Headaches and Brain Health

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bradford Cooper and today’s episode will take us inside the brain covering handwriting to headaches, brain health, and much more. Our guest is none other than Dr. Deena Kuruvilla, a board certified neurologist and headache specialists at the Yale school of medicine, who is also a specialist in complimentary medicine. She speaks regularly around the country and captured our interest after being quoted in multiple national publications, including the wall street journal, us news, and the Huffington post. Our conversation today is quite fascinating as we take a deep dive in the various treatments for headaches that influence so many people, but we don’t stop there. We also discuss how journaling can positively influence learning and memory, whether there’s a value in those Sudoku puzzles and much, much more. If you are looking to pursue your health and wellness coach certification before the national board requirements change, our August training will be your last chance. Now we’ve been saying July, but the NBHWC just extended one of the requirements that will now allow our August attendees to comfortably meet that new timeline that they’ve set up. If you have questions, if you’re saying, wait, what’s this national board, or yes, I’ve been thinking about doing that, just reach out to us, happy to set up some time. I won’t go into it now. Our email is Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. And we can set up a specific time to talk through your specific situation or feel free to visit our website for initial coaching resources, CatalystCoachingInstitute.com, and you can now pop over to the YouTube coaching channel, which is literally youtube.com/coaching channel and find a growing library of freely available video resources as well. Now it’s time to join Dr. Deena Kuruvilla as she discusses headaches and brain health on the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching Podcast with Dr. Kuruvilla. It’s so good to have you join us today. Thanks for making time in the midst of your crazy schedule.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Cooper.

Dr. Cooper

So a lot to unpack here today with, you bring so much to the table in terms of the insights for this group. Maybe a good place to start would be provide, just give us the basic lay terms, some of the key components of the brain, the functions of those pieces, just give us that baseline. So we have something heading into the conversation.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. So I have to start off by saying that the brain is extremely complex. The brain is responsible for so many different functions throughout the body. It’s responsible for producing thoughts. It’s responsible for storing memories. It’s responsible for us speaking right now, for producing speech. And it’s responsible for every movement that we perform from picking up your cup of coffee, to riding a bike outside during quarantine. In addition to all of these important things that the brain does for us, it is also responsible for so many important organs in the body. It’s responsible for breathing. It’s responsible for making your heart function, it’s responsible for your stomach and for it, you know, that the gut brain connection, that more research is being done right now. And for me personally, I am a headache specialist and a neurologist. The brain is also responsible for producing pain specifically.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. And people have just perked up and they’re thinking, Oh, wow, this is going to be a good one. How, a little background though. How did you decide to make this your life’s work? Was there some, some catalyst in your life, was there a story that led you to saying, this is what I want to do?

Dr. Kuruvilla

So I always knew that I wanted to help people for sure, but I didn’t always know that I wanted to work with the brain. I think that that developed over time, just after learning kind of the complexities of the brain and having had migraines myself, um, in my lifetime, it was, it’s a condition that I can definitely relate to. You know, neurology in general is an extremely interesting field because we, before my time, the mantra was diagnose and adios. The reason because neurologists, neurologists really couldn’t do much to help patients back in the day, they would be able to diagnose a condition, but there were very limited treatment options available. So now that has completely changed. There’s a completely new era for neurology. And there are so many major treatments now for migraine, for multiple sclerosis, for Alzheimer’s disease, for Parkinson’s. And so, so many things have developed in such a short period of time. That just makes it incredibly interesting. It’s a treatable field right now. It’s no longer a diagnose and adios.

Dr. Cooper

That’s very fascinating. Our son actually thinks he, he’s taking the MCATs here in the next month and he’s thinking neurology, maybe toward the top of the list. So this has got my attention even more than I thought it would. So very good. So there’s been a growing interest in, in brain health, obviously in recent years, some of that, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s, but it goes a lot further than that. Can you share some of the keys you’ve discovered to optimizing the health of our brains over the last several years?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. So there’s two major things that we can all do, I think to optimize brain health, there is prevention and then there’s managing. So prevention is extremely important, especially while we are all on this lockdown in the middle of this pandemic, prevention, prevention, prevention. So physical exercise, aerobic exercise is extremely helpful for keeping up brain health. You know, just 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day, getting your heart rate up and really getting the blood pumping can be extremely helpful. Avoiding, avoiding tobacco, using alcohol, illicit drugs are certainly important in trying to optimize your brain health. Sleep, sleep is such an important thing right now, right? When now our work is kind of leaking into our home life. As many of us are now working from home, that can certainly disrupt sleep. So sleep is so important to provide downtime, to grow, repair and reset the brain. And so, you know, for adults, many studies have shown that around seven to nine hours is usually optimal. And for children, they need much more, they need much more sleep so there are different guidelines, but sleep is so important. Another kind of preventive strategy is managing stress. You know, I think that everyone is kind of going through a stressful time right now. And as stress goes up, cortisol levels go up, and cortisol is thought to be toxic to brain cells. And so we have to engage in avenues to treat stress such as meditation. You know, that’s been shown to lower stress levels. And so, you know, kind of engaging in those activities can certainly help to prevent, some things from happening to the brain to optimize brain health.

Dr. Cooper

So as I’m listening to you describe this, it is everything I love, because our main four, we talk about the cornerstones of health and wellness being, move fuel, rest, and connect. And you’ve basically said three of those. We’re not just talking physically, Brad, this is helping your brain as well. You brought the stress component into that. Would stress be, I don’t want to overstate this, but would stress, be a symptom of brain, not brain injury, but brain, just something, you know, you, you’re not treating your brain right when your stress levels come up. Is that an accurate, A=B?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely 100%. So underlying brain disorders, you know, such as migraine, for example, can result in stress, but stress, and those high levels of cortisol that we can produce from stress can be toxic to our brains. So it’s there, it’s a toxic cycle to bring that stress into life because that can result in poor brain health, as well as the other way, where, you know, underlying brain disorders can produce increased stress as well.

Dr. Cooper

And this is in the absence of headaches. So this is not just for the person that’s struggling with migraines or, or has stress headaches or, you know, suboccipital muscular headaches at the end of the day. This is in general. So general population, more stress is not healthy for your brain.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. That is absolutely true for absolutely everyone. Whether, whether you have any, you know, unrelated to any type of underlying neurological diagnosis, whether you have one or not, stress is toxic to the brain.

Dr. Cooper

All right, let’s, let’s take a slight side turn here on, on brain exercise if you will. There’s a lot of apps out there and things you theoretically can do. I’ve read that there’s very little evidence they actually do help. Any guidance on crosswords and Sudoku, and brushing your teeth with the opposite hand and eating food with the fork in the other hand, and, and these kinds of things? Obviously those do help create new neural pathways, but are they actually adding to the health or are they just slightly expanding that capacity?

Dr. Kuruvilla

They are likely just expanding the capacity, but they’re not overall adding much, there’s actually very, there’s not enough evidence to say that, you know, doing a crossword puzzle a day is going to prevent your memory from deteriorating over time or, or using your left hand to brush, the opposite hand or brush your teeth. So it’s, it’s, there’s just not enough evidence out there to say that those things are truly productive. It’s really all about, you know, prevention as we discussed and really managing existing medical conditions. Also, you know, a lot of folks in the United States have high cholesterol, diabetes, thyroid conditions, high blood pressure, managing those things can certainly help to prevent the development of some type of memory disorder down the line or other brain conditions.

Dr. Cooper

You’ve just provided a huge amount of motivation for a lot of people. I think folks naturally think, well, you know, I have high cholesterol, but that just runs in the family or, you know, I’m carrying a little extra weight and that’s just the way it is. But if you start telling people, well, this also influences your potential, there’s no guarantees and you’re not safe if you’re healthy, but it improves your likelihood of not having those as early in life or at all. That’s big. So am I restating that accurately?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, it’s so important to highlight that genetics does play a role, but there are things that, there are things that many of us just can’t control, but, you know, doing these things to, controlling those other medical conditions you may have, they may play a big role in cutting down, issues with the brain and improving brain health.

Dr. Cooper

We had Dr. Kenneth Pelletier on here, oh, probably six months ago talking about epigenetics. And it’s a fascinating topic that I wasn’t aware of prior to connecting with him. So yes, absolutely. You’ve got the genetics, but you can turn on, turn off with, in some cases it’s not a, it’s not a given. All right. So the reason I originally reached out to you, you really caught my attention, you were quoted in the wall street journal about the connection between handwritten notes or journaling and the opportunity to fire up the hippocampus. Can you talk us through that? You know, Harvey Mackay talked years ago about the power of the pen as people are doing more typing, but he was talking about it from a business sense that the handwritten note means more to other people than it used to, but you’re talking about there’s actually some benefits to doing that. Can you talk us through that a little bit?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. So it’s been shown that the memory typically works better with writing things down. We are certainly firing up certain areas of the brain, like the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and recall when we are writing things down. You know, a lot of recommendations have been made out there about diary, keeping, for example, it’s been shown that diary keeping, you know, very basic things like, you know, even if it’s a food log or just feelings every day, or, you know, any of those types of things, they have the capability to improve memory recall and increase critical thinking. Where those, some of those, those really important things are not getting activated with smart devices. So when we’re on our iPads or our iPhones, we are kind of, sometimes toggling between apps, right? We are we’re, you know, maybe writing something down in a diary, doing our to do list, and then let’s check in on Instagram and see what someone has just posted. Right? We’re toggling between multiple different things and smart devices in general have been shown to decrease attention and concentration and increase dopamine within the brain. Now, the importance of that is dopamine is one of the main neurotransmitters in addiction. So it’s interesting to think that are we activating some type of addiction path by using our smart devices more frequently, there needs to be more studies on it. There’s not enough evidence on that yet, but dopamine specifically that addiction neurotransmitter has kind of been shown to go up with smart devices. So that’s very interesting.

Dr. Cooper

It is interesting. And it just pops into my mind. You think of, you know, they talk about entry-level drugs, you start with this one and that can lead to this one. Is there any research to date showing the more of A, being the, the smart devices, the increased use of alcohol or drugs or those kinds of things, or is that more hypothesis at this point?

Dr. Kuruvilla

I, that that’s more hypothesis at this point. It would be really interesting to study that.

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Huh. Interesting. So, okay. You said writing, this is handwriting. So if I’m typing a journal, so if I keep an electronic journal, that’s different than if I literally have my journal, I grab my pen, I sit down and I write. And it’s because when I’m typing, I’ll go back and forth. Or even if I were to devote, let’s say 30 minutes sitting there typing specifically, not touching Instagram, not grabbing my phone still the handwritten has a bigger impact on the hippocampus and the way the brain functions.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Cooper

So interesting. Is that new research? I’m not familiar with that, that’s really, I mean, that’s a driver. That sounds fantastic. We can all do that.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Right. Right. Absolutely. I mean, you know, the research has been out there for quite some time, but now there’s more and more research within the past few years on that. So I’m really excited to see what ends up happening. You know, the pediatric population, the kids are actually the, probably the good population to study for this. See how they’re using screens as children, and then measure that over time. Many pediatric folks have already done this. The general recommendation by the, you know, the national pediatric society is one hour of screen time per day for the older children. So, you know, a lot of us try to, our pediatricians tell us that, and we try to implement that in our children.

Dr. Cooper

So I’m now flipping to, you know, folks that are used to saying, okay, I’m going to exercise for 30 minutes or 60 minutes a day saying, Oh, I’m going to start journaling five minutes. Is it, have we seen any, is there a hurdle? Is it, it needs to be five minutes. It needs to be 20 minutes. Or is that yet to be determined?

Dr. Kuruvilla

That’s yet to be determined, there’s no specific time recommendation, but you know, the things that we typically do on the computer, if we can convert some of that to journal or even, you know, the things like when we’re logging our exercise or our food, you know, turning that into a written journal is very helpful.

Dr. Cooper

So funny. Now nobody can make fun of me anymore. I still use a handwritten little day timer and I keep my triathlon training journal in a handwritten format too. And people are like, what are you doing? It’s already on Strava or it’s already like, okay, well, listen to this interview folks. All right, let’s get into headaches. Cause I know people are sitting here going get to the headache piece. We need to hear this. So whether people get them occasionally or they battle with the migraine stuff, can you talk us through some of the low hanging self-treatment fruit that may help people that haven’t heard it all before?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s important to highlight how common headache is, it affects around 40 million people within the United States are having around less than 15 headache days a month. And around 4 million people have 15 or more headache, days a month, they have chronic migraine. So it’s extremely common. I think it’s really important to see here. We’ve just spoken about screens, right? And using, having screen time, you know, screens are a trigger for a lot of people with migraine folks, especially now who are on the screen for hours at a time, 12 hours a day, they’re having a big uptake in headaches. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of medical effects, medical conditions that can happen as a result of increased screen time. And for folks with migraine, that’s a huge issue. As far as, you know, managing headaches go, you know, migraine is the most common headache disorder in the United States. And most folks start out with some types of lifestyle changes. Like we were talking about kind of making sure to sleep enough every night, reduce stressors, looking for specific things that may trigger their headaches like foods or alcohol, for example. And then they’re really wanting to consult with a physician that, you know, whoever manages headache to talk about how frequent the headaches actually are by keeping a headache diary and then discussing the appropriate treatments.

Dr. Cooper

I can remember, my background, I was a physical therapist for 25 years. And I remember early in my career, I started getting these headaches every afternoon and I’d go to the, I went to the extreme, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I’ve got a tumor or something. And what I discovered was I moved into a management role. So I was sitting at my desk more and my chin was jutted out. Suboccipitals are compressed. And as soon as I fixed posture, I was good to go. Like I didn’t have any more issues as soon as I just was like, dude, seriously, tuck your chin in and sit up right. And boom, they’re gone. How often, cause people are seeing you after they’ve tried everything. They’ve, they’ve tied Dr. Google. they’ve gone to their family physicians, et cetera. How many, just ballpark, I’m just curious how many times does one visit and you identify something like that or a food that maybe they hadn’t thought about before, or, you know, let’s cut down the screen time after 7:00 PM. Is that pretty common that people miss an opportunity like that, that if they would just go see someone like you, it can, it can be a part of their past, not their every day?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we, there are so, you know, folks who have migraine, for example, there, you know, as we were discussing earlier, there’s such a huge genetic component, but there are certain things that we can adjust or do to bring down the frequency of the headaches and to help them manage just like we manage hypertension, diabetes. We’re able to manage, you know, migraine, for example. We do often identify, you know, very specific things that could be triggering the headaches and, you know, stress is a big one. We were talking about this earlier. Mood in general are huge, comorbidities with migraine, for example, you know, some folks do tell us that positioning can be a problem. And so we do often work with physical therapists like yourself, who, who helped with positioning, teach the appropriate exercises and also make a huge difference for folks.

Dr. Cooper

Wow. Not sure where to start. I just know people are sitting out there going, but what about my situation? Is there any other low hanging fruit things that we haven’t touched on that people could try that, you know, you just, when you think of your pie chart and it’s this percentage of food and alcohol, this percentage of stress this percentage of sleep, this percentage of posture. Is there any other category that we’ve missed with this conversation?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Yeah, so the, I think, you know, a diary would be the most helpful because there’s not, there’s not exceedingly, it’s not, that, you know, for example, posture is the most common thing in most people that reduces migraine. There’s nothing like that. Every single person has different triggers for their headaches. And so we usually have to have them keep a pretty detailed diary and identify when their headache is happening. How many days a month, what, you know, their diet, what their diet looks like. Are they incorporating alcohol in there? You know, red wine for example is an extremely common trigger for migraine in people. It’s extremely common, even in folks who don’t have a history of migraine, red wine can trigger one. Sleep, sleep, sleep deprivation is an extremely common trigger or sleeping too much is also a trigger. So there is, a lot to be said with having regularity in one’s life, sleeping at the same time, waking up at the same time, having, a healthy diet and exercise, you know, there’s all those lifestyle modifications that we also recommend.

Dr. Cooper

It comes back to the basics so often. And then everybody, if you’re hearing what she’s saying here, she says, keep a diary. Now you just heard us say that actually is gonna give you better brain health in general. So even if you don’t have headaches, keep a headache diary, everybody, just talk about different things. All right. So as I was watching some of your interviews online and, and preparing for this in one, you mentioned something called the ponytail headache. I have never heard of that in my life. Can you explain that to us? Talk us through that one a little bit.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Oh, absolutely. So ponytail headache is extremely common. You know, another name for it is the technical term for it is external traction headache, commonly seen with folks who pill their hair back very tight or wear caps. For example, dancers, ballerinas who have to tie their hair tight back into a bun or in swimmers who have to wear swim caps. These are exceedingly, this is an extremely common headache disorder in this population. Basically the nerves that run through the scalp, those superficial nerves become very sensitive. And that traction, that pull when you’re pulling the hair back or wearing a cap results in superficial pain, that then can travel to the brain and send and produce a generalized headache. It’s a very interesting phenomenon that’s very common.

Dr. Cooper

Very interesting. Are there other versions of the ponytail headache? Not, not that piece. You mentioned swim cap, but are there other things like that that maybe some of our listeners could kind of pull into their self-treatment or self-diagnosis that they’d never thought of?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. I should add here, ponytail headache, you know, is also is this phenomenon called aloe denia when you touch something like you, you shave your face and it’s painful, or you touch your scalp and it becomes painful. It’s also a headache. You know, that’s also a part of that ponytail, headache phenomenon. So ice cream headache, for example, we get, if you eat your ice cream too fast, that can result in a really bad headache.

Dr. Cooper

I thought that was brain freeze.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Or you’re right. It is, that is the term that we all use for it. Absolutely. Or you walk out into negative degree temperature. I’m not sure if you get that in Colorado,

Dr. Cooper

Not as bad as Connecticut, but we get our share occasionally.

Dr. Kuruvilla

So you walk out into these freezing temperatures and you get a headache. So the other technical term for that is cold stimulus headache. It’s basically a headache that’s produced by extremely cold temperatures that are either applied to the outside of the head or are inhaled or consumed, like with ice cream. And, you know, that’s just thought to happen because you’re activating, you may be activating a specific nerve that can also trigger back and cause headache, but usually goes away within 30 seconds to one minute. But it’s extremely common also just like ponytail headache.

Dr. Cooper

Interesting. Huh. All right. So you’ve seen pretty much everything when it comes to headaches. What are some of the things that surprise you most about what you’re learning? What we’re learning more broadly?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Yeah, absolutely. I would have to say, what’s surprising me the most is the rapid release of treatments. Within the past couple of years, the whole landscape of neurology has changed. We have like super specialists now in neurology, not only do we have people who specialized in neurology, we have people that have now super specialized in conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, migraine. And in each of these categories, there are many treatment options. Now that’s why we need those super specialists, because, you know, for example, in the headache world, we’ve had all the, you know, for the past, however, 30, 40 years, we’ve always used medications that were not developed for headache to prevent headache. And within the past year and a half, we’ve had four new, migraine specific preventive treatments released. So it’s, it’s just, neurology just has completely changed. We’re able to treat patients now and able to change lives dramatically and reduce disability as a result.

Dr. Cooper

This is so fascinating. Okay. So with things like ibuprofen, aspirin, those kinds of things for an athlete, the recommendation is if you don’t need it, don’t use it because it literally delays your, your healing rate. You don’t, you don’t heal as quickly. If you have some, you know, quad pain from a hard ride or whatever, is, is there any correlation to that with, with headaches? Should, should people say, well, you know, it’s a, it’s a four out of 10, so I think I won’t use it today. Okay. Now it’s an eight out of 10. I don’t have a choice. I need it. Any guidance on ibuprofen aspirin use on a, I don’t want to say regular basis, but for headaches.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Absolutely. So the rule of thumb is we consider aspirin and ibuprofen, those families of medications, rescue medications. Those medications that we use as needed for, for headache, we recommend overall limiting it to two days a week, if possible, we recommend not using it over two or three days a week often, because two reasons. One is because of the side effects from it, as you correctly stated. And in the, in the headache world, we also have to worry about medication overuse headache. So using, over the counter medications, ibuprofen, and its cousins, for example, can result in more daily and frequent headaches. Yes, absolutely. Right. So if you’re, if one is having headaches that frequently, they probably need to be discussing some type of medication to prevent headaches overall.

Dr. Cooper

Excellent. Glad we got into that. Okay. So, just a couple of questions left, future of brain health. Can you kind of peer into the crystal ball for us? You’re seeing so many more things that we have no idea is even going on. We try to avoid the headlines here. So we’re going to, we’re going to have you kind of peel back the curtain for us a little bit. What, what, what do you see coming down the pipe? What can people be looking forward to keep their eyes open for?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Oh yeah. I think the biggest thing is treatment treatment treatment. I think that, the treatments are booming in brain health right now. And I think that, you know, I’m hoping somewhere down the line, we’re going to start seeing some cures for conditions. I think that would be really amazing. I hope that’s, you know, in my lifetime, I think that’s the biggest thing. We’re also seeing a big boom in the imaging industry. I think that the imaging studies, we have MRI, for example, we’re getting more and more advanced imaging modalities to provide more accurate diagnosis for people. So that’s, that’s been changing. That’s been changing rapidly also.

Dr. Cooper

When you talk about cures, are we talking about medications? Are we talking about different surgery, things they can do on an outpatient basis? Is it a combination of these things? What, what, what are we seeing?

Dr. Kuruvilla

I think it’s going to be both. I think it’s going to be a combination of things, you know? And I should, I should say cure or extremely good management. You know, there are neurological conditions now that we have surgeries for, that are helpful for managing conditions. You know, we have deep brain stimulation where they place the stimulator inside the brain to manage conditions, that in conjunction with medications, I think we’re going to get to a point of wonderful, you know, hopefully really good management for the patients.

Dr. Cooper

You just sparked another question that a lot of other folks would be interested in. So there are some different companies coming out, Halo is one that I’ve heard of where they’re talking about you, you wear this headband or this cap or whatever, while you’re doing your bike trainer or you’re running on the treadmill or something, and it’s supposed to elevate, it’s, it’s basically supposed to be a performance enhancer. Studies are very limited on the effectiveness, but this company has got a lot of venture capital behind it. What is your experience or, or have you run across those? What are your thoughts on where that is currently and where you think it might be five or 10 years down the road?

Dr. Kuruvilla

So I haven’t seen much evidence surrounding the halo headband specifically, but we have, like, I think down the line, we’re going to come up with more portable ways to treat neurological condition. For example, in, in my world, in the headache world, we have many devices available. One of which is a headband that can be worn to treat headache, to prevent it and use it as needed. That device, for example, has multiple clinical trials behind it that showed that it may be helpful for folks. I think, you know, down that landscape, I think we’ll see more inventions. And, but, you know, I think things like the halo and, and other, headbands that are currently available, it’s important to see that there’s not as much evidence behind those things, like you mentioned, and also kind of see where it’s coming from, you know, was it scientifically developed or not? It’s interesting.

Dr. Cooper

To be continued on that one? All right. Well, last question. Any final words of wisdom, just want to kinda make it wide open. Anything that I haven’t brought up, things for people that are trying to improve their own health and wellness, or maybe they’re a coach or they’re, you know, in a parent role or anything, or let’s see, let’s even walk down the Alzheimer’s door here. Is it, any advice on that realm that people can be helping their parents or their parents listening to this can say, you know what, I didn’t think about that beyond the general health and wellness components you mentioned earlier.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Right, so I have to say that this is a challenging time for everyone. Everyone is on edge right now, there is a huge component of anxiety, and we’re seeing many more cases of depression right now, whether that’s with, you know, people within the community, essential workers, like our local grocery store workers, postal workers, healthcare providers, they’re, everyone right now as, as from what I’m seeing within the community and observing within different studies that are available, everyone is on edge during, during the stressful time. And so the one thing I have to say is that we are seeing, neurological conditions and other medical issues manifest from anxiety and depression. I think first and foremost, when you’re with family, when you’re with coworkers, it’s really important to ask how they’re doing and gauge if there is a component of anxiety and depression, because many medical conditions and neurological conditions can manifest as a result of that. And this is the time I think, for our mental health professionals to really take a front stage and help people through it. So yeah, I was mentioning earlier self care is a huge thing that can help with this and consulting with the right mental health professional.

Dr. Cooper

That’s a great reminder. Yeah, it’s exciting because the coaches are in that role where they’re not counselors, but they are having those conversations with people. And it’s very easy for them to say, no, seriously, how are you doing? So I appreciate you bringing that up. Anything on the Alzheimer’s front? And we’ve had some guests talk about that in the past, but anything else that you’re seeing that might provide some hope? It’s such a massive area, the sleep is clearly a huge component of it. Is there anything else, either that you’re seeing that we may not be aware of or some hope that you see down the path a little bit?

Dr. Kuruvilla

So there are drugs that are being studied for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. There are IV treatments that are being studied, but currently our options are a little limited. We have medications that are used to manage the condition, but we, you know, we don’t have a robust medication that makes the dramatic difference that we’re looking for unfortunately. So, I think it’s, it’s challenging for a person with Alzheimer’s and with a family member who’s caring for them. It’s important to, you know, we were talking about this earlier to provide frequent reminders to your loved ones with Alzheimer’s, frequently reorient them and also check in with them about, what you mentioned earlier, their mood, sleep and how things are generally going. The biggest hope right now is that, you know, things are being studied specifically for Alzheimer’s disease, and we can hope that something is going to be promising and can be offered to folks.

Dr. Cooper

Very good, Dr. Kuruvilla. I really appreciate it. How can people follow you, keep track of what you’re working on, those kinds of things. Do you have a Twitter handle? Do you have, another realm of communication you’d like to highlight for us?

Dr. Kuruvilla

Sure. So I’m, I’m actually on the Yale medicine website. If you just type in my name there, Deena Kuruvilla, I pop up right there and, you know, you can find me there.

Dr. Cooper

Perfect. Well, again, really appreciate it. I know you have a lot going on and thanks for taking time out to chat with us.

Dr. Kuruvilla

Thank you, Dr. Cooper take care.

Dr. Cooper

Is your head spinning? Wow. So fortunate to have Dr. Kuruvilla join us in the midst of her, as you can imagine, really crazy busy schedule. Obviously feel free to pass this along to anyone who may be struggling in the headache front, or curious about opportunities to enhance brain health. She provided so many great insights. I was just fascinated by the idea of the handwritten notes, influencing the hippocampus in this world, where everything is computer keyboards. It’s just so interesting. Thanks for tuning into the number one podcast for health and wellness coaching. And thank you so much to those of you who share it with others. Next week, we are excited to welcome Earl Fee. He is the 90 year old world record holder, well currently in the 800, but about to be the mile as well. And yes, I said 90 year old, I can promise you you’ll be impressed with this gentleman as he shares his approach, that has allowed him not only to be healthy, but actually fast as he enters his 10th decade. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you may also be interested in the YouTube coaching channel, which is literally youtube.com/coaching channel. And you’ll find a growing library to compliment the podcast. Now it’s our turn. Let’s go get better and let’s help those around us do the same. We’re grateful to be on this journey with you and hope you found it beneficial in your life. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper signing off, make it a great rest of your week. And I’ll speak with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst, health, wellness, and performance coaching podcas