DISCOVERED: THE SOLE IMPEDIMENT TO AN AGELESS BRAIN – PLUS 3 KEY INSIGHTS ON HOW TO OVERCOME IT

No drug will ever be able to restore lost memories or undo the damage that disease does to your brain. But this natural protocol based on 3 neuroscience discoveries just might be able to help you preserve your brain health so you needn’t worry so much about what science cannot do for you…

Allow me to tell you a story about the declining health of brains across the world today, and why the story need not apply to you.

If you are over the age of 45 years damage to the delicate machinery of your brain has likely already begun, though you will certainly remain unaware of what is happening to you for quite some time…

Are you willing to take a chance on the possibility of slowly losing your mind as you age? New research suggests it’s now mostly a matter of choice. Your choice. Keep reading the current page to find out what you can do to significantly lower your risk of cognitive decline.

By “likely” I mean that out of every 5 women who have reached 45 years of age, one will not only go on to develop severe cognitive impairment, but in the final years of her life she will experience all the misfortunes we associate with slow-motion brain death.

Men, because they tend not to live as long, do a little “better” in this regard. They will tend to travel the same road at about one half the rate of the women.

In recognition of the dire implications of this “new normal” for aging of the human brain a handful of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world recently went to war on your behalf…

Among them, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Biogen.

Each assembled a team of their best and brightest.

Leading scientific minds, similarly directed to an all out effort to blunt the effect of the number one cause of:

• Failing memory
• Bouts of confusion and disorientation
• Increasingly erratic behavior
• Loss of verbal fluency
• Social withdrawal
• Crumbling personality
• Inability to complete even simple tasks
• And, in the end, total dependence on others for survival in a battle which is ultimately ALWAYS lost…

Each of these companies, despite their enormous financial and scientific resources, impressive drug-discovery successes of the past, and the lure of future prescription drug riches beyond anything Wall Street investors could possibly imagine, failed utterly in their bid to engineer a drug to restore cognitive impairment [Refs. 1,2].

With each tanked effort the lesson hammered home has been that while clinical trials for prospective cancer drugs come back with a sliver of good news at least half the time [Ref. 3], for promising drugs that would fight cognitive decline the final drug approval rate is closer to 4 in every one thousand hopeful compounds tested [Ref. 4].

Even then, the drugs approved so far for medical use combat only the symptoms of cognitive decline, and not the root cause. In other words…

Approved “memory rescue” drugs neither eradicate nor prevent mental deterioration

Unfortunately, when it comes to arming you in the fight against cognitive decline, if someone hands you a weapon it won’t come in the form of a pill…

So big pharma has all but given up on ever being able to eradicate this dreadful condition that robs people of their dignity as it extinguishes their minds. In short, these companies have given up on YOU.

By rights, you should be upset about this. VERY upset.

Because now you’re effectively on your own.

If you have secretly been hoping for a “silver bullet” to decisively fight cognitive decline on your behalf – should you one day need the assistance – well, it appears you are out of luck.

You and the 150 million others worldwide who are expected to be affected by slowly eroding neural health by the year 2050. As I have said, you have every right to be upset about this. And yet…

Not everyone is disturbed about this unwelcomed news

Judging from the solicitations cluttering my inbox daily, a number of parties much smaller than the Pfizer’s and the Eli Lilly’s of this world have now succeeded not only in coming up with ways to fight off the debilitating influence of cognitive decline, but reverse it…

Not all astonishing tales involving the brain are untrue. Marian Diamond, the 1960’s neuroscientist who discovered brain cells can rewire at every stage of life, at the microscope she used to study Albert Einstein’s brain. Four thin slices arrived preserved in formaldehyde inside a mayonnaise jar. Diamond found the physicist’s brain especially rich in “glial” cells.

To hear them tell the story:

• It’s the junk food that reverses memory loss. Just two bites of this weird-looking food and your memories, intelligence, even your sense of humor come rushing back… in just 90 days!
• Boosts the size of your brain by up to 14 percent! The unlikely nutrient discovered growing on a tiny South Pacific island that produces 7 times more geniuses than anywhere else on earth…
• Brain-shrunken and robbed of his speech he contracted into the fetal position. But after this one simple meal plan he was able to wire a home generator, read Time Magazine, and joke with family again!
• It’s the single most important memory-health discovery of the century. Mixed with any diet, it strengthens the complete cognitive power of your brain. Learn people’s names, computer skills, even a new language!

As you have likely already guessed, these stories are pure nonsense. Malarkey. Bunkum. Hocus. Dare I repeat my point? Piffle and poppycock.

Not one of these sensational claims is supported by even a thread of scientific justification. And likely not one of their authors is the least bit worried about concocting their fantastic tales. That’s because…

These modern day snake oil salesmen are looking to use your brain against you

They are banking on the idea that you are frightened the truth about how to preserve the health of your brain may not be simple. They take delight in the notion that the mere prospect of complexity will do their job for them, paralyze your intellect, and that in your panic to ward off unwelcome lapses of memory and brain fog you will grasp unthinkingly at ANY solution to maintain lucidity, sharpness, and excellent recall.

These inbox hustlers are even more confident about their prospects for bamboozling you now that big science has declared itself on the ropes when it comes to defending you against the quiet neuronal destruction that takes hold in your brain during mid life and erupts decades later as incurable cognitive impairment.

I could go on about how deplorable this behavior is, but instead I am simply going to make a promise to you.

Unlike the “fake newsters” in your inbox, I will not try to mislead you about just how complex and challenging the science of lasting brain health has turned out to be. That’s because:

I don’t think I need to trick you into accepting the possibility of life-long mental clarity and performance

Not by conjuring fake hope with the pseudoscience equivalent of a showman’s slight of hand – a dazzling card trick framed as the result of extraordinary mental powers you too can acquire…

I don’t think I need to do this, because the story I wish to tell you about how to preserve the health of your brain has color and excitement of its own. It also contains more than enough real hope that I am compelled to believe you will want to hear it in its entirety.

The story itself is short. It will take me but just a few minutes of your time to relay it.

But the slow deterioration of your brain – what Nobel prizing-winning chemist Linus Pauling described as the most sensitive of all the organs in the human body – often passes as a drawn-out, agonizingly brutal affair…

One that can break the hearts of your loved ones as it slowly detaches you from your life and leaves behind the wisp of an entity no longer fully recognizable as the unique personality that has, so far, inhabited your every cell.

Allow me to relate to you the precise nature and time line of this slow demise, this death of the “conscious you”

I am qualified to do it because I have witnessed its devastating and irreparable influence close up. I watched it gut the life of someone I cared about deeply.

Nothing I ever did helped her one bit. The process that daily destroyed her brain seemed unstoppable. It hobbled her, degraded her, devoured her, and then killed her.

Sadly, it might have been avoided had she known what I know today.

None of it need ever happen to you, and if I have anything to do with it, by the telling of her story here I warrant none of it ever should.

That’s my goal. To share with you knowledge that would have made such a difference in my life and hers, had we only been aware of it when it could have helped.

Allow me just a few minutes and I’ll disclose to you how to massively increase the odds as the years go by that you’ll maintain the mental sharpness you’ve come to take for granted.

Let me show you how to improve your odds of retaining the memories no one else but you can carry forward and share with the world

As a result of what you learn here today, everything which has resided safely in your head until now will have a much better chance of remaining safe, resisting the mental-erosions of the slow-creeping epidemic of mid-life cognitive decline sweeping the globe.

But when it does go wrong… when as a result of ignoring everything I would have you learn about how to avoid the chaos that surrounds a life touched by a fading brain… well, you may be surprised about just how fast it can happen…

The automatic sliding door that caught my mother as she left the high street supermarket might not have knocked most people to the ground. But at 71 years of age she was “lucky” the fall broke nothing more than her wrist.

Off to the hospital she was taken, where she was assigned a bed for the night. But not before she was given anaesthetic for the pain and her arm was placed in a cast.

You can imagine my surprise the next morning, when I went to pick her up and discovered she had no idea who I was

“How could she forget who her own daughter is?” I demanded of the nurses I cornered outside her room. “In a single day?!”

I knew she had not hit her head in the fall. How could a broken wrist wipe away her memory of me? What on Earth was going on?!

The nurses insisted all they’d done was fix her wrist and that she would need to see her general practitioner.

Well, it quickly turned into more than a visit to the local G.P.

As the specialist tacked my mother’s brain scan to the light box in front of us he made some remark about the science being more than just the “fancy physics and large magnets” you see in the glossy brochures. But that without the expensive device in the other room which allowed him to see deep inside her head… my guess would be about as good as his.

He studied the light box and raised a finger.

The MRI scan was about to reveal a ghostly side of my mother, one that for years had remained entirely hidden to me

“There,” he said, outlining a dark butterfly-shaped region at the center of her brain. “Unfortunately, we see this a lot.”

No one ever expects they will one day be receiving news about the results of a brain scan…

I found out later how right he was. There was nothing truly exceptional about the state of my mother’s deteriorating brain. I’ve since discovered that something unprecedented is taking place in the brains of virtually every grown adult in the western world.

At a time when advances in early-warning and treatment technologies are causing casualty rates in oncology and cardiovascular clinics to plummet, the exact opposite is happening when it comes to the health of our brains.

Brain atrophy rates are quietly going up.

It is as though we are being slowly infiltrated by a sinister, virtually invisible adversary capable of nothing less than mentally hollowing us from the inside out.

We seem to have arrived at a point where creeping cognitive decline is now almost a rite of passage as we settle into old age

It certainly did not used to be this way, and it is definitely not normal.

So what IS normal, you might be wondering to yourself. What can you reasonably expect as you get older? And what kind of unusual and unexpected behavior falls into the category of normal age-related decline when it comes to brain function?

In particular, what ought to constitute signs for real concern?

Take a moment and ask yourself if you have recently run up against any of the following situations:

• You’re driving down the road at night and suddenly you realize you have no idea what street you are on because you took a wrong turn – something you have never done before.
• You chance upon a news story, one that reminds you of someone you have not thought about for months and you realize to your astonishment you cannot recall their name. At all.
• You head down to the laundry room to wash clothes and when you get there you realize you’ve not brought the laundry detergent with you and now you need to go back for it.
• You’re having a conversation and suddenly the word you want to use won’t come, even though you’re sure you know what it should be.
• You are reading aloud and are suddenly sobered by the realization you’re not as rapidly fluent with your speech as you once used to be.

If any of this sounds familiar… you can (probably) relax.

Minor inconveniences due to faulty attention span, temporary lapse of memory, or a slowing of regular processing speed are not necessarily signs that your mental functioning is breaking down. At least not to any extent outside the normal expectations associated with age-related cognitive decline.

As with the rest of your body, the performance of your brain begins to naturally wind down once you have reached your peak child-bearing years.

A little more disturbing perhaps, is that this happens a lot sooner than “old age”. But how much sooner?

A study in the British Journal of Medicine showed that cognitive decline can begin as early as age 45

Over a period of 10 years researchers looked at the rate of decline in mental reasoning of 7390 British civil servants aged 45-49 years [Ref. 5]. The authors of the study reported that, for both men and women, the rate of cognitive decline for the tracked decade was 3.6 percent.

This might not sound like a very big change in mental function. But the corresponding rate of decline for men aged 65-70 years, the age range more commonly associated with large changes in mental performance, was not even three times as large as for the younger group. For women, the loss of performance 20 years on was found to have only slightly more than doubled.

This result proves that the belief that cognitive decline starts late in life is a myth.

If you have reached middle age it has likely already begun.

But in my mother’s case the damage went well beyond normal “wear and tear” in the brain. By the time of her fall the structure of her brain had altered dramatically. The shocking thing about this was that for years no one around her noticed what was happening to her. That includes me.

I saw my mother frequently in her sixties, the years during which the hole at the center of her brain must have been expanding and causing behaviors others would eventually have cottoned onto, had she not lived alone.

Looking back, I realize now there WERE signs – perfectly obvious warning signs I simply failed to spot…

In her fifties she would catch the bus into town to meet me. But she often forgot the rendezvous point. I would spend ages walking the streets to find her.

Meryl McCullough, my mother, sometime in early 1950s, as I remember her long before her fight with cognitive impairment.

I should have thought her forgetfulness was strange as my mother had always been sharp as a tack when I was a girl.

She had been a librarian, and loved to read and write. Some of her poems, which I found years later, left me in awe. She was the last person in my life I would ever have suspected would be susceptible to the slow creep of cognitive decline.

But it turned out being a bookworm offered her no protection.

All her life she remained in perfect health, right up until her doctor suggested a brain scan. I’ve since learned that being healthy guarantees no safeguard either. It takes a lot more than that to fortify your brain against atrophy and the gradual erasure of your mind.

Looking back, what I brushed off as forgetfulness I should have recognized as something else entirely. But back then I had no idea.

In her sixties my mother would visit me, and leave behind clues about her changing mental state.

I would find household items in odd places. A hairbrush in the refrigerator. Gardening gloves in the oven…

The study of brain science has revealed large and undesirable changes taking place inside our skulls much earlier than was previously believed to be the case. Yet this insight represents just one sliver of an entire rethinking about the way our brains work.

Until very recently scientists believed brain cell growth and a restructuring of the 100 trillion connections that facilitate the flow of information inside our heads was just not possible. Not after we reach adulthood.

We know now this point of view is not entirely correct. All throughout your life your brain can change, possibly even increase in size in some cognitively crucial regions like the hippocampus, the area of the brain which plays a vital role in the formation and retrieval of memories.

Because of this, there is absolutely no reason to believe declining mental performance and worsening brain health is a natural consequence of getting older. Brain science is telling us we might actually be able to push our brains in the opposite direction.

But changes which signal dramatic IMPROVEMENTS in brain performance and health don’t happen automatically.

For most people just the opposite takes place. The health of their brain WORSENS because they end up encouraging all the wrong changes to it.

In my mother’s case that butterfly-shaped stain on her MRI indicated an absence of brain matter in her hippocampus. The part of her brain responsible for memory had shrunk so much that the rest of her brain must have been compensating for the poor performance. All it took to destabilize the fragile state of her mind was a dose of anaesthetic and the trauma of being hospitalized for a few hours.

The real damage to her brain had probably begun decades ago. The same damage that could well be taking place in you, quietly, as you read this page.

You wouldn’t know it is happening. There will be no signs that important brain structures and neural pathways are breaking down.

The tragedy of the faltering brain is that it incurs irreversible damage in complete secrecy and silence

Even today there is no standardized test to detect a brain in an early state of peril.

Your doctor will be quick to take your blood pressure, and if it is too high, warn you about the impending threat of heart disease. But when it comes to your brain… he checks out entirely!

He doesn’t think to query you about your mental health until you are showing signs you may have lost your marbles!

But by then it is too late. Increasingly the evidence is showing the damage at this stage is WELL beyond repair.

As you may know, cognitive decline is typically associated with “brain plaque”.

This plaque is a build-up of a protein fragment called amyloid-beta, molecules of which are believed to clump together in the space between the connecting parts of communicating neurons – the synapses, as they are called.

Once “gummed” the synapses are no longer able to transmit signals from one brain cell to the next – they go quiet

This loss of signaling causes the neurons to fall away from each other. Once that happens they become obselete, and marked for destruction by the brain’s built-in maintenance system.

That maintenance system is made up of “glial” cells. These helper cells mop up foreign invaders and clear away debris left behind by dying brain cells. Because of this the glials turn out to be very important to the story of lasting brain health. So we’ll come back to them shortly.

As for those sticky clumps of amyloid-beta, they are the exact target for which those drugs mentioned earlier were pursued like the Holy Grail by pharmaceutical companies. For decades the giant drug makers were convinced that clearing our brains of that one tiny protein would be the key to ensuring lasting brain health.

Brain matter, up close. The brown regions show amyloid beta protein plaques surrounding a neuron. The black shapes show neurons filled with tau protein tangles.

Well, it hasn’t turned out that way. Even when drugs have been applied with some success to clear away the unwanted plaques the symptoms of a brain in deep distress have persisted.

That’s probably because by the time someone has undeniable signs of cognitive impairment more than HALF the critical neural pathways and brain cells responsible for normal brain function have been either damaged or completely destroyed.

Getting rid of nuisance protein at this stage is not going to restore the missing half of your brain!

Most people would be shocked to learn how much the brain wastes away under the damaging influence of the amyloid plaques that spread to every part of it. Shrinkage is a hallmark of the brain afflicted with gradually worsening memory loss.

Perhaps the most incredible part of this story is just how much your brain will compensate for itself as it continues to contract and lose mass as time goes on.

On the one hand a sudden stroke could kill off an entire third of your brain and the result would be a catastrophic shutdown of some of its most vital functions. You may lose speech, control over one entire side of your body, the ability to regulate mood and emotions… A huge swathe of your personality may vanish in an instant.

But the slow destruction of the same amount of brain mass, taken neuron by neuron as the years pass?

As it quietly goes about its work of dismantling your brain over a period of decades persistent neuronal dissolution is like a thief that works hard to disguise from you what it is doing.

It does so by allowing your brain enough time to exploit redundant pathways and every possible efficiency available to it to compensate for the ever-shrinking number of ways it can figure out how to get things done.

Finally your brain runs out of options, hits a wall, and the true unraveling of your mind begins

I think that’s what happened to my mother. All it took was one small fall to push her brain over the edge and cause a rip in the fragile tapestry that remained of her mind.

“That’s Carolyn,” she would tell me when I tried to cement our relationship with an old photograph that showed us together. “Do you know her?”

I would try to jog her memory by asking her how she thought she knew me.

“School? Did we go to the same school?” she would ask.

At the weekends I would sit in the chair beside her bed in the memory care facility and stare at the “clock” on the wall. It never told the time of day. Instead the display read: “NOW IT’S SUNDAY MORNING”. Outside her room another declared: “IT’S TIME FOR BREAKFAST”

After a while I learned to live with the idea that my mother would probably never again acknowledge me as her Carolyn. My name would never again cross her lips in any meaningful way.

But with my son it was different. I just never could forgive her for being unable to remember his face and his role in her life.

Of all the cruelties that loss of memory inflicts on those it leaves behind, this may be the greatest of them all – that we come to hate the ones we love through no fault of their own, but because the act of abandonment demands some kind of price.

I cannot tell you how many times I sat in that chair across from my mother as she wept for seemingly no reason at all and I swore to myself for the sake of my son that I would not become her.

Yet every year that passes this promise becomes harder to keep. Harder for me, and harder for you. Because, little by little, a new truth has begun to emerge…

Something odd is going on, and it is rattling those who work in the field of brain health

Dedicated professionals in epidemiology who have devoted their lives to unraveling the mysteries of slow brain atrophy are lately sitting up.

They have found themselves staring at glowing reports that crow of triumphs in brain health and ever-falling rates of cognitive decline – and they are shaking their heads. Because they know something is not adding up. Deep down they know the numbers cannot be right…

And a few of those who have noticed are beginning to speak up.

Like Dr. Walter A. Rocca, a brain health expert from the Mayo Clinic and the Rochester College of Medicine, who has studied the question of brain atrophy rates closely.

In 2018, at a brain science conference held in Turin, Italy, Dr. Rocca surprised his audience when he declared the incidence of brain atrophy could well be on the rise.

Unmistakable signals of neurological foul play

We seem to be growing increasingly susceptible to the life-shattering influence of brain detoriation in old age and we are not sure of the cause.

Take a look at the following chart. It shows sneaky but apparently irrefutable evidence for the probable rise in rates of cognitive impairment. The graphic reveals mortality rates associated with a number of conditions for U.S. centenarians (people over 100 years of age):

Percentage change in death rate for the top 10 causes of death among U.S. centenarians between the years 2000 and 2014 [image credit: CDC]

Now, you don’t get to live to be 100 years of age, let alone survive much beyond that, if your cardiovascular health is poor! So looking at the brains of the super old is one way to separate out the incidence rate of deaths due to brain atrophy (neuronal loss) from the neurovascular influence (because those folks tend not to make it to 100 years).

And as you can see, between the years 2000 and 2014 the rate of deaths due to brain disease in the super old shot up by almost 120 percent.

In the same graph, the rate of increase in hypertension (high blood pressure) isn’t all that far behind. This might not be an accident.

That’s because high blood pressure is one of the leading risk factors for brain atrophy [Ref. 8], and is easily understood because of the damage it does to the small blood vessels of the brain that supply brain cells with vital nutrients and oxygen.

If you leave this page with only ONE piece of advice about the preservation of your brain health it should probably be this:

Get your blood pressure checked, and if your doctor tells you it is high, find ways to lower it!

Nor is this rise in brain-atrophy related death rate just a trend in the very old, as this graph of the change in all-age mortality rate for the same period (the the graph above) shows:

Percentage changes in selected causes of death (all ages) between 2000 and 2014. Only the incidence of brain-atrophy related deaths rose dramatically. Created from data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

So now that we know the threat of brain atrophy appears to be on the rise, what might be the cause?

And is there anything you can do to significantly IMPROVE your odds of preserving the health of your brain as you get older?

I am going to show you that there ARE actions you can take, and provided you are not already in the latest stages of cognitive decline, that you can likely avoid its increasingly pervasive influence.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Carolyn Hansen

I have been a life-long practitioner of physical fitness and healthy nutrition, and today I am a passionate brain health advocate after witnessing a family member succumb to the ravages of early-onset brain atrophy. You have already heard a portion of the story of my mother’s battle with persistent brain shrinkage, which she lost a few short years after her diagnosis.

If you have been fortunate enough to be spared the hardship and pain that accompanies failing brain health in a loved one you may be unclear about the progression of the condition and why, in many instances, death soon follows.

Allow me another minute and I will sketch for you a brief summary of how this comes about.

Your brain is an incredibly complex structure composed of 100 billion individual neural cells, each of which communicates with as many as 10 thousand of its neighbors. All up, there might be as many as 100 trillion different points of connection.

These numbers are so huge that we cannot possibly fathom their true meaning.

But perhaps what we can appreciate is that at the center of each network of connections is a single cell, a “neuron” that uses long finger-like projections to reach out and touch its neighbors. These fingers are “dendrites” and the places where they come into contact with their neighbors are “synapses”.

Across these synapses flow all the chemical communication that determines your unique expression, or personality. This means:

The health of your synapses affects every thought, emotion, sensation, movement, and memory that will ever be set into motion within you

If anything should disrupt the flow of information across one or more of these synaptic “gaps” then the neuron ceases to function to its full capacity. It becomes impaired.

Synapses in the brain are found at the end of axons that transmit electrical impulses from one neuron to the next.

Luckily, with so many redundant connections built into each and every neuron (the thousands of dendrites and their terminating synapses), it takes a LOT to go wrong before that brain cell is so badly impaired the rest of your brain regards it more a liability than an asset. That’s when it gets marked for destruction and is promptly eliminated.

This is how your brain can quietly shrink once you have reached middle age, and yet for a decade or longer there may be absolutely no sign of what is happening to you. Neurons quietly blink out of existence but you remain as vital, personable, sharp and as lucid as you have ever known yourself to be.

But eventually they arrive. The odd lapses of concentration. The missed appointments you put down to being overly distracted.

Then it’s misplaced keys, a vanished remote control, the name of an old acquaintance you suddenly can no longer recall…

Increasingly you find yourself relying on memory aids and electronic devices (a kind of artificial memory) to recall important information required to complete daily activities.

Your job performance suffers. You tell yourself that you no longer “enjoy” your work. But it’s more than that. And while you might not be able to admit you are becoming less reliable, more frequently at fault, others are beginning to notice…

Soon you become dependent on family members to recall important details because devices are beginning to seem confusing and cumbersome. You fail to notice your motor skills aren’t quite what they once were. Loading the dish washer – something you never thought twice about before – now seems more difficult with each passing month…

As vital connections in your brain begin to break down in massive numbers everything changes

The world you once thought you understood becomes foreign and frightening to you. It no longer functions the way it once did.

Nor do the people you thought you once knew seem as familiar, people whose faces and voices have begun to change. Increasingly they seem to be replaced by strangers who appear out of nowhere to offer assistance as though you were a child. Someone incapable of making your own decisions. Someone unable to get yourself dressed, find a way to feed yourself, and navigate your way to the bathroom.

With gradual loss of mobility eventually there comes a bed-ridden state of existence and round-the-clock care. This immobility increases vulnerability to infection, including pneumonia (infection of the lungs) which can often prove fatal.

In the final months your atrophied brain deteriorates so much you lose control of your ability to swallow and you become susceptible to death by malnutrition and dehydration.

At this stage even forced feeding cannot keep you alive

It is horrible to witness such a state of affairs play out, as I have seen it do. And if I’m going to be honest with you, there is a terrible guilt that goes along with it.

When my mother returned from the hospital after breaking her wrist I was forced to give up my training to take care of her. I was scared to leave her by herself.

At first it was hard to be solely responsible for the life of another. But it got so much tougher as the months wore on.

Finally it got to the point where I could not leave her alone for a single minute lest she begin in on some strange new behavior that might harm her. Every tiny object in the house I had to hide away in case she come upon it and try to eat it.

With every unexpected sound in the dead of night I would leap from my bed and rush through the darkness to her room. Each time dreading that I might be plunged into some new situation that would require me to pull her back from the brink of disaster. In the end I had to have her admitted to a facility. I held out for 6 months, but I could take it no more.

If someone had come to me with the promise of a “magic pill” to restore my mother’s mind I would have leaped at it. Even if all it did was placate my mother so that I could find time to restore my own sense of sanity, in all likelihood I would have paid the price, even if it bankrupted me. But…

There is no pill that will help. Certainly not one that will restore a damaged brain

Even the drugs that claim to slow progression of brain shrinkage have a checkered track record.

That’s because the process of neuronal death has turned out to be incredibly complex. It involves a multitude of factors. No one drug could possibly deal with them all because most drugs target one specific biological process. This is by design. If a pharmaceutical company tested a drug not ultra specific in its expected behavior the company might discover the drug acting more like a poison than a silver bullet.

For example, Donepezil (trade name Aricept), Rivastigmate (Exelon), and Galantamine (Razadyne) are all approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration to treat mild to moderate brain shrinkage.

Each of these drugs works by targeting acetylcholine, a key neural signaling molecule (neurotransmitter) that tends toward exceedingly LOW levels in the atrophied brain.

This is a big problem, because not only is acetylcholine critical for learning and memory, but it facilitates signaling between nerve cells and muscle cells. It plays a vital role in activities both voluntary (lift yourself up off the couch) and involuntary (heartbeat, digestive function, bladder control, etc). So it’s no exaggeration to say that:

Without acetylcholine to fire the muscles that pump blood glucose and oxygen throughout your body you would be dead within minutes

Donepezil, Rivastigmate, and Galantamine increase acetylcholine by inhibiting an enzyme that acts like a bolt-cutter, chopping the acetylcholine molecule in two so that it breaks off the acetylcholine receptor on neurons and can be recycled for use.

That’s what helps to keep brain and muscle cells firing when brain atrophy has begun to take its toll.

Another drug approved for use with patients experiencing severe memory loss is Memantine (Namenda). It works by latching onto the brain’s NMDA receptors, to which glutamate binds. Glutamate is the chief excitatory neurotransmitter and is responsible for all signaling in the hippocampus.

The trouble here is that neurons in the shrinking brain tend to have insufficient access to food (glucose) and the repair mechanisms needed to handle the damage which accrues in such a high-energy environment. The result is that too much NMDA stimulation in a given brain cell eventually triggers the self-destruct mechanism and leads to the cell’s death. Use of Memantine slows down the rate of neural destruction.

In each case the applied drug is very specific in its application, alleviates some of the symptoms of brain deterioration, but does not stop or reverse the process. These “memory loss” drugs also come with substantial risk of side effects, including nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite and more frequent trips to the bathroom. The bottom line is this:

All these drugs do is buy a little more time. They do not restore lost brain function

Nor is it likely any drug in the future ever will. So for lasting brain health we must not depend on one showing up.

Perhaps you’ve begun to worry the situation is looking rather grim! I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so. But… I promised you I would restore hope for the health of your brain and that’s exactly what I intend to do.

I am able to make that promise, and fulfil it, because of the following solution to better brain health that does not depend on the arrival one day of a currently non-existent drug.

And it certainly doesn’t depend on your willingness to believe in miraculous memory-restoring herbs brought back from Genius Island, or a stunning one-hour brain technology that stops brain shrinkage in its tracks, without side effects or a prescription.

To explain how this solution works – this protocol – I first need to bring you up to speed on 3 key revelations about factors which contribute to brain shrinkage.

Each of these revelations is equally applicable, whether we are talking about a condition apparently as innocuous as mild cognitive decline (which in 1 out of 3 cases devolves to something a great deal more worrisome), or it is one of the major brain afflictions.

INSIGHT #1: BRAIN INFLAMMATION IS THE KEY DRIVER OF NEURODEGENERATION

For many decades central nervous system specialists believed that diseases of the brain were in large part driven by the genes. That is to say, you inherited your risk of disease.

Inflammation that causes pain in your joints and muscles you will notice. But the danger of low-grade inflammation in your brain… That’s much harder to detect.

But this belief in genetic influence as a major driver of brain maladies turns out to be wrong. Inherited risk amounts to only a very small part of the total brain disease risk you are exposed to over the course of a lifetime.

Instead, another unrelated but common factor has been identified as playing a HUGE part in the development of these diseases.

That factor is chronic inflammation.

We have all, at some point in our lives, dealt with this natural response of the body to injury. We scrape a knee, the area swells, turns red for a few days, and then settles down and returns to normal. In other words we experience the normal healing cycle. But with chronic inflammation there is no return to the normal state. The injured region remains on a state of “high alert”. We do not heal.

Inflammation is a normal part of our body’s immune system response to tissue damage and the presence of unwelcome, potentially harmful microbes.

The trouble begins when the immune system gets the wrong message

Instead of attacking a legitimate threat it will direct its wrath against the body’s own tissues. This can happen when an area of the brain becomes chronically inflamed – a likely outcome, for example, when brain cell synapses become clogged with amyloid-beta protein fragments.

Researchers investigating the causes of brain disease have found that chronic inflammation also accompanies the early stages of those diseases.

Now, it could turn out that inflammation proves NOT to be the primary cause of brain atrophy.

But there seems to be little disagreement among brain experts that chronic inflammation pushes along abnormal states of brain health, dramatically worsening them over time.

This is not just true of the brain, but of all organs in the body. Wherever chronic inflammation is discovered to have been quietly residing for extended periods of time, dramatically worsening health almost always follows.

Therefore, any protocol that works to eliminate your risk of chronic inflammation in the brain should be considered to have the potential to significantly improve your odds of lasting brain health.

What that means is this: If you are worried about the threat of cognitive decline in the coming years or decades, you should also be worried about the inflammation that may be going on in your body right NOW.

Not 20 years or even 10 years down the line, but today.

This is the FIRST major insight into what to look for in a comprehensive science-based protocol for lasting brain health. Because it raises an obvious question: What exactly should you be doing right now to combat the kind of inflammation that would one day rob you of your quality of life by slowly destroying your brain?

It is the answer to this question that leads us to the second revelation about how best to preserve your cognitive faculties – maybe even your sanity…

INSIGHT #2: THIS COMPOUND DISCOVERED IN STRAWBERRIES INHIBITS CHRONIC BRAIN INFLAMMATION

It is remarkable how often plant-based extracts have proven to work just as well or better as a form of medicine than any drug devised in the laboratory.

Potent neuro-inflammation killer – the common strawberry.

Still, when it comes to the human brain you might be surprised to learn that one of the leading candidates for a breakthrough in brain health preservation is the strawberry.

Recent research into the biochemical properties of strawberries has revealed a small molecule called fisetin that can improve cognition [Ref. 9]. In other words, eating strawberries might actually improve your brain function.

Scientists have been able to show that fisetin performs its magic by significantly lowering brain inflammation, a likely key driver in the development of brain shrinkage [Ref. 10].

So, does this mean that eating fisetin-rich strawberries over the course of your lifetime could protect you against brain damage?

Unfortunately the answer seems to be no.

Because to gain the desired fisetin-derived neuroprotection you would have to consume at least 10 pounds of strawberries every day. You would be eating strawberries to the exclusion of every other food type. Every day. For your entire life!

Luckily, it turns out that strawberries are not the only food you can eat to lower inflammation throughout your body and your brain. Fisetin isn’t the only natural compound that acts as a potent anti-inflammatory agent.

There are dozens of natural foods available at your supermarket that have now been identified as having neuroprotective properties. In fact, according to a number of nutritionists specializing in the health of the brain…

The neuroprotective strawberry is not even at the top of their list!

Unfortunately there’s not enough space on this page to provide you with a detailed summary of what these foods are, or how they work to protect your brain.

But, if you keep reading, I’ll tell you how to find out everything you might want to know about how to fortify your diet with foods that will significantly reduce your risk for cognitive decline.

I will tell you how to help guard both yourself and your loved ones from the kind of anguish my mother and the rest of my family experienced in the years after she was diagnosed with severe brain shrinkage.

I will return to this shortly. But before I do I first want to bring to your attention the final of my 3 key revelations about the progression of neuronal abnormalities of health.

This one has to do with a happy choice I made early in my life about how I would spend the remainder of my days. While I could not have guessed as to importance of making the right decision at the time, I am convinced my life might have turned out VERY different – and not nearly so well – had I taken a different path.

It was a path I hope you’ll also decide is appropriate for you once you understand the benefits for the health of your brain.

It also happens to address yet another way to guard against the brain-unfriendly processes of inflammation.

INSIGHT #3: LOW PHYSICAL FITNESS PROMOTES CHRONIC BRAIN INFLAMMATION AND COGNITIVE DECLINE

Before I tell you about one of the most promising developments in the science of lasting brain health I want to ease your mind.

If, as I have been telling you, there really is no hope for any drug, surgery, or other “technical fix” to restore cognitive function lost to neuronal damage, you may have begun to worry that the fate of your brain, of your mind no less, is beyond your control. You may be concerned that what is lost over time can never be returned to you.

But as you’ll see, that’s not entirely the case.

Science is revealing that to some extent you CAN reclaim lost memory capacity. Moreover, you can get back lost reasoning ability, emotional stability, and a host of other neurological functions which, left unchecked, poor neuronal health could cause to disappear forever. In a moment I’ll explain how this is possible, what its connection is with physical fitness, and what it all means for you.

First, though, why it is I can speak with such authority on this topic…

I have spent a significant portion of my life devoted to the pursuit of physical fitness. But not because I was born with an innate desire to huff and puff, get sweaty, and enjoy all the hard-earned psychological benefits which the release of endorphins provide after a strenuous workout. Instead…

I brainwashed myself into accepting the idea that only exercise could save me

And this will sound like a cliche, but it is absolutely true – save me from a fate much worse than death.

I am talking about the highly unpleasant state of affairs that marks the end of life for most people today.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the top 15 causes of death in the United States, which amount to about 80 percent of all U.S. deaths, over 90 percent are attributable to disease [Ref. 11]. This means your odds of dying from some chronic illness – one that foretells of a miserable final few months (perhaps even years) spent fighting the inevitable – are greater than 72 percent.

Think about that for a moment. Roughly 3 out of every 4 people are slated for a very sticky end – the kind no one should have to go through.

Maybe you’ll get lucky. You’ll be that fourth person who escapes the odds

I could tell you I certainly hope that’s the case. But these days I don’t depend on hope to get me through much of anything, let alone a health crisis. And nor should you.

I put hope aside in my late twenties when I watched my father in law lose his battle with cancer.

Unlike my mother’s death, which she inched towards in the remote confines of a nursing home more than two decades later, his passing played out before my eyes in gory detail when I became his care giver. It was an experience I will never forget – one that utterly changed me.

Going into it I was a youthful, carefree spirit who enjoyed pushing the social limits with her friends at the weekends. By the time I came out of it I was someone who understood very clearly that her time in this world was limited.

Nor was it guaranteed to unfold in the way I might wish. If I had once taken for granted the notion that at the age of 90 years I might die happily in my sleep, or instantly be stuck dead with a massive heart attack, now I was saddled with visions of alternate futures utterly disquieting and gruesome.

Living through that episode literally scared me straight to the gym

And for the past 40 years I’ve scarcely been out of it.

Drinking, smoking, eating whatever tasted good… throttling back and always taking it easy on myself…

I took a hard look at myself and it was crystal clear that if I did not want to suffer the same kind of fate as my father in law I needed to take MUCH better care of myself. I couldn’t allow disease any foothold in my body whatsoever.

I went from a frame of mind in which what I wanted for myself in the next few weeks was replaced by a concern about what I wanted for myself at the end of the next few decades.

The glossy posters on my walls of rock and roll bad boys came down. I stopped visiting the local liquor store for party supplies and the cartons of Pall Malls I frittered away with my friends in the dimly-lit, smoky disco joints at the other end of town.

Up went posters of an exercising Jane Fonda in purple spandex and striped leg warmers

I joined Jazzercise class and threw my body into the beat of eighties pop music. Then it was bicycling, marathons, bodybuilding…

When I began working out in the gym something DID happen. To my body and my brain. Suddenly those muscle magazine ads weren’t corny at all!

Exercise turned into a religion for me.

The threat of cancer had intimidated me into becoming physically fit, into strengthening my body for the challenges I might face in later life. It never occurred to me back then I might also be shoring up the crucial factors that contributed to the health of my brain.

I only learned about that aspect of physical fitness much later when trying to understand what might have happened to my mother.

But evidence for physical fitness as a vitally important requirement for superior brain health has been building for a surprising long time, including the observation that only 5 percent of highly fit women deal with any form of cognitive impairment.

Perhaps even more surprising, the same research [Ref. 12] is showing that compared to women of medium physical fitness:

Highly fit women have their odds of cognitive decline reduced by a stunning 88 percent!

When I said I got lucky when I made the decision to actively pursue a state of high physical fitness for myself I meant it. If a drug were developed that dropped your odds of cognitive impairment to one eighth of what it might be otherwise, that drug would be a blockbuster worth almost any price the company that came up with it cared to ask.

So what exactly does “highly fit” mean in this instance? And how does fitness translate into better recall, sharpness of mind, and all-round cognitive ability as we age?

Perhaps the earliest evidence for the strong neuroprotective effect of fitness comes from a primary health care study into mortality rate carried out in 1968 on 1,462 women from Gothenburg, Sweden. The Prospective Population Study of Women (PPSW) ultimately ran for a period of 44 years. Three observations about the women who enrolled in the study are of especial interest to us:

• The women were middle-aged. Their ages ranged from 38 years to 60 years, with a mean of about 50 years. So observations on these women began during mid-life, the age at which neurodegeneration quietly takes root in the brain, its effects not typically to be observed for a decade or more.
• 191 of the women participated in a cardiovascular fitness test. This allowed the researchers to assess each woman’s peak workload capacity (so that they could be categorized as having low fitness, medium fitness, or high fitness)
• It was a LONG study. The cognitive health of the women tested for cardiovascular fitness was tracked for up to 44 years, from 1968 to 2012.

In 2018 a study of the effect of midlife cardiovascular fitness on cognitive impairment was published in the journal Neurology by Helena Hörder and her colleagues from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden [Ref. 12]. By analyzing the results of the PPSW study they showed just how vitally important it is to remain fit if you want to reduce your risk of brain shrinkage in later life.

The Prospective Population Study of Women has shown that fitness at mid life translates into potentially more than an extra decade of high brain performance.

In particular, high physical fitness during mid-life provided the massive measured risk reduction of 88 percent quoted above.

The fitness test was only carried out once. The women’s heart rates were monitored as they exerted themselves on a stationary cycle.

They warmed up on the cycle for 6 minutes, rested for the next 5 minutes, then they performed a “peak workload test” where they cycled as hard as they could for up to 6 minutes, or until they could go no more.

The high-fitness women, of which there were 40 out of the group of 191 tested, managed to generate an average of at least 120 watts of power at peak workload. The medium fitness women produced between 80 and 120 watts.

None of the women in the high fitness group went on to develop brain shrinkage

Just two of them suffered any form of cognitive impairment (5 percent). In contrast 25 percent of the medium fitness women (of which there were 92) developed some form of cognitive impairment, half of those involving cases of brain shrinkage.

What did the study prove?

For one thing, that when the heart is healthy so is the brain with which it shares a body.

But the science also showed that one of the most important ways by which physical activity helps the brain remain healthy is through its modulating effect on INFLAMMATION – a process we have already identified as perhaps the most significant driving force in the escalation of cognitive decline [Refs. 13,14].

We now know regular exercise significantly lowers inflammation in the body and in the brain.

A measure of this effect is provided by C-reactive protein (CRP), one of the markers of inflammation your doctor will look for when you get your blood tested during a routine check up [Ref. 15]. CRP levels tend to plunge when you incorporate exercise into your routine.

This reduction of inflammation in the body is reason enough to regard physical activity as a potent protector of your brain against the normal processes of age-related cognitive decline. Better yet, as a protective shield against the abnormal processes that precede brain shrinkage.

Pottering around in her garden did not permit my mother to take advantage of the beneficial connection between physical work and mental fortitude. She simply did not expend enough energy on her flower-growing activities. On the other hand…

I have benefitted immensely over the years from the association between physical activity and lower brain inflammation

You’ll see exactly how I’ve managed to do this shortly.

Right now though, I want to acknowledge that you might well be feeling as though I’ve tossed you in at the deep end. I’ve certainly thrown a lot of science at you! But as I mentioned at the beginning of this page, it’s the realities of brain science that are going to provide you with a way to reliably maintain brain function and lower your risk of brain shrinkage.

Still, I’m going to take a moment to back up and return to the period that started me on my quest for better brain health. The period initiated by my mother’s sudden mental decline.

By the time my mother’s brain began to collapse in on itself I had unwittingly shed myself of the same sedentary habits that would condemn her final years to a stressful chapter in which she passed in and out of recognition of her family.

Her shriveled hippocampus, the source of the tell-tale insect-shaped blotch that would one day illuminate a brain scan and prompt her doctor’s grim diagnosis, was letting go of memories at the same time I was building out my own fortress of neural connections.

As I stacked metal plates onto Olympic-sized bars in the gym, and in the mirror measured my outward progress in terms of the number of pounds of added muscle and lost fat, unbeknownst to me something else was going on.

Beneath the boney layers of my skull I was building an entirely different physique

It was one that would serve me in the years ahead the way it never could my mother.

Long before I had any idea that her brain was struggling to maintain its facade that all was right with the world, likely long before she had the faintest idea of where her world was headed, she would lean up against the door jamb when she caught me checking the thickness of my quadriceps in anticipation of an upcoming show.

“Carolyn,” she would say with a smirk. “Why do you bother with all that exercise?”

Back then I shrugged off her remarks. But I could certainly tell her why today.

The most exercise my mother ever got was from tending to her garden, of which she took great and deserved pride. In the spring her handiwork paid off with rows of magenta-colored chrysanthemums, large gold-eyed sunflowers and purple and red fuchsias, the flowers of which hung above the greenery like christmas decorations out of season.

My mother spent hours in her garden every weekend. Fuchsias, like these seen in spring, were among her favorites.

I knew that something was up with my mother the day I handed her a knife and suggested she “tidy up” my vegetable garden while I prepared the evening meal. When I found her half an hour later she had inexplicably destroyed my crop of Swiss chard, cutting off every plant at its base.

When I asked her what she was doing she didn’t bat an eye. “I’m weeding, silly.”

HOW TO RECLAIM AN EXTRA DECADE OF CRYSTAL CLEAR THINKING

So what do these remarkable discoveries about the connection between physical fitness and the ongoing health of YOUR brain mean when it comes to your risk for cognitive decline? Is it a small effect, or a big one? Let’s clear that up now…

The Swedish women’s health study ran a full 44 years. Yet during this entire period only 5 percent of the women from the high cardiovascular fitness group fell victim to any form of cognitive impairment. This translates into just 1/8th the rate of occurrence of this affliction experienced by the study participants deemed to be of moderate fitness.

What I haven’t told you yet is that of that 5 percent of highly fit women who eventually were diagnosed with cognitive impairment, their brains resisted the change for an unusually long time.

When the researchers compared these women with those in the moderately fit group – women who also began to experience frustrating forgetfulness, periods of confusion, and ever-growing inability to deal with even mildly complex daily tasks – they found an effect much larger than expected.

The onset of symptoms of cognitive impairment in the highly fit women were delayed by 11 years

They experienced more than an extra decade of mental sharpness that would otherwise not have been possible had they ignored the cardiovascular health of their bodies.

Of course, you could argue that this is an isolated result specific to the study in question.

But over the years it has turned out that, from one human clinical trial set up to investigate this strange relationship to the next, the results seem to support just one conclusion. The more often you engage in short bouts of intense exercise, the more likely your brain will be able to resist the epidemic of cognitive decline that sabotages the latter part of so many people’s lives today.

I became so convinced of the long-term benefits of exercise for my own body that I pursued matters of fitness relentlessly. I became a personal trainer, a gym owner, and finally an online fitness consultant.

When I started out I knew nothing about the science of exercise. That came much later. All I knew for sure was this:

Working out made me feel amazing

When I left the gym my body would be bristling with energy, and every day I felt I was ready to take on the world. And after all these years I still feel exactly the same way I did the first day I realized my body was responding in ways I did not understand, but for which I felt tremendous appreciation.

It’s that feeling I have tried each day of my life to share with those who have sought my advice on how to improve both the shape of their bodies and their overall health.

Today I want to help you gain the confidence I have about where my body, and especially my mind, is likely to take me in the years ahead.

I have shared part of my story with you. I have revealed fragments of the hard final years of my mother’s life. I am breaking my silence on this matter now because, as painful as that period was for me, I am troubled every day by the idea that none of it was necessary.

Today I am convinced beyond any doubt that my mother’s misfortune might have been avoided

If only she had understood sufficiently early on what she needed to do to keep her brain healthy.

We still do not know everything there is to be known about how the human brain begins to falter in middle age.

For example, why does one person with mild cognitive impairment go on to experience significant brain shrinkage, or other nervous system deficiencies, while another does not?

And yet we do have a very good idea now about which factors speed up the process, and which slow it down. I have sketched for you 3 key insights about how simple lifestyle practices can either heavily load the dice in favor of a path that leads to cognitive decline, or significantly increase the likelihood of maintaining lasting brain health.

Had my mother understood these issues and acted on them she might be alive today

I might have ended up carving out time for her every other weekend to make the half-hour drive out to the mouth of the harbor where she lived by herself at the end of a long winding gravel road. I can imagine finding her, as I once did, waiting with freshly-baked scones and tales of her latest gardening exploits.

As you age the identity of your family members should not have to become a mystery to you as memory loss increasingly robs you of your personal connections to the world.

Instead, through what amounts to ignorance, she allowed herself to be robbed of potentially the most satisfying experiences of her life.

At the age when others are looking forward to getting to know their grandchildren, getting to spend time helping them understand the world, she forfeited all of that.

As a result she spent the last few years of her life wondering who “the boy” was who sometimes accompanied me on those dutiful trips out to the nursing home. Regrettfully my son was never given the chance to experience anything remotely approaching the true character of woman he knew as his grandmother.

Of course, my mother’s story is not unique.

Everyone knows someone

During those visits to the care facility I witnessed the destructive effects cognitive impairment has on every family it touches. Not once did any day visitor return home with joyous news about the recovery of a resident family member. Late stage impairment just does not work that way. It is a one-way street from which you do not return.

This is why I firmly believe that to prevent the inwardly-spiralling descent that marks a life handicapped by cognitive decline you must take action. Not when things are starting to look dodgy, but LONG before you expect you might ever be affected.

Taking action in your 60s is better than waiting until your 70s. Taking action in your 50s is much better still. And if you are in your 40s… there is no better time than right now to begin laying the groundwork for lasting brain health.

You need to act now – while you still have a say in the matter

Nor is it just your own health I worry about.

If you have a partner, what becomes of your lives if one of you begins to experience the unnerving effects of memory loss, confusion, the sudden inability to share with the other all the experiences that help to make life so tolerable?

What would it mean for your relationship if either of you was faced with the prospect of becoming a full-time care giver to the other? Not for months, but quite possibly for years? What happens when the memories you’ve come to depend on your partner being able to retrieve when you cannot, all gradually fade away? How do you continue to share a life when the shared memories on which it is based are simply gone?

Or if you are a parent and you cannot depend on a partner to take care of you when your mind begins to break down… How do you justify the prospect of potentially becoming a physical, emotional, and financial burden on your children?

I have been one of those children, so this thought haunts me.

But it drives me too. In fact, this could be the sole reason I’ve been able to take massive action since the years during which I had to deal with my mother’s illness.

Now that I’ve put the horrid experience behind me I’d like to help others who might inadvertently be heading down the same road that she did, not realizing that to have any real chance of heading off disaster they need to take steps now – not 10 years from today, nor even 5 years – right now, to protect themselves.

For years I’ve watched people walk into my gym, plonk themselves in front of our sign up desk and reel off a dozen good reasons why they want to invest in a membership to get into shape:

• They don’t like what they see in the mirror, especially that spare tire on their midsection.
• They are physically exhausted and would like to make it through 18 rounds of golf without feeling as though they’re about to collapse.
• They are tired of being taunted by their kids for being out of shape.
• They are in a relationship rut and want to try the online dating thing and be able to post a real photo of themselves looking… “Well, better than this!”

You get the idea. But what I never hear from these optimistic souls is that they want to improve their physical health for the sake of their brain. It simply does not occur to them that not only is this a possibility, it’s also the ONLY surefire way to both preserve and improve brain function.

It’s the only way I know of that keeps you from losing your mind!

The trouble is, until now I never had a truly compelling set of arguments to help convince others just how badly they need to take action to ensure the longevity of their brain.

I would tell my hopeful prospects that, just as they needed to curl a dumbbell to strengthen the bicep in their arm, they needed to put in extra time to strengthen their brain. To spur growth in the critical areas that control memory, learning, and executive function. Those still-viable but neglected portions of their brains that had undoubtedly shrunk, just as their now downgraded muscles had withered since the day they stopped coming to the gym shortly before having kids.

I would have loved to be able to point people to a comprehensive brain health program that teaches this approach

But I could not find one.

I came across a great deal of material which promoted a brain-body connection. But the information always seemed to flow only in one direction. From the brain to the body. Nobody discussed the importance of the health of the body as a determining factor in the health of the brain. I viewed it as a vital missing element that rendered all these programs incomplete and fundamentally flawed.

So in the end I realized I was motivated enough to create such a program myself.

My goal has been to take everything I have learned about what is truly required to put yourself on the path to lasting brain health, then have you, not exactly follow in my footsteps, but partake in the best lessons I have learned. At the same time I would have you avoid the many hazardous, yet seemingly innocuous lifestyle choices that can shut down the important biochemical processes your brain depends upon for lasting mental health.

It is no exaggeration to say you may extend the health of your brain by at least a DECADE, if not for life.

This can be achieved simply by substituting one set of everyday actions for another. Though neither set of habits may have any immediately discernible effect on the longevity of your mental faculties, one will nonetheless shore up the scaffolding of your mind while the other, quietly, behind the scenes, will be steadily nibbling away at it until the day arrives when your mind can no longer support the weight of reality and the entire edifice quickly begins to crumble before the eyes of everyone around you.

I would like to help ensure this never happens to you, and to do it I have prepared a program that encapsulates everything I have learned about how to maintain mental performance and protect your brain against the life-changing threat of cognitive impairment, whether mild or significantly more impactful.

Of course, I wanted to be sure I was going to be offering you something different from what you may be used to hearing about when it comes to the health of your brain.

In particular, this is not:

• the brain-energy breakthrough of the century
• King Solomon’s ancient secret to nearly unlimited, flawless memory
• a simple “trick” that reverses cognitive impairment in just 14 days
• or any other equally appealing brain-technology wonder…

If you’ve stuck with me to this point you know I don’t believe in solutions that sound, and always turn out to be, “too good to be true”.

Can we agree it’s OK to admit that if I offer you something which is going to work for you, then it’s going to take a little thought and a little elbow grease on your part to implement before you reap the benefits?

Hopefully, that sounds as reasonable to you as it does to me.

ANNOUNCING A NEW SCIENCE-BASED PROTOCOL THAT PRESERVES, EVEN REJUVENATES, YOUR BRAIN SO THAT YOU CAN LOCK IN LASTING COGNITIVE HEALTH WELL BEYOND MIDDLE AGE

While I was thinking about how best to structure the Ageless Brain program I realized something important.

When it came, the crisis my mother experienced at 71 years of age seemed to strike like a bolt from the blue. But really it had done nothing of the sort.

She did not descend into a child-like state of blissful ignorance about what was going on in her world simply because of the shock of being treated medically for a fall. Or because her brain suffered some allergic reaction to a pain killer.

What was going on inside her brain had been bubbling away for years. Perhaps 20 years. Maybe longer. Her fall was simply the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

When the brain transforms in response to its environment, absent of direct injury, it does so slowly. So slowly that the changes can be detected neither by the person experiencing them, nor by others who interact closely with them. At least not for a very long time.

So when it comes to shoring up the brain, building resilience against the damaging influences that might otherwise destabilize it, that takes time too.

When I switched from a strict regimen of Jazzercise workouts to a series of strength-building resistance-based sessions with barbells, squat racks, and a diet based mainly on chicken and pasta, I did not see my body transform from its “butterball” state to an appealing slender, lean, and more muscular shape overnight. It took more than six months to see any changes in the mirror.

It is the same with your brain

I could give you all the information you need to put yourself on the path to lasting brain health and to significantly lower your risk of cognitive decline you would likely be willing to do almost anything to avoid. But unless you implement this information in the right way it won’t help you one bit.

Just as it would be impossible for me to explain in a single session what it is you need to do to transform your physique from “ordinary” to “stage ready” (in the parlance of competitive bodybuilding), it is unlikely that having me throw a bunch of information at you all at once is going to be helpful.

A far more realistic approach is to meter out the lessons over time.

This involves having you make measured but straightforward lifestyle changes. You can think of these as installed “habits” which are both needed and proven to stave off the epidemic of slow ongoing cognitive impairment that begins during midlife and takes place with such little fanfare that you may not be alerted to the true extent of the damage it is doing to your brain for decades to come.

For this reason Ageless Brain has been designed as a membership program

Lessons are delivered once each week for a period of 6 months.

By the end of that period you’ll have been exposed to all the ideas that have shaped my thinking on brain health. You won’t just understand what to do to improve the way your brain functions both today and years (even decades) from now, but you’ll have learned how to painlessly take on the mannerisms that ensure you stick to the protocol.

Over this six-month period of time I am going to teach you how to reset your body’s internal chemistry so as to gradually and effortlessly lower the amount of inflammation that may be causing problems not just in your brain, but in the rest of your body too.

As I pointed out earlier, neuroinflammation – the state wherein your brain’s own immune system has begun to turn on the delicate neural structures responsible for memory formation and recall, learning, and a myriad of other cognitive abilities – is perhaps the biggest threat your brain faces in the years ahead.

Ageless Brain helps to significantly bring this threat down in size, if not eliminate it

But we won’t get there in “just 5 weeks”.

That’s OK, though. Because unlike the promises you may hear from some of those other mental training programs, brainpower pills, powders, potions, or “mind rewiring” diets that might suggest something amazing can happen in a period of just weeks, we’ll be dealing in reality.

And the truth is there are NO clinical trials of any type that prove you can significantly restructure your brain for the better in that short a period of time. None.

But you will see real results within those first 5 weeks. You’ll see these changes begin in the way you feel, and possibly in the way your body begins to look. You’ll notice a difference.

But real changes at the level of the neuron, the synapse, the axons that conduct messages throughout your brain… that will take a little longer. As will the growth of NEW neurons and the rewiring of your brain so that you literally begin to remodel and strengthen the brain you have now.

Ageless Brain will keep you on that path until your brain feels and performs better than it does today. More importantly, this will remain true year after year as you continue to age beyond your middle years and well into the second half of your life.

This is the promise of Ageless Brain – a brain improvement protocol based on the 3 key insights about lasting brain health I have offered you today.

The protocol will be delivered in the form of two components…

One is a 12-episode series of educational “insights” into what works and what does not when it comes to maintaining cognitive function and reducing your risk for cognitive impairment (content delivered weekly).

The other is a 12-week action plan which alternates with the educational series, allowing you to slowly get up to speed over a period of 24 weeks (6 months).

Here’s how it works. We’ll begin with:

THE 4-MODULE (12-PART) USER’S GUIDE TO AN AGELESS BRAIN – OR, HOW NOT TO ACCIDENTALLY DESTROY YOUR BRAIN BEFORE YOU ARE DONE USING IT

I probably should not joke about a topic which has caused as much pain in my life as this one has. Because I would not wish on my worst enemy the experience of having to go through (for years) dealing with a family member with substantial cognitive impairment.

There’s nothing funny about being on the wrong end of a diagnosis of brain shrinkage. Or having to give up part of your life to care for someone in that situation. It is incredibly taxing for everyone involved.

The purpose of the 4-module educational component of the Ageless Brain protocol is to heavily bias the odds in favor of you never having to deal with severe mental impairment yourself, or any of a number of conditions that afflict the central nervous system and restrict your mental and physical capabilities.

Even if your goal is “merely” to reduce the number of “older folk” moments that have lately begun to concern you – misplacing the TV remote, forgetting to pay the bills before the due date, leaving the house for the supermarket without your shopping bag…

The protocol outlined in Ageless Brain will help to put the “senior moments” behind you

Over the years I have explored a great number of approaches to physical exercise and nutrition – two important “modalities” by which brain resilience can be achieved. There are others, but what you eat and the amount and type of physical activity you engage in are two factors you can control, at any age. They can also have a huge effect on how your brain “reorganizes” itself in as short a period of time as 24 weeks, the length of the Ageless Brain program.

I got lucky. I stumbled onto a lifestyle of habitual exercise and proper nutrition. I groped my way towards superior physical health after taking a lot of wrong turns along the way and after wasting an astonishing amount of time (when I think back about it now) following the dubious advice of “gurus” I once considered much smarter on these topics than I believed myself to be.

Only much later in my life, after I was forced to reassess whether what I believed was good for my body was also good for my brain, did I realize my approach was more than well founded. Even so, more brain-specific research has shown me there ARE better ways to think about food and its effect on the brain. That means:

I pare down the science of brain nutrition for you, so you get to bypass my learning curve…

You are about to receive the BEST information on how to feed your brain for improved health without having to put in the time to filter through the mountain of conflicting information out there on this topic.

You’ll also discover what I figured out on my own, about which types of exercise are brain-friendly, and which are not.

I’ve spent years doing both – but many many more years doing the RIGHT kind of exercises (thank goodness). Needless to say, you won’t have to risk wasting even an hour of your time pursuing pointless physical activities.

By that I mean workouts which improve neither the health of your brain, nor the rest of your body. I mean it:

I’ll show you how to get in a week’s worth of brain-boosting exercise in an hour or less

Let’s take a quick look at what’s covered in each of the 4 modules that make up the core educational series. These are delivered every other week, allowing you plenty of time to absorb their lessons. Or you may go through the course at an even more leisurely pace if you prefer. These lessons will always be available to you in the Ageless Brain member’s area.

MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION

Before you can hope to SAVE your brain, you first need to properly appreciate what it is you have to lose.

By the end of this first part of the Ageless Brain program you’ll understand in no uncertain terms what is at stake. The six months I’ll be guiding you will pass quickly. So I want to be sure you are mentally prepared to extract the most you possibly can from our time.

That means going into this with the right mindset. Don’t worry, I will drag you along kicking and screaming if I need to. But if we can get your head sorted at the outset, so much the better!

What all this boils down to is just one thing you absolutely need to understand from the beginning: reaching middle age should not mean you begin preparing yourself for the twilight years of your life, where slow and steady cognitive decline is expected and accepted without question.

Consider this: you have spent half a century establishing your role in the world. You are at an age where you should be making valuable use of your acquired wisdom, not setting it aside and accepting the idea that your time is almost up!

No matter what your age, kicking back and enjoying the scenery is prelude to disaster, both physical and mental. If you wish to remain vital (be able to remember correctly, think clearly, reason logically) you need to live and breathe this belief: that there is no law, biological or otherwise, that declares you must slow down and take it easy on yourself as the years pile up behind you.

Healthy brains are active brains attached to active bodies

This is the mindset I intend to drum into you as you make your way through the first module of the program.

But mindset will only take us so far. We will be relying on science to get us to the finish line.

So in this section I will also be reminding you of why that is, how it has benefitted us already, and what can reasonably be expected if we not only pay attention to the lessons of brain science, but also put them into practice…

The topics we will cover in Module 1, as we get started with the program, include the following (click on the separate parts to reveal more details):

PART 1:
IN PURSUIT OF THE AGELESS BRAIN
[toggle for topics covered]

• The human brain: unable to exist outside the body even momentarily, either in whole or part, makes it the only organ you cannot buy, beg, or barter for – it’s value to you incalculable. Yet unless you perform these essential actions it will become entirely worthless to you.
• Sprinkle a little of this into your brain (or your food) and all hell breaks loose. Warnings from a 20th century scientific genius who earned TWO Nobel prizes.
• Does your doctor check for this metal in your blood? For millions of women the answer is NO, and they pay for it in unnecessary mental suffering. What to ask for at your next check up so that you don’t risk a lifetime of suffering in silence.
• Why your goal should be to strive for “peak performance living”, what that means in relation your brain, and why I’ve made it my number one priority for nearly 40 years.
• Why failing this program could be more dangerous to the future health of your brain than never starting it at all (so we won’t let that happen!)
• How to live your life as though disease is a choice to which you can say NO (as I continue to do very effectively, as you can now also choose to begin doing)
• Some “corny” advice about how to better appreciate and care for your brain. Share this with your friends and watch it make a HUGE difference in the way their lives play out 20 years from now (plus you’ll get the sweet satisfaction of being able to say “I told you so!”)
• The unexpected “obsession” that took hold my thirties, rewired my brain, and guaranteed I’d never again think poorly of myself (you won’t either if you give it a shot)
• For mature audiences only: the kind of wake up call you do NOT want to be getting, at any age – and yet if you have even a single friend, you probably will get it (this happens with such regularity I was able to build a gym business on panic it inspires)
• The dumb thinking that once had me believing I was invincible, and the life-altering “kick in the pants” that changed everything (I like to think I had to live this experience so you’ll never have to go through it yourself)
• A true horror story. Stephen King may know how to paint a chilling scene, but compared to Life he’s a petty scaremonger (use this lesson to keep the Grim Reaper from your door).
• To Sudoku, or not to Sudoku? The truth about whether brain training (crosswords, jigsaws, and other puzzles) really makes you any smarter or lowers your risk of memory loss…
• Where to find the ONE person you can depend on to safeguard the future health of your brain (hint: it’s not me)
• Your plastic brain: what plasticity means, and why this is great news if you still want to write that novel, learn to sing, take up acting, or get started with anything else you promised yourself you’d do before you kick the bucket.

PART 2:
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY AGELESS?
[toggle for topics covered]

• What you’re really up against when it comes to trying to beat back the apparent inevitabilities of aging – and how it’s possible to plow ahead and do it anyway.
• What the creator of Bulletproof Coffee, a self-described cyborg who says his goal is to live to 180 years of age, spent $6000 to have injected into his brain, and what he hoped to gain from it.
• Why a small handful of spoiled billionaires are scrambling to develop their own “youth pill”, and what that means for aging non-billionaires like you and me.
• According to the Central Intelligence Agency the 31,000 inhabitants of this tiny country get access to twice as many doctors as Americans do, and they live on average 9 years longer. What’s wrong with this picture?
• The unlikely barber shop meeting between Vincent Van Gogh and a 13 year old French girl who went on to become the oldest woman in the history of the world (and remained sharp as a tack until the day she died).
• The surprisingly youthful age after which your odds of dying double every 8 years (hint: it happens long before you ever reach middle age!)
• Island of Amazonians. The tiny East China Sea prefecture on which 90 percent of the native inhabitants who live past 100 years are women (and the 3 secrets responsible for their unusual longevity)
• Possible or impossible? Living to 120 years of age in an era characterized by fake foods, sedentary lifestyles, and unaffordable healthcare – and why you should make the effort to do just that, even if the odds are absolutely stacked against you…
• Neurological Catch 22: The brain “rusting” process that helps defend against foreign invaders, keeps your brain cells brimming with thought-producing energy, and yet threatens to chip away at the infrastructure until your thinking machinery finally comes apart at the seams.
• The “common as dirt” protein in your body that movie stars pay large sums to have injected into their lips. But be careful – damage bodily structures made of this substance and you will have to live with the consequences. This non-replaceable protein is NOT age-proof.
• The sticky business of aging. Why adding more sugar to your diet may be “gumming up the works” – causing you to age faster, look older, and die younger.
• The story of the accidental discovery of the ticking cell – or why you could live forever if scientists ever figure out a way to switch off this “expire by” mechanism found in every cell of your body.
• How to live to 200,000 years of age – and the tropical sea water organism, now under threat of extinction, which appears to have done exactly that.
• The little-known (but well-understood) biochemical process that explains why cancer will sit idly in your body for a decade or more before undergoing explosive growth.
• Lessons in aging from a line of “immortal” chicken cells that were actually nothing of the sort, yet managed to fool the scientific community for 40 long years.
• The Bible mentions “four score years” as the length of a human life. Is it right? Is 80 years the upper age limit beyond which few will ever have the chance to live out their latter years? After 2000 years, by just how much have we been able to improve this number?

PART 3:
HOW THE CELL FINALLY GAVE UP THE SECRET TO AGING
[toggle for topics covered]

• The truth about those seemingly magical “vitamins” that promise to roll back your biological clock, allowing you to “RE-boot your DNA, live longer, defy aging…”
• Train of thought: How running to catch a train in the Soviet Union helped trigger a flash of insight that solved the biggest problem in the science of anti-aging.
• Uh-oh, your DNA is shrinking. The discovery of a “trimming” agent which prevents genetic chaos at the molecular level. Just one problem, the side effect of this genetic grooming is… aging.
• Nifty tricks with “pond scum”. An Australian biologist probes the anti-aging secrets of a single-celled organism that lives forever in the pond at the bottom of your yard… and wins a Nobel Prize.
• Cracking the secret to immortality – the startling discovery of an enzyme that switches off cellular aging (and helps cancer take root in your body)
• The overlooked connection between longevity and a specialized cell type produced throughout your life by your bones: without it you would be dead within 3 months.
• The reason the cells in your hair follicles, your skin, and your intestinal tract – unlike cells elsewhere in your body – are constantly dying and being replaced (until you reach middle age, when they stop being replaced…)
• One of the more under-appreciated side-effects of the science behind anti-aging pills that do their job: a shorter life span.
• The 9 “capacitive” characteristics of an Ageless Brain (all of which are well worth striving to achieve)

MODULE 2: BRAIN FOODS

In the second module we’ll explore one of my favorite topics: nutrition. As I discovered long after I began taking a real interest in the good that nutrient-dense foods do for your body, the uninterrupted preservation of the health of your brain is critically dependent on the nature of your diet.

Eating the RIGHT foods will bolster your mental faculties. It will improve your memory and ensure the resilience of your brain to neurodegenerative influences like microbial infection and the pro-inflammatory response of an overactive immune system.

As we have seen, inflammation that seeps into the deepest recesses of your brain to upset its normal chemistry, is particularly worrisome.

That’s because inflammation of the brain may be the single greatest predictor of eroding memory and hidden brain shrinkage.

The good news is that you can rapidly put the brakes on brain inflammation by implementing the food recommendations outlined in this section of Ageless Brain.

This is where I will introduce you to a powerful anti-inflammatory diet

This is a diet that has been carefully formulated and scientifically proven to significantly lower your risk of cognitive impairment.

You don’t have to take my word for it. I’ll point you directly to the scientific studies based on clinical trials which show how the Ageless Brain Diet can lower your brain age by 7.5 years and cut your risk of brain shrinkage by MORE THAN HALF!

But I’m not only going to tell you which foods will defuse the simmering neuroinflammation that may already be quietly deconstructing your brain behind the scenes, I’m going to provide you with complete meal plans to remove any confusion about what brain-friendly anti-inflammatory meals actually look like.

I’ll also reveal for the first time the unique mechanism by which these foods may be accomplishing their brain-inflammation-quelling magic.

That way you’ll know exactly what effect the Ageless Brain Diet is having on your brain. You’ll be able to understand the “how and why” of the science behind it, and (if you should wish it) be able to adjust your diet to include new foods revealed by your own research to satisfy the protocol. In other words:

You’ll be in complete control of your diet

You’ll gain all the brain benefits afforded by neuroprotective foods WITHOUT having to sacrifice your ability to decide which foods work best for you, based on taste, established eating habits, and budget. Whether you enjoy eating meat, or you prefer vegan dishes, the Ageless Brain Diet will accommodate you.

Here’s a sample of the brain food topics we’ll cover in this second module of the program:

PART 1:
WHAT POWERS YOUR THINKING MACHINE?
[toggle for topics covered]

• Where to find an essential dietary substance that supports the scaffolding of your brain and facilitates neural signaling (you MUST add this to your diet, your body cannot make it). This brain-builder also fends off disease!
• Why it won’t be enough to simply adopt a “healthy eating” mindset (not if you want to significantly reduce your risk of cognitive decline)
• What your doctor is really hinting at when he says you are at risk of cognitive decline (hint: could you really imagine him suggesting your brain might be shrinking?)
• When to ignore your risks for stroke, both large and small, and mild cognitive impairment (yet end up lowering them all anyway)
• Why it’s darn near impossible to get reliable information on the best foods to eat for brain health (with one significant exception)
• Two main causes of damage to the brain, and the two classes of foods seemingly designed to perfectly counter them (chances are you’re eating little of either)
• Why a diet scientifically proven to reduce cardiovascular disease is also good for the brain (but not as good as it could be)
• The truth about cholesterol, and why the greatest threat to the health of your blood-vessels is more likely to be found in your cereal bowl than your egg cup.
• What people are eating in countries where the risk of having a heart attack or getting cancer is 10 times lower than in the United States (essential dietary advice for those who don’t already live in one of these places)
• Would you eat these neuroprotective foods to lower your risk of cognitive decline and brain shrinkage by 40 percent? (Millions already do, many remaining as sharp as a tack into their 90s and beyond)
• Foods to eat, if diagnosed with a shrinking brain, clinically proven to lower your risk of dying over a 4-year period by a whopping 73 percent…
• Memory-preserving salad toppings (choose the wrong one and you’ll benefit from only half the effect)
• Use this food type, popular as a party snack, to form new neural connections and strengthen memories (hint: it grows on trees)
• A diet scientifically formulated and verified to forestall cognitive decline, and especially brain shrinkage (the diet works even if you cheat on it – and let’s face it, you will!)
• MYTH BUSTER: The food type that provides no neuroprotective benefit at all (even though most people think it does – in fact, with one exception, this class of foods might even WORSEN your risk of cognitive impairment)

PART 2:
THE AGELESS BRAIN (NEUROPROTECTIVE) DIET
[toggle for topics covered]

• If strawberries are chock-full of anti-inflammatory fisetin, and brain scientists absolutely love them, why has this other berry been crowned the KING of neuroprotective foods?
• The maximum possible score for people on this clinically designed and tested neuroprotective diet is 15. Yet the eating habits of the average person puts their score at less than HALF that number. Use the provided scoring table to learn whether you are doing any better (and if not, how to fix this).
• A study of 960 people on the neuroprotective Ageless Brain diet reveals those with the top third highest scores (who suffer the least amount of cognitive decline) tend to share these 6 non-diet-related attributes. Do you possess them?
• Sticking to the protocol lowered the tested “brain age” of those who followed the neuroprotective diet by 7.5 years. Would 7.5 extra years of crystal clear thinking in your later years make a difference to you?
• Cheat on the neuroprotective diet and you still lower your risk of brain shrinkage by 35 percent. And if you stick to the diet? (Hint: the risk reduction is better by far!)
• Have you suffered a stroke in the past? Why researchers at Rush University Medical Center believe the neuroprotective diet has proved so useful in helping stroke victims improve their ability to think, reason and remember.
• Red meat, butter, cheese… Are these high-cholesterol foods good for your brain? Or could they be driving it towards a crisis from which there is no return?
• When you regularly eat two servings of this food type you lower the age of your brain by 5 years (yet 9 out of 10 Americans leave it on the plate).
• Consumption of this substance found in wine can reduce your risk of cognitive impairment by 50 percent over a period of 5 years. Yet, of richly-pigmented fruits in which this substance is highly concentrated, grapes don’t make the grade. Discover which ones do.
• Biological safeguards ensure this blood-vessel-altering process – which could damage your brain – will not happen once you become an adult. Unless you happen to be a woman.
• The little-known growth factor which fuels cancer when it gets out of control elsewhere in the body, but promotes cognitive decline in the brain (and sometimes cancer too).
• Why foods in the neuroprotective diet also starve tumors (so that you get “double whammy” brain and body protection)
• The mysterious effect of cholesterol-lowering statins on the brain (which may reduce long-term brain shrinkage risk, yet cause acute short-term memory loss!)
• Three powerful “phytochemicals” which switch off the growth factor that stimulates cancer and neurovascular blockages (and the 3 common foods in which they are found).
• A list of more than 30 disease-preventing (and non tumor friendly) foods found to control (limit) the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the body.
• The popular pasta topping that reduces abnormal blood vessel growth in prostate cancer by a stunning 70 percent (and the natural ingredient responsible for it).
• The “cinema snack” proven to lower your risk of heart disease by 35 percent, and your diabetes risk by 27 percent (a third benefit: it’s also a rich source of the primary building block for brain cells).

PART 3:
BRAIN FATS – ALL OF WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, NONE OF WHAT YOU DON’T…
[toggle for topics covered]

• Saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated… A simple way to bypass the good fat/bad fat confusion and figure out which fats are brain cell killers, and which are not.
• What a 4-year study of 6000 women over the age of 65 revealed about the effect of saturated (animal) fat on the rate of cognitive decline (if you’re wondering whether or not to leave that extra strip of bacon in pan, this will settle the matter).
• ONE type of fat enjoyed by older women who consistently score highly on cognitive tests (naturally this fat tastes great, but it’s also really good for your heart).
• TWO types of fat your body is unable to manufacture, yet are essential to the maintenance of your brain. Unfortunately, consumed in the wrong ratio they provoke inflammation (something the average American diet makes easy to do…)
• The truth about vegetable oils and how they affect your long-term risk of cognitive decline.
• Health fanatics (and birds) love this food type with a ratio of bad to good fats as great as ONE HUNDRED or more. Great for constructing bird traps, much less useful for building healthy brains!
• A non-seafood derived source of brain-healthy omega-3 fatty acids which also happens to be a great source of protein (and is vegan-friendly).
• A bean from the South East with an out-of-this-world omega-3/omega-6 fatty acid profile and a special protein that allows it to mimic all the properties of an egg when fried in a pan!
• A plant-derived source of brain-healthy omega-3 fatty acids so smooth and creamy it can be used as a fat-rich substitute for dairy to make ice-cream and other desserts.
• The special fat-soluble antioxidant and anti-inflammatory substance found in one “fatty fruit” (and spinach) that Tuft University researchers say boosted working memory and problem-solving skills in a 6-month study of older adults.
• A “hard nut” brimming with omega-3s, of which heart-unhealthy Americans eat about ONE per year (but when Sri Lankans ate this same nut 120 times every year 4 decades ago, their rate of heart disease was practically non-existent).
• A food type derived from cane which acts as an accelerant for brain shrinkage. A century ago we ate 5 pounds of it every year. Today we eat more than 75 pounds (you probably ate it in the last hour).
• In the eye this process causes the light-sensitive tissues to be slowly starved, resulting in loss of vision. In the brain it first leads to forgetfulness, lack of focus, and creeping moods of depression. Then the symptoms really become serious…
• Remove this food type from your coffee table if your hope is to retain clarity of mind and intellectual sharpness as you age.

MODULE 3: BRAIN WORKOUTS

In this third installment of the program we move on to the benefits of physical activity.

If you are not already exercising for your general health I’m going to teach you why it is so critically important you begin doing it for the health of your brain.

I’m also going to show you how to fall in LOVE with the idea of putting yourself through your paces. If I can teach you to appreciate working out even HALF as much as I enjoy the process (and especially the after-experience) you will have absorbed one of the most important lessons I could possibly pass on to you.

There is no drug on Earth that can stimulate in the human body the level of brain-boosting hormones and growth factors which are set free by vigorous exercise.

Not even the most neuroprotective food can do it. This is something I learned the hard way:

You cannot eat this additional layer of protection for your brain

You literally have to manufacture it directly using willpower and the motivation I will provide.

Luckily, I have already poured decades of my time into mastering the most efficient approaches to working out. I’m now going to pass these on to you in Ageless Brain so that you’ll be able to put in the MINIMUM amount of time and effort to maintain a steel-trap memory as you age, and to minimize your risk of ever being diagnosed with cognitive impairment or full-blown brain shrinkage.

I’ll also give you my thoughts on which modes of exercise work best to stimulate the growth factors critical to your continued brain development.

As you’ll see, and as Dr. Daniel Amen, the pre-eminent brain researcher, is fond of saying: “You are NOT stuck with the brain you have. You can change it, and make it better.”

Vigorous, well-chosen exercise is, in my opinion, the most reliable and most powerful way to do this, and in this part of Ageless Brain you’ll discover how to go about it the most efficient way.

Highlights of this third module include the following:

PART 1:
MAKING THE CASE FOR EXERCISE
[toggle for topics covered]

• The intimate link between physical activity and brain health – and why you can’t simply outthink a sedentary lifestyle.
• What Stephen Hawking, the genius British mathematician and astrophysicist saddled with motor neuron disease, taught us about not taking your brain (or your body) for granted.
• The surprising results of a landmark study of 678 aging nuns which shows that “hitting the books” during your youth could help you beat brain shrinkage.
• Why sitting for most of your day is having much the same effect on your brain today as smoking once did on your lungs (in the end, both have the power to kill you)
• Are these 3 biomarkers of inflammation crossing your blood-brain barrier and causing havoc in your brain? Would you know how to ask your doctor to find out?
• The story of the woman who hit the gym at 40 to lose weight and ended up changing her brain instead (and why she’s now helping thousands of others do the same).
• The story of the tall and beautiful college professor who carried her most shocking secret in a hat box (so that she could share it whenever given the chance).
• What to say at slow-paced brain research conferences to get people in the audience jumping to their feet and screaming that you must be wrong.
• How to annoy all your male colleagues and still manage to get onto the cover of Scientific American by running a “Disney World” for rats.
• The story of the epilepsy patient who woke up in 1953 to “30-minute recall” after surgeons removed what turned out to be the memory center of his brain (the good news: his seizures went away, and now surgeons know what NOT to touch).
• Why it might be a bad idea to sign up for a white water rafting trip the day after you look in the mirror and decide you’re “a little chunky”.
• What the heck “intenSati” means, where to find it, and why it could be an absolute game-changer for your brain (as it was for the woman who offered this story).
• How to set your brain on fire by screaming affirmations in exercise class (works great, even if it also makes you feel ridiculous)
• The top 5 things we learned about healthy brains from watching rats in a cage (including the importance of love)
• How long it takes for all that running, jumping, and puffing in exercise class to change your brain (so that you can think more clearly, have less trouble remembering things, and pay attention for much longer).
• What taking the running wheel away from mice revealed about how our brains work (or the crap you can expect if someone ever steals your treadmill).
• Why one NYU brain science professor felt the need to spend 6 months practicing her new course on her cat before she dared roll it out to her class.
• Terrifying things you can convince first-year college students to do so they either rebel or fall completely in love with you (either way, their brains are changed forever).
• Why you don’t need to be a super triathlete to benefit from the brain-boosting effects of exercise.

PART 2:
BUILDING YOUR BRAIN WITH EXERCISE – WHY IT WORKS
[toggle for topics covered]

• An unconventional and previously untested U.S. high school physical fitness program that unexpectedly shot the academic performance of its 19,000 students through the roof and inspired a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry to write a book about it (works on old brains too!).
• The best time to perform exercise so as to forge new brain cell connections and maximize your learning potential (especially relevant if you work out at the end of the day).
• How hard and for how long you need to exert yourself to stimulate brain cell growth and hold onto existing memories beyond middle age.
• What to tell a psychiatric patient when they ask for advice about how to deal with either anxiety, depression, or attention deficit (even though they’ll likely despise you for it).
• What to do for depression if Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, Paxil or any other drug therapy just doesn’t cut it for you (this works one third of the time, is free of side-effects, and won’t cost you a penny).
• How to stimulate production of the master molecule that hooks up brain cells (and significantly lowers the odds of them being “reused for parts”).
• The “octopus” analogy for the memory formation and strengthening process (or how to picture “life” from the perspective of a brain cell).
• Words of wisdom from a Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist who manages to publish books and write scientific papers at 87 years of age while working out 7 days each week (agreed: this man is a show off).
• Why squatting, running, and leaping into the air can make you smarter, and your brain more resistant to the effects of aging.
• A definitive answer to the question: “What’s the least amount of exercise I can do to maintain brain health and ward off brain shrinkage?”
• Two forms of stationary cycling, one of which generates 3 TIMES the amount of growth factor that produces new memory-preserving brain cells.
• Why regular gym activity may be a waste your time if your goal is to get smarter, not just fitter (and the kinds of physical activity that allow you to do both).
• The results of a large-scale study of British citizens of the same age, carried out over a period of 27 years, that showed how exercise could be used to lower one’s odds of depression by 19 percent (this drug-free approach works for any age).
• The relationship between depression and the number of hours spent sitting around, according to an Australian study of 8,950 middle-aged women (and what to do to reduce your odds of “feeling blue” by a factor of 3)
• The identity of an exceedingly common, but often unwarranted, psychological state (which you could be experiencing this very minute) that connects depression to the shrinkage of the two regions of your brain which control memory and emotion.
• The identity of the hormone responsible for shrinking your brain (plus what causes it to be released in a catastrophic flood that also raises blood sugar, increases bone loss, and kills your sex drive!).
• The surprising results of a Viennese aging study which failed to confirm all but ONE of 9 factors potentially predictive of brain shrinkage (hint: it’s the one that affects mood and your sex life)

PART 3:
EXERCISE AS A WEAPON IN THE WAR AGAINST COGNITIVE DECLINE
[toggle for topics covered]

• The worrying implications of a common mood-altering gene abnormality that predisposes you to major depressive disorder, or MDD (affects roughly 1 in every 3 people).
• The 2010 Stanford University Department of Psychology study which showed MDD gene-carriers how to reduce their odds of severe depression by a full two thirds (no doctor’s appointment required).
• Why knitting and watching TV represent “clear and present dangers” to the health of your brain (and the brain-friendly relaxation techniques to replace them with).
• The emergence of ever-accelerating cognitive risk factors which affect people born between the years 1946-1964.
• The difference between a diagnosis of cognitive impairment and brain shrinkage (and why it may just come down to whether you can afford the MRI scan)
• The findings of a University of Sydney study that sought to determine which type of exercise works best to preserve memory (one of which was a clear winner).
• The 44-year clinical study of 191 Swedish women that shows how a simple physical fitness test at the midpoint of your life is a major predictor of susceptibility to cognitive deline and brain shrinkage (this test can be performed at your nearest gym).
• The best age to begin exercising to reliably forestall brain shrinkage and the threat of irreversible cognitive impairment (hint: you have likely already reached it).
• How to get started, safely, with a physical fitness plan if your current daily exercise routine consists of the walk to your car!
• The tragic tale of a famous artist who traded a lifetime of bad habits for a 15-minute session in the gym – and paid the ultimate price for it (a valuable lesson in what NOT to do when it comes to working out).
• What never to do on an airplane more than two straight hours (unless you are prepared to risk long-term brain damage, loss of speech, physical paralysis, and even death).
• An inexpensive non-exercise-related device you can install in your place of work to reduce the number of hours you need to spend at the gym (it boosts your productivity too).
• Strap this device onto your body if you cannot afford a personal trainer – it costs less than $200, motivates you to keep moving, and may just save your life.
• One way to reliably transform the tedium of exercise into a social event that gets you brimming with excitement several times a week (it’s also one of the easiest ways to lose weight).
• A type of exercise you can perform just once a month to increase bone mass and the amount of a bone-derived growth hormone that stimulates the production of new brain cells.

PART 4:
EXERCISE PROTECTS YOUR BRAIN!
[toggle for topics covered]

• Running, cycling, tennis, squash… Does it really make a difference which type of aerobic activity you adopt to stimulate the production of new brain cells? Does it matter how long, or how hard you throw yourself into it? (Answer: yes, and yes!)
• A super-efficient time-saving technique you can use to condense 50 minutes of physical exercise to just ONE minute – without sacrificing any of the cardiovascular benefits.
• How to solidify important new memories by boosting by a factor of EIGHT the amount of human growth hormone in your brain (handy for those times when you really need to bone up on new concepts).
• How to gain deep access to the area of your brain that controls motor skills, balance and coordination (rewarding you with superb dexterity and sure-footedness, and extraordinary mental control).
• Why you need to go again, and again, and again, when it comes to shoring up both your memories and your commitment to lasting exercise habit.
• How to tap the gracefulness of this “slow and calming” but physically challenging sport to wipe away brain cell-destroying stress and anxiety from your life.
• The good, the bad, and the ugly of aerobic exercise as an approach to improved brain health (as told by a decade-long instructor).
• Leg warmers, or weight belts? How to choose the workout routine that is right for you (and avoid spending years on movements that provide you with absolutely no health benefit).
• Are you really burning off fat? Or is it muscle? Why doing one will make you leaner, while the other will make you fatter.
• How getting a bad case of shin splints dramatically changed the course of my life for the better (and the shape of my body).
• A compelling argument for why you should immediately begin lifting weights for the health of your brain (even if you are a woman and the thought of “pumping iron” sounds absurd to you).
• My 3 favorite neurotrophic (brain supporting) exercises, and the single piece of weight-bearing equipment needed to perform them (strand me on a deserted island and I would insist on taking it with me!).
• The physical activity responsible for producing in athletes 10 TIMES the amount of a “super protein” that modulates brain rewiring and the production of new brain cells (even DOUBLING the amount of this protein could provide a significant improvement to memory performance).
• The tiny and incredibly popular weight lifting device invented in 19th-century Russia that allows you to work out anywhere (whether it be in a large open-floored gymnasium or a compact space like your living room).
• A unique approach to getting fit, relied upon for two thousand years by fighting forces to attain combat-readiness, which today uses dried beans, rice, sand, even water to perform full-body workouts in 10 minutes or less.
• Would you put in 3.5 hours of intense physical activity each week if it rolled back your biological clock by 9 years? If so, this is the activity to get your there…
• What to fear if you are among the unwitting 90 percent of the population which fails to perform ANY exercise whatsoever.
• How to determine your current level of brain damage using the “naked before the bathroom mirror” 5-second body assessment and wake up call.

MODULE 4: RISK FACTORS

In this last portion of the Ageless Brain educational series we’ll concentrate on clearing away any remaining (sometimes severe) obstacles to the lasting health of your brain.

It is no exaggeration to say that if you choose to ignore everything else I teach in this program and just concentrate on eliminating from your life the cognitive risk factors explored in this section your brain will likely benefit significantly.

We’re going to take a close look at habits you may have picked up over the course of a lifetime. Habits which can:

• prematurely age your brain by as much as 16 years
• as much as TRIPLE your risk of cognitive impairment (you’re likely engaging in one such habit now)
• predispose you to life-threatening diseases like lung, liver, colon, cervix and pancreatic cancer (all of which will kill you even faster than would a shrinking brain)

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Because every threat of chronic disease that might affect the other organs of your body is also a threat to the health of your brain. As we’ll see, every part of your body is connected to every other part through the 60,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries that supply your brain with every molecule of fuel and oxygen and other essential factors needed to sustain it.

So, if you want to remain clear-headed as you age, your “pipes” will need to remain whistle-clean. Blood will need to flow freely to and from your brain. And your metabolism will need to function optimally so as to produce all the energy required for peak mental capacity no matter what your age.

The solution to these problems which directly affect the performance of your brain involves simple awareness.

When you know what is causing your brain grievous harm you can take corrective action. I’ll show you which habits carry the greatest risk to the long-term health of your brain and what you can do to curb them.

Here’s how we’ll do it:

PART 1:
BRAIN LONGEVITY – WHAT CAN GO WRONG
[toggle for topics covered]

• How to tell whether that forgotten name is a normal response to aging, and nothing to worry about, or suggestive of something far more sinister.
• The importance of dwindling attention span (the proximate cause of a wandering mind) to memory formation and recall.
• The difference between “crystallized” intelligence and “fluid” intelligence – and why one will fade with age while the other won’t (and may even survive moderate cognitive impairment).
• Whether you should be fearful if diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (plus the 10 signs you might already be afflicted).
• The 7 stages of cognitive impairment familiar to all physicians (any one of which your own doctor may have already entered into your “medical history”).
• “How long have I got?” A guide to longevity in the face of a brain shrinkage diagnosis.
• What to expect if you carry “ApoE4” – the cholesterol gene variant that predisposes you to cognitive impairment (and other potentially fatal outcomes).
• An inherently non-reducible brain shrinkage risk factor even more influential than ApoE4 (this one affects absolutely everyone ever born).
• If brain shrinkage is the KING of cognitive impairments, this form – the curse of thickening blood vessels – is the clear runner up (and can act with the gravest of consequences FAR more quickly).
• The top 3 risk factors for neurovascular blockage (odds are, you’re dealing with at least one of them, even if you don’t realize it).
• The story of an indomitable world leader known as “The Grocer’s Daughter” whose steel-trap memory and forceful voice seemed guaranteed to last a lifetime (but was instead cut short by cognitive impairment).
• The story of the movie star turned politician who finally became the most powerful man on the planet, before he stunned the world with a graceful 2-page letter announcing his “long goodbye” as a result of a brain shrinkage diagnosis.

PART 2:
THE MODIFIABLE RISK FACTORS FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT
[toggle for topics covered]

• The inspiring story of a “soap opera” TV star turned cognitive neuroscientist whose sudden decision to return to school decades after leaving it quickly put her on a path to becoming one of the pre-eminent authorities on cognitive decline.
• The strange connection between tooth hygiene and your likelihood of ever being diagnosed with cognitive impairment.
• Why it may be too late to save your parents from a full-scale neuronal meltdown (and what to do next to ensure you don’t follow in their footsteps).
• The dangerous brain health “blind spot” that may be promoting the false belief that you are already doing everything you can to protect your brain (when in fact you are only doing a FRACTION of what is necessary).
• How to avoid having to be chemically restrained in your final years so as to keep you from trying to find your way home when let out of your room in the care facility.
• Ditch this potentially stroke and brain atrophy-inducing habit if you want to avoid the “premature aging” of your brain – or risk dealing with the side effects which can include lung, liver, colon, cervix and pancreatic cancer.
• Daniel Amen, the brain-imaging neuroscientist, says this enjoyable but “age restricted” habit will ruin your brain. Now a joint French/Canadian study agrees: this activity at least DOUBLES your risk of cognitive impairment (THREE times if you really partake of it).
• The state-sponsored habit that turns out to be not only GREAT for the long-term health of your brain, but the more you engage in it the greater the amount of neuroprotection (and the more money you are likely to be paid for what you do).
• How a 5-year Yeshiva University study revealed a “minimal investment” leisure habit which can be taken up at any age to confer a substantial delay in the onset of cognitive decline (provided you don’t wait too late to get started with it!)
• Jumping Jacks for the brain: for the treatment of anxiety and depression this works even better than prescription drugs (and massively reduces your odds of falling victim to ANY disease, including brain shrinkage).
• A physically (and mentally) invigorating habit that HALTS brain shrinkage, and can even ADD brain volume (yet most people NEVER take it up).
• The only brain maintenance habit that MUST be performed daily to avoid immediate and serious “brain fog” (yet only two-thirds of the population take the time to do it right).
• What to be on the lookout for in your cerebral spinal fluid that presages the arrival of cognitive impairment up to two decades before it strikes.

PART 3:
THE RISK THAT RUN THROUGH YOUR VEINS
[toggle for topics covered]

• How to shrink your brain volume 8 percent (effectively aging your brain by 16 years) by overdoing a practice you will almost certainly engage in today.
• What a study of 1.3 million individuals revealed about the connection between body weight and cognitive decline (and why it might be time to revise that diet).
• An effortless but ill-advised approach to losing weight (you’ll never hear this from your doctor and for good reason).
• The worst age range to be obese if your goal is to avoid ever losing your mind (hint: this is the period during which you are most likely to pile it on).
• Fifty-four million people in the United States are afflicted with this condition that pre-disposes them to cognitive decline. Yet they are completely unaware of it.
• Three ways that poor blood sugar regulation raises your risk for cognitive decline (and how to fix this).
• Four signs that your arteries are clogged and you may be on the verge of heart attack, stroke, or just the slow silent death of brain cells that suffocate in the absence of a sufficient flow of blood.
• How to use a salt shaker to lower your risk of cognitive decline.
• An increasingly popular and “peaceful” way of living that turns out to be as dangerous to your health as smoking cigarettes.
• The memory-strengthening hormone linked to depression that too often goes awry and actually kills off memory and new memory-forming brain cells.
• What a study of 50,000 individuals with depression tells us about the condition’s connection to neurovascular blockage and brain shrinkage (which it often precedes by a decade or more).

PART 4:
THE INFLAMED BRAIN
[toggle for topics covered]

• Why your brain sometimes goes to war with itself and fights enormously destructive battles it cannot possibly win.
• “Sticky protein” syndrome: how too much sugar can turn your brain’s normally placid “mop-up” cells into warring “attack dogs”.
• The dangers of chemical weaponry, and other neuron-unfriendly substances deployed in the shrinking brain.
• The details of a crazy idea that promises to immunize you against brain shrinkage by “erasing” part of your brain (the catch is the cure could also kill you…)
• Why an anti-inflammatory drug developed for joint pain relief might just work better inside your head as an inhibitor of early stage cognitive decline.
• A promising but highly controversial option for treating brain shrinkage in the not-too-distant future.

PART 5:
KEEPING INFLAMMATION UNDER CONTROL
[toggle for topics covered]

• Nineteen safe and inexpensive anti-neuroinflammatory foods you can use in place of high-cost neuroprotective drugs (if any are ever found to reliably do the job).
• The brightly-colored herbal powder used for millenia as a cooking spice which modern science has shown also doubles as a high-potency anti-inflammatory for your brain – but ONLY if you combine it with a particular dark-colored spice that increases bioavailability 20-fold.
• Another little-known “high octane” anti-inflammatory compound found in a special class of berries that rivals the antioxidant power of resveratrol (from grapes and red wine). Yet this compound is absorbed by your gut 20 times more easily and remains in your body 7 times longer.
• A long-used medicinal spice from South-East Asia which contains a powerful neuroinflammatory substance that, in mice, reduces the rate of memory-related brain cell death by up to 35 percent (and may work just as effectively in the human brain).
• Telomeres are the “genetic markers of aging” that tend to shorten the older we get. So what do we make of the family in which they LENGTHEN with age?
• Why in a third of the population do telomeres not shorten, but instead maintain their length? (And yet these individuals die anyway)
• The “dirty and addictive” telomere-shortening habit that shrinks your brain and ages your body, on average, by 7.4 years. The good news: you’ll reclaim 3 of those years if you kick the habit.
• Another highly addictive telomere-shortening habit that also shrinks your brain and ages your body, on average, by 8.8 years.
• The effect of diabetes on telomere shortening, proving that sugar is not only “pure, white, and deadly” but does a bang up job when it comes to the premature aging of your brain.

PLUS: THE 12-PHASE AGELESS BRAIN “ACTION PLAN” – A FITNESS AND NUTRITION PLAN FOR YOUR BRAIN

Let’s turn now to the actionable portion of the Ageless Brain protocol. This is arguably the most important component. That’s because without a specific plan for what to do and when to do it, you’ll have no option other than to accept the inevitable when it comes to the health of your brain. In all likelihood that means a steady decline in mental function as the years go by.

The Action Plan will help to ensure that never happens.

Over the entire six-month period during which you will be exposed to the Ageless Brain protocol you will receive practical guidance in the form of both physical fitness and nutrition recommendations.

Fitness, as you know by now, does not just tremendously improve your overall cardiovascular health. It paves the way for a lifetime of marked cognitive performance. It does this by facilitating the biochemistry necessary for neurogenesis (brain cell growth) and plasticity (brain cell rewiring). At every age.

Nutrition doesn’t just provide the fuel needed to power the sustained function of your energy-intensive brain. Through the PROPER selection of foods is it can also power the transformation of your brain from a degraded state of inflamed neurochemical inefficiency, to an alternative inflammation-free cognitive state capable of high mental performance.

These considerations helped guide the formulation of your six-month Action Plan, the result of which – when fully implemented – will be this:

• You will think and reason with greater clarity (so work colleagues will continue to be impressed with your performance)
• You will remember the small stuff (not just who your partner is, but the details of how you met)
• You will feel better and look better (you will probably also lose weight if that seems desirable)
• You won’t get out of breath so easily (like when you haul groceries from the car, or go the distance on date night – yes, your sex life is likely to improve too!)
• You will breeze through life’s hiccups (the hundred little obstacles that might otherwise have brought your day to a screeching halt)
• You may need to rethink retirement! (because not only are you likely to live a better life, but live a longer one too – people who live to 100 years of age tend to be very fit)

In short, you’re going to behave as though you were much younger than the calendar suggests.

This is my goal for you, and it all begins by preparing you for a continued appreciation of the benefits conferred on your brain by the judicious choice of exercise and nutrition.

Every second week you will get the next “step” of the Action Plan, to be executed at your own pace.

At the end of your self-paced six-month instruction and training program you can expect to experience all of the benefits listed above. But long before that happens you can also expect the following:

• After 4 weeks… You may be wondering how your new diet of brain-healthy but delicious foods managed to escape your attention until now. Armed for weeks with a cookbook full of Ageless Brain meal recipes, you’ll find yourself completely rethinking what foods deserve to go into your shopping cart. You may also find yourself glancing at the bathroom scale as you begin to anticipate the changes to your body…
• After 8 weeks… You may be FEELING the changes. The numbers on the bathroom scales might not be budging yet. But still, you FEEL the differences throughout your body. And your brain is beginning to respond to the recommended physical fitness regimen. Bone and brain derived neurotrophic factors are taking effect, instructing your hippocampus to add new brain cells in anticipation of new experiences to be encoded into memory…
• After 12 weeks… You may be seeing changes on the scales. A few pounds lighter. A notch inward on your belt. Now there’s no denying the outward expression of physical progress – your arms and legs are stronger than you have experienced in years! And inwardly, this is the time after which Daniel Amen confirms changes ARE taking place in your brain, its structure gradually adjusting to a lowered state of inflammation. You may notice you’re thinking more clearly and you’re less fatigued…
• After 16 weeks… There’s no question your adherence to the Ageless Brain protocol has sparked a change in way your body and your brain now operate. The combination of the right foods and the right workouts has completely revitalized you from head to toe. Your hormone levels are more balanced. The result is better digestion. More energy. Less stress to contend with. In fact it’s getting harder and harder to throw you off your game. You’re leveling up – reclaiming a significant fraction of the physical and mental performance of your youth…
• After 20 weeks… When you look in the mirror you may not recognize yourself. Five months in, the physical changes may be significant. More importantly, the changes going on at the level of the synapses in your brain will be equally astounding. Your workouts have stimulated measurable growth in your hippocampus, improving your ability to make and retain memories, and you’re utilizing energy more efficiently so your brain can think with greater intensity and for longer periods without tiring. At this point you almost feel like another person…
• After 24 weeks… You may be wondering where the time has gone. At the six-month mark, as you assess the degree to which your brain (and body) feels revitalized – indeed, feels more youthful and capable than you believed possible – it dawns on you that you are now fully prepared and able to maintain the high-functioning cognitive state you’ve worked to attain. You have put yourself solidly onto the path to an Ageless Brain…

GET STARTED WITH THE MOST ADVANCED, MOST EFFECTIVE PROTOCOL YET DEVISED FOR LASTING BRAIN HEALTH

Isn’t it ironic that the ONE organ we think least about how to keep healthy is our brain?

For most of us it is literally a black box, a hidden compartment of complexity and mystery about which we’re content to accept only brain specialists might have any real inkling.

And yet by surrendering curiosity about the nature of our brain and how it works we give up any chance that we might control what happens to it!

That’s not just downright risky and scary – it’s plum crazy in my opinion.

Because the consequences of doing nothing to preserve the health of your brain can be dire. Not just for you, but for anyone who depends on you for support, be it a spouse, a child, or even employees.

But suppose, just for a moment, that your sense of obligation to others to ensure your continued health just isn’t going to be strong enough to compel you to take the necessary actions to save yourself (this seems unlikely, but let’s play Devil’s Advocate for a moment).

Are you really willing to entertain the idea of losing your independence as your brain collapses in on itself? Of having to be completely beholden to the care and duty of family members? Of eventually becoming so dependent you have to be dispatched to a nursing home because the burden of caring for you is too emotionally, physically, or financially taxing on your partner, or your children?

WILL YOU SIMPLY GIVE UP AND THEN EXPECT OTHERS TO TAKE CARE OF YOU?

Honestly, I don’t think that’s the kind of burden anyone who has thought about this matter would be willing to inflict on a loved one.

It’s not something they SHOULD have to deal with, especially given that in most instances this level of debilitation is entirely avoidable.

Ageless Brain was created for that exact purpose – to help you ensure you never have to put yourself, or the people you care about, through the ordeals that come with a diagnosis of progressive brain shrinkage.

Here’s what you’re risking when you decide NOT to take action, considered from the perspective of someone who might end up shouldering your burden.

My attempt to provide personal home care for my ailing mother lasted six months, after which time I was a physical wreck. I don’t advise this approach. On the other hand, I have one friend who worries about what she will do once the money she pays to a care giver runs out. She pays $8,000 every month for someone to attend to her father who has irreversible brain shrinkage.

ANOTHER FRIEND PAID $10,000 EVERY MONTH

She had two parents with severe cognitive impairment (one has since passed away) who needed full-time care. They would sit in the same room across from one other, each of them wondering who the other person was they were staring at.

Unfortunately, scenarios like these play out every day for families forced to deal with loved ones who have ignored for too long the health of their brain.

Wouldn’t you prefer to do what is needed today to ensure your children (or spouse) won’t ever have to spend up to $120,000 annually to help you through your final years? A brain-neglect “tax” that could amount to more than a million dollars should you last a decade?

Could your loved ones survive the level of financial stress that has them selling off assets to pay your nursing home debts? Could they tolerate being forced to dip into college tuition funds once set aside never to be touched? Could they handle going bankrupt?

My son deserves better than that. If you are a parent, I am sure your children do too.

I created Ageless Brain so that you might never have to face this kind of burden

Here’s something else to think about. Even if you knew for sure one day a pill WOULD be developed that completely arrested cognitive decline in its tracks, allowing you to bypass the expense of a care giver, you would still go broke trying to beat the disease. That’s because no pharmaceutical company would sell a cure for anything less than the market can withstand.

If you would pay $120,000 a year for round-the-clock care while your loved one continues to descend into mental oblivion, wouldn’t you pay at least that much to keep them sane? To allow them to enjoy the remainder of their days unencumbered by the consequences of a slowly-dying brain?

Of course you would.

Just like you’d be willing to pay $190,000 for an open heart surgery that lasted just hours if your life depended on it. Or a $200,000 per year experimental immunotherapy protocol that promises 3 in 10 odds of eventually putting your cancer into remission. You’d pay double this. Triple, if you could afford it.

The drug makers know this.

One way or another, if you get sufficiently sick, you’ll pay for the privilege (even if it is just an illusion) of getting well again. You’ll pay a LOT. Or someone else will pay on your behalf.

Here’s the thing, though.

You don’t have to get sick

At the very least you can significantly reduce the odds of it ever happening. When it comes to your brain, the key to lasting health isn’t about waiting until something ominous turns up on an MRI scan.

By then it’s too late to expect anything close to a miraculous recovery. The damage is done. It is irreversible.

To be effective at helping to safeguard your brain against the silent threat of disease, you need to act DECADES before the first signs of memory loss are ever expected to reveal themselves.

You can only hope to slow down the progressive loss of memory and preserve as best you can your ability to think well enough to continue your life independently of others. And if not, at a minimum try to hold on to the memory of who you are and the faces of those who would support you.

The key to bypassing the kind of neurological damage that eventually scrambles your thoughts, and detaches you from the world you have always known, is prevention.

It is the pursuit of a protocol like Ageless Brain, which has been formulated to significantly enhance your odds of preserving full brain health well into your advanced years.

If the thought of losing your mind terrifies you, it may comfort you to know that in most cases devastating mental impairment IS entirely avoidable. That’s because scientists are in growing agreement that cognitive impairment is often the long-term outcome of a state of chronic inflammation in the brain that can be prevented.

When you begin putting into practice the Action Plan outlined in Ageless Brain you will be implementing lifestyle strategies which, through the results of clinical trials, are scientifically proven to be successful at significantly reducing your risk of neurological damage and cognitive decline.

But to have the greatest impact on your brain you need to begin on this corrective path as early as possible. You need to get started long before the damage begins. You need to begin making these changes today.

MY UNCONDITIONAL IMMUTABLE BRAIN GUARANTEE – NOTICEABLE NEURAL RESTRUCTURING IN 60 DAYS OR YOUR MONEY BACK

When you elect to take this six-month (24-week) brain revitalizing, brain resculpting journey with me you can expect to experience the most significant rate of improvement within that period (though attending to the health of your brain should certainly be considered a life-long process).

In fact, if you don’t literally FEEL you are beginning to experience some of the benefits of the protocol within the first 60 days (time enough for you to begin putting the Action Plan into practice), you are welcome to take advantage of my failsafe “immutable brain” money-back guarantee:

If you are not 100% satisfied you are seeing results – if instead you’re absolutely convinced your brain is immutable and incapable of responding to the Ageless Brain protocol – you can request a full refund, no questions asked!

If at any point during the first 60 days you don’t feel like you are making progress, for any reason whatsoever, you can cancel your membership for a full refund. In fact, if you continue your membership for any portion of the recommended full six-month period of brain improvement and safeguarding instruction and training, you can cancel and request a full refund for that month of the program.

Why can I offer this level of guaranteed satisfaction or your money back? Because the Ageless Brain protocol is a comprehensive, well thought out, and thoroughly tested program that gets results.

Once you begin to experience its effects directly I am confident you’ll recognize the quality and worth of the information you are receiving as you make your way through the program from the introductory session on day one until the final wrap up session six months later.

I know that when you become an Ageless Brain practitioner you won’t just feel you have made a wise initial investment. You will quickly discover that you want to stick around for the full six months as I continue to imbue within you a new appreciation and understanding of your brain, and how best to take care of it.

Here are 5 reasons why I am fully confident Ageless Brain is the ONLY program that can deliver on its promise to help you achieve the greatest possible level of lasting brain health:

• Because I spent long months carefully researching the scientific studies that underlie the protocol (see below), ensuring that it is not only widely accepted by brain science authorities, but also that it has the widest applicability.
• Because I’ve been unafraid, when telling the story of your brain, to pull out for the wide angle view, or zoom in for the close up when I felt it necessary to help you get the appropriate and most illuminating perspective.
• Because I have thought hard about how to provide you with the LEAST amount of actionable advice that nonetheless provides a significant improvement to the current and future health of your brain.
• Because you’ll recognize from day one that I am invested in seeing you achieve the kind of high-performing and long-lasting brain we each deserve.
• And because I have lived the protocol for decades, reaping all the same brain benefits you will reap, as have hundreds of my personally-trained clients over the years.

Remember, you are FULLY PROTECTED against making an uninformed decision when you sign up today for an Ageless Brain membership. Even if you only skimmed this page and did not take the time to read every little detail of my offer, you are protected against discovering later that you made an ill-informed decision about your purchase.

That’s because you are covered by my “immutable brain” money-back guarantee. You risk absolutely nothing when you sign up today and finally give the health of your brain the priority it deserves. You have my word that your future brain will regard your decision today to safeguard it against the threat of cognitive decline (or worse) as the wisest thing you ever did on its behalf.

And don’t forget, you’re not just investing in the health of your brain. I’m also committed to helping you immunize the rest of your body to the ravages of age. After all, what use is a healthy well-functioning brain if it is connected to a body that will not last?

Get Started With Proven Strategies To Help Keep You From Losing Your Mind

Still not sure you need to take action right this very minute to safeguard the health of your brain?

I’ll be perfectly honest with you. If you have yet to reach your 40s you may have as much as another decade to make the decision to get serious about the long-term health of your brain. It is always better to start early on a preventative protocol, but the real damage typically doesn’t begin kicking in until your mid 40s.

After that, all bets are off and sticking your head in the sand is the surest way to one day find yourself facing a looming cognitive crisis – one you are wholly unprepared to deal with.

Maybe it happens in your 60s, the most common age to begin experiencing disturbing changes in mental functioning. Perhaps your luck runs out before that. Either way, you can be sure what follows will be highly unpleasant, downright scary, and possibly not only life-altering, but disastrously so.

Here’s the good news. Right now you get to CHOOSE the likely future you’ll be forced to deal with. One of them beckons with a sense of crystal clarity about what lies ahead. The other is murky and uninviting, and potentially harrowing.

In the murky world you might find yourself riding a lawn mower.

Even the simple things in life can become challenging and dangerous when your attention span begins to fade.

The sun is up, your hopes are high, but no sooner have you zeroed in on one untidy clump of oversized grass than another catches your eye and you are off to deal with that. And as your inattentive mind flits from one patch of lawn to the next you look back to discover you have mowed in an aimless and unproductive way, and as you circle back to restart the entire process you cannot for the life of you figure out why you have done this…

Are you prepared to accept the kind of life in which you fail to finish the things you start because you can no longer focus?

Or would you prefer to remain in the crystal world where your mind follows a predetermined long-held mowing path that allows you to be quickly finished with your chore and sipping a refreshing lemonade on the verandah in the company of your delightful grandchildren?

In the murky world you may well be able to continue to enjoy cooking with your granddaughter, something the two of you have done for years. But more and more often you may also notice she has begun to surprise you with her requests.

One moment you’ll be happily scooping flour from a paper bag and the next minute she will say “Grandma, hand me the sifter,” and you will have no idea what she is talking about. “What’s a sifter?” you’ll ask her, but all you will get back is a blank look.

Can you live with the prospect of the sudden and possibly permanent disappearance from your memory of the once familiar?

Having to choose between the way life could be and the way it WILL be if you elect to do nothing to protect your brain should not be difficult. The job of your brain is to protect you, so you need to do the same for it!

Or would you prefer to stay tethered to the crystal world where you remember the names of the tools you’ve used a lifetime to carry out your favorite pastimes – so those precious interludes spent with family members are never interrupted by embarrassing and unexplainable failures of memory?

In the murky world taxes go unpaid because those once-figurable 1040s now seem like labyrinths of confusion and you push them aside until they slip your mind entirely.

In the murky world your friends inexplicably stop communicating with you, their faces replaced by strangers who seem to know you but you do not know them.

In the ever-changing reality that seems daily to be swallowing the world you once knew more and more you can no longer tell whether you are awake or you are still dreaming.

It is almost impossible to imagine the grief and the terror advanced mental impairment forces on the lives of those it touches. When it happens, I can testify, you will be willing to pay any price to turn back the clock and reclaim your life. You will contemplate doing things you would have never thought possible.

But it should never have to come to that. Especially not when you know ahead of time how to protect your brain with a protocol designed to help improve your current cognitive capabilities and lower your risk of neurodegenerative disease.

When you elect to become an Ageless Brain member today you will be rejecting (and rightfully so) the dark and uninviting path forward which has become the default for so many.

If you would prefer to advance into the second half of your life with the confidence that comes from knowing you have done everything possible to forestall mental decline, and even to boost mental performance by adopting habits that encourage the continued growth and rewiring of brain cells no matter what your age, click on the button below to place your order and become the latest Ageless Brain practitioner.

ARE YOU READY TO TRADE IN YOUR OLD BRAIN FOR A NEW ONE?

Click on the green button to begin the Ageless Brain protocol, improve your memory and thinking ability, and lower your risk of cognitive decline – the modern-day curse of an aging brain!

Yours in lasting brain health,
Carolyn Hansen

Just $197 $127 one-time payment

Just $47 $27 each month (for 6 months)

CLICK HERE TO ORDER AGELESS BRAIN

P.S. Ageless Brain is the only science-based protocol designed around the 3 KEY INSIGHTS found on this page about the progression of non age-related cognitive decline and progressive brain shrinkage.

As such, its primary purpose is to help you implement lifestyle practices that lower your long-term risk for cognitive decline, brain shrinkage, and every other neurodegenerative condition that directly impacts the central nervous system.

P.P.S. Ageless Brain is the only brain health protocol that takes you on an extended six-month journey so as to provide you with adequate time to shake off every established but neuro-destructive habit you may have picked up over the years, ideally replacing each with a brain-friendly alternative.

You get to experience the protocol for a full 24-week period, during which time you will be exposed to simple nutrition- and exercise-based trainings that improve your current mental performance and help immunize your brain to the life-long threat of gradual but irreversible cognitive impairment.

Click on the button to place your risk-free order now.

Pssst! Would Your Doctor Wade Through This Much Scientific Research On Your Behalf?

Don’t get me wrong…

If you wake up with an unexplained pain in your chest I would be the first person to recommend you seek immediate medical advice from your physician. I would also encourage you to ask about preventative measures for high cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure… all the common afflictions we could both reasonably expect your doctor to know something about.

But when it comes to the ongoing health of your brain?

Strategies to avert the kind of catastrophic brain shrinkage that took the life of my mother?

Are you prepared to take that big of a chance on the future welfare of your mental health, given the average general practitioner’s knowledge about the workings of the human brain can probably be traced back to three lectures attended during the first year of medical school?

Your doctor may be able to spot a tell-tale shadow on a brain scan and refer you to a specialist for more information about what it might mean. He may be able to agree with you that something is “off” with you. But that’s about it. When it comes to offering actionable steps on how to treat the common symptoms of age-related cognitive decline, or worse, your doctor is likely to be of little use to you.

I realized this the day I learned my mother’s condition had come with as much of a shock to her physician as it had to me. Amazingly, he hadn’t noticed anything was wrong with her until the day she could no longer recognize him.

Well, no one’s mental state should ever be allowed the opportunity to deteriorate this badly.

That’s why I have relentlessly researched both age-related cognitive decline and disease-related cognitive decline. I have looked into the causes for fading memory, physical and social clumsiness, disorientation and erratic behavior, change of personality… plus all the other hallmarks of a brain showing the warning signs of serious mental deterioration.

I have had to repeatedly go back to original studies to figure out what the researchers were really looking for and whether they actually found evidence for it. And if they did find evidence for an effect that alleviates the miseries which accompany a life marred by a diseased, or shrinking, or otherwise impaired brain, then:

• How strong was that evidence?
• Did the conclusion of the study warrant me advising others to adopt the lessons that came out it?
• Was I prepared to tell others to follow for life one strategy or another based on those lessons?
• Was I personally prepared to follow the same strategies?

The good news is that when you obtain your membership into the Ageless Brain program you won’t have to spend anywhere near the amount of time that I did vetting scientific studies for solid, actionable, and worthwhile lifestyle habits that legitimately have the power to preserve for life most of the brain function you were born with.

That’s because I have already done the hard work for the both of us and I’m happy to share it with you.

This means you literally get to spare yourself years of wasted time. Time you might have spent following dubious “brainpower boosting” practices. Or gulping down pills, powders, or potions that have been positioned as exotic brain-saving remedies you cannot afford not to take a chance on – even if it might cost you thousands of dollars each year to keep your dietary supplement subscriptions going.

And even if ONE of those subscriptions actually is providing some kind of benefit, the odds of the others doing so too? It’s slim. And there’s every possibility that some of those supplements are actually doing your brain more harm than they are good. Not every supplement lives up to the standards of preparation and safety advertised on the outside of the bottle.

Why take that kind of risk when the payoff is so hard to quantify?

Instead, use the results of the research outlined in Ageless Brain to make smart decisions about actions you can take today, based on proven science, to protect the health of your brain. I guarantee, you’ll find it’s one of the wisest decisions you could ever make about how to safeguard your most valuable asset.

Disclaimer

Product will be purchased using Paypal, a secure online payment interface