All About Brain Health for Longevity: Insights from Neuroscientist Dr. Kristen Willeumier

Nobody teaches us how to take care of our brain and how to possibly reduce the risk of dementia or degenerative disease or reduce the risk of having altered cognitive function. And we always take that for granted when we're young.

My guest today is a return guest and now a dear friend, Dr. Kristen Willomeyer. Dr. Kristen is a neuroscientist and author of the book Biohack Your Brain. She conducted her graduate research at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, earning MS degrees in physiological science and neurobiology, as well as a PhD in neurobiology. She also served as a postdoctoral scientist at Cedars-Sinai focusing on neurodegenerative diseases. In her role as the director of neuroimaging research at the Amen Clinics, Dr. Willemeyer led pioneering studies, including one on the long-term effects of repetitive subconcussive impacts in NFL players and the development of a protocol to reverse brain damage and enhance cognitive health. Kristen, welcome back onto the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you on, and Oscar as well. So for those listening, we have beautiful Oscar on also. So hello to both of you. Well, hello.

Thank you for the lovely introduction. And, you know, one of our rescue dogs, Oscar, here wanted to say hello Hello to you and everybody in the audience. Hello. So hello there. Hello everyone. So sweet.

As you were saying as well, Anna, pets and animals are so important for our health and our mental health and overall wellbeing as well, right?

So yeah, well, we, you know, we discussed during the pandemic there was the highest number of people adopting pets in the home because of just the feelings of social isolation and the lack of connectedness. So I thought it would be fun to have Oscar make a cameo. And we can certainly, I can even lead by telling you that there was a new study that was published in the Journal of Neurology that used brain imaging and looked at older adults who were experiencing social isolation and loneliness. And what the brain imaging results showed is people who are less socially active or socially connected had smaller brain volumes. And this— some of the regions, they did a regional analysis, and one of the areas that had the smaller brain volume was the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with learning and memory. So the moral of the story, and they do this to teach neurologists in the clinical setting, the importance of asking patients, right, are you socially connected? Are you getting out? Like, if you're socially connected, are you feeling lonely? Right? Because sometimes people are out and about in the world, but they still feel lonely inside. And so pets are a way to open our hearts and make us feel less lonely and more connected. So I thought this would be the perfect way to start our conversation. Perfect as well. And Oscar always loves to sit by me during a podcast.

So beautiful. He's so sweet. And then you have your new adopted dog as well, Olivia.

Olivia, she's here too. Yeah, she's the baby, 1 year old.

So sweet. And obviously the longest running study since 1938 on longevity and happiness and longevity out of Harvard also says the importance of relationships and connection as a fundamental role for later in life. And I'm in the process of watching the Netflix series How to Live to 100. I don't know if you've seen it.

I have not. What have you learned?

Well, so the episodes that I—

it's Dave, it's Dave Butner, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Yes.

He's in Okinawa, and then Sardinia, and then he was somewhere in California actually as well.

But it's not Dave. It's Dan Butner. Dan Butner wrote a wonderful book. Yeah.

And then longevity.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he, of course, part of it is that sense of community that as a person ages, that they're not put into a nursing home. But instead, they're still very much part of the community. They're seen as like a wise, knowledgeable person, respected because of that, and supported by younger generations. So again, it's that community and lack of isolation, which, which totally makes sense. I mean, we are humans to have connection. And we think with this little device that we call our phone that we're more connected. Well, hey, we forget how it is in the good old days when people used to write a letter and be like, I'm going to come visit you for a week.

Almost in this state, right? That, that was actually how I grew up, right? I'm a little bit older than you, slightly, um, and I laugh because, you know, I think I might have told you this on the last podcast, but I brought a typewriter with me to college. So that basically tells you—

I used to have one in the home. I know a typewriter.

Oh, you did? You actually know what that is?

I do.

Your father used it? Okay. So I brought a typewriter, um, But it's interesting you bring up our little phones. And right now we've got kids who are literally glued to the phones, using them. I just read some research. Kids are using phones an average of 8 hours a day. That's what the screen time is. Pre-pandemic, it was 2 to 3 hours. Now post-pandemic, it's 8 hours. And that's, again, facilitating the isolation piece. So you're connected, but you're not physically with people. And now we're seeing this big increase in kids having mental health issues. Again, you know, when I grew up, it was like, you go outside, you play with friends, you go play with, play your sports, you can come in for dinner, right? We had to be out of the house. And there was no, in my house, there was no television, like you could, I could watch an hour, but my mom was really like, no TV. You're going to be a kid. You're going to read a book. You're going to be playing sports. You're going to be connecting with the neighbors. And if you left me outside long enough, eventually I would meet people. You know, you just— so it is kind of funny. We're laughing, but the phones really start to isolate people, whether it's kids or even adults. Right? They think they're like, we're connected and I'm connected with my family, but you actually have to be out with people. Right? And you were talking about, you know, this documentary, you know what I love about it? A lot of people live in the United States are afraid to get older because they feel like they're going to be left alone and isolated. And a lot of people do that. They put their parents in assisted living facilities and they'll go visit them. But in Dan Buettner's documentary, I'm sure he was showing that as people get older, they're the wise elders of the community and their kids and the grandkids come and visit them and they're taken care of. And sometimes they all live together, which is so beautiful, sweet and so nice.

And I think communities like in Florida or in certain neighborhoods, right, I saw going back a few years now, pre-pandemic, but my mom used to go to this gym class and there was a 90-plus-year-old and she was a former dancer and she was still able to kick her leg higher than I've ever been able to.

Higher than the Rockettes? Let's go for you.

Exactly.

Yeah.

She was still in her Rockettes days. I mean, talking to another guy, he's like, yeah, I do spinning 4 days a week and then I do weight training and, you know, I'm going to celebrate my 88th birthday next year. I'm like, sorry, what?

This is in your mom's gym?

Yeah, exactly.

That's amazing.

With the dementia, she doesn't go there unfortunately anymore. But that, that was right. And I was so impressed. And I think because of that community, I mean, my, my then 95— he's passed since, but my 94-year-old grandfather was just like, I'm as young as I feel at heart. And he's like, I'm not interested in speaking to older people because they just complain about their health. He's like, I focus on younger people.

Is that what he said? You know what's really, what's really cute is my, my grandparents on my father's side lived to 92 and 95. And I remember when my grandpa retired. So he owned his own auto parts business, sold it, then he became a volunteer police officer and he volunteered at the Toastmasters. So now he was 70 years old and Toastmasters is where you go and learn how to give speeches in front of an audience. And so my grandfather was doing all of this in his 80s and 90s and they'd go on cruises to see the world, just travel. And, you know, we really can learn a lot from our, you know, from our grandparents and great-grandparents. And the reason why it's so important, and I think you and I have talked about this before, is now the average lifespan of somebody living, at least in the US, is 79 years of age. Now, you're telling me here your grandparents lived into their 90s, mine lived into their 90s. But then my parents both passed in their 70s. So my mom passed at 70, my dad at 78. I'm like, we're going in the wrong direction. Yeah, yeah, right. We're going in the wrong direction. So what is it?

Yeah, we should in theory have all the resources and the technology and the thing, but we are poisoning ourselves. And this is what I'd love to just, you know, look at as well with you is, you know, why is the brain deteriorating? Like, why does that happen? And then, you know, many people focus on their, like, cardiovascular health or like their gut health, but how many people have got a game plan down for their brain health? Yet that drives the whole system. So let's talk about that, Kristen. Like what's happening?

I love that you just said that because you're talking about my favorite organ in the body, the brain, which does drive the whole system. And if, you know, the operating system isn't working appropriately, right? If the master organ that's receiving all of the signals from your external environment, right? What you see, hear, feel, touch, and then process it and tell the body what to do, you're not going to be able to function appropriately. And of course, everybody can relate to Alzheimer's disease. Most people know dementia and Alzheimer's was when you start to lose your memories. But why does that happen? It happens because proteins start to abnormally fold and accumulate in the brain over time. And I will share with you one of the many revelations that I learned being a scientist in a neuroimaging clinic was that we could use brain imaging and see what was going on in somebody's brain. And they might come to us and not be symptomatic. So their cognitive health might be intact, you know, their memory is intact. They say, oh, I'm getting older, you know, maybe I, you know, can't remember where I place my keys. I'm having a senior moment. But we could look at their brain image and see that there were areas of the brain that had very low blood flow. And we knew if they didn't change their behavior, that a potential Alzheimer's or dementia diagnosis was possible. And this is when I started to learn that there are these biomarkers that we can look at in the brain 10 years, 15 years before anyone has a symptom that will tell us This person is heading that way. What can we do to slow things down, possibly prevent an Alzheimer's or dementia diagnosis from happening? So, you know, we typically give those diagnoses starting around age 65 and older. But if you back calculate, you go, okay, 65 minus 15 or minus 20 years, now you're in your 40s, which is you're in your 40s, you know, I'm in my early 50s. So this is that time when those— yeah, I just turned 51 actually. And you know what, I always tell people my age because it's— I'm actually proud of it. It's taken me, you know, a lot of years of study to get to this point where I can speak about the brain and tell people, you know, why it's important to protect it. But I also think it's important to share this information because Nobody teaches us how to take care of our brain and how to possibly reduce the risk of dementia or degenerative disease or reduce the risk of having altered cognitive function. And we always take that for granted when we're young.

Just to make a point on that as well, I think that there's even a lack of awareness around that it's even an option. And so when I even, you know, talk to some people about this and they're like, oh, I don't even want to know about it. Like, you know, I dread the day that I get that diagnosis. Diagnosis, and I just don't want to know about it. And it's like, well, actually, there is prevention, right? There is the opportunity. So I'm excited to discuss that as well. So, you know, for people listening who might be like, what, I can actually do something about it? It's like, yes, you're speaking to a neuroscientist with a protocol.

So we have protocols. Yes, we do. But it's, it's the first part is just knowing that you can change your brain, that there is the possibility to make these changes. I always have to say the small caveat, if A very small percentage of dementia cases are due to certain genetic mutations, right? There are certain sort of ancestral patterns that we see. So you could have a gene that may be responsible. But for—

Quick question on that though, Kristen, sorry if I just ask, is that the APOE4 gene or different to the APOE4?

No.

Okay.

It's different from APOE4. So there are presenilin genes, there's different genes that we can look at that we know, we say are causative. For Alzheimer's. So if you have it, the probability of getting it is very high. And you, you see this in families. So if your mother or father had it and they did the genetic testing and they have one of these presenilin 1 or 2, um, alpha-synuclein— there's different genes that are— have been implicated in, um, causing Alzheimer's. But the APOE4 alleles and the variants, they just increase or decrease the risk of getting Alzheimer's. Just because you have the variant doesn't mean you will get Alzheimer's. So what is great about that is if you do do the ApoE testing, I'm sure you've done—

you had a single copy.

Yeah, I do have a single copy.

My mother doesn't have a copy and she has a dementia. And we did the analysis with Dale Bredesen, Dr. Bredesen, and hers is mainly due to lack of HRT and several head trauma incidents.

Interesting. So interesting you bring up the head trauma. It is why I have been a passionate advocate of people taking care of their brain health if they've played a collision-based sport, even if they've done it in their youth, like myself. I was a competitive equestrian. I have fallen off hundreds of times. You can hear I speak fluently and my cognitive capacity is currently intact, but When you have head trauma, sometimes it can cause damage to the brain that, you know, over time, certain things we can't change, right? So there's a reversibility to some things, but an irreversibility to others, right? If I shear and damage neurons, I can't repair them, but I might be able to grow more blood vessels around them to make sure they're still well oxygenated and nourished. I can still help create new neural connections. So if there's an area of the brain that's damaged, the brain can undergo what's called neuroplasticity and make— a single neuron can make up to 10,000 connections with its neighbor. So if it gets damaged, the brain has the compensatory process to be able to make other connections. So I think that's the part we want to highlight, like the brain throughout your lifespan has this ability to be plastic, right? So you can make new connections throughout the brain. And then there's very specific regions where we can still grow new neurons, which is phenomenal. And I think that's why we— and I know you've talked about this on other podcasts with other scientists and doctors— it's revolutionary. And it's changing our field, because now we can look at the brain in a completely different way and say, wow, we— there are things we can do to protect it. There's, there's sort of a certain reversibility to, let's say, some of the symptoms you might be having. We might be able to preserve network connections and slow down the brain aging process and help preserve some of the brain volume changes that sort of naturally— or prevent, I would say, some of the brain volume changes we might naturally see with aging by your dietary and lifestyle habits.

Which is so exciting.

Yeah. Question for you, and I'm going to backtrack. So your mom has no copies of the APOE4?

Correct.

And you have one?

I have one from my father. Yeah.

One from your father. And did your father do the analysis?

Uh, he— has he done it since? Um, I think we've been so focused on my mother.

Your mom, right?

With the dementia. Um, I mean, obviously it has to have come from him, right?

Yeah, I was wondering if he had the one or two copies, but your dad's doing well.

And he's probably— Yeah.

And yeah, but he's cognitively intact. So he is a shining example that you could still have those two copies and be—

I think he has one, one, one copy, right?

So one or one or two copies. That's true.

I actually am not 100% sure. But yeah. So but it's actually interesting. I must ask him if he's got one or two, but it is an example. And I think it's just being aware of what what the right lifestyle choices are, which we need to dig in. You need to share with my audience, like, what are the things to look out for? But I guess a question I want to ask just off of this is that if with modern diets and lifestyles, if the average person, right, that existed, if the average person were to not do any preventative measures and just have the average diet and the average stress levels and the lack of sleep and all the other things that we do to ourselves, Is it inevitable that cognitive decline will continue as we're seeing?

You bring up an interesting question. So I think of average person can have a lifespan to 79 years of age, because at least I don't know what the UK numbers are. But so let's just say 78, 79, 80. We're actually seeing more centenarians, which is very exciting. It's probably because of the longevity community. And thanks to wonderful people like you who are really spreading the word about the importance of brain health. And when you take care of your brain health, you extend your healthspan and your lifespan. But your question, so somebody can go through their whole life and do nothing and stay cognitively intact. But what I might ask them is, and again, I've come from a psychiatric clinic, right? I've worked in psychiatry and I've, you know, one of my mentors was the head of neurology over at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. So I've sort of had a foot in both worlds. And what I found is most people as they age start to struggle with mental health issues, anxiety, depression, inability to focus. Is it clinical? No, it might not reach the point where there's a clinical diagnosis. Sometimes you have to have these things for a certain period of time to be able to get the diagnosis. But if you're struggling with a mental health issue, that's a brain issue. And imagine if you take care of your brain health using some of the foundational principles we're talking about, you might be able to better regulate your emotions and you won't have to deal with, you know, anxiety, depression, inability to focus, having those senior moments that people start to have when they, you know, cross the Rubicon of 50 or 60. Right. I always hear about, you know, people having their senior moments. And here I am, 51. I just read a recent paper where they called 55 like older adults. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm, I'm, I'm actually getting into that category.

That's my world. Give me 100 and then we get to an older—

we've got to reframe. I know I used to tell patients in the clinic, I'm like, you're not allowed to say you're old until you're 85. Like, you know, 65 is the new 40. But what I would just say to your audience is that the more that you start to embrace a brain-healthy lifestyle and weave it into everything from the things that you eat to the things that you drink. So what you're consuming to what's in your environment, to how much you sleep, to how much you exercise, like how many of these things can we help optimize so that you have the greatest ability to have the long healthspan and lifespan and reduce your chance of having to go to the doctor? Because we In the clinic, we also like to say going to the doctor can be very expensive. It's expensive to see a psychiatrist, especially if you're going to do it weekly. The medications are expensive and have side effects. Having to be put in an assisted living facility can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000 a month. So, you know, it's a really interesting way to shift your perspective. And I'm speaking to you who's very financially literate. You're coming from the— you know, you come from investment banking. Investing in your brain health pays dividends. And that could be later in life, not having to go through, you know, dealing with the doctors and potential medical expenses you can have. So, you know, you can look at it from that perspective as well. But again, I will say, if you do nothing, you know, to support your brain health is just sort of live your life the way you want and don't sort of proactively address it, you probably just have a higher chance of, you know, dementia or diseases of aging. You know, the brain volume changes as we age. As I've written in my book, by the time we hit the age of 40, brain volume starts to decrease anywhere from 5 to 10% per decade. And what that means is you just start to lose neurons over time. Your brain's not in this active growth phase like it is when when you're younger, which is why when you're a teen and you're crazy and you're bungee jumping, you're playing football and you're knocking your head around, but you get knocked down and you get up again like that song says, it seems like kids are Teflon and their brains are super resilient. Well, it's because the brain is really plastic. It's growing all these new neural connections. You're— you are a lot more resilient. You know, as you get older, you know, your energy levels go down. You're not quite as resilient. Sometimes neurotransmitter production goes down and you just— you slow down a little bit. And that's actually— that's okay. You don't have to, you know, you can be running marathons and, you know, you can be at your— your mom's health club where the gentleman who's 88 or 90 is spinning. Like, that's what we love to see. But, you know, We change, right, as we get older.

So, but so that's the question then as well, right? So is it, you know, the probability, I don't know how much research there is around that, but like people who don't take proactive brain health decisions, like what is that probability of developing disease? I guess there isn't like a research on that, but the good news is like what can people be focusing on to be on that positive brain health so that they don't even begin to have the decline?

That's the best way to think about it. It's like having a savings account and putting money in your savings account or diversifying your portfolio, right? We're going to make sure we own some land and we're going to make sure maybe we have some gold and then we're going to have something in the stock market. We're going to, you know, it's, it's a way to help ensure that you're going to reduce the risk risk of having to contend with a neurodegenerative disorder, right? By the time people hit the age of 65, they say 1 out of 10 adults will be contending with, you know, potential neurodegenerative disease. Like, the risk increases with age. And so that's why it's really easy to go up until you're probably the age of 50 and not really think about your brain health. And then you cross the age of 50, now you're taking care of your aging parents. Who you see have dementia and, you know, it's the cycle of life. Like as one gets older, things change and, you know, we have the stamina and energy to manage that. But you see that you're like, number one, you're like, I don't want to be like that, right? How do I change that so I don't have to depend on other people, so I don't have to lose my memory, so I can still be a functional member of society? You know, how many people work their whole lives and then retire and then you should be having fun, but they're taking care of medical issues. So for all of the young people listening, it's like being proactive, right? If you're 20 and you're listening to this podcast, you're a million steps ahead of the game. And I think it's in the collective consciousness now. More young kids are really sort of excited about brain health and addressing their mental health. And if you're older, if you're 60 and you're listening to the beautiful Claudia on this podcast, then I love it because I would say it's not too late and you can still change your brain function. And the things we'll talk about can help support your brain health. And the most important point, if you get nothing else from this conversation, like listening to Claudia and I, you know, I'm a neurobiologist by training, right? I used to look at individual neurons and study what happens to them specifically with regards to Parkinson's disease and what happens at the level of the synapse and how things change in the brain. So I like to think that every neuron in your brain is precious. And when we think of these degenerative disease processes happening 5, 10, 15 years before you have a symptom, we're now talking about how do we protect the cells of your brain, these beautiful neurons, and what are we doing every day to protect your cells. So if we think about it now, the cellular health, the cellular level, it makes more sense. Oh, this is why I should be drinking water, right? Because we want, you know, our beautiful cells to have lots of, you know, nutrients coming in. And you need water to flush out the metabolic waste and help bringing the nutrients in and help keeping our blood pressure to a healthy level. Some people don't even realize if you have high blood pressure, just making sure you get the right amount of water in can help to regulate it. Because how many people out here are— you know, I write in the book, this is one of my favorite points. Our brain is 75% water. It's not 75% coffee, fruit juice, Gatorade, iced tea, kombucha tea. And my husband actually gives me a hard time because I drink a lot of green juice and he doesn't always see when I drink water. And he's like, you know, you talk about water, but you're drinking juice. Like, you're— I'm like, yeah, but that's actually fresh.

Exactly.

And there's vegetables and there's water. Yeah, they're very hydrating. But, you know, I just bring up this point. Something as simple— if people do nothing else but drink the proper amount of water each day for their body, over the course of decades, that's preserving your brain function.

And I think for women it's like 3 liters a day and for men 4 or something like that, depending on activity levels. Is that right?

Yeah. So the Institute of Medicine statistics say 3.7 liters for men each day, which is like, I think, 125 ounces. And for women, it's 2.5 liters, which is about 90 ounces.

So I've rounded up.

But you, you round it up. So I like because you optimize, you're like, I'm going to take— I'm going to factor Factor in everybody's exercising who listens. Exactly. Because my husband also says that. He's like, you exercise all the time, you're not drinking enough water. Which I love because he literally drinks a ton of water.

Very impressive. Be good myself.

Yeah, you probably are good at it.

Empty lemon and ginger tea here, so I need to—

Yeah, and that is fine. That works. Oh, I love your— Well, you know, I have my collections here, so my green juice. But it's— I mean, it's— it is so important, right, not to be dehydrated because sometimes over time— and again, I think this happens more in an older population when people are 60s and 70s— they just, they don't think about it, they don't do it. And so you've got to get the fluids in. Yeah, because I always say if you, if you go to the hospital for many issues, the first thing they do is hook you up to an IV to make sure you're well, you know, you have fluids. And so that's just one of those little reminders. It's not easy. You know, when I taught the brain-directed weight loss groups in our clinics, that was the number one thing, the very first thing I had everybody do. I said, that's what we're going to start with. Our first goal the first week is you're going to calculate how much water you should be drinking, and I want you to accomplish that every day. We're not even going to move to number 2. Until you get that down. So that's how simple it can be.

But, you know, and I think with that, just for— I know some people are like, well, you know, it depends. And personally myself, if I'm working at my desk, like, I'll have my tea and I'll have my things there. If I'm out and about, like, I will not drink as much. And then I notice it and I have to remember. And I think it's having your schedule, like, having those optimized, knowing the days you're going to be out and about. Like, maybe it's always in your car, you have like your water there, or if you're out and about, you always have your bottle with you. And you know how many times you need to refill it in the day to just remember, right, to make it as easy as possible. So you don't need to think, oh, okay, I missed a day of it. And then I know some people are worried like, well, I don't want to be up at night. And there are different strategies around this. But some people say, you know, get the hydration in earlier in the day, so that you can stop drinking by 6 PM or whatever that time is for you so that you're not running to the bathroom all night.

Well, it's great that you mentioned that. So one of the things people in my group did is they get 3 32-ounce bottles of those BPA-free bottles in the different colors. And so if you get 3, that's almost 100 ounces of water. And that worked for both the men and women. And you can do your blue bottle, your pink bottle, your green bottle, and you have them throughout the day. And so I would do it too. So anything I talk about in the book or anything I teach, I do because it's, it's living the message and it's being authentic. And you even saw I had my green juice just before we started and I was like, okay, wait, I've drank too much. I'm like, now I have to use the restroom, right? That's normal and healthy. But you're right, you know, if you're somebody who has a prostate issue or you already know, like, you can stop drinking your fluids it's, you know, earlier in the evening, so you don't have to do that. But, um, it's just— it's smart to get that as your number one strategy. Like I said, if, if people leave this podcast with nothing else, you trust me when I say just getting those fluids in. And again, it's not just the water, you know. You can get 20% of your hydrating fluids from soups and teas and the green juices and you're hydrating fruits and vegetables. So I like that. But just try to find water.

Yeah, but this is also, I think, an interesting point. I want to hear what your view on this is, that there was a point where I was drinking buckets of green tea with fresh lemon thinking this is great, it's a diuretic. And I woke up one morning and it was really, really bizarre. I almost felt like I was in a dream. Now, this has probably been about a week of like drinking 3 liters of my, you know, pot with the thing. I'm thinking it's all great.

You're drinking 3 liters of tea?

Yeah, well, like 2.5, 3. Like, I was— the thing. And so I woke up in the morning, Kristin, and it felt like I was in some cartoon with this, like, super rocky ship. I couldn't even, like— and I was like, what is going on? Like, and I don't take medication, and I don't like—

and I'm healthy.

But I was I can't get the kids to school. Like, I literally was really concerned. And so I had a doctor and I spoke to the doctor, come and see me. And he's like, well, you know, it could be your heart, your middle ear. He was like, he was totally baffled.

He couldn't figure it out.

And then just by chance, somebody and they're like, oh, well, green tea will do this to you. It's a diuretic. So I was dehydrated. But meanwhile, I'm thinking I'm drinking liters and liters of I had drunk some water, but because it's a diuretic, it was just draining me completely. So what are the big things people should be careful of? I know caffeine is a diuretic as well.

Coffee is a diuretic. Exactly. That's why I didn't know you were drinking 3 liters of the tea.

At the time, I was like, this is great.

Yeah, it's so good for me. But you know what? I'm so happy you brought that up because this, this is authentic and it's real and it's what happens. It's what happens with the tea. It happens with supplements too. Right? People are like, oh, I was told I should take this supplement, and then they have a side effect and their doctor is trying to figure out what in the world has caused this. So, yes, when we talk about the water, we want it to just be water. That's why I was saying the other 20% can come from— and that's the tea. So I said the tea. So 20% of 3 liters. Not 100%.

Yeah, exactly. Right.

Go water, everybody.

Don't do what I did.

Don't follow— but learn from her, right? Her knowledge, experience, and training. Don't drink 3 liters of green tea or whatever tea you've done, because you probably did it several days in a row, is what I mean.

It was like a week of it. Yeah, yeah, a week. Yeah, you know, I go all in when I go in. I'm like, this is—

you do go all in. And the other thing, and I, I believe we probably talked about this on Marathon, um, podcast that we did the first time you interviewed me, which I think went 3 hours, 4, 4 hours.

I think it was 4 hours.

Clearly we— yes, what is— you drink your water. Um, one of the things that I love to teach people, because I think it's really important and I wish somebody taught this to me, um, is the importance of drinking water when you wake up. Like, the first thing that you should have isn't— shouldn't be coffee. So you've spent all night sleeping, right? Hopefully 8 hours. For some people who are superachievers, that might be 6 hours. But you want to hydrate with water first before you have a cup of coffee, which is dehydrating. So to all of your listeners out there that sort of regularly wake up and say, oh, I wake up with my coffee, Do your best to try a glass of water first or a hydrating green juice. Yeah, right. And then do your coffee because that's— think about supporting your body. Again, I'm all about nourishing and nurturing this incredible brain and body that you have. And what are those, you know, small pearls of wisdom that I can share with you from working with thousands of patients that come in our clinic where we see their brain scans, see what's going on and go, okay, we need to kind of do a reboot, right? What can we do to kind of get you on the right path? And I will say many of the things that get people on the right path, they have to do in their own homes, right? You, you know, you go to a doctor to get medicine, you know, we've got supplements and we've got medicines and technologies, but you've got a whole kitchen there. Everything that you put in your mouth every day, the environment you're living in, like I said, the exercise you're getting, all of that is such a big contributor to your overall brain health.

So yeah, that's really important. And well, I'm excited to dig into that again and to share that with people. And just one point, I had Professor Dr. Sachin Panda of the Salk Institute. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him and his work.

I might have seen that. Did you have him talk about circadian rhythm? Yeah, because I think I saw that one.

Okay, beautiful. Yeah. And so he was also saying that, you know, research is there that because of the cortisol response when we're waking, it's actually important to wait 90 minutes. So as for coffee lovers to know this, before having your cup of coffee, so 90 minutes because of—

is it because you have the cortisol boost when you wake up? Yeah, right. Okay.

Stressing your body if you have caffeine, which is a stimulator as well, by having it during that time frame.

So I love that. Well, you know, I don't drink coffee, so I'm probably one of your very few people. But I think that's fascinating. And it just goes to show, you know, a lot of people that I've worked with, and I'm sure those that you've coached and work with, a lot of people don't wake up up with energy. So the first thing they do is reach for the coffee for energy. And the thing that I like to really focus on is how do we wake up just feeling energized naturally. And so I think these little things like waiting the 90 minutes after you get up to have your coffee, right? Wake up if you can and get your exercise in because that's when you have the highest amount of cortisol. It'll be energizing. You'll get your workout in, right? You'll boost your mood.

And then BDNF factor as well, right?

You get your BDNF, your brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which helps grow new neurons in the brain. So you're going to help support growing neurons in the region of the brain that actually starts to shrink, um, as you get older, the hippocampus. Um, and so we want to preserve that beautiful brain region, uh, and doing exercise every day is what helps it, boosting the BDNF with the exercise.

Kristen, just a question on that. Is there an optimal amount of time to exercise. That's the minimum effective dose, I want to say, right? So it's not like doing a 2-hour run like a maniac around the neighborhood, right?

We actually have a few of those in our neighborhood. My husband will be driving, it'll be 6 o'clock at night, there's this woman power walking. He's like, I see her at all hours of the day. She's got her whole little suit on, like her whole outfit, at all hours of the day. And I was like, wow, she's very committed. But for all those of us who have to like live in the real world and, you know, hold down a job and take care of a family or aging parents, this was a really cool study. I always love to share this because it drives home that it doesn't have to be— you do not have to go crazy with 2 hours of running to get your exercise in. So as we age, I was talking about the brain like slowly starts starts to shrink, and that's called normal aging. But we— there's these certain regions like the hippocampus I'll keep mentioning. It's the area of the brain essential to learning and memory. We need to preserve as much of that volume as we can because when we, we learn things during the day, goes from our short-term memory, which is in the front part of our brain, prefrontal cortex, and at night, you know, it shuttled into our long-term memory, but it has to go through the hippocampus like that. That is the essential component to sort of transfer the energy from short-term memory to long-term memory. Okay, so it's all about how do we protect this beautiful part of the brain. So we just talked about the exercise. A gentleman by the name of Ericsson, his last name, et al., published a paper in PNAS and he asked the question, does 40 minutes of walking. So he looked at an older population, and I'm about to cross over into that. I think if we called older like 58— yeah, like 58 to 80. I mean, I can't remember the exact numbers, could have been 55 to 80, but looked at an older group of individuals, um, did brain imaging, like baseline brain imaging, and then after a year He followed people that just did 40 minutes of walking with their heart rate elevated between 50 to 70% VO2 max. And you can wear a little heart rate monitor, you know, 50 is reasonable. So it's like power walking for 40 minutes and compared their hippocampal volume to those individuals who just did stretching and toning, right? So there are your non-aerobic activity people, but still did probably their Pilates and their stretching. And he found that those that just did the 40 minutes of power walking throughout the year increased hippocampal volume by 1 to 2%. It might have even been 2%. Well, those who did the stretching and toning, it decreased by about 1.4%. So why am I saying this? So as we age, like when we get older, the hippocampal volume shrinks by about 1 to 2% each year. So just the 40 minutes of power walking. That's it. As you cross the Rubicon, you're 55 and older, is going to help preserve that hippocampal volume. Why? Because you're getting your heart rate up. It's boosting blood flow to that region of the brain. More blood means more oxygen, more nutrients. It boosts that brain drive neurotrophic factor, which is like Miracle-Gro for the hippocampus and for the neurons there. And as long as we don't do habits that thwart the growth of that region. So like drinking alcohol every night, like don't have a glass of wine every night after your power walk. And I do have to say that because working in a clinical setting, when you start to ask people, you know, do you drink? What are your drinking habits? A lot of people feel that having a glass of wine each night is okay, or having a beer after work is okay, and that will shrink your brain volume. So do your 40 minutes of power walking and, you know, try to refrain from the alcoholic, you know, celebrating with the cocktail afterwards. I think I, I, I, if I do not say it, you know, I will preface this by saying, you know, if you would come into our clinic and you're, you were healthy, you didn't have any psychiatric diagnoses, and there was no concerns about Alzheimer's in your family, we always say 1 to 2 glasses of something a week is okay if you have a healthy brain. I personally feel like you should probably be kind to your liver and your brain and not do it except on special occasions, rather than birthdays, holidays, because it's just, you know, That's not a brain health food. And I actually think, you know, at one time people, even doctors, were recommending, yes, you can have a glass of red wine. Red wine is good for you. And I think the tide is changing now when you're looking at these large brain biobank studies. I think one was actually published out of the UK Brain Biobank where they looked at— I know. Thank you, Claudia. Yeah, well, yes. And they looked at drinking habits and found that those— and I'm not going to quote it accurately, so I'm just going to make sort of a general statement— but drinking alcohol was associated with smaller brain volumes. And of course, to me, that is not— that statement is not rocket science. It is just a reality. Like, I don't like people— you know, sometimes people try to make their bad habits seem okay. My doctor says it's okay, or I've read the Mediterranean diet, you could have a couple of glasses of wine if you want to be a longevity enthusiast. You know, alcohol, your poor liver has got to, you know, process those toxins and they do flow through the bloodstream to your brain. So, you know, it's not good for your neurons. Yeah.

And I think it's, it's like a shift as well. So, you know, I'm generally not a big drinker. I mean, this is not talking about my student days at university.

Right, we're all gonna put our college days like we're just gonna pretend. Yeah, because I, I have had, you know, turning 21.

Exactly. And things—

not my finest moment.

For another story, another time.

Exactly.

Um, but for the half marathon that I did recently, I was like, you know what, yes, congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, some people are like running multiple marathons or like ultra marathon, they're like, you know, what's this? But for me it was a big thing. So I've done it. I'm not a long-distance runner. I don't need to do it again. Um, but it was—

you checked that off your bucket list.

It wasn't even on it in the first place. Okay, it is what it is. But I gave up drinking alcohol, and, um, I just thought in social settings, like, I was out at some dinners and stuff as well, and like, it's when you're able to make that shift. And again, I had the half marathon as my, like, thing, and it was fine as your excuse. Excuse, yeah.

Um, and I know to make Yeah, socially acceptable, so people don't pressure you into feeling like you have to.

Exactly. And I guess it depends on your friends and your environment. I'm, you know, speaking with people listening, right? But it's like, I know, especially like in an Irish or UK culture, that's very much like, oh, you're not drinking, like, have something. Depends who you're with. My group of friends are not like that, thankfully. So there was no, no issue with it. And I was surprised myself because I would be like, oh, I'll just have one drink tonight or whatever. But it's so nice to wake up the next day and like, you know, when I was in my 20s, like I was fine on like 3 hours of sleep and a few cocktails.

Teflon. When you're young, you can do it.

Oh Lord. Yeah, I was fine then. But now I notice and I speak to friends as well, like, you know, it just doesn't— what's the point? Like, I don't want to ruin my next day. Like, there's so many things I want to do and achieve and like, etc. That, why would I write off a day, right? And so it's interesting now, like, how long I'll keep it, keep it this way. And let's never say never. But I think what you said was a valid point in terms of, you know, if there's certain celebrations or whatever, like, just feel into it. But it's not having that regular check-in, assuming Mediterranean diet and a glass of wine every day is okay. I mean, I know people who drink half a bottle of wine by themselves.

I know, I know, I know people who do that that as well. And they're like, I'm functioning, I'm fine. And I'm like, if we looked at your brain, it might have a different story. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's— well, and I realize it's habit. I think for people it becomes habit. And I will say, again, this is the beauty. I'm very, very grateful I had the opportunity to work with the Amen Clinics and actually see for myself what these things do to people's brains. Like, you know, you share some of those examples, like what were some?

Yeah.

So I'll tell you, when we had people come in who were dealing with issues with alcohol, it causes very low perfusion globally throughout the brain. And what that means is low blood flow. And we could see very clearly on the imaging. And sometimes Sometimes people would come and fill out the forms and we'd have their history and they speak with a historian for 2 hours. So we're very thorough in getting the medical history. And you look at the brain scan and you go, wow, this doesn't comport. Like there's a piece that's missing and you go, you know, what's, you know, have you had traumatic brain injuries, right? Is there an alcohol issue? So the brains of people who are alcoholics, we show very, very low blood flow could be throughout the brain and like a scalloping toxic pattern.

What's happening though with the— what does the alcohol do to prevent blood flow?

It's toxic. So think of alcohol as toxic to the brain. It's toxic to the white matter, which is the— what surrounds the axons. So your neurons have a very long axon. It can be surrounded by white matter, which helps neurons communicate efficiently from one to the other. So over time, I mean, So you've got that. It's just toxic and can damage neurons. And number 2, it can slow thinking in the brain because, right, you're slowing the communication between neurons. It's a central nervous system depressant. So, you know, but— and you know that because everyone who drinks alcohol always feels calm and they feel good initially. But I talk about how, you know, it impacts your sleep. So if you have alcohol and then you go to sleep, it interferes with your sleep architecture. So you're going to have a harder time with your memory. Remember I was telling you about you take all of that great information you learned during the day, and it, it's when we sleep that we get it into the long-term memory. So alcohol will slow that process down or impede that process. Um, it takes a lot. I mean, I will tell you, and you and I have talked about this, one of my family members, uh, who is brilliant, had a PhD, um, and worked at university, she quietly had an alcohol problem. You know, she was a functional, high-functioning alcoholic, highly intellectual, and she died of cirrhosis of the liver in her 50s. And it shocked our whole family because we did not see it. So the one thing I will say, having worked in a brain imaging clinic and have had the opportunity— pretty much everybody who walked in our clinic for evaluation would be getting either electrical or functional imaging of the brain. So you start to see the patterns, like what do people's brains look like? What do people's brains look like who are alcoholics or functional alcoholics who are having that glass or two glasses? And it's deleterious to your brain health as well as your liver and other organs of the body. So it's just, it's a toxin that needs to be metabolized and removed. And it does take a lot. As you know, you probably know people who been alcoholics and they seem to be functioning. But where it might catch up with you is as you age, because think about the— it's the aging brain meets the toxic brain. Right. And so that's the part where if anybody's listening and they're like, oh, I didn't think of it like that, and maybe it's good to stop now.

Yeah. So would you recommend for people listening who are maybe like on the fence to say, oh, you know, I have a few drinks every week, would you just say ideal to just cut down to a few times a year and that's it?

Would you— I think the, I mean, the best is like you slowly start to— yeah, I mean, unless you're a healthy individual, like then, you know, again, we say you could do 1 to 2 glasses a week, but I, I would prefer to say the celebrations is the best time. And you're going to find, I mean, it's a good experiment to do for yourself. Yourself. Just stop for a week and see how you feel. You did it.

Yeah, I mean, for months.

Yeah, I see how much— yeah, see how, how much more productive you are, how bad, how much better you feel. And then you weigh risk-benefit analysis. You know, here's— it's the beauty of life, we get to choose how we want to live it. You can decide what, how you want to live your life and what your brain does or doesn't do. The hardest part, and maybe it's why I'm so sort of particular when I make recommendations is once you cross the Rubicon and you have a degenerative disease, you've lost brain volume. Like we see, sometimes there's nothing, there's not a lot we could do. Like, so we don't want to get you to that point, right? There are some people that I'm working with right now that have dementia, their hippocampal volume is at the 5th percentile of somebody their age and gender. And, you know, that's hard, right? That's so really working from a deficit. There's still things we can do. So it's almost like, let's just start now. I think that's the main point. And I will tell you, at least here in America, like the American Academy of Neurology is now really embracing brain health as an initiative. Initiative. The World Health Organization is embracing brain health as an initiative. It's really, it's really fascinating to see because they realize now, you know, this is— it's not just the decade of the brain, it's, you know, it's, it's the century of the brain. Like, now we need to focus on it. And when we take better care of our brain health through reducing exposure to toxic substances— so that's cigarettes, that's—

let's talk about that.

Yeah.

Cigarettes, alcohol. But what about like mold in houses? What about like—

well, mold, that's— yeah, the mold in the house, this is really interesting. We actually had bought a new house and took the roof off just before we got these torrential rainstorms in LA. And, you know, we could see there was mold growing in the house. And I had every room, you know, I had somebody come in here and measure the particulates in every room to make sure that we were going to be safe. Yeah, sometimes toxic mold exposure, you don't see it. It's like it's happening. It's, it's silent. And it's not a bad idea to think about having that done if you've never had it done in your home, just to see what the levels are and do some remediation. It's actually very easy to do.

Yeah. Can you share with people like what, What does one do? So let's say somebody knows like, oh, I had a leak, um, you know, from my neighbor's—

it's a rainstorm, or, or my basement flooded, right? And so somebody— so you go, yeah, you can call a mold inspector. They will literally measure the particles. They measure the particles inside the house as compared to the outside environment. That's the gauge that they measure by, and they can physically visibly inspect it and see if it's, you know, black mold. You can actually see it. Sometimes it's behind the wall so they can cut it out. And, you know, then you can go through the mold remediation process. I think the most important part is if you've had a big storm and there's been water in your home, you can, number one, get a dehumidifier. I think we had like 6 of them. I bought 6 from Home Depot in one night and I had had 6 fans, they were going all around the house because there was serious water damage happening. And as somebody who studies the brain, and my husband is the same way, he's like, we need the mold guy here, stat. And we've done it before in the bathroom. Sometimes you just want to do a check. Like, bathrooms can tend to get mold exposure. So that's, again, a nice way to see, is your environment, the air that you're breathing, clean, right? And you, you can also get the air— um, we have Rabbit air purifiers. Actually, I'm not running them in all of the rooms, but you can also do that to have like a clean air flowing through. And if you get those purifiers, by the way, you have to clean all of the different— like, our purifiers have like 7 different like shields because they— yeah, the different— yeah, the different filters. So you have to also commit cleaning them and cleaning the filters. There's a lot to it, right? There's a lot to like keeping your— the area you live in clean.

Because my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that the black mold, like the mycotoxins, they get into the— at a cellular level. So you really—

yeah, they're neurotoxic.

They're neurotoxic as well. And so you need to detox that. So if someone has had black mold exposure what would you recommend? Is it sauna? Is it taking certain supplements that help to extract it? Like, what do you see as beneficial?

So that's a good question and not my area of expertise. I'd probably have to have somebody go to a functional medicine practitioner or somebody who specializes in that to see if— I mean, yes, like overall for detoxification, saunas are great, infrared light therapy, could probably be helpful. And there are probably IV and chelation therapies that would be specific to what you've been exposed to that could help clear that. So that's the good news. That's what I would do. They go, we look at the brain and then we're like, okay, go see the functional medicine practitioner who can help clear that from your system.

Yeah.

And on that same point too, we can look at, you know, when you have your blood work done, you can look at heavy metals. You know, have you been exposed to mercury, arsenic, lead? One of my dear girlfriends who's 76 just had a comprehensive blood panel done. And, you know, she has high levels of mercury and she's not sure where they come from. She's like, I don't really eat fish. You know, I said, do you have fillings? I know I asked her about the fillings in the mouth.

Mouth.

No, I don't. You know, it's perplexing, but she's now going and getting the chelation therapy for it because mercury is toxic to brain cells. What mercury can sort of accumulate and thwart the ability of neurons to communicate with one another. So it's like it gunks up the system, gunks up the cables. And so, like I say, it's like two neurons talking to one another. It's like a nice long cable. And if, you know, if abnormal— if mercury or aluminum is in your brain, you're just not going to have a clear communication from one neuron to the next. And that's what causes the memory issue. So again, I love that people now, like I said, this is a dear friend of mine who's 76 that's doing it. It's like, bravo. She just got an infrared light panel for herself and she's like, will this work? I mean, the infrared light and photobiomodulation is really fascinating. Data that's starting to come out on that to help cellular energetics. And we're looking at it. Yeah, it's really for the mitochondria that's, that's in the bloodstream, right? You're sort of helping the mitochondria, um, to little cellular energy centers pump up more ATP so you feel more energized. Um, but looking at using that to people who have dementia and Alzheimer's disease is really fascinating, you know. So I'm seeing people use it more for their skin or for anti-aging. And there's all of this, like, how close do you have to be to the panel? Like, you have to be touching your skin. There's a lot going on there that we're still learning. Yeah, but I, you know, I don't see any harm in using those things. I know I have one of those space masks that I—

that I—

was that why you look so gorgeous?

Like, I think it's the Apple MacBook.

Do you have one of the masks?

Like, my girlfriend, my 76-year-old girlfriend got one and I was like, well, it's South Korean from Cell Return, no affiliation. And I find it phenomenal. They've got different settings, red light, blue light, and then they have a pink light as well. And then 20 minutes or 10.

Yeah, you only need 20 minutes because that's, you know, the blood circulates.

And you can already see beautiful rejuvenation after that 20 minutes in there. It's like almost like an incubator type of thing. There is like—

Yeah, I saw the whole— she actually took a picture and asked me what I think about it. I said, I have not used this yet. Maybe I should.

I know, but I mean, at the end of the day, it's kind of try and see. But I did buy the panel for my parents. And my mother with her dementia. But now she— with the dementia, sadly, it's too far that she's like, why am I sitting in front of this pan? Are you cooking? I mean, what is this?

Oh, your poor mom. It's like baking your mom. Like, okay, sit in front of this pan. I know. And especially with dementia where she's like, I don't even— you know, this does not compute. But your mom is a really interesting example. Like, if you look back over your life, did she have any habits that you saw? Like, I mean, I know Dr. Bredesen said, well, it could be a TBI. I mean, TBI is, you know, you could have one traumatic brain injury and it could increase your risk of dementia.

She had several, right? So, so I think, I mean, there's a larger picture with it, right? And so, yeah, obviously spent a lot of time and we've discussed this, and with Dale Bredesen as well. And yeah, one driver is the lack of HRT after hysterectomy in the 1990s, which she had in Ireland at the time. And so lack of estrogen falls off a cliff. I know from—

I mean, that's okay. So that's one possibility, right? Lower estrogen.

Okay, lower estrogen. And then I always—

there's a risk-benefit analysis with that too, with HRT and deciding cancer, yeah, predisposition to cancer versus like the neuroprotective piece.

Yeah. And I've had Dr. Joanne Manson from Harvard Medical School on the podcast, who was the leader of the study that was cut short and misinterpreted as well. And so there is a lot to be seen with that, but let's park that for a minute.

Okay. So there's one bucket there, low estrogen. One bucket there.

But she had three more major head trauma incidents.

Incidents.

One at the gym, a line of treadmills. What someone left a treadmill on and she was crossing over sort of from one treadmill to another in conversation.

Stepped on a moving treadmill.

Stepped on it, went flying, like really knocked her head, right? So that was number one. Number two was here visiting us in London with my kids. My daughter had this kind of scooter, which is like a skateboard with the thing with the handle, right? That sticks out.

Oh no.

She was pulling it behind her and was a bit of a sight. So her foot, literally like in a cartoon, sadly, got on top of it and it went flying. And she was unconscious.

She got knocked unconscious.

She was unconscious for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever it was. I mean, not like a longer period of time, but still enough to knock her unconscious. With a neighbor's place. So there's like a few, few different things with the neighbors. She missed a step. Step, fell on her face. And the worst of it all was in January 2020, the great year 2020, right? Um, she had had a vein procedure, and honestly, I'm, I'm still very upset that the doctor thought it was a good idea for a then 76-year-old to have both legs done at the same time, same time, so she couldn't wrapping them tightly, which means chance of blood clot is very high because you're supposed to keep your legs.

I know. Elevated and moving and moving.

Yeah, you should be moving. She was informed to keep them elevated and not to move too much. That was on a Friday. And Sunday morning, after having them elevated for over 2, you know, 2, almost 2 days. And thankfully it was a Sunday morning and my father was in the next room, but she went into the bathroom and she collapsed. And my father thought that like, what is this noise? That the whole mirror must have come off the wall because it was so noisy. She must have literally fallen like directly backwards. And what came to pass was that there were two blood clots that went into her lungs, which caused her oxygen saturation level to be so low that she fainted in such a drastic way that she literally collapsed, opened the back of her head. And she went from the previous week going to the gym 5 mornings a week at 8 AM. She was there without fail with the 90-year-old who could do the rocket kick and all the rest of bit, to lying in hospital. She recognized myself, my sister, my father, but she would be like, you know, who are these ladies that keep coming and touching my arm? Like, she didn't comprehend that was a nurse. She's in Florida looking out at palm trees asking, is this New York City? Is that Central Park? Like, she— and that was the first time I understood what a concussion can be. And you'll know this.

She had not just a concussion, but two blood clots, pulmonary embolism, low oxygen saturation for who knows how long, by the way. So prior to that, she was cognitively—

She was like, there might be slightly small things, but she was— Yeah.

I mean, this was the critical incident.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my God. Okay. Honestly, like, And that's, to me, that seems like the most precipitating factor. But it also goes to show, I mean, this is why traumatic brain injuries or brain injuries or getting knocked unconscious, like, to me, that is one of the number one— these are the things we can prevent, you know, and we've got to sort of think in that preventative way. Like, how do we always protect our head? If we've had an incident or several incidents where we've been knocked unconscious, it increases your risk of dementia significantly. Because we don't know what areas of the brain are impacted. Remember, head impacts are the invisible brain injury. And unless you go and get scanned, right, you come to the Amen Clinics and get the SPECT scan or EEG, or, you know, they're not going to do a CT scan unless they suspect a brain bleed. So a lot of times you don't even know what's really happened to your brain.

And so just maybe for somebody listening, like, I remember not so long ago in the kitchen or whatever, and I kind of went up quickly and I didn't realize that the door of one of the cupboards was open. So like, what is— and obviously I stayed conscious, it was quite a, quite a bump. For people who've like hit their head, you know, how, how do you define trauma, like head injury?

Mild traumatic. Yeah, There's mild traumatic brain injury, moderate brain injury, and severe brain injury. And so, you know, probably 90% of brain injuries are going to be in the mild traumatic brain injury category. And it's the, the definition is really based on signs and symptoms. So have you been knocked unconscious? Right, number one. If you haven't been knocked unconscious, it's, you know, mild traumatic brain injury. But if you have been knocked unconscious for— it's usually for less than 5 minutes versus more than 5 minutes, or if you've had what's called post-traumatic amnesia. So you sort of wake up for it, but you can't remember details either pre or post-impact, you know, then, you know, we're going more into the moderate category. So if you just hit your head but you're not unconscious, that's mild. Okay. And usually, again, the categories are separated by how long you've been unconscious, right? If it is 5 minutes or more, you know, usually less than 5 minutes, they're like, okay, well, this could be mild. More than 5 minutes or having— if you've hit your head and you have this post-traumatic amnesia, right, you're having trouble remembering things after the impact, especially if it's longer than a day, then we're going to go into the moderate category. So if you've hit your head, you haven't lost consciousness, and you still have your memory intact, it's, it's mild. Yeah. But when we start having a loss of consciousness that's longer than 5 minutes, or again, you have loss of memory, then we're going to start to drift more into the moderate category. And then severe is usually a brain bleed or like a blunt force trauma to the head, which can happen with car accident. Yeah, she had a brain bleed.

She had bleeding in the ventricle, right? So it wasn't actually in the brain matter. So she was lucky that it wasn't in the brain matter to damage that further. But right, any trauma to that degree into the brain, I guess, is just not—

it's a singular trauma, especially if if it's moderate or severe, where again, you've got the loss of consciousness, or you have the post-traumatic amnesia that's lasting longer than 24 hours. Again, that increases your risk of dementia. And that's just because you might have lost neurons in a specific region of the brain that's important in learning and memory or processing information. Because remember, the whole brain is connected, we need it all to function right, to function well. And when you have bleeding in the brain, that's, you know, sometimes people have to go into the emergency room or surgery and get a shunt to help relieve the pressure. That's why if you have an impact to the brain and you start to lose consciousness, you know, get to an emergency room.

Okay. So for people listening, right, if they have any sort of whatever. Yeah.

Any sort of being knocked unconscious, get evaluated by a neurologist.

Neurologist.

And if you, even if you have a mild brain injury and you're not knocked unconscious but you have symptoms, go see a neurologist for an evaluation. It never hurts. It can give you peace of mind. And if they have, but if you had a loss of consciousness, even if it's briefly, I would go to an emergency room, tell them what happened. They'll decide immediately if you need to get scanned and don't drive yourself. By the way. If you're at home and it happens, please call 911 and have an ambulance come get you.

Good point.

Because you don't know if you've had an impact to the brain and there's a small brain bleed and you can lose consciousness while driving. So I don't know, I take every impact to the head seriously.

And what do you do, like, if you, if you knock your head, right? Like, what are—

do you—

is there a detox?

There's all kinds of hair Yeah, well, it's funny, if you have an impact to the head, you can have all sorts of things happen— dizziness, nausea, blurry vision, sensitivity to light, noise, sound. You can have trouble with sleeping. So I mean, you have all of these different symptoms that you might have to manage. You know, because I work in the brain health space, if it happens to me, I clearly have people I can call call, or I can get scanned immediately. But for the average person, if that happens, again, this is where you can call your general practitioner or call your neurologist. Just let somebody know that you've had it and discuss your symptoms, because there might be things that can be done to alleviate headaches, head pain. You know, it's really symptom dependent, because if you any psychiatric issues, anxiety or depression, you know, I might say you should go see a psychiatrist to help get something for that. But it's a head injury, so neurologist is my first recommendation. And they can do a full eval in their office to help give you some peace of mind on what to do. Because truthfully, most people say to rest, right? But, you know, In our clinical setting, we then work with traumatic brain injuries and say, okay, we're now going to put you on a brain rehabilitation protocol. And that might entail specific dietary recommendations, like the Mediterranean diet. It might include some supplement recommendations. At the Amen Clinics, we actually created a formulation that we used for people who have traumatic brain injuries. That includes a foundational brain-directed multivitamin. So it's a multivitamin with additional nutrients that help support your brain function. And there's an omega-3 fatty acid.

Yes.

I'd have to— I'd have to go back and look at the formulation again to remember what the specific brain nutrients that we, we added to it, because I think there's like a fruit and vegetable blend. Again, I'd have to go back and look.

Okay. Yeah.

Well, Well, because then we also added the omega-3 fatty acids. Um, because when you have traumatic brain injury, the omega-3 fatty acids help decrease inflammation, increase blood flow, and it helps to repair the cell membranes, the neuronal cell membranes. So you want the omega-3s. And then we had a very specific brain nutrient protocol, um, which entailed alpha-lipoic acid to help balance blood sugar. Acetyl-L-carnitine to help boost acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter important for memory. So if people who have traumatic brain injuries have memory issues and we want to help support the memory, we're going to give nutrients that support the memory. Um, cuprazine A also supports memory, so that was part of the formulation. Um, and acetylcysteine, which is sort of a powerful antioxidant, it helps to produce the glutathione, which is powerful antioxidants. We had N-acetylcysteine, phosphatidylserine, which is also important in supporting cell membranes. So, you know, between the multivitamin, the omega-3s, and these brain support nutrients, which I talk about in the book, I actually give the detailed supplements, what each one does in the brain, and Also talked about, you know, you might need to talk to your doctor because again, when you're taking supplements, if you're on blood thinners, we have to be very careful with omega-3 fatty acids and some supplements that thin the blood. Sometimes people are also on medications that boost acetylcholine, so we have to be careful. So I'm very mindful, right, when we make recommendations, even for recovering from traumatic brain injury, you might want to run them by your neurologist. Or your general practitioner, because, you know, you can have the supplement medication interactions. But we would do dietary interventions, supplement interventions, and then we could test to see where your cognitive level is at. And if we need to strengthen it, we had certain brain training games that you could do to help boost, you know, your cognitive function. And then we have tools like neurofeedback feedback. So if we measure the electrical activity of your brain and saw certain connections needed to be strengthened, you could do neurofeedback protocols. So again, I'm kind of jumping into all of this that you can do if you've had a traumatic brain injury. You know, these are just some of the options you have.

But Kristen, as well, this is a protocol that, say, somebody who's in their 40s maybe had a few fun— well, I shouldn't say fun, but like party years, let's say, brain-damaging party years, and they're pretty damaging.

Oh, I see. Okay, I'm listening.

Like, how do I optimize? Can I use this protocol too? Is this just for people with major head brain trauma, or would you recommend this as a general protocol? You know, obviously consult your physician and make sure it's, you know, okay for you, etc. But say that the physician said, okay, yeah, you're healthy, you can do it, and you want to optimize. Is this a protocol you would recommend for most people?

You can use it for brain optimization. You can— we would adjust the dose for people with traumatic brain injuries. So yes, to your question, you know, you— a healthy individual could take all of these nutritional supplements, and what they will do is help support healthy cognitive function and bring more blood flow to the brain, as well as help to repair cell membranes. So yes, best guess. The answer to your question is you can do this for brain optimization. It's funny because a lot of people— I'm so used to tailoring supplement protocols for people, and I love people who are into the optimization piece because they're more open to taking more things. And I'm also used to people being like, I don't want to take a lot of supplements, so how do I streamline this for my brain? And I I, in the book, I have 3 tiers of, you know, supplement recommendations for your brain health. I have a section called Brain Basics, which sort of are healthy for everyone to take. Like, I feel very comfortable with a majority of people just doing the Brain Basics no matter what. I have what I call an All-Star category, which sort of uplevels, right? Like, if you're open to taking supplements and you really want to, expand, you could do both. And then I have the part called the injured reserve, which is what we were just talking about. Now, how do I help take care of my brain if I've had a brain injury or I'm, you know, I have alcohol issues, right? And I want to optimize my brain because we use this formula for people who had toxic looking brains as well. So that's a very long-winded answer to say, because I guess you could take it. But if in the book book, I give every single one of those supplements and you can decide, do you want to take everything, you know?

Or you can put it in your food and things like that too. I wanted to talk to you about the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We've talked about this in the past and I know that was part of the protocol that you did on the clinical trials with the NFL players. I'm just going to check in with you, Kristen. I know as usual our conversation's got a bit over— are you still okay for time for a little bit?

I am, yes, yes. Yes, we could definitely do the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Let's talk about that.

Yeah. And what you were seeing and maybe for people like that, not that familiar, can you just give a little bit of context to it as well?

Yes. So hyperbaric oxygen therapy is where you actually go into a chamber and breathe 100% partial pressure oxygen. So it's used to help readily get oxygen into the tissues. And it's classically used for people who have gangrene, radiation poisoning, carbon monoxide poisoning, deep sea divers who get the bends, burn victims. So these are the classical indications for using hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We need to very quickly get oxygen into tissues, dying tissues.. And that is sort of the appropriate use for it. Interestingly, now, as people are looking at ways to help support brain health and longevity, you know, we started exploring using hyperbaric oxygen therapy for people who had traumatic brain injuries and looking at ways to help reoxygenate the brain. And, you know, this is one of the methods that can be used. So you need to get a prescription for it if you're going to use it at a dose of 1 point— it's usually 1.5 atmospheres or higher.

There's—

and so what does it do to your brain? So what we found is it helps, it helps grow new blood vessels in the brain. So we use imaging modality called brain SPECT imaging where we can look at blood flow patterns in the brain. And if we put somebody in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, at 1.5 atmospheres or above for usually an hour. What we would find is it would help to increase blood flow to the brain, and we would do 40 sessions in our patients. So usually what we could do is a baseline scan to see where the blood flow was at, have them do 40 sessions at 1.5 atmospheres or above, and then do a follow-up scan. And so we saw these areas of the brain that, that had really low blood flow, like we would see with traumatic brain injury, or in the case of even people who've had alcohol issues or Lyme disease, where you see that low perfusion. This is a way to help bring the perfusion back. But it's also anti-inflammatory. It can actually upregulate 8,000 different genes, you know, in the body. So it's a very powerful modality. Not just for growing new blood vessels and helping bring more oxygen to the tissues, but also as an antiviral, antibacterial. It's like it boosts your immune system. So they were actually looking at hyperbaric oxygen therapy during the COVID pandemic. The problem with that was people were having issues with their lungs and breathing. And, you know, that's another piece that needs to be factored in. And so we, you know, we did this before the pandemic. So we were using exclusively for people with traumatic brain injury and how do we help restore and rehabilitate brain function. There are now clinics that are open that offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Not all of them are in these chambers. There's ones that have, you know, they're like bags that you can get in and zip. And, you know, the atmospheric pressure is a lot lower. It's usually 1.3 atmospheres, which is around sea level. It's like normal breathing. So if you want to use one of those, those are safer. We did not test them. So in the clinical setting, we used protocols that were clinically indicated that we knew we could make a measurable difference difference in brain function. So I can't speak to the efficacy of those that are really more at 1.3 atmospheres that are popping up in sort of more health and longevity, like clinics. I mean, I know people who are doing them routinely, and I can't— because I haven't studied them, I can't really speak to their efficacy. So I can only speak to the efficacy of the ones where you're going in a chamber where, you know, you have to get the dive down to the 100% partial pressure oxygen. We know that it's now getting into your bloodstream. And we can see the measurable effects with the brain imaging.

That's at 1.5 atmospheres. And you said it was 40 sessions and higher as well. And 40 sessions over what period of time?

Like what cadence? Good question. So it's more— so for people who've had traumatic brain injuries, or even acutely, like who've had strokes, people have used hyperbaric oxygen therapy. If you've had the acute injury, we might say we want you to go in 5 days a week, um, and that's a lot for some people, but we want them to get the best benefit. So if you can go 5 days a week, um, doing the 40 sessions— it's expensive. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, if you're going to do the 40 sessions, could costs $8,000 to $9,000. So it's not an inexpensive proposition, but when you're talking about saving your brain health, if it's clinically indicated, it's worth it. Again, if it's in one of these clinics where you're going in the chamber, you're zipping yourself in and out, it's at 1.3 atmospheres, that's different. So I, I just don't really know the benefits. You know, you might have to do 80 sessions for it to work, but I don't— yeah, I can't really speak to that.

Yeah, no, it's just interesting for people, and I'm also thinking I'm going to be seeing my father as well. I remember we— I don't know the atmospheres where he was at, but it was so funny. We went for dinner after and he was like super jokey. He was like joking with the waiter. It was almost like he was like a teenager again, and I was like, you know, wow, from one session of the—

he did He did one session. Yeah, he did one session of H5.

Yeah, just one session of it. And like, I've sent him to do it more often. My parents get all my biohacking ideas. I'm like, go and do this.

But are they doing the chamber, like, where they're locked in and brought down?

It looks like a hospital bed with the glass dome over it. Yeah. So it's that one. Like, here in London, I've been to one, and it's more of a, like, a room with a green light. And you put it on and you can feel like it feels like a plane taking off. So I don't know the exact atmosphere pressure, like I don't know how much pressure was in that one as well. So now at least I have the measurement to double check. But from 1.5, you know, there's clinical research to say that it makes that difference.

Yeah, it's like anything under that, I just can't, you know, I've had plenty of people ask because they pop up all over the place here in Los Angeles. And I'm like, well, and I I'm, you know, I guess I'm the person that stays more with like the clinically indicated usage of it. Because there's an appropriate time and place for these kinds of things. So if you've, you know, played a collision-based sport and have had a lot of brain issues, you know, these are people who can go in for more than 40 sessions, and they're sometimes they're being followed over time, you can do you're 40 and then wait a year, a couple years, see how you're doing clinically. So it's all evolving research, but I will say I was, I was impressed to see the changes that it could make using brain imaging. I mean, these are measurable changes that are consistent over time, and it's really because you're growing new blood vessels. So that's always been one of the reasons why I really liked it. And it also helps to mobilize stem cells in your body. They will go to wherever they are needed, which is why it's used in wound healing. Many times have gone, you know, people have gone in to accelerate wound healing, but you need the prescription for it. So the places where people are going in where you don't get a prescription written by a clinician, I don't— I'm not quite sure how that works or what the— yeah, yeah, or if it's working.

Well, exactly, to know, because I— that, you know, I go to these conferences on longevity, etc., and these people are selling devices for the home. So I guess it's just to be aware.

I've, I've had people that I've worked with that are like, should I spend $60 grand to put one of these things in my home? You know, it's interesting because a lot of times we're using these with the athletes that have played the collision-based sports and are really wanting to help restore and repair their brain function. I remember speaking to a guy who was, um, I think he was an MMA fighter, and he had one in his garage. Um, this is, I think, when we were still doing our research. I was talking about— I was fascinated. And he goes, yeah, I've had one of these things in my garage for 10 years, and I would go in it and use it. He's a fighter, so they learn— I mean, when you're in these sports where you're taking impacts to the brain, I think you're— and you're not feeling great, right? Yeah, you're like, wait a minute, how 'Oh, do I protect myself and take care of myself?' And I remember he's like— he was cognitively proficient, was really thankful his brain was okay, and he attributed it to his, this chamber that he had in his garage. And I'm like, 'Oh, okay.' So I'm not going to rule anything out. Like, you know, I'm very open-minded, you know, as long as it's safe I mean, there's things that can happen in these chambers, right? They're highly explosive. Like, you know, it's a hot— it's high-pressure oxygen.

Like, you know, explosions can happen.

Yeah, they can happen. And they have had happen— they have happened to people I know who have been in them. And so it's— when you put— when you put oxygen at very high pressure, you know, you have to be very careful. So— and also So, you know, for certain people there's contraindications to going into these chambers. If you've had cataracts or things with your eyes, because it's the high pressure and it can actually help— it could damage the vessels around the eye. So you also, you want to be mindful going into these chambers. This is why you require a prescription, like, yeah, make sure that it's appropriate for you. But again, I'm, I'm like this with everything from the supplements you take. Make sure they work with your medications because as you said in the beginning of our conversation, you drank 3 liters of green, you know, your, your tea for several days in a row and then you were loopy. And it's like, you know, we're sort of we have like a set point that we're used to being at. And when we start to change that, we want to make sure there's a medical professional or somebody who knows what we're doing to follow through and—

Exactly, to take care of us as well. So, Kristen, let's say someone is keen to know where they are in their brain health status. What are tests, right? Because it's not a typical test that you go to see your, you know, annual doctor's visit and they say you should do a brain scan, right? So what is something you would recommend people ask for? And from what age would you think it's important to ask? Like what type of brain health tests are available?

Yeah, that's a good question 'cause it depends on where you go. So it's, if somebody lived in the United States and they wanted to go to the clinics, they do brain optimization all of the time. And there are standardized neuropsychiatric assessments and cognitive assessments that can be done and even simple quantitative EEG just to look at how the brain is functioning, which is relatively inexpensive and you're not exposing your brain to potential radioactive chemicals, right? When— because sometimes when you do these scans, like a brain spec scan, you do have to have a radioactive tracer to be able to see what's going on in the brain. So those are things that one has to think about. But getting back to your question, you can— there are tests available that can be done online. I mean, for certain people I work with, I have a test that I send out to people that can be done annually just to assess how is your brain functioning. Is that the— looks at your brain across 12 different— okay, it's not the marker. No, it's, it's— no, no, no.

Oh, did you say mocha? Mocha? Yeah, mocha.

Yeah, are you talking about mocha? Yeah, yeah, mocha. No, this is more, um, assessing different domains, like your different cognitive domains. It usually takes people about 40 minutes, and I can see what's going on, and it's adjusted to a normative database. And so that's something, you know, you can have that done every year. You can have— you can go to your neurologist and say, hey, I would like to have my brain evaluated. And, you know, there are different batteries of tests that can be done. It's more about finding a location, right? So I was saying the Amen Clinics is one location. You know, I work with people and I have a certain test that I use for people. A neurologist is going to have their specific battery of But I think we're, we're in an environment now where brain health is an important topic. And I would really advise somebody might go to a neurologist and they'll say you're perfectly healthy, you don't need a brain health evaluation. And I would say, well, find another neurologist then, you know, or reach out to me because I do feel like it's important even if you just want to have the baselines on file. You know, most people are probably going to perform well on a MoCA test unless you start to show signs, right, of clinical symptoms. And really, you and I are more in the space of optimizing brain health and taking what we have and making it better. And that's going to be— to be able to do that, you have to find people like I said, like myself, or, you know, but yourself, you know, people who are really more more forward-thinking in this space. And you can even ask your general practitioner, believe it or not, like, you know, people are picking their own batteries of tests and realizing this is something that people want. Now, if you've had a brain injury and want to take a look at your brain, I do highly recommend, you know, getting a baseline test. Or if you have a child who's going to play a collision-based sport, I would recommend having a cognitive test at the beginning of the season and maybe a baseline EEG just to see how their brain is functioning. And then after they have an impact, you could do a follow-up. But again, I acknowledge that this is very forward-thinking and not everybody is at that space yet.

Yeah, but I think it's just very helpful for people to realize that. I know when I spoke with Dale, he said, you know, from the age of 50, you should be having a cognoscopy. He was saying like once a year.

I agree with them. I, and I might even say 40, but I agree with Dale 100%. He's absolutely right, you know. And I know they have a clinic and, and they do this sort of work. So, um, I think people have many options, you know, if they want to look into their brain health. They can start with, you know, people that might be covered under their insurance. That's why, you know, I start like, let's do the basics, like if your insurance carrier will allow you to go to your GP or your neurologist and say, I'm really interested in brain health, can I do a basic cognitive assessment? And if they don't have something that would work for you because they, they're like, you're cognitively normal, if you take this exam, you're not, you know, you don't need to take this exam yet, then find somebody else, like reach out to me, reach out to Dr. Bredesen, reach out to clinics, reach out to you. There's places that are equipped to be able to do this for people. But if insurance can cover it, if insurance can cover it and you can just do it annually right through your doctor, all the better. So I'm all about, you know, being financially prudent and resourceful.

Kristen, what's your vision for optimal brain health? Like, what needs to happen? Where does the world need to be to get to an optimal brain health?

Society? Well, I think to start is just to think about taking care of it the way we take care of our body. That's truly, that's the vision, right? You people understand the importance of going to the gym to maintain their physical health and their, their muscles, right? We know the importance of resistance training, especially as you get older. You want to make sure your body is built up to be strong and your heart is built up to be strong. Now we want to just add the brain to it. It. And truly going to a gym and building up your body is building up your brain. So that is one step. Most people don't realize they're actually helping their brain in many ways. But to be thoughtful about everything, the things that you're thinking, the actions that you're taking every day. I mean, we didn't even get to the mental health piece about taking care of your brain health, right? The people that we keep around us, and, you know, sort of managing our day-to-day emotions. That's a whole nother piece. And that's sort of the side effect of taking great care of your brain health is you're actually gonna be sort of more mentally fit and healthy.

Yeah, I mean, just even to touch briefly on it with, you know, mental health, I guess, is a big topic, right? But just with, you were saying a deteriorating brain, and with aging comes then the anxiety and other, symptoms as well. But, you know, what role is stress having on, on the whole expediting degeneration and what people really focus on?

That's actually like a whole nother discussion. It's a whole nother book. I feel like I need to write. It is round 3 because it's, well, it's funny. We all go through stress and I think one of the, the benefits of aging is you learn learn how to be better at emotionally regulating yourself and being able to manage stress, knowing when to say when or when to say no or when to walk away, when to walk away from a job that's too stressful, you know, how to pivot and change your life so that it brings you greater ease because life wasn't meant to be hard. We just went through a pandemic. Many of us lost family and loved ones, and those are traumas that could be with us indefinitely. So I— it's funny, it's like I don't even want to gloss over this topic because it's so important. And, you know, just from a biological perspective, you know, we say stress causes an increase in cortisol, elevated cortisol in the body chronically, right, over, over time, can help shrink certain regions of the brain. So the area of the brain called the hippocampus, we've been talking about ad nauseam in this podcast, has a lot of glucocorticoid receptors. So when we're stressed, the cortisol binds to receptors in the hippocampus and can shrink it. It binds to receptors in the frontal lobes in your brain can shrink that area. So the high stress levels are just correlated with, you know, brain shrinkage. So the bigger question is, how do we help calm our central nervous system? And what's really exciting, and I mean, we're seeing all kinds of great science-backed research to show the benefits of having a meditation practice having a yoga practice, having a breathwork practice. And if you're not into any of that, because some— for some people that is not their jam, then you can go to— sometimes it's even listening to certain music, right? Being out in nature, taking calming supplements like GABA, which we've talked about. This is where I love supplements because you can actually use them to help calm the stress. You know, we can use neurofeedback, like I've talked about before, where it's a non-pharmacological approach to calming the networks in our brain so we can more easily emotionally regulate and protect our brain health. So stress is a big topic. We're always going to have it. So it's how do we learn? Yeah, like how do we learn to to just be more peaceful, more peaceful with the choices that we've made. I mean, somebody could listen to this podcast and you feel stressed because they might have to change, feel like they have to change a lot. But I would say no, what you have to do is that there's probably small changes that can make a very meaningful and impactful difference in your day-to-day life. What I've seen from brain imaging studies is that most people walking around today have very low blood flow in their brain, right? They wouldn't know it. Um, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book, is I was like, oh, more people could use improved perfusion to the brain. Um, and why do they have perfusion deficits? It can be, again, for many of the things we talked about— exposure to toxic mold, too much alcohol, um, side effect of chemotherapy, right? Sometimes certain drugs smokes can do that to our brain. We've had a stroke, we've had traumatic brain injury, we played collision-based sports and have like little mini injuries to our brain. I mean, there's a myriad of things just being human and living in this world, you know, kind of puts a little bit of an assault on this organ and nobody looks at it. You know, understandably so, like, you know, unless you're in my field or you're in neurology or neurosurgery, or neuroscience, you're not looking at your brain. So we're kind of saying, hey, it's kind of cool to look at your brain and you might want to think about it. And if you can, it's important. And even if you don't look at it, right, if somebody's listening to this podcast, because most people won't ever get a brain scan unless they, they have suspected neurological issue. I would just say, think about the daily habits. Again, it's why I wrote the book. It's the things that you teach, like the daily habits that keep the blood flowing to the brain. That's really, I think, what's going to help people in the long run. And, you know, I know you were asking me about managing stress. You know, I think that's something we're all going to try to perfect, right?

Yeah. And you listed some beautiful modalities, right, with that breathwork practice. And I think that's such a key word. It's a practice. It's just doing it regularly. There's no right or wrong. Long, be it breathwork or meditation or yoga or walking in nature, right? The beautiful grounding. It's kind of going back to what people did before, you know, we didn't have those cell phones.

What about how did our grandparents live to 100? Yeah. You know, and I don't know that they were doing breathwork or yoga.

My Irish grandfather smoked and like we still couldn't believe he made it to 94, you know, and he was But you know what?

He was probably out with his friends, socially engaged. Like, like to take this conversation full circle back to Dan Buettner and living to 100, I think, you know, really it's about living a joyful, happy life. Like we've thrown out so many different approaches today in this podcast. No one is perfect. Try— you can try one that sort of resonates with you. We're learning more, like, you know, the more of them they do, they're probably going to have more of a synergistic effect to help support your brain over time. I think the most important point to get out of this is you've got a lot of options and there's a lot of us out here with resources that can help for those who are curious and, you know, want to know more and, you know, are like, wow, how do I take care of my brain? Never even thought about it. Or they might be listening and they're a former firefighter or, you know, there's somebody who's been in a profession where they've been exposed to toxic substances or they've, like I said, or a police officer where there's traumas 24/7, like, oh, I never even thought maybe I should look at my brain and, you know, do something to help calm it down. And bringing this also full circle, I brought Oscar in here at the beginning, like, You know, as my dad aged, he got into horses and riding horses and would just go out, you know, to the barn and hop on the back of a horse. And he was so happy, even with his Parkinson's, he would be on the horses. You know, those animals and animals in general, you know, you read the literature, you can help unravel PTSD just by putting somebody on a horse. Right. It's there. They're now being used in therapy for PTSD and autism. And, you know, again, these are things that, you know, they're, they're easy to do. It's not about going into a clinic. It's about being in nature, being connected with our animals. I don't know. It can be that simple. Like, I think maybe that's the, that's sort of like the, the point I wanted to to make. Like, if you want to go into everything, we've got a lot of fun things that are available that can help support your brain health. But if you like it simple and you don't want to go into a chamber, you want to go in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and you know, you don't— you're not the person who wants to practice meditation, you need it to be simpler, you can do that too.

Yeah, go to nature, etc. It's available. Kristin, you're such a wealth of knowledge and experience. Are you? Thank you so much. No, it's, uh, as you know, I adore speaking with you all the time. Um, but if people are interested in finding more about what you're up to, obviously there's Kristin's book, which I recommend everybody read. It's really, really phenomenal. It's beautifully written for everyone to understand. There's so many practical tips and insights in there. So that's Biohack Your Brain, available, I think, on Amazon and pretty much everywhere. Where can people follow you and what you're up to, Kristen?

Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you for having me on your podcast. It's always a delight. You're such a beautiful, like, bright, shiny, like, kind, compassionate person doing amazing work in this world. And really, you're shining such an important light. Light on what people can do to support their health and longevity. And I just love you for that. If people want to reach out and have questions, they can go to my website at DrWillimeyer.com. I'm sure you will leave a link for people to access that because spelling— yeah, it's, that's, it's a lot for people.

I know, I know.

I'm like, I'm available, you know, to address any questions you have and, you know, would be more than happy to support your listeners in any way possible and encourage them on their brain health journey wherever they are at. To go to the website, you know, the book is just another resource that's available and written. Like you said, it's written for the general public. It's not it's not a heady brain book. It's a very sort of action-oriented book.

And I'm glad you liked it. Thank you. No, it's really phenomenal. I've recommended so many people as well. And it just breaks it down because I think it's true. Like, people focus on their body. They go to the doctor, they have their ears and their eyes and their nose and their lungs checked and their blood pressure. But like, who's actually looking inside our brain, which we know is so important on so many levels. For everyone listening, thank you for coming this far because our conversations tend to be long. So well done. And hopefully you are inspired and empowered to take your brain health back into your hands, to speak to the right people and practitioners, and to get going to maintain good cognitive health. As your father had Parkinson's, my mother with her dementia, and it's avoidable diseases if we catch them on time..

So amen to that. They are avoidable. And you know what? And you know what? If you are one of those people that have them, you know, there are still things that we can do to support you. That's, that's also the other thing to note. You know, you're not alone. As I, as I say, no brain left behind.

Oh, beautiful. Kristen, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure, as always, to speak with you and have you back on again.

Thank you so much. Oh, so much fun. Thank you for the honor and the pleasure of speaking with you as well.

We only did, what, 2 hours this time? Exactly.

We were 2, 2 hours and a bit in. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Claudia. Thank you.