The Real Causes of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — And What You Can Do Today

The impulse for this conversation was a phone call from my mom. She told me that my dad had forgotten their wedding anniversary — for the first time in their marriage. There was no bouquet, no celebration, and a conversation followed that I had been quietly dreading. As a brain health coach, I knew what the signs meant. I had noticed his trembling hands and moments of confusion when I visited in February. And I knew I had to say it out loud — to my mom, and now to you.

This post is a companion to Episode 64 of She Became CEO. It is personal, and it is practical. Cognitive decline and memory loss are not inevitable, and there is more within your reach than most people realize.

When you try to recall a moment, you don't get a video. You get an image — a fragment with a feeling attached to it. When we tell a story about the past, we connect those snapshots, filling in the space between them with inference and emotion. That is why two people who were in the same room will remember it differently. They captured different moments from different angles and interpreted them through different frameworks of meaning.

Memory is how we know who we are. When it starts to go, it doesn't just affect the past — it unsettles the present. The person who forgets an anniversary is not just missing a date. Something in the retrieval system is losing its grip, and that tells us the brain is under strain.

The brain contains roughly 86 billion cells, and each one has thousands of connections to other cells. Those connections are how you think, remember, feel, and function. Cognitive decline does not start with cells dying — it starts with connections thinning. Imagine a tree in autumn, losing its leaves slowly until the branches are bare. A cell that once had thousands of connections may be down to hundreds, then to none, and eventually the cell itself dies.

That process can take 20 to 30 years. The brain is so capable of compensating that by the time symptoms appear, the damage has been building quietly for a long time. This is why brain health researchers emphasize that anyone 35 or older should be thinking about active prevention, not waiting for symptoms.

When you eat carbohydrates, glucose enters the blood in amounts the body did not request. The body has to deal with the surplus urgently — it burns what it can, stores some as glycogen, and converts the rest to fat. That surplus is what causes blood sugar to spike, forces an insulin response, and leads to fat accumulation over time.

When this happens chronically — year after year, decade after decade — the brain's cells stop responding to insulin properly. They can no longer take in fuel. They are surrounded by energy they cannot use. Researchers call this glucose hypometabolism. Some call Alzheimer's disease type 3 diabetes, because the mechanism is the same.

When you stop eating carbohydrates, something different happens. The body produces a small amount of glucose from protein — exactly as much as certain functions require, and no more. There is no surplus, no spike, and no insulin surge. The body runs on ketones made from fat, and the brain runs on ketones too. Some researchers believe it actually performs better on them, with cleaner and steadier energy.

This is why a ketogenic approach has gained serious attention in brain health research. As long as there is even a small amount of glucose in the diet, the body will use it and will not produce ketones. Ketosis only happens when carbohydrates are truly removed.

The takeaway: Remove sugar and ultra-processed food. Not reduce — remove.

Parkinson's disease is the world's fastest-growing neurological condition, and according to leading neurologists, it is not a natural consequence of aging. It is largely caused by what we encounter in the world around us. Three main environmental culprits have been identified.

Pesticides. Particularly a chemical called paraquat, still in use in the US despite being banned in Europe. About 40 million Americans drink from private wells, and that water is rarely tested for pesticides. People who drink well water have roughly a 75% increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease. I think about my parents when I hear this. They spend time at their countryside property, get their water from a well, and right next to the property, agricultural fields are sprayed with pesticides. They have been drinking that water for years.

Trichloroethylene — TCE. An industrial dry cleaning chemical present in the drinking water of one in three American cities, it is associated with a 500% increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease. That number is not a typo.

Air pollution. Tiny particles in smog and exhaust enter the body through the nose, and the nose bypasses the blood-brain barrier — the brain's security system. Those particles can travel directly along the olfactory nerve, straight into the brain. This is likely how heavy metals accumulate in the brains of people with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's over time.

My father drove trucks for years during the Soviet era, which means he was regularly exposed to diesel fumes, exhaust, and heavy metals from the road — things that may have been accumulating quietly for decades. I am not diagnosing him. I am noticing a pattern, and the pattern matters.

There are ways to remove heavy metals from the body. Some protocols, however, can be harsh on a weakened system, so if this is something you want to explore, find the information carefully and proceed with caution.

My dad eats a lot of red beets because he believes they help with constipation. Here is what I want him — and you — to know.

Constipation is often one of the first signs of Parkinson's disease. The disease may not begin in the brain at all. It may begin in the gut and travel upward along the vagus nerve — the long nerve connecting the gut to the brain stem — before it ever appears as a movement problem. Constipation in someone who also has tremors and memory changes is not simply a sign of needing more vegetables. It may be an early neurological signal.

Red beets are also very high in oxalates — plant compounds that accumulate in tissues over time and contribute to inflammation, joint pain, and neurological symptoms. I have talked about oxalates extensively in earlier episodes.

When the body is struggling, we often reach for things to add — more fiber, more supplements, more medication. But sometimes healing means removing things, not adding them. If you have a headache, your body does not have an Ibuprofen deficiency. It may need to eliminate a toxin, an irritant, or an inflammatory food.

We need them, and I am not saying otherwise. But most conventionally trained doctors have not been trained in what I have been sharing here. This is not their fault — medical education follows established curricula, and the science on diet, ketosis, environmental toxins, and brain metabolism is relatively new and largely outside mainstream training.

There are doctors who have gone beyond their training, studied independently, run clinical trials, and recovered patients who were told nothing could be done. There are also people without medical degrees who have done serious independent research and found real answers. The absence of an MD does not mean the absence of knowledge, and the presence of an MD does not guarantee current knowledge. Learn, question, and evaluate evidence for yourself. Be the leader of your own health team.

Published research has shown that a significant percentage of people in the early stages of cognitive decline improved their cognitive scores — not just slowed the decline, but reversed it — through lifestyle intervention. The brain is not as fixed as we have been told, but it does need the right conditions.

I am sharing all of this because I love my parents, and because I have been on my own version of this journey — rebuilding a brain that was depleted by years of stress, poor sleep, and the wrong foods. It is possible, and I am evidence of it.

If someone in your life is showing early signs — forgotten dates, trembling hands, moments of confusion in familiar places — pay attention and have the conversation. And if the person who needs to hear this is yourself, start now, not when symptoms appear.

 Click this link or the image below to listen to E64 on PodBean, or find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: memory loss prevention, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's prevention, Parkinson's disease causes, brain health diet, ketogenic diet brain health, environmental toxins brain disease, how to protect your brain, brain health for women over 50, midlife brain health