The Psychology of Fighting Dementia | Dr Tommy Wood

Tommy Wood (0:00)

Right now, I think in the US., somewhere between 7 and 8 million people are living with dementia. Worldwide, 7 to 8 times that. And the burden of dementia is expected to double or triple in the next two decades.

Michael Gervais (0:13)

That's alarming. How much of dementia risk is actually within our control?

Tommy Wood (0:17)

They estimate that potentially 45% of cases of dementia could be completely prevented. There are other analyses that think it could be even higher than that. They include things like...

Michael Gervais (0:28)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. Today's guest is Dr. Tommy Wood, physician, neuroscientist, associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington, and author of The Stimulated Mind, Future Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age.

Tommy Wood (0:52)

What we think or expect to happen to our brains doesn't necessarily have to be true. Regardless of our family history or our genetics, and hopefully that means that we can put ourselves in a position to decrease the likelihood of decline and potentially dementia towards the end of our lives.

Michael Gervais (1:08)

In this conversation, we explore what dementia actually is, who may be most at risk, and why some of the factors that shape long-term brain health are more modifiable than many of us realize. If a parent has dementia, can you speak to the listener here about how they should be thinking about themselves?

Tommy Wood (1:24)

If you had a parent who had dementia, a great place to start is...

Michael Gervais (1:29)

With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Tommy Wood.

Hey, that's a good way to start. I've been looking forward to having you back on. One, because we're running in similar circles, which is fun. We'll get into some of our cross-pollinations in a minute. More than anything though, you've got a rich understanding of the brain, from high performance into health, that kind of wide chasm there. So, can we just start first with what do you hope the listener will get from this conversation, from somebody who has been a student of the brain for a long time?

Tommy Wood (2:13)

The main thing I hope people get out of this conversation is an understanding of how much power they have over their own cognitive health, now and then for decades into the future. And an appreciation of the fact that what we think or expect to happen to our brains doesn't necessarily have to be true, regardless of our family history or our genetics. There's still a lot that we can do and we have a lot of power over our brain health and our cognition.

And hopefully that means that we can put ourselves in a position to decrease the likelihood of decline and potentially dementia towards the end of our lives.

Michael Gervais (2:54)

My understanding, I don't know, for most of my training was you reach a certain age and your brain is on a decline.

And that I would imagine is the prevailing wisdom. And in your book, Stimulated Mind, you've highlighted a different way of thinking about it. So can you just address that prevailing idea that your brain hits 65? I think it starts at 40 is where I learned. And then there's a decline. And then there's a bit of a shelf after a certain age. Can you just beat that up a little bit?

Tommy Wood (3:20)

Sure. So there's two parts to that. And a lot of it, I think, goes back all the way to the beginnings of neuroscience. And I love being a student of the history of the fields that I work in. So the father of modern neuroscience is Cajal, Ramon Santiago de Cajal. He got the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1906, which he's shared with Camillo Golgi. And they actually disagreed so much about the nature of the of the nervous system that they refused to give their acceptance speeches on the same day, which I thought was fascinating. But Cajal was the person who essentially described that the brain was made of individual cells, which we now called neurons. He didn't call them neurons. They were somebody else did later on. And he also told us or had this idea, it's written down that the adult brain is immutable, those are his words. And so this is something that we've thought ever since, that the adult brain becomes fixed at some point, and then it starts to decline. And that decline part, I think comes from other aspects of what we've kind of baked into society since the beginning of the 20th century. So I think some of this comes from the work of, or the teachings of people like Sir William Osler. So Sir William Osler is a legendary physician.