The Low Battery Effect: Why Brain Energy Is The Key To A Healthy Life

Summit Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Reversing Alzheimer's Summit. I'm one of your host, James Maskell. And throughout this whole week, we are empowering you with the right information to make it easy for you to build a better brain, be healthy, and keep your risk of Alzheimer's dementia low. And we're super excited today to have someone who's been doing this for a long time and knows exactly how to build a healthier brain. My name is Julia Lindstrom. She's been pioneering as a researcher and as part of Simple Smart Science, CEO and founder.

And, is on the cutting edge of really understanding what it means to have a healthy brain, to keep a healthy brain. And, Julia, it's great to have you here. Representing super smart science, but also sharing incredible, information with our community. Thank you so much, James. Such a pleasure to be here. So, I know that throughout this summit, you know, we've really been sharing the sort of the foundation of what it takes to, keep a healthy brain and some of the methodology. And, you know, one of the things that I stood out to me, as was when I was reviewing your work, is this idea of the low battery effect and the sort of, brain energy as a concept.

And I feel like this is a concept that is really starting to make it into the, the mainstream in a, in a, an exciting way. So can you tell us a little bit about, brain energy and the low battery effect as you see it? Yeah. So and thank you for the question, because this is really kind

Brain Energy and the Low Battery Effect 1:29

of the core of why people don't change, right. So if you think of your brain having this battery or PowerBar or whatever you want to call it, you know, you think of a video game and you have your PowerBar. And really what we're looking at is if you have a low power bar, you have a low battery. You can't make the changes you want to make in life. Everybody wants something, whether that's more time with their grandkids or a new house or a new job, you're not a better health, right? You're not going to get anything if you have a low battery and it starts with your brain.

We really talk about heal your brain, heal your body, and it heals your life. And so if you think so, for example, let's say you have a terrible night's sleep. You know, the next day, first of all, you're gonna be dragging all day. He was super low battery. You don't have the discipline and the motivation to go to the gym. That's when you're going to skip it right? You don't. You just want to put anything comfortable in your mouth. You don't want to eat healthy. You don't want to take the time to cook that beautiful, healthy dinner.

You just go fast food it. So it's the ripple effect of having this low battery. And if you take that over decades, it really causes disease. And what we see is that people just forget what healthy feels like. They forget what it feels like to have energy like we talked to so many people that after they've worked with us for 10 or 26 weeks, whatever it is, they honestly are like, I can't believe I forgot what healthy feels like. I thought I was feeling okay before, now I feel amazing. And that's the the battery effect.

When you have a full battery, when you're waking up every morning feeling great and you're prioritizing everything that everybody's talking about in this summit around your brain health, we call it our ten pillars of brain health. When you prioritize all of that and you start to feel the best that you can feel, you are going to have a full battery and you can accomplish anything, right? You're gonna have better ideas. You're going to be able to execute faster. You're going to be able to be able to communicate what you want better and easier, not be as reactive in your relationships.

Everything just falls into place. And that starts with healing your brain and putting your brain health first to get you, more energy and your battery. You're like your body's batteries. That makes sense for you, James. Makes sense. You know, so much of the time we think about brain health in terms of memory and focus and and aging. But it sounds like what you're saying is that whatever age you can, you know, you can improve the battery, you know, you can take it from low to high. What, what are some of the keys from the years that you've been doing this, that sort of, speed that journey along?

I think it's really finding out why your battery is low. You know, we talk a lot about getting to the root cause of issues, but, you know, in that example, sleep, we hear so many times from clients that, oh my gosh, I can only say 5 or 6 hours a night. But that's fine. I have energy, I feel great. Well, even adding on that extra hour. Right. Because sleep is when not only do your memories consolidate and stick. So I think of it like a photo album. If you have a table full of photos and you need 7 to 9 hours to get those into a photo album and you're only sleeping 5 or 6, that's an hour's worth of photos that are just going into the trash, right?

Lost forever. Or we talk about the street analogy as well, right? That at night is when your brain cleans itself out. So if over decades you're losing an hour's sleep a night that's not cleaning crew, it's leaving trash every night. And over time it just starts to pile up. And it's like driving your car down a street that's just piled with trash. You're not going very far very fast, if at all. And that's when memory issues start to come up. And and you're, you know, your recall declines. Learning new things becomes harder because it just can't get in there.

And so, of course, you know, sleep being one of the easiest things for people to understand. Right. But if we look at everything, even not one of my pillars of brain health is, is having purpose.

Sleep, Purpose, and Root Causes of Low Energy 5:40

And there's two days in your life you have the highest probability of death. The first is the day you're born, and the second is the day you retire. And we work. But probably 90% of our clients are retirees. And what we find is they just don't have a reason to get out of bed. They just don't have a reason to go to bed early. They get caught in their computer and they're just, you know, staying up till 1 or 2:00 in the morning, whereas they never did that when they were working. And it creates this low battery effect.

So it's resetting all of their expectations really in their life about let's find out what you want and let's find out what's causing this low battery, what's draining your battery every day. It could be your diet. It could be because you just are kind of depressed. You have anxiety. You don't know what to do with your days. You're feeling hopeless. A lot of our retirees feel like they just don't have time. One of our great clients, Nancy, came to us and she was probably 30 pounds overweight. She was 70 years old and she was taking care of her mom that has dementia and was living with her like full time job.

And her biggest fear was that she she wanted to move to Colorado. She wanted to mountain bike every day, and her fear was that she didn't have time, that her body was going to fail her before her mom died, and she can move to where she wasn't going to be able to live out this dream of spending her retirement in Colorado, mountain biking every day. And so working with her, being able to reframe that, she lost. Yeah. That's a great side metaphor to put your brain health first. She lost 35 pounds in our program.

And she went on to realize, wait, I do have time, right? I'm healthier now. We found out she had Sibo and it we traded for that helped her get in a program for that. And she really excelled. Now her health, she she she's the first one. I'll tell you I didn't know what I didn't know. And I can't believe that I forgot what healthy feels like. I thought I was healthy when I came to you guys, and now I realize how much I am so much healthier. And the biggest thing is, now she realizes she has time and she's putting herself first.

Now, like every quarter, she goes out to Colorado to do a little bit of it while she's taking care of her mom in the meantime. So now she realizes the healthier she is, the more time she has. But not that she's going to live longer, but that she's going to have more quality time because she filled up that battery and she's going to more quality time in her days. Yeah. Something you mentioned there that I'd love to just double click on is your is the purpose element, because I just feel like, you know, from it from my experience and with family and friends and otherwise that that's such a critical thing to maintaining the desire to increase the battery life.

Right? You got to have some reason to get out of bed and do it. What do you do when you work with someone and you you uncover on day one that this is maybe the core of the issue. It happens more often than you think and it's really sad. It's something like 5,055% of all people above 65 are lonely or isolated. And and it's it's a sad fact. Right. So you have the lonely that's a social component but also comes with purpose. And so if you don't have a reason to get out of bed, you don't have a reason to fill that battery up.

Right. And so what we typically do is really help them to discover what that is. And you wouldn't think about brain health being around okay. Let's go find you a purpose. And it doesn't have to be going back to work. The Japanese have they don't even have a word for retirement. They call it a change in purpose when whether that's going out and working with animals or volunteering, or just spending more quality time with your grandkids. It's having something to look forward to. And I think that's true for everybody in life.

What we find when we work with people that don't have purpose are a little bit depressed, is they have nothing to look forward to. And so it's finding that for them, and that can be a journey in itself a lot of times is just getting that next thing to look forward to. And sometimes that's just looking forward to feeling better and having energy when you wake up. A lot of times that's what it is for people and that's just one little step, right? So if we can get you waking up feeling a little bit better, having a little bit more energy, that's just a little bit more energy.

And your your PowerBar. Right. Your battery. Yeah. And that little bit more energy. Then we'll get you a little bit more motivation and discipline to do the next thing. And so we talk about, you know, Atomic Habits has the great 1% rule. And if you just do 1% change over the course of a year, it's 372% change in your life. And so it's just filling up the energy bar a little tiny bit each day or your battery. So that over time, six months from now, a year from now, you're not even going to recognize yourself.

It's going to be easy and effortless, and you're just going to feel amazing every single day. Beautiful it sounds from what you're saying, is that, you know, this is

Taking Ownership of Brain Health 10:50

a part of the shift that you're describing, I guess, is the sort of shifting the locus of control to the person doing it right, and that you can't really outsource this, you know, you can't. Your doctor can't do it for you. You've got to be in the driver's seat. How do you help people make that shift? Because it seems to me like that's one of the biggest shifts, especially given that older people, you know, grew up in the era of medicine where it was like really clear that medicine could do everything for you.

And we're only just sort of coming into this new era anyway now. But they've been living their whole life thinking that the doctor would take care of them, and now they arrive into old age and it's like, well, actually, the only things that work revolve around you doing stuff, you know, and that could be that can be testing, right? It is a really hard mind shift, and it's a hard mind shift for doctors and it's a hard mind shift for the medical community. And yes, there are a lot of charlatans that are, you know, pitching a pill that'll fix everything.

And I see why that gets so frowned upon. But if we look at really doctors, you know, surgeons cut and doctors prescribe and it's really their only tool in their toolbox. And it does talk about another great doctors on your show. Right. Like there are great doctors who do more. But if we look at overwhelming, we're probably looking at 80 to 90% of the medical community where that is their tool in the toolbox. So we talk to a lot of clients who just feel like they're not as sharp as they used to, right their late 50s, early 60s.

And I'm like, I just don't feel like I can do as much as I used to. I'm I'm missing words. I'm forgetting thoughts in the middle of a sentence. And this just isn't me and their batteries getting low, right? And so they go to a doctor. And what does a doctor do? He usually will give them the most, you know, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test. And they're probably fine. Right. 26 to 0 to 30, 26 to 30 is normal. And then you go into mild cognitive impairment and 15 is full dementia. And they're probably fine.

And so a lot of times what we're seeing is they're prescribing these pills that are meant for dimension Alzheimer's patients. And I can't tell you how many times we talk to clients that are on these medications that have terrible side effects and really do nothing. They don't work because there's not ever going to be a pill that's going to fix your sleep and your lack of exercise and your depression and your anxiety and your bad diet, and the fact that you don't leave your couch and watch TV or TV every night and that you don't have purpose and there's just not going to be a pill that's going to fix all that ever.

And I think that realization is hitting people more and more of every time I go to the doctor, I just get another pill, and now I'm getting prescribed pills to take care of the side effects of those first pills. And, you know, and listen, we need our doctors. We do. I want to have a leg without a doctor. Like they are great of acute care. A lot of them are great at chronic care, but not many because they're not really getting to the root cause. When you know, when is the last time you go in for an issue to your doctor and they ask you, you know, what's your quality of sleep like, right?

How much exercise are you doing? They're just not. So what happens is people are looking down this path going, wow, I just like we can all imagine when we walk into an assisted living facility and on the bedside table, we can see that stack of pill bottles. And at some point in people's lives, they think about that and they think, wow, I do not want that to be my future. And so no, doctor, thank you. I don't want another prescription pill to take care of the side effects of this other pill. How about our doctors prescribing meditation and weekly massages before they prescribe pain meds or anxiety or depression meds?

Right. Like that's what we would love to get to. How would how how about a prescribing a physical trainer instead of pain meds for joint issues, things like that. So I think that the tide is turning and they're realizing more and more as more and more science comes out that supports listen, it's yeah, sometimes we need a prescription to get over the hump, but let's have a plan. When we put somebody on something, let's have a plan to get them off of it. Right? Like let's, you know, there's Zen pick.

I think it's great. All these people are losing weight. There's nothing better. But let's have a plan to change their lifestyle along with taking this drug that's helping them lose the weight. So when they get so that we can get them off of it eventually. Because long term, not good side effects. Right. So we can get them off it long term. And no, they're not going to go back to where they were because we've given them the win to do them to fill up their battery. Right. We've lost weight. They have more energy.

They're sleeping better. All their joints don't hurt anymore. Fantastic. Now let's teach them how to do this when they're when their battery is high, teach them how to do the work so they can continue doing it and eventually get off of that stuff. We're good at getting people on, not going to get people off, and we never have a plan to get them off when we start them on it. And I think that's the biggest tragic. I think we need those prescription drugs in many, many cases. But we need a plan and that's where we fail.

Well, at the pharmaceutical first approach for this has not worked and is not working. And so it makes a lot of sense. And it's probably a mistake to go in that direction. What other mistakes do you see that people make when they're trying to improve their brain health? That, you know, that people can who are listening to this, can learn from so they don't fall into the same trap. I think it goes back to your question before words. They have to take ownership in their own hands. And I'm grateful we live in, you know, in the United States, we're able to do that.

We're able to go see an alternative doctor. Yes, we have to pay out of pocket for it, but we have that available to us. We can order on blood tests if we want.

Prevention, Risk Factors, and When to Start 16:58

Right? We need somebody to read them, of course, but we can go out and take our health in our own hands. Much more so than in other countries. I lived in Sweden for a long time, and Mexico, and I know Canada right now. You can't. You don't have that capability to go take your health in your own hands and figure out what's going on inside of you. You have to trust the doctors. You have to just do whatever they say. And so I think it's learning that, yes, you have the power and it's okay to question everything.

And really it's about feeling what's right for you, doing your own research. There's so many resources now to do your own research on these drugs and figure out if this is right for you or not, and to talk to your doctor and say, hey, I'm I'm willing to do this, but is this for life? And if not, how long and how do I get off of it? One of my coaches, one of my functional brain health coaches, she's been on an antidepressant since she was eight years old. And so we're talking about 20, 20 plus years and she thought, like everybody, you just kind of taper off, which is not how you get off of antidepressants.

It's actually the efficacy is in the bottom. I can't remember if 10 or 20% of it. So you can taper off to that point, but then you got to go much slower on that last little bit. And it's learning those things. On how to do this properly. And so we actually have a great resource now on somebody that how that's their profession. They help people get off of prescription drugs as they're getting healthier. And it just knowing these resources exists to take the power back, to do what's right for you and to be able to just question them and without feeling.

And I you know, there are great doctors out there. Keep looking until you find one that'll have the conversations with you about this and that will really engage with you versus just pulling out their pad, ripping it and saying, here you go, have a nice day. Right. Beautiful. Well, look, I mean, you, you you take me out well for that because really the whole point of this summit and what we're doing, it truly is to build a network of doctors that are doing, you know, all the things that you're describing, you know, prescribing, across the pillars of health, you know, making recommendations, social prescribing, getting to the root cause, understanding all of that.

But, you know, ultimately the chances are there's not one in your zip code right now because this is new and this is an emerging model. And so I'm really grateful that, tools like yours exist and a proven and you can support people, on that journey, you know, as you as you like in your business. Do you, do you work with people who are on the sort of cognitive decline spectrum, or when is the like when is the right time to start working with, smart science? Yes. We you know, prevention and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

So we really only work with people that are in a preventative state. And and, you know, we want to get to them as soon as we can. I mean, the time is now. I don't care if you're ten, right? I have an eight year old. And we focus so much on his brain health. And I see what a balanced, amazing kid he is and how easy it is for him to learn and focus and all the things that so many kids have a hard time with, but all the way up. And so really, the time is just now, no matter what age you are. We talked to 50 year olds that have diabetes.

You have a much higher risk of getting dementia if you have diabetes, things like that. Just even getting that resolved and being able to figure that out, super, super important. But it really does come down to now if you it is a preventable disease that we've seen, right? Dementia and Alzheimer's can be a preventable disease. So the time to get into optimal health is now. Now I can't tell you if it's going to prevent it in the future, but what I can tell you is you're going to get a much higher quality of life today.

We we refer if they've already kind of crossed over that line. We always refer to other doctors like doctor Dale Bredesen and his Apollo Health Clinic. But when you're in the prevention stage, if you're just starting to feel like, wow, I don't feel as sharp as I used to. Health problems are bubbling up. You know, we talk about the bucket analogy. I'm sure other people have talked about that. Where everybody has a bucket, and genetically it could be a big bucket, like a swimming pool, or it can be a little Dixie cup.

Right. But all your bad habits are filling this bucket up. I always like to think of it as like green sludge and all the healthy stuff you're doing is ladling out, bailing out that sludge. But if you're filling it up faster or you have a small cup, you got to know that genetically we do a lot of genetics testing, too, with functional genetic testing. But, you got to know what your limits are, because when that overflows, you're getting some disease. And I don't care if that's an autoimmune disease, diabetes or dementia down the line, you're going to get a disease.

And so if you have any of those right now, your bucket's already overflowing. And you've got to do this work. Now if you're getting to that point or you feel like something's going on, now's the time to. I mean, I spend a ton of money on preventative health for myself every single year because I want to know what's going on inside of me. And as my body gets older and changes, things are going to change. Hormones are going to change. I got to do it every single year, right? People have budgets for houses or hot tubs, and I can guarantee you someone that just got diagnosed with MCI, they would trade that hot tub, that car, whatever, for all the money in the world to go back 20 years earlier and take care of this and help to prevent it.

Because even if you can stave off a year or two, you're looking at, you know, what's the average cost of assisted living, not memory care. Memory care is even a lot higher, but it's $56,000 in this country. So even if you can stave off an extra year or two, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. So spending that money, I always say, you pay now or you pay later and you'll pay a lot more later. So now is the time for everybody. I mean, it's rare that we find somebody that's doing everything right that is in in really, really good health.

And, is putting is prioritizing their brain health. Yeah, absolutely. Well, like, I think you've added so much to this conversation. I'm super grateful to be part of this, this summit. So, you know, if people are interested in finding out more about I'm getting started and they're ready to prevent, where do you recommend they go? Yeah, absolutely. So the best place to start with us is I host an hour long workshop where we talk about it's the definitive guide to Alzheimer's prevention,

Getting Started with the Workshop and Closing Remarks 23:38

and I really get into detail around diets and when to eat. Also a couple other anti-TNF lavatory issues, because inflammation is one of the pathways that leads to dementia. So we're going to give you the link to sign up for that. It's free. It's an hour long workshop. It's a great place to go get really detailed action step workshop where you even get it. You even get a worksheet that you fill out as you go. So you have a plan when you end. So it's a great place for people to go. Just start. Amazing.

Well, we'll put all of those details into the show notes. And Julie, I just want to share, you know, like I think, you know, this is having a moment right. This topic right now with, the needs and also, you know, the journey that we're all on. And I just want to say, you know, just to to see this coming 13 years ahead and to, you know, understand the power of it and to learn so much over the last 13 years about it. I just want to acknowledge you know, what it takes to be a pioneer and, you know, to do it before the science is really there and before, you know, just doing it based on what you see and your own experience and, and, and now, you know, the universe coming around to show that you were dead on and that this is really critical and this is really the only way that we can build a healthy brain.

I just want to salute what it takes to do that. And really powerful to have you onto this, onto this summit and to add your voice to, all of the great speakers that we've had, all the great innovators and and, you know, from my perspective, this is the beginning of a transformation in the, you know, in the way that we think about brains and brain health. And I think we're all moving towards a brain first, functional medicine model where the brain is actually the most important thing. And if we can get that going, then, everything else can take care of itself.

So thank you for leading. Thank you for pioneering. And, I'm excited to see, what comes next. Absolutely. Thank you. So much. I mean, that is the goal. That's what we're doing too, is trying to create more brain health pioneers out there spreading the message. We have a certification program even for that. Right. So it's everybody out there trying to teach other people so that they can go to each other people. So it's amazing you said the word pioneer because that's exactly what we're trying to do.

So thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure being here. Awesome. All right. Well, this has been the Reversing Alzheimer's summit. We've been here with Julia Lundstrom. We'll have all the details in the show. Notes. How you can get started, with, understanding what they're doing. And make sure to check out the rest of the talks that we have today. And coming up for the rest of the summit. We've got lots of great stuff on so many different topics. And I know you said at the beginning that there are, you know, ten pillars of brain health.

And, I'm sure that throughout this summit you'll be able to learn about, you know, some of those pillars and take action towards having a healthier brain. So thanks so much for tuning in, and we'll see you at the next session.