Brain or Drain

If you listen to the current medical dogma, your brain is on a one way trip down the drain. The medical press is preparing patients and doctors alike for an oncoming wave of dementia, Alzheimer’s and vascular both. According to the statistics, if you do not get cancer but you live long enough to nearly get cancer, you will get Alzheimer’s instead. The numbers run higher for women.

That is depressing, and it is also not the whole picture.

A reader who has been with me for years asked if I would build an “anti-Alzheimer’s” supplement. I cannot say that. I would not say that even if the FTC and FDA let me. Here is what I can say.

What I think actually happens in the aging brain

The diseases of aging, Alzheimer’s included, do not start with the clinical signs. They start years and often decades earlier, in the inflammation, vascular changes, and mitochondrial decline that show up long before a memory test catches anything. By the time the clinical picture is obvious, you are working against compounded damage and the rescue options are limited. Telomerase and gene therapy strategies of the kind my friend Mike Fossel is researching may eventually move that line. They are not in the clinic yet.

I would prefer not to wait for that fight.

Hence the case for getting the inflammation down, the mitochondria functional, and the gene expression where it should be, decades before the clinical question even arises.

Where the evidence lives

• Omega 3 fats. The literature on EPA and DHA, brain structure, and cognitive aging is among the strongest we have. Higher omega 3 status correlates with larger hippocampal volume, lower rates of cognitive decline, and lower rates of clinical dementia in observational data. The interventional trials show smaller effects but consistent directionality, especially in adults who started with low omega 3 status. Dose matters. So does duration.
• Lion’s mane (Hericium erinaceus). A mushroom with growing data on nerve growth factor support. Animal data is consistent. Human data is small but encouraging on recognition memory in older adults.
• Bacopa monnieri. An adaptogen with a longer human trial history than most adjuncts in this space. Cognitive benefits at studied doses generally appear at 8 to 12 weeks.
• CoQ10 (ubiquinol). Mitochondrial support. The brain is the most metabolically expensive organ in the body. Mitochondrial decline in neurons is a well documented part of cognitive aging.

What to do tomorrow morning

• Check your omega 3 index. If it is below 8, raise it with a serious dose of EPA plus DHA.
• Audit your sleep. Glymphatic clearance happens during sleep. Skipping it is the single most underrated risk factor for cognitive decline at our age.
• Train your brain the way you train your body. Hard reading, new skills, language, music. Use it or lose it is not a metaphor.
• If you supplement for brain support, choose a formula with named ingredients and real doses, not a “proprietary blend.”

The pharmaceutical industry will not allow a small supplement company to rain on the parade of drugs that cost billions to develop. Most of those drugs have, by their own labels, modest effects on symptoms and no impact on the disease process. Prevention through real omega 3 dosing, mitochondrial support, and clean lifestyle work is not a marketing claim. It is the cheapest, best supported approach we have.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Doc

Further reading:
He X et al. Structures, biological activities, and industrial applications of the polysaccharides from Hericium erinaceus. Int J Biol Macromol. 2017.
Brandalise F et al. Dietary supplementation of Hericium erinaceus increases mossy fiber-CA3 hippocampal neurotransmission and recognition memory in wild-type mice. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2017.
Dethe S et al. Elucidation of molecular mechanisms of cognition enhancing activity of BacoMind. Pharmacogn Mag. 2016.

— Doc