To forward-thinking women intent on preserving the full spectrum of their cognitive abilities indefinitely this warning from scientists who study the menopausal brain may actually be a blessing in disguise...
But don't expect your physician to be warning you about the acute vulnerability of the female brain
to neurodegeneration beginning around your 40th year. Most doctors are not even aware of
the problem, let alone the recognized solution to it!
In fact many women will be dismayed to discover - after reluctantly enquiring about the unfamiliar symptoms taking place within
them - that their doctor's understanding of menopause is at best rudimentary.
Take Anna for example, a 57-year old counselor to women for whom, until recently, menopause seemed to have passed by.
It is only now, looking back on a three-year loss of joy and desire, and anything remotely resembling the emotional highs and lows of
her past, that it occurs to her she might have misinterpreted the signals of perimenopause - that hormonally-chaotic period in a woman's
life leading up to the last period she will ever experience.
Chocolate cake. A common first treatment for symptoms of perimenopause. [Image: Pexels.com]
Terrified that the way she is feeling might represent her new normal, Anna has seen her days structure themselves around eating cake.
Before going through it herself Anna had assumed that when menopause finally caught up with her she would have a few hot flashes,
her periods would eventually stop, and she would carry on feeling the way she always has...
No one warned her there might be joint pain, heart palpitations, and low-level anxiety.
No one alerted her to the possibility of endless trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But those appear to be nothing more
than false alarms, needless dashes in the dark to perpetuate her insomnia and her body-saturating fatigue.
Even thinking, which she had always taken for granted, has become taxing.
So to avoid the complexity of decisions involving wardrobe and meal plans she has resorted to a daily uniform of black track pants and black
tee shirt, and tv dinners served from the microwave.
This experience, and Anna's research into the cause of it all, leaves little doubt in her mind that her newly-acquired daily brain fog
and the other debilitating symptoms she has "shrugged off as age-related wear and tear" are in fact the result of approaching menopause.
Some menopausal upheavals may not fade gracefully with time, but instead quietly linger. [Image: Pexels.com]
As unpleasant as it is to deal with, all her reading suggests the topsy-turvy nature of her hormonal transition should at least
be temporary - even if "temporary" is to be measured with a years-long yardstick.
The notion that her neurological symptoms might eventually let up but her underlying brain architecture might continue to
quietly deteriorate never crosses her mind...
This is because brain shrinkage does not draw the same kind of attention from a woman as does the more immediate humiliation and
desperation she derives from wild mood swings, urinary tract infections, painful sex, and vaginal atrophy - the not-so-celebrated
causes of menopausal dread.
If the issue of shrinkage does ever drive women like Anna to raise embarrassing questions with their doctors it is
NOT because of any suddenly-emerging interest in the long-term health of their brains...
Women are not taught to be suspicious about such a thing, and physicians are not trained to divert the thinking of their patients towards it.
Instead, once you have drummed up the courage to address why it is you no longer feel you can
trust your own body not to find new ways to embarrass you daily, then rather than focus on the health of your brain...
Both You And The Doc Will More Likely Want To Discuss The Immediate Goings On Of Your Better Appreciated Lady Parts
The known territories.
The probed and spatula'd landscapes documented by a century or more of investigative women's health.
Conventional women's health focuses more on those elements of the female body not shared with
the opposite sex. [Image: Unsplash.com]
A woman's breasts. Her ovaries. Her uterus and vagina.
These are all fair game for speculation on the part of her physician.
But her brain?
What can a general practitioner properly surmise about the goings on in that butter-soft ball of gray matter
which lays hidden away from the outside world by an opaque layer of protective bone?
And yet...
If your doctor could see inside your head he/she might be shocked by what the two brain scans shown below
from the Department of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine reveal about the abrupt changes which can take place inside your
head when you transition through to menopause.
Can you spot the difference in brain activity (energy consumption) between these two brains?
One belongs to a woman still capable of getting pregnant. The other belongs to a slightly older woman whose
reproductive cycles have terminated.
Shades of orange and red indicate a warmer (energy consuming) brain, shades of green and blue signify a cooler, less energy-activated brain...
The story conveyed by this image is not of some anomaly in brain function experienced by the rare woman whose health unexpectedly
goes south right at that critical time in her life when everything changes.
The new science of female-specific brain health is telling us this is not a rare occurrence.
Instead, every neurological circuit you had grown to depend upon before this critical transitional period beginning in your fifth
decade of life - all the non-reproducible brain wiring that makes you uniquely you - suddenly becomes at risk of being "remodeled" to
accommodate the needs of a soon-to-be non-reproductive body and a now energy-starved brain.
It is not a coincidence that extreme weariness and mental confusion often dog a woman's ability to perform in every area of her
life in the years leading up to menopause.
It is because she is literally being stripped of the resources needed to power her brain!
Here's The Good News. For Many Women This Anxiety-Ridden Period Of Mental Destabilization Will Last Less Than A Decade.
Recently scientists from the Department of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, in collaboration with the College of Medicine
at University of Arizona, performed brain scans on 160 women aged between 40 and 65 years [Ref. Mosconi-2021].
Dr. Lisa Mosconi, the lead scientist from the 2021 women's brain imaging studies conducted
at Weill Cornell Medicine. [Image: Ted.com]
They tracked the group of women for two years.
What the brain researchers found both surprised them and confirmed the results of earlier studies which had indicated
the period of transition to menopause is both neurologically eventful and fraught with risk to the female brain.
The good news seemed to be that in most instances - even though a woman's brain is likely to undergo significant changes in structure and connectivity,
changes which could trigger and exacerbate many of the common symptoms of menopause - the post-menopausal brain will recover much of its cognitive
and emotional facility.
A brain subject to the destabilizing effects of menopause, the research suggested, will find a way to compensate and adapt.
However, this will not be the case for every woman.
About 1 in 5 women will experience lasting - sometimes debilitating - changes to the way their brain is structured and the way in which it processes
information. This brain remodeling will set the stage for how this unlucky group of women view the world and interact with it for the rest of their days.
The results of the two-year long study were published in the journal Nature in June of 2021.
A graph from that paper, from which a great deal of useful if not so reassuring information can be inferred, shows a simple interpretation of the
(decidedly not-so-simple) trends seen in the female brain as it is forced to adapt to the ever-mounting stress of estrogen and progesterone withdrawal.
I will interpret for you shortly this mysterious pattern of falling and rising biomarkers of brain activity and brain health.
Lisa Mosconi, the lead scientist on the brain imaging study, was later asked by
The Wall Street Journal about what her investigation had uncovered [Ref. WSJ-2021].
One of the most surprising findings, she said, was that gray matter volume - the amount of cell tissue allocated to information processing in the
brain - despite dipping during the years leading up to menopause, actually recovers in some parts of the brain as a woman moves into her postmenopausal years.
She gets back a large part of the cognitive deficit she suffered during the turbulent years of menopausal transition.
"Our study suggests the brain has the ability to find a new normal after menopause in most women," declared Mosconi
Some women have interpreted this statement, and the results of the study which do suggest a woman's brain will find a way to compensate for the
physiological changes forced upon it when the hormones estrogen and progesterone plummet throughout her body, to mean that women worried about the
effects of menopause on their brains can now breathe a sigh of relief...
One writer for WomenAndHome.com
who can be forgiven for perhaps reading too much into the findings (the published results are extraordinarily hard to decipher) chose to report the
news with the decidedly upbeat headline Menopause and the brain: turns out it's not so bad [Ref. WAH-2021]
Significantly more women fall prey to severe cognitive impairment than do men. [Image: uahs.arizona.edu]
Not so bad?
If that was true, why is it that of every 3 people who struggle with severe cognitive decline 2 of them are women?
If menopause acting on the female brain is "not so bad" then why is it that one woman out of every 5 whose brain undergoes
neurological impairment during her menopausal years is fated not to recover her premenopausal faculties?
In what sense is this not so bad?
Clearly there is some level of disconnect between what is being reported to women, and what is being experienced firsthand, and for
the first time as they enter menopause, by tens of millions of them across the globe every year.
So what is the truth of the matter?
When It Comes To The Vulnerability Of Your Brain To The Loss Of Your "Sex Hormones" At Midlife,
Why Does It Seem So Hard To Get Definitive Answers About What Is Going On?
Hey there, my name is Stephen Carter.
I am a former physical scientist (Ph.D.) and an expert on matters relating
to that fuzzy area where women's health and brain discombobulation begin to overlap.
Yet, in as much as this fusion of distinct medical specialties may sound promising (especially to you, my Female Reader), I have to
admit it is a strange place for a man to hang out. Also, a kind of lonely one. Because it turns out hardly anyone gives a damn about women's brains.
Even so, for some time now I have investigated the research efforts of those scientists who do care about what is happening
specifically to the brains of women.
But it did not start out that way.
Initially my interest focused on the work of leaders in the field of general brain science.
These are the little-known but highly dedicated researchers who seek to better understand how those of us who have reached the middle part
of our lives can preserve our cognitive health for (hopefully) the rest of our days.
At first my exploration of the science of the aging brain was driven by practical considerations. I wanted to make sure I was
doing everything I could to preserve my ability to make a living (by continuing to use my intellect) well beyond the age of retirement.
But then I made an interesting and unexpected discovery.
The demographic most likely to benefit from the practical information I was digging up was not men like myself. It was women.
The Human Brains Most Vulnerable To The Passage Of Time Belong Not To Males But Females
Furthermore, when it became apparent that female brain health is inextricably tied to the mechanics of the female reproductive system
I realized the topic of brain health is a LOT more interesting than I could ever have suspected it might be.
Here is what I have now figured out.
The average woman simply has NO idea about the challenges she faces on the neurological front as she enters the fifth decade of her life.
How could she?
The information on this topic is so new that you will not find it mentioned in any text book.
Nor is your doctor likely to respond with anything other than a blank stare should you query them about how best to mitigate the
risk to good brain health imposed by the passage of menopause.
Consider estrogen therapy, you might be told - as though the solution to all "women's problems" is more estrogen (yet this is far from the truth!).
In fact, one has to stare long and hard at the science literature devoted to uncovering the connection between menopause and
brain health before any of it begins to make any sense.
Take, for example, the previous color-coded graph which shows the ebb and flow of the biomarkers of brain health as a woman
transitions through the stages of menopause.
It is not so easy to interpret!
You could take it upon yourself to read the scientific papers detailing the changes seen in the female brain as it passes from the premenopausal (PRE)
phase, which represesents all the early years during which your hormones are regular and you are sexually reproductive, until the postmenopausal (POST)
phase when you have ceased to be so.
If you do this you will occasionally come upon relatively easy-to-interpret data, like this "brain shrinkage" graphic from the Nature paper
[Ref. Mosconi-2021] showing the population-averaged loss of white matter (WM) volume over time, both in the front and rear parts of the brain,
as a woman passes from her premenopausal to her postmenopausal years:
But for the most part the content of these papers is dense and opaque to the general reader.
An easier approach to understanding this complex topic perhaps, is to find a guide who can present to you just the bits you really ought to know about.
My Job Today Is To Help Women Understand And Accommodate The Changes Taking Place Inside Them, And Especially Inside
Their Head, As Their Reproductive Biology Begins To Fail Them
Consider for a moment that initial graphic from the Nature paper - the one showing the evolution over time of SEVEN important biomarkers of
brain health.
I have reproduced those curves here with less detail so as to remind you of the highly variable nature of the composition and architecture
of the female brain as it passes through the years surrounding menopause.
For the labeling of the separate curves you can refer back to the full scale image.
One story that might be inferred from the multi-colored curves of biomarker intensity seen here - based on an interpretation
of the plotted dark gray curve which represents gray matter volume - is that a woman's cognitive faculties are largely restored
in the postmenopausal years.
This is the period during which the amount of gray matter in a woman's brain recovers.
In isolation this part of the story is not only true (cognitive test scores do recover after dipping in the perimenopausal years),
it is also reassuring.
Even so, for the complete picture of how your neurological well-being is affected as you transition through menopause we need to also take
into account the additional changes your brain may experience, as indicated by the remaining 6 (color-coded) curves in that tell-tale image.
And is there ever a tale to be told here...
This is where my job as a translator of inscrutable scientific papers begins to pay off!
Allow me to briefly summarize for you the hidden biology of the middle-aged female brain so that you can see where you
really stand when your body begins to switch from its estrogen-dominant to its estrogen-depleted mode...
Note: The explanations in the seven colored sections below match up with the corresponding seven colored curves in the graphic
from the Nature paper.
Here is what it all means:
Your brain loses power. Normally your brain accepts blood sugar and converts it to energy.
Estrogen boosts the conversion process. But with estrogen shut off at menopause glucose metabolism in the brain
drops by as much as 30 percent and never recovers - sometimes leading to disastrous consequences...
Your brain cannibalizes itself. Now starved of energy and in desperate need of a new source
of fuel to power itself your brain begins to feed on its own white matter (the fatty material which protects
your neural circuitry). This energy-compensation process causes parts of your brain to begin to shrink...
Your brain unplugs itself. In parallel with the loss of white matter (brain wiring) goes
brain connectivity (as revealed by the fractional anisotropy measurement). Less connectivity
means fewer pathways for signal conduction and more brain fog. Worse yet, your brain becomes increasingly
fragile to destabilizing events...
Your brain engages in cover-up. Energized by the sacrifice of fatty white matter, your brain
compensates for the loss of connectivity by growing/strengthening its neural (gray matter) linkages.
The improved cognitive performance suggests good brain health but masks the ever-weakening neurological scaffolding...
Your brain begins to asphyxiate. More oxygen is needed to burn fat than to burn glucose.
To meet the biochemical demands of its growing white matter metabolism your brain sprouts additional blood
vessels to allow for more oxygen-carrying blood to be pulled from your body...
Your brain heats up. Metabolizing the fatty part of your brain for fuel causes
its energy signature to soar (burning fat produces way more energy-providing ATP molecules than does
burning glucose). But what happens when your brain begins to exhaust its supply of white matter and the
energy spigot goes away?
Your brain begins to rust. Biological rust in the brain takes the form of slowly-accumulating
noxious protein fragments called amyloid-beta. Around 1 in 4 men and women carry ApoE4, a gene which
appears to predispose us to this "neurological rusting". And in women plummeting estrogen seems to get the process started...
Clearly a LOT is going on in a woman's brain at this time of her life!
Even so, the sketch I have provided you comes nowhere close to conveying all the changes which take place when a woman's
estrogen (and progesterone) production begins to shut down.
To characterize the outcome of this potentially tumultuous period of your life as "not so bad", based on the apparent medium-term
effect of it on your brain, is to gloss over some stark realities you might later discover was a mistake to have dismissed so quickly.
The bodily discomforts do a fantastic job of distracting you from the much more worrisome changes
going on deep inside your brain. [Image: 123rf.com]
Yet probably not 1 in 1000 women will ever become so aware of the vulnerability to which their brain is exposed during
the menopausal transition that they would be inspired to take any measure of action ahead of time to protect their brain.
Instead, most women will become preoccupied with the well-known physical and mental discomforts of menopause...
The hot flashes.
The night sweats.
The insomnia, mood swings, forgetfulness, and overwhelming feelings of fatigue which drive exasperated women to forums and their
physician's office in search of answers and relief.
And yet it may never occur to them that at the very same time they feel as though they might be losing their mind, the physical changes
taking place inside them might be predisposing them for that very thing to happen in years to come.
Consider These "Unfair" Statistics Which Apply To You, By Virtue Of The Fact That You Are Saddled With, As Dr. Lisa Mosconi
Calls It, A Double X (Chromosome) Brain
The estimated lifetime risk of developing severe cognitive impairment in women is roughly twice that of men.
[Image:
alz.org]
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #1 -
By 45 years of age you will have acquired a roughly 1 in 5 chance of eventually succumbing to severe cognitive decline
(twice the risk seen in men) [Ref. AAR-2020].
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #2 -
If you develop severe cognitive impairment the cost to your family of providing care is expected to be substantially greater than
if you were a man because women tend to suffer for longer with the condition (Medicaid pays out 70 percent more for female care [Ref. ALZ-2021]).
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #3 -
If you carry the relatively common ApoE4 gene, then compared to a man, as you age you will likely
develop worse memory performance, experience more rapid brain shrinkage (white matter and neuronal cell death), and exhibit more pronounced
biomarkers of severe cognitive decline [Ref. Hara-2018].
In fact, according to one of the foremost authorities on female brain penalties, "a woman with a single copy of the APOE4 gene
is at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than a man with two copies of the gene." [Ref. JFN-2017]
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #4 -
You are about 3 times more likely than a man to develop MS, an often devastating neurological condition
which degrades the neural wiring in your brain, spine, and optic nerves [Refs. Ahlgren-2011, Wallin-2012].
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #5 -
You are about twice as likely as a man to develop a noncancerous meningioma (brain tumor) sometime in your life [Ref. Christensen-2003].
Despite being non-malignant these tumors can still cause terrible suffering and even death.
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #6 -
You are about 4 times as likely as a man to develop osteoporosis (a condition wherein extreme thinning may cause bones to grow so feeble
they are able to spontaneously collapse) [Ref. NOF]. Unfortunately weak bones in postmenopausal women are known to be associated with
more rapid cognitive decline [Ref. Brownbill-2004].
- FEMALE NEUROLOGICAL PENALTY #7 -
Throughout your entire life the odds of you suffering a major depressive episode will continue to be 50 to 100 percent
more likely than if you were a man [Refs. Hara-2018, Kessler-1993].
Yikes. When it comes to your neurological health, once you reach your forties it's no fun to be a woman looking ahead in life, is it?
Not to mention the hard-scrabble existence that menopause itself can foist upon you during this time. I am not going to bother spelling out
all the miseries associated with this chapter of your life because, well, if you are already living them then you know full well what that's
all about!
Instead, what I want to tell you about is the stuff you have yet to take into account because nobody has pulled you aside to explain it.
Either because they don't understand it, or because they also have yet to be taken aside...
If you look back at that list above you will see I have described all these shortcomings of being a woman as penalties. Because that is
the way you should think of them.
And now I want to tell you about one of the most potent contributing factors to this lop-sided lottery of gender-specific brain dysfunction.
It is one that reminds me of a popular game enjoyed by children and adults alike.
But trust me, there is nothing fun about how this game plays out...
What You Need To Know About Neuro-Destructive Jenga, The Menopause-Induced "Brain Game"
No Woman Would Ever Willingly Choose To Play!
We actually touched on this extraordinary transformation of the female brain already.
It is bound up in that innocuous-looking light grey dot which appears in our list of explanations about the worrisome
changes which get started in your brain during the years of the menopausal transition.
Menopause has a kind of built-in Jenga penalty that acts on the brain.
[Image:
Yellow Octopus]
The defining characteristic of this most pernicious of the seven brain destabilizing processes is cannibalism.
In fact there are two main processes which compete with each other during this period.
The second mechanism (highlighted by the dark grey dot in that same worrisome list) is a positive one.
It involves a slow strengthening of the neural connections in your brain over time.
You will remember that this discovery, which has been touted as compensation for the first process which literally eats away at the white matter of
your brain, caused one excited journalist to declare that perhaps things are "not so bad" when it comes to way the female brain evolves
under menopause.
But the act of endlessly chipping away at any structure eventually has consequences, even if you continue to reinforce the parts that remain.
You can see how this works in the game of Jenga which involves players taking turns at removing wooden blocks from a pre-built tower.
The goal is to remove your block strategically so that structural integrity is maintained and the pile of blocks does not come tumbling down.
In the energy-starved menopausal brain an analogous process takes place as the fatty myelin coating on neural connective tissue is removed and
used for fuel.
Remove too much and the entire neural network may collapse. Fail to reinforce the remaining parts of the network with stronger neural connections
and the same thing may happen anyway.
And all the while this is happening, before the end of this macabre "game of neural deconstruction" draws close and the structure begins to show
signs of instability, a woman is likely to remain quite unaware of what is happening to her.
Reader, you may remain blissfully unaware of what is happening to you!
As Parts Of Your Brain Shrink In Volume And Becomes Ever More Fragile, The Odd Behaviors You Do Notice You Might Chalk Up To The Effects
Of Old Age Or Too Much Stress.
A woman may scratch her head, but nonetheless she will dismiss those instances where she found herself struggling to recall the names of people and
objects with which she was once highly familiar.
She will completely overlook missed appointments, deliveries that failed to show up, and the reason she planted calibracoa and not petunias
three months earlier.
And those misplaced car keys which finally turned up the refrigerator...
Surely someone was having fun with her!
Strange that these things keep happening. But still, easy to dismiss.
Until the day a destabilizing incident causes some part of the fragile architecture to collapse.
This could be due to a stroke, inflammation (possibly autoimmune in nature), a urinary tract or other infection, a fall, a prolonged misunderstanding
about how much of a specific medication to take which leads to poisoning...
In fact, the ways in which a non-trivial change could be triggered in the delicate biochemistry of the brain are countless.
When delirium presents itself it is often overlooked or erroneously diagnosed as dementia which it is
not (but may precede).
And then within a matter of weeks or days, sometimes just hours, the dwindling infrastructure is accelerated through a tipping point and what seemed to be
a normally-functioning brain loses its ability to properly make sense of the world around it.
The diagnosis following such events sounds harmless at first because we usually associate it with passing illness and fever.
"Delirium," the doctor tells one of your family members as they shine a light into your eyes.
But sometimes that delirium is a sign of something much more sinister, and lasting.
In 2010 a study of postoperative delirium in elderly patients found that those who were already diagnosed with some form of cognitive impairment were
more than twice as likely as those with "normal" cognition to be institutionalized in the months following a case of post-operative delirium [Ref. Joost-2010].
In fact, it is easy to think of two reasons why the risk that a woman might lose her mind when her weakened neural architecture is subjected to a neurological
shock must be even higher than what turned up in the researchers' data.
The first reason is because delirium has been found to go unrecognized by nursing staff in as many as 7 out of every 10 patients with delirium with whom
the staff interact [Ref. Inouye-2001].
The second reason is that "normal" cognition must also include unrecognized cases of cognitive impairment not tallied in the risk
assessment for institutionalization (women are particularly good at learning to hide their disabilities from family members).
Take care. Even something as simple as a fractured wrist could lead to an abrupt, debilitating,
and sometimes permanent change to your brain chemistry...
Here is why this matters.
Every year close to 900,000 women in the United States fall and fracture their hip, ankle, wrist or other bones [Ref. Kim-2011]. A similar number
of women in their sixties or older likely get back up and congratulate themselves on NOT having broken anything.
Yet, regardless of whether it happens as the result of delirium in the days following a surgery, or the medical attention received for a sprained
wrist or scrapped knees, a certain number of these women suddenly discover they have no recollection of the faintly-familiar strangers who are now
referring to them as "Mom".
Familial relationships can be dissolved in what seems like the blink of an eye - though in reality this is the end result of a slow dismantling of the
neural wiring that defines our relationship to the world.
When a faltering brain is pushed beyond its tipping point even our own children can become strangers to us!
Fortunately, though it happens all too often, suddenly losing your grip on reality is perhaps the worst and least likely outcome.
You never want to get to the point where the way you feel about yourself begins
to mirror a sparse and muted abstract watercolor!
Most women just fail to counter the withering effect going on in their head and steadily lose their energy and drive.
This is a consequence of the myriad menopause-induced changes to the metabolism, architecture, and connectivity of their brains outlined earlier.
Not every woman is affected this way. Indeed, about 1 in 5 women scarcely even notice they are going through menopause. They wonder what all the fuss
is about.
But for many other women the situation is quite different.
They lose their capacity for creative and self expression. They lose their sense of joy, pride, worth and purpose.
Even their desire for sex may go as their hormone-driven urges wind down and the opportunities for romance seem less and less worth the bother.
In short, they lose the plot of their lives as their cognitive capacity, social and romantic dexterity, and degree of self-reliance deflates like
a damaged balloon from which the air is slowly being let out.
If the possibility of living out the rest of your days as a watered down version of who you are now strikes you as marginally terrifying and not the least
bit fair, well, you are probably right about that.
Because - with the possible exception of the page you are reading right now - you do not get a whole lot of warning about what you might be up against.
No One Tells You, Not Even Your Doctor, That The Biological Cost Of Being A Woman Will Be Deferred Until You Reach Your
40s - At Which Point A HUGE Bill May Come Due...
It is easy, when you are a woman, to take for granted the sexual power which enables you to bring forth entirely new human beings from your own body.
It is after all a superpower you were born with.
On the other hand, this superpower comes with a catch. And if your goal is to enjoy long-term, uninterrupted cognitive health, then this catch is not
one you can afford to ignore.
You know, of course, that the ability to reproduce comes with an expiration date. This is menopause.
Much less well appreciated is that prior to this, during your fertile years, that ability to mother involves some insanely complex biology which your
body is only able to sustain for 30 years or so by borrowing against its future.
The ability to bear children carries a hidden cost. It takes away from the long-term resilience
of your neurological scaffolding and connectivity - unless you decide to take action to counter its effects.
That borrowing began the day you ovulated for the first time, at which point one could argue your brain stopped acting entirely of its own volition.
That's because from that point on it was periodically doused in messenger molecules from your ovaries which regulated your emotions and strongly
influenced the way you viewed the world around you.
For most women those molecules, the hormones bubbling up from their loins, literally brainwash them to seek out a member of the opposite sex and
utilize their womb for procreation.
Estrogen ensures your brain stays energized, wired, and focused on the objective.
Progesterone on the other hand sedates your brain and mercifully deflects from the physical discomforts associated with having to build and
discard an entirely new potential biologically nursery every 30 days or so.
The result is that for years your body and brain ceaselessly maintain the machinery of incubation.
Then, if everything goes right, your body temporarily becomes an incubator. Then a supplier of food. Then back to maintaining the incubation machinery
until the next cycle of reproduction...
To coordinate all of the hormone-driven processes required to see through a successful pregnancy a woman's brain has to be highly optimized for the
reproductive decades of her life.
But that optimization comes at a cost (remember that catch I mentioned earlier?)
This is because the optimized responses of the female brain depend so critically on the presence of the hormones estrogen and progesterone.
And when these are taken away in the fifth decade of life the finely tuned machinery of a woman's brain begins to sputter. And for some women the
machinery ultimately crashes completely.
The symptoms most commonly associated with menopause - the hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings from anxiety to depression and back again, the
utter exhaustion - for most women these are the unrecognized signs of an energy-starved brain reconfiguring itself and causing turmoil as it tries
to find a new equilibrium.
But from the point of view of human development there is no evolutionarily-honed final state of balance for the female brain.
For most of human history we simply never lived long enough for it to have evolved. The brain of a female human beyond the age of 50 years is very much
an unfinished product.
It certainly has no warranty of any kind!
This is why the way your brain shapes up in the second half of your life is entirely up to you. Because in a very real sense Mother Nature has
provided you with no plan for how to maintain it for the long-term...
And I think this means you need to come up with a plan of your own.
But that raises a couple of obvious questions, right?
Like, how would you go about that?
And what would a good plan look like once it was sketched out?
After having put a great deal of thought into what a good neuroprotection plan should entail, at a minimum, for a woman whose age is between about
40 to 60 years (the window during which the pursuit of such a plan is likely to reap the most reward) I was able to come up with a short-list
of SIX requirements.
Would you like to know what I came up with?
These are the elements I think need to be taken into account when you formulate your own (female-specific) brain-protection plan:
The SIX Things I Think Every Good Women's Brain Health Plan Should Have
- REQUIREMENT #1: A thorough understanding of the gender-based neurological penalties you will endure by virtue of having a female brain, the proper
functioning of which is critically-sensitive to the varying amount of the hormones estrogen and progesterone coursing through you.
- REQUIREMENT #2: Science-based strategies for addressing these hormone-induced penalties so that you can attempt to "level the playing field"
by removing (during the most impactful period of your life) one of the major contributors to increased risk of non-negligible cognitive
impairment in the years ahead [Ref. Brinton-2021].
- REQUIREMENT #3: Science-based strategies for mitigating against invasive assaults on your brain. Commonly overlooked by those who obsess
over Sudoku and other marginally useful "brain-boosting" techniques is a proper defensive strategy against the microbial world which can do
a lot of neurological damage very quickly if given the chance.
- REQUIREMENT #4: Science-based knowledge of foods conducive to lasting brain health. Research has shown that neuro-inflammation (which is exacerbated
around menopause by the loss of estrogen [Ref. Villa-2016] and progesterone [Ref. Lei-2014]) is perhaps the main driver of both slow age-related
cognitive decline and the accelerated kind due to disease. So you will need to devise for yourself an anti-inflammatory diet.
- REQUIREMENT #5: A commitment to achieving excellent physical fitness. Low physical fitness, it turns out, promotes inflammation in the
body - the kind that ratchets up your risk for brain dysfunction [Ref. Horder-2018]. You will need to convince yourself to put in the work,
preferably with the least amount of physical effort so you stay motivated.
- REQUIREMENT #6: Knowledge about what NOT to do to ruin your progress. We all make dumb mistakes. But you really should try to avoid making those
which are entirely avoidable and involve obliterating the reduction in risk of cognitive impairment you have worked so hard to achieve
elsewhere in your life.
If you keep these six principles in mind, as you go about formulating your plan for how to "keep the lights on", what you are likely to come up with
is a solid approach to meeting all of the brain-health challenges I have brought to your attention today.
Alternatively, rather than try to figure out all of this on your own, you could have someone like me outline the basis for such a plan for you, which
I have done. This is entirely based on the recommendations of those who have carried out the scientific studies which I will summarize for you.
If you have a few more minutes to spare I would like to tell you more about this...
Will You Allow Me To Show You How To Improve Your Odds Of Preserving The Full Cognitive Capacity Of Your Wondrously
One-Of-A-Kind Brain Throughout Your 40s, 50s, 60s, AND THE DECADES BEYOND?
My educational program for lasting cognitive health was developed to cater to the specific biological needs and unique characteristics
of a woman's brain - not a man's. That's why I have named it...
I know. A program designed by a man, but for the benefit of women only?
Why would I devote myself to filling in the blanks on a comprehensive educational program for cognitive health which categorically excludes my fellow men?
It's because when I looked closely at this topic it was the women who appeared to need the help most.
Not only that, but everything I have learned on the subject suggests you cannot address the issues of brain health maintenance without first adopting
a gender-based approach to assembling the core material needed to create a worthwhile teaching and implementation framework.
The truth is that men also have their own needs when it comes to the maintenance of brain health. For example, they are far more prone to
Parkinson's disease.
But women suffer in larger numbers from later-in-life brain dysfunction and disease. Plus the deck is stacked against them in another important way...
History suggests that from a medical point of view women's brains have just not been deemed all that interesting. Or at least not different
enough from a man's brain to warrant any special consideration not taken into account by smaller size alone.
These factors by themselves might have been enough to persuade me to go all in on the study of women's brain health. But they were not the
only ones which factored into my decision.
In my opinion the biology of the female brain is fascinating, not too well understood (especially by those who need to understand it), and its
study is very much still in its infancy.
This subject is also somewhat impenetrable to the layman (or should I say laywoman) because the story of women's brain health, and the much-needed
strategies to maintain it, are wrapped in the language of science.
That means one way to get a feel for what is going on is to be well-steeped in the art of both reading scientific journals and listening to the
talks of the folks who write the papers discussed in those journals. Need I point out that this does not describe average woman!
Another way of getting to the root of a complex subject is to find someone able to do the legwork for you. Someone who can translate all the
apparent gobbledygook into something meaningful and easy enough to understand.
You guessed it, I am that person - the former scientist turned translator of weird findings from the world of academia.
And Her Ageless Brain is the condensed laywoman-friendly summary of all the most important things I have learned about how to keep
a woman's brain healthy and high-functioning for the longest possible time.
I like to joke that if I was writer for television shows I might have named my program
The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Female Brain - And How To Avoid Accidentally Destroying It.
On the other hand, this alternative title is much less of a joke than it is an accurate description of my intent and what you can expect when
you go through the program.
So if I have already managed to convince you of the worth of this goal of mine go ahead now and click on the button below so we can get started...
But if you do need more information about what we will be covering in the program you will find that detailed in the sections below.
Before We Jump Into The Details Of What You Will Discover Inside Her Ageless Brain, Let Me First Describe In Broad Strokes What
You Can Expect From This Program...
I have designed Her Ageless Brain to be an educational and actionable course metered out over a six-month period.
However, you will be free to consume all of the material at whatever speed you feel is most comfortable. Entirely up to you.
Once you are a member I will send you weekly reminders via email of content awaiting you in the program. The course consists of SIX modules and
the aim is to have you consume one module every month (but again, you can go at whatever speed you prefer).
As you will quickly discover, there is a lot of material in this program. This is partly why I recommend the six-month approach.
But in addition to this, the goal of the program is to entirely reframe your thinking on the subject of brain health.
The objective is to get you to recognize the importance of fully-functioning "grey matter" in your life. That and the need to make certain
lifestyle changes LONG BEFORE you ever experience any of the worrisome symptoms of a brain neglected far too long.
When I tell you that you need to begin making these lifestyle changes early on I mean up to 20 years before the signs of neglect begin to show
in your sixties and beyond.
This might surprise you.
Because what it means is that if you have not yet begun to implement a sufficient program of self-care by the time you are 50 years
of age then you are already 5-10 years late in your efforts.
Better late than never, they say.
Yes, but if you are reading this page and you are in your sixties, or older, and you have yet to give your cognitive
health the same consideration you might already have done for your cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, or immune system heath, then frankly...
This program might not be for you!
That's because I have assumed the age of the woman I can help the most is someone still in her perimenopausal or early postmenopausal years.
In other words, I anticipate that you are between the ages of about 40 and 60 years. But the younger the better, because then you will have
more time to practice your cognitive health rescue plan and stave off the damages that might otherwise accrue over the years.
This is one of the reasons why I spend a good deal of effort outlining in the program what takes place in your brain throughout the years during
which you spend in the menopausal transition window (from the ages of roughly 40 to 60 years).
This is a biologically critical period for every woman.
The consequence of being ignorant of its effect on the brain is part of the reason that at any given time in the United States you can find
approximately 4 million severely cognitively incapacitated women who have paid the ultimate price for having been neglectful of what was
happening to them.
Here's the good news.
If you meet the selection criteria I have spelled out, and you are in relatively good health now, then that sorry fate need not be your fate.
Even if your goal is to only slow down the march of cognitive decline, and not attempt to impede it entirely, you are well-positioned to do that still.
If you decide to act, there is still time to do so.
Let's take a closer look now at what I have included in your Her Ageless Brain membership which was created in accordance with the SIX
requirements, or principles, outlined earlier for any good women's brain health program.
The program contains six modules, each of which addresses one of the six principles.
Here is the first of them...
Are You Ready To Take An Eye-Opening Dive Into The Science Of How Your Not-Really-A-Man's Brain Actually Works?
Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, in his book How To Live Longer And Feel Better said about the brain that
"Of all the organs in the human body, the brain is the most sensitive to its molecular composition."
But in spite of the litany of neuro-sensitive chemicals he trotted out in his chapter on the brain - the drugs, vitamins, minerals, amino acids,
and other nutrients which positively influence the brain or hasten its dysfunction - he never once mentioned the contributing effects
of a hormone imbalance.
Pauling was far from alone in his limited thinking on "brain chemistry".
Back then, just a few short decades ago, no one seriously considered the long-term effects of an estrogen or a progesterone
deficit on the functioning of the human brain.
It was as if, when it came to research associated with the female brain, the medical profession blinded itself to the decades surrounding menopause.
Today we know this was a HUGE oversight.
One consequence of this is that for more than a generation women have been fed an entirely erroneous dialog about the nature and operation of their brain.
Another follow-on from this oversight is that assisted living and memory care facilities today are overflowing with female patients who were never
made aware of the sometimes harrowing challenges female brains will face around midlife which male brains will not.
Those women never learned that these challenges involve physical changes to the architecture, metabolism, and connectivity of the female
brain - changes which may predispose that brain to severe cognitive dysfunction in the years to come.
In The Estrogenic Brain you will be introduced to recent discoveries in the science of women's brain health.
This is the critical first step to figuring out how to reduce your potential for slow (and sometimes sudden) loss of the neural circuitry
that spells out everything about how you perceive and respond to the world around you.
Keeping a lid on what makes you the one-of-a-kind person you are today requires a basic understanding of the science outlined in this chapter.
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
THE ESTROGENIC BRAIN
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE ONE OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
-
Why you should reject the "So it's really nothing to get too concerned about" suggestion that the reason women die from neurodegenerative diseases at more than twice the rate men do is because women get the benefit of out-living their luckless counterparts.
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Why the most neurologically risk-fraught time of your life is not old-age but middle-age (the last period of your life during which you can effectively counteract the risk that you may one day lose your marbles).
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The nature of the critical THREE stages (not one) of menopause that play a huge part in whether or not you will enjoy "neurological harmony" in the second half of your life - and how to identify what stage you are at today.
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The reason, during the run up to menopause, that you might feel as though you need to be committed to an insane asylum (and why many women in the past quite unjustly have been).
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Why menopause was once considered by physicians to be a purely chemical problem with a purely chemical solution, and how that did not work out so well for millions of unsuspecting women.
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Why the female brain is programmed to unplug around the time of that first gray hair (you remember, the one you plucked in your forties before anyone had the chance to notice it).
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How that inevitable midlife brain drain powers weight gain in your caboose (and belly!)
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How to understand menopause as a "one-way phase transition" of the female brain, like the irreversible melting of an ice cube.
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THREE ways your brain begins to sputter when your estrogen disappears, and what that means for your ability to think clearly, recall things, and maintain focus long enough to complete everyday tasks.
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Why that ketogenic diet you never got started with might turn out to be key to your long-term ability to ward off cognitive impairment.
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An introduction to one of the world's foremost researchers of the female brain - a woman who has been obsessed with them for more than half her life, and the secrets she has uncovered.
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The existence of a little-known "window of neurological opportunity" the average woman knows nothing about, but which if she misses shortly after menopause could be a cause of regret for the rest of her life.
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Insight into the behemoth, but badly-designed, women's health study which scared many women off hormone therapy for good (and is still doing so), and may have robbed them of years of additional clarity of mind, memory recall, and higher executive function.
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What the difference is between the female hormone progesterone and the synthetic (man made) progestins you might have mistakenly put into your body for years as a means of family planning thinking they were the same thing...
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Why you never want to swallow an estrogen medication.
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The FOUR things you want to avoid doing if you ever decide to put yourself on a hormone therapy (unless you are comfortable with increased risk for an adverse medical outcome).
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Why some woman consider estrogen supplementation "the fountain of youth" - and the things they can now do because of it which otherwise would have been impossible.
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What happened when a hormone therapy-advocating brain scientist took a dose of her own medicine (Hint: She's still doing it).
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The politically-connected celebrity who now advocates strongly for women's brain health and who has used her fame to launch a movement to wipe out Alzheimer's disease.
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Why the "insulation" on your neural wiring is likely to be cannabalized by your brain once you hit menopause, leaving you open to the cognitively-debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis-like "short-circuiting".
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Why symptomatic menopause - the hot flashes, night sweats, anxiety, memory loss and so on - is harmful to your brain (and not just an unpleasant nuisance).
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The story of the soft-spoken brain-imaging expert who spends her time taking "x-rays" of women's brains so that she can see what is going on inside them.
A layperson's explanation of the findings from three seminal papers penned by two of the leading ladies in the field of menopause-induced "brain restructuring" (meaning this is not exactly stuff you can "Google"!)
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A simple way to interpret those worrisome-looking but informationally-opaque brain scan images the doctors tack up on their lightboxes and point to whenever they are asked to explain what they found.
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Why 99 out of 100 women will sail through menopause without ever learning they had a chance to implement neuroprotective protocols during the one time of their life that it might really have mattered to do so.
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The story of the writer who made a living detailing all the nasty things that had gone wrong with her body, and then at the age of 53 found herself Googling "memory loss menopause" when she could no longer remember the word for the vegetable she was holding.
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What to expect of your brain going into menopause if you were unlucky enough to have been raised on a diet of Ho Hos, Twinkies, fast food, and Coca-Cola - as a generation of less than brain health-aware women have been...
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The types of foods brain researchers eat when they remember their research is about improved brain health - and what they eat when this goal completely slips their mind (this affects body weight too).
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The existence of an energy-producing enzyme that wards off crashing fatigue (at least until menopause hits). If you have ever felt "tired to your bones" this may explain why.
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A highly counter-intuitive way to ward off the effects of crashing fatique (and you may not welcome it) which works by increasing the number of energy-supplying mitochondria in your body.
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Can human brains really grow replacement cells throughout life? Or did we confuse our brains with the brains of birds?
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The part of a woman's brain that, once her estrogen goes, shrinks up to THREE times faster than a man's - making her more susceptible to ever-diminishing: recall, new-memory formation, and learned behavior.
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Menopause as a fuel for neuroinflammation. The truth about the impending storm brewing in your head.
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TWELVE "essential facts" about inflammation and its damaging influence on your brain. Useful to know if you want to counteract the possible long-term effects (which are cognitive impairment, neurodegenerative disease, and death).
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A cautionary note on the immuno-suppressive powers of estrogen, and the auto-immune consequences for an estrogen-deprived body.
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Why your body may become overly-sensitive to diet at menopause, so that certain foods can no longer be tolerated.
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What you need to know about microglia: the cellular "attack dogs" of the brain which roam and protect it - unless they mistakenly decide to attack it (whereupon they become your worse enemy).
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A very much under-appreciated trauma-induced vulnerability in women which can lead to a complete change of mental state (meaning no more you).
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Why, if you still love your brain on reaching middle age, you will want to do everything you can to avoid going under the knife for any reason whatsoever!
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The mechanism behind a gene you have a 1 in 8 chance of carrying, which increases by 3-4 times your odds of getting dementia. But only if you are a woman.
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How to determine whether you carry that potentially cognitively-damaging gene (if you dare to know).
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How to think about your predicament if it it turns out you ARE genetically predisposed to high risk of early onset dementia.
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How to replace those expensive brain scan machines (which are not likely to be covered by insurance) with an early warning system that uses a "cheap and dirty" but fairly effective tool for spotting brains at risk.
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FOUR assessible risk factors which determine whether a woman is at high risk for a neurodegenerative disease (all but one of which you can likely assess right now).
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The recently-confirmed connection between how awful you feel during menopause (due to the unpredictable hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, etc) and your risk for neurodegenerative disease in later life.
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An answer, based on a large-scale study of health insurance claims, to the question of whether or not women's hormone therapy can substantially lower the risk of neurodegenerative disease.
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The precise influence of mode of delivery (pill, patch, or shot), duration of treatment, and brand of drug, on the degree of neuroprotection afforded by a given women's hormone therapy.
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The names of the hormone therapy brands which offer the best protection against ANY type of neurodegenerative disease.
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The names of the hormone therapy brands which offer the best protection against DEMENTIA.
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An answer to the question of what AGE you want to begin your hormone therapy for best neuroprotective payoff.
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An answer to the question of whether you should SWALLOW your hormones for best neuroprotective payoff, or slap them onto your SKIN.
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FOUR reasons you might abandon hormone therapy within a year of beginning it - even if you believe it could reduce your symptoms of menopause and protect your brain from disease.
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An answer to the question of HOW LONG you should stay on hormone therapy if your goal is to stay mentally sharp and neurologically disease-free for as long as possible.
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Why 4 out of every 5 people who join "the bone loss club" are women (yet another gender-based penalty you must contend with).
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The surprise discovery of a "bone hormone" that travels to your brain to help maintain a sharp, fully-engaged, and vibrant mind (and what this means for the woman with thinning bones).
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A neuron growth factor generated in the brain in response to physical activity (giving new meaning to the popular fitness maxim "use it or lose it").
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The best way to stimulate bone growth - provided you haven't already succumbed to the awful effects of frailty (Hint: You don't ever want to let it get to that point!)
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What to do to avoid the degrading influences that in later life, and down at the cellular level, leave your brain porous (like Swiss cheese).
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How physical activity stimulates the production of 3 neurotransmitters critical to good mood (killing off anxiety and depression in the process).
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Another reason to want to master your brain-boosting "bone hormone": it also acts as a weight loss hormone.
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The existence of a SECOND bone hormone which specifically suppresses appetite (providing one more reason to want to avoid menopause-induced bone thinning).
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Evidence that a "progesterone metabolite" found in the brain cells of young women may contain the seeds of a "magic bullet" for neurodegenerative diseases.
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A cheap, well-tolerated and well-tested alternative treatment to the "magic bullet" which might end up costing tens of thousands of dollars every year to administer.
Do This When You're Faced With An Assortment Of Wildly Mis-Behaving, Lady-Brain-Enslaving Hormones...
Fifty-one years. That's the average age at which a woman in the United States hits menopause, the point after which she no longer menstruates
and thus can no longer conceive.
But for a period of time leading up to this point, perhaps for 5-10 years, the effect of approaching menopause on the bodies of 4 out of
every 5 women is like an unwelcome storm tide being pushed relentlessly in their direction.
The emotional waves and troughs caused by the advancing hormonal chaos of perimenopause leave some of these women feeling as though they
are about to drown.
If you have been through this, or you are going through it now, you do not need me to spell out the nature of all the miserable symptoms you
may experience as your reproductive powers gradually flicker out.
You are quite aware of the punishing effects of menopause on your body...
What you might not have tumbled to yet is your susceptibility to an additional neurological adversity which is tied to one of at least
24 different hormonal profiles which can describe the menopausal woman (use the information in this module to learn which one applies to you).
You might also be surprised to learn that the potentially debilitating effect of those sloshing, ultimately disappearing hormones on the long-term
viability of your brain is now largely settled science.
In 2021 the results of a telling large-scale observational women's health study were published. The study, which involved 380,000 women aged 45
years or older, looked at the effect of hormone therapy on long-term cognitive health [Ref. Brinton-2021].
Researchers from the University of Arizona were able to confirm the long-suspected notion that loss of a woman's estrogen and progesterone at menopause
is responsible for a significant fraction of all female cognitive impairment, whether short-term or long-term.
The study showed that putting the missing hormones back into a woman's body using hormone therapy dramatically altered the likely long-term outcome for
a woman's cognitive health.
The authors of the paper claimed that for their female study group up to 58 percent of all cases of severe cognitive impairment appeared to be
preventable.
For some specific hormone formulations, the calculated case reduction rate in the treated women exceeded 80 percent.
The only problem?
Most women cannot tolerate hormone therapies, which often worsen the effects of menopause.
So what is a woman to do?
How does she take advantage of her knowledge of the strong influence of hormones on her health, and the way she feels, to not only improve her odds of
reducing the classic symptoms of menopause, but to also significantly reduce the lesser-appreciated risk of adverse long-term effects on her brain?
Well, one thing she can do is to attempt to balance her hormones.
The purpose of this module, as reflected in its title, is to show you some ways you might go about this - including handy techniques for monitoring
your progress.
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
BALANCE YOUR HORMONES
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE TWO OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
- How to kick ass without the benefit of hormones - as recounted by one celebrity actress who suddenly found herself tasked to do it in her sixties.
- The FOUR most common reasons a woman will give for showing up unannounced at a hormone rebalancing facility (can be used to gauge your level of desperation).
- The SINGLE most common reason a woman seeks help when menopause strikes (seems to be a frequent concern of women not affected by menopause too).
- What your doctor may NOT tell you about menopause, as paraphrased by a doctor who will.
- An uncommon occupation of women (at least in the U.S.) which seems to leave them immune to the unwanted effects of menopause.
- How to completely screw up your hormonal balance using simple objects you inadvertently come into contact with each day (or purposely apply directly to your body).
- Why the real cause of "estrogen dominance" has nothing to do with the amount of estrogen flowing inside you, according to someone who attended to menopausal women for most of his life.
- An estrogen-enhancing poison you may be exposed to each time you shop - even if you never touch the items you buy.
- The identity and nature of the three hormones most likely to make life uncomfortable for you, even BEFORE you reach menopause.
- A simple pictorial way to understand your inherent hormone instability, involving an object found beneath your kitchen table.
- The identity of a hormone your boss (or anyone who has power over you) can ramp up or down at will, and when raised too much will "switch off" all your other hormones!
- THREE horror stories from women who tried hormone therapy for years and came out the worse for it - and another who swears it bestowed upon her decades of vitality!
- Why six million women on hormone therapy got the shock of their lives when the results came back from a study carried out to confirm the safety of the treatment.
- An actual numerical answer to associate with the question: "How much more likely might my life be 'seriously harmed or forfeited' if I go on hormone therapy?"
- The difference in the effect on your body of taking synthetic hormones as opposed to those which are physiologically indistinguishable from the real thing.
- A framework for evaluating the need to even consider hormone therapy (useful if nothing else seems to be providing relief).
- How to improve the quality of your days by properly exploiting a solar-powered hormonal regulation system.
- How to slow the ageing process by better regulating your hormones (which may otherwise speed up the process).
- Why you are more likely than not to be diagnosed with at least one hormonally-related dysfunction at some point in your life (and how to lower those odds).
- How to know whether you are hormonally imbalanced, just by answering a few simple questions.
- An answer to the question of which is better for detecting a given hormonal imbalance - a test based on collecting saliva, or blood? (Hint: Especially useful to know if you do not like needles!)
- The identity of a hormone-testing company within which the ratio of female to male workers is HIGHLY unusual (and not dissimilar to that of a social insect colony!)
- The physiological difference between the "free" and "bound" hormone concentrations in your blood (and why you do not want to confuse one with the other).
- How to determine whether your quoted hormone test numbers are abnormally high or low (and compared to what).
- Does your estrogen really disappear at menopause? Or is it a different hormone you should really be concerned about? (Plus the EIGHT signs to look for suggesting it's the latter one).
- How to figure out a FULL DECADE before the occurrence of menopause whether or not you will be dealing with hot flashes, and additionally get an estimate of their expected intensity.
- Is diagnosing the root of a hormonal condition really that difficult? Hint: You'll learn about one common menopausal symptom which may be traced to any one of THREE different hormone imbalances, and another symptom which can be traced to FOUR hormones (or any combination of them!)
- How to interpret the results of your laboratory-issued hormone tests (with reference to fancy graphics!)
- An inexpensive way to monitor your hormonal health using nothing more than a common sick-care instrument (there's a very good chance you have one in your medicine cabinet already).
- A brief reminder of what you (should have) learned in high school about the way your monthly cycle is supposed to work - assuming nothing weird is going on with you...
- How to detect the occurrence (and size) of the monthly release of progesterone in your body without collecting or analyzing any kind of body fluid.
- TWO rules which can be used to determine whether your "monthly cycle" is approximately regular, even if not monthly (Note: You'll be needing a ruler to implement them)
- The difference between the follicular and luteal phases of your monthly cycle, and why one (contrary to popular belief) might last much longer than the other...
- The best day on which to collect a saliva sample for estrogen or progesterone testing (which might differ from what the testing lab is telling you).
- THREE ways to determine whether you are still fertile (ovulating) without having to get your doctor involved.
- An expensive lesson (which you would not want to learn from experience) involving an exploding thermometer and gold jewelry.
- How to measure the amount of estrogen flowing in your body using nothing more than your fingers. (Warning: You'll want to skip this method if you're even slightly squeamish!)
- How to measure the total amount of progesterone released inside you over the course of the month using a method that has you "counting the boxes".
- What you need to know about caring for an often-overlooked body part which can be used as your sex hormone backup plan, should your ovaries pack up on you.
- Advice for medical responders, care-givers, police officers, executives, teachers and anyone else whose job seems overly taxing, on how to survive chronic (and sometimes deadly) emotional stress.
- A horrifying (but also funny) story of a woman who refused to take action on the severe hormone-induced symptoms she was experiencing until one night when she had a dream that changed everything.
- How to avoid having the regular discomforts of menopause turn into a period of ongoing superstress.
- An acutely age-dependent hormone found in your saliva, which is NOT testosterone, but is nonetheless responsible for about HALF of your physical strength, bone health, and sex drive (and how to confirm that it is in need of a boost).
- An emotionally-susceptible hormone whose strength varies hour by hour to drive belly fat accumulation (meaning the abundance-measuring device for this hormone may be your bathroom scales).
- The extraordinarily common but progesterone-destroying emotional state you'll almost certainly want to avoid if you find yourself dealing with symptoms of menopause.
- An unusually consequential, almost sneaky hormone that, when it is flowing in abundance, dulls the normal action of the other hormones so as to render the conclusions of hormone test results nonsensical (which may confuse both you and your doctor).
- The FOUR stages, one of which is chronic fatigue, to a full-blown hormonal meltdown (including the graphical means to determine which stage might apply to you).
- ELEVEN highly unpleasant consequences of a hormonal meltdown - all of which can usually be avoided, most of which can suddenly appear "almost out of nowhere".
- The EIGHT tipping points for a hormonal meltdown that you will absolutely want to avoid triggering.
- The story of one woman whose episode of hormonal meltdown was misinterpreted by her doctor as a heart problem, whereupon her cardiologist upped the ante by offering to cut open her chest.
- Another story of a woman who thought her hormonal meltdown was all in her head, until her hair started falling out (you'll never guess what her doctor suggested as a solution).
- SIXTEEN wildly dissimilar symptoms of a metabolically consequential hormonal imbalance that begins in your throat.
- The name of the hormonally-induced disease more common than diabetes or heart disease, and which occurs 5-7 times more often in women than in men (and yet 6 out of 10 women will never think to seek treatment for it).
- EIGHT identifiers of this "lady loving" disease which can easily be detected in the mirror (assuming you know what to look for).
- What to look for in the test results to confirm a healthy amount of thyroid hormone (the nuances of which some laboratories still get wrong).
- The name of a debilitating condition at least EIGHT times more frequent in women than in men whereupon a woman's body turns on itself (it also tends to strike right around the time of menopause).
- How to understand the results of a blood test for thyroid health - and the SIX biochemical substances you will need to be able to differentiate between...
- The story of one woman whose 7-years of hypothyroidism vanished after her primary biomarker of disease went from a count of 1800 to just 50 in a matter of months - and the one (non-pharamceutical) change she made to bring this about.
- A generalized approach for eliminating the symptoms of auto-immune-based hypothyroidism (try this if nothing else has worked).
- Curious profiles in thyroidism - SEVEN case studies, and the test result analyses, for women with varying signatures of disease (including one instance in which the blood work looks absolutely normal despite classic symptoms).
- How to detect a possible case of thyroidism - even if you have no idea about the nature of the symptoms you should be looking for, or you are unwilling to get out of bed to do it.
- The nature of a disquieting connection between the uterus and the brain - often revealed to a woman for the first time after the former is yanked out of her body.
- The cons of female castration: Why you should try to hold onto your ovaries - even if your doctor insists you no longer need them.
- What to eat to court "uterine disaster", according to one doctor well-versed in the subject (or you could try to avoid these extremely popular foods).
- How to keep your uterus when it is riddled with fibroids - an alternative approach to consider (which involves getting rid of the offending growths) when it seems every doctor you consult is keen to do a hysterectomy.
- The story of the middle-aged writer whose gift for finding the right word to express herself (e.g. "reincarnation") was gradually replaced by a series of cryptic crossword puzzle clues ("The word Buddhists use for the next life").
- The story of the suddenly and inexplicably chronically exhausted 52 year-old fire fighter who began packing on body weight - and the nature of the hormonal imbalance that took her 5 years to come back from.
- The greatest obstacle to balancing your hormones and SEVEN possible ways to try to tackle it (because this is definitely a case of "easier said than done!")
- An often-neglected hormone which has a HUGE influence on how good you feel at midlife, but which begins rapidly declining in a woman's body before she even hits puberty (sorry, but you are guaranteed to lose sleep over this one!). Includes case studies.
- How to avoid exposure to powerful hormone disrupters (difficult because most women are practically, and sometimes literally, bathing in them).
- Why you don't have to worry about taking mineralized supplements, even though production of hormones in your body depends critically upon them (assuming you do this one other thing).
- FOUR vitamins to consider topping up on for improved menopausal health, TWO of which are essential to staving off the collapse of perhaps your most vulnerable sex hormone.
- How to assess the efficacy of herbal supplements for the relief of symptoms of menopause, using a unique approach called "fingerprinting".
- The secret of a 400 year-old (and now clinically proven) "herbal extract" from the forests of Korea which stems hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia and mood swings.
- The best herbs to consider supplementing with to alleviate symptoms associated with: low estrogen, high estrogen, low progesterone, high testosterone, or low cortisol.
- The TOP EIGHT mood calming herbs (according to the women who have tried them).
A Strategy To Reduce The Likelihood Of Your Brain (And Body) Falling Prey To Malicious Microbes And Cellular Sabotages...
Your body and your brain are constantly in the line of fire. The threat of a hostile microbial attack upon them is never so distant that we
can afford to let our guard down.
We were reminded of this unfortunate and ever-present reality by the worldwide pandemic of 2020.
Millions dead and many times this number chronically incapacitated [Ref. Raveendran-2021].
And all of it due to the novel behavior of a virus which causes bodily injury that can extend far beyond the immediate battleground of the respiratory system.
If a coronavirus infection taught us anything it is that what starts in the lungs does not necessarily stay in the lungs...
Because of this your brain is vulnerable to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other viruses like it.
Based on the results of post-mortem studies, research into the virus's ability to penetrate the human central nervous system shows that
it can invade "the brain micro-vasculature, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), as well as the neurons" [Ref. Whitmore-2021].
Another study carried out in Korea during the early months of the pandemic revealed that the risk of severe cognitive impairment increased
by 40 percent in survivors of a coronavirus infection [Ref. Park-2021].
And according to an article published in National Geographic in 2021, "Researchers find that people who only suffered mild [coronavirus]
infections can be plagued with life-altering and sometimes debilitating cognitive deficits" [Ref. Mullin-2021].
Of those who endured more serious disease and were hospitalized, the measured reduction in their reasoning, problem solving, and spatial planning
abilities was similar to the average cognitive decline seen in an equivalent (non-infected) demographic at the end of 10 years of aging.
"I've never experienced anything like this in my life," said one woman quoted in the article.
She was just 32 years of age when severe brain fog and reading comprehension issues set in after infection.
"Your body just feels like it's breaking down. You lose your sense of self."
The implication?
That the days are over when you worried only about the toll an influenza infection might take on your lungs in the winter season.
Should you prove unable to fight off an infection of this new class of viruses in the future, your brain - indeed all your internal organs - could
be at risk of serious damage.
Of course, we can often depend on vaccines and anti-viral medications for protection. Both are valuable weapons in the war against microbial disease.
But they do have their limitations...
They both take time to develop, and they are very much targeted to a specific viral threat.
One out of the dozens, possibly hundreds of brewing threats monitored around the world by epidemiologists [Ref. May-2021][GRAY-2021].
Your immune system on the other hand was evolved to respond quickly to microscopic foreign invaders, and to respond to them regardless of whether
or not they have been encountered in the past (this is something that vaccine-stimulated protection cannot do for you).
This fast and non-specific response of your immune system makes it the most potent form of natural defense available to you, to be immediately
deployed against causes of infectious (and non-infectious) disease.
This means that, to cause you any harm, all current and future microbial threats to your central nervous system first have to get past your immune system.
This is why, as soon as I learned of the pandemic threat in 2020, I dropped everything I was doing and focused solely on putting
together a comprehensive guide to enhancing the human immune system using strictly natural approaches backed by scientific testing.
Specifically, I decided to focus on the vitally important matter of how to fortify your respiratory immune system. That's because in the
United States, even before the pandemic struck, a whopping 78 percent of deaths due to infectious disease were the result of a respiratory
infection [Ref. Bcheraoui-2018].
The result of this intense research into how to maximize the protective capabilities of your immune system was Immune System Reboot which
makes up the third module in the Her Ageless Brain program.
It will provide you with a summary of the known science for factors which have been demonstrated to help recruit your natural immune defenses so as
to help protect your brain (and other internal organs) against the invisible microbial threats known to exist in the world today, as well as those
we can expect to encounter in the near future.
This is an invaluable training.
It may be the most valuable health resource I have ever created.
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
IMMUNE SYSTEM REBOOT
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE THREE OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
- The nature of the FIVE critical elements to superior immune response and why, at this very moment, you're likely deficient in all of them.
- Why following the anemic "recommended daily dose" for certain micronutrients may severely hamper rather than enhance your immune response to harmful pathogens.
- How insight into the use of sunlight to treat lung disease in the 1920s may be the key to blunting the killing power of modern day respiratory-disease pandemics.
- How to know whether you have enough "sunshine vitamin" flowing in your veins for your white blood cells to carry out successful seek and destroy missions against microbial invaders.
- Why your ability to generate the sunshine vitamin vanishes with age - and what to do to restore its protective effects, even if you never see another ray of sunshine in your life.
- A simplified explanation of the bio-warfare taking place in your lungs when a hostile respiratory pathogen invades, and the story of the sunshine vitamin-assisted "rum ball" defender without which your immune system would quickly lose its fight.
- The strange relationship between your distance from the equator and increased susceptibility to infectious disease. PLUS the ingenious trick used by one Arctic-hugging nation to keep its citizens from falling sick...
- Evidence of a Catch-22 respiratory infection scenario which pits the two arms of your immune system against each other, and why the outcome of the battle could hobble your response to vaccination.
- The amount of sunshine vitamin in your blood below which the risk of death due to respiratory disease DOUBLES if you are 50+ years of age (and why you are probably below this grim cutoff).
- How to reduce by a factor of THREE the rate of influenza infection in sunshine vitamin-starved school children (while also lowering the rate of asthma attacks by a factor of SIX).
- What the habits of lifeguards and shirtless Maasai herdsmen reveal about the effectiveness of "getting naked" to boost immune response (and how to achieve the same result without needing to strip down).
- A common maritime food source available in the deli section of your supermarket which has been used for thousands of years to confer robust immune response (protects against cognitive decline too!).
- A test you can carry out at home to reveal potential immune system deficiency (IF you can bring yourself to sparing a drop of blood!)
- Why the ability of individuals to quickly enhance one critical element of their immune response varies by up to a factor of TEN (and how to work around this frustrating limitation).
- The name of the micronutrient which costs ONE DIME per day found to be at insufficent levels in just 4 percent of people with mild coronavirus symptoms (no diagnosed pneumonia) but at insufficent levels in 96 percent of those who required hospitalization.
- The name of the micronutrient rushed as a 50 TON shipment to the city of Wuhan in response to its coronavirus outbreak, and the meaning of the cryptic message painted onto the truck by the shipping company.
- The story of the Nobel Prize winning chemist who figured out why we are vulnerable to the common cold but other animals are not, and the drugstore fix for it he proposed (costs LESS than a dime per day).
- Why your ability to produce toxin-quenching antioxidants is critical to maintaining a strong immune system - and how you may be completely sabotaging your antioxidant production with poor food choices.
- An answer to the mystery of why one antioxidant is found in your white blood cells at TEN TIMES the concentration it is found in your blood serum - and why, to maintain peak immunity, you'll want to do everything you can to keep it that way.
- The strange connection between scurvy - the tissue-wasting disease that decimated 16th century British sailors - and susceptibility to pneumonia, the sometimes fatal endpoint of a respiratory infection.
- The details of three little-known studies carried out in 1942, 1967, and 1979 which show how a cheap micronutrient reduces the incidence of pneumonia by 80 percent, and why those studies were ignored.
- A controversial drug cocktail claimed by the maverick doctor who came up with it, to chop 80 percent off the death rate for inflammation-induced multi-organ failure (as seen in acute respiratory disease).
- The embarrassing story of the Victorian-era midwives who somehow understood hand-washing reduced infection rates in their maternity ward, yet were laughed at for their ideas by doctors of the time.
- The inspiring story of an obscure American physician who in the 1940s treated and cured many viral diseases, including polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, and the flu using only a simple micronutrient.
- The name of a cherry-like fruit which contains 30 TIMES the immune system boosting nutrient power of oranges. Plus another succulent you can get your hands on which contains 100 TIMES the amount!
- The difference between getting a vitamin shot or taking a pill when it comes to correcting a deficiency or battling an infection? Turns out it's a BIG one which you'll want to know about ahead of time...
- The identity of an antioxidant your body produces naturally (under the right conditions) without which you would quickly become susceptible to cognitive decline, coronary plaque deposits, aberrantly dividing cells and viral infection.
- A little-known liver-saving micro-nutrient your doctor will turn to if you overdose on acetaminophen, which also turns out to be (extremely) protective against respiratory infections.
- How to reduce by more than 50 percent your odds of getting sick with respiratory illnesses during the winter months (including the name of the supplement that confers protection, and the dosage).
- How to identify the immune system killers in your kitchen which may be increasing your odds of getting sick. HINT: They're mostly white in color and can be dangerous to swallow.
- The EIGHT WORST OILS to be cooking with when it comes to the preservation of your lung and heart health. Plus the nine healthy sources of fat you can use to replace them.
- The truth about saturated (animal) fats and whether or not you should be cutting them from your diet to increase your odds of weathering (maybe even surviving) a bout of infectious disease.
- A popular superfood which lowers dangerous acute immune reponse to infection while almost doubling the number of white blood cells involved in early detection and elimination of an invading microbe.
- The identity of a foul-tasting vegetable used to create a vinegar in 1721 reputed to confer immunity to the bubonic plague - and the odd circumstances of the unsavory characters who lived to tell the tale.
- How to HALVE your number of sick days due to cold and flu symtoms by taking a powdered herb that multiplies your immune system's "natural killer" cells by a factor of THREE.
- Why middle age marks a change from a strong immune system that suppresses the growth of tumors in your body, to a weakened one increasingly not up to the task. Plus what you can do to slow the transition.
- How to preserve immune function with exercise, and the best type of exercises to achieve this. (Works even if you are of retirement age.)
- The surprising effect of skeletal muscle on the regulation of immune response, and why you may want to think twice before allowing your muscle mass to waste away through sedentary living.
- A natural antioxidant produced by your body when you are healthy, but which is rapidly consumed during times of infection making you prone to severe illness - unless you perform this one action ahead of time.
- A popular form of exercise (mostly practiced by women) which has been shown to lower inflammation in the lungs. Plus how often and for what period of time it should be performed.
- A calming type of exercise practiced in China for more than four centuries which significantly lowers oxidative stress in your body and reduces both inflammation and your odds of viral infection.
- PLUS a whole bunch more immune system-focused stories, studies, and recommended practices that space considerations do not easily allow to be summarized here...
To Discover The Best Foods For Your Brain You'll Need To Master This Neuronal Equivalent Of "You Are What You Eat"
Imagine that you want to put yourself on a diet.
Your goal is to reduce the amount of excess fat in your body. But all you can get your hands on for guidance
about the best way to go about it is a "woman's reducing manual" from the 1960s, a time when soda pop was advertised as wholesome and
unreservedly approved by the medical profession of the day.
Don't you think you would drop that manual in the nearest trash can and look for something a lot more current and backed by the latest in
nutritional science?
Of course you would. And I created the Brain Foods module for much the same reason.
It is the literal equivalent of a dieting manual, but one designed to rid you not of excess fat but of the excess risk of cognitive impairment
brought on by consuming the wrong foods.
This compendium of edible risk abatement strategies contains all the as-yet-to-be-popularized information you need to know today in order
to be able to reap the neuro-cognitive benefits it is designed (by scientists, and not by me) to provide 20 or more years from now...
I am going to introduce you to the female scientist (somehow women always seem to be the ones inside those white brain science lab coats) who
asked a simple question and then answered it for herself.
Actually it was two questions she asked:
"Are there any popular diets which can be proven to be neuro-protective?
"And if there are such diets, what are the foods found in them that are providing the protection?"
It turns out that there are several popular diets which fit the bill.
From these an array of food types has been identified which are able to defuse the simmering neuroinflammation which typically accompanies
the slow but hidden deconstructing of a formerly healthy brain.
You will learn about a brain health-optimized and clinically-tested diet based on these foods which has been shown to be able to reduce your
future "brain age" by 7.5 years and cut your risk of brain shrinkage by more than half.
I am also going to show you how to find complete meal plans so as to remove any confusion about what anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective meals
actually look like.
But it is even better than that.
Because when I looked into the nature of these remarkable foods I noticed something interesting. Most of them share two more characteristics that make them:
- Perfect for helping you maintain a trim physique. This is because they represent nutrient-dense food types low on carbohydrates but
rich in protein and fats.
- Ideal for helping to curb the growth of microscopic tumors in your body. Inside this module you will learn how, through established science,
exactly these foods are able to pull off this remarkable feat.
INTERESTING FACT: Post-mortems carried out on accident victims show that 40 percent of healthy women between 40 and 50 years of
age already have in their breasts these undetectable one-day-potentially-deadly microscopic growths [Ref. Li-2010].
Once you understand the "how and why" of the science behind this brain-friendly dieting protocol revealed in Her Ageless Brain you will be
able to (if you wish) adjust your diet to include additional foods uncovered by your own research that also satisfy the protocol.
This means you will be in complete control of your diet.
You will gain all the brain benefits afforded by neuroprotective foods WITHOUT having to sacrifice your ability to decide which foods work best
for you, based on taste, established eating habits, and budget. Whether you enjoy eating meat, or you prefer vegan dishes, the brain-healthy diet
outlined in Her Ageless Brain will accommodate you.
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
BRAIN FOODS
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE FOUR OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
- Where to find an essential dietary substance that supports the scaffolding of your brain and facilitates neural signaling (you MUST add this to your diet, your body cannot make it). This brain-builder also fends off disease!
- Why it won't be enough to simply adopt a "healthy eating" mindset (not if you want to significantly reduce your risk of cognitive decline)
- What your doctor is really hinting at when he says you are at risk of cognitive decline (hint: could you really imagine him suggesting your brain might be shrinking?)
- When to ignore your risks for stroke, both large and small, and mild cognitive impairment (yet end up lowering them all anyway)
- Why it's darn near impossible to get reliable information on the best foods to eat for brain health (with one significant exception)
- Two main causes of damage to the brain, and the two classes of foods seemingly designed to perfectly counter them (chances are you're eating little of either)
- Why a diet scientifically proven to reduce cardiovascular disease is also good for the brain (but not as good as it could be)
- The truth about cholesterol, and why the greatest threat to the health of your blood-vessels is more likely to be found in your cereal bowl than your egg cup.
- What people are eating in countries where the risk of having a heart attack or getting cancer is 10 times lower than in the United States (essential dietary advice for those who don't already live in one of these places)
- Would you eat these neuroprotective foods to lower your risk of cognitive decline and brain shrinkage by 40 percent? (Millions already do, many remaining as sharp as a tack into their 90s and beyond)
- Foods to eat, if diagnosed with a shrinking brain, clinically proven to lower your risk of dying over a 4-year period by a whopping 73 percent...
- Memory-preserving salad toppings (choose the wrong one and you'll benefit from only half the effect)
- Use this food type, popular as a party snack, to form new neural connections and strengthen memories (hint: it grows on trees)
- A diet scientifically formulated and verified to forestall cognitive decline, and especially brain shrinkage (the diet works even if you cheat on it - and let's face it, you will!)
- MYTH BUSTER: The food type that provides no neuroprotective benefit at all (even though most people think it does - in fact, with one exception, this class of foods might even WORSEN your risk of cognitive impairment)
- If strawberries are chock-full of anti-inflammatory fisetin, and brain scientists absolutely love them, why has this other berry been crowned the KING of neuroprotective foods?
- The maximum possible score for people on this clinically designed and tested neuroprotective diet is 15. Yet the eating habits of the average person puts their score at less than HALF that number. Use the provided scoring table to learn whether you are doing any better (and if not, how to fix this).
- A study of 960 people on the neuroprotective Ageless Brain diet reveals those with the top third highest scores (who suffer the least amount of cognitive decline) tend to share these 6 non-diet-related attributes. Do you possess them?
- Sticking to the protocol lowered the tested "brain age" of those who followed the neuroprotective diet by 7.5 years. Would 7.5 extra years of crystal clear thinking in your later years make a difference to you?
- Cheat on the neuroprotective diet and you still lower your risk of brain shrinkage by 35 percent. And if you stick to the diet? (Hint: the risk reduction is better by far!)
- Have you suffered a stroke in the past? Why researchers at Rush University Medical Center believe the neuroprotective diet has proved so useful in helping stroke victims improve their ability to think, reason and remember.
- Red meat, butter, cheese... Are these high-cholesterol foods good for your brain? Or could they be driving it towards a crisis from which there is no return?
- When you regularly eat two servings of this food type you lower the age of your brain by 5 years (yet 9 out of 10 Americans leave it on the plate).
- Consumption of this substance found in wine can reduce your risk of cognitive impairment by 50 percent over a period of 5 years. Yet, of richly-pigmented fruits in which this substance is highly concentrated, grapes don't make the grade. Discover which ones do.
- Biological safeguards ensure this blood-vessel-altering process - which could damage your brain - will not happen once you become an adult. Unless you happen to be a woman.
- The little-known growth factor which fuels cancer when it reproduces wildly elsewhere in the body, but promotes cognitive decline in the brain (and sometimes cancer too).
- Why foods in the neuroprotective diet also starve tumors (so that you get "double whammy" brain and body protection)
- The mysterious effect of cholesterol-lowering statins on the brain (which may reduce long-term brain shrinkage risk, yet cause acute short-term memory loss!)
- Three powerful "phytochemicals" which switch off the growth factor that stimulates cancer and neurovascular blockages (and the 3 common foods in which they are found).
- A list of more than 30 disease-incompatible (and non tumor friendly) foods found to limit the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the body.
- The popular pasta topping that reduces abnormal blood vessel growth in prostate cancer by a stunning 70 percent (and the natural ingredient responsible for it).
- The "cinema snack" proven to lower your risk of heart disease by 35 percent, and your diabetes risk by 27 percent (a third benefit: it's also a rich source of the primary building block for brain cells).
- Saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated... A simple way to bypass the good fat/bad fat confusion and figure out which fats are brain cell killers, and which are not.
- What a 4-year study of 6000 women over the age of 65 revealed about the effect of saturated (animal) fat on the rate of cognitive decline (if you're wondering whether or not to leave that extra strip of bacon in pan, this will settle the matter).
- ONE type of fat enjoyed by older women who consistently score highly on cognitive tests (naturally this fat tastes great, but it's also really good for your heart).
- TWO types of fat your body is unable to manufacture, yet are essential to the maintenance of your brain. Unfortunately, consumed in the wrong ratio they provoke inflammation (something the average American diet makes easy to do...)
- The truth about vegetable oils and how they affect your long-term risk of cognitive decline.
- Health fanatics (and birds) love this food type with a ratio of bad to good fats as great as ONE HUNDRED or more. Great for constructing bird traps, much less useful for building healthy brains!
- A non-seafood derived source of brain-healthy omega-3 fatty acids which also happens to be a great source of protein (and is vegan-friendly).
- A bean from the South East with an out-of-this-world omega-3/omega-6 fatty acid profile and a special protein that allows it to mimic all the properties of an egg when fried in a pan!
- A plant-derived source of brain-healthy omega-3 fatty acids so smooth and creamy it can be used as a fat-rich substitute for dairy to make ice-cream and other desserts.
- The special fat-soluble antioxidant and anti-inflammatory substance found in one "fatty fruit" (and spinach) that Tuft University researchers say boosted working memory and problem-solving skills in a 6-month study of older adults.
- A "hard nut" brimming with omega-3s, of which heart-unhealthy Americans eat about ONE per year (but when Sri Lankans ate this same nut 120 times every year 4 decades ago, their rate of heart disease was practically non-existent).
- A food type derived from cane which acts as an accelerant for brain shrinkage. A century ago we ate 5 pounds of it every year. Today we eat more than 75 pounds (you probably ate it in the last hour).
- In the eye this process causes the light-sensitive tissues to be slowly starved, resulting in loss of vision. In the brain it first leads to forgetfulness, lack of focus, and creeping moods of depression. Then the symptoms really become serious...
- Remove this food type from your coffee table if your hope is to retain clarity of mind and intellectual sharpness as you age.
The Key To The Mind-Body Connection Which Promotes Longer-Lasting Memory, Better Mood, And More Efficient Learning? It's Exercise.
In this fifth installment of the program we move on to the benefits of physical activity.
If you are not already exercising for your general health I am going to teach you why it is so critically important that you begin doing it for
the health of your brain.
There is no drug on Earth that can stimulate in the human body the level of brain-boosting hormones and growth factors which are set free
by vigorous exercise.
Not even the most neuroprotective food can do it - which is to say:
You cannot eat this additional layer of protection for your brain.
You literally have to manufacture it directly using willpower and the motivation I will provide.
But I am not going to lie to you.
You might never fall in love with the idea of working out as a proven approach to enhancing your odds of maintaining a steel-trap memory
as you age, and as a means to minimizing your risk of ever being diagnosed with cognitive impairment or full-blown brain shrinkage.
But to help motivate you towards more physical activity, you ARE going to be shown the evidence for this approach to enhanced brain strengthening
and resilience.
An example of this was the substantial 88 percent reduction in risk of severe cognitive impairment seen in the physically fittest of a group
of 191 Swedish women aged between 38 and 60 years.
The study of the neuroprotective effect of cardiovascular fitness was carried out at the University of Gothenburg, and published in the
journal Neurology in 2018 [Ref. Horder-2018].
Additionally, the researchers concluded the age at which dementia set in for women with high fitness was delayed by 9.5 years compared to
women who demonstrated only medium fitness.
Hopefully this kind of population-study evidence will inspire you to try for a similar brain shrinkage-free result in your own life!
I will also point you towards the most efficient approaches to working out so that you can put in the MINIMUM amount of time and effort to
stimulate the growth factors critical to your continued brain development.
As you'll see, and as Dr. Daniel Amen, the pre-eminent brain researcher, is fond of saying: "You are NOT stuck with the brain you have. You can
change it, and make it better."
Vigorous, well-chosen exercise is, in my opinion, the most reliable and most powerful way to do this, and in this part of Her Ageless Brain
you will discover how to go about it.
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
BRAIN WORKOUTS
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE FIVE OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
- The intimate link between physical activity and brain health - and why you can't simply outthink a sedentary lifestyle.
- What Stephen Hawking, the genius British mathematician and astrophysicist saddled with motor neuron disease, taught us about not taking your brain (or your body) for granted.
- The surprising results of a landmark study of 678 aging nuns which shows that "hitting the books" during your youth could help you beat brain shrinkage.
- Why sitting for most of your day is having much the same effect on your brain today as smoking once did on your lungs (in the end, both have the power to kill you)
- Are these 3 biomarkers of inflammation crossing your blood-brain barrier and causing havoc in your brain? Would you know how to ask your doctor to find out?
- The story of the woman who hit the gym at 40 to lose weight and ended up changing her brain instead (and why she's now helping thousands of others do the same).
- The story of the tall and beautiful college professor who carried her most shocking secret in a hat box (so that she could share it whenever given the chance).
- What to say at slow-paced brain research conferences to get people in the audience jumping to their feet and screaming that you must be wrong.
- How to annoy all your male colleagues and still manage to get onto the cover of Scientific American by running a "Disney World" for rats.
- The story of the epilepsy patient who woke up in 1953 to "30-minute recall" after surgeons removed what turned out to be the memory center of his brain (the good news: his seizures went away, and now surgeons know what NOT to touch).
- Why it might be a bad idea to sign up for a white water rafting trip the day after you look in the mirror and decide you're "a little chunky".
- What the heck "intenSati" means, where to find it, and why it could be an absolute game-changer for your brain (as it was for the woman who offered this story).
- How to set your brain on fire by screaming affirmations in exercise class (works great, even if it also makes you feel ridiculous)
- The top 5 things we learned about healthy brains from watching rats in a cage (including the importance of love)
- How long it takes for all that running, jumping, and puffing in exercise class to change your brain (so that you can think more clearly, have less trouble remembering things, and pay attention for much longer).
- What taking the running wheel away from mice revealed about how our brains work (or the crap you can expect if someone ever steals your treadmill).
- Why one NYU brain science professor felt the need to spend 6 months practicing her new course on her cat before she dared roll it out to her class.
- Terrifying things you can convince first-year college students to do so they either rebel or fall completely in love with you (either way, their brains are changed forever).
- Why you don't need to be a super triathlete to benefit from the brain-boosting effects of exercise.
- An unconventional and previously untested U.S. high school physical fitness program that unexpectedly shot the academic performance of its 19,000 students through the roof and inspired a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry to write a book about it (works on old brains too!).
- The best time to perform exercise so as to forge new brain cell connections and maximize your learning potential (especially relevant if you work out at the end of the day).
- How hard and for how long you need to exert yourself to stimulate brain cell growth and hold onto existing memories beyond middle age.
- What to tell a psychiatric patient when they ask for advice about how to deal with either anxiety, depression, or attention deficit (even though they'll likely despise you for it).
- What to do for depression if Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, Paxil or any other drug therapy just doesn't cut it for you (this works one third of the time, is free of side-effects, and won't cost you a penny).
- How to stimulate production of the master molecule that hooks up brain cells (and significantly lowers the odds of them being "reused for parts").
- The "octopus" analogy for the memory formation and strengthening process (or how to picture "life" from the perspective of a brain cell).
- Words of wisdom from a Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist who manages to publish books and write scientific papers at 87 years of age while working out 7 days each week (agreed: this man is a show off).
- Why squatting, running, and leaping into the air can make you smarter, and your brain more resistant to the effects of aging.
- A definitive answer to the question: "What's the least amount of exercise I can do to maintain brain health and ward off brain shrinkage?"
- Two forms of stationary cycling, one of which generates 3 TIMES the amount of growth factor that produces new memory-preserving brain cells.
- Why regular gym activity may be a waste your time if your goal is to get smarter, not just fitter (and the kinds of physical activity that allow you to do both).
- The results of a large-scale study of British citizens of the same age, carried out over a period of 27 years, that showed how exercise could be used to lower one's odds of depression by 19 percent (this drug-free approach works for any age).
- The relationship between depression and the number of hours spent sitting around, according to an Australian study of 8,950 middle-aged women (and what to do to reduce your odds of "feeling blue" by a factor of 3)
- The identity of an exceedingly common, but often unwarranted, psychological state (which you could be experiencing this very minute) that connects depression to the shrinkage of the two regions of your brain which control memory and emotion.
- The identity of the hormone responsible for shrinking your brain (plus what causes it to be released in a catastrophic flood that also raises blood sugar, increases bone loss, and kills your sex drive!).
- The surprising results of a Viennese aging study which failed to confirm all but ONE of 9 factors potentially predictive of brain shrinkage (hint: it's the one that affects mood and your sex life)
- The worrying implications of a common mood-altering gene abnormality that predisposes you to major depressive disorder, or MDD (affects roughly 1 in every 3 people).
- The 2010 Stanford University Department of Psychology study which showed MDD gene-carriers how to reduce their odds of severe depression by a full two thirds (no doctor's appointment required).
- Why knitting and watching TV represent "clear and present dangers" to the health of your brain (and the brain-friendly relaxation techniques to replace them with).
- The emergence of ever-accelerating cognitive risk factors which affect people born between the years 1946-1964.
- The difference between a diagnosis of cognitive impairment and brain shrinkage (and why it may just come down to whether you can afford the MRI scan)
- The findings of a University of Sydney study that sought to determine which type of exercise works best to preserve memory (one of which was a clear winner).
- The 44-year clinical study of 191 Swedish women that shows how a simple physical fitness test at the midpoint of your life is a major predictor of susceptibility to cognitive deline and brain shrinkage (this test can be performed at your nearest gym).
- The best age to begin exercising to reliably forestall brain shrinkage and the threat of irreversible cognitive impairment (hint: you have likely already reached it).
- How to get started, safely, with a physical fitness plan if your current daily exercise routine consists of the walk to your car!
- The tragic tale of a famous artist who traded a lifetime of bad habits for a 15-minute session in the gym - and paid the ultimate price for it (a valuable lesson in what NOT to do when it comes to working out).
- What never to do on an airplane more than two straight hours (unless you are prepared to risk long-term brain damage, loss of speech, physical paralysis, and even death).
- An inexpensive non-exercise-related device you can install in your place of work to reduce the number of hours you need to spend at the gym (it boosts your productivity too).
- Strap this device onto your body if you cannot afford a personal trainer - it costs less than $200, motivates you to keep moving, and may just save your life.
- One way to reliably transform the tedium of exercise into a social event that gets you brimming with excitement several times a week (it's also one of the easiest ways to lose weight).
- A type of exercise you can perform just once a month to increase bone mass and the amount of a bone-derived growth hormone that stimulates the production of new brain cells.
- Running, cycling, tennis, squash... Does it really make a difference which type of aerobic activity you adopt to stimulate the production of new brain cells? Does it matter how long, or how hard you throw yourself into it? (Answer: yes, and yes!)
- A super-efficient time-saving technique you can use to condense 50 minutes of physical exercise to just ONE minute - without sacrificing any of the cardiovascular benefits.
- How to solidify important new memories by boosting by a factor of EIGHT the amount of human growth hormone in your brain (handy for those times when you really need to bone up on new concepts).
- How to gain deep access to the area of your brain that controls motor skills, balance and coordination (rewarding you with superb dexterity and sure-footedness, and extraordinary mental control).
- Why you need to go again, and again, and again, when it comes to shoring up both your memories and your commitment to lasting exercise habit.
- How to tap the gracefulness of this "slow and calming" but physically challenging sport to wipe away brain cell-destroying stress and anxiety from your life.
- The good, the bad, and the ugly of aerobic exercise as an approach to improved brain health (as told by a decade-long instructor).
- Leg warmers, or weight belts? How to choose the workout routine that is right for you (and avoid spending years on movements that provide you with absolutely no health benefit).
- Are you really burning off fat? Or is it muscle? Why doing one will make you leaner, while the other will make you fatter.
- How getting a bad case of shin splints dramatically changed the course of my life for the better (and the shape of my body).
- A compelling argument for why you should immediately begin lifting weights for the health of your brain (even if you are a woman and the thought of "pumping iron" sounds absurd to you).
- My 3 favorite neurotrophic (brain supporting) exercises, and the single piece of weight-bearing equipment needed to perform them (strand me on a deserted island and I would insist on taking it with me!).
- The physical activity responsible for producing in athletes 10 TIMES the amount of a "super protein" that modulates brain rewiring and the production of new brain cells (even DOUBLING the amount of this protein could provide a significant improvement to memory performance).
- The tiny and incredibly popular weight lifting device invented in 19th-century Russia that allows you to work out anywhere (whether it be in a large open-floored gymnasium or a compact space like your living room).
- A unique approach to getting fit, relied upon for two thousand years by fighting forces to attain combat-readiness, which today uses dried beans, rice, sand, even water to perform full-body workouts in 10 minutes or less.
- Would you put in 3.5 hours of intense physical activity each week if it rolled back your biological clock by 9 years? If so, this is the activity to get your there...
- What to fear if you are among the unwitting 90 percent of the population which fails to perform ANY exercise whatsoever.
- How to determine your current level of brain damage using the "naked before the bathroom mirror" 5-second body assessment and wake up call.
What Not To Do To Avoid Accidentally Destroying Your Brain Before You Are Done Using It
In this last educational portion of the Her Ageless Brain series we'll concentrate on clearing away any remaining (sometimes severe) obstacles
to the lasting health of your brain.
It is no exaggeration to say that if you choose to ignore everything else I teach in this program and just concentrate on eliminating from your
life the cognitive risk factors explored in this section your brain will likely benefit significantly.
We are going to take a close look at habits you may have picked up over the course of a lifetime. Habits which can:
- Prematurely age your brain by as much as 16 years
- As much as TRIPLE your risk of cognitive impairment (you're likely engaging in one such habit now)
- Predispose you to life-threatening diseases like lung, liver, colon, cervix and pancreatic cancer
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Because every threat of chronic disease that might affect the other organs of your body is also a threat to the health of your brain.
As we'll see, every part of your body is connected to every other part through the 60,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries which
supply your brain with every molecule of fuel and oxygen and other essential factors needed to sustain it.
So, if you want to remain clear-headed as you age, keeping your "pipes" whistle-clean is likely to help with that. Blood will need to flow freely
to and from your brain. And your metabolism will need to function optimally so as to produce all the energy required for peak mental capacity
no matter what your age.
The solution to these problems which directly affect the performance of your brain involves simple awareness.
When you know what may be causing your brain grievous harm you can take corrective action. I will show you which habits carry the greatest risk to the
long-term health of your brain and what you can do to curb them.
Here's how we will do it:
CLICK FOR SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS YOU'LL FIND IN:
RISK FACTORS
WHICH MAKES UP MODULE SIX OF HER AGELESS BRAIN
- How to tell whether that forgotten name is a normal response to aging, and nothing to worry about, or suggestive of something far more sinister.
- The importance of dwindling attention span (the proximate cause of a wandering mind) to memory formation and recall.
- The difference between "crystallized" intelligence and "fluid" intelligence - and why one will fade with age while the other won't (and may even survive moderate cognitive impairment).
- Whether you should be fearful if diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (plus the 10 signs you might already be afflicted).
- The 7 stages of cognitive impairment familiar to all physicians (any one of which your own doctor may have already entered into your "medical history").
- "How long have I got?" A guide to longevity in the face of a brain shrinkage diagnosis.
- What to expect if you carry "ApoE4" - the cholesterol gene variant that predisposes you to cognitive impairment (and other potentially fatal outcomes).
- An inherently non-reducible brain shrinkage risk factor even more influential than ApoE4 (this one affects absolutely everyone ever born).
- If brain shrinkage is the KING of cognitive impairments, this form - the curse of thickening blood vessels - is the clear runner up (and can act with the gravest of consequences FAR more quickly).
- The top 3 risk factors for neurovascular blockage (odds are, you're dealing with at least one of them, even if you don't realize it).
- The story of an indomitable world leader known as "The Grocer's Daughter" whose steel-trap memory and forceful voice seemed guaranteed to last a lifetime (but was instead cut short by cognitive impairment).
- The story of the movie star turned politician who finally became the most powerful man on the planet, before he stunned the world with a graceful 2-page letter announcing his "long goodbye" as a result of a brain shrinkage diagnosis.
- The inspiring story of a "soap opera" TV star turned cognitive neuroscientist whose sudden decision to return to school decades after leaving it quickly put her on a path to becoming one of the pre-eminent authorities on cognitive decline.
- The strange connection between tooth hygiene and your likelihood of ever being diagnosed with cognitive impairment.
- Why it may be too late to save your parents from a full-scale neuronal meltdown (and what to do next to ensure you don't follow in their footsteps).
- The dangerous brain health "blind spot" that may be promoting the false belief that you are already doing everything you can to protect your brain (when in fact you are only doing a FRACTION of what is necessary).
- How to avoid having to be chemically restrained in your final years so as to keep you from trying to find your way home when let out of your room in the care facility.
- Ditch this potentially stroke and brain atrophy-inducing habit if you want to avoid the "premature aging" of your brain - or risk dealing with the side effects which can include lung, liver, colon, cervix and pancreatic cancer.
- Daniel Amen, the brain-imaging neuroscientist, says this enjoyable but "age restricted" habit will ruin your brain. Now a joint French/Canadian study agrees: this activity at least DOUBLES your risk of cognitive impairment (THREE times if you really partake of it).
- The state-sponsored habit that turns out to be not only GREAT for the long-term health of your brain, but the more you engage in it the greater the amount of neuroprotection (and the more money you are likely to be paid for what you do).
- How a 5-year Yeshiva University study revealed a "minimal investment" leisure habit which can be taken up at any age to confer a substantial delay in the onset of cognitive decline (provided you don't wait too late to get started with it!)
- Jumping Jacks for the brain: for the treatment of anxiety and depression this works even better than prescription drugs (and massively reduces your odds of falling victim to ANY disease, including brain shrinkage).
- A physically (and mentally) invigorating habit that HALTS brain shrinkage, and can even ADD brain volume (yet most people NEVER take it up).
- The only brain maintenance habit that MUST be performed daily to avoid immediate and serious "brain fog" (yet only two-thirds of the population take the time to do it right).
- What to be on the lookout for in your cerebral spinal fluid that presages the arrival of cognitive impairment up to two decades before it strikes.
- How to shrink your brain volume 8 percent (effectively aging your brain by 16 years) by overdoing a practice you will almost certainly engage in today.
- What a study of 1.3 million individuals revealed about the connection between body weight and cognitive decline (and why it might be time to revise that diet).
- An effortless but ill-advised approach to losing weight (you'll never hear this from your doctor and for good reason).
- The worst age range to be obese if your goal is to avoid ever losing your mind (hint: this is the period during which you are most likely to pile it on).
- Fifty-four million people in the United States are afflicted with this condition that pre-disposes them to cognitive decline. Yet they are completely unaware of it.
- Three ways that poor blood sugar regulation raises your risk for cognitive decline (and how to fix this).
- Four signs that your arteries are clogged and you may be on the verge of heart attack, stroke, or just the slow silent death of brain cells that suffocate in the absence of a sufficient flow of blood.
- How to use a salt shaker to lower your risk of cognitive decline.
- An increasingly popular and "peaceful" way of living that turns out to be as dangerous to your health as smoking cigarettes.
- The memory-strengthening hormone linked to depression that too often goes awry and actually kills off memory and new memory-forming brain cells.
- What a study of 50,000 individuals with depression tells us about the condition's connection to neurovascular blockage and brain shrinkage (which it often precedes by a decade or more).
- Why your brain sometimes goes to war with itself and fights enormously destructive battles it cannot possibly win.
- "Sticky protein" syndrome: how too much sugar can turn your brain's normally placid "mop-up" cells into warring "attack dogs".
- The dangers of chemical weaponry, and other neuron-unfriendly substances deployed in the shrinking brain.
- The details of a crazy idea that promises to immunize you against brain shrinkage by "erasing" part of your brain (the catch is the cure could also kill you...)
- Why an anti-inflammatory drug developed for joint pain relief might just work better inside your head as an inhibitor of early stage cognitive decline.
- A promising but highly controversial option for treating brain shrinkage in the not-too-distant future.
- Nineteen safe and inexpensive anti-neuroinflammatory foods you can use in place of high-cost neuroprotective drugs (if any are ever found to reliably do the job).
- The brightly-colored herbal powder used for millenia as a cooking spice which modern science has shown also doubles as a high-potency anti-inflammatory for your brain - but ONLY if you combine it with a particular dark-colored spice that increases bioavailability 20-fold.
- Another little-known "high octane" anti-inflammatory compound found in a special class of berries that rivals the antioxidant power of resveratrol (from grapes and red wine). Yet this compound is absorbed by your gut 20 times more easily and remains in your body 7 times longer.
- A long-used medicinal spice from South-East Asia which contains a powerful neuroinflammatory substance that, in mice, reduces the rate of memory-related brain cell death by up to 35 percent (and may work just as effectively in the human brain).
MY UNCONDITIONAL WEAK-STUFF GUARANTEE - EITHER YOU BEGIN TO SEE THE VALUE IN 60 DAYS OR YOUR MONEY BACK
When you elect to take this six-month (24-week) women's brain health reframing journey with me I expect you to be astonished by what you learn
in the first 60 days. I expect you to see the value in adopting a cognitive health rescue plan which focuses specifically on the needs of the female brain.
This process, of transforming the way you think about the needs of your brain and how to stay motivated to protect it from this point on, is going
to take time. In my opinion, at least six months of application is required to put the program's brain protection protocols fully into effect.
But if you don't literally FEEL you are beginning to experience some of the benefits of the training within the first 60 days (time enough for you to
advance through the first two modules), you are welcome to take advantage of my failsafe "weak stuff" money-back guarantee:
STEPHEN'S WEAK-STUFF GUARANTEE
If you are not 100% satisfied you are receiving amazing value - if instead you're absolutely convinced that the content found in
Her Ageless Brain is weak stuff and that you will never benefit from the training and actionable protocols which are presented
and deemed credible in this program - you can request a full refund, no questions asked!
Why can I offer this level of guaranteed satisfaction or your money back?
Because the content which makes up the Her Ageless Brain program is comprehensive, well thought out, and is entirely based on scientific
inquiry and tested clinical protocols.
Once you begin to gain familiarity with its teachings, and directly implement and experience the suggested practices, I am confident you will recognize
the quality and worth of the information you are receiving as you make your way through the program from the introductory session on day one until
the final wrap up session six months later.
I know that when you begin consuming the material in Her Ageless Brain, and implement its practices, you won't just feel you have made a wise
initial investment. You will quickly discover that you want to complete the full six month journey as I continue to help you gain a new appreciation
and understanding of your (uniquely female) brain, and how best to take care of it.
Here are 4 reasons why I am fully confident that after carefully inspecting the material contained in Her Ageless Brain you will agree
that it presents exactly the kind of information needed to help you achieve the lasting cognitive health you deserve.
I think you will agree with me on this point because:
- You'll see evidence that I have spent long months carefully researching the scientific studies that underlie the brain protocols found in
the program, ensuring that these are not only widely accepted by brain science authorities, but also that, where possible, they have the
widest applicability (so that the men in your life can also benefit from them).
- You'll come to appreciate that I have been unafraid when telling the story of your uniquely female brain, to pull out for the wide angle view,
or zoom in for the close up when I felt it necessary to help you get the appropriate and most illuminating perspective.
- You'll recognize that I have thought hard about how to provide you with the LEAST amount of actionable advice that nonetheless is likely
to provide a significant improvement to the current and future health of your brain.
- And you'll understand from day one that I am invested in seeing you achieve the kind of high-performing mental performance and long-lasting
brain health we each deserve. Otherwise I surely would not have gone to the trouble to create this massive library of researched material for you!
Remember, you are FULLY PROTECTED against making an uninformed decision when you sign up today to become the next Her Ageless Brain member.
Even if you only skimmed this page and did not take the time to read every little detail of my offer, you are protected against discovering later
that you made an ill-informed decision about your purchase.
That's because you are covered by my "weak stuff" money-back guarantee.
You risk absolutely nothing when you sign up today and finally give the health of your brain the priority it deserves. You have my word that
your future brain (six months from now) will regard your decision today to safeguard it against the threat of cognitive decline (or worse) as the
wisest thing you ever did on its behalf.
And don't forget, you are not just investing in the health of your brain. I am also committed to helping you immunize the rest of your body to the
ravages of age.
After all, what use is a healthy well-functioning brain if it is connected to a body that will not last?
For The Woman Who Is In Love With Her Mind Enough To Want To Continue Using It, And Who Is Determined Enough To Do
What Is Needed To Help Prevent Her From Losing It
Still not sure you need to take action right this very minute to safeguard your cognitive health?
I'll be perfectly honest with you...
If you have yet to reach your 40s you may have as much as another decade to make the decision to get serious about the long-term health of your brain.
It is always better to start early with a preventative protocol, but the real damage typically doesn't begin kicking in until your mid 40s.
After that, all bets are off and sticking your head in the sand is the surest way to one day find yourself facing a looming cognitive crisis - one
you may be wholly unprepared to deal with.
Maybe this happens in your 60s, the most common age to begin experiencing worrisome changes in mental functioning. Perhaps your luck runs out
before that. Either way, you can be sure what follows any crisis of this type will be highly unpleasant, downright scary, and possibly not only
life-altering, but disastrously so.
Here's the good news.
Right now you get to CHOOSE the likely future you'll be forced to deal with.
One of them beckons with a sense of crystal clarity about what lies ahead. The other is murky and uninviting, and potentially harrowing.
In the murky world you might find yourself tasked with coming up with a new campaign for a client, something you have done successfully dozens
of times before and on which your livelihood depends.
Today you might thrive on being in control. But you'll need cognitive game to keep doing it! [Image: unsplash.com]
You have the brief before you. You know what is needed, and you know what you have got to work with.
But now your thoughts no longer shape up...
They wander in an aimless and unproductive way, then fizzle out before you can connect the dots.
Every time you remember agreeing to what now seems an impossible deadline you feel a surge of heat and anxiety, and for the life of you you cannot
figure out why you have put yourself in this position.
Are you prepared to accept the kind of life in which you fail to finish the things you start because you can no longer focus on them sufficiently long?
Or would you prefer to remain in the crystal world where your mind continues to make those unexpected connections and you end up delighting the people
on whom you depend to maintain your preferred way of life?
Remember, you get to choose.
In the murky world you may well be able to continue to enjoy cooking with your granddaughter, something the two of you have
done for years. But more and more often you may also notice she has begun to surprise you with her requests.
One moment you will be happily scooping flour from a paper bag and the next minute she will say "Grandma, hand me the sifter," and you will have no idea
what she is talking about.
Having to choose between the way life should be and the way it MIGHT be if you elect to do nothing to protect
your brain should not be difficult. The job of your brain is to protect you, so you need to do the same for it! [Image: 123rf.com]
"What's a sifter?" you will ask her.
But all you will get back is a blank look.
Can you live with the prospect of the sudden and possibly permanent disappearance from your memory of the once familiar?
Or would you prefer to stay tethered to the crystal world where you remember the names of the tools you have used a lifetime to carry out your
favorite pastimes - so those precious interludes spent with family members are never interrupted by embarrassing and unexplainable failures of memory?
In the murky world taxes go unpaid because those once-figurable 1040s now seem like labyrinths of confusion and you push them aside until they slip
your mind entirely.
In the murky world your friends inexplicably stop communicating with you, their faces replaced by strangers who seem to know you but you do not know them.
In the ever-changing reality that seems daily to be swallowing the world you once knew more and more you can no longer tell whether you are awake or
you are still dreaming.
It is almost impossible to imagine the grief and the terror that advanced mental impairment forces on the lives of those it touches. When it happens, as
the families of millions today can testify, you will be willing to pay any price to turn back the clock and reclaim your life.
But it should never have to come to that.
Especially not when you know ahead of time how to protect your brain with a protocol designed to help
improve your current cognitive capabilities and lower your risk of neurodegenerative disease.
When you elect to become a member of Her Ageless Brain today you will be rejecting (and rightfully so) the dark and uninviting path forward which
has become the default for so many women who were never shown an alternative.
If you would prefer to advance into the second half of your life with the confidence that comes from knowing you have done everything possible to
forestall mental decline, and even to boost mental performance by adopting habits which encourage the continued growth and rewiring of brain cells
no matter what your age, click on the button below to place your order and become the latest Her Ageless Brain practitioner.
Before I leave you to decide about whether or not you would like to join my program today I have one last suggestion...
Take a moment to think about all the things in your life you have put off doing for another day. The stuff you have placed on your mental list
of things to look forward to when you finally have the time for them.
Maybe it is as simple as time spent kicking back and enjoying the company of your grandchildren.
Maybe it is a long-planned-for trip to Europe during which you will finally get to experience firsthand the marvelous works of the Renaissance
artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. Because secretly you have always wanted to stand beneath the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and also
see with your own eyes the impossibly-beautiful marble sculptures which still adorn the cathedrals of Italy.
Or maybe you always imagined you would one day be able to write that novel which has been kicking around in your head, or begin a series of
daring romantic episodes unencumbered by the overly-precautious nature of youth.
What would you say might be the sum total worth to you of all these future opportunities which you might still avail yourself of in the remaining
decades of your life?
And which will require your full mental energy, focus, and cognitive wherewithal to make happen?
Try to put a dollar amount to it.
And if you don't think the investment of a Her Ageless Brain membership pales in comparison to the number you come up with then click
away now and forget everything you have learned today about the value of your cognitive faculties and their enhanced vulnerability due to
your possession of a pair of double-X chromosomes.
Otherwise... Consider clicking on the green button below to become a member of my Her Ageless Brain program and discover the story
and the science behind the protocols shown to improve and help preserve the full cognitive spectrum of your uniquely female brain!
Yours for better cognitive health,
Stephen Carter, PhD.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR HER AGELESS BRAIN
IMPORTANT: This program is administered as a membership portal which you will receive access to using your
member email address and a password issued immediately after payment.
Pssst! Would Your Own Doctor Wade Through This Much Scientific Research On Your Behalf?
Don't get me wrong...
If you wake up with an unexplained pain in your chest I would be the first person to recommend you seek immediate medical advice from your physician.
I would also encourage you to ask about preventative measures for high cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure... all the common
afflictions we could both reasonably expect your doctor to know something about.
But when it comes to the ongoing health of your brain?
Strategies proven to help avert the kind of life-altering brain shrinkage which can begin as early as your forties and fester unrecognized for decades?
Highly risky is the way I would describe betting the future welfare of your mental health on your physician's ability to catch any problem
early. Especially given the average general practitioner's knowledge about the workings of the human brain can probably be traced back to three
cursory lectures attended during the first year of medical school.
Knowledge about the specific inner workings of a woman's brain? Forget about it.
Your doctor may be able to spot a tell-tale shadow on a brain scan and refer you to a specialist for more information about what it might mean.
He may be able to agree with you that something is "off" with you.
But that's about it. When it comes to offering actionable steps on how to treat the common symptoms of age-related (not even hormone-related)
cognitive decline, or worse, your doctor is likely to be of little use to you.
This is the reason I have relentlessly researched on your behalf the factors which influence age-related, hormone-related, and disease-related
cognitive decline. It is so that you do not have to depend on the unlikely circumstance that anyone else in your life has done it and will fill
you in on the necessary information as time goes by.
I have looked into the causes of fading memory, physical and social clumsiness, disorientation and erratic behavior, change of personality... plus all
the other hallmarks of a brain showing the warning signs of serious mental deterioration.
I have had to repeatedly go back to original studies to figure out what the researchers were really looking for and whether they actually found evidence
for it. And if they did find evidence for an effect that helps to prevent or forestall the miseries which accompany a life marred by a diseased,
or shrinking, or otherwise impaired brain, then I asked:
- How strong was that evidence?
- Did the conclusion of the study warrant me advising others to consider adopting the lessons that came out it?
- Was I prepared to tell others to follow for life one strategy or another based on those lessons?
- Was I personally prepared to follow the same strategies in as much as they applied to me?
When you become a member of the Her Ageless Brain program you bypass all this knowledge filtering. You won't have to spend anywhere near the
amount of time I did vetting scientific studies for solid, actionable, and worthwhile lifestyle habits that legitimately have the power to help to
preserve for life most of the brain function you were born with.
That's because I have already done the hard work and I am happy to share it with you.
This means you literally get to spare yourself years of wasted time. Time you might have spent following dubious "brainpower boosting" practices.
Or gulping down pills, powders, or potions weakly positioned as exotic brain-saving remedies you cannot afford not to take a chance on - even
if it might cost you thousands of dollars each year to keep your dietary supplement subscriptions going.
And even if ONE of those subscriptions actually is providing some kind of benefit, the odds of the others doing so too? It's slim.
Why take that kind of bet on popularized but usually highly-speculative brain-saving schemes when the payoff is so hard to quantify?
Instead, use the results of the research outlined in Her Ageless Brain to make smart decisions about actions you can take today, based
on proven science, to help protect the health of your brain.
I guarantee, you'll find it's one of the wisest decisions you could ever make about how to safeguard your most valuable asset.
- [Mosconi-2021] Menopause impacts human brain structure, connectivity, energy metabolism, and amyloid.beta deposition
- [WSJ-2021] The Surprising Good News on How Menopause Changes Your Brain
- [WAH-2021] Menopause and the brain: turns out it's not so bad
- [AAR-2020] 2020 Alzheimer's disease facts and figures (Alzheimer's Association Report)
- [ALZ-2021] 2021 Alzheimer's disease facts and figures
- [Hara-2018] How does alzheimer's affect women and men differently?
- [JFN-2017] The Judy Fund Newsletter, Fall 2017
- [Ahlgren-2011] High nationwide prevalence of multiple sclerosis in Sweden
- [Ref. Wallin-2012] The Gulf War era multiple sclerosis cohort: age and incidence rates by race, sex and service
- [Christensen-2003] Incidences of Gliomas and Meningiomas in Denmark, 1943 to 1997
- [NOF] What Women Need to Know
- [Brownbill-2004] Cognitive function in relation with bone mass and nutrition: cross-sectional association in postmenopausal women
- [Kessler-1993] Sex and depression in the National Comorbidity Survey I: Lifetime prevalence, chronicity and recurrence
- [Joost-2010] Delirium in Elderly Patients and the Risk of Postdischarge Mortality, Institutionalization, and Dementia
- [Inouye-2001] Nurses' Recognition of Delirium and Its Symptoms
- [Kim-2011] Hip fractures in the United States: 2008 nationwide emergency department sample
- [Brinton-2021] Association between menopausal hormone therapy and risk of neurodegenerative diseases: Implications for precision hormone therapy
- [Villa-2016] Estrogens, Neuroinflammation, and Neurodegeneration
- [Lei-2014] Anti-inflammatory effects of progesterone in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated BV-2 microglia.
- [Horder-2018] Midlife cardiovascular fitness and cognitive impairment: A 44-year longitudinal population study in women.
- [Raveendran-2021] Long COVID: An overview
- [Whitmore-2021] Understanding the Role of Blood Vessels in the Neurologic Manifestations of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
- [Park-2021] Dementia Risk among Coronavirus Disease Survivors: A Nationwide Cohort Study in South Korea
- [Mullin-2021] How does COVID-19 affect the brain? A troubling picture emerges.
- [May-2021] Tomorrow's biggest microbial threats
- [GRAY-2021] Mitigating Future Respiratory Virus Pandemics: New Threats and Approaches to Consider
- [Bcheraoui-2018] Trends and Patterns of Differences in Infectious Disease Mortality Among US Counties, 1980-2014
- [Li-2010] Can we eat to starve cancer? - William Li (Youtube)
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Stephen Carter (PHD) and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide
medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult
their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Carter nor the publisher of this content takes
responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers
of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition,
supplement, or lifestyle program.