Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. Supplements to Aid Anxiety, Part 2, Invite Health Podcast Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InVite Health podcast, where our degreed health care professionals …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE, IMPORTANT NEW STRATEGY- INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 595 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our degreed health …
cholesterol
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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] cholesterol
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Welcome back to part two of my episode ceramides, these fats make cholesterol extremely dangerous. Ceramides are a type of fat that our body makes. And there’s different forms of ceramides and they’re okay at normal levels, in fact, they make your skin and are involved with your cell production, etc., but at very elevated levels, they’re extremely dangerous for your heart. And we discussed, Dr. Jeff Meeusen he’s the co-director of the cardiac lab at the Mayo Clinic. And Dr. Meeusen says that elevated LDL or overeating causes ceramides to build up in our tissues. So LDL is notoriously titled bad cholesterol. It’s not always bad. You need it for certain things. But when it’s elevated or goes rancid, it’s very dangerous, especially the small, dense variety of it, dense meaning, it’s heavy, so it floats out of our blood because of gravity, it is attached in the blood vessel walls and because it’s a small molecule, because it has these small molecules in it, any cracks in the blood vessel walls any opening in the blood vessel walls are can easily insinuate itself into them. So what’s the problem with ceramides, the ceramides literally shoves the LDL, bad cholesterol into the walls of our blood vessels. And according to the Mayo Clinic, 50 times worse than usual. In other words, if LDL, bad cholesterol has a propensity for attaching and damaging our blood vessels and causing a buildup of the plaque that leads to hardening of the arteries, it’s 50 times worse if you’re elevated in ceramides.†[00:02:17]
[00:02:18] So I said in part one of this episode that elevated ceramides, on their own, are monsters for our hearts and they actually affect our survival and inflammation causes them to increase the kind of inflammation you’d see in diabetes or maybe kidney disease or liver disease, not the temporary inflammation you get from an infection that that goes away quickly, hopefully. But also obesity increases ceramides, eating a lot of unhealthy fats, eating a lot of sugary foods like donuts. They all increase ceramides, overeating in general, obesity, blood sugar problems, like I said, inflammation, elevated LDL. All of these increase ceramides, unfortunately. So it’s just a process of aging. That’s why it’s so important for us older adults to have a lot of antioxidants to help protect our blood vessel walls and antioxidants like what’s in blueberries and broccoli and green tea and a little bit of cocoa, if it’s not damage into milk chocolate, things like that. Antioxidants, they help protect us. Vitamin C, natural vitamin E, tocotrienols, version of vitamin E, all those help protect us.†[00:03:37]
[00:03:39] But also you want your bad cholesterol down when you’re older because the ceramides are going to be there. So the bad cholesterol literally becomes more dangerous as we grow older. So we really should discuss at this point what lowers ceramides. And just to cover quickly the Mayo Clinic and many other academic research institutions of high caliber, said that elevated ceramides are involved with severe heart attacks, strokes, severe build up of cholesterol, the blood vessel walls. There’s even evidence for Alzheimer’s disease in older people. Our T cells don’t work well to fight cancer. It leads to massive heart attack strokes, the need for bypass surgery and open heart surgery and stenting and also, unfortunately, mortality, not just morbidity, which is disease, but mortality, which is the end. So you really want to lower your ceramide level.† [00:04:36]
CERAMIDES MAKES CHOLESTEROL VERY DANGEROUS>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:04:37] Now, just a word on this. LDL once again is the number one fat that builds up in our arteries that leads to atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis, etc., you know, hardening of the arteries and blood vessel walls. And a spike, tremendous success which statins for lowering LDL cholesterol, heart disease still remains the number one cause of death everywhere in the planet. So we have to look at other things involved here. We know inflammation is part parcel of these issues. That’s something you could get checked out, I’ve done a couple of podcast episodes on something hs-crp, which is something that can be used for a marker of chronic low grade inflammation that can damage the kidneys or the brain or the heart. We’ve spoken about different kinds of fat previous in episodes, like triglycerides. Now we’re talking about ceramides.† [00:05:32]
[00:05:33] So this is another thing, and by the way, a good diet exercise, not smoking, not drinking a lot of alcohol. All of these things tend to lower all of these bad things. But we need a little bit more help with ceramides. Now, they have found that two types of statin drug do help lower ceramides, rosuvastatin, which is Crestor. If I had to take a statin, that’s the one I would take. I would take about five milligrams a day because, five milligrams a day doesn’t seem to be a problem. It doesn’t tend to make people fatigued, it doesn’t have an effect on the liver or anything like that. It seems to be fine and it does a great job of pushing down the bad cholesterol. A tiny, tiny, tiny bit raises the good cholesterol, but not very significantly. But now they’re finding that rosuvastatin lower ceramides. So that’s another plus. And that might be why out of all the statins, rosuvastatin along with Atorvastatin, seem to be the best for keeping patients alive because Atorvastatin also has a slight propensity for lowering ceramides.† [00:06:37]
[00:06:48] When you look at evidence of something helping, you always want to look at the cell evidence. You always want to look at animal evidence of the animals not being mistreated or being put in pain, etc. So these are researchers from Spain, a bunch of different academic research institutions in Spain. And by the way, if you’ve never been to Spain, it’s a gorgeous country, and the history and the architecture and the food is just amazing. And the art, the arts amazing. In any event, getting back to the podcast episode, researchers from Spain published their findings in the journal Food and Function. And they they were feeding animals a lot of fats and sugar. So that’s not a terrible thing. It’s not like they were torturing the animals. They were feeding the animals fats and sugars. And I saw that, ceramide levels were increasing, so they gave them fish oils in their chow and they found that the ceramide levels were dropping. And this is not the only evidence is mounting evidence now, accruing evidence that fish oils lower ceramides, so that’s another feather in the cap of fish oils. We know that fish oil do help preserve muscle and bone. They are healthy for women’s breasts and your colon, they’re certainly healthy for your heart. They lower the risk of sudden cardiac death, which is amazing. They’re fantastic for your brain and they’re needed by your eyeballs. They need for color vision and fine vision. They are needed for memory and a good mood. Mental health issues. So fish oils are really good supplements. Just make sure you get a really high quality fish oil because you want it to be fresh and clean. † [00:08:27]
[00:08:30] So as ceramide levels dropped in these animals, the ability to control their blood sugar improved. And you know, in part one of this episode, we spoke about ceramides being part parcel of blood sugar issues. So here we have animal evidence that the animals that were becoming chunky and their cholesterol was going up and everything was going up and their ceramides were going up and they were losing control of their blood sugar, which is leading towards diabetes in the animals, simply giving them fish oils, lowered ceramides, and they could see a direct connection. As ceramides levels dropped, blood sugar control improved. So the Karolinska Institute is kind of like our Tufts University or our Johns Hopkins. They do a lot of high quality research, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. They hand out different Nobel Prizes for medicine and physiology, I believe, but they hand out several Nobel Prizes. So they’re highly regarded and they worked with the University of Bergen, which is in Norway, and they published their findings in the Journal Lipids in Health and Disease. And they gave mice, once again in mice, a high fat diet, which is not a terrible thing. They’re not torturing them, roasted, not in pain or anything. They didn’t cut off their tail, so they gave mice, a high fat diet and they found that, ceramide levels were increasing. So then they gave some of the mice, fish oils or krill oil, and both of them were lowering ceramide levels. Fish oils lowered ceramide levels. But the krill oil at equal dosages was superior to fish oil for lowering the level of ceramides. I’m glad I take two Krill oil every day with my breakfast. Just so happens my wife and I, do have a lot of fish, a lot of different kinds of fish. But I still take the Krill every morning because you want that DHA for your memory. You want the EPA, DHA, for your brain, and you want it for your eyeballs. Additionally, Krill oil has a little bit of DPA, which is amazing for the heart. And Krill oil has other things useful for the memory like astaxanthins, phosphatides and choline, it gets into your brain, so I take Krill, fish oil is fine. I think it’s a great supplement, I just prefer Krill.† [00:10:54]
[00:10:57] So here’s a study from Yale University School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It’s published in the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism. And they found that fish oils, yes, they lower triglycerides, which is a greasy fat that when it’s elevated, it’s terrible for your heart, it’s terrible for your liver, and it causes strokes. But besides lowering triglycerides, it lowered ceramide levels and this led to correcting elevated blood sugar. So there’s a connection now, you know, I didn’t even do my intro. You know, my name’s Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist, and you can find all the Invite Episodes wherever you listen to podcasts or just go for free, by the way, or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and you can get all of our podcasts all in one place. And you can also find invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. So when you listen, if you could subscribe and leave a review, it would be helpful for us. But let’s get back to this. I was so psyched about it, I didn’t even do the intro. That’s okay. Who cares about the intro?† [00:12:12]
[00:12:24] So we are concerned about ceramides, just to reiterate, because they increase your high blood pressure, they increase with diabetes, they increase with obesity, the increase with inflammation, increase with age, they increase with eating too many fats and sugars and they cause heart damage. And if they’re really elevated, they lead to fatal heart attacks. And I said that statins can help lower them and fish oils help lower them and krill oil, not a lot of data on krill oil yet with ceramides. But that one study was very, very positive. Oh, and by the way, besides several statins, Atorvastatin and Rosuvastatin, lowering your intake of bad fats and sugars helps lower ceramides, cutting your calories, aerobic exercise and fish oils. They all help lower ceramides, so I just want to repeat these things, they are so important. So eating incorrectly, especially if you overeat, leads to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, many things, it contributes to Alzheimer’s disease, even bone loss and pain, etc. And eating correctly reduces inflammation, supplies antioxidants. Eating wrong leads to bad things, including cancer, eating correctly, good things. I think fish oil should be part of that. They’ve seen, it was, uh, researchers at the University of Manchester in England, University of London. It’s published in the journal Biochemical Pharmacology that, even people who choose a poor diet, high in cholesterol and sugar, if they take fish oils, it helps prevent the inflammation, it helps prevent the rise in triglycerides and it helps prevent the rise in ceramides. So let’s go on with some of these fish oil studies. And in fact, let’s let’s talk about related studies. I mean, fish oils also lowered the kind of inflammation related to over eating, related to diabetes, related to obesity. The FDA actually allows a health claim for fish oils with high blood pressure, recently, and it’s based on 70 different studies. So there’s a new study from the Journal Frontiers in Nutrition. It’s a meta analysis of ten existing studies that fish oils help lower high blood pressure. More importantly, dozens of studies show that it reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death, which is related to high blood pressure. Now, there are several other studies that fish oils lower ceramides. I think that that’s a very positive thing to do. So I want to thank you for listening to part two of our episode. How ceramides make your cholesterol exceedingly dangerous. Exceedingly dangerous. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. And let me just reiterate, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast or go to Invitehealth.com, where it says podcast. So thanks for listening. Hope to see you next time, on another episode of the InViteⓇ Health podcast, Jerry Hickey signing off. †[00:15:33]
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How can krill support your health? Jerry Hickey, Ph. goes into depth about the difference between krill and fish oil as well as the benefits.
You must listen to this podcast and learn how certain supplements have the ability to enhance our brain health even as we age.
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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