Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #105 Max Lugavere

Episode Date: September 2, 2019

Max Lugavere is a filmmaker, health and science journalist and the author of the New York Times best-selling book Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life. He is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast The Genius Life. We sit down with Max and discuss PCB's and additives in our food supply today, Everyday household retardants we may not be aware of and his upcoming book slated for a 2020 release date.    Connect with Max: Website: https://www.maxlugavere.com/ Twitter: https://bit.ly/2KodlhB Instagram: https://bit.ly/2Ko44ta YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/maxlugavere   Listen to The Genius Life Podcast | https://www.maxlugavere.com/podcast-1   Show Notes: Dr. Kevin Hall Obesity Study | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517 Aaron Alexander on Genius Life Podcast | https://bit.ly/2IBjCa1   Show Sponsors: MindBullet https://mindbullet.com/kingsbu (Use code word KINGSBU at Checkout for 20% Off)    Waayb CBD www.waayb.com (Get 10% off using code word Kyle at checkout)   Onnit Foods & Supplements Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/   Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk   Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY

Hello, friends. We've got the return of my man, Max Lugavere on the show today. We had Max, I think a year ago or so, he was talking about his last book, Genius Foods, which I think is a must read for anybody looking to improve cognitive function and just a phenomenal dude. We get into all sorts of cool shit. We go into the weeds of PCBs and chemical additives that are added into our food supply, flame retardants that are on our fucking couches and our beds and all sorts of weird shit that we got to combat in this world and a lot of how-tos. So it's not just a doomsday. We're all fucked. It's a lot of great information as usual. The first time I podcast with Max, I realized something. For a man his age, he can quote statistics and studies in,

I think, a similar manner to Dr. Rhonda Patrick. That was my first inclination. I was like, damn, this guy can, not only does he have the knowledge, but he can drop the knowledge at any given point in time. And I find him incredibly easy to talk to. Obviously, he's got his own podcast. He's got a spot on TV on, I think, one of the major networks. So he's no stranger to the camera or the microphone. And he's got a spot on TV on, I think, one of the major networks. So he's no stranger to the camera or the microphone. And he's got a new book coming out in 2020, which we talk about on the podcast. Obviously, that's a ways away, but check this podcast out. Let me know what you think. It is incredible. And there are a number of ways you guys can support this show.

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And I feel like it's been one of the most important things that I've added to my daily routine, whether it's just heading into work or trying to crush a workout. MindBullet is for sure a part of my supplement cabinet on a daily basis. Pre-workout, it is one of the greatest things that I've added into the game and you can get 20% off if you go to mindbullet.com slash kingsboo or just mindbullet.com and enter code word kingsboo, K-I-N-G-S-B-U at checkout for 20% off. Our next sponsor is my favorite CBD by far. And I have scoured and searched high and low for the right CBD product to bring to this show. These guys have a giant USDA certified organic farm up in Colorado, and they're locally based here in Austin. And I've had the pleasure of getting to know some of the people that work for them.

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I see my sleep scores improve on the Oura Ring and the Whoop. And there's no doubt this is one of the most important things you can add to your game. Go to w-a-a-y-b.com and enter code word Kyle at checkout or w-a-a-y-b.com slash Kyle and you can check out my cool ass landing pages there and get 10% off. And as always, don't forget 10% off all supplements and all foods at onnit.com slash Kyle. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the show. Here we are, the glorious return of Max Lugavere. Hey, it's good to be back. It's good to have you back, brother. Thanks for having me.

So I think your podcast was out when we first podcasted. I don't know if it was Human Optimization Hour or On It podcast. Obviously now, Kyle Kingsbury podcast, and I promise you, it is the last time you'll hear a name change. But yeah, your podcast podcasts tell us about it yeah i mean it's it's called the genius life and uh i just got done interviewing you for it super excited for that to premiere um but yeah after i launched my book genius foods in march of last year i wanted to keep the content stream going you know know, and certainly I have,

I've had a lot of friends that have had podcasts and I've always sort of envied the ability to, that it gives you to just reach out with people that you find fascinating and say, Hey, let's create some content together. You know, I want to learn from you. In this, in this age where I feel like so many of us are living in increasing isolation, a podcast is just a great excuse to reach out and to have a conversation, you know, and to put that conversation online and hopefully, you know, help spread knowledge and, you know, do all that good stuff. So a few months after my book came out, I launched The Genius Life. And it's really been a way for me to get to talk to people that I find interesting in the health and wellness sphere. And certainly I talk to have lots to offer in terms of value,

in terms of insight, in terms of intuition. And so that's one of the things that I pride myself on with my podcast is the range of conversations that I'm able to have on it. So some of my favorite episodes, I've talked to a woman who runs the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, which is a fascinating universe in and of itself in terms of the everyday chemicals that are probably hiding out in your kitchen right now that have the potential to alter the way your hormones work which is actually kind of terrifying seeing as how our hormones guide everything from our growth and development to our hunger levels to cognitive function you name it um to a guy who's one of the world's few

oleologists, meaning he studies olive oil. He's an expert in extra virgin olive oil. And as somebody who's a huge fan of extra virgin olive oil, aside from the science, I wanted to hear from somebody who's kind of like a sommelier for extra virgin olive oil about how to buy the best olive oils, how to taste one so that you really get a sense for its potency. And it's just been great. I mean, I consider myself a wonder junkie. So a podcast is today, I feel like the ultimate platform to be able to, you know, kind of just like peruse your interests and broaden your interests ultimately. Hell yeah. And I've certainly gotten that myself. Well, I definitely want to turn

people onto your show and get you there just to listen to me and no one else. No, but for sure, like to extract all this good stuff, we were listening to a few of the episodes on the way down, but would you mind unpacking a little bit of some of those tips? Like what the fuck is in my kitchen? You know, this is something that I think we talked about. I think 80,000 chemicals have been introduced in the U.S. alone in the last 100 years. 80,000 chemicals from flame retardants they spray on your mattress to shit that's in our food supply. And everyone's heard about glyphosate, but there are literally thousands and thousands more that are everywhere we come in contact with. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, like, I'm almost like too plugged in because I see arguments from

both sides. Like, you know, there's like on the evidence-based camp, you know, people will say like, you know, you can't just be afraid of a chemical just because it's a chemical. And that's true. You know, like if you were to break apart a blueberry or banana, I mean, these fruits are composed of hundreds of compounds that you can't pronounce. So just to be afraid of something because you can't pronounce it, we don't want to fearmonger in that sense. But the reality is, is that there are so many examples throughout human history where untested chemicals have been

foisted onto the human population without rigorous long-term testing. And consequences were only later realized after the compound or the medicine. 10 years, 20 years into it. Yeah. Or whatever it may be has been exposed to millions of people. And so some of history's greatest fails that I like to reference are lead-based paints. You know, prior to 1978, homes were painted with paints that were made using lead, which quickened the drying time of paints. And you think of paint as being inert, right? It's on a wall. But in high-activity parts of the house, like windowsills, doorways, and, you know, stairwell banisters, that paint sloughs off and it creates dust, which gets into our lungs and ultimately into our circulation. And there's no safe level of lead in circulation. It's damaging to cognitive function

when you're a child. And so we have that, we have asbestos-based building insulation, we have, I mean, partially hydrogenated oils, which are trans fats, which have been in the market for 10 years, or at least which are now thankfully banned by the FDA, but are still present in the form of polyunsaturated oils, which have small amounts of trans fats in them. So there's just like too many examples. And my stance is that these compounds should be considered guilty until proven innocent, as opposed to innocent until proven guilty. Many people, many people will say, well, we don't have data that these compounds like glyphosate, for example, are harmful. We don't know. There is no data that tiny doses of glyphosate coming in through conventionally grown produce is harmful, right? But absence of evidence

is not evidence of absence. So just because we don't see an effect we haven't done those trials that doesn't mean that these compounds are safe i think that the they'll just sorry to jump in it's not like they put this through rigorous human trials first it's like this was studied on humans for 10 years and then brought to market 100 you know congress gets lobbied the new fucking chemical gets put hey, this is going to help save world hunger, right? And then here we go. Now we're in the fucking great human experiment. And we might not know until 20 years after the fact, just like DDT. Exactly. Same fucking thing, right? And you look at glyphosate. Now, I think it was the World

Health Organization that said it's a probable carcinogen. Probable human carcinogen. Yeah. I mean, and our own government has a less aggressive stance on it, but I think we want to hedge our bets like where our health is concerned. And I've reviewed literature that shows that organic produce tends to have more valuable phytochemicals.

Organic produce is not, there tends to be some pesticide residues in them just because of the way the ecosystem, the growing system, everything is so interconnected, but they have dramatically lower levels of these pesticides. So yeah, so I mean like, and then you look at the environmental working groups, dirty dozen list, I think it's just, it's easier to defer to organic produce and to not take a risk and to not give these industrial agrochemicals the benefit of the doubt, right? And some of these chemicals actually undergo less rigorous testing because we don't directly like eat them. They're not a food product. They're not a medicine. They're not a supplement, right? But many of these chemicals unwittingly enter our bodies whether we want them to or not so

the focus of my podcast on endocrine disruption uh was about phthalates and bpa in particular phthalates are they're these are both basically plasticizer compounds they're used to make plastic water bottles baby bottles uh furniture you know. I mean, plastics are embedded in the American dream at this point, right? So these compounds don't have any good research on them really. In fact, the testing standards for BPA haven't been modified in over 20 years, which is scary in and of itself. But BPA was actually originally identified as a xenoestrogen. It mimics estrogen in the body. And it was actually, its original intended destination was in pharmaceuticals. It was meant to be an endocrine disrupting drug that were to be,

that was going to be given to women and girls to help treat problems that were associated with being female. So menopause, pregnancy nausea, for example. And the same compound could also be injected into animals to increase the yield of milk, meat, things like that. So it's well known that bisphenol A, BPA, is a xenoestrogen. At a certain point, it was basically rerouted and it went the way of plastics when a way more powerful compound called DES was identified, diethylstilbestrol. And DES was a much more potent xenoestrogen to the degree that it began to be called the mother substance, because it was like this potent synthetic compound that could be cheaply produced and

injected into women. And, you know, it's yet another one of history's big fails. It actually went into production as a drug. And only later was it discovered that it led to rare uterine and vaginal cancers in girls that were exposed to des while in their mother's wombs so it was pulled it was banned thankfully um it's actually still approved for use in dogs but uh but its related compound bpa has gone on to infiltrate nearly every aspect of our lives, right? We have BPA in our water bottles. We have BPA lining the inner lining of cans. It's pretty much everywhere. BPA coats the store register receipts that we get.

When you shop at a supermarket and you get a heat-sensitive receipt, it's coated in BPA. And this compound enters our circulation. It does so either through the skin or through hand-to-mouth behavior. And it's a potent endocrine disruptor, along with phthalates, along with, as you mentioned, flame-retardant chemicals, which are now in our furniture, compounds that make our clothing and our carpets water-resistant or waterproof. So it's like the modern world has become saturated in these chemicals and, uh, and you're really not going to be able

to avoid them, you know? So I think the best thing to do is to minimize your, your exposure. That's sort of like the best case scenario today. Um, and yeah, it's just like, that's one of the reasons why I've become so kind of dedicated to promoting healthy food and high quality food, nutrient density and things like that. Because, you know, today your average human is just inundated from every possible angle with, you know, these endocrine disrupting chemicals, with sleep debt, with chronic stress, with, you know, being more sedentary than we ever have before in human history, with a diet that's now become saturated with ultra processed foods. So, you know, we have, our bodies have an ability to defend themselves against these insults, but not when the odds are so stacked against us. And so that's why when people like come out of the woodwork defending compounds like glyphosate or, you know, saying that like these compounds are not harmless, I'm like, yeah, maybe if they were like the only thing, you know, in the modern environment that we had to contend with. that today a woman's risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer is one in six, right? So that's like a staggering statistic. But only 30 years ago, 40 years ago, it was one in 20. So our genes haven't

changed. It's the environment that's mutated. And so that's become really kind of like a focus for me and sort of exploring what that is. You know, I kind of feel like in my first book, Genius Foods, I really got to do a deep investigation into nutrition. But nutrition is just like, it's one part of the puzzle. It can support our body's best efforts to detox, to remain resilient, to, you know, achieve a healthy body composition and, you know, optimal metabolic status and all that stuff, that's all true. But it's not the only part of the puzzle. Like sleep, finding a healthy means of diffusing stress, avoiding these chemicals to the best of our ability.

I think it's all super important. It's a lot, but I feel like we've talked about in the past my reason for getting involved with health and wellness. My mother was very sick and it's really led to me kind of seeing the world in a new way and leaving no stone unturned ultimately, because I just don't think that genes could explain what it was that my mom had developed. I mean, for your listeners, people who don't think that genes could explain what it was that my mom had developed.

I mean, for your listeners, people who don't know, and I've written about this in the past, my mom had dementia for seven years that she developed. She started showing her first symptoms of at the age of 58. And that took her to the age of 66, where she was diagnosed with cancer, essentially. And over three months I watched her wither away and it was just the most tragic thing. And I just, I can't believe that such bad health was baked solely into her genes. I mean, we know that so much of chronic

non-communicable disease today is, you know, is environmental, you know, it's, it's the interaction between our environment and our genes perhaps. And so people are sick, you know, you look around, um, there's no question, you know, it's two thirds of adults are either overweight or obese. Half the population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic, um, rates of cancer are through the roof. Heart disease is still, you know, the leading cause of death globally. So, you know, I've tried to, I've taken it on myself to become a bit of a detective

and, you know, just circling back to the podcast. It's a really great way to get to talk to people and to discuss these ideas and do it in a way that's, um, uh, you know, that brings like people along with me for the journey, because certainly I'm not the only one in this position, you know, like everybody that I know, we were just talking about our good buddy, Michael trainer. Um, he's just one of my friends who has been touched by dementia as well. Everybody that I know, every millennial that I know, because our parents are getting older, is seeing signs of cognitive aging, seeing dementia pop up. I have a good friend that was just diagnosed with breast

cancer over the past month. So I think that it's all coming to a head and we've been a part of this like mass experiment. We've been the unwitting guinea pigs essentially in this trial that's been running. And I just don't think that the outcome is looking good. No, it's getting worse for sure. For sure. Well, I like the direction you're taking, you know, with the podcast and what you're doing in terms of expanding out food, as we both know, is such a critical piece because it's something that we, I mean, you can't live without it, right? Obviously water being another big piece, air being another big piece. When you talked about genetics, you know, that's something

that really resonates with me. That was one of the first big um how should i put this is it was one of the first big like it just shattered my beliefs as a young person there's a couple things that have done that over the years as i've gotten into this space one being you know i think the common term was or knowledge growing up was be careful getting hit in the head you only have so many brain cells and after that that's it and it's like no no we we do continue yeah to make new brain cells and there's different things that can accelerate that and help us but the brain the brain with neuroplasticity is always changing it's always in flux no different than other parts of our body um but this concept that you know if I have a genetic predisposition for something that that's

the disease I'll die from. And that's total nonsense. It's absolute bullshit. Yeah. Dis-ease happens through different variations in, in what we put in our body, what we, how much stress we have, right. And that stress, and I've taken some shit for this online from people that don't know, but Robert Sapolsky wrote a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Great book. Amazing. Paul Cech wrote a book called

How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy. Phenomenal. Both of them talk about how all stress chronically, and this isn't acute stress. People chime in online. What about back squats? That's a stressor. It's like, yeah, back squats work.

But if you did that three times a day for the rest of your fucking life, that would become chronic, right? So chronic stressors could be emotional. They could be from your food. You know, if you have a gluten intolerance and I'm constantly eating fucking pizza and bread and Cheetos and all this nasty shit all day long, like that's not going to help me out, right?

So it could be from anything, any kind of stress that remains unchecked over time will lead to a breakdown. We're now, because we have all these things, and this really just circles back to, I do have some level of control, and it is my responsibility to understand what that level is and how I can go about attaining that, right? How I can go about making sure, because I have a predisposition, Aubrey and I both did our 23andMe and we outsourced it to Rhonda Patrick's site, foundmyfitness.com for a $10 donation. She looks at a number of different gene mutations and tells you like, this is how you process vitamin D. This is how you process plant-based beta carotene into usable vitamin A. Same thing with alpha-linolenic acid. Can you

take plant-based omega-3s and use them in DHA and EPA or not? So both of us were the same in many aspects of that. Neither one of us can. We could be vegan and do well. We have to get animal source vitamin A from liver and egg yolk. We have to get omega-3s from fish and krill. We can't do it from chia seeds and flax seeds. Our body doesn't respond that way. Understanding that helps you to make sure that you're giving yourself the most optimized food and all that stuff. And you don't have to figure that out if you're trying to balance the diet. Yeah, 100%. People of European descent tend to be worse at converting the plant-based forms of omega-3s to its usable forms in the body. And that's become something that, just generally speaking, I think I come across a lot of vegan and vegetarians on, well, particularly through Instagram. Usually they don't follow me, but they always end up commenting on my posts. They're very militant. And they're private accounts, of course.

Yeah, and no hate against them. But just speaking to, you know, because my wheelhouse is really, I began being very interested in the genetics of Alzheimer's disease and dementia and things like that. You know, it is interesting to note that, you know, most people who develop Alzheimer's disease, first of all, Alzheimer's disease rates are just skyrocketing. So it's estimated that 5

million people in the US have it today. That number is set to triple by the year 2050. And if you make it to the age of 85 today, you have a one in two chance of being diagnosed with it, which is like a coin toss. So you want to know your odds of developing Alzheimer's disease, it's a coin toss. But the, you know, the genetics of Alzheimer's disease is a coin toss. But the genetics of Alzheimer's disease are very interesting in that very few people have the early onset familial variant of, or it's actually a mutation that determines whether or not you're gonna develop Alzheimer's disease.

Most people that know about, or I should say, the most well-defined gene associated with Alzheimer's disease is a risk gene. So it influences your risk, but it's not a determinant gene. And about one in four people have it. The APOE4? The APOE4 allele, yeah.

But still, half of people over 85 have Alzheimer's disease or will develop it. So clearly there's a big gene environment interaction. And I gave a TED talk or a TEDx talk recently where I shared research that, you know, if you look at parts of the world where their food supply has become, hasn't been as industrialized as ours, and certainly their lifestyles are different as well, you know, they don't live in the Western world where they're working behind computer screens and sitting at desks all day. The same frequency of the APOE4 allele in those parts of the world, like in Ibadan, Nigeria,

there's a lot, it's a much smaller, almost an insignificant association with Alzheimer's disease. So what that suggests is that if you're genetically at risk for Alzheimer's disease and you live in the United States, you might simply move to Ibadan, Nigeria and see that risk abolished. So it's purely, it's an environmental thing. And we don't yet have all the answers in terms of what it is about our environment that seems to pull the trigger on that predilection in people. But, you know, I happen to think that just like our diets modulate in a powerful way are risks for many of these chronic diseases, which we're now seeing burdening society, obesity, type two diabetes. I feel like those same things, it's not a stretch for me to extrapolate

how those same features might affect brain health. And so that's kind of the hypothesis that I sort of wrote Genius Foods operating under. I love that. And you mentioned obesity and diabetes. Two more things that Aubrey and I both have a disposition for genetically to be obese. You guys are both ripped. That's their fucking case in point, right?

Like case in point. And it was funny when i saw that i was like really i'm supposed to be obese and i i thought of my extended family and i really saw the writing on the wall and even diabetes on my mom's side and alzheimer's on my father's side i was like okay all right sure the genetics show that but you'll never see me obese you're never going to see me with diabetes right and that again it just i mean yeah i'm sure i'm definitely into figuring shit out and understanding yourself a little bit better sometimes that means spending a little bit of money to quantify sometimes that means getting a self-quantification device whatever the case is um it really just

comes down to the want to know you know it's really cool that you want to know this shit. Everyone who comes to this space usually had a fire lit under their ass that brought them here. So with your mother, Michael Trainor's father, different people get brought into this and they understand that. Rob Wolf was a raw vegan in college at Chico State

and his health declined, testosterone dropped. And then he circled back and started working with Lauren Cordain and getting into the paleo space, getting into the keto space. But there is a catalyst that brings us here. And hopefully, it's not something that you can't recover from. Yeah. No, what I like to say to people is that genes aren't destiny, but they will determine what the standard American diet and lifestyle will do to you. You know, I mean, the standard American diet and lifestyle ravages the human animal. I mean, we're eating diets that are not biologically appropriate, right?

It's so funny. Like, I feed my cat a bag of cat food and it says biologically appropriate cat food. I'm like, how do they know this? It's basically what you would observe a cat eating in the wild, right? Unfortunately for the modern human, our wild no longer exists, right? We have access to sweet fruit 365 days a year, no matter where in the world we live, no matter where in the world our genes have sourced from. Food is available to us. I mean, there's a proximity effect, right? I mean, we're just around food all the time. Portion sizes are getting huge.

And most of the foods that we're eating today are what are called ultra-processed foods. They're essentially hyper-palatable. So it makes it really difficult for us to moderate our consumption of those foods. And this was actually shown in a... I battle sometimes on Instagram with people in the if-it-fits-your-macros camp.

Same. Same. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I call them calorie zealots because, you know, they basically take this reductionist approach where they distill food down to its, you know, the energy. Calories in, calories out. Calories in, calories out calories in calories out right you are no um healthier or or uh like your your health is determined solely by your energy balance at the end of the day you know

um and i think that that's such bs and and this was actually shown so my my focus really is in helping people to recognize food quality and i do this on instagram but i also get to do it'm very lucky. I get to do it on television where I get to reach, you know, America. I get to reach like the masses. And I see that people are confused as hell, as confused as they've ever been when it comes to nutrition. And my argument is that by reaching for higher quality foods and by eschewing the ultra processed junk foods, your hunger is naturally going to regulate itself to the degree that you don't have to think about calories. Calories are like time, right? It's like a manmade construct. And while you might enjoy being tethered to your Excel spreadsheet or your calorie counting app or your food scale, I mean, that's not what any of the people in the world's

blue zones are doing. That's not what any of the world's remaining hunter gatherers are doing. And that's not what we did for the vast majority of our evolution. Our bodies have an intuitive sense of the degree to which they need energy. And that becomes abundantly clear when you base your diet around unprocessed whole foods, which, you know, should sound intuitive. But recently, a trial was published led by National Institute of Health obesity researcher Kevin Hall. And he found that basically, when you let people consume an ad lib diet, meaning they were like allowed to eat, you know, as much as they wanted, eat until fullness or satiety, that by eating a diet that was built around whole, unprocessed foods, their hunger naturally regulated itself to the point that

they actually were able to maintain their energy balance or come in at a deficit naturally. And that leads to weight loss, obviously. Whereas when they gave the same subjects, it was a crossover trial, ultra-processed foods, they ended up eating a 500-calorie surplus. So this obsession with calories to me is just totally asinine when it really seems to be an artifact of the fact that our diets have become so mangled and so industrialized. Whereas by eating unprocessed foods and by sticking to dark leafy greens, vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, meats like grass-fed beef, chicken, eggs, things like that that and even your starches that's something that i love that you pointed out genius foods is like yeah you can have fucking berries you can have different

there's good sources of carbohydrates 100 sweet potatoes probably going to do a lot better than some type of flour-based bread or pasta yeah you know i, the thing about carbs. So, you know, there's a lot of from the same camp, really the calories, the calories brigade that, you know, sweet fruit, grains, things like that. Again, it's all about calories. It doesn't matter if you're eating sugar. If you're in a hypocaloric state, if you're eating, if you're consuming fewer calories and you're expending every day, you can have as much sugar as you want. Basically, you're going to lose weight all the same. But I've been honed by my experience getting to like do these TV shows, right?

And I'm not just talking within my filter bubble of my Instagram audience and people who are following the paleo hashtag and the LCHF hashtag. I'm talking to people who are like, not only truly ignorant about nutrition, unfortunately, but also when you look statistically, again, at people's metabolic health in this country, you know, most people have some degree, if not, you know, if not full-blown glucose intolerance. So for most people, I don't, that's why I don't advocate for the consumption of grains or even, you know, potatoes all that frequently. And that includes sweet potatoes or sweet fruit. Now for somebody like you or me or somebody who's working out or who's privy to how nutrition works, even

at a, at a rudimentary degree and they're exercising, they're not sedentary. Spend some time without carbs three months in a year. Spend some time without carbs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three months in a year. Spend some time without carbs. For that person, carbs are great. Carbs can be great. They can be used to support your workouts. You were saying before you used to work out two to three times a day, right? I mean, for somebody like you, with that program, I mean, you have a way higher carb tolerance

than most people. But if you're diabetic, pre-diabetic, you basically have minimal carb tolerance. And so for those people, I don't advocate for, you know, the consumption of sugar and starches and things like that. And so I just, I love getting that kind of pushback on Instagram. You know, it seems so, so self-centered, you know? Well, people want to defend, that that's the there's so much to this and i've spoken with aubrey about it a lot the defense of who we are right and that really you look at politics religion any of these things um and i brought this up a lot it's pride month i brought it up a lot recently but like this this concept that if i say it doesn't matter if a man wants to have sex with another man,

it's none of your fucking business. Who cares? And you say, no, they're going to burn in hell. It's wrong. It says so in the Bible. We're at odds here, right? And that's okay. The difference is if you think that it's so not okay, and that if you were to change your mind on that, it would actually peel a layer of who you are away, right? You're so attached to the idea that you actually identify with that concept, right? And the same can be said for anything. I've used that example a lot lately, but your political background or what you eat for food. So if you're an if it fits your macros guy and you're to have a diehard belief in that, and you post a meme on Instagram that shows the difference between one donut versus

one sweet potato or one donut versus a fucking handful of broccolini, like that's going to trigger them because they don't want to release the idea that I can, I want to eat donuts. Like, fuck you. I want to eat donuts. Like, and if they could just see that and see like, look, man, I know what you're doing here. You want to have your cake and eat it too. That's fine. Understand that. And maybe you do have metabolic flexibility. Maybe you have done some fasting and some other things in that occasional fucking cheesecake. I'm going to eat cheesecake tomorrow for my boy's birthday. And I'm not going to fucking worry about it. I'm not going to worry about it. but that's not a part of my diet. There's no part of the week where I'm like, it's cheesecake day or it's, it's, you know,

today's my cheat day and I'll eat whatever I want. That doesn't exist in my lifespan or my, or how I really make this work now. But I think that's such a critical piece is in the argument section online, which is fucking everywhere, whether it's Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, people need to understand that we don't always have to agree on things. Where you'll actually learn is when you can pull yourself back a layer from what you believe and listen. Doesn't mean you agree with me on everything I say. It doesn't mean you agree with Max on everything he says. But if it triggers you to the point where you will no longer hear the person in front of you, that's where we run against an issue, right? When you're so identified

with your own beliefs that you can't release it to new, more valuable information, that's an issue. Yeah, 100%. I think it becomes problematic when religion gets in the way. And I use the term religion loosely to, you know, apply to everything from, you know, these, these nutrition factions, like, you know, veganism, or even carnivore, keto, whatever, paleo. But even in, in the worst instances, and this is, you know, thankfully, a minority, but like, people can use science as a religion as well. You know, people can become basically evidence Nazis. And if they don't have the data in front of them, then they basically don't, they won't even consider the possibility that there could be something there, you know, and those people tend to be down on what they're not up on. And I just, I find that to be so rigidly bound by the available data. First of all, it ignores the fact that science is an industry just like everything else. And that scientific papers, there could be publication bias, you know, um, there, there papers can be subjected just as much and, and researchers and whatever could be subjected just

as many, you know, unforeseen influences as anybody else. You know, I mean, I was, while my mom was going through her, this, you know, this, this health tragedy in my family, um, somebody was ousted, uh, a high level, um, executive was ousted from Sloan Kettering, which is one of the top cancer hospitals, because he was failing to disclose, you know, just how bad the side effects of various cancer drugs were in his trials comparing, you know, I forget exactly the details, but you can just Google it like. And so, you know, we have to remember that science is an industry and it's subject to innumerable biases. And when you take looping back to these endocrine disrupting chemicals, glyphosate, I mean, whatever it is, there are billions of dollars that are getting in the way potentially of, um,

those long-term studies and the data that we need to really determine whether or not these compounds are going to be safe. And it's just not a risk that I'm willing to take with my life and the life of, you know, and the health of my loved ones. So, I mean, I guess it's a philosophical quandary. But at the end of the day, as you mentioned, I think it's important to listen to all sides and to develop that critical lens for yourself, you know, to do your own research, to align with people who you think are trustworthy, who disclose where their funding is coming from, because everybody needs to make a living, right? And, and yeah, and just to kind of go with your internal compass, you know, like go with what you believe is right, go with your gut. Yeah, and not marry the idea. You know, like when I first got a nikotosis, I probably spent

a better part of two years in that space and really felt amazing. And then as my training shifted and I started competing in jujitsu again, I circled back to better carbohydrates. And then Wired to Eat was written by Rob Wolf and he taught us how to test our carbohydrate tolerance to different carbohydrates. And I really spent a year in that space playing with different things and figured out white rice, probably not the best for me. Sweet potatoes, they're okay. And you know, then how, how do we look at that from a composition standpoint? And how do I look at that from a cognitive standpoint? And when's the best time to circle around? I just, it all came from trial and error. There is no one size fits all approach to any of this stuff. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. There's no one size fits all approach to any of this stuff. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. There's no one size fits all. And I, you know, even at the end of the day, like no, no scientific, uh, scientifically trained person will ever speak in certainty, you know, when it comes to things as complicated as nutrition, diet, lifestyle. I mean, what we, what we have at our disposal are probabilities. And so you have to see yourself as an N of one experiment, you know, you really have to tinker and, and, you know, whether it's, um, experimenting with, you know, the conditions in your bedroom for, you know, to optimize your sleep and then tracking it with a sleep tracker or going and getting blood labs every year and seeing whether or not the butter that you're putting in your coffee every day is causing an aberration of your lipids. Like, I think it's important to stay, um, to keep tabs on these things because if we don't, who's gonna, you know, I mean,

we go to doctors for the most part for sick care. We don't do it for healthcare. Healthcare is what happens when you're pushing your shopping cart, you know, along the perimeter of the supermarket and you're doing your best to avoid the aisles, which is where the ultra-processed packaged foods lie. It's usually in the aisles of the supermarket. It's when you're debating with yourself whether or not you want to get off your butt and go to the gym. That's healthcare. That's where wellness occurs. It's those micro decisions that we make every day that don't feel like they matter all that much. But in the grand scheme of things, they matter a lot. And that's really what I feel like my role is in all this to sort of help people realize how empowered they truly are.

Because by the time you're sick, you're disempowered. You know, illness is the great disempowerer. I don't know if that's a word. I'll take it. But it really is, you know, so and I've learned the hard way. I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand from every conceivable angle. And so, oh, yeah. Well, I know you got to get out of here soon. You got another podcast coming up. But I wanted to ask you one quick blip on you. And you asked me what my favorite biohacks were when I was on your show. What have you, what have you learned from your podcast that you've started to implement into your own life? What, what resonated with you so much that you decided, damn, I'm going to, I'm going to start doing this now that you didn't necessarily know before.

Oh my God. What a good question. Um, well, most, most top of mind for me i uh you know i had our mutual friend alan alex aaron alexander i was in trouble saying his double a aaron alexander aaron alexander that's how you warm up for the podcast it's a good one name over and over again um so i had i've he's been on my podcast twice at this point and i always learn a ton from him, but lately I've been making more of an effort to sit on the floor. His podcast just went up this past week. It's episode number 60, I believe. We'll link to it in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, sitting on the floor, being able to get up off the floor is a, you know, is sort of a marker thought to be associated with vigor and robustness. You look around the world, people are sitting on floors. We're not, you know,

we don't spend as much of the time as we spend here in the West on chairs. And I feel like we see a lot of, we, you know, we tend to experience a lot of consequences as a result, neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, stuff like that. Oh yeah, I love it, brother. And I'll add to that one piece.

I think it was 180 bucks on Amazon amazon it ships free on prime for a hundred square feet of mma puzzle mats and our living room for the last six years has had these right in the living room so if i can't make it to go to yoga or if i need a spot to to wrestle with my son it's always fucking there whoa you know and we talked about convenience on your show, how you, how you make something available. Yeah. We've had hardwood floors and the Airbnb we're in right now is hardwood. It's not a great surface to sit on. Right.

Right. But you put those MMA mats down and all of a sudden you got a place to do yoga. You got a place to wrestle. You got a place to stretch. You got a place to roll out and have fun. And it's fun to just lay around. And I got my buddies over and I'm kind of a rough house kind of guy. And even when my old man's in town, I'm like, get over here, old man. And we use a black belt in jujitsu and we'll have, we'll have a little five minute round on the mats there in the living room.

Your dad's a black belt in jujitsu? Yeah. What? Yeah. So all good things, you know, and all that comes from just the ability, like I don't even have to walk in the fucking garage. Wow. If you're worried about the fashion of your home you can throw them in the garage that'll work just the same but spend some time there right so i think that's a good way to

get on the ground and aaron alexander is an amazing dude he's been on my show three or four times now yeah great guy dude it's been excellent having you here we're gonna run it back in the near future as uh there's some very cool shit happening in Max's life that we can't quite divulge yet, but we'll run you back here, I think, spring of next year and we'll be able to dig a deep dive into that. Thank you, brother. Looking forward to it.

And one more time, your podcast and where people can find you. Yeah, my podcast is called The Genius Life. It's available everywhere you listen to podcasts and I'm pretty active on Instagram. So come over and say what's up. I'm at Max Lugavere. Dope. We'll link to all that in the show notes. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Hell yeah.

Thanks for listening all the way through the show. This was a good one. My boy, Max Lugavere. Check him out. We've linked to all his stuff in the show notes. Get his book, Genius Foods, if you have not. And I don't know if it's available for pre-order, but be on the lookout for his book coming out in 2020. It's going to be fire. No doubt about it. And as always 10% off all supplements and food products at on it.com slash Kyle, please give our sponsors some love and hit subscribe and tell your homies about us because we're growing like wildfire and we want as many people in the mix as we can. Thanks for tuning in y'all.