>> now, from abc7, "beyond the headlines" with cheryl jennings. >> two prominent california doctors with best-selling books insist that we have the power to heal our own brains from certain diseases. well, it sounds too good to be true. but they say it should start when we're young, and it should also begin with a look at the way we eat. these two women say it is true. they say they healed their brains. sally and deborah talked with me by skype and facetime with stunning news -- they reversed their early symptoms of alzheimer's disease by making food and lifestyle changes based on research by neuroscientist dr. dale bredesen. he wrote a book called "the end of alzheimer's." >> two years ago, i scored mildly cognitively impaired on a cognitive assessment test. and most recently, i scored perfect, and i'm really happy

about that and claiming it. >> dr. sally weinrich, a former cancer researcher and grandmother, followed the bredesen protocol and is able to cook once again for her large family, pick up the grandkids from school, and she's learning spanish. >> over a period of, i would say, four to six months, the symptoms i was experiencing all reversed, and i returned to my cognitive functioning that had been sort of my norm when i was younger. >> deborah recovered her ability to sight-read notes when she plays the piano. she also regained the ability to help her active family of four while working a high-powered job, and she no longer has facial blindness, which meant she couldn't recognize people she knew. adda, an active grandmother, told me by skype that she improved her ability to think clearly, and she lost almost 80 pounds after making dramatic food and lifestyle changes. >> i gave up a lot of red meats and beans and rice and potatoes.

>> adda began making those changes after she started working for cardiologist dr. steven gundry. that was nearly six years ago. he wrote a book called "the plant paradox." grammy winner kelly clarkson also read "the plant paradox." she talked about it recently on nbc's "the today show." she said she not only lost a lot of weight, but, also, cleared up her autoimmune disease. >> i mean, for me, it wasn't really the weight -- for me, it was i'm not on my medicine anymore. >> the temptation is, "well, let's just stop for a pizza, or let's get a bucket of chicken, and we'll be okay." but, in fact, all those things that make life easy and convenient are actually diminishing our health and our kids' health. >> dr. gundry and dr. bredesen have joined forces in the fight against brain disease. >> if it's in your family, you want to come in in your 40s and say, "where do i stand?" we want everyone to get on prevention. we really can reduce the global burden of dementia if we do

that. >> it completely changed my life. >> i feel hope. i'm celebrating being the first person in south carolina to reverse alzheimer's. if my story can help one person, then my embarrassment at having no brain -- i joke about -- is worth it. >> dr. steven gundry is here from his medical facilities in palm springs with these incredible books, which we're gonna talk about in just a few minutes. he has had a brilliant career as a renowned cardiologist and heart surgeon. he is one of the fathers of robotic heart surgery. but now, you -- i read your bio. [ both laugh ] but now you're fixing hearts and brains through food, not medicine or surgery. >> i know. what kind of crazy idea is that? >> where's the money in that, right? but you say, in your book, that we are raising kids to be sugar addicts -- not intentionally. >> yes, not intentionally, you know -- we're purposely keeping kids happy with high sugar loads. and they're, you know, running around and happy with their mac and cheese and their

chicken mcnuggets and their chips and their juices. one of the things that's really happened in the last, probably, generation is we've actually thought that juice was good for our kids. >> right. >> and all it is, is pure sugar. and they are on a sugar high 24 hours a day. and that's one of the reasons we actually see an extreme amount of adhd in our kids. they are constantly being bombarded with sugar. and sugar is a very excitatory chemical in our brains. in fact, johns hopkins years ago, in the early 1900s, proved that, if you took a kid with epilepsy, which you couldn't treat with drugs or surgery, took all their sugar away from them, put them on a ketogenic diet where, basically, all they ate was fat, that the epilepsy was cured. >> and...? >> and that worked because they took away the excitatory effect of sugar. >> well, what happens when parents bring kids with adhd to you? >> what we do is actually get them on what the kids are

supposed to eat. we're actually designed to eat a lot of leaves, believe it or not, a lot of olive oil, and a lot of fat, like avocados. and that's what we're supposed to be designed. we can change them over to sweet potatoes instead of potato chips, and they'll be great. i actually hand out nuts in my office. everybody gets a -- >> you have a nut mix, a special mix, right? >> the world-famous gundry nut mix. >> which is...? >> walnuts, pistachios, and macadamia nuts. and every one of my patients has to have a quarter cup of nuts to see me. >> [ chuckles ] okay, that's a good deal. all right, so, "the plant paradox" -- what does that mean? what is "the plant paradox"? >> so, the paradox is -- we didn't realize it, but there are plants that absolutely don't want to be eaten. they don't want to be eaten, and they don't want their babies eaten, because plants have a life. what we know now is that certain plants make proteins that are called "lectins," and they're called "sticky proteins" 'cause they like to stick to certain sugar molecules in us.

they stick to the lining of our gut and make leaky gut, and they stick to the linings of our joints. if you wake up in the morning and your joints are stiff, i can guarantee you you had some lectins for dinner the night before. there's actually beautiful studies in animals that show that they are a cause of anxiety and depression. and we now know that lectins, when you swallow them, climb up through a big nerve up to your brain called the vagus nerve, and can actually cause parkinson's and alzheimer's. >> wow. >> absolutely. >> all right. we're gonna take a break and come back and talk about what we should be eating and what we shouldn't be eating, which is more important, right? all right, we'll be right back with dr. steven gundry on how to keep our brains healthy. so stay with us. we'll be right back.

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>> we are back with dr. steven gundry, author of "the plant paradox" and a new cookbook, which i've been trying to implement. edying to find all the and he is a world-famous cardiologist, heart surgeon,

who's now fixing brains through food, which is really radical for a lot of people. so, we talked about how food can be medicine for us now. so, what should we be eating and what should we get rid of? >> okay. so, what we're designed to eat -- we're actually 99% a great ape with our genetic makeup, and one of the things i try to convince my patients is a gorilla eats 16 pounds of leaves every day, and he's got more muscle than we'll ever have. a horse only eats grass -- he's got more muscle than we'll ever have. all the largest animals on the earth are actually eating leaves and plants. they're not eating, you know, burgers and fried chicken. one of the things that i have to convince my patients of is that, if you look statistically now, protein consumption, animal-protein consumption is equal in causing diabetes and obesity to sugar consumption,

carbohydrates. we convert protein that we eat into sugar because we don't have much storage system for protein and we don't waste energy. so that chicken breast that you're having, thinking that you're doing a great thing, is actually converted into sugar, and then it's stored as fat. and two huge international studies now show that animal consumption, including chicken and fish, is the biggest cause of obesity and diabetes, equal to sugar consumption. >> more than all the white foods we eat -- the pasta, the bread? >> yeah, equal to the pastas and breads that we eat. >> so, you talked about lectins and foods th we oun'eat t spifer l g back to ctins. so, again, plants don't want their babies eaten in general. they can't run, they can't hide, they can't fight, so what they do is they equip their babies with these toxins, these toxic

proteins that are called "lectins" that are designed to make the animal that eats their babies sick or not feel well or not do well. and the smart animal says, "you know, every time i eat this stuff, i don't feel very good, and i'm gonna go eat something else." then humans arrived, and humans are pretty stupid. let me give you an example. we feed cows corn and soybeans. they are not designed to eat corn and soybeans. corn and soybeans have huge amounts of lectins that the cows aren't familiar with, and they get such severe heartburn -- heartburn -- that they stop eating. and to get them to eat, we mix half the world's supply of tums, calcium carbonate, into cattle food so that they won't get heartburn from the corn and soybeans. >> so we're eating soybeans, corn, and tums... >> yeah. >> ...if we eat... >> yeah. s y kw, next time you have heartburn from a pizza that has lectins in the

tomatoes, the wheat has a lectin, and the cheese from an american cow, and you get heartburn and you pop tums or a nexium or a prilosec, just say, you know, "even a cow isn't this stupid." the plants are actually trying to get your attention. >> so, you talked about grains and tomatoes. so, nightshade plants are off the list? >> yeah, the nightshades -- potatoes, eggplant, potatoes... sorry. >> tomatoes. >> ...tomatoes and peppers, and goji berries are a nightshade. i know. it's so sad. >> everybody thought that was the good health thing. >> yeah. and, the other thing -- the mischief makers are beans. yeah. beans have one of the worst lectins there are. now, you can soak them repeatedly and you can cook them and you can diminish the amount of lectins, but you can't get rid of them completely without a pressure cooker. and for busy people, number one, the modern pressure cooker, like an instant pot, you know, one touch and you're done -- it's great for working families. i know everybody's got to get, you know, a meal on the table

and get to five soccer practices and do two or simultaneously. and the temptation is, "well, let's just stop for a pizza, or let's get a bucket of chicken and we'll be okay," but, in fact, all those things that make life easy and convenient are actually diminishing our health and our kids' health. so one of the things i did in "the plant paradox cookbook" was to have people make food they love that loves them back. so we've got waffles. we've got pizza. we've got cupcakes. there's even a lemon poppy-seed bundt cake that's really good. >> all right, now i know we're running out of time, and i have tried some of these recipes, and they are amazing. but they don't use traditional flour, so if you want that kind of information, you're gonna have to get the cookbook. [ laughs ] or we might post some of this and have some of the ingredients online. dr. gundry, thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. >> thank you for what you're doing. >> thank you. >> all right, we are gonna be

back with more information about brain health and how you can help anyone in your family, from babies to seniors. stay with us. we'll be right back.

>> my guest is dr. dale bredesen, an internationally recognized expert in researching diseases that affect the brain, such as alzheimer's. he is the founding president of the buck institute on aging in marin county, and he is the author of a book that is stirring up a lot of controversy. it's called "the end of alzheimer's: the first program to prevent and reverse cognitive decline." now, you've said this is a

terrible disease and alzheimer's should be a rare disease. >> that's right. so, alzheimer's is now actually the third leading cause of death in the united states. it had been underestimated previously and called the sixth leading cause, but it's actually the third. it is now -- dementia is now the number-one leading cause of death in the united kingdom, so this is a huge problem. but when you actually look at what is causing it, all the contributors to this illness, what you find is that many are preventable and correctable. so, in fact, this should be -- if we all do the right things, this should be a rare disease. >> all right, so, it is a terrible disease, because the impact it has on the individual themselves and the family and the healthcare system -- they're just horrible. >> that's right. this costs our healthcare system over $260 billion per year. and of course, that doesn't begin to explain the fact that it ruins families. of course, the caregivers are also affected.

their own health is affected. so this is a huge and growing problem, and one that, for example, will bankrupt medicare in the upcoming years. >> it's phenomenal to even think about that and hard to believe. when i talk about this, though, with my younger people in my life, they cannot relate to it. they go, "oh, that's an old person's disease. i don't have to worry about that right now. that doesn't affect me," and it actually does affect more people than we think. >> surprisingly, yes. so, it used to be called old-timer's disease. >> right? >> many people would say, "oh, old-timers." well, in fact, we see many people now who are developing this disease in their late 40s and early 50s. >> why? >> you know, we don't understand that yet. one of the suggestions is that many of the contributors are things that have actually gotten worse in our society over the years -- for example, the consumption of sugar. as you know, the rise in type 2 diabetes, the rise in childhood obesity -- these are things that are putting you at least with the biochemical signature of the

future of alzheimer's disease. so, many people we see, for example, who have insulin resistance -- what that means is their sugars have gone up because of their consumption, and, therefore, their body has had to produce insulin to deal with that sugar. >> mm-hmm. >> and it's a little bit like having a child who plays really loud music all the time, so you walk around with headphones on. now you hear a nice brahms lullaby -- you can't hear it. same thing happens with your brain cells -- they get exposed to insulin for many, many years, and now they actually downregulate their response to it, so they get what's called "insulin resistance," which contributes to alzheimer's disease. >> and this can start -- can it start in our 30s? have you seen that? >> absolutely. and in fact, you know, i checked a number of my colleagues, because when i was training back in the 1980s, we did not see people in their 50 getting alzheimer's, except very, very rarely with familial cases, which only represent 5%

of all alzheimer's. most of us who will get this -- it's sporadic alzheimer's. and about 45 million of the currently living americans will develop this disease if we don't develop something that really works for it. so, this is a huge and growing problem. and so, yes, the findings are that you've developed the beginning pathophysiology about 10 to 20 years before a diagnosis of alzheimer's. >> so, if we think we have our senior moments, as we joke about them, those really might be a serious issue? >> so, here's the thing -- the way we think about this disease is changing fundamentally. number one, when you go in to your doctor and he says, "oh, you have alzheimer's," he doesn't tell you why. you want to know, "why did i get this?" just like, "why did i get cardiovascular disease?" or, "why did i get cancer?" you know, years ago, we didn't know that smoking caused cancer, you know, 100-plus years ago. so, people now tell you you have alzheimer's disease. that doesn't mean anything without saying why this actually

is, so that has to change fundamentally. and then, secondly, we have to look at the very first changes. so, we want to change -- in the past, it was said, "go in as late as possible because there's nothing you can do about it, anyway." that's changed completely. so now we want people to come in as early as possible. and in fact, if it's in your family, you want to come in in your 40s and say, "where do i stand?" we want everyone to get on prevention. we really can reduce the global burden of dementia if we do that. >> i want to start with what we do, and, first, you have to know where you stand, which means you need to get tested. >> yeah. yes. >> so, that's a good thing if you have health insurance and if you can afford it, but then, is the testing going to cause problems with lo-t disability or insurance? >> that's a really good point. so, first thing is, we say that, you know, everyone knows, when you turn 50, what happens? you get a colonoscopy. so, when you turn 45, you should get a cognoscopy. you should get a series of

tests, and this is some blood tests -- pretty easy -- some urine tests, and a baseline, which you can actually get for free on the internet. "where do i stand with my cognitive abilities?" you can do a moca score. you can do other things, as well. so, you want to get that baseline. and then, if you find out that there are things that are putting you at risk -- because that's the problem -- you don't know them otherwise -- then you can correct those and reduce your chance of getting it in the future. now, you brought up a very important point -- what happens when the insurance company says, "hey, there's something written in your chart that says 'memory problems.' we're not going to give you long-term care insurance." that happens. so you want to get your long-term care insurance before you get -- before anyone writes in your chart "memory problems" or "pre-alzheimer's" or "alzheimer's" -- any of those sorts of things. >> okay.ow, we have a wea tt bit ofsoenace't andxercib all do to help improve our

brain health and the people we love. so stay with us. we'll be right back. >> the doctors recommend getting tested for the alzheimer's gene, avoid sugar and processed food. eat a plant-based diet. eat healthy fats, including olive oil, avocados, and nuts. meditate in the morning and evening to reduce stress. get a full night's sleep. exercise daily. check with your doctor to see if you need vitamin supplements.

♪ strummed guitar you can't experience the canadian rockies through a screen.

♪ upbeat music travel through this natural wonder and get a glimpse of amazing, with a glass of wine in one hand, aboard rocky mountaineer. canada's rocky mountains await. call your travel agent or rocky mountaineer for special offers now. >> we're back with dr. dale bredesen, the founding president of the buck institute on aging in marin county, and internationally respected expert in studying diseases of the brain, such as alzheimer's. now, his book, called "the end of alzheimer's" says that it offers the first program to prevent and reverse cognitive decline. most people say there's no cure, so they just give up, they don't want to know, but you have seen this being reversed wi your protocol. >> right. so, when we say "reversal," we're saying "reversal of cognitive decline."

that doesn't necessarily mean a cure, because we're not doing -- you know, we don't have autopsies. these people go back to work. they get better. they're able to dress themselves again. they're able to interact with their spouses better. they're able to interact with their families. and we have documentation, very well. and there are over 2,000 people who are now on this protocol. we've trained over 1,000 physicians from 10 different countries and all over the united states. we repeatedly see improvements, because we are asking, "what is actually contributing to the problem?" and the most important thing of all is, when people improve, they sustain their improvement. the longest person on now is for six years, whereas, as you know, in the past, people would improve and then they would go right back down. so we see improvement that is now sustained. and by the way, we've had people go off and on the program. when they go off, they get worse. when they go back on, they get better again. so the most important thing to realize is that there are a hundred different various genes that are associated with this.

the dominant one is called "apoe." but it's important to realize, if you have the quote, "alzheimer's gene apoe," that's only a risk, and, in fact, it doesn't mean that you're going to get it. so if you zero copies of what's called "apoe4," then your chance through your lifetime is about 9%. if you have a single copy, it's about 30%. and that's 75 million americans. >> whoa. >> and if you have two copies, and that's 7 million americans, your chance is over 50%. most likely, you will develop it. now, that doesn't mean you will. it means your risk is high, so you want to get on a prevention program. and, yes, medicines are helpful, but they're helpful on the backbone of a personalized program. you want to have a very low-carb diet, and it's a plant-based, whole-foods, organic... you don't want a bunch of pesticides in there. they actually predispose you to cognitive decline, as well. and then you want to have at least a 12-hour fast between finishing dinner and starting

your breakfast or brunch, and at least a 3-hour fast between finishing your meal and then going to bed. >> so if we just take care of our brain, our bodies and brain will take care of us. >> absolutely. you want to take care of your brain, and you want to start early to take care of your brain. that's the key. >> great advice. >> we can all do it. >> we can do it. and it's not that difficult -- it sounds like it. but, dr. bredesen, thank you. thank you for your research. i appreciate it. >> thank you very much, cheryl. >> all right, and we do want to know from you about your concerns about brain health. and you can contact dr. bredesen through our website. for more information about today's show, just go to our website, abc7news.com/community. we're also on facebook at abc7communityaffairs as well as cheryljenningsabc7. and follow me on twitter @cherylabc7. thanks so much for joining us. we'll see you next time. ♪ ♪

we're tracking two breaking news stories tonight. one, there are mandatory evacuation orders in lake county, including the city of lake port. the city posted this photo of what the fire looked like from city hall. people have been vicadvised to leave at a moment's notice. our other broeaking story, another firefighter has died while fighting the ferguson fire. he was