Episode 7: The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy

Overview

• Ex-differentiation is a very new concept but its critical

• The epigenome is the regulator of the genome.

  • Genome is four letters.

  • Epigenome reads the genome.

  • Over time our genome gets harder to read, so our cells take up the wrong roles.

Brain Age

• The brain ages significantly slower than the rest of the body.

• There is little neurogenesis in your life; the cells you have in your brain will be there your whole life.

• Therefore the brain does an excellent job at protecting itself through these adversity mimetics. But we can make that protection even more substantial.

• Evolutionarily speaking, people never lived this long; therefore, our brains never needed to stay that sharp.

• Older people are less likely to want to learn new things.

• As we get older, we need to learn new things continuously.

Longevity Pathway

• mTor - Respond to low amounts of amino acids

  • Responds to fasting and insulin signaling. It will recycle old proteins into new proteins (autophagy).

    • mTOR needs to be down-regulated for this to occur.

• AMPK - Senses low glucose and energy, it boosts NAD

• Sirtuins - Requires NAD to protect the cells.

  • Respond to many adversity mimetics.

  • Cert-1 and cert-6 go down as we age. Cert-1 is very important when it comes to aging.

  • We want to upregulate cert-1’s and sirtuins

• All these pathways protect the body through these adversity mimetics.

• NAD boosters create more sirtuins.

Diet and Exercise

• Mediterranean diet can protect you from aging and reverse aging.

  • 10% reduced risk in dementia.

• Resveratrol activates cert-1

• Olive oil can activate cert-1

• Vitamin B-12 is crucial, and people on a plant-based diet might not get enough.

  • Adds methyls in your DNA

• High homocysteine indicates how healthy you are.

  • It is correlated to dementia.

• No alcohol or smoking (mos pi duhan)

• Fatty Acids

  • We need to make sure we get enough fatty acids.

  • Fish is a great resource.

  • EPA/DHA ratio is critical.

  • Linoleic acid - Flaxseed, walnuts

  • Oleic Acids - Olive oils and avocado

  • Omega-3

    • It might be useful to get 1 gram a day

    • These fats are great for our brain. It protects the brain and helps restore it.

• You need exercise

  • Better blood flow

  • Better neural activity

  • Sirtuins are activated through exercise

  • Increases executive function

Supplementation

Metformin - AGAIN

• Metformin can turn NMN into NAD.

• Treating fish with metformin can improve their memory.

• Metformin can cause higher cell activity and suck sugar out of your blood.

• Metformin helped reverse mild cases of dementia.

• Metformin helped prevent dementia by 55%

NAD Boosters

• NAD levels go down in the brain as we age.

• Sarm1 depletes cells of NAD; we create more sarm1 as we age.

• NAD-H is NAD with hydrogen attached.

  • NAD is also a hydrogen carrier for cells.

  • You don’t want too much NAD-H.

• B3 → NR + Phosphate→ NMN → NAD

Increasing Blood Flow

• Vascular blood flow is incredibly important for our brain.

• NMN and cert-1 help create new blood vessels.

• Upregulating cert-1 protects mice for many diseases.

Sleep

• Sleep is essential to tell your body when to activate and relax.

• We get worse at sleep as we get older; insufficient sleep makes us age.

• NMN can help raise NAD levels in the morning.

• Get some sunlight early in the morning.

• One night of sleep deprivation can mess you up.

Overall Message

• We need to keep our brains healthy actively.

• We have a responsibility to our families to keep our brains healthy for our lifespan.