Sanjay Gupta Quotes

As a primer, here are the five pillars of brain health: Move, Discover, Relax, Nourish, Connect.

If you don't want to lose your job, you become conservative, you keep your head down," he told me. "And it's pretty unfortunate, because without the willingness to fail, the possibility for great success is eliminated. [quoted from Mark Roth]

The brain can be continuously and consistently enriched throughout your life no matter your age or access to resources.

No matter what your DNA says, a good diet, regular exercise, not smoking, limiting alcohol, and some other surprising lifestyle decisions, can change that destiny.

After that experience, I decided that the things that were more important to do were the things I was actually not focused on, and I wasn't focused on them because I was pretty much afraid of failing," he says. [quoted from Mark Roth]

the more you understand your memory, the more inspired you’ll be to improve it.

Fear-based messaging will never lead to a long-term effective strategy because it is not the way we are wired.

A well-sculpted mind is a work of art, but a loving heart is an instance of divinity.

Any factor—from smoking to high cholesterol levels—that affects the blood flow system in the brain has a significant impact on its function and risk for decline.

That means that over 90 percent of our health and longevity is in our own hands.

His TED talk on the subject, “What Makes a Good Life?” has been viewed more than 29 million times.

I want to live my life like an incandescent lightbulb. Burn brightly my entire life, and then one day suddenly go out.

Give what you believe in and not what you have.

physical inactivity has been calculated to be the most significant risk factor in cognitive decline and the development of dementia.

We tend to worry about our ability to remember names or where we put our keys, but we should also worry about the memory we need to be a great performer in whatever role we fill as a professional, parent

I should also add something about weight here, because we all know that there’s often a relationship between weight and risk for diabetes. If the risk for Alzheimer’s disease goes up with metabolic disorders, then it makes sense that the risk also rises with unhealthy weight gain that has metabolic consequences. The science now speaks to this fact. Carrying extra weight around the abdomen has been shown to be particularly harmful to the brain. One study that garnered lots of media attention looked at over six thousand individuals aged forty to forty-five and measured the size of their bellies between 1964 and 1973.11 A few decades later, they were evaluated to see who had developed dementia and how that related to their waist size at the start of the study. The correlation between risk of dementia and thicker midsections twenty-seven years earlier was remarkable: Those with the highest level of abdominal fat had an increased risk of dementia of almost three-fold in comparison to those with the lowest abdominal weight. There is plenty of evidence that managing your weight now will go a long way toward preventing brain decline later.

Memories that are not recalled often can begin to fade away because those memories are not being reinforced. Which is why it’s relatively easier to remember the details of what you did more recently than what happened many years ago.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of appropriate touch. Hand holding has been found to decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol. A friendly touch can also be calming. In other words, the simple act of touching another human is a way of connecting with others to protect ourselves—and them.

if you remembered everything that comes into your brain, your brain would not work properly and your ability to creatively think and imagine would be diminished. Everyday life would be difficult; sure, you’d be able to recall long lists and cite elegiac love poems, but you’d struggle to grasp abstract concepts and even to recognize faces. There’s

We don’t usually think about dementia when we’re entering our prime, but we should, because it provides a remarkable opportunity. Data from longitudinal observational studies accumulated over the past few decades have shown that aside from age, most other risk factors for brain disease can be controlled. That means you indeed have a powerful voice in controlling your risk for decline.

caregiver who also maintains a full- or part-time job, be extra cautious about your time, energy, emotions, and personal needs. You are at a high risk for burnout, but not for reasons you may think. Caregiver burnout is caused less by the rigorous responsibilities of the jobs themselves and more by the fact you tend to neglect your own emotional, physical, and spiritual health. To repeat, put yourself on your to-do list.

Since 2005, researchers have been finding correlations between diabetes and risk for Alzheimer’s disease, especially when the diabetes is not controlled and a person suffers from chronic high blood sugar.7 Some have gone so far as to refer to Alzheimer’s disease as “type 3 diabetes,” because the disease often involves a disrupted relationship with insulin, the metabolic hormone involved in both types 1 and 2 diabetes. Insulin is the hormone needed to deliver sugar (glucose) into cells for use.

Don't try to inspire people with fear. It doesn't work well, and it doesn't last long. When you scare someone, you activate that person's amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. The reaction is swift and hot, as one would have when confronted with a threat. The problem is that an action that starts in the emotional centers of the brain bypasses the judgment and executive function areas of the brain as well. As a result, the reaction may be intense and immediate, but it is also often uncoordinated and transient.

Exercise” includes a combination of purposeful aerobic cardio work (e.g., swimming, cycling, jogging, group exercise classes), strength training (e.g., free weights, resistance bands, gym machines, mat Pilates, lunges, squats), and routines that promote flexibility and balance (e.g., stretching, yoga). It also includes leading a physically active life throughout the day (e.g., taking the stairs instead of the elevator; avoiding prolonged sitting; going for walks during breaks; engaging in hobbies such as dancing, hiking, and gardening).

You can likely name all five senses: sight (ophthalmoception), smell (olfacoception), taste (gustaoception), touch (tactioception), and hearing (audioception). But there are others with the “cept” ending, which is Latin for take or receive. The other six senses are also processed in the brain and give us more data about the outside world: Proprioception: A sense of where your body parts are and what they’re doing. Equilibrioception: A sense of balance, otherwise known as your internal GPS. This tells you if you’re sitting, standing, or lying down. It’s located in the inner ear (which is why problems in your inner ear can cause vertigo). Nociception: A sense of pain. Thermo(re)ception: A sense of temperature. Chronoception: A sense of the passage of time. Interoception: A sense of your internal needs, like hunger, thirst, needing to use the bathroom.

Physical exertion, in fact, has thus far been the only thing we’ve scientifically documented to improve brain health and function.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not. MARK TWAIN

For example, what should you do when the person seems stuck on repeating a word, activity, or sentence over and over again? Repetition is common in the disease's later stages. The person is searching for familiarity and comfort as the brain continues its malicious march forward in decline. One of the ways to respond in addition to being calm and patient is to engage the person in an activity to break the pattern of repetition.

You can change your brain for the better or worse through behaviors and even ways of thinking. Bad habits have neural maps that reinforce those bad habits.

No event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death… . What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge—of my own positive and personal experience. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial

There’s a saying in medicine that no one is dead until they are warm and dead.

According to the American Heart Association, for every minute that goes by without someone attempting CPR or defibrillation, the odds of survival decrease by 7 to 10 percent. 8 If ten minutes go by, survival is a long shot.

It is true that scientists and doctors use the word clinically, and it is also true that patients and their loved ones don’t always know what to make of it, especially when they first receive the diagnosis. It is too imprecise, for one thing. Dementia can be a spectrum, ranging from mild to severe, and some of the causes of dementia are entirely reversible. Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for more than half the cases of dementia, gets nearly all the attention, and as a result, the terms dementia and Alzheimer’s are often used interchangeably. They shouldn’t be. The word dementia, however, is steeped in our common vernacular, and so is the association with Alzheimer’s disease. In this book, I use both terms with the hope that the conversation, and the words we use to describe the broad condition of cognitive decline, will shift in the future.

mantras

It’s a beautiful paradox: In order to remember, we have to forget to some degree.

How did a novel bat coronavirus get to a major city in the dead of winter when most bats were hibernating, and turn a market where bats weren’t sold into the epicenter of an outbreak?

as L-serine, they have shown that the misfolding of amyloid and tau doesn’t continue happening, effectively halting the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Recent studies of recreational cyclists aged fifty-five to seventy-nine suggest they have the capacity to do everyday tasks very easily and efficiently because nearly all parts of their body are in remarkably good condition.

Recent studies of recreational cyclists aged fifty-five to seventy-nine suggest they have the capacity to do everyday tasks very easily and efficiently because nearly all parts of their body are in remarkably good condition.15 The cyclists also scored high on tests measuring mental agility, mental health, and quality of life.

When you are forest bathing and breathing in the “aroma of the forest,” you are also absorbing substances known as phytoncides, which protect trees from insects and other stressors. As we have learned over the past decade, these phytoncides can also protect us by increasing our natural killer immune cells and decreasing cortisol levels.28 While spending time in nature or green spaces has long been recommended to improve mental well-being, we now understand what that aroma of the forest is really doing for our bodies and brains.

The brain handles tasks sequentially but can switch attention between tasks so quickly that we’re given the illusion that we can perform multiple tasks together. So if you want to get more done using less effort, aim to work on what’s called your attentional ability: focus and concentrate on one sequence—one task—at a time and avoid distractions.

Fear-based messaging will never lead to a long-term effective strategy

Part 3 takes a look at the challenges of diagnosing and treating brain diseases. What should you do if you notice the early signs? Are they symptoms of another health condition that mimics dementia? Why have our research and clinical trials failed so miserably in coming up with cures and drugs to treat neurodegenerative ailments? What treatments are available at all levels of severity? How can a spouse remain healthy while caring for a partner with dementia (caregivers have a much higher risk of developing the disease)? Dementia is a moving target; caring for someone with the disease can be one of the most challenging jobs ever undertaken. No one learns in formal schooling how to deal with a loved one whose brain is in irreversible decline. For some, the brain changes are slow and subtle, taking years or even more than a decade for symptoms to become pronounced; for others, it’s sudden and rapid. Both circumstances can be difficult and unpredictable

Brain Food: The GCBH Recommendations on Nourishing Your Brain,

brain health specifically took me to neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, the director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell

its adult size by nine months and nearly three-quarters by two years of age, a baby’s head must be large and grow rapidly to accommodate the rest of the body’s growth. On average, the brain reaches its maximum size in girls at about eleven and a half years of age and fourteen and a half on average for boys—but again it will not be fully mature in terms of its internal development and executive functioning until about twenty-five

serine,

Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His TED talk on the subject, “What Makes a Good Life?

at the National Institute on Aging. He has devoted much of his life to studying the brain and the effects of cutting caloric intake by fasting up to several days a week.25 In laboratory experiments, Professor Mattson and his colleagues have found that intermittent fasting, which in his definition means limiting caloric intake at least two days a week, can help improve neural connections in the hippocampus while protecting neurons against the accumulation of those dangerous amyloid plaques.26 According to his theory, fasting challenges the brain, forcing it to react by activating adaptive stress responses that help it cope with disease. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. One thing we know is that when fasting is done correctly, it can increase the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein I defined earlier that helps protect and strengthen neural connections while also spurring new growth of brain cells. Physical exertion and cognitive

the alliance’s site and the resources available online at daanow.org. It publishes two small handbooks: one for the person diagnosed, and the other for

it is about achieving a certain physical appearance.

It is your you that bosses you around all day, raises important as well as inane questions, beats you up emotionally on occasion,

Scientists discovered these “forgetting” neurons in 2019, which helps us further understand the importance of sleep—and the merits of forgetting. It’s a beautiful paradox: In order to remember, we have to forget to some degree.

FIRST realized that my dog knew more about life than I did after I observed him snoozing in his bed by the fire during the holidays. No matter what kind of chaos might erupt around the house, no matter what demands a child or a spouse might have, no matter what was going on with work, the world, or the furnace, there was a contentment to just “being there”, warm, and near his family, that was undeniable. If that dog could know peace amidst all this chaos, why couldn’t the rest of us? Chaos, I learned, is as much a physical reality that we can do nothing about, as well as an emotional response. The dog chooses to not respond. Amazing.

When you “eat a rainbow” of vegetables, you eat a more diverse array of nutrients, many of them brain-friendly antioxidants.

These people are called the “invisible second patients.

Someone who was mean can become, after developing dementia, gentle and sweet.

AlzU.com

At the age of five, she was forced to flee an area of the world that is now Pakistan. It was during the time of the bloody Indian subcontinent partition. Along with her family, my mother joined one of the largest human migrations in history. After arriving in India, she lived as a refugee for the next several years, struggling to survive. People in those refugee camps didn’t have the luxury of hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Yet her mother (my grandmother), Gopibai Hingorani, a woman who had completed only the fourth grade, told her she was going to make sure her daughter received something that no one could ever take away from her: an education. It still gives me shivers to imagine a young girl trapped in a camp being told she would one day become someone who mattered. By keeping her promise, my grandmother initially gave my mother her sense of purpose. My mom completed engineering college in India and made history as the first female engineer there. It was just the beginning of her life in a male-dominated space. After reading a biography of Henry Ford, she dreamed of working for the company that he’d built. Again, my grandparents came through. They took their savings of a lifetime to send my mom to the United States in 1965. At age twenty-four, she became the first woman hired as an engineer at Ford Motor Company. My parents are now retired in Florida, but they stay active, playing a lot of bridge, singing karaoke, and traveling. My mother spends a lot of time with her five granddaughters, teaching them the value of a life lived with purpose.