanisms that are causing this clumping is interfering with the communication. And it would be like static on your cell phone, that starts to increase with time. And eventually the cell phone just loses its connection. And that is at the end stage of Alzheimer's. So it's a scary, scary disease. And I am so convinced that not only with memory loss, but with most chronic diseases. We cannot stop everything. If you live long enough, something's going to get us. However, I think everything now is been cut back two decades. What used to happen to 80 year olds is now going for the 60 year olds.
Brian Strickland 03:58 What do you think are some of the contributing factors involved in that? If those diseases are affecting people 20 years younger? Why is that? Well,
Ed Jones 04:07 First off Alzheimer's, many of the people who I regard with great admiration for their intelligence calls Alzheimer's, a type three diabetes. And when you take a big step back and you embrace what we call functional medicine, functional medicine is so different than mainstream medicine. Functional Medicine is actually being a detective and going into your physiology and determining what is it with you that's out of balance that will end up creating poor health and disease that's totally different than mainstream, which is let's wait for it to happen. And then treat it with symptomatic type of drugs. So if you're interested in preservation of your health and your memory, you want to know the word functional medicine. Every cell has as we studied in school, a nucleus and you know all these components and part of what makes your cell Run is the mitochondrial part of that cell. And all that that does are primarily is produce energy. That is the gasoline that is the electricity. That is your cell phone battery that's in each cell. And what's happening is the mitochondrial part of the cell is being damaged, what's causing the damage. Anytime you have chronic inflammation, you're going to create chronic damage. And I use the analogy is I have calluses on my hands with a reason I have calluses. I do a ton of chin ups in the gym. Well, the body is very wise, and it knows that it needs to preserve itself. And so it tries to fix and tries to patch in a very, very timely and efficient manner. So that my hands are trying to patch these inflamed, inflamed pieces of skin. Well, they're building calluses in order to protect me. But if that's internalized, that is plaque in your arteries, that is Alzheimer's deposits called beta amyloid in the brain. That is arthritis. That is so many of the things that we age that we age from, is based in chronic inflammation. Do you feel this inflammation? Heck, no, you don't, you really don't have the type of nerve nerves in the brain where you can actually feel it like you would if you stepped on attack. So what are the factors that are causing these things to happen in 2018, opposed to 1960, because we didn't have the prevalence of it back then. We were living a lifestyle that is so conducive to chronic inflammation. That is why disease rates are soaring is not because of lack of a statin drug. It's not because of a lack of some of the drugs being offered for memory loss is because the underlying issues are so freaking out a balance, that we can't help to have damage and something's going to be damaged along the way. And it's not one something it will be multiple some things but if you have, say a genetic Tennessee, or a blueprint, which is a gene is basically like a blueprint that you're building a house from. But what they do is they were they remain either silent, or they awaken. That's the key to genetics. And we had these genes called APoE4. And if you have an AP four gene, and you have one pair of those, you have a fairly increased risk of Alzheimer's. And if you have a two pairs of those genes, you have a far more significant risk. Don't particularly worry about this, get out of the mainstream fear mongering that they will tell you that, oh, you're doomed because you have these genes called APOE4. No, we need again, take a step back and say what why do we have this gene? And what can we do about it because there's a word called epigenetics. Epigenetics means that things above the genetic level that turn on or turn off a gene, if we know that that gene can be turned on or off, guess what mainly does it the foods you eat, the supplements you take and the lifestyle that you lead. This does not happen overnight, when you hit 67 years old, and all of a sudden at 68. You're starting to kind of forget all these things and you're losing your personality. It didn't happen then it started happening at 30, not 67. It's just you didn't have the symptom, do I recommend you get a genetic test for that. I'm not a huge fan of getting tested. If there's not a option to do something about it. It creates terrible anxiety and many people and they really become their diagnosis. They quit live in their own life and they live the medical name that they were put on. However on a puppy for I am convinced that we can alter that gene. Guess how you alter it is very simple. First off, a puppy for Jane was put in us or we developed it in us through many generations for the purpose of withstanding famines. But what's great about this AP-e four gene issue is we know how to silence it intermitted fasting, that is what makes the gene go back into it silent state. So if you get this test at 40 years old, and you know that you have it. Well, we're going to I'm going to talk more about the other protocols to put together but just intermittent fasting alone, which is not eating between 12 and 14 hours a day are basically reserving your eating time for between eight and 10 hours a day. Now you add that on top of nutritional supplementation and addressing your sleep and staying away from EMF Huge, absolutely can be a game changer. Now one person I want to talk about is Dr. Dale Bredesen, he has come up with a protocol called the recode protocol and the recode protocol protocol is a organized system of looking into your physiology with blood work in order to determine early on, what do we need to actually adjust so that this machine runs like a jet engine. And what you do with this is you will take that blood work list that he offers, and you can get the blood tested through a trusted practitioner. My advice is do not go to your general practitioner unless you already have a relationship and a knowledge that he's open to holistic functional medicine. Now, if a person is really self motivated, and they want to be heavily personally involved in their own system of health, you can order a lot of bloodwork most of this yourself online. And under our order button, you can go to direct labs.com. You can order all of these blood works right there, they have a drawing station in every single town. And that is an option that 10 years ago, we did not have. But the good thing is on the recode program with Bredesen, he gives you the values so you actually can compare, okay, if this is what I need to be, and this is what I am, how do we get there. And it's really just simply a tune up. And this tune up involves again, a diet that is more going to be heavily based in high amounts of healthy fat with every single meal, modest amount of protein of quality origin and carbohydrates that are of low glycemic. What does that mean? That means carbohydrates that don't have a supercharged ability to raise blood sugar and insulin levels. Now one thing is, you know, how do we know to be concerned if we're starting to feel like we're slipping? There's about five level steps that if you're feeling nervous that you're forgetting, and you're you're really kind of freaking out? Yeah, I wonder if this is Alzheimer's or dementia? Or you know, I'm just at the keys. I don't I keep forgetting the keys. Well, you know what, I went to the gym this morning. And it really pissed me off. Because I go in, I work out six days a week, I go to my locker, I take my shower, forgot my damn belt. Am I worried that that's dementia or Alzheimer's? No, because I have all the pieces of my other parts of my life is running very efficiently. And one of these is this is what you ask yourself. If your lapses don't interfere with your everyday life, my belt forgetting is not going to interfere with my everyday life, I can actually completely ignore it if I choose to. I just don't really like it. But it's not interfering to use, you can see improvement if you do brain training. What is brain training? Well, of course, it's putting a challenge on the ability to come up with conclusions or learn new words. Recall, figuring out puzzles, I mean, a whole host of these it what it is not, is doing something you're already comfortable in. That would be like if you're if you think playing cards is going to be brain training. No, it's really not. It's that that's you need to learn language, you need to learn to fly an airplane like I did, you need to be you know, rienne reading as good as it is. If it's not challenging you with memory. I love poetry. Oh, I just there's times when it's the the healing potion for me. And during a past, I got divorced four years ago, and during some really dark times, the memorization of different poetry was my therapy. Three. If you've just started a new medication 50% chance it probably is going to cause some memory loss. If you just started and you started feeling that you have to look into the type of medication you're taking one of those waxy, two, Ambien waxy, three Staton, drug, sleeping pills, and bladder pills. Those three are hugely significant for causing memory loss. Guess what? If you don't quit taking them, you're gonna keep losing the memory. So find an alternative if you're interested in and holistic health. The fourth one is nobody else seems to notice anything wrong with you. that's a that's a good sign. You know, if your daughter's saying Dad, you know, I'm kind of wondering why are you keep forgetting this, so that may be a sign now and the fifth one is no for an app fact that you will have a foggy mind and thinking if you are completely stressed, sleep deprived, or multitasking. And, you know, I want to be as good as I can every day. But I've had to become gentle on myself, if I'm losing sleep for three nights in a row, I can't expect to remember that person's name. Or perhaps, you know, that website that you told me about earlier. It just comes with the territory and and even young people, so don't think that it's just those of us who are 50-65, and things like that. And, you know, I was talking to the rep at life extension a few weeks ago, and I love this new new idea that they have on a product. In fact, there's some research now that one of the reasons that we are becoming senile is yes, there's damage to the brain. Yes, there's nutrient deficiencies, and there's lack of omega three, which half the brains made of these omega threes, you have to supplement with those. But when you're young, and you have enough super efficient system, if you had a damaged cell, the body is really efficient at removing that cell. So it's no longer in your body. Well, one of the theories now, and they've done studies on rats with this is that if we could access the ability to remove senescent cells, which are cells that are seen now, we would unload a huge burden within us mentally and physically. And Life Extension has a cool product now called senolytic activator. And what I like about it is, they feel like that if you do this one time a week, it will kickstart the ability of your body to remove these cells. So guess what, buddy? Ed's doing here I'm taking on every Monday, I'm taking my two little senolytic activators by life extension. And it's made with course, a 10, and a Thea Flavin, and it's all based on some pretty good significant research.
Brian Strickland 17:03 So this is obviously a horrific disease that has many terrible effects. But I was wondering if you believe if there's any protocol that can help your body guard against it.
Ed Jones 17:15 That's the frustrating part for me is, again, the many of the mainstream philosophies simply don't understand that we have a toolkit that they actually don't even know exists much less know how to pull from that toolkit, and that is to activate the innate healing capacity of the body. But that has to be done by investigative work on the person's individual chemistry. I mean, it can't be a blanket thing. So that requires practitioners who understand that, but what's frustrating is many of the the organizations that are wonderful, to help support the family and come in and counsel and, and I'm not discrediting anything that they do because, Lordy, I'd be calling on them in a New York Second, if I had our loved one, and we were fully diagnosed with this. The issue is, and I know what they think they think they don't want to give false hope. But what they don't embrace is and they actually preach against it is there's not one single, really notable method to slow down the progression of Alzheimer's. And it's just simply not true. Number one is if you listen to the video by Dr. Dale Bredesen on mercola.com on recode, if you put that in, you will hear his story of how people went back to their modestly went back to their regular life sometimes went back to their job, all of these things that he's had 1000s of patients do because they embraced the trueness of accessing healing within that individual physiology. And the thing is, there's 36 reasons, medical reasons, physiological reasons why we get Alzheimer's 36. So, a drug will only usually address one significant type of mechanism within the human body. So if you have a house and you someone went up there and drilled 36 holes, and then I came over and patch two of them, you think it's gonna make any real difference in how your future is in that house? No, and you can't, there's not gonna be 36 drugs, it's going to be found in our lifetime to patch and really and truly the word patch, which I've never actually said before, is the method of mainstream medicine. It's patching. And I'm, you know, I'm so lifelong committed to the philosophy that instead of treating the body for what's wrong, Let's feed the body for its healing. Stop treating it always and start feeding it and that involves supplements and food and sleep. leap, all those things I keep talking about. And we cannot ignore that. And you know, I get frustrated at times with some younger people who think that if they'll eat broccoli every day that that's the answer to long term health and is simply simply a very confused philosophy to me. Yes, we need our green vegetables. But if you don't start slowly lowering the inflammation early on in life, by a keto type of diet, healthy fats, omega threes, vitamin D, a green drink, those things are vital. And again, it's like retiring with money, you don't start your freakin retirement plan at 61 and hope to retire at 65. You started when you're early in life, and then you have a significant amount,
Brian Strickland 20:45 I did want to take a moment and maybe hit on some of the supplements. Obviously, that's a large part of, of your life in my life. And I was wondering if there are any supplements that you would recommend even at an early age to begin taking to help guard your your body in mind against this disease?
Ed Jones 21:03 Absolutely. You know, if you have, if you have the interest in the budget and the person to help you, I don't even care, I would say at 25 years old, let's get some good, you know, basic blood work on the big picture, not the picture of what you would get at a physical, I'm talking about a fund of you know, a type of blood testing that's going to look at your, again, inflammatory factors, look at all the bases that create health, not getting bloodwork to look at what is wrong with you that that's different than looking at how do we tune you up? totally different. So in my 40 years experience with seeing 10s and 10s of 1000s of people and watch them, I think there are four things that every human who is breathing today that is 18 years old or older, needs to be considering one of which is a multivitamin. You know, I love natural factors. I like mega food. You know, there's many good companies, there's many terrible companies find someone you trust that can give you this advice. Secondly, omega three, here's the deal on omega three, most of what's being sold is less quality than what I would like for people to be taking. Because if the fish swim in polluted waters, it's going to have those toxins within that fish. You can't eat fish, almost you cannot eat fish, anywhere, even fresh cod, that will be anywhere close to as pure as you can get in a supplement form. The supplements I read last week are 300 times cleaner than almost any fish you can buy, unless you are purchasing it from a company who doesn't care. So again, let the buyer beware. Find the companies who care This world is so black and white. And there's a big chunk of what has to happen, which is find people who actually have a heart who's whose number one goal is not just to sell things, but to help people. And those are can be company based, it can be retail base, it can be friend base, and then of course probiotics. And, again, the devil is in the details. Don't expect to go in to your local drugstore and pick up something and hope that is going to just do the trick. It probably won't, it might be helpful. And here's the good side of supplements, even the worst supplements generally, the worst thing that can happen is nothing. Let's talk about oh, I won't even talk about let's say that you went behind the counter of the drugstore. And you thought yeah, I'm going to experiment with some of these little white and blue pills behind the counter. I think all of us know that that would not be a good gamble. Every one of those will have something that will be a negative side effect. And when I say side effects, I mean something serious. And with supplements that is literally the safest ingested substance that has ever been sold in this country. And because the media tends to not tense because the media is very biased against it. You'll always read these headlines and that doesn't mean we're perfect. Yes, we can have flaws. We can have contaminated batches we take this industry takes care of it so quickly. It's crazy. And then lastly, superfoods. superfoods is a I do it every day. It's a green drink. It's a drink that has all of my my foods like spirulina and broccoli and cauliflower and Anna and down the list. Again, let the buyer beware you've got to make sure it didn't contain lead that they've harvested the foods correctly. Again, natural factors for that drink is my absolute favorite. We came back from Canada just a few months ago viewing the farm where all these vegetables were grown. And I was totally speechless when the scientists farmer explained that the phytochemical content which was fine chemicals. People think do you eat broccoli and green foods for vitamins, that's not true. The vitamins really are not significant in those foods. It's what's significant is what that plant produced on its own when it was growing that protected it against disease, famine, pest, chemicals, ozone, blank, blank, blank, that is what's called a phytochemical. So plants have 1000s of these phytochemicals based on what they think they need. Well, when we ingest a plant that has a full array of these gas, what happens to us it gets in our bloodstream, it goes to our brain, it protects our liver, it helps us in so many ways. The problem is, if that plan is not harvested within a reasonable period of time, it loses its phytochemicals significantly. So how many of your foods do you think that you ate this past week that were grown and picked early? Most of them probably, we don't live off the land like we used to, we don't have the local farmers, you know, many things are picked across the world. Well, they can't pick them when they're exactly at their peak, because there'll be rotting by the time you get to them. So you have to find the option to is drink a drink that was picked at its peak of phytochemical content, natural factor, scientists told me that there was one of their vegetables the previous few weeks, that the equipment said it would be peaking at 2:30am in the morning. And so they actually had everyone come out who were their pickers at 130. And they started picking the food. That's unheard of what company would even care. But there are companies that are caring, that's one of them. So you know, this is how you insure yourself with phytochemicals. You don't insure yourself by going to most restaurants and ordering broccoli and cauliflower. Do I still do that? Heck, yes, I do, because it's the best I can do. But I also back it up, you got to backup your plan with this core four, multivitamin omega three and the right dose, right purity, the probiotics, and this green, a green drink, and I prefer this one. And you know, I get questions all the time with people come in and say, What can I take right now that can clarify my thinking and make me quicker and have better recall? Well, you know, there's a class of things called nootropics, which are natural and or drugs that can supercharge the brain. I really like Dave Asprey. The call is his term called bio hacking, which is, you know, whatever technique he could find that would raise his level of performance physically and mentally, he basically has built his life around that, well, there are some of these natural products and a couple of the drugs that I really am intrigued by, but we're gonna save that conversation for another day. Because with Alzheimer's, I really think that should be on the second page, not the first because we have to stop the continual damage to the brain and know what nootropics don't do that. All they're going to do is and go in and supercharge temporarily, the ability of the brain to do its job. And you know, for those listening, it's never too late to start the journey to maintain and build optimal health and and that's is more significant Of course in memory than almost anything else. And you know, I've spoke about this fish thing and the omega threes and the fact that you cannot really find fish that's extremely pure. However, I know a company that really has the most tested and quality fish anywhere in the country and is called Vital Choice. If you go to our website at the holistic navigator calm and you scroll down on the Products page, you will see vital choice it is fish, salmon, and other products similar that have been 100% in the purest, pristine places of the world processed and the exact right types of machines and lack of chemicals and freshness. And I'm so impressed with them. So order is you know it's not cheap. It's not Dollar General pricing. But if you have a budget to support it, this would be the place if you want to regularly get a type of fish that is pure, go to holistic navigator.com and and scroll down now I will have to put a plug in for the zoom toolbar this into bars a bar that I formulated that is we did it because of this purity issue. Again, I saw so many of these meal protein bars that were not optimal to be kind and they would have like several ingredients that would be like Wow, this looks cool. This looks good. And then they would fill it with sucralose or a type of corn syrup or some other ingredient that was really uncertain as to its origin. Well this is Two bar is in Zunta itself is an Indian name for honesty. And if you go to holistic navigator, you can see the zoom toolbar and and I use bars every day at 230 in the afternoon because I eat it, you know, I drink my drink at six, which we've talked about before, the only drink that I think can maintain my energy and health all day long, or at least to launch and if you start your day, right, you got more room for making some mistakes people if you start your day wrong with these granolas and these bagels and these donuts, sometimes missing meals, sugar drinks, you blown it is almost I'm not saying don't try harder the rest of the day, but you can't really fix it once the machine has gotten off the track. So the zunta bars by 230 snack or a bar. So if you're interested in that just go to holisticnavigator.com and look under the Products page for some time. That's going to wrap it up for this week's episode. I really appreciate you listening to this show. And if you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. That is what helps us to spread the word about this podcast. And if you have any further questions, visit the holistic navigator.com holistic with an H and drop us a note. I'm Ed Jones and remember, whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must or she must be kept from doing harm. Thank you and everyone have a wonderful and healthy week.