Raena Morgan: Hi, I’m Raena Morgan with iHealthTube. Today we’re visiting with Dr. Parris Kidd and he’s the author of PS: Nature’s Brain Booster. Dr. Kidd, welcome.
Dr. Parris Kidd: Thank you, Raena. It’s good to be here.
Raena Morgan: This is an exciting book, very exciting…because it has a lot of promise. You talk about our aging population and that conditions like Alzheimer’s and things like that are on the rise. What are the numbers like? How alarmed should we be?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, Raena there are two sets of numbers that we can look at. #1 is the estimated risk for developing dementia, which is mostly the Alzheimer’s dementia, and the chances of that, according to the Alzheimer’s Association of the United States, is about 1 in 10 for people over 65.
Raena Morgan: 1 in 10?
Dr. Parris Kidd: 1 in 10 for people over 65 possibly will develop dementia if nothing else changes in their lives. And, for people over 85 the risk actually increases to 50/50.
Raena Morgan: 50/50!
Dr. Parris Kidd: The Association estimates that some 7 and a half million Americans currently have some form of dementia.
Raena Morgan: Well, you know, forgetting names, or not being able to take a name and place it with a face that it goes with, that’s across the board. Young people forget names and faces. Why should that be more significant for the elderly?
Dr. Parris Kidd: It happens to all of us, right?
Raena Morgan: Right! It sure does!
Dr. Parris Kidd: Sometimes I wake up wondering what my name is?! But Raena I think the test is—and I think all of us should be checking this out for ourselves—when we’re with people of our age are we functioning about as well as they are? Or, are we noticing that we’re not coming up with the names, with the faces, the addresses, the word, the ability to understand, the telephone numbers, as well as the people around us? If you’re feeling a little bit sensitive to that, if you’re not playing as well in the card game, in scrabble, you may want to think about getting tested. And there’s a condition called age-associated-memory-impairment in which these individuals are scoring in the lower 5% of the test scores for their age; those people are at a much higher risk for dementia.
Raena Morgan: Okay.
Dr. Parris Kidd: And so, a person who is diagnosed with age-associated-memory-impairment, or another condition closely related called age-related-cognitive-decline, it’s going to be a person who wants to immediately get onto a dietary supplement program, as one example.
Raena Morgan: All right, and the thing I was concerned about is that we have so many baby boomers who are coming of age.
Dr. Parris Kidd: We’re talking about us, aren’t we?!
Raena Morgan: Yes, we’re talking about us.
Dr. Parris Kidd: Yes!
Raena Morgan: And again, how alarmed should we be? Should we be getting tested?
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, I already got very alarmed in my mid-40s. I realized that I was slipping and that’s what got me into brain nutrition.
Raena Morgan: Okay.
Dr. Parris Kidd: And, ‘round about that time is when I was able to start working with PS, this fascinating brain nutrient.
Raena Morgan: Fascinating. Absolutely.
Dr. Parris Kidd: And, PS is a nutrient that can make a difference to memory and learning and other higher brain functions, the functions that we call cognition.
Raena Morgan: Okay, and what is cognition? Could you define that—I mean, in a few words?
Dr. Parris Kidd: I believe it comes from the old Greek meaning: “to know”.
Raena Morgan: “To know”, quality of knowing.
Dr. Parris Kidd: But essentially, it’s all the functions of the cortex, the functions of picking up stimuli from the environment, recognizing those stimuli, processing them and then taking the appropriate mental steps to deal with them. But, in everyday life it’s remembering where we left the keys, being able to think about having an organized list of what we want to do today, you know, the grocery list, being able to recognize our best friend’s telephone number, and all of these things that make us functional. In the workplace it means that we’re focused; we can concentrate during our meetings; we can write and process information during the course of the day, all of these practical things that make us human.
Raena Morgan: That’s cognizance?
Dr. Parris Kidd: I think so, yes, there are many, many ways to define it.
Raena Morgan: Thank you for joining us Dr. Kidd, and you have a lot of interesting and exciting things to talk with us about.
Dr. Parris Kidd: Well, thanks very much for having me.
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