Dr Lexi Watson of OAKLEY Wellness: 5 Things You Should Do To Optimize Your Wellness After Retirement

As a part of my series about the “5 Things You Should Do to Optimize Your Wellness After Retirement” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Lexi Watson.

Dr. Lexi Watson is the founder and CEO of OAKLEY Wellness. As a pharmacist, Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner, and Apollo Health PreCODE/ReCODE 2.0 Certified Practitioner, her focus is optimal aging wellness for her clients, her family, and herself. Her practice is a partnership: she equips her clients with Optimal Aging Knowledge and provides testing, tools, mentorship, and encouragement for lifelong sustainable self-care — Longevity Empowered by You (OAKLEY).

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I didn’t choose the Functional Medicine-based Brain Health Specialist career path that I enjoy and share with others today; it chose me. The talents God blessed me with, my family’s encouragement, and my life experiences directed my path to where I am today.

For as long as I can remember, I have been an avid reader and enjoyed art, dance, and interior design. My career aspirations were headed in that direction until I took high school organic chemistry. A passion I didn’t know existed emerged. I searched for careers based on chemistry and decided to pursue pharmacy. Even though I battled ADHD, I fully comprehended, excelled at, and tutored others through general chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, drugs and diseases — you get the picture. My friends jokingly reminded me that I was “different.” I decided long ago that I liked that distinction. My unique personality and combination of skills set me apart from the crowd. I enjoyed solving problems and tutoring others. I still enjoy art, dance, and interior design too, but today I use them to support a balanced lifestyle.

When I was little, my granddad told me magical stories, each one started exactly the same way, “Once upon a time, a long time ago, but not too long ago, there lived a little girl…” Each story, through vivid details, praised something I did, taught a lesson, or motivated me to challenge myself. I miss those stories, simplistic at the time, yet profound as I reflect on his guidance. Christmas 2021, Granddad hugged me tight and told me he was proud of the woman and healthcare professional I had become. He wished me joy and happiness for the future. I will treasure that day forever; he passed Feb 22, 2022 at 2:22 pm (such a Granddad move because he was a numbers guy).

I have watched my family struggle with disease from an early age. “In sickness and in health” has been put to the test more times than I care to count: cancer, heart disease, congenital defects, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, high blood pressure, ulcers, arthritis, fibromyalgia, allergies, food sensitivity, ADHD, dementia –the list is long. I see the same in my pharmacy patients.

As an independent community pharmacist, I loved building relationships with my clients, but as they confided their fears of living with chronic medical conditions, my heart was broken. I filled their medications and made sure they were on the best and safest drug therapy available, but I realized I wasn’t truly helping them get better. I was helping them mask and manage the symptoms of unidentified underlying conditions. They were still dying of horrible diseases that robbed them of their lifestyles, their relationships, and even their dignity. The conversations that left me feeling the most helpless were those with patients suffering from the spectrum of memory related diseases typically summarized as dementia or Alzheimer’s. I came to the conclusion that our current way of practicing medicine doesn’t make patients well. It is sick care, not health care. That’s what led me to pursue training in functional medicine, a root cause systems-based approach to health that has continually proven to both prevent and reverse chronic disease.

While integrating my functional medicine practitioner training, I changed my high stress, fast food, burn the midnight oil ways

While integrating my functional medicine practitioner training, I changed my high stress, fast food, burn the midnight oil ways to the lifestyle I recommend to my clients. I eliminated the inflammatory bloating I didn’t know I had and no longer needed my ADHD medication for mental clarity. I was confident I could be the change in my family’s health lineage… with the exception of Alzheimer’s. I used every tool in my toolbox but continued to watch my grandmother succumb to this vicious condition as her mother did before her. She has always cared for everyone in our family but herself. She ate the Standard American Diet, was a stress eater and yo-yo dieter, got little to no exercise, and never quite slept well. Throughout the years she’d battled anxiety, depression, gastrointestinal issues, ulcers, high blood pressure, breast cancer, a heart blockage, and now she was disappearing right before my eyes despite being on the best drug therapy available. What hit me like a brick wall was that what she was suffering was my fate as well. I knew there had to be something more to it.

That’s when I found Dr. Dale Bredesen and his team. Their research showed they could not only halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, but could also reverse it using tools, tests, and protocols that are an extension of my functional medicine practice. Yes, Alzheimer’s can be prevented and even reversed! The spectrum of memory-related conditions became my passion. This career path chose me. I became a brain health root cause expert because Alzheimer’s is no longer a death sentence. I have a choice. You have a choice. I am on fire with this knowledge and simply want to share it with others and mentor them to success.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I’d say the most interesting story I have since starting my career happened on the day I launched OAKLEY Wellness.

So many things were happening all at once, any of which could have prevented me from launching. My house flooded and I temporarily moved in with my parents, who were already housing my sister for her pharmacy rotations and three dogs; my grandmother had fallen at memory care and was not doing well in the hospital; and because my grandmother wasn’t doing well, my some of my extended family came in from out of state to join us. Things were hectic to say the least. Despite everything going on in our lives, my entire family was so supportive of whatever I needed to make the launch happen since if we, ourselves, didn’t do something my grandmother’s fate would be our own.

So, I buckled down, we all went into survival mode, and I successfully launched on my originally planned day. Afterwards, I called my mom to tell her how it went. She was at the hospital with my grandmother because the nurse had said her breathing had changed and didn’t think it would be long before she left our world and arrived in Heaven. While I was on the phone, mom put me on speaker and I told Grandma about the business I was building to help prevent other people from suffering like she did. I told her I loved her and we hung up.

A little over two hours later, I received the text that she had passed.

I don’t believe in coincidences. The unplanned dual occurrence of my business launch and her passing tells me God has big plans for me and OAKLEY Wellness. It tells me I’m on the right path and to walking in faith one step at a time.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

That’s a good story actually, with the fantastic lesson that I need to be very specific with my clients in order to properly coach them to optimal health.

Part of my program to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s disease involves changing what and how you eat to support healthy brain cells and function. This includes avoiding certain foods that are naturally more damaging and inflammatory to the body, namely gluten. I was so excited to work with my very first client that I failed to mention that the goal of eating gluten-free was to decrease her inflammation and fill those spaces in her nutrition with healing foods such as vegetables and healthy fats. She came back to me the next month not feeling much better and confused because she hadn’t eating any gluten. It turns out that she had simply replaced her cereal, baked goods, and crackers with gluten-free versions, but hadn’t increased her veggie or healthy fat intake. Her diet looked virtually identical to what she’d been eating before we started working together, minus the gluten. Her response to our discussion was, “But it’s gluten-free!”

When coaching someone through change, it is very helpful to be as specific as possible with respect to goals and the steps necessary to get there. Eating gluten-free Oreos is no different in my book than eating regular Oreos when it comes to imparting health. Since then, I’ve begun given specific examples of what a good meal or snack would look like and my clients have experienced success in leaps and bounds since I tweaked my coaching approach.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

This may be cliché, but I could not be where I am today without my mom. From coaching me to an excellent writer to becoming my first OAKLEY Wellness client, she’s always been there for me with answers, suggestions, and advice (even when I didn’t want to hear it).

Above all, she’s shown me what it is to love unconditionally.

One instance that comes to mind is an extension of the story about my grandmother and the OAKLEY Wellness launch. She had been working for months as my grandmother’s health advocate and helping my aunt, Power of Attorney, coordinate the best care possible from afar. Even though Grandma hadn’t said my mom’s name out loud for a long time, she worked tirelessly to make sure Grandma was under the best care possible.

My mom had been planning to help me with my launch when my grandmother fell. Despite everything she was already doing for my grandmother, Mom still found a way to make me feel so supported in what I was doing even though she couldn’t be there in person. She helped proof read my notes and outlines from the hospital, tested out my consultation scheduling process, and even stayed active in my masterclass community.

If that’s not unconditional love and support, I don’t know what is.

Now I get to mirror her love and dedication in my own relationships, both personal and professional. I know my husband appreciates it, but so do my clients. I believe that’s why I’m successful. I show people I love and care for them; they aren’t just another client to me. My mom showed me how to do that.

What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?

Especially in the health and wellness space, we’ve got to practice what we preach. I help men and women reverse the effects of not taking care of themselves for decades every day. I see what will happen to me if I don’t follow my own advice.

So, to my colleagues, I know sometimes it’s hard, but take your own advice and treat your body, mind, and spirit like the temple it is. Fuel it with nutritious food that will work with your body, not against it. Move your body. Rest. Then, take care of your family and your clients.

It’s the same idea as putting on your own mask in case of an airplane emergency before helping someone else (even a child). Eventually, you will not be able to take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself first.

What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?

The best work culture I have ever been a part of felt like my second family. We still had rules and structure, but I felt genuinely loved by both my coworkers and customers.

I’d say my best advice to other leaders would be to balance the ethics and precision of a job well done with treating your employees like family. Some examples may include offering distress perks such as having an office dog, providing lunches for celebrations, or going to a ball game together.

Treating your employees like family, and encouraging them to do the same, keeps your perspective clear Your employees are human beings with emotions, goals, and families of their own. When you forget that, you risk everything.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. From your point of view or experience, what are a few of the reasons that retirement can reduce one’s health?

In my experience, most people thrive when they feel like they have a purpose. If we don’t have one, we tend to become sedentary and lethargic, make poor food choices out of convenience and boredom, and become isolated and depressed.

I believe this is the main culprit of declining health after retirement.

The solution? Discover, or define your purpose — you may one or many. I like to coach my clients towards a purpose that also brings them joy. Maybe it’s coaching a grandkid’s ball team or volunteering at the library. Maybe it’s learning to grow a successful garden or finally follow your life-long desire to sell baked goods. Whatever it is, it shouldn’t feel like work. It should make you happy, bring you joy, and give you a sense of calm, steadiness, and belonging.

Can you share with our readers 5 things that one should do to optimize mental or physical wellness after retirement? Please share a story or an example for each.

Absolutely! Of course there are many aspects of wellness that can be optimized, but these are my top recommendations as a Wholistic Wellness Coach, Brain Health Specialist, and ReCODE 2.0 Certified Practitioner.

1. Get a Cognoscopy to determine the health of your brain and your risk for dementia.

Research is now showing at least 36 factors that contribute to Alzheimer’s and dementia. You can think of these as holes in a roof. To keep water from getting in, you need to fix as many holes as possible. This applies to Alzheimer’s as well. However, not every person will have all 36 holes or even the same combination of holes. Thus, to prevent Alzheimer’s, or even reverse it, you must identify and address as many of an individual’s contributing factors as possible.

A cognoscopy is a comprehensive assessment designed to identify your specific contributing factors for Alzheimer’s and dementia. It includes a cognitive quiz, hormone levels, nutrient levels, toxin levels, blood sugar metabolism, inflammation level, and more, and allows you the opportunity to upgrade your lifestyle habits to prevent dementia and fully support a healthy retirement.

To get the best results interpretation and personalized plan, I would recommend finding a ReCODE 2.0 Certified practitioner, such as myself, via the Apollo Health website (https://www.apollohealthco.com/). Once on the home page, hover over “Get Started” in the menu bar and click on “Find a Practitioner or Coach.” Each certified provider has been trained in how to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s and can help you get started right away.

2. Strategically nourish your body and mind. Keep up your energy, and optimize your overall health.

The brain functions at its best and is more efficient at self-repair and self-cleaning when you are in a state of mild ketosis. This means that your body is using ketones (breakdown products of fats) as fuel instead of glucose (the simplest form of carbohydrate).

There are three factors that allow you to get into ketosis — food, fasting, and exercise. When these are combined, they can heal your metabolism and provide you with clean and sustainable fuel for your brain.

The best way to attain ketosis with nutrition is by avoiding sugar, simple carbohydrates, grain (including gluten), conventional dairy, processed foods, and fruits with a very high glycemic index such as pineapple, while simultaneously eating lots the following foods that not only promote ketosis but are also full of the specific nutrients that boost brain health.

• Non-starchy vegetables
• Tea
• Healthy fats

Adding prebiotics, resistant starches, probiotics, animal proteins, and low glycemic fruits also provide major benefit, but shouldn’t be the main components of your plate.

Don’t worry! You can still indulge occasionally with sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit, enjoy coffee, occasional red wine and starchy vegetables and legumes.

Fasting is consuming no food or drink, other than water, plain coffee, or plain tea, for an extended period of time and helps promote mild ketosis. To benefit from fasting, you only need to hit the 12-hour mark, although many people prefer a 14–16 hours fast, and the majority of that time you will likely be asleep. It is also best to stop eating three hours before bedtime so your sleep is actually restorative (see below for more information).

3. Consistently exercise your body and brain to increase strength and flexibility as well as keep your mind sharp.

Just like with food, it’s best to do a variety of exercise including both aerobic exercise and weight training. Aerobic exercise options include walking, jogging, swimming, playing tennis, getting on the elliptical, yoga, and much more. For weight training, you can incorporate lighter weights or go heavier.

Eventually, you’ll want to be doing some form of exercise at least 4–5 days per week or about 45–60 minutes total each day. However, starting at 5 days of hour-long workouts will leave you beyond sore and ready to give up, so I don’t recommend starting there. Instead, I recommend starting really small, say two days a week for 20 minutes.

I also mentioned exercising your brain. Your brain is also a muscle that needs to be worked out, and brain training can do just that. There are lots of apps that help you do this, but my favorite is Brain HQ.

4. Establish healthy sleep habits to ensure a proper recharge.

Sleep is when the body repairs itself and when it makes most of its deposits into your body’s bank account reserves. If we aren’t getting enough good sleep, our bodies can’t finish the clean-up job, leaving us with a mess to begin the next day and dysfunctional components to work with.

To help your body get good sleep, you need to send your body the right cues and create a relaxing bedtime routine. This may include exercising early in the day to allow that adrenaline surge to calm down, timing your light exposure by switching to yellow lights in your bedside lamp or going screen-free for an hour before bed, finish eating 3 hours before bedtime, avoiding stimulants such as caffeine after noon, and going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning.

5. Effectively manage physical, mental, and emotional stress to increase resiliency and vitality.

All three types of stress are perceived the same way by the body. Stress is stress and causes a release of the stress hormone, cortisol, in your body. High levels of cortisol disrupt almost all your body’s processes and is toxic to your brain by attacking the ability to make new neurons and maintain the neurons associated with memory formation.

I’ve already discussed a few ways to reduce stress on the body — eat real food, get good sleep, and move your body. Additional ways to reduce the stress response in your body that also help you restore resiliency include yoga, meditation, and deep breathing. Decluttering can also help as studies show our stress levels naturally rise when we are in a cluttered and disorganized environment. Last but not least, do something that brings you joy at least weekly, if not daily. If you can incorporate a combination of these into your life, that is best, but even just one will make a world of difference.

Bonus! I want to caveat all my recommendations above with my new mantra — the best action is imperfect action, because if you wait for it to be perfect it will never happen. Don’t worry about being perfect or being able to do everything at once. The important part is that you begin. Take action today!

In your experience, what are 3 or 4 things that people wish someone told them before they retired?

I have been counseled many times by numerous retirees on this subject. This is the advice that resonated with me the most.

1. Find a purpose in your retirement.

This ties into a question from earlier. In your retirement, volunteer, learn something new, fulfil a long-lost dream, share your wisdom and experiences as a mentor, give back or pay it forward. There are so many different opportunities for purpose out there. Find the one that resonates with you and brings you joy to be a part of. It will energize you and will help balance your mental and physical health.

2. Optimize your aging health before retirement or use retirement to focus on yourself without the myriad of work distractions.

Disease is expensive! It robs you of your savings, your time, as well as your family, friends, and livelihood. Invest in your health now or you’ll be forced to pay for it later.

3. Make a plan to fight isolation.

Schedule time to spend with family, join social groups, volunteer, get a pet. There are also many different opportunities for community and connection! Isolation is a silent killer, but kill it does.

4. Prepare for retirement as early as possible.

Seek professional guidance with estate planning and Medicare enrollment. Federal requirements and deadlines are critical and some, if missed, cannot be amended.

Wills, trusts, and estate planning laws differ from state to state. You will want to be aware of nuances or changes, especially if you retire to a different location.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

Absolutely. The End of Alzheimer’s by Dr. Dale Bredesen is the book that has completely changed my life and career. As you now know, I have a strong family history of Alzheimer’s and had accepted the slow memory decline as my destiny, dreading the day I couldn’t even recognize my husband. Then I found Dr. Bredesen’s book where he explains his work that found 36 factors that contribute to cognitive decline as well as how to modulate and optimize those factors. From his research, he developed the ReCODE and PreCODE protocols and has sense demonstrated that cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s can not only be halted, but reversed. Dr. Bredesen’s book has given me hope for my future, allowing myself to dream of growing old with my husband, and has guided my personal lifestyle transformation as well as my career path. Now I’m the founder and CEO of my own business, OAKLEY Wellness, established through my journey from pharmacist, to Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner, to Brain Health Specialist and Wholistic Wellness Coach, and I get to help men and women struggling with declining memory and the fear of dying from Alzheimer’s (the same fear I had) to take control of their future and reverse cognitive decline.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I believe the world needs to know that illness and disease are not simply a consequence of getting older, but are the direct result of lifestyle choices we make every day. The body is designed to heal itself. Everything it does, it does for a reason. Therefore, chronic disease is a protective mechanism that the body has induced for so long that it has caused damage not only at the cell level, but now the tissue and even organ level. This is true of Alzheimer’s as well. We currently treat the symptoms of what is really going on upstream from chronic disease symptoms. It’s time we took a root cause approach to our bodies. Chronic disease is optional. Alzheimer’s disease is optional and people don’t have to live in fear of it anymore. This is what I’m trying to do along with Dr. Dale Bredesen and his team at Apollo Health.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

This is a good question. My favorite life lesson quote is by Dave Ramsey — “Live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later.”

This was said in a financial context, but can also apply to a healthy lifestyle.

Financially, this quote is aimed at inspiring people to live well within their means for a period of time in order to become debt free. My husband and I are currently living this out and cannot wait for the day we can scream that we ware debt free from our professional school loans.

I believe this montra applies directly to health as well. If you take the time now to fuel your body well, prioritize sleep, and move and rest regularly, your body will stay younger and healthier than others your age who aren’t doing those things. When you get older, you’ll still be able to do things like hike, run, or play on the floor with your grandkids.

Additionally, if you begin to take the time for your body now, you can set yourself up for a beautiful retirement!

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I would have to say Dr. Dale Bredesen, the pioneer behind the research of reversing Alzheimer’s. His work has given me hope for my own future as well as given my career direction. He has truly changed my life and I am so grateful for that.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

Great question. I am on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The links to each can be found below. Readers can also check out my website, www.oakleywellness.com.

• Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/dr.lexi.watson
• Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dr.lexi.watson/
• LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lexi-watson-090939139/
• Pinterest — https://www.pinterest.com/drlexiwatson/

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!