The Dr. Lam Show

Preventing and Reversing Alzheimer's with Dr. Isabel Hunsinger, MD

December 26, 2021 Dr. Lam
The Dr. Lam Show
Preventing and Reversing Alzheimer's with Dr. Isabel Hunsinger, MD
Show Notes Transcript

There are 6 important areas to look at when trying to reverse Alzheimer's, and it's important to deal with all the root causes in order to optimize brain health. Dr. Isabel Hunsinger and Dr. Carrie Lam go through each of those parts and what you can do about it in this informative episode.

1:15 - Dr. Isabel Hunsinger's Journey to Integrative Medicine
7:45 - Bredesen protocol
8:30 - Foundational Sleep
9:55 - Inflammation and why your brain is on fire
11:40 - Glycotoxin
15:20 - Atrophic, suboptimal nutrients, trophic factors, and hormones
21:45 - Toxins, mold
23:35 - Vascular, stroke, blood flow
24:25 - Head injury, concussions

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Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Hi, welcome to the Dr. Lam Show. I'm Dr. Carrie, and I have Dr. Isabel Hunsinger here with me. She is Cuban American-born, currently based in New Zealand, experiencing a different culture. She has been studying functional medicine, trying to get to the root cause of disease and treatments. That's exactly what we like to do, too. And her expertise is in Alzheimer's, dementia, cognitive decline, anxiousness, depression, and diabetes. She's currently doing telemedicine for the past seven years via www.doctoronamission.com where they offer online courses and coaching. And so we're going to be talking today about overcoming Alzheimer's, depression, brain health, and how it's also connected to diabetes. So welcome to our show.

Isabel Hunsinger:

Hi Carrie, good to help. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

It's very good to see you. I like to ask people what their journey with integrative and functional medicine and how you came here because everyone has their story to tell.

Isabel Hunsinger:

A great question. I've been a medical doctor since 1991, I graduated from the University of Colorado, in Denver. In 2000, I was really unhappy practicing medicine in America with the HMOs, and having to call and getting cleared by an 18-year-old if I can order a CAT scan of the head. And, so one day in February of 2000, I just told my husband how unhappy I was practicing medicine in America. I'm a medical doctor trained in America, and we can go anywhere to help the world, you know. So we have always skied with the Kiwis in Colorado and I said, let's check out New Zealand. So we moved to New Zealand in 2000, and it's so funny because, what you run away from still stays right on your back if you don't figure out what the root problem is. And the root problem is, I needed to realize that we don't have a healthcare system, we have disease management. And even in New Zealand, that is the case. We have got such a tremendous amount of chronic disease here. So in 2000, I got turned on to the Institute of functional medicine that the practice that I went into, was a doctor that was into functional medicine. So he taught me about that and I've been studying it ever since. In 2013, I gave away private practice to start Doctor on a Mission.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

That's great. It's so right, we don't do health care, in America, we do sick care. People come with their sickness and their diseases, and we're just patching symptoms. We practice functional medicine to get to the root cause and help you from the inside out. So how do you also get into, brain health? Can you talk about how you came into helping people prevent and overcome Alzheimer's and depression?

Isabel Hunsinger:

It starts with my story. In 2013, like I had said, I started doctor on a mission and so here I am. I've seen Dr. Mark Hyman and what he's doing, my fearless leader, my mentor, and in functional medicine, and I realized that I got to do that and so I gave away private practice. And at 2013, at 53, I'm a wife, a mother, a doctor and now a brand new entrepreneur, something that you and I did not learn in medical training did we? But you know what? We could teach a good way.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

And nutrition, that's not something we got from medical school either.

Isabel Hunsinger:

And sleep and stress. So after a year, I realized that I was just very anxious, and joyless and hopeless. And when I get anxious, I don't sleep. And we know how important sleep is. We're actually trained to survive on two or three hours of sleep in our medical training, which is disastrous. This time, for 17 nights, I only slept two to three hours every night and by the end of the 17 nights, I tried to take my life. And I tried to do that twice in three days. Luckily, by the grace of God, that plan was interrupted by my daughter coming into the garage. My husband took me to our pastor and they both agreed that I needed to go see the psychiatrist. So a medical doctor having to see the psychiatrist is like a bad situation. But at that point, I had totally surrendered and was very obedient. And so I went to the psychiatrist, as this was way beyond the GP. The psychiatrist put me on medication to help me sleep, which I'm so grateful because there is a place for conventional medicine, and there is a place for pharmaceuticals. I remember the psychiatrist saying you're going to be on these antidepressants for the rest of your life. And at that point, I thought, we'll see about that. Then I went on a journey for five years, during which I learned how to pivot. We spent a lot of money in this pivot. And despite a lot of disastrous mistakes, I learned all the different cracks in the foundation that can affect our brain health. And it helped me understand that I shouldn't feel shame about feeling suicidal. I should understand that my brain is an organ and we need to learn how to take care of it like any other organ in our bodies. Yes, that is not taught in medicine. So now, I'm seven years out, I'm off my antidepressants. I'm not saying don't be on antidepressants, but hope that if you repair your foundation, you could come off your antidepressants. Now I'm peaceful and joyful, and I'm just making my mess into the message to help people overcome anxiety and depression. On that journey, I learned how anxiety and depression and pre-diabetes and diabetes increases our risk for Alzheimer's.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yeah, this is a metabolic issue, for the brain and often Alzheimer's is called diabetes type three. Isn't that the thing?

Isabel Hunsinger:

That's one of them. I've trained under Dr. Dale Bredesen, are you familiar with Dr. Dale Bredesen? So I'm ReCODE2.0 certificate practitioner. He teaches us that there are six areas that can cause Alzheimer's, and that if we just figure out the six areas, then help patch that up and pre diabetes is one of them. That's Alzheimers, that he does it in types.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So what are the foundational things you'd like to start with? In order to look at people when we're looking at brain health just in general, what parts should we be looking at?

Isabel Hunsinger:

Everybody needs to be sleeping. 7-9 hours of sleep. I'll just go ahead and break it down. The way Dr. Bredesen has taught us, and I'll keep it as simple as possible. So there's six types of Alzheimer's areas that we need to look at when we bring on a patient. Before that let's backtrack and say Alzheimer's and cognitive decline starts 20 years before we start expressing it. And the key is start taking care of your brain right now. That's, number one. Two thirds of the population of Alzheimer's are women. Unfortunately, so we have a lot of work to do in that area. And there's just a lot of hope, which is what I love, because I just I love to see that people can get better if they can just learn how to reverse it. So type one is inflammation. Why is your brain on fire? And it could be from a lot of things like a leaky gut, poor gut health. It could be from pathogens, like gum disease, P gingivalis, mold toxins, heavy metals, and environmental toxins.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So, inflammation.

Isabel Hunsinger:

Yeah, inflammation is number one. And then metabolic syndrome, which is highly prevalent not only in America, but in New Zealand and Australia. Which is your large belly, little bit of high blood pressure.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

and high cholesterol?

Isabel Hunsinger:

Dr. Bredesen teaches us that cholesterol is important, we need a good cholesterol because your brain is fat. But we look at the LDL, the small, dense, heavy LDL which everybody does not need it. Then, the metabolic syndrome also consists of pre diabetes, type two diabetes. So those that's your inflammation, if you can see why your brain is on fire due to inflammation, repair it, and that'll help you.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Remove the triggers and repair the inflammation.

Isabel Hunsinger:

The next type is type 1.5. And 1.5 is called glycotoxic. That's just a fancy name for sugar toxicity. Glyco is sugar. Dr. Bredesen says that this is self inflicted cognitive decline, because it's so easily reversible. If we just make sure that we get rid of the sugars. We eat good carbohydrates, good proteins and good fats at each meal.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Meaning like, vegetables, complex carbs, right?

Isabel Hunsinger:

No, I'm talking about cookies and cakes and candy. And you know, all the stuff that we're taught to be right. Yes.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yeah. The refined carbs are not the good ones. But the good carbs to eat are the complex carbs the best?

Isabel Hunsinger:

Yes and vegetables. I mean, even an Yes, Yes, prevent and reverse type two diabetes, right? onion, a carrot has carbohydrates. They are the good carbohydrates. I was joking about the candies. Hey, I got a joke for you. It's a doctor joke? So a 92 year old man went to go see a doctor for his annual physical. And then a week later, the doctor sees him walking down the street with his lovely young life. And so the doctor walks up to the 92 year old man, he goes well, looks like you are doing mighty fine. And the 92 year old man says, Doc, I'm just following your prescription, you said be cheerful and get a hot Mama. The doctor said no, I didn't say be cheerful, get a hot Mama. I said be careful, you got a heart murmur. So the punchline is be careful. You got a heartburn, right? If you remember those two things, it's so type 1.5 glycotoxic. We can decrease our blood sugars just like you had said with good carbohydrates, good protein, good fat and fiber. Because fiber stabilizes our blood sugar. And if we can just do that with every meal, then we can get up to four hours of satiety. We'll be happy for four hours and we won't need to eat so much food. He also says that when you have type two diabetes or pre diabetes, you have a two fold increase of getting Alzheimer's so I'm all for getting us to reverse it as fast. So that always scares people. Hey, when I tell them you got pre diabetes, you're in queue, you're walking towards Alzheimer's, you happy about that? Are you aware about that? I say, okay, the work starts now it's up to you your choice. I'm just your coach. The second type two is called atrophic. And atrophic is simply sub optimal nutrients, sub optimal hormones, and then sub optimal trophic factors. Trophic factors are proteins that allow the nerves to follow a certain path like BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, and that just helps the, the neurons, the nerves to connect. And one of the fastest ways that we can increase BDNF is walking. So I always let people know your best healthcare as a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of walking shoes and just go walking fast as if you're late for an appointment. And then hormones. This is the big one for women. Because what happens to us? After menopause, we don't have hormones, a lot of us are afraid of being on put on placed on hormone replacement therapy. And so our estrogen is so important for our brain. testosterone is important for our brain. progesterone is important for our brain. So we see that and also in men, you know, I'm not saying that men don't get Alzheimer's, but hormones are really important. Then your vitamin D levels, as you know, vitamin D is a hormone, not a vitamin. Then your thyroid hormone is really important.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

I like to say it's three legs of a stool, or it's actually adrenal hormone, reproductive hormones, and also the thyroid. All those hormones are so important to be stable, and they work with each other. So if you have one leg of the stool that's off, you're going to be falling down the chair. Right?

Isabel Hunsinger:

That's a really good point. And just as you probably already know, if your cortisol levels are elevated, that shrinks your hippocampus. Your hippocampus is like an elephant, it's your memory, it remembers everything. But if your high stress level increases cortisol, then it's going to start shrinking your, hippocampus, and we don't want that. And then the sub optimal nutrients are all your vitamin B's, your zinc, your vitamin C, and your co q 10. So that is type two. And then type three is your toxins. And this is like a sub specialist area. Toxins, we are so exposed to toxins ev rywhere.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Pesticides, the foods that we eat night, and even the water that we drink or environment. They're full of toxins, and so it's important to be able to do many detoxes every day, right?

Isabel Hunsinger:

What kind of detoxes are you talking about?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Simple, gentle ones, like oil pulling, where you swish around some oil in your mouth and coconut oil, sesame oil, sunflower oil just helps to make your teeth wider, but also pull some dental toxins out. I do different challenges also like distilled water, where that can also help to detox people and drinking lemon water, you know, helps your liver. So any any type of detoxing in a continual and gentle way will be very beneficial for the constant bombardment of toxins in our environment.

Isabel Hunsinger:

Great point, Carrie. I love that. And how about a little lymphatic drainage on the rebounder?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yes, that's very good, too.

Isabel Hunsinger:

I get on my rebounder and get things moving. Did you know that your lymphatics, which is your lymph node systems in your brain drain best when you lay on your side when you're sleeping? So you're cleaning out your lymphatics while you're sleeping if you lay on your side. It's very common in women around menopause to see these toxins starting to show up and that's essentially because we're losing the hormone support in our brain. And we've got years of exposure to toxins that are kept in our bones and our fat. As we go through menopause and later on, our bones start breaking down. So the osteoclastic, which is just these little Pac men that eat our bones and cause osteoporosis. When those little Pac men start chewing up the bone, the toxins are released. And our brain is not able to think anymore. So that's why we see so many toxins in women. There are three categories, as you know, one is metals, like mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic and then organic chemicals like glyphosate and pesticides. There's this one test that found 172 chemicals, that blows my mind.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

You don't even know babies also have these chemicals now.

Isabel Hunsinger:

I've never checked babies, they have them too.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Their moms, even from the womb. What the mom eats, goes into breast milk, goes to the baby. We got to clean ourselves out. Like you said it's 20 years to show up and so you have to work on it now if you want to prevent Alzheimer's later.

Isabel Hunsinger:

Absolutely. The other organic chemicals are paint thinners. I used to love painting, now just use water based. Then our plastics, like BPA, PBS and BPF. And then the third category is biotoxins which are toxins produced by living organisms. For example, molds.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yeah. mycotoxins. You want to think because we don't have much rain, but still there's water leakages, that can happen. And so a lot of occupational buildings have mold in them. Even bathrooms. I mean, bathrooms are always a place where it's nice and humid and so more love to be there. So IBS very rampant.

Isabel Hunsinger:

And then the herpes virus family. So HS1 if we've got cold sores, that increases your risk of getting Alzheimer's and then your oral pathogens like P gingivalis, then there's also Lyme disease, which with all the co-infections are all things that can cause dementia, cognitive decline, early Alzheimer's. Then we go on to type four, you still with me?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Inflammation, Atrophy, Toxins,

Isabel Hunsinger:

Inflammation, Glycotoxic, Atrophic with the hormones and the vitamins and stuff and then the fourth one is toxins. And then the fifth one is we've called it type four, because type 1.5 is glycotoxic. So the fifth one is called Vascular. And that's just decreased blood flow to the brain, because your brain needs blood. Now let's think of all the different ways that your brain is not getting blood flow. Having a heart attack is number one. Number two, is stroke. Exercising is so important. Just 30 minutes of exercise a day pumps the blood into your brain. So you and I are both big advocates of huffing and puffing and so vascular is very key. Make sure you've got good blood flow to the brain. And also the last one type five is trauma, head injury. Soccer players bouncing the ball on their head have a 3-500 increase risk of Alzheimer's.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Concussions day in day out cause havoc in your brain.

Isabel Hunsinger:

I'm so glad I never had a son and didn't have to worry about my son wanting to play rugby as rugby is huge down here. Have you ever seen rugby players?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yeah, I don't know how to do it.

Isabel Hunsinger:

I've learned to watch it here in New Zealand, and it's a big deal, culturally, it's huge. So those are the areas that you have to look at to address what's causing it.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

When we talk about Alzheimer's is not only Alzheimer's for brain health, it's anxiety, depression. For us, we call it Neuro Affect Circuit where, it's important to look at all these triggers and find the root cause of the issues, maybe the neurotransmitters in your brain health, or the gut. And so it's very important to have a big picture, look at your whole body in order to help your brain as an organ. I, thank you so much for going through all the five

Isabel Hunsinger:

Five and a half types. That's good. and a half types.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

I don't know why they make five and a half, it should be just fixed. But it is very useful to help break it down. And for someone who's struggling with their neurotransmitters, or their neural aspect, to look at all six parts and see where they can improve. And so thanks Dr Isabella, it's really great that you are able to go through this. If people wanted to get a hold of you or see where you're at, can you provide us with where you can where they can find you?

Isabel Hunsinger:

So there's there's two areas that I invite people to, and one is the bossy brain solution, our Facebook page. It's free and private and only for women. Sorry, guys. And it's just to help you learn how to overcome anxiety and depression, how I did it and how they can too. So that they can think clearly and have lasting happiness because they don't have to be where they are. So that's the Bossy Brain solution. And then I'm also on my website, www.doctoronamission.com

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

That's great and thank you for coming on our show. Today we've learned quite a bit about brain health. We invite you to like to share and to subscribe to our channel if you haven't yet. And we hope to see you next week and our next episode.

Unknown:

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