#71 Episode: Understanding Alzheimer’s as Type 3 Diabetes: Insights with Shannon Davis

Ever wonder if your daily habits could be impacting your brain health? Alzheimer's is now being called 'Type 3 Diabetes' because of its connection to insulin resistance—and there's more we can do to prevent it than you might think!

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Show Notes 

• Opening with Shannon Davis, a registered dietitian with 18 years of experience in metabolic health.

• The shocking truth about Alzheimer’s being linked to insulin resistance, often called "Type 3 Diabetes."

• Discussion on how processed foods, high-carb diets, and lack of movement fuel cognitive decline.

• Why movement is key to brain health—and it doesn’t mean hours in the gym.

• Simple tips for preventing Alzheimer’s, including diet, daily movement, and mindful choices.

• A look at how supplements can play a role in maintaining a healthy brain.

• Cari’s personal connection with Alzheimer’s and why this topic is close to her heart.

Key Takeaways

• Alzheimer’s is now seen as “Type 3 Diabetes” because of its connection to insulin resistance.

• High-carb diets and processed foods contribute to cognitive decline.

• Regular movement—even a short walk—can help protect your brain.

• Supplements can be a proactive choice for maintaining brain health.

• Lifestyle changes are often more effective than medication in Alzheimer’s prevention.

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to Better Than A Pill. Today, I'm so excited to have Shannon Davis with us as usual. She's our registered dietitian and she's got you guys.  Hey, Shannon. You guys know, Shannon has 18 years of experience. She specializes in metabolic health and she helps people really focus on insulin resistance and healing from chronic disease.

So we're so blessed to have her here. better than a pill. And I also just want to say, before we get started, I just want to give credit to God for making this podcast possible and for getting the truth out into the world. So thank you, Lord. I'm super excited.  And we're gonna, we're gonna touch in a little bit on  insulin resistance and Alzheimer's today.

And I know a lot of y'all listening This may pertain to you. I think as we get older, these things become more apparent to us. They're on our mind, and especially if we have a genetic disposition to these things as we creep up into our 40s, our 50s, our 60s, 70s, right? And we want to understand and do as much as we can.

And so let's talk a little bit about Shannon, I'd say like, why is the prevalence of Alzheimer's so high? Do you think? Okay. I think as we have been 20 to 30 years into the processed, highly ultra processed foods the boxes, the barcodes, the packages into the idea that we need to be eating every 2 to 3 hours the sedentary lifestyles, believe it or not, Alzheimer's is now called type 3 diabetes.

It is true. Insulin resistance or diabetes of the brain, long  up until very recently we've thought of Alzheimer's is this  plaque buildup where we're getting these amyloid plaques in the brain. And while I'm not going to say those are insignificant. But there have been autopsies done on people with zero dementia, zero Alzheimer's and there's amyloid plaques in their brain.

So the brain forms these plaques around anything that's  not supposed to be there. It's almost like it's  protecting and shielding off something that could be harmful. And so when we look at Alzheimer's,  the fact that it's type three diabetes of the brain, what that's truly saying is that our brain is being deprived of energy.

So we get energy two ways. We get energy through glucose as a sugar burner and through fat as ketones. Now, if we are insulin resistant, which 93 percent of the population is. We're not able to uptake glucose properly because insulin is the key that unlocks the cell that takes glucose into it for us to utilize as energy.

So if our cells aren't responding to this insulin, Then glucose isn't getting in the cell. So then the other form of energy that would be available, that's really preferred by our brain is ketones, but ketones can only be made if insulin is not present in the absence of insulin. But if you're in a high insulinogenic environment, Because of eating sugar and carbs and eating every two to three hours in these processed foods.

Our insulin levels are very high. So we're not going to make ketones. So now the brain's deprived of any energy and that's where we get Alzheimer's and dementia. And the reason I think that we see an uptick is because of the prevalence of these ultra processed, highly addictive, Convenience foods that everyone is eating. 

Yeah. And it's so because it's so easy just to grab it and just go, we're in a society where we just have to run. We've got to achieve. We got to push. So let's just grab it. And we think we're doing something healthy for our body. Yeah. So I get that. It's interesting too, because you don't always think, it always comes back to this insulin.

Resistance issue that I hear you talk about is something that  you never hear about. When it comes to Alzheimer's, I know I don't, I don't think of that right away and I'm learning and I'm growing through this. As I hear you speak, it makes sense to me. In addition to the genetic component, I know for me, this is a topic that I want to understand. What can I do?

And my grandfather had Alzheimer's. My dad has dementia, so I am terrified. terrified of that. And no one's immune to that. We're all, we all can be affected. But if we live  a healthy lifestyle, we're going to be at less risk of it. If we watch our sugar, our carbohydrate, our processed food intake, we get movement.

And you're the best, better one to talk about movement. I think for me, What's really important on 44 is to realize that movement doesn't mean having to go in and kill yourself in the gym for two hours. Movement can mean stretching. Movement can mean walking. It's just, I want to be functionally fit.

I want to move without pain and for the rest of my life. And so taking that pressure off of people of thinking of movement as a means to weight loss.  Exercise, and I will yell this till the cows come home, exercise is not a means to weight loss. You can't out exercise a bad diet. So if you can remove that pressure and say, okay, I'm going to move, even if it's five or 10 minutes, I'm going to get up and move and I'm going to move because movement, we are created as humans to move.

So when we move, when we sleep, sleep gets not enough. We don't put enough impact on the importance of sleep. We try to mitigate stress and then we pay attention to what we eat. And I'm not saying that you can't have things that you enjoy. No, we all do. But being cognizant,  then we're going to greatly reduce our risk.

And medications are not the answer; being on 100 different pills is not going to prevent you from getting it. And it can exacerbate it. Look at statins, the number one prescribed medication  to date. And statins are direct, directly related to dementia, Alzheimer's and type 2 diabetes. 

Yeah. And I love what you, what you just shared is so true and it's just, it's so important for us to just take a look at what we can do right now in our lifestyle that can help ward off this. I'm with you. My grandfather had Alzheimer's, I am, I'm scared to death of getting Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's. And what else can I do? And yes, I'm a hundred percent, movement is my area. That's my expertise. And yes, it's not about working against our bodies. This is what I've started talking about. It's about working with our bodies and that's going to be. Something that we have to look at daily based on where we are.

I can tell you guys out there when it comes to pain relief and injury prevention, you don't need more than 20 to 30 minutes of continuous exercise at most, listen, 10 minutes.  10 minutes of continuous movement, 10 minutes, you're going to have health benefits. One of those health benefits could be towards preventing Alzheimer's.

Now that being said, you guys know that in order to sustain our movement, we've got to do certain things to help prevent injury. We've got to be stretching fascia release and strength. And you guys know I'm a big fan of therapeutic Pilates. So we need these things. This is my belief. This has been my experience, I think so often we, like what you said, just, it resonates with me.

We're using exercise as a means to  most in a sense, work against our bodies, punish ourselves. I think we've talked about this. I don't use the word cardio for that reason. I hate the word cardio. I don't use it because it's the most abused thing out there. In terms of, people in the gym just go for hours and hours.

And. And they look the same for, I believe, Carrie. I know this is a little off subject, but I believe that the reason people do so much cardio is because of the addiction that they get from the high that it causes.  Absolutely. And yeah, and I know we've talked about this. I know myself, I've lived that.

Yeah. And that's what, we've talked about this. It's all about shifting our thinking and what, with our movement and what we put in our bodies to the standpoint of nourishing. How can I take care of, how can I nourish, how can I help my body? Let's shift that. But yeah, so many of us are stuck in this performance addiction, striving addiction, exercise addiction.

And so making that shift is key. I want to circle back because of that. One of the things that I'm working with y'all on and I am on my own health journey and I'm using the system called the feel great system, which we've talked about before on our podcast. And we have it here by uni city.

And I'm for me. We've talked about this and guys, I know you're going to get sick of me saying this, but I'm primarily using it to restore my insides, my gut health. However, I can tell you right now, I'm also using it to sustain my mental health. Okay. And my energy level is huge for me, for my anxiety.

When I tell you. It's unbelievable. And so I'm wondering too, cause we're, we're talking about  insulin resistance and Alzheimer's.  Have there been studies showing that this, the system that I'm using and that we're using can help with Alzheimer's, because there is that relationship to glucose.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's not been any direct studies. studies relating, the feel great system to Alzheimer's, but there are studies relating insulin resistance directly to Alzheimer's and our supplements.  help reverse insulin resistance. You can correlate that, the hard part about supplements is they're not funded by big pharma.

So it's really difficult for supplement companies to come up with the funding to do these huge studies that pharmaceuticals get done because they get funding. They,  70%, believe it or not, 70 percent of the funding for the FDA comes from pharmaceutical companies. So  they get the money to do the research is what you're saying.

And I understand that, but I do understand what you're saying too, is that if the products we're using, like for me because there's so much that I'm learning that's linked to. The high glucose levels, the insulin resistance, and that most of us come to find out most of us are walking around in this state and unaware or not at the point where we have official diagnosis, but we're still hurting our bodies.

That would be me. Like I'm not a, and I think that we can catch these things early, which is the point of us coming on here today and just getting things out there.  Alzheimer's is something that we could prevent, even You know, like with the, in addition to all the healthy lifestyle factors we mentioned to having a supplement that could help, like for me, I think about when I take the orange powder that I put in, it's so easy to use.

Like I put it, I take it before my meal and if I have glucose in it, I know that it's going to be absorbed better. So I feel like that. That is, in my mind, I'm thinking that's a preventative thing I can do, it's exactly. It's like lessening the blow, right? Wearing a seatbelt is not going to prevent an accident, but a seatbelt is going to help, maybe prevent you from getting as injured as if you weren't wearing it.

And that's the same, the supplements do like them, they help control appetite. They help increase insulin sensitivity. They help lower blood pressure, lower inflammation, and improve gut health. Lower glucose. All of these things are necessary in order to try to mitigate us from Alzheimer's. And that, and I'm thinking to myself, just because of my beliefs, like, why not, if you need something that's going to help you and try something natural.

And I'm wondering like the alternatives out there for medications people might try to use to prevent Alzheimer's, the damage they could do to the body. Oh yeah. There's not really been a medication, there's been several that have been tried. And none have worked. I think there's a brand new one out on the market now with some really nasty side effects.

And it comes with an astronomical price tag. So the thing with medications is they're not the answer. They're not the answer to dietary conditions. They're band aids. And why not prevent yourself from needing it? Why not  work on the front end, Upstream  versus downstream when the problem's already there, it's much harder to reverse, when someone starts to get dementia and shows signs of it, like my dad, the chances that we're going to reverse that are very slim.

So we want to not even get to that point. And that makes sense. And I think that everything we can do in our power in terms of taking care of our body, everything physically, emotionally, mentally, we look at relationally and spiritually too. All of those things are important components.

And they matter. They all matter. They do. And we can't undermine any of them now from the physical standpoint, we're focusing on that's our area. And, I think. I would ask, and I'm wondering if some people might be thinking, so if I make it, if I don't eat as much sugar, cutting out the processed foods, all those things are a great start, like taking steps.

I think that using a supplementation could be a step for some people, maybe not for everybody, but when do you feel like it could be a step for somebody? What are the symptoms they may be experiencing? That's what I want to talk about next. Absolutely. So if you can't go long without eating. 

That's a problem. If you have been unable to lose weight, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, fatty liver, if you have skin tags on your neck, if you have PCOS as a female, erectile dysfunction as a male, if you have gout, if you have neuropathy, All of these things are signaling a bigger problem, which is the insulin resistance.

Diabetes type two is an insulin resistance problem. So if you have any of these things if you feel like you have to take food with you in your car or on a hike, that's a problem. We should be able to go for periods of time without eating and without feeling ravenous or hangry. All of these things are symptoms of a much bigger issue.

And, everybody knows, including Children, that doughnuts and cookies and french fries and pizza are not healthy for us. We all know this, but yet we all eat it all the time. All of us. We do. For the most part, it's because we're addicted to it. Food addiction is real. It exists. And I know because I have it.

So if there are things that can help  break that addiction, right? I'm not taking an olympic and a Wygobie. I'm not going to inject myself with something that  is potentially harmful. So I choose the natural options. This right here tells my body to release itself. GLP 1, which suppresses my own hunger, helps those urges, those cravings for carbohydrate foods, right?

And then if I can keep my insulin down through keeping my glucose down, then I'm not going to have these hunger and cravings. Spikes all the time, and that right there is detrimental on the body. When you have high glucose, you're aging yourself. You're caramelizing or glycating things inside your body.

That's why your nerves, you get neuropathy. That's why your eyes go bad. That's why your kidneys get damaged. Because you're basically,  Taking a blowtorch and frying your insides. And so there are definitely people poop supplements all the time because it's not a prescription. I'm here to tell you, supplements work better than prescriptions and they don't come with a list of side effects that are harmful.

If the drug that you're taking to fix something has a bigger list of potential dangers, What are we doing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's why we have this podcast better than a pill. Because there are solutions. Like we've mentioned all of our lifestyle factors, the supplementation, and I think I love how you shared those specific things going on with our health and wanting to, while we're here, word off further.

deterioration of our mind, through, through high insulin resistance, it's all consuming. I hope that this has been helpful for you guys that have been listening today and in the podcast. And I thank you Shannon for coming on. Yay. I'll put the links for the supplement. The great system is going to be here.

If you're interested, please check that out. And also, I know a lot of you that are listening are struggling to move because you're struggling to enjoy activities. You love whether it's golf or whatever it is, you've got back pain, stiffness, and no, I'd love to connect you guys. I'm here. You can schedule us.

consultation by clicking the link in the episode. We'll always put that in there too. And because you are a listener of the better than a pill podcast, we will honor an exclusive savings for you. So we release new episodes every week on Wednesday, and I look forward to having you join us then.