Brain Fog, Hormones and Protecting Against Alzheimer's Disease and Other Forms o

12:29PM Jul 5, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Dr. Kavita Desai

Keywords:

health

women

day

brain

risk factors

eat

oestrogen

symptoms

started

morning

sleep

hormones

mushrooms

reduce

supplements

cognitive decline

terms

great

food

find

Welcome to the high performance health podcast. My name is Angela Foster. I'm a former corporate lawyer turned health and performance coach. And each week, I bring you a new insight biohack or habit to help you unlock optimal health, longevity and higher performance. Thank you so much for joining me today. Now let's dive in.

What we've developed in society is that the woman has to hold it all together and we do we because we're good at it, and it's become our job and, and that's fine, but then we don't prioritise ourselves and we feel guilty if we do. And I think that's a rhetoric we need to change.

I friends in this week's podcast episode, we're gonna be talking about how to protect your brain and how to look after your cognitive health and prevent dementia, which is a growing problem worldwide with currently the World Health Organisation reporting more than 55 million people have dementia. with Alzheimer's disease being the most common form of dementia, which may contribute to 60 to 70% of cases. Women seem to be disproportionately affected by dementia, both directly and indirectly. And we know that for some women, menopause can be a triggering event for early onset dementia. So we're going to be diving in today about how you can protect the health of your brain and how your hormonal health impacts this. My guest is Dr. Kavita Desai, who is an accomplished pharmacist and the founder of the health and wellness company revival which is dedicated to educating women about Hormonal Health, disease prevention and cognitive health. Her mother was also diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease and she she has personal experience of going through this and after witnessing the decline of her mother's health and focusing more attention on her own cognitive health. Dr. Desai redirected her clinical skills to focus specifically on women's health, brain health and disease prevention. And so we're going to be diving into how you can really look after the health of your brain in today's episode. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to Dr Kavita design. So I am joined today by Dr. Kavita Desai, who is the founder of revival. She's a women's health expert and has a particular specialism in women's cognitive health and hormones. Marcy, thrilled to have you on the show today. Firstly, a very warm welcome.

Thank you so much for having me today.

I think we can start off you and I were talking a little bit offline that around what happened with your mom and how your own journey of her going through a cognitive decline really inspired you to focus on women's health. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what led you into the field.

So I'm a clinical pharmacist, I did my doctorate in pharmacy, so I'd worked in a hospital setting in the early years of my career. And then I had started a cardiac prevention clinic. So diagnosing a lot of risk factors, counselling on lifestyle changes, and also modification with medication, if nice, if necessary, which ultimately branched into an interdisciplinary clinic that I owned, that had an integrated pharmacy in it. And we dealt a lot with pain and addiction, a lot of women's health, what we started to see and we saw 1000s of women that had fibromyalgia and they were all in their Peri menopausal years, it's it was an interesting correlation. We were doing some innovative treatments to help with pain management, trying to reduce the narcotic usage. And then in that timeframe was when my mom had started to just show signs of some sort of issue. She her personality was changing. She was becoming quite different from her normal self argumentative with me, we were very close. And I couldn't understand why she suddenly was picking on everything. You know, I just had my first daughter at that point. And she was very helpful when she was an infant, but then became increasingly critical of everything I did and not really willing to discuss what was going on. So I knew already that something wasn't right. But again, she was in her early 50s at the time. I attributed that to possibly, you know, menopausal symptoms, you know, there's a lot of mood changes that come in those years with our loss of hormones. But it worsened and that made me very, very concerned and I kept urging you know, my my father and my brother to that I think we should be looking into this but I my voice kind of went unheard unfortunately at the time. Now in retrospect, I really wish I pushed for it further, but by the time we finally had her diagnosed about seven years after I started to notice a change in personality. We had an MRI done her brain had atrophied or shrunk by 50% By that point, and we were told it was Alzheimer's disease quite significant like she was probably in her mind. cauterets stages by then. So her daily function must have been quite diminished at home, I think my dad was maybe choosing not to see it or was compensating for her. And in denial, I'm not sure he's a physician. So I feel like he would have known what he was seeing. But that's when it came to light that she had early onset Alzheimer's. So which is when a person is diagnosed prior to the age of 65. So she was in her late 50s, around 60 By that point. So that's when I became increasingly worried about my own health, you know, the health of my children. Early onset is known for having a bit of a genetic genetic predisposition, although I don't have a family history of it. So, you know, it could just be a one off scenario in this case. So that's kind of when not only because of my past experience of working with women who were going through a lot of inflammatory conditions, but also now seeing my mom who was a nonsmoker, non drinker, you know, light a fairly, I thought healthy lifestyle, now had a cognitive decline. It gave me a great deal of perspective on my own health and things that I should be changing. And, you know, which is when I embarked on the path of wanting to learn a lot more about brain health and what we can be doing to prevent our own risk. And then just as I'm ageing you know, perimenopausal women with the loss of our hormones, we know that those hormones are very protective for brain health. A lot of the symptoms that women experience are linked to the same risk factors that can lead to cognitive decline. So this is when I launched revive out, this is what I wanted to really encourage women to be aware of to know their risk factors, to advocate for their own health because I think Women's Health is a disaster. Right now, we're not addressing these things where we're normalising our loss of hormones in our risk factors when we should be taking them very seriously because we're at very significant health risks. As we go through our Peri menopausal years.

Detoxification is so important now more than ever, with the number of toxins we are exposed to daily in our food, water, personal care products and environment. No matter how careful we are, it's impossible to totally get away from the chemicals. And we also have to think about detoxifying the toxins we produced through cellular respiration and clearing excess hormones like oestrogen. Our skin is one of the key ways we detoxify. And that's why I love to include sauna as part of my weekly routine. But going to a facility with a sauna can be time consuming, and investing in one yourself has been expensive in the past. That's why I love bond charges sauna blanket. It has so many benefits from raising your heart rate to that a physical exercise, so you burn calories whilst you relax, you can burn up to 600 calories in just one session. The sweating helps flush out heavy metals and other toxins and the infrared light which heats the body directly rather than the air around you mean you get the same benefits at a lower heat. On charges sauna blanket is easy to set up taking less than a minute. It heats up rapidly and you can enjoy a session for 30 to 40 minutes whilst relaxing, reading watching TV or even meditating. So you can truly stack your hacks. Bond charges sauna blanket is also low EMF compared to other brands on the market. And it's the quickest on the market to heat up. So it's an easy thing to fit in. When I'm not working out in the morning, you'll find me meditating in my bond charges on a blanket with a red light therapy mask on my face boosting collagen while I relax and bond charger giving listeners of this podcast 20% off their sauna blankets, red light therapy devices and other wellness products. Bond charge ship worldwide in rapid time with free shipping on every solar blanket and 12 months warranty. Simply go to bond charge.com forward slash Angela and enter code Angela 20 at checkout that's boncharg.com forward slash a n g e l a and use code Angela 20 to save yourself 20%. Yeah, I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. I mean, I think it's so, so challenging going through something like that. And when it's with someone you're so close to I was reading your book and about how your mom was your best friend. And I think it must be so hard to see that personality change and feel kind of like you want to do things about it. You've obviously put a huge amount of research and time into helping women and to kind of turn that into a positive. You mentioned there that you're you sort of feel if you had pushed harder. Do you think that the outcome could have been different from from if you had known sooner because I'm just curious as to what the balance is here and I want to discuss with you like prevention tactics and things that women should be aware of. But if if your belief at that time was actually I think my mum was developing it, whether things that if there's early intervention that can really help with that.

I think in her case, because her initial symptoms were were so young, I don't think dementia would have been at the forefront of any of our minds. It probably was already too late. So I don't think you're right. When I say that, I wish I had advocated for her sooner it was more so that it would have been easier for us as a family to to deal with it, I feel that by the time her official diagnosis came through, we hadn't had any discussions about it. Like I never had the chance to speak to my mum about it, and ask her how she felt and what I could do for her. By then, you know, she was already, you know, unable to carry long on carry on long conversations. I think when the whole family would get together, I think it was quite confusing for her to have too many people around, especially to have young children around who are, you know, louder, have higher pitched voices. It was, I think it was also it was confusing, and probably made her a little bit more agitated, in fact, so I never, I regret never having the chance to actually speak to her about all of this. Even now, as I'm entering my period, menopausal years. I don't know what symptoms she had, she never spoke about it. She didn't even tell me if she was starting to have memory loss issues. I just have one very vivid converse, memory of a conversation I had with her. And it was already at a point where I knew she wasn't quite the same. But I hadn't put two and two together yet. And I remember we were sitting together. And she said to me, she's like, you know, my biggest fear in life is that I won't remember you and your brother one day. And it didn't dawn on me at that time that I think she knew she must have known that she was starting to feel forgetful, or she was I'm not sure I don't know, to this day, what she was thinking or how she was feeling. But now it's so significant to me, because why would somebody say that, that my biggest fear is that I won't remember you. And, you know, I think there's a large caregiver burden issue I saw it happened in my family, my dad deteriorated because he was caring for or trying to care for her and not asking for help not taking help when I tried to get it for him. And I think that's part of the reason I would also encourage a lot of people to know sooner, because I think then plans can be put in place there is weightless for nursing homes. So in her case, it was just it was all handled very poorly. And then it was very stressful, trying to ensure that she was getting the proper care and she was well well taken care of. But in terms of prevention, I think we all need to be living our life, as though we might get Alzheimer's, there's, you know, a rapid increase in the incidence of cognitive decline happening. So I think we all need to be worried. And I don't think you need to have a genetic risk factor to potentially still get it. And having the gene doesn't mean you will get it we don't automatically turn on every gene in our body if we can change some of the risk factors. But they say that there can be changes in the brain for Alzheimer's up to 20 years prior to symptoms. So, you know, it means we need to be prioritising our health much, much earlier than we tend to right. We're more of a society of you know, treat after the fact more band aid treatment rather than prevention. And I am a huge advocate of trying to prevent long term disease.

Yeah, for sure. It's interesting what you say there about the risk factor for the gene because I think that it is something that's been quite publicised recently. We have some really interesting and helpful work from the likes of Dr. Dale Bredesen. I know Dr. Patrick talks a lot about it. But then there's been some televise things, right, with celebrities talking about having the gene and quite scary things content, I think. And I think it's that sort of thing, where as well, if you do now that DNA tests are so widely available, commercially, you can end up finding out and I know for me, I discovered that I have one copy of that gene, and it's definitely something you can't unlearn. And I'm still sort of, I think most of me feels really empowered by the fact that I've identified this and there are things that I can do. And it can give me that greater sense of agency. But then there is that fact right that now you have been and it may not have been one, but it is there, but as you say, may never be activated. And it's interesting that you say also there are some people who may suffer with this who don't have any genetic potential for it. When we're looking at prevention, and we can come on in a moment to the particular risk factors that occur around perimenopause. What are the things that we need to be thinking about for both men and women on a sort of basic level in terms of lifestyle nutritional prevention for dementia?

Yeah, so there's numerous factors that I like to advocate for. So the first one, I think you have to start with lifestyle changes. So that's diet. Um, Our modern day diet has become an increasingly processed full of chemicals. We, you know, we are always eating on the go, we're not cooking as much. And I think it, it's really going back to eating a whole foods diet. So up being how many you know fruits and vegetables you're getting a day preferably vegetables, low glycemic fruits, lean protein. So that means sourcing if you are a meat eater, making sure you're trying to if possible, get you know, grass fed beef, you know, organic free range chicken, we need to lower that toxic burden that we get through our diet. And one of the big risk factors for cognitive decline is glucose imbalances, right, and diabetes or glucose intolerance. And which also happens to premenopausal women as they start to lose their oestrogen is that we start to process sugars differently. So I'm not advocating for a ketogenic diet necessarily, but a low carb diet for sure and get your carbohydrates from things like lagoons or from your vegetables and less from you know, processed carbohydrates like bread and pasta, etc. And then the next thing is exercise, we have to keep moving. And again, that does not mean you have to be doing a hit class every single day, it's even just movement. In general, we're not meant to sit all day long. So getting up and going for a walk every morning. You know, weight training for sure, we need to maintain our muscle mass or testosterone starts to decrease pretty much after the age of 30. And for women especially it becomes a huge risk for osteoporosis and muscle mass loss as we enter our pre menopausal years. So again, we training is key least three times a week I generally tried to do even for myself, and then sleep, which is huge, because they've linked to poor sleep and poor sleep hygiene with cognitive decline as well. And that's largely you know, we have to change how we're eating and drinking in the evening, you know, lowering our caffeine intake, lowering our alcohol intake before we go to sleep. Even maybe cutting off your dinner a little bit earlier, at least three, two to three hours before you go to sleep. Getting off devices, that's probably one of the hardest thing, right? We're a squirrel generation and we want to be on our, our devices, right until we go to bed. And then we bring our phone to bed with us. And that's another thing, I tend to leave my phone downstairs, I don't bring it upstairs with me. Because I think a it promotes a quiet relaxing, you know, end of day, but it also reduces the EMF waves and that that can be near our head, which are also very poor for brain health. And then we want to reduce stress again, because stress is very inflammatory in our body affects the brain. Meditation has actually been shown to improve the grey matter in our brains. So if we can meditate or just be mindful, again, going for a walk in nature, but not thinking about your to do list, I think it's about stilling the mind, even just for a few minutes a day has been shown to significantly increase, you know, brain health. And then I'd already mentioned like trying to reduce toxins. So not only from food, if you can buy organic food, but just in everything we use every day, it's in everything. There's an article actually, that just came out this week about the PFA s that are inside leggings. And then if women wear that to yoga without underwear on, and that is right up against mucosal membrane, and they're absorbing those chemicals through their clothing, which is extremely frightening. You know, I think if it's just coming from one or two angles, it's one thing but we're being bombarded by chemicals on a daily basis in our cleaning supplies or makeup are our food in the drinking water even I do highly recommend either reverse osmosis or black carbon filter for our drinking water, even though tap water is safe in most first world countries. So we say there's still a lot of chemicals in them and arsenic gets in and pesticides are in the groundwater. And you know, it's I think the more we can reduce that toxic burden, the better. The other thing that's been linked with cognitive decline is vitamin D levels. And we know that vitamin D is now being shown to be quite beneficial, optimal than vitamin D levels are being shown to be quite beneficial for a lot of disease risk prevention, but brain health especially so, you know, having a level diet or just taking, you know, vitamin D daily, we can get sunshine, we don't generally convert enough. Especially if you're darker skinned or if you live in a colder climate, you will never be able to get enough vitamin D by going outside. So I generally recommend supplementing that. And then gut health is another big one. Our gut microbiome is linked with our brain. And if we have poor gut health, which often we do with the stress the diet, you know, the way we tend to live these days, we're not really protecting that microbiome. So taking a probiotic eating probiotic rich foods and eliminating a lot of the the process fast. And, you know, toxin laden foods can also help maintain your gut microbiome. And then learning new things. So now it's about finding the joy in your life. Because I think we also tend to, you know, hit the grind, we don't do things we love. And I think you need to be social, you know, have your friends have that outlet, and learn new things, learn as much as you can, whatever you like to do if it's learning a new language. For me, when my mom was diagnosed, I was really sad. And so I, I started singing and that ended up being something I continued to do, I thought I would just do it until I wasn't embarrassed to be heard and singing. But it ended up being so meditative for me like it brings so much joy, it does stimulate the vagus nerve to, which probably is part of the reason I feel so good after I have a singing lesson. But I did that I started painting. And then eventually I started this company, I It's interesting how I love that my mom impacted me so much when she was healthy, and I was young. But how even in her illness like it has brought so much good to my life. That, yeah, she'll live on forever in that. And I think, I think we all need to do that, right? It's find the joy in our life, whether it's even just writing a gratitude journal, when you first wake up in the morning, bing, bing, focusing on the positive, I think can really help with brain health.

If you're an hour in the morning, like me, but you need some high quality nutrition and protein post workout, maybe grab and go on the school run much like my days, then here is a little smoothie, you can whiz up super quickly. That gives you high quality nutrition, I generally mix a couple of scoops of protein powder with one scoop of creatine for the neurological muscle boosting benefits. And then I add in tonnes of ice with my ag one and kind of blend and go. Ag one is made with 75 super high quality vitamins, minerals, and Whole Foods source ingredients. And so I know that I'm getting the high quality nutrition in alongside the protein in the morning to boost my mood, my immune system and give me sustained energy throughout the day. And if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Because athletic greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you need to do is go to athletic greens.com forward slash Angela Foster. That's athletic greens.com forward slash Angela Foster, and check it out. I think that's so beautiful that it lives, it lives on through your mom, that's really amazing. There's so much there that I want to kind of pick up on this concept of learning new things I think is really important. There's also some research I think is in there around a level of someone's education as being kind of neuro protective. So actually, like taking that education on as a young person can be helpful.

You can Yes, but I think it's fine to do it then. But I think we need to be continuing to learn, right? I think, you know, in generations past we had the attitude that okay, you you study to become something, and then you plugged along in that career for the rest of your life. And we didn't really have a push to do more. And it doesn't always have to even be career related. Right? I think even just having hobbies, we stop having hobbies. Like, I feel like you see young children always trying new things. And then we just stop, we stop learning. So at least in my case, when I started singing and painting, I didn't know I could do those things. I was in the sciences my whole life. I didn't do any of the arts, I gave it up because I was so busy. And then when I started doing it, I was like, wow, there was this whole other side of me that I didn't even know existed, which was really quite interesting. And so we my husband, I are now really encouraging our kids to be like that, that, you know, try different things you never know what you make where you may find a passion and you doesn't have to be a career. It doesn't even have to be something you're great at as long as you enjoy doing it. So I think that that's kind of one of the things that we tend to forget as we age, right that we can do more than just our career and be a caregiver or a mom or a sister. There's other roles we can play

very much so and I guess that sort of brings curiosity to my mind, because less so now. But you know, when we look at sort of your mom's generation, for example, there are a lot of women who actually their main focus was taking care of their children, even if they had a strong educational background. And so when the children leave home and they're hitting menopause at the same time, they've now got this drop in hormones, but often quite a big drop in terms of what they're doing as well because not that many women are picking up a new sport or a new creative pursuit. And unless they're doing things you know, like, you know that the other the older generation, we're doing my crosswords and things. You know, it's kind of a puzzles, which doesn't happen a lot. Now, there is sort of that gap and I wonder how much that's affecting cognition.

Yeah, and I think I had put out a survey actually, when I was first conceptualising revival. I wanted to know, I knew what, what I wanted to focus on and how I wanted to help women. But I also wanted to hear where are women struggling? What symptoms? Are they having, you know, if are they prioritising their health care? If not, why not? And their own well being. And it was alarming, I had several 100 women respond to the survey, the symptoms they were complaining about are almost the same. The self Pryor's prioritising of their own health is negligent, they are not doing it. And generally, it's because they feel guilty, because they're the ones that have to hold the family together, and their parents need them or their kids need them or their partner needs them. And it's always like, I put myself last. And I, you saw, I read that over and over and over again, when I was reading all the responses, and it was heartbreaking, because I think that's what we've developed in society is that, you know, the, the woman has to hold it all together. And we do we because we're good at it, and it's become our job and, and that's fine. But then we don't prioritise ourselves and we feel guilty if we do. And I think that's a rhetoric we need to change that it's okay to be it's like the, you know, when you're on an aeroplane, and they say, you know, put your own oxygen oxygen mask on before you help someone else. And I think it's like that. And if you don't take care of your health, how can you take care of all the other people that are relying on you or that you feel you need to be there for? So I think it's changing that mindset, right, that it's okay to put yourself first and take a little bit of time for you.

Yeah, for sure. And I think as you say, everyone benefits. When we look at sleep. This is something that I think is challenging, particularly for a lot of women that are high performing. You know, a lot of my listeners, a lot of women I work with, they are pursuing their careers, and they have families. And it's just so commonplace that they work all day, they come home, they look after their kids, they take care of them. And then they basically go back to work and they work and then if they're going to get any time with their husband is going to be by staying up a little bit later. And then they get to bed late, they wake up early to start the whole thing. Again, it's to rinse and repeat. And sometimes alcohol can be aware of winding down in that process or weekends. But certainly they seem to be shortening that window. And as a corporate lawyer, something that I regularly did was just push through the night work all night, and we had to to get the deal done. Yeah. When we're looking at sleep, you know, many people are now tracking their sleep, are we looking at the length of sleep? Obviously, Quality Matters? But are there specific things because I know that some people will feel refreshed after six and a half hours or so. And they're early morning people in the wake up and they feel quite sprightly and they're in a rhythm. Other people seem to need more sleep. What how can we know in actual fact is what we're doing helping our brain helping prevention of things like cognitive decline, what what do we really need to think about in terms of sleep?

Yeah, I think unless you're wearing one of those trackers, it is hard to gauge but generally how you feel when you wake up is a good indicator, if you're waking up, alert, not dragging in the morning, and we we really should be aiming for no less than seven hours, you know, we don't need to be sleeping 910 hours. I mean, if you do great, that's, that's wonderful. But then there's also evidence showing that you don't want to sleep too long, that's actually detrimental to health too. So I think if that sweet spot is seven to eight hours, if you can get that. And it does mean a lot of lifestyle changes, I think especially for women, as our progesterone goes down, our sleep quality is lost, and that's out of our control. So then it means taking control back on all the other things. And it does mean it will mean sacrifice, it will mean not having that glass of wine at night, not having caffeine later in the day, going to sleep earlier than we prefer. And a lot of the true restoration happens before 12 1am. So you really want more of your sleep packed into the the later evening hours, and not so many in the morning. Which is tough, because then it means going to bed by 930 10pm to try to get two to three hours or really restorative sleep in before the later part of the night. And I think it's again it's detaching from devices. It's it's making a lot of changes that we've probably become become very accustomed to. But I think a good indicator is if you can sleep six to seven hours and you wake up feeling energetic and refreshed, then you probably got a good night's sleep. And one measure is subjective. Yeah, yeah. The average person would be.

Yeah, and I think also as well, like I think we're now have released data, haven't they that the accuracy is about 85% But we're still not quite I think things are gonna get a lot better. I think one of the challenges for women is as their children grow and they become younger adults and teenagers, that's where the friction occurs. Because it's like, you don't want to go to have to go to bed ahead of your child. They're on a late routine, because their circadian rhythms totally shifted for a few years. Sometimes the kids a bit more grown up, they're going out, and now you're worrying about them. You're keeping a phone near you because you want to be available. And there's just this whole kind of factor of things that they can step away from.

It is That's very true. It's such a juggling act, right that at what point are you then neglecting other people to prioritise your own health? I think you have to do the best that you can write for your current lifestyle, and keep optimising it as each stage changes. I think that's the best we can do to be honest.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I guess taking control of some of the other things you mentioned, around blood sugar, which I think is something that people are becoming much more aware of now, we have like CGM is where people can easily track at home and see for a couple of weeks what's going on or a month or maybe even a few months, you can get some really good data and understand them. Actually, this food already triggers my, you know, blood glucose rise, and I wasn't expecting it. I've been looking at some of the research around that recently. And it seems that actually the spikes themselves, these oscillations may be more damaging even than someone who has a slight elevation and sort of maintains it. But it seems quite difficult to kind of figure out other other reports I read will say, you want to minimise the spikes no more than two spikes a day. What have you found there in terms of really protecting not just the brain, but all of the body's tissues, the kidneys, everything else? Because it's you know, you you see less of a spike after exercise, right. And we do want to refuel, and that's a very good mechanism, often you won't see any kind of Spike if you've just worked out. But what should people be aiming for in terms of blood glucose control?

Yeah, I think, again, unless you're wearing a monitor, right? You we, we need to do what we you and you'll know if it's working, because for me, I know if I have something sugary, or if I have some alcohol, then I'm hungry. And if you're constantly feeling hungry, in less than two or three hours after you've eaten a good meal, then your insulin is definitely spiking. And I think we should also be aware that, yes, although we want to reduce the spike. So you know, there's tips that you can drink apple cider vinegar before a meal, and it may lower your glucose spike. If you eat foods in a certain order, I haven't tried any of this, but I know that there's a lot of people that do do that. My only issue with that is we're also really worried about inflammation in the body. So having a high glucose level is very inflammatory, but then eating the foods that cause that are very inflammatory foods, right. So I feel I like to try to eat as clean as possible so that I know my, my insulin is just not swinging, and it keeps it nice and steady. And I know that I'm doing it well when I'm not hungry all the time. And I'll feel satiated after having just uh, you know, some protein with some vegetables, and some healthy fats and a meal and, and then it just sustains you so much longer. And I think that's what we should be aiming for is to feel like that, where you feel fueled, you feel like you have energy because if you eat the right foods, you also you're nourishing your body in a different way than when we eat a lot of calories from, you know, low nutrient dense food. And then that automatically is going to keep our blood sugar much more stable that will keep our insulin from swinging. And then also protect our brain because again, as we enter menopause and oestrogen goes, our brain doesn't metabolise the glucose the same, which is very damaging for cognitive health. So the more we can be reducing foods in our diet that cause insulin swings, and elevated glucose levels, I think the better for our long term health because those hacks are great that if you Oh, if you eat it in a certain way, or take apple cider vinegar, but you're still putting an inflammatory food into your body at the end of the day. So I think you kind of have to address it from both angles.

I agree. And I think I think what's concerning as well, about some of that, as you say, if you're eating the right type of foods, then it's less of an issue. But the you know, the way that the kind of nutrients compete for entry in terms of into the cells. We know that like saturated fats, you may see less of a glucose spike, but actually could be causing problems when you're coupling saturated fats with carbs. And actually you see a long term elevation, right and you can increase insulin resistance. And actually, you might find that had you put a CGM on you would have noticed that yeah, you might not have had a massive spike but your glucose was up all night and the next morning you had a higher fasting glucose. And so these kind of little hacks the quality as you say, of the fats are going to make a difference and everything that's going in.

Yeah, we almost have to have in it's hard right? Because it feels like punishment when we're told not to with a taste token, and of course, all the foods that are bad for us tastes really, really good. But I think we almost have to the same way you would not buy an extremely high end car, and then put subpar oil and gasoline into it, you almost have to think of your body like that we only have one chance to keep ourselves healthy. And as someone who witnessed somebody have Alzheimer's and the decline that she went through, and it was heartbreaking, we're kinder to animals than we are to humans when they're in these conditions. That, you know, you almost have to always be thinking, is this good for my brain? Because if it's not, you know that five seconds in our in our mouth that taste? Is it really worth it for the long term risk that it can bring?

And what are the some of the things that are good for our brain? I've kind of read about things like Amiga three and blueberries, what are the things I think you mentioned mushrooms in your but what what are the things we can do that are really pro healthy brain?

Op brain? Like do you mean from a food standpoint? Or from a nutritional? Yes, yeah, definitely healthy fats. So the Omega threes for sure, and preferably the the Omega threes that come from fatty fish, you can get it from algae as well if you're vegetarian, but the EPA and DHA is what we need. So the Omega threes in in plant based foods are still equally beneficial to reducing inflammation and poor health. But the EPA and DHA in the fatty fish is extremely important for brain health, very anti inflammatory and good for cognition. And we need to be aiming for more if you are supplementing with it, the bottles don't read the number on the front where it says how much fish oil is in it, you want to look at how much EPA and DHA is another name for a higher amount. And then definitely, yes, low glycemic fruits like blueberries and raspberries and that not only do they have a lot of fibre in them, which is good for your gut microbiome, but very antioxidant as well. lean proteins we need that to maintain our muscle mass amino acids building blocks for you know, all of our cellular function. And then what else do I like to advocate for like cruciferous vegetables, I love broccoli, I probably rave about broccoli more than I should. But if you can get cruciferous vegetables into your into at least one meal a day. So whether that's brussel sprouts or cabbage, they have a lot of anti inflammatory properties that are extremely beneficial. And then green tea, the EGCG in green tea is great for brain health as well. So if you you know without adding honey and any dairy to it, if you can drink green tea plain and that's good for you as well. But there's so many things i i take numerous supplements a day of you because we have to address all of the inflammation that's probably going on our body. And I think with the way soil is depleted these days, and farming practices and pesticide use were much more inflamed than we were in generations past we can be eating the same way our ancestors did, but the quality of the food that we have now is not as nutrient dense as it was in the past. So I like to just be cautious and try to address all those risk factors as much as I can with with supplements and diet and kind of a combination of both.

And what are some of the supplements that people might think about.

So functional mushrooms, I know they're they're becoming very popular but are huge the the nutritional value of mushrooms is I think has been underrated for a long time. We've looked at button mushrooms as a what is this funghi growing on the ground, we didn't really think much of it in years past. But to eat a variety of different you can either eat it and consume it or you know take it as a supplement like lion's mane is one for instance that crosses the blood brain barrier. So it actually crosses up into the brain space and is extremely great for cognition and memory improvement and focus. Cortisol has been shown to help with stamina and energy, athletic performance. A lot of them have anti cancer fighting properties, digestive health properties, very anti inflammatory tremella for instance, is has a lot of vitamin D in it as well. So as a as a whole trying to incorporate as many of the functional mushrooms into your either your supplements or diet is I think always, always good to consider.

How much do we need to have in terms of lion's mane? I've seen kind of vary report some people say like two grammes, sometimes more what would like if someone was thinking because there's really good research behind Lion's Mane Now isn't that in terms of helping? What would that be? What would that look like? Would it be a daily protocol?

Yeah, I personally would. But if you don't, I think some is better than none, I think aiming for no less than 250 to 500 milligrammes of an extract of lion's mane or even any of the other. You know, the other key functional mushrooms like quarter steps or Rishi is very, can help with stress reduction. It's very calming. There's so many benefits and so taking a variety of them, you're kind of hitting numerous of the risk factors that we've talked about. Just right digging functional mushrooms.

Yeah, yeah, they're pretty amazing. You also mentioned the power of meditation in terms of increasing grey matter. And I know Andrew Heaton men talks a lot about mstr, for example, and the impact that has on the brain, there's various forms of breathwork. What would you advise? What would be a good daily practice? Or can it be mixed up between doing some breath work? You know, pranayama, things like that, doing some meditation? What are your thoughts around that? And the research you've seen in terms of cognitive health?

Yeah, I think the greatest benefit is if we do probably 15 to 20 minutes a day, knowing the average woman in this age bracket, even the average man right, the way we live our lives, that probably is impossible for most people. Also, stilling the mind is a challenge. I know I struggle with it, I am not, I'm not good at it by any means. But I, I do know how much better I feel when I try to incorporate even just a few minutes a day. Sometimes I just do box breathing. If I have a few minutes, I will just sit and I will breathe in for four to five seconds, hold for four to five seconds. And then I try to exhale for longer that stimulates the vagus nerve. So if you can make the exhale portion, you know, one or two seconds longer than the inhale and old, that's quite beneficial. So sometimes I'll just do that just to just calm the system down. Especially when I'm feeling stressed, I find that very helpful. But otherwise, I tried to do either a mindfulness app or a transcendental meditation app, even to the five to 10 minutes. First thing in the morning, I used to try to do it at night, which was disastrous, it puts me to sleep. So I don't think that was as beneficial. But the research is showing that you know, 15 to 20 minutes, if you can get that in every day

is is ideal. When do you like to do when do you find the best time I well,

I get up quite early in the morning. So that's the best time for me before I've hopped out of bed and started my day. Because once my day starts, it's unlikely I'm going to stop and now start meditating in the middle of the day. And end of the day when I also have time, I'm too tired. So usually, you know, 530 in the morning, when I first wake up, I will try to do it then as much as I as much as as possible.

And let's talk about exercise. You mentioned exercise. You know, it's really important. I saw some research on this, you know, squats, for example, as a full body movement seem to enhance BDNF, which is like local growth. Yeah, what do we need to be thinking about in terms of exercise?

There? Interestingly, I also just saw some research recently about how working the calf muscles so by doing calf raises, that muscle releases, releases some factors that actually help with longevity. So I don't I don't know that they really, you know, flush that out enough. But I think improving our muscle mass is essential, even just for growing older, healthily, right, the last thing we need is for our muscle mass to completely disappear. And then now we're frail and we're more likely to fall have falls. And it just it will, it will lead to other more chronic diseases, right, and potentially osteoporosis. And so I think building that foundation of muscle, ideally, when we're younger, but it's never too late to start three to four times a week, at least 30 to 45 minutes. Working the larger muscle groups like the back muscles, the leg muscles can yet help release growth hormone and, you know, improve posture and it's just for long term healthy. It's amazing how much energy you have to when you weight train and incorporate some routine exercise and it almost needs to be scheduled in writing because it feels like a chore I'm sure for many people. So you almost have to just set aside that time every single day and just do it and once you start generally you don't regret it. Yeah,

yeah, I don't and also they're the muscles are great for storing glycogen right and improving that instant sense turned.

Yeah, that's exactly that's right. Yeah. And for you know, for weight, just redistribute redistribution, because for women, again, we we start to develop a lot of abdominal visceral fat as our oestrogen decreases. And that can help shift that right as we as we train, muttering our muscles and also like change the diet that can also help redistribute the abdominal fat.

It's funny because you know, people talk about going like for a run as being meditative, which I think it is, and it's that rhythmic movement. I've also found that the box breathing you describe there, just even if you follow the simple kind of military style in for for whole, for for out for hopeful, just that rhythm of doing the same thing similar to weight training, I've got to get through however many that not so much with strength training when you're looking at the much lower sets for example, but when you go with a little bit higher volume and you're like doing 10 1215 reps, just the rhythm of doing that and strengthening the muscle and feeling that tension and doing it again, I don't know about you, but I find it creates so have order in my mind that empowers my day seems like it goes better.

I agree. I don't know if it's also I think stilling the mind, right? We don't we don't think of it that way. But we're all you're doing in those moments is you're focusing on that one thing. And I think, the more we do activities in a day like that, if you're meditating without realising you're meditating, I think it's really, it's forcing you to stop thinking about the other 100 things that you need to think about and actually just focusing on one, which is key. Yeah, yeah.

Last question. Before we we come on to your work in terms of the book and you've got a supplement range that's coming out, which is really exciting. What about the place for women's hormone? So hormone therapy during as they transition through menopause? It seems like there's this critical window hypothesis around the right time of that and how that can be, you know, protective of brain health?

Yes, for sure. I think I'm a huge advocate of hormone replacement therapy. I think there was a lot of misinformation in that study that came out in 2002. About the risk factors with hormone replacement. And those were also older formulations, the ones that we have now, we should be looking for extra dye all in the oestrogen formulation, micronized progesterone, which is taken orally, and we want to be taking our estradiol, topically, so whether that's in a patch, a gel cream, you know, you can even get a vaginal cream, that when we don't take orally and then the risk factors for breast cancer and blood clots, and that that we were once very, very concerned about are actually negligible. So it's, it's safe, unless you already have had breast cancer or you have a history of cardiovascular disease or clotting, then it may not be right for you. But if you don't have any of those risk factors, they're showing that it's actually very safe. It improves a woman's quality of life significantly, women generally, you'll feel so much better, we end up with so much like joint pain and muscle pain and hot flashes and dry skin and brain fog and anxiety. And you know, the list of symptoms that we can have during our pre menopausal years are quite extensive. And HRT can really help a lot of women feel a lot better. It also will reduce your risk of long term disease like the replacing the oestrogen earlier is being shown to be neuro protective. So can actually potentially help reduce the risk of cognitive decline, reduce the risk of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, we need these hormones, it's no different than if someone isn't producing insulin, we replace it. And I think HRT needs to be looked at the same way that this is a disease is a syndrome, it's not just a natural thing we go through and we just have to live through it. Not only because it's uncomfortable to have those symptoms, but also because it is putting us at risk of of illness. So I think it's something that we should be strongly considered and physicians should be speaking with their patients about it, I still get a lot of feedback that there's still, you know, misinformation, it's not actually being taught in medical school, like women's health is not being taught in medical school the way it should be. So I have friends and women reach out on my profile all the time that say that their physicians are like, No, I won't even talk to you about it. And they're not, they're not being even offered it as an option. So I think it's something that we should be advocating for ourselves and finding a clinician who wills it will give you your options. And it may not be for you. And it may be something you choose not to do. But I think the we should be given the choice. And and the proper guidance and information surrounding the use of HRT for sure.

I would a woman know that it was time to go and see her medical doctor about getting hormone therapy? Would it be at the point at which because I know often when we'll see a shortening in their cycle, then they'll see it started to lengthen them? Do they need to wait for symptoms? Or adds that cycle length is coming at broader? Like what will be the time that it's like actually, Joe, this is a really good time to be thinking about it.

Yeah, I think as soon as you're starting to notice that you're having pre menopausal symptoms. So for some women that can be in their mid 30s I can start quite early for some women it may not be until they're into their 40s Maybe even later 40s It really varies. But I think the minute you're having any symptoms, it's perfectly safe to start there is no and there isn't even a too late to start. I think the earlier we start the better the outcomes are for a long term disease risk prevention for sure. But like if you've started having a variance in your cycle, or you're starting to have hot flashes, or mood changes, and you know that that's that's not another underlying cause. And it's it's just something new for you. Then I think by all means we should be we should be seeking out practitioner that can talk to you about your HRT options. And generally once a woman is over 40 We don't even treat based on blood levels because the Blood are our hormones are constantly fluctuating. So doing a blood level, it's a snapshot in a moment in a day, where you are in your cycle isn't taken into account, even during the day, your hormones can fluctuate so much. So it's not always a good indicator. A lot of times we can treat just based on symptoms alone. So if you're, if you start taking oestrogen and progesterone and you're not feeling better, we can increase the oestrogen up to a certain limit, there is a max dose that we generally recommend. And you just treat until the symptoms are mostly controlled. It doesn't have to be based on blood blood levels, per se.

And would you do this when a woman was still having a regular cycle? Or when you would wait? Okay.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, you absolutely can because the, your period can continue well into your 50s. But you can have a lot of perimenopausal symptoms prior to that. So absolutely. I think the minute you start to have those fluctuations, HRT is perfectly fine.

Tell us about your supplement that you have coming out to help women kind of get their bases covered what's going into that?

Yes, this has been a passion project that has gone on for two years now. So after my mom, my mom passed away during COVID. And I had already prior to that in just researching brain health and what I should be taking to try to not only improve my brain health, but also reduce like inflammation in my body improve my sleep, address my gut microbiome I was taking, like I take a handful of supplements every day, which is a lot of filler, then trying to source the right doses to because I felt I feel that some supplements were were meant to take higher doses of it than what the recommended daily allowances for disease prevention. So I knew what I wanted to take. And I was sourcing it all from, you know, 10 different places and then counting it out every day in my little dose set. And it's a nuisance. And it's not, it's not something easy to follow in in a busy lifestyle. And then I'd end up missing days at a time because I just hadn't gotten around to, you know, counting it all out for the day and whatnot. So that's how I started to develop this, this supplement line because it's really from from a personal standpoint, this is what I wanted to be taking every single day. It's for any woman looking to improve her long term health, improve her risk of long term disease. It has 48 vitamins and herbs and functional mushrooms in it. There's six products, I had it all divided up based on when I felt we should be at what time of day, we should be taking it. I had the tablets the morning and the mid day stack, I had them enteric coated so that we could reduce some of the stomach upset because I didn't want again, I would like for me it's a compliance issue too, when you have to take too many it can be quite hard on the stomach. So I was trying to reduce, you know how many side effects someone might have if they were taking it. But these are all the things that I feel address, you know, blood sugar, for instance, there's Berberine and which is now being shown to be quite powerful at managing you know, glucose levels almost on par with metformin, which is the first line drug for diabetes there's seven functional mushrooms in it there's a probiotic in it, there's a stack for nighttime with like L theanine and magnesium glycinate which are great for relaxation and inducing a healthier sleep pattern. And then there's you know, the morning stack has like turmeric and ashwagandha which is great for stress and anxiety and there's the you know, full B vitamins in there and vitamin D, the omega threes so it's literally everything i i want to be taking yeah that they've had for formulated into this kind of like it's six products you take everyday it's very easy to follow. And I wanted women to feel special like their health matters. So they're in glass bottles with metal lids like I didn't want plastic. And I it's just easy to follow. Then you just know in the morning, you take this one and day you take this one and it's just me. I'm hoping you will make the choice to prioritise their health easier.

Amazing. Awesome. I look forward to that. Where can people find out more about you your work, but your new supplement line that's coming out 2023 is a busy year for you.

Yeah, you can check us out on Instagram. We're at revival dot inc. Or our website which is revived l.com

Amazing. We will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

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