Why Alzheimer’s Is Called Type 3 Diabetes. Plus, How to Lower Your Risk

June 19, 2018 by Team Asprey

The statistics are eye-opening. Women represent nearly two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). In her 60’s, a woman’s projected lifetime risk for developing Alzheimer’s is 1 in 6, compared to 1 in 11 for breast cancer.[ref url=”https://mybrain.alz.org/alzheimers-facts.asp”] Though the statistics demonstrate that Alzheimer’s afflicts many more women than men, it’s not often perceived as a gender-based disease.

“That’s why we started the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement,” explained Maria Shriver, one of the world’s foremost Alzheimer’s advocates, in a recent Bulletproof Radio (iTunes) podcast episode. “That’s why I fund women-based research, and I still go around the country pushing researchers and doctors to look at women’s health differently. [Doctors often say,] ‘Well, you know, there’s a lot we don’t know.’ That should not be the fallback answer from doctors to women.”

For 15 years, Shriver has been reporting on, fundraising for, and bringing awareness to Alzheimer’s. It started when her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003.

What is Alzheimer’s disease, really?

More than 100 years ago, Alois Alzheimer observed that people with cognitive decline had a peculiar protein called amyloid plaque in their brain. A lot has been gleaned since then. In the last ten years, studies have consistently demonstrated that this plaque formation, which impairs cognition, is caused by a lack of insulin, or insulin resistance, in the brain.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/”]

Alzheimer’s isn’t the only disease linked to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is more commonly recognized as the major risk factor for diabetes. The latest research connecting brain disease with insulin issues has led to Alzheimer’s now being referred to as type 3 diabetes.

The role of insulin in Alzheimer’s

In his groundbreaking book “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,” internationally recognized expert in neurodegenerative diseases, Dale Bredesen, MD, explains the role of insulin in Alzheimer’s.

Bredesen notes that the job of an insulin molecule is to lower blood glucose or sugar levels. In order to ensure that blood glucose levels don’t drop too low, your body must break down insulin. This happens through the help of an enzyme called insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE), which incidentally, helps to destroy Alzheimer’s plaques.

However, the sticky part of this equation is that the IDE enzyme cannot break down excess insulin and destroy plaque at the same time. If IDE is busy breaking down insulin, it doesn’t have the bandwidth to fight plaque.

What this means is that by having to constantly combat excessive insulin levels (most often due to excessive sugar consumption from a poor diet high in processed foods), IDEs leave the gates wide open for plaque to build up, thus causing Alzheimer’s.

The way to combat Alzheimer’s, or type 3 diabetes, may be to reduce insulin resistance and restore insulin sensitivity. Because there are few symptoms of insulin resistance (fatigue, belly fat, high blood pressure), you may not realize you have it.

How to combat Alzheimer’s with cyclical ketosis

Cyclical ketosis is a key way to improve brain health. In this approach to the keto diet, you cycle in and out of burning fat and carbs for fuel. You can reach ketosis through a high-fat, low-carb diet (less than 50 grams of net carbs a day), however for some people – women in particular – it’s challenging to remain in this state all the time.

Enter a cyclical ketogenic diet like the Bulletproof Diet. You follow a high-fat, low-carb meal plan five to six days a week. On day seven, you up your carb intake to roughly 150 grams, during what’s called a carb refeed day. In this way, your body learns to utilize both fat and carbs for fuel by what’s called metabolic flexibility. Since, in cases of Alzheimer’s, the brain doesn’t use sugar well and thus becomes insulin resistant, a cyclical ketogenic diet will minimize the damage sugar causes, though still provide you with ample fuel in the form of healthy fats.

As you become more and more fat-adapted on a cyclical ketogenic diet, you’ll retrain your brain mitochondria – those powerhouses that make cellular energy – to become resilient and metabolically strong in the absence of glucose. Bonus: You’ll also give your IDE enzymes a chance to clean house on any cognitive-impairing plaque that shouldn’t be hanging out in your brain anyway.

Simple steps to cyclical ketosis

Follow the Bulletproof Diet and restrict carbs for several days to get into the ketogenic habit. Then, after two weeks, reintegrate carbs on carb refeed days. Aim for Bulletproof-friendly sweet potatoes, squash, and white rice one day a week on your carb refeed days.
The easiest way to consistently keep ketones present in your body (to train your cells to easily burn both fat and sugar) is to add Brain Octane Oil (BOO) to your meals. Mix it up in salad dressing or drizzle on your sushi so that you’re getting a small, steady dose throughout the day.

How to Know Your Purpose and Avoid Trauma – Mastin Kipp #501

June 14, 2018 by Dave Asprey

Today’s guest on Bulletproof Radio is an author, entrepreneur and inspirational speaker, Mastin Kipp.

Aside from being a number one author and speaker, Mastin is also the creator of Functional Life Coaching(TM) for people who are seeking rapid transformation in their lives. He has been featured on the Emmy Award show, Super Soul Sunday, and is recognized as a “thought leader for the next generation” by Oprah Winfrey.

Mastin has built a highly successful international personal development company that helps people create rapid change, connect to who they really are, and how to live their lives with passion and purpose.

He joins us today to talk about just what he is doing to get people to make better life choices.

Enjoy the show!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

Follow Along with the Transcript

How to Know Your Purpose and Avoid Trauma – Mastin Kipp #501

Links/Resources

Website: www.mastinkipp.com
Mastin’s Book: Claim Your Power
Mastin’s Live summit (July): claimyourpowerlive.com/2018
Twitter: @mastinkipp
Instagram: @mastinkipp
Facebook: facebook.com/mastinkipp/
YouTube: youtube.com/user/TheDailyLove

Show Notes

If you are a human who is alive, you have a pattern [00:12:37]
“Our brains aren’t even really fully developed until we’re about what, mid-twenties. So we’re going through things as kids that we don’t even have a meaning or context or awareness of what that actually is, and then we just take it on as normal.”
You can’t sustain growth without healing [00:16:35]
“I love exponential thinking and I think exponential problems solving problems is everything but you’re not going to be able to sustain exponential growth without exponential healing at the same time.”
Direct correlation between the leader and how the business performs [00:24:12]
“One of my core values is to view everything that happens in my life as a living lesson. When I view things that way, then I can start to take responsibility and pivot and change.”
Don’t be a traumatized person alone on Mars [00:49:20]
“The other thing is that you got to do your trauma work because otherwise, you’re just a traumatized person alone in Mars. And Matt Damon can tell you how that was.”
What trauma is [00:08:32]
“When people hear the word trauma they think significant – like you’re on a battlefield and you lost a limb or you have some type of sexual assault that was violent or you were mugged – and of course those things fall into the lens of trauma. But there are a million shades of trauma from like your parents were gone and you didn’t have an emotional connection to them to like your father five minutes late.”
How trauma is like having the brakes on our car always turned on (Dave) [00:18:52]
“If the brakes are always on, the car and it doesn’t steer right, that’s where trauma comes in. Because you think the steering wheel is pointed forward but it’s pointed sideways but you don’t know and you don’t know that the brakes are always on a little bit until basically, the car won’t go as fast as it could.
Knowing your purpose [00:39:27]
“So purpose, in a very practical sense, sends signals to your body that “you have use, therefore be healthy” – think of it that way. And that’s really important.

Go check out “Headstrong” and “The Bulletproof Diet” on Amazon and leave a review!

If you like today’s episode, check us out on Apple Podcasts at Bulletproof.com/iTunes and leave us a 5-star, positive review.

Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve to Improve Memory, Says New Study

June 13, 2018 by Team Asprey

Why is it that you might have trouble remembering where you left your keys, but you can remember the juiciest steak you ever had? A new study[ref url=”https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04639-1″] reveals why food is so prominently logged in your memory. It turns out your vagus nerve acts like a GPS between your gut and the memory center in your brain, another reason to keep it in tip-top shape. (An out-of-whack vagus nerve can leave you with inflammation, a compromised immune system, anxiety, and mood swings.)

What is the vagus nerve?

The vagus nerve is your body’s longest nerve — it extends from your brain all the way into your gastrointestinal tract. It functions like a superhighway, transmitting biochemical signals in both directions. In this way, it’s responsible for telling your brain when your stomach is full.

How does the vagus nerve affect memory?

A University of Southern California study has demonstrated how the vagus nerve network also impacts your memory, helping you remember what you ate. “When animals find and eat a meal, for instance, the vagus nerve is activated and this global positioning system (GPS) is engaged,” says co-author Scott Kanoski, assistant professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife.

Researchers analyzed the gut-brain vagus nerve pathway of rats and found that when the pathway was disconnected, the rodents didn’t remember key information about their environment. “We saw impairments in hippocampal-dependent memory when we cut off the communication between the gut and the brain,” says lead author Andrea Suarez, a PhD candidate in biological sciences at USC Dornsife. “These memory deficits were coupled with harmful neurobiological outcomes in the hippocampus.”

The scientists say their findings raise the possibility that bariatric weight loss or other surgeries affect memory by blocking gut-to-brain signaling, and that more research is needed. What is clear from the study is that the vagus nerve is vital to critical body functions, including memory.

4 ways to support your vagus nerve

Here are some strategies to make sure your vagus nerve is in tip-top shape:

Try deep breathing: The link between breathing and heart rate, which is controlled by the vagus nerve, is well-established.[ref url=”https://journal.chestnet.org/action/consumeSharedSessionAction?JSESSIONID=aaaV7Vzw3aX1lcRrgHlow&MAID=MSI5V3enkQI8On%2FusQpC9A%3D%3D&SERVER=WZ6myaEXBLGCStFnotvlaQ%3D%3D&ORIGIN=994839492&RD=RD&rtc=0″] Yoga breathing and guided breathing exercises, which tone the vagus nerve to work like a well-played instrument, can calm your heart rate and lower your blood pressure.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705176/”]

If you are in panic mode, try this box-breathing technique to prompt your vagus nerve to release acetylcholine, which will calm you down.

Inhale for a count of four.
Hold for a count of four.
Exhale for a count of four.
Wait for a count of four.
Repeat until your hands are back on the controls.

Expose yourself to colder temperatures: Acclimating to the cold stimulates your vagus nerve, which in turn, calms your nervous system. Studies show that regular doses of cold temperatures — think an extremely cold shower — reduce stress markers.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18785356″] If you live in a cold winter climate, this is a great reason to take a walk outside on a frigid day. Otherwise, you can also try cryotherapy in a frigid cryochamber, a human-sized tank filled with nitrogen-cooled air.

Maintain a healthy gut: Because the vagus nerve connects your brain to your gut, it’s imperative that you do what you can to maintain a healthy gut microbiome. Remember, the vagus nerve is a two-way street and biochemical signals go in both directions. So, support your gut with probiotics and fermented foods. You can also get a comprehensive microbiome test like Viome, an at-home kit which reveals the status of your gut. You can then work with a functional medicine doctor to bring your gut back into balance if it’s out of whack.

Sing to self-soothe: In a Bulletproof Radio (iTunes) podcast episode, Stephen Porges, MD, shares his theory called the Polyvagal Theory – which proposes that your body’s survival mechanism (flight-or-fight response) is inextricably linked to your vagus nerve. Porges says you want to do everything you can to maintain vagus nerve status-quo so that you can combat flight-or-fight mode. “Singing or playing wind instruments forces you to exhale slowly.” Porges likens this to yoga breathing, which has the same calming effect on the vagus nerve.

Why Anger Is So Destructive — and 4 Surefire Ways to Find Calm

June 12, 2018 by Team Asprey

Take it from Sean Stephenson — anger packs a mean punch. Stephenson, a therapist, self-help author, and motivational speaker born with osteogenesis imperfecta or brittle bone disease, has worked through his fair share of anger at the world for his condition. When Stephenson was born, the doctors told his parents he wouldn’t live longer than 24 hours. Now at age 39 — and over 200 bone fractures later — he brings awareness to the seriousness of brittle bone disease and how he manages it on a daily basis.

In a recent Bulletproof Radio (iTunes) podcast episode, Stephenson shared what it was like to have this disease as a kid. “If I was playing a video game and…getting stressed out, I could fracture my own arm in anger. Just by being tense and angry, [my] muscles would tense and clench and [eventually] break [my] bones. So, at some point in my mind, I [thought] peace might be a safer way out.”

Though Stephenson’s condition makes him an extreme example, unmanaged anger can still wreak havoc on your body and happiness. Read more about the science behind anger, the benefits of anger management, and techniques to keep your anger at bay.

What is anger, really?

Anger is a normal and healthy emotion that every human being on the planet feels from time to time. However, if anger rears its ugly head all the time — spirals out of control, impacts your ability to function by impairing your judgment, or hinders your success — it’s doing you no good. Chronic, rage-filled anger can affect your relationships, health, and peace of mind. What you want to look out for is the anger that harms or sabotages yourself or others. That kind of anger you can do without.

According to Sir David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, an internationally-recognized psychiatrist and researcher, anger is one level on a scale ranking emotional states from shame (lowest) to enlightenment (highest). Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness puts anger between desire and pride – and it’s one of the levels of falsehood (meaning it’s not in accordance with your highest self). Hawkins’ notes anger is driven by hate and you process or feel it in your body as aggression.

Anger is a high-energy emotion, so if you know how to channel it constructively, you can use it to energize your actions. You can actually become more resolved or determined by anger. However, its ugly side appears in the form of resentment that leads to hatred, grievances, and grudges.

In his book “Healing and Recovery,” Hawkins reveals that the process of experiencing anger is one of expansion. He cites the example that an angry animal (like a porcupine) swells up. Even a cat, when angry, attempts to look imposing with a swollen tail nearly twice its normal size. The biological reasoning behind this expansiveness is enemy intimidation.

And herein lies the beauty of anger. It can be channeled to pursue something greater for your life. Anger can morph into courageousness and eventually become loving and joyful; even ultimately enlightened.

What is anger management?

Anger management helps you tap into these expansive qualities of anger for good. According to Hawkins, angry outbursts are rage-filled distractions that allow you to avoid feeling deeper emotions like fear, or even shame and guilt, all of which are rooted in self-hatred.

By understanding the reasons for your anger, you can then use anger management tools to temper your response. These techniques also help you get in touch with the more primary emotions driving your anger, so that you can release them for good.

Anger management doesn’t suppress your feelings. Rather, it helps you to understand the implicit meaning behind the emotion, so that you can express it in a healthy way without losing control.

Anger warning signs and triggers

While anger is often a cover-up for deeper emotions, it still an emotion in its own right and fairly easy to spot. That said, some people have learned to suppress anger from childhood, so a refresher on how to spot anger might be helpful, since it doesn’t always manifest in the ways you’d think. Here’s what you might feel or experience physically as a result of anger[ref url=”https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/anger-management.htm”]:

Knots in your stomach
Clenched hands or jaw
Feeling clammy or flushed
Breathing faster
Headaches
Pacing or needing to walk around
“Seeing red”
Difficulty concentrating
Pounding heart
Tensed shoulders

Anger can also affect your thought processes.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4692323/”] You might overgeneralize, obsess, or jump to conclusions. Blame is also a common response to anger. Regardless of the way you experience anger, it’s undoubtedly uncomfortable.

Anger management: 4 ways to cool down, fast

So how do you go from those intense, angry feelings to a healthier emotional state? In the Bulletproof Radio podcast episode, Stephenson reveals that he cycles through 16 anger-management techniques to keep his calm daily. What works for one person might not work for everyone. Practice several of the strategies below until you find the ones that work best for you.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)

One extremely effective way to root out anger is with EMDR.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951033/”] Intense anger is commonly linked to trauma and EMDR is an exceptional trauma-tackling technique.

EMDR therapy helps your brain and nervous system respond more appropriately to specific triggers, especially ones that make you angry.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951033/”] As trauma can change the brain system, EMDR helps recalibrate the brain’s circuitry properly by resyncing the right and left lobes.

During a typical treatment session, you’ll follow a light from left to right on an EMDR device. By moving your eyes back and forth at specific speeds, your brain circuitry is reset. You can then go back and review the specific angry trigger with an EMDR specialist to uncover its source.

Body scan meditation

Body scan meditation is a progressive and relaxing muscle process that helps you release emotional and physical pain stored in your body, by giving conscious thought to specific regions. Because anger is often linked to pain, this technique releases tension and provides anger-related pain relief. Here’s a Spotify audio recording of a relaxing body scan meditation.

Kundalini breathwork

Studies reveal that yoga is an exceptional way to move anger out of your body.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144615/”] Kundalini, in particular, is a potent form of yoga that moves energy up your spine. It’s especially powerful at addressing stagnant energy in the back. In fact, in The MindBody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain, Dr. John Sarno suggests anger (in the form of pain) may linger specifically in the back or spine.

If you are into a yogic approach, here is a three-minute practice that deploys the powerful kundalini breath with easy movement to move negativity, frustration, and anger out of your body.

Journaling

On Bulletproof Radio, Stephenson said he is certain he would have killed himself had he not found journaling. Journaling can be an effective way to speak to yourself in private about what’s bothering you. For people who don’t feel comfortable expressing anger or other emotions with others, journaling is a great go-to anger management technique. In fact, the American Psychological Association recommends journaling as a healing technique for a variety of reasons, including anger.[ref url=”http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun02/writing.aspx”]

If you are just starting out with pen in hand, here’s an exercise to get you going:

Consciously decide that you will allow yourself to express your anger with words.
Give yourself ten sentences to write about everything that is distressing you.
Write by hand – get messy if you like. Write in all CAPS if that calls to you. Whatever technique, fully allow yourself to vent onto the page, uninhibited.
After you release your anger, you might feel inclined to sit for a moment…without writing anything at all. Feel what’s stirring inside. When you pick up the pen again, jot down observational notes about the experience. Did it help you to release your anger? If so, that’s your cue to continue with the pen.

Watch Related Video: How to Get Over Your Addiction to Pity With Sean Stephenson

How To Get Over Your Addiction To Pity – Dr. Sean Stephenson #500

June 12, 2018 by Dave Asprey

We saved one of our favorite interviews of all time to go out as our 500th episode of Bulletproof Radio!

Today’s guest is none other than Dr. Sean Stephenson. Sean is one of the hugest people we’ve ever met, and you may know him from his 70 million YouTube views and his 25 years of speaking on stage and working to change the world.

He’s actually almost three feet tall. Dave Asprey first met Sean several years ago at a networking event and got to talk afterwards. Dave was just blown away at the love and compassion, and just joy that he projects in everything he does, even though he has lived with brittle bone disease which kills most people long before they reach his age.

He has this amazing story of not just resilience and survival which is amazing in of itself, but of just going beyond that into a place of gratitude and service that is just unique in any human being.

So we wanted to bring his mindset to all of you today, so that you can understand what goes on in his mind, and just in his whole way of being.

Enjoy the show.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

Follow Along with the Transcript

How To Get Over Your Addiction To Pity – Dr. Sean Stephenson #500

Links/Resources for Dr. Sean Stephenson

Show Notes

“Now, tell me a little bit about brittle bone disease, because we were talking before we started the cameras and you were saying that a lot of your life experience is what taught you to be who you are, but also just was the source of your humor which is just omnipresent. Just walk me through what it was like to shift from survival into where you are now.” -Dave
“The opening line of every talk that I’ve ever given in decades is that when I was born, the doctors told my parents that I would be dead within the first 24 hours of my life. I’m happy to report 39 years later, all those doctors are dead and I’m still here, and that goes over everywhere well except for in hospitals. They don’t like that-” -Sean on brittle bone disease
“With this condition, childhood was just physically brutal. Something as simple as sneezing day would break a collarbone, and if you’ve ever broken a collarbone it’s one of the worst bones to break. Maybe second to the femur, just so painful. Sneezing would break collarbone, putting on pair of pants too quickly would break a femur, coughing would break ribs. By the time I was 18, I had fractured over 200 times and when you hear 200, it’s hard to fathom that because each bone took four to six weeks to heal and sometimes there’ll be multiple fractures.” -Sean
“Pain is inevitable, but what my mom and dad taught me when I was young is suffering is optional. You have a choice to suffer, you have a choice to become addicted to the most addictive substance on the planet.”
“It’s not caffeine or sugar, it’s pity. More human beings are addicted to pity than anything else on the planet, and whenever you are feeling sorry for yourself, you are putting yourself into a disabled spot. It’s a conscious choice to feel sorry for yourself, and many of us feel justified. In fact, I think most of the human race would allow me get out of jail card for feeling sorry for myself because of the cards I was dealt. I think what’s made all the difference in my life is at a young age, I found that when you do feel sorry for yourself, people back away from you slowly and I didn’t like that.”
“I found when you make light of things and you have fun and you make people laugh, they creep toward you. They inch closer to you when you bring them good feelings. When they feel sorry for you, they slowly back away.” -Sean
“So at a young age I said well, I want people close and in my condition I believe that one of my survival instincts was human connection. Connection is an exchange of humanity, it’s an exchange of emotion, and when people connect they feel it. Maybe they don’t know what’s happening, they just know that there’s that bond that’s been built.” -Sean
“I wouldn’t spend a good 10 years of my life mastering a doctorate of clinical hypnosis to understand the unconscious mind that I spent many years of my life to behavioral science, to even down to the biology of just understanding pheromones and these things that maybe we don’t consciously release, but they’re always interacting with us.” -Sean
Sean on how people react to him. “That has a lot to do with them and very little to do with me, and therefore, I don’t have to take it personally. So therefore, I don’t have to be defensive. I upset a lot of people with disabilities unfortunately, because I don’t associate with my highest identity being disabled. Disabled means not able and I’m not going to walk around like, a donut doesn’t walk around going like I’m missing all this thing in the center, I’m a loser. No, it’s a donut. You’re able to dunk it into the coffee or the hot cocoa, that’s what makes a donut unique.”
“You’re trying to bond with me or you want me to feel loved, or you want me to feel that you’re empathetic and thank you for that but you’re wasting your time with the way you’re doing it. The way you’re doing it is at a vibration that I’m not interested in. Yes, I’m three feet tall, yes I’m in a wheelchair, yes I get stared at and I have to go about certain daily activities dramatically different than you might, but let me tell you, I’ve had heartache like you.” -Sean
“I’ve been confused, I’ve been lost, I’ve been scared, I’ve been so angry, I felt slighted, I felt like the world’s unfair, I can relate to your world internally far more than you can imagine. So when I just try to reeducate somebody on the wasted energy of pity, and then also maybe even if they let me in a little bit more, see where are they feeling sorry for themselves.” -Sean
“There’s some people on this planet that no matter how much you try to give them examples of how you love them, or you care about them, the world is a good place, they’re hell-bent to be angry human beings.” -Sean
Sean on the Coast Guard Motto of saving the people that swim towards you. “The people that swim toward them. So when somebody’s swimming toward you, they want your help. They want your love, they want your attention, they want your kindness and I love being around people that swim towards me. I am no longer in the business or in the interest of swimming toward people that don’t want me. They won’t do the effort to come my way that are either flailing around in pity like come save me or swimming away. The definition of a victim is somebody that runs into a burning building screaming help me, help me. I don’t have time for that, they’re going to get us both killed energetically.
“I always say I got God’s caffeine in me, meaning God’s caffeine wakes me up out of bed because it knows how many people on this planet are unnecessarily suffering. They’ve put themselves in a prison, then they’re holding the key in their hand.” -Sean

Go check out “Headstrong” and “The Bulletproof Diet” on Amazon and leave a review!
If you like today’s episode, check us out on Apple Podcasts at Bulletproof.com/iTunes and leave us a 5-star, positive review.

Scientists Find New Cause of Depression

June 11, 2018 by Team Asprey

The recent deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have shone the spotlight on depression and other mental health issues. You may be left questioning how you can support a loved one who’s going through a rough time, or how to best deal with your own depression.

Antidepressants are one way that people use to treat the condition. A recent study[ref url=”https://neurosciencenews.com/new-depression-type-9305/”] has found a link between depression and a protein known as RGS8 — a finding that could change the way some of these drugs are formulated and open the door to better treatment.

What causes depression?

The study led by Hiroshima University (HU) questions the leading theory about what causes depression — that depressed people have low levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine. Study authors note that while 90 percent of antidepressant drugs target these two neurotransmitters, 30 percent of people on these drugs don’t experience relief. Is there something else causing the depression in this group?

MCHR1 may be a root cause of depression

The researchers built on previous findings, which suggest that the protein RGS8 controls a hormone receptor known as MCHR1. RGS8 is involved in the part of the brain overseeing movement and mood regulation, while MCHR1 helps to regulate sleep, feeding, and mood responses.

This new study found that mice with more RGS8 in their nervous system showed signs of less despair than mice with average amounts of RGS8. “These mice showed a new type of depression,” says Yumiko Saito, a neuroscientist at HU. “Monoamines [serotonin and norepinephrine] appeared not to be involved in this depressive behavior. Instead, MCHR1 was.”

Specifically, the researchers noted that RGS8 mice (i.e. the rodents that consumed the drug that stopped MCHR1 from functioning) had less depressed behavior and longer cilia. What does this mean for treating depression? RGS8 could be a promising candidate for new antidepressant drugs because it blocks MCHR1 from functioning, which leads to a better mood response.

Combat depression with brain support

The results point to what we already know — that depression is a hardware issue in the brain. Certain lifestyle tweaks can give your brain the support it needs, hopefully helping ease your depression. Whether you choose to add antidepressants into the mix is entirely up to you and your doctor.

Nutrition

You can curb depression in two ways: decrease inflammation[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542678/”] and increase nutrient levels.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738337/”] The Bulletproof Diet eliminates most food allergens responsible for inflammation, and is high in nutrient-dense veggies, herbs, spices, as well as healthy fats and protein. For more science-back hacks for a stronger brain, read How to Fight Depression Without Medication.

Exercise

Moving your body could help to alleviate depression. [ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC474733/”] Specifically, high-intesity interval training (HIIT) naturally increases your levels of brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), a compound that increases the production of new neurons and neuronal connectivity, which decreases symptoms of depression.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148895″]

Boost your mood with supplements

Modafinil (Provigil): Modafinil is a powerful nootropic used to boost mood without causing withdrawal and with low risk of dependence.[ref url=”https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/485215?resultclick=1″] You will need a prescription for modafinil. Read more about it here.

Vitamin D3: Vitamin D activates genes to balance your hormones specifically. Low vitamin D is linked with depression.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23065655″] Some people find that supplementing with it improves mood.[ref url=”https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/BJP/type/JOURNAL”]

Dose: 1000 iu per 25 lbs. bodyweight, taken in the morning.

Recommended Brand: Vitamins A-D-K (Vitamins A, D, and K work together to support bone, heart, and immune function.)

Get on
“The Inside Track”
with Dave

See What Trouble Dave’s Getting Into on Social

Start hacking your way to better than standard performance and results.

Why Alzheimer’s Is Called Type 3 Diabetes. Plus, How to Lower Your Risk

What is Alzheimer’s disease, really?

The role of insulin in Alzheimer’s

How to combat Alzheimer’s with cyclical ketosis

Simple steps to cyclical ketosis

Follow Along with the Transcript

Links/Resources

Show Notes

What is the vagus nerve?

How does the vagus nerve affect memory?

4 ways to support your vagus nerve

What is anger, really?

What is anger management?

Anger warning signs and triggers

Anger management: 4 ways to cool down, fast

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)

Body scan meditation

Kundalini breathwork

Journaling

Follow Along with the Transcript

Links/Resources for Dr. Sean Stephenson

What causes depression?

MCHR1 may be a root cause of depression

Combat depression with brain support

Nutrition

Exercise

Boost your mood with supplements

Get on “The Inside Track” with Dave

See What Trouble Dave’s Getting Into on Social

Start hacking your way to better than standard performance and results.

Get on
“The Inside Track”
with Dave