#2060 Reversing Cognitive Decline - Dr. Denise Furness

And where I'm not consistent is you know the exercise that's twenty twenty six. And we might even touch on that, Craig, because I've had people asking me from a podcast a few ago that we didn't follow up on an exercise thin wit chatted about with me. But I work really hard on my sleep. But this is not a new thing. I haven't I realized the terminology, the words that I've used. I've always said, you know, I'm not a great sleeper. You know, we obviously have these sleep experts that say

sleeps your superpower. I would say sleep's not my superpower. But now that I track, and I'm not saying everyone should track, because some people it causes them more anxiety. But I'm often pleasantly surprised. You know, Okay, I might have only got five hours sleep, but I actually got you know, two hours of deep sleep, an hour and forty five of rem I'm like, that's good. I got a lot of restorative sleep. But I work on it.

I have a I plan my sleep. When I'm traveling, I try to have a wind down wind down not wine, because that is not good for sleep. Wind down routine. I have to clarify that because if you people go, oh cool, a wine, wine, wine down routine. I'll have some wine at night. No, no wine. And I do have a little bit of a supplement regime, but the supplements I don't think would work if I wasn't doing everything else, and you know, trying to get out in the morning see the sunlight as soon as I get

to the other side of the world. What am I doing. I'm walking. I'm trying to get into that time zone, you know, eating at certain times. So my sleep, believe it or not, during this stage and with everything I do, is good. But I've focused on sleep for many, many years as someone that's had children and one the second one was not a good sleeper and an auto imune condition, and understanding rest and stuff. So sleep's been my priority.

And actually for all the listeners out there that think, you know, I can't do anything about it, when you really do start to understand your triggers and what you need to do, you know there's no point going to bed if you're wide awake. Like for example, I was just in Sydney last week and I was at at dinner even though it was eleven o'clock at night and past my bedtime. I'm an old lady. I didn't go to bed in the hotel room. I stayed up for an hour just packing my bag, chilling out, having a

CAMAMALTI because I know that's going to relax me. By the time I go to sleep, I'll be ready to go to sleep. I'm going to have a better sleep than laying there going oh past my bedtime. I've got to wake up early for a flight. So yeah, that's my little two cents for you all.

other depending on your relationship with that particular variable. But yeah, I think that the hardest really is is sleep, because like you can just choose to eat better, and now you're eating better. You can choose to move your body more, and now you're moving your body more. But you can't just choose to have a good night's sleep. You know,

that's kind of out of your control. Yes, there are things that you can do to prove the chances of having a better night's sleep, but I think that's the toughest. You know, probably that and anxiety, like sleep and just managing one's mind, and obviously they go hand in hands. Poor sleep and overthinking and rumination those things don't always but often go together. Yeah, but there are so many things which it's really just a matter of making that

decision and doing that thing. All right, well, I'm doing four weeks with no booze. Cool, Well that's just a decision and not saying it's an easy one, but it's absolute. You just do it. And now I'm ten days in, I've had no booze, so every day I've had no booze. But you can't say I'm going to do twenty eight days of sound asleep. You can't do that. So you've got to go. Fuck. I hope I sleep tonight. What are the things that I can do to optimize my

chances of sleeping well? And then some people do that, but then they worry so much about sleep that then they get into bed worried that they're not going to sleep. And that's that fucking anxiety about the sleep that keeps them awake.

snake's are huge. And there was a big spider in the walking robe which is behind us. And by the way, welcome back to Queensland and East. We've got spiders and we've got jellyfish and it's so crazy living up here.

But he was trying to be really quiet because he was so scared of waking me up because he knows how you know, anxious I used to get about sleep. But we had a conversation because he actually mentioned he said, you know, you focus so much on sleep, but you know what about the exercise, even if he now mentions it. And I was like, I actually think I'm a good sleeper. And this is very new, like this is very very recent, as in like weeks, as in the last few weeks.

I've just changed my dialogue that actually I am a pretty good sleeper. And with all the life and with all the lifestyle things I do and all the stuff going on, I have now worked. And it's not that I always have a perfect sleep, don't get me wrong. But I know what I can do to improve my sleep. I know what's going to disrupt my sleep, and if I do have one bad night's sleep, it's not a big deal. Like that's where I'm at.

If you have insomnia, or you're over fifty, certain certain things, you can just go to the pharmacist. It's their discretion and most of the time they'll give you a two milligram slow release melotone. And I think if you are having issues sleeping, like it's becoming an issue you do, think you've got insomnia, or you're having anxiety, or you're traveling into nationally like I do, I would suggest using it,

but I don't suggest using it long term. So we don't have any hard data to say that long term is dangerous. But very recently there was a big scare in the media that long term malatonia increases risks of cardiovascular events. However, when I dug into the research, actually it's a kind of retrospective study. They've just gone back to hospital records and they've associated people that mark down taking melatonin with sort of heart attacks. But it's people

taking malatonin for years. But the truth is a lot of people taking melatonin might not have reported it. The ones that were taking melatonin might have had more insomnia and serious issues, and that could have been the issue around the cardiovascular events. So when you look at the study, it actually brings up more questions than answers. But the media jumped on it and made it sound like if you're having melatone and you're increasing risk of heart attacks.

I even got a bit scared. But as I said, I went to the research paper and it made me think, well, I don't take it consistently. You know, I'm not taking it for years and years. It's not high dose, but we don't want to be reliant on something. But if you are having issues, to maybe get you out of that funk, get you out of that anxious period, melotonin

can be really helpful for most people. And I'd always start the lowest dose possible and then you know, build up slowly if you think it's not helping, So that's really going in strong though, Like melotonin's like straight to the stuff. There'd be things I would do before melotone and basic things. Magnesiums very calming for people at night. Some people benefit up a lot just from magnesium. L cnine is something. There's a particular type of lthanine, the

alpha wave lthanine. Lots of different brands have that specific form of lthanine that's been studied, the alpha wave that really helps with the deep sleep. I again respond really well because I do tracking and even just little things like a wind down routine, something at night that you're not sitting there scrolling social media, even if you think it's not stressing you out, you know, don't. You can't.

You can't control what you see, and then something triggers you and then you get a little bit of caught. That cortisole stops your natural malatonin, which is your sleep hormone. And I should have mentioned that if people don't know what malatonin is, it's your natural hormone that increases during the night. It's what comes up at night and helps us sleep. And it's really more about our body understanding

that Cicadian rhythm, which is that day night cycle. We do have rhythms and cycles, and one of the best things you can do, aside from all the supplements, is just waking up in the morning and seeing the sun telling your body it's morning, and then at night being in the dark and just calming down the system to go okay, day night. This is how it should work. You know, we confuse ourselves with all the blue light, the stresses eating late at night, you know, sleeping in

or not seeing the light in the morning. People are wearing sunglasses and that the body doesn't know, or they're wearing even blue blockers in the morning. A lot of people now having blue blockers. I don't have mine on today, but I usually wear mine in the day for the screen, and people think our blue blockers are great all the screen, But that's more at night. It's actually normal to see some blue light in the morning. So there's a lot of mixed signals from just our environment that we can

work on before we even think about supplements. You know, just getting up doing some movement, a bit of a bit of walking or something in the morning and then not having that blue light at night.

see you later. Just my daughter. Now, I don't know if she's just it's genetic and she's like me, or if it is a male female. I'm just going on what happens in my household. But in my household, the males just go to sleep. Estelle, My daughter is just like me. So we've got an audiobook on, we're reading a story, or we're just doing a little bit of coloring. Again, it's that wine down. She wants to talk to you. Oh, no, I need to go to the toilet now, Oh I

didn't get my water bottle. Like it goes on for an hour. It's fascinating to watch Harry just bed sleep done.

I'm doing. You know, women are often doing what they're doing thinking about ten thousand things, like we've just got so much going on in our brain. So I do think that is a big component. I also think post baby, even tho I'm talking about my daughter who's only nine, you know, taking longer to get to sleep and just to calm down. I think my sleep got a lot.

There was a real period of years and years where I was an extremely light sleeper, whereas now, even though I'm perimenopausal, I'm actually getting a bit more deep sleep. But for many years I didn't. Yes, my daughter used to wake me up, but even when she wasn't waking me up, I was just you're on this like any noise, any noise, and it's so annoying when your husband doesn't hear the noises. Oh my god, did you hear her?

Did you hear like anything? I'm up? And I do think that is some evolutionary maternal thing, protective mechanism to be like, are the kids okay? Again, we don't know this for sure, but I definitely had years of very very light sleep and everything woke me up, every single noise.

you do you have any do you go? I think it's about as good as it's ever been. It's maybe a bit worse at this, a bit better at that. How do you Because I think about my brain performance a lot, because I'm old, like way older than you, and I think about you know, I'm I'm more concerned with my cognitive function than my biceps. And that's fucking saying something for me, because you know, there was about fifty years where I'm like, it's all about, you know, insecure, overthinking,

ego driven, maniacal. Not fifty years, but a good thirty years where I've just cared way too much about how I looked. And it's funny. Now I just think about how can I make my brain work great? What's your brain kind of performance?

you need to be a bit more focused. And sometimes I'm a bit distracted too many things happening. But overall, I'm very happy with my with my ability to learn to retain new information, which I think is important. And I feel like I I even though you know I would be kind of mid age, I feel like I'm still growing, Like I don't feel old, which is great to say after six weeks of international travel. Like at

the moment, I'm actually feeling believe it. I'm not pretty good, But as I said, I've been very much focused on sleep, very much focused on basic things like walking, hydration, like such basics. But I have to factor them in. I have to factor them in so that I don't burn out. But I feel like my brain's pretty good. Next year, I will do a lot less international travel and I want to focus more on clinic and get back into seeing these patients that are very much interested in their

cognitive health. And I'll probably bring back in the cognitive assessments that we did in Melbourne, so the clinic down the road from you craig your health. In Brighton we used to do cognitive assessments. So there are little memorys and things you can do to assess your memory and if it's deceived, if there is a bit of cognitive decline, and by the way, if there is, it doesn't mean that's it. We actually can do a lot to improve it. I think I'll bring these things back in next year

because they are important tools. I like tools, as you can tell, I like to track. But generally I feel I'm really happy to say I feel great considering my mum was really having memory issues, strange things, even hallucinations, but she sort of had weird like frontal lobe stuff going on before the diagnosis. But mumum was having symptoms at my age. And I'm definitely not. I'm not like I'm doing well.

I'm not interested, Like I'm not interested. But then you know, obviously, doing what I've been doing at UNI for the last six years is a very different kind of environment and focus for me. But even though you know you're often doing stuff which is not fun or easy or painless or comfortable or all of those things. In an academic environment, and as you well know, Denise, but that that kind of using or that kind of use of my brain

has been really good for me beyond academia. It's like really expanded the way that I think, and it's really expanded me in ways that I didn't expect, beyond just learning how to research and how to run studies and interpret data and write papers and read papers and a fucking thesis and all that stuff. But it's like for me, I reckon thirty or forty percent of it is getting the PhD, but sixty percent of it maybe is all the cognitive benefits. I feel my brain works better now

than when I started. And when I started, I was fifty six, so you know, and now I'm sixty two. So for me, that's a really and maybe I'm wrong, but you know, how do you know? But as objective as I can be about me and my brain and my mind and my cognitive performance, it feels like like I don't I don't feel like I lose my place or I blank out, or almost the opposite. It's like I can't get the shit out of my head quick enough.

It's like my mouth works at one, my mouth works at one, and my brain works at two point zero and my gob can't keep up with my brain sometimes.

like I'm better at speaking that I am writing. But I'm really starting to lean into writing. I've had to write, I had to write a thesis, I've got to write papers. But I really don't like it, and something's changing. I'm starting to enjoy putting things down on paper. I think it's not so much the writing. I enjoy sharing, and I think the talking and speaking on stages all the time is exhausting. Writing's kind of nice if I'm not putting that pressure on myself to be perfect. Maybe That's

where I'm at now. I'm getting older, I'm less of a perfectionist to think I didn't like writing because I thought I wasn't good at it, just it was never happy with it. When you speak, that's it, it's done, can't change it. But writing I can go over it and over it and over it, and I'll never be happy. Whereas now it's like just get it out there. This information is and now it's like this information is so important if again we're thinking about brain health, like people

need to know this stuff. It could change people's life. It doesn't matter how it's written. The content has got to get out there. So I feel like I'm growing, and I think for everyone listening, Yes, you want to focus on what you're good at because you love it and you're more likely to do well because it's your passion and you enjoy it. But you definitely want to

stretch yourself. You definitely want to do things that are hard, things that you don't like, because that's where you will grow in other areas and you'll actually get you will get a level of satisfaction and growth keeps in that word. I don't usually use that word, but that's sort of what's coming to me. Because even if you're in forty fifty, sixty seventy, you can still be growing your mind, growing your muscles. We're not over at a certain age, so

I think you know everything you've done, Craig. So good for your brain. And when we again thinking about cognitive decline or cognitive ability, there was a paper published in April. And not that we need the research to prove this, but it's nice to see good data. But there was a paper published that was looking at the risk factors and the preventative things we can do to reduce dementia in Alzheimer's, stroke and hypertension because they're also closely linked.

And when it came to the brain, cognitive activity as a protective factor stood out above everything. Yes, exercise is important, a whole food diet comes up, but activity using your brain. When you're looking at the reason I keep people can't see me because we're on a podcast, but I keep sort of stretching my hand out because it shows you in a circle. There's a visual. But the one that

stands out the most is cognitive cognitive activity. Use your brain, keep learning things, keep doing new things, and that will keep your brain young.

you meant to do your ten thousand steps. It's eleven o'clock at night, and you know you could get away with not doing You're up to seven. You've got to do three more, and you could just go to bed, and you go, fuck it, I'm going to go do my three just because I want to tick this box every day and I know I don't have to, but I'm going to. So when you do these things that you don't need to do or you don't have to do by necessity, but you just choose to do them.

So you take the you know, the narrow path, not the wide path, or the higher path not the lower path. There's a part of a brain that actually gets bigger, which is that the anterior mid singulate cortex. And Andrew Huberman talks about this quite a lot. But what it

does is irrespective of the task. It could be cleaning your room, it could be going for a run, it could be having a hard conversation with somebody that you really don't want to have, but you you just put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants and you go and have the conversation. And so it's in the doing of these things that are mentally and perhaps physically challenged that this part of the brain adapts

and crads new neural pathways and physically gets bigger. Then when we do that, over time, we just get better at doing hard things, you know. And it's like the beauty of this is our brain can keep adapting and learning and upgrading pretty much at any age. You know. Obviously, with people with real degradation there are issues. But for the average person listening to this, who isn't in the

middle of you know, Alzheimer's or some kind of brain disease. Yeah, the thing is we can all train our brain and prove our cognitive function focus, attention, memory, recall performance, you know, even maths, even writing, even creativity. I mean, that's the beauty of this stuff. That's why I just love the fact that, well two things. One, we have more potential

than we understand. I know that sounds cliche, but I truly believe that on a range of levels physically, mentally, emotionally, creatively, professionally, personally, we just have more talent than we realize. But then the next challenge is getting people to actually believe that, because I think our self doubt and our fear gets in the way of what we can do.

decline in Alzheimer's. You know, parts of the brain that had so much damage or all lit up doing the scans and then the improvement you know, in three to six months, and particularly in twelve months. So there is a lot happening, and I came away from that event just like mind blown. The advancements, mind you. I mean they are talking about some pharmaceuticals potentially, there are some drugs coming out, but our focus wasn't on that. The

focus is on the lifestyle thing. So he has a pretty it's a very intense program he has reversing Alzheimer's clinics in the US. But it's the diet, it's the exercise, it's the supplements. There's no one protocol that's working out. What were the triggers, you know, if someone got mold, or is it the genetics? You know? Is it this? Is it that you know? There are different things some people say Alzheimer's is you know type three diabetes. A

lot of people have blood sugar issues. But it's working through all of that and bringing the body back to balance and people can heal even further along in the journey than what's than once we thought, so really really promising. I would say in the next five to ten years, hopefully it becomes a lot more known that we really can do so much, because I think a lot of people still don't even realize I think that's it. You've got a diagnosis, get your things in order, you know,

that's it, You're done. And that's not the case at all.

body weight and so on. But yeah, so my daily protocol is about I would say ten to fifteen, probably somewhere in the twelve. I take two tea spoons which I reckon is about six and six grams slightly heaped, and I feel good. I feel like my brain works better. I would call it cognitive support. I wouldn't call it a miracle or anything. But you know, the thing is that it's hard to know, isn't it, because there are so many variables around what makes your brain work well?

Like I sleep really well, so that helps. I don't drink booze, so that helps. I don't eat shit food, so that helps. I stay really well hydrated, so that helps I lift weights. That helps I don't really suffer from anxiety or stress. Helps. I have good social support. A few people love me, so that helps. You know, there are so many things that impact how a person's

brain works, you know, for good or bad. Then to try to think, oh, this is going to make a twenty five percent difference or a two percent difference or no difference, it's almost impossible to know because you know

you're doing so many things at once. But I think if you for people who want to and whether or not it's with creatine or any kind of intervention or any kind of thing, that you want to try keep everything else the same and introduce one thing you know, don't introduce two things or three things or four things, because then we don't know what's working.

have the exact doses. So being very cautious of what you're actually getting and if you have the opportunity working with a but if not, at least speaking to someone at the health food store sometimes as a naturopath or an expert or even the pharmacist that pharmacies usually have someone that's trained in the supplements that you can have a chat to. The reason I ask about the creatine is there was you know these podcasts. I love Ronda Patrick. You know, Ronda Patrick and I do similar things, but

she stayed in in research. But she was saying, you know, fifteen grams. I think it was fifteen, maybe more than that, but we'll get rid of jet lag. And there was all this stuff, and I get jet lag, right, I'm flying from the other side. So I had fifteen grams and as I've done it twice now because I thought I may be the first time, and I'm about to use a different type of creatine, even though I know

the stuff I've got pure, it's compounded. But anyway, I'm going to try a different one and see if it's the type. But on both occasions, I have felt like awful, like actually a little bit. It made me feel worse, a little bit, almost sort of dizzy, not nice in that, like a little bit, tiny bit not off. I feel more off, and one hundred percent did not get rid of my jet lag. I was devastated. And the first

time I thought, oh, maybe that's a one off. The second time, however, now I went to a talk just last month in Hong Kong, but they were saying you never have fifteen grams as a one off, Like they said you should have five grams three times a day. So I thought, okay, maybe that is the issue. Though that wasn't talked about people to say have a high dose. The impression I got is that you needed to have that much for it to cross the blood rain barrier.

If you have the smaller doses that we typically have, like five grams, which I'm fine with, you won't get that. But then I've now heard you would never have that much at once because you do get you know, gastrointestinal stuff things like that, have it spread a day. So that's the difficult thing too, you know, knowing how to take things. But yeah, just be cautious. I'm obviously very experimental with myself and I know that I can get good quality products. But for me personally, I did not

feel better having that much. Unfortunately, that is not my wonder drug at the moment. But I'll keep you posted if things.

are just basically eating lollies. Yeah, it's such an unregulated, dodgy industry, especially when.

Where are they getting the ingredients? I can't advise you. They're like, should I take this? I'm like, the ingredients look great, but are they the ingredients? Are they the dose? I can't advise you because I don't know that product and I don't know who makes it. The things that I'm generally recommending, I know that brand. I trust that brand. You know it's approved through TGA or other regulatory bodies for my international clients. So you do need to be

very cautious of what you're taking. And that's another thing I'll say about malatona. I mean, malatonin's got really strict in Australia. Once upon a time people were just buying it online. Now it's really heavily regulated. It's unlikely you'll find it online. But the reason why melatonin, as we used to be prescription only now at the discretion of the pharmacist. If you have a chat, if they're unsure, they might send you to the doctor to get a script.

But once upon a time you could just buy it online. It didn't matter. But the reality is they've done the studies and a lot of those ones online had more. Most of the time they had less, but occasionally they had more. But the reason Whyustralia is cracked down is

they've had I can't remember the number. To me, it didn't seem striking considering how many children there are in Australia, but I think it was over a thousand reported don't quite beyond that, but reported overdoses of melatonin in children because a lot of parents give these gummies to kids. Now, I don't personally recommend that. I have a daughter who's not a great sleeper, but I don't choose to give her malatonin. I choose to sit with her and as if we read a book, or we have certain things,

or in saying that though kids are pretty smart. When I travel, her dad tells her to go to bed, and she goes to bed, but when mum's around. But so I don't choose to give my children malatonin. I do know for children on the spectrum and that have a lot of maybe more anxiety and things like that, you could consider it. It sleeps so important and if it helps, but in general, teaching kids to wind down at night and things like that is I think more important.

But we've had lots of overdoses of melatonin in children because they think they're lollies and they overdose and then they're in the hospital, and yeah, big issues there. So that's why it's become almost impossible, which is a good thing to buy online in Australia.

a bit cheaper. Arrived at my post office, which is just up the road, giddy up butter Cup, and I'm like, woo who and I spray it on. I'm like, that doesn't smell like the normal stuff. And then and then I look at the bottle. I look at the thing, and the normal after shave or perfume or whatever you want to call it, it's like it's like a light yellow color. It's like apple juice the color. And this is just clear like water. And I'm like, oh, this isn't it. It's in the same bottle, it's in the

same packaging, it's identical. Then you open it and it's not. It's not what I paid for. It's literally not that after shave. And it smells like it doesn't smell terrible, but it doesn't smell great. And yeah, literally different stuff. So that's my that's my one and only fora into online shopping at this point in time.

spray the gidiotoran under here. I'm just going to put it all over me and I'm going to put this stuff in my hair and it's fine, Like it's fine as if. And you're like, do you know what's in that? You absorb it through your skin, like prostate cancers going through the roof and all of these things. And I'm not saying that's the cause at all, people, that's not the cause on its own, but it's this total load of chemicals and toxins in the environment, and then people

made them, got digestive isshoes. They've got some other things going on this and that. It's the total load of all of these things. And these are things we can control. There are some things we can control. And the stuff you put on your skin and your body. It's really if you want to think about reducing risk of chronic conditions and feeling good and not being tied and brainworking, you want to reduce those chemicals.

the whole hotel Denise. Where can people find you and follow you? Connect with you?

but not too intense. It's going to be about health, the aging, what you can do to feel good in that moment, but also long term stuff. It's the first time Craig and I have done something like this together in person. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait.