Max Blumberg joins me to talk about his new documentary, Little Empty Boxes, about Alzheimer s disease, the most common form of dementia, which affects 6 million people in the United States and is the most commonly diagnosed form of the condition. In this episode, we talk with Max about what he s been working on for the last 10 years, why he s dedicated his life to Alzheimer s research, and why he thinks the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes the condition is a fraud. We also talk about the role of amyloid beta in Alzheimer s, and how the discovery of this protein changed the direction of research in the field, and the role it plays in the development of Alzheimer s prevention strategies. This episode is brought to you by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Alzheimer s Association, and Alzheimer s Research Collaborative Research, a not-for-profit organization run by the Alzheimer's Association and the National Center for Neuropsychology and Neurogenetics at the University of St. Francis de Waldron to discuss Alzheimer s and other forms of dementia and its effect on human neurology. Thanks to Max for coming on the show, and for being kind enough to share his story with us! and for letting us use his voice and expertise in this episode. Thank you Max, Max, for being a national treasure. You are a wonderful human being, and you are an inspiration. - thank you, Max Thanks also to Dr. Alex, for working so hard on the documentary for coming out with the documentary, Little Empty boxeses . in honor of my mom, Dr. Alzheimer s Disease Prevention, and so much more! - The Alzheimer's Disease Prevention Documentary, by Dr. Alois Alzheimer from Alzheimer s on this episode of the podcast - and for all the work he s done to make Alzheimer s Prevention. and all the research he s doing to make dementia prevention, and I hope you enjoy it the first ever dementia prevention documentary about the science of dementia prevention in the next episode of The Big Little Empty boxes in the world. in order to make you can be a little empty boxes to make the most important thing we can all of us can do to help people better understand Alzheimer s in the first place a little more aware of the disease prevention about it. thank you.
00:01:22.000And there's a lot of controversy within the field.
00:01:27.000The last time I was here, we talked about fraud in the research space with regard to the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia.
00:01:41.000And actually, finally, over the past month, that paper was finally retracted.
00:01:46.000Could you explain to everybody what the fraud was?
00:01:49.000Yeah, so basically, among the dementias, Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of it, and that affects about 6 million people in the United States.
00:01:57.000And since it was first named in 1906 by physician Alois Alzheimer, the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes Alzheimer's disease, dubbed the amyloid hypothesis, has been that this plaque formed by a precursor protein called amyloid beta accumulates in the brain,
00:02:16.000And by finding a drug that can potentially remove, extract those plaques from the brain, from the extracellular space around neurons, that we could essentially cure the disease.
00:02:29.000That the causal factor in the condition was ultimately this amyloid beta protein, which forms the plaque.
00:02:40.000Trial after trial had been a dismal failure, and it wasn't looking good until in 2006, a paper was published in Nature, which for any scientist publishing in Nature, it's like winning an Academy Award.
00:02:54.000And that paper, essentially, what that did was it allegedly identified this variant of amyloid beta that connected the plaque to the cognitive dysfunction.
00:03:06.000So the most important clinical feature Of Alzheimer's disease.
00:03:09.000Because for a long time, it was known that cognitively healthy people accumulate plaque in their brains.
00:03:15.000And that plaque doesn't seem to correlate with cognitive impairment or anything like that.
00:03:19.000And so that was very deflating for researchers in the field until this 2006 paper came out.
00:03:25.000And what it did was it renewed faith in this hypothesis, which was always a hypothesis.
00:03:32.000And Continued to send billions and billions of dollars worth of funding down this path and what turned out to be the case just two years ago was that that paper was essentially fraudulent and It represented about 16 years worth of wasted time wasted money Which was hugely deflating for not just the research community,
00:03:54.000but also for any patient who's ever suffered from Alzheimer's disease and You know, the way that the field is now slowly starting to turn, but this is a drum that I've been beating for the past 10 years, is that we really need to start talking about these conditions in terms of prevention.
00:04:09.000And that's what inspired me to set down this path of creating this documentary, Little Empty Boxes.
00:04:20.000In the paper, they identified these proteins that they isolated in rat models of the condition, mouse models of the condition, called A-beta star 56. Again, amyloid is...
00:04:36.000Amyloid is there at the scene of the crime, so to speak.
00:04:38.000So when you have Alzheimer's disease, somebody who's died of Alzheimer's disease, what they find inevitably in the brains of cadavers who've died from Alzheimer's disease are two features.
00:04:48.000They see this aggregation of these plaques, amyloid beta plaques, and tangled proteins called tau.
00:04:54.000And so it was a very seductive narrative that this plaque causes the condition, right?
00:05:00.000The problem is they've succeeded at reducing the plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, but that hasn't led to any improvement in the clinically meaningful features of the disease that we aspire to improve for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease,
00:05:17.000The cognitive, the cognitive function.
00:05:21.000And in tandem with that, we see that amyloid is produced naturally in all brains and people who are cognitively healthy have amyloid in their brains.
00:05:28.000There's a degree of amyloid burden that seems to be inevitable as a just general phenomena due to aging.
00:05:37.000And so it was becoming very clear that amyloid is not the causative feature here, that there is some other factor or factors at play which lead to cognitive degeneration.
00:05:48.000Until 2006. And in 2006 what happened, this paper basically found this subtype that when injected into a mouse caused profound cognitive dysfunction.
00:06:00.000And what they did was they illustrated these proteins in what's called a Western blot analysis, which is basically a graphical depiction of proteins.
00:06:10.000And the peer review process for papers, I mean, people go in and they crunch the numbers and stuff, but they don't look at imagery, and they don't...
00:06:18.000They don't go through the imagery with a fine tooth comb to make sure that it hasn't been photoshopped, essentially.
00:06:25.000But one sleuth, who is a scientist himself, this researcher from Vanderbilt named Matthew Schrag, actually identified that a lot of these images had artifacts that made it very clear that they were faked.
00:07:43.000And that, you know, you have this scientific paper you publish and you knowingly release these Photoshopped images in order to validate your paper.
00:08:07.000And by the way, that paper has been subsequently referenced thousands of times in the medical literature.
00:08:14.000Basically, you know, negating a ton of research.
00:08:19.000I mean, like countless papers that have been since published that have referenced that paper in 2006, that Nature paper that was finally retracted.
00:08:30.000And it's my view that dementia, essentially by the time you are diagnosed with dementia, we'll say Alzheimer's disease, you are in late stage Alzheimer's disease.
00:08:40.000Whether it's mild, whether you were just diagnosed yesterday, this is a disease of midlife with symptoms that appear in late life.
00:08:48.000And so that's why the field is now slowly, hopefully, I hope, pivoting more towards prevention.
00:08:53.000And where the money, I think, needs to go is into identifying that golden biomarker that's associated with the onset of the condition.
00:09:03.000So that clinicians can intervene earlier.
00:09:06.000Because right now when you catch it, it's sort of like pancreatic cancer, which incidentally my mom passed from in 2018. But it's, you know, pancreatic cancer, most of the time it's diagnosed and it's too late.
00:09:53.000And so that's why 10 years ago when I saw this developing in my mom and I stumbled upon all this research and I began really diving in, it became very clear to me that this is something that anybody with a brain needs to be aware of and talking about.
00:10:05.000And what's the factors when it comes to someone eventually getting Alzheimer's?
00:11:47.000Which is a mind-blowing way to think about this condition.
00:11:52.000And in fact, we see that peripheral insulin resistance, so the hallmark of type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance.
00:12:02.000And we see that the more insulin resistant a person is, the more difficulty their brains seem to have with regard to creating ATP, which is the primary energy currency of our cells.
00:12:14.000And the researcher who coined type 3 diabetes, her name is Suzanne Delamonte.
00:12:56.000So, when you first started becoming aware of this, when your mother develops this condition, you first start being aware of it, what were the first things that you noticed that started to get you to question whether or not the conventional applications of drugs are on the right path?
00:13:16.000Yeah, I mean, you know, I grew up in New York City, and when my mom first started to show these symptoms, And how did you notice it?
00:15:12.000And, you know, when you're in these doctor's offices and they're, you know...
00:15:17.000Oftentimes, they don't have the best bedside manner, and they run a battery of esoteric tests.
00:15:22.000It can be incredibly overwhelming, and it becomes really hard to advocate for yourself, I've learned, as somebody with a chronic illness, not least of which a chronic illness that's affecting your cognition.
00:15:32.000And so I decided at that point, essentially, that I had to pack up my LA life.
00:15:39.000I moved back to New York, and I started going with my mom.
00:15:41.000From doctor's visit to doctor's visit.
00:15:44.000And again, you know, I'm pretty privileged.
00:16:32.000And so my mom was given one of these drugs without full informed consent, I don't think.
00:16:37.000I mean, ultimately, we tried to get her off of them, which we found out was incredibly difficult to do.
00:16:42.000Titrating off one of these SSRIs is really, really hard, actually.
00:16:47.000And it turned out, obviously, to be the case that my mom, that these symptoms were not due to depression.
00:16:52.000They were due to degeneration in her brain.
00:16:55.000And we went from doctor's office to doctor's office, ultimately culminating in a trip to the Cleveland Clinic.
00:17:00.000So just imagine, like, we're in New York City, right?
00:17:02.000We have, like, multiple hospitals at our disposal.
00:17:05.000We had to book a trip to the Cleveland Clinic, and it was there that, for the first time, my mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition.
00:17:11.000So she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at that time.
00:17:19.000I've always been a pretty chill guy, but that was the first time in my life I've ever had a panic attack.
00:17:25.000Just Googling the drugs, you know, like any scared kid would do when their mom receives a life-changing diagnosis.
00:17:33.000And that was the moment for me that I realized that my life had to pivot and I had no choice but to dedicate myself to learning all that I could about these conditions.
00:18:22.000Acting in a reactionary way to something that had taken decades to manifest to me just seemed wrong.
00:18:29.000And I stumbled upon the work of a neurologist at Weill Cornell New York Presbyterian who was talking about Alzheimer's disease as a preventable condition, which is not something that I'd heard prior to coming across his work.
00:18:46.000And I realized at that time that this was like considered 10 years ago a fringe idea.
00:18:51.000Dementia prevention was like a fringe idea.
00:18:54.000Except for through the lens of this neurologist who was working within the confines of, you know, rigorous, randomized research and, you know, and checking all the boxes for scientific credibility.
00:19:09.000And so to me, it became really clear that this is a topic that I needed to help amplify using my skill set as a non-medical doctor, as a non-academic scientist.
00:19:17.000And I also learned really early on that it's not a genetic condition, that we have genetic risk factors, but that That we have a say when it comes to our cognitive destiny, that this is not a natural part of aging.
00:19:31.000I mean, you know, everything in the body as you get older tends to falter in its functionality.
00:19:36.000You know, like, our joints don't work as well.
00:19:38.000And, you know, there is a degree of forgetfulness that I think is...
00:19:43.000In a way, a natural aspect of getting older, but cognitive impairment, that's not natural.
00:19:48.000Degeneration of our neurons of, for example, the portion of the brain that drives movement, the substantia nigra, which occurs in Parkinson's disease, that's not normal.
00:20:02.000And so it began this investigation for me, trying to understand, because I was seeing the person who meant the most to me of anybody in life.
00:20:09.000You know, degenerating every day in front of my face, getting worse and worse and worse.
00:20:14.000It instilled this burning desire in me to understand all that I could and to share in the hopes that it might prevent it from happening to others.
00:20:27.000And yeah, it was also very odd because my maternal grandmother did not have dementia.
00:20:32.000So it was really sad and surreal, in fact, that my mom was increasingly requiring around-the-clock care while her mother, who lived in the same home, And was 30 years older was cognitively totally healthy.
00:21:24.000Like, if there was a drug that would have actually helped my mom, I would have been first in line at the pharmacy to fill that prescription for her.
00:21:32.000And physicians are very quick to, you know, to write a prescription.
00:21:37.000It's like add a new drug to the arsenal.
00:21:40.000They're very reluctant to deprescribe.
00:21:45.000I have never seen a prescription deprescribe to my mom.
00:21:49.000And by the end of her life, she was on 14 different pharmaceuticals.
00:21:52.000And there's nobody on earth that understands how all of those different drugs are interacting in a system that's growing increasingly frail.
00:22:03.000And, you know, so I started to investigate these modifiable risk factors, you know, whether it's dietary, diet-related, which it, you know, in my mom's case, it may have had something to do with her diet over the years.
00:22:17.000It might have had nothing to do with her diet over the years.
00:22:20.000But also now we're starting to see that air pollution is a major contributor to neurodegeneration.
00:22:28.000We're starting to see now that, well, as of 2020, it was acknowledged that exposure to air pollution is actually one of these newly identified modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.
00:22:38.000So exposure to fine particulate matter, PM2.5, actually might cause Alzheimer's disease for some patients.
00:22:46.000And then Most interestingly, and this is one of the things that I want to talk about with you, which I came across the work of a neurologist named Dr. Ray Dorsey, who's over at University of Rochester, who's done a lot of work publishing on the link between environmental toxicants and Parkinson's disease.
00:23:04.000Parkinson's disease is now the fastest growing brain disease.
00:23:06.000And my mom's condition actually had more in common with Parkinson's disease than it did Alzheimer's disease.
00:23:11.000She had Lewy body dementia, which has more in common with Parkinson's, even though they're both dementia, Lewy body and Alzheimer's.
00:24:06.000We use it here, and occupational exposure to this compound is associated with between two and a half to three times the risk for the development of Parkinson's disease.
00:24:20.000Related compounds are literally used in mouse models to create Parkinson's disease.
00:24:27.000The company that creates it has been under investigation for years, and what has now come to light is that they knew about the fact that these chemicals accumulate in the brain, in brain tissue, and they seem to selectively target the region of the brain associated with Parkinson's disease,
00:25:00.000How do you know if those pesticides or herbicides are being used?
00:25:04.000Well, the residues and the exposures that you get from eating them is very low, but we don't know what long-term exposure to those low levels is doing to us.
00:25:16.000My mother is somebody who never believed in Organic produce, right?
00:25:46.000And we now have data suggesting that it creates this condition, that it selectively targets and destroys dopamine-producing neurons that mediate movement.
00:25:57.000And it's used in cereal grains, things like that.
00:26:05.000Why does cannabis oil have a profound effect on Parkinson's patients?
00:26:12.000You know, I don't know about cannabis oil, but I can tell you about nicotine.
00:26:17.000And nicotine is a very interesting compound from the vantage point of Parkinsonism.
00:26:23.000And I know, I mean, a lot of people, you know, love nicotine obviously for its cognitive boosting effects.
00:26:31.000I'm not going to say that it's a healthy compound.
00:26:33.000I mean, I think that it has cardiovascular repercussions.
00:26:47.000Nicotine by itself raises heart rate and it raises blood pressure acutely.
00:26:53.000Not by much, but presumably And it's vasoconstrictive as well.
00:27:00.000So there's some evidence suggesting it impedes wound healing.
00:27:07.000I will occasionally use nicotine as a cognitive enhancer, but I also have...
00:27:13.000I have chronic low back issues, and I think that, you know, for people with disc issues, this is just a speculation, but I think that it's probably not a good idea to chronically use nicotine if you have disc issues, which are already, your discs and your back are already poorly vascularized,
00:27:33.000And smoking, you know, increases your risk for Alzheimer's disease.
00:27:38.000I don't think that we've identified a relationship between pure nicotine and, well, pretty much anything.
00:27:45.000The research on pure nicotine by itself is pretty sparse.
00:27:49.000Most of the research on the health effects of nicotine is confounded by smoking, which is obviously not good for you.
00:27:55.000But interestingly, there does seem to be an inverse relationship between nicotine use, even via smoking, and Parkinsonism.
00:28:03.000So people who smoke cigarettes seem to be protected to some degree against Parkinson's disease, which is very odd.
00:28:11.000And they've shown in mouse models That nicotine actually, when they use some of these mitochondrial toxins, some of these poisons like Paraquat, right?
00:28:22.000Or another one called MPTP, which has been used as a street party drug, but it's actually profoundly neurotoxic.
00:28:29.000It's been shown to create chronic Parkinsonism with just acute use.
00:28:34.000Nicotine actually prevents that in those models.
00:28:38.000So it's been shown to somehow protect the brain from, in some regards, against Parkinson's disease.
00:28:45.000So I wouldn't recommend using nicotine unless somebody, and this is again a speculation, but my hypothesis is that if you were exposed occupationally to some of these compounds like Paraquat or Rodinone, or there are other compounds that are being directly connected to Parkinson's disease,
00:29:04.000I would say maybe nicotine is a potentially disease-modifying intervention in those contexts.
00:29:10.000So when they've studied patients, was there a noticeably smaller instance of people who developed Parkinson's who were smokers, or was it non-existent?
00:29:25.000I'm not sure the relative risk decrease, but it's one of these odd things that seems pretty consistent in the literature, that smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.
00:30:47.000Might act in a way as an antioxidant in the brain.
00:30:49.000I'm not recommending it because there are risks, of course, but they've shown that it seems to be protective in these animal models against these poisons that would otherwise cause Parkinsonism.
00:31:03.000Some other cool facts about nicotine, actually, because I did do a little bit of a deep dive recently into it, because I do notice a cognitive benefit when I use it.
00:31:51.000So it's relatively transient in your system.
00:31:55.000But then I think the more interesting compound is its primary metabolite, which is called cotinine.
00:32:02.000Cotinine's half-life is 20 hours long.
00:32:04.000And it seems to also boost cognitive function, mental health, insofar as animal models can show us that these compounds boost mental health.
00:32:13.000Might even enhance what's called fear extinction.
00:32:16.000So for people with PTSD, it might play a role.
00:32:19.000So it's a really interesting compound.
00:32:22.000But, you know, again, it's highly addictive.
00:34:09.000See, I mean, it does seem to be this, it's like this really interesting compound where it does all these, you know, it has all these effects in the body that many of which I'm sure are negative, but it does seem to do some good stuff for the brain, which is fascinating,
00:34:27.000So I think, again, I'm not promoting it, but...
00:34:32.000If you're able to forge, as an adult, a responsible relationship with it, then maybe it's worth experimenting with.
00:34:43.000Particularly because of its potential to...
00:34:48.000I don't want this to come off as an endorsement for nicotine, but its ability potentially to protect against Parkinsonism is very interesting.
00:34:56.000And so when a person, you're saying, so this is something that starts to happen in midlife and then it really expresses itself in dramatic ways years later.
00:35:09.000Other than the environmental factors, what dietary factors contribute?
00:35:15.000Except, obviously, pesticides and herbicides that are, unfortunately, a part of our food system now.
00:35:41.000As we've seen, right, with Paraquat and this Chinese company that has shrouded the data, and in fact, they've assembled internally a SWAT team to essentially suppress data suggesting harm due to exposure to this herbicide.
00:35:57.000Even though it's banned in that country?
00:35:58.000Even though it's banned in China, yeah.
00:36:04.000But there was another article that came out recently in the publication ProPublica written by, I believe her name was Sharon Lerner, another journalist who I connected with at this DC event that I was at recently, who, it was this crazy,
00:36:19.0003M has been hiding the health harms, shrouding the health harms, suppressing the health harms due to exposure to these PFAS compounds.
00:36:30.000That are forever chemicals, known endocrine disruptors.
00:36:35.000So there's like all this corporate collusion and shrouding of the truth.
00:36:40.000And I'm just like, I think insofar as you can reduce your exposures to these kinds of things and selectively, you know, if money is scarce, you know, selectively buy certain things organic.
00:37:06.000We've all got microplastics in our balls these days, microplastics in our atheromas, right?
00:37:11.000Like they found in our arteries, that the presence of microplastics was associated with two to threefold increased risk of cardiovascular death.
00:37:21.000Partnering with Environmental Health News, a consumer watchdog sent 40 bandages of different brands to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certified lab.
00:37:29.000The lab found that 65% of the bandages contained detectable levels of synthetic forever chemicals, or PFAS. Yeah.
00:37:57.000Is that trolls from pharmaceutical companies?
00:38:01.000I mean, that's something that I guarantee you corporations use.
00:38:06.000If nations use it, and we know they do, and we know we do, we know that there's troll farms in Russia, we know this is a real thing.
00:38:14.000Why wouldn't corporations use that too, especially if they could farm that off and be removed from it as far as being able to trace back the paperwork?
00:38:25.000I mean, even within our own government, the USDA, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 95% of people on that committee have or have had conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry.
00:38:42.000At least 50% that I'm aware of today, working on the 2025 issue, we see all the time there's been a number of great...
00:39:15.000I mean, these companies, they pay these people that are body positive influencers as well.
00:39:21.000So they're basically paying people that are ill because of eating these things to tell other people it's okay to eat these things and that it's somehow or another phobic, whether it's fat phobic or whatever it is, to not encourage body positivity.
00:39:41.000It's stupid for the people that are getting it.
00:39:44.000It's stupid for the people that are promoting it.
00:39:46.000It's stupid for our culture to be inundated with this nonsense and misinformation where we have to sort through it and try to do deeper research and consult people who actually understand what's going on.
00:40:00.000It's so disheartening that we live in this world that's so compromised by money.
00:40:05.000That information about key things like your own health is so distorted that it's hard.
00:40:12.000Like, you know, you talk to people and so many people have like a basic misunderstanding of what is good and not good for you.
00:40:20.000And all of it is because of this kind of thing.
00:40:23.000That it's just so prevalent and it's so confusing.
00:40:27.000And you're getting expert advice from people, which is one of the wildest ones for me.
00:41:01.000I mean, most of the social media, you know, personas that I've observed that purport to be experts or that, you know, that seem to have, I don't know whether it's through credentialism, a degree of authority.
00:41:16.000I mean, I wouldn't send a loved one to.
00:41:19.000It's just gaslighting on a mass scale, because your average person today comes across this ideology that all foods are fine, it's all good, and they try to reduce their consumption of the crap that they're already eating, and they end up failing at that,
00:41:38.000because it's really hard to moderate your consumption of these foods, which have been engineered to be consumed Quickly and regularly, and then they feel as though they're, you know, they feel moral failure, and then it just creates this vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting.
00:41:55.000We're not being honest about the way that these foods impact behavior.
00:42:00.000And today, 60% of the calories that your average person consumes comes from ultra-processed foods, which are foods that are highly calorie-dense.
00:42:18.000And by the way, it's these ultra-processed foods that are a major route of ingestion for these kinds of chemicals that we're talking about, these industrial chemicals, forever chemicals.
00:42:28.000You know, ultra-processed foods are, you know, if you want more phthalates in your body, We're good to go.
00:42:55.000Which is a very easy, I don't know if easy is the right term, but it's a very simple proxy to use to identify how these compounds might be affecting us, right?
00:44:21.000I get asked this a lot, like, who do you know who to trust on social media?
00:44:24.000I think a really good heuristic is, you know, somebody actually, I was giving a talk recently, and somebody highlighted that one good indicator of somebody who is likely trustworthy is somebody who is willing to present the opposing viewpoint,
00:44:43.000and not strawman the opposing viewpoint, but actually steelman the opposing viewpoint, like to actually make clear what the opposing viewpoint is, and then to refute that viewpoint.
00:44:51.000So they're not ideologically connected to the result.
00:45:06.000I'm also not trying to be one of these people on social media that purports to know everything, to have the magic routine or protocol.
00:45:13.000You know, for everything, you know, as like some kind of, you know, all-knowing arbiter of health information because I feel like there are still so many unknowns and I could easily one day develop what it is.
00:45:31.000I had a health scare in 2022 that, um, you know, just proved to me that, you know, there is a lot of like luck that goes into this, you know, into this equation as well.
00:45:53.000Oh man, I have mild, or it's probably progressed, but it's like disc desiccation between L5 and S1. So it's basically a dehydrated disc, which I got from just squatting improperly 10 years ago,
00:46:08.000and my back's never been the same since.
00:46:32.000Louis Simmons from Westside Barbell developed this machine that strengthens the back and actively decompresses the back.
00:46:39.000And what it is is your body weight with your chest down sits on this bench and underneath it you hook your legs to this thing that's like a leg curl and you lift up which strengthens your back and on the D cell when it brings it down it's actively pulling your back and it's phenomenal.
00:47:13.000And it's great for developing leg strength and hamstring strength and glute strength, but really I use it for lower back, for decompression.
00:47:21.000Show a video, Jamie, if you would, so we could see how it worked.
00:47:32.000So he was a power lifter and developed some back problems himself.
00:47:35.000But you see how on the downswing, it's actually pulling your back and you can feel it pull your back.
00:47:42.000So you can feel it like separate everything.
00:47:46.000You feel like little things pop in there and it provides relief.
00:47:50.000And for him, they were telling them he had to get his disc fused because he had too much compression.
00:47:54.000He said, well, what about decompression?
00:47:57.000And they were reluctant to consider that and so he's a genius, a fitness genius, and so he designed a machine that would actively decompress the spine while strengthening the muscles around it.
00:48:48.000And what that does is, instead of hanging from your ankles so your legs tense up and your legs resist the weight of your body, instead of that, everything hinges down from your hips, and you will, like, immediately feel when you get down there your back popping and decompressing.
00:49:52.000Everyone that I know has had problems.
00:49:55.000I do not know anyone that has had back surgery.
00:49:57.000That's like, that's the best thing I ever did.
00:50:00.000Everyone, like Daniel Cormier, UFC champion, he's like, I was never the same.
00:50:05.000Once they cut my back open, it was never the same.
00:50:07.000There's ways to also deal with it with stem cells.
00:50:11.000And one of the things they're doing now, because the FDA has such restrictive rules on stem cells, people are going overseas and other countries to do it.
00:50:18.000And I have some friends that run a clinic down in Tijuana, the Cellular Performance Institute.
00:50:24.000And I know many people, including a good friend of mine, my friend Shane Dorian, who is a world champion surfer who's had pretty severe back problems.
00:50:34.000He went there and they're injecting directly into the discs.
00:50:38.000And there's a very strict protocol of recovery.
00:50:41.000You're not doing anything physical for like a couple of months after that.
00:53:01.000So you're lying flat on your back, you press this up, you sit up, you get to one knee, you post the other knee, you get up, you stand up straight, and then you lower yourself back the same way.
00:53:18.000And I think one of the problems that people have when it comes to weightlifting and developing problems, and I've certainly had plenty, Is that you're overloading certain muscle groups and then all the stuff that connects things together, the lower back, the neck, all these different issues.
00:53:34.000They happen because your whole system is not strong uniformly.
00:53:41.000You're developing strong muscle groups like quads, but how are the hamstrings?
00:53:49.000How are the things behind your calves?
00:55:00.000And so what a slant board is, is a board that you do squats on where the back of it is raised, so your toes are pointing down, your heels are pointing up, and what this allows you to do is get a very deep bend of the knees, and you get your knees That push out over your toes and you really lower,
00:55:27.000They're doing it with different exercises here.
00:55:29.000These are just calf strengthening exercises.
00:55:31.000I do them with bodyweight squats and one of the things I do them with is goblet squats.
00:55:37.000I have very strong legs, but I never do deadlifts, and I never do like regular squats.
00:55:44.000The heaviest thing I squat with is a 100-pound kettlebell.
00:55:48.000So I hold a 100-pound kettlebell in front of me, and then I do goblet squats on that.
00:55:54.000And what that does is it strengthens...
00:55:57.000When you have a heavy weight, like a 100-pound kettlebell, and you're holding it in this position...
00:56:03.000Just to hold it there, your whole body wants to go forward, right?
00:56:06.000Because it's like, it's all this weight out in front of you.
00:56:09.000So you're stabilizing it with your lower back, you're stabilizing it with your abs, and then you're dropping down very deep into this bodyweight squat and then up for this goblet squat.
00:56:22.000And I do it on that, on the slant board.
00:56:24.000Phenomenal, and it doesn't put a lot of strain on your back.
00:57:43.000Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot that I, you know, obviously don't know, but I know what I know, and I know that from a nutritional standpoint, from an environmental exposure standpoint, your average American today is inflicting self-harm unwittingly on a daily basis via the foods,
00:58:34.000It's like our bodies are resilient, but they can only contend with so much.
00:58:38.000So you throw all these exposures against the backdrop of widespread nutrient deficiencies, you know, unprecedented sedentary behavior, chronic stress, poor sleep.
00:58:50.000And it's a recipe for chronic disease.
00:58:53.000I mean, to me, it's very clear as to why so many of us seem to be suffering.
00:58:58.000Yeah, and it's very difficult for someone who's swimming in a sea of that to figure out how to course correct.
00:59:04.000Yeah, and to quote-unquote detoxify, which has become one of these contentious words now on social media, granted maybe possibly for good reason because it's used to sell detox supplements and things like that, but I mean our bodies can detox.
00:59:19.000We just have to make sure that we're giving our bodies the right raw materials to do that.
00:59:23.000And that's actually one reason why I think I'm not a carnivore dieter.
00:59:28.000I'm a big advocate of consuming grass-fed, grass-finished meat.
00:59:31.000I'm a huge protein guy, but I do think dietary fiber plays an important role in terms of helping us detoxify, release some of these compounds when we go to the bathroom.
00:59:40.000How does dietary fiber play a role in detoxifying?
00:59:44.000So, the three primary means in which a body detoxifies is via peeing, pooping, and sweating.
00:59:50.000And when you release bile acids into the lumen of the gut, with those bile acids compounds of the liver has essentially deemed, has marked for removal from the body.
01:00:05.000And fiber, dietary fiber, soluble fiber specifically, sequesters these bile acids.
01:00:12.000And because they're absorbed by the soluble fiber, they disallow reabsorption.
01:00:20.000That's actually the mechanism by which soluble fiber can reduce LDL cholesterol, ApoB, because it sequesters bile acids, which your liver creates using cholesterol.
01:01:06.000But I do think there's a mechanism for fiber to help remove some of these toxins and the like.
01:01:12.000And is the idea behind that mechanism that fiber encourages defecation?
01:01:18.000Fiber, the soluble fiber, like, traps.
01:01:21.000Basically, bile acids get released into the lumen of the gut, which help break down fats, right?
01:01:26.000You need these compounds to break down and assimilate fats from your diet, right?
01:01:31.000But there's a very small, I believe it's at the end of the small intestine where these acids essentially would otherwise get reabsorbed, but because they're trapped by the soluble gel-forming fiber, They get passed.
01:01:42.000And so how is that different than what would happen if you just ate meat and you have these compounds?
01:01:50.000That's a big question mark, but I think that that's something that is not often discussed and should be discussed.
01:01:57.000One of the potential benefits of fiber is the fact that it helps trap toxins in the gut.
01:02:08.000You know, the bulk of stool is made up of fiber and dead bacteria and cells that have been sloughed off the, you know, epithelial layer of the large intestine, small intestine.
01:02:22.000But yeah, fiber is generally what makes up, you know, the majority of a stool.
01:02:27.000And if you just eat meat, then what is your stool?
01:02:32.000Well, I've never personally done a carnivore diet and I'm not a gastroenterologist, but carnivore dieters say that they poop fine, but I think it's a missed opportunity to not be getting fiber in your diet.
01:02:45.000I don't think that the carnivore diet long-term is optimal.
01:02:50.000Short-term, and also I will say that people that see reprieve from awful conditions like So the primary function of fiber that you think is beneficial versus having a carnivore diet is the fact that it can absorb these compounds inside the gut,
01:03:16.000whereas if you're just eating meat, that's not going to happen.
01:04:02.000There are some studies that suggest otherwise, that it's not necessarily the fiber, it's fermented foods that play a larger role in promoting gut bacterial diversity.
01:04:11.000But we know that fiber feeds gut bacteria, and as a result, we get beneficial postbiotic compounds like sodium butyrate, which is anti-inflammatory, feeds cells in the gut.
01:04:25.000I think there are a few benefits to fiber consumption.
01:04:31.000I don't think that fiber is the primary thing that we should be looking for in the diet necessarily.
01:04:56.000Yeah, it's one of the weird arguments from the carnivore diet side is that fiber is not necessary.
01:05:03.000And, you know, when you see these people that have been eating nothing but meat for 5, 10 years and show an alleviation of all sorts of symptoms of different autoimmune conditions and different issues that they've had, it's interesting.
01:06:37.000You know, and we're also, today there's widespread gut dysbiosis.
01:06:42.000So people have problems with their guts.
01:06:43.000They have immune systems that are not fully competent, as evidenced by the soaring prevalence of autoimmune conditions and allergies and the like today.
01:06:53.000Which I think is attributed to there are many factors that play a role.
01:06:56.000You know, it could be overuse of antibiotics.
01:08:13.000Well, he was getting it so often that he was essentially on antibiotics for a whole year.
01:08:19.000And his gut is fucked up real bad to the point where he's like constantly nauseous.
01:08:25.000He's seen a bunch of different doctors, they've tried to fix it in a bunch of different ways, and no one can really figure it out.
01:08:32.000Like, when someone has developed a really destroyed gut biome because of antibiotics and long-term, like, really irresponsible long-term use of antibiotics, what can someone do to try to come back from that?
01:08:48.000Yeah, I mean, most people would reach for a probiotic, but there was actually a study that came out a couple years ago that found that probiotics, after a course of antibiotics, I believe the antibiotic was Cipro, actually delayed recolonization of the gut by healthy bacteria.
01:09:06.000The microbiome is a big buzz term, and there are still so many more unanswered questions than there are answers.
01:09:14.000I think based on my assessment of the literature, and I've written about it in my books, I think that the best thing to do would probably be just to slowly get back to a diet.
01:10:15.000You know, some people do really well on low FODMAP diets.
01:10:17.000So, like, you know, these fermentable carbohydrates that include fiber, but also include other specific carbohydrates that are easily fermented.
01:11:40.000But I would probably adopt one of those diets and then, you know, first, maybe even like an elimination diet, like a really aggressive one.
01:11:49.000Because people with serious gut issues, I mean, again, I'm not like a carnivore advocate, but seem to do really well, at least in the short term on these carnivore diets.
01:11:57.000So I would say maybe try something like that.
01:12:00.000If that is too restrictive, then I would try maybe a low FODMAP diet.
01:12:04.000Have you ever thought about trying a carnivore diet just to see what's up?
01:12:56.000You know, it used to be like the afternoon, I'd be like, oh, then I'd have to power through, get a cup of coffee, wake up, figure out what to do, and then go to a show.
01:13:10.000It's very different in when you eliminate...
01:13:13.000Essentially, most carbohydrates from your diet and then your body starts to produce glucose via gluconeogenesis through absorption of protein and meat.
01:14:33.000There's so many benefits to prioritizing protein, which I do.
01:14:36.000But I do think that, you know, like dark leafy greens, for example, is known to be one of the most nutrient-dense forms of produce because of its low calorie density, and it's a great source of vitamin C,
01:14:52.000folate, But also I think dark leafy greens, I mean, take kale.
01:14:57.000Kale's the top source of these carotenoids called lutein and zeaxanthin, which we know directly support eye health and brain health.
01:15:05.000And so I don't see a reason to deprive myself of these greens that I know have these compounds that Literally migrate up to the brain where they help to reduce oxidative stress.
01:15:15.000They might even improve the way, you know, cognitive function and the like.
01:15:19.000I think the arguments against eating those to me always are like some of the silliest is that plants are producing these chemicals to avoid predation.
01:16:04.000And they try to figure out what's wrong and then many of them try to supplement and then one day they'll have a piece of salmon and feel like their body just returned on and then they go, okay, I gotta stop doing this.
01:16:33.000I think one thing that's really interesting is that, you know, even within the nutritional orthodoxy, saturated fat still continues to be demonized, right?
01:16:42.000But only 3% of the saturated fat that your average American intakes, ingests, comes from steak, comes from meat.
01:17:11.000But 3% comes from red meat, excluding mixed dishes.
01:17:15.000The vast majority of saturated fat that your average American ingests comes from desserts, comes from mixed dishes like pizza, lasagna, egg rolls, things like that.
01:17:28.000But it's like we've demonized steak, right?
01:17:30.000Which is like one of the most nutrient dense things a person can eat, right?
01:17:34.000Yeah, we're in a very strange position, this country at least, with regards to our understanding of what is actually good and not good for you.
01:17:43.000You know, when I tell people that I eat mostly meat, they're like, what about your cholesterol?
01:17:51.000To try to walk them down the rabbit hole of good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, the balance of cholesterol, cholesterol as it relates to plaque in your arteries.
01:18:16.000And when people are willing to readily consume this processed bullshit on a daily basis, but then demonize steak, I'm like, that is one of the dumbest things that we have become accustomed to.
01:18:30.000This idea that a steak is delicious, but it's ultimately bad for you.
01:18:58.000Half of adults today are, have some degree of insulin resistance, right?
01:19:02.000We know that 90% of adults have some degree of metabolic dysregulation if you factor in things like waist circumference, low HDL, triglycerides, and things like that.
01:19:13.000And so for a health expert today to demonize any whole food, any whole food to me is just absurd and actually really unethical.
01:19:25.000And red meat is, you know, again and again it comes up.
01:19:37.000I mean, iron deficiency anemia is still a major global health problem, last I checked, and red meat is the ultimate iron supplement.
01:21:02.000And then the data came out showing us that, oh, wait a minute, cholesterol, this nutrient that we've demonized for decades, actually has no negative downside, no downside with regard to cardiovascular risk.
01:21:13.000For the vast majority of people consuming dietary cholesterol, very little impact on serum cholesterol, right?
01:21:31.000And so I think, I mean, I do think it's just a matter of time before we realize that there is a lot of good to be gained from foods like red meat.
01:21:43.000But, you know, there's so much politicization Yeah.
01:21:47.000And then people cite things like the China study, which is very flawed.
01:22:39.000And when she served me my first egg when I was a child, she served me it with a warning to not eat these with any significant frequency because they have the potential to clog your arteries.
01:22:59.000But she, whatever the magazines or the TV, you know, the nightly news would share about healthy eating, and certainly whatever the marketing, you know, in the supermarket, as she was pushing her shopping cart around the supermarket aisle, anything with a red Heart Healthy logo on it would end up in my shopping cart at some point,
01:23:16.000And so I grew up on a diet that was largely ultra-processed and mainly, you know, I was encouraged to eat a low cholesterol, low saturated fat diet.
01:23:28.000I mean, I grew up consuming margarine.
01:23:30.000And I remember the big plastic tub of corn oil that we always had out by the stove.
01:23:53.000So, like, even when I wrote my first book, Genius Foods, This data hadn't even yet come out yet, but we now see for every 10% increment in ultra-processed food consumption, there's a 25% higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
01:24:24.000And that these ultra-processed foods that have recently been introduced into the American diet, those are the things that you should gravitate towards.
01:24:35.000And you still have these personas on social media, credentialed social media personas going to bat for them.
01:24:49.000They are committing a crime against humans, an information crime against humans, and it will result in those people taking choices that are negatively going to affect their life.
01:25:24.000And, again, I think it goes back to the fact that these foods are, you know, we tend to overconsume them, and they're a route of ingestion for these, you know, for these forever chemicals and the like.
01:26:14.000Well, I think people are more aware of it now, fortunately, because of people like you that are spreading this information and people hear podcasts and they get like an adjusted sense of why they've been misinformed.
01:26:25.000And that's a new thing, you know, and the ability to access information from unofficial sources now.
01:26:34.000It turns out to be real information and very beneficial.
01:27:09.000There's so many competing voices and misinformation out there on social media and fear-mongering today.
01:27:16.000I mean, fear-mongering with regard to animal source foods, which I think is a problem.
01:27:20.000I mean, as I've said, I'm not a carnivore dieter.
01:27:24.000I think it's just, yeah, it's really insane that today anybody would fear-monger, you know, Any sort of whole food.
01:27:34.000And I think that really, you know, like I used to be more interested in what's the appropriate, for example, ratio of carbs and fats to one's diet for optimal health.
01:27:43.000And I really do think it's, you know, for most people, the big lever, dietarily speaking, is to reduce your consumption of these kinds of foods.
01:27:53.000What are essentially vending machine foods?
01:27:56.000Things you can just sit on a shelf forever and still be edible.
01:28:00.000You know, I think intermittent fasting is something that a lot of people are talking about today.
01:28:04.000I think that's like, you know, there's nothing magic about it, but that can be used as a tool.
01:28:07.000There are lots of tools at people's disposal, and it frustrates me sometimes on social media where you see, you know, people, especially those in the so-called evidence-based community, that get so down on what they're simply not up on.
01:28:20.000They tend to write these tools off as being trivial or they'll even talk disparagingly about them.
01:28:31.000I think whatever tool is at your disposal that you have the ability to use today, I think that's a great thing.
01:28:40.000The more awareness we have, the better.
01:28:45.000So for your documentary, when you're discussing the causes and what you can do to sort of mitigate the effects of these things, what's the primary concern and when does some...
01:29:03.000So you say this is a disease that starts to show itself in middle age or begins, and then by the time you see the symptoms, you're in late stage.
01:29:13.000So it's by the time you present and you're diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, I think that it's irreversible at that point.
01:29:23.000So I think the sooner you can get a handle on your risk factors, you know, some of which include nutrition, but also social isolation is a risk factor.
01:29:37.000And what is it about that that causes it to become a risk factor?
01:29:41.000Well, I mean, there's that 80-year-long ongoing study at Harvard, the study of human development that found that loneliness is a toxin on par with smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.
01:29:52.000And, you know, I think humans are, first and foremost, we're social beings.
01:29:57.000That's one of the reasons why, you know, a human neonate is born half-baked.
01:30:01.000I mean, we continue our development in the presence of others.
01:30:04.000You know, they call it the fourth trimester.
01:30:07.000Relative to other animals in the animal kingdom, a human is born with zero capacity to survive.
01:30:16.000And so I think it's just hardwired into who we are as a species, that we are social beings.
01:30:21.000And today, whether it's attributed to, you know, living in cities and remote work or social media, It's taking a huge toll on us from the standpoint of mental health, and that creates downstream biochemical consequences.
01:30:34.000I mean, this is not just an emotional phenomenon.
01:30:37.000This is something that actually has a real-life health impact.
01:30:42.000What about exercise in terms of like seeing people who develop Alzheimer's or dementia?
01:30:51.000How many of those people are sedentary and how many people develop it that are avid exercise enthusiasts?
01:30:59.000I mean, exercise is medicine when it comes to the brain.
01:31:02.000With regard to the epidemiology of exercise and dementia risk, I don't think that's clear because also as people get older, they tend to become more sedentary.
01:31:15.000But we do know that exercise does have a profound impact, even just light activity.
01:31:20.000But is there an instance or like a measurable decrease in instances of people that have dementia and Alzheimer's with people that are enthusiasts that have never stopped exercising, like people that are like 70-year-old marathon runners?
01:31:35.000I mean, people with greater cardio-respiratory fitness, particularly in midlife, seem to have reduced risk in late life for an Alzheimer's diagnosis.
01:31:43.000Because again, it's about being healthy in midlife that really seems to move the needle.
01:31:48.000So midlife obesity is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease down the line.
01:31:54.000Being actually heavier in late life is associated with lower risk because people tend to become less well-nourished as they get older.
01:32:04.000So the obesity and Alzheimer's disease connection is actually quite interesting.
01:32:07.000So midlife obesity is associated with With increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, but people who are of heavier weight as opposed to more frail in late life seem to be protected.
01:32:19.000So just by virtue of one of the things I've always said about heavy people is if boy if you can get that person to lose weight They're gonna be so strong because they've been carrying around all this weight all the time.
01:32:30.000Yeah, you know like my friend Ralphie Mae Ralphie was How big do you think Ralphie was his heyday?
01:34:13.000Midlife healthy and fit and then later in life you just have to make sure you don't get frail.
01:34:19.000Yeah, and at a certain point you could ride the wave of the health that you've, you know, the robustness that you've cultivated in midlife.
01:34:26.000But that's why we should, the earlier you start with these dietary and lifestyle principles and adopting them and living them, the better.
01:34:34.000Yeah, that's one of the craziest statistics that significant muscle mass has a reduced impact on all-cause mortality.
01:34:54.000It can deal with all kinds of things because it's gone through significant stressors on a daily basis in order to achieve this muscle, right?
01:35:35.000Your muscles are, obviously, for mobility, super important, improving insulin sensitivity.
01:35:41.000There's no better way to cultivate insulin sensitivity than to resistance train regularly.
01:35:47.000And we see, again, that insulin resistance is related to glucose hypometabolism in the brain, which is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.
01:35:56.000Another thing they've found is that exercise training with weights, specifically strength training, is one of the best methods to reduce anxiety.
01:36:08.000There's lots of evidence now, meta-analyses even, Showing us whether it's resistance training, I mean, cardiovascular, it's such an important tool for brain health.
01:36:18.000And that's part of the reason why I love fitness.
01:36:21.000And most of it is due to what fitness does for my brain, my brain health, my mental health.
01:37:42.000There was no, I mean, nobody was resistance training for fun, certainly not women, right?
01:37:46.000And they were the targets of like, they were the bullseye of precisely that messaging, avoid cholesterol, avoid saturated fat, you know, low-fat this, low-fat that.
01:38:00.000And it's really sad when you look around and you see that generation, you know, and their health.
01:38:06.000Yeah, and the differences between, I mean, there's been a bunch of internet memes about this, the difference between like an 80-year-old woman who regularly strength trains and has been doing it her whole life and another 80-year-old woman who's in a chair, you know, and she's rolling around on a scooter because she can't walk right anymore.
01:38:26.000So, I mean, I think we're definitely making progress.
01:38:28.000I think that's one of the upsides of the wellness industry and this, I think, this fervor surrounding wellness and whether it's group workouts or gym culture.
01:38:40.000I think it's amazing that people across the age spectrum now have embraced fitness as a lifestyle.
01:38:46.000And women are lifting weights, and I think that's just incredible.
01:39:09.000So one of these compounds that has been directly linked to Parkinsonism that Dr. Ray Dorsey from University of Rochester has published on...
01:39:20.000It's called trichloroethylene, and it's still being used in dry cleaning today, but it was used until the 70s for certain medical applications.
01:39:29.000It was used as an anesthetic for pregnant women.
01:39:39.000And about 30%, I believe, of groundwater in the United States is still contaminated with this compound, trichloroethylene.
01:39:46.000And we know that there are traces of pharmaceuticals and various compounds in tap water that...
01:39:54.000I think, you know, the dose makes the poison to some degree.
01:39:58.000So now and then I think it's probably fine.
01:40:00.000But I do think, you know, filtering your water, running it through a charcoal filter, maybe even a reverse osmosis purifier is probably beneficial.
01:40:44.000I mean, it's probably, you know, in some way if that's all you're drinking and who knows what else that water has been able to leach through the pipes or what have you.
01:40:54.000Speaking of which, have you seen the recent study that came out, it was very recent, on these dishwashing pods?
01:41:58.000That we establish what's called the no observed adverse effect level for a given compound, and then we assume that below that, exposure is safe, right?
01:42:08.000And so that's why you always hear that exposure to these compounds is fine because the dose makes the poison, and they're very small in terms of the doses that we're being exposed to.
01:42:17.000But the problem with endocrine disruptors, and this is not fully appreciated, I think, by the vast majority of people, Is that unlike most compounds which follow a linear dose response where, you know, you consume too much water at a certain point fast enough and it'll kill you,
01:42:36.000A lot of these endocrine disrupting compounds have what's called a non-monotonic dose response.
01:42:42.000So a non-monotonic dose response means that at a low level, you might have effects, and you might not have effects for a period above that dose, and then you might have toxic effects at a much higher dose.
01:42:56.000You might have completely different effects at a low dose.
01:42:59.000So low dose toxicity, that's the issue.
01:43:01.000And hormesis is a perfect example of this working in our favor, and it's a perfect example of a non-monotonic dose response that we actually want.
01:43:12.000So at a very low dose, broccoli sprouts, this compound sulforaphane, produced by broccoli sprouts, creates a beneficial effect in the body, a response, where it causes our livers to increase production of glutathione, and we seem to have this protective,
01:43:28.000But if you were to consume too much sulforaphane, it would kill you, right?
01:43:33.000And so one of the issues with these compounds like phthalates and other endocrine disruptors, but phthalates in particular, Is that they have what's called a non-monotonic dose response, which makes them really difficult to study.
01:43:44.000And it makes guidelines surrounding them really tricky.
01:43:49.000And so the idea is that you might experience effects due to a low dose exposure that aren't necessarily killing you, right?
01:43:59.000But that are still deemed safe, you know?
01:44:03.000So it's not quite a linear dose response.
01:44:06.000It can be, you know, a U-shaped curve, for example.
01:44:13.000It makes these chemicals hard to study.
01:44:17.000And that's one of the major concerns within the field of toxicology surrounding these kinds of compounds.
01:44:23.000The hermetic effect is very interesting, right?
01:44:25.000Because something can be bad for you in large doses, but beneficial in small doses.
01:44:32.000And like this is similar to like what's going on with cold plunges and saunas as well, right?
01:44:37.000Like your body has a response to this thing that...
01:44:40.000You stay in that cold water for a long time, it will kill you.
01:44:43.000You stay in that sauna for a long time, it will kill you.
01:44:46.000But if you can get a healthy dose over a determined period of time and you build up to whatever that is, then you have these great benefits.
01:45:31.000That's why I think you're better off, you know, when people say that, oh, well, the level of phthalates in these ultra-processed foods, they're in the parts per billion.
01:45:40.000You know, we don't actually know how those, you know, how those, even as minute as they are, doses to that degree are affecting us.
01:45:47.000You know, in the short term, certainly not the long term, but also, you know, when combined with all of the other exposures that your average person, you know, incurs over a day-to-day basis, it's just, yeah, it's a looming question mark.
01:46:02.000And so that's why I think it's better to be safe than sorry and practice the precautionary principle and to reduce your exposure when you can.
01:46:09.000So for pretty much anyone listening to this that's concerned about Alzheimer's and any form of degeneration, whether it's Lewy body or any kind of dementia, so first of all, be healthy, be fit,
01:46:25.000stop eating processed foods, start exercising, limit your exposure to whatever these chemicals are, whether they're You know, all the endocrine disruptors.
01:47:26.000Because it's a heavier vehicle and there's more of that.
01:47:30.000And I wondered like if they included Teslas in those because I have a Tesla and it has regenerative braking, right?
01:47:37.000So what that means is like it doesn't coast.
01:47:40.000As I'm driving, so if I'm driving 60 miles an hour and I see up ahead there is a stoplight that just turned yellow, and I know it's going to turn red, and I have a few hundred yards, I just let off the gas and my car slows down.
01:47:56.000It slows down considerably to the point where I barely have to use the brakes.
01:48:00.000So a lot of people, when they talk about driving Teslas, they talk about one-foot driving.
01:48:58.000EVs can produce more tire dust because they're heavier and have more torque, which can cause them to wear out tires faster.
01:49:05.000I think that what they were saying in the one study that I read, though, was that with many of them, because I don't think most electric cars use the regenerative braking aspect.
01:49:19.000It's just wild to me that, I mean, it's like hubris.
01:49:22.000You know, we think, one day we think we're doing good for the environment, and then the next day, you know, we find out that there are all of these downstream...
01:49:29.000It's kind of like, you know, people don't, I think, can't wrap their head around the fact that plant production actually leads to crop death.
01:49:37.000You know, critters and moles and moles on, but it's just like works.
01:49:42.000If you're partaking in modern life today, there is blood on your hands and I don't think there's any way to get around it.
01:49:51.000And I actually think that the focus on greenhouse gas emissions is super important, but I think it's unfortunately taken the focus away from corporations who Seem to get a hall pass when it comes to releasing these kinds of volatile organic compounds and these forever chemicals into the environment.
01:50:09.000I think that's a real major environmental concern that not enough people are talking about.
01:50:24.000So, the uptick in highly polluted environments like Mexico City and the like, how much of an effect does that have statistically?
01:50:35.000I mean, the data that I've seen, proportionally, I'm not sure, but I know that it's significant, and it depends, obviously, on parts of the world.
01:50:44.000And more research needs to be done because, obviously, a very polluted...
01:51:09.000I think it depends on where you are, and I don't think there's one cause of dementia for every person with dementia.
01:51:16.000I think there are different causes, but certainly when you look at these studies and you see that they had PM2.5 in their brains, and around the PM2.5, these particles...
01:51:29.000There's the aggregation of these plaques that we associate with late-onset Alzheimer's disease.
01:52:34.000I think making sure that your HVAC system has changed that filter regularly, make sure that it's a good filter.
01:52:39.000I mean, there are ways to mitigate exposure.
01:52:43.000You can damp, you can wet dust, as opposed to using a dry duster that just redistributes dust.
01:52:50.000I mean, dust oftentimes harbors a lot of these chemicals that we're talking about, whether it's trichloroethylene or plastic-related compounds.
01:52:58.000You want to sequester the dust in a damp cloth, throw that cloth away or wash it.
01:53:03.000Vacuuming, I think, is really important.
01:53:05.000Make sure that your home is well-ventilated because homes are now becoming increasingly insulated as a cost-saving measure.
01:53:13.000Which has led to an increase in exposure to certain volatile organic compounds in the home.
01:53:20.000So, yeah, I mean, you might not be at risk in your house for exposure to fine particulate matter, per se, but, you know, you're breathing in all this other stuff, which isn't great for you.
01:53:31.000And so when you set out to do this documentary, were you...
01:53:37.000Trying to just highlight all the issues we're trying to present cures or potential Mitigating techniques that people can use like what were you trying to do?
01:53:47.000Yeah, so I wanted to on the one hand Capture what it was that my mom was going through and as an artist.
01:53:54.000I mean it was an incredibly painful for me and my family and so I felt in many ways that by documenting it It was giving meaning to the whole experience for me, which would otherwise just be purely traumatic.
01:54:10.000And so I wanted to document what my mom was going through and pay tribute to her and also to pay tribute to the science of dementia prevention, which again, 10 years ago, nobody was talking about.
01:54:27.000There's no magical diet that's proposed.
01:54:30.000The hope with the film was to unravel a lot of this sort of misinformation that I think we've been doled out over the past few decades with regard to what we should and shouldn't be eating.
01:54:40.000But there are other factors that are covered.
01:55:04.000Why we see rates increasing so starkly today.
01:55:07.000And she talks about how it's unlikely to be genetic due to genetics.
01:55:11.000It's likely to be due to exposure to whether the standard American food environment or something else.
01:55:20.000And we also have one of my mentors, Richard Isaacson, who's the Alzheimer's prevention specialist who I was at New York Presbyterian, Weill Cornell, whose work I stumbled upon really early.
01:55:33.000So it's really to drive home the notion that this condition doesn't begin overnight.
01:55:38.000You have decades to set yourself down a different path if you simply become aware of the fact that your choices do impact your brain health.
01:55:50.000And so it's in part informational, but it's also a tribute to...
01:55:58.000My mom, and it's a tribute to anybody really who's ever experienced dementia, both as a patient or as a caregiver.
01:56:06.000It's a film that people will find solace in.
01:56:30.000She's like in her early 60s in the film.
01:56:33.000And so for anybody who thinks that this is something that, you know, only affects old people, you know, people, grandma, grandpa, I think it's going to shatter a lot of unhelpful misconceptions that people have about these conditions.
01:56:46.000Was there anything that your mother found or that you found that helped your mother and mitigated some of the symptoms?
01:56:56.000I think it slowed the progression of the condition, but it also, in a significant way, lifted her spirits.
01:57:06.000Because, I mean, we know that exercise is really important for mental health, and it certainly helped with hers.
01:57:15.000But it also, I mean, there is evidence that exercise, whether Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease, I mean, it's profoundly effective as a, you know, I mean, potentially in terms of slowing the condition, improving symptomology,
01:58:01.000And we've become so sedentary, generally.
01:58:05.000We have to schedule our activity today.
01:58:10.000So, yeah, it's not, you know, there is no magic bullet, unfortunately.
01:58:14.000It's a multifaceted problem, and we don't yet have all the answers, unfortunately, but my intent was to show people, to convince people that, you know, even though...
01:58:29.000We don't need to sit idly on our hands as we, you know, particularly with the degree of self-harm that your average person is self-imposing on a day-to-day basis with the foods that they're eating, with their lifestyles.
01:58:42.000Like, we can do things a little bit differently, and the research tends to support that by changing the way that we're doing things, it'll buy us additional years or maybe even decades of cognitive health.
01:58:54.000Well, that alone, I mean, that's an amazing thing.
01:58:59.000I mean, what my family went through was awful.
01:59:01.000I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy.
01:59:03.000And I think that if there's a way that my work can, you know, affect people and prevent one additional case, I mean, that would be amazing, right?
01:59:14.000Are there any medications that have promise?
01:59:21.000Well, there's research now looking at these, like semaglutide, these peptides.
01:59:30.000Semaglutide for decades was used as a type 2 diabetes medication, and now obviously it's being used for weight loss.
01:59:39.000And they're now pushing it on children, and people are using it for vanity reasons, which I don't support.
01:59:46.000But insofar as it can lower blood sugar, they're looking now to see if it reduces risk for the development of Alzheimer's disease.
01:59:57.000They've already shown that it can reduce risk for cardiovascular events, which I think is great.
02:00:04.000I mean, if it's a last line of defense for you and you need that medication, I'm happy that we have it.
02:00:08.000And they've shown that it can reduce cardiovascular events.
02:00:12.000They're looking now to see if it can reduce risk for Alzheimer's disease.
02:00:16.000And there have already been a few trials showing that it might improve cognitive function.
02:00:21.000Now, the reason for that Is that semaglutide actually increases insulin secretion.
02:00:28.000And this is, I think, just a band-aid.
02:01:14.000Because in the brain of somebody with Alzheimer's disease, glucose metabolism is dramatically constrained.
02:01:20.000And so you're basically like you're shooting insulin straight up into the brain because whatever goes up your nose is like you bypass the blood-brain barrier.
02:01:30.000Because you've got these olfactory neurons that extend into the nasal cavity.
02:01:34.000This is one of the reasons why air pollution is so harmful when we breathe it in through our noses.
02:01:38.000And one of the reasons why people sniff coke.
02:01:49.000I could be wrong, but I think they've already shown in a phase one and phase two trial that it leads to an improvement in cognitive function in patients with Alzheimer's disease, semaglutide.
02:02:00.000And so, you know, I think that's potentially...
02:02:05.000Acute administration of intranasal insulin beneficially affected spatial memory and executive function in healthy, normal-weighted adults.
02:02:35.000But the thing is, in the brain of somebody with Alzheimer's disease, so one of the reasons why they're calling it type 3 diabetes is because there's insulin deficiency and insulin resistance.
02:02:46.000So it kind of has the hallmarks of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
02:03:39.000Maybe spraying insulin up into the brain on a chronic basis increases insulin resistance, and then you become dependent on that.
02:03:45.000So as a last line, maybe it's helpful in some capacity, but I think that's one of the reasons why semaglutide might help for somebody who's already experiencing cognitive decline.
02:04:05.000But then also, I mean, yeah, I wouldn't...
02:04:09.000Drugs that are helpful in the setting of somebody who's already been diagnosed, there really isn't much.
02:04:16.000I mean, there were these drugs that were...
02:04:23.000We're approved and have recently been essentially abandoned.
02:04:27.000One of the drugs being aducanumab by Biogen, because they found it to be effective at reducing the plaque in the brain, but it led to, first of all, there were awful side effects.
02:04:36.000It actually increased, these drugs increased brain atrophy and didn't lead to any significant improvement in cognitive function.
02:06:03.000And it seems to be the case that the brain of somebody with Alzheimer's disease, their ability to generate ATP from glucose is diminished by 50%, but their ability to generate energy from ketones is unperturbed.
02:06:20.000So you can basically supplement The brain's energy needs with ketone bodies.
02:06:26.000But when a person develops Alzheimer's disease, their preference for sweet foods increases.
02:06:33.000They actually develop a sweet tooth, which is thought to be the brain essentially crying out for sugar because it's starving essentially for energy.
02:06:42.000And so getting somebody with Alzheimer's disease to adhere to a ketogenic diet, incredibly difficult to do I would imagine.
02:07:34.000She's a neonatal pediatrician named Dr. Mary Newport, who's been an advocate for this research for decades at this point, whose husband, Steve, developed Alzheimer's disease.
02:07:47.000And knowing what she knew about neonatal nutrition, she started giving him coconut oil before the availability, the widespread availability of MCT oil and these ketone products.
02:07:59.000And this is an anecdote, but she has written about and reported that when she initially started giving her husband these ketones, he had Alzheimer's disease.
02:08:09.000She saw a dramatic improvement in his cognitive function.
02:09:36.000What about cold exposure, heat exposure?
02:09:38.000Does any of that, cold plunge and sauna, have any effects?
02:09:42.000It obviously has a big effect on dopamine and norepinephrine.
02:09:48.000There's research out of the University of Finland showing that sauna use is associated with Pretty dramatically reduced risk for Alzheimer's disease.
02:10:06.000Now that's an observational study, but I think it's potentially more telling that it was a study done in Finland because in Finland, Finland is the sauna capital of the world.
02:10:17.000There's one sauna on average per household in Finland.
02:10:20.000And so it kind of removes a bit of the healthy user bias that you might see doing that same study here.
02:10:25.000You know, people here in the United States, people who regularly use saunas, maybe they're more well-off, they have spa access, you know, they've got fancy gym memberships, or they can afford to have a sauna in their homes.
02:11:43.000We don't yet know for sure that it's causally related to, you know, to...
02:11:48.000Alzheimer's prevention, but I mean, I would assume that there's a real effect happening there.
02:11:56.000When you look at all of the different things that are available today to improve your health, when you look at lifestyle choices, dietary choices, exercise choices, is there a way,
02:12:12.000like if a person's listening to this, what's the best step forward?
02:12:17.000If you're listening to this, you know what?
02:13:08.000Non-essential, some like, you know, that the later in the day we can push our first meal, the better.
02:13:14.000You know, we would get some kind of like autophagy brownie point or something like that.
02:13:18.000But actually the data has come out showing us that when we eat a protein-rich breakfast first thing in the morning, and we consistently eat that every day, it does a really good job at regulating our hunger levels throughout the day.
02:13:29.000We subsequently, when we eat a high-protein breakfast, we eat fewer calories over the subsequent 24 hours.
02:14:08.000And so try starting your day with a protein-rich breakfast.
02:14:13.000Try to hit 30, 40, maybe even 50 grams of protein with your first meal of the day.
02:14:17.000It's a great way to assuage your hunger to make sure that you're going to be Come lunchtime, you're not going to be up against the wall looking for the quick sugary fix from the vending machine or from the rec room or the cafeteria or whatever.
02:14:30.000I think it's a great first healthy habit to adopt.
02:14:35.000And that's going to influence your behavior subsequently down the line.
02:14:40.000I also think it can be really useful to try to be as present with your food as possible.
02:14:46.000I mean, I'm guilty of eating on the run just as much as anybody else today, but studies show that when we're distracted when we're eating, we tend to consume more calories, about 15% more calories, which doesn't seem like a lot, but you consume...
02:15:00.000You know, 15% more calories with every meal every day, and that adds up to a spare tire over time, you know?
02:15:10.000You really want to major in the majors, as opposed to the minors, which I think many people do today.
02:15:16.000So prioritizing whole foods, if there's one dietary tip, I really think that that's it.
02:15:25.000Because in so doing, you are optimizing for satiety.
02:15:29.000We know, thanks to NIH-funded research, that when people eat largely an ultra-processed diet, they tend to...
02:15:39.000Overconsume their calorie budget for the day by about 500 additional calories.
02:16:26.000For the first time in human history, there are more overweight people walking the earth than underweight.
02:16:30.000Due to, you know, this phenomena, this westernization of our diets.
02:16:35.000I think it's also very important what you said about not biting off more than you could chew and just try to take on one healthy habit at a time and build up to that.
02:16:44.000Because it's been shown that habits, if you can continue them for a predetermined period of time, I think it's 90 days or something like that, once it gets to around 90 days, those habits become sort of cemented in to who you are.
02:17:44.000Some of the most jacked guys in my gym are the sweetest dudes and are always willing to, you know, That's their thing that they enjoy doing.
02:18:34.000And it's so intimidating to, like, walk into this place where everyone's so familiar, they're already so far on their fitness journey path that, you know, you look at their body like, that is not my body.
02:18:50.000And here's the thing about fitness is that it's like, it's not, once you adopt it into your life and you embrace it and you embrace the lifestyle, it's like the rising tide that lifts all the boats in your harbor.
02:19:04.000Because the discipline, you know, the discipline that it takes that you, you know, that habit once cemented, I mean, you can apply the things that you learn in fitness to so many other areas of life.
02:22:45.000They'll write early in the morning, and then they go for a walk, and they'll bring a tape recorder or their phone so they can use the voice notes.
02:22:52.000And as they're walking, they'll start reviewing their material and thinking about their material as they're walking.
02:22:58.000And then, like, maybe a new idea will come.
02:23:01.000Because, you know, you're getting the heart rate.
02:23:04.000The oxygen, all the endorphins, and then you're also in this thing where you're just walking and just thinking.
02:23:14.000And as you do that, ideas start to sprout.
02:23:18.000Very common amongst riders to go for a walk after the initial ride of the day.
02:23:48.000Brief, intense bursts of activity, often called exercise snacks, offer a potent strategy to mitigate the health risks associated with our sedentary lifestyles.
02:24:16.000And he would just do it throughout the day.
02:24:18.000Just every now and then do a couple of pull-ups.
02:24:21.000I mean it sort of like lines up with the strength first philosophy of Pavel Totsilin and all the the talk of kettlebell work like do you do any that stuff?
02:24:34.000The idea was you should never do anything to failure and that this idea of doing things to failure is you're just trying to rush results by you know forcing yourself to do that and that strength should be thought of as a skill and And the way to practice skills is to not be tired.
02:24:50.000And so when you do kettlebells, like, I follow these principles.
02:24:54.000So say if I'm doing clean and presses with 70 pounds, I could probably do 25 reps if I wanted to get to failure.
02:25:05.000If I really wanted to get to, like, the last one, like, ugh!
02:25:11.000I could totally keep going but I put it down and then I walk away and then It looks like I'm lazy because I'll just like watch TV I'll watch a fight on TV and I won't do a thing for five minutes So in between my sets, I'm not the guy that like unless I'm doing endurance training I'm not the guy that like goes through these sets like all right,
02:25:34.000let's go next one push it I don't do any of that And I've gotten significantly stronger.
02:25:40.000I just wait a long time in between sets and my workouts, like my kettlebell workouts might take two and a half hours.
02:26:38.000For the last set, I really want to be fresh.
02:26:41.000And then when I'm hitting these, I'm not fatigued.
02:26:44.000And it's decreased my soreness substantially.
02:26:47.000It has allowed me to get all the repetitions that I would get in a shorter workout, but I'm never in a point of fatigue where I'm having a difficulty controlling the weight.
02:26:58.000And I think the Russians used this strength training method, you know, a long time ago, and they realized that this idea of, like, train smarter, not harder.
02:27:15.000I mean, hypertrophy, a lot of times, like bodybuilders, if you ever observe, they'll do really lightweight and extremely high repetitions, like 100 curls with, like, 15 pounds.
02:27:56.000I wonder how it reconciles, because for hypertrophy, I've never been all that strong, and so my workouts have been...
02:28:03.000I've primarily focused on hypertrophy, but I've always thought that while you don't necessarily need to go to failure on every set, you do want to get close to it, and maybe even hitting failure on the last set seems to promote good gains,
02:28:48.000So obviously, working through the entire rep range of a movement is beneficial and should, I think, generally be the default.
02:28:56.000But my understanding is that when the muscle is in its most lengthened position, under load, you seem to get a lot of bang for your buck.
02:29:04.000And that's where the benefits of Lengthened partials comes into play, but also really kind of emphasizing that stretched position of any move, you know, of any exercise, whether it's like the bicep curl or the chest fly or even the chest press,
02:29:21.000you know, making sure that you're really stretching out that muscle.
02:29:26.000There seems to be a lot of reward to be gained from that.
02:29:31.000Whereas opposed, I think, maybe what's most interesting about it is that we tend to think of most of the gains being achieved when fully contracted.
02:29:42.000You know, like we squeeze the full contracted position, for example, of the chest fly.
02:29:46.000Whereas I think what this research is starting to suggest is that you actually get more benefit from that stretched position.
02:29:53.000And making sure that you're really, as opposed to kind of just doing like this like partial range of motion, like really kind of extending out and carrying that kind of philosophy to, you know, on through, you know, every lift.
02:30:07.000I think there are some, there's some thinking that, you know, the...
02:30:14.000Certain exercises, there might be some risk incurred with that.
02:30:18.000For example, preacher curls, for example.
02:30:20.000I've seen some horror story videos on Instagram where people snap their biceps.
02:30:25.000But just generally speaking, That's sort of like a big buzz thing now within the fitness community.
02:30:34.000The stretch-mediated hypertrophy, which is interesting.
02:30:39.000It kind of makes sense because it's kind of the most vulnerable time of the lift.
02:30:44.000Especially if you have a chest fly in your back, you feel so vulnerable.
02:30:56.000And then at the end of it, you're like...
02:30:59.000Yeah, you really feel vulnerable in the beginning in the beginning everything feels like I got to get past this where it's enjoyable And it's kind of enjoyable in this rep range like as you're bringing the hands together Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not I'm not definitely not like an expert on the topic But I'm a student of of it of fitness science and and I've put it into practice and I've seen some pretty significant gains As a result,
02:31:47.000I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that people make in the gym is that they don't train with adequate intensity.
02:31:51.000I see a lot of people in my gym, they're lifting weights...
02:31:57.000And I see them putting the weight down when they clearly had five, six additional reps in the tank.
02:32:03.000And they're not lifting weight that's all that heavy compared to how you described your new lifting style.
02:32:09.000They're kind of just going through the motions of the exercise, but they're not actually sending the adequate stimulus to the muscle that it needs to adapt, grow stronger, or we're going to die.
02:32:19.000And then they wonder why they don't get any results.
02:32:43.000I'm just super psyched to be here, to get to do what I do, to share...
02:32:52.000Evidence-based research with people, but in a way that's practical and that acknowledges the limitations of the research that I share and just the general landscape of nutrition science, which tends to be incredibly weak.
02:33:32.000And so yeah, insofar as I get to provide a more authentic, high integrity, highly actionable path for people, I'm just grateful that I get to do what I do.
02:33:45.000And I do it on my podcast, The Genius Life.
02:33:47.000And I'm super excited for people to watch the film, which I've worked on for the past 10 years.
02:33:53.000And again, I think it's the most important thing I've ever done.
02:34:01.000You are a really important resource, and I think it's a great pleasure to have people like you available to provide free information for people to learn about all these different ways that they can benefit their health.
02:34:17.000And it's just so important to have someone like yourself out there that really focuses on it and does a great job of disseminating that information.