Another Great Reason to Control Chronic Stress, It's Now Linked To Alzheimer's with Terry and Roy

June is Alzheimer's and brain awareness month. Chronic stress can wreak havoc with our bodies. Stress lowers our immunity, drivers up blood glucose levels, blood pressure, and now Alzheimer's is also known as Type 3 diabetes. chronic stress does affect many biological pathways within our body. The time to lower your stress is now before the damage becomes irreversible.

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Another Great Reason to Control Chronic Stress, Its Now Linked To Alzheimer's with Terry and Roy

00:00:14
Roy
Welcome to another episode of educational. I'm your host, Roy Terry. We are the podcasts that we do bring you our journey, not only through our aging, but us helping our parents, just, they be, as they become neat as they need more and more help, more care. It's a, there's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of misinformation. What we're here to do is, not only talk about our situation, but also we do have, professionals in the area that do come on from time to time. So, today though, I think we're going to talk about, chronic stress and Alzheimer's.

00:00:56
Terry
Yeah. Just to mention that June is Alzheimer's and brain awareness month. Yeah, we found an article, that was in the science alert, on the science alert, website saying that chronic stress could be a factor and behind Alzheimer's that is not, I don't like that because all signs lately are pointing to us having it,

00:01:27
Roy
Sooner, rather than later, too, with they call they're starting to call it the type three diabetes. So, if you have diabetic issues, if you have stress,

00:01:41
Terry
Yeah, just all of that, everything leads into something is going to lead into some kind of brain, and heart, and it all leads the older you get, the more you pay attention to it because, as kids, we just, w we talked about this earlier, we just are Bulletproof, and we just want to eat everything and do, just do what we want to and reacting and not responding, which is hard to do. And, responding properly, whatever that means. Not just letting it build up, but, chronic stress. Oh my gosh, I, we have it.

00:02:30
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of it to go around and, it leads to other things that, we talk about the, getting enough sleep. Of course the blood group glucose that, as you read down through the study, it was talking about that there is a,

00:02:49
Terry
Like the HPA access. Is that where you're going? Yeah.

00:02:52
Roy
Yeah. The, the, I can't even pronounce,

00:02:55
Terry
I've got a thalamic pituitary, adrenal axis, HPA axis,

00:03:00
Roy
It's a pathway that's supposedly, located just above your kidneys, that links to, parts of your brain. The other thing is that, if I'm trying to look down through here, but if I'm not mistaken where I read that it also raises the blood glucose, yeah. The glucose levels in our blood when we get high stress too. It was like, well, we're getting it on multi fronts then, and then it, typically, if you're stressed, you don't sleep right. You don't eat. Right. If you're like me, you like to stress eat, which is eating all the bad things that, not good for you.

00:03:42
Terry
Yeah. I mean, at the molecular geneticist, David growth from Curtin university in Australia is the one who I'm going to quote here. He says, what we know is that chronic stress does affect many biological pathways within our body. There's an intimate interplay between exposure to chronic stress, and pathways influencing the body's reaction to such stress. They also mentioned that the HPA axis, is part of its job is also to regulate the release of cortisol, the steroid hormone, the greater, the stress, the more cortisol is released.

00:04:24
Roy
Yeah. That's the, I think that's the fight or flight drug that are a chemical that is released that, we just get in the other parts of this, probably raises your blood pressure. There's so many, nothing good comes from stress. When you have chronic stress, I think it just begins to, take its toll on a lot of our function. I think it actually can reduce our immunity where you get sick more. I know I've been, it's been years ago, but being in that position where you're just so stressed out for so long, and then it's like, you just get sick, get the flu.

00:05:01
Terry
Shuts down. Yeah. Yeah, increase in. We've talked about that earlier, too. The increasing the blood sugar. Oh my gosh. That immune system, it's just a vicious cycle. I mean, the older we get the older.

00:05:17
Roy
Yeah. It says here, also I think this is a quote, from that guy that you just mentioned, but it says in the brain, this leads to chronic disruption of normal brain processes increasing in risk of subsequent neuro degeneration and ultimately dementia. So,

00:05:37
Terry
Yeah. I mean, my dad had, I say he had all simers, he had Pick's disease, which is a form of dementia, but for all intents and purposes, we called it Alzheimer's, the genetic, I know it's going off the beaten path here, but, I, I, I think that genetics has a part in it too. I don't know, all of his siblings, all four of his siblings and some kind of dementia or Alzheimer's too so interesting.

00:06:10
Roy
Yeah, we'll have to uncover that, take a look at that maybe next week and see what is that genetic connection and how big of a part does it play.

00:06:18
Terry
What, does going off to, would you get a test to see if you had, if you were pre declined for it? Cause I think that's or predisposed to it. I think that is an available test right now. Isn't it? That.

00:06:34
Roy
I don't know. I don't know. I would have to really think about that. Cause it's like, if there's nothing you can, I guess let's take that back and say, if there's a position that you can do something about it, then yes. Maybe, but if it's one of these things, like it's just going to happen. I don't really know. I mean, it, because then it's like you spend all your time worrying about when I'm going to get this. And yeah. I mean, I don't, I'm sure that if, even if you're predisposed to it, that doesn't mean you're a hundred percent going to get it or a hundred percent, if they say you're not predisposed, doesn't mean a hundred percent that you won't get it still a lot of gray area. I think you could, well, I won't speak for other people. I'll speak for me. I think I would end up worrying about, as tomorrow, the day that happens versus just live in life and maybe doing the things that we can have control over to, try and that healthy decisions that we can make to try to avoid it.

00:07:34
Terry
Yeah. And I mean, talk about chronic stress. If you were to know that would just probably exacerbate the situation.

00:07:43
Roy
Yeah. Know that it's one of those things that's easier said than done. I know it's how we react to stuff, but unfortunately, life throws things at people that puts them in stressful situations and this pandemic, I'm sure it's put a lot of people with jobs, situations trying to eat, pay the bills. We've got we're at a time now where the, I think they've extended it one more time, but the, rent protection and then, here in Texas, they signed a bill where that the extra federal bump is going away. I think today it's the end of it. Anyway, I just, I guess the point is that it's, even if I told you at 30, that stresses an important factor in this Alzheimer's it's like, really, what can you do to avoid it? just,

00:08:38
Terry
Well there, yeah. I mean, you just have to, you have to, let me give you advice, I guess, have some kind of strategy to be able to, where do you get that? Is there a class there's gotta be a class, there's a class for everything. I'm.

00:08:55
Roy
Sure there is. I can give you some tools to do it, but it's like, if you're worrying about your livelihood, it's hard to, yeah. I mean, it's hard to like say, well, I'm not going to be stressed about that. It just is what it is. It projects you into a spot of not having a roof over your head or not having food to eat, especially if you have kids. There's just, to me, it's just one of those things that's easier. It's very easy to pronounce that. Oh yeah, you need to avoid stress. Well, people usually don't, well, I'll see, most people don't seek out stressful situations. We try to avoid them or, we try to be proactive to not get ourselves in. It's mainly the tools that once we find ourselves there, if there are things that we can do to help ourselves relax. Again, there are situations that, I mean, until the sick, until whatever the problem is resolved, you're going to be under a tremendous load of stress.

00:09:56
Roy
Yeah.

00:09:57
Terry
Short of go into meditation retreats, or, just kind of some kind of inner working retreat, energy retreats or something like that. It's still, things are going to come up where you're not going to be able to do it, but breathing deep, breathe a lot of decrease.

00:10:14
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's things that we could do like that you can deep breaths, you can meditate, you can do a lot of things, but it's like myself, I can only speak for me, but even doing those things, it may work for a minute. When I get through with that and have to get back into life, that problem is still there. I still have to figure out a way to solve it. So, and maybe that's just a me not wanting to deal with it. And maybe, but I don't know. It's hard because just like I said, it's just easier to, it's easy to say to forget it and move on, but very difficult for me as I feel like I need to solve it, got a problem, needs answer. God do it. If I let here, if I sit here and wait, it's.

00:11:04
Terry
Going to be time,

00:11:07
Roy
Time goes by and I still didn't solve it. So,

00:11:10
Terry
Yeah. And, and of course there are situations that need, I think Nene, I guess it's the dude and the chicken dude wants to scientifically fix it all. The chicken me wants to kind of take it in, breathe it in approach it from all sides, figure out where to go and then hope that it goes away. So I don't have to do anything.

00:11:34
Roy
Yeah. I guess I've been around them up that most of them don't just go away. I want to say, sometimes we do borrow trouble and I think we've talked about this before that there was a, a situation surrounding us, let me just put it that way. There were some situations surrounding us and, it was kind of on my mind, heavy for an evening or two, and then whatever that was, it actually ended up not materializing. So, we always like to talk about bars and troubles that, here I was sitting and being, thinking about something, being worried about it. I think it was it's one of the very few times that I w actually woke me up in the middle of the night, to deal with it. And then, it kinda took a turn. Something happened that what was the plan that was supposed to happen? Didn't happen.

00:12:28
Roy
Some, there were, they found another way to do this. So it was.

00:12:31
Terry
Like, so it was like off, all that wasted time that you could have been sleeping, but, sometimes we just get into that rabbit hole when you can't pull it.

00:12:41
Roy
Right. Yeah. This was just something that just kept being on in my mind that, cause it resulted from a decision I made to, I gave somebody permission to do something. After that, I was trying to be a nice guy. After that I was like, I wished I hadn't have given that permission.

00:12:59
Terry
Because yeah,

00:13:02
Roy
Well, no, that was definitely under my control. I shouldn't have done it so well. It was already, you know, in motion. There wasn't much else to do, but anyway, yes, very much so.

00:13:17
Terry
Yeah. But chronic stress not good. If you can find a way to deal with it, if you have a little extra time in one, a research that maybe that would be helpful toward not getting on, not getting Alzheimer's or any of the other things that could be related to the chronic stress and inflammation and all of that.

00:13:40
Roy
Yeah, I've got one more piece I was going to read here. It says that identifying the molecular mechanisms underlying the association between chronic stress and Alzheimer's disease, as well as identifying genetic factors that could contribute to the subs sub susceptibility of this association may allow for new therapeutic targets to be identified as well as strategies targeting chronic stress management to be implied. That was what the researchers wrote in their paper. Yeah, there's just a lot of good work going on. Haven't heard much more, we talked last time about the new Alzheimer's drug that's come out and I'm really, haven't heard much more from either side, which is surprising. I, I really thought that we would, here's some of the, I guess some of the people who were affected with Alzheimer's either themselves, if they're in early stages come out or their family members come out to say that, Hey, Ron, at this point, anything is worth taking the shot over.

00:14:46
Roy
We'll do, we'll.

00:14:46
Terry
Try it just to have anything, any, I mean, they've got Alzheimer's, you've got Alzheimer's and there is not really, there are drugs that you can, take to help keep you stable, not to, just kind of where you are. It's not gonna reverse anything, but that only that kind of taps out after you take it for so long.

00:15:12
Roy
Yeah. Those only don't they only treat the symptoms. They don't really treat, I think this new drug actually was one of the first ones that treats some of the underlying aspects again, not, well, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even with the new drug, not reversal, but if you catch it early enough, maybe just puts you in a holding pattern to stay in the early stages longer than what you would have, maybe if you hadn't taken it.

00:15:42
Terry
Yeah. And, I mean, I, I, there's just, it's almost been 20 years since they've had any new drugs. I think, there was a lot of, there's a lot of pressure from all over the place to get something out. I don't know, I, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it, but then, my dad has, is gone and I don't know how I'd feel about it if you were here, but I would certainly be researching the heck out of it. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to say, in honor of, Alzheimer's and brain awareness month, there are some are I'm sorry, do you have anything else to say there are some free Alzheimer's and dementia programs. The, Alzheimer's foundation of America created the AFA T teal room in it's a free library of virtual, activity and therapeutic programming, just do it online. They have all these classes that are free music, art, dance, movement, fitness gardening, virtual tours, and you can go to the Alzheimer's foundation, organization website for that information.

00:17:04
Terry
Also there are a bunch of dementia support groups and very well health, just put out the best seven dementia support groups of 2021 Alzheimer's association, was the best overall support group. The best for Lewy body dementia is the Lewy body dementia association. Family caregiver Alliance was the best for the caregivers, American Parkinson's disease association, best for mentorship as dementia mentors and social media as memory people. I haven't been on that one yet, but I'm very interested to find out about more or more about that one. Yeah.

00:17:55
Roy
Yeah. The Alzheimer's association has a lot of great resources in there they're everywhere, so it never hurts to give them a call. They had a little up ahead of this that just basically was talking that if you're in the early stages, you can, that it can help improve some of your quality of life. It's very important for you and your caregivers to, seek out a group and find that there's more than one. If you go to one you don't feel comfortable with, or really doesn't meet your needs, look around and find one in your community that helped. I also have a bunch online now. If you don't want to get out of the house, or if you live in a smaller rural environment where they may not be available in your town, you can always get online and, join groups and with anything, this devastating, it's just great to seek support.

00:18:49
Terry
Instead of reinventing the wheel and having to do all the researchers that you don't have to do it alone, and it's not weak or to ask for help and just ask the questions that you need help with your answers on, you surely need to research other things, but if you're getting, if you put the question out there and five people come back and say, oh yeah, this is the right thing to do. 10 come back and say, no, you need to check this out. And, you might want to double check.

00:19:23
Roy
Yeah. There's just, people that have been through it can help us know what to do, what are some things that have worked for them and, some best practices and just be there to talk to, sometimes it's more just a, you just need somebody just to reach out to that has been through this that can, be, somebody that you can lean on. Look for those places, there's a lot of them, Google them call the Alzheimer's association call, one of your senior center, community, senior community centers, a lot of places you could turn to for that.

00:20:05
Terry
Yeah. It's just really important that you get that care.

00:20:11
Roy
All right. Unless you have anything else that's going to do it for this episode.

00:20:15
Terry
I think I'm good. I think I'm good.

00:20:17
Roy
All right then. Well, thanks a lot for listening. Of course. Like I said, we try to release our guest episodes on Tuesday and then on our Thursday episodes, we'll be talking more about, some, maybe some things that we've gone through or that we're seeing, I've got, my parents, my mom and stepdad are fixing to make the move from, their house of 30 years into a, not to a community it's kind of a community 55 plus red Easter when it was first built. It was a little different situation, but now it's just, apartment rental community. We're going to see how that goes with the, we're going through the downsizing and then, see how this goes. Anyway, we'll be talking about things that are happening with the us, but also, we've kind of chosen to, at this point to focus a lot on dementia, just because it affects so many people it's devastating.

00:21:20
Roy
And, there may be some things that we can do health wise to, like relieving our stress, making sure our sugars are in order,

00:21:31
Terry
A healthy diet overall, I mean, for everything, but, and we had, Dr. Joy was on, she's a dentist. And, she goes and does house calls for older people and helps the caregivers figure out how to do the tea. You just don't think about that and brush your teeth. Yeah. Just brush your teeth. Well, no, there's more to it because a lot of people have when they get older, they might have bridges or whatever. If somebody doesn't tell the caregiver, how are they to know? Right. That can affect all kinds of things.

00:22:05
Roy
Right. Yeah. I was surprised in that episode to find out that, I knew that, our oral health affected our heart health as well. I was very surprised when she said that it can affect our brain health too, to your brain,

00:22:20
Terry
The plaque, everywhere.

00:22:23
Roy
Yep. So, all right, well, up until next time, that's going to do it for us. I'm rowing course. You can find us at www dot educational, excuse me. Yeah. www.ageucational.com. We're on all the major social media platforms, as well as all the major podcast platforms, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes. If we're not a one that you listened to, please reach out. We'd be glad to get that added. Until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your health.

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