Alzheimer’s: Preventable or Inevitable?

Alzheimer’s. Is it inevitable or is it preventable? Alzheimer’s is a disease just like diabetes is a disease. It affects a particular central region of the brain. It’s largely not genetic. There are two genes that cause Alzheimer’s called a PP and entin, and they account for less than one in a hundred cases. And if a person is unfortunate enough to have these genes, they will get early onset Alzheimer’s in their fifties or sixties. And by the way, even if they follow the right diet and lifestyle path, the progress of the disease will be much improved. So what this means is for the vast majority of us, perhaps 99%, if we make the right diet and lifestyle choices early enough, we do not need to get this disease. It is not an inevitable consequence of the aging process. Now don’t just take my word for it. Researchers at the National Institute of Health in the US attribute 22% of the risk of Alzheimer’s to a raised homocysteine and lack of B vitamins, 22% to a lack of seafood and Omega-3 31% of Alzheimer’s risk to smoking 32% to a lack of physical activity and exercise and 24% to lower education, which means less cognitive use. It’s very important to use it or you lose it. People who retire before the age of of 61 have double the risk of dementia of those who retire after the age of 66. I’m 66 and I decided I should learn a new trick. So I’ve just graduated as a paraglider pilot license. My wife has bought me a base and an amplifier. So my next task to use my brain is to learn the bass because things like learning, music, exercise, dance, anything that requires a lot of coordination and learning is fantastic for the brain. Now a big study, including some of our experts at the charity, the Not-for-profit organization, food for the brain.org in the Journal Nature, using the data from the UK Biobank reports that right now if we acted on preventable factors and the UK biobanks survey, up to 73% of cases of dementia could be prevented. But they happened to ignore things that they haven’t measured, such as the role of homocysteine and B vitamins. So what we’re learning is that if you have a high intake of Omega-3 think fish and supplements, you cut your risk by over 20%. If you have a low intake of sugar, uh, you dramatically reduce your risk as well. Diabetics have twice the risk. Even people losing blood sugar control but not diabetic have an 18% increased risk. If you have a high intake of antioxidants from fruit and veg, you literally halve your risk. If you have enough B vitamins to keep your homocysteine down, that’s gonna cut your risk by probably a quarter. So when you put all these factors together with your diet and lifestyle, you soon realize that this is a preventable disease and you are in the driving seat. You are the architect of your brain’s future health. At Food for the brain.org, we are helping hundreds of thousands of people learn how to dementia proof themselves. And the way we do this is that dementia is diagnosed on the basis of a cognitive function test. We got permission to digitize this test and we’ve made it freely available to anyone. Takes about 20 minutes online at the website Food for the brain.org that measures your actual cognitive function right now. So that’s your kind of baseline. Then you fill in a questionnaire on your diet and lifestyle and a few medical questions and it works out your future dementia risk index. If you’re doing everything wrong, you may score up to a hundred percent. If you’re doing everything right, you’ll score closer to 0%, which is what you’re shooting for. And the test shows you exactly what is driving your risk and what you need to do about it. Let me tell you the story of Alan Norris. Nicknamed Nudge, his wife Dorothy started to find him at night in different rooms in the house because he couldn’t find the bathroom in his own house. He couldn’t leave his house and go to the village ’cause he’d get lost. He couldn’t both eat and talk at the same time. He was a computer programmer and he was struggling to turn his computer on or off, he couldn’t even think of tomorrow. He was an avid gardener, but the idea of planning your garden was way beyond his capacity. He was diagnosed with mixed dementia, which is both Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. They asked the doctor, what can we do? And he said nothing. So they went online and they found our website. Food for the brain.org. Sat down, did the cognitive function test, completed the questionnaire, and as you would expect, his cognitive function was very poor in the red zone. Actually. They were already quite healthy people by most standards. And what his test showed was a future risk of 56% and every area is shown as red, amber, or green. And two of the amber scores sleep in stress and active mind. They weren’t so good and B vitamins and brain fats, they scored yellow. So over the next few months, they took charge of his health. He went to bed an hour earlier to get more sleep. He was lacking sleep. He supplemented be vitamins. He took Omega-3, he cut right back on sugar five days a month. He went ketogenic, having very, very little carbs. Uh, there’s a kind of fat called C eight oil. It’s a type of MCT or medium chain triglyceride. You can buy it in the health food stores. He had two tablespoons a day. Those provide ketones for the brain, which helped to bring his brain back to life. He got physically active, he got socially active, and uh, gradually over the next six months, he dropped his dementia at risk index from 56% down to 30%. He turns his S into yellow and his yellows into green, and he more than doubled his cognitive function score. Now he’s back on the computer. He’s planted his whole spring garden and his wife Dorothy says, I’ve got my husband back from dementia. So Alzheimer’s is preventable. The sooner you take action, the better. Please don’t bury your head in the sand and think, I don’t want to know. You want to know where your cognition at is at. You want to know what’s driving your risk, because with a few very simple changes, just like nod made, you can bring your brain back to life. Get rid of brain fog, forgetfulness, increase your energy and make sure that you never have to suffer from this terrible and preventable disease. Alzheimer’s.