Dementia Is Not Inevitable: How Cognitive Decline Can Be Prevented & Reversed | Jo Grabyn

SHOW NOTES

🌐 Website: https://bouncematters.com.au

📲 Socials: Instagram & Facebook @BounceMatters

Featured Method: Dr Dale Bredesen’s ReCODE Protocol
Key Tools Mentioned:

• Photobiomodulation (Vielight)
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• Infrared Sauna
• Sleep studies & oxygen testing

00:00 – Dementia overview & why the narrative is broken

02:40 – Dementia statistics & young-onset trends

08:30 – The Bredesen Protocol explained

12:30 – Real-life cognitive reversal stories

15:00 – Dementia vs Alzheimer’s vs cognitive decline

18:00 – Prevention & Lancet findings

23:00 – Blood markers & optimal health ranges

31:00 – Trauma, stress & mental health

33:00 – Sleep, oxygen & brain detox

41:00 – Mould, toxins & EMFs

44:00 – Exercise & resistance training

55:00 – Red light, hyperbaric & sauna therapy

1:05:00 – 84% success rate explained

1:08:00 – Prevention message for younger adults

Dementia Is Not Inevitable: How Cognitive Decline Can Be Prevented & Reversed | Jo Grabyn

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich, well, dementia. Dementia, as we will learn today, takes many forms. In fact, apparently there are over 200 types of dementia and of course most people associate Alzheimer’s as dementia and there are many other forms that takes. And most disturbingly, as you will hear today, this is affecting people at an ever younger age. And like so many health conditions that perhaps your doctor may not have explored the response that is often given to patients with diagnosis is, well, there’s nothing much we can do about it. There’s some new medications coming on the market, et cetera, et cetera. A familiar narrative no matter which disease you are talking about. But guess what? Dementia is preventable, it is treatable, and there are many, many things you can do about it even if your doctor doesn’t know about it. So today’s guest is Jo Grabyn. Now, Jo is the founder of Bounce Matters.

And she is one of Australia’s leading clinicians in the prevention and reversal of cognitive decline. Now, since 2016, Joe has been applying Dr. Dale Bredesen’s pioneering work to help individuals or families and families stabilize and even reverse dementia symptoms once thought irreversible. And this is so interesting. Dale Bredesen is a world famous neurologist who himself, after 20 years of practicing, had an epiphany through his functional medicine life. Look, I’m not going to spoil it. He had an epiphany which led to the Bredesen Protocols, which have transformed literally tens of thousands of lives and may well transform yours here today. 

She’s now training practitioners across Australia to do the same. We’re going to explore the science, the hope and some practical steps for keeping our brains healthy for life and why prevention truly starts decades symptoms appear. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Joe Graven. Welcome to the show Jo. 

Jo Grabyn (02:09)

Thanks for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:19)

Jo, dementia neurodevelopmental issues and dementia being a big one of them is a big problem and before we dive into prevention and reversal and a concept that a lot of people may not be even familiar with, can you paint a picture of where we currently at with dementia as a public health issue, both globally and in Australia and how significant is the challenge and what trends are you seeing? Paint a picture for us.

Jo Grabyn (02:43)

So it’s actually quite a scary picture, to be honest. Every 3.2 seconds somewhere in the world is actually diagnosed with dementia. In Australia, we’re looking at dementia being the leading cause of death for Australian women and the second leading cause of death overall. So it’s far surpassed cancer and cardiovascular disease and all of the things that we’ve sort of talked to be aware of and concerned about. And right now there’s, from a Western medicine perspective,

It’s just like, you know, I’m very sorry, this is your diagnosis. I suggest you get your Feds in order. There’s not very much we can do. And you know, this is a trajectory, which is devastating for the patient, for their family. And it really puts them in a position of feeling incredibly hopeless and helpless. And you know, when it used to… So my grandfather died of dementia when I was in year seven, he was 86.

I don’t really remember who he was as a man before he lost his personality. And, you know, we always used to think of it was senile dementia. It was just, it was old people. But the terrifying thing is like, see patients in their fifties and their sixties. So the young onset dementia group in Australia, well, everywhere, but we know the numbers in Australia is growing at a terrifying rate.

And generally speaking, it’s geriatricians who will diagnose dementia, but you can’t get a referral to a geriatrician to 65, which doesn’t help when you’re 48. And most people don’t go to see a geriatrician until they’re in their seventies or eighties anyway, because to them, that’s the last stop before I jump into a nursing home. So let’s like leave that one as long as we possibly can. So, from a medical, like from a pharmaceutical perspective, there’s over 60 failed drug trials.

There are a couple of medications that are still quite widely recommended for people being Aricept and Mimantene. There were three studied quite extensively last year. One has been conditionally approved in Australia. But they’ve actually got some quite terrifying side effects. So 31 to 34 % of people from these medications can experience brain swelling and brain bleeding, which when you’ve already got brain damage, that’s not very appealing.

And even having spoken to a geriatrician about this, he’s like, but Joe, even those meds really only work if we catch it very early and people are too, you know, they’re too scared to go and see anyone very early because they don’t want to lose their license. They don’t want to lose their job. They don’t want to be told that their life is over. So at the moment, the general model of dementia is a really pretty dark hole.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (05:36)

But Joe, know, we obviously we’re to be talking about dementia but what you have actually mentioned is not an uncommon response to a diagnosis of many kinds. That is when a patient asks a doctor, why has this happened? Firstly, it is often dismissed as, it’s just bad luck, just your genes, whatever, rather than the doctor actually saying, we don’t know.

I don’t know more specifically I don’t know and then the second part of this which again we could be talking about dementia could be talking about cancer we talk about autoimmune whatever the patient says what can I do about it and because the practitioners knowledge is so limited rather than say I really don’t know they would say well you know put your affairs in order.

There’s not much you can do. In other words, if I don’t know about it as a doctor, it’s probably not worth knowing about. And that’s not an uncommon response to chronic preventable diseases per se, let alone dementia.

Jo Grabyn (06:47)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And for the programs that have been developed that are helping, there are many of the top neurologists and the top neurological centers that are poohooing it and saying that’s ridiculous, know, it’s snake oil, don’t use this, don’t use that, nothing will help you. And yet the studies are showing that that’s absolutely wrong, you know.

The work that I’ve been doing since 2016, they’ve just wrapped up a very large trial. So we don’t have the numbers on that yet, because it was literally only finished on the 31st of October. And now they’ve done some basics around statistics, but it’s not ready for sort of big discussion yet. But even when they were doing looking at publishing hundreds of people, they were getting an 84 % success rate of either stabilizing or reversing cognitive decline.

Now the medications just slow down if you’re lucky, and I do mean if you’re lucky, the medications may slow down the decline, but they are not going to stabilize you and they are not going to reverse you. But if you’re willing to do the work and you work with the practitioners that will dig, you know, basically go down every single potential rabbit hole for you and work out what all of your risk factors are and your contributing factors are. It’s possible to stabilize it and turn it around.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (08:11)

Yeah. Look, I mean, you’ve been in this, as you mentioned, you’ve been in this space for over 10 years and you mentioned, I know we’re going to be talking about the work of Dr. Dale Bredesen. What are the key principles behind the Bredesen approach and what have you seen in your own clinical experience that brings, you know, the whole thing to life really?

Jo Grabyn (08:33)

Yeah, great. Great question. So Dale was a neurologist who spent 25 years looking for the magic bullet that as, and he’s just like, it was just failed drug trial after drug trial. And again, and his wife was actually a functional medicine doctor and she, and he goes for 20 years, she kept saying to me, Dale, this is so much more complex.

This is going to be all of the metabolic issues that people have. This is going to be toxins. This is going to be gut issues. This is going to be the emotional side, you know, environmental. And so eventually when he got sick of, you know, getting nowhere with the medications, he decided to start digging in and seeing what all of these factors might be. So he developed, calls it the roof with 36 holes. So he’s kind of going for every person we want to look at which of their 36 holes has a hole in it.

You know, and which ones can we plug? You can’t plug one or two isn’t going to stop the flow. But if we can turn around more than half, then we have a good chance of making a difference. So when I first met Dr. Bredesen in 2016, they had completed a pilot study of 10 patients. One of those patients has literally just walked from one coast to the other in the US, something like 4,000 miles, completely reversed in, you know, the greatest state of health cognitively and physically. What they did learn was that once you’re on the program, have to work the program and you have to stay on the program. can’t kind of go, well, this is just six months later on better. So I’m going to go back to doing all of the things that I did before, because it does come undone relatively quickly for most people. Basically because, you know, the neuro, we’ve actually been  creating the damage for 20 or 30 years before we start to see signs So the I guess you could say the the horse is bolted in a sense.

And what we want to do is leash it and pull it back and get it under control So it’s sort of like trying to get in front of a moving train we can absolutely do that and since then you know, I’ve seen patients who like my youngest patient at the moment is 52 and it took her year, she was diagnosed a week before her 52nd birthday and it took a year of her and her husband and her daughter fighting saying this is not just menopause. Menopause doesn’t stop me from knowing how to fold a blanket anymore. I actually saw them that were here on Saturday and even the neighbour who didn’t know she had a diagnosis said, have you been doing something different?

You seem so much better now than you were a few months ago. You know, and then, I had one of my first patients who he was the most astounding reversal I’d ever seen. He was a gentleman. He was only, he was 54, but his symptoms had started in his mid forties, but he actually coached a new, one of the New Zealand Olympic teams through three Olympics. And then he’d been a really high end executive coach. And by the time I met him, he came in with his wife and his two adult daughters.

He shuffled in with a pair of noise canceling headphones on and could only occasionally engage in the conversation. So most of my assessment of him was by his family. And we went hard with that case. We threw everything in the Bredesen protocol plus voter by modulation plus hyperbaric plus sauna. They actually, they were from New Zealand and they lived here for a couple of months.

And within a month, his kids were going, my god, Jo, it’s like we’ve got our dad back. He’s sitting at the dinner table with our friends, like telling stupid dad jokes and taking the mickey out of everyone. And he sat here before he left and went home. And he’s just like, Jo, thank you for giving me my life back.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:33)

Wow, I get a shiver down my spine as you tell that story. It is interesting though, isn’t it? Because I kind of may have dismissed the genetic component too much. It tells you you are susceptible. It tells you this is how this disease has manifested itself, which then says you’re stuck, you are with your genes so you can’t just take a pill and get over it. This is part of what life looks like moving forward. But I’m guessing that one of the icing on the cake is that they would be feeling so much better in all sorts of other ways as well.

Jo Grabyn (13:06)

Absolutely, like cardiovascularly, so fitness-wise, they’re able to exercise again, they get their personality back there and you calm their anxiety down. The reason he walked around with noise-cancelling headphones is because his anxiety becomes so bad that he couldn’t sit in a cafe or he couldn’t go to a shopping center. He was just so overstimulated and his brain couldn’t manage the stimulation.

The thing is, Alzheimer’s, interestingly, Alzheimer’s is fairly intrinsically linked with the APOE4 gene, which I think is what you were talking about with the genetic link. But to give you an example, the 52 year old lady that was sitting here with me on Saturday, she doesn’t have an APOE4 gene. No. So there are patients, you know, we know that if you have one copy of the gene, then your risk is increased by about 30 to 40%.

When I first trained 10 years ago, they said if you had two copies of the Alzheimer’s gene that you had a 90 % chance. And last year there was discussion around calling that a diagnostic. However, that’s been negated now saying in essence, if you have two copies of that particular gene, your risk is around 50%. But generally in the younger onset patients, so the people under 65, they often don’t carry one of those genes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (14:21)

I would say when I say genetically predisposed, I’m not talking just about one gene that we can put our hat on. I’m just saying your genetic makeup, you could have manifested as a heart attack at 52 or you might have got cancer at 52 but in your particular case, it’s a cognitive decline and before we go on, I think it is probably worth getting some definitions in place here between cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s, these terms are all used interchangeably. do we, tell us, give us the 101, you know, of dementia, Alzheimer’s, cognitive decline. How do we define them?

Jo Grabyn (15:03)

So if we think of, um, I think a good example is looking at irritable bowel syndrome or IBS. IBS is like an umbrella term for a whole range of digestive symptoms that sort of have, they’re like, Oh, well, we can’t quite figure out what it is. So we’ll call it IBS. Dementia is an umbrella term for, is it too, there’s over 200 different types of dementia. Alzheimer’s is the most common form. So it’s around 70 to 80 % of cases and.

Cognitive decline ranges from we have what we call subjective cognitive impairment. So it’s like, you you know that your brain isn’t working the way that it used to, but you are not going to test up as though there’s something wrong with you. So it’s normally when the doctor’s going, don’t be silly. You’re just a bit stressed or, know, you’ve just gone through a divorce or you’re not sleeping properly, but you know, you know, in your heart of hearts, that something’s not quite the way it was generally the next step from that which can take up to 10 years will be mild to moderate cognitive impairment. And it’s, you will actually, by this point, if you were to do a test with your doctor, they would come up as being, your cognition isn’t normal anymore, but it may not be bad enough for it to be considered to be dementia. 

Alzheimer’s itself requires an FDG PET scan or a spinal tap for them to be able to see that you have amyloid plaque and how tangles, though there is now as of August, there’s a blood test available in Australia called brain scan, done by a lab called neurocode and they look at three different markers. So you can actually do a blood test to find out up to 18 years in advance. If you already have the markers for Alzheimer’s in your bloodstream, then there’s a whole range of other types of dementia that are much, you know, that are sort of in that Alzheimer’s space or more severe. So you can have dementia that comes with Parkinson’s, can have Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and then there’s a whole raft of more, much lower percentages of people can have these other conditions. and then one, the one that we’ve heard a lot about over the last few years is CTE, which is the dementia that comes as a result of chronic concussions and brain injuries.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:23)

What does CT stand for again?

Jo Grabyn (17:24)

Well done. It’s something to do with concussion. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:35)

That’s okay, that’s okay but it’s interesting we’ve also done programs with Patrick Holford from Food from the Brain. I’m not sure whether you’re familiar with the organization but they have a cognitive decline, the cognitive assessment which combines a whole range of the cognitive function tests that you would normally do. You can sip it. Sorry plus lifestyle tests and they assert it is entirely preventable.

Jo Grabyn (18:04)

I think in many people, even if we look at the Lancet papers, even the Lancet are saying in 2024, they were saying 45 % of cases worldwide are preventable through modifiable risk factors. So that went from 35 % in 2017 to 40 % in 2020. So 45 % 24, I wouldn’t mind betting the next one comes out at 50. I think that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:38)

I’m guessing Joe as more doctors learn about these protocols that number will go up and there’s a link between those two things isn’t there?

Jo Grabyn (18:39)

Yeah, absolutely. and this, cause there’s so many things, even on the Lancet list, like I read through the paper in detail last year and there was still things that fit into their, we’re not quite sure yet type list. You know, things like sleep, for example, like we, we know that if people have a creating oxygen debt every night while they’re sleeping, if they have, you know, a pulse oximetry under 98% and or definitely under 96 that their brain is going, you know, is starved of oxygen when they’re sleeping. So, you know, it’s, it’s crucial. So for some patients, just by getting them to put a CPAP on, on a nightly basis can have a massive change to their cognitive state.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:27)

So Jo, are you saying to me that even in the Lancet paper they are still unsure whether sleep has a factor, is it properly a factor? Wow, I mean that is you just don’t get any more basic than that. You’re talking about oxygenation but one could also talk about the glymphatic system and the deeper levels of sleep. My goodness, if that’s an indication of the EQ or HQ health quotient the Lancet, we are at a very rudimentary stage. Let’s come back to the Bredesen approach. You’ve mentioned 36 holes and I’m guessing we could cover, I don’t know whether we will cover all 36 of them, but let’s talk about those principles of what Dale Bredesen reformed neurologist. Can I call him that?

Jo Grabyn (20:16)

Absolutely. I trained with quite a few neurologists that first training round that I did with Dale back in 2016. And what’s interesting is the majority of the neurologists who were there were already, shall we say, reformed to functional medicine.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (20:34)

Often we’ve done a lot of programs on this reform process and it’s usually an epiphany which affects them in some way personally. Yes. Like they may go through their professional life telling their patients, look, there’s not much you can do. It’s just genetic. And then they or one of their family gets it. And all of a sudden they explore alternatives. So let’s talk about those alternatives.

Jo Grabyn (20:56)

Yeah, definitely. I find it very interesting because people are so astounded. So I’ll give you an example, basic blood tests that we can get through Medicare and how our pathology ranges differ to what the World Health Organization dictates as being baseline directives. Vitamin B12 and vitamin D are two of those that are crucial to be optimized in any sort of autoimmune condition and particularly neurological condition. So there are markers that, you know, Medicare could be happily testing, like, you know, like as I said, B12, vitamin D, but homocysteine is a key marker. And to give you an example, the range on homocysteine in Australia is generally around six to 14, maybe as far as 18. 

However, in the Bredesen protocol, we want it optimized to six or seven. And your that B12, example, World Health wanted that if your plasma level of B12 is under 400, they want an active B12 tested. However, the range for Australia in effective B12 is generally around, it says above 35 or 40, but the research shows it needs to be above 100. And vitamin D is one that kills me every time because of the number of patients I see with osteoporosis.

And the bottom of our range is 50 and the World Health Organization says anyone with a vitamin D under 75 is at risk of osteoporosis. So again, back to the 52 year old I saw on Saturday when I met her, her vitamin D was 38. And she, we, got a bone mineral density done for this lady and she has severe, she’s only 52, severe osteoporosis in her hip joints and severe osteopenia in her lumbar spine. And it’s never been tested. It’s never been looked at you know, Omega-3 is a crucial one and we can’t get that through Medicare, a proper Omega-3 index. So it’s what’s the percentage of Omega-3 across your body, but then also what’s your Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio. Cause in really simplistic terms, Omega-6 is more an inflammatory fat and Omega-3 is our anti-inflammatory fat. And honestly, I test this for every patient.

And it’s a private test that they have to pay for. And I think I can still to this day after 15 years of testing it count on one hand, the number of patients who have been optimized. The majority of my patients, even if they’ve been taking fish oils. So if you look at optimal Omega 6 to Omega 3 is a tour of three to one. They probably average at 10 to 20 to one, you know, and even Ross Walker. mean, 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:41)

I’m sure even Ross has been regular guest on this podcast, but do go on, I love that, even Ross Walker.

Jo Grabyn (23:52)

Well, what I was going to say like Ross is he’s my cardiologist, but he’s also one of my mentors. And, you know, he’s like, Jo, I like the index. They say above 8%. He goes, I don’t want any of my patients under 11 or 12 % in their omega three index because it’s so crucial for their cardiac health. know, so there’s, we are trying, we always want to get our patients to optimal health. Not the way I look at it. And this is probably quite contentious, but in like with, I look at pathology lab ranges as if you’re inside this range, you’re not dead or you’re not going to hospital. And you will become a good customer eventually. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (24:19)

Yeah. And you will become a good customer. I think people misunderstand the public health system to a large degree. Are we preparing healthy people or are we preparing good customers? There’s a fundamental question that’s easy to miss but once you are aware of it, difficult to ignore. Go on. See some of these ranges and Ross, I love Ross’s quote who often says people criticize some supplements as expensive urine but I also like expensive blood as well. like Ross. Ross is a regular.

Jo Grabyn (24:57)

Yeah, he’s a great guy. So, you know, that’s sort of some real basics, like we’re looking at kidney health, you know, there’s one of the things that like really frustrates me is on your basic biochemistry that everyone gets, it happened, it’s one of the things that when a doctor does a workup for you, they’ll do biochemistry with liver function. So your EGFR is your filtration rate of your kidneys. 

And I was always trained that number should never be under 90 until you’re over 90. And the range, the range in Australia is above 59. But if you get tested and you land at 58, you are automatically in stage three chronic kidney disease. And last year, I was at a pathology conference and there was a functional medicine nephrologist who actually runs a big clinic in Thailand. And he said, it’s a thing he hates the most about nephrology is, he’s like, we should be looking at it when it’s 89. And especially if the patient’s 40 and going, we can do something about this now, but their theory is that they can’t do anything about it until it’s stage three. And it’s like, you know, it’s one of the things that I’m on with my patients all the time. I’m like, Hey, like you are half of 90. This measurement can’t be here. Like we are, I am not okay with this. You know, so it’s.

It’s always about trying to help people optimize their health. So, because if we optimize our internal environment, then we’re helping our brain work better because we used to, you know, we used to have this, I think bit of a polyanna view that our brain was, it was protected, right? The blood brain barrier means nothing that’s running around in your body can get into your brain. It’s fine. It’s in its own little safe space, but it doesn’t, it basically floats in the soup of whatever else is floating around in our bodies.

So, you know, with the Bredesen protocol, we’re looking at, you know, we’re optimizing your blood. So we’re looking at your gut, you know, you’re when everyone gut microbiome has been sort of the buzzword now for at least five years. And, know, the gut brain connection via the vagus nerve, but also with our bacteria is crucial to understand. You know, we’re looking at things like toxins and that’s, you know, I always I get quote.

I get frustrated by the quote from GPs especially of, you don’t need to detox everybody’s body detoxes anyway. And this is a big play where place where genetics come into play because there’s certain detox genes that you either have them or you don’t. It’s not like, you have a version of like the majority of our other genes. It’s there’s certain things that a lot of people don’t even have it. And so know, when you’re looking at their toxic load and people are like, but you know, don’t smoke or don’t this, but it’s like, well, if you’re in one of the most, you know, say the top three or five toxic professions, for example, you know, yeah, absolutely dentistry.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:05)

Like dentistry. Dentistry is one of the worst.

Jo Grabyn (28:06)

It terrifies me when I have a couple of retired dentists that are my patients and it’s, and they’re like, but we still teach, you know, still use mercury at university. I’m like, don’t even start. Don’t even start. like hairdressers and, you know, airline stewards because of atmospheric radiation. then like I have a young onset patient who is, he was diagnosed at 60 and it’s quite the perfect storm. 

So he was a really active teenager, played rugby, boxer, went into the Navy, became a clearance diver, and as a clearance diver, he was a bomb tech. But he was, so he was, just his job meant he was exposed to, you know, major explosions, which people don’t realize how soft your brain is. So it’s just doing their job has them getting a brain injury every time they blast something. Then when he left the Navy, he went into the police force and he was under severe stress.

He was in like a child abuse unit and then was bullied out of the police force. it’s because he’s, and he’s stressed got so bad that he had to leave. And then eventually he started his own business as a concrete. And it’s just like, my God, I didn’t have a chance. Like, you know, it’s, it’s so devastating and he still has teenage children, you know? So, and when he and his wife eventually got the diagnosis and they’re with a geriatrician.

He would ask a question and the geriatrician would answer his wife. It was like he wasn’t even in the room. So there’s so much that needs to change about the way that people are empowered or disempowered, spoken to and included. You know, the toxins are a massive thing when, you know, he’s also got many brain injuries that need to be worked on. that’s something like I want, part of my training was with Dr. Daniel Amon in the States who does all the spec scans and the hyperbaric for the NFL players. 

He was actually the consulting physician on that movie Concussion that Will Smith did all those years ago. And, you know, he taught me, he’s like, you need to ask the question about head injuries in concussion, often 10 different ways over a number of consultations. And, you know, because it might take three or four visits for someone to go, yeah, that happened.

I got pushed off the top bunk when I was four and landed on a concrete floor. You know, it’s astounding how much, you when we’re digging into people’s history, decades and decades of history, that the little things sort of get lost. So it’s very much about taking the time and making the effort to unpeel the onion, to understand what all the toxins are, or just what all the different events are. You how many surgeries have they had, therefore how many general anesthetics have they had?

If they had amalgams removed, how were they removed? And then if they had a really difficult childhood, what did that look like and what’s been their assistance to recover from that type of thing?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:13)

It’s interesting isn’t it with trauma as an example a lot of people don’t realize that well muscle not only do minds have memory and it can be subconscious but muscles have memory too and that memory can go on for a lifetime so things that you don’t even think was significant you talk about building one on top of the other eventually you exceed an adaptive capacity and bingo you’ve got a you eventually have a diagnosis but there’s quite a process in between the building of those things and the actual diagnosis and I’m guessing that’s where your focus is so much on is is reducing that risk.

Jo Grabyn (31:52)

Yeah, absolutely. And even from a therapy point of view, like I often find, we know that when we’re talking, we can only access that sort of 5 % of our conscious mind and the other 95 % is in our unconscious and subconscious. So often because I do a lot of mental health work as well. And we know that depression is an overall risk factor for both genders, but anxiety is, uh, best still trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of this, but anxiety is a big contributor for women but less so for men and often my patients are at the point of going either I’ve had a counselor for 20 years and it was a lot of nice conversations but I didn’t really get anywhere with that and so normally I’m either referring my patients to a psychotherapist so they can look at the mind body connection or to a very good kinesiologist who can actually pull the answers out of their body without them even needing to know the answers because as you said. It’s all stored in their energetic system and their muscles and their body can’t lie.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:56)

Another one is sleep too isn’t it because whenever you ask people about sleep, don’t worry I can sleep anywhere anytime. Sleep’s not a problem Ron, move on you know and you go well hang on, hang on that’s not meant to happen and people have this sense of normality. What is their experience in sleep? What else is there? Well actually quite a lot as it turns out. Let’s you know talk about sleep a little bit too because I think that must be a huge risk.

Jo Grabyn (33:22)

Sleep is a massive risk factor. so things, can be as simple as asking someone, do you know if your nose breathe or mouth breathe? If they’re here as a couple, I will actually ask the partner if they snore. Generally when someone’s over 40, I will request a sleep study. And at the very least like a pulse oximeter overnight to measure their oxygen overnight. A lot of my patients, if they don’t struggle with anxiety, then I will encourage them to get something to measure their sleep like an aura ring. 

Because we don’t just need to know the number of hours, we need to understand how much REM sleep are we getting, how much deep sleep are we getting. The glymphatic drainage system that you mentioned earlier, we need to be asleep for six hours before that really kicks in. So it’s like our brain’s own little set of janitors that are going in there and cleaning out the toxins and…helping us break down the amyloid plaques that get spoken about and help us break down the tautangles that are spoken about. 

If we’re not getting a minimum of an hour of rem and an hour of deep and six hours overall, but ideally we want to aim for more like eight or nine, then our brain isn’t being given the opportunity to clean itself up. Like our lymphatic system, every time we’re walking around up and down stairs, anytime that our muscles are moving, it gets an opportunity to push things out, but our brain is in a really different situation there. sleep once we’re over 60, was so recently I did some extra modules with that were brought out through recode and they were all done by various dentists, but they were dentistry around sleep and toxins and the gut microbiome and things like that. 

And talking about upper airway resistance syndrome and the fact that once we’re over 60 at, you know, the risk for sleep apnea increases exponentially just because of generalized aging, you know, and one of the things that I find really challenging is most people hate CPAP machines. Like it’s, they’re really invasive. don’t think, to be honest, I don’t think I could sleep with one. And I have some patients that live between here in Queensland and I got a message off them today and they actually got a CPAP for the wife and nine months on, she’s still struggling. And so I’ve actually asked her to go and see Lewis or the team at Sydney holistic dentists when they get here. Cause I’m like, I need for you to get a sleep mouth guard and get it adjusted appropriately while you’re here. Because I’ve got other patients who have done that and they’re, they’re like, Oh my God, it changed my life. Like I couldn’t use the CPAP. One of my patients is like sleeps between three different bedrooms. He has this thing that if you can’t sleep in one room, you’ll go and try another one. Maybe it’s a temperature.

But he’s like, my mouth guide goes everywhere with me. So it makes it, you you can travel with that and there’s, but even from a younger perspective, often bad sleep patterns can start happening as, you know, at toddler age.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:44)

Well, we’ve done programs with Dr. Jim Papadopoulos, respiratory pediatrician, who made the statement that 50 % of ADHD diagnoses undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing conditions. So people rush towards the medical intervention of prescribing Ritalin, but it actually could be a poor sleep that is causing that kind of problem.

Similarly it’s so interesting to hear you talk about CPAP because it is said to be the gold standard if you like and again it you know it’s a it is when it’s used it’s great the problem is compliance people actually using it as a problem and while the mouth guard which holds the lower jaw forward and keeps it’s called a mandibular advancement splint keeps the jaw slightly forward it keeps the airway open it may not be as effective a CPAP but at least you’re wearing it and at least it’s improving things. 

So yeah compliance is much better with those and they need regular adjustment. That’s another really important thing people think and in fact many dentists think they only have to give their patient the appliance and off they go. They’ll never see them again but we would encourage people to bring it in every six or twelve months to review and adjust.

Jo Grabyn (39:09)

Well, as we age, as we eat different foods, as we potentially gain or lose weight, all of those things are going to have a massive effect. I mean, even from the perspective of thinking about our blood work, you know, it’s we change our diet, things change, we change our exercise, our markers might change. have suddenly we go through a period of serious stress.

Often when it’s people in their 40s and 50s, that serious stress that may have to do with a parent who’s become incredibly unwell or passed away. so when we’re looking at the various things to help people, we can’t even our prevention programs and our reversal programs. It’s like we even once we get you stable, we still need to check in with you every three to six months. 

And if something goes sideways we need to know then because we need to kind of, we go back in and dig into what’s been going on in your life in the last few months or if you guys moved house or have you been traveling? You know, I always think of an example that Dale spoke about of a lady that had had complete reversal and three months later, like hadn’t seen her for three months and her husband rang and said, I think we need to see you. Like things, things are going backwards.

And what had happened was that their son had actually gone to university, but he’d got a football scholarship. And so every weekend she was getting on a plane and flying to wherever her son was. So there was a lot of stress around that. There was the travel, there was the reduction in oxygen when she was traveling. And she just wasn’t resilient enough yet to cope with that. So, they’re just the different things, you know, that’s probably one of the other things that we should talk about from a, one of the things that we really dig into, which seems weird is people’s homes. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:55)

You know, when it comes, especially when we’ve got cognitive issues in early patients, you know, if you’ve got someone in their forties and fifties, it’s, know, are you living in mold? Is there any mold in your home? Oh, there’s that little bit on the window sometimes that I have to wash up and it’s like, so we have one, we have two options. We can either get you tested or we can get your house tested, but probably one is going to lead to the other anyway. Um, because the mold issue, especially in particular areas in Sydney, you think about how much rain we’ve had over the last few years compared to what Sydney used to be like. 

And some of the older areas like the Eastern suburbs and like Mossman, especially anywhere where there’s lots of little like valleys and crevices where houses don’t get, you know, they have parts of the houses that never dry out because they don’t get sun because of all the lush landscape. But for the people living in them, that can become a massive problem. And it can be the thing that’s driving their cognitive issues.

You know, we’ve done programs on home biology and I think the energy efficiency of our homes where vents are closed off to prevent, to preserve heat is a problem because we don’t ventilate our rooms. But also the ubiquitous use of gyproc, if it ever gets water damage, you literally cannot remediate or often can’t remediate that water damage that’s occurred there.

So it’s a real, it’s a huge issue. I imagine radiation as in the phones, the wifi, I mean, my God, that must be open a whole can of worms there.

Jo Grabyn (42:35)

It absolutely does. so radiation, EMF, we think about Wi-Fi, we think about phones, we think about screens. I mean, I’m sitting here in front of three screens, all I can say is thank God I actually have an EMF blocker on the back of my phone, which is sitting here protecting me from the little space that I have here right now. And especially now because we live often, you know, more and more people live in apartment blocks for, you know, convenience. And so…

Even if patient people like, but next door neighbor is not going to turn off their wifi. I’m like, I don’t really care about your next door neighbor. Let’s just like limit what we can for you and, know, and turn yours off and, know, use blue blocking glasses at night so we can try and get the light. Right. Because we’re so as much as many people are malnourished, we’re also malilluminated with the, yeah, look at you go. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (43:26)

So put on my blue blockers for those listening to audio. Go on.

Jo Grabyn (43:32)

So the radiation is definitely an issue. Nicole Bilsma, who actually owns the Australasian College of Environmental Studies. she was my lecturer like way back when, and then she built that college here in Australia and she finished her PhD, I think, either early this year or late last year on the impact of the environment on chronic illness. And it’s really pretty terrifying. we look at…

Like with my patients, I’m like, you know, do you, what’s what electronically, what have you got in your bedroom electronically? Like if you have a TV unplug it at the wall, don’t just turn it off with the remote and you know, what’s on the walls surrounding your bedroom? Like are you next to the laundry or are you by a fridge or is the TV from the, you know, the 70 inch TV from the lounge room next door against your wall. And you know, so there’s so many things that we really dig into the nitty gritty detail over time.

To make sure that we’re trying to optimize every part of someone’s life. exercise is a huge thing. And the interesting thing is often what I find is that people who are like small and slight, who have never really been into exercise, like I didn’t need to exercise because I don’t need to lose weight. Do you know that your brain actually needs the extra oxygen circulating that we get from exercise?

And so, you know, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can always start. I’m often starting a lot of women in there, you know, post-menopausal. It’s like, it’s time to start weight training. they’re like, but I don’t want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m like.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (44:13)

Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen, but…

Jo Grabyn (44:14)

I promise you, never will, but we need to get you on board with some weight training and, you know, or we get you walking in the, when you do walks, when you find a seat, can do squats or you can do walking lunges on the way. And because I find these really quite cool is that leg strength correlates with cognition. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:35)

How interesting.

Jo Grabyn (45:37)

So, you know, if I can get people to do nothing else, I’m like do lunges and squats, you know, and walk up the stairs with your heels on the stairs so that you’re actually activating your glutes. And the little things that you can have people do without saying, you don’t have to go and get a personal trainer and you don’t need to be running an hour a day. When I first trained with Dr. Bredesen, it was very much a minimum of 60 minutes, at least five days a week at a moderate intensity. So sort of like a zone three in cardio and weight training once or twice a week would be nice.

Now it’s almost like the evidence has flipped on its head that if you do nothing else, do two 45 minute solid weight training sessions a week. know, obviously an integration of the two would be fantastic, but you know, if we’re working people up to things like that, what they do, sometimes I’m getting people to actually pull back from the amount of cardio they’re doing because it’s having too much of an effect. Like it’s having almost an aging effect but it’s actually creating an adrenaline issue around their stress hormones. like you know there’s it’s a Goldilocks effort you know we need we need enough but we don’t you know there is such a thing as too much.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:45)

Yeah, tell me, mean people are coming into you with a whole gamut or the range of cognitive decline slash dementia problems. Where do you start? Where do you get, know, how do you start? mean 36 holes in the roof, you know, how do you decide which one you’re going to focus on because it must be so easy to also overwhelm people.

Jo Grabyn (47:07)

It’s so when, so nobody gets to just book in with me because I need them to understand that they need to be ready because it’s not like going to your GP and going, my brain doesn’t work properly anymore. Give me a pill. And you’ve got seven seconds of diagnostic time in a 15 minute appointment. This is you’re going to come and sit down with your family and we’re going to have two, maybe even three hours of digging through your life. So before we do that, I’m going to send you a number of questionnaires to complete and fill in over time. I would like you to map out a full health and medical timeline for me as best you can from your beginning of time through to now. And you can put as much detail as feels good for you in that. we’re looking at.

So I’ll ask them for any past medical records, any blood tests. We ask for what medications and supplements are you taking now? But have you ever taken anything for a long time that maybe didn’t work well for you or that made you feel bad? And so we know then, because there’s also a group of drugs that actually have an effect on your brain. so just because they’re not on them now, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t, like sometimes people have been on something like nexium or, you know, an anti reflux drug for 10 years. 

And they’re not, they’re not anymore, but they were. it’s things that I need to take into consideration for the bigger picture. And we’ll, you know, it’s, need to, can you write me a food diary for three or four days and then please include a weekend? Cause most people eat differently on the weekend. you know, and so that way, and if, especially if they are an older patient and they’re going to come with a partner or an adult child or both, I’ll say like do this in bite-sized chunks, 10 to 15 minute chunks, you’re probably going to need an hour or a lot, but do it over time. Cause it’s, it is like peeling an onion in the fact that you’re, you know, the memories are going to come back. Oh yeah, I had that operation and oh yeah, there was that accident. And you know, so that gives them some time to start to look at their life in a way that they probably never have. 

And then I have, um, say my brain doesn’t work like other people’s, I hand write all my notes because and I have quite a structured like four page form that I work for work through for people because it helps me remember like the many things that I actually need to ask them about. and then when we get to the end and I’m not I’m probably I’m quite generous with my time because I think it’s important to for them to be able to ask me questions that they haven’t been able to ask other professionals you know around things that are going on for them and how they can manage certain situations in the home. And they need to feel like someone’s a hundred percent on their team. Not something most people are used to. And so generally by the time I get to that, they’re having a brain explosion by the time I get to the end. So I’m like, okay, so off the back of today, we’re going to do a.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (50:19)

But Joe, that must be an incredible learning experience for them to confront, perhaps for the first time in their life, that a lot of stuff matters and a lot of stuff is interconnected.

Jo Grabyn (50:22)

Yes. Often they walk out of those sessions going, I feel like I know myself better today than I ever have for my whole life. And now I’m starting to understand how the things that I did along the way have helped me get to here now. sometimes there’s shame and there’s blame and I’m like, there’s no, there’s no place for that. Like it’s, you know, we all, we’ve all had a life.

Right. And we’ve all been young, dumb and stupid and done things that we kind of look back and go, wow, I really wish that didn’t happen. And I’d rather not have a conversation, but also everyone knows this is completely judgment free space. So it’s, you know, the, the most I might do is take the Mickey out of them, especially if they tell me that they ate maccas yesterday. And it’s like, okay, so that would be the last time that you ever go through the evil in, but you know, it’s, it is still about trying to not.

I will never try and pick on them and make them feel bad. It’s just like, you know, these things have to change because these are the things that are stopping your brain from being able to work properly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (51:28)

I mean one of the things that I’ve learned in my career over 40 plus years and a mentor of mine, Dr. Janet Travell taught me this 30 plus years ago that if you take your time and listen to your patients and ask them the right questions and know what those answers mean, they’ll often not only tell you what’s wrong with them but they’ll sometimes even tell you how to fix it if you’re in tune with what you’re asking.

I think that three hour, two or three hour appointment when you consider that one in six Australians is on antidepressants and 95 % of antidepressants are prescribed by GPs and most GPs appointments are five to ten, maybe 15 minutes. That’s not a life altering experience but it’s certainly I can imagine those two or three hours with you going through their lives and connecting it is really an amazing experience.

Jo Grabyn (52:24)

I think it means a lot to them, it also helps them understand that I’m going to be asking them to change a lot. And I’m going to be asking them to do things that they haven’t done before. And that without doing it, there’s a causative relationship. And so often I do get to the pointy end.

There was a, there’s a health food store in Manly that they used to refer patients to me, but they would say to people before they came to me, just note, Joe’s very direct. And I’m like, yeah, I’m direct, but I’m not, it’s, it’s in service of you. You know, like I’m never going to be nasty to you. I’m never going to be harsh, but I’m going to tell you the facts and I’m going to encourage you to adult. And sometimes people really hate that. Like, like I’ll, when I’ve had, you know, I had a

A lady here with her daughter and she was diagnosed with dementia two years ago, they’re all in denial. And we won’t even talk about her diet, but she drinks two glasses of wine every night, seven days a week, day in, day out. And when I said, I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to do that anymore. She started crying.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (53:45)

Yeah, can, you know, I’m not surprised to hear that.

Jo Grabyn (54:58)

Yeah. And it’s, just said, you know, I said, I, I need you to understand that there is no safe level of alcohol for your brain. And you know, this is not the start of the journey. Like it’s already been going on for some time. So I’m going to give you the information, which is it’s not safe for you to drink alcohol anymore. How you choose to pull that back is your choice. Like it’s on, it is something I’m sorry, but I need to put that on you because I know that we won’t get the results we need if you continue to drink alcohol. And it’s a really hard conversation. have to have it a lot.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:29)

Yeah. I mean, I think most people or anybody that’s gone alcohol free for a week or month or more would be would be aware of how ubiquitous alcohol is in everyday life. You’ve had a hard day. Have a drink. You’ve had a great day. Have a drink. It’s a funeral. It’s a celebration. Have a drink, have a drink, have a drink. And yet this toxic thing, I think in general, it’s the first week that is the most difficult. And once you’re over that, you get to see, wow.

This is actually how good I can feel. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Keep going. I mean, I can, this must be well life altering. mean, what, the Bredesen protocol, which clearly addresses many different areas. You mentioned one thing before I asked you that question, I was going to ask you how successful is the protocol? What are the statistics tell us? But..

Before we get onto that, you mentioned bio-photo modulation, which we used to call low-energy laser or red light therapy and hyperbaric chambers and saunas. Tell us a little bit about those interventions and why they might be beneficial.

Jo Grabyn (55:39)

Yeah, so photobiomodulation is red light therapy. It’s just at a very specific wavelength. So I’ve since 2017, I’ve worked with a company from Canada called Violite and they probably published the most papers on using the 880 nanometer wavelength for which is what’s called the gamma wavelength, which helps with cognition. And then they also use the alpha wavelength, which I think is 660 and they use that more for calming the brain. generally, like when I first started working with them, they’d had one global study, which was on Parkinson’s and the improvement in Parkinson’s patients was nothing short of astounding. 

Then they built out a COVID, sorry, global Alzheimer’s study of which there were locations here in Sydney, but then COVID happened. So, they went from patients going into a clinic three times a week to giving people the unit to it’s 20 minutes, three, six times a week. So people then able to use it at home and their results were just so much faster. Their, their research ecosystem is enormous. They’ve done PTSD studies. 

They’ve worked a lot with the military in the U S a lot of traumatic brain injury studies, like different mental health studies, but from a cognitive benefit, like we’ve even seen patients that are in nursing homes. So nursing homes means you can’t change their food. A lot of them are wheelchair bound. You can’t give them supplements because you’re not allowed to do it. And even within four to six weeks of patients using the headset for 20 minutes a day, they start to have improvements for them. So it’s not like you’re saying that you’re bringing them back to normal, but for someone to be able to tell a nurse that they need to go to the bathroom rather than have an accident is huge to be able to remember that their loved one came to visit them that day, you know, is massive.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (57:42)

This biophoto modulation is red light therapy, is it in the form of a lamp, is it in the form of a panel, is it in the form of glasses?

Jo Grabyn (57:52)

It’s a headset. I can run and get one if you want me to.

Yeah, it’s actually set up so that the lights are stiff. They’re actually matching what’s called the default node network mode. Node, can’t say it today, default mode network of the brain. And basically the red light is activating the mitochondria. So the mitochondria, the little energy centers in our brain and our brain cells, cause they’re so busy, have the most mitochondria per cell of cells anywhere else in our body.

And so the mitochondria actually, fed by the red light. So it’s one of the reasons why, like people with chronic fatigue, we try to encourage them to go and watch the sunrise or to see a sunset so that they can get red light activation through their eyeballs and into their brain. And, you know, it just, pulses out a specific, wavelength and actually helps. Like some people will say they can feel it. Others less so but like.

I think in the, what am I now, eight years of having worked with the company. And they do, they actually have this, what I think is a very impressive money back guarantee. So six months, 80 % money back guarantee, no questions asked. So really it’s like a cheap rental cause it’s quite an expensive piece of equipment to buy, but then it’s like, well, you’ve got it comes in a great little carry case. I’ve got patients that travel all around the world and take it with them all the time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:26)

This is Violite. This is the Violite Group.

Jo Grabyn (59:28)

Yeah..And like you spelled, L-I-G-H-T or.

So B-I-E-L-I-G-H-T.

And then hyperbaric, I’ve had hyperbaric oxygen chambers now for eight years, nine and remind our listener what that is.

So it’s a chamber where you sleep in, lie in, a book, and you basically breathe an increased amount of oxygen under pressure. So they range from mild hyperbaric, which is much like lower pressure, but it can just be pressurized air. So because there’s more air jammed in the chamber, you get more oxygen right through to the heavy duty chambers that you would get like at the Penguin Navy base that they use for the divers if they come in with the bins.

So, you know, there’s a huge range. And the thing is people just think more pressure, more oxygen means better. But actually one of my teachers who is part of the International Board of Undersea Medicine, he did his PhD last year and they actually did comparative studies of mild air only chambers through to 2.400 % oxygen chambers. And he said, it’s not that more is better, they’re just different.

So they actually looked at the genes that they turn on and off. They looked at the inflammatory markers that they turn on and off. They’re still trawling through the data to be honest. But what was interesting was when the Mayo Clinic contacted him mid-year about they were putting together sort of the top 50 anti-aging technologies. In the end with the data mild hyperbaric and then high pressure hyperbaric came out at I think numbers three and four.

So it’s one of those things that when we actually breathe oxygen under pressure through pleural effusion, our plasma can pick up the oxygen. So when we’re just breathing air out here, only our red blood cells can pick it up. But our plasma is 80 % of our blood volume and it can get to places that like in the big scheme of things, red blood cells are really big when they’re traveling around in tiny little blood vessels. And so often plasma can get to places that red blood vessels can’t, sorry, red blood cells can’t.

So I mean, even from a brain perspective, you know, when you think about how much of our brain is actually made up of fat, not a highly vascular area.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:49)

And this is presumably why hyperbaric chambers are really useful for injuries because they just promote that kind of repair. What about saunas and ice cold immersion?

Jo Grabyn (01:01:58)

So cold immersion is a hormetic effect and you don’t actually have to do an ice bath to get that cold. Like you can go from a sauna to a cold shower or you can even at the end of a cold shower, turn off the hot water and just dance around in it for 30 seconds. Sauna is very much about detoxification. And so if we look at the difference between, I refer to them, so everyone knows what an infrared sauna is now because there’s a million infrared sauna centers around.

But a lot of gyms still have like an old school, what I would refer to as a wet sauna. So the difference is a wet sauna makes you sweat, but you’re only going to get rid of the toxins that are more or less sitting in the pores of your skin. An infrared sauna, because it has the infrared wavelengths of light from through far, mid and near, they won’t have a lot of near. They can actually penetrate your body by six to eight centimeters and therefore all of your cells are then able to start detoxing.

the toxins out into your bloodstream and then or into your lymphatic system. So what we always recommend for our patients is, because we’re two blocks from the beach, is don’t immediately jump out of the sauna into a cold shower. Go for a walk down the beach and then jump into the ocean. Like don’t get wet until you stop sweating because if you, you’ll either blunt the response and you won’t get as much in the way of the toxins out or what will happen is sometimes people do that and then they come out of the cold shower or whatever and they start sweating again and then the toxins are sitting on their skin and will reabsorb through their skin.

It depends on if we’re looking at environmental toxins, mould, metals, you know, as to what type of protocol it will put into place. But I’ve had a number of patients, including that gentleman from New Zealand that I mentioned, and we did literally six days a week of an hour and a half of hyperbaric and then a sauna every day. And within two to three weeks, you know, they’re different people.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:03:58)

And how long are we in the sauna for? you remember? Maximum 40 minutes.

Jo Grabyn (01:03:59)

Maximum 40 minutes. you don’t, an infrared sauna doesn’t need to be as hot as a wet sauna. It’s actually about penetration. Like I get some people who can’t sweat.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:14)

In fact, how quickly you do sweat is an interesting indicator as well as your detox pathways. Do you think, is that true? What do you think of that statement?

Jo Grabyn (01:04:22)

I think it’s one of those things sometimes I think it’s an overall health parameter because when I think about the patients that don’t sweat if they’ve been in there long enough and at a high enough temperature they’re often patients that have had chronic illness for a long time. Chronic fatigue, chronic pain, not necessarily brain issues but you know they’ve got different things going on that aren’t that mean that their body’s been under stress strain for a really long time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:53)

You mentioned and this is where I want to ask you because we’ve said you know a lot of people get a diagnosis of dementia and they make picture affairs in order there’s nothing much we can do there’s new drugs coming out we might give that a shot tell us what the success rate is of the Bredesen approach.

Jo Grabyn (01:05:05)

So at this stage, the last study that was fully published, that’s like I said, the Avantia trial at this stage is too new for us to have the data on that, but 84 % of patients stabilized or reversed. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:05:23)

Wow. I mean that is quite extraordinary, hardly surprising to any regular listener of this podcast because this will go, yeah I thought something like that but that is an extraordinary statistic.

Jo Grabyn (01:05:35)

Yeah, it’s, the thing is that one of the things that we do have to help people understand is it’s so Bredesen’s very careful in the fact that he says, expect it to take six months to start to see results. Right. But that’s not six months from the day that you walk in my door down there. That’s six months from the day that we’ve got all the ducks lined up. So that we have your diet altered and improved and that we have you on the right supplementation rating, which means that we have to have had all our test results back.

You know that we get to get everything, all of the bits lined up and then we count the six months from there. And don’t get me wrong, Ron, I had a gentleman last year who has two copies of the Alzheimer’s gene. He, it’s a cuter story. He and his wife have known each other since I was nine. They’re now like in their mid eighties and interesting cause he has the two copies of the Alzheimer’s gene, which is a cholesterol transport gene, but his cholesterol had never made it to four.

So his cholesterol has always been very low and he’d only just started to get symptoms the year before, but he’d been in hospital. A lot of things have gone sideways. And at that point, the, his mini mental state exam, which is what the doctors were using for measuring his cognition, it was down to 22 out of 30, which is a clear dementia diagnosis. Now they’re pensioners, so they didn’t have a lot of money to spend. So, but his wife is a rock star in the kitchen.

And so she completely overhauled his diet. She went for a walk every morning. He’d go for a stroll. Nah, she got him out there for a power walk, doing his lunges, doing squats. He’s like, Joe, was sweating. It just seems a bit unfair, but it’s okay. She looks after me. So I’ll chase her. Just a small handful of supplements to optimize his blood work. Just his basic blood work that we’ve done through the doctor and a few things to help with his gut. And we managed to get him to implement some brain training because he was an English teacher. So, um,

With a fact he was very proud of. So I’m like, okay, so you know literature and books. So I’m like, why don’t you and Jenny have a little book club each day? So you’ll read something and, and you know, if you don’t want to be on the computer, because we, did eventually agree to go online and do online brain training within eight weeks of working with him. His mini mental state exam came up to 27 out of 30. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:55)

Wow. I love this story. I love this whole story in fact, Joe. I had a feeling I would because this is all about our mission on this podcast is about personal empowerment and there is just so much people can do. Listen, I just want to finish with one thing. If you could communicate one message to people in their 30s and 40s about protecting their brain health, what would it be?

Jo Grabyn (01:08:19)

Start looking at it now. So Dr. Bredesen calls it a cognoscopy, which is funny because I often get emails to my for a discovery call going, Joe, can I have a cognoscopy? It’s basically what we do is a full assessment the same way as we would for a patient that already has symptoms. Look at dig out all of the risk factors. Look at all of your blood work. Look at all of the things that are basically going to be putting your brain at risk and turn it around now and teach you know, learn how to eat for your brain, learn how to, you know, how much exercise do you know, do you need, you know, so with patients that we’re doing prevention. 

I’m not quite the Nazi that I am with patients that I’m trying to reverse. But what I want to make sure is that people are empowered with all of the things that are their risk factors and then all of the things that they can do to help optimize their overall health and their brain health. And then, you know, if something goes sideways, I’m always here.

But for now, like these are the things that we can do. you know, I guess with prevention patients, we’re looking at the rocks rather than the pebbles. So what’s a handful of big things that you can do now to protect your brain? Particularly if you have a family member who has or has had dementia and that, you know, we do know that there are genetic links. There’s also what we would refer to as familial links rather than just genetic links. And so rather than having that…

That fear in the back of your head that, my God, what if this happens to me and I don’t want to know, is get yourself empowered with the information that is going to allow you to have a really long, healthy, physically, mentally, and cognitively healthy life.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:09:58)

Well, Jo, that is a great note for us to finish on. And I just wanted to thank you not only for all the wonderful, wonderful work you are doing, but for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us here today. Thank you so much.

Jo Grabyn (01:10:10)

Absolutely pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:10:11)

Well, we could be talking about diabetes, we could be talking about cancer, we could be talking about heart disease, but in this particular case, we’re talking about cognitive decline in general and dementia in particular. And lo and behold, yes, there are things you can do, which is actually the mission of this podcast to empower you with knowledge comes power. And just because your doctor doesn’t have that knowledge doesn’t mean you don’t. And things can be done. 

And it’s so interesting to see how often medical practitioners have an epiphany at some point in their professional career and then start to explore root cause and lo and behold, many wonderful things develop from it. So when I was talking about, it’s interesting also to consider the fact that you are genetically predisposed and it’s again an example of looking for the one gene. Well, of course there are many genes and when I talk about you being genetically predisposed, I’m not looking for one gene. I think we do need to have a healthy respect for family history and that tells you you are predisposed to something. But that does not mean you are predetermined to have that or you haven’t, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s what this protocol is all about. That’s actually what this program is all about.

We will have links to Jo’s Bounce Matters website and you can explore there what Dale Bredesen’s protocols are. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well. 

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Disclaimer

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person as a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.