I will probably be the first personal trainer you ever hear say she wants to help you get big, fat and fluffy. At least one part of you anyway... your brain. A healthy brain is big, it's fluffy and it's made of 60% fat. In 2024, nearly 7 million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Two-thirds of those diagnosed are women, Hispanics are 1.5 times more likely to get Alzheimer’s than Caucasians and African Americans are twice as likely to get it.
Alzheimer’s is on the rise in the US, Canada and Mexico and is expected to get much worse in the coming decades. Alzheimer’s is called “Diabetes Type 3”, due to the starvation of the brain through insulin resistance. Just like a pancreas or liver that dies due to being unable to use glucose, the brain slowly starves to death while sugar cravings in the person go up. It is now believed that is why brains shrink in Alzheimer’s patients, starvation and inflammation.
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There are 3 FDA-approved drugs for Alzheimer’s, all of them expensive and none of them work to stop cognitive decline. The latest drug is sold under the brand name Lequembi (patent by Biogen and Eisai). The drug is delivered by an IV every two weeks and appears to work by removing a sticky protein from the brain that is believed to cause Alzheimer’s to advance. It has the side effect of causing brain bleeding and aside from that it doesn’t stop the disease.
Current drugs for Alzheimer’s are aimed at trying to remove the plaques and protein tangles associated with Alzheimer’s brain autopsies. Many researchers now believe this is like attacking the firemen who are trying to put out the fire in your brain. As per usual, big pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs that treat SYMPTOMS (Amyloid plaques and Tau proteins), not CAUSES.
The latest approved drug, Lequembi, will sell for $26500 per year and apparently medicare in the US has agreed to cover 80% of that cost. Nearly 7 million people in the US have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s so that is potentially a 1.48 billion dollar income for Big Pharma and the problem is just expanding rapidly. Patients are still not getting better and Alzheimer’s is still believed to be a slow death sentence.
When it comes to Alzheimer’s disease your best offense is a defense. By the time you show any symptoms of Alzheimer’s, (Memory problems, loss of executive function etc.), you have already had the disease for up to two decades. The disease we call Alzheimer’s is actually a protective response to a wide variety of insults to the brain: Inflammation, insulin resistance, toxins, bacterial infections, hormone fluctuations, inadequate levels of nutrients, and insufficient brain-derived neurotrophic factors, (BDNFs).
In his New York Bestseller, “The End of Alzheimer’s Program”, Dr Dale Bredesen, MD recommends some things that work for people who already have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s AND for people like myself who have a high risk of getting it, (My Grandmother, Mother, Aunt and Uncle all died of Alzheimer’s disease). Using an intervention mainly consisting of changes to diet and exercise, Dr. Bredesen has actually reversed the cognitive decline in several hundred people who were suffering from Alzheimer’s.
The dietary intervention Bredesen developed he calls Keto Flex and it uses intermittent fasting. The brain is able to work using ketones as well as it can use glucose. The classic ketogenic diet is very difficult for most people to do on a long-term basis. The diet that Bredesen developed includes a wider variety of foods and people have less trouble maintaining it for that reason.
The Bredesen Keto Flex diet is very similar to the diet I developed for weight loss, the Reverse Aging Diet and contains elements very similar to the Mediterranean diet. The main thrust of all 3 of these diets is that they cut out sugar, processed food, trans fats, seed oils and dairy products. They include lean proteins from animals and fish. My diet and the Keto Flex both use intermittent fasting to improve insulin sensitivity and increase mitochondrial health.
The second weapon against Alzheimer’s, (and all the other diseases most likely to kill you), is regular exercise. If you want to age without disease you MUST exercise. You do not need to run marathons or become a bodybuilder, but increasing your “healthspan”, your length of healthy living, means muscle development and cardiovascular endurance must be addressed.
So what is the minimum effective amount of exercise? If you were to walk your dog up a steep hill and back down for 20-30 minutes a day you could reduce your risk of disease by 50%. Throw in 25 push-ups and you could reduce it by another 20%. Anyone should be able to pull this off and if you can not then you better get cracking!
Another easy way to get more anti-aging health benefits is to add some inexpensive biohacking to the program. I have my clients do 20 minutes of hot sauna for their brain health and 3 minutes of cold plunge after their workouts. This practice improves your cardiovascular health and helps you lose body fat by increasing your BAT fat. BAT fat, (brown adipose tissue) is metabolically active and helps you lose the BAD fat, (visceral fat that sits around your organs causing inflammation). Remember that chronic inflammation leads to ALL pain and diseases associated with aging, including osteoarthritis, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and stroke.
A HUGE way to improve your brain is through improving your sleep habits. When you get deep, restorative sleep, your brain has a chance to clear toxins and clean up the plaques. If you aren’t sleeping well you need to correct that ASAP. Taking sleeping pills of any kind, (Ambien, or Tylenol PM), is a disaster for your brain health. Alcohol in any amount will DESTROY your sleep. I counsel my clients, (most of whom are over 55), on the following to correct their sleep problems:
Watch the sunrise and sunset to reset your circadian rhythm.
Expose your skin to the early morning sun without sunscreen for the near-infrared light, even for just 5-10 minutes.
Go to bed at the same time every night, as early as possible.
Turn off devices that emit blue light in the bedroom, (like TVs) and read a book by red light or switch your Kindle device to red light or “night shift” setting.
Eat between 12 p.m. - 6 p.m. if you go to bed by 9 p.m.
Kill the booze before bedtime.
As a bonus to having a great brain, you will get a better-looking body! Eating the right foods at the right time, and getting the right amount of exercise, sun and sleep will make a new person out of you in no time! If you need help with any of this, feel free to contact me at the number below or join my social media for more topics on aging without pain and disease.
robynlittlewood@yahoo.com
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