Jesse: You're famous for saying that "You're only as young as your oldest body part." I think you've coined that phrase more or less and brought that to the public. What body parts do you find most prematurely aging in people?

Eric Braverman: Well it's actually fairly variable. Typically you know people think of women aging, getting short, getting osteoporotic and getting a fair amount of dementia.And it's the same in the matter of heart disease. But it's really much more variable than that. Let's work our way down the organs. By 40 years old everybody's brain pretty much on it's 3T or 15 times more powerful M.R.I, combined with Beam demonstrates significant either atrophy or loss of myelin sheath, missing pieces of pituitary or ischemia blood flow changes and processing speed alterations. so there's pretty much a significant cognitive alteration and those alterations are occurring all the time. You can't learn a language after 12 without an accent. By 20 your brain's peaked speed - if you haven't created some kind of genius work by 30, you generally won't do it. By 40 everybody is turning the corner towards dementia - partially. Now partial for me - a lot of partial or a microscopic, but it's there. And then you work your way down the organ systems, you see aging everywhere. 90% of the people on autopsy, certainly women have nodules. We're up around 70% nodules in our patients. And so thyroid ages, parathyroid shuts down causing osteoporosis. Most people don't even know what the parathyroid is. 4 purple glands which look like little peas in the neck. Pineal glands not making the melatonin, pituitary not making the hormones anymore up in the brain. Heart's starting to show valve leakages and damages. Bones are almost universally losing calcium, strength and collagen - down by 40. Muscles certainly very deteriorated in women much faster than men. So women have a lot more sarcoporosis and coronary artery starts clogging up with calcium. You just work your way through the system and you got lot of malabsorption.

Jesse: That's a pretty grim picture so far.

Eric Braverman: Well grim in that we do expect death to free from us and the redemption of corruptible flesh will become incorruptible. So you're only as young as your oldest part. We have to be cognizant that we scan the whole body and make an age print. We'll make this available to your audience free, which they can just call in anytime and get a copy of it at 888-231-PATH. That will give you a rough idea of this.

Jesse: I was wondering about setting some of those baselines of saying - you've the heart of a 70 year old. One of the questions that crawls into mind is how do you set that yardstick? How do we say that we know what the average 70 year old should look like?

Eric Braverman: Well now you're asking certain ipsative data so what we've done is actually established optimum bone density, optimum heart health, optimum brain health. Now we know what a brain is with atrophy because it fills your skull. I just put on my instruments, which are when you go to Dr. Eric B, you'll see I just put in a typical atrophied brain that's advanced with a lake of water in the middle of the brain. If you look at enough brains that are 20 and 30 and then you look at 60 year olds, they're a catastrophe. If you look at bad 60 year olds, they got a Lake Michigan sitting in the middle of where there's supposed to be brain tissue.

Jesse: One of the things that you're famous for is your book "The Edge Effect" and I believe that's the book where you have the self-assessment on your various primary neurotransmitters. Could you talk a little about that and also when you see imbalances - what those imbalances that you're typically seeing look like?

Eric Braverman: Basically what I just told you - you're only as young as your oldest part - is a catastrophe of health allocation services. So in America a guy goes and he gets a colonoscopy and then he doesn't bother to check out his bone density and dies. Or doesn't have his attention checked and he skies into a tree but his rectum has been certified as healthy.

Jesse: *Laughs*

Eric Braverman: Alright, so we have a situation where virtually everyone can only do partial healthcare.

Jesse: Yeah.

Eric Braverman: That partial healthcare as in you might get an eye exam, you might check your glaucoma, you might get to your colonoscopy, you might get to your G.I. That partial health review is a decision that you make in total ignorance of what the oldest part is; and that total ignorance results in unfortunately catastrophe where it doesn't get good return for most people. And medicine the way it is currently practiced - you're only as young as your oldest part - results in specialty catastrophe and that catastrophe is best illustrated by the group of doctors flying home in an airplane. The pilots get sick and there's all these doctors that came back from a conference. So the republican surgeon says, "Don't worry I know what to do." He says, "I'm gonna cut off the left wing." The democratic surgeon says, "I'll cut off the right wing." The G.I. guy scopes the rectum in the plane looking for controls. Urologist scopes the bladder - the toilet bowls, looking for controls. So you have a situation where no one goes to the head of the plane. When we go to the head of the plane we turn the brain into an electro-biochemical machine and the electro-biochemical machine is neurotransmitters being transmitted back in to electricity.

Dopamine is one symbol of adrenaline, catecholamines and we drill that up with everything from testosterone, estrogen, growth hormones, DHEA, brain energy formulas, we have a whole nutrient regimen to boost dopamine and boost brain cell growth and voltage. So with age we're all losing voltage and to keep that voltage is tough.

Jesse: What are some of the ways to attack that problem?

Eric Braverman: They attack it everyday with sugar and coffee. That's how they attack it right now. But I want to give the overview and pseudocholine is the next one. Dopamine's basically extroversion. So if you want to understand the brain from a love perspective. Extroverts are more loving because they share, feelers are more loving because they care. Organizers are more loving because they get more done and intuiters are more loving because they see what people need. Alright, and to really make love work with most people you've got to share some.

Then the next story is intuitiveness and pseudocholine. Big picture, cognitive function, memory storage all depends on pseudocholine. Whether it's eggs or fish or fish oil or growth hormones or parathyroid hormones. In other words the pseudocholine links very much to your bone frame. So the studies show - as we learned from the last point - that the athletes do the best. Men that are athletic and women that are athletic will in long run do the best. Their brains become stronger and this is called the Spark principle - triggering all neurotransmitters to take-off.

Then you go to GABA. So the brain's energy is E=mc2 is the mass of voltage of neurons firing times the processing speed squared. So being fast is more important than being strong in many ways for energy for brain output. So quick minds do well. And we go to GABA we got ways to build GABA with acetone, progesterone, primolone and other hormones and nutrients. Bottom line is that you can't get the full effect of successful health if you don't also simultaneously have stability. So you have to be changing and creative and energetic but you also have to be stable. And finally you've to be sleeping. Seratonin - you've stay in a good mood and Seratonin gives you feeling. GABA keeps you organized and ultimately human beings are in relationships. So more they are extroverted, intuitive feeling and organized the more loving they are. But not all of us are made just to be loving. A guy like me is made to be strategic and to create strategies for people to enhance their brain and break the aging barrier and explore the stars; live to 800 and fulfill the dreams of humanity. Now that won't happen if we're all getting stupid. So we've to come up with a smart program in every situation from computers to fixing cars - everybody does a diagnostic. So the biggest un-smart mistake of the smart drug movement was to take things without evidence. In other words you have ischemia in the brain you take Niacin. If you've got frontal lobe disorder you've got to get some executive functioning - you've got to take an Adderall or a stimulant. So we have an entire strategy to continue to fix the brain, triggered to a brain print. The brain print has layer after layer after layer of processing speed issues, sleep issues, personality issues, type temperament issues; and we can basically do a living autopsy of the human brain. So we do a living autopsy on the human brain and body and then a person can make their decisions on what changes they want. So I don't want all the changes. In other words I learn that I'm not that great a listener and I decided that I don't want to change too much, except that I do want to change it in some situations. So anything that raises GABA will make me a better listener and slow me down a little bit to pay attention to people.

Jesse: Why do you think that the American medical system is so far behind on giving a holistic overview on brain focused diagnostic?

Eric Braverman: Well it's very much back to an ancient paradigm error where the church got this brain and soul and the enlightenment of the body. And the world's more interested in sex anyway. So basically the current physical exams are boobs and vagina for women and for men it's erectile and the prostrate and the cardiac. So pretty much the head's been left out of medicine other than to look inside the ears and see if you can see through to the other side.

Jesse: *Laughs* What do you think are the primary things that everybody should know about to make simple improvements in their own neurological health?

Eric Braverman: Exercise number one. Physical fitness, nutrition, brain food diet, vegetables, fruits. You know everything I think everyone knows.

I want people to know I wrote the book "Younger Sex For You". I coined the phrase, "every erection has a resurection". Which pretty much dials up any sex life - let me tell you some good news about sex. The hypometabolic brain and the atrophy that we find in those men and women, there's no question that sex reduces that atrophy. So the joke when we used to say that, "if you don't have sex you'll die" is a little bit true.

Jesse: *(laughs)* You've written a lot of books over the years. What do you think is the best way to start?

Eric Braverman: I've created a whole Braverman library. You can start with The Edge Effect, Younger You. Start with the books that sell 250,000 copies or so because those books are usually meant to be readable. I've 3 wellness encyclopedias now.

Jesse: What are your feelings on the various supplements that promote neuroprotective benefits?

Eric Braverman: Exercise, eggs, fish oil, yogurt, acidophilus, the right cultures. Blueberries is big. Bioflavinoids, citrus is big and hippocampal shrinkage, Indian kartalin, Russian rhodiola, Chinese huperzine. There are a zillion things you can do. I told you again - brain print me anybody and I'll tailor the right regimen. Other wise you'll end up with a dealing with the hardest of the 10 commandments - thou shalt not covet. You know like taking a 100 pills without matching anything.