Protecting the Female Brain with Lisa Mosconi & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. We have a very special episode. This is all about protecting the female brain. How do you protect it, whether it's from dementia, Alzheimer's, brain fog, insomnia? This is a very special episode, and we have one of our favorite guests back. This is actually your 4th time on our show, more than anybody else that we've had on the show. This is Dr. Lisa Mosconi. By the way. Yes, for anyone who For everybody who's joining us brand new, and we're talking about her new book, XX Brain. She is the director of the Women's Brain Initiative at Weill Cornell.

Yes.

And she's the associate professor. She's a neuroscientist and a nutritionist.

She's just—

her CV is just the longest of anyone we really have on the show. If you haven't seen the previous 3 episodes, I highly recommend it. We did 2 episodes on her bestselling book, Brain Food. And then we also, the last episode, we talked about what people should know about women's brain, how they experience more, more brain fog, they experience more depression, more anxiety, insomnia, dementia, almost twice as much.

Right.

So in this episode, people by demand, they were asking, what do we do to protect our brains? And this is not just for our female audience, this is also for Or anybody who cares about the females in your life. So this is a very important episode. Let's give a quick review about the female brain and how it's different than the male brain. Right.

So there are many theories on how women's brains differ from men's brains. And there's a lot of pop science out there, a lot of hand-wavy theories on how our brains differ. And I've been looking at brains for 20 years and can guarantee that there is no such thing as a gendered brain. Brain, right? So if you look at brain scans of brains, you can't tell if that brain belongs to a woman or a man just by looking at the structure or the anatomy of those brains. What we have shown is that, however, our brains age differently.

Okay.

And there are some differences in our biochemistry on top of that that really matter for our health. So like you said, women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression, not to mention health headaches and migraines, as well as having more autoimmunity, like autoimmune disorders that can attack the brain, like multiple sclerosis. We're 3 times more likely to have that. We're 4 times more likely to develop a meningioma, which is the most common cause, which is the most common form of brain tumor. And on top of all that, we're more likely to die of a stroke, should a stroke take place, and we're also more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Hmm.

So of all Alzheimer's patients, almost 2/3 are women, which means that for every man suffering from Alzheimer's, there are 2 women.

Twice as much, almost.

Almost twice as much, yes. Yeah, almost twice as many. Yeah, I think it's more of a prevalence thing. We don't fully understand why that is the case, and this is something that I've been doing for a really long time, like over 15 years of trying to figure it out. And finally, I think that we have some Answers, for sure.

Okay, and you talk about some of those answers in your brand new book.

Most of it, yes. Yes, for sure, for sure. So the last time I was here and we were talking about women's brains, we were really trying to explain how that came to be. And we were talking about the Women's Brain Initiative, which I launched at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and we're open to enrollment if anyone is interested. And my research is really focused on understanding how brain health plays out differently in women and in men. We very much care about the men too.

Of course.

Because what the research has shown is that women's brains and men's brains have different risk factors, and that's the bottom line. So the things that affect a woman's brain are not necessarily the same that affect a man's brain, and both are important.

Okay.

But medicine has been historically gender biased, so a lot of the information we have really derived from studies in men.

Okay.

So the recommendations that we give patients and the guidelines that we use to diagnose certain diseases are really based on symptoms that are more prevalent in men than in women. Like cardiology is a good analogy from a different field. Like we know that women are 7 times more likely to be discharged in the middle of a heart attack as compared to a man having a heart attack.

Wow.

And that is because doctors are trained to recognize the male symptoms of a heart attack, which is the very sudden chest pain and the pain shooting down the left arm.

Okay.

Those symptoms are prevalent in men, but not in women. Women tend to experience nausea.

Right.

Or pain in the back of the neck and in the stomach. They feel like they have the flu. And so the doctors don't recognize symptoms and they're like, well, you're not having a heart attack. Here's an antidepressant, go home. So a similar bias exists in neurology and psychiatry. And so we're really trying to understand what impacts brain health most in women and in men, and how we can address those risks.

That makes sense. And so, in effect, they're treating women as, like, as just like men.

Yes.

Except for women have breasts and tubes and stuff like that.

Yes. So, that's bikini medicine, like I describe in the book. And it's a rather unfortunate term, really. to describe how historically medical professionals actually believed that men and women were essentially the same person with different reproductive organs. So given the worldview derived from that model, I think that the very notion of women's health is problematic.

Right.

Like if you go to a doctor and ask them to see a patient through the lens of women's health, they're going to check your blood for hormones, they're going to give you a Pap test for cervical cancer, and if you're over 40 or 42, you get a mammogram. So once again, women's health is confined to the health of reproductive organs, which is really a problem because it's due to a reductive understanding of what a woman actually is.

Right.

Right. So from where I sit as the director of the Women's Brain Initiative, there's this part of the body that will never be covered by a bikini that really deserves our attention, and that's our brains.

Right.

We never talk about women's brain health. And we need to because our brains are one of our, by far, best assets.

Right.

And our very own vitality and joy and happiness and capacity to enjoy life comes from a healthy brain and a healthy mind.

Sure. Now recently you and I were speaking at an event, Women's Move for Minds.

Yes.

And I believe Maria Shriver actually wrote the foreword of your book. That was exciting.

Yes, it's wonderful. She's such an incredible, wonderful, just Honestly, wonderful person, and she's so invested in in women's health, in women's brains, and Alzheimer's prevention. And it was such an honor for me that she she agreed to to write the foreword. And then she had us fly over to LA and really talk about brain health and your wonderful magic techniques to do. Yeah, I tried to actually have my parents go through the whole thing.

Oh, really?

But they're nuclear physicists, so as soon as I said just give me the elements, they were like boom boom boom boom boom.

They know it already.

It's not working.

That's amazing. Now, at that event, you were sharing some of the things that people, that women could do to be able to protect their brains, and you go into a lot of detail. And what I, again, what I love about this book, it's science and evidence-based.

Yes, it's a conservative book in some ways because I am a scientist and accuracy is really important to me. So I'd much rather be more conservative and say, This may work for you, but there isn't a lot of science to really back this up.

Okay.

However, there's a ton of science showing that doing these 8 things, which I call the 8 pillars of Alzheimer's prevention in women, actually work. So if you're new to this and you're just starting, start with something that's been shown to prove, you know, which has really been shown to work in hundreds of thousands of women.

Right.

Because your chances Of course. Than this little thing that just came out in the news 2 months ago.

Right.

So for me, it's all about really how strong the evidence is, which doesn't mean that other things can't work.

Right.

It's more like, let's start with a strong, solid review of what's been proven to work. Let's start from that, and also let's look at safety over time. So not just short-term, but long-term. Long-term as well is really important, especially for Alzheimer's.

Of course, of course. So when we're thinking about those foundational pillars, where do you— where do we start?

Right, so as a scientist, I have a tendency to get lost in details, as you know. So I found a good way, I think, to summarize this into 8 actionable items that any woman can just make part of their lifestyle today.

Okay.

In her routine. And in order to remember them, learning from you, these wonderful strategies, I found this Latin expression. I'm Italian, so Latin makes sense to me, which is mens sana in corpore sano. In English, that's probably mens sana in corpore sano, something like that. But the point is, so you spell it, the first part, mens sana means a healthy mind, in corpore sano, in a healthy body. The good thing is that you have 8 things that you can, you can choose from. But sometimes we get overwhelmed because we're like, oh, I have to do all of them, or I have to do all these different things. But I think it's best to just choose one, really make a solid, durable change, and then address the other ones. Or if you're already at that stage, choose 3 and start with 3.

I love that.

Good.

So what does the N stand for then?

In your honor, is for mental stimulation. There's a ton of evidence in neuroscience that you really have to stimulate your brain. And you have said something that really resonated with me, which is that learning is for your brain, but exercise is for your muscles.

Right.

And that's such an elegant and accurate way to put it. So we know from first year in college that the more 2 neurons are active together, the stronger the connection is built. And that's the first principle in neuroscience, the principle of Hebb. Which also means that you really have to stimulate your neurons in order for them to remain active and plastic.

Right.

Right? And so how do you do that? The key is learning.

Right.

You have to challenge your brain. In other words, if you are fantastic at playing chess, playing more chess will not help you nearly as much as For example, playing bridge.

Right.

So you have to learn something new. You have to keep challenging your skills and capacity. Number 2 would be E, right? E is for exercise. It is really important.

Sure.

There's a study of hundreds of women followed for over 40 years, which is incredible, and this study showed that women who lead a sedentary life have 30% rate of decline Wow. Which means that a third of all women who don't really move their bodies may get Alzheimer's at some point in their lives. Whereas women who have a higher level of cardiovascular fitness in midlife have virtually no rates of dementia. The rate of dementia is close to zero.

That is astonishing.

It's incredible.

How do you explain that? So is it, is it because generally what's good for the Heart, like exercise, is good for the— is good for the brain?

Yes, I think it's— yes, so blood flow is crucial for brain health. And what happens if you do not exercise your heart is that your circulation slows down, which is normal with aging. But that's really when you should try and maximize your aerobic performance, which it doesn't mean you have to do jumping jacks all day. You just need to make sure that your heart gets Stimulate it. Your heart is a muscle, right? It's a kind of use it or lose it.

So after that you have the N.

N is for nutrition. So diet and nutrition. And I often recommend to start with that if you have to choose one of the 8 letters. Nutrition is really important because most people eat 3 times a day.

Right.

So you have 3 chances of doing something good for your body and your brain. Every day of your life. So that's a good start. And there are many diets out there.

Right.

And I will not be telling people what they should do in terms of their life and diet. It's a very personal choice. But from a clinical perspective, it is important to me to let women know what kind of nutrients have been shown time and time again to be really supportive of women's brains.

Right.

Right. So you, you just try to incorporate more of these nutrients in your diet. whatever your diet might be. So fiber is a big one. Antioxidants are really important, like vitamin A, C, and E have been shown to really boost brain energy in women. And the last one is polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Okay.

Like omega-3 fatty acids from salmon. They're very important. Olive oil, almonds, flaxseeds. There are a lot of different sources and they They've been associated with a much lower risk of dementia in women, as well as a lower risk of depression, infertility, postpartum depression, and lower levels of anxiety. And it's also really important to know what not to eat, right? If there's one thing, if there's one change that is easy to make, sort of, is to stay away from processed foods.

Okay.

There's these incredible—

Such as?

Fast food is a major issue, but packaged foods, prepared foods, sometimes takeout food is not that healthy. So really being careful with the quality of your food and trying to eat fresh, if possible homemade. S-C-O-N-I.

Absolutely. So tag her, follow her, tag myself @JimKwik, and share it because when you share it you get to help other people. I believe that in everything we're here to do in this hero's journey, you know, we, we, we learn so we can earn, meaning we get benefit out of it, but then we return and we share that. And, and that's part of our way of doing that. And when you tag us, some of our favorites— share your big aha in the description. What's the one area that we've talked about so far that was kind of, kind of lit up your, your brain and that you're gonna make one little decision on Moving forward, because little by little, a little becomes a whole lot. And I'll repost some of our favorites. I know you repost them also as well. You are so active in that. And yes, and we'll see you. We'll see you in our next episode.

Hi, Quick Brain. It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. Three things to do: Number one, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number two, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing. Because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: three one zero two nine nine.

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