Preventative Options for Dementia and Alzheimer’s with Dr. Romi Fung, ND on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

think so much about. Because, you know, conventionally speaking, everything just happens to be at the head right here and do everything in here. Right? That’s where most of the medications the first one is usually Aricept, or Donepezil. And that is a really good pharmaceutical to get the brain connections going. But you always want to consider the environment of the brain just like how we consider the environment of the body. There’s always this really good analogy where you have a sick goldfish in a fishbowl  because the water is dirty. Do you either medicate the fish or clean the fishbowl? I’m trying to tell everyone else because right now, the evidence, at least in the written literature, it says that about a third of all dementias is preventable. But I believe that that is underestimated. I believe at least 60 If not 90% of dementia can potentially be prevented through a lot of our nutritional means dietary as well as lifestyle. And these are things the evidence is growing, that you might hear things like, oh, let’s take fish oil for the brain, or curcumin for the brain or, and that was my graduate studies research right there for my master’s degree curcumin as an intervention for cognitive impairment. But even things like people were saying sleep and exercise and all that, is that just a brain specific thing? Or is that a body totality kind of thing? So, I started looking beyond the brain and realize that there are many things that we’re doing that is found in the body, that if we work with the body that would mitigate the risk for developing that cognitive decline and progression of dementia.

Manon Bolliger  06:55

Well, give us like in an example of of that, so it’s very concrete.

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 07:02

Absolutely. Before I give the example, there’s just everything that’s coming together now in the research is actually by what we call epigenetics, the above the gene or one the gene, and one of these genes have been found to correlate with the production of the beta amyloid plaque. So, is it getting rid of the plaque? That’s the question that’s always been the big money research, right there. What happens when we get rid of plaque? Do we actually reverse dementia and Alzheimer’s? Right now, after 200, over 200 clinical studies and trials on these so-called medications, unfortunately, we’re not seeing much positive benefits right there, we have to look beyond that or looking into the root, why is plaque being made. And there’s one gene now that’s isolated called bace-one, B A C E dash one, and by eliciting it, that we actually start making and producing more of the beta amyloid plaque. And there are many things, I’m going to give you one example right now that induces this plaque, the number one I find is something called hypoxia, or lack of oxygen. Now, lack of oxygen can come from many, many different sources, we think about breathing as a result, could it be that our ability to not breathe or belly breathe air deep breathing, our inability of that is affecting our brains, potentially. Because now we’re living in a society where we’re mostly in sympathetic mode, our breathing has become a lot shallower, and that is reducing the oxygenation happening, especially and specifically in the front part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex made for concentration and focus, and even executive function. So, planning ahead in your day yet, and all that. So, there’s that. But the other thing to do with oxygen comes from iron. And iron is what we need to make hemoglobin in our blood. If we don’t have enough hemoglobin in our blood, our ability to carry oxygen throughout the body and thus throughout the brain is impacted. And I’m finding a lot of my patients that are quite low on the ferritin, which is the stored form of iron, they’re coming in with very low ferritin. And there’s been no intervention per se. I have patients coming in with ferritin as low as eight, five, even less than one I’ve seen on the bloodwork.

Manon Bolliger  09:44

Right, so what affects ferritin I mean, if on a simple level, I know you know, at least I’ve always been told, you know, take molasses or eat more meat or you know, if you do that you should be fine right? But that’s not always the case. So, what competes with the ferritin?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 10:10

Good point and good question right there. There’s a number of factors. And the first thing is how do we absorb the ferritin. Even if we eat meat, I find people that are not vegetarians, or vegans, that are still eating and consuming good amounts of animal protein, still low in iron. And that’s because we need to convert that iron into an absorbable form, first and foremost. And that comes in the stomach. When in the stomach, we have something called hydrochloric acid, or stomach acid. And we need that stomach acid to be in its optimal level to be able to break bonds and get nutrients coming in. But to be able to convert the iron into a more absorbable form, for us to absorb. And the reason why we’re getting a lot of GERD and acid reflux and all that is not coming from a point of high stomach acid, but rather low stomach acid. And that is reflective of our stressed lifestyle, the sympathetic mode. And by not having that…by not turning on that parasympathetic, rest, and digest were impeding our bodies to absorb or to create stomach acid to be able to then break down the foods then to be able to absorb in our bodies. So that’s one major factor right there. There’s a couple more as well, but I feel like constantly putting ourselves in sympathetic.

Manon Bolliger  11:44

Yeah. And what’s also interesting with that most of the conventional or pharmaceutical approach is kind of misleading, because most of the tablets you take actually further decrease the acidity of the stomach, so you’re stuck with even less to digest, right? So, and digestion is huge for many things. If you can’t digest well, it affects everything. But so, what other impacts would a person that suspects they might have this issue? So, oxygenation, the ability for iron to be absorbable? What other inflammation because you mentioned the curcumin, which you could have an inflamed brain. How would you have an inflamed brain? What’s, how would that happen?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 12:38

Well, that’s digestion again, right there. When you do have your digestion that’s impeded. This is what we call gut permeability, or leaky gut. What can potentially happen is that whatever you’re digesting, at digesting is not fully digested, is being absorbed in the body inappropriately or prematurely. And that’s coming to the brain, and the brain has to protect itself. And what happens is the immune system is going to get more involved in protecting the brain and protecting the body. This is what we mean by getting up that inflammation, and make the brain become also known as leaky brain or connected with leaky gut. And when you do get that inflammation going on in the brain, whether that be from the leaky gut, and or combination of foods that can also promote inflammation, then there are many cells in the brain very sensitive to inflammation, one of them being glial cells, and that helps put the whole brain together. In fact, I believe 60% of the brain is consisting of glial cells. And these are cells that don’t necessarily regenerate as well as the others. So, there’s this misconception that the brain can regenerate, which can in some means, but not all cells have that capability. And the point about relearning certain things, especially when it comes to cognition is that the brain has the ability to make new connections or neurogenesis with the existing cells. So that connection right there.

Manon Bolliger  14:24

Yeah, neuroplasticity, right, like when it develops new pathways, but ideally, you want to make sure that you don’t ruin the pathways that do exist. So, what about I know that when I went to naturopathic school, it was like, oh, it’s aluminum, it’s mercury. What about those types of toxins or, you know, phospho, lysates, or whatever. What about all of that kind of stuff? How does that impact in your practice I mean.

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 14:59

you Hmm. So, no, absolutely when it comes to heavy metals like lead, mercury, aluminum or aluminium wherever you’re coming from. The point here is yeah, there was a number of social media posts and news articles regarding some of the heavy metals. And to my understanding, these heavy metals are very reactive.

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Dr. Romi Fung, ND 16:34

They can cause a lot of something we call oxidative stress, because they have a lot of unpaired electrons that can then potentially damage proteins and fats potentially. Because fats are more prone to damage and our brain is about 70% fat right there. So having more aluminum, mercury, iron from any exposures, whether that be dental amalgams or lead pipes and all that there is a potential tendency to cause that kind of damage. Not necessarily saying that these heavy metals cause dementia, it’s something quite different to that. But in kind of my research and my kind of understanding and perspectives on this, the brain is a body of fat and is prone to oxidative damage, just like how it is prone to inflammation. And we have to mitigate that exposure as much as possible. And for some people, it would mean having to slowly because I know there’s the traditional chelation or you’re taking your ridding these heavy metals from the body. And for good reason, as some people do chelation gently as they do, if they go seek a biological dentist to get to remove dental amalgams that have mercury in them, they would want to be chelating. before, during and after the event to ensure that the body’s not…to just protect the body from any spikes of mercury, per se. But chelation can be a double-edged sword. So, we have to be very gentle with that.

Manon Bolliger  18:22

Yeah, and is there anything else generally to help because I was thinking digestion is so key to, you know, inflammation to oxygenation. Now, elimination, what pathways need to be functioning really well for that?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 18:43

Good point, and that’s the lymphatic. The lymphatic system, which we call our, you know, our recycling kind of system, is our cleaning system. And this is the importance of sleep and exercise because the lymphatics run alongside the heart and the blood vessels because it doesn’t have a pump, it doesn’t have a heart, the lymphatic systems, just the whole system of potentially, you know, tubes and vessels that run along the blood vessels, and they depend on the pressure coming from the heart. So, exercise is going to be important in being able to elicit that movement of the lymphatic system to get waist to move. But the biggest component of the lymphatic pertaining to the brain is something called the glymphatic system, which is gleif glial cell lymphatic. That’s the biotic system of the brain. And there’s a number of studies, imaging studies that show that when you get into deep sleep, your glymphatic system and the brain opens up to about four times its size, to be able to facilitate any removal of wastes that are accumulated throughout the day. And some of these wastes have been found to be beta amyloid plaque. So that it’s not that it is a death sentence when we create beta amyloid plaque, we have ways to go about with mitigating that. I think every healthy person makes beta amyloid plaque. Look at the centenarians who live beyond Blue Zones with postmortem studies, they’re still found to have some level of beta amyloid plaque, but never really had the cognitive decline symptoms.

Manon Bolliger  20:32

Yeah, it’s like the body’s ability to, to manage and you know, but I was thinking to when you were talking about the lymph, I mean, that may be also why in Bowen therapy, we see when we do you know, the basic procedure, the starting one, what I call Reboot, is it helps the whole lymphatic system. So, if on top of that, they sleep better. And these brain lymphatics want to excrete, if your body’s lymphatics are stagnant, it’s not going to be able to excrete as well, right. So, it’s really important to have the whole body you know, and there’s lots of other things too, like the brushing, you know? Yes, brushing, you know, other ways to get the lymphatic moving.  Hydration yes. Here we are both without a glass of wine or wine…water. I’m glad there’s no glass of wine right now. I probably need one today. But water would have been really good. Anyways, but okay, so how can you tell, though, that you’re, you know, that you’re like that before…it’s not that it’s too late, but at a time where these are signs, like early signs that, you know, is it like not knowing where you put your key? Or there’s like, what are what are the signs, the most common signs that people can see?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 21:30

Hydration Yeah, so well, first off, prevention is going to be always key. So, I have patients that come in saying they don’t have signs and symptoms, but we’ll do the array of testing. So, there’s a number of blood tests that tell us more about your inflammation, about your cardiovascular health, about your insulin, insulin is such a big factor in this as well. But the first and early signs and symptoms that should not be ignored would be you know, forgetting your keys your wallet more often than you usually would, forgetting names, forgetting faces, and looking at someone who you work with, and you  forget their name, and might be potentially problematic. We have to screen for a number of these things. If you find yourself lost in a familial location, whether that be a mall or neighborhood, that’s also important. It doesn’t always necessarily have to be short term memory loss, we always associate dementia, first and foremost with short term memory loss. But even things such as loss of focus. Focus and concentration can also be early signs and symptoms that something is going on in the brain that is burdened, and something that needs to be addressed. These are signals coming from the body and that it’s telling us something is a little off, we need to address it. And we need to take in all the cues from there.

Manon Bolliger  23:46

And then I guess people can add if they’re not sleeping well, that means they’re not repairing, you know, and digestion has signs and symptoms if they’re not, most of the time anyway, that things are not being absorbed. I don’t think you can always tell it’s not being absorbed. But certainly, if you have digestive symptoms on top of that, then you kind of you can put all of it together and go from there. Time to look after my body and my brain.

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 24:16

Yep, absolutely. And I would have to say that it’s kind of like going from I like the analogy of a highway. And if you picture a highway from the body to the brain, and if you think about the body as one major city, let’s say Vancouver and in the brain is probably a smaller city. Let’s talk about I don’t know Richmond or let’s talk about up north interior Prince George; there we go. And what I like to picture is that these roads are stable, because these represent the pathways, the vessels, both the cardiovascular, digestive, and even the lymphatics and then you have all the cars the trucks and moving vehicles, bikes, they all have to carry something from one end to the other. And you need to have these cars to be fully functional, because that’s what they’re carrying fuel. They’re carrying glucose, which is coming from our diet. If we’re not digesting well, we’re not able to carry the glucose to the brain, there’s also another very common thing that could happen about glucose is that the glucose gets to the brain, but doesn’t get into the brain, especially one certain part of the brain, because not all parts of the brain will utilize the glucose. But there’s a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is, has the heaviest densest number of insulin receptors, meaning it uses up a lot of energy. And it’s this hippocampus, that is the start to our encoding of short-term memory. So, I find as I screen my patients even wanting just to prevent, because they have a family history of dementia and Alzheimer’s, that insulin resistance tends to be the most common thing, potentially. Oxygen, oxygen is also needed to be screened, whether that be coming from lack of iron, lack of proper sleep, sleep apnea, as long as it’s very important to, and this can be easily seen in a blood test.

Manon Bolliger  24:26

Yeah, so there’s plenty to do not just fear and worry.

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 26:27

Or just treat accordingly saying, Oh, you have something in the brain, we’d give you something for the brain to be very common in potentially students and even practitioners. And it’s not the wrong thing, per se. It’s not looking at the body as a whole.

Manon Bolliger  26:44

No, no, but I mean, that’s been the paradigm that has sort of taken over for a while, but I think it’s on its way out. As far as what I’ve heard on the news. Not the news. But I think people are tired of that paradigm, you know, because it doesn’t really makes sense, you know, to go after a part as if the fixing the part will fix the hole. It’s like, it’s just a backwards way of thinking, you know, if you think of fixing the hole, then there’s a chance that all the parts can improve. And then, you know, with specialization and study, you can decide what else might be, you know, to be looked at. Is there anything…our interview is like already at a time? I feel like we haven’t started, but Well, you’ve been you’ve been speaking, so maybe it’s different. But is there anything else that we’re missing on the subject that that wasn’t mentioned?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 27:52

No, I think we got some pretty good parts about, you know, our cognitive health being reflective of the body and screening for digestion, hormones, inflammation, cardiovascular health, and toxins. Those tend to be the first few things that I would look into. And besides that, you know, screening is it’s kind of like, the most important messages. Everyone’s always told that at 50, you ought to start considering taking a mammogram or even a endoscopy or gastroscopy. So, looking to make sure that you’re being screened for colon cancer. Why can’t we get that same kind of level of screening for your cognitive health, even if it just entails to be a simple blood test?

Manon Bolliger  28:46

Blood test, exactly. Especially that right? Because like you said, the plaques can be there. And they’re not they’re not the biggest factor. You know, people work around it with general health, you know, so. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think I mean, where to find you, that’s part maybe you could share that. I know that you give talks on a continual basis. And that’s how you’re so well-known and appreciated, because you’re accessible to people through those talks. All these public talks, and they’re free as far as I remember. And then also, when people want to book an appointment with you, where do they go?

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 29:31

So, I’m situated in Richmond, British Columbia. I have a private practice at the Three West Center along number three and Westminster. Patients can find me I guess, online. You can either Google my name Dr. Romi Fung, and usually it’s the first thing that comes up. But there’s also my website www.drromifungnd.com. I also on social media on Facebook and Instagram, where I do post a lot of my upcoming talks and events, and also online booking that your it’s accessible for everyone. I provide care both in person as well as virtual for those in BC at this time. And future talks coming up. I’m excited for the TEDx Talk happening soon where I talk more about beyond the brain, and dementia. I do have a number of online virtual talks, as well as through various organizations and various companies. I do mostly talks in my community of Richmond, where you’re more than welcome to join us through either the Brooklyn Public Library, or the various community centers of Richmond.

Manon Bolliger  30:46

All right, well, thank you very much for taking the time to have this conversation.

Dr. Romi Fung, ND 30:51

Thank you so much for having me Manon.

ENDING: 41:33

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