Dr. John Oertle, Solidarity HealthShare’s Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder, joins Anna Mitchell of the SonRise Morning Show to discuss lifestyle and health changes that could help those who are wondering how to avoid dementia. Listen or read the transcript below.
Happy to welcome back to the Son Rise Morning Show, Dr. John Oertle, the Chief Medical Officer for Solidarity HealthShare and Underwriter of the Son Rise Morning Show. Dr. Oertle, welcome back.
Dr. John Oertle (00:12):
Hey, great to be with you this morning.
Anna Mitchell (00:13):
It is great to have you. And September is World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, and you’ve got a post over at Solidarity HealthShare’s blog about this, that apparently nearly half of dementia cases could be avoided. And I understand you see this as really a matter of stewardship in a way. So what are these ways that we can help ourselves try to prevent this from happening?
Dr. John Oertle (00:41):
Yeah, great. So these are not big obstacles. They’re not really expensive medications. I know too, there was just a recent FDA approved medication in the last couple of years that’s incredibly expensive, but these are the things that we can do to be able to protect ourselves. They’re within reach and they’re easy to do. So I’ll just go through a number of them that they actual, the article highlights, but one of the first ones that was actually really new that hadn’t been thought of before, but the correlation between prevention of dementia is strong, is hearing and vision. When you are restoring a person’s hearing and vision or getting the cataract surgery or being able to have those hearing aids, then what you actually see is that there’s a strong correlation of that to be able to protect the brain from degrading. There’s actually researchers. They’re not fully defined as far as why that’s the case.
(01:36):
There’s a couple of theories. Maybe it’s because you’re utilizing those neurons instead of losing them. There’s also a thought that you’re going to be able to build up those processes in the actual the mind as well. And so you have more neurons devoted to working instead of degrading. There’s also another theory that it keeps you more social, which is an important aspect too of healthy aging, that you’re actually engaged with community. We’ll talk a little about that later, but that’s a really big one. That was a shift and really highlighted in this actual article. The other ones that have been known for quite a while that the article also discusses is say for instance, your cardiovascular health. And so keeping your blood pressure normalized, making sure that your cholesterol levels are actually favorable. These are all helpful and really I think about this because again, it’s the vasculature to the brain.
(02:27):
You want to have good, healthy vessels that are delivering good oxygen and nutrients to the brain when you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, makes it difficult for those vessels to be able to really, again, get the proper nutrients to the actual brain, specifically oxygen. If you’re a smoker, stop the smoking. Smoking certainly leads to higher incidents and risk of Alzheimer’s. We also know that the other thing that is mentioned in the article is the education and cognitive engagement. Word games, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, being able to engage the mind to learn new things. We talked about this is that again, there’s more neurons that are being utilized and if you don’t use it, you lose it kind of a mentality. So this is really where when we’re looking at not just allowing the mind to just plateau, and I encourage all, you can do this from every age.
(03:22):
Learn new things, learn new skills, learn a new instrument. There’s so many things that we can do to challenge our minds instead of just plateauing that. Again, it’s helpful to be able to engage the mind, to be able to be in continual use and have fruit in our lives instead of just continuing to not utilize it and degrade. (That’s such a great point.) And then the last thing that I love to talk about too is overall lifestyle choices. So your overall wellbeing, specifically in being able to have strong relationships, strong community is a big one. To be able to stay social. That actually has shown to be able to have great anti-aging properties as well. There’s blue zones that again, are studied within people that are live over a hundred years old with great cognitive capacities. They’re in all over the world, but they actually show the number one correlative factor in these communities is that they have strong relationships, that they have a community around them and that you’re being engaged.
(04:28):
So I always say, don’t be isolated. Other things that help too in these lifestyle choices, like managing your weight and being able to have a good BMI or being able to also limit alcohol consumption or even exercise. If exercise was a medication, it’d be the best medication, multimillion dollar medication on the market, but it’s not. And so even just when I say exercise, it’s something that’s so good for so many different diseases and so much prevention, but don’t think that you have to be going and running a marathon. When I even talk about exercise, even 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day is actually able to show longevity and length of life. So again, it’s fall, go out, get outside, go enjoy the actual beautiful weather that we’re coming into this season, and again, start just walking those 8,000 steps a day. It shows that that can actually protect against Alzheimer’s, but also just all the other diseases that have come with aging and having a good quality of life to the end.
Anna Mitchell (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is all great advice for just being a good steward of the temple that is our bodies. Now, before we let you go, Dr. Oertle, you mentioned the heroic witness of those who do what they can to care for loved ones who have suffered from dementia. How hard it is to watch a family member decline in that way. And we see some countries advocating for assisted suicide in these cases, and I’m hoping you can just make the point a little bit here, whether you had a healthy lifestyle or have a healthy lifestyle or not, you don’t lose your human dignity just because you suffer from this disease.
Dr. John Oertle (06:19):
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. So our dignity is not determined by what the things that we can do. Our dignity is from that we are made in the image and likeness of God, and so it’s actually you turned it on its head. I always like to say that in this performance mindset that so many people have that in our society and not having a godly worldview is that they think what we do determines what we get as far as what we have, and that determines who we are. This -what matters is who we are as being a child of God. And really when you turn it on its head, when you’re a child of God, then that actually determines the access that we have to the Holy Spirit and the access that we have to God our Father. And that actually in turn comes to the fruits of living a life well lived that we’re able to pour out from ourselves.
(07:14):
And this goes through again, beautiful fruit. And so when you have that mindset, it’s not dependent upon your dignity isn’t dependent upon what you do. So even the cases where you’re having difficulty dealing with a parent when you know that person that you’re working with and that you’re serving is a child of God, it actually, it comes through with a lot of fruit and they don’t have to do a single thing about it. Just the service and the love and that ability of walking with somebody during that time. I’ve spoken to so many people going through this, I bet myself recently experienced this, and just the amount of fruit and the beauty and the goodness that occurs when you’re walking with somebody and dignifying them, it’s tough as anything, but it’s actually so beautiful when you actually get to experience this.
Anna Mitchell (08:02):
Yeah, it’s the beauty of the cross. I mean something that we talk about a lot here on the Son Rise Morning Show. Some beautiful thoughts here from Dr. John Oertle as we close out our conversation. You can find solidarity health share linked at sonrisemorningshow.com. Dr. Oertle, thank you so much.
Dr. John Oertle (08:21):
Thank you. Great to be with you today, Anna.