You're listening to The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly Bulletproof Radio. Welcome to Interventions with Dave. What you're going to hear on this is going to be somewhat detailed, but you're going to learn the mindset for troubleshooting and upgrading. I'm going to talk with people about how to manage whatever's going on with nutritional and lifestyle strategies. And then here's what.
you might want to go ask your doctor about. To be really clear, this is not a replacement for doctors, but you should be prepared when you go into the doctor. So sometimes there's an idea you can plant a seed working in partnership with a functional medicine provider and magically. You get better outcomes. That's what we want to do here. And our...
victim today. I'll go with, let's go with victim. That's what it feels like. Right. Is Carrie Glassman, registered dietitian, certified nutritionist. And she was just on the show talking about omnibiotic life, the probiotics. And at the end of the show, she said, you know, I couldn't remember this one thing. And she had this long list of excuses. So tell me what's going on. Tell me what you said.
It wasn't even that long. My number one blame, my number one blame was perimenopause. My hormones are shifting. I'm going to be 50 in January. And my word recall lately has been crap.
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perimenopause. My hormones are shifting. I'm going to be 50 in January. And my word recall lately has been crap. What is going on with that? So I've always been super interested in cognition and brain health and Alzheimer's runs in my family. And I just like to feel on and sharp.
super busy. I work really hard and I like to feel good and be on. So when I am not 100% on and when I'm feeling the least bit off, I'm not happy about that. And I've noticed over the past couple of years as my hormones are shifting. My memory, my word recall is just not as sharp as it used to be. And it's driving me mental. So you're going to hack me?
I'm going to hack you. And the way this episode came about is we finished recording the Omnibiotic and she's like, oh my God, I couldn't remember something. That's really pissing me off. And I said, let's just hack this really quick. This might be a short episode. We don't know what we're going to talk about.
Honestly, this is an area where I think a short conversation could have a really big difference for you and for anyone. Now, you've made an assumption that you're losing words because of perimenopause. Have you tested that assumption? So my hormones, the last time I tested, which was actually about a year and a half ago. So I have not recently. I'm actually doing that in September.
I'm doing a home workout. No, they were actually, they didn't show any changes yet. Like they actually showed that they were fine. No, they really did. I mean, they didn't show signs that they were, that I should be having any issues. yet. But as we know, that's just certain blood tests. That doesn't mean that your body still hasn't shifted. You're saying I'm losing words. My working memory isn't what I want it to be, or actually that's long-term memory, not working memory.
So you took a hormone test. You said it must be perimenopause. Your hormone test didn't show anything weird. So you told yourself it still must be perimenopause. So you'd have an excuse, even though the data didn't match your excuse. Is this an accurate assessment? Yeah.
And I probably wouldn't necessarily say that for, let's say, a client. But I know based on, again, it's still been a year and a half since I had it. So I'm saying that the lot could have shifted. So I say a year and a half ago when that happened, I'm saying. This is since then. So I'm just assuming that things have started to shift. So that wasn't actually.
the exactly accurate answer. Okay, but you said for the last couple of years you've had a problem. So the problem started, you got your hormones, the hormones didn't indicate they were the source of the problem, but you're still continuing the narrative. It's just not a proven narrative and you shouldn't believe it. Maybe there's something else.
You're right. Oh, my God. You're right. It's OK. And this is one thing that happens with people who work in healing professions. You know, doctors and healers of all stripes have a very hard time turning it around on themselves because you have to be.
able to take away the parts of shortcut thinking that are built in that we can't see it just to save energy. Especially if you're having an energy problem in your brain, your brain will take even more shortcuts and everything feels harder than it is. The things you would rule out are heavy metals because heavy metals are a major cause of word loss in the brain, specifically mercury and maybe lead. You got to get a test for those. And if those levels are high.
then that is your issue and it has nothing to do with your hormones. Second thing is, did you get a thyroid panel? I'm doing that in September. Okay, good. That's really important. Yeah, I'm doing that in September. Around 50, around perimenopause, even before your sex hormones change, it's very common for thyroid to just take a little dip. And if you're lucky and you have normal kind of thyroid things that just come with aging, your TSH is going to creep up above one.
And even if you don't get your other thyroid markers, that's probably enough to say just a teeny tiny bit of thyroid is going to help. I think almost everyone over 50 benefits from an eighth of a grain because like, oh, it's normal. Everyone your age has those kind of thyroid scores. Like, no.
Anti-aging professionals want between 0.2 and 1.0 on your TSH and adequate T3 and T4 and not too much reverse T3. So you got to get that dialed in because when energy levels are slightly low in the brain, the brain will feel it first of any part of the body because the brain has the most mitochondria.
per cell. The neurons there are just studded with them. So if you can't make enough energy, it's like, what's not important? Remembering an old fact. So it takes these shortcuts. You want to turn your memory on, you turn your energy back up.
Go to the thermostat and turn it up because it's likely off because in menopause, it gets off for almost everyone and in andropause as well. The second thing that may be affecting it but probably isn't because you got it tested would be your testosterone levels. And when you get those retested, as long as they're not dropping, you're fine. But...
I do find there can be a correlation between adequate testosterone and brain function. And there is in men and women, a correlation of testosterone and synaptic density even. So you just want to make sure those hormones are there, but it's probably an energetic problem. or a toxin problem. If it is due to perimenopause, then we start looking at mast cell mediated inflammation in the brain because as estrogen levels rise and progesterone levels fall.
It makes your mast cells more sensitive in the brain. Mast cells are the cells responsible for protecting you as part of your immune system. They're also the ones that give you hot flushes and they give you hives and give you night sweats. And they're activated by... histamine, they just become very easy to activate when you are
in your 50s and you're a woman. And you go through a period of that and they're easy to activate because of estrogen. To fix it, black cumin seed oil can help or sometimes even just a medication like a claritin. can do wonders. Reduce allergic inflammation and having a healthy gut is one of the biggest things you can do. You already know that. You're already doing that. So maybe turning down mast cell sensitivity with Claritin.
may be helpful. If you have a really bad brain fog, Benadryl before bed on occasion may be helpful. And if you wake up the next morning feeling like, oh my God, I got everything back. Now you know that it's that kind of inflammation. You're going to get a mercury test. And you may need progesterone cream if your labs say it. You may need DHEA only if your labs say it. You may need Pregnant Alone only if your labs say it. And I'm saying that for listeners because...
If you're listening to this thing, I can go to the store and buy Pregnenolone and DHEA. Yes, you can. And that doesn't mean you need them. And if you take them as a man or a woman, DHEA and Pregnenolone are... parent hormones. They can turn into almost anything, including the hormones you don't want. So if you're a man, look, I took DHEA.
And I got man boobs and I lost my libido. By the way, that's what DHEA does to me. So I don't take DHEA. I take other stuff like testosterone, right? So you just need to know. But in your case, I'd be looking at cortisol as well. Yeah, that's hormone. Right. And everyone has more now. Well, absolutely. And it's funny because you were saying that I was not good at looking at myself as my own patient, which I totally understand. And that is why you need to go see other experts and professionals.
I said you failed. They're different. Well, of course, because as my boyfriend says to me, who is not a medical professional in... or a health and wellness person in any way, shape or form, other than the fact that he eats healthy. He just says to me, there is nothing wrong. You're not in perimenopause. You just have way too many things on your plate and there's just too much in your brain. So there's probably a little bit of that.
going on too, but I like everything you suggested. This is super helpful. Have you been tested for ADHD? So fascinating. You should ask me that. Around this time of year, you might notice your skin is dry or dull or irritated. It's because cold weather disrupts your skin barrier. That's the shield that keeps moisture in and environmental stress out.
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So fascinating. You should ask me that because my son actually has ADHD. He is 19. So I've done lots and lots of research. obviously just having him as my son for the past 19 years. So I've been researching this topic extensively over the years, and I've had him on a good regimen of supplements and lifestyle.
changes over the years. And he's amazing and doing amazing. But it's funny, as I've done all this reading, I think to myself all the time, hmm, I think I probably wasn't diagnosed as a child. I just overcame all of this. Through behavior changes, I've overcome most of it. And then I've been reading actually a lot about women in their 40s and 50s being diagnosed who were never diagnosed because also we know that many people, again, when we were 20, 30, 40 years ago.
We weren't diagnosed with that or the amount of people diagnosed was much less. I'm sorry, you were diagnosed with that. You needed happy pills. They were called benzos. And that was the diagnosis. They would just hand out benzos like Captain Crunch cereal to housewives who couldn't see.
it because a lot of them had ADHD. It runs in women and men. And if I can just save you some money on diagnosis, there's like a 90% chance based on this conversation that you would fall in that bucket. And you already know it because you read all the papers. Well, and by the way, I'll say my daughter's then very...
Mark, she's going to be 16. And she says to me all the time, okay, Rex has this, you're doing this and doing this. You got, you got to go on some, you got to go on his regimen to me all the time. So perhaps Okay, here's two things, actually three things I'm going to recommend for you. Number one, Daniel Amen at Amen Clinics is a dear friend. He changed my life when I was an adult with ADHD who didn't know it.
And I did a spec scan at one of his clinics years ago. I am actually on his board of directors for Amen Clinics now, and I talk with him regularly, and he's got 200,000 brain scans. He can look at your brain and tell you exactly what's going on if you want to go really deep on this stuff. That would be useful. If you want to say, all right, I'm going to self-medicate because there's some work here.
One of the most powerful drugs for what you want is called aniracetam, A-N-I-R-A-C-E-T-A-M. This is a gray market drug in that it's not banned in the U.S. It's just not... admitted to exist by the physician's desk reference. It is a type of cognitive enhancing drug that has been in existence for about 40 or 50 years, very well studied, originally made by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in its paracetam form.
Aniracetam increases memory IO. I have been on it for 20 something years. And it's one of the reasons that I can do what I do because I have unusually good memory IO because I use drugs that give it to me. And it protects neurons from cell death anyway. And it also has a mild anti-anxiety effect. So maybe you should try some anorastin. It's going to cost like 30 or 40 bucks for a bottle of it.
That sounds amazing. A couple in the morning. You might need a little bit of choline. I recommend CDP choline instead of alpha GPC, the stuff they put in. alpha brain or whatever. Alpha GPC creates problems with cell membranes that CDP choline doesn't. So you might need a choline donor or take a bunch of lecithin if you prefer. or phosphatocholine. Okay. But not everyone needs that, but some people benefit from it. You probably will benefit from it.
because anoralsim increases your brain's use of choline. And then on top of that, why don't you just go for the big guns? I was on Nightline talking about the stuff. Modafinil. Modafinil is the limitless drug.
It gives you amazing focus. It's off-label use since the late 90s has been for ADHD, but it's way better than taking prescription meth, which is also Adderall. And what you find is with... maybe even 100 milligrams, which is the lowest dose or even half of the lowest dose of that in the morning.
it's just so much easier to focus. And by the way, everyone else around you seems really slow because you're like, my brain works, but it's really, really helpful for ADHD brains or for jet lag or for a day when like nothing works. It's a really big difference. I took it every day for eight years and it got me through business school. It helped me learn to meditate, made a huge difference. But then I started doing what is now 40 years of Zen.
with years of development of neurofeedback. I spent six months with the electrodes on my head between the smart drugs, between all the cognitive enhancements, between things like CoQ10, which would benefit you because it helps with your mitochondria.
Things like red light therapy, you're going to get a true light, one of the brand new true light devices that's four times more powerful than anything else out there right now. You can take something called methylene blue along with your red light therapy. Do you know about methylene blue? It's, well, a very old dye that was used in surgery or in those little blue drops. Well, it turns out the...
A prescription version of that, or at least the human food grade version of it, is very active for improving mitochondria, especially around red light. So you can take up to 10 milligrams orally. Your tongue will turn blue like you kissed a smurf. then you use your red light and that actually really improves mitochondrial function. So you might feel it on your brain. Speaking of which, one of the first ways I regenerated my brain was with...
focused infrared light on my brain. So you can take red and infrared lights and put them around your head and they'll improve blood flow everywhere. Honestly, get your mitochondria working. Take some antiracetam, maybe modafinil in the morning if you really, really need it. Not everyone needs it. And get your heavy metal test and get your thyroid test. And maybe it's menopause, but I don't think so. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is amazing. Okay, but we forgot to talk about one thing.
And I can't believe I forgot anytime. Oh, in the last couple of years, this new problem happened. Tell me about water damage in your home. the type of water or if there's been any water damage like floods or anything like that. Floods, leaky sinks under the cabinet, leaking dishwashers, roof leaks. I live in New York City in an apartment building. Nothing really in our specific apartment. Nothing really. Yeah. You might want to.
check out a mold test. They're something that you can do now in your house for really, really affordable prices. And I'm just checking this URL for you to make sure it's the right one. Yeah. And this is actually interesting that you're bringing this up because my daughter gets really bad headaches and I get headaches too.
Okay. That's actually one of the reasons I don't drink alcohol, really. It started from... Now it's more brain health, but it started with alcohol that just trigger horrible migraines. So I've been saying, actually, we need to get a mold test in here. We need to get a mold test.
And my boyfriend keeps saying, there's nothing. This apartment's fine, blah, blah, blah. And we keep having this whole conversation and this debate about it. So if you have a resource for me, I will trust your resource and go with it. First is moldymovie.com. It is free. This is my documentary on toxic mold. One of the guys I interviewed lives in New York city and he's a hedge fund manager who was completely taken out by.
mold in his apartment building, which was a LEED approved brand new expensive apartment building. So New York. tends to have problems. Also, the subway is riddled with mold and has been flooded recently. So if you take the subway regularly, I promise you, you're getting mold. In fact, some of my wife's fertility clients had to stop riding the subway in order to get pregnant because they were getting... so many toxins that way and they were hyper reactive to it. So.
Yikes. As a New Yorker, I don't want to tell you not to take the subway, but I do think you really, really want to get a mold test in your apartment. There's a company called GotMold at gotmold.com that can send you a test kit.
And that could be an interesting thing for you just to figure out, all right, is it going on? I kind of have a sneaking suspicion that maybe more than you think it is, at which point if it's not specific to your... apartment and you don't have massive levels of it, maybe just good quality HEPA air filters and this company called Home Biotic. like probiotic, but homebiotic. They make a mold probiotic you spray around the house that competes with mold.
I know about this because I'm the founder of the company because toxic mold trashed me. It's one of the reasons I weighed 300 pounds. I'm going to get even with that stuff. So homebiotic.com. If you find in a, in a. air tests from gotmold.com that there's an issue. You might want to check it out. So those are other ideas. We do have good air filters. I bought those. I have that. I bought those. It's like $200 or $300, I think.
I would do that for sure. And then you'll know, because I suspect anytime people start to lose words, mold toxins are a major thing. I went down the metals path and forgot to ask you about mold because that's... That's so common, especially when it's a recent change. Like what happened? Well, you would know the guy two units up or down had a massive flood and it ran down the walls and stuff like that happens all the time in big apartment buildings.
You are amazing. This is incredible. Happy, happy to be of service. And thank you, Carrie, for being on the show now twice because we got to do a little bit of an intervention. It's been a ton of fun and I will see you. on the interwebs thank you so much you're listening to the human upgrade with dave asprey
The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products.
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