How to keep these electron thieves in balance.

We don’t catch Alzheimer’s.   We don’t go into a room with someone in advanced stages of this mind thief and come out worrying about our exposure to them.  There is no germ that silently attacks us and invasively eats away our brains.

There are genetic markers for this disease and we may have inherited one or more of these markers.  But we can choose a lifestyle that does not activate these genetic markers and despite perhaps even having two APOE4 markers not manifest this disease.  This fact is true for many diseases.  Our genes for disease only show up when our amazing bodies cease to be able to keep a system or systems in balance.

Alzheimer’s is not a germ caused disease.  It is instead a complex disease for the most part caused by our personal lifestyle choices.  How we choose to live our lives determines if we develop Alzheimer’s or if we live Alzheimer’s free!

Our bodies need respect and attention.  Using a car analogy, we can replace our cars but we cannot replace our bodies.  While we have our cars, we take care of them giving them regular maintenance and filling them with gas and having the oil changed.  We check the tires, replace the brakes and watch the gauges that tell us if something is not working well in our cars.  As for our bodies, some of us actually attempt to take care of our bodies and may go to the doctor for regular checkups.  I am not implying here that we have to do this but I suggest you need to know what your markers are.  You need to know if your body and all its parts are receiving what they need and are able to use these things efficiently.  You may do this by checkups with a medical doctor, a functional or integrative medicine doctor, or by choosing a lifestyle that is close to ideal, by visiting your naturopathic doctor, your Ayurveda doctor, your homeopathic doctor, or other health care provider.  You should know the status of your body’s health and act to keep it healthy or restore it to full functionality.

When we take care of our bodies we can expect them to serve us well into our elder years.  We can LIVE until we DIE!  Given the right care, our bodies can remain healthy for all of our living years.  Those aches and discomforts, that burning in your esophagus, the constipation, the insomnia and more – these are the markers on your body’s gauges telling you that something is not working.  What we forget is that ignoring these little symptoms or putting a “Band-Aid” on them is not getting to the root of the problem.

Often when you see your primary medical doctor or a specialist, he/she gives you a “Band-Aid”.  They say take this laxative; this antacid, this pain pill.  You head home and follow these steps and cover up the discomfort.  What happens then?  You may think “Wow I have a great doctor as I am no longer constipated…. “   That is what I refer to as a “Band-Aid.  You take something or do something to cover up the problem but you do not FIX the root cause of the problem.

We need our medical doctors to look at WHY this problem developed.  Why did the body’s many backup systems for dealing with such problems get overwhelmed?  What needs to be done so that the body can once again function healthily?  For the most part, this was not how our doctors were educated.  They do not know how to uncover the root problem and resolve it.  They do know how to apply “Band-Aids” J

In the case of something like constipation, one finds that in most cases the problem relates to one’s diet.  (You can be assured that what you put into and on your body is often the core problem behind any disease.)  In constipation, it may be that you are chronically dehydrated; perhaps you do not have sufficient fiber in your diet; perhaps your microbiome (the bacteria and fungi and viruses in your gut that are supposed to symbiotically support you and your immune system) is overrun by microbe types that are not supportive of your best health; perhaps you have leaky gut, and more….  But most doctors give you a laxative and send you home.  Nothing fixed.  The problem will recur when you stop taking the laxative or the broken system in your body will begin to cause the breakdown of other systems in your body… a vicious cycle begins!

So, what to do?  And how does this relate to Alzheimer’s Disease?

Your body is a complex system of interrelated parts.  If you have high blood pressure, something is going wrong with the body – the whole system – not just the heart.  Not just vessels that are clogged, nor vessels that are hardening.  Covering up these problems does not repair the broken part(s)!  Simply taking a combination of pills to make you blood pressure results look healthier does nothing to correct the original imbalance that caused the pressure to be too high or too low.  At most, it is a temporary fix.

You need to address the problem itself and fix what caused this symptom in the first place. Likewise, for Alzheimer’s!  You can take steps to address the problem even if it has been diagnosed as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or full-blown Alzheimer’s.  You can take steps at this diagnosed stage to reverse the damage done!  Even better, you can take steps now to ensure these damages never show up in your life.

What to do?  Tis not simple to make changes to enable your body to be healthier and your brain to remain functioning fully.   Here at the Owl’s Nest Oasis, we help you take multiple steps, multiple approaches to allow your body to regain its health. You can do this at home.  You can make changes to your lifestyle that will enhance your health and give your body the right tools to keep your brain cells healthy and to allow your amazing body’s ability to repair and rebuild what is damaged.  It is not easy.  But, you can do it.

You would make whatever changes possible for your child if he/she became ill.  IF you knew what to do.  Imagine your child is diagnosed with some allergies.  Perhaps food allergies; perhaps environmental allergies; perhaps … Would you not take the offending foods out of your child’s diet?  Would you not remove the offending environmental items from your child’s environment?  Of course, you would.  So how about for you?  Are you willing to change your diet? Your environment?  Your sleep habits?  Your stress levels? And more?

Let us examine one aspect of your health – the deeply hidden important work going on inside each cell of your body and how this area of your body can be disrupted and can manifest as any number of chronic illnesses.  In our case, we are looking at this breakdown with respect to Alzheimer’s.  We are looking at one of the many instigators that can lead to Alzheimer’s.  If you are suffering from cardiovascular problems, arthritis, diabetes type 2, or other chronic problems this information applies to you as well.  Learn about this basic step and make changes in your life to remediate this area.

Inside our cells are tiny organelles called mitochondria.  Most of our cells have hundreds or even thousands of these minute systems and you should care about them because they keep you functioning.  They produce the energy (ATP) for you – the energy that runs all of parts of your body.  That energy allows you to be alive.  You need to take care of these tiny complex engines.  They need to receive the right kinds of nourishment.  They need to have clear passages to let the energy get to where it can work for you.  They need to have effective “garbage” removal systems.  But, they are hidden inside your cells and depend on the cells to allow the right things in through the cell membranes and to take away the garbage and send the energy to where it is needed in the body.  This, hidden from your view, critical system needs to be given the tools to operate effectively and efficiently.

Let’s focus on one critical area related mainly to the mitochondria.  These tiny engines can either operate to produce energy or enter into a defense mode to protect themselves and the cell they live inside.  They are unable to be in both modes at the same time.  Your consistent habits greatly affect them – getting sufficient sleep every night, getting effective exercise regularly, lowering your stress levels, and more of your lifestyle choices, determine whether the mitochondria produce energy, switch to a defense mode where they cannot produce energy, or they decide to die because they no longer get the message that they are effective.  You can see these little organelles are critical to your health; to you being alive.

Interestingly, these little engines produce a lot of garbage – less when fed a basically ketogenic diet – but whether functioning on glucose, their normal fuel or ketones, their alternate fuel, they still produce waste and much of it is in the form of free radicals.  One free radical they form is the hydroxy radical /the OH radical.

Our bodies have built in systems to recycle the free radicals when healthy but our lifestyle choices can cause our bodies to produce more free radicals than the body can handle.  Since free radicals seek to be in balance, they will viciously grab onto another atom’s electrons to bring themselves into balance.  You learned this – and probably ignored it – in high school chemistry.  Now, when a free radical steals electrons from another atom’s orbit, that atom or molecule it stole from now becomes a free radical itself creating an endless growing cycle of free radicals.

Given the right tools – healthy antioxidant foods and sometimes supplements – the body has its own checks and balances and can keep these free radicals in check.  But sometimes, the numbers of free radicals overwhelm the body’s ability to handle them and they get out of balance.   ,In this imbalanced state, the body enters into an ever-increasing problem, a cascading problem where cells die and we develop a chronic health condition.  We are responsible for this breakdown and when we learn and apply what we can do to prevent or reverse this cascade we contribute to our good health.

As in the car analogy, if we consistently put the right type of gasoline into the tank to run the engine, we get a consistent response.  If, however, we put diesel fuel into a gasoline engine’s fuel tank, we will soon see the consequences of not giving it the right fuel.  Our bodies are far, far more complex than our cars, so we see the results manifesting as a chronic condition farther down the line.  And what we see are problems such as constipation, arthritis, cardiovascular disease symptoms or perhaps Alzheimer’s.

Here are some references where you can learn how free radicals are implicated as one cause of the breakdown of cells in the brains and hence the development of Alzheimer’s. Most of all, examine how you are in charge of keeping free radicals in balance.

First for you I have a medical article – tis readable but not for the light hearted – that shows how free radicals are implicated in the development of a disease, in this case Alzheimer’s.  This article reviews the evidence that free radicals and the oxidative stress created by them are among the contributors to Alzheimer’s Disease.  This is the only medical article I am referring you to and it is included here simply to demonstrate to you that these imbalances (that cannot be corrected simply by consuming more anti-oxidants) are definitely involved in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s Disease.  Find this 2018 article at: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2018/oxidant/antioxidannAD6435861

Now you can do much research into articles written for easy understanding about how to prevent free radicals.  How to avoid oxidative stress.  How to feed your body for optimal health of the cells and mitochondria.   And more.  I am listing a few links below that can start you on this learning journey to keep yourself in tip top shape.  Do contact us at the Owl’s Nest Oasis for Alzheimer’s Remediation with any questions related to this or other topics about keeping your brain healthy.

To get you started here are some references.  I look forward to hearing about your discoveries and the changes you made to your diet and lifestyle to keep your brain cells well nourished and in happy energy producing form!

In the past, I have referred you to the work of several doctors.  The one who stands out clearly as the likely Father of the Cure of Alzheimer’s Disease is Dr. Dale Bredesen.  As early as 1996 he published about the relationship between Alzheimer’s and Free Radicals:   https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/18085/title/Trying-To-Unlock-The-Mysteries-/Of-Free-Radicals-And-Antioxidants. Note in his 2017 book The End of Alzheimer’s, Dr. Bredesen notes that there is not one item contributing to this disease but rather a mixture of between 30 and 40 problems occurring in a person’s body and which combination of these problems is very individual.  An interview of Dr. Bredesen by Dr. Berry in February 2018 they delve into the complexities of Alzheimer’s Disease and you can read that interview here:  https://www.forgoodhealth.com.au/images/PDF/drberrypdf.pdf

For simpler reading and learning what lifestyle habits you can adopt to prevent or reverse an imbalance of free radicals and oxidative stress consult some or all of the following:

Dr. Mercola has multiple articles on his website about free radicals and antioxidants.  A couple are:  https://articles.mercola.com/free-radicals.aspx  and https://articles.mercola.com/antioxidants.aspx

Dr. Russell Blaylock also has multiple articles both at his website and on other sites.  As each doctor listed here you can find many other articles to simply explain to you what you can do at home to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s.  A few articles by Dr. Blaylock are: https://Americannutritionalassociation.org/newsletter/review-excitotoxins-taste-kills https://www.sanaview.com/preventing-and-reversing-cognitive-decline-such-as-alzheimers  https://w3.blaylockwellness.com/Health/BWR/LP/BWR-002-Alzheimer-s

Dr. Perlmutter similarly has many articles and videos about these topics.  And he makes it simple to understand.  https://www.drperlmutter.com/oxidative-stress-action-free-radicals/  and https://www.drperlmutter.com/oxidative-stress-action-free-radicals/#more-2697

When you have taken this exploratory learning journey and have chosen to live healthier to support your cells, you may also want to look at how the best anti-oxidant you can use may well be the Hydrogen molecule.  Being the smallest atom and combining two atoms to form the molecule of Hydrogen H2 it is the one antioxidant that can get directly into the cells through their protective membranes and even into the mitochondria!  There it can clean up the free radicals at their source.  (H2 converts the hydroxy radical into plain simple water so side effects and definitely something the body can deal with.)   I am not in any way associated with the company I am listing here but you may want to visit their website and listen to their presentations to see if using a simple form of super hydrogenated water might be something that would enhance your health.  I personally have no experience with this yet but would be amiss by not letting you know about this company.  So, when you have looked into the daily habits you can adopt via the links above and more, if you think you might want to delve deeper, you might start here with www.tryh2.com.

For questions or to arrange a Skype chat contact me