Strategies to Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk

You’re listening to Boomers Today with your host Frank Sampson. Well, welcome to Boomers Today. I’m your host, Frank Sampson. Of course, each week we bring you impward and very useful information on issues facing baby boomers, their parents and other loved ones.

And as I do on every one of our shows, I thank all of you, and I thank all of you because so many of you are sharing our entire podcast individual shows with family and friends, and that’s how our listeners are growing each and every day. So thank you for doing that. So many of you listening on either Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, other podcasts, stations that have come up as well, or many of you just go to Alex and Siri and I asked them to take you to Boomers Today. Some go to Boomers todayradio dot com.

So again, thank you. But I do know why you’re sharing our shows with friends and family, because we have just fantastic guests and I’m not going to disappoint you. Today we have with us doctor Mark Milstein, who is the author of the international best selling book The Age Proof Brain, nominated for the Next Big Idea Book Award and translated into seven languages worldwide. A leading brain health researcher and international keynote speaker, doctor Milstein specializes in translating cutting edge neuroscience into clear, actionable strategies to optimize brain health, lower the risk of dementia, and boost happiness and productivity.

Doctor Milstein earned his PhD in Biological chemistry and a Bachelor of Science a Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from you CLA, where he conducted research in genetics, cancer biology, and neuroscience. His work has been published in multiple scientific journals. So, doctor Milstein, thank you so much for joining us on Boomers today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, thanks for having me here. Yeah, it’s great, great to have you. So a lot that we’re going to discuss. We’re going to pack it in into this approximate half hour here.

But you know, as you know I mentioned too, I’m in the Senior Services. We work with families across the country. And a question I’d like to start with is, you know, it’s wonderful that you’ve dedicated your career to brain health. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about aging about memory? What do you think that is? And maybe there’s more than one, but I’ll let you tackle that.

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that there’s nothing we can do that we are you know, there’s a destiny based upon our genes or our family history. And what we really see clearly is that there are things that we can do and we can really have much more control over our long term and short term brain health. We understand specifically with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, that you know ninety five to ninety seven eight percent of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease are not strictly based on genetics, and there are things we can do that can significantly lower our risk.

So genes can play a role, but they’re not our destiny. And even with day to day memory, there’s just a lot we can do. We have much more, much more control than we ever thought. So you already I think, kind of answered my second question I was going to ask, is cognitive decline inevitable? Or do we have more control than most people think? So give me some of you know, we don’t have to give in necessarily all the details, but generally speaking, what kind of control do we have? Well, we understand that we’ve identified certain risk factors and lifestyle interventions that we can do.

And the hopeful side of this is a lot of them are really simple and they’re not you know, expensive supplements or you know biohacks or the things that we’re seeing on you know, TikTok. They’re just things that we can do each day. And what we see is that when we pull them together, that we really see a significant impact. We understand that we can lower risk for things like Alzheimer’s and dementia anywhere from thirty to sixty percent based upon some lifestyle factors.

So yeah, a lot lot more control than we ever thought, and that makes us very hopeful. So we’re going to get into some of those in a bit. All right, But I guess how do we know those studies had probably had to start decades ago to have to know that hey, this will this can lower your chances. Have the studies gone on decades? How do we know? Yeah? Absolutely, they’ve gone on for decades, and so people have been tracked for decades.

And we look at population studies and there’s a lot of you know, statistical analysis that has done to analyze which factors are actually having an impact and which aren’t. And we clearly see that there are things, you know, across multiple studies and what we call these meta analyzes, where we you know, pool good studies together and throw out the bad ones, and we clearly see essentially over and over again that the same things keep coming up that have an impact. Yeah. So I asked this question to pretty much everybody with an expertise in more in dementia and the various types of dementia.

But I want to ask it again because we get new listeners and it’s just something people need to know. But maybe you could explain in Layman’s terms, all right, just the difference between when you hear dementia you hear Alzheimer’s. There’s other types of dementia. But explain kind of the difference because you hear from people.

Listen, I’m sure you do. I do hear from people all the time. Yeah, I think my dad has dementia. Well was he diagnosed well, not really well, but he might have Alzheimer’s.

I mean, you know, people are very confused. Yeah, so maybe you could help clear that up. Very understandable confusion because for a long time those terms were used interchangeably Alzheimer’s and dementia. But it really it’s important we talk about this because we want to separate those terms out.

Because the way that we think about it now. Is that dementia is just significant issues with memory or changes to personality, having trouble making decisions to the point where it’s interfering with one’s ability to get through the day. And there’s many things that can cause dementia. There are head injuries, there’s side effect, side effects to medications.

There’s a long list of things that can cause dementia. Alzheimer’s is one specific disease that causes the symptoms of dementia. And the way that I always like to think about it is that you could have a running nose. That’s a symptom, but many things can cause that running nose.

You could have a cold, you could have allergies. But we really do want to think about separating out those terms Alzheimer’s and dementia. And the reason why is that. Dementia is we want to dig deeper if somebody is showing signs of memory loss or issues with their memory cognition, because about eighteen to twenty percent of all causes of dementia are highly treatable, so it would be tragic if we were just thinking, oh, there’s nothing we can do, and we always want to dig deeper.

So it’s exactly what you said, is that we want to always dig deeper figure out what the root causes, and that. Really informs what’s possible and what can be done. Yeah, people are probably going to be shocked when they hear this answer. I don’t know the exact answer, but you probably do.

But how many different types of dementia just the number how many different types of dementia are there? Approximately? Well, there’s over there’s over like a hundred causes of right, So it’s it’s a it’s a high number. You know. Some of the most common causes. Alzheimer’s is one of the most common.

There’s vascular dementia, there’s front frontal temporal dementia. There’s issues with as we said, side effects to medications, head injuries. There’s a long list. There’s underlying conditions, a long list of them that can cause issues with with with dementia.

So it is really important to get past the idea of, oh, you know, somebody showing signs a loved one or one self and there’s nothing we can do. We always want to dig deeper because there are things we can do. Okay, So I’m going to put you on the spot here. Don’t don’t be mad at me, all right? In your opinion, do you think that there will be let’s say, in your lifetime you’re younger than I am.

Okay, all right, but in your lifetime, well we see a cure, a cure to any of the types of dimensional what be Alzheimer’s, Louis body from vascular. Do you feel that there would be a cure or it’s just we have to just lessen our chances. It’s an important question. So I’m hopeful that we will have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but I think we have to put in perspective the trajectory and the road to that cure.

The idea is is that where we’ve come a long way, and what we’re going to talk about a lot today is lowering risk. That’s where we clearly see we have strategic steps that we can take. The next phase of this is early identification, and we have to be responsible with that because that doesn’t mean everybody needs to go into a brain scanner. But if somebody has a family history, or they have certain genes, or they have they’re.

Showing some signs. We believe that the combination of early detection, the lifestyle factors that we’re going to talk about, and also some medications that are either in clinical trials on the horizon, that that combination of things will be highly impactful. The idea of. That somebody’s going to be able to have an injection or a pill and just have a cure, you know, that’s a ways off.

But one way that we do think about this is that Alzheimer’s disease specifically and dementia, they’re caused by many things. So if you take two people who have Alzheimer’s disease, they might not have or they very likely don’t have the same exact underlying root issues that are. Causing the Alzheimer’s disease. And it’s actually very similar to what we saw in cancer research, which is that when we started treating cancer cancer in with multiple cocktail medications identifying different root causes, that’s where we saw a big jump in success.

And when we start to understand that Alzheimer’s disease is in some cases waste in the brain, in some cases, it’s metabolism issues. In some cases, it’s inflammation. In some cases, it’s combinations of all of those things. We start to.

Target them and combinationally treat them. That’s what we believe. There’s going to be a next big jump in the future. But the idea of just a single pill or an injection that’s going to cure Alzheimer’s, I’m hopeful for that, but I think we have unfortunate ways to go before we get there.

That’s what we’re progress is being made, and so we want to just you know, keep things in perspective. Oh, that’s that’s positive. That’s positive. Great, Great, So we’re going to take a real quick break, I promise, just to recognize our sponsor and we come back.

I’d like to talk to you about some of the strategies, your recommendation strategies to help reduce Alzheimer’s risk. So there’s a number of them. So we’re going to go through that when we come back. Okay, So my question is to all of you listening, do you know anyone who may be concerned about an older driver well Senior care authorities Beyond Driving with Dignity program is a facilitated self Assessment Program for older drivers.

This program has been designed to service of IDLE tool to facilitate older drivers and their families as they make the appropriate decisions regarding the future of one safe driving career. If the individual is a safe driver, an advisor will provide him or her with strategies and how to remain a safe driver as they progress through the aging process. If driving retirement is the appropriate decision, then the individual and their family are offered possible alternatives, resources and a specific plan to ensure a smooth and successful transition from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat. If you’re in the in the industry and listening, senior care Authority conducts webinars seminars on call driving under the influence of dementia, so it might be quite interesting if you’re interested in learning more about that.

But you could also learn more by going to www. Dot Beyond Driving with dignity dot com and connect with a Senior care authority advisor in your area. We’re back with doctor Mark Milstein, who’s the author of the international best selling book The Age Proof Brain and is a leading brain health researcher. So doctor Milstein, welcome back, and maybe before we get into some of the strategies to help reduce Alzheimer’s risks.

You know, feel free to just share with our listeners how they can learn more about the wonderful things you’re doing, and how they can you know, maybe get your book as well. No, I appreciate that. So, yeah, the book is available called The Age Proof Brain. I just actually launched a podcast this week called Best of Your Brain, which is just filled with take home tips to keep your brain healthy short term and long term.

And then my website doctor Mark Milstein dot com, which I try to keep people updated about once a week on you know, tips and new studies and just try to give people actual information that’s just just useful to them. So that’s those are some ways that we can keep in touch. Great, great, And that just to make sure we got the spelling on your website, it’s d R and then M A R C. Millstein m A M I L S T E I N dot com.

Right, that’s right, that’s great. I just want to make sure, you know, maybe Google would figure it out as well. They’re wrong, but right, great, great, All right, good, So let’s talk about some of these, you know, strategies to help reduce Alzheimer’s risk. You know, tell you, tell me, I know you.

You’ve come up with several, but I’ll let you kind of go go through them one by one and we could discuss them. Yeah, definitely, there’s quite a few. The ones that have a significant impact are things like sleep. We know that when we’re sleeping, we were actually cleaning our brain and it’s it’s just fascinating that when when we go to bed at night, our brain inside our skull shrinks down to about sixty five percent of its current size.

And always say that sounds like a horror movie, But what’s happening is that there’s waste that builds up throughout the day and that’s just part of being alive. But if that waste isn’t removed, that can interfere with how we’re feeling, our memory, our long term brain health. There’s many different types of waste in the brain, a different types of waste and what we call it kind of trash. And when we’re sleeping and our brain shrinks down, it squeezes it out, almost like a sponge squeezing out garbage, and then fluid comes up from our spinal cord and washes this trash away.

So that’s why. Sleep is an opportunity to really just keep our brain clean and protect it. And we realize that this washing process happens in deep sleep. So just something to.

Be aware of I like to give just a quick tip, is that you’re actually preparing for your ability to fall asleep and get a good night’s sleep actually in the morning. There’s this Nobel Prize winning discovery that you have this countdown clock mechanism in your brain and it counts down and helps you fall asleep. And you actually start the countdown in the morning by getting outside for about ten to fifteen minutes within about a half hour waking up. So it can feel like we’re preparing for sleep, you know, right before bed, but we really start preparing for sleep in the morning.

And that a little bit of daylight sounds so simple, but helps us fall asleep that night, and we believe that can play a role in, you know, optimizing our sleep and then getting that good brainwashed. So another just something simple. Yeah, so there’s gonna be some people I’m sure listening to this going easy for him to say, yeah, I have trouble sleeping, all right, And there’s a lot of people, you know, I’ve done shows on just that subject matter. Yeah, but some people might use over the counter or maybe prescription drugs to assist with that.

Is there anything that you would recommend against taking that maybe could ever reverse effect. Yeah, it’s a good question. So we want to be careful and say that we believe that sleep without medication is most optimal for most people. And we’ve learned so much about how to get a great night’s sleep without using sleeping aids or medications.

We want to really try those things, give them a really good try. And there’s there’s a whole list of things that we can do, everything from you know, that morning light to the temperature. Of our room making a little bit cooler, and we could go on and on and on. There’s just so much there.

Now, if somebody has tried all of. Those things and they’re still struggling, which can happen, then somebody becomes a candidate for a sleeping aid or a sleeping medication. But we want to be very careful in which one they’re using because some of them can cause more harm than good, and it’s always a risk versus reward type of equation where we want to make sure that it’s you know, again, the right medication for the right person, for the right amount of time. You know, in the past, people were just kind of given sleeping aids easily, and now we’re taking a step back and saying, let’s really focus on the things we can do without using them.

Now, if somebody’s been using them for a long time, we wouldn’t want anyone to go cold turkey, but talk to the person that prescribe them and say, you know, what are the things I can do to you know, possibly lessen this because we do believe that natural sleep is most optimal. My understanding is some of the over the counter we don’t have to name brands, but just those that are selling as you know, cold and flu type of medication and they have the version of you know, the nighttime first. Sure, I don’t know what chemicals are in that, but my understanding is that’s not a good thing to be taking on a regular basis. Yeah, we have very strong evidence for that.

So that’s there’s something in our brain called colin and it’s important for memory. It’s basically a chemical. And when those medications are called anti coaling medications and they make people feel drowsy, and people often use them as the side effect to help them sleep. But we clearly see, as you mentioned, the long term use or the higher doses of those medications over time do significantly increase the risk of memory loss.

So that’s a perfect example of medication we really don’t want to turn to for sleep and we want to think about ways we can sleep, you know, without those medications. Well, thanks for confirming that, so good. Tell us other areas strategies that you suggest. Yeah, one of the easiest is is that they did this study and they followed people for like thirty years.

It’s an example of a you know, really long study that we talked about earlier, and they looked at thousands of people and they found if people did this one thing, they lowered their risk of dementia by sixty percent. And we see this. Over and over again, and it was simply getting thirty minutes of walking a day. It didn’t have to all be done at the same time, but thirty minutes of walking a day significantly lowers the risk of dementia.

And we actually understand the science behind this. Now when we walk, we released this factor called BDNF. It’s this kind of this growth factor that keeps our brain youthful and protected. And if you think about it, you know our ancestors, if they walked, they had to remember how to get back home.

And so walking and memory are very tied in the brain. And it’s just something really simple that we can utilize is just making sure we’re getting some walking to time the morning walk is good, after meals is good because you know, diabetes is another big risk factor, so we want it. We realized that some movement throughout the day helps with that as well. So a lot of these things work together.

When we walk, we get better sleep. So it kind of we can check some boxes and some simple things can really cover a lot. Yeah, and so it’s not that you have to be a speed walker. No, not not a race.

It’s not a race. But there is some interesting data that if you can walk a little bit faster for some of the thirty minutes, that we call this increased gait. And so they actually did this study where they found that you know, if people just simply walked a little bit faster, like from a street sign to a street sign, they just picked up the pace, they actually tended to have more protection for their memory. And we believe that again you don’t have to power walk everywhere you go.

But if you can pick up the pace get your heart rate up a little bit, there seems to be some additional brain health memory benefits. And in terms of just getting your heart rate up, you know, even getting your heart rate up about six to ten minutes a day has a really powerful brain health benefit. So we see that just you know, it doesn’t have any marathons and triathlons. It’s some small things that we can integrate that can be really really and.

As you said, you don’t not that thirty minutes is a long time, but you don’t necessarily have to do it all at once. No, And it’s interesting. All these you know, trackers that we have have given some interesting data that it doesn’t have to be all at the same time. We see we call incidental movement that’s added up throughout the day, you know, walking around your house or apartment, parking a little bit farther to the grocery store, you know, walking around the grocery store.

All of it counts, and all of it can be helpful. Great, great, great, tell us more, I know. You have several Yeah, another thing that we realize is just being aware of some underlying conditions, and we realize that what we talked about earlier was this idea that you know, dementia, Alzheimer’s, they’re rooted oftentimes in these conditions that we just want to be on top of. And three of them that we just want to really be on top of.

And I just say to people, you know, when you go to your door, just say, you know, I want to be on top of my heart health, I want to be on top of diabetes, and I want to be on top of inflammation. Those are really the big three. And so just having a conversation with your doctor and saying, you know, things like we realize that, you know, blood pressure, it doesn’t sound like it’s connected to brain health, but someone’s blood pressure today is one of the most powerful indicators of their ability to retain their memory down the road, and blood pressure that’s too high or too low as a risk factor. So just being on top of that and just you know, treating it, whether it’s lifestyle or in some cases medication, we just realize that these are the avenues we can use now to protect our brain down the road.

Being on top of diabetes, one of our single greatest risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s disease is untreated diabetes. But if you treat the diabetes, that risk comes down. And so we realize that these are just example after example of something that raises risk, but if we treat it, the risk comes back down, and we just want to leverage as many of those as possible. I like to think of it as it’s not one thing that often leads to dementia Alzheimer’s.

It’s like a straw that breaks the camel’s back. So if we can just take as many straws off the camel’s back as possible, that’s just what we want to think about doing. Right. What about what about gut health? Any thoughts there.

That’s that’s a big one, an area where what we’re eating has a really powerful impact on our brain health. And this is another area where there’s a lot of products being sold, there’s a lot of marketing, so very exciting science and simple things that we can do that have an impact without having to turn to you know, you know, expensive solutions or supplements in most cases. But the idea is is that essentially a lot of the inflammation that we talked about a moment ago. If you think of inflammation almost like a fire.

Well, that fire can start in the gut and it can spread to the brain, and so what we really want to do is just put the fire out so it doesn’t spread. And so there’s certain foods that just put the fire out in the gut. And one of the things is just like a Mediterranean diet, there’s something called a mind diet that we have a lot of evidence for. But all these diets seem to have two things in common.

One is that they’re not they don’t have processed food. They’re really whole natural food. So I like to say, if if you look at the ingredients and that the food is packaged and you can’t pronounce it, those are things you just want to want to minimize. And also, these diets that are really brain healthy and gut healthy are high in fiber.

And if someone can get about twenty five to thirty grams of fiber a day, we actually have all this evidence now that they can lessen the inflammation or fire in the gut that could spread to the brain. But also people actually if they have twenty five to thirty five grams of fiber in a day, they actually tend to get better deep sleep that night. So it’s another example of how these things are interestingly connected. And deep sleep, we believe is a better brainwash.

And you know, if you’re going to if you’re gonna be on top of your fiber, which is important, just you know, think about going slow you want to, you don’t want to add too much fiber at once. Diet is individualized and people need to find what works for them. But some simple things like adding a little bit more fiber, staying away from the pros this foods most of the time can go a long way for gut health and brain health. Great, great, well good.

So advice that you can give to families those listening here who maybe has a parent or other loved one that is, uh, they’re starting to see some memory decline. I mean, how do you really tell the difference between normal aging memory decline and something that hey, maybe we need to check this out. Any thoughts there, Yeah, I think it’s I think the first thing is just so important that we’re talking about this because it’s such a it can be a very challenging thing to to have this conversation, especially with people that we love and care about. We want to be aware that, you know, forgetting to pay a bill or forgetting an appointment or you know, things like that, they’re normal, that’s part of being alive, and that’s okay.

What if it’s happening with increased frequency, it’s interfering with someone’s ability to get through the day. That’s what we really want to get on top of it. And we want to try to have the mindset now that just because somebody is showing some issues with memory does not mean that they have Alzheimer’s disease. It doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s something that there’s it’s in the category of something that is it’s you know, there’s nothing we can do.

We always want to think about it as this is a warning sign and there’s so much we can do, and we want to get on top of determining is there something going on with this person’s heart, Is that it’s issue with blood pressure is and an issue with a medication side effect? You know, is what’s actually happening here. So really, if somebody sees a pattern and it’s escalating or it’s something new or different, we really encourage people to just seek out the help of starting with their interness or you know, their their general practitioner. Having the conversation, getting a thorough physical that’s a great place to start, and thinking about all the things that we’ve talked about and some other things as well, and then progressing possibly to a neurologist. And having those conversations.

And we just really believe the sooner that we can be on top of things. It’s just like anything that we see with health that in almost all cases, the better outcomes. So we just want to, you know, encourage people to normalize these conversations because we believe there’s a lot of help that people can can get from them. Great, great, great suggestion.

So unfort I mean, I could talk to you all day about this. Probably don’t have all day, but I could talk to you all day about this stuff. But you know, we don’t have much time left here. But is there anything that maybe because I don’t want to finish up the podcast and you’re thinking, God, I wish Frank would have asked me this, you know, is there anything that you kind of wish I would have asked you that I think would be that you think would be helpful to our listeners.

I think that what one thing that I always find encouraging in the research is the research is very complex and it’s intense, but we do see consistently that things like things that are fun and like learning new things, being social, dancing, like things that are that that we don’t often think of as scientific consistently show up in studies as things that are brain protective. And we realize that having fun, being social, learning new things, gardening, being in nature, these things there’s real evidence now that they’re brain protective, and we want to take time to do these things, embrace them because we believe, you know, doses of them over time are not only good day to day, but are good long term. And I think just realizing that in all the complexity, there’s some simple things that we can do that have a powerful impact. Great great well, Thank you doctor Mark Millstein.

Check out his book Internet, The Age Proof Brain. Thank you all for joining us on Boomers Today. Please be safe and we’ll talk to everybody next week. You’ve been listening to Boomers Today with Frank Sampson.

To learn more about today’s show, visit boomerstodayradio dot com and join us next time for another edition of Boomers Today.