The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 456. Sugar Cravings, Red Meat, and Your Health ｜ Max Lugavere

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:09.880 Today, I'm talking with Max Lugavere, who flew in from L.A. to Washington, D.C., to have this conversation with me.

00:01:17.520 He's a journalist who's become quite a well-known scientific researcher and popularizer, but also a creative investigator in his own right.

00:01:27.620 He wrote a trilogy of books, the Genius Trilogy, one on foods, one on life, and one a recipe book on the kitchen,

00:01:36.780 and is also the producer of a documentary that will be released at the end of June 2024 called Little Empty Boxes.

00:01:44.160 All of that was motivated by his mother's experience with a form of dementia that involves the degeneration of these neurological tissues known as Lewy bodies.

00:01:56.260 It's not Alzheimer's or frontal temporal dementia. It's another form of dementia.

00:02:01.300 And he was very shocked by his mother's illness, which she developed when she was in her late 50s.

00:02:10.300 And also, by the dearth of effective treatment that was available to her and ended up obsessively concentrating on research into the dementias in general,

00:02:22.760 concluding, as have many people in the last decade, that the dementia spectrum of illnesses, and that includes Parkinson's, by the way,

00:02:31.900 might well be preventable with interventions that are early enough in life,

00:02:39.620 and that many of those interventions might be dietary in nature.

00:02:45.200 And we discuss why that is and talk about the carnivore diet as well as a potential diagnostic investigative tool

00:02:57.200 for the analysis of complex disease in general, and, well, I suppose in some ways celebrate the possibility that dietary modulation

00:03:07.220 might prove to be the treatment of choice on the prevention side for these terrible degenerative neurological diseases.

00:03:16.960 So, I'm interested in diet, I suppose, despite myself, I would say, because it's not my natural domain of interest.

00:03:30.600 I'm more interested in psychological matters, let's say, than physical or physiological matters.

00:03:36.400 I know they overlap, but my attention doesn't naturally gravitate that way.

00:03:42.600 But I have definitely learned that many of the things that I would have been tempted to assume were psychological aren't.

00:03:54.980 I mean, I've known for a long time, for example, that endogenous depression, the schizophrenic disorders, and manic depression,

00:04:03.380 I never thought of those as psychological disorders.

00:04:05.820 I thought, no, those people are sick, we just don't know what's wrong with them.

00:04:08.720 So, I spoke with Chris Palmer in some detail on my podcast, and I just met him again in Boston.

00:04:16.580 He's got a couple of research projects finishing up.

00:04:21.060 He's got 15 on the go looking at treatment of those disorders with diet, and the first three have been spectacularly successful.

00:04:29.800 So, diet, right.

00:04:33.220 So, let's start with your genius work, and outline for people what those are, and what you're doing with them, and why.

00:04:42.320 Let's start with that.

00:04:43.440 Sure.

00:04:44.600 So, I've written a trilogy of books, the genius trilogy, as it were.

00:04:49.480 And my first book was called Genius Foods, and it came out in 2018.

00:04:52.540 And it's a tome to, and an homage, really, to the science of both dementia prevention, as well as the burgeoning field that's being referred to as nutritional psychiatry.

00:05:06.320 So, how diet plays a role in, you know, mediating mental health, insofar as it does play a role.

00:05:16.200 There's this really, you know, exciting area of research looking at how our diets are, you know, are able to influence our moods, which I think is incredibly exciting.

00:05:25.140 Um, I followed that up with a book called The Genius Life, which was a more, was a more lifestyle-centric guide.

00:05:32.960 Um, and then my third book came out in 2020, I'm sorry, 2022, and it was a cookbook, kind of bringing everything together.

00:05:41.020 But, um, my work really, I would say, primarily explores the intersection between diet and lifestyle and brain health.

00:05:48.340 And the reason why I wrote these books, um, is because I was personally affected by, uh, dementia, by a form of dementia called Lewy Body Dementia, which, prior to even receiving that diagnosis, um, in my family, it's a condition that my mom suffered from.

00:06:06.980 Um, I became obsessed with trying to understand all that I could know.

00:06:11.120 How old was she when that happened?

00:06:12.620 She was 58 years old.

00:06:13.900 Right, right.

00:06:14.320 When she first started to show these amorphous symptoms that...

00:06:17.520 What did she, what symptoms did she show? 0.99

00:06:19.900 So, she had, um, symptoms that both, uh, occurred concurrently.

00:06:26.120 Um, some of them were movement-related.

00:06:29.200 So, rigidity, balance issues, stiffness.

00:06:32.520 I guess rigidity and stiffness are similar.

00:06:35.120 Um, but, uh, yeah, a real lack of coordination, um, you know, reduced swinging in the arms.

00:06:42.340 Right.

00:06:42.600 You know, I'm not a medical doctor, so I didn't have any framework with which to understand what I was seeing.

00:06:46.900 Right.

00:06:47.340 My mom exhibit.

00:06:48.080 I thought, you know, movement symptoms as a musculoskeletal condition, right?

00:06:51.200 Right, right.

00:06:51.300 It has to be.

00:06:52.740 Um, but then, in tandem with those symptoms, she also displayed stark cognitive dysfunction.

00:07:00.040 And, um, it's not necessarily that she, you know, started to forget simple things like, you know, who she was, who her family members were.

00:07:11.020 But it seemed as though her, I've likened it to when you have too many tabs open in your browser window.

00:07:16.460 It's just like the frame rate starts to stutter.

00:07:18.800 And that's sort of what I, what I saw in my mom, who was very much still in the prime of her life, had all the pigment in her hair.

00:07:24.100 You know, raised three boys, ran a business.

00:07:27.460 And I had been a journalist prior to that.

00:07:29.680 I had been a generalist journalist, um, since college, since graduating college.

00:07:34.020 I, uh, worked for a, I had worked for a TV network that was co-founded by Al Gore.

00:07:39.600 Um, it wasn't a political network.

00:07:42.020 And, uh, I certainly, you know, was never really that into politics.

00:07:46.320 Um, but I was, uh, sort of like this young kid who was given the reins of this TV network that reached 100 million homes in the U.S.

00:07:54.200 And so when my mom became sick, I...

00:07:57.700 How old were you when she became, when she was diagnosed?

00:08:00.760 She was, uh, I was in my late 20s.

00:08:04.040 Okay.

00:08:04.240 Yeah.

00:08:05.500 Um, and I had just come off of that position and I was in between jobs and, um, more so than, than being a journalist at the time, I was just a scared son.

00:08:15.520 You know, I was a scared son seeing, you know, these awful symptoms, these mysterious...

00:08:19.900 Yeah.

00:08:20.240 Yeah, there's not much worse than a degenerative neurological disease.

00:08:23.900 Yeah.

00:08:24.200 They're brutal, those things.

00:08:25.300 They take you apart, like, atom by atom.

00:08:27.740 Exactly.

00:08:28.320 Yeah.

00:08:29.360 And I, there was no precedent in my family.

00:08:31.120 So, I, you know, as soon as that, that the immediate trauma of, of realizing that my mom had something serious going on with her brain health, it was a, it was the most profound call to action that I've ever felt in my entire life to do what I could to understand to the best of my ability why this would have happened to a woman at the age at which it did.

00:08:53.060 Why were you so compelled to, do you think, why were you so compelled to transfigure your life to come to the service of your mom?

00:09:00.500 Hmm.

00:09:02.020 Love.

00:09:02.600 I mean, you know, my mom was the most important person in my life and I'm the first born in an incredibly small family.

00:09:11.480 And I've always had an incredibly close relationship with my mother and...

00:09:17.060 Right.

00:09:18.100 So, this wasn't okay.

00:09:19.380 It wasn't okay.

00:09:20.740 Whenever I had so much as a cough growing up, I mean, moments later, I found myself in the pediatrician's office.

00:09:26.400 And when my mom became sick, you know, the, those around her were not all that set up to really understand what was going on.

00:09:38.820 I mean, we're not, you know, we, as a society today, we outsource so many different forms of literacy, right?

00:09:44.800 We outsource culinary literacy to Grubhub, to our apps, you know, we outsource financial literacy to our financial handlers.

00:09:51.660 Health literacy is like, it's a huge, you know, area, it's a, it's a huge unknown.

00:09:57.260 Like, we all collectively have, you know, these really scary knowledge gaps, which only become apparent to you when, you know, you're strong.

00:10:05.340 And then you just get more scared because you start to understand how big the knowledge gaps are.

00:10:09.440 Yeah.

00:10:09.580 I've never recovered from finding out that the food pyramid was a scam.

00:10:13.580 Yeah.

00:10:14.100 That's just, that was just, the degree to which that's a scam is, I don't know, is there a worse medical crime in history than that?

00:10:23.080 No.

00:10:23.500 I mean, telling Americans to load up on 7 to 11 servings of grains every single day.

00:10:28.300 Yeah.

00:10:28.500 Yeah.

00:10:29.480 And to find out that that was a marketing ploy by the Department of Agriculture and that they went against the advice even of their own consultants who warned them that they would produce an epidemic of obesity and diabetes, which is, well, and not, to say nothing of depression and dementia, which is exactly what we have now.

00:10:48.200 Exactly.

00:10:48.720 It's like, I don't know what you even do when you find out that that's true.

00:10:53.280 Yeah, and the unwarranted demonization of natural fat-containing foods, nutrient-dense foods like animal-sourced foods, which continue to be demonized.

00:11:02.480 Even by the American Diabetic Association Society, I don't remember which one is still pushing the notion that, you know, diabetics can eat carbohydrates.

00:11:13.180 Like, actually, I don't think so.

00:11:14.840 I don't think that's a very good idea since they're converted to sugar, for example.

00:11:19.820 And then they're essentially glucose intolerant, right?

00:11:22.240 Like, it's madness.

00:11:24.620 And, you know, with that demonization of these, like, natural whole foods, I mean, we live in a time where 60% of the calories that your average American consumes comes from what are called ultra-processed foods.

00:11:34.820 Right, the center of the supermarket.

00:11:36.660 Exactly, the antithesis to whole foods, right?

00:11:38.560 So the idea that we're still demonizing whole foods, to me, is insane.

00:11:42.840 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:43.900 And causes insanity, too.

00:11:45.880 So it's not just insane, it's a cause of insanity.

00:11:48.780 Yeah.

00:11:49.260 Yeah, I mean, that is not—

00:11:50.860 What do you think of RFK?

00:11:52.420 Just out of curiosity, because they're—I'm sorry, that's a non sequitur in a sense, but not exactly.

00:11:57.500 Like, I've never seen another politician make an issue of health.

00:12:02.700 Yeah.

00:12:03.060 Right?

00:12:03.400 Of general health at the level that we're discussing it.

00:12:06.720 Yeah.

00:12:06.860 I mean, obviously, COVID became an issue and public health is an issue, but Kennedy is the only candidate I've ever seen who's calling out the reprehensible, mostly corporate actors who are poisoning, well, everyone, fundamentally.

00:12:23.200 Yeah.

00:12:23.480 I think he's an incredibly important voice in that regard, and I hope that no matter what happens in November, I hope that he finds a way to continue his advocacy.

00:12:33.760 I mean, I'm obviously, you know, completely aligned with the notion that we do need to start doing things differently.

00:12:41.940 Well, what's the obesity?

00:12:43.740 What—what's the percentage of Americans now who are obese?

00:12:46.740 By 2030, one in two.

00:12:48.980 One in two.

00:12:49.160 And this is not just overweight.

00:12:50.500 This is, like, frank obesity.

00:12:52.320 Right, right, right.

00:12:53.160 And so the morbidly obese will be one in five?

00:12:56.960 Yeah.

00:12:57.620 Yeah, unbelievable.

00:12:58.920 It's unbelievable.

00:13:00.100 And obesity is a risk factor for—

00:13:01.880 Everything.

00:13:02.520 Pretty much everything.

00:13:03.340 Mm-hmm.

00:13:03.760 Yeah.

00:13:04.140 Mm-hmm.

00:13:04.720 Yeah.

00:13:05.300 And—

00:13:05.780 And the cure isn't fat positivity.

00:13:08.480 No.

00:13:09.060 No, definitely not.

00:13:10.440 No.

00:13:10.840 I mean, you can be more or less healthy at any given size, but it's less healthy to be obese than it is to be of normal weight.

00:13:18.840 You know, I can understand the fat positive people in one way.

00:13:23.380 You know, I would say before I learned what I did learn about diet, I was—I was never particularly judgmental about people who are obese.

00:13:32.600 You know, I did, I suppose, to some degree accept the idea that fewer calories, a little more exercise, you lose weight.

00:13:42.380 And perhaps that—would I say that some more willpower would be of use?

00:13:49.300 I don't know if I ever really believed that because I dealt with people who had all sorts of different problems.

00:13:53.720 And reducing it to something like inadequate willpower, yeah, you've got to be very careful about doing such things.

00:14:01.240 But now when I see obese people, I think it's really too bad that you're ill.

00:14:06.800 Yeah.

00:14:07.180 Yeah.

00:14:07.380 It is a disease, and it's a—I feel a strong sense of empathy for them because, you know, them, they're being gaslit, essentially.

00:14:17.940 That's for sure.

00:14:19.080 Because what you hear over and over again is this idea that all foods fit, there are no such thing as good foods or bad foods.

00:14:26.520 And that might be true at a population health level, you know, I mean, like—and there's no single food that's going to cause obesity in an individual, right?

00:14:36.680 It's a dietary pattern of the over—you know, you typically involving the overconsumption of these ultra-processed foods.

00:14:43.120 Right. Well, you're more likely to overconsume the foods that are, what would you say, pathologically delicious.

00:14:48.800 Yeah.

00:14:49.400 Right.

00:14:49.620 Hyperpalable.

00:14:50.120 And they'd be made pathologically delicious, the high-sugar foods in particular.

00:14:53.540 Exactly.

00:14:53.860 It's very difficult to resist them, and no wonder.

00:14:56.260 Yeah.

00:14:56.680 There was a seminal NIH-funded study led by Kevin Hall, who's a highly regarded obesity researcher, who found that, you know, when you give people an ultra-processed diet to consume and you tell them to eat two satiety, it's called ad libitum feed in the literature, they end up consuming a calorie surplus of 500 additional calories.

00:15:17.240 So you do that every single day for a week.

00:15:18.860 That's a pound of fat gain every single week.

00:15:21.220 Right, right.

00:15:21.860 And conversely, when they gave them these minimally processed foods, they saw them eat to the same degree of satiety, fullness, but coming in effortlessly at a calorie deficit of about 300 calories.

00:15:31.500 So that's an 800-calorie swing.

00:15:34.000 I wonder if that has anything to do with seasonality of grains.

00:15:37.080 Well, because I'm curious, as our initial agricultural ancestors, especially in colder climates, it's like maybe you wanted to pack on an extra 20 pounds before winter hit.

00:15:49.300 You know, and so maybe that's an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that from September to December, let's say, that you took full advantage of the harvest.

00:16:00.440 So that if lean times come, it makes sense, eh, because islanders who've been on islands for many, many generations are much more likely to become overweight on a North American diet.

00:16:12.640 And you're much more likely to go through starvation periods on an island as a population.

00:16:18.560 And so people who are very, what, either efficient in their metabolisms or perhaps liable to overeat in times of plenty would have been people who survived.

00:16:29.400 So, you know, because it's interesting, right?

00:16:31.720 If there's a stable degree to which you overeat high-calorie foods, that indicates that there's, like, there's a reason for that.

00:16:39.140 That's not just random.

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00:18:15.880 Yeah, it's an adaptive survival mechanism.

00:18:21.600 Those of us who are the most adept at putting on and storing fat would make it through the famine of winter.

00:18:28.000 Yeah, the winter.

00:18:28.800 Well, and you can see why that wouldn't happen in the case of animal products,

00:18:32.640 because your cows, your lambs, your goats, etc., they can survive the winter no problem.

00:18:37.880 You don't have a storage problem there.

00:18:39.680 Yeah.

00:18:39.860 And you don't have a seasonality problem, so there's no reason to pig out, so to speak, right?

00:18:45.780 Okay, okay, okay.

00:18:46.860 So, let's go back to your mother.

00:18:49.080 So, one of the also awful things about neurological diseases is that you're very damaged by the time symptoms show up.

00:18:58.000 I've read with Parkinson's, for example, the relevant neurological tissue is 95% gone by the time any symptoms appear, right?

00:19:05.520 So, that's brutal.

00:19:06.420 Yeah, so with Parkinson's disease, by the time you are diagnosed with the condition,

00:19:13.480 about half of the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra are already dead.

00:19:20.200 And those are the neurons that produce dopamine that control movement and the like.

00:19:24.460 And this is a condition like many other chronic non-communicable conditions today.

00:19:28.820 They don't begin overnight.

00:19:30.260 They're simmering over a span of decades prior to the onset of symptoms.

00:19:36.220 Well, you can predict probability of developing dementia with verbal fluency measures taken in people's 20s, right?

00:19:45.520 So, there's a long-term study of nuns.

00:19:47.840 They had fluency measures taken when they were very young.

00:19:50.320 And so, that's an early indicator of we don't know exactly what.

00:19:54.340 Is it that the dementia process is already occurring that young?

00:19:59.240 Or is that an indication that the neurological substrate is less robust?

00:20:03.380 It's not obvious.

00:20:04.900 Well, yeah.

00:20:05.840 Inflammation certainly plays a role in reducing cognitive function, being overweight.

00:20:10.940 When people typically lose weight, they see an improvement in their cognitive function.

00:20:15.720 Yeah, right.

00:20:16.920 Yeah, well, you know, the best...

00:20:18.440 I looked for a long time into the literature pertaining to maintenance of cognitive function across time.

00:20:25.020 Because there's a linear decrease in your fluid intelligence.

00:20:29.740 So, that's G, essentially.

00:20:31.680 The central measure of cognitive ability.

00:20:34.360 It starts to decline in your early 20s.

00:20:36.520 It's pretty linear.

00:20:37.180 And so, that's, you know, that's a drag.

00:20:39.480 And then you might say, well, what can you do to forestall that?

00:20:42.340 And there are many companies, none of which seem to exist anymore on the internet,

00:20:46.780 that were claiming that, you know, daily cognitive exercises could increase your IQ or forestall cognitive degeneration.

00:20:53.160 But the literature always indicated that your best bet in that regard was both aerobic and non-aerobic exercise.

00:21:01.620 Because the brain is such a rapacious metabolic...

00:21:07.340 It has such a rapacious metabolic demand.

00:21:10.060 If you're physiologically compromised, then your brain's going to suffer first.

00:21:14.340 So, the best...

00:21:15.000 It's so funny, eh?

00:21:15.800 The best thing for your brain is to be a gym jock.

00:21:18.100 So, that's really hilarious in a terrible way. 0.64

00:21:22.160 Okay, so, you saw this terrible illness take hold of your mother.

00:21:29.160 And that motivated you.

00:21:30.560 Motivated you what?

00:21:32.500 Well, I'd always been interested in fitness and nutrition privately.

00:21:37.520 And in fact, when I started college, my intent was to go into medicine,

00:21:40.660 which I ended up pivoting away from when I realized that, you know,

00:21:44.560 I really was a competent storyteller and creative person.

00:21:50.800 And I ended up switching to a double major in film and psychology in college,

00:21:56.160 which, you know, on the one hand, kept one foot in the world of science, you know, as an undergraduate.

00:22:03.380 But then also, I really kind of fell in love with documentary filmmaking, the idea of being able to tell important stories.

00:22:10.020 And that was really my passion.

00:22:12.740 And that's what led to this role, getting to produce content for this TV network backed by Al Gore.

00:22:19.020 So, this is what led ultimately to my foray into the world of smart attainment.

00:22:24.380 So, essentially creating content, telling stories, investigating, you know, ideas that I felt were under discussed.

00:22:33.000 And when my mom became sick, you know, I had this passion, this lifelong passion for nutrition, for health.

00:22:40.680 I knew where to find quality, primary literature, peer-reviewed research.

00:22:45.720 How do you know that?

00:22:46.560 Well, in part due to my passion for it, you know, so I've been familiar with PubMed and, you know, and all those sources.

00:22:58.280 And then as an investigator, you know, as a journalist, you're, I mean, the term journalism today, you know, it's taken on a bit of a different meaning.

00:23:05.420 But you're, of course, not trained as rigorously as a PhD, but you are trained to, you know, like identify sources that are credible and be able to parse them from sources that are less so.

00:23:18.040 You're trained to ask questions, to don a skeptic's hat.

00:23:21.900 Yeah.

00:23:22.200 And those are the skills that I had when my mom became sick.

00:23:25.020 And I'm not saying that, you know, diving into the medical literature as it pertains to dementia prevention, this burgeoning field of research, was easy for me at first.

00:23:33.940 It's not easy for anyone.

00:23:35.220 It's not easy for anybody.

00:23:36.000 And also, most physicians never do it.

00:23:38.580 Like the public has an idea that there's not a lot of distinction between a physician and a scientist, or they believe that physicians are scientists, and most physicians believe that, but they're not.

00:23:49.400 Correct.

00:23:49.620 And most physicians aren't trained to read research or assess it critically, and certainly not to participate in this generation.

00:23:57.040 And so, well, the reason I'm bringing that up is because there's no reason to assume that if you're a journalist and you have the cognitive ability and persistence to plow through the literature, that you couldn't learn how to assess it.

00:24:10.460 You can.

00:24:10.980 Of course.

00:24:11.400 It's hard because the scientific papers presuppose a pretty high level of pre-existing knowledge.

00:24:17.440 And so often, if you dive into a new field, you have to go back down into the simpler sources to just understand even the lexicon.

00:24:25.740 But it's not like it's impossible.

00:24:27.660 Yeah, but that's something that I actually quite enjoyed.

00:24:30.480 You know, I would read papers, and I would read the—you know, I started just reading the introductions and the discussions and the conclusions, and I would cross-reference.

00:24:37.620 And I would, you know, if there was something that I didn't understand, this is prior to AI, I would just cross-reference it in the hopes that some other scientist, who's maybe more verbally fluent, would have described the thing that I was interested in learning more about in a different way that would lead to it clicking in my brain, that aesthetic aha, you know?

00:24:56.020 But yeah, so that was just like a relentless passion that had become an obsession because it was—I was seeing the consequences of—

00:25:06.620 How much time do you think at that time, when it was a relentless obsession, how much time do you think you were spending every day doing that research?

00:25:15.560 Every waking moment, and I was—

00:25:17.260 For how long? For how many, like, months, or—

00:25:19.740 It was probably a span of—I mean, it was a span of about six years prior to even, you know, the idea of, you know, having a book, like being able to write a book.

00:25:35.420 Right, right. So that's about the equivalent of an extremely rigorous master's and PhD program. Six years—well, that's about the same, I would say, for people who really hit it hard.

00:25:44.320 It's six years of obsessive work.

00:25:46.280 Yeah.

00:25:46.480 Now, it's—do you have any idea how many papers you read?

00:25:51.460 Thousands.

00:25:52.440 Thousands.

00:25:52.840 Yeah, yeah. And I also, I, you know, at the time, I had become friendly with somebody who gave me their academic credentials to log in through their university libraries, and I could download papers for free.

00:26:03.260 Yeah. Something that should be available to everyone.

00:26:05.800 Should be.

00:26:06.100 Since the taxpayer funds the bloody research.

00:26:08.740 Yeah.

00:26:09.560 And, but then also along the—along somewhere early on in my journey, I realized that I had an aptitude for what I was doing and for, you know, my ability to not just digest and synthesize into a cohesive narrative what it was that I was reading, but that I was able to communicate in a way that, you know, I started to garner the respect of the physicians in the doctor's offices that I would attend to with my mother.

00:26:32.380 And ultimately, I became fairly close friends and collaborators with researchers in the field.

00:26:41.700 So, at a certain point—

00:26:42.740 This was when? What years was this?

00:26:44.880 Around 2011.

00:26:46.200 Okay.

00:26:46.500 I started attending scientific conferences, and I started sharing what it was that I was learning, and yeah, it was just a, it was, you know, it was a journey that was arduous at first, but I just, I kept reading and reading and synthesizing and reaching out to people.

00:27:10.960 How did you support yourself while you were doing this?

00:27:13.060 It was very hard. I mean, I wasn't making any money. I actually, because of what it was that my mom was going through, I was living in LA at the time. I ended up basically sacrificing my LA life and moving back to New York to be closer to my mom, to tend to her and to, you know, in essence, become a caregiver of sorts.

00:27:34.160 It's not the primary caregiver, but to help out with her. And this is what I was going to say.

00:27:39.620 So, I also, at a certain point, realized that I had something that very few people, civilians, very few civilians have, and that is media credentials.

00:27:46.220 And so, really early on, I realized that I could exploit my media credentials. I wasn't famous, but I had been on TV, I was verified on Twitter, and I started reaching out to researchers and scientists whose work I had been reading to ask questions and to essentially get in the room with them, so to speak, to be able to, you know, if there were any lingering questions or I needed, you know, something clarified or what have you.

00:28:10.080 And I ended up forging relationships with these researchers because they saw the passion that I had for understanding this topic, the relative dearth of awareness that there was around, you know, dementia as a potentially preventable condition.

00:28:23.600 And, yeah, that was a journey that began at this point over 10 years ago.

00:28:28.400 But, yeah, it's been incredibly fruitful in the sense that not only have I been able to write these three books, but I actually got to collaborate with one of my mentors in science, Richard Isaacson,

00:28:39.340 who's a, you know, he's been, he's a neurologist at Weill Cornell, New York Presbyterian, who from day one has been, you know, really pushing this idea of dementia.

00:28:47.480 What's his name?

00:28:48.120 Richard Isaacson.

00:28:49.800 Richard, would he be a good guest?

00:28:51.920 Oh, he's phenomenal, yeah.

00:28:53.780 He's a neurologist?

00:28:55.420 He's a neurologist who essentially helped to create the field that is now referred to as dementia prevention.

00:29:01.840 Back when nobody was talking about dementia, back before the notion of being able to prevent this condition

00:29:07.840 was even thought of as a possibility.

00:29:10.760 It was something that he was really advocating for and studying and, you know, and raising funding for these clinical trials that he himself had run.

00:29:19.800 And so I got to collaborate on a paper with him.

00:29:22.940 Oh, yeah, that's a good deal.

00:29:24.360 Yeah, published by Springer in 2019.

00:29:25.920 It was a chapter in a textbook on the, basically an overview review, looking at the clinical practice of dementia prevention and making that accessible to other clinicians.

00:29:41.300 Because as you referenced, you know, most physicians are, in fact, technicians, you know, and many, but not all, physicians are essentially, have become paper pushers for the pharmaceutical industry.

00:29:51.820 Well, and you can understand that in some sense.

00:29:54.360 I mean, before the pharmaceutical companies were utterly corrupt, they did serve an educational function for general practitioners, let's say,

00:30:03.060 who were overwhelmed by their practice and who didn't have the time to keep up on the relevant literature on each disease.

00:30:09.140 And that's not surprising because that's really hard.

00:30:11.820 But it does mean they can be captured, and that certainly happened.

00:30:15.100 I mean, I worked with pharmacists for quite a long time in the, I say, 2000 to 2010, something like that, watching how they were marginalized, but also with physicians, watching how the pharmaceutical companies educated and then captured them.

00:30:36.720 And that's not, well, it's not a particularly pretty sight, although I do understand how it happened.

00:30:42.120 And I can also understand the pharmaceutical companies' economic motives.

00:30:46.000 It's not inexpensive to produce new drugs.

00:30:48.040 It's also very difficult, and they do have to be marketed.

00:30:50.680 So that's all very complicated.

00:30:53.280 All right, so you wrote this chapter.

00:30:55.820 That's a hell of an accomplishment for someone who's not a formal scientist.

00:30:59.880 And so why don't you, we'll go back to the genius trilogy, I think, in a moment or two.

00:31:05.880 But I would like to hear, now that we're into this, a little bit more about what you learned about the etiology of dementia in general and about its prevention.

00:31:14.180 Because that's going to be, both of those are going to be news to virtually everybody who's watching and listening.

00:31:19.500 So, well, depending on where you look, the estimates are that at least 40% of dementia cases are attributable to what are called modifiable risk factors.

00:31:31.820 So, you know, you have your non-modifiable risk factors, which are your age.

00:31:38.720 You know, age is still the number one risk factor for dementia, unfortunately, today.

00:31:42.860 Gender.

00:31:43.880 Women are at twice the risk as compared to men.

00:31:47.120 And your genes.

00:31:47.980 You can't change your genes, although you can change your expression.

00:31:50.600 Right, right.

00:31:50.880 You can influence the expression of your genes, right?

00:31:53.200 But those three things, age, gender, genes, you know, those are your non-modifiable risk factors.

00:31:57.480 But then you have about 12, if not more, modifiable risk factors.

00:32:01.400 So, these are the risk factors that essentially fall under your control.

00:32:04.600 You have a degree of agency.

00:32:05.800 And that is, I think, what is so exciting and empowering.

00:32:10.020 And so, just to, you know, discuss a few of them, and happy to double-click on any that you find compelling, most compelling.

00:32:18.300 You know, obesity, for example, that's one of them.

00:32:20.980 We know that we have agency when it comes to whether or not we are obese, right?

00:32:25.280 Yeah, well, at least it's potentially controllable.

00:32:27.580 Yeah.

00:32:27.760 Is it, okay, so is it obesity per se, or is it, do you know if it's directly related to pattern of fat distribution?

00:32:34.560 Like, is visceral fat a worse marker for potential dementia than body mass index?

00:32:40.500 Do we know?

00:32:41.320 Yeah, well, there is an association.

00:32:42.880 So, as waist circumference grows, there seems to be an inverse relationship between total brain volume.

00:32:49.340 So, there seems to be an impact of, you know, perhaps the inflammatory cytokines produced by the visceral adiposity.

00:32:56.420 We know that, you know, fat is an endocrine organ, essentially.

00:33:00.300 And that the adiposity that you accumulate around your viscera, I mean, that seems to be the most pro-inflammatory.

00:33:08.060 Yeah, yeah, right.

00:33:08.860 Okay, okay.

00:33:09.420 So, that is the link.

00:33:10.300 It's inflammatory cytokines with visceral abdominal fat.

00:33:15.320 Right.

00:33:15.560 But also, even subcutaneous obesity is associated with impaired insulin signaling, right?

00:33:22.780 So, type 2 diabetes is another modifiable risk factor.

00:33:25.860 We know that many people today are struggling from glucose intolerance, type 2 diabetes, free diabetes.

00:33:31.840 Well, we should be able to get that up to everyone suffering from it if we keep on the track that we're on.

00:33:36.240 Yeah.

00:33:36.520 I mean, I know that this is a horrible fact.

00:33:39.920 So, the blood sugar curves that are used to diagnose you as diabetic when you're 20 are age-adjusted as you age.

00:33:49.080 So, if you take the typical 60-year-old and use the 20-year-old curves, many of the average 60-year-olds would be diabetic by 20-year-old standards or pre-diabetic, which means they're pre-diabetic.

00:34:02.440 Like, there's no reason for those curves to be age-adjusted as far as I can tell.

00:34:05.980 And so, that means that diabetes as a factor among people 60 and older is radically underdiagnosed.

00:34:14.780 And if diabetes is a risk factor for dementia, which we know, because I've heard dementia referred to, it's got to be for at least 20 years by people in the know as type 3 diabetes.

00:34:27.000 Yeah.

00:34:27.440 Right.

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00:35:34.740 Right.

00:35:37.080 Yeah, actually, the neuropathologist who coined that term, type 3 diabetes, is she's in my documentary, Little Empty Boxes, which she's not, to my knowledge, been in any other public-facing content.

00:35:51.340 But I thought that that was an incredible way to frame...

00:35:55.680 What's her name?

00:35:56.800 Suzanne Delamonte.

00:35:58.360 Suzanne?

00:35:59.300 Suzanne, yeah.

00:36:00.480 Suzanne Delamonte.

00:36:02.560 Yeah, she's at Brown University.

00:36:05.300 And so, it's funny that more attention hasn't been paid to her, because that's a big deal if it's right.

00:36:09.980 Like, it's a big deal.

00:36:10.920 Big deal.

00:36:11.540 Yeah.

00:36:12.120 So, you talked about non-modifiable and modifiable risk factors, and we went through obesity and diabetes, which are also linked.

00:36:18.360 What else?

00:36:18.840 What else is modifiable?

00:36:20.680 Hypertension.

00:36:21.080 So, high blood pressure, about 50% of adults today have hypertension.

00:36:25.780 We're starting to see pre-hypertension in adolescents as well.

00:36:29.660 Oh, good.

00:36:30.180 But one of the seminal studies in the field of dementia prevention is known as the SPRINT-MIND trial, which found that when people with hypertension were aggressively treated via pharmacological means for their hypertension, they saw a dramatic risk reduction for the development of cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment.

00:36:50.760 In fact, which is considered like a prodrome of dementia, a form of pre-dementia, if you will.

00:36:56.800 But we know that, you know, lifestyle modification, dietary exercise, for example, all are, you know, as effective as drugs.

00:37:05.360 And when you have hypertension, essentially the blood vessels that are supplying blood, nutrients, oxygen to the brain are essentially damaged.

00:37:14.420 And so, yeah, hypertension is incredibly damaging to the brain.

00:37:19.320 You said there were 12.

00:37:20.800 Yeah.

00:37:20.980 I think we should, can we go through all of them?

00:37:22.920 We can go through, yeah.

00:37:24.160 I mean, so those are the ones that I think that are most relevant to diet.

00:37:30.960 Yeah, okay.

00:37:31.140 But I think it's important at this, you know, juncture to state that diet is not the only, nutrition is not the only variable here.

00:37:39.760 So, I'll never know what caused my mom's dementia, unfortunately, although it's a, you know, an investigation that's going to continue on through the rest of my life.

00:37:49.060 But, you know, nutrition is one slice of the pie.

00:37:51.160 And so, among the modifiable risk factors, you have, you know, non-nutrition related risk factors, such as exposure to excessive air pollution on a chronic basis.

00:38:03.040 Which, as of the 2020 Lancet Commission on Dementia, was finally acknowledged as being a risk factor for the development of dementia.

00:38:11.900 We've seen studies run in, for example, Mexico City, where they've seen pathological changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease in the cadavers of adolescents and children.

00:38:27.600 You know, people who have died in Mexico City, who have been exposed over the course of their lives to, you know, excessive levels of air pollution, like fine particulate matter, PM2.5, for example.

00:38:39.600 That they see an undue aggregate of, you know, amyloid beta, for example, which is the protein that forms the plaques that, you know, is one of the defining characteristics.

00:38:50.220 Is there an inflammatory consequence, too, or does anybody know?

00:38:52.560 Yes.

00:38:53.140 It is.

00:38:53.660 Yeah.

00:38:54.160 There's an inflammatory consequence.

00:38:55.540 There's a cardiovascular consequence to being exposed to air pollution.

00:38:59.560 With regard to your cardiovascular system, we know that what's good for the heart is good for the brain.

00:39:04.360 And conversely, what's bad for the heart is bad for the brain.

00:39:06.760 And so, air pollution, you know, plays a major role.

00:39:11.120 An area that I think is incredibly exciting, also very scary, but ultimately empowering, is, you know, looking at certain environmental pollutants, like certain industrial solvents.

00:39:25.000 For example, there's a compound that, there's another fantastic neurologist who has become a friend and colleague, and I think his work is incredibly important.

00:39:34.540 And his name is Ray Dorsey, Dr. Ray Dorsey, he's a University of Rochester neurologist, who has done a lot of work exposing the link between exposure to certain chemical solvents that are still widely being used in the United States, like trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, and the etiology of Parkinson's disease, and related conditions like Lewy body dementia, which is the condition that my mom suffered from.

00:39:59.400 And so, we know that, you know, what we breathe, what we eat, these are all having an impact on our health, but now the evidence is really starting to emerge that, you know, that the brain is not, you know, does not sit in this privileged ivory tower where it's immune somehow to, you know, what it is that we're eating and the compounds that we're, you know, inhaling.

00:40:23.180 The brain sits directly downwind of, you know, a lot of the insults that are being waged by modern life, modern living, you know, the trappings of modern society come at a cost, and we're starting to see that they now have, are likely having an impingement in our collective brain health.

00:40:41.920 So, you know, one of these compounds, trichloroethylene, which I just referenced, is still being used to spot clean in dry cleaning applications, and it's an incredibly volatile compound, it readily evaporates, it easily, you know, infiltrates groundwater, and obviously, occupational exposure to these compounds is really bad.

00:41:04.200 But there have been a small handful of epidemiologic studies that show that exposure to a compound like TCE, for example, is associated with a 500% increased risk of the development of Parkinson's disease.

00:41:18.160 This is a compound that was used medically up until the 70s, it was used with, you know, to decaffeinate coffee, it was used as an aesthetic for pregnant women, it's still being used as a metal degreaser, and again, it's used to spot clean in dry cleaning applications.

00:41:36.580 Now I'm skeptical of all my suits.

00:41:38.360 Yeah, well, you definitely want to not dry clean, or at least make sure that the dry cleaner that you're using is a quote-unquote green dry cleaner, because, you know, I think they'll be less likely to be using these kinds of compounds.

00:41:52.700 But it's really scary stuff.

00:41:53.880 My mom was somebody who worked in the garment industry in New York City, and so, you know, she likely was exposed to these kinds of compounds on a regular basis.

00:42:01.500 Certain herbicides and pesticides we know are, you know, occupationally linked to these kinds of conditions like Parkinson's disease.

00:42:12.120 We breathe them in through our nose, right?

00:42:13.720 They don't undergo the same degree of detoxification as an ingested compound.

00:42:18.900 They can very easily bypass the blood-brain barrier.

00:42:22.600 You know, they access the olfactory bulb.

00:42:24.380 Actually, a decline in sense of smell is one of the earliest features of a preclinical feature of cognitive decline, dementia, and even Parkinsonism.

00:42:36.460 And so, you know, as far as these conditions are, these compounds are in our environment, I think that that's, you know, on the one hand, it's very scary, but it's also empowering.

00:42:45.820 The more awareness that we can have about reducing our exposure to these compounds, I think it's crucially important.

00:42:50.700 So that's, you know, that's another of the modifiable risks.

00:42:55.640 Yeah, that's on the toxic exposure side.

00:42:58.180 Yeah, which I think is incredibly important.

00:42:59.620 My second book, The Genius Life, was really, you know, looked at that, or, you know.

00:43:03.320 How much of the, how much of an overlap do you think there is between the dietary risk and the toxic exposure risk?

00:43:11.960 Because obviously, well, and we'll get into this after we're done this section of the conversation, but obviously, there's the carbohydrate-diabetes-obesity link, but then there's food toxicity link too.

00:43:24.560 Yeah.

00:43:24.780 Because lots of things that we think are edible would rather not be eaten, and they have, well, I mean, I've known for years that the typical plant, people are worried about the pesticides that are on plants, and fair enough.

00:43:37.700 But they're not nearly as worried about the pesticides that are in plants, and there are plenty of them, because, well, plants don't like being eaten by bugs, and most of them aren't that happy about being eaten by us either.

00:43:48.360 And so they have got very potent chemical defenses, and they're not trivial.

00:43:52.660 And I've wondered, because of my experiences with diet, I mean, I lost a lot of weight because of the diet that I'm on, and I kept it off.

00:43:59.640 And that's quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure.

00:44:02.120 It's really something to, like, I weigh what I weighed when I was in my 20s.

00:44:07.100 You know, that's really something when you're 62.

00:44:10.040 It's like, what the hell?

00:44:11.520 Who knew that was possible?

00:44:13.040 And I have about the same bodily composition that I did when I was in my 20s.

00:44:19.160 And some of that's obviously from not eating carbohydrates, but there are other improvements that I've experienced that have made me wonder.

00:44:29.940 Like, I had psoriasis.

00:44:32.220 It's gone.

00:44:33.540 And some of the psoriasis patches had lasted, well, literally decades.

00:44:38.260 And they're gone.

00:44:39.320 And I think, oh, well, I was obviously eating something that was causing that.

00:44:45.740 Is that carbohydrate linked?

00:44:47.580 Who the hell knows?

00:44:48.540 But is it food toxicity linked or immunological?

00:44:53.980 Allergic?

00:44:54.720 I don't know.

00:44:55.500 Well, I think that most people, and this is where the whole, you know, the debate about the carnivore diet and all that, I think, becomes really interesting.

00:45:06.180 You know, a robust organism such as yourself should be able to consume some of these plant, quote-unquote, defense compounds and garner a degree of, you know, additional strength in so doing, right?

00:45:19.740 But there's this notion of hormesis where, you know, low doses of a certain stressor, you know, or toxicant, if you will, might actually cause a response in the system that actually leads to an up-leveling of robustness, of vigor, of strength.

00:45:36.120 Pharmacon means something like a little bit of the poison that kills you, cures you.

00:45:40.900 Yeah.

00:45:42.420 And so that's where I think if you have a robust, for example, gut microbiome, you know, I think that most people should be able to derive value from these kinds of compounds.

00:45:53.040 Yeah, well, that's the theory.

00:45:54.920 I mean, when you look at the average health state of the typical person, it makes you wonder, right?

00:45:59.580 And I've wondered how far down the rabbit hole you have to go to get to the bottom, given how obese people are.

00:46:05.260 And, well, what I've seen as the consequences of a relatively radical dietary shift.

00:46:10.440 So, well, that's obviously one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today.

00:46:13.560 Let's turn then.

00:46:14.820 We went through quite a few of the modifiable risk factors.

00:46:17.920 Let's turn from that, if that's okay, unless there's any others that you'd like to specifically highlight.

00:46:23.200 We can turn to that, to what you have been, what you found in relationship to diet and what you've been recommending.

00:46:29.700 So are there other modifiable risk factors that you think are worth concentrating on?

00:46:34.160 We went through diet and exposure to pollutants and toxicity.

00:46:38.220 Anything else that's directly relevant?

00:46:40.640 Yeah, well, there's a newly identified risk factor, and that is hearing loss.

00:46:44.880 And that's, you know, again, newly identified.

00:46:47.180 So all the verdict, all the research that we need to make, you know, clear recommendations,

00:46:54.220 other than if you have a hearing loss, a hearing aid actually is a potentially, you know, can be a potential boon to health.

00:47:00.940 Oh, so it's actually the loss of the auditory input.

00:47:04.160 Yeah.

00:47:04.460 And not a correlation between the degeneration of the ear and the degeneration of the brain.

00:47:09.480 Or maybe both.

00:47:10.580 No, I mean, I think insofar as we know that social isolation, which is...

00:47:14.000 Yeah, well, right.

00:47:14.500 Which is, in fact, another...

00:47:16.120 Yeah, you become more and more isolated, you know, in your own world.

00:47:20.540 And I think that that's probably harmful.

00:47:22.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:22.540 We know that depression...

00:47:22.940 Yeah, sure, sure.

00:47:24.640 Depression is another one.

00:47:26.160 Uh-huh.

00:47:26.520 And, you know, these estimates are typically conservative.

00:47:30.260 So I said at the onset about 40%, which was the number that was given, you know, most recently in this 2020 Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention.

00:47:40.140 But I think it's very likely that the majority of cases, at least with regard to Alzheimer's disease, and likely also even these Parkinsonian conditions, which, you know, it's becoming increasingly clear that there's an environmental toxicant aspect to them.

00:47:56.880 I think that the majority, and this is just my opinion based on my, you know, assessment of the literature, are likely preventable.

00:48:04.980 We don't have all the data yet.

00:48:07.080 But I think given what we do currently know, we don't have to sit idly on our hands.

00:48:11.700 You know, for example, there's a class of drugs that are widely being used today on a frequent basis called anticholinergic drugs.

00:48:20.460 And there are too many to list, but certain, you know, allergy medications, sleep aids, over-the-counter sleep aids, you know, have, we've seen, are associated with a starkly increased, chronic use is associated with a starkly increased risk for the development of dementia, which is not something that was considered in this paper.

00:48:38.140 So, you know, I think, I do think that most cases are potentially preventable.

00:48:43.520 And another reason why I believe this to be the case is that Alzheimer's disease is not genetic.

00:48:49.740 You know, it's, we have genetic risk factors, the most well-defined of which being the APOE4 allele, which about one in four people carry.

00:48:57.720 And depending on whether you carry one or two copies of this SNP, your risk increases anywhere between two and 14-fold.

00:49:04.940 But these are not, this is not a deterministic gene.

00:49:07.140 So, with Alzheimer's disease, two to three percent of cases are, you know, the early onset variant or familial, which is deterministic.

00:49:17.820 But the vast majority…

00:49:19.180 So, there's a certain genetic mutation that, in certain lineages, will essentially guarantee that a person develops Alzheimer's disease.

00:49:30.700 But this is a very rare form of it, and it's a completely different monster than late-onset sporadic Alzheimer's disease.

00:49:39.940 And similarly, with Parkinson's disease, the heritability of Parkinson's disease is incredibly low, one to two percent of cases.

00:49:47.260 So, these are all conditions that are, I think, mediated in large part by, you know, your environment.

00:49:53.960 You might have a certain genetic, you know, predisposition.

00:49:57.280 But, you know, for the vast majority of people that develop these conditions, it's not due to their genes.

00:50:03.100 It's due to the interplay between their genes and the environment in which they live.

00:50:08.340 Right, right.

00:50:08.880 So, it's making them more susceptible to environmental assault, essentially.

00:50:13.900 You can take, for example, you know, somebody with the ApoE4 allele, who, again, in the United States, is seemingly at dramatically increased risk.

00:50:22.900 But you might move them to a less industrialized part of the world, like Ibadan, Nigeria, for example, where they've done, you know, this research, or southern Italy.

00:50:30.380 And you see that risk all but abolished.

00:50:33.100 And so, it really is about the genes and where we've, you know, where we've tasked these genes, you know, the environment that we've tasked these genes with having to contend with.

00:50:44.840 Right, right, right.

00:50:46.320 Okay, so let's turn to diet.

00:50:47.820 Now, you have these three books, and then we want to, we don't want to forget your film either.

00:50:53.260 Yeah.

00:50:53.820 So, these three books in the Genius Trilogy, Foods, Life, and Kitchen.

00:50:57.860 Let's go, if you think that's reasonable, let's go through them one by one, Foods, Life, and Kitchen.

00:51:03.180 So, foods.

00:51:04.500 So, what were you outlining in that book?

00:51:06.760 Yeah, so, you know, I think my approach has never been to demonize foods, certainly not whole foods.

00:51:13.980 But with Genius Foods, I...

00:51:16.060 You should tell people what a whole food is, just so they know.

00:51:18.980 Yeah, so, whole foods don't have extensive ingredients lists.

00:51:21.380 They are the ingredients.

00:51:23.120 So, these are the foods that you tend to find around the perimeter of the supermarket, right?

00:51:26.960 As you alluded to, it's the aisles of the supermarket.

00:51:28.680 Stay away from the aisles in the supermarket.

00:51:30.980 Yeah, I mean, you could dip in, you know, now and then to pick up some nice extra virgin olive oil,

00:51:35.000 which has a ton of evidence, you know, in terms of its, you know, its brain health benefits.

00:51:41.040 It's, you know, we now have meta-analyses that show that extra virgin olive oil actually has a profoundly anti-inflammatory effect.

00:51:47.660 And it has some, it actually shares some of these mechanisms with ibuprofen, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.

00:51:54.700 But chronic use of that drug coincides with heightened risk for cardiovascular events, for example.

00:52:00.380 But extra virgin olive oil is essentially, you know, as anti-inflammatory as a low dose of that drug,

00:52:07.660 but without any of the negative side effects, only good.

00:52:09.820 Okay, so you could go to the aisles in the supermarket for extra virgin olive oil.

00:52:15.020 Yeah, vinegars, spices.

00:52:16.600 Spices are actually, few people realize this, but spices, aside from being a, you know,

00:52:21.640 no to low calorie way of jazzing up your food,

00:52:24.620 are actually some of the most concentrated sources of some of these hormetic compounds,

00:52:29.800 you know, polyphenols and the like, which we believe play a role in health,

00:52:33.620 and, you know, in supporting a healthy gut microbiome and the like.

00:52:38.100 But, yeah, generally you want to focus your shopping around the perimeter of the supermarket.

00:52:41.760 And so I'm a huge advocate of the consumption of whole animal source foods and whole plants,

00:52:47.580 which is a very controversial statement to say today.

00:52:50.160 I don't know why, but I'm...

00:52:52.440 Why do you think it's controversial?

00:52:54.620 Well, because we've got billions of dollars of, you know...

00:52:57.920 Right, so it's not controversial, it's just anti-propagandistic.

00:53:01.560 Exactly.

00:53:02.120 Right, with the advertisements being a form of propaganda.

00:53:05.160 Yes.

00:53:05.540 Although they're the capitalist version of propaganda.

00:53:07.920 Yeah, I mean, 73% of the items in your average supermarket are ultra-processed.

00:53:11.320 Right, and so what's the difference between processed and ultra-processed?

00:53:14.660 It's a fantastic and important question.

00:53:16.440 So, processing is a continuum.

00:53:18.480 You take an apple, you slice that apple, you're processing it to some degree, you know.

00:53:21.700 You blend those apple slices in a smoothie, you're processing it even further, right?

00:53:26.140 Right, yeah.

00:53:27.320 Ultra-processing, the whole idea of an ultra-processed food, that was actually something...

00:53:32.140 The term was first devised with this nutrient profiling system in Latin America called NOVA.

00:53:39.000 And an ultra-processed food is essentially a food that you couldn't possibly make in your own kitchen if you tried.

00:53:43.040 So, these are...

00:53:44.160 Cool whip. 1.00

00:53:44.680 Yeah, these are food-like products.

00:53:47.080 Yeah, food-like products, that's right, that's a good one.

00:53:50.220 That involve...

00:53:51.160 They're sort of like food, except they're not edible.

00:53:53.160 Exactly.

00:53:53.720 Yeah.

00:53:54.280 I mean, I think, like, we've gotten to this place in society where we've ceased to be able, seemingly ceased to be able to put empirical definitions around anything.

00:54:03.380 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:04.160 Right?

00:54:04.560 That's what happens when you live in the Tower of Babel. 0.99

00:54:06.900 Yeah.

00:54:07.400 Really.

00:54:08.000 Words lose their meaning and everyone speaks a different language.

00:54:11.040 It's incredibly anti-human, right?

00:54:12.740 That's for sure.

00:54:14.600 Yeah.

00:54:15.000 And so...

00:54:15.960 Okay, so ultra-processed...

00:54:17.520 Okay, so you couldn't make that in your own kitchen.

00:54:19.760 Right.

00:54:19.880 That's a good rule of thumb.

00:54:20.980 So, if you couldn't make it in your own kitchen, then perhaps beware of it or be wary of it.

00:54:24.960 Right.

00:54:25.260 If it comes in a box or a bag and it has, you know, a shelf life that is years, you know, away, if it doesn't expire, it doesn't rot.

00:54:35.560 So, nothing will eat it except you, then maybe don't eat it.

00:54:39.300 Precisely, yeah.

00:54:39.940 Yeah?

00:54:40.000 Okay.

00:54:40.760 Yeah.

00:54:41.060 And, you know, I think, like, a little bit here and there, like, I like to be a pragmatist and, you know, I've had the incredible privilege of getting to go on major national media where I get to reach people that still do today live in food deserts, you know?

00:54:54.720 And so, I try to temper my message with empathy for, you know, what some people today still in this country have to go through when it comes to finding and accessing and being able to afford even fresh whole food.

00:55:09.420 Right.

00:55:09.480 Two things.

00:55:11.920 Tell people what a food desert is so everybody knows.

00:55:14.960 And second, do you actually think it's possible to just eat a little bit of ultra-processed foods?

00:55:20.340 Because I'm very curious about that.

00:55:22.080 It isn't obvious to me that, like, my experience with that has been that it's easy to eat none rather than some.

00:55:30.860 Because the problem with some is that, well, how about some more?

00:55:36.100 Yeah.

00:55:36.480 Right?

00:55:36.780 And that's really a vicious conundrum when it comes to high-fat, high-sugar foods.

00:55:42.420 Yeah.

00:55:42.920 Because they're hyper-delicious.

00:55:47.180 Well, this is, yeah, this is where I think the education around the, you know, this topic is crucially important.

00:55:53.220 Because people are usually not armed with the knowledge that these foods have a profound impact on your behavior.

00:56:00.500 Yeah.

00:56:00.720 So, it's seldom informed consent today, right?

00:56:04.960 Because we're told that all foods fit.

00:56:06.480 Food is food.

00:56:07.280 There are no such thing as good or bad foods.

00:56:09.180 Yeah.

00:56:09.880 All calories are equivalent.

00:56:11.420 Yeah.

00:56:11.720 And so, people think that it's a moral failure when they go to the freezer, they take out the pint of ice cream, intending only on having a spoonful.

00:56:19.180 And before they know it, they're looking at the bottom of the pint.

00:56:21.560 Yeah.

00:56:21.780 It's not due to moral failure.

00:56:23.860 That's what you're programmed to do.

00:56:25.480 And in fact, that's what food scientists are paid lots and lots of money.

00:56:29.300 To make sure you do.

00:56:30.420 To make sure that you do.

00:56:31.560 Yeah.

00:56:33.300 Now, is it possible if you're able to, you know, understand the impact that these foods have on your behavior and cultivate a, you know, quote-unquote healthy relationship with them?

00:56:42.480 Yeah, I think it's possible, but it's just very difficult, you know?

00:56:46.340 Yeah.

00:56:46.740 Well, our rule in dietary modification has always been, don't have it in the house.

00:56:52.580 Yeah.

00:56:53.060 Right?

00:56:53.340 Because you'll eat it.

00:56:54.120 Especially if you're hungry.

00:56:56.300 Precisely.

00:56:56.640 It's like that 90s horror movie, The Gate.

00:56:58.520 I don't know if you're familiar or you saw that movie.

00:57:00.440 But it's like once you open up those floodgates, it becomes really difficult, if not impossible, to pump the brakes.

00:57:05.640 So, with regards to not being able to pump the brakes, let's say, do you know if, let's take sugar as an example.

00:57:14.260 One of the things I've been curious about, because I know that microorganisms, they're very sneaky little things, and they can affect complex organisms in ways that are, in some ways, horrifying and unimaginable.

00:57:27.380 And so, I wonder, do you know if there's any evidence that a sugar-centered gut biome contains microorganisms that produce sugar craving?

00:57:39.000 Well, I don't know of any hard evidence, but I would say that it's likely.

00:57:45.860 Yeah, it is likely.

00:57:46.580 We know that the enteric nervous system, the gut, communicates with the brain.

00:57:50.300 Yeah.

00:57:50.500 Well, also, those organisms would have a distinct advantage.

00:57:54.340 If they could make their host crave what they need to survive, then they're going to live.

00:57:58.760 And there's lots of evidence that such things are possible in the natural world.

00:58:04.500 Not only possible, but actually quite likely.

00:58:07.520 Yeah, and also, your body gets used to what it is that you feed it regularly, and it starts to crave the things that you feed it regularly.

00:58:15.040 Yeah, sure, your appetite.

00:58:16.420 Well, look, you can see that with foods like olives and coffee.

00:58:20.500 And alcohol, I suppose, even.

00:58:22.260 No child likes their first olive, right?

00:58:25.420 You have to cultivate the taste.

00:58:27.120 And it's partly because, so, the taste and reward systems are quite interesting in their relationship.

00:58:33.320 Because each, the satiety system and the reward system are separate from the taste systems.

00:58:39.660 Which you can tell, because you can eat something to satiety, and it still tastes the same, but you don't want it anymore.

00:58:48.000 Now, you could imagine a system where the more ice cream you eat, the less you can taste it until you can't taste it at all, so you quit.

00:58:55.540 But that's not how it's set up.

00:58:57.280 And the satiety and reward systems are somewhat separate for each taste category.

00:59:02.840 So, when people say, well, I still have room for dessert, what they mean is, well, I've satiated the, like, umami system for protein, but not the system for carbohydrates or sugar.

00:59:13.720 And then that system is also modifiable by learning, so that you can learn.

00:59:19.620 It's weird, because when you learn to appreciate olives, bitter foods really fall into this category.

00:59:24.980 Because they're very difficult to like on first exposure, because we don't like bitter things.

00:59:30.760 But once you learn to like them, you really like them.

00:59:34.280 And so, that shows you that that's a testament to that modifiability of, well, the taste and the satiety system by experience.

00:59:40.780 And so, of course, your body's going to adapt to what you eat, because for obvious, it's obvious, it's obvious why that would be the case.

00:59:49.800 Yeah, and I think that there's like a degree of, you know, I mean, this is more your wheelhouse certainly than mine.

00:59:56.280 But, you know, somebody who is, has, you know, a higher degree of openness, you know, can embrace these more complex flavors.

01:00:05.660 Yeah.

01:00:07.400 Whereas, you know, I still encounter a lot of people today who, you know, adopt, who have adopted and stick to what I call the 12-year-old boy diet, where they're, you know, they really only seemingly can appreciate really simple flavors and mouthfeels.

01:00:24.000 So, what would the 12-year-old boy diet be?

01:00:26.980 French fries and hot dogs?

01:00:28.260 It's kind of like, yeah, French fries, hot dogs, ketchup on everything.

01:00:30.900 Right, right.

01:00:31.100 It's like the standard American diet, you know, to a team.

01:00:33.040 Right, ketchup on everything.

01:00:33.980 Just things that are like incredibly palatable, no complexity.

01:00:39.140 I think it's a, yeah.

01:00:41.620 Chicken fingers?

01:00:42.100 It makes sense when you're 12 years old, right?

01:00:42.740 Do chicken fingers fall into that category?

01:00:44.400 Yeah.

01:00:45.400 But, I mean, chicken fingers are great.

01:00:47.040 I'm not, you know, I'm not hitting on chicken fingers, but although I haven't had a good chicken finger in a long time, but because they're usually deep fried and all kinds of, you know, who knows what these days.

01:00:56.560 But, yeah, I think cultivating a broader palate, I think, is incredibly important.

01:01:02.380 But, essentially, yeah, your body will start to crave what it is that you most routinely feed it.

01:01:07.980 And it'll become better at processing those, whatever it is those food components happen to be, you know?

01:01:13.760 So, for somebody who's chronically eating, you know, a high-carbohydrate diet, their bodies get better at burning, you know, glucose, for example.

01:01:21.340 Somebody who's on a, you know, highly fat-adapted ketogenic diet, for example, they become better at burning fat.

01:01:27.620 And that's why there's this phenomena known as physiologic insulin resistance.

01:01:31.180 For somebody who's on a very low-carbohydrate diet for a sustained duration, you know, they do, there is a degree of physiologic insulin resistance that occurs where, you know, they'll start to consume, you know, something as innocuous as a bowl of blueberries, and they'll see their blood sugar go through the roof.

01:01:48.080 It's not because the blueberries were unhealthy, ever.

01:01:50.520 It's just that they, you know, their bodies have become so well-adapted to burning fat as a fuel source, you know, at the expense of carbohydrates.

01:01:59.500 Right, right, right, right, right.

01:02:00.900 Okay, so in your book, your genius book on food, does that outline, what does it outline precisely?

01:02:07.900 Obviously, it talks, I would, it talks about the difference between whole foods and, say, ultra-processed foods.

01:02:16.140 Yeah.

01:02:16.300 So those are manufactured foods.

01:02:18.020 Correct.

01:02:18.560 So if it's made by a giant corporation and it's in a box.

01:02:22.200 If it has an ad on TV.

01:02:24.140 Okay, if it has an ad on TV.

01:02:26.200 Oh, that's an interesting market.

01:02:27.620 Yeah.

01:02:28.020 It's a good heuristic, right?

01:02:29.220 Yeah, sure, sure.

01:02:30.160 Yeah.

01:02:30.400 So if it has an ad on TV, avoid it.

01:02:32.780 Yeah.

01:02:33.680 To the best of your ability.

01:02:34.900 And so what I tried to do in Genius Foods was highlight the food, specific foods that I thought there were, that would stand out to me over and over again in the literature as being particularly supportive of brain health.

01:02:48.240 Whether it's by way of their nutrient density or by way of the, we'll say prevalence of certain phytochemicals, which have shown to be particularly supportive of brain health.

01:03:00.000 For example, and this is something that I think I really broke the news on with Genius Foods, was the role of dietary carotenoids.

01:03:07.400 So these are plant pigments that actually also accumulate in animal tissue.

01:03:12.580 For example, in the beef of a grass-fed, grass-finished cow, you see an abundance of carotenoids, which gives the hue of the fat tissue of that marbling in a piece of grass-fed steak, for example.

01:03:26.720 It's a different hue.

01:03:27.520 It's slightly more orange in color, similar to a pastured egg yolk.

01:03:31.780 You see a higher prevalence of these carotenoid compounds, which we know, well, we've known for decades at this point, play a role in supporting eye health.

01:03:40.500 So certain carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin can help prevent AIDS.

01:03:44.260 Are those in golden rice?

01:03:47.820 I think beta-carotene.

01:03:49.260 Vitamin A isn't golden rice, but they are golden as well, right?

01:03:51.520 Yeah.

01:03:52.040 So they, I think that's...

01:03:53.060 And they do prevent blindness, golden rice.

01:03:54.700 Correct, yes.

01:03:55.740 So vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide.

01:03:59.740 And so, yeah, they've modified golden rice to have a higher, to have beta-carotene, which is pro-vitamin A.

01:04:06.820 Yeah.

01:04:08.520 Interestingly, many people are not as good at converting pro-vitamin A to retinol in the body.

01:04:14.760 I still think it's a great source of vitamin A, but a pro-vitamin A and ultimately retinol.

01:04:20.380 But yeah, vitamin A is naturally found in animal source foods like egg yolks.

01:04:23.120 Okay, so a diverse range of colorful whole foods.

01:04:26.720 Yes.

01:04:27.020 Plants and animals.

01:04:27.980 Yeah.

01:04:28.220 I'm also a huge, I mean, and this is, I guess, somewhat more controversial, but I think red meat is a health food.

01:04:36.560 Say that again. 0.71

01:04:37.080 I know that you agree with that.

01:04:37.540 Say that again. 0.71

01:04:38.100 I think that red meat is a health food.

01:04:39.720 And I'm not like, you know, and this is an opinion that I've established based on data well before I had any kind of, you know, financial relationship with the kinds of companies who produce the meat that I personally, you know, eat and feed to my family.

01:04:53.360 Yeah.

01:04:53.740 Yeah.

01:04:53.780 But I think it's an incredible, it is an incredibly nutrient-dense food.

01:04:57.860 Yeah.

01:04:59.480 And...

01:05:00.160 Well, cows go to a lot of work to make it. 1.00

01:05:02.000 Yeah.

01:05:02.680 Mm-hmm.

01:05:03.420 I mean, all those stomachs, right?

01:05:04.880 Right.

01:05:05.160 That they have.

01:05:05.620 Right, absolutely.

01:05:06.800 So, that's the right kind of ultra-processing.

01:05:09.180 There you go.

01:05:09.920 Mm-hmm.

01:05:10.220 Right.

01:05:10.740 It's like nature's form of ultra-processing.

01:05:13.900 And yeah, and so I think that's an incredibly important food, but...

01:05:17.060 Right, so it's remarkable that that's been demonized.

01:05:20.220 Like, it's... 0.99

01:05:20.620 And the thing is, the demonization doesn't quit, because for a long time, I suppose, it was driven by idiot quasi-scientists and people who are maneuvering in the same domain as the food pyramid liars. 0.98

01:05:36.320 But now, the climate people have got a hold of it as well. 0.98

01:05:39.380 Yeah.

01:05:39.540 But for whatever reason, animal-related food, while there's also the ethical issue, which isn't trivial, I would say, you know, that's not something that can be easily ignored or should be.

01:05:50.100 But red meat is definitely the... 0.89

01:05:52.740 It's the target of propagandists continually.

01:05:55.840 And so, and that's really not good if it turns out that it's actually useful, like seriously useful for us.

01:06:01.340 And we have what?

01:06:02.680 What's the FDA recommended daily announce?

01:06:05.400 RDA for carbohydrates?

01:06:07.020 There's no RDA for carbohydrates.

01:06:08.500 Yeah, there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate.

01:06:10.780 Right.

01:06:11.380 Which is, really, that should...

01:06:13.140 That's something to be said repeatedly.

01:06:15.460 Yeah.

01:06:15.820 Because that's really kind of shocking.

01:06:18.280 It is.

01:06:18.700 We have, you know, a daily requirement for certain essential fats, certain, you know, fatty acids, like omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

01:06:25.960 Proteins.

01:06:26.620 Protein is massively important.

01:06:28.460 Yeah.

01:06:28.880 There's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate, which isn't to say that you shouldn't eat them.

01:06:32.320 Right.

01:06:32.400 But it's very strange that that's not essential.

01:06:36.080 Correct.

01:06:37.160 And also, I mean, you look at the data and beef consumption in the United States has declined over the past few decades.

01:06:43.160 Mm-hmm.

01:06:44.040 It's on a downward slope.

01:06:47.240 And yet we continue to blow up.

01:06:50.940 We get sicker.

01:06:51.580 We get more obese.

01:06:53.000 And it's a whole food, at the very least.

01:06:55.720 It's a pristine source of dietary protein.

01:06:57.580 I mean, it comes concurrent with, you know, all kinds of nutrients that we know play a role in good health.

01:07:04.780 I mean, it's actually, I mean, it is a source of phytonutrients.

01:07:08.000 Most people don't realize this, but, you know, the phytonutrients that a cow ingests makes its way into the tissue of that animal, just as it does us.

01:07:17.580 Creatine, taurine, carnitine, carnosine.

01:07:20.280 I mean, these are all, I think, really important nutrients.

01:07:23.360 And, you know, and it continues to be demonized.

01:07:27.820 Some people will say, oh, well, it's a source of saturated fat.

01:07:31.940 It's fascinating that 3% of the saturated fat that your average American consumes comes from steak.

01:07:39.680 The vast majority comes from what are called mixed dishes, ultra-processed foods, dairy, which is actually, even full-fat dairy is neutral, if not beneficial from a cardiovascular health standpoint.

01:07:51.380 I mean, and so, yeah, I think the demonization of red meat is a real shame, and it's a big problem.

01:07:57.880 And the evidence that's used to demonize it is incredibly weak.

01:08:01.080 Right, right, right.

01:08:01.960 As is most nutritional science.

01:08:04.000 Most.

01:08:04.480 Stunningly weak.

01:08:05.280 Stunningly weak.

01:08:05.760 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:06.280 Correlational studies in the field of nutrition are not helpful.

01:08:09.220 No.

01:08:09.560 And the other studies where you could infer causality, they're unbelievably difficult to do.

01:08:14.820 It's hard to get people to modify their diet.

01:08:16.940 Yeah.

01:08:17.160 And to stick to it.

01:08:18.020 And, yeah, it's very difficult research to do.

01:08:20.420 So, I can understand why they default to correlation studies, but they're not helpful.

01:08:25.240 Too many variables.

01:08:26.360 Those are the kinds of studies that make up our dietary guidelines.

01:08:28.920 I mean, those are the kinds of studies that, again and again, you know, implore us to consume grains at every meal.

01:08:34.360 And I think, you know, it's just—

01:08:39.100 Yeah, so talk about grains, because do grains qualify as a whole food?

01:08:43.880 Well, certainly the vast—the form in which they are most frequently consumed today, absolutely not.

01:08:50.260 Right.

01:08:50.400 Most people today, you know, the form of grains, which most people consume, are refined grains.

01:08:54.400 Muffins.

01:08:55.060 Yeah, exactly.

01:08:56.460 Right.

01:08:57.140 Health cake.

01:08:57.520 And even if you were to go to Google Images and look at the image of the food pyramid, which thankfully has been retired, you know, what it's been replaced by is, you know, I would say not that much better.

01:09:06.720 Yeah.

01:09:07.060 Although it is an improvement.

01:09:08.380 But, I mean, it was literally—the illustrated USDA food pyramid, it was like pasta.

01:09:14.000 It was like loaves of bread.

01:09:15.420 Yeah.

01:09:15.640 Like, you're telling me that that's essential for good health, that I need to be eating 7 to 11 servings of this—

01:09:20.120 At least.

01:09:20.400 —on a daily basis.

01:09:21.900 Mm-hmm.

01:09:22.400 And so, if you actually look at what a grain is, I mean, you know, most grains today actually in the supermarket are fortified because they're so nutrient-impoverished that they have to have added nutrients—

01:09:32.960 —nutrients added to them to make them—

01:09:34.920 Even in their basic form.

01:09:35.920 —serve any sort of dietary value at all.

01:09:38.380 But they're essentially pure—it's essentially pure energy.

01:09:41.560 It's cattle feed.

01:09:42.140 Now, I'm not saying that grains can't play a supportive role to health.

01:09:45.220 I mean, certainly you look at, you know, for example, bodybuilders who are in fantastic physical shape.

01:09:49.240 You know, it's not—they do, you know, many of them on social media, the more prominent ones, do use performance-enhancing drugs.

01:09:55.660 But, I mean, grains can be used to facilitate exercise performance and the like.

01:10:00.220 And I think if you—

01:10:00.620 Well, and you can say, too, like, socially speaking, you know, the first order problem that our society had to contend with was getting everyone enough calories.

01:10:11.120 Yeah.

01:10:11.320 Right, and you could see some utility in generating cheap calories.

01:10:17.220 I always—I often think about corn syrup in that regard.

01:10:20.140 Corn syrup is a very cheap source of calories.

01:10:22.980 But when the problem is obesity and not starvation, corn syrup seems like a very bad solution.

01:10:28.800 Correct.

01:10:29.120 And so, you know, I'm willing to give the Department of Agriculture, let's say, its credit for assuming that—or for ensuring that calories per se are in plentiful supply, which is the case.

01:10:41.840 But, man, we're paying a vicious price for it on the other side of it.

01:10:46.000 Yeah, well, I mean, this is the—we live amidst the first time in human history where there are more overweight people walking the earth than underweight.

01:10:52.820 Right, right, right.

01:10:53.560 So, we've solved the food scarcity problem.

01:10:55.780 I mean, there's—you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody in a state of energy deficit today in the Western world.

01:11:01.360 Yeah.

01:11:01.840 Especially here in—

01:11:02.720 And increasingly in the developed world.

01:11:04.100 Except when that's used for political—like, most of the starvation, in particular, in the developed world is purposeful.

01:11:11.760 Not the consequence of economic inadequacy, right?

01:11:17.800 It's targeted.

01:11:19.180 And so, yeah, and that's a good thing that we solved that problem.

01:11:22.600 But these problems are not trivial either.

01:11:25.640 Yeah.

01:11:25.980 And they're getting worse.

01:11:27.520 Correct.

01:11:28.020 And I'm not saying that grains cause, you know, Alzheimer's disease.

01:11:32.100 That's never been my stance.

01:11:33.740 But, you know, we do have to look at this as a food quality problem.

01:11:36.980 And grains, I don't believe, are, you know, particularly when you have all these other options in the supermarket, like grass-fed, grass-finished beef, wild fatty fish, salmon, for example, sardines, eggs.

01:11:48.320 You know, eggs are one of nature's cognitive multivitamins.

01:11:51.100 A study was just published that found that, you know, just consuming—

01:11:53.320 And they were demonized, too.

01:11:54.520 They were demonized, too.

01:11:55.460 Yeah.

01:11:55.680 Yeah.

01:11:56.220 And interestingly, and this is, again, and to preface, I'll never—just to reiterate, I'll never know what caused my mom's dementia.

01:12:02.820 I don't know if it had anything to do with nutrition.

01:12:04.560 It could have had everything to do with—I don't know.

01:12:06.560 I'll never know.

01:12:07.740 But, you know, my mom was somebody who, for the entirety of her life, was concerned about heart disease.

01:12:13.180 And so whatever the messaging was around heart disease is something that my mom adopted and ingrained, essentially, in not just her diet, but my diet growing up.

01:12:21.640 And so, you know, my kitchen was always filled with, you know, low-fat, fat-free, cholesterol-free food-like products.

01:12:29.500 Yeah.

01:12:30.200 That had—adorned by the Red Heart Healthy logo on them, which you still see ubiquitously in the supermarket, right?

01:12:36.080 And eggs were one of those foods that we threw out, essentially, in lieu of these more, you know, processed, high-margin replacement products.

01:12:46.200 And an egg is literally a cognitive multivitamin.

01:12:48.940 I mean, it contains a little bit of everything required to grow a brain, right?

01:12:52.320 So it's postmarked by nature.

01:12:55.860 You know, this is—here, this is what you need to grow a brain in an egg yolk, right?

01:12:59.960 Even if it's a chicken brain.

01:13:01.680 Even if it's a chicken brain.

01:13:02.840 Yeah.

01:13:03.280 But studies are now starting to show that they're an incredible cognitive multivitamin.

01:13:08.560 A study was just published that found that, you know, all it takes is one to two eggs a week in this one study.

01:13:14.700 And there was something like a 50% risk—close to a 50% risk reduction for the development of Alzheimer's disease.

01:13:22.000 Wow.

01:13:22.500 We know that choline is one of the most important nutrients.

01:13:24.780 In fact, about 40% of the effect that they saw in this observational trial, they thought, was attributed to the fact that egg yolks are the top source of choline in the standard American diet.

01:13:37.240 And yet, 90% of adults today don't consume the adequate intake for choline on a daily basis.

01:13:44.480 Right, so that's the consequence of demonizing eggs.

01:13:46.920 There you go.

01:13:47.420 You demonize eggs. 0.66

01:13:48.320 Great.

01:13:48.880 90% of adults don't consume adequate choline, which is crucially important.

01:13:52.520 It's the backbone to acetylcholine.

01:13:54.420 Yeah, right.

01:13:54.600 Which is the neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory, right?

01:13:57.500 It forms the, you know, skeleton molecule of our neuronal membranes, which are crucially important for our, you know, brain cell communication, our ability to perceive the world.

01:14:08.980 So, it's a fantastic food.

01:14:11.140 And, you know, I remember when my mom first served me, you know, that egg, my first egg, she was like, you know, she warned me not to consume them with any, you know, significant frequency because they might clog my arteries.

01:14:25.280 Right.

01:14:25.520 And we know the dietary cholesterol for the vast majority of people.

01:14:29.520 Well, the data was there a long time ago showing that this, I knew this in like 19, in the 1980s.

01:14:36.880 The decreased risk of heart disease reported as a consequence of cholesterol lowering was swamped by the increase in suicide that was caused by the fact that cholesterol is a precursor to serotonin.

01:14:52.280 So, even if fewer people died of heart attacks, which is probably not true anyways, more people committed suicide.

01:15:00.780 So, that's part of the problem with the complexity of dietary studies, right?

01:15:04.560 Is you need to control for a lot of variables and you need to measure a lot of outcomes.

01:15:09.720 Yeah.

01:15:10.080 But with these observational studies, I mean, there's always residual confounding.

01:15:13.820 Like...

01:15:13.920 Yes, always.

01:15:14.720 Always.

01:15:14.860 There's no way of controlling it.

01:15:15.780 There's no way.

01:15:16.280 No, no.

01:15:16.820 You can't do correlational dietary studies.

01:15:18.760 Yeah, you just can't.

01:15:19.900 No, no.

01:15:20.540 They should never be published.

01:15:21.960 Yeah.

01:15:22.160 I mean, I'm pro plants.

01:15:25.280 You know, that's a flag that like, you know, that I've planted, no pun intended.

01:15:29.560 Yeah.

01:15:29.740 But it's not hard to imagine a world where, you know, all of the, you know, the mountains

01:15:35.440 of evidence that we have observationally looking at, you know, how fruits and vegetables

01:15:39.520 impact human health, the positive effects that we see at the epidemiologic, you know,

01:15:44.880 scale, that that could potentially be a false positive because everybody and their mother

01:15:50.500 knows that fruits and vegetables are good for you, right?

01:15:52.200 And eating fresh fruits and vegetables today is an incredible privilege in a time when,

01:15:57.700 you know, 60% of the calories come from these ultra processed foods.

01:15:59.880 It can be really difficult to find access to fresh fruits and vegetables, right?

01:16:03.900 I mean, we do have RCT data showing us that there are beneficial compounds.

01:16:08.000 I've talked about some of the phytochemicals in it.

01:16:09.720 But conversely, red meat, it's also very easy.

01:16:12.760 Well, okay.

01:16:13.300 So let's talk about that a bit because I was obviously at some point, we're going to get

01:16:17.340 into the issue of the carnivore diet.

01:16:19.640 Yeah.

01:16:19.820 And so I guess the first thing I'd say is, and you're making some allusion to it now,

01:16:24.520 obviously, what are your thoughts about the carnivore diet and its potential advantages

01:16:30.700 and dangers?

01:16:32.200 I think, I mean, I think it's potentially a great therapeutic diet for people that have,

01:16:38.080 you know, a predisposition to autoimmunity.

01:16:41.220 Yeah, okay.

01:16:42.320 And it's not something that I would ever behold to anybody.

01:16:45.160 Here's the other thing is that diet zealots, particularly today on social media, they're,

01:16:49.820 they seem to be very emotionally invested in what other people eat.

01:16:53.300 I don't care, ultimately, what other people eat.

01:16:55.860 Yeah.

01:16:56.180 I feel the same way about that, you know, at, say, a moral level.

01:17:00.280 Right.

01:17:00.880 But like you, you want people to be able to make informed decisions, not decisions clouded

01:17:06.940 by what I call covert activism, right?

01:17:09.960 Yeah.

01:17:10.300 Or overt activism for that matter.

01:17:13.620 Yeah.

01:17:14.480 Or, you know, misinformation or disinformation about what it means to eat healthily today.

01:17:19.800 Ultimately, I don't care, you know, if somebody wants to-

01:17:21.500 Otherwise known as lies.

01:17:22.920 Yes.

01:17:24.180 Precisely.

01:17:26.040 So, yeah, I mean, I would, for people that are, that have seen a reprieve of symptoms from

01:17:31.640 some of these awful conditions that people suffer from.

01:17:33.420 Yeah.

01:17:33.600 Like, keep doing it.

01:17:35.680 Yeah.

01:17:36.360 I think that for somebody with a robust gut microbiome who, you know, I think people should

01:17:41.980 be able to tolerate and not just tolerate, but to derive, you know-

01:17:45.760 Benefit.

01:17:46.120 A health benefit from, you know, many of these so-called plant defense compounds, you know,

01:17:50.560 even cruciferous vegetables, which have become demonized in certain carnivore circles, you

01:17:54.640 know, due to, you know, certain glucosinolate compounds or compound like sulforaphane, which,

01:18:01.800 you know, there are actual randomized human trials that show that these compounds can

01:18:06.640 actually help us detoxify from some of these environmental pollutants that we know, you

01:18:11.540 know, play a role in disease.

01:18:16.040 Obviously, you can get a certain dose, if you will, of phytochemicals from eating animal

01:18:21.900 source foods, but, you know, carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which we know are very

01:18:25.940 beneficial to brain health, you know, you're not going to see a better, you're not going to

01:18:29.260 find a better source of them in the supermarket than kale, for example, which people love

01:18:33.720 to hate on, but foods like kale, spinach, dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, I

01:18:38.840 think that the, I do think that for most people, the benefits outweigh the risks.

01:18:43.080 Yeah.

01:18:43.740 You know, if an elimination diet where you remove all fruits and vegetables for a time

01:18:51.060 helps, I think that's amazing.

01:18:52.980 Well, that's a good, useful thing to discuss procedurally.

01:18:56.560 I mean, when we were trying to address my daughter's immunological problems, which my

01:19:04.220 wife was on at a very early stage because she intuited that there was a dietary relationship, 0.97

01:19:09.680 but it turned out to be so complex.

01:19:12.140 I mean, we couldn't have possibly imagined that eating nothing but meat was the solution.

01:19:16.860 Like, who in the hell is going to ever think that?

01:19:18.480 I knew that fasting was a reliable treatment for arthritis and that's well documented in

01:19:25.000 literature.

01:19:25.380 Virtually everyone who's arthritic, if they fast, they go into remission, but then when

01:19:29.680 they start eating, the symptoms come back.

01:19:31.940 And so, well, and maybe that's not true if all they start eating again is red meat, but

01:19:36.640 those studies hadn't been done and still haven't been as far as I know.

01:19:39.860 Um, we had tried Michaela on some different elimination diets, but they made no sense.

01:19:48.840 Like the food classes that were eliminated and kept seemed random to me and well, and to

01:19:55.640 Tammy and, and to Michaela.

01:19:57.180 And she started to experiment.

01:19:59.420 They started to experiment with more radical elimination diets and by trial and error.

01:20:03.700 And also because of Sean Baker came to experiment with only beef, which worked.

01:20:11.280 And so, you know, and we've talked to hundreds or maybe thousands of people now who've tried

01:20:16.980 variants of the carnivore diet and had radical, especially weight loss transformations.

01:20:23.280 Like I talked to people at my lectures all the time who are, they're shell shocked because

01:20:27.560 they've lost like 150 pounds in 18 months.

01:20:29.760 And so they're not even the same people physically.

01:20:34.000 And while they're happy about it, obviously, but also completely, they're shocked by the

01:20:39.440 fact that that worked.

01:20:41.400 Now I would say, and you tell me what you think about this is that if you are suffering

01:20:46.300 from chronic health conditions, especially if you're also overweight, an elimination diet

01:20:52.760 is worth trying on the off chance that something you're eating is causing your symptoms because

01:20:57.960 who knows?

01:20:58.540 And the simplest elimination diet is obviously just beef, right?

01:21:03.780 So why not go down to one variable?

01:21:06.200 And if it doesn't work, like we've talked to many people and I know people say, well,

01:21:10.920 anecdotes aren't data.

01:21:12.160 It's like, no, but they're hypotheses.

01:21:14.680 Yeah.

01:21:14.960 And many of the same anecdotes start to look a lot like data.

01:21:19.240 So anyways, we've talked to many people who've reported remission of their diabetic or arthritic

01:21:26.860 symptoms within two weeks of an only beef diet.

01:21:31.700 And so we are thinking that it's more like three months is a good trial.

01:21:36.240 And if it doesn't work, well, okay.

01:21:39.180 The loss is some restriction for three months and that's about it.

01:21:43.500 And it's not like it's easy.

01:21:45.160 I'm not saying that.

01:21:46.100 And you may suffer some complications in the transition to the new and more restrictive

01:21:52.000 diet, but you can live on just beef.

01:21:54.240 So like, what the hell?

01:21:55.620 If you're half dead and radically overweight, three months isn't much of a risk.

01:22:01.740 And so I'm wondering what, like, what do you think about that line of logic?

01:22:04.660 Yeah, well, I think, you know, I think, well, I think you're right.

01:22:09.220 And in the sense that beef is, it's an incredibly nutrient dense food.

01:22:14.360 It's highly satiating.

01:22:16.400 Yes.

01:22:16.840 It's loaded with protein, obviously.

01:22:20.480 You're restricting the consumption of large swaths of the most problematic foods accessible

01:22:28.480 to a modern human today.

01:22:30.280 And so it doesn't surprise me that at least in the short term, you're going to see an

01:22:34.920 improvement.

01:22:35.520 Yeah.

01:22:35.900 Yeah.

01:22:36.740 And so I guess my question is, and I think Sean Baker is very smart.

01:22:42.540 Yeah.

01:22:42.780 But I had him on my podcast recently and I posed this question to him, like, you're performing

01:22:47.140 already at such a high level on beef and I don't doubt that you're healthy.

01:22:51.040 You seem healthy.

01:22:51.900 Yeah. 0.80

01:22:52.140 He's quite the monster. 0.61

01:22:53.380 Yeah. 0.60

01:22:53.560 And I'm not going to gaslight somebody who's on, you know, a carnivore diet and asserting that

01:22:59.160 they're thriving on it.

01:22:59.980 Yeah.

01:23:00.160 Like, who am I to, you know, to say that you're not, right?

01:23:02.720 Yeah, right.

01:23:04.760 But, you know, my question to him was like, okay, so you've established that this diet

01:23:09.580 is working well for you.

01:23:11.360 Why not add in some of these foods that we know have compounds that, you know, might...

01:23:16.680 Be lacking in beef.

01:23:17.820 Yeah.

01:23:18.100 Or like might give you an additional benefit.

01:23:20.660 You know, for example, like an all meat diet might not have very particularly high levels

01:23:25.300 of magnesium, which we know, you know, plays hundreds of roles in the body, right?

01:23:29.180 Everything from, you know, repairing DNA damage to energy synthesis.

01:23:32.920 Like, it's a cofactor that, you know, is required in the synthesis of ATP, for example.

01:23:37.740 Yeah.

01:23:37.820 Some of these carotenoid compounds that I mentioned earlier.

01:23:40.560 Yeah.

01:23:40.880 Like, yeah, you're getting...

01:23:41.740 Those are definitely open questions.

01:23:43.260 Yeah.

01:23:43.440 Maybe you're getting a small amount of them in your meat-only diet, right?

01:23:47.200 Yeah.

01:23:47.260 Yeah.

01:23:47.280 But maybe a little bit more might, you know, give you an additional cognitive...

01:23:50.500 And we're just playing, like, nutritionism here with these, like, individual nutrients

01:23:54.440 that have been studied that I can reference that I know about.

01:23:56.980 But there are swaths of nutrients in the plant kingdom that, you know, have been identified

01:24:02.260 as playing, as having a potential benefit to human health.

01:24:04.980 Even something as innocuous as white rice, right, where it's had all the anti-nutrients

01:24:10.380 sloughed off, right?

01:24:11.560 Like, for somebody who's, you know, such a physical specimen as he is, like, maybe adding

01:24:17.120 some carbohydrates into that system, you know, so that you get a little bit of additional

01:24:21.420 glycogen in the tank before, you know, because he's still trying to, like, break records.

01:24:25.420 Yeah, right. 0.99

01:24:25.680 That guy's a madman. 1.00

01:24:26.300 Right, right. 1.00

01:24:26.900 The best possible way.

01:24:27.920 Yeah.

01:24:28.140 Maybe that might, you know...

01:24:30.100 Okay, so I can understand that.

01:24:32.760 I guess my criticism of that, to the degree that a criticism is warranted, is it's extremely

01:24:43.980 complex to...

01:24:45.200 And this contradicts to some degree something I said earlier, you know, that you could reduce

01:24:49.900 to a carnivore diet and then add back.

01:24:52.540 It's very complicated to add back, right?

01:24:55.300 You really have to think like a scientist and you have to be very disciplined, you know,

01:24:59.860 to experiment with one thing at a time in addition.

01:25:03.560 And then also to figure out, well, how do you know if it's helping?

01:25:07.040 Like, what's your measure and over what time frame?

01:25:09.740 You know, so, like, I've tried to add things back to my...

01:25:12.060 I added salmon back to my diet and it turned out that it made me anxious and I have no idea

01:25:18.860 why and it's a pretty robust effect and it took a fair while to manifest itself.

01:25:23.420 And so, you have these terrible complex problems with adding things back, which is, well, maybe

01:25:30.300 if you added phytonutrients, for example, of the sort that you were describing, it would

01:25:34.660 take a month to see a difference and it would be hard to measure except in certain circumstances.

01:25:41.180 So, like, how do you know?

01:25:43.380 And that's the problem with any scientific investigation.

01:25:46.060 And the advantage to just eating beef is that it's really, it's simple, right?

01:25:53.780 It's like, no, just do this.

01:25:56.560 And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there would be ways of...

01:26:01.760 It might surprise me, but I could imagine that there would be ways of improving your diet

01:26:07.160 beyond what you would get with merely meat.

01:26:09.740 But, man, it really, it's a conundrum to figure out how to go about doing that.

01:26:15.860 Yeah.

01:26:16.880 Well, everybody's...

01:26:19.200 The other thing that I think is important is that there's really no...

01:26:21.740 There's no such...

01:26:22.520 Nutrition isn't a hat.

01:26:23.700 There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all pattern that's going to work for everybody.

01:26:27.820 Um, and, you know, in your family, you obviously have, you know, you have these health concerns,

01:26:33.360 which I think are important to acknowledge and to, you know, and to recognize that you're

01:26:39.140 a scientist and you've, you know, you've done the work and you've found this one diet,

01:26:42.520 this diet that works for you.

01:26:44.360 Yes, kicking and screaming all the way.

01:26:45.960 And I think that's amazing.

01:26:48.160 Um, but, you know, for somebody who is not immunologically compromised, right?

01:26:55.060 And who, you know, was born vaginally and who didn't take a ton of antibiotics growing

01:27:00.640 up and was breastfed and who hasn't, you know, traveled all around the world and had infections

01:27:05.160 and surgeries and things like that, that, you know, you know, these are all like, it's

01:27:09.340 death by a thousand cuts today.

01:27:11.360 Um, and so you throw into that milieu chronic sedentary lifestyles, which, you know, has a

01:27:16.860 negative impact on the gut microbiome.

01:27:18.540 We know that, you know, obviously an ultra-processed food diet has a negative impact on the gut microbiome.

01:27:23.200 You know, all of these industrial chemical additives also are playing a role.

01:27:27.660 We've lost resilience in the gut, I think.

01:27:30.140 And that's why so many of us do seem to do better, seemingly, on these, you know, incredibly

01:27:35.580 restrictive elimination diets, right?

01:27:38.620 Well, we've changed our cooking habits dramatically too.

01:27:41.320 I mean, um, slow rising yeast doesn't produce the same bread as fast rising yeast, right?

01:27:50.300 Because it has a longer time to break down the gluten, for example.

01:27:55.200 And so a lot of the traditional ways of cooking things that made them edible have been replaced

01:28:02.080 by rapid, cheap, which is advantageous, factory mechanisms.

01:28:07.120 But, you know, we have no idea what we left behind in consequence.

01:28:11.860 And so it may also have been that 40 years ago or 50 years ago, when people were cooking

01:28:18.460 more traditionally, things were a lot more edible than they are now.

01:28:22.420 Now, I would also say, I don't know what you think about this, like, because I don't know

01:28:26.820 the science in this.

01:28:29.380 You know, as the world is urbanized and as the cultures have mixed, a much more diverse range

01:28:35.520 of food products have become available.

01:28:37.100 Now, you might say that was advantageous, but I also wonder about that because, you

01:28:42.760 know, I noticed, for example, when I moved from Montreal to Boston, I developed allergies.

01:28:48.420 Well, I developed allergies to oak leaf mold.

01:28:50.940 There was no oak leaves and no oak leaf mold in Canada, not any place I had been.

01:28:55.700 And so I moved somewhere that was a completely different environment and I was not immunologically

01:29:00.320 prepared for it.

01:29:01.120 But I just, I guess I wonder too, is it possibly a consequence of the fact that we can eat so

01:29:08.740 many diverse things that weren't available before?

01:29:12.260 You know, people would have had their traditional diet and really not strayed beyond that.

01:29:16.960 Like, I can remember, certainly I can remember the first time I had Mexican food.

01:29:23.600 You know, I was probably 16 or 17 and that was a real foreign cuisine, which is a strange

01:29:30.040 thing to contemplate.

01:29:31.660 Now, I kind of grew up on German, English, and Ukrainian food, right?

01:29:36.400 And certainly Chinese food was also foreign and not common.

01:29:44.260 We had a Chinese restaurant in this little town I grew up in, but that certainly wasn't

01:29:48.260 a staple.

01:29:48.900 So I know that in principle, hunter-gatherers had quite a diverse range of food products

01:29:56.360 at their disposal, but they would have been eating those habitually from day one.

01:30:00.360 They wouldn't have been introducing new foods along the way.

01:30:03.220 So do you have any thoughts on that?

01:30:04.440 Do you know anything about that?

01:30:05.540 Well, what grows together goes together typically.

01:30:08.420 Yeah, right.

01:30:09.320 And yeah, but I don't think as a species we would have made it this far had we had not

01:30:16.080 been as incredibly resilient and adaptable as we are capable of being.

01:30:21.420 Right.

01:30:21.940 You know, I think...

01:30:22.900 We've never had to live in factories, though.

01:30:25.140 Yeah, that's for sure.

01:30:27.080 Yeah.

01:30:27.380 That's for sure.

01:30:28.080 Yeah, that's an environmental novelty.

01:30:30.280 Yeah.

01:30:30.800 So I think, I do think that there is, we're meant to be resilient, you know?

01:30:36.980 The idea that, you know, so many of us, statistically, you know, you feed, you take 100 people and

01:30:43.980 you feed them each a peanut, one or two of them is going to die.

01:30:48.160 Yeah.

01:30:48.520 Right?

01:30:48.780 From a peanut.

01:30:49.960 I don't, I think that that's a maladaptation.

01:30:53.220 And I think it's probably due to the fact that, you know, we're, well, we're doing many

01:30:56.880 things wrong.

01:30:59.320 And so...

01:31:00.760 So, so, okay.

01:31:01.880 So tell me, tell me what happened with your mother and then tell me how you eat.

01:31:05.840 Yeah.

01:31:07.880 Well, you know, she, it was really sad.

01:31:14.060 She, for eight years, struggled with Lewy body dementia.

01:31:19.420 And for most of that time, I was there with her, just a concerned son trying to do what

01:31:25.700 I could to help improve things.

01:31:27.660 But one of the earliest insights that, that I was able to glean from the literature, which

01:31:35.960 is, I think, counterintuitive, and most people are completely unaware of this, is that, you

01:31:39.780 know, these, as we alluded to earlier, these conditions don't begin overnight.

01:31:42.540 They take decades to manifest.

01:31:44.220 So, you know, essentially dementia and many of these kinds of conditions that are now saddling

01:31:50.220 modern society.

01:31:51.800 These are diseases of midlife with symptoms that appear in late life.

01:31:56.440 But by the time you're diagnosed with dementia, I mean, you're essentially in the late stage

01:32:01.780 of that disease.

01:32:02.720 Right, right.

01:32:03.260 Yeah.

01:32:03.400 And that's why Alzheimer's drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate, because you're trying to

01:32:09.260 treat the condition, you know, well past the point at which, you know, a simple, you know,

01:32:16.140 pharmacological solution is going to have any sort of practical impact.

01:32:21.860 Right.

01:32:22.120 So even if, the thing is, is that at that point, even if the drug stops the disease cold, a tremendous

01:32:28.420 amount of damage has already been done.

01:32:30.480 Already done.

01:32:30.940 So it would not only have to stop it, it would have to heal it.

01:32:34.440 Yeah, I mean.

01:32:35.040 And that's hard with neural tissue.

01:32:36.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:32:37.640 I mean, you know, how are you going to get back the 50% of dopamine-producing neurons,

01:32:42.480 you know, in the substantia nigra?

01:32:44.000 Right, right.

01:32:44.960 Like, you're just not.

01:32:47.720 And with Alzheimer's disease, by the time, you know, a person is diagnosed, you know, one

01:32:52.860 of the salient features of Alzheimer's disease is what's called glucose hypometabolism.

01:32:57.380 So this plays into the type 3 diabetes.

01:33:00.940 You know, as it's been termed, that by the time you're diagnosed with the condition, your

01:33:06.940 brain's ability to derive energy, to create energy from glucose, which is its primary

01:33:11.100 fuel substrate, is diminished by about 50%.

01:33:13.960 And the brain is a ravenous consumer of glucose.

01:33:18.140 It makes up 25% of your basal metabolic rate, despite only accounting for 2% to 3% of your

01:33:23.840 body's mass.

01:33:24.780 So it's a ravenous consumer of energy.

01:33:27.000 And so any power outage in that organ is going to lead to failure.

01:33:32.860 And so by the time you're diagnosed, you know, that's already, you know, starkly diminished.

01:33:36.640 And so, yeah, it wasn't really positive.

01:33:41.820 I mean, in every doctor's office, what I experienced with my mom, I've come to call

01:33:45.840 diagnose and adios.

01:33:47.740 And, you know, a physician would essentially prescribe a new drug or titrate up the dose

01:33:51.920 of something that she was already on, but minimally effective, if effective at all.

01:33:55.860 And by the time my mom passed in 2018, she was on 14 different pharmaceuticals.

01:34:01.420 Right, right, right.

01:34:02.180 And there's no physician on earth who can predict the way these 14 different drugs...

01:34:08.440 No, definitely not.

01:34:08.540 No, no, not even two, probably not even two.

01:34:11.740 Yeah.

01:34:12.140 Certainly not 14.

01:34:13.120 Not even God knows.

01:34:14.360 Like, and so the level of toxicity, right?

01:34:17.800 Yeah.

01:34:18.120 Which isn't to say if there was that blockbuster drug that came along that I wouldn't, you

01:34:23.200 know, be first in line at that time to fill that prescription for my mom, but it's just

01:34:28.000 very unlikely to be the case.

01:34:29.420 In fact, there's, you know, there's all kinds of fraud, you know, within the field of Alzheimer's

01:34:34.880 drug research that, you know, came out a couple of years ago, yeah, which is something

01:34:38.980 that was incredibly disheartening.

01:34:41.980 There was a paper, you know, published in 2006, for example, that was like completely fraudulent.

01:34:46.180 And finally, actually, over the past week, in fact, they finally are pulling that paper.

01:34:53.320 They're retracting the paper.

01:34:54.540 But it was a paper that renewed interest or renewed, you know, the funding pipeline for

01:35:01.320 this drug target, the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease, where, you know, they 0.87

01:35:10.020 in 2006, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, basically what he did was he identified

01:35:15.840 he claimed to have identified this subtype of amyloid that was responsible for the cognitive

01:35:20.700 decline, which was a big sort of the missing link, essentially connecting this really druggable

01:35:28.200 target, right?

01:35:28.840 The amyloid beta plaque that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease

01:35:32.000 and drug research.

01:35:33.820 He claimed to have found it in this 2006 paper, you know, which had subsequently been referenced

01:35:38.900 thousands of times in the medical literature, you know, continued to, you know, foment this

01:35:43.500 like, the glut of research money, you know, going down this amyloid hypothesis pipeline for

01:35:50.780 Alzheimer's drug research, which was completely fraudulent.

01:35:53.320 That paper is now finally being retracted.

01:35:55.360 God.

01:35:55.720 But that's, it's just like, that's the situation, you know?

01:36:00.880 And so, it was, you know, incredibly disheartening.

01:36:04.900 I tried to, I did get my mom on an exercise regimen, which I thought was helpful, at the

01:36:11.980 very least in terms of lifting her spirits, but I think probably played a role in slowing

01:36:15.900 the progression of the disease somewhat.

01:36:19.720 With Parkinsonian, with a Parkinson's condition, you know, exercises, it's important for everybody,

01:36:25.220 essentially.

01:36:25.820 It's important for people with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, any form

01:36:29.200 of dementia, really.

01:36:29.900 But with Parkinson's disease, there seems to be really good data there.

01:36:34.280 But ultimately, nothing, nothing really helped, you know?

01:36:37.640 And, and so, it was really sad.

01:36:39.100 And then, Labor Day of 2018, my mom was actually diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away

01:36:44.820 three months later.

01:36:46.940 So, this is where I think what, part of what separates me from, I think, other people in

01:36:54.040 this space is that, you know, the degree of sickness that I've seen firsthand, profound.

01:37:02.580 And it, you know, it occurred to the person who meant the most to me of anybody in the world.

01:37:07.760 And I saw, up close and personal, the dearth of treatment options, you know, the diagnose

01:37:14.240 and adios of it all.

01:37:15.860 And I was very privileged in the sense that I grew up in New York City.

01:37:19.520 I got to go to cathedrals to Western Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,

01:37:25.500 NYU, Columbia.

01:37:26.860 I mean, I've been to, I've been to them all with my mom.

01:37:28.960 And it became so important.

01:37:32.400 Once I learned that these conditions take decades to foment, it became so important to

01:37:36.500 me.

01:37:36.580 The most important thing in my life to evangelize, you know, this science, because I think it's

01:37:42.180 so...

01:37:42.680 So, what should people do to learn what you know and what they should do relatively rapidly?

01:37:49.340 Well...

01:37:50.020 Your books.

01:37:50.840 Yeah, I think...

01:37:51.320 Which, is there one in particular?

01:37:53.400 Genius Foods is a nutritional care manual to the brain.

01:37:55.840 It's an encyclopedia of, you know, and there's, and it was, it came out six years ago.

01:38:01.140 There's not much that I would change in the book, maybe a few tweaks here and there.

01:38:04.540 But in general, the science has really stood the test of time.

01:38:07.260 Okay.

01:38:08.040 Which was my intent in writing the book.

01:38:10.400 And so, yeah, it really is everything that a person needs to know.

01:38:14.520 But from a high level, Little Empty Boxes, my documentary, this is the first documentary

01:38:18.740 ever to tackle dementia through the lens of prevention.

01:38:22.580 And so, anybody who's ever experienced dementia, they're going to find incredible solace in

01:38:27.220 the film and seeing what it was in my family.

01:38:28.640 And where can they get access to Little Empty Boxes?

01:38:31.040 So, it's available for pre-order now at littleemptyboxes.com.

01:38:35.440 Okay, littleemptyboxes.com.

01:38:37.180 Do you want to just run over the description of the film for us?

01:38:41.200 Yeah.

01:38:41.480 And tell us what...

01:38:42.420 Of course.

01:38:42.940 How you made it?

01:38:43.740 Why?

01:38:44.240 Well, we know why, but what's the film about?

01:38:46.760 What will it offer people?

01:38:47.720 So, this is the...

01:38:48.720 Okay, here's Kathy Luguer.

01:38:54.540 Hi, good morning, everybody.

01:38:56.700 I just clipped some coupons that I'm going to never use.

01:39:00.780 I'm going to kiss my son, Max, right now, who's holding the camera.

01:39:05.560 How's mom?

01:39:07.600 It's like her brain has low RAM.

01:39:10.180 Do you remember what the date is today?

01:39:19.380 Well, how about the month?

01:39:22.740 No.

01:39:25.320 We know that Alzheimer's disease starts in the brain at least 20 to 30 years before the

01:39:29.360 first symptom of memory loss.

01:39:30.480 The million-dollar question, actually, probably the trillion-dollar question is, why do people

01:39:36.600 get Alzheimer's disease?

01:39:38.760 The rates of Alzheimer's have skyrocketed.

01:39:41.640 What did we change?

01:39:43.500 The federal government, in 1980, starts its guidelines.

01:39:47.440 You take away butter, meat, dairy, eggs, cheese, all those things you ate.

01:39:51.620 What do you eat on your plate?

01:39:53.080 What's left?

01:39:53.560 The brain only takes as much sugar as it needs.

01:39:58.080 The overall problem is inflammation.

01:40:00.620 Inflammation burns.

01:40:02.020 What happens in Alzheimer's is you have low inflammation, but chronic low inflammation.

01:40:07.460 This is the aisle of food-like products.

01:40:11.740 Diet, stress, sleep, toxins, all these things have a huge impact.

01:40:16.900 The question is, how far gone are you before it's irreversible?

01:40:21.600 I hope I'm a good mother.

01:40:23.100 You're an okay mother.

01:40:26.280 I need to go back and be closer with my mom.

01:40:29.560 I don't want really to take so many x-rays.

01:40:32.980 Get me out of here.

01:40:35.980 The best way to explain the inexplicable is to compare the human genome as a piano with

01:40:42.160 23,000 notes.

01:40:43.920 You need to track 300 of these 23,000 notes to play the song Alzheimer.

01:40:49.580 It's not destiny that you develop this.

01:40:53.100 Diseases like Alzheimer's start long before the symptoms are seen.

01:41:00.820 And the question is, what are you going to do about it?

01:41:04.460 You've done all the tests.

01:41:07.100 But it's not enough.

01:41:08.540 You've got to be there to help me.

01:41:10.820 Ma, he said you still got it.

01:41:12.200 You still got it.

01:41:13.260 You still move.

01:41:14.160 There they are in the park for the first time.

01:41:19.320 So now it's really up to us.

01:41:22.580 So we'll do our best.

01:41:23.580 So this is the, this project is the first thing that I ever did in this space.

01:41:39.340 And this is before I had the knowledge that led to subsequently my books, my podcast.

01:41:44.760 I have a podcast called The Genius Life.

01:41:48.800 The documentary is a time capsule of me just being a terrified son, doing whatever is humanly

01:41:57.740 possible in the realm of diet, lifestyle, going, you know, initiating this investigation that

01:42:05.120 ultimately would become my life's work.

01:42:06.580 But to try to help my mom.

01:42:08.480 And it's an incredible, I think, you know, human interest story.

01:42:12.980 It's something that I think anybody, you know, who's ever had a sick loved one, you know, will relate to.

01:42:18.900 And it's mostly a peak, a very intimate peak into what it's like to not just have dementia, but to be a caregiver.

01:42:27.740 Um, and it also, with very broad strokes, paints what a roadmap towards prevention might look like.

01:42:36.760 I see, I see.

01:42:37.580 So it's not a, it doesn't provide easy answers, a one-size-fits-all solution.

01:42:42.860 It's not one of these diet documentaries that's like promoting an agenda.

01:42:46.400 It's just like, let's get back to reason and common sense when it comes to diet.

01:42:51.620 And undo a lot of these mistruths that we've been force-fed, no pun intended, you know, over the past few decades.

01:42:57.820 That has really, in many ways, affected us all, you know.

01:43:01.700 It's affected us all.

01:43:02.760 I mean, it's in greats.

01:43:03.640 Oh, definitely.

01:43:04.740 Here's another pun.

01:43:05.440 It's in greats.

01:43:05.720 God only knows how it's affected us because we don't know how erratic a population that's radically unhealthy will become.

01:43:12.960 Yeah.

01:43:13.560 Right.

01:43:14.260 And we may well find out.

01:43:16.480 Yeah, and we're all getting older.

01:43:17.540 I mean, the oldest millennial now is in their 40s, right?

01:43:20.040 So, this is a, this is, now is the time.

01:43:23.300 And so, it's a film that I think really, I think, reveals what is, I think, the most important question of our time.

01:43:32.640 And, yeah, I think it's the most important project I've ever done.

01:43:36.500 All right.

01:43:36.980 And when, and it's available for pre-order.

01:43:39.360 When does it launch?

01:43:41.000 June 27th.

01:43:42.260 June 27th.

01:43:43.080 Yeah.

01:43:43.400 Well, good luck with that.

01:43:44.620 Thank you so much.

01:43:45.260 Yes.

01:43:45.800 Yes.

01:43:46.380 Thank you very much for talking to me today.

01:43:48.360 You're the man.

01:43:48.880 Yeah.

01:43:49.220 Much appreciated.

01:43:50.040 Much appreciated.

01:43:50.880 And so, the Genius Trilogy podcast is Genius Life and the new documentary is Little Empty Boxes.

01:43:58.360 That'll be out closer to the third week of June.

01:44:01.000 Yep.

01:44:01.380 June 27th.

01:44:01.520 Yeah, well, good luck with that.

01:44:02.680 Seriously.

01:44:03.420 And for everybody watching and listening, we'll continue this discussion on the Daily Wire side of the platform, of the podcast.

01:44:11.160 And, well, I'm going to talk to Max a bit more about the development of his interest over time.

01:44:17.960 I think that's what we'll focus on.

01:44:18.960 And so, if you're inclined, join us there.

01:44:26.480 Thank you very much for your time and attention.

01:44:27.880 And thank you to the film crew here in Washington, D.C.

01:44:30.580 That's where we are today.

01:44:33.340 On the stage at the Museum of the Bible, as it turns out, which is a very cool museum.

01:44:38.160 A testament to the book that spread literacy around the world, right?

01:44:43.540 And that was really the prototype for books as such.

01:44:46.320 So, if you're in D.C., give the Museum of the Bible a visit.

01:44:51.500 It's well worth the time.

01:44:53.240 It's a beautiful building as well.

01:44:54.700 Award-winning building.

01:44:55.900 Beautifully designed.

01:44:57.280 So, and Max, thanks again for coming today and for coming here in person.

01:45:01.000 That's much appreciated.

01:45:02.060 And to all of you watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention.

01:45:16.320 Thank you very much.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 17, 2024

456. Sugar Cravings, Red Meat, and Your Health ｜ Max Lugavere

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