Cognitive Clarity: Key Tests For Brain Health Revealed

So when I think about complex chronic diseases and what affects brain health specifically, I go back to how I was taught by my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Daniel Steinberger, who helped me think through a complex system science lens. What’s going to cause chronic, complex disease is the same thing that causes any complex system to go awry. It’s an imbalance when there are lots of interconnected networks. We need balance among them and communication between them. So imbalance or too much, too little in the wrong place or at the wrong time is going to cause disease at a cellular level. It’s also how we work our way out of that disease state as we want to maintain and attain balance in a whole new dynamic setting. Things are constantly changing their diurnal rhythms, their monthly rhythms, their annual rhythms. And in those rhythms and that changing flow and pattern we want to maintain appropriate balance for that time of day, that part of the week, that part of the month. And so what does that look like for each of us individually? Well, I would argue that there are six components, six primary things to look at that are going to cause cellular damage. And that if we can address these six primary causes of disease and brain degeneration, then we are going to be able to reverse that disease process. The earlier we get started, the better. The more fully we dive in the better. So let’s get started. 

The first one is toxins. You’re going to hear a ton about them throughout the summit. I think of toxins in three flavors metals, chemicals, and biotoxins like mycotoxins. You’re going to hear experts talk about each of these different types of toxins and give you tons of ideas about how you can increase your ability to detoxify naturally and then maybe get some help from a provider where you can really precisely go after toxins that are specific to you. Eliminating those toxins is also a really big part of getting out of this imbalance. Too many toxins in the wrong place like your brain at the wrong time. For the most part, too many toxins in your brain are always the case. You don’t want any of those toxins there but every cell creates metabolic waste and so we need a way for toxins to move through the body. There are naturally occurring toxins. There’s lead in the soil. We’re going to be exposed to heavy metals. We’re going to be exposed to mycotoxins. Fungus has been here on Earth a lot longer than we have. We’re going to be exposed to these things. The question is can we get rid of them? And are we being exposed to an inordinate amount? The toxin is number first.

Actually, I’m going to take you through all six real quick so that we have our framework and you can write them down. And then I’m going to come back to each of them. Toxins, nutrients, stressors, structure, infections, and signaling. All right. Again, toxins, nutrients, stressors, structure, infections, and signaling. So we talked about toxins. Next, we’re going to talk about nutrients. Again, this week, you’re going to hear a ton about diet, nutrients, supplements that you might want to be taking, and nootropic factors. How do we organize ourselves? What do we want to look for this first? Is there anything way to and how might we know that we can do micronutrient testing? We can also think about our gut. Are we putting the right nutrients in? Are we able to digest them? Are we able to absorb that? You mean are we able to eliminate the pieces that don’t serve us right? Are we able to have that bowel movement every day that helps us to not only detoxify but helps keep our gut microbiome healthy? And there’s also an indication that we generally are healthy. So you can test nutrients, you can test the gut, and you’re going to learn a ton of tricks that you can try. 

My opinion about diet is that there’s no one right diet for everyone throughout the year. There are ways to eat seasonally and there’s no one right diet for every human throughout their entire life. As children, we might need something very different than as a postmenopausal female. There’s a lot of nuance to this, and many people get benefit from changing their diet. It’s just the change that helps them to change their metabolism and to get those nutrients that their body so desperately needs. So consider making a commitment to changing your diet and not as attached to which diet you choose. Of course, here we like an organic ketogenic diet for the most part for brain health. But I’m less attached to fully committing to that than to committing to making a change in your diet so that you can get better nutrients and heal. So we’ve talked about toxins and nutrients. Next, we’re going to talk about stressors. Back to balance, you can have too much stress and certainly, many of us can relate to this, particularly the caregivers out there who are feeling stressed because they’re losing, slowly losing their loved one, and grieving that they also might have sleep affected. Maybe they’re not prioritizing their own diet and lifestyle habits. 

Then we also have the flip side. We have a lack of stress. This is when we kind of kick our feet up and imagine retirement as a lazy day right in front of the TV eating potato chips. That is going to be an issue. We’re not getting enough stimuli. We’re just vegging out. We’re not finding purpose or meaning. We’re not getting exercise, which, yes, is a type of stressor. We want to stress the system so that we get more resilience in it. This is called the hormetic effect. So, you know, if someone is very frail, we don’t want to go too far. If they’re very severely advanced in terms of dementia, we don’t want to go too far in that direction. However, we do want to create a life where we’re having the good types of stress, the type that gets us out of bed, that gets us excited about the day that challenged us so that we get better. We’re going to take some deep dives into both aspects of that. What are great brain healing activities? What can we do with which stressors can we choose? And then how do we adapt and how do we rewire our brain so that stress does not become toxic? These are both crucially important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to brain health. 

So we talked about toxins. We’ve talked about nutrients. We’ve talked about stressors. Now we’re going to talk about structure. We are going to hear from several experts that will talk about traumatic brain injuries, that will talk about sleep, and the effects of sleep apnea or a closed airway at night can have on the brain. So stay tuned for these pieces. But they’re two of the big pieces around structure that make a big difference in our brain health. So what are the things that structurally might be causing brain health issues or dementia for you? You might think about molecular structure and genetic predisposition, things like your APOE status that is in that molecular structure bucket. Is there an increased chance that I might have a risk for dementia because of a molecular structure issue that maybe I can’t change but I can change how my genes are expressed and I can reduce my risk by addressing all of the other modifiable risk factors we’re going to discuss during this summit. And then there’s that macrostructure. The way maybe your orthopedist or your chiropractor might think about it. How is your hipbone connected to your leg bone? Are you in chronic pain because of degenerative discs or a herniation? Have you been hit over the head with a baseball bat or did you get repeated concussions as a child or even as an adult that may have increased brain inflammation? Are you at risk for a fall that might increase your risk of a traumatic brain injury? That might considerably impact your ability to heal. These are all things we want to consider. 

And so we’ve talked about toxins, nutrients, stressors, and structure a little bit. And now we’re going to talk about infections. Again, you’re going to hear from incredible experts this week who are going to talk about some of the infections that can particularly do damage and wreak havoc on the brain. These infections include Lyme and the Lyme co-infections like Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia, and some of the others. We’re also going to talk about the Porphyromonas gingivalis or the bacteria that causes gum disease and how that can directly impact cognitive function. You’ll also hear about the herpes simplex viruses and how that can impact cognitive function, as well as COVID and long-haul COVID syndromes.

So we’ve talked about toxins, nutrients, stressors, structure, and a little bit about infections. Next, signaling as we age there’s a natural process that reduces the hormones in our body. But we can do a lot to mitigate the risk that’s associated with those drops in hormones that might come from our muscles like BNF that might come from our ovary. It’s like progesterone and estrogen or testicles like testosterone. We’re going to discuss the pros and cons and the risks and the benefits of potentially adding bioidentical hormones, thyroid hormones, vitamin D, and other hormones that send signals to the brain that tell our brain to create new neurons and new connections between them. When we put all of this together, we can essentially put out different treatment options, different lab testing, and different interventions into these categories. And through that, we can really organize and systematize how we approach this Bredesen protocol and how we approach neurodegeneration and our brain health long term. I hope you found this helpful. We’re looking forward to seeing you through the rest of the summit. Thank you so much for joining us.