 There's a fascinating book called, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a Hmong child, her American doctors and the collision of two cultures. Now it's about a girl from Laos who has epilepsy and it's describing a bit of the cultural differences. If you can imagine a native culture seeing someone epilepsy just talking to you and then they begin having a seizure. This was something that was terrifying to traditional cultures and for people before the modern era where we understood that epilepsy was a neurological issue. And many other conditions that were said to have affected the spirit or the consciousness of the person were very disturbing and really alarming to ancient people. So even back in the day, people thought that many of these issues were due to spirits or possession or very unusual metaphysical phenomena. Now, one of those is dementia because if you've ever interacted with a loved one who has memory loss or has dementia or Alzheimer's, five years ago, grandma's there and today she may not even know your face and it's deeply disturbing. But why does it actually happen? Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Heing, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day. So before we jump in, I've put together two very important links right below this video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, that information is right below the video there. So what is dementia? You know, in the third year of my medical program, I was having a lot of sleep issues and probably 50% of the nights I was having an issue with insomnia. I couldn't fall asleep or I couldn't stay asleep. And after a few months of this, I was noticing I was really starting to struggle to find words. So one day at lunch, one of my classmates, now colleagues, he said to me, he's like, you're usually quite articulate and smart but lately you have been repeating your words or you're stuttering and you're stumbling a lot. Is everything okay? You sound like my patient with dementia. Now, lots of conditions can mimic dementia, right? I have patients of my own that have anxiety or depression and they also don't sleep well. So that what looks like dementia can just be due to sleep deprivation. It can be due to just general exhaustion and general fatigue. It can be due to, you're doing too many things in your life, you're overwhelmed until you seem very scatterbrained or disoriented or jumpy. Those do not warrant a diagnosis of dementia. Technically, dementia is a general term used to describe a cluster of symptoms that affect your memory, thinking, and social abilities. So in people who actually have dementia, these interfere with just day-to-day activities. And the diagnosis of dementia isn't just one particular disease. Several diseases can cause dementia. The one we are most familiar with is Alzheimer's, which is the most common. So what are some of these early warning signs before we get into the traditional Chinese medicine approach? Now, in this first paper here, entitled The Diagnosis and Management of Dementia, a review, the researchers describe impairments in memory, language, attention, visual spatial cognition, such as spatial orientation, executive function, and mood. Now, in another research paper, they highlight nine particular risk factors. This paper is called Dementia Prevention, Intervention, and Care. 2020 report of the Lancet Commission, and they describe a growing body of evidence supports the nine potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia modeled by this Lancet Commission. They describe less education, hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical and activity, diabetes, and low social contact. So it's interesting that these are considered risk factors for dementia, but what are those actual warning signs themselves? Warning sign number one is memory loss. So difficulty organizing and actually planning things. People seem a bit scattered. Sign number two is personality changes. So interesting facet of dementia, or even, for example, Alzheimer's is, sometimes people have significant levels of agitation or anger. They may have other symptoms of depression or anxiety as well. The third is troubles with general spatial abilities. So for example, getting lost when driving around town. You know, my grandma, who has Alzheimer's, for example, one time went out for a walk and wasn't home for several hours because she was completely lost, disoriented in her own neighborhood, and her husband had to go out and look for her, and some neighbors actually found her pretty far away from home. So that's a very worrying aspect of dementia, in this case, Alzheimer's. The fourth being sensory dysfunction. So for example, physical senses like coordination issues. The fifth is language problems. The classic dementia being losing or forgetting words. You know, a lot of people around middle age, they say, oh, you know, what is that word or what was that thing? My memory is not like it used to be. Sort of a classic dementia anecdote. The sixth is confusion and disorientation. So the most severe being like, for example, what I gave about my grandma with Alzheimer's, people are actually walking out their apartment or their home and they get lost for hours. And then they get quite alarmed or quite agitated because they have no clue where they are, how they got there, and they have no clue how to get home. So that is a very traditional dementia sort of scenario. Now there are very interesting herbal formulas that can be used to help these symptoms of dementia. Now, check out this first paper here and it's studying ginseng. So ginseng we call renchen and it's on the ginsenocides, some of the compounds within ginseng. This paper is called treating senile dementia with traditional Chinese medicine. And I wanna highlight, researchers found that ginsenocides exerted significant neuroprotective effects on cultured cortical cells against XYZ-induced neurodegeneration, indicating it may be efficacious in protecting neurons from oxidative damage. Now, the second paper is on quite a famous herb, ginkgo biloba, and this is called traditional Chinese medicines and Alzheimer's disease. So in this paper, I wanna highlight two things. The leaf extract possesses the capacity to treat a variety of neurological disorders, including AD and age-related dementia. And it has many pharmacological effects, including improvement of mitochondrial dysfunction, scavenging of free radicals, lowering of oxidative stress, reduction of neural damages, reduction of platelet aggregation, anti-inflammation, and anti-aging. Now, ginkgo is quite a famous memory supplement these days, probably because of this kind of research, but in general, we never give single herbs really for any condition in TCM. So I don't recommend you just buy them and take them. Now, dementia is primarily related to two organ networks in TCM. The first is the Shaoyan organ network, the heart and the kidney pair. And the second is the Jwayan, the liver and pericardium. Now, the Shaoyan organ system is the heart and the kidney. Now, from a purely biomedical point of view, this typically encompasses cardiovascular issues, right? So we know that there's a strong correlation with people who have long-term cardiovascular issues like heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure, blood sugar, strongly correlated with the development of dementia, right? So one of the best things is making sure that this organ network, really cardiovascular health, is really firing on all cylinders. And on top of that, what's interesting is that, not only do we see heart disease, diabetes, blood sugar issues strongly correlated with dementia, obviously those are correlated with many other issues in general. So, you know, this heart kidney network is cardiovascular issues, blood pressure, strokes, right? These three issues are some of the largest reasons that people die today. And the Jwayan organ system, liver and pericardium, is often dealing with circulation in a different way, right? So we say that, for example, lots of people with diabetes have this kind of nerve damage from prolonged, uncontrolled diabetes. And what do they get? Peristegias, right? They get pins and needles. They get loss of sensation in the legs. The worst being, they have to get their legs amputated because now it's basically, your leg has such prolonged deficits in circulation that now it's basically septic. You have these aspects of the circulation and a way you can conceptualize it is, well, if your legs don't have circulation, other parts of your body are probably impaired as well, right? That's a very distal from the heart zone. So, heart and kidney organ network and liver and pericardium organ network are two of the most common that we overall want to make sure are functioning properly. And so we typically utilize formulas, sometimes with the addition of these herbs, but the base formula being the most common and the most important for maintaining good circulation, which will be one of the factors that decreases the chances of dementia in general. So, before you guys go, don't forget to check out those links right below this video. And also, there's a related video right here that will help you as well.