Dementia Isn’t Inevitable: How Lifestyle and the Nervous System Protect the Brain

Introduction and Dementia Overview 0:00

Hey everybody, Dr. Rob Silverman here. I'm excited I've got Dr Clint Steele. He's a Dr Arthur speaker. and a dimension brain health specialist with over 30 years of experience. He has over 2 million social media followers. he has several Amazon bestselling books, and he's going to shed the light on dementia, Alzheimer's, the nervous system. I'm happy I am ready for this beautiful give and take. Good morning, good afternoon, Good evening, Dr. Steele. It's a good after noon here. Yes. good to see you, man.

Super excited to be on here You do great work and so I am honored to be on your show. I'm happy to have you. Looking forward to you shedding that light like I said on dementia. Let me give the viewers some information. Dementia is a progressive decline in mental abilities. Many neurodegenerative diseases are associated with dementia. Dementia affects over 57 million people worldwide, 10 million new cases annually, roughly one every three seconds. Ooh. In the US, 6.1 million older adults have dementia, risk rises sharply with age, 42%, lifetime risk for Americans over 55. The global economy costs $1.3 trillion annually.

And dementia is not a normal part of aging. Well, if it's not normal, part aging, what is going on? It's a brain that's degenerating, man. Like, you know, those are all, scary numbers. But here's the thing. If you sit down and you look at this and say to yourself, okay, well, Let's figure out why, you said 42% risk of Alzheimer's or dementia after the age of 55. Well, what are the 55% or 56% doing that are not getting there, right? Great question. That's what we got to look at, we've got stop looking at these numbers and think, oh, my grandfather had it or my grandmother had and my mom had, so that means I'm going to get it.

No, We're going shed some light on this. Yeah, well, genes are not your destiny. They load the gun, but they don't fire the. And, you know, we had a conversation before I came on, and you said some really interesting things about that. Not to steal your thunder. Let it rip. Well, I love this, man, because here's the thing. As we move into this doc, i want to make sure that this is not a competition. This is. Me versus their neurologist, me versus. Their medical doctor, versus, their family member.

Right. I want them to be able to logically think through this stuff. And so when it comes to genetics, one of the lies that I talk about in my book is, if you have the gene, you're going to get the disease. It's a lie. Here's the proof. I'm going go through three different scenarios here to to logically prove this to you. Number one is that geneticists state that 20% of world's population have a gene for dementia, at least one gene. 20%. And so if you consider we have 8.1 billion people in the world, 20% of that is 1.6 billion with a B that should have dementia,

Genes vs Lifestyle in Dementia Risk 3:00

right? If it's due to genes. Well, okay, let's take out 50% percent of those people because they're under the age of 40. But we're still looking at over 600 million people that should have dementia if it was due to genes, right? And as you just stated, that's not even close to the case. Now, it's still way too many, but we are talking about 50 million. We're talking less than 10%. That's number one. Number two, and I love these studies that involve twins right right exactly we're talking identical twins because they have the exact same genes and never doc never ever whether it's a cancer study whether its a cardiovascular study or whether a dementia study never before have we seen 100% of these twins both getting the same disease never okay in fact what we see when it comes to dementia there was a great identical twin study that showed the twin with the stronger legs was less likely to get dementia.

You're like, wait a second, what do you mean? What is strong legs? That's right. Like, like guys, that gives you a hint, right? It comes down to lifestyle. And that brings us to the third logical scenario, and that is the human genome study. That was done from 1990 to 2002, 12 years. There's governments all over the world, medical universities all you know walks of life and what they found in this 12 year study what you alluded to earlier was that genes do not cause disease something has to turn that gene on and that something is your environment aka your lifestyle beautiful we're done let's go home drop the mic environment I mean, when you look at these neurodegenerative diseases, which all again have associations of dementia.

So for instance, Parkinson's has 50 to 80% dementia, I know that's a wide range. High number also in Alzheimer's, you're right, they're all environmentally driven, certainly Parkinson. You know, you have about 125% increase in Parkinson's if you live within a mile of a golf course. That's crazy. Is that nuts or what? I don't play golf, but I live near a Golf Course. So look what's going on. It is crazy! I remember one time I was playing golf. I didn't I played golf a lot. Played maybe a couple of times a year.

But I remembered I out on the golf Course and I standing with a buddy and we looked up and there's some electrical wires there and they were just buzzing. Just buzzing, right? And like we're literally there is a house probably 20 yards from us, right? And we're standing right underneath this. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? Right? Like most people, maybe they don't think about that, but guys, this is not good for you, obviously. No, without question. In that twin study, we talk a lot about muscle mass.

Muscle mass is the longevity organ, and we build from there. But muscle, mass, the reason it's a longevity, organ and it helps with avoiding dementia is it is literally an endocrine organ. So it allows you to dispose and dispense of glucose, which many instances have been seen in the sign of increased dementia. Absolutely. And there's a couple of different studies. I mean, all muscle matters, but specifically we're talking leg strength and then also, I'm sorry, what'd you say? I said muscle matter.

Maybe we got a book. Yeah, muscle does matter, right? Absolutely, especially around leg, strength, and grip strength. Interestingly enough, and so the way I explain to people and I tend to simplify this maybe too much so But I like for people to understand like listen if your brain and this all comes down to stress by the Way stress when your Brain is stuck in survival mode And so survival Mode is when the fire alarm goes off you your? Brain says hey, I got a survivor the Bears chasing you right I gotta survive and So think about it this way if I have weak leg muscles and How fast can I run?

How am I going to be able to climb the stairs or get down the steps in order for me to escape the burning building?

Environmental Triggers and Muscle Health 7:00

Same thing with grip strength. If I can't carry my food, if I cannot open up stuff, I cant rip apart a carcass and be to carve this, get the meat out of this. Think about way back. But your brain says, wow, that stresses me out. We're not going to be able to eat, we're going not to survive. And so that's kind of the simplified way for me to think about it and explain that to patients. Excellent metaphor. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Let me give you some more numbers. Between 2013 and 2017, researchers found 143% increase in diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer's between the ages of 55 and 64. 311% increased in diagnoses ages 45 to 54. 373 percent increase and diagnosis ages 30 to 44. Youngest person Alzheimer is 24. What happened to our environment?

How did my dad miss it? And we're susceptible to it. Exactly. You know, I don't love those numbers because they're sad, but they serve a purpose, right? Right. We're seeing close to a 400% increase in dementia cases between the age of 30 and 45. It used to be, oh, i don' have to worry about dementia. That's for 70 year olds or 80 year old, Well, what's happening is this and I go back to the stress word. Okay. And when I say stress guys, I'm talking emotional stress, which most people think of, but I am also talking chemical stress.

I also talk in physical stress not moving our bodies enough or properly, right? Eating too much sugar, alcohol, too many, uh, ultra processed foods. Right? And so what happens is, this understand that dementia takes 20, 25 years to occur. So if you're talking to 30 year old, His brain or her brain started degenerating at age 10. Well, how do we know it was degenerated, right? Well we see early signs. Okay, doc, for years, I was known as the anxiety doc because I would have five and six and seven year olds coming into my office with anxiety.

They were on one and two anxiety meds. And I able to, through lifestyle, get them off those med, to get rid of their anxiety, but you consider that now we have Teenagers, easily teenagers, once they're in junior high or high school, for sure, depression, anxiety, focus problems. We are now in elementary school. And what happens is this is a sign. This is your brain saying, hey, I've got a problem. Guys, like, let's fix this. Instead, what happened is we, number one, ignore it. Or number two, we cover it up with medications, right?

Allowing the brain to continue to degenerate because this a side that your brains is dysregulated. It's not functioning properly. And so what happens as that brain continues to dysregulate, it starts to degenerate at some point. And so over 20 years, so by the time these people are nine, 10, 20, years later, we're talking 30, 35, 40 years old, now they've got dementia. And that's how it happens. It's a 20 year long process and our brain is telling us we've a problem 20 before that, but we are ignoring it.

So we got to stop ignoring that stuff. To piggyback on what you just said, there are tests for Alzheimer's that will tell you, as you said Portend Alzheimer's 20 years in advance. The problem is people aren't taking them. They're waiting to this because we live in a symptom based medical society. So once you have it and you're forgetting where your keys are, it's not too late. but it's advanced. So let me ask you, you made some really great statements where you believe for cognitive decline, and you can stop it, stop the degeneration, put the fire out and reverse it.

Talk about some of the cases and some the things you've done. Yeah, I'll just share my very first case. There's a lady that came in 80 years old. She had been suffering from anxiety, depression, she had high blood pressure and she arthritis, right? Inflammation of their joints, which is another sign that you got a brain problem. In addition, she had just been diagnosed with early onset dementia. She comes in at the time, now this is about six years after my grandmother had died of dementia and I'm like, no one should have to die like this and no family members should watch their loved ones suffer and die.

Six years later, after I watched my grandmother die, this lady comes into my office and she's suffering from all that stuff. She walks in. During the day one, she is forgetting what she was talking about in the middle of a sentence. In addition, her husband had to remind her of her kids' names many times. And so I told him, I said, listen, i've never cared for anyone with dementia. I say, but I take care of anxiety and depression and blood pressure issues and arthritis all the time, right? Just through lifestyle changes.

And they said okay, let's do that. Let's see where this goes. For sure, what happened six weeks, eight weeks later, anxiety or depression or high blood What we didn't know and what I was kind of a surprise was her

Early Warning Signs and Rapid Cognitive Decline 12:00

personality started coming back, her memory started to come back. At six months, we redid her MOCA score. She went from a score of six out of 30, which for those of you that are familiar with MOCAs called Montreal Cognitive Assessment, ideally should be between 26 and 30. Right. which is severe cognitive decline. Guys in six months, we jumped her from six to 17 out of 30, which has unheard of just through lifestyle changes at that six month mark. Her husband walked in, gave me a hug and said, thank you.

You've given me my wife back. We have a photograph of her two years later at her 82nd birthday, going out to dinner with her kids, uh, go into the fair with their husband the day before her daughter sent me a message that night and said, thank you so much. Like, I don't know if we'd have our mom right now, if it wasn't for you, you know, being able to do this stuff with right. And, and so that's just one story. I mean, have numerous, so many stories. It's unbelievable. But the point is guys, And I'm not, not bragging here.

Not, want this to come off as, as a braggart, but, I want people to know that if you change your lifestyle, if change you brain and you take it from degenerating to regenerating. There's a good possibility we can reverse a lot of these things, right? And we call that neuroplasticity, the reneurons, and there's five different types, but for us, we'll keep it real simple. There is maladaptive and adaptive neuro plasticity. Obviously, you flick the switch in somebody's brain going from maladptive to adaptive, neuro-plisticity via lifestyle.

Thank you for bringing that up, because I talk about this a lot. A lot of people think that neuroplasticity is a good thing, and it's not good or bad, it just is. It just means that your brain is moldable, right? And it is going to change. And so what I tell patients is this. Listen, if your brains is degenerating at this level and only regenerating this at level, we've got a problem. If this was a scale, then we'd be degenerated. So what we got to do is we have to stop the degeneration or slow it down.

We've got to increase the regeneration so we can flip that switch. And when we do that, amazing things happen. Let's get into the flipping of some switches. let's talk about microglial. Dr. David Perlmutter is coming out with a book, I think it's the summer. It's on microglial activation, you know, and he is a luminary in the field of functional medicine, functional neurology. That said, we've got these micro glials, which are the glial cells which clean things up in brain. When they're called an M1, they are pro-inflammatory.

when they were in M2, their anti- inflammatory. You are also flicking that switch. So they not working as pro inflammatory glia cells. They're working is anti inflammatory cells, outstanding. Exactly. And great. Thank you for leading into that because here's one of the things I get from people is, you know, I talk about stress, people come back and they say, well, no, it's due to inflammation, right? And so we get a lot of docs that say it is due inflammation. Well, my response is well what caused the inflammation?

Something has to cause the information guys, because your brain, if I ask you one simple question, what coordinates every function in your body, brain and nervous system, And so at some level, yeah, for sure we've got our gut brain, we got a heart brain. Every cell, you know, kind of is allowed to function on its own. But at level all of these, everything has to communicate back to the brain so the can determine what we're going to do system-wide. Right. And so that comes down to if the brain is overstressed, it's going to move into an inflammatory state.

Inflammation in the body means inflammation in a brain. That means brain degeneration. Whatever duty you got, you do to your brain, whatever duty brain you duty got. You can really delve into that. But I want to give you like some what I call high yield host prompts. It used to be called rapid fire. I changed it for you. Oh, you changed. It. All right. For you, Dr. Steele, I knew I had what I have coming on and this guy was going to rapid firing. Knowledge bombs will be flying. What break first, the brain or the nervous system regulating it?

It's a combo. The brain perceives at times, but also the system perceiving through touch that feeds back to the So it's a combination. I'd say one or the other. It's okay. The brain's part of the central nervous system. There's not much of a difference. Why do some patients decline rapidly while others remain resident and resilient despite risk? Well, it comes down to adaptability. How well can your brain adapt to and recover from stress? And so we've got to start talking about the stress load, allostasis it's called.

Most people know about homeostases. It's the ability for the brain and nervous system to maintain balance. But what people don't talk about is something called allosthasis. And this term wasn't invented till the late 1980s. What it is, is it the abilities for brain or nervous to adjust to stress and then recover once that stress is gone. Because homeostasis, when the fire alarm goes off, hopefully is very different than homeo stasis when you're laying down to go to bed, right? Very different homeos static pattern there.

And so that's called allostesis. So that what we've got to look at. We've gotta look the brain's ability to adapt. and we saw this during COVID. This was huge. During COVID, people would get this infection. They would they would, they get, this and when their brain couldn't adapt to that added layer of stress, That's when we saw big problems, right? And a lot of people died because their brain couldn't adapt to that and then recover once that was over. Well, long COVID is based on damage to a dysfunctional mitochondria.

Number one mitochondrial organ in your body is your brain, yada, yaada. Where is the clinical window where intervention still changes the trajectory? You know, I've seen it as far, you know. I just told you about that 80-year-old that had, she scored six out of 30 on her MOCA score. And so I've seen it pretty advanced, but I have seen get to the point where when someone is not cognizant enough to be able to do the things,

Reversing Decline with Lifestyle and Neuroplasticity 18:00

a lot of times we don't see that reverse. So it's tough. And what I want to focus on that question is, guys, start taking care of your brain early. Stop waiting. If you see early signs, and this is especially men, women too, what happens is that People, you talked about the blood test earlier that shows 20 years in advance. You can see whether or not you've got amyloid plaques in your blood, et cetera, if you have a genetic test. And some people don't want to get that done because they think, well, If I have it, and if there's a high risk, then there is nothing I can do about it.

But that's lie. And so stop believing that. Let's figure out what we have going on now so that we can get on top of this ASAP and take care of as soon as possible, as early as And for neurofilament light, I do use it in the office because sometimes patients need to see as opposed to just believe. Exactly. What do most practitioners miss when trying to support cognitive health? I think most practitioner's miss the emotional piece, right? Uh, i think especially functional med docs are docs. They're great with, with the chemical overload, changing diet, you know, um, taking care of hormones, et cetera.

in addition to exercise. But I think one of the things that most people miss is the emotional aspect of this. And the reason that's so important is because I have this come all the time and you probably have had the same thing. I had a chiropractor friend of mine a few years ago died of cancer and they said, I don't get it, right? This guy like eats healthy as anything like exercises regularly. And I just come back and the one thing we don't know is what's going on in their head, right? Right. Because if they have, they usually it's subconscious.

It's a subconscious limiting belief that is causing them stress, when they believe that they're not good enough or they are not worthy or not deserving or something's wrong with them at a sub-conscious level, which goes back to like before the age of 10, usually happens before age 10 and that's kind of ingrained, it is called the neurosynaptic pathway. That's going to create stress, right? You, you see the environment as stressful. Something happens over here. I'm stressed out about that because it proves to me that I am not good enough or you know, I don't have enough money to pay the bills.

That proves that see something's wrong with me because I can't make enough. Money that stresses me out. When you're stressed emotionally, that moves you into survival mode, brain degeneration. One of the questions I ask and I'll ask your, your audiences, and as came across this again yesterday, crazy. And I asked the question, do you love yourself? Do you love yourself? Good question. Many, many times the answer is no. And so the next question is why? Why don't you? Love yourself. In this lady, she said, because of rejection.

I said what your rejection of what? She's a rejection on myself. Why? why are you rejecting yourself because I feel like I'm a failure. Is that true? I say, when was that first time that that thought came to you. She says first grade. I was, I, was reading, now was asked to stand up in front of class and read to the class. And I messed up reading and everyone laughed at me. At that point, and I felt like I. I said, that's been my whole life, everything, all this stuff happens. Then I feel like, failure.

Well, here's the truth. Are you a failure? Because if, if I might be going too long on this doc, If I am stop me, but you know, there's, There's a way to, to work that out is if you are at a negative vibration, you're out of, sync with source. You're out of flow with God. Because God doesn't see you as a failure. And so the truth is, I'm not a fail. I am a success. But then we've got to prove it. We've gotta prove that. So I said, is there anything that you're successful? And she started crying.

She said I raised three amazing kids by myself. That's okay. There you go. oh what's going on she says these are tears of joy because that proves to me that i am success i'm not a failure right we can go through the list of more things that she was successful at sorry i went kind of long on that one no no the answer is emotional stress without question i think the emotional slash mental stress is the most deleterious symptom that we could fight you know my mom who used to say with her high school education physical stress but there's nothing worse than mental stress.

And yeah, amen to that. 19.1% of Americans suffer from anxiety, 18.7, depression. I mean, that's about 39%. That's four out of 10 people walking down the street. The interesting thing about the mental health symptoms, they are the number one set of symptoms that decrease when you remove a food sensitivity. That's part of our environment, food, because food is a potentiator for conversation with the outside world, both health and, unfortunately, inflammation. So we're both chiropractors. The central nervous system is the driver.

Where does spinal manipulation come into driving nervous system health. Well, the way it comes in and there's a lot of research coming out on this lately, right? And by the, for those of you watching, you know, chiropractic was never meant to be a neck and low back pain profession, unfortunately became one, but over a hundred years ago, Chiropractic profession started with an adjustment that restored a man's hearing. It had nothing to do with, with pain, And so now what we're seeing is that the science is starting to catch up with it.

And we talked a little bit about this last time. I'll just go into this real quick. You've got something called Golgi muscle tendon fibers. These are muscle fibers, joint fibers that communicate with the brain immediately. So the brains knows what's going on in that joint and that muscle, et cetera. The highest percentage of these fibers per ounce of body weight are in the eyes. The reason it's so important is because when we can't move our eyes laterally and see what's going on over there or over,

Stress, Emotions, and Brain Regulation 24:00

that stresses out our brain. That affects that communication from these muscles to the brain, our brains begin to degenerate. It says, hey, I can see over here, it kind of scares me, and it stresses me out, boom. The second highest is in the spine, especially the upper cervical spine. And so when those joints are not functioning properly, just like your eyes aren't functioning, properly moving properly. That's going to cause stress. Same thing happens to your spinal joints. When your Spinal joints can't communicate with your brain properly that stresses out your Brain.

And So what we see is when you've got a restricted joint, you got to subluxated joint. we move that joint properly, okay, we get it moving properly. Now the communication from that join to the brain starts to happen. The brain says, Oh, I love this. I loved this, right? Great. And when your brain loves, when you're brain feels good, feels safe. It moves from degeneration to regeneration. You know, I I'm a chiropractor. Everybody knows that. And I guess I am not a straight philosophical traditional charypracter.

But when I was doing a lot of musculoskeletal elements, it was full body because the body is all interconnected. It's like the circuitry on a Christmas tree. If that circuit tree is working well, the whole Christmas trees lights up and it looks beautiful. It's just not working at optimum rate. Now, we'll give you some rapid fire. Crossword puzzles, are they helpful or overstated? I think a lot of times they're overstating. I find if you wanna do them, absolutely. But what I found is this, for example, I had a lady, she was doing crossword puzzle three hours a day from New Jersey, right?

She's 60 something, starting to show cognitive decline. She was cross word puzzles three hour a days. And I asked her to count backwards from 50 to one, She couldn't do it. So what should she be working on, guys? So yeah, there are parts of the brain that are going to be stimulated when you do crossword puzzles, but guys, that's not the end all be all. We've got to find out what the weakness is. What the problems are, and then we start focusing in on those. The brain has to adapt to that and be able to correspond to it first.

And so a lot of times there's a layer of stuff that we do before we get into the cognitive exercises. which reels in them. Second question is what's your best daily brain stimulus? Oh my gosh. So many, so many. I could go on and on. Give me one that we've been doing today other than podcasting with each other. That I've done today? Yeah. Well, here's the thing. On 20 things I did within the first 10 minutes of waking up, right? So one is before I even get out of bed, I focus on things that make me feel good about my life, things I set intentions, today is a great day.

Today is an amazing day that sets an intention for my brain to start seeing good things. It allows my to feel safe and secure. Then I go in and brush my teeth. I do some mirror work. And I say, Clint, I love you, man. You're amazing. So I look at myself in the eye. Brush my tooth with a bamboo toothbrush. No plastic. None of that junk. Don't use the traditional fluoride toothpaste either. I make sure I get 8 to 10 ounces of water within the first 10 minutes. I balance on one foot while I'm brushing my teeth.

Uh, I go outside, get some sunshine. Like guys, this is all stuff you should be doing within 10, 15, 20 minutes of waking up. Right? So it's all about you for the 1st 15 minutes to hour about waking, getting yourself set and reset in your environment. It's about my brain. It's about my brain. Because when you start thinking about this, and I want listeners to really take this in, everything that you do in your day either moves your brain in the wrong direction towards degeneration or moves you brain, in a right way, towards regeneration.

If you can do enough, if you could do more stuff to regenerate your brain, then degenerate. Your brain. You're going to move in the right direction. So everything you do, you've got to ask yourself, is this degenerating my brain or regenerating? My brain? I know you adhere to the concept of testing and not guessing, maybe not genetic tests because of the numbers that you spoke, which is very insightful to me, but the idea of a metric to track for brain longevity. What would you use? I like to use simple things.

You might be thinking a lab test or something like that. Yeah, those are great. Here's what I, here's, what, I'd like, right. I liked to measure balance. How long can you balance on one foot, both feet with eyes open, eyes closed? Can you do it? How Long? Because ultimately guys, when, we start seeing, especially when we started seeing late progression, like I shouldn't say late, but more advanced progression of dementia and Alzheimer's we've got to take these these objective measures, and we got to turn them into wins.

So if someone can only balance on one foot for three seconds with eyes open, but two weeks later, it's at six seconds, that's a win, right? Counting backwards from 10 to one, counting backwards, from 100 to 1 in under 60 seconds. If that is too easy, you go by threes. if that too is you, go buy sevens. Count doing the alphabet backwards in, under sixty seconds like these are easy things that you can measure from an objective standpoint. that you can say, okay, in three weeks from now, let's see if I'm getting better.

Yeah, I get better or no, not getting any better? Can you breathe properly? Like we could go on and on, but I like stuff that people can do at home that are easy, that's easy to do. Grip strength, another huge one that can test, right? Leg strength. There's numerous leg tests that we can get up out of a chair. How many times can you do it in 30 seconds? These are the things that I think are really beneficial for people to be able to track. training and balance determination is maybe the leading marker now for longevity.

And part of longevity is trying to avoid dementia.

Chiropractic, Balance, and Nervous System Health 30:00

So I wholeheartedly agree with you. That's interesting. You spoke about brushing your teeth, and of course you talked about using an organic natural toothpaste, not the one with fluoride and all the chemicals like triclosan. 75% of people use tricosan and have a gut issue. Damage your gut, you damage your brain, there you have it. It's part your environment. But you're standing on one leg and brushing your teeth, you are working the opposite side and you try to sync. When you talk about balance, I know you mean to also refer to the idea of the balance between the left and the right hemispheres of your brain, brain balancing, cerebellum and stuff like that.

So now it's teed up, you get to play golf. Go for it, buddy. Yeah, that's super important, right? Like, yeah, to your point, I was talking about just balance on one foot. But yeah. We want the balance in the brain. And we want to be able to just switch back and forth. That's part of the, you know, the whole degeneration process when your brain can't adapt and can can do that. And so some of things we'll do on balance on one foot, we will do cross body movements, or we have someone throw a ball at you and catch that we do a number of different things.

We can talk about, people, for example, I have one gentleman that he is amazing when it comes to anything artistic, right? He can play the guitar, he can sing, remember songs, no problem. You give him a math equation, a basic, this is a 50-year-old man, you give them a first grade math equations, they can't do it. Right? So that's the stuff that we've got to be able to balance as well, be to work both sides of the brain 100%. You have used an expression called exercise for health. I'm going to expand that and say exercise.

For brain health, what exercises do you like most and how often and does women's exercise program differ from a man's So I think strength training is super important. And a lot of people don't equate that, right? Strength training to brain health, but I that's super-important. I really love slow movement exercise, Tai Chi and Qi Gong and yoga, because yoga stretching as well, that all activates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps the brain move out of survival mode into healing mode, which is important for regeneration, your brain can't regenerate if it's stuck in survival, it can heal.

So I think those are important. I Think grip strength is super important, you know, for talking, we are we just talking physical exercise that we're talking walking is huge, right? There's so much research on walking guys, anywhere from 4000 to seven, 8000 steps a day, We've got to get those steps and we've gotta move our body. um so i don't know if we were talking just physical exercise or cognitive but those are some of the physical things right love it i i adhere to exactly what you said brain work so my friend came in he's 60 like i am and he said to me i'm learning a new language because that's a critical element you know he says that he is at a dilemma or predicament in his life because he doesn't what signs to look for in dementia slash Alzheimer's.

So help them out. What signs would you? Well, I think first off, people need to be aware, right, of what's going on with their body. Okay. And I this is the key. This is one of the keys is we're in a society where, man, we've got, you know, We've Got our phones buzzing. We got people over here. we got this news over Here we go. Like all this stuff going. I'm like, just slow down. Listen to your body, become aware of What's Going on your Body. Guys, our body's always talking to us. Our body is always Talking to Us.

What I tell people is you feel a little off. You feel little sluggish, you notice low energy. Uh, You notice you're not as sharp as you used to be, right? You can't remember people's names when you use to. Be able to, uh, your eyesight's getting bad. Your hearing is getting back. These are all brain problems, write your sleep. Super important guys. One of the first things that I see when someone has a brain problem is their sleep starts to go right high blood pressure, digestive issues, anxiety, depression.

Like these are early warning signs, that we need to watch for. I think things, and I'm going to, again, layer on to what you said. Number one, I agree, is sleep. I thinks sleep goes across the board with all kinds of conditions and diseases. And number two is stress. In number three is the movement. You can see when somebody's aged. Some people have gray hair, some people don't. some have blonde hair. This and that, the other thing. But how they move really depicts their age from the inside out.

Now, you're very animated. And I love it because I'm a New York guy and I loved animation. I loves passion. What drove you into this field? Cause we all have a why I did chiropractic cause I have torticollis and wanted to, you know, fix people the way I got fixed by a chiopractor. You know I had that epiphany at 21 years old. what drove into wanting to help people with dementia? Well, I think first it was my grandmother, uh, seeing her suffering and just, You now I walked into the room.

Exercise, Brain Training, and Daily Habits 35:00

She was in a memory assisted living facility and Walking into the room, she didn't know who I was a lot of times. She didn' know my mom was. And they were showing her flashcards of things like apples and very different fruits and the footballs and soccer balls. Do you know what this is? And she did not know. The next day, they would ask her again. I mean, come on, guys. This is it? This what they do? And so I remember seeing her pass away. I remembered one time I walk in and she didn't know who I was.

And she said, just get me out of here. Just can you take me fishing? She used to love to fish and it broke my heart. I don't know how to deal with dementia, but I can take care of the rest of this stuff. And lo and behold, as that happened, her dementia got better and I'm like, holy cow, I am onto something here, man. Like this is nuts. As I started looking to it, like I wasn't the only one, right? Dale Bredesen had already done a couple of research studies showing this by the time that I figured it out and didn't even know who he was, And so we've seen five research articles in the last five years showing that you can reverse the symptoms of dementia, right?

All with lifestyle. One, believe it or not, was at Harvard University, how many people heard about that study? Zero, zero. Like, this is crazy to me, right? It has been said in our side of the field that Alzheimer's slash dementia can be stopped and reversed. You're talking about Dale Bredesen. He has his recode. I'm going to give his supplemental protocol. Tell me if you like it. Or I know you liked the whole thing, but tell me If you want to add anything to any of these specific supplements. Number one, methylated B vitamins.

100%. Vitamin C. Vitamin D. Yes. K2. Resveratrol. Acetylalcarnitine. Coenzyme Q10. Omega-3 fatty acids. Yes. Curcumin. yes. Omega 3 fatty acid in the idea of pro-resolving mediators. Magnesium L-threonate. And I like magnesium glycinate too. Yeah, great stuff. Choline, which switches M1 to M2. Yeah. So people eat their eggs, acetylcholine in the eggs. Guys, let's go. I mean, the choline and the egg. Let's eat. Hooperzine, it has Pospatidylserine. Here's the thing is when I was working with this 80-year-old female who came in, I started looking up like, okay, what should I tell her to take?

And I start doing the research. Guys, there are I bet at least a hundred different things that you could take that have been proven to help improve brain function, help improved memory, helped protect the brain, helps cognitive function etc. And so what I did was I picked the top 10 that I found in the research and I put them into a one supplement, actually I added another one that has 11 ingredients in one. There's so many things. Mine's made in super hot. You want to know what else is hot for anti-inflammation?

You're going to laugh. Saffron. Oh, no, I don't laugh at that. I tell people to take saffron a lot, especially if they're depressed. But what we saw with saffron, saaffron worked better than medication and helping people that were on depressive medications already, right? Better with no side effects. Plus it also works better than one of the, I can't remember which one, but one the Alzheimer's drugs out there worked better. Yeah, we mentioned curcumin. Interestingly enough, the pro-resolving mediators doesn't get enough play because they are a fractionated fish oil that allows for the resolution of inflammation.

Supplements, Spices, and Light Therapy 39:00

Remember everybody, inflammation is a fire that burns. If you don't shut off the stove, it's going to light up all the other pilots. Ultimately, its going burn down your house. Pro Resolving Mediators is the timer to shut off the stove in that fire. That's awesome. Yeah, it's one of the ones I love to use. Let me throw in another one too. I've got something called the Dementia Prevention Spice Blend. My TikTok, my videos went viral on this, but basically it is turmeric which obviously contains curcumin, right, with a little bit of pepper in there, also cinnamon, and then also ginger.

And then we also throw in some cayenne pepper if you want, you don't have to. I mix it with little honey, I take a spoonful every day. There's research on every single one of those spices, eighth of a teaspoon a day, helps improve memory, cognitive function, it helps protect the brain, et cetera. So I'd take spoonfuls every, single day and people love that. That's why saffron is so hot now because they found the herb. We've known it for years. I was on a podcast and I asked a medical doctor and he said, look at me, Rob.

I am of Indian descent. We've known about saffron for centuries. And then what my staff members were saying in Spanish, come on, it's in the rice that we eat together. Something else I like to use for dementia and Alzheimer's is non-thermal, low-level laser class II. I found that to be tremendously effective to decrease the inflammation and allow the brain to rewire. It also allows for the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factors, which are the miracle grow of the neurons. I like that. I love using that for people that have had brain injuries too, especially, um, photobiomodulation, any kind of concussion or TBI injury.

Yeah. So I want my Dr. Clint steel crystal ball, I wanted him to look into that crystal bowl and tell me, Hey Rob, in five years, here's where we're going to be in reference to dementia.

Future Outlook and Oral Health 41:00

Well, and in 5 years I don't see the trajectory changing much honestly. Uh, but in 10 years uh, think people are going start to see light. I think more and more people are coming on board. We're starting to see this more testimonials, more research. Believe it or not, these five studies that I talked about, they've been done in the last five years. To my knowledge, at least, that they're still not teaching a medical school. They're not talking about a miracle school, right? I think the trajectory is gonna be a little bit longer than five years for this to be able to one of those things that we look back on in 20 years and say, wow, can you remember when people were dying from that, right?

And that'll be no longer. It might be the next generation, but I'm doing all that I can and I appreciate you having me on here to help Change that trajectory. Well, you're a leader in change the trajectory, I appreciate your time. This was fun, but what pops in my head when I do these is, no, some guests are great. Some guests aren't as good. Everybody tries. You were wonderful. And I kept saying, this is a podcast. because you're not afraid. You know, some people, I don't want to insult Rob. Don't worry.

I'm not here to slice you and spice you, and do all that kind of stuff. So it was a lot of fun. But there's just one thing I wanted to cover, because it an oversight on my part not to inquire on you. He talked about brushing your teeth. And it said to me, oral health. We know that gums, gingivitis, lead to a bacteria called gingivalis, which lead a destructive enzyme called ginger pans. which up the ante in a percentage of people with Alzheimer's, obviously dementia goes with this. Where is the oral microbiome gonna fall in the next 10 years in that crystal ball?

Well, I think it's gonna move up to the space where the gut microbiomes is now. A lot of the people becoming more and more aware of it and the importance of 100%. I agree. Well we gave him something to look forward to. It was my pleasure. Clint, we gotta do this again. Hope to see you at the upcoming symposiums. Thanks for your time.