The Survival Paradox: Mastering Biochemistry to Reverse Alzheimer’s

Introduction to Dr. Isaac Elias 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit. I'm your host, doctor Heather Sanderson, and I'm delighted to introduce you to Doctor Isaac Elias. He's a recognized expert in the fields of integrative medicine, focusing on cancer detoxification and complex conditions. He is a respected physician, researcher, bestselling author, educator, and a mind body practitioner. Doctor Elias partners with leading research institutes including Harvard, the National Institutes of Health, Columbia, and others to coauthor studies on leading edge therapies for cancer, heavy metal toxicity, and inflammatory conditions like dementia.

He is the founder and medical director of. And I have to say that one for me. Let me tell Amitabha. That's beautiful. Amitabha medical Clinic and healing center in Santa Rosa, California. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me in this really important summit. Thank you for spending the time. It's just really a pleasure to be here. I was telling you that everyone who has interviewed you, everyone who knows you, speak so highly of you. And so it's really just a privilege to get the opportunity to interview you.

And, there was a I, I have to admit, I was just leafing through it, but I started getting into this survival paradox. I haven't had a chance to read all of it, but I was sharing a room at a conference with a friend who had a copy and so, we were talking about your book, and she was just saying your praises, like I mentioned. And The Survival Paradox, is the title of that book. Would you please explain what exactly is the. So what does that mean when you say survival paradox? And how does it say to health, aging and longevity?

Yeah. Of course. So the survival paradox is really is it sounds it's a paradox because we are built to survive. So this concept is really for me, it's really a paradigm shift that I want to offer, which is a culmination of decades of clinical work, studies, often of multiple medical discipline, being a Chinese doctor or a Western doctor in some other systems, and meditating for decades. So what it is, is we all recognize our drive to survive, which is built within us. It would, you know, whether it's what keeps us alive.

But the same drive is what drives inflammation, is what drives fibrosis. It's what drives organ degeneration. It's what drives the cytokine storm that affects us in Covid. And it's what drives neuroinflammation, including dementia and Alzheimer. So it's important to recognize that the same thing that is built and present in every cell in our body

The Survival Paradox and Inflammation 2:50

is actually what drives our aging and every chronic and acute illness. So in this sense, it's really important to understand it and to to comprehend it. And then of course, what, what what can you do about it. Most importantly, what can you do about it? So, the survival paradox specifically impacts neurological health, and this progression of neurodegenerative diseases. So go into the details there. So when we really look at our, it's the survival paradox in how it operates. If it is innate in us it has to be automated.

We can't really think about it. And it's automated through the autonomic nervous system, through the sympathetic nervous system. So we respond immediately, either with a response or fighting the cytokine storm inflammation and its damaging effect, or through running away flight, which is either we just desert the area or we hide. So we hide under certain coating. We create certain microenvironment. This is really what is in the basis of fibrosis, of biofilm, of micro environment where cancer grows, infections grow until your sclerotic, plaque, you can see every disease.

So we have the automated system, but then our biochemical system also responds within minutes. So there are certain proteins called alarming. I call them the survival proteins that sound the alarm. And the key ones, the one I've been researching for almost 30 years now is galectin three. That is close to 10,000 published papers. So galectin three studies survival response, which systemically will affect our immune system, our macrophage in the nervous system, the equivalent of the macrophage, our microglia and astrocytes in their relationship.

So we will trigger an overexpression of microglia that will create neuroinflammation that is you know, so well is it the root of every neurological disease. So it's so fascinating when you look at Alzheimer patients, the concentration of galectin three, this protein in their brain tissue is ten fold compared to controls who don't have Alzheimer ten times as high. And in the plaque itself, it can be 20 times higher. So we have this inflammatory driving protein that is really is really it's really a survival response.

So we really want to see what will cause the body, what will cause our being to create a survival response and then what we can do about it. And that's why often, regardless of where the problems come from, some of the methods will be similar, while some of them will be more specific. And it's it's it's very relevant in general and it's very important in Alzheimer's and dementia. So you're talking about something that's basically a marker for inflammation. So the question I always want to know, once we've discovered that there's inflammation present is what caused the inflammation.

Right. It's a great question. And that's really the contribution that I'm trying to make. So galectin three is not a marker. It's actually a culprit. And as I've published two very important papers on sepsis, actually showing that when you look galectin three, you don't get this. The cytokine storm IL six doesn't go up, kidneys doesn't get damaged. We showed it in patient in the in the intensive care unit. We saw it. We showed it in an animal model. So what causes inflammation. That's a great question. Why.

Because you know we need to integrative holistic field have identified identified inflammation is the culprit for decades right now finally and a lot because of the Covid Western medicine as well. Inflammation drives everything. But inflammation is not the cause. It you say what causes it? What causes this is this survival drive. Anything that puts our cells in survival. So if we look at our brains, if we look at ourselves, what happens if we don't take a deep breath? We hold our breath. At some point we start feeling the tension.

Right? Things. We move into an anaerobic metabolism. And finally we take a deep breath. So it's survival response is that response when we don't have enough oxygen, when our our metabolism is not functioning normally. So if we really understand it then we understand anything that will change the survival drive and will balance. It will affect neuroinflammation. And it's very fascinating. You know, if you look at patients with or people with dementia, with Alzheimer and any of us, when we h what happen when we get stressed, we can't remember words, we forget right suddenly and then and then we take a deep breath and suddenly we remember why we went into a survival mode.

We change our metabolism into an emergency survival metabolism. How do we call it glycolysis? We move from normal. I go big metabolism using the mitochondria into glycolysis. Why you glycolysis. You can produce energy 100 times faster but extremely inefficient. As you know two molecules of ATP for one glucose compared to 36. And what does it byproducts acidosis hypoxia which fuels the old mechanism with mTOR. One and other I know and F and other factors. I don't want to focus too much on. So this microenvironment drives this survival response, drive narrow neuroinflammation, drive inflammation.

How do we get in the brain in two basic ways. One, we have too much oxidative stress. We can't utilize oxygen properly. So one approach is we got to reduce inflammation. We got to reduce oxidative stress. So these are the people where there is not good antioxidant support. So for example if we use the so called in in glutathione

Galectin-3, Neuroinflammation, and Alzheimeru2019s 9:20

we are reducing the oxidative stress people's memories. It gets better. The other one so basic there is not enough blood getting to the brain. So these are the two basic highways. Both of them are driven by galectin three. Both of them. Both of them are driven by survival drive one. Because we just everything is on fire. We have too much oxidative stress. Two we don't have air. We going to hypoxia. The response is the same response. It's an abnormal metabolic response and an abnormal microglial response.

And we get fibrosis of the brain. The brain stops functioning. How do we see it in an Alzheimer? Black galectin three skyrockets I mean you know we say likely 20 fold but 20 fold not increased by 20%. Now we have to understand galectin three is an upstream a culprit, a small change in galectin three. Let's say galectin three. You know, it's studies went up by it even didn't double okay. It did even double in patients. Yet interleukin six went up a thousand fold. And there because interleukin six is downstream dealing with cytokines, it's like putting a fire down in the middle of a dry season in California, dealing with galectin three is bringing rain.

You know, it's very different. You know, there's no fire, right? Everything is being nourished. So this is a different. But in the plaque, it is so evident that it goes up 10 to 20 fold. It shows you the severity of the condition. So anything that changes this through the mind, through habits, through diet, through through certain activities and physical exercise, through with supplements is the key thing to make it all work. We got to block galectin three and that's why modify to respecting and improving galectin three blocker with a number of papers specifically on daily inflammation is an essential supplement.

It's really what will make everything work better. And I'm saying it as a not because I developed it and not because there are 80 published papers. Actually, yes, because there are 80 published paper, but because I'm recognizing its effect after decades. If you look at my charts, 15, 20 years ago, I used MCP. I used picked to some of most people not all of them. Now it's the first supplement. Why? I'm addressing the leading protein that drives aging, that drives the inflammation that I've never inflammation.

So that's on the supplement level. But the other thing that we often ask ourselves, we should ask why is enzyme a such an epidemic? You know, it's really right. I mean, it's truly an epidemic. And interesting. I am I'm trained, I'm heavily training in Chinese medicine. I'm a licensed acupuncturist. But I also studied certain alternative lineages in the 90s when I would be into studying Chinese classics, etc. and in our study groups in the 90s. It's almost 30 years ago. We identified Alzheimer as the epidemic of the 21st century.

And why did we do it? Because we could see how the earth is getting weaker, the place of nourishment is getting weaker. And now we know is the gut brain connection. Right. But it's very basic to Chinese medicine. We also saw this with the computers coming in and phones coming in thick. Human communication was weakening in what is the brain? The brain is the most amazing communicator, stronger and more powerful than any computer on Earth. So when we lose this communication, when we don't get nourishment, nourishment, that we get through appropriate sleep, through de-stressing, through exercise, and through having time to rest now, right now we are only 24 seven right?

Then it puts heat, it puts inflammation into the system. So we were anticipating this. And as part of it, you know I was studying how to prevent it. And how to help it. And I'm so thrilled about your summit and some of your presenting materials, because I've said for decades, and I got in trouble with it. Alzheimer's is a treatable condition. I see it in the clinic. It's a treatable condition. You know, now that it's clear that there are no pharmaceuticals and we are finally being listened to and it's good.

You know, I'm glad we are. At least some people listen to us. Right. But the idea that. How do you reestablish the communication? So what galectin three does, why is collective is so devastating? Because it's a carbohydrate binding protein. So it binds to inflammatory compound to growth factors to hyper viscosity factor. And you deliver them in different parts of the body. So let's say you deliver them to the brain only a monomial so it can penetrate. It's very small. And then through all these links it creates a pentameter of five five different one.

And it creates a lattice formation a shield. And under this coating you get micro environment which doesn't have oxygen. You get heavy metals, you get pesticides, you know, you get mycotoxins. They all come together. They are packaged because of the of the liposuction. Right, that are oxidized and heavy metals come to. So when you break the lattice formation extracellular early, you know the cell membrane, suddenly insulin receptors can work. Suddenly a Ampk is working. You produce normal energy, you shut down the hypoxia.

So initially, you know, most of the work was done on cancer. Now we can't guy. But when we're doing research on cancer, some of the feedback was my memory's getting better now. You know, it's an holistic doctor. We don't need 50 patients to make a conclusion if we see a trend. So something to eat. Suddenly joint pains were getting better. Suddenly blood pressure was going down. That's why I figured a little bit ahead of the curve, about 10 or 15 years ahead, that actually galectin three is fueling the basic inflammation and fibrosis.

So that's one of the important approaches in the extracellular level. Now what also does it anything that creates communication and creates movement. So for example everybody talks about ballroom dancing. Well anything we're doing Taichi qigong. But why is dancing so good. Is there is a coordination. It's fun. We get nourished and it's done in a community. You know, you're not isolated. So it's about having a community. How do we get good community? By drinking enough water. So there is nourishment between the cells and the last, deepest part, which is really the essence of my book, The Survival Paradox, which I think it's a good book.

I do recommend it. It it gives this message about how we transform a survival paradox. And it's really big with Alzheimer's and dementia by connecting to our heart, by creating a mutual respect and mutual support between all the body systems, between every cell in the body. And I don't have time to really elaborate on it. It's a it's really it's really what how we tipped our infinite healing potential. But what happens? Every cell is a survival drive. Every cell likes to take nourishment and puts out toxins.

Right. The basic and then tissue that the same organ does the same.

Detoxification, Microbiome, and Environmental Toxins 17:20

The heart is very different. The heart takes out all the junk from all of the body. It doesn't say, I don't want blood from the liver. I don't want blood from the brain. Right? Connect with the universe through the breath. Our drama is insignificant for the universe. We take little oxygen and what does it do? It gives it without judgment. In the first organ, the heart nourishes. It nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. Ignatius itself is part of nourishing others and in order to nourish others.

So this, this self-love is part of loving others. It's not it's not anarchistic point of view. And it's fascinating for me and I, I am amazed nobody, nobody saw it. The heart also is interesting organ. It nourishes itself only when it finishes its job. You know other organs, right? Arteries coming in the heart doesn't do it until it finished giving up everything. Only then it it's it's done. It's selfless work. It takes care of itself. So when we connect with this through meditation, for example, there are studies, you know.

Well, UCLA did a great study years ago. Brain tissue, the jiren circuits get preserved based on how many hours a day you meditate, how many years you have meditated, and how good is your meditation. So my biggest passion and unique training in decades of meditation, of healing that I teach this on a volunteer basis. And when we connect with this, then anything and everything is possible. So I think when we realize that we can snap out of the survival paradox and that everything that happens for the way what is survival and the survival is, is holding to something that is supposed to go away if everything changes.

And also every disease is contained in Z. The power of our infinite healing potential. When we connect to this principle. So how do we do it? By opening our heart. By opening our mind, by changing our lifestyle, by taking the right supplements. And then we also have to take care of the intracellular environment. We have to make sure that the mitochondria is working well. And one of the fascinating supplements, it compounds it. It has done a lot to bring in United States to the forefront, a lot in cancer, but in other areas is hinoki oak from Magnolia because Unoaked is a gift from nature.

Well, Nokia recognizes when a cell is normal, it becomes an anti-inflammatory, an antioxidant, very powerful, and it opens and regulates the mitochondria when it sees it. The cell is a cancer cell. It will cause oxidative stress. And we let toxic cell so it can differentiate between the cells. So naturally modified it was picked in with a Nokia becomes the great combination in brain tumors. And in the number of papers on this and of course in interior inflammation. And what are Nokia does. It also moves us from glutamate together.

It enhances the movement from an excitatory damaging effect into Gaba. So that's a little bit I know I got a little bit carried away. It does happen to me. But please ask me other questions because that's the only thing that I would like to say I love it, I love it. So I think many, of course, providers, but also many of our listeners are very highly educated. And this idea that blocking galectin three is, is sort of like inhibiting, inhibiting inflammation at some level. And we're familiar with things like NSAIDs and your, your Tylenol, aspirin, Advil that, that kind of family of things.

And then also familiar with corticosteroids. Right. Your cortisol shot even cortisone injections or taking hydrocortisone or something like that. And cortisol also does this in an unnatural level that are endogenous cortisol. And when we look at those cascades like blocking the arachidonic acid cascade or something like that, there are usually these side effects that happen right where if you take aspirin, it can create issues in your gut. Tylenol can create issues in your liver with cortisol or exogenous cortisone.

You can end up with bone issues. And of course it affects your adrenals. And so with blocking the lectin three with what you're describing, can you explain how it's different? How do like are there side effects that we might need to think about. Or is it more modulating in a way that's protective and supportive? That's a great question. It's it's really between it's really between an artist that's slowly, slowly fixing things compared to throwing a nuclear bomb to damage one thing. And everything. It burns. That's what steroids are.

So galectin three is needed in the first few minutes, and it will always be there because the body will still excrete it. It's what happens afterwards when it stays on. It starts a cascade of events or changes until in cytokine and in inflammatory processes, much earlier, much quicker then the chain is in. You know, it in, in cyclooxygenase and in and all the other markers and in the hormones. It's much, much down, down the road. So galectin three modulates what he does when the but the body needs to be able to repair and let go.

So galectin three is really our injury repair protein. But what happened he doesn't stop it. So in this sense how does he do it through inflammation and fibrosis. So we can see how in sepsis it will bring initially it will start the process but then it will block neutrophils. It will create a cytokine storm. It will create a spike in interleukin one B in interleukin six, interleukin ten in TNF alpha and beta. It will drive the process. So no glitches with the modulator. The only side effects. For example, I know a prostate cancer study the side effects of patients who used it beyond like just for their digestion, getting used to the high dose of 15g.

But the people's memories got better, their energy improved, their joint health improved. So the only side a side benefit, you know I love it. That's that's kind of how we describe the side effects of our approach to cognitive improvement is the side effects are that your blood pressure normalizes as your blood sugar normalizes, you have less of a risk. Yeah. It's exciting when you're supporting the system. You see all of it get better every so. And it sounds like your approach, does a similar thing.

And we need to initiate them by combining them. Your therapeutic approach, to enhancing and protecting cognitive function. I know you've already described a bit of this, and it I just love that imagery of, and I've had the good fortune of having the opportunity to dissect a body and see what a human heart looks like, and I had never made that connection about how where nourishing the heart is nourishing the body and yet also taking care of itself. And it's so many caregivers are here joining us.

And I think that that image, it's very potent for me, and I hope for all of the caregivers here listening, that there are these ideas like, put your own oxygen mask on first and you can't serve from an empty vessel. And yet a heart, eye body is even divinely designed in this way to share this message of of taking care of ourselves as we care for others to know martyrdom here, that there's so it's so true. It is divinely designed. That's really like in Judaism. It's the tune, the fixing. You know, in Buddhism it's the same we connect with our heart and our mind.

It is we have the heart that pumps blood. This is ordinary daily work. And we have our heart is a divine healer, definitely both of them working at the same time. Even if we're not connected to it, the heart will still give blood. But for example, talking about galectin three.

Heart, Meditation, and Healing Potential 25:40

Galectin three can cause heart failure. But which kind of heart failure? Ejection preserved fibrotic heart failure? It will make the heart stiff, not communicate, not share. That's the worst kind of heart failure. So you can always see I like to really see the imaging. So when we look at what to do with the brain, how we see from a survival paradox, we need to look what is causing cell damage, what is causing oxidative stress. So we talked in general about circulation oxidative stress. But one thing I have done a lot of work with heavy metals.

I published a more effective perspective on heavy metals. I mean, I give a same presentation in the in came in 2001, you know, and they got the first data and then I published in multiple journals. But it because MSK is a very strong collector of heavy metals. But what I didn't recognize, I recognize what I kind of took for granted is I think it was bombarded with pesticides. You know, we get yeah, there are certain level of pesticides you can't avoided. There is a very low level of normal. There's no such there's no such a thing like a little bit of poison.

Poison is poison. So pesticides, especially glyphosate, will drive narrow inflammation will drive excitatory brain. You take this with mycotoxins, with heavy metals, with AFM. You know, MF with the with EMF, with stress. And you put it as a package and you got this have something, it is not going to end up good. So as part of it, we need to cleanse. We need to detoxify the body from pesticides, from heavy metals, from mycotoxins. And they all relate to each other. So we do it, you know, in the gut and we do it systemically.

And it's interesting one thing about, again, about the role of more effective in speaking. It's a powerful killer of heavy metals. Systemically we need to bind to different mycotoxins, but we also have to address in the gut. And we have to respect our microbiome. Microbiome is part of our community. And we know right when we get stressed, infections get triggered immediately like this by rocket wakes up when we are stressed. You know, people with Covid, other infections wake up to right? Same response.

We are not the only one who want to survive. The virus wants to survive. The bacteria wants to survive. And it's fascinating when we look at the spike protein of the of the Covid, what is it? What does its structure resemble? Well, simple, I guess it's almost identical to galectin three. Amazing, right? This was already published in June of 2020, and yet I couldn't get a clinical trial because of the politics. But yeah, so if you block the spike protein, you will block the attachment. You will we will block the inflammatory response.

So it's interesting that the virus itself is part of its survival response is using a similar mechanism. So part of this strategy in general health in immune health which is so relevant right now, we can just say let's talk just about the timing. Nothing about anything else and talking about brain health. It's about having a more efficient system, having a good response and balancing, modulating, harmonizing the next inflammatory response. And we can look, you know, in my book I talk about the image of a bird flying in the sky.

It's a Buddhist image. If you look at the baby when they are born and they get a cut, the cut gets completely healed. There is no skull, right? They don't use inflammation and fibrosis. The system can let go just like for people who are parents, right? Your child goes to the kindergarten to school. They have a big argument with another child. They come on, they tell you, wow, we hold it for weeks. I'm going to call this parent. Well, the child already forgot about it five minutes later, right. Similar process.

Okay, we hold two things. Same thing survival, holding. So we lost this ability to repair in this way. And that's part of our challenge. That's part of of rejuvenating the bodies to be able to actually do it. So rejuvenating and healing, especially with Alzheimer's disease, is a little different from those who are just looking to optimize and haven't already gone down the path of having cognitive decline. How does your approach differ when you're supporting someone who's looking for optimization, reversing reversing disease?

Well, optimization has a preventative element in it and has a maintenance element. So everything is done in a milder way, you know. So you want to make sure that you are balancing oxidative stress, that you're improving circulation, and you know that you are shifting from the survival drive, inflammatory inflow, aging and it's it's a journey. You know, I know my own. I was like at Optimal Health in March. I spent some of my year in a while. I was swimming for two months. My blood markers were the best.

I was my best spacing in ten years. I was about to teach meditation and healing in Israel. 150 people in the whole Israel. Nobody was wearing masks. I got diagnosed with Covid 45 minutes before it started. You know, it's a great lesson in letting go. All the volunteers waiting for me for two and a half years. I just let it go. Everybody let go. It was the most amazing healing for for everybody. I mean, I did use Paxlovid, but in full it I was I was antigen negative. I was able to teach on the third day, but it's affecting my health.

I have more inflammation. I can see it in my blood test. So now I'm moving into a more active regimen. So I'm doing therapeutic activities, for example, which is one of my unique specialty like filters the blood. So the idea with a patient with Alzheimer's already in dementia is the intensity has to be higher. But the guiding principle, which is so much fun to see, the literature recognizing it, everything is changeable and everything can repair itself. So one of my favorite thing is not everybody is going to be a miracle, but anyone can be a miracle.

And we never know the idea is it? We got to let go of our fixation. A brain that doesn't function well. The brain doesn't get blitz blood supply and drainage is plaques which are solid, is the brain that doesn't let go. A brain that becomes fixated. So when we can let go, we when we can release, when we can relax, things can happen. For this, we need nourishment, oxygen. So we don't feel like we know we can't take a breath. That's what happens for a cancer cell like the cancer go through I, I aerobic glycolysis.

There is oxygen and it can't breathe. It goes through this. And that's what happens to the brain if it if it doesn't get enough nourishment. But the brain is a little tentative. You know, a metabolic pathway because it needs to be protected. So anything that changes this with the understanding that brain function can change, I mean, I have some there was an international TV health healthy station, I don't know, they did some programs on my patient with cancer years ago and one of them it's severe Parkinson but also stage four colon cancer that burst open.

And we have a video of him 12 years later. He's breakdancing. You can see he's refined motor movement, you know, because you believe they can change. So it's really my approach is about empowering the patient. I know also when I teach meditation and healing, I'm an okay healer. You know, I can I can do some good things with people. But my main passion is in empowering the patient to connect with the infinite healing potential. And we now know that it's all connected to the brain, doesn't, doesn't change, and cannot you know, it cannot rearrange itself and can connect, rejuvenate itself.

We know it's not true. Be just a more challenging journey. And but the only thing we can do is keep going. But if we have to understand more about the type of meditation you know, that is we've said throughout this summit that our mind space, our brain space and our mindset is so important to preventing and reversing cognitive decline. And so we've had several experts on to discuss that, and I'd love to hear what's worked for you and your patients and what you teach. So my teaching is a little bit complex, because I'm a little bit unusually trained.

I've trained for decades. Just to give you a sense of what I mean. And usually for 20 years, I would spend about 2 to 3 months a year in the mountains meditating. And for ten years I meditated half a day and worked everyday. And then one day I would sleep in the forest with a cabin. So that's, I mean, kind of little bit crazy, you know. So but I did gain some insights. So the basic principles, the first wave to create spaciousness, openness. So for example mindfulness helps us go it's very popular.

But even mindfulness is effort because we are mindful of something. So even mindfulness have to be let go of. Mindfulness is a very good first, second, third great tool. If you really want to progress you've got to let go even of the concept of mindfulness, because who is mindful of what you know that, right? So it totally creates openness, openness, openness, openness.

Caregiver Balance, Letting Go, and Practical Meditation 35:40

It's like cutting the ice to small pieces. But then we have to melt the ice and we melt the ice by connecting with our heart. You know, people like that will put their hands on their chest. They can just feel the heat of the heart, and you just let the seed go everywhere. You can let it specifically go to your head. You can feel how the brain is relaxing. So we combine this principle of openness with the warmth of a loving heart. And then the trick is, how do we deal with obstacles? So we have our own habits, we have our own traumas, we have our own genetic tendencies and our own epigenetic tendencies.

So in my work in meditation, I have developed very unique methods on how to peel off our epigenetic and genetic tendencies. Multi-generational and people experience it. And a lot of it is by recognizing the interdependence between all of us. You know, if we look, you know, if we look at each other right now and you look back 1500 years, you have had infinite people create you. If every 25 years is two people, 1500 years is two, two to the 60th power, you go to a thousand infinite number. There is no way that we never had some kind of a parent or relative.

Sometime in the past it's mathematically impossible. So we are all connected. Some are very strongly connected. Thousands, millions of relatives, some are a little bit connected. When we recognize this, then we connect with our heart and our heart. The electromagnetic field of the heart gets to every cell in the body. It's a hundred times bigger than the electromagnetic field of the brain. So when we are with people, first of all, when the heart is happy, is open. We get to to every cell in our body and we get to other people.

You know, it's interesting for me, I mean, I've worked on this for decades. I mean, nothing came easy for me. But it doesn't matter when you find gold, it's gold if you find it right away or you work hard. But something about even in the last incidents of the letting go of the retreat, something melted in my heart. So here I am. You know a lot of things going on in my life, and I'm, like, ridiculously happy. I like, see, I see optimism. People say, you know, I feel it to other people actually towards myself, certain health habits and problems that for decades just went away.

It's a choice we give. We can be happy, we can be unhappy. But to be genuinely happy, we got to do our work. We got to do our healing. And Heather, the same feeling that we have multi-generational is in every health. So in the brain it will have a certain habits. If we have a family habit of dementia and Alzheimer's we can tap, then we are more susceptible, right? But if we choose a different highway, it doesn't happen to us. So we always have a choice. It's really important. I do a lot of work with death and dying, and even at the moment of death, people have a lot of choice.

And, you know, because the moment of death is this amazing moment when you really see a letting go. So with every breath, with every thought, we can let go. And when we let go, when we feel relaxed, what happens is survival drive for the way. Then we get less inflamed. Now, for me, it's fascinating. Every chapter in my book about memory, inflammation and the end. I tell my story. I have a family pattern of not remembering names of people. It's multigenerational and it's interesting how it happened and no part of it.

I come from a Holocaust survivor family, but there something about being a well of familiar thing. And maybe they didn't pay attention to everybody. And when I was treating myself, suddenly I was remembering names better than I ever remembered in my life. Now, it's not that I got back to my baseline. I was transcending my baseline. How is it possible? Because I was feeling some of the epigenetic and genetic tendencies. So, you know, for me this was one example. Each one has their own examples, but it's just to really to inspire people and also to understand our journey in life is a journey with our regular memory goes down normally as we age, but our wisdom goes up and we the wisdom.

You can't cut corners and I'm very cinematically oriented. That was it, I did. I did the Cuando with the Korean national team when I was 15, because I lived in Korea and I was a yoga teacher since my teenage anyway, early 60s. And I lay down and I get just like a sensation of my body, so. Well, I think this is how come you didn't get to this level 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago? It takes time. It takes time to unlearn. Unlearning is very different than learning for the for the doctors, you know, for the health providers, you can't make shortcuts.

You've got to study. For me personally, I study vertically, I don't like I'm not a conference type person. So I know studied yoga, I studied shiatsu, Chinese medicine for three years while going to medical school, then master of science in Chinese medicine and then classical homeopathy. But I kind of took my time. I decided to do this. Not an easy journey. But then when you get all this knowledge. And then there was a period when I went to the mountains for months and months. I was going to stay there for years, but it didn't work out.

Then. It's a process of unlearning. You let go of what you learned and that's where you connect to with to a deeper insight. And that's a gift of aging in memory and mental capacity really helps it. And it's interesting that the research now showing that the brain gets to its best balance in the 70s. In the 80s, what is it? Is this wisdom that come through us and we can tap it for healing? It's amazing. So I'm noticing in myself, and I'm sure there are lots of people listening and having this experience of kind of having a tiger by the tail of I hear you.

And I've been in the experience of a meditation retreat or some place where there can be this allowing, this letting go, this acceptance. And yet when we're in the rat race of our lives, and especially for caregivers listening who you know, they might imagine if I let go like this, something awful is going to happen. My loved one is going to disappear. They're going to run off. They're going to eat the wrong thing. They're going to get, you know, they're going to burn that. Whatever it is, if they let go of some of that vigilance.

And so what do you say to someone who's having resistance come up when you describe this process of allowing and letting go? You know, I have a is is in addition to being a busy doctor, I've kind of cared for a family member nonstop for the last 13 years. So it's not like it's a certain level. Not, I mean, each with the problem, but I'm always a caregiver, so I'm used to it. So you start by taking small. You create small space by created small pieces of time. You wake up in the morning before you start, you sit in bed for five minutes.

You breathe, you just you exhale and feel your mind and your heart opening two three minutes. You do the same before you go to bed and you find this moment of relaxation. And then what happens in this part of really training and my real passion, and I hope to do it in 2023, is in the summit format. I mean, I'm doing a cancer summit in February, but later on I want to do a week like this as an offering for people to go through the experience. It's an experience. So what happens then? Suddenly you have this moment.

You are relaxed and you have a moment that you get lost. So one of the big secret in meditation, from a Buddhist, perspective, a Tibetan Buddhism perspective is we meditate with open eyes. So as I'm talking to you right now and I'm engaging in mental practice, I'm totally meditating. And if you are trained enough, it's no different than if I would be sitting outside in nature. There's no difference. So then suddenly and slowly, it's not easy. It's a lifetime of work, but it's doable. You're doing and you'll undo it and your undoing becomes one.

That's a big secret of healing. There's a big secret of being a healer with no effort. Not easy to teach some of my some of the meditation masters. One of my teachers claimed that I can't teach this. I don't agree with them by the most. And you know I don't give up easily, is that there is a way to integrate it where you are in action and you are doing stuff, yet something in you is opened inside. And this is why, when the mind is in this way, everything is easy, even if it doesn't seem easy. And when the mind is not in this way, nothing is easy, even if it seems easy.

And that's really the that's really the journey of, of of meditation and healing. That's a beautiful and yeah. Manifesting is for all of those listening and for myself and for you and everyone involved. I love that idea that, that everything has this ability to have ease and ease from there, surround it even when it feels extremely challenging. I think this is such a critical message for anyone dealing with dementia or cognitive decline, and there's so many practical pieces to what you've just described your lives.

I can't thank you enough for sharing your time and wisdom and expertise. This is really just been a beautiful and profound conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was really enjoyed it. It's such a pleasure. I want to make sure that people can find out more about you. So, you know what? They can they can go to Doctor Elyse, that org or two, or to survive a power book. I really recommend to read this book. This book was really underrated. Bye bye bye bye. My daughter is an ordained Buddhist clergy, and I am unusual for women.

So she and she's a great editor. So there is there is a quality of love and caring in this book, and it shows you a way. First, it opens your eyes to wow, now I understand what's going on, and then there is a way to change it through detoxify compassion. So healing our scars of survival and then through freeing ourself from this survival drive. Wonderful. Thank you so much for this contribution. Both you and your daughter, and for for sharing really, really important work. Thank you. Thank you very much.