Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is just one tool in our toolkit for reversing early-stage Alzheimer's in our residents.

We’re seeing them reclaim their memory, feel steady on their feet and hold a conversation again.

Here is how it works: We already help residents with healthy food, exercise, vitamins, and saunas.

But when we added oxygen therapy, everything changed.

This is another example of a resident regaining her memory: remembering what state they live in, their city and playing music again.

Old people don't have to move into an assisted living or nursing home. Some people accomplish amazing things even into their 8th, 9th or 10th decades of life.

Let's celebrate a few of them in this thread. Hopefully they will inspire you or your family members.🧵 Yuichuro Miura has been a mountaineer and skiier his whole life. In 1970 he was the first person to ski down Mount Everest.

Fast forward to 2013 when Mr Miura was 80. In that year he became the oldest person to climb to the summit of Everest.

Just had a meeting with our mobile doc at our assisted living home. We have a resident that is complaining of a lot of dizziness and constipation.

So I put together a spreadsheet of their meds showing the usage, side effects and any considerations for stopping the medications.🧵 After discussing everything with his great doctor, out of his 11 medications we agreed on the resident eventually either stopping all of them or taking them ‘as needed’ (PRN in medical terms).

We also looked into problematic interactions between the meds.

(1/10) Although we work hard in our assisted living home to improve the health of our residents, we still have to work with people with cognitive decline on a daily basis.

Our caregivers have received a lot of training in this area. Some of the best training came from @amindforallseas CEO Eric Collett. Here is a summary of his program called the VITAL 5 Pillars.🧵
amindforallseasons.com (2/10) Eric ran a large assisted living facility (100+ beds) and is an expert in working with people with dementia.

He believed we can do better, and so started his company @amindforallseas to do just that.

They are the company that helps us interpret lab results of our residents and set up a program to improve their cognitive abilities.
amindforallseasons.com/enhance-protoc…

Here is an overview of some of the activities we do in our assisted living homes to help of our residents.

Hopefully some of the activities might help you if you're caring for an elderly parent or spouse. We definitely see improvements in people's health as a result. 📷(1/9)

Starting with a tour of the home.
After people are up in the morning, we'll often take some of them on a walk around the neighborhood. Not only does it help wake them up to start the day, but it also exposes them to morning light.

Early morning light helps reset their circadian rhythm, starts the day off with Vitamin D and let's them breathe some fresh air.

Especially in summertime Phoenix where the rest of the day is too hot to go out.

If your loved one is struggling with sundowners, try having a routine of waking them up early and exposing them to morning sunlight.(2/9)

We use a piece of exercise equipment at our assisted living homes called the X3. It is a lot safer than traditional weights & is much easier on the joints. I want to show you how this equipment can help you and your family fight sarcopenia.🧵 Sarcopenia is the inevitable loss of muscle mass as we age. Everyone eventually suffers from it. You can fight it with a good diet and resistance training.

What if you don't fight it?

"Sarcopenia is associated with a 2 times higher risk of mortality in community-dwelling adults and nursing home residents and 3 times higher risk in cancer patients."
karger.com/ger/article/68…

We often receive a new resident in our assisted living homes from a hospital or rehab clinic. Here is an example I put together of the paperwork we receive for them. It's not pertaining to any particular resident. First of all the diagnosis for a resident for some context🧵:

Acute hypoxic respiratory failure
Pulmonary HTN
PNA (Pneumonia)
Pleural effusion
AKI (Acute Kidney Injury)
C. difficile diarrhea
CAD (coronary artery disease)
Diabetes
Dizziness
Encephalopathy
Foot ulcer, left
Hyperkalemia
Subtherapeutic international normalized ratio (INR)
Wheelchair dependent Here is what a typical medication list from the hospital might look like:

Glucometer (Blood Glucometer)
Glucose test strip (Blood Glucose Test Strip)
Insulin syringe - Needle U-100
Lorazepam
Lancets
PARoxetine
Tylenol
Albuterol-ipratropium
Allopurinol
Atorvastatin
Fluticasone-salmeterol

8 million people in the US have diabetes. It is estimated that an additional 98 million have pre-diabetes. That's over 1 in every 3 people in the United States have these conditions.

It's not just diabetes that's the problem. Diabetes leads to so many more health conditions. If you have Type 2 diabetes, you may think you can manage it with Insulin. Think again. That diabetes puts you at higher risk for up to 57 other health conditions. Here are some of the major ones:

60% more likely to have dementia later in life
9% more likely to get cancer
5.2 times more likely to have end-stage kidney disease
4.4 times more likely to have liver cancer
3.2 times more likely to have macular degeneration (loss of central vision)
higher risk of developing 23 out of 31 circulatory condition

ncdalliance.org/news-events/ne…

Many people think dementia is genetic. "My Mom or Dad (or both) had it, so that's my fate".

Not really. There are lots of things you can do to lower your risk or avoid cognitive decline entirely. We're doing a lot of these in my assisted living homes. I made a short video of things you can do and go into more detail in this 🧵 One of the best things you can do is grow your muscles. When we hit our 30's, we develop a condition called Sarcopenia. It's a fancy term to say we start losing muscle mass naturally.

Muscles do a lot for us - from lowering blood pressure, increase cerebral blood flow, improve brain structure and function, and promote neurogenesis (the creation of new brain cells).
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC74…).&text=79%2C%2080%2C%2081%2C%2082,phosphorylation%20of%20the%20tau%20protein.

If you or a family member is concerned about their brain health, I would like to give you some great X accounts to follow. They have not only helped me improve the cognitive abilities of our assisted living residents. They also help lots of people on a daily basis improve their lives.

And they do it almost completely without drugs!🧵 Let me start out with @EricDCollett, the founder of @amindforallseas. We use these guys as a consulting company to analyze lab tests for our residents and ongoing coaching. Eric was an executive director at a large assisted living facility. Like me, he felt we could do so much better for our senior population.

He decided to do something about it. A Mind for All Seasons was the result. They do amazing work. If you know someone with anything from a concussion to dementia, these are the guys to call.
amindforallseasons.com

I want to share a story that made my day yesterday. After my podcast with @SBakerMD, a family called me from another state.

Their husband/father had cognitive decline and were wondering if he would be appropriate for my assisted living home. 🧵 I referred them to the company we use to help us improve the cognitive health of our residents, A Mind for All Seasons (@amindforallseas).

Honestly I had forgot about the referral and never followed up to see if they could help him.