Dan Buettner: Battling Memory Issues After a Concussion

tell me about the concussions my short-term memory is not nearly as good as it used to be this is your skin here are the concussions in areas where you might have trouble finding words and short-term memory interesting [Music] thank you so much for being here I am so excited to do this and looking forward to it I read your history I have a pretty good idea

what's going on tell me about the concussions about three years ago I was in line skating around the lake in front of my house developed the path developed cracks and I my skate one of them and I had sort of a glancing blow the first time but it hit my heart head hard enough that I knew oh I better get this checked out I got went

to the emergency room uh I didn't feel many um repercussions afterwards but I thought aha from now I'm gonna wear a helmet and then three months after that wearing a helmet rollerblading around the same knot like I hit a hit a pothole I didn't even remember hitting it but uh the next thing I knew there were paramedics picking me up off of the pavement and it

turns out I had been knocked out for 20 minutes you know I know enough about concussions that sometimes you have uh headaches and sometimes you have depression but I didn't notice any of that what I have noticed that it's my double vision I'm wearing glasses here with prisms on it got worse and my I don't know what the test revealed but my own assessment is my

short-term memory is not nearly as good as it used to now that may just be because I'm over 40 but it may be because uh you know that I'm knocking my head and then I had a third uh bounce in my head bicycling somebody put a chain over the same Trail I took in when I took it out I didn't see it in the dark and

I was probably going 15 miles an hour and all of a sudden my bicycle is going zero miles an hour and I'm still going 15 and I did a head plan three times in less than a year you know that's part of the reason why I'm so interested to come here today yeah and the thing you noticed is your memories not as short that's correct other

people say you have ADD tell me about that well I don't you know I I don't know it's not a clinical as people around me I care about uh say that I'm not that I tend to jump around a lot I have a very active brain and I'm you know I'm ran blue zones and I write and I speak and and um I tend to be

very active and I tend to do things in a non-linear way so I don't know if this is a mental health disease or if it's just the way I'm wired and um but it's only a mental health condition if it interferes with your life you know like people leaving for it or you get fired from it or it's causing you or your loved ones undo stress

yeah you know I wrote this book on happiness and I this famous paper by Dan Gilbert Daniel Gilbert about an unfocused mind is an unhappy mind and you know I could probably use more Focus whether it's clinical ad or not yeah your Skin's not terribly ADV ocate in a minute [Music] um all right we looked at your brain we do a study called spacked inspect looks

at blood flow and activity it looks at how your brain works and this is an example of really healthy skin so this is your skin and a lot of your brain is awesome but here are the concussions oh you can see them right there um you are chip loads right here get whacked and you can actually see it right here that's a good cut wall and

are we looking at dead tissue there or you are not you're looking at sleeping tissue I've seen a lot of 62 year old prints a lot your brain is really healthy for somebody you're rich and so we'll get back to it but we look at the top you're not getting dementia I can tell 20 years before you have symptoms whether or not you're gonna get Alzheimer's

disease or frontal temporal activation you are not you've worked really harm on your health right studied health you know perhaps the only thing we might disagree on is the alcohol but um you have a healthy brain but it's also one that has been hurt and if we look right here it's pretty clear it got hurt in areas where you might have trouble finding words and short-term

memory bitterest so you can actually so those divots are that's sleepy tissue yeah now the question I would have is can I make it better a whole bunch better so it's not Dad it's sleepy and I always say it's three things gotta love your brain so I call it brain Envy Freud was wrong famous not the cause anybody's problem not seen it once the organ you

want big is your that's the one size Matters um avoid things that hurt it and then do things that help it your emotional brain is pretty busy so I wanted to just chat my emotional brain's busy all and I'm not anxious and I'm not depressed but I can't stop like five an hour free I will fill it with project if I go on vacation it's like

oh we went to the beach for like half an hour okay okay I'm gonna go to Seattle check that box so now what but sometimes when I see this diamond there's past emotional trauma anything significant for you emotional trauma and nothing that sort of lasted that circles in your head that you have trouble getting rid of not now by having the past to get sad after

you sold your company I try I've been working so hard you know I did like 50 speeches I wrote an article for National Geographic I wrote a book in the process of selling a company is a year-long emotional roller coaster I just want to take a break and and then the pandemic hit so I thought great I'm gonna spend the next you know a year or

two just getting healthy reading other books enjoying life you know because I think at the end of the day there should be a balance between productivity and savoring life you know and I'm like product wrote a product and wasn't savory but then I got about three or four months into it there's some big disappointments and then I realized I had enough of the Repose you know

I want to get back out there be relevant and contribute and learn and now there's a quote I just heard last week from an 82 year old guy named Jim Flanagan who really really um inspired me he said you know at a certain point you realize that work is more fun than fun and that's right that's the case for me it's totally the case for me

I I'm somewhat influenced by this blue Zone's work so in these blue zones we know people statistically live the longest and almost all people drink moderately there you know it's part of a culture it's Sardinia and Korea even Okinawa so it doesn't seem to be inconsistent with living a long healthy life but to your point I would probably agree with you they might even live a

little longer so once again it gets back to that sort of um savoring life and saving your life you know it's that um but I think from a medical point of view you're absolutely right and I should probably rethink my two drinks a day for my patients the ones I see every day you're doing awesome but you and I are not about normal for about optimal

yeah so how can we improve this so do you think um these uh this other than like seeing it I'm not so I I'm not so anxious to see another scan in my brain but do you think this protocol that you're going to suggest would move these my memory and these other cognitive abilities more pot I do which ones you think that your protocol will have

the biggest impact on memory that's the one I'm most interested in yeah yeah [Music] I think if you really decrease drinking I would do that I could take it from 10 a week to two supplements I think if you just did those two things because you're doing so many other things right or read that'll have a big impact um so less alcohol all put together these

supplements for you two packets a day multiple vitamin fish oil brain boost and it's our blue box your brain was worse I'd give you our red box it's got more stuff in it but also something called Advanced blood flow I just see it as a problem I'm going well I'm going to I'm going to my intention here is to um go at what you recommend here

at heart and see if it changes my brain [Music] oh [Music]