Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lisa Mosconi The XX Brain 20240711 :

CSPAN2 Lisa Mosconi The XX Brain July 11, 2024

Were honored to be hosting this fascinating conversation with doctor lisa mosconi and Natalie Morales about her new book the xx brain the groundbreaking science empowering women to maximize Cognitive Health and prevent alzheimers disease and her research on Womens Brain Health. Shes made it her lifes story to study the female brain and her new book provides a roadmap for using the risk of dementia. If you dont have the book and youre interested in buying a copy we will put a link in the chat and find more information and i would certainly recommendit. So as we begin to dive into this conversation let me start with our wonderful speaker. Lisa mosconi is professor of neurosurgery neuroscience and radiology at Cornell Medical College where shes the founder of the womens Brain Initiative and associate director of the prevention clinic. Shes an adjunct faculty member at the department of psychiatry at nyu school of medicine and she holds a phd in neuroscience and Nuclear Medicine. Her research focuses on the Early Detection of alzheimers disease with atrisk individuals especially women and how alzheimers disease can be prevented through a combination of medical care and lifestyle modifications in diet, and intellectual fitness. Shes the author of another great book, the xx brain. Thank you for having me today thank you lisa. Were also delighted to be joined by Natalie Morales and natalie is the author of nbcs today show. A host of dateline and author of behind closed doors with Natalie Morales. She previously served as host of nbc access and cohost of access live well as news today where she cohosted the shows serious hour and she joined today in 2006 as National Correspondent and course all platforms including nbc nightly news, daline andmsnbc. We are real grateful natalie for your excellent reporting during the semester was timeso we are delighted you came to ta today but i want to point out talie has some connection to this. She has a book call simple recipes for healthy ving where she shares her Favorite Recipes and tips for a healthy lifestyle. Welcome natalie,e are delighted to have you with us toy. Its my pleasure peggy, thank you so much for this rm introduction and a wonderful topic and an opportunity for us to focus on ourealth especially right w. Doctormoscow any , this book t xx brain the groundeaking science empowering women to maximize cognitive heal and prevent alzhmers disease is fascinating and is imptant for women to understand th significance of the rearch but also the Preventative Care that you put out in the book so idelighted to share this time with you and t the message out there. Imoing to turn the mic over to you. Thank you so much. Doctor mosconi, lets talk. The book is lled the xx brain so were talking about women and the fact of the matter is that we are two thirds more likely to and of developing alzheimers in our lifetime. Our womens brains that different than mens . I know men are from mars and women e from venus but is it true that we are wired so differently . We are, we are wired differently ani am a neuroscientist and background is neurology, medicine so the way i reseched my objective, i looked at the brain in many different ways th many parameters and what stan out most clearly is at brainswomens brains age differeny than mens brains and its something we have learned just recently from my research is at the way that a woman changes isey to brain changes, the connection thats been largely unexplored pretty much forever area and so its a very interesting topic and i think its worth talking about in terms of nopause. And that really is important for the brai im getting there. Asome point we all do. And we need to understand this durg the transition to menopause and how its associated with gher base learning and also with anxiety, witprevention, with an increased risk of medical conditions. Are going to dive deep into all of those topics because i think thats what weralso fascinated about is how can i better perhaps decrease mchances of developing alzimers. We will get into that lets go back intohat you said, the Scientific Community is only now starting to understand that women and our hormones may be somewhat late but yet why s gender been removed from the problem and from the equation in the medical community . That is something i have personally struggled with long time. I have bn trying to target women for 20 years in part because they have a diseas that really affected the women in my family and i started asking as soon as i could see i was. [inaudible] because my parents are nuclear physicist. Its very interesting but my questions were the difference between women and men in terms of its a lifestyle, is it mething else and the questions were just not there. And i think the problem is we have these huge gender gaps, especially as related to brain health. And today Womens Brain Health is overlooked, underdiagnosed a underresearched field. But thats really because theres two things that happened, the first one is that women were actively excluded from rearch until 1993 especially from Clinical Trials but the point is there was research and the second thing is that all this medical research excluded women, just substantiated this bias against mens brains that i referred to as bikini medicine which youre saying that what makes a woman a woman from a medical perspective is her reproductive organs. If you think about womens health, its about got , its about heovaries, its about her hormones. We dont talk about her brain. Especially when were talking about womens brainsits about womens health. We never talk about womens brains. And so all this is women excluded from research and its been underdiagnosed. Its fascating. You talk about your connection to alzheimers and my motherinlaw was diagnosed in her mid50s with early onset alzheimers so its been a passion of mine as well to try to crack the code and try to figure out what we can be doing better. Les go back to the question of hormones. Pically estrogen with women. What does estrogen have to do with alzheimers . Its a real great question and its something that i explored omitted from the conversation around brains. The ains are connected with the rest of the body and especially with women the introduction between the brain and reproductive system is key to brain aging and the media is to medication between the brain and all know that theres a difference between the genders, women have more estrogen so what we dont reale is a distinct hormone we have in our brains, we just have a different function inhe brain. We think of th these hormones as being involved in reproduction but in the brain , there really is a completely different function and itsrelated to energy. Women, literally pushes neurons to burn sugar to make energy. Estrogen is tiny your brain energy is tiny. That has some kind of superpowers in the brain that eps the Brain Healthy and younand the thing is tha this wears away gradually over time, not just with a but with women they need like you to menopause but in the process stage without detection that the antigen provideso how does that fect the brain then as you start going through menopause and you start experiencing loss of estrogen . We can seethat as a slowdown they maycollect energy and that is associat with an accelerated aging process. I think a lot of women report after nopause not all women obviously bumany wom, their hair is little bitmore fragile. Something happens inside the brain area theres not a huge problem, the brain is also starting to age and we can see th for some women the changes very mild but with others they are quite, hundreds of women. [inaudible] we find e difference in energy levs in the brain which does not correlate with cognitive performance. Women perform just as well as men of the same age. Womens brains are complicated and were trying to find out how theyr compensating because the brain kind of loses energy with estrogen but theyre perforng really well. Were trying to find out what happened soe can promote that mechanism. Theres a couple of chapters in the book but theres a whole section that focuses on hormone replacement thery and wh should think about it, who shouldnt. Ill recommend you read that because theres a lot of front areas where you go through and say you should or shldnt and then obviously you have ccer or Breast Cancer survivors, you have to prove it differently but for those who are approaching menopause or are already there already what do we need to be asking rselves when it comes to energy . We need it and why do you want it . I think there are diffent things that can be achiev. Its really important to know your strength and s something to discuss with your doctors but its not something thats very useful area for other women, it really depends on what youre tryi to achieve and what systems you want to minimize or alleviate and im very interested in what women would like to test for prevention being thatn some ways but not. [inaudible] before menopause and that hasnt been done yet so its been unexplored and the are many questions that need to be answered bualso it would be interesting to think what we can do instead of aromatherapy because there natural behavior modifications that can be used in pretty much athe same result. Going to get into that lifestyle, exercise, sleep and how all of that plays a part. But he has to first what about genetics . What is the genetic connection and link . As i mentioned my mother had early onset alzhmers and my husband and i are very much about health and wellness now because we know perhaps there is a risk for him. I recommend testing whetr its, i have a whole chapter in the book about testing whh starts with a family questionnaire becae yes, early onset alzheimers didnt happen to oer family members but other family members were affectedecause its so genetic. So there are other things that we would like to. [inaudible] the diseascomes in two major forms, genetically determined, is caused by a genetic mutation that is another form so im hoping it is just a mutation but he is most likely igible for his first. 1998, 99 percent of all cases are genetic mutation. And for the majority of those cases its truly that interplay of permutations but also lifestyle and environment to better modulate. Me ask you about that because there are some medical risk factors th could also affect your risks of developing alzheimers. Art disease, thyroid disease, tabolic disorders, aumatic brain injury. Can you talk about tt . Here are many different medical correlations that did not necessarily respect the cost but they could trigger and promote disease and they include the ones you just mentioned and especially for women its very important because you do have a mponent but i think its really importantthat there are many differentisk factors and in the book, were just learning how these sk factors affect genders differently and it loo like many women have different pathwaysthat men are more cardiovascular in nature but for women they are more responded so there is some risk factors that increase risk of alzheimers more for women than in men and i think its fny in a way that many sk factors affect women more than men but only women and not men in rms of income but the number one risk factor is in men is not being named. Why is that . Theres so many possibilities and permutations but another one r men is not being married to woman. I think its not so ch th married to a woman abeing in a stable nurturing relationship. Because there was Data Collected many years ago that marriage wajust not allowed in those countries and men were wearing married women but at one point, women are good at taking care of people. So in life where in charge the health of the entire family. Were in charge of the medical appointments, we make sure the family is eating healthy. Which is a perfect segue to lifestyle and prevention. We have some fewer questions, somebody asking what is this sile important thing a woman can door her post menopausal bra . The single most important thing is to really look at your lifestyle and find the one part of your listyle that is not where it should be or where you would like it to be. Everybody. [inaudible] for me, there was stress reduction. [laughter] but for a lot of women. Naudible] they are intellecally stimulated, they are just not physically fit. I think e of excess healthy female brain before and after menopause. [inaudible] pecially among learning. Learningis to your brn what exerciseis to your muscles. Can really stimulate connection between different brain regions. And that will really keep the brain plastic which in Technology Means young. You need to challengeyourself. If you like to read a book, dont read a novel , read something thats challenging. If you want to watchmovies, watch documenties as well. Learn to engage in what youre doing. My mom does this for times a weekand cades her brain young. Besides that, i know that i have to be in that eight step, how important is moderating what you eat but also what kind of food should you be eating as he also wrotthe brainbook. That is rely important, the other one is the food you eat have an effect on inside your brain. s a really big part so. [inaudible] especily for women, i recommend we found that there is a strong correlation between antioxidants 80 and see in your brain Energy Letters throughout the lifespan. Also after menopause, th more you consume daytoday the more you build energy over time and the second reason is that we eat three times a day. Three times a day, we would literally have Three Chances a day to make a choice towards your brain health and if you look really about teachingour brain. Your brain performs so much better. Thats a strong component of healthy diet, to really eat r my brain as much as i can and the way we eat as a mily. Thats perfect, the mediterranean diet which you write about in the book, its sort of the diet that most people should follow. Ihink its a really good test, its a very fresh diet it has theutrients that the brain wants. Its not a deprivation diet. I cant be deprived. I nt to enjoy my food so i think its a very sensib diet and what i like about it is that itsot what somebody thinking about and write a book about it, its thousands of years of women couming a diet and becoming better than women o were on a different diet. It doesnt have to be intervening. I think its more the concept, [inaudible] with a good amount of vetable oil and a lot of fibers and its really good for you. [inaudible] so theres this huge data with hundreds of thousands of women showing that later on in life you go throh menopause. Interesting. It speaks to the omega3 fatty acids. They also show that the more profound sugar you have in your diet, go through menopause to not just something you do for pleasure something, like food is function actively do to have control over it. Exercise ian important factor and like, you write in the book that slow and steady wins the race. The modete exercise is the route to go ther than a lot of people are saying were going to jims,we can te highintensity classes. Now were doing the videos at home. So why is slow d steady a betterlace for exercise and w much exercise shouldwe be geing . Slow and steady translates to moderation in fatigue and we looked into that in women, specifically not meand women together but it shows that theres a shape between intensity, if you have very low intensity as the intensity starts going up you reach a hit and that moderate intensity. If you go to theord highintensity your gains are decreasing. That engages women older so as long as there are hormones in physiology, in general you can do whatever you like. Any exercises are helpful. For men and women, you have a huge approach to what works witthe others. Buwomen who are older than 4, especially under menopae, i beeve its sustainable. And we also do it and you can see a benefit whereas for many pple you very high intensity and you just dont do iconsistently enough. If you do, great. Whats important is if you cant, thats okay. No need to feel mad about it. I was going to ask you abousleep how do poor sleep quality impact wom and their brains as they age . It does and tts my issue. National Science Foundation has shared that women are worse than men at any age. We have trouble falling asle and trouble staying asleep and the quality a structure of the sleep is more easily disrupted. That seems to have an overlap with age. I dont want to sound like im ripping women up but it has an impact as well because what happens is theres a very specific part of the brain called the brainstem and if your estrogen activates that region, when the estrogen starts to go up and down, your starting at age 25 then this region is not activated and thats why we have energy to make went up in the middle of the night and instead melatonin is really high throughout the night, till two in the morning and then it decreases as you go up and th go up too much and you wake up at three in the morning so its extremely important to prioritize sleep and i know theres a lot of us that have a hard time doing that. Do you sleep well . I dont, ive been struggling with sleeping well and during the pandemic its been worse. All of us are feeling stress and anxiety but i do feel li i get up in the middle of the night or i ha to get up and then go ba to sleep so ive been taking which i read in your book as well so n and i wanted to ask you for several reasons, what are some of the benefits that you recommend anobviously you should talk with your doctor about, its something that you can react well with your body im a strong believer in testing. For deciding which substances today. Think a lot of people, it makes a lot of sense in principle but it doesnt help you make a decision. Its usual included in the top. So what we do, we do lot of testing we can measure some of the b vitamins and then if there are any deficiencies we measure it but first of allweo througa Diet Examination becae its the best way to supplement his changing it. That said,nsome cases , a healthy diet is not in this case its supementing its helpful and its supplements we td to recognize especially for women, is fatty acids, especially for those do not eat fish. If you eat fishyou shouldnt eat them. But then something im fond of is oils. Women who dont eat fish very often or maybe its the highest concentration of women of any oi. [inaudible] just one is about half. Ow. I switchedo now im using that. Fascinating. And what about vitam

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