Food Linked to Alzheimer's Disease | Dr. Heather Sandison x Dave Asprey

My grandmother passed away a little bit north of a hundred years old, about 101. And in the last few years she definitely had Alzheimer's going on. You could see it coming in and out. And I looked at what they were feeding her at the, at the care home that was a block from my parents house. It was all seed oils, grains, sugar, junk food. And if I was there and I just poured a little bit of C8MCT oil in her food, we could have a conversation about what it was like at Los Alamos National Labs when she was working on, you know, uranium and things. And then the other time she just watched infomercials and, and it's like that's just a mild ketogenic agent and it's one of all these different things. But finding a care provider who could even just swap out some bad oils for good oils, much less get enough protein in or help with exercise, it was impossible. And most of the care providers were really poorly paid. They were good hearted, they wanted to do good, but they couldn't even make ends meet. So it, it's, it's a rough situation. That's why people are saying, well, I can't afford to eat healthy. Well, grass fed butter is more expensive than regular butter or margarine, but not that much more on a per calorie basis. It's cheaper than kale, which isn't good for you anyway. But the other thing is, is white rice more expensive than brown rice which is full of arsenic? No. Is arsenic linked to Alzheimer's disease? What do you think?

Well, heavy metals in general and yeah. Are something that we screen for in everyone and it's also quite simple to get rid of arsenic and mercury. You don't need fancy chelating agents. There are binders that are specific to that.

And what are the binders for mercury and lead.

I use the IMD for mercury and arsenic. IMD product from Quicksilver is a silica based product that binds it in the gut so that you don't need a chelating agent for lead, you need a chelating agent. EDTA is the only thing I've found that will, will help with that. However, lead I worry about less. A lot of that is stored in bones less, it's less neurotoxic than mercury. So we're always kind of battling that espe. Most of my patients, as you mentioned, are women, are postmenopausal women. And so the bone risk to brain health, that risk benefit ratio, we're always navigating whether or not we should use EDTA either orally or by iv.

And it's a bit of a risk there. EDTA is something that in, in my life in my mid to late 20s, I had very high lead levels, who the heck knows where from? And my skin was kind of this gray color. And I was obese, had chronic fatigue that was more mold toxin related than lead. And I got my first EDTA intravenous treatment and I came home and my partner at the time said, oh my gosh, your skin is pink. Just from one treatment. And we know that any amount of lead in your, your blood especially increases your risk of cardiovascular things.

Reduces iq.

Yeah, reduces iq. There's that. And we're looking at, okay, let's say that you're a young person. You're saying, all right, maybe I should avoid heavy metals and maybe I should occasionally get rid of some. And you can use that. Was it imd?

Imd? Intestinal Metal Detox. Yeah.

And Quicksilver, I'm the founder of Quicksilver, has been on the show. It's a, it's a good company. They have a push catch protocol that's also really good. And so we can all do that and we can do that way before we get Alzheimer's to reduce our risk and to perform better today, which is really important when people come to see you with Alzheimer's. How do you know which of the types of Alzheimer's it is? How do you know what the cause is?

So we do a precision based functional medicine, naturopathic medicine workup. So we're looking at these six components of brain health again, their toxicity, and we're looking even taking that step back. But we want to put this in the framework of is imbalance too much, too little in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what we're looking for, right? There's a homeodynamic state that we're optimizing for in the brain. There's a diurnal rhythm, there's an annual rhythm, there's a monthly rhythm. There are all of these changes that happen, but we want them to be within this optimal kind of up and down. Right. We don't want things too high and we don't want things too low, but we want them to change over time. So this is a complex system. It's complex system science is applied to the brain. And so we go back to these six components. They're causal level components, right? There can be inflammation. Sometimes you'll hear people say inflammation is the cause of chronic disease or inflammation is the cause of Alzheimer's, what caused the inflammation? Just like amyloid plaques, right? Amyloid plaques as the cause of Alzheimer's. It's a way to simplify a complex process, but it doesn't work. When we get rid of the amyloid, we don't resolve the Alzheimer's, we don't resolve the cognitive problem decline. So what we want to look for is what are the things that are going to trigger an inflammatory response? What are the things that are going to trigger a reaction in the form of beta amyloid or tau proteins? What can we do to stop that cascade? So we want to go to the causal level factors. And again, it's toxicity, it's nutrients, it's structure, it's stress, it's signaling and its infections. And when we can look at those things and a lot. So the lifestyle factors are the foundation for this, right? Before you even go see a doctor and spend all the money on testing, are you getting a non processed diet? Getting in and out of ketosis, Potentially maybe going plant based when you're not in ketosis, some diet that above all else eliminates processed foods. And then are you getting enough sleep? At least 7 hours of sleep, aiming for 90 minutes of REM sleep, 60 minutes of deep sleep, getting that good restorative sleep where the brain can rinse amyloid out of the, out of the cerebral spinal fluid, where we can get the toxins like mercury and lead and all of that out of the brain, all of the metabolic waste that's created every day. Do we give the brain the opportunity to do that at night? And then can we consolidate memories, also a really important part of sleep and brain health. So diet, sleep, exercise, are we getting at least 200 minutes a week of exercise? A combination of vigorous aerobic exercise, strength training, some sort of dual task exercise we typically recommend. We like exercising with oxygen, potentially contrast oxygen, if you're in the optimization space, if you're in prevention and not frail.

Come to upgrade labs, we do that.

Yeah, I know. I used an ewot at your place when I was at 40 years of Zen. So stress that, you know, speaking of 40 years of Zen, stress, stress management, are we getting enough? Are we, do we have purpose and meaning? Are we getting that hormetic effect potentially from fasting from exercise, from contrast oxygen, contrast hydrotherapy, those kinds of things? Are we using that to optimize our cognitive function? Or are we kicking our feet up and saying, hey, I'm retired, so I'm gonna have happy hour cocktails every day and drink, drink plenty of alcohol and soda and, you know, indulge in cookies and cake. That is some people's version of retirement. And that is not how we're going to optimize cognitive function. So foundationally, we've got to have balance in all in what we eat, how much we move, how much we sleep, the quality of our sleep, and who we engage with. Are we socially isolated or are we engaging with others? Those foundations are absolutely crucial. And if I'm going to test for metals with that, if I'm going to add supplements. Supplements are supplemental by nature, right? Like, we want to add those to the foundations. And so then once we have that foundation in place, or sometimes, you know, these are parallel tracked, then we start looking, what are the toxic levels? Are, are there metals like we just discussed? Are there molds? And I thank you for the podcast you did originally with Dr. Shoemaker, and then Neil Nathan has added a lot to that conversation. And I've studied with both of them. So understanding, have we been exposed to the mycotoxins, Are we getting them out? Are we out of that? Are we currently being exposed and pouring in more to our body than we can get rid of? And then also chemical toxicity. Glyphosate has a big effect on the nervous system. So do PCBs, phthalates, petrochemicals. These are things that we can measure. We can identify exposures and then we can help to get rid of infections. Same thing. We can measure for them. We can understand if they're part of this inflammatory process in the brain and we can resolve them so that then we free up resource to focus on regeneration.

I love that.