- Hi, I'm Parris and talking to you
about a little bit more serious issue today.
It's Alzheimer's.
Now, due to some events and circumstances recently,
I have been brought back to a test
that I took a couple years ago from 23andMe.
If you've followed this channel for a while,
you may remember when I took that DNA test,
and they gave me my health report telling me
you have an increased chance of getting these illnesses,
however, on the other hand,
you have a decreased chance of getting these illnesses.
And there were two locked reports in there,
one for Alzheimer's and one for Parkinson's.
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- And when I ordered the test, originally,
I thought, ahh, I'll open 'em up.
I don't care.
But, in the test, in order to unlock that result,
you have to read through information that says
not everyone who has this particular marker on their DNA
will come down with these diseases,
however, you do have an increased lifetime chance.
Make sure you understand that 'cause once you know it,
you can't unknow it.
Anyway, I chickened out basically and decided,
this was, again, a few years ago,
there really didn't seem
to be any treatment for either of those illnesses, so
why find out?
There was interesting discussion
in the comments on that video about whether
I made the correct choice morally to,
to not gain that information because
I'm responsible for my family and so forth,
and maybe I should know that.
But, and in any case,
I decided I didn't want
to spend the rest of my life being paranoid
every time I forget where I put my car keys,
wondering, oh no, is this start of Alzheimer's?
So, I decided not to unlock those tests,
and I left it.
I haven't been back in like a year and half,
actually, to look at that.
Well, I've been getting,
here's one of the events and circumstances that came up.
I've been getting emails from 23andMe
that they're going to be converting my setup
of what I can see about my health over to the new system,
which gives you far less information.
And they basically say, you got a short period of time here.
If you want to know the results
of those tests that are locked,
you're gonna have to unlock them now and see that
because you won't have that option
once we transition you over.
So, that's one of the events.
Now, another is that a close friend of the family,
up where my family lives in Washington State,
his son was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's
at 35 years old and was told
he wouldn't recognize anyone or anything probably
within about 10 years, so to plan accordingly.
Now, Alzheimer's, part of what makes it so terrible is that
it's traditionally been thought
there's nothing you can do about it.
And so, I was interested.
Well, the last time I was at
my doctor's office a month back,
they do integrative medicine,
where they take the best of Western medicine
as well as more alternative ideas.
They find what works, doesn't matter where it comes from,
and put that together to help you with your healthcare.
I really like that.
I really like them.
Saw that the lead doctor there was doing a seminar
on treating Alzheimer's, including reversing Alzheimer's.
And I thought, yeah, that's a little too alternative
because there have been so many medicines
that have gone through the research cycle
to treat Alzheimer's and have failed.
Nobody seems to be,
nobody seems to know how to get ahead of this
to prevent it or how to treat it once it's started.
So, her seminar about reversing cognitive decline,
oh, I really like them, and I respect them.
And I thought, well if she's giving this seminar,
maybe she knows something I don't.
So, I decided to go and attend that,
and it was very interesting.
I'll share a little bit of that with you here.
A couple quick steps that (bottle rattles)
are very good to take and I took the very next day
to help prevent getting in a situation
where you have any kind of serious cognitive decline.
Also, I will show you what my results showed me
because I decided two nights ago,
(sighs)
after thinking about different things,
knowing that I would lose the option
to find out this information,
knowing that after attending this seminar,
it's not as black and white as
Alzheimer's is just gonna happen to follow it's course,
and there's no way you can change that.
There's actually, especially if you catch it early,
apparently, a great deal you can do.
And I will link to a website of a doctor
whose doing a lot of studies in this,
that the doctor who I saw doing the seminar,
reported on this other person's work.
So, I will link to that in the description
down below this video, so you can check it out for yourself.
But, I had decided, and I admit this was after
having a beer as well,
and it was rather late in the evening,
and I decided, all right,
I'm gonna unlock the results and see.
First of all, I wanna be clear that
I'm telling you what I heard my doctor say in a seminar.
So, you're getting this secondhand.
Plus, I have no medical training.
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on YouTube.
So, I just want to make that clear.
Okay.
Out of the 244 drugs that drug companies
have got at least part way through the testing process
to treat Alzheimer's, only one has actually been approved.
You've probably seen TV commercials for it.
Why is it 243 out of 244 drugs failed?
Well, the thinking is, of Dr. Bredesen,
and my doctor as well, is that they're,
they're focusing on the fact
that you have these amyloid plaques in the brain
that stop the neurons from being able to communicate,
and things sort of breakdown from there.
And the drug companies are saying, all right,
what can we put in somebody that will break that stuff down?
But they're not going far enough back
to ask the question, what's causing it in the first place?
Why is that forming?
And is there something we can do to
change the course of those particular things being formed?
It's the thinking of the doctors
who believe Alzheimer's can be stopped,
and even reversed if you catch it early on,
that it's really a lifestyle, diet,
and physical exercise type combination
that does most of the damage.
And that those plaques that are formed,
that you see as evidence of Alzheimer's,
and that do block the neurons from talking,
they're sort of the by-product
of what damage is being done to the brain.
It's not that they're just being,
that it's not a simple cause and effect thing.
Instead, there are a bunch of causes related to
being overweight, not exercising, not getting enough sleep,
not eating the healthy foods you should,
and eating foods that are actually really terrible for you
and mess up your intestine, mess up your microbiome
that lives in the intestine.
And a combination of things that we're doing to ourselves
produce a number of effects in the body,
one of which happens to be those plaques
that form in the brain.
If you go back to the root cause of it,
and fix the issues with how you live,
you can actually, they have found in a small study
and a larger study that's coming out very soon,
found that people who adhered very strongly
to the changes that were recommended,
in addition to doing supplements and some other things,
were able to reverse their Alzheimer's,
reverse their cognitive decline.
I don't know that you can say they reversed the Alzheimer's
because I don't what the, that they had any imaging done
that showed the status of the plaques,
or if you can even see that without an autopsy.
And you wouldn't want to have that done
just out of curiosity.
However, you can see in their results,
where they do very quantifiable testing
of their vocabulary, math skills, and memory,
you can see where they went down, down, down,
and once they made the changes, came back up
to where they were before if you catch it early enough.
Now, I don't have the PowerPoint demonstration to put up
that she showed in her seminar,
but I will tell you some of the helpful things you can do
to stop going down the path towards Alzheimer's
and reverse early Alzheimer's,
or at least the cognitive decline portion of it.
If you believe it is possible that it's a lifestyle thing,
it's within your power to change it.
Diet is the most crucial thing.
I just mentioned and some of it is counterintuitive,
but for the large part,
most people know what they shouldn't be eating.
People know what they should be eating more of,
vegetables, and fruits, and fish, and nuts,
that sort of thing.
An interesting thing I didn't know about
is fasting every day, well, actually, fasting every night.
Fasting means you don't consume anything
that has sugar in it.
So, you can have an herbal tea or something like that,
or water, but you can't have anything with sugar
because the sugar, or any other food,
it's starts the digestive process all over.
And,
apparently, to help the brain clear out what,
(stammers) what undesirable things have collected in there
during the day,
you need to have a period of at least 12 hours of fasting.
And the problem is a lot of people, now, eat really late,
watch TV at 11 o'clock, watch Jimmy Fallon or something.
You got Burger King commercials going with,
on your giant size TV, with the hamburger this big,
with the grease drippin' off.
Of course you're hungry,
and you want to go out and get some.
You can't do that though.
You need to have at least 12 hours,
even a little longer is better, with no food.
So, if you can stop eating at seven at night,
then you can have breakfast at 7:00, 7:30 in the morning.
Some people in this,
who are on the regimen to try to help with this,
actually don't eat breakfast at home anymore.
They bring it with them and eat it at work
at nine o'clock, 10 o'clock to give them 13, 14 hours
of no food because it really does help.
Exercise, your doctors will tell you to do these,
these exact steps for a number of things.
And sleep, who gets enough sleep anymore?
I can't think of anyone.
Everyone seems too be sleep-deprived, and it turns out,
you do pay a price for not getting that sleep
because it does have an impact on your brain.
Now, there are a number of things to watch,
in terms of being low in certain minerals,
vitamins, and so forth.
I won't go into that.
But, there is a pathway,
by which those amyloid plaques get created.
And along the pathway,
depending on the health of your brain,
this particular, I guess it's a protein,
can be cleaved in one spot or another.
And normally, it's this one spot,
which it then goes on, basically,
to help clean out that sort of stuff.
But if it gets cleaved in the wrong place,
which is what happens when your brain's not doing well,
the situation there isn't good, and so you end up,
basically, breaking that protein in the wrong place.
It's what goes on to contribute to the plaques.
And there are two things you can take,
again, according to this seminar I attended,
that are very helpful for making sure that the
cleaving occurs in the correct part of that protein.
And these are both over-the-counter things.
One is, this is a little different name, it's curcumin.
It's the spice, the spice that's used a lot in India.
You can tell I got a big ole bottle of it.
And the other, let me see if I can pronounce this one,
ashwagandha.
I'll make sure I have these spelled out correctly,
again, down below this video,
so you can know the names of these,
in case you're interested in it.
I'm not entirely sure what this one does.
I'm guessing it's an herbal thing,
but all I know is they said it helps your stuff cleave
and so, I want it all cleared out.
I do have to say that results that were presented,
in terms of people having quite a significant improvement
in their cognitive function, were really, wow, impressive,
especially one of them, was a professor, a PhD I think,
who had, you could see where he was, obviously,
a very intelligent man,
and his level of vocabulary use and understanding,
and so forth, just went down in such a sad fashion,
that he was losing those abilities.
But when he went on this particular regimen,
within a short amount of time, it started going back up,
and it went up about to where he was before.
But, again, that's based on catching it early.
Once the damage in the brain has gotten to the point
where neurons have actually died,
you can't get that back.
So long as it's, again, this is my understanding of it,
so long as it's a matter of the
connections aren't working right,
you may be able to repair the connections.
But once it's gone on long enough,
that the neurons themselves are starved out and die,
you're not going to be able to get back
whatever that memory was related to that group of neurons.
That's gonna be gone for good.
Based on the fact that, I believe now,
that there is a regimen you can go on,
kind of a common sense regimen in some ways,
about get enough sleep,
and make sure you're doing exercises several times a week,
and don't eat the bad stuff, and eat more of the good stuff,
I decided I would unlock the Alzheimer's,
it's called a EPO four, E-P-O four marker,
that people, you can get a copy from one parent apparently,
or you may get it from both parents.
If you have one copy of it,
it increases your Alzheimer's risk a certain amount.
If you have two copies of it, it increases quite a bit more.
So, it's not telling you you're going to get Alzheimer's
because there are a number of people
who develop Alzheimer's that don't have it.
But, amongst the people who have this,
they have a disproportionately higher number of them,
who do development Alzheimer's.
So, it seems to make you prone towards it even more.
And I decided I wanted to know that risk for myself.
So, let me show you want I found out.
This is my homepage of my DNA information,
the hundreds of thousands of points that they tested
back when they were doing the 23andMe testing for $99.
And up here, in the blue bar, it says that,
you may soon lose access to some things,
so if you wanna know those results,
you better unlock 'em now.
And this is all sort of interesting,
but let me go up here to My Results, Health Risks.
Now, under locked reports,
you can still the Parkinson's Disease risk.
I didn't see any need to take a chance on finding out
more bad news than necessary the other night.
So, I have not unlocked that one,
and I'm not sure if I'm going to.
First, they show you things you have elevated risk for,
some of which make sense,
considering what I know about my family history.
And, also the number of stars indicates
how much more likely you are, to how confident they are,
that this is an accurate predictor of the risk.
And, down here, Alzheimer's Disease,
they're fairly confident.
However, my risk is 4.3%.
The average risk in the population is 7.2.
So, my risk is actually less.
That means I don't have even one copy
of that EPO four marker in my DNA.
On the page, it tells you more about the testing
and the condition.
My result compared to average results.
There's a video they recommend you watch,
and that's about the APOE gene.
And things you can do to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's,
things that they talk about would,
"Take care of your heart.
"Growing evidence suggests a
"link between heart health and brain health."
Take care of your heart.
Control your blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, diabetes.
It can help with Alzheimer's.
It's not that those conditions
are causing you to come down with Alzheimer's.
It's that the same thing you're doing to yourself
that cause you to have heart disease, and diabetes,
and high cholesterol, and are overweight,
also damages your brain in a way that causes Alzheimer's.
Turns out, it's a lot simpler
and a lot more complicated all at the same time.
Because you don't take a pill
that clears out all those plaques in your brain,
instead, you have to go several steps back
in the process of what caused them,
fix those issues, and it's rarely just one.
It's usually a combination of issues, which then multiplies.
They estimate up to 30 something different factors
that contribute to Alzheimer's, but their root source
is back to sleep, and exercise,
and stress, and eating the right foods.
So,
it's,
if it were easy to fix those things (chuckles),
nobody would be fat, and everybody would be a lot healthier.
But, the good news is, you can affect it,
you can improve it if you catch it early enough,
and it's in your control.
You don't have to wait for the drug companies
to come out with some expensive medication
you'll have to take for the rest of your life.
If you make the decision to improve your health in ways
that will not only reduce the risk of Alzheimer's,
but all of those other things
that so many people are coming down with these days,
the diabetes, and high blood pressure, and heart disease,
it'll help to save you from all of those.
So, it's probably a good idea to do.
I am trying to do all of those things,
some days succeeding better than others,
but this is one more reason
why I'm going to redouble my efforts.
And I will give you updates on how that goes for me.
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