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Ep. 13: Hope for Alzheimer's Treatment and Improved Brain Health · Wellness in Today's World

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Welcome to "Wellness in Today's World," a space where we discuss the latest insights in psychology, wellness, and everything in between.
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Hello, I'm Dr.
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Debra Kawahara.
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Thank you for joining me today.
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In today's episode, we'll be diving into one of the most important topics of our time: brain health.
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As we age, understanding the protective factors that support cognitive well-being becomes essential,
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not only for preventing conditions like Alzheimer's disease, but also for safeguarding ourselves against vulnerabilities such as scams that often target older adults.
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To guide us through today's conversation, I'm honored to welcome Dr.
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Duke Han.
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Han is a clinical neuropsychologist, a diplomat of the American Board of
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Dr.
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Professional Psychology and Clinical Neuropsychology, and a tenured professor of psychology, family medicine, neurology, and gerontology at the University of Southern
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California.
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His expertise lies in the factors that shape cognition and decision-making in aging, and his research offers powerful insights into how we can protect and strengthen our minds
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across the lifespan.
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Together we'll explore practical strategies for maintaining brain health, his latest findings on Alzheimer's disease, and how to better understand and prevent scams that
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exploit older adults.
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This is a conversation that touches every family, and I can't wait to share it with you.
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Welcome, Dr.
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Han.
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I appreciate you being here today.
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Yeah, it's really great to be here with you, Debra.
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Thank you so much for having me on your show.
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I'm a big fan and really looking forward to chatting with you.
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Great.
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So let's begin by talking about your journey as a clinical neuropsychologist.
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What got you inspired to become a neuropsychologist and how has your journey shaped the way you see brain health today?
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Well, I've always been interested in the brain.
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I remember taking a psychology course in high school, and the part that I most was inspired by was the part about neuroscience and the brain.
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At the same time, I was volunteering in a severe dementia wing of a retirement community.
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And I saw firsthand the devastating impact of dementia and that had a big impact on me.
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And so in college,
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I remember taking a health psychology course and the professor, whose name was Dr.
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Jim Blumenthal, shared some research of his that showed exercise improved memory in older adults who recently had heart surgery.
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And I vividly remember reading this paper of his in class and asking him during class, "Wait, you can measure memory?
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There's a way to actually measure memory?"
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And he said, "Yes, there's a whole field of clinical neuropsychology.
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And that's a field where you can measure brain function." And really, at that point, I was hooked.
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He set me up with a clinical neuropsychologist at my college, who was actually seeing patients at the time.
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And I think seeing both brain function decline and also improve
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under certain circumstances, showed me that there's a lot that can be done that impacts brain health, for the better and for the worse.
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So this has been foundational for my understanding of brain health.
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I know that there are things that we can do to help our brains as we grow older.
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And obviously there are things that can happen to our brains that would impact us negatively.
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You talked about that first professor that you just asked this question and it seemed like the trajectory kind of took off in that way.
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Can you talk about like mentors and mentoring?
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Because that seems like that was an important piece in terms of your journey.
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Oh, absolutely for sure.
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I would not be where I'm at without the mentors in my life.
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I mentioned Dr.
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Jim Blumenthal, who took me under his wing.
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I was an undergraduate while I was in college, and he has always been a supportive mentor to me.
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He's always someone I just refer to as Jim, and I just looked up to
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him.
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It's interesting. I later came to find out he is one of the most influential health psychologists in
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the field. Wrote,
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you know, the textbook on health psychology, or at least a lot of people think so.
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And so I do need to acknowledge his impact.
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I need to acknowledge my graduate mentor, Dr.
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Paul Nestor, who took a chance on me, frankly.
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I still don't know how I got into graduate school.
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It's still a curious question to me.
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Other mentors, Dr.
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David Bennett, Dr.
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Lisa Barnes, Dr.
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Mark Bondy, all of these people have played key roles in my professional development
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and understanding about cognition and decision making and aging in particular.
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For example, David Bennett taught me how to write a research grant.
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I really didn't know how to do that before.
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He mentored me in how to work well in interdisciplinary teams, how to appreciate other people's perspectives and expertise.
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Lisa Barnes taught me the importance of community engagement in research.
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You can't just study older adults.
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You have to be a part of their lives.
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You have to give back.
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Mark Bondy helped
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sharpen my focus on aging and cognition.
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He taught me how to run a research lab well.
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So I'm very grateful for these and other mentors who took a lot of time with me when they really didn't need to and I hope to be paying that forward to some degree.
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What it makes me think is that it took multiple people to teach you the skills in order to now be able to do the things that you're doing now.
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It wasn't just this one person.
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And I think that's really important for people to hear that having multiple mentors is so important as you were kind of trying to go in your career because
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really, people have different strengths and they're going to all contribute to kind of you integrating all those different strengths and skills into becoming a neuropsychologist.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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If there's one piece of advice I would give anyone more junior in the field is to try to seek out as many mentors as you can because I think each mentor provides something a
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little bit different in terms of support or just a different perspective.
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I think mentoring is also a two-way street.
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So I think it's also important to learn how to be an appreciative mentee and how
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you might be able to help mentors actually in some way.
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Yeah, so I've benefited from a lot of really great mentors in my life.
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I think that's such an important point about mentors and mentees, that it isn't only one direction that the mentor teaches or you know hands down information.
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It oftentimes becomes bi-directional, like there's a synergy between the two and that the mentor actually does learn from the mentee as well.
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I have to say now being on the other side of things and having mentees, there really is something to that bi-directional consideration of mentoring, actually.
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So I 100% agree.
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I'm going to take us in a little different direction right now.
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I want you to talk about your work on the Global Council for Brain Health.
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I know that you know this was sponsored by AARP.
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I've been able to look at the website and the work that's being done by this council is amazing but could you tell me a little bit about the council and why its work is so
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important?
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Yeah, I would be absolutely happy to speak to you about the Global Council on Brain Health, which, honestly, has been one of the most rewarding projects that I've been a part
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of in my professional life.
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The Global Council on Brain Health is an independent international science collaborative that was convened by AARP to offer the best advice to the public about brain health.
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So these are...
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scientists from around the world really.
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They really worked hard to find experts around the world on brain health and different aspects of brain health.
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And I'm one of the inaugural governance members.
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I'm one of the original governance members of this body.
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Historically, what this council has done is we focused on a particular topic relevant to brain health, something like exercise, physical activity, social activity.
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What AARP does is they bring together all the relevant experts on that particular topic to meet with us to provide their insights on that topic.
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And then there's a consensus statement that's put together on that topic.
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So we've done over 16 consensus statements so far.
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All of these materials are freely available to download on the website, which is: www.globalcouncilonbrainhealth.com
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Anyone can download any of these and honestly that was sort of a condition for I think many of us to be involved is that all of the resources would be freely available.
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This is important work because we're pulling together in one freely available resource a summary of most of the research on brain health to date on that particular topic.
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It's great because they're really thorough summary statements.
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But something else that the council does is
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they put out short infographics.
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And so if you really don't have the patience actually to read through a statement, which can be many pages long sometimes, you can just look at the infographic, just look at the
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visual depiction of some of the main points.
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That often is what most people look at and what a lot of people find helpful.
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I would say, I mean, people are really busy these days.
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And I just think that that's...
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it's so user-friendly to be able to look at that infographic and right away get information about, you know...
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And I'm going to have you talk about the key pillars, because I think that is one of the easy ways to say, okay, what areas do I need to be thinking about?
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I'm gonna tell the audience, if you have a chance, they're really easy to read and you get the information right away.
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So for you busy people out there, you can get it very, very easily on the website and kind of know, okay, these are the areas I wanna focus on.
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So I am gonna ask you now, why don't you talk about those key pillars that you had found.
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What I really like is that they're bringing in the scientific experts who work in these areas and they're condensing it all for you.
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And to me, that means that this is science-based, evidence-based, so you know that there's a lot of research that shows these are key pillars that come from many, many research
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studies.
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So,
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Dr.
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Han, please tell us about these key pillars that the council was able to find.
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So the Global Council on Brain Health has established a "Six Pillars of Brain Health" initiative to help people really focus their efforts if they really want to focus on brain
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health.
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And so these six pillars are, as you said, are very steeped in the science.
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They're science-based.
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We know that they are the most effective to help protect brain health in older age.
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The first one is social engagement.
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So having positive social engagements.
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This could be volunteering, mentoring.
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We were just talking about mentoring before.
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The second is cognitive stimulation.
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So this is actually participating in cognitively stimulating activities.
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So if you're listening to this podcast or watching this podcast right now, that's a great example of doing a cognitively stimulating activity.
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The third is stress management.
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So we know mental health is very important.
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This is something that has become even more important, more appreciated in recent years.
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So the better you're able to manage your mental health, your stress level, that seems to be protective for brain health.
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The fourth is physical exercise.
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And if there's one topic that far and away has the most empirical evidence for brain health in older age, it's physical exercise.
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And physical exercise is one of these topics where we can always do it just a little bit more.
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We're probably not all doing as much as we should.
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But it's great.
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The positive news is that we can always do just a little bit more.
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And so that might be just taking the stairs over taking the elevator a few floors, and might be just parking a little bit farther away to go to wherever you're going so that you
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have a little bit more of a walk.
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There's always a little bit more, even if you're wheelchair-bound, you might be able to move some other part of your body a little bit more.
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And so that's what we mean by physical exercise and really,
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anything more that people do, it seems to be a benefit to brain health.
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The fifth pillar is restorative sleep.
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So we know as we grow older, sleep becomes a little bit more disjointed.
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It becomes a little bit harder.
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But the more that you could actually protect your sleep in older age, that's important because during sleep, a lot of your brain actually clears out a lot of the gunk actually
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that builds up over time.
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So that sleep is really important.
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And so there's a number of recommendations on how to ensure better sleep.
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So going to bed at a reasonable time, getting up at a consistent time, maintaining your bedroom as a dark space without devices to interrupt your sleep.
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A few of these recommendations are in the consensus statement.
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And then the sixth pillar, which I think a number of us are interested in, is nutrition.
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So the better the diet you have, the better
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it is for your brain health.
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And there's been a lot of really interesting, compelling studies to show that the better you eat, the better your cognition is, the more maintained your cognition is over time.
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And it could even be protective against dementia, actually.
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If people do nothing else besides focus on these six things, then they will be on their way to maintaining better brain health in older age.
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And so we hope these six pillars will be a helpful and simple way that people can keep these things in mind for their own brain health.
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That really is a nice comprehensive overview of the areas.
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Now, I know oftentimes, and I'm going to say even for myself, I'll hear all, "Of course, these sound wonderful, but how do I start getting this integrated in my life?"
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What would you suggest if someone just wanted to start maybe small?
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I think, as I said before, physical activity has the most research support behind it.
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So I think just doing that little extra exercise that you might not be getting currently, I mean, and this could really be simple.
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This could be even just standing up during an extended time of sitting, like if you're stuck on a flight or on a bus ride, just standing up for a few minutes, actually.
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Just even that additional movement is better than just continual sitting.
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There's always something that you can do that will actually be a bit more physical exercise than before.
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There's just a lot of research showing that physical activity is something that benefits brain.
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There are even research studies showing that older adults who engage in more physical activity increase brain regions.
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There's an actual increase in brain.
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Typically there's a decrease in brain with older age, but with physical activity you could actually increase brain regions and that's a major deal.
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Another reason why this is important is we know that the brain is only 2% of body weight, but it actually uses about 20% of the blood supply.
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So physical activity actually increases blood flow to the brain and that just helps the brain function better.
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Physical activity is probably the one thing, if people just want one thing to focus on.
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You can always just do a little bit more.
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But I think that "little bit more" idea can apply to all of these, right?
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So I think, for example, just taking the step of not looking at your phone right before...
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or watching TV right up until the point that you go to sleep, you know, that blue light from those electrical devices might interfere with sleep.
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So just taking some time before you go to sleep to not look at
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anything electronic actually would be helpful towards sleep.
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So there are these little, little things that people can do, like maybe just not eat as many fries or, you know, little baby steps, I think turn into bigger baby steps and then
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those things become a bit easier and healthier.
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Yeah, and I often, when I'm working with clients and doing behavior change, talking about baby steps or micro goals.
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And I even think about myself when, you know, I was overweight and wanting to do it, but I had to do it slow.
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So I started like, okay, just for this week or for the next two weeks, walk around the track once.
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You know, and that was good because I wasn't so sore that I didn't want to do it the next day.
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And then I slowly, gradually built up as I was getting more stronger and fit that I could do more and more.
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But I did it in small increments so I would stick with it.
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And so I think you can choose any of the pillars
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but just make them doable.
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So I always say to my clients, so that if you're successful, so that you'll keep with it.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I think when people start seeing those successes with those baby steps, just being able to maintain those goals, it just allows and inspires people to do just a little bit
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more.
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And so I do think there's a sort of a building on top of successes that happens actually.
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And all of that really does help your brain quite a lot.
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Yeah, you know, I was going to ask you because I happened to just come upon the study just recently and they talked about, I think it was done in the UK and they were talking about
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four kind of phases of your brain over the lifespan.
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And I was wanting to ask you with these pillars, are there different focuses as you go through...
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Like they said, zero to nine was one.
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9 to 36, I think, another, 36 to 66 another, and then 66 and older.
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I guess I wonder, are the key pillars still those key pillars at those different phases?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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I think the general thought, at least in dementia research, is that it's never too early.
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Even in childhood, if some of these habits can be sort of created or maintained, the longer people do these good habits, the better it will be for brain health, actually.
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So that's a great, great point that you raise.
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You know, since we work a lot with AARP and AARP works with older adults, people think maybe this is an older age sort of set of recommendations.
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But really, the earlier anyone does any of these things on a regular basis, maintains these good habits, or at least tries to improve on any of these things, the general
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thought is that this will have cascading effects later on down the road into older age, actually.
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So,
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thank you for bringing up that point because it's an important point.
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This is not something that you should sort of put off and focus on later in your lifetime.
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The earlier you incorporate these behaviors, the better.
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Yeah, I kind of see it as like you investing in your brain health earlier is actually building your protective bank account in some ways for older age.
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um
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Absolutely.
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And there's a very famous and well-known theory, which is the theory of cognitive reserve.
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And that basically says the more you focus on education, the more you sort of focus on brain enrichment earlier on in life, that will actually protect you against cognitive
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decline later in life.
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And so all of this really is steeped in very well-known and well-established, well-respected science.
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Yeah, these are all really great points to be talking about.
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So maybe it's even in childhood we should be focusing on these key...
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and they basically are social determinants of health if we really think about it in connecting it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And we firmly believe social determinants of health have a big impact on brain health, actually.
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There's a lot of really interesting research about this, particularly related to Alzheimer's dementia.
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So we know, for example, older black adults are two times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.
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Older Hispanic adults are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease compared to older white adults.
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What's interesting is that there are studies to suggest there's no difference in the disease pathology.
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So then the question becomes, how do these greater incidents happen?
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And we really believe a lot of that is due to social determinants of health, actually.
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We know that there are historical inequities in our society in the United States.
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A lot of these have transcended over generations.
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And so there's a lot of important research focused on that right now.
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I mean, it really does seem like those systemic contextual factors, then, you know, what neighborhood you live in, what kind of environmental factors are at play, right?
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Yeah.
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And we talk about physical activity and diet, right?
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It's well-known there are these nutrition deserts where you can't get certain fruits and vegetables in certain neighborhoods.
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And even the ability to exercise, given certain environmental conditions, that might not be available,
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actually, as opposed to some other neighborhoods.
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So a lot of these are actually steeped in social determinants of health.
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And that's an important aspect to the conversation that needs to happen.
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Thinking about food, because the availability, accessibility...
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there's all these diets that are put out there.
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And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that because we're steeped in the whole diet phase, you know.
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Is there something that people could easily implement in their lives in terms of diet or food when they think about brain health?
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So in general, artificial ingredients are less healthy versus natural ingredients.
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And so I think even paying attention to things just on that basic level, I think the less artificial, the less, you know, manufactured the food is, the more sort of natural, the
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more healthier actually.
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And so that's sometimes how I try to explain it to
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people just to really just break it down.
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So in general, people think eating more fish is better than red meat, eating more vegetables is better than certain carbohydrates or certain sort of saturated fats.
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So I think there are these sort of general notions that are pretty well-established.
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As someone put it simply and just said, try to eat something more natural versus something that's been sort of manipulated or changed.
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And the more natural the food, the better, generally speaking.
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I have heard like plant-based diets generally tend to come out better in terms of...
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I think having a healthy amount of vegetable and plant intake is definitely going to be more helpful than not.
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Moderation is a good thing.
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I think people can have certain foods, barring any sort of medical condition, obviously.
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in general, having more plants than not, I think, is a good thing.
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I want to really switch to the work that you do at your lab and the focus on Alzheimer's disease and cognition and decision making.
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So let's talk about that a little bit.
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You have your lab at USC that focuses on Alzheimer's disease.
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Talk about the work you're doing right now and some of the exciting findings or discoveries you're making.
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Yeah, I would be happy to.
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Thanks for asking.
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Our research lab at USC is really interested in the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease.
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And so this might be early cognitive changes that might be happening, early behavior changes that might be happening that might indicate the involvement of Alzheimer's
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disease.
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Right now, we've had a focus, just within the last 15, 20 years or so, we've had a focus on poor financial decision-making as a
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potential early sign of Alzheimer's dementia.
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This really came about through a number of different lines of reasoning.
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Really, it started, I think, when people, family members, started noticing that one of the first signs of a family member who developed Alzheimer's dementia was poor financial
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handling, even ahead of a noticeable memory decline.
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So I was a part of a research center, an Alzheimer's research center at the time that started to take interest in this topic as an early marker of Alzheimer's disease.
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And so ever since, we've been using a number of tools to try to understand this: neuroimaging, neuropsychology tools, health tools; this is what we've been focusing on.
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And I know that you are actually going to a lot of senior centers and residential homes to talk about this in terms of financial decision-making and scams for older adults.
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Can you talk about that a little bit?
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Yeah, that aspect is something that I learned from Dr.
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Lisa Barnes and my work in Chicago.
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They impressed upon me the need to engage with community and not to kind of just go and take data and not give anything back.
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And so one of our lab values actually is that we are very much involved in community
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activities.
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So senior centers will often be there and just be able to be a resource to older adults who might have questions.
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I often get invited to give talks on this topic of financial decision-making in the context of early Alzheimer's disease or scam and fraud of older adults.
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And I often try to accept those invitations because I want to give back to the community, community centers, senior centers.
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This extends even to our labs.
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Our lab is involved in community service projects also because we just feel very strongly about wanting to give back, be a good citizen.
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What a wonderful way also to get the findings disseminated, not just in the academic journals, but to actually get it to the people that really need to know the findings,
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right, as it's impacting them.
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I think it's the most rewarding when I do these community talks, honestly, even more so than some of the scientific talks I get, because I know it's having an impact and it's
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helping people understand what might be going on.
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What would you suggest...
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I mean, you know, you're saying that poor financial decision-making may be a symptom early on for Alzheimer's.
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If a family member or a loved one, you're starting to see this happening, I guess what would you recommend the person kind of help in that situation?
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I think it's always hard when family members start noticing this.
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I often give talks and have family members come up to me and say, "Yeah, I started noticing this in my father, mother, uncle, aunt." And they felt powerless to what they can
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do about the situations.
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I usually recommend that if the older adult is open to it to get an evaluation just to kind of see, particularly if this is a change in behavior, like if the older adult all of
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a sudden starts giving away money to strangers or bogus charities and this was never the case before, this change in behavior could indicate that there's a disease process going
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on in the brain, that Alzheimer's disease neuropathology might be
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changing certain brain regions that might be affecting financial decision-making.
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So if the older adult is open to this, getting checked out, I think that's always a good thing.
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What we've started also doing is just recommending that even before this might happen, that older adults might want to have a conversation or family members might want to have a
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conversation with their older adult, "What if this happens?
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What if I have concerns?
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Like, let's come up with a game plan that sort of honors you and what you want.
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And also, if I'm concerned, what can we do about that?" Part of this is if things progress too far, it might be too late, actually; complicated with legal and other sort of factors
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coming into play.
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But if people have a conversation and almost plan ahead,
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if something like this might happen, I think that would go a long way to help sort of protecting or saving a lot of heartache that might come out because of this.
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Because often the older adult is upset because they feel like they should be able to spend their money.
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And that's true, that they should.
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However, if you have a family member that's very concerned and that sees this as a very stark change in behavior,
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it can be hard to see an older adult taken advantage of and when these situations happen, it can be devastating.
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It could be life savings that are lost, hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been, that have taken a lifetime to accumulate just gone in, you know, a matter of days.
29:15
And we never want that for an older adult.
29:17
We want every older adult to live well and financially stable into their older years.
29:22
And it's really, really sad when we see this happen.
29:25
So it sounds like early conversations building that relationship so that it's very clear what their wishes would be so that everyone is aligned, and being able to navigate because
29:41
I do think that they're wanting to keep their independence and autonomy but...
29:47
right?
29:47
But if you're starting to see some questionable things how do you
29:52
then work with them in terms of those things?
29:56
I think if older adults sort of have this conversation before there are any concerns, I think most older adults would agree, yeah, "If I start acting weird, I can understand how
30:07
that could be concerning." And so if this is just a discussed plan ahead of time, I think it will go a long way to reduce the heartache.
30:16
Yeah, and what it goes back to for me is relationship.
30:20
You have to have that relationship in order to be able to do this.
30:24
You can't just come in like the emergency room doctor and say, "Hey, we can't let this happen, right?" Yeah.
30:32
Yeah, and on the note of relationships, so we use a lot of brain imaging and other tools to try to understand this topic.
30:39
And it's interesting because we've seen in our own research that if older adults have good, strong relationships, that seems to be protective, actually, against financial scam
30:50
fraud and vulnerability.
30:51
And so, you know, there's an epidemic as we grow older of loneliness, you know,
30:56
friends, family members passing away or just moving away.
31:01
It really is something that older adults have to deal with, honestly, pretty significantly.
31:06
So the more that we can check in with older adults, the more that we can help foster or create stronger connections with older adults, the better, the more protective it is for
31:14
older adults.
31:14
And that makes a lot of sense, right?
31:16
Because if an older adult comes across something a little bit like they're unsure of, they know that they have
31:22
someone they can go to and ask, you know, does this seem legit?
31:25
Or if they have someone open to speak into their lives, you know, to share some concerns, it makes a lot of sense actually.
31:31
Yeah, and we know the science shows that loneliness is one of, I mean, the impact on your health is so significant that the former Surgeon General kind of said, it's an epidemic in
31:45
the United States, that we need to really address it.
31:48
Wanting to end on, what gives you hope
31:52
Yeah.
31:53
the future of Alzheimer's research and prevention?
31:57
Yeah, so it's interesting.
31:59
I've been focused on early Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's disease as an area of focus for my research and clinical activity for about 20 years now, and for most of that time, there
32:11
really wasn't much hope, actually.
32:13
We've had a number of drugs that we've used for many decades.
32:17
They didn't do much.
32:19
I mean, they did help a little bit early on in the disease, but they, you know,
32:23
they don't do much to help stop the disease or slow it significantly.
32:27
Just within the last couple of years, and really it's just within the last couple of years, there's been a lot of new renewed hope, actually.
32:35
There's been a couple of new anti-amyloid therapies, which is a very technical way of saying there's just new medications that have just come out in the last couple of years,
32:44
which, to everyone's surprise, does seem to be
32:48
associated with reduced cognitive decline or some positive outcomes in Alzheimer's disease.
32:55
So these new medications, these new therapies are being tested very exhaustively right now.
33:01
When they first came out, they didn't have great representation of different diverse groups.
33:05
I think they're trying to work on that now.
33:07
And then the other additional
33:09
sort of thing that has happened in the last couple of years is there's a blood test actually that looks and detects Alzheimer's pathology actually in the blood.
33:18
So, sort of like how you would go to your physician and get an annual blood draw to kind of check your cholesterol, it might get to a point where you, in the same blood draw, you
33:27
might be able to detect how much Alzheimer's neuropathology you have in your blood.
33:31
What's interesting is that if you have that ability early on where you can detect an increase in that Alzheimer's pathology and you have these new therapies that you can try
33:43
to intervene earlier, there's a chance that you could potentially push off the disease or that it might not develop, actually.
33:50
And so a lot of the current trials right now are focusing on that.
33:55
They're trying these new medications just within the last couple of years
33:59
in people who are not showing cognitive decline just yet, actually, with the hope that they won't show cognitive decline or they won't show cognitive decline until much later in
34:09
life.
34:10
Both of those things would be huge wins, actually, in the field of Alzheimer's disease.
34:15
So it's interesting, I often get asked this when I do my community talks, like, is there any hope for Alzheimer's disease?
34:20
For 15 years I said, "No, it's all the same.
34:24
We've had all these failed drug trials."
34:25
Just within the last couple years, it's almost been a huge game changer, and a lot of us have renewed hope.
34:33
And that's a good thing because we haven't had that hope for a very long time.
34:37
Really sounds promising.
34:39
Like if you can either be able to push it off till later or even being able to prevent it?
34:49
Huge, huge it sounds like.
34:51
Yeah.
34:52
And we'll have to wait and see if that's the case.
34:55
We're all crossing our fingers, but it is truly a new hope.
34:59
First time in a couple of decades.
35:01
So as we come to an end, I do want to pose to you, is there anything you would like the audience to know about brain health that we weren't able to talk about, or key takeaways
35:13
that you want the listeners to know about?
35:17
Yeah, so I have to say this has been great.
35:19
Thank you so much, Debra, for having me on your show.
35:21
I always see it as a huge community and societal benefit to be able to get the word out about the idea that poor financial decision-making might be an early sign of Alzheimer's
35:31
disease.
35:33
It doesn't mean it's always gonna be Alzheimer's disease.
35:35
Not all people with Alzheimer's disease are gonna make poor financial decisions, but it might be an early sign and that could potentially help.
35:43
With the new therapies that are coming online, bring someone in and potentially identify someone that might benefit from those therapies, for example.
35:51
I did want to reiterate the point that you actually brought up and so intelligently brought up is this idea of social determinants of health.
36:00
We really do think this is important.
36:02
It really needs more research.
36:04
We need to know why certain racial ethnic groups are developing Alzheimer's disease more than others,
36:09
even when they have the same amount of pathology.
36:12
To us, a lot of us in the field, we really do think it's because of those social determinants of health.
36:17
And so that's an important scientific point that needs to be researched and needs to be identified.
36:22
It'll help all Americans because if we can identify that there are these certain conditions that actually predispose someone more to Alzheimer's disease, then we can
36:30
intervene.
36:31
We can actually do something about that and actually reduce the incidence of the disease.
36:34
It's for sure a scientific question,
36:37
and it needs to be scientifically studied and scientifically understood.
36:41
So I just wanted to thank you for having me on your show.
36:45
It's great to be able to talk about these points.
36:48
Thank you, Dr.
36:49
Han, for sharing your expertise and your knowledge and your experience.
36:54
I know I feel so fortunate to be able to have this conversation with you.
37:00
And I hope that our audience today takes this conversation and becomes inspired to think more deeply about brain health and to hopefully engage in things that will increase their
37:14
brain health and prevent
37:16
any of these cognitive disorders that we know happen.
37:19
And as always to the audience, thank you for being here.
37:23
And last but not least, remember: Wellness is a journey, not a destination.
37:29
Please take good care and we will see you next time.