Max Lugavere is a journalist, bestselling author, and creative investigator. He is also the producer of a documentary that will be released at the end of June 2024, called Little Empty Boxes. In this episode, Max talks with me about his journey into the field of mental health, including his experiences with depression and anxiety, and how he uses food as a tool to improve his own mental health. He also talks about his new series, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety, which debuts on Daily Wire Plus on October 31st, 2019. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code: "Adios" to receive 10% off your first month with discount code "ADios" when you enter the discount code: DOPE. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling, and offer a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way. With decades of experience helping patients, and a unique approach to understanding why you're struggling. Dr. Peterson offers a roadmap towards healing. He provides a roadmap toward healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone, there's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Today's episode is a bonus episode of Daily Wire PLUS! Subscribe to our new series on Depression & Anxiousism: The Genius Trilogy: A Guide to Mental Health by Dr. Max Lavere. and Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer s Disease. Get in touch now! Subscribe on Anchor.fm and get 20% off of the entire service starting October 1st, 2020, by becoming a member of the Genius Trilogy, and get 15% off the first month, starting at $99/month, and 15% discount when you become a Member of the VIP Club. Subscribe for a year-wide discount! Get the VIP membership starts next month, only 2 months get $50/month and get a discount on the Testimonial offer starts starting with $99, VIP access gets you access to the Testimony starts at $29, VIP gets $39,99, and they get VIP access to VIP.
00:00:00.940Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:01:09.880Today, I'm talking with Max Lugavere, who flew in from L.A. to Washington, D.C., to have this conversation with me.
00:01:17.520He's a journalist who's become quite a well-known scientific researcher and popularizer, but also a creative investigator in his own right.
00:01:27.620He wrote a trilogy of books, the Genius Trilogy, one on foods, one on life, and one a recipe book on the kitchen,
00:01:36.780and is also the producer of a documentary that will be released at the end of June 2024 called Little Empty Boxes.
00:01:44.160All 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.
00:01:56.260It's not Alzheimer's or frontal temporal dementia. It's another form of dementia.
00:02:01.300And he was very shocked by his mother's illness, which she developed when she was in her late 50s.
00:02:10.300And also, by the dearth of effective treatment that was available to her and ended up obsessively concentrating on research into the dementias in general,
00:02:22.760concluding, as have many people in the last decade, that the dementia spectrum of illnesses, and that includes Parkinson's, by the way,
00:02:31.900might well be preventable with interventions that are early enough in life,
00:02:39.620and that many of those interventions might be dietary in nature.
00:02:45.200And we discuss why that is and talk about the carnivore diet as well as a potential diagnostic investigative tool
00:02:57.200for the analysis of complex disease in general, and, well, I suppose in some ways celebrate the possibility that dietary modulation
00:03:07.220might prove to be the treatment of choice on the prevention side for these terrible degenerative neurological diseases.
00:03:16.960So, I'm interested in diet, I suppose, despite myself, I would say, because it's not my natural domain of interest.
00:03:30.600I'm more interested in psychological matters, let's say, than physical or physiological matters.
00:03:36.400I know they overlap, but my attention doesn't naturally gravitate that way.
00:03:42.600But I have definitely learned that many of the things that I would have been tempted to assume were psychological aren't.
00:03:54.980I mean, I've known for a long time, for example, that endogenous depression, the schizophrenic disorders, and manic depression,
00:04:03.380I never thought of those as psychological disorders.
00:04:05.820I thought, no, those people are sick, we just don't know what's wrong with them.
00:04:08.720So, I spoke with Chris Palmer in some detail on my podcast, and I just met him again in Boston.
00:04:16.580He's got a couple of research projects finishing up.
00:04:21.060He's got 15 on the go looking at treatment of those disorders with diet, and the first three have been spectacularly successful.
00:04:44.600So, I've written a trilogy of books, the genius trilogy, as it were.
00:04:49.480And my first book was called Genius Foods, and it came out in 2018.
00:04:52.540And 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.
00:05:06.320So, how diet plays a role in, you know, mediating mental health, insofar as it does play a role.
00:05:16.200There'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.
00:05:25.140Um, I followed that up with a book called The Genius Life, which was a more, was a more lifestyle-centric guide.
00:05:32.960Um, and then my third book came out in 2020, I'm sorry, 2022, and it was a cookbook, kind of bringing everything together.
00:05:41.020But, um, my work really, I would say, primarily explores the intersection between diet and lifestyle and brain health.
00:05:48.340And 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.
00:06:06.980Um, I became obsessed with trying to understand all that I could know.
00:06:52.740Um, but then, in tandem with those symptoms, she also displayed stark cognitive dysfunction.
00:07:00.040And, 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.
00:07:11.020But it seemed as though her, I've likened it to when you have too many tabs open in your browser window.
00:07:16.460It's just like the frame rate starts to stutter.
00:07:18.800And 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.
00:07:24.100You know, raised three boys, ran a business.
00:07:27.460And I had been a journalist prior to that.
00:07:29.680I had been a generalist journalist, um, since college, since graduating college.
00:07:34.020I, uh, worked for a, I had worked for a TV network that was co-founded by Al Gore.
00:08:05.500Um, 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.
00:08:15.520You know, I was a scared son seeing, you know, these awful symptoms, these mysterious...
00:08:29.360And I, there was no precedent in my family.
00:08:31.120So, 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.
00:08:53.060Why 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?
00:09:20.740Whenever I had so much as a cough growing up, I mean, moments later, I found myself in the pediatrician's office.
00:09:26.400And when my mom became sick, you know, the, those around her were not all that set up to really understand what was going on.
00:09:38.820I mean, we're not, you know, we, as a society today, we outsource so many different forms of literacy, right?
00:09:44.800We outsource culinary literacy to Grubhub, to our apps, you know, we outsource financial literacy to our financial handlers.
00:09:51.660Health literacy is like, it's a huge, you know, area, it's a, it's a huge unknown.
00:09:57.260Like, we all collectively have, you know, these really scary knowledge gaps, which only become apparent to you when, you know, you're strong.
00:10:05.340And then you just get more scared because you start to understand how big the knowledge gaps are.
00:10:29.480And 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.
00:10:48.720It's like, I don't know what you even do when you find out that that's true.
00:10:53.280Yeah, and the unwarranted demonization of natural fat-containing foods, nutrient-dense foods like animal-sourced foods, which continue to be demonized.
00:11:02.480Even by the American Diabetic Association Society, I don't remember which one is still pushing the notion that, you know, diabetics can eat carbohydrates.
00:11:24.620And, 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.
00:12:06.860I 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.
00:12:23.480I 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.
00:12:33.760I mean, I'm obviously, you know, completely aligned with the notion that we do need to start doing things differently.
00:13:10.840I 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.
00:13:18.840You know, I can understand the fat positive people in one way.
00:13:23.380You 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.
00:13:32.600You know, I did, I suppose, to some degree accept the idea that fewer calories, a little more exercise, you lose weight.
00:13:42.380And perhaps that—would I say that some more willpower would be of use?
00:13:49.300I don't know if I ever really believed that because I dealt with people who had all sorts of different problems.
00:13:53.720And reducing it to something like inadequate willpower, yeah, you've got to be very careful about doing such things.
00:14:01.240But now when I see obese people, I think it's really too bad that you're ill.
00:14:19.080Because 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.
00:14:26.520And 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?
00:14:36.680It's a dietary pattern of the over—you know, you typically involving the overconsumption of these ultra-processed foods.
00:14:43.120Right. Well, you're more likely to overconsume the foods that are, what would you say, pathologically delicious.
00:14:56.680There 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.
00:15:17.240So you do that every single day for a week.
00:15:18.860That's a pound of fat gain every single week.
00:15:21.860And 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.
00:15:34.000I wonder if that has anything to do with seasonality of grains.
00:15:37.080Well, 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.
00:15:49.300You 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.
00:16:00.440So 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.
00:16:12.640And you're much more likely to go through starvation periods on an island as a population.
00:16:18.560And 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.
00:16:29.400So, you know, because it's interesting, right?
00:16:31.720If there's a stable degree to which you overeat high-calorie foods, that indicates that there's, like, there's a reason for that.
00:16:58.900Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:17:08.260And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:17:11.580With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:17:18.960Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:22:46.560Well, in part due to my passion for it, you know, so I've been familiar with PubMed and, you know, and all those sources.
00:22:58.280And 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.
00:23:05.420But 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.
00:23:18.040You're trained to ask questions, to don a skeptic's hat.
00:23:22.200And those are the skills that I had when my mom became sick.
00:23:25.020And 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.
00:23:36.000And also, most physicians never do it.
00:23:38.580Like 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.
00:23:49.620And most physicians aren't trained to read research or assess it critically, and certainly not to participate in this generation.
00:23:57.040And 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.
00:24:27.660Yeah, but that's something that I actually quite enjoyed.
00:24:30.480You 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.
00:24:37.620And 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?
00:24:56.020But yeah, so that was just like a relentless passion that had become an obsession because it was—I was seeing the consequences of—
00:25:06.620How 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?
00:25:17.260For how long? For how many, like, months, or—
00:25:19.740It 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.
00:25:35.420Right, 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.
00:25:52.840Yeah, 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.
00:26:03.260Yeah. Something that should be available to everyone.
00:26:09.560And, 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.
00:26:32.380And ultimately, I became fairly close friends and collaborators with researchers in the field.
00:26:46.500I 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.
00:27:10.960How did you support yourself while you were doing this?
00:27:13.060It 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.
00:27:34.160It's not the primary caregiver, but to help out with her. And this is what I was going to say.
00:27:39.620So, 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.
00:27:46.220And 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.
00:28:10.080And 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.
00:28:23.600And, yeah, that was a journey that began at this point over 10 years ago.
00:28:28.400But, 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,
00:28:39.340who'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.
00:29:10.760It 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.
00:29:19.800And so I got to collaborate on a paper with him.
00:29:25.920It 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.
00:29:41.300Because 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.
00:29:51.820Well, and you can understand that in some sense.
00:29:54.360I mean, before the pharmaceutical companies were utterly corrupt, they did serve an educational function for general practitioners, let's say,
00:30:03.060who were overwhelmed by their practice and who didn't have the time to keep up on the relevant literature on each disease.
00:30:09.140And that's not surprising because that's really hard.
00:30:11.820But it does mean they can be captured, and that certainly happened.
00:30:15.100I 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.
00:30:36.720And that's not, well, it's not a particularly pretty sight, although I do understand how it happened.
00:30:42.120And I can also understand the pharmaceutical companies' economic motives.
00:30:46.000It's not inexpensive to produce new drugs.
00:30:48.040It's also very difficult, and they do have to be marketed.
00:30:55.820That's a hell of an accomplishment for someone who's not a formal scientist.
00:30:59.880And so why don't you, we'll go back to the genius trilogy, I think, in a moment or two.
00:31:05.880But 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.
00:31:14.180Because that's going to be, both of those are going to be news to virtually everybody who's watching and listening.
00:31:19.500So, 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.
00:31:31.820So, you know, you have your non-modifiable risk factors, which are your age.
00:31:38.720You know, age is still the number one risk factor for dementia, unfortunately, today.
00:33:36.520I mean, I know that this is a horrible fact.
00:33:39.920So, the blood sugar curves that are used to diagnose you as diabetic when you're 20 are age-adjusted as you age.
00:33:49.080So, 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.
00:34:02.440Like, there's no reason for those curves to be age-adjusted as far as I can tell.
00:34:05.980And so, that means that diabetes as a factor among people 60 and older is radically underdiagnosed.
00:34:14.780And 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.
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00:35:37.080Yeah, 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.
00:35:51.340But I thought that that was an incredible way to frame...
00:36:30.180But 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.
00:36:50.760In fact, which is considered like a prodrome of dementia, a form of pre-dementia, if you will.
00:36:56.800But we know that, you know, lifestyle modification, dietary exercise, for example, all are, you know, as effective as drugs.
00:37:05.360And when you have hypertension, essentially the blood vessels that are supplying blood, nutrients, oxygen to the brain are essentially damaged.
00:37:14.420And so, yeah, hypertension is incredibly damaging to the brain.
00:37:31.140But 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.
00:37:39.760So, 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.
00:37:49.060But, you know, nutrition is one slice of the pie.
00:37:51.160And 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.
00:38:03.040Which, as of the 2020 Lancet Commission on Dementia, was finally acknowledged as being a risk factor for the development of dementia.
00:38:11.900We'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.
00:38:27.600You 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.
00:38:39.600That 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.
00:38:50.220Is there an inflammatory consequence, too, or does anybody know?
00:38:55.540There's a cardiovascular consequence to being exposed to air pollution.
00:38:59.560With regard to your cardiovascular system, we know that what's good for the heart is good for the brain.
00:39:04.360And conversely, what's bad for the heart is bad for the brain.
00:39:06.760And so, air pollution, you know, plays a major role.
00:39:11.120An 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.
00:39:25.000For 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.
00:39:34.540And 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.
00:39:59.400And 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.
00:40:23.180The 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.
00:40:41.920So, 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.
00:41:04.200But 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.
00:41:18.160This 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.
00:41:38.360Yeah, 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.
00:41:53.880My 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.
00:42:01.500Certain herbicides and pesticides we know are, you know, occupationally linked to these kinds of conditions like Parkinson's disease.
00:42:12.120We breathe them in through our nose, right?
00:42:13.720They don't undergo the same degree of detoxification as an ingested compound.
00:42:18.900They can very easily bypass the blood-brain barrier.
00:42:22.600You know, they access the olfactory bulb.
00:42:24.380Actually, a decline in sense of smell is one of the earliest features of a preclinical feature of cognitive decline, dementia, and even Parkinsonism.
00:42:36.460And 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.
00:42:45.820The more awareness that we can have about reducing our exposure to these compounds, I think it's crucially important.
00:42:50.700So that's, you know, that's another of the modifiable risks.
00:42:55.640Yeah, that's on the toxic exposure side.
00:42:58.180Yeah, which I think is incredibly important.
00:42:59.620My second book, The Genius Life, was really, you know, looked at that, or, you know.
00:43:03.320How much of the, how much of an overlap do you think there is between the dietary risk and the toxic exposure risk?
00:43:11.960Because 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.
00:43:24.780Because 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.
00:43:37.700But 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.
00:43:48.360And so they have got very potent chemical defenses, and they're not trivial.
00:43:52.660And 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.
00:43:59.640And that's quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure.
00:44:02.120It's really something to, like, I weigh what I weighed when I was in my 20s.
00:44:07.100You know, that's really something when you're 62.
00:44:13.040And I have about the same bodily composition that I did when I was in my 20s.
00:44:19.160And some of that's obviously from not eating carbohydrates, but there are other improvements that I've experienced that have made me wonder.
00:44:55.500Well, 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.
00:45:06.180You 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?
00:45:19.740But 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.
00:45:36.120Pharmacon means something like a little bit of the poison that kills you, cures you.
00:45:42.420And 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.
00:47:26.520And, you know, these estimates are typically conservative.
00:47:30.260So 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.
00:47:40.140But 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.
00:47:56.880I think that the majority, and this is just my opinion based on my, you know, assessment of the literature, are likely preventable.
00:48:07.080But I think given what we do currently know, we don't have to sit idly on our hands.
00:48:11.700You know, for example, there's a class of drugs that are widely being used today on a frequent basis called anticholinergic drugs.
00:48:20.460And 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.
00:48:38.140So, you know, I think, I do think that most cases are potentially preventable.
00:48:43.520And another reason why I believe this to be the case is that Alzheimer's disease is not genetic.
00:48:49.740You 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.
00:48:57.720And depending on whether you carry one or two copies of this SNP, your risk increases anywhere between two and 14-fold.
00:49:04.940But these are not, this is not a deterministic gene.
00:49:07.140So, with Alzheimer's disease, two to three percent of cases are, you know, the early onset variant or familial, which is deterministic.
00:50:08.880So, it's making them more susceptible to environmental assault, essentially.
00:50:13.900You can take, for example, you know, somebody with the ApoE4 allele, who, again, in the United States, is seemingly at dramatically increased risk.
00:50:22.900But 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.
00:50:30.380And you see that risk all but abolished.
00:50:33.100And 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.
00:53:54.280I 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.
00:54:41.060And, 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?
00:54:54.720And 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.
00:56:11.720And 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.
00:56:19.180And before they know it, they're looking at the bottom of the pint.
00:56:33.300Now, 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?
00:56:42.480Yeah, I think it's possible, but it's just very difficult, you know?
00:56:56.640It's like that 90s horror movie, The Gate.
00:56:58.520I don't know if you're familiar or you saw that movie.
00:57:00.440But it's like once you open up those floodgates, it becomes really difficult, if not impossible, to pump the brakes.
00:57:05.640So, with regards to not being able to pump the brakes, let's say, do you know if, let's take sugar as an example.
00:57:14.260One 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.
00:57:27.380And so, I wonder, do you know if there's any evidence that a sugar-centered gut biome contains microorganisms that produce sugar craving?
00:57:39.000Well, I don't know of any hard evidence, but I would say that it's likely.
00:57:50.500Well, also, those organisms would have a distinct advantage.
00:57:54.340If they could make their host crave what they need to survive, then they're going to live.
00:57:58.760And there's lots of evidence that such things are possible in the natural world.
00:58:04.500Not only possible, but actually quite likely.
00:58:07.520Yeah, 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.
00:58:57.280And the satiety and reward systems are somewhat separate for each taste category.
00:59:02.840So, 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.
00:59:13.720And then that system is also modifiable by learning, so that you can learn.
00:59:19.620It's weird, because when you learn to appreciate olives, bitter foods really fall into this category.
00:59:24.980Because they're very difficult to like on first exposure, because we don't like bitter things.
00:59:30.760But once you learn to like them, you really like them.
00:59:34.280And so, that shows you that that's a testament to that modifiability of, well, the taste and the satiety system by experience.
00:59:40.780And 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.
00:59:49.800Yeah, and I think that there's like a degree of, you know, I mean, this is more your wheelhouse certainly than mine.
00:59:56.280But, you know, somebody who is, has, you know, a higher degree of openness, you know, can embrace these more complex flavors.
01:00:07.400Whereas, 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.
01:00:24.000So, what would the 12-year-old boy diet be?
01:00:45.400But, I mean, chicken fingers are great.
01:00:47.040I'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.
01:00:56.560But, yeah, I think cultivating a broader palate, I think, is incredibly important.
01:01:02.380But, essentially, yeah, your body will start to crave what it is that you most routinely feed it.
01:01:07.980And it'll become better at processing those, whatever it is those food components happen to be, you know?
01:01:13.760So, for somebody who's chronically eating, you know, a high-carbohydrate diet, their bodies get better at burning, you know, glucose, for example.
01:01:21.340Somebody who's on a, you know, highly fat-adapted ketogenic diet, for example, they become better at burning fat.
01:01:27.620And that's why there's this phenomena known as physiologic insulin resistance.
01:01:31.180For 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.
01:01:48.080It's not because the blueberries were unhealthy, ever.
01:01:50.520It'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.
01:02:34.900And 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.
01:02:48.240Whether 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.
01:03:00.000For example, and this is something that I think I really broke the news on with Genius Foods, was the role of dietary carotenoids.
01:03:07.400So these are plant pigments that actually also accumulate in animal tissue.
01:03:12.580For 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.
01:03:27.520It's slightly more orange in color, similar to a pastured egg yolk.
01:03:31.780You 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.
01:03:40.500So certain carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin can help prevent AIDS.
01:04:38.100I think that red meat is a health food.
01:04:39.720And 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.
01:05:20.620And 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.
01:05:36.320But now, the climate people have got a hold of it as well.
01:05:39.540But 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.
01:06:53.000And it's a whole food, at the very least.
01:06:55.720It's a pristine source of dietary protein.
01:06:57.580I mean, it comes concurrent with, you know, all kinds of nutrients that we know play a role in good health.
01:07:04.780I mean, it's actually, I mean, it is a source of phytonutrients.
01:07:08.000Most 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.
01:07:20.280I mean, these are all, I think, really important nutrients.
01:07:23.360And, you know, and it continues to be demonized.
01:07:27.820Some people will say, oh, well, it's a source of saturated fat.
01:07:31.940It's fascinating that 3% of the saturated fat that your average American consumes comes from steak.
01:07:39.680The 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.
01:07:51.380I mean, and so, yeah, I think the demonization of red meat is a real shame, and it's a big problem.
01:07:57.880And the evidence that's used to demonize it is incredibly weak.
01:08:57.520And 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.
01:09:22.400And 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—
01:10:00.620Well, 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.
01:10:29.120And 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.
01:10:41.840But, man, we're paying a vicious price for it on the other side of it.
01:10:46.000Yeah, 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.
01:11:33.740But, you know, we do have to look at this as a food quality problem.
01:11:36.980And 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.
01:11:48.320You know, eggs are one of nature's cognitive multivitamins.
01:11:51.100A study was just published that found that, you know, just consuming—
01:12:07.740But, you know, my mom was somebody who, for the entirety of her life, was concerned about heart disease.
01:12:13.180And 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.
01:12:21.640And so, you know, my kitchen was always filled with, you know, low-fat, fat-free, cholesterol-free food-like products.
01:12:30.200That had—adorned by the Red Heart Healthy logo on them, which you still see ubiquitously in the supermarket, right?
01:12:36.080And eggs were one of those foods that we threw out, essentially, in lieu of these more, you know, processed, high-margin replacement products.
01:12:46.200And an egg is literally a cognitive multivitamin.
01:12:48.940I mean, it contains a little bit of everything required to grow a brain, right?
01:13:22.500We know that choline is one of the most important nutrients.
01:13:24.780In 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.
01:13:37.240And yet, 90% of adults today don't consume the adequate intake for choline on a daily basis.
01:13:44.480Right, so that's the consequence of demonizing eggs.
01:13:54.600Which is the neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory, right?
01:13:57.500It 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.
01:14:11.140And, 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.
01:14:25.520And we know the dietary cholesterol for the vast majority of people.
01:14:29.520Well, the data was there a long time ago showing that this, I knew this in like 19, in the 1980s.
01:14:36.880The 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.
01:14:52.280So, even if fewer people died of heart attacks, which is probably not true anyways, more people committed suicide.
01:15:00.780So, that's part of the problem with the complexity of dietary studies, right?
01:15:04.560Is you need to control for a lot of variables and you need to measure a lot of outcomes.