I'm super excited to be here.
I'm a big fan of TED and TEDx.
I think these events are wonderful.
So, I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders
of Anti-AgingGames.com,
and today I'm going to give you the top ten tips
to keep your brain young.
There're tips to help reduce your risk of early memory loss,
and what I want you to do is,
if you like the tips,
I'd like you to share them with as many people as possible,
with friends and family.
I'm actually going to show you the website
where you can get a copy of the tips.
So don't worry too much about taking notes.
My scientists and I literally went through 17,000 studies
to come up with the tips that I'm going to share with you today,
as well as the tips that are in our games and on our site.
But before we start, I want to tell you a few things.
First off, I'm not a doctor.
I make games for a living.
So, this is not medical advice.
This is simply a starting point
for you to speak with about your future health
with your doctor.
Secondly, it's all good news.
So don't worry,
I'm not going to terrify you with anything.
Third, I'm not here to sell you anything.
We're actually going to give you a VIP code
so you can have free access to the games.
So, don't worry, no supplements, no snake-oil,
nothing like that.
(Laughter)
Just pure tips with no ulterior motive.
So let me give you the e-mail.
If you actually send an e-mail to Tips@Anti-Aging-Games.com,
you'll get a copy of the tips
as well as a link to see all of the tips on the website.
Or you can just go to Anti-AgingGames.com
and click on the brain tips section.
So this whole thing started four or five years ago
when one of my friends' mom
got Alzheimer's.
And while I was watching my friend deal with this
and just struggling with it
emotionally, physically, financially,
I noticed that there is this unspoken, but very deep belief
that she, too, was going to get Alzheimer's,
that it was entirely genetic,
that she was doomed to have this happen too eventually.
And that's just not true.
That is absolutely not true.
Depending on who you ask,
only 5 to 8% of Alzheimer's
is linked to a single gene to begin with.
There is a study that shows that,
when you have two identical twins, and one gets Alzheimer's -
they're identical twins,
you expect the other one to get Alzheimer's 100% of the time,
that doesn't happen.
21% of the time, the other twin doesn't get Alzheimer's
or gets it so much later that it's unrelated to that genetic basis.
So I'm here to tell you about that 21%,
and what lifestyle changes you can make
to actually help reduce your risk of early memory loss.
And the good news is, everything that I'm going to tell you,
it's easy, it's free,
and you can do it starting today.
So without a further ado
I will talk about the first tip.
The first tip,
and if you walk away with nothing else, just walk away with this one:
fast walking is fantastic for your brain and your heart.
So fast walking 30 minutes a day,
five times a week,
is linked to 33% less Alzheimer's.
If you actually include vigorous aerobic exercises
that get your heart rate up,
three times a week, at least 20 minutes,
that actually reduces your risk down to 50%.
So, fantastic news.
If you can't walk comfortably,
what you want to do is water walking,
cross-country skiing,
or if you know someone in a wheelchair, tell them to use a hand wheel.
Any aerobic activity that basically pushes the blood into your brain faster,
pushes the oxygen and nutrients into your brain faster
helps things repair,
pushes the waste out of your brain.
That is fantastic for you.
You doctor will tell you that if you have an exercise at all,
what's really important
is for you to just start getting into consistent exercises.
So you may start with 10 minutes a day.
I don't know about you,
but I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to exercising.
Just incredibly lazy.
Exercising for the sake of vanity never motivated me,
because I just figure plus or minus ten, twenty pounds, who cares?
(Laughter)
It's true. It's just not motivating.
But when I read this study,
avoiding Alzheimer's,
and maintaining your freedom and independence later on a life,
hugely motivating.
So I started walking, and I got tell you,
it increases your energy, you drop weight,
and you just feel so much healthier and happier.
So definitely recommend that.
Second tip is to play mentally engaging games.
Studies show that any kind of learning, any kind of mind engaging game play
is fantastic for you.
The keys are that has to be interactive,
mind engaging,
it's extra good if it's fun.
So passive entertainment,
is like watching TV or daytime napping.
(Laughter)
Interactive entertainment includes playing brain fitness games,
like on Anti-AgingGames.com.
But you actually don't even need our games.
Any kind of learning is fantastic for you.
So, you can play chess. You can play bridge.
You can learn a new instrument, a complicated dance or language.
If there's a social component or physical component, even better.
So learn ballroom dancing.
What's funny is you don't actually have to be good at it at all.
So you can try Tae-Bo dancing, flamenco, guitar,
it doesn't really matter.
You're doing different things than what you usually do during the day,
so your brain is growing new neural connections,
and it's just fantastic for you.
Third tip: avoid poisons.
Everybody knows about lead in smoking.
What you may not know
is that smoking in midlife doubles the rate of dementia later.
And what I didn't know was that even an occasional cigarette,
the social cigarette or social cigar,
causes your capillaries to act like they're being poisoned
because guess what?
They're being poisoned.
(Laughter)
You want to avoid that.
You also want to avoid -
the jury's out on aluminum,
they don't know if these things are inconclusive,
but if you can avoid it, please do.
You also want to avoid toxic substances in your everyday life.
There's a website called cosmeticsdatabase.com,
and you can literally put in your shampoo,
your toothpaste, your soap, your makeup, your sunscreen,
and all of your cleaning products,
and it pops out how toxic it is on a scale to one to ten,
and you can find out what's toxic
and what's a safer alternative to the things you're using.
Forth tip: being social is incredibly good for you.
There's a Harvard study that shows that people who have five social ties,
and the people who they spend time with, who they really enjoy,
- the people at work don't count,
you don't really enjoy them if you're honest with yourself -
(Laughter)
So, spent time with those people.
That people that didn't have half the rate of cognitive decline,
as the people who were the most isolated.
Isolation is terrible for human beings.
So, super important that you stay social.
If you don't have a lot of friends, if you just moved,
if your friends are negative and you're getting rid of them
after the last tips that I tell you,
try looking at places like the Red Hat Society,
the American Association of University Women.
I'm sure there are men's groups that are equivalent,
but I don't know what they are.
(Laughter)
Co-ed groups.
Also, volunteering is a fantastic place to meet really high quality new friends.
VolunteerMatch.org is great.
Idealist.org.
If you're in L.A., laworks.com has a lot of projects;
phenomenal place.
Next is having a purpose and life direction is fantastic for you.
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center found
that the people with the highest purpose and life direction
had 2.4 times less dementia
than the people with the lowest.
What this means for you
is you can pick any cause outside of your immediate circle,
of yourself, your friends, your family, and your acquaintances,
any cause that's important to you.
Doesn't matter what it is as long as it's meaningful for you,
and just work on it regularly.
That's great for you, it's great for society,
and teach other people to do that, too.
If you think about the people in this room,
the two generation above me
were the ones who kick down the doors of sexism and racism,
and they're now kicking down the doors of homophobia,
and there's a lot of more work to be done.
So, pick any cause that's important to you and go out there and do it.
Your brain will thank you and society will thank you.
Next one is to relax.
Relaxation is fantastic for you.
I told that this would have good news.
So go to the spa, relax, whatever you need to do,
meditate, yoga, reading a book.
I like relaxing in motion;
I like walking through nature and things like that.
So whatever you need to do, it's really good,
because what happens is stress actually shrinks your brain.
And you don't want that.
Stress rewires your brain.
It affects memory, it affects decision making.
It actually ends up messing with your emotional regulatory system.
So, it's not good for you.
I was working at this day job funding Anti. AgingGames,
and it was really stressful,
as I was reading the study about how stress shrinks your brain.
(Laughter)
And it said that the people who had the high stress job,
low control,
multiple bosses telling you opposite things,
had the worst...
this is stress and brain shrinks it,
and I was like, "Oh my god! That's my job."
(Laughter)
So I decided to quit.
I ended up leaving shortly thereafter.
But if you're in that job, start looking for other jobs.
You don't need that. You health is much more important.
Next tip is to partner with your doctor.
A good doctor is prevention oriented.
So, most people stay with their doctors because that person is nice or familiar.
That's not a good reason to stay with a doctor.
You want someone who understands prevention,
understands nutrition, understands exercise,
understands the importance of stretching,
understands the interactions between things.
The reason why is,
I can tell you broccoli and cauliflower twice a week
is fantastic for you.
It decreases lot of different types of cancers
by at least 20%.
If you have a thyroid problem,
that actually makes the thyroid problem worse.
So, a good doctor knows that.
It's impossible for you to try to keep track of the stuff yourself.
A good doctor will tell you
how your supplements are interacting with things.
It's just really important for you to do that,
because things are really intertwined and interactive.
You generally want to get most of your vitamins
from fruits and vegetables,
and not your supplements,
but your doctor might ask you to use some supplements too.
And a good doctor knows how to do that.
So, for instance not having enough vitamin B12
is linked to memory loss,
but you can't just take supplements
because you don't know if it's absorbing or not.
The good doctor knows how to measure this in your blood stream
and see if it's absorbing,
and if it's not absorbing, then you need a monthly shot.
So, pick a good doctor
and really partner with that person to go forward in life.
Next tip is to protect your head.
People who have had head injuries,
have two to four times the rate of Alzheimer's.
If you had a head injury in the past,
don't worry, there's a lot of factors:
what part of your head get hit, how long you were unconscious,
for things like that,
but not going forward that you have to protect your head.
Wear a helmet when you're bike reading.
The place that you're more likely to get hit in the head is in your car.
So always wear your seat belt.
Always pick a safer card;
make that one of your primary screenings,
and never text while you're driving.
The people who text have 23 times the accident rate
as the people who don't.
One study showed that it was equivalent
to drinking four drinks and getting behind the wheel.
Someone's texting in the car, tell them to pull over.
If it's that important, pull over.
And second to last tip is
the Mediterranean diet is fantastic for you.
It's one of the only proven diets to just really be good.
They also call it "eating colorfully".
Mediterranean diet involves seven to ten servings
of fruits and vegetables per day.
I know that sounds like a lot,
but actually it's really hard to gain weight with fruits and vegetables.
So you actually end up filling up with that
and losing weight.
Fresh is best,
thyme is second best.
Mediterranean diet people also eat a lot of fish,
preferably wild fish, twice a week.
They eat nuts, almonds, walnuts,
preferably raw, not salted.
Beans, legumes,
nobody knows what a legume is.
(Laughter)
Those are peanuts and beans,
(Laughter)
and there's a real social component to the Mediterranean village diet as well.
So the last tip that I'm going to give you
is that positive outlook matters,
and it matters a lot.
If you would ask me as a scientist how much I think this matters,
I'd say it matters a little bit.
But it turns out that it matters much more than anybody ever thought.
What happens is that there is a study called "The Nun Study".
They tracked 600,078 nuns over the course of their lives,
and a lot of the nuns even gave permission
that upon their death they could be autopsied.
They opened up their brains to see what was going on
and what the correlation is with Alzheimer's.
They found that the nuns
who had the highest usage of positive emotion words,
so the highest positive outlook,
not only aged better,
and lived longer, and lived healthier lives,
but also what was really startling was,
in a few cases, when they opened up the brains of these people,
and they looked inside,
there were tangles and plaques that are associated with Alzheimer's,
but they didn't have the symptoms that are of Alzheimer's.
So there's this neuroprotective effect to positive outlook
that is really, really great,
and scientists are going to need to study it,
but just so you know that's there.
The thing that you can do for yourself is eliminate your negative self-talk.
Talk back to it.
Your brain doesn't know the difference between true and false.
So talk back to it.
Get rid of your negative friends, replace them with more positive ones,
and just remember that seeing the opportunity in all challenges
is a really good thing.
Learning the lessons in mistakes and then letting go
is a really good thing.
And finally,
wanted to just share the VIP code with you.
If you go to Anti-AgingGames.com
and you use the VIP code TEDxVIP
or TEDVIP, no spaces,
you can get a free month of Anti-AgingGames.
You also get a better rate;
you get a friends and family rate of 9.95 dollars/month
instead of 12.99 dollars/month.
If you like it you keep it,
and we donate all of the profits,
100% of the profits from the TEDxVIP code
to various charities.
I mean, our basic goal is to improve lives around the world.
In the US what that means,
is sponsoring Alzheimer's prevention research,
and cancer prevention research, dementia prevention research,
as well as some cure research.
Overseas, it's not really a matter of taking people from 75 or 85 to 100;
it's more a matter of taking people from 5 to 35,
using clean water access, malaria nets, and things like that.
Education medicine.
So, that's what we're doing.
In general, the company donates 20% of its pretax profit to charity.
So, if you like these tips, if you found them valuable,
please share them.
We went through years of research to be able to give this to you today.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)