Morning Drinks That Help Memory, Energy & Chemo Brain — The Cacao Formula Explained

So we're going to talk about chemo brain or just thinking clearer and removing the brain fog with more energy. Support your heart and brain health gently. And we're going to talk about that from a morning drink, something you can do every day if you're a cancer patient or even a family member because you want to do things to prevent Alzheimer's and dementia. And here's a simple formula to do that. And I'll go into that here in a minute. But before I get started, the number one thing to really avoid this is not doing the high dose chemotherapy standard of care, one size fits all, instead doing precision care when that's targeted. Because we have all the testing that we've talked about in our other episodes, the next generation sequencing the transcriptomics and immune profiling with spatial biology. Now we're using a thousand plus data points instead of 24. And we can be at 10 or 15% the normal chemotherapy without the side effects. I'm Dr. Dino Prado. For the last 25 years, my team and I have walked with patients who have dealt with difficult cancers and they failed some of the top cancer hospitals across the country. And oftentimes when patients are doing cancer treatment, they have a difficulty with energy, thinking clear and having some real idea of what to do to get over that. So today I'm going to talk about some important flavanols. Now, you've heard of some of these things, but combined all together, they can be very powerful. Cow, which is an important flavanol, matcha green tea, a pinch of cayenne pepper and ashwagandha. That's the drink formula. And you can do all kinds of things to sweeten it with stevia, monk fruit. But I'm going to go through this in a way so you can understand some of the benefits that we see and really how this improves memory. I do this in the morning and sometimes in the evening to really get my memory, mood and energy working well, kind of feed my circulation and help to release stem cells and help some mitochondrial health, all with a simple drink. So let's talk about this. What we want to do is we want to go through some of these aspects on how these different types of treatments can help. Because oftentimes when we're in the middle of medical care, we just don't have clarity. And often patients get brain fog, they lose energy, and this is a good way to overcome that. So let's talk about cacao for a minute. Ceremonial cacao. For years, many people, indigenous people, have sat around campfires and had this high pure, 100% organic cacao. Obviously, you want to look for stuff that has no heavy metals in them. And they drink this. And as they do, they get this mental clarity. They're able to better concentrate or relax. It's a good time here to pray. I like to read my scriptures because it gives you mental clarity. It's almost like a feeling of Zen and something you really need when undergoing cancer treatment. So why this is helpful is because cancer treatments trigger brain fog. Slow recall, trouble finding words, low focus. So we want daily habits that help to gently but powerfully increase our brain blood flow, reduce inflammation and protect our neurons. Those are the nerves around our brain area areas. And without any, like, false harm that can come to the body. Sometimes if we take things, it can cause harm. This only in my experience, has been beneficial for patients. So cacao flavanols, in people who use it regularly, they improve their brain flow, particularly to the hippocampus, which is the memory hub of our brain. And this is fantastic. So it allows us to work better, study better, have clarity of mind. And that's why I really like cacao. And it doesn't give you the crash that you get with coffee. Matcha green tea. Again, you want to look for a product here that is organic and clean. It supports warps, memory networks and attention in many human studies. So we like that. But it also has other cancer preventative properties. Both cacao and Matcha have our antioxidants. They can help with cancer prevention and slowing down blood supply to tumors and a lot of other things which make them really powerful polyphenols. And some of them work together in combination. The other ingredient I like here is ashwagandha. It's a popular adaptogen. You can use it in the form of a tincture. Maybe you can add 7, 10, 15 drops because you'll start to see that this helps you with dealing with stress and giving you a little bit more energy and more cognitive. I also like to add a little bit of cayenne pepper. Add a little pinch, but go to a fourth, a teaspoon. Maybe work your way up to half a teaspoon. This is great for circulation. Cancer patients have thick blood, and that thick blood can cause strokes and heart attacks. And sometimes you might be on a blood thinner. But the cayenne pepper I like because it prevents blood clotting and helps with circulation. When you combine all these together, it's powerful and makes for a powerful morning drink. So here's how you do it. You can warm up your Favorite organic clean almond milk that has no fillers or coconut milk, whatever you like, or do half and half with water, warm it up to a temperature you like, add about a teaspoon of cacao. Start with that, about a half a teaspoon or a quarter teaspoon of Matcha green tea. Everything being organic in this formula. If you're sensitive to caffeine, lower the matcha green tea. If you can handle it, then you can handle the little bit of the higher dose, like a half a teaspoon or more. And then you add about 10 or 15 drops of an ashwagandha tincture, a nice product you can buy that's organic, high quality. Add a little cayenne pepper, froth that up in the blender and you can add a little stevia or monk fruit and it'll give you some sweetness. If you want to. You could also add a scoop of collagen in here. That's no, no problem with that at all. That's also helpful for your gut health, giving yourself a nice little 10 milligrams of protein to start the day. But what I like about this is it really helps your memory. It's loaded with antioxidants, anti inflammatories and these flavanols help to neutralize the free radicals and the inflammation and neural inflammation that you get from chemotherapy. That's one of the problems with chemotherapy. Remember when you do high dose chemotherapy or standard of care, it's what's offered at all the hospitals, all the standard oncology groups. This chemotherapy will often not get to the tumor. Maybe less than 3 to 5% make it to the tumor, which means the rest of it causes organ damage and nervous system damage. And people that have susceptibilities will develop chemo brain where they can't concentrate or think very well. What the cacao drink does is provide an antioxidant, anti inflammatory to go to the brain, calm that area down and help replenish the blood flow to that area so that you get better cerebral blood flow, perfusion of oxygen. And this gets the brain more fuel, the mitochondria, more fuel. Also some release of stem cells for repair and makes a big difference. See the nervous system, when you have two neurons coming together, they have area called synapses where they talk to each other. The flavonoids engage in helping these cells to survive, communicate better. And they have these cancer properties to help cancer cells die off. So this is why I love this formula. It's very simple. Now even if you don't have cancer. We all need neurogenesis in the hippocampus. We all need help with memory, especially as we age. So I like these kind of drinks to give us this brain concentration, energy, helps us with circulation, helps us with heart health, helps us with antioxidants, has lots of benefits. Like a lot of the wonderful things that come from the earth that God has created. There's a lot of benef. One in particular gives memory. So when you do the drink, you can do it in the morning. Maybe this is the time that you go for a walk, get some sunshine, get your feet on the grass, get a little grounding, feel good, maybe read a little scripture. This is a great time to do that because it's going to help your brain, help give you energy. And in the evening, obviously not too close to bedtime, but maybe you can reduce the matcha green tea and use a little cacao, depending on how sensitive your body is. And this can also help give you a little antioxidant, little hot chocolate in the middle of the night. I love chocolate. It's one of my favorite, if you will, things to indulge with. And I've turned this drink into a kind of little memory powerhouse that works well. So chemo brain, we can avoid it. And what causes chemo brain? Well, like I said, it's the treatment that's the oxidative stress from the chemo or the radiation, depending on what area that is in your body that causes this fog, lack of ability to concentrate, and little treatment side effects that occur with chemotherapy all the time, which can affect the vasculature and the inflammation. And so these flavanols help to blunt some of those neurotoxicities and those signals that occur with those negative therapies, giving your body some good health and energy. So think of it this way. Vascular health is so important in cancer, we don't think about that. But a lot of patients can get strokes and heart attacks just from thick blood. Late stage cancer patients have very thick blood. So one of the things I like about adding a little cayenne pepper here and having a little bit of the cacao Flavanols, they support the endothelium and the cerebral blood flow. The endothelium is that lining around your blood vessel wall. So that's good. It gives you some antioxidant support. And they naturally have things like theobromine and L theanine, which are going to help your brain's concentration. So one drink in the morning and if you'd like in the evening, it helps to alkalize the body, give a little cacao and energy. So you can start with 1 teaspoon of cacao or go higher if you like. You can start with half a teaspoon or a quarter teaspoon of Matcha Green tea. Again, all these products organic and you can do up to a teaspoon if you like, and a little cayenne pepper and ashwagandha and play with the formula and see how you feel. Start slow because it may be more powerful than you think and you can get a lot of energy. And the same thing with the cayenne pepper, don't let it be disruptive to your digestive system. So start with maybe a quarter or 16th of a teaspoon and then work your way up. This makes a big difference and it really can give your body a lot of energy. It's the, the things we do every day, the little things we do that can be so powerful long term. You know, we talk about Alzheimer's and dementia being like a type 3 diabetes. The blood flow that you get from this type of drink, it's so good for your brain concentration and your memory. It can only help and not hurt, particularly the antioxidants. So I like this drink for cardiovascular disease, for cancer, support for brain, Alzheimer's, dementia, all those areas, because we're getting blood to that hippocampus and we're getting that support with memory with the EGCG from the Matcha Green tea and the flavanols. And we're getting more oxygenation into the tissue, which is really powerful. It's also a good thing to do before you exercise because with the cacao you get nice vasodilation so your blood vessels open up. And then when you go to exercise, you get beautiful perfusion of blood and oxygen to your tissues. So this is really nice. It's a nice touch of the morning. Also, a little bit of caution if you have liver issues. Always be careful with green tea and things of that kind because I don't know what medications you're on, but normally I have not seen any of our patients have any issues with this. But I do have to always give some disclosures if you have problems with blood pressure. Remember, cacao can lower, lower your blood pressure, which is a really nice benefit. It's an anti hypertensive naturally. So just make sure if you're on medications, you're monitoring these things. And of course, be careful with your stomach and the cayenne pepper because you, it'll actually help your stomach in low amounts, but if you give too much, it might cause burning and irritation. So just work with those doses to get the right formula for you. What makes you feel good, what tastes good? Because if it tastes good, your compliance is going to go up and you're going to feel the benefits over the years. I hope this was helpful and it gives you some tools to help you with your brain going through cancer treatment. You don't have to have chemo brain remember. I personally think the key is the high dose chemotherapy and going with targeted care that makes all the difference. But when you have a drink like this, it can give you a huge advantage in feeling better and having more energy. May the Lord bless you on your journey to healing. Sam.