Neurologist: The Hidden Root Cause of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s & Brain Cancer | Dr. Matthew Phillips

Jesse Chappus (0:00)

Coming up on today's show.

Matthew Phillips (0:02)

I deal with cancer and neurodegenerative disorders, mainly in my research, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and then glioblastoma will be the brain cancer. You can tie everything together through a mitochondrial and metabolic lens, even for disorders that seem wildly different. We've been under a cell-centric theory for the last couple of hundred years. I think this is going to be more and more challenged in the future, where we look at perhaps mitochondria are the fundamental units of life and the cell is more providing a nice infrastructure for them. A lot of people would argue that insulin resistance is the core disease. It is not. It is a response to mitochondrial impairment, which is primarily due to a very high-carb diet all the time. The insulin resistance is there to protect the mitochondria from the glucose onslaught, because they take the hit. And we know that if you subject mitochondria to too much high carbs, a lot of free radicals get produced and they die. The three pillars are fasting, deep rest, and sleep. All three of those things are subtractive strategies. There's a difference between additive metabolic strategies and subtractive ones. This is what people are always biased towards. They think, oh, I need to do an additive thing. I need to change my diet, change my exercise. I need to do more of it. What people tend to neglect are the subtractive things, doing less of something. Don't be hard on yourself. Do it every day. That's the thing. Make sure you do all three every day.

Jesse Chappus (1:20)

Dr. Phillips, if you had to identify one biological factor that connects Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, even brain cancer, what would it be?

Matthew Phillips (1:32)

It would be metabolic health, which is underpinned by mitochondrial biology. So keeping your metabolism and mitochondrial biology optimal.

Jesse Chappus (1:48)

All right. Let's dive even further into what that actually means.

Matthew Phillips (1:52)

Sure. So I guess health is a tricky thing to define, I guess. But you could see it as a state of balance between anabolism and catabolism, building things up, breaking things down within the body. So basically a balance in terms of energy flow throughout the body. So not too much energy coming in, not too much energy coming out. And also a balance in terms of metabolic and energy flexibility. So I think especially in neurons, the body being able to use different fuels at different times and being adaptable as the situation demands.

I guess that's important too. And so that's why maybe it's not ideal to being glucose, high glucose all the time, and maybe not even ketosis all the time, but be able to perhaps switch between them periodically and then use other fuels like lactate, like when you exercise, your brain likes to use lactate. So I guess in terms of the metabolism of all that, it's good if that's optimized, you're able to produce energy when you need it, you're able to use different fuels when you need them, and adapt. And then if you look deeper at how the energy is produced and how the body switches from one fuel to another, and all the signaling that underlies that, and enzymes that need to be activated or ramped up or ramped down.

I think a lot of the more recent research and evidence is really implicating mitochondria, which as I'm sure your listeners know, there's a few hundred or a thousand or two thousand and almost all ourselves.

They seem to be really key players in terms of coordinating those things.

And I guess while we've been under a cell-centric theory for the last couple of hundred years, like we sort of see cells as the fundamental unit of life, at least in humans, I think this is going to be more and more challenged in the future by a mitocentric perspective, where we look at perhaps mitochondria are arguably the fundamental units of life and the cell is more providing a nice infrastructure for them. So I would say if you want to be healthy, it's about metabolism and mitochondria. And if you're looking at metabolism, I think one of the most important things, very underrated things is making your brain and body in general, very adaptable to different energy sources. I do think there are significant advantages to being in ketosis most of the time. I would lean towards that. But perhaps to dip into glucosis, not huge spikes, but cycle into using glucose more at times, and lactate at times in other fuels too. And then always with a lens on your mitochondria. And if we look beyond just the fuels, of course, there are many other things that are very important for mitochondrial health, which would include things like probably one of the biggest ones is making sure you're not conically stressed, and that you have some sort of active deep rest protocols throughout the day. And the other big one obviously is sleep, making sure you're optimizing your sleep every night if you can. And as you probably know, during the daytime, I think a lot of intermittent fasting is important because that really allows your body to take a break from the food onslaught, which arguably is damaging on several levels to your mitochondria. And it also allows you to dip more into using ketones if you do the fast for long enough. So I think health, physical health anyways, is a composite of all those things.