Change Your Brain Every Day - Nutrition Tactics to Supercharge your Brain – PT. 3 with Max Lugavere

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

In the third and final episode of a series with Genius Foods author Max Lugavere, Max shares some of his proven strategies for foods that will supercharge your brain. 

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. We are here with Max Lugavere, author of bestselling book, Genius Foods. We're having a really great time. Let's make this last podcast as practical as possible. People think getting healthy is hard. And our response usually is being sick is hard. This is easy. You just have to put the right strategies in your life.

So talk to us about that. I have one question first because this is really important. How many recipes are in your book? When you mentioned you had turmeric chicken fingers, I was like, oh, that sounds yummy. How many recipes do you have? I have about 15 recipes in my book. Fantastic. Okay.

Yeah, And those turmeric encrusted chicken fingers can be turned into chicken nuggets. But actually, and this is not something I've talked about on any other podcast, but the reason why I call the chicken fingers chicken fingers is because they're named in honor of the finger study that was performed out of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, which is the world's first ever large population long-term randomized controlled trial to show us that cognitive decline does not have to be a necessary aspect of aging. So that's the name of the trial, the finger trial. And so I've named these turmeric-encrusted

chicken figures after the trial. Oh, that's fantastic. I like that. That's hysterical. So this trial basically used three big strategies. So diet, much like how Max talks about ingenious foods, exercise, including weight-bearing exercises, and new learning. So there was a cognitive enhancement. So working your brain like a muscle. They took people who had cognitive impairment. So these were not normal people. They weren't at the end stages of Alzheimer's, obviously,

but they were people who were beginning the dark road. And they showed over, it was a two-year trial, I believe, a 30% improvement in their memory compared to the control group that did nothing but continue to get worse with treatment as usual. So it's huge. All of the pharmaceutical companies that were heavily invested in Alzheimer's disease, they started shutting down these divisions and laid off thousands of people because you will never find one medicine to prevent Alzheimer's disease or treat it because it's not a single mechanism disease.

It is a multifactorial disease, what you and I always talk about. You have to fight the war on multiple fronts. And food totally does that. Right. Reminds me of Vikings. My favorite, one of my favorite episodes of Vikings, when they were really sneaky and they surrounded them from every side. That's what you got to do. And that's what you can do with the food. So, Max, let's talk about in your mind, in Genius Foods and your experience, what are five or six of the most practical things people

can do to use food as medicine? Absolutely. So the first trick that I would say everybody should really go out of their way to eat what I call huge fatty salad every single day. This includes dark leafy greens like kale, spinach, and arugula. canola. This, as I mentioned in the first podcast, has been shown actually to be a strategy that's associated with reduced brain aging by up to 11 years, thanks to this wonderful Rush University study led by Martha Clare Morris. So, huge fatty cell, douse it with extra virgin olive oil, which leads me to my second tip, which would be to clear your kitchen of grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, and soybean oil,

and stock up on high-quality extra virgin olive oil, which is the only fat which has a robust body of evidence behind it to say that this oil can actually improve cognitive function and perhaps shield you against these kinds of diseases in the long term. The third thing that I would say is critically important is to shop on the perimeter in your supermarket. So the aisles are usually where these processed foods, which now make up 60% of our calories, lie in wait. But being cognizant of these kinds of foods and knowing how to shop around them not only reduces temptation and the necessity to use your willpower, which is, you know, only so strong, but really the perimeter is where you're going to find all these exact foods that we're talking about as being very beneficial to the brain. The fourth step I would say, yeah, the fourth tip I would give people is one that I think your listeners are really going to appreciate, and that is to eat dark chocolate.

Habitual dark chocolate consumers have better, stronger memories. Cocoa flavonols seem to reverse almost aging of the hippocampus, which is a vulnerable memory center in the brain, the first structure to really be affected by Alzheimer's disease. And so for chocolate, I recommend that people go for 85% cacao or higher. But eat a bar a week. It's one of my go-to snacks. And you really can't go wrong with dark chocolate, especially if the bar isn't.

Well, but let's talk about sugar and dairy. And so many people just heard you say a Snickers a day keeps the doctor away. Even though you didn't say that. Right. Right. Right. I mean, this is so important. And when you get to 85%, it actually is pretty bitter.

We make two things, one called Brain and Love, the other one called Brain on Joy, which is chocolate and coconut, but we sweeten it with erythritol and stevia and it tastes actually awesome. I'm so proud of it. But a lot of times people hear chocolate and then they're dipping strawberries into Ghirardelli chocolate, which may not be the right strategy. Right. So I was thinking, though, because I love what you just said, as did 99% of the women who listen to our show. I was thinking, because you say I never forget any bad thing you've ever done. Ever. Ever.

Ever. It's because of the chocolate. I just figured it out. It's because of the chocolate. You know, it's brain food. What can I say? By the way, it's so cute watching you guys. This is one of my favorite podcasts I've ever been on because you guys are just like amazing together.

We're a little crazy, but at least I married a psychiatrist. To take care of your craziness. I just got to tell you, it's awesome. All right, so we have salad. And I missed the word. It was a big fatty salad. A big fat salad. A big fat salad that actually has fat in it, which is get your oils right.

And virgin olive oil does have a lot of wonderful research. Shop on the outside of the store because when you go down the aisles, and my dad owns a chain of grocery stores, I grew up in them. Tana and I actually did a video with Mark Hyman on shopping in a food desert. And if you look at corn dogs, for example, they have 29 ingredients in them and most of them you actually wouldn't recognize as food. And then dark chocolate, but you have to be careful. You're going to be careful, get rid of the dairy.

My problem with dairy is the hormones and antibiotics that are in it and that so many people are sensitive to it. You're kicking me under the table. Why? Because I want to make sure that before we go, I just like want to give like people one little tip that I figured out for traveling because they always ask and maybe Max you already have this in your book, I don't know. But one thing that I figured out because I can't have vinegar and so sometimes vinegar

and oil when you're traveling or whatever is just too hard for people and they don't like it. So if you do the olive oil which is perfect like you said it's really good for people and they don't like it. So if you do the olive oil, which is perfect, like you said, it's really good for you. And sometimes even lemon's a little too bitter. Ask them for a couple of orange slices and just squirt the orange over the top of the salad. It's amazing. It's so good. And it has no calories. And you know, I don't know, my friend Mark Hyman and I fight about this all the time. He's like, oh, calories don't matter. And I'm like, you've been smoking way too much pot. It's like, he does not smoke pot. Wait, back up. He does not smoke pot. You cannot go on. People listen to you. He does not smoke

pot. Our friend, Mike Harmon, Mark Hyman does smoke pot. No, he does not smoke pot. I didn't say he did. I'm just saying anybody who says it doesn't matter. Get back to Max. I would agree with that statement, actually, that calories still do matter. But the quality matters more. Quality matters, and when you're eating foods that are of higher quality and that are not ultra-processed, it becomes a lot easier to eat a responsible amount of calories. And you get to eat more of them.

And your appetite tends to get better. Your cravings tend to get better when you kill the sugar. But if you're having 800 calories of nuts a day, you're going to gain weight. Not if you're just having 800 calories of nuts. But if you have just 800 calories of Twinkies, you will

get inflamed and gain weight over time. But initially, you will lose weight. And then you will gain weight. That's true. Because you're going to mess up your leptin. One more. Max, one more tip. Sorry, Max. I love this. We should have warned you. So do you have one more tip for us? Yes. All right, let me think about this. Well, I guess my last tip would be to really write these dietary changes into your identity to make them a part of who you are. I think it becomes a lot easier to skip the self-negotiation when you really make this

embedded into your being. You guys have brain warriors. That's very much a badge of honor that I think people wear and it's an identity. There's this funny joke that people that are into CrossFit, vegans, people that are paleo, within five minutes of meeting them, you know that they adhere to this diet because those are very much identities. So I think that by embedding these kinds of rules into your own personal constitution, I think it becomes a lot easier to stick to them. You know, you're a person that perhaps only eats red meat if it's grass-fed, or you're a person that's only

going to use extra virgin olive oil, you're not going to use commercial salad dressings ever. Those are the rules that I think by embedding them into your core constitution, they're really going to help you stick to them and skip that self-negotiation, which I think becomes really difficult, especially in the modern world. I agree with you so much. In fact, that's one of the reasons we started the whole brain warrior concept. So I practice martial arts, Daniel was in the army, and I have learned so much from being a

quote unquote martial artist. That's part of my identity. So we found that when people take on that identity, there's so much that they, as you said, it becomes part of who they are. We talked about getting your black belt in health. How would a warrior think? What would a warrior do? What would a black belt do? There are certain things they do. There are certain things they do not do. And it just becomes easier to adhere to that. I agree with you 100%. Well, you have to be armed, prepared, and aware. And you would probably also agree that, you know, the real weapons of mass destruction, you know, I always say ISIS has nothing on our food industry. They're highly processed,

pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber, food-like substances stored in plastic containers that are literally destroying the health of America. And unless you are super clear about the goals you have for your life, you're going to be run over by this food industry that is damaging our society. But I still believe in the whole David and Goliath thing. So watch out. What does that mean? It means they're the big, they're the Goliath. But that doesn't matter. David won.

So we can win. We can win. Those of you that are listening, you can win. Yep. Pick up a copy of Genius Foods by Max Lugavere. I have Mark in my head now. Poor Mark. Poor Mark. Mark is coming on next week.

And we love Mark. We love him so much. Genius Foods. Thanks, Max. What a joy to be with you. Next time we're going to have you in the studio with us and you can partake of this craziness. I can't wait, you guys. I truly can't wait to hang in person. And again, it was an honor to be here with you guys and all of the brain warriors. So thanks for having me. That was fantastic.

All right, my friend. Take care. You too. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.