Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Written by: Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at [email protected]† Alzheimer’s is a complex disease with many risk factors. It is a disease that affects more than just the person who is afflicted with the illness. For the care takers …
Written by: Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at [email protected]† Dementia is a complex issue that concerns many people. Dementia is a complex topic because not only is it considered by many to be a neurocognitive disorder on its own, but …
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FEELING FRAZZLED? GET FOCUSED! INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 650
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH.
*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]
*Intro Music*
Amanda Williams MD, MPH: [00:00:40] I’ve talked a lot about stress versus burnout in the past and even talked about brain fog. But we know that this is a major problem that so many Americans are dealing with every single day. So, I feel like it’s a topic that needs to be discussed in some more detail. When you look at the statistics of how many Americans are feeling incredibly stressed out and this is affecting all aspects of their life, maybe you get to work, and you feel like you’re not focused or you’re having a hard time completing task. Maybe you’re in school and you’re having a hard time meeting deadlines for certain projects that are due. So, this is an area where we know that through lifestyle modifications, we can make major gains. So, I am Dr. Amanda Williams, scientific director at Invite Health, and they did a survey across the country, and they recognized that well over 80% of workers experience what they consider to be high levels of work-related stress. Well, this is a major issue if you have basically eight out of ten individuals in any office building or in any factory or any place of employment feeling incredibly stressed out that can show what leads us down that path the burnout. Burnout used to always be looked at as something that only applied to folks who were in the health care field. We now recognize that because of our hectic lifestyles that most people are trying to tackle too many things, that stress level is really quite high, and burnout is a real thing. So, I encourage you to go back and listen to the previous podcast on, stress versus burnout so you can recognize the difference. † [00:02:25]
[00:02:26] But we can see how we can have a loss of energy, a loss of focus, a loss of attention. Just an overall sense of not feeling right, feeling as people always say, I feel stressed out. We know that there are many things that we can try to do to decompress ourselves, but not everybody’s into meditation or yoga, but there are other techniques that you can turn to, and I encourage you to find a mindfulness technique that’s going to appeal to you that you can start to apply on a regular basis when you feel those moments of stress so that you can focus on your breathing, perhaps, or take your mind to a different place, even if it’s only for two, three, four or 5 minutes, it can make an astronomical difference, in so many aspects, not only of your mental well-being but for your physical well-being as well. Because we can see the correlation between high levels of stress and cardiovascular disease, and dysregulation of our blood sugar, for example. But in particular, when most people think about stress, they feel like they feel it in their brain, and I think that this is an important takeaway is to recognize that our brain is very power in feeling that low energy or that lack of motivation. This is a clue to you that your brain is screaming for nutrients. Your brain is asking, please feed me. Kind of like if you get that rumble in your stomach and you say, Oh, I’m very hungry. Well, your brain is also hungry for key nutrients in order to be able to offset all of those daily stressors that we come across each and every single day. So, we know the importance of healthy diet and adherence to a Mediterranean diet is certainly the way that we want to proceed forward. We know that those high antioxidant foods certainly can do so much to boost our cognitive performance. † [00:04:17]
DAILY FOCUS & MEMORY SUPPORT JUST GOT EASIER, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 648>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:04:18] We also recognize that healthy omega three fatty acids are incredibly important to our brain and for the functionality within the brain, a lot of people say, oh, I have ADHD, and we know that in childhood we see higher percentages of young boys and girls who are diagnosed with ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But this is quite common in adults as well. And when you have high percentages of Americans who have been clinically diagnosed as having ADHD, and then you have a whole another group of folks who are self-diagnosed as having ADHD, we have to zero in the real problem. We have to look at the diet. We have to look at our mechanisms that we use in order to decompress our stress. I often say that Americans stay in that lane of sympathetic overdrive and have a difficult time pumping that brake with the parasympathetic. nervous system. Now you see other places around the world where they do a much better job. They take longer vacations, they take breaks during the middle of the day, and they sit down, and they enjoy a meal. They’re not trying to power through their lunch like most Americans, if you even have the time to eat your lunch and when Americans do choose the foods, they’re getting something that’s quick grab and go ultra processed. And we wonder why our brain, when we return from lunch has a very difficult time focusing and why we start to feel sleepy because we’re not nourishing our system in the appropriate way. But we know that there are many things that we can do each and every single day to add to our supplementation routine that can zero in on supporting healthy cognition and allowing us to have better focus and attention. So, I’m going to zero in just on a couple of things today. † [00:06:11]
[00:06:11] Phosphatidylserine folks, Phostidylserine is a very important phospholipid. This is a key fat that helps to support our brain and the way that the brain is reacting and responding each and every single day, even with the release of key neurotransmitters including acetylcholine. We have seen now how the use of phostidylserine supplementation has been shown to be highly effective in both pediatric and adult cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. They looked at a meta-analysis of multiple clinical trials, zeroing in on the utilization of phostidylserine supplementation and the overall symptoms that people experience with ADHD. And they found through this meta-analysis of these different randomized clinical trials that phostidylserine was effective in reducing symptoms of inattention, especially in children. We have seen clearly the studies done in college students and how this can really help with that stress leading into exams. So big midterm exams or their final exams, and when they started to supplement with phostidylserine, it helped to bring that stress level down. Well, we know it’s doing this in a couple of different ways. One is, it’s very great for HPA axis, so the hypothalamus- pituitary adrenal axis. The other is it is working as this membrane fat to protect our brain cells from dings and dents, as I always like to describe them. But the more stress we have, the more prone our brain cells are to having dings and dents. So, there was a study that was done in the Journal of International Sports Nutrition where they wanted to see if they could replicate the use of phostidylserine in the setting of stress when it came to exercise and performance. So, they were looking at cognitive function before and after acute exercise. They found that when giving college aged individuals phostidylserine, giving them this for two weeks and then having them do an acute physical activity, so exercising and then they assessed their plasma cortisol levels. They were looking at testosterone levels and they could see a significant improvement in their cognitive function, both pre and post workout just through taking phostidylserine for two weeks. So, that’s pretty impressive. So, if you are going to work every day and you feel like you’re exercising your mind and you’re never getting anywhere, maybe phostidylserine is the nutrient you should be turning to. We’ve been able to see how beneficial phostidylserine is in conditions such as depression, as well as anxiety. And we know in the setting of ADHD, oftentimes we have these co-morbid conditions where individuals do feel a lot of anxiety about trying to meet deadlines or trying to finish a task at work. And so, the two often go hand-in-hand, so through the action of phostidylserine, we can help to create more of this balance throughout the system. So Phostidylserine is one thing. † [00:09:42]
ICYMI:BEING SUPPLEMENT SAVVY IN THE SUMMER, INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 649>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:09:42] Another formulation is cerebral care, and the Cerebral care formula contains inositol. Inositol is very important when it comes to cell-to-cell communication in the brain. So now, if your brain is kind of on a hyperactive course and it’s just kind of firing away and it doesn’t know when to stop, that’s a problem because the likelihood that the brain cells have the ability to communicate with each other at that point in time is not real high, they’re just firing away. So, we need them to be able to pause and communicate effectively and say, oh, hey, this is the task we’re trying to do. So, with the use of the cerebral care formulation, we can see where we can gain valuable ground. When it comes to the way that our brain is communicating with the rest of our body, which is very key as well, too. Because remember, if your brain is feeling fatigued, the rest of your body is also going to be feeling that level of fatigue. So, we know that diet and exercise are key. We know that adding in nutrients such as phostidylserine, and then taking it to this whole different advanced level with the addition of the cerebral care powder, which gives you that inositol, it gives you some of that phostidylserine gives you acetyl- L-carnitine to energize up your brain cells, and it gives you CDP choline, which allows you to remember the tasks that you did. Many times, when people get home from work, they go gosh, what are all the things that I did today? So, we want to have very acute short- and long-term memory, so having choline as part of the cerebral care formulation helps to enhance our cognitive function by improving upon memory. So, it’s a really easy way for individuals who do feel that heightened level of stress. We know many Americans, over 80% of Americans who are working say, yeah, I’m stressed to the max. You know, millions of Americans have been diagnosed with ADHD. So, if we want to be effective, we want to have energy, we want to be task oriented, we have to zero in on feeding the brain. And this is a really good one, two combinations of the cerebral care with that phostidylserine. Of course, you want to partner this up with a good regular exercise routine with finding a mindfulness technique that is geared towards you and also adherence to a Mediterranean diet. So those are my tips for all of you Americans who are out there and feeling slightly stressed out and not focused when it comes to your day-to-day work, when it comes to whatever you are trying to accomplish, that should get you to where you want to be. And I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the Invite Health podcast. You won’t find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting, invitehealth.com/podcast to make sure that you subscribe, and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. † [00:09:42]
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Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. KRILL OIL, OR FISH OIL. PICK ON AND TAKE IT- PART 2. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 625 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the …
Written By: Allie Might, FMC, INHC, ATT For further questions or concerns email me at [email protected] Everyone experiences stress throughout their life. There’s no way to avoid stress all together. But what do you know about how to handle these situations and can …
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH.
*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]
*Intro Music*
Amanda Williams MD, MPH: [00:00:40] When it comes to aging, there is a common concern that many people have, and that is they want to remain sharp, want your brain to be functioning, firing on all cylinders as I like to say, as we get older. We know that there’s a lot of things that we can do to help prevent the decline in cognitive function as we grow older, we can look at different techniques that certainly have been shown to be beneficial. We can certainly look at the foods that we are eating, and I want to talk a little bit about neuro hacking today, because this is something that has kind of gained a lot of momentum over the course of the past decade. And many individuals are really starting to dive in to this whole thought of what can I do to maintain brain health? So we’re going to talk about some of the different nutrients that can clearly be advantageous to stave off age related diminishment of brain function and of course, what we can be doing to maintain our cognitive reserves, so I am Dr. Amanda Williams, scientific director at InVite Health. And neuro hacking is also sometimes related to or called brain hack, and this is an attempt to optimize our brain function and enhance cognitive performance. So this can be undertaken with different goals in mind. But generally speaking, most people want to have a better firing brain and this might happen to younger folks who are in college and want to do better for overall academic performance, and they try different brain techniques to enhance their recall, for example. So any of the things that we can do to attempt to improve upon brain function and mental performance, we can kind of categorize as neuro hacking. And there’s much clinical research out there now that is zeroing in on hacking the brain and the dimensions of cognitive enhancement.† [00:02:48]
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[00:02:49] There was a fascinating research study that was conducted a couple of years ago that dove into this, looked at the dimensions of cognitive enhancement and the physical components to this, the behavioral components, the biochemical components to this, and this is where we can start to look at those lifestyle modifications, the healthy eating, the exercise, why more research is being done as to the brain connectivity when it comes to exercise, for example, we know that that helps to release those feel good neurotransmitters, that dopamine release, but there’s a lot of complex information that occurs within the brain. And we know there’s a lot of things that we can do that can disrupt that complexity, certainly poor diet, sedentary lifestyle can lead into all of this chronic inflammation. Excessive damage brought on due to free radicals as well as inflammation and glycation can all lead to problems with lowered cognitive function as we grow older. But we know that there’s a lot of different strategies out there that they are assessing to see how our brain is working and how we can improve that. How do we make it even faster that we don’t want to lose this because of the process of aging? And this is where this whole new side of science, this neuro hacking or brain hacking has come into play, looking at the different dimensions, the cognitive domain, looking at the availability of different actions that can help to enhance the way that the brain is working as we grow older and, you know, different nutrients that help to enhance that neural signaling, the release of those powerful neurotransmitters, and this is where we start to look at the different nutrients, including omega three fatty acids. We have to look at mental fatigue in the different regions of the brain that get impacted because of high stress and just feeling run down. We have to look at the learning and the memory components, the hippocampus, which plays a crucial role in learning and memory. So there’s all of these moving parts in different areas within the brain that we know can be enhanced or strengthened. It’s kind of like doing brain exercises, we’ve all probably heard that as you get older, doing crossword puzzles or word lines can be very helpful. And, you know, finding new, exciting hobbies where you’re learning new things. There’s many individuals who will go and take a course you know, maybe they already have their degrees, already worked a full career, but they want to stay sharp. So they’ll go and take you know, college class and learn something new. So we know that these things have existed for a long time, but to focus on nutritional neuro hacking or brain hacking, this is this new area of scientific research that really is quite progressive in terms of enhancing your brain function and the utilization of different nutrients to help us get over that feeling tired, you know, the utilization of things like Rhodiola, where we have a lot of mental fatigue and problems with focus. So the use of inositiol, and ginkgo biloba can be very, very beneficial. How nutrients such as Blueberry Extract, those powerful purple anthocyanins can be very helpful when it comes to learning and memory. So we look at focus tired, memory, stress, all of these. And we say, well, what nutrients can we add in to our daily routine? We start to turn towards things outside of our diet, and if we eat a Mediterranean Diet where we are incorporating in those high fiber foods, those powerful vitamins and minerals provided from those wonderful fruits and vegetables, the seeds and the nuts, the healthy fats that help to protect the brain as we get older, to maintain that brain volume. Well, we can also look at different nutrients,such as acetyl-L-carnitine, so we have our alpha Lipoic acid combined with our Alcar, so Alcar with ALA, and we know that this is important for cellular fat metabolism as well as for energy production with inside of the cell within the mitochondria itself, we can see that those folks who have utilized, Alcar, acetyl-L-carnitine get a significant improvement on mental fatigue. So maybe they said, yeah, I just don’t feel as sharp, my brain feels kind of tired. They start to utilize Alcar, and they say, wow, you know, I feel like I have more energy, I feel like I’m more focused.† [00:07:48]
[00:07:49] We can clearly look at the addition of a formulation such as mind synergy or the cerebral care formulation and the powerful blend of those nutrients to enhance neuronal connectivity. The use of Phosphatidylserine and Phosphatidylcholine, these key fats that help to maintain the structure of your brain cells as you get older. And think about all the stress that we throw at our brain throughout our life. So we want to be able to stay focused, stay sharp, create new memories, maintain old memories. We have to take care of our brain and we do this through the action of neuro hacking, we think about the exercise that we’re going to do the next day and how that’s going to help reduce our stress level and release those powerful neurotransmitters, those feel good hormones that get released. We look at the incorporation of carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin. Oftentimes we think of them in the setting of eye health, but we definitely can see how these two powerful carotenoids do so much for our brain tissue and when taking them together can help to lower the amount of inflammation in the brain, just those two nutrients, those two carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin, they make up about 75% of the carotenoids found within the brain. So it would be incredibly advantageous to be taking a formulation that contains lutein and zeaxanthin.†[00:09:24]
[00:09:26] The scientific research on different nutrients such as Curcumin, for example shown to have very powerful cognitive benefits. The study that was conducted in men and women between the ages of 45 years old and 74 years old. And they found that when they were taking curcumin on a daily basis for 12 weeks, they started to have it improved working memory, decreased fatigue in the brain. Ginkgo biloba, which really helps to enhance the proper blood flow and oxygenation to our brain. These are all key ways that we can practice healthy neuro hacking. The incorporation of just our basic vitamins and minerals can offer a significant amount of support, along with omega three fatty acids. Oftentimes we think about fish oil, we’re thinking in that setting of cardiovascular support. But we know that those omega three fatty acids are helping the brain remain nice and full, which is why we have so many formulations that are geared towards optimizing those neuronal connections and supporting and maintaining the cellular function in chemical pathways and enzymatic pathways in the brain, all of which have been studied and shown to be highly effective. So I oftentimes will partner up that cerebral care formulation, which contains acetyl l-carnitine along with inositol, inositol is very powerful way to yield a positive cell to cell communication pathway in the brain. So for those who do have a hectic job or a hectic lifestyle and you feel mentally drained, incorporating in one scoop of that cerebral care each day along with mind synergy, can pack a punch when it comes to that brain hacking. So we can learn more, so we can remember more so we have better stress resilience. So when we are stressed out at work, maybe you’re in a traffic jam and you’re stressed out that the brain can respond better to that, so you don’t end up with mental fatigue we have to zero in on those nutrients that help to support neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections and to strengthen itself, we know that those key phospholipids, that phosphatidylcholine,the Phosphatidylserine do a wonderful job when it comes to allowing the brain to have better neuroplasticity. At the end of the day, we want to enhance our brain’s metabolic function, we want to enhance our critical thinking, support a better mood response, increase our focus. And of course reduce the amount of mental stress and brain fog that we have in order to have the ability to age in a more graceful way. So as we continue to watch this new progressive research field of hacking the brain or neuro hacking, it will be very interesting to see how many more components we start to find, that affect the biochemical pathways, the physical pathway, as well as the behavioral pathway. But for now, what we do know is that we can eat healthy foods through the adherence of a Mediterranean diet. We can help to support our body stress response through having daily physical activity, and we can incorporate in these powerful brain boosting nutrients such as the cerebral care formulation and the Mind Synergy, as well as looking at formulations such as the Alcar with ALA. So stick around on this topic because there is more to come, that is for sure. But I do want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting Invitehealth.com/podcast. Do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. And we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast.†[00:09:26]
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