Name: THIS Is The Fastest Way To Get Dementia… | The Brain Doctor, Dr Ann Mckee
Uploaded: 2026-03-10T07:23:23.000Z
Duration: 8 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

You mentioned that you've looked at lots of brains of people that have Alzheimer's.

Bit of a dumb question, but what is the difference between Alzheimer's and dementia?

Yeah, it's a great question because everybody is confused.

So dementia is sort of this general term.

It's dementia, which means the loss of your mental abilities, you know, dementating.

So loss of cognitive abilities, dementia.

There are many subcategories of dementia.

The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease.

It's the most common age related cause of dementia.

But then under Alzheimer's there's also Parkinson's disease.

With Lewy body disease, there's something called frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

Then there's, you know, you get into odder and rarer diseases.

Progressive supral nuclear palsy, Gaumanian dementia.

Well, you know, it's a very common disease.

It's supposedly in over 50% of people that live to the age of 85.

If you looked at their brains, half of them would have Alzheimer's disease.

Not everyone gets the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease at 85, but they'd have the pathology.

Now, things you can do to lessen the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are staying socially connected, using your brain, challenging your brain.

Because high cognitive reserve, high cognitive ability gives you strength, brain strength, brain resilience against these diseases.

So even if you have pathology, you can circumvent the areas of injury, the areas that aren't working well, and

So that's one thing, you know, physical activity, fitness, but

also mental fitness, challenging your brain, keeping it active, developing a high cognitive reserve.

And then the other things you can do is, you know, stay fit, eat right.

Cardiovascular health is intimately connected to Alzheimer's disease.

You want to avoid high blood sugar diabetes because that can definitely hasten Alzheimer's disease.

So it's really a story of staying healthy.

Alcohol, well, alcohol can damage your brain and alcohol damages it in entirely different ways than Alzheimer's or cte.

But if you do drink alcohol, it can exacerbate your symptoms, it can make your symptoms worse.

And we don't have any direct connection between alcohol and Alzheimer's, but, you know, we do know that it's not good for your brain health.

It damages parts of the brain that can lead to cognitive problems.

No, I Think our awareness of these diseases is increasing.

You know how we used to call it senile dementia?

So, you know, we sort of dismissed it as just old age.

But there are some people that live to very old ages that are perfectly intact.

So these are abnormal aging, these are pathological aging.

And we're much more aware of it than we were, say, 40 years ago.

Forty years ago, we really had no concept how common this disease was.

Is there anything that you believe about the brain that most people disagree with?

So, as it relates to Alzheimer's and cte, is there any sort of fundamental beliefs that you're currently trying to prove out through your testing and the things you're doing at Boston University?

I don't know if other people don't believe them, But

I do feel that inflammation, anything that causes inflammation in your brain, and

I think what a lot of people would agree with me, inflammation is one of the key promoters of brain disease and neurodegeneration.

So there's tremendous inflammation in Alzheimer's disease, tremendous inflammation in cte, and

if we could figure out sort of this bad inflammation, we might be able to prevent or at least stave off these terrible diseases.

And the other thing that I think is very important is small vessel disease, vascular disease, the health of these small blood vessels that are so important in terms of giving, oxygenating our brain, if they become damaged or injured through a variety of mechanisms, then we also see these diseases being accelerated.

So, you know, I think there needs to be a lot more attention to the earliest changes that are associated with these diseases.

And in my mind, those are vascular changes and inflammation.

And what kinds of things cause inflammation in the brain?

Really, any insult to the brain, Certainly, if the blood vessels are damaged and they become leaky, you get substances leaking into the brain that irritate the brain and cause tremendous, tremendous inflammation.

The blood brain barrier is a very tight barrier.

You can have all sorts of toxins in your blood, but

they're not getting into your brain because you have such a tight barrier between the blood and the brain.

We keep out all sorts of noxious substances, but if you injure the blood vessels, they leak.

And all those things that we are trying to keep out of our brain leak into the brain and promote inflammation.

Those changes can facilitate neurodegeneration.

And the things that make those blood vessels become injured, well, trauma, trauma that back and forth.

But also things that affect vascular health, like High blood pressure, high cholesterol, blood sugar.

Stress, you want to reduce stress, you want to stay physically fit, you want to eat.

It's just the things that sleep, you know, sleep is so important for because at the end of the day, your sleep, you're actually clearing bad substances out of your brain.

You have a clearance system in your brain that is most active when you sleep.

And so when you're sleeping, it's pulling out the noxious chemicals, it's draining them into your, into your system so you can get rid of them.

We probably have a few million parents listening at the moment to this conversation and, and

those parents, you know, their kids are saying, I want to play rugby, I want to play soccer, I want to play American football, I want to do hockey.

Well, you know, every parent is different.

You have to really understand your child.

Is it that they need to play that particular sport or could they be as.

Just as easily, could they be just as happy in a non contact sport?

They're playing plenty of non contact sport.

There are plenty of sports that have low risk, so I would promote all of those.

And then if they're playing, they choose.

If they think, you know, this is a decision that they want to make despite the risks, then, you know, make sure the coach is very, very well, you know, versed in some of the adverse consequences of concussions.

And those hits to the head, even the non concussive hits, make sure that there's good education, good education of the player as well as the teammates, as well as the coach.

And then, you know, try to delay playing full contact as long as possible.

I think you should delay it until the person's physically robust has, with a musculature with a strong neck, they're able to, you know, resist hits.

There's, you know, a blindsided hit is much more damaging than a human hit that you're expecting because you set your neck, you're expecting the hit and it doesn't cause the whiplash that a blindsided hit cause.

If you love the DARA CEO brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor.

Become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button.