Speaker 1: Every breath you take is going to create energy in
Speaker 1: your brain, which is this delicate, fatty damage prone organs
Speaker 1: squeezed into a container the size of a grapefruit. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Max Lugavier, a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: TV personality and health science journalist. He's been featured on
Speaker 1: NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and in The New
Speaker 1: York Times and People magazine, and he's an internationally sought
Speaker 1: after speaker. Max is also the author of three books,
Speaker 1: including the New York Times bestseller Genius Foods Become smarter, happier,
Speaker 1: and more productive while protecting your brain for life. Hi Max,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Eric, Jenny so good to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. Yes,
Speaker 1: as you just said, we have Jenny with us. So
Speaker 1: this is one of the episodes where Jenny joins us.
Speaker 1: And I asked Jenny to join us because she is
Speaker 1: very connected, Max to your work and it's been an
Speaker 1: important part of our lives the last few years. So
Speaker 1: we'll get into that in a minute. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. Do you want
Speaker 1: to do it? Sure? Sure, I'll read it to you,
Speaker 1: all right, Max. So here goes. There's a grandparent talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves at battle within us. One's a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: one's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, looks up at its grandparents and says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparents says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to know how that parable applies to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I wish I could sit with that
Speaker 1: for an hour just to think about. I got goose
Speaker 1: bumps as you're as you were reciting it. What immediately
Speaker 1: came to mind? And I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: necessarily the answer that I would give an hour from
Speaker 1: now or tomorrow after I sleep on it. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think in life we all endure certain stresses. And uh,
Speaker 1: I know this firsthand in a profound way because I
Speaker 1: had a sick loved one, my mother, Jenny. What I'm
Speaker 1: getting from you is that you can relate to that.
Speaker 1: But in life, wherever those stresses come from, whether it's
Speaker 1: work stress, whether it's marital stress, relationship stress, identity stress, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be, I mean, some of these
Speaker 1: stresses are unavoidable, right Like, you just can't get around them.
Speaker 1: As much as we like to live in this fairytale
Speaker 1: land where there is no stress, to some degree, life
Speaker 1: stress is inevitable. And I think in those moments, of course,
Speaker 1: you have to do what it takes to tend to
Speaker 1: those stresses and to show up for them and for
Speaker 1: the people in your life that that may be involved.
Speaker 1: But you also have to take care of yourself. And
Speaker 1: I guess that the analogy with that parable is the
Speaker 1: bad stresses are I guess the bad wolf. But you've
Speaker 1: got to really be able to carve out time regardless
Speaker 1: for yourself, for self care. Use kinds to speak to
Speaker 1: yourself in those moments, because sometimes I think we can
Speaker 1: be very harsh self critics. When my mother was sick,
Speaker 1: and I guess we'll get into it, but when my
Speaker 1: mom was sick with dementia, especially in the later stages,
Speaker 1: when she had developed another horrible chronic disease in which
Speaker 1: ultimately took her life, that was of the most stressful
Speaker 1: period of my life. Period uh the end. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that I made it to the other
Speaker 1: side in one piece. And looking back, the way that
Speaker 1: I think that I was able to do that and
Speaker 1: come out relatively unscathed was the fact that I still
Speaker 1: prioritized exercise. I still made a point to nourish my
Speaker 1: body with my dietary choices. I made a point to
Speaker 1: do things that I really love doing, like sauna. Sitting
Speaker 1: in a sauna cold water immersion. I kept up my
Speaker 1: guitar playing, which is something that's very personal, something I'm
Speaker 1: very passionate about, even though somebody looking from the outside
Speaker 1: who has never experienced something like that might say, well,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you want to spend every second with your mother
Speaker 1: in those moments? And my answer to that would be, well,
Speaker 1: I want to spend as much time as I can
Speaker 1: with my mom, but I also need to feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf, right. I need to continue doing the things
Speaker 1: that I know bring me happiness and bring health and
Speaker 1: well being to me so that I could then be
Speaker 1: most adequately prepared to show up and be my best
Speaker 1: self for my mother. If if that makes sense, it
Speaker 1: makes total sense. It makes really deep sense to me
Speaker 1: as I listen, you know, gosh, I just have so
Speaker 1: much I want to ask and say, You've been really
Speaker 1: important to me these last four years. So four years ago,
Speaker 1: my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Really her symptoms started
Speaker 1: when she was in her late sixties as we look
Speaker 1: back on it now, but as so many families can
Speaker 1: probably relate when you first start seeing signs and symptoms,
Speaker 1: especially if they're kind of on the earlier side of life.
Speaker 1: As I consider that to be You don't explain it
Speaker 1: right away as dementia. You start thinking it could be
Speaker 1: other things, you know, like my mom and dad had
Speaker 1: just gotten a divorced, so we thought, well, this is stress,
Speaker 1: you know, it's explicable, like she's she's trying to learn
Speaker 1: how to live life again in her late sixties on
Speaker 1: her own, and she's never done that before. Of course
Speaker 1: she's falling apart. You know. It wasn't until I was
Speaker 1: sitting with her one day, and she went every month,
Speaker 1: I guess, as long as I can remember to see
Speaker 1: her parents grave, which is not far from where we live,
Speaker 1: and she started telling me one day that Mimi and
Speaker 1: Pop Pop's grave that the cemetery had moved their grave
Speaker 1: without telling her, and I was like, what you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm pretty sure they would never do
Speaker 1: that anyway. There. It wasn't until something like that happened,
Speaker 1: and then a couple other things that we ended up
Speaker 1: one of the doctor and getting that diagnosis. But the
Speaker 1: last four years have unequivocally been the hardest of my life,
Speaker 1: the most stressful, and that disease would have ravaged me
Speaker 1: like it has ravaged my mother. Had I not found
Speaker 1: your work and begun to really learn how and then
Speaker 1: dedicate myself to caring for my own well being. Um
Speaker 1: in the way I ate my exercise, my sleep, the
Speaker 1: way I fed myself spiritually and took care of myself
Speaker 1: untally and had supported around me like with Eric. And
Speaker 1: you know, as a result, I feel like I'm coming
Speaker 1: out of the other side of this, at least as
Speaker 1: she's on the tail end of this disease, really a
Speaker 1: lot stronger and healthier, amazingly. But it's I can relate
Speaker 1: to you. It's it's incredibly hard to go through this
Speaker 1: with a loved one. When did you first see signs
Speaker 1: of this in your mom? Is it in her fifties?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, it was in her late fifties,
Speaker 1: And like you, I had no mental framework for understanding
Speaker 1: what I was observing. And my mom, I didn't have
Speaker 1: dementia in my lineage. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, my
Speaker 1: mom's mom was actually in her nineties at that point
Speaker 1: and cognitively sharp as attack. So the notion that my
Speaker 1: mom that her daughter could somehow be developing dementia in
Speaker 1: her late fifties was I mean, the term mind blowing
Speaker 1: concept doesn't even cover it. It It was just not on
Speaker 1: my radar in any sense. So the plaints that she
Speaker 1: was exhibiting were just a natural part of getting older perhaps,
Speaker 1: but ultimately I had no framework to explain it. I mean,
Speaker 1: she complained of brain fog in tandem with that, there
Speaker 1: was also a change to her gate. So Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 1: is a memory disorder, and usually it's it just involves
Speaker 1: a memory, whereas there is a category of neurogenerative conditions
Speaker 1: called movement disorders. Parkinson's disease is the most well known
Speaker 1: of which, and Parkinson's disease usually presents with a change
Speaker 1: to one's gate. There's a bit of a shuffle, there's rigidity,
Speaker 1: there's balance issues that that present with Parkinson's disease. So
Speaker 1: my mom kind of had both sets of symptoms come
Speaker 1: on at the same time, which was very unusual. And
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York City, which is where
Speaker 1: my mom lived at the time, And in New York,
Speaker 1: you know, you have access to incredible hospitals, cathedrals, to
Speaker 1: western medicine. We in fact lived across the street from
Speaker 1: n y U Land go On Medical Center, which is
Speaker 1: a wonderful medical institution. But it wasn't until we decided
Speaker 1: to pack up and take a trip to the Cleveland
Speaker 1: Clinic and Ohio where my mom was diagnosed for the
Speaker 1: first time with a narrowdegenerative condition, because in every doctor's
Speaker 1: office prior to that trip we had experienced essentially diagnosed
Speaker 1: and audios with the caveat being we still hadn't had
Speaker 1: a diagnosis. One doctor thought that all of my mom's
Speaker 1: symptoms were due to depression, which is actually quite interesting
Speaker 1: when you consider that one in four women over the
Speaker 1: age of four year on some kind of antidepressant drugs.
Speaker 1: So this psychiatrist that my mom saw, I thought that
Speaker 1: all of our symptoms were just a pseudo dementia as
Speaker 1: a result of depression, which is a thing I mean
Speaker 1: that you know, some people do develop symptoms that look
Speaker 1: like dementia that once you treat the depression, those symptoms
Speaker 1: go away. But in my mom's case, it was much
Speaker 1: more severe, and it wasn't until that trip where she
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with some kind of Parkinson's like condition that
Speaker 1: she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's
Speaker 1: at the same time. And for me, that was a
Speaker 1: point of no return in my life, where I became
Speaker 1: obsessed with trying to understand everything I could about the
Speaker 1: ideology of these kinds of conditions, like what might contribute
Speaker 1: to a person's pre position toward developing them, both Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: disease and Parkinson's disease, what if anything might be done
Speaker 1: to help her from the standpoint of diet and lifestyle,
Speaker 1: because I learned right away that these drugs are nothing
Speaker 1: more than biochemical band aids, right. They just attempt to
Speaker 1: treat the symptoms, but they're minimally effective, particularly with rare
Speaker 1: forms of dementia which my mom had. My mom didn't
Speaker 1: have Alzheimer's, she had some some more niche form called
Speaker 1: Louis body dementia, and in tandem with that, I was
Speaker 1: really interested to see if there was any insight that
Speaker 1: I might be able to glean from the medical literature
Speaker 1: that might provide a roadmap for me so as not
Speaker 1: to develop what it was that my mom had developed.
Speaker 1: And so that journey began about ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: it's just for me, been a relentless pursuit of truth
Speaker 1: since then, and it's led to the books and the
Speaker 1: podcast and all that stuff. Well, it's interesting, you say,
Speaker 1: Louis body. So my mom was initially diagnosed with Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: but not long after did we start seeing other symptoms
Speaker 1: that were really just textbook Louis body. And she had
Speaker 1: all the hallucinations, the paranoia, the personality changes, the aggression,
Speaker 1: and she has now like the rigidity and the kind
Speaker 1: of jerky movements and her muscles, and we're quite certain
Speaker 1: that that's really what's going on. Of course, we won't
Speaker 1: really know definitively, I guess till an autopsy postmortem. At
Speaker 1: this point, I don't see much reason to go in
Speaker 1: and do any kind of invasive diagnostic testing in her
Speaker 1: current condition, but it's important to me to know, you know,
Speaker 1: for my own health. Yeah, what separates Louis bad dementia
Speaker 1: is Louis boddy Is has more in common with Parkinson's
Speaker 1: disease than it does with Alzheimer's disease, and one in
Speaker 1: five dementia patients have Louis body dementia. With Alzheimer's disease,
Speaker 1: especially in the later stages, you'll see dramatic shrinkage of
Speaker 1: the total brain volume because on a global scale, the
Speaker 1: brain is just atrophying. So you'll see shrinkage, which they
Speaker 1: can show on an MRI I. In my mom's case,
Speaker 1: as her dementia advanced, there was no marked shrinkage to
Speaker 1: her brain. Her brain volume was relatively healthy. The problem
Speaker 1: with Louis body mensia and Parkinson's disease is that there's
Speaker 1: a region of the brain called the substantia nigra where
Speaker 1: dopamine producing neurons, which are important for movement, begin to die.
Speaker 1: And in fact, by the time you show up to
Speaker 1: your neurologist with your first Parkinson's disease symptom, half of
Speaker 1: those neurons are already dead. So this is a disease
Speaker 1: like many of the chronic, noncommunicable diseases that are now
Speaker 1: burdening modern society, this is a condition that begins in
Speaker 1: the brain years, if not decades, before the presentation of symptoms.
Speaker 1: This is certainly true for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer,
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease. So my focus really turned to prevention once
Speaker 1: I realized that to me, it was very much something
Speaker 1: that younger people needed to be talking about, but also
Speaker 1: older people as well. It wasn't until I feel the
Speaker 1: past couple of years where you really could mention conditions
Speaker 1: like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease and prevention in the
Speaker 1: same sentence. So I feel like I was in many
Speaker 1: ways prescient in terms of getting this this research out
Speaker 1: to people, because it was just not something that people
Speaker 1: were talking about. And to me, prevention really is how
Speaker 1: we're gonna be able to move the needle on these
Speaker 1: conditions because you know, as we mentioned, the drugs are
Speaker 1: minimally effective, their biochemical band aids, and when you take
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease, for example, six of Alzheimer's drug trials fail.
Speaker 1: So the idea that we're going to come up with
Speaker 1: some magic kill while I prayed when my mom was
Speaker 1: alive and I'm not a religious person, that some kind
Speaker 1: of blockbuster drug would come around the corner, I think
Speaker 1: it's very unlikely in light of the revelation that these
Speaker 1: conditions began far earlier than the presentation of symptoms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when my mom was diagnosed, you know, it really shook
Speaker 1: my world. Like you, and we didn't know of a
Speaker 1: family history of of any kind of dementia, and my
Speaker 1: mom and I were very similar, always have been very
Speaker 1: similar in a lot of ways and identify with her
Speaker 1: so much, and we're very close in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So it really kind of rattled me to the core,
Speaker 1: like my own mortality just came rushing into the forefront
Speaker 1: of my mind. And I realized that I could be
Speaker 1: looking at a preview of coming attractions and I would
Speaker 1: really like that not to be the case. And so
Speaker 1: when that realization came to me, Um, I just started
Speaker 1: looking for information on how and I decrease my risk
Speaker 1: that this is the end of the road for me,
Speaker 1: you know. And in so doing I came across your
Speaker 1: work and so Genius Foods was the book that you
Speaker 1: wrote that that landed in front of me, Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: and you changed the way I ate completely. Um changed
Speaker 1: the way I ate changed my focus on different lifestyle factors.
Speaker 1: For decades, I've struggled with my weight and always had
Speaker 1: pursued weight loss from a vanity standpoint without much success
Speaker 1: in any sustainable way. But when I read your book
Speaker 1: and now having this motivator of my long term brain
Speaker 1: health as like the most important motivator. I mean, I
Speaker 1: lost forty pounds. It just fell off my body because
Speaker 1: I started eating in this very Mediterranean diet is the
Speaker 1: easiest way to say it, but there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to it than that, which we'll get into and in
Speaker 1: the best shape of my life. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, four years later, it's it's not only sustainable,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's just the way we eat, the
Speaker 1: way we operate, the way we live. Now I'm always
Speaker 1: on the hunt of the like frank and fats, all
Speaker 1: the oils that are like rancid and in everything and
Speaker 1: are pro inflammatory. I mean, you've changed the way I
Speaker 1: look at that food, max and for the better. And
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful. Oh I'm so glad and humbled really
Speaker 1: to hear that. And it's remarkable and the credit goes
Speaker 1: to you, because knowledge without action is fairly useless. But
Speaker 1: it was you that put the knowledge gleaned from a
Speaker 1: book Genius Foods. You instituted it in your life and
Speaker 1: you've seen remarkable progress and that's that's on you. So
Speaker 1: thank you for doing that. And I love hearing both
Speaker 1: how those changes have made you feel, and also that
Speaker 1: they're reflected in the mirror as well, because today, I mean,
Speaker 1: obesity and overweight our major public health problems. By the
Speaker 1: two people are going to be not just overweight, but obese.
Speaker 1: And so I've actually described Genius Foods as being the
Speaker 1: only book out there that will simultaneously shrink your belly
Speaker 1: and and grow your brain. That's a great way. It's
Speaker 1: such a great way to say it. You're exactly, which
Speaker 1: is I guess a really in hising proposition. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: were you eating like before your mom's diagnosis and you
Speaker 1: you really dove deep into this work? Did you have
Speaker 1: a pretty good diet? I mean, I would say we
Speaker 1: had an okay diet by the average American standard. We
Speaker 1: were better than that. But we've we've come a long way.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what was it like for you? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question. I guess I have to give
Speaker 1: a little bit of a backstory before I described my
Speaker 1: my diet prior to writing Genius Foods, because I grew
Speaker 1: up in a family that was as I mentioned, I
Speaker 1: grew up in New York City, so textbook definition of privilege, right,
Speaker 1: Like I grew up in New York City, my parents
Speaker 1: were affluent. I had access to all the best supermarkets
Speaker 1: and foods, and my mom was indeed health conscious when
Speaker 1: she had your coloring and probably had a similar body type.
Speaker 1: She was never overweight. She was mindful of what you
Speaker 1: put into her body because she was concerned for the
Speaker 1: majority of her life with developing heart disease. So my
Speaker 1: earliest recollections of the dietary pattern that my family embraced
Speaker 1: was probably similar to a lot of families in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. We ate a fairly low at diet.
Speaker 1: In particular, my mom was was largely vegetarian. She was
Speaker 1: always afraid of eating saturated fats, you know, so there
Speaker 1: was never any butter in the house. We always had
Speaker 1: margarine in those in those pale yellow plastic togs. We
Speaker 1: didn't use animal fats or anything like that to cook
Speaker 1: with by the stove. I remember, with vivid clarity, always
Speaker 1: there being this large I guess it was like a
Speaker 1: gallon plastic tub of corn oil, which my mom would
Speaker 1: would saute chicken tenders. That was many many a meal
Speaker 1: that we had. She avoided dietary cholesterol. I don't remember
Speaker 1: ever seeing my mom until her later years because I
Speaker 1: finally was able to get her to eat them. But
Speaker 1: I never saw her eating eggs growing up, and when
Speaker 1: she prepared for me my first omelet, which wasn't until
Speaker 1: I was probably around twelve years old. She gave me
Speaker 1: the warning, the disclaimer that you only want to eat
Speaker 1: these in strict moderation because of the cholesterol contained. Any
Speaker 1: yolks will ultimately clog your arteries. So my mom instilled
Speaker 1: in us this dietary dogma that she had gleaned right
Speaker 1: passively from mainstream media and from whatever celebrity doctors were
Speaker 1: ended up making it on TV at the time because
Speaker 1: there was no Internet, that we should ultimately eat a
Speaker 1: diet that's that's loan and animal products, low and saturated fat,
Speaker 1: low and dietary cholesterol. She also never ate any red meat,
Speaker 1: so growing up, I ate a lot of whole grain
Speaker 1: products and refined grain products. I both if there was
Speaker 1: a red heart healthy logo on it and the supermarket,
Speaker 1: chances are it was gonna end up in my house
Speaker 1: at some point. Never any butter, lots and lots of margarine.
Speaker 1: All of the food in my house that was saute
Speaker 1: generally was sauteg using corn oil and the like. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. As I, as I got older,
Speaker 1: my radar started to galvanize and I started to become
Speaker 1: interested in nutrition myself. I started to eat more salads,
Speaker 1: but generally I still continued to eat a lot of
Speaker 1: whole grains. I kept my consumption of eggs and red
Speaker 1: meat and stuff like that to a minimum, although I
Speaker 1: definitely always enjoyed steak on like unlike my mom. But
Speaker 1: as I began to research and dive into the medical literature,
Speaker 1: really challenged a lot of preconceptions that I had about
Speaker 1: what it meant to eat healthily. For example, the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: dietary pattern, for some reason is to find in the
Speaker 1: literature as being a grain heavy diet, when in reality
Speaker 1: it's not. And in fact, though they do eat whole
Speaker 1: grains and refined grains in the Mediterranean parts of the world,
Speaker 1: it really is a fallacy to assume that the health
Speaker 1: and the protection from conditions like cardiovascular disease and nerro
Speaker 1: degenerate disease like Alzhemer's disease that we see among populations
Speaker 1: who adhere to the Mediterranean dietary pattern are because of grains.
Speaker 1: It's in spite of grains. Um. I've found in my
Speaker 1: research that that these people have the health that they
Speaker 1: have because grains at the end of the day are
Speaker 1: nutrient poor. They are highly energy dense UM, so they
Speaker 1: provide a source of cheap calories right. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: why we use grains to fatten up cattle in this country.
Speaker 1: The form that most grains take in the standard American diet,
Speaker 1: without question, are processed, refined grains. Even whole wheat bread
Speaker 1: is a refined grain. Commercial wholy bread is is it's
Speaker 1: a refined end grain product. It masquerades as a health food.
Speaker 1: But if you look at most packages of whole wheat
Speaker 1: bread in the in the supermarket, there's added sugar. You'll
Speaker 1: find added sugar, usually high fruc dose corn syrup. You'll
Speaker 1: find added oils. So the first thing that I did
Speaker 1: was I removed most grains from my diet. I wasn't
Speaker 1: dogmatic about it. There's nothing overtly toxic about grains, certainly not.
Speaker 1: It's just not a quality food. And once you remove
Speaker 1: grains and the added sugar and the unhealthy oils, which
Speaker 1: we could talk about, what do you replace those foods with, Well,
Speaker 1: you end up replacing them with foods that are actually
Speaker 1: nutrient dense. They're the kinds of foods that our ancestors
Speaker 1: ate during the time in which our brains evolved. Right,
Speaker 1: Their eggs, animal protein, which is not controversially the highest
Speaker 1: quality protein found in nature. Right. That also provide a
Speaker 1: bevy of important micronutrients which are important for supporting brain
Speaker 1: health and brain functions. So as soon as I made
Speaker 1: that switch in my diet, I noticed that my mental
Speaker 1: energy improved. My energy levels throughout the day. We're much
Speaker 1: more stable, I was and fatigue in the afternoon with
Speaker 1: a lot less frequency. I was sleeping better, my body
Speaker 1: composition improved, so many good things, And so I was like,
Speaker 1: I have to write about this. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: not only you know, is this likely beneficial for reducing
Speaker 1: risk of cognitive decline as we age. But you just
Speaker 1: live and feel better in the meantime, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just have a life you can enjoy a little
Speaker 1: more fully if your body is well cared for you. So,
Speaker 1: you have a new book out, Genius Kitchen, which I'm
Speaker 1: so excited about. I feel like every time I scour recipes,
Speaker 1: in the back of my mind, what I'm looking for
Speaker 1: is like, is this Max Lucavier approved? You know, like
Speaker 1: with this, check all your boxes you And Lisa Musconi
Speaker 1: is another like her books really have informed how I eat.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that being said, you write in your book
Speaker 1: Genius Kitchen at the beginning, like me, you say, when
Speaker 1: my mom first became sick, I set out to learn
Speaker 1: as much as I could about the role that food
Speaker 1: plays in the health of the body and brain. So
Speaker 1: I'd love to know as you have as a scientific
Speaker 1: journalist and as somebody who I believe really vets and
Speaker 1: looks at the science behind nutrition in a way that
Speaker 1: is really thorough and balanced, and you really scrutinize it,
Speaker 1: and you come out the other side with a very
Speaker 1: reliable summary and position on things. You know, what evidence
Speaker 1: have you found that food can really contribute to not
Speaker 1: only our short term but our longer term cognitive health.
Speaker 1: Such a good question. There's so much evidence now. And
Speaker 1: just to be clear, I don't think it's grains that
Speaker 1: lead to my mom's condition. So my my stance really
Speaker 1: has always been, let's talk about what we can include
Speaker 1: in the diet that is going to give the brain
Speaker 1: what it requires to be healthy and to better contend
Speaker 1: with the inevitable stresses that it will have to contend
Speaker 1: with as it ages. Right, So, there's ample evidence now
Speaker 1: that wild fatty fish is protective when it comes to
Speaker 1: the brain. This is due to probably many mechanisms, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a great source of protein, the fact
Speaker 1: that it provides pre formed omega three fats, which provide
Speaker 1: one of the most important structural building blocks to the
Speaker 1: human brain, to cosa hexaenoic acid, in particular d H A.
Speaker 1: D H A fat is found most abundantly in foods
Speaker 1: like wild salmon, sardines, hearing acrol things like that, and
Speaker 1: research shows that even people who are genetically at risk
Speaker 1: for developing Alzheimer's disease, if they eat one to two
Speaker 1: servings a week of fish, seem to have a robust
Speaker 1: risk reduction for developing Alzheimer's disease. Foods like extra virgin
Speaker 1: olive oil, So that one of the key recommendations that
Speaker 1: I make is get rid of the grain and seed
Speaker 1: oils like the corn oil, the canola oil, and the
Speaker 1: soybean oil and embrace extra virgin olive oil. We can
Speaker 1: see there's there's such a wide body of literature now
Speaker 1: and and ever growing showing us that extra virgin olive
Speaker 1: oil really is medicine for the brain and body. We
Speaker 1: can see animal studies, we can look to in vitro
Speaker 1: studies and in cell culture we can see epidemiologically population studies,
Speaker 1: but there are also randomized control trials like the Seminal
Speaker 1: Prettymed study that has shown us that when people consume
Speaker 1: extra virgin olive oil up to a leader a week,
Speaker 1: they see improvement in their cardio metabolic health, their neurometabolic health,
Speaker 1: their body composition. This is a really important study because
Speaker 1: it was a randomized control trial, which is the kind
Speaker 1: of trial of course, required to prove cause and effect.
Speaker 1: So I'm a huge advocate of the consumption of extra
Speaker 1: virgin olive oil. It's got a very heart healthy ratio
Speaker 1: of fatty acids. It's it's primarily mono unsaturated fat, which
Speaker 1: is the most abundant fat found in nature, and the
Speaker 1: brain relies on cardiovascular health, so it's good for the
Speaker 1: heart is gonna be good for the brain. An extra
Speaker 1: virgin olive oil. I mean, it's just it's a powerful food. Berries.
Speaker 1: We know from the Nurses Health Study that people who
Speaker 1: regularly consume berries, and I'm not talking a huge amount
Speaker 1: once two servings a week have brains that appear about
Speaker 1: two and a half years younger than age matched controls.
Speaker 1: So berry consumption is something that it's a it's a
Speaker 1: stable for me. It's one of the reason why I
Speaker 1: called blueberries a genius food. I take a pretty strong
Speaker 1: position on grass finished red meat beef. This is a
Speaker 1: topic where we can actually have a bit of a
Speaker 1: debate about this, because not everybody, I think agrees with me,
Speaker 1: But to me, it's very clear that red meat provides
Speaker 1: a bevy of important nutrients, especially nutrients that tend to
Speaker 1: be under consumed these days. It provides a compound called creatine,
Speaker 1: which we know supports brain energy metabolism. It's a great
Speaker 1: source of dietary coline, which, according to the Institute of Medicine,
Speaker 1: of people do not consume the adequate intake of and
Speaker 1: coline provides the precursor molecule colline for acetal coline, which
Speaker 1: is an important neurotransmitter for learning and memory. Research shows
Speaker 1: that older adults who consume the most coline have about
Speaker 1: at risk reduction for dementia. So I'm a big advocate
Speaker 1: of the consumption of beef. Dark leafy greens I think
Speaker 1: are are wonderful. Rush University researchers found that people who
Speaker 1: eat a large bowl of dark leafy greens about a
Speaker 1: cup and a half every day have brains that perform
Speaker 1: about eleven years younger than age match controls. That's one
Speaker 1: of the rules actually that I that I set forth
Speaker 1: in Genius Foods is just eat a big salad every day.
Speaker 1: A salad is like the perfect vehicle to combine a
Speaker 1: great protein source, whether it's eggs, grass fed beef, chicken,
Speaker 1: extra virgin olive oil. And then in your dark leafy greens,
Speaker 1: you're getting important compounds like luten and zazanthem, which are
Speaker 1: carotenoids that we know tech neural tissue. So we've known
Speaker 1: for decades at this point that luten dizas anthem are
Speaker 1: important for eye health. So anybody listening might be familiar
Speaker 1: if say they have like an eye health vitamin in
Speaker 1: their medicine cabinet, usually they'll contain lutin din zia as
Speaker 1: anthem because they can help prevent age related macular degeneration.
Speaker 1: But we now know that these same compounds accumulate in
Speaker 1: the brain where they protect against age related memory loss,
Speaker 1: and they can also thanks to randomized control trials, we
Speaker 1: know can also improve the way that your brain functions
Speaker 1: in the here and now. So these are just some
Speaker 1: of the staples of the diet that I tend to recommend.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a modified Mediterranean diet. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to the evidence, we know thanks to studies like
Speaker 1: the Finger Study, which is being run out of the
Speaker 1: Carolinska Institute in Stockholm suite in a seminal study showing
Speaker 1: us that our actions really do have an impact when
Speaker 1: it comes to our cognitive health. We can see that
Speaker 1: even in older adults with at least one risk factor
Speaker 1: for cognitive decline, that adopting a diet very similar to
Speaker 1: the diet that I recommend leads to improvement in their
Speaker 1: processing speed. So processing speed is one of the first
Speaker 1: domains to falter as we get older, and an improvement
Speaker 1: and executive function. Executive function is your ability to get
Speaker 1: things done, to plan, to make decisions, to tune out distractions,
Speaker 1: impulse control all rely on executive function and food. We
Speaker 1: can see now thanks to these r ct s can
Speaker 1: have a major impact on the way that our brains work.
Speaker 1: I'm about to jump out of my scan. I'm so
Speaker 1: I'm so excited at this exact moment, this this information
Speaker 1: just sparks such a flame of passion and excitement in me.
Speaker 1: I think it's because of couple of things. First, I mean,
Speaker 1: kind of back to the parable, we can actually have
Speaker 1: a real impact on our health, our brain, health, the
Speaker 1: way we experience our life by the foods we choose
Speaker 1: and that we put in our body. Right, Like we
Speaker 1: can choose to feed whichever wolf through these choices about
Speaker 1: what's on our plate. You know, there is a real
Speaker 1: empowerment there. I think the other thing that's so great
Speaker 1: is that we've dug further into it. Right. It's good
Speaker 1: for your brain for cognitive protection. We also know it's
Speaker 1: good for helping with things like depression, with anxiety. It's
Speaker 1: good for your heart. I mean, it's this one thing
Speaker 1: that if you can kind of do and get right,
Speaker 1: the benefits cascade in so many directions, so many different directions.
Speaker 1: I mean I recently recorded, uh from my podcast, an
Speaker 1: episode all about sugar. You know, sugar is a big
Speaker 1: topic these days, right, Like your average American consumes seventy
Speaker 1: seven grams of added sugar every single day. That's twenty
Speaker 1: teaspoons a day. That's almost twenty teaspoons of pure sugar,
Speaker 1: added sugar for which we have no bio logical requirement,
Speaker 1: every single day. What's interesting The reason why I bring
Speaker 1: it up is because there was another really important trial
Speaker 1: that gave people with hypertension so high blood pressure drugs
Speaker 1: to normalize their blood pressure. And what they found in
Speaker 1: that population was that they experienced when they normalized their
Speaker 1: blood pressure, they saw a dramatic risk production from mild
Speaker 1: cognitive impairment. So mild cognitive impairment is often considered pre dementia. Right,
Speaker 1: people will develop m c I monocognitive environment. Oftentimes it
Speaker 1: will convert to a more severe form of cognitive decline.
Speaker 1: And what they found was that for people who are
Speaker 1: pharmaceutically treated for their hypertension, there was this dramatic risk
Speaker 1: reduction right for developing monocgogni imperment. Because we know that
Speaker 1: the brain relies on vascular health, right, the second most
Speaker 1: common form of dementia is actually vascular dementia. Stroke is
Speaker 1: very common today. Stroke is when you have a major
Speaker 1: occlusion in an artery supplying blood to the brain, right,
Speaker 1: But vascular dementia is like a lot of more subtle
Speaker 1: occlusions that lead to this just overall cognitive deficit. And
Speaker 1: we know that maintaining a healthy bloo pressure is crucially important. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason why I brought up sugar is that studies
Speaker 1: show that one single high sugar beverage can elevate your
Speaker 1: blood pressure for two hours. Leads to an elevation of
Speaker 1: blood pressure for two hours because it stimulates our body's
Speaker 1: fight or flight response, our body sympathetic nervous system. And
Speaker 1: the dose that they used in this study with seventy sugar,
Speaker 1: which is what your average person is consuming every single day. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a threshold effect, but what
Speaker 1: I do know is that research shows that sugar consumption
Speaker 1: is associated with hypertension, particularly added sugar, And so it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that so many of us are experiencing problems
Speaker 1: with our memory, that incidents of these kinds of conditions
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease seem to be accelerating. It's because of our diets.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's our diet definitely plays a major role.
Speaker 1: It's not the only aspect of the modern life that
Speaker 1: I think is is harming our brains, but um, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a major one. It's a major one. And
Speaker 1: so the new book Genius Kitchen, I love so much
Speaker 1: about it, just from the bit I've got to read
Speaker 1: through here, but very practical cool things. At the beginning,
Speaker 1: you give kind of a crash course in some really
Speaker 1: important pillars of nutrition. When you talk about how to
Speaker 1: stock a genius kitchen, you know, you go through powerful plants,
Speaker 1: and you talk about mighty meats and animal protein, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to just kind of walk through a couple
Speaker 1: of those, just to orient people a little bit with
Speaker 1: some very practical ways to approach these different kind of
Speaker 1: macro groups of food. I recommend everybody reading Genius Foods
Speaker 1: because it not only does it give an in depth
Speaker 1: look at this and more, but the other thing you do, Max,
Speaker 1: is you educate in such a way that I am
Speaker 1: in awe of what my brain does every day and
Speaker 1: what's in there and how powerful it is and how
Speaker 1: I mean it trumps you know, modern technology and then
Speaker 1: some and and it's just right there between our ears,
Speaker 1: and we just need to support it. Our bodies are amazing,
Speaker 1: and you really help us stand in awe and fall
Speaker 1: in love with kind of the miracle that our bodies are.
Speaker 1: But that being said, if you if you don't have
Speaker 1: time and you want kind of a crash course, but
Speaker 1: let's talk about first the important a fiber. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the roll of fiber in
Speaker 1: our health. Yeah. Absolutely, fiber is interesting because it's not
Speaker 1: an essential nutrient. We don't need fiber to survive, but
Speaker 1: it seems to make life better. There seems to be
Speaker 1: an association with fiber consumption and reduced levels of inflammation.
Speaker 1: It's fairly consistent link that we see in the in
Speaker 1: the literature. Long lived people tend to eat a pretty
Speaker 1: high amount of fiber, particularly in relation to the quantity
Speaker 1: that we tend to consume in the in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's very satiating because it absorbs water. So fiber is
Speaker 1: one of the two things that I recommend that people
Speaker 1: look for in their foods if they're especially on a
Speaker 1: weight loss plan, because it's so satiating. Right. You want
Speaker 1: to increase your fiber consumption slowly, though, because you have
Speaker 1: to cultivate the microbiome the gut flora to be able
Speaker 1: to metabolize the fiber that you're consuming, So you can't
Speaker 1: do this overnight. You have to gradually tight rate your
Speaker 1: fiber consumption up. But fiber is a food source for
Speaker 1: the thirty trillion microbes that live at the lower end
Speaker 1: of your gastro intestinal track. You're large intestine. The colonic
Speaker 1: microbiome is what it's called, and we know that when
Speaker 1: you feed the bacteria that live in that part of
Speaker 1: your body. We have bacteria actually all over our body,
Speaker 1: so it's called it's the gut microbiome in particular that
Speaker 1: we want to strive to feed. They release chemicals. It's
Speaker 1: like having a drug factory in your own body. You
Speaker 1: feed these these bacteria fiber and they end up churning
Speaker 1: out powerful chemels that seem to play a really important
Speaker 1: role in the body with regard to mitigating inflammation. For one,
Speaker 1: which we know is at the cornerstone of chronic disease.
Speaker 1: Inflammation is like having a forest fire in your body
Speaker 1: and the brain sits directly downwind of that fire. And
Speaker 1: it seems that fiber is able to turn the dial
Speaker 1: down on inflammation in part by supporting beneficial gut bacteria.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that it does this is
Speaker 1: it helps create a more robust what's called the mucosa.
Speaker 1: So we have this bacteria in our large intestine, and
Speaker 1: those bacteria are foreign organisms, right, but we don't have
Speaker 1: an inflammatory response to them. Our immune system doesn't see
Speaker 1: them and and freak out right, because there's this demilitarized
Speaker 1: zone that lies in between our gut epithelial layer, which
Speaker 1: is the one cell layer thick portion of our gut
Speaker 1: wall through which we absorb nutrients right and water, particularly
Speaker 1: in the in the large intestine, because the gut bacteria
Speaker 1: are kept in a in a safe zone thanks to
Speaker 1: this demilitarizing that we call the gut mucosa. And we
Speaker 1: know that fiber can help create a more robust gut mucosa,
Speaker 1: which again helps minimize inflammation in the body. So I
Speaker 1: think that fiber plays a really important role through the
Speaker 1: lens of the gut microbiome, keeping the gut microbiome happy.
Speaker 1: And it also plays a saciating role. And I would
Speaker 1: say those are the two primary reasons why fiber is
Speaker 1: something that we should seek to get more of in
Speaker 1: our diet. The average American today consumes about fifteen grams
Speaker 1: of fiber at most, thanks to diets that have become
Speaker 1: largely ultra processed. But our hunter gather ancestors probably consumed
Speaker 1: somewhere in the ball park of a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: grams a day, So in order of magnitude higher, so
Speaker 1: fiber i'm a I'm a huge fan of fiber, and
Speaker 1: you find it, of course in produce, in fresh vegetables
Speaker 1: and fruits. Yeah. The other amazing thing I think about
Speaker 1: plants is the polyphenols and the pigments that are so
Speaker 1: incredibly nutritious and help us in so many ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: polyphenols are amazing there. They are another component of vegetables.
Speaker 1: Research tends to show remarkable health protective effect from fruit
Speaker 1: and vegetable consumption. And when researchers try to break fruits
Speaker 1: and veggies down into their constituent nutrients, the essential nutrients
Speaker 1: that they contain, and then they give those nutrients to
Speaker 1: subjects in the clinical setting to try to supplement what
Speaker 1: they're seeing in fruits and vegetables, and they try to
Speaker 1: distill it down and reduce it to a supplement, they
Speaker 1: don't see the benefit, they don't see the health benefit.
Speaker 1: And so it's gotten nutrition researchers to think about vegetables
Speaker 1: in a new way, fruits and vegetables in a in
Speaker 1: a new way. What if it's not necessarily the essential
Speaker 1: nutrients that are leading to these health benefits that we
Speaker 1: see in people who eat fresh fruits and veggies more frequently,
Speaker 1: but these other more inexplicable compounds that are contained by
Speaker 1: the fruits and vegetables. And the reason why compounds like polyphenols,
Speaker 1: which you'll find in any number of veggies in the
Speaker 1: in the supermarket. Also tea, coffee and tea tend to
Speaker 1: be great sources of these polyphenol compounds is that plants
Speaker 1: develop them as a way of dealing with their own stressors. Right,
Speaker 1: because plants can't run away from predators, They can't fight
Speaker 1: their way out of being eaten by a rodent, right
Speaker 1: or a field mouse. So what they do is they
Speaker 1: become chemists. They developed these compounds that essentially serve as
Speaker 1: their own innate anti feed. It's their own innate sort
Speaker 1: of herbicides and pesticide to make a mouse or squirrel
Speaker 1: sick once that mouse or squirrel comes gnawing at its
Speaker 1: at its leaves, you know, if a fungi starts to grow,
Speaker 1: and so we see that stressed plants generate more of
Speaker 1: these compounds, and when we eat those plants, they pass
Speaker 1: that vigor that they've developed onto you. It's this really
Speaker 1: beautiful illustration of the symbiosis of all living things, and
Speaker 1: usually fruits and vegetables that have more bitter flavors tend
Speaker 1: to be higher in these beneficial compounds, which is why
Speaker 1: tumeric has been so well studied and and seems to
Speaker 1: possess such powerful health boosting effects. Right, Compounds like cinnamon,
Speaker 1: herbs and spices actually are very concentrated sources of these
Speaker 1: polyphenol compounds. And then you mentioned plant pigments. That's why
Speaker 1: we say eat the rainbow. Right. You're looking at dark
Speaker 1: leafy greens or bell peppers or roots, tubers, cruciferous vegetables.
Speaker 1: They all have these beautiful combinations of reds and yellows
Speaker 1: and greens all mixed in. Whether or not you can
Speaker 1: see the yellow pigment, it's in there in a plant
Speaker 1: like kale for example. Oh, we also have to mention
Speaker 1: the blues that we see in blueberries and red onions
Speaker 1: and purple potatoes. Right, antocyonis for brain health. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: those pigments, pigments all play a different role in strengthening
Speaker 1: the brain, it seems, which is super interesting. And I
Speaker 1: think why we see the people who eat salads on
Speaker 1: a daily basis or consume berries, they all seem to
Speaker 1: have brains that perform better thanks to these pigments that
Speaker 1: um play a role in protecting fatty structures in the brain,
Speaker 1: like our brain cell membranes. Our brain cell membranes are
Speaker 1: very delicate and damage prone, and we know that these
Speaker 1: plant pigments like luten and zazanthe and actually accumulate in
Speaker 1: the brain where they help protect against lipid peroxidation, which
Speaker 1: is when the chemical damage that we call oxidation occurs
Speaker 1: in the extracellular environment. And so, yeah, tons of good
Speaker 1: stuff and plants. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing that
Speaker 1: blew me away is that our brains are so delicate
Speaker 1: and are with us our whole life. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it is something that can be easily damaged, and it's
Speaker 1: prone to oxidation and oxidative stress. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just this kind of floaty, jelly like thing that
Speaker 1: is just so delicate yet so incredibly important to the
Speaker 1: way we live and experience our life. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: what drives oxidation. It's oxygen, right, And you've got this
Speaker 1: organ that is utilizing of the energy metallism of your body.
Speaker 1: Every breath you take is going to create energy in
Speaker 1: your brain, which is this delicate, fatty damage prone organs
Speaker 1: squeezed into a container the size of a grapefruit, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a crucible for oxidative stress. And
Speaker 1: the brain isn't just made of fat, right, It's made
Speaker 1: of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are the most delicate and
Speaker 1: damage prone. So when I say that the brain is
Speaker 1: the most delicate organ I'm not using hyperbole. It's like
Speaker 1: it's very prone to oxidation. And that's precisely why fat
Speaker 1: soluble antioxidants like vitamin E or like these plant pigments
Speaker 1: that we talked about luten and zos anthem play such
Speaker 1: an important protective role for the brain. They have easy
Speaker 1: access into the brain, They easily bypass the blood brain barrier,
Speaker 1: and they help to protect against oxidation, which is the
Speaker 1: defining feature. When left unchecked and when occurring to a
Speaker 1: degree that our bodies can no longer handle, we call
Speaker 1: it oxidative stress. Right. An oxidative stress underlies all of
Speaker 1: these conditions that we're talking about, whether it's Alzheimer's disease,
Speaker 1: parkins and disease, it can it can exacerbate other conditions
Speaker 1: in the brain like autism. Oxidative stresses major problem. It's
Speaker 1: either at the ideology of these conditions or plays a
Speaker 1: contributing role in driving them, which is why we need
Speaker 1: to be concerned in our diets with ingesting adequate fat
Speaker 1: soluble antioxidants. I'm curious about wild caught fish versus farm
Speaker 1: raised fish. You know, I'd always sort of heard wild
Speaker 1: caught is best, farm raises not so good. I think
Speaker 1: that might be changing in some ways. We've talked to
Speaker 1: a couple of sustainability experts on oceans are saying, look,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in the ocean that's not
Speaker 1: good for you anymore. The proper farm raised fish is
Speaker 1: going to be better. So kind of where is your
Speaker 1: thinking on that now and how is that evolved? Yeah,
Speaker 1: great question. So fish is medicine. I mean, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: people who can sume fish regularly seem to be protected
Speaker 1: against Alzheimer's disease. And when you look at the population level,
Speaker 1: people are not consuming fish from pristine waters in their
Speaker 1: ancestral state, right Like people are eating for the most part,
Speaker 1: canned tuna, canned albacore. They're eating farm salmon. So that's
Speaker 1: where the value of observational evidence comes into play. We
Speaker 1: see that people who eat fish seem to be protected, right.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to say, stick with wild salmon, make
Speaker 1: sure that your fish comes from pristine sources. But that's
Speaker 1: not going to be effective advice for many people, right
Speaker 1: who can't either can't afford or don't have access to
Speaker 1: wild fish. So for me, I just like to tell
Speaker 1: people to eat fish and whatever form it takes. And
Speaker 1: aquaculture is improving over time. So we've had to scale
Speaker 1: up aquaculture over the past fifty years to feed a
Speaker 1: growing population quite dramatically, and mistakes have been made. But
Speaker 1: you're right, I reckon that the farming of fish is
Speaker 1: continually improving. And if you get fish from Alaska, Norway,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are all areas that are that are
Speaker 1: really leading the charge in terms of improving the conditions
Speaker 1: for for farmed fish. But yeah, fishes is a wonderful food.
Speaker 1: It's a great source of protein. And it's not just
Speaker 1: fish like salmon, right, It's like mollusks, crustaceans, all great
Speaker 1: sources of really important nutrients that play a particularly beneficial
Speaker 1: role with regard to brain health. So I love to
Speaker 1: eat wild salmon. And also wild salmon is now more accessible.
Speaker 1: There are lots of big supermarket chains like especially these
Speaker 1: wholesale places you can find it frozen. Eating frozen is
Speaker 1: totally fine, great way to save money and economize um,
Speaker 1: but just eat fish that that would be my advice.
Speaker 1: People that eat fish their their brains seem to work better.
Speaker 1: Their offspring seem to have better performing brains, so it's
Speaker 1: great for pregnant women. It really is a wonderful food.
Speaker 1: Is there any particular type of fish that you don't
Speaker 1: want to eat too much of? I've certainly heard about
Speaker 1: tuna and mercury. Do you want to limit your exposure there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not that concerned about mercury from fish. Obviously, mercury
Speaker 1: if you work with it, it's a it's an obvious
Speaker 1: occupational hazard. But from fish, I'm not all that concerned.
Speaker 1: It's probably wise to hedge your bets if you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: if you're young, if you're breastfeeding, and stick to the
Speaker 1: lower mercury fish. But with regard to the lower mercury fish,
Speaker 1: there should be no concern. So. I know some people
Speaker 1: are concerned with just eating any fish because of our
Speaker 1: our polluted oceans, but benefits of fish consumption, just to
Speaker 1: be very clear, still outweigh the risks. That's really good
Speaker 1: to know, because I think that I've been limiting my
Speaker 1: fish consumption, just making sure I'm eating like the right
Speaker 1: kind of fish that's coming from the right kind of place.
Speaker 1: But what I hear you saying is like eating fish
Speaker 1: is better than not eating fish, period. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is really important to point
Speaker 1: out is that there there are risks and benefits associated
Speaker 1: with every single food. You can take Kale or any
Speaker 1: dark leafy green, and depending on where it grows, it's
Speaker 1: going to absorb heavy metals from the ground. Right. Kale
Speaker 1: has been shown in some studies to harbor heavy metal.
Speaker 1: Is like thallium. Dark chocolate, which is a genius food. Right.
Speaker 1: Dark chocolate studies show don't want to hear anything bad
Speaker 1: about dark chocolate. Well, I'm gonna tell you I love
Speaker 1: dark chocolate. I eat it regularly. The benefits out waigh
Speaker 1: the risks. But some dark chocolates have shown to carry
Speaker 1: heavy metals like lead and cadmium. Right, But still the
Speaker 1: benefits seemingly at this juncture right that way, the risks.
Speaker 1: Red meat a total health food. When you cook red meat,
Speaker 1: you create certain compounds that in vitro, like in a
Speaker 1: peatrie dish, might elicit an inflammatory response from a cell
Speaker 1: and a peatrie dish right, how to recyclic A means
Speaker 1: are created. Ages are created, but in the context of
Speaker 1: a diet that contains antioxidants. Plus with all the nutritional
Speaker 1: benefits that you get from eating red meat benefits out waigh.
Speaker 1: The risks same with fish, with really any food group.
Speaker 1: With regard to whole foods, there's a risk associated with
Speaker 1: eating anything. I mean, you could drink enough water fast
Speaker 1: enough that water will kill you. So it's all about
Speaker 1: the dose. Make sure that your diet has a good
Speaker 1: amount of diversity and variety in it, like a good
Speaker 1: stock portfolio, right, Diversity is key. Same with the diet.
Speaker 1: Right after I've read your book Genius Foods, I mean,
Speaker 1: the changes that I made were broadly speaking, to eliminate
Speaker 1: processed foods when it all possible, when it's pretty much
Speaker 1: always possible for where we live. Subsequently, that will kind
Speaker 1: of take care of a lot, right there the main
Speaker 1: problematic things that go in our body. But you know,
Speaker 1: also looking at starchy carbs and sugar intake and getting
Speaker 1: that down to bare minimum. But then the other biggie
Speaker 1: was looking at the oils that we consume. Thus began
Speaker 1: my love affair with the Hextravirgin olive oil. I mean
Speaker 1: we we subscribe to Growing Vine thanks to listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast. Oh I got we obsessed. I mean when
Speaker 1: that box comes of olive oil, I mean it's I'm
Speaker 1: way too excited. We put it on everything. I love
Speaker 1: olive shout out to Vine. I'm gonna text Nicolas after
Speaker 1: you just kind of made her shoutout major shoutouts. So great.
Speaker 1: Eric got that for me for Christmas to Christmases ago
Speaker 1: after hearing about it. I think it was on your podcast,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's the best gift. I mean, the fact
Speaker 1: that I could get this excited about olive oil is
Speaker 1: something that we kind of like chuckle about. But anyway,
Speaker 1: talk us through what is the deal with the oils
Speaker 1: that are good to consume and those that we want
Speaker 1: to avoid and why? Yeah, I love this topic. It's
Speaker 1: so controversial too, but well it is because grain and
Speaker 1: seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, soybe, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of money that goes into the production of these oils. Right,
Speaker 1: these are these are facts that have ads on television.
Speaker 1: Right generally, if if you're having to advertise on TV
Speaker 1: your food product. It's for all intensive purposes, very likely
Speaker 1: not food. Um. But these oils haven't been in the
Speaker 1: human food supply until just about a hundred years ago
Speaker 1: because prior to that we hadn't had the chemistry labs
Speaker 1: to extract these kinds of fats from the foods from
Speaker 1: whence they came, and to make them tasteless and bland,
Speaker 1: so that food manufacturers because then squeeze them into myriad
Speaker 1: ultra processed food products. Right. It's the it's the reason
Speaker 1: why food manufacturers will use the same oils in a
Speaker 1: granola bar in Cereal for children, used to coat roasted
Speaker 1: nuts with, and then restauratories use the same oil to
Speaker 1: fry food in right. So these oils have no distinct
Speaker 1: characteristic because they've gone through the ringer. It's the food
Speaker 1: industries equivalent of the witness Protection program, whereby you can
Speaker 1: take corn oil, soybean oil, grape seed oil and you
Speaker 1: make them bland and tasteless as can be. But that
Speaker 1: processing damages those oils. So anytime you see corn oil,
Speaker 1: canola oil, soybean oil, they've all gone through a production
Speaker 1: process called deodorization to get rid of all the bitter
Speaker 1: flavors that would normally accompany these oils. And the problem
Speaker 1: is that process creates a small but significant amount of
Speaker 1: trans fats in the oils, which we know there's no
Speaker 1: safe level of trans fat consumption. Now, a little bit
Speaker 1: here and there isn't going to kill you, but at
Speaker 1: the level that your average American is consuming these oils
Speaker 1: at because of their presence in everything from ultra process
Speaker 1: foods to restaurant food, to fast food to commercial salad
Speaker 1: dressings there in everything, yeah, we're consuming a lot of them,
Speaker 1: which leads to a significant intake of trans fats, which
Speaker 1: we know is associated with cardiovascular disease, which we know
Speaker 1: is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and also
Speaker 1: worst memory function even among the young and healthy. Right,
Speaker 1: But the reason why I say this is controversial is
Speaker 1: because still those oils, when compared to saturated fats, which
Speaker 1: are what you'll primarily find an animal fats, they lead
Speaker 1: to a reduction in L d L cholesterol, which is
Speaker 1: this sort of sacred cow in Western medicine in terms
Speaker 1: of what we need to be cognizant of when reducing
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease risk. Right, we want to get our LDL
Speaker 1: as low as possible, which is what the which is
Speaker 1: what the medical and nutritional orthodoxy really that's sort of
Speaker 1: one of their ms rights to get your l d
Speaker 1: L as low as possible. First of all, those kinds
Speaker 1: of oils are not the only fats that can do this, right, So,
Speaker 1: mono unsaturated fat, which is what's primarily found in extra
Speaker 1: virgin olive oil and avocado oil also have the same
Speaker 1: l d L lowering effect, right, So, and they're also
Speaker 1: the fats. This is where it's so ironic and so hypocritical,
Speaker 1: even that extra virgin olive oil is the fat used
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean region of the world, and somehow we
Speaker 1: have this false notion that the Mediterranean region somehow is
Speaker 1: inclusive of corn oil and canola oil and soybean oil.
Speaker 1: You won't find kitchens in the Mediterranean cooking with those
Speaker 1: crappy oils, right, They use extra virgin olive oil. So
Speaker 1: extra virgin oil should be the primary oil. The other
Speaker 1: thing is that even though those fats do reduce your
Speaker 1: LDL cholesterol when compared to animal fats, because they're unsaturated,
Speaker 1: they are very easily oxidized. In fact, by the time
Speaker 1: we buy them, right these oils, they've been sitting in
Speaker 1: these plastic tubs in the supermarket for who knows how long,
Speaker 1: who knows how they've been stored. Studies show that they
Speaker 1: already have oxidative byproducts in them that exceed appropriate levels
Speaker 1: of safety. And then we cook with them. Restaurants will
Speaker 1: keep them in the fryers and use them to fry
Speaker 1: foods with and then heat them and then reheat them.
Speaker 1: Those oils are not changed on a daily basis, They're
Speaker 1: not changed certainly certainly not changed in between meals, and
Speaker 1: so it allows cancer causing compounds to enter our foods.
Speaker 1: It's just a nightmare. And there was actually a study
Speaker 1: it came out in the late nineties that found that,
Speaker 1: first of all, we know that we are what we eat, right,
Speaker 1: and these fats, what's so critical to know about them
Speaker 1: is that fats, more so than carbs, really make you
Speaker 1: who you are. Because the fats that you eat get
Speaker 1: ingrained in your fat tissue, They get chartered around your
Speaker 1: body on lipoproteins, of which L D L's is one
Speaker 1: of the more well known lipoproteins that circulates. They get
Speaker 1: embedded into our brains, and these fats are damaged and
Speaker 1: it damaged fat damages you. So studies show that these
Speaker 1: fats actually they're more prone to taking on an inflammatory phenotype.
Speaker 1: They're more likely to get oxidized when they are embedded
Speaker 1: in our L d L lipoproteins, and it makes those
Speaker 1: ld L particles more easily able to adhere two immune cells,
Speaker 1: which is what basically creates athros sclerosis. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: drives your LDL down when you consume them, but at
Speaker 1: what cost? And that's what nobody's talking about. And we
Speaker 1: don't have the long term population randomized control trials to
Speaker 1: say with certainty that they're safe. We simply don't. So
Speaker 1: that's why for me, it's a no brainer, no pun
Speaker 1: intended to get rid of those oils at the very least,
Speaker 1: to play it safe right precautionary principle, and to integrate
Speaker 1: primarily extra virgin olive oil, which has such a robust
Speaker 1: body of evidence to say this isn't just like benign,
Speaker 1: but this is actually great for you. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: a recipe in your in your new book for I
Speaker 1: think it's like um olive oil poach salmon. I was like,
Speaker 1: I mean, could could there be a better brain food
Speaker 1: dish than that. I mean, I cannot wait. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to cook out of this book. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about it. Another kind of controversial topic I think that
Speaker 1: I really love to hear your latest sort of take
Speaker 1: on is gluten. I know that in your cookbook they're
Speaker 1: all gluten free recipes. Why is that? And do you
Speaker 1: have kind of a take on gluten good or bad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I just I mean, I just don't think that wheat
Speaker 1: is a health food. It's been a staple in human
Speaker 1: diets for eons at this point, but that doesn't indemnify it,
Speaker 1: especially when wheat and its most common appearance in the
Speaker 1: standard American diet, is a refined product, right like bread.
Speaker 1: In fact, I just posted this on Instagram today. Six
Speaker 1: of the calories that your average American consumes comes from grains,
Speaker 1: including wheat, corn and rice, vegetable oils, canola oil, corn oil,
Speaker 1: soybean oil, sugar and sugar, sweetened beverages, and fruit juice.
Speaker 1: So that right there, those foods that I just listed
Speaker 1: make up six of the calories that are average American consumes.
Speaker 1: And you wonder why we're overweight, why we're sick, right,
Speaker 1: And people like to pin the blame on animal products.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. Sixty person of the calories
Speaker 1: that we consume come from abject junk. But getting back
Speaker 1: to your question, so I just don't think that wheat
Speaker 1: is a health food. And gluten, no human can properly
Speaker 1: digest gluten. Once or two percent of the population to
Speaker 1: Celiac disease, so they know that they can't consume gluten
Speaker 1: otherwise they have a violent reaction in the gut. Six percent,
Speaker 1: if not more, of the population is non celiac gluten sensitive,
Speaker 1: so they'll experience symptoms either in the GI tract or
Speaker 1: purely extra intestinal e um. And this is a pretty
Speaker 1: underdiagnosed condition that doesn't really have a clear definition. So
Speaker 1: that right there, that's almost ten percent of the population
Speaker 1: that doesn't do well with gluten. And we also live
Speaker 1: in a time where people have widespread gut dysbiosis, whether
Speaker 1: it's due to overuse of antibiotics, overuse of c sections.
Speaker 1: Obviously in some cases it's medically warranted, but in some
Speaker 1: cases it's not. We have this obsession, especially these days,
Speaker 1: with sterility and hygiene, and so it's led to I
Speaker 1: think a microbiome that is not as robust as it
Speaker 1: has been for the majority of our of our evolution,
Speaker 1: and because no person can properly digest gluten, I think
Speaker 1: it leads to problems for a lot of people. Um,
Speaker 1: that's why we see increased rates of autoimmunity celia disease,
Speaker 1: of course, but then there's also non celiac autommune conditions
Speaker 1: that we see increasing in prevalence. My hypothesis that there's
Speaker 1: probably a dose effect with gluten, and today we're eating
Speaker 1: more of it than ever before in human history. We're
Speaker 1: eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and all the
Speaker 1: snacks in between is some kind of wheat based snack.
Speaker 1: And of course gluten is not only found in weed,
Speaker 1: it's found in ride barley Pharaoh. So we're just eating
Speaker 1: more of it than ever before in human history, and
Speaker 1: our guts are not in good shape. They're not in
Speaker 1: fighting ability to withstand the onslaught of this protein that
Speaker 1: no human can properly break down. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that gluten is the smoking gun for conditions
Speaker 1: like Alzheimer's disease or anything like that, but in my view,
Speaker 1: it's just not a health food. It's not essential, it's
Speaker 1: not something that we need to have in our diets.
Speaker 1: I personally I I eat a gluten free diet, but
Speaker 1: maybe you know, once or twice a year if i'm
Speaker 1: if I'm somewhere and they have like a great sour
Speaker 1: dough bread, I'll indulge a little bit. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, I choose to avoid it for those reasons.
Speaker 1: We was it last year, spent some time wearing continuous
Speaker 1: glucose monitors, and I would love to just hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the role. You know, how important is blood
Speaker 1: sugar in our overall health. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things we saw was the dramatic difference between her
Speaker 1: and I with different foods, for how one would spike
Speaker 1: one of our blood sugar and the other not so much.
Speaker 1: And you know how how really personalized that was. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so personalized. There was a study a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago that was published that really blew minds
Speaker 1: even amongst um scientists, that showed that people would have,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, dramatically different blood sugar responses to the
Speaker 1: same food, and it was really dependent on the microbiome,
Speaker 1: the microbial composition, and also we have different enzymes in
Speaker 1: our saliva that are responsible for breaking down starches and
Speaker 1: sugars and things like that. So everybody's different, and that
Speaker 1: certainly includes how our blood sugar response to a given food.
Speaker 1: It's certainly true that chronically elevated blood sugar is a
Speaker 1: major problem. It's what underlies type two diabetes, for example,
Speaker 1: which is a condition that affects many Many people actually
Speaker 1: want into a alts in the United States are either
Speaker 1: diabetic or pre diabetic. But what precedes chronically elevated blood sugar,
Speaker 1: sometimes by decades, are chronically elevated levels of insulin, which
Speaker 1: is the hormone whose job it is to get sugar
Speaker 1: out of the blood and shuttle that sugar into our
Speaker 1: muscles and liver where it can actually play a functional
Speaker 1: role in our health. Right. Studies have shown that chronically
Speaker 1: elevated blood sugar, but even levels of blood sugar below
Speaker 1: the level at which point a type two diabetes diagnosis
Speaker 1: would be made, is associated with worse brain function, lower
Speaker 1: volume in terms of the memory center of the brain.
Speaker 1: So for me, I think it's important to minimize blood
Speaker 1: sugar excursions as best as as one is able to
Speaker 1: and to really prioritize foods that are lower on the
Speaker 1: glycemic spectrum, to avoid added sugar as as much as
Speaker 1: one can, and to really use foods that are going
Speaker 1: to lead to a dramatic excursion of blood sugar more
Speaker 1: as a performance enhancing tool. So you know, I don't
Speaker 1: like to demonize carbohydrates, but carbs are central for people
Speaker 1: who are are exercising. They're really important as a fuel substrate,
Speaker 1: especially when we're performing high intensity work like in the
Speaker 1: in the gym, which we know is really important modality
Speaker 1: that helps to boost cardio respiratory fitness for example. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not that concerned with with daily spikes,
Speaker 1: just so long as you're cognizant of how you feel
Speaker 1: after the spike, because sometimes insulin, our pancreas releases insulin
Speaker 1: not in a way that's as precise as we would like.
Speaker 1: It's more of a sort of blunt tool. And sometimes
Speaker 1: when we eat really rapidly to get digesting sources of
Speaker 1: sugar or carbohydrates, it can send our blood sugar really
Speaker 1: high and then drop it below baseline, and that's where
Speaker 1: people tend to feel that sensation of hangar. People who
Speaker 1: are prone to anxiety also feel triggered in those moments
Speaker 1: they sometimes feel a little bit more anxious, and so
Speaker 1: for that reason, I think it's important to minimize glycemic
Speaker 1: variability in one's day. UM. And also I think cgms
Speaker 1: are useful just in terms of getting an overall sense
Speaker 1: of like how food affects your blood sugar. But it
Speaker 1: really is the chronicle vation of blood sugar that is
Speaker 1: particularly harmful, and the major cause of that in Western
Speaker 1: diets is overly sedentary lifestyles, eating a diet that predisposes
Speaker 1: you to weight gain, so eating more calories and your
Speaker 1: burning every single day, and also eating lots and lots
Speaker 1: and lots of added sugar and refined grain products. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really interesting and informational for me to see
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of weeks at a time,
Speaker 1: like what foods did what to my blood sugar, and
Speaker 1: also the role of like time restructed feeding or intimate
Speaker 1: and fasting, whatever you want to call it, how beneficial
Speaker 1: that can be for just having kind of a prolonged
Speaker 1: period where I'm at a lower sustained blood sugar. One
Speaker 1: of the podcast episodes that you did that I found
Speaker 1: so interesting was your interview early on with Um Sasha
Speaker 1: and Panda and yeah, and how you know, just our
Speaker 1: circadian rhythms and how important it is just even for
Speaker 1: health and gut repair to have like a time where
Speaker 1: you're not eating. Like I think he likened it to
Speaker 1: a highway. You don't do roadwork when there's traffic going,
Speaker 1: you know, all around the road, Like you needed time
Speaker 1: to shut things down so that repair can be made
Speaker 1: so that like everything functions normally. And I find that
Speaker 1: to be helpful. Like I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: bed with my blood sugar really high because I'd like
Speaker 1: my body to be rest and repair. I'd like it
Speaker 1: to be sleeping. I mean, my brain to go through
Speaker 1: the watch cycle that it does that it's you know,
Speaker 1: glymphatic system. And so I just thought that like seeing
Speaker 1: that in a quantifiable way from a from a blood
Speaker 1: sugar standpoint was really supportive of reinforcing the good habits
Speaker 1: that you know, I know we're good for me anyway.
Speaker 1: It is super interesting. But the only caveat that I
Speaker 1: would add is that sometimes we do things that are
Speaker 1: actually quite good for us that will lead to an
Speaker 1: elevation of blood sugar that you'll see with a CGM
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't otherwise see that have nothing at all
Speaker 1: to do with what you're eating. So I actually wore
Speaker 1: one of those cgms for a while, and I was
Speaker 1: kind of mind blown when I actually saw. I kind
Speaker 1: of knew this would happen because it makes sense from
Speaker 1: a physiologic standpoint, But I was sitting in a sauna
Speaker 1: and I saw my blood sugar spike and I hadn't
Speaker 1: eaten anything. But it's because you're experiencing a physical stress
Speaker 1: or a stress on the body, which we know is
Speaker 1: good for you, right. And but what happens is it
Speaker 1: leads to an increase in cortisol levels. And what cortisol
Speaker 1: does is it helps to liberate stored fuels, right, Because
Speaker 1: it's a stress, Your body is having a stress response,
Speaker 1: and typically throughout human history, a stress response would be
Speaker 1: a response to physical danger, right, And so your cortisol
Speaker 1: elevates when we're stressed out in part to liberate these
Speaker 1: fuels so that we'll have the energy to like get
Speaker 1: out of harm's way. Right. One of my few concerns
Speaker 1: with with cgms is that people will see that and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, man, I can't I shouldn't use
Speaker 1: saunas anymore because it's causing rise in my blood sugar,
Speaker 1: So that would be the one caveat. But with regard
Speaker 1: to what you were talking about circadian biology, there is
Speaker 1: research showing that when we simply eat earlier dinners that
Speaker 1: our bodies are better able to regulate levels of sugar
Speaker 1: in the blood, which, as we talked about, higher levels
Speaker 1: is associated with worse brain health. So for that reason,
Speaker 1: I think it worthwhile to curtail your consumption of food
Speaker 1: to two to three hours before bed, which is what
Speaker 1: I am to do, and which is what such a
Speaker 1: panda the Salt Institute what his research is beginning to show,
Speaker 1: which is very exciting stuff. It's really exciting. I can't
Speaker 1: say enough how much I appreciate the work that you
Speaker 1: put out into the world, how much it's changed my
Speaker 1: life and Eric's life subse quickly for the better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we both live better lives because
Speaker 1: of knowing what we know, and and a lot of
Speaker 1: what we know is thanks to you and your work,
Speaker 1: your books, your podcast, and so it feels really meaningful
Speaker 1: for me to get to connect with you today and
Speaker 1: to get to tell you that and also introduce our
Speaker 1: audience if they don't know you already to you and
Speaker 1: your work. Oh my god, I mean it means so much,
Speaker 1: and I wish I could express in words how much
Speaker 1: it truly means, because you do all this work in isolation,
Speaker 1: and it's the result of something that you experience is
Speaker 1: very personal, and you really seldom feel that others can
Speaker 1: relate to what you're going through in those moments because
Speaker 1: it's just so mind bogglingly stressful and barbaric, and you're like,
Speaker 1: is this really what being human involves? You know, like
Speaker 1: in those moments, like it's just like it's really hard
Speaker 1: to believe. And so to hear that that it's somehow
Speaker 1: made it across the ether of the universe and into
Speaker 1: your hands and it's affected you, You know, it means
Speaker 1: a lot. My work really has been to learn as
Speaker 1: much as I possibly can and to share with the
Speaker 1: hopes that my readers, my followers or whatever will take
Speaker 1: to heart what it is that I'm talking about. They'll
Speaker 1: be interested maybe in boosting the way that their brain
Speaker 1: works today, losing weight here and there maybe, but ultimately
Speaker 1: that I'll be able to move the needle on the
Speaker 1: on these conditions that they'll be able to prevent their
Speaker 1: own dementia, which would really be amazing. I mean, if
Speaker 1: I'm if I'm able to impact just one person with
Speaker 1: regard to dementia prevention, I mean that to me would
Speaker 1: make it all worth it. Well, thank you so much, Max.
Speaker 1: It has been such a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: Like Jenny said, your work has been very valuable to us,
Speaker 1: and we're really happy to have had you. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much. Has been an honor connecting with
Speaker 1: both of you, and and I'm grateful that you've introduced
Speaker 1: me to your audience. And I'm hopeful that people pick
Speaker 1: up Genius Kitchen and that it helps them. And we'll
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes to where people can
Speaker 1: get Genius Kitchen and all your others stuff. You guys
Speaker 1: are awesome. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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