Race Against Mind: An Alzheimer's Prevention Investigation

This episode is different. No protocol, no experiment, no takeaways in the usual sense. Instead, I'm sitting with what happens when APOE4 research keeps getting more specific and doesn't hand me anything to actually do about it. I walk through a new study on how APOE4 disrupts a backup fuel system in aging neurons, my own spiral into APOC1 research after a confident claim from a longevity doctor t...

Chronic stress is one of the most underappreciated risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and for APOE4 carriers, the relationship between stress hormones and neurodegeneration is not just additive. It's amplified through a distinct biological mechanism that operates independently of every other pillar in your prevention protocol. In this episode, Sarah walks through three years of personal HRV data...

Women account for two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s cases. For a long time, the explanation was simple: women live longer. But that doesn’t fully account for the gap. What the research is now pointing to is that something happens during the perimenopausal transition that changes the brain’s trajectory : and for APOE4 carriers, that transition isn’t just uncomfortable. It may be the highest-leverage wi...

I was having a glass of wine most nights when I got my Oura Ring. Not a lot, or so I thought. Within weeks the data told a different story. My HRV baseline runs in the nineties. On mornings after drinking, even one glass, it dropped to the thirties or forties. Every time. Without exception. That data started a three-year experiment I didn't plan to run. And on December 31st, 2024, I eliminated alc...

Someone told me to give my mom coconut oil after her Alzheimer's diagnosis. My mom couldn't remember I was pregnant at the time. The person meant well. The advice was wrong. And for someone with APOE4 genetics — which both my mom and I carry — it wasn't just wrong. It was potentially the opposite of what the research supports. That moment is where this episode starts. Because the problem isn't peo...

In February of last year, I woke up with brain fog so severe I started researching how to get a brain scan. I was convinced I had amyloid accumulating. I wanted data, not reassurance. It turned out to be a reinfected root canal. But that fear led somewhere useful — to a p-tau217 baseline test and a consulting engagement with an Alzheimer's prevention company that finally gave me the answer I'd bee...

I've had high cholesterol since I was nine years old. I know, because my mom took away my chicken nuggets and put me on a diet. Three months later it came back to normal. Problem solved — or so I thought. It took until I was twenty-seven, two years into being vegetarian, to see a normal reading again. Total cholesterol of 139. I remember thinking: I finally figured it out. That one number became m...

Sleep is the most underrated lever in brain health. The research is unusually clear: what happens during deep sleep directly affects your risk of cognitive decline, the hormones that regulate hunger, your cardiovascular recovery, and your body's ability to clear the metabolic waste that accumulates in your brain every single day. Most people know sleep matters. Far fewer understand what's actually...

This episode goes deep on the exercise pillar. The four mechanisms connecting movement to brain health, including a 2026 UCSF study that identified a liver enzyme that repairs the blood-brain barrier and what it reveals about why consistency matters at a molecular level. We also get into why getting stronger is different from lifting consistently, what the SMART trial found when it measured both s...

For APOE4 carriers, knowing your risk is only useful if you know what to do with it. In this episode, Sarah walks through her path to developing a baseline, and discusses the labs that actually matter, fasting insulin, homocysteine, hs-CRP, Vitamin D etc. Sarah also discusses why standard functional medicine isn't specific enough for APOE4 biology, and how to interpret baseline data without losing...

Sarah is homozygous APOE4, the highest genetic risk profile for Alzheimer's disease. Her grandmother had it. Her mother was diagnosed at 58. When she got her own results, she didn't wait. In this first episode, she traces how a family legacy of Alzheimer's became a five-year personal research project and why the window for meaningful intervention is decades earlier than most people think. She brea...