#71 March 2024 Simplify Health News

Heal and Rejuvenate by Better Food Choices

Simplify Holistic Nutrition Consulting & Functional Medicine Health and Wellness Coaching

As I am returning from New York City, attending the Integrative Healthcare Symposium, I am loaded with information from the leaders In Functional Medicine. It was a multi-day conference that I have been attending in the last 13 years, where I learn all day from famous MD’s, researchers, who are working on finding the root causes of un-health. Many of the lecturers are also famous book authors. My head is spinning trying to process all the information and converting it into information that you can all benefit from.

The biggest topic as you can imagine continues to be:

Inflammation, Inflamm-aging, and Lifestyle Choices that lower Inflammation.

An Anti-Inflammatory Diet plus fine-tuning it with avoiding the bio-individual inflammatory foods is a great and powerful way to reduce inflammation in the body. I continue to love the FIT Tests. I have been working with for the last 10 years. It makes a huge impact in helping my clients improve their health and set some ground rules for their food intake. The additional Gut Barrier Panel gives us a lot of additional information to work with, and I am grateful that it has been added. All disease starts in the gut…. It is incredible how much the knowledge about the connection between gut and brain health, as well as overall health has been learned and researched since I started attending this conference.

Order your new FIT Test kit here

Dr. David Perlmutter, the author of the Grain Brain, board certified neurologist talked about the newest findings in Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease. Here are a few glimpses of his talk, summarized by Avery St. Onge, who is the Content Specialist of Integrative Practitioners and the Natural Medicine Journal.

“Emerging data indicates that addressing metabolic health with lifestyle interventions is more effective at preventing cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease than reducing levels of β-amyloids.” According to Dr. Perlmutter, Alzheimer's disease begins decades before symptoms like memory loss become apparent. And the changes occurring in the brain leading to Alzheimer's are primarily metabolic.

Dr. Perlmutter talked about the new FDA approved drugs and discussed their side effects.

He estimated that shifting towards leveraging metabolic health improvements in individual medical care could prevent up to 70 percent of Alzheimer's cases. “While it's important to pull people out of the river,” he said, “it's far more important to find out why they're falling in the first place."

According to Dr. Perlmutter, lifestyle and dietary factors are essential for preventing Alzheimer's and cognitive decline.

These include:

Physical Exercise: Dr. Perlmutter stressed that regular physical activity is essential. He said exercise not only boosts general health but also has specific benefits for brain health like brain metabolism and insulin sensitivity, crucial factors in preventing cognitive decline. He even saw in a U.K. study that Alzheimer’s patients were able to improve their cognitive decline by working out.

Dietary Habits: The importance of a healthy diet cannot be overemphasized, explained Dr. Perlmutter. He suggests a diet that controls blood sugar levels and provides ample fiber to nurture the microbiome.

Nitric Oxide and Cardiovascular Health: Techniques to enhance nitric oxide production, including engaging in physical activity and consuming nitrate-rich foods, can improve blood flow to the brain and support cognitive function, Perlmutter said.

Oral Microbiome: Research indicates a connection between the oral microbiome and overall health, including the brain's health. Dr. Perlmutter said maintaining a balanced oral microbiome through diet and avoiding products that disrupt this balance, like certain mouthwashes, could be crucial in preventing cognitive decline.

Social Integration and Purpose: Dr. Perlmutter also mentioned broader lifestyle factors, such as social integration and having a sense of purpose, that could lower Alzheimer's risk. He noted observations from blue zones around the world where strong relationships and a sense of purpose are more prevalent, and people maintain cognitive health into older age.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland is known as the “Father of Functional Medicine”. He ended the conference with a very powerful talk about rejuvenation by healthy lifestyle choices.

I loved the positivity of hope and rejuvenation.

Please reach out if you need me to help you heal and rejuvenate by better food choices.

I have hope that we can all always improve from where we are!

Wishing you all health and happiness.

Love,

Silke