- [Lorie] It's notsupposed to be this way.
Anxious thoughts anddepressed feelings rob us
of our best lives.
Addictions take over our minds.
Muddled thinkings turns decision making
into an overwhelming task.
And we're just plain exhausted.
As Americans increasinglycomplain of these
and other brain issues,women experience them
at double the rate of men.
Leading women's health expertand bestselling author,
Dr. Sara Gottfried, says it's time
to repair the brain-body disconnect.
In her new book, Brain Body Diet,
she lays out a 40-day plan
leading to not only a thinner you,
but the calm, sharp, very bestperson you're meant to be.
- Dr. Sara Gottfried is here today.
She's with our MedicalReporter Lorie Johnson.
Let's go over to Lorie and our guest.
- Thanks, Pat.
And welcome, Dr. Gottfried,back to The 700 Club.
- Thank you.
Happy to be here.
- So you're one smart cookie.
You graduated from Harvard Med and MIT
and you are an obstetricianand gynecologist,
so you're a woman's health expert.
This new book, by the way, fantastic.
Read it cover to cover.
But it deals with the woman's brain.
And what I found fascinating
is that women's and men'sbrains are different,
so different, that if youshow people just brain scans,
eight out of ten times, theycan say that's a man's brain,
that's a woman's brain.
So women and men do have different brains.
- Different brains.
I mean they differ structurally,they differ molecularly,
and they differ in terms of function.
This is the root of why
there's double the rate of depression,
higher rates of anxiety,
even double the rateof Alzheimer's disease.
- Which is so upsetting and women,
and you can attest to thisbecause you have patients
that you see one-on-one in your office,
but also thousands of patients online,
and you can say thatwomen are too unhappy.
They're miserable.
They're depressed.
They're overweight.
Their thinking isn'tright, forgetful, angry,
stressed out, and thenof course, Alzheimer's.
But what I love about this book
is you say the cure, the prevention,
is sort of the samefor all of those issues
and it starts with diet.
- It starts with diet.
I mean the idea here isthat we have to connect
the body with the brain.
We can't think of thosetwo things in isolation
We need to bring them back together.
And you're right, you start with food.
- And we need to talk about
how messed up our food supply is.
We noticed that in the
Journal of the AmericanMedical Association last month,
there was a huge study that showed
that processed food increased the risk
of all cause mortality by 14%.
That's every type of death increases
because of these processedfoods which contain the sugar.
So the sugar and the processed foods
are enemy number one, right?
- Absolutely right.
I mean what happens with theprocessed foods and the sugar
is that it disrupts theintegrity of the gut lining.
When that happens, itcan disrupt the integrity
of the blood-brain barrier.
And so it leads toinflammation in the whole body.
It can block insulin.
It can make you gain weight.
And then it starts to causeinflammation in the brain.
Neuroinflammation.
And we know that thispredates Alzheimer's disease,
it predates depression by aconsiderable amount of time.
When it comes to Alzheimer's,
we're talking about a 25-year problem
that exists in the brain
before you ever have a diagnosis.
- So how could we prevent Alzheimer's
and prevent the depression andsome of these mood disorders
that we're dealing with andalso the brain fog with diet?
What should we be doing exactly?
- So to reduce the inflammation,
you want to make sure that you've got
plenty of vegetables on your plate.
So I advise people to eat apound of vegetables every day,
mostly the non-starchy vegetables.
You want to make sureyou're getting healthy fat.
The brain is mostly fat.
We know fat can be cooling,it can be really satisfying.
You also want to restrictyour eating window.
This is incredibly important
because I think a lot of people believe
that they should havebreakfast, lunch, and dinner,
and snacks in between.
The way that our DNA evolved
is to eat within aboutan eight hour window,
with an overnight 16-hour fast.
We know this helps to clearout the gunk in cells,
but maybe most important, moreimportant than anything else,
is to control your blood sugar.
I want people to careabout their blood sugar
as much as they do abouttheir retirement accounts
because your health isyour greatest wealth,
and 60% of cognitivedecline can be prevented
by managing your blood sugar,
getting in that Goldilocks position
where it's not too highand it's not too low.
- So you say people shouldstop eating at dinner time,
like 6:00 p.m., and thenwhen should they pick up
eating again the next day?
- So that would be 10:00 a.m.,
to have an eight hour eatingwindow, 16-hour overnight fast.
Most of the time, you'resleeping, so you can do this.
What I advise for women
is that they slowly ramp up to this point
so that they start maybe with a 12-12
so that they have anovernight fast of 12 hours,
and then they ramp up tomaybe 14-10, and then 16-8.
- So you mentioned brieflya minute ago about the gut,
what's going on the gut.
We know that we need thegood bacteria in our gut.
How do we get that?
- We know that prebioticsare the most important way
to feed the good bacteria.
You also want to avoid stress.
Stress is the elephant in the room
when it comes to thebody-brain connection.
We know that, there was just this study
released in October of last year
showing that women are muchmore vulnerable than men
when it comes to stress.
When you have stress,starting in your 40s,
it can shrink the brain,it can reduce memory
and also visual perception.
So it's really crucialthat you manage stress.
Stress can poke holes in the gut lining
and lead to that inflammationthat we just talked about.
- And you have wonderful,wonderful tips in your book
about ways to managestress, exercise, sleep,
and the list goes on,and you have great tips
about how to get a good night's sleep
because a lot of peoplehave trouble there.
But I did want to talkto you about hormones.
Hormones are a huge issueabout why we're stressed out
and why we overeat, why we can't sleep.
What should women know about hormones?
- Well with your hormones,definitely getting cortisol
under control, the mainstress hormone, is key.
You also want insulin on your side
'cause that's gonna help you
with reducing cognitive decline.
Then there's the sex hormones.
And this is the major difference
between the male and the female brain
and leads to, probablyleads to the increased risk
of Alzheimer's disease,depression, and anxiety.
So estrogen, progesterone, testosterone,
those are hormones that youwant to have on your side.
As estrogen starts to decline in your 40s,
that's when you start to see differences
on PET scans of the brain.
And so I really encouragewomen to manage their hormones
and to make sure thatthey're on your side,
that they're not getting out of whack.
- And you recommend in your book
getting your hormones tested
and you have wonderful resources
about where you can getthe good hormone tests,
and also, you advise people
to take a probiotic, the good bacteria,
you have a couple recommendations in here,
and it's really fantastic information.
And what I also loved is you said,
regardless of whether youhave the Alzheimer's gene,
you can prevent this disease,but you need to start early,
like in your 20s, soyoung ladies, listen up.
- Well, and it's never too late.
I think that's an importantpart of this message too,
that you can make changes in your brain
well into your 40s, your 50s, your 60s.
I want women to care about their brains.
I want men and women tocare about their brains,
starting as early as possible.
- What I thought wasalso really interesting,
when we talk about the processed foods
and those awful ingredientsthat they put in there,
those ones that aredifficult to pronounce,
I often look at the list of ingredients
and think, hmm, I wonder what that is.
Oh well, it's probably fine.
The FDA would never allow something bad
to be put in my food.
But that's actually not true.
Some of these ingredientsmake us addicted to bad foods,
make us hungrier, actuallyeven make us more depressed.
- That's exactly right.
What we know is thatabout 20% of Americans
have food addiction.
Most of those are women.
And we definitely thinkthat a lot of it is related
to processed foods, theconsumption of sugar,
and so we have to be really careful
about getting back to whole foods,
getting the fiber that you need,
that's where the poundof vegetables comes in,
eating the healthy fats,
getting the low inflammatory proteins
that are so good and make you feel sated,
make you feel satisfied.
- A lot of people are likehmm, what is a healthy fat,
what types of proteins should we eat.
It's a long list and it's all in here.
And one more thing before we have to leave
is you talk about toxins in the food.
There are actually a lot oftoxins in our environment.
I was shocked to see that there are toxins
in the beauty products that we put on.
All the make-ups and thelotions and the potions
and the cleaning products in ours houses.
Even the perfumes thatwe wear can all be toxic,
and that adds up.
- It adds up.
So it leads to toxic load in the body
and then it can crossthe blood-brain barrier,
things like mercury,things like Bisphenol A,
and affect your brain.
So we have to be careful abouthow we get exposed to toxins
and then we need to periodically detoxify,
which is something I cover in the book,
so that you're getting thesetoxins out of your body.
You know, a common onethat I see is glyphosate.
So glyphosate comes in foodsthat are genetically modified
and we know it's associated with
an increased risk of anxiety.
It can cause disruptionof the gut-brain barrier
and that's just not good for you.
- And we know that these tips,
these things have beentried on thousands of women.
They really work.
A lot of people are like, oh, I don't know
if I should go to the effort to do that,
it's probably not gonna work.
It really does work.
And I wanted to say, forfolks who want to learn more
about Dr. Gottfried and her protocol
and the Brain Body Diet, I'mgoing to be interviewing you
for Healthy Living, whichis a 30-minute program,
so we're gonna have more time to talk,
and that airs tonight on theCBN News Channel at 9:30 p.m.
Dr. Gottfried, always a pleasure.
Thanks so much for being here.
- Thanks, Lorie.
