Alzheimer's Dementia - 034

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalised, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Alzheimer's disease has physical, psychological, social and economical impact on carers, families, and society. But is it a normal part of aging and can it be reversed? Stay tuned. SPEAKER C Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions. For overall good health. SPEAKER B One of my favorite words is solutions. And my guest, Dr. John Clark, has many lifestyle solutions to the diseases that plague us. Welcome, John. Tell me, is Alzheimer's dementia something that Australians should be worried about? SPEAKER D Boy, if I was Australian, I was surprised to find that dementias, especially Alzheimer's, were the second leading cause of death among Australians. SPEAKER B Oh, that is something to be concerned about. So is it getting better or is it getting worse? SPEAKER D Actually, it's getting worse. Currently, there's about 350,000 people with Alzheimer's, and the number is expected to go up to 400,000. SPEAKER B So it's getting worse. That's not really what we want to hear. No, it's not. Oh, dear me. So is it actually a normal part of aging? SPEAKER D It doesn't have to be. No, it isn't. And in countries where people still live on the land, especially places where they've studied, individuals out in the bush, say, in Brazil, they don't get high blood pressure, they don't get high cholesterol, and they don't get Alzheimer's. SPEAKER B That's incredible. What about indigenous Australians and so on? What's their rate of Alzheimer's? SPEAKER D Yes, especially since they adopt the lifestyle of US. Western people, they have three times the risk of the average Australian, which is already high. SPEAKER B Oh, that is really, really sad. Really sad to hear. Why? I mean, why is theirs so much worse? Three times as bad? Why? SPEAKER D Well, you know, a lot of these diseases that people get are linked, and so high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, all these affect the brain, especially high blood pressure. And this leads to more dementia. And so it has to do with the other lifestyle diseases that come from the things they do, as far as diet and lack of exercise that bring on the Alzheimer's. SPEAKER B Okay, so the problem, I guess, I mean, there's problems with every disease, but with Alzheimer's in particular, they really need a lot of care. SPEAKER D Yes. SPEAKER B Or more than any other disease. SPEAKER D I suppose, the person who gets Alzheimer's becomes a major problem to the family. In fact, when we look at people who have lots of stress, alzheimer's carers have become a model for stress. And so a lot of the medical studies done to find out what the effects of stress are have been done on people who are taking care of their Alzheimer's. Family member? SPEAKER B Yes. So how many carers are there, did you say, in Australia? SPEAKER D About 1.2 million people taking care of these Alzheimer's patients. SPEAKER B That's a lot of people who are stressed just from that one cause. SPEAKER D Right. And you can see since there's far more carers, they're taking turns, so they don't have to be around the clock, but it makes a difference. We have a gentleman that we rub shoulders with quite often. His wife, previous wife died of Alzheimer's. He spent the last five years of her life basically around the clock taking care of her. And he attributes now some of his own health issues to the time he had to spend taking care of his wife. SPEAKER B I think you've got a story of someone who was able to improve their mental capacity. Tell us about that. SPEAKER D Yes, I had a lady bring her husband to me. SPEAKER B Okay. I like the way you say that. Bring her husband. Why is it that men have to be brought to the doctor? It is an issue, isn't it? No. You're not going to answer that, are you? SPEAKER D I'm going to avoid that question. So there's definitely an issue here with a patient who doesn't really necessarily understand that they're getting sick. The Alzheimer's patient may be showing symptoms, losing memory, not coping well, having difficulty in social situations. And it's more the family that says, you know, dad isn't acting like he used to. And so it's the family members that bring these people in, and they say, well, here he is, and he's not doing as well. And he looks around and says, oh, I'm not doing so bad. So sort of a disease that you lose your consciousness of what you should be. And so they brought father in and they said, he's not making sense all the time. He forgets things. He makes decisions that aren't good. And so we're hoping there's something you can help us with the lifestyle wise that will make a difference. So we sat down with them. We said, first of all, what do you do? And my questions are usually around diet. What do you eat for breakfast? What do you eat for lunch? What do you eat for tea? What are you eating between meals, if anything? And are you regular in your timing of your meals? I got sort of a profile. Ask him about exercise, ask him about certain ingredients and foods, and then I set up a program for him. The program included a lot of important things for the brain. First of all, keeping it well hydrated. People's brains are supposed to be at least 70%. Water supposed to be right. And if they don't drink enough water, the brain shrinks, which isn't a good thing. SPEAKER B That doesn't sound nice. SPEAKER D No shrinking brains. And then we had him eat good food. Foods that are especially helpful for the brain were high antioxidant foods, fresh fruit, berries, particularly pomegranates good things like beans, lima beans, red beans, high in antioxidants, things like corn, things that will help the neurotransmitters capsicum and foods like that that stimulate neurotransmitters. And we also gave him a lifestyle as far as exercise. We had him exercising immediately after meals, no naps after meals. That doesn't help. We had him eating a small third meal. Going to bed with a large meal on board definitely leads to Alzheimer's. So if you're out there for your tea on the Barbie, roasting things with lots of oils, you're headed for Alzheimer's. On the other hand, we had him eating only fruit for his third meal, or if he could skip his third meal, be much more helpful. And then mind exercises. Okay, you want to keep that mind well exercised. And so we had him doing a couple of things. One was studying the Bible, which is very good at exercising the mind and comparing one part of the Bible with another. We call it associations back and forth. For example, rest. The Bible talks about, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So we had him look at rest. Well, then there's the Sabbath, which is a rest, and then there was the rest. And going into canaan was figured as a rest. And then there's the rest that people have when they're free from their sin. Anyway, associations back and forth, exercising his mind. The other thing was to predict things. All right? So you're pouring the juice out of the bottle, predict how many drops are left at the very end, and count them and get good at predicting things. It's using the mind. SPEAKER B And that was a kind of a fun way to do it, too, wasn't it? Was nothing hinged on it, but it was just a good way. Yeah. Mind your mind. That's one of the principles, isn't it? For good mind health. So what about the oils? You mentioned something about oils. What's the big problem with oils in the diet? SPEAKER D For a person that's trying to keep the brain healthy, they need good oxygen to the brain. In studies of laboratory animals, when they put them on a high fat diet, the oxygen on the brain actually fell below 70% at about 6 hours after the high fat meal. That's disastrous. SPEAKER B That's huge. That's really huge. SPEAKER D Yes. And so if you don't have good oxygen on your brain, you're in trouble. Now, there's two reasons why oils cause this. Number one, they make all the little red blood cells stick together, so they go in chains. When they're in chains, they don't go through the nice little capillaries or small blood vessels in the brain very well, and you don't get oxygen to the brain. The second reason why a high oil diet, high fat diet, a diet with a lot of cooking oils or margarines or butters or any kind of oil spread ends up taking oxygen away is that the oils take a lot more oxygen to digest, to metabolize, to get used by the body. Therefore, you're running at an oxygen deficit. All these things affect the amount of oxygen getting to the important neurons of the brain and those neurons then become susceptible to Alzheimer's. Basically, the neurons die or become loaded with what we call fibular tangles, strange protein that ends up up there, protein that's really oxidized protein from bad lifestyle habits and collects in the brain and clogs the neurons. Anyway, we gave him a diet that was low in fat and sent him away with a lot of things to do. I usually see people when I'm on the road doing lectures and so I don't always follow up with them to find out what happened. But I was due a couple of years later to give the Alzheimer's lecture again and I'm thinking, what happened to that gentleman? I have to check on him. So I called him up, got a hold of his wife. His wife said, oh, he's doing great. No more symptoms as long as he stays on his diet. SPEAKER B Okay. So that was important for him. And he was at that probably knife edge where he couldn't afford to do some of the things that others might get away with. And that was marvelous. So that's two years later, John. Yes, two years later. And it was still working for him as long as he worked with the program. That's very, very encouraging. I think you have another story too. Someone named Mario you were going to tell us about. SPEAKER D Yes, I was going in another part of the country and family said, you know, we live way up north in Michigan. But Mario was living down in their father was living down in Florida on their own, and they were ending up with Alzheimer's. So much so they had to quit taking care of themselves. They were no longer independent. And so they moved up to Michigan with the family. Well, the family was well versed in good lifestyle habits, good diet, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. And so they put Grandpa on good food. And within a short time, the Alzheimer's totally reversed. Mario became normal and was able to function normally. They kept him there, though, because some of these people, if you send them back on their own, will go back to their old lifestyle habits. Anyway, he totally reversed the Alzheimer's. SPEAKER B Isn't it sad to think that there are people in that condition who don't have to be if only they knew, and if only they would do what you've been talking about. I think that's incredibly sad because we suffer needlessly from many things, don't we? And we do. You've talked about many of the lifestyle things that don't have to be that way. And so I think that's just amazing. What about how does social support play into this problem for people who have Alzheimer's? How does that work? Does that help? SPEAKER D It's very helpful. In fact, studies have been done on Alzheimer's patients and looking at how many social connections they have. In other words, how many friends. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER D And they've discovered that people who have six friends are almost unlikely to have Alzheimer's. SPEAKER B Just six? That doesn't sound huge, does it? SPEAKER D Not a lot. SPEAKER B And if you don't have six, it could be something you could work on. So that's people that you feel you've got a reasonable connection with yes. SPEAKER D People you see periodically, people you have a good relationship with, people you do things with, people you interact with. SPEAKER B Interact with. Yes. SPEAKER D Another factor socially is attitude. People who are happy, people who are well adjusted. That would sort of mean low on stress, too, but those people have a lot less Alzheimer's than those who are socially isolated, angry, frustrated. I was interested to find there was a researcher that went around studying people and their attitudes. He went door knocking and he discovered that people who were angry, frustrated and isolated. And a few years later, when he came back about six years later and did the same, houses were in much worse case mentally, with more dementia. And so the factors that make a difference are whether you are contributing to others'happiness, whether you're involved in their lives, whether you have friends. SPEAKER B Well, that's just amazing. Now, there was a gentleman by the name of Otis you were going to tell us about too. How did he get along? SPEAKER D Right. This person came to me with the idea in mind of learning from me what to do for their Alzheimer's, but they only came alone, they didn't have anybody with them. And I went through a whole lifestyle program with them, but they kept backing up and asking about things that they had forgotten. And when they left, I was sure they hadn't gotten the whole program and hadn't gotten everything written down. And so I was thinking, you know, there's a tipping point. There's a point beyond which, if you haven't taken care of it and haven't still have the wits about you, the mental capacity to learn that you could be in big trouble and you wouldn't be able to reverse it. SPEAKER B Well, that's really sad. So how did he get a lot? He didn't improve. SPEAKER D Didn't improve and didn't overcome it and eventually went on to more carers and facilities. Yes. SPEAKER B That's really sad. So I'm just thinking, anyone out there who has early stages or you've got friends or family who do, that's the second leading cause of death, for a start. I think it'd be really, really good to be taking on board. What John's saying here? They're not hard things, are they, John? They're not terrible things. They're really lovely things to do and have so many benefits. Quite apart from caring for our brain, they care for all parts of our body. SPEAKER D Yes. And you know, this thing about diet, there's important aspects to diet. We covered the good things, but spending a little more time on what to avoid. The neurofibular tangles that mess up the brain are really oxidized proteins that come from the body and from dietary habits that raise the oxidative stress in the body. More oxidation, more bad protein, more load on the brain. And so people don't realize that some of their favorite foods are causing this. And the foods that are especially a problem are foods that have maybe oxidation in them. How do you oxidize a food? Well, you leave it open to air. People don't realize that a lot of this processed food is open to air. For example, you go and you buy a box of cereal. Well, that cereal came from a grain product, usually. Let's take, for example, wheat. When you get a kernel of wheat, it has a nice coating around it that keeps the oxygen out. It has good oils in it, it has good proteins in it. But when you take the coating off the outside of that wheat, you take the bran away or the germ, you processes it, process it. Then you end up with a product that is not protected from the oxygen. Then you boil it and you make it into a flake. So the flakes inside the box of cereal, that flake has no protection against oxidation. You end up with oxygen in that box, and the oxygen affects the product. You eat that product, and that causes oxidation in your bloodstream. The oxidation in your bloodstream will cause lesions inside your blood vessels going up to your brain, for example. And then you end up with more oxidative stress, more neurofibular tangles, and you end up with more Alzheimer's. Another thing that'll do this is frying anything in oil. Now, we love to fry things in oil. SPEAKER B You got chips, not we as in we. SPEAKER D Yeah, let's distance ourselves from that diet. But people will fry potatoes in oil, and then you end up with an oxidized product. You might ask, well, what about olive oil? Isn't olive oil great? In a study looking at olive oil, where they were frying things, they took two big frying vats like you would fry chips in French fries, and they put olive oil in one of them and the usual oil in the other VAT, and then they heated it up. They fried two batches of French fries, and then they looked at the oil. When they got through frying, the olive oil didn't look any different than the other oil. And in that frying process, it had lost all the good properties for which we value good extra virgin cold pressed olive oil because of the heating process in the presence of oxygen. And so oxidized foods, another thing that will oxidize foods is letting it spoil raw ferment age. SPEAKER B So what sort of foods would they be, John? SPEAKER D People like their milk aged until it turns into a dark yellow chunk. We call it cheese. Highly oxidized, full of oxidized cholesterol. Millions, no, billions, no, trillions of molecules of oxidized cholesterol. And as soon as somebody eats that product, within one day, within 24 hours of eating that oxidized product, they will have lesions inside their blood vessels, like those that lead to heart attacks and so forth. SPEAKER B That quickly. SPEAKER D Within 24, 24 hours. If your body wasn't quick to clean that up with good antioxidants, such as your berries and your pomegranates and so forth, then you end up with lesions in the blood vessels that cause a poor transfer of oxygen from the blood to the tissues, and you end up with oxidized brain cells and so forth. Oxidized foods, other oxidized foods. Well, we talked about processed foods, but anything fermented, you think about the fermented foods. Vinegar, highly oxidized, usually fruit, or usually apples. Chocolate, very fermented product. SPEAKER B Oh, now you're on dangerous ground. SPEAKER D Oh, didn't I promise I wouldn't talk about coffee? The beans are a fermented product before it ever gets that's a fermented product. Vanilla fermented for about six to eight months before you get these beans that have that flavor. Otherwise they're like any other bean. SPEAKER B I actually went to buy some vanilla recently and I think it was something like 20% alcohol. SPEAKER D Oh, yes, alcohol. Another fermented product. SPEAKER B I couldn't believe it. So I put it back on the shelf and you don't need it. The recipe said that and I thought, oh, well, I'll go and get it. But no, that's incredible. SPEAKER D Yes, soy sauce, a very fermented product, and you end up with more oxidized proteins, which end up in your bloodstream causing trouble. And so when you eat a high antioxidant diet, those antioxidants become free radical scavengers. In other words, they go around collecting this oxidized stuff and packing it away so it won't cause trouble. So then I suppose you try to balance your diet, but really avoiding the bad things and eating the good things. SPEAKER B We don't balance our diet, though. I was just reading the other day that only one in 20 Australians has the recommended amount of fruit and veggies. One in 20. So we're not balancing it. Even if we didn't have all of those harmful things, we're just not going to be able to mop up all of those free radicals. SPEAKER D And if everybody went down to the supermarket and got their allotted number of fresh fruits and vegetables to avoid cancer, to avoid Alzheimer's, to avoid high blood pressure, there would be a national shortage. We just don't produce enough, don't grow enough, don't import enough fresh fruits and vegetables to take care of everybody. Everybody better rush down to the supermarket and load up on this stuff before the hoarders get there. SPEAKER B Don't think there's a terribly big risk of that, unfortunately. But at least I hope that people will increase their fruit and veggies. That's a really good step to take. Anyway, you talked about grains a little bit earlier and the problems with the flaky ones, the ones that have been processed and then exposed to the air. So what would be some good examples of some whole intact grains that would serve as a nice cereal? What would you suggest there? SPEAKER D You can buy things like barley and cook it up. You can work with different things like amaranth, millet, brown rice, whole grain rice. There's different types of beans also that are very good. We mentioned red beans, and when you have these foods that haven't been processed, then they retain their effectiveness. SPEAKER B That barley is really lovely. It's a delicious grain. It's mild and very, very pleasant. I use it in the slow cooker and I actually timed it's. Such a quick thing to do. And it took me three minutes to go and get the cooker and go and get the barley and measure it out, put it in and pour the water. And that slow cooker will last us, probably the two of us, probably three or four breakfasts each, and for three minutes effort. I don't have any other recipes that are that quick to prepare. And the only cleaning up was to just the cup. It was just a little bit of fluff in there from the barley. So I don't know anything else that's as quick as that or as nourishing. It's hugely high in fiber. The fiber goes right through the grain and it's just there. So we just take what we need and over the next few days, enjoy it with some fresh fruit. Beautiful breakfast. Beautiful way to start the day. SPEAKER D Can I come to your place for breakfast? SPEAKER B By all means, by all means. Love to have you. SPEAKER D And so another aspect to this is that when you have your grains, getting them processed as recently as possible. In other words, I'm not suggesting we never grind wheat, but if you ground it yourself and then use it, it makes a lot of difference whether it was ground six months ago and went through the different storage places and then got put in a package and sold to you in the supermarket. SPEAKER B And do you know, I have a grinder and a friend of mine who also ground her own wheat, they both had asthma. She and her husband both had asthma. They started grinding their own flour and making their own bread and the asthma went. Now, I don't know, that's all she told me. It's just an anecdotal thing to throw in there. But when we buy whole meal flour off the shelf, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have the germ, because it wouldn't be able to stay on the shelf if it did, that would have to be refrigerated. So not everyone's going to be able to grind their own wheat, but like you say, as recently as possible is going to be a whole lot better. SPEAKER D And I want to highlight this a bit further. I had a physician friend that was dealing with people with heart disease. He took them off cow's milk and put them on soy milk, and then he sent them home. Well, a lot of the patients went home and then came back with their heart disease back, and he couldn't figure out why. Then he discovered they had been buying powdered soy milk that needed to be reconstituted with water. But what he discovered is while that product was on the shelf as a powder, the oxygen was getting to the oils in the soy, causing oxidation and causing a recurrence of the heart disease. SPEAKER B That's interesting. Never would have thought about that. So it's better to have it if you're having soy milk, you have it in the liquid form rather than the powdered. That's very good to know. That because you don't want to be creating the problem we're trying to solve by using a powdered product rather than a fresh product. A fresh product. Yes. Thank you for that. Very good. So that's been a lot of information that you've shared with us. Would you like to just recap on that and just so that we can pull it all to mind? Because this is an alzheimer's talk, so we might have forgotten a few. SPEAKER D It's important to have exercise, both physical and mental. A healthy body supports a healthy brain. So good exercise outdoors and good brain exercise, such as in bible study. The next thing is to capitalize on your social links, your strengths with other friends. Make sure you have plenty of friends. Make sure you spend time talking with them. Get involved in their lives. Don't be socially isolated. And then practice good dietary habits with lots of good, fresh fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants avoid the things that are high in oxidation, such as fried things and things that have been created through fermentation. SPEAKER B Well, that's a wonderful wrap up, and I hope that we can remember all of those things, and I hope that we could actually do them, too. Because, look, viewers, even if it's just some things, even if it's one thing that you're not doing now, regardless of whether you feel at risk, it would be worth doing at least one thing and then make it a journey and move forward with that. And if you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website. That's 3abnaustralia.org.au Click on the watch button. We hope to see you next time and go. God bless. SPEAKER C You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.