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On this episode of Boomer Living, we have Dr. Nate Bergman, Chief Scientific Wellness Officer for Kemper Cognitive Wellness, speaking about brain health and the concept of “Scientific Wellness” and how it relates to brain aging and wellness.
[01:24] Introduction[02:04] Is memory loss preventable in any way or is it inevitable as we age?
[03:16] Aside from memory loss, what other kinds of cognitive loss are passable and how can we pick up on this early both for ourselves and observing it in our loved ones?
[06:49] Do you think our lifestyle lends ourselves to constantly be bombarded with information flashing in front of us and just taking us in so many different directions, does that contribute to it?
[08:28] What should we do if we or someone we know are experiencing these types of loss?
[10:37] Can you give an overview of what dementigens are?
[12:08] What are the most common dementigens, and how do we best avoid dementigens in our own lives?
[17:55] Planning for longevity, aging, attitude towards aging, and caregiving should start in you’re younger years.
[20:52] Finding the strength to be a caregiver.
[22:51] What is “Scientific Wellness” and how was it relevant to brain aging and wellness?
[24:34] Is there anything beyond lifestyle factors that is evidence-based that may help delay or improve the effects of cognitive aging, perhaps technology?
[27:23] What other types of anti-memory loss technology do you think we’ll see in the next decade?
[29:09] Kemper Cognitive Wellness is launching a new course for caregivers which gives theoretical and practical information to help new caregivers navigate the ins-and-outs of caregiving for someone with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Dr. Nate Bergman is a board-certified physician currently acting as the Chief Scientific Wellness Officer for Kemper Cognitive Wellness in Cleveland, Ohio. He formerly co-developed the brain health program at Cleveland Clinic’s – Center for Functional Medicine. The author of peer-reviewed medical articles, a podcaster himself, and father of 5 very neurodiverse children!
Dr. Bergman’s podcast “Evolving Past Alzheimer’s” brings you the highest caliber information on Alzheimer’s prevention and reversal and pathways to thrive in life’s “second half.” The challenge of Alzheimer’s has provided humanity with an opportunity to upgrade its collective consciousness. Listen here: https://evolvingpast.com/
Transcript:
Hanh: 1:24
Today my guest is Dr. Nate Bergman. He is a board certified physician and currently acting as the chief Scientific Wellness Officer for Kemper Cognitive Wellness in Cleveland, Ohio. He’s formerly co-developed the brain health program at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He’s the author of several peer review medical articles, a podcasts or himself, and a father of five, very neurodiverse children. So Nate, welcome to Boomer Living.
Nate: 1:54
Thank you, Hanh. I appreciate being here, Hanh.
Hanh: 1:56
Yeah. So I know one of your specialties is memory loss. It’s something that many people are afraid of experiencing in their lives. So is memory loss preventable in any way or is it inevitable that, something comes as we age?
Nate: 2:11
Yeah. So thank you for asking that because that’s like probably the biggest thing. The biggest message we’re trying to get out there is that memory loss isn’t always inevitable. In fact, it probably is much less inevitable than a lot of people had once thought and the literature has changed on this. And as you and your audience know all too well, once people get to that, for some people it’s in their forties, but other people it’s in their sixties, once you reach a certain age, things slow down a little bit. Things just don’t process quite as fast. It’s a little bit more difficult to think of new information or learn new information, recall some things. And that’s like a natural process, just like joint pain can be a natural process. Teeth decline over time, things change with the skin, but we don’t often think about, okay, “I know there’s stuff I can do for my muscles. I know there’s things I can do for my skin and my teeth.”, but we don’t understand that they’re the sort of the same things that you can do for the brain. And there really are. There’s quite a bit that can be done. So yeah, memory loss is not necessarily inevitable. And in fact it’s oftentimes and maybe largely preventable.
Hanh: 3:16
Aside from memory loss, what other kinds of cognitive loss are possible and, you know, how can we pick up on this early, both for ourselves and observing it in our loved ones?
Nate: 3:26
Yeah. So the best way to pick up on, on loss is just, “Do I feel different”, right? “Do I feel different because people will usually say, okay, I feel different.” It’s harder to remember names. It’s hard to remember, maybe “I know that person, but I can’t remember their name”, or “I used to remember the directions, and I’m just getting older”, or, “I went to my doctor, they just told me I’m stressed out or I’m going through menopause.” And while those things can be true and stress and menopause, all of those things do impact memory and general cognitive function. The first thing to pay attention to is what are you as an individual experiencing yourself? I have patients that were 52 years old were told they were going to menopause when they went in with memory problems and two or three years later, they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Nobody’s thinking that a 52 year old woman or man that’s coming in with memory complaints is going through Alzheimer’s disease, but it is possible. So the first thing and most important thing is to pay attention to your own symptoms and be an advocate for yourself or, somebody that you love To answer you the first part of your question, which is whether other aspects of cognition that are not necessarily memory, like, I, recalling names or recalling events from a couple days ago, or even remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday. Because those things are really in the sort of the bin of memory, but there’s a few other really important pieces of cognition that tend to decline over time with age versus processing speed. “How fast can I pick something up? How fast can I learn new information?” So, not only do boomers and the rest of us have to face, like just the fact that we’re 45, 55, 65, 75 years old now. So we have the normal process, but the speed and pace of every change obviously is changing is rapidly advancing as well. So, processing speed becomes an important thing to be able to measure and follow over time. And that’s something that can decline. It can, and it in some cases it can decline fairly rapidly. So that’s something that you want to pay attention to. And I say attention is another thing that is really worth spending some time talking about. So attention is actually from a medical standpoint, it’s very complicated. All of the inputs that go into paying attention, but I think most of us have an intuitive sense of what it means to pay attention, to be able to hold our attention. So, aside from someone having something like attention deficit disorder, like an ADADD or ADHD, our ability to pay attention and our attention span can decline over time as well. So that’s something that can be measured and followed. The last of the, of the important areas of cognition that are worth following over time is something called executive function. And again, probably many of your listeners are familiar with this, but executive function, again it’s a complicated neurophysiologic neuro electrophysiologic phenomenon, but basically it’s your ability to figure out “What do I have to do and how do I execute to get those things done?” And that is actually one sometimes, and in some cases can be the first sign of an oncoming dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, is a breakdown in executive function. We’ve seen people in their late fifties, mid fifties that are having trouble at work, being efficient, like they used to be. And it’s not necessarily because, “Oh, they’re forcing new technology or there’s just so much more.”, It’s the same work, the same job that they used to do. It’s just taking them a longer period of time. So if you’re noticing problems with efficiency, that might be an executive function problem.
Hanh: 6:49
Do you think the, our lifestyle lends ourselves to constantly be bombarded with information flashing in front of us and just taking us in so many different directions, does that contribute to it?
Nate: 7:03
Yeah. So, I think probably for millennials and older, so millennials, gen X boomers and then certainly the generation ahead of the boomers where, you know, even though there, there are elements of us that are digital natives, but still, we’re not wired for everything that’s coming at us all the time. If you and I think about what was like, what it would be like to be a young person nowadays, let’s say somebody who’s 10 years old or 18 years old with all of the information, all of the choices, all of the, just everything they have to deal with, it really seems pretty overwhelming. So, yes for our systems those are, those would be stressors, right? And then of course the technology itself can and some of the lights that are emitted from the screens that we’re talking in front of that we spend all day in front of can obviously impact hormones, can impact attention it can impact our eye function. So it has all kinds of has all kinds of, th the pace, the speed of technology and our general environments of that quality of our food, the quality of our water, even the quality of our air is I think one of your recent guests commented on you. The quality of our air was now a big risk factor for for also developing Alzheimer’s disease. So yes, there’s no question that not just our own lifestyle, but the. the environment that we’ve created here in the world we live in is impacting our our ability to live the healthiest that helps, or the healthiest longest life it’s that we can live. But I think there’s opportunities to improve. Also. That’s the, I think the important part.
Hanh: 8:27
Yeah. Yeah. Now what should we do if we, or someone we know are experiencing these types of loss?
Nate: 8:35
I’m a doctor, so I have to first say, go to your doctor. But, but I, w, you know, we operate in a practice that really has had to step outside of the insurance-based or insurance reimbursed model because of the limitations there. In an eight to 12 to 15 minute appointment with someone, even a 20 minute appointment, it’s really hard to work through real issues. You really, the answer is a test, a medication or a procedure or surgery. I mean that, those are really the answers. And of course, if you need a hip replacement, it’s an amazing life-changing event. But if someone’s having issues like memory and they’re subtle, our field, so the field of neuropsychology internal medicine and neurology even mood and, yes, mood disorders is also rapidly advancing. So problems up till now have really been the testing themselves. Let’s say you have an issue that you and, “I just can’t feel. I just feel like I can’t, be as efficient as I used to.”, and you go to your doctor. What is the doctor likely to say, “Oh, you’re just stressed out.” Are they going to test your cortisol? Are they going to get heart rate variability? Are they going to look at, even a half an hour battery of neuropsychologic tests, where they’re looking at you compared to people that are within about five years of your age to see if you are in a normal range? Unlikely. The best you’ll do is go to a neuropsychologist, and then I think that’s, I think practically speaking, what people can do within an insurance-based model is say “I’m having this issue and I went to my primary care doctor.” They might send you a neurologist, but I would request neuropsychologic evaluation. So neuropsychologic testing. And that’s, it can be a battery of about an hour where you meet with a psychologist and then two, three hours of extra testing and you’ll get a rich, deep, detailed report and, and still sometimes that’s missing what we call SCI “Subjective Cognitive Impairment”. So, if someone has subjective cognitive impairment, then it really is on, it is, unfortunately it’s upon them to seek out someone who can really get to the bottom of it. Get to the bottom of it. And but I think the best place to start going to primary care doctor and then probably getting neuropsychologic evaluation.
Hanh: 10:36
Great advice. Now, can you give an overview of what dementigens are?
Nate: 10:40
Oh yeah. I love this word dementigens. So I heard this word from a neurologist named Dr. Dale Bredesen for the first time. I think a lot of us have a sense of what an allergen is. Allergen is something that would give rise to allergies or cancer. Carcinogens give rise to cancer. So. There are more and more things that would be considered dementigens. So things that cause or give rise to, or are associated with dementia, Alzheimer’s dementia. Alzheimer’s of course being the most common kind of dementia that we have worldwide. We think right now. And so, things like high blood sugar, diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, so not getting enough oxygen, concussions, air pollution could be that hormones have something to do with this. We’re finding out that gut health and the microbiome, so the, the totality of bugs that we have in our in our GI tract and in other places, probably in our sinuses and sort of other places that are warm and wet around our body. All of these things impact dementia. And the list goes on and on periodontal disease, if we have untreated Gingervitis inadequate amounts of exercise, excess stress, especially it’s certain periods of our life. It looks like ages of between 50 and 65, we’re particularly susceptible to stress because what’s happening in our hormones at that time. The immune system’s also impacted. So there are several things that are on the list of dimensions that are either can directly cause, or are highly associated with developing Alzheimer’s or other dementias.
Hanh: 12:08
Now, what are the most common dementigens, and how do we best avoid dementigens in our own lives?
Nate: 12:14
Yeah. So it’s always going to go back to the basics. It always goes back to the basics. We can’t get away from the food that we eat. It doesn’t have to be all organic and grass fed, although, if you can afford that, that’s great. And it might be a little bit of data that’s that’s superior. But if you eat more vegetables, meaning more vegetables water-soluble vegetables, things that are high in fiber will be good for all of the cardiovascular risk factors. So things that are good for the heart, generally speaking are good for the brain because again, we’re learning, we’re learning more and more about the heart-brain connection. So you can’t get away from eating foods, probably eating less red meat. Eating more berries that are low in sugar, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, when they’re in season in particular and get them frozen. And then probably limiting dairy probably limiting dairy without necessarily cutting out dairy. I’m someone who is sensitive to dairy. So I’ve got 99% dairy free. If you can handle dairy, you probably not too much, just not too much red meat. And then omega-3’s. I’d probably be eating omega-threes and make sure you have adequate vitamin D. Vitamin D is not just a vitamin, but it also acts like a hormone. So there’s a lot of just again, all of these things, there can be a sweet spot where you can overdo it. An overdoing vitamin D can lead to a buildup of calcium and then problems with the blood vessels and ultimately the heart-brain and blood pressure. So, sweet spot. Then, sleep is like a huge thing. Sleeping enough, but also getting quality sleep. You’d be amazed by the number of people that said it, say, look like you and I, that are not particularly overweight, don’t particularly since we don’t struggle with obesity at this point, that we suspect have sleep apnea, which is a low oxygen to the brain, right? So if someone’s getting low oxygen to the brain, even if it’s very mild, even if somebody gets a study and it says, “Oh, it’s a mild sleep apnea.” That means you’re getting a mild amount, essentially a brain damage every single night. So that’s crazy. We would never say that a lot, a mild amount of brain damage or mild amount of low oxygen to the brain is acceptable. So we find that we treat and we look for and treat sleep problems aggressively in our clinic. Exercise, of course I can go on and out of exercise probably every to everybody knows that’s good for them. And then as you mentioned before Hanh, is the stress. Stresses become this, like it’s like the epidemic of our time. And particularly for those of us in our thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, if we’re still at work, even sometimes if we’re post retirement, but we’re struggling economically. I mean, COVID, election but w wherever, there’s no shortage of things to cite in terms of stress. So, having a way or several ways to deal with stress, are really important. and that brings us to this sort of the fifth big pillar, which would be our environment, right? So our environment would be our own interactions or connections continuing to learn and enrich ourselves, staying connected to anybody that cares about us and anybody who we care about, caring about people. I find for us what we do and in my own life groups, and right now at Zoom groups used to be in person groups, but Zoom groups really keep me afloat, really keep me afloat and have two or three of those a week that we do. And it’s in the evenings typically after the kids are asleep. and those are the things that really just breathe life into me and allow me to be with my children. Also, I call my family a lot, we do family Zoom. So there’s many things that are, a lot of these things are obvious. A lot of these things are obvious, but these are the things that are at the core that we always start with.
Hanh: 15:25
Yeah, I agree with you. And you know, like on a personal level, I’m not sure if you can successfully achieve all those key components in its entirety, like a hundred percent you like at my optimum. It’s like a life evolution that in some point in life you’re doing really well in one. And then you’re short on the other. I feel like that ought to be at the forefront at all age level, not just in the later part of life, where, you, you might realize gee, I gotta do better. And all these key components exercise more, eat, better nutrition, get enough sleep have got away. So we do stress cultivate relationship and engagement. Everything that you described, I think we got to move that backwards sort-to-speak, at all age of life. What do you think?
Nate: 16:12
Totally agree with you. Totally agree with you. I just, we started recently picking up, Qigong, cause I think that you can try to stack some of these things together. If, if you can get more efficient with, instead of thinking about all of the things separately, trying to think about them, “Can I work on exercise and stress reduction at the same time?”, because it’s like, it is otherwise, it’s just your life becomes a, “I want to keep myself healthy and I miss the enjoyment of life.” Right? “I miss the enjoyment of life.”, or getting, “Sinking myself into doing what I want to do. I want to contribute. I’m going to be of service”, those kinds of things. Yeah. I just, I paid my kids to do Qigong, and just to see if we could get them into you know, and we did a two week thing just to give them a taste because like otherwise they just wanna play video games or talk to their friends. You know, what I mean? Like, it doesn’t and those things in a video games. Yeah. It may not actually be bad. There’s some there’s some data that’s really interesting. Now I’m coming from virtual reality and some video games that may increase certain parts of the brain, the sizes of certain parts of the brain, particularly that are related to Alzheimer’s disease. Technology and video, and it’s not all bad, definitely not. But I couldn’t agree more that if we try to install a healthy habits earlier in our lives, not only will, it’ll be easier for those folks, with the kids that are growing up to live in that line, but it also sends things like Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, even cancers in some cases. But certainly, alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and other dementia’s start five, 10, 15, 20, 30 years in advance of actually having some of the symptoms of noticing symptoms and instead of this inability to live independently. So the earlier you start the better and you don’t have to do everything all perfect and cause no one does. If you, once you meet someone that’s doing something perfect let me know, because I want to have him on my show too.
Hanh: 17:55
I know. Here’s the thing, I am aiming, all those key components that you describe, moreso now in my later years then, in my twenties and thirties. So, it’s um, maturity is commitment and also realization that they’re important. And on a side note, I want to tell you something. I shared with a couple folks that I don’t know very well, the purpose of some of the topics that we talk about, including longevity, aging attitude towards aging, caregiving, right? To me, that’s just life. I don’t care what profession you’re in. How old you are. Those are things that you really ought to take note. Anyway, so I’ve shared that. They were so insulted that I even asked them if I if they thought about their longevity or their aging journey and, some of them have felt like, “You know what? That is such a dumb question. I’m young. I just had a baby and I’m really young caregiving. “What’s that? Why should I care?” Like I said, even though you and I, we’re talking about it now, and we’re recommending that it’s never too early and the sooner you discover this and live it by it or instill this in your life, the better you are. But it’s also a culture of society paradigm shift, not everybody believes this. Not everybody thinks that they’re going to be a caregiver or a recipient of one. Because why would they, they’re younger, they’re healthy, they’re goal driven, achieving all these things. And the last thing they want to think about is caring for an older adult. That time will come.
Nate: 19:19
Yeah, it does. It does. And then, usually that’s the time where people start to speak out, spirit. Yeah. There’s a book I was recently reviewing for a variety of reasons, and it’s a book called “Falling Upward”. It’s by Richard Rohr. And a wonderful book about life’s second half. It’s about really, second half of life. Once you come to this notion that “Yeah. I’m I’m not infallible. I’m going to go through pain and suffering in life, and that’s just part of it, part of the deal.” And all of our efforts to live a perfectly healthy, we still will encounter difficulty challenge, pain, suffering, and then embracing that. Embracing that, that really is the beginning of the, what we call this the second half of life. So like you were saying, it’s, it seems like most people hit that sometime in their forties or fifties, just, that’s a maturity point. But you meet people that are 15, 16 years old that have been through what they’ve been through and they started the second half of life. And I’m no expert in the second half of life, but but it does seem that spirit, spirituality on some level is really important. And there’s enough good quality medical studies done on having spiritual practices, whether it’s meditation or it’s a prayer that people do better. Their loved ones do better when they’re engaged in those kinds of things. So it’s important not to leave those kinds of things out. And there’s there that doesn’t require a lot of more, a lot more time. It’s not like you have to go to church or synagogue or a mosque. at prescribed times, although that’s great too. It could just be while you’re doing the dishes, it could be listening to something or praying. There’s millions of ways to do it.
Hanh: 20:51
Yeah, I agree. My mind was just thinking of all this as you were speaking. And what I want to say is that I can speak to it with a full conviction, that the spiritual sense is huge and it needs to be right up there, the top seven or all these key components. I personally think, because as you get into the later years and whether your health is declining, it could be your mind, your physical, or perhaps you’ve gone through many difficult times. Okay. sometimes as, health and mind decline, the only thing that allows you to, think and grow, as far as you can is your spirit, right? Because everything else may seem to be very limiting. Perhaps you can’t move as fast, think as much. You follow what I’m saying? Because everything else seems to be declining. The spiritual sense allows you to be as full as you choose to be.
Nate: 21:47
It’s such a good point. We work a lot with caregivers. We have a lot to do with caregivers. So let’s say somebody who’s been with a spouse for 40, 50 years sometimes, and now their spouse has Alzheimer’s or dementia or is they just got a diagnosis or something like that. And they’re just not this is not the person that they fell in love with, right? This is not the person that they’ve lived in shared oftentimes an amazing life with and what that does to a person. And then they need to find, the strength, they need to find the energy, they need to find the will to do the caregiving. And so, there’s there’s a way to do that. There’s a way to do that and be able to thrive and not be taken down by that. But but I think like you said, “Spirit” is a kind of in the center of that. I don’t see how you get around that.
Hanh: 22:32
Yeah. And everything that you describe all those components dementigens and so forth, although it might seem to be an outside environmental, but I personally think it’s an inside job, meaning your spirit to fully strengthen and achieve those components. Yeah. Now, okay. So what is Scientific Wellness and how was it relevant to brain aging and wellness?
Nate: 22:56
Yeah. Good question. Scientific Wellness is really emerging as another, another area of personalized medicine. Most of us experience going to the doctor, Are you sick? No, your labs look okay, but I don’t feel great.”, or “My joints hurt.”, or “I can’t think straight.”, or “I’m anxious all the time.”, or “I’m not sleeping well.”, but “You’re just stressed out.”, and we just we get waved off. So because our current health care system is really focused more on illness and disease, you have to wait until the light turns red on the car or something’s not working instead of paying attention to the check engine light. So, Scientific Wellness is really taking a different approach. It’s okay. What are the drivers of feeling good? What are the drivers of wellness? Where, what can we measure? What can we look at? And we, so we do like a variety of tests. We do it like, a hundred plus. blood tests, and we’re looking at people’s brainwave activity. We’re looking at heart rate variability. There’s a lot of things, yeah, a lot of ways you can take Scientific Wellness, but it’s essentially looking at what are the conditions that drive someone to feel their best, that drive longevity, that drive health span, and then leveraging those, and then seeing where you’re at as an individual, where are you at on the continuum and how can you get to a greater amount of wellness? And that’s it’s not airy fairy. Like, it’s a lot of this is measurable and repeatable. You can follow it over time and, that’s what we do. And there’s a growing number of companies, businesses, clinics that are approaching health care this way as as opposed to just the “Old Sick” care model, which is good for certain things, but it’s just not really not met the it’s really not met the need when it comes to chronic disease and preventing and dealing with early stages of chronic disease.
Hanh: 24:34
So now, is there anything beyond lifestyle factors that is evidence-based that may help delay or improve the effects of cognitive aging, perhaps technology?
Nate: 24:44
Yeah. Technology is probably the one that has the most promise right now. Yeah. So, one of the things that we’re been using for the last couple of years, so I’m fairly new into it. We’ve been involved in it for about five years, been using it with consistency for about two years, are things like “Transcranial Electrical Stimulation. So it sounds like, crazy because people start to think about “OneFlew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and electroconvulsive therapy. And we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about small amounts of current that pass over various areas of the brain. And you can do you can just, you can put little small electrodes on that you can buy at home and get at your house, and it’ll speed up things like processing. It may help attention and working memory. So your ability to hold a bunch of things in your mind and work with them at the same time. Gamers are using them. Computer engineers, computer coders are using them. And so, we’ve reappropriated this too individuals to combat cognitive aging. There’s a large study being done at University of Florida that’s wrapping up. Adam Woods at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Ben Hemstead at University of Michigan has a study for mild cognitive impairment. So there, there is this growing evidence out there that transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial alternating current stimulation, or even things like lights, led lights and small lasers, photobiomodulation have an impact on cognition. And the way we think they’re working, it’s not a hundred percent clear how they work, but they seem to improve energy production in the cells, through the mitochondria. They increase blood flow and vasodilation and allow sort of good chemicals that our body make, to flow to the area that may be problematic. So it gets things unstuck. And then the current, the electrical current seems to be improving network activities of brain. So our brains, like we make decisions much like a committee. An effective committee has several members and you have more influential members, maybe less influential members, but everybody has to get together and decide. So our brains, we don’t just think, “Oh, the front does this, the left side, does this.” Everything’s working in committee. And sometimes if you can influence areas that are most influential based on things like brain mapping or an MRI or something like that based on what’s actually happening in someone’s brain, right? You can influence the network and you can have a positive effect, like, somebody might, think of names faster. They might be performing at work quicker. They might be reading more easily. They might have a reduction in anxiousness or anxiety or a sense of just that race of anxiety that can happen with some people. I think technology right now is the thing I’m most excited about in terms of its application to reduce cognitive aging and to even intervene when people already have big problems like mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s, or other dementias.
Hanh: 27:23
So, what other types of anti-memory loss technology do you think we’ll see in the next decade?
Nate: 27:29
Yeah. It’s hard to say. But, like I mentioned before, virtual reality is like, is is marching or running ahead of the pack, now. I think you’re going to see virtual technology, virtual reality technologies. You’re already starting to see them. But I think you’ll see them more and more in insurance reimbursed, insurance-based, office settings or telehealth problem, more likely where you’ll combine traditional therapy, psychotherapy, working with a social worker, psychotherapist, et cetera. in combination with some of the technologies that I mentioned before, in addition to virtual reality tools. And some of us are sort of put off by that. I think, our experience is, when we do this with people in their fifties, sixties, seventies, even their eighties, they like it. They’re not bothered by it because if it helps, if it solves a problem, that’s really the bottom line. I’m always surprised by how much people will do though. Put stuff on their lips and their skin and their, all kinds of things for aesthetics. And we really care about how we look and our body. but we don’t take the same approach to our minds and brains. And I’m not suggesting that we need to go to, a plastic surgeon for our brain. But it is, it’s becoming more and more possible. It’s becoming more and more possible with some of the technologies, and some of the things that, even stuff with some of the stuff that we do on the inside of people. Some people are on hormone replacement therapy, and that can be helpful, although I don’t recommend that for everybody. There’s more and more things that we can do. And honestly, like you and I were talking about before we started the interview, there’s, there’s so much new that a lot of my time is spent sorting through what’s real and what isn’t. It takes a long time just to sort through what I want to expose myself to and expose my patients to and what I would never want to do.
Hanh: 29:03
Right. Well, gee, I really enjoyed this conversation. I thank you so much for your time. Do you have anything else that you would like to share?
Nate: 29:11
Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, where, we work at Kemper Cognitive Wellness and we’re really passionate, and we’re really one of the nation’s leading companies for dealing with Alzheimer’s, dementia’s at every stage. We’re launching a course for caregivers. Caregivers are some of the most stressed out overburdened. Like I mentioned before, they’re find themselves in these crazy situations. It’s very difficult to get all the information or most, even most of the information that you need in one place. So we’ve we’ve been working with people one-on-one and in small groups for a long time now. But we’re trying to get the information out. So, it covers all of the things we talked about much, much more, but it’s practical, right? It’s not theoretical information. It’s practical information because just getting from the time you get up in the morning until the time you get to go to sleep, I don’t probably have to tell you, but as a caregiver for someone dementia, it’s it can be a nightmare and it doesn’t have to be, so we call it live well with dementia. If you go to LiveWellWithDementia.com you can find it. And we’re very proud and excited of the work that we’re doing there. Thank you for asking.
Hanh: 30:10
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Nate: 30:11
It was great. I I appreciate your questions. It was pretty organic. Good to be connected.
Hanh: 30:15
It really is. I thank you. So we’ll be in touch.
Nate: 30:18
All the best.
