Natural Ways to Prevent Alzheimer's & Boost Brain Health | Dr. Heather Sandison | 1199 | Dave Asprey

It seems like you might be a biohacker. Your toolkit is intermittent. Fasting, a ketogenic diet, detoxing, optimizing sleep, managing stress, and doing stuff with your brain. It's almost like if we all did those all the time, it's not meant to be a cure. It's just how you're supposed to be living to have a brain that works.

Yeah. The other thing we call it is a naturopathic doctor.

Exactly.

Right.

Right. It's living the lifestyle that our bodies and brains are designed for so that we get optimal function.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

Today's episode is about one of my favorite topics. Brains. Not just having a brain that works better, but not getting Alzheimer's disease. If you followed my work in the longevity field, you know that there are big. If you followed my work in the longevity field, you know that there are four big killers you've got to avoid. And the first one is diabetes, which leads to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. And maybe the scariest of all of those is Alzheimer's because you're unable to care for yourself and you don't even know it. And if you've experienced that in a family member as I have, it's. It's not the way most of us want to go. So what do you do to reverse Alzheimer's if you have it? Well, there's a new book and a new toolkit about that. I want you to listen to the episode today even if you don't have Alzheimer's, because you don't want to get it. And I promise you that someone you know either has it or is going to get it until we solve this problem permanently. Our guest today is named Dr. Heather Sandison, and she wrote the New York Times bestseller Reversing Alzheimer's. The New Toolkit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health. The title says it all. To improve cognition, even if you don't have Alzheimer's. This episode is for you. And if you read Headstrong, my big cognitive enhancement book, half the research. And it comes from Alzheimer's research, because that's when brains stop working. How do you make them start working again? It's the same stuff that makes good brains into great brains. Heather, welcome to the show.

Dave, such a privilege to be here. Thanks for having me.

It's my pleasure. And I just love that you're doing this work, in part because women get Alzheimer's twice as often as men. That's why I was the largest donor to the Women's Alzheimer's Project in recent years with Maria Shriver. Because this is a thing that affects all of us but women more than men. What led you down the path of deciding this was worth your time and attention?

Yeah. Thank you. So I started re looking into this at Bastyr. I was going to naturopathic school and very oriented towards health rather than focusing on the disease process and what's going wrong. My orientation has always been towards how can we optimize much like yours. Now fast forward a few years. I had the privilege of seeing Dr. Dale Bredesen, who became my mentor, speak at a conference. And he put together this. What really made a ton of sense conceptually. But what I had been programmed to believe wasn't true. Right. I had been told over and over again, like many, many, many doctors out there, that there was nothing I could do to support someone with Alzheimer's or dementia, that to suggest otherwise was to give them false hope and to do harm. And so I kind of took that as gospel. But then when I heard Dr. Bredesen speak, he set up this stack. You know, in the biohacking world, this is a very well known concept that we can have these stacks of interventions or a stack and a supplement, right. That we put all these things together so that we hopefully potentiate the, the benefit of it. And Dr. Bredesen was describing just that, essentially taking everything I had learned in naturopathic school and packaging it for those suffering with cognitive decline. So conceptually it made sense. I also knew I had the framework and the background to be able to execute on this, but I still didn't believe it was possible. I went to his training because I was so intrigued by what he was saying. And so then I had the credentials on the end and I was on his list of trained providers and people were showing up in my office with way more confidence than I had. And I walked them through the process, not knowing if it was going to really help because again, it had been ingrained in me to be skeptical. And then over and over and over again, people proved me wrong and showed me what was possible for those suffering with dementia, even severe Alzheimer's. People weren't necessarily going back to work. They weren't 100% better. I would never call this a cure, but people had significant improvements in their language ability, their ability to get dressed in the morning, their activities of daily living in their quality of life, and also, of course, the quality of life of their partner and their families.

You said you'd never call this a cure. Is that because you're not good at your job?

It's because the language, I think, is a little bit misleading if we say cure. Right. So what I see over and over again is that people have to stay on this plan. It's a brain health program. It's a brain health lifestyle. And we. There's a resident who. I have these. The center called Marama, and we've had people move in and then move home. And there's one woman who came in with a MOCA score. Montreal Cognitive assessment normal is 26 and above. A perfect score is 30 out of 30. She had a MOCA score around 10. She was pretty bad. As we get towards zero, it's getting worse and worse. Somebody with zero has no verbal ability. She was at a 10, which is where we, you know, we're asking for a miracle to get reversal of the disease process, which her MOCA score went up to like over 20. She was just a miraculous case. And so her family wanted her to move home, so she moved home. And unfortunately, her son was traveling more than expected. She was pretty isolated. She wasn't getting the same diet, she wasn't exercising as much. And her MOCA score fell to a nine. So she moved back in with us. And her MOCA score is now up again. Right. So it's not a cure the way that we might think of, you know, a urinary tract infection or a pneumonia where you get an antibiotic, it goes away, you never have to think about it again. This is really about adopting a brain health lifestyle so that you can support neuronal health whatever stage you are in, either cognitive decline or looking towards optimization.

Dr. Dale Bredesen's become a friend. This show, according to him, helped him hit the New York Times list with his first book. And I was so amazed to hear a medical doctor with great credentials say that mold toxins are one cause of Alzheimer's. I've been saying for years, and no one believed it. And he put the evidence out. But it's not the only cause. It's all the other things that inhibit mitochondria, like heavy metals and other types of toxins and metabolic disturbances. And it seems like either preventing or reversing all of those is a good.

Strategy, even if you're 20.

I couldn't agree more. And particularly if you have the genetic predisposition towards Alzheimer's disease. Right. If you have the APOE. APOE genetics, if you have one or two copies of the APOE 4, then you are at a much higher risk of developing Developing Alzheimer's in your life lifetime. And it makes a huge amount of sense to adopt these strategies of reducing toxicity, balancing nutrients, of getting structural support, making sure you're avoiding sleep apnea, optimizing sleep, optimizing stress, getting enough purpose and meaning but not too much stress that it becomes toxic having your signaling pathways optimized. And then of course, making sure there's not infectious agents that might be triggering that inflammation in the brain. Or looking at these, all of these components of brain health I think is really important as we age, but particularly for those at high genetic risk of developing Alzheimer's.

It, it seems like you might be a biohacker. Like your toolkit is intermittent fasting, a ketogenic diet, detoxing, optimizing sleep, managing stress and doing stuff not meant to be a cure. It's just how you're supposed to be living to have a brain that works.

Yeah. The other thing we call it is a naturopathic doctor, so.

Exactly. Right.

Right. It's living the, the life that our bodies and brains are designed for so that we get optimal function. It's common sense, just uncommon practice. Right. We're in a society where we're swimming against the. It's easy to scroll, it's easy to get processed food, it's less expensive, it's more convenient. And so all of society is sort of stacked against us and we've got to work harder to do the things that help us to optimize our health.

How much more expensive is it to not get Alzheimer's versus just eat junk food?

So we can talk through the numbers here. Pretty straightforward. Memory care is going to cost you probably base $6,000 a month for the most discounted in probably the lower socioeconomic areas of the country. Now I'm on the coast in San Diego. Routinely you're going to see memory care that starts at 10 or $12,000 a month. And then as soon as you start needing one on one care or you need extra help with your medications, or you need extra help with any of these other long laundry list of things, they're going to add more cost. Right. So it's very, very, very labor intensive to care for someone with Alzheimer's and dementia. And if you try to do that at home, you don't get the economy of scale at a memory care that you do at a memory care clinic. Now you're paying for one on one care at home. This can get to be even more expensive than $16,000 a month, $17,000 a month in 20, 2012. My dad was helping, was caring for my grandmother who was at home, and he was spending upwards of $20,000 a month. When I asked him about that as I was putting the book together, I wanted to make sure I remembered that right. And he said, you know, Heather, I probably couldn't even get that care. Now it's so hard to find caregivers that the cost of that is going up and up and up. It can be a very thankless job, and for some people, it can be a dangerous job. If people with dementia end up combative or violent, you can't often find someone to take care of them.

If you've been listening to the human upgrade for even a little while, you know that alcohol isn't good for you. Also, if you're like 99% of people out there, you probably do drink on occasion because it's a social experience and it tastes good and let's face it, it feels good. So what do you do about it? Well, the thing I'm most excited about is a product called Zbiotics, because Zbiotics makes a genetically engineered Probiot drink. And you have this before you have alcohol. And for the next 24 hours, it helps to protect you from the toxic breakdown of alcohol. And it's genetically engineered, but it's not the kind of genetically engineered crop stuff we're dealing with. It's actually an edited bacteria that can't reproduce. And what it does is it just breaks alcohol down into something that's not toxic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking, because you know how those PhDs are. Here's why it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct called aldehyde in your gut. It's that product, not dehydration, that's making you feel like crap the next day. Zebiotics produces an enzyme that breaks that toxic byproduct down. All you have to do is remember to make Zebiotics your first drink of the night, and then you'll feel so much better tomorrow. Every time I serve alcohol at parties at my house, I put Zbiotics out and everyone says, wow, I feel so different. And when I have sake with my sushi, I take Zbiotic. So if you're planning a little partying this summer, definitely take care of your liver and take care of your aging. With Z biotic, go to zbiotics.com Dave to get 15% off your first order. Zebiotics has a hundred percent money back guarantee. So if you are unsatisfied for Any reason they'll give your money back, no questions asked. This stuff really works.

My grandmother passed away a little bit north of 100 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 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 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 gut so that you don't need a chelating agent for lead, you do 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. Especially 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, which is really important when people come to see you with Alzheimer's again, their.

Toxicity, and we're looking, even taking that step back. What 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, It's a way to simplify the. The. A complex process, but it doesn't work. When we get rid of the, of the amyloid we don't resolve the Alzheimer's, we don't resolve the cognitive 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 it's 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 seven 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 ewat at your place when I was at 40 years of Zen. So stress that, you know, speaking of 40 years of Zen 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 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, supplemental 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 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. And so the brain, we can resolve them so that then we free up resource to focus on regeneration.

I love that.

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