00:00:02.600There was that 2018 Kevin Hall study that found that people on ultra-processed diets,
00:00:09.980when invited to consume ultra-processed foods ad libitum, meaning to satiety,
00:00:15.260all the food that they wanted, they ended up eating a 500-calorie-per-day surplus.
00:00:20.940And if you stretch that out over the course of the week, 500 calories a day,
00:00:24.400that's a pound of fat gain every week.
00:00:26.960when they took those same people and they gave them minimally processed foods to consume,
00:00:31.920they ended up coming in at a calorie deficit by about 300 calories. So that's an 800 calorie
00:00:38.100swing right there determined purely by what you're eating, not by how much you're eating.
00:00:44.180So what seems to be the case is that what you eat determines,
00:00:47.320at least to some degree, to a significant degree, how much you're eating.
00:00:51.260Hello and welcome to episode 106 of the Michaela Peterson podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by
00:01:01.840Max Lugavere. I was very happy to have him for the second time on my podcast. He was my guest
00:01:08.960on the second episode of this podcast when I screwed up the video and it was only audio,
00:01:14.940the good old days. Max is a health and science journalist and a New York Times bestselling
00:01:19.860author. He returned to discuss more lifestyle options to promote and prevent degrading brain
00:01:25.460health. You guys do not want that. This episode will be interesting for anyone who wants to learn
00:01:30.420about brain health. Everybody should. Eating healthy food, caffeine, and more. And want someone
00:01:37.240who's more middle-of-the-road healthy diet. He makes sense to the gluten eaters. Even they can
00:01:42.580understand this guy. If you're not into going so restrictive on your diet that you only survive
00:01:47.920off of cows. I get it. I feel that. And that's where Max comes in handy. Everyone who eats the
00:01:54.360standard American diet should read his books and listen to this guy. Don't forget to subscribe if
00:01:59.300you like this episode. This episode is brought to you by Super Speciosa. Super Speciosa is a
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00:02:20.100withdrawal from opiate dependency. I always advocate for dietary changes to enhance mood
00:02:25.920before anything else, diet, exercise, saunas, avoiding inflammatory foods and poison. But if
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00:03:48.000this episode. Welcome to my podcast again. It's so good to be back for a second time.
00:04:01.400What an incredible honor. It's good to see you. Thank you. It's good to see you too. In case
00:04:08.320anyone hasn't seen the first episode, the first episode did not have video because I didn't know
00:04:13.200how to do a podcast. And so it was only audio because the video didn't work. So this time it
00:04:18.920has video, but if they haven't seen the first one, can you give a brief background about who you are
00:04:23.020and what it is you do? Yeah, absolutely. And also thank you for having me on as one of the first
00:04:28.160episodes. I was one of the premier episodes of your podcast. So what an incredible privilege
00:04:33.760that was. So my name is Max Lugavere. I'm a health and science journalist. I started as a
00:04:39.760generalist. My career began as a producer and journalist for a TV network in the United States
00:04:45.180that I did for six years. But I've always had a penchant for health and nutrition and health
00:04:49.020science. In college, I spent the first three years on a pre-med track, but I pivoted when I realized
00:04:55.520that I loved storytelling and creativity and that I had more of an entrepreneurial brain.
00:05:02.720I think I've always had subclinical ADD in the sense that it was always very hard for me to focus on things that I wasn't very passionate about.
00:05:11.940And so for that reason, my grades academically, I was just never, you know, an amazing student, the kind of student that would be competitive had I gone the med school route.
00:05:21.320And ultimately, I think I made the best decision for me and my own personal happiness.
00:05:26.140So I went into this field as a journalist and I did that for six years.
00:05:32.740And then when I left that job where I got to work with some of the best of the best in the field, it was then in my personal life that my mother got sick.
00:05:42.360And she developed what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare form of dementia, a form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, which is akin to having Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease at the same time.
00:05:53.820And as I mentioned, I'd always been passionate about health and nutrition.
00:05:57.620So when this happened in my personal life, I decided to step in and go with my mom to all the doctor's appointments.
00:06:03.760And ultimately, we ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease for the first time.
00:06:11.320And what I experienced in every doctor's office from the local clinic just across the street from my mom's house in New York to the Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the most storied academic medical institutions that the United States has, I experienced what I've come to call diagnose and adios.
00:06:32.840You know, very little in the way of diet and lifestyle is talked about.
00:06:36.640A physician basically runs a battery of esoteric tests where they write down a few prescriptions on a pad, none of which being any kind of dietary or lifestyle intervention, and they send you on your way.
00:06:47.040And that stoked a curiosity in me to use the tools that I had acquired, the skills that I had acquired as an investigator to try to look into the medical literature to see if there was anything that could be done from a more holistic standpoint to help my mom.
00:07:01.980and in tandem with that, what could be done to prevent cognitive decline from being something
00:07:08.220that I ever have to contend with because I'm somebody who values my brain, my creative output,
00:07:14.420my intellectual output. And so I just began to dive in and I came at it from a place of, again,
00:07:20.260curiosity. I knew nothing at the time, although I had a foundational passion for nutrition. And
00:07:25.560as a journalist, you're trained not as rigorously as a scientist, but you know how to identify
00:07:31.760what is a credible source versus what is not a credible source. And, um, I'd been sort of
00:07:36.320plugged into fitness circles and that and the like for many, many years at that point. So
00:07:40.900I just began to look and look further. And, um, I read as much as I could find on PubMed. I started,
00:07:50.000you know, I read every book that I could find. I started watching Ted talks, like I left no stone
00:07:54.640unturned. And then ultimately I decided that I was able, I realized that I was able to use my
00:08:00.140media credentials, my status as a quasi public figure to reach out to scientists and researchers.
00:08:07.280And this is before podcasting really was a thing. So I didn't have a podcast at this point. I was
00:08:12.080just somebody who had a blue checkmark on Twitter. And I began reaching out to people who were really
00:08:17.360sort of ushering in that I would see as the first and last authors in the primary literature that
00:08:23.720I was reading that were really ushering in this notion of dementia as a potentially preventable
00:08:28.860condition. And I wanted to interview them. So I began to interview them for a few projects that
00:08:36.440I was developing, one of which being a documentary on dementia prevention, which I'm still actually
00:08:41.860working on. And that ultimately led to a number of really incredible opportunities where I've
00:08:46.840become collaborators with some of these researchers. I've been able to publish
00:08:50.320literature, peer-reviewed academic literature. So I'm an author. I've written books for the
00:08:56.520public, Genius Foods and the Genius Life, but I've also been able to co-author a chapter in a
00:09:01.800textbook that clinicians use to, yeah, it's been, it's been really quite incredible. I've been able
00:09:06.600to lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences. And so I may, I'm not, I don't, I never misrepresent
00:09:11.440myself. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm just incredibly passionate about something that's
00:09:14.820become very personal to me. Um, and I think I have, uh, you know, a bit of an aptitude for this,
00:09:21.620for understanding and for communicating science. And I always remain sort of open to challenging
00:09:28.680my own assumptions and beliefs about health and nutrition and the like. So it's, again,
00:09:35.160led to a number of incredible opportunities. But really, my passion is helping people of all ages,
00:09:39.540but particularly younger people, live and eat in a way that optimizes their brain health and
00:09:43.680helps them minimize risk for the kinds of chronic, non-communicable diseases that we know are just
00:09:50.080ravaging um society these days and and making people sick and shortening people's lifespans
00:09:57.340and uh part of that has to do with myth busting and um helping people separate fact from fiction
00:10:03.420but i uh i host a podcast called the genius life and yeah my two books are out genius foods and
00:10:09.760the genius life and that's actually how we connected i remember hearing about your story
00:10:13.160and i sent you my first book genius genius yes yeah and it was um i was like this could have
00:10:19.380helped me years ago. But by that time I was already on the carnivore train or it might've
00:10:25.160been. Yeah, I was, I was like, just, just newly on the carnivore train. You are the guy that I
00:10:30.500direct people to if they're like, you know, I'm pretty healthy, but I don't want to get chronically
00:10:37.640ill later. Are there things I could do now? And I'm like, you should read genius foods because
00:10:44.120that would convince anybody that simple changes that really aren't that hard to implement can
00:10:51.700really reduce pain and suffering later. And I think young people,
00:10:57.020young people who are healthy or who haven't experienced a family member's ill health or
00:11:02.200their own ill health, totally disregard their diet. They're like, ah, whatever. I can eat0.98
00:11:08.240anything. Doesn't matter. I'll deal with me being sick later. And it was like, you don't know what
00:11:13.140being chronically ill is like. You don't want to deal with that. You want to spend a good portion1.00
00:11:17.660of your time making sure you do not have to deal with that because it's horrible.
00:11:23.100Yeah. Trying to change chronic illness feels like trying to move a cruise ship with your hands,
00:11:33.840trying to change the direction of a cruise ship by pushing it with your hands. That's what it,
00:11:38.680that's what it feels like. Because by the time you've already shown symptoms, the disease has
00:11:44.720set in, like its claws are already well embedded. And I saw this with my mother. I mean, my mom has
00:11:52.580had a form of dementia that is tragically understudied, but that's because it's rare,
00:11:58.880of course. But if you take Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia,
00:12:02.600that begins in the brain 30 to 40 years before the first symptom. This is fact. And Parkinson's
00:12:09.740disease, which had overlapping features with my mom's condition, that's another one of these
00:12:15.420conditions where by the time you show up to the neurologist with your first symptom, half of the
00:12:19.880dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra portion of the brain where neurons involved in
00:12:24.060movement die in Parkinson's disease, half of them are already dead by the time you show up with your
00:12:29.280first symptom. And that shouldn't be that hard to, that shouldn't be that shocking to consider
00:12:36.200because the same, it's the same story for cardio, for, you know, chronic cardiovascular disease,
00:12:42.260for cancer, for type two diabetes. I mean, these conditions take years to manifest. Um, and so
00:12:49.000to me, rather than live in fear, I think that's an incredibly empowering side of the story that
00:12:54.940We have agency. We have say when it comes to our health destiny.
00:13:00.140And unfortunately, you know, like when I started going to those neurologist's office with my mom,
00:13:08.440thankfully, I had the insight that now for the first time, because I had no prior family history
00:13:13.860of any kind of neurodegenerative disease. Like I thought Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's
00:13:18.420disease were something that only really old people got. My mom was not old at the time.
00:13:21.680so thankfully I had the insight to realize that now for the first time I had a I actually had a
00:13:28.060risk factor for both of these I could develop exactly what it is that my mom developed because
00:13:33.480my mom has that condition um and so it became clear to me that this is something that younger
00:13:40.380people needed to be talking about and so I kind of took it upon myself to get the message out there
00:13:44.380knowing that I wasn't a medical doctor but that um that I had the ability and the and the desire
00:13:50.720to communicate science in a way that was balanced and responsible and could ultimately make a
00:13:57.280difference for people. I don't know why some people, my audience already knows that I'm
00:14:05.340extremely biased. And if somebody is a medical doctor, I assume that they've been taught something
00:14:10.700wrong for a really long time. So they're going to be even harder to convince about whatever you're
00:14:16.340trying to talk to them about, but for nutrition and actually being able to read literature,
00:14:22.400that's not even necessarily something you'd go to a doctor for because they don't do
00:14:28.180nutrition specifically. No. So yeah, they get, I mean, they get an afternoon of nutrition training.
00:14:35.180They get very little training when it comes to exercise, um, and the power that exercise,
00:14:41.440exercise is medicine right but they're they're not taught that um and at the end of the day i
00:14:48.340think it's important for people to realize that um there there are some incredible doctors out
00:14:52.800there so i can't i can't deny that but there also are some really bad doctors there are a lot of
00:14:57.380really bad doctors doctors are human for one and also medical doctors at least in this country are
00:15:03.000they're not scientists they're technicians you know they're like trained to operate according
00:15:10.280to script. And if they veer from that script, then they run the risk of a malpractice suit.
00:15:15.860So what doctor is going to, um, you know, veer too far from the orthodox path
00:15:24.220with, with their patient, it's just not, it's not really going to happen. So you kind of have to
00:15:29.580take matters into your home, into your own hands to some degree. And that's not to say that me and
00:15:36.200my mother didn't go to doctors looking for answers. We did. I mean, I, I'm, I, we, we wished,
00:15:44.540you know, often that there would be, I wished that there would be a viable, that there would
00:15:48.160actually be a viable pharmaceutical, um, agent that could, that could provide relief for my mom
00:15:54.420and there, and there wasn't. My mother actually, she passed, uh, a little over two years ago and
00:16:00.960And so, she had struggled from dementia for seven, eight years, but she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Labor Day 2018.
00:16:10.380And so, it was just, I mean, it was awful.
00:16:13.980But what I experienced with her, with oncologists, was the same thing that I had experienced with her with a neurologist.
00:16:22.580They were just, they weren't able to offer her anything.
00:16:25.720I'm not faulting mainstream medicine for that.
00:16:29.260you know, we certainly went there as opposed to some of these more alternative, um, you know,
00:16:36.300options, which, you know, there's no evidence for, you know, for these alternatives, you know,
00:16:43.300treatments, but, um, uh, but yeah, it's just like, to me, I think prevention is so crucially
00:16:49.940important and we don't know everything at this point, but I think we know enough where we don't
00:16:54.020have to sit idly on our hands. I agree. So before we delve into some of the things people can easily
00:17:01.280implement that could potentially save them from years of suffering down the road, how did you,
00:17:10.200I wanted to ask you because I've had my own share of family health troubles. How did you manage to
00:17:19.340stay sane during the stress of dealing with somebody chronically ill?
00:17:26.100Oh man, such a good question. I love, I love that you asked this question because,
00:17:29.640you know, especially when you have somebody who is on a loved one, who's on hospice,
00:17:35.580um, you want to spend every moment with that person. But for me, I knew that if I didn't
00:17:42.060carve out time in my day, every day for self-care that I wouldn't have made it to the other side.
00:17:47.840And so that's where to me exercise was my savior. Um, during, especially during those,
00:17:55.540those final three months of my mom's life, I made an effort to get to the gym every single day.
00:18:01.640And my life at that point had been incredibly stressful. I mean, there was like, obviously
00:18:06.120what my mother was going through, but there was infighting in my family, you know, about her
00:18:10.600treatment. And it was just like, it was so stressful, but I, every day I went to the gym
00:18:16.100And then I took time out and I was sauna-ing, you know, I was like hitting the sauna almost every day, cold plunge almost every day.
00:18:24.520I mean, there's such a bounty of evidence now showing us that exercise is a tonic for mental health.
00:18:30.620And so, and I experienced that firsthand, you know, whether it was anxiety or depression, which is something that we all experience, right?
00:18:38.260there's such a robust but there's meta analyses now coming out that are showing us that whether
00:18:42.580it's cardio that whether it's more aerobic style training or resistance training both are super
00:18:47.780effective in treating even clinical cases of of severe depression um and anxiety so that i mean
00:18:57.100that was a major outlet for me just getting to the gym i mean it feels so good you know you get
00:19:02.220that endorphin rush. It helps balance neurotransmitters, hormones. You're boosting
00:19:07.940BDNF in the brain. So you're keeping your brain plastic and agile all the while. There's so many
00:19:15.240mechanisms by which exercise fortifies your mental health. So that was a big one for me.
00:19:23.140Eating healthy, I think, is a huge part of it as well. We know now, thanks to this growing field
00:19:27.500that's being called nutritional psychiatry that food has a powerful say in terms of mood my diet
00:19:32.540was already quite good um you know pretty privileged in the sense that you know i had this
00:19:38.480foundation of nutritional knowledge so unlike most americans whose diets are 60 ultra processed foods
00:19:43.880mine tend to be more whole foods and so um we know that when people with severe depression make the
00:19:51.800switch from an ultra processed foods diet to a diet that's more whole foods more mediterranean
00:19:55.860style that, uh, that seems to help, um, with mood, you know? So for me, that was just like
00:20:02.380a foundational thing. I don't know if changing my, if, if my diet, my diet was certainly supporting,
00:20:06.680um, everything that I was doing in the gym and the like, but it's self-care. It's really self-care.
00:20:12.740It's, you've got to make time for it. Um, for any caregivers listening, anybody who's doing
00:20:16.880anything stressful. I mean, don't start to judge yourself or your situation until you've had a
00:20:22.280workout and then reassess. The other day I woke up and, you know, I still have bouts where I wake
00:20:28.420up sad about what transpired. And I was, I felt gloomy. I had no motivation to even get to the
00:20:34.280gym, but I forced myself to go to the gym and everything cleared up and it felt amazing. So,
00:20:41.340um, so yeah, exercise really when it comes to mental health and, and weathering the storm,
00:20:45.960so to speak exercises it's profound this episode is sponsored by carnivore crisps
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00:22:23.120episode i need to be more disciplined with that i've got like there's some stressful seriously
00:22:29.440stressful things going on and it's like when you first get hit with that load of stress
00:22:34.780i'm just like first i'm full of adrenaline right for like an extended period of time but when that
00:22:41.300wears off i'm just tired and i'm like and then i know that exercise would help but i'm so tired
00:22:48.340but the cold plunge is pretty easily implementable so you can be pretty lazy and still manage to do
00:22:55.560a cold plunge. Yeah, it's painful. I think anytime you get out of your comfort zone,
00:23:01.520good things happen. And getting into a cold plunge, it's rarely easy to do. I mean, it's
00:23:08.480difficult to do, but the benefits are profound. I mean, there's a researcher, Charles Rezon,
00:23:13.940I believe he's studying cold exposure and mood. There have been a number of case reports published
00:23:19.520on PubMed where winter swimming, you know, seems to offer reprieve from even the most severe
00:23:26.800depression. So I'm not saying to circumvent pharmaceuticals, if that's what you need,
00:23:31.200you know, I would never place a stigma on, on pharmaceutical intervention, but like,0.97
00:23:35.340but I think you should always, they fucked me up guys. I placed the stigma there.0.84
00:23:40.360Well, I wouldn't be up for years. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not endorsing them,
00:23:47.260But I'm saying, but, but, you know, meta-analyses tend to show that, well, we know that antidepressant drugs are very much over-prescribed and that for people with mild to moderate depression, they're no more effective than placebo and exercise is just as effective, if not more so.
00:24:08.020But they are, they are effective for people with severe depression, seems to, seems to be the case.
00:24:16.560Well, my mom was on luck there. My, my mom had been on sertraline for many, many years
00:24:22.220and we tried to get, which is Zoloft. And we tried to get her off of that. And we realized
00:24:28.420what a nightmare that is to come off of. Yeah. Um, yeah. I don't think I would have made it off
00:24:34.140mine. So I was on Ciprolex, uh, and so that's an SSRI and I was at a pretty high dose through
00:24:40.360like developmental years. And when my depression went away, when I went low carb, like it went
00:24:45.300away while I was on them. And I was like, ah, well, don't need this anymore. And kind of stopped
00:24:51.220taking them over a period of two weeks because I literally didn't know that you could have
00:24:55.540antidepressant withdrawal. And the reason I ended up on the zero carb diet, now looking back, I know
00:25:02.940this. I didn't at the time. The reason I ended up on it was because my brain was in such a state of
00:25:08.000constant panic from stopping those antidepressants that I was getting SSRI withdrawal from tiny
00:25:15.760little amounts of carbs. So like light, heat, sound, and then carbs. It's gone now. I don't
00:25:22.840have antidepressants, any withdrawal anymore. And so I don't get those mood dips when I have carbs
00:25:28.340anymore. Thank God. But I'm not very happy with that experience, especially considering I didn't
00:25:35.480know what was going on for like two and a half years. Yeah. I just think that diet and lifestyle
00:25:41.460should always be the first line of defense. So like, yeah, work with that and see where you are
00:25:48.260then see, yeah, see where you are. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So for things people could change,
00:25:53.760if you're your average Joe, you're on a standard American diet, you're getting a slump in the
00:25:59.240afternoon, maybe you're a little, have some COVID weight. Like what are some easy things people
00:26:05.480could change to improve their lives? Well, I think, I mean, one of the things that I've done
00:26:11.240recently or that I do regularly that I think really helps me as I take, uh, hiatuses from
00:26:16.840caffeine. Um, are you a coffee drinker? No, I couldn't drink coffee either. I can drink tea now.
00:26:23.900so i'm pretty proud of that i just discovered milk long have you had milk long tea oh i heard
00:26:30.240you post i saw you post about that and i googled it it's amazing it doesn't have any milk it's like
00:26:36.060fermented long tea and it tastes like milk and i haven't had milk since 2015 and it is so good
00:26:42.480i can't picture like a tea that tastes like milk i'm gonna have to it's so good i think if you
00:26:47.360have had milk maybe it doesn't taste as much like milk as i think it tastes like milk but
00:26:53.240Anyway, milk oolong. It's great. People should try it anyway. Caffeine.
00:26:57.660Well, I know that this is going to be a polar. Yeah. The, the, the caffeine abstention is going
00:27:01.740to be, you know, is going to make some people hate me, but, um, but I love coffee and I love
00:27:07.400caffeine, but I, I find that it definitely messes me up and it's, you know, I was in denial for a
00:27:11.960long time about it, but, um, you know, I drink it, I drink it typically first thing in the morning.
00:27:16.760And I always, you know, I either, if I, if I've, if I consume too much, I experienced that wired
00:27:21.960and tired sort of burnout feeling, or I just, I feel like I've been hit by a train later in the
00:27:27.380afternoon. Um, and so I've, you know, at this point now I've taken, I've done this a number
00:27:33.660of times where I'll take a one to two to three or a month long hiatus from, uh, from caffeine.
00:27:40.880And I feel like I feel incredible. Like when I, when I do it, it's, it makes me almost not want
00:27:46.080to go back to drinking caffeine, but I do happen to love the taste of coffee. Um, but whenever I
00:27:51.800take these breaks from from caffeine i think it's you know because here's what happens when you
00:27:55.740become dependent on caffeine caffeine is an ergogenic compound so it's a performance booster
00:28:01.340it boosts mental acuity it boosts physical performance in the gym we know that when you
00:28:05.840have an acute dose of caffeine however i think when people are dependent on it the boost that
00:28:11.040they're getting isn't a boost from their baseline performance it's merely treating their withdrawal
00:28:16.140from caffeine. And so you need to continue to dose yourself with caffeine to have even your
00:28:22.340baseline level of, of, of performance. Whereas, well, you know, when I, I find that when I take
00:28:28.620time off of it, um, I go back to having baseline, my baseline level of performance as my actual
00:28:35.540baseline. And then whenever I bring caffeine back in at the minimal effective dose, I'm actually
00:28:40.740able to, um, have superior performance to, to my, to my baseline. So I think the key is to just not
00:28:47.380become dependent on it and to, and to cycle it, to cycle caffeine, which, you know, people do with
00:28:52.180other supplements in the fitness space. But, um, so I think, I think that's a big, that's a big
00:28:56.560thing for me, at least currently. So currently I'm, I'm off caffeine. I'm sipping some lion's
00:29:01.300mane, uh, in a cup. Um, but yeah. And then, I mean, we could talk about diet. We could talk
00:29:08.640about lifestyle i'm really you know i think you and i share an affinity for animal sourced animal
00:29:15.420based products um you know i'm a i'm big on on on quality meat um fish eggs things like that
00:29:23.580really supportive uh in my view of brain health i mean the the strongest body of evidence supports
00:29:29.720fish you know i mean you can't you can't deny that fish is medicine when it comes to the brain
00:29:34.920But I think that red meat is as well and eggs, you know, eggs, wonderful source of choline, which is the precursor to acylcholine, which is an important neurotransmitter for learning and memory.
00:29:48.740About 10% of the population consumes the adequate intake for choline, which is shocking.
00:29:56.660And there also happens to be a risk reduction for people for the highest tier of choline consumers.
00:30:03.060I believe it's about a 30% risk reduction for dementia. So observational correlation,
00:30:08.380but, um, but I think choline is a pretty, pretty important nutrient among many that you find in,
00:30:13.780in animal foods. Okay. Yeah. So we, we talked, I think last time we talked a little bit
00:30:22.480about diet and I do want to touch on that, but for genius life, can you tell me some of the things
00:30:31.620that are important in that book yeah and i want to cover makeup too oh i saw some post about well
00:30:39.140i wear makeup i'm like fuck it i don't get autoimmune symptoms from makeup and anything
00:30:43.660that doesn't give me autoimmune symptoms from my god i'll do it but i've heard you talk about a0.98
00:30:49.500whole bunch of poisonous chemicals and makeup yeah um i don't know if i'll be able to list
00:30:56.100them at this point uh but they're but but basically the point that i was trying to drive
00:31:00.820home in the genius life and with cosmetics and bathroom products and the like is that we're
00:31:06.200exposed to any number of industrial chemicals on a daily basis and we don't yet have the kind of
00:31:11.660long-term data to know whether or not these come these compounds are safe every once in a while
00:31:16.380there will be a big lawsuit like what happened recently with johnson and johnson and their talc
00:31:21.680powder which was contaminated which had been contaminated with asbestos oh my god i didn't
00:31:27.680know about this. Was it asbestos or arsenic? It was like, it was, it was one of these, you know,
00:31:31.900don't, don't, don't quote me on that. Asbestos would be terrible. Arsenic's pretty bad too.
00:31:35.900Yeah. It was, it was, it was basically one of those. It's very easily Googleable, but women,
00:31:41.220you know, and, and men, people, boys, uh, put this stuff on their genitals and women were
00:31:47.440developing rare vaginal cancers, um, you know, at, at, at dramatically increased risk when they
00:31:55.960had been using this product chronically. Asbestos and ovarian cancer. Did you Google it? Yeah.
00:32:02.820It's asbestos. Holy shit. Wasn't that, isn't that for babies? Oh my God. I didn't know this.0.99
00:32:07.760It's, it's, it's terrifying. So, you know, I like to abide by the precautionary principle,
00:32:13.460um, which stipulates that the less time a product or a supplement or a medicine or an industrial
00:32:19.340compound has been you know in the sort of human um like in our sort of ecosystem the greater burden
00:32:28.540of proof it should bear before we deem it as safe and oftentimes that burden is placed on consumers
00:32:34.500really it's not placed on on manufacturers and so a lot of these compounds um well for one they
00:32:42.180exhibit endocrine disrupting potential and there's this big debate so your endocrine system is your
00:32:48.760they're your hormones. You have leptin, ghrelin, insulin, growth hormone, your sex hormones like
00:32:54.640estrogen, testosterone. Primarily, these endocrine disrupting compounds are thought to disrupt
00:33:01.040sex hormones and thyroid hormone. And the problem is that toxins typically, when we think about
00:33:10.900toxins follow a linear um the the greater the dose the greater the risk of toxicity the greater the
00:33:20.720danger posed by any any chemical really um the dose makes the poison um that what we call that
00:33:28.160is a monotonic dose response it's like a linear dose response increasing dose increasing dose
00:33:32.880increasing toxicity the problem with endocrine disrupting chemicals is that they follow what's
00:33:38.560called a non-monotonic dose response. It's more like a U-shaped curve. They can have one effect
00:33:42.960at a high dose, but they can have a completely different effect at a very low dose. We don't
00:33:50.420know how to study all of the different chemicals that are suspected to have this ability to
00:33:57.780disrupt our hormones. What that means is that they might test one of these compounds at a certain
00:34:03.920dose and find the dose at which point it becomes toxic. And then below that, they say, oh, well,
00:34:10.500it's safe. But the point is that at a low dose, they can have a completely different and still
00:34:15.540harmful effect. The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, which was a nonprofit doing great work,
00:34:21.720and I think they've shuttered, but they've identified about 1,400 compounds that humans
00:34:28.600are exposed to routinely that have the potential for endocrine disruption. And endocrine disruption
00:34:33.520is like, I mean, the potential consequences of disrupting your hormones can be anything from,
00:34:39.780you know, unwarranted fat gain to low libido to improper cognitive development, improper brain
00:34:48.460development. Thyroid hormone, for example, is important for the development of our brains as
00:34:52.880were growing up. Um, and so that's where I think it's important to be really weary of, uh, you1.00
00:35:03.320know, industrial compounds. And that's not to say that natural products are necessarily safer, but
00:35:08.520I think that, um, but you know, I just, I don't, I don't necessarily trust, uh, compounds as readily
00:35:16.940when they're synthetic and we're told to just slather them on. Also many of these products
00:35:21.160like cosmetics, um, which you brought up, you know, they're not, we don't like, we don't ingest
00:35:27.420them. So they're not tested for that, but they still are able to enter circulation, whether it's
00:35:33.500through hand to mouth behavior, you know, we touch our face and then we touch our mouths.
00:35:37.860Um, they, they're able to get into our skin. Uh, we know that BPA, for example, is able to,
00:35:43.260to get in through our skin and enter circulation. Um, even certain types of dental floss,
00:35:48.400like dental tape for example dental tape is made of substance that substances that are
00:35:54.560used to make teflon or non-stick pans and yeah and we know ideal yeah definitely not ideal these
00:36:02.500are powerful endocrine endocrine disruptors there's a whole movie with mark ruffalo called
00:36:06.360dark waters all about this how you know these compounds are carcinogenic um
00:36:11.540yeah they're called perfluorinated alkylated substances or pfas for short and dental tape
00:36:18.740is made using those kinds of substances and so you want to avoid those and use dental floss
00:36:24.840instead but yeah there's there's so many and i think it's it's not worth you know going crazy
00:36:31.540over because you're not going to be able to completely eliminate your exposure to these
00:36:34.600kinds of things. But, you know, in, in my view, I think it's just important to become aware of,
00:36:42.100um, these kinds of things. And, uh, yeah. And then from that point, you know, with that
00:36:49.740information, I think what it tends to do is it tends to lead to either not necessarily using
00:36:55.880these products, you know, for example, like fragrance products, we're told, okay. Yeah.
00:37:01.240Thanks to marketing, right? That like humans like should smell a certain way, you know, and that all bad odors are like, you know, something that we want to like put a put a chemical bandaid over.
00:37:14.140um but fragrances are among the most notorious they're made using phthalates the term fragrance
00:37:21.980on a you know on a on a cosmetic label could be an umbrella which you know which hides hundreds
00:37:29.280of chemicals under its under that under that singular term so um so yeah i think i think
00:37:37.480the the best course of action is just to sort of minimize our exposure to these and to
00:37:42.740and to opt for natural food-based sources that you know i mean something that you might that you
00:37:48.240might consume would be something that i would uh you know use on my like face or to brush my teeth
00:37:55.720with or um to to wash myself with lanolin is really good if you need a lip gloss it also works
00:38:03.780as a moisturizer lanolin is great uh i use beef tallow i have like a beef from belcampo i have
00:38:09.700like a beef teller. Oh, do they have a bum? Yeah. Okay. I've, I've tried one of those.
00:38:13.880I prefer lanolin just because I just find it just, it's extremely effective. Like I used to use
00:38:19.360before I got all health conscious, I used to use Vaseline when I switched over to lanolin,
00:38:24.660but, um, I was traveling, speaking of fragrances, I was traveling the summer and I went, I was in
00:38:29.520Croatia and I got into this house and I've gotten, I guess I've had things set up so well in my own
00:38:38.120home that I forget how many things can go wrong when you travel. But I got in there and there was
00:38:42.640this whole something scented and it was so strong that I was like, this is nauseating. Like, I don't
00:38:48.840know how someone can be in here. So I had to search around. They had this weird container
00:38:53.420full of this oil with these sticks coming out of it and they were just everywhere. So I put them
00:38:57.660on the laundry and close the laundry. But then it was like the sheets were covered in whatever soap
00:39:04.240they were using was scented. So the sheets had this like film of scented soap on them. And I was
00:39:12.180like, does anyone, does anyone like this? Like there's so many things like now I'm not going to
00:39:16.760be able to sleep. I have to sleep with a towel on my pillow. Cause my head is going to smell like
00:39:20.480this stupid pillow. I was like, how do people survive? Well, like using scented laundry1.00
00:39:27.360detergent. How do you live like that? Yeah. I mean, I buy everything that I buy in my house
00:39:33.900is like, it's, you know, scented with like essential oils and things like that. And I
00:39:37.540know it sounds really woo woo. And I know that there are going to be people in the audience who
00:39:40.680are like, Oh, nature fallacy, you know, like natural doesn't necessarily mean, mean that it's
00:39:45.260safe, but, um, but there, there are just too many examples throughout history where industry has
00:39:52.480foisted a compound onto the public, you know, only later to have seen the unintended consequences
00:40:02.220unfurl. So, you know, as we talked about asbestos and talc, asbestos in our building, you know,
00:40:09.020materials, lead in paint, for example. You know, lead in paint, they thought, oh, it helps speed
00:40:14.760up the drying of paint. What they didn't account for was the fact that paint over time sloughs off,
00:40:20.920It becomes dust particles in our homes.
00:40:32.120Bisphenol A is a well-known endocrine disruptor.
00:40:35.260It's been known for 100 years at this point that it's a xenoestrogen.
00:40:38.600It's like a synthetic form of estrogen.
00:40:40.980Many of our plastic products are made of it, but it's not inert.
00:40:44.960It's able to migrate out in the form of dust, leach out into our food.
00:40:50.000When we use BPA containers that are made using BPA and we store fatty, acidic, salty foods in it, it comes off on our cash register receipts and that ends up in our mouths due to hand-to-mouth behavior and also through the skin.
00:41:10.740And so there are all these just there are too many examples throughout history.
00:41:14.780And when I look at like my mom's life, she wasn't she wasn't skeptical at all.
00:41:21.900I mean, she just kind of she was very health conscious, but she listened to the messages that were that were sent to her via marketing, the traditional marketing channels.
00:41:32.280um and so her home she used all the cosmetics and her home was cleaned using just the standard
00:41:40.420cleaning products that were fragranced um up the wazoo and so i just think it's important to be
00:41:47.020you know a little bit more a little bit more skeptical and to have your own sort of you know
00:41:51.080to have your own back when it comes to minimizing exposure to these kinds of compounds because
00:41:55.920because corporations don't, we know that. Yeah. I would say be extremely skeptical. I'm so
00:42:03.380skeptical. It's unbelievable, but I don't seem to be, I haven't been wrong about a lot of the
00:42:08.960things I'm skeptical about and people, a lot of people who tell you they know what they're talking
00:42:14.240about too, or like, Oh, this is fine. They don't know what they're talking about. And you, you
00:42:19.340touched on this earlier. You're like the newer, the chemical or the newer, the drug, it doesn't
00:42:24.700mean better. I had, um, a couple of people on to talk about pharmaceuticals, specifically
00:42:29.660psychiatric medications. And it was like, they'll come out with a new one and they'll say, this is
00:42:33.720the best one. That one has the least amount of data, right? Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Well, a wonderful
00:42:41.620and topical example is the recent, um, Alzheimer's drug aducanumab released by Biogen and fast
00:42:49.780tracked for approval from the fda right that drug it was there hasn't been a new alzheimer's drug
00:42:56.420to hit the market in 15 years um and alzheimer's drug trials have a notoriously abysmal success
00:43:03.520rate um their failure rate is 99.6 so 99.6 of alzheimer's drug trials fail but this aducanumab
00:43:11.760drug was fast tracked and obviously a lot of people are very hopeful because there are very
00:43:18.880few effective pharmaceutical treatment modalities for alzheimer's disease but it's been controversial
00:43:24.640because the drug has been shown to reduce levels of amyloid beta in the brain which is the plaque
00:43:30.380most closely associated with alzheimer's disease you know alzheimer's disease is characterized in
00:43:33.960part by this aggregation of amyloid the the amyloid beta plaque as well as misfolded tau
00:43:41.800protein in the brain um and the drug has been shown to be successful in reducing plaque burden
00:43:48.400in the brain but it hasn't been shown to move the needle on the most obvious and clinically
00:43:52.960relevant endpoint which is cognitive function so it the drug hasn't been shown to actually help
00:43:57.320the cognition or extend life in people with alzheimer's disease it just reduces this you
00:44:03.960know this plaque in the brain um which who's to say that that is even causal when it comes to
00:44:10.160alzheimer's disease i mean the amyloid hypothesis is still a hypothesis and so yeah i'm uh
00:44:17.500uh, I think you just have to be a skeptic, you know, don't be, don't, it's important not to be
00:44:22.940cynical about these kinds of things, but I think, um, skepticism is something that we don't have
00:44:28.200enough of. And I think that falls in line with our just overall lack of scientific literacy in
00:44:33.660this country. Um, you know, we all need to learn, I think more about how to think like a scientist,
00:44:42.400You know, I'm not formally trained, but my experience with my mom, my passion to help others, my curiosity and my desire for knowledge has led me down a path where, you know, I mean, being skeptical is crucially important.
00:45:00.600I'm constantly even questioning my own beliefs about and assertions that I've made about diet and lifestyle and the like.
00:45:12.400Agreed. Yeah. So important. It is important. Okay. How important is it to eat organic food?
00:45:19.940Does it really matter? Oh man. Um, I eat organic when I'm eating the skin or the rind or the whole
00:45:28.380fruit or vegetable. Um, I don't think it's important to buy organic, uh, when it comes
00:45:34.540to something that, you know, has a, has a rind or appeal. Like I would never buy an organic banana
00:45:38.840or avocado um i think it's important that people know that there's very little nutritional difference
00:45:45.240when it comes to when comparing organic versus conventional and um you know ultimately uh
00:45:54.820if you know if you want to eat fruits and vegetables and conventional is the is the
00:46:01.200only form that is available to you whether you know because of access or because of you know
00:46:06.460finances, um, I think conventional is fine. There's very little, when it comes to like,
00:46:11.140there's very little difference when it comes to like essential nutrients, but, um, organic
00:46:17.080does have, uh, very low, um, you, the very low risk of ingesting synthetic pesticides when
00:46:26.380consuming organic. Um, they do use herbicides and pesticides in organic, but they're organic
00:46:31.180approved. And some of them include, you know, copper, for example, which is an essential
00:46:35.300mineral. Vitamin D is an example of another organic approved pesticide. So, you know,
00:46:42.280anti sort of organic zealots will say, well, you know, organic still contain pesticides,
00:46:47.640but you're not getting the synthetic pesticides is I think the point. Also, there's lower risk of
00:46:53.340exposure to certain heavy metals like cadmium in organic produce. And you're also getting
00:47:00.240higher levels of plant defense compounds like polyphenols, which are going to be higher in
00:47:06.100organic produce. Um, because these are compounds that plants naturally will generate to ward off,
00:47:13.200uh, predation. Um, and so you're getting more in organic, you're getting less in,
00:47:18.600in conventionally raised produce. It's, you know, it's kind of splitting hairs. I think,
00:47:23.420um, for somebody on a, on a limited budget, you know, I think that there's a lot of
00:47:28.040people in the wellness world, um, project this image of perfection that if you can't eat organic
00:47:33.380all the time, then somehow you're not, you know, you've, you're a moral failure. Um, I don't think
00:47:38.640that that's necessarily the case. Um, but I, you know, I definitely try to eat organic when, uh,
00:47:44.500when it comes to dark leafy greens, when it comes to berries, um, things like that. Another
00:47:49.300completely anecdotal data point. Um, you know, my mother is somebody who never believed in organic.
00:47:54.300She just didn't believe in it. You know, whether it was her trying to save money or whatever, you know, she ate conventionally grown produce her whole life. So, again, not saying to draw any conclusions from that, but, you know, I'm sort of in a place where I want to examine every aspect of her life and kind of go in the opposite direction because her health was so tragic.
00:48:19.560So, uh, so yeah, I, you know, those are my, those are my feelings on, on organic.
00:48:27.340How important is it to eat unprocessed foods?
00:48:42.740But I think the key determinant of successful aging is really going to be the degree of processing that the bulk of the foods that you consume undergo.
00:48:55.120If you're your standard sort of your average American consuming 60% ultra processed foods.
00:49:24.220When we cook vegetables, we're processing.
00:49:25.640When we're cutting things, you know, with a knife and fork, we're processing them to some degree.
00:49:29.740Ultra processing is when, you know, for example, you take grain flour and you just, you know, put it through these myriad processes that make it so easily digestible.
00:49:39.780that it, even though it's not overt sugar, it's not a sugar necessarily. It basically is no
00:49:47.460different to your body. It becomes so rapidly broken down and absorbed at the top of your
00:49:52.060small intestine. Um, same, you know, uh, ultra processing also occurs to fats. So like grain
00:49:59.080and seed oils, like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil. I'm very skeptical of those. I don't, I try
00:50:05.160to avoid consuming any of those oils because the processing damages those fats that are very
00:50:10.460delicate because of their high, their preponderance of polyunsaturated fatty acids. And we know that
00:50:16.080one step in the production process, deodorization actually creates a small but significant amount
00:50:20.200of trans fats in those oils. And we know that there's no safe level of trans fat consumption
00:50:27.780at this point um so it's like it's all those packaged processed foods that you see you know
00:50:35.260lining your supermarket shelves like in the in through the aisles which is where the ultra
00:50:40.600processed foods tend to tend to be they're the chips they're the commercial cereals commercial
00:50:45.440breads pizzas pastas they're um you know they're just they're made with machinery and so it's it
00:50:54.260basically outsources a degree of, uh, you know, it takes very little effort for your body to
00:51:00.620assimilate. Um, there's probably a relationship between the degree of processing and the
00:51:05.020speed at which we were able to consume these foods. So I think that that speed in and of itself
00:51:09.520is, um, potentially one of the problems with the food. Like they're very easy to chew ultra
00:51:16.380processed foods. You know, they don't require any sort of jaw vigor to, uh, to, to chew and break
00:51:23.360down you know our bodies begin to assimilate them almost immediately that flood of sugar you know
00:51:29.400if we're talking about refined grain products hit the bloodstream super rapidly leads to a huge flood
00:51:34.680of of insulin and um yeah there's a i did an interview with um former fda commissioner david
00:51:42.380kessler who thinks that you know he basically echoed this that ultra processing is like one of
00:51:47.480the, you know, biggest problems with the modern food supply. Also, you know, you absorb 100%
00:51:54.820of the calories of an ultra processed food. Whereas a minimally processed food, like,
00:52:00.140you know, say you're consuming a handful of nuts, or, you know, some like, you know,
00:52:07.060barely ripe vegetable or, or, or fruit, or, you know, even meat products, like, you know,
00:52:13.700you're losing a percentage of these calories nuts for example about 30 percent of the calories of
00:52:19.940whole nuts just pass through you you know because you're chewing them yourself but you're you're
00:52:24.660you're not necessarily able to break them down as fully as you know if you were to be consuming
00:52:29.600nuts in the form of nut butter which is like you know a very processed form of nuts
00:52:34.560so i think that there are all these sort of issues when it comes to ultra processing also
00:52:40.700nutrient depletion i mean that's another whole other thing when you look at the packaged processed
00:52:45.640foods in our in our supermarkets so often they're fortified with synthetic vitamins and minerals
00:52:50.420because the processing of these foods depletes them of nutrition that's one of the reasons why
00:52:54.54090 of americans are deficient in at least one essential nutrient so i would say that yeah i
00:53:00.940mean when looking at the world's blue zones they're you know people like valter longo david
00:53:07.540Sinclair. They love to cherry pick the fact that they eat lower protein diets, but there are all
00:53:18.340these variables that are different. But when it comes to diet, I would say the biggest difference
00:53:23.700is that they're eating foods that are minimally processed, save for the processing that they do
00:53:27.840themselves when they cook their food. One of my questions was, what about this
00:53:35.000link between red meat consumption and not living very long yeah so i i'm a huge fan of red meat i
00:53:43.840do definitely um you know i i try to sort of i situate i'm i think i'm situated sort of in the
00:53:51.600middle where i see the value of red of red meat and i eat it all the time but i also think that
00:53:58.240there is merit to the notion that excessively fatty meat should be moderated. And my reasoning
00:54:05.660for that is that, you know, if you look at wild game, wild game is all there, it's incredibly
00:54:11.580lean. If you take a cow and you compare, especially a grain finished cow, and you compare, you know,
00:54:17.700its constituent fat to the fat of wild game, it's way, way fattier. I think grass finished
00:54:24.140beef is is way healthier in part because we know that it's actually leaner i mean a grass a cow
00:54:30.580that's eating its biologically appropriate diet is going to be is going to be leaner and some
00:54:35.300people have genes that cause them to have an over response when it comes to their you know their
00:54:40.060lipid profile to diets that are excessively high in saturated fat so while i'm a huge fan of red
00:54:47.280meat i personally you know and i and i do eat fat you know fatty meat all the time i love a good
00:54:51.360ribeye i love you know barbecue ribs and stuff like that but i do try um for the most part to
00:54:57.040reach for leaner um cuts of red meat now do i think that there's like when when when all that
00:55:06.200is said and done there's anything inherently unhealthy about red meat no i think it's actually
00:55:09.600quite healthy i think it's a superfood in fact i call it a genius food um it's packed with
00:55:14.340nutrients that we know are important for the brain and body nutrients of concern so i mean like we
00:55:20.320talked about choline earlier and how 10% of the population consume the adequate intake for choline.
00:55:26.100Beef is, you know, an amazing source. It's a great source of vitamin B12. It's a great source
00:55:30.160of iron. It's a great source of zinc. You get tiny amounts of omega-3s, but I think that that's
00:55:36.400worth something. You also get creatine, which, you know, I would call creatine a conditionally
00:55:42.360essential nutrient because we know that people who are on diets that lack exogenous creatine
00:55:48.420and when supplemented, they see an improvement in their cognitive function.
00:55:53.280So yeah, beef I think is a superfood when it comes to the brain. But we also have to be
00:55:58.720cognizant of the fact that the brain is fed blood and which contain nutrients and oxygen
00:56:06.680by a network of micro vessels that are incredibly delicate and tiny. And that if you were to take
00:56:12.360out of your head and stack end to end would stretch 400 miles long. And that that vasculature
00:56:17.860needs to be protected and so that's where sort of cardiovascular health and the science on
00:56:23.320you know lipids and stuff is very fascinating to me and I think also quite important and
00:56:31.680and so yeah so for example like there's some some thinking and evidence that people that
00:56:38.240are genetically at risk for Alzheimer's disease carriers of the APOE4 allele for example
00:56:42.100have a sort of an exaggerated response when it comes to their LDL cholesterol when they consume
00:56:49.160excess saturated fat. What saturated fat does is it reduces the amount of LDL receptors
00:56:54.540on the surface of the liver. So, what that can do is it can cause LDL, basically,
00:57:00.440you know, these lipoproteins that circulate cholesterol and triglycerides through your
00:57:03.500blood to build up in the blood. And I don't think that that's a positive scenario. And so,
00:57:09.960So yeah, I think it's ultimately about balance.
00:57:12.860Do I think that there's anything potentially harmful about high-protein diets?
00:57:18.500No, I think that protein is crucially important, especially as you get older.
00:57:22.000There's evidence that people over 65 live longer and have lower risk of cancer when
00:58:31.200We also know that the body has a requirement for certain micronutrients.
00:58:34.580And we know that many of these nutrients, especially nutrients that are supportive of optimal brain and mental health, are nutrients of concern.
00:58:43.000And so you can't just eat anything and expect to – you can perhaps eat anything and lose weight.
00:58:48.440But are you losing the right weight and are you going to feel good and be healthy in the process?
00:58:51.480And so I'm not one of these like obsessive fitness guys who thinks that it's all about, you know, what the scale says or how you look in the mirror.
00:59:00.160To me, it's about living a long time healthily, you know, optimizing for lifespan, optimizing for health span and looking good and being strong in the process, which are completely related to living long and healthily, right?