EP132: Part III: Ketones, Diet, and Beyond: Lifestyle, Healthy Brain Aging, and Alzheimer’s Disease

This Is Getting Old Podcast with Melissa B PhD

Taking control of your lifestyle can profoundly affect your brain health. From diet to exercise and stress management - every choice we make affects our mental well-being. What decisions will you make?

In this episode of This Is Getting Old: Moving Towards an Age-Friendly World, we're graced by the spectacular Dr Mary T. Newport, armed with the lowdown on ketones, diet, and lifestyle to keep you in tip-top cognitive shape.

Eager to crack the code on healthy brain aging and Alzheimer’s prevention? My guest today has a treasure trove of tips to transform you into an ageless wonder! Huzzah!

Key points covered in this episode:

✔️ From Gray Matter to Great Matter: Dr Mary T. Newport's Expertise on Ketones' Role in Brain Longevity

Meet Dr Mary Newport who earned her degrees from Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and practiced clinically in pediatrics and neonatology. In 2008, she began combining coconut and MCT oil, unleashing its ketogenic powers to battle her husband Steve's early-onset Alzheimer's. Their brave fight resulted in an impressive four extra years of quality life.

But Mary didn't stop there. Unsatisfied with just one success story, she penned "Clearly Keto for Healthy Brain Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention" to wield a whole food Mediterranean-style ketogenic diet and other clever lifestyle tricks to help more brains outsmart Alzheimer's and its dastardly dementia cronies.

✔️ The Role of Choline

It's very important to try to get as many of your vitamins as much as possible from the foods that you eat. If you're on, say, a low carb diet and you make it a Mediterranean Diet, you'll get most of the vitamins that you need, but you might not get enough. And a lot of people do not get enough of certain nutrients like choline.

Most people may not have any idea what choline is, but choline is part of acetylcholine, it's a neurotransmitter that's important to learning and memory. It's also extremely important component of cell membranes throughout your body and especially abundant in the brain.

✔️Get Your Vaccines

There are studies showing that vaccines recommended for adults 65 and older can reduce your risk of dementia. These include the flu vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine for pneumonia - it covers the most common form of (bacterial) pneumonia.

There are people with COVID 19 that have neurological effects, effects on their nervous system and on their brain that have been have do go on to develop brain fog and dementia after having COVID; so stay current with the recommendations for this vaccine and any boosters.

✔️Minimize your risk of head injuries

We want to avoid any head injuries - and it's very common for people to fall. If you get a head injury, or a concussion, basically you lose consciousness or there's some bleeding in that area of the brain. Plaques and tangles will form in that injury, very similar to what happens to Alzheimer's disease.

✔️ Where to learn more about Dr. Newport

Get in touch with Dr Mary Newport via email at [e-mail] or through social media at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You. Can also check out her website at https://coconutketones.com

If you have questions or comments or need help, please feel free to drop a one-minute audio or video clip and email it to me at [e-mail], and I will get back to you by recording an answer to your question.

About Melissa Batchelor, PhD, RN, FNP, FGSA, FAAN:

I earned my Bachelor of Science in Nursing ('96) and Master of Science in Nursing ('00) as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) School of Nursing (SON). I genuinely enjoy working with the complex medical needs of older adults. I worked full-time for five years as FNP in geriatric primary care across many long-term care settings (skilled nursing homes, assisted living, home, and office visits), then transitioned into academic nursing in 2005, joining the faculty at UNCW SON as a lecturer. I obtained my PhD in Nursing and a post-master's Certificate in Nursing Education from the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing ('11). I then joined the faculty at Duke University School of Nursing as an Assistant Professor. My family moved to northern Virginia in 2015 which led to me joining the George Washington University (GW) School of Nursing faculty in 2018 as a (tenured) Associate Professor. I am also the Director of the GW Center for Aging, Health, and Humanities. Please find out more about her work at https://melissabphd.com/.