Discover how movement, diet, and metabolic health play a crucial role in brain function and overall well-being. Learn the importance of restoring metabolism before engaging in brain-boosting activities, the connection between chiropractic care and neurodevelopment, and how simple exercises like cross crawls can enhance cognitive performance. Explore how physical movement impacts emotional health and why diet and hormone balance are key to brain recovery.
Dive into the benefits of keto for brain function, the link between dementia and glucose metabolism, and the surprising connection between sleep apnea and cognitive decline. Whether you're looking to improve mental clarity, prevent neurodegenerative diseases, or optimize brain health, this conversation is packed with essential insights you won’t want to miss.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:03 - Preface: When to Start Exercise for Brain Health
01:50 - Chiropractic and Brain Health
03:47 - Cross Crawl Exercises
05:35 - Movement and Brain Function
07:06 - Diet and Brain Recovery
08:46 - Keto and Brain Health
10:34 - Western Medicine & Chronic Disease
12:24 - Dementia and Glucose Metabolism
14:02 - Sleep Apnea and Brain Health
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:03] All right. So I've gotten some questions about what I talked about exercise, um, and rebuilding the brain for things like dementia, um that Alzheimer's like things like this, uh, post concussion, post traumatic brain injury, stuff, stuff. Um, so I want to preface this by saying that you can't do this until you restore the metabolic function or however you want to say it until you're sort of the chemistry until you get the nutrient levels back up in the brain. You get the cholesterol levels back up, you get the testosterone levels back up, and you get, the ATP production brought back up until you get those things done, until you, get the liver cleaned out and things like that. You can't start this. So this is one of those things that we do about, uh, sometimes the third, fourth month in sometimes, you know, second month, depending on where people are. Um, so you can actually create more problems with this than you can solve, um, if you do it too early. And I see a lot of people doing this because their doctors would be like, exercise is good for you. Go exercise. And then the symptoms and problems get worse. And the reason for that is that we go back to that, what we call the point of diminishing returns. The body can't regenerate, rebuild and heal from it. You're gonna have problems from it, so all right. So that's the thing. So if you have a family member with dementia, do not put them on this program. Send them to us and we'll go through it. But I wanna kind of go through anyway. Because if your body is healthy, then these are great things to keep in mind from the exercises that we're looking to do. So. One of the things that we always want to start with when we have somebody with neurodevelopmental issues, neurocognitive issues, things like that, is we want to kind of go back to the basics. Um, and your brain is literally built off of motion. so the information that comes into your brain from the outside, what you see vestibular to your balance, and then all the motion from all your joints, uh, build the brain.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:50] And this is why chiropractic is so critical to neurodevelopment. This is why it's so important for maintenance function and for general overall health is because of what it does. metabolically to the brain and all the information that comes in and how it rebuilds neuroplasticity and all that fun jazz. So you're gonna be getting adjusted when we do this as well, but we're gonna start off with things called cross crawl exercises. So, you literally have people get on the floor and crawl around on their hands and knees. This helps to kind of produce function. When you're doing that, you're making sure where the back is, where the head is, like they're looking up, so you get all that activation to the what we call the posters by in the back of the neck. Um, so they're looking up. And their eyes are up. So as you're bringing your eyes up, it changes the function of the information that goes into your brain from your eyes. And we'll have them crawl around like this quite a bit. One of the things that we will do that's really, really super beneficial is, again, when they're ready for it, we'll them in shorts. So shorts, no socks, no shoes. And we will have them crawl around outside in the sun. is with as little clothing as they are comfortably thinking can be in, uh, so we can get the most sun exposure to them. Uh, so you're also getting a grounding function because we're the frequency energetic function of the body is really important for that. Um, and so you getting grounding function and you're getting it in short bursts. Um, one of the things we always want to do is look at changing the energetic frequency function of all of these people who have any type of neurocognitive issue. Um. We want to start resetting and cholesterol functional. We want to start resetting that function and that charge. Um, so we haven't crawl around on an outside first, don't put these people directly on grounding sheets. Um, uh, it can be too much. Like they get detox reactions and things like that. So you got to kind of build them up. So the crawl around outside on the earth thing is fantastic. Um, it really kind of helps a giant amount of different things.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:47] You'll have them do it for about five, 10 minutes. So you kind of built up to this. Maybe you start doing them a couple of times a day. Then what you have them start doing is you haven't started doing, and you know. Core work, you have to start like, so when I say core work, remember that's pelvis and everything that attaches to it. So we can start doing body weight squats. We can start walking up small stairs. The body weight squat are usually first because walking up elevation, whether it's a six inch stair or whatnot, is gonna have vestibular play in it as well. So balance coordination function as well, and so that's gonna be a little bit step up. So you wanna be able to do those up downs, the squats. So you get a low chair. Um, that's at parallels where we start and we get used to standing up and sitting down and then we drop that a little bit lower. I try to get about four inches lower so you can get like, instead of being parallel, your, your angle of your D and your butt is kind of there. And so we have them stand up and down from that. Um, obviously with things they can hold onto and stuff like that. And then we have him start walking up and downstairs and then we start having them stand on one foot. And like with, there's all sorts of ways to thinking like there's a wall right here. They've got a handle right here. Like there's all sorts of things that they can stop that. And then once they kind of get used to standing on one foot, then you destabilize that surface with foam. And so they can standing on it there. And then we can slowly work up to my favorite exercise, which is single leg squats or single leg step ups. So you're basically just increasing the size of the stair they're stepping up on. And they get giant amounts of what we call a fair information or information from the joints and everything to the brain, from the hip, from the knee, from ankle, from toes. from the lower spine, the SI joints, so all this information, giant amount of information just flowing up to the brain and causing brain function to increase. I'm trying to stay as low level as I can on this.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:35] Okay, so what actually happens is all that information hits the cerebellum, the cerebelum forces the frontal lobe, the frontal lumb suppresses the temporal lobe and so we actually get suppression of the medullar function so you're gonna start seeing reductions and fear, hate, anger, terror. And so we get cognitive, uh, emotional, functional control as well. Uh, from these, uh this is one of the reasons why when you go, if you're all pissed off and you go take a walk or you go exercise, you're not a lot less pissed when you get done exercising, um, because that's what happens. That's the, that's the function to the brain. Um, but so those are, those are one of the big things that we'll do for that. Um, and as we start building these people back up, you'll start to see, um, lots and lots of things return. But remember, so these people are already going to be where their hormonal function is going to return. So they're going to be, their testosterone levels are going to be where they're supposed to be. Their D3 levels are gonna be where they're suppose to be and all these people's diets have been radically altered. So we're going have a much higher fat content, much higher protein content, Much, much lower, if not completely, uh, negated or completely taken away sugar function. So what ends up happening is that we get a lot more ATP to the brain. We get a little more oxygenation in the brain, we get a lot healing function in the brain. A lot of these people are going to be on BP 137 and TB 500. They're going be on Smoral and Epimoralin. And what that mix does is increases the, the actual growth hormone receptor sites. So we get a lot more punch. We got a lot of more effect out of our growth hormone and our testosterone. So not only are we rebuilding the brain, but we're rebuilding the body at a ridiculous rate. And so what you end up seeing is that these people start to get, they, they regain their balance and coordination.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:06] They start regaining, you know, joint function, they start reganing, you know, all sorts of cognitive conditional function, cognitive function, emotional control, all these things come back really, really quickly. because we're giving them everything the body possibly needs to regenerate and heal this. So, you know, it's not just, you know, I'll go slip, go put grandpa on these exercises and he'll get better or put yourself on these extra sizes and you'll get better. Unfortunately, the body and the brain are substantially more complex than that. But as long as you give them the nutrients they need, they will regenerate and heal. Um, and one of the other things about that as it radically reduces the glucose. So the sugar, the sugar toxicity that the brain has and the hormonal toxicity, specifically being insulin, toxicity the brain, has the diet and the exercise both radically help reduce that. Because any excess sugar that's in your body, your muscles will burn up, like real quickly as you're starting to do these exercises, specifically because a lot of these have lower extremity involvement. So legs and butt and that type of thing. And so as you using those larger muscle groups. It sucks that stuff out of the system a lot faster. So these things are fantastic. These exercises are fantastic for these people once they get there. But it's one of those things that, if you're working on dementia and you've gotten some, you've lucked out and you got somebody who understands metabolic function and dietary function, and they've started to put you into a path of, a lower glycemic, whether it's keto or not, I would highly recommend you get with someone who knows how to put people on keto and knows how. Cause not everybody can work through keto.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:46] Like that's one of those things that we don't talk about, but biochemically sometimes people can't use it. Um, and so like I talk about the cart, the, my patient who was on carnivore and her, he didn't produce enough sugar. And so she couldn't do it. Um, you know, I'm like work with somebody who knows how to do that, but that keto style diet, which we know, like we've, you know, all the stuff on epilepsy has shown that, you know, at the keto diet done properly is wildly beneficial to changing metabolic health and functional health. and uh, biochemical health, how you want to say it of the brain, you know, like you'll take people who have massive amounts of seizures, you fix their oxygenation issues and you fix their, you reset their diet to a higher fat diet, much, much much lower on the glucose function. And then bang, like seizures will stop like that in not every single time and every single person, but like, and a lot of people, like, you, you bring me the average epileptic and, you know, with dietary changes and we watch their sleep function and we detox them a little bit, give the body back the, the methylated B vitamins and it requires. And you'll see epilepsy just go through the floor. Um, it's really amazing. And this information has been out for 200 years, a hundred, at least a hundred years. Um, and you know, this is one of those things that the medical system suppresses because if you can fix people's dementia, if you could fix their, you know diabetes, if he can fix all that, if it can fix a lot of their problems without pills and just the diet, well, then that takes money out of the system. So Western medicine will never tell you about it. Um, we could probably fix, I would say If everybody did it right, 70% of all chronic disease would go away in the United States just by fixing diet and that would 100% bankrupt all the pharmaceutical companies, 100%. Because if you, you know, no more statin drugs, no more depression drugs, no, more. no more, no more. Lots of chronic pain would go away. All your diabetes, some of it would go way.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:34] A lot of your heart attacks and strokes would go, a lot of cancer would go. And that's why it's not being taught. It's really like, I'm not hearing this from anybody else. That's 100% the reason. Hopefully with RFK coming in, we'll be able to get some of this information out. But what we know for a fact is that the closer we get the body metabolically and whatnot back to original design, which means getting the chemicals that the body requires in and getting the body. the chemicals, the body wants out, out, whether we either never put those chemicals in the body, those toxins in the buddy, or we're able to shuttle out our metabolic waste faster. We will get healthier. Like it's a hundred percent of the time we've seen this every single time. Um, and so this has been a proven functional thing. So that's the goal, like to get these people back. And so hopefully with RFK, we'll get some of this stuff done. Um, but it's going to be, it's gonna be a slog. It's gonna to be a fight. It's going be a battle. Um, But yeah, so that's, that's. The exercise piece. Like I said. That piece in the chiropractic piece, the chriopractic piece is 100% critical of this because nothing will increase joint mechanoreception function more than chiropractic. There's nothing that's been studied that does more function for increasing information from the body to the brain than chriapractic because chiropractic's whole sole job is to remove that information without that inhibition or that block of information to and from the brain. It's its whole stated purpose. So getting adjusted usually twice a week is where a lot of these guys need. Sometimes it's three, but getting everybody adjusted and then exercising is really, really awesome. Yeah. So Jason, yeah, a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm starting to hear that dimension Alzheimer's is type three diabetes. Yeah, it is like you could easily make that. You could make that argument. Um, because one we have the things that create diabetes are glucose metabolism problems, which you 100% have an Alzheimer's and dementia and to insulin resistance problems, which you 100% having dementia.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:24] So like what you're looking at is so the, again, this is more information, more people want to know, but this is what it is. The receptor that moves sugar from the blood to the brain area, where we call the cerebral spinal fluid, it's called a glut one receptor. That glut one receptors wildly dependent upon insulin to tell her to turn it on and off, tell it what to do. So if you have high fasting insulin, yeah, if you have high-fasting insulin, what's going to be happening is that your blood, which is supposed to be between 80 and a hundred blood sugar is going to start dripping sugar in your cerebral spinal fluid space around your brain. That's supposed to 55 to 60. So 100% type two diabetes. is going to lead to sugar and glucose metabolism problems and insulin problems in the brain. So 100% it, you could call it type three diabetes. I wouldn't. Um, and the reason I wouldn' call it, type three, diabetes was I actually have a little bit of issue with this is because people go, well, I have type two diabetes. Therefore my brain is safe. That's a hundred percent wrong. Just if there's a fire coming towards your house, if you're like, well just because the fire hasn't gotten here, I don't have to worry about it. Yeah, you do. So it's one of those things where like, as soon as you recognize that you've got type two diabetes, you have to understand your heart, your blood vessels and your brain are all under attack. And as soon you recognize and you start adjusting it and fixing your type two diabetes, everything in your whole body gets better. Um, and that's, you know, that's a, there's some peptide work. There's some hormone work. Uh, there a giant amount of dietary work. There's sleep stuff. Um, sleep is big for this as well. I'll touch on that real quick. I think I got about a minute left. One of the things that happens when you're asleep is that your body, if you have sleep apnea specifically, and this is one of the things we go through intensely is you have any sleep apnea.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:02] What ends up happening is that when you startle yourself awake, the reason that you startling awake and in the process of starting you awake, you release adrenaline and cortisol. Those two things will spike your insulin every single time. And it will also dump a bunch of sugar into the bloodstream because you're in fight flight. And so what ends up happens is that you watch these people who have sleep apnia issues. And they've got horrible other issues in their body. They've got, you know, they've got, damaged the brain function. They've got, electrolyte function problems. They've got, insulin response functions. And a lot of these people have insulin resistance. You know, these people can't lose weight because all through the night you're dumping, you're jumping adrenaline, which wakes you up. And you're dumping sugar, which spikes your insulin. And then, you know, you you're holding those, that stuff there all night long. And so that's one of those big things. And so we've got to start working on getting people back to sleep. You have to look at oxygenation, centralized sleep apnea, not just obstructive sleep apnia, which is a big problem people get into, I'll get into that tomorrow, but that's basically where it is. So there's like, when we treat, the reason I like to treat dementia is because it requires all of the pieces to be put back together properly. But this is a Big Deal, hopefully people will start to recognize it and start treating it this way because the drugs they're giving people are just making it worse. So if you guys have any questions, just have questions@chalmerswellness.com Or drop me in the comments or hit me in DMs. Have a nice day. Thanks for your time.
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