Essential Vitamins & Supplements for Good Brain Health

By Michelle Chain | Prevention

Alzheimer’s expert Dr. Richard Isaacson sat down with Maria Shriver on Friday, August 5th once again to continue their conversation about Alzheimer’s prevention, memory, and diet on Facebook Live. In this session, they discussed the essential vitamins our brains need.

“It’s confusing,” Shriver said, describing all the different supplements out there. She asked Dr. Isaacson to break it down for viewers and explain what they should be focused on to improve their memory.

“One concept about taking a supplement or a vitamin, in my opinion,” said Dr. Isaacson, “Is that you should always try and get that thing you are trying to take from real food.”

For example, he described the different ways you can support the microbiome–which has been found to be crucial to brain health–by eating various foods high in fiber rather than taking probiotics, and he said that eating fatty fish twice a week is important to gain the benefits of fish oil.

He also urged everyone to get the proper blood tests and “know your numbers” to choose the supplements that are right each body. “This is personalized medicine,” he said. “These vitamins may not work for everybody, to reduce brain shrink over time, but if you get to know your numbers” you might be able to impact brain shrinkage and improve your memory…

For example, he went into detail about sugar levels in blood. “If you want to press the fast forward button to getting Alzheimer’s disease, get diabetes. That’s what it’s synonymous with,” Dr. Isaacson said.

“Let’s repeat what you just said,” Shriver said, “Because that’s really important. If you want to fast forward the path to Alzheimer’s, which is losing your mind, eat sugar.”

Dr. Isaacson discussed the research about the benefits to the brain from supplements like Probiotics, DHA, EPA, Fish Oil, Omega 3s, B-Vitamins, Cacao Powder and many more,

“The overall headline here,” Shriver summed up, “Is that there are things that we can do, in our 20s, our 30s, our 40s, 50s, 60s, and our 70s, to improve our memory. I think that’s so new.”

You can help your brain at any age.

Watch the full video conversation to learn more below: