Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What is the best supplement for me? What potency is right? What does the research show? Is it worth the money? These and all of your other supplement questions are answered here. Jared St. Clair brings well researched information so that you can make more informed decisions regarding your health, specifically focused on how to effectively use natural supplements to optimize your health and Vitality. Of course supplement and food choices aren't the only factors in optimal health. Jared also shares a regular series of Emotional Vitality episodes that will help you release the negativity that may be holding you back and embrace your full potential. Vitality Radio is not JUST about health, it is about HEALTH FREEDOM. Jared provides needed insight into the current threats to your health as well as the threats coming from government agencies, pharmaceutical companies and modern medicine as a whole. With over 35 years of experience in the natural products world, and a hearty dose of wit and sarcasm, Vitality Radio isn't just educational but entertaining and enlightening.
Bredesen
===
[00:00:00]
Jared: Welcome to Vitality Radio. I'm your host each and every week. My name is Jared St. Clair, and I have yet another fantastic guest for you today. I've had some, uh, brand new guests over the last several weeks, and I've had some recurring or returning, I should say, guests. And uh, this gentleman that we're gonna have on today will be on for his third time on Vitality Radio.
You have probably heard of him because. The two episodes he has done with me have been two of my very most listened to and downloaded episodes ever. His name is Dr. Dale Bredesen. Before we get into that, and I introduce him though, I want to remind you of how you can get in touch with us. If you have questions about anything you hear on the show, you just call us at (801) 292-6662.
That's 8 0 1 2 9 2 66 62. You can also reach out to us on our website, vitality nutrition.com, where we [00:01:00] have a handy chat feature if you want to ask questions there. And, uh, we've got way more. Than an hour long shows worth of information to go over. So I'm not gonna dilly dally much longer. Let me go ahead and introduce you to what we're gonna talk about and then I'll tell you who we're speaking with Today we're gonna talk about neurodegeneration, we're gonna talk about those, uh, diseases that nobody ever.
Would wish on their worst enemy, things like Alzheimer's and dementia. We're gonna talk about what I think is maybe the most exciting area of research that we have right now, uh, in nutrition and in health. Across the board, and that is the prevention of and reversal of these types of conditions. And the man standing at the forefront of that is my guest, Dr.
Dale Bredesen, graduated from Caltech and received his MD from Duke. He served as pre a resident and chief resident in neurology at U C S F, [00:02:00] then postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate, professor Stanley Senner. He was the founding president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He's been doing this for years, and I think besides having him on my show, my favorite thing that he's ever produced is the book The End of Alzheimer's, which is absolutely fascinating.
If you've not read it, uh, you absolutely should look into it. Dr. Breen, welcome back to Vitality Radio.
Bredesen: Great to be back with you, Jared. Thanks.
Jared: Okay, so let's talk, since it's been a little while since you've been on the show, since I know the, uh, the, uh, research is ongoing. Let's talk about what the latest is on the research in prevention of and reversal of neurodegeneration.
Bredesen: Yeah, so much going on right now. And, uh, let me start by saying, uh, Alzheimer's is now optional. Um, and I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, but here's why I say that. [00:03:00] If you get in, if you get involved, If you get started when you are asymptomatic or when you during the period of sci, virtually everybody does.
Well, we've not had a single person go on prevention yet who then went later and got dementia. So that's the first thing. So we recommend anyone who's 40 years of age or older. Please get on active prevention. Please get on what we would call pre-code. Get a cogn. We all know when you turn 50, what do you do?
You get a colonoscopy, but let's not forget about your brain. So if you're 40 or over, please get a cog, and that's easy to do. It's some basic blood tests. It's a simple online cognitive assessment. Uh, and it is if you're already having symptoms, you wanna include an MRI with volumetrics. But if you are not experiencing symptoms, you don't need that.
So do some basics there. Now, when you go and get dementia, you go through four phases. First two [00:04:00] phases are where you are asymptomatic, as I just mentioned. And then the second phase is sci, subjective cognitive impairment. It lasts about 10 years. So you can see we have a. Huge window to help people.
Virtually a hundred percent of these people do well. Now the third stage of four is called mild cognitive impairment. M C I. In our trial, 84% of those people still got better, but as you go farther and farther along, it's harder and harder to do that. The fourth and final stage is called dementia, and some of those people get better, but again, it's harder and harder the farther and farther you go.
So we recommend, please, Everybody do that. If you get in there early, this is why we say Alzheimer's is now optional. Get in early, get treated, reversal. If you're already an S C I, uh, prevention. If you're not an s c I yet, and, and you know, a hundred percent of those people do very well, that's the future.
And then, [00:05:00] you know, with we, we've got a trial that's just, just starting up. It's at six sites. It is in Hollywood, Florida. It's in Nashville, Tennessee. It's in Cleveland, Ohio. It's in Sacramento, California. Uh, it's in the East Bay, Oakland, California, and then San Francisco, California. So if you're within one hour drive of any of those sites, please let us know.
Um, we are, uh, signing up people who have. Uh, M C I and early dementia. So you can see we're even, uh, we are doing this trial for people in the relatively late stages, simply because that's where drug trials are done. This is a precision medicine protocol trial, so it's different, but it has, it is what has led to the best results of any, to date, better than any drug so far for Alzheimer's disease.
Jared: Fantastic, Dr. Breon. I'm gonna pause one second. I just recognized my H V A C kicked on, I forgot to [00:06:00] turn it off. Hold on one second.
Bredesen: Okay. And, and, um, Here we go. And Jared, let me mention one other thing. I do have another meeting at noon, so I think we've still got 46 minutes or so. Um, so I'll have to take off, right, if that's okay. I'm gonna have to take off right around noon. It could be, you know, 1201 or something, but it's gonna have to be somewhere around there.
Jared: I'll keep an eye on that. And that's just about perfect. Uh, that'll leave me with a couple of minutes [00:07:00] to wrap up the show, which is
Bredesen: Great. Great.
Jared: Okay. So we're gonna act like we never left off here. All right. Well, that's really, really interesting. And for, for those of you listening, I know a lot of people are driving down the road right now listening to this show in the, uh, show description.
We'll list those sites, uh, for you so that you can take a look at that and we'll list, uh, we'll give you some links on how you can get more information on the trial. So I do want to, there's a couple of things that you. Talked about there that I think are pretty important that people are gonna have questions about the cog.
Um, you told us what it is, but how does someone get that?
Bredesen: Very easily go to my cogn.com and it'll take you right to it so it's easy to do, uh, and easy to get signed up for. And again, we recommend it everybody 40 or over because we all wanna make sure that we can stay sharp to a hundred. That's the goal.
Jared: Fantastic. Okay. So that's, that part is, is part one. And then can you talk just [00:08:00] a little bit about what you, what you said, how this trial is different than a drug trial trial. Uh, what are you actually testing?
Bredesen: That's a great point. So, you know, it's, it is so interesting to me. All drug trials to date have been the same sort of thing. We tell you ahead of time what we're gonna use, we're gonna use for everybody. You know, this drug, it's typically at a specific, uh, dose. Uh, so you're telling the people ahead of time what's gonna happen without knowing what's causing their cognitive decline.
So we flip the script here and the question here is, What's driving your cognitive decline? So we start by looking at all the different drivers. We look at a hundred different, over a hundred different things. So we're looking at do you have insulin resistance? Do you have exposure to mycotoxins, for example, do you have leaky gut?
Do you have specific infections such as herpes simplex, p gingivalis, that are associated with cognitive decline? These are organisms that are [00:09:00] found in the brains of patients with cognitive decline. So we look at all these things and determine for E each person what are the drivers? And it's typically several.
It's typically not just one. And then we address those things with a precision medicine sort of protocol. So if you have. Change in your oral microbiome. We're going to address that. If you have abscesses that have been undiagnosed, we're going to address that. If you have Lyme disease that's been undiagnosed or other tick-borne infections, we're going to address those.
Uh, if you have changes in your immune system, we're going to address those. If you have sleep apnea, we're going to address that. All of these things are critical determinants and when we look at the. Fundamental drivers of cognitive decline, they really can be boiled down into two major categories. It's energetics [00:10:00] and it's ongoing inflammation or things that activate your innate immune system, and especially the memory component of your innate immune system.
So if you've got too much activation of the innate immune system and or too little energies supporting your brain, You are at risk for cognitive decline. So therefore we wanna target those things. If you've got sleep apnea, we wanna target that. If you've got vascular disease, we wanna target that. And the great news is we've had tremendous results, the best results of any in history by going after those major contributors, identifying them, and then addressing them.
So that's how this is. Fundamentally different than drug trials. And let me add one other thing. The recent drug trials, whether you're talking about Kinumab or Umab or Aducanumab, these have not made people better. That's an important fundamental distinction. What they're showing is, Instead of going downtown, uh, don't, going down [00:11:00] rapidly, you're going down slightly less rapidly by 22% in one trial, 27% in another trial, and 36%.
So all it's doing is slowing the decline. Now, here are the things that actually did better than those drugs. Number one, extra virgin olive oil by itself because it actually improved some cognition. Number two. What's so-called, well ketones, another one. Ketones. Just exogenous ketones. This is the work of Professor Stephen Kna from Canada.
Very nice studies on people with M C I number three, what's called combined metabolic activators. So these, again, they're addressing the energetics, and then the best of all of them is recode. What we developed, the approach that we're now gonna be testing once again in a randomized controlled trial. So in one case, you're doing this with the trial you're doing.
That that's the fundamental distinction.
Jared: Wow. So, yeah. Well, and that's a massive distinction, but the thing that I think is the most [00:12:00] fascinating about that, and, and maybe it shouldn't be fascinating, but it is unusual, as you stated, is that you're actually treating each patient where they are. Uh, you're not saying, okay, the illness is Alzheimer's or cognitive decline, and therefore, All people in that category are the same, so we'll treat them all the same.
You're actually taking them as individuals, which I absolutely love.
Bredesen: Yeah. And you know, doesn't it make sense, you know, if, if you said, look, we have a. A hundred different companies and we wanna give one drug that makes every company go into the black. They're all in the red. We wanna put 'em all in the black. We want 'em do well, and we're gonna give one drug that does that.
You say, no, each company is having problems for a different reason. Um, you know, the company that's got someone, uh, stealing, stealing their money, and another company that's got poor management and another company that's paying too much. For the, the space that they're renting. I mean, these are different things.
So you've got to address the [00:13:00] things that are actually giving you a problem. And that's exactly what we do with these trials.
Jared: Yeah. I, I love that. That's really exciting. So yeah, definitely we'll get the information from you on how people can look into that more, and we'll get that put in the show description for everybody listening. Okay. So we've covered how, oh, and we'll have a link for the. My Cogn as well. So you can easily find that.
Uh, so what else is going on right now? Before we started talking, you told me that you were really excited about a new clinic, I believe it is. That's opening up. Tell us about that.
Bredesen: Yeah, this is a great point. You know, and I've wanted to do this for years. Uh, and so finally we have an opportunity to do, uh, the, the, the, the big goal here is we need a place for people ar around the world. Anyone who gets a neurodegenerative condition. Whether it is macular degeneration, Alzheimer's, pre-Alzheimer's, uh, you know, any frontotemporal dementia, Lewy [00:14:00] body disease, uh, progressive s supernuclear palsy, corticobasal degeneration, all you just go right down the list.
These have all been untreatable illnesses and indeed, This is the area of greatest biomedical therapeutic failure. As has been said, we all know someone who's a cancer survivor, but no one knows an Alzheimer's survivor. Well, of course now we're seeing them. We're publishing them, we're seeing it again and again.
And by the way, we now have people who are over a decade on our protocol who have sustained. Their improvement for over a decade. So really excited about that. We're seeing the first survivors of Alzheimer's, which is why I wrote the book, the First Survivors of Alzheimer's, and these people actually wrote their stories, but we've never had a place like, okay, where do these people come?
If you're sitting in. New Jersey, and now you're starting to have twitches in your muscles and someone says, your neurologist says, you know, you're in the early stages of als. You know there's [00:15:00] nothing to do. So we are now setting up the first place where there is validated hope for these various neurodegenerative diseases where we can look for each of these just as we do in Alzheimer's.
We look at what's driving this. We look at your microbiome, your gut microbiome. We look at your oral microbiome, we're looking at. Toxins you've been exposed to in all this. And this will be set up. My hope is it will be set up by the end of this year or in early 2024. Uh, and this will be at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Los Angeles.
Very excited about this. This is an institute founded by neurosurgeon, Dr. Dan Kelly. And within that there is the Pacific Brain Health Center, which is run by Dr. David Merrill, uh, who's actually an early adopter of our protocol. And so I've been talking to, uh, to, to Dave and to Dan just recently. And the plan now is to establish this new center.
Now, whether we're in early discussions, so it's gonna take, again, it's gonna take a few months to get [00:16:00] this up and running. Um, we're gonna have to, uh, you know, we're have to raise some support for it, but we're very excited about this because it will be, The first of its kind, it will be the first place to offer validated hope for these neurodegenerative conditions.
And by the way, we all already in some separate studies, uh, have some suggestive early results in dry macular degeneration. People who are in the early stages where again, there just has been. Virtually nothing that helps. There's something called a Reds two, but as they say, instead of losing 13 lines of vision, you lose 12 lines of vision.
So the effects are pretty minimal there. So I'm very enthusiastic. This is the future where we will be able to have people with all these degenerative diseases. And by the way, one of the functions of this place will be to combine the precision medicine. With various good looking drug candidates where we can now target specific things, but it'll be using the right drug for the right person under the right circumstances instead of just saying, [00:17:00] let's have this across the board approach.
That has nothing to do with why you got the problem. So I think, you know, this is a new era now in neurodegenerative disease evaluation and treatment.
Jared: Well, that's incredibly exciting because as I've stated on many of my shows, including ones that I've done with you, that's a major concern for me because of family history issues that we have. And, uh, I, I would say if, if you had to pick a. A thing to be concerned about, uh, you know, Alzheimer's and all of these, uh, other neurodegenerative diseases, Trump so many other things that, that I can think of.
And so having a, uh, not just the fact that you're doing new trials, that you're, uh, testing this and learning more and getting better at it, but that there'll actually be a center that is focused on it, uh, solely is, is really, really exciting. So you've got a lot. Uh, a lot of [00:18:00] information for us here and of course, n not nearly enough time to share all of it.
I wanna mention to the listeners that you have been on the show two other times. We'll link to both of those episodes, uh, in the show description because I, there are questions that you want me to ask Dr. Breen right now that I'm not going to ask cuz I asked him before. And so they're already there.
We've got 'em on record. Uh, in terms of, uh, a lot of different things. We talked a lot about diet, we talked a lot about exercise, we talked about a lot about those other things on previous episodes. So please go back and listen to those episodes. You'll get that information,
Bredesen: Could I add one
Jared: oh, go ahead.
Bredesen: the diet? Since you mentioned the diet. So we there something fundamentally has changed in that area. So as you we've talked about before, the diet that has worked best for brain support is called Keto Flex. 12 3 12 slash three. So this is a diet that is a plant rich, multicolored.
Uh, high fiber, uh, [00:19:00] mildly ketogenic diet with appropriate periods of fasting at night, and it's actually now available for delivery. So we worked actually with, uh, with nutrition for longevity, N four L. They've done a fantastic job. They've done other diets as well, uh, such as fasting mimicking diet from Dr.
Volter Longo, and so they now have. For order, you can actually get n uh, you can actually get Keto Flex 12 three. So I think that's a, a really help. I'm, I'm grateful to them for putting this together to make sure, cuz it's hard to get all the right things, to get the grass fed beef that you actually need.
To get the, you know, organic and, uh, hormone free chicken and all that to get the appropriate vegetables, uh, that are organic, to get all the right things, the pastured eggs. Um, it's hard to get all these things together and to do it at a reasonable pricing. Uh, so I'm, I'm really grateful, uh, to them for putting this together.
Jared: Well, I'm gonna have to look into that. That's really interesting because you're [00:20:00] right. One of the things that I know is, is challenging for people, especially when they're getting new information for the first time, like this is, you know, there's a lot of questions about where to start, uh, uh, feeling overwhelmed about how am I gonna do all of this?
So any of these tools that make it. Easier, uh, especially when it comes to diet, because let's face it, uh, the American diet is an absolute disaster in most cases. And so having something laid out there that, that makes it more accessible, I think is, is great. So I guess we're gonna have to link to that in the show description as well.
A lot of good information to link to.
Bredesen: Lots of good information. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, Oops. There we go. Uh, so, uh, and, uh, Jared, I apologize. I'm gonna have to take 30 seconds here. I've got a, I've got a, a very elderly dog who is begging to go out here and
Jared: a problem. Not a problem.[00:21:00]
Bredesen: okay. All right. This is, this is Cooper right here.
Jared: Hey, Cooper.
Bredesen: He's 16 now.
Jared: Yeah, that's, that's elderly.
Bredesen: Okay. Okay. All right. Sorry about that.
Jared: No problem at all.
Bredesen: All right. He's usually so, so good, but he's just gotten [00:22:00] so old that it's, he's having a little, little bit of a tougher time. Okay, great. So in any case, uh, so yeah, so Keto Flex, uh, 12 three from, uh, from Nutrition for Longevity. Uh, really, I'm really excited that, that they have put this together.
Jared: Yeah, that is, uh, very interesting. So, like I say, we will definitely link to that as well, and I'm gonna have to look into that myself. That's, uh, I, I didn't even know that was, that was available. And of course, uh,
Bredesen: and I've tried, and actually I've had two weeks of it myself, uh, really enjoyed it. And then I checked my ketones and actually they went up on this, so I was very happy about that. So, yeah, again, um, it ma it has made it much easier because the most common. Concern I've had from people is they say, you know, wait a minute.
You're asking me to change my diet, my fundamentally, you know, what I'm eating every day. It's, it's not that easy. Okay, now, so this is making it very easy, uh, and you can, you know, do it for a while. Help to get yourself into ketosis. Um, and then you can kind of cycle on and [00:23:00] off, uh, and, uh, you know, take some, you know, take some breaks.
One of the things they've done that's nice is. They give meals for a week where then the weekend you can do something different and then go back on. So it helps you to get the appropriate detox. It helps you to get the appropriate fiber, helps to get appropriate, very low, uh, you know, non, non-toxic, uh, diet.
Get away from things like glyphosate and the various, uh, uh, in insecticides and herbicides that are on so many of these vegetables and things like that. So, uh, again, uh, I think they did a great job.
Jared: Well, yeah, that sounds very, very appealing for sure. So you did mention something, I'm really curious about you. You said this has been the most successful, uh, of the various diet plans for people with cognitive decline. Uh, what else has been studied, uh, when it comes to, uh, diet and cognitive decline that either did or didn't work well?
Bredesen: Great point. So the common thing, so, so people have looked at, [00:24:00] uh, you know, high protein diets, high fiber, I mean, or high fiber and high simple or high. Uh, complex carb diets, the ones that have come out and worked the best. Uh, but that, uh, but they failed in one area. So if you look at the biochemistry of what does it take to make and keep synapses, uh, this again is about energetics and about inflammation.
So the Mediterranean diet, And the so-called mind diet have both done pretty well, but neither one of those, and there's a lot published on both of those. Neither one of those actually gets you into ketosis. That's been the thing that's been missing from these. And neither one g uh, requires periods of fasting.
So what you really wanna do, in a perfect world, you wanna make it so that. You ha are insulin sensitive, so that, that's a big problem. Uh, what, so what happens? Your brain has two things that it runs on. It needs to [00:25:00] have either glucose or it needs to have ketones. And unfortunately, As we get over 40, what's happening to many people is you lose both of those.
And in fact, you really have an energetic emergency. You're, you're failing because what happens is you're not l using glucose as well because of your insulin resistance, because of our. Processed food, high carb toxic diets, unfortunately, that are the standard American diet. So now you've lost that arm.
And in fact, if you do a PET scan, that's what Alzheimer's signature is, a reduced glucose utilization in the temporal. And parietal regions of the brain. Then what it takes to make ketones when you're starving, you'll break down fats and produce ketones. The problem is if your insulin is high, which it is for so many of us because of these high carved diets.
The [00:26:00] high insulin actually actively prevents your body from making ketones. So you really have a terrible scenario where you can't utilize glu ketones and you can't utilize glucose, and you're kind of sputtering along. Now you have to be careful if you just say, well, I'm just gonna starve myself until I'm insulin sensitive again.
Remember? The cognitive decline is really about energetic insufficiency and activation of inflammation. So you can't go that way because now you don't have enough supply. What you have to do is restore insulin sensitivity and restore ketosis. So what we do at the beginning of the trials, we just say, Just take exogenous ketones.
Just take whether you take some MCT oil, which you, you, which is great for people who don't have vascular disease. If you have vascular disease, just take some KE one or, or take some. Uh, ketones, salts or esters, that's fine. That [00:27:00] way you've got that part of the equation satisfied, and then over time you will become insulin sensitive.
In the long run, you wanna be metabolically flexible once again so that you're now able to go back and forth between glucose ketones. So you're doing ketones really while you're sleeping and while you're fasting, and then you're doing your glucose when you're eating. Another big thing that's come out since we've talked last.
Uh, is the, is the fructose, uh, is the fructose report and then I think it's again, good for anyone to check on this. This is the work of Professor Rick Johnson, who is from University of Colorado. He published a paper just a couple of months ago, and actually both David Perlmutter and I are co-authors on this paper, along with several other people as well.
And what Rick has shown with his beautiful research over the years. Is an interesting paradox and that is when you take in a lot of fructose and you do that, you [00:28:00] know, this is, uh, this is not to say you eat a piece of fruit. That's fine, that's great. Fruit's good and it's, it's gonna give you some nice fiber as well.
But what happens with. Animals as we, uh, get toward winter, we know that we're gonna go for a period without much food. So there's an evolutionary phenomenon where in fact, they eat like hundreds of pieces of fruit, and of course we're getting it. Through high fructose corn syrup and through poor diets, and it, what it does is it triggers a metabolic pathway in your body that number one stores fats because it thinks you're gonna have winter.
So now you're storing fat and you have all the problems that are go along with fat storage, adipokines, and inflammation and all that. Not to mention, you know, You know, losing your, you know, feeling good and, and being in good shape. But here's the, the real problem, because it thinks winter is [00:29:00] coming, it dials down your energy, even though you've just taken in fructose a sugar, you're dialing down your a t p and as he showed, it's about 15% or so.
Well, for all of us who are like right on the edge, oh my gosh, we now have less energy to support our brains, and we're now su we're increasing our likelihood of cognitive decline. So this is one of the reasons, and he points out that it's, you just go right down the list. All the things that are associated with high fructose are associated with Alzheimer's disease.
It's a reduction in a tp. It's a specific change in specific areas of the brain. It's amazing the similarities there. And as he points out, you activate that same pathway by taking in a lot of fructose, which so many of us are, go out and eat some candy. You know, all these things with high fructose corn syrup.
Number two, you do it by taking in too [00:30:00] much glucose because you convert the glucose to fructose. And number three, you can do the, uh, activate the same pathway by having too much salt. So any of these things can do that. So again, we're seeing more and more accurately. What is putting us so many of us at risk as I, you know, and I talked about in the past, 45 million of the currently living Americans will die of Alzheimer's if we don't do something about it.
So it really dwarfs the Covid 19 pandemic, where of course, over 1 million Americans have now died.
Jared: Yeah, it's, it, it is something that it, I think what kind of stands out to me, Dr. Breen, is that we, we are very much in a society. Where we've been almost trained to wait until something goes wrong before we go to fix it. Uh, and most of us are [00:31:00] feeling the aches and pains, or in this case the memory loss or whatever it is before we're ever actually doing anything about it.
And the very top of the show, you said if you are over 40, even if you're asymptomatic, Do something about it. Right? And I absolutely love that advice because what one of the things that's fascinating about your work is that it does look like this stuff can be reversed and the earlier in the more likely you are to be able to reverse it.
And maybe the easier it is to reverse it, but my goodness, it's so much easier to just prevent it in the first place. Right?
Bredesen: Yes, and as we talked about earlier, those first two stages, so asymptomatic, we can absolutely, if you do the right things, we figure out what your risk factors are. We can absolutely prevent you from having cognitive decline in the future. I always ask the doctors who work with, we've trained over 2000 of them now, and I always ask, have you seen anyone yet who went on active prevention, did the right thing, but [00:32:00] still developed dementia?
No one has seen it yet. Now, maybe 20 years down the road, we'll see. But the good news is we can be pretty sure that, yeah, for the vast majority of people, we can prevent this problem. Second thing, when you go into the sci subjective cognitive impairment, virtually a hundred percent of those people will get better again if they do the right thing.
So the, especially those two phases. Please get in, get on active prevention, or if you have some symptoms, don't wait. Everything's been backward in this field because people thought there was nothing you could do about it. So they said, yeah, it's probably not Alzheimer's. Don't bother to go in until you were having major problems.
This was like you, if you remember the first few weeks of the pandemic, they said there are too many people in the er. So don't come in until you actually have problems breathing. Oh my gosh. That's the worst thing you can do with covid 19. Go in early, get treated early. [00:33:00] So the same thing is going always happened with Alzheimer's disease.
Wait until it's really late because just hope that it's not Alzheimer's, cuz there's nothing we can do about it Anyway, that is really 20th century thinking and we wanna move into 21st century thinking much more successful.
Jared: And ac across the board, not just with Alzheimer's. Of course, prevention is really the key to all of this. All right, so we do have, uh, we have about 20 minutes left with you and one of, there's a couple of questions that I get asked a lot, uh, at Vitality that I wanna make sure that you, uh, have a chance to answer for us.
The first one is with you, you, you say s c i, right? Subjective, cognitive, uh, decline issues. What is, would you say, normal? I have a lot of people ask me, well, isn't it normal? I'm 50 and now I'm not remembering where my keys are as often, or I'm 50 and I'm having a harder time remembering people's names or [00:34:00] whatever the symptoms might be.
What's normal? Age related memory loss is what people ask me versus what should I be concerned about.
Bredesen: You know, this is such a good point because it's so hard for us to step back and say, you know what? We realize that what's normal is sick. Um, that's sad. But because of our diets, because of our lifestyles, because of our exposures, we are living in, uh, an era in which most of us after the age of about 40 or so are sick.
When I was on the National Aging Council, Years ago, there was a beautiful study by an epidemiologist there who showed that in the United States, we as an average population, develop our first chronic illness in our forties. Whereas in Europe, they don't develop their first chronic illness into their late fifties.
And even in some countries, uh, that have long, uh, longevity [00:35:00] things like France and Italy and more into the sixties, uh, what he did was he compared. The UK to the us and what they showed was that in the UK it was almost a decade later, even though the UK doesn't have tremendous, uh, longevity. In fact, it's fairly similar to the us.
So what was happening is in the US we get hypertension or type two diabetes or pre-diabetes, uh, or, you know, other problems, uh, when, you know, uh, high cholesterol, uh, you know, problems like that you may have. Uh, some people, of course, even will have a heart attack in their forties, so you may have your first problem in your forties, but because of the American healthcare system now, they're pouring all these drugs, they're doing everything possible.
We spend a huge amount, about 20% of our G D P to keep sick people alive until a certain age, and we're fairly poor in the global, uh, uh, longevity pool. We're in the like, 42nd or so varying a little [00:36:00] bit year to year, but we're about in the 42nd place, 41 countries ahead of us, most of which spend far, far less than we do for healthcare in the uk.
Again, it's in your fifties, but they don't spend as much on healthcare and we end up dying at about the same time. This is really scary. And it shows that a lot of us are living with chronic illness, and it may be chronic mild illness, but we're living with chronic illness. So you pointed out what's normal?
Is it normal to start losing your cognition? Well, I'll tell you something. If you do the optimal things, even when you think it's normal to lose a little of your cognition, you're gonna notice that your cognition is much better. People who have normal cognition actually score better. Do better when they do the right things, when they get onto wait.
What we developed for prevention was called pre-code prevention of cognitive decline. When people get on that, they [00:37:00] find that they actually score better, do better, and again, we hear this all the time, so when you say what's normal, Unfortunately, what's normal is, uh, is is ill illness, uh, and it's unfortunately in the United States it's chronic illness starting in your forties on average, which is really un really sad.
We all know someone who's. Got into, you know, whether they're 80, 90 or a hundred, and we're like, wow, they're really sharp. Yes, they've been doing the right things. They're keeping themselves sharp. So our goal is to reduce the global burden of dementia, and by getting people on prevention and early reversal, get people to a hundred.
And stay sharp to a hundred. And so you may notice some changes. Uh, you may have trouble remembering phone numbers or you may have trouble, uh, remembering faces. That's a common one. Or you may sometimes pull up to a stop sign and say, Hmm, this is a familiar area, but [00:38:00] I don't really remember. Am I supposed to turn left or right?
Uh, or you may find that. You're losing your train of thought. That's another one. People will develop adult, a, d, d, attention deficit disorder. They'll say, wow, you know, things will just kind of disappear. I'll, I'll start thinking about something. I'm gonna do this next and I'll forget about it. All of these things are seen to be normal aging, just because they're common, but they're actually not normal.
When you get right down to pathophysiology, what. Becomes Alzheimer's disease. What becomes the dementia of Alzheimer's disease actually starts about 20 years before you get a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. That's been well studied, well published, so you can see changes. On things like PET scans and spinal fluid, about 20 years ahead.
So what we used to think when I was training as a neurologist, we used to think, yeah, Alzheimer's is a disease of sixties, seventies, [00:39:00] eighties, and nineties. No, it's actually disease of your thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, which gets diagnosed 20 years later. And as scary as that sounds, the great news, the take home news is, You don't have to get it.
It is now optional. So get evaluated for anyone who's 40 or over, get on active prevention. And let me mention one other, there's another huge development since you and I talked last time. We've talked about, yeah, you gotta go and get a PET scan. Um, that's a pain. They're expensive. Or get a spinal tap. Do you want a spinal tap?
Jared? I don't want a spinal tap. You know who wants spinal taps? Well, the great news is there are now blood simple blood tests available that tell you if you're headed for this, and they're becoming better and they're becoming more of them. So the first one, the one that's moved from research now to commercially available is called pau, P T [00:40:00] A U, Pau one, uh, 180 1.
And this is a change in your tau that is occurring as you're heading toward Alzheimer's. So everybody should have that test and no, just like, Knowing your cholesterol and knowing your lipid numbers, you should know whether your pttow is going up. And another one that I'm even more excited about, not because it's as sensitive and specific, it's not as specific as the pttow, but it's actually more sensitive.
It is an earlier change, which is called G F A P. Now that one is not yet available commercially. But it should be available commercially within the next several months. And this is one that actually goes up about 10 years ahead of time, but it's more nonspecific. So it can tell you something is wrong with my nervous system.
I could have had head trauma. I might be getting frontotemporal dementia, I might be getting Alzheimer's, but at least I know if I've got a [00:41:00] normal G F A P. Things are looking pretty good, and if I have an abnormal G F A P, ah, okay, let's go in, let's get tested now. Let's see what's causing this and let's make sure I don't ever slip further.
So, fantastic. This is a new era again with early prevention, early evaluation, and not allowing people. To advance to the stage of mento. So you can get PT A L 180 1 now, you'll be able to get G F A P pretty soon. There's another one, uh, which is called, uh, which is called NF L, which is uh, which is. Uh, neurofilament Light, that's another one you can check.
That one is also one that is relatively non-specific. Anything that is damaging your neurons can increase your neurofilament light. And then there's a final one, which is the a Beta 42 to 40 ratio. And there are different groups that do that, uh, such as a C two M, which has one called [00:42:00] iv. Uh, there's another one I I believe now.
Quest also does 42 to 40 ratio. So the, the, you know, this is a new era where we now can just look at the blood much more simply. Now people will say, oh my gosh, I'm too scared. I don't wanna know these things. No, now's the time you do wanna know them so that you can absolutely prevent yourself from ever having declined.
My hope is that, you know, 10 years down the road, this is the routine. Nobody needs to get this problem, and we now know enough that we can look at you early on and tell you whether you're on the trail to get this and let's prevent it.
Jared: Yeah, it really is exciting all the research that's happening and all of the access that we have now to, uh, test the waters and see where we're at. So I appreciate you sharing all that with us. We've got a few minutes left. I, the, the next question that, uh, I'm getting asked A lot has to do with a product, uh, that was developed by life seasons, uh, [00:43:00] with you, uh, in partnership with them called Neuro Q.
Now, neuro Q has easily been our most popular brain. Supplement we've ever sold it. It's one of the most popular supplements we've ever sold in the history of vitality and nutrition. And the reason for that, I mean, uh, frankly, you came on the show, you talked about it, you explained what it does and how it works and all that.
We, we had a lot of people. Get excited about it and try it out, but what blew my mind was how many people used it and very, very quickly after using it were reporting really great results, uh, with some of those simple things like, where were my car keys, and who's that guy and what's his name? You know, those types of things.
But recently, Just in the last few months, you introduced something new, uh, that is called, uh, neuro Cue Extra Strength, and there's one additional ingredient, uh, talk toss to talk to us about why you added that and, and who might want one versus the other.
Bredesen: Great point. Uh, and again, [00:44:00] I would go back to if you're starting to have some symptoms, I would go with the extra strength. If you're not starting to have some symptoms, I would go with the, the standard, but. We've done the research over the last 30 years, we now understand much more about the biochemistry, what's actually driving this decline, which is why, why we wanna do these evaluations and get these people on specific programs.
But we thought, okay, let's put together something that actually addresses the things. When you go for some of these products, it, you know, it doesn't address what's actually the common causes of the problems. So what I really like about Neuro Q is it actually addresses the thing. So it has. Two excellent anti-inflammatories in there.
Curcumin has multiple interesting effects. It actually binds to amyloid and helps remove it. It actually binds to the tau. It actually reduces the inflammation. Now the another key piece here is when you're now trying to make memories, one of the critical things and the most important [00:45:00] neurotransmitter for memory is acetylcholine.
So what the Hooper gene A does, which is in the extra strength, it prevents you from degrading the acetyl choline that's there. So it, it basically bumps up your acetyl choline. So again, these, there's nothing magical about these. These are scientifically shown to be specific neurotransmitter related.
Lipid related, inflammation related, blood flow related. These are all the things that drive good cognition and that's why I, you know, again, I really appreciate the fact that that life seasons actually worked and said, okay, let's talk about what it takes to make a brain function better. Instead of just trying to do, throw in one or two things that has a minimal impact, and then trying to convince people this is something that's gonna help them.
Jared: Right. All right. And so, and of course, as I said, we've had great results with it, but the Hooper zine, a sorry, is a [00:46:00] really interesting ingredient to me. And, and maybe in a future episode, uh uh, I'll, I'll. I'll dig into the research a little bit more on that because the research is actually really impressive, uh, what I've read so far.
Now, there's another thing that you've introduced and when I first talked to you, uh, well over a year ago now, I think we're almost a year and a half since our first, uh, interview. Uh, we talked about what supplements you found are, Maybe the most universal in terms of things that people can take to help with their cognitive function.
And the first couple of things outta your mouth back then were magnesium L three and eight. Uh, and then also you mentioned omega three s being a big deal. Now, recently you've introduced a specific omega-3 with 400 milligrams of d h a in the neuro Q line. Uh, talk to us a little bit about why that was put together the way it was.
Bredesen: Yeah, great point. And there again, so many, uh, pieces on this. So what happens is, uh, some work actually from [00:47:00] Professor Wortman from m i t over the years showing that if you want to make new synapses, you need. Acetacholine, which is basically another source of choline. So for your acetylcholine, but you also need dha.
So it is structural for synapses, but then omega threes are also anti-inflammatory. And then the third piece they also resolve, uh, as Professor Charles Shan from Harvard has shown and discovered himself in his laboratory. I. There's something called resos that take ongoing inflammation and help to resolve it.
So it's not just about preventing inflammation, it's also about resolving the ongoing inflammation. And as he pointed out, these things are derived, some of them from omega three s. So the omega-3 fats have multiple mechanisms that are actually support. Good cognition, synaptogenesis, [00:48:00] resolution of inflammation and prevention of, of future inflammation.
So for all those reasons, it's absolutely critical and in, you know, improving your fats, uh, very, very helpful. As I mentioned earlier, I mentioned ketones. There's another study on, interestingly, on just extra virgin olive oil, uh, which has a lot of oleic acid, another good fat, these things. Again, good results, time after time.
And one of the common things that comes up on studies of cognition is the benefits of omega three s. And this has been published, you know, repeatedly by multiple groups. It's if you had to pick. You know, some of the most important things for cognition, uh, omega three would be right up there with some of the best.
Jared: Yeah, indeed. I mean, I always tell people that the research on omega-3 is as tall as I am, which isn't that tall, but it's still, still a lot of papers and there's just so much amazing research on it, specifically with neuro uh, neuro [00:49:00] neurological health, and also of course with inflammation. And inflammation, you know, Alzheimer's.
Uh, is right there with the inflammation, but also diabetes, and which of course we're Alzheimer's and diabetes are closely linked. All of these things that we're dealing with in America that people are getting in their forties, that they're getting in their fifties and sixties, uh, in other countries, uh, have inflammatory links that are very, very, uh, closely tied to them.
Uh, based on what I can tell. So we have about two minutes left, Dr. Braden, and I'm, I'm really curious about this last question and then I'm gonna let you go. So you talked about Fats, my experience listening to. All the other podcasts that talk about these kinds of things. There's a whole bunch of people talking about fat right now.
We're talking about omega threes. We're talking about omega sixes. We're talking about inflammatory fats. One of the big, most common, uh, things that people are talking about is the avoidance of seed oils, [00:50:00] which a lot of people don't even understand what that means. I'm curious, your take on what are the healthy fats, what are the fats we want to eliminate as much as we can from our diets.
What's, what's your take on that?
Bredesen: Yes. Such a good point. And you know, you can measure a lot of these things now, which is fantastic. So of course we, we all the, you know, and it's important, people always say, oh my God, we don't want a high fat diet. Well, high good fats. Yes, low bad fats. So number one. Trans fats. These are artificial fats that come from partially hydrogenating things, putting them under pressure, making things, uh, you know, like, like Crisco and stuff like that.
We wanna avoid trans fats. Everyone agrees on that. Then secondly, we need omega threes, six and nines. But it's the ratio that can be dangerous. So we'd like to see, you wanna look at your six to three ratios? Six are the. Pro-inflammatory fats. So you, you, but you need to have a little bit of six. So we want your ratio to be [00:51:00] anywhere from one to one, up to four to one, but the typical American diet, 15 to one.
So things like linoleic acid, which is an omega six highly inflammatory, no, we don't want that. So we wanna get you down here in the one to one, to four to one ratio. For six to three. You've gotta also have some nines. And then by the way, that's, uh, that's in of extra virgin olive oil, for example. And then, um, you wanna make sure that your arachidonic acid, which is again the, another pro-inflammatory marker, uh, is not too high.
So your your AA to EPA ratio, um, and that's the EPA is I cosa, Penta, Penta, NOIC acid. So e p a, um, and that is another omega-3. So you wanna get these. The pro-inflammatory to the anti-inflammatory. Not too high. So not too high on the AA to epa, not [00:52:00] too high on the omega six to omega three. So all of those are absolutely critical.
Now, with that, you having good fats, um, can actually be very good. And by the way, your brain, uh, the Ayurvedic physicians of thousands of years ago called the brain fat. Because they say that there's a lot of fat there. Uh, and so you need some fat. What happens when you lower, you know, you lower your cholesterol too much.
When you lower your fat too much, your brain shrinks, unfortunately, and that is associated with atrophy. So the, this is why key to have the appropriate fats.
Jared: All right. And of course this is, uh, you've got another appointment. Um, you're, I know you're in demand all the time, and I really appreciate you taking this time with me and my listeners today. It's been another fascinating conversation. We're gonna link to all of the things you talked about in the show description, and I'm gonna let you go.
Thank you for joining me again on Vitality Radio.
Bredesen: Look forward to talking to you again. [00:53:00] Let's keep up the conversation There is so much new. As you mentioned, this area is just exploding and we're getting to a point again where nobody should have cognitive decline. So let's work together with all of us to make sure that happens.
Jared: excellent. Thank you so
Bredesen: Alright, thanks Jared.