The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, a recent study shows that 15% of the population or 45 million people will get Alzheimer's, it's a very sobering statistic, however, there is hope, some new breakthroughs have shown progress in reversing the damage effects of dementia.

So listen, close and find out how you can help yourself or someone around you who is suffering later... We'll tell you what's going on around town. But first up, Dr. Martha Wittenberg is a board certified family medicine physician who received her BA in Biology from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and her master's and doctorate at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

After being in private practice for many years, Dr. Wittenberg pursued additional training in holistic and integrative medicine. She is a board-certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging and regenerative medicine, and completed a fellowship in metabolic nutrition medicine through the metabolic Medical Institute. She is passionate about helping people discover their underlying imbalances and coaching them back to wellness, their medical interests include bio-identical hormone therapy, weight loss, Adrenal Health, mood disorders, detoxification and gut health, and we welcome her to the mother's radio show, Dr. Wittenberg, how are you? I'm great, thank you. Thanks for having me, Kim, thanks for being here. That is quite a mouthful and quite a background, thank you so much for being here and thank you for sharing all of your research and development.

Thank you.

So before we get to today's topic, please to listen on your mission and all of your work... Well, I guess to sum it up, I would say my mission is to try to give patients the best guidance I can, so that they can really optimize their health and live long prosperous lives. And I started out in conventional medicine, and I began to get disheartened by the fact that nobody was getting better by just prescribing medications and finding out that people really weren't changing their lifestyle, I started to develop my own health issues, I had a lot of fatigue, guy developed Hashimoto's, thyroiditis, and I had some other autoimmune problems, and when I looked for answers with conventional medicine, nobody really had anything to offer me, but once I started learning more about integrative medicine and following the recommendations for what my issues were, I started to get better and so I wanna share that information with patients so that they can use it to help themselves... Good for you. And I love that, yeah, you have first-hand knowledge and you did the research and now you're sharing that with everybody else, so today we're talking about dementia and something near and dear to my heart, my mom has dementia, and so I'm fascinated by this, Dr. Whitburn, what is dementia?

So dementia is basically a general term for brain disorders that cause special changes in the brain, and these lead to mental, decreased mental abilities.

So symptoms are severe enough with dementia that they start to interfere with daily lives, they are also persistent, so they don't go away and they're also progressive, meaning that they get worse, so symptoms may include memory loss, that's what people often think of first, but also personality changes, problems, reasoning, loss of verbal skills and motor problems like imbalance, eventually people may no longer be able to be themselves, trust themselves, talk, walk, and they will require full-time care.

What is the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's?

So dementia is the general term, and Alzheimer's is the name for the most common type of dementia, so Alzheimer's accounts for 60% to 80% of all dementia cases, and memory loss is usually an early indicator of Alzheimer's.

The fact that there are 300 million people in the United States, and it's estimated that 15% or about 45 million people who are living in the US today, we'll get Alzheimer's is a big problem. They say everybody knows a cancer survivor, nobody knows an Alzheimer's survivor, so it's traditionally been a death sentence, and so it's serious that it's such a prevalent cause of disease in this country, that's such... If you really stop and you just think about what you said, it really just breaks your heart, it does, there is no cure at this moment in time, and everybody is affected... The prevalence of Alzheimer's, it's increasing. Just from what you just said, there is no cure. And we all know somebody. So talk to me a little bit about that and just really what you just said about your background, not necessarily your background about Alzheimer's, but just how you have a background from traditional medicine, and you didn't find anything from just handing out medicine and you wanted to cure your own self. So from your own background, personally, what can you tell me about the prevalence of Alzheimer's increasing in... How you want to affect change. Okay, so I think the prevalence of Alzheimer's is increasing, there are many reasons, one is lifestyle, so diet can be very inflammatory, this can contribute to Alzheimer's, people could not be getting enough nutrients because of their diet, which can also contribute to Alzheimer's, or they may not have the hormones they need to help improve their brain health, also we have a lot of toxins in our environment, they're something like 85000 chemicals released into our environment every year, and so a type of Alzheimer's is associated with toxic exposure as well, so just knowing what your risks are and what your exposures are and minimizes and optimizing a healthy lifestyle will do a lot for decreasing Alzheimer's disease, what are the causes of all summers, you just touched a little bit on your lifestyle and your diet.

What else could be the cause? Welle, simplest explanation is there's an imbalance between the cells that regenerate brain neurons and the cells that break them down, and researchers are still trying to figure out what are all the components that make that happen, like all chronic diseases, it's complicated and it's not the same for everybody, but there are three main triggers, they think for Alzheimer's, one is inflammation, to his lack of nutrients, artifacts and trophic factors are basically cells that support the growth and survival of cells, so they can be growth factors in the brain, or they can be hormones, and then the third underlying cause of Alzheimer's could be toxins, and the toxins... I mean, they're everywhere, right?

Whereas toxins, following an organic diet is one thing, filter in your water, decreasing your intake, a fish that contains mercury, getting appropriate exercise to help your brain clear out place, you're now getting an adequate sleep, these are all things, but if you... The first step is knowing what you're being exposed to and minimizing your exposure, and then leading a healthy lifestyle so that you can optimize your body's ability to metabolize and excrete whatever toxins you have come into contact with, is there more than one type of Alzheimer's? Yes, so now you think they're actually six types, so that is the first step at looking at a person with Alzheimer's is figuring out what type of Alzheimer's they have. So Type 1, 2 and 3 are basically what I just discussed. The first is inflammatory, the second has to do with lack of nutrients, the third has to do it with toxins, type 4, they actually call type 15 because it has some components of inflammation and lack of nutrients, and this is associated with diabetes, so people don't realize that having diabetes actually increases their risk for Alzheimer's pet 5%, so that's the fourth type, there's also a type that's associated with vascular problem, so decrease blood flow to the brain, and then the final type is traumatic, so that's what you see... You know, with the NFL players or people who have had repeated concussions or head injuries over time, and they put that under the Alzheimer's umbrella. That's interesting. So that's... Wow, I hadn't heard about that. What symptoms do people typically experience to do all of a sudden be diagnosed with ALL summers.

Okay, well, Alzheimer's takes a long time to develop. So they now know that plaques that deposit in the brains of Alzheimer's patients start to form 20 years before they're diagnosed, so before somebody has Alzheimer's, they might have just subjective cognitive impairment, that means they're starting to notice that things aren't working the way they used to, but if they go to the doctor and get test on, everything still looks normal, that starts first followed by mild cognitive impairment, so that's when you're starting to really feel like there's an issue, you go to the doctor and you may not do as well in some of the cognitive tests, but you can still function and you can still live your normal life, and then after that comes the early Alzheimer's stage, so initially, people may begin with having difficulty of remembering conversations or names and then have difficulty remembering which task to do, and then it just starts to progress more and more where it's interfering more with their life and other people are starting to notice because I'm seeing this along with my mom and I've been going to all of our doctor's appointments, so... Exactly, I see what you're talking about with the subjective cognitive and the mild cognitive, at which point do we see there's no turning back, and at what point can we do for medication or organic... What do we do to help that? Okay, well, it depends from which viewpoint you're coming from, if you're coming from a viewpoint of conventional medicine, you start intervening when there's mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's, and that's when one class A drugs is typically prescribed further down the line, when people develop more moderate Alzheimer's that's when a second class of drugs is typically prescribed, and basically that's all that's done for people who have Alzheimer's, unless they do some physical therapy or some extra work to help them somehow with their function, and it's typically like arose or something for the... Exactly, so Arce increases acetylcholine in the brain, and this is important to memory, and then the second class of drugs decrease glutamate in the brain, so glutamate is an important neurotransmitter. People with Alzheimer's have too much of it.

And when you have too much glutamate, you also have too much calcium entry in your cells and that can damage them, so the second class of medicine tries to decrease the glutamate, but the problem with these drugs are they each are only targeting one thing where there could be 30 things going on in the brain of somebody who has Alzheimer's, so a single therapy is never gonna be effective. This is very interesting information, and there's plenty more to come with Dr. Wittenberg, so please stay with us, we'll be right back.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com. And now back to our interview with Dr. Wittenberg, and we're talking about dementia, and this is fascinating information, we're talking about this, and of course, I have a personal interest in, because my mom has dementia or we were just talking about drug treatment is treatments and my mom is on arose. You were just mentioning the next drug phase, what other drug treatments are there for Alzheimers and do they work?

So the other class of drugs, besides the one that arise is in decreases glutamate in the brain, which I mentioned that that an example of that drug would be Amanda, which is the brand name for a mate, and that I believe is the only one in that class that's approved in the United States.

These medications can improve symptoms temporarily, but they've never been shown to change the progression or the eventual outcome, and I think the reason why you were saying that is because there are so many symptoms happening and they really just target one... Right, so yeah, you could have multiple imbalances in your brain or multiple things that are triggering to production of amyloid plaque and just increasing acid choline and decreasing glutamate is not gonna fix the problem.

So if someone carries the gene for Alzheimer's, what is the likelihood that we might get it?

So there are genes that have been associated with Alzheimer's, but the most common one that people ask me about is the APO-E-gene, so this gene has three different forms, people can either carry E2, E3 or E4. E4 is the form that has been associated with Alzheimer's, so if somebody carries zero copies of the E4 gene, their lifetime risk is approximately 9% for getting Alzheimer's, someone with one copy has up to a 30% lifetime risk, and somebody who carries both copies of the E4 gene has 50% to 90% increased risk. And throughout their lifetime.

Wow.

How do you go about going through that test to find out there you could actually order it through regular labs such as lab core, so it's something that someone who has a family history could ask their doctor to get that checked for them.

Now, if somebody does have two copies, that doesn't mean they're definitely gonna get it, we know now that there are things that you can do with lifestyle that will lower the risk, so genes don't have to be your destiny, you can actually override your genes with your lifestyle, oh, that's where I'm interested in finding. Let's find out.

Right, yeah.

How do we do that?

Let's all find out.

Yes, how do we override our Deans to not be destined to... Well, it all depends on what your issues are, so anybody with a family history or anybody who carries the APO E4 gene or anybody who is starting to experience what they feel is subjective cognitive impairment, should have what Dr. Dale Bredesen calls a Cognos copy. So this usually, or optimally should take place in the 40s, maybe early 50s, but 40 is if you have a family history or carry APO E4, and what this involves would be a physical exam, some cognitive tests and extensive blood work.

So there are a lot of inflammatory markers or tests for infections or test first toxic exposures that can be done to make sure that you are not carrying any of these risks, and so that is... This particular test is called the APO-E4, exam is called A-G, So the APO E-gene. And if we were to go into our physician and we would ask for that, right, say, Can you check me for APO 4 and get an APO-E gene test.

Okay, I'm going in. That's the first thing I statistics calling making a Monday. Oh my goodness. And then if people are also concerned because of family history or because they carry the gene, they could also do some imaging, so a lot of times when people are checked for Alzheimer's, they will just get a basic MRI and it can just be normal, but if you're concerned about memory loss and MRI with what they call volume metrics would be important. And this basically measures different parts of the brain that are important to memory, and they can see if areas such as a hippocampus are smaller than they should be for your age, other testing would include a PET scan, so this looks at your glucose uptake in the brain, and when somebody has Alzheimer's, they may have decreased uptake in certain areas of their brain as well, and then finally, you can actually do scans to see if you have Amida in your brain, so not everybody needs all those tests, but if you're somebody with a family history or you're starting to experience mild cognitive or just subjective cognitive impairment, getting an MRI with the volume... Metrics would be a good starting place. This is great information.

And then again, you were saying lifestyle, so we make the lifestyle changes, we make sure we're exercising, that we're eating clean, organic... Right, so basically, I learned this pneumatic from Dr. Rudolf tansy, he's a professor of neurology at Harvard, and he's also the director of the Alzheimer's genome product project. Excuse me, his pneumatic is for the Word shield. So in that pneumonia S stands for sleep. So seven to eight hours of sleep is optimal, and you want it to be a restorative sleep, if you're waking up a lot in the middle of the night, that's not restorative sleep for those people, we may recommend a little melatonin, which is actually an excellent brain antioxidant or trip to fan, if they still can't sleep, we talk about hygiene. Well, are you watching your iPad before you go to bed? If you are, maybe you should limit that, or at least you can put a blue light locker on your electronics, when your eyes look at that blue light, it tricks your brain into thinking a daylight so you don't make melatonin. So we talk about hygiene and things like that, if somebody stores and wakes up not well rested, I would recommend getting screened for obstructive sleep apnea because you'll never get restorative sleep if you have untreated sleep apnea, and then beyond sleep, the H and the pneumonia stands for handle, so that speaks to managing stress, whether it's spending time to breathing, getting a massage, taking a bath, doing yoga, whatever it means to you to relax, that's important to make time for every day. The eye stands for Interact. So this just refers to the fact that people do better when they socialize, for human social beings, and when people are isolated or lonely, they don't do as well overall, and then is the exercise... So there are certain recommendations for adults, they should try to get at least 30 minutes most days of the week, five or six days of the week, and again, when you exercise, you can actually help clean amyloid out from your brain, so that's really important. The L and the pneumatic stands for learn, and that talks about brain training, so staying active with the job or just reading a lot. That's all great. Doing cross or puzzles. That's great, but they actually have certain programs now that are specifically designed to help improve cognition, so brain HQ is one of those that we recommend because it has 30 years of research behind it, and actually the man who developed it is Michael Merce, and he's actually also the research or who developed the Cole implant, so doing some brain training every day can help people as well, and then the final letter of shield is deep or diet. So anti-inflammatory diets like Mediterranean diets are best with limited gluten or dairy, just because those tend to create more inflammation in the body, Paleo Diets are okay because they eliminate we in dairy, however, they're very meat-focused and me tends to create more inflammation. It has a lot of omega-6 fatty acids.

So a paleo-type diet that emphasizes more fish would be better because fish has the omega-3 fatty acids in it, and then ketogenic diets have actually been used a lot with people who have cognitive decline, and they found that people with cognitive decline respond well to that type of diet, so that's a diet that's very low in carbs, much higher and healthy fats and helps with brain function.

Wow, that is fascinating. And tell me once again, it's a Rodan tansy, and that is what all of what you just mentioned, for sleep, handle, interact, exercise, learn and diet stands for shield. Yes.

So that's great information. Wow. Supplements, what do you recommend to help improve brain function, so it definitely depends what the underlying issue is, So if inflammation is the issue, we might recommend things like Omega-3 fatty acids, those are found in fish. But often you would have to eat a lot of fish to get enough... We also look at blood work, what's the ratio of... Somebody is omega 6 to omega-3 ratio.

Optimally it would be one-to-one, but for most people at 16 to one, so we wanna try to raise the omega-3 fatty acids and get a high quality fatty acid that's really potent, instead of a generic fish oil from a large retail chain, you wanna... That's one supplement you definitely wanna spend the money on because quality doesn't matter when it comes to omega-3 fatty acids, other things include probiotics, optimizing vitamin D and acetate, which is an amino acid, is very good for lowering inflammation, it also helps with liver health. Same thing with alpha-Pook acid, both of those help regenerate glutathione and goat is our body is most potent anti-oxidants, so it's great for brain health and nine, which is B3, are all really great for lowering inflammation in my favorite... One of my favorites in terms of botanicals is curcumin. So curcumin and gender are great no matter what type of information somebody has, and then if blood sugar is an issue, alpha poke acid is also good for that Co-Q10, I think you mentioned, or somebody mentioned that their parent was taking co0, that's great. To help with blood sugar regulation, Chromium is as well, and magnesium, I think everybody should be on magnesium, it has over 300 functions in the body, and I think it's about 68% of people in the United States are efficient in it, in magnesium.

What about natural therapies to help cognitive function... Natural therapies would be some of the supplements that we recommend, we also do hormone replacement therapy because of the link with estradiol and decreased risk of Alzheimer's, we do some IV nutrient therapy as well to optimize people's nutritional status, so those are some natural things that we offer here, what we recommend really depends on the individual, what is their reason that they're having catiline, and that will tailor what we recommend, and what else can people do to help protect their brain function?

So some of the things we already talked about limiting stress, getting enough sleep, exercise, those are all key, Diet, obviously, there are also prescription medications that can work in cognitive functions, so it will be important for people to be aware if they're on one of those medications for instance, some cholesterol medication called statins have been linked with cognitive decline, so if somebody's taking those, they may wanna talk to their doctor about, Do I really need to be on this medication? Just last May, a new study came out that showed in people over 65 taking statins just for cholesterol reduction who don't have pre-existing heart disease, right. So this is just preventative, had no benefit from statins and they might have even made them worse.

Oh my goodness, wow.

So knowing if you really need to be on a medication and going to your doctor and reviewing, that's important, antihistamines have also been shown to be linked with cognitive decline, and those are very common... A lot of people take those.

So our approach is more, Let's try to lower your inflammation, more natural way is with things like vitamin C and Corsican and Brolin, and that's really great information and you write people maybe take them too much or abuse them, not really, they just keep taking them and they don't think they just really still need to be on this... Right, that's a good point.

Thank you for that.

And I get to the last question, I would say is, is there a way to reverse cognitive decline?

So actually there is... And it's really exciting. So for the first time ever, there's been some success at reversing cognitive decline, so this is from a protocol that was developed by Dale Bredesen, who's a medical doctor from UCLA, he now runs the Buck Institute in Northern California, and he actually recently wrote a book called The End of Alzheimer's. That discusses his protocol. But overall, all of his patients collectively have... He's found at least a 50% success rate at reversing cognitive decline, and so we've been trying to incorporate that and now put together a program that we can offer at our office and combine that with our hormone therapy and IV nutritional therapy to optimize the success and so it's in here, Dale reticent. But within yours as well... Oh my goodness. Doctor, this has been fascinating information, thank you so much, we can look forward to how you want again, but in the meantime, thank you.

Thank you to... And we look forward to having you, Dr. Wittenberg, you can check your website, I progressive Med dot com and learn more about you, Doctor, passion for alternative medicine and the other great things he's involved with. Thank you again for your visit. Thank you.

Okay, thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show. And for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,