Dr. David Bardsley

is to get that seven to nine hours sleep every night.

One of the big factors is side effects of medication.

And not just over-the-counter medication, but prescription medications as well.

So many prescription medications have

cognitive slowing as a side effect.

And some of the, you know, extremely, extremely common ones like statins, you know, drugs that are used to lower blood cholesterol.

And one out of four adult Americans, 25% of the adult population in the United States takes a statin on a daily basis.

A lot of anticoagulants, antidepressants have a negative cognitive side effect to them.

So our goal, everybody's goal, should be to be medication-free.

And look, it's not possible for everybody, but for the majority of people, it is possible.

And if you can't be medication-free, you want to at least be able to reduce that medication to a minimal level to get the desired effect.

And so many of the medications are due to our poor lifestyle choices.

That's why we're on them to begin with.

What else?

You're not going to want to hear this.

Most people don't.

Alcohol is not a friend of your brain and your cognitive ability.

We can grow human brain cells, human neurons in a petri dish in a lab and add just one little drop of alcohol and instantaneously 100% of those brain cells will shrivel up and die.

Now, we can't say that that happens in the living brain because we have no means yet of putting

miniature imaging device into a living brain so we can actually watch that interaction take place.