THIS Is The Fastest Way To Get Dementia… | The Brain Doctor, Dr Ann Mckee

you mentioned that you've looked at lots of brains of people that have Alzheimer's bit of a dumb question but what is the difference between Alzheimer's and Dementia or is it the same thing yeah that it's a great question because everybody is confused so dementia is sort of this general term it's dementia which means the loss of your mental abilities you know deating so loss of cognition cognitive abilities is dementia there are many subcategories of dementia causes of dementia the most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease it's the most common age related cause of dementia

but then under Alzheimer's there's also Parkinson's disease with Louis Body Disease there's something called fronto temporal lowbar degeneration then there's you know you get into otter and rarer diseases Progressive superclear poy uh uh ganian dementia and and somewhere down there is also CTE so CTE is a cause of dementia ah okay and how do I avoid getting Alzheimer well you know a you know it's a very common disease it's supposedly in over 50% of in people that live to the age of 85 if you looked at their brains half of them would have Alzheimer's disease

not everyone gets the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease at 85 but they'd have the pathology now things you can do to uh lessen the symptoms of Al disease are you know staying socially connected using your brain challenging your brain because High cognitive Reserve High cognitive ability uh gives you uh strength brain strength brain resilience against these diseases so even if you have pathology you can circumvent the areas of injury the areas that aren't working well and and know and not experience the symptoms so that's one thing you know physical activity Fitness but also mental Fitness challenging

your brain keeping it active uh developing a high cognitive Reserve um and then the other things you can do is you know stay fit Eat Right cardiovascular health is int intimately connected to Alzheimer's disease you want to avoid high blood sugar diabetes because that can definitely hasten Alzheimer's disease so it's really a story of staying healthy alcohol well alcohol can damage your brain and Al alcohol damages it in entirely different ways than Alzheimer's or CTE but it if you if you do drink alcohol it can exacerbate your symptoms it can make your symptoms worse and

um you know we don't have any direct connection between alcohol and Alzheimer's but uh you know we do know that it's not good for your brain health it damages parts of the brain that can lead to cognitive problems are these diseases increasing no I think our awareness of these diseases is increasing you know how we used to call it scile dementia like oh yeah he's just getting old so you know we sort of dismissed it as just old age but there are some people that live to very old ages that are perfectly intact um so

these are abnormal aging these are pathological aging um and we're much more aware of it than we were say 40 years ago 40 years ago we really had no concept how common this disease was is there anything that you believe about the brain that most people disagree with still to this day I don't I can't think so as it relates to Alzheimer's and CTE is there any sort of fundamental beliefs that you're currently trying to prove out through your testing and the things you're doing at Boston University well I do I I I I you

know I have my own theories I don't know if other people don't believe them but I do feel that inflammation anything that causes inflammation in your brain and I think what a lot of people would agree with me the inflammation is one of the key prom Motors of uh brain disease and neurod degeneration so there's tremendous inflammation in Alzheimer's disease tremendous inflammation in CTE uh and if we could figure out sort of this bad uh inflammation we we might be able to prevent or at least Stave off these terrible diseases and the other thing that

I think is very important um is small vessel disease vascular disease the the health of these small blood vessels that are so important to in terms of giving o oxygenating our brain if they become uh damaged or injured through a variety of mechanisms then we also see these diseases uh being accelerated so uh you know I think there needs to be a lot more attention to the earliest changes that are associated with these diseases and in my mind those are vascular changes and inflammation and what kinds of things cause inflammation in the brain really any

insult to the brain uh certainly if the blood vessels are damaged and they become leaky you get sub substances leaking into the brain that irritate the brain and cause tremendous tremendous inflammation the brain the bloodb brain barrier is a very tight barrier you can have all sorts of toxins in your blood but they're not getting into your brain because you have such a tight barrier between the blood and and the Brain we keep out all sorts of noxious substances but if you injure the blood vessels they they leak and all those things that we are

you know trying to keep out of our brain leak into the brain and promote inflammation those changes can facilitate neurod degeneration and the things that may those blood vessels become injured well trauma trauma that back and forth but also uh things that affect uh vascular Health like high blood pressure high cholesterol blood sugar exactly High cortisol yeah yeah lead to so stress I guess stress you want to reduce stress you want to stay physically fit you want to eat right it's it's we all know that what you need to do it's just those things that

sleep you know sleep is so important for uh because at the end of the day your sleep you're actually clearing bad substances out of your brain you have a clearance system in your brain that is most active when you sleep and so when you're sleeping it's pulling out the noxious chemicals it's draining them into your into your system so you can get rid of them so sleep is also critically important we probably have a few million parents listening at the moment this conversation and those parents you know that their kids are saying I want to

play rugby I want to play soccer I want to play American football I want to do hockey all these kinds of things what would you say to to those parents well you know every parent is different every child's different you have to really understand your child is it is it that they need to play that particular sport or could they be as just as easily uh uh H you know could they be just as happy in a non-c contct sport there plenty of non-con sport they plenty of sports that have low risk so I would

promote all of those and then if they're playing they choose if they think you know if this is a decision that they want to make despite the risks then you know make sure the coach is very very well you know versed in in some of the adverse consequences of concussions and and those hits to the Head the even the non-concussive hits make sure that there's good education good education uh of the player as well as the teammates as well as the coach and then you know try to delay playing full contact as long as possible

I think you should delay it until the person's physically robust has M with a musculature with a strong neck they're able to you know resist hits hits there's you know a blindsided hit is much more damaging than a hit that you're expecting because you set your your neck you you You're Expecting The Hit and it doesn't cause the Whiplash that that are blindsided hit cars if you love the dver CEO brand and you watch this Channel please do me a huge favor become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit

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