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Nootropics for Healthy Aging and Preventing Neurodegeneration w/ David Tomen - Connecting Minds Ep28
164 Plays5 years ago
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Links to David’s resources and social media:
Website: https://NootropicsExpert.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OJP2cnNB04NacojV9MZWg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidtomen
David’s book Head First: https://nootropicsexpert.com/head-first/
Best Nootropics for the Aging Brain: https://nootropicsexpert.com/best-nootropics-for-the-aging-brain/
13 Nootropics to Boost BDNF: https://nootropicsexpert.com/13-nootropics-to-boost-bdnf/
Best Nootropics for Anxiety: https://nootropicsexpert.com/best-nootropics-for-anxiety/
Top 7 Nootropic Adaptogens to Conquer Anxiety and Stress: https://nootropicsexpert.com/top-7-nootropic-adaptogens-to-conquer-anxiety-and-stress/
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Transcript
Introduction to Nootropics & Aging
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. I'm Christian, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have the third part of our three-part series with David Thomen today. David Thomen is a nootropics expert. His website is nootropicsexpert.com. He has a YouTube channel by the same name. And today's topic is super important to me, and I'm sure to many of you. And that is how to use nootropics supplements for healthy aging.
00:00:27
Speaker
and preventing neurodegeneration, right? So, we all, I'm sure, want to live well into our 80s, 90s, and more, hopefully, and maintain our cognitive function, our mental performance, right? Nobody wants to start forgetting things and getting brain fog when they're whatever, 40, 50, 60, doesn't really matter.
00:00:49
Speaker
And as you learn on the podcast episode today, memory loss, for example, that's not a normal part of aging. It happens for a reason. Something metabolically is happening in the brain that is causing that, right?
Five Supplement Categories for Brain Health
00:01:01
Speaker
So David covers five categories of supplements or rather supplements that address five categories related to healthy aging of the brain, right? So the first one is free radicals or how to make sure that
00:01:15
Speaker
the oxidation reactions in the brain, the free radical damage, is kept within balance. So there's a certain amount of oxidation that happens on a constant basis as part of our normal metabolism. But it's when it gets out of balance, when it's too much,
00:01:32
Speaker
That is a state known as oxidative stress, right? So we want to give our body, our brain, the compounds it requires to quench those free radicals as a manner of speaking. Okay, so that's the first category.
Free Radicals & Oxidative Stress
00:01:47
Speaker
The second category is supplements that can keep the synapses healthy. He has an article that I've linked in the show notes on neurotropics that can boost BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is an important
00:02:01
Speaker
compound that is involved in things like neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, things like that. He also discusses supplements that can help to reduce or prevent Alzheimer's and dementia. That's another thing that a lot of us I think are terrified to when they end up with dementia.
00:02:19
Speaker
and not even recognize our own family members. So there are supplements that can help to at least prevent that to an extent. He also covers supplements that can promote vascular or blood flow in the brain. And you can probably imagine that blood flow is important for all systems in the body. And then finally, another topic that he'll cover is nootropic supplements that can help
00:02:46
Speaker
with neurotransmitter decline. Personally, I learned a ton of stuff on this episode. I didn't actually know that our neurotransmitters decline as we age, for example. So there's a ton of info here.
Synapses & BDNF Support
00:02:58
Speaker
I will definitely be revisiting this podcast myself. There will be links to David's resources in the show notes of this episode. I'm so grateful to David for
00:03:10
Speaker
coming onto the podcast once again and sharing his wisdom and insights on Neutropic. This is again, as I said before, one of my absolute favorite topics. I take a ton of Neutropic supplements every day and I plan to do that basically until I die. And I'm sure that many of you out there are looking for ways to not just improve your cognition now, but maintain it as you age, right? And this will definitely educate you on the topic. So
00:03:40
Speaker
Thank you for joining me today and without further ado, here is David Tolman of NeutropicsExpert.com. Go ahead. Let's talk about aging. I did a lot of research in aging and I found out that right around your 21st birthday, things start to go south. Oh, damn. This applies to the young neurohacker as well as the baby boomer or the senior citizen because it affects all of us. Once you get into your 20s,
00:04:09
Speaker
these things start to happen. And the thing is, is that things like memory loss is not a normal part of aging, right? I mean, we all know somebody who has lived into their 90s, who has got like a memory, like a 20 year old, yeah? But we've also known other people in our lives that have got Alzheimer's or dementia. And why? That is what we're gonna talk about here.
00:04:38
Speaker
The human brain follows a pattern as you get older. And I've identified it and narrowed it down to five different categories of brain aging.
Alzheimer's Prevention & Protein Buildup
00:04:53
Speaker
And if you understand each one of those categories and you address each one of those categories, you can help prevent a lot of this stuff from happening. And you can reverse some of it too.
00:05:04
Speaker
So what I propose, Christian, is that we just quickly do a 30,000 foot view and a quick review of each one of these five categories. And if people want to see more on how to deal with aging, I've got an article called Best Neutropics for the Aging Brain. Yeah, I love it. Let's do that. So does that sound like a plan? That sounds awesome.
00:05:29
Speaker
Okay. So just quickly, the five different categories are free radicals in synapses, Alzheimer's and dementia, vascular dementia and cerebral circulation, and neurotransmitter decline. Those are the five categories. So free radicals
00:05:50
Speaker
I got Alzheimer's dementia, free radicals, what were the other three?
Vascular Health & Circulation
00:05:56
Speaker
Free radicals, synapses. Synapses. Category number two. Okay. Alzheimer's dementia is number three. Yeah. Vascular dementia and cerebral circulation or blood flow in your brain. Okay. Number four. And neurotransmitter decline is number five. Okay. Well, let's start with free radicals. What are free radicals?
00:06:20
Speaker
We've got extensive research that shows the oxidation of DNA in proteins and lipids by free radicals are responsible for the functional decline in your brain. And I'll give you just an example that may blow your mind. It's an estimated 10,000 oxidative interactions between DNA and free radicals in each one of your brain cells every day. Each one of your brain, 10,000 in one brain cell. Multiply that by billions and billions of brain cells.
00:06:50
Speaker
So as you get older, one of every three proteins per cell is dysfunctional because of oxidative damage because this thing gets out of hand. So free radical and oxidative damage is by no means the only problem that causes that we encounter in aging, but it is a major one that a lot of people aren't even aware of.
00:07:11
Speaker
And these free radicals are just produced during energy production. And our immune system is built, is designed to keep those free radicals under control and to prevent oxidative damage. The problem as we get older is that our immune system becomes less and less efficient. And so free radicals get out of control and free radicals are just
Neurotransmitter Decline with Age
00:07:33
Speaker
stray oxygen ions of different sorts that end up killing things in your brain. So your brain doesn't work as well. And so you just take some supplements to quench or to control free radicals.
00:07:47
Speaker
and to basically support your immune system. And so we can use alpha-lopoic acid, which we talked about in another episode of this, of this podcast. We can use CoQ10, we can use creatine, we can use begincobaloba, we can use an acetyl l-cysteine or NAC, we can use pine bark extract. Each one of these supplements has been shown in clinical studies in real,
00:08:16
Speaker
in real life to help keep free radicals under control. The next category is synapses. A synapse is the way your neurons talk to each other is a neuron has an axon coming out of the top of it, yeah? And that axon is like a sending antenna. And at the end of that axon is a synapse.
00:08:37
Speaker
The neighboring neuron has got a bunch of dendrites sticking out of it and they're kind of like receiving antenna and the end of those dendrites are synapses. So the action potential goes from the neuron up the axon to the synapse and it tells the synapse to release a vesicle containing dopamine neurons or serotonin neurons or acetylcholine neurons to the neighboring neuron. And so it does that to the neighboring synapse.
00:09:04
Speaker
What happens is that as we get older, these synapses wear out or they become dysfunctional or you just lose them. And most people have heard that as you get older, our brains shrink. Yeah. Our brain loses about 5% of its weight per decade after age 40. Well, think about that. A lot of that weight loss is due to synapse loss.
00:09:32
Speaker
So how do we support synapses? We support synapses by using nootropic supplements. And I found that the easiest way to increase, to grow new synapses and to repair existing synapses is by boosting brain derived nootropic factor or BDNF. And I've identified like 15 or 16 different supplements that do that. And I've written an article called 13 nootropics to boost BDNF.
00:10:01
Speaker
I've found it more since then, but that list includes things like ashwagandha, artichoke extract, berberine for skolin, inositol, magnesium, pterastilbene, uridine monophosphate. Each one of these supplements has been shown in clinical studies to help support synapse. Either synapse repair or synapse growth or synapse plasticity. In other words, the way it works.
00:10:28
Speaker
The third category is Alzheimer's. There is proteins that happen naturally in our brain. They're amyloid beta proteins, they're tau proteins, and they end up in things called tau tangles. What happens as we age is sometimes these proteins start to clump up and they end up blocking blood flow.
00:10:51
Speaker
And this happens in everybody's brain. Some people end up with Alzheimer's. Some people end up with dementia. Some people go to their grave never experiencing any of these diseases. But if you autopsy their brain, you're going to find out that this is still happening in their brain. And so how do you prevent this buildup of amyloid beta proteins? And how do you prevent tau tangles? Use nootropic supplements.
00:11:17
Speaker
Hooperzine, resveratrol, piracetam, St. John's wort, turmeric, vinpositine have all been shown in individual dozens of clinical studies to help prevent the buildup of these proteins that causes Alzheimer's and dementia. Probably the most effective one is turmeric. In my studies, I found that if you did one thing to prevent Alzheimer's,
00:11:45
Speaker
and other types of neurodegenerative
Nootropics Strategy for Brain Aging
00:11:47
Speaker
diseases. You just take 750 milligrams of turmeric extract that has 95% curcuminoids, add that to your nootropic stack and take it three times a day for the rest of your life. Wow. Yeah. That's cool though. The next category is vascular dementia or cerebral circulation. Your chances of developing white matter lesions, strokes and dementia, they all increase as you age.
00:12:12
Speaker
And if your family has a history of these types of diseases, your chances are even higher. Now, white matter lesions are damage to the white matter in your brain. The white matter is essentially the axons.
00:12:27
Speaker
that are connecting all of these neurons, yeah? And blood flow. The primary cause of this damage to the white matter seems to be poor blood circulation. You've got capillaries in your brain that are tiny, tiny, tiny capillaries that you can hardly even see. And they just lose function. They don't no longer, blood doesn't flow through them anymore. And when blood flow stops,
00:12:51
Speaker
bad things happen in your brain. And you end up with things like vascular dementia or a stroke. And the easiest way to prevent this is to boost blood flow in your brain. And how do we do that? We do that with nootropic supplements. We can use cat's claw for skolin, ginkgo biloba, oat straw, pine bark extract is one of the most effective supplements for boosting blood flow in the brain.
00:13:18
Speaker
You can use paracetam or phenylparacetam has been shown to boost blood flow. You can use prameracetam. You can use resveratrol. And my favorite one for boosting blood flow is vinpositin. Vinpositin is a semi-synthetic derivative of the vincamine, which is an alkaloid derived from the lesser periwinkle plant.
00:13:40
Speaker
And it's used primarily to boost blood flow. It's a prescription drug in a lot of European countries. They're trying to make it into one of the United States, so it's harder to find here. But I've got a couple of sources where I can still get it. And it's one of my favorite supplements that I've been using every single three times a day for the last 12 years.
00:14:01
Speaker
And do you actually feel, because I did a bottle of that from iHerb from Gerald formulas, do you actually feel impositein? Because if it boosts blood flow, it's probably not something it's too... It depends on how good you are at listening to your body. Okay. I can feel it. Yeah. And I can especially feel it when I run out of impositein because I forgot to order it and I'm without it for two or three days. I really notice a difference.
00:14:28
Speaker
I mean, it's of all of the nootropics that I use in my stack in post-itine is one of the most noticeable ones, the effect of it. What sort of dosages are we talking in your case? 10 milligrams. Just 10 milligrams. You don't need much, 10 milligrams three times a day. And the other thing is some of the B vitamins, niacin and vitamin B6 and vitamin B12, they're all involved in blood flow one way or another in your brain. So a good B complex.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, this is something that runs in my family a little bit. So, you know, it's definitely something that I'll be kind of digging into a lot further and, you know, sending all the care packages to folks. There are some very, very effective supplements that can help prevent that stuff. So yeah, please do. Yeah. Thank you so much. And the last category that in brain aging is neurotransmitter decline.
00:15:26
Speaker
And studies show that things like dopamine and serotonin levels decline as we age. For example, dopamine levels begin to decline by 10% per decade starting in your early 20s. And what does that mean? If less dopamine leads to declines in cognitive and motor performance, you can't move as well and you can't think as fast.
00:15:48
Speaker
Right? Serotonin declines as we age. Brain-derived nootropic factor declines as we age. And the other nasty thing is that in another episode that we did, I talked about the enzymes that get rid of these neurotransmitters once they're used. For example, dopamine is monoaminoxidase.
00:16:14
Speaker
So monoamine oxidase steps in and gets rid of dopamine after our brain uses the dopamine.
00:16:20
Speaker
And if you inhibit monoamine oxidase, you can boost, reverse that and boost the levels of that neurotransmitter like dopamine in your brain. The problem with monoamine oxidase is it increases as we age. So dopamine decreases and monoamine oxidase increases, further suppressing dopamine. So what do we do about all this? Well, we just use precursors to boost those neurotransmitters and we find something to boost brain derived nootropic factor. And if we want to get really technical about it,
00:16:50
Speaker
and really get into the weeds about it, find natural monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and we can do all that with nootropic supplements.
00:17:00
Speaker
For example, you can use the direct precursors for like L-tyrosine for dopamine and L-tryptophan for serotonin and acetylcholine or alpha GPC or CDB cole for acetylcholine. And then you can use, I talked earlier about brain derived nootropic factor and that declines as we age. We just take a supplement to boost brain derived nootropic factor.
00:17:26
Speaker
and nerve growth factor, any one of the 15 supplements that I talk about. And you can use monoaminoxidase inhibitors as well. You can use acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. You can use GABA transaminase inhibitors, these enzymes that increase as we age and we don't want them to.
00:17:50
Speaker
So there's no tropics that does all of that. For example, oat straw inhibits monoaminoxidase B, which increases dopamine levels in your brain. Wow, oat straw, never heard of that one actually. And it increases levels of GABA serotonin and dopamine levels in your brain. It's not a precursor. So all it does is it forces the release of these neurotransmitters that are already there.
00:18:18
Speaker
to create more of these neurotransmitters, you have to use a precursor. And that's how aging happens in the human brain.
Christian's Experience & Gratitude
00:18:29
Speaker
So if somebody wants to prevent brain aging, you just go through this and you pick like two supplements from each of these categories and add it to your stack and you use those every day and you should be able to go into old age and still have a really good functioning brain.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, I asked you your age before we started recording, which I won't divulge, you know, because obviously we haven't agreed to that or discussed that. But for folks listening, if you are watching the video, David,
00:19:09
Speaker
I'm not in my 20s. Looks a lot younger than he actually is. And as you can tell, his brain is working really gosh darn well. So I'm pretty sure that if we do even a tiny percentage of what we've discussed here, we're going to get some benefit. You will.
00:19:31
Speaker
Thank you so much, David, for coming back on the podcast again. This is literally one of my favorite topics, and to prove it, I'll tell you, just since the last time we spoke, which I saw today was on the 12th of January, so it's been like six weeks, I got alpha GPC after we discussed it.
00:19:49
Speaker
Of course, I got my CDP colon right here. Those two are always on my desk, but I also got, I got some, some kind of more synthetic stuff. Like I got oxiracetam. I got no pept trying that out at the moment. And I got some phenopiracetam that I haven't tried yet. Um, and just messing around with some modafinil, but like that's just for, I don't even know. Have you tried modafinil out of curiosity?
00:20:17
Speaker
I haven't, no. I did try Adderall and it didn't work for me. I switched back to Ritalin and I've been using Ritalin twice a day for the last, I don't know, 13 years now, 14 years.
00:20:32
Speaker
Awesome, awesome. Well, yeah, listen, thank you again for what you do. Your website is great. Your book is great. Just let me know when the new book comes out and then we'll get the links included in all the previous episodes of folks that
00:20:50
Speaker
find the episodes. We'll have a link to the new book because I think that one will be available to purchase in physical copy as well. I know some folks prefer that way. So please let me know when that arrives. Looking forward to that. And again, David Tolman, thank you so much for coming on Connecting Minds. Christian, thank you for having me back. I appreciate it.