Hey guys, welcome back to Well and Worthy Life Podcast. I have got a returning guest. Actually, he’s been on the podcast a few times. One of the few men we’ve had here, but Ed Parks is with me from Neuro Reserve. You may remember we have talked to him a few times. And so, Ed, welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me here.
Hey, Deanna, it’s awesome to see you and it’s just great to be back on here. And especially I feel super, super privileged to be one of the few men on this podcast. I’m channeling. I’m seriously like feeling like I’m channeling all my inner femininity. Just love it. I love, you know, getting in that zone. So, well, it’s so great.
And, you know, you have given us so much information, but you know, one of the reasons that we, that I wanted to have you back on is September is World. Alzheimer’s month. And you know, that is so near and dear to both of our, our hearts with my stepdad and your father. And we won’t go into that story cause we’ve covered that story a couple of times.
So you guys, if you want to know the story about our fathers, you need to listen to one of the other episodes. We’ll link to all the episodes in the show notes. But but add. Is the founder of Neuro Reserve and and Neuro Reserve has the supplement.
Relevate and it was founded out of really because of your relationship or your father and what happened with him. So we, we tell that whole story on a previous podcast, but it’s a great supplement. And especially if you’re concerned and we all should be concerned about, about our brain health. I mean, let’s be honest, right?
I mean, our brain health is. To me, probably one of the most important things, I’ve talked about this before, you know, both my parents died of cancer and that was bad, but watching my stepfather die from Lewy Body Dementia was far worse, far worse, because you lose them way before, and so that’s really what really set me off on my health journey.
Really watching that. That’s great. I mean, not not great about your family history, but great that you’re doing something and that’s really set you off and put you in a direction for health, you know yeah. So, yeah. Hey, everybody. I’m Ed Park. And like Deanna said, you know, I founded a preventive nutrition company called Nero Reserve.
And, you know, we focus on healthy brain aging and, and it’s great to speak with you today about brain longevity. Thank Let’s let’s go. Let’s call it that because that’s because that’s what it is. It’s, it’s brain longevity and this world Alzheimer’s month that you mentioned is it’s just a wonderful time to spread awareness of this because like, like you were saying, like age related brain diseases dementia is, I mean, they hit it what we really are.
Our brains are, they carry our personality. They carry it. Our ability to think and learn, obviously our memories our feelings. Our ability to love, right? So it is, it is everything to us. And so so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a huge part of my life as far as what motivates me. And yeah, I remember first bonding with you on the fact that you know, both are.
Fathers, you know, they, they, they passed away of dementia everybody, especially, so it’s, it’s so sad if you, you know, and I know a lot of the listeners have family members that have had dementia or Alzheimer’s and And just watching somebody disappear before your eyes. And, you know, just like you said, they lose that personality and and those memories and just all that stuff.
And gosh, I mean, like that’s the last thing I want. And I think it’s so sad for the people who are left more so than that person who it’s going through. I mean, I don’t know. I think. Watching my, my stepfather, I will say he knew it was happening and he was very frustrated but on the outside watching this super smart man who had gone to Dartmouth and his personality became kind of flat.
And he and then just, he, there was no rhyme or reason. He would remember some things and forget other things. And he had a lot of paranoia and delusions. It was just, like I said, really sad to watch. And that’s the last thing I want. And I love this brain longevity. You know, it’s not about just living long.
It’s about living a long time healthy with my, all my brain functions. You know, we have to take care of our brain, just like we take care of our bodies. You know, a lot of people, and I’m guilty of this, you know, I thought exercise. Was taking care of myself, you know, I mean, really, but that’s just 1 small part of our just 1 small part.
Really? Yeah. Are, you know, actually that I think, yeah, that’s that’s message. Number 1, I’d say for this is that our brains age, you know, the age, just like everything else. And it’s. It flies under the radar because it’s not like our skin where we could see our skin or, you know, it’s not like how we can feel our joints, you know, getting older and we know something’s up there.
You know, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s very insidious. So everybody should just be very alert about this. And there’s a couple of other things about. That now that I’m speaking about it for a moment here about brain health and the impact of brain diseases, that’s very special compared to, say, other chronic diseases like heart disease or hypertension or diabetes.
Right? And the thing here, I think there’s a few things. The 1st thing is that for brain health, we don’t have any really good cures Biomarkers or markers to kind of look at, you know, for like heart health. You know, we, we got, we got L D L, we got H d L, we can look at that. We got like, you know, diabetes, we got a one C.
We could look at that and say, oh, am I getting close to getting it or not? Or, and, and stave it off, you know, for, for brain health we don’t at this point. And so it kind of flies into that radar and sneaks up and hits you really hard. And the family’s really hard. And I think the second thing is there aren’t very good, there are no good really drugs for brain, like brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.
So when you get there, it’s not like you can get a statin drug for heart disease or something like that. It’s, you’re, you’re, there’s really no options. Yeah, no options, you know. And like you were saying, it’s just really tough. It has super high impact on the family. Everybody left, right? Because who’s left but the caregivers, right?
So they’re the ones who are doing a lot of at home care. A lot of it’s not covered by insurance. So the financial impact is huge. So you got these three things that make it a very unique and They’re very, I guess you could say special, but not special in a good way, special in a bad way. Yeah, health area.
So so, yeah, so let’s, you know, and, and for women, that’s, there’s there’s a, a, a very special message in that too. And, and so we’ll get past all the scary stuff first, but I that you can do about it. Yeah, exactly. You know, but for, for women, I know that’s, that’s a lot of your clients obviously in, in midlife is that that I think the second message I guess is that.
They are higher risk. So for two thirds of all Alzheimer’s dementia cases are women. And so and there’s certain reasons for that. But but that’s something that should not necessarily be something that scares women, but it should be a motivator because obviously not all women and most women don’t get dementia.
And and there’s a, one of the big pieces of that which you work on a lot with your clients is the perimenopause and menopausal states. And that period of life. And so, and we got into this in a previous, I think, podcast about that, that critical time opportunity where, where women can really set themselves up really well for their future brain health.
Even as you know, estrogen is dropping and estrogen is very good for the brain. Right. But even as that’s dropping, they could really set themselves up really well for a wonderful second stage or second chapter of life, right. For their brain health. So. So anyways, I guess that’s the second message is that women out there you really want to pay attention to this.
And if you do, you can really set yourself up really well for great brain health, great memories, great living. Yeah, yes, exactly. Exactly. And, and so we’ve talked about this a little bit, the Mediterranean diets they’re so powerful in the cognitive help. So what makes them so powerful? Yeah. Yeah. So, so the good news is that there’s one of the most powerful diets.
In fact, I should just say it is the most powerful diet for brain health is a diet you’ve heard of already, probably. And it’s the Mediterranean or Mediterranean type diets. So that’s, that’s news there because for a long time, people looked at it as like a cardiovascular type thing, like, Oh, it’s going to be good for your heart.
Right. But it’s actually in around past 10 years or so. Research has shown it’s it’s extremely, extremely protective for the brain. So when we think about what a Mediterranean or Mediterranean like diet is, you know, what are what are the what’s the most. Brain healthy Mediterranean like diet out there.
Right. And here’s some of the foods in it. Okay. So you just want to really focus in on this kind of characterizes Mediterranean in general. Right. Right. But the first thing is is olive oil. So you were going to say that I love so good. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s like, as your core Cooking and dressing oil.
If you, if olive oil, you switch over to that rather than maybe some of these other seed based or corn based oils, you’re in great, great shape if you switch over to that. And and that’s something we can’t fit in a supplement. Okay. So, you know, our products and nutritional products and this official supplement, we can’t fit all of oil in there because you need, you know, spoonfuls of it, you know, it’d be great if you just have a nice, you know, big tablespoon every day of olive oil, or at least have it through other foods.
So but so that’s a big piece of it, you know, and the other, and the other thing is Is vegetables. Okay, so colorful vegetables and that might seem a little kind of generic, but I’ll drill down here and say for the brain in particular, it’s a dark, leafy green vegetables. Yeah, so and I’m sure, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, you’re a nutritionist and I’m speaking to the choir here to you, Deanna, but like, you know, when it comes to leafy greens, you know, the magnesium.
The polyphenols, all those plant based antioxidants that come with it, the lutein, which is good for your eyes, and also because it’s an extension of your brain, it’s good for your brain. You know, that all, they’re all very rich those leafy green vegetables and those nutrients. And, and I’m telling you, it’s probably one of the most Under eaten foods in the standard American diet.
So, yeah, because I think a lot of times people taste it and it’s bitter. And so we’ve gotten, especially in the United States, we’ve gotten so used to everything being sweet, right? Because everything’s sweet and when that bitter taste, so I read something where. that you have to try it seven times. And you do acquire a taste for it, especially if it, if it’s something.
And so I would encourage you to, if you haven’t tried it in a while, try it again, keep trying it. And gosh, we can mix. leafy greens in a smoothie. You can do all kinds of things where you don’t even taste it. If it, if it’s just really, you can’t handle it. Yeah. I mean, when I was, I’m so, you know, I, I made a lot of changes in my diet about five, six years ago at, for brain health, because before that, I was working in the pharmaceutical industry.
I thought I knew everything. I didn’t know anything about nutrition, right? Until I really decided I want to move into nutrition, I started learning about it. And and so, I mean, here’s my secret. When I first started eating more broccoli, I just sauteed it and olive oil, and I just threw a whole bunch of salt on it, which is probably not a good thing, but I’ve been backing off ever since.
So I’m backing off, you know, there isn’t as much salt, but you know, I just thought, okay, so that was a way to just kind of build up my, my leafy green intake, you know? Yeah. But but so, so when it comes to, you know, fruits and vegetables, we want to go in that direction for fruits. Once again, you know, colorful fruits, but for the brain, in particular, berries are really important.
So they have these those, those deep colors, the pinks and purples and the blues of berries. They, and the reds, they, they are called anthocyanins and they are the pigments that make them those colors. But they’re also super potent anti inflammatories and antioxidants that can, that can exert their effect in the brain.
So it’s so when we think about foods, think berries and and I think, you know, when it comes to, to, to kind of meats, if you will, or I guess they’d call flesh or whatever it’s fish, so, but in particular cold water fish, so fish that need to yeah. We come out of that North Atlantic or Alaska, you know, those areas there, but basically what I’m talking about are salmon herring sardines and anchovies.
I know those aren’t the favorite out there. Actually, I’m really grown to where I love sardines. I’ve been eating a lot of salad. And I was over in France this summer. It was amazing. And I’ve been eating more sardines. And actually yesterday I went over to a girlfriend’s house and she made salad nicoise and she put sardines on the side because not everybody’s going to eat sardines.
And they were so good. So good. So good. Well, you see everybody. So look, and also here’s another tip. This is my own personal one. When I get the canned sardines, right? I like the ones with jalapeno. Oh, that’s a great idea. I’ve never had the ones with jalapeno. Oh, I get, I get them over. I mean, my, my wife buys them every so often and, you know, those packages of six and they’re like, you know, soaked in olive oil with jalapenos all over them.
So, you know. There you go. There you go. And again, I think it is something that you can acquire taste for because a couple years ago, there is no way I would touch a sardine for anything in the world. But then when I heard so much of the health benefits, I was like, well, and now I like it. So there you go.
Yeah, and and so that, you know, those fish are just obviously most people have heard already that the Omega threes, which are these healthy fats that are called DHA and EPA, you know, those are very, very rich in these cold water fish and, and the thing about DHA especially is that it is a building block, it is literally a structural beam, if you will, you know, within the walls of our neurons in our brains.
So not only does it do that, but it also has a great, it’s like an antenna, you know, and it’s signaling out there for anti inflammatory action as well. So there’s a lot of things that it does that are extremely important for the brain. And I don’t know, just for a quick tidbit on the brain and why we keep talking about anti oxidants, you know, and anti inflammatories, and why they’re so important for the brain it’s because, you know, if you imagine your brain as an engine, then you really should imagine it as an engine.
And that’s running all the time. It will not turn off. It just, it just, it just doesn’t turn off. And so your brain uses about 25 to 30 percent of your body’s energy of your overall energy usage. And that is After only being like two or 3 percent of your body weight, so it’s punching way above its weight on energy usage.
And think of that as a dynamo that just keeps turning and turning and turning and using energy and, and of course when you run an engine that fast and that long, there’s going to be a lot of stress built upon it, you know, so that’s why antioxidants. Especially those colorful vegetables are super, super important in the anti inflammatories that Omega 3s can bring.
So, just to give you a picture in your head, hopefully that’ll help people, you know, become more motivated. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, I, I love that. And I think that it goes back to this whole thing that food is medicine. That we know it’s very important. We nourish our body and we talk about this all the time in my group revived now and about how important we we’ve got to really take care of ourselves.
You know, when we were in our twenties and thirties we got away with some things, but here it’s the thing. It too, it wasn’t talked about as much. I don’t think there was as much research or anything right now. It’s more of a thing. I even feel like for the twenties and thirties out there. Yeah. I mean, boy, y’all should take really pay attention to and really you know, start early with nourishing, you know, using food as nourishment, not just something to.
Yeah. Enjoy. Right. I mean, you want to enjoy it and you can enjoy it. I mean, I love blueberries and salmon and all those good things. So, so anyway, I do think that that we have to really pay attention about the way we fuel our body. And I think that’s very interesting. And what you said is how our brain uses so much of that energy.
Compared to the rest of our body, you know that’s that’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. We, we tend to think that we’re using all of our energy when we’re working out or in our big leg muscles or something like that. But in reality, that’s our brain. That’s really, really kind of like. Scarfing up all that energy, basically, in a lot of the sugars in our body, whether or not that be simple or complex sugars and things like that.
Our brain is really scavenging for all that, you know, and trying to get as much of it as it can. So, but yeah, for you 20s and 30s folks out there. Just a tidbit. You know, there’s very, very excellent research out there that shows that the brain begins to decline. And I don’t mean to say decline in it. I don’t, I don’t mean to scare.
I mean, I don’t mean to scare. I mean, to motivate in a sense that our brains began to decline age related issues in our late 20s. Basically, we peak for brain, brain, I guess you could say Our, our innate brain performance peaks at our late twenties. And so what we need to do is we need to start pretty early, you know, and that’s why that’s the sort of stuff runs under the radar so much, you know, until like maybe there are people in their sixties, you know?
So yeah, well now I need to, now I know why my youngest son and his wife, they’re in their late twenties. They think they’re smarter than everybody, but they probably are there at the top of their game right now. You’re going to decline from here. I’m going to send them this episode. Let them know that.
Also, also us, us more mature folks, you know we got, we got, so when they did all those tests to see like what ages and when people like start to decline in their brain performance, the one thing that the older folks always, always did better on was this thing they call, they called it. It had to do with vocabulary and world experience, basically wisdom.
There was some sort of a metric there and we were always leading. So I like that. I like that a lot. Oh my goodness. Well, okay. So let’s go to our next topic. Visceral fat and its relationship to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Well, first of all, before we even go there, let’s tell everybody what visceral fat is.
Because I feel like… That term, I’ve just really started hearing a ton about visceral fat in the last couple of years, but maybe really in the last year. So go ahead and tell them about visceral fat. So that, yeah. Yeah. And you know, great to be talking about this because I know it’s, it’s important. It’s a, it’s a big part of revive now and, and you know, what you’re doing for for, for all sorts of people, you know, and, and the thing is, is okay, in the simplest terms, you know, Visceral fat.
It means belly fat. That’s, that’s it. That’s it. You know it is the big old complex, you know, 50 cent word for belly fat and midsection fat basically. And so that’s visceral fat. And, and, and the thing about the thing about the visceral fat is that it matters a lot for brain health. So there’s There’s a great, you know, there’s great, you know, you may be motivated already to have a great waistline, right.
And, and to just work on that and, but now you have another reason and it’s a really, really important reason. Cause I think a lot of people, a lot of women, you know, I have a lot of women that come to me and they’re like, Oh, you know, I’ve got this belly fat and I want to get rid of it. Not because they think so much about how they they feel with it.
Well, they did feel, they don’t feel good with it, but it’s more about the looks and feels that they don’t even relate that to the brain health, but it is, again, it goes back to this, that it’s all related. And so we can’t just work on one thing and think that’s, that’s the ticket. It’s, it’s all these things and it’s a domino effect of our overall health.
Yeah, that, that is, I mean, that is an awesome way to put it is it is the domino effect and, you know, when people start to build up the waistline or belly fat it’s it’s the thing that people should know from a brain and cognitive standpoint, is that obesity. In midlife in general, right? Is a risk factor is a big risk factor for mild cognitive impairment, which is called MCI.
And that’s usually the leading point to Alzheimer’s disease. So, and other types of, you know, all being the, the, the leading type of dementia. And the thing, the, another important thing to keep in mind is that there are sex differences. Okay. So obese women in midlife, right? They have a greater risk. of Alzheimer’s later in life.
And the very interesting thing, and you probably know this, you know, kind of from all your experiences and what you do, women tend to carry fat, well actually reasonably distributed throughout their bodies until menopause. And then when menopause happens, fat distribution starts to kind of Can can tend to concentrate more in the belly, right?
And that’s a that’s a function of a lot of things happening, right? In that period, Mary Perry, monopause and menopause. And so and so the thing of. Like you know, if I already get on my, my soapbox for a second here, the, the, the thing about visceral fat that makes it kind of particularly dangerous is that it’s not just a, it’s a store.
It’s not just a storage space. Of course it is. It’s a storage space for fat. However, we really should be thinking of that visceral and a belly fat as an additional organ in our body. Okay, that has been built up because what it has is it’s just not a lot of fat cells. It’s actually they build out connections to our nervous connections to our central nervous system.
There’s vasculature in there. There’s some blood vessels. There’s lots of different types of cells, not just. fat cells, and all of them start to emit and pour out into our bloodstream lots of different biochemical signals that will start to cause Big problems down the line, right? So we really want to kind of keep that.
We really want to pay attention to that. And just like for 1 instance, they release a lot of inflammatory molecules. So, people who tend to have a lot of belly fat tend to have basically a lot of, you know, kind of chronic inflammation that’s building up in the background and and also what a lot of those signals that they do also, they build up that insulin resistance.
And, and, you know, leading to type two diabetes. And once again, so there’s that and type two diabetes, once again, is a huge risk factor for Alzheimer’s. So so those all kind of build on each other. So it’s, it’s just once again, not, not meant to scare or to, you know, cause anybody to be discouraged.
Actually, everybody has a belly fat. Okay. So. It’s it’s really all about. Yeah, it’s really it’s a, you know, everybody. I mean, I was practicing hockey the other day with my son and I was out there, you know, doing like, you know, lateral, like, you know, strides and stuff and crossover. So I felt so good about myself.
And I took my shirt off. I’m like, wait a second, man, you got to work on that belly fat, you know. So, but everybody has it. It’s just a matter of making sure that, that we, we do things like, like a lot of things that you, you tell your your clients. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot of these things to just make sure you keep it under control.
And isn’t Alzheimer’s even referred to a lot of times as type three diabetes. It is. It is. Yeah. And, and it’s, and it has a lot to do with that. The the fact that, you know, type two diabetes is basically, you know, insulin resistance and insulin resistance in the brain for brain cells is bad for, A lot of reasons.
And the big the big reason is that one thing is that our brains just so much energy like we mentioned, and insulin allows cells to pull the sugars in. To give the energy it needs. Now, of course, we all know if we don’t get enough energy, basically, if you don’t get enough food, we’re going to die.
Eventually, we just stop eating, you know, or if we eat too little, we’re going to starve and maybe die. Right? So think about that at the really cellular level, like those little neurons, they’re asking, like, oh, I got to get fed. And now they can’t get that anymore because they’re insulin resistant. That’s partially it, because they got some other ways to get around that, but also insulin is very good about.
You know, antioxidant effects and a lot of these other downstream effects as well. It does a lot of stuff. It’s just not all about, you know maybe blood sugar or sugar in general. It’s a little about a lot of things. So yeah. Yeah. And so what about these people they’re listening and they’re like, Oh, my mother had Alzheimer’s or my grandmother had Alzheimer’s or maybe my father, whatever.
So are they genetically disposed to having Alzheimer’s? Yeah, so there, so one, one thing about Alzheimer’s like, like every other disease or every other advantage that we have in life, right? You know, there’s a genetic component to it. Okay. It doesn’t, it doesn’t seal our fate. But it does play a role and, and the, the biggest genetic risk factor for all spammers disease and later in life is called APOE4.
And so that’s a, that’s an acronym for apolipoprotein E4. But what that, what that is, is that everyone gets this particular gene called APOE. Okay. And and it comes in three flavors. Two, three and four . So that’s why there’s a p o e two, a P OE three and a p OE four. And, and you get one copy from each of your parents.
Kind of like, so if people imagine, you know, when they did in high school, they did the genetics class and you see a little grid, a two by two grid, right? And there’s your mom and your dad, and you know, and so you get one copy from your mom, one copy from your dad, and. You know, if you’re, if you’re, if your parents, both your, you know, one parent had one copy of APOE 4, you know, and another parent had one copy of APOE 4, you know, you have a 25 percent chance of having a single copy of APOE 4, and maybe you have one copy of APOE 3, and then another copy of APOE 4, but basically you get a pair of these, right?
And anybody who has either one copy of APOE 4 or two are at higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life. And because we were speaking about visceral or belly fat, right? It plays a big role because What the APOE4 gene does, if you have one or two copies, is it changes the way in which your body metabolizes fats.
So this all goes back and comes full circle to fats, and lipids, and and also insulin. So, so it’s a A. P. O. E. is almost like a master gene. If you have an A. P. O. E. for what happens is that that actually goes into your nucleus. So if you remember, like a little bit of like that high school biology and that little part of the very center of cells where all the D.
N. A. Is kind of scrunched up, right? You know, it actually goes in there and actually A. P. O. E. for can actually affect over 1, 700 other genes that we have. And we, you know, so, so it does a lot of other things, but the things that we do understand, you know, well, now is that it affects. The ability to properly process fats and bring them into the brain.
And once again, remember, that’s very important for those healthy fats. And and also it affects cholesterol and it also makes us more predisposed towards insulin resistance. And so now, now let’s layer on one last thing, and that is women. And so, women who have APOE4. One copy or two tend to tend to have a higher risk, even more so than men.
So there’s a sex difference there as well. So, you know, if a woman has a POE for one copy of it, then they would have maybe three times more chance of false memories later in life. If they have two copies, then they’ll have maybe upwards of 10 to 15 times A greater risk, right? So that’s a big deal, you know, so when it’s a big deal.
And so when, when you think about that, you want to really think about, okay, how can I live in a way that can, can basically tamp this down as much as possible, because, because it is, has to do with that processing that we can attack it through nutrition. You know, inflammation, we can attack that through, you know, through nutrition and also lifestyle.
Right? So really paying a, a big, a lot of attention to that. Once again, this is not meant to scare, it’s meant to motivate and I think everybody should live. Like they have one or two copies of a p o e four, this, this risk sheet for Alzheimer’s, because 25% of us do, that’s a big number. How would we know?
Yeah, exactly. How would we know if we’ve got a p o four? APOE4. Yeah, you know what, what people can do is they can, they can do a genetic test, right? That’s one of, and you know, what about that 23andMe? Does that do that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You can choose like an option to have that like checked. When they do it but but, you know, one thing I just say is, and everybody should think about it, you know, carefully, live like you do.
Yeah, exactly. You could, you can just assume you have it and live really healthy, which is a great way to go. But sometimes people need extra motivation and they’re going to feel empowered by knowing so doing the test is great. Other people might be like, hey, I don’t want to. I don’t want to know either.
It’ll just create more anxiety and stress for me. I’m just going to try and live as healthy as I can. I don’t want to know. And that’s another way to go, but you know, there’s a lot of genetic counselors out there who can, you can speak to, you know, just to say what, you know, how should I think about this?
Should I do it or not? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because it could add a lot of anxiety to some people. I mean, for me, it motivates me and I did do the 23andMe and now I can’t remember. I don’t think I had the APOE for, I don’t think I did, but you have to ask for it. Yeah, specifically. But I mean, like, I, I know that I want to live, you know, a long time with a healthy brain.
So I’m going to do some of the things that I know are important to be like that, because I mean, I do have a grandparent. My parents didn’t live long enough because they both died of cancer, but. My grandmother was in her nineties and she ended up with Alzheimer’s. I mean, I thought it was pretty good that she lived in her 90s and didn’t get it until then, but but still it, you know, it does mean that there’s, it’s there and and gosh, let’s face it, people are, you know, we have the ability to live longer and longer now, so we really got to take care of our brains.
I don’t think people really thought about that, you know, I mean. When you think about it, the science has come a long way. On making sure our bodies last a long time. Right. But what about our brains? So we better, we better do everything we can. Exactly. It’s all really new. You know, also, I mean, a lot of, a lot of people for a long time thought the brain is kind of like static.
It’s like just the way it is. And it’s kind of sitting behind your skull. And, and if you lose some cells, you’ll never get them back. And now we know maybe in an, even in adults. You know, there’s neurogenesis, which is the creation and the birth of new brain cells, obviously not as fast as like if you’re a baby, but you can replace neurons.
If you live a healthy life, you can birth new ones and you can create new connections by learning, obviously, and by, you know, curiosity and things like that. So and and so, so there, there’s just. You know, when it comes to nutrition and how it affects visceral fat, how it affects, you know, you can, you can attack APOE4 with it, you know you can cut your, you can cut your, your likelihood of Alzheimer’s in half, like 50%, you know, by following a really nice Mediterranean diet, you know, really watching that nutrition, maybe even more than 50 percent if you’re really focusing on it, you know, so so that’s, that’s that’s really good news.
Anything you can cut in half is. Yeah, exactly. And doesn’t movement help your chances to exercise, right? Exercise is like the other big lever to pull. Like those are the two big ones is are, are nutrition and also exercise and and exercise, you know, when it it’s. That can that can cut your risk by just as much.
And also it’s, I mean, actually, it’s just so it’s, it’s really powerful, you know, and especially for like, let’s say Parkinson’s disease, you know, another neurodegenerative disease. Often, often linked to Lewy body dementia. Right. Right. You know, you know, high intensity interval training resistance training, very important for that, you know, so so yeah, so the strength that you work on with with revive now, right.
Very important, super important pillar. Exactly. Exactly. So, okay, we’re going to wrap this up, but let’s give everybody a few tips. Okay. First of all, Mediterranean diet for sure. Move your body for sure. Your supplement. How does that add? Yeah. So, I mean, the reason why we developed it is because you know, with our medical advisors from like Cleveland Clinic and Rush University and Barrow Neurological we all just got together and said, okay, at a practical standpoint, most of them when they’re treating patients they realize that and their family members ask questions about what can I do to prevent this?
What can I do to maintain good health status for my brain? When they tell people, okay, Do your best. You know, do the Mediterranean diet. People usually make it a little bit of the way there, but they don’t make it all the way. And so, at a practical standpoint, you know, we wanted to develop Relevate, you know, which is our product, we developed Relevate to make sure people can close the gaps.
For the most brain beneficial nutrients out of the Mediterranean diet and out of that what they call the mind diet which is a Mediterranean diet also specifically for the brain. So, there’s there’s 17 nutrients in there, specialized types of, you know, Omega threes that are actually meant to intended to go after, you know, a POV for, you know, We have B vitamins, those anthocyanin pigments that we talked about, you know, with the berries that they’re in there, the flavanols that are in those leafy green vegetables, right?
The magnesium and the lutein and zeaxanthin, you know, all those we pack in because those are the ones that people are not getting, are getting the least of in the standard American diet. Because it’s our default in the standard American diet because we’re surrounded literally I could go across the street here and hit like a McDonald’s, right?
I mean, it’s so easy to get that sort of food, which is Calorie rich, but nutrient or that that we realized that something like relevate is, is important to just help people achieve that, that Mediterranean diet, 50 percent reduction in risk type of profile. So we want to help people get at, you know, so, so that’s what, that’s what Relevate is.
And yeah, I urge people to give it a try. Like, obviously learn about it a little bit more. You can learn about it at neuroreserve. com. So that’s N E U R O reserve. com. And and just see if it’s something that, that it could help your diet and help your nutrition overall. And we’ll link it in the show notes.
And I’ve got a code that can give everybody Yeah. A discount. I think it’s Deanna 15, but it’ll all be in the show. Deanna 15. Yeah. It’ll all be in the show notes also. So so, okay. But y’all are great on Instagram and y’all always have blogs and all kinds of things, so tell everybody where they can find you so that they’ll know it’s.
Okay, it’s, it’s pretty easy. So on our Instagram is where we do Instagram, Facebook, you know, is where we do a lot of social media. So our Instagram handle is it’s. Neuroreserve. That’s it. So N E U R O. Reserves. So all one word. Neuroreserve. And for Facebook, it’s the same thing. Perfect. Easy. Yeah. And and then also obviously our website, like I mentioned before, but for our social media, which is primarily Instagram and a little bit of Pinterest what we do is we really try to focus on providing the latest research in brain nutrition and cognitive nutrition, but also Ways outside of nutrition.
We can really you know, strengthen our brain health. And that goes to the things that, you know, obviously, Deanna, you were talking about earlier, like the exercise and, you know, other things like sleep and other lifestyle factors. So really want to help people. Become equipped to live a brain healthy life.
So, yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I love bringing this awareness, especially this month. You know, with world Alzheimer’s month. So Ed, thank you so much for joining me yet again and educating everybody on more about brain health and bringing it, you know, it’s, it is one of those things that unfortunately, I think that because we don’t look at our brain every day, we forget.
Yeah, forget that we have one and that we need to really work on that too. We look at ourselves in the mirror every day and we’re like, especially as women, we’re like, Oh, I’m getting some wrinkles. I need some Botox. It needs to, you know, that behind that skin behind those wrinkles, we have this brain that we really need to work on.
Yeah, exactly. I look at myself in the mirror every morning. I got, Oh man, Ed, you got to get on that Rogaine. Fast. I mean, you got to work on that, you know, you know, it’s easy to forget about the brain. That’s, that’s where, that’s where all the action is, is in our, is in our brain. So that’s exactly right.
Well, thank you again, and I appreciate you being here today. All right. Thank you, Deanna. I appreciate you also.
