Meet Paul Bendheim, founder of BrainSavers®

As the founder of BrainSavers, I take true pleasure in introducing myself and the BrainSavers-Oasis partnership to you. As a team, we exist to help you live independently as long as possible and to have an enriched, rewarding life, no matter your living arrangement.

I am a native of Phoenix Arizona, where I currently live with Judith, my incredible wife and award winning ceramic and jewelry artist. My daughter Jessica is in medical school and my son Daniel is employed in the financial sector. Jessica is the mother of my two darling granddaughters Audrey and Amelia. My non-work activities include spending as much time as possible with my family, gardening, tennis and jogging, fly-fishing, reading and art.

By profession, I am a board-certified neurologist with special expertise in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementing disorders. My passion, now full-time work is BrainSavers, the company I founded years before lifestyle became recognized and accepted as the only evidence-based approach to reducing the risk of this feared and terrible disease. The foundational ideas for BrainSavers lifestyle program were initially developed in my book, The Brain Training Revolution: A Proven Workout For Healthy Brain Aging. More than a decade later, in January 2021, major health celebrity Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s book, Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age, was published. It is gratifying to see the lifestyle components of BrainSavers pioneering program increasingly recognized and communicated via the mainstream media.

My primary mission has evolved to become educating, informing, and coaching the 100 million aging Boomers and healthy seniors who are at risk for AD. This is why I started BrainSavers and this is BrainSavers’ primary goal.

Years ago, I realized that what I had been taught as a medical student and resident in neurology was fundamentally incorrect. No less a luminary than Dr. Houston Merritt, long-time chairman of the department of neurology at Columbia University College of Medicine, said to our group of medical students:

“One of the unfortunate experiences of growing old is sitting in my favorite chair and listening to my Betz cells (large neurons) commit suicide by diving into the ventricular lakes.”

Thanks to loads of research in the basic and clinical neurosciences, we now know, without a doubt, that a brain healthy lifestyle enriches your life, protects your cherished memories and can prevent AD.

My intent is to write a regular blog to benefit all of you who participate in Oasis’ lifelong learning adventure. Each blog intends to inform about some aspect of healthy brain aging. Next, I will highlight the two fundamental principles that are the underpinnings of BrainSavers Brain+Body Total Fitness Program – neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve. Later blogs will explore in-depth numerous aspects of your brain, the most incredible object in the universe. Thank you for joining me in this exciting journey.