Pittsburgh neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Maroon, who at 83 is two years older than President Joe Biden, said on Newsmax on Tuesday that while he has not treated the president, he does believe there is "mild cognitive impairment" that can be observed, and like most people, he's concerned.
"I think there clearly is mild cognitive impairment there," Maroon, considered one of the top neurosurgeons in the country, told "Wake Up America." "In 15 to 20% of patients within a year, they're going to have dementia."
He added that he does not have the answer to the question about whether Biden can serve another four years as president, "but clearly like the rest of the country. I'm concerned about leading 331 million people in the free world."
Maroon, after decades of achievements as a neurosurgeon, remains in practice and is an avid athlete. He has competed in more than 78 triathlon events, beginning his training at the age of 40 after the death of his father at 60, and is in training for another event this spring.
He said the secret to his own health "is no secret for anybody. It's diet, It's exercise. It's avoiding environmental toxins. It's controlling stress and getting enough sleep and interacting with individuals in a good, social, healthy way."
He explained that cognitive decline occurs naturally as the brain gets older.
"As we get over 50 the brain, that magnificent creation with 86 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections, slowly starts to degenerate," he said. "We lose cells, we lose synaptic connections as the brain malfunctions."
The main symptom of that is memory impairment and disorientation in terms of time and place, said Maroon.
With Biden, "you're just showing the slipping and the falling," said Maroon. "These are things associated with aging, no question, also associated with cognitive impairment, impulsivity, the difficulty in processing information like we used to, taking vast amounts of information, to analyzing it, and then, like a laser, speaking and articulating it."
Other symptoms can involve falling asleep during meetings, or displaying angry or impulsive behavior, he added.
"All of these are symptoms of cognitive impairment, which is a transition," Maroon said, pointing out that by the time people are his age, "1 in 3" will have dementia.
As president, Biden is under a considerable amount of stress, and while stress is needed to develop resilience, "there's an apogee," said Maroon.
"Just like a triathlon, you have to work your muscle, your body, and your brain," he said. "At a certain point, though, stress becomes neurotoxic. It destroys cells in the hippocampus, that part of the brain that serves memory … we develop the downward exhaustion curve.
"There's no question that stress is deleterious and destructive to the human brain."
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