Recently, I spoke on a panel for PBS TV at the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) convention in Boston.  The topic was dementia.

There was a woman with mild cognitive impairment on the panel. Her condition is sort of like pre-Alzheimer's disease.

Everyone on the panel -- including the Harvard neurologist -- agreed that memory loss is NOT a normal part of aging.

The sad part was that the panel didn't have much to offer people in the way of prevention. Their only solution was just a very bad and pretty ineffective selection of drugs with lots of side effects.

But there is another way to think about brain aging.

The brain responds to all the same insults as the rest of the body -- stress, poor diet, toxins, lack of exercise or sleep, nutritional deficiencies, and more.

So all we have to do is give the brain a tune-up and we can see miracles. 

In a minute, I will tell you about a few miracles in my practice. 

Are you heavy?

It could be making you sick and tired and age prematurely.

And I don't mean heavy with fat.

I mean heavy with heavy metals -- like mercury!

Unfortunately, toxic mercury problems are common.

Along with polar bears, beluga whales, ducks, otters, panthers, and all river fish as well as most large ocean fish, we humans are poisoning ourselves with mercury at ever increasing rates.

There's no doubt about it.

Mercury is the most alarming, disease-causing source of environmental toxicity that I see daily in my practice.

So many of patients have toxic levels of mercury -- and they're not alone.

Can your body affect your mind?

By making different food and lifestyle choices, can you rid yourself of depression, boost your mood or even improve more serious conditions such as ADHD, autism and more?

In my experience, the answer is YES and I'll show you precisely how in just a second.

But first, let me tell you about one of my patients, Sarah.

She's a very vibrant, smart young woman of 18 who had just finished high school with honors and was admitted to a top university.

Even more exciting, her passion for theater and acting had recently landed her the lead role in a real movie.

The future ahead of her was bright and full of possibilities. 

So why had Sarah's distraught mother brought her to see me?

Well, over the previous few weeks, she had sunk into a debilitating depression. 

Just because you have a diagnosis doesn't mean you know what's really wrong with you!

Don't believe that?

I didn't used to, either!

As a doctor, I was trained to believe that all people with the same diagnosis were the same. 

That means, I thought that one person's asthma was the same as someone else's asthma and that depression was the same in everyone.

That made my job pretty easy -- once I made the diagnosis, all I had to do was match the pill to the ill, the drug to the disease.

What's wrong with this approach?

When doctors practice medicine this way, we end up treating the NAME of a disease -- not the CAUSE.

The truth is, everyone is different, even people with the same diagnosis.