Stop Memory Loss: The Science Behind Healing

Guest: Sayer Ji

The purpose of this presentation is to convey

information. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or
cure your condition or to be a substitute for advice
from your physician or other healthcare professional.

Jonathan: Welcome to The Alzheimer’s and

Dementia Summit. I’m your host, Jonathan
Landsman, creator of naturalhealth365.com. Did
you know that every three seconds someone gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
or dementia? In fact, Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death, kills more
people than breast and prostate cancer combined, and western medicine fails
to offer a solution.

As a health and fitness consultant for nearly 30 years, I believe Alzheimer’s

and dementia are the most misunderstood, cruelest and costliest of all
diseases. That’s why I created this summit, to help you prevent, slow down,
and reverse cognitive decline before it’s too late.

Our show today is Stop Memory Loss: the Science Behind Healing. Our guest,
Sayer Ji, is the founder and director of greenmedinfo.com, the world’s most
widely referenced evidence based natural health resource. In addition, Sayer
has a long list of affiliated responsibilities, including vice chairman with the
National Health Federation and cofounder of the Alliance for Vaccine
Awareness.

Conventionally speaking, we often hear about a rather hopeless message that

memory loss is a natural part of aging. This is a very dangerous,
disempowering message that implies there’s not much we can do about
memory loss. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, after
listening to this program, it will be abundantly clear to you how misinformed
western medicine has become.
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Simply put, the research clearly shows that debilitating memory loss issues
are merely a product of our lifestyle habits. And the great news is that we do
have the power to avoid memory loss and even greatly improve our brain
function at any age. It all begins with the right information. Please join me in
welcoming Sayer Ji to our program. Sayer, welcome.

Sayer: It’s a great pleasure to be here. And thank you for having me.

Jonathan: Sayer, what is your view on curing Alzheimer’s disease? Can we

actually reverse symptoms like memory loss?

Sayer: That’s a great question. It’s interesting because in today’s climate, in

terms of the legal regulatory discussion, it’s not really a good thing to say that
you can cure any disease, according to the FDA, FTC. But I think the truth is
pretty clear, and that is that many of the so called diseases that we associate
with sort of inexorably lethal or degenerative processes actually are really
projections or reifications of symptoms.

So it’s almost like you’re wanting to buy a house. And you end up buying at a
really bad interest rate. And you lock it in for 30 years. And there’s nothing
you can do. Well, that’s sort of what the medical establishment has ended up
doing with a lot of “diseases.” They’ll take symptoms, repackage them off in
Greek or Latin names, and then say, “You know what? You have Alzheimer’s
disease. And now we just have to try to treat the symptoms.”

And ultimately, if we go a couple of layers down and deeper into what’s going
on, it could be as simple as a blood sugar disorder. It could be as simple as
heavy metal exposures and toxicity. There can be psychospiritual aspects of
why we lose our memory or have suboptimal memory.

So of course there are many, probably hundreds of factors that feed into the
symptoms that then become sort of concordized as “Alzheimer’s disease.” And
so in that sense I would say absolutely it can be cured because oftentimes it’s
truly more a myth than it is an actual reality that we have this sort of
unbeatable condition.

Jonathan: Sayer, we’re about to get into some of the top evidence-based
natural therapies for Alzheimer’s and dementia. But I thought for a moment
before we got to that topic we would talk for another minute about something
so interesting that you just said that I think is important to emphasize. For
the person that is brand new to this information, mostly used to hearing, “Oh,

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boy, you have memory loss,” or, “Oh, you’re aging. Just accept things,” and to
have you say, “Wow, this is something that has a two-fold problem,” if you
will; one, conventionally speaking, most physicians are not educated on
anything you’re about to clearly speak about.

But the second part is what you just mentioned very quickly, which is there is
this very real threat that even if an individual doctor has a personal belief that
wow, a person ought to maybe make some changes in their lifestyle, for them
to suggest that publicly really is a threat to their profession, that’s, I think, a
hard pill, if you will, to swallow for a lot of people to really accept.

It’s hard for them to believe that modern medicine is controlled in that way. I
think most people think wow, a doctor’s really out there for my own best
interest. They don’t know about these controlling interests behind the scenes.

Sayer: Oh, I appreciate that very much. There’s a fulcrum here that I often
find myself hovering on because on the one hand, when you are diagnosed
with a “disease,” it’s almost like an opportunity to have compassion because
there are real physiological problems going on.

There are elements of “Alzheimer’s disease” and nerve degenerative diseases

that involve memory loss that are actually organic in nature, meaning we find
lesions in the brain. We find calcification. We find heavy metal accumulation.
So it doesn’t mean that it’s all conspiracy, of course.

But we do know that when someone is diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s

disease, you almost start looking beyond the issues that are sort of right there
in front of you. So they have memory loss. That may be correct.

But what happens when, for example, they start consuming higher levels of
medium chain triglycerides in coconut, and their brain suddenly has ketone
bodies instead of sugar to maintain its high energy consumption, and
suddenly they start remembering better?

Well, obviously the coconut oil or whatever they’re taking didn’t just “cure” the
Alzheimer’s disease. Rather, it addressed the obvious metabolic challenges
that are behind suboptimal memory and cognitive function. So it’s a way of
looking at it differently when we start thinking about it the way functional
medical practitioners look at what’s the root cause of the problem and let’s try
to identify and resolve it. It’s a more empowering way of discussing the
problem.

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But I will agree that, yes, our species is suffering from widespread
neurodegeneration. And there are things that have been studied. In fact,
thousands of years of scientific research have been poured into the topic now
of “Alzheimer’s” disease. In fact, before I came on the show, I did a little search
on MEDLINE and found over 191,000 published studies on the National
Library of Medicine’s database - you can go there through pubmed.gov - on
either Alzheimer’s or dementia.

And about 7,000 of those are just on complementary medicine and these
conditions. So the good news is that, yes, there are times where people really
are suffering from a “condition” that is, in many ways, physical. And the good
news is that there are actual natural ways that have been studied that could
be of great value.

Jonathan: Sayer, I love it. And I think this is so important, that people pay
close attention to what you’re about to say. What are the three top evidence-
based natural therapies for Alzheimer’s and dementia that you see in your
research?

Sayer: Well great. It’s a question that I’ve applied a lot of time and energy into
answering through not my “own opinion,” but through scouring the research
available on the subject. And so on GreenMedInfo, we have a number of pages
dedicated to different conditions. Alzheimer’s is one of them.

And we have indexed, thus far, 99 different substances that have been studied
to provide a potential sort of neuroprotective agent to prevent the onset of
these symptoms which lead to the diagnosis and/or a neurorestorative
property, which is even more encouraging because, again, as we stated, the
dominant way of looking at “disease” today is that it’s something that just gets
worse.

And we can just manage symptoms. And as you know, there’ve been hundreds
of clinical trials funded now in order to get FDA drug approval for treating
Alzheimer’s and improving the condition and slowing the progression. As of
right now, after literally hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, not a
single agent has been found to slow the progression.

And that’s because they’re using patented synthetic substances. And they’re
doing it because, of course, there’s between $1 to $11 billion of funding
required to get your average drug on the market with FDA approval.

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So what happens is that all this other research exists on MEDLINE, which
people don’t know about, which of course I’ve spent a lot of time indexing. And
so right now we have these 99 substances. And the top ones that we’ve
indexed are curcumin, vitamin D, and, actually, folate - folic acid is sort of a
synthetic variety - surprisingly has been found to have some therapeutic
properties and nerve restorative properties.

So those are just three of so many. And it speaks to sort of the hope and
promise that natural medicine offers that of course synthetic profit driven
medicine just can’t accomplish.

Jonathan: And, Sayer, I think it’s important to really just quite simply say the
obvious, that a lot of times when these substances are discovered to have
some sort of health benefit to people, you just don’t see it played up in the
mainstream media, people turning on the TV or opening up just one of these
normal newspapers or magazines, because of the funding that is behind these
institutions. And the funding that I’m talking about is through big pharma,
isn’t that fair to say?

Sayer: Brilliant observation. What we have, fundamentally, is that within the

realm of publishing research on interventions for any disease, but Alzheimer’s
in particular, is that there is an ethical obligation, as far as I understand, for
scientists to publish the results even if they’re null or negative findings, right,
so they find either no relevant information or they find negative information.

So when it comes to pharmaceuticals, you could literally spend billions of

dollars trying different chemicals out and manipulating the statistics to make
it appear as if there’s some benefit beyond the placebo. And this is actually
what happens.

But ultimately, if you look at the full data set, and especially if you can find
independently funded research, which there’s very little, you’ll find that most
of the interventions today on the market, like Aricept for Alzheimer’s, actually
have no value and actually cause a lot of neurotoxicity.

That’s why Aricept was one of the top, I think it was 11, drugs the World
Health Organization identified as causing seizures in the world. So of course
seizures, that’s a pretty serious neurotoxic affect for a substance that’s
supposed to “treat” a neurodegenerative disease. So, yes, the publishing of the
research is highly manipulated.

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And of course the natural compounds that have been studied have somehow
slipped through this membrane. If you look on GreenMedInfo today you’ll find
30 studies on curcumin’s benefit for Alzheimer’s. Curcumin, of course, is the
golden hued polyphenol that gives turmeric its bright yellow hue.

And some of the studies - I have them here right in front of me - show an
enhanced clearance of amyloid beta plaque in Alzheimer’s disease patients,
which is amazing because of course this misfolded protein they often find in
lesions in the Alzheimer’s brain is considered to be sort of almost like a death
sentence. “Okay, you’ve got it. It’s just going to progress. And there’s really
nothing you can do about it.”

Well, curcumin, a spice extract, can actually enhance the clearance of this
pathological misfolded protein in Alzheimer’s patients. Well that should be
something announced throughout the world as the best discovery of all time
for the condition. But as you state, about 70 percent of the media is funded by
pharmaceutical interests. So this information doesn’t get out there. Thanks to
this summit, hopefully it will.

Jonathan: I hope so as well, Sayer. I’d like to talk about some of the things
that you feel, through your investigation, cause Alzheimer’s and dementia.
And I should say right away, a lot of people may not have heard about this
information. But it’s just so important because of what you’ve pointed out
already. It’s important to understand that when we’re suffering from any kind
of problem like, say, dementia or any other serious health problem, it’s a
different orientation that you mentioned before that we should have, not just
that we have this disease and now just treat it with toxic pills that don’t really
get us any better off at all but to look at what might be blocking something
from naturally happening. What might be suppressed in our body? What
might be just harming us outright toxin wise? And if we could just remove
these threats, if we could nourish our body better, all of a sudden these
symptoms fade away. It’s not such a crazy notion, is it? What’s causing these
conditions?

Sayer: Yeah, well there’s a lot you’re stating here, which I think has a lot of
potential to enlighten and empower people. I think one of the most important
things of all, which I haven’t really discussed yet, is that not only does
turmeric contain curcumin, but it has something called aromatic tumerone,
which you don’t find often in the fancy sort of nutraceutical extracts, which
has been shown recently to cause regeneration of damaged brain tissue
through enhancing the replication of what are called neural stem cells.

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So what we’re finding is that there are ways that we can support the body’s
natural self-healing ability. And the moment someone’s diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease, it is the most damaging moment because of what you call
the nocebo effect, which is you’re pretty much pronouncing them forever
subject to something out of their control.

And the assumption is, because this is the truth, that the best possible
treatment today for Alzheimer’s, like Aricept, probably enhances the
degeneration of the disease, which is why the epidemic is only growing. So you
can help people understand that they actually not only can but are, at every
given moment, regenerating damaged tissue, that there’s an interference there
that you just need to remove. And the interference is often a belief system of
course.

Again, being pronounced basically dead with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis doesn’t

help anyone because they’re just not going to try. And for them to understand
that if you have accumulation of things like aluminum or lead in your brain,
or mercury, let’s say - amalgam is almost 50 percent mercury by weight.

And that’s in people’s teeth, in their brain, basically, or really close to it -

obviously then this becomes a very powerful component of why we have these
neurodegenerative issues and memory problems that lead to diagnoses. But
on the other hand, if we can identify the obvious causes, well then that’s the
cure right there.

We can remove them and help to enhance the body’s natural detoxification
system. I mean just the example of broccoli sprout extract for removing
mercury from those who suffer from autism like symptoms, for example, that’s
very much relevant to the discussion on adult neurodegenerative diseases like
Alzheimer’s.

So what I’ve done is, on the Alzheimer’s page on GreenMedInfo, I’ve also
indexed research on “problem substances,” which you’re asking me right now
about. And so some of those include, of course, the heavy metals. But even
things such as sugar is so obvious a contributor to what is known as type 3
diabetes, where the brain cells actually become resistant to insulin, no longer
can get the sugar into the cell to provide that continual source of energy the
brain needs.

If you deprive the brain of sugar or glucose, within about three minutes it
starts to freak out. And you literally get a fight or flight response to try to

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increase your blood sugar through adrenalin and cortisol just to try to survive.
Now if you have an alternative fuel source, of course, healthy good saturated
fats like caprylic acid and other medium chain triglycerides, your brain is able
to thrive in a different way metabolically

And so just sometimes the use of something as simple as coconut oil could
cause a significant change in memory and cognition. So again, some of the
problems are really there right in front of us, which are always related to
chemical exposures, dietary incompatibilities, and/or deficiencies, and, again,
the mindset that we put onto these “diseases” that we feel we can never treat
or reverse.

Jonathan: Sayer, that was just so magnificent what you said. I thought you
were almost going to leave it out at the end. You’re talking about toxic fats
that people are eating, the heated vegetables oils in food or the obvious things
like fast food or processed sugars in sodas, beverages, the hidden sugars that
people think are natural, but they’re really synthetic, all of these things on
and on and on.

But what a most dangerous threat that is to a person that might just
innocently walk into a conventional doctor’s office and say they’re struggling.
They have memory issues. What do you think’s going on? They get some sort
of neurologist involved. They do some sort of testing. They ask some
questions. And now they get labeled with dementia. And it’s like game over.

And now what Sayer has to say, “Eh, I’ve heard about it. But what’s the big
deal? It’s not really going to help.” And it’s that giving up. That mental,
emotional framework is so important towards healing. I mean the will to live or
the giving up, boy you could die really soon, as well. And that’s not so crazy, is
it?

Sayer: No, it’s not. In fact, this transfers right over to the subject of cancer
because that’s one example of a disease that is so profoundly misunderstood.
And what happened was two years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine
they published this massive study. It was like half a million Swedes. And they
looked at what happened when they received the results from their cancer
diagnoses.

If they were diagnosed to have a cancer, even though it may be something that
was misdiagnosed or even not a lethal cancer, it didn’t matter. They had up to
a 26.9 increased fold of heart related deaths within one week of receiving a

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positive finding for cancer.

And so when that study came out, it sort of helped us realize that just like in
indigenous societies where sometimes a shaman would point a bone at
somebody and say they’re going to go die tomorrow, the belief that you were
going to die because the authority figure, the shaman’s robe or the white coat
is telling you you’re going to die, or you have a condition that’s lethal, and
there’s nothing you can do to heal it, well, that’s why you end up dying,
because we are so powerful, we have such an ability to heal.

And it’s been really outsourced and/or stolen from us from the beginning
because of this facing the priest of the body, this notion of a proxy
intermediary we need. Taking the lactose rich pill, the placebo pill, is not
unlike taking a Eucharistic wafer. It’s the same level of faith. And by
outsourcing it and not acknowledging our ability to heal, we are effectively
being pronounced dead. And we’re participating in it. We just don’t really
realize it.

Jonathan: And, Sayer, I want to make this point really clear, not that I’m
going to speak for you. But certainly our position here for the Alzheimer’s and
Dementia Summit is not to say that we’re against western medicine. We love
what they do. And conventionally trained doctors have so much to offer.

But in terms of outsourcing, I think it’s just important that if we do reach out
to try to find someone to bring into our circle, if you will, to help us out, that
they are partners, right, that we are always the ones that are the most
responsible for ourselves. We make the decisions about what we do and who
we allow in our life and who we keep out. I think that’s ultimately a really
important message for everybody. Wouldn’t you say that’s fair to say?

Sayer: I would absolutely agree. And inadvertently, or even on the other side
of it, I’m pointing out that the true power that physicians have that they don’t
often realize, to affect the most massive type of positive change in the lives of
their patients, that’s really what has surfaced in regard to the power of the
placebo, which is, “I will help,” and the nocebo effect, “I will harm,” is just the
belief system or the comportment, the attitude that they as a physician trying
to help a patient through a diagnosis could be so powerful that they’ve never
really been aware of this. So it’s a big responsibility. But it also speaks to just
how much change and positive power there is for them to make a difference.

A couple of things I didn’t mention, which I should, is that when it comes to

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one of the primary contributors, I believe, to neurodegenerative disease,

memory loss, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, is actually statin drugs because
they are so powerfully neurotoxic in so many ways. Of course the brain, by
weight, dry weight, is about 30 percent cholesterol. So when you take a
chemical whose very job is to prevent the synthesis of it, and especially those
which are the lipophilic statins, that go right into the brain and inhibit
cholesterol synthesis there, are just absolutely absurd as far as in any way
contributing to brain health.

Of course, depleting the body of lipoprotein, especially LDL, that’s the taxi cab
that delivers all the fat soluble nutrients and antioxidants and things like
coenzyme Q10 right to the brain. So the vilification of LDL as a nature made
or God made particle that is essential for brain health is also part of why
statins are so dangerous.

Of course, just a few years ago the FDA put on the statin drugs a black label
saying can cause both dementia or memory problems and insulin resistance,
type 2 diabetes. So of course the brain, being susceptible to ulcerations in
metabolism like insulin resistance, it’s a double whammy. So again, that’s
another big part of the problem.

For those who need more research to support these statements, we have a
database on statin drugs that now has indexed 300 different signals of harm,
the primary mechanism of toxicity - and there are over two dozen we’ve both
identified and provided ways to look at just that research easily - are
neurotoxicity. So that whole category of drug is really a huge problem when it
comes to the “epidemic” of memory disorders.

Jonathan: And Sayer, I would suggest that people look into this whole issue
of statin drugs and lowering excessive amounts of cholesterol. Another danger
that people could look into is to have an appreciation that, yes, cholesterol’s
necessary for many functions within the body. But excessive amounts of
cholesterol are coming into the body and accumulating, if you will, on the
inside of arteries as a way of patching up injuries to those inner linings of our
arteries, just as an example, around joints.

This sort of calcification or plaque buildup, if you will, is sort of a protective

thing that’s going on because of the presence of some sort of injury, some sort
of threat, some sort of toxins that are going on in the body. So what I’m getting
to is when someone is lowering their cholesterol physically and abruptly with
a drug, they’re not addressing, on the other side, all of the toxins that are still

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going on inside the body threatening the brain, threatening the heart. It’s
something for people to consider. That’s all I’m suggesting.

Sayer: It’s right on point. In fact, you wouldn’t want to blame the Band-Aid for
the injury it’s covering up. And as you know, Linus Pauling’s unified theory of
cardiovascular disease causation was really vitamin C deficiency leads to the
body using cholesterol as a backup Band-Aid, so to speak, because the
collagen synthesis whatnot is not enabling you to heal up the blood vessels
and the arteries in particular.

And there are many levels to this. I’m glad you brought this up because we
like to compartmentalize these conditions. Memory loss is a brain disorder.
Alzheimer’s is separate from cardiovascular disease. Of course the number
one killer is still heart disease and cardiovascular problems, which start with
things like endothelial dysfunction.

And so the connection between cardiovascular decline and the slow decades
long accumulation of plaques in the arteries is very much connected to why
we have such a prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases. One of the most
interesting new hypotheses regarding the causation of Alzheimer’s is
calcification in the brain. And so in 2014 a new study came out that looked at
this exact problem with Alzheimer’s disease. And what they’re finding is an
excess accumulation.

Two-thirds of adults have pineal gland calcification, for example. And we even
know that that correlates well to fluoride exposure. So there are so many ways
you can look at these interconnections. But I would certainly argue that
calcification of the artery is the end stage before you end up with rupture of
the plaque and death of cardiovascular disease, that all of these things are
linked together.

And it’s really helpful to look at it more holistically. So when you’re doing
exercise, you’re actually helping to support endothelial function. And you’re
also stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis, which is a big part of how the brain
gets its energy, as well as maintains sort of a non-cancerous state as well as
helps to stimulate the regeneration of the neural stem cells. So it’s all
connected.

Jonathan: Well said, Sayer. This is such a common sense approach to

preventing memory loss, is to understand how healthy our body is when we’re
circulating well our blood, when oxygen is getting everywhere in the blink of

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an eye, nutrients and waste products are passing in and out of cells easily.

And obviously the other side of the coin, when a person’s inundated with toxic
fumes that they’re breathing in, smoking too much, toxic foods clogging up the
body, calcifying the body, slowing down the metabolic functions in our body,
naturally then drowning in those toxins, how we could see that all of these
disease symptoms can come up in people in many different ways. Whether it’s
within the brain or the heart or digestive system, we can see these things.

Sayer, talk to us about some of the dangers or other limitations, if you will, of
conventional drugs for Alzheimer’s disease.

Sayer: I love it, yeah. I wrote an article a while ago about declaring chemical
war on Alzheimer’s because interestingly enough, what’s happening is the
primary intervention is what’s known as a cholinesterase inhibitor, because
the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, is most associated with memory.

Now, this is part of the monoamine hypothesis, which includes concepts like
depression is caused from serotonin deficiency. It’s very simplistic and
reductionistic. But there’s a little bit of truth to it because we know that
rosemary, for example, has a number of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors that
don’t have the adverse effects associated with the drugs they use.

So remember, Aricept is one of the most well-known seizure inducing drugs

out here. In fact, the World Health Organization in 2010 published this report.
And there were 71,000 documented cases of drug induced seizures. And
Aricept was a factor in 8.5 percent of them globally between 1998 and 2006.
So can you imagine they’re trying to ply these drugs for a brain disorder that
involves damage? And they actually cause such profound damage they can
produce seizures.

So the problem is is this category of drug actually overlaps with things like
venom, in nature, and chemical warfare agents, because they basically
interfere with that cholinesterase enzyme. Theoretically it’s a sort of reversible
effect. So it’s not permanent. But with some of the venoms it’s permanently
blocking that inhibitor and causing excess accumulation of the
neurotransmitter. And you die.

But the point is is that this is the same category. And so in many ways we are
deciding to declare war against Alzheimer’s with chemicals that are like
venoms and like chemical warfare agents. They have been acknowledged by

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even the World Health Organization to be one of the primary causes of

neurotoxicities via seizure. And so of course this leads us to the realization
that, again, it’s unfortunate, but the whole system by which we validate and
approve drugs today is forced through a process that is really all about patent
exclusivity and not in any way about effectiveness, safety, affordability, all the
things that we would hope an evolved society would prioritize if they really
want to alleviate suffering.

Jonathan: Sayer, this is where I want to shift gears now. And for those who
are really staying with us and have pen and paper in hand, please get ready to
take notes. Let’s shift our attention to some of the ideal prevention and
treatment strategies, Sayer, that you feel would really help someone who’s
concerned about memory loss.

Sayer: Excellent. My primary thing that I’ll keep harping on is curcumin. And
a lot of this has to do with the 2006 study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s
Disease. It’s just a case study. They took six patients. And what they found
was that when they compared those patients who received curcumin, the
extract of turmeric, to those who didn’t, they found that there was a
significant reversal of memory loss, as well as indicators of the misfolded
protein in their brain actually improving. So they were actually reversing the
disease in this particular study.

Another study, I can’t give you the exact date, I forgot the date, but it was
around the same time, showed that within a matter of just a few days, several
of those with Alzheimer’s started to recover some of their memory. So it’s a
pretty amazing thing if you think about it. These are pretty affordable and
safe, very accessible to anyone. And they’re superior, in many ways, right, to
the drugs. It’s just that you’re not going to see the billions of dollars needed to
validate it in the “Phase 1, 2, 3” clinical trials the FDA requires for drug
approval.

So when people go to their doctor and say, “I heard on the internet curcumin
could be good for my husband. He has Alzheimer’s,” they’re not going to tell
you this because legally they can. It’s not true. They can’t say there’s been all
this FDA drug approval of it or clinical research. So it kind of forces you, on
some level, to go back to your own decision making right, to say hey, I’m going
to try something that is safe and effective.

Here’s one caveat, is that people think about taking heroic doses of herbs all
the time. And it’s not the right approach. You should be considering,

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theoretically, before you get to a really bad problem, to incorporate these

spices in your food. And therefore you have what’s called a culinary dose. And
what’s interesting is just a few years ago a study was published on rosemary,
another really important herb for memory.

In fact, you’ve heard the poets recite rosemary for remembrance for quite some
time. And they found a culinary dose is much more effective at increasing
memory whereas a heroic dose was actually causing memory impairment. So I
think the dosage difference was a 500 milligram culinary dose was superior to
a 2000 milligram heroic dose. So that’s another thing that I would mention.

Jonathan: And, also, Sayer, we see, traditionally speaking, curcumin being

taken in food all the time as having its health benefits. It’s not like over
hundreds and thousands of years these people went to health food stores and
bought lots of pills of curcumin.

Sayer: Yes, in fact, in India there’s such a low incidence of Alzheimer’s

disease, which has always been a pretty interesting observation. There’s usage
of it on a daily basis. And a lot of the areas in India, they’re exposed to really
serious conditions as far as heavy metal toxicity and a lot of the types of
things we consider very much western. And yet they still have such a low
incidence.

So it’s an epidemiological kind of observation, which is very generic. And there

are all these confounding factors that aren’t taken into account. But my
intuition leads me to believe that it has a lot to do with the benefits of
turmeric.

Jonathan: And we see this traditionally with cultures all around the world,
when it comes to the Japanese with sea vegetables. And they’re eating it all
the time. Curcumin in India, they’re eating it all the time. So it’s also getting
out of this western mindset of well, I’m going to take 10,000 milligrams all in
the morning of something, right, even vitamin C, for example, which is a great
antioxidant.

And, yes, you should get it from food. But also supplementation is great. But
the benefit of it is to really drip it in you, if you will, throughout the day
because you’re using it up. You use it up so quickly. It’s gone. And it just has
to get into you more and more. So it has to be just part of your lifestyle.

Are there other things, like vitamin D, you mentioned, or folic acid? So many

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people are deficient in vitamin D. I speak to many doctors all the time. And
most people that get a blood test, they’re under that number 30, which is just
the basic range and higher that you want to be in. And they’re saying most of
their patients are way under 30, which is really deficient.

Sayer: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said for vitamin D’s role in helping to
maintain the genetic and epigenetic infrastructure and superstructure of our
bodies, right? But I’m starting to appreciate more the fact that sunlight
exposure is far more healing and necessary than just any kind of singular
wavelength. UVB rays, right, on either side of solar noon, say two hours, is
where you generate your vitamin D.

But given that UVB, like UVA, is phototoxic, it turns out that we need the
whole spectrum of wavelengths that occur during the day from sunrise to
sunset, optimally, to be healthy. And when you see a sunrise, those
wavelengths are actually most important for neurological health. In fact they
have been shown to induce a cascade of genetic events in the brain that may
lead to activation of longevity pathways as well as antioxidant pathways.

I used to think okay, well vitamin C is so important. Well you can’t compare
vitamin C itself to the benefit of a whole orange. Well, that’s a good metaphor
because the whole sun, as well, is much more valuable than just vitamin D.
So, yes, vitamin D’s a good indicator. And you’re right. Most people, they’ll get
their blood test done, and they’ll find 30 nanograms, I think, per deciliter. And
they’ll hear that that’s great.

But technically that’s probably an indication of profound deficiency from

sunlight. But I would argue yes, being outdoors, breathing in the air, exposing
yourself to sunlight including sunsets, it’s all very relevant to the topic of
memory and Alzheimer’s.

Jonathan: And that’s probably for a whole other show that we would do. But,
boy, when we got into natural light, how disturbed is the human population
growing every day in terms of that disturbance of natural light? In the
morning, not being exposed to gazing at sunrises, or sunsets or just gazing at
the moon and really how that changes us on a hormonal level, as you say,
affects our neurological system.

And instead now so many people are exposed to artificial white light from TVs
and mobile devices way past ten p.m., which is that sweet spot of being able to
regenerate our body between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. And now we’re just up in the

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middle of the night, later on at night, looking at white light, throwing off our
hormonal balance. I mean it’s no wonder we have all these brain and
emotional and digestive disorders, no?

Sayer: Absolutely. In fact, as we know, the melatonin connection is very

powerful. And if we’re exposing ourselves to the wrong types of lights,
especially the artificial light later in the evening, then we are interfering with
one of the most powerful nerve protectives and, arguably, neurorestorative
agents that we produce, which is melatonin.

So I would say what I love so much about this discussion is that we’ve already
touched upon dozens of things in the “lifestyle,” from exposures to artificial
foods to environments to nutritional deficiencies. And that’s the beauty of it, is
that really, “Alzheimer’s disease” is not what we think it is.

If we were to address all of the things in our lifestyle that we do have a choice
about and just improve them a little, they all add up to contributing to a
regression, if not reversal, of some of the symptoms that, again, we were told
once you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s you can kind of kiss it goodbye
because there’s no effective treatment that exists, meaning no pharmaceutical
treatment, which we of course know is impossible for it to ever be effective
because it’s using synthetic chemicals to try to heal the brain.

So the beauty of it is, if we can get beyond the illusion of there being some
horrific sort of plague like brain disorder to the reality, which is, yeah, we’re
pretty screwed up in modern times, and you and I and hundreds of people out
there are speaking to what most people listening already know, if we improve
our diet, we get more natural exposure to the sun, clean air, water, then you
know what, things actually start to improve.

Jonathan: Sayer, I have a very strong feeling, as we close out this program,
that we’re going to be finishing very strong together. Besides diet, are there
any other therapeutic protocols that you feel could help someone with
Alzheimer’s, or dementia for that matter?

Sayer: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting because I have indexed, also, on that page
on Alzheimer’s what we call therapeutic actions, one of which is actually
sunlight exposure. So there’s been some research on that. Music therapy is
fascinating because music is such a fundamental ingredient in living a
soulful, happy life, in my opinion. And it turns out when we do activate that
aesthetic element and spiritual element, it starts to actually cause an

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improvement in Alzheimer symptoms. That has been clinically studied.

Massage, of all things, these elderly people often need touch. And in our
western model, where our children go off to college, and we don’t see them
again, we don’t live in a traditional way, there’s no “role” for the elderly the
way there used to be. And they don’t get touched and appreciated the way that
they should.

So in lieu of that, sometimes just having a good massage therapist, making

sure that basic fundamental need is met, which will also generate things like
oxytocin, which we know is essential for social intimacy and even social self-
contact, in a sense, of being a social being. And in terms of dietary
modifications, the Mediterranean diet has actually been found to be very
therapeutic when applied to those who are eating your standard American
diet, right?

So when you start to alter things towards healthier fats and more nutrient
dense foods and less of the more processed grains, you start to see a
significant improvement. So the research is pretty encouraging when it comes
to what we can do.

Jonathan: Sayer, I’m sure there are a lot of left brain oriented scientists out
there who would probably roll their eyes at what I’m about to say. But to be
honest, it really doesn’t matter to me because I could just feel this in my heart
and see it also with my intelligence, as well.

This whole idea of people, towards the end of their life and even, sadly, maybe
in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, may be feeling so alone and not feeling like they’re
being loved at all, how detrimental that can be for you mentally, obviously,
and emotionally. And that can play a role in, yes, eating bad food, hurting
your digestive system but also, what we’re talking about today, in, obviously,
showing up in signs of mental disorders from just someone feeling so
disconnected, which is really some of what you were just saying, right?

Sayer: Absolutely. I think it’s clear that we can very easily objectify those in
our life that we know aren’t getting what they need on a physical, emotional,
spiritual, social level. And labeling them as having Alzheimer’s, in some cases,
could just be a way of evading the reality of our humanist, our connection to
nature.

Our connection as social beings is being challenged in many ways. And it’s

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just important we realize that we don’t want to objectify each other by

overmedicalizing. We do want to acknowledge, though, through the lens of
compassion, that we have real physical challenges.

And I would say this, it’s a miracle we’re holding together so well considering
what we’re all exposed to. And that speaks to our resilience and a higher level
of guidance, on some level, and power that we’re imbued with. So there are
different ways of looking at it.

But I think the most important takeaway is that we have, every moment, this
miracle occurring within us. And the healing ability of even just the stem cell
lineage in our body is so well known. And it’s even a fact right here and now
that those stem cells are a continual lineage from the last universal common
ancestor about 3.4 billion years ago.

So there’s a threat of immortality that runs throughout our body. If we can

make sure that those stem cells are well nourished, that we’re not challenging
them through electromagnetic radiation constantly, and affecting them so that
they can’t replicate in a healthy way, then we have this sort of promise of
regeneration available to us. And that goes on until the day we die, really.
There’s still always some hope for healing that we have.

Jonathan: No doubt, always appreciating that the spiral works in both ways.
We can be going up, or we could be going down in terms of the way we think
every given moment, whether we trigger that off ourselves or perhaps be
fortunate enough to hang out with someone who sparks that in us, that we
change the way we think. We change the way we feel.

Or perhaps simply changing the way we physically are eating or doing

something, which then sparks us off mentally and emotionally in a more
positive direction. It’s important for us to appreciate that all of this is playing
its role out, as you say, every day we’re alive, to never give up hope and to
understand that this is really going on every day that we are alive.

Sayer: I love it. The only thing I would add is that it’s, to me, about the power
of choice. And when we’re told “we have a disease label,” and the moment we
accept it just without any critical inquiry, we’re really saying we have no
choice. And that’s exactly the opposite, I think, of what you and I are speaking
to. And the truth is that we all do have a lot of power to choose differently.
And it could be as simple as eating a little differently, as you said. Or it could
be a bigger step in the way we think. But it’s really empowering to know that.

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Jonathan: Sayer, I want to thank you so much for your time. And I want to
thank our listeners for joining us today. If you would like a copy of this
program, plus all the other presentations inside The Alzheimer’s and
Dementia Summit, simply click the banner you see on this page. Thanks
again for attending The Alzheimer’s and Dementia Summit. Talk to you soon.
Take care.

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