Dr. Eckel Longevity Series Part 6 - Gut-Brain Axis

Neurodegeneration, the third leading cause of death, right. In our tenets of longevity, the first tenet is don't die without our brains, nothing else is happening, right? We all have known loved ones or know people in our communities that have dementia, Alzheimer's, mild cognitive impairment. When you start to lose the brain's functioning, you basically are losing your life. If you go to the neurologist, who is going to function, you know, address your brain, they're not really looking at other pieces and parts of you. And we know in the holistic model we are connected. We've all heard the gut is the second brain. So the microbiome is essential in brain health. Go figure, right? We digest our food, we absorb the nutrients, but most importantly, we have gut bugs in the bowel, in the microbiome that secrete dopamine and serotonin, oxytocin. They, they get secreted there and then circulate throughout the whole body. So the gut brain axis, there is enormous amount of research going in on that topic. Now we screen all of our patients every year, if not twice annually for the microbiome component because it is that important for brain health. In that gut brain axis, the, one of the main players here is the vagus nerve, cranial nerve 10. And that is kind of the darling right now in complementary and alternative medicine of healing the vagus nerve. Well, what is that? The vagus nerve is responsible for parasympathetic activity. There's two branches of the autonomic nervous system. You have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. The sympathetic is the saber toothed cat coming to eat you. And you either fight, you run, or you freeze. Well, you're not digesting the burger. When the saber toothed cat is coming to you, you're shunting blood out of the gut to the muscles, to the eyes, so you can see what's coming at you. That is, you're on alert. You are not repairing your cells under parasympathetic activity. The rest and digest and regenerate. That is where the body heals. So getting somebody into a parasympathetic activity, in particular with regards to the vagus nerve, the other thing to know about the vagus nerve, we all think that the brain controls the body, but the vagus nerve, there's 78% of afferent information coming in from the periphery, from our bodies, up into our brain to regulate and help maintain our homeodynamic status of like, are we in balance or not? So the vagus nerve is a major Player there in the gut brain axis and the general health of the body as a whole. Why is this important in longevity when we're talking about the gut brain axis and the vagus nerve and parasympathetic activity? Well, if you are just living in a state of fight or flight, the sympathetic, right, and that could be your computer doesn't boot fast enough, right? The red light isn't turning fast enough. That triggers cortisol and it gets your body into a hyper metabolic state. So it's increasing metabolism. So if we go back to that original equation of metabolism and damage and pathology, by speeding up metabolism in a sympathetic state, a stress, a fight or flight state, you are in essence, you're speeding up your aging process. And you've seen this like you could look at President Obama. He went in with black hair and he came out with gray hair. You know, that was an accelerated aging process on any of the presidents of the United States. When under high stress, what does it do? It speeds your metabolism. It's putting you into a sympathetic dominant role and you're out of balance. You're not regenerating, you're not in rest and regeneration. That balance comes together at the hypothalamus, which I call the switchboard operator. And you may have noticed maybe your symptoms get worse when you're stressed. Maybe you're more forgetful. You don't remember where your keys are, right. You have too many. You're juggling too many attentional units. Like you don't remember things. You forget more frequently. You're under stress. So that's really the connection here in a longevity play is that you've got to get into that balance state. And ultimately we live in a sympathetic dominant world. So we want to do all kinds of things to balance our parasympathetics and make that a stronger branch. When I get into the literature, I uncovered this concept and cell type called a prion or prion. Tomato. Tomato. Well, what are those? These are misfolded proteins that were discovered in 1997. They're the new kids on the block, but nobody's talking about them. But they're linked to all neurodegeneration. Unfortunately, on the prion research, it's very much in its infantile stages. There is a researcher out of Scripps University in Florida studying NAD for inactivating prions. Now, prions, a little bit of their background is they can't be destroyed by hot or cold. They're ubiquitous in our environment. And I think one of the secrets to reversing the degradation of the brain. We need to address that cell type. In the 22 years of practice, I've seen a lot. I've come to the conclusion of treating from the oneness of all, which is a different way of addressing the innate intelligence of the body. Meaning I don't treat disease processes or pathology. Of course we want those things to go away, but that's the end product or a symptom of an imbalance in an individual. One of the core things that I see over and over and over again that does not get addressed but is contributing into neurodegeneration is trauma. I have a hypothesis that I'm working on right now in that I see the innate intelligence, in its intelligence starts to produce dementia and Alzheimer's and neurocognitive impairment as a protective mechanism to the individual. And what we are putting in clinically is addressing trauma at a deep, deep root. We know it is affecting over 51% of adults in North America. And we know that from the ACE scores. These are adverse childhood experiences. And when you hear that, you might think, oh, that doesn't apply to me. But that could be as much as having an alcoholic parent, having a parent with mental illness, depression or anxiety. So these rates of those conditions are on the rise. And so we're seeing more and more adverse childhood experiences that hit the tipping point of early childhood development leading to chronic physical ailments later in life. That coupled with the ability to address trauma informed practice, really, there's a whole educational component out there in providerland of making sure we address these underlying causes or issues for people to really get at true deep healing for people. One of the best therapeutics that we that is coming online right now are psychedelic assisted psychotherapies. And these are deep healing components in that they can really raise the veil. A lot of folks don't understand that, that they are carrying trauma, they're carrying their trauma, they're carrying their ancestral traumas. And if you never address that, if you don't turn that stone over, you don't know what's there. And we have put in clinically ketamine assisted psychotherapy, KAP for short. And this is one of the best ways right now to create deep healing for people and really addressing trauma in a complete way. Another therapeutic that is really showing promise in the clinic is ITMS or brain frequency Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Again, another one of these words that rolls right off the tongue. And this is the component where we get a full EEG of your brain, 19 leads. We look at all of the facets of where your brain is communicating, not communicating. If you've had any head traumas or depressions or anxieties or imbalances of the electrical activity of your brain can then feed back into the brain and wake up portions of your brain and put to sleep over active aspects, big around addictions, around executive functioning and performance, around ptsd, around depression and around concussions and head traumas. We have NFL players that have gotten their brains back from micro traumas to their brain 40 years ago. You know, their daughters texting into the clinic saying, thank you so much after Thanksgiving, thank you so much, I've got my papa back. You know, like where they used to have, you know, short fuse and anger and emotional outbursts. Just no executive function, no control of their brain from so many traumas. So the tms, or Brain Frequency Training, is the next generation really specific to the individual. We can measure and correct your brainwave frequencies here. So the statistics are stacked against us here, folks. We know what if we don't do anything, we are winding up in dementia. Right? That's where we're going. So if you are not addressing this now, and by now I mean, like, if you are watching this and you're 30 years old, like, you need to take action now because this stuff builds up over decades. And if you're in your 60s or 70s or 80s, guess what, you. It's not too late for you either. Right now is the time to get into action. Get the assessments, get evaluated, and let's see what's under the hood, and let's meet you where you're at and get the information in there to help your body heal, because I know it can. The future of medicine is in light and sound frequencies. I mean, look at the Apple watches right now. They've got a. It's a light that is reading all of that data off of the body. We can make quantum leaps and pun intended there by utilizing these technologies that are out there.