Episode 159
· 01:02:08
Alright. Let's go ahead. Let's get going. I know there was team said there was an accident somewhere and I slowed some people down, but let's let's do it. So just by a show of hands, is this your if this is your first time here, let me just welcome you.
Dr. Barrett:Awesome. Look at that. Wonderful. Well, welcome, guys. It's an honor to be here tonight with you and to share what we know about the brain.
Dr. Barrett:So if this is your, just out of curiosity, first workshop with us this year. Yeah, cool, awesome. So we usually host one every, we're gonna say two months, two to three months. So just be on the lookout for the next one. Tonight is all about the brain.
Dr. Barrett:And if you know someone or have someone in your life or you directly are dealing with, let's just say Alzheimer's dementia. So you know someone who's dealing with it close to you or you personally are struggling. Let me just see a show of hands. How many people? Yeah, I'd be surprised if there wasn't more people.
Dr. Barrett:What about anxiety and depression? Anyone around you that you know, anyone that has anxiety? Yeah, what about attention deficit disorders or autism? Yeah. So when we look at these common neurological symptoms nowadays, the most important thing to know is that they are common, but they're not normal.
Dr. Barrett:And we shouldn't treat them as such yet we often do. I hear a phrase a lot, it's the kind of the cop out phrase. It's like, oh, it's just because I'm getting old, right? And so I just wanna help dispel hopefully some myths for you guys tonight about the brain and what a healthy brain is and what a sick brain is because there is a big difference between the two and how you can create a healthy brain and take charge of your health. Because if the brain goes, everything else goes.
Dr. Barrett:So this is all about the brain. We've got about 30 something slides to knock out. We should be able to do that in under an hour. So without further ado, you guys ready to get going? Let's get it.
Dr. Barrett:Okay, so the presentation tonight is gonna be kind of intertwined between neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration, right? So I'm not gonna necessarily separate population. I'm not gonna talk about kids first and then adults later because really when you look at the brain, it's all the same. The only thing that changes is time. The only thing that changes is the age but kids, for instance, they don't grow out of a certain health issue, they grow into another one.
Dr. Barrett:And so it goes from one symptom to another. It may represent itself as anxiety but then that transfers into brain fog and then memory lapse and then another symptom. You know, when we look at symptoms, symptoms will come and go but if the underlying issue is never addressed, those symptoms will change with as a person goes through life. So today is gonna be kind of all inclusive. We're gonna give you some really practical things.
Dr. Barrett:So when you leave here tonight, you're gonna learn more about your brain, hopefully in an hour than you have in your entire life and make it super practical. So tomorrow you can start living an intentional life to create a healthy brain, okay? Who is here for themselves or a loved one specifically for neurodegeneration by a show of hands? So it would be like Alzheimer's dementia, prevention of cognitive decline, put it up real high, just so I can get an idea. Okay, who's here tonight to talk more on the lines of like ADD, neurodevelopment disorder by show of hands, put those up big.
Dr. Barrett:Okay, that just helps me frame out tonight so I can be a little more intentional with what we talk about tonight but it seems like Alzheimer's dementia is definitely something that scares us. Is anyone fearful even in a small degree that they may one day have Alzheimer's or dementia? Yeah, absolutely. Tonight you won't be, tonight you won't be, okay. I guarantee by tonight you will not be fearful of Alzheimer's dementia.
Dr. Barrett:You will have the desire to make change and you'll know exactly the cause of neurodegeneration. So let's get into it. Let's talk about that brain health continuum I just mentioned. It is a progression where it can start off as ADHD, it can then turn into more. We go into anxiety and then brain fog, memory loss and dementia.
Dr. Barrett:So they are different symptoms but this is the same biology, it's the same roots issue happening in the brain and we'll talk about those six root issues here in just a moment. There is a massive crisis when it comes to the brain. So what research shows that right now, one in thirty one kids will be diagnosed with some type of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. We see it as almost like one in ten kids, one in eleven percent of children diagnosed with ADHD. Now, when we look at Alzheimer's, it's seven million and it's projected to double in the next twenty five years.
Dr. Barrett:So rates of neurodegeneration and neurological disorders are climbing every single day. So the questions we ask is why, right? If genetics haven't changed since we've been on the earth, human genetics haven't changed, why? Why are we getting all of this increase, the significant increase of neurodegenerative conditions or even just look at autism for instance. Why has that blown up since the 1980s?
Dr. Barrett:Man, that could be some of it, we'll talk through that. We'll talk through infections, we'll talk through toxins, we'll talk through nutrition depletion, talk through inflammation, we'll talk through head injuries. And listen, I mean, just full disclosure, yeah, none of my kids are vaccinated, but I'll tell you, there are kids who aren't vaccinated that have neurological symptoms like autism, ADD and ADHD. So why those kids, right? Well, we'll talk through why it's not just the toxins in vaccines, it can also be the toxins in our environment.
Dr. Barrett:And honestly, there's one that's potentially even more dangerous now than ever before because of the accumulation of it. So when we look at Alzheimer's, it really starts, I always say this to patients, your brain health in your 70s is predicated on what you did to your brain in your 40s and 50s. So Alzheimer's dementia, neurodegeneration is not something that you happen chance wake up and it's there, it is a slow progression and it's very slow. Like if you look at the root issue of how long that root issue has been there, we're talking, it's been there for decades, for decades. And what we associate with a mild symptom like, Oh, I'm just losing my memory.
Dr. Barrett:Oh, I'm just a little more imbalanced. I don't have as good balance anymore. It's fine, it's just because I'm getting old. Let me tell you, it isn't fine and those are early warning signs that the brain is not healthy. So we look at brain changes, they begin twenty to thirty years before symptoms will ever arise, twenty to thirty years.
Dr. Barrett:And then the core issues are things like we talk about at our workshops, insulin resistance, which is like diabetes of the brain. Has anyone ever heard of Alzheimer's being referred to as type three diabetes of the brain just by a show of hands? That's a common AKA for certain conditions of the brain because when the brain can't efficiently utilize energy from food, it goes into a resistance state and then we're a little bit in trouble. We see chronic inflammation. Well, we hear that, we say, yeah, well that makes sense but like what is that?
Dr. Barrett:What is actually causing inflammation? We'll get into it, we'll talk about hormonal decline. Back a couple, maybe twenty, fifteen, twenty years ago, it was like, hey, estrogen, a female shouldn't take it, it increases their risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, they shouldn't be on estrogen but then what do we know? Estrogen is neuroprotective. Estrogen is vital to a healthy brain as you age.
Dr. Barrett:Healthy estrogen will dictate a healthy brain and healthy bone. So we do need estrogen. So we'll do we take it as a patch, as a cream, as a pill? Maybe, and we'll talk through that. We see poor sleep.
Dr. Barrett:If you wanna feel terrible, stay up and watch the world cup until 11:00, which I did. And then I'm usually in bed by nine and I felt those two hours, right? Well, you accumulate that over the course of days and weeks and years and we have a sleep apnea situation where we're not oxygenating at night, we're not getting deep, restful sleep, we're not restoring at night and now we have a recipe for disaster and toxicity is for sure a concern. Memory loss, it is the final chapter in the book, but it is not the first one. There are numerous chapters before we get to the conclusion of Alzheimer's and dementia.
Dr. Barrett:So let's look at a guy, his name is Doctor. Bredesen and his model, he wrote a book called like Recode and I use a lot of his stuff tonight because it's really practical and you can go home and get his book and I think it's great. So if you were to go and get that Recode book and you can learn everything we're gonna talk about tonight, but in more detail. So it's pretty well established in neurology that there are causative links to Alzheimer's dementia, neurodegeneration and neurodevelopment disorders. And he addresses these and we have to understand that the brain is only responding to threats and it's always asked the question, are we in a state of growth and healing and repair or are we in a state of crisis?
Dr. Barrett:And that's the way the brain looks at the situation every day. Are we healing or are we in a crisis mode? It's the same situation with heart disease, right? Has anyone ever heard like cholesterol is linked to heart disease and if your LDL levels are really high, then we gotta get your LDL levels as low as possible and that's gonna save your heart from having a heart attack. Yet the evidence is actually points to that not being true.
Dr. Barrett:You can have normal cholesterol and have a heart attack. How? How can you have someone who's on a statin have just terrible cholesterol levels in the sense of being so low that their brain which is primarily made of cholesterol and fat, 60% of it is rotting yet they still have a heart attack because LDL is a lipid, is a cholesterol molecule on the site, on the scene of a house that's on fire like a fireman would be. If the house is on fire, you're gonna see a fire truck. If the heart's on fire, you're gonna see LDL cholesterol.
Dr. Barrett:And if the brain's on fire, you're gonna see certain plaques and proteins that you're all familiar with or heard about like beta amyloid plaques and tau proteins. Why are they there? Because the brain's in crisis. So is it like, hey, let's just get rid of as many tau proteins as we can through a medication, shot or infusion or should we address the underlying issues? It's the same conversation we're dealing with heart disease.
Dr. Barrett:Should we just get your cholesterol levels as low as possible and hope to pray that it doesn't result in a heart attack? No, that's not the solution at all. The fundamental issue in cardiovascular disease and what's killing people every day is an inflamed heart, is an inflamed cardiovascular system is an inefficient energy system. And so the same things that we heal the heart or the brain with can be used for the heart. This all is practical for most systems of the body.
Dr. Barrett:So is it safe to grow or are we in a threat? There are six pillars we're gonna lay out tonight. There are six pillars that are really important to the foundation of building a healthy brain and therefore a healthy body. Remember, the brain drives every response, every action in order for the heart to beat, the lungs to breathe, it's why I love being a chiropractor is because if we could influence the way the brain talks to the body, we can virtually help any condition. It doesn't mean we're curing any condition but we can help any condition.
Dr. Barrett:Why does an adjustment lower blood pressure? Why does an adjustment help kids with asthma? Why does an adjustment help babies poop when they're constipated? Because we're sending healthy signals from the brain to the body. So when we look at these six pillars, we're really talking about inflammation.
Dr. Barrett:How good is the brain's metabolism? What is the toxicity environment of the brain? What nutrient depletion do we have? Number five, what are our hormones? And then number six, are we training the brain?
Dr. Barrett:Neuroplasticity, are we training? I think there's something that we lose as we age and that's novelty, learning something new yet we know how important novelty is in helping anyone overcome Alzheimer's dementia which we have seen multiple times already this year, early stage Alzheimer's dementia have already returned back to normal functioning brain by following our protocol and one of them is in the audience tonight. We've seen incredible changes and not just in Alzheimer's dementia, not just vascular, hey, vascular dementia, this is now your life, good luck. And then we see a cognitive score that's ten years better than her age where she failed it miserably the first time. And we're gonna tell you how she did that, how people do that every single day.
Dr. Barrett:Let's talk about inflammation. Again, this is like a weird one, I think because we hear about it so much. We hear about inflammation so much but I just don't think we really understand what it is, like what is inflammation? So when we talk about neuroinflammation, this is a inflamed brain, a brain that's on fire, okay? And we can get into the science of what specific molecules are elevated in this situation but let's just keep it a little bit simpler and just talk about the effects of neuroinflammation.
Dr. Barrett:And the effects are when their brain is on fire, the neurons of the brain are damaged. So inflammation is a killer to the actual brain cells. It also disrupts neurotransmitter. So when the nerve cells are damaged, there's a part of the nerve cell that spits out hormones to another nerve cell, we call those neurotransmitters and that starts to get injured. And when that gets injured, then we don't get that proper signaling and a lot of times that results in anxiety and depression, panic attacks and sleep disturbances.
Dr. Barrett:When we see high levels of inflammation, it is always associated with a more rapidly aging brain. Inflammation in any part of the body will accelerate cell turnover which I always explain aging like this. Aging is like making a copy of a copy but you only have a certain amount of copies to make. And so if you take a copy of a copy, the tenth copy of the original copy, does it look the exact same and as clean as precise as the first one? It's just a little bit cloudier.
Dr. Barrett:What about the hundredth and what about the thousandth, right? Your life is spent off of a copy machine and you're making copies every day of yourselves. The faster you are making copies, the faster you age. The more you take that copy machine, you slow down the production, the slower you age, that is aging. We are trying to slow down the copying process.
Dr. Barrett:How do we do that? We make sure cells are healthy and stay alive as long as possible and we don't have to keep making copies of copies. And obviously with neuroinflammation, we do get that increase in cognitive decline. What are the sources? So this is where it's like, okay, you said it, you said there's inflammation in the brain, but what are the sources of that inflammation?
Dr. Barrett:And so a couple of the sources are things like food sensitivities. When we run an Alzheimer's panel, one of the big food proteins that is very reactive to brain tissue. So what do I mean by this? You were at, was anyone at our immune system autoimmunity conversation gut workshop, the gut workshop was just recently, yeah, we talked about autoimmunity and what we talked about was how the immune system, when it gets confused, will react to food when it shouldn't and then anything that's like that particular food protein. So there are certain proteins in the body that mimic dietary proteins.
Dr. Barrett:For instance, gluten, if you have a thyroid issue, you gotta go gluten free. Why? Because the immune system, when it reacts to gluten cross reacts with your thyroid cells. Casein, dairy, when your immune system has a dairy sensitivity, not an allergy, a sensitivity, it'll cross react with brain tissue. So if you have a dairy reaction, your immune system simultaneously is attacking your brain and it's one of the things that we look at when it comes to certain food reactions.
Dr. Barrett:Gluten is another one. When you remove gluten from a kid's brain that's reacting to it, it's like you turn the lights on, just their life is changed. Now, things like sugar is different, food dyes, those are more stimulants. We're talking about more cross reactivity with immune system causing inflammation. So food sensitivities, gut dysfunction.
Dr. Barrett:There are certain bacteria that when your immune system reacts to, it reacts to your brain. Another example is strep. So there's a condition in kids and adults called PANDAS or ANDAs and this condition is associated with erratic behavior. A kid is completely normal and it goes nearly schizophrenic at five, six, seven years old, has panic attacks, has anxiety for no reason. Why would a 10 year old have anxiety for no reason?
Dr. Barrett:Well, because the winter they had six strep infections that were never dealt with and one day they wake up and their immune system flipped. From attacking strep, it then turned into a start attacking the brain. That chronic brain attack is called neuroinflammation that then drove that little boy's anxiety or panic attacks or schizophrenia. And we see it undiagnosed all the time. Many of you were actually in this audience, many of you as a kid had anxiety with no known origin.
Dr. Barrett:At 12 years old had anxiety, at 15 started having anxiety and there was infections that were never dealt with. There was hormone imbalances that were never dealt with and you just kind of willed your way through it, maybe through meds or maybe through another means but you still are battling that anxiety to some degree, but now it's turning into other symptoms, memory loss, cognitive decline, whatever those symptoms may be. It's important to understand that the brain, just because it was anxiety at 12, right? Doesn't mean if the anxiety is gone, the root cause or the issue is gone. We see autoimmunity, we just mentioned that that's that cross reactivity.
Dr. Barrett:So when your immune system's attacking a bug that shouldn't be there or a food protein that shouldn't be there, it then cross reacts with your own brain tissue. Chronic infections, these are mainly mold and Lyme. The big two, I would say are mold and Lyme. If you're giving me, hey, what are the big two causes of neurological inflammation that a lot of patients would never know that they had it, it's mold and Lyme. Those two organisms are brutal.
Dr. Barrett:Traumatic brain injuries and concussions, this is significant, more significant than I think people give evidence to, I think we've seen a lot of good come out of the NFL with awareness of head injuries, but people are dealing with head injuries and the symptoms sometimes years later from those head injuries. Why? Because when you have a head injury, it's an insult, an injury to the brain. And if there's already underlying triggers there, maybe they're strep there, maybe there's food reactions there, maybe there's something else there, then that concussion creates an event. It puts the brain into a very severe fight or flight in a severe form of neurological inflammation.
Dr. Barrett:When we see this at the end level, we call it microglial activation and that's just a fancy term for the immune system is now because of that concussion attacking the brain. Poor sleep and chronic stress are all sources of neurological inflammation. So how do we reduce it? So there's the source, let's go practical. How do we immediately start seeing changes in the inflammation of our brain, okay?
Dr. Barrett:So nutrition matters, food matters and there's levels to which you need to be serious about your nutrition. If you're in any state of cognitive decline, I would highly encourage at minimum a paleo diet with carbohydrate restriction and we'll talk about carb restriction here in a second or a ketogenic diet but if you want to heal a brain, you use food to do it and the best foods are high quality fats, high quality protein and low carbohydrates. Why? Because we're trying to change the metabolism of the brain. When we look at whole food nutrition, just think of it as it says, whole food nutrition.
Dr. Barrett:So they should be vegetables, fruits, protein, so fish, wild caught fish, grass fed beef, free range birds, should be eggs, should be diverse. Omega-three fatty acids. So fish oil is a fantastic way to reduce neurological inflammation specifically a type of fat called DHA. So if you entered the raffle tonight for supplements, one of the supplements we're giving away is a very high potency DHA. It's like twelve hundred milligrams of DHA which is very strong dose So immediately start reducing neurological inflammation and helping heal brain tissue.
Dr. Barrett:Little like the brain tissue, the sheaths around all the nerves is made up of fat and it's made up of another substance called choline, which from eggs. So when you eat an egg, an egg yolk specifically, you're getting choline and you're getting fat, omega-three fatty acids and those two are just a power packed nutrient for the brain. Sleep is so, so important to healing the brain and reducing inflammation and I'm not just talking about sleep, like I'm not just saying, hey, to sleep at nine and wake up at five or six. What I'm saying is what does your sleep architecture look like? Like how well are you sleeping?
Dr. Barrett:So, you know, there's a lot of devices, Oura rings, I've got a whoop, there's ways to test that but when you look at your sleep, you need to make sure you're going into deep sleep, regenerative restorative sleep, you're coming out, you're going back in, you're coming out and going back in, staying asleep for the whole night and that you're oxygenating properly. Like my phone will tell me, I mean, a couple $100 for a ring that you wear, it'll tell you everything about your sleep, tell you how many times you woke up even when you didn't think you woke up, tell you how well you stopped or how many times you stopped breathing and how well you oxygenated. Give you a percentage, you oxygenated at 99% last night, great. Hey, your oxygen was low. Why?
Dr. Barrett:Because of potential sleep apnea. What do we do there? Well, you talk to us, we'll help you. Bethany is here, she's incredible with airway disorders, she'll help you. But sleep optimization is not just I get more sleep, it's really about sleep architecture.
Dr. Barrett:Nowadays I think we have so much technology, sometimes we don't know what to do with it but if there's one that I would give to you and say, hey, I think this is well worth your birthday present or Christmas present or something special, it would be an Oura Ring or a Whoop, it just depends on which one you desire more but some type of wearable technology to look at your sleep, look at how well you rested and recovered. Exercise, gosh, there's incredible benefit to training and really not when you train because that has a benefit, oxygenation, blood flow, it's actually after you train because of the injury you provided to the body due to training, you're breaking down tissue, your body goes through this massive repair mechanism and releases all these growth factors that not just help, don't just help your muscles repair, actually help your brain repair. Stronger people live longer. The more muscle you have, the longer you'll live. VO2 max, the better you are at endurance and running and we call that the VO2 max, your oxygen, your ability to carry oxygen throughout the body is essential at longevity.
Dr. Barrett:Those are the big two when it comes to exercise. I love yoga, I love stretching, I love Pilates but we gotta work, we gotta build muscle and we gotta get our heart rate up. We gotta build muscle, we gotta hurt a little bit. When we hurt in the gym a little bit, you guys hurt yourself so much in that CrossFit. I mean, you guys are still CrossFit.
Dr. Barrett:You should be walking out of that park club all over. All bent over, absolutely. Well, he's gonna live longer. He may have a knee injury, a little bit hip injury and that's what I tell people, I'd rather you get a joint injury in the gym than sacrifice your brain and your heart by sitting on the couch. When you look at the gut, healing the gut, if you have digestive symptoms, you have brain symptoms.
Dr. Barrett:If you have digestive symptoms, you have brain symptoms, why? Here's what's wild. The lining of the gut, so that barrier, we call it the gut barrier. Most people when it's broken down, hear this term leaky gut or leaky gut syndrome. Anyone heard that term before leaky gut syndrome?
Dr. Barrett:Okay, that barrier, crazy, is identical to the blood brain barrier, identical, it's the same structure. So when you have a leaky gut, you have a leaky brain. When you have a leaky gut, you have a leaky brain. Healing the gut barrier, how do you do that? We'll talk about that in a second but things like zinc, colostrum, fermented foods, fiber, healthy beneficial bacteria, fat soluble vitamins.
Dr. Barrett:When you do all of that, guess what else heals your blood brain barrier. And before healing the brain, you always have to heal the gut. And one of the cool things that we've implemented in this practice is a medical laser, it's a class four medical laser and the science on it's incredible because this laser, most people are familiar with red light, right? They see all these red light devices, you're like, is that good? Is that good for me?
Dr. Barrett:Should I use that? And you're like, seeing people stand maybe a couple feet away and let me just tell you, it's doing nothing. Like that's actually doing absolutely nothing. So let me help you. If you have a red light, okay, you have to literally like put it on your body and red only penetrates like that far in body.
Dr. Barrett:So it's really just for the skin. So if you wanna heal your skin, reduce inflammation of the skin, red light's gonna be great but to get deeper into muscle and then even go past the skull, is bone into the brain, you have to use a laser for that and obviously you can't get one, so you have to go to a practitioner to get one but one of, like our core treatment model, when any kid comes in with an attention deficit disorder, autistic spectrum disorder, anxiety, depression, concussions, Alzheimer's dementia, any neurological condition, we get them adjusted to provide sensory input to the brain, we change their nutrition and we laser that brain. We laser that brain and it's gonna provide it with all of this high frequency light therapy that makes the brain come alive, it's incredible. You see better oxygenation of the brain, better blood flow to the brain, better usage of energy, repair nerve cells. I mean, and I can go on and on.
Dr. Barrett:So that's more of like a, hey, this is a cool thing and we use it. So that's inflammation. If you were to walk away, think about one thing you wanna do today to improve inflammation, just one thing, maybe that's exercise, maybe that's, hey, I wanna start taking in more official, maybe that's changing my nutrition but let's think about one thing. All right, number two, let's talk about metabolism. The brain uses 20% of the body's energy.
Dr. Barrett:The weight of the brain is not very much, but yet it uses one fifth of the brain's energy. So what you're eating is literally the brain is utilizing most of that energy. So the proteins, fats and carbs that you're eating is fueling the brain. What you're eating is fueling the brain. This is the core issue in most unhealthy diseased brains is we see insulin resistance.
Dr. Barrett:Insulin resistance, what does that mean? It means your brain's diabetic in essence. Your nerve cells, which require so much energy, literally can't take a carbohydrate from an apple and utilize it efficiently. So we see this high level of sugar in the brain and we see all the sugar circulating the brain, this is creating significant damage. So what does the fat or what does the brain use instead of sugar?
Dr. Barrett:I just said it, fat. Fat is the primary source of fuel that the brain wants to use and it's like the cleanest energy for the brain. When we are trying to heal the brain, we are removing carbohydrates, not because I'm mean and not because carbs are bad because they're not. If you're training hard and you've got a great robust metabolism and you're fasting, carbs are a fantastic fuel. Carbs are necessary for gut health, for brain health, for serotonin, but not when the brain's unhealthy.
Dr. Barrett:So what do we do? We go through a strict season of keto or significant carbohydrate restriction, significant carbohydrate drops so that we can get the brain utilizing fat for its primary source of energy and then we can actually reverse insulin resistance of the brain. We can regain insulin sensitivity over time. So is keto forever? No, but it is for a short term when we're really trying to make an impact.
Dr. Barrett:So should you do keto? I've got a healthy brain, I really don't have any neurological symptoms, I'm just here to learn, should you do keto? Maybe, maybe try it for thirty days but what would you recommend? I would recommend just probably like I talked about before, whole food nutrition, making sure when you eat carbohydrates, they're high fiber based carbohydrates, right? Vegetables are high fiber carbohydrates.
Dr. Barrett:White rice is a high fiber carbohydrate. Fruits are high fiber carbohydrates. Those are the sources of carbs that we should be consuming. Insulin resistance leads to brain fog, poor memory, reduced learning and neurodegeneration. So how do we build a healthy metabolism in the brain?
Dr. Barrett:Like how does the brain switch that insulin resistance system? And you do strength training, strength training directly improves insulin sensitivity. Walking every day in particular, this could be transformational for you tonight because it provides stimulation, oxygenation, blood flow and metabolic flexibility. After a meal, walk ten to fifteen minutes after a meal. It'll improve your digestion, it'll improve your clarity, your mental energy, your clarity, it'll improve your body composition.
Dr. Barrett:If you're trying to lose these stubborn 10 pounds, you can't lose them, walk after a meal. This is a great way to drive insulin sensitivity is walking after meal, just ten minutes. Focus on protein. Protein is so essential and we're so deficient in it. Perspective is this, need probably 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein at minimum per pound of body weight.
Dr. Barrett:So if you weigh a hundred pounds, need 60 grams of protein a day. Kids, how many kids weigh a hundred pounds and don't eat more than 20 grams of protein a day? I've got four, I've got one kid who's really tall. I've got one girl who's really small. Her sister is two years younger and about the same height and guess who doesn't eat protein?
Dr. Barrett:She just, she's like, it's like force beating her. She just doesn't eat that much. Like sweet, that's how you grow. Okay, I wanna grow. Eat more protein, perfect.
Dr. Barrett:We don't, it's hard, it's hard. Protein is exhausting eating it. You ever try to eat 150 grams of protein coming from, it's hard, it's a lot of eggs, it's a lot of ground beef but protein does so much. Every neurotransmitter of the brain needs amino acids from protein. All the growth factors need amino acids from protein.
Dr. Barrett:Protein stabilizes your blood sugar. So eating your protein first in a meal with your fiber and then carbs at the end is a great way to balance your nutrition. Blood sugar control, this is what we talked about. Here's another just kind of secret for you. If you're trying to improve blood sugar, let me give you a little recipe.
Dr. Barrett:It's eat three meals a day, no snacking, wait about three to four hours between each meal until dinner and breakfast, wait at least eight hours. So eat your breakfast at 8AM, eat your lunch at twelve to 01:00, eat your dinner at five to 06:00. If you're at 06:00, don't eat your next day breakfast till obviously, I mean, wake up four if you want to, but you know what I'm saying, we're waiting at least eight hours between dinner and next breakfast, four, four, eight. And what that does is it forces your body because if you're constantly feeding, feeding, snacking, snacking, okay, you're constantly spiking insulin, constantly spiking insulin and you're creating dysregulated blood sugar. Now, if you wanna body build and get strong and grow a bunch of muscle and you got a robust resilient metabolism, you're gonna eat five, six meals a day cause you're just making growth factors and insulin growth hormone, right?
Dr. Barrett:Just making it like, but that's not where longevity is. If you're trying to make a change and you're in trouble or your friend or family member's in trouble, they're in trouble, like their brain, we're seeing cognitive decline, we're seeing balance issues, keto, ketogenic. That's an incredible recipe for success for the brain. All right, number three, toxicity. The toxic brain, these are the modern threats today.
Dr. Barrett:Mold, mold is a big one. How do you know you have mold? Go to vcstest.com, vasinvictor, cstest.com, take the online screening. If you fail it, you probably have mold or Lyme, it's free. Heavy metals, which one are the big two?
Dr. Barrett:Well, mercury is a big one. Mercury is a big one. Lead is another big one. How do you get it? Well, I mean, someone mentioned earlier vaccines was a big source, flu shots and some of your generations in here amalgam fillings.
Dr. Barrett:So all those black fillings, they were silver, but they're black and then they get silver again by getting them polished and it releases all that mercury, that's your amalgams, okay? That's a source of mercury. The big cause of Parkinson's and tremors. Pesticides are known to create neurological inflammation. Plastics now account for 0.5% of brain weight, 0.5% of brain weight.
Dr. Barrett:When they study Alzheimer's and dementia, neurodegeneration patients, there was statistically significant and I don't know what the significant number was but there was a significant amount more of plastics in those brains. Currently, it's estimated that our brains, if you're not detoxing well, that 0.5%, what does that like look like? If you have a plastic spoon, plastic ware, that spoon, the weight of that spoon, I think it's like seven grams, that's the amount of plastic in your brain right now, especially if we're not detoxing it but we'll talk about those strategies. Mold and Lyme were the big infections that we see in toxicity. And so right in kids, any of these, like they do get a vaccine and all of a sudden we start seeing behavioral concerns ADHD or we do get infections, so we start seeing brain fog and fatigue or we start seeing memory decline.
Dr. Barrett:And so I put down these strategies, say, okay, how are we gonna detox our environment? It's gonna be simple. Why is protein fiber back up their nutrition? Because protein makes amino acids in order for you to have the liver to detox, you need those amino acids. Fiber literally binds toxins in the gut.
Dr. Barrett:So when you consume fiber, it takes toxins in the gut, binds them and then you obviously excrete them. Clean water and clean air, so just like we do a HEPA filter in our house and this is a mandatory, okay? So if you're making like a checklist, mandatory reverse osmosis water, mandatory reverse osmosis water especially in Knoxville, okay? Sweating. So one of the best ways to detox is sweating.
Dr. Barrett:I'm gonna tell you a strategy here in a second but sweating, if you're not sweating and I see this a lot, people that can't sweat, they have detoxification issues. So I put people, I prescribe sauna to them and they get in a sauna like I was so hot but I couldn't even sweat, couldn't even break a sweat and they're overheating, their body's literally overheating. So I obviously tell them get out, there's certain prescription to it but then they start sweating and that's a breakthrough in their detox systems. Movement like rebounding and walking and then glutathione is probably my favorite supplement to take for detoxification. Let's talk about this.
Dr. Barrett:Does anyone use a sauna on a regular basis and at regular, I'd say at least three times a week by a show of hands, is anyone? One, two, three, four, okay. Once is doing nothing, twice is doing nothing, you have to do at minimum three times a week. So what does sauna do? Because if you were to have the Oura Ring and infrared sauna, it would change your health.
Dr. Barrett:Okay, so the sauna is one of the most powerful lifestyle tools for healthy brain aging. It increases blood flow to the brain when you're in there. It reduces inflammation. We see it activates cellular repair pathways. We call that BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factors.
Dr. Barrett:It supports memory cognition associated with lower dementia risk the more you use it. What we see is that when we are exposed to heat, this creates what we call a hormetic response. Small doses of stress create stronger brains, hormesis. So let's talk about it. We see increased blood flow, increased oxygen delivery, increased brain resilience, increased cellular repair, decreased inflammation, decreased oxidative stress.
Dr. Barrett:When you look at finished studies where most of the saunas are done, we see studies that show like 2,300 adults followed for twenty years of their life where they did four to seven sauna sessions per week, sixty three percent lower rate of sudden cardiovascular death, fifty percent lower cardiovascular mortality, forty percent lower all cause mortality and significantly lower dementia risk. And the reality of this is true, the more is better, more is better and some is not enough. More is better and some is not enough. Do you have a question? Yeah, go ahead, you go.
Dr. Barrett:That's right. Same prescription. So the difference and honestly, we see with research is infrared, your greatest body absorption of infrared is we were talking about difference between heat and infrared, okay? Traditional heat sauna and infrared. So I've had both, right now I've got my barrel heat sauna because it's just a, it's more of like a chill vibe and you got, you know, put water on the coals and it's just fun.
Dr. Barrett:So that, but that thing gets up to like 200. I mean, it's hot, it's hot. I have my little cap on so I don't burn the rest of my hair that's left. And so that is 200 degrees. Research shows for infrared, your greatest absorption of infrared is 120 to 140 degrees, 120.
Dr. Barrett:You don't need it 150, you don't need it 160 and a lot of them can only go above 160 because that wavelength is absorbed internally and heats you from inside out, okay? The same prescription though, four to seven because it's doing the same mechanism, it's just at a lower heat. How long? Twenty minutes. So the frequency of four to seven, fifteen to twenty minutes at 170, 190, that's finished, that's heat sauna.
Dr. Barrett:This should be more like 120, 140 in infrared. If you're not used to that, like if that's not you then we're going two to three days a week, ten to fifteen minutes max and make sure you're doing like a high quality electrode like the element slamming that while you're in it, okay? You gotta get that sodium repletion. This is, I believe a game changer for all cause mortality. Most of us aren't doing it enough, we're here and we need to be here.
Dr. Barrett:So it is hard to get here but if you were to get here, then you're effectively treating disease. Is that the same for kids? It depends on age, we can talk after. Pillar pillar number four, nutrients. Like portable sauna?
Dr. Barrett:Yeah. Like wet style sauna? Probably have So like steam sauna versus dry sauna? It'd have to be it's it's gonna be temperature dependent. So, don't know, I haven't looked into it enough in terms of a steam sauna.
Dr. Barrett:It's again, it's more temperature dependent unless it's infrared which penetrates deeper, different system. Time of day back. No, but you don't want to heat up before bed because then you don't sleep as well. You wanna be as cold as you can before bed, take a cold shower after. Okay, pillar number four nutrients, the starving brain.
Dr. Barrett:The brain is nutrient dependent and every thought requires nutrients. What are the big brain nutrients? These are the big ones, these need to be tested. These need to be tested every year in your labs. If these aren't being tested, your doctor's doing a disservice, these need to be tested.
Dr. Barrett:What needs to be tested? DHA, we know what that is, it's a omega-three fatty acid. Choline, magnesium, vitamin D, B12, iron and zinc. Iron mainly because of anemia and why the brain needs oxygen and energy. Kids, especially women, females are starting menstruation.
Dr. Barrett:If they're anemic, their brain is starving, okay? So how do we get these soup, like all those nutrients, how do we get them? We get them through our food ideally, a little depleted, but ideally wild caught salmon, wild caught fish is one of my favorites. Pasture raised eggs, grass fed beef, tons of just potency in grass. How much grass fed beef do you eat, Doctor.
Dr. Barrett:Barrett? I eat grass of beef every day and usually twice a day. This lunch, the lunch I had steak and I'll probably eat some type of ground beef tonight. I eat probably about a pound of red meat a day and you're like, Oh, that causes cardiovascular disease. That was a myth, that is a myth and a lie and I'm so sorry that that was told to you.
Dr. Barrett:Beef liver, I don't like it. I don't like it. You ever have this, it's not good. It's not good. It's not good at all.
Dr. Barrett:So capsules are a better option. Beef liver capsules, oysters, oysters are a great source of healthy fats and also tons of minerals, sea minerals. Avocados, blueberries are like my favorite fruit, spinach and pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seeds because it's full of minerals like zinc. Hormones, hormones play a role. This is pillar number five, balance your hormones.
Dr. Barrett:If your hormones aren't balanced, it's an issue. And really the story here is this, you don't know unless you test, you gotta test your hormones. And so I can go on about each hormone and what they all do but the reality is you got to know where you're at, you got to test, you got to optimize your hormones and you're gonna live longer. You don't have to be scared of hormone. This is the summary of this.
Dr. Barrett:You don't have to be scared of hormone replacement. I'm gonna say every person if they're trying to increase longevity and live a healthier life will be on hormones one day, should be on hormones one day. That is a ninety nine point nine percent statement. There are some I don't believe should but that is very, very, very rare instances. Because when your hormones are balanced, it's mood, it's energy, it's repair, it's sleep, it's motivation, it's dopamine energy.
Dr. Barrett:And the big ones are estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, your thyroid, we gotta look at functionally, not 0.5 to five TSH, it's gotta be below two, one to two. Cortisol has to be balanced, tells us your adrenals are healthy. And so test your hormones, test your hormones. But how do we support it? The stuff we've been talking about, sleep, strength training, protein intake and getting that fat off.
Dr. Barrett:How do we get that fat off? Exercise. Yeah, exercise, do that walk, that ten minute walk after meals. There is a reality of calories in calories out, the more you move, more than likely the more fat will come off the body. That is true to an extent, there are other reasons why that may not happen, but that is true for most.
Dr. Barrett:And the last pillar, we've got to be learning, we have to be learning. We learn through movement. So I played pickleball for the first time this weekend, that was fun. I don't have time for pickleball in the sense I don't make time because I enjoy other recreational activities but we did as a family is awesome. Learn pickleball, learn dance, learn how to play the piano, learn, you guys are dancing all the time.
Dr. Barrett:That's amazing for your brain health. So we have to make sure that we're challenging our brain, we're challenging our memory, we're challenging our movements. If we're not, there's studies that literally say, if you can hold this, if you can hold this for over a minute, you live longer. So just balance is so important. It is true, you use it or lose it and whether it's learning, reading, balance, coordination, photography, learning, learning, learning, challenging the brain is so important and when we do learn through movements, we get a lot of other benefits.
Dr. Barrett:So if you were to learn but you learn through an exercise or a sports, pick up tennis, pickleball, golf, something, We get brain derived neurotrip, we get better blood flow or mood change or we get insulin sensitive and so we can kind of knock out two birds with one stone. Most of you are under chiropractic care and so this is one of my favorite things to talk about because if you get adjusted, you will live longer, you will adapt better. There's just truth to the spine because being healthy, the spine is the greatest influence to input to the brain. If you're trying to change the brain, you have to change the input and the most amount of input comes from the spine. When we make adjustments to your spine, this is just reinforcing the good habits you're doing, right?
Dr. Barrett:So let me just reinforce it for you. When you're making those adjustments to your spine or to little man who's a month old, you are helping encourage neurological development, neurological resiliency, neurological adaptations. The brain depends on that sensory input. And so you see when there's a spine that's healthy, we get better balance, we get better vision, we get better movement. We talked about that laser.
Dr. Barrett:So if you're saying, hey, there's a patient struggling, we really need to help them, what do we do? Change the nutrition, get them moving, get them adjusted and we'll put that laser on that head and we're gonna see some awesome changes. For all the moms, we crushed this because we started at ten so the team was telling me, You got five minutes. We crushed it. Thank you for keeping me on track.
Dr. Barrett:But hey, moms and parents out there, you wanna raise healthy kids, these are the things that we wanna do. These are the brain builders, these are your brain builders. We wanna prioritize protein for their breakfast, prioritize protein for the breakfast. And that could be three pieces of turkey bacon, some grass fed like Greek yogurt, some blueberries and boom, we got a great start to their day. A couple eggs, you can be creative but we wanna really try to prioritize breakfast.
Dr. Barrett:If you wanna lose weight, consume protein within thirty to sixty minutes of waking up and not a protein shake because that's like carbs to the body that's so rapidly absorbing, we want slow digesting protein. Get your kids on a DHA supplement. Get your kids on a DHA supplement. We have a Oh, you know, you're not gonna get like a month old because their tummies, they're getting it from you, but once they wean, I mean, if you even look at formulas, DHA is in it. But as soon as they wean, we wanna put them, start putting some DHA on foods like we would put on like their eggs or on their beef on top.
Dr. Barrett:They got to get good sleep, quality sleep. Hang on one sec and we know it, most of us are like kids aren't devices way too much. Yes, they are. So they need to be out outside, they need to be exploring, they need to be seen in the sun, they need to get wild and sweat and roll and get injured and those things are good, they build resiliency. How do we protect our brain?
Dr. Barrett:So that's raising brains, how do we protect it? And this is where probably a lot of people are. How do we protect it? We build muscle and you build it as much as you can in your 30s and 40s because it's gonna be harder in your 50s and 60s, okay? So build it, build that muscle.
Dr. Barrett:Let's create a metabolic shift. Let's shift from being so carb dependent and snacking to three meals a day, solid protein intake. Let's get some good quality sleep. I know that's hard when you start having kids, that's where power naps come in. I'm the king of a power nap.
Dr. Barrett:I can go to sleep and wake up without alarm in nineteen to twenty minutes. It's like clockwork every day. Power naps, they are actually research shows in sleep dependent or sleep deprived brains how power naps make up the loss of time, like hours of time, power naps are cool. Hormones, start optimizing them now before they get crazy. Get your thyroid looked at, get your testosterone levels optimized males, get your estrogen and progesterone.
Dr. Barrett:Ladies, the biggest issue is too much estrogen relative to your progesterone. Get that second half of that cycle healthy, that progesterone luteal phase, keep it healthy as long as you can because it will preserve you, it'll preserve your bone mass, muscle mass and brain health long term. Get adjusted. So here's, I'm gonna leave you with this, I think this is it. I told you before, like you can go home and start to do all these things and I think you should pick a couple that you should like really stick out to you.
Dr. Barrett:Maybe it's walking after every meal, maybe it's consuming more specific types of food, maybe it's supplementing with omega-three fatty acids or certain nutrient but you can't grow what you don't measure. You can't grow, you can't get better what you don't measure. So it is important that in today's society, we have access to look at biomarkers in our bodies more than ever before and we don't have to go to a doctor to do it, which is even better. So in my opinion, here's what I would do. I'm gonna give you something that I think is gonna be super practical.
Dr. Barrett:I have no affiliation with the company. I wish I did because they're blowing up, but there is a company from Doctor. Mark Hyman called Function Health. If you set up an account with Function Health for $365 a year for a dollar a day, you get 160 biomarkers, 160 biomarkers. Every nutrient, every marker that I ever test in the office that I would wanna test on a patient that usually runs 2 to $3,000 worth of labs is $365 and you get two per year.
Dr. Barrett:But what's great is if you are concerned about Alzheimer's and dementia risk, you can test that, you can test that. You don't have to book a neurology appointment six months from now and make up a bunch of symptoms that you might be having just to get into there and potentially run a panel but they usually won't and then you're just having a terrible conversation about medications. Let me help you, get some data. For $365 you can get a ton of data. Go do some function health labs.
Dr. Barrett:You'll get everything you could ever want, all your hormones checked but under the brain section, you can add on the Alzheimer's. It looks at your genetics because there are genetic risk factors. Genetics is like the bullet in the gun. Lifestyle is pulling the trigger. The bullet can be loaded, you can have genetic risk factors, just you don't have to pull the trigger though.
Dr. Barrett:You pull the trigger with lifestyle but it's good to know your genetic risk so you can look at that and you can look at tau protein, you can see what that marker is and you can look at food reactions. I mean, the data there is just, it's so incredible and you have access to it. You don't need a doctor. You probably need a doctor to read it. I would suggest that.
Dr. Barrett:So you could come to us and we'll help you interpret the data because it's a lot of data and it's hard to process where to actually do and where to start but if you sometime the next few months wanted to make an investment in your health, would be my top recommendation. Get some data, know where your nutrients are at, look at your omega-three status, see what your B12 is, see if you're iron anemic, see what your vitamin D levels are because there's no way to improve these by just randomly supplementing. What if your vitamin D levels are normal? What if you have plenty of omega-three fatty acids? Then you're just wasting money or even over supplementing.
Dr. Barrett:So just be intentional there, you'll save money in the long run and then take something from a lifestyle. So that's the assess portion, you wanna assess and then do something tomorrow. Maybe it's run those labs, maybe it's walk after meal, maybe it's sign up. If have, if you're not under chiropractic care, I think we're doing free new patient appointments. If you're not a chiropractic patient, free new patient appointments if you book those tonight.
Dr. Barrett:We've got raffles to give away. We're here to help. Let us know how we can serve. I think it's raffle time. Let's do it.
Dr. Barrett:I'll let you guys take over the raffles. Get your tickets out. Good thing you stay.
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