Brain Fog Fixes

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin and welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so you can go out there and live that big life you're meant to live. And today's show is super fun because I'm bringing in my co star from the TLC show, Freaky Eaters. He's a psychologist from the show when I was on there as a nutrition and fitness expert. And he is going to talk about brain fog. He's got a great book, the Brain Fog Fix. It's also a public television special. And we had honestly so much fun on this show. If you haven't had a chance to watch it, they occasionally do some reruns of it. And we tackled people who were addicted to basically it's kind of like Hoarders meets My Stranger's Addiction. And so you had people who would only eat one type of food rather than anything else. And it was getting in the way of their whole life, their relationships, their career, obviously their health and you know, the key things people were addicted to. I always say that. And I never saw anyone addicted to salmon or broccoli. It was like french fries, pizza, couple people were raw meat and we had one gal who was addicted to tartar sauce, another gal who was addicted to cornstarch. Crazy stuff. So we spend a lot of time together. He's one of my favorite people and I'm super excited to share him with you today and his topic because it is affecting all of us, as you're going to hear in a second. But before I bring him on, let me tell you a little bit about him. So he's got the brain fog fix and he is a therapist, a psychotherapist. He's been on a ton of stuff. Let's see he's been the co host of E's Sex With Brody, the Investigation Discoveries, My Strange Criminal Addiction, Logos, That Sex Show, VH1's Couples Therapy, host of TLC's My 600 Pound Life Reunion and TLC's Freaky Eaters with Me. And he's also been on Dr. Oz, the Doctors, Dr. Drew On Call, Wendy Williams, Rachael Ray, Access Hollywood Live, Bethany Ricki Lake, Anderson Anderson Live, Nancy Grace, Nightline, Fox and Friends, and the Today Show. In fact, we did the Today show together. So he is just a blast. This is going to be such a treat. So again, Today's guest is Dr. Mike Dow. So let's do it. Dr. Mike Dow, welcome. Welcome to the show. I am so thrilled to have you on the show.

I'm so happy to be here, my friend.

Jj, I know it's been too long. Gosh, I had to like schedule a podcast in order to talk to you. Crazy.

We're both busy these days.

I know. Let's dive into this whole idea of brain fog now before we dive into some of the things that you can do to fix it, first thing I want to know is I want you to really explain, like what besides the obvious of like, what we think it is, what, how do you define brain fog?

Yeah. So what's really interesting, I think the best definition is when people just don't feel like themselves. So they sort of detect, they can kind of notice that lack of sharpness, that fogginess that, you know, sometimes just a little bit of minor depression, minor anxiety, minor forgetfulness. But the condition doesn't really fall neatly into one diagnosis or another. So it's not really generalized anxiety disorder. It's not really, really major depression. It's not dementia yet. But it's just a combination of a little bit of all of those things, which I believe is because of our lifestyle and all of the things that we do primarily as Americans, from the way we eat, sleep, live, love, that are really setting our brains up for all of this fogginess.

And how common do you think it is to feel a little off, feel a little foggy?

I would say most people. So you know, in terms of at least in this country, so we know that anytime it's something that you know very, very well, whenever you are something that you are internationally known for is that blood sugar spike. So, you know, I don't think people are all that surprised. I think they need to know how to do that. But looking at all the people who are struggling with their weight, eating Too many processed carbohydrates, too much sugar, spiking that blood sugar too often, which is, by the way, most of America is struggling with their weight. We now know that that drastically increases your risk for brain fog, dementia, cognitive decline, depression. And we also know, it's also interesting that it's become so common that the American Psychiatric association had to create a new diagnosis to capture all of the mild forms of brain fog that are called mild neurocognitive disorder that don't yet meet the diagnostic criteria for dementia. So isn't it so interesting that what you do.

That's crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

It's crazy. Yeah. I can think of two such big examples with one of my sons who suffers from bipolar disorder. So he's even more sensitive to things. And if his blood sugar. If he had unstable blood sugar and sometimes when he was off with his dad and going off to school, he wouldn't have quite the best. His blood sugar would crash and bam. I'd get a call from the school. It was like, oh, great, there we are. Total trigger. I mean, it was the number one trigger for him. Because when you're younger, bipolar's rapid cycling. And I remember another time he was at school, and this is what's crazy in schools is he won a contest and they gave him a pound bag of M and Ms. As the prize. And I'm like, you handed a fifth grader a pound bag of M and Ms, like, and thought, you know what? Actually, he wasn't even in fifth grade. He was in second grade at the time and thought that he could handle that. Right? Like, so. And then another one, they called to come come get him. So we kind of know which things aren't so good for for brain fog, because obviously anything that could keep get your blood sugar unstable is going to create a problem. But what about foods that are good to help with brain fog and anxiety and different things like this?

Yeah, I have a couple that I love. Maybe I'll just talk about my top three. What's really interesting is if you combine. I have a recipe in the brain fog fix, and it's really simple. It costs you about a penny a day. It's called my wellness shot. You just put a half teaspoon of turmeric, a half teaspoon of black pepper in an ounce of water. We know in studies from rural India that because they have this a couple times a day in their curry, this mixture of the turmeric and the black pepper, they have 90% less, less Alzheimer's disease and their seniors compared to our seniors here. And brain scans have confirmed this benefit. And when you mix those two and you get those in the bloodstream and that pepper helps the tumor get into the bloodstream, that of course they can see that it blocks the accumulation of those plaques that can cause dementia, other forms of brain fog. Now, if we're talking about anxiety and depression, I have a list of the omega 3 superfoods in my book. And what's also really surprising, JJ, is that there is this. Everyone talks about wild seafood. Wild seafood. And that's primarily true. But I think a lot of people were surprised that this list from Harvard actually does contain a few fish that are farm raised. For example, rainbow trout has very high levels of omega 3 that can prevent anxiety, depression, dementia, other forms of brain fog, but also very low levels of toxins and mercury, which of course is not true for a lot of other fish like salmon, which of course you always want to eat wild. So it is sort of.

Don't you think that's the challenge though? Like, isn't that the challenge with fish is you don't know if the farmed or good farmed or bad farmed? I mean, that's the biggest confusing thing now is this fish thing.

I agree. Well, and you know, not to mention all the ways that restaurants and grocery stores try to trick you by saying, oh, it's fresh Atlantic. Well, what does that mean? Fresh Atlantic doesn't mean wild salmon.

Yeah, it's opposed to stale.

But yeah, it is a labyrinth to try to figure out what we're supposed to be eating. I even recommend to people when they get my book to take out their iPhone, take a picture of that list. So you always have it in the photo section of your iPhone.

That's great.

We really do need these decoders to eat these days.

No kidding. So you have got that list in your book.

I do.

Perfect. Because that's one of the things. It's the brain fog fix book. That's one of the things that gets really challenging is you kind of do this blanket of eat all wild fish, but it's just like eat all organic. You actually don't have to. We know some of the things you don't have to. You don't have to do organic. Some of the fish you can get good farmed fish, but it's sort of like, which way do you go? And then I want to back up to curcumin. I know the black pepper can help with absorption of the curcumin. But another thing that of course, helps is if you eat some good healthy fats with the curcumin too. So if you can throw that in with one of your. Maybe some ghee or something, even better. And then what's your third?

Absolutely. Probably olive oil. So, you know what's also interesting is looking at mental health diagnoses and inflammation and high levels of omega 6s. So, you know, that crap soybean oil is everywhere.

Let's call it what it is. That crap soybean oil. Crap.

That crap soybean oil. And you know, jj, it's crap. And you know, this also really makes me mad is when they put on a label made with extra virgin olive oil. And then you turn it around and you read the ingredients and it'll say, you know, number one, soybean oil, number two, canola. And then somewhere down the list there'll be a little extra virgin olive oil.

There's a dash of it. Don't you hate the distraction techniques that are going on out there? It's just crazy. Just like you just talked about fresh. It's like, well, what else would it be? You know, it's like not rotten, you know, so, yes, you have to, you have to flip these things over because you have to become a food detective. And that's why I love lists, shopping lists. Because otherwise, you know, how do you know? I mean, I recently got duped at the store and I was so upset about it. You know, I got some almond cheese and had this massive stomachache. And then I look at it and go, oh, my gosh, it's got casein in it. I'm like, why did they take. Why did they put dairy into the nut cheese when and not tell, you know? Come on.

Right, so. Right.

All right. Yes. I love those. I love your three foods. I'm totally down with those. Now. Let's keep talking food since this is a foodie audience. Foodie audience, foodie audience. And I just turned 53. Can't believe it.

I still remember 38, though. So that's good.

Thank you. Just for everyone listening, when they first brought. I got hired on the show that Mike and I were on together first, and then they brought him in, they had another guy in who quit. And thankfully, because I got the perfect costar, my perfect partner in crime. But you walk in, I'm like, I'm like, great, now I'm going to look like his mother. Well, yeah, I don't really look like your mother because I'm not Asian and Hawaiian, so I certainly don't. But still, let's talk senior moments.

I was referring to the age you.

Could be my half sister. So back over to senior moments, of which I don't have any and don't plan to. And dementia, what can you do? What foods can help? I mean, dementia is a scary, scary, scary thing. Do you have any of the stats of what's going on with dementia? It's crazy what's going on there.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean dementia and Alzheimer's tripling by 2050. So I mean this is something that is, it's really, really frightening. And I think it primarily, I mean, there's a lot of different factors. You know, we know that, for example, you want to sleep because you know what's really interesting is this recent research shows that, you know, when you sleep, all your neurons move apart. That's sort of your brain's wash cycle. So any of the gunk or the plaque that was developing gets sort of hosed down. And that's more efficient when you're sleeping because those neurons actually create a little space. So yeah, it's sleep and it's the way we live and pollutants and all that. But I think it's primarily about the changing American diet. I mean, when you look at the worst culprit, the fact that we're using these soybean oil, high omega 6s, factory farming, which I recommend in my book, when people do eat meat, I have a lot of stats because they are so brain healthy. Grass fed, pastured eggs, dairy, meat products. If you do eat those, I'm not telling you whether you should or you shouldn't, but if you are, you want to stay away from the facts and farmed versions because they have much higher levels of those pro inflammatory.

Oh, they're crap. They're just crap. We're calling everything crap.

They really are.

They're crappy. Just like the soybean oil. Yes, it's. You know, there is an interesting stat too, just on blood sugar balance. And if you have elevated blood sugar, like looking at your hemoglobin A1C, your blood sugar is, is averaging around 90, your risk of dementia goes up significantly. So it's just food is so protective here. And I love that you brought up sleep because sleep is such a biggie that I'm always harping on people about, like if I had to pick one thing of food, it would be definitely sleep. And now what about other, other things just in general to help you keep brain fog free? Besides changing your diet and besides the sleep, what else?

Yeah, so I have Some psychological and even some spiritual practice practices that have been proven to really help. So, you know, there's this meditation that I have in my book that the Alzheimer's association recommends because we see that this particular meditation can improve memory. There's also the most. I have this memory game. So there's all these memory games and you could play crossword puzzles and do the word search and all that. And all that's great because anything you're doing that's going to keep your brain active is going to help a little. But probably the best memory game which has even been shown to help 80 year olds improve their memories when they've already shown some decline in memory is called the N back. And I have a version of it in my book. Another really simple way to play the end back, that childhood game concentration is actually a version of the end back. So if you just take a deck of cards and you put, you know, take all the, you know, you can play with a deck of cards and take out all the numbers or take the, take the suits, take the, you know, the jacks, queens and kings and aces, put them face down and look for pairs or look for, you know, pair, threes or fours of that, just like you did when you played that game as a child. Because that is going to help to keep your brain sharp because it's targeting your working memory. Now, your working memory tends to decline as we get older versus, for example, crystallized intelligence, which is facts that you're going to memorize for Trivial Pursuit. That tends to be fine as we get older, but the working memory tends to go. So that N back is really significant because it can help to preserve that working memory.

Awesome. I've never heard about that before. So that's a good. And how do we go find that one?

Yeah, so it's in the appendix of my book. So the.

All right, perfect. The original.

Or you can use. It's in the book.

It's in the book. Get the book. Get the brain fog fixed. And speaking of that, if they go over to drmikedao.com and that's spelled D O W Dr. Mike Dow, what are they going to get there? Do you have anything cool for my listeners?

I do and you're in it. So that's even more, even more exciting.

Yes.

Well, if you go over to drmikedow.com now that's D R M I K E G O W. There's some free videos for the online class based on my book, which is called the Brain Fog super fix, which includes seven New York Times bestsellers and myself. So that's a total of eight New York Times bestselling authors, experts in all their fields, everything from medicine to nutrition to meditation, spirituality. And I have the best of the best as part of this course. I'm just really excited about it. And there's a bunch of free videos. So if you go to my website, you'll get some of those preview videos.

And we had a lot of fun doing that. Yes, we did.

We sure did.

We did.

I love watching you cook, J.J. because you know, I'm not a great cook.

And I'm a blender. I like to blend. That's my favorite way to cook. Throw it in the nutribullet. Hit go. Best of all. Well, thank you so much. And I want to remind everybody listening to go to Dr. Mike, you thank and thank you so much, Mike for joining me. So awesome having you on the show. Now after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's questions. So stay with me. What if everything you knew about food, sugar and health was making you fatter? Join JJ Virgin on her free Sugar Impact secrets webinar and discover the truth about sugar. JJ has helped hundreds of thousands achieve fast lasting fat loss with her fat burning strategies. And now it's your turn. Visit www.jjvirgin.com now to attend this free webinar and start to lose weight faster, feel younger and break the hold sugar has on you forever. Register for free at www.jjvirgin.com. welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. I love this time. And today's question is all about one of my favorite topics. It comes from Lynn Morgan and it is can you talk about leaky gut? What is it? Best foods to eat or not to eat. All right, Lynn, I sure can. So your small intestine should be semi permeable. Some stuff should be going out but not a lot of stuff. What happens with leaky gut is your gut wall becomes more permeable and things get out into circulation that shouldn't be out there. When that happens, your immune system goes what the heck is going on? And it launches an immune attack against things. So for ex usually this leaky gut is coupled with inability to really break down protein well because due to low stomach acid. So leaky gut tends to happen because of stress. Stress makes your gut wall more permeable. Gluten can actually release a protein called zonulin that can make your gut Walmart permeable. Fructose can actually poke holes in the small intestine and make it more permeable. A lot of different medications, especially pain medications, can do this. There's also some question about different, you know, things like artificial sweeteners and genetically modified foods, and some of those being an issue as well. But especially stress, gluten, fructose, and different medications are biggies here. And so what happens is you eat something and you should have enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach to start breaking down the protein. Because this is specifically a response to proteins in foods. It's not going to happen from the fat, it's from the proteins. If you haven't been able to break it down, well in the stomach, now it's getting into the small intestine. Now your gut's more permeable. And some of these things start to get into circulation, cross the barrier where they shouldn't be, and your body sees these things, they're called antigens, and it creates antibodies against them to basically neutralize them. The antibodies grab a hold of the antigens, create immune complexes. And if this was just happening a little bit here and there, occasionally you've got macrophages, little pacman that eat them up and get rid of them. But if we're eating the same foods all the time, and there's certain foods that seem to be triggers for this, classically you can do something called an igg test, and you can see them. And what I saw over and over again was that eggs and dairy and then gluten is actually a different test. In this test, I saw wheat, gluten is different, but for this, I'm going to say gluten, soy, peanuts, corn, tended to show up over and over and over again. And I think probably a lot of that is because they're ubiquitous. You look at the processed food diet, the standard American diet, Gluten, corn, soy, corn, eggs, peanuts, are in everything. And so that's a big part of the problem, is you have that response over and over, and it just takes a little bit. And then your body can't get rid of those immune complexes because there's always some around. The worst part about this is as you create these immune complexes and you create these antibodies when you don't eat the food, the antibodies are sitting there and wait for it, and they make you crave the very food that is hurting you. It's a catch 22. So what do you do? This is what actually the virgin diet's all written about is you pull out the most common offending foods. Those, plus sugar, of Course, because sugar is really disruptive to the gut microbiome which you need to stay healthy to be able to absorb your nutrients well and keep that gut, that small intestine gut protective barrier, good and strong. And of course artificial sweeteners are out altogether. So you need to do that but then also eat a lot of healing foods. Healing foods are specifically clean fish protein. Wild fish is really big here. That's why I wanted to bring this up after this Great interview with Dr. Mike Dow. Healthy fats because they reduce inflammation. So dehydrated nuts and seeds and especially chia and freshly ground flaxseed meal. Freshly ground flaxseed meal is really good here because it's very gut healing. Mucilaginous apples can be great here because the pectins help heal the gut as well. And then using a bright array of non starchy vegetables because all of those phytonutrients, the nutrients in the plants help reduce inflammation because the antioxidants. So those are some of my favorite healing foods. But the big thing here you want to do is pull out the offending foods and then swap in some of these foods. And then one of the other things I love to help heal the gut is I use things. I use glutamine powder, but I also use a blend. It's actually called my leaky gut support of a variety of different products including cat's claw marshmallow and N acetylglucosamine that can help heal your gut and reduce the inflammation. And I find that works really well to be on that for one to three months as you're going through the healing process. So that is my recommendation. Now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps out a bunch. And another thing that helps out a bunch is when you subscribe and share it with the show with your friends. That makes me be able to keep going with the show. So I hugely appreciate it. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you you are worthy dare to live a life that matters. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that can could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. 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