Change Your Brain Every Day - What Foods Should I Eat? PT. 2 with Max Lugavere

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

Food is medicine, or it’s poison. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Genius Foods author Max Lugavere shares his nutritional tips for detox, gut health, and brain health. 

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 still here with Max Lugavere and we're talking about genius foods. It's a great topic and we have lots of questions for you, Max, but let's jump in and continue on with genius foods. Well, you know, one question I have is we were talking about detox and a lot of

people don't get, it's not just your liver that detoxes you. It's your liver, so you should eat more brassicas. So as we were talking about broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage. Your gut is a huge detoxification organ. And so more fiber, which those brassicas happen to have. Right? But also your kidneys, so drink more water and your skin before I came today I actually spent 25 minutes in the sauna just to

get a good sweat going right and those heat shock proteins have actually been shown to be an antidepressant so I'm super happy today that we get to talk to Max so max let's talk about this idea of food is medicine or poison yeah I love that I love that line from you actually you said that on the doctor ostro that we were both featured on together which which I love you know with every bite you take your cognitive health is a choice that you're making. Yes. And, yeah, you know, I mean, when it comes to gut health, there was a very interesting study that was published recently from Rush University that found that people that consumed a large bowl of dark leafy greens every single day had brains that looked 11 years younger on scans. And this was an observation that was made in this

study. But it's fun to speculate what the mechanism may be, you know, when you when you think when you think about dark leafy greens, you know, they're packed with fiber, as you mentioned, they help, you know, move things through their gut, but they also provide food for the 30 trillion microbes that live in our large intestine. So the gut brain axis is a really exciting area of research. I go into depth in it or on it, I should say, in my book, Genius Foods. But it really plays a major role. In fact, many of the diseases that we were talking about on the last podcast, Lewy body dementia, Parkinson's disease, it's unclear what the inciting incident is for either of these two diseases, but it's becoming increasingly clear that what really kicks the cascade into motion for these two diseases may begin in the gut. So I think when it comes to eating foods that benefit the gut, it's dark leafy greens, it's

fibrous vegetables, it's colorful, low sugar fruits, things like that. These are all beneficial. And even probiotic containing foods. If you don't like them, I mean, going for a probiotic might be beneficial. Very early days for this kind of research, just to be clear, but there was another very compelling study that came out of Iran about a year and a half ago that found that a probiotic actually was able to significantly improve symptoms for patients with pretty severe cognitive impairment in the form of Alzheimer's disease. So obviously it needs to be replicated, but I'm very optimistic that the gut is going to be, you know, increasingly a focal point for researchers looking to

solve these diseases. Yeah, no question. We had David Perlmutter on and he's the author of Brain Maker, which is just a marvelous book. And, you know, Tana's a nurse and uh i often say so why do nurses put alcohol on your skin before they give you a shot and it's to kill the bugs um but what about all the alcohol people drink that are killing the bugs in your gut i think we we just have to be so careful. When our daughter was six, Tana taught her about the microbiome. And Chloe got all weirded out. I told her she had bugs in her gut and she freaked out. I'm like, no, no, they're like pets. You have to take care of them because these pets take care of you back.

So she named them. So loving them, feeding them. And one really interesting thing, you know, as a psychiatrist, I realized that early childhood stress actually changes the microbiome in a very negative way. And it sets people up to be anxious, perhaps for the rest of their lives, unless you go back and fix their gut. Well, so many kids are on chronic antibiotics. And you just led me into one of my questions. So I deal with a lot of moms in my community.

And nutrition is something I've been fascinated with for a long time, mostly to heal myself in the past. And then now I planted it in our clinics, um, for brain health. But one of the things that people constantly say to me is, well, how should I feed my child? I'm doing your program. How should I feed my child? And, and that's, that's always an interesting question because there's not like a special diet that kids should be on once they're not eating baby food anymore. And even then, you know, it should be really healthy food like you eat. But with the exception of, there are always some foods. Of course, babies should not eat peanut butter until you know they don't have a peanut allergy past a certain age. And honey because

of botulism. I mean, there's certain foods specifically or specific raw honey. And there are specific foods based on allergies. But these programs, your program, Max, is perfect for kids. And yes, I get it. Some kids aren't going to eat all those greens initially. But you can boost the antioxidants in their diet until they get used to greens with spices and herbs and things like this. And you can hide them like you did. Hide them in smoothies. I tricked, well, you are the biggest kid in our house. I had to hide them from you, mostly. So I had to stick them in smoothies. I put them in smoothies to hide the flavor.

I know. I saw her put a whole handful of kale in the smoothie one day, and I'm like, I'm not eating that. I'm not a cow. And she said, well, you've been eating this for two months. She's sneaky, Max. She is a sneaky woman. Pretty. Do you have any other comments about kids? Yeah. Well, you know, I think that's where the value of another nutrient that's become relatively demonized over the past couple of decades comes into play and actually proves pretty useful. And that is sodium in the form of salt.

You know, who said that vegetables need to taste bland and, you know, and or bad? You know, roasting vegetables with garlic and salt and pepper, you can make them incredibly savory and tasty. And actually, salt is incredibly important because sodium, again, is a nutrient. It's required to get vitamin C into the brain, which helps create neurotransmitters. People that are on low-carb diets that do things that cause the excretion of sodium, whether it's drinking coffee or exercising vigorously, which we know that we should, or even taking certain diuretic drugs need to replenish sodium. So for children that are growing, I think, you know, making sure that the vegetables taste good, using salt to do that, I think is profoundly important. In my book, I also talk about

research performed in Kenya by Charlotte Newman at UCLA who found that children that were supplemented with grass-fed beef actually showed an improvement in mental health and learning abilities compared to dairy and compared to just a vegan meal. This is one of the, I think, really important bits of research. It was a trial that can show us the value of properly raised meat, especially for the developing brain. So why does red meat have a bad rap? You know, I think it's because most of the people, increasingly throughout the world, but especially here in the United States, eat pretty miserable quality red meat. And they also tend to eat meat in the context of diets

that we know are really bad. You know, 60% of the calories that we consume today come from what are called ultra-processed foods. You throw really unhealthy, you know, factory-raised meat on top of that, that is not a recipe for health. So whereas typically produced grain-fed beef, I would say, is anything but a health food, grass-fed and particularly organic, but really I think grass-fed is the key term here. 100% grass-fed really makes red meat a health food. And so I think that's really, really important. And while nutrition for the developing brain, especially for neonates, is a little bit out of my wheelhouse, we now know that we continue to grow new brain cells up until death.

By providing our bodies with the proper building blocks to do that, DHA fat, vitamin B12, all the nutrients that are found in properly produced whole foods, I think becomes critical, and particularly at younger ages. I agree with everything you said. If I could just throw in a couple little tricks that I used with my daughter and my big kid, the other big kid in my house, that wears the wedding ring that matches mine. So what I used to do is I would blend up vegetables and put them in like a chili.

Or I would blend up vegetables and instead of using breadcrumbs, put them in beef patties. And I love everything else you said. I actually did a segment on sodium as well. I agree with you on what you said. And also adding cinnamon or vanilla is amazing. It makes them taste great. So, you know, you can get your kids to eat some veggies.

It might take a little time. Be patient. So I just want to throw that in. Well, and my grandson, our grandson, who wouldn't eat at all when he was a baby, he was just a super picky eater. And you were playing with avocado gelato at the time. And we have this great picture, Max, of Eli with chocolate all over his face. It's actually avocado with raw cacao in it. It's basically pretty simple. Right. So a developing brain requires nutrients in order to stay healthy. But these are all the same foods that you've been talking about. I'm just sneaky about getting kids to eat

them. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I'm a big kid, right? Like I want to eat foods that taste good. Yes. Men are big kids. Yes. Yeah. And so actually, I'm pretty proud of the recipes in my book. I've got turmeric-encrusted chicken fingers. I've got chicken wing. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah. And I also have a kale salad that's made using nutritional yeast, which is one of my favorite foods. Yeah, it tastes cheesy. It tastes cheesy. Yeah. Kids love it and it's full of vitamins. That sounds great. I should try that. Well, we're going to talk, when we come back, we're going to talk about more practical tips on how you can use food as medicine to optimize your mind now and later. I'm going to pick that up. Those recipes sound amazing.

Yes, ma'am. I'm going to trick you more. Stay with us. 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 Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.