Physician, author, pioneer in integrative brain health
Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D.
Founder of the original wellness movement
Hello, I'm Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., and for the past two decades, I've led the charge to prevent brain aging, memory loss, and Alzheimer's disease. I want to share with you that Alzheimer's disease and memory loss do not have to be a regular part of aging. In fact, medical research reveals that how you live your life today may well determine how your brainpower and memory work tomorrow.
Founder
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The idea that changed everything
Your mind is more in your hands than they told you
For most of medicine's history, the aging brain was treated as a fixed fate. Dr. Dharma never believed that. His life's work rests on a more hopeful idea, that the way you live, eat, move, rest, and tend your spirit, shapes how your mind ages. Not a guarantee. A measure of control, where everyone said there was none.
He has spent fifty years proving how much is still up to you.
The library
His life's work, in his own words
Decades of writing on memory, the brain, and how to protect both. Sit with it for as long as you like.
Every guide is free
Yours to keep. We only ask for an email so we can send them and share what is new.
Browse the full library
Their story
A doctor, his wife, and a life's work
Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., and Kirti Khalsa. Tucson, Arizona.
Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa graduated from Creighton University School of Medicine and trained in anesthesiology at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was chief resident. He is board certified in anesthesiology and pain management. In 1993 he founded the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation, and in 1997 he wrote Brain Longevity, the book that helped introduce the idea that memory loss is not a fixed part of growing older. In 2003 he was invited to testify before Congress on how lifestyle shapes Alzheimer's disease.
None of it was built alone. Kirti grew up in Rome and directed regulatory affairs for a multinational pharmaceutical company before the two of them built the foundation together. Today she is its chief executive and he is its medical director, and she still teaches yoga to seniors, thirty years and counting. A doctor and a pharma executive, married, doing the work side by side from their home in Tucson.
Your work in the field of memory loss should now be considered mainstream.
Richard Carmona, M.D.
17th Surgeon General of the United States
Said of Dr. Dharma and the work of the ARPF.
His path
From the operating room to the meditation cushion
People ask about the turban. Here is the story.
Dr. Dharma trained as an anesthesiologist and was chief resident at UC San Francisco. In 1981 he adopted the Sikh faith, and he has worn the beard and white turban ever since. The faith came with a daily practice of Kundalini yoga and meditation, and the practice slowly changed his medicine.
In 1987 he opened the first holistic pain program in the Southwestern United States. In 1993 he and Kirti founded the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation to study what they were living, including Kirtan Kriya, a 12 minute meditation studied for its effect on memory at UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and West Virginia University. It began with faith.
Ancient wisdom and modern science in the same pair of hands.
What we stand on
Five pillars behind everything we do
From how the formulas are made to how we treat the people who take them.
Respect for all life
Vegan formulas and a lighter footprint, so the way we care for you never comes at the planet's expense.
Stay true
Truth leads the way. High standards, rigorous testing, and clear honest labels so you can choose with open eyes.
Embrace synergy
We blend old traditions and modern research into formulas designed to work together, the way the body does.
Illuminate what's possible
We hand you the knowledge and the tools to age well and live fully. Empowerment, not fear.
Nurture a better tomorrow
Doctor formulated, carefully tested, and backed by our two percent pledge to brain health research.
The practice
Twelve minutes, four sounds
At the center of his work sits one small daily practice, old enough to predate the research by centuries and simple enough to learn in an afternoon.
What it is
Kirtan Kriya is a twelve minute meditation from the Kundalini yoga tradition. It is sung on four sounds, paired with simple repeated movements of the fingers. Dr. Dharma did not invent it. He did something rarer. He asked universities to test it.
What the research found
UCLA
In a randomized trial of adults with mild cognitive impairment, Kundalini yoga with Kirtan Kriya matched the gold standard memory training on verbal memory, and outperformed it on executive function, mood, and resilience.
Lavretsky and colleagues, Department of Psychiatry, UCLA.
University of Pennsylvania
Brain imaging studies with Andrew Newberg, M.D., one of the leading researchers of meditation and the brain, documented increased blood flow in memory related regions during the practice.
Newberg and Khalsa, University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
West Virginia University
Randomized controlled trials in adults with subjective cognitive decline studied the practice against music listening, with both arms practicing twelve minutes a day.
Innes and colleagues, West Virginia University.
The Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation is an independent nonprofit. It does not sell or endorse the products on this site. Research findings describe the studied practice, not any product.
Why he made them
The doctor who wanted more to offer
For years his patients arrived carrying bags full of bottles, a dozen brands with no plan behind any of it, and still they struggled. He could not shake the feeling that medicine was leaving something out. So he did the thing he has always done when he did not have an answer. He went looking for one.
He studied the ingredients one at a time, then studied how they worked together. He brought in everything he had spent his life learning to trust, his faith, his yoga, the wisdom of the East, the discipline of the lab. Not to follow the industry. To build something honest for the people in his care.
He was one of the first physicians in this country to make a truly clean supplement. In 2002 he put his formulas online, vegan, no fillers, years before clean meant anything. They are still made exactly the way he designed them because they work.
He takes them himself, every day.
See him in his own words
The doctor, on public television
Long before brain health was a trend, public television sat him down to explain it. Here he is, doing what he does best, making the science feel like hope.
Dr. Dharma on Arizona Illustrated
His work continues
See where Dr. Dharma is teaching
Dr. Dharma carries this mission forward through the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation, with talks, programs, and events on brain health and prevention. If he is speaking near you, go.
The Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation is an independent nonprofit. It does not sell or endorse these products.
For practitioners
Carry his formulas in your practice
For years these formulas were shared through acupuncturists and integrative practices. If you run a practice and would like to offer them to your patients, we would love to talk.
Wholesale inquiries welcome from licensed practitioners and integrative wellness spaces.
Reviews
Trusted for over two decades
Every review on this site is from a real customer.
I have been taking Dr Dharma supplements for at least 15 years and I wouldn't go without them.
I have been taking both the gold caps and the brain caps for the last 10 years and I have found these two products to be very beneficial to me. These are both excellent products.
I've taking Dr. Dharma's supplements for many years and at 76 I can feel the positive effect on my mental and physical health.
Reviews reflect individual experiences. Results vary.
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