Can You Reverse Dementia? Dr. Royce Bargas on Bredesen’s RECODE + Ketosis, Toxins & Testing

What if cognitive decline isn’t “one disease”… but dozens of problems happening at once?

Board-certified cardiologist and functional medicine physician Dr. Royce Bargas breaks down Dr. Dale Bredesen’s RECODE approach (Reversal of Cognitive Decline) — a multi-factor, test-driven protocol aimed at Alzheimer’s, dementia, and prevention (PRECODE).

In this episode, we cover:

• The “leaky roof” analogy: why single-drug approaches often fall short
• The 5 major drivers Bredesen targets: inflammation, glycotoxicity (sugar), toxins, atrophy/nutrients-hormones, and trauma/head injury
• “Test, don’t guess”: labs, toxin panels, hormones, antibodies, and more
• Volumetric MRI: tracking hippocampus volume over time
• Why ketosis (measured beta-hydroxybutyrate) is central for many patients
• Ketoflex 12/3 + time-restricted eating (and what “healthy fats” actually means)
• Detox basics: exposure reduction + binders + when chelation may matter
• What Dr. Vargas has seen in real patients — and why compliance + coaching/support can make or break outcomes
• Bonus: “nootropics” — buzzword or useful? (glutathione, huperzine A, bacopa)

If you have a loved one showing early signs—or you’re serious about prevention—this conversation is a practical, hope-filled roadmap.

Listen here or watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KYP0IrAjVn8

(Educational content only. Not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider.)

Visit UltraBotanica.com to learn more about us and how you can get a free sample of our products.

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Usually you don't get significant cognitive decline if you have been always eating a whole foods, organic diet and exercising every day and sleeping well. And so the actual program includes many foundational aspects. That's very functional medicine esque. You have to eat the right things. Now, the biggest change in the diet is that you want to be in ketosis. And so if you want to optimize the health of your brain cells, your you cannot eat carbohydrates and sugar. You want to get into ketosis. People are checking their ketone levels. We want a level of beta hydroxybutyrate to know that you are doing everything you can to optimize the function, the energy and function of all of your brain cells. And so that's very difficult for people to look at that and be like, am I going to be able to change my diet enough to be in ketosis for the rest of my life?

0:01:00 - (Josh Bellieu): Foreign. Hey everyone, it's Josh Bellew here with Ultra Botanica and with Ultra Life. Today we have Dr. Roy Spargus with us, doctor of osteopathy, board certified cardiologist for this episode today. But we're going to take an interesting detour away from heart health because we're going to talk about something you may have heard of someone called Dale Bruce, Dr. Dale Bredesen, a neurologist. I think he's got three best selling books out there.

0:01:36 - (Josh Bellieu): He's created a really cool program called Recode. Recode your brain. It's a protocol. And he's also trained people that are certified Bredesen recode practitioners. Many of them are functional and integrative doctors. And Dr. Royce Bargas is one of those. So we're going to talk a bit today about recode and cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer's, things like that. Is there hope for an individual to recode their brain, no matter where they may be at? And Royce Vargas, always it's awesome to have you here.

0:02:13 - (Josh Bellieu): I'm sure I'm going to be wowed by this information. I didn't even know till recently that you were a certified Dale Bredesen recode practitioner.

0:02:21 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Oh, yeah, for a few years now.

0:02:22 - (Josh Bellieu): I am stoked about this. Can you explain maybe the foundational principles behind recode, maybe how it differs? Because I've heard a lot of different protocols recently. I've been studying brain health, heard a lot of different protocols and different approaches to doing this. What are the foundational principles and how does this differ maybe from other programs that we've heard of out there?

0:02:45 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Well, I would say if there are Other programs that are a multifactorial lifestyle approach to cognitive decline, they're piggybacking off Dale Bredesen because he truly was the pioneer.

0:02:57 - (Josh Bellieu): Really. Really. And how long, I'm just curious, has he been just, oh, gosh, plug away in this arena? I've heard of his, I've heard of his name for almost two decades, I think.

0:03:05 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, yeah. I can't remember when he published patient zero. I should have reviewed, I have a whole talk about this. I should have reviewed it for this.

0:03:14 - (Josh Bellieu): Oh, no worries.

0:03:15 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It's been a while. It's been a while. And so he is an Ivy League trained neurologist who really has dedicated his entire career to Alzheimer's treatment. He believes that it is a reversible process or completely preventable disease. And he looks at Alzheimer's as like a leaky roof, which is very different than any sort of conventional pharmaceutical based approach. And so for somebody to develop significant cognitive decline, a lot of things have to go wrong.

0:03:56 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And in the pharmaceutical world, you treat one thing. And that's why there has been problems. Over 250 drugs studied for Alzheimer's and not a single one of them has made a very significant impact on the disease.

0:04:11 - (Josh Bellieu): Oh my gosh.

0:04:11 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Because they're each plugging one hole. And you can imagine if you have 35 holes in your roof and you successfully plug one, you still have 34 holes leaking in your roof and your house is getting very wet. And so his program looks to identify all the holes and plug them all as best as possible. And even if you can plug 30 of the 35 holes, you will have made a very significant impact on your cognition.

0:04:42 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And so examples of the holes are things we know that insult and stress the brain. And so he's developed five different, kind of coined five different subtypes of dementia. And this is sort of how the program is broken down into identification of the holes. And so there is inflammatory, as I've said a thousand times, inflammation is the root of all evil. So there are inflammatory biomarkers and different things.

0:05:14 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Glycotoxicity, so that's glucose, inflammation from glucose. So basically metabolic dysfunction and high blood glucose. There's a reason why dementia has been coined type 3 diabetes. It is a sugar driven disease. And then there's toxicity, which is toxins like heavy metals, mold, glyphosate, environmental toxins that we know damage brain cells and contribute to cognitive decline. And then there's atrophic, which are all the trophic factors that are necessary for the brain.

0:05:50 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Zinc, selenium, all the B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin C, all the antioxidants, all of your hormones, estrogen, testosterone, progestero, pregnenolone, dhea, thyroid, all of those trophic factors that support optimal cognitive function. And then trauma, which is, you know.

0:06:15 - (Josh Bellieu): You'Ve heard of that T word keeps coming up in our conversations.

0:06:19 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Not trauma, like emotional trauma, although I'm sure that's damaging for the brain. But this is specifically like head trauma, the concussions that, you know, football players get, or motor vehicle accidents.

0:06:31 - (Josh Bellieu): Combat sports athletes.

0:06:34 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, there's been a lot of media press about cognitive decline in ex football players. It's a huge problem.

0:06:42 - (Josh Bellieu): For a second, I want to go back as it relates to some of these holes because you mentioned these five categories, five holes, as you called. And that was, that was great. Put a good picture in my mind. How does a practitioner go about determining which area, which hole a person has?

0:07:05 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): You test, don't guess. And so the testing is pretty extensive through the Recode program. And to be clear, so Recode stands for Reversal of Cognitive Decline. And there's also a pre code program which is much less intensive. That's Prevention of Cognitive Decline. Beautiful. So you don't have to have any element of cognitive decline to benefit from this program. And in fact, my favorite is the pre code, like get in before you have anything. If you've determined you have risk factors, if you have family history, if you have APOE genotype, it's never too early, but it can definitely be too late.

0:07:43 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah. Please give us a brief and I interrupt you. I'm sorry, go ahead. But I want you to tell us these different tests.

0:07:51 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): I can't even list all the tests. There are all the things that I mentioned when I'm talking about the different subtypes. We test all of those things. So all the cholesterol markers I've mentioned in earlier episodes, many metabolic markers, fasting, insulin, triglycerides, all of the like, many essential elements, B vitamins or vitamins in general. Many of them are B vitamins. We look for toxins. I do very extensive toxin testing.

0:08:26 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): All the hormones. Like, I want to know that I've optimized all of your hormones as much as possible. We do antibody panels to see do you have an immune response to things like gluten or there are antibodies. You can actually test for leaky brain. That's not necessarily a target for therapy, but just more informative. We do Volumetrics MRIs where we actually can measure the volume of the hippocampus and the amygdala, the two structures of the brain that are most affected by Alzheimer's.

0:09:02 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And we can track them over time to see if we've improved hippocampal volume. And the program has actually been shown to actually increase the volume of the hippocampus, which is profound in the area of Alzheimer's.

0:09:15 - (Josh Bellieu): So one of the holes that you mentioned was heavy metals and glyphosates. I am so confused about heavy metals, identifying them and then what one does to get those out of the body. I keep hearing the words forever chemicals about glyphosate and all these others. And it just kind of makes you think, well, I've been exposed. There's really nothing I can do to get them out of my body. They're going to be there forever.

0:09:40 - (Josh Bellieu): And, gee, what do you do when you discover someone has elevated heavy metals in their body or they've got glyphosate or other things you test for in that category? What are the things one can do to get those out of their body?

0:09:57 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It is a very defeated mentality to call anything a forever chemical. Like our body is beautifully designed to get rid of all this stuff.

0:10:05 - (Josh Bellieu): Hope springs eternal. Thank you.

0:10:07 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): I mean, we were never meant to have the level of exposure that we have today. Don't get me wrong. And so paramount to your health is to minimize your exposure. You cannot eat glyphosate. You cannot spray Roundup on your yard. You have to avoid heavy metals. And so part of the program is educating people like, where would you. Where would I come into contact with glyphosate? Where would I get mercury in my diet?

0:10:33 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): How would I ever be exposed to lead? So that you can act. Absolutely. Cut out all exposure if you already have it in your system. Again, you were beautifully designed to get rid of it. Just our world suppresses these detoxification pathways that are. They have to be working in a pristine manner to get it all out, but they can get it all out. Metals specifically can sometimes require chelation. I do IV chelation in my practice. I also use a lot of Quicksilver Scientific.

0:11:08 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): They're probably the leaders in the world for detox products and protocols that can augment your detoxification pathways. They're right in a suburb north of Denver in Colorado. A great company. I use a lot of their detox systems. And a detox system basically up regulates all of those pathways in our body that are designed to get these toxins out and bind up the toxins in the gut and eliminate them from the body. And so it's possible to get them out.

0:11:42 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Metals may need to be chelated.

0:11:43 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, we have some pretty savvy viewers, but something I learned a while back that I think is very important for our viewers to understand is when you mention avoiding glyphosate, a lot of people are going, I'm eating the rainbow. And I'm like, wait, if you're doing things that are conventional farming, most people don't realize that when they are harvesting grains and vegetables through the normal strip farming methods that are used out there, the conventional agriworld that uses pest, pesticides, the glyphosate is actually sprayed on those to dry them.

0:12:18 - (Josh Bellieu): And so if you're not moving into this world of eating organic and identifying the level of organic, look up organic certifications so you can kind of get an education about that. People may think, man, I'm eating three salads a day, and I'm eating the rainbow and doing all these things. And yet they're exposing their body in a profound way to glyphosate.

0:12:39 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yes, yes, definitely eat organic. I actually love the Environmental working group Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen. They put it out every year. I think it's pretty accurate representation of foods that you may be able to not do organic and then foods that you absolutely have to do organic. And I like that, because the reality is that organic produce is super expensive. And if you can make choices that help you to really avoid the problem things, a general rule of thumb is if it has a peel and you're gonna remove it, you don't necessarily have to go organic. Bananas, avocados.

0:13:24 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): If it has, like, cracks and crevices in it where all the glyphosate can go, and you're never gonna get it out, washing it like a raspberry or a strawberry, you better be eating organic, because those things are loaded with glyphosate. If they're not, and then wash your produce.

0:13:41 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, I actually learned a trick way back in the day that you can, you know, take a nice little plastic tub, and you can actually open up a betaine HCl hydrochloric acid capsule. You put that in the water, and then when you're washing your vegetables in that, it profoundly will take pesticides and stuff off of that kind of interesting idea. I learned. I know. I learned that from a kinesiologist way back in the day in California. And it was brilliant. And I did it forever and got away from it when I started eating all organic.

0:14:13 - (Josh Bellieu): So I understand in the recode protocol the words personalized and precision are just repeated over and over and over. And you've already said there is a lot of tests that can be done. But I mean, I'm thinking to myself, you know, if you're out there and you have a loved one that you're seeing, moving on to this cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer's road, why not take an approach like this? Because you heard Dr. Bargis mention that all of these hundreds of pharmaceutical drugs have still, what did you say? Basically, have not proven to be able to help yet.

0:14:53 - (Josh Bellieu): So you have an actual path and a roadmap for an individual's to start at any place in the game, whether they want to prevent or whether they're in the thick of it. You know, and I've heard our good friend Keith Bishop mentioned before how critical it is for someone to have in essence, kind of a partner to help. Because if a person starts to go into cognitive decline, before long, they may not be able to open their email, or they may end up in the bathroom and wonder why they were there, or in the kitchen, or the spouse wakes up in the night and goes, where's my mate? And then finds them in another area of the house scratching their head. So how critical is something like that in this process? And I'm saying this because I want to incentivize viewers to notice, look for the signs, and then say, you know what, we're going to go do this.

0:15:39 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It is so important. Josh, I just had a meeting yesterday with my health coach. I have the benefit of having a functionally certified health coach in my practice, one of the only ones in Oklahoma. And she's very familiar with my recode protocol. Her name is sue. And I absolutely, I could not successfully be a recode provider without her. And so the program, I mentioned how we do all these tests, and it's easy for me to tell you, take your zinc, do this detox, let's put you on some hormones.

0:16:10 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But. But the actual protocol is you have to change your whole entire life. Usually. Now, some people come to it already doing a lot of the right things, but usually you don't get significant cognitive decline if you have been always eating a whole foods, organic diet and exercising every day and sleeping well. And so the actual program includes many foundational aspects. It's very functional medicine esque.

0:16:42 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): You have to eat the right things. Now, the biggest change in the diet is that you want to be in ketosis. And so if you want to optimize the health of your brain cells, you cannot eat carbohydrates and sugar. You want to get into ketosis, people are checking their ketone levels. We want a level of beta hydroxybutyrate to know that you are doing everything you can to optimize the function, the energy and function of all of your brain cel.

0:17:09 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And so that's very difficult for people to look at that and be like, am I going to be able to change my diet enough to be in ketosis for the rest of my life?

0:17:19 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, and let's talk about that for a second because I know there is ketogenic diets. And then as I was on for about three months, a therapeutic ketogenic diet, which was even limited on protein as well as carbohydrates. And then there's the carnivores, which I see many people resolving all kinds of issues by going on a carnivore diet, doing it the right way. There's great resources out there. But I look at Carnivore much more as a therapeutic, not a life diet.

0:17:47 - (Josh Bellieu): That's just me. I know some people that have been on it 15 or 20 years and they seem to be the most healthy individuals in the world. I have not seen those people. Okay, okay.

0:17:56 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And then also you need vegetables and the rainbow. Like you have to.

0:18:00 - (Josh Bellieu): Great. And how about this? How about intermittent fasting? Because if you're going 16 hours without food, maybe eating one beautifully balanced meal a day, you're really hitting that ketosis zone for several hours. Right?

0:18:15 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Well, we don't guess. We test. And so we will measure ketone levels. Intermittent fasting is a huge part of the program, or it's not. It's technically time restricted eating if you're minding a narrow window for when you consume all your calories. So there is a very specific meal plan. It's called Ketoflex 12 and 3. So it's not Atkins ketogenic, it's not carnivore.

0:18:41 - (Josh Bellieu): Give us a synopsis.

0:18:42 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It's a very specific meal of the.

0:18:44 - (Josh Bellieu): Macro microbes in that and the balance of those and what that looks like.

0:18:48 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): So people typically start out in a 65% fat and the rest is balanced protein.

0:18:56 - (Josh Bellieu): And explain for our viewers what you mean by fat, because a lot of people are going to think, oh, canola oil and seed oils and these things and stuff. Tell us what healthy fats really are.

0:19:06 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, healthy fats are extra virgin first cold pressed, organic olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, pasture raised ghee. Not inflammatory fats. Obviously, if you eat a lot of inflammatory fats, you're defeating the purpose because you are Going to cause a lot of inflammation. Which is where I tend to have issues with the carnivore diet because you're not taking in any anti inflammatory if you're not eating vegetables.

0:19:31 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Meat is a condiment in this meal plan. Yet 65% or greater of your calories you consume are fat. And so that's hard to wrap your head around. Dr. Bredesen wrote a whole book just about the meal plan. It's complicated and it's a difficult switch for people but basically you fill three quarters or more of your plate with healthy vegetables and a serving of high quality protein.

0:19:59 - (Josh Bellieu): So can we bust a myth here? Because I, I've got a lot of Native American background and I was vegan for a period of time and then I was lacto vegetarian and then I was lacto ovo vegetarian. Never really felt quite right doing all that when I actually began to embrace beef. And I will only eat grass fed beef of the highest quality. Yes, it's expensive. Boy is it satisfying though. It fills me more.

0:20:30 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But buffalo is a great recipe.

0:20:32 - (Josh Bellieu): Yes, but fat within those types of meat and I know buffalo is very lean, but fat within those types of meats is not bad for you coming from a cardiologist perspective. Thank you for saying that animals were.

0:20:45 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Created for human cancer.

0:20:47 - (Josh Bellieu): And let's talk maybe about grass fed butter as something again. It's actually considered a healthy fat by a board certified cardiologist that is a functional medicine specialist. Okay, it is.

0:20:59 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But you can't be eating margarine, God help us all, or these refined seed oils, soybean oil that is in everything that comes out of the canola.

0:21:07 - (Josh Bellieu): Rapeseed.

0:21:08 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): I go through my health food seed corn. You can't eat any of that.

0:21:11 - (Josh Bellieu): It's all over health food store products.

0:21:14 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, it's not. You can't eat it. That's not a healthy fat. Avocados, eggs. I'm a huge proponent of eggs. Great way to get your protein and fat if you can tolerate them. There is a lot of intolerance to chicken eggs, those nuts, very good source of healthy fat. But you can't buy nuts that are deep fried in soybean oil. You gotta buy like dry roasted. It can't have soybean oil or it's inflammatory.

0:21:41 - (Josh Bellieu): It's hard to find nuts that actually are not rancid on a store shelf. That's why one of the places I like to shop keeps them basically frozen so that when I get them in the bags that I get them, they basically were thrown into the cold thing. Shipped cold and then they're, they're cold because nuts do get rancid really quickly. And a lot of people overeat nuts too. That's kind of a problem. You know, you don't need to eat 2 handfuls of them and say, wow, being really healthy with my body.

0:22:09 - (Josh Bellieu): So for you, how many just ballpark figure, how long have you been doing the Recode protocol with your as a practitioner under the Bredesen protocol? And then how many people have you actually worked with? And give us an idea of some of the things you've seen because you've mentioned some hard things, which I know that about. You do the work right, but people can't take baby steps in these things as well and begin to get better. But if somebody's going to engage, cognitive decline is coming on.

0:22:42 - (Josh Bellieu): How many people do you think you've taken through this? And I know you know a lot of other practitioners too, so you can, can draw from that pool. How many people do you think you've taken through this? And what are some of the types of things you see when people embrace the Recode protocol? And how quickly do they begin to see changes?

0:23:00 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Okay, so my recode and pre code practice is not huge. I mean it's a highly specialized program that is not for the weary. And so I think right now I might have about 30 people in the program. And people have come and gone over the years. I think I've been doing it somewhere between two and three years. I've been a certified practitioner that I've really been like, people pick me when they sign up for recode, that I was practicing this type of thing long before I became a recode provider. But actually being in the program and so I have probably, I don't know, I would have to look at my numbers.

0:23:40 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Maybe less than half are actually pre code. And so they don't have any element of cognitive decline. And so the big success with them is that all of their scores are staying normal. So in order to know, like how is somebody doing? They take pretty advanced cognitive neurocognitive assessment tests. And then they just know in their life that they feel good and their memory isn't suffering. In my recode patients, I mean, I won't lie there have people that have come to me with MOCA scores, which is Montreal Cognitive assessment. It's a 30 point in office pretty brief tests that you do to quickly assess somebody's cognition.

0:24:23 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And if you come to me and your MOCA score is less than 10, the highest being 30, anything less than, oh, gosh, I should know this. Maybe 20 less than 20 is dementia. Somewhere between 20 and 25 is like mild cognitive impairment. If you come to me with a MOCA score of 10, it's gonna be really hard. And if you could do the entire program 100%, you may not decline from where you are. Maybe your score will go up a couple of points. But the problem with those people is that they're already so declined that you can't get them to exercise, you can't get them to do brain training exercise, you can't get them to take all the supplements.

0:25:10 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And so it's so hard for them to comply with the program at that point. Even with a really good support system, it's hard. Now, Dr. Bredesen has turned some of those patients around. And there's actually this amazing facility in Wichita called the Clear Mind center, and it's a nursing facility. It's the second. The first one is called Marama, and that's in California. So it's. And Clear Mind center is just in Wichita, and so it's right down the road. And so it's kind of doable for patients.

0:25:40 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): So it's a facility where people live and breathe 24, 7 recode. All of the meals are Recode compliant. It's amazing. Now, it is not cheap, but either is a memory care center. And so I have had a couple of people go in there. Some have done better and some haven't. For me personally, when I'm implementing the protocol, it is really all about compliance. And how much of the protocol can you do? And so I had one patient who came and she, like an example, she no longer managed her own finances.

0:26:15 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And when she first saw me, she hadn't actually written out her own check in over a year. And when she came to her second appointment after only three months on the protocol, and this is her just implementing it herself with her family at home. She literally wrote her check for her business herself, which was just a testament to me. Like, it really can help. I have another patient who. He has pretty significant cognitive decline, but he's brilliant and he owns an accounting firm.

0:26:44 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And so his executive functioning is very high, and his ability to communicate with his clients and stuff is high, but his memory is not good. And so when he first came to me, it was a very hard visit. There was a lot of crying in this visit. I was like, you have got to make your plan to protect your clients and protect your business and protect yourself and figure out a way out of this. And he's Been with me now for a year and he still owns this business and still working, but he's kind of separated, taken himself out of like the critical jobs that could really affect a person's financial welfare and does more of kind of the relationship.

0:27:32 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And I thought about him when Adam talked about the professor that retired and three months later died. Like, I really actually don't know that I ever want this guy to stop working because it's so much a part of his life and his satisfaction. And that's super important in the program as well. Community is really important and surrounding yourself with people that improve your outlook on life. And his job is very important to that.

0:27:58 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But he's had the wherewithal to make the plans and appropriate decisions to protect himself and protect him, his clients. And he's exercising more and he's like religious with the diet. Like, you tell him this. You can get meal plans actually ordered from a service that are recode compliant. And he gets those and eats them and he's doing great. He's improved a lot of his scores dramatically in the past year and a half or so. He's doing really well. And I think if he stays with the program, I think he'll do, he'll do well.

0:28:38 - (Josh Bellieu): So you've always, when something like this comes along, you have these opposing forces between what would be standard of care, the 200 drugs that you mentioned that don't work. And so there's going to be 200.

0:28:52 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Drugs to treat it. There have been over 200 studied.

0:28:55 - (Josh Bellieu): Oh, there you go. Okay, thank you.

0:28:56 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Three drugs on the market.

0:28:57 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay, gotcha. Thank you so much for that, that distinction. There's always going to be critics of something like this. I think I already know the answer to this question, but I want to hear it from you. You know, people are, are criticizing the recode protocol and they're doing the same thing they always do. There's not been any long term randomized placebo controlled trials, which you and I know can go into the hundreds of millions of dollars to do something like that.

0:29:23 - (Josh Bellieu): How would you respond to that? I mean, obviously you just told us what about case studies and results you're seeing when people embrace the protocol, but from a doctor's perspective, that does deal in a hybrid practice with functional and some level of standard of care as well. How would you deal with those criticisms?

0:29:43 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, I think that is fear. I think that it's a big pharma mentality that supports that philosophy that you need some sort of large scale randomide plus placebo controlled trial. To something.

0:29:59 - (Josh Bellieu): They can afford them.

0:30:00 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): They can afford them. But the truth is this protocol can never be studied in that way because that kind of study design is to study one factor and keep all other things the same. And so this program is not one factor. That's what makes it so different and quite frankly, so effective. It's 100 factors all at once. And so the only way to study it would be to take a group of people with the same level of cognitive decline and all the same risk factors and put half of them in the protocol and half of them not.

0:30:33 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, exactly.

0:30:34 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): And that's still not randomized. Double blind placebo. There can be no blinding in this protocol. You're either living the protocol or you're not. And so Dr. Bredesen is doing a good job of following his patients and publishing like, he wants this protocol to be mainstream and he wants it to be validated. And he publicly. October 2023, I guess he published like his 10 patients that had been doing the program for 10 years or something. I can't remember all the details of the study to show improvement, but there's no placebo and there's no, like matched control.

0:31:15 - (Josh Bellieu): Exactly.

0:31:15 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It's just either it works. We know what happens if you don't do it right.

0:31:19 - (Josh Bellieu): Exactly.

0:31:19 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): It's pretty clear. And so the people that are going to stand back and say it doesn't work, work. They're just scared that they're not going to take the pharmaceuticals or something. I don't know what they're worried about. They're scared that they won't be able to meet the. They won't be able to implement the protocol. I don't know what they're worried about.

0:31:37 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay, so last question, and thank you for that. That was great. There's a big buzzword in the supplement industry the last three years, and I know how these trends go in and out of the supplement industry. I frankly am very upset at times with the supplement industry because to me, they're doing the same kind of ride that's happening in the other world that we're not very fond of at times, 30 to 50 somethings out there, and the word is nootropic or nootropic.

0:32:07 - (Josh Bellieu): What are some of these things that one would find in nature? Let's for a second not talk about drugs. There probably are those that we know people are doing things with Adderall and all kinds of crazy things out there. But in the nootropic world, that would be a supplement world. Are there any things within your own Practice that you have recognized are really key supplements that, let's say it's an individual that's not having any cognitive decline, not having dementia, but maybe they really want to tune up or sharpen their mind. Are there things in nature that you would recommend for people and would you call those nootropics?

0:32:46 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Nootropic is a total buzzword right now. I don't really, I have never said the word nootropic in practice ever. Okay.

0:32:53 - (Josh Bellieu): Ooh, we caught you on film saying it for the first time.

0:32:56 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yes. So I don't really discuss nootropics necessarily with my patients. I definitely advise heavily against using any Adderall amphetamine stimulant type product. They're highly addictive and they are not going to be helpful in the long run. And there's so much, I mean, don't even get me into, like the fentanyl laced stuff out there. You cannot be grabbing an Adderall from your college roommate because you can wake up dead. And it's happened, it's happened to close people. To me, it is very bad. And so I would caution people, do not take those drugs.

0:33:35 - (Josh Bellieu): Thank you for that.

0:33:37 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Now I also believe supplements are supplemental. And so I'm gonna always, you know, food first and exercise is actually the most potent nootropic on the planet. It increase bdnf, it causes mental clarity. It's gonna be the best way to support cognitive function in your brain. And then don't eat sugar and eat your vegetables. And that's gonna be very important. As far as, like, what do I pull out when I wanna increase mental clarity in a young person?

0:34:08 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): I use a lot of. I wouldn't say a lot. Well, one thing I would say is caffeine. Caffeine can be incredibly effective. If you're not adversely affected by caffeine, it can cause, I mean, it obviously causes mental clarity and increases your energy level and can be very effective. I never use this, but nicotine is actually an amazing, like, woo. You can really think straight.

0:34:36 - (Josh Bellieu): I've heard of that.

0:34:37 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But it's also highly addictive and very difficult. And certainly I don't want anybody addicted to nicotine or certainly don't smoke, but it does cause a lot of. It's very good for mental clarity. And then I use glutathione. So glutathione is the most potent antioxidant in nature and in our bodies. And a lot of us are deficient. And in a toxic world, we use up a lot of our glutathione and there's a lot of controversy about how to administer glutathione. You can't swallow glutathione. So for anybody out there, if you're taking glutathione capsules, you are not, not getting any glutathione.

0:35:15 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): You can't use it that way.

0:35:17 - (Josh Bellieu): N acetylcysteine is something that can help to naturally elevate glutathione levels.

0:35:22 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): That's a lot of nac. But if I want, like, I want to increase my focus right now, like I have to give a lecture or you're going to take a big test or something, you can really be on your game by taking liposomal glutathione. I administer intramuscular and IV glutathione in my clinic too, but it's not really practical for people. So I use a great liposomal glutathione product. It's not super practical for long term detox because you really do blast through that product within an hour or two. You've used it all up.

0:35:58 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): But it can really be helpful for. Wow, I feel amazing for an hour after I take this. I use that in a lot of my younger patients.

0:36:07 - (Josh Bellieu): Are you familiar with Bacopa? Now it doesn't work well for me, but I know people. People, when they take Bacopa, it is literally game on for about three hours.

0:36:18 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah. So the two other like more botanical things would be I use Huperzine A and Bacopa Moneri.

0:36:28 - (Josh Bellieu): I was hoping you were going to mention Huperzine.

0:36:29 - (Dr. Royce Bargas): Yeah, those two things can really increase focus for like add, ADHD or just brain fog in general. Those are the two things that I really go to.

0:36:42 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah. And also for me, I love to utilize different types of ginseng that I will put together with others and that creates for me a really good headspace as well as a little increased physical endurance as well, which I really love. Well, you've been listening to Dr. Royce Vargas, Dr. Of osteopathy, board certified cardiologist. You can contact Dr. Vargas Bargas really easily. Bargis wellness.com b a r g a s wellness.com

0:37:14 - (Josh Bellieu): I'm Josh Bellew. That's Dr. Vargas. This is Ultralife Today. Do you like what we're doing? Please, like subscribe, Share. Give us five stars where you can. We'll see you next time. Sam.