Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
DAIRY~THE OPTIONS AND BENEFITS By: Allie Might, FMC, INHC, ATT Dairy is that food group that seems to be one of the easiest to consume and the most indulgent. This group is commonly associated with calcium and strong bones. It has a wide variety …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. UNDERSTANDING VERTIGO, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 669 Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited …
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, PH
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. † [00:00:34]
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Collagen is a well-known ingredient for joint health, for skin health, and for bone health. It’s the second most common ingredient in the human body after water, and it makes up tissues throughout the body. It makes up 36% of your bone, in fact, that’s what the calcium inserts itself into, it’s called the organic matrix of the bone, what collagen makes. And the calcium actually attaches to that. It makes up 67% of your cartilage and your joints, like in your knee joint approximately. That’s actually where the glucosamine chondroitin embeds itself, so, it’s very important for bone health and for joint health. It makes up about 70% of your skin, that’s what the hyaluronic acid inserts itself in, which is basically the rest of your skin. And it makes up tissue throughout the body, it’s a very important ingredient. But here’s the problem. Once you stop growing in your twenties, the body starts to make less and less collagen per year. So, after the age of 50. We’ve lost a great deal of our collagen. But here’s the thing, it also turns out that collagen is good for your muscle and apparently for your brain to other things that suffer with age. So welcome to my podcast, Collagen, which is known for skin and bone and joint health, is also good for your muscle and apparently for your brain. Hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m a licensed pharmacist. I’m also the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. You can find all of and watch podcasts for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Invite Health. Of course, all of the information on this podcast episode will be listed in the description. † [00:02:39]
[00:02:40] So, let’s talk about collagen and you and your muscle and your brain. So, if collagen is so important to the body, it’s a real problem when you start to lose it, you have to replace it to make up for the missing you, literally. So, let’s talk about muscle specifically. Once we hit our fifties, we really start to lose muscle. Now, I have to tell you, I was, I wouldn’t say a gym rat, but I spent a lot of time in gyms lifting weights and, you know, on a treadmill and doing sit ups and all that stuff. And I could tell you, if you lift weights and you do all of those exercises, you’re not only don’t lose muscle in your fifties, but you can also gain muscle and strength in your fifties. But for people not doing that, they typically lose about 1.5% of their strength each year after the age of 50. That dynamic accelerates in your sixties and seventies. After age 60, we lose about 3% of our strength each year. So, a 75-year-old man, he could have lost 70% of his strength, of his strength if he doesn’t take steps to prevent that. And there are things you could do. There are definitely things you could do. I’ll talk about some of the other nutrients that are surprisingly good for your muscle. After the I explained about the collagen itself, and of course, proteins always important for muscle. Minerals are important for muscle because they make it function. Plus, minerals work with your nervous system for the twitching of the muscles. So, let’s look at some of the studies on collagen and muscle. But first, let’s talk about collagen quality. There are better sources of collagen. For instance, at Invite, we get our collagen from a French Italian company, it’s called Peptan, its very high quality has to be rich in collagen peptides. Now, collagen is a very big molecule. We call that a high molecular weight. So, they literally have to add some enzymes to break down the collagen so you can absorb it. And that’s good because it liberates collagen peptides. So, it’s easier for you to utilize and are used throughout the body, they’re used everywhere. They make up all of the valves of your body, they make up the lining of your blood vessels, they make your muscle, they make your connective tissue and your nose and your ear lobes and all that. So, they’re used everywhere, and you want to a clean collagen. There are some collagens coming from some countries that are just subpar. They’re low in the peptides and they’re not that clean. And how much do you need? Well, you know, if it’s for the skin, you could probably get away with three grams of collagen a day, three grams of the protein from collagen, if it’s for the joints and the brain, etc, you probably need 5 to 8 grams a day. † [00:05:37]
MAGNESIUM IS THE IGNORED MINERAL FOR BONE STRENGTH, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 639>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:05:40] So, here are some studies on collagen. This is a study in the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition. It’s from Nippon Sports Science University in Japan, but also other academic research institutions in Japan. It’s middle-aged men, their average age was 53, and they’re randomly placed on either collagen or a similar looking powder, but didn’t have the collagen peptides on it, so we would call that a placebo. And on a 29th day of the collagen supplementation and of course these men had at baseline, they checked them at baseline, baseline means the start of the study when they were enrolled, but before they got the collagen, so it’s the start, the inception of the study. Then on the 29th day after taking collagen, all the men performed 40 bodyweight squats. So, I hate squats, never did them, but they’re using weights and they’re doing squats. The squats were divided to five sets, so it’s eight squats at a time, five times, which would definitely be exhausting. Now the collagen, was taken one hour before the exercise and they gave them five grams. Well, you know, like a teaspoon and the collagen reduced fatigue. It significantly reduced fatigue, which is very interesting. The collagen also reduced muscle soreness significantly. I mean, it really made a difference. But the collagen added on to the benefits of the exercise by increasing muscle strength and adding the collagen to the exercise was significantly better than exercise, plus placebo for improving the muscle strength. But the collagen also reduced muscle damage when compared to previous studies. So, our previous studies, they looked at the amount of creatine kinase in the blood and in this study, they looked at the amount of creatine kinase in the blood, but they weren’t focused on that, but they saw that the creatine kinase in this study was lower than in previous studies, so it’s not the best way to do it, but it is some kind of indication. Creatinine kinase is something that when you use your muscle, you break it down and when levels are higher in the blood, it means that there’s been some muscle damage or muscle wasting. Now, I just took some of the studies on collagen and muscle. There’s a lot more to it, I mean, there’s a good amount of research showing that collagen is good for muscle. Do all the studies show this? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty much an agreement because as our body ages, we have to supply sufficient collagen to it to counter the natural breakdown of muscle that’s caused by the lack of collagen. Collagen make up a certain percentage of muscle. † [00:08:29]
[00:08:31] So, this is the British Journal of Nutrition. Now they’re looking at older people who are sarcopenic. Now, sarcopenia means the loss of strength in muscle you get in aging, and it could be extreme. So, if it gets too extreme, you have fragility syndrome where you’re shrinking, you’re becoming inactive, all those diseases of aging are creeping into your life, it’s not a good thing. So, these are 53 sarcopenic men, they’re losing strength of muscle. Their mean age was 72, so the middle age was 72. So, they’re probably in their sixties and eighties, sixties through eighties, and they gave them either collagen or placebo during an exercise regimen. They exercised three times a week, it was guided exercise for 12 weeks. You don’t want to hurt themself, now over 12 weeks, there was a real impact with collagen. And of course, this was resistance training. I don’t know if it was with bands or free weights or, you know, some kind of machine, with weights on it that restricts which muscles you use. But it was resistance exercise and taking collagen and these elderly men, this is hard to do, increase their muscle mass. They had bigger muscles, they looked better in their t-shirt and improved their thigh strength, and it was blocking muscle loss better than exercise only. So, that’s a really important point. Stopping muscle loss, better than exercise only in these older men. Now, I have to tell you, I work out with weights every other day or every third day, depending on how hard I push myself. Because I’m almost 70. It takes longer for my muscles to recuperate after I lift weights. So, sometimes after if I exercise Monday, maybe I’m not ready by Wednesday, maybe I have to wait until Thursday. But that’s okay because I don’t want a soft tissue injury which can, in my age can take weeks and weeks to heal, and that can really get in the way of me playing sports and exercising and just, you know, cause pain. So, who needs it? So, after I lift weights, generally, I, I limber up, I do stretching exercises. I get on the bike for 20 to 25 minutes, and then I do more exercise, more stretching, and then I lift weights and then I stretch a little bit after that too. That’s generally my routine, three days a week. But in between that I’m riding my bike out in the street. When I say riding a bike before lifting weights, I’m doing a recombinant bike in my garage, but on other days I’m using a punching bag, I’m gardening, I’m playing pickleball, maybe I’m kayaking, which I don’t do as often as I used to. I no longer live on a lake, so I don’t have the opportunity to kayak as much. But I love kayaking, so that’s not the only exercise I get. I do a lot of walking because you need to get exercise pretty much every day. So, what I do after I work out, I take collagen, I take a product called Collagex HA by Dr. Allan Pressman, it’s a great product, tastes good too. Most collagens taste vile, this one taste good. And then I add to that beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate, which is better than protein pretty much for muscle. It’s like what protein changes into the build muscle? And then I add to that, to the forte, it’s called Flex Hx, the product, but the ingredients are in the forte for rebuilding my ligaments and tendons. So, that’s what I do after I exercise, and I take that as soon as possible. I put in a shaker, and I shake it up, put water and I drink that, so I don’t take the creatine before I work out. I take it after because your muscle fibers open up after exercise. It’s easy to get these things in there. If I really overdo it with exercise? Which at my age I try not to do. I’ll take a calcium and magnesium and vitamin D because of calcium and vitamin D, you’ll get back into the muscle again and help prevent it from twitching, etc. That’s important. If you like run a marathon or something and your muscles are really, really fatigued, take some calcium and vitamin D to get it back into the muscle and you’ll see that the muscles recover faster. † [00:12:42]
[00:12:44] So, here’s a randomized controlled trial from Germany. It’s in the Journal Nutrients, it’s Roar university, and this is young men with an average age of 24. And they took all kinds of measurements at baseline which means they started to study, they enrolled these 25 young men, average age of 24, and they check their strength and their muscle size and their blood levels and everything. And then they gave them a full body workout regimen three times a week for three months. And adding collagen versus placebo powder increased their muscle mass and they also burnt more fat than exercise without collagen, so adding the collagen and even young people improved their muscle mass, they burnt more fat. So, their fat free body mass was improving, the fat was going away. Now their strength improved modestly, it was better in the collagen group. Well, you know, these guys haven’t lost muscle yet. The 50 to 60- to 70-year-olds, the 80-year-olds, it’s improving their strength much better because they’ve lost strength. But a 24-year-old, you still building strength. So, the collagen helped a little bit, so that’s a positive thing. But it was getting them in shape faster, they were losing the fat and getting muscle mass faster. So, here’s the last one I’m going to say about collagen. It’s kind of like a bonus because it’s researchers in the UK, different universities that do research in sports and exercise and fitness in the UK. It’s in the Journal of Amino Acids, I love that journal because proteins are made out of amino acids and you’re basically made out of protein and water with some minerals thrown in and some fat thrown in and some sugars, some body sugars thrown in. But you’re basically protein and water, that’s what we’re made out of. And protein also makes our hormones many of our hormones like insulin and insulin type growth factors and protein makes enzymes that make the body work efficiently, so it’s all interesting. Proteins adjust our ph, so we’re not too acidic or too basic, it’s all important. So, these researchers in the UK are doing a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is when you take a whole bunch of studies and you group them together, it gives you more people, it gives you more researchers. And if you do it correctly, if you’re picking studies that are well-designed and accurately reported and lacking bias, they really kind of proves that something works or doesn’t work. And usually when you do a meta-analysis, you kind of weaken the results. So, if something should help you 20%, when you do a meta-analysis, it might only help you 12%. That’s just how a meta-analysis works, because they are also picking negative studies and they’re grouping them together. So, if you have 20 great studies that say something works and you have two that say it doesn’t, you know that the 20 is going to outweigh the two. But the two that says it doesn’t work will pull down the average benefit. So, this is 15 studies, mostly in a recreationally fit people, but not always. Some of the times, it’s in older people, even in elderly people. The collagen was improving the ability to exercise because it was reducing muscle soreness, and it was reducing joint soreness. It also benefited bone health, now that’s going to make, that’s going to make sense. Collagen was originally researched for skin grafts and damage to the skin caused by burns. That was some of the original research. So, they were figuring it out, you know, people with third degree burns, can we apply collagen wraps to it? Can we give them collagen? And he found it was helpful. And they also found out that studies show that collagen help people with knee joint pain and hip joint pain, in fact, I have a lot of people report that collagen helps them with their spinal pain because your spine is basically made out of collagen. † [00:16:58]
[00:17:00] So, in this study, looking at these studies and people exercising the collagen was reducing joint pain. It was benefiting joint tissue, it was improving bone health because 36% of your bone, like I said before, is made out of collagen and that’s what the calcium adheres to. And at the same time, collagen was improving strength, muscle size and muscle recovery was sped up. So, collagen with exercise is good, it protects the bones. It actually helps build bone, it protects the joint, it actually improves the ability of the joint to create chondrocytes, little joint cells. It improves the rate of recovery from exercise for sore muscles. It helps build muscle, muscle mass. That’s very important for us, older people. And it helps build strength and helps older people regain strength. So, now, you know, I thought I’d have time to do the brain stuff on collagen. I think I’ll have to do that as a separate podcast. So, I want to thank you for listening and this is Jerry Hickey signing off. But before I go, if you could subscribe and leave a review, that would be helpful for us and you can find all of the Invite, you know, I gave you all the info before, but you can find the InViteⓇ Health Podcast episodes wherever you listen for free or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. Thanks for listening. Have a great day, rest of the day and I’ll speak to you soon, hopefully. † [00:17:00]
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Allie Might, INHC, AADP, ATT dives in to why calcium is an important supplement and how you can add it into your routine to reap the benefits
Allie Might, INHC, AADP, ATT goes into the benefits of calcium and how it supports broken bones, osteopenia and osteoporosis
Blue blockers
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!†
*Intro music*
Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:40] Okay, welcome back to my podcast episode. Blue Blockers Protect You From Vision Problems and Alzheimer’s Disease. The blue blockers are found in green leafy vegetables. They’re called lutein and zeaxanthin. They help protect you from blue light and we’ll get into that over this episode. They’re very important. In fact, they’re so important that I generally recommend that people take additional as a supplement. So they found out researchers like at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, etc., Tufts, that green leafy vegetables are great for the brain and the eyes and they slow down the aging process and make aging a much better experience. And then they took the ingredients separately in studies and they found that, hey, these things are remarkably important and these are key nutrients in these foods that help block the aging process of the eyes and the brain and help reduce the risk of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and help reduce the risk of eye diseases such as age related macular degeneration and even cataracts and glaucoma, all these things that can rob you of vision and even cause blindness. So now we’re going to go into this a little bit deeper.†[00:01:55]
[00:01:57] So welcome back to the podcast. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also I am pretty good with this nutrition stuff. I have to say, you can find all of our episode for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe and leave a review. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InViteⓇ Health.† [00:02:21]
[00:02:24] So a quick review. Women tend to have more body fat than men, about 20%. There’s a much higher incidence of Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases in women that can occur at a younger age than men. And also eye diseases such as age related macular degeneration are much more common in women. Many of the pigments found in green leafy vegetables like arugula and broccoli and Brussel sprouts and lettuce and kale and spinach can get trapped in fat. And women tend to have 20% more body fat than men, like I just said. One of the things to protect you from it’s not just blue light, but it’s also oxygen. So I said that 60% of the oxygen with every inhalation goes to your brain. And if you don’t have enough of these antioxidants, molecules can be created that damaged brain cells, we said that part one of the of this podcast. So lutein and zeaxanthin are the primary carotenoids in our brain. You can get a little bit in pistachio nuts, you get it in egg yolks, you can get the zeaxanthin in corn, zea maize it’s named after corn zea maize, zeaxanthin. But you generally find them in green, leafy vegetables. I’ll go into a selection of green leafy vegetables at the end of this podcast episode.† [00:03:51]
[00:03:52] Now they are super concentrated in parts of our brain where we process information like where we know where we are and if we’re standing or sitting or what day it is, or what’s that person’s name or, you know, things like that and memory and learning. So they’re super concentrated in our hippocampus, which is core to learning and memory in our occipital and frontal lobes of our brain, where all of these things take place, all of these executive functions and cognitive skills take place. So evidence is rapidly building that the lutein and zeaxanthin found in these green leafy vegetables help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and a low level of lutein and zeaxanthin in your blood serum is tied into an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This is in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. And this is information from the rush memory and aging process. And also Inserm in France, a major research hub, and Oregon Health and Science University. † [00:04:57]
[00:04:59] Now additionally, lutein and zeaxanthin help stop the buildup of beta amyloid plaques in our brain, preventing them from gunking together and becoming toxic. This is according to Harvard researchers with a bunch of researchers from China who published their findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. But it gets bad in that. So lutein and zeaxanthin help prevent aging related diseases of the brain. But it gets better. Because lutein and zeaxanthin make the brain work better. They make the cells in your brain like the learning cells, the memory cells more efficient. They actually improve cognitive function, showing you how key they are. So it’s not just protecting the brain with lutein and zeaxanthin, you’re actually involved with making the brain function better. † [00:05:48]
[00:05:51] So several studies led me up to doing this episode, this podcast episode in the first place. Several years ago, there was a super important study that was kind of like glossed over because everybody was focused on COVID 19. It was overlooked because of the pandemic, and it was a meta analysis. Now, this is important. A meta analysis, if done properly, tells you if something works or it doesn’t work. It could be a food, it could be a vitamin, it could be a surgical procedure or anything. A diet, that’s a meta analysis. † [00:06:29]
[00:06:30] So they scan, they do a systematic review of the information on a website such as Ovid and Web of Science and PubMed. And they look for key terms like in this case it would be lutein and zeaxanthin or green leafy vegetables, brain, neurological, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, things like that. And then they gather all the evidence and they get rid of the studies that do not look right, that there’s something wrong. Like maybe there’s a bias, there’s a big risk of bias, or maybe the the results are just too good. There’s something wrong here. Or, you know, they’re not reported well, they’re not designed well. So they throw those out and they keep what’s left, which could be five studies, could be 100 studies. So then they analyze it. So all of a sudden they have this data from all these different research institutions, all these different clinics and hospitals and universities, etc., and medical schools. So all these different researchers, that takes out a further risk of bias and it gives you a lot more data and makes it very powerful because all of a sudden you’ve got a study of 100 people, you’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of people. So if you do it right, it tells you to something work or doesn’t work. So during the pandemic, they did this meta analysis which reviewed 24 different meta analysis, 24 different previous systematic reviews. † [00:08:03]
[00:08:05] So this means something. I mean, this this is very powerful. This is well powered. Many, many people, many, many years high intake of green leafy vegetables strongly led to a lower all cause mortality. Now, that’s profound. Researchers don’t commonly use words like strongly, so when they say a word like strongly, that really means something. They strongly lower, they strongly lead to a lower all cause mortality. So what’s all cause mortality, it’s the journal food chemistry. All cause mortality could be dying from anything, getting run over but that can happen because your brain’s foggy, you’re not paying attention, you get depressed, suicide. But usually it could be infections, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, a heart attack, a stroke, cancer. You know, the common causes of mortality, a broken hip, you know, broken hips lead to blood clots and infections. It could it could be really dangerous.† [00:09:04]
[00:09:05] So this big analysis shows a precise amount that you would need to consume daily to lower your risk of dying from all these different causes, including cancer. 100 grams of green, leafy vegetables a day. Now, if you have a salad with a arugula and different kinds of lettuce and you have a serving of spinach or broccoli, you can easily get to 100 grams. 100 grams is about three and a third ounces, three and a third ounces. Reduce the risk of all cause mortality by 25%, including cancer. I mean, that’s big. And Lutein and zeaxanthin are major players in green leafy vegetables. They help prevent memory loss because they’ve been studied separately. They’ve been taken as supplements and studied separately in many, many studies. And there’s a very large volume of research, huge amounts of green leafy vegetables and a very large volume of research now on lutein and zeaxanthin supplements. So the effect is real. The government needs to do the right thing and allow companies to put really strong claims on the labels for well-made lutein and zeaxanthin supplements about protecting the eyes and protecting the brain. It’s really time. They help prevent memory loss, they help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.† [00:10:37]
[00:10:39] But lutein and zeaxanthin protect your eyes also. And the eyes are connected to the brain. About 90% of the information your brain gets is from your vision. And if you look at, you know, when the eye doctor looks at the back of the eyes with that little sculptor actually looking at an extension of the brain, the optic nerve is the only part of the brain you can look at without doing surgery; they look in the eye with that little sculptor looking at the optic nerve, it’s a direct extension outside the brain. So and the eyes are connected to the brain, eye health is connected to brain health, so lutein and zeaxanthin protect the eyes also, especially all of those little sensitive, vulnerable little organelles and organs in the retina needed for fine vision, and they protect them from blue light. † [00:11:24]
[00:11:24] So let’s talk about blue light. The blue light spectrum is super high energy. It’s more energetic than red and orange and yellow and green and purple because it’s a very short wave. So when you’re looking at blue light, millions of these waves are hitting your eyes much more than other light waves. And this causes a glare and the glare, uses up your lutein and zeaxanthin. And what happens if too much lutein and zeaxanthin is used up? The macular tissue that’s a shield for the inside of your eyes starts to thin because it’s mostly made out of lutein and zeaxanthin. And this allows the blue light to penetrate and it can damage the retina. † [00:12:07]
[00:12:08] Now in young children and I’ve done podcast episodes on this in young children on screens all day, you’re getting a lot of blue light. You get blue light outside, of course, you’re in the daylight, blue sky. But on your computer screen, there’s a lot of blue light on a high definition television, on video games like X-Box and even on your cell phone, you’re getting blue light, you’re getting a lot more blue light than our ancestors, you’re getting a lot more exposure. This uses up the lutein and zeaxanthin in your macula. In young people, it leads to eye fatigue and brain fatigue, which there’s a clue there for your kid in college. Give them a lutein and zeaxanthin supplement, and they’ll probably do better academically, because their brain and their eyes won’t get as tired. Because I could tell you this, when I go on a computer screen, if I do lutein and zeaxanthin, I could go for hours without my eyes getting tired. If my eyes did get tired, if I didn’t take the lutein and zeaxanthin then my eyes got tired like after an hour or an hour and a half, if I take the lutein and zeaxanthin within about 10 minutes, my eyes aren’t tired anymore, it’s pretty amazing. And here’s something else that’s interesting, the lutein and Zeaxanthin have to negotiate their way, inside your brain to get to your eyes. † [00:13:21]
[00:13:22] So because they’re so important for the brain, the brain grabs a lot of lutein and zeaxanthin and holds onto it. Maybe not enough is getting to your eyeballs. I think it’s really important, especially as we get older, to take a lutein and zeaxanthin supplement because it does protect your eyes, it does protect your brain and does a lot more than that and even helps your brain work better and it and improves your day to day vision and your visual acuity, how sharply you see and contrast sensitivity like picking things out from a background, like you’re driving at night and it’s raining and it’s gloomy and everything. And you know, there’s a tree branch across the road. You’ll see it quicker if you have enough lutein and zeaxanthin in your eyeballs and help you recover from glare quicker. They did a study at the Moran, eye center. That’s the University of Utah, and when they gave elderly, it was something like 100 very elderly people. When they gave them lutein and zeaxanthin or placebo, over the course of a year, the people on lutein and zeaxanthin their vision actually improved a little bit, which is just the opposite of what normally occurs with aging. They did an interesting study in China on people who dried professionally hours and hours and hours of driving every day. These people do an amazing amount of driving like truck drivers, etc., that driving across China and the Gobi Desert, etc. And when they gave them lutein, it really helped their vision. It really helped her eye fatigue and their brain fatigue and their ability to pay attention while they were driving, etc. † [00:14:39]
[00:14:39] So these are incredibly important for our eyes and the optic nerve that goes into your eyes as a direct extension out of our brain. So on a protective side, once again, they reduce glare, uh, the glare from the blue light. Oh, and let me just say something else. Let me backtrack a little bit. In young people, use up the lutein and zeaxanthin by going on a computer screen all day, their eyes and their brain get tired. But in older people, it’s worse than that. You can actually get some eye damage and brain damage. So you always want enough lutein and zeaxanthin. And unfortunately, with age, this happens with a number of nutrients like zinc, you absorb less zinc with age, you absorb less fish oils for your meals with age, you absorb less lutein and zeaxanthin from your food with age. So it really becomes important to take a good supplement. So on the protective side with lutein and zeaxanthin they reduce glare in the eyes and this affects your visual processing speed and it can improve their contrast sensitivity, their visual stamina, the visual acuity. This affects our ability to solve problems. This affects our memory. This affects our executive functions and also protects our hippocampal region, which is so important for our memory. I’ve done some podcast episodes on the hippocampus, our frontal cortex of our brain and regions of our eyes. I mean, so key. The lutein and zeaxanthin help prevent age related vision loss and age related blindness, I’m going to go into some studies now. † [00:16:19]
[00:16:22] They help prevent the development of the diseases, including brain diseases like memory loss well, I mean, that’s not a disease, anybody can have memory loss, subjective memory loss. But they help prevent memory loss and they help prevent the development and disease of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. And their progression, which means worsening progress is not always a good thing, progress of the disease means it’s worsening. So there was a very recent study in nutritional neuroscience, and this was the direct trigger for me to do this podcast episode. It was published on June 11th of this year. Consuming lutein and zeaxanthin rich foods reduced the risk of dementia and reduced the risk of eye diseases. † [00:17:10]
[00:17:14] Now, this is a benign approach to getting antioxidant defenses to help prevent inflamaging, to help prevent memory loss, to help prevent brain diseases, to help prevent eye disease. A lot of green leafy vegetables. So let’s get back to women. You have to take into account women’s immune systems. There’s this really brilliant researcher, Dr. Billy Hammond, he’s the kind of person I follow when it comes to the science of nutrition. He’s the principal scientist in Division Sciences Laboratory at the University of Georgia, that’s in Athens, Georgia. They do a lot of brain research and fusion research at the University of Georgia in Athens. He’s also a professor of the Brain and Behavioral Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. And he’s done a great deal of research on diseases of aging in women that affect both vision and memory. And he’s also done a great deal of research on lutein and zeaxanthin because they’re so key.† [00:18:16]
[00:18:19] So I’m going to quote Dr. Hammond now. “Females have a much more robust immune response, but then suffer from the long term consequences such as enhanced responses, injury” end of quote. So women’s immune systems, because they have to go through pregnancy, etc. are very powerful, they’re more powerful than men. Now, when the immune system is really functioning well, you’re releasing chemical messengers like chemokines and cytokines, like interleukin six. These are the things that have damaged the lungs of people with COVID 19 that led to so many deaths. Antioxidants are some of the things that quench those things and protect regions of the brain in the eyes and the lungs and every other part of body. So it’s very key for women to have enough of these nutrients, especially since some of these nutrients get trapped in the fat in your body, have a higher fat content in general than men. So they actually need more of these nutrients. That’s really key to a long, healthy life for women. So let’s look at the nurses health study. It’s almost 50,000 nurses that were followed for a 22 year period, that’s amazing. Women in the highest quintile of intake of lutein and zeaxanthin quintile would be the top 20%. Women in the top 20% of intake of lutein and zeaxanthin had a 24% lowered likelihood of reporting reduced cognitive function over the 22 year period. But don’t forget, these women were getting questioned by the researchers all the time. There was always follow up questioning. So when they would ask these women, you know, how’s your memory? How’s your brain? They’d say, Well, my, my brain is fine. I’m not I’m not forgetting words and I’m not forgetting that I’ve been somewhere or read a book, etc., and I can remember things and I can learn. They had a lot of these green leafy vegetables, they were getting in a lot of lutein and zeaxanthin. † [00:20:14]
[00:20:17] So here’s the problem in a nutshell, women just need more lutein and zeaxanthin and carotenoid pigments in general like lycopene. So here’s the Journal of Vision Research. That’s the Shepherd’s Eye Research Institute in Boston. Although women tend to consume more lutein and zeaxanthin than men, women average 38% less lutein and zeaxanthin in their retinas. So potentially this is going to affect their eye health and their brain. It’s all connected. So even though women tend to eat more green, leafy vegetables and high quality foods, etc., than men, they tend to have 38% lutein and zeaxanthin in their eyeball and their retina where it counts. And lutein and zeaxanthin are the only carotenoids, and you’re right, they’re the only ones. They’re the most important carotenoids in your brain also. So they protect the retina from the blue light and other insults. And if you don’t have enough whatever there is depleted quickly, it’s used up very quickly and then you’re really in trouble. † [00:21:24]
[00:21:26] So using a pollutant and zeaxanthin in your eyeballs will then quickly use up the remaining lutein and zeaxanthin in your brain, and your brain won’t work as efficiently, but it’s more likely to get damaged by the free radicals are always occurring in your brain at high levels. So it’s a problem. Potentially, this also leads to cataracts. There’s studies showing that when you have enough lutein and zeaxanthin, but also zinc and other nutrients, it lowers the risk of having cataracts. There’s a big study from Finland showing that. † [00:22:02]
[00:22:04] And you know what? There’s also a recent study using data from Rush Russia’s Memory Project. The Rush Institute is over in Chicago, and they study aging. And they’re the people that came up with the MIND diet. They took the the best of the Mediterranean diet and combined it with what they considered the best of the dash diet. The Dash diet is a diet developed to help prevent heart disease and high blood pressure, etc. Help prevent strokes and heart attacks. So they mixed the Mediterranean diet with the dash diet. Now these are patterns of eating. They’re not like calorie restricted, restricting diets aimed at dieting and losing weight. However, when you eat properly like these kind of foods, you lose weight anyway. They’re not fattening foods and they’re super healthy foods. So they use- and they’ve proven with this MIND diet that it cuts to risk of Alzheimer’s so they were using so I’m doing one more brain study because I kind of left it out before using a Rush memory project data higher in take of total carotenoids substantially. And once again, that’s a huge word for researchers, lowers the hazard of developing Alzheimer’s disease by an incredibly powerful 48%. So a good diet, there’s other things that lower the risk of Alzheimer’s reading, studying, learning, talking to people, being social, getting enough sleep, getting exercise. All these things help lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. But they found that intake of total carotenoids and there’s a lot of data on this this is just one thing I’m quoting especially lutein and zeaxanthin lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by an incredibly substantial and incredibly powerful 48%. These are Harvard researchers. And they found that this help prevent a buildup of beta amyloid plaques in the brain and also lowered fibril formation. That’s the sticky plaques that become so damaging and toxic in your brain. † [00:24:06]
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[00:24:08] So age related macular degeneration is a major cause of vision loss and blindness in people over the age of 55. And it’s more common in women by far. So these are Harvard researchers, people who consume the most lutein and zeaxanthin have a 40% lowered risk of advanced age related macular degeneration, which leads to blindness. This was approximately 100,000 men and women. It was published in JAMA Ophthalmology. So the data is real, the data is real. Additionally, other carotenoids in the study, like beta carotene and alpha carotene especially reduce the risk of age related macular degeneration by 25 to 35%. But there’s more Harvard research looking at glaucoma. Glaucoma is very common. It’s usually from pressure in the eyeballs. The plumbing of the eyeball isn’t working properly, and you get a buildup of fluids and they’re crushing down on the retina and they cause damage to the retina and they can lead to vision loss and blindness. It’s a very common cause of vision loss and blindness, especially in older people. So this is more Harvard research. And once again, it’s it’s almost 100,000 men and women, it’s from two very long term studies mixed together. Both of them lasted longer than 25 years. So this is really good data consuming a lot of green leafy vegetables reduce the risk of developing glaucoma by 20 to 30%. † [00:25:33]
[00:25:35] So studies of lutein and zeaxanthin, they don’t just protect the eyeball, they actually improve your vision health. Like I mentioned at Marin Eye Health, that eye center study at the University of Utah. So not only do they make the brain work more efficiently, they make the eyes work more efficiently. I remember the study, I can’t find it now because I read it many years ago. All they did was give women DHEA and lutein, and their memory improved, their cognitive functions improved. That’s all they did was give them lutein and DHEA. DHEA is one of the two most important oils in fish oil capsules and eating fish. It’s very important for the brain and memory. Studies show that if you get 100, 200 milligrams of DHA every day, you cut your risk of Alzheimer’s disease by about 36%. So it’s really, but they also are really super important for your memory. † [00:26:22]
[00:26:25] Now, just a couple of other things. High blood levels of lycopene and lutein and zeaxanthin in research reduced the risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancers. They lead to stronger bones because they reduce inflammation in the bones. And this improves osteoblast activity, which builds bone and reduces osteoblast activity that breaks down bones. So when you reduce the inflammation in the bones, you’re actually building bone. So they’re important for that, too. And they help prevent sarcopenia, which is that age associated loss of muscle and strength, which is a hazard, because then that affects your balance and your mobility and your independence. They lead to a healthier heart, better circulation, healthier skin, they even reduce wrinkling and help protect your skin from the sun and a reduced risk of autoimmune diseases so these are really important foods. † [00:27:14]
[00:27:14] So the take away, have a lot of green leafy vegetables every day. Now, a couple of caveats there, don’t have raw cabbage, vegetables cause there’s goitrogens in there. Things that slow down your thyroid gland, your thyroid gland you need it for your memory and heart health and reducing inflammation for energy and strength, etc. So you don’t want to slow down your thyroid, so cook your cabbage vegetables and there’s a lot of cabbage vegetables. I mean, there’s broccoli rabe, there’s bok choy, there’s collard greens, there’s kale. I grew up on kale when I was a little kid in Ireland, we grew up on kale, we ate so much kale, we never ate cabbage, we ate kale. Cabbage, brussels sprouts, all these things are in the cabbage family. I wouldn’t have them more than four times a week and I would cook them, four times a week is fine. So on the other days you’ll look at other greens like lettuce, dandelion greens. I was very good friends with a family from Barry, Italy and they would make salads on Sunday afternoon with dandelion greens, and I got to tell you, it was so bitter, but they’re super healthy. Lettuce, arugula, all those are greens. But don’t risk it, take a well-made, natural source of lutein and zeaxanthin. The synthetic doesn’t work well, it’s sort of a different chemical structure. They don’t have that nailed properly.† [00:28:38]
[00:28:38] So you want a natural lutein and zeaxanthin. Generally, they get these from flowers. They reduce your risk of depression, they reduce your risk of eye inflammation, they reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. You’ll want to add to that some fish oils, you want your B vitamins, you want your minerals, especially your zinc and your magnesium and adequate calcium, you want your vitamin C. If you want a couple of other things that are great for the brain, well absorbed turmeric. Turmeric is very poorly absorbed, it’s that pigment and curry that gives it that smell and taste and color. Well absorbed turmeric is great for the brain, resveratrol is good for the brain, acetyl-l-carnitine is good for the brain. Alpha lipoic acid is good for the brain. These are all things we’ve done podcasts on.† [00:29:20]
[00:29:20] So I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode. You can listen to all of our episodes wherever you listen to the podcast for free or go to invitehealth.com/podcast. And if you could subscribe and leave a review, it would be very helpful. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at InViteⓇ Health. I want to thank you for listening today and please join me again in future podcast episodes. Jerry Hickey, signing off, have a great day. † [00:29:20]
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