How Lifestyle Impacts Brain Aging & Dementia With Brain Expert Kimberley Wilson

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0:2845 % of global dementia cases can be prevented through this. Kimberly, it is a true joy to have you here to help us navigate our way to a healthier and longer life. If nutrition has an effect on physical health, why would we not assume the brain might suffer similar outcomes? in the UK and really around the world. I think we're all super worried about everything and stressed. What's going on? The literal organ underpinning our mental health is much more vulnerable than it could be. Why is that? There's a huge nutritional insufficiency. We must fix this. OK, let's go through the supplements and the foods that are good for your brain.

1:13You need more omega-3, the B vitamins and... Wow! The thing is, the nutritional choices are shaped to a huge and quite unconscious degree. Yes, buying ultra-processed food is cheaper. So how can you eat healthily for less? But also the very best thing that you can do is... At 57, this is the first time I've heard that. So today I'm talking to Kimberly Wilson. I love Kimberly because she's all about the brain, but also how important nutrition is to the brain, feeding our brains, but all the ways that we can feed our brains emotionally, with exercise, with food, how we can help ourselves, that nothing, even dementia, isn't written in stone.

2:03We can do so many things to lower our risk of things like Alzheimer's. And I think sometimes we think that that's taken out of our hands. So I can't wait to speak to Kimberley. If you want to get more great content like this please could you just click the like and subscribe buttons because it means that we can continue to bring you amazing information life-changing information that's what we'd like to do um kimberly it is a true joy to have you here um chartered psychologist and food fanatic, but who's married the two to help us navigate our way to a healthier life and longer life. Hopefully, yes.

2:51Yeah. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is the current mental health crisis that we feel like is hitting us in the UK and really around the world, I think, if you look at anywhere. But is it? Are we, I think we're all super worried about everything and anxious and stressed, but is it, is it about something that's actually concrete? Because I think we're stressed about health and work and the world, but is it just because we're more aware of it? What's, what's going on? What's happened to us all? I mean, that's, that's kind of a big argument that everybody's still having. and in a kind of very therapist response I think it's a little bit of everything I have I have my very personal opinion or my kind of bias opinion which is if we're thinking about mental health as an emergent property of a brain I think our brain health is not as good as it could be for various reasons I think like the literal organ underpinning our mental health is much more vulnerable than it could be obviously why is that um I think my position is that there's a huge nutritional insufficiency kind of we have terrible diets and the way that we see our so for example we're seeing children with metabolic disease children with type 2 diabetes children with dental caries if we can understand that nutrition has an effect on physical health and physical health outcomes, why would we not assume, believe, understand that the hungriest organ in the body with an incredibly high nutritional demand might suffer similar outcomes?

4:47What's interesting about what you've just said to me is that I feel like at 57 that is the first time I've thought of the brain as being hungry for nutritional. I've just thought that it just sits there. This is all the thing that these are the muscles that need the energy to move and I have to walk and my heart. But I've never, what food does my brain need? So much, so much food. I'll try to be concise. um so if we start with the fact that your brain is made of food obviously all of you is made of food but we sometimes forget that you know I always say that because I think sometimes we forget we tend to think of our bodies as or nutrition just as calories you know just yes my body needs energy yes that's sort of how I perceive it but everything that is you is made from food everything when you are being made it's so mad like you're saying I'm going I don't know where I've been the last right so in the womb you were made up of the bits of toast and chicken and beans that your mother was consuming and Johnny Walker unfortunately well well this is not no this is absolutely the point right because if we know that for example that things like alcohol and nicotine and caffeine can affect development in pregnancy then nutrition too yes of course yeah So the brain is made of particular fats that have to come from the diet, omega-3 fats called DHA and EPA.

6:22And they are, if you think about the brain like a house, every second or third brick is omega-3. So if you're not getting enough of those foods during pregnancy, what we see is babies born with smaller brains that are less well connected. We know that. Wow. For sure, right? Right. The World Health Organization calls iodine, iodine deficiency, the leading cause of preventable brain damage worldwide. Right. The leading cause of preventable brain damage across the globe because iodine kickstarts development of your organs during pregnancy. And the brain is one of the very first organs to start developing in areas where there's low iodine consumption.

7:04population iq can be suppressed by about 15 points permanently and at its extreme iodine deficiency used to be called cretinism oh so i i just quickly want to ask you about iq because i knew this from when my kids were at school i don't know how i learned it but that but so many people are of the impression that if your iq is this you can raise it that's not the case with IQ you can raise it a little bit um or it can go down a little bit you know either way but your IQ is your IQ pretty much but we think a big chunk of IQ is linked to literally the structure the connectivity in the brain right and that is laid down in in the womb in the womb um and so we know about iodine for example but then there was a study in the UK which found that 67 % of pregnant British women had mild to moderate iodine deficiency.

8:02So it's really well known around the world, the World Health Organization says make sure you've got enough iodine and yet most women in this country aren't getting enough. But I've had three children and this is the first time I've heard that. That is quite mad. We all know about folic acid, you take that beforehand. And this is it. So folic acid and vitamin D. Folic acid to reduce the risk of neural tube defects. Absolutely. But that's not the only nutrient that reduces the risk of neural tube defects. Choline is another nutrient found in egg yolks, which does the same thing. And in fact, we think perhaps they might kind of work together to support that.

8:41Nobody gets told about choline. When women eat or supplemented with choline during pregnancy, their children have better sustained attention at ages 7 and 11 because their brains have that much more connectivity but Kimberly you know what's so funny because I mean I just love talking to you it's so interesting what is mad is that you're you're telling me this and I'm thinking I didn't take it I didn't I mean I was actually eating quite well in pregnancy because I wanted to interestingly of course i wanted to eat better when i was pregnant than i did when i wasn't pregnant i think that's nature isn't it yeah mother nature it's a really motivating time do that but i'm sitting there going oh my god i didn't do that i didn't do which makes you feel anxious this is so interesting we learn all this stuff and then we think oh my god it's like one thing feeds the other we get more information more knowledge around something but actually it's because I think that we need these big organizations to take this information on better.

9:47Yes. And listen to you and do something with it so that we don't have to feel anxious, that we're not being taken care of. We know that our GPs or our hospitals or our midwives have got all the information about everything that will help us. And so we can then take our hands off the steering wheel yeah no that I mean that's exactly it how frustrated do you get you know you know when they um they ask the Hulk like how do you do it he's like I'm always angry I'm kind of I'm always angry I'm always a little bit angry when I talk about this stuff um do you work with the government in any way I don't know I mean all of my advocacy is kind of through my books and and that's why I started because when I tried to speak to the prison speak to the governors and no one was listening nobody cared I mean it was it was seen as kind of superfluous and and you know they had bigger problems at that point perhaps so um it kind of went nowhere and that's when I moved online I was like fine if I can't do anything here then I can help my own patients that is brilliant and I can go online yeah um but no I haven't done any work with the I mean, this podcast, it's called Begin Again.

11:04It's not aimed specifically at any age. It's about starting again. And I mean, I love talking about food because food is an area where you can make massive changes to your mental health. We've just been talking about that. and um but one of the huge areas I know for in particular obviously I'm like menopause queen I love talking about it I loved educating about it similarly to you I'm so frustrated that we don't all learn about it as young women and men everybody needs to know about it half the population are going to go through it no one can sidestep it it's going to happen um but what I'm so interested about is dementia and that is it true that more women than men get dementia yes so when it comes to something like Alzheimer's disease which is the most common form of dementia because dementia is an umbrella term yeah um women have twice the risk of men so of every three dementia patients two of them are women okay so when I've been told about that that more women than men get it.

12:16I've been told that it's because we live longer. Is that true? No. It's not true. It's not true. Stop it. And it's not true. Sorry, I love you. I didn't mean to slap your chin in there. What? It's not true for a few reasons. Yeah. Right. So first of all, if that were the case, then we, if it was simply about aging, we would expect longer lived populations to have higher rates of Alzheimer's disease and that's not what we see so places like Japan places like Greece who have an older population Italy don't have like correlation yes correlation with that kind of okay with dementia so for example in the UK dementia is our leading cause of death I can't how long has that been is that oh for years and no not and even during COVID where it was still dementia.

13:11I'm pretty sure. No, we don't know that. We can check that. Perfect. No, because we think maybe cancer or heart disease or some secondary outcome of a fall. No, it's Alzheimer's disease. So that's in the UK, but somewhere like Greece, an older woman is more likely to die from a respiratory infection. So complications of a flu or pneumonia than she is from Alzheimer's, even though on average she will live longer. So it's not simply what we can say from that is it's not simply about age. And then there's another interesting, very worrying trend, which is young onset dementia. So there's early onset dementia, which we do think seems to be genetically linked.

13:59But young onset dementia, which is when you're being diagnosed at a younger age, tells us that it's not about age. because dementia is typically an age-related condition. But if there's something going wrong, if we're getting diagnosed earlier, that means there's something going on with the health of our brains, that our brains are aging at an accelerated rate when our bodies aren't so much. So it's not simply about age. And having seen my father go through Alzheimer's, the one thing that you want to do for as long as you possibly can is preserve brain health because watching somebody go through that, it's not something I would want to experience.

14:42It's horrible. And interestingly, you said this terrible trend for younger people being diagnosed. When you're saying younger, how old do you mean? Because I think, wasn't it, isn't dementia kind of 65 plus? 65 is the average age of diagnosis. But so would you be considered younger if you were under 65? Yes, yeah. Okay. And there's more of that happening there? It's growing. The number of people being diagnosed in their late 40s, 50s is increasing. Because I, you know, obviously when we were talking about older people, you were saying it's more genetic. And obviously my father had Alzheimer's, so it's something that I think about.

15:23But it's not just, you're not just stuck with that. There are things that we can do. There's so much. There is so much that we can do. The latest global commission on Alzheimer's disease says that 45%, nearly half of global dementia cases can be prevented through changes in the environment and lifestyle. Wow. 45%. 45%. The 14 modifiable risk factors. Some of them aren't in our own individual hands. Some of them about like air pollution and things like that. but other factors like you're you know taking care of things like hearing so if you if you're hearing hearing this is so interesting yeah sorry no no um if your hearing starts to go um people who don't get a hearing aid are more likely to develop dementia than people who do get a hearing aid similarly with eyesight and we think that's because essentially like everything else in your body um your brain works on a use it or lose it principle right so if you don't keep working on your flexibility your body says we don't need to move in that range of motion anymore let's not bother maintaining it we'll put the energy somewhere else um and similarly with your brain if your brain isn't being if those neurons aren't being stimulated and used then your brain says well we're not going to put the energy into maintaining them we can use that energy elsewhere or just it'll just save it um and so when you lose your hearing you're getting fewer inputs of stimulus from the environment your brain is being less challenged and so it's kind of it's like an empty warehouse you know you kind of close the door and and it starts to degrade because if you're not constantly using it and it's being constantly upkept then you start to lose it um And the other potential association between hearing loss and dementia is the loss of socialization.

17:28Yes. Because we know that social connections are so important for our well-being, helps to lower our stress. And I think I've seen people that find it hard to hear, maybe in a big, busy restaurant or and you kind of see them kind of leaning in and then you just see them kind of check out a bit. oh I'll just I'll just watch yeah this conversation happening I can imagine that really stressful um so that's interesting so if somebody is thinking that they may be getting the beginnings I know as a person of um like later midlife like I'm getting on now that um loss of hearing is something that you don't want to admit to it's a pride thing and you you don't want people to think that you're old.

18:18I mean, I know some people are really proud and don't mind getting old at all, but lots of people do. And it's about like not wanting to go to get checked, but wearing a hearing aid, does that make a difference? Yes. It does. Yes, because you're still going to give your brain that stimulation and you're still going to be able to stay connected with people and socializing and engaging. And you're less likely to be isolated. And we know that loneliness is a big risk factor for dementia as well again and we think that that's the the stress of isolation because we're not meant to be isolated we're we're kind of tribal network organisms we need to be with other people in order to feel safe and when we're when we're alone we feel vulnerable and that turns up our stress which is you just remind me well we just reminded me yeah of um another one of the reasons that we think women have twice the risk of dementia is that women tend to have higher rates of depression and depression tends to be associated with chronic stress so that an additional stress burden throughout life whether it is experiencing discrimination in the workplace or abusive relationships or the burden of taking care of older parents whilst also taking care of the kids all of that stuff can increase a woman's stress as well as some hormonal things increase her risk of depression and then that can increase her risk of Alzheimer's.

19:40I'd be interested to talk to you about stress because stress is such a weird thing to measure like yes I feel like I am a driven person and I'm go go go and I'm like you think it but I've done it four hours ago do you know what I mean I feel like you're a bit like that like you know what I mean like we're kindred But, and I pride myself in that. I've always tried myself in it. And someone mooted with me the other day. It's like, are you in a constant state of stress? And I was like, is that not a good thing? Like, I feel like it's a good thing, like I'm on it, but I'm not sure for my body now that it is.

20:26What is going on? So that's one of the very, very interesting things about stress is that partly it's about the kind of can we measure levels of cortisol and adrenaline in your blood? Yeah, and how do you do that? But also the negative or how negatively you are affected by stress is impacted by your attitude to it. So it's not simply a thing about levels. It's also the psychology of it. Oh, wait. So I could have lots of cortisol in my body. But if I'm going, this is ace. if this is you on fire yeah so for example if um if we to take two people and set them typically it's like a horrible maths challenge to be done in front of an audience right the kind of thing that um you get them to count backwards from a thousand in sevens like something horrible um that's going to just increase that stress um and if you you can prime someone to you know feel embarrassed and anxious about it or you can prime someone to be like this is a challenge let me see what I can do or it's not too it's not a big deal if I fail or we will see that this person has fewer negative consequences of the same level of increased stress compared to the person who's perceiving themselves as failing perceiving themselves as being negatively judged perceiving so it's not just the stress itself it's how we attend to it what we think about it our attitude to it, the meaning that we give to the stress.

21:56It's the same with burnout, right? So you can be working at a very, very high level. Again, you have two people working at a very high level. But if one person is being praised for their work, they have some autonomy over their work, they feel that their work is in alignment with their values. The same objective level of work for someone who doesn't have as much power over their time, feels like they're not taken seriously in the workplace doesn't feel they're being paid adequately for their efforts that person is going to burn out this person is going to feel motivated so it might be the same objective level of stress wow but the meaning associated with it changes our subjective experience of it and so if it's not the actual kind of level of cortisol it's how you deal with it how do you how do you know if how you're dealing with it is bad I mean I actually can I think I would probably be able to tell from what you've said so then it's about changing thought patterns right around yourself don't be so hard on yourself this is I've got to just tell you as a younger person than me this gets better like this is this is the benefit of getting older when you were talking about doing the maths challenge in front of an audience 10 years ago that would have sent me into a cold sweat today I just think if I fail I fail well this is it that's what's interesting but it's it's but that's not the story that people are getting I meet people as young as 30 who are saying i would this is it for me i don't want to get any older than this it's it's it's really interesting because age has become a fear and a terror and anxiety real terror and longevity you'd literally do anything you cryogenically do this inject yourself with the blood of a teenager get your vitamins and then get your iron and then you know you never drink and you never have fun And, you know, it's like interesting how I feel happier in my own skin now than I ever have done before.

24:15It's just a bit wrinkly. Yeah. Well, and that's when we talk about kind of menopause and how that's experienced across the globe in societies where aging is valued and looked well upon and women are valued for their wisdom and their experience and what they can offer to the culture or to the society. They have fewer negative symptoms of menopause. Oh, wow. God. It's mind blowing, right? Right. It's the way that we think about things. I mean, I'm telling this to my clients in therapy all the time, that it's not just the thing that happens to you. It's the story you tell yourself about it. That's what will impact how badly you're affected by it.

24:59Right. So if I, if I'm, I'm dumped, you know, I'm in love and my partner breaks up with me, I will have a markedly different experience of that breakup if I tell myself it's because I'm unlovable it's because I did something wrong I'm going to be lonely forever I'm gonna if I tell myself a story about my worthlessness compared to if I tell myself a story about this is what happens to people nobody ever gets married to their first love this is heartbreaking but at least I now have different options I'm learning I can I can take what was good maybe you know just because it's ended doesn't mean it wasn't valuable doesn't mean that there wasn't something beautiful there that I can hold on to I will have a completely different experience with that breakup it will still hurt yes but I will have a different experience of the breakup and myself depending on the story I tell about it I think um I think really the the self-perception is such an enormous thing but and obviously we can do a lot about talking to ourselves in a different way around problems that we're facing so stress and things like that we've learned that that's a big change I want to bring food into that now nutrition um and how can so like let's talk about supplements and dementia for example you you've talked about omega-3s I mean should we what okay let's go through the supplements that are good for your brain and let's go through the foods that provide those um minerals and things like that yes 100 um so there's a lovely study on this called vitacog which people can look up and what they did um which is why it's such an elegant study was to take people who already had two big risk factors for dementia So they were already older, over the age of 70, and they already have a condition called MCI, mild cognitive impairment.

27:07So that's not Alzheimer's, but it's the type of kind of start. Yes, it's considered a risk factor for Alzheimer's. It's a slowing of cognitive abilities. You're not quite as sharp as you used to be, a little bit more forgetful. Maybe you don't follow a complex conversation quite as well. And so, as I say, it doesn't always become Alzheimer's, but it's considered a risk factor. we want to watch out for people who have mci so two big risk factors and what they did was again it was a placebo controlled trial of b vitamins going to give you some b vitamins for two years to take and then we'll see you in two years time we'll scan your brains and we'll give you some cognitive tests and then we'll see how you're doing um compared to placebo at the end of those two years i think it was two years um the people on the supplements on the b vitamins had a 30 percent average slower rate of brain atrophy brain loss the shrinking of brain cells compared to the people who were on the placebo but only if they also had higher blood levels at the start of omega-3 because omega-3 works with b vitamins to protect the brain so the people had high blood levels of omega-3 and the b vitamins had a 40 reduction in brain atrophy and that's extraordinary because we don't have medications that are as effective.

28:29You know, the medications that have been licensed in the US and that NICE are saying we can't have them on the NHS here because the risk profile is too high. They don't give you that level of improvement or slowing of disease progression. And they have, you know, the side effects include brain swelling and brain bleeding. Like this isn't the kind of... But I don't understand if there is a clinical trial that proves that, that you're saying there is, and it shows that. Why is the national health not just giving? I'm not national health bashing because I love the national health and we wouldn't want to be without it.

29:09But there feels like a misfiring here that it's cheaper than these drugs, I would imagine. No side effects and we could all be healthier. So I think they would say that we haven't got enough evidence. We need more placebo controlled trials. The thing is, there's not so much incentive to do lots of placebo controlled trials on non-patented products. A B vitamin and a M. So it's really money. It's partly about how do we build up a body of evidence, right? And we build up a body of evidence by doing lots of expensive trials. And we only really want to do lots of expensive trials if we're going to get some money off the bucket.

29:49It's worth investing in an expensive trial if I then get a very expensive drug at the end of it that I can recoup my investment on. So what we really need is philanthropists who've got squabillions of pounds who literally don't care. To invest in nutritional interventions. To just invest in nutritional interventions where they're not going to get their money back, but they will change the world. Yes, where they can help build up a strong enough evidence base. I'm going to start writing letters. So that Cochrane will say, yes, thank you very much. And then Nice will say, here you go, you're welcome.

30:23Because at the moment we don't have that. So with something like Omega-3, for example, there aren't enough studies that indicate benefit for things like dementia, even though we have these kind of smaller individual trials. Where we do have good evidence, but we still haven't done anything with it,

30:40is around premature birth. Can I just say something? I think we need to get you anger management. I mean, I feel so sorry for you. It's really hard. Always on the edge. I just want you to know that if you ever need to call someone and just blow off some, I'm going to give you my number. You do that. I just, you're never going to guess what. It's hard. So sorry, finish what you were saying and then we could, yeah. And then I'm talking about my rage. Yeah, great. So we have really good evidence. from Cochrane. So Cochrane is this international group of researchers who collate all of the evidence, analyze it, and then say, yes, this is strong enough evidence for us to make recommendations for public use.

31:26Yes. And Cochrane, I want to say five years ago, published a review that said supplementing pregnant women with 200 milligrams of omega-3 reduced very early premature birth by 42%. I can't find a midwife who knows that. I've given talks to specialist perinatal services, and they don't know that. And that's years old research from the holy grail of research and recommendations. So why does it not get out there? Where are we going wrong? i so in in my first book i quite can we just talk about the books because this is a good time thank you first one that's the first one yeah um so it's called how to build a healthy brain a little practical guide practical guide to do it so how to do that and then this one newer yes last year two years ago two years ago unprocessed what your diet is doing to your brain so there you go um but it was in this book yeah yeah um that lots of things um we don't take nutrition really seriously or we didn't so certainly um psychology psychiatry have not taken nutrition seriously as an intervention we haven't you know again considered that the brain is an organ.

33:05You know, we think about the brain in terms of its outcomes and its manifestations. We think about it in terms of mood or concentration or, you know, those sorts of more abstract things. The power of the brain is unreal. We don't think about it as a physical thing that is burning through 20 % of your calories. Didn't know that. Yeah. So only 2 % of your body weight, but a quarter, 20 % of your energy when your body is at rest going all to your brain yeah um so it's just it has this huge metabolic rate like constantly burning through energy it needs food interestingly as well i've i'm sorry i keep i keep in but i i want to get all this information at you i know and i will just keep thinking things so um i'm i was always kind of um trying to be as sugar free as you know possible low sugar diet and obviously processed sugar obviously sweets cakes biscuits and things like that I do avoid but the brain needs glucose the brain runs on doesn't it yeah it's like so you if you stop everything like fruit and you know carbs and everything then your brain is just going what am I supposed to work on well exactly so it will so your brain runs on glucose because so between glucose and fat glucose burns more cleanly essentially you need more oxygen to burn fat as fuel and your brain doesn't have much room um it has a very high metabolic rate so which i mean it would run out of oxygen very quickly if it was running on fat and you don't want that you don't want your brain to run out of oxygen um it would create too much what's called um reactive oxygen species oxidants basically and when you get too many of those they damage the very delicate brain tissue so you don't want that happening either um so essentially glucose is a cleaner better fuel for your brain it will run on glucose preferentially um but yes if you cut out all sources of glucose starches carbs any kind your body would start to have to try to make glucose by itself it would either do that from breaking down the proteins that you were consuming or if you weren't consuming enough protein breaking down your body's own muscle isn't isn't isn't the body an incredible tool isn't the way that the brain seeks food in other places if you're not giving it and isn't it interesting so when now having spoken to you for a bit i totally get everything that you know about the body and the mind how the two are just so deeply connected and they all need, I've just thought of the word, you're going to love me.

35:50Homeostasis. Beautiful. Everything, everything is working towards protecting your brain, right? Yeah. Your brain is the only organ completely encased in bone, right? It's so delicate and so important. You know, when in utero, in the womb, the body will preferentially pull down particular nutrients from the mother's body. to fuel the brain just for the brain just for the brain do you know you know I had um a brain tumor yes and it was a colloid cyst and um it most likely started in my mother's womb isn't that mad it is yeah I was like what would when I in utero even so it's interesting but you talking about I was thinking I wonder if like that all the little something little started and then yeah and it's so I mean it's extraordinary how you found out yeah I mean I'm just but you know you keep talking about the brain and this amazing thing and I keep thinking about Kevin who's seen it yes absolutely mad have you seen pictures of your own brain well he's got video footage of it and I keep asking to see it but I think he's just wants to give you a bit of time he's giving me a bit of time because I keep going I'd love to see it and he's like let's yeah I think so but I would hopefully I will I really want I'll share it with you I once I went to a A talk, the MS Society do an annual talk, and one of the speakers had a 3D print of his brain.

37:20Wow. And it was just the best thing, his actual brain to scale. I just thought it was the most amazing thing. Yeah, I mean, an MRI of a brain is mad. Yeah. You cut through your eyes and your nose, and you're like watching it slither through. It's so crazy. None of us want to be that parent who's constantly texting their kids, where are you? So I've partnered with Life360 today who have the solution. For me it's not just about keeping up with day-to-day plans. I've got a daughter on the other side of the world in Australia and with the time difference and everything we are always playing phone tag trying to find a good moment to call but with Life360 I can just check in with her without needing to pester her every five minutes and get peace of mind without being that mum.

38:07And it's not just the family halfway across the world it's actually brilliant for everyday life no more endless text checking if someone's on their way or waiting up because you don't know if they've made it home yet just open the app and see simple plus life 360 works whether you're on iphone or android and you can set up place alerts so you get a little nudge when someone arrives at their destination i love that if you want to make life easier and stress a bit less download life 360 today and family proof your family i so supplements we were just touching on supplements what other supplements so iodine we're talking about the b the bees the bees and the omega-3s yes need to go together where can is this all on your page do you talk about you talk about it how do we find out is it in the book where where do we go in the street um uh instagram is probably the place to be and my podcast so instagram what's your podcast called it's called stronger minds stronger minds um where i will talk about different kind of brain and mental health facts and science and information i have a weekly newsletter where i share fresh brain science every week great um so i'm trying to like wherever people are i'm trying to be um so yes in terms of foods um oily fish so your salmon fish mackerel anchovies herring trout everyone forgets about trout it's delicious kippers yes they're herrings um so yes yes a smoked this this is i'm i'm a food you can keep it in let everybody see let everyone see that i didn't know that i might be wrong i think it's herring no i i'm pretty sure it is it tastes similar but just smokier so i don't know all of those delicious things all of those delicious things um but so oily fish really good is it's quite interesting how sometimes with vitamins and minerals that you need to take one but if you take this one as well it'll sort of help you the one i learned recently i mean i i don't know if i'm right i'm not a it's just but was vitamin d and k2 everybody's talking about take those two together because it'll help you with your vitamin d and how omega-3s and Bs are good together.

40:25The Bs work together. They help 9 and 12 work together to basically break down a compound called homocysteine, which is kind of neurotoxic, into a safe amino acid. They work together to recycle it and make it safe for you. When do we take supplements and when do we eat food and what's better? Always food first. Food first is the basic principle. So for example, there was a study that showed that people who ate a small bowl of leafy greens every day. So like a small cereal bowl. So wait, leafy greens. I know that sounds really dense of me to say. No, no, not at all. But what is it like? No, not at all.

41:03Okay. Kale, spinach, watercress, rocket, lettuces, like the long romaine lettuces. But all lettuces? I mean, all lettuces will give you something, but the darker the green, the better. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't know that. Yeah, so things like the Cavalieros that get really dark, the better. But yes, all greens. And the more variety you have, the more variety of nutrients you get. Your brain needs a range of nutrients. So variety is the spice of life. Those people who had daily greens compared to people who ate less than a serving of greens a day had brains that were 11 years younger than the people who had 0.8 servings of greens a day.

41:45Wow. Right? Okay. And then a separate study that looked at those nutrients in brain samples found that the levels of those nutrients associated with leafy greens were 50 % lower in the brains of people who died with Alzheimer's disease compared to the brains of people who died with healthy brains. Wow. So we think that these nutrients are particularly protective, full of antioxidants. Like I said, those oxidants really damage the brain. Your brain has its own internal antioxidants or glutathione, but because it has such a high metabolic rate, it's always kind of throwing out these. Yeah, yeah.

42:20And so if you can give it an extra support with these other antioxidant compounds in your food, particularly food, because antioxidants as supplements can knock the immune system out of balance. Right. Which is what you do not want. No. But through food, you're golden. and um so we know fishy or oily fish greens leafy greens leafy greens and then i would say is magnesium a thing magnesium is a thing for the brain so i so the the caveat and the kind of full disclosure here is that i do try to optimize my diet but i do also take a little little cheeky because i take magnesium i take magnesium i take a b complex i take my vitamin d and I take an omega-3 what I consider to be the best evidence I just tell you something this is going to sound so shallow and we are going to start an absolute craze like of people running to the local health store I'm going to copy because you're the brain health lady I eat really well I just copy researchers okay yeah you copy researchers yeah and they're doing it so I okay I'm doing it I spoke to one of the leading brain researchers Michael Crawford he's been talking about this stuff since the 70s he will eat fish about four or five times a week I did too you know and I just thought well if he's I I eat um I eat mackerel um I'll eat half a fillet of mackerel out of the fridge as my snack that is my mid-morning snack like that's where I've got to but because I love the taste I'd rather eat that than a biscuit yeah I love the taste of it your brain loves you for it yeah well I hope so it's been through a lot did Kevin give you any kind of recommendations about what to do post-surgery no no no I mean it's been um it's it's been interesting short short-term memory loss is a really weird one I've had basically Alzheimer's in return I was like a very advanced Alzheimer's patient that was could feel herself getting better every day has been a um I mean I'd love to talk to you about it one day if you ever meet anybody that's going through short time memory loss it might be nice we could have a chat while I'm helping you with your anger issues thank you so much beautiful um symbiotic like exchange of knowledge um but because of my dad I think I've felt since since I found out so maybe 12 years ago that he had Alzheimer's I've been thinking a lot more about what can I do for myself yeah can we just discuss exercise yes exercise is probably the strongest evidence base we have for protecting brain health long term um every time you move you're helping your brain a little bit and I like the fact that you said every time you move because um it's not just I was talking to somebody this morning um it's not just going to the gym it's being active what does that look like for a brain and what kind of activity helps so everything so we can split it into three so we think about cardio strength training and mindfulness type exercises right cardio um really the same thing that it does for your heart in terms of kind of keeping your blood pumping keeping your blood vessels flexible and responsive that's what it does for your brain because you have 400 miles of blood vessels in your brain.

45:48Wow. Feeding all of those really hungry cells who are burning through all of this energy. And so they need a constant, regular, reliable supply of oxygen, nutrients, and glucose. That's what a stroke is, right? If that gets blocked and you can't get access to those cells, the rest of your body has the capacity to store energy as a backup. that's what fat is your brain doesn't have a backup store of energy your brain cannot store energy so we never want there to be an energy crisis for your brain and but and obviously cardio oxygen loves it like I could feel um because I started walking um the day after my operation I was walking up and down the corridors waving at everybody because I I wanted I knew actually not the day after because I was in intensive care for three days but um the minute I could I got up and was going because I could feel like that's what biologically I needed to do oxygen yes oxygenize my brain and we and we see improvements in performance simply from that so when there's more blood flowing through your brain your brain cells are getting more oxygen you have better memory performance you have better concentration and focus you have better processing speed from that simple kind of mechanical thing and it might be you know it might be get off the tube two stops early and walk to work like you're late or it might be but just do something something as short as four minutes can be sufficient it can be really really great really small doses can be really really helpful um when it comes to resistance training so you know anything that's about building muscle that's lifting weights body weights push-ups kettlebells anything that's building muscle essentially the same chemicals that are released to build muscle growth factors cross into the bloodstream up to the brain do the same thing for your brain they help improve the survival of the brain cells that you have and encourage the growth of new connections strengthening your brain so you will hold on to your brain volume the more exercise you do because your brain starts to shrink yes it starts to shrink from about your late 50s by about half a percent per year and that's considered normal I don't consider it I find it terrifying um but walking resistance training um they can reverse that age-related shrinking particularly in the hip they can reverse it wow that's great beautiful study which had people walking they started at five minutes started at 15 minutes and they they increased their increments of walking by five minutes per week until they were doing 40 minutes three times a week right and they increased their hippocampal volume and the hippocampus is the part of the brain which is a seat of memory at long-term memory pulling things back remembering something that you did when you were 6 15 last week um increased hippocampal volume by two percent by which is effectively reversing brain aging wow simply through walking i mean get a dog get a dog a dog fine you know what i mean start a walking group with friends yes you know and that's social you know join a club because loneliness is so bad for us we know um and you were talking about i was really interested that in exercise you talked about mindfulness and I was like hang on a minute how is mindfulness exercise so if we think about things like yoga or your tai chi yes kind of mindfulness mindfulness based activities there are a couple of things that are kind of built into them which are really helpful for your brain um so one is the stretching element which by itself we think when you stretch muscles certainly in animal studies you lower inflammation in the body wow can i just say you have given me great um fuel for when i do you know i love exercise and i share sometimes about exercising but people don't want to stretch after because it's like i've done i've done the session i'm just going to go back to my life and and oh it's fine and i don't get the doms and it's fine and i'm actually quite flexible so if actually the physical act of stretching is good for your brain I'm gonna say that I'm gonna keep Kimberly told me superb yeah superb yeah and then the breathing so when you're doing in a yoga class or in a mindfulness-based exercise you're often breathing very slowly you often have elongate your exhalation and what we see is a again a reduction in stress improvements in stress resilience.