Ep. 140: Improving Your Health Through Everyday Rituals with Dr. Marc Milstein

On this episode of Health Gig, we are joined by Dr. Marc Milstein. He gives us tips on how to improve our lives in a very simple way. We talk about recent events in the world of Alzheimer’s, the perfect amount of sleep, and how much coffee is too much to drink. You’ll want to hear his tips on how to improve the way your brain functions and simple tricks that have a huge impact.

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Show Notes

[07:00] Memory really is use it or lose it.
[9:45] We are actually seeing data that suggests that loneliness, as is great of a risk factor to our health, as things like obesity and smoking.
[11:00] We want to clarify that dementia is just a term for symptoms of memory loss. So there's many things that can cause dementia. There's actually two hundred causes, over two hundred causes of dementia. Somebody could have an accident. They could have a brain injury. It could be a side effect to a medication. All these things can cause dementia, the symptoms of memory loss. Alzheimer's is one specific disease that causes the symptoms of dementia. It's the most common disease that causes dementia.
[14:30] Our brain is so complex that it fragments everything and little moments will trigger memories that we haven't thought about in years or decades.
[16:30] Brain health is very much related to what's happening in our gut. Gut health is related to how we're sleeping, how we're managing our stress. But the most impactful thing we can do is eat a diet that doesn't have the processed food.
[19:00] besides age, our single greatest risk factor for developing Alzheimer's is unmanaged or untreated diabetes. It raises the risk about sixty-five percent. We actually have data that shows that if we effectively treat diabetes, we're actually protecting the brain. We even have some data that people might be more protected if they effectively treat diabetes from developing Alzheimer's because they're optimizing their metabolism.
[22:00] The good news is, is that by optimizing your sleep or doing a little more movement or thinking about just these little nutrition changes, we're not only helping our brain health, we're lowering the risk for inflammation. We're lowering the risk for diabetes.
[22:30] Blood tests are on the horizon where we can tell if somebody has risk factors or that they're developing Alzheimer's or dementia, possibly decades before they'd ever see symptoms. What we believe is the earlier we try medications or lifestyle interventions to better outcomes that we will see.
[24:30] We want to change that mindset and say that just like cancer if we can detect it early, We believe that we can slow down the progression in many cases and have this be something that can be managed.
[25:30] We realize that sleep is just absolutely critical because we want to wash that trash away every single night.
[27:30] It's very difficult to catch up once the build-up takes place. Most people don't have a great night's sleep every night. That's the reality. But the more nights that we can try to have a good night's sleep and we can make this a priority, the better
[28:30] It's like compound interest. It might not be noticeable day to day, but when you look back and you think about all these little habits that add up over time, it's about most days trying to get a good night's sleep. Most meals, trying to eat this way.
[29:00] The study suggests that anywhere between seven and nine hours of sleep is optimal for most people. So something as simple as soon after waking up, getting outside and getting some fresh air, walking outside, even on a cloudy day for about 10 minutes, is something that's been shown to be based upon some really interesting brain science to really help you sleep that night.
[31:30] Coffee might actually have some brain health benefits. It's not something we're at the point where we would say people need to start drinking coffee for their brain health. But if people enjoy a moderate amount of coffee, there's some interesting data that might be beneficial to the brain.
[32:30] What's happening in our mind impacts our health, impacts our genes. If we're happy, lowers the risk of a whole host of conditions. People recover better from heart attacks, from strokes if they're in better moods.
[34:00] What they found was that people had more happiness when they around their friends, when they looked deeper into the data, what they found was with their friends, they did fun things
[35:00] These studies have shown it's not the number of people, it's not having the most followers or Facebook friends or social media friends. It's not about being in a big crowd of people. It's about connecting and feeling close to one person or two people, just a couple people, and making that relationship is meaningful.
[35:30] The blood tests are on their way. They're very close to being available clinically.
[36:15] But a big warning sign is if memory loss is getting significantly worse, it's really interfering with day-to-day life. If things that we really knew all of a sudden we're having trouble with.
Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

"We are actually seeing data that suggests that loneliness is as great of a risk factor to our health as things like obesity and smoking." - Dr. Marc Milstein

"Even though Alzheimer's is scary... we want to change that mindset. If we can detect it early, we can slow down the progression in many cases and this can be something that can be managed." - Dr. Marc Milstein

"We really want to mix it up and think about different types of learning, activate different parts of your brain and you want to be really giving your brain a full brain workout." - Dr. Marc Milstein

Keywords

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PodcastadminJuly 21, 2021