The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
The Simplicity of Wellness podcast is about learning how to bring your body into balance so that you get leaner, stronger and healthier as you age. Each week I'll share thoughts and ideas that help my clients build the self-awareness, self-confidence and self-reliance to lose weight, shed inches, manage muscle mass and master their mind so that they can stop dieting and enjoy living at their healthy weight with optimal wellness.
The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
Brain Fog to Alzheimer's: Practical Steps for Better Brain Health
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Imagine transforming your fear of Alzheimer's into actionable steps for better brain health. Amy White takes you on a personal journey through the maze of genetic testing, specifically the ApoE gene, and how lifestyle choices can be game-changers in mitigating cognitive decline. By challenging the traditional view of Alzheimer's as merely a structural issue, she introduces groundbreaking research suggesting it's also a metabolic condition. Amy candidly shares her family's history with memory issues and how her professional expertise in holistic nutrition has reshaped her outlook on brain health.
Discover the power of nutrition, fasting, and stress management in optimizing your well-being. Amy offers practical tips like extending your overnight fasting window, eliminating processed foods, and adopting a low-carb diet to maintain metabolic health. She also highlights the significance of managing stress and monitoring blood sugar and ketone levels. Listen to Amy's strategies for achieving a healthier lifestyle without drastic changes and find out how you can get support through a free consultation. This episode promises to provide you with tools to become leaner, stronger, and healthier, all while keeping your brain in peak condition.
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Welcome to the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal busy life in this modern, sugar-filled world.
Speaker 2:Hello simplifiers. Are you frustrated by brain fog and worried that it could mean bigger and badder things down the road? If so, this episode is for you, because we're diving into brain health. I'm going to start with brain health, cognitive decline and Alzheimer's to be specific. As the episode unfolds, I'll mention other medical conditions that appear to be unrelated but actually have a common root cause. Toward the end of the episode, I'll outline the three big lifestyle factors that you can manage to help improve and control your health now and as you age. I'll then finish by sharing a snapshot of what my real healthy attempt at life looks like.
Speaker 2:Back when I was 37 and not feeling my best, I wanted to lose weight, but I didn't want it to be a quick fix that I then had to repeatedly fix for the rest of my life. I wanted to focus on being as healthy as I could be and for weight loss to be the bonus that I got for being healthy. This is still how I approach body weight for myself and my clients. One of the things pushing me to get healthy and stay healthy was the fear of Alzheimer's. I've seen relatives on my mother's side suffer with memory issues. It's pretty scary. I don't know if they were ever officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's or if it was just considered dementia, but in any case, it was something that I knew I didn't want. Unfortunately, I also didn't think I had a choice. To me, dementia and Alzheimer's felt like a crapshoot. You're either destined to get it or not. My thoughts about this have changed. I now believe there's more to the Alzheimer's story than what I used to believe.
Speaker 2:Early on in my shift into the nutrition health world, I learned about genetic testing. You may have heard of this type of testing. A lot of people do this through 23andMe. Basically, you get your genome sequenced. You can then take that raw data and pay to have a report run that shows all of your genetic variation. One of the companies that does the sequencing is called StratGene by Seeking Health S-T-R-A-T-E-G-E-N-E. Way back when I first learned about genetic testing, I thought it was the worst idea ever. I would never do that. Why would I want to find out if I had bad or problematic genes? You can't change your genes. You get what you get.
Speaker 2:My belief was that there was nothing I could do about the genetic hand I'd been dealt. It was just a waiting game to see which of the diseases of aging would play out. To tell you the truth, I wasn't really worried about all of my potential sketchy gene snips. There was one in particular. I was concerned about a gene snip called ApoE or apolipoprotein E. If you look up APOE, this is what it will say. Variations in APOE affect cholesterol metabolism, which in turn alter your chances of having heart disease and, in particular, a heart attack or a stroke. Variations in APOE are also associated with altered odds of having Alzheimer's disease. That's what I was worried about Having a gene snip that told me I was going to have Alzheimer's. I wasn't even worried about heart disease. It was all about Alzheimer's for me, and it still is. Even though I was unsure, alzheimer's officially ran in my family. I was convinced I was going to suffer with it. I didn't want to see the cold hard facts.
Speaker 2:As I got further into my nutrition master's program, I started to understand that our genes don't really tell the whole story. Yes, I have genetic variation we all do. Yes, I have certain gene variations that make me more susceptible to certain conditions or diseases, but that doesn't mean I'll for sure suffer with these issues. The best way I've heard this whole gene thing described is your genes load the gun, but your lifestyle is what pulls the trigger. In other words, even if you have a genetic variation that makes type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer's or heart disease or high blood pressure or cancer or whatever other thing a possibility, it doesn't mean it will happen. Yes, your genes are your genes. They won't change. But how you choose to live is what will dictate how your genes express themselves. Will your so-called bad genes activate or stay dormant? This brings me to Alzheimer's what I used to believe and what I now believe dormant. This brings me to Alzheimer's what I used to believe and what I now believe.
Speaker 2:Alzheimer's has long been described as a two-branch structural or anatomical problem in the brain. Branch number one an accumulation of plaques in the brain that basically muck things up. Branch number two tangled brain neurons that also muck things up. Basically, two types of structural problems that make your brain stop working correctly. There are also two known issues with this classic understanding. The first these disease identifiers can't be confirmed until after death. You can only see these structural problems when the brain is biopsied. Brain biopsies happen after someone has died, so there's no early clinical marker of the disease. Number two the drugs that have been developed to target.
Speaker 2:These structural issues don't seem to have much of a positive impact. Research in animal models tend to confirm that the drugs don't really help. This brings me back to that feeling I had there was nothing I could do but wait it out. So why would I want to know? As I got further into my life as a holistic nutritionist with a better understanding of how the body works, I realized I did want to know. Here's why Research has continued and more information about the potential causes of Alzheimer's is now available.
Speaker 2:A new view of Alzheimer's suggests that it's not simply an anatomical issue but a metabolic issue. As a nutritionist who specializes in healthy, permanent weight loss, the primary focus of what I do with my clients is rebuild their metabolic health. Alzheimer's, as a metabolic issue, is now a disease linked to something you have the power to manage the health and balance of your metabolic hormones. This means that reclaiming your metabolic health can help you regulate your weight, but also be an intervention that helps you improve and stop cognitive decline and possibly even Alzheimer's. The hormone insulin is a clinical marker of how well your body processes sugars. Insulin also appears to be an accurate clinical marker of cognitive decline.
Speaker 2:The new view of Alzheimer's suggests that it is a disease of insulin resistance in the brain. A study out of Finland that focused on several dozen lifestyle variables found that a person's fasting insulin was more tightly correlated with their risk of Alzheimer's than their age. A Harvard Medical School paper entitled what's the Relationship Between Diabetes and Dementia aligned with this claim and stated that the earlier you develop diabetes, which is a metabolic condition, the greater your risk of developing dementia. The paper was referring to type 2 diabetes, which is a disease of too much insulin. When there's too much insulin in your body, the cells all over your body, including the brain cells in your hippocampus, ignore insulin's message to take in glucose. They close the insulin door on the cells and block glucose from being absorbed as fuel.
Speaker 2:It's likely that Alzheimer's isn't an immediate and pressing problem for you, but what about brain fog? Remembering why you went to the grocery store, finding your cell phone after you just had it in your hand? You know the normal stuff that we get frustrated by every single day. We're talking about that Before severe cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's. There's mild cognitive impairment. Could brain fog be considered mild cognitive impairment? Possibly, if high levels of insulin are related to the risk for developing dementia and Alzheimer's. It's also likely that high levels of insulin are a factor with everyday brain fog.
Speaker 2:Your hippocampus the part of your brain where you learn and store memories is a hybrid engine. It runs on two fuels glucose and ketones. Too much insulin means the glucose fuel isn't available. Your hippocampus could be swimming in glucose, but if that glucose can't get into the cell, it's as if it's not even there. In this situation, the brain will easily and willingly switch over to gobble up and burn ketones. But what if there aren't any ketones? When insulin is high, the cells of your body and brain can't use glucose. But there's another problem with high insulin. When your insulin is chronically high, your body can't release fat and convert it to ketones. Without glucose or ketones, your brain cells are starved for fuel. Cognitive impairment is what happens when your brain cells don't have the fuel to function properly.
Speaker 2:If you want to be healthy and age well, I think it's important to do what you can to help your body and brain out. Regaining metabolic balance is the number one thing you can do to manage your risk of cognitive decline and many other health issues. The high insulin will eventually cause brain cells to stop processing glucose while at the same time that high insulin will keep your body from breaking down fat to produce ketones. This is the situation that many people eating a standard Western diet of mostly processed foods are facing. It's also a situation for a lot of people eating what they believe to be a healthy diet that includes healthified snack foods. Gluten-free foods are still processed and have enough carbohydrates to spike blood sugar and cause high levels of insulin. Food choices have the power to starve your brain.
Speaker 2:At the beginning I mentioned that there are medical conditions that at first glance appear to be unrelated, but when you take a closer look, you see that they all have a common root cause that is, metabolic imbalance with chronically high levels of insulin. Some of these conditions are infertility, as PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome in women and erectile dysfunction in men, fatty liver disease, hypertension, migraines and type 2 diabetes. There's a very interesting study on PCOS by Stephen Cunane. The study compared seven women with PCOS to 11 healthy female controls who were of a similar age, education and body mass. The PCOS group had a 10% higher fasting glucose and a 40% higher level of insulin resistance than the control group. The results showed that several regions in the brain of the PCOS group resembled brain patterns seen in aging and early Alzheimer's disease. More importantly, the results showed that mild insulin resistance and the brain's inability to properly metabolize glucose can exist in young adults in their 20s who aren't overweight or obese. Pcos is the most common form of infertility in women, but at its core, it's a disease of too much insulin.
Speaker 2:I don't want any of this to scare you. I want this to empower you. The risk of cognitive decline due to metabolic imbalance is a problem that you have the ability to manage. So let's talk about what you can do to manage your insulin and blood sugar levels. There are three big things to focus on Diet, inflammation and stress Diet. Don't let food constantly spike your blood sugar and keep your insulin high. Stop eating five to six times a day. Eat three meals or two meals and a mini meal. Stop snacking. Let your blood sugar and insulin come back to a normal, healthy level before you shoot it up again with more food.
Speaker 2:What you choose to eat will have an impact. How often you eat will also have an impact. Focus on protein, healthy fats from animals, avocado, olives and coconut. Enjoy carbohydrates, but make sure most of the time they are unprocessed. This means vegetables and fruit. Make things super easy and let go of anything made with grains. This is the one super simple thing you can do to regulate your blood sugar.
Speaker 2:When it comes to how often you eat, you want to have a minimum of at least equal time fasted and feasted. This means in a 24-hour period, you have a maximum 12-hour eating window and a minimum 12-hour fasting window. If you stop eating at 8 pm, don't eat again until 8 am. Everyone should be able to do this. I'm going to challenge you. As a listener of this podcast, I know you're interested in your general health and well-being. You can do better than a 12-hour overnight fast. Shoot for 14 hours. If that feels easy, do 16 hours. That's it. There's no need to do more than 16 hours. You also don't need to do this in one day. Work your way up to 14 hours and once that's feeling really easy every now and then see if you can go 16 hours because it feels easy. You're not hungry.
Speaker 2:Eating right so that your blood sugar and insulin stay in a healthy range, and letting your body have fasted time will allow you to burn body fat and naturally create ketones. Your brain loves ketones. If there are ketones and glucose available, your brain will go for ketones first. I'm not saying go on a ketogenic diet or try to live in a state of ketosis. You don't need to chase ketones. Bring your metabolic hormones into balance. Eat real, whole, unprocessed foods most of the time. Watch your sugar intake and get your carbs from vegetables and fruit. That's all you need to do. Ketone production is a natural part of a healthy metabolism.
Speaker 2:The second thing I mentioned was inflammation. I'm talking about cellular inflammation, not inflammation due to an acute issue like an open wound, sprained ankle or broken bone. Food intolerances can cause inflammation. Unaddressed food intolerances lead to what's called leaky gut. Leaky gut then leads to the biggest cause of systemic inflammation autoimmune conditions. Get rid of the garbage processed food. Reduce the amount of grains you eat. Ideally, get rid of all the grains. No cereal, pizza, pasta, bagels, crackers, pretzels, all that stuff. You'll thank me in about a week because you're going to feel so much better. Notice which foods just don't work for you.
Speaker 2:What do you eat that makes you feel kind of like ugh? It took me 55 years to figure out that my body does not like almonds. It was a subtle thing. It was just a heavy fullness that I would feel after eating almonds, not even a lot of almonds. The same thing happens when I'd eat something made with almond flour. One day. That moment of ugh clicked and I thought it's the almonds. I was right. Now I rarely choose to eat almonds or things made with almond flour, and my body is so much happier.
Speaker 2:The last thing is stress. This can be tough. There are so many things that you can't control, so focus on what you can. Fix your sleep. Do what you can to get good sleep. One bad night of sleep will put your body into a state of insulin resistance. A good night of sleep will correct this. Regular bad sleep is going to increase your insulin by raising your cortisol. The other thing that can create stress in your body is high levels of the stress hormone, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. One thing that can create stress in your body is high levels of the stress hormone, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. One thing that causes your body to produce epinephrine is caffeine. Bad sleep and caffeine tend to be a vicious cycle. You're raising two stress hormones cortisol and then epinephrine. Fix this, get good sleep and need less caffeine.
Speaker 2:Let me wrap this up by telling you more about my genetic test. We all get two ApoE snips. When I say ApoE, it's A-P-O and then the letter E, apoe. Remember, apoe is the snip for heart disease and Alzheimer's. The ApoE4 is considered the bad gene snip. This is the snip correlated with higher risks of Alzheimer's. There's also APOE3 and APOE2, both considered to be more neutral or good. I have what's called APOE34, meaning I have one 3-SNP and one of the scary 4-SNPs. It could have been worse. You can have APOE44, two of the so-called bad SNPs.
Speaker 2:My ApoE 3-4 makes managing my metabolic health a real priority for me. I got healthy and lost my extra weight years ago. I'm living in maintenance, but for me maintenance is a mostly low sugar lifestyle. It's very important to me to keep my blood sugar balanced so that my insulin can stay in a healthy range and do the job it's designed to do. I want to give my brain all the help I can. I eat two to three times a day. I rarely snack.
Speaker 2:I don't follow a keto diet. I'm not trying to be in ketosis. My carbs don't typically go over 100 grams in a day. Those 100 grams come from non-starchy vegetables and some fruit. The purpose of my low-carb diet is metabolic health to keep my insulin low so that I get the bonus of making ketones when I'm fasting overnight and in between meals. I do occasionally track my blood sugar and blood ketones. I have a Keto-Mojo blood sugar and blood ketone testing device. I tested my ketones before I ate my first meal today. My ketones were at a 1.1.
Speaker 2:Nutritional ketosis is defined as having blood ketones in the range of 0.5 to 3.0. As I mentioned, I'm not following a ketogenic diet. I'm not chasing ketones. I don't keep my carbs under 30 grams. I'm also no food saint. I do have what I call sometimes foods that are higher in carbs. These are occasional indulgences.
Speaker 2:Living this way still allows my body to naturally make ketones, which in my case, I believe is very important. Considering my ApoE status, I don't want my brain to ever feel starved for fuel. When it comes to Alzheimer's, it's not one or the other, an anatomical issue or a metabolic issue. It's both. My ApoE4 could indicate that I may have more potential for anatomical change in my brain. This is one of the primary reasons I want to do what I can to support my brain health, and that is to manage what I have control over my metabolic health.
Speaker 2:I hope you found this episode informative and helpful. Remember the biggest way you can improve your metabolic health is to eat a healthy diet that keeps your blood sugar and insulin in a healthy range, while also reducing inflammation and improving your sleep so that you feel less overall stress. Enjoy your week. I'll be back in the next episode. Do you like the idea of eating for the body you want? Is there a piece of you that's eager to learn how to become leaner, stronger and healthier without having to overhaul your entire life? If this is you, then you're in luck, because this is what I do. I can help you reconnect and work with your body so that you can enjoy the body, comfort and confidence you deserve, eating foods you love. Click the free consult link in the show notes. Let's talk about where you are, what you want and how you can get there.
