Early onset dementia and Alzheimer's disease, that has tripled since 2013

Dr. Casey Means: "And then the early onset dementia and Alzheimer's disease, that has tripled since 2013. So younger people, and that makes sense though. We've got 30% of teens now with pre-diabetes. That was like 0% in the past. You didn't have kids with the adult onset diabetes in the past. And so you've got now 30% of teens with pre-diabetes.

You've got middle-aged people now 50% with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Of course, that's also creating an energetic deficit neuro metabolic, neuro energetic theory of Alzheimer's, maybe with these cells crying out for help, maybe some of these plaques that we're seeing are actually a protective mechanism.

The brain actually laying down almost like protective shielding. It's a response to an underlying metabolic issue as opposed to the problem itself. But of course, in our paradigm, we're like, we just got to get rid of that symptom of the problem. When in fact, actually, if we could unencumber the brain to be able to make energy properly, make good energy properly, that's why our book is called Good Energy, they would actually be able to heal itself and to have the power to do its work, which is cognitive thinking.

I was just going to say, an amazing book about Alzheimer's that just hasn't gotten as much attention as I think it should is Dale Bredesen's book, The End of Alzheimer's, because he talks about when you really look at the research, there are about 36 different biomarkers and factors. I think he calls them like the 36 holes in the roof of what creates, like if it's raining and you plug one hole, your house is still going to be filled with water.

You have to plug all 36 holes to prevent or reverse Alzheimer's disease. And of course, all of these are related in some way to metabolic health, but it's things like your vitamin D levels, your insulin levels, the amount of movement you're getting, vitamin D, insulin, B12, other things like that. These things that we know are part and parcel with metabolic health.

And there was an amazing Lancet paper from a couple years ago that showed that if we just got on top of some of the basic modifiable factors of our metabolic health, we could slash Alzheimer's rates from happening. So I think, yeah, fundamentally it's one more branch on the tree that is rooted in this metabolic dysfunction in our body, which is fundamentally rooted in three processes that uniquely really hurt the brain, which is oxy of stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic inflammation.

These are the three hallmarks of metabolic dysfunction and the brain is so sensitive and such a complex, high processing power organ that these core cellular disturbances that make up metabolic dysfunction, which are caused by our environment, and cannot really be addressed with drugs, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, they're showing up so prominently in the brain."