The Dr. Hyman Show - It Is Possible To Stop Or Reverse Dementia with Dr. Elizabeth Boham

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. If you have a diagnosis, then you need to start thinking about the cause. And in dementia, it's a lot of things. It's like we talked about. It could be the metals. It could be the insulin resistance. It could be the nutritional deficiencies. Hello, everyone.

Starting point is 00:00:19 It's Dr. Mark Hyman. And welcome to a special episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. That's pharmacy with an F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you ever have memory issues, you better listen to this podcast because it'll help you a lot. And this special episode is called House Call. And in this series, I sit down with the Ultra Wellness Center's physician, medical director, Dr. Elizabeth Bowen, who's been my colleague in practicing functional medicine for decades now. She's one of the most extraordinary doctors I know. I go to her when I'm sick. And she has literally been the pillar of the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where we've seen thousands and

Starting point is 00:00:55 thousands of patients from all over the world, helping them with all kinds of problems that no one else can figure out. And today we're going to talk about memory and dementia, which is a terrifying thing for people because, okay, you get a heart attack, whatever. You're still you. You get dementia. You're not you anymore, and it's terrifying, and it's one of the most prevalent conditions rising and rising. We now see at a rate of about 5 million people in America with Alzheimer's. It's going to go to 14 million soon. It's global. There's a couple hundred million people around the world with this. It's pretty terrifying. And the care of these patients is just so burdensome on the families. It's so costly. It costs more to take care of an Alzheimer's patient than it does to take care of

Starting point is 00:01:38 someone with heart disease or cancer. People just don't realize that. So we're going to talk about this. How much do we really have an impact on this disease? Can we do anything about it? It's such a great question, Mark. And such a great place to start, right? Because it's kind of hopeless. As a neurologist, the classical joke about neurology is diagnose and adios. You have Alzheimer's, nothing I can do. See you later.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Get your affairs in order. Goodbye. And have a nice rest of your life. And that's it. But actually, we know there's so much we can do, right? There's so much we can do that impacts our health and our body and definitely our brain health. So we can have a huge impact by taking good care of ourself, by making the right food choices, by exercise, by meditation, by getting good sleep. And there's a lot of times that we can find some imbalances in the body

Starting point is 00:02:30 when we look deeper that can have a huge impact on somebody's cognition and on their memory. And that's really exciting. It's so exciting, you know, because for years we were told there's nothing you can do. Right. And there's been literally billions of dollars spent on hundreds and hundreds of studies that have all failed. When these drugs work, the benefit is that maybe they'll delay getting into a nursing home by three or four months. Like that's a success. Right. Right. And some of them just don't work at all. Like the main drug we use, Aricept, the studies show it doesn't even work at all. Right. And some of them just don't work at all. Like the main drug we use, Aricept, the studies show it doesn't even work at all. The amenda might help a little bit. And that's okay. But why have they failed? Because we're looking in the wrong place for the solutions. And we're not looking at the root causes. We're trying to deal with the problem after it's already

Starting point is 00:03:18 happened or at the downstream on the effects of it and not really dealing with the drivers of this problem. And in functional medicine, we really look at that. And what's been exciting to me over the last few years, Liz, is that there's been a number of studies that have come out that have shown that personalized approaches work, that lifestyle interventions work. The FINGER study, which was published from Europe, showed that by simple aggressive lifestyle interventions, diet, exercise, stress reduction, treating risk factors factors like if you have prediabetes or whatever, had a significant impact on slowing and even reversing memory loss. A new study just published this recent last October by Richard Isakson in New York City

Starting point is 00:03:55 showed that you actually could, by personalizing treatment for people's nutritional status, for their metabolic status, for their lifestyle treatments. You could literally stop or reverse memory loss and Alzheimer's in these patients, which is just should be headline news. Right. But you don't hear about it. And that's what's so fun about doing functional medicine, because that's where our focus is, right?

Starting point is 00:04:19 That's what we're looking to do. We're looking to personalize our treatment plan for that individual patient. We gather all of their history and figure out for that person what may be out of balance for their body, what may be causing the inflammation in their body, what may be causing their problems with their cognition. And we can then personalize and figure out where do they need to focus? What do we need to focus on with that person? And it makes a huge difference in terms of, for so many people in terms of how they feel. You know, years ago, I, practicing functional medicine at Canyon Ranch, I just was treating all these people for body issues, right? So for their gut or their, you know, heavy metals or their metabolic syndrome, their prediabetes and

Starting point is 00:05:08 nutritional deficiencies and folate and B12. And I would find all these physical things wrong with people and then I would treat them. And then they'd report to me, my memory's better. My depression's gone. My panic attacks aren't anymore happening. I have ability to focus and pay attention better. And I'm like, what is going on here? And I wasn't focused on treating the brain, but as a side effect of fixing the body, the brain would get better. And that's when I wrote The Ultra Mind Solution,

Starting point is 00:05:38 which is how the body affects the brain. And it was like over 10 years ago. And we're just sort of catching up with what I was observing back then. And even the literature back then, you could see there was evidence that this was true. Again, it just takes 17, 20 years for scientific advances to end up in clinical medicine. But functional medicine shortens that gap. And I remember this one patient, and we're going to talk about your patient soon, but this one patient I had who was just sort of striking. He came in with his wife, and he was a CEO of a major company.

Starting point is 00:06:14 It was his family business. He was unable to function. He was 70 years old. He basically was depressed and cognitively impaired, memory loss, basically sitting at home in a corner doing nothing and has had you know mood changes because a lot of times people with memory issues of dementia get a lot of mood changes their personality changes nobody wanted to be around him his grandkids didn't and i'm like well i've never treated this before but i'm gonna just try

Starting point is 00:06:42 to get you physically healthy and see how it affects your brain. Yep. Because at that time there wasn't a book on the end of Alzheimer's or any of this stuff. And although David Perlmutter, you know, talked a lot about how to treat the brain with neurology and we really learned a lot from him. Yes. And this patient turned out, he lived in Pittsburgh. He had super high levels of mercury because, and he also had a lot of dental fillings. And in Pittsburgh, all of my patients from Pittsburgh have super high mercury. Oh, interesting. And the reason is, I believe is that it's the steel capital of America and they use coal for the steel plants and coal has mercury and lead And it's used on everything. They put it on the fields.

Starting point is 00:07:26 They use coal ash for instead of like sand on the icy roads in the winter, they'll use coal ash. So it's everywhere. And he also had prediabetes, which was undiagnosed. He wasn't really overweight, but he had kind of a little belly. And he also had severe irritable bowel for 30 years. It was on Stelazine, which is a sort of anti-psychotic,

Starting point is 00:07:51 you know, like tranquilizer, basically, which was kind of strange. Yeah. And he also had severe folate and B12 deficiency. He had high levels of homocysteine. He had a lot going on, huh? And methylmalonic acid. So he had gut issues. He had vitamin deficiencies that affect the brain. He had heavy metals. He had prediabetes. And he also had genetics that set him up for this. So he measured his genes,

Starting point is 00:08:18 something called ApoE. And if you have ApoE4, you're much higher risk for dementia and you also can't get rid of metal. So he had APOE4, which is the worst risk. He also had genes that affect his folate metabolism, like MTHFR. So he wasn't able to process the folate he was getting from his diet, so he was sort of functionally deficient in these nutrients. And he had terrible gut issues. And so we looked at all these things, and I just treated his diet to get rid of the insulin resistance. I treated his gut with the 5R program, which we've talked about on the podcast to reset his gut. I gave him the nutrients he needed in the right doses. I

Starting point is 00:08:54 detoxified him from heavy metals and he literally came back to life. And I treated him for years and years and his memory was good. His mood was good. He was able to go back to work and function, running his company. And you just don't see that with traditional medicine. And I think you bring up a really important point that sometimes people want to know the underlying root cause, the one thing, right? They want to know what is the thing that's causing this problem, this cognitive decline, for example, or whatever problem that person has. But many times, many times it's a little bit of multiple different things that come together, right? So he had six different things that you were focused on and they were each contributing to his cognitive decline. And so you have to work on all of those different pieces for him to start

Starting point is 00:09:42 to feel optimally better. So his unique genetic susceptibilities made those things worse for him. Absolutely, right. So not everybody with prediabetes gets dementia. Not everybody with mercury gets dementia. Not everybody with gut issues gets dementia, right? But when you add all the up, it actually all makes sense. And I think we are often really focused on the pathology in medicine, right? We focus on the amyloid or the tau proteins,

Starting point is 00:10:08 all these things that we see in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. But it turns out that those are so downstream as a consequence of all these other factors that nobody's treating. Yes. And we know that memory issues and the brain issues, whether it's depression or autism or ADD or Alzheimer's, are inflammation in the brain. Right. And there's amazing studies of people who have terrible amyloid in the brain, but their

Starting point is 00:10:32 genes for inflammation are different and they don't actually produce inflammation and they die completely cognitively attacked with a brain full of amyloid. And all these billions of dollars of drug studies on amyloid just have failed because we're just going downstream instead of upstream, which is what functional medicine does. Which is so fun to practice, right? We're spending that time to really get to know your patient, get their personal history, figure out for them what are the things we need to remove, what are the tacks we need to take away to help their body heal. And I think you're right. There's so many situations where we see people have huge improvements in their memory and cognition when we address what are their

Starting point is 00:11:13 underlying root causes. Hi, everyone. Hope you're enjoying the episode. Before we continue, we have a quick message from Dr. Mark Hyman about his new company, Pharmacy, and their first product, the 10-Day Reset. Hey, it's Dr. Hyman. Do you have FLC? What's FLC? It's when you feel like crap. It's a problem that so many people suffer from and often have no idea that it's not normal or that you can fix it. I mean, you know the feeling. It's when you're super sluggish, your digestion's off, you can't think clearly, or you have brain fog, or you just feel run down. Can you relate? I know most people can. But the real question is, what the heck do we do about it? Well, I hate to break the news, but there's no magic bullet.

Starting point is 00:11:52 FLC isn't caused by one single thing, so there's not one single solution. However, there is a systems-based approach, a way to tackle the multiple root factors that contribute to FLC, and I call that system the 10-Day Reset. The 10-Day Reset combines food, key lifestyle habits, and targeted supplements to address FLC straight on. It's a protocol that I've used with thousands of my community members to help them get their health back on track.

Starting point is 00:12:17 It's not a magic bullet, it's not a quick fix, it's a system that works. If you want to learn more and get your health back on track, click on the button below or visit GetPharmacy.com. That's Get Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y.com. Now back to this week's episode. Like I had a 75-year-old gentleman who came to see me, and he was a professor.

Starting point is 00:12:38 And so he was, you know, his brain was really important to him. You know, he spent a lot of time up there in his brain, and he noticed that it wasn't working as well. He was having a hard time with paying attention to when he was reading. He was getting lost when he was driving. And he was really frustrated and scared. And so we started to get his history from him. And, you know, I got a good detailed history. And one of the first things I noticed, even outside of the history, was we did his anthropometrics, right? So he comes into the office, right? He comes into the office, and we measure his blood pressure, we measure his weight. But in our office, we also measure the waist to hip ratio. At the Ultra Wellness Center, we always are looking at that waist to hip ratio, right? So we get so much information when we look

Starting point is 00:13:30 at somebody's waist to hip ratio. Because if you're holding on to too much weight around the belly... Belly fat. That belly fat, that visceral adiposity causes a lot of inflammation in the body. And it's a sign, it's a signal to us... That's all the organ fat. It's a different kind of fat than the fat on your butt or on your legs, right? It's really dangerous and drives so much inflammation. And we can't just liposuction it away, right? Because it's deep in there. Actually, that's so funny you mentioned that because I have a slide that I use in my talks, which was of a study in the New England Journal of a woman who had 40 pounds of liposuction, who was really overweight. And they

Starting point is 00:14:05 did a scan of her belly before and after, and they found that, yeah, all the subcutaneous fat was taken out, but all the visceral fat was there and none of her blood markers changed with loss of 40 pounds of fat, not her blood pressure, not her inflammation levels, not her insulin, blood sugar, cholesterol, nothing changed. Right. Because we know it's that deep visceral fat that's so pro-inflammatory in the body. What's visceral? It's the deep, it's the organ fat, right? That's deep in our belly. And we know that it's not just sitting there.

Starting point is 00:14:35 It's an active endocrine organ. It is producing, it's producing inflammatory markers. It's producing cytokines. It itself is increasing inflammation in the body. So your fat cells are not just there holding up your pants. No. They're actually dynamic and they're producing hormones or producing inflammation and it's affecting everything in your body, including your brain.

Starting point is 00:14:56 Including your brain. And you were just mentioning earlier about how cognitive decline and memory loss is often an inflammatory disorder. And so we did his waist to hip ratio. And for men, you want to be less than, in general, you want to be less than 0.9, your waist to hip ratio. I'm more severe. I say 0.8. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:17 And it depends on somebody's ethnicity where, you know, how strict we want to be, but at least less than 0.9. And he was like 1.04. So his, his, he was holding onto too much weight around his belly. And, and so we said, I said, okay, this is an area I know I have to focus on because even if, even if somebody can't do tons and tons of, of a workup and tons and tons of testing, we know, we know that that insulin resistance, that weight gain around the belly, that metabolic syndrome, that prediabetes that's associated with that visceral adiposity, right? So that weight

Starting point is 00:15:53 gain around our belly is associated with what we call prediabetes or metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance. We know that that is associated with dementia or memory loss. But prediabetes causes pre-dementia. Yes. So you don't even have to have diabetes to have a problem. Right. And if you have diabetes, your risk of dementia is four times greater than the average person. Right.

Starting point is 00:16:16 Which is staggering. Staggering. So people... Especially since the fact that 75% of us are overweight. Right. And 42% now are obese. And it's are overweight. Right. And 42% now are obese. And it's all connected. Right.

Starting point is 00:16:28 And at least half of us have metabolic syndrome, right? In this country. One out of two people in the country have prediabetes or diabetes. And people are always like, oh, is there anything I can do to prevent this dementia? Yes. And this is an area that we really, really can attack. It makes a huge difference when you work to get down the waist-hip ratio. And so what we did with... People don't connect the belly and the brain. I mean, the belly fat, the bigger your belly,

Starting point is 00:16:56 the worse your brain is off. You're more likely to have Alzheimer's. You actually literally shrink your brain. The bigger your belly, the smaller your brain. Right, they're calling it type 3 diabetes, right? That is dementia or Alzheimer's disease because we know there's such a connection with how well the insulin works in the brain. So it's really critical that people understand that there's so much you can do by just improving your waist to hip ratio. So your professor's diet wasn't terrible, but...

Starting point is 00:17:24 No, he didn't think it was terrible. It was kind of high starch and sugar. Right. He's like, he said, well, we always ask. We always have people actually fill out their diet diary. But I always ask. And people are, they're like, oh, no, it's not bad. We're trying to be healthy.

Starting point is 00:17:37 You know, he was, he had the money and he was educated. But for breakfast, he might have... He wasn't eating junk food, but he was... No, but he might have a piece of toast. He'd be like, well, it was wheat toast for breakfast with my coffee. And then at lunch, he might grab a turkey sandwich and had a salad. And then at dinner, he might have pasta with his fish or chicken. So he didn't have an awful diet, but for him, he had gained like 30 pounds over the last 40 years or so. And he had

Starting point is 00:18:03 gained it, as we mentioned, in his belly, which is a sign to me, which is a sign to me that says, okay, he's more carbohydrate intolerant. He's got this metabolic syndrome, which means he's not tolerating these carbohydrates that well anymore. And that's where we need to focus from a diet perspective. So just to be clear about carbohydrates. So like broccoli is a carbohydrate, but you're not talking about broccoli. No. from a diet perspective. So just to be clear about carbohydrates, so like

Starting point is 00:18:25 broccoli is a carbohydrate, but you're not talking about broccoli. So plant foods are all carbohydrates, that's what they are. Any plant food, whether it's orange or broccoli or you know a potato, but they're not all the same, right? Certain carbohydrates are super bad for your blood sugar and insulin. Others are great. Right. So I always just joke when I say carbohydrates are the most important food for health and longevity. Why?

Starting point is 00:18:54 Because we need a plant-rich diet full of lots of colorful fruits and vegetables that are low in starch and sugar. But if people are eating potatoes and bread, which you think, oh, that's fine whole wheat bread. But actually, that's worse for your blood sugar than table sugar. But if people are eating potatoes and bread, which you think, oh, that's fine whole wheat bread, but actually that's worse for your blood sugar than table sugar. And sandwich bread and potatoes and pasta. It may not seem terrible, but if you are someone who's carbohydrate intolerant, which by the way, affects about 70% of Americans, and the ones who are overweight, then you got gotta deal with that. Right. And I always tell people take away anything with flour in it, right? If, even if it's gluten-free flour, cause some people are like, well, it's gluten-free, but if it's, if they've

Starting point is 00:19:35 taken a grain and turned it into a flour, right, then like, like with pasta or bread, then it's something that's easily digested in your body and it causes your blood sugar to spike, which causes your insulin to spike. Yeah. And then that insulin causes us to gain weight around the belly. And remember that belly. And makes you hungry and crave carbs. That's for sure.

Starting point is 00:19:55 Right. And makes you lazy. Yep. So we think people are lazy. They don't exercise. They often feel like crap. So they don't want to exercise. So it's like a vicious circle from the food causing you to be hungry and lazy

Starting point is 00:20:05 as opposed to the other way around. The fact that you eat too much and you don't exercise enough causes weight gain. It's the other way around. Absolutely. And then that weight around the belly is causing inflammation in your body to go up. And that inflammation then is turning into,

Starting point is 00:20:19 for some people, dementia and cognitive decline, which was happening with this gentleman. And so when we did further testing, we could see more things that went along with this waist to hip ratio being high. We saw that his blood sugar was fine, like his blood sugar was fine, but his fasting insulin was high, right? So I always say, I always recommend people, have your doctor check your fasting insulin. Which, by the way, most doctors never do. They check your blood sugar. Right, right, right.

Starting point is 00:20:47 And so his fasting insulin was 15. Wow, that's high. Yeah. Because you like less than five. Yeah, we like it less than five. Not to brag, but mine is two. So we knew it was way too high. And we also saw the other things that we typically see in this situation.

Starting point is 00:21:04 High triglycerides, low good cholesterol. You know, he had a lot of things that high C reactive protein. That's a marker of inflammation, right? Yep, which you can have your doctor check as well. And all of this sort of came to say, okay, we've got to really focus on his prediabetes, on his insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, whatever we want to call it, right? And so what we did is we shifted his diet and we pulled away those refined and processed carbohydrates. You know, we just focused on the non-starchy vegetables for his carbohydrate sources you

Starting point is 00:21:35 were mentioning. And more fat. And more fat, right? Talk about fat in the brain. Well, you know, we know the brain is fed by good, healthy fat. And the fat also really helps with balancing blood sugar. And the fat is like 60% of your brain is fat. And a lot of it's the omega-3 fats, right? Yeah. So we really focused on giving him more. We gave him fish oil as a supplement, but we focused on him getting more omega-3s from his diet too, from ground flaxseed, from the fatty fish like sardines, which I love,

Starting point is 00:22:07 salmon, and really focused also on just giving him more fat in his diet. And that helped him, that is what helped him feel more satiated. Yeah, because when you eat fat, you feel full. Right. And you're not hungry. Right, he wasn't looking for food all the time. If people cut the starch and sugar and they don't eat the fat, they're going to be hungry all the time. Right. Right. So that really helped him just helped him balance his blood sugar. Over time, he lost some of that 30 pounds. He lost most of the 30 pounds. We got him exercising because we know that can improve BDNF, that brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's like miracle grow for the brain, right?

Starting point is 00:22:47 Yeah, yeah. And he really wasn't, he's kind of a sedentary kind of guy. So we got him moving and exercising. And it was phenomenal. Just by lowering his insulin, lowering that waist circumference, getting him exercising, he saw a great improvement in terms of his energy and his memory, which is most important to him. I remember those studies are like, just walking prevents Alzheimer's because it increases this BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is stimulated by exercise. Yep. And we can also stimulate BDNF through intermittent fasting, which is kind of interesting, a more ketogenic diet, which is that low-carb, higher-fat diet, through meditation, through the good, healthy fats, the omega-3 fats.

Starting point is 00:23:30 So we can stimulate that BDNF. Meditation also does it. So you can either run or you can sit on your butt and both do it if you do the right thing. Right, right. It's so powerful. So we really have to focus in on this because, you know, traditional doctors don't measure insulin. They don't look at insulin. I mean, this is the most common condition period in medicine today, without a doubt. And yet doctors don't know how to look for it and

Starting point is 00:23:57 diagnose it or treat it, which is just stunning to me because this is just basic. This isn't even just functional medicine, right? So the literature describes what this syndrome is, metabolic syndrome. It describes prediabetes. You can use a tape measure, your waist to hip ratio. You can look at your triglycerides. You can look at your good cholesterol. The good cholesterol goes down, the triglycerides go up. You can look at inflammation. You can look at insulin. If you wait till your blood sugar's up, it's too late. By the time your insulin... It's so much harder to reverse it at that point. I had a patient who was like, I was really overweight and she had a big, big belly.

Starting point is 00:24:31 And it was like such an eye-opening case for me because not only did I do a insulin, I did a glucose tolerance test also with insulin. So you give someone a load of sugar, put it on two Cokes and you measure their blood sugar and insulin before and after one and two hours and you see what happens. She had the most perfect blood sugar. She never went up over 100. Her blood sugar was perfect. Her A1C, which is the average blood sugar, was normal, but her insulin was like 200. Not 15, not five, but like 200. And I was like, whoa. And so she is just packing on this belly fat yeah because the insulin just everything she eats just turns to belly fat and as you mentioned people just feel

Starting point is 00:25:11 so tired and lethargic yeah so we need to really help them drop that insulin yes and so it's just so easy to treat this patient and i think with typical cases of memory issues it's such a big factor and i think the food is such a big factor. And I think the diet, you know, there's a lot of research showing like Mediterranean diets, for example, help prevent Alzheimer's. They call it the men diet. And, you know, it's just basically things like salmon and greens and chocolate. Olive oil and olives and nuts. They even had red wine in there. You know, and I think, you know, we have so much power and people

Starting point is 00:25:43 feel afraid and powerless about memory loss and dementia. Like, you know, we have so much power and people feel afraid and powerless about memory loss and dementia. Like, I can prevent heart disease and diabetes if I eat better and exercise. But they don't get that the brain is just connected to the body. And you have tremendous control and power over what happens if you deal with all these variables. Absolutely. So the other thing I want to sort of talk about was this other case you had. Yeah. It was a woman who had memory issues and her brain was super foggy and wasn't having any energy.

Starting point is 00:26:12 She'd get sick easily. So what was going on with her? Right. So she was around 60. And so she was kind of scared. She was scared that she was struggling with her memory. And she was having a hard time recalling things, you know, remembering that person's name or what was she supposed to be just doing or why am I in this room? And so she was,

Starting point is 00:26:32 she was, and she's like, I'm 60. You know, this is, this is really scaring me. So I got a good detailed history on her and I realized she's also been really sick a lot. She was getting all the colds and flus that were going on. You know, I'm like, okay, now that's concerning. So we, we did some testing on her and we found out, and when I did an exam, right, when I did an exam, I saw that she had a mouthful of silver fillings. And so I got concerned, as you were mentioning earlier, we know that, that mercury is a neurotoxin, right? It can cause, it can cause damage to the brain. We also know it can cause damage to the immune system. It can decrease the functioning of our immune system. And so we did this special test with her that looks at, it was a quick silver test, that looks to see her mercury

Starting point is 00:27:19 and her blood, how much of it was coming from the fillings, right? Yeah, you know, it's so interesting because, you know, there's such controversy about this. And the dental groups go like, there's no issue. It's safe. But it's so funny to me that, you know, if you go to a dentist and you have fillings and they remove them from your mouth, they have to put them in a special toxic waste disposal system, according to the EPA. So why is it safe to put in your mouth but not to throw in the garbage?

Starting point is 00:27:43 Right. I don't get that. And the truth is that we know that it off-gases, that you grind your teeth or you chew and everything gets stable, but it actually releases mercury slowly into the body and it can be absorbed and cause all kinds of issues. Now, some people are great at getting rid of it, but others are terrible. Right. And this kind of test, you just don't get it at your doctor.

Starting point is 00:28:02 You don't. Right. We look at hair, urine, blood. We see what's going on, how you're detoxifying. It's such a big issue. And then we do challenge testing to see what your body load is of mercury. And there's good evidence for this. But again, this is not something that most doctors look at or do. And that's what we do in functional medicine. So different at the Ultra Wellness Center where we treat all sorts of patients like this. And we see when we start to pull the hood back and look underneath, we see an incredible

Starting point is 00:28:25 array of things that actually are treatable. Right, right. So for her, her inorganic mercury, which is telling us how much mercury is coming from those amalgams, was really high. So I said to her, you know what, we need to work on getting these fillings, these mercury amalgams. They call them silver fillings, but they're actually mercury. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:28:51 Safely removed. So safely, which I think is important. You don't want to just yank them all out without using precautions, right? So like a dam, a dental dam in the mouth, oxygen. High-speed suction, yeah. I mean, I had a patient, well, not a patient, a doctor who talks about this was sort of a chronic fatigue doctor. And he's started, you know, wanting to get the mercury out of his mouth. And he had a lot of it. And he went to the dentist and they didn't do it right. And he ended up getting heart failure from the mercury poisoning, which is actually documented in literature. It's one of the causes of heart failure. So you have to do it safely. You have to go to a biological dentist or an integrative dentist. There's a website called iaomT.org where you can see people who've been certified to do it properly

Starting point is 00:29:30 to make sure you don't just go and rip these things out because it can be really bad for you. Yeah, you want to work with somebody, I think, on this, especially if it's a big issue for you because you also want to make sure the body is supported to detoxify. Like the body has this tremendous ability to detoxify. It's set up to get rid of these toxins we're exposed to. You know, as you mentioned, some people are better at it than others. Yeah, I suck at it. Yeah, me too.

Starting point is 00:29:55 But all of us can support our natural body's ability to detoxify, right? By drinking good water, having regular urination, making sure we're having regular urination, making sure we're having regular bowel movements, eating a lot of fiber, sweating with sauna and exercise. Yeah. Poop, pee, perspire. Yeah. Oh, I like that. Poop, pee, perspire. Yeah. So you want to support that. And for some people, depending on what their levels are like. So for this woman, her levels were really high and she wasn't very, she wasn't well when she first came to see me. So, so we needed to support her a little bit more. You know,

Starting point is 00:30:30 we actually gave her some NAC, N-acetylcysteine, which helps the body with production of glutathione. Which is the main detoxifier in the body. I actually gave her glutathione. I gave her IV as well as liposomal glutathione to help her body detoxify and mobilize these toxins and to help her through that process of getting rid of this silver in her mouth. And that really helps the immune system too. I always find that so fascinating, right? When I first learned about the connection with the detoxification system and the immune system. So when you really support the detoxification system, then somebody's immune system works better.

Starting point is 00:31:09 And so, you know, that was very helpful. And we do those IVs all the time at the Ultra Wellness Center, and it really helps with mobilizing heavy metals and toxins from the body. And of course, we focused on those cruciferous vegetables, the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, which really also they have glucosinolates in them, which help the body with production of glutathione. These are amazing plant chemicals that act like medicine in the body, right? Right. It's phytonutrients that help the body with production of the glutathione, which is this amazing detoxifier, the substance that helps the body detoxify. And then we use fibers and binders in the gut so you don't reabsorb it, right?

Starting point is 00:31:47 Right, right. So for her, we actually, her levels were at a point where we definitely had to use some binders to help them, you know, to get down safely. But when you're doing that, you want to work with a practitioner who really knows how to do that. Yeah, you have to be trained in functional medicine. And we do this at the Ultra Wellness Center. We've been doing it forever. And I personally had mercury poisoning.

Starting point is 00:32:06 I talked about it before, but I had cognitive impairment. I couldn't focus. I couldn't concentrate. My memory was terrible. I literally was reading my kids a book at night and I couldn't remember what I was reading. I just could read it out loud, but I actually couldn't understand it.

Starting point is 00:32:19 I was like, I literally had a broken brain. And it was the mercury. And so it's so impactful for so many people. And I've seen this over and over again. And then you have to learn how to do it right. And all the things you're talking about, we have a very specific methodology that basically takes out the bad stuff and puts in the good stuff. And so you support the body's natural system.

Starting point is 00:32:38 So fibers and the right foods to help detoxify and the right nutrients like selenium and zinc and all these things are reallyenium and zinc and you know all these things are really so necessary in N-acetylcysteine like pork acid and we use all these supplements and diet and sometimes even medication to help get the body to rid itself of these metals but it has profound effects for me it did yeah and this patient that you saw it was amazing you know she stopped getting sick so often. And then most important for her is her cognition really improved. That brain fog went away. She wasn't having a hard time when she'd walk into a room and forgetting what she was doing there.

Starting point is 00:33:14 You know, she really was noticing that her recall was better and, you know, that she just felt more clear in the head. And it was really exciting to see. Yeah, so true. I mean, I remember this patient I had was like about 75, 80 and she was, you know, a very prominent woman in her community, was on the boards of many boards and fairly wealthy and was just struggling. And she was told that she had early dementia and there was nothing she could do about it. And I actually tested her and she had a normal B12 and folate, but she had, when we check these things called homocysteine and methylotic acid, which are special

Starting point is 00:33:51 tests that look at the function of these nutrients, they were terrible. And so I gave her a B12 shot and some high dose of folate. And she literally just came right back online and her depression and her fatigue and her memory loss went away. And about five years after I got a call from her I'm like I was like oh boy maybe she's not doing good and I had her on my schedule and I talked to her and she's like oh Dr. Hyman I just wanted to find out what do I need to do because I'm going to Bhutan trekking and I want to know what I need to take before I go and you know I see this over and over and I think yes um you know we talked about a few things like insulin resistance. We talked about heavy metals.

Starting point is 00:34:27 But dementia is simply the name of symptoms of memory loss. It doesn't tell you what's causing it. People say, oh, you have memory loss. You have dementia. That's what's causing it. No, no, no. That's just the name of the problem of you can't remember anything. And functional medicine helps to figure out the why.

Starting point is 00:34:47 And if you have a diagnosis, then you need to start thinking about the cause. And in dementia, it's a lot of things. It's like we talked about. It could be the metals. It could be the insulin resistance. It could be the nutritional deficiencies. It could be Lyme disease.

Starting point is 00:35:02 Like Chris Christopherson had dementia and treated with Lyme disease treatment and got better. I've seen many cases like that. Yep. Infections, right. It could be mold in your environment. Yes. It could be other toxic influences.

Starting point is 00:35:13 So there's so much we know about this disease now. And if we applied it, we could help so many of these millions of people who are suffering. And I think people just need to understand that it's not just about getting the diagnosis and getting your affairs in order anymore. We actually have so much we can do. And at Cleveland Clinic, we've been working with the memory center there, the Luruel Center there. So excited about these ideas. They're implementing them. We're seeing this in academic centers like in New York City with Richard Isaacson,

Starting point is 00:35:49 which is funded by partly Maria Shriver, whose father had dementia. So we're seeing this incredible advances, but it's just people aren't getting access to it. And at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where we treat these kinds of problems, we see incredible results and we check all these things. We check metals, we check your gut, we check your insulin resistance, we check your nutritional levels, we check for Lyme if needed, we check for mold. And these are the things that, you know, your traditional doctor just doesn't do. And then we learn how to fix the diet. And we talked about, you know, things like intermittent fasting or ketogenic diets or caloric restriction. All these things can help actually help the brain. And then we figure out what foods are good for the brain, like the fats, and we apply that.

Starting point is 00:36:26 And then, of course, we'll actually treat the specific things as needed, right? If people need different things. And we focus on sleep and stress and gut and diet. So it's really a comprehensive approach that you just don't get when you go to the doctor and you say, I'm having memory issues. And it's terrifying for people because they think there's nothing you can do. You just want people to have hope that actually there is a lot you can do. So much we can do. I mean, I, I mean, I, I, I'm sort of skeptical that you can have an impact when people are pretty far gone. Um, you know, it's better to get it earlier, like when you're pre dementia or even before that. But, uh, I, I just want to end with a quick story, which is of a nursing home in Cleveland where

Starting point is 00:37:07 the family got very focused on my book, Ultramind Solution, and Dr. Bredesen's book, The End of Alzheimer's, talking about lifestyle, diet, various things with their patients. And these were patients who had moderate to severe Alzheimer's, and they were in a nursing home. And they said, you know, they hired a chef, they got all the gluten dairy out, all the sugar processed food, they fed them whole foods, and within two weeks, these patients were coming back online. They were talking where they hadn't been talking. They were having less, you know, need for restraints, and less need for this and that, and medications, and I mean, they weren't cured, but their cognitive function got significantly better.

Starting point is 00:37:45 And I see this over and over again. So I just want people to really feel like it's not a hopeless case, that there is something we can do, and that there's a way forward to think through this together. And I think, you know, people are struggling. We do this all the time at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. We have a great team of providers, you know, four doctors, two PAs, a whole bunch of nutritionists and great team. And we're really good at actually navigating

Starting point is 00:38:11 through these complex stories and coming up with what to do and how to help people. I agree. It's just a fun place to work because there's so much, we see so much improvement all the time. And it's really fun to dive deep and figure out for that individual person what is going on.

Starting point is 00:38:28 Yeah, people go, oh, it's a miracle. It's not a miracle. It's just applying good science. Yeah, absolutely. Functional medicine, for those who are listening, is not a specialty. It's a way of thinking about complex diseases using a systems approach and getting to the root cause and actually thinking about how the body is one integrated system. Because often you go to the cardiologist, the neurologist, the rheumatologist, the gastroenterologist, and like they're all treating their body part, but it's one system.

Starting point is 00:38:53 And so functional medicine helps us really deal with that. And we see amazing, amazing results. So Liz, Dr. Bohm, thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of House Call. It's a mini episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'd love everybody to share with their friends and family on social media. I'd love them to leave a comment if you can. Tell us what you think. We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:39:13 And I'll catch you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Thank you, Mark. Hi, everyone. Thank you. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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The Dr. Hyman Show - It Is Possible To Stop Or Reverse Dementia with Dr. Elizabeth Boham

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