Have you ever awoken from a deep sleep in a cold sweat in a dark room scared to death from a nightmare where a zombie was trying to eat your brain? Zombies are mythical creatures, defined as the undead, mindless corpses that want to feed on human flesh. Super scary right? Well as scary as these mythical creatures are in fantasyland it is becoming a reality that we have a pandemic of brain deterioration and the creation of a zombie mind state that is creating many social and economic problems in our country and our world.

No one decides to become a zombie and a mindless undead human, but the truth is that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and neurological brain deterioration is extremely high and increasing. When a person has Alzheimer’s and dementia unfortunately they are no longer able to take care of themselves, and they loose their independence. They loose their purpose for living, and are no longer a productive member of society or the family unit. Not only are they “not themselves” anymore but the disease process is slow and does not cause them to pass away quickly, it is a slow deterioration that family members have to watch and suffer with also. People with Alzheimer’s and dementia may not be walking the earth trying to feed on human flesh but they are negatively impacting society. 

What is scary about how neurological degeneration is how it is financially crippling to families and to our society. It is estimated that it costs $100,000 a year to care for one person with Alzheimer’s. That’s paying for the facilities, the nurses, the doctors, the caregivers and the time away from work for the family. With the number of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients increasing every year do the math and think of the extraordinary cost of brain degeneration. An interesting fact is these numbers are not truly being looked at in our national debt because Medicare costs and social security costs are not figured into that total number, just another loophole. It is estimated that neurological degeneration alone will bankrupt the United States by 2050 and that is a generous estimate, which only gives us 35 years until the zombie apocalypse.

                                                                                                             Image Tatum Johnson
I’m going to be straightforward with you; the chance of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and dementia is very slim. The problem is that the brain has already degenerated and the neurological tissue is damaged beyond repair. It’s like having a bad knee joint with all the cartilage gone. You are not going to be able to regrow that cartilage and make your knee healthy like it was when you were younger. Luckily we can get joint replacements now that can really increase our quality of life. Going in and cutting out damaged parts of your brain and replacing new neurons is not as easy. The best defense we have against becoming zombies is keeping our brains healthy.

Instead of going out and buying anti-zombie spray and zombie proofing your house, it is more important to work on keeping your brain as healthy as you can. Your brain is made up of many neurological cells that all have to work together sending signals back and forth interpreting sensory signals from our environment and our body and then sending output signals to adapt to our environment, or make changes to our body to keep us in homeostasis (balance). Nerve cells become damaged when there is too much inflammation in our brain. It is also damaged when a nerve becomes over excited for too long and can no longer keep sending the signal the body is telling it to send, and it can also be damaged if the nerve cell does not get stimulated often enough. Basically you can use it too much or not enough and cause brain damage.

The brain has a blood brain barrier that is designed to keep the brain protected from the rest of the body, being very selective what can cross that blood brain barrier and get to the neurological tissues. Unfortunately the blood brain barrier can be compromised by inflammation. Inflammation comes from irritation in the digestive tract or blunt force trauma to the head (zombie attacks). Obviously it is important to protect your head. Sports in which head injuries are prominent do have long term affects on brain health as we are seeing with many football players. If you have a concussion you should be under the direct care of a doctor who specializes in treatment for concussions and not rush back into activities that risk another head injury, that is the worst thing for a concussed brain is to get another concussion.

Besides blunt force trauma the next biggest area of inflammation that affects our brain health is our digestive tract. The facts are if you have a leaky gut you have a leaky brain. The two go directly together. When the digestive tract is leaky it means that the cells of the gut are allowing abnormally large proteins and particles to enter the blood stream. This happens often because of food allergies, not digesting food thoroughly, and altered gut flora creating a dysbiosis (abnormal bacteria and yeast living in the gut). There are many ways to check for food allergies, but if you have abnormal bowel movements, bloating and gas, heart burn or pain in your stomach after eating I would highly recommend you figure out which foods are irritating you. pH balance is very important for gut health which is controlled by diet as well. Raw apple cider vinegar 2 tsp two times per day in ¼ cup of water is a great way to help balance pH and aid in digestion. Taking probiotics and eating fermented foods are also helpful for balancing the gut flora. Our brains are made up of fats. Eating foods high in omega 3’s like fish, grass fed beef, avocados and walnuts are great to keep in your diet. Other fats like coconut, butter, and olive oil are also good for the brain. Supplementing with high quality fish oil is highly recommended, as it is often hard to get enough good fats in our diet.

Making sure to protect your brain is your best defense against becoming a zombie later in life. It is essential for your quality of life, for your family, and for our society as a whole to have people with healthy brains making important decisions to guide our future and help protect us from the zombie apocalypse that is inevitable if we don’t start making better choices for our brains now.