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5 Supplements Your Parents Should Be Taking (But Likely Aren’t)
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Why don't we just begin with the
personal because I think that's the most
universal. And all of my friends of my
vintage um or younger, no one's getting
younger, so they're all contending with
aging parents and what to do with them,
how to help them. Can you speak to just
some of the circumstances with your
parents and what you have used as
interventions that have seemed to have
an effect? Both of my parents are taking
a multivitamin. And you might go, well,
multivitamin really, what's that going
to do? And I'll tell you, we've come
full circle. You know, 10 years ago,
there was a huge splash that was made in
the media. Big article came out and it
was called enough is enough.
Multivitamins are not only useless, they
may be harmful.
And it was a study that looked at a
variety of different studies. It's
called a metaanalysis that basically
said, well, you know, all these vitamins
that you're taking are useless and in
some cases they can be harmful because
they can allow cancer to to grow faster.
And I sort of debunked that, you know,
10 years ago. But over the course of
those 10 years, and as you mentioned in
the intro here, you know, science is
always changing and revisions are made.
We learn new things. And in that 10-year
frame, three different randomized
control trials have come out. And
randomized control trials are really key
because you are comparing, you know,
this intervention which in this case was
a multivitamin to a placebo because
people taking anything are obviously
going to want a positive effect and many
people do anticipate that and they can
actually change their biology. Placebo
is a real thing. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> So three trials came out looking at the
effect of multivitamins on cognition.
And I'm talking the multivitamin that
was used was the standard
run-of-the-mill. It was sententrum silver.
silver.
>> Centrum. I knew it was going to be
Centrum. Yeah.
>> It was the vitamin that you would go
that's the one vitamin that's not going
to have any effect. It's like the you
know, but actually it turns out it's got
over 40 essential nutrients in it and
it's also got some other nonvitamins. So
things that are like polyphenols like
luteine, zeazanthin. These are actually
really important for eye health but also
the brain. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And these three randomized control
trials were two years long.
And what they showed was that taking a
multivitamin for two years had pretty
enormous effects on cognitive aging.
These were in older adults. These were
adults were 65 years of age or older.
That's where my parents are. And after 2
years of taking the multivitamin, they
had improved cognition on a battery of
different tests. That equated to like
reducing global cognitive aging by about
2 years. And on top of that, they
reduced their episodic aging by five
years, almost five years. It was 4.8
years. Episodic memory is the kind of
memory that's involved in remembering
events, things that that happen in your
life. And so that's a big effect. 5
years of reduced
>> episodic brain aging, episodic memory,
brain aging.
>> Mhm. And so I think that anyone that's
concerned about their parents, one of
the easiest things that you can do in
terms of improving cognition, now I
should mention these were older adults,
yes, but they weren't older adults with
neurodeenerative disease. So these these
were older adults that were otherwise
didn't have any sort of neurogenerative
disease. That's also important because
>> once you get to a pathological state,
you you kind of have to do more things
to help improve cognition than just a
multivitamin. Mhm.
>> That's what I have my mom and my dad on
a multivitamin. That's the easiest
thing. Vitamin D is also another
no-brainer. I mean, 70% of the US
population has insufficient levels of
vitamin D. Older adults are even higher
than that. So, you know, almost the
majority of all older adults are vitamin
D deficient. I mean, most people aren't
going outside. And even if they are
going outside, they're either wearing
sunscreen or just the fact that they're
older affects their their skin's ability
to make vitamin D3 from the sun, from
UVB radiation from the sun. And so
there's much less efficient at it. In
fact, a 70-year-old makes about four
times less vitamin D than their former
20-year-old self.
>> So vitamin D supplement is a low hanging
fruit. It's super easy to bring someone
up to level. If you just had to give a
couple of bullets on the things that you
feel confident in having your mom and
dad continue doing or taking,
>> let's start with the supplements cuz
like you said, it's sort of a
lowhanging fruit in a sense from a
behavioral change perspective, >> right?
>> right?
>> What do you have them doing?
>> I guess I'll kind of zoom out and talk
about, you know, I think you listened to
a podcast I did with Dr. Mark Matson
many several years ago and I mentioned
that my dad was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease
>> in 2017 and that's an important context
to consider like what sort of
supplements I'm giving my dad and also
the fact that you have to think about
compliance like what were your parents I
do have a parent that'll take a lot of vitamins
vitamins
>> actually do
>> or a few vitamins right
>> so with my dad knowing his disease with
Parkinson's disease multivitamin was in
there because that's already like so
important just to cover a lot of bases
you're getting a lot of different you
know vitamins and minerals And then it
was omega-3. And in fact, it was a high
DHA. And he's getting about two grams a
day. And there's a lot of evidence that
omega-3 can help with dopamineergic
transmission, can help with a lot of
brain function, particularly as it
relates to Parkinson's disease as well
as Alzheimer's disease.
>> So that was the second supplements that
he's, you know, taking. And then the
last one that I could really get him to
take was
ubiquininal, which is a reduced form of
CoQ10. Now, co-enzyme Q10 is actually
something that we have inside of our
cells and it's involved in mitochondrial health.
health.
>> So, having a depleted CoQ10 can lead to
mitochondrial toxicity. And so, taking
CoQ10, there's actually been some early
studies with even Parkinson's disease
patients showing that supplementing with
CoQ10 can be beneficial. And he's
actually taken those supplements for for
many, many years now. And very I would
say surprisingly but also I'm thankful
that his Parkinson's disease has
progressed very very slowly. So it's
been 9 years you know almost 10 years
and he's really essentially had this
Parkinson's disease limited to one
tremor in his hand.
>> So that's great and that's all I can say is
is
>> yeah it's great news. It's great news
and you never really know at the end of
the day what is the reason for that. But
he's convinced, I'm convinced, his
doctor's convinced that he should keep
doing what he's doing and that it seems
to be beneficial. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> My dad is one of those guys that doesn't
like to take a lot of pills. If he would
take more, I would give him more.
>> If he were willing to take more, what
would you give him?
>> I would also give him sulurophane. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Definitely tried, but he doesn't want to
take more pills. So sulurophane is it's
a compound that is formed when you eat
cruciferous vegetables like broccoli,
cauliflower for example and it's formed
from something inside of it called
glucaraphin. When you break the plant
tissue when you bite it or you know chop
it up or whatever it forms sulforophane
sulforophane is not necessarily in the
plant itself. It just gets formed when
you break the plant tissue. That's a
technical thing. So I'm just going to
talk about sulforophane and call it
sulforophane as if it's part of you know
the plant but it's not. Just so you know.
know. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Sulfurophane, like I said, it's
something that's formed in these
cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli
sprouts, the young young sprout of
broccoli actually is the best source of
it. It has 100 times more of that active
precursor glucaraphin than mature
broccoli. So that's the best dietary
source of it.
>> Are you growing your own broccoli
sprouts or are you doing off the shelf now?
now?
>> I'm off the shelf now. I used to. I used
to. It's work. It's not that much work,
but it is work. But you also like you
have to be very fidious about not having
it contaminated and that's where the
real work comes in. But I like it
because there are people that can't
afford the supplement and this gives
them another another way to to basically
get it. Yeah. For cheap. So the reason I
really like sulfurophane and why I want
both my parents on it and my mom has
been taking it, we can talk about that
in a minute, is because it is the most
potent dietary activator of this system
that we have called NRF2, which is this
major system. It's a basically a
transcription factor that activates a
lot of different genes inside of our
body. And it activates genes that are
involved in stress. It activates a lot
of what are called stress response
genes. And these are the kind of things
that are activated when you're doing
stressful things like exercise or you
know if you're fasting. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> So you really want this pathway to be active
active
>> because a little bit of stress right
it's like chronic overdose of stress bad
but little doses of stress has this I
guess what would you call it hormetic effect.
effect. >> Exactly.
>> Exactly.
>> Right. Am I getting that right? Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> You nailed it. So essentially we're
talking about what is sometimes called
ustress or good stress. It's these small
doses of stress where, you know, your
body's responding to that stress by
activating all these beneficial pathways
that deal with stress. Whether we're
talking about antioxidant pathways,
anti-inflammatory pathways, pathways
involved in clearing out damage, you
know, damaged stuff from your cells like
autophagy, just all sorts of beneficial
stuff, right? Those pathways are
activated for a longer period of time
than the acute stress that you're giving
it. So in this case the sulfurophane is
a little bit of an acute stress like
polyphenols in general are. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> The amount of time that you're ingesting
that polyphenol is very small and
digesting in. The reality is is that
it's activating these stress response
pathways that last you know on the
orders of like 24 to 48 hours sometimes
longer. So you're having this beneficial effect
effect
>> that's overall beneficial from that
little bit of stress. And so sulurophane
activates NRF2 and one of the main
pathways that it's activating is
increasing glutathione production. And
it's been shown in a couple different
human studies that it increases
glutathione in both plasma but also in
the brain. >> Yeah,
>> Yeah,
>> glutathione is the major antioxidant
that we have in our body and it's very
important in the brain. super important
for not only preventing brain aging but
also for dealing with dysfunction in the
case of acute injury like traumatic
brain injury or in the case of
Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's
disease which are other types of injury
on the brain glutathione plays a big
role there and so I obviously would want
my dad to be taking sulurophane and
there's a supplement out there that I
use that has been used in many like 12
or so different studies and so it's you
know It's been shown to be beneficial
across the board and that is something
that I do give my mom. Now, the reason I
gave it to my mom, well, I was kind of
hoping my mom interestingly has two
other types of sort of brain dysfunction
um problems, but they're not
neurodeenerative in the sense of
Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's
disease are it's kind of like a
something going wrong in the brain and
it it affects her motor control. So, she
has tremors. She has essential tremor
and she has orthostatic tremor. And I
have secretly wanted the increase in
glutathione to affect those tremors.
But when I gave the sulfurophane to my
mom, because I knew the placebo effect,
I did tell her that we were using it to
detoxify these chemicals that are
associated with plastic like BPA because
that's also been something that I'm I'm
using sulfurophane for because that NRF2
pathway does activate what are called
phase 2 detoxification enzymes. And it's
been shown to detoxify. Even if you're
living in like a city like New York or
LA where there's a lot of air pollution,
it's been shown to detoxify benzene.
Within 24 hours, people start excreting
60% more benzene from their body. Now,
benzene is something that is found in
air pollution. It's also in cigarettes.
>> Yes. Don't drink your own urine if
you're taking sulfurophane is what
you're saying.
>> Definitely don't do that. But also, if
you're living in a polluted place, I
tell all my friends in LA, I'm like,
"You have to be taking sulfurophane.
It's a non-negotiable, right?" So I told
her to take the sulurophane because I
wanted her to detoxify BPA because she
does eat a lot of processed foods and
stuff which are found in plastic.
Anyway, so she started taking it and she
came back to me and told me that it was
helping her tremors and that she wanted more.
more.
>> How long did that take?
>> Not long. It was actually I think within
a week or so, maybe maybe two. It was
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