I’m joined by Claudia von Boeselager, a Peak Performance Coach and wellness podcaster, to discuss her healing journey and how she’s supporting her mother with her dementia diagnosis.
Today, I’m joined by Claudia von Boeselager, a Peak Performance Coach who is passionate about helping people reach their next level of greatness in life, health, relationships, and business. She’s also the founder and host of The Longevity & Lifestyle Podcast, which covers lifehacks, routines, and strategies to live smarter and optimize every aspect of life. We discuss her healing journey, as well as neurodegenerative disease prevention and symptom management.
Claudia started off her career as an investment banker, and eventually transitioned into the tech startup space. Between her intense job and caring for two small children, she started to notice the effects of burning the candles at both ends. She was suffering from chronic sinusitis, digestion issues, brain fog, and exhaustion, but didn’t resonate with the prescriptions and recommendations from her doctors. That’s when she dove into the world of functional medicine and learned how to live in a peak state with high energy.
Another major reason for the proactivity around her health and wellness was her mother’s progression with dementia. She shares an overview of her experience with helping find solutions and prevention methods for her mother, including going on the Ketogenic diet, addressing sleep apnea, and engaging in daily movement routines, brain games, and socializing. Listen in to hear our conversation about challenging the narrative around aging.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality.
And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
Welcome to this week's episode of the vitally you podcast. This week's guest Claudia vavo lag. Is coming to us from the UK. She is a peak performance coach, passionate about helping people reach their next level of greatness in life health, relationships and business sound familiar. Cloudy is on a mission to help 1 billion people optimize their lives, unlock their true purpose and reach their fullest potential.
she uses the mic of her podcast, the longevity and lifestyle podcast to serve this mission where she invites the world's leading pioneers and thought leaders on the podcast to share their groundbreaking research and strategies. I met Claudia earlier this year as a guest on her podcast, we took a deep dive into self care.
I'll put the link of, of our episode in the show. So one of my favorite parts of this episode with Claudia is our conversation about her mom who has Alzheimer's and what she's learned about prevention and symptom management. I want to emphasize that we are not victims of our ancestral health histories or our DNA science has now proven that our choices, life, experiences, and exposures determine how our genes are expressed.
The choices may not always be easy. And ideally we really want to work from the perspective of prevention versus management, which is the situation Claudia found herself in with her mom. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Be sure to stay to the end for this month's winter of life waves, eon patch, Claudia.
Welcome to the VIU podcast. I'm really excited to have you as a guest.
[00:02:21] Claudia von Boeselager: And I'm so excited to be on. Thank you so much for inviting me.
[00:02:24] Dana Frost: Well, Claudia, I would love for you to share how you arrived to where you are today. The founder and CEO of longevity and lifestyle, the host of a podcast, a coach. We would love to know how it is that you came to this place.
[00:02:40] Claudia von Boeselager: Sure. So I guess it's been a bit of a colorful journey for me, but I guess that's what makes life interesting. And I started off my career as an investment banker. So as a female in a very high stress, high males dominated environment and went on from there to work in, in startups and, and the tech space, again, very sort of male dominated environment.
And I've been to meetings, but you know, even conferences where I was like one of two women, right. So that's kind of been my bread and butter, but used to it and your body kind of adapts or so I thought, and I spent a lot of my teens and twenties with super high energy getting by and a few hours of sleep and this, you know, way of sort of modus opera, Randy, that.
Burning the candles on both ends, but I was fine and I'll always be fine. And I'll be the 90 year old, out dancing at night. No problem. And then mid thirties kind of hits and you know, two children, young children. And I started noticing health issues and I I'm probably like the worst patient because I have like, you know, my body's like telling me something, I'm like, oh, I'll be fine.
You know, this is sort of creamy. And, you know, things started to creep up as well. And I had a doctor who was like saying, you know, there's a few things you should be paying attention to. I mean, I did, of course notice the brain fog, but you know, I had friends were like, oh, it's baby brain. And like, this will go away.
And I was like, okay, I'll just ignore that part. And then this chronic fatigue, which was very new to me and I was like, you know, Hmm. I wonder what's going on. Okay. I'm not gonna really pay attention to it as well. And then I have this chronic sinusitis and I was like, you know, what is going on? And then there was some digestive issues as well.
And these were all like new to me. But again, I'm such a bad patient that I was kind of ignoring them. And I remember it was one beautiful spring day. It blue skies, sunshine, and the type of day you'd have a spring in your step. And I was climbing a staircase and I remember it was, I felt like I was climbing.
What I could imagine was climbing what it would be like to climb Mount Everest. And it was like one slow step in front of another. And I remember looking down at my watch and realizing it wasn't even lunchtime. And I was so exhausted and I was, how was I gonna get through the day I had two small children, I had businesses to run.
I'm like, what is the next 20, 30, 40 years gonna be like? And I was, this is not my, my vision of being a 90 year old with high energy and doing really fun things. And it was in that moment that it finally clicked for me. And I realized. If I just continue with this ignoring and pretending everything's gonna be fine, it's gonna be a pretty miserable 20, 30, 40 years ahead of me.
And this is not the life I'm willing to accept and traditional medicine and the recommendations from the doctors weren't really resonating with me. So I said, okay. This is a project I need to take really seriously and into my own hands as well, because it's only gonna get worse from here. And that led me onto this incredible journey of researching into everything from biohacking to doing different testing, to speaking to pioneering doctors and scientists.
To doing different trainings and performance coaches. I mean, you name it. I've kind of done the spectrum of different meditation techniques and breath work. And it's been such an exciting journey and it's allowed me to sort of live in this peak state, but also have a biological age now, 14 years younger than I am.
And I'm I'm so I'm officially 26. Um, and I'm trying to get down to 20 years old and, and keep it there as well. But why, why what's the purpose behind it as well? Right. So it's not just about like living well or living well longer, but my big vision or, or mission, I guess, and, and where I'm helping clients to reach as well.
Is. If we can live in a peak state with high energy and thriving and on purpose, what a beautiful place the world would be instead of worrying about diseases and medical bills. And I mean, especially, you know, in the us, you know, how, how insanely crazy the, the health system is. And if you can live in such a vital and, and beautiful.
Date, living out your true purpose then, and, and making an impact on the world. Like what a beautiful place the world would be. So that's sort of where my, my mission came from and, and what I'm doing now with, uh, longevity and lifestyle step by step.
[00:06:36] Dana Frost: Thank you for sharing that. I remember when I was on your podcast, you said we had similarities in, in the stories.
And when you were talking about taking that walk on that day and feeling like you were climbing Mount Everest, I can remember a distinct point in my own life when I. I'm so tired. I can barely take two steps forward. And I think that that's something that a lot of women can relate to Claudia. And also when you say I was a bad patient, I think that it's really the female archetype that tends to in service to her job in service to her family, we tend to ignore the communication from our body, from our physiology.
And as you said, we just think, you know, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. And so, Claudia, I'm sure you didn't go from that day. it felt like you were climbing Mount Everest to feeling like a 26 year old. And so could you share with us what were a few of the things that you did that really made an impact?
I know on my own journey of healing from adrenal fatigue, I had to nap every day for over a year. And I did acupuncture once a week unless I was traveling for over a year. So what were some of the things that you did that you felt really made an impact on your energy?
[00:07:58] Claudia von Boeselager: Great question, Dana as well. And obviously it's, it's personalized.
Everyone's gonna be a little bit different as well. And I think that, and exactly, as you said, women tend to be like, as long as everyone else is fine around me, I'll be fine. But. Relearning. And for me, this was the case to actually check in and be like, how am I? And not just from an emotional point, but like, how is my body?
Am I exhausted? What do I need? And being better at self care and self love, which was something that I definitely wasn't good at. And, and I've learned the importance of it. And if I'm not in a good place, how am I supposed to be in service others? Right. So it's paying attention to that as well. So some of the strategies that have really helped me is starting off with a morning priming session.
Right. So, you know, I get up a little bit before the kids do as well, just because as soon as they're up, it's a whole nother level of, of intensity. And just to have that time to myself and I, I start off with, you know, having daylight exposure. Um, I live part of the, in, in, in London, sometimes in Florida where there's more sunshine, but.
Try to get that daylight exposure. And I do a little sort of gratitude practice. And I mean, as I'm sure you've shared with your listeners as well, there's so many studies that show, you know, the power of gratitude. And just getting into that positive vibration. And it's literally two minutes with the sun on, on my face.
I did it this morning as well. It was beautiful. This the sun's out again. And, um, just focusing on things and it's not just saying, like, I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful for that, but it's actually feeling gratitude. So I, I really important people to understand the difference of like, oh, I'm grateful for my life.
I'm grateful for my bed. Like, it's like, I'm so grateful that my heart is beating every day. I don't really think about it. Like I have a nice bed to sleep in. You know, I have two children who are healthy and happy, you know, whatever it is. I'm, I'm, I'm happy for a new pen that I got, whatever it is that, that it can be.
It doesn't, it doesn't need to be something, you know, super profound, but to really feel that gratitude practice. So that already kind of sets you up in, in a great way. For me for, I have low blood pressure and I found also for cognition and, and different benefits around that. Um, and, and BDNF, what I like to do is I have a pellets on at home, which I got during COVID when gyms were closed and things like that as well.
And I'll just do, even if it's a short 15 minutes session with. Music that I like, you know, you can sort of program your thing and I do some weights and, and movement as well. And then I do a morning priming session, which is a mixture of Chiang. So really getting into the body. Some breathwork some meditation and I visualization as well.
And obviously there's tons of studies that show, you know, the power of this, of, of really visualizing your day, seeing things as done, like you've actually accomplished it because you're rewiring your brain to, oh, I don't know if I can achieve this to it's actually been done. You can even write it down, which is really powerful as.
and again, circling back to sort of a gratitude and things that you're looking forward to, then it's into the shower. And depending on how brave I am at the beginning, it was literally putting the shower cold at the very end and sort of one hand or the other, but having some sort of cold shower, um, it's even for, you know, ideally a minute or, or longer as well.
It's good for your hair. It's good for your skin, but I mean, there's, , if you're in your head with stress, cold water will definitely get you into your body and like focusing on the present moment, like nothing else. So that's really, really powerful as well. And so that's just a little morning practice that I have.
And for, I mean, typically I'll get that sort of 90 to 98% of, of my days, but I really notice the difference if I don't have that. So that's just a little kind of sneak peek into that, that part of, of my morning routine. I think other big game changers is really taking sleep seriously and not just seriously, but, you know, getting that quality sleep and really tweaking things, making sure it's a dark room.
I have light sensitivity, you know, the blackout curtains that the temperature is also. Okay. I'm sort of a cozy person. I can have warm temperatures. I know now the importance of a colder room. And that sort of sleep hygiene around that. And, and obviously it starts with the, the evening routine as well.
Right? So the lack of blue, blue lights, and there's so many things you can do, you know, there's the flux F dot L X free software. You can download on your laptop to just change it to a warm light versus the blue light. Avoiding screens, avoiding news television, things like this as well around bedtime. So a long answer to a short question, but those are some of them, the things that really helped me set up the day to, to win obviously nutrition exercise I had been doing, but I made some alterations as well.
And maybe just one point on exercise. So my sort of a type personality was very much, you know, I had to do an hour of spinning and then I did an hour of some sort of weight training. You know, two hours like overkill myself, cortisol, adrenals, maxed out, et cetera, and realizing like, that's not just the way you need to do things like you can do it in a softer way and your body will thank you as well.
So that was also a revelation that it wasn't just about push, push, push, but actually like to be a bit more calm and centered as well. I had a daily meditation practice before, but it just took it to another level. Um, and, and having that as a routine as.
[00:12:56] Dana Frost: I love what you call daily priming. So I have morning, I call it morning, quiet time, but I really love.
You're priming yourself for the day and that the visualization part is so very powerful. Claudia. I resonate highly with that. Um, I call it pre remembering where you go through and you, you pre remember how things are going to unfold and it's really. So amazing to hear stories from clients when they have, you know, a difficult fam, maybe it's a family, encounter, a family gathering and there's tension in the family and, and they, or they have a difficult conversation with a boss or a coworker, and they take themselves through the process of, let me allow this event to play out in my mind.
in a way that is for the best, for the good of all people involved in a way where lo the vibration of love is what. Comes forward. And it really is just amazing. The stories that come back even before every podcast. I, I have the pre remembering of the podcast. I think that's such a great Pearl for our listeners to realize the power of slowing everything down.
One of, as you were talking, I was kind of thinking, you know, it's the, it's the masculine archetype and the masculine energy that we need. It's a beautiful energy, but it's that heavy? You know, heavy on the go go. If we think about just physical strength of carrying a big load and taking something forward with all of the strength we can muster, there's a lot of constriction in that process.
The feminine way is, and this isn't to say women aren't strong. Women are incredibly strong to be soft, to carry something. with a soft energy. It actually requires, I believe a lot more intention.
[00:14:54] Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, I really like that as well. And this is actually a subject matter that I'm, I'm really looking and studying more about as well, because I've come from sort of these very highly analytical, very cerebral, very male dominated environments to actually learning about.
Reconnecting in the wisdom of the body, like getting out of the mind and dropping into the heart, dropping into the gut, like whatever it is for people, how they, how they communicate that. And listening to that, you know, wisdom. One of my favorite sort of analogies of this is from Dr. Mark Atkinson, who says, you know, being in the prefrontal cortex is like being in a cave.
You know, you are restricted in your thinking. But if you drop into the body through breathing, you know, connecting with the heart, it's like being in the ocean, you know, there's this like infinite wisdom and that you're able to, and the more you're able to and learn from it and hear it. You know, the, the, the wisdom is, is, um, endless as well.
And especially women have the advantage of being intuitive and, you know, knowing that women have so many superpowers that they can tap into accordingly as well. And we're not taught that we're not trained, that, you know, women are expected to be a certain way. And this is if you want to work, you need to compete and do it this way.
But actually there are other ways that women can, can deal with things as well. I really like that with the, the female energy and feminine energy and which men also have. Right. So it's different from being male or female. Um, and it's also like being open to receiving and not having to know everything.
And one of, um, my mentors that I, as I speak with as well is she says, you know, it's like stepping into a circle of not knowing. And not needing to know. And what I love is the expression of, you know, let the universe surprise you. You don't have to always plan everything and know everything, um, and see these synchronicities that, that appear from it as well.
So it's really beautiful. I
[00:16:46] Dana Frost: love that. Can you give us an example, uh, in your own life of when you felt that synchronistic awareness or when something just really dropped in and you were like, wow, I did not have to work so hard for this because I, we tend, you know, the model has been, you've gotta really, you gotta work really hard.
You actually even have to study really hard and you'll never know enough instead of sitting back relaxing and allowing things to come towards you. Do you have an example in your life from
[00:17:16] Claudia von Boeselager: that? So, um, I'm trying to think of a, like the, one of the best ones, right? So this is my, my thing as well. I think I've had different situations where I've been like, you know, had the idea like, oh, be really helpful to, you know, have someone join the team or, you know, work together with someone who has this.
And lo and behold, like I'm put in touch with this person or is somebody reaches out to me and I have to smile because now I'm much more in tuned with things like this as well before I would've been like, oh, this is a great coincidence. And now I'm just. Of course, this is happening, but for me, and you know, I'm trying to, my, my kids are six and eight years old, so they're still quite young and I'm always coming with different ideas, but, you know, I'm trying to help them also to tap into their intuition because I do believe that children are innately intuitive, but they unlearn it during, through the educational system.
So I, I challenged my six year old who was hiding things in a hide and seek game and she couldn't find one of the things. And I was like, listen to your intuition, like tap into that. And she found it again. So, but for, for me was really funny. So my, my aura ring. , you know, as loved as it is. Right. But it gives me all my data and things like that as well.
And we were visiting friends in Abu Dhabi, and I went swimming in the ocean with the girls and there was waves and I'm holding onto them. And my ring was gone and I was like, silly me going into the ocean of course, with like the waves. And I mean, the water's beautiful crystal clear, but it was gone. And that evening.
I, you know, was obviously a bit disappointed, but that evening the girls had fallen asleep and I going to bed and I just had this like flash of intuition, but it was like one of the most clearest in my life. And I knew exactly where the ring was. And so I woke up the next morning and I said, okay, girls, we have to go back to where we were.
So we went from our friend's place and we had been for the day at, at this hotel. And I had totally forgotten because we'd probably been at the, the hotel work for the day. And we had been at the same place for. Seven hours and 45 minutes. And I'd forgotten that there was just a few minutes when we had arrived that we were somewhere and I'd taken off the ring to put the sun cream on.
And lo and behold, that flash of intuition was so precise. I went back there and there was the ring and I mean, whatever you wanna call it, I don't know. But it was unbelievable. And I was so thankful. That, what I had assumed was lost in the ocean was actually still sitting there. So yeah. I
[00:19:27] Dana Frost: love that story of goosebumps all over and, and isn't it so true.
We can, we all have so many examples of losing something and feeling the constriction and the anxiety about it, and then searching voraciously to find it and not finding it. And then when we relax, And we let go then suddenly we, you know, we find it or somebody else finds it. And I had, I had, this is just a really silly situation, but I had a situation with my dishwasher on Sunday.
It wouldn't close. It was in this weird situation. And I, and I did what we, you know, I go look at troubleshooting. I go look at YouTube videos cuz I can't fix it on my own. And you know, I'm, I work on it for a while and then I'm just like, I. I just need to relax. Like I have no control over this. I didn't want in my mind and I'm sure everyone can relate, oh, this is one more thing for me to do this week.
I need to call a service person and it's one more thing to do. So I got really worked up about it. And then I was like, you know, I really have no control over this and I just let it go. I walked over. It was literally within seconds. I walked over the dishwasher and I just gently closed it again. Closed.
[00:20:40] Claudia von Boeselager: But allowing for something to happen, like that being receptive and, and not the doing, but the receiving as well. Mm-hmm so that's a good example.
[00:20:48] Dana Frost: I think Claudia, one of the things I wanna make sure we talk about is, and you mentioned mindset, but I know I've never talked about Alzheimer's or cognition, memory loss on the podcast.
Before in, in my prior life out of college, I was a social worker and I worked in the area of dimension and I worked with the Alzheimer's association. I'd led support groups. So I would, you know, I would love a few. Pearls. I think this is something that you have really looked into and I'd love for you to share some of your pearls of knowledge in this
[00:21:23] Claudia von Boeselager: arena.
Sure. I'm, I'm very happy to, and it's a topic really close to my heart because my mother is sadly sort of well progressed on the, on the path of dementia. And in the past, you know, I just thought this was a disease that you get from, you know, unhealthy eating or whatever it may be as well. And through, you know, a sequence of different events.
I have the honor and pleasure of meeting Dr. Dale BR of the buck Institute and health actually has a protocol for. A identifying, right? So there are 38 different drivers that will lead to dementia Alzheimer's and different neurodegenerative diseases as well. So basically one is like to get to the root cause of it and then different protocols on what you can do to either prevent it.
If you're not on that path yet, or to actually reverse it if caught on time. And so at the time though, sadly, my mother. At a stage that she was so advanced, that we have were able to, you know, improve things for a certain period of time, but it wasn't there that we could get her back to a hundred percent.
And by a hundred percent just in case people were, are interested, there's a mock score MOCA. It's a Montreal cognitive assessment score. And so a perfect cognition is 30. I think you could even do them for free online. They're not very challenging. It obviously depends on your, your cognition, but through the protocol in Dr.
Del Edison's work in clinical research that they've done is that as over time and as a disease progresses, you will decrease in your score. So, um, if you have a marker score of 18, which is seen as sort of. Mild to medium level of, of cognitive decline. They were able to reverse people who even had a score of 18 back up to 30, which is just incredible.
And, you know, trust me, we've been to a lot of different neuroscientists and neur. This is so far into them. They, they can't believe it. And there are FDA drugs that unfortunately will at least pause, but if not even pause, some of them actually expedite the decline as well. So there is no cure. However, the cure is actually the protocol, but because there's no, there'll never be one pill that will cure all.
Because as I said before, there are 38 different drivers, which can be anything from. If you have mercury fillings, like mercury is poisonous in the body, this will affect your cognition. So I implore anyone who has mercury fillings to please take them out and you can do a mercury detox and you can get other fillings put in that are less toxic as well to low vitamin D levels.
I mean, we forget the importance of basic things like vitamin D and testing, and just to make a little, you know, side note, those normal ranges you see on your blood test. I think they're normal for you note they're based on a white man in the sixties, in the United States. Now, I dunno, how many of us are exactly like this white man, but I definitely am not.
And also I don't wanna live in a normal range of this guy that I don't even know. I wanna live in optimal state as well, which is another reason why I employ people to really speak with a functional medicine train practitioner that looks for optimal ranges for you as well. So what came through chance as well of discovering the book it's called the, the end of Alzheimer's program, how to reverse cognitive decline and Alzheimer's at any age.
Is really understanding, you know, what is going on and without getting sort of too much into the science as well. But number one is really the testing to see where your levels are and to see are they really in optimal levels? You know, is your magnesium levels too low? Do you have toxins in your body? I mean, some people live in houses where there was a leak and the leak, you don't even always see the black mold, which are then toxins that enter your body.
They could be behind the walls. And these are all things that you can actually test, which is really, really great. And I guess another courage to say is that. Alzheimer's in dementia and most neuro degenerative diseases are a 20 year in the making disease. You can catch them on time and you can reverse them, which is so empowering.
So don't just write yourself off or say, oh, my mother had it. My grandmother had it. I'm gonna have it. There's nothing I can do. Let me just, you know, go on as is like, you can change this. You can change this cycle and you just need to get on top of it. As I mentioned from Dale's book, there's amazing resources as.
And so one is to get to the testing. And now for my mother, which was really interesting is that her dementia was caused from head trauma. So she had three bad head trauma incidents. One was at a gym and she used to go to the gym at 8:00 AM every morning, come up may. And so she like the exercise and physical activity was always there.
But one day she was walking across treadmills to get onto the treadmill where she was looking to get, and someone had left it on and she was speaking with somebody. Fell had a bad head injury. She tripped over another step, had another head, head trauma, and then through some thrombosis, she ended up having a third, very bad head trauma that caused severe concussion.
So her head trauma or her dementia came from head trauma and lack of HRT hormone replacement therapy after hysterectomy in the 1990. And those are the two main drivers for all the testing that we did that have caused her dementia, which is just so sad and so heartbreaking because had we known what to do back then, this could totally have been resolved for.
So again, I, I really important people to, to look at that and, and to check out the book as well.
[00:26:29] Dana Frost: Can I say one, I just wanna interject something Claudia, because you're bringing up, this is such a clarifying moment in terms of, you mentioned see a functional practitioner because what a functional practitioner will do, they'll go back and they'll do a timeline.
That is pre-birth. To date and they're actually going to catch those falls. They're gonna catch every little thing that's happened in your life. So you can begin to create a framework for your health because everything that's ever happened leading up to where you are today, contributes to what you're experiencing today.
And. You're right. If you catch it early enough, there are strategies that you can turn these things around and you can, you know, we really need to be thinking, this is where I am today. How do I want to feel in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years? And what, you know, in a fun, from a functional lens, we look at antecedent, we look at triggers and we look at mediators and so.
You really need that framework when you're thinking about how do I want to feel in 10, 20 years? Okay. Continue. This is very interesting.
[00:27:36] Claudia von Boeselager: Thank you so much. My pleasure as well. And, and I think it's, you know, some people like these tests are expensive and I won't do that as well, but, you know, honestly do the cost analysis and think about what.
Is what it's gonna cost you down the line, if you continue with, with these chronic illnesses and diseases and, and not just that, but also for family members, um, specifically now it to mention Alzheimer's, but I think any disease, I mean, type two diabetes is now reversible. There's so many things that you can do.
Yes. It takes effort. Yes. It takes time to think about, okay, I need to change my diet and exercise and lifestyle interventions that need to be done, but you spend a bit of time doing that and then it becomes routine and habit. So just it's, it's a, maybe a few months of time and effort that go in and, okay.
Yes, there is initial outlaying cost, but it's saving you. So much in the long term and think of the upside, the vitality, the excitement, the health, the benefits, the enjoyment of life, instead of going to doctor visit after doctor's visit and no one really knowing exactly what the problem is, et cetera. So I really, for people to have sort of that mindset shift to do that and, and, you know, have your why as well.
So you have your purpose to why you want to do that. Mm-hmm okay. So let's go
[00:28:44] Dana Frost: back to your mom because I am so curious to know I interrupted you, but I, I do want to, I wanna. Tell me how that progressed for your mom. So we know where she was. I'm sure you did some of the
[00:28:56] Claudia von Boeselager: protocols. Yeah, exactly. So we had her on the routine.
So one of the benefits is going on the ketogenic diet because I'm, I'm not sure how familiar your listeners will be under the difference between a ketogenic diet versus, you know, the standard diet let's say, or a healthy diet, but. When your body's in ketosis, you produce ketos, which is an energy source.
Your brain loves ketos. And one of the triggers of, of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases is that the brain is pretty much starving. It has insulin resistance and it cannot. Basically get, be fed and have BDNF from the typical diet. And so, and if you think back to the caveman times, like when there was no food around the humans, would've all died off.
If we were not able to produce energy without food. So it's a natural state for the body to be in. And the best is when you actually shift between feasting and fasting, right. So one is to be on the ketogenic diet. So we got her on that and to make sure that she was having at least a 12 to 14 hour window overnight, typically of fasting, right.
But you're asleep anywhere and you're doing things like that as well. We looked at like sleep apnea. We looked at her oxygen levels. Now my mother has extreme low blood pressure. And so her oxygen levels were sometimes dropping quite low. So that was also something we had to address and look at also.
Another one was also doing sort of mental stimulation and there are like brain HQ or some online tests. It's tricky. I even tried it myself and you really have to, you know, a no technology, which my mother is not, not a strong point, but to be able to click the right game aspects on the screen at the same time, but even just playing, you know, doing a puzzle, playing UNO, playing different games, um, having that interaction is, is really, really important and then exercise.
Right? So it depends again on your baseline. Where she is now and because of her fall and her lack of, you know, stability and, and having to recuperate from that, even just having 30 minutes of consecutive. Walking fast walking, even with Nordic sticks or whatever it is that you might need, um, or depending on where you are, maybe for you, it's a run, whatever, but you wanna have that 30 minutes of exercise is just really, really fundamentally important.
So you have the diet, the exercise component, and then supplements. And, and depending if you need to do a detox, if you're mercury, toin levels are really high, you look at that as well. What's also really interesting there. Studies done out of the almond clinics. They did a lot of clinical trials on NFL players.
So the, the American football players who obviously have extreme amount of head trauma and of course, extreme amounts of dementia, ALS Parkinson's. I mean, it's really, really sad. However, they've developed protocols on how to reverse. Brain damage and Dr. Kristen Willey, who I've had on my podcast as well, and has become a dear friend, was head of, um, director of brain imaging at the time developed a protocol that she was working with these players on reversing.
And one of the doing hyperbaric therapy. I, if familiar with this, Dana, have you come across? Don't know if you're familiar with this? Dana, have you come across it before? Yes. Mm. It's so powerful. And because she was doing the brain scans before and after that, she actually had one NFL player, former NFL player, I should say, who refused to change his diet refused to change his exercise.
The only thing you would commit to was the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And that alone was showing regrowth in parts of the brain. So again, this is very advanced. There is not that much research out there, but what is there is so powerful that if you know any of your listeners or, you know, any family members are suffering, this is definitely so.
To look into and even just to try and even do the scans before and after as well. So just backtracking to my mother as well. I think COVID was very unfortunate because her really bad fall that she had, where she had a complete concussion. And was, uh, hospitalized for eight weeks was just before COVID hit.
And my mother's a very social creature. She loves her friends, loves activities, loves planning things. So during that recovery time is when COVID was really at its worst. People were not interacting, weren't socializing. And I think when you get to a certain. Age in life. It's so important to maintain those relationships and interactions for anyone.
I mean, you know, the Harvard study and longevity, one of the keys is community and, and, and connected can be feeling connected. And so if you, if that falls away, especially if that's such an important part for you already, that will affect your, your cognition and, and memory loss. With my mother, because her score was 11, not at 18.
When we, when we came across, um, Dr. Bison's protocol, it's just more trying to maintain that as well. She also has other issues with the low blood pressure, which then makes her feel dizzy sometimes, et cetera, as well. So. Unfortunately, it's not a, you know, perfect success case, which I would love. And yeah, it, it, it's heartbreaking because, you know, this is someone who used to be a real shining star and, and center center of attention, but in terms of always like there to help the world and help people, you know, I wish we had caught it earlier.
So, you know, I take sort of my, my pain and suffering, I guess, with this, for, for her to, you know, implore people, to really see what you can do proactively. And, and before it gets too, too far, Yeah,
[00:33:53] Dana Frost: I think that really is the message Claudia, because I can see. Her story is part of your motivation. And I know for myself, the story of my father and my, his mother and my grandmother is part of my motivation.
And so these are the things that today, because of everything that we know, what we have access to, we really are able to change. Our own health trajectory, even if you know it couldn't have been done for previous generations, it really can be done. We do have the knowledge today. So thank you so much for sharing that.
It's really interesting. I was exposed to Dr. Bison's work in my nutrition school and I've never taken a deep dive into it. And I think it's just really important information, vitally important information for us to have as we. Think through how do we want to grow older?
[00:34:47] Claudia von Boeselager: and not to just accept like aging and like I have to age, and this is all part of it as well.
But actually if you feed the human body, like if you catch any diseases early, you can reverse it to feed the body. Well, like, I mean, I find it still so shocking that nutrition is not taught in medical school all the years of training as a doctor. And if you ask the majority of them, they've either had zero times training as in nutrition or maybe one hour.
So they don't have that knowledge unless they've gone, gone about research, researching it themselves. And as, as you will know, Dr. Mark Hyman is, is such a leader in this field as well of making it, you know, completely acceptable and a must that, that food is really the medicine we feed our body every day.
So I think that's really the, the starting point for so many mm-hmm . And
[00:35:33] Dana Frost: I did wanna say that because the ketogenic diet, it is, it is a therapeutic. Diet, it's a therapeutic protocol. And I know that it's super trendy right now, but it's actually not necessarily the therapeutic diet that everybody needs to have.
So I wanted just to say that, to get that on the record, it is a therapeutic diet. It is incredibly effective for people who have brain disorders. It's effective for people who have type one diabetes seizures, but it's not something that all everyone should. Jumping onto as it is
[00:36:09] Claudia von Boeselager: trending. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out.
It's really important as well. And I think what people also, who try it as more like a fun diet thing, they don't realize that it is a very precise diet, because if you take too much protein in it, you, you shift the balance, you kick yourself out of ketosis and then you're just eating a lot of fat, which then can co lead to things like gout, et cetera.
So you need to, if you're gonna do it, it's like a, a binary all or nothing. You need to do it really. Clearly and perfectly. And I, I basically, there has to be other factors in, in place that are tested in advance. It depends what your, your use is. If you actually get a very clean, healthy diet and your purpose is for weight loss, then just focus on having a beautiful, like really, really, um, healthy food diet.
And look at what you're eating of whole foods. You don't need to go as extreme as to go on a ketogenic diet. Mm-hmm mm-hmm
[00:36:58] Dana Frost: okay. Thank you for, I just wanted to clear that up and we are nearing our end, Claudia. This has been such a great conversation. I have so many more things that I wanna talk to you about.
So maybe you need to come back as a guest again, there are a couple of questions I wanna ask you one, because you. Have a very full life with your work. So this your service to the world and you are in the phase of life where you have these two very young children. Is there one tip you could give to any of the listeners who are in a similar situation as you like one juggling tip or, you know, one, I guess maybe you're rising before they were, before they wake up, which was my tip, always as a mom, but any, anything else that comes to mind?
[00:37:43] Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, that's, that's a really great question. I mean, I think definitely if you're not aligned and in a good place, then, you know, you're, hoing them around you is not gonna be as well. Right. So I think it's that knowing what you need for you and allocating time for that, and really scheduling that time as well.
And I think one of my learnings about what not to do in the past was like work, work, work, work, work, and then everything else had to kind of squeeze in around that. And then there was no time left and instead look at the sort of. Plan and be like, okay, when is my self care? Or like me time slots, even if it's at 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM or whatever that needs to be.
And then, you know, build in breaks during the day for the, I don't know, the, let the universe surprise you. Maybe you need to have that siesta, that, that map or that meditation time during the day to recharge your batteries, but whatever it is that you need to do to be at your best. So I think my tip is, you know, that, that planning.
Starting with the self-care time and then going from there to allow you to be at your best. And then this, maybe one sort of add on to that as well. I'm, I'm reading Cal Newport's book on deep work and it totally resonates with me because I think women are like, oh, we're multitaskers. And we're great at doing this as well, but there's so many, many studies that show the importance of going deep on one topic.
Over an hour and a half to three hours at a time. That's where your creativity comes through. Your real value comes through. So even from a work context to really build in those longer blocks of time to do something more productive than just trying to multitask 20, 30 things as well. So a long answer to a short question, but
[00:39:16] Dana Frost: well, I'm so glad that I ask you that question because those are wonderful little bits of wisdom there.
Okay. And then my final question, what does feeling younger while growing older mean to you? ,
[00:39:27] Claudia von Boeselager: that's also a great question as well. And I think kind of comes back to what I said at the beginning. It's about having that vitality, that love of life, that being excited and, and joy every day of your mission and what you're here to do and to help people and impact and their lives.
That's, that's part of my mission. Everyone will have a bit of a different one. So I think that feeling younger, um, will gives me that energy and, and that vitality to, to live my purpose.
[00:39:52] Dana Frost: I love it. Thank you so much, Claudia. It has been a pleasure having you as a guest. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
[00:39:58] Claudia von Boeselager: Thank you so much for having me on Dana. This is such a pleasure as.
[00:40:01] Dana Frost: Thank you for joining me on the vitally U podcast. Everybody. If you're enjoying these conversations, please hit subscribe and download. Spread the love with the review and share it with your friends. If you haven't yet downloaded my free ebook checklist for daily vitality, you'll find the link in the show notes.
I created this guide for my clients, from everything I learned during my own health crisis. And now is the time drum roll. Congratulations to this month's winner of life waves, eon patch. We know that inflammation is one of the signs from the immune system, that it is working to put out a fire in the body where there is inflammation.
Something is happening that
[00:40:41] Claudia von Boeselager: we need to pay attention
[00:40:42] Dana Frost: to. Lifeways eon patch, decreases inflammation, really within minutes, and it moves the nervous system from fight and flight to rest and heal. Thank you. Morningstar C for this. Dana has created a nurturing space where we all can grow from to truly experience feeling younger.
As we age, her solo episodes are impactful and raw weaving in personal stories as well as challenging today's norms on health and aging. Dana's thoughtful and insightful questions. Create an interesting conversation with her guest when listening Dana's approach comes across effort. Write down to the tone of soothing voice, keep it up.
I feel this podcast is your zone of genius. Thank you so much. Morningstar C please send me an email with your address. So if you want to be entered to when July is giveaway, simply leave a review, an apple podcast, screenshot it and send it to dana@danafrost.com or simply direct message me on Instagram.
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[00:42:05] Claudia von Boeselager: yours.