The Latest Anti-Aging Hacks for Your Brain

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I’m so good. Thanks for having me.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So I understand you’re in sunny San Diego.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

We are, lucky to be.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Thank you so much for joining me for this hour. I’m just so excited to hear about how you are looking at aging and the brain and what we can do to kind of slow down that process. So, at first, I’d like to get a little understanding of your background for the listeners. If you could just tell us about how you got into this journey of really helping clients with aging.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Sure, of course. So I’ve always been interested in medicine. I actually, I grew up in Hawaii and I saw around me that the people who are most engaged in their communities and creating solutions to the problems that come up, the challenges that any community, any place faces, they were healthy. And people who weren’t healthy, they really didn’t have the capacity engage. They’re running to doctor’s appointments or they’re being pushed around in wheelchairs. They can’t always get where they wanna go, to show up for community meetings or whatever it is. And so I saw that the people, and as I traveled in my college years, I saw the same thing kind of repeating itself across the world. And I realized that to have an impact, we need to be healthy. And God knows the world needs solutions these days. 

So my purpose became very clear that my job was to make sure that there were more healthy people in the world. And I had been interested in conventional medicine and considered that path. But when I found naturopathic medicine, it made so much more sense because the emphasis was on health. And that again is where we have the capacity to make impact. So then I went to naturopathic school at Bastyr. I had some of my own health challenges, and got a ton of benefit from naturopathic interventions, structural interventions like osteopathic manipulation, or craniosacral therapy. 

And then as I started in my practice, I was more interested in complex system science, and how that applied to the human body and to medicine. So how can we take and naturopathic medicine and even IFM and functional medicine perspectives, it can get really overwhelming really quickly. It’s like where do we start? Some people say to start in the gut, some people say to start by treating infections. Other people say it as start by treating stressors and the adrenals. And I was confused. When patients would come in, I didn’t know where to start. And so looking back at a complex system science model, it’s like, all right, how can we create a structure, a formula so to speak, even though it’s individualized, but where do we get our priorities and how do we decide what to do first, what the correct order of operations is? 

And so that complex system science model essentially says that what we’re treating is imbalanced. And imbalanced, the definition of that is going to be too much, too little in the wrong place or at the wrong time. And so if we have imbalance in our system, in our human body or the brain, then we’re gonna end up with disease. And what we wanna do to reverse that, to prevent it is create more balance. And I would argue that there are really only five areas that you need to focus on to get really fundamental, foundational change and create more balance, more health in the system. And that would be toxic burden. Again, too much, too little in the wrong place at the wrong time, too many toxins. 

Creating toxins to the natural process in our bodies, we have great ways to get rid of them through our organs. And yet we’re inundated these days. Unfortunately we live in a toxic world. And so we really have to make that a priority. So toxins imbalances and toxins imbalances it’s nutrients. Of course, we all know that if you eat too much sugar, you get diabetes. If you don’t have enough Vitamin C, you get scurvy. Well, there’s lots in between that. And so we can optimize nutritional balance to get the best benefit for that complex system. So toxins, nutrients, structure. 

Structure can be from a genetic perspective like at a molecular level or from an orthopedics perspective, maybe how your hip bone is connected to your leg bone kind of a thing, but also like a chiropractor’s perspective, are you getting blood flow from your brain down to your toes? Are you getting blood flow out of your brain up into your brain? Is that cervical spine in the right place? Because that vertebral artery goes right through there. So really important. And of course not just with blood flow, but with nervous system, with nerve innervation and all of the communication and signaling that’s happening all day every day. 

So again, toxins, nutrients, structure, stress which I think most of us can relate to at some level. We need some stress, that’s exercise. A little bit of stress helps us build muscle. We need some stress to get us out of bed in the morning. But if we have too much and it’s chronic or we relate to it in an unhealthy way, that can lead to disease. And then I always say infections last. So we have toxins, nutrients, structure, stressors, and then infections. 

And the reason I put infections last is because I would argue that the majority of the time, if we balance the nutrients, the stressors, the toxins, and the structure, then we end up with a really good functional immune system that keeps most of those infections under our control. So that’s my approach to medicine. And I got there by seeing patients, and getting a little frustrated and then finding a solution for myself that was like, how do I organize this? How do I get something that feels really solid? And then present that to my patients, and sure enough now we see it work over and over. It’s really satisfying, and I love my job more than ever.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Wow. So that’s very interesting about the philosophy. I’ve never seen it put down quite like that, but it seems very simple. So that it’s actually easy to understand for patients. So maybe let’s talk a little bit about the brain in particular, and how these various factors impact the brain and aging. Like in your practice, I know you looked like you would train with Dr. Bredesen who’s so famous for the Alzheimer’s protocol. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how that’s impacted your practice and what you’re doing.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, it really profoundly impacted my life, I would say. So I heard Dr. Bredesen speak at a conference and his model fits very neatly with my model of complex chronic disease. And that he’s been very comprehensive. If we leave out a key player, a key piece, if there’s a big toxic burden and we never look for it, then it’s less likely that that patient is gonna fully recover. He’s gonna get better. And so he brings to the table this approach that’s very comprehensive. And my list of five things very much overlaps with his. So I was intrigued. And then I wanted to do his training, but I showed up to his training a bit skeptical. This is Alzheimer’s and I had, of course, very well-meaning, very accomplished instructors when I was in school say, don’t give anyone false hope. We really can’t reverse Alzheimer’s. 

We can’t reverse dementia. And now my clinical practice at Marama at the residential care facility, I can tell you with absolute certainty that that is factually inaccurate. We absolutely can reverse dementia. Does it happen every single time? No. Does it take a lot of work? Yes. Does everyone get full recovery? No. But absolutely without a doubt, the vast majority of the people that I interact with who have dementia gets somewhat better relatively quickly, too. So I went to Dr. Bredesen’s training and took it all in, absorbed it all. I felt very grateful because I had been trained in toxins and hormones and GI issues, and all of these kind of I think of them like verticals. All of these chunks that he was talking about, I had trained in. And so I was able to apply it pretty quickly. I got listed on his website. So I had patients calling and asking about it. And they came in with even a little bit more confidence than I had. And Linda was my first patient I saw. I saw her just within a month or two after I took the training. And she came in with a MoCA of two and yeah, her handwriting had been affected. I would start to ask her a question, and she would forget the question before I could answer. 

Her relationship with her husband, although he was amazingly supportive, and she had this great, positive, wonderful spirit. She just giggled easily and wore these big, bright clothes. And they were just, she’s a doll. You could tell that their relationship of course had changed because they couldn’t carry on a conversation. And so we did all the testing. We sent her home, she got amalgams out. We got her on hormones. She moved out of a moldy bedroom. She started exercising and dancing. T

hey completely switched to a ketogenic diet. I saw her three weeks later, and her MoCA was an eight, like this, an eight. She went from a two to an eight in three weeks. So this is one of the… I get like chicken skin just talking about her case because it was one of my first cases. And when something like that happens in your office where something you’ve been told is impossible happens right in front of you, and you watch how different now her relationship is with her husband that she can remember a question, that she can engage, she can speak in full sentences. When I saw that that was possible for Linda who had a MoCA of two, in my mind I go, oh my God, what is possible for everyone else who’s maybe at a MoCA… They have a lot more cognitive capacity. 

For listeners who aren’t familiar with the MoCA. A perfect is 30 out of 30. So a two is extreme cognitive decline. Anything above 24, so it’s pretty normal, pretty functional. When you start to get into the teens, you’re repeating yourself, you’re struggling. It manifests for different people in different ways. But a two out of 30 on the MoCA is extreme dementia. And to see her recover some capacity was, I mean, I shed tears. I was very emotional. I was in disbelief. And then as a provider, I mean, how do you not dedicate your life to letting everyone know, and making that available to more people?

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So it sounds like you said, you’re a founder of this residential care place for seniors experiencing cognitive decline. So it sounds like it’s a big party of practice taking care of patients with dementia. And is that correct?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

That’s correct, yeah. And we’re about to have three RICOH. So trained by Dr. Bredesen three RICOH providers at my clinical practice. And then Marama, I created out of a need I had after I started seeing more and more dementia patients, their families, their friends were calling and asking the question I think a lot of doctors like myself and Dr. Bredesen get, which is where do I send my loved one? I have to work. I’ve got kids of my own, but my parent needs support. And I just don’t have the ability to like switch their diet, put them on keto, get the sugar out of the house, get all the, make it organic.

I don’t have the ability to do that. So where can they go where they can get that support? And I looked and looked, and there wasn’t anything that was really doing a good job. So I thought, of course, how hard can this be? It’s harder than I thought, but it is again, just amazingly satisfying. And my kind of full circle thinking the way I was in high school kind of still having that idea that healthy people are the ones who engage in society. People with dementia, not only can they not engage in society, they can’t show up to PTA meetings. They can’t show up to community association meetings. They can’t show up in church, I guess they could, but they don’t remember much. They don’t engage much. They’re not organizing the potlucks. But not only do those seniors not engage, but they take a caregiver with them. So they’re taking two people out of society. Now that the grown, the 40, 50 year old daughter can’t show up to T-ball practice for her child. Whatever it is, that middle generation is stuck, needing to care for their parent and work and care for their child. And often it’s just so challenging to juggle it all that it just doesn’t happen. And so the creation of Marama was really an answer to that question. 

Where can I send my loved one where I know there’ll be well taken care of? So we opened and started taking patient, excuse me, residents in March of 2020. And a week later, the world shut down. So we kept, it was actually this beautiful like divine intervention at some level because we kept our census low. So we just had about six residents out of a capacity of 12 because my concern of course was double the residents, double the staff, double the risk of COVID. And so although we had employees who got COVID, we had not a single resident contracted COVID, and everyone was safe and their cognitive function improved. Yeah, it’s been a wild ride but so satisfying to watch people really, like it’s almost like a plant that hasn’t been watered. They just sort of like perk back up and engage more. They start looking each other in the eye, engaging with each other of course, cheering each other on, and then just their interactions with the family, with their caregivers. It’s just beautiful to watch.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So maybe just let’s go into like, let’s pick, like I mean, nutrients and people always wanna ask about how they should be eating and what supplements they should be taking. I guess, I know you can’t maybe create a customized recommendation plan, but what were the categories that people should be thinking about if they were to look at their diet and supplements for the brain health and to prevent aging?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Great question. So with the diet, the ketogenic diet really has the most literature that supports its benefits for cognitive function. And typically I think of the dietary intervention in sort of like three phases. So the first phase is commit to keto. And when Dr. Bredesen and I are kind of troubleshooting like why isn’t someone getting better? That’s the first question he asks. Are you sure they’re in ketosis? So we check either with blood, urine works for a little while, the ketone breath meters. I haven’t found one that reliably works every time. 

So we stick to blood even though it takes a finger prick and it hurts. But it is the best way to get that feedback. And the ketogenic diet, a lot of people are like, okay, what do I eat? Well, that depends. Being in ketosis is a metabolic state where you’re burning fat instead of sugar for fuel. And for some people they can eat zucchini and stay in ketosis. For other people, they can’t. I had a patient who could eat white rice and stay in ketosis which just makes zero at all. So you get that on both ends where some person will have, something, a hard cheese that seems like it should keep you in ketosis, but they fall out. 

So some of it has to be individualized. And this is where one of the best technologies in anti-aging is a health coach. Really one of the best banks for your buck when it comes to this is the lifestyle pieces. And although I love to nerd out on like the latest testing and the latest interventions. I love like the red light therapy, but really foundationally, the most benefit you’re gonna get is changing your diet, especially if you’ve had a standard American diet, getting into ketosis or an organic diet. So you get those toxins out of the food that you’re consuming, and then exercise, exercise, exercise. Good sleep, breath work, meditation. Those are the things that are really gonna get you the most benefit and guess what? They cost the least.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So the ketosis part, are you recommending to clients be in ketosis like seven days a week or they can have like, are you recommending they be in and out during the day time?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, so I started to say there’s three. I got excited and lost track. There’s three kind of phases that I want my patients to go through. And the first is that real heavy-hitting brain detox, brain-healing diet which is ketosis. After that, we are switching to more of like a paleo Mediterranean and ketoflex. And so that looks like maybe four or five days in ketosis, and a couple of days where you’re adding something like sweet potatoes where we know your blood sugar is gonna go up. But you’re not adding Skittles. Like you’re not getting high-fructose corn syrup, but you’re getting some good nutrient-dense carbohydrates. So that’s typically high carb veggies like carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, that kind of thing. And then depending on the person, we will change the diet as needed. 

My general dietary advice for someone without dementia is there is no one right diet. That for each of us, there may be different seasons in our lives and certainly different seasons in the year where different things are appropriate and we feel healthier and better with a different diet. So of course in the summertime, maybe eating more fruits, more raw, in the wintertime, eating more kind of heavier warmer foods makes a lot of sense. When we look at these ancestral diets, things like paleo, even keto to some degree. When we look at those diets, the consistent thing about them is inconsistency. That we didn’t have sugar available 365 days a year our entire life for, well, we do now, our ancestors did not have that available. And so our body, this complex system that we’re engaging with here that trying to optimize, it really is designed to have inconsistency in the diet. And that’s part of what a ketogenic diet is. It’s taking away that sugar, but maintaining nutrients and fuel in the form of ketones, and in the form of fat.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Okay. And the, you mentioned some nutrients, like what about fats? Are you recommending supplements with Omega-3s and?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So traumatic brain injuries are a very big factor in terms of putting someone at risk for dementia. And if anyone has a history of TBIs, there’s essentially like a formula I follow and we get as much as we can out of it. And of course tweak it as that individual needs, but methyl B12, phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine. So these phosphatidyl groups are big part. They’ve got fatty in on them, and then lots and lots and lots of Omega-3s. I would even say for anyone who’s experienced a TBI, if we’re hitting it hard and really trying to heal it. And soon after as well, like 10 grams of EPA and DHA. Not just the Omega-3s, but read the numbers per day of EPA and DHA.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

That would be like about four or five tablespoons or something, or how much is that?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, exactly. So it depends which supplement you have in front of you. We use one, there’s about 1100 milligrams of EPA, DHA in each capsule. So we’re talking about 10 capsules. Yeah, it’s a lot. And it’s expensive, but you don’t do it forever. We do it during this healing period hopefully three to six months. And then you get a lot of regeneration. The other thing that we do for the TBIs is of course brain exercises, but IV and NAD plus and then contrast oxygen therapy. And these things seem to really, really help with healing the brain.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So NAD plus is intravenous. You’re giving intravenous NAD?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, we usually follow up with oral or sublingual. There’s really no comparison to the benefits of a sublingual NAD, even that, there’s a bunch of them. And everybody feels like there’s is the best of course. But there’s nothing compared to the IV and NAD in terms of the effects that we’ve seen.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So how much dosage are we talking about? Like when people go for IVs, how much NAD would they be taking at one time?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, great question. We start with three grams over three days. And we typically do 500 milligrams the first day, a gram the next day and then 1.5 grams the third day.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

It’s huge, huge, biggest doses.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

These are big. Well, it depends. When you’re talking to somebody who does a lot of IV NAD for addiction, they’re doing like 10 grams over eight days or something. They’re doing a big dose. And I have had patients who are getting benefit after three days, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve plateaued. Like they could still get more benefit or the benefit starts to wear off. And so then we’ll do another three grams or another six grams kind of get as much into them as possible. What you wanna do is super saturate ’cause that NAD is a co-factor for so many biological reactions that are happening in the system. And any sort of stress whether it’s psychosocial, excuse me, psychosocial stress or a stress like an injury, like a traumatic brain injury, you deplete that NAD pretty quickly. And so when we super saturate the system, if that is the limiting factor, you turn on a lot of those reactions.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So then it has to begin, I guess, over some hours so people get this flushing where they feel this funny reaction with NAD. So given over a number of hours, I assume.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

You’re absolutely correct. Yes. So we tell our patients to plan for eight hour days, and sometimes they’re 10 hour days, and sometimes people some people blow through it in a couple of hours. But we do recommend that they set aside a certain significant amount of time to get through it.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Does it get easier? Like once you’ve taken NAD, and you’re at certain dosage, does the body got used to it?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Well, that’s why we start with a half gram, and then go to one gram and then go to 1 1/2. Typically it’s a little easier to take the higher doses, the second and third day. Yeah.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

And for dementia, the same thing would apply or you’re not using it in dementia?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Well I use it in dementia cases where there’s a history of traumatic brain injury. Absolutely. And then also post stroke rate which is essentially a type of brain injury. So I would use it in post stroke patients, and we’ve seen some really good results with that and then TBIs. And sometimes if there’s a long history of really high stress, then I am thinking NAD is on the menu of options that could potentially benefit.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

You mentioned the phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine, are these capsules, liquid, would you recommend like for viewers like what companies they can go to?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Oh, yeah. So I usually use the BodyBio PC. This is Patricia Kane’s. The PK Protocol is one thing that’s referred to as so Patricia Kane is the one who really popularized and teaches around using phosphatidylcholine. And you can use that IV or orally. You’re getting pretty different benefits. So oral PC, it helps with the bile. And so it’s actually very helpful for detox. It makes it a little bit more viscous or maybe a little less viscous, sorry. I’m not sure if I’m saying that right. But anyways, it makes it easier to get rid of bile and flush it through the biliary tree and out of the gallbladder so that you can be getting rid of that toxic sledge that our liver is creating every day that can a little more easily. And then at a cellular level PC, And I think you get more of this benefit when you do it by IV. 

But of course, that phosphatidylcholine is replacing those, if you think back to high school biochemistry, that phosphatidyl bi layer that creates our cell membrane, also the nuclear membrane inside the cell that houses our genetic information, a lot of toxins are stored in that layer, in that membrane layer. And when we can add really good phosphatidylcholine, it can kind of kick out the stuff that’s not quite as good from before. And when the body’s making new cells, it can incorporate that high quality phosphatidylcholine and get rid of a lot of those toxins. So when we think about toxicity, there’s kind of two phases. 

Elimination is what I always am coaching to think about first. This is every time we urinate, every time we have a bowel movement, every time we sweat, every time we exhale, we’re getting rid of, we’re eliminating toxins from the body. They’re no longer in us. They’re outside of us. The other place that that needs to happen is at the cellular level. We need to push them out of the cells into circulation so they can go to the liver. So they can go to the GI tract or be processed through the kidneys or out through the skin or out through a breath. So those two phases, phosphatidylcholine is particularly helpful with kicking the toxins out of the cell. But first of course, you wanna make sure you have your, we call them trees or organs of elimination have those open optimized, really working. 

Otherwise patients will experience something often called the Herxheimer reaction where you feel worse before you feel better because you’ve got a bunch of toxins now in circulation. So that happens more with glutathione is another one that will do that. Even sweating will sometimes do that initially early on, and some of the binders can do that. So you just wanna go slow, and know that if you get a little bit of reaction, you’re going in the right direction. We just have to change the timing to go a little slower.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

And the phosphatidyl series that’s similar. Is that a similar function?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yes. So it has the phosphotidyl groups, little less. So I use a lot phosphotidylserine actually for… It helps with cortisol and calming the brain. So it helps you to metabolize cortisol, and yeah, again, generally helpful for brain function. This phosphotidyl groups are good for all kinds of biochemical reactions. But the serine in particular is calming for the brain.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Okay. And let’s talk a bit about like B vitamins. Most people are supplementing with those, and I know you mentioned methyl B12. Yeah, I’d love to hear, how do you attack that issue and what type of recommendations do you give?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Well, for aging and in particular for an aging population, man, B12 is really important. Because our stomach is not maybe firing on all cylinders the way it was in your 20s and 30s. And so the stomach is one of the places that B12 is made, and supplementing with it can make a really big impact on red blood cells, on energy levels directly, on a lot of different things. B12 is very conserved. Every cell in our body is using B12 at some level. In fact, it’s important for the creation of new cells. It’s important for all kinds of things. This is why you can have anemia is because you’re not creating enough red blood cells if you don’t have enough B12 or foliate. So B vitamins are used everywhere for everything. 

You have to have enough of them. And if you don’t, it’s a big problem very quickly. They also, as we mentioned with under stress, so you have physical or mental, emotional stress, they get depleted very quickly. Toxic stress as well will deplete B vitamins because they are necessary for getting rid of toxins, for eliminating toxins. So the B vitamins I think of them you need all of them. We can’t, yes, we can pick and choose and we can focus on… They each have their role to play, but you really need to B complex. They play well together. They really help most if you have all of them. So B12 or folate and of course, B6 and zinc are really important in the brain for the metabolism of neurotransmitters. So just a simple example of glutamate, very excitatory, helps us of course to focus and remember, and helps us engage. But if you can’t turn your glutamate into GABA, then it’s really hard to get to sleep. 

You want that five o’clock Friday feeling. Nothing’s as big of a deal when you have plenty of GABA in your system. This alcohol is a GABA receptor agonist, or Ativan and Ambien. The benzodiazepines are GABA receptor agonists. And if you don’t have enough of that going on, if you’re kind of stuck with a lot of glutamate, it’s really hard to relax. So that’s gonna be stressful for the brain. That reaction, that glutamate to GABA step requires enough zinc, B6, and magnesium. So really really important to have enough of these nutrients. Otherwise we’re not gonna feel very good. 

We’re gonna feel anxious or depressed. Methylation, you mentioned. And methylation helps us to, serotonin, dopamine. I mean, the list is very, very long, that carbon and three hydrogen groups if you can remember that from chemistry class. That makes the world go round. Like that methyl group is so important to turning things on. Even genetically turning on the right genes. We have so much potential in us, but that epigenetic effect of methyl status is supremely important in terms of creating balance in the system and using that potential.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Wow. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. Did you wanna chat a little bit, you did mention about the red light therapy that you’re involved in, and maybe I’d love to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah. So I love the red light therapies. What we’re talking about here are… Some people get confused with infrared like we would use for a sauna. And infrared is fabulous, wonderful, really great, it creates heat to whatever’s in front of it can help us with sweating and getting that detox happening. And the other piece of this that I really think there’s where there’s a lot of underused potential is in the kind of 680, 660 to 850 those two nanometers of red light. And some of that is visible. And some of it is not visible. This is our near infrared is not visible. And then the red light red light at 660, 680, that is visible. So those two are really, really helpful for a lot of things. And the reason why is because they affect mitochondria. 

So mitochondria create ATP which is the fuel that ourselves run on. And as we age, if we don’t have enough ATP, we’re gonna feel that. It’s gonna feel like organs that don’t work quite as well. It’s gonna feel like low energy. It’s gonna feel like not remembering. And so we need to make sure each of ourselves has plenty of ATP to be working with, to be running on. And the mitochondria are where that happens. So we often, the functional medicine perspective, we’re often thinking about mitochondrial nutrients like CoQ10 and carnitine, and all of these minerals that are necessary to, ribose. 

All of these things that are really necessary to make the mitochondrial function. Well, I have some patients whose guts don’t work. So giving them a big supplement with all of these nutrients and although it’s well-intended, it ends up in diarrhea or something. So we have to have multiple ways that we can get to the same outcome. And the red light therapy is phenomenal because there’s so little risk. There’s like no risk. It’s very calming. It feels good. And you just put red light in front of your face, wherever you want it to work. Your face, if you have something going on, a cut or something that’s healing, you can put it in front of that. But this red light changes how the cycle of oxygen. There’s an enzyme in there. So it helps to get the mitochondria structurally, again structure. We’ve got plenty of nutrients, but if we add a structural component, we can get those mitochondria optimized even further. So really exciting. And what you see, you get aesthetic benefits, you get energy benefits. And over time, the violet is where they did a lot of this research.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Violet, right?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Violet.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

You’re using the violet?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, we’re using violet-

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Is that the one that’s inside the nose?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, exactly.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

The one that’s inside.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

It can go up through the cribriform plate, and you’re getting above the nose and up into the brain. So, and we’ve seen with some of our more severe residents at Marama, we’ve seen profound changes in 20 minutes. They’re not always sustained, but we are seeing big changes, just putting it on. And then when they take it off, they’re engaging in a totally different way.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Oh, wow. Very interesting. And tell us about contrast oxygen therapy.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, this is an exciting, kind of again, under utilized hack is, Olympic athletes often train at elevation. And they’re looking for that increase in erythropoietin. So we start to create more red blood cells. And that’s when you train at elevation over a sustained period of time. So you are on low oxygen. What we do with contrast oxygen therapy is similar, but we do it in a shorter amount of time. So what we have is, this setup, the contraption is an oxygen concentrator, and then there’s an oxygen reservoir, a bag of oxygen. And you put a mask on that connects you to that reservoir of oxygen. And then you start working out. 

So you get on a bike or on a treadmill, and you breathe positive oxygen for a little while, and then you flip it to negative oxygen. And when you go to negative oxygen, what happens is that CO2 will accumulate, carbon dioxide accumulates, and it makes your blood vessels really big. So they start feeling starved of oxygen. And so they wanna be ready to get it whenever it’s coming. And so you have this vasodilatory effect, and then you flip the switch, and you go into positive oxygen. And that tissue, the vascular system that has been primed to take as much oxygen from the system as possible gets a flood of it. 

And so there’s again, a handful of things that are going on here, but one it increases circulation, improves detoxification. There’s also pressure changes in the microvasculature. So at the capillary beds where you can get new circulation to things that maybe weren’t fully ischemic, but they weren’t fully dead, but they were kind of in that area where in between death and life. Not fully optimized because they weren’t getting great blood flow maybe because of inflammation and injury, toxicity that had built up, something like that was in the way. And so those pressure changes when you’re flipping back and forth from positive to negative oxygen help to reboot that system. You also- Yeah, go ahead.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Does negative oxygen just means less than 21%? What does negative oxygen mean?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah. So there’s errors. As you mentioned about 21% oxygen and then positive oxygen, what we’re saying there in the concentrator, made by the concentrators, stored in the reservoir, you’re attached to by the mask is about 80%, and then negative is not zero, but less than 20. And so you feel like you’re missing it, especially if you’re sprinting on the bike or on a treadmill.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

But that would be at altitude one would have a similar experience when they’re climbing a mountain or something like that. Is that right?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Exactly, exactly. It’s like you’re at altitude.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Wow, okay, that’s exciting. So it’s all can be done. The whole time you’re doing it while you’re on a treadmill or on a bike or something.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, and it really only takes about 20 minutes. So it’s a quick workout and you can increase your VO2 max and your lung capacity. I mean, it really profound, amazing, impressive results and low risk. We go slow with our residents. We have elderly residents and we use the . So we put them on positive oxygen for the first couple of weeks that we’re working with us. Really there the goal is just movement and comfort. We want them to feel comfortable on the bike, comfortable with the mask. And you do get benefits from just exercising with oxygen or EWOT you’ll hear it called. You do get benefit just from exercising with oxygen. But in my opinion, the magic really happens when you start doing the contrast. 

The concept here is the hormetic effect or hormesis if you’re familiar with that. You’re basically creating a stressor. And then as you add a stressor to this complex system, it increases its ability to respond to stressors in the environment. We can think of this with temperature. If we go from our 73 degree house to the car that’s got air conditioning to the office that has air conditioning, and we never spend a summer in the desert or a winter in the Arctic or some, whatever reasonable in between there is then our body forgets how to respond. Similar thing with food. If we always have calories available, our body forgets what it means to fast. This is why you see these things pretty consistently around the world, especially in indigenous cultures. Fasting is part of the process every year. 

The hot and cold contrast therapies. We see this in saunas like in Finland and Russia and Korea. You see this all over the world, that the asking the body to respond to a stressor actually increases the health of the system. And that’s what we’re doing with contrast. So you can do it with calories, with oxygen, with temperature, with all kinds of things.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Are you using a cold or hot types of treatments as well?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, yep, we are. So we have saunas available, and then we’ll do a cold rinse after that. And yeah we’d love to grow that certainly specifically like for injury, if somebody had stubbed a toe or done anything, twisted an ankle, and yes we’ll use contrast therapies, hydrotherapy very specifically to that injury. And that also gets you great results.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

So I guess our viewers might be asking, so you’ve kind of put that these are the elements, the toxins, the nutrients, the stressors, the structure and infections that we need to look at to be in harmony or balance. And so what is the evidence regard that this actually slows aging? Like is there some type of evidence on that?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yes. So thank you for asking. There’s actually a recent paper that was published by some colleagues of mine. Dr. Kara Fitzgerald published in 2021, just very recently in the journal aging, the reversal of epigenetic age using diet and lifestyle interventions. And so this was a randomized clinical trial and she measured it using the Horvath DNAm age clock, which Dr. Horvath, who I believe is at UCLA. He created that. And as you and I discussed, he has a test available through diagnostics where you can test how quickly you are aging. And biological age, one year per year is one way of thinking about aging. I’m 38 and somebody else’s 78, and somebody else’s two or three because they’ve been on the planet for that long. Now, when we think about, that’s chronological age, excuse me. 

When we think about biological age, that is how maybe even though I’ve been on the planet for 38 years, do I, or myself showing up as if they’re 30 or is it they’re 50? And this really makes an impact as we age. We’ve all had family members, maybe or someone we know who’s in their 80s and they look like they’re 60, and you’re going, wait, what, what did you do? Where do I start taking notes? And then someone else who’s in their 60s, and maybe they’ve been through a lot of stressors or, a great example is seeing someone who doesn’t have a home, like if you pass homeless people, they often look much, much older than they are probably because of a lack of nutrients, a lack of, and very high stress situation. 

And so when we look and when we can see these differences across the spectrum of society, we say, okay, well, what what’s changing that? And the Horvath method is a great way to test it. And then these diet and lifestyle interventions, sure enough. Stress management, lots of phytonutrients. A lot of the similar, methylation. And of course, it’s Dr. Horvath’s, that test is testing methylation as a marker. Telomeres are another way that aging gets tested, that relative aging, the biological age, versus chronological aging. And there’s this-

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Dr. Fitzgerald’s intervention was a diet and lifestyle intervention. And what was the diet like? What is it secret diet?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

So a great question. And she would be a better person to ask about the absolute specifics. I will say again, that there was a health coach who was involved with making sure that the participants were really eating this great diet. It, oh, so here it is. The diet restricted carbohydrates, and included mild intermittent fasting to lower glycemic index. And then it’s supplemented daily with fruit and vegetable powder. Polyphenolic modulators. So probiotics, lots of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, methyl donors, curcumin, EGCG. A lot of the things that we are using for brain health, dense animal protein, so liver and eggs. So very, very nutrient-dense diet.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

And I think there’s meditation as well. And there was some regular exercise as well.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yep, absolutely. Yep. Yeah, so this again. The technology really comes back to the things that humans have been doing for millennia.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Yeah, it sounds like we’re starting to understand, we’re starting to unravel what, a little bit more with science now, what does this aging look like and how we can reverse it. I think that’s why I think this summit is so interesting. ‘Cause we’re just on the cusp of understanding this piece, which has kind of been just about, okay, yeah, live healthy, but we didn’t really under-, we couldn’t really define what that was or why that had that impact. But we’re starting to understand that.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

It’s so important too. It’s really, I believe because we probably as you said, are on the cusp of understanding. Humans right now, maybe 125 years is about the max, but there are people Aubrey de Gray. If you listen to him or talk to him ever, he believes that we’re just probably a decade or two away from being, in our lifetime, we will probably have the opportunity, the choice to live much, much longer than that. And so if that’s the case, if we wanna live healthy lives, we don’t wanna live to 150 or 175 and spend them in bed debilitated or demented, we want to spend them traveling and engaging and enjoying time with family, and again, engaging in our communities.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so is there anything else that you wanted to end of to tell our viewers like what’s the main message they should get from today’s talk?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I think that there’s a healthy skepticism around anti-aging maybe, and also around brain, the reversal of cognitive decline. And that makes a lot of people feel afraid to tell someone that they’re experiencing, they’re noticing cognitive decline. And the main message from me that I want everyone to know is that there’s hope. And that there are very clear, very predictable testable and reproducible results around reversing cognitive decline. And so please find a Ricoh doctor, learn more about Dr. Bredesen’s work. He’s got several great books about this, and be on the lookout for lots more science that’s coming out. We’re doing a clinical trial in my office. Dr. Bredesen is about to publish one himself, a clinical trial looking at 25 participants. Dean Ornish has a trial going right now. So there’s a lot of them happening. And I suspect that just in the next few years, neurologists will be saying the same thing. Nope, there’s more you can do than just Amenda.

Sanjeev Goel, MD, FCFP (PC), CAFCI

Yeah, I think you’ve really provided a lot of hope to our viewers, including myself. I was worried about Alzheimer’s, and I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing. Thank you so much.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s really been a pleasure.