How Everyday Chemicals Are Quietly Damaging Your Brain

Introduction to the Summit Interview 0:00

Hello and welcome to a very special interview today for the Reversing Alzheimer's Summit. I'm your summit host, Doctor Kristine Burke. Over the last decade, I've helped many patients reverse their cognitive decline. And in this summit, I'm bringing you interviews with thought leaders who can help you understand how you can prevent and reverse cognitive decline and Alzheimer's for yourself and your loved ones. I cannot wait to introduce you today to Laura Frontrow. She is the founder and CEO of Bio Radiant Health.

She's the creator of six online functional Medicine Health Summits, and has served thousands of patients in the clinic and virtual settings as a nurse practitioner over the last 25 years. Her focus is to solve the root cause of chronic health conditions by supporting cellular energy production, gut health, and detoxing the whole body. Her work in the health industry marries both traditional and functional medicine, and she's known by her community as the energy Lady. And who doesn't want boundless energy for themselves and their brain.

Laura, I am so happy to have this opportunity to speak with you today. Welcome. Thank you so much, Doctor Christine. It is a pleasure to be here. Thrilled to be a part of this. As you know, I hold you in the highest regard as far as doctors who really know how to support people with brain function and dementia and Alzheimer's. And so when you asked me to be a part of this, that was a huge compliment. So thank you. Absolutely. I'm really excited to have this conversation. So let's start out. Just tell me why you focus so heavily on prevention in your functional medicine practice.

I think this is the crux of it, right? Because we all want to prevent getting there. And we don't want dementia. We don't want Alzheimer's. And on that note, we also don't want cancer. And we don't want, you know, end stage heart disease. We don't want any of these things to happen. And unfortunately, the way that you prevent all of these things is really similar. But this is a dementia and Alzheimer's and brain talk today. So we're going to focus on that. You know, my focus on prevention really stems from the beginnings of my Western medicine career.

Why Prevention Matters in Functional Medicine 1:58

So I worked in Western medicine for one of the biggest HMOs in America for 21 years. And ironically, I worked in what we call a preventive medicine department for the first about eight years of my career. And we did what all Western practices do. We ordered tests that are considered prevention, and I use air quotes because later I learned they're actually not prevention tests. They're early detection tests. So we order, for example, mammography to prevent breast cancer. It's a prevention test right.

We do cervical cancer screening to prevent cervical cancer. We do we do laboratory evaluation. Of, you know, blood sugar and hemoglobin A1, c to prevent diabetes. We do PSA tests to prevent prostate cancer. But here's what I would ask you is, are we really preventing anything with those tests. Or are we just looking for early disease so we can catch it before it turns into chronic disease? Is difficult to treat? Once I realized that, I really wasn't practicing prevention at all. You can't unknow that.

Once you realize it, you can't un realize it. And truth be told that clinic did a lot of good work that I worked in. They were incredible and they also did not have enough time. We did not have enough time as a clinician to actually teach people how to truly prevent disease. For the most time that I had or the most I could actually say in a visit, because I had so many labs to review and so many diagnostic tests to order and review, that mostly all I could really suggest was, you know, make sure you're eating less and exercising more, and you're a little overweight and your blood sugar is a little funny.

But to really give them a true support in prevention is not something that we were actually doing in the Western medicine space. But all under the guise of prevention. We were ordering all this testing. And I mean, yeah, I mean, if you if you detect disease early, you can prevent a worsening of it. But I mean, in the, brain space in the, in the cognition and dementia and Alzheimer's space, I'm sure. Christine, you've got some good examples of things that are used for prevention that are truly only early diagnostic tests. Right?

Absolutely. I think I think a lot of what we do in conventional medicine is just early detection in the guise of prevention. We do the same thing with cholesterol. We do, you know, we do the same thing with diabetes. We're not preventing it by checking a blood sugar and waiting until the entire house is burnt down. Before we do something. So we're going to try and insurance classifies a lot of this stuff is preventive and therefore covered, you know, fully because it's a preventive exam or a preventive test.

But okay, so there's my soapbox about prevention and what the Western medicine is based is a truly great, prevention. And then as I started studying functional and integrative medicine and natural medicine, I realized that there was so much more to prevention. And it really starts at a cellular level. It's just it's a big topic. So we can we can get into how to truly prevent. Because I think everybody watching this right now is wanting to know how to either prevent it in themselves or how to help a loved one who already showing signs up.

Absolutely. So let's talk about what some of the root causes of chronic inflammatory health conditions are, even ones that are commonly missed in functional and integrative medicine. And this is truly where prevention starts, right? So if you can get it underneath and you can get into what's truly causing. And I think one of the ways I like to explain this is kind of a continuum of health. So, you know, many ways that that we can go about explaining this when you think about preventing disease, a lot of times practitioners will start with what I would call middle of the ladder or middle of the pyramid or middle of the stream.

So if you had a health pyramid where your goal was at the top, I want strong brain function, right? I want to I want prevent dementia, and I want to keep my cognition strong. My whole life. And that would be your goal. And then so the pyramid is laid out where here's the steps you need to take to reach that peak, that great brain cognition as you age at the very base is where these four main things are. But I want to talk about where people start kind of by mistake, and they'll start with looking at things like adrenal function, blood sugar function, thyroid function, hormone function, and all of those things are important.

But I would say there's a deeper root that's actually just regulating those things. If you have blood sugar dysregulation, if you have hormones that you just can't get into balance, if all these things are happening, what's under that? So a lot of practitioners classify those things I just labeled as the root cause or the root causes. Your blood sugars just regulate. Oh, the root causes your thyroid are the root causes. You need hormones, right? No. So we need to take it a step deeper. So if we go to the bottom of the pyramid, what's under that?

What's underneath the middle problems. So I will call all of those middle of the stream or middle of the pyramid problems underneath are truly four things that once I started focusing on these in my own practice, this is where people really, really started to get results. Now I will also make a disclaimer that everyone's results vary depending on genetics, depending on an accumulation of what we're about to talk about throughout a lifetime, depending on whether or not they're coachable and consistent with their lifestyle practices.

I mean, you've seen this in your practice that you'll make recommendations and people will start out the gate strong, and then they kind of fall off and cherry pick, well, I don't want to do this, but I'll do this and, you know, results maybe. Right. Sure. Right. So those four things and this is where everybody grab your pen and paper and write this down. Because these are the big four things that you should be focusing on in my humble opinion. So number one would be chronic infections in the body.

So well what do I mean by that. When we talk about infections we might think of I think people think of the gut. They think of it like diarrhea and like infections in the body.

The Four Root Causes of Chronic Disease 7:54

They may think sinus infections. They may think of like bladder infections, like where can infections live in the body. And the truth is they can live anywhere. And the categories of infections could vary widely from person to person. It could be bacterial infections, fungal infections, parasitic infections. It can be any combination of those. And they live far beyond the gut microbiome in the sinuses and the kind of the places where we feel like when we get sick, we go to the doctor to get an antibiotic for a sinuses or an antibiotic for our bowels, or whatever's happening, like diverticulitis, for example.

Right. You think of an infection in the bowels that gets out of control. They give antibiotics for it. But what actually where actually can all those things go? They can it can move right through the gut wall into the bloodstream and migrate. And we can get infections settling in in our lungs, in our joints, in our in our muscles, in our brain. They can really set up camp anywhere. So infections is the first thing. The second thing is toxins. And this is a huge topic that I'm sure you have people coming here to just talk about toxins.

If I'm guessing you've got a speaker just talking about toxins, I'm going to I'm going to refer to I'm going to tell everyone, make sure you listen to whoever's talking about toxins, and I'm going to give you some big categories of toxins. With toxins. We've got toxins in the air, toxins in the water, toxins in the food, toxins in products that we put on our body and on our skin, toxins in cleaning products that we use to keep our space. You know, spic and span and then toxins that are that we're cooking with in our kitchen.

Those are kind of the categories I would give. One more category would be the toxins that are just emitting from our living space. So I'll unpack some of that. So let's start backwards. So from our living space I'm talking about volatile organic compounds. This room that I'm in right now is quite empty because I'm going through a remodel. And we just painted these walls and I have brand new floors, and all of that is emitting volatile organic compounds. So right over there in the corner is an air purifier that's going 24 seven.

It's always on when I'm in this room and it's cranked up really high because it's loud when I'm not in this room. So it's going all the time because I am getting attacked by bowls, organic compounds as we speak. And even if your home has, even if you've been in your home for ten years, it could still be emitting these things from our furniture, from our flooring, from our paint from. And these are very toxic. I, you know, people think about, well, is it that big of a deal? I'm just breathing it.

Whoa. You guys, I want to remind you about what happens when you breathe something in. So what is the purpose of your lungs? Is to bring in oxygen to oxygenate the blood, which pumps back to your heart and out to your body. So whatever you're bringing in, and this is the reason we breathe, is to bring oxygen to the body. Everything else that's coming in with it is going to go right through the system. So every breath you take is being pumped all over your body. It's not just staying in some little filter like you don't have a Hepa filter in your lungs.

Walls are going to come back. So let's talk about I said I'd go backwards. So the other thing I mentioned was kitchen. I mean this is the forever chemicals, right? The PFOs, this is everything from what you're cooking with your cookware to the packaging that your food is coming to you from the store, all the cellophane and the plastic. And, you know, it's hard to find things in glass anymore. Right? I look for it like I want the glass jar of whatever thing I want to. I want to purchase, I want, I want vegetables and fruit that's free in bins, not wrapped in cellophane.

Trader Joe's is the biggest offender. If you have a Trader Joe's in your area, are you going there? And everything's like wrapped in plastic and you know, you get to buy you have to buy the package of three tomatoes, not just, you know, pick a tomato, right. All that plastic matters. And then the categories of products that we put on our skin, our hygiene products and our body products often have endocrine disrupting chemicals. I know somebody on here is going to talk a lot about that. So we'll just say that's a big category.

And then I mentioned that we're eating or drinking a lot of our toxins, and we're breathing from the outside air. I talked about volatile organic compounds inside. But outside we're being rained on in the atmosphere. We're being rained on with heavy metals, with herbicides and pesticides aerosolized. And I don't think people realize how many heavy metals were actually breathing it, and they think it just comes from eating big fish or amalgam fillings, or maybe a multi-dose vaccine that had mercury in it.

And then that's where metals come from, that we actually breathe a considerable amount and we drink a considerable amount. In fact, radioactive elements like uranium, radon, and these are gas in a gaseous form, but it's actually a heavy metal. It's the heaviest of metals. And we drink it. That's where it is. It's in our water source. So making sure that you have purified water, that's and a pure purification system that's not just rated for for heavy metals, but also radioactive elements is a really big deal.

So total soap box I could get on about that. But so those are the first two categories. The third category is nutrient deficiencies. And you know, we are well aware that farming practices in our country is depleted our soils. We're well aware that people don't eat a variety and diversity of food and that, you know, they kind of get stuck in a rut of eating the same five things and not having diversity. We know that people eat too much processed food. I mean, without a doubt. But also there's an issue with nutrient deficiencies that actually caused by those first two problems I just talked about.

So the nutrient the nutrient deficiencies are actually influenced by those infections and the toxins. And I'll unpack that really quick. So with the infections think about them skimming off the top. Your body is a host to these infections. They need nutrients to go through their own lifestyle and life cycle and thrive in your body. So they're going to steal nutrients from you as you ingest them. A great example would be iron depletion can be caused by parasites. People have this like I'm iron deficient and I can't figure it out.

All my tests are normal. My doctor says I just need to take iron the rest of my life. There could be a parasite that's skimming off the top and eating your iron. So that's just one example. And then the other problem is with these toxins that I just mentioned. They actually get into our cells. Cells have think of your cells having receptor sites to receive a nutrient. So almost like a catcher's mitt. So you're eating all this healthy food. Let's say you're really conscientious. You're eating you know, your your diversity and variety and you're eating organic and, you know, grass fed and wild caught all the things.

And so you have all this beautiful food coming in. And if your cells can't receive the nutrients, you can't utilize them. So those catcher's mitts I'm talking about on the outside of cells, they get blocked by toxins. So instead of catching a nutrient, it's catching a heavy metal. Or it's catching a that later it's catching a herbicide or a pesticide, and it's blocking that receptor for the, for the nutrients to get into the cell. So what I essentially just told you is that the first two problems, infections and toxins create nutrient deficiencies.

And this is something I'm really passionate about because I've seen so many practitioners are like, we're just going to run a nutrient test on you, and we're going to give you a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals and supplements because you need that your body's cells. But they're not solving this stuff. So now you're on this hamster wheel of needing these supplements the rest of your life because you haven't cleared the toxin out of the catcher's mitt. Exactly. I know I often tell people, if you have a list of supplements, that's as long as your arm, you have an unresolved toxin issue.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know, when, when, when I'm working with people, we're going through gut and detox protocols and sometimes people get stuck in detoxification. I say, okay, let's run some nutrient panels to see, because sometimes replacing those nutrients are going to help. So, you know, a list of nutrient replacements in a certain period of your protocol, then your healing process is fine, but not forever. You shouldn't need it forever unless you have a genetic reason why. Like if you can't methylation, maybe you need to be on certain forms of methylated B vitamins the rest of your life.

Yes, that's a that's a that's a true statement. But you may not need to be on this long list of all these antioxidants and all these amino acids and all these fat soluble in water soluble vitamins and all the things. So okay, there's four things. Memorize those four things. So first was infection. Second was toxins. Third was nutrient deficiencies. Fourth stress and trauma stress and trauma. All the way. I know you have a stress and trauma person coming here to talk. You must you cannot talk about brain dysfunction, dementia or Alzheimer's without covering this topic.

So good. You got somebody. Now this is okay. This is big. So what I'll just say about this is Western treatments for trauma and stress are ineffective. So mostly it's either talk therapy or it's up pill to alter, you know, brain neurotransmitters. And neither of those things truly solve the problem. The traumas and traumas that we've had to take, trauma, the trauma that we've had throughout a lifetime, imprints into our body and creates a physical imprint and a physical symptom. And that's not going to be solved with most medications or talk therapy.

There's other modalities of clearing trauma from the body where you don't have to relive it, and your body can create brand new neural pathways. And you can you can really heal the physical imprint that it's had on the body. And then secondly, I would say stress, just the stress of our life, right? The stress of our life. It really does prohibit us from being able to heal well. And we must, we must we must incorporate stress reducing activities, whatever that is for you. And however you can bring it into your life.

Like for me. For me, it's really about sticking with I. I hate to work out so much, I hate it. I'm like, I'll be the first to say I hate doing it. So I actually in order to do it, I hire a trainer who physically trains me over zoom or face to face. We do it either way, but that is actually a stress relief for me. It is a tremendous stress relief for me, and I must carve out the time to do that at least three days a week, as much as I dislike it. So I'm saying sometimes the stress reducing activities are things you don't really enjoy.

I I've never once regretted doing it. I've never once got to the other side of a workout and said, well, I wish I didn't do that today, but to get the motivation to do it is very difficult for me. I don't enjoy it. Some people love it, right, I so that's a stress free reducing activity for me. So is taking small little ten minute brain breaks throughout the day. So for me it's also reading scripture. It's also going to church. Like these are all stress relieving. Fill my cup. Let go. You know, don't let all that imprint on to me and hold it.

So we do need to reduce stress because it is going to affect brain health.

Gut-Brain Connection and Early Warning Signs 18:38

So those are my big four. And those are the things that were never what we discussed when I worked in preventive medicine in the Western space. Never once did we go searching for hidden infections in people's bodies. Never once did we truly do a deep, deep review of toxic exposures and find toxins in people's. But I you know, I left out mold toxins. I should have talked about that one, too. There was never no such thing as check for mycotoxins in the in the Western medicine space. So the toxin piece, we never looked for it or talked about it.

Never once out of my mouth did I say to people, have you thought about changing your cleaning products or your shampoo, or your toothpaste or your deodorant? And, you know, in terms of nutrient deficiencies, there's a few panels that we run in Western medicine. We might look at your magnesium potassium level or your iron level, but we're really not getting to the root. And really only looking at what's circulating in the bloodstream. We're not actually looking at tissue measurements of these of these nutrients.

So we're really not telling you what your cellular need is. We're really just telling you what's being shuttled around the bloodstream. Your body's moving nutrients to get it to the brain, to get it to the liver, to get it to the lungs. But it's not the true nutrient need of the body. And that may be like a huge kind of moment for some of our viewers as well. It's like, what do you mean, my magnesium level? And my doctor doesn't tell me how much magnesium I need. I can have a completely normal magnesium level and a high need for it that you never see with a blood test.

Absolutely. And we know that because magnesium is so tightly controlled by the body, because it's so important, and so you don't get to see what's missing from the cells, because the body will take it from the cells to be able to transport it where it's urgently needed. So we have this false sense of security. And that's such a great example. Magnesium is yes, I always use magnesium as an example, because I can't tell you how many magnesium tests I ran that were normal. And so as functional practitioners that almost you I run a lot of organic acids tests on people.

And I honestly in the last year I've probably ran like a thousand of them and I can't think of a single person that had a normal knee and normal magnesium need, like they were sufficiently filled up with it every person needs it. Yeah. Well, you mentioned earlier, right, the depletion of the nutrients from our soil and from our farming. And, you know, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a report on that about once a decade. And you can watch literally from 1960s, 1970s, 80s, you know, 2000 now, I think the most recent one might have been in 2012 because that Covid pandemic slowed it down.

But you just watch and, you know, magnesium was one of them. It dropped by like 80 something percent. I think if I'm remembering correctly, in cherries, that was just an example of it. But our food has less nutrient content now. You know, I'm I have to say, back when I worked in Western space, I can't tell people how many. I can't tell you how many times a patient would ask me because I worked in a bone clinic for a lot of my career, and a patient would ask me, should I be taking magnesium replacement magnesium supplements?

And I can't tell you how many times I said no. There's only two people in developed countries that are deficient in magnesium alcoholics, alcoholics, and people who just simply aren't eating people with eating disorders. And I was so wrong. I was so wrong. Yeah, yeah. Because you check the blood level, and the blood level says that it's normal. Well, and also, like you mentioned at the beginning, in conventional medicine, we're looking to diagnose a disease state. When we do lab tests, we're not looking to identify early changes of dysfunction.

So we're just we're you know, we're ordering a magnesium test and then being satisfied with that result without thinking about or looking into what this actual cellular need is. Yeah, exactly. So once I realize those four underlying things are actually causing the hormone dysregulation, they're causing the cholesterol imbalances, they're causing the thyroid dysregulation. They're causing the adrenal dysfunction. They're causing, you know, all of these kind of middle of the road, the blood sugar dysregulation, all of it, all the metabolic stuff is actually being caused by deeper problems.

And, and once you grasp that and you realize, like, this is where you need to start to actually solve chronic disease, I mean, this now makes it doable, right? Like now you've got something to work with here. You're not going to be spinning your wheels trying to replace hormones the rest of your life, trying to, you know, get that, catch that thyroid or catch that blood sugar that you can't seem to get regulated. Yeah, I think we do spend a lot of time chasing those things and not paying attention to the actual roots.

So what do you think our viewers should be looking for or asking about? If they're looking for a functional medicine practitioner to help them prevent or solve the root causes, inflammatory diseases. Right. And, and whether no matter what you're looking for, if you're if you're in the market looking for a dementia doctor or you're in the market, you know, looking for a heart doctor, or you're in the market looking for, oh my gosh, let me think. What are the biggest issues we see in a cancer doctor?

Right. Like any of these we're looking for just a a doctor who's going to help or any practitioner who's going to help. You just feel better. Like, you know, something's going on and you've got this cluster of symptoms, this kind of midlife funk where your energy's down, your brain is kind of not as dependable as you used to be. It's foggy. Maybe you lost your motivation. You don't find yourself, you know, really trying new things anymore, leaving the house very often and saying no to your friends and family to go do fun things.

Or, you know, maybe you're getting aches and pains in your body that you never had before. Now you've got headaches, or maybe you've got some bowel stuff going on where you just can't trust eating out or eating at a family's house, because you're going to have to recover for a couple of days. It's going to cause bloat, and it's going to drop your energy, and then you're going to have weird bowels, like maybe you have diarrhea and constipation and all these things. So if you and any of these things you're trying to solve, then is really vitally important that you're that when you're interviewing practitioners that you're wanting to know, where do they start?

Where do they start with your process is the very first thing they want to know. You know, your blood sugar and your thyroid and your hormones? Or do they want to also know what's your gut health? What's your toxic load? There's some other exploration, in my opinion, that needs to be done, like with these labs to see what's underneath it. And I am a huge fan of if all of these things thyroid, blood, sugar hormones, if all of these things are abnormal, definitely take some action to support that and then be ready to do the deeper dive into the the thing that takes a little bit longer to solve is restoring gut health, restoring toxic or reducing toxic load, and working on that stress, peace and trauma piece.

So when you're interviewing practitioners, if they're not saying to you in their plan, we're going to check your gut health, we're gonna do a gut microbiome lab. We're going to focus on that, because that is where the beginning of all health starts. And yes, I'm going to use all these other things, but we can't leave that out. And also, as we go, I'm going to want to know what toxins are in your body. We're going to want to run some labs to see what are your heavy metal levels, what are your mold levels, what are your phthalate and and herbicide and pesticide levels?

What are your environmental toxin levels so that we can assist your body in releasing that as well. So that would be my number one thing. And then also when you're working with a practitioner, I would say definitely work with somebody who understands that in order to properly detox, we need to do some pre work about opening the drainage pathways and prepping the body. It should be a gentle, slow process to get to the deep detox that I'm saying. Some people don't need chelation, some people do, but there's some pre work to getting those toxins out to make this gentle and respectful to your body.

And remember that your body is so smart and it can heal if you give it the right kind of stepping stones to to get better. So that's what I would look for in a practitioner, for sure. They better be talking about gut and toxins. Yeah, absolutely. They should be. Well and that brings up another interesting thing that we haven't really touched on very much. And that's the gut brain axis and the importance of gut health in our cognitive health. Do you want to talk about that. Yeah it's critically important.

And and here's the interesting thing. I think a lot of times people will say, I don't think I have a gut problem. I poop every day and I don't have bloating or abdominal pain. So I'm good there. And here's what I want to say is that your gut symptoms don't have to be gut symptoms are digestive symptoms, so your gut symptoms don't have to be digestive symptoms. Your gut symptoms can be brain symptoms, and this is because your gut and brain are connected by what we call your vagus nerve. And there's this thing called the HPA axis hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis.

And it is a simultaneous communication between the gut and the brain, so rapid and so fast that we even have been able to isolate it in studies. We know that when somebody has an infarct at a stroke in the brain, immediately the gut microbiome shifts, the bacteria flora shift in response to that infarct in the brain. It is that rapid and that fast. There's a nonstop communication highway. And here's the thing. I don't think people realize that the brain barrier, the thing that's supposed to keep toxins and infections out of the brain, is made up of the same proteins, molecules and structures as the gut barrier.

They are actually very similar because there's this rapid communication between both and because they're made of the same fabric, so to speak. What happens to one happens to the other. Now, this is not hard to prove in just regular life. So how many people watching here have ever had an experience where their brain is in a stressed out situation? Like, I have to give a speech at my sister's wedding and right before that speech, your your brain is like chattering how stressful this is. And what do you have to do?

You have to go empty your bowels. Right. We have an immediate response, like connection between brain and what's happening here and what we're thinking about and our experience, our emotional experience and what's happening in our digestive tract. It's we can we can prove it over and over again with just regular everyday experiences. So, so this is happening on a deep cellular level. And if we are trying to fix the brain without fixing the gut, it's like that hamster wheel spinning. We're not going to fix it.

And this is where Western medicine completely misses the mark. I mean, I hope it's changing. I hope neurology is really paying attention to gut and gut brain axis and the connection there. But this is where if more emphasis was put on protecting and preserving and also restoring gut health, then we'd get better outcomes. In neurology, with brain health, it's such a critical missing piece. Absolutely. Absolutely. It as well. I mean, we're learning things like the research is showing the same alpha synuclein tangles that we see in the brain of patients with Parkinson's disease or Lewy body dementia.

We see those same tangles in the gut nerves, and we see them there first

Practical Steps for Sleep, Detox, and Finding Help 30:08

before we start to see the symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease. So it really does all begin in the gut. And it's so important. Well, and then that also brings us to the importance of that balance in the gut microbiome and the types of bacteria that live there versus what we find in the brain. Because the brain isn't sterile, the blood isn't sterile. We used to think none of those things housed bacteria, but now we know that they do. And it really makes this whole interplay so important. What do you think?

Well, you mentioned some of them that maybe you could just bring them back for us, that some of the early warning signs that gut health might be negatively impacting brain work? I think that's super important to highlight that. Yeah. So, you know, lots of things. So for example, if you feel like you have a short fuze or a short temper that you didn't have before, or you're more emotional or you feel like more anxious, or you feel like, you know, you can't, I think so, I think, you know, all of these things are your relationships.

So how does that play out? Your relationships are being affected, right? So people are you're having a hard time getting along with people or being in relationship with people. That's often a sign that something's happening with brain. And then if you think about the things that used to make you happy and fulfilled, like your hobbies and like being challenged at work. So if you find yourself not picking up your hobbies or not seeking challenge, right? Just if your boss comes in and says, okay, I've got this project and I'm going to put and you're thinking, don't pick me, don't pick me, don't pick me like I like my.

It really is a sign. Like my brain can't keep up with it. Right? Or you used to be the one in your family that organized all the family gatherings. You were the go to person, but you just can't fathom. It seems overwhelming now. It's overwhelming to actually organize that, to make sure that all the everybody brings the right food. And we got all the everything we need and the extra chairs and the extra and the and if you feel like I can't do that, that is a sign that something's going on with your brain.

Not that it's just you can't stand your family anymore. Like, this is a overwhelm thing. So feeling easily overwhelmed with things that used to make you happy and then feeling like you can't keep things organized anymore, right? You just you're getting lost in your words. You're getting lost in your tasks. Obviously, there's the things that are that everybody knows. You walk into a room and don't know why you came in here, right? But honestly, we've all been doing that since we were young. I mean, I was doing that when I was a teenager.

Like I'd walk in and be like, oh, I mean, I think that's just like a little brain short circuit that can happen to anybody. But I think it's more telling when relationships start to suffer, when you stop doing the things that used to make you happy, when you start isolating yourself, when you start keeping shying away from social interactions because you are worried you'll forget people's names and you don't want to have to introduce to people. And you're like, I don't know who they are, I know them, but I don't know them.

And so you avoid social like, I know I'll just pass. I'll stay home. Those are signs. I think these are such important examples, because not one of those would typically lead someone to suspect that there was something wrong with their gut. First of all, and often I think that we tend to just, you know, discount these experiences that we have is just part of aging or just normal senior moments. And it's so important to recognize that, no, those are actually the early symptoms that something is not right anymore and gut right.

So sometimes all it takes is a really good gut restoring experience to bring those functions in the brain back online. Aired all the time from our from our clients and clients. They say oh my gosh I actually don't have anxiety anymore. I actually my short temper went away, I started, I picked up my hobby again and I started doing it, I, I finally started the nonprofit organization that I've always dreamt of because now they're working, now they're engaged again because everything's working is it takes all of the pieces for us to be our best selves.

Do you have any final practical tips that you think are important for people to implement? Yeah. You know, there's so many things that you can do on your own starting now, when you're getting ready to look for a practitioner to order labs for you. And I know that that doctor Christine and I are both in the mindset that we like to have some diagnostic tools and evaluations to tailor for people so that you're not kind of guessing in, in the dark of what people need. But there's a lot of lifestyle things that everybody needs.

Right? And so these things are free. These things are just the way we're living our lives. And so I think enough emphasis doesn't get put on protecting sleep and creating a sleep routine and hygiene. I think that is critical. And I'm sure you'd agree that lack of sleep and poor sleep hygiene and habits is a huge contributor to dementia. Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've talked to in my career who really resist this piece, who really say, But I'm busy and I didn't, and they just they're in this habit.

They've created this habit of being very busy in the evening. And we know you and I know why that's happening. They're having cortisol spikes. They're getting a second wind like they've got this full dysregulated system. The HPA axis is broken. And so they're they're like tired in the afternoon and then think they're like 6:00 I'm going to go start a project that's going to last for hours. Right. So so it's the stopping that. So the stopping that behavior and actually allowing yourself to rise and and and shut down with the cycles of the sun the circadian rhythm and actually protecting that sleep.

And I'm sure you have people coming in here talking about sleep. So I'd say that would be a B1. And then I would say on the toxin front, I would say it's almost impossible to change everything at once. If you try to do that, you're going to make yourself crazy and your family and you're going to get really angry family members. If you just go and do a sweep of the bathroom and throw away. We're not using this shampoo. We're not using this body wash. We're not using this lotion. I'm getting rid of this deodorant.

This is the new if you just switch that all at once, you're going to get a revolt in your household. So I would say don't do that. Just do things one at a time. As something runs out, choose a healthier option. I always get the comment that But Laura, it's expensive, clean products are expensive, and I really want you to really be careful with your words and what you're actually willing to spend money on, because at the end of the year, if you switched out all your body products and cleaning products, think about how many times do you replace the counter cleaner?

Maybe twice a year. Like it's not. You're not buying it every two weeks, right? And how many times do you go through a tube of toothpaste like it lasts you sometimes a couple of months, like it's. Yeah. So at the end of the year, yes. These products are more expensive by a dollar or two usually, or sometimes even less than a dollar more. At the end of the year, you might be spending 300 $500 more. Is that worth it for your health? Could you could you live with spending that much more on your hygiene, body cleaning, food storage products, all of that if it meant you could avoid chronic disease.

So I just want to really put that into perspective for people. It's really hard when you're at the store and you're like, but this one's a dollar cheaper, right? Do I look like I mean, it's a dollar cheaper and it's totally toxic. Put that down more. So these are like just some simple tips, right? That can just like two things that can get you going. Protect that sleep. Change things out one at a time. Perfectionism in the possible. Yeah. So Laura, this has been an amazing amount of information and so many practical tips for people to grab on to and be able to implement even before they have an opportunity to engage with a practitioner.

But let me ask you, how can people find you? How could they? How can they reach out to you? It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm at Laura for ontario.com. I'm also at Laura Ontario on Instagram. My name is like the great frontier with I. Oh, it's this Italian name that seems hard but super easy. And thank you so much for having me on and really looking forward to hearing the success that all of your viewers have after watching this. This is such an important project that you're putting together. Thank you so much. Bye bye.