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Dharma Singh Khalsa, MD, is not shy about saying, “I
told you so.” As founding president/medical dir-ector
of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation International
in Tucson, AZ, and author of the books Brain Longevity, The
Pain Cure, Meditation as Medicine, and Food as Medicine, Khalsa
says, “I’ve always been ahead of the curve.” Considering
how much nay-saying and even outright attacks his ideas about
health have generated over the years, it is hard to begrudge
him a little bragging, now that mainstream medicine has embraced
many of his theories.
It has been a long road to recognition for Khalsa, whose integrative
medical approach to the brain and longevity incorporates meditation,
stress reduction, diet modification, and the use of supplements.
Not long after he established his foundation in 1993, a television
crew in search of a medical expose met him at his front door. “Is
it true you’re trying to steal old people’s money
by telling them you can help them stave off Alzheimer’s
disease?” the television anchorperson demanded to know.
A lot has changed in the past 10 years. In May 2003, Khalsa
was asked to testify before Congress about his integrative approach
to preventing and treating Alzheimer’s disease. He also
met with US Surgeon General Richard Carmona, MD. “He turned
to me and said, ‘Your work should now be considered mainstream,’” Khalsa
says. “It was as if all my hard work of the past decade
had finally received the recognition it deserved.”
Khalsa says he realized he wanted to treat patients—or “healing
partners,” as he calls them—with an integrative
approach that utilized a range of healing modalities. Born in
Cleveland and raised in Florida, Khalsa graduated from Creighton
University School of Medicine in Omaha, NE, and trained in anesthesiology
at the University of California in San Francisco, where he held
the prestigious post of chief resident and was on track to becoming
a professor of obstetrics.
Medicine and Meditation
Khalsa says that one day, he had “a
powerful calling and longing to go to New Mexico” where
he took a position as a clinical anesthesiologist at Lovelace
Medical Center in Albuquerque. Having practiced what he calls “basic
stretchy” yoga
in medical school, as well as transcendental meditation “for
stress reduction and energy” during his residency in San
Francisco, Khalsa found a Kundalini yoga center and tried a
class. “Out came this tall, skinny guy with a long red
beard and a turban, and he started doing these very powerful
breathing exercises which I enjoyed,” says Khalsa. “After
about 10 minutes, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s for me.’ I
continued taking the classes, not thinking that I was going
to totally change my life.” Khalsa had become increasingly interested in Kundalini yoga
and the Sikh religion followed by many Kundalini practitioners,
which he has since adopted. In 1981, he attended an advanced
meditation course led by Yogi Bhajan. “When I met Yogi
Bhajan, I had a very powerful awakening. Some people talk about
past-life or near-death experiences; to me, this was a future-life
experience. At that moment, I realized I no longer had to use
powerful anesthetic drugs to put these people to sleep, but
could use these new things I was learning—such as nutrition,
supplements, stress management, exercise, and the like—to
help people wake up and heal their bodies, minds, and spirits.”
Khalsa continued working as an anesthesiologist but also began
building his knowledge of integrative medicine. “When
I was a chief resident in anesthesiology, I went to the highest-level
medical conferences,” says Khalsa. “I used that
same desire to learn and that same interest in science but I
sought out leaders in the alternative medicine field.” He
studied with Yogi Bhajan, who taught him about alternative medicine,
life extension, nutrition, supplements, meditation, and yoga.
He also took basic and advanced training in mind-body medicine
at the Mind-Body Institute at Harvard Medical School under the
tutelage of Dr. Herbert Benson, whose best-selling book The
Relaxation Response introduced the medical benefits of meditation
to a mass audience. Khalsa also received certification in medical
acupuncture from UCLA.
In addition to advancing his medical training, Khalsa studied
with the acclaimed holistic nutritionist Bernard Jensen at his
Hidden Valley Health Ranch, as well as with Paavo Airola, whose
book How to Get Well advanced the idea of food as medicine. “I
studied with high-level nutritional masters because there were
no doctors back then who knew anything about nutrition,” he
says.
Using his growing knowledge of integrative medicine, in 1987
Khalsa helped develop the Southwest’s first holistic pain
program at Lovelace. In 1990, he became the founding director
of the Acupuncture/Stress Medicine and Chronic Pain Program
at the University of Arizona College of Medicine campus at Maricopa
Medical Center in Phoenix. “I began reviewing the literature
on stress medicine and came across something that was earth
shattering to me and life changing,” says Khalsa. That
discovery—that chronic stress releases cortisol in the
bloodstream, and cortisol causes the death of cells in the brain’s
memory center—has recently received a lot of attention
in the mainstream medical press.
“I came to the realization that Alzheimer’s disease
and memory loss, whether age-related memory loss or what they
now call mild cognitive impairment, is really in large measure
a disease of lifestyle,” says Khalsa. “It’s
unfortunate that they’re spending billions of dollars
looking for one magic bullet drug when 90% of the things that
can be done to help prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s are
things we can do for ourselves: eat right, take supplements,
manage stress, and exercise.”
After reaching these conclusions, Khalsa and his wife Kirti
made it their mission to help people prevent and reverse memory
loss using a holistic or integrative medical program. In 1993,
they formed the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation International,
a not-for-profit integrative medicine program devoted to preventing
and reversing Alzheimer’s. Khalsa also became a founding
member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine.
Four Keys to Greater Brain Longevity
Khalsa’s methods
for helping people achieve brain health and overall longevity
revolve around the idea that the brain is “flesh and blood
like the rest of the body,” so “what
works for the heart works for the head.” Topping Khalsa’s
list of health recommendations is proper nutrition. He recommends
eating copious amounts of fruits and vegetables while limiting
fat to 15-20% of the diet. Those fats should be primarily unsaturated “good
fats,” particularly omega-3 fatty acids.
Khalsa says supplementation is an important component of any
diet. Everyone, he says, should take a high-potency multivitamin
and mineral supplement. In addition, he puts a scoop of the
Life Extension Mix in his fruit smoothie every morning, along
with his own Longevity Green Drink, which he says is similar
to the green powders sold by Life Extension. “I drink
that and I don’t think about food or energy until about
12 o’clock,” says Khalsa.
In addition to supplements such as vinpocetine, Huperzine
A, and galantamine that Khalsa recommends for people who already
have symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, he recommends several
brain-specific and general anti-aging nutrients for people who
want to prevent the disease. Khalsa says vitamin E has been
shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. Coenzyme
Q10 tops his list for heart and brain health. “One of
the leading researchers on coenzyme Q10 told me they should
put it in drinking water because it’s so powerful,” says
Khalsa. “It’s an indispensable brain-specific and
antiaging nutrient.” He suggests alpha lipoic acid for
overall health and life extension.
Khalsa also believes that there is strong evidence that ginkgo
is as effective as conventional medicine in helping to improve
the symptoms of dementia. “Contrary to what some of the
large companies’ disinformation campaigns would have you
believe, I think ginkgo does help people who already are ‘normal’ improve
their cognitive function.” Another brain-longevity supplement
that Khalsa thinks has been overlooked by mainstream medicine
is phosphatidylserine. “It fights cortisol and stress,
and improves mood, neurotransmital function, and nutrients getting
to the brain cells,” says Khalsa. “It has been shown
to slow memory loss. I think it is a tragedy that because the
drug companies can’t patent it, they don’t promote
it to the doctors.”
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The last supplement Khalsa recommends for everyone is DHA
or other omega-3 fatty acids. “It is crucial to supplement
your diet with an omega-3,” Khalsa advises. “It
insulates the nerve fibers, improves attention, concentration,
and focus, and is very good for the heart, overall longevity,
and anti-aging.” The second step in Khalsa’s program is stress reduction. “This
is critically important because the chronic stress we’re
under releases cortisol from our adrenal glands, which in small
amounts we need to get out of bed in the morning but in large
amounts has been proven to turn your brain into a toxic dump,” says
Khalsa. “It’s like battery acid on the hippocampus,
or memory center, of the brain. Chronic stress makes you fat,
makes you have high blood pressure, and ruins your heart, immune
system, and brain.” Of the many methods of stress reduction
available, Khalsa first recommends meditation. “The only
thing that has ever been shown to reduce cortisol is regular
elicitation of the ‘relaxation response,’ or meditation,” he
says. “Meditation is the most natural form of anti-aging
longevity medicine. The body has an incredible ability to bring
itself back into balance if we give it a chance, and meditation
is the most powerful way to bring the body back into balance.”
Third on Khalsa’s list is exercise, for both body and
brain. “It doesn’t have to be anything like running
a triathlon,” he says. “You can just walk briskly
three or four times a week for 30 minutes.” Khalsa says
cognitive exercises also are very important. He suggests discussing
the news, a book, or movie, doing puzzles, or reading a book
or magazine to stimulate the brain. He also recommends advanced
meditation involving breathing exercises, fingertip positions,
and sounds, and says his preliminary research shows that this
sort of mind-body exercise has a therapeutic effect on the brain.
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The last element in Khalsa’s brain-longevity regimen
is drugs and hormones. Although he says many medications are
overused, he does not advise patients to get off drugs they
already are taking. Khalsa believes hormone replacement is very
important and recommends replacing DHEA, pregnenolone, and testosterone.
He also challenges recent studies questioning the safety of
estrogen replacement therapy. “I think if the studies
were done with a natural form of estrogen, you would not find
the negative consequences,” says Khalsa. “That’s
just my hunch.”
In addition to his books, Khalsa publishes a monthly newsletter,
The Healing Zone, which can be accessed at his website, www.drdharma.com.
Information on the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation International
can be found by clicking on the organization’s website,
www.alzheimersprevention.org.
Khalsa will host a three-day brain longevity program in Tucson
in March 2004.
Through his work, Khalsa hopes to prevent an “expensive,
draining, horrible” future in which the number of people
with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to quadruple in the
next generation. “By following the program I put forth,
we go in a different direction. We develop wisdom, spirituality,
love, and the ability to give back to society and hopefully
someday make this world a better place. That is one of the long-term
effects of following an anti-aging program.” |