Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Brain Health and Longevity | Max Lugavere

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Max Lugavere, a filmmaker, health and science journalist and author of the The Genius Life and the New York Times best-seller Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life.Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. After his mother was diagnosed with a mysterious form of dementia, Max put his successful media career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance.For the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and visited the country’s best neurology departments—all in the hopes of understanding his mother’s condition. Sometimes with the non-traditional route of education, I have my doubts, as there's something to be said about formal training.But Max’s purpose is clear – he knows what he’s talking about and offers some very practical strategies that you can begin implementing today. We discuss how critical diet is for both brain health and longevity – Max shares his nutritional recommendations and some tips for preparing healthy meals regularly._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. I would say the most powerful motivator that I've ever had in my life to do anything has been my mom's illness. And so to me, I'm just, I'm highly motivated, highly incentivized to understand why she got sick for any semblance of closure that I can get on what I experienced with her, but then also to prevent it from ever happening to myself. So I care about fitness, but I'm not obsessed with macros and achieving a certain body fat percentage. I'm not as interested in that. I enjoy working out.

I work out mostly for my mental health and just so that I can feel good. But generally, I'm interested in longevity. I'm interested in brain health. And under that purview falls cardiovascular health, falls body composition, falls metabolic health, falls all that stuff. There's no bottom to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who have committed

their life efforts towards mastery. We want to better understand how they use their mind. What is their thinking like? How do they organize their inner life? How do they make sense of the world around them? And then if we dig underneath, what are the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft? And if you want to learn more about how to train your mind, this is just a quick little reminder at the top to check out the online course that I created with head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Pete Carroll, at findingmastery.net forward slash course. You get $50 off by being part

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One a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to

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And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life. When you head to davidprotein.com slash Finding Mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash Finding Mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Max Lugavere. He's a filmmaker, a health and science journalist, and the author of The Genius Life and the New York Times bestseller Genius Foods. Become smarter, happier, and more productive

while protecting your brain for life. So Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachel Ray Show, and the Doctors. And after his mother was diagnosed with a quote-unquote mysterious form of dementia, Max put his career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance. And for the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and he visited the country's best neurology departments, all in the hopes of understanding his mother's condition. Now, sometimes with the non-traditional route

of education, my antenna perk, and I start to have my doubts. There's something to be said about the formal training to say, okay, there's some basic gates that people have crossed through with this formal education. And in this case, I wanted to make an exception. Max's passion is clear. His approach is clear. His deep interest in science for the purpose of application is clear. And when I double click and triple click under his thinking, he knows what he's talking about. And he offers some very practical, available strategies that you can begin implementing today as well. So we discuss how critical diet is for both brain health and longevity, and Max shares his nutritional recommendations, and then some ideas for preparing healthy meals on a regular basis. And with that, let's jump right into this

conversation with Max Lugavere. Max, how are you? I'm good. Good to be here. Yeah, cool. All right. So you've taken a deep dive. You've got a non-traditional route to arrive at a set of principles and some insights and practices that have a unique takeaway because you weren't classically trained in neuroscience. And I think your undergraduate degree was in psychology. Yeah. Well, it was a double major. I double majored in documentary filmmaking and psychology, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, that's a good blend. Right? The arc of story and the insights of humans. And yeah, good. That'll be fun to talk about. And, and it's really interesting to me that you, for me,

you represent this emblem of a nimble learning, laser sharp focused approach to getting better. And it's like you use the internet to better understand something that you want to go after. And now when I say that out loud, there's an asset and a potential trap, right? And I want to talk about both of those, the asset being the accelerant to learning and not having the, I don't know, some sort of muddled path that doesn't take you exactly where you want to go. And then the trap, obviously there's, this is the big one is that not necessarily hardened by the history of the research that a professor or university might want you to have, you know, like that ability to discern good science, tested science, great researchers, ones that are on the fringe. And so that we have to navigate our own way through there. And so I want to talk about both of those because you represent something

really unique that's happening right now for people. And so, um, does that sound like, like the, the path that, um, you want to go down as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thank you for, I I'm excited about, you know, the conversation. Um, and you know, when, when, uh, the opportunity arose to sit down with you, I thought that that was a really cool opportunity because I often get asked kind of cookie cutter questions, which, um, you know, you kind of, you develop mastery when you're asked the same question over and over again. But yeah, I, I think my path, um, it has been unique, uh, to say the least. And, um, I think my path, it has been unique to say the least. And I think it can leave certain people confused, but other people can, you know, I've found draw inspiration from it.

And so walking that line and kind of talking about the ins and outs, you know, the upsides and the pitfalls of taking the path that I've taken. Yeah, it's an exciting prospect. Yeah taking the path that I've taken. Um, yeah, it's an exciting prospect. Yeah. So you and I hold different emblems, right? Like I went long and deep in the educational path, right? Licensed as a psychologist, which not everyone knows, but that's a undergraduate graduate and then PhD program and then licensed. And then you went totally nimble and, and said, I'm going to go get the information from this interweb place that holds a lot of information. And I'm going to source it that way. But let's start with how you grew up. And let's start with your story of your mother.

Yeah, for sure. It's like, as a psychologist, I pause saying like, are we really going to go to mom? But your story is unique about mom. It involves my mom. It involves my mom. Certainly. Um, yeah, so I grew up, uh, I mean, I guess, you know, what you probably want to know about is like my, is my academic background and why, despite having a passion, a very public passion for health and wellness, I didn't go the pre-medical route. When I was in school, throughout my schooling as a kid and as an adolescent, I had a very unique experience in school. My grades were never great, but the teachers always loved me, which I found to be a

very strange state of affairs because usually you would think that if your grades are not good, your teachers aren't going to like you. But I always struggled with, um, I struggled with certain aspects of my executive function. I was a big procrastinator. I was not, I would always put off, you know, my, my, my projects and studying to the last minute. In fact, I didn't really like studying. It was, it was rare that I, um, actually studied for tests and exams and things like that. But despite that, I've always been passionately curious and I've always had a tendency towards being an autodidact, meaning self-taught. And there were, there were areas in my life where I've taught myself various topics, even like, like, well, when I was, when I was a child, I was an early adopter of

like the internet, which sounds kind of strange, but this was like the mid-90s. And I gravitated towards the internet, and I actually developed a mastery over web design and web development at a time when nobody else was doing this. I was actually, my first appearance ever on TV, national TV was, um, on a show called in the mix on PBS, where they highlighted me as being a prodigy for a computer development at a time when, when nobody was, you know, few people enough were on the internet, but I actually learned how to create websites and I was actually offering it as a service to local businesses in New York city, which is where I grew up at age. What age? I was 14, 14. So 14, you had a bit of a tinkerer approach, right? You're going to self

learn if you will about that. And you were recognized for it. And did you have a business as well? I, it wasn't like a formal business, but it was something that I was just getting like lunch money for as a 14 year old. Yeah. Okay. So therein lies kind of your three of your crown jewels, right? One is that self-starting curious approach. Um, and then not only self-starter, but like self-maintaining, you know, how to figure out some competency, a little bit of business and a little bit of TV. Yeah. Right. And that's kind of where you're, those are the three crown jewels, at least for right now. But when I think about you, I think that there's at least one more, which is probably compassionate empathy. And back to your mom. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what was money

like growing up? Oh, you're good. Um, money was, this is the training at play. What was money like? Um, am I going to be paying you after this? No, you're not. So money growing up. The sponsors pay. Yeah, so we get a free ride. It's great. It's great. The money was, I was very fortunate.

I grew up in New York City. So right there, I was very lucky to have been born in that environment. And my parents were entrepreneurs. They came from nothing, but they created a business that in the 80s and 90s did very well. And so growing up, they... What type of business? They were in what's called the schmatza business, the garment center in New York City. So they were...

Are you Jewish? Yeah. Yeah. And do you guys practice? No. Well, no, my mom did. She did. My dad was always kind of an atheist, but culturally, my family was very Jewish. It's really funny. Is your family practice? No. Well, no, my mom did. She did. My dad was always kind of an atheist, but culturally my family was very Jewish.

That's really funny. Are you, is your family Jewish? Yes. But my dad's an atheist. Yeah. Right. Okay. But so was Judaism part in the practices and ID ideology around it?

Was that part of the family dynamic? Uh, it was. Yeah. My fam, my parents are very Jewish. They're not, I mean, the thing about being a Jew is kind of an ethnicity and there's like this long cultural, well, there's two parts, right? Sometimes they overlap, which is the ethnic cultural and then the spiritual practices. Yeah. Sometimes they don't over, over, overlap, but listen, I'm in dangerous territory cause I'm not Jewish. And so, uh, teach

me. No, you're right. You're right. Um, they don't always overlap. Sometimes they do, but yeah, I've never been religious. Um, I've always been, I describe myself today as being a spiritual atheist. I mean, I'm spiritual, uh, but I, I don't, I'm not a theist. I don't believe in a man's sky. I don't really, you know, I mean, I'm not kosher and nothing, nothing like that. Um, but culturally I connect very much to the plight of my, you know, and I'm using air quotes, my people, I don't really believe in, in labels that divide people. You know, I grew up, I, when I was 18, I discovered the work of Krishnamurti and it changed my view on who's this Jiddu Krishnamurti. He's an, he's like a guru. He's like sort of the anti-guru guru. One of his most well-known ideas is that truth is a pathless land,

that you really have to come to your spiritual truth through self-reflection and through letting go of cultural conditioning. And we're conditioned to be – I'm conditioned to be male, white, American, Jewish, whatever. And really, truth doesn't have labels. So that's sort of, those are, those are kind of like the more Eastern tinged philosophies that I gravitated to spiritually. But, um, but culturally I feel pretty Jewish. I was born in New York city. My parents were in the garment center. Um, we, you know, that we threw around Yiddish words in my house growing up, you know, um, what are some of the, your favorite ones, the Yiddish words, because there's such a

zip with them. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's, there's so many, uh, and, and I don't really use them that much in my life, but, uh, but I appreciate them for the nostalgia value. Um, you know, one of them, and it's actually a term that I talk about, there's a section in the book, it's kind of in the back of the book, but it's actually a term that I talk about. There's a section in the book, it's kind of in the back of the book, but it's like, I want to leave my readers with some of the principles that my mom instilled in me. And one of them, uh, it's essentially don't be a

schnur. A schnur is a Jewish, it's a, it's a Yiddish word and it basically means sponge. Don't be a sponge, you know, suck everything in. Yeah. Don't take, you know, generosity is amazing thing. Oftentimes we're on the receiving end of it. Um, don't take you know generosity is an amazing thing oftentimes we're on the receiving end of it um don't be a sponge when you're on the receiving end of generosity you know don't take advantage of anybody oh cool um schner yeah there's just ch n-e-r n-o-r-r-e-r i think there you go yeah okay so it's like a yiddish word so like so is that's a to me not knowing yiddish i don't know it it seems like this mate it seems like a Yiddish word. So like, that's a, to me, not knowing Yiddish, I don't know it. It seems like this may,

it seems like a made up, you know, word, but is it a little bit like, but that's a real word in, in the ethnic cultural community of Judaism. Right. So that's not an uncommon word that mom made up.

No, it's not. Right. That's right. Like, because my grandmother, she, she's made up some words now. Right. And we, we, we've got a phrase for those types of words, but this is not a family word. This is a Yiddish word. Yeah. It's a Yiddish word. And my family,

my family didn't, my grandma spoke a little bit of Yiddish, but my mom and dad didn't speak a lick of it other than these words that are just kind of in the, in the cultural lexicon. Okay. Hit me with one core principle of your family. Um, a core principle would be honesty. Second one, uh, kindness. Third one. Um, I would say empathy. And yeah, there you go. And then who were you thinking about when you said those words? My mom. That all came from mom. Yeah. Okay okay so much of your life has been around the influence of your mom and then the i don't know if it's protection but the wanting to help her when she got sick is that right so much of your life is revolved around mom which is interesting from your jewish

perspective um because mom holds such a powerful place in the family. Do I have that right? Yeah. And so what did she hold for you? Like what was, what kind of space did she hold for you? Well, I mean, I was in many ways a mama's boy, you know, like whatever that, that term means. I just, I loved my mom and I listened to my mom and I, you know, me and my mom, we, we had an affection, you know, that I think at least from what I witnessed with my peers growing up, it was not super common, not as common as you would expect. Um, and my mom had very strong, uh, values. You know, my mom had a, she had a strong, she had a strong personality. Um, it wasn't an overbearing personality, but it was, uh, she had a point of view and she instilled it in me and my brothers.

And, and she, she really had a firm constitution that I think wasn't, wasn't perfect. You know, I mean, people of her generation, they're not, you know, they have some ideas that are maybe not as great as others, but, um, but, you know, empathy, caring, caring for others, lending a hand, being brave, being kind. Um, these are all, these are all attributes that I think, um, really meant a lot in my house to be, for example, to be called a liar was one of the worst things that you could call somebody. If you were not telling the truth and you've, and you became a liar in my house, that would be like, that's like the worst thing that you could, you can call somebody. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team,

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When did you decide that you're going to go to school for psychology? So I started school. So I was, even though my grades were never great, I was always very curious. Teachers loved me. I was also always in the honors program. So I was, I always went to schools, public schools. So my parents paid nothing for my education through high school. But I was always placed in the honors program because of my, I guess, intellectual curiosity, capacity, potential is a word that I always heard thrown around.

I always had a lot of potential, but I never reached it. Did you like that word? It cuts both ways for people. Really? I just heard it so much growing up. Max has a lot of potential. We just wish that he would be, you know, making more efforts to attain it, to reach it. And what would you do with that?

Nothing. Go back to like coding and playing video games. And yeah, for some people it's like, yeah, I got, I got something in me, you know, like, and then for some people it's like yeah i got i got something in me you know like and then for some people it's like man i got big expectations around me you know it goes

the other way but for you it was more neutral it was just like a little bit noisy like okay that's great i think what i prioritized i i always wanted to be um i wanted to be liked i wanted to have have friends. And, uh, and that I think to me held precedence, um, over getting good grades and things like that. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I did suffer at times. I, you know, I wish that my grades were better and I tried, but I would just always default back to my baseline mediocrity in terms of my academic performance. Okay. What was the hardest thing that you've been through? This is just color and tone until we get to your insights, but what was the hard things that you've been through in life? Oh man. Um, well, I think for a while it was figuring out what, what, what I was meant to do, um, what my path was. Um, I've, uh, a lot of people, I think, struggle to find their

passions. I'm somebody who's always had a lot of passion. My mom's had a lot of passion. And, and for me, I felt, I felt similarly in that I, there were always things that I loved, but I just couldn't figure out what to actually do to like what to apply, how to apply myself. You know, max doesn't apply himself that's like that's that was part of the narrative that was part of the narrative yeah so that was more of a soul searching self-discovery process and the hard part of that for you was the not knowing the anxiousness on the other side of it is that right it's so you didn't have like some of the other more dramatic stuff which is i didn't have like some of the other more dramatic

stuff, which is, I didn't have money. I was kicked out of my home. I, you know, didn't have shoes like that type of hardship. You had more of the anxiousness, um, that surrounded not knowing. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Um, that's one of the luxuries of having some basic needs met is that we get to figure out like a muse about how do i belong yeah what what is my purpose maslow's hierarchy of needs there you go right that's a really important function i was very lucky in that i was allowed to self-actualize um i was allowed to i was and i also um because i had money growing up um it never, money never became something that, that I really cared all that much about. My parents worked very hard so that I would know the value of a dollar.

They, the last thing that my parents would ever want to do is spoil me, even though I got what I, what I wanted for the most part. Um, you know, there were things, there were things that I distinctly remember from my childhood where I wouldn't get. They wouldn't give me what I wanted specifically to teach me that you can't always have what you want and that, you know, a dollar is still meaningful even though we're very lucky. Parents were hard or soft? Yeah, my parents were – my parents were like – my dad was soft. My dad would give me, you know whatever i wanted my mom was a little bit more firm and then my grandmother who played a very dominant uh role in my grandma was always around during my upbringing she lived through the depression and she had she had no money for her

childhood and she actually was a brilliant businesswoman so she actually was able to make money um through brilliant means she you know, first of all, she didn't graduate high school and she was a woman and any money, every, any, um, money she was ever able to amass, she invested in the stock market. And despite that, despite actually making a nice little nest egg for herself, I remember she would, um, every day she would pick me up from, from, from school and bring me to Hebrew school, which is where I learned, you know, how to like get my bar mitzvah, which is something that you do when you're, when you're a Jewish kid at the age of 13. And she would, I would, she would always take me to get an afterschool snack. She would get me a slice of pizza and a soda. And I always

wanted, I always wanted a second slice because I loved pizza growing up and she would never, she would never let me have it. It's just too much. Yeah, there you go. Okay. All right. So I'm getting a tone. I'm getting a flavor for it. Um, you're the oldest or middle oldest. Okay. And then I want to understand, um, honesty for just a minute, right? Because there's something very powerful about your position that you're going to go search the interwebs for content and knowledge that is going to help others. There's a great responsibility for that because you're not standing on the shoulders of giants that have been gone through the filter, like from formal education, but they've done great research, right? And I'm making some leaps

because I don't know exactly yet. And so the honesty is actually going to be really important. And so I'd like to know a time that you were not honest. You've lied, right? Oh, man. You've got yourself in trouble in some sort, right? Yeah. Let's say 98% of the time you're honest. What are the two percenters like?

Man, well, once I got in trouble first, I got in trouble a few times for stealing as a kid. Um, I, uh, you know, I grew up in New York city and I always had, I was always, I always had good friends, but sometimes we got into trouble and there was one, um, one of the big things in my life growing up where I got, where I got in a lot of trouble was I, me and two friends, a guy and a girl, um, we were in third grade, but, uh, and at the time we had a teacher. So this didn't involve jail. This didn't involve jail. Third grade, back in third grade, I stole some cookies. Yeah, no, I didn't have milk. It was pretty bad. It was pretty bad. We basically like, there was a teacher,

her name was Mrs. Strand. And she would give people these like toys when they would do good things. And you know, when they would get good grades, they were like the equivalent of like what you would get in your Happy Meal at McDonald like those kinds of toys and she had a whole closet full of them and there was a period of she liked happy meals she like maybe she yeah yeah okay saving all the toys yeah um but me and my two friends we found out that when she would bring the students down to the schoolyard to get picked up every day after school she wouldn't lock the door she wouldn't lock the door. She wouldn't lock the main door. Yeah. And so me and my two friends, we found, we, we discovered that. And then we would sneak up, um, every day after, uh, after, you know, school was out. And, um, when she was still down in the yard and we would go and we were like basically break into the, to the classroom, the door was

open, but we would then go into our closet and we we started like stealing the toys and um but but here's the thing so this is another testament to my mom my mom one day we were uh packing up she was like going through my bag to to make sure that i had like my homework in it she opened up my bag she saw all these toys and I'm not a good, I've never been a good liar. So she asked me what, why the toys were there, you know, and, and what I forget, obviously I forget what I said, but whatever I said was not convincing. And my mom actually ratted me out. My mom called the school. She told my teacher, she got me and my friends in trouble. And, uh, that was like a big thing. Like you're traumatized by that experience. I had almost the same story. Really? Yeah. It was like third grade. And, um, there's a developmental thing that's probably happening in third grade and I can walk through some of those things in a minute, but it was a third grade and I was making money at school. And I, first this is a longer story, but some folks that are familiar

with it will recognize I was selling these hot beans, these beans that I found, I was selling for a quarter. It was really good. And I got in a little trouble for that. And then I figured out like, and I got suspended for it. Right. But, but my parents actually kind of rewarded me for it. They're like, nice job, kid. You know, like you figured out a resource that was limited. You were the only one that knew the source and you had this kind of thing and you had to sell it like interesting. And so they're like, okay, it's okay that you got suspended. Like you're trying things out. And so then I started, I came back maybe a couple of weeks later. I don't have the timeline. Right.

And I was selling candy. Now remember the hubba bubba Bubba? Yeah. Do you remember? Right? There's like five pieces in a pack. Yeah. And the pack was 25 cents. Oh, they were so good. Yeah, they were so good. They still make them now.

And I was selling each little cube for 25 cents. So that's a good margin. Wow. So here's where it went wrong. Is that I thought, you know what? Why am I paying for this? I could make a hundred percent margin if I stole the packs. Oh man.

I know. Good job. Like, I mean, I got, so I had fistfuls of money in this, like these shoe boxes. I was just selling. And like all the kids were bringing quarters and dollars and my pockets were full of them. And then, so I got in trouble. My mom was like, where'd you get all this money? Wow.

And so I had to go give. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I had to go give all the candy back to the store. And like your mom, she called the school and let them know that like put a stop to this. It's not right. It's not good behavior. And so I went back to, it was Thrifty. Is there still Thrifty's? I went back to Thrifty.

It was the place I was stealing. Sorry, Thrifty. And I gave them a big whole thing of candy back. And they looked at my mom, like, what are you guys doing? We can't take food back. Like, you know, like what have you done to this food? You know, like, thanks kid. And so they wouldn't take it. They, what they probably should have done is take it and look, give me this weird look, you know, like bad behavior kid. So we went back with it and I was like, Mom, do I get to keep this? I mean, obviously I didn't. There's something in that young age that exploring is really important. Pushing boundaries is really important.

I agree. It seems like we both had good moms. Principle based. There you go. I mean, yeah. Principal based. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Okay. So let's do this. Let's pivot to, um, your mom getting sick. So, I mean, as you can tell, uh, I've always been very close with my mom. I went into, well, a little bit, you know, just more of the backstory so that you really understand. I, when I, I grew up really interested in computer science and programming and things like that, but I ended up discovering fitness and health and nutrition. And as like a computer programmer, introvert, at the time in high school, I really gravitated to fitness as a way of transcending myself at the time. What were you looking for? What did you

want from being more fit? Well, I was never, I was never an athlete. I wouldn't say that it was, um, motivated by insecurity or anything like that. I just genuinely, there's a really cool article on cnn.com. It's the only, it's the only, um, news site that's ever kind of like talked about this overlap. You might be able to explain it, but there's a, there's a very, um, large and counterintuitive overlap between gamers and programmers and bodybuilding, which is strange because you think of bodybuilders being like jocks and I wasn't a jock growing up, but I had this like sort of analytical, you know, brain that really liked debugging and iterating and tinkering as, as you mentioned. And so when I discovered fitness and how I could

kind of do the same things that I was doing with my keyboard, but in my body and see it reflect better in the mirror and, you know, lead to me having greater confidence in, in school with my peers, that just was like dopamine city for me. Um, and so I ended up really, really loving that. And that led to me starting college as a pre-medical, uh, student. I was like biology. So pause for a minute. What you're looking for was a way to feel better about yourself. Yeah.

Right. So you're using your, what other people thought of you was important, important enough to do some work on yourself. And then when you saw the change, you liked the change and then you liked the way you would speak to yourself about the change. Yeah. As I mentioned, I wanted people to like me. I found that by starting to work out and getting better looking, more confident, it led to people.

I started to get more attention. But then my programmer brain really enjoyed the fact that I could read about the science of bodybuilding and iterate it in my own health. And it just felt kind of cool that I was like a system just like anything else. And that led to me starting college actually on a pre-medical route. Halfway through college, though, I realized a love of storytelling and creativity and ended up switching my double major to film and psychology. So I didn't go into medicine. Um, but because as I mentioned, I grew up with Maslow's hierarchy of needs covered. It was for me, it was all about self-actualization pursuing my passions. It really wasn't ever about money. And so even though becoming a doctor would have probably been the better financial decision.

I was just following my bliss as Joseph Campbell, you know, always says. And so I ended up switching my double major, switching my major to a double major in film and psychology. And that ended up with me getting a job, an amazing dream job, working for Al Gore for six years as a journalist on a TV network that he founded in 2005 called Current TV. And I did that for six years, living in L.A., far from my mom, but every week calling my mom on the phone, giving her updates on my life, asking for career advice and what have you, you know, the, the geographical distance from my mom, um, was hard, but, uh, you know, I'm a big boy and I was, I had this amazing job. She was proud of me and she could put on her TV every single night and see me. So it was amazing. You're on, on air, on air, on camera. This is 21, 2000, 2005. Yeah. I was 22, 23. Um, and what were you covering? What were you saying on air and doing on there? Basically?

I mean like anything and everything that was like news that was relevant to younger people, um, the millennial audience. I mean, topics that I was interested in, certainly some of them, but then topics that I had no, I've never been interested in politics, but I got to talk about politics and things like that. You know, and I, it was a way for me to stretch my brain and learn how to convey topics that are a little more, more delicate in nature to a wide audience. It was an amazing, it was like journalism grad school, but instead of having to pay to go, they, it paid me a small salary and I got to live in LA and I was on TV and I got to enjoy the young Hollywood vibe. It was, it was really a dream job.

Um, that lasted about six years. And, uh, when I left the network, I was sort of in this period in my, in my professional life where I didn't know what I was going to do next. Um, and I seized that opportunity to spend more time in New York city home with my mom. Um, cause it was about six, seven years. I would see her once, twice, maybe three times a year, um, for about six years while I was doing this, this job. And I relished the opportunity to spend more time with my mom. So it was about that time. It was like 2010, 2011 where there were some changes to, you know, my mom would start talking about doctor's appointments and things like that. And, you know, for a younger person hearing their parents talk about their health, it really goes in one ear and out the other. Because you just kind of assume that older people are going to have health problems or, or health issues. We, I think often assume that this is just par for the

course of getting older, but my mom would start to complain about brain fog and things like that. And I had no frame of reference to understand this. I mean, I studied psychology in school, but I mean, I didn't know anything about dementia. I, you know, I knew about, you know, my, my favorite course was abnormal psych, but it's not like my mom was, um, you know, just like presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia or anything like that. You know, it was, it was just like this sort of, uh, amorphous, you know, these amorphous complaints about her cognitive function. And ultimately I, I started to spend more and more time in New York City. Me and my brothers kind of noticed the same thing that there was my mom had a change to her

cognition. There was a change to her gait, which is how a person walks. And it was in we were the whole family was in Miami, actually, where my mom formally announced to the family that she began to see a neurologist. And I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative disease. So this was just something that, you know, we had no frame of reference to interpret. We didn't even believe her at first. We thought that she was just attention seeking. And so I remember it was during that trip to Miami, we were kind of poking fun at her and my dad, my parents are separated, but you know, they, they were together during that one trip to Miami, um, from across the living room. He was like, yeah, well, if you know, you're having problems with your, with your brain,

what year is it? What's the year? And my mom couldn't recall the year. And she started to cry actually. And my mom, she likes attention, but she, you know, it wasn't often that we would see her crying growing up. And that was for me the moment where it was sort of like the record stopping. Um, everything kind of changed and I knew that I had to step in and intervene because I was the only person in my family. I was the oldest. I had the closest relationship with her of my, of, you know, um, I was closer with my mom than my two siblings and my mom and dad were, were divorced and separated. So me with this passion in health, this brain that, you know, like I think I've always had a penchant for science and health and nutrition is just a topic

that I'd been into for a very long time at that point. I realized that if anyone, if anybody was going to step in and help my mom in the family, that it, it had to be me. And I was happy to do it because I love my mom. And so I decided to move back to New York from LA and I started going with her to doctor's appointments. And we started in New York. We went to NYU and then Columbia. We went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, really couldn't find a diagnosis for her. Ultimately, we had to fly to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio because they're known for taking on complex medical cases. They assemble a team around the patient. And it was there for the first time that my mom was prescribed drugs for a neurodegenerative condition. She was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. And that to me, it was the first time in my life I'd ever

had a panic attack. Um, just Googling the drugs, you know, consulting Dr. Google. And again, I knew nothing about any of these conditions back then. This was, um, did you have a full on panic attack or were you saying like, I believe based on what I know about panic attacks. So that's what I had. Usually they feel like you're going to die. Like your heart's pounding, you're sweating. Yeah. There's a thing where it feels like you, you know, full panic. Yeah.

It was like that scene in, um, you ever see saving private Ryan? The first scene on the beach where all the audio fades out except for a very high pitched tone and the guy's looking around for his own arm. It was that scene for me. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. That, that to me is what a panic attack felt like. So that set the course for you to go study?

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them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20 off your first order that's caldera lab c-a-l-d-e-r-l-a-b.com slash finding mastery you know what's interesting about dementia is that there's good research but it's it's a frontier understanding right now like even some of the brightest neuroscientists and, you know, like there's some good understanding of the brain, but I wouldn't say great. And I say that with an asterisk because the last I looked deep into the research was about four years ago. And a lot's happened, I'm sure, for four years. But there's an institute that I was, I don't want to say formative with, but I was early on the board called the Institute of Neuroinnovation and dementia was kind of the root of it. So we were,

we raised, Dr. Amir Vokshar was the founder of it and he's raised good money, good awareness around it, certainly in the Los Angeles area. So I've got some perspective on dementia, um, you know, but not, I don't think where you've been, I know some of the recent stuff, so I'm, I'm stoked to learn. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a topic that I've been, I've had tremendous exposure to. Um, I mean, I, you know, from, from the side of the patient, from, from where my mom was, from going and being with my mom in all of her doctor's visits, to really exposure on the academic side as well. I mean, I never misrepresent myself. I don't have a PhD. I didn't go to medical school, but I've been able to co-author peer-reviewed literature.

I've participated in research studies. I've collaborated. Um, I've become colleagues with some of the researchers that have become my mentors in the field. Who are some of the folks that you're like, if you want to understand some of the cutting edge, some of that bleeding edge, uh, innovations, who are you looking at? I mean, there's definitely, there are definitely a handful, but I would say one of my primary mentors is a, an amazing guy, good friend of mine, Richard Isaacson, medical doctor, neurologist. He heads up the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell in New York Presbyterian, which it's a clinic that he created. There you go.

He's an amazing, amazing guy. We'll get him on because dementia is a real deal now. You know, it's game changing for people and their families. Yeah. And he has a personal connection as well. That's why he and their families. Yeah. And he has a, he has a personal connection as well. That's why he got into it. Yeah. Most do. And he was sort of like a Doogie Hauser, um, character where he did like a, like he, he did his undergrad and his, his medical school at the same time or something like that. Yeah. It was insane. Give a top line definition

of dementia. Well, it's a neurocognitive disorder, um, where your, your, your memory function, your executive function, it's, it's, I would basically describe it the way DF swab, who's another neuroscientist who I've never met him, but I love his work. Uh, he basically would describe it as a, uh, an accelerated form of brain aging. You know, we all tend to, um, there are foibles that we associate with, with just aging, you know, forgetting where your keys are. And that, that tends to happen more and more frequently as we get older. But this is like a pathologic acceleration of that, of that process. It's just a more extreme, uh, form of it. There's widespread neuronal loss. So your brain cells

actually begin to die. Um, and dementia looks like it looks differently for every person. Once you've seen one case of dementia, you've seen one case of dementia. Yeah. And it also strips and robs people of their dignity, right? Because that's the other part. Like, yes, there's a degenerative accelerated process that's taking place, but the bewilderment that comes with not knowing who the person is across from you that you're supposed to know. Yeah. Right.

That type of experience, social experience. My grandfather had a dementia due to a carotid artery. So he had some, he had a surgery. Yeah. It was vascular. And so he had that impact and And he was so freaking clever, though, his social EQ was off the charts, that he would be able to just roll with it. And it was really hard to tell for a long time. If he could tell if you if he knew or didn't know, or just rolling with it. So but it's a stripping of dignity in many respects for people. Oh, in so many ways. It's embarrassing to not know your mate, your best friend. Yeah. Yeah. It manifests differently for every person. Um, you know,

the thing about dementia, they say that you lose a person twice. It's the only disease where you lose a person twice. Yeah. Physical and psychological. My mom never didn't know who I was. Um, she always knew who I was. Uh, for her, it was more of like a strangulation of her brain power to the point where you couldn't converse with her. Really. Um, she would lose her train of thought mid sentence almost, you know, immediately after beginning sometimes, uh, to, to express herself. Um, physically she became handicapped. She was not able to get up off the couch without help. Almost as if you were dealing with somebody who was just 40 years her senior.

If somebody has dementia or a family member, where would you send them? If somebody has dementia. Or a family member. Yeah, or a family member. Yeah. What resource would you say, get connected here? Which we say say you know i'm guessing that's why you wrote your first book yeah right the nutrition piece of it right

the reason why i do this what i do professionally why why i've decided to step up and i wrote my first book is because i believe so strongly in prevention as being the real needle mover on this condition and are you interested in like telomeres? Are you interested in dopamine? Are you interested in like cellular? I mean, I'm interested in all of it, but primarily I'm interested in the, in the dietary and lifestyle modalities that are going to help reduce our risk leading to what? So if I eat really well, what's going to happen to my brain? That's going to reduce the risk of this really crippling experience for people. Well, I mean, eating really well is, is, you know, it's important for procuring cardiovascular people? Well, I mean, eating really well is, is, you know, it's important for procuring cardiovascular health. So, I mean, as you know, as we just

mentioned, having, having, you know, good cardiovascular function is incredibly important for brain health. I mean, there was just a study published over the past year. It was called the sprint mind trial, which found that for patients with high blood pressure that were being treated to reduce their systolic blood pressure to an even more aggressive degree than what would be, you know, standard of care, they were able to dramatically reduce risk for the development of mild cognitive impairment, which is essentially like pre-dementia. You know, you have pre-diabetes and that often will convert to type 2 diabetes. Mild cognitive impairment is sort of like a prodrome to prodrome to to full-blown cognitive

impairment yeah due to dementia so if somebody's struggling if they're listening now they're like damn my memory's not what it used to be yeah and that can be kind of the arc of aging yeah and it can also be like something more serious if they're if they're nervous about it if it's like you know so where where would you send somebody whether it's them or their family member noticing that there's something very different about the person? How would you say set them down this path? And we're going to get to your insights and books. I really want to go there. Yeah. Pivot quickly, but I mean, here's the thing for somebody with dementia or for somebody who has a loved one with dementia, maybe they don't, maybe they don't, maybe they don't early, early in that. Yeah.

Well, I would say you want to go to, I mean, definitely go to a neurologist. I mean, we have tools. They're limited, I'll admit. But to diagnose dementia, you can get a number of different brain scans. You can do an MRI. You can look at total brain volume. You can do PET scans. You could do a type of scan called an FTG PET, which actually has very high predictive value.

It does. Yeah, which looks at glucose utilization in the brain. So one of the earliest, if not the earliest, um, preceding feature that we see in brains that, um, that is associated with Alzheimer's disease is a, is glucose hypometabolism. So glucose is the primary fuel substrate that the brain uses to create ATP. And ATP is the energy, the energy of cells. Yeah. And in a brain that has Alzheimer's disease, its ability to create ATP out of glucose is diminished by 50%. So it's a stark, um, energy deficit in the brain, which is the most energy hungry organ in the entire body. So why this is, why this is so

important is that they've been able to observe, I believe about a 10% decrease in glucose utilization at 20 years old in patients that are genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. So this might be a lifelong, you know, uh uh energetic problem in the brain a metabolic problem and if that's the case then you know then i think that we have uh some insight as to how we can kind of help procure so let's say i go in measured against the normative database and if i've got a 10 reduction in glucose allocation then i might be at risk so is it more of a screening or is it a detection technology? I'm not familiar with this. Yeah, they're not doing it. Um, I don't believe it's covered by insurance. Uh, so this is not something that you can, this is down the line. Yeah. Yeah. Generally,

um, the way that they screen for, I mean, they, you know, they look at your cognition, it's executive functioning, that type of stuff measured against. They'll get a baseline. They'll see how your cognition changes over time. We also have risk factors that we know are related to Alzheimer's disease. You know, if you have type 2 diabetes, for example, your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease explodes anywhere between two and four fold. How about type 2 diabetes for folks that are not familiar with one and two.

Type 2, you had to earn it. Yeah, well said. Yeah, you had to earn it. You had to make some choices to put yourself in that poor health state. You know, it's nutrition lifestyle choices. Type 1, you know, you're kind of born with some stuff here, right? Yeah, I mean, the major difference is type 1 is an autoimmune condition. It is a deficit of insulin, whereas type two diabetes is resistance to the hormone insulin so your pancreas is producing insulin unlike in a type

one diabetic person who has to inject exogenous insulin yeah um a type two diabetic basically has they're creating they're creating all the insulin they need uh up until their pancreas burns out but basically what happens is their cells become tolerant to insulin, which is not because they're eating such high sugary. Yeah. Too many. I mean, too many carbs, too much sugar, added sugars, too many calories in general to, you know, their lifestyles are overly sedentary, too much stress. Um, I think in the world of nutrition, people want to be able to point a finger at one thing. Um, there's so many, I mean, you know, one of the, one of the topics that I cover in the,

in my book, the genius life is, um, environmental toxins. And so this is a little bit off topic, but you can basically, I mean, people that are exposed to compounds that are used to create plastic, um, are basically, they show an altered insulin response. So how that relates to the brain unclear at this point, but, um, but yeah, there's so many, I mean, nutrition. There you go. Okay. So type two is a risk factor. What else we got? Type two is a risk factor. I mean, you definitely want to keep tabs on your lipids. So, um, you know, the diet heart hypothesis, which basically suggests that having high LDL cholesterol is a causative player in heart disease. I mean we can debate that. That debate is ever raging on social media.

But if your lipids are out of whack, you want to make sure to get that under control. And so the dietary recommendations that I make are generally – I believe that they're going to do the most good for the most people. So I'm not a big advocate of consuming lots and lots of saturated fat and things like that. Because people have clinically relevant, you know, varying and clinically relevant ability or ways in which their bodies metabolize saturated fats. So saturated fat is like the primary way of raising your LDL cholesterol. And so for people that are just slamming coconut oil, putting it in their smoothies, butter in their coffee, um, I think certain people with certain genes are going to fare less well, uh, when they eat an overabundance of saturated fat. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm really pretty particular in my diet. You know, I understand

the value of it and I want to feel vibrant. So I make, uh, the most part, you know, like 90, 10, like really strong choices. I think that's smart. Yeah. And so, but my LDLs don't quite reflect that. So for the panel, I just had a lipid panel done and it was like, it was 200 normal LDLs. I think it was 200. And I think I came back like a 220. And so it's not like, whoa, it's, but it's always kind of been there. And I mean, I'm talking like, dude, I eat oatmeal like you wouldn't believe in the morning. And I exercise like a regular basis at a pretty high clip. And so there's a genetic component to it that I'm always working against. So that's one of the other reasons I wanted to make sure that you and I synced up on some

of these more thoughtful approaches on the nutrition side. Yeah. I mean, I think some people might just like their their baseline might just be a little bit higher than others i think that's normal you can't really you know i wouldn't get concerned just looking at one number in isolation of others so i mean you're lean you know yeah and that was the other part of it you know relative to htl and whatever it's like an okay profile yeah before as hard as i work at it like it should it should look like yeah you know like

stellar yeah i mean but you know intermittent fasting i think can help um you know fix fix lipids to a point 16 hours yeah 16 hours of fasting for men um fewer for women you know women are i think hormonally a little bit more sensitive you know like they're they're just going to be more sensitive to signals of food scarcity um because their bodies are women their their bodies are amazing they're just like so awe-inspiring but they're you know they're they're they're walking this tightrope of like trying to support the health of the woman but also to procure to be able to create a another another human life yeah you, you know? Okay. Go, go back to what you're saying right before there, that the 16 hours for men and just for folks that are not clear on this restricted feeding zone, the idea is that like, if you went to, if your last meal was at say eight

o'clock, right. That you wouldn't 12 hours of a fast would be, you would eat breakfast at 8am. But if you added another four hours to it, you know, you get to noon. That would be a 16-hour window and you start your eating at that time. Yes. Yeah. And then the idea is that you eat really healthy food during that time. Right. That's kind of meet the macro and micro approaches.

And so how many days a week would you recommend men and women to do intermittent? I mean, I try to do it, try to do it every day. I don't get hung up over the hours. Like sometimes I'll do 12 hours. Sometimes I'll do 14. Sometimes I'll do 16. But the, your average person is eating. Your average person is eating for 16 hours every day.

They're eating from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to bed. And so not only is that, uh, first of all, eating more meals throughout the day is associated with having a higher body mass index. So it's just the more meal, the more times we eat throughout the day, the more overweight we tend to be. There are exceptions to this, of course. Um, but you know, I mean, think about, uh, this notion of decision fatigue, which is a psychology concept, right? Like the more meals you have throughout the day, the more opportunities you have, the more frustrating it could be to try to get everyone right. And the more opportunities you have to mess it up and to not eat your best. So for me, and I think for others, um, I don't know if this has yet been studied, but, uh, intuitively,

you know, if you're able to just eat fewer meals, then it's going to be easier for you to control your appetite, to make better decisions. I think you're on the fringe there a little bit, but I like the creative idea there. What I like about that is that the decision fatigue, there's something else that I think is a note to your point which is super interesting and when you go to the supermarket that i want to go um not crazy hungry and i don't want to go full but i want to go where i can make informed decisions where my biology right in that moment the state is not driving decisions so that when i walk down aisles that have more healthful food that i'm choosing those things as opposed to any most of the aisles in the middle of the grocery stores are um more suspect they're more the canned stuff they are yeah yeah and on the outside you've got like a little bit more healthy choices well a few

people realize that supermarkets tend to be designed the same you get the fresh perishable food on the outskirts of the supermarket perimeter and then the aisles are where the ultra processed foods hang out um but i i do think that there is some merit to it's it's easier to to not eat than it is to eat a small meal and then try to moderate your consumption especially i would say significantly more when what we're eating are ultra processed foods that perpetuate their own consumption yeah those kinds of foods and then are you would you make that same type of guiding thought for athletes because it feels like a different conversation i'm having with athletes yeah athletes are different there's yeah so this is more about longevity um fit health for the mass as opposed to the two percenters of the world that are trying to.

Yeah. I mean the record, I feel like these are, these pointers are, are people want to feel good. They want to be healthy and they want to have like good bodies. I think, you know, like that can't be discounted. You know, people want to like look good. And if you look at any of the world's hunter gatherers or even throughout the world's blue zones, people look robust, like up until old age. And they're not sitting around counting calories or obsessing over macros, carbs or fat or protein or anything like that. They're eating predominantly whole foods. And so that's the recommendation that I make that I think is a little bit different than most. I don't obsess over carbs or fat. I think as long as you're sticking primarily to

minimally processed foods, then you're going to be able to say five ingredients or less. Yeah. I mean, or would you say one ingredient? It's kind of an, it's kind of, that's kind of, it's kind of arbitrary, but yeah, I mean, real food to me doesn't have an ingredients list. They are the ingredients. They're what we buy. Like a legume is a one ingredient yeah choice exactly exactly and i definitely partake in the trappings of the modern world i eat you know i occasionally eat processed foods there's no guilt or shame in it but you're not making your own ketchup i'm not making my own ketchup so if you're gonna buy a ketchup and you whatever you're gonna have some we just found at uh one of our stores it's cool it's a fun we've got year olds. It's a great selection for us.

It is, they're like French fries, but they're not fried. So probably, I don't even know, grilled. But they're, it's like beets. Oh, cool. So they're superfoods. Like yams and beets and this, that, and the other. And like he's eating it. Like, it's like, these are great.

That's awesome. And so, and then we're looking for like, so we're not doing the high sugar fructose anything and so we've got a ketchup that is like super organic it's got more vinegar in it than it does anything else you know and so you're like yeah this is great and so i'm like right you know like good for the brain good for the body you know so that type of choices are the ones we're trying to get clever with yeah for sure i mean ultra processed foods and these are foods with that which have long extensive ingredients lists they hide out in the aisles of our supermarkets they're hyper palatable they drive their own or they drive their own consumption they're probably there probably is a relationship although i haven't seen data but it's probably the more processed food is the faster it is to eat

the faster it is to infuse into our circulation. It just, you know, it's more for the liver to have to contend with. And we tend to overconsume calories when we build our diets, when we base our diets around these kinds of foods, which, by the way, people are doing. Like 60% of the calories that we consume today come from these types of foods, ultra-processed foods, burritos, pizzas, bagels, cakes, muffins, granola, you name it. So what, okay, so here's where i struggle on the nutrition side i want to make helpful decisions yeah i also am moving at a pace where i wish that i had enough time to prepare but i really don't and i'm not doing a good job on the preparation side and so i'll find myself trying to find like a organic shop um that prepares meals and go there

and you know i'm not talking like vegan all the time or anything like that but like organic foods okay so how much time do you spend cooking i mean i spend a fair amount of time cooking but um it is it is your business but like say for folks like me yeah like well i what i what i recommend and and how i actually cook i cook sort of like a mediterranean style which is in my that's what i do too yeah very simple so in my in my house i don't have a ton of fancy expensive ingredients i have the basics i have salt pepper garlic powder hot pepper flakes things like that i've got a great extra virgin olive oil and using those which one um well are you doing you don't have to name it if you

don't want to, but are you doing something from Italy or are you doing something from the States? Cause I just read something about stuff that is coming. Uh, the States are actually good on olive oil is what I read. Well, I can share some tips on how to buy great extra virgin olive oil. Yeah. So you want to, you want to basically buy in the smallest bottle. You want to use extra virgin olive oil quickly and then buy fresh. Cause bottle. You want to use extra virgin olive oil quickly and then buy fresh because unlike wine, extra virgin olive oil doesn't appreciate its quality or value. Yeah. It only gets worse. And it's good if it comes in a darker bottle. It comes in a dark glass bottle. You don't want to buy in plastic. And you want to use it rapidly. So get a small bottle and then restock, um, you know, regularly the oil should

taste, um, fresh and grassy, never greasy, never oily. You know, I had someone who's an old school Italian going, Hey, listen, taste this. And if olive oil isn't spicy, it's not right. Yeah. I was like, really? My family's from Sicily and I was like, what? And so I, would you confer or is that not, is that true? No. Yeah. You want it to be spicy. A little spice on it. Yeah. You want it to have a, it's going to hit the back of your throat and it's going to have a strong peppery feeling. And actually you can, the olive oils are sometimes judged in their quality by the number of coughs that they evoke. So if you consume an extra virgin olive oil that hits the back of your throat and makes you cough twice, that's two cough oil. It's

pretty good oil. Three cough oil, that's a keeper. And that, that spicy peppery feeling in the back of your throat and makes you cough twice, that's two-cough oil. It's pretty good oil. Three-cough oil, that's a keeper. And that spicy peppery feeling in the back of your throat, that's owed to a specific compound called oleocanthal, which is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen, which is an NSAID drug, but without any negative side effects. I love it. Oleic acid is a big deal for brain health, and that comes from olive. Well, oleic acid, it's a monounsaturated fat. It's the primary fatty acid in extra virgin olive oil. You can also find it in grass-fed beef. It's a pretty common type of fat in the supermarket. So you'll find it in a bunch of different places. I get it from olive oils and olives, but more olive oil.

But it's not just the oleic acid. So oleic acid, you'll also find in avocado oil. What's special about extra virgin olive oil are these polyphenols, are these compounds like oleocanthal, which is beyond the fat. It's like it's a phytochemical that has just been shown to be very beneficial. It's been shown to help the brain clear itself of these plaques.

Polyphenols are something special for the brain, for, sure. You know, you find you, I love, I drink tea, so I'm finding it, you know, tea. And I know some people like coffee and there's a way to get it there, but like fresh leafy vegetables, right? Like it's one of the primary and darker, the better. Yeah. Right. And so bitter compounds, but I didn't, Oh, bitter, bitter, bitter. I didn't know it in olive oil. Yeah. And so I see bitter whenever you're whenever you're like going through your the produce section you find produce that has like a spicy or bitter flavor these compounds are actually very beneficial um what about like ginger and turmeric is that but is that with the the phenols there yeah as well Okay. Yeah. Cool. Bitter is better. And actually, if you look at

our produce, these, these, these bitter flavors are being bred out of our fruit because they're not as palatable. Um, if you think about it, like humans don't tend, humans tend not to like bitter, you know, we tend to like, if you, if you think about the first time you ever tried wine or coffee, you probably didn't like it very much. So, I mean, at the end of the day, I think we develop tastes for these foods because they make us feel better than like, I think that the feeling that they give us outweighs our distaste for those bitter compounds. There was a, um, let's call it an elder in the Asian community. Um, I can't remember where I heard the story. It wasn't directly to me, but the story was, oh, he's too young. He doesn't appreciate bitter yet.

It was in relationship to tea. Wow. It's a cool thought, isn't it? It always stuck with me. I don't have the source to it, but okay. So let's do this. What is just make it simple, right? Which is like Mediterranean diet, good olive oil.

Keep going down that path. Like I was taking us down a rabbit hole, but, and I love the weeds that we're in, but make it simple. Get me healthy. Yeah. Well, so I call them genius foods. I think if you can, if you can base your diet around these specific foods, you're going to do really well. And there, you know, this is not in terms of the nutritional component to things. It's grassfed beef. It's wild fatty fish. It's dark leafy greens. It's coffee and tea if you like coffee and tea. Nuts.

Dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is actually great. I mean cocoa is a fruit. Cacao is a fruit. It doesn't mean that dark chocolate is the equivalent of eating a fruit salad. But very good for cardiovascular health, which as we mentioned is very important for brain health. Also a wonderful source of magnesium. Extra virgin olive oil is the primary fat that I use.

So you really want to be cognizant of the fats that you're consuming because the brain is made of fat. So fat-soluble antioxidants, wherever you can find vitamin E, wherever you can find plant compounds like lutein and zeaxanthin, which are found wherever you're going to see colorful veggies or produce, fruits or veggies. These are all going to help the brain. Basically, they're going to act like a sword and shield for the brain against aging, against the aging process.

Eggs. Eggs are an amazing brain food. Are you keeping in the yolks? I keep in the yolks, yeah. Because if you consider, and of course you know this, the nervous system is the first structure to assemble in an embryo, and that includes the brain. And so what is an egg yolk an egg yolk is literally everything that nature has deemed important to grow a brain a healthy brain my vegan roots i was a vegan for like i don't know i can't remember like six seven maybe even eight years at one i think it was like

six seven years and it was from compassion eating and it was back in 89 and so it was before there was a whole foods it was before and it was like i was not healthy but i was compassionate my compassion was high yeah so now it's like i i value compassionate eating and i'm but i'm eating a mediterranean diet right now so take what you just said Is it a salad with some grilled chicken on it with lots of olive oil and a little bit of vinegar maybe or something like that? So here's what people should be doing every single day. Eat a big ass salad every day. Researchers actually out of Rush University have found that people who do this, people who abide by this rule of eating a large salad of dark leafy greens every day have brains that perform up to 11 years younger come on all right i'm fired up right now so that's not iceberg lettuce

it's what lettuce um i mean my favorites are spinach kale arugula arugula is great one of the top i'm so over kale right now are you kidding yeah yeah okay it can be it can be an acquired taste but arugula is great spinach is great even romaine lettuce is great better a better option than iceberg lettuce romaine is great romaine is actually a cruciferous vegetable as well. Is a what vegetable? Cruciferous. Like broccoli, radishes. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And some of the most valuable compounds in these dark leafy greens are called carotenoids. So lutein, zeaxanthin. Really important. You don't have to remember them. But they're very important for eye health. And your eyes are actually an extension of your brain.

Like eyes contain neural tissue. And we've known for some time now that these carotenoids accumulate in the eye where they help us protect ourselves against age-related macular degeneration. But we now know that these pigment compounds in dark leafy greens, lutein and zeaxanthin, actually also accumulate in the brain. And researchers out of the University of Georgia, they did a clinical trial where they took UG students and they gave them 12 milligrams per day of combined lutein and zeaxanthin. What they found was that compared to the placebo group, they were able to achieve a 20% boost in their

visual processing speed, which is pretty remarkable. Even the researchers thought this because people who are young and healthy are already thought to be at the peak of their cognitive prowess, right? So these plant compounds actually accumulate in the brain and they may actually make it work better and more efficiently. And they're only absorbed when we consume them in the presence of fat. So if you're eating that bowl of dark leafy greens and there's no fat source, so you could either throw an egg in or, you know, I love to use extra virgin olive oil, then the absorption of those compounds is negligible. So you need a fat source whenever you're consuming this. Avocado and or nuts. Avocado is great. Nuts are great. Pumpkin seeds, I'm down with them. Avocados are actually wonderful because they

already contain fat as well as lutein and zeaxanthin. So they're sort of like an all-in-one genius food. And there was actually a trial where they supplemented an older adult population with avocados. There was also a group that was given potatoes and chickpeas. And what they found was that the avocado boosted levels of lutein in the brain and also was associated with an improvement in cognitive function. So these compounds are great. Avocados are wonderful. I mean, literally eating them makes your brain work better. And so one salad, lots of dark leafy vegetables in there. And then what else are you putting in there? You're going to put a little chicken or no chicken

necessarily? Where do you get your proteins? Yeah. As I mentioned, grass-fed beef i'm a huge fan or wild salmon or i mean you can throw a shrimp chicken whatever you want i mean protein is something that i think is it's a whole other rabbit hole but protein is important i think few people eat um optimal amounts of protein would you want people to eat more yeah it's very it's actually very difficult to over consume protein because protein is the most satiating micronutririent. So a lot of people are running around saying, oh, we eat too much protein because we tend to eat more than the recommended daily allowance of protein. But actually, we might actually need more protein for good health and to maintain lean mass as we age. And protein, of course, I think the fact

that protein is so satiating in a time where the obesity crisis is no joke. I mean, we're on track now. By the year 2030, one in two adults is going to be obese. And so the fact that protein basically acts like a sniper gun to our hunger, it's more satiating than carbs. It's more satiating than fat. And if you look at processed foods, they're all devoid of protein. So protein literally, whether we're talking about cold cuts, beef, fish, chicken, eggs, the best way to basically satiate your hunger so that you don't end up overeating carbs and fat, which are just pure energy, which most of us are carrying too much of on our waistlines as it is. Nice. Okay. So what are you doing for other meals? So we got it. And is the salad about

two handfuls or how big is your salad? Great question. But, um, I try to put two cups, which is a little bit more than, um, what they found in that study was, was had that, that 11 year. Is that a one handful? Yeah, I would say probably like two, two handfuls. Yeah. Like a, like a like a like a cup like a like you're holding water yeah exactly right and that's about the size of your salad and then you're loading it up are there any other veggies and stuff that you're throwing in i mean i get i kind of i love to nerd out about specific fruits and vegetables but at the end of the day what you know it's not about any one food it's about the dietary pattern as a whole. So like one, one salad, you know,

or one blueberry is not gonna, is not gonna optimize your brain. I love blueberries for a lot of reasons. Blueberries are great. Yeah. Rainberries. Yeah. Um, it's about the dietary pattern as a whole. So it's, it's making sure that you're showing up every day and you're eating the salad. And what do you think about powders, collagen proteins? Yeah. P powders for like, you know, protein, whatever like i'm a fan but i have i have i think i have different you know it depends on your goals but yeah i mean i think i i use a collagen protein um powder and i also use a whey protein powder but i way doesn't do right with me but i def collagen you know i was introduced to collagen about two maybe three years

ago i was like yeah that, that works. This works. Yeah. I mean, I think protein powders are – I have a little problem with the source of it. Back to that compassion eating thing. But I choose it and I see benefits from it. I notice it. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. I mean, protein powders are food basically. I try to – when I buy protein powders, I try to make sure that they're minimally processed. So to me, whey is a great option. You might do better with whey isolate than whey concentrate. It's literally, it's just a by-product of like cheese making. So to me, it's like a whole food. It is a whole food product. Whereas like some of these vegan protein powders, there's so processed and there's also a very serious risk of heavy metal contamination in vegan protein powders. Good to know. I i did not know that so here's my breakfast oatmeal like it's a frozen oatmeal you know yep it's good uh high quality you know kind of choice there and then

i'll throw a handful of blueberries on it i'll do some sort of associated nut whether it's like a just a handful of nuts and then some protein powder on it and so'll do some sort of associated nut, whether it's like a, just a handful of nuts and then some protein powder on it. And so that's kind of an early food for me. Call it at the 14 hour mark. Yeah. I'm glad that you had the protein powder. Um, I, I personally would probably not eat oatmeal first thing in the morning because it's a very high glycemic, um, you know, just carb source. Sharpen me up. It's either that or eggs for me. I would prefer, I mean, personally I prefer eggs. Yeah. I get tired of them though. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you cook your eggs and what do you, how do you do it? Oh man. Eggs, any, any style.

Give me a breakfast menu. I can crack out open tomorrow. Oh man. Well, one of my absolute favorite breakfasts, which I can eat every single day. I love to get smoked salmon and make some over easy eggs. Here's the Jewish heritage. Maybe that's the Jewish. Yeah, here we go. Just eat it with the – and some avocado too, like a half to a whole avocado on the plate with the eggs and the salmon. If you – I mean if you really want to get indulgent, then roe salmon eggs super super powerful brain food yeah ikura if you go ever go to a sushi restaurant sure yeah but you can actually buy it you can buy

salmon roe from like oh and you're just going to drop them in the eggs no yeah i just yeah i'll throw them on top like these salty little like savory bombs they're awesome they pop in your mouth yeah so good okay that's good all right so what do you think of tortillas um i mean i could get down with some tortillas i like you know if it's like 100 corn it's like organic corn you go corn nothing wrong with that yeah flour is a mess yeah i mean i think a lot of people are freaked out about corn um and i think the problem with corn is that it's been disassembled and it pervades nearly every single processed food in one way or another whether it's corn meal or whatever yeah yeah but whole corn you know whole there's nothing wrong with whole corn but so a corn a whole corn tortilla yeah it's really i mean

there's not a lot throw some eggs in there some salmon roe yeah right and then what else would you put blue corn blue corn is an even better option than whole corn if you can find a blue corn tortilla blue corn blue corn gets its color from the same pigment found in blueberries and in red onions they're called anthocyanins and anthocyanins are actually an area of it's a sort of really exciting area of research for brain health because it's been found that these anthocyanins can accumulate in the brain and help it shield itself against oxidative stress there's a observationally people who eat foods that have more anthocyanins tend to have more youthful brains so i've had blue corn chips i don't think yeah those are those are good they also have like slightly higher protein

yeah corn chips than white corn yeah um but you know corn is like uh we live in a time where so many people have type 2 diabetes, which we talked about, right? It's insulin resistance. And insulin resistance, what that essentially is, it's glucose intolerance. So corn is essentially a starch. Now, it has a lot of, you know, if we're talking whole corn, it has fiber in it. So it's really not a bad option. But I generally try to like minimize my consumption of rice, corn. I don't

eat wheat, things like that. Just because to me, you know, it's just not the highest quality food. It's fine. I mean, you know, occasionally we all want to have that taco or that burrito or whatever, and that's fine. Um, but I'm generally, what I look for in my food is nutrient density. Um, and you know, I think there are just a lot better options for you, like a nice piece of protein and fibrous veggies, low sugar fruits, things like that. Dinner? Dinner. I love to roast up veggies. As I mentioned, I'm a big fan of Mediterranean style cooking.

So I'll roast up some Brussels sprouts with some garlic powder, sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, and then like a nice piece of fish. I mean the possibilities are endless and you don't need fancy recipes or an overabundance of expensive spices or seasonings or sauces. I mean if you go to – I mean some of the best kitchens in the world, they're making, they're taking, it's, it's like alchemy. They take really, uh, it's quality over quantity of ingredients. And they take this, a small number of ingredients and they can make it, they can make magic with it, you know, fresh, high quality ingredients. You really don't need a lot. What's your take on kind of protein bars or things in wrappers that, you know, on the go type of stuff. Most of them junk and all, okay. If I'm really pressed against the wall and I'm starving, I'll eat a protein bar. But for the most part, they're just, I mean,

now foods that are slapped at the protein label have this halo effect, uh, but generally not, not good. And the thing about protein bars is often now, because there's this obsession over low carb eating with it, which I think is actually a good thing. I think it's a net positive. But now they're using all these fiber, you know, sugar replacements, fiber-based sugar replacements like chicory root fiber and inulin. And if you eat too much of any of those, you're going to get like the worst. I wonder if I'm eating like sawdust, you know, to get – it's high fiber, low carb. I'm like, how is this happening? They could just – but the thing is some of these fibers, like they can make you so bloated and gassy like which nobody freaking wants you know yeah what uh your take on probiotics probiotics um speaking of gassy yeah i don't uh i don't actually take probiotics

i take i like probiotic containing foods like kimchi um cabbage things like that yeah yeah the best way really to encourage like a healthy gut is to feed the bacteria that's already in your gut you know a nice healthful diet of colorful preferably organic veggies and cut out the package processed foods avoid you know added sugars and things like that when you do grab a bar and i know maybe you don't want to you know say it on air for endorsement but like if you were to grab a bar which brand would you grab oh man it's really it's honestly it's not that far out of your ecosystem yeah well there's like a few brands that like taste good but um but yeah i just like you know i don't i don't endorse any one bar

because they're just you know all of them yeah like i might get by like one of them might make me feel okay but i just feel like i'm not eating real food you know it doesn't it doesn't quite really work yeah and then and i just i don't feel great and then if i happen to eat two then it's just like my stomach just feels like a mess you know what about a snack what are you choosing for a snack and let's say we're not doing a handful of nuts but some sort of snack on the run a handful of nuts is like well that's what somebody healthy would choose yeah right no it's dark dark chocolate actually a great snack that i always have in my fridge pickles oh my god really you don't like pickles not really actually i really like pickled anything yeah my um fruit i love fruit pickled fruit no not okay my wife is cuban and they've

got this incredible cuban sandwich that they make with um you know this is not the healthy choice but it's like usually white bread lots of cheese some sort of mustard ham turkey something on there and then they layer some pickles in there it's's like, oh, my God. Yeah. But yeah, so pickles. Pickles, very satiating, nice. You get a hit of electrolytes and very low, like five calories. Like the sweet pickles or just regular dill pickles? I'll do like sour. But they satiate you.

They're a good snack. Very low calories. Like a full pickle. You'll just grab one out of the juice and eat it. Yeah, grab one out of the juice. What else do I one out of juice what else do i eat i enjoy um again protein is very satiating so if i feel like i need a snack i'll you know have some greek yogurt or cottage cheese whatever i'm not a big dairy consumer but there's really no debating that the protein and dairy can is very high quality it's among the highest that's available to us beef jerky i'm a huge fan of like a low sugar beef

turkey turkey or beef or like there's. There's all types of turkeys. Now. Yeah. I like, I like beef jerky. Um, there are a few brands now that are like cutting the sugar, which is good. Um, how about bone broth? Bone broth is great. Yeah. Do you put anything in your bone broths? Um, no, I buy, there's now a number of brands that are putting out really good soups and things like that yeah for sure um yeah i'm a huge fan i mean also great great protein source so these are all like real natural healthy foods i i definitely do snack on you know like god there's some of these like some of these popcorn i was just gonna go popcorn yeah i'll eat it yeah because popcorn is actually very filling there's a lot of volume so if you're

craving like a crunchy crispy snack i find that i get hungry after eating popcorn though really right like the the carb piece to it but yeah it's an interesting choice for sure yeah um what else i'm trying to think of other other. Yeah, there's like a cereal brand. I became an investor in a cereal company because it's like a high-protein, grain-free, sugar-free cereal. They sponsored us for a bit. Did they? Yeah. Nice job. Magic Spoon, right? Magic Spoon. Yeah, there you go. It's an interesting choice for sure like

a protein low carb low sugar yeah right as a treat i'm not eating it every day but it's like it's to to get my protein levels up um it's got that sweet that uh makes me feel good um tell me about some things definitely to avoid let's go let's keep it strict with the brain health piece like are we talking soy are we talking what are we talking about like for me it's what i'm okay with yeah generally the things that i recommend avoiding um to the best of your ability unless you decide to have a planned indulgence you know um refined grain products you know i'm definitely like trying to minimize my consumption of packaged processed foods you know that's it like i'm not trying you know carbs fat we can debate the merits of low carb and and i tend to have a

bias towards low carb eating so you're saying listen if you didn't eat as much out of a package yeah and you're eating green leafy vegetables yeah with a nice quality fat you got your grilled type of foods in uh for proteins you're good yeah and eat until you're 80 percent full yeah exactly exactly and then reduce your feeding time yeah yeah right just your feeding time eat fewer meals throughout the day um and uh but then also i think with the foods that i think are definitely worth avoiding are anything made with um grain and seed industrial grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil. What about safflower oil? Yeah, I would say avoid.

You say, what about high heat extra virgin olive oil? I would not use extra virgin olive oil for high heat cooking, but you actually can cook with extra virgin olive oil. How do you cook your eggs i'll use extra virgin olive oil or some avocado oil or butter um if i'm gonna sear a steak on a cast iron pan and put the temperature up really high i will use like a butter or ghee for that very high ghee which is like clarified butter i don't know it oh really yeah it's got it's great butter how do you spell this g-h-e-e it's great oh cool butter at a high enough heat will start to brown because the milk solids in the butter um they get you know burnt off essentially but uh

ghee basically has those butter solids removed and so it's a very clean burning fat. Oh, cool. And you just buy it anywhere? You can buy it anywhere. G-H-E-E. Yeah. It's great. It's got a unique smell. It's used in a lot of like Ayurvedic recipes and Indian dishes.

Although most American Indian food, they don't use as much ghee because it's more expensive. And they'll use a lot of very unhealthy industrial grain and seed oils. It's not the traditional cooking that we expect. When we go to Indian restaurants or even Chinese restaurants and things like that, most restaurants, you're getting food that's just bathed in industrial grain and seed oils, which are not good for our cardiovascular systems, not good for our waistlines, and certainly not good for our brains. What do you do for grilling? Do you marinate your meat? Best case scenario, yeah. In a perfect world, I would marinate meat in garlic, onions, things like that, which have actually been shown to reduce the formation of um potentially carcinogenic compounds that form when you char meat on the outside yeah but to be totally honest i don't often do that i do just kind of pre-salt my meat and i try not to burn it you know i try to just cook it to a medium medium rare

there you go temperature yeah awesome dude this is great super practical i can tell you got some depth in there thanks man yeah i just i obsess there, I know the way that my brain works, maybe you could explain how my brain works to me better than I can articulate it, but I don't know a lot about a big number of topics. Like for example, I know probably less than your average person on the street about politics, about sports, about, you know, the kinds of things that I think most people tend to know about, but I go very deep on just a small handful of topics. And are you more interested in brain health or fitness or lifestyle longevity? What are you more interested in right now? Well, I would say the most powerful motivator that I've ever had in my life to do anything has been my mom's illness. And so to me, I'm just, I'm highly motivated, highly incentivized to, uh, to understand why she got

sick and to not to understand why she got sick just for that alone, just for any semblance of closure that I can get on what I experienced with her, but then also to prevent it from ever happening to myself. So I care about fitness, but I'm not obsessed with macros and achieving a certain body fat percentage. Like I'm not, I'm not as interested in that. I enjoy working out. I work out mostly for my mental health and just so that I can feel good and, um, you know, like not have any pain or, or whatever. But, uh, but generally I'm interested in longevity. I'm interested in brain health. And under that, under that purview falls cardiovascular health, falls body composition, falls metabolic health, falls all that stuff. So there's really no, um, there's no bottom to the well, you know, like it's, it's all interesting and fascinating to

me. And for those topics, I find that my brain almost works like a, like it's almost photographic, like the memory that I have for studies and findings and things like that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do what I do. Awesome. Yeah. I can tell you got, you got a depth in there. And then can I, can I ask you for a couple of resources? Like where can people go on your book? Right. Both your books. Yeah. Um, let's hold those for a moment, but other, other places to go as well. Um, so I've consulted, uh, on a project, um, actually, uh, a nonprofit project that isn't, is, um, it's an offshoot out of the Alzheimer's prevention clinic that I mentioned earlier called alzu.org. It's a great

resource for anybody wanting to know more about, um, about dementia and specifically dementia prevention. Um, so again, it's, it's, um, it's a project of the Alzheimer's prevention clinic, but at wild Cornell medicine in New York Presbyterian, and it's headed up by Richard Isaacson, who's one of my mentors. And I've consulted on video content with them. I've, you could actually find, I think some some videos with me on there. But other resources, I really implore people to become more literate in terms of science, you know, like culinary literacy. Most millennials don't have it. Financial literacy. Most millennials have lost touch with knowing how to manage their money and things like that.

I think scientific literacy is one of those things that people should know where to find research and know how to read it and interpret it. I mean, not everybody is going to go on to write books and things like that. But there's this idea that science is like owned by academia. It's owned by the universities. It's not. Science is a method of asking questions and pursuing answers. And for that, I think, you know, it's something that we're all capable of understanding. And, you know, like people have problems.

People have, you know, so many people are dealing with health problems. I'm not alone in what I experienced with my mom. And so to be able to have these tools at your disposal I think is invaluable. Would you recommend people go understand the Krebs cycle? Because I don't know where I would be without it. The Krebs cycle? Yeah. I mean, not necessarily.

I mean, you know, like. You think that's too granular? Yeah. I don't think that you have to get that granular i mean dr krebs put this thing together that was like wow you know and so i don't like atp you're interested in atp right so if you don't have magnesium on board you're in trouble right right of course right so it's part of that so so how do you how do you get magnesium you can't know everything how do i get magnesium i mean i i eat dark chocolate i eat almonds i

you know supplement and you will oh you will supplement with magnesium and there's so many magnesiums i know so glycinate magnesium glycinate why glycinate it's well because it's magnesium bound to an amino acid called glycine yeah which is also found in collagen. So you don't need anything else in your stomach to absorb it. It's not going to have an osmotic effect. It's not going to draw water into the gut and cause diarrhea if you take too much of it, which will be the case with magnesium citrate. Yeah. Yeah.

So glycinate is pretty... And it can be pretty tough on the gut too. Magnesium can be. Yeah. Not glycinate though. Magnesium glycinate is pretty easy. It's pretty good. Okay. too magnesium can be yeah not glycinate though magnesium glycinate is pretty easy it's pretty good okay so it's little things like that like b12 and protein or um testosterone like they're

related yeah and so you know i don't know i'm a fan of like kind of getting into you you're right you can't know everything you think that the krebs cycle will be like a little overwhelming well it's like even the term nutrition expert. First of all, I never call myself an expert, but others. How do you describe what you do? I mean, I call myself a health and science journalist, which I think is what I am, you know, in the spirit of Michael Pollan and, you know, Gary Taubes and all these guys who've basically just kind of taken these topics and translated them, made them exciting and approachable and

achievable for people. Um, but, but I don't really, yeah, I don't think there really is a precedent for what I'm trying to do because even, even like me, I definitely have an opinion. I have a point of view and I want to educate. I want to help people make better choices in their lives, you know? So you've got two books. The first is called genius foods. And the second is the genius life, the genius life. And, um, on genius foods, is that a resource for how to eat well? Yeah, it's primarily a nutrition deep dive. So if, if you want to take, I mean, you'll basically walk away. If you read every word in Genius Foods, you'll have, I mean, it's the equivalent of like getting a PhD in the topic of nutrition as it pertains to dementia prevention. It really is the best resource that's out there for that topic.

And I know that I'm biased. But my new book, The Genius Life, incorporates nutrition, sort of all the high-level recommendations that I make in Genius Foods, but with a whole 360 degree lifestyle component. So it's just packed with the simple things that you can do every day that are going to add up to big health wins that you'll feel right away. Nice job, dude. Nice investment. Your approach is clear. And so I'm stoked that we had, you know, sometimes with kind of the non-traditional route of education, I wonder, and your ability to have a point of view and also kind of double click and triple click under stuff is really fun for me. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thank you for coming in and spending the time. Where can people find you? Very active on instagram at max lugavere l-u-g-a-v-e-r-e and um and uh i've also got my own podcast it's called the genius life and i'm excited to have you on it um and so you can come

over there and hit the hit the subscribe button but yeah i'm super proud of my books um my books are how i make a living and stay afloat so genius foods Foods, The Genius Life, check them out. And I promise you, you won't be sorry. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback.

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