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This week Dr. B discusses "brain fog," headaches, CTE, and general neurological symptoms. All of this and more on the Real Health Podcast with Dr. B!
Creators & Guests
What is The Real Health Podcast with Dr. B?
On a mission to share practical solutions to improve your wellbeing, The Real Health Podcast will equip you with evidence-based recommendations essential to achieving a healthy lifestyle. Join Dr. Barrett Deubert as he shares his passion for educating, inspiring, and empowering individuals to achieve “real health for real people”. Breaking down health topics such as: immunity, stress, real food, natural living, and much more to provide you with actionable steps to improving your family’s health.
Hello, Grant.
Grant:Hey, Dr. B.
Grant:I got a hat for you. Will you show the camera?
Grant:I think I'm good.
Dr. B:Are you going to the game?
Grant:I am going to the game. I'm a student, so I get $20 tickets.
Dr. B:Wow. My my ticket was not $20.
Grant:Yeah.
Dr. B:I had to pay more as a Gator fan.
Grant:Really? Shocker. What are your thoughts on the game? What do you think is gonna happen?
Dr. B:I think I'm leaving at halftime.
Grant:Okay.
Dr. B:Which should be great.
Grant:Okay.
Dr. B:An early night. You know? I got that 9 o'clock bedtime. Yeah. Yeah.
Grant:You go to sleep early. So yeah, alright.
Dr. B:Yeah. So probably probably an early bedtime for me. But I wouldn't mind being there in the 4th quarter with a close game.
Grant:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Dr. B:If, I mean, if- the spreads opened up at, like, 16 and a half.
Grant:Yeah. I saw 15 and a half, but...
Dr. B:Okay.
Grant:Around that, which is pretty crazy coming off the Arkansas loss for us.
Dr. B:Agreed. It is at home, night game. You got Alabama next week. This is a must win.
Grant:Mhmm. It is a must win. It's Florida. I mean, I...
Dr. B:A lot of pressure on the game.
Grant:I'm so sorry. I hate Florida.
Dr. B:Oh, I- there's no- there's no- yeah. I mean there's no...
Grant:You're from Florida. It's fine. Like, if you weren't from Florida and you were a Florida fan, I'd be like, "Okay, I have a problem." I mean, you're from Florida.
Dr. B:Yeah.
Grant:It's fine.
Dr. B:I don't actually have the same hatred as, you know, for Tennessee. I mean, we beat you 17 out of the last 20 years.
Grant:Well, I think that's why I actually have such a hatred because my memories...
Dr. B:Even when we have, like, a true freshman come in at halftime and sling it and win the game somehow or...
Grant:Oh, don't.
Dr. B:You know, these, like, random, like, 4th quarter, 4th and 20, you know, touchdown. So my growing up, it was Florida State was that...
Grant:That's so valid. But, like, for me, growing up, which I grew up in Knoxville.
Dr. B:Right.
Grant:Every single year
Grant:For the last 20 years.
Grant:I would watch football.
Dr. B:You'd be watching.
Grant:Yeah. And I- my parents went to UT. My dad hates Florida. We would watch Florida game, and we would lose a stupid game every year. Like...
Dr. B:Yes.
Grant:Just like it was last year. We lost a stupid game in the Swamp. We lost- honestly, we shouldn't have lost. Shouldn't have lost that game.
Grant:Yep.
Grant:So, anyway...
Dr. B:Well, I don't- I don't expect you to walk away from this game sad.
Grant:I do, just because my expectations are so low. But I think- I think the Vols can pull it out. We'll see.
Dr. B:Yeah.
Grant:Anyway, we hope that this is enjoyable for you all. If you're from Australia, if you're one of our Australian listeners, I'm so sorry, you don't understand college football.
Dr. B:Yeah, but there are a lot of Aussie punters in college football now.
Grant:That's true. Our punter is...
Dr. B:Ours is as well and he's one of the top rated punters in the country.
Grant:Yeah. So interesting. Well, if Dr. B is muted the entire podcast next week, if it's 20 minutes of silence, it's because Tennessee lost. So...
Dr. B:We'll have a moment of silence for you next week.
Grant:Okay. Alright.
Dr. B:Let's make sure that's, that hat is in full view.
Grant:Okay. But if y'all lose, next week, can I bring a Vols hat for you to put it right there.
Dr. B:Sure. You got it.
Grant:Will you wear a Vols?
Dr. B:No. But it can be right here on the table.
Grant:No. Will you wear a, like, a shirt? Will you wear...
Dr. B:A Vols shirt?
Grant:If I bring you a polo, would you wear it?
Dr. B:That's a good question. Alright. The bet would be you have to wear a Gators shirt.
Grant:I would come on the podcast next week and wear a Gators shirt.
Dr. B:And then I'll wear- I'll wear a Vols polo, during the recording.
Grant:Okay.
Dr. B:Is that a deal?
Grant:Yeah. It's a- it's a deal.
Dr. B:So the hat is multipurposeable, but it's mainly holding up my phone. Sorry. Because I got a couple notes. Alright. We're talking about that's- the subject today is "brain on fire."
Dr. B:That's what we're talking about. So if you ever have had symptoms of, like, brain fog, fatigue, depression, hard to wake up, feel just neurologically, like, you're not able to compute as fast, you may have symptoms of like- weird symptoms like, tremors or like random spastic, responses in your muscular system. Like, if any of that is you, hey, this is a podcast- because we're gonna talk about brain inflammation and the adult brain inflammation. We'll touch a little bit on kids and autism, but the main goal of today is really help me understand as we as we go into the series of, like, season changing and we talked about, sleep and how important that is, last week and circadian rhythm health. I wanted to reach out to the audience group that may have symptoms and they don't know what to do about it.
Dr. B:So this would be like a brain on fire situation. Most of the time when you're diagnosed with depression or anxiety, then you just assume, hey, that's that's just because I'm not taking Wellbutrin, but that's not necessarily the case, and so we just want to bring some light into that. So when we look at, like, early on, like, concerning symptoms when it comes to the brain that's on fire or brain inflammation or really what we call neuroinflammation, then we see that when the brain is not healthy, has inflammation, we see, poor conduction speed, so literally nerve conduction velocity decreases, and from that we see a decrease in in forming, thoughts. We see variations in mental speed. We also see one of the big signs is brain fog, like you just feel foggy and you can't compute things as fast.
Dr. B:So, this is kind of a hallmark of neuroinflammation. As we dive into this subject matter, we're gonna talk about things like lethargy, depression, sleeplessness, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, just not feeling like you're able to or want to do things. So don't ignore these symptoms if this is your if this is you. I would encourage you to say, hey, let's dive deep into this matter and figure out what may be driving it, what may be causing it. You know, when we look at the cause the of a brain on fire, we can get super sciency.
Dr. B:I'm presenting at a, seminar this weekend on this subject matter. So I'm trying to bring this down to a level of, hey, as a patient, if you're having these symptoms, don't ignore it no matter what a provider has told you in the past because what we see is, like, old head injuries and concussions absolutely have a long term effect on the brain, so much so that the the literal brain itself is restructured, the, what we call the glial cells which makes up 90% of the brain are restructured. They change their form and this is a massive concern and what we see is the progression of these, head injuries can lead into neurodegenerative conditions, dementia, Alzheimer's symptoms, and that the famous, you know, CTE that we see in athletes where their personality is changing. Why? Because they're- they had a they have a frontal lobe injury and that's where the personality comes out in an individual.
Dr. B:Or when you when you have floaters, when you start seeing floaters in the eyes, that's the occipitalis, the back part of the head that could have been injured. So, when we have insults to the brain whether it's a physical trauma, a chemical trauma, or even we see it in PTSD patients, so chronic emotional stress, it changes the structure of your brain and and it doesn't go back and that's one of the most important things for you to understand is that when the brain changes its structure, and these cells change their structure, it it doesn't change. It is forever. It is permanent. So when we think about, you know, these these patients that maybe had head injuries and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, they're better, the concussion symptoms are better, that does not mean much of anything.
Dr. B:That is the tip of the iceberg. We have to absolutely look at the brain differently for the rest of of their life. We have to prevent reoccurring injuries. We have to prevent further insults to the brain to make sure it is as healthy as it can be for life. We even see that the effects of what a mom does, where when a mother is in an inflammatory state that it actually passes on to the child then the child has a inflamed brain and then when they're exposed environmental toxins like vaccines or infections that this is the driver of autism- this is, their brain was already primed, already set up to be- have a secondary insult or be inflicted a second time.
Dr. B:And so the brain is very unique where when you have these cells injured, when the brain cells are injured, they don't go back. Other parts of the body there, they die off and then and then you make new ones. The brain is not that way. Neuroplasticity is something completely different. What we're talking about here is damage to the brain that's been done at an early age that doesn't that never changes.
Dr. B:So what are some strategies to help heal the brain? And what we're gonna do is at the at the end of this podcast, once you listen through it, if you are concerned about the health of your brain, if you have any of those symptoms of brain fog, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, ringing the ears, low energy, inability to focus, concentrate, mood change, anxiety, depression, the list goes on and on. You will have an opportunity to, reach out to us and we will send you a brain health questionnaire. We'll email it over to you, you can fill that out and you can then, as you take the questionnaire, determine whether or not you have any red flags with these symptoms and are they associated with a certain region of the brain. And then what do you do about it? So we'll give- we'll send that to you.
Dr. B:We'll give that to you absolutely no cost whatsoever. And then we even have the ability with our nurse practitioner, Rachel, to even meet with you virtual if you're not in Knoxville to help you in your journey of healing, especially when it comes to even neurodegenerative conditions. There's a really cool study that showed with with MS. Let me pull it up here. It was pretty- it was pretty wild, but they're showing how a ketogenic diet in 2 different groups- 2 different- 2 different control groups, they showed a ketogenic diet actually caused remyelination.
Dr. B:So this is massive when we talk about strategies to heal the brain even in severe neurodegenerative or neuro autoimmune cases like MS. We had a vascular dementia case that was that scored in really low on the cognitive health assessment. And, really, it's just kinda, hey. It's just gonna get worse, and then we can give you palliative care at some point, which is there's no hope in that. But ketogenic diet, chiropractic adjustments, doing some laser therapy for, like, a hyperbaric oxygen effect to the brain had has completely reversed her symptoms in such a dramatic way.
Dr. B:It's beautiful to see that you can heal. Your brain may forever be restructured but that doesn't mean you have to exhibit the symptoms of neuroinflammation. So let's dive into it a little bit. If you experience any of those symptoms, there are different levels of brain inflammation and the most minimal symptoms associated with neurological inflammation is when we get into, like, the subtle symptoms of, like, reduced brain endurance and brain fog and brain fatigue after, like, you're exposed to pollutants or, you know, sensor chemicals. Maybe it's brain fatigue after you're exposed to certain, food proteins like gluten and dairy.
Dr. B:But overall, like within a few hours the next day, you've recovered pretty well. I would say that's that's what we would call like mild. You have mild neurological inflammation, still a concern. You could have moderate neurological inflammation. This is more of what we call a sickness behavior syndrome when we start getting into depression, inability concentrate, sleepiness, but you just find that you just need more sleep consistently not just for a day but for weeks at a time.
Dr. B:You're lethargic, you don't have motivation, there's even a potential loss of appetite, and just this overall sense of malaise when it comes to physical being physically active, this is moderate neurological inflammation. These symptoms are definitely progressing to the point of a higher concern and then there's this cutoff point and the cutoff point is is whether we call it whether the brain is primed or not and I don't want to get too sciency here but in essence once the brain is primed, it's been injured, it's been inflamed for so long or stressed for so long, it gets to the point of no return, and this is where there's an insult that creates moderate to severe symptoms and this patient will show those moderate symptoms, when they're injured or stressed or infected when there's a viral load and they just- they don't recover. Like, it takes them 2 weeks to recover when they get exposed to a flu, or a cold or or COVID. They get exposed to cigarette smoke or another chemical, a pollutant of any sort, and and they're in bed for a week. Alright.
Dr. B:This is where the brain is primed. This is severe neurological inflammation and these clinical severities of neurological inflammation is one where we go from this, hey, I can recover in a day to I can't recover in a week or 2 weeks and then if left uncorrected it gets to a state of neurological autoimmunity where you can literally- your brain starts to- your body- immune system starts to attack its own brain and in this case we get into neurological autoimmunity then it can become neurodegenerative conditions like CTE encephalopathy and in these situations we are, doing the best we can with what we have, but even in these severe situations of neurological autoimmunity like MS or like a Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's case, there's still hope and we're gonna talk about that hope. Here are some solutions to help you heal. Yes, the brain may be forever like damaged, but what's the evidence show in how to heal a damaged brain? So exercise.
Dr. B:Exercise is one of the most potent healers to the brain and when we look at, exercise, physical exercise can heal a blood brain barrier. One of the things it does is it reduces the inflammatory effects of the brain and up regulates your own antioxidant system of the brain. Over training is an issue, so we don't we got to be mindful of what load you can take on, because if you train too hard you'll just be in bed for a week, or you just feel exhausted for a few days. So we got to choose the right training load, but when it comes to exercise here's the best form of training. It is 5 to 7 minutes of high intensity burst style training.
Dr. B:This is done a couple times a day every day as we see this massive increase of brain derived neurotrophic factors, growth hormones, opioid, there's an opioid effect, to the brain and we see this down regulation of neurological inflammation. This is mainly driven through burst style of training. So this is the best when it comes to healing the brain. 5 to 7 minutes of all out high intensity and one of the best ways to do that is through through what's called Tabata, which is 20 seconds of high intensity work as hard as you can go, 10 seconds of recovery repeated over the course of 8 intervals and that's 4 minutes of work. If you were to do multiple Tabatas, a couple Tabatas a day, progressively over time, this shows to be the most effective at healing the brain.
Dr. B:It's not chronic running, it is not 30 minutes of CrossFit, it is not strength training although I am a fan of all of those things. If we're trying to heal a brain, burst style of training is what research shows the way to go. When it comes to sleep, sleep has to be a part of the healing plan. You have to get 8 hours of sleep at night, you have to sleep well, you have to sleep restful and deep. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, we know that the brain is losing energy.
Dr. B:So this is dysglycemia, This is some type of dysregulated blood sugar, or we got to get your blood sugar regulated. The ketogenic diet is great for this or a paleo autoimmune diet is great for this, but we have to regulate blood sugar so your brain has stable blood sugar throughout, and your body has stable blood sugar throughout sleep. So when you're in a fasted state and you're 6 hours into your sleep, you're not spiking adrenaline to make up the loss of blood sugar, and this would obviously wake you up. So sleep, particularly blood sugar regulation, is vital to healing your brain that may be- that may be on fire. When it comes to nutrition, the best nutrition plan is the ketogenic diet.
Dr. B:When your when your blood ketone levels are to a point of like maybe 2 or 3, this is where you heal. Ketones are an incredible fuel source for the brain. They are a fuel source. So just like sugar or glucose, ketones are a fuel source for the brain. When we look at Alzheimer's dementia, we see this as being a it's a insulin resistant brain or a type 3 diabetic brain.
Dr. B:Okay? Is what they're framing it as. Ketones act as a primary fuel source for the brain but ketones also not only provide energy but they reduce inflammation, they up regulate what's called M2 activity of the brain which is neuro anti inflammatory. This is a way of reducing inflammation. Ketogenic diet reduce inflammation.
Dr. B:Ketogenic diet helps seizure activity. Ketogenic diet helps MS patients. Ketogenic diet helps Alzheimer's dementia patients. Ketogenic diet helps all, autistic spectrum disorder. Ketogenic diet is a massive healing protocol for anyone with neurological inflammation.
Dr. B:Ketones are so healing for the brain. So there are 2 different clinical trials that showed a ketogenic diet had a remyelination effect on MS, and dietary fats are a massive component, right, when we look at healthy fats, monounsaturated fats, olive oils, coconut oils, butter, are great to heal the brain. And then if we wanna elevate it, there's a lot of great research that shows time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting is another way to elevate neurological health and healing. So we see that intermittent fasting can allow for a greater neurological anti inflammatory effect than not fasting at all. So if we wanna elevate healing to another level then we take a ketogenic diet and then we add in a time restricted feeding window of 12, 14 or 16 hours.
Dr. B:We feed them for 8 and this helps even more ketone production and has even a greater effect on healing the brain. Some nutrients, when we look at plant nutrients, what nutrients are the most effective at healing the brain, reducing neurological inflammation? There are some key features here. One, it has to cross the blood brain barrier to actually have an effect to the brain. So they're not all antioxidants and polyphenols do this. These certain plant chemicals are king. So the first one is resveratrol. Resveratrol is one of the most potent antioxidants when it comes to reducing neurological inflammation.
Dr. B:Number 2, curcumin. Curcuminoids. This is very effective at helping the brain reduce inflammatory loads. Another one is celery. There's an antioxidant or polyphenol in celery that is very effective. Apigenin is very effective at reducing neurological inflammation.
Dr. B:Another one are catechins. Catechins are extracts of green tea which have a really potent, anti inflammatory effect to the brain and even onions, capers, and pomegranates are great to reduce neurological inflammation. These also- what some of these fibers in these plants do is they provide bacteria in the gut with what's called short chain fatty acids. And so if actually if you're looking at trying to create a a dramatic effect in healing the brain, short chain fatty acids or these, fibers that are eaten by bacteria, microbes in the gut make these short chain fatty acids and these short chain fatty acids travel up through the vagus nerve, through the vagal pathway and this has a massive neuro anti inflammatory effect as well. Short chain fatty acids, acetate, propionate, and butyrate or butyric acid are these those 3 short chain fatty acids are massive at healing and down regulating inflammation of the brain or just consume fiber. So even just starting your day off with it like just a fiber elixir, get a Vitamix and just pulse a bunch of, you know, celery and and cucumber and beets and berries whatever and consume that high fiber dose combined with a diverse bacterial system in the gut is a great way to reduce neurological inflammation.
Dr. B:What are some other things? Fish oil, specifically DHA. DHA is a massive anti inflammatory effect in the brain because it crosses the blood brain barrier. EPA which is another type of fish oil does not. DHA does and you may need a 1000, 2000, 3000 milligrams of DHA to reduce neurological inflammation.
Dr. B:So you have to dose it according to how the patient is responding or how you're responding, But DHA has been shown to have a great effect on reducing neurological inflammation. So we talked about, you know, short chain fatty acids, we talked about polyphenols, we talked about, essential fatty acids, fasting, and ketogenic diet. When we look at reducing inflammation in the brain, there are so much available to us and I think the most important thing to take away from this message is in this world today, I think we get excused a lot by practitioners saying, hey, if you have anxiety, depression, psychiatric, autism, psychiatric, whatever. But we need to look at this from a different perspective, and the brain has the ability to heal to a degree that we can reduce, maybe even eliminate symptoms. And today's episode is not to treat you over a podcast or provide medical advice, but to encourage you to get to a provider that's gonna help you heal and to not just be okay with where you're at. So if these symptoms are where you're at or if you have a child with autism and you just kinda feel stuck or you've gotten to this point where you're like, I feel better, but then symptoms keep coming back with every infection, with every stress load, or every whatever food introduction.
Dr. B:We gotta drive to the next level and we can provide you with a health, brain health questionnaire to determine if your brain needs healing. And so reach out to us direct through email, at one of our offices. You can go to healthfactoryknoxville.com or armorhealthlknox.com. Go to our Instagram, direct message us, and we will send you our brain health checklist questionnaire that you can fill out and see if you're a good candidate for any healing with neuroinflammation, and then, you know, Rachel, our nurse practitioner, can work with you over the phone virtually to help you heal in this journey. So when we, kind of conclude today's episode, I guess the main intent is to provide hope for people and to say, hey, don't be just- don't accept even if it's severe neurodegenerative condition of Alzheimer's dementia or even if you've been diagnosed neuro autoimmunity, don't just take it for what it is.
Dr. B:I truly wanna encourage you to take the next step in your healing journey and search and and pursue these other means of healing. So that's it. Go, Gators, and, thanks for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. Grant is cringing as I say that.