Dr Shields- Dodging Dementia

is dr shmuel shields and we're continuing with our guide your health series broke hashem we've had some very nice feedback from the series so we're hoping to be able to continue with a first wednesday of each month to continue with the with the series blinder today we have a very interesting topic we're going to talk about keeping the brain healthy i think the official title was dodging dementia and taking steps to improve cognition memory brain health and so on and i wanted to set the stage for this talk by saying the following um we know that we have six constant mitzvahs uh the mitzvah to believe in hashem there's a mitzvah not to believe in any other deity to believe in hashem's unity his oneness and also to love hashem to fear hashem and not to direct one's heart or eyes to immorality or to entertain any kind of api courses thoughts so i want to focus on yeerah and i think david hamelech in safetyhillam says it best he says that through my flesh i see my creator so this concept of yeera fearing hashem we might be able to think of it in terms of being an aura of hashem uh his greatness his wisdom uh mice are voracious creating the world creating human beings and when we look at the human body like david amella tells us through his flesh he was able to see his creator miraculousness of the human body i have a photo here from an asha yaksa shot and we have different organs here uh the eyes being the most miraculous camera in the world uh today we're going to talk about the brain and we're going to talk about some of the functions of the brain and we think about the human brain we should have a sense of year a sense of or for the creator i've heard it said that it would take the computer space the size of three empire state buildings to do what the human brain can do the central nervous system composed of the brain and the spinal cord integrates information received from all parts of the body and coordinates all the body's activities just the process of learning itself involves numerous steps including concentrating processing information storing and retaining that information and then recalling it from memory this kind of that kind of power needs a lot of fuel and the brain depends on getting that fuel from the foods that we eat i just want to let you know that a number of the patients i've worked with over the years as a nutritionist they've told me the following they're concerned about having difficulty concentrating habitual forgetfulness not being able to focus these are very common things that you see in children and in adults as well and many times people are fearful sometimes you you're at a social event somebody introduces you to somebody and two minutes later you can't remember the the name of the person and i'm sure there are people listening right now that have gone into a room in their apartment or house forgot what they went in for and we start to get very fearful and we think the worst we think we're developing some form of dementia alzheimer's and and so on and so forth um well if you do have certain symptoms you're concerned about it's always good to check with the healthcare professional to rule out certain things but many times it's not really deterioration of the brain or irreversible signs of aging but sometimes it can be due to a poor diet and we're going to give you some examples of that in a minute um sometimes just by improving how we eat could affect the health of the brain and there are there's a lot of research today and a lot of good studies that show with the right lifestyle with the right eating habits and so on we could reduce the risk of cognitive decline and we can keep the brain healthy and and active and we could have better focus and and hopefully better memory so getting back to that i want to go through a few tips today on what we can do to keep the brain healthy and i'm going to save the nutrition component for a little bit later the first tip i want to talk about and some of this information is from a book that i wrote called lachaim 18 chapters to live by and also from dr andrew weil an article i saw where he talks about 10 tips for a better memory so one of the first tips is to exercise your brain to keep the brain healthy just like you want to keep the body healthy the brain has to be exercised also how do we exercise the brain a little bit different than the body the body we lift weights we walk we run we jog for the brain it requires mental exercises that stimulate brain function so for example crossword puzzles word games board games learning a new skill or a new language these are ways that we stimulate and keep the brain exercised so these are very important things to do then we have also controlling underlying medical conditions managing them to the best of our abilities so if we have high blood pressure or an elevated cholesterol level or triglyceride level or if we're diabetic and you know we have to make sure that we're controlling cholesterol blood sugar blood pressure because if these things are uncontrolled it could affect circulation to the brain it could damage capillaries and blood vessels that nourish the brain so taking care of underlying medical conditions is crucial to a healthy brain checking your medications there are a number of medications that could affect short-term memory short-term memory is usually what goes first our long-term memory stays intact a lot longer so if you were prescribed the new medicine and you've noticed the decline in your short-term memory i would bring it to the attention of your doctor or pharmacist and find out if that's one of the side effects of the medication exercising your body in addition to being good for the heart and the cardiovascular system is also good for the brain because you're increasing circulation so you're bringing nutrients to the brain you're removing toxins and so on obviously anything we can do to reduce our stress level when we're under you know heightened stress for long periods of time there's a hormone called cortisol which is known as the stress hormone that gets elevated in the blood and that hormone could damage the hippocampus which is the part of the brain that stores our memory so we want to make sure that we take steps to reduce uh you know ongoing stressful stressful situations and so on adequate sleep is critical to a healthy brain being able to concentrate being able to focus being able to function uh properly we know that if we even get one if we go one night without sleeping or sleeping very poorly the next day we're sluggish hard to concentrate hard to focus uh more irritable moody and so on so sleep is a critical component to keeping the brain working properly and last but not least many times when people forget a name that they've just a person they were just introduced to oftentimes it's due to the fact that at the time of the introduction they may not have been focused they might have been paying attention they may have been looking somewhere else or distracted with a thought or whatever and sometimes not paying attention is is a cause for forgetfulness for example when somebody introduces you you should concentrate and then say the name over again you know even out loud nice to meet you so and so so you reinforce the message in the brain just like if you're let's say you're listening to a radio and there's a news flash and at the same time you're washing the dishes if you really want to remember and and be able to focus on what's being said what most people do is they'll stop watching they'll come over to the radio they'll focus on it and they'll be better able to remember just by paying better attention okay so i want to come back now to the role that nutrition and foods play before i do that one other point i want to make which has been shown to reduce the risk of mental decline cognitive decline and even forms of dementia is having a hobby and doing volunteer work they found that people who are engaged in hobbies have volunteer work doing things that they enjoy doing every day having some sort of relaxing activity seems to be important um for the health of the brain and also being socially engaged being in contact with other people is very important to the health of the brain and to reduce the risk of mental and cognitive decline okay now let's talk about the role of foods and nutrition as it pertains to the health of the brain basically in my book i am 18 chapters to live by the chapter i have on health of the brain we have a sub chapter there called good nutrition equals good cognition so the brain as i mentioned uh depends on amino acids fatty acids a large array of vitamins and minerals that are necessary to produce the essential chemicals called neurotransmitters there are 40 different chemicals in the brain that we call neurotransmitters that are back that are allow nerve cells to communicate with each other and allow the brain to to function to satisfy the brain's enormous need for these vital nutrients the human heart sends 25 of the body's blood oxygen and glucose directly to the brain with each heartbeat in fact the brain has a higher concentration of nutrients than any other organ in the body even slight deficiencies in the b vitamins b1 b2 b6 b12 folic acid niacin have been associated with memory loss irritability nervousness fatigue mental confusion depression and even emotional instability almost anybody that's been diagnosed with depression usually has a low b12 level that doesn't mean b12 deficiency causes depression but b12 and other b vitamins do play a very important role in cognitive functioning and memory and so on so we we want to make sure that we are well nourished i there's a typical example i give and you may have heard it before but i think it's important to repeat again if anybody does any baking and let's say you need a certain number of ingredients to bake a cake and you fall short by one or two ingredients chances are you can still have that cake but the missing ingredient might compromise the the quality of that cake whether it's the texture the aroma the taste something is going to be missing when you eat that cake and it's the same thing with the human brain if we are missing certain nutrients or we're depleted of nutrients so we have deficiency and those nutrients are necessary for building those neurotransmitters in the brain and now they're not being built the way they need to be built that could be problematic so this is something that that we have to pay attention to knowing that we want to nourish the brain with all the nutrients that are necessary and one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that we're eating properly what affects the brain over time certainly the aging process and as we age plaque buildup cholesterol in the body will interfere with circulation to the brain we also have something called oxidative damage oxidative damage is basically damage that's caused by oxygen to the cells of the brain and the brain is vulnerable because it's a big user of oxygen so one of the ways to offset oxidative damage and to keep the brain healthy is to make sure that we have a diet that is rich in antioxidants which i'd like to talk about right now so antioxidants what does it mean anti means against an oxidant means oxygen something that works against oxygen even though oxygen is a good thing and necessary for life and all the cells in the body need it it also has a downside and the downside is oxygen the oxygen molecules can damage things for example if you take a piece of iron that's not painted you leave it outdoors it's going to rust that rust is an example of oxidative damage if you cut open an apple and you leave it exposed to oxygen the cells of that apple begin to get damaged by the oxygen and start to brown so one of the ways to offset oxidative stress oxidative damage to the cells of the body and particularly to the brain is to actually increase our in our intake of antioxidants so what's an example vitamin c is a very powerful antioxidant so if you want to try an experiment when you get home cut open an apple take some fresh lemons squirt it over one half of the apple and the other half just kind of leave alone and come back maybe a half hour later and you're going to be surprised to find that the apple that was has the lemon juice on it the fresh lemon on it didn't change color and seems pretty much intact and the other half of the apple is you're already starting to see the result of oxidative damage so what is it about the side with the lemon juice what it is you have vitamin c in the lemon juice and that powerful antioxidant vitamin c which covered the cells of the apple is now protecting it against oxygen and it works pretty much the same way in our body when we have these antioxidants things like beta-carotene there are literally hundreds maybe thousands of antioxidants some of the common ones beta carotene vitamin e vitamin c selenium when you drink a cup of green tea you get polyphenols that's the plant chemical the phytochemicals that are in the green tea leaf that's a very powerful antioxidant and that would protect the cells and the blood vessels as well so by having a a whole food meal plan that's rich in antioxidants we get more protection against the damage that oxygen can cause to the brain so if i had to show you a little picture here you want to keep your meals colorful you want to get foods that have a lot of color and allow you to get the various plant chemicals and antioxidants that are in these kind of foods here's sort of a sample one day meal plan again you see it is very colorful it is made up of whole foods you know no unprocessed foods there is a cookie there and a cup of coffee just to make it look a little normal but but basically it's a whole food meal plan and as you remember for those of you that might have uh saw the uh presentation last week we spoke about the mediterranean diet and we mentioned that the mediterranean way of eating is one of the most well researched ways of eating in the world it's been decades of research behind it and i spoke about some of the health benefits in the talk last week but just to focus on one aspect of mediterranean eating and how it pertains to the talk today is that there is research that shows that someone who adheres to a mediterranean way of of eating may reduce the risk of alzheimer's by 40 which is uh which is no small thing uh and again why that might be the researchers feel due to the food makeup the healthy fats that nourish and feed the brain you know the monounsaturated fats the omega-3 oils that are part of this diet uh the colorful fruits and vegetables loaded with you know things like and the whole grains so you have an array of b vitamins you have a lot of the anti antioxidants we spoke about and the healthy fats seem to play a protective role uh for the brain and for the blood vessels so so these are basically some of the important um tips that i wanted to discuss with you today just an interesting note in in my book i have a list of foods that have some of the highest antioxidants things like prunes raisins berries plums oranges red grapes and vegetables that are rich riches than antioxidants are things like kale spinach broccoli beets red bell peppers just to name a few but we can see there's there's a lot that goes into good brain health and there's a lot of steps we can take lifestyle-wise like we mentioned and spoke about another food that is very important is fish fish because of the omega-3 content the brain makeup the brain is made up of a lot of fatty tissue and that fat is actually omega-3 so when we're eating fish we're actually nourishing the brain so we can see there are a lot of things that we can do lifestyle-wise obviously obesity puts us at risk for dementia as well so anything we can do to promote healthy a healthy lifestyle and again this is a guard your health series so we want to promote health we want to promote healthy lifestyle healthy eating exercise and a lot of the other things we mentioned over here could go a long way in helping us to have better focus better attention better concentration hopefully better memory and and better cognitive functioning as we as we go forward if anybody has any comments or questions they'd like to address to me personally i can be reached at 718-544-4036 i'll give you an email address also it's aras and robert amazon michael shields s-h-i-e-l-d-s rm shields 6-2 at gmail.com again that's rm shields 62 gmail.com uh okay i hope you'll continue to join us in uh what will be hopefully monthly wednesday the first wednesday of each month we hope god willing to try to continue with this series everybody should have a healthy and safe summer thank you for for joining us