Congitive decline may be more environmentally induced than we once thought. Stellar education on nurturing the brain and preventing degenerative brain disease.
In the third of 4 episodes, Coach Britt interviews the brilliant Dr. Brant Cortright Ph.D professor and author of Functional Psychology for Anxiety, Depression and Congnitive Decline.
This cutting edge perspective on the brain, mental health and psychology will BLOW YOUR MIND! (pun intented)
We've been going about psychology and mental health all wrong.
You won't want to miss all four episodes with Dr. Cortright. For more on his work, books and interviews, you can find him at https://www.brantcortright.com/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
Congitive decline may be more environmentally induced than we once thought. Stellar education on nurturing the brain and preventing degenerative brain disease.
In the third of 4 episodes, Coach Britt interviews the brilliant Dr. Brant Cortright Ph.D professor and author of Functional Psychology for Anxiety, Depression and Congnitive Decline.
This cutting edge perspective on the brain, mental health and psychology will BLOW YOUR MIND! (pun intented)
We've been going about psychology and mental health all wrong.
You won't want to miss all four episodes with Dr. Cortright. For more on his work, books and interviews, you can find him at https://www.brantcortright.com/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
What if every experience, every hardship, every obstacle was given to you not to break you, but to mold you and strengthen you. What if the center of your suffering was actually the key to ultimate health? And what if your own pain was meant to be the catalyst for your rate is purpose. Welcome to bud belly life, empowering purpose, mind to microbiome. I know you you've touched a little bit on cognitive decline, um, and the, you know, Alzheimer's and dementia, things like that. I am absolutely fascinated or at this piece. And I think it would really be who people to know some of this. Um, so when you talk about, like you said, the, the hip hippocampus actually shrinks, you say, you know, trauma can actually shrink the hippocampus, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm trying to reiterate here. This is how we learn guys. This is how we teach the coaches, re reiterate the things we learn, we'll slip. Um, by a quarter we can shrink the hippo campus by a quarter because of trauma or severe stress. Um, when we see this, because sometimes I feel like when people are diagnosed with disorders, especially mental health, behavioral, et cetera, um, that they're all very similar and they kinda run together. Right. Um, and so when it comes to dementia and Alzheimer's, and things like that, you talk about that shrinking of hippocampus and this lack of regenerating new, fresh brain cells. Um, can, do you believe you can reverse some of that process, even in the older community or people who are maybe younger and experiencing some of those things? I mean, that's not beyond the realm of possible too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and there is beginning evidence that this is the case, right? It used to be thought that Alzheimer's, for example, once it started, it was like falling off a cliff. There's nothing you can do to stop it. And they're now saying that actually you can stop it. And in some cases you can even reverse it to some degree. Again, it depends how much damage has been done. Um, once the person has lost a good amount of their brain cells, you know, it's like an amputated limb. It it's not gonna grow back. Um, but if it's just starting or the person is just experiencing cognitive decline or kind of brain fog, absolutely. These are lifestyle, um, disorders, these dementia, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, you know, right now, um, within a few years, the way the trajectory is going, um, it's, it's almost there now, but it, within a few years, half of the people who are 85 will have Alzheimer's or dementia. Mm. And since most of us at this point are expected to live, to be about 85. That's a pretty scary statistic.
Speaker 3:Um,
Speaker 2:So Alzheimer's and cognitive decline, cognitive decline is what we experie before we get into full blown Alzheimer's or some other kind of dementia. Again, they have these common neuro mechanisms. There's this neurogenic slowing there is, um, actually with Alzheimer's Alzheimer's being called, um, type three diabetes because it's a failure of, um, glucose metabolism in the brain. There's a lot of insulin resistance. And so one of the things that there are a number of clinical trials under being happening right now, where that involve a ketogenic diet, which means that the brain is using glucose so much for fuel as it is using Keone bodies or fat for fuel.
Speaker 3:Um,
Speaker 2:There's a physician in, uh, Florida whose husband, um, developed early onset Alzheimer's and she began feeding him at a certain point coconut oil and then the ketogenic diet and found that he came back, um, not all the way back, but quite a bit back. Um, Dale Bradon, who has the book at the end of Alzheimer's talks about reversing Alzheimer's in some patients with ketogenic diet.
Speaker 3:Um,
Speaker 2:So getting the brain to use ketones or fat for fuel, rather than just glucose gets the brain operating at a higher rate,
Speaker 3:Um,
Speaker 2:And also begins to then reverse the insulin resistance that most people who are over 40 have some degree of the other thing is that Alzheimer's most dementias, cognitive decline have in common is inflammation, right? Chronic inflammation is one of these diseases are one of these conditions that is behind so many other conditions. It's where, you know, we need a good, healthy, inflammatory response. If we get an infection or a cold or a cut, we need to be able to Mount a defense to get rid of the, um, invading attackers. But then we need to turn off that inflammatory response and chronic inflammation is where we don't turn it off. It's where it keeps on going. And then the inflammation begins to attack our body's own cells. So we now know that anxiety is an inflammatory process. Depression is an inflammatory process. There are elevated inflammatory markers with depression and the same with cognitive decline. And Alzheimer's, these are inflammatory processes, a good blood test. Again, for everybody to do, when you get your yearly physical is called the high sensitivity C reactive protein. And if your level is over 0.0 0.5 for a male or 1.0 for a female, it would be really good to look at your diet and to start E eating an anti-inflammatory diet. And the book goes into suggestions for how to do this. And there's a number of nutrients that we can take that also help that one of these again, is omega3. Another one is green tea extract. Ideally we want 10 to 15 cups of green tea a day, but we don't want that much caffeine. You can do, especially
Speaker 1:If we have that's
Speaker 2:All that is liquid. Um, so have caffeine free green tea, extra, which you can take, um, turmeric or Curin powerful anti-inflammatory, but you also need to do it with lipids, like egg or bio, a extract, which increases the bio bio availability by around eight. Um, Again, the book wasn't numbered, borage oil is another really good one. Um, omega seven, um, not people, many people don't know about that. It's another anti-inflammatory, um, tart cherry extract. These things are powerful, natural. Anti-inflammatories that bring the inflammatory level down.
Speaker 1:Do you have a desire for fulfillment? That's helping people tap into their own health mentally, emotionally, and physically fire you up. Do you believe in the impact of the gut microbiome on overall wellness, you may be an H WCA coach for more info on our cutting edge health coach trainings. This it H w C aco.com. So I have a story for you, um, that it supports the information you bring given. Um, and I was on the road to it. Well, it's not, it's a situation. So, um, I, I, I was on the path of kind of working through some of this in my own head, in my own opinions coming from a functional perspective. Um, but I will tell you the information you've added today in this interview, and for you guys listening the session of interviews, if you miss any of them, please go back and read or listen to all of them. Um, but the information you've given has filled in incredible gaps. So there's someone very, very close to me, you know, she's near 80 and she always been pretty sharp as a attack, very, you know, uh, you know, do a lot of stuff. Um, and just a little bit about her upbringing is, you know, she, um, had gone through trauma as a child. She lost her mother at only 12, and she had two little sisters to take care of. Um, and didn't have that role filled well, just took on a very stoic, um, mother role at 12 years old without a mom. And so, you know, she'd had this childhood trauma got married very early at 18, um, you know, got married, stay married, had had kids and, and did all that. And so, and then, um, she's coming, you know, coming up to 80 about now and in the last two and a half years, you know, she's, like I said, she's been really sharp. Um, she does follow a lot as kind of traditional medical directive, but not over the top because she just comes from a generation that doesn't rush to the doctor for every sniffle. I mean, that just wasn't normal then. Um, and so she, in the last two to two and a half years, she lost her husband who she'd been with since she was, you know, 16, 17, 18, no, no different. Um, she'd been taking care of him with congenial heart failure for a, a couple years prior to that. Um, and then she lost him and was living alone. Um, and then about a year later, her, one of her daughters, um, her cancer came back to a level, you know, stage four level. Um, and it got really scary and it was very stressful. Um, and then this all happened. We got locked down with COVID about the same time, and she was in a lot more isolation because everybody was worried about her with her age and exposing her. So she was alone a lot. So we had all of these events and she over the last year, but excessively recently been showing very fast cognitive decline to where they're calling it maybe, um, a fast onset dementia symptoms. And so they had put her on an antidepressant in a year ago. They, um, have then put her on other things, you know, like do like her, you know, with her GI issues now that are, you know, in my opinion, not ironically, uh, happening, um, the brain gut connection, the body, the inflammation, right. But we treat the symptoms in this, in the typical approaches to treat symptoms. So she's been put on, you know, the, the, the softeners and the, this and that, and the fiber and the, all the things. Um, and she's been, had a rapid more rapid decline in the last six months, I would say. And to the point where they're now wanting to like, test her brain and do all these things. And I've, I've myself really advocated, hardcore to see someone in functional medicine, someone with an approach like this, because she'd been on very little medication, especially for her age in this society of the sad diet, she'd been on very little medications. She was a very sharp woman and coming from the emotional connection piece, that trauma piece that I underst and, you know, with her childhood and then a two to three year time period of time, period of all of those stressors. When you said that stress an aver, really an adverse experience can shrink the hippocampus a quarter of its existence. Like you said, that would be like losing a chamber of your heart. I was, it just, it just gave extra umph to me in this situation. Um, what would you advocate for or suggest to people who have a loved one, or have someone close to them who meets some of this criteria? What is the, what is the, obviously, I, it, we can stop, you know, if something, we, we wanna stop something from exacerbating, maybe we can't, like you said, when you lose brain cells, it's like losing the limit. It doesn't just grow back per se. But when do we know when it's actually a brain cell loss and the difference between cognitive decline and how can we be vigilant in this and not work against people? I love that you gave the information about the antidepressants too, about what they're actually doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that is a huge question. It's like, it's one thing to do it for ourselves once we learn about all this, but how do you turn somebody else onto this? How do you interest in this, particularly if they're really caught up in the conventional medical paradigm, because the conventional medical paradigm is so much about symptom suppression rather than about real healing. And so again, I think like you're suggesting a functional medicine person would be great. Um, somebody who really wants to really look at how the brain can actually heal rather than just have the symptoms be suppressed. Um, you know, when a spouse dies, statistically, the chances of the other spouse dying within a year, just skyrocket, um, unless they have some really close relationships and it sounds like another one of her close relationships die, those kind of stressors have a big impact on the brain and cognitive functioning. Um, therapy would be great for her to begin to process some of this, um, omega threes. It just, the whole dietary thing would be really important, but again, sometimes people are so far gone that they aren't able to do it. If you can catch'em where before it really gets too far great. Um, then things can sort of start backing up and there can be regaining a function in many cases. Um, but it's hard when it's not, you, it's hard to really interest somebody and turn them on this. Um, sometimes people are really open to it and, and they're just ready other times, they're just in another paradigm and it's hard to get through.
Speaker 1:And when it comes to, you know, cognitive of issues, mental, um, you know, like dementia Alzheimer's and cognitive decline stuff, what's tricky. I think too, is they often aren't in a place where they're great at making their own decisions or following through with habits or things. So, so we're needing to communicate more with the advocates and the people caretaking or advocating for them, um, to do that. And that's a, that's a lot of work. Um, but if we can believe, I think if people, if people had, they do some of the work, if they could feel the faith and the, the confidence, um, in the ability for if, for it to do something, if, if they can understand more of like, like I said, you've given us some excellent science and some excellent studies on some of this, this stuff with the brain connection. And I think that that helps people not see this as holistic stuff. Right. There's some real, real facts here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think just one of the piece I'd add around cognitive decline, that since it starts 20 to 30 years before we see symptoms that aside from really healing and strengthening the brain, we also need to work psychologically. Right? And so we need to use our brain right there. There's measurable cognitive decline at two points in our lives when we graduate from college. And when we retire, unless after we graduate from college or retire, we do something that uses the brain that uses the mind. Then there is no cognitive fall off. And so what this amounts to is life long learning, right? We need to be always learning new things like listening to this podcast. It is neurogenic. It is, it is that stimulating the birth of new brand cells. It, it, it's a good thing to do. It's creating new connections and that's what keeps people sharp to be, um, learning language, to be learning to how to cook something differently. It doesn't have to be reading. It can be reading. It can be a class, it can be on the web. It can be taking a new way home from your work. It can be travel to a new place. Um, but learning new things I think is hugely important for the brain. And it's not just cross crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles makes us better at crossword puzzles, but it doesn't really generalize. We need to cross train the brain by learning many new things.
Speaker 4:Thank you for joining us for another empowering episode of bud belly life. For more information on gut health and mindset, resources, visit bud belly life.com and remember heal yourself and then empower others to do the same.