Change Your Brain Every Day - Is Your Genetic Health Path Predetermined? with Leeza Gibbons

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

Did you know that people 85 years and older have a 50% risk of getting Alzheimer’s Disease? That may sound crazy, but as TV personality Leeza Gibbons says, actually everyone who has a brain is at risk. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Gibbons share insights that can help you keep your brain sharp at any age.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. I'm here with my friend, Lisa Gibbons, and we're talking about something that's near and dear to both of our hearts. So now that you know that you're at risk, some people would go, well, I'm at risk, so... Sign me up early.

Let's live it up. Yeah. What do you think? I think the definition of live it up then needs to include, okay, what can I do to change the path of what could look like a predestined future? You know, I'm a big one on saying, you know, I don't want to borrow tomorrow's troubles today, but I certainly don't want to be naive. I think for those of us, and there are so many millions of us who have relatives with Alzheimer's disease that put us at greater risk, we need to recognize that everyone who has a brain is at risk. It is a false sense of security, right? To think that I'm never going to get it, I don't have a family member that has it. So that's one thing is, yes, we are at greater risk. But, you know,

if you have a brain, then you are at risk for these diseases. Every, probably while we've even been talking on this podcast, the numbers have changed. But what is it now, every 58 seconds or something, everyone is diagnosed? I mean, someone is diagnosed with a new case, and as we've said before, that many of those new cases are women. I've learned that early intervention, the sooner you know better, the sooner you can do better, and the sooner you can begin to change the things that are within your ability to alter. There are a whole bunch of them. There are a whole bunch of them, which you've helped us realize. Yes, thank you very much. There are a bunch of them. So when you say we're all at risk, if you live until you're 85,

you have a 50% risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's or some form of dementia. So you have a 50% risk of having lost your mind. I'm not okay with that. No. Because I want to live until I'm 85, especially the closer I get to it. Yes. I mean, to look at, if you're watching this

and you think about the people you know in your life, or maybe yourself, like look to your left, look to your right, you know, you're either going to need a caregiver or be a caregiver. being in denial which our society tends to want to just go into this hole doesn't help anything yes now we'll just get distracted by our phone and what latest tweet that happened all right so the one thing i discovered that if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if you're headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind.

I'm hoping people understood what you said, 11 risk factors. One of them is genetics. One of them is genetics. There are ten others. And if you're not paying attention, one of them will get you when it didn't have to. So we came up with a mnemonic that we like called Bright Minds and the B in Bright Minds is blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. And how many brains have you scanned now? 150,000.

So you kind of have an indication of what this is like, what this means. Low blood flow. For somebody like me, and you've looked at my brain, you know that that's an issue that was in my brain. That means to rescue it, I need to do more exercise. Let's talk about all those things because we said there's lots of things you can do. Let's talk about things you can do for your blood flow. So know if you have the blood flow risk. So, yes, you can get a scan.

SPECT is a blood flow study. But also if you have things like hypertension or any form of heart disease, heart attack, heart arrhythmia, cerebral vascular disease, like a stroke. For men, if they have erectile dysfunction, because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it means they're everywhere. And if you don't exercise.

And so the things to do, exercise is the obvious one because it increases blood flow. So you want to keep your cardiovascular system healthy because your brain is 2% of your body's weight, but it uses 20% of the blood flow and oxygen in your body. So it's the most expensive real estate in your body. But there are other things too, like ginkgo. And so our supplements like Brain and Memory Power Boost, ginkgo and venpocetine, both increase blood flow in the brain. Foods like beets and cayenne pepper and rosemary increase blood flow. Sugar decreases blood flow. Caffeine increase blood flow. Sugar decreases blood flow. Caffeine decreases blood flow.

Nicotine decreases blood flow. And, you know, I always say brain health is three things. Brain envy, you've got to care about it. Avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it. So for blood flow, it's exercising and eating foods that increase blood flow. That love you back, like you always say. Eat foods that you love that love you back. Right.

I'm not going to be in an abusive relationship again with anything, especially not food that I can completely control. If I may, with blood flow and all these other risk factors, these changes and the damage they may be doing to your brain start decades before you begin to notice a result. Isn't that the one big thing we've learned with all the research is that Alzheimer's disease doesn't just show up at 58 or at 78. I'd scanned a 59-year-old woman, and her brain was clearly Alzheimer's. And the scan pattern is bilateral, means both sides, parietal lobe decreases, temporal lobe decreases. Odds are

she had negative changes in her brain in her 20s. In her 20s. So if you're a young person thinking, well, I'll worry about this when I need to worry about this, this is the time to begin to put in those protective things, right? The changes that you make. This is your insurance. So the R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And there's some other risk factors there. Loneliness.

Having failed in school. So having learning problems because then you don't love learning and you don't continue it throughout your life. If you're in a job that does not require lifelong learning, you're at a higher risk. If you have high iron levels in your blood because it prematurely ages you. So this is one of the few instances where leeches were actually a good thing because donating blood actually helps to get rid of excess iron. So I have to do that because I've always had high iron levels. Interesting.

And so I don't eat much red meat because it has higher concentrations of iron. But you do talk about protein throughout the day for your brain. Protein and healthy fat because it'll balance your blood sugar and you won't be overweight and you'll have good focus. The big strategy though for retirement and aging is lifelong learning. It is 15 minutes a day. Do something new. And what I want people to do, especially you, is coordination exercises. So dancing, so ballroom dancing, if you can get Steven to do it with you, is so good for you.

Well, good for you because of the hand-to-eye, because there's music involved, which is positive. There's socialization. There's skin-to-skin touch. There's lots of positives. There's exercise. And there's the shame that some of us feel after we do it. That's the piece we have to take off the table. There is no, this is not a

Dance Olympics. If you're not good at it, and you know, for highly successful people, it's like, oh, we don't want to do things we're not good at. But we need to get over that. Because if we're not good at it, then that means our brain actually needs to do it more so we can develop a part of the brain we're not used to developing. So we've got a bigger bell curve of achievement than people who are good at it. You do. So new learning. The I in bright minds is inflammation. And inflammation comes from the Latin word to set a fire. And when you have high inflammation in your body, it's like you have a low-level fire that's destroying your organs. And high inflammation is associated with dementia and depression.

And we are so inflamed in this society because we have low levels of omega-3 fatty acids. I did a study here on 50 consecutive patients who came here, measured their omega-3 fatty acid levels. If they weren't taking fish oil, 49 of them were low. 98% of them were low. And so I think all of us should be taking omega-3 fatty acids and fish oil, or if're vegetarian using algae based products to help you with that um if you have any form of gum disease you have high inflammatory markers and quite frankly i never really cared about my teeth because i was busy and then i read study after study yes periodontal disease is associated with dementia. It's associated with heart disease. It's associated with depression.

I'm like, I'm not okay with that. No, especially when that's an easy fix. That's a habit. It's a habit. And so when I went to my dentist last year and he's like, you just have the best gums. I felt like I was seven. And I wanted to put the report card on my refrigerator.

Gold star. I called Tana, and I'm like, my teeth are great. I was like, seriously? Is that what makes you happy? Yes. Yes, that's what made me happy. Turmeric or curcumins. We make something called brain curcumins.

It has an anti-inflammatory effect effect and you have to kill the processed foods because processed foods are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids corn soy all genetically modified all raised with pesticides but even if it wasn't it's omega-6s are pro-inflammatory. They're called fall fats because they put you toward the end of your life, where omega-3s are spring fats because they help keep you young. And along with inflammation is getting your gut right because when your gut's not right, you end up with this thing called leaky gut, which actually causes inflammation throughout your body. But very treatable things that you're talking about.

All of this. None of this is hard. You just have to fall in love with your brain. And then G is genetics. And what I have come to believe is genes aren't a death sentence. They should be a wake-up call. For sure. leave his jeans are in a death sentence, they should be a wake-up call. And if you have grandma and your mom, it's like, okay, I need to pay attention to this because, you know, as much as I love my four children, I never want to live with them.

I never want them taking my keys from me. I don't want them deciding what I wear. No, I want to be independent. But that means, you know, I'm 64. I need to be thinking about it now, not when I'm 84 and headed to the dark place or further down the road to the dark place. But even if you have the E4 gene, even if you have two of the E4 genes, so that's what we think of as sort of the highest risk or one of the highest risk. Well, that means you have a tenfold increased risk. Well, it's tenfold from 2.5%. So that means you have a 25% risk, which means you have a 75% chance something else is going to kill you. So it's not dire, but if it's me,

I'm serious. You want to mitigate that risk because you can. And they found for people who have the E4 gene, exercise actually works better for them. Getting on an anti-inflammatory diet works better for them. New learning works better for them. And so for me, that's motivating. That's very motivating. To do the right thing, having, you know, a nihilistic viewpoint. It's like, oh, well, there's... Because, you know, when I first started scanning, I was so excited. I'd go to national meetings.

And I had this one doctor from Washington University. And he goes, well, if you have that risk, why would you want to know? I hear it all the time. And I'm like, are you nuts? If you knew a train was going to hit you, wouldn't you want to try to get out of the way? It's like, are you insane? It's like, come on, let's be serious. But, you know, you understand it, I understand it. You know, we're fearful of the unknown. That's why if you name

it and claim it and start an action plan, that fear can just, you know, devolve into something much more manageable. You can replace that with feeling how wonderfully proactive you are. I'd rather be in the fight because I love my life and my wife and my mission and my kids and my grandkids. I mean, there's so many reasons to love, and I don't want to be a burden. When we come back, we're going to talk about more of the risk factors. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.