The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Improve Memory, Focus, And Cognition

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Joovv, LMNT, and Zero Acre.  The daily activities of life revolve around our brain, and yet it is so easy to forget to prioritize the things we need to do in order for it to thrive. Our modern lifestyle can have many harmful effects on the brain, but it is possible to learn how to minimize the insults and get started on the path to better brain health. In today’s episode, I talk with Dr. Dale Bredesen, Jim Kwik, and Dr. Daniel Amen about why it’s important to pay attention to your brain health and how to optimize your brain function. Dr. Dale Bredesen is internationally recognized as an expert in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The End of Alzheimer's, The End of Alzheimer's Program, and his latest book, The First Survivors of Alzheimer's: How Patients Recovered Life and Hope in Their Own Words. Jim Kwik is the founder of Kwik Learning and a widely recognized world expert in speed-reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning. For over two decades he has served as the brain coach to many of the world’s leading C-suite executives and celebrities. After a childhood brain injury left him learning-challenged, Jim created strategies to dramatically enhance his mental performance. He has since dedicated his life to helping others unleash their true brainpower to learn faster and perform smarter. Dr. Daniel Amen is a physician, double board-certified psychiatrist, twelve-time New York Times bestselling author, and founder and CEO of Amen Clinics, with ten US locations. Dr. Amen is the author of many books including the mega-bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, as well as The End of Mental Illness, Memory Rescue, Healing ADD, and Your Brain Is Always Listening. His new book, You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type, is now available. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Joovv, LMNT, and Zero Acre. Access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests with Rupa Health. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com today. For a limited time, Joovv is offering all my listeners an exclusive discount of $50 off their first order. Just go Joovv.com/FARMACY and apply my code FARMACY. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to DrinkLMNT.com/hyman today. Zero Acre Oil is an all-purpose cooking oil. Go to zeroacre.com/MARK or use code MARK to redeem an exclusive offer. Full-length episodes of these interviews can be found here: Dr. Dale Bredesen Jim Kwik Dr. Daniel Amen

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Your brain can grow. You can rebuild brain tissue that's been damaged by the insults. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. To all the healthcare practitioners out there, let me ask you a question. Would you like to make your life a little easier? I'm sure the answer is yes. As a functional medicine doctor, I know you can relate about how complicated and time-consuming ordering lab tests can be. Thankfully, with Rupa Health, you can easily order lab tests from more than 30 different lab companies such as Dutch, Great Plains, Genova, Access, Medical Laboratories, and many more, all from one convenient location. This is really a much-needed option in functional medicine.

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Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Feehan, one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. As we grow older, many of us fear cognitive decline and the loss of our ability to perform everyday tasks. This is particularly worrisome with the unprecedented rates of Alzheimer's disease that we're currently seeing. But just as it's possible to retain movement and mobility as we age, it's also possible to keep a sharp and healthy brain. In today's episode, we feature three conversations from the doctor's pharmacy about proactive ways to identify potential problem areas in the brain and how to optimize brain function.

Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Dale Bredesen about a multi-pronged way to evaluate brain health, which he terms a cognoscopy, with Jim Quick about practical ways to stimulate the brain and improve memory, and with Dr. Daniel Amen about his comprehensive Bright Minds brain health plan. Let's dive in. Everybody knows they should get a colonoscopy to check their colon, but you come up with this term called a cognoscopy, which I love, which is essentially how do you do a deep dive into your brain and all the things that affect your brain that cause risk of cognitive issues. And by the way, all the things that you measure with a cognoscopy are all the things we measure for any chronic

illness to look at. And some are more prevalent in different illnesses. But with Alzheimer's, you really come up with a model of a cognoscopy. So can you talk about what is a cognoscopy? What should we be looking for? How do we get it? Can we get it with a regular doctor? Or is this something that you really need specialized care for? Yeah, it's a great point. And people have told me don't use that term cognoscopy. It sounds so horrible. I love it. But it's simple. It's easy to remember. And we all know we should get a colonoscopy when we turn 50. So we recommend everybody 45 or over get a cognoscopy. And as you said, it is things related to chronic illness, but the key is to prioritize.

I mean, that's the key. The people who are getting the best results, as you know, are the ones who are prioritizing the things that are the most important drivers. It's different for each person. For some person, it's going to be getting at that Borrelia. For the other person, it's going to be getting at that mycotox. For the other person, it's going to be getting at that mycotoxin. And another person, it's going to be the glycotoxicity.

So today, it's very simple to get a cognoscopy. One might be mold. One might be lime. One might be sugar. One might be mercury. It might be mercury, right? And might be vascular. A common one is people just don't have the vascular support for their brain.

And this is why they are downsizing. And so if we return that support, we return the oxygenation and the blood flow, they do better. So the way you can get a cognoscopy, it is three things. It is number one, a set of blood and urine tests, easy to do. Number two, it is a simple online cognitive assessment. And if you're completely asymptomatic and doing great, and you're just in for prevention, you can stop there. Just those two things. If you have any symptoms or you're not scoring well on the cognitive tests,

you want to include number three, which is an MRI with volumetrics. You want to know the volume of your hippocampus. You want to know the volumes of your frontal lobes and your parietal lobes and things like that. And hippocampus is that little memory center in the brain, tends to shrink. Right. And I've heard you present some cases that when you've done these cognoscopies, you start these interventions that are in the End of Alzheimer's program in your new book, which everybody should get. And you map out the changes over time when you implement the Bredesen protocol. And remember the story you told of the neurologist,

the neuroradiologist who looked at the scans and was like, this was before and this is after, this doesn't make any sense. I've never seen this in my entire life to go from like 20% of what it should be to 70 or 80 or 90% of what it should be. Can you explain how that happens? Absolutely. And we see this again and again and again. We're actually just publishing another paper showing not only increase in hippocampal volume, but also improvement in PET scans, where you go from a PET scan that shows Alzheimer's to a PET scan that doesn't show Alzheimer's. We also see improvements in electrophysiology. So improvements in EEG, improvements in evoked responses, and of course, improvements repeatedly in cognitive scoring

and testing. So this is happening because you are putting the things in that actually support the brain. You're getting hormones and trophic factors that are critical. So the brain is now making the synapses once again. Now, we don't know yet, is it making more neurons? Is it making just more synapses? Is it changing in terms of its astrogliosis? We don't yet know what's happening at the cellular level, but we do know that that atrophy is improving in

many of these people. So you said two things there that sort of struck me. One is that your brain can grow. You can rebuild brain tissue that's been damaged by the insults and literally grow your memory center, which correlates with improved cognitive function on the brain cognitive testing. And second, you said you can do a brain scan that you can see Alzheimer's on. You can repeat the brain scan and the Alzheimer's markers on the brain scan are gone. That's like what? Stop presses, headline news. Why isn't this

on the cover of New England Journal, JAMA, cover of New York Times, Wall Street Journal? What's going on here? Yeah. Well, partly because, of course, the standard is, you know, do a thousand people and then do the whole study. So, you know, at the beginning, you have to start somewhere. You know, we're just getting the airplane off the ground. You've got to start somewhere. So, you know, at the beginning, you have to start somewhere. You know, we're just getting the airplane off the ground. You've got to start somewhere. So we're looking, as you said, at these various cases. We are in the midst, I should say, of the first trial in history in which we look at all the different contributors for each person and address all these different things. We'll be finished with that in December.

So very enthusiastic about that trial. But yes, we do see in these anecdotes that we're now looking at, we see improvements in PET scanning and electrophysiology and hippocampal volume and all these things. When you are getting these people to improve and to do the right things, you're literally just restoring a synaptoblastic neurochemistry. And what that means is you're creating a brain that likes to build new brain cells. That is capable. It's over almost 30 years ago, it was discovered. It was, of course, I was taught years and years ago that the brain doesn't make new neurons. You get the ones you

have and that's it. And then about 30 years ago, it became clear that, hey, there are neural stem cells and you actually do make new neurons throughout life. And so it's a question of which ones do you keep? And do you have them interact with other neurons? Do they become part of the functional network? So it turns out you do make more of them. And if you do the right things, you can keep them and you can keep their interactions. Now, one of the big topics that you cover is the microbiome, leaky gut, inflammation, Alzheimer's. And so most neurologists aren't saying, well, let me look at your digestive system. Let me look at your gut and seeing if there's inflammation there. And how does that

connect to the brain? And we talked to a colleague of ours, Rudy Tanzi, who's been pioneering some of the work around finding microbes in the brain. We thought the brain was sterile. We thought the brain had a blood-brain barrier that prevented anything bad from getting in. Well, it turns out that barrier is only semi-permeable and that things can get in and they can be even microbes. So can you talk about this amazing research on the gut and the brain and the microbiome and how that impacts what we have to do with patients with Alzheimer's. And by the way, that patient that I had who had really had brain dysfunction, her main issue was her gut. And we fixed it up after decades of being constipated, needing enemas to go to the bathroom

and laxatives and tons of bad bugs growing in there. It was just amazing what happened. We fixed all of that. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, when a neurologist makes a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or pre-Alzheimer's, the best thing the neurologist can do is refer the patient to a functional medicine doctor to deal with all the things that are driving this problem. But of course, the neurologists have felt like, oh, this is our province. You know, we have to give the drug and watch you go downhill, which is really unfortunate. I think that's going to change. So absolutely, the gut is a driver. And I think one of the most interesting studies that was done in the last couple of years was a group, they were actually studying rodents, but what they were doing was injecting candida.

And they thought, they wanted to see how long does the blood-brain barrier keep the candida. They injected it into the blood vessels and asked, okay, what happens when it goes by the brain? How long can the brain keep it out? And the answer was, okay, what happens when it goes by the brain? How long can the brain keep it out? And the answer was it went in immediately. So there is, yeah, Canada, this is in a normal animal. So the fact of the matter is there is much more communication, just as you pointed out, and as Rudy has been pointing out, there is much more communication between the brain and the periphery than anyone thought possible and what have the pathologist shown us when they look in the brains of

patients with Alzheimer's what do they see herpes simplex in the brain they see candida in the brain they see Borrelia in the brain they see P.gingivalis from your dentition in the brain gum all these different gum disease so the bottom line is our brains are communicating with the periphery much more than anyone thought before. And as you said, we actually probably have a normal brain. As much as that kind of blows my mind, we actually probably do have a normal brain microbiome and we're going to have to have probiotics for our brain at some point. Cognobiotics, right? Cogn have probiotics for our brain at some point.

Cognobiotics, right? Cognobiotics. Yeah, there we go. Wow. That's incredible. Well, you know, the approach also that is needed is something we don't do in traditional medicine, which is how do you restore a healthy microbiome, right? And this is what the focus of functional medicine is. How do you take the symptoms that people have, or even they may not have any symptoms in the gut, but look at the environment in there and optimize it by taking out the bad stuff, putting in the good stuff and using the functional medicine approach to really heal the gut. So I think what you're saying is that each patient is different and some may have gut issues, some may have other issues. One of the other issues that really affects people is heavy metals. And there's been a lot of talk in the past about aluminum and Alzheimer's, but it was sort of, you know, sort of ignored. And I

remember a patient I had, one of the first patients that I was like, I don't know what I'm doing with Alzheimer's. This patient has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia. I have no clue if anything I'm going to do is going to work, but I'm going to try my basic framework of functional medicine to see if we can just take out the bad stuff and put in the good stuff. So I did a cognoscopy of sorts, got rid of the dementogens. And what was really striking about this guy, Dale, was he was seven years old. He was a CEO of his major family business, couldn't function at all. So it was in the corner, basically depressed and not functioning. Nobody wanted to be around him. And he had pretty significant dementia. But when I looked at his story, he grew up in Pittsburgh, and he lived in Pittsburgh, and there's steel plants there. And almost every patient of mine from Pittsburgh is mercury toxic, because they put coal ash on the streets, they put it on the

fields, gets in the food, it's in the air, and he had a mouthful of fillings. And normally, you know, normally normally when you do a challenge test for mercury with a patient in functional medicine you know you see a level of 20 or 50 that's like you worry about that it's high yeah um a hundred you know i've had a you know maybe 20 in my whole life of doing maybe 10 to 20 000 tests his was. I'd never seen anything like that. One other patient, I think I had 400, but almost nobody liked that. And I got rid of his fillings. We detoxed him from the mercury. He also had all these genes like ApoE double four. He had methylation gene problems that has to do with the vitamins. He had genes that affect insulin resistance. He had years of gut

issues. He'd had irritable bowel for decades and was on Stelazine for his gut. And so he had all these issues that we treated. So we fixed his insulin and blood sugar. We fixed his gut. We fixed his B vitamins. We got rid of the mercury. And the guy literally came back like Rip Van Winkle from the dead. And it was the most striking thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I was like, holy cow. Like I just cured Alzheimer's. And I'm like, and this was like 15 years ago. And I'm like, what? And that was really began the process of me going, wait a minute, the brain is so fixable if we understand the insults, which you have mapped out so well in the end of Alzheimer's, and if we understand how to actually repair and heal the system. So talk about mercury in the metals and how these affect the brain, because this is not to say that everybody with Alzheimer's has heavy metals, or they don't, but I've had a number of patients

that makes a huge difference when you deal with it. Yeah, but as you said, a certain number of them, that is the key piece. And here's the thing. I mentioned earlier, your brain makes amyloid when it is under attack by microbes because it's trying to kill the microbes. But interestingly, the gene itself that amyloid comes from, which is called amyloid precursor protein, is a gene that is responsive to metals. So there's literally a metal binding region on the RNA, this piece that's going to be making the protein. So it responds to mercury, it responds to copper, zinc, iron. So this thing is part of what's binding up those

metals. So it actually binds up. So what happens is you can actually give mercury. And as you indicated, mercury is literally a cause of Alzheimer's, not in everybody, but in a small group of people, probably something like 3% to 5% of all Alzheimer's patients, which still is a lot of them. There are going to be 45 million people with it who are the currently living Americans. 45 million of us will develop Alzheimer's during our lifetime. 5% is a couple of million people have metal issues. Exactly. This is a big problem. So this is why, as you said, you want to check this on everybody

because if that's one of the contributors, you need to deal with it. And when you do, they do better. And it does, it increases the production of the amyloid. And it both, interestingly, it induces the amyloid and it induces the tau as well. So it is a great way. If you want to give yourself alzheimer's take some mercury eat some sushi exactly but the funny thing is you know that

not everybody accumulates the mercury and it's a lot has to do with genetic creation i personally had mercury toxicity and i had cognitive dysfunction i felt like i had dementia really i did my level wasn't 350 it was 1877, which is bad enough. Still, yeah. And still bad enough. And so I understand from a personal point of view what this does. And it's one of the most potent toxins on the planet, probably second only to plutonium. It is the most potent neurotoxin. And it's just, it's unconscionable to me that we don't, as a profession, really think about the role of toxins. We check the blood levels, but that doesn't really reflect the total body burden of these metals. And so there are ways through functional medicine and

the approach you're talking about to really do this. Let's talk about the next topic, which is, you know, hormones. And I think, you know, I've seen some really interesting responses to hormones around thyroid, sex hormones. This is what we call a trophic factor. So it's not something that's hurting you. It's something that you're lacking, that your brain needs to function. So talk about some of the big hormonal findings and what you're seeing with these patients. Yeah. And there's some elegant work published out of the Mayo Clinic a number of years ago where they simply looked at women who had oophorectomies for whatever reason. Take their ovaries out. I'd say take their ovaries out. Move it up the ovaries, right? At the age of 40 or younger who did not get BHRT versus one who did not get hormone replacement versus those who did get hormone replacement.

And even though the hormone replacement has been imperfect for many of these, there was a striking difference. The ones who did not get the hormone replacement had a more than doubling of the risk for developing Alzheimer's, even though the Alzheimer's wasn't diagnosed till years later. It goes perfectly with the science that we talked about earlier. This APP is looking for support. And when it does not get that support, it's flipping over to the synaptoclastic. It's saying, we can't support this brain. And it goes beyond just estradiol to progesterone and pregnenolone and testosterone and vitamin D and all these things. Thyroid hormone as well. These are all critical. And so repeatedly people have come upon the fact that you're getting this at the time often when you're losing those hormones or down the road from this.

And we see a lot of people now. Something I never saw when I was training people who are in their 50s, women who are going through menopause or perimenopause who have their first symptoms at that time. So for a number of reasons, it's huge, not only the support side, but also as Dr. Chris Shade has pointed out, progesterone is one of the most critical parts for your detoxification apparatus. So when you now get this relative lowering of so-called relative estradiol excess or estrogen excess, this is because you've lost both, but you've lost the progesterone to a greater extent. You are at increased risk for toxin-related Alzheimer's disease, and you're now getting this synaptoclastic burst, you are re-releasing these toxins, including mercury, that you have sequestered for so many years. So by multiple mechanisms, having too low a support from your hormones is a critical

risk factor for cognitive decline. Yeah. And there is controversy about hormone replacement, particularly around cancer. And do you worry about that? Do, absolutely. And so I think it's critical to have people see experts in this area, you know, Dr. Anne Hathaway, Dr. Prudence Hall, and many people who are BHRT experts who look at, you know, when's the best time to do this? What are the best doses?

Where, you know, when, if you, can you improve? Can you get the better outcome than this worry? And yeah, there is a worry about cancer, although some of the studies have actually shown reduced, with appropriate use of estrogen and progesterone, reduced likelihood of cancer. So you really want to stack those against each other. And there's very personalized approaches to this depending on your genetics or family history, what actually is going on with you, what your biology is, and actually helping women to personalize the treatment using the biological hormone replacement, not actually the kind that comes from horse urine, which is what all the studies were done. So we don't even have big studies on the good stuff. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark here.

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That's Z-E-R-O-A-C-R-E dot com slash mark. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Let's talk about nutrition. We're going to talk about diet in a little bit, but I want to talk about the widespread nutritional deficiencies that you're seeing and how those play a role in the brain and cognitive decline and what are the most important nutrients we need to be focusing on. Yeah, you know, it's amazing to me because we've got so many things working against us. And obviously you've written probably more on this than anyone, looking at the critical nature of nutrients for your health, you know, looking at all, you know, changing the world one bite at a time and all these fantastic things

that you've done. And this fits, again, it just fits perfectly with the science that we've studied over the years. And so, you know, Paul Clayton from Oxford has pointed out that we don't even have the nutrients in the soils that people had 100 years ago, 200 years ago, when we were thinking, you know, these people, wow, they didn't know what they were doing. They were doing much better than we are because they actually, he's pointing out that, you know, Henry VIII had better nutrition than we do. Of course, he ended up being obese and had problems with arthritis and things. But the key is that they actually had better soil. So we've got essentially a triple whammy. Number one, we have poor soils and therefore we have poorammy. Number one, we have poor soils and

therefore we have poor overall nutrition. Number two, we're eating food that's way too high in sugar, obviously, and way too high in processed foods and all these issues. So we're eating stuff that's toxic. And then number three, we're not getting nearly enough fiber, nearly enough phytonutrients. So we have this system. It's as if you took your car out and you're trying to drive this car that needs appropriate fuel. And you're putting stuff in that is very low octane. It's just sputtering. It's spluttering.

It's having trouble getting out of the block. It's just, you know, you might go a little way. And that's what we're all dealing with every day. So if you see- Crap fuel. Crap fuel. You optimize those things. You get people into some ketosis. You get them appropriate fiber for detox and for their microbiome. You get them appropriate low-carb diet. You get the appropriate phytonutrients, and by the way, one of the most common deficiencies, choline. As you know, choline is needed to make acetylcholine, which is a critical neurotransmitter for memory

and is reduced in people with Alzheimer's. And I've checked myself on a chronometer and I realize I'm not getting enough choline in my diet. You know, we should be getting around 550 milligrams or so of choline each day. Which you get from where? Eggs and sardines? You get it from eggs and from, yes, from sardines, from liver, obviously, you know, organ meats, things like that, from oysters, things like that, a number of vegetables as well. Or you can, if you're not getting it from there, take some citicholine. This is why Professor Wertmann from MIT found that citicholine is so helpful for synapse formation.

So, you know, lots of ways to get choline, but please make sure that for synapse formation. So lots of ways to get choline, but please make sure that you get it up. So all of these things are critical. So what besides choline is so important for the brain? Oh, well, take flavanols. Flavanols and flavonoids, those alone, a study that just came out showing that over thousands of people, those who were in the highest quartile of flavanols had a much lower dementia risk than those who were in the lowest quartile of flavanols. So things like strawberries and things like grapes and things like that are all helpful to give you the flavanols. And then the flavonoids, things like blueberries and things like that, all critical. So those are like 25,000 different phytochemicals and plant foods.

And flavanols and flavonoids are part of those. And so eating a rainbow-colored diet where half your plate is vegetables is a simple take-home to protect your brain and pretty much everything else that could go wrong with you. So we've got choline, we've got flavonoids and phytonutrients. What other major nutrients are an issue? Well, you know, the minerals. that could go wrong with you. So we've got choline, we've got flavonoids and phytonutrients. What other major nutrients are an issue? Well, you know, the minerals. So the key ones that almost all of us are deficient, as you know, in zinc. And zinc has become a huge issue because of COVID-19. So many of the people who are deficient in zinc are reduced and have an increased poor outcome, increased risk for having a poor outcome from

COVID-19. So zinc, magnesium, iodine, potassium, those are the big four that most of us are deficient in. And then of course, vitamin D, as you know, the study that just came out about 10 days ago, showing if you take the people who are low in vitamin D, they have a much worse outcome in COVID-19 than the people who have sufficient vitamin D. And of course, Alzheimer's is no different. The same thing you see, people who are low in vitamin D, more likely to get Alzheimer's, people who are sufficient vitamin D. And of course, same thing in multiple sclerosis, high vitamin D associated with better outcomes. So as you said, it's multiple diseases that all depend on these critical

factors. Some of the most important things I found are B vitamins. I once had a patient who was about 80 something years old. She was on multiple boards, very successful woman, but was noticing depression and really severe cognitive decline and been diagnosed with MCI or pre-dementia. Told to get her affairs in order. She came to see me and I'm like, checked her levels and found she had a really high level of something called methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, which are things that most doctors don't check, but reflect your status of B12, which is methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, which is the folate and even B6. So I basically gave her B12 shots, high doses of methylfolate, which is a particular kind. Saw she had some genes that made her need a special kind

of folate. And she called me back and was doing amazing. And all of her symptoms had gone away. And then a few years later, maybe four or five years later, she called me up and I thought, oh, I saw my schedule. I'm like, maybe she's not doing well. She's declining. I kind of worry about her a little bit. And she was like, Dr. Hyman, I'm going trekking in Bhutan and I want to know what I should do to prepare and what I should be taking with me. So I was like, okay. And I think sometimes it's that simple, but it's not always that simple. But I think understanding the role of nutrients and nutritional deficiencies is huge. It's far more common than we think. You can't get everything you need from food. I think a lot of the reason the studies on vitamins have failed in Mars trials, whether it's for cancer or heart disease, is because they're not dealing with

the whole system. They're just like, if you're eating, you know, donuts all day, you can take all the fish oil or vitamin D you want. It's not going to do anything to fix your risk of heart disease, right? So you have to look at everything together. So let's talk about this concept you talked about called keto flex. We've touched on it a number of times. But what is the diet that's best for your brain? And what is the diet that's best for your brain if you actually have Alzheimer's? Yeah, great point. So let me preface this by saying I know far less about nutrition than you do.

So, you know, I'm really talking to someone who's an expert here. I'm looking at the neurochemistry. So I'm interested in, you know, synapses, how they're made, how do you keep them? And so this is Ketoflex 12-3 is nothing more than what's the thing we can use to drive your biochemistry toward an optimal biochemistry for making and keeping synapses. And so what do you need? You need to have ketosis. You need to have all the nutrients we were just talking about for support. You need to have high fiber because you need to help yourself detox. You need to improve your microbiome, all those sorts of things.

You need to have appropriate probiotics to support your microbiome. And you need to have fasting periods for autophagy, fasting periods for helping you to get into ketosis, fasting periods for all the great things that fasting does, even things like lowering your blood pressure. Hypertension is another big risk factor for Alzheimer's. So if you put all that biochemistry together and you mix it up in a blender and you say, what's the diet? We named it KetoFlex 12-3.

It's ketotic. It's mildly ketotic. It's plant-rich. This is not a bacon-related ketogenic diet. This is a plant-rich, high good fats, intermediate proteins, low carb, and no simple carbs. It is flexitarian. And I realize flexitarian means you have to eat some meat and fish. It's really more about flexibility. You want to be a vegetarian? No problem. Make sure to check your homocysteine and your vitamin D and things like that. But fine. If you want to have some meat, you know, have some fish. It's hard to be, I think, keto if you're not eating animal protein. I mean, you can do it as a vegan or vegetarian, but it's harder because it's harder to reduce the carbohydrate load because you need the

protein from beans and grains and things like that. So how do you do that with those patients? Yeah, that's a great point. And so, you know, again, because getting into ketosis is so critical for supporting brain energetics, we tell them just start by taking some exogenous ketones, do it for a couple of months, no problem, because we need to get that energy up. So taking it as a supplement. Exactly. Then you can get yourself into endogenous ketosis. And we do that by increasing the fat consumption and all the appropriate oils and the nuts

and the seeds and all the things that you've written about that are excellent sources of good dietary fats. And then again, and then if they can't get into enough ketosis, okay, we can supplement that a little bit to get them where they need to be. So it's then, so that's the flex part. And then 12-3 is 12 hours as a minimum. And if you're ApoE4 positive, you should really make it 14 to 16 hours of a fast between when you finish your dinner, when you start your breakfast, brunch, or lunch. And then the three is for three hours before you go to bed. You don't want to be eating right before bed because it'll spike your insulin, reduce your growth hormone in your

melatonin and so forth and so on. So this is why KetoFlex 12-3 is essentially our attempt to take the neurochemistry of synaptogenesis and to put it into a diet. A lot of people do not remember names, not because they're not capable of remembering names, because the truth is, if I was to ask your audience right now who has challenges remembering names, 99% of them will say, if they're honest, I do. I'm bad at remembering names. And then I will say, okay, well, let's say Mark has a suitcase of a million dollars cash for you. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, who's going to remember that person's name for a million dollars cash tax-free for your favorite charity? Everybody.

So all of a sudden, your whole audience is full of memory experts now. So it's actually a lie, a lie, or, you know, and these are the lies we tell ourselves. I'm not good at remembering names. You have to be present to it. Exactly. And you need a reason because here's the thing. Not everybody remembers everyone's name, but we certainly don't forget everyone's name either. And if you reverse engineer it, you'll find that there's a method behind what looks like magic. You didn't just happen to remember the person's name. There was a motivation. There was a motive for taking action. There was a purpose.

But you've got special tricks. How do you remember 100 people in an audience? Well, even here, and we'll go through the methods, even here, a simple trick would be asking yourself, why do I want to remember the person's name? Because a lot of people's names you remember are people you're attracted to, people who could be good for your brand or your business. There's an inherent motivation. And so when you're meeting somebody and you want to remember

their name, ask yourself, why do I want to remember the person's name? Because write this down as I know a lot of people are taking notes, reasons reap results. If you do not have a reason to do something, you will not do it. Reasons reap rewards. and so the first part is like a lot of people they can't get themselves to read they want to read a book a week you know we know if the average person reads two or three books a year but a book a week 52 books a year that will transform your life but a lot of people can't get themselves to read 10 15 20 minutes a day because they're not associating themselves to the reason but let's say they do have a clear reason. The second part of the formula,

besides having a purpose, is energy. What keeps people from, and this is never really talked about in books, because you'll get books on mindset, you'll have books on motivation, but a key element to motivation, your motive for taking action, like the proof that you're motivated is your acting, right?

And so what I'm thinking about is energy. Some people could have a clear reason to read, to work out, but they have no energy. Like they didn't sleep the night before, right? Or they're super stressed. So they lack the vitality to do that action. And that's keeping them from doing those sales calls or taking that road trip or to do the things that they need to be able to do. And so you need to look at energy. So in here, I talk about 10 ways of jumpstarting your mental vitality, right? Which includes maximizing your sleep, stress management. And, you know, I quote you in there also a lot about the brain foods.

Because as we talked about on your show, what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter, right? And then once you have, you're motivated. See, my question is always critical thinking. I'm thinking, okay, is the person, if I'm programming this robot, for example, if it has a reason, is it going to do it? Not necessarily. It needs energy. Okay, so let's say it has a reason and energy. Is it motivated yet? The one thing I could think of that it won't take action on is because the thing that they're thinking about is too big. Meaning that you think about, oh, I want to start a business. Like, how do you, like, that's not, that's not a task or a step, right? So the third part are small, simple steps.

Because this is, motivation for me is about, you know, time management, this is energy management, having a clear purpose gives you energy and clarity, because something that's not clear takes away energy, you know, having energy and energized brain gives you energy. And then finally, small, simple steps require very little energy, they require very little effort. So my thing with getting people to really make functional change, like to put down this food and pick up this junk, pick up this food, is to break it down in a small, simple step. Meaning that instead of thinking your goal is to have the perfect relationship or the perfect body, how do you break it down into the smallest

step where you cannot fail yeah it's like this this you know like the BJ Fogg framework exactly so in here we talk about reverse engineering your habits and I take dr. BJ Fogg who heads the behavior lab at at Stanford University and he talks about tiny habits he's saying hey flossing your teeth we all know it's good for your longevity. Floss one tooth. Floss one tooth. Same thing with reading. If you want to read a book a week, don't focus on that 45 minutes a day that it takes to read a book, you know, or if you learn speed reading, do it 15 minutes a day. Hey, read one sentence, because nobody's going to stop after one sentence. It's not like, oh, I got to do this

one hour soul cycle. It like i gotta put i gotta get myself out the door well i did it because i i hated like weight lifting and push-ups and all that stuff i love to run and bike and tennis and all that and i i decided okay i want to start doing more strength stuff so i'm gonna start with push-ups right i can do that i'm like well i really can barely do 10 push-ups but i'm gonna start and i realized well what do i need well i'm motivated i have a reason i'm aging i want to age well and motivated. Um, you have energy and I have the energy. So I realized I shower pretty much every day and I turned the shower and it takes like a few minutes to warm up. So I do pushups before I want. So the trigger is the turning the shower on. And then I

do my pushups and I went from 10 to 50 pushups. That's amazing. Just by just these little steps and it works. And here's the thing. It's really, if you're persistent, you could achieve it. But if you're consistent, you could keep it. You could keep it. You know, I believe consistency compounds that little by little, a little becomes a lot.

And that's how you create a transformation in an individual or in a culture, like the movement that you have with food fix. It's these little things that add up, that add up to big things, you know, over time. So that's motivation. And then the third circle on here, once you have the mindset and the motivation, are you getting the result? Not necessarily. What's the one thing that's missing the third m with is which is the method right the methodology you need to know you know how to do it so the mindset is the what the motivation is the why you know your reason and then the methods are the how now here's the thing this is where the

magic comes in i want everyone to think about something they want to be more limitless about meaning progress make progress make some advancements that are measurable. The minds where mindset in this Venn diagram crosses over with motivation. That's where you have something called I call inspiration. And because I alliterate everything three M's there, here are your three eyes. So mindset crosses over with motivation, you have inspiration, and their books on mindset, and their books with motivation, you have inspiration. And there are books on mindset, and there are books on motivation, right? And there are books on inspiration, or social media posts or speakers or something. That's inspiration. Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to have the result, because what are you missing? You're missing the methods, right? Now, if you have the motivation and the methods, then you have the second eye where that crosses over, you have

implementation. But the problem is you're doing it, right? You're motivated and you know what to do, but the ceiling in your results is your mindset, what you feel like you deserve, what you feel like you're capable of, because all behavior is going to be belief driven. If your mindset is, I have a horrible memory, you can be motivated and know what to do and you still won't remember because the behavior will be limited by the belief. So show me the money. What are the methods?

So in the book, we show people how to unravel these negative beliefs that hold them back. Now, finally, where mindset crosses over with methods, that's where you have, this is where you have ideation. So you have inspiration, you have implementation, and then you have ideation. You have the right mindset. You have this winner growth mindset.

Anything is possible. I deserve it all. And you have the methods, right? But you're not motivated. So it just stays as an idea. This is ideation where people just analysis paralysis, think about all these different things where all three of these intersect, where mindset, motivation, and methods intersect, where inspiration,

implementation, and ideation intersect is a fourth eye, which is integration. Because ultimately real transformation is a full integration. And that sweet spot where all three connect is that limitless state. And that's really, I believe this limitless model is an explanatory schema for anyone, for themselves, their team, their family, if there's a gap between where they are and where they want to be. This book is about redrawing the borders and boundaries of what we have. So give us some practical tips.

How do you, for example, read 25% to 50% faster, remember names or numbers or bullet points? And what are those methods? Let's do it. So going to the... I mean, I want to get a free console here. No, no, no. Let's do an actual

will you do actual coaching here so the book is breaking down is broken down into three sections so we so it's actually three books in one you know where we go through and dissect mindset and we talk about the limiting beliefs that hold us back and the truth right because we talk about these seven lies and lie for me is, it's a limited idea entertained. It's not the truth. It's an idea that we give energy to that we entertain, that we that we picked up. Because here's the thing when it comes to this, because I'm gonna talk about speed reading. Some people I could teach them the method, but they could believe they're stupid, or they could believe they're a small, they're a slow reader, or they could believe they are a

procrastinator, and they won't do the method. So we debunk these lies because they're really BS, right? They're belief systems, right? So assuming people have the right mindset and they're motivated to read, because some people, you can teach them what to do, they still won't do it because they're not, they know they could do it, but they don't feel it,

like the benefits of what it'd be like. Like for me, an example I share in the book is the reason I'm here today is because when I was 18 years old and I learned these skills, my life transformed. And I couldn't help but help other people. And I started to teach this. And one of my very first students, she was a freshman. She read 30 books in 30 days. Honest to God, 30 books, not skim or scan. She read. Wow. And I wanted to find out God, 30 books, not skim or scan, she read.

Wow. And I wanted to find out not how. I didn't want to know the method. I taught her the method. I want to know what her motivation was because most people who learn that same method did not do the same thing. Did not do that, right.

And I found out, I wanted to ask her, how do you find out someone's motivation? You ask them why. You know, why were you doing this? And I found out, I always get choked up thinking about this her mother was dying of terminal cancer doctors gave her just two more months to live and the books she was reading were books like that you write books to save her mom's life

books on health wellness alternative medicine energy everything and i was like i wish you luck you know prayers you know and i don't talk to her for months. Six months later, I had a call from this young lady, and she's crying, and she's crying, crying, and when she stops, I find out they're tears of joy, that her mother not only survived, but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how, they don't know why.

The doctors called it a miracle, but her mother attributed 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books. And I get goosebumps. Yeah, I get the chills when you talk about it. I call them truth bumps, but I feel like that's when I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower

and it's a power we all have, we just weren't taught in this world. But I illustrate this saying that I'll teach right now, I'll share with you some great tips on how to read faster. But you have to believe it's possible and you need a reason to do so. Be just like going to the gym. You don't have to enjoy it. And I feel like you'll enjoy it once you get good at it.

For example, a lot of people do not read because they're not good at it. And if somebody wasn't good at tennis, it wouldn't be a very enjoyable process. Like if you're not, I'm not very great at golf. So I really don't find a lot of joy in playing golf because it is, it is a struggle. Right. And so, but if I was great at it, like Tiger Woods or whoever, then I would be wanting to play all the time. It's fun because it's because your competence, confidence is looped together. So that being the case, find your why to read. Now, to read a book a week.

Yeah, tell us how. Yeah, so this is the key. Having just written the book, the average book on Amazon has about 64,000 words, the average one, right? Now, I know yours are larger, but 64,000 words. Now, the average person reads about 200 words per minute. Now if you divide those two numbers together, it takes about 320 minutes to get through one book. All right, that sounds like a lot, but break it down into seven days in a week.

That's about 45 minutes a day. So that means 45 minutes of reading a day. You could split it up 20 minutes in the morning, 25 in the afternoon. You could get through one book a week, 52 books a year. That would transform. I mean, what books would you read over the course of a year? That's like having a PhD in any category.

You think about what you would study in terms of entrepreneurship or wellness or anything else like that. Now that's 45 minutes a day. Now, if you read, you know, we graduate people, we have students, 195 countries, they triple their reading speed on average. That means 15 minutes a day. We'll get you through a book a week. Amazing. So how do you do that? With the same level of comprehension? With the same, it better. So it's so, so insane because. Okay. I

got a lot of books on my shelf over there. I'm like, I'm dying to get through them. So here's the thing. And that doesn't even take time. Cause that that's to get through so here's the thing and that it doesn't even take time because that that's a mindset issue here's the thing because i i filter everything through these three m's and so when you're coaching your your patients or somebody who's listening to this their spouse or their teammates whenever they they're talking you could see where the where where the the constraint is is it in a belief or is it a motivation how was the technique to go from yeah so this is how you this is, you know, 45 to 15 minutes? This is how you do it.

The faster readers tend to have better comprehension in actuality. That's the truth. So if we're going to unravel these myths, faster readers tend to have better comprehension. And I know this because we have students in 195 countries, so we have a lot of data, right? And I've worked with kids with learning difficulties to seniors and and so genius leaves clues one of the keys are what keeps us from reading faster i'll tell you number one lack of education right we're not born with the ability to read we we learned it and but the last time we took a class called reading what how old yeah exactly you were

seven years old and so everything has changed since then but we're still reading the same way right so that's a challenge so this is the education part the second reason why is lack of focus some people will not read faster because they lack the focus they'll read a page in a book get to the end and then just forget what they just read and then go back and reread it now but if when reading is done well, it doesn't take time, it actually makes you time. Because if I could double everyone's reading speed, and I'll show you how right now, if I could double your reading speed, that means what takes an hour only takes 30 minutes.

The average person has about four hours of reading a day. Think about it. Think about the text messages, the emails, the magazines, the journals, everything you need to process information. By the way, the magazines, the journals, everything you need to keep to process information. By the way, the reason why we do so much corporate training at Google and GE and WordPress, SpaceX, all these things is because if the average workday is being spent four hours a day processing information, that means half of their salary is being paid just to read. That means if someone's being paid $50,000, they're being paid $25,000 just to do something so ubiquitous like reading.

And they're reading like they read when they were seven years old. So here's the thing. If you could just double your reading speed instead of four hours, do it in two hours. I'm going into the motivation so people will do it

because the strategy is really easy. Two hours a day, if you save it two hours a day over the course of a year. You're not going us you're gonna make us by the book no no i'm gonna share with you but but the reason why i do this is because it's not i'll tell you what it is and most people won't do it until they realize they can save two hours a day over the course of even if they save one hour a day over the course of a year is 365 hours. That is nine 40 hour work weeks. You get back two months of productivity. So I want that to be your why. What would you do with two extra months a year?

Every company should send all their employees to go to do the training. Right. But everyone listening should make this a priority when I'm about to teach you the method because the motivation is there. What would you do with an extra hour a day or an extra two months a year? Most people kill themselves to get an extra two weeks of vacation time a year, right? And so that's the why. Now, the technique is very simple. The faster you read,

the faster readers have the better focus. The reason why, when you read slow, you're feeding this super brain one word at a time. Metaphorically, we're starving our brain. And if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. And that's why you distract yourself. It's like driving. If you're going 20 miles an hour in your neighborhood, you're not really focused on it.

What are you doing? You're drinking your coffee or texting in your neighborhood, you're not really focused on it. What are you doing? You're doing five, you're drinking your coffee, you're texting, which you know you shouldn't. You know, you're having conversations, you're thinking about the dry cleaning because you're going slow. That's like reading.

Most people are reading too slow. If you're going 100 miles an hour, you're darn focused. Right, exactly. If you're racing cars, taking hairpin turns, you're only focused on two things, the act of driving

and what's in front of you. And you're not thinking about the dry cleaning, you're not not trying to text you're not trying to check your makeup you're doing just those things that's why just like with reading when people are reading faster they're just focused on the act of reading and what's in front of them right and i'm dispelling these mindset beliefs because if i don't dispel them people think like oh i'm not gonna read faster i'm not gonna understand what i'm gonna read and read. And if I don't tap motivation, they're not going to do the method. But here is the method. One more obstacle that we're going to fix with the method, sub-vocalization. Sub-vocalization is this act of saying the words as you read, right? You notice that when you read

to yourself, you hear that inner voice inside your head, hopefully it's your own voice. It's not like somebody else's voice. The reason why it's a challenge is if you have to say all the words in order to understand them, you can only read as fast as you could speak. That means your reading speed is limited to your talking speed, not your thinking speed.

I bet you a lot of people are listening to this show right now at 1.5 or 2X, right? Because they can understand it at that much, but they can't talk that fast. And here's the question, the question of mindset belief. Do you have to say the words in order to understand them? The truth is you don't.

Any more than you say comma, question mark, you don't do those things. You don't have to say a lot of words. The, their, and because they're filler words. 95% of the words you see are words you've seen before. You don't have to pronounce them. So the fastest readers don't pronounce all the words. And finally it's the last obstacle that we'll fix right now is regression a lot of people are slow readers because they unconsciously reread words have you ever read like a line and found yourself rereading this the line again or going back yeah it actually

25 50 percent of our time sometimes unconsciously of, can be spent rereading words. And it's very taxing for the eyes. Because in speed reading, there are these things called fixations. A fixation is a fancy word for an eye stop. When you're reading a word, your eyes fixate on the word, and then the next word, and the next word. And there are about 10 words per line in the average book. So it's making 10 stops. Now, the equivalent would be for kids, when they're reading, they're very slow readers, first learning how to read, they don't see words, they see letters. And they're looking at each

individual letter sounding them out. So they're making like 40 stops going through the line. That's why it takes them so long to read. Now, the equivalent of how kids read that make 40 stops to adults reading 10 stops, speed readers actually make maybe two or three or four stops. Because they see groups of words like adults, normal readers, see groups of letters. So they're seeing three chunks at a time, so their eyes only have to stop two or three times and that's the equivalent of driving in traffic you know having to make ten stops over instead of just two or three yeah that other persons get there a lot faster so the growth here to read faster one of the ways of teaching yourself to reading groups and the sub vocalize less now this is the method part is by using a visual pacer now this is so simple when people read using a visual pacer. Now, this is so simple. When people read using a visual pacer,

it could be a pen, a highlighter, a mouse on a computer, your finger, a pencil. When you underline the words, not skip anything, because I bet in your traditional speed reading class, you skip words or you go down the page or you make fancy S or Z forms, but you miss big gaps. That's why you get the gist of what you read.

So traditional speed reading, people, it's not for comprehension. It's skimming. Yeah, yeah, that's what I learned. Yeah, exactly. But you don't want your doctor to get the gist of what he's reading, right? That wouldn't make any sense. And so for me, what we've tested is if you just underline the words, don't skip anything, and test yourself. Not with an actual pen, but just like... Yeah, you don't skip anything and test yourself don't don't not

with an actual pen but just like yeah you could you don't under you're not actually inking it up or anything if you're reading on a screen you're not touching the screen or touching the paper you're just underlining the words and then test yourself read for 60 seconds without using a visual pacer count the number of lines you just read then set your timer to read 60 seconds using your finger while you read and count the number of lines you just read, then set your timer to read 60 seconds using your finger while you read and count the number of lines you just read. That second number will be a 25, 50% lift across the board. And now if you practice it more, it'll get even better. But here's the reason why. And I tell the why to increase your motivation because some people are like, oh, that's nice, but you don't

understand why. So adults won't do it. Number one do it all children all children when when if you didn't teach them to do otherwise they'll use their finger to help them to read because it helps their focus it's true second of all you do it and you're thinking i don't use my finger when i read but if i asked you to count the number of lines you just read a hundred percent of people watching listening will use their finger and use it as a pacer one two three four or a pen one two three because the third reason why is because your eyes are attracted to motion like if something ran somebody ran past the cameras here nobody would look at us because your eyes are hardwired as a hunter gatherer your survival you have to look at what moves the most in your environment because it could be a threat. You're a hunter-gatherer in a bush. You're hunting lunch, a rabbit or carrot, whatever your viewers

eat. If the bush next to you moves, you have to look because number one, it could be lunch, or number two, you could be lunch. So you have to look at what moves. So your eyes are hardwired to look at what moves. So when you're underlining the words, your eyes are being pulled through the information as opposed to your attention being distracted and pulled out. And then the final reason you use your fingers while you read is because it's how your neurology is set up, your nervous system, your senses.

Like, have you ever tasted a great piece of fruit, like from the farmer's market? Not something that's been waxed and sprayed. Wild strawberry. Yeah, something like right off the vine. Have you ever tasted a great tasting peach? In actuality, you're not tasting the peach. Your tongue is not capable of tasting what a peach tastes like.

It's actually smelling the peach. But your sense of smell and your sense of taste are so closely linked that your mind can't perceive the difference. It can perceive the difference when you're sick, because when you can't breathe out of your nose, food tastes what? Bland. But that's because your sense of smell and taste are so closely linked.

Just as your sense of smell and taste are linked, so is your sense of sight and your sense of touch. That literally when people underline the words as they read, people will tell me all the time, I feel, I don't know what it is, I feel more in touch with my reading. In fact, if you go to a child, a and say look at my keys look at my keys look at my keys the child will what reach out and right and grab and touch because in order for him or

her to feel like they're seeing it they have to touch it it's equivalent of if if somebody is blind so another example how did if they't see, how do they read? Right. With their sense of touch. So you're reframing mental illness to brain health. And you have in your book, The End of Mental Illness, a simple way of thinking about this. You call bright minds, the 11 risk factors that steal your mind and how you avoid them. Can you take us through that?

So a number of years ago, I realized if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, if it's headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And bright minds is the mnemonic we came up with. And the B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. It's also associated with addictions. It's associated with depression.

It's associated with ADHD and schizophrenia. So you want to do everything you can to protect your blood flow. And 40% of 40-year-old men have erectile dysfunction. Do you know what that means? 40% of 40-year- old men have erectile dysfunction do you know what that means 40 of 40 year old men have brain dysfunction because if you have blood flow problems anywhere it likely means they're everywhere right and so you know you have blood flow problems if you get a scan because spect is a blood flow study uh if you have hypertension if you have any form of heart disease if you don't exercise um so it just gives you some very simple things to do the r is retirement and aging when

you stop learning your brain starts dying and you know i turned 65 this year and i've seen thousands of 60 70 80 year old brains. And the news is not good. It's sort of like, you know, as we age, our skin begins to fall off our face. The same process happens in the brain unless you're serious about it. Right. I mean, I have your scan 10 years apart. And as you got older, your brain got better yeah well how exciting

is that that you're not me happy i'm very competitive with the brain the brain you have um the eye is inflammation that i mean both you and i know it's a disaster inflammation is a disaster for every organ in your body it's true including your brain and so people can measure their omega-3 index before you just go on to what you can do it's important to underscore this we know from the research today that depression is inflammation in the brain that autism is inflammation in the brain that avd and dementia are inflammation in the brain that add and dementia are inflammation in the brain and if that's true then the question is what's causing the inflammation how do you stop it and how do you fix it so tell us about that so if you have a low omega-3 index taking omega-3s can be really helpful

um you have to get your gut right because having this thing and i'm a psychiatrist i didn't know one thing about leaky gut until i read the ultramind solution and then i'm like oh you have to get your gut right because if your gut's not right your brain's not right you're likely to have things get inside your body that have no business in your body which causes an autoimmune or an inflammatory response so food really matters sugar is pro-inflammatory and foods that quickly turn to sugar bread pasta potatoes rice um you want to you often say eat them like a condiment uh that last recreational drug recreational they're not even a condiment sugar and is a recreational drug it's it's it's fine but didn't you say the four white powders yeah the deadly white powder that's like white powder white flour white sugar cocaine and too much salt that so diet really does matter. And our processed foods are loaded with pro-inflammatory omega-6s.

So corn and soy, we're overloaded with them. I mean, not that they're evil, but they're not the right choice as primary staples in our diet. But also things like infections and mold and we're gonna get there so the eye is inflammation the and so get your gut right omega-3 fatty acids the g is genetics and the big lie with genetics is i have obesity in my family and that's why i'm fat well the fact is i have obesity in my family. I have a brother and sister who are 150 pounds overweight, but I'm not. Why?

You're wearing a skinny suit. Because I know the behaviors that make it likely to be so. So genes are not a death sentence. What they should be is a wake-up call and tell you what you're vulnerable to so that you get serious about prevention. I mean, you're in better shape now than when I met you 15 years ago. Sure. You lost more weight, you get more muscle and you're 15 years older. And I work on it.

Right. But because I love what I do. And quite frankly, I have four children. I never want to live with them. I love them. I want to live with them. I love them. I want to be independent for as long as possible. I don't want them being worried about taking away my driver's license. That means I have to take care of my body because my body will then take care of my brain. But that causes you to think ahead, which is, of course, a brain function.

The H is a national epidemic that nobody knows. It's head trauma. Head trauma is a major cause of psychiatric illness, and nobody knows about it because psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, they never look at the brain. And so that fall out of a second story window that caused you to be angry and depressed nobody's thinking about rehabilitating the damage that occurred that's why you really shouldn't let your children hit soccer balls with their head play tackle football and if you've been in a car

accident and then you got depressed somebody should look at your brain and then you should go about rehabilitating it and that's what i did with the big nfl study yeah um and we published a study 80 of our players get better in as little as two months it's amazing by putting them on our bright minds program so i'm pretty excited about that the t is toxins and when i first started scanning people i mean it was really clear that marijuana alcohol cocaine methamphetamine heroin are bad for your brain but then i would see these toxic scans of people who never use drugs yeah and i'm like oh no and i had not one lecture on mold exposure when i was a psychiatric resident or heavy mercury or mercury

poisoning or lead exposure. I had none of that. And so we often find ourselves working up a toxic brain. And did you know 60% of the lipstick sold in the United States has lead in it? So I think that is the kiss of death. And so I know, you know, this app think death. And so I know you know this app, Think Dirty. And when I downloaded it, you can scan all of your personal products. I threw out half of my bathroom because it was basically toxic.

Things like parabens and phthalates, they're called hormone disruptors, which we're going to get to in a second. But you don't want want whatever goes on your body goes in your body and affects your body so you have to get rid of the toxins and basically it's decreased exposure and support the four organs of detoxification kidneys drink more water god eat more fiber liver stop drinking i'm just not a fan i mean we can talk about it um but it disrupts liver function and sweat with exercise or take saunas people take the most saunas have the lowest incidence of alzheimer disease um so m is something i call

mind storms it's abnormal electrical activity in your brain so if you have a hot spot in your temporal lobes or cold spot what we see it's akin to seizure activity so sometimes anti-convulsants can really help a ketogenic diet has anti-convulsant yes properties there's this great book it's written in 1980 by Jack Dreyfus, who's the founder of the famous Dreyfus Mutual Fund. And he said, a remarkable medicine has been overlooked. And it was Dilantin, which is an old anticonvulsant. He'd been going to see a psychiatrist forever. He said three days on Dilantin, he didn't need a psychiatrist anymore because it had

balanced his brain. And so the second I is immunity and infections. If you look at a map of the United States and you look at the highest incidence of schizophrenia, overlay the highest incidence of Lyme disease, they're identical. It's incredible. Anybody in the West or the Northeast or the northern midwest should be

screened for lyme if they have a psychotic disorder and just need to screen them for it because if they have it treating it may actually treat their quote mental illness that is not mental it's the body you treat the brain. Yeah. And his neurohormone deficiencies. D is diabesity. You know, as your blood sugar goes up and your weight goes up, the brain gets smaller. As we talked about getting your weight, right? Your blood sugar, right? And S is sleep. This is how you keep your brain healthy. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast

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