Staying Sharp As A Tac In your Golden Years

Introduction and Brain Health Mission 0:00

Welcome back to the reverse brain disorder Summit. Joining me now is Julia Lundstrom. She is a neuroscience and a brain health educator and CEO of Simple Smart Science. She is on a mission to not only make a measurable improvement in 10 million people's brain health, but to have a 50% reduction in the amount of dementia cases by 2050. Using her ten pillars of Brain health over the last ten years. She has over 110,000 copies of her book, The Brain Owners Owner's Guide three Simple Solutions to Quickly Boosting Your Memory in Print, and had over 1.4 million people attend her workshops on preventing dementia and getting optimal brain health. Today.

And now she is bringing it home to you. Julia, thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here. So I'm curious, how did you get started in this thing that we call memory? I mean, this is a deep rabbit hole that I don't even think we've fully solved. And when it comes to brain science. But undoubtedly you have a ton of information. So what? What kicked you off on this? As it gets bigger every day? I still feel like I only know a speck on the wall of everything there is to know.

Oh yes. Well, it it's like many people's stories. My aunt got dementia about 15 years ago and 13 years ago, and she was one of the cases that rapidly declined. I mean, within a year and a half, two years, she didn't even recognize her children. And she was one of my favorite aunts. And it was incredibly tragic to see. At the same time, my brother, who was at that time 44, had a heart attack and had to get on statins and heart attacks run rampant in my family. Especially on the male side, and prescription meds especially.

So that was really ruined the memory. And he had another heart attack about five years later. And so it just was this kind of snowballed. And then my mom got dementia about five years ago. And luckily we've been keeping it kind of in check. But, we like to say she's in the final stage of dementia where she calls you and says, happy birthday.

Personal Story Behind the Work 2:06

I do know this. Yeah, I noticed. Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's kind of cute, right? You know, it's kind of cute. It's endearing. So for me, it just became a very big passion project. I also was going through a very one, probably the most difficult time in my life. And depression is also one of the symptoms, one of the causes of having a very bad memory. And so, serendipitously, we met a scientist who was working on the tropics and back then 2012, this was, you know, before Alpha Brain. I mean, it was before the tropics were a thing.

And we came out with our first supplement my first day. And from there, it's just been a giant snowball getting into all areas of holistic health and really starting to create my ten pillars of brain health, which we have come to today. Beautiful. Yeah, well, I'd love to get started on that because, as we're uncovering and I think as the evidence is showing us, more and more each day each year, we're finding that there's so many things that impact our brain health and dementia is now, I think, recognizably not this genetic thing that just happens to us haphazardly when we get to some certain age.

But it can happen really young. Of course, we may have genetic predispositions if Constitution always plays a role in in every, every case. And yet there's things we can do, right? There's, there's unbelievable amounts of opportunities, to to correct some things and to prevent the, these, these type of cases. Right. So what are some of these? Maybe you can just start start off with some of the most, I think, let's say impactful of the ten pillars. Where do you what do you start people on those ten hours.

Sure. So what we do is we have a memory guru program that we put people through. And basically we look at their whole lifestyles through the huge intake that we do with people, and we decide where which one of the ten pillars is going to have the greatest effect, what's going to be the greatest lever? And as you know, everybody's individualized. So it's really different for everybody to say what's going to be the most impactful. I will say we work with older people, typically 60 plus, not really a generation.

A lot of people are working with on prevention. I like to say they're the Betty Crocker generation. You know, they they grew up their parents, probably homemade. Everything. And and all of a sudden Betty Crocker put a cake in a box and put it on the shelf. And there you go. The rest is living out of boxes and TV dinners. So it's really teaching them, I'd say food and nutrition is a huge one, of course, for everybody. But we really look at it as, you know, a lot of people do have their nutrition dialed in.

And so we'll look at the other areas on what's beginning to affect their memories. Or a lot of times they just want to prevent dementia and Alzheimer's because they have it in their family, kind of like I do. Right? I mean, that's a symptom of decades after all the damage is done. And so it's really important to hit it earlier, even though we do only typically work with older people. So it's taking all the amazing information that your remarkable speakers have put together, like Doctor Bateson, one of my heroes, you know, and he says there's 36 reasons for that.

We know of potentially a couple more, probably a couple more, but not many more for getting dementia and Alzheimer's. And really memory issues in general. And so we've come up with the ten pillars, which are really lifestyle changes. And to solve the majority of those, we can't solve all of them, you know, heavy metal poisoning, mold, those are things that need much more detailed care. But we can solve a lot of them by just changing lifestyle. And it's a lot of things people don't think about. And especially coming out of Covid, I would say one of the biggest things we hear from all of our clients is they've been stuck inside.

They're not being social, they're not getting that social component. And for me, the social side is something that a lot of people are talking about. But it is a giant component that actually there was an 80 year Harvard study done where they determined that being social and having a good family unit was almost twice as important as food and, as diet and exercise combined. And so we really helped people to get out there. And part of that is also purpose. Purpose is another one of the brain health pillars.

Because, you know, I can talk all day about sleep and diet and exercise, but those are really the common ones. We like to focus on ones that and we do focus on those, but we like to really drill down on other sides. And you know, there's there's two days of your life that you're most likely to die. Do you know what those are? I don't. Okay. So it's the day you're born. Of course.

The Ten Pillars of Brain Health 6:48

And then the day you retire. Wow. And in this country, we have this mentality that we stop working and do nothing or go play until we can't play. And then we really do nothing. Whereas in Japan, they don't even have a word for retirement. It's a change in purpose. Is their word. And so it's getting people back to purpose. And I love we had one of our clients say, you know, the best part about our program is that it brought purpose back into their life. They were feeling very purposeless. And that, of course, challenges the brain, which is another pillar, being able to challenge and learn something new and continually grow.

So we we focus on all ten. But a lot of the fun ones that people don't think about using your memory is another great one. The cell phone. The biggest challenge to modern technology, to our memories that we have, right? I mean, we don't use our memory anymore, and it's like a muscle you don't use it, you lose it. So. Right. I mean, do you remember anybody's phone number? Well, not only the phone numbers, right? I mean, because this is this is we don't we mean, this is a common joke in our generation, right?

Like the ones that I mean, I remember dozens and I recall remembering dozens of phone numbers. Right? And then not only phone numbers, but, I remember as a kid, I would ride my bike all around the city that I grew up in, and I knew I knew how to get anywhere and everywhere. I knew seven ways to get to the same place, you know? And now I've moved into a new city. I've been here for a number of years, but still my memory's not as good. My directionality is not as good because I rely on Google Maps way too often.

Right. And it's funny because I was in, Europe recently and they didn't have service. And so I actually had to, I had to get back into a mode that I, that I hadn't been in in a long time, which is. Okay, look at this thing here. Where's the sun? Where's this building? You know, like, what's the street name? Now look what's what's near it. So I was actually having to do some spatial recognition and like, I mean, it challenged my brain in a new way. Fortunately, I, I grew up in an era where that was the case.

Right. And so I kind of remembered how to do it. But I can see this these new generations, they're just not they don't have the wiring, so to speak, like it has to be trained into that. Yeah. I mean, we have built in navigation into our system, right? We're live and die by the sun for the most part, and where it is in the sky. And I think that that's something that's really we're losing as each generation just depends on their phone. So that's something we actually talk to people a lot about. Do not use Waze, do not use Google Maps.

Try to use your memory. I tell all the people in my company that actually just don't use it. Middle ground. So. So yeah. Denver. Yes. So so what do you do with them? You do you recommend some specific exercises or some phones? Some some fun games, so to speak, that we can use to sort of, challenge our brain on a regular basis. Yeah. So really what we're trying to do is get them to use different parts of their brain that they're not used to using. So, for instance, my husband is amazing at every musical instrument.

Right? But if trying to put a spreadsheet in from in front of everybody's eyes go, okay, so it's trying to get people to use things that they're not used to. So if they haven't played a musical instrument, maybe they go play a musical instrument, learn how to read notes, learn how to paint, and you learn a different language. Just even reading on a new topic, trying to learn about space, right? Become endlessly fascinating last couple of years with space and just using your brain to think about things that are much bigger than yourself, but then also driving them towards the using challenging themselves to use that knowledge for a purpose as well.

So, the AAP has an amazing program called Experience Core, and we have sent a lot of our people to them. And what that does is take older individuals that go into elementary schools, retired individuals, and tutor them. And it has such a double bonus, right, for the kids. Their grades go up on average 20%. And within six months, we've seen a 20% increase in memory on the older adults. Right. Because their challenge, they have to get there, right. They got to be on time. They got to do curriculum, they got to be patient.

And they're the best tutors anyway because they're so much more patient in that time. So it's things like that. It's not only challenging yourself, a challenge yourself a purpose because people do lose their purpose after they retire. It's such a such an ugly word in my book. Yeah. No, I mean, you're hitting on something so fundamental. And I didn't realize our our works sort of crossed so much. But in the Human Longevity Project, when we went around the world, this was something I noticed over and over again in the the people that I was talking to that were in their 80s, 90s and beyond that, an 85 year old man in Japan, in Okinawa named Fuji.

And he, he he was running a huge construction business with hundreds of employees. He had another business that he was that he owned, and he had no, no intention of retiring. That didn't it wasn't a thing. He just wanted to work. He's going to work till he died. Another man in in Japan. He he stopped working at his job. And then he does his hobbies, which is like rebuilding cars and playing in a band. He was in his 70s. Right. And then. And then my favorite case was that, a young lady of 94 and I.

Purpose, Social Connection, and Retirement 12:18

And I asked her straight up, I said, look, you know, a lot of your your, friends in your family have passed away, you know, like what gets you up every day and what keeps you going. And she said, well, I have to learn this song for the violin on Tuesday. And I thought, what a preciously wise answer that was. Right? Like, she understands that. Like, it's the little things that we can we can have, we can build purpose around. And for her, she this violin she picked up when she was 92. And I mean, I used to play the violin when I was a kid and she was terrible, but it was unbelievable to watch her.

How skillful she actually was from going from 92 to 94. And she was going and playing with her, you know, her music group. And, you know, I thought like, that is somebody that has so much wisdom and understands life. Right. And she was sharp as a tack at 94. And she figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. And it comes with having that mental attitude. Right. The optimism. Yeah. And that's a huge one too. And we work with our clients a lot on that because of course they fall into depression. They get sad when their body starts to fall apart and they don't have purpose.

They don't have something to get up in the morning for. And I remember, I did a live long well summit about seven years ago, and I interviewed my dad, who has since passed, but I he lived to 88 and he went through I mean, he had both hips replaced triple bypass surgery when he was in his 50s for heart and he had three heart attacks. They gave him ten years to live at that time. Right. And he lived till he was 88. Pacemaker, all this stuff. And I just said, hey, dad, you know, and and all of life's adversities that have thrown at you, you've always just kept this amazing, positive attitude and outlook, and everybody thinks you're the happiest guy around, you know, how did you how did you do it?

What's the secret? I was like, I didn't know I had a choice. Right. It just is that it's being sad and depressed of all these things. It's, it's a, it's not a choice for me. Right, right. It just doesn't come into my sphere. So I always took that. I remember that so specifically and I love that. Yeah. I just I didn't have a choice. Right. Whereas most people think they do and they a lot of times choose the sadness and the doubt. And I know that chemically, that isn't always the choice, but totally.

And look, I mean, I think we all get it right. Like there are certain things that when, when a phase of our life or situation passes, right, there's a certain morning sometimes that that can take place that's over. And then oftentimes we don't know where to turn to next. Right. So that's where it gets a little tricky. And things can get a little stuck and stagnant. But this and this is a fundamental challenge I see in our culture, in the Western culture and especially in the United States, is that after retirement, there's this searching of, I don't know what to do and or so therefore, I'm not going to do anything.

I'm just going to kind of just stop and sit and, and and I don't blame that on the individuals per se. I think we actually lack the fundamental structures for that sort of next phase of life, to support that. And I love what you're doing, connecting, people in their 60s, 70s, in their retirement age with younger kids and the studies that I've looked at on longevity benefits people. The older people get younger, like biologically speaking, all their markers start to improve. Right? And I think that's fascinating.

Just by hanging out with the youth. Right. So something about that sort of youthful vibrancy that sort of restores that vitality in the older generation. Right? So there's so much there. What are some other things? How do you how else do you maybe coach people that are because right now in doubt, we have a lot of people in their in their 50s and 60s and kind of approaching retirement or, or have passed retirement age. What are some ideas where they can kind of reengage with life if they're not, not quite sure what to do next.

Yeah. So that's one of the initiatives we're working on right now. It's been a year in progress, probably by another couple before we can fully get it in, but we really want to go to where people live. And a couple of years ago, Heather, who does some of your other interviews, she I actually took my mom to her to how we had to put her in a rotation protocol, and I was there for the grand opening of one of her centers where she was taking people from around the world that have dimension Alzheimer's and putting them in there to live for six months to a year.

And it sparked the idea of, well, let's not make people move. Let's take this to where people live. Totally. And so what we're doing is going into retirement communities and basically taking what Danbury, Butner, you know, had always been stronger filters. Is doing with larger communities. But bringing it down to the retirement community and we're, we're bringing it in. So not only are we changing the diets, I mean, my mom and her retirement community, it breaks my heart. They they serve a dessert for every single meal.

Yeah, donuts for breakfast. You know, it just it breaks my heart. And the exercise class. She lives in a community of 200 people, and I think five. Go to the exercise class, and they sit on a chair and with their legs up and down, you know, it's just there's no weight lifting. There's no muscle with such a big piece. There's a direct correlation of how much muscle mass you have and the overall health of your brain. So that's a huge piece, right. So we're going to go into the communities and certify the communities to be brain health communities where the residents will have this opportunity to join the program.

And the best part is, is we're going to create these pods where each of the members that join this program will be part of a group, and it's up to them to create the the memory exercises and have a memory class for the challenges. And so you get the social component, which is huge and which is huge, right. Because a lot of them, I mean, my mom sticks to the same 2 or 3 people out of 200, right? So it kind of mixes things up a little bit where you they can go on walks together, they can exercise together.

They have this little pod, but also they're going to be the ones teaching. They're going to be the ones who are keeping each other accountable and

Brain-Challenging Activities and Community Programs 18:30

and learning and bringing this information. And so it creates this kind of upwelling where they help each other. Social, and they're challenging their brains and it gives them purpose. Yeah. And then what's really cool, what we're seeing in our current memory driver program, which is just it's a one on one coaching program. It's spreading. So we had a teacher of an inner city school come in and take our program, and now she's going in and teaching the help and the diet and the purpose and talking to the kids about it.

Right. Because that's what we need. Right? So we just need more boots on the ground. We need more people teaching this. We have a serious problem in this country with education around health. Yeah, I agree, especially in in sort of the geriatric population, the elderly population, you know, I same thing when I, my, the grandmother, after my grandfather passed, she joined a retirement home and at first it was funny. It was almost like college. She was meeting all these people and everything was great.

And she had all these stories. And I was like, this is hilarious. It's like college for old people. This is amazing. And then over time, what I noticed, same thing. It was it was the food is absolutely horrid that they were serving. And then eventually, you know, because it's a retirement home. So there's a lot of turnover, right? I mean, people pass on and new people come in and, and there is this kind of change eventually in, in her social kind of atmosphere, you know, when it was new, it was all exciting.

And there's all these people and then it same thing. There wasn't a lot of social, engagement put on by, by the community. And so they were kind of left to fend for themselves, like, here's your life. And they had some thing. So they had a couple things, but it wasn't a bunch of activities. Right, exactly. But it wasn't engaging in in contrast to the retirement home that I went in in Okinawa and they did karaoke, they had a dance thing, they put on a presentation, they had this amazing exercise program, like every day that would engage them.

They had, all the people that weren't living there, but they would come in and just and either hang out or sometimes they would need a little bit of care, like maybe they would need a bath or whatever, but they weren't even living there. So there would be. It was like a very engaged community, with people from, from all around that didn't even live there. And so it was just a totally different environment. It felt like in Okinawa, they call it genki, which is kind of lively and vital. Right. And so it was it was had that energy of vitality as opposed to, you know, at least the one that my grandmother was into was was just kind of low.

It was very it just it didn't lack that sort of lively, kind of energy. And so, you know, I think about that and this is probably why a lot of people don't want to go live into a retirement home, especially if they're maybe a more introverted type. Right. And so I think your, your whole idea and purpose becomes massive because at that point and it's like we can find something, whatever it is that, that that excites us and pursue that. Right. But I think that is perhaps an under discussed topic in, in terms of how important it is for brain health, for longevity, for overall health.

Right. So, what other things can we sort of look to when we're getting into our 50s and 60s? And because a lot of the stuff we would love to have known about when we were in our teens and 20s and, and living the optimal lifestyle and the optimal diet. But by the time we get in our 50s and 60s, maybe we didn't make the right choices. Maybe we didn't grow up in an environment where we knew some of these things. What can we do at that point to kind of put the brakes on, on any progression and perhaps even reverse some of the symptoms that might be, showing up?

Absolutely. So I think one of the best ways, we've actually expanded, we've started with just meditation and that has, you know, working with the older generation. That's actually a dirty word to some of our clients. They they think it's. Yeah, they think it's, cultish or just anti, anti-Christian. Sure. Yeah. But they don't understand is that prayer does the exact same thing to the brain. And so we work with people. It doesn't matter the syntax. I don't care what you call it. It's taking that space to grow your prefrontal cortex.

Right. We've seen the studies of practice meditators where they're able to grow their prefrontal free prefrontal cortex by 20%. And then, of course, they can remember for six months or a year. But it's remarkable what they can do. And so it's bringing these practices in and enhancing them. Most people don't know how to meditate. You know, they they don't do it because they think they just need to sit there. I went to Dave Asprey for two years of Zen and learned 50 different techniques of meditation, and it was a remarkable and so, in the next year, we're going to start retreats as well, teaching people how to do more of that, but bringing in more of our, our time colors, and breathing.

I don't know if you've ever read James Nestor's book breath. I've done a lot of breath work on my own. Yeah. And it's it's for those who say they can't meditate. I tend to direct them towards breathwork because, like, you start here, that because you can breathe and I know you can. And it's something you can notice right away. Right. Breathwork is unbelievably powerful, whether it's a calming breath or an energizing breath or something in between. There's so many different sort of pranayama that you can explore in the Vedic culture, too, right?

So I love that. And it's not just about the breathwork, though, right? It's about how you breathe, right? I mean, we see these people sitting in their wheelchairs, and I just mouth breathers. Yeah. And how much science is around that? We're supposed to be breathing through our nose. Yeah. And there's a whole reason we have two is in case one gets blocked.

Meditation, Prayer, and Breathwork 24:18

But really, it's the announcements about the nose and how much difference that makes in your heart health and your brain health and everything. Just breathing through your nose, even through exercise, which I'll admit, very hard for me to do. If I start out breathing through my nose for exercise, I can, I can. It depends on the level, but I can usually continue it. If I remember halfway through the night the other day, my girlfriend, she's just like, knows I can't. It's too late. I'm way up the mountains too fast.

But it is right. It's how you breathe. Yeah, that's a big one. And and this is, you know, what you're touching on are things that anybody can do, right? That's what I love. It's not there's no limitation to this stuff, you know again meditation or prayer and then breath work. The nose breathing stimulates nitric oxide. Right. Like this is this is the fascinating part is that it's mechanical. Right. It's actually the breath coming in the nose hitting these little sensors that trigger nitric oxide production, parasympathetic tone.

It calms us down. Right. Like there's there's really, really important aspects to to that breath. And then of course using the diaphragm which is a massive muscle which, which controls a lot of different functions itself. Right. So instead of just breathing in the chest, that was a big one for me. Was, was I was such a chest breather. And so for me it's been learning really how to breathe in that, in that sort of belly area, expanding the diaphragm. But these are, these are massive. And I think especially when it comes to 50, 60, 70, if we have limited mobility.

Again, meditation and breathwork, are not hindrances in any way. Right. We can do those things. Absolutely. It's here. What are some other things that that we can include. What about some some either supplements or foods that, that we, we might want to look to and stay away from. Sure. So I mean nutrition we typically start everybody out on nutrition. Just we, we gear the program towards them. That nine out of ten people need help on the nutrition side. And it encompasses a huge case. And of course, that's one of the biggest levers.

We all know that food is medicine, right. And people get put on these prescription medications and typically therefore acute problems. And the doctors know to put them on and then they don't know how to take them up. Right. And so it messes with everything with the chemical balances, with hormones, with everything. And so we really work to get people more back in balance with their food. We fully believe in fasting. We typically have people do. Doctor. Walter Longo's food based fasts every six months.

It's a five day food based fasts where you're limited calories, but you're still eating, so you're not you know, a water fast is incredibly don't helps people. Yeah, but that really puts your neurons into kind of this ultra protective mode, which they've seen with chemotherapy, actually increase the results of chemotherapy because it protects the healthy cells. And chemo can go in and kill the the cancer cells. So we definitely talk a lot about fasting. We talk about, hydration is a huge one where, you know, one of my favorite stories is the woman who came in with massive migraines and literally with just hydrating her over 30 days.

Her hydrate, her migraines went down to once a week instead of once a day, which is I mean, it's some things are just that simple, right? Yeah. But supplementation is a huge one. I know a lot of, the people you talk to talk about why? So I'm not going to go too into detail there with the poor soil quality and things like that. But really what we're looking for in the supplementation, it's most people think of just taking a pill like our minds today. It's great. It has amazing scientific studies behind the ingredients.

We have a zillion testimonials over the last ten years, and it's an all natural product. But but what happens is if you're just going to take one a day, right, you're not really going to reverse, which is the protocol, you're not really going to reverse the damage. So if you've ever worked with a nutritionist, if you've ever worked with a dietician, what they're going to do is have you upped the dosage of the amount that you take for a certain period of time to really kickstart and help reverse the damage, all within safety measures, all within scientific studies.

And then you can lean back and get back to where you're just kind of at this maintenance level. Yeah, but that's what happens a lot of times. And supplementation, I mean I can go out and say, you know, go out and take your omegas, buy your fish oil, highly concentrated with DHEA, which is what you want me to probably say 1 to 1. But, over 500mg, even 750 for the DHEA component, which is really hard to find with someone, but it is hard to find, and the people just we like to give them the protocol.

Right. It's not just about going and taking the two that's on the bottle that we have to put. It's let's let's boost you up a little bit and see how you perform and kind of work with it a little bit. Yeah. And then we'll get you to a maintenance level. But if you're incredibly inflamed, too little, you know, capsules of omegas aren't going to do anything for you. So it's that it's building the protocol for people and working with the dosages, not just here. You should go take your Q10 and your probiotics.

I mean, obviously if I was going to say there are two supplements, you should take it that you should look at your gut and your brain. Yeah, right. You need to have your gut health that's so, so important. The probiotics, prebiotics even work with some amino acids. And and really looking at I mean, I got to say, when you're talking about supplements, you've got to be talking about getting people off prescription medications. Yeah. Which is something we're just now looking into hiring someone that can really work with our people.

We talked to a couple specialist. It's a specialty. Yeah, totally. Didn't want to do that on your own. Yeah, yeah. No doctors know how to get people on them. And there's very little follow up afterwards. Right. We are in such a sick care system that I think is slowly changing. Yeah. But it's it's going to take education and time and probably the whole system

Nutrition, Fasting, Hydration, and Supplements 30:06

for, you know, the whole pill system, the pill popping system to break down. And that's really what we're about is it's kind of encouraging that that new system to come up and working with the people. But, you know, doctor puts you on anything. And the antidepressant, for instance, there's no protocol to get you off. They're not talking about Valium following up with you, except for when you call to make an appointment. And and I think that's such a tragedy because it's that they are they work. Okay, let's not talk about antidepressants, but, you know, a lot of these prescription medications are needed, and they do work acutely.

But there's no protocol for getting people off of them. And sleep medications are one of the worst we work with. We do a lot of work with people around their sleep. Yeah. And that, I think, is that, you know, I, I'm always like, well, depression so important. But sleep is so important. You know, our very first client, Jason, Susanna, bless her heart, I love her to death. She's still around and in our program, very, very much involved. But she she was taking care of, cut Alzheimer's, and she wasn't sleeping at all.

Her mom was getting up about every two hours. And so Susanna was just a train wreck. And her every free moment during the day. She was sleeping, right? She was just exhausted, trying to work, trying to sleep, take care of her mom. Her husband is taking care of her mom during the day. She had no time with her husband, no time to see grandkids, no time to do anything. And so we actually worked with the mom as well to get her sleeping better. And then once the mom started sleeping five, six hours a night, it completely changed Susanna's life.

So now she could spend quality time with her mom versus just taking care of her mom in her final days. And she then was able to go out and challenge herself and take classes and become social so that when her mom did pass, she wasn't starting from down here having to come back up. She was already up here able to handle it, right? Able to just start accelerating your life right after mom died versus having to come up from depression and anti-anxiety pills that she was on, that we got her off of. And I mean, all this stuff, right?

It's just creating this, this space for people that a lot of them know what to do. They just don't have the accountability, which is huge. That's really something that we focus on. And and giving them the the execution of the executable plan for them. Yeah. Right. And it's it's so important that it's something that they're going to do. And a lot of times we teach them and then we let them tell us what they're going to do. It's got to be their idea. Yeah. Right. It's got to be their plan. Yeah. Otherwise they're not going to do it. So yeah.

Well I mean, what you're saying about sort of the supplement and, and pharmaceutical aspect I think is so, so huge. And I find this in my, my practice as well with all kinds of supplements. Right. So the pharmaceutical aspect again, maybe it's not worth even mentioning because you I think you said it so well but it's, it's, it just becomes this, this downward spiral. Right. Because drugs get, get piled on more drugs and more drugs. And, you know, it's just prescription after prescription after prescription.

And you can't unwind that unless you have somebody really understands how to do that safely effective. And more than that the the not like it's the support angle. Right. So it's I'm not even anti-drug as much as I am. Like where's the support. Right. Because the pharmaceuticals aren't support there to suppress something, to turn off some symptoms, to provide relief. Like that's kind of what they're designed to do, so to speak. But there's no support. Right. And this is where the supplementation can really come in and be helpful.

But your point is really, really important, which is that oftentimes we see something on a bottle or we get a protocol from a practitioner. And it's a it's a template protocol. It's a blanket protocol. And what I've found, especially with things like, let's say, medicinal mushrooms, like, my talkie or turkey tea and these are supplements that I recommend often, sometimes I find that people benefit from like 8 or 9, three times a day. And that's, that's that's in contrast to what's on the bottle, which is like one three times a day.

And so like, that's that's ludicrous in a sense. And yet that's what it takes for some people. Now, I don't think people should be doing this on their own, especially with certain supplements. But but your point is really well-taken that working with somebody who can guide that process, find that threshold where they're starting to actually notice benefit and then scale it back. Right. Like that's that really starts to become an important thing. And again, that's what I find. And I think to some degree, practitioners and the manufacturers, these supplements are cautious with their recommendations of how much to take.

And I think that's a good thing. And it's fine is that people, they're taking on these supplements and they're not noticing a difference. And oftentimes it's because they don't know which ones are working, which ones they actually need and how much they need and when to scale them back. Exactly. And, and, and it's when you scale it back, especially with prescriptions, you have to replace it with something, right? It can't just be this. Okay? Just get off your prescriptions. We had one client that before she came to us, she got off her her antidepressants and are sleeping pills all at the same time.

Just cold turkey that, like, you know, I mean, the just crazy train wreck scenario, you have to replace it. And a lot of times you have to replace it with even therapy. Right? We had someone that had been on Valium for 15 years, and all of a sudden as she's working and we're working with her doctor and her practitioners, right. Work. And it's a group effort. This is not a us them. It's all of us together working on client care and you know, as she started to come off, she's feeling emotions again.

She's been numb for 50 years. And it's overload. It's sensory overload. And she feels like she's a train wreck because she's feeling much more deeply. And that it's, you know, she wants to get back on it because she wants to be back to what she's comfortable with this numbness. And so it takes a psychologist. It takes therapist coaches to help work through that progress process, too. It's not just, hey, go get off of this, right? I mean, we gotta look at the the effects it has and replacing amino acids I mentioned before is so critical when you're getting off of even if you're reading back on supplements, if you're really used to them and you're performing at a high level, but you don't want to be taking, you know, ten Omegas a day or whatever it is, and you want to wean back to a normal level.

Medication Support and Safe Tapering 36:30

It is replacing that too. And that a lot of times that could just be with food. Yeah, I am absolutely. Well, you're pinning a really a broad picture here, right. Because if somebody is on a pharmaceutical medication that's kind of numbed them or depressed them, then it's hard for them to find a purpose or find meaning or reason or perhaps right. So to go do the things that are required for good brain health and longevity. You know, we may need to start somewhere over here, right? So there's there's a really complex picture.

I think some times that, that, that you can face. And so, again, I love the work that you guys are doing working with individuals in this regard. Where can people find more of you work and, and how can they find more support from what you guys offer? Sure. So right now we're really concentrating fully on our one on one coaching program. We called our Memory Guru program with Memory Mastery as well, where we will start to take some DNA tests that can show us the bigger picture of things. But they can.

I sent a link to you. They can go and, look at our website. We have on our website is simple smart science.com. We have our coaching program portion of that. They can go read about it, and they can book their own call to talk to one of our memory strategists, just to see if there is an opportunity to work with us, and one of our programs and if not, honestly, we always send people resources or refer to other people depending on where their situation is. We're a 100% preventative company. When we do get dimension Alzheimer's cases, we usually send them to any emails or doctor to send, you know, to put them into their programs.

Because I do believe in what they're doing is remarkable. And, truthfully, we're starting an academy. A lot of our people that have been through our program, which is another amazing thing. You get these older people who want to go out and teach this to other people. So we've been working on our academy the last year where we're going to help people that are health coaches, and even get their health coach certification board certified, become memory and cognition coaches, and go get more boots on the ground.

So really for us, we're, you know, that's one initiative. The academy is another version of them. And of course, going to retirement community is 55 plus communities where we can bring it to them. We're really trying to bring all these out there. So we need people that want to be involved. So of course we want to work with us and get in the program. Fantastic. Talk to us if you want to get involved in what we're doing and help us build this community, go to the retirement communities, build the academy to get more boots on the ground.

It teaches education in schools and everywhere you can go. You know that in companies, that's what we're really looking to do, and build partnerships and have the right collaborators to make this a reality. Bring this information to everybody, because that's what everybody does and the program sets. I can't believe nobody knows this. I can't believe this isn't being taught in schools. I can't believe it. You know, and it's for you. And I live it and breathe it every day. It seems so natural. But really, brain health is not even a topic of conversation so.

Well, and it's it's one of the things that people feel most right about getting older is losing the mental faculties. Right. And and especially the connections with their loved ones. And I think what you're doing, I mean, I got goosebumps when you when you mentioned kind of that coaching, mentorship program, I think, I mean, I'm thinking that right now, if there's anybody watching this 5060 that wants to prevent and looking for the next phase of their life, this is something you can go through not only get educated on how to improve your health and maintain good brain health for yourself, but then you can become the teacher and the coach on the back end, right?

Like it's kind of like going to college again for brain health and then teaching others. Right? And you get to work with peer groups, and help others prevent, cognitive decline.

Programs, Academy, and How to Get Involved 40:06

I mean, I think that's to me like, again, I get goosebumps talking about that because I think it's such a fantastic idea. I love that you're doing that. Get that out faster, please. That's that's what we need, right? Like, again, I think what has me so excited about that is the fact that you're providing an outlet, an avenue for people to to seek that next phase of their life. Right. My mom actually just got went through that, and she's doing, like, voiceover recording stuff. She found kind of a next thing I was like, oh, that's awesome.

Like, what a random thing to stop. But it's perfect. And she's really good at it, and she's having to figure out a little bit business stuff and develop websites. And so I'm like, that's awesome that she found that. And I know so many other people maybe haven't found that are looking. This is such a great avenue. So I love that you're doing that. Please, please tell me what that's called. Do you have a name for that yet? Is it we do have a name. And off the top of my head we've been working on for a year, but, I think it's the simple smart science academy is the academy.

And then the certification for, the retirement communities. And going into those. We're still working on that. Cool. Well, go to simple smart science comm, right. And just and go to the the coaching program. If you want to talk to us individually about your individual health to create a plan for you. And like I said, everybody gets resources from the phone call, whether they join the program or not. We will definitely support them and give them something from that call that's going to help them.

We never let anyone walk away empty handed. We're an education first company, so we educate, and then yes, if you want to reach out, you can reach out to our support is simple smart science.com. If you want to join the course, we would love bring it on people. I love that and at the very least join. Join their newsletter and you can find out more information for the things coming out. Right. So you guys are doing amazing stuff. Julia, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Your wisdom is so welcome. Thank you for having me. Jason.