WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat Episode 3: Aging as a Disease

Welcome to what the health an independent approach to your health span. Have you noticed how our healthcare system may not have your best interest in mind? Join Dr. Eckel in this fun and sometimes disturbing exploration of the state of health care and what it means for you. Now here's your host, Dr. Eckel. Welcome back everybody. Dr. Greg Eckel and Dr. Jonathan Nadal. And this is what the health in our new format. And we are coming at you from all over the globe at this point out of Oregon and Utah today. And I wanted to continue our discussion. We are going to recap the blue zones because we finished on that note last week. And for folks that didn't listen to that, just after this show, go back and listen to it because we are rolling with a whole theme of longevity, your health span and quality of life. It isn't just quantity. We want an enriched, full hearted, love filled, abundant life for us, for you and for the world. So one of the big things in researching longevity and health span is, you know, is around community. And this one I wanted to pull it out of seven different aspects of you know what when we're studying blue zones and where the highest concentration of centurions live, which are people that live beyond 100 years of age and loneliness is a great ager. And this is around quality of questions asked, the levers to pull in your health, in your performance, in your longevity. And Dan Buettner, we have him to thank for his research on the blue zones. Again, he just took a blue pen. It's why they're called the blue zones. And there was also this other aspect of it where they really teased out genes because we hear a lot of people will come into us in the clinic and talk about, well, it's in my genes, it must be just destined, you know, what do you do when somebody says that to you?

Dr. Middle we know that it's so much more beyond that and we talked about that last time a little bit like being able to turn off and on your genes like it's not a set program that we're not able to change. We actually are able to change it. And a lot of things that we're going to talk about are going to help that.

Yeah. And you know, there was a, the Danish twins study that showed only about 20% how long you live is determined by your genes. So you can study, you know, pretty much replica genetic data right here in the twins. And you know, 20% of the time is it playing out the same way in each individual. So, you know, there are these components Again around the seven pillars in the blue zone. So we've got the move naturally which is the gardening, house cleaning. These folks aren't going to the gym. The purpose, as Dr. Nadal mentioned last week around Ikigai, it's a Okinawan saying is around the Nicoyans down in Costa Rica call it Pura Vida. It's the good life. It's living the good life. Knowing your sense of purpose, if knowing your sense of purpose is actually worth seven years on your life and really coming from your heart and understanding that like why you incarnated in this time in this frequency is such a big one less stress experience. So having times built in routines to shred stress, that could be happy hour. Now we are not big, we are not promoting lots of alcohol but in moderation, which actually is the sixth pillar of this. But things to pray, to nap, remembering your ancestors just throughout the day. The 80% rule in Okinawa, which is around 2,500 year old Confucian mantra which reminds them to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full. That one, after we mentioned that one last week, I really was paying attention to, you know, sometimes I just shovel it in there, doc, and I just don't stop. And then you're a little uncomfortable after. It's like, well, wait a minute. There's an old mantra on the planet. What is it? It's Harry, Harry Hashibu. And so having that, that mantra and just remembrance of we don't need, we live in abundance, we don't need to fill our stomachs to the, to the gill every time.

And with that it reminds you of the previous one less stress. Like if you're sitting down or standing up and eating during your lunch break. Rushed and stressed. Yeah. If you eat super quick, you're going to fill up a lot more than you, than you would if you're like in tune with where you're eating and tasting every bite and actually sitting with it. So yeah, yeah.

And having that gratitude and thanks for the actual flavors like slowing down and I mean we are eating the sun's energy. It is remarkable really like how, how much abundance is produced on the planet and then we just don't even pay attention to it. Like it becomes like, oh, it's here all the time. I don't need to pay attention. But you know, I ate a raspberry and a BlackBerry and a blueberry and watermelon over this weekend and just, and cacao and just small bits and just savoring every bite. And the, I mean those colors they just pop. The taste just pop. And it is truly heaven when you tune into that frequency. You know, it is, it is pretty quite remarkable. So, ok, the fifth tenant, heavy vegetables, plant based diet. Now we have heard this, we are hearing this a lot more with global warming and we are going to cover those components in later episodes of what the health here on our longevity these series. But it is true. Having more roughage, more vegetables. You know, about three quarters of your plate should be a vegetable material. Maybe salad side vegetable, three quarters of the plate. About, you know, we want four to six cups. I'm going to err on the type of six cups of vegetables a day. But this is from the research of folks that lived beyond 100 years old showed they ate predominantly vegetables, smaller amounts of protein. So meat, mainly pork, which is interesting. On average only five times per month. Serving size of about 3 to 4 ounces, which is like the palm of your hands, right? Or the deck, a deck of cards. Like that amount. Boy, you know, you think of some steaks that you have had recently, it is like I am definitely eating a lot more in the protein realm than that. The alcohol is the sixth tenet. I did talk about that a little earlier. Teetotalers, those that abstain entirely from alcohol tend to die seven years younger. Now that doesn't hold true for the Seventh Day Adventist because that was one of the zones of the highest concentration of centenarians. But we do overdo alcohol in the north. So in North America and then seven community, which I led out with starting this, it really is on our relations. We are herd animals, we grew up in tribes and we need that. Especially, you know, after the last two years we've really experienced what separation and loneliness can do. We've seen clinically folks with neurodegeneration are at the very beginnings of Alzheimer's, dementia really get pushed into those pathologies because they're social, they had a lot less information coming into the system.

Right.

So I just wanted to do a little recap there really. We titled this show. You know, the first tenet of longevity is don't die.

Right.

And we, you know, we mean it. The longer you hang on right now in this next 10 years in particular, there are a lot of therapeutics coming on board that can really help reverse the damage of hard living on the planet and also regenerate our bodies. But we want to talk about the three killers. But there is one thing that underlies all of this. I am going to pose this to Dr. Nadal and let's see well, we.

Know stress and inflammation, right? I mean, if stress is the more emotive, like inflammation is kind of the physiological equivalent to what's going on. Yeah. From cortisol dysregulation, you know, just our white blood cells and immune system being dysregulated. There's so much that happens when we're under stress acutely that then if it becomes chronic stress, which so much of us experience, you know, it just throws everything in our body off. And whatever the tendency is, whether it's our brain, heart, guts, everyone's got a certain tendency for something to go off. So stress and inflammation.

Yeah, stress and inflammation. I would say 9 out of 10 leading causes of death are due to inflammation. And I saw a great TED talk, and I'm sorry, I don't have the name of this psychiatrist psychologist that came out on stage saying it was very dramatic. She comes out deadpanned and says, I've been killing people for 30 years. And you think, well, why are you saying that on stage? But what's up with that? And what she was talking about was giving a negative connotation to stress. Right. Because in therapist component, or in that therapeutic relationship, our words matter. Our words matter every day. But in particular in that therapeutic relationship, even more hundredfold. And there are these concepts, placebo and nocebo. Nocebo is the negative consequences of thoughts versus placebo is the positive consequences of thoughts. So if you are thinking you are going to get better, you have a better chance of getting better. If you are thinking you are going to get worse, you have a better chance of getting worse. It's amazing how it works that way. But here was a leading therapist saying, you know, my words mattered so much and I didn't realize what I was doing to my patients. And that saying, this stress is killing you. The stress is leading to inflammation.

Right.

We did lead with that. And so I just want to make sure people realize there's a lot of things that you can do to decrease your stress and, or mitigate. Because not all stress, like stress, is an adaptive advantage of why we're still alive on the planet. Right. But it's just gone off the hilt on just. It's just on all the time. And so, you know, those seven, that's why I started with the seven pillars of the blue zones. Just as a reminder. These are the things that we found in folks that live a long and healthy life and then stress this component around. You know, let's talk about the autonomic nervous system here before we get into the top three killers. Because, you know, having this physiologic understanding of the autonomic nervous system, the two branches, and what, though, how those behave in our body.

Yeah, good, good point. Because there's, you know, whether years ago, if we're being chased by a bear or a tiger, like fight or flight, Right. Now, if you're, if there's a cop car behind you, fight or flight, or you have a stressful situation at work, the body internally doesn't know the difference. Stress. Stress and all the hormones and neurotransmitters are cascading a similar way. But I think what you're speaking of addresses kind of like the more cerebral aspect of things versus the more, let's call it, the more reptilian, primitive brain. Right. And the more we set up these pathways and these connections between what is an actual stressful trigger, how are we dealing with it? The more we reinforce some of those positive control mechanisms that we can kind of work through it, the easier it becomes. So, I mean, there's the body and there's the mind. We shouldn't separate them completely. Yeah, take it from there.

Yeah, totally. So, you know, what happens under that? You know, I like to say the saber tooth cat coming to eat me.

Dr. Yeah.

So you have got the bears in your analogy, which is. That's a big code. I think I envision the Kodiak bears of Alaska, which will just maul you if you're out. I mean, they can go 60 miles an hour. That's stressful, right? You see one of those animals coming at you. Well, what happens in the body physiologically is we shunt blood out of our gut. That's why there's a lot of digestive issues on the planet right now because of chronic stress and ulcers occur. When you shunt the blood from the gut. It goes to your large muscles, your thighs, your arms, so that you can fight or run away. It also blood flow goes to the eyes, so you can see the predator coming to get you, but you're not going to be digesting your food there. And you're going to be depleted because you spike cortisol, which then spikes the. You start mobilizing sugar because you need the energy. And you either you flight, you run, you freeze, like play possum, like maybe it won't see me or, you know, flight fright or freeze. So those are the three components that happen to you under stress. And, and, you know, now it's like, oh, I don't have enough memory on my computer. That's stressful. My programs are slowed down working or I just hit the red light going into work or whatever the perceived stress lay on top of that. This work we've. We've been laying in some of Dr. Joe's Dispenza's work into our clinic and into the culture that we're creating at Nature Cures. And you know, you get into, you know, we have 70,000 thoughts a day and like 86% of those are the same thoughts we had yesterday. And we're expecting the world to be different today.

How? Really? Yeah.

How does that happen? It doesn't. You know, we have these memories in our bodies of the thoughts of yesterday and then we have all kinds of evidence of, well, this is the way the world is. It's like, no, that's the way the world has been because that's what you keep dreaming of thinking of. And if you're not catching yourself in the moment of the self criticism or you know, whatever the repetitive thought process is, you know, one of the techniques I'd like to share is just, you know, dangerous neighborhood to go into by yourself.

Right.

And when you get into a loop or you start getting, you know, that judgmental voice and you know, maybe I'm the only one that has that voice, I don't know. But when that voice starts, you have to. You put your hand on your throat and. And you just say out loud actually like you mean it, stop, stop, stop. Because that isn't helpful. It's not going to change your outcome. It's not going to change the way the day goes for you. Versus that's just a quick little interrupt technique. Do you have any interrupt techniques that you are coaching people on these days, Dr. Nadal?

Yeah, I like the stop. And actually even that one just applied a little bit more further coming from more CBT kind of stuff. It's that using as an acronym. So stop. Actually stopping. Taking a step back, observing and then proceeding mindfully if you want to kind of expand into it further. Like one thing is the quick physical stop. And then if you actually adopt that and use it as a quick mnemonic to actually be present, take a few breaths in the moment, it can all kind of connect. That helps me and it's helped a lot of my patients again from some really good therapist and kind of CBT work, but really easy cognitive behavioral therapy.

For those that are, you know, taking notes out there.

Yeah.

So let's get into it because that, that component there's the mindset which we did cover and, and we're going to weave that into each of these episodes because it is so important when you realize, like, I can't create a different outcome for me if I don't start thinking differently. And ultimately, what I want to promote on the planet is people thinking fully with their frontal lobe, their prefrontal cortex, where the creativity is, that allows us to then feel safe and drop into our heart and then actually ask and listen to your heart of how you should proceed and what you are creating on the planet. And, you know, because this leads right into the number one killer in North America and really around the globe, cardiovascular disease. It's heart disease. Right. We have a preponderance of heart attacks on Monday morning. There's no surprise there. Like, people are not liking their lives.

Right.

We've got some stats, stats on this. And this is cardiovascular disease. And I'm adding in heart disease and stroke. These are cdc.gov numbers that I'm going to be tossing out here. We've got 696,962 deaths a year in North America. Really? In the United States. For the cdc, taking these stats in the United States, then you can add strokes in there, which is the leading cause of disability. 2000, 2000 strokes a day.

Yeah. That's crazy.

And there's three different outcomes of those strokes.

Yeah. I mean, they could hopefully slow or fast recovery, but there could be permanent paralysis, even death, you know, and, and some of the, the paralysis aspects, I mean, it could be just a loss of function from verbal communication, you know, physical movement. It could lead to a lot of sad, hard changes.

You know, Dr. Nadal, will you carry this real quick because I'm going to.

Be right back here. Okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to keep going forward with it. So we know in general cardiovascular disease, stroke is one consideration, but then hypertension. Right. Hypertension just tending to increase with age. Right. I mean, we know that, that the standard kind of textbook has been 120 over 80. Right. And that's kind of gone back and forth over the last few years. Now, some would consider even that to be almost a pre hypertensive state. We know over 2/3 of adults have over the age of 65 will have some form of hypertension, controlled or not. So ideally, we want to bring it to that. Hey, welcome back.

Thank you.

Thank you. We want to bring it to that 115 to 120 over 80. Okay. And as far as what those are, we know the top number. So systolic versus diastolic, like how well the heart is Distributing the blood versus how well the heart is filling back up with the blood. So it's just interesting to think about how much stress versus, you know, positivity and negativity we're letting into and out of the world and kind of mirroring that energetically with what our heart's doing at bringing things in and out. You know, maybe a little abstract, but it's. I don't think there's a coincidence that the number one killer is cardiovascular diseases in this country.

No, I would agree. I mean, you know, we look in Chinese medicine, which is the heart is the emperor, the empress, and everything comes from the heart. Like, I think it's safe to say most of us on the planet would like more love and affinity. Right. To be seen, to be heard, to be understood. You know, these are natural human tendencies. And you look at the energetics of the heart. And what I love in our tradition in Chinese medicine is we honor the emperor, the Empress. And all of these symptoms, you know, they are not thought about. They are just so mechanistic right now in the Western understanding or approach to health, which is why, you know, it's like half the population in North America is on a statin medication. And it has not changed the outcome of cardiovascular disease being the number one killer. Right. We've controlled statin for the, you know, cholesterol for the most part, but it's not really addressing the underlying imbalance here. And, you know, I really, I wanted to talk about the numbers because a lot of times folks will, you know, either have the home blood pressure cuff or, you know, they'll go to the, you know, at the Walmart or the pharmacy and get the blood pressure check. But then the attendant just says, okay, your blood pressure is good. But do you know what the numbers were like? What were they? Because, you know, 120 over 139. So that systolic number, and forgive me if you already said this one, but 50% increase of coronary heart disease, a 71% increased risk of stroke. 71%, which is, you know, there sometimes, I will tell you, sometimes my blood pressure is at 130. And I, I know this stat. It's like, who. That's an increased risk of stroke right there, you know, if systolic is less than 120. So, you know, 120 over 80 is kind of considered the average. Well, now in the last couple years, we call that pre hypertension.

Yeah.

Because. Because it's going to accelerate. Because that's what's happening. It's not normal. It's very common in our populations and why heart disease is number one killer. But if it's less, if you get your blood pressure below 120, and there are ways, and we're going to share how you do that. 38% decrease of heart failure, 43% decrease of cardiovascular death, 27% lower mortality overall. So with your blood pressure lower. So again, when you look physiologically, that's systolic. It's from your heart pumping out against your system. Well, what causes your blood pressure to rise?

Go back to what, 20, 30 minutes ago. A lot of stress and inflammation.

Right, Right.

When we're stressed, like you were saying, you know, all this blood will kind of go to the distal extremities, lead to some constriction just to maintain that pressure and that ability to fight or flight. So, I mean, but obviously there's a lot of other aspects like nutrition and how much you're moving, but stress is huge.

Stress is huge. And, you know, so when veins get cholesterol buildup that gets smaller and smaller. So you're putting fluid through a pipe. It's like, you know, if you're out in the garden and you're using your hose, you put your thumb over the big hole, that it gets much harder, right? The stream of water becomes much harder. Well, that's what happens in the body too, folks. And that's how your blood pressure rises. And then that's putting undue stress on your eyes, on your kidneys, and that's really in your hearing, you know, all of these things. That's the issue with hypertension, is the end organ damage. So we're going to stress here. You know, how do you measure and assess? So it is, you know, definitely get your cholesterol checked, get your inflammatory markers checked. We look at particle size in our clinic. So you want to differentiate because it is a little bit. Well, I would say it's very antiquated just looking at cholesterol. Cholesterol plus inflammation. We like highly specific C reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker. Those two, cholesterol plus inflammation equals cardiovascular event. There's a great test that we've come across, which is VO2 max testing. It's the best testing for any microvascular changes, even 10 years before it becomes a macrovascular event, meaning you could pick it up on imaging so you can pick up changes to your heart and your cardiovascular system 10, 20 years prior to any issues happening. And it's totally reversible there. You know, you've got to make sure your Your cholesterol is under control. LDL below 70, no diabetes, you're not even pre diabetic. So that would be hemoglobin A1C. You want below 5.8? We would recommend below 5.5. So those markers plus then your cardiovascular output, you know, exercising 20 minutes a day in a moderate heart rate is really the key. Like you can actually age backwards now if you're cook, couch potato or you haven't been moving your body, start with a couple minutes just walking. But move it or lose it, it is in Chinese medicine, again, the blood is the healing aspects of the body. You know, your circulation matters and if you're not moving your body, you're not getting circulation. And so that's not, that's not going to be beneficial for you. And you know, again, not sexy. This is not sexy medicine. It's not like some purple pill or some new device I can sell you, but it is just going for a walk in nature. Get out there and smell the roses. I mean it's springtime right now all over the planet, or at least in the northern hemisphere. And it is beautiful. The lilacs just went off, the roses are coming out and the rose city there. One other test that I wanted to share and then we'll move on to the second killer is cimt. It's carotid intima thickness testing. So it's an ultrasound of the veins that you can really measure the plaque sizes. Now that's a macro vasculature event and I'm telling you, we can pick this up in microland. So for 30 year olds, 40 year olds, like it's not too early. This is not, you know, heart disease is not an old person's disease anymore. This is going younger and younger and younger because we're becoming less fit.

Yeah, it starts way earlier. And even with those VO2 max studies, like there's impressive ways to catch it early. So absolutely don't wait till it becomes a macro visible problem for sure.

And honestly, you know, it's what, 25% of the time the first symptom of heart disease kills you. So a quarter of the time, I mean, this is where, you know, I'm in my 50s, this is where you hear of your friends that are 50 years old, they just die. It's like, what, what happened? And they're like, well, his heart stopped or he had cardiovascular disease. His first symptom had no other symptoms before then. And so it is, it is a life or death component. And we're talking don't die. Here. So this is the first one. Get. Get the ticker checked, right? Yeah, get the ticker checked. All right. Number two.

Yeah. Cancer.

The big C word.

Big C word. You know, it's hard. It's like how many of you know somebody, friend or family member? It's for everyone. I feel like it's barely one or two degrees of separation. You know, somebody you know in the last few months got diagnosed with cancer. Right. It's just a thing. Ideally, hopefully in time we can. It can no longer be a thing. Right? Yeah. So, I mean, overall stats, where are we in 2021?

2021? Yeah.

1,898,160 new cancer cases. That's a huge number. And 608,570 cancer deaths are projected to have occurred in the United States. What is it? After increasing for most of the 20th century, the overall death rate's fallen from its peak in 91. But either way, I mean, it's an issue that we need to deal with head on, and they're going to fluctuate decade to decade. But if the overall trend is increasing, then we know it's an issue, right?

Well, we actually are showing a decline of 31% from 91 through 2018. And this is really around the campaigns around smoking. So to stop smoking, that is one of the largest levers for longevity and your quality of life. You know, the saying is, we're not going to eat, we're not going to supplement our way out of a potato chip bag.

Right.

And if you're, if you're doing, you know, smoking cigarettes, they're very carcinogenic because of the way that they're produced right now. But also it's a very hot and drying substance coming into the body. So in the Chinese medicine perspective, it dries your blood. As we age our blood, we become blood deficient, meaning the quality or information in our blood isn't what it should be. Right. We just talked about it in heart disease, where circulation matters, movement, 20 minutes a day, getting up into a moderate level of your heart rate will really change your life. It will change your world. And there is nothing to buy there. Like it is just movement. So this, we are showing a trend down because the smoking campaigns and then early detection and treatments, so that's 3.2 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred in that timeframe from 91 to 2018. We still have a long way to go. I mean, this is the number two killer. It's about 98,000 less deaths a year than cardiovascular. But that's still a lot of death. It's a lot of death. And that's a lot of new cases that you said in 2021, almost 1.9 million people diagnosed. That's where it's like one degree of Kevin Bacon here. Like, we are, you know, we all know people that have had cancer or have died of cancer. And so these, you know, four leading cancers, there's four that are the biggies, right? Halted prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer. Those are the top four. You know, it's kind of the dreaded C word, right? I mean, nobody wants to hear that. They're thinking, ah, chemo, radiation, you know, surgery. What am I going to do? But, you know, our new understanding of cancer is we're treating it like a metabolic syndrome, right? It's kind of. We can treat it like diabetes. Now, once you have cancer, you know, the stats are skewed a bit here when we're talking about survival rates and, you know, which cancer would be a better cancer to get. You know, some of them are highly treatable conventionally, and others like pancreatic cancer or there's a lot of glioblastomas of brain cancers that we're hearing about these days, or they're deadly. I mean, we haven't found a way to slow them down and or stop them. Now, that said, if you're just doing conventional care, those stats apply. But if you're stepping outside of that box and actually looking at your possibilities, that you don't become a statistic anymore. And I think our moniker is where east meets west. Naturally, it's a continuum of care. And for certain cancers, conventional is the way to go. The whole way. Other cancers, like, boy, that doesn't really buy you anything, but it just toxes your body out and it might kill you. Right. And so it is going to a specialist, understanding what your options are. We did talk about the top four. So that's breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer. I don't think we necessarily need to get into the stats on those. People are familiar with them. But let's talk about testing and prediction and prevention of these.

Yeah, I mean, besides the idea of some having a genetic component, really lifestyle, and just early screening, you know, it's granted if there is some family history, there's some. Getting tested earlier is a good idea. But there's a lot of new advancements. I mean, was it just a couple weeks ago, we were even meeting with someone on this new screening tool, which is super exciting.

Yes, yes.

Ten years ahead of any markers that would easily be determined. So there's a lot coming out there.

There is. So again, first tenant, don't die. I got to meet with a company out of India called SAR Labs. Ashish. I forget his last name, but he and his brother, they created this company. Their father was an amazing, brilliant researcher, medical doctor, but died of cancer. And so these brothers were determined to find a solution. And I think that they have. Now, it's not available in the United States yet, but we are, we're kind of front of the line because we've been in communication with these folks and it's very promising where it can actually pick up cancer six months before they take off running. So it can show particular changes in your blood. It can even type. If you have cancer, it will tell you what stage it is and what the predominant tissue type was. What was the origination of that cancer in the past. As of yesterday, we would have to go in and biopsy and then send that into the pathology lab. So it's a surgical procedure and looking at typing the cancer type to then dial in a specific therapeutic. So this is really, it's revolutionary. We've got the grail blood test that we brought in. It will test for 60 plus different types of cancers. Some issues around that one is it's not super specific or sensitive. So depending on what kind of information. I know there's a lot in, you know, Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis are talking about their life force, a book out where they're doing full body MRIs and scans along those matter to pick up. But even those scanning for a palpable mass is kind of almost too late. Right. I like this idea of being able to do a blood test to detect early because then, you know, then you can really utilize even bioenergetics of what's happening in your field before it physically manifests in matter. And so there are, there's a lot of things there that we can unpack. There's also, we have this prodrome test that, you know, we had a whole episode with Dan. Good. Now on what the health. He wrote the book breaking Alzheimer's. Well, he's linked pro plasmalogens with all neurodegeneration, but on this test are GTA, gastrointestinal tract acids. And if you're deficient in these GTAs, it shows an increased risk of colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer and also other inflammatory disorders and diseases. So that's a nice. It's an ultra long chain fatty acid it's made by the gut microbiome. That's again, why we test the microbiome on all of our patients and then those GTAs are absorbed into the blood supply. So over 90% of colorectal and pancreatic cancer cases are detected in persons with GTA levels below the 25th percentile. So there are, you know, there are some earlier screening. Definitely. You know, the societies in gastroenterology have reduced the age that you start annual screening for colorectal cancer down to 45, I believe. And if you, like Dr. Dahl mentioned, if you have a family member that had cancer, whatever type of cancer, whatever age they were diagnosed and or started exhibiting symptoms, that's the recommended time to start screening for yourself. So we have a lot of patients with had uncles or fathers died of prostate cancer in their 40s. And so we've been screening them for the last two decades because it's something that you need to pay attention to. A lot of times people, especially around cancer, they want to put the blinders on.

I'm like, I don't want to look. Yeah, that's not a good situation to do that in. Yeah. The earlier the detection, the more we can do about it, right? Yeah, yeah.

All right. Number three, near and dear to us.

What do you got, Dr. Nadal Neurodegeneration. Yeah, Good alliteration with the near and dear to us. Yeah. So, I mean, when we think of. Picture an 89 year old person, okay, maybe they have Alzheimer's. Right. I mean, it's. It is very common, sadly. What are we talking about? 134,240 people, right? Yeah.

With Alzheimer's. So that's just Alzheimer's.

Yeah. There's a whole.

That's about 80% of dementias are Alzheimer's. So there's another 20% that aren't. It's like Lewy Body dementia, other dementias. Yeah, but, you know, 6.2 million Americans living with Alzheimer's, it's not a death sentence, but it can be. You know, the average age of death after the diagnosis is about four to eight years. Now, some people can live 20 years with this condition. Projected. This is on the rise. It's going to surpass 13.8 million people. So we're currently with 6.2 million people living with Alzheimer's in the United states, doubling by 2060, and then lives affected. There's 11 million American caregivers providing over 15 billion hours a year, and that's unpaid care. You know, it is a drain. You know, my Nana had dementia, and so I definitely, you know, she had it for 10 years, and she could tell stories from the past, but just didn't remember anything and possibly also did repeat herself quite considerably. And it is. It is impact. It is impacting. Right. When you lose your brain, the individual is gone.

Yeah, it affects the whole family.

Yeah, it affects the whole family. It's very. It just impacts, like, it's a lot of work to care for these folks and. And they're not the same person. Right. Because their brain, they don't have that prefrontal cortex anymore. Their brain is disintegrating. Actually. That's what, you know, Dr. Alzheimer, 1906, described it as a very peculiar disease. And on dissection, he noticed that the brain was rotting, basically degenerating in the skull. So there's differentiation that I want to get into. And it's not just a depressing topic. It's a real topic. So it is. You know, it's getting younger and younger. People are exhibiting signs of dementia and early onset Alzheimer's. 2017, Blue Cross Blue Shield, their actuarial data of all conditions in their database, the average age of onset. So we're saying, you know, we're saying like 65 and older, predominantly average age of onset, 2017, Blue Cross Blue Shield was 47 years old.

That's wild.

Yeah, that is wild. And so what can cause that? Like, what. What is contributing into this?

Well, we know now it's. It's much more than just aging. Right. I mean, it's. So even some of the things that we check for, like environmental toxicity from metals, plastics, I mean, the state of the world right now, there's. There's a lot of that. But then from ancestral trauma, trauma in general, stress, which we've talked about, basically, anything that's. That's impacting blood and qi in our body is affecting that in our brain, too. I mean, the whole talk, unlike type three, you know, just the idea of relating diabetes to some presentations of Alzheimer's where, yeah, it's changing the microvasculature. And we know that there's a lot of damage done when there's dysregulated sugar in the blood and everything that's associated with. So is it a surprise that it's happening earlier? No. But does that mean that it's clear that we should be able to do something about it if it's more to do than just aging? Yeah. So it's a call to arms, for sure.

Yeah. And, you know, one. One word on that, too, is because I think what happens now, especially with folks over 65, is when they get this diagnosis, it's like, okay, all the providers throw the towel in, like, well, okay, you're gone next. And that is, that should not be happening because we are seeing clinically, we are seeing this reverse. We have also Dr. Dale Bredesen to thank for educating a whole group of physicians around the Bredesen protocol, which I actually call Naturopathic Medicine 101 because it's diet, lifestyle recommendations. And he's been able to show and publish this data on the reversal of Alzheimer's. We've had a stage two, which is a pretty advanced form of Alzheimer's. There's three stages of it. This is a middle stage before it really becomes into a terminal component. Couldn't do one plus one. Got multiplication factors back, got his sense of smell back. These are things that shouldn't turn around in the medical literature that we are actually seeing in the clinic. I don't want to provide false hope, but I also want to provide some hope in that we're going to leave the door open for people and there is a lot to be done here. So if you are witnessing your parents or grandparents going through this for them, but also for you, like, let's get you assessed and you know what, what kind of tests are there? What are we looking at here with neurodegeneration?

Yeah. So, I mean, we can dive right into genetic testing. You know, from checking out Apoe 4, we know about 25% of people will carry at least one copy of the Apoe 4. 2 to 3% will carry two copies. It's one of the strongest risk factor genes for Alzheimer's disease. So it's huge to consider. I mean, although inheriting it does not mean that you'll definitely develop it because genetics, like we talked about, it's only going to express some of what could be expressed from your ancestors about 25% of the time, like I mentioned earlier. Yeah, Epigenetic plays a huge role here, but it's still worth knowing about, you know, if that's what's going on in your body. Let's make sure that we can do everything we can to prevent it from expressing that. Right? Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like you have a big asterisk over here when we start talking genes. So. Right. Not contradictory. We look at genetic profiles. You know, we do a very, we can do it very in depth work that has a whole database of research to show what works with different SNPs, which are single nucleopeptides SNPs that we will put in. Because it's kind of like taking yourself to the front of the line. Like, instead of going on the time tested what has worked for the most amount of people. This is really taking you to the front line with your genetic platform. But it's a big asterisk. So we, I like to mention that, though, because it'd be highly motivating to start making changes if you have that snp. Right. So we need to look. You mentioned diabetes and blood sugar regulation before.

Yeah. We know insulin sensitivity plays such a huge role at neural inflammation as well that it just can't be ignored anymore.

Yeah.

It's not just a disease that's affecting the body. It's definitely affecting the brain and how it's trying to recover and heal from anything. So avoiding blood sugar spikes is going to be essential to reducing the tendency of insulin sensitivity, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, one of the things that I've been really, I've been playing around with personally is wearing a continuous glucose monitor. And I, you know, I wanted, you know, if you would have told me 10 years ago, you're gonna wear a device that's gonna measure your blood sugar, I'd be like, hell no. I don't want to wear a device to do that. But because of the information we know about blood sugars and regulating glucose in our bodies, in a longevity play, and just really in a health information of like, how is this food affecting me? How are my decisions day to day? And I am not saying to wear this forever. You know, two weeks, a month, maybe you are going to do it a month quarterly, just to touch base and check in. It is something I really think is worth exploring for yourself and, and to get a read. We see folks with type 2 diabetes and they've had it for 30 years, and they still don't understand how food affects their sugars in their body. And then they're regulating with insulin. But insulin is not a benign substance. It can also cause damage long term. So, you know, it is. There are some. Again, first tenet, don't die. There are some interesting technologies coming on. Not that we want big brother watching, watching us, or monitoring all of these things and getting social credits. But I think there are ways of using this technology for our benefit, not total reliance on them, but just to inform us. It's another data point. Right. We're putting together. We have a whole program coming into the clinic called Heads Up Health that will pull data from labs and the wearables and all of these devices that we have and actually have a forward facing dashboard for you, the consumer and for us, the provider so that we can really make informed decisions because really what gets measured gets changed. And that's a big piece. I just wanted to put a plug in there because it is something that I am actually sharing this. Dr. Nadal now moving this up into our therapeutic regimen of really implementing these monitors earlier in our patients care.

Yeah, right from the beginning. And it'll be, it'll be more, there'll be more quality to it if they start tracking it from early on because we'll start implementing changes right out the gate. So the more you can see how significant and drastic the changes are happening with the work, it's even more useful and inspiring, right? Yep. Yeah.

Our third piece of this is environmental toxicity. And you know, maybe you've seen ads if you've got a Parkinson's diagnosis. With pesticides, we see heavy metals causing a lot of issues with our brains, of course, head traumas, micro traumas to the brain, concussions, injuries, you know, impact injuries. Because, you know, our brain, our brainstem spinal cord is just floating in cerebral spinal fluid in the middle of our frame, our structure. So it gets bonked if your body hits something hard. Your brain is bouncing around in that cavity up there. So that's, we look at the microbiome, the gut brain axis, and there are different ways of measuring how full your cup is, but it's really stepping out of the box, taking a full person full picture. Look, we did share the reversal of these conditions, which is great. Then looking at. There's also another measurement that we run is called the WABI testing, which is an EEG of the brain and it's looking at evoked potentials, P300 response times, how quickly your body responds to stimulus that can pick up any neurodegeneration really early in the curve and really help us implement a treatment plan that will get, you know, maximum potential percentage of response for your body. So again, just stressing here in the, in the, in the ending of the show, you know, don't die, number one. Number two, take some notes from these blue zones and incorporate that into your day to day. Number three, move your body 20 minutes a day. Now I really, I mean, I've been remiss actually, Dr. Nadal, because I've really been focusing in on putting some steel muscle, like lifting weights, toning the muscle for bone health. But the cardiovascular component really far outweighs the weightlifting. You know, moving the body and it's a You know, people don't want to hear that, right? They don't want to hear, oh, you have to go exercise for 20 minutes. So let's call it movement. Right? Dance. Put some good music on and dance, you know, play, play. I mean, there it is. Let's play more.

Yeah.

Any last parting components that you'd like to share?

Just, you know, building it all the way up to the end. And then don't be afraid of looking outside of the like, test. Like get out there and figure out are there any concerns then, then let's figure it out. Let's deal with it. You know, we can live well, play and look at all these different lifestyle kind of hacks. And that's awesome and it should be done. But there's also component of just investigating and testing and figuring out what's actually going on and you know, just to keep it in mind. And there's a lot that can be done in that way, right?

Yeah. Just encouragement to get into action. If you don't know where to go, give us a ring. We offer complimentary consults. You can just. We'll get that link out there to you. But you can also go onto our website. We have it right there on the first page. That's naturecuresclinic.com I just want to say I appreciate you all for listening in. This is a. I'm having fun with this discussion. We'd love to hear from you. Supportaturecuresclinic.com that's supportnaturecuresclinic.com if you have any questions about this show or the previous one or topics that you want to hear about going forward. We are on a roll. I think we put together some really fun material and we are learning lots. I hope that you are too. If you are, please share the show with your friends and family. So think of two people right now. Just say, hey, I heard this great podcast with Dr. Nadal and Dr. Eckel. I want to share this with you because I want to age well with you. Right. Let's take our community with us. With our brains, with our brawn and with community, we, we will go forward into that lovely, lovely evening. So again, what the health. We are here on the contact talk radio Tuesdays from 2 to 3pm Pacific Time. Tune in next week. We will see you then.

See you then. Bye Bye.

Okay, you're clear. Awesome. Still recording up there. Sorry.

There we go.