"If we really want to start slowing
down that rate of degeneration, we need to understand what causes the
degeneration so we can reduce those factors. That is our lifestyle. These are the
things that we can affect; those are the things that we have influence over. And the earlier
that you can catch any of these at the very, very subtle stages, the more likely that you
can do something about it relatively simply. Hello, Health Champions. Today I want to talk
about the 10 earliest signs that you might be moving in the direction of dementia and why
is it so critical that we catch these signs and symptoms early while they're silent
because dementia is not reversible. So if we wait till we have full-blown dementia,
there's not a whole lot we can do about it. But as we talk our way through these signs
and symptoms, the first thing I want you to know is don't panic because every one of
us is going to have some of these signs and symptoms to some degree. The main thing
that we want to get out of this is to start understanding that the brain controls absolutely
everything in your body, and therefore any imbalance at all is going to be a sign of a brain
imbalance and some degree of brain degeneration. But the key to understand here is that some
of these are perfectly normal. For example, if you're right-handed, you will typically have
a little bit stronger left brain and a little bit weaker right brain. So we all have some imbalances
to start with. The key is to understand which ones are normal and which ones really matter. So
once we understand that the brain controls everything and we can start understanding
what these signs and symptoms matter, now we can catch them very, very early and
we can do something to prevent dementia. So at the very basic level, dementia means that
there is neural degeneration, that the brain cells, the neural tissue, the tissue that sends
and processes signals just isn't working as well as it used to. And one way to think about this is
a light bulb, that if you start off with a light bulb that has 100 watts, you can really brighten
a room. But then if there's a dimmer that starts turning the power down on this light bulb and
then we go down to 40 or even 25 or 10 watts, now that light bulb isn't burning so brightly and
we're going to cast some shadows on the room. And the same thing holds true with dementia, that the
brain just isn't working as well as it used to. So let's just look at it very, very simply.
That if we have this much brain function, if we have this many watts of output from the
brain, then we have good brain function. If the function starts declining, then we have
reduced brain function, and at some level we're going to get down to a level where
it's not working well enough and we have dementia. And then at the bottom of the
scale here from side to side we have time. So this would be the beginning of life
and the end of it would be the end of life. Now the thing to understand though is that from
birth up until about 20-25 years old we're pretty much home free. The growth and development of
the brain is just part of a natural growth. But then from 25 years and onwards, now the brain will
decline. We're going to lose brain neurons, we're going to lose connections, and what's important is
that we don't lose things so quickly because the slope, the rate of degeneration, is the key factor
here. So if we had a quick degeneration, now we might start having some decline. We might have
some memory loss, we might lose some coordination, we might have less quality of life at about
halfway into life or even earlier. And then at about three-quarters or so into life, we would
see dementias, different degrees of dementia, and this is what we see in the general
population that are heading for dementia. So it would be a whole lot better if we slow down
the rate of decline here. And now you can see that the time where we would start getting some
decline, maybe some brain fog, maybe some lessened energy or some other degenerative disease,
it would move forward in time several years, maybe a decade or two. And the time that we
would hit dementia would move toward the very, very end of life. And this is what
we typically see in the population, that the vast majority of people have some degree
of dementia toward the very end of their life. But what if we could reduce that rate of
decline even more, the rate of degeneration, so that we can live out our lives and never
hit that level of decline, much less dementia, so that we could have good function all
the way throughout life? And this is not impossible because there are people who
get into their 90s and centenarians even who have good brain function, are
clear and sharp to the very end. But if we really want to start slowing
down that rate of degeneration, we need to understand what causes the
degeneration so we can reduce those factors. And these causes include things
like genetic factors, environmental toxins, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation.
And then there's also some clinical findings like protein aggregates, mitochondrial
dysfunction, apoptosis, and autoimmunity. And these last ones here, protein aggregates, those are the little protein buildups that
they find in the brains of Alzheimer's people, for example. Mitochondrial dysfunction is
critical because mitochondria are little mini organs inside your cells that make most of your
energy. So as we have a decline in mitochondria, we have less energy, so of course then that
light bulb would start burning a little dimmer. Apoptosis is programmed cell death, so all cells
are supposed to die. There's a turnover of cells, but if there's a problem, if there's a dysfunction
to the timing of this programmed cell death, now we can have it happen at the wrong time
or too early. And autoimmunity is when your immune system attacks itself and that,
of course, can speed up the degeneration. But if we look at this big list, then the genetic
factors are the most important. But we have to understand what genetic factors mean because
most people think that's just your DNA. When we talk about genetics, most people talk about the
genetics that you get when you are conceived and that you have unchanged throughout life.
But that's just your genetic makeup. What we're talking about is genetic expression because
that's the bigger part of these genetic factors. And the expression of your DNA comes down to
lifestyle, which is in this yellow square here. So the environmental toxins—these are hundreds
of thousands of different chemicals that we can potentially get exposed to that our ancestors
didn't have—that's a huge load on the body, on your DNA, on your genetic makeup.
Then we have oxidative stress, which is, again, part environmental toxins can cause
oxidative stress, but then there are many, many other factors like smoking
and processed foods and sugar can also increase this oxidative stress.
And, of course, chronic inflammation, which we talk a lot about, which is part of
metabolic syndrome and also from autoimmunity. But then all the rest of the list here that people
very often talk about as the causes of dementia, they are really just secondary.
They're the result of the stuff in yellow here. So the yellow is where we need to
focus because that is our lifestyle. These are the things that we can affect; those are
the things that we have influence over. And I like to talk about the Triad of Health. So
your health, you can think of it as a triangle where you have some chemical factors, you have
some structural factors, and you have some emotional factors. So chemical, those are the
nutritional aspects, the quality of the things that you put in, but also other chemicals that get
in the way like toxins, for example. Structure has to do with posture and movement and exercise and
flexibility and so forth, and this is why it's critical that we maintain some movement, we
maintain some physical activity. And emotion, that is basically how good you feel. That's
positive emotions on the upside like joy and purpose and happiness, and stress or anything
that feels bad on the downside. So there's a positive and a negative aspect to all of these
three, and they're like three sides of a table. And all of these three will
affect the environmental toxins, your level of oxidative stress, your chronic
inflammation. That is where that comes from. And when we add it all up, then this becomes
a body burden. This is like the chronic load that your body has to deal with whenever
it's going through your daily life. And the higher your body burden is, the more
the load is on the lifestyle factors, and the more difficult it is for your body
to express those genetic factors favorably. The first sign would be some kind of change in
your special senses like smell, for example. So if you start having difficulty in distinguishing
different smells that you used to be able to, that could very well be that you're getting
a little bit of brain degeneration. You could also have noticed that things that
you do recognize but they're more dull, they don't have that lively fragrance
anymore. And then we have taste, of course, which is a combination of taste buds and
smell. So when your smell starts to decrease, now the food starts losing some
of that interesting flavor also. Another important special sense is vision when
you look at things, but it's not what people would usually associate with vision. It's not
your visual acuity, whether you need glasses or not. This would have more to do with a
lack of depth perception because that has to do with brain processing. It could have to
do with your peripheral vision, as your brain doesn't have the same capacity to process. Then
it starts to focus more right in front of you, and you lose some of that periphery. And it
could also be that you're seeing fairly well, but that you have a hard time interpreting
and making meaning out of what you're seeing. And the next special sense is hearing,
and it is inevitable with increased age that you're going to be losing some of
those high frequencies. You're going to hear more of the lower frequency band.
But even if you hear well, you might have trouble understanding speech; it
doesn't sound as clear and it doesn't make as much sense anymore. And it could also
be that you're not as good at determining the direction of the sound anymore because all
of that, of course, is brain processing. And the last special sense is touch. And here
it could be that you start noticing a reduced sensitivity to pain, and it could also be that
you're losing some of your tactile senses, the fine touch. And it could also
be less sensitive to temperatures. Now, all the special senses have to do
with processing incoming information, but the next one, number two, has to do
with motor function. So now it's the type of information that the brain sends out, and this
has a lot to do with movement. And one thing that you're probably familiar with is posture. As we
get older, then people tend to have a hunched posture or a stooped posture, but again, this
is not inevitable. If we work on our posture, if we maintain movement and we practice posture,
then it doesn't have to become that way. Another thing you might notice is if your hands
turn in because part of a stress response is that we get in a defense posture. We roll our shoulders
in, we pull our shoulders up, the hands turn in, and it's the brain that's supposed to turn
that off. So the better the brain is working, the quicker we can return to normal
and get our arms into a normal posture, which is where the hands are parallel to the body. Another important aspect is gait and arm
swing. And here you can really kind of get detailed on looking at this. One thing
that often happens is shorter steps, and then oftentimes when it gets more severe,
elderly people start to shuffle. But it could also be simply asymmetrical, and this is something
that you could look for. And it's interesting, if you look around you, you hardly ever see
anyone walk with arm swing that is the same on both sides. So however much the right
and left arm are swinging forward and back, it should be symmetrical. Whichever side
has the lesser arm swing is typically the weaker side of the brain. But if you just start
walking and practicing, now you're reinforcing, you're reviving these pathways, and
you're building up that aspect again. Another motor function is balance because your
brain has to process millions and millions of pieces of information every second for
you to stand still when we only have two feet to stand on. And this could be that you
notice you're a little clumsy maybe or that you have more frequent falls or maybe that
you're just feeling a little bit unsteady. And closely related to that is coordination,
which is your ability to move your body relative to other objects in space. And this could be
something as simple as catching a ball or even maybe start buttoning a shirt. If those movements
start to feel difficult, that could be a sign of early brain degeneration. And the earlier
that you can catch any of these at the very, very subtle stages, the more likely that you
can do something about it relatively simply. Another aspect of motor function
is also facial expressions and facial asymmetry. So the brain tells
all the little muscles what to do, and the health of the brain sets the basic
tone. So if you have more muscle tone on one side of the face than the other, if you
notice, for example, that one side is drooped, then that can be a sign of degeneration. It
could be that you notice that you or someone else is less expressive, that their face doesn't
have as much expression anymore, and maybe you see that you or someone is developing more of a
crooked smile or some other facial expression. Sign number three is handwriting. So if
you used to write really neatly and then it starts to look more sloppy, then that can
be a sign of brain degeneration because you don't have that same level of control. And, of
course, I'll have to mention that doctors are, of course, exempt from this rule because we
are trained to write very, very sloppy. So what we're talking about is more recent changes;
it's not something you've done all your life. But if you notice that it gets more shaky and less
controlled, then that may not be a good thing. And another very specific case is called
micrographia, and this is particularly associated with Parkinson's disease. And this is where you
notice if someone is starting to write very, very slow and very, very small. It's like they're
taking great care to write, but everything becomes really tiny. And this is for three reasons. With
Parkinson's, you have less speed of your motions, so you have to focus harder on controlling them,
and you're also getting more muscle stiffness because the brain sets the muscle tone, meaning
it decides how much to turn it on and off at any given moment. And with Parkinson's, you get muscle
stiffness because it doesn't know how to turn it off. And, of course, with Parkinson's, you also
have less control, less coordinated movements. Number four is speech changes, and here again
we're talking about very subtle changes. That could be something like just a weaker voice
or a softer voice where someone used to be very expressive and now it pulls back a little
bit. It could be slurring of words, it doesn't sound as clear as it used to, or it could be
hesitation as if people are constantly searching for words. If they stop mid-sentence, it's
like they have to plan out what they're doing. Number five is difficulty swallowing, and
this might seem strange to some people, but swallowing is a pretty complicated thing.
A lot of things we take for granted have many, many different steps to them. And, of course, the
brain controls all of this. This would be if you have difficulty swallowing in the absence of some
other noticeable fact, like when you don't have a sore throat or you don't have a swelling. In
some cases where people have a neck problem, like they have a growth on their spine or
they have an enlarged thyroid or something, that could affect your ability to
swallow. But if you have trouble even when there's nothing that they can find,
then that could be a neurological thing. Number six is tremors, which is a form of mild
shaking, repetitive shaking. And this one we need to understand a little bit because
here we're talking about some mild and temporary shaking initially. And this would
be mostly noticed in your hands and fingers, and it would be at rest, meaning you're
just kind of sitting there and it starts shaking. So this is not like you're doing a
hard workout and you've exhausted a muscle, and then you go reach for something and you
shake. That's normal. But if it's mild and temporary and you're at rest, then that could be
a sign that your brain isn't working quite right. And related to that, I want to mention something
called a twitching eyelid or a blepharospasm, which it's called, and that's where your eyelids
start twitching. And it might twitch for a few minutes or half a day or off and on, but then it
goes away. So I wouldn't say that that's normal, but everyone has had that at some point,
and it doesn't mean nothing. It means that there was an imbalance in your brain and
nervous system, but it was temporary. So we don't want to worry too much about
all the little things that come and go. Number seven is less stamina, and here we're
talking about different types. We're talking about physical endurance because if you're
working out, if you're moving physically, if you're exercising, the brain still has
to drive that activity. But then, of course, if you're sitting still and you're working
on something cognitive, something mental, then that's another type of endurance. But they
both go back to the brain; they depend on the brain. And, of course, one aspect of that would
be focus. So if you notice that you don't have the same endurance in terms of focus and getting
things done, then that could also be a sign. Sign number eight is decreased reflexes, so
this could be a slower reaction time in general, or it could be more specific, like
we have slower responses to visual or auditory cues. Like something
shows up in our visual field, we see or we hear something, and it
just takes a little bit longer to react. Sign number nine is spatial confusion, and this
is when you don't have a great sense of direction anymore. And before you panic, let me just say
that I don't feel like I have a great sense of direction, and it's gotten way, way worse since
we got all these automatic navigation devices in our cars and on our phones that tell us every
moment where we're supposed to go. But what we're talking about here is more of a change, that
if there is an area that you're supposed to know and all of a sudden you have difficulty
navigating even though it should be familiar. And another one could be that you
have spatial confusion in an area, in an environment, in a room
that should be very familiar. And sign number ten is a change in emotional
affect, and that's another word for emotional expression. There are some people who tend to have
a very flat affect. That means that they don't show much emotion with their facial expressions
or their voice. So when you have flat affect, then you have less vocal intonation. So
it's normal in speech to have your voice go up and down. Part of this is culture,
part of its habit, part is personality, but we express emotions by varying our vocal
intonation. And as the brain becomes a little weaker, a little slower, then very often we can
lose some of that variation and get more of a flat affect. So we're not expressing emotions
that well or not demonstrating it to others. And one way we do this is with
our voices, and another way is with facial expression. So if both
of those start going a little more flat, that could be a sign that your
brain is not as bright anymore. So if it's a very early gradual degeneration,
we would probably be more likely to see a flat affect. But in later stages, we could actually
see the exact opposite because now the brain is supposed to inhibit certain spontaneous outbursts.
And if the brain isn't strong enough to inhibit, to control that anymore, now we can see the
opposite with exaggerated vocal intonation and vocal expression and facial expressions,
and we can see things like outbursts. So I hope you see how the brain is really what
controls everything. There are no accidents. If you stumble, if you have sloppy handwriting, if
you are out of balance, it all means something. It's not accident. And if you want to learn how to
make things better, how to start addressing these things at an early stage, then I have lots and
lots of videos on this. It's pretty much what we talk about in all my videos, and I've done some
specifically on how to prevent early dementia. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to
love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really
works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so
you never miss a life-saving video."
