Max Lugavere is a health journalist who specializes in nutrition and the brain. He s also a filmmaker and the author of the best-selling Genius Foods, Genius Life, and Genius Kitchen. In this episode, Max talks to us about the dangers of processed foods, and why we should all be eating more whole foods. He also talks about how processed foods are actually a poison to our brains, and how we can eat more whole food in order to counter the effects of over-processed foods. If you are watching us on YouTube, only the first 15 minutes will be available to you, then we'll be slinking off into the home of free speech to give you the truth about Aducanumab and Alzheimer s, that pledged to treat Alzheimer s. Is there a profit in it? Who knows what's going on? Remember, you can join us on Locals for a new and reasonable price. That's Locals, for a better and cheaper price. Stay free! Stay free, you're not gonna want to miss it! Timestamps: 3:00 - Tucker and the Obama Revelation 4:30 - Is Obama a war criminal? 5:15 - What's the point of war? 6:20 - Is there any such thing as war? 7:00- Is Obama better than a hero? 8:40 - How do I know what s going on here? 9:15- What do I eat? 11:30- How can I eat more than that? 12:40- What s the difference between a whole meal? 13:00 15:40 16:00 + 17:30 17:40 + 16:10 14:15 15 + 17 + 17? 15 Can I eat enough food? 17 + 15 + 16 + 16? 14 + 15? 16 + 15 ? 13 + 13 + 15 ? 15 And 15 + 14 + 14 + 15 And so much more? + + + 15 & 15 + And so Much More? & + + And This & And This + And And This And This? + And + And That And This & And That? And And That - And This So Much More! + And So Much So Much Less? + + & And And So And And And A Good And This Including That? + And This??
00:00:01.000Over the month of September I'm doing a handful of live shows that are a combination of spirituality, breath work, individual awakening, community building and challenging authority.
00:00:11.000How do you bring down the system while bringing up children?
00:01:08.000Thanks for joining us for this fabulous festival of mutual awakening and understanding.
00:01:14.000We've got a fantastic show for you today.
00:01:16.000Later, we'll be talking about Tucker and the Obama revelations, as well as talking about the nature of heroism and whether or not Obama would be better described as a war criminal.
00:01:26.000Certainly according to the Geneva Convention, He would be.
00:01:30.000Also, did you know the rumble button's gone now?
00:01:41.000If you are watching us on rumble right now, remember, press the red button and join us in the locals community when you get to see these fantastic conversations live.
00:01:49.000If you're watching us on YouTube, Only the first 15 minutes will be available to you, then we'll be slinking off into the home of free speech to give you the truth about aducanumab and Alzheimer's, a drug that pledged to treat Alzheimer's that seemingly makes things a lot worse.
00:02:09.000Remember, you can join us on Locals for a new and reasonable price, but it's time now for me to introduce our fantastic guest today, Max Lugavere.
00:02:17.000Max Lugavere is a health journalist who specializes in nutrition and the brain.
00:02:34.000Max, the first thing that I want to talk to you about is our lethal, deadly, contemporary lifestyle.
00:02:39.000Is it true that 60% of calories that adults eat are coming from processed food and that processed foods are sort of no food at all and are almost akin to a poison?
00:02:49.000Yeah, I mean, they are foreign to our bodies.
00:02:51.000And the distinction really is, you know, processing occurs on a continuum.
00:02:56.000So when you slice an apple, you are processing it to some degree.
00:03:04.000Like even by taking a bite out of an apple, that's a process.
00:03:07.000Yeah, but at least you're allowing yourself to masticate your jaw to do the work, which is what it was evolutionarily designed to do, right?
00:03:18.000You pulverize it, your jaw muscles don't have to work, your stomach, I mean, there are all these muscles throughout your body that are essentially getting a workout.
00:03:25.000When you consume a bolus of whole food, we digest food slower, it sends satiety signals to our brains in a more deliberate manner, and so people, there's actually research that shows that people who consume primarily these ultra-processed foods, foods that have essentially been pre-chewed for you, Partially pre-digested tend to over consume them to the tune of about 500 additional calories.
00:03:49.000So right there if you look at the fact that today 73% of the foods in your average American supermarket and probably I would reckon that the UK is close by are ultra processed.
00:03:59.000It makes sense why the obesity statistics now are so startling about 50% of Americans are not just overweight but obese.
00:04:05.000It's a good example of how our biochemistry has evolved alongside nature, which is kind of obvious because we're on the same planet and there's a sort of a natural and literally organic harmony between us.
00:04:18.000And even if you extract mastication and the digestive processes that evolved in order to digest the food that we eat, if you extract the necessity for that process, you induce a kind of new The new potential for mutation and sickness and illness.
00:04:35.000I wanted to talk to you just for a moment about, we recently have been talking about Bill Gates' growing meat in labs, funding a new sort of, not plastic coating, it's apparently an organic material that allows food to be preserved for longer.
00:04:50.000What do we think about the sort of technologisation of food and centralised food and the patenting of food.
00:04:56.000Is this ultimately, as it claims, good for climate change and good for health or do you
00:05:00.000think that these endeavours have other motivations behind them?
00:05:03.000No, I think it's, as you here in the UK would call it, bollocks.
00:05:06.000Yes, that's what we would say, bollocks.
00:05:08.000That's what we say, that's our language.
00:05:09.000Yeah, I think it's quite inappropriate.
00:05:11.000What it does is it illustrates this phenomena known as nutritionism, where we apply science to the fact that we've co-evolved with whole foods, right?
00:06:30.000You can see how technocracy, the control by a cadre of experts, is facilitated by the reduction of all things to data and the idea that if you have a kind of a spiritual or open-minded perspective, also open-minded your brain will fall out, towards food that isn't based on patentable qualities.
00:06:55.000It is in fact a kind of an understanding that's somewhat more holistic That is regarded as inferior, that all things are turned into data, all things are made material, all things are objectified, no room for mystery, and it doesn't always work.
00:07:11.000So let's just for a moment touch on one of the points you made earlier before moving into the rather more controversial subject, which we won't be able to talk about on YouTube, about this Alzheimer's drug that I understand you have sort of personal motivations in your investigation and
00:07:26.000desire to convey the truth around this drug.
00:07:28.000Before we get into that though, which we'll do exclusively in the other place,
00:07:32.000why would you tell us a little bit about the sort of obesity epidemic and its impact on health and
00:07:39.000the relationship between obesity, big food and big pharma?
00:08:12.000Particularly at a time when you're still developing, right?
00:08:15.000And the brain is undergoing rapid development.
00:08:17.000So this is reflected in the statistics that show us that 50% of adults are either flat-out obese, And 9 in 10 adults have some component now of metabolic illness.
00:08:29.000So metabolic syndrome, it's a constellation of symptoms.
00:08:56.000The healthiest foods in the supermarket don't make health claims.
00:08:58.000They're found around the perimeter of the supermarket.
00:08:59.000You don't see health claims on eggs, on avocados, on dark leafy greens, things like that.
00:09:05.000But instead, it's the food products that are extremely high margin, right?
00:09:09.000Can you tell me about the criteria used to demonstrate, as this beautiful chart does, that Lucky Charms might be healthier for you than, I don't know, oxygen.
00:09:32.000So this is this is a food, a nutrient profiling system that was devised out of the Friedman School for Nutrition at Tufts University.
00:09:40.000Which has this, it's like this very curious hierarchy, right, that places watermelon and kale at the top of the list, but just underneath that you see frosted mini-wheats, you'll see... Oh my god, frosted mini-wheats!
00:09:50.000So if this was actually like in the NFL or NBA or APL... Like a perfect food.
00:09:54.000Like watermelon is Manchester City, kale, Arsenal, or, you know, I'm guessing it's Green Bay Packers, I don't know what happens in your country, but frosted mini-wheats... Yeah.
00:10:03.000I mean, frosted mini-wheats can't come in at number three.
00:10:05.000Right, no, I mean, watermelon and kale are perfectly healthy foods, but you would die if you chose to base your diet solely on those two foods.
00:10:15.000But frosted mini-wheats... Frosted mini-wheats, yeah, it's an ultra processed, super high margin... You want a combination of a little bit of watermelon, a bit of kale, and then I mean, in my view, you could flip the whole thing upside down, actually, because you'll notice that the ground beef, you've got dairy, whole milk is sort of at the bottom, at the bottom end.
00:10:36.000But on top of that, you'll find Lucky Charms, you'll find egg substitute fried in vegetable oil.
00:10:41.000So these are the, these are the, essentially the darlings of the food industry that have given, been given unduly high ranking on this list.
00:10:49.000And there've been critics of this chart, critics of this chart who've said that foods, these foods were not meant to be compared across categories, right?
00:10:58.000But actually, if you were to go to the Tufts University website, they did the exact same thing, but obviously presented it in a much more favorable light.
00:11:04.000So this is the problem with these kinds of systems that are heavily influenced by the food industry.
00:11:08.000How are these kind of, this kind of data, how is it funded?
00:11:17.000Like the food industry definitely has a hand in not just funding the school, but the researchers that are involved.
00:11:23.000I see that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates Medical Research Institute were somewhat involved in creating what I can now call the Lucky Charms graph.
00:11:33.000How Lucky Charms are better at that for you than eggs and other whole foods.
00:11:38.000But also look at the pharmaceutical companies.
00:11:44.000There's essentially no industry that isn't complicit.
00:11:47.000And then when you look to the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee that was just assembled a couple months ago, 95% of those members had ties to either the food industry or the pharmaceutical industry.
00:11:58.000And this nutrient profiling system was essentially designed to influence consumer purchases by making front of package health claims.
00:12:06.000And so to me, I mean, that's what a scoring system is essentially. It's so that a consumer would be able to
00:12:12.000compare food items from across different categories. And so I think it's a massive problem.
00:12:17.000But the idea that this is objective information, the idea that you could trust the science
00:12:21.000and regard it as empirical data rather than a set of facts that are organized particularly
00:12:28.000to direct you to consume particular foods, to live in a particular way.
00:12:32.000We see this across all of public life.
00:12:36.000When you unpack information, it's often that information has a sort of a trail behind it of financial interest.
00:12:44.000And to see, as you say, Big Pharma, the kind of NGOs and foundations that frequently come up in our reporting is hardly a surprise in that crazy league of Watermelon and Lucky Charms and Little Frosty Yeah, I mean, look, I'm pro-science in the sense that I wish I could snap my fingers and have the kind of study replicated that would show us, for example, the kinds of big looming questions in the field of nutrition, which is a field that I genuinely love.
00:13:12.000But the problem with following the science often is that the science follows the money.
00:13:16.000And so you get something like this, which is just a four-year-old would look at that graph and be like, something's wrong here.
00:13:24.000You know, it's plain that the reliance on a particular type of science has become a new orthodoxy.
00:13:31.000I think in the last couple of years we became used to being castigated with the idea that science was not a subset of corporate and globalist interests.
00:13:42.000And that happened while simultaneously some scientific voices were closed down, other scientific voices were amplified, but we can't go into too much detail on that while we are still on YouTube, which are to a degree regulated by the World Health Organization's guidelines, which similarly accept incredible funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of Lucky Charms.
00:14:05.000We're going to leave now, if you're watching us on YouTube, to make sure... How do I say that drug again?
00:14:13.000And what is the problem with aducanumab, one of the great drugs that's given Alzheimer's sufferers a real opportunity to live a better life, other than possibly it doesn't work.
00:15:20.000Yeah, so aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody drug that basically trains your immune system to identify markers on the plaques that are commonly seen in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
00:15:33.000So Alzheimer's disease is characterized in part by the presence of this immense plaque burden, plaques made of a protein called amyloid beta.
00:15:43.000Along with some other, you know, proteinopathies like misfolded tau protein.
00:15:47.000And so Alzheimer's disease drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate.
00:15:52.000So it's just dismal when it comes to finding a drug to treat this condition, which by the way, begins in the brain decades before the first symptom.
00:16:16.000Ten years ago, you couldn't mention Alzheimer's disease and prevention within the same sentence without getting ridiculed by the medical establishment, by the medical orthodoxy.
00:16:26.000So my first project, I'm a health and science journalist, so I didn't take an academic path, but my mom had a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia.
00:16:33.000And even prior to that diagnosis, you know, it was unclear the variant of dementia.
00:16:37.000And so I went down the Alzheimer's disease rabbit hole.
00:16:41.000And my first project was a feature-length documentary, which I'm still working on.
00:16:45.000It's called Little Empty Boxes, and it explores all of the different lifestyle and dietary factors that might predispose a person to developing this condition, which now affects millions and millions of people worldwide.
00:16:55.000In fact, it's now the number one cause of death in the UK as of last year, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
00:17:00.000Dementia and Alzheimer's is the number one cause of death?
00:17:04.000How come these sort of facts are so opaque and difficult to discern?
00:17:09.000Why is it that we're only just learning about it?
00:17:11.000This was ridiculed, so it's not, there's nothing conspiratorial about us not knowing that it's preventable, it's just that wasn't scientifically verified so it's understandable.
00:17:19.000But the idea that it's such a significant cause of death, it seems extraordinary to me that it's not something that we commonly appreciate.
00:17:25.000Yeah, well, I mean, there's this saying that science advances one funeral at a time, and this is because scientific personalities are very obstinate, they're fiercely territorial.
00:17:35.000We see this at the highest echelons of academic medicine and nutrition science and the like.
00:17:41.000And this is why it takes, on average, 17 years for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice.
00:17:48.000And so, I've been working in this field trying to advocate for prevention for about a decade at this point, but it's really only the past couple of years, the past three years, really, that the tide has begun to turn.
00:18:00.000So, in 2020, the Lancet Commission on Dementia published a statement saying that About 40% of Alzheimer's cases and dementia cases are attributable to what they call potentially modifiable risk factors, which basically means risk factors for dementia, the development of dementia, that fall under your control, i.e.
00:19:08.000So I began as a generalist journalist, and when my mom became sick, it was like an atom bomb going off in my world.
00:19:15.000She was the most important person in my life.
00:19:18.000And in every doctor's office, what I experienced with her, I've come to call diagnose and adios.
00:19:23.000And basically a physician would run a battery of esoteric tests, write a prescription down, you know, or titrate up or down some medication that she was on and send us on our way.
00:19:31.000And by the, by the, by the end of her life, she was on 12 different pharmaceuticals that were, I think, you know, in tandem or individually making her worse.
00:19:41.000Um, and I can say that with, with certainty.
00:19:42.000And so, I was very disillusioned by the tools that medicine had, you know, during that time when a person presents with the most feared condition for your average American, which is, of course, dementia at this point.
00:19:58.000And I took it upon myself to use my journalistic skills and my media credentials to reach out to people and start doing my own research, diving into PubMed.
00:20:05.000I mean, we live in a time now where, you know, all of the world's knowledge is available at our fingertips 24-7.
00:20:11.000And I found it to be incredibly empowering, despite the fact that I had this real tragic thing occurring in my personal life.
00:20:17.000I exploited, I decided to exploit all those tools to the betterment of my, to the benefit of my family.
00:20:57.000I've never looked at it in those terms.
00:20:59.000We sort of sold the idea that there's an inevitability that we're on some preconceived, predetermined route towards illness and pharmacological solutions that our behaviors and our diets are not Considerable factors in you know, particularly in this kind of condition.
00:21:18.000Yeah, and I'll give you another example where the pharmaceutical industry may be complicit, right?
00:21:22.000So that 40% figure that I listed off to you, that was what was indicated in the Lancet report, which said the potential for prevention is high.
00:21:32.000But I think that's a gross underestimate.
00:21:34.000And one of another massively modifiable risk factor for people is the chronic use of what are called anticholinergic drugs, which is a category of drugs.
00:21:42.000I couldn't possibly list off all of the drugs.
00:21:44.000But these are drugs that are like essentially sleep aids, and they help with, you know, to relieve symptoms of allergies for people.
00:21:53.000Chronic use of these drugs is associated with a dramatically higher risk of the development of Alzheimer's disease.
00:22:04.000Can you tell me about aducanumab and what in particular is important about this and the potential falsification of papers and how it got its FDA approval?
00:22:14.000So, ever since Alzheimer's disease was first coined in 1906 by physician Alois Alzheimer, He looked in the brain of a cadaver, a woman who had died from the condition, and saw plaque, essentially, in the brain, clumped around brain cells, neurons, like the plaque on your teeth, essentially.
00:22:34.000And so from that day forward, amyloid plaque was thought to be the causal factor with regard to Alzheimer's disease.
00:22:42.000And from a pharmaceutical drug discovery standpoint, the mission has been, well, if we can get rid of this plaque, then we'll have a cure for Alzheimer's disease.
00:22:51.000But of course, as time goes on, we develop new imaging technologies.
00:22:55.000What we see is that people without Alzheimer's disease also have amyloid in the brain.
00:23:00.000Amyloid is produced naturally in all brains, essentially.
00:23:08.000They would try all these different drugs, trying to get amyloid out of the brain, and that's called the amyloid hypothesis.
00:23:13.000That became the domineering kind of route of drug discovery, with the idea that if we can get rid of this villainous plaque, that we'll find a cure for the condition, right?
00:23:23.000And so spending $3 billion a year on drug discovery.
00:23:28.000But by the year 2006, with Alzheimer's drug trials having a 99.6% fail rate, worse than for cancer, heart disease, any other condition, faith in that hypothesis was starting to wane until a paper was published in the journal Nature by a University of Minnesota researcher named Sylvain Lesny, which essentially claimed to have isolated a subtype of amyloid beta that, when injected into a healthy rat, caused severe cognitive deficits.
00:24:03.000And so this was thought to be the missing link because, as I mentioned, cognitively healthy people have amyloid in their brain.
00:24:10.000Researchers up until this point weren't really able to connect amyloid beta with the most important symptomology, the most important symptom with regard to Alzheimer's disease, which is the severe and profound cognitive decline, until this paper was published where they claimed to have found the subtype, injected into a mouse, boom, we have like cognitive impairment, right?
00:24:31.000And so since then, since 2006, that paper came out in Nature, which is like winning an Academy Award if you're a research scientist, right?
00:24:37.000It's been cited thousands of times, because science is cumulative, it builds on papers that have come prior.
00:24:43.000citing this paper, and it really renewed faith.
00:24:47.000It funneled a lot more money down this path and renewed faith in this so-called amyloid
00:25:15.000And the peer review process doesn't look at... They'll crunch numbers occasionally, but they don't look at, for example, Western blots, which are imagery, which is basically data presented in a more illustrative format.
00:25:28.000And what Matthew Schrag found was that this 2006 paper, um, the images, the data was essentially fabricated.
00:25:37.000It was, there were artifacts indicative of Photoshop, like a cheap Photoshop cut and paste job.
00:25:43.000So the paper was deemed completely fraudulent, like that data didn't exist.
00:25:48.000And so again, since then, since 2006, All of this other research has come out building on top of it.
00:25:53.000It funneled billions and billions and billions of more money looking into this path, this amyloid hypothesis.
00:26:34.000And so, there are other theories as to why Alzheimer's disease develops, and there's the metabolic theory of Alzheimer's and the like, but this new drug, aducanumab, that was approved by the FDA, despite a panel of, it was about 11 or 12, I think it was 11 experts, the vast majority of them either disagreed with its approval or remained silent, like lips were sealed on its approval.
00:27:06.000It might be better than nothing for certain patients, like a small subset of patients, but in the majority of patients that took it, were a significant proportion of the patients that took it.
00:27:16.000I don't, I can't say for sure if it was the majority, because I don't recall.
00:27:20.000It led to severe side effects like brain swelling, bleeding, accelerated brain atrophy, which is already, you know, par for the course if you have Alzheimer's disease, like, like dramatic atrophy of the cortex of the brain.
00:27:44.000Experts at the point when it was up for approval had doubts about it, questioned it, or didn't speak about it, and it was approved anyway.
00:27:53.000Do you suggest that this is the type of thing that frequently happens, and do you imagine that there are other motivations for its approval other than its efficacy?
00:28:42.000I mean, what it did was it served to confirm the biases of all of the many scientists who
00:28:47.000are fiercely territorial over their reputations working in that field.
00:28:50.000And again, if I had a blockbuster drug to give my mom.
00:28:57.000You know, at the depths of her despair and her difficulty with her dementia, I would, in a second, I would have gone out to get it for her, right?
00:29:05.000But these drugs don't work, and they're potentially, you know, they're likely more harm than good, so it's a big issue.
00:29:12.000Yeah, Max, it seems like what you're tracking is a food industry that promotes foods that likely contribute to senility, dementia, Alzheimer's and related conditions, then a drug industry that offers medications that are not effective And I begin to get the idea that we're on again a conveyor belt where one end of it we're sort of blobbed up with sloppy food as bad for us and basically poisonous and then treated with medications many of which have to be
00:29:45.000used in conjunction with others, this sort of symphony of shoddy medications that often
00:29:52.000have not been effectively trialled. And increasingly what we're finding is that the motivation
00:29:57.000for the pharmaceutical companies, for the food industry, for the FDA is not scientific
00:30:03.000excellence or nutritional heights but profit.
00:30:07.000And it's pretty plain that it's become gargantuan and out of control.
00:30:11.000As we often discuss on this show, I don't think anybody begrudges industriousness or even a profit motive.
00:30:19.000But when it reaches the point that it has done in the examples that you conveyed, it's a problem.
00:30:24.000Also what's a problem is that when you try to have a conversation about these kind of subjects, is that you're subject to incredible censorship.
00:30:31.000Now, am I right in thinking that the mainstream media opposed the documentary that you've already mentioned in which you try to present some novel ideas on Alzheimer's, its relationship to diet and the lack of effectiveness of many of the medications?
00:30:44.000Oh yeah, so when I first got started, an ambassador for one of these drug discovery funds Which is a non-profit, right?
00:30:53.000It's like, you go to its website and you would think it was the most benevolent organization with the care of the patients as their sole priority.
00:31:01.000But when I first got started on this project, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it.
00:31:05.000And so it went kind of viral and we're raising money and all that.
00:31:09.000And thankfully it was successful and we're now nearing the finish line, finally.
00:31:12.000But this ambassador wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
00:31:17.000Basically comparing my efforts to, I think the headline was, uh, Alzheimer's disease, the cure for Alzheimer's disease isn't going to come in the form of coconut oil and other quack, you know, speculative things.
00:32:40.000And so it's like a house of cards built on fear, right?
00:32:46.000If we stop the fear-mongering, then people are going to stop the funding of this, right?
00:32:51.000They're going to stop writing the checks.
00:32:53.000And so yeah, I saw that up like up close and personal and it was really heartbreaking you still still find the article It's something like Alzheimer's disease coconut oil in the Wall Street Journal.
00:33:04.000I mean I've thought about I've thought about hitting that person up, but he was a really rude rude human unfortunately We've got some comments from our community, like Thomas Beard.
00:33:18.000He wants to ask you about plant-based diets.
00:33:31.000I think it's our biologically appropriate diet, but I think you can work a few levers to make a plant-based diet work if you're dedicated to it, and as I know you are, and many people are.
00:33:44.000Because you just think there are valuable nutrients, proteins, and things like that.
00:33:49.000Turin and stuff in me that we just can't like that.
00:33:52.000Yeah, I think like when we try to distill an entire food category such as animal source foods to one essential Nutrient like vitamin b12.
00:34:01.000We're practicing that reductionism that we talked about earlier We're practicing nutritionism, and I think we've co-evolved with our food We've co-evolved with all of the many what are called karna nutrients that are found in animal source products that are you know plug-and-play but But ultimately, I think the big wins today for anybody navigating the standard American or the standard British food environment, to be not overweight, to be not type 2 diabetic, I mean, those are the big rocks.
00:34:24.000So yeah, I think you can make any diet work, essentially.
00:34:29.000But my view is that Omnivore is probably the most optimal.
00:34:32.000Is it true that you disagree with some of the views of our other sexy diet guest, Paul Saladino?
00:35:03.000Um, I think, uh, if you're going to point a finger at kale or even oatmeal, which I think he's been doing quite a bit lately and say, that is the smoking gun for all of our health ills.
00:35:12.000I think that that's, uh, baseless, but I think he does present some, some really good ideas as well.
00:35:18.000So we've got to come to a kind of consensus of truth together.
00:35:22.000Uh, Tesla said, and this, I can't believe I missed this question, Max, you mentioned earlier that Alzheimer's can be detected decades before symptoms.
00:35:31.000Well, so it's not that it can necessarily be detected, we can look for what are called risk factors at this point.
00:35:37.000They can do imaging, they can look at brain volume, they can look at amyloid burden, but they're not doing those kinds of tests clinically, and that really is the holy grail of prevention, is to find the biomarker that dictates whether or not a person... Are you saying that biomarker hasn't yet to be found?
00:35:54.000But there's not enough trialing and research because that's not profitable, it's in fact expensive.
00:35:58.000There was a blood test, and I wrote about it in my first book called Genius Foods, called IRS-1, where it predicted with 90% accuracy something, or even higher than that, whether or not somebody was going to develop it.
00:36:08.000But I think at this point, it's good to know your genetic risk factor, to know whether or not you're a carrier of the ApoE4 allele, and then to look at all the other biomarkers that we know are associated Most closely, you want to look at your metabolic health, so you want to make sure that you have a nice, healthy blood sugar, you're not a type 2 diabetic, you're not overweight or obese, and I would also do my best to minimize at this point exposure to environmental pollutants, toxicants, air pollution, things like that.
00:36:31.000Know Daganoku, who's a great member of our community, and if you're not a member of our community yet, press the red button.
00:36:36.000There are all sorts of incredible benefits, including regular scans to prevent outside- we don't do that, that's just simply false advertising.
00:36:44.000No, Dugganoku is a member of our community and he asks, hey Max, I want to ask you, through Russell of course, don't be cheeky, a question pertaining to diversity.
00:36:53.000How do you feel that there is evidence to support the notion that diet may be more unique than what we're led to believe by our societies?
00:36:58.000I've personally tried for years to figure out the diet which matches me best, sometimes living exclusively on grass.
00:37:12.000What, how do I find a diet which matches me best while staying away from food that are filled with chemicals, plastics, or genetic modifications?
00:37:20.000Yeah, I mean, I think, like, again, shop around the perimeter of your supermarket and stick to mainly minimally processed whole foods.
00:37:25.000Everybody is different, so there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet.
00:37:28.000I like where he was going with that question.
00:37:30.000And there's also, you know, everybody's different and then everybody has different microbiomes.
00:37:33.000So, you know, we can say things like vegetables and things, you know, of that nature are good for you.
00:37:38.000But if you don't have the microbiome cultivated to contend with a sudden onslaught increase in fiber, then you're going to be paying a digestive penalty for that.
00:37:46.000So, you know, you got to, I think a little bit of experimentation is really important.
00:37:50.000But again, I think as long as you're, you're sticking mainly to minimally processed foods, omnivory, I think for most people is going to do the most good.
00:38:20.000It's a myth that you can't cook with it.
00:38:23.000It's very chemically stable, owed to its predominance of monounsaturated fat, which is very chemically stable, and it's about 15% saturated fat.
00:38:30.000And on top of that, extra virgin olive oil is loaded with polyphenol antioxidants, which protect the oil against oxidation.
00:39:32.000I like to be really clear, actually, about what I know and what I don't know.
00:39:34.000But with regard to depression, my first book was a deep dive into the topic of nutritional psychiatry, which is a growing field right now, and it's very exciting.
00:39:43.000And it's showing us that for a subset of depressed patients, diet may play a role.
00:39:50.000The mechanism here, it's being referred to by some as the inflammatory cytokine model of depression.
00:39:56.000That depression is the result of chronic low-grade inflammation that's occurring in the body.
00:40:01.000And we basically can control, to some degree, with our diets and our lifestyles, our overall inflammatory status.
00:40:09.000And so we know that eating a diet that is rich in ultra-processed foods, you know, packaged shelf-stable vending machine foods, if you will.
00:40:17.000And an overly sedentary lifestyle, a lifestyle that relegates sleep to an afterthought, a lifestyle that is chronically stressed out.
00:40:23.000We know that those are all pro-inflammatory and that that can have a downstream effect on the brain and our cognitive processes certainly as well as our mental health.
00:40:34.000And so there are studies now coming out of Many highly regarded academic centers like the Food and Mood Center at Deakin University.
00:40:43.000One study that I cite fairly regularly is the SMILES trial, which found that for clinically depressed patients who had really crappy diets, half of them were given the standard of care in Australia.
00:40:56.000The other half were given a Mediterranean dietary pattern to adhere to.
00:41:02.000They saw three times the rate of remission from depression in that group that was given the Mediterranean dietary pattern to consume.
00:41:10.000Olive oil, animal products, dark leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, things like that.
00:41:15.000And the other group, obviously, they didn't have the improvement in symptoms to the same degree, and they didn't see the same rate of remission.
00:41:24.000So, we're seeing now that, you know, in the form of clinical randomized control trials, that diet does have a pretty powerful influence, right?
00:41:31.000And we know that micronutrients like magnesium, which half of Americans don't consume adequate amounts of, we know that that's related to many, many processes, hundreds of processes in the body.
00:41:40.000We know that it can play a role in the reduction of anxiety and depression and things like that.
00:41:45.000We also know that Yeah, there are nutrients.
00:41:49.000There are nutrients in animal products, in shellfish, that play a really important role in mental health.
00:41:54.000And I like what you said about inflammation, that we're like inflamed as individuals and as a culture.
00:42:00.000What do you think about fake meat, the sort of the vegans treat, the way out?
00:42:05.000Bill Gates' hobby course, fake meats, what are they?
00:42:09.000Any good or vile blobs of nothingness?
00:42:13.000I mean, I think that they don't hold a candle to actual meat in terms of a nutritional value.
00:42:20.000But I'll concede that many vegans enjoy it because it just tastes good.
00:43:23.000We'll post the links to both of those in both of our chats and also Max's latest book, The Genius Kitchen is out now.
00:43:29.000And as Max mentioned, his podcast, The Genius Life is also available.
00:43:35.000Now, if you want to be a member of our community, one of the ways that I reckon you can reduce inflammation and also get some Awakened Wonder Pants, it starts today.
00:43:46.000If you are an Awakened Wonder, simply by pressing the red button, you can join our team meetings, post-show shows, meditations, podcast recordings.
00:43:58.000Now, last week, the world was lit up to a degree by Tucker's controversial interview with that dude that made them Obama revelations.
00:44:08.000So, in Here's the News today, we used that to begin an analysis of Barack Obama's time in office and his status as an elder and hero of the Democratic Party.
00:44:18.000How can this status be maintained when you scrutinize Obama's time in office, particularly around war?