Dr. Mark D'Esposito

We want to look about optimizing health and brain health and getting up to our optimal levels because otherwise we're always playing defense instead of playing offense.

And that's really hard for neurologists.

We have a hard time thinking about brain health even though we're the brain specialists.

We think about brain disease.

And we're just now as a field start thinking about preventative neurology, and thinking about it not just like stopping Alzheimer's disease, but promoting health in a healthy brain.

Neurologists don't talk to patients about sort of healthy patients about being healthier.

Yeah, I mean, I think the big problem with brain health is trying to have a measure of what brain health is.

And it's interesting to me, again, as a physician, thinking about it from a neurologist standpoint, when you go to your family doctor, your primary care physician, every year from your yearly physical, they examine every organ in your body.

except your brain, your lungs, your heart, your skull system, your skin.

But what do they do for you?

Outside of having a conversation with you... Yeah, no cognitive task.

There's nothing... No working memory task.

They don't measure your brain at all.

And it's not their fault.

We haven't provided... The field has not provided them with a test of brain health.

Right.

And so part of the problem is we don't have a measurement of brain health.

I'm involved...

And it's something called the Brain Health Project, which is at UT Dallas, which is their goal as a study to enroll 100,000 people in... And they've been developing a brain health index.

And that's a complicated thing to do, but I really believe they're onto something because it's not just cognition, it's cognition, it's social, it's lifestyle, like sleep, and it's...