Believe Your Brain is Destined to Decline? Think Again.

they get older, is that they're going to lose their brain function, they're not going

to be as sharp as possible.

“And they think that is preordained, it's something that's just going to happen.”

But what you're going to learn today is that none of this is preordained. Your brain doesn't have to shrink, you don't have to lose your sharpness as you grow older. From a machine for two, he is a neurologist, a neuroscientist, he's a teacher. He is author of a new book, it's called The Invincible Brain.

I read it, I loved it, I even provided a blurb for it. He's someone who's been thinking about the brain for decades now. And the point he makes is that so much of what happens to our brains is in your hands. Something you can control. Not necessarily a new medication, not a new procedure, but just simple ways that you live

your life. And the simplicity is something that's really going to strike you today. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is chasing life. But what I want to do is not to study the whole world. The master of the lab has been taught to the internet, so it's a master's real job. But you don't do anything.

Exactly, it's just a failure. It's just a matter of how much you work and if you work, you'll get it. That's right. Save, how much you're working. You're going to get it.

Now you're going to try it.

Well, welcome, first of all, to chasing life.

What a privilege for me to have you on the podcast. It's my pleasure to see you in person, Sanjay. Well, you know, I obviously know you, I know your work, I've read your book, but I'll just want to go back a few years.

“You wrote a paper, I think it was in JAMA, journal American Medical Association, sometime ago, talking about this 12 week program.”

Which I read, the paper at that point, and it really struck a nerve with me. This idea that you could not only sort of stall cognitive decline, but maybe even improve it in people. It was very interesting. It was very simple paper. There was no new drugs or procedures. It was mostly based on lifestyle changes. And it really caught my attention, because I think what people typically feel is that the brain is just going to decline over time. And there's not much you can do about it. That is obviously not your belief.

You're absolutely right.

When I first started to treat patients in their 70s with cognitive decline, I felt like it would take nine months or a year before I could see some changes.

Right. The pleasant surprise I had was that many people started to get better within weeks. Now, it's important to keep in mind that these older adults who had mild cognitive impairment, the stage between normal and Alzheimer's disease, had objective improvements in their validated cognitive tests. It wasn't just that they felt better. Right. They actually memorize things.

“What do you think is going on there? Are these people who just mastered a skill, in this case, to skill of memorization, or would you say that their brains objectively improved or where their brains healthier as a result of this program?”

That's an excellent question. In order to provide real heart data that we were making changes in their brain, I hope 10 brain MRIs before and after the program. We did quantitative measurement on the size of their hippocampus, the part of the brain, which is roughly the size of your thumb, and it's important for learning a memory. hippocampus is the part of brain, as you know, which shrinks and causes symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. So, in our program, more than half the patients and these older adults, late 60s to early 80s, had one to 3% increase in the volume of the hippocampus. And we showed that results in our paper, which was published in the journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease, on how we can actually see the size of hippocampus growing, and you can see with naked eye that this brain has a large hippocampus at this one.

I think you and I around the same age and probably trained around the same time. And I think that when we were in medical school, the conventional wisdom was that the brain was different somehow than other organs. That you got a certain number of neurons, and that was that. And over your life, you were going to drain the cash of neurons, and there wasn't much you could do about it. What you're suggesting, and I realize other people are catching on to your work now, but what you're suggesting is that that's not the case that you can improve your brain throughout your life.

What you can do is to tap into that repair mechanism and improve your brain in the absence of trauma or stroke.

“So, for example, when you exercise, you increase the amount of BDNF. When you learn something new, you increase the number of synapses.”

When you eat a healthy diet, you reduce inflammation, and you can then increase the size of hippocampus. In other words, the improvements in the brain are not subtle. They're so prominent. They're so profound that you can see it on MRIs before and after.

And I'm not the only person who is shown who can increase the size of hippocampus. In fact, I put together my program after seeing dozens of studies that showed individual lifestyle factors.

What I call five pillars of brain health increases the size of hippocampus. So I argue if exercise alone can increase the size of hippocampus, improving sleep, reducing stress, meditation, brain training. If all of these individually can grow the size of hippocampus, it should be the case that putting them together would produce better results in a shorter period of time.

“And that's what I saw when I published my paper in 2016. And since then, there have been dozens of other randomized controlled studies that have shown lifestyle interventions can profoundly improve brain functions.”

Our brain has theoplasticity and that capacity is just sitting there. Our brain is made of cells, just like our heart is made of cells.

And those cells need oxygen and nutrients. And so it's not surprising to me that our brain responds to lifestyle interventions just like our heart responds to lifestyle interventions. How new is this what you're talking about? Because again, let me go and go back a few decades when we were in medical school. That was not what people thought. I think the past five to ten years, five to ten years people have come to appreciate how easy it is to change the brain anatomy with interventions. You know this doctor, but if you ask older people what their biggest fear is, it's usually something related to their brains.

“They're looking to lose their memory, they're going to lose their personality. They're not going to be able to have a, a, a joyous retirement because they just don't remember things as much.”

That is, that is people's number one fear. My parents, this is what they fear about. Frankly, I've started to worry about that. But with lifestyle changes, not necessarily a new medication or a new procedure with lifestyle changes for a significant percentage of people, maybe not everybody, but a significant percentage that does not need to be the case. Absolutely. And what I find interesting is that when I talk about those things in my public lectures or in other interviews, people are surprised to hear it.

Yeah. And what I love to do in my future public lectures and interviews is to empower people to take charge of their brain and realize that they can improve their memory and improve their cognitive functions at any age. There are six things that you really focus on in the book, main reasons that lead to brain shrinkage. And I just want to read these. We're generally talking about inflammation and reducing blood flow. That's sort of the cornerstone of all this. We're talking about stress, sleep apnea, obesity, insomnia, untreated depression and concussions.

Those are the things that you say to focus on in terms of what might actually be causing cognitive decline. Yes, those factors have been shown to reduce the size of the hippocampus in a dose dependent manner. So the worst, the obesity is the more hippocampus shrinks. The more number of concussions you've had, the more hippocampus shrinks. The more stress you are, the higher cortisol levels, the more your hippocampus shrinks. And unfortunately if you have all of these things, your risk for us how many disease decades later would be 16-fold higher. So 16-fold example, yes, this has been shown in an upstairs study in German. So if let's say you're risking your 70s is 2%, then 2% is not significant.

I mean, there's 98% you won't get it. However, if you have had these factors and you're 2%, it's 32% which is significant. Again, I just want to emphasize this because this is such a big fear for people. Those things are reversible. Yes, the impact on your brain is reversible. That's quickly as your brain may shrink in these areas. It can start to grow again as well. Exactly. See, in 2009, I wrote a paper about what we just talked about. All the factors that shrink the brain and I publish it actually in nature. In 2010, 2011, I published papers about how many factors, what I call the five pillars of brain health, exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress reduction and brain training, increase the size of hippocampus.

And that's when I started in 2012 to create my program. And as I mentioned earlier, I thought it would take a long time to see results.

But it turns out that 12 weeks seems to be sufficient amount of time to see objective improvements in brain functions.

“Why weren't more people thinking this way? Why did it take so long to say, hey, look, this doesn't have to be the case that you can actually improve your brain at any age?”

I think people follow the leader and sometimes somebody says something and it's, you know, it's met with criticism. And then as a person or that group of people provide more information, more and more people say, hey, maybe there's some point in that. And of course, 10 years later, people say, obviously, let me give you an example. In 1950s, people felt that your heartbeat's only so many times. And so you don't want to exercise too much. Eisenhower's cardiologist, Dr. White, was one of the first cardiologists who said, actually exercise good for you.

At that time, people who had heart disease were told to rest and take it easy. In 1980s, there was an article near times that said, some cardiologists believe exercise is good for you.

I was so revolutionary back then. I mean, not talking about 100 years ago, right, right in '80s. And then, of course, 1990s, more data showed that exercise beneficial.

“And with a paradigm shift, I sincerely believe that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we're going to look back and say, what were people thinking?”

Well, why weren't they take care of their brain the same way they would take care of their teeth or their heart? Is it generally true that what is good for the heart is good for the brain? I mean, if we adopted those healthy lifestyle as a result of what we learned about heart disease exercises, good eating a low fat diet, things like that.

Are those things equally beneficial for the brain or is the brain different in some way?

Everything is good for the heart is good for the brain, but the brain is something extra on top of what the heart needs. And that is brain training. So I think your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. So everything you do in terms of lifestyle, that's good for your heart. It's good for your brain. And you add some cognitive training and then you're being good shape. Good shape. I mean, that's inspiring. I, like I said, I'm in my late '50s. Now, I worry about this. So what should I be doing? We understand that exercise is beneficial. A healthy diet is beneficial. But what does, what do these 12 weeks when you put people on the program? What did it look like for them? How challenging was it?

“I think people need to appreciate that they don't need to have cognitive decline with aging. The first step is the changing mindset. You have to realize your brain has an organ. Just like your heart has an organ.”

That's the number one. Let me just stop it for a second because that is very much the assumption. Yeah. So the first step is to stop that because if you keep saying, oh, I'm getting old. What do you expect? You do less. You do fewer things because you think you can't. So you reduce your brain activity and you challenge your brain less because you think you're not capable. You just brush off. You just say, I can't do this. And the more you become sedentary and the less you use your brain, the more your brain shrinks.

Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You do less. You are less capable. Which then confirms your idea that you're declining. And this is what I found exciting about my work. You see a lot of people think that you get Alzheimer's or you don't. You either are lucky and you dodge this Alzheimer's disease or, you know, you're stuck and you implemented. In reality, there are many factors that shrink the brain. The pathology of Alzheimer's, which is called the amyloid plaques and tell tangles is two components of let's say eight components that can shrink the brain.

In sedentary lifestyle, sleep apnea, insomnia, poor diet, chronic stress. All those things shrink the brain in parallel to these plaques and tangles. Now, the media and many of my neurologic colleagues have focused on those plaques and tangles with the assumption that if you eliminate these with medications, then you cure Alzheimer's disease. And it has not been enough emphasis on these treatable components. But it's simply cognitive decline with aging has two components. A component of what's called Alzheimer's pathology and a component of lifestyle related treatable conditions.

For the cognitive decline. But in my experience, 90% of people improve when you treat the treatable component of their soup of issues.

“And so my program has two components. Take care of the negative things. Like if somebody has sleep apnea, treat the sleep apnea. And if somebody has a center lifestyle, you know, get them to do those things.”

And another component is to do brain training and really get their brain to wake up. Your brain is like a muscle. When you challenge it, it actually grows. So when you combine, you know, take care of negative things and focus in positive things. You can't see results in 12 weeks. More of my conversation with Dr. Majeed Fatuhi right after this short break. This week on the assignment with me, Audie Cornish.

I have always believed about myself and told people that I don't have an addictive personality. Because I don't have a lot of biases.

I'm a Mormon. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I've never, you know, tried drugs. Anything like that. My guest today is a staff writer for the Atlantic. His name is McCake Hopkins. He spent $10,000 of his employers money and an entire NFL season diving into the world of online sports betting. I just believed that it would be a funny little side plot in my broader investigation of the sports betting industry. I genuinely did not expect that it would kind of take over my life.

Listen to the assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app. I'm Evan Ross Katz, your host for the comeback official podcast.

Every week I'll be joined by co-creator, executive producer, writer and star, Misa Coetron.

I love being valid and co-creator, executive producer, writer, director and showrunner Michael Patrick. Here's the real tea you go ahead. Each episode will be going behind the scenes and sharing our love for Valerie Church. As someone who has loved their show for years, it's wild to see just how much the world has changed since we last saw her. Welcome back to Chasing Life, and my conversation with neurologist and author Dr. Majeed Fatuhi.

There are these new medications that have been approved.

“There hadn't been anything approved for, I think, you know, almost a decade and a half for Alzheimer's dementia.”

Other of these medications monoclonal antibodies, which I think you're referring to, which help address these plaques and tangles in the brain. And, you know, there was a lot of excitement around these drugs. What was your thought when you saw these drugs get approved? I think it's exciting that we have drugs that can eliminate amyloid in the brain. However, as I expected, eliminating amyloid has not cured Alzheimer's disease.

Patients whose brain are cleared, like more than 80% of amyloid, is cleared from their brain before and after brain images are very striking. Like, all the amyloids gone. You would think if amyloid was the main culprit that the person would all of a sudden come normal again. In reality, this does not happen as I would have expected, because you only address one component of a super problems. These medications reduce the rate of decline by a little bit.

Whereas several studies, not just mine, dozens of studies have shown that multi-modal lifestyle interventions, programs, which like mine combined lifestyle interventions, produce better and more robust results than these drugs do.

“And so, I think, again, I'm an optimist.”

I think that, in ten years from now, you're going to look at Alzheimer's disease, much the way we look at diabetes. In other words, much of diabetes can be prevented. How many people have diabetes? We have medications to treat it once has happened. And in reality, we use a combination of lifestyle interventions and medications for effective treatment of diabetes.

And so, I think we will look at Alzheimer's in the same way.

I think these new medications are first-generation medications.

And at a second, a third-generation medication is more effective. And it will be helpful to start these earlier, because the earliest footprints of these pathologies appear in the brain 20 years before the symptoms begin. So, the best time to do these things is your age. You want to exercise, you want to sleep well, you want to avoid junk food, you want to keep your stress low and you want to improve your brain. Brain training.

So, I think what we need to do is to make taking care of your brain as part of your daily routine.

Such as, so, for example, you want to reduce your stress.

“You want to limit stress for things that are really worthy of stress.”

You want to get stressed over traffic and minor things in your life. You want to leave the stress for major things. You want to avoid junk food, no junk food. You know, food that are high, you know, highly processed food and food that are high in trans fats and food that spike your sugar, increase inflammation, the brain, and literally shrink the brain. Literally, not, not theoretically, literally.

So, no junk food. Keep your stress down. Move every day, you know, walk 2,000, 5000 steps a day. Exercise about 3 hours a week and do something that challenges your brain every day. If you set aside one hour a day for brain maintenance, with those things I just mentioned to you, you'll be, you'll be head of 90% of the population.

Let me just ask about you. You're the author of the invincible brain. Great title, by the way. Thank you. What do you do?

In terms of stress, I really leave stress for things that are severe, significant. Do you meditate? I do breathing exercises. Several studies have shown that slow breathing exercises. Things that increase what's called edge RV.

Heart rate variability by your feedback is a very effective way to reduce cortisol levels. We do stress and reduce amyloid in the brain. So, I actually enjoy those breathing exercises for 5 minutes. Of course, I teach students mentoring students. I write books.

I write journal articles. I do research. I take dancing lessons with my lovely wife. And so, I have something to challenge my brain every day. So, I exercise.

I exercise most days. I sleep well. I'm tired. But the time I go to bed at night, I'm tired. I just crash.

I'm tired. And then, I don't eat junk food at all.

You never catch me eating doughnut.

Or, if I have to eat ice cream, I have a small amount. You know, it's so interesting. It's a sound simple, right? And maybe that's the point.

“I think there's so many gravitational poles in our society to move us away from what you just described.”

So, for people who are listening, it sounds simple. But at the same time, it's not that easy. Because there's all that, you know, it's easier to eat process foods. It's just much more ubiquitous. There is a lot of stress in our society.

And, you know, we live in an increasingly sedentary life. So, I think, you know, you talk about breathing exercises. And people may say, "Well, come on, we're talking about monoclonal antibodies. We're talking about brain surgery. We're talking about all these things to try and reduce plaques.

But the idea that breathing exercises could accomplish some of those same things. In some ways, that's the most extraordinary part of this, the simplicity of it. Absolutely. And one thing that I know you and I focused on is having a sense of purpose in life. Yeah. If you have a sense of purpose in life, that helps to guide your daily routines.

For example, I think it's a reasonable goal to say, "Look, I wanted to be a brain-separator. Someone who reaches the age of 90 and remains sharp and independent. You may not get there, but you will set that goal."

“And if that's the goal, and they say, "Look, this is my sense of purpose. That's what I want to do."”

Then every day, when you are faced with choices, you will take a choice that's in line with your purpose. Let's say your purpose is to take care of the grandchildren or take care of your children. Then, if you remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing, and you want to be able to be in good shape when you're in the 80s, so that you can spend time with your children and your grandchildren.

So you use the sense of purpose as a carrot that helps you decide whether I'm going to have this French fries. I'm going to say, "No thanks." Look, I think it's hugely inspiring to hear that just making that decision, those micro decisions on a daily basis can help keep these three and a half pounds of tissue healthy. Yes, I think what we need to do is to help people appreciate that the destiny of their brain is in their hands,

but in most part, only small person to people do everything right and get outside my disease or do everything wrong, and they don't get it. Very small person to people to that. What do we talk? Because that is often the argument that you hear, right?

And I'm always careful, I think, as a physician,

because you say, "Hey, look, if you engage in these healthy behaviors, then you're likely to not develop Alzheimer's disease." And then you inevitably get somebody who said, "But I did that my whole life." Now I feel like I'm being blamed in a way,

What percentage of people are we talking about?

Okay, let me talk to you in terms of pathology. Less than 10% of people who'd reached late 80s have only placed on tangles of Alzheimer's disease and they're bringing up nothing else. And there were 90% of people experience cognitive decline because of a soup of problems. And so, in my practice, you know, 5% 10% of people would fall in the category

where genes played an important role.

“I think genes and hereditary played an important role for early onset Alzheimer's disease.”

When somebody has parents who develop cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease in their 50s or early 60s, that has a strong genetic component, but a late life Alzheimer's disease is really a super problem.

And very small percentage of people experience cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease

if they have done everything right. It's interesting also that the incident of Alzheimer's disease is declining in many Western high-income countries. So, I think that people are catching on and that there are parts of the world where people are staying active and sharp as they get older and that is a trend.

And I tell you, in Kenya's from now, people are going to look back and say, "What were they thinking? Why weren't they doing things to keep their brain sharp?" That's why I wrote my book in a miserable brain because I felt these things should not be limited to patients who come see me in clinic. Everything we're talking about are readily available for people everywhere.

And you just have to change your mindset.

“You have to realize, "Can take care of your brain?"”

The same way you take care of your skin and your heart. If you have that aha moment, then you will really think twice about eating at French fries. You eat twice, you know, just shut off the alarm and go back to sleep and you just go for, you know, for, you know, a 40 minute walk or something because we need to change people's daily habits in order to be results. But they need to start easy.

So, when I talk to my patients, I say, "Listen, don't make your brain health another source of stress." Don't add to your list of feeling guilty about things. Let's just make a habit of walking 20 minutes a day. And then I want you for the next, you know, two, three weeks. Cut back on the amount of junk food by 10%, like if you have a cookie or muffin or a bag of chips, just eat less of it.

Still eat it, but less of it. And see how you feel. What happens is that when people make these changes, they feel that brain fog evaporates. And they start feeling sharper in a matter of weeks.

“I think it's a tragedy that so many people are experiencing cognitive decline and necessarily.”

It's really tragedy because they can take care of themselves easily and they're not. How would you describe the level of evidence behind the things that you're saying? The level of evidence for multimodal lifestyle dimensions reducing cognitive decline is compelling. There are many randomized controlled studies in which one group of participants received a combination of diet exercise, stress reduction, improving sleep, and another group did not receive those interventions.

And standardized tests were applied and showed that the group that received intervention had better cognitive function. They had better, better size, larger size, people campus. I know this because I have reviewed the literature. Thousands of randomized controlled studies have been shown that lifestyle dimensions improve in functions. And to put this in perspective, I wanted to know,

how the randomized controlled studies for lifestyle interventions compare to the new Alzheimer's medications. So I went to the literature and guess what? The benefits of lifestyle interventions are far higher than the new medications. And it makes sense. Farmer companies aren't going to like to hear that. I think I salute from a school companies for all the investment they've made past 30 years.

They've spent billions of dollars to come up with a drug that helps reduce amoloid. More than 100 clinical trials failed and they kept added. So I salute to them. I encourage them to continue to find medications that can help reduce amoloid and towel under brain.

And I think this new medications they have produced are the first generation medications.

And at the second and third generation medications will be effective. Let me put things in perspective for you. If somebody has heart disease and an expensive heart attack, there are many factors for it.

Just to put the main risk factors.

Now if you just treat the cholesterol, you will not prevent future heart attacks.

“You need to control the cholesterol and you need to put them on an exercise program and you need to treat their diabetes and you need to treat their sleep apnea.”

Those things will reduce the risk for developing a heart attack in the future, not just treating the cholesterol. With statins or other medications, it will make a small dent, but it will not eliminate. Whereas if you do the whole thing, they will have a significant reduction in the risk for developing a heart attack. We're in the same level with amoloid and lifestyle interventions when it comes to Alzheimer disease. If you just reduce amoloid, you make a small dent in risk for cognitive decline or further cognitive decline.

Whereas if you reduce the amoloid and do those five pills of brain health, exercise, sleep well, eat healthy, reduce stress and do brain training, then you will see the remarkable results. One of the things that's different is the brain training part of this. What does that mean? You do in crossword puzzles and number of puzzles, or what are you doing to train your brain?

Can I just use your brain for a second?

This is where what I call is the main brain area for cognitive functions. Parts are important for attention, concentration, planning, parts of the brain inside the temporal loop. Call it a campus is important for learning new things, and all these brain areas are highly malleable. Now you can choose to work on parts of your brain for attention and concentration, or you can choose to work on parts of your brain for memory. Just like if you go to a gym, you can choose to work on your biceps, triceps, or your legs.

So depending on what you like to achieve, you can focus on those brain areas. Now the controversy is, well, I did some brain training, and I still got Alzheimer's disease. Well, first of all, brain training is one of the five pills of brain health. I'm by itself, it's not going to cure your Alzheimer's disease.

“You need to do all of them, and also you have to realize if you really are concerned about your memory, you need to do memory exercises.”

If you really are concerned about your attention and concentration, you really need to work on the frontal loop. And these days, there are lots of apps like the facility, brain HQ, peak, elevate, where people can choose which brain area they can focus on. Just don't do crossword puzzles or Sudoku because you feel you must do brain training. Choose what it is that you want to improve and work on those specific cognitive domains. Do you have specific things you work on?

My memory, you know, I memorized my credit card numbers, I memorized their cards, my wife memorized my credit card number. Great. Very well, my dad. My wife and I take dance lessons together, and I play card games and my daughters during college. And there are much faster than I am.

And I do my best to keep up. Is ballroom dancing good for your brain? Absolutely. Well, for one thing, one study showed that if you take ballroom dance classes and continue for a year, parts of the brain that are important for coordination and planning increase,

and the size of the campus also increases in the group that took ballroom classes versus group that didn't. And I think exercise and ballroom dancing particular has many benefits. For one thing, you're exercising, you're on your feet.

“Number two is that you have to keep track of your steps.”

You have to memorize steps and you have to keep track of where you are. You also have to listen to music and coordinate the music that you hear with the body movements. And you're closer to someone you enjoy yourself. You actually have more dopamine in your brain. So I think ballroom dancing in general is one of the best ways you can improve your brain function.

When I see patients, I say pick something you enjoy. If you're like fishing, if you're like golf, if you're like photography, do it. Go to the next level. You don't have to do boring things to challenge your brain. If you don't like abs, this brain abs don't bother.

Learn a hobby you always wanted to do.

If you're like painting, take painting classes. If you're like cooking, cooking is a great brain training. You have to keep track of all the ingredients. You have to put them in sequence. And it's a definitive outcome that you can see how you did.

And you can improve.

It has a capacity to grow and become stronger by challenging it.

And then combine the things that challenge your brain with the things that are also enjoyable to you. And you will see the best results. Yeah, I don't think that's interesting. People think of brain training solely as maybe number puzzles or word puzzles. But the idea that ballroom dancing can do all those things that you were just describing for your brain. Pretty remarkable.

When I was thinking about brain health, one of the neuroscientists I was talking to said, "Start painting."

I'm a terrible artist, but I started painting and he said, "Also, I'm right here."

And he said, "Start doing with your left hand." Which I thought was really interesting and it's something I've maintained. I got a little easel and I will paint sometimes. I find it relaxing, but also I find it activating to other parts of my brain. Well, look as a fellow brain nerd. Thank you.

“Because, you know, I think a lot of us have, you know, I'm a journalist.”

I've followed your work for a long time and I think trying to get a lot of your messages out there.

I really thank you for learning this book. I'm going to hold it up again, the invincible brain. I read it. I even blurbed it. Yes, thank you for much for your interest, man. I loved it. I meant every single word.

It's very inspiring.

“I think, you know, like I said, people are scared, especially when it comes to brain health.”

And I think this provides them a lot of peace, hopefully. So thank you. Sure, thank you very much for having appreciated it. That was my conversation with neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Majeed Fatuhi. His new book is called The Invincible Brain.

The clinically proven plan to age-proof your brain and stay sharp for life. It's available now. Thanks so much for listening. To have I got news for your ears, the podcast. I am your host, Michael Ian Black.

In this week's episode, we're covering everything. Iran, airports, Elvis. We're answering the question.

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