Your Brain On... Alzheimer's (Mythbusting Special)

Ayesha Sherzai (0:00)

Welcome to Your Brain On podcast with your hosts, Doctors Ayesha and Dean Sherzai. Today's episode is about the myths and facts of Alzheimer's disease. We're going to pick some of the most prominent myths out there, and we're going to dissect it and present the facts. Dean, are you ready?

Dean Sherzai (0:18)

I'm very ready. I think it's such an important concept because Alzheimer's being one of the fastest growing epidemics, it's going to challenge our society. And one of the first things society must be prepared for is myths and information. So I think this is going to be helpful.

Ayesha Sherzai (0:33)

I agree with you. I think it's going to be very helpful. And these are some of the most prominent questions that we get from our Neuroworld community, as well as some of the Ask Me Anythings or AMAs on social media, specifically on IG that we put out.

Dean Sherzai (0:47)

And just for our audience sake, because we always try to be transparent and bring it into our own lives. We've both been infected with COVID, and that's a scary little situation, because we don't really know what happens to our brains once we are infected with COVID, and there's all these other issues. Although you and I had an easy time going through this process, but it's still an important fact that we need to discuss. Maybe at the end, we'll tell you about the myths and facts that we know of about COVID and its effect on the brain.

Ayesha Sherzai (1:17)

That's right, yeah. So if you hear some stuffiness or some sexy voice coming out, it's probably because of remnants of COVID.

Dean Sherzai (1:24)

Please speak for yourself. This is my natural sexy voice.

Ayesha Sherzai (1:26)

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, now we're on the mend, thankfully. It was a mild case, so we're feeling better. All right, myth number one. If you're older, Alzheimer's is inevitable. We hear that all the time, that Alzheimer's is a disease of aging. And essentially, in many communities, Alzheimer's and aging is synonymous. It's one and the same thing.

Dean Sherzai (1:50)

It is. It's considered synonymous. It's not an aging disease. Alzheimer's is a biological accumulative trauma. And by trauma, I mean the traumas of physiology, the traumas of metabolism, the traumas that we experience in our body and environment for that matter. The main contributors are inflammation, oxidation, glucose dysregulation and lipid dysregulation. These four, we call them the four horsemen. They are devastating. And it's not just one of those. Often it's a combination of those because they contribute to each other. On top of that, we also know things like hearing loss. We also know things like environmental factors. So it's a cumulative process that ends up in a pathologic process that we call Alzheimer's. Yes, it is ultimately driven by these abnormal proteins, amyloid and tau, but often they're not the starting points. So Alzheimer's is not a lightning strike. Alzheimer's is a slow burn that builds and builds decades earlier. So if we take it in that context, it is actually quite helpful, because if we look at it in that context, we can actually affect it early on, influence each of those intervening variables. If you have insulin resistance, if you have trauma to your head, if you have inflammation, you can address it early and affect the disease powerfully. So that's the way we see the disease, and also it's the way that we can treat the disease.

Ayesha Sherzai (3:14)

Yeah, I find that very empowering, because if you think of it as a cumulative condition, which basically means that the damage that gets done, you don't really spend time on fixing it, or you actually don't give yourself an opportunity for that damage to rehabilitate. And I think life is like that. If you need sleep, and if you don't sleep, you do some damage, but if you do sleep, your brain actually cleanses itself and it repairs itself. So there's always something you can do to allow for the brain to repair itself. I find that empowering. A lot of people might actually find that scary. I hope that our listeners actually find that empowering because that essentially means that if you work towards taking care of your brain and if you give it the right opportunity to heal itself and to thrive, you can prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Dean Sherzai (4:06)

Absolutely.

Ayesha Sherzai (4:07)

Fantastic.

Dean Sherzai (4:07)

So the next myth is that Alzheimer's has to do with memory loss.

Ayesha Sherzai (4:11)

I think that's a very common one. And the reason it's common is because most of the cases of Alzheimer's disease, they begin as memory loss, where people become forgetful. They forget names. They forget where they place things. They forget how to get home or get to a familiar place. So forgetfulness is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. But forgetfulness or memory loss is just one aspect of the disease. Multiple different cognitive functions actually get affected in Alzheimer's disease. As you and I know, our patients may have some memory problems in the beginning, but then later on, they tend to have things like difficulty with making a decision, judgment problems. They have spatial issues where they can't really figure out how near or far they are from an object. A lot of patients actually come with a lot of bumps and bruises because they bump into things not really necessarily knowing where they are in a particular location. That's one of the reasons why driving becomes so difficult because of visual spatial difficulties. These other problems are motor function, movement gets difficult, etc. So in Alzheimer's disease, while memory problems are prominent, it can be accompanied with multiple different issues as well. And I think that's one of the differentiators of Alzheimer's disease from other types of dementias and other types of dementias, like for example, in frontotemporal lobe dementia, one of the salient features, initial salient feature, is difficulty with judgment and decision-making. So frontal lobe problem, but in Alzheimer's disease, it tends to be memory, but it's not just memory.