The Longevity Podcast: Alzheimer's and Brain Health Research
AI-hosted deep dives into the latest Alzheimer's, dementia and brain health research, curated by Dr. Dung Trinh. Each episode breaks down a recent study or topic, such as diet, sleep, exercise, heart health, biomarkers, early detection and new treatments. We explain what the science says and what it may mean for staying sharp as we age.
Episodes are discussions generated with AI hosts. Every episode cites its sources so you can read the original research yourself. This podcast is for education only and is not medical advice. Talk with your doctor about your own health.
Episodes
390 episodes
Can an Eye Exam Spot Alzheimer's? Retinal Blood Vessels Hold Clues
Could a routine eye exam one day flag Alzheimer's disease? Because the retina is an extension of the brain, this study used a genetic method called Mendelian randomization, drawing on large genetic datasets and more than 52,000 UK Biobank parti...
Brain Health: Fluid Spaces on MRI Reveal Amyloid vs Vascular Damage
Enlarged perivascular spaces, the fluid-filled channels around small blood vessels in the brain, show up on routine MRI. This study of 307 people with cognitive impairment from a Seoul dementia cohort asked whether amyloid and blood vessel dise...
Dementia Stages: How a Daily Function Test Tells Mild From Moderate
How do clinicians tell mild dementia from moderate dementia? This study tested the Functional Activities Questionnaire, an informant-based checklist of everyday tasks, in more than 34,000 people from the US NACC database and confirmed the resul...
Alzheimer's Timeline: Amyloid to Tau Is Faster in Women, APOE4
Using amyloid and tau PET scans from two US cohorts, ADNI and the Harvard Aging Brain Study, researchers estimated how long it takes to go from amyloid positivity to tau positivity. That interval varied widely and was shorter in APOE4 carriers,...
Gut Molecule ImP Linked to Faster Alzheimer's Decline
A gut bacterial compound called imidazole propionate (ImP) is linked to Alzheimer's-related brain changes and faster cognitive decline in a large Wisconsin cohort, with mouse and cell studies pointing to barrier and tau pathways.Research...
Alzheimer's Blood Proteins: How MRI Links Them to Risk
A Mendelian randomization study of plasma proteins, structural MRI measures, and Alzheimer's disease risk found 12 neuroimaging metrics and 1,633 proteins with causal ties to AD. Brain imaging also mediated about 67% of the link between the imm...
Dementia Risk Knowledge: Why Recognition Isn't Enough
A letter responds to a large review of public dementia risk awareness, arguing that recognizing a risk factor is not the same as knowing what to do about it. The authors urge surveys to measure actionable knowledge, whether risks are personal h...
Brain Health as a Vital Sign: Lifestyle Steps Doctors Should Track
Should doctors check brain health the way they check blood pressure? In this editorial, neurologist Gregory Cooper looks at the Brain Health Vital Signs project, which scores patients on 15 lifestyle risk factors for dementia. He explains how t...
Best Diet for Alzheimer's Prevention: MIND, Mediterranean & Asian Diets
Does what you eat shape your risk of Alzheimer's disease, and does the answer change between Eastern and Western diets? This episode digs into a 2026 review in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease that compares dietary patterns acro...
AFib And Dementia Risk
People with atrial fibrillation (AFib), a common irregular heart rhythm, face a higher risk of developing dementia. This study followed 91,795 UK Biobank participants who wore activity trackers. It found that people with AFib who got at least 1...
When Your Memory Blinks
You know that moment when you open the refrigerator and forget what you came for, or you recognize an actor’s face but their name is gone? Most of us laugh it off, but the fear behind it is real: what if it’s not stress or sleep, but the earlie...
How Europe Decides Who Gets An Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Drug
In the European Union, the Alzheimer's drug donanemab is approved for a narrower group of people with early symptomatic Alzheimer's disease. They must carry no copies or one copy of the APOE ε4 gene variant, and they can't have certain signs of...
When The Brain’s Sanitation Team Goes Rogue
Alzheimer’s has been treated like a neuron problem for decades, but what if the real lever sits in the brain’s support system, quietly failing long before symptoms show up? We dig into a 2026 Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease paper t...
Fascia And The Hidden Roots Of Mood
Your shoulders creep toward your ears during a brutal month. Your chest tightens during panic. Your body feels heavy during depression. We usually call those downstream symptoms, but the research we’re unpacking argues for something far more di...
Neurofilament Light Chain And The New Era Of Brain Aging
What if the clearest signal about your brain’s future isn’t hidden inside an MRI, but floating in your blood right now? We dig into Neurofilament Light Chain (NFL), a nervous system biomarker that behaves like a smoke alarm for ongoing nerve da...
How A Shingles Shot Could Cut Dementia Risk
You’ve heard the standard dementia prevention script: eat well, sleep more, do the puzzles, and hope for good genes. Then a result lands that doesn’t fit the script at all, a routine shingles vaccine associated with a 33% lower risk of dementia...
Alzheimer’s Is Also A Vascular Disease
Alzheimer’s has been sold to all of us as a neuron story: plaques, tangles, and brain cells fading away. But the data we walk through here points to a more unsettling possibility that the real tipping point is structural. When the brain’s blood...
Fish Oil Paradox
Fish oil has a near-halo status in nutrition culture: a simple, golden capsule that promises better memory, sharper thinking, and protection from cognitive decline. But a landmark longitudinal analysis using ADNI data and published in the Journ...
45% Of Dementia Risk Is Modifiable
What if the biggest lever for preventing dementia isn’t hidden in your DNA, but sitting in your calendar, your sleep, your diet, and even your hearing? We dig into a 2026 German study published in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Diseas...
What Happens When A Silent Disease Becomes Knowable
Alzheimer’s doesn’t wait for a diagnosis to begin. The brain changes can start quietly for years, even a decade, while someone looks totally fine, passes cognitive tests, drives, works, and pays the same routine healthcare bills as their peers....
Why An Amyloid Positive Test Does Not Mean The Same Disease
A clean diagnosis feels like an X-ray: obvious problem, obvious fix. Alzheimer’s disease is the opposite, and the arrival of disease-modifying anti-amyloid therapies like lecanemab and donanemab makes that gap impossible to ignore. We dig into ...
Creatine For The Brain
Your brain is an energy hog running on an ATP battery that lasts only seconds, and that one fact changes how you should think about “brain supplements.” We dig into why creatine is more than a weightlifting staple, how phosphocreatine works lik...
The Glymphatic System And How Sleep Flushes Brain Waste
Sleep turns on a hidden plumbing system that pressure-washes the brain, clearing toxic waste that builds up during wakefulness. We connect brand-new human imaging with practical sleep habits so you can protect deep sleep, memory, and long-term ...