6 Ways to Naturally Improve Brain Function-Transcript from Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain

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So today, really want to get into the topic which is six natural ways, natural solutions to stop Alzheimer’s or Dementia. Alzheimer’s Dementia, it’s one of the biggest health issues that we face with our elderly population. There are so many people that are struggling and it’s important to understand that by the time somebody has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s too late. For most people, you don’t reverse the severity of memory loss. If you wait, if you don’t take preventative steps toward maintaining good brain health you could end up losing your capacity for your brain to function, so very, very important.

So as we go into these natural ways to stop Alzheimer’s, remember, it’s natural ways to stop it, not natural ways to treat it if you have severe memory loss and dementia. We want you to understand the key here with Alzheimer’s particularly is prevention and the reason why is the brain is one of the slowest healing tissues in the body. It’s not like the skin. You got brand new skin every four to six weeks. You’ve got a brand new gut every two to seven days. You’ve got brand new blood cells every three to six months. Some tissues are a lot quicker to turn over. Your brain cells, your neurons don’t turn over quite as quickly. They do turn over but we want to keep them healthy because they’re slower to heal and if we wait till they’re so severely damaged then the road back can be a lot longer.

Let’s dive in. There are six natural solutions to stop Alzheimer’s. Number one, eat fat. We have been living in a world where we’ve all been told, right, you see it on the news, you hear it from the American Heart Association. You hear from most doctors and cardiologists. They tell you fat, eat a low fat diet or a no fat diet. Just go to the grocery store, you see all the low fat no fat products. In the dairy aisle, everything is 2% or skim, right? You look on most of your package processed foods, a lot of this stuff says low fat. It was really, really popular fad in the ninety’s and it’s just kind of carried on and over.

We live in a society where fat has been demonized. It’s important to understand that we did a show on fat a couple months ago. If you want to dive into the fat details, I want you to go back and watch that show. You can pick that up on Gluten Free Society’s blog. If you just type in the war on fat, you can pick up that video.

Fat has a bad reputation and it’s not deserved. We want to differentiate. It’s not eat more fat that I want you to do to prevent Alzheimer’s, it’s eat the right kind of fat. Most Americans get highly processed hydrogenated fat, which is horrible for the brain, it’s horrible for the heart, horrible for the blood vessels, causes weight gaining, causes inflammation. So we want to avoid any type of oil that’s hydrogenated. These are typically your hydrogenated vegetable oils. Your [krisco 00:02:52], your margarines, the things that say hydrogenated soy oil or hydrogenated corn oil or hydrogenated vegetable oil. You see those terms, avoid of food altogether. You typically only find that in processed foods.

Now, the other type of fat that we want to make sure that we’re getting enough of is Omega-3 fat. Omega-3 is the type of fat that comes from cold water fish. Primarily, it’s really hard to get omega-3 if you don’t eat a lot of fish, at least enough Omega-3. Grass fed beef does have Omega-3 but it’s hard to source it from plants. Some people use flax or chia to get Omega-3 but that type of Omega-3 has to be biochemically converted by the body, so it’s a little bit harder for some people to convert those types of Omega-3 fats into their active forms.

Remember that a large percentage of brain tissue is made out of omega three fats, particularly a component of called DHA, Docosahexaenoic Acid, which is a very, very important type of Omega-3. While most people are eating, they’re eating high levels of Omega-6 which is the opposite of Omega-6. The Omega-6 fats tend to contribute to inflammation. The Omega-3 fats tend to help reduce inflammation. So you want to make sure that the type of fat that you’re getting in your diet that your diet is, again, Omega-6 isn’t evil or bad but if you have an imbalance and most people who eat heavy loads of grain, heavy loads of carbohydrates, have a huge imbalance of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fats in their diet and again that contributes to brain erosion. That creates brain damage.

Remember too, why are we eating more fat? Because the fat soluble vitamins. Fat soluble vitamins are fats. So vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, the way you get the bulk of those vitamins is through eating fat or fatty food. So if you’re avoiding fat or eating low fat, you’re actually reducing your overall intake of Omega-3 but also vitamins A, D, E, and K.

So, eat fatty foods and don’t be scared to eat fat. Eating low fat can kill you. Again, it’s about fat discrimination. So if you need more of the details on fat, go watch the war on fat. You can pick that up on glutenfreesociety.org. Blog post, if you just type in “the war on fat” you can pick that up.

Number two, minimize excessive carbohydrate intake. Now, some people follow a ketogenic diet, some people follow carb diet. Atkins was kind of the pro Genesis to low carb diet. I’m not necessarily even saying you need to follow a low carb diet. I’m just saying don’t over-consume carbohydrates. Most people, the percentage of carbohydrates in their diet on a daily basis is 60% or more of their total calories are coming from carbs. This is a bad idea. Remember what carbohydrates do.

Excessive carbohydrates break down into glucose. Glucose in and of itself is not an evil thing. Glucose is one of the precursors to generating our body’s energy source. Our body’s energy source is called A.T.P. and we need glucose to make A.T.P. The problem is when you’re over-consuming foods and you’re breaking down so much glucose that glucose hits your bloodstream. When you have too much glucose in your bloodstream, your body has to respond and the way your body responds to that is it either one, it converts that sugar that glucose into fat, triglycerides and then it stores it in your liver and it stores it around your heart and it stores around your intestines creating visceral fat, which increases inflammation and increases your risk of lots of different kinds of diseases.

So that’s one aspect of eating too many carbs. It actually converts into fat. One of the other things is that remember, just like if you were to spill glucose sugar on the floor, it would make the floor sticky. Well, same thing in your bloodstream. If you’re over consuming carbohydrates, you can make your bloodstream overly sticky and so then the proteins in your blood, there’s actually a scientific term for this is called glycation, G-L-Y-C-A-T-I-O-N. Glycation refers to when you have too much blood sugar and the sugar coats the proteins that circulate in your bloodstream so the albumins and the globulins and the hormone proteins that are circulating through your bloodstream, those are coated with sugar and they get sticky and they don’t work very well.

So now, when you have too much glucose, remember, you basically make your hormone carrying proteins, your vitamin and mineral carrying proteins, your immune proteins, you make them sticky and you make them less efficient at doing their job. And again, that’s called glycation. If you’ve ever actually gone to your doctor, if you were being monitored for diabetes, they’ll run a test called hemoglobin A1c. What this test is measuring is it’s measuring the glycation, it’s measuring the sugar on the protein in your blood called hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein that carries oxygen.

So remember, you eat too many carbs, you produce too much glucose. You put too much glucose in your bloodstream, that glucose causes a stickiness on the proteins. That stickiness on the proteins contributes to a diminishment in their effectiveness. So you get hormone dampening, you get lower deliverability of vitamins and minerals. You get a weakened immune system and then you get this subsequent inflammation because too much glucose actually also leads to an increase in inflammation. So then your body has to clean up that mess.

Again, just like if you spilled sugar on the floor, you’d have to clean that mess up with a hot mop, otherwise you’d have sticky drug all through your house with dirt and dust and everything else that comes with it. That’s very, very similar to what happens in your bloodstream.

The other problem with too much glucose in the diet is remember what glucose can do. If it’s too high, you have yeast in your gut, we all do. But too much glucose in your diet feeds those yeast. So now they start to grow out of control/ So you can get yeast overgrowth in your gut, which can then subsequently cause a leaky gut. Remember what else yeast overgrowth does, yeast is a fermentor so when you have an over aggressive population of yeast in your gut, when you eat those carbs, the yeast are using them as food but they’re producing alcohol as a byproduct.

When you over-consume carbohydrates, what you’re doing potentially is you’re increasing the risk for creating an intestinal distillery where you actually have your own wine distillery right there in your GI tract and you’re producing alcohol. You’re producing that alcohol then your liver has to deal with that alcohol. Your body has to deal with that alcohol. Remember, alcohol is also highly caloric. Alcohol by gram is seven calories per gram whereas a carb is only four calories per gram. A gram of alcohol is actually almost twice as caloric as a gram of carbohydrate.

But again, if you’re over consuming carbohydrate and you’re feeding the yeast, then you’re going to actually … Medical literature reports on something called Auto-Brewery Syndrome and it’s basically when you over feed your yeast populations and allow them to create again basically that brewery effect right there in your gut.

So we don’t want that because alcohol damages the liver but it also damages the mind, it damages the brain. Remember, this whole thing, we’re talking about how can we keep our brain healthy.

Now I want to bring up the third component which is maintaining healthy blood sugar level. So part of this, I know these are very similar things. One is not over consuming carbohydrates but the other is maintaining healthy blood sugar and there are a few different strategies here. Remember that when your blood sugar levels go up, when they’re riding higher on average much higher over 100, over 110, now we’re in this range where again we’re creating more of that sugar coating on our proteins.

Remember, what is Alzheimer’s also being referred to as. It’s being referred to as type 3 diabetes. Type 3 diabetes is what Alzheimer’s is now being referred to as. So maintaining blood sugar actually reduces your risk of developing type 3 diabetes. Again, Alzheimer’s Disease is synonymous with type 3 diabetes.

So, I want to talk about how you can maintain your blood sugar levels or really high you can monitor your blood sugar levels with your regular doctor or even if you’re not working with the doctor, there are certain tests that you can ask for that you can have ordered that will help you understand kind of where you’re at.

One of those tests is call the hemoglobin A1c or a HbA1c. Now you might have heard the commercials they’re coming out with now talking about the A1c test, it’s the same thing. It’s the hemoglobin A1c. Hemoglobin A1c levels for a healthy individual should be at least under 5.4. That’s where I like to see it in my patients, it’s under 5.4. So if your level is at 6, 6.2, your blood sugar averages are riding really quite high and that’s going to create a problem for you. So keeping that hemoglobin A1c level under 5.4.

Also testing your blood glucose. Now, there are a lot of different ways to test blood glucose. If you’re doing it through a doctor, generally, they’re having you fast and you do your first blood draw in the morning and you’re measuring blood glucose. Well, a normal range is 60 to 90, 60 to 90. Now the newer lab ranges over the last number of years have expanded. Actually, they’ve not expanded on both ends, they’ve expanded on the high end. Now we’re seeing labs call 60-100 normal and that’s not normal. We want to really keep that fasting glucose under 100 but preferably between 60 and 90. If it’s going over that 90 mark, you’re running higher blood sugars and that can be a problem.

Other tests that can be done is insulin, fasting insulin, so just another blood marker that can be measured. Keeping your fasting insulin at 5 or less is ideal. Remember, the less insulin you need, the better off your body is going to be. Insulin, if you overproduce it over time, that’s actually part of why diabetes occurs, but insulin also the more you make the more at risk for cancer you are, you put yourself in. So insulin is an important marker.

Another marker is leptin. There are some nutrient levels that I want to talk about that should be measured if you’re worried about controlling or maintaining blood sugar to preserve your brain function. These nutrients I’m going to talk about are very, very critical, very important. I actually did an entire video series on this, on blood sugar control that you can go back and watch but I want to mention them here.

Magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, Vitamin B12, chromium, Vitamin B3. Those nutrients are necessary for regulating how your blood sugar level is controlled. Those nutrients play a role in how your pancreas measures and monitors blood sugar. They play a role in how your pancreas makes insulin. They play a role in how well your insulin receptor is receiving that insulin and allowing the glucose to get out of your blood and into your cells where you can then make energy. And then those B vitamins, particularly vitamin B2, vitamin B12, vitamin B3 and vitamin B5 play huge role in breaking down the sugar, the glucose and converting it into energy.

So, again those nutrients measuring those are also critical. A lot of people go to their doctor, they just have their insulin measured, they just have their A1c’s measured and they don’t get that detailed nutrition information and so the doctor says, maybe your blood sugars are a little bit high but they have no idea why they are high, they only know that they are high. We want to know why they are high and the whys comes with nutrients. Remember, your body can’t regulate blood sugar without having appropriate minerals and vitamins so if you don’t know those answers, then you can’t really ascertain the origin of why the blood sugar is high.

Now one of the other things I want to talk about as it relates to maintaining healthy blood sugar levels also flows into number four which is exercise because one of the very best ways to maintain healthy blood sugar levels is make sure you’re moving and getting adequate motion and movement every day. So exercise, what do we know about exercise?

Number one, more muscle mass equals less disease. We know that muscle mass equals better blood sugar control. We know that movement promotes cerebral spinal fluid around your brain. The motion of your CSF, if it’s stagnant, the people that have sedentary lifestyles, the circular of their cerebral spinal fluid becomes stagnant. Remember CSF is a nutrient delivery and it carries waste away from the brain. It’s kind of a circulatory system around the brain that’s very critical. We want to keep it in motion and the best way to do that is motion is movement. Walking is one of the best ways to have good cerebral spinal fluid movement.

So if you’re not walking, if you work at a desk for eight hours a day, these are things that you want to try to, take periodic breaks and make sure you’re getting adequate movement. Movement again is important. So walking is an important part of this but walking is not going to build more muscle mass. So you want to have a strategy where you’re building muscle. My advice is and I mean unless you’re already in fantastic shape and most people are not. Most people aren’t horrible shape, they’re under muscled. Many of the ones that aren’t overweight are what we call skinny fat where they’re thin but they have no muscle tone and many of the people who are overweight, they have more muscle tone than the skinny fat people because they’re having to carry around that weight all day but they’re still under muscled and much of their muscle is marbleized and increases their risk of inflammation.

We want exercise. What kind of exercise helps to regulate, improve muscle mass but at the same time helps to generate the flow of CSF and helps to generate the flow of your lymphatic system. The best kind is high intensity interval training.

Now, high intensity interval training, this is another series I did several months ago on high intensity interval training because it’s so, so critical to get the right kind of exercise. A lot of people go and do 60, 90, minutes on a treadmill and they think that that’s going to be sufficient or they train for marathons and they think that that’s going to be a healthy sufficient way to exercise. It’s not. Those areas where you’re doing really, really long term exercise, the long bouts of cardio that, actually eats away at your muscle tissue over time. The second you quit doing them, you start gaining weight because you reduce your muscle mass.

On the other side, we don’t have to become meatheads and go to the gym and lift heavy weights all the time. High intensity interval training, my advice to you is do body weight activity. Body weight, pushups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, plank-holds, jump ropes, things that require your body and control over your body, not necessarily heavy weights. But applying these types of activities on a regular basis in a high intensity fashion is very, very critical for maintaining blood sugar. Very, very critical for maintaining but body mass. Very, very critical also for keeping the circulatory fluids moving so that your body can detox.

Kayla’s chiming in and mentioning yoga classes. I’ve got to agree. Yoga is a great way to exercise for flexibility. So there’s two sides to this coin. There’s the side where we want to improve our muscle mass but then there’s the side where we don’t want to build such big muscles that we’re so tight and we can’t move. We want some flexibility training in there as well and yoga is one of the best ways to add flexibility training to your workouts.

Personally, I like to do high intensity interval training but every morning before I start, I do a 20-minute routine where I’m doing a lot of different yoga stretches. Downward dog and some of the hip positions like warrior one, warrior two, warrior three positions. If you’re not familiar with yoga, you might consider taking a class or hiring somebody to kind of walk you through it or purchasing a video online that helps you kind of figure out yoga.

You don’t have to do like a uniformed 90 or 120 minute yoga class but you can pick up a lot of really great stretching techniques by taking some yoga classes and then if you don’t want to continue with classes, you can apply those at home in your own setting. So yoga is a really, really good way. Thanks Kayla for your input there.

Let’s move to number five which is being aware of medications that destroy brain health. This is an area where a lot of people just don’t realize that brain health can be deteriorated through a number of different types of prescriptive drugs.

So let’s start with some of the main ones that we know can contribute to dementia. Probably the one of the top of the list is the statin. That’s the drug, the Crestor, the Lipitor, the Zocor, that family of drugs called statins that lowers cholesterol. Remember that cholesterol won a Nobel Prize in medicine and this was over 10 years ago. Cholesterol won a Nobel Prize in medicine because it was discovered that you needed cholesterol to form brain synapses.

This war on cholesterol that we’ve had for the last 40 years is really, it’s overkill. Cholesterol has been demonized to the nth degree. I would say if you are on a cholesterol medication and your doctor is looking at you and saying you’re crazy if you get off this medication, I would definitely look to get a second opinion from a functional medicine doctor who’s experienced in this area because lowering cholesterol is one of the top reasons why we’re seeing Alzheimer’s skyrocket. We’re seeing we’re seeing so much more dementia today after decades of use of statin drugs than we ever had in the past. That’s not to say that stats are the sole cause of dementia but they definitely play contributory role.

One, because they walk less for all synthesis and so many cardiologist are acting in a manner where they’re trying to lower cholesterol too aggressively. Cholesterol below 150 can create suicidal tendencies and severe depression. So look at where your cholesterol is riding. If your doctor’s got you on a statin and he’s got your cholesterol way down at 120, you need to look at that as a potential threat to your brain health.

One of the other medications that can create a problem is metformin. No metformin is actually a medication to help control blood sugar. So part of what I’ve been talking about already, you’re thinking, okay, well why would I not take my Metformin if it helps control my blood sugar. The reason why metformin can contribute to brain deterioration is because it inhibits vitamin B12, it inhibits folate, and it inhibits Coenzyme Q10 or CoQ10.

Remember, these nutrients are very, very crucial and critical toward, remember, B12 is important for myelin production in the brain. Your brain is very richly myelinated. So if you’re on a drug that blocks B12, one of the thoughts behind why we think diabetics have so much neuropathy, part of it is the sugar damages the nerves but the other part is that the drugs used to treat high blood sugar block the vitamin B12 creating a B12 deficiency neuropathy. Remember, B12 creates the coating around your nerves that insulate your nerves including your brain.

So, if you are taking a drug for a long period of time that inhibits vitamin B12, you’re actually potentially damaging your brain’s ability and your spinal cord’s ability to produce the myelin sheath that helps your nerves properly function and work. So B12, remember, necessary for myelin production.

Folate is necessary for the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin and the neurotransmitter dopamine. If you are blocking serotonin and dopamine formation by taking a medication you can end up with some neurotransmitter deficiency that can deteriorate brain function. And then CoQ10. CoQ10 deficiency is actually been linked to neuropathy and cognitive decline in humans. Remember that metformin also blocks CoQ10.

What I said a moment ago which is statin drugs that block cholesterol or prevent the production of cholesterol, they also inhibit CoQ10. So now if you’re on a statin and metformin and many people are. They’re lowering their cholesterol at the same time time, they’re treating your diabetes. You’ve got two drugs there that are doing their worst for your brain health.

Another class of medications that I’ll bring up is the blood pressure meds. Excuse me. Number of your blood pressure medications actually they inhibit CoQ10 as well. CoQ10 is kind of a trend. A lot of medications actually interfere with CoQ10 production or uptake. Their number in the class of blood pressure medications that can block CoQ10.

Some blood pressure medications though also cause magnesium loss. They cause Vitamin B1 and they cause potassium and other electrolyte loss. Now why is that important. There’s actually a disease called Beriberi. Beriberi is the name of the disease of a vitamin B1 deficiency. There’s two forms of Beriberi. There’s a wet form of Beriberi that affects your heart and then there is what’s called a Dry Beriberi form. Dry Beriberi affects your brain because you cannot make acetylcholine, this is the primary neurotransmitter that your brain uses for cells to communicate to each other, you can’t make acetylcholine without vitamin B1.

So people that take a lot of blood pressure medicine especially the class of medicines that are known as diuretics, where we’re causing a lot of B1, and there are some diuretics that actually inhibit vitamin B1 uptake into your cells, this can be a disaster.

Let’s think about this because a lot of people with metabolic syndrome, which is high blood pressure, high cholesterol and they have diabetes or high blood sugar, they’re being given statins, metformin, and blood pressure medications all at the same time. So the top three drugs on the list that are brain destroying drugs are the same three that many doctors use to treat patients with these conditions.

All these conditions, right, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol can all be addressed with diet assessment and diet change. So, if you’re on those kinds of medications, your brain is that risk and if your doctor is not talking about diet and lifestyle, not just eat better and exercise but details, we want details. What does eat better mean? We want the devil in the details. You should have a doctor that’s talking to you about those things because lifestyle change is where it’s at when it comes to these diseases. Medications only mitigate some risk while they’re creating new diseases and new risk and causing nutritional deficiencies. They don’t come without side effects so you definitely want to make sure you’re addressing this.

Other medications that can contribute to poor brain function or deterioration of brain function, anti-acids. They can inhibit. When you block stomach acid, you inhibit calcium and magnesium and zinc and vitamin B12 absorption. So again, what did I say about B12? You need it to make myelin. What do we know about magnesium? Magnesium is necessary for a process called methylation. Your brain, to make neurotransmitters you need a lot of methylation. You need your methylation pathways to be really toned at home. And so, if you don’t have adequate magnesium, that’s just not going to happen very efficiently.

Another class of medications is the antidepressants and these are the SSRI’s, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. What they do, they don’t fix the problem. These drugs prevent your serotonin levels from breaking down quickly and recirculating. And so, they don’t fix the fact that a person might have low serotonin, they just make the serotonin that you do have to work harder. So it’s important to understand that those types of drugs, although for somebody who’s severely depressed, they may feel better when they start getting on them. If you’re on them for long periods of time, you can really, really run into problems with brain deterioration.

I would encourage you to read, there’s a really good book by Dr. Kelly Brogan called “A Mind of Your Own.” If you’re on any kind of antidepressant this is a book I’d highly recommend you read if you want to have some kind of help in kind of mitigating away from that. Dr. Brogan is a psychiatrist and so she actually … She moved into the functional medicine realm because of what she saw happening to her patients who were on these kinds of medications. Great experience in that book, it might be very helpful for you.

Okay, number six. Stop eating grain. That brings me to another good book. “No Grain No Pain.” If you haven’t read it, make sure you do. Go pick up a copy, you can buy it on Amazon, you can buy it in Barnes and Noble’s and most major bookstores but get your copy and read it. Grain contains so many different components that have been shown to cause what I call brainflammation, right, inflammation of the brain. Grains cause brainflammation through many different mechanisms. One of the identified mechanisms that we found is that gluten itself can create anti-bodies against your myelin which is the again, the coating around your neurons and the insulation around much of your brain tissue.

We also know that gluten can cause a leaky gut and that this leaky gut issue, okay, leaky gut contributes to things in your GI tract leaking into your bloodstream and then having access to your entire body. That means they can get up and they can start having access to your brain and your blood brain barrier and they can really create some major issues.

So leaky gut can lead to leaky brain. I actually published an article on this. There were a couple really great research studies done that I commented on several months ago. You can also pick that article up. It’s the leaky brain, if you type in “leaky brain” on Gluten Free Society you can pick that article up and read more about leaky brain.

Mycotoxins, grains are heavy mycotoxins which are mold toxins and these mold toxins can suppress the immune system creating chronic sinusitis infections and remember when you have a sinus infection, those infections get direct access to your brain through your nose. Your nose is a cranial nerve with direct access to the brain. Picking up an infection can start to alter the hormones that are coming out of your pituitary gland. The hormones like adrenocorticotropic hormone that regulates your cortisol level or it regulates your adrenal function. We’ve got other hormones like your thyroid hormone that can be affected by chronic sinusitis. Again, they can be caused as a result of mycotoxin exposure.

Then we also have the fact that we know that grains can alter the microbiome. Eating grains, it’s been well established and well studied that eating gluten can actually trigger changes in the microbiome that can be detrimental to a person’s health. Remember the microbiome, let’s think about this from the perspective of your brain. We have a gut brain too. You have more neurons in your gut than your entire spinal cord and the neurons in your gut have a direct communication line to your brain, it’s called the vagus nerve.

We think about how your gut talks to your brain and delivers messages through your brain. Part of that is controlled by your microbiome. If we’re altering your microbiome some of the bacteria in the microbiome make serotonin. Some of the bacteria in the microbiome make dopamine. As a matter of fact, about 90% of your serotonin in your entire body is made in your gut, not in your brain.

So, think about that for a moment. If we’re using a food that alters our microbiome and reduces our capacity to produce serotonin in the process, we’re going to start having brain and neurological and cognitive decline in deficits.

High omega-6. Now I mentioned this earlier. This is just another property of grain. Grain is high in Omega-6. Remember, high Omega-6 equals an imbalance in the Omega-6:3 ratio which can contribute to inflammation but the other problem here is that you need those Omega-3’s. The Omega-3’s are brain building nutrients or brain building fats.

The last one I’m going to talk about today in terms of grain and the negative properties of grain is the mold. The mold itself, grain the way that it’s stored before it’s processed it has a tendency to grow a lot of mold in it and so we see different molds species like [inaudible 00:30:38] and other types of molds found in heavier quantities in grain. A lot of people are allergic to mold. Mold can produce mycotoxins which I talked about earlier. We can get inflammation through that exposure and that can affect the mind and the brain as well.

Okay, so there’s your six, right? Your six natural ways to prevent brain deterioration. I want to dive into now some of the questions that are coming in. Let’s see here.

Adam is asking a question about movement and swimming. How about spring freestyle swimming in a pool. That’s okay. Again, you can use swimming as a high intensity exercise, to swimming in laps, to swimming aggressively. So if you’re doing like a freestyle stroke, don’t putter around, swim aggressively. Interval means basically certain quantity of time that you’re doing work and then in that a certain quantity of time that you’re doing rest. That’s what an interval is. A high intensity interval means that when you’re at work, you’re doing high intense.

So, don’t just kind of loll through the pool. You want to go high intensity through those laps and then rest and recover then go high intensity against. Yes, swimming can be a great option especially if you suffer with chronic pain and you don’t have the capacity to lift weights or do some of the other exercises or movements, exercising in a pool can be a very effective exercise as well.

Let me back up for a minute. If you’re in a pool and you have chlorine sensitivity, that can be a bad idea especially an indoor pool. Again, that’s just an individual note. “No Grain, No Pain” right? Yes, that’s the book. “No Grain, No Pain.” We posted a link for you, nograinnopainbook.com. Again, if you haven’t read it … I’m going to brag on myself a little bit. It’s the best book if you’re struggling with chronic autoimmune problems. It’s the best book for you to read because it has a strategy, it has a 30-day strategy for you to follow to get almost instant results.

Sylvia, thank you. “The best book ever written about it, please read it.” That’s a great testimonial to the book. Thank you so much Sylvia for chiming in.

Michelle, chiming in as well. “No Grain, No Pain. Awesome book.” Thank you, Michelle.

Let’s see here, Misty is chiming in. “What do you think of iron, copper and magnesium imbalances. This is the work of Morley Robbins at gotmg.org. That’s a big question. Iron, copper and magnesium imbalances. You could have imbalances of any nutrient and I would just simply say, iron deficiency can be a major problem, iron toxicity can also be a problem. There are some people where it just depends on the doctor and how they’re actually looking at it. Doing the right types of testing to be able to identify these types of imbalances is where it’s crucial.

Some people get told to go on iron without the appropriate testing. This happens all the time in pregnant women. The right types of testing, I can’t emphasize testing enough. So there are different tests to look at these levels of things. So, if we’re really looking at Copper, you can look at serum copper, you can look at free floating copper, you can look at a protein called ceruloplasmin which is very important indicator, because it’s a carrier of copper. It’s also a carrier of iron. If you’re iron overloaded you use your ceruloplasmin to kind of get iron out of the body and put a stress on your copper store.

If that’s what you’re referring to, those are just some general things. Magnesium it’s great. You can measure magnesium in red blood cells and looking for really a level over five and a half and then you can also look at magnesium and my favorite test is called the lymphocyte proliferation [inaudible 00:34:37] which is a type of white blood cell analysis of the intracellular quantity of magnesium. Again, there are imbalances in a lot of different things. This is just one of many.

Okay, Adam this is chiming in. When I stopped eating cereals and rice cakes my palpitations went away. This is a very, very common thing to see. When people cut grain out of their diet, you lose all those things I talked about. The inflammation, the antibodies, the leaky gut, the mycotoxins, the microbiome dysfunction, the Omega-6 ratio balances. All that starts to affect every organ every tissue in your body. Glad to hear that it was helpful for you.

Looks like we’ve got a big monster question here. Not related to today’s topic but my husband and I have been struggling with fertility issues for five years now. I’ve changed my lifestyle 180 degrees and have completely removed all grains, dairy, and soy. I have lost, wow 100 pounds. High five to you Amy for that, that’s fantastic. I’m now within a healthy weight range but we still have not been able to successfully conceive. Is there anything else you can think of that I can try to change or speak with my PCM about before looking further into fertility treatments?

Well, I’m going to say this is and this is going to be extremely offensive maybe to some of you but I’m just going to say it like it is. In my opinion, most of the time when people seek out fertility treatments, it’s one of the worst things that you can possibly do because your body is innately intelligent. Your body is so smart. It doesn’t want you to carry a baby if you’re not going to be able to carry that baby to term in a healthy way. Infertility is not actually a disease. It’s your body’s way of saying that you’re not healthy enough to conceive. Now, there are exceptions to that rule so don’t blow up on me yet.

There are exceptions to that rule. Some of those exceptions might include you take somebody who maybe had damage to their fallopian tubes or damage to their ovaries or uterus because of a preexisting inflammatory disease like endometriosis or PCOS earlier in life and now they’re trying to conceive and they’ve changed their lifestyle completely and they’re very healthy but they’ve had physical damage to the organs. Those are cases where fertility treatments might be helpful or something like an in vitro fertilization or something along those lines.

Most people seeking out infertility treatment options through heavy dose hormones and other things, it’s a terrible idea because your body is, again, your body can’t sustain carrying a baby in a healthy way or you wouldn’t have an issue with it.

Now, to answer your question Amy, there are a lot of things to look at. You’re doing a lot of things right. You’ve lost 100 pounds and that tells us that you’re doing a lot of things right. Some of the other key factors, one, you should be and your husband should be both tested for delayed food allergies or delayed food hyper sensitivities. These things can create a chronic inflammation that can alter hormone output and make a person infertile. So being tested for that would be on the top of the list.

Another type of testing I would encourage you to do would be what is called a lymphocyte proliferation test where you’re measuring your vitamins and minerals. I don’t know if I have it. What I’ll do is I’ll post it up after for you Amy. I have a diagram that I created on a nutritional deficiencies and the roles that they play in infertility and I agree might be extremely helpful for you. So I’ll make sure that one of my team posts that for you after this presentation so that you can check that out. But going getting those nutrient levels tested. Sometimes Infertility is a simple as a CoQ10 or a zinc deficiency.

Now one of the other things that you might want to do if you live in an industrialized city and they fluoridate the water, you need to have the fluoride levels pulled from your water. I’ve had a number of cases of infertility, patients with infertility where fluoride toxicity was the cause. So keep in mind if you live in an area where there’s a fluoridation process in the city water, pull that fluoride out of the water and stop being overexposed. Now there are also some tests that can measure whether or not you’re being overexposed to fluoride and that might be something that you talk to your doctor about as well. It’s a loading test, it’s a urine test measures fluoride output over 24 hours. Get that type of testing done and that might give you some insight as well, great question.

How often should our nutritional deficiencies be retested? I’ve been correcting alpha lipoic acid, vitamin C and B7 deficiencies for two months now after the testing. How long does it typically take to correct these things?

Depends on the type of test that you had done. Unfortunately, a lot of doctors do the wrong kind of testing for nutritional deficiencies. They use the serum. They use your blood and they’re measuring how much is floating around in your blood. Understand that vitamins and minerals, measuring what’s in the bloodstream is only a direct reflection of today because your level of nutrients in your bloodstream can change, can dynamically change rapidly so it’s not a real accurate indicator.

That’s why I like using lymphocyte proliferation where we’re looking at intracellular nutritional content. This type of testing, when somebody has deficiency with this type of testing, the supplementation is generally six months long, meaning that okay, if you’ve got these particular deficiencies alpha lipoic acid, C, you’re going to supplement with a therapeutic goes for six months and then you’re going to get retested and then you’re going to make adjustments in that.

So if you’re having the right type of testing perform, having it measured every six months and no later than eight months is ideal for prevention. I have mine done every six to eight months on purpose because I want to make sure I’m adjusting. If I need supplements or if I need to change my diet a little, I need certain nutrients a little bit more aggressively in different kinds of foods, I want to be able to preemptively do that because remember that the cure is not in the medicinal treatments of illness and symptoms. The cure is in the prevention. A pound of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Good questions

Oh, wow, you are right on it. Age 50, I develop type, I’m going to say type diabetes, I don’t know if that’s type 1 or type 2. I was put on all the drugs you mentioned immediately. I experienced brain deterioration. I went for help and they put me on Cymbalta. I’m currently undergoing neurology testing to get to the root of my memory loss. I have systemic sclerosis and Lupus. Yes, Sarah, you are being …

Far be it for me to tell you how to communicate with your doctors, it’s type 1 diabetes. First of all, type 1 diabetes shares the exact same genotype pattern as those with celiac disease. So Sarah, the likelihood that you are grain sensitive is about 100% in my experience and I’ve seen a lot of folks with type 1 diabetes and done their genetic tests and confirm that.

The fact is that probably a big part of your brain deterioration and a big part of your type one diabetes actually came from grain and dairy so you’ve got a probably a good idea to get those out of your diet and if you do that, then the need for all those medicines that you’re on is probably going to dramatically reduce and probably go away over time. My advice for you is that they’re not going to find an answer doing testing where they’re doing MRI’s, where they’re doing EMG’s or NCV’s. These are just tests that tell you what’s wrong. They don’t tell you why it’s wrong.

Understand that when we’re looking for answers, it’s one thing to know what, it’s another thing to know why and the what is only half. We really want to know what then we want to know why and so a lot of that testing … Again, I’m not saying that all neurologists are bad and that you shouldn’t see one. I’m just simply saying that in my experience, a lot of the neurologist test measure what but don’t measure why and then they leave you wanting because the solution when you know what is another drug and another drug is going to cause CoQ10 deficiency or some other type of problem and it’s just going to leave in a state of deprived deficit nutritionally without assessing the origin of why the issue is there in the first place.

Natalie is asking about reverse osmosis water. She purchased an RO water system at Whole Foods. Does she need to add minerals back in and if so how do I do that? You can but you don’t have to. I have an RO unit, I do not typically add minerals back in.

Understand this, that when you use RO, your water does become more acidic. Generally speaking, water coming from the city is typically around seven and a half to eight and a half at a Ph. When you run it through RO, the PH drops anywhere from four to five. So you have a more acidic water but you have to understand your body is a buffering system and if you’re eating healthy, if you’re eating lots of healthy vegetables, if you’re eating healthy food, then you’re getting nutrient buffers. You don’t have to worry about rebuffering your water because your body doesn’t have to work that hard to do it if you’re eating healthy.

You don’t necessarily have to worry about realkalinizing your water when you use an RO filter but if it makes you sleep better at night and makes you feel better, certainly you can do it. There are a number of companies that sell trace mineral drops, which you just squirt into the water and drink it. There are some companies that sell very expensive thousands of dollars machines that realkalinize your water. I don’t think they’re necessary. In clinic, I’ve never seen them be the reason why somebody couldn’t recover, the reason why somebody didn’t get better.

A follow up to Amy’s question. My husband eats the same as I do but I will have him check with the doctor regarding food allergy and tolerance. Thanks for your perspective. One other thing, I don’t know this can be for a man, it can kind of be a sticky topic but if he has had a semen or sperm analysis, that can also be very, very helpful. Doctors can measure the analysis to see how well, how fast swimmers swim and really they can measure their potency, their life, their longevity, how long they last because sometimes what happens we have a low sperm count, which for some men it’s a matter of changing underwear, for other men it’s a matter of it’s a matter of measuring now testosterone and making sure they don’t have zinc deficiency or other issues.

Low sperm count can be an issue. Low sperm motility can also be an issue. Sperm, there they look like little tadpoles under a microscope, right? They’ve got these little tails that wiggle. They’re called flagella those tails. Poor sperm motility is caused by these little tails not really whipping effectively. One of the things that causes low motility of sperm in men is CoQ10 deficiency. Another thing that can cause it is zinc deficiency and another thing that can cause it is in the anti-oxidant deficiency. So those are just again additional things that you can look into.

Is there a test for leaky brain? No, there’s not a test for leaky brain. The test for leaky brain is do you have brain fog, do have poor memory, do you have a hard time with word recall. I mean, if you’re having severe enough brain fog where that’s happening, then there’s a strong likelihood that you could have a leaky brain. There’s not like a clinical test that we can measure the permeability of the blood brain barrier. It just doesn’t exist at this point.

Okay, looks like I got all the questions answered. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll be back again live next week to answer your questions. If you’ve got topics you’d like to see us cover in the future, forward those over to us. I’m happy to entertain them. We want to be here for you and help you and your families find and reach a greater or higher degree of health and that’s what we’re about here on the Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain Show.

Also, if you’re not subscribed, go to glutenfreesociety.org. Sign up for our newsletter, the quantity of information we put out every week is fantastic and also will help you navigate going gluten free. True free or grain free.

The other thing I mentioned to do, again, go if you haven’t. I want you to take advantage of the 16 years of clinical knowledge and experience that I have and one of the best ways to get that in an easy to read synopsis is No Grain No Pain. You can pick that up nograinnopainbook.com.

So, you guys have a fantastic weekend. We’ll see you back next week, take care. 6 Ways to Naturally Improve Brain Function