Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 250 - Dr. Dean Sherzai: Brain Health Masterclass

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

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and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. the show notes and check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners. Hey, everybody, welcome into another episode of the show. In this episode, I am joined by none other than the amazing Dr. Dean Scherze. He's a medical doctor. He's a PhD. He's a behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist whose entire life has been dedicated to behavioral change models and helping people better understand how it is the brain works and functions. He holds two master's degree in advanced sciences, and he studied lifestyle epidemiology at Loma Linda University, where he has looked at the brains of the healthiest and longest living people in the world. So Dr. Shirze and I are going to have all kinds of discussions today on this episode about exercise, about food, about alcohol,

about cannabis, about creatine, and much more. So sit back and enjoy the episode with Dr. Dean Shirze of The Brain Docs. Dr. Shirze, how are you doing? Doing very well. Thank you so much. Glad to be connected here with you. Absolutely, man. Happy to have you. One of the things that actually made me reach out to want to have you on the podcast, it wasn't anything you were posting specific to cognition, to brain health, to neurology, but I believe you guys shared about a month and a half ago, Tom Nichols' book, The Death

of Expertise, which he's a writer who I really like. I've read all his books and most of what he writes in The Atlantic. But what I thought was so fitting about this is in the health communication space, the science communication space, had an impasse where the podcasters, sub-stackers, the... What's the word I'm looking for here? The influencer space is really adding a lot of noise and it's really making it hard to parse out substance and who is and isn't an expert. And so when I was looking through your credentials, I was just blown away by how much of your life has been dedicated to neurology and studying the brain. And so to kind of kick us off here, Dr. Shirzai, could you tell everybody what it takes to become a neurology medical doctor, to get a PhD. I think you have a master's in public health as well.

Yeah. Well, I want to start by saying, first of all, it's wonderful connecting with you, especially around this topic. And whatever comes out of my mouth is not out of appeal to authority or the false humility that overwhelms all communication. I try to be as accurate and accountable and, and want to be held accountable by everybody. It doesn't matter what their degrees. Having said that, um, I, you know, my, my cousins say you have more degrees than a thermostat. Yes. Um, do I, that I need those? No.

Some of them are just because maybe I was insecure and some had some some some something happened to me in childhood but nonetheless I love education I love learning I love the I said I hate the word humility the way it's being used but the humble nature of science which then never overstates always says to the best of our knowledge and and it's okay if we know whatever we know we don't have to extrapolate and make up wild bombastic things just because it makes me feel good or makes so with that said um my background is neurology i did my work at georgetown university then i did three years of work in some really wonky work in NIH, National Institutes of Health, in experimental therapeutics, where patients like PSP, progressive supernuclear policy, which is almost like an aggressive form of Parkinson's, which usually takes the person through a terrible three-year journey, and then they pass away. and we would put these tubes into their brains and infuse with BDNF or GDNF to see if there's growth of neurons, stem cells. The wonkiest things would come to us at NIH at Experimental

Therapeutics. And then I did some other work. And then I ended up at another fellowship at UCSD, which was the number one neuroscience program at the time, with Leon Thal doing some amazing work on pathology and imaging, fMRI. My wife did the fMRI, did the pathology work. And then after that, we got a little disillusioned, although I don't want to overstate that either, with the clinical trials over and over and over again with the same model. And by the way, we're not the type that throws the baby out with the bathwater. We believe in basic science. We believe in clinical trials. We believe in the pharmaceutical company when they do good work.

But it was almost like a myopic one area when it came to Alzheimer's. Amyloid, amyloid, amyloid. And amyloid is a part of this story, despite this new thing that came out that some people faked the data in 2006. did see that i did see that but it doesn't negate the theory just you know and we never us aisha and i never believed in the amyloid theory as the end-all be-all we thought that for the majority it was a downstream effect meaning that lifestyle affected it and then amyloid popped up. I'm simplifying it. But there is about 3% that are completely driven by amyloid.

And that means that if they have the genes, they'll get the disease no matter what. But that's only 3% of Alzheimer's. Oh, wow. So with that said, we went towards lifestyle to see how we can find out what's right and what's true and what can be applied to the society. Because you can say all you want, but if you just say, well, now you just have to do it, it means that you really don't have any idea about behavioral neuroscience, which is my field. It's hard. Behavior change is hard. It's not a guilt thing. It's not a blame thing. If somebody's not doing it, they're not bad. They're not dumb. They're not weak. It's that

the mechanisms that created those behaviors were such that they created overwhelmingly powerful, debilitating behaviors. That is beautiful, both scientifically and in a human way, all judgment is taken out. Yeah. It really removes morality from how we look at the behavior changes. People know they ought to make, but have such a challenge making and implementing. Not so much take out morality. Morality then becomes at the highest level. I want to help people. I don't want to judge people. I love people. I want to help you. That's it. That's the level of morality.

The rest becomes functional, structural. How do I do that help instead of judging them? Instead of me who grew up in a fairly nice family with my mother who spoke nine languages and that and all that stuff. And for me to say, why aren't you like me? Well, that's beyond arrogant. Actually, it's actually stupid. Yeah. I used to struggle with that a lot as a young in shape fitness professional who had a lot of lifestyle factors that were aligned with maintaining my fitness. I used to think

that the only difference between myself and somebody who wasn't in the shape they wanted to be in was a willpower and discipline. But there's so much more to the story than that. It's interesting to hear you kind of parse this out because I had to go through my own journey and realizing just how misguided I was and how judgmental I'd become as a professional. And I've been so much more successful abandoning that in favor of kindness and really hearing where people are coming from. Understanding. I mean, I'm a scientist, but I'll tell you, love is understanding.

Period. Done. End of sentence. Meaning that you understand the complexity of all that's around you, the mechanism, the sociology, the psychology, the anthropology, all of that stuff. And then instead of judging, you become a part of the change. Not a whole. Don't get it.

A part. Having said that, by the way, I was the same school as you and judging and all that. So, um, and, and then it makes it a lot more functional and, and, and, and, and then you become a good, not just a coach, but a leader. I think leadership, my, my dissertation and the last sentence, it says leadership in the 21st century is good listening good understanding so so with that said my my and our objective has been first of all find out what's true uh for transparency's sake both Aisha and I and our kids are vegan

but we don't but we're vegan for environment and ethics and our own. We don't impose on others, but our science stands on its own. Meaning that sometimes we say things like, I know that we're destroying the oceans, but fish is not bad for you. I'm sorry. If it makes you on, you know, we've, we've lost some friends here and there. We say, I understand the science. I understand what we're doing to the ocean. I understand all that.

But if you're asking about the science of what is good and bad, the data so far doesn't show that small fish are bad for you. In fact, there's evidence that it's good for you. And we say that not so that people, you know, there's a Stephen Covey book, Speed of Trust, one of my favorite books. Every relationship is about trust. Right now, you and I, me and my child, children, me and my wife, me and my coworkers, trusting integrity and capacity. Integrity is established not by established when people are vulnerable and tell the truth and are transparent and capacities by capacity.

What would the argument you were making? Do they have the foundations, the PR, you know, all the building blocks and have taken into account all the fallacies and when they come out so with that said um what lifestyle truly truly helps the brain this incredible organ three pounds two percent of your body's weight but consumes 25 of your body's energy, but consumes 25% of your body's energy. No, we don't use 10% of our brain. We use 100%, but in less than 1% efficiency, by the way, just for transparency sake, again, that's an extrapolation. When I have data, I say it's data driven. When I'm extrapolating, I say it's extrapolated. There's evidence that we use it extremely inefficiently. I'm using 1%

as a filler. We don't know different people, different percent, but we really use the brain inefficiently. Why? We have 87 billion neurons. Wow. Each of the neurons can make a couple of connections or as many as 30,000 connections. Does that have to do with where they are specifically? Everywhere, but some places more than others. And then that's one level of complexity. That's the second level of complexity. The third level is, so now you have quadrillion connections, but it's not even that. How you organize the brain over time gives you an exponential added layer of capacity. So we have that level of capacity.

layer of capacity so we have that level of capacity and things like nutrition an environmental factor in a closed box the brain is in a closed box yeah it's in a hermetically sealed environment and the brain blood brain barrier not much gets through not even viruses unless they have paths they have antigens i mean usually they don't i mean viruses that small even glucose needs a receptor which is the number one energy source of the brain not ketones glucose yes sir so all of this yet um it's overwhelmed over the years but this brain has the capacity to grow grow through its connections not no not new cells but the new cells are not important. Well into your 80s, 90s and beyond, that's the positive side. Yeah.

But for the rest of us, it actually starts shrinking. Well, I'm hoping not us because we're living a positive life. For those who live the standard American life, they start shrinking in the 20s. Oh, gosh. Yeah. What are some of the primary lifestyle differences between somebody like yourself who's well-versed in what to do and somebody who's showing signs of brain atrophy in their twenties? What, what are those big things that people need to be the most concerned about?

Yeah. Because, because as I'm sure it's true with, with all tissues, you know, like with muscle tissue, you have a unique opportunity in your early life to bank a lot of it. And so those habits that you have around muscle tissue in your early life really pay dividends down the road. And I'm sure if you're in your 20s and 30s, you can do things for your brain that will pay huge dividends down the road. So maybe starting with what people ought not to do. Yeah. First of all, anybody who's selling you anything, it's a gimmick. There is no biohacking. There's no brain hack. Not yet. It will be. We will. And I'm okay with that. With AI, with, oh my goodness, what's going to happen in the next 10 years? There's a group of people that

will talk themselves out of a lot because they're going to be, oh, AI is scary. This is scary. That's scary. Fusion energy is scary. They're just scared of everything. And scared people create scared language, which is beautiful language, but scared language. Sure.

The reality is we're going to cure cancer in the next 10 to 20 years. And I'm not one for bombast. Yeah. I always try to stay circumspect and calm about data, but at the rate that we're going, especially cancer, yeah. Even Alzheimer's, many, many diseases, life longevity and all of that. I don't know that part of how long, but we will be doing all of that. But at this point, when people tell you to eat butter or add this thing or add that thing or um uh you know this is or eat liver or you know things that these are ridiculous people just

trying to be they're trying to they're trying to get attention yeah they're grifters whether they're grifting for money or grifting for attention they're they are grifting for attention there. They are grifting. Here's the biggest thing you can do. And look how unsexy it is. Add greens to your diet once a day, good heaping serving of greens. Studies show that it actually make, it gives you 11 years of younger brain. Wow. Now what, what markers in the brain are particularly elevated by leafy greens? Like what, what is that unique benefit? So what we believe is it's, it's, it's anti-inflammatory. So we've identified four pathways. I am sure again, not for humility sake, but for being, knowing that science,

science, when science changes, it doesn't get rid of something completely, especially now in the past. Yeah. Bloodletting was bad. That was bad. But now what happens is it becomes more nuanced, a little more nuanced. So it doesn't get rid of things. Like when people say, you know, the quantum theory, relativity did away with Newtonian physics. No, it didn't. One serves at the macro level. The other one serves at the micro level. And we don't know what's the next level.

They don't negate each other. It's just more level of complexity same thing here with that science now um what we do know at this point four processes that we've written in our book one is inflammation oxidation glucose dysregulation and lipid or fat dysregulation and there's plenty of data for that despite despite the fact that beyond belief, people coming out saying, oh, cholesterol is not bad for you. I mean, because you saw some animal data that was contrived in a certain way that does not negate 10,000 other research projects, 10,000. Because you just want to confirm your preconceived beliefs. And you want to believe that bacon is medicine who doesn't but but but it's not it's not it's literally a confirmation driven process and it

is powerful it's been driving humanity for millennia and and and if we just say my commitment is to the next fact which is going to make me uncomfortable. Remember, leadership, everything else is management. Leadership is comfort with discomfort. That's actually what grows humanity. If we are comfortable with the discomfort. And the next piece of information is going to make me very uncomfortable. But if it's fact, if it's driven, not even perfect fact. Science has never been perfect, but look where we are.

And so that's what's happening and what inflammation and what happens with greens it does all of those it's antioxidant anti-inflammatory it regulates glucose yeah it regulates lipids doesn't have any lipids so it lowers the lipid levels you know that the latest paper that came out that actually they want your ldl the data shows not they want like whenever i say they that the conspiracy they that came out that actually they want your LDL, the data shows, not they want. Like whenever I say they, the conspiracy, oh, they, they're doing something. There's nobody here. So your LDL to be lower, we're going to get into that as well.

HDL, LDL, triglycerides, all of that. We're doing a huge paper on this. We've just published two massive comprehensive reviews in the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Journal. One, Omega-3 in the Developing Brain, which came out this month. And the previous month, Omega-3 in the Aging Brain. But we're doing one on fats and comprehensive review, not Google review or Facebook review or something like that. Some doctor's... Narrative review, right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, no. this is comprehensive, which means there's another unbiased person overlooking your data, coming up with their own. And it's painful, but it has to be that way.

So that's where how greens help. That's how beans help. That's how herbs and spices help. Not all of them are equal. Some of them are more. Turmeric appears at this point to be more effective. We did this study when we were directors of brain health at cedar sinai retina is a continuation

of the brain so when you look at the retina amyloid protein which is the bad protein that often accumulates in alzheimer's curcumin actually binds to amyloid and then presumption is the brain body removes it so the presumption but there's evidence that it lowers inflammation anyway so all of these things are inclusive and something as uninteresting as greens yeah you can't create big movement on on tiktok on greens you can't create a company on greens you know you can't so there it is greens and so so leafy greens cruciferous greens all greens they have different levels yeah right herbs are incredible because pound for pound and herbs are great for a couple of reasons because pound for pound they have the highest anti-inflammatory

components different different ones different levels the other is, because we are not optimal beings for longevity. Evolution never cared about your longevity. So when people talk about paleo life and ancestral, they have never looked into any data about our ancestry. into any data about our ancestry. No, it's fascinating to me, actually, and this is just a quick aside, how studying evolutionary biology and studying evolutionary psychology has really equipped me more to think scientifically. And it's given me a substantial barrier, if you will, to some of the misinformation because there's such a, I believe it's the appeal to nature fallacy, which is this notion that if our ancestors did it, disregard the fact that they died when they were 35. If our ancestors did it, then it must be better. And this is something that is quite prevalent in the science communication space, in the TikToks, influencer space, which are these appeals that are made to how our ancestors.

Well, Danny, I like you already. When you brought the fallacies, I know that I'm talking to somebody who's, I love this. I love, you know, I, between NIH and UCSD, I was asked by President Bush and others to go to Afghanistan and help reconstruct the healthcare system there I actually went with World Bank initially between 2002 to 2005 this is 20 2002 okay 2000 not 15th century not 2000 BC so I was in charge of recreate reconstructing the entire healthcare system if you pub PubMed and put my name, Shariza, you'll see what I did for women's empowerment there and healthcare system and all that. But listen to this. This is 21st century and post-war, post-Taliban. And we found 15% of the kids to have hypothyroidism in their natural state.

Nature didn't care about your IQ. Nature didn't care about your longevity. Oh, and, and the average age on the, in the 21st century in Somalia and Afghanistan at the time was 46. Yeah. Imagine 2000 years ago, imagine 5,000 years ago where dental, you know, whenever I give talks, I say, raise your hand if you had an infection and then half the people. And if you had a dental problem, carries, if you had this and I would say, and then by the end, almost everybody would have raised their hands. And I would say in 15th century, you will all be dead. Yeah. Yeah. be dead yeah yeah yeah there seems to be a unique obsession with longevity right now in it's it's very tightly knit with the biohacking community yes which which is a community that is uniquely

effective at disseminating health misinformation not necessarily because i believe it's something that they want to do but i think there's an internal conflict with, and most of these people are men, the fact that we are mortal. And that is very difficult for people to face. And the search for immortality or life extension has led many men on many crusades to find, whether it be the fountain fountain of youth they're in search of something mythical so much so that when they hear yeah the best thing you could probably do for long-term brain health is eat a shit ton of vegetables they're just like it can't be that simple yes it can't well so when we were at ucsd coming from that program which was the number we had choice to go anywhere and the option was usually boston in that direction all that but we we decided to take the path less traveled because we wanted to study lifestyle and

so we looked around to different places the healthiest places in the world and all that and as it happened one of the blue zones where dan butner was a good friend of ours um has identified the blue zones and the only one in united states and the only one that's been validated with a huge study that's been funded for 50 years is the Loma Linda or the Adventist. Yeah. Adventist health study. So I usually I picked up the phone, did a cold call to the president of the United States of the university. And I said, you know, I've trained here. I want to come there, create a brain Institute, brain center. They said, yes, come on over. And we started and we started collecting data and seeing patients. So the Adventist, and this is not just hearsay. This is the Adventist health study, an incredibly well-studied database. Yeah. 50 years, 96,000 people. Wow.

96 000 people wow the amount of data is just beyond belief guess what they live on the average 10 to 12 years longer and healthier than everybody else not to 10 10 to 12 days not to 10 10 to 12 weeks not months years yeah there's a fountain of it. And you know why? Five things. Nutrition. They're plant-based and I'm vegan. They're actually vegetarian. Mostly they're vegans as well. But I say, you don't even have to be that. Clean up your diet. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Just eat more vegetables and less processed foods. That's it. I don't care. But if we just do that, we will actually have changed healthcare significantly. You don't have to become's it. I don't care. But if we just do that, we will actually change health care significantly. You don't have to become a vegan. I would like you to become because of other reasons.

But for health reasons, just eat cleaner. And that means more plants, more unprocessed. Do more of your own cooking. You know, that kind of stuff. Second, and we're going to talk about this one a lot. And it's very, very important. And for reasons that people actually don't emphasize exercise exercise is one of the only things that grows your brain yeah i've heard that

it's uh most of your gray matter is modifiable with various types of exercise absolutely and we'll talk about leg strengthening and all that stuff that I love, which we do all the time. Well, I hate legs workout, but it's my least favorite, but we'll do it anyway. I've learned to love it over the years, but I definitely had an aversion to it. Yes. Yes. And then thirdly, stress management, because there's good stress and bad stress. Of course, I'm using the word stress in a colloquial way, but challenging your brain, why wouldn't that be a central feature of an organ

that consumes 25% of your energy and puts you at risk by making you sleep so that the brain can rejuvenate? Why? Because it wants to be challenged. It wants to think. It wants to be creative. It wants to, and if you to be creative. It wants to.

And if you stop that from doing, stop doing that, especially after you retire, the brain shrink the fastest. So keep the brain challenged. Stress it, but around your purpose. When it's stressed, not on your purpose, not time bound, not directional, it becomes negative stress. And we've spoken, I'm writing a book about this now, around the limbic, hypothalamic, pituitary and adrenal axis. The storm that it creates in your body continuously is the most destructive thing. So people who are doing things that are not around their passion,

like what you're doing, this podcast, you love it. That's good stress. But if you're doing the same thing that's not really challenging your brain or your passion, it's destructive. So that's stress management. Fourth is sleep or restorative sleep, deep restorative sleep. The brain needs sleep because during sleep, we cleanse the brain. Yeah, I learned about this like two, three years ago, that there's a literal like deep cleaning that takes place while you're asleep. It is so unbelievable. The brain actually in a way shrinks and then creates space for the lymphatic flow to take the debris out through the venous system i mean it's just remarkable and then of course the glial cells that are actually the janitor cells that clean up the brain it's just remarkable yeah

and the second thing you do during sleep is organize and reorganize the brain those dreams i saw something on tiktok somebody talking about dreams being a travel into the fifth dimension and this, and I'm like, okay, maybe how we're okay. Dreams are your brains, your brain's tool of reorganizing information, especially emotionally related information, content, late information, reorganizing it. But because the medium of consciousness is story, the medium of consciousness is story. They come in the form of stories, weird stories, but they're stories. Yeah.

So it's, well, it's remarkable to me too, how sleep while we sleep, and this is, I think rodent data, but if you are to introduce a pattern to a rat and then you monitor their brain after they fall asleep, that the brain is repeating that pattern during sleep. So as to help them learn, there's a lot of things that are getting put together behind the scenes while we sleep that help with memory, cognition, skill acquisition. Sleep is a unique time for the brain. People on the average, on the average, this varies, there's a confidence interval around this, but on the average, people who don't get good night's sleep, they have 40% reduction in their cognitive capacity. What does cognitive capacity mean? Because I'm sure we'll talk about cognition as a word, but what are the markers of cognitive capacity? So let's define, let me tell you the fifth element. The fifth element is good stress, which is mental activity.

Challenge your brain. In research, because we need solid variables, we use education as a marker of cognitive challenge. But it's not education. It's a person, some of the brightest people I know dropped out of high school. I'm not saying that people should drop out. Although nowadays, I don't know. people I know dropped out of high school. I'm not saying that people should drop out. Although nowadays, I don't know. I mean, I have more degrees, but my tell my kids,

all the education in the world is on the online now. Yeah. And you would be losing time if you're not using that and not, not to drop out of college, but use that profoundly, but nonetheless challenge your brain, challenge your brain around your passions, around growth, but push deeper and deeper. That's critical. Now, the importance of the different aspects of brain's capacity, and all of these have different variables, right? For somebody who's got really bad nutrition, that becomes more important. For somebody who has sleep apnea, that's important because that increases your chance of Alzheimer's and decline by 70%. By the way, people think that they have to worry about memory and cognition at age 60 or 70 or when they first have memory problems.

No. You only see the decline once the infrastructure has fallen. But the degradation of infrastructure starting in your 20s start then eat a little healthier exercise a little more stress manage a little better sleep better avoid alcohol i'm sorry the least i did a video we do lots of videos to get thousands of views but i did a video and said that the amount at this point uh the all all looking at all the data the amount of alcohol that's good for your brain is zero i've never been called more names yeah more lambasted than you can you can ever imagine it got 150 000 views in like first day and comments. I'm sorry.

You don't like the data. That's the data. Yeah. It doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that I don't drink a glass of wine here and there, but I'm, but I, but that's my hypocrisy, but I'm not going to lie about the data because to fit my hypocrisy. Totally. I mean, I don't, I don't drink at all.

So I'm about as biased as it can get. And I, I have multiple personal reasons to be anti-alcohol and I'm puritanical about it to the point where it can be off-putting. But you're absolutely right. The truth is the truth. And all of our tissues seem to be very sensitive to the toxicity of alcohol. None more so than the brain. Your liver can only handle so much at once and what it can't handle is left to circulate all throughout your body and it and it affects how you absorb fat it affects how you absorb omegas it affects how you absorb vitamins it affects how you process proteins it affects how i mean i can go over the list of how it affects all of that so where's the benefit

what's the mechanism oh they say flavono you would have to eat a crate to get enough resveratrol and anti, you know, it's just ridiculous. I always ask the people who use that defense, that line of defense, when was the last time you ate a grape? Do you enjoy eating grapes? If you want those benefits, you could eat grapes. And a lot of those And a lot of those plant compounds you're after, they're found in even higher quantities in blueberries, in darker berries,

things that contain those pigments. You don't need to drink wine to get your resveratrol. Exactly. And if your biggest worry is resveratrol, you're in good shape because you got a lot of other things to address. Sleep, just sleep. Sleeping seven hours to eight hours a night of deep restorative sleep, meaning that you're going through those four cycles at least five to six times a night. That's more profoundly beneficial than any biohacking thing out there. Yeah. Yeah. And there's so much you can do to that. So, yeah. So that's where we are as far as that. Your question, out there. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and there's so much you can do to that.

So, yeah. So that's where we are as far as that would be your question, previous question. Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit more about, about the food, the exercise, all of that stuff. And I I'm, I'll ask you questions as we go here. You've done a fantastic job of, of laying out a foundation of, of the five things that people really need to do to help their brain. They need to eat right. They need to find some type of exercise. We'll talk more in detail about both of those. Manage the amount of stress they place on the brain, sleep so it can recuperate, and then challenge it the way you would probably challenge a muscle. So as to promote

cognitive adaptations. And I guess that's my first question is cognition as a phrase. We talk a lot about cognition, the brain's capacity, what it does, what are the markers as a scientist that when you say, okay, leafy greens is going to improve your brain's capabilities and hyper-processed foods, sleep apnea are going to decrease your brain's capabilities. What are those metrics, those capabilities of cognition? Is it memory? Is it processing speed? You just hit on it. Okay. So there are two ways to look at this. Intellect in a blunt way is actually identified by your ability to process information your capacity to process solve problems let's just say that it's your prefrontal cortex how

well can you solve problems but it's not isolated because if you can't maintain focus i always say focus is the gatekeeper of consciousness focus is the gatekeeper of memory focus gatekeeper of everything else Focus is the gatekeeper of memory. Focus is the gatekeeper of everything else. So focus has to be there. When you see, I'm a chess player, not a great one, but I love chess. And I see these people playing chess with blindfolds with 15, 20 other people. That's not so much IQ, but it is processing capacity, but also focus and ability to maintain

all these games in your head, knowing that this opening is, you know, some French opening defense. And this is a Maria Lopez. And this is that Italian. And so you know that. So you have to keep focus. And then you process the deeper and deeper. So that's the blunt way of looking at it. IQ actually looks at it in a much broader way, looking at your memory as well, your process.

IQ actually looks at it in a much broader way, looking at your memory as well, your process. So the six areas, memory, executive function, which is processing speed, language, visual, spatial, and attention. Are any of those six things uniquely enhanced by nutritional strategies that benefit the brain? nutritional strategies that benefit the brain? Meaning like, if I'm eating more leafy greens, if I'm getting the right amount of omega fats, can I experience or expect to experience specific areas of cognition to improve? Or is it like the tide that raises all boats? So the short answer is yes, it does raise all boats. But as we get more data, Yes, it does raise all boats. But as we get more data, as we start mapping the brain better, by the way, we've already mapped the brain remarkably.

But as we realize that it's an individual, we think that liver function is individual. Imagine brain function. So for different people, their weakness. So we did a meta-analysis, which is a huge task in itself, looking at cognitive games and cognitive improvement in pre-dementia patients. Okay. And we found something surprising. You know, in leadership, we say work around your strengths, right?

But when it came to cognition, the thing that came out is working around your weakness. Because that weakness becomes the sink. That weakness becomes the sink that weakness becomes the anchor that weakness becomes the thing that pulls the rest of the ship down so if you're if you're older and you're starting to develop memory problems then work on your memory and there are so many times my memory games doesn't mean some contrived game or sudoku or this or that so for a lot of my patients, I said, do you watch TV? Yeah. And my patients watch blue bloods and this and that. So they love it. And I like it too. But so I said, watch it differently.

Now we'll have a notepad next to you. Watch it with focus with detail and afterwards write down the detail from the show, the names, not the main characters, but the new person, the street they went to, you know, that level of detail. Initially you'll do terribly because none of us are trained to do that. But as you get better and better and better, you'll get better at that. But now since your memory was your weakness and you strengthen that, that also helps the others move forward as well. Yeah. So in that sense,

but I'll tell you, we're going to learn a lot more complexity than this in the next few years. Yeah. We will have games. So games are not bad. Yeah. Some games that affect attention poorly, negatively, they're bad, but some, a lot of games, even now bluntly, they seem to be good, but in the near future, they will actually, we're actually, we're working on technology. We have a technology company looking at people playing games and the game adapting to the person's proclivities. And then the game figuring out their weaknesses and strengths and working on those and building it around their tendencies. Wow.

weird thing where young men and women had to sit in a seat for eight hours and listen to a lecture that's not primed to them to one where it's a game that's pulling them in and teaching them exponentially. Hey guys, taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing sports nutrition partner, Legion. Legion makes the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, sports nutrition, recovery, and fat loss. I don't recommend many supplements. In fact, I think you can get the majority of the nutrition you need from a whole foods diet. But let's be honest, many of us are either on the go and need assistance, or quite frankly, we're not going to settle for average and we want to get the absolute most we can out of our training. So Legion is the company I go to for all of my supplement staples, whether it's creatine, which I get from their product Recharge, my protein that

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So head over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny to save on all your sports supplement needs. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one, fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good

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helping more people live a healthier life. Enjoy the episode. It's funny that you say that because I really had to self-organize around my early education experience because I had ADHD. I was diagnosed at Stanford when I was four years old. So I took Adderall up until I was about 11 years old as a way to try to focus in. And when I came off the Adderall, because I wasn't gaining weight and developing properly because it's such an appetite suppressant. I found ways to kind of gamify the educational experience to work with my brain. And so if there's a future in which we can use technologies to adapt the educational experience to kind of work with people's brain proclivity, that would be real encouraging because I struggled mightily to maintain focus and attention in that traditional classroom setting.

Unless we have a world ending, world destructive event, the future is incredibly bright. I think technology, AI will solve so many things, so many problems. so many things, so many problems. And I'm very, very, very optimistic, even in this realm of TikTok, where people are scared of all this noise. There's nothing in this universe stickier than reason. Yeah, yeah, it's it occupies 0.1% of the universe of the TikTok. But that 0.1% over time is more powerful than all the rest of the 99.9% of noise. Yeah, I agree with you there, man. So let's talk a little bit about exercise and the brain specifically. I'm an exercise junkie. That's what I do professionally. I try to guide my clients and the patients at our physical therapy studio through rehabilitative, strengthening, athletic

enhancing exercise. But one of the things I've noticed the most, and I'd say the majority of our population, our client population is over 50, are the cognitive enhancing effects of exercise. And I can't really verbalize it as well as you might, But what are the cognitive benefits of consistent regular exercise? How does exercise benefit the brain? I really understand how nutrition could. Every cell in your body is made out of something you eat. And we discussed the unique antioxidant effect of the greens, the lipid regulating effect, the glucose regulating effect. Exercise has a lot of those same effects.

Yes. But how is it uniquely beneficial for the brain? So let's organize it in this way. Let's organize it psychologically, motivationally, and neurologically. Love it. So first, motivational. I hate the word motivation because it's the it's the most demotivating term in in in language because it's not it doesn't have a denominator it doesn't have

anything that you can put levers on it's like saying push pull yourself by the bootstraps what do i do if i'm not motivated some of the best people i know had depression and they were not motivated they had or they didn't know where to start them so motivation is a useless um it's a selling tool instead of motivation vision that's clear and goals that come out of those that vision that are applicable they're smart specific measurable achievable relevant and timebound? And do you have reward systems that, in your own way, systematically inculcate this into your behavior? Wow, that's powerful. And nothing does that better than exercise.

Why? Because it's well-defined. I'm going to walk. I'm going to do a brisk walk every morning, 25 minutes. It's not as circuitous as food. It's not as even more circuitous and a little problematic as stress management or sleep, which is very difficult for a lot of people or even cognitive. Exercise is clear.

So when you do it, you check it off. It's literally a dopamine pump yeah i say the ship of emotion is moved by the tugboats of dopamine pump and nothing does that better than well-defined exercise routine gotcha that's one level that's motivation now let's get to motivation again the dopamine pathway there are three dopamine pathways in the brain. The one that's in the basal ganglia has two functions, movement and motivation connected. Do I need, I say more. No. Yeah.

So there, so that's directly connected. Motivation and movement are directly connected. And, and, and then the best antidepressant, the best anti-anxiety drug head-to-head against the best drugs is exercise yeah and i'm one of the ones that says those drugs work they work bluntly but they work i'm not against those when somebody needs it absolutely i would be the last to say don't use it it's it's it's a gimmicky thing when a doctor says, throw away all your drugs. That doctor should be reported. That doctor is just trying to sell themselves.

They're not trying to be anti-pharmaceutical. They're just trying to sell themselves. But there are things that are alternatives at times. Most of the time, there are things that can be tried before medication or as an adjunct as well as. that can be tried before medication or as an adjunct as well as. So exercise is the best anxiety drug, the best depression drug, the best focus drug because it works on the dopamine pathways that affect all of those, which then works on the serotonin pathway

which creates the long-term emotional ship, the long-term emotional state. I knew the minute you brought up the basal ganglia and the dopamine sensitivity of that region, because my dad has Parkinson's disease. So I'm fairly familiar with that particular brain region and the dopamine interaction. And there's one more, I believe that you said, there's the neurology of how exercise enhances the brain. Yeah. When you exercise, you release BDNF and GDNF, mostly BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which grows the connections between your neurons.

That's why in every study that you look at that had imaging, a brain that usually shrinks over time. For those who eat the standard American diet and live the standard American movement and standard American stress, their brains are shrinking after the age of 20. That's not a hyperbole. That's, that's data right there. But people who exercise at any age actually start growing parts of the brain and how to those connections.

And that matters more than anything else. So one of the first things we do, even though one of my masters is in nutrition, guess what? Exercise is the first thing. Why? Because of all of those three reasons. Because once you create that habit, you can stack all the rest of the habits on top of the exercise habit.

It has the power to hold it on its shoulders. Yeah. It's a real keystone habit for just a living, a more health. Why would you sacrifice? So I say, tell people, you know, the revolution of the 20th century was that we were able to compact calories in a small space, a donut, 700 calories. That's a lot of calories. Guess how much you have to run to get rid of that? Way too long. Yeah. So now you have a running habit or a walking habit.

And you know this fact about donut. Do you think you dare do that again? Or at least you will be less likely to do it. You're more likely to go for that shake that has protein powder or this or that or just regular food that has lots of protein and clean and all. So it's the ultimate key stone habit, ultimate stackable habit. So I love exercise from all of those reasons. Hey doc, real quick, I'm going to pause this here. I lost your video. I'm not sure if you're able to turn that back on for me. If not, we can continue without it. Sorry about that.

Hey, no worries. How did that happen? It's only been like three minutes. So it's perfect. I'm just putting a note here for my editor that at 1.02.30, we fixed the audio. What did I talk about? Oh, I can go over to exercise again. Oh, no, it's perfect.

I've got so much to pull from. This is fantastic. So we'll just pick up here from exercise is a keystone habit. Yeah. So if exercise is the positive keystone habit that works motivationally to kind of get you going, it makes it easier to stack those other wins. I see this a lot in my practice as well, working with weight loss clients. It's easier to start with exercise while being

somewhat weight agnostic and then approaching nutrition after you've seen a little success with exercise because it makes everything easier. It makes you feel better. It kind of raises the motivational level globally and non-specifically. You feel like you can do more hard things. Yeah. Does exercise also, and we talked about five things you need to do for your brain, exercise being one, challenging it being number five. Does learning a new exercise modality, like picking up a new physical skill, double dip into kind of both of those buckets? It does.

I'll approach it two ways. When you exercise and do one other activity, like for example, you're on a treadmill and you're learning or listening to some data, there is some data. I their cognition, they improve their learning and all of that. But how that can be applied in regular life, it's difficult. But learning a new exercise, absolutely. One thing that we had a physical trainer friend who was going with us, because for my book release, I tried to break some push-up record, I had a, for my book release, I tried to break some pushup record, never, never knowing, uh, you know, in any case, I, I tore the supraspinatus, actually both of them, but this one just came off the bone completely.

And it wasn't just from the pushups, but I had a fall earlier and then later as well. Um, nonetheless, um, so coming back after surgery like that i i wanted to make sure i was safe the one thing that he taught me was that yeah free weights are great machine they have they all have their advantages if you want to gain a lot of muscle and you know free weights and all that but then it has side of the problems that you could injure yourself and all so you have to have somebody with you but the the the method of multimodal exercises where you're doing exercise that actually cross references muscles uses different muscles it is incredible it also challenges your brain but also uses your muscles in ways that are more natural. So which means that it's going to help with these accessory muscles and things of that nature.

I'm getting a little on the sideline of the conversation, but that's something that from my own experience, yeah. No, it's beautiful because like in my field of strength and conditioning, we talk about intramuscular coordination, which is the brain's ability to coordinate all the motor units inside of a given tissue, but then intermuscular coordination, which is orchestrating all of the muscles or multiple

muscles working in concert. And I can imagine that movements that are multimodal or they're compound and they use a lot of muscles, that is asking a substantial amount of your brain to orchestrate. And learning new skills that are like that or repeating skills like that could only benefit your brain. Absolutely. So let's talk about then things that I think people do on a semi-regular basis that could potentially be deleterious to the brain. And we touched on alcohol already, but, and you said that one drink is enough to have negative implications on the brain. What, what would, what does the standard American alcohol consumption pattern do to the brain

over a lifespan? It shrinks the brain. It damages particular parts of the brain. It, um, it affects, um, um there are there are syndromes you know uh wernicke korsakoff syndrome yeah i actually have a family member who developed that yeah yeah it's a just terrible thing to watch and most of that is because people who drink alcohol they don't eat as the right food so they have thiamine deficiency vitamin deficiency things of that nature they affect their gi system which

means that b12 is affected b12 is an incredibly important vitamin for the brain um across the board your microbiome is affected which means that the uh the fatty acids that help with the brain blood brain barrier is affected which that's damaged i mean i can go on with the list of how many different ways alcohol affects yeah people worry about mouthwash and its effect on microbiome. Yes. Are you joking? You have a glass of alcohol. I saw this on Joe Rogan and I'm like, okay, that's, that's, why don't we talk about the

main thing, which is alcohol? Yeah. Which is the bacterial population of your mouth. Yeah. You're demolishing with one glass of alcohol, you're demolishing an entire colony of microbiome, which are there to help you. But nobody wants to talk about that because it's just too popular. Yeah. And it's a really good point how we miss the forest for the trees, because somebody might see a study that shows a unique decrease in nitric oxide production.

I know the exact clip you're talking about for Rogan, by the way, interestingly enough, because my girlfriend and I have discussions recurrently around my brushing duration, toothbrush duration. And so of course, I was like, all right, well, what can I do to shorten this? My brain working to make my life easier. I said, okay, mouthwash might be a nice intermediate here. Well, of course, I stumble across this clip about mouthwash eradicating the microbiome in your mouth and decreasing your body's ability to make nitric oxide. And I remember specifically when I saw that thinking, every time somebody drinks alcohol,

you're putting essentially mouthwash into your mouth, but then you're swallowing it and it's going sliding down all of your plumbing and everything it touches, all of the microbes that it touches are dying essentially instant deaths because what do you clean your countertops with? I was about to say, it's a detergent. It has an OH group at the end. What is the OH group? So it can bind the other hydrogens and break up cell walls of organisms. What organisms? Microorganisms. And yet people don't want to talk about that because it's not popular. People want to talk about the microbiome, but they don't want to talk about how bad alcohol is for it. Yes, but no, this is what they want to do. Tell me the pill that I can take

that can increase my microbiome. Yeah, exactly. There's no such pill. So alcohol, we understand to be uniquely deleterious. What about cannabis? I understand there's not as much research on cannabis because of the federal prohibition around it, but we know enough about how it affects

and works with the brain. What do we think about cannabis consumption long-term and its effects on the brain? Although you touched on it, I want to come back to it. We lost a great opportunity to study a drug that is neuroactive just because of our own biases. So it should be studied. It should be studied more for multiple reasons. And for God's sakes, don't, you know, let science do its work, you know? But having said that the data that exists right now shows that people who use, and then the quantity has not been determined where the line is. It's not like alcohol, like any amount of cannabis is bad for you,

but probably is bad, but it's not as bad as, but, um, people who use cannabis chronically, the data that exists shows that it affects their memory negatively. So that, that's what we do have. That's what we do have now, how it can be beneficial in different forms for, for mood, for other stuff that should be studied. Absolutely. And I think we're, we will find things, but at this, that should be studied. Absolutely. And I think we will find things. But at this point, this cannot be used as an argument to just go nuts with the cannabis

because the data shows chronic use of cannabis is damaging to your memory. Yeah. And we have those receptors for cannabinoids in our body. And one thing that I do know is that when you ingest cannabinoids, even if it's from a natural source, those receptors will be, they have a much higher affinity for the external cannabinoids. So there's some disruptive effect on the local cannabinoid, kind of endogenous cannabinoid interactions. And maybe we'll learn more about that as we go. No, that's brilliant. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. But that's brilliant,

because exogenous introduction of things might seem benign, but people don't recognize that there is a downregulation of receptors that goes on with all neuroactive and hormone driven mechanisms in the body. Meaning that if you bring something from outside, it might be effective, but if it's above the natural state, then the post receptors actually down regulated themselves. So now you've actually completely changed the mechanism. Now, I don't want to say anything more than that, because then we're extrapolating beyond the data. Sure.

No, but that's something I see a lot in the fitness and performance space is what happens when you introduce endogenous hormones and what that does to somebody's, or exogenous hormones and what that does to somebody's endogenous, not just hormone production, but also the receptivity for those hormones. not just hormone production, but also the receptivity for those hormones. And so if you have receptors for anything in your body, it's probably because you make something that binds to them. And if you introduce heavily concentrated things that could compete with that, like you said, until we can really study these things long-term, we won't know. And hopefully, we get to a place, at least at a federal level, where we can fund research that will allow this, but that will take reclassification of cannabis as a substance,

which is, we're closer than we've been in the past. So it could happen. I'm looking forward to that. And then the last drug, and people lose it a little bit when I call it a drug, but it's something that I've wondered about because I think normally what we look at caffeine, we look at how it affects the adrenals and you drink coffee, the adrenals pump out epinephrine, you get a little bit of a jolt, it binds to the adenosine receptor. But how does caffeine affect the brain? And are there levels of caffeine intake that could be deleterious to the brain? Because that's the drug that I think most people use every single day without really thinking about how it affects their body. So we have a complex relationship with

caffeine by we, I mean, me, me and wife we're so we've written papers that when we did reviews we said that the data at this point showed that caffeine is beneficial because the population based data shows that people who drink a lot of coffee had lower neurodegenerative diseases they had lower parkinson's they had lower especially with parkinson's they had lower but that's population-based data it's not wrong it's not bad i know that this new social media now says oh epidemiology is wrong how most of what we're doing around this is epidemiology there is no causal studies they're all correlational but the strength of correlation repeatability of correlation all that matters yeah but so so the data on the population level there seems to be

some benefit but with more nuance, we're finding out, of course, people with AFib shouldn't take it. Cardiac arrhythmias shouldn't take it. People with anxiety should have a different relation. People with sleep should have a different relation with it. Drinking in excess. And that has not been determined completely. Yeah.

Irrespective across the board seems to be uh some some harm um so our relationship is changing we're beginning to have to have more data we know that people that put sugar and and and fatty dairy and things like that the data's there that that's harmful but it's not just that so we're looking at it in a different way in fact in the last book we didn't even put it as one of the beneficial foods. We said there's some, you know, ambiguity around the data that needs to be explored. And we're okay. As scientists, if we don't know something, we don't fill it up with my own story. You know, I don't, we're figuring it out. So at this point, we've pulled back a little. And for some, for a large number of population we say that no it's it's something that they should avoid oh and and how it affects lipids how it affects your liver all of it so it's it's complex if you can if you haven't been drinking alcohol you should i mean well yeah alcohol and caffeine you don't need to start it for health if you're drinking it and

you're drinking a lot pull back a little and and drink it healthy without the sugar and all that. And at the low level, we're still trying to figure it out. Make sure that you don't have anxiety. That's a big one. Definitely no heart problems, things of that nature. So here's one that I think you could get into a pretty spirited debate about whether or not it's classifiable as a drug, but it definitely has a unique drug-like effect on the brain, and that is sugar. sugar intake to the brain? And is there a dose dependency? Meaning if I want to enjoy a relatively nutritious, healthful diet and I exercise, but I also occasionally would like to have something with some sugar in it, but I'm really conscious about my brain health. Should I be aware of my

sugar intake? Should I have a cutoff in terms of grams? If I go over a certain amount, what's happening to my brain? I saw you guys make some content around the type three diabetes terminology that people are using to describe Alzheimer's and some of the falsehoods around that. And so I wanted to definitely talk about sugar intake. Yeah. Yeah. So like everything else, it's a little bit of a three-dimensional chess. If you're exercising significantly that gives you leeway to be bad in many ways not that you would want to because once you start exercising you would want to do you wouldn't want to take away from that advantage but it gives you a little bit more leeway right sure it doesn't mean that that sugar isn't doing as much damage but it's going

to do less because the exercise metabolize more yeah exactly but in general sugar not carbs not carbs are not bad it's simple sugars processed carbs that are bad and even excess carbs but but but definitely processed carbs simple carbs are bad because never in history did you have access to free sugar even let's say you were in a place where there was a lot of fruits it was seasonal it was only one type and it always was bound to fiber that's why there's a difference between sugar between juice and fruit yeah i mean significant difference what the harm that fruit juice does is actually completely the other way when you eat the fruit yeah but then you also have to look at your own history if you have diabetes then you're more prone to even fruits that have a lot of sugar so you have to be but not as much but but you just have to be aware of it the fiber component

of foods really do protect you quite a bit um so so the three-dimensional component is if you have leeway you can do more damage to yourself. But remember, I'm saying damage. So sugar, there's nothing beneficial because that spike, actually what it does is we were talking about receptor offset. We did a study in Haines, which is one of the largest databases. It's a unique database of 34,000 nationally representative people. We had the pleasure to have access to it. And we looked at insulin resistance, not even diabetes.

We excluded diabetics and we looked at younger people than 65. Wow. So look at that. And then looked at a cognitive test that was done on them. And guess what? Even in that population, insulin resistance, not diabetes, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance had an effect on their cognition. And the relationship between that and sugar is very strong.

Yeah. And that goes back to what you said at the very beginning about blood sugar regulation being critical for brain health. It is. It is. And remember, before 150 years ago, the way we got sugar was always in carbs. Yeah. And the complex form. Tell me one way that it was not complex. Maybe somebody in sugar cane where they bit down on the sugar cane and all that came was water and sugar. But how often is that? Yeah, it's literally that or you took down a beehive. That's like, those are the only two ways that like evolutionary homo sapien was getting his sugar fix the way we do now. Correct. And then we don't even have data on what happened to those people. You know, the Eskimo stories for a long time, they said, oh, look at Eskimos. All they eat is saturated fat. Yeah.

And they're fine. Well, the data showed they were not fine. They were massively affected as far as cardiovascular system. So which comes to our first conversation about evolution and us looking at the past and this natural fallacy that what was happening before was somehow healthier. It was not, you wouldn't want to live in 15th century, I assure you. So this is a question that I'm, it's a little bit of a personal question because I'm a pretty dogmatic about supplementing with creatine for muscular performance. But recently, I'd say within the last like five to 10 years, there's a new body of evidence emerging around creatine and brain health and the role that creatine could play in cognition, preventing cognitive decline, even treating TBI. And I don't need you to go too detailed into it, but do you find creatine to be potentially promising, especially as somebody

who is a vegan plant-based? Yeah. So we've looked into it quite a bit. And I can't speak a lot about it. And not in the sense that I haven't looked into it because there isn't a lot of data. But I think there is trends towards it. And that's good enough. So it means that we need to study it more. There seems to be some evidence,

especially for people who work out. There seems to be some evidence, especially for people who work out. So being completely transparent as a vegan, like you said, I'm not going to be dogmatic. And I'll tell you, if tomorrow they said, take the we have absolute evidence, not social media evidence. Some guy who puts butter in their coffee was's an engineer and says eat this and that no it's people who have done studies and then other people who are not even connected to them have replicated the studies and they've deployed then if they say take these 10 things i'll take it because the future is going to be supplemented i can assure you not today future will be supplemented but in the meantime though um we should look into that we

know that we need more protein than we thought as for people who exercise for vegans we have to be a little more aware although protein is protein protein is as good as anything else but be aware of protein you need more if you want to build muscle or if you want to maintain muscle which is incredible we didn't talk about this and exercise. One of the most important factors about maintaining vitality as you age, one of the most, no, the most important thing as far as maintaining vitality when your age is maintaining muscle tone, muscle capacity. Why is that so valuable for your brain?'ll tell you for for no for for not just

your brain people who live healthier their their metabolism is better they are they're more stable they have less falls which is the number one thing that gets people in the hospital they they have more brain volume they have i mean the list goes on and on and on and and and they seem younger they feel younger they they're everything in every sense and on and on. And they seem younger. They feel younger. They're everything in every sense. And as much as when you were younger working out and you thought it was important and you know why you were doing it because you wanted to go to the club and find a girlfriend. Not you, of course. But when you get older, I don't know what your demographics are as far as your audience.

A little bit of everything. Workout. Workout. Workout. Number one, start some weight training. Make sure you do it safely. Make sure when you get older, you get shoulder injuries. Make sure that you stretch.

I was in tennis, soccer, football. Never stretched. Terrible coach. But never got injured. Well, one injury. But when you get older, you get injured, stretch, be aware, but work out. Working out is the one thing that's going to maintain your youth. Come to Daniel, let him guide you. This is the way to go. So here's my kind of last question for you, just to wrap things up. This has been really informative. You said the future is supplemented.

Are there any supplements that have a robust enough evidence basis that you would recommend them for somebody who's looking to give their brain what it needs to thrive? give their brain what it needs to thrive? Robust enough? No. Okay. But when we wrote the two papers on omega-3, we said that the reason that the data is not robust is because the research does not avail itself to the ultimate outcome. And the trends look very strong.

And the fact that the only fat that the brain needs, not all these people who say, oh, the brain is made of fat, therefore it needs fat. They have no, no. The only fat that your brain needs is omega-3. And so for transparency, again, we take omega-3, quite a bit of it, because it appears that at higher doses, it's beneficial. I don't care what you take. If you don't want to take it, take it through food. If you're, if you know, we take even food, chia, flaxseed, nuts. If you're eating fish, that's, you know, that's a way I rather you don't, but that's, that's the way to get it or supplement. We supplement because we think it's that important. Our kids,

we have a 15 year old and a 17 year old. They're both finishing college. They've all their life. They've been working very hard with our academics and they've been supplemented with omega-3. Algae based omega-3. Yeah. We take algae base. Yeah.

And, and B12, if, if, if your B12 is, even if it's normal, but on the lower side, B12,

especially as you get older. And then if you, a lot of population has vitamin D deficiency, at least check it. If it's on the lower side b12 especially as you get older and then if you a lot of population has vitamin d deficiency at least check it if it's on the lower side vitamin d um and so far the data shows that people are going to make all kinds of claims that now the trend towards curating is there there's a signal not as strong as omega-3 and all of these other things I said. There's a signal. We should keep an eye. We should look at it. So that's basically where we are at this point. Well, Dr. Shirzai, that's unbelievably helpful, super informative. If I come across anything that I think looks good or not so good about creatine in the brain, I'll be sure to send

it to you because I'd love to hear how that shifts in the next couple of years and see if we can get to a more definitive stance. But thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody who's listening to this find you, find your work and do what they need to do to take care of their brain? Yes, on social media, we're the Brain Docs,

D-O-C-CS, the brain docs. We also have this academy community, which because of behavioral, we know that the community component is the most important. It's the neuroacademy.com. We have hundreds of people where we on a daily basis, we give them information. There's live sessions on cooking, on exercise and all of that stuff on neuroacademy. sessions on cooking on exercise and all of that stuff on neuroacademy and um we uh oh and our non-for-profit which is our passion in the communities is healthymindsinitiative.org where we just won the national academy of medicine award for our work in the african-american churches

and communities and that's our passion if you want to go help there and join and participate and volunteer and help that's our passion that's who we are go help there and join and participate and volunteer and help. That's our passion. That's who we are. Fantastic doctor. Thank you so much for your time. And we'll chat soon. Much love.