" The 3 Reasons Women Over 50 Lose Their Memory (And What Actually Reverses It) | Dr. Vonda Wright"

I know you talk a lot about the body-brain connection. What are we losing out? Because if you look at, when we talk about aging, brain aging is such a big part of it. And frightening. And frightening, very frightening. I mean, I've had so many countless family members, mentors, family friends who've had Alzheimer's, dementia, stage four brain cancer. It's painful to watch the people you love go through it. What is happening? What is that body-brain connection? What are we losing out in the brain when we're not doing the things we've talked about? You know, loss of cognitive function is multifactorial. Dementia is different than pure Alzheimer's with the plaques that accumulate. But we know for sure, and there's just so much research, that we can maintain our brain with the physical activity we do. I mean, for instance, I've talked about the role of bone releasing osteocalcin, which goes to the brain. There is another protein that is stimulated to be, it's called transcribed when DNA makes a protein. When skeletal muscle contracts, it also causes the transcription of a protein called clotho, which is the longevity protein. Part of clotho's role is to go to the brain and stimulate neuron development. So there are studies out of the University of Pittsburgh that showed a six-week walking program will grow the hippocampus, which is the memory part of the brain, in double digits. You know, I don't know the mechanism that's worked out. But I think at a very basic level, I mean, we'll go back to the hunting analogy. That kind of strategic stress on the body tells our body that we're still living. We're not curled up in a ball in some cave waiting on winter to die. We are active. We have enough strategic stress that we have to maintain because our body is so highly conserved that if our body doesn't think we're using something, we'll lose it. It will start resorbing like bone. If I put a cast on your leg, you will resorb the bone in your leg. Petey So true. Mary-Anne Yeah. So I think the brain is the same way. So back to what maintains a brain. Well, muscle releases a protein that maintains the brain. Bone releases a protein that maintains the brain, right? Fascinating. Isn't that fascinating? Petey So fascinating, yeah. Mary-Anne Food has a role. But when we think of midlife, we have to start talking about hormones. And the work of Lisa Moscone, who is at Cornell in New York, has shown that in women, and probably in men, but her work is in women, the brain is covered in estrogen receptors. So as we lose our estrogen, it affects the brain. That's why when I was going through perimenopause, there was a short period of time when I wasn't on hormones yet. I'm in surgery, and I know that I want the thing that does this, but I could not remember that it was called an adsen. Think how frightening that is for a brain person like me. I use my brain to help people make a living. That was my estrogen receptors being totally empty. But once I replace my estrogen, my brain is a black box again. Isn't that frightening? So I think it's multifactorial when we lose it. But I also think that all the lifestyle things we've talked about have proven out in studies to be able to make a real impact on our cognitive function. Petey Yeah. I think a really big thing for me in all of this, as I'm hearing from you, is just what you said earlier about how little we know about our bodies, and how we base it on just how we feel, which isn't the healthiest check. It's almost like you're driving your car, and it feels fine. But there's so much going on behind the scenes, that if you didn't take it to the garage and get it checked, you wouldn't know. It was one of the reasons I recently invested in function health, because I just wanted to find a way to make access to information so much more easy for people. And just having access to those lab results and those lab tests, so that you can actually go to your doctor and say, hey, this came up. What does this look like? Or I don't understand this. Or what about this? And I think that's what's helped me so much. You were just with Darshan, Dr. Shah, who's been my doctor. And I find that he's able to flag to me so many things early on, which means we can deal with it, as opposed to end up in a position where it's, you know, too late or harder to reverse. I also find in myself and the people I care for, that we become a little addicted to our data, which is a good thing, right? I become a little competitive with myself when I'm wearing my glucose monitor. Can I keep my glucose at 80 or below? Versus, oh, it shoots up to 100 and something, because I've eaten something disastrous. And I don't want that, right? So you can't change what you don't know. So I think data is amazing for that.