The Daily Habits That Protect Your Brain At Any Age: The New Science Of Dementia Prevention with Dr David Perlmutter #674

David Perlmutter (0:01)

I think people need to grasp the fact that Alzheimer's doesn't just happen, it's not a genetic thing by and large, it is a manifestation of our lifestyle choices, and beyond food, that's for sure. The point is that should be empowering news for people, that this disease which people fear more than cancer is something over which they have a significant degree of control in terms of being basically the architect of their brain's destiny.

Rangan Chatterjee (0:30)

Hey guys, how are you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.

This will be the last episode in the current series of my podcast. If you're a long-time listener, you will probably know that every summer, we start releasing weekly episodes for around six weeks. Now, there are many reasons for this, but the main one is because the summer is the time of year where my family and I try to prioritize undistracted time together. My wife is the producer of this podcast, and so very involved like myself with the production of every episode. For us, we've discovered that this summer break is really important and something that we prioritize. In fact, I would say that the more summers we do this for, the more I realize that what we do is somewhat of a revolutionary act in a world that gives so many people the message that they can't stop. Now, I'm well aware that many of you really look forward to each week's episode and that this podcast has earned a place in your weekly schedule, and I am really, really grateful for that. But please don't forget that there are over 600 episodes in the back catalog, and pretty much all of them are just as relevant today as they were when they were first released. So perhaps this summer, you can take our little break as an excuse to delve into the back catalog and listen to some episodes you may have missed first time around, or perhaps revisit some of your favorites. Honestly, I think so many of these conversations are worth a second listen. If you do go back and listen to an episode you've already heard, I can pretty much guarantee that you're going to hear different things and that the ideas within the conversation will land with you in a different way. Because what we hear and pay attention to will depend on what else is going on in our life. After all, we don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. Our plan as always is to relaunch the next season at the start of September. Okay, so on to brain health, which is the topic of this week's episode. Whether it's watching a parent struggle with memory loss or noticing that we're not as sharp as we used to be, the fear of cognitive decline is something I hear about all the time. Yet for far too long, the message from mainstream medicine has been a disempowering one, that there's not much you can do about dementia. It's largely down to your gene so that one day, maybe, we'll find a drug to cure it. Well, today's conversation directly challenges that. My guest is Dr David Perlmutter, a board certified neurologist, one of the world's most prominent experts on brain health, and the author of multiple bestselling books, including his very latest, Brain Defenders, Harness the Power of Your Immune Cells to Protect Your Brain for Life. In our conversation, we discussed the single biological mechanism that sits at the heart of virtually every neurodegenerative condition, from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to long COVID and depression, and why understanding it changes everything about how you approach your lifestyle. David's key insight is that our brain's own immune cells, called microglial cells, have the power to make or break our future brain health, keep them in their protective state through diet, exercise and metabolic testing, and we can safeguard our brains for life. Feed them with a surplus of ultra-processed foods, and they will shift into a destructive state that drives neuroinflammation.

We explore how exactly ultra-processed food damages the brain, why metabolic health is the key to cognitive longevity, why the diagnosis of Alzheimer's is really the end stage of a process that began decades earlier, and the specific blood biomarkers that David believes everyone should be tracking, including fasting insulin, homocysteine, and uric acid.

There's a great deal of fear around neurodegenerative conditions like dementia and understandably so. But what I hope you take from this episode is something that David emphasizes. We need to be scared because we have agency.

The research is crystal clear. The choices you make right now are already in real time shaping your future brain. And it's never too early nor too late to start making them.