Food as Brain Medicine: Plants, Inflammation, and Cognitive Decline

0:00you got depression, obesity, and hearing loss. So what if you were to go to your primary care doctor with dementia or your neurologist, what are some of the traditional treatments that are going to be offered? One might be a prescription drug called aerosept, which is a colon esterase inhibitor, meaning it increases the amount of acetylcholine in your brain. Acetylcholine is one of the key neurotransmitters, and it's like turning the gain up. So we also have a question here, oils lubricate the joints? Yes, oils definitely lubricate the joints, and I would refer you to an amazing video from Dr. Michael Greger that just dropped within the last week, showing that olive oil, not by mouth, but topically over a joint, our arthritic joint is really good at stopping the inflammation. Okay. So going back to aerosept or

1:09dinepazil colon esterase inhibitors, that's one category. Another category are called NMDA inhibitors, an example is the mantine or NMDA, and these definitely help with some of the symptoms. And then there's a third category that recently brought to the market within the last few years, called LeCambi, has way too many side effects and I'll go over the problems with these new antibodies against amyloid. I'll do that in a little bit. All right. So I'll give the three categories that are prescription drugs that are normally offered are the colon esterase inhibitors, the NMDA, antagonists, and the monoclonal antibodies. And medications like aerosept, they can help, but they're definitely side effects, things like nausea and stomneal weakness and cramping.

2:13So the anti-colonurgic medications have been linked. So this is the opposite. So instead of increasing acetylcholine in the brain, what happens if you take a medication over the counter or prescription that lowers the amount of acetylcholine? And when I see a 70-year-old patient, often they're on 10 different medications, and maybe four of the 10 are anti-colonurgic meaning, they're decreasing the amount of acetylcholine. And in this busy, I couldn't even fit all the ones on the slide, but one of those is called Benadro or Diphon hydramine. And I'm not, which is a great drug for allergies, for an acute allergic reaction. My concern is you don't want to be on a drug like Benadro or Diphon hydramine chronically, because what happens is it increases your risk of getting dementia. All right, so another category is the NMDA receptor, including momantine.

3:17And that can help, but you get side effects like headache, constipation, dizziness, and feeling sleepy. All right, so another medication class associated with Alzheimer's are statins, which can cause co-Q10 deficiency. Co-Q10 is an important co-factor in mitochondria. And so some of the patients that get started on statins develop dementia. And sometimes it's reversible, meaning if they stop taking the statin for the cholesterol medicine, the symptoms will go away, but not all. I mean, I gave this lecture a couple months ago, and there's a gentleman in the back who had been a professional banjo player. He started the statin. He lost his memory

4:20for playing the banjo. He could no longer play professionally. He stopped the statin, but he never got that memory back. So for that reason, I tried to stay away from statins for my patients. And became famous on TikTok and Instagram. I did a video on this topic with Robert Love. We had 1.6 million and 2 million views, talking about three prescription drugs that increased the risk of Alzheimer's. And then it was covered by the Daily Mail. It's interesting how it works these days. The Daily Mail basically said they never interviewed me. They basically watched my TikTok and wrote an article about it. So I guess these cases could be a reporter because you don't actually have to interview anyone. You can just go on TikTok. All right. So here are some more medications associated with dementia. Opiates, things like heroin or morphine. Proton pump inhibitors like

5:25Omeprazole, which increases amyloid in the brain and can decrease vitamin B12, an important B vitamin for neurologic and brain function. And next are benzodiazepines like Xanax and valium. I'll talk about those more on the next slide. Tri-cyclic antidepressants like Amatryptylene or Elevil can cause dementia with chronic use. And that's what I'm saying about all these. I'm not saying never take them. I'm saying you don't want to be taking this every day of your life. And then SSRI's like Prozac Paxel and Zoloft. I'm not a fan, certainly long-term of those medications because of the long-term brain damage that we see. And so specifically going back to the benzodiazepines things like Adivan, if you take them for three to six months, they raise the risk of developing Alzheimer's by 32%. They're often taken for anxiety or to help asleep. Now if you take them for

6:26more than six months, it boosts the risk by 84%. And then if you take the bentos for over a year, it can result in cognitive impairment that can continue after you stop the medicine for up to 3.5 years. All right, so that was bad news. What about some good news? What are some medications that actually prevent dementia? And this is what I'm thinking about. Men who take Viagra have lower odds of Alzheimer's and they bet you the same as true of women. So why in the world would Viagra help with the brain? It's been shown to reduce the amyloid plaques. It enhances blood flow of via nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a gas. It's one nitrogen in one oxygen atom together that open up blood vessels. And it's neuroprotective, meaning it protects neurons.

7:29It reduces tau tangles, which are often seen with Alzheimer's. All right, and these are prescription drugs. Here are the recommended lower doses. I recommend you start out. So for example, Viagra or Sedentafil will be 25 milligrams in Cialis or Tidalafil will be 2.5 milligrams. And Lori is asking what are alternatives to help with anxiety? I mean, my favorite is lavender essential oil, but there are many others. Okay, so what are the problems with the existing therapy today? Specifically, this new antibody against amyloid, laquembee, side effects that are seen in a third of the patients are frequent brain bleeds and brain swelling to the point that if you want to take this drug, they are going to insist that you get a monthly brain scan to make sure that you haven't developed a brain bleed or brain swelling.

8:33And, but the drug companies have a solution to this. Instead of calling these side effects, they call them Arya. Doesn't that sound like a song? It's just a nice, it's don't worry, it's just an Arya. What's an Arya? It's amyloid related imaging abnormality, imaging because again, if you want to take these, you have to get imaged every month. All right, so again, yeah, not a fan of laquembee or drugs of that class.