Stay Free - Russel Brand - Defying Dementia! Max Lugavere on Brain Health, Nutrition & Lifestyle

00:00:00.000 Hello there you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:01.000 Over 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.

00:00:11.000 How do you bring down the system while bringing up children?

00:00:15.000 Can't sleep! 0.76

00:00:16.000 Can't f***ing sleep! 0.99

00:00:17.000 Sleep while I have extendable orgasm now! 0.99

00:00:20.000 How do you try to bring down Bear Grylls while you're on Running Wild with Bear Grylls? 0.98

00:00:24.000 And Bear Grylls is much better at that stuff than you.

00:00:27.000 How do we find new ways of challenging authority while trying to live normal lives?

00:00:33.000 So I'll be doing stand-up, breathwork, meditation, as well as conducting polls and votes because I believe democracy works.

00:00:40.000 Are you happy with your current government?

00:00:41.000 No.

00:00:42.000 With you live in theatres like Hayes on the 12th of September.

00:00:46.000 That's a little intimate London gig.

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00:00:51.000 Windsor on the 19th of September.

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00:01:03.000 Stay free.

00:01:07.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:01:08.000 Thanks for joining us for this fabulous festival of mutual awakening and understanding.

00:01:14.000 We've got a fantastic show for you today.

00:01:16.000 Later, 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.

00:01:26.000 Certainly according to the Geneva Convention, He would be.

00:01:30.000 Also, did you know the rumble button's gone now?

00:01:32.000 You can't even give us a rumbling.

00:01:34.000 You're just going to have to give us a like like everybody else.

00:01:37.000 The homogenization of all spaces!

00:01:39.000 All things sanitized!

00:01:41.000 If 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.

00:01:49.000 If 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.

00:02:06.000 Is there a profit in it?

00:02:08.000 Who knows what's going on?

00:02:09.000 Remember, 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.

00:02:17.000 Max Lugavere is a health journalist who specializes in nutrition and the brain.

00:02:21.000 He's a filmmaker.

00:02:22.000 He's the author of the best-selling Genius Foods, Genius Life, and Genius Kitchen.

00:02:28.000 Max, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:02:30.000 Thanks so much for having me.

00:02:32.000 Are you happy here?

00:02:33.000 I'm super happy.

00:02:34.000 Max, the first thing that I want to talk to you about is our lethal, deadly, contemporary lifestyle.

00:02:39.000 Is 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?

00:02:49.000 Yeah, I mean, they are foreign to our bodies.

00:02:51.000 And the distinction really is, you know, processing occurs on a continuum.

00:02:56.000 So when you slice an apple, you are processing it to some degree.

00:02:59.000 Yeah, that's pretty finicky though.

00:03:01.000 Like even mastication.

00:03:03.000 I said mastication.

00:03:04.000 Grow up.

00:03:04.000 Like even by taking a bite out of an apple, that's a process.

00:03:07.000 Yeah, 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?

00:03:14.000 If you bleach the apple into a soup.

00:03:17.000 Yes, into a soup, right?

00:03:18.000 You 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.

00:03:25.000 When 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.

00:03:49.000 So 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.

00:03:59.000 It makes sense why the obesity statistics now are so startling about 50% of Americans are not just overweight but obese.

00:04:05.000 It'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.

00:04:18.000 And 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.

00:04:35.000 I 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.

00:04:50.000 What do we think about the sort of technologisation of food and centralised food and the patenting of food.

00:04:56.000 Is this ultimately, as it claims, good for climate change and good for health or do you

00:05:00.000 think that these endeavours have other motivations behind them?

00:05:03.000 No, I think it's, as you here in the UK would call it, bollocks.

00:05:06.000 Yes, that's what we would say, bollocks. 0.98

00:05:07.000 Is that what people would say?

00:05:08.000 That's what we say, that's our language.

00:05:09.000 Yeah, I think it's quite inappropriate.

00:05:11.000 What 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?

00:05:21.000 And so we try to break a food.

00:05:23.000 Since the dawn of nutrition science really began, we've attempted to distill foods down to its constituent nutrients, right?

00:05:30.000 Like an orange has vitamin C and maybe a few other things, right?

00:05:33.000 A banana has potassium.

00:05:35.000 and maybe a few other things.

00:05:36.000 So we isolate these nutrients and we try to determine what's essential and what's not.

00:05:41.000 And by the way, that list of essential nutrients is constantly evolving.

00:05:44.000 And so when you take like a Silicon Valley guy who looks at food through this lens,

00:05:50.000 food as data essentially, you end up with a product like in the US we have something called Soylent.

00:05:55.000 I don't know if that's available here, but it basically is, it's purported to be a food

00:06:00.000 that you could essentially live on that has all of the required essential nutrients in it.

00:06:04.000 But if you look at the ingredients list, it's like ingredients list,

00:06:07.000 it's a slurry of garbage essentially, but it ticks all the boxes for what we believe to be

00:06:11.000 our essential nutrients and not.

00:06:13.000 There've been no long-term randomized control trials to ascertain whether or not this will actually lead

00:06:17.000 to a thriving human as opposed to somebody who's merely just surviving.

00:06:21.000 And so, yeah, it is at the end of the day, I think a huge problem.

00:06:23.000 It's a reductionist approach that hasn't served us in any area, you know, in the sphere of biology

00:06:29.000 and certainly not nutrition.

00:06:30.000 You 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.

00:06:55.000 It 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.

00:07:11.000 So 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

00:07:26.000 desire to convey the truth around this drug.

00:07:28.000 Before we get into that though, which we'll do exclusively in the other place,

00:07:32.000 why would you tell us a little bit about the sort of obesity epidemic and its impact on health and

00:07:39.000 the relationship between obesity, big food and big pharma?

00:07:43.000 Yeah, totally.

00:07:45.000 So, as I alluded to, about half of the U.S.

00:07:48.000 population, and this is, by the way, this is a condition that we're exporting now, so I'm not sure what the exact statistics are.

00:07:53.000 I know that in the U.K., about 50% of the calories consumed by your average adult are from ultra-processed foods, and the U.S.

00:08:00.000 is higher.

00:08:01.000 It's about 60% for adults, about 70% for children.

00:08:04.000 It's worse for children.

00:08:06.000 My hope was that children would eat less processed food.

00:08:08.000 Yeah, more candy, confectionary products and things like that.

00:08:11.000 Yeah, it's a huge problem.

00:08:12.000 Particularly at a time when you're still developing, right?

00:08:15.000 And the brain is undergoing rapid development.

00:08:17.000 So 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.

00:08:29.000 So metabolic syndrome, it's a constellation of symptoms.

00:08:31.000 About 9 in 10 adults now have that.

00:08:33.000 So it leaves a dramatic minority in a state of good health, right?

00:08:39.000 And so I think the food environment definitely plays a huge role in that.

00:08:42.000 As I mentioned, 73% according to a machine learning algorithm of the foods available in your average supermarket are ultra processed.

00:08:48.000 These foods are being pushed on us.

00:08:50.000 They're sold to us in primary colors at eye level in your average supermarket.

00:08:55.000 They make health claims.

00:08:56.000 The healthiest foods in the supermarket don't make health claims.

00:08:58.000 They're found around the perimeter of the supermarket.

00:08:59.000 You don't see health claims on eggs, on avocados, on dark leafy greens, things like that.

00:09:05.000 But instead, it's the food products that are extremely high margin, right?

00:09:09.000 Can 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.

00:09:22.000 Yeah.

00:09:23.000 Lucky Charms are a greater requirement than water and your own blood and bones.

00:09:27.000 Yeah.

00:09:28.000 I'm made of Lucky Charms.

00:09:29.000 I'm made of Lucky Charms.

00:09:31.000 Yeah.

00:09:31.000 And you really are what you eat.

00:09:32.000 So this is this is a food, a nutrient profiling system that was devised out of the Friedman School for Nutrition at Tufts University.

00:09:40.000 Which 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!

00:09:50.000 Yeah.

00:09:50.000 So if this was actually like in the NFL or NBA or APL... Like a perfect food.

00:09:54.000 Like 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.

00:10:03.000 I mean, frosted mini-wheats can't come in at number three.

00:10:05.000 Right, 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.

00:10:13.000 On watermelon or kale, you're right.

00:10:15.000 But 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.

00:10:36.000 But on top of that, you'll find Lucky Charms, you'll find egg substitute fried in vegetable oil.

00:10:41.000 So these are the, these are the, essentially the darlings of the food industry that have given, been given unduly high ranking on this list.

00:10:41.000 Right?

00:10:49.000 And 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?

00:10:58.000 But 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.

00:11:04.000 So this is the problem with these kinds of systems that are heavily influenced by the food industry.

00:11:08.000 How are these kind of, this kind of data, how is it funded?

00:11:12.000 How is it put together?

00:11:13.000 Who's behind the compilation of this?

00:11:15.000 Yeah, I mean the food industry.

00:11:17.000 Like the food industry definitely has a hand in not just funding the school, but the researchers that are involved.

00:11:23.000 I 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.

00:11:33.000 How Lucky Charms are better at that for you than eggs and other whole foods.

00:11:38.000 But also look at the pharmaceutical companies.

00:11:41.000 Oh my god.

00:11:44.000 There's essentially no industry that isn't complicit.

00:11:47.000 And 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.

00:11:57.000 So it's just across the board.

00:11:58.000 And this nutrient profiling system was essentially designed to influence consumer purchases by making front of package health claims.

00:12:06.000 And so to me, I mean, that's what a scoring system is essentially. It's so that a consumer would be able to

00:12:12.000 compare food items from across different categories. And so I think it's a massive problem.

00:12:17.000 But the idea that this is objective information, the idea that you could trust the science

00:12:21.000 and regard it as empirical data rather than a set of facts that are organized particularly

00:12:28.000 to direct you to consume particular foods, to live in a particular way.

00:12:32.000 We see this across all of public life.

00:12:36.000 When you unpack information, it's often that information has a sort of a trail behind it of financial interest.

00:12:44.000 And 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.

00:13:12.000 But the problem with following the science often is that the science follows the money.

00:13:16.000 And 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.

00:13:24.000 You know, it's plain that the reliance on a particular type of science has become a new orthodoxy.

00:13:31.000 I 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.

00:13:42.000 And 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.

00:14:05.000 We're going to leave now, if you're watching us on YouTube, to make sure... How do I say that drug again?

00:14:10.000 Educanumab.

00:14:12.000 Aducanumab.

00:14:13.000 And 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.

00:14:23.000 Can I still say that on YouTube?

00:14:24.000 Yeah.

00:14:25.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, click the link in the description right now and join us over on Rumble.

00:14:30.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, click the red button and join us in Locals Become.

00:14:36.000 So, tell us a little bit more.

00:14:42.000 Also, do you drink kombucha?

00:14:43.000 Because we're developing Vile Slops, a fantastic new kombucha brand.

00:14:47.000 We're working on the name.

00:14:48.000 It's being brewed up in the cellar even now by Jim there.

00:14:51.000 He's got a great sort of wad of, I think, what do you call it?

00:14:54.000 Mother?

00:14:54.000 Some sort of... A scoby.

00:14:56.000 A scoby.

00:14:56.000 some sort of fertile, ghastly little beast. Alien mass. I've looked at it, it's the most

00:15:02.000 nasty little thing in a jar. But vile slops will be coming soon and we're making all sorts 1.00

00:15:07.000 of pledges about it, that if we can get the FDA to sign it off, which I think we can,

00:15:12.000 it's going to be, I think it's going to be a winner. Can you tell us a little bit though

00:15:14.000 about this, what's it called? Adjacentum.

00:15:16.000 Kajagoogoo. 0.56

00:15:18.000 Catch me if you can.

00:15:19.000 Catch me if you can.

00:15:20.000 Yeah, 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.

00:15:33.000 So Alzheimer's disease is characterized in part by the presence of this immense plaque burden, plaques made of a protein called amyloid beta.

00:15:43.000 Along with some other, you know, proteinopathies like misfolded tau protein.

00:15:47.000 And so Alzheimer's disease drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate.

00:15:52.000 So 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.

00:16:00.000 ...like that.

00:16:01.000 Alzheimer's, the presence of Alzheimer's can be detected decades before the first symptom.

00:16:04.000 Does that mean that new preventative measures could be applied?

00:16:07.000 That there are early indicators that mean you could change lifestyle habits?

00:16:10.000 Absolutely, yes.

00:16:11.000 Oh my god, I've never heard that before.

00:16:12.000 Yeah, so I mean you, you, ten years ago... Do you not know about that?

00:16:15.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:16:15.000 Did you know that?

00:16:16.000 Ten 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.

00:16:25.000 And this actually happened to me.

00:16:26.000 So 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.

00:16:33.000 And even prior to that diagnosis, you know, it was unclear the variant of dementia.

00:16:37.000 And so I went down the Alzheimer's disease rabbit hole.

00:16:41.000 And my first project was a feature-length documentary, which I'm still working on.

00:16:45.000 It'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.

00:16:55.000 In fact, it's now the number one cause of death in the UK as of last year, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

00:17:00.000 Dementia and Alzheimer's is the number one cause of death?

00:17:03.000 Yes.

00:17:03.000 I didn't know that either.

00:17:04.000 How come these sort of facts are so opaque and difficult to discern?

00:17:09.000 Why is it that we're only just learning about it?

00:17:11.000 This 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.

00:17:19.000 But 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.

00:17:24.000 Did you lot know that?

00:17:24.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:17:25.000 Yeah, 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.

00:17:34.000 We see this in Alzheimer's disease.

00:17:35.000 We see this at the highest echelons of academic medicine and nutrition science and the like.

00:17:41.000 And this is why it takes, on average, 17 years for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice.

00:17:48.000 And 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.

00:18:00.000 So, 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.

00:18:18.000 modifiable.

00:18:19.000 And so things like obesity, things like diabetes, hypertension, depression, low education status, these are all variables that we have.

00:18:28.000 Diet and poverty.

00:18:29.000 There you go.

00:18:30.000 But diet plays a massive role here.

00:18:30.000 There you go.

00:18:32.000 There are some non-modifiable risk factors.

00:18:34.000 There are about three of them.

00:18:35.000 So you've got your age, your gender, and your genetics.

00:18:37.000 You obviously can't change those.

00:18:38.000 But this is a condition that largely develops.

00:18:44.000 We're now starting to see, due to an interaction between those risk factors that are hardwired in us and the environment in which we live.

00:18:52.000 And so that's where I think the data is becoming abundantly clear that we do have a say.

00:18:57.000 So it was your own mother's rare form of dementia that caused you to begin investigating the subject, is that correct?

00:19:08.000 Yes.

00:19:08.000 So I began as a generalist journalist, and when my mom became sick, it was like an atom bomb going off in my world.

00:19:15.000 She was the most important person in my life.

00:19:18.000 And in every doctor's office, what I experienced with her, I've come to call diagnose and adios.

00:19:23.000 And 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.

00:19:31.000 And 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.

00:19:39.000 None of them helped.

00:19:41.000 Um, and I can say that with, with certainty.

00:19:42.000 And 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.

00:19:58.000 And 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.

00:20:05.000 I mean, we live in a time now where, you know, all of the world's knowledge is available at our fingertips 24-7.

00:20:11.000 And I found it to be incredibly empowering, despite the fact that I had this real tragic thing occurring in my personal life.

00:20:17.000 I exploited, I decided to exploit all those tools to the betterment of my, to the benefit of my family.

00:20:24.000 And what I learned was startling.

00:20:25.000 So I mean, dementia is a condition that begins years prior to the onset of symptoms.

00:20:29.000 And so that's a real window of opportunity to change the course of our cognitive destiny.

00:20:34.000 So if you're obese, become not obese.

00:20:36.000 If you're a type 2 diabetic, become not a type 2 diabetic.

00:20:39.000 You know, I mean, just being type 2 diabetic right now, which affects two thirds of, or I'm sorry, 50% of people in the United States now.

00:20:48.000 Increases your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease between two and fourfold.

00:20:51.000 So this is a massive, modifiable problem.

00:20:55.000 Yeah, that's extraordinary.

00:20:57.000 That's extraordinary.

00:20:57.000 I've never looked at it in those terms.

00:20:59.000 We 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.

00:21:18.000 Yeah, and I'll give you another example where the pharmaceutical industry may be complicit, right?

00:21:22.000 So 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.

00:21:32.000 But I think that's a gross underestimate.

00:21:34.000 And 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.

00:21:42.000 I couldn't possibly list off all of the drugs.

00:21:44.000 But these are drugs that are like essentially sleep aids, and they help with, you know, to relieve symptoms of allergies for people.

00:21:53.000 Chronic use of these drugs is associated with a dramatically higher risk of the development of Alzheimer's disease.

00:22:01.000 Is this real?

00:22:02.000 And they're drugs.

00:22:02.000 They're over-the-counter drugs.

00:22:03.000 Massive big money.

00:22:04.000 Can 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?

00:22:13.000 Totally.

00:22:14.000 So, 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.

00:22:34.000 And so from that day forward, amyloid plaque was thought to be the causal factor with regard to Alzheimer's disease.

00:22:42.000 And 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.

00:22:51.000 But of course, as time goes on, we develop new imaging technologies.

00:22:55.000 What we see is that people without Alzheimer's disease also have amyloid in the brain.

00:23:00.000 Amyloid is produced naturally in all brains, essentially.

00:23:08.000 They would try all these different drugs, trying to get amyloid out of the brain, and that's called the amyloid hypothesis.

00:23:13.000 That 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?

00:23:23.000 And so spending $3 billion a year on drug discovery.

00:23:28.000 But 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.

00:24:03.000 And so this was thought to be the missing link because, as I mentioned, cognitively healthy people have amyloid in their brain.

00:24:10.000 Researchers 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?

00:24:31.000 And 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?

00:24:37.000 It's been cited thousands of times, because science is cumulative, it builds on papers that have come prior.

00:24:43.000 citing this paper, and it really renewed faith.

00:24:47.000 It funneled a lot more money down this path and renewed faith in this so-called amyloid 1.00

00:24:52.000 hypothesis.

00:24:53.000 The problem was, and this was published last year, late last year, in Science Magazine,

00:24:59.000 a Vanderbilt researcher named Matthew Schrag was known for scouring these post-publication

00:25:05.000 peer review websites where people look at papers that have already gone through the

00:25:08.000 peer review process but have flaws that they might flag and indicate and send off to the

00:25:13.000 publishers.

00:25:15.000 And 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.

00:25:28.000 And what Matthew Schrag found was that this 2006 paper, um, the images, the data was essentially fabricated.

00:25:37.000 It was, there were artifacts indicative of Photoshop, like a cheap Photoshop cut and paste job.

00:25:43.000 So the paper was deemed completely fraudulent, like that data didn't exist.

00:25:48.000 And so again, since then, since 2006, All of this other research has come out building on top of it.

00:25:53.000 It funneled billions and billions and billions of more money looking into this path, this amyloid hypothesis. 0.96

00:25:59.000 Of course, it's wasted time, right?

00:26:01.000 Which is heartbreaking for anybody with a loved one with the condition.

00:26:04.000 And again and again and again, we see that amyloid is not the cause of the condition.

00:26:09.000 Certainly when it builds up to the pathologic degree that we see in Alzheimer's disease, it becomes problematic, of course.

00:26:15.000 But it's like claiming that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease.

00:26:19.000 It's like what's causing the cholesterol to aggregate there?

00:26:21.000 What's causing the amyloid to aggregate in the brain, right?

00:26:23.000 It's there at the scene of the crime, but it's not necessarily the victim.

00:26:26.000 It's like claiming that firefighters cause fires because firefighters are always there

00:26:29.000 at the scene of the fire, right?

00:26:31.000 It's correlation, not causation.

00:26:34.000 And 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.

00:26:59.000 And nonetheless, the FDA approved it.

00:27:02.000 And it is minimally effective, right?

00:27:06.000 It 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.

00:27:16.000 I don't, I can't say for sure if it was the majority, because I don't recall.

00:27:20.000 It 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.

00:27:35.000 And so it's not a cure.

00:27:37.000 It's just like this, like this bandaid that probably does more harm than good.

00:27:40.000 So it possibly did nothing.

00:27:42.000 It possibly made things worse.

00:27:44.000 Experts 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.

00:27:53.000 Do 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?

00:28:02.000 Yeah, I mean, it's money.

00:28:03.000 I mean, first of all, it's wildly expensive.

00:28:06.000 And the benefit is it leads to a .45 cognitive benefit on an 18 point scale.

00:28:12.000 So .45 out of 18 points, that's the benefit.

00:28:15.000 And then you have all these horrible side effects to contend with, right?

00:28:19.000 Brain swelling.

00:28:20.000 Is it that drug?

00:28:21.000 Catch me if you can, Giselle.

00:28:23.000 Is it that what it done was broke down plaque, but it didn't affect the causes of Alzheimer's?

00:28:27.000 Is that what they were able to demonstrate its effect was?

00:28:30.000 Exactly.

00:28:31.000 So it reduced the plaque, right?

00:28:31.000 Yeah.

00:28:33.000 So it's like it serves as confirmation bias.

00:28:35.000 So as a toothpaste, fantastic.

00:28:37.000 But as a remedy for Alzheimer's and dementia, not so good.

00:28:41.000 There you go.

00:28:42.000 I mean, what it did was it served to confirm the biases of all of the many scientists who

00:28:47.000 are fiercely territorial over their reputations working in that field.

00:28:50.000 And again, if I had a blockbuster drug to give my mom.

00:28:57.000 You 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?

00:29:05.000 But these drugs don't work, and they're potentially, you know, they're likely more harm than good, so it's a big issue.

00:29:12.000 Yeah, 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

00:29:45.000 used in conjunction with others, this sort of symphony of shoddy medications that often

00:29:52.000 have not been effectively trialled. And increasingly what we're finding is that the motivation

00:29:57.000 for the pharmaceutical companies, for the food industry, for the FDA is not scientific

00:30:03.000 excellence or nutritional heights but profit.

00:30:07.000 And it's pretty plain that it's become gargantuan and out of control.

00:30:11.000 As we often discuss on this show, I don't think anybody begrudges industriousness or even a profit motive.

00:30:19.000 But when it reaches the point that it has done in the examples that you conveyed, it's a problem.

00:30:24.000 Also 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.

00:30:31.000 Now, 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?

00:30:44.000 Oh yeah, so when I first got started, an ambassador for one of these drug discovery funds Which is a non-profit, right?

00:30:53.000 It'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.

00:31:01.000 But when I first got started on this project, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it.

00:31:05.000 And so it went kind of viral and we're raising money and all that.

00:31:09.000 And thankfully it was successful and we're now nearing the finish line, finally.

00:31:12.000 But this ambassador wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

00:31:17.000 Basically 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.

00:31:30.000 And this was like, this is years ago.

00:31:31.000 So this is even before that Lancet paper that said the potential for prevention is high.

00:31:35.000 Right.

00:31:36.000 But they, these, this, whether it's the, you know, the drug discovery funds or the researchers,

00:31:44.000 people tend to be down on what they're not up on in the field of academia, right?

00:31:47.000 So this kid comes along trying to- Are you that kid?

00:31:51.000 I'm that kid.

00:31:52.000 You're like a plucky kid.

00:31:53.000 Yeah.

00:31:53.000 You're an outsider.

00:31:55.000 You, Max- Lugavere, yeah.

00:31:58.000 Lugavere, with a name that sounds like a radical and an outlaw, you turn up with your new documentary

00:32:04.000 where you wanna talk about diet, the efficacy of certain medicines,

00:32:04.000 where you want to talk about diet, the efficacy of certain medicines,

00:32:08.000 presumably your personal experiences with your mother.

00:32:08.000 presumably your personal experiences with your mother, and immediately there's opposition

00:32:15.000 when it's at the Kickstarter phase.

00:32:17.000 Yeah, immediately.

00:32:17.000 It's astonishing.

00:32:18.000 And it was heartbreaking at the time, because I thought that this film had the potential

00:32:22.000 and it will do massive good for the world, but because it took the spotlight for a second

00:32:28.000 during that time off of, we gotta find a cure.

00:32:33.000 Alzheimer's disease is the only condition that can't be prevented, cured, or treated.

00:32:36.000 Let people get it, then cure it with toothpaste.

00:32:39.000 There you go.

00:32:40.000 And so it's like a house of cards built on fear, right?

00:32:46.000 If we stop the fear-mongering, then people are going to stop the funding of this, right?

00:32:51.000 They're going to stop writing the checks.

00:32:53.000 And 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.

00:33:00.000 It was an op-ed.

00:33:01.000 Do you look at it sometimes? 1.00

00:33:02.000 I mean bastards. 0.99

00:33:04.000 I 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. 0.99

00:33:18.000 He wants to ask you about plant-based diets.

00:33:22.000 Are they a good thing or a bad thing?

00:33:25.000 I noticed that you liked our beef down at the bottom of the Lucky Charm link.

00:33:30.000 I'm a big advocate for omnivory.

00:33:31.000 I 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.

00:33:44.000 Because you just think there are valuable nutrients, proteins, and things like that.

00:33:49.000 Turin and stuff in me that we just can't like that.

00:33:52.000 Yeah, I think like when we try to distill an entire food category such as animal source foods to one essential Nutrient like vitamin b12.

00:34:01.000 We'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.

00:34:24.000 So yeah, I think you can make any diet work, essentially.

00:34:29.000 But my view is that Omnivore is probably the most optimal.

00:34:32.000 Is it true that you disagree with some of the views of our other sexy diet guest, Paul Saladino?

00:34:39.000 He's got some theories on vegetables.

00:34:41.000 I think he says vegetables are a waste of time.

00:34:43.000 He hates them. 1.00

00:34:44.000 They should be shot. 1.00

00:34:47.000 Each parsnip should be interviewed now and asked to leave the country. 0.99

00:34:51.000 And if the parsnip for some reason resists, it should be pushed over the White Cliffs of Dover.

00:34:56.000 That's Paul Saladino's theories.

00:34:57.000 What are your views on vegetables?

00:35:00.000 No, I disagree.

00:35:00.000 Uh, I disagree.

00:35:01.000 I think vegetables are great.

00:35:03.000 Um, 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.

00:35:12.000 I think that that's, uh, baseless, but I think he does present some, some really good ideas as well.

00:35:18.000 So we've got to come to a kind of consensus of truth together.

00:35:22.000 Uh, 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.

00:35:29.000 How?

00:35:31.000 Well, so it's not that it can necessarily be detected, we can look for what are called risk factors at this point.

00:35:37.000 They 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?

00:35:51.000 It hasn't yet been found, yeah.

00:35:54.000 But there's not enough trialing and research because that's not profitable, it's in fact expensive.

00:35:58.000 There 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.

00:36:08.000 But 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.

00:36:31.000 Know Daganoku, who's a great member of our community, and if you're not a member of our community yet, press the red button.

00:36:36.000 There are all sorts of incredible benefits, including regular scans to prevent outside- we don't do that, that's just simply false advertising.

00:36:44.000 No, 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.

00:36:53.000 How 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?

00:36:58.000 I've personally tried for years to figure out the diet which matches me best, sometimes living exclusively on grass.

00:37:04.000 Once for a week, only wine gums.

00:37:06.000 Another time, squirrel tail.

00:37:08.000 I've tried everything.

00:37:10.000 Some of those details I added.

00:37:12.000 What, how do I find a diet which matches me best while staying away from food that are filled with chemicals, plastics, or genetic modifications?

00:37:18.000 That's from Nodaganoku.

00:37:20.000 Yeah, I mean, I think, like, again, shop around the perimeter of your supermarket and stick to mainly minimally processed whole foods.

00:37:25.000 Everybody is different, so there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet.

00:37:28.000 I like where he was going with that question.

00:37:30.000 And there's also, you know, everybody's different and then everybody has different microbiomes.

00:37:33.000 So, you know, we can say things like vegetables and things, you know, of that nature are good for you.

00:37:38.000 But 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.

00:37:46.000 So, you know, you got to, I think a little bit of experimentation is really important.

00:37:50.000 But 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.

00:37:59.000 Things like that.

00:37:59.000 I think you're, you're probably in the clear.

00:38:02.000 Max, Dootie1947 says, Alright mate, I love my fried egg.

00:38:06.000 Organic, on toast, whole grain, with olive oil on it every morning.

00:38:11.000 Is this healthy?

00:38:12.000 Am I living in a gangster's paradise?

00:38:14.000 I would say that's pretty good.

00:38:16.000 I love olive oil.

00:38:18.000 Even if you're cooking with it?

00:38:20.000 Yeah, you can.

00:38:20.000 It's a myth that you can't cook with it.

00:38:23.000 It's very chemically stable, owed to its predominance of monounsaturated fat, which is very chemically stable, and it's about 15% saturated fat.

00:38:30.000 And on top of that, extra virgin olive oil is loaded with polyphenol antioxidants, which protect the oil against oxidation.

00:38:37.000 It's chemically very stable.

00:38:39.000 They cook with it in the Mediterranean.

00:38:40.000 I mean, people who, for generations, use extra virgin olive oil, they're using it to cook with, right?

00:38:46.000 Either that or, you know, animal-based fats.

00:38:48.000 But I think the healthiest fat to use, like the healthiest added fat to use is by far extra virgin olive oil.

00:38:54.000 And then eggs are one of nature's multivitamins.

00:38:56.000 I mean, it literally is a cognitive multivitamin, the egg yolk.

00:38:59.000 We've answered your questions.

00:39:02.000 That's what we've done.

00:39:03.000 That's why it's worth becoming an Awakened Wonder and a member of our community.

00:39:07.000 Another thing that you'll avoid by being part of a community is potentially depression.

00:39:12.000 40 million Americans are apparently depressed, or at least that many Americans are on antidepressants.

00:39:18.000 For all I know, it's many, many more.

00:39:20.000 Is depression exacerbated or even caused by diet in your view, Max, seeing as how you claim to know everything?

00:39:28.000 I don't claim to know everything.

00:39:29.000 I don't.

00:39:29.000 I really don't.

00:39:32.000 I like to be really clear, actually, about what I know and what I don't know.

00:39:34.000 But 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.

00:39:43.000 And it's showing us that for a subset of depressed patients, diet may play a role.

00:39:50.000 The mechanism here, it's being referred to by some as the inflammatory cytokine model of depression.

00:39:56.000 That depression is the result of chronic low-grade inflammation that's occurring in the body.

00:40:01.000 And we basically can control, to some degree, with our diets and our lifestyles, our overall inflammatory status.

00:40:09.000 And 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.

00:40:17.000 And an overly sedentary lifestyle, a lifestyle that relegates sleep to an afterthought, a lifestyle that is chronically stressed out.

00:40:23.000 We 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.

00:40:34.000 And so there are studies now coming out of Many highly regarded academic centers like the Food and Mood Center at Deakin University.

00:40:43.000 One 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.

00:40:56.000 The other half were given a Mediterranean dietary pattern to adhere to.

00:41:02.000 They saw three times the rate of remission from depression in that group that was given the Mediterranean dietary pattern to consume.

00:41:10.000 Olive oil, animal products, dark leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, things like that.

00:41:15.000 And 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.

00:41:24.000 So, we're seeing now that, you know, in the form of clinical randomized control trials, that diet does have a pretty powerful influence, right?

00:41:31.000 And 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.

00:41:40.000 We know that it can play a role in the reduction of anxiety and depression and things like that.

00:41:45.000 We also know that Yeah, there are nutrients.

00:41:49.000 There are nutrients in animal products, in shellfish, that play a really important role in mental health.

00:41:54.000 And I like what you said about inflammation, that we're like inflamed as individuals and as a culture.

00:42:00.000 What do you think about fake meat, the sort of the vegans treat, the way out?

00:42:05.000 Bill Gates' hobby course, fake meats, what are they?

00:42:09.000 Any good or vile blobs of nothingness?

00:42:13.000 I mean, I think that they don't hold a candle to actual meat in terms of a nutritional value.

00:42:20.000 But I'll concede that many vegans enjoy it because it just tastes good.

00:42:24.000 Yeah.

00:42:25.000 And so I wouldn't withhold that from them, right?

00:42:27.000 Here's the thing about me.

00:42:28.000 I actually don't care what people choose to eat.

00:42:30.000 I'm not emotionally invested in what other people choose to consume.

00:42:34.000 I just like to lay out the facts free of...

00:42:37.000 As free from bias as I can possibly muster.

00:42:42.000 And so, yeah, from that standpoint, eat it if you enjoy it, but from a nutrition standpoint, it doesn't hold a candle to real red meat.

00:42:48.000 Mate, I want to thank you for coming on our show, for sharing that information so fluently, carefully and beautifully.

00:42:55.000 Thank you for mobilising your own personal story and suffering into something valuable for the community.

00:43:02.000 And thanks for responding so brilliantly to our community questions.

00:43:06.000 I wish you all the best with the documentary.

00:43:08.000 You've found the funding for that now, have you?

00:43:10.000 Yeah.

00:43:10.000 We, well, we still have like, you know, a bit of a ways to go.

00:43:13.000 We need to find distribution for it, but we have a trailer at littleemptyboxes.com.

00:43:18.000 And, um, and I host my own podcast too, so people can come and check me out.

00:43:22.000 Uh, it's called The Genius Life.

00:43:23.000 There you go.

00:43:23.000 We'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.

00:43:29.000 And as Max mentioned, his podcast, The Genius Life is also available.

00:43:35.000 Now, 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.

00:43:46.000 If you are an Awakened Wonder, simply by pressing the red button, you can join our team meetings, post-show shows, meditations, podcast recordings.

00:43:54.000 It's really worth becoming a member.

00:43:56.000 I guarantee that.

00:43:58.000 Now, last week, the world was lit up to a degree by Tucker's controversial interview with that dude that made them Obama revelations.

00:44:08.000 So, 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.

00:44:18.000 How can this status be maintained when you scrutinize Obama's time in office, particularly around war?

00:44:25.000 Here's the news.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - September 12, 2023

Defying Dementia! Max Lugavere on Brain Health, Nutrition & Lifestyle

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