Dementia Expected To Double By 2030: What can We Do?

okay this is an article I’d like to have your feedback one of the research shows I thought we were done this is from the Daily Mail which is a British newspaper dementia cases to double by 2030 says World Health Organization the number of people suffering dementia around the globe is expected to nearly double to 65 point 7 million sufferers by 2030 the World Health Organization has warned by 2050 it is likely to rise 70 percent above today’s figure of 30 5.6 million sufferers dementia is caused by a variety of brain illnesses that affect memory thinking behavior and the ability to perform everyday activities Alice homers disease is the most common cause of dementia and makes about 70% of cases the report published with Alice hai MERS disease international said there are 7.7 million new cases of dementia reported each year and then skipping down to the article it says the study also highlights a general lack of information and understanding about the disease so if you could each tell me what what the research shows the new guys first I just read the article that came out in the past six months from Dale Bredesen who’s a dementia researcher in Los Angeles and my sister lives 45 minutes from his clinic and she has dementia my mother had dementia and I don’t remember what you call it Oh Alzheimer’s yes yeah old-timers so in this study he reported on 10 patients nine of whom recovered they were moderate to severe Alzheimer’s patients one did not recover and was the most severe case but the others returned to their normal lives including back to work and my mother left library science at the journalism school and Columbia Missouri early she couldn’t remember how to do the Dewey Decimal System so to me this article was the first I’m sure others have read other articles that are introducing the concept of the reversibility of dementia and they had 30 different interventions and the person who is healthy in their living but everyone in their family had the disease got a different mix of those 30 interventions to turn them around than someone who was a couch potato and ate only garbage and and had no meaning or comfort in life and we’re getting dementia that was a whole different set out of the 30 so an introduces several concepts one is that there’s such a multifactorial cause of diseases and we’ve grown up in a system that wants to find one cause one solution one pathway to fix it and we realize then in a few months or years that it disturbs that disturbs lots of other pathways so this idea that there’s multiple pathways and different people have different sets of needs so there’s the personalization of the care once you begin to get the idea of what to do so that’s very important and and the idea now that when something new like this happens and is put forth we need to have it documented in many different hands and many different settings before we understand how it’s really going to work for example like the potassium in the whole foods plant-based diet might need a little filtering when you are working with an advanced kidney disease patient so I think this is very exciting and I don’t think we know how to use that tool yet unless some of the other panelists do but that’s our work is to stay on top of that because we are the generation of people that that news story was talking about Dale breda son BR e de Sen right and it was published in the journal aging AG ing I love what you said about this being such a multifactorial disease and I think what we’re just starting to understand is it’s not a disease that’s just the luck of the draw it’s another lifestyle disease and if we’re a consuming plant-based you know a plant-based diet we can help to reduce oxidative stress we can help to reduce the process of atherosclerosis and the blood vessels in the brain we can increase you know antioxidant status we can decrease inflammation there are so many things we can do but there are also things that we need to be very conscious of and I think one of those things is having sufficient essential fatty acids in the diet and there are some people that that are really doing an extremely low fat diet and their intake of essential fatty acids may be so low that they’re they’re not producing enough of the biologically active forms of omega threes the eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid that are important for brain health and so these are things that need to be considered as we’re trying to put together a truly optimal plant-based diet and so there are some studies showing that vegans have a reduced risk and some studies have actually shown an increased risk and I think it really depends on the quality of the diet so we were wanting to maximize the components of the diet that are protective minimize the toxic the there are so many components in the diet they all of the persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals and so forth that are neurotoxic and can contribute to these kinds of diseases so I think we need to be conscious of that but we also need to be conscious of getting enough essential fats getting enough vitamin D getting enough of the essential nutrients like I’m on oh yeah well let me I can continue on that note just to give a little more information the I’m a person in complete agreement that these phytochemicals and antioxidants present in a broad assortment of natural plant foods protect the delicate membranes and tissues of the brain and the eye the eye is a window to the brain and the people get macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy and their if they have eye disease they have brain disease too and you could see the disease in the II’s and you can see the disease in the brain but we know that those diseases of neurologic tissue are protected by the broad assortment of phytochemicals in green vegetables in red foods in purple foods in other words blueberries and blackberries are very protective in and green vegetables especially green cruciferous vegetables are very protective in the your channel sulphide compounds and onions are very protective and so there are so natural plant foods eat in their natural state supply the brain and the rest of the body with nutrients it needs for normal function to allow us to live a long and healthy life without getting degeneration of these organs but when you eat a diet that so high in processed foods and animal products both which neither will contain phytochemicals and antioxidants our tissues suffer with a buildup of free radicals and advanced glycation end-products build up and destroy neurologic tissue and we get poor circulation to the brain and shrinkage of the brain with aging and once you get significant shrinkage of the brain you lose memory and you you’re somewhat cemented in that part is not reversible you can’t grow back a new brain you can’t grow brain tissue can’t regrow and a lot of dementia is not reversible but it would have been preventable and so the major cause of dementia is atherosclerosis and lack of oxygen and nutrient delivery of the brain from a poor diet now on the other hand what Brenda just brought up is the fact that some vegans are placing themselves at risk of having dementia with later life number one if you’re gonna be on a vegan diet a healthy vegan diet and you live you got a little lot longer and you’re not gonna have likelihood of having an early life death due to court sudden cardiac death or heart attack or cancer so you might live to be 85 90 95 100 years old more chance for you have brain injury or memory loss or dementia in your later years if you don’t take care of your health when you’re younger and a lot of vegans are taking risks with their health because their fervor and excitement about the enthusiasm for this diet makes them feel I think and vulnerable to think that they don’t have to be careful with nutrients that too may have adequate nutrients we did a study or I should say the people that I was involved with did a study on 166 vegans who are not supplementing with EPA and DHA but most of them were using adequate levels of flaxseed or flaxseed oil or walnuts and we found that at 167 people 67% were borderline deficient or insufficient based on a omega-3 index of being four or above the lab considers 6 or above ideal that we considered for adequate and 67 people fell I think it was 67% fell below four well that meant that about you know there’s certain percent more adequate did have adequate levels but the but the more concerning part was 27% were below 3 in a small percent I think five or six percent were below two in other words there were some people that were very very deficient in their omega-3 index which could forbode them developing dementia in their later life but yet there’s a broad spectrum of our of the vegan community thinks that’s not necessary but their facts are and studies haven’t been done – no that’s not necessary and we have to err be conservative here and err on the side of caution and make sure if their people are going to be on a strict vegan diet they either check a blood test to check adequacy or they take a low dose supplement and and we did in the study when we took the people that were deficient we supplemented them later with a very low dose about two hundred milligrams of the epa DHA combination and almost all of them I think 49 out of 50 became sufficient with that little tiny dose you didn’t need much the body in other words the body utilizes that small amount if it needs it it doesn’t whereas if it didn’t need it it wouldn’t utilize it and I don’t think that the omega-3 omega-6 index is that important because if you’re thin and not eating fat a lot a lot of them if you’re burning off your calories you’re not storing a lot of omega-6 fatty you’re burning it for energy and your body can take the omega-3 from the Ala you have a walnuts and flax seeds and a little bit of maybe algae derived eh-eh you’re taking and hold on to that utilizing it appropriately on the cell membranes in the brain but one thing I wanted to add is that we looked at the data in this study and we try to ascertain whether the people who were low were those not eating walnuts in flaxseed or any ala maybe it was maybe we could have had the fact that if they ate enough of those precursors to DHA and EPA they would produce enough and we found that that didn’t help that wasn’t true there was no good correlation between the ala consumption and the epa and DHA the DHA consumption meaning that the primary differentiating feature between with for deficiency was genetic differences in conversion enzyme activity that this is that some people just produce it adequately and other people don’t and we and and some think some people absorb certain nutrients less effectively than others so it’s a little bit of a little bit of caution that I’m you know that we’re talking about here that there are some people in the vegan community don’t recommend eating nuts and seeds don’t the diets are too extreme are extremely low and fat and they also don’t recommend taking an EPA or DHA supplement and that combination can be potentially risky for some people if they live long enough later on in life and we want to make sure that that’s not that thrusts who really want to live this way we want to make sure we’re protected or at least being conservatively careful here this is an important subject so I’ll try to share as concisely as I can the experience I have with this a number one so everyone knows the numbers probably everyone here knows it that my generation the baby boom generation it’s conservatively estimated that 25% of us will have Alzheimer’s disease I didn’t say dementia memory loss Alzheimer’s disease this equates to millions of people worldwide many of you listening today take heed to what we’re saying the second thing so we don’t alarm anyone about vegan diets being deficient this is the least deficiency diet on the planet earth meat dairy diets are deficient diets but erring on the side of caution is something that I’m completely in agreement with now 20 years ago Framingham which is a offshoot of Harvard who everyone admires if you like research when Framingham says it you know it’s it’s correct they came out with a study and said that standard medical blood tests were not correct on b12 and up until then Hippocrates Institute was to come to place in the vegan community globally because we had done thousands and thousands and thousands of blood tests many reflecting the b12 and we bet that that was correct Framingham told us it was not so I get a new a panic because I’m out traveling the globe telling people b12 is important now why are we speaking about b12 it’s the most important nutrient to stop memory loss dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and neurological disease it’s the number one most important we then rapidly adopted a nutritional blood test and I had never done that as a nutritionist before because I thought they were all frauds they were taking blood out seeing what was floating around in the bloodstream and saying you had it or didn’t finally a philanthropic gentleman in Texas who reversed disease I believe it was cancer on diet funded endlessly the University of Texas and they created something called spectra cell test and so 20 years ago 19 years ago we adopted that and this is a very definitive test hold your horses out there in the world in here seventy percent of the population of the world lacks b12 meat-eaters dairy eaters fish eaters chicken eaters have about a seven to eight percent higher incidence of b12 deficiency then do vegans and vegetarians raw food vegans out of Fontana’s work Washington University st. Louis shows us raw food vegans have the least now why because we’re the best we’re wonderful no because b12 is a bacteria from soil if you’re a vegan you’re cooking your food the bacteria is dead if your meat eater a fish eater a chicken eater or dairy eater you’re cooking your food and you’re not eating vegetables so of course you have a slighter high but vegans and raw food vegans have b12 deficiencies too so the one supplement that our medical team absolutely suggests all of you look into and think about taking is a proper bacterial form of b12 if you don’t take any other supplement please do that but then I completely concur with what was said here studies done in Los Angeles which I’ve read by the way and dr. Fuhrman essential fatty acids are incredibly important now you’ve been conned by the fish oil and fish industry to think fish oils a great source it is not a great source I said last night and I’ll repeat again the international organization the number one organization on oils discourage the consumption of fish oil so do I and I’m sure everyone here does too because it leads to disease cancers heart disease yes art disease etc where do fish get their oil from Joel basically alluded to it from algae so part of the Hippocrates diet for 30 years have been algae fewer at Hippocrates and on the diet you’re on algae and it is the only Omega oil that literally is identical to the fat that makes up your brain so when we take flax or we take walnut that happens but it’s so miniscule amount you know if you take a pound you may get a little tiny bit so going directly to the algie’s or my suggestion now if you have a deficiency they actually make an extract from the algae and I highly encourage you finding that on the internet I’m sure you can find that and consider that that’s what our medical team would tell people to do the next thing is my wife wisely calls dementia and Alzheimer’s stage 3 diabetes there has been plethora plethora of research that shows that high sugar contents lead to memory loss dementia etc so removing that and Sunday to close the conference be having a 90 minute conference on sugars and all the latest research and will touch on dementia with that but when I was writing a book for the Swiss 15 years ago called longevity I said as long as I don’t just have to write about nutrition I’ll do this and I was then looking at the best research on dementia of memory loss etc it was being conducted at Harvard at that point by a very young man who was interested in centurions and when they had discovered the classic gene for Alzheimer’s disease they found centurions 100 year old people that had the exact gene but didn’t have dementia and was it a food commonality that prevented that no it was use of mind now in those days they were doing crossword puzzles now we do luminosity or the computer program for it these were very active social people they were dating 100 year old they were out dating they were socializing they had a community that surrounded them so let’s not only get stuck on the dietary aspect or supplemental aspect memory use is going to keep you young and you know that how many of you have known somebody that was complete completely vibrant at 70 or 80 and their wife or husband died and within months they lost it completely and the last thing I’ll have to say about this is that you’re going to end up with much more dimension because of the lower oxygen counts if you saturate the bloodstream in the veins the vent vesicle vessels of the body with animal fat it’s just common sense if you grab your neck and squeeze it hard you’re not going to be very conscious in the short time and you’ve been figuratively grabbing your neck and squeezing it hard by filling your veins up with whipped cream and every other ungodly thing that you seem to have liked in the past so diet does play a role but there’s more than just diet involved in this issue I think I’d like to add something about b12 and we maybe we should just talk about that briefly this is important because you brought it up and that is that the b12 blood test the normal is considered let’s say between 250 and 900 and the and what you starts will Lou – which is true and that a normal bleep b12 blood test between 250 and 500 or between 250 and 450 doesn’t guarantee that you have normal b12 even though it might be normal in that range but it may not be and that’s where we sometimes draw a test called it called an MMA methylmalonic acid or even a homocysteine but a mathematic acids usually better could help differentiate that borderline low b12 whether it really whether more is needed or not but one thing we have to keep in mind that as we age that the need for b12 increases because we are absorption and utilization of b12 can decrease and we can have less production of intrinsic factor in the elderly so we have to be concerned about b12 deficiency being a cause of memory loss of problems in later life so it’s important to make sure you have adequate levels that’s high enough and and the other thing to recognize is that the RDI for b12 which i think is 4 micrograms a day is not adequate for a vegan because if you are on a animal product based diet and you’re having a little animal products 20 meals of the week and you’re absorbing 1 or 2 milligrams per meal and you get 4 or 5 micrograms a day or add it up that’s gonna work for you but for a vegan who’s taking a b12 supplement once or once a day or once every other day you’re not going to absorb a lot of that supplement you’re not going to so but you’re not like you only absorb a certain limited amount and maybe you only absorb two milligrams you took 10 milligrams or 5,000,000 Li absorbed to that’s once a day you didn’t even get the RDI into you and that may not be enough so the point I’m making now is that if you’re taking supplements to make your b12 need you have to go a little higher because you’re not getting them regularly each meal we have to take like 50 to 100 or 200 if you’re on especially as we age to go a little higher as we get over the age of 75 when you twelve absorption goes down because we can absorb it not through the normal intrinsic factor receptor mechanism but by diffusion when we take a higher amount we can get the extra amount into us so I think it’s important that we become a little bit of like b12 experts maybe you could add to that it doesn’t matter it’s the type of b12 is it bioactive or is it not is that the chemic chemically made b12 or not this to me is the most pertinent question just to clarify the RDA is 2.4 micrograms 2 point and 2.4 micrograms and and but that is not sufficient to keep homocysteine levels down and when homocysteine starts to rise our risk of heart disease and dementia and even problems with birth defects and so forth also begins to rise and so most experts are suggesting that if you’re taking 2 things that’s really important to know number one is that the Institute of Medicine recommends that everyone over the age of 50 so regardless of whether or not you consume animal products everyone over the age of 50 should not rely on animal products for b12 and that is very simply because you must cleave the b12 off the protein it’s bound to which is bound to in animal products in order to be able to absorb it and probably somewhere close to 10 to 30 percent of people over 50 don’t produce enough enzymes and acid to be able to actually do that job of cleaving the b12 off the protein and so it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re vegan or non-vegan and what’s really important is vegans may actually be at an advantage if they’re using a regular supplement whereas non vegetarians may think they’re fine because they’re getting b12 in animal products and they don’t even realize that there that risk after 50 so that’s important to know so what do we recommend we recommend experts recommend somewhere thousand to twenty five hundred micrograms two to three times a week okay and if you’re consuming methylcobalamin then you because it’s slightly less stable you may need to be taking a thousand micrograms daily rather than two or three times a week and the other thing to know is if you’re taking it on a daily basis the recommendations range from about ten to about 250 micrograms a day and we still don’t know for sure exactly how much is needed because it’s different for different people depending on how efficiently you’re able to absorb it so I think those are just a few other things and I was just when you mentioned b12 I went what did was I brain dead when it was forgetting to mention b12 because it is hugely important in V vegans who are not supplementing tend to have levels of in the 120 to 160 range as opposed to 400 plus range that they should be at so this is you know it’s just don’t fool around with b12 make sure you have a source you know being in practice for 25 years and taking care of a lot of people in the vegan community I’ve seen a lot of people develop john beech severe b12 deficiency there was a contingency of people who felt that b12 was not necessary and that you know a healthy diet of natural foods we give us all we need and I’ve seen people die from b12 deficiency I had one young man came to me he was a national champion kickboxer and he couldn’t walk he was couldn’t stand up he couldn’t balance himself and couldn’t walk anymore without assistance yeah because it affects you neurologic you longer nerves first and but he made a recovery actually would be 12 supplements he got well and he told people on his radio show they recovered a mess really but and then I actually had you know that I knew somebody who actually passed away because of a super high homocysteine but a b12 level of 40 b12 was 40 and his homocysteine was up in the 90s actually an ATM developed atherosclerosis and had and died it would be 12 to 15 i neva knew a person years ago who came to me because she was a big her guru said you don’t need b12 and I told her you you know she that you don’t need b12 and she was actually your you know near dying it’s and still refusing to take b12 you know because she had developed this problem I have other I had another woman who was um actually paralyzed and couldn’t walk for a long long time and got somewhat better but didn’t get all of function back from b12 deficiency I’ve seen a lot over the past years you’ve let you let us into a good conversation here both of you I think let’s talk about the symptoms of b12 deficiency pernicious anemia is one of them so if your nose is tingling and you’re scratching it a lot your hands your extremity or your feet your toes that’s Perdition anemia now you’re lucky if you see that because some people could get into paralysis like Joel just said you’re starting to lose your memory and you may have been perfectly fine a year ago now you’re skipping a lot you don’t really see that you may also have dizzy you know and it’s not low blood pressure of course you have low blood pressure that’s possible or blood sugar problem but if you’re having these symptoms and know you’ve gone to a physician and know you don’t have either the above you have to look at the b12 and again when I look at 70% of the population globally we work with an international audience lacking this this is not a small issue this is not a small issue at all this is the most important issue you’re probably going to hear us speak about tonight so please look into this and learn about it and read about it and begin supplementing if you take a proper b12 you cannot take too much the early signs are tingling of the feet would be an early sign