853: Brain Health for Women With Make Time Wellness

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and this episode tackles the topic of brain health for women. And I’m here with the founders of Make Time Wellness who are Emma and Helen and Emma is a British and Indican West Indian model as well as an entrepreneur and an advocate and a wife and mother of two. She’s married to Bruce Willis and in this episode we go deep on her experience with brain health, how she got into this topic in the first place and why she feels it’s so important, especially for women. And she’s here with Helen Christoni, who’s also a wife, angel mama, ultra runner, and career entrepreneur. And the two of them co-founded Make Time Wellness, which is a company advocating for brain health and mental wellness, especially for women. And that’s the topic we really dive into today. They give some really practical tips and also speak to the importance of why addressing this earlier than we might think we need to is so important for women, including statistics like how one in 11 women will get breast cancer, but an estimated one in six women will get Alzheimer’s or dementia. So this is a big topic and they have some great advice. Let’s jump in. Emma and Helen, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Emma: Thank you so much for having us, Katie. We’re so excited to be here and speak to women about their brains.

Katie: I am so excited to this conversation. Well, welcome. And I feel like in all of the talk of women’s health, we have so many voices talking about, you know, the importance of muscle and hormones. And I feel like brain health does not get talked about enough. But from at least my limited understanding, this is a really relevant and important issue, especially for women. So to start off broad, I would love to hear, first of all, how each of you got into this work. And then maybe you can introduce us to some of the key ideas as to why brain health is something we should be aware of as women, especially as we age.

Emma: Yeah, I mean, I’ll start. So my name is Emma. You know, I started off my career as a model. I worked from the age of 16 up until about 32, which is like a very long, long career considering. And, you know, after I had my second daughter Evelyn, I really started experiencing an incredible amount of brain fog. You know, this is prior to the COVID brain fog. It was just, you know, just cloudy and really hard to find my words and walking into a room and why did I come into this room? And you know, I had gone to my doctor and I said to him, what is going on? Oh, Emma, it’s stress. Oh, you’re not getting enough sleep. Oh, you’re, you know, it just kept it getting dismissed and dismissed and dismissed. And, you know, that’s kind of how this idea of Make Time Wellness came to be. And, you know, wanting to just go deeper into the why of it all. And I started to speak to Helen about brain fog and supplements that I was taking and how things started to sort of open up for me. And I feel like I introduced you to the world of brain health.

Helen: Yeah, I mean, I found it really interesting because I’ve been in brand marketing for a really long time. Health, wellness, beauty. And Emma started talking to me about brain health and cognition. And I, you know, personally in my family, I lost my grandmother to dementia. I lost my mother-in-law to dementia. And so, it’s just, something that’s affected my own family. And I think everybody, like I’m 50, I’m 54 now. When we started this, it was probably 52. And you start losing your short-term memory. I mean, so I was really interested in the category.

Emma: Yeah, I mean, I think that being dismissed by my doctor for so long, you know, I had to then seek out a doctor who introduced me to the term brain health, which was something I’d never heard before. And I think I’m pretty up to date on wellness in general. And when he introduced me to this concept of brain health and the pillars of brain health and this sort of lifestyle change that I needed to implement, I just found it so interesting that even today, when I go into my primary doctor, and we go through, you know, when was your last mammogram? And how are you feeling? And la, la, la, la. And, you know, all this stuff, you know, your heart. Are you taking care of this? He is never talked to me once about my brain. You know, and I think that’s something important, I think, for your audience, who’s probably super sophisticated, you know, when was the last time your doctor spoke to you about your brain?

Helen: Or anybody, for that matter.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. You know, so this doctor, again, introduced me to just a lifestyle change. And supplements to be on and you know the pillars of great brain health like sleep, like nutrition, like you know reducing my stress, and you know through that I really saw a difference and you know introduced all these concepts to Helen and I remember you were kind of like, whoa, like no one’s spoken to me about my brain either and like what are you talking about?

Helen: Yeah. And so, I mean, Emma really wanted to, she was like taking all these supplements and I mean, talk about the pills.

Emma: Oh God, the pills. So, you know, I’m taking supplements and handfuls of pills three times a day. And I’m a busy mama too. I got a lot going on and just getting these pills down multiple times a day was very difficult for me. And I said to Helen, I said, I wish I could take these supplements that are really supporting my brain, that I’m really seeing a difference with, and I would love to be able to just drink it, like turn it into a drink supplement. And Helen was like, yeah.

Helen: I was like, let’s do it. And so, you know, that is something. And when I started to really look into the brain health space and started doing my research, this is a very male-dominated space. Like every like brain enhancement, cognition product that you find out there, it looks like a male performance product. Like it’s so hyper marketed to men. And I was a little taken back when I started doing my research that just no one was having this conversation, to women in this space when women are so much more at risk than men. And so then we just got very, you know, motivated to start this conversation. The whole point of Make Time Wellness and the Make Time movement is to really get the world talking seriously about women’s brain health.

Emma: I also think what was interesting is as we sort of took a deeper dive into the world of brain health and really discovering it and understanding it, the statistics were incredible. We want to do the statistics?

Helen: Yeah, so, I mean, Katie, I don’t know if you know, but by the age of 30, your brain already starts to decline. And by the time you’re like 50, you’ve lost 50% of your short-term memory. And two-thirds of the women, two-thirds of the Alzheimer’s patients here in the U.S. are women. And I always like to like compare it to breast cancer. So, you know, and we talk about breast cancer and getting our mammogram and doing our self-checkups. And we talk to our daughters and we talk to our mothers and everybody paints the world pink in October. Currently, one out of 11 women will get breast cancer. One out of six women will get Alzheimer’s. And so when we think about, like all the discussion about breast cancer awareness, and then you think one out of six women will get Alzheimer’s and there’s nobody talking about it. And it’s just such an important topic because I mean, our brains are our most important organ.

Emma: Yeah, and what’s exciting is that there’s actually things that we can do. We can start to support our brain at any age. I’m not sure that maybe you don’t know this, but when you get a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, that disease has already started in your brain 10, 20, 30 years prior to that diagnosis. So for me, I feel like prevention is always better than cure. Like what can we do to best support our brain? And there are ways that we can do it today that’s completely obtainable. You know, it’s really not out of the realms of craziness that we don’t already do for our wellness. But for me, how I approach my health and overall well-being is I think about my brain first, and the rest of my body will benefit. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah, I love that you guys are bringing a voice to this topic. And Emma, like you, I would guess many women listening and certainly me as well have had the experience of feeling dismissed by a doctor. For me, it was in the realm of thyroid health and being told for years like, oh, no, your labs are normal. Everything’s fine. That’s just part of being a woman. That’s just part of postpartum. And then finally actually getting answers, but having to really search hard to find those answers and to advocate for myself. And I feel like at least the thyroid world is well talked about now. There’s a lot of voices bringing knowledge to that area. And you’re right, like I, as you were saying, that was thinking I’ve been to a lot of doctors and specialists over the years, and I’ve never had one single person ask me about my brain health or brain markers other than a couple of podcast guests who were neuroscientists who ask kind of peripheral questions. So I love that we are having this conversation specific to women.

And you mentioned kind of that mom brain and brain fog that happens as a mom. And you also mentioned that there were some things that were easy to add to your life style, that seems to help a lot. So I think there’s a lot of hope in this for women. I would love to unpack maybe what are some of the big factors that can negatively affect brain health, especially in that window, like you mentioned, if it’s starting 10, 20, 30 years in advance of a diagnosis, what do we know about the contributing factors, especially for women, that can lead to that in the long term?

Emma: I mean, I think I can compare it to like the five pillars to great brain health, right? The things that we should be doing that we weren’t doing prior, you know. And as mothers, as new moms, like we’re not getting enough sleep. Well, sleep is, you know, one of the best things that you can do for your brain health, you know, you should be getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night. You know, you’ve heard of something called the lymphatic system, but in our brain, we have something called the glymphatic system so that when we’re sleeping, you know, our brain is doing the housekeeping. It’s, you know, cleaning things up. So sleep is really important, but as a mom, you know, that’s still one of the things that I have the hardest thing trying to get. Are you kidding? Like seven to eight hours would be incredible. You know, sometimes I’m lucky if I get six, but the goal is always to try and get seven. And how am I going to do that?

The other thing is like nutrition, you know, not really feeding ourselves the best foods. And, you know, when it comes to a brain healthy lifestyle, you know, there’s studies that the Mediterranean diet is the best diet for us, you know, with leafy greens and unsaturated oils, like, you know, olive oil, legumes, fish, you know, you can get protein from your vegetables, you know, really thinking about that. And this lifestyle is a lifestyle. It’s not that you’re just going to implement this quote-unquote Mediterranean diet for, you know, I’m going to do it for four weeks. Sure. That’s a great start. But really, it’s about how do you implement this stuff into your life?

Exercise, you know, as a mom, very hard as a caregiver, very hard to get in there and, you know, commit to that. But exercise is so important for your brain. When you when you exercise, you know, your, it helps to sort of remove this sticky substance that we have in our brain that builds up that’s called amyloid. So, you know, exercise, you know, cardiovascular exercise, 45 to 60 minutes, you know, high intensity a couple of times a week or even like low intensity. It could be as much as just going for a walk with a friend talking about your problems. You know, there’s, you have these pillars. And I go by five. And there’s some, you know, neurologists and, you know, that have a lot more. But I stick to five, because I feel like that is, that works for me. I don’t like things to get overcomplicated. I like, I like things to be simple. So yeah, you know, I can take you through the five pillars to great brain health and what we should be doing.

Katie: Yeah, I love that because as you mentioned, these things are all interrelated. So I’m sure that these five pillars also impact essentially every other area of wellness. But I feel like nobody’s looked at this through a brain health lens first. So I would love to hear how you’ve distilled it to five. And I think that’ll give a great starting point for women to take baby steps on each of those.

Emma: Yeah, I mean, like I said, exercise, nutrition, practicing great sleep hygiene. You know, stress reduction. Meditation is something that’s really beneficial. Meditation is sometimes hard for me. You know, I do have a very busy, active brain. So, like I said, like your listeners are very sophisticated. So I’m sure that they know things that they do, that they like to do that will lower that stress. You know, for me, it’s like getting in the garden. I have a garden here and I love to get in and weed and plant and, you know, go for a walk. I have certain things that I that I like to make time for, hence the name, to lower my stress. Staying socially engaged. That’s really important, too. You know, that is like one of the things we say over at Make Time.

Helen: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, women make time for everybody else but themselves. I mean, this is just chronic to women. We’re making time for our kids. We’re making time for our husbands. We’re making time for our families. We’re making time for work. We’re making time for whatever it is. But the one thing that we put last is ourselves. And so, it’s so important. And, you know, Make Time came about of just starting to think about how am I going to make time in my day to do some of these pillars, block out my calendar, give myself breaks and actually put it on the schedule. Because if you don’t put it on the schedule, it’s not going to happen. And so like me, I mean, I can have upwards of 12 meetings a day, go, go, go. And it’s just grind culture. And so like stopping and thinking about making time for yourself is one of the easiest ways to get started. And then baby steps, you know, if people aren’t necessarily super fit, like go out and try and get a couple thousand steps every day. Incorporate just a little more grains in your diet and sleep.

Emma: Yeah. I mean, listen, it’s like the five pillars. It’s hard to hit it out of the park seven days a week, but it’s what I strive for, right? Like, you know, it’s, it is not easy. But like you just said, Helen, it really is baby steps. And, you know, the more you do it and the better that you feel and the more motivated you become. And, you know, it’s like, it’s kind of this beautiful snowball effect. So, we keep it simple in the pillars. And again, it’s obtainable. It’s not crazy to think about it and to implement it into your life.

Katie: Yeah, I think those baby steps, to your point, can add up into this positive feedback loop that then also helps you have more energy, helps you have more motivation. And also, as you mentioned, I think for women especially, we’re so good at nurturing and taking care of everyone around us. And often, at least for me, it can feel selfish to make time for ourselves. And of course, there are all those metaphors about not being able to pour from an empty cup and all of that. But it’s so true, especially I feel like from an energy perspective.

And I love the simplicity of your pillars. I say often on here, we often underestimate, I think, the most profoundly helpful things because of their simplicity. And even just things like you mentioned going out in the garden, stacking sunlight and nature and movement together. That’s three right there that you get to check off. And your mental health is going to feel great from that time. I’ve heard so many people on this podcast talk about modern chronic disease from a lens of essentially nature deficit disorder, that we’re meant to live more in harmony with nature than we are. And that one of the easy steps we can do that’s free is to simply start prioritizing time in nature, if possible, even if it’s with our kids, even if it’s a walk with our spouse or whatever it may be.

And I think those foundational things are always so important and impactful. And then can anything we bolt onto that becomes more effective because we’ve built a solid foundation to start with, but you also mentioned supplements. And I would guess that many people listening are wondering, okay, I have mom brain, I have brain fog, what supplements can help with this? Because it seems like this is an almost universal struggle for moms, especially.

Emma: Yeah. I mean, let me just start with like, you know, again, our formula comes from these handfuls of pills that I was taking. So everything that I was taking, and I’d said, Helen, this is your domain. How do we take these and turn it into a drink?

Helen: Yeah. And so we worked long and hard on the formula and it was really important for us. Like supplements can be so complicated. You know, there’s so much on the shelf. Like it goes so over people’s head most of the time. It was really important for us that we were able to make an all-in-one, that was easy for women to understand, and that we really took care of their brain, body, and beauty, in that order. And so first we have cognizin in our formula. cognizin is a nootropic, very well-studied ingredient that improves cognition, focus, clarity. And then in addition to that, we have curcumin, this beautiful, very highly available curcumin in our formula. Curcumin is a great anti-inflammatory. And our curcumin is really highly absorbable. And so what it does is it reduces inflammation and it reduces the oxidative burden, which can protect all of our brain cells. And another added benefit from curcumin really like it’s such a great ingredient for women because of the anti-inflammatory benefits. You see a reduction in bloating, a reduction from all over retention of water. You recover better when you’ve exercised, things like that. It’s a really beautiful ingredient.

Then we have MCT oil, which provides a lot of energy to the brain. We’ve got B vitamins, which boost the production of neurotransmitters that are needed for that brain-body connection. We have a full multivitamin in there, like specifically for women. Biotin for beauty. And it’s all wrapped up in a drink that you can easily just add to water in your water bottle. You can put it in a smoothie and it really covers a woman’s phases. And so where we took years in development, it was really a passion project for Emma and I to really make sure we got it right, and, and so far so good. We’re really excited to bring this formula to market.

Emma: I mean, it’s also delicious, by the way.

Helen: There’s that.

Emma: Yeah, there’s that. We call it our adult Tang. You know, it’s, it’s a delicious orange-type drink. I like to put mine, and, you know, I do it both ways, either in a smoothie, because I love a smoothie, a scoop in there, or on ice in eight ounces of water, or, you know, 32 ounces of water where I can just put it into my, you know, big sort of Yeti and sip on it throughout the day. Yeah, it’s yummy. I love it.

Katie: That’s, I feel like, especially helpful because I would guess many people listening have had the experience of doing some not so tasty things in the name of health. So it’s always nice when it’s healthy and tastes good. That’s a win for sure.

Helen: And no sugar. So it was really important for us. I mean, sugar is one of the things that is really, really not so good for your brain health. And so it was important for us that we had a sugar-free formula. And so it’s a very, we work with a really great food scientist on this, and it’s a beautiful natural formula. And really easy to incorporate in your day to day and really just to throw a scoop in your water bottle when you go, you’re covering all your bases, and it just makes it easy for women to have an all in one.

Katie: That’s awesome.

Emma: And everything with our, you know, brand, we’re no more pills. You know, again, like I said, like I’m so over taking pills. I want a gummy. I want a drink formula. I want something I can add into something. I just, I’ve been taking pills for too long. I’m just over it.

Katie: I feel you on that. And Helen, you mentioned about sugar not being great for the brain. And I would love to just briefly go a little bit deeper on that because I feel like perhaps listeners have heard of why sugar isn’t great for all the other parts of our bodies, but maybe haven’t had an explanation of why sugar is specifically bad for the brain.

Helen: Oh, it’s one of the worst things for brain health. And so, you know, it creates, I mean, it’s the number one cause of inflammation in the body, right? And so inflammation is so horrible for us everywhere, but inflammation is really, really, really bad for your brain because it really just impairs it from working properly. And so, and you know, you can almost tell, like if you, if you go out, I mean, everybody has their cheat. And if you go out and you eat a whole thing of like cake or cookies, that like food hangover. That’s the sugar.

Emma: Yeah, that crash.

Helen: That’s the sugar hangover. And so really, and all brain experts, I mean, they go on and on. It’s the number one thing you should reduce from your diet for your brain health, for cancer, for heart health. And so it’s a big offender. It was really important to Emma and I that it was not a part of our product line. And people sneak in it, you know, and so it was super important that you don’t sneak it in. And sugar is one of the main things in our culture that is sneaked in and stuck into all of our food. And we’re taking it, we don’t even know it. And so just a huge problem, not good for our brains, our hearts, our body.

Emma: Which also then like affects your sleep. I mean, listen, I love a little bit of sugar every now and again. And I, you know, if I have dessert at the end of the night, you know, I’m not going to sleep. You know, I’ll get to sleep. I just won’t stay asleep. So these are really some of the things that it’s really important to sort of cut out if you are really trying to get to those pillars. So if I’m, you know, sleep is one of the most important things that I work on because I’m terrible at it. So I just have to be mindful and know that, listen, if I’m going to have ice cream with my kids, I know that I’m gonna fall asleep, because I’m gonna crash, and then around two in the morning, I’m going to wake up. And how am I going to get myself back to sleep? You know, so that is definitely one of the reasons why I’ve reduced sugar.

Helen: And it’s really bad for your cognition and your focus. And I mean, it just kind of really knocks you off kilter. You can see, I mean, like look at children, perfect example. What happens to them when you give them too much sugar? They can’t focus. They can’t concentrate. They can’t sit still. And we’re used to it as adults. I mean, like we’ve come up with this. And so like we have like a threshold or a tolerance, you know, but it’s still affecting us, you know, just because we’re used to it now. But yeah, I mean, the perfect thing is when we look at our young children and the effects that sugar has on them. And like we’re just used to it now at this point in our lives. So, yeah.

Katie: Yeah, it’s a good point. And we have no biological need for sugar, especially refined sugar. We can get plenty of carbs from natural food sources to fuel our brains, but literally no biological need for refined sugar ever. Yet we’re consuming orders of magnitude more than we used to even just 50 years ago, certainly a hundred years ago. And so I don’t think ever it’s a single factor, but this seems like it could be one of the big factors in the rise of chronic disease across the board, including as we talked about today, brain health. And I think we’ll get to go even deeper on that in our next conversation because I’m really excited to have you both back to tackle brain fog and mom brain specifically. I know we’ve touched on that in this episode. But for today’s episode, as we wrap up, I’m just so grateful for both of you for the work that you’re doing and for your time today. Thank you so much for being here.

Helen: Thanks, Katie.

Emma: Thanks for having us.

Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.