How to Boost BDNF For Brain Health

Scott:      We're talking about brain derived neurotrophic factor. When those at low levels seem to indicate potential issues down the road, are the things we can do to boost those levels, are there dietary things, are there exercises, brain games? Anything we can do to boost those levels that way? 

John: Well any muscle that you flex, you tend to keep healthy so it's kind of a use it or lose it. I definitely try and keep busy, mentally as much as possible. Reading, learning, in that respect. 

There's evidence also that physical exercise increases BDNF levels so this is one of the really nice benefits, side benefits of exercise is that BDNF levels are shown to go up after vigorous exercise and in fact muscle tissue has been shown to secret BDNF, or stimulate release of BDNF into the circulatory bloodstream. 

Scott:      Can you explain what NeuroFactor is? 

John: Sure. NeuroFactor is essentially a proprietary extract of coffee fruit and we've been working on the idea of coffee fruit since the very early 2000s. We recognized that it had certain phenolics within it and potent antioxidant capacities that nobody was taking advantage of. 

In fact, the industry recognized that the fruit of the coffee was basically an industrial waste. And they would strip off the fruit, throw it away and use the seed which of course we all roast and grind up and brew for coffee.

We've done the bulk of our research on using the whole fruit, meaning it comes off the coffee plant, intact and we quick dry it, and then we grind it and extract the seed and the beautiful pulp that's around it and there are really marvelous characteristics to it. We do a water ethanol extraction of that fruit and the resultant is what we've called NeuroFactor. 

Scott:      And so, people will want to know this, after hearing that explanation but you can't drink more coffee and get the same effects, correct?

 
John:       That's a great question. No, not really. We've done a couple of clinical studies and we're going to be doing even more, and I can explain that briefly. We did a pilot study about 18 months ago on NeuroFactor.

 
And in the study, we took groups of people, 10 or 12 people, and we set it up so we had multiple groups. And the multiple groups consisted of a placebo, no treatment and just fasted overnight. Our coffee fruit extract, green coffee bean extract, chlorogenic acid. 

There's a method to the madness here that I'll explain. And also a grape seed extract and caffeine. And the reason we set off all those legs of the study was that we knew right away people would ask the question that you asked, "Well, maybe I should just have a cup of coffee." 

But the only group of all of those that had statistically significant, and really significant results was the coffee fruit extract group. The NeuroFactor group. Caffeine didn't do it. There was a slight trend toward some activity, but nothing profound. Chlorogenic acid didn't do it. 

The green coffee bean extract didn't do it. So we saw across the board that there's really something special of which we really don't know what it is yet, we're working on that but within this whole coffee fruit extract that none of the other materials had. That really got us excited and we designed another study, a second study that we just finished not too long ago with a group of 20 people and it's a crossover study. 

And what we did this time was we just wanted to reiterate that the coffee fruit extract, NeuroFactor, caused this increase in the intercellular BDNF and sure enough, it did, against the placebo. We did the washout period, crossed the group over and had them do it again and it verified those results. 

Interestingly, in this, we decided to put the final nail in the coffin, if you will. Hate to use that term in a clinical study. We gave another group a cup of coffee, just to see "well, okay, how about brewed coffee" and it didn't work. That was sufficiently exciting, now we have two published studies showing increases in BDNF, that we decided to go onto to design two more studies that I'll briefly tell you about. 

But in this second study, we also, our the biologist, Zebgnia Kofsky (sp), who is leading our R&D effort has been doing a lot of research on messenger RNA and how cells talk to one another. He's been studying these vesicles called exosomes. Exosomes are basically like little postage envelops that the cells use to communicate with one other. 

Different types of tissue can send messages to different parts of the body. It's how our genetic structure communicates. There's been a lot of debate in the science community, whether or not BDNF can actually cross the blood- brain barrier.  Because if it can't, like if we exercise and we generate BDNF, it may be great for our peripheral nerves, keeping our nerves healthy and helping regulate our appetite, maybe our metabolism. 

But what does it do for our brain if it can't cross the blood-brain barrier? It's a protein and its large so its arguably not getting there. As it turns out, we measured the relative changes in the blood BDNF and the exosomal BDNF. He worked long and hard to figure out a platform in order to be able to measure this exosomal BDNF. 

As it turns out, the exosomal levels of BDNF increased more than the blood BDNF by a real ratio. Why is that exciting? We know that exosomes cross the blood-brain barrier. There are only 10 and 30 nanometers in size, they're really tiny, so they can go through this permeable protected barrier into the brain. We know that BDNF is getting there. 

Having all this information after these two studies, we decided that we would go to UCLA to do a cognitive study, and that's going to be initiated this year. We're going to be looking at how BDNF may really modulate short and longer term memory as stimulated by our NeuroFactor. What we're trying to do is A. show that it has a function but B. 

Now we're trying to put rubber to the road in terms of what's in it for me, for the consumer. Because that's what it really boils down to in the end, is "Okay, it's changing this marker, I have no idea what BDNF is, but I'll take it you'll tell me what it's really going to do for me." 

So if we can show, via some studies, that cognitivaty (sp), or focus, or memory is enhanced in some way, that'll be fairly powerful, and then actual physical changes in brain activity could also be interesting.