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April 25, 2024
Leg Strength & Your Brain The Foods That Ruin Your Memory How Younger People Improve Your White Matter Midnight Snacking & Our Brain
In this episode we are all about protecting your brain: Researchers from King’s College London recruited nearly 400 twins, age 43 to 73, and tested different factors, including leg power and speed… and retested 10 years later. The result: The researchers found that leg strength was a better predictor of brain health than any other lifestyle factor looked at in the study.
Also, you’ll hear how every time we eat something that spikes blood glucose levels – like fast food and refined carbs - our hippocampus takes a hit. Plus how eating cold-water fish twice a week will boost blood flow to your brain, and reduce plaque buildup, a top cause of Alzheimer's.
More resources and information are available at https://Tesh.com
(00:00) Maximizing Memory
(08:58) Habits That Ruin Your Memory
(15:28) Impact of Diet on Brain Health
Transcript
00:00 - Speaker 1
All right, welcome to the podcast John Tesh with Gibb Girard, and today we're going to talk about memory. Oh yeah, we gosh on the radio show and everything we do online. People ask us questions about this all the time about maximizing the memory.
00:14
So I have before me here the five habits that are ruining our memory. So we can stop doing that, all right. So let's just get right to it, love it. And number one is one that Gibb and I talk about not only on broadcast, but we also talk about it in the gym. We talk about it after the gym because we see all these studies about how important it is to have strong legs, and so I know that Gibb's going to dig deeply into this in just a moment, but let me just lay out a story you may have heard before.
00:44
And it comes from researchers from King's College London what they did back in the days. They recruited nearly 400 twins ages 43 to 73, and they went and they tested different factors, including a leg power and speed, and then they retested 10 years later and the results were pretty amazing. Researchers found that leg strength happened to be a better predictor of brain health than any other lifestyle factor looked at in the study.
01:09
So, whether it was crossword puzzles or diet or exercise or any of that stuff cardio Basically, the twin with more leg strength at the start of the study maintained their mental abilities and had fewer age-related brain changes than the twin with weaker legs. So squats, brisk walking, stair climbing the experts agree these are all exercises that will protect your memory and brain function. So the number one habit that will ruin your memory is not exercising your legs skipping leg day and a lot of people skip leg day because it just doesn't show.
01:42 - Speaker 2
It doesn't particularly for men.
01:43 - Speaker 1
Pre-kardashianian women didn't do it either but now people are much more likely to do lower body. Is that like one of the prehistoric levels? Yeah, it's like we have antebellum and postbellum.
01:55 - Speaker 2
America, we've got anti-Kardashian, pre-kardashian, post-kardashian.
02:00 - Speaker 1
Anti-Kardashian.
02:06 - Speaker 2
I think that's my aunt Amajane. She's anti-Kardashian, but the point is, you know, people don't do it because, again, it's not particularly for men, it's not as aesthetic. But I have seen multiple studies, including this one where they look at MRI cross sections of legs and they look at the muscle definition in the MRI cross section to see exactly how much muscle density is in someone's leg. And that is, you know, that is also linked to Alzheimer's and dementia and uh, and preventing it. So it is, it's super important.
02:30
One of the big reasons why it's important not only is it hard, and doing hard things is really good for you in general when it comes to your longevity, but, uh, your leg muscles are your biggest muscles in your body.
02:41
It's, they are the biggest muscles in the body, and muscle tissue consumes blood sugar like nothing else. So one of the things that we talk about consistently on the show about Alzheimer's and dementia is that inflammation in the brain, particularly from a high processed food diet. It creates inflammation in your brain and that causes a deterioration of all of the centers for memory, the centers for mood and all kinds of longevity functions in your brain, and that causes a deterioration of all of the centers for memory, the centers for uh, for mood and fun, all kinds of longevity functions in your brain, the things that start to deteriorate as you age. The legs eat that stuff, they just the muscles get the bad stuff and they process it and they and, and, and. That keeps you from getting those huge blood glucose spikes that begin to wear down your, your memory centers. So do yourself a favor. And there are machines. You can get a commercial gym membership for under 10 bucks a month now, that's right.
03:32 - Speaker 1
I think it's like 24-hour fitness, is that?
03:35 - Speaker 2
So there are leg machines that you don't even have to worry about your back. There are machines you can get in so that you don't hurt yourself because the range of motion is limited to exactly what you're supposed to do and build those leg muscles. And we just did deadlifts, both of us this morning.
03:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, different weights, though. I lifted 150 pounds. Gib lifted the Lexus. That's not true. The car.
03:58 - Speaker 2
That's not true? Well, it's close. It was a Fiat, it was close.
04:01 - Speaker 1
What was it?
04:02 - Speaker 2
250 pounds or something it was. It was 250 for 12.
04:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so Gibbs' brain's going nowhere, your brain's in your legs. That's what my dad would say or something.
04:13 - Speaker 2
Anyway, why is your dad, mick, from Rocky 1? Come on.
04:16 - Speaker 1
Mick. I mean, come on, rocky, sorry He'd be talking to himself. He said, come on, mick, so uh, I also wanted to underscore this by saying that it was. So I go for the. I go for my like you know 20 000 mile checkup since then and since that bad cancer diagnosis many years ago. So I go back and I get scanned, I get checked and it's usually the looking for lymph nodes that have lit up, and mine have lit up, like you know, a few times stuff like that.
04:42
This time, um, the dr logothetis from md anderson, he's looking at the scan with me and mom and he goes, uh, and you know this story, but he goes uh, okay, so we got this node here is lit up a little bit. This node here has been, but I don't, I don't see too much activity. But the the big reason why we're not going to put you back on treatment is what we're seeing here and I'm looking at. He's like looking at my legs in the skin and he goes. So your hips and your quads as strength, and and uh, your big muscles, the, uh, the ratio between those and the and the fat that's in your stomach and the rest of your body is so good that your body is able to now, uh, fight off. It's unbelievable.
05:24
And basically what he was saying is just what Gibbs said was that when you and this is not an accident, because I hadn't worked on my legs forever, but because we were doing these stories I ended up hiring a trainer and the trainer was working with me on balance and also on just getting my legs stronger, because the treatment that I'd gone through with the cancer treatment was it was muscle wasting, so I needed that, I needed that extra help. But he said just what you said. Gibby said that it was, and that's why I was so excited about talking to you right after I got that. Had that meeting. The large muscles in your body, john, are burning the fuel that cancer can't have now.
05:59 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you can keep those legs strong, if you can keep those muscles active, it will stop all kinds of metabolic issues in the rest of your body, because you, you know I mean you know that how it feels, especially as you get older. I mean I know how I feel If I eat a high sugar meal, if I eat like donuts or something for breakfast, or if I, if we have cake for somebody's birthday or something. Afterwards I can feel it through my whole body. But if my legs are strong, that feeling of my blood sugar spiking and then the insulin response, and then all of that that kills my energy for the day, my legs eat up all of that and my energy is much more fluid, much less violent in terms of its changes, and I'm a happier, healthier person.
06:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you've created a stronghold, basically, where you have somebody else fighting up against that glucose. Okay, so that's number one not having strong enough legs. The second habit that could absolutely ruin your memory and this is related right is eating processed foods. Yeah, so this is from Dr Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Cornell. Dr Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Cornell. He says every time we eat something that spikes blood glucose levels, like fast food and refined carbs, our hippocampus takes a hit. And that's a big deal he says, because that's the area of the brain responsible for memory and even for spatial navigation. In his research on Alzheimer's and memory preservation, dr Isaacson insists that we eat cold water fish twice a week. Doing that will boost blood flow to your brain and reduce black buildup, a top cause of Alzheimer's, and stop eating the processed food. So what would you say is cold water fish?
07:35 - Speaker 2
Cold water fish is going to be that cod. It's going to be some halibut, sardines, anchovies, but I mean cod is a great one and you know the cold water fish because it's oily right. It's usually oily and oily whitefish, and that's how you know as opposed to pelagic fish like swordfish and stuff like that which is higher in mercury.
07:57 - Speaker 1
So is salmon considered a cold water fish.
07:59 - Speaker 2
You know, I think it depends on the kind of salmon.
08:01
I think that's why you have to get the right kind. I think it depends on the kind of salmon. I think that's why you have to get the right kind. But the reason why it's good is because for the fish to survive in the cold water, they have to have the right ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and so when you eat them you get that right ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids and what that does for your and this is why farmed fish doesn't usually have that. You need the wild caught cold water fish.
08:26 - Speaker 1
And I would assume that the tiny fish right, the krill and anchovies, those are cold water as well. Right, yeah, anchovies, we're not going for those. I can't do them.
08:37 - Speaker 2
I know and we've talked so many times. I mean Dominic D'Agostino is a big metabolic researcher at the University of South Florida, I think, and who does a bunch of work for Navy SEALs and the ketogenic diet. I mean he just swears by those anchovies, he just takes them with him when he travels. But I can't do it.
08:56 - Speaker 1
It's disgusting. But it's the cold water fish and less processed food. Again from Dr Isaacson from Cornell. Really good for your brain.
09:06 - Speaker 2
It's the exact same thing we were just talking about. Right, the processed food gives you that spike and that spike erodes your brain. Dr Daniel Amen, who we've had on different permutations of our show. He's a big neurologist in Southern California and he talks about not only doing the things that will benefit your brain things like the Sudokus, the crossword puzzles but also making sure that you're not doing the things that damage your brain. And this is one of those on his list as well that processed food thing.
09:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So here's another habit, number three. The number three habit that can ruin your memory is not hanging out with younger people.
09:46
I would have missed it. This is according to Georgia State University psychology professor Dr Vanetta Dotson. Dr Dotson wrote Keep your Wits About you, the Science of Brain Maintenance as you Age. And Dr Dotson says, as we age, socializing with younger people who are mentally sharp provides the type of brain stimulation that helps boost our cognitive function, and that's especially true for people who are starting to experience some cognitive decline. So in an analysis of 40 studies by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, when the two generations interacted, young and old, the mental and physical health of the elderly improved dramatically.
10:23 - Speaker 2
It also benefits the younger people. I mean, you know, if you're younger you should be, you should be hanging out with older people to give you better perspective on your life. It'll help you realize what's important. It'll give you an understanding of your history. This is why multi-generational households are a big factor in, you know, in blue zones, right Is that is that it helps everybody in the process. The younger people benefit, the older people benefit in terms of, uh, of cognition. Uh, I will say, as I get older, my desire to talk to younger people that are not my kids goes down quite a bit.
10:57 - Speaker 1
I talked to somebody so different I talked to somebody in their twenties.
11:01 - Speaker 2
I'm like oh I, I cannot, I cannot, I don't have a TikTok.
11:04 - Speaker 1
What am I supposed to talk to you about? My TikTok comes out of my watch.
11:08 - Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly.
11:10 - Speaker 1
But anyway the young, they pass pieces of their vitality onto the elderly, improving their cognitive abilities and, like Gibb said, it works both ways. I mean, I listen to this. It even happens with fruit flies. So our expert says the presence of youthful, active fruit flies doubles the lifespan of older flies. To what? To two days.
11:33 - Speaker 2
Because fruit flies are exactly.
11:35 - Speaker 1
So that's number three. The habit that can ruin your memory not hanging out with younger people. I got to get in on that. So the fourth habit that will ruin your memory not reading enough books. And we just don't have an excuse anymore. We were just talking about this on the radio, about what happens to your brain when you just read 20 minutes a day from a book. Because we have Kindle, we have real books. Whatever you want to do, download a PDF. So if you regularly lose your train of thought say the experts search for your keys or forget where you parked your car the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology believes you will strengthen your memory by just reading more books, even if it's just 20 minutes a day. The researchers joined with local libraries to see if reading had the potential to improve people's memory skills and randomly divide a study subject into reading or gaming groups. The gaming had far less effect than the people who were reading books every day.
12:31 - Speaker 2
Sure, I mean look, especially because most books, particularly if they're geared towards anybody from 12 and up, they're going to be a couple hundred pages long, which means that you're going to have to follow plot points for several hundred pages. And if you read books like you and I like the Stephen King books those are oftentimes six or seven, even 800 pages long. That that requires a lot of mental activity in order to stay engaged. The great thing is, a good writer will keep you engaged and will keep. It will make the whole process fun. Um, but, and and the really great news is what that does for your brain. Just sitting there going through that process of of tracking a story for for several weeks, of reading several hundred pages, it is. It makes a huge difference in your overall cognitive ability and it's something that we, you know. It'll also help with your attention span because most of the stuff that we get right now is quick bites.
13:24
You know 30 seconds of your time plus an ad. Uh, you know 30 seconds of your time plus an ad. Uh, you know two minutes of your time plus an ad. That's all that. That's everything that we're seeing now. Uh, a book is a much more intimate experience. It's a much longer experience. You sit there with it for a much longer period of time and it really opens your brain.
13:39 - Speaker 1
That's well said the fifth and last habit that can ruin your memory is the midnight snack that you had last night. Yeah, that's the worst yeah, I, I, my wife, uh, we got some donuts and and connie froze them, thinking that you know they'd be for another time I can? I can eat a frozen donut.
14:00 - Speaker 2
I mean, it's just to me, it's just not that hard, it's an ice cream cone, it's no problem.
14:04 - Speaker 1
She's like where the donuts go. I said I have no idea.
14:07 - Speaker 2
No, it's. The dog must have gotten the donuts. Kids were over here, it must have been that.
14:11 - Speaker 1
So a UCLA study shows that our late-night eating habits significantly reduce our learning and memory. There was a study, and the researchers did this. They tracked two groups that ate the same amount of food and slept the same number of hours. The only difference was that one group ate during normal daylight hours, while the other group ate late at night when many of them would normally be sleeping. So after just a few weeks they scanned them with the MRI brain scans that revealed significant changes in the hippocampus of the late-night eaters Hippocampus, of course, the brain again associated with learning and memory. The changes translated to far worse performance on memory tests compared to those who ate during the day.
14:53 - Speaker 2
Our body does not want us to eat at night, late at night. I mean, this goes back to the first two points, right, that's inflammation, and at night. The reason why eating at night creates more inflammation is because you're actually not consuming the calories and you're not allowing your body. You're eating the calories, but your body processes are not using those calories right away. So then your body is in the process and, by the way I say this, this is really important to know you and I both we have midnight snacks. We know we're reading you the research, we know the research. We talk about it on the air all the time. We still do this stuff. It's just good to know that by limiting it you help yourself live longer and have a better memory.
15:28
So when you eat the food, your body needs to either burn the calories it has to process it into blood sugar and then burns those calories.
15:36
If it doesn't burn the blood sugar out of your body, then that gets processed into fat through your liver and that process is going to take away from the benefits of the sleep, the neurological benefits of the sleep, because your body is focused on converting calories into fat as opposed to clearing out the metabolic byproducts in your brain, which is what you really need sleep for.
15:59
So when you do that, you are interrupting the cleaning process in your brain, as well as a process called apoptosis, which is when you're, when you have not eaten for a while. The more time you're able to go between meals, the more your body goes. Hey, we don't have a lot of food right now, we don't have a lot of calories. We can't keep all of these cells around. We've got to get rid of the weakest ones, and that process of removing the bad cells is, uh, is a is a process in cancer prevention. It's a process that helps with overall reduction inflammation in your body, and it is a necessary process that most of us in the modern world, because calories are so available I mean, never in the history of humankind have we had so many calories, 100% of the time, available within arm's reach and so the midnight snack just kind of underscores that you're not allowing your body to clean itself out the way that it needs to.
16:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I remember we did an interview with a doctor from the Cornell Food and Brands Lab and at the end of the interview I just asked so what's the biggest problem today? Why are we gaining weight? Why is there so much obesity? And he said because you can have dinner at the gas station yeah, he said there's food everywhere, everywhere, yeah, back when, back when I was growing up, the food, fast food didn't exist, right, and it's a.
17:14 - Speaker 2
It's a. It's an abundance of calories and a lack of nutrition. So we, we we end up doing is we eat all these calories we get up to 2500 calories for the day but our body's like, hey, we still need, you know, we still need vitamin K. So we're still hungry, we still need to ingest food in order to get the vitamins we need.
17:30 - Speaker 1
So the processed food and sugary foods. Our brain needs energy.
17:38 - Speaker 2
It burns more energy than any organ in our body, right, right, so they say chess players burn as much energy in a chess match as running five miles. So when you think about it, I think it's more than like a soccer player burns. Yeah, so that's how powerful the brain is in terms of burning energy. And if you allow that spike in blood sugar, that spike in that poor nutrition, that creates a spike of inflammation in the brain because it's consuming those calories first, yeah, that's good stuff.
18:08 - Speaker 1
Listen if you want to dig deeper, if you want to go further, if you'd like a more intense version of what we're talking about here. Gibb and I have put together a course called Maximize your Memory, and you can get details just by visiting https://tesh.com
All right, welcome to the podcast John Tesh with Gibb Girard, and today we're going to talk about memory. Oh yeah, we gosh on the radio show and everything we do online. People ask us questions about this all the time about maximizing the memory.
00:14
So I have before me here the five habits that are ruining our memory. So we can stop doing that, all right. So let's just get right to it, love it. And number one is one that Gibb and I talk about not only on broadcast, but we also talk about it in the gym. We talk about it after the gym because we see all these studies about how important it is to have strong legs, and so I know that Gibb's going to dig deeply into this in just a moment, but let me just lay out a story you may have heard before.
00:44
And it comes from researchers from King's College London what they did back in the days. They recruited nearly 400 twins ages 43 to 73, and they went and they tested different factors, including a leg power and speed, and then they retested 10 years later and the results were pretty amazing. Researchers found that leg strength happened to be a better predictor of brain health than any other lifestyle factor looked at in the study.
01:09
So, whether it was crossword puzzles or diet or exercise or any of that stuff cardio Basically, the twin with more leg strength at the start of the study maintained their mental abilities and had fewer age-related brain changes than the twin with weaker legs. So squats, brisk walking, stair climbing the experts agree these are all exercises that will protect your memory and brain function. So the number one habit that will ruin your memory is not exercising your legs skipping leg day and a lot of people skip leg day because it just doesn't show.
01:42 - Speaker 2
It doesn't particularly for men.
01:43 - Speaker 1
Pre-kardashianian women didn't do it either but now people are much more likely to do lower body. Is that like one of the prehistoric levels? Yeah, it's like we have antebellum and postbellum.
01:55 - Speaker 2
America, we've got anti-Kardashian, pre-kardashian, post-kardashian.
02:00 - Speaker 1
Anti-Kardashian.
02:06 - Speaker 2
I think that's my aunt Amajane. She's anti-Kardashian, but the point is, you know, people don't do it because, again, it's not particularly for men, it's not as aesthetic. But I have seen multiple studies, including this one where they look at MRI cross sections of legs and they look at the muscle definition in the MRI cross section to see exactly how much muscle density is in someone's leg. And that is, you know, that is also linked to Alzheimer's and dementia and uh, and preventing it. So it is, it's super important.
02:30
One of the big reasons why it's important not only is it hard, and doing hard things is really good for you in general when it comes to your longevity, but, uh, your leg muscles are your biggest muscles in your body.
02:41
It's, they are the biggest muscles in the body, and muscle tissue consumes blood sugar like nothing else. So one of the things that we talk about consistently on the show about Alzheimer's and dementia is that inflammation in the brain, particularly from a high processed food diet. It creates inflammation in your brain and that causes a deterioration of all of the centers for memory, the centers for mood and all kinds of longevity functions in your brain, and that causes a deterioration of all of the centers for memory, the centers for uh, for mood and fun, all kinds of longevity functions in your brain, the things that start to deteriorate as you age. The legs eat that stuff, they just the muscles get the bad stuff and they process it and they and, and, and. That keeps you from getting those huge blood glucose spikes that begin to wear down your, your memory centers. So do yourself a favor. And there are machines. You can get a commercial gym membership for under 10 bucks a month now, that's right.
03:32 - Speaker 1
I think it's like 24-hour fitness, is that?
03:35 - Speaker 2
So there are leg machines that you don't even have to worry about your back. There are machines you can get in so that you don't hurt yourself because the range of motion is limited to exactly what you're supposed to do and build those leg muscles. And we just did deadlifts, both of us this morning.
03:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, different weights, though. I lifted 150 pounds. Gib lifted the Lexus. That's not true. The car.
03:58 - Speaker 2
That's not true? Well, it's close. It was a Fiat, it was close.
04:01 - Speaker 1
What was it?
04:02 - Speaker 2
250 pounds or something it was. It was 250 for 12.
04:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so Gibbs' brain's going nowhere, your brain's in your legs. That's what my dad would say or something.
04:13 - Speaker 2
Anyway, why is your dad, mick, from Rocky 1? Come on.
04:16 - Speaker 1
Mick. I mean, come on, rocky, sorry He'd be talking to himself. He said, come on, mick, so uh, I also wanted to underscore this by saying that it was. So I go for the. I go for my like you know 20 000 mile checkup since then and since that bad cancer diagnosis many years ago. So I go back and I get scanned, I get checked and it's usually the looking for lymph nodes that have lit up, and mine have lit up, like you know, a few times stuff like that.
04:42
This time, um, the dr logothetis from md anderson, he's looking at the scan with me and mom and he goes, uh, and you know this story, but he goes uh, okay, so we got this node here is lit up a little bit. This node here has been, but I don't, I don't see too much activity. But the the big reason why we're not going to put you back on treatment is what we're seeing here and I'm looking at. He's like looking at my legs in the skin and he goes. So your hips and your quads as strength, and and uh, your big muscles, the, uh, the ratio between those and the and the fat that's in your stomach and the rest of your body is so good that your body is able to now, uh, fight off. It's unbelievable.
05:24
And basically what he was saying is just what Gibbs said was that when you and this is not an accident, because I hadn't worked on my legs forever, but because we were doing these stories I ended up hiring a trainer and the trainer was working with me on balance and also on just getting my legs stronger, because the treatment that I'd gone through with the cancer treatment was it was muscle wasting, so I needed that, I needed that extra help. But he said just what you said. Gibby said that it was, and that's why I was so excited about talking to you right after I got that. Had that meeting. The large muscles in your body, john, are burning the fuel that cancer can't have now.
05:59 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you can keep those legs strong, if you can keep those muscles active, it will stop all kinds of metabolic issues in the rest of your body, because you, you know I mean you know that how it feels, especially as you get older. I mean I know how I feel If I eat a high sugar meal, if I eat like donuts or something for breakfast, or if I, if we have cake for somebody's birthday or something. Afterwards I can feel it through my whole body. But if my legs are strong, that feeling of my blood sugar spiking and then the insulin response, and then all of that that kills my energy for the day, my legs eat up all of that and my energy is much more fluid, much less violent in terms of its changes, and I'm a happier, healthier person.
06:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you've created a stronghold, basically, where you have somebody else fighting up against that glucose. Okay, so that's number one not having strong enough legs. The second habit that could absolutely ruin your memory and this is related right is eating processed foods. Yeah, so this is from Dr Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Cornell. Dr Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Cornell. He says every time we eat something that spikes blood glucose levels, like fast food and refined carbs, our hippocampus takes a hit. And that's a big deal he says, because that's the area of the brain responsible for memory and even for spatial navigation. In his research on Alzheimer's and memory preservation, dr Isaacson insists that we eat cold water fish twice a week. Doing that will boost blood flow to your brain and reduce black buildup, a top cause of Alzheimer's, and stop eating the processed food. So what would you say is cold water fish?
07:35 - Speaker 2
Cold water fish is going to be that cod. It's going to be some halibut, sardines, anchovies, but I mean cod is a great one and you know the cold water fish because it's oily right. It's usually oily and oily whitefish, and that's how you know as opposed to pelagic fish like swordfish and stuff like that which is higher in mercury.
07:57 - Speaker 1
So is salmon considered a cold water fish.
07:59 - Speaker 2
You know, I think it depends on the kind of salmon.
08:01
I think that's why you have to get the right kind. I think it depends on the kind of salmon. I think that's why you have to get the right kind. But the reason why it's good is because for the fish to survive in the cold water, they have to have the right ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and so when you eat them you get that right ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids and what that does for your and this is why farmed fish doesn't usually have that. You need the wild caught cold water fish.
08:26 - Speaker 1
And I would assume that the tiny fish right, the krill and anchovies, those are cold water as well. Right, yeah, anchovies, we're not going for those. I can't do them.
08:37 - Speaker 2
I know and we've talked so many times. I mean Dominic D'Agostino is a big metabolic researcher at the University of South Florida, I think, and who does a bunch of work for Navy SEALs and the ketogenic diet. I mean he just swears by those anchovies, he just takes them with him when he travels. But I can't do it.
08:56 - Speaker 1
It's disgusting. But it's the cold water fish and less processed food. Again from Dr Isaacson from Cornell. Really good for your brain.
09:06 - Speaker 2
It's the exact same thing we were just talking about. Right, the processed food gives you that spike and that spike erodes your brain. Dr Daniel Amen, who we've had on different permutations of our show. He's a big neurologist in Southern California and he talks about not only doing the things that will benefit your brain things like the Sudokus, the crossword puzzles but also making sure that you're not doing the things that damage your brain. And this is one of those on his list as well that processed food thing.
09:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So here's another habit, number three. The number three habit that can ruin your memory is not hanging out with younger people.
09:46
I would have missed it. This is according to Georgia State University psychology professor Dr Vanetta Dotson. Dr Dotson wrote Keep your Wits About you, the Science of Brain Maintenance as you Age. And Dr Dotson says, as we age, socializing with younger people who are mentally sharp provides the type of brain stimulation that helps boost our cognitive function, and that's especially true for people who are starting to experience some cognitive decline. So in an analysis of 40 studies by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, when the two generations interacted, young and old, the mental and physical health of the elderly improved dramatically.
10:23 - Speaker 2
It also benefits the younger people. I mean, you know, if you're younger you should be, you should be hanging out with older people to give you better perspective on your life. It'll help you realize what's important. It'll give you an understanding of your history. This is why multi-generational households are a big factor in, you know, in blue zones, right Is that is that it helps everybody in the process. The younger people benefit, the older people benefit in terms of, uh, of cognition. Uh, I will say, as I get older, my desire to talk to younger people that are not my kids goes down quite a bit.
10:57 - Speaker 1
I talked to somebody so different I talked to somebody in their twenties.
11:01 - Speaker 2
I'm like oh I, I cannot, I cannot, I don't have a TikTok.
11:04 - Speaker 1
What am I supposed to talk to you about? My TikTok comes out of my watch.
11:08 - Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly.
11:10 - Speaker 1
But anyway the young, they pass pieces of their vitality onto the elderly, improving their cognitive abilities and, like Gibb said, it works both ways. I mean, I listen to this. It even happens with fruit flies. So our expert says the presence of youthful, active fruit flies doubles the lifespan of older flies. To what? To two days.
11:33 - Speaker 2
Because fruit flies are exactly.
11:35 - Speaker 1
So that's number three. The habit that can ruin your memory not hanging out with younger people. I got to get in on that. So the fourth habit that will ruin your memory not reading enough books. And we just don't have an excuse anymore. We were just talking about this on the radio, about what happens to your brain when you just read 20 minutes a day from a book. Because we have Kindle, we have real books. Whatever you want to do, download a PDF. So if you regularly lose your train of thought say the experts search for your keys or forget where you parked your car the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology believes you will strengthen your memory by just reading more books, even if it's just 20 minutes a day. The researchers joined with local libraries to see if reading had the potential to improve people's memory skills and randomly divide a study subject into reading or gaming groups. The gaming had far less effect than the people who were reading books every day.
12:31 - Speaker 2
Sure, I mean look, especially because most books, particularly if they're geared towards anybody from 12 and up, they're going to be a couple hundred pages long, which means that you're going to have to follow plot points for several hundred pages. And if you read books like you and I like the Stephen King books those are oftentimes six or seven, even 800 pages long. That that requires a lot of mental activity in order to stay engaged. The great thing is, a good writer will keep you engaged and will keep. It will make the whole process fun. Um, but, and and the really great news is what that does for your brain. Just sitting there going through that process of of tracking a story for for several weeks, of reading several hundred pages, it is. It makes a huge difference in your overall cognitive ability and it's something that we, you know. It'll also help with your attention span because most of the stuff that we get right now is quick bites.
13:24
You know 30 seconds of your time plus an ad. Uh, you know 30 seconds of your time plus an ad. Uh, you know two minutes of your time plus an ad. That's all that. That's everything that we're seeing now. Uh, a book is a much more intimate experience. It's a much longer experience. You sit there with it for a much longer period of time and it really opens your brain.
13:39 - Speaker 1
That's well said the fifth and last habit that can ruin your memory is the midnight snack that you had last night. Yeah, that's the worst yeah, I, I, my wife, uh, we got some donuts and and connie froze them, thinking that you know they'd be for another time I can? I can eat a frozen donut.
14:00 - Speaker 2
I mean, it's just to me, it's just not that hard, it's an ice cream cone, it's no problem.
14:04 - Speaker 1
She's like where the donuts go. I said I have no idea.
14:07 - Speaker 2
No, it's. The dog must have gotten the donuts. Kids were over here, it must have been that.
14:11 - Speaker 1
So a UCLA study shows that our late-night eating habits significantly reduce our learning and memory. There was a study, and the researchers did this. They tracked two groups that ate the same amount of food and slept the same number of hours. The only difference was that one group ate during normal daylight hours, while the other group ate late at night when many of them would normally be sleeping. So after just a few weeks they scanned them with the MRI brain scans that revealed significant changes in the hippocampus of the late-night eaters Hippocampus, of course, the brain again associated with learning and memory. The changes translated to far worse performance on memory tests compared to those who ate during the day.
14:53 - Speaker 2
Our body does not want us to eat at night, late at night. I mean, this goes back to the first two points, right, that's inflammation, and at night. The reason why eating at night creates more inflammation is because you're actually not consuming the calories and you're not allowing your body. You're eating the calories, but your body processes are not using those calories right away. So then your body is in the process and, by the way I say this, this is really important to know you and I both we have midnight snacks. We know we're reading you the research, we know the research. We talk about it on the air all the time. We still do this stuff. It's just good to know that by limiting it you help yourself live longer and have a better memory.
15:28
So when you eat the food, your body needs to either burn the calories it has to process it into blood sugar and then burns those calories.
15:36
If it doesn't burn the blood sugar out of your body, then that gets processed into fat through your liver and that process is going to take away from the benefits of the sleep, the neurological benefits of the sleep, because your body is focused on converting calories into fat as opposed to clearing out the metabolic byproducts in your brain, which is what you really need sleep for.
15:59
So when you do that, you are interrupting the cleaning process in your brain, as well as a process called apoptosis, which is when you're, when you have not eaten for a while. The more time you're able to go between meals, the more your body goes. Hey, we don't have a lot of food right now, we don't have a lot of calories. We can't keep all of these cells around. We've got to get rid of the weakest ones, and that process of removing the bad cells is, uh, is a is a process in cancer prevention. It's a process that helps with overall reduction inflammation in your body, and it is a necessary process that most of us in the modern world, because calories are so available I mean, never in the history of humankind have we had so many calories, 100% of the time, available within arm's reach and so the midnight snack just kind of underscores that you're not allowing your body to clean itself out the way that it needs to.
16:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I remember we did an interview with a doctor from the Cornell Food and Brands Lab and at the end of the interview I just asked so what's the biggest problem today? Why are we gaining weight? Why is there so much obesity? And he said because you can have dinner at the gas station yeah, he said there's food everywhere, everywhere, yeah, back when, back when I was growing up, the food, fast food didn't exist, right, and it's a.
17:14 - Speaker 2
It's a. It's an abundance of calories and a lack of nutrition. So we, we we end up doing is we eat all these calories we get up to 2500 calories for the day but our body's like, hey, we still need, you know, we still need vitamin K. So we're still hungry, we still need to ingest food in order to get the vitamins we need.
17:30 - Speaker 1
So the processed food and sugary foods. Our brain needs energy.
17:38 - Speaker 2
It burns more energy than any organ in our body, right, right, so they say chess players burn as much energy in a chess match as running five miles. So when you think about it, I think it's more than like a soccer player burns. Yeah, so that's how powerful the brain is in terms of burning energy. And if you allow that spike in blood sugar, that spike in that poor nutrition, that creates a spike of inflammation in the brain because it's consuming those calories first, yeah, that's good stuff.
18:08 - Speaker 1
Listen if you want to dig deeper, if you want to go further, if you'd like a more intense version of what we're talking about here. Gibb and I have put together a course called Maximize your Memory, and you can get details just by visiting https://tesh.com