Is Your Diet Feeding Alzheimer's Disease?

Things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes press the fast-forward button on Alzheimer's pathology and cognitive decline.

Why is diet considered to be one of the most potent tools in protecting the brain against Alzheimer's disease?

As the belly size gets larger, the memory center in the brain, the hippocampus, gets smaller.

What about supplementation?

People with diabetes have twice the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

How is Alzheimer's disease diagnosed?

These are the types of things that can just pay dividends, not just for brain health, but heart health and otherwise longevity.

Your genetics kind of Loads the gun, but your lifestyle is the trigger.

We want people to feel empowered because we can do something to fight Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline, and we can do that really starting today.

Welcome back to the Kwik Brain Podcast. I am your host, your brain coach, Jim Kwik of Kwik Learning, where we help people to learn quickly with our speed reading, memory, brain optimization strategies that are simple and easy for you to use. We try to make it as entertaining as possible and really practical And pragmatic. I want to thank everybody also for supporting the launch of our new Limitless Expanded Edition. People can find out more at limitlessbook.com. Please leave a review. The first edition just came out a few years ago, did over a million copies sold, and we want to thank you, our Kwik Limitless community, for making that happen. And I think we had 18,000 ratings and reviews on the first book. So the best thing is when those stories that mean the world to us, when you post that on Goodreads or on Amazon or wherever you purchase the book, Barnes Noble. Because your stories make a difference and together we could build better, brighter brains, no brain left behind. Now, in this episode, we're going to talk about a subject matter that's really near and dear to my heart. Many of you know my story, not only of traumatic brain injuries, but also I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I was going through, you know, my challenges. She passed when I was 7 years old. For people that don't have a family member or a close friend that has gone through brain aging, it was, it It was a challenge, especially at that age, because she was the one that took care of me growing up. And so we're going to talk about Alzheimer's prevention and treatment diet. And we have like the expert on here. And we have Dr. Richard Isaacson, MD. He's a preventative neurologist who conducts research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases. He founded— now, if I was to read his CV, it would take the entire 20 minutes. So I'm going to kind of bypass that. He founded and directed the first Alzheimer's prevention clinic in the United States back in 2013. He's written books like The Alzheimer's Prevention and Treatment Diet. We will link to that in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. Also an audiobook, Brain Power 101, How to Boost Your Memory and Stay Brain Healthy at Any Age. And who doesn't want to do that at any age and stage? Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Isaacson.

Jim, super, super appreciative for the invite. Great to see you again. Good to be back to familiar territory. We spoke a lot several years ago. It's good to be back. And I just wanted you to know, over your left shoulder, you have a very fancy, good-looking, multicolored brain. But I brought out the OG right here for those watching the podcast.

Oh my goodness.

We have the OG. This is my better— my brain kind of thing that I carry around with me as my side brain.

I need one of those. That is amazing. If you're watching this on YouTube, and I encourage you, we always put the extended version of the podcast on YouTube. Please join our 1.3 million subscribers there. We put daily tips for brain health, mental health, and accelerated learning there. But make sure you subscribe. That just made my day.

This has been in storage for a while, but there we go.

This is awesome. You should go on stage. We've had the opportunity recently to reconnect, giving keynotes at BrainMind in San Francisco with Reid Hoffman and some other amazing individuals. individuals and scientists and faculty. We originally met on a panel we were doing for our mutual friend Maria Shriver. We've been big supporters of hers for women's Alzheimer's movement. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. So I want to thank everybody who's purchased our books. We've always, you know, supported financially these great causes, including education for kids. But I wanted to start with, with your book. So, why is diet considered to be one of the most potent tools in protecting the brain against Alzheimer's disease?

I think people just haven't been aware that what you eat every day, the food that we eat as fuel, this is a part of us. And, people think, okay, if you eat healthy, okay, well, I'll lose some weight or I can lose my belly or something like that. Well, as the belly size gets larger, the memory center in the brain, the hippocampus, gets smaller. And you are what you eat when it comes to brain health. And, you know, you can't eat a magic blueberry and think you're going to, you know, prevent or cure Alzheimer's. That's not it at all. But, you know, the totality of evidence suggests that, you know, eating in a brain-healthy way, the Mediterranean-style diet, you know, green leafy vegetables, fatty fish, lake trout, mackerel, herring, albacore tuna, wild salmon, sardines, really, really plentiful in those brain-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

Mm-hmm.

Minimizing the processed foods, Minimizing added sugars, staying away from the high fructose corn syrup, you know, eating wine maybe in moderation, not too much. You know, some varying degrees of evidence about maybe less is more or none is better, but a little complicated. Eating is a critical component for the brain-healthy lifestyle. And it's something we're passionate about. And, you know, different people probably need to eat different things depending on their genes. And that gets— that's the complicated answer. But the simple answer is anyone can make a brain-healthy choice today to have a cumulative positive positive brain effect tomorrow. You know, half a cup of blueberries and strawberries a couple times a week in the Nurses' Health Study showed that you could delay cognitive decline by 2 years. You don't have to eat blueberries every day and strawberries because the antioxidant properties, they have a long half-life, so you can eat them every couple of days and that's okay. So there's a lot of nuance with nutrition science. It's hard to study. It's hard to prove. But our work and the work of many others has really shown the power of of diet and the brain.

Clearly what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter, right? Before we go into this a little bit deeper, what put you on this, on this course? You know, for me, it was a traumatic brain injury. It was a grandmother with dementia. Was it something personal for you, or is it something— what guided you along this journey?

So my older brother was a neurologist, is a neurologist, and when he was I think graduating med school, I was in 5th grade. He's a little bit older, a fair amount older than me. And I remember, you know, getting his books, his textbooks, and I was like the dork in the back of the school bus, like reading Neuroanatomy Made Easy and Understandable on like camp trips during the summertime. That's completely ridiculous, but it's completely true. In 5th grade, I think I wrote like this thing saying I'm going to be a neurologist and I had all these life goals. And I also said I'm going to have a red fancy sports car. That hasn't happened yet. But everything else I've checkboxed and I've always wanted to be a doctor. The brain has always been fascinating for me. But my Uncle Bob, my great Uncle Bob, actually introduced my parents and actually also saved me from a pool when I was drowning. I still don't like pools. I don't like being near water because I had a near drowning episode when I was 3 years old. And my Uncle Bob, former Navy guy, jumped in to save me. And that's, again, all true and all, you know, it kind of shapes who you are. And Uncle Bob developed Alzheimer's disease back around 1995.

Wow.

And back in '95, we really didn't have treatment. We had this one drug coming out. It really wasn't doing too much and has some side effects. It's now pulled off the market. But, you know, when I started this whole thing, like just when I started, you know, graduating high school, going to med school, there were no treatments for Alzheimer's. And now, you know, we have several FDA-approved treatments, both pills that help with symptoms, new infusions that may help with disease-modifying components. And that's complicated, but just, just there's a whole new era in the treatment of Alzheimer's. But the, the, the whole premise of prevention of Alzheimer's, that you can do something to take control of your brain health, whether it's eating a certain way or exercising or taking a certain drug to reduce risk or managing risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes. This really all became true to me because I saw my Uncle Bob develop it, my dad's cousin. You know, I kind of realized what she was saying, the same story over and over to me at a wedding back in 2007. You know, I've had 4 family members with Alzheimer's and I hear and I empathize with the story about your grandmother because this disease is terrible. It's a thief. It robs you of your memory. It robs people of who they are and it robs families of precious time. So over a decade ago, I started figuring out, is there anything and everything that we can do as long as it's evidence-based and safe to reduce a person's risk before they have symptoms? And that's really, we've tried to put this research into the public knowledge and try to prove the The thesis of our work. And then now the next phase is to scale the work. Just like, you know, I don't have a podcast or I haven't written all these new books lately, and you're doing amazing stuff, Jim, and I've learned a ton from you, by the way. The goal is now to get this knowledge into the hands of people. And, you know, we're creating digital tools and where anyone can just go and, you know, from the comfort of their own cell phone, take a risk factor assessment, take a cognitive test, and learn about the specific things that they can do to reduce risk. So, I've been driven by the family, but, um, you know, my work is, and our work is just not even close to being done.

But you're still hopeful.

We went about 2 years without, without connecting, Jim. Like the things that have changed in the last 2 years, I, I, 20 minutes is not even close to the amount of, um, time we would need to cover the ground. We have new drugs. We have new genetic understandings. Like I'm going to show you that actually, yeah, I can show you. We're on a video. This is a A card that's in an envelope that you can peel. And we're doing finger prick tests, like an at-home blood test, stick it on the card, mail it back, and we can understand, you know, a person's proteins in their blood that, you know, tie into a person's risk of Alzheimer's disease. And, you know, what we're trying to do is use these simple at-home tests to bring down costs, scale care, you know, democratize care. And just like we get a cholesterol test, where you check your HDL, your LDL, your total cholesterol, triglycerides. That's what we want to do. We want to create kind of that cholesterol test for the brain. And if someone lives a healthy lifestyle, eats a healthy meal, exercises, you can simply just check and see, hey, how's— instead of how's that working on my cholesterol, how's that working on my brain biomarker risk score? So, this is the type of stuff we're doing. And yeah, I'm hopeful. 2 years ago, I would have said this is crazy. This is science fiction. This is Theranos talking.

Yeah.

But this isn't Theranos. I've seen the data. We actually do this, you know, we work really hard on this. And, um, no, I couldn't be more hopeful for both prevention or treatment.

Are those tests available for the general public or through, through their doctor?

Oh, no. So this is, you know, we're, I'm a, I'm a clinician, but I'm a researcher. Um, and, and, uh, this is, no, this is early days. You know, the first data that in 77 people was, was, uh, you know, presented on this back in July of 2023. So we're talking like, this is hot off the press stuff. We've been doing this now in our program for a little while. And I would say every couple of months, that goes by, um, I'm going to know more, but no, I don't think these, these finger prick at-home card tests is ready for primetime today, but that's what we're working on. We're, we're working on, you know, getting this information out to as many people as possible. And that starts with, you know, understanding is the person at risk and if so, what they need to do about it. And that blood test can give that.

Amazing. So I want to, I want to talk about prevention in a little moment, but I, when you, when When your Uncle Bob or other individuals, when you talk about showing symptoms, I imagine a lot of— I'm in my 50s. I would imagine a lot of people who, they have memory lapses and they're concerned because maybe it runs in their family, like for both of us, that they get anxiety and they get a little scared and fearful because they forget where they put the keys or where they parked their car or they're having these memory lapses. What are some signs besides testing, but in day-to-day, is that something for people to be scared of? Because that could amplify, right, a lot of the anxiety and fears around it. But is common misplacing your cell phone or where you parked your car or forgetting a name, how is that different than— what should people be looking for? Great question.

Great question. And, you know, when it comes to, you know, things like, oh, I misplaced my cell phone, you know, where'd it go? I can tell you I misplaced my cell phone at least twice today. I don't think I have dementia. I have, well, last night I have sleep deprivation. I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old and they decided to wake up nice and early this morning, meaning like 4-something in the morning. So between sleep deprivation, between this totally technology connected, you know, I have these 2 cell phones because the one's going ping, the other one's going pong. I think when someone isn't able to pay attention to something as well as they could, they're not able to form that memory and kind of consolidate. And you're the memory expert. I'm just a neurologist and a biological guy. You could characterize this probably a lot better than I can. But I think when simple things like misplacing keys in a cell phone, that's not as worrisome to me. But when someone has progressive short-term memory decline and they get lost while driving Right. They have trouble, um, you know, using the keys. What is it? Which key goes to what? And you misplacing your keys is one thing, but finding them later, that's good. But if you misplace things over and over again, you have trouble with your finances, um, you know, trouble with, uh, work tasks, um, you know, losing track in conversations and not able to, you know, kind of complete the same sentences that you, that you would do in the past. Um, personality changes, um, you know, changes Changes in sleep patterns, changes with anxiety or depression. Those can be some early premonitory signs. So there's a lot of things that are associated with cognitive decline that can really suggest a potential early diagnosis of Alzheimer's, the first symptomatic phases of Alzheimer's. But the traditional run-of-the-mill things, like when there's a name, oh, what's that good-looking guy? Oh, he said he was in his 50s, but man, he couldn't be in his 50s. He looks so much younger. Well, I met him through Maria Shriver. Oh, Jim, Jim Kwik, wait a minute. That your name was on the tip of my tongue. To me, that's less, that's not really an Alzheimer's-like picture. That could be something either related to cognitive aging, expected changes as we age, which I think still something we can do about sleep deprivation, stress, all the things. So I think it's important that if someone in your family is experiencing symptoms of memory loss, Have an open, honest conversation with their doctor. Go to the doctor with them and have a conversation. Explain. Sometimes a patient may not realize it. The person with the symptoms doesn't realize it. So, you know, ask the doctor if the primary care doctor doesn't feel comfortable evaluating. You can see a specialist, a lot of waiting lists, neurologists, psychiatrists, memory centers are in, you know, many metropolitan areas, Alzheimer's centers. So, you know, I don't think there's like a perfect, like, symptom where you say, oh, it's got to be Alzheimer's. But when in doubt, you know, get, get, you know, get an evaluation. The other thing I would say is Alzheimer's disease and other dementias begin in the brain decades before the first symptom of memory loss begins. So, you know, my Uncle Bob, he was told by his doctors that he was having senior moments and it was okay in his 60s, you know, the glitches.

Mm-hmm.

And at 72, he was diagnosed with dementia. Due to Alzheimer's. But if you move the clock backward, that means in his brain, he first started having the pathology of Alzheimer's in his 40s, 40s and 50s. And it takes 10 to 20 to 30 years to progress, just like heart disease. You have the buildup of the plaques and the vessel walls. So I think what we need to do with Alzheimer's and dementia, and we need to think about things earlier. We need to shift the focus to prevention and reducing risk. And I think really it's an exciting time because now we're able to do that in a much more scientific way.

When you mentioned he was diagnosed, what does— how is Alzheimer's disease diagnosed? Is it really clear-cut? Is it as simple as a blood test or how is a scan or how does somebody get that diagnosis? Are you a high achiever constantly seeking that next level of success? Welcome to the Kwik Success Program. It's a deep dive and support system to master your life and scale to new heights in personal and professional achievement. Included is our exclusive monthly book club where we process transformative ideas from amazing books to level up your learning and your life. We also bring the author to the club to answer your burning questions. You can also participate in monthly live coaching calls with me where your questions meet my decades of expertise. Simply go to kwiksuccess.com. That's kwiksuccess.com and choose the plan that works best for you.

Most of the time, almost, almost by far the majority of time that people receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, They receive a diagnosis based on a clinical diagnosis. The doctor hears the story and gives a diagnosis. Now, there are tests. There's PET scans that people can do, radiology tests of the brain that look for amyloid or tau. There's spinal taps that people can do, and that's, you know, more invasive. You have to do a procedure, but it's not a big deal. You get amyloid and tau, and you can, again, make a formal diagnosis that way. But really where the field is going, and again, last time we talked in detail, Jim, there was zero. There were no available blood tests. for Alzheimer's pathology. And now there are several multiple companies, different types, you know, we're, we're bullish and going full, full speed ahead on these fingerprint cards, but there's literally blood tests and they're not perfect. But if someone can get a blood test, they find some amyloid or tau, these pathologic proteins that get built up in the brain, then, then you can get a confirmatory test like a brain scan or a spinal tap. That is really the gold standard definitive way. to get a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. But I hate to say 8 or 9 times out of 10, these tests aren't ordered because most of the time they're not covered by insurance and doctors just don't feel comfortable ordering and patients unfortunately can't afford it a lot of times. So that's the new way. And I think that that way is changing quite a bit.

And we hear a lot about Alzheimer's, a couple things, you know, in social media world, even I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen like the analogy that heard Your genetics kind of loads the gun, but your lifestyle is the trigger. You hear things like Alzheimer's has been called type 3 diabetes. Is there any truth to these things?

People with diabetes have twice the risk of Alzheimer's disease, and there's a really important relationship there. You know, metabolic syndrome, having high blood sugar and insulin resistance and a larger, you know, waist size or visceral fat, fat around the belly and then the visceral internal organs. All of that is related to fast-forwarding this pathology related to Alzheimer's amyloid pathology and the diagnostic rates are much higher in people with diabetes. I think it's complicated though, and I think different people can take different paths to Alzheimer's. And really the goal of our work is to be able to use genetic testing use blood testing and give people a personalized plan. And, you know, the things that we're trying to do now is, again, trying to democratize this, you know, have a software solution where someone can go and complete a risk assessment online, take a cognitive test, and then the software learns enough about the person to give an individualized or personalized plan to reduce that person's risk rather than, you know, just telling everyone go eat, you know, green leafy vegetables and go, You know, go run a mile 3 times a week. We want to give people a prescription, a brain health prescription that's individualized for them. And that's really the power of the new data and what software and AI, artificial intelligence, can do. You know, this is what I'm really excited about.

Now, in your book, you offer some guidelines for the general public, like a 9-week diet plan. Maybe you could walk us through— you obviously can't— I recommend everyone get your book so they can see the specifics. But maybe we could talk about some of the key principles of the plan and how it introduces brain-healthy foods and dietary strategies to our listeners.

Yeah, absolutely. And the book is an easy read. Great if you get it, but if you don't want to get it, it's okay too. I can give you resources. We'll give our listeners resources that for free, anyone today can jump online and take a journey on brain health in a personalized way. So that being said, the book tries to give A roadmap forward about, you know, how to incrementally change a person's diet. For example, you know, the body and the brain wasn't meant to have food 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sort of thing. Giving the body and the brain a time for rest, you know, eating within a specific window, maybe having breakfast at 8 or 9 AM and having dinner no later than 6 PM. It gives your body and your pancreas a way to kind of relax a little bit. Insulin is produced when you You have sugar and really insulin can fast forward brain aging and inflammation. So eating in restricted time intervals, it's called time-restricted eating. Some people call it intermittent fasting. To me, intermittent fasting is like a 24-hour or more period, but eating in restricted windows is one thing. You know, making a plan, you know, when someone's traveling, you know, getting brain-healthy snacks and getting the bad stuff out of the house and the good stuff in the house. So the 9-week diet plan really tries to walk people through, I don't want to call it common sense necessarily, but it's just some straight straightforward advice that can just try to handhold someone that when they're committed to making a change, here's a roadmap forward. Here are some recipes. Here are some things you can eat. This is what is good, brain healthy. This is what is not good or brain unhealthy. And the 9-week diet plan tries to track a person through that.

So what would, let's say on a typical 24-hour day, what are some of the foods that you would consume when you're not traveling and eating at a hotel or something? What would be preferred? What would be some of those examples?

Green leafy vegetables, a salad at least once or twice a day, adding a healthy protein, again, wild salmon, grilled chicken, turkey, red meat once or twice a week, probably. It's a little controversial, depends on how the meat is prepared. Grass-fed beef, that's better, that's more brain healthy. Grass-fed milk, free-range eggs, these are different ways to to make specific food choices that are better brain healthy because they're better, for example, in omega-3 fatty acids. So plentiful vegetables, instead of having processed foods, desserts, fried or fatty foods, or unhealthy ice cream with lots of trans fats or saturated fats, having berries as a brain healthy substitution for dessert. My mom used to tell me everything in moderation, right? You can have a cookie here and there, And you can enjoy yourself here and there, but eating a balanced diet with whole foods, processed foods, the packaged stuff, the stuff that's been sitting around on shelves for a long time. You know, if it's in the— if you're in the grocery store, go to the outer bounds, right? Go to the place that, you know, the refrigerated area and the fresh food, whole foods, whole fruits, you know, rather than drinking a glass of apple juice or orange juice that's just— can spike your blood sugar quickly. Have a piece of whole fruit, have an apple and have berries. These are the types of concepts that we try to intertwine, but also enjoy yourself. And it's okay if you're exercising and you're doing everything right, it's okay to eat. We don't want people to exclude too much unhealthy food. We don't want people to eat too much unhealthy food. But really the take-home point here is you have to make your brain and belly happy to really have success over time.

And things can be nutritious and also delicious if people put a little effort and attention to it, certainly. So we're eating the colors. We have to avoid, mitigate those glucose spikes, right? Insulin resistance could cause just physiological changes and cognitive changes that we probably don't want on the ongoing. What about supplementation? Is that something that— are there certain supplements that have been shown to support brain and preventing cognitive decline? Let's say if they're not getting it from the fish, are you supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids like DHA? Or if they're not eating the meat, maybe they're supplementing with creatine, or if they're not getting the eggs, maybe the choline? Or what's your view of supplements?

Yeah. So these are great questions. So I am, I am, I'm not pro-supplement or anti-supplement. I'm pro-evidence, right? And omega-3 fatty acid supplements, which is basically the the brain-healthy fats, DHA and EPA are the abbreviations. If a person is not able to eat enough fatty fish, or even if they are sometimes eating enough, but we check the blood levels, there's, you know, people can go online and get a test for their omega-3 fatty acid levels. And if it's low, and that person has one of the risk genes, we talked about genes earlier, genes, APOE4 is this risk variant. If you have a copy, it increases risk. It doesn't mean you're going to definitively get Alzheimer's or anything like that. But people with an APOE4 variant, Absolutely have to have plentiful amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet. And I would say at least 30, 40, 50, 60% of the time, depending on the person, even if they're eating enough fish, they're still going to need to take supplements. So we take a targeted approach. We don't use supplements willy-nilly. We do a blood test and we, you know, add, add, and then we titrate the dose based on the blood test result. You know, vitamin D, a lot of people are deficient in vitamin D, a little controversial, a little confusing. Some says, oh, it's protective on brain health. Some says not so much. I believe it's pretty safe, especially especially in low to moderate doses and people with 2 copies of the ApoE4 variant, those are people we really want to, you know, make sure that the vitamin D levels are adequate or even at a healthy level.

And that's a simple, that's a simple test.

Totally. And, and, and that's, that's what this is about. It's, it's about, you know, a precision or individualized approach. There's a blood test called homocysteine. Homocysteine is an amino acid, a protein in the blood. And it's been shown that people that have this elevated protein called homocysteine or whatever in the blood, That those people, if they take B-complex vitamins, B12, folic acid, low doses of B6, they can actually slow brain shrinkage over time and actually slightly, a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit improve memory function. And those are in a group of people that already had the mild cognitive impairment phase. This is the earliest symptoms, not dementia, but the earliest symptoms as a precursor to dementia. So B-complex vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D can certainly be impactful in the right person at the right dose at the right timeframe before symptoms begin. Dark cocoa flavanols, there's a cocoa powder supplement I take myself. There's something called curcumin, which is basically curry, the turmeric root. Certain people that have amyloid in their brain taking a specific type of curcumin, I have nothing to disclose, this is nanoparticle version, taking that, that can actually potentially slow progression of amyloid. So the take-home point here is there's a lot of different You know, permutations out there. And I'm not a big, you know, I don't put people on 10 or 20 or 50 supplements or anything like that. But I would say on average, my patients are on at least 3 to 5 different vitamins and supplements based on their own individual test results and their own biology and genetics.

Everyone's bio-individual. And obviously, this is not meant to— this conversation, this is the disclaimer— not meant to treat or diagnose any form of disease. Definitely talk to your educated health practitioner. This is not just protection for us, it's protection for the person listening, right? To be responsible and have agency. And, but if you were to give 3 top-line recommendations that could be a big needle mover for brain health or staving off dementia generically to the general populace, if you could have the world subscribe to 3 things for better brain health, what would they be then?

Number one, seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking control of what we call vascular risk factors. So things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes press the fast forward button on Alzheimer's pathology and cognitive decline. These are things that are entirely manageable and preventable if they're caught really early. So, you know, everyone needs to get their blood sugar checked at least every year and their blood pressure, And their cholesterol every year, and if they do that, and if they start starts tracking up and up and up, then let's do something about it to get it down down down down down, and that can really slam the brakes on cognitive decline. So that would be number one. Number two, you know, I would say we talked a lot about it eating a brain healthy diet. You know, green leafy vegetables really critical. You know, just stopping the junk, eating a balanced diet, eating whole foods. These are the types of things that can just pay dividends, not just for brain health, but heart health and otherwise. And I would say the third thing, because there's just so many, so many things, but the third thing I would say is, you know, take a deep breath. You know, you can grab the bull by the horns. That was it. That was a good deep breath, Jim.

Yeah.

I feel more calm watching your deep breath that you just took. You can grab the bull by the horns, get educated, get informed. And this education and this information has been democratized. And, you know, we've been working on a free It's a study. People can enroll and join. And it's, you can go to yourbrainstudy.org or retainyourbrain.com. Right now we're only testing it on people aged 53 and above. So if you're 53 and above and have no or minimal memory complaints and have a family history of Alzheimer's, that's really where we're starting it. But if that, if you're listening and you want to learn something, you can join right now and learn about your brain health, get a memory test, get a baseline. The software will learn about you. It will Understand your risk factors. It will get to know you. It will give some education and feedback. And after 6 months, we're going to be able to really get a personalized plan. And the software can be your guide. You don't have to go to a doctor's office. You don't have to pay anything. And this is really the goal, to automate personalized, individualized care. We want people to feel empowered because we can do something to fight Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline. And we can do that Really starting today.

I love it. I absolutely love it. We'll put all the links as we always do to everything mentioned here at jimkwik.com/notes. And it's just a reminder, this conversation, that we can be the pilot of our brains. We don't have to be the passenger. I always have a brain on my shirt or pointing to my brain in photographs just because it's just what you see, you take care of. And it's because it's in your constant awareness. If you see your clothing or your car or your or anything else. It's just a reminder that you, you know, you see it deteriorating, but we don't see the thing that takes care of us all the time. So, you know, make it a priority. Ask yourself daily, is this good for my brain? Is this bad for my brain? But definitely check out the links in the show notes. Dr. Isaacson, I want to thank you so much for the work that you do and for sharing it here with our community. How can people learn more about your work?

I do research through the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases in Florida, indflorida.org. You can learn about things. We have some education stuff on there. You can donate, of course. We're always happy to take donations. We're a nonprofit foundation. And then really retainyourbrain.com and yourbrainstudy.org is a way for people to, you know, get empowered and participate in research. And if you participate in research and learn about brain health, you're helping everybody. You're not just helping yourself, you're helping the field move forward. So really appreciate, thanks so much for the time. Thanks for your platform. And really had a good time catching up today.

Amazing. Dr. Isaacson, everybody make sure you share this episode with a family member or Or a friend that could benefit from it. Please leave a review on Spotify or iTunes or YouTube, wherever you consume this. And yeah, we look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Dr. Isaac, thank you again. We look forward to having you back to share your latest research and things that are exciting to help us, our community, build better, brighter brains. No brain left behind. All right, be limitless, everybody. Thank you.