7 minute read
Younger Next Year
Are you sick and tired of feeling sick & tired? Did the last couple of years beat you up physically & mentally? Have you made a vow to eat better, move more & lose some of that pain in your body? Perfect! Dr. Allen J. Hamilton, a brain surgeon & neuroscientist, has the science to help you begin to turn back the hands of time. Author of “Younger Next Year” & “Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, Sexy & Smart Until You’re 80 and Beyond.”
Kim Carson: What’s the most important thing to know if you want to live past 80?
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Dr. Hamilton: I would say if I was going to put it into three categories: one is stay fit and really dedicate yourself to that, and that’s a six-day a week sort of thing. Eat right, sleep right and finally, connect, love on people and stay very connected. Those are really the important ingredients.
KC: How do we “eat right?” What does that really mean?
Dr. H: Now, I think more and more of us docs, we used to ignore food and I think now what we’re realizing is food is just another form of medicine. When it comes to things like protecting your brain, we even talk now about genius foods that there are certain foods that are very high in fats like avocados. Somebody once called the avocado a grenade of antioxidants. It’s a fabulous food and you know, Max Lugavere wrote a beautiful book called “Genius Foods” and I highly recommend it to my patients because it really sets you up on a diet that’s going to help you prevent cognitive decline.
KC: You know Dr. Hamilton, seven years ago, I got healthy and lost 115 pounds. Of course everybody notices the outside but what’s really different is on the inside. I can now say that I was in a food fog and it lifted. Manufactured food drove me to overeat whatever came out of that box or bag. I wasn’t on a food binge with a pound of steamed broccoli. And when I eliminated the fake food I had serious withdrawals similar to what I’ve heard addicts describe.
Dr. H: Right. Literally, you are right because most of these systems are drawing on the dopaminergic system, the same system of reward system that we use for drugs and so you’re absolutely right that coming off those foods does induce a kind of withdrawal syndrome, but the answer is when you get on the other side and you’ve kicked the habit, what a wonderful freedom and feeling of being young again and energetic and vigorous. You know, it’s a new lease on life.
KC: Yes, my brain literally felt clearer.
Even now I feel better than I did when
I was in my 20s.
Dr. H: You know, I think the medical profession and I’m speaking as a doc,
I think we really dropped the ball on this one. It really took alternative medicine and a change in the culture and Whole Foods coming along and
Natural Grocers coming along and all the emphasis being driven from the consumer end until we realized “Oh, we have to go back and check that.” It turns out nutrition is important at every turn.
KC: Let’s not forget about exercise too. I hate the word exercise. I like to say that
“I’m getting more movement into my life.” It feels better for me to say that, I don’t feel a resistance in my body. But when you add more movement, any movement into your day and you pair that together with real food, natural food, what does it do to your body physiologically?
Dr. H: Number one, it really reverses things – aging is really a process of inflammation is what it comes down to. Inflammatory damage. So, when you exercise regularly, number one you reverse the clock on that inflammatory damage. The second thing is that we’re finding that if there’s one thing you can do to make sure you don’t suffer from cognitive decline as we get older, it’s exercise. Unfortunately, I hate to tell people it’s both aerobic and strength training that you have to do because they both work on two different aspects of cognitive decline. But one of the things that we’re finding is there’s a small group called “super agers,” and they don’t have the decline. They don’t start getting memory problems, they don’t drop IQ points, they don’t have cognitive problems and what they’re really showing us is we can really knock off about 50% to 60% of all the dementia and cognitive decline. Years ago, we thought “Oh no, you’re doomed.” It doesn’t matter. As one of my friends said “It’s diagnosis and adios.” That’s what the docs used to say. “Hey, you know you’ve got cognitive decline, you got Alzheimer’s and thanks very much. Bye.”
KC: Yes, right. You also talk about the importance of connecting.
Connecting with other people, friends and family. Where does that fit and why is that important?
Dr. H: Well, we are connecting machines.
When you look at what the brain is motivated by and when you look at some of the neurochemistry, we are hardwired to be connected—connected as children and to stay connected throughout our lives. The reason it’s so important is it provides us with a whole bunch of neurochemicals that protect us against bad outcomes and they buffer us against bad outcomes.
So, when the proverbial crap hits the fan, what you’re really going to find is the connections in your lives, the meaningful friends and family, that’s what buffers you and gives you a lot of reserve. Also, in turn, it releases a lot of neurochemicals that are protective against the very things we want to avoid as we get older. KC: Do women age differently than men?
Dr. H: They do. There’s good news and there’s bad news. There’s a little bit of a suggestion in literature that women’s brains age and are a little more susceptible than men but women start off with more brain, thicker cortex and they have more association. They use both sides of their brain much more than men, which shouldn’t surprise any woman. So, what happens is women are able to do a lot more connectivity, interconnecting. They are able to read the emotional content better than men.
The other thing is very often the exercise has even more of a protective effect.
KC: Before you go let’s circle back to inflammation because inflammation causes pain and other chronic health issues. What are some things that can naturally get rid of inflammation? You mentioned exercise, definitely the diet.
Dr. H: Exercise, your diet especially, heading over to the healthy fats like we see in things like avocado. There are certain compounds that we only see for example the wild carotenoids that are only seen in wild fish. So, I make a big point about the quality of the food that we eat. All of those things help with antioxidative stress and we know they also help preserve brain cells. That’s the name of the game is not to lose the brain cells we have and encourage the new ones to grow.
Find Allen Hamilton at AllanHamilton.com
Kim Carson
Kim is an Author/Podcast/ TV/Internet personality. Watch and listen for her on WGVU TV’s Kalamazoo Lively Arts and J. Schwanke’s Life In Bloom. Learn more at kimcarson.online and fb.com/kimcarson
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