Full Transcript Introduction to Michael Morgan 0:00 Hello and welcome to the Reversing Alzheimer's Summit. 0:02 I am super excited to have with me Michael Morgan. 0:07 He is an educator and an innovator. 0:09 He's been in the field of the healing arts for more than 25 years, 0:14 and has been innovating in what it takes 0:17 to help people with Alzheimer's and dementia. 0:20 And what we're going to do today is get a download from him about what 0:24 he's been up to and the different ways in which this is relevant to you, 0:26 whether you are on the path to Alzheimer's yourself, or whether 0:30 you are a caregiver or whether you're just generally interested. 0:34 So, Michael, welcome to the summit. Welcome. 0:37 Nice to be here. 0:37 Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. I'm really excited to have you. 0:40 So give us a little bit of the backstory here. 0:43 And, I'm particularly interested. 0:44 You know, one of the things we have not spoken about the summit 0:46 anywhere else is really the power of hands on medicine for, for, for people 0:52 who are on the path of Alzheimer's, cognitive decline, dementia. 0:56 How did you sort of come to the conclusion that this might be valuable? 0:59 And what have you done about it? 1:00 Yeah, I kind of call cranial sacral therapy like the missing piece 1:05 in terms of manual therapy, dealing with just a little bit of background, 1:09 as I was saying before to you, is that I started this as with Dale Bryson, 1:13 you know, 20 years ago, and I've been teaching 1:15 cranial sacral therapy, which I'll talk about just a second 1:18 for the last 20, 25 years around the world. 1:21 And I knew that it was useful very practically for people 1:25 that had headaches and migraines. 1:26 Even more recently, with NFL players, people that have had 1:30 concussions or soccer injury, that kind of thing. 1:33 And I started to think 1:34 maybe it could have an application for Alzheimer's and dementia as well,
Craniosacral Therapy and Alzheimer's 1:38 because I had some staff relatives, namely my stepmother and sister in law 1:42 that died of Alzheimer's. 1:43 And I thought, well, maybe this could have helped them as well. 1:47 So I started doing research. 1:49 And as a little background, if people aren't familiar, 1:51 cranial psychotherapy, which is now taught around the world 1:54 in at least 60 different countries, and we trained over 100, 1:57 you know, a thousand practitioners around the world. 1:59 It's a very gentle, hands on technique 2:02 to palpate or listen, as we say, to the body. 2:06 So you know how doctors or nurses 2:09 learn 2:09 how to listen to the respiratory rhythm, right. 2:12 And they feel that periodic rhythm like an oscillation of the body. 2:16 Then they also get trained to listen to the heartbeat. 2:18 Right. Which can have a fluctuation. 2:21 Doctor, upload your doctor. 2:22 John. Upload your my mentor. 2:24 In the mid 1970s, he started at Michigan State University 2:28 and then moved to Florida and created a worldwide clinic there. 2:32 He realized that there was another rhythm he discovered through a series 2:36 of coincidences and operations, that it's a little slower 2:42 than and certainly slower 2:43 than the cardiac rhythms, slower even than the respiratory rhythm, 2:47 but kind of at a similar rate, around six cycles per minute. 2:51 It's almost like breathing, but a slower rate. 2:54 He realized he could palpate the body and the head, 2:58 and he felt this very gentle rhythm that kind of widens and narrows 3:03 in the head and causes the body below the neck to go on 3:06 to internal and external rotation. 3:09 So that's what we teach practitioners how to do, 3:12 how to blend in with the body with a very light touch. 3:15 This is like five grams. 3:18 So people to do energy they need to actually use a little more force. 3:22 But people that are physios that are stronger, they need to lighten up. 3:27 But what he found is when people listen to the body in a very light way, 3:31 just by listening, the body can start to shift. 3:35 And basically what we do with cranial psychotherapy 3:38 is we listen up and down the body, 3:41 and we listen to places where things are moving well and freely, 3:45 because the rhythm underneath the cranial sacral rhythm underneath 3:49 the respiratory and cardiac is like a very gentle oscillation, like a breathing. 3:55 And it basically informs the whole neural skeletal structure, structure system. 4:00 So it's as if, if you can tune in the cranial sacral rhythm, 4:03 everything else starts to respond in kind. 4:06 So when you do that and you listen, you can listen in the body, 4:10 as we trained practitioners to do, to feel where things are moving well and freely. 4:15 And then we also can find places where things aren't moving so well 4:19 and freely, where there's tightness in the body. Right. 4:22 And when we do that, when we find places in the body where things feel tight, 4:26 we do a series of techniques to loosen things up. 4:30 So that's step one. 4:32 And then what we've found in our experimentation and observation, 4:36 especially relating to Alzheimer's and dementia, is that what can happen? 4:42 And we kind of research this over time, starting with doctor all pagers commentary 4:46 in the early 2000 is he found 4:50 that people that had Alzheimer's and dementia, 4:53 their brain starts to dry up in either day. Two. 4:56 We call it a body disorder. 4:58 The brain dries up and only if we could put 5:01 some moisturizer on our head, it could seep into the brain. 5:04 But it takes a little more of a light touch to do that. 5:07 So what we found is that people with senile dementia, 5:11 one of my nursing friends, 5:12 had started our original study, and or Silvio found that people 5:15 with senile dementia have about 75% 5:19 less flow of cerebral spinal fluid than the normal adult. 5:23 So basically, there's a turnover of cerebral spinal fluid at any one time. 5:28 There's about 125ml in the body. 5:31 About four fluid ounces. 5:32 Not a lot. 5:33 But there's a turnover of 5 to 6 times a day. 5:36 So there's like a washing action of cerebral spinal fluid. 5:39 But people with dementia as they age and it gets more severe. 5:45 There's less and less. 5:46 And there can be as much as 75% less CSF in the body.
CSF Flow, Glymphatic System, and Plaque Clearance 5:51 And what happens then? 5:53 It's like a river that dries up, as I used to say in one of my Ted talks. 5:57 It's like, 5:57 you know, a river can be flowing freely, and as the water table dries up, 6:02 all the mud and sludge and still start to collect. 6:05 Well, by analogy, that's what happens in the brain, in the spinal column. 6:08 What happens is all these amyloid plaques, which is like 6:12 the smoking gun of Alzheimer's, dementia start to accumulate. 6:16 All the toxins accumulate in the brain, in the body. 6:20 And then when that happens, that seems to correlate 6:23 with cognitive problems, cognitive problems and memory problems. 6:28 And so what we found is if you can speed up the volume 6:32 through some simple techniques of cranial psychotherapy called a still point. 6:35 In other things, you can start to wash away. 6:38 As researchers at University of Rochester and University of Copenhagen found, 6:43 you can start to wash away those toxins and clear things up. 6:46 So that's what we've been doing. 6:48 We've been teaching people to do some simple manual therapy techniques 6:52 and more advanced techniques to help clear the body from toxins. 6:55 So that's a long answer. 6:57 It's a great it's a great answer. 6:59 So give us an idea of like where is the extra fluid living? 7:02 Where does it come from? 7:03 How do you get it into motion? 7:05 That's beautiful. That's a good question. 7:07 So what I'm going to be showing you is a picture of the skull. 7:13 And then what's called the gong fat system, this network 7:15 of about 100 billion neurons and about 100 billion glial cells inside the body 7:20 that was discovered about ten years ago through research 7:23 from the University of Rochester and the University of Copenhagen. 7:26 It's a very intricate system, and that speaks to and explains just a bit. 7:31 Can you see this here? 7:32 The cast and glial limited membrane system? 7:34 Not quite. This is the. Okay. Good. 7:36 So let's see I'm going to go back now I see it. 7:39 All right. Good. 7:41 So when you look at the periphery and the light blue, 7:45 that's where we teach people how to palpate the bones of the head. 7:49 And there's a very thin layer called the meningeal system. 7:53 I don't know if you can see my arrow, 7:55 but it's that that's little line underneath the blue. 7:58 And it's only about a millimeter thick. 7:59 And that's where CSF flows. 8:02 However, and scientists had known this but not been able to verify it. 8:06 What happens is that there's a series of little structures called aquaporins 8:11 that are like little tiles on the underside of the membrane system 8:15 that allows cerebral spinal fluid to flow 8:19 basically ever into every nook and cranny of the brain. 8:23 And there's about a hundred billion astrocytes 8:27 or glial cells and about 100 billion neurons. 8:31 And for the last hundred years, what scientists have been researching 8:33 is the neurons. 8:34 But for the last 10 or 15 years, the glial system, 8:38 glial means like glue and lymph means lymph. 8:41 They found out there's this very intricate system 8:45 inside the brain, which explains a lot of how cerebrospinal fluid 8:49 is flowing and processed in the system. 8:53 This is called for little more information. 8:56 These aquaporins and that light blue up on top is the membrane system, 9:00 only a millimeter thick. 9:02 And then there is underneath the structure of the membrane 9:04 something called the pia mater. 9:06 And these little one way valves called aquaporins 9:10 actually conducts extracellular fluid down 9:12 in every nook and cranny of the brain. 9:15 Now, what's interesting if you see this slide, 9:19 is that this is a picture of the neural vascular unit. 9:23 It's only about 20 to 40 nanometers, like a billionth of an inch wide. 9:28 And over on the left are the neurons. 9:31 So about 100 billion of those. 9:32 And over on the blue is a glimpse system. 9:35 There's about 100 billion of those. 9:36 And over on the right is these microvascular systems. 9:40 There's about 400 miles or 1000km inside of the head of this vascular system. 9:46 And every nook and cranny of the brain. 9:48 Now the blue, the aqua forms, see those little end feet at the top? 9:53 They're like little feet. 9:54 And if you imagine this is a three dimensional structure, 9:57 you can see how they like to nuzzle around each other 10:00 and nuzzle around the neurons and nuzzle around the vascular system. 10:04 When there's inflammation in the brain, which is one of the things we address 10:08 with the perennial psychotherapy, these blue structures 10:11 swell up and get thicker, so they narrow the channel. 10:14 And in the light yellow this is a structure called the perivascular space. 10:19 These are like the micro rivers inside the brain. 10:22 So when you really get a problematic structures 10:25 I've talked about a problem as I talked about Doctor Rennison. 10:28 What happens is that when you have inflammation 10:31 and you actually have the accumulation of flack 10:34 because you have less flow of cerebrospinal fluid, 10:38 imagine that you could fill all these little yellow structures with little dots. 10:43 That would be the accumulation of plaque. 10:45 So when that happens, the brain literally gets clogged up. 10:49 And over time, as you know, when you do an autopsy and so on, 10:52 this whole area becomes nonfunctional or desiccated. 10:56 It's like the whole structure of the body goes through, 11:00 almost like an auto immune response. 11:02 It gets more and more inflamed. 11:03 So what we studied a lot is the structure of the auto immune response 11:07 inside the brain. 11:09 Now the good news is if you could palpate the brain 11:12 and pump up the volume, kind of like what we do in cranial psychotherapy, 11:16 you could speed up the deposition 11:19 of these plaques and these proteins and wash it out of the system. 11:23 And what we found anecdotally, 11:26 and as with this search and I'll talk more about biomarker research in a minute, 11:30 we can actually chart that as we clear 11:34 these micro structures in the brain with these unwanted proteins 11:39 you get improvement in cognition and improvement in memory. 11:43 I'm really glad we're covering this because, Doctor Christine Burke, 11:46 who's my partner and one of the other hosts here, 11:48 you know, she's become one of the best in the world. 11:50 She's part of this, the new trial. 11:52 She's not a neurologist. 11:53 She's actually an internal medicine doctor. 11:56 But she was a vascular specialist. 11:57 And I think it's the vascular connection that you're. 12:00 McKnight. 12:01 Yeah. That is that's, you know, critical to brain function. 12:03 And it's great to see it visualized here. 12:07 Yeah. 12:07 And there's one other piece, if I may. 12:09 And that is and I really agree with Doctor Bateson about this. 12:13 There's five different vectors to Alzheimer's right. 12:16 There's a vascular piece. 12:17 But it could be toxicity like heavy metals. 12:20 It could be hormonal. 12:23 It could be because there's an impact externally 12:26 from close head injuries or concussions like that. 12:29 It could be inflammatory like maybe you see, 12:32 you know, a lot of a lot of functional medicine. 12:34 Doctors talk about Alzheimer's as tide three diabetes. 12:37 So any one or combination of those factors can contribute.
Treatment Benefits and Early Results 12:43 So is doctor reticence says one size doesn't fit all. 12:46 That's why the medications don't necessarily work. 12:49 And as a point in that microvascular system, 12:52 if the medication did work 12:55 and or something with the keto diet 12:57 or other pieces or exercise could help, 13:01 if those substances can't get into the microvascular 13:04 space, they can't really be effective, or we think we can make them much 13:08 more effective. If we can palpate. 13:11 So I'll stop there. 13:13 But that kind of gives you an idea of that, that structure and that that approach. 13:18 Are there any, self-directed things that can aid in that journey, 13:21 or is it always have to be done by someone trained in the methodology? 13:24 Well, what I've done, because my real passion is to significantly reduce 13:29 the deaths from Alzheimer's worldwide in the next five years. 13:32 Of course, I'm on my second five years, but there are some simple techniques 13:37 we teach in a two day virtual class, and basically I teach this online 13:41 so I can get to more people because I've taught people in Australia, 13:44 New Zealand and India and all over is that we can teach people 13:48 how to do some simple techniques called a still point. 13:51 Even between our treatments, caregivers at home and loved ones and other therapies 13:57 can treat people in between treatments to continue that momentum. 14:01 Because our whole theory, which is kind of like another question 14:04 I gave you about could we reverse? 14:07 I found out it's a little bit of a sequential problem because reversing. 14:12 Absolutely. 14:13 But it's kind of like a car coming out of a driveway. 14:15 Right. First you need to kind of slow it down. 14:17 So we want to document that piece, which we've done. 14:20 Then you want to stop it. 14:22 And then once the car has been in reverse, you want to put it forward. 14:25 Then you want to document how you can bring things forward. 14:27 And typically it's a sequential process we've been documenting 14:32 as to how that process occurs. 14:36 Interesting. 14:36 Wonderful. Well, so then let me ask you this. 14:38 So like for the people who are listening, what would be the benefit in in 14:43 and how quickly could you see a benefit and going to see one of 14:47 these practitioners that you've trained and how would you experience the benefit? 14:51 So one of the quick classic answer to that, James, is it depends 14:55 because as you know, when someone's progressing through this disease process, 15:00 they might be just for prevention. 15:02 They might be at risk, they might be at the early, middle and late stages. 15:08 So that's part of the dependency. 15:10 Typically what people find even in the first couple of sessions 15:14 is they get more relaxed. 15:15 One of the things that we studied 15:17 in our initial study in nursing homes, with people that had early to mid 15:22 stage dementia, even though we found some had more advanced stage, 15:25 is that they get to be more relaxed. 15:27 One of the things we found in the Con Mansfield Agitation study is typically 15:32 people feel like with clothes and injuries, they're more agitated 15:36 and they're hard to manage in nursing homes when they are. 15:39 So we can do first of all, there's still point if you can calm them down, 15:44 that means there's less agitation, there's less on and omic response. 15:48 People are able to moderate easier. 15:51 And because of that, probably their sleep is better, which is a big factor as well. 15:55 Right. 15:56 And they're able to manage in a better way. 15:58 So the first level of that is probably almost straight away. 16:02 They're going to feel more relaxed typically. 16:05 And then as we found in our initial study in nursing homes 16:08 where we did a study over six weeks, is that people 16:12 it takes, interestingly enough, jumps about three weeks 16:15 for sometimes people to see with treatment once daily. 16:19 The effect and a first I thought, oh my God, what's going on? 16:22 And then I realized, we're doing this. 16:25 We're actually titrating naturally the body at such a rate 16:28 it can accommodate that change, especially if there's been accumulation 16:33 of problems and toxins because as you know, 16:35 somebody doesn't wake up one day with Alzheimer's, you know, it's like 16:38 it's probably been brewing for 10 or 20 years. 16:41 It's just been subclinical. Right. 16:44 So what happens is that after about three weeks, 16:47 we started to notice that other people started to notice. 16:51 They repeat, 16:52 they actually catch themselves repeating like, wow, I've been repeating. 16:56 And then they may notice that, oh, I start to recognize my caregivers 17:01 or other therapists, or we had 100 year old 17:04 lady started to be able to feed herself and they have more and more mobility. 17:09 So we have some reels of tape 17:11 of people we treated, and they see these things incrementally. 17:15 So that's one piece of first order. 17:17 And then what we've done in experimentation, 17:20 which is kind of like a key thing that we do, is not only do we have 17:24 individual one on one treatments and doctor up, I do my mentor pine 17:28 there's down in Florida at a clinic years ago is 17:32 we do these many intensives where we get several therapies together in one setting 17:37 so we can treat people for two hours, three days in a row. 17:41 Because understandably, people may have accumulated insults over time. 17:46 So I'll give you an example. 17:47 We just did an intensive in Baltimore, Maryland, and we had a fellow that came 17:52 and threw this biomarker testing, which we have Tom, I can touch on. 17:56 His numbers were pretty high, right. 17:58 So one would think he has a lot of neuroinflammation 18:02 in the brain in the head and restrictions, which indeed he did.
Finding Practitioners and Training Options 18:06 But the other piece, which is not obvious, is he had all these spinal insults. 18:10 He had fallen off a, a garage. 18:14 He'd actually, bruised and hurt some ribs. 18:17 And he had all this restriction up and down his spine and about 30%. 18:21 This is part of the lymphatic system of all the drainage. 18:24 Infiltration was blocked. 18:27 So we realized from that because we're unknowingly discovering this, 18:31 that there was more concentration of particulates 18:34 in his CSF because of that. 18:38 And we're realizing, because cranial sacral 18:41 is really an osteopathic technique, that if we can deal with structure and function 18:46 and increase the filtration, probably his numbers are going to lower. 18:49 So we're in a whole study. 18:51 This year of saying we can do biomarker testing, look at the numbers, 18:56 and then tell 6 to 12 months later and go, hey, have the numbers actually improved? 19:01 So that's what we're about in a very vigorous right now. 19:04 We're we're very, very busy and doing that. 19:06 But it just shows that structure and function. 19:08 It's not only the head but it's in the whole body. 19:11 There might be in salt. 19:12 So we just find that it's useful to acknowledge that people 19:17 typically in their 60s, 70s or 80s, that developed these conditions, 19:21 we can do something to kind of ameliorate or smooth out, 19:26 so to speak, structural insults from the past. 19:30 And when we do that, automatically, the brain and spinal cord, 19:33 they just begin to function better. 19:36 Beautiful. 19:37 Yeah, I love that. 19:38 So how does someone who's listening to this, 19:40 you know, find one of your practitioners? 19:41 And what's the best way to to get engaged? 19:44 I would say the simplest way, and you can put this in the chat, 19:48 is to email us at support at Preventing Alzheimer's dot com. 19:52 My website is preventing Alzheimer's dot com. 19:54 You can see interviews I've done in my Ted talks. 19:57 People can find out how to connect with the practitioner 20:01 and if they're really interested in this biomarker testing, which is a new way 20:05 to test three different levels of testing Peter 217 20:09 and NFL and GFP. 20:12 They can actually, prior to this if they wish, 20:15 if their concern look at where are they on the spectrum. 20:19 And this is exciting because, you know, it's it's kind of like you go to a doctor 20:24 and you know, your, your A1, C level might be high or your triglycerides 20:29 and you look at your numbers and you go, oh my God, what do I do? 20:31 Well, you can do something to change. 20:33 And then re monitor to see our numbers have been changed. 20:35 So now for the first time, we're able to marry 20:39 our subjective assessment of the body and the mechanical structure of the body 20:44 with this neuro testing and say look at cause and effect. 20:48 So we have an objective way to monitor what we're doing subjectively. 20:52 So not only can we monitor it, this makes sense behavioral changes and mobility. 20:58 But we can see in terms of the biomarker testing with very sensitive testing 21:02 how we can do that. So we're offering that as well. 21:04 And we think it's a great complement to what you might be doing 21:09 and what people are doing with diet. 21:11 What people are doing exercise. 21:12 So we can actually say we're moving in the right direction on the fall. 21:16 And for people who are interested in finding out more about how to learn 21:19 how to do this, well, it's a good next step for that. 21:21 Again, go to Support and Preventing Alzheimer's dot com, 21:24 and we'll put you on our waiting list for our next two day training. 21:28 We just did one a couple of months ago. 21:29 We had people from all over 21:31 the world were training, and then we do follow up for them as well. 21:34 And then we could connect them with their local therapist also. 21:38 Wonderful. So we're very excited because. 21:42 See, again. 21:45 We are training 21:46 certified longevity specialists in every major area. 21:49 So right now we do these mini intensives 21:52 in Southern California, Chicago, Baltimore, 21:56 Boston, Iowa, a beautiful hot springs, and Montana in the summer. 22:00 So we cover mostly every major area. 22:02 You know, there's thousands of therapists 22:04 when we're training them and more specialized. 22:06 So if anyone emails us, we can put them in touch with a local practitioner 22:11 or find a way to develop a treatment program and protocol for them. 22:15 Wonderful. 22:16 Well, you said at the beginning, something that really resonates with me 22:19 is that you feel like this is the missing link. 22:21 And I think, you know, all the way through this summit, we've heard of, 22:25 you know, interesting biomarkers, interesting, 22:27 you know, transformation that you can do both individually and collectively. 22:30 We've heard of group and connection. 22:32 We've talked about different drugs that are on the pipeline, 22:35 but we haven't had anyone really talk about the power of hands on therapy. 22:39 And I think that there's something really special here. 22:42 And, I'm grateful, for sharing the wisdom. 22:44 What do you think?
Reversal Potential and Closing Remarks 22:45 I mean, you 22:45 you obviously your site is preventing Alzheimer's. 22:48 What is your experience of, of the reversal of symptoms in the other direction? 22:53 What we found is for sure 22:55 we already have enough anecdotal evidence to say we can see slowing. 22:58 That's the first thing. 23:00 And we've seen a lot of good evidence of stopping. 23:03 And then reversing takes longer. 23:06 So these mini intensives that we do, we may need to do 23:09 more than one or several, which is part of our program 23:13 to dig into the deeper area where there's been even more insult. 23:17 And like Dale Bradford has found, is that if someone is right 23:22 on the edge of at risk or early stage, that's when we've seen the greatest shift. 23:28 As in, it's kind of like with kids with autism, right? 23:30 You know, when someone's on the spectrum in their high functioning, 23:33 you're going to see a better change as they're further along. 23:36 It's a little harder. 23:37 But we've been even found that people in mid-stage going to later, 23:41 we found improvement and improved quality of life. 23:45 So we're kind of like practically monitoring to see what stage you're at. 23:50 And if somebody does have high numbers, especially with all seeing markers, we say 23:54 this is something, 23:56 you know, we don't want to dally, you know, 23:57 we want to have time to kind of more aggressively show it. 24:00 But we have seen definitely slowing stopping. 24:04 And depending on the stage where people are at, 24:07 we've seen more and more improvement. 24:09 And like Heather Sanderson has found and, you know, in her clinic 24:12 and I work with a lot of these folks that I've been talking on. 24:15 So it's like this is that, hey, if we can do something 24:19 to change even inflammation and diet that's going to complement 24:22 and improve our numbers with people using manual therapy as well. 24:26 Wonderful. 24:28 Well, Mike, 24:28 I know this is the very 24:29 beginning of our relationship and I look forward to what's next. 24:32 I've already got lots of ideas for synergy and partnership here, 24:35 so thank you very much for being part of the summit. 24:38 And thanks for your support. 24:39 And, we're really excited to build these health centers in the future. 24:44 And I think, the Emmanuel therapy could be at the middle of it. 24:46 So thank you so much for tuning in. 24:48 Throughout the summit. We're going to have great speakers. 24:50 We got more information here coming up today. 24:53 If this interview inspired you, 24:55 make sure to send it out to people who might want to be on the path towards 24:58 becoming a practitioner, so might want to throw this into their, their regimen. 25:03 Thanks so much for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. 25:05 All right. Thank you so much.
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