The Dr. Lam Show
The Dr. Lam Show
Unlock the Secret to Improving Memory
Walk into a room and forget what you went there for in the first place? Misplaced something and can’t seem to remember where you put it? Memory issues are very common as you age, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be you as we will be going through tips on how to improve memory and brain fog naturally.
1:50 - Adrenal Fatigue and Brain Fog
3:15 - Brain Games to help memory
4:20 - Meditation to reset Brain
5:00 - High Antioxidant foods to help memory
6:25 - Leaky Gut Optimization
8:30 - Hormone Balancing to reduce cognitive decline
12:30 - Getting good restorative sleep
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Have you ever walked into a room and forgot what you went in there for the first place? How about misplacing something, and can't seem to remember where you put it? Memory issues are very common as you age, but that doesn't have to be what you have to deal with. We'll discuss some tips on how to improve memory today. This is The Dr. Lam show and we're here to talk about integrative medicine, and empower you to take control of your health. If you've enjoyed this show and find it useful, please hit the like button and subscribe to The Dr. Lam show podcast, as well as YouTube channel. I'm Dr. Jeremy Lam, and I'm an internal medicine doctor. I'm also board certified in anti aging and regenerative medicine. I spent my medical career working on chronic diseases as well as prevention and I believe in what integrative medicine can do for my patients.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:I'm Dr. Carrie Lam, and I'm a family medicine physician. I've completed fellowships in functional and metabolic medicine and I'm passionate about nutrition and lifestyle medicine. Today, we're going to talk about ways to improve memory. Sometimes we get confused with memory issues and brain fog and we'll discuss some effective ways to help both. As people grow older, like you said, sometimes their memory begins to falter. And if you have adrenal fatigue, we see that even at a younger age. People might get confused with brain fog, which is difficulty focusing and concentrating and just feeling like there's a fog over your mind or your memory. So we'll be sharing some tips for memory management and keeping your mind sharp. The number one recommendation would be practicing yoga, which is really something very simple. It starts really with the breath and it keeps you flexible, and help regulate your oxygen needs in a meditative way. Having that flexibility not only helps your body, but also help your mind. There are studies in people who did yoga, and they found that it was better than even doing mind games and helping prevent memory loss. So you're able to do some yoga, make sure you practice it. And if you're someone who has adrenal fatigue, keep in mind that you can overdo things. And so even some yoga is a very hot and intense and with the flow. If you are in Adrenal Exhaustion, you don't want to overdo things. Listen to your body, make sure you're not too exhausted after you do the yoga. And we have our own adrenal yoga series that starts on very gently and slowly scales you up, building up your core to make sure you that you don't overdo it with your energy levels. And so this is the first tip that we'd like to recommend for people to improve their memory. What is something else Dr. Jeremy?
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Well, you mentioned one thing which is brain games. It's one of my favorite ways to keep my brain active, like word puzzles or Sudoku. And your brain, you have to think of it as a muscle and so you've got to keep exercising it frequently. That's going to keep your mind sharp. Doing these brain games, or just keeping your mind active by writing or having hobbies, is going to train your brain and improve memory management. Sometimes that can also be very relaxing. So you know, instead of just being on the computer all day, you're trying to do something active with your brain. If you want to have a social component, you know, playing chess with someone or checkers, or doing a puzzle together will also help with memory improvements.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Yeah, excellent advice and it can also be meditation, which is another tip to help calm your brain and body down. Meditation was studied, where they scanned injured people's brains, they found that the medulla which is the part of the brain that is in charge of fear and anxiety, actually reduced the stimulation when you meditate. When you meditate, you kind of reset your system in your mind into thinking that you are in control, you're going to get rid of the feared anxiety and build up your memory cells by resetting. So meditation is another way to reset or recalibrate your brain and body in terms of helping it especially under stress and help your brain recover.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:So besides some lifestyle measures like yoga and meditating there are certain foods that can also help optimize your brain and improve memory. And these foods are high in antioxidants, as well as being really high in omega three fatty acids. The reason for this is that they're going to help protect neurons inside your brain. The neuron sheath is made of fat, which is why it's important to increase your intake of omega three fatty acids. So Dr. Carrie, why don't you tell us about some foods?
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Yeah, some nice good fats that you can get from foods are like coconut oil, which is high in antioxidants. Avocados have good fat, blueberries, beets are also high in antioxidants to reduce inflammation in your brain. And so not only are foods important we have to think about the gu flora as the gut is your secon brain. It's interesting to th nk that your gut is going to help your memory, but it is ve y important that gut brain axis s very important to health an optimal memory. When you ha e a leaky gut, you're also go ng to have a leaky brain. Dr. Je emy, tell us a little more about that.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Leaky gut happens when your gut lining barrier starts to break down. The toxins that you ingest, may leak through the intestinal membrane, to the bloodstream and reaching the brain to cause brain fog, difficulty concentrating, etc. So it's really important to make sure that your gut is optimized. For that, you first have to make sure that you get rid of the toxins that you're ingesting by eating organic foods, avoiding pesticides, herbicides, drinking water out of glass bottles, instead of plastic. All these can decrease the amount of toxins that enter your gut and ultimately to your brain.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:Yeah, fixing leaky gut is very important. We have gut podcasts if you are interested in going back and listening to those in order to help your gut. So you can tell that memory issues really aren't as simple as needing to write things down or are just getting on with your life and dealing with it. Every circuit and organ in your body is connected and a major change in one of them can have unexpected effects. So if you're still struggling with memory, even though you've fixed your gut, you're getting your hormones balanced, and you don't know what to do with the brain fog, give our team a call at our office 714-709-8000 for a free initial phone call, and we can give you specialized information on how to help you with these memory issues. So Dr. Jeremy, what are some other ways that we can look at these health problems and cognitive health in helping to balance the brain?
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:Well, one of the great ways to boost cognitive health is to look at your hormones. Especially during menopause you can have varying amounts of estrogen, and that affects your brain health. According to experts, a considerable drop in estrogen levels can lead to cognitive issues. So scientists are investigating and menopause can be a risk factor for developing cognitive problems. They're also trying to find the link between hormone levels and cognitive health. One study actually suggested that late menopause delayed the decline of verbal memory. We're going to be talking about some natural methods to help your body deal with the hormone imbalance and menopause and then help with cognitive health. So Dr. Carrie, what are some natural methods that we can help with cognitive decline and menopause?
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:In menopause, you have to look at the estrogen to progesterone ratio. Back in the day, most women were a lot skinnier, and so their hormones, their estrogen were not produced as much by fat cells, and so they were not as estrogen dominant as we would call it. So even though menopause is a drop in estrogen, the absolute value of estrogen might drop. Nowadays, when women go through menopause they might still be estrogen dominant in comparison to progesterone, because fat cells produce estrogen. Not only being the weight in the fat cells, but also a lot of the products that we use that have xenoestrogens ake us more estrogen dominant. o for example, laundry etergents, cosmetics, esticides in the foods. So eing estrogen dominant, can hrow your estrogen to rogesterone ratio off. ifferent women have different ypes of bodies. Some women you ear breezed through menopause, hile others have a really hard ime. But the menopause symptoms an also include the memory ssues that come with it, from he estrogen to progesterone atio being off. In order to elp with that, you have to ruly go organic, get rid of esticides, reduce household leaners that are full of hemicals in them. What you eat as a direct impact on your ormones, which means you should educe pesticide content in your ood, processed foods, unhealthy ats, refined carbs, as those an increase estrogen levels, eading to more inflammation in our body and your brain.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:And it's interesting that you noted that, different people can have different reactions throughout menopause. One very common complaint is hot flashes, which can happen both you're skinny, or overweight. So it's not only estrogen dominance symptoms, but also vasomotor instability, which can occur due to estrogen imbalance. So hot flashes can be due to both high and low estrogen. It's not just because you're having the hot flashes, that puts you on hormone replacement, because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It needs to be adjusted properly, as well as also personalize to your symptoms, and your body type. So we often don't take a one size fits all approach, because everybody is different and crucial to take a personalized approach to your hormones.
Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:That's great. So other than balancing the hormones, the other thing to note in the neuroaffect circuit is to ensure that you get good restorative sleep. Sleep can really affect your brain and your circadian rhythm and it's one of the most frequently complained that we hear in adrenal fatigue. When your body's under stress, it's unable to fall asleep, or you can wake up in the middle of the night with sleep mediated insomnia, so both are problematic. It reflects that the neural endo metabolic stress response is imbalanced. Many people try to fall asleep, but then when they wake up, they're still tired. This can be cortisol driven, or it could be a neurotransmitter imbalance, metabolic imbalance within stable blood sugars. There's so many different factors and unless you get to the root cause of it, and you just maybe take some sleep aids and enforces sleep, it is not really getting to the underlying cause, and this approach could actually backfire on you and make the sleep worse. Sleep deprivation, can also lead to hormone and blood sugar imbalances. You may have noticed that inadequate sleep reduced your ability to make right judgments. Like stories of new mothers experiencing inadequate sleep, do some ridiculous things like forgetting to put on clothes or mixing up their coffee for breast milk because inadequate sleep has impaired their judgment, and their memory and mood. And so it's very important to really get good restorative sleep.
Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:So we've talked a lot about different ways to help with improving memory and we hope this helps you understand what may be going on in your body. Memory issues can often be ignored by conventional medicine, and that leads to long term rehabilitation. Just remember that it's your body and you're the best judge of whether it's healthy or not. So if you think that something is wrong, don't stop searching until you get the help and the guidance you need. Thank you for being with us today on The Dr. Lam show. We hope that you found this information helpful and if you did, please subscribe to this channel so that we can continue bringing you more great content. Remember that we're here to empower you to take control of your health.
Unknown:This podcast has been produced and broadcast solely for informational and educational purposes by Lam Clinic. Statements and views expressed in this podcast are not medical advice and have not been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration. The products and supplements discussed in this podcast are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you believe you may have a medical condition, please consult your own doctor. Opinions of guests are their own and Lam Clinic does not endorse or accept responsibility for any of the statements and views made by guests. The views and opinions of guests in the podcast are their own and do not reflect those of Lam Clinic. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. In some cases, individuals on the podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in the products or services referred to herein podcast listeners should always seek the advice of their physicians or other qualified health providers with any questions they may have regarding their own medical conditions. Podcast listeners must always continue to follow the advice of their personal physicians for all of their medical needs.