Cognitive Decline Expert: The Disease That Starts in Your 30s but Kills You in Your 70s

And we have this white powder in front

of me. You got a big smile on your face.

>> I do because I don't care who you are,

you should definitely be having this.

Let's talk about creatine. Phenomenal

research shows you can creatine your way

out of sleep deprivation. It can protect

your brain against a concussion, stroke,

[music] from stress. And there was a

study done on Alzheimer's disease

patients. And they found that patients

not only preserved their cognitive

functions, but they had more energy and

they were able to exercise more. And I

know this because I'm a clinician and

over the last decade I've been

surrounded by the greatest neurosurgeons

in the world studying the brain. And so

I'm here to tackle one disease and that

is Alzheimer's because it generally

starts in our 30s and 60 million people

worldwide have Alzheimer's. [music] 70%

being women. And I get angry and I get

passionate because women have been lied

to. They've been underrepresented. They

downplay their symptoms or they're too

scared to ask their doctor for advice.

And what people don't really know is

that it is a preventable disease, but

it's like endstage cancer. Once you get

the diagnosis, there is no cure. And the

fact that so many people are at the

mercy of a disease that is preventable

is not okay with me. And I don't think

people understand these [music] things.

Like people don't really know that we're

becoming more sedentary, which is a

disease. And there was a study that was

done on this that showed that if you do

10 air squats every hour, this can

compensate for your sedentary lifestyle.

And then we have several lifestyle

factors that can lower your risk of

getting Alzheimer's disease, as well as

showing you what 5 minutes a day can do

for your brain performance. Just using a

tennis ball and an eye patch.

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let's do this.

[music]

Louisa,

what is it you do in simple terms? And I

guess most importantly, why is it that

you do it? And why now?

>> Over the last decade, I've been studying

the brain. I'm both a clinician and an

academic. So, I get to see the brain and

I also get to research it. And I'm

really here to tackle one disease and

that is Alzheimer's disease.

>> Why is this so important now?

>> Right now because 60 million people

worldwide have Alzheimer's disease. That

number is going to triple by the year

2050. 110 million women will have

Alzheimer's disease by the year 2050.

This is a disease that robs you of who

you are, your complete identity. So,

we're going to get really into this

straight away cuz I brought Henry with

me, right?

>> And for anyone that can't see, Henry is

a model brain that she's holding in her

hands.

>> This is around 2 lb. And if you actually

feel it and you know, if you actually

feel a real human brain, it feels like

tofu, but this is everything you are.

And the fact that so many people are at

the mercy of a disease that is

preventable is not okay with me. It

doesn't sit well with me. We used to

think that women were disproportionately

affected by Alzheimer's disease because

we lived longer because age played a

role in it. But we now have substantial

evidence to show that it's not the fact

that women live longer or people in

general because dementia and Alzheimer's

disease are not part of the natural

brain aging process. For women, and they

differ from men, and we can separate the

sexes and talk about it, for women, it

is purely because being a woman is a

risk factor for getting this disease.

Now, if we go through and we have a look

at all of the people that currently have

Alzheimer's disease, 95% of them could

have been prevented because this is not

a disease of genetics. It's a disease of

lifestyle.

>> 95% of it could have been prevented.

>> Correct? We're we're born with our with

our genetic makeup. Meaning that, for

example, if you have a genetic mutation

on chromosome 4, you will get

Huntington's disease. There is nothing

we can do about that. That's how you

were born. But when it comes to

Alzheimer's disease, there's around 20

to 30 genes involved in the disease.

Only around 3%

of the disease cases right now were

driven through those genetic mutations.

The genetic mutations that you are born

with, you get them from mom and dad are

presinelin one, presinelin 2 and the

amaloid precursor protein. So you if you

have a genetic mutation in one of these

genes, you will get some form of

dementia.

>> What is the age range where people will

start to experience Alzheimer's?

>> Let's just actually take a broad

overview of what Alzheimer's disease is.

Okay. So you've probably heard of

dementia. Yeah.

>> So dementia is the umbrella term. So

Alzheimer's disease is sits under the

umbrella. It's a form of dementia.

There's fronttotemporal dementia which

is what Bruce Willis has. There's

dementia with Louis bodies. There's

Parkinson's dementia. There's vascular

dementia. This disease dementia or

Alzheimer's disease is a disease of

midlife. And so it generally starts in

our 30s. It starts in our 30s, but the

first symptoms show up in our late 60s,

70s and beyond.

>> When you say it starts,

>> yeah, our brain fully develops at around

25 years old. 25 to 30. And after that

that's when we if we don't take care of

our brain we start getting a decline in

these functions. Now let's go back to

the brain. The brain is 87 billion

neurons around 5 to 10,000 connections

per neuron. The my favorite area of the

brain is the cerebellum. And the piking

cells inside the cerebellum have upwards

of 50,000 connections per cell. So so

tightly dense and there is so much

happening. It takes 20% of the total

calories that you consume every day to

power this thing. And it's the most

vascular richch organ in the entire

body. Over time, through things such as

sleep deprivation,

poor diet, lack of physical activity,

environmental toxins, this slowly

erodess at the functioning of the brain.

And over time, this starts to compound

because that's what biology is.

Everything is compounding. One night of

sleep deprivation raises your risk of

amaloid beta, which is one of the

hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease

pathology, by 4%. That's just one night

of sleep deprivation. Imagine a new

mother or a shift worker or a physician

in their residency getting countless

nights of sleep deprivation day in and

day out. Imagine all of that

compounding. And what happens? Well, we

end up with either neuronal loss, which

is like the complete atrophy of certain

parts of the brain. And that's what is