Dementia starts decades before symptoms
Episode 210
In this episode of Integrative You Radio, our host Dr. Nicole delves into the critical topic of neurological health, with a specific focus on dementia and Alzheimer's. The podcast emphasizes the need for proactive measures to support the neurological system, highlighting the alarming fact that dementia often begins decades before an official diagnosis. The discussion provides insights into the visible signs of neurological issues, often overlooked as normal aspects of aging or genetics, and the importance of recognizing these early indicators. The episode also offers valuable information about how neurological stress can manifest in various ways, such as vision problems, loss of smell and taste, and other symptoms. This engaging episode ultimately encourages listeners to take proactive steps to prioritize neurological health and provides essential insights into understanding and addressing these critical issues. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! What you’ll learn: Early Recognition is Key: Dementia often begins long before an official diagnosis, making early recognition of subtle signs crucial for proactive intervention. Mind the Signs: Vision problems, loss of smell, and taste are indicators of neurological stress that should not be ignored, as they may signify underlying issues related to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Proactive Steps for Health: The episode emphasizes the urgency of taking proacti
Topics: neurological, dementia, health, unknown, before, stress, decades, integrative
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Dementia Starts Decades Before Symptoms
- Dementia's silent onset means proactive neurological health strategies are essential long before cognitive decline is noticeable.
- Observable signs like vision changes, and altered senses of smell and taste can be early indicators of neurological stress.
- It's vital to distinguish between normal aging and potential signs of underlying neurological issues.
- Taking immediate action to support brain health is crucial for long-term neurological well-being.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs, so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs, so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio. Uh, so today, I am diving into talking about neurological health, specifically in reference to dementia and Alzheimer's.
**Unknown:** I've done longer format webinars on this. If you head to our site, integrativeu.health, and you're looking for an even deeper dive, definitely check it out, our webinar archive, which is located on our limitless health journey. But overall, there was a quote that I came across, and it was ... It's not really a quote.
**Unknown:** It was, it was a quote from a research study, and primarily what it was showcasing is dementia starts decades before the diagnosis. Decades. And this is something that I can't help but observe in our society. And I observe this when I'm walking around a mall, walking around a downtown, walking around a city, you know, walking around anywhere.
**Unknown:** Because neurological issues are so much more visible than people realize. It's just most people don't know what to look for. And a lot of these things that I'm about to talk about are presumed to be normal, or they're presumed to be a product of age, a product of genetics, and they're not. And especially some of these neurological signs are happening in children.
**Unknown:** And some of the things that we really need to look out for, for us to be aware of, does the neurological system need support? Does it need better data to see what's going on? And how can we be proactive in order to avoid these very serious diagnoses like dementia and Alzheimer's? Because anybody who has experienced a loved one with dementia or Alzheimer's, it is one of the most traumatic experiences for an entire family.
**Unknown:** And most of you know that Dr. Nick and I are so passionate about helping families to not only be their best, but to have their best version of health, so they could do all of the things that they want. And being able to have better data on your body, your brain, is going to allow you to accomplish your dreams, be happy, enjoy your time, get your energy back, and actually have this quality connection with your family. So one of the podcasts that I did a while back, it was, Does Bra- a Bad Brain Equal Bad Vision?
**Unknown:** There are many people that have bad vision. There are many people that have been wearing glasses or contacts since they were very, very young. And that's one sign, one sign that your neurological system is compromised. And no, this is not genetic.
**Unknown:** If you've listened to other podcasts, your genes will be turned on or off depending on environment and lifestyle. And listen to one of our other podcasts, I have to pull the name of it, but I talked about a twin study. Two twins, identical DNA, identic- identical genome, and putting, putting them in different environments with different lifestyle factors created a different expression of their genome. So this is called epigenetics, for those of you that love your research and wanna dive into it.
**Unknown:** But this is not about you're doomed to have bad vision because your parents, your grandparents had bad vision. It is a sign that there is some type of neurological stress, because your eyes are controlled by the nerves that go to your eyeballs. So you need to keep that in mind. You also have a set of cranial nerves that control your senses, your sense of smell, your sense of taste.
**Unknown:** So if you have a dampened sense of smell, a dampened sense of taste, you have neurological stress and more than likely neurological inflammationSo those of you that lost your sense of smell after COVID or the COVID vaccine, this is not because it's long COVID or the bullshit that they're blowing up our ass this is about you have neurological ramifications from either having the virus or having the vaccine so it's a matter of figuring out what is going on that is creating neurological stress and neurological inflammation the same thing with, with your tongue and the little ball, it's called your uvula at the back of your throat one of the tests that I've done many, many times over in practice is open your mouth and stick out your tongue and when someone sticks out their tongue, sometimes you look and you find that the tongue deviates or falls to one side or you look at the back of the throat and you see that that little ball, that uvula, is falling to one side and that is showing that there is either a left or a right side neurological weakness that's, that test can definitely showcase more imbalances in the left brain to the right brain. It's not always a hundred percent indicative of neurological inflammation or neurological degeneration, but it definitely will showcase why someone has weakness on one side of their body or they constantly are getting injured on one side of their body. In addition to that, if you're having numbness, tingling, burning, restless leg syndrome, those are all neurological symptoms. Those are all showcasing that there is some type of stress on your neurological system and inflammatory cascade, but that's more in your peripheral nervous system opposed to your central nervous system.
**Unknown:** So the moral of the story is, is that when we are looking at our kids, we are looking at our spouse, when you see abnormal eye movements, you see, mm, the eyes, uh, shake left to right, that's called nystagmus. That is showcasing neurological stress. When you see your kids stare and you're like... and you're saying their name, "John, Johnny, John, John," and they are out.
**Unknown:** They're out there, and they can't hear you, that's sometimes a version of a miswiring, a version of a, of almost a seizure, like a low-grade version of that. And I'm not talking like your kid is daydreaming and getting creative but... or watching a movie because that's what movies do. They program you, so they're, they put these children in a trance.
**Unknown:** But I have found that there are many kids when I'm, when they're coming in with all different types of things like ADD, ADHD, or they have epilepsy, seizure disorder, or they, their parents think that they are on the spectrum, autism, et cetera, then I will start either talking to the parent or talking to them. They're like, "Yeah, you know, the teacher has reported that he kind of tunes out, and it'll go on for a couple of minutes, and then he'll finally come out of it." And that is showcasing neurological stress. Kids that have a lazy eye, that's showcasing a neurological imbalance. Kids that have really weak muscles or atrophied muscles on part of the body, one side of the body, that's showing neurological stress and, of course, loss of memory.
**Unknown:** So when we find we're in the early stages of neurological degeneration, we have problems with our short-term memory, and then when we start to have issues with our long-term memory is when we know that there is a progression of neurological degeneration. So all in all, there are ten-year-olds that have memory loss, abnormal eye movements, staring off, nerve pain, weakness on one side of the body. They have all of those things, and then they also have issues with paying attention. They have setbacks when it comes to learning and...
**Unknown:** or they have tantrums, and they have abnormal outbursts. And really, at the end of the day, we're calling this behavior, but this is a brain on fire. This is a brain that is not getting nourishment. It's not getting nutrients.
**Unknown:** It's not getting glucose because blood sugar is all over the place 'cause we are feeding ourselves and our children absolute garbage. We have a boatload of chemicals in our bodies because of the prepackaged foods and the convenience foods that exist, which is creating neurological inflammation, and then we have kids that have drainage issues from sore throats constantly, tonsil issues, sinus issues. They're getting tubes in the ears because of chronic ear infections. And then on top of it, they're taking a boatload of antibiotics, which is wiping out their good bacteria, compromising their microbiome, which if you don't have a proper microbiome, you also have neurological stress.
**Unknown:** And you have a microbiome in your sinuses. You have a microbiome in your mouth. You have a microbiome in your ear. You have a microbiome in your gut.
**Unknown:** You have a microbiome on your skin. You have a microbiome everywhere. And so you say, "Oh, well, I eat, I, I feed my kids great, great food, and, you know, we grow our own vegetables." But you're a clean freak, and you love to use Clorox, and you love to use harsh chemicals in the house 'cause you want your house to be spick and span. Well, guess what?
**Unknown:** You're still wiping out their microbiome because you are depleting all of the good bacteria through the household products that you're using or the household products or the cleaning agents that are sitting on the lining of the bathtub, and then you put your kids in the bath. SoThis is a matter of understanding that all of it matters. It's not just about food, it's not about supplements, it's not about, you know, just your, your household environment. It's, it's about going old school.
**Unknown:** Going old school and let your kids ride it out sometimes when they get sick. Stop running to the antibiotics every single time. There are a million natural alternatives from colloidal silver. I was talking to an individual that I just met more recently and she was just like, "What?
**Unknown:** I don't understand. Is silver safe?" I was like, "That's why they, back in the day, they used to gift, uh, parents of small children, of newborns, a silver spoon because it was actually made of actual silver, and it wasn't silver-plated, and silver has massive benefits to the immune system." And so we, we knew about all of these things back in the day, we just don't practice, practice them anymore. We've gotten busy, we are distracted, we are in hustle, overwork ourselves, kill ourselves culture, and we don't have time. We don't have time.
**Unknown:** We also don't have the energy because we don't have the bandwidth because we're spending our time on f- on stre- being stressed out, being worried, trying to work up the corporate ladder, you know, trying to, to keep up with the Joneses in the neighborhood. We've lost sight of the things that are really, really important. And that is also another part of this conversation about dementia and Alzheimer's because one of the things that I've talked about in webinars that I've done is that this is, when it comes to the neurological system being able to thrive, this also is about stimulation. And there are many people that are doing the same shit every single day.
**Unknown:** They are in this, this monotonous life, and they don't do anything outside of the box. They don't do anything that makes them a bit uncomfortable, that challenges their brain, that challenges their learning, that challenges their neurological system. And one of the examples of this is that you find that some individuals they will drive a long distance, they're ... and they don't normally do that.
**Unknown:** They driv- drive a long distance and they arrive to their destination, they feel exhausted. And that's not a physical fatigue because they sat in a chair, but that's a mental fatigue, and that's a mental fatigue because they used their brain differently than they normally do. So most of us have no stimulation and if you think that stimulation is video games, computer games, or working on your computer, that is bad stimulation. So if anything, that's putting you backwards because the blue light that's coming off of these devices, and that's just one piece, is creating neurological stress.
**Unknown:** It's altering your brainwaves to keep you in a beta high stress state. So this is about the fact that a lot of us have toxicity inside of our systems that is creating this neurological inflammation and then we have lack of stimulation, good stimulation, and too much of the bad stimulation, and then third to that really comes down to the massive crisis that we have, especially here in the US, with blood sugar handling. And I will tell you the, the telltale, I've told it many times before, webinars and podcasts, is it's the person who gets up in the morning, they don't really have an appetite. If you are the person who wakes up with no appetite and almost an aversion to food, you have an extreme blood sugar issue.
**Unknown:** But waking up with minimal appetite, you have a cup of coffee, and that is something that then even suppresses your appetite further. You go till noon, 1:00, 2:00 in the afternoon before you eat something. By that point you're starving and no matter what you eat, if it's a healthy smoothie bowl or a healthy, you know, uh, rice bowl with all these superfoods or you go for the straight up burger pizza, you're still going to spike your blood sugar and you're going to fall miserably within about 20 to 30 minutes after you eat. Then you are grabbing for your next coffee of the day or maybe you're going to the vending machine to grab something a little sweet or something with a little bit of caffeine in it.
**Unknown:** You now start to approach the evening hours. You're starving again. You're snacking before dinner. You eat your dinner, and now again you're looking for something sweet to end the, the day.
**Unknown:** This is a telltale of rollercoaster blood sugar. Doesn't mean you're diabetic, so if you had your blood sugar tested and you're like, "I'm fine," that doesn't matter. That doesn't mean you don't have problems with your insulin. That doesn't mean that your brain actually knows how to use glucose properly because if you're spiking and crashing, it's like the boy who cried wolf.
**Unknown:** The insulin that tells your cells, including your brain cells, "Use the insulin. Use it for fuel. Use it to function." When your blood sugar's up, down, up, down, up, down, it's like, "I, I don't really know what's going on here." So your cells lose the ability to know how to use glucose. So now you have all this sugar floating around in your bloodstream, which is actually inflaming your cardiovascular system, and now you have issues with blood flow to your brain.
**Unknown:** Because if your blood vessels are constricted, they're narrowed, you're going to have a lot more trouble getting proper blood flow to your brain, which is usually the culprit for headaches and migraines, and this is going to prevent oxygenation to your brain, which is going to be one of the biggest catalyst to neurological degeneration. If your brain cannot get fuel from glucose and it cannot get oxygen, you are going to have more rapid neurological de- degeneration. And as mentioned from the early part of this podcast, this is going on for decades before you actually start to have the telltale symptoms of dementia, AKA you were driving and forgot how to get home, because that's what the textbook tells us. But there are a million warning signs in between that we need to look at for ourselves, we need to look at for our families.
**Unknown:** Um-There are tests out there. There is a test by Vibrant America, Vibrant Wellness, that it's literally called the Brain Zoomer, and it shows you if you have an autoimmune attack on your blood-brain barrier, which is the barrier that protects your brain from foreign substances and foreign infections. It tells you if you have infections in your brain, and they also have another test that showcases all different types of chemicals, toxins, and heavy metals that can be present in your body. So that company alone can yield so much amazing data to help you understand what's going on with your neurological system, what's going on with your kid's neurological system.
**Unknown:** And this is something that you'll be surprised with how many people are walking around thinking that their neurological system is a-okay, but they have bad word recollection and brain fog, and it turns out that they have a multitude of infections and they have a leaky blood-brain barrier. So the great thing about all of this is it's all fixable. You just need the data. You need to understand what's really going on at the foundation so that you can make better decisions on how to heal from it.
**Unknown:** And that's really the beauty of what we've done for years is we give you data that you will never get anywhere else. And it starts with that, and it also starts with you shifting your mindset from thinking that the bad memory and the brain fog and the ADD and the depression and the anxiety, that it's all just normal. It's the normal, and it's also a product of aging because it's not. It's a product of environment and lifestyle.
**Unknown:** And so if we can stop normalizing that and start to ask better questions and get better data, this is not going to only change our own lives, but it's going to change the lives for our family, and it is going to create a new trajectory for generations after and how they have health. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio. We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments.
**Unknown:** Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
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