The Joe Rogan Experience - #1870 - Max Lugavere

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Max Lugavere is a wellness journalist, filmmaker, author, and host of the "The Genius Life" podcast. His new book, "The Genius Kitchen," is available now.  https://www.maxlugavere.com/

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up, Max? How are you? What up? Thanks for having me. Pleasure to meet you. Same. I've enjoyed your content online, so it's exciting to meet you in person. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that.

So you were telling me before we got rolling, I said, save it, let's just talk about it. This Alzheimer's thing that you're doing? What are you doing? Yeah. So I've been deeply immersed in the Alzheimer's dementia prevention world for the past almost decade at this point. Just to lay it out upfront, I'm not a medical doctor. I didn't take the academic route. I started college sort of on a pre-med track, but what ended up happening was, uh, I ended up going into journalism straight out of college and I ended up working for a TV network in the U S um, that was backed by Al Gore back in the day. And so I got to hone my storytelling chops there, but I'd always been really passionate about health, nutrition, medicine, things like that. But in 2011, my mother started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, which is a rare form of dementia. Robin Williams had that. Yeah.

Yeah. Terrible condition. It's described as feeling like you have both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. And certainly that's what I observed in my mom. And so when she started to display those symptoms, it had taken me and my family completely off guard. I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative condition. My mom certainly wasn't old at the time. She was 58. She was still a spirited, youthful woman in middle age. Um, she had all the pigments in her hair. And, um, for me, I was in between jobs and I really had the opportunity. I was grateful to have had the

opportunity to go with her to different doctor's appointments. And I grew up in New York city. So we had access to, you know, cathedrals to medical, um, advice and, and, uh, and, and examination. And in every instance, we were met with what I've come to call diagnose and adios. Basically, a physician would run a battery of esoteric tests on my mom, scribble down a few notes on a prescription pad and send us on our way. But we had to ultimately take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which is known for taking on really complex medical cases. They build a team around the patient. And it was there that for the first time, my mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition. She was prescribed

drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. It wasn't until a few years later that she actually received the Lewy body dementia diagnosis. But at that point, I started to dive into the research because I had been trained as a journalist, which, you know, you're not trained as rigorously as a PhD scientist, but you're kind of taught similarly to investigate things, to maintain skepticism, to, you know, ask questions. And I started to look into the literature and just generally get a sense of what it was that my mom had been diagnosed with, what this, you know, what this entailed. And I realized that in most cases, dementia begins in the brain decades before

the first symptom, 10, 20, 30 years even by some estimates. And so for me, this became something really important to explore as a potentially preventable condition. Because I realized for the first time that I had a risk factor, that my mom was my risk factor. Essentially. I didn't, I hadn't even yet looked into my genes at that point, but, um, but so I, uh, I started looking into it and I came across all of these like fascinating insights, which, which we can talk about, but I decided at that point, um, that I, to, to sort of do what I could to help push the, you know, move the needle with this condition, that I would use my skills, which at the time were filmmaking, because I had just come off, you know, I was like producing content for TV, and I was on camera, I was a communicator as well. And so I decided to do a documentary on the topic of dementia prevention, the first ever

documentary on dementia as a potentially preventable condition. We've all seen dementia documentaries on HBO and networks like that. And they always push this very doom and gloom mentality about the condition, which I understand. It is a very difficult condition. It's America's most feared condition after all. And this is a condition that 90% of what we know about Alzheimer's disease in particular, which is just one form of dementia has been discovered only in the past 15 years. So it's a very rapidly evolving field of science. But I felt like if we know that this is a condition that begins in the brain decades before the presentation of symptoms, then to me, what

that is, that's a very empowering insight. That means that we have agency to change our cognitive destiny. So I started shooting with my mom, which was very hard to do. Um, because, you know, I mean, my, the person who I love most in the world, I was watching, um, decline right in front of the camera, but also, um, I decided to exploit my media credentials at the time to then talk to researchers and scientists around the world. Um, and I was doing my own research in the primary literature as well. But I decided to, yeah, to go to these labs and clinics where they're really ushering in dementia as a potentially preventable condition. And I actually signed myself up to become a study subject in one,

actually, at Weill Cornell in New York. And I actually became, ultimately I became, um, a collaborator with the, uh, principal investigator there who's become my mentor over the years, Richard Isaacson. Um, and I got to, uh, coauthor a paper in a clinician's textbook, uh, on the clinical practice of, of dementia prevention. Cause you know, after all this time I've learned so much about, um, about the condition, the etiology and so forth. Uh, but this documentary, I'm super excited for it. It's, um, it's called little empty boxes and we have a trailer up at little empty boxes.com. Why little empty boxes? Well, it's a, it's a nod to something that my mom says in the film, which is actually something that, you know, my mom's condition, it seemed like her cognition had

just severely downshifted almost, almost overnight. Um, and so my mom never, my mom never like forgot who I was or anything like that. The presentation of Lewy body dementia is different from Alzheimer's disease. And once you've seen one case of dementia, just generally speaking, you've seen one case of dementia. Every, every dementia is different. But in my mom's case, it led to her often losing her train of thought soon after beginning to express an idea. And she would often say things that just didn't make logical sense. So it's sort of a nod to something that she says in the film. But I'm super excited because we inked a partnership with a wonderful foundation called the Alzheimer's Foundation of America. And yeah, I'm just super excited to... Is dementia purely genetic or is it caused by environmental factors or any other things that people consume?

environmental factors or any other things that people consume? Great question. So though dementia, though Alzheimer's disease was coined in 1906 by a physician named Alois Alzheimer, the brain has long been thought of to sit in sort of the ivory tower of the brain guarded from what happens down below by what's called the blood brain barrier. But we now know that the brain is influenced by everything that happens down below. And the dogma, especially with regard to Alzheimer's disease fundraising over the past couple of decades, has really been that this is a condition that you can't treat, prevent, or slow. But we now have really solid data to say that it is a potentially preventable condition. So when it comes to our risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia,

there are basically two categories of risk. You have your non-modifiable risk factors, of which there are three. So you've got your age, your genes, and your gender. So your age, age is still the number one risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease, right? You can't change your age yet. You have your gender. If you're a woman, your risk is double that as compared to a male's. And you have your genes. Now, genes is something that we can actually talk about because you can't change your genes,

making them, therefore, a non-modifiable risk factor. You can change the expression of your genes, how your genes express themselves moment to moment. So for example, if you live in the United States and you carry a copy or two of what's called the APOE4 allele, so it's basically a polymorphism, meaning it's not a mutation, it's actually a very common gene variant, about one in four people carry the APOE4 allele. In the United States, that increases your risk anywhere between two and 14-fold, depending on whether you carry one or two copies. I think that's also the same genetic expression that makes you have CTE.

CTE, yeah. It makes everything more, it makes your brain more vulnerable in general to insult, whether that is from TBI, exposure to pollutants, exposure to unhealthy ways of eating. Do we know why it does that? Well, it's interesting. Yeah. So the APOE4 allele is thought to be the ancestral version. So it's the first version. All non-human primates are APOE4-4. So they carry the APOE4 allele, not just one copy, but two copies. And yet they don't develop Alzheimer's disease.

When you look to people, we've evolved these different isoforms of the APOE gene. So we have APOE2, 3, and 4. And just to reiterate, APOE4 is the ancestral allele. So cultures that have longer exposure to modern agriculture, actually there's lower frequency of the APOE4 allele. The thinking is that agriculture, right? Like when we became domesticated, when we started basing our diets around grains, when we became more sedentary, less generalized in terms of our cognitive, the daily cognitive tasks that our ancestors would have undertaken, that it's selected against the APOE4 allele. So it's possible that that allele, which again is very common, one in four people carry it,

is sort of the canary in the coal mine for the Western way of life. That if you adopt a Western way of life and you eat, you know, today, 60% of calories that adults consume come from ultra-processed junk foods, right? We're more sedentary than ever before in human history. We've got more stress. We're exposed to more environmental pollutants. That that is what dramatically is what pulls the trigger, right? Because genes load the gun. It's our diets and our lifestyles that pull the trigger.

But if you were to take somebody with that same genotype, right, and move them to a less industrialized part of the world, like say Ibadan, Nigeria, where the frequency of the ApoE4 allele is just as common, it has little to no association with Alzheimer's disease. So just to put that another way, what that suggests is if you're genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease in the United States, you might simply move to Ibadan, Nigeria or another less industrialized part of the world and see that risk abolished. So with this consumption of processed foods that is responsible for a large percentage of the calories that people consume today, is the human body adapting to that?

Is that why this ApoE4 is less prevalent than it is in other cultures? You know, it's possible, although with age being the primary risk factor, it's unlikely that that has put significant selection pressure. So I'm not sure, but we do know, you know, there are, I think, gene studies where they've looked at expression of genes that produce enzymes that break down amylase, right, like starch and things like that. And those are increasing, I think, over time. It's a little out of my wheelhouse. But generally, I mean, yeah, the standard American diet is completely aberrant from the diet that our ancestors consumed, the diet that really we attribute to the development of the human brain. 60% of the calories that we consume today come from ultra-processed, packaged convenience foods. It's a massive problem. I mean, it's driving obesity. It's driving type 2 diabetes. If you have type 2 diabetes... So going back to Alzheimer's

disease and this gene expression, so the APOE4 allele is, you have it, but it's not necessarily destiny. And 90% of Alzheimer's cases, I'm sorry, more, like 99% of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to some interplay between our genes and our environment. There's a very small proportion of patients with Alzheimer's disease that have a gene mutation that is a deterministic gene. And this is called the early onset familial Alzheimer's gene. And that gene basically guarantees that you're going to have Alzheimer's disease. But that makes up only one to 2% of cases. The vast majority of people who develop Alzheimer's disease, it's the interplay

between their genes and their environment. So excluding environmental factors like pollutants and plastics and all sorts of other things that affect people's bodies. What are the other things that a person can do to make sure that they at least are preventing the possibility of this happening? Yeah. Like if the symptoms take, if it takes decades to exhibit symptoms, what are they seeing when they say that the people exhibit signs or exhibit some sort of a future of dementia? Like how can you see that? What are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, so you can't necessarily look inside the brain. I mean, you can.

There are studies that look at what's called brain glucose metabolism. So something that you see in Alzheimer's disease is a reduced ability of the brain to generate energy from glucose. This is called glucose hypometabolism. This is a defining feature, actually, of Alzheimer's disease. And I say Alzheimer's disease. Again, my mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease. And I say Alzheimer's disease. Again, my mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease, but it's the most common form of dementia. And so all the research on it really looks at mostly Alzheimer's disease. And then you get sort of like all-cause dementia in there. But like these more niche variants like Lewy body, like frontotemporal, there's very little research on them.

So when I say sometimes I use Alzheimer's disease and dementia interchangeably, but with Alzheimer's disease, one of the primary features is called glucose hypometabolism. So the brain's inability to create energy from glucose. So you see that decades before you see symptoms of dementia? Yeah, especially with people who are genetically at risk. About a 10% reduction in the ability to generate energy out of glucose, which is the primary energy substrate for the brain under said conditions. So if people see this, if they get a test and they find out that they have this ApoE4 and then they get their glucose checked, how are they checking that, their ability to process glucose?

Yeah. I mean, they do what are called FTG PET tests, scans. So they'll just look to see glucose uptake in the brain. But... Where does one get, like if someone is saying, oh my God, I have dementia in my family and they're listening to this, how can I find out? What do they do? You know, that's not a test that you can easily get. Um, they'll use it for a study purposes like research purposes, but it's not a test being used clinically. Um, the, the, what correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain is your degree of insulin, uh, resistance in the body or sensitivity. So if you are insulin sensitive, you've talked many times on the podcast in the past about metabolic health, insulin sensitivity

versus resistance. The sort of classic condition that we see here in the US characterized by insulin resistance is type two diabetes. But what the studies have shown is that insulin resistance correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain. So what you really want to do to keep your brain healthy is to make sure that you're as insulin sensitive as possible. That's one thing that you can do that you know you're checking off that box. You know you're checking off that box. Because when it comes to, so we talked about the, and let me know if I should like, you know, kind of double click on any one of these because, you know, I know we're covering a lot. But when it comes to the other risk factors, what are called the modifiable risk factors, you have 12 of them. And one of them is diabetes.

So insulin resistance, obviously the hallmark of type 2 diabetes. We know that insulin resistance is strongly correlated to reduced glucose utilization in the brain. Obesity is another modifiable risk factor. Studies show that as your waistline expands, your brain shrinks. Total brain volume is actually inversely...

That explains Bert Kreischer. Yeah. Call Bert. He needs to know about this. total brain volume is actually inversely. That explains Bert Kreischer. Yeah. Call Bert. He needs to know about this. Um, so yeah, obesity is no bueno. It's not good. You know, I mean, there's like this push online now, like the health positivity, body positivity. Yeah. I think it's so foolish. Yeah. I just, I can't imagine being so sensitive to people's feelings that you ignore a very clear warning sign that they're doing something that's insanely unhealthy and preventable. And it's something that should be broadcast to everybody. Everybody should know this is a real factor in a host of different

problems that are going to happen with your body. 100%. I mean, you can be more or less healthy at a given size, right? But to be not obese is healthier than being obese. 100%. Yeah. And by the year 2030, one in two Americans are going to be not just overweight, but obese. I thought it was already there. We're close. We're 40%, but we're getting there.

It's insane. Yeah. And it's clearly connected to our diet. Yeah. And, you know, that's one of the things that I have enjoyed is a lot of your posts on diet and food. But we'll get to that. But before we get into that, when you talk about preventative measures that someone can take other than decreasing your waistline, losing weight? What are the other factors? Does exercise have any factor on dementia? Yeah. Exercise is medicine when it comes to the

brain. So, and we can tackle this from a number of different angles, but when you exercise, you're literally pushing fresh blood up to the brain and blood carries oxygen, nutrients, antioxidants, things like that. When you exercise, you are increasing the expression of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, which is sort of considered to be like a miracle grow protein for the brain. You're increasing blood flow. You're increasing the expression of BDNF. You're changing the neurochemistry of the brain essentially with a workout. I mean, I'm a different person when I leave the gym than I was walking into it. So you can subjectively, you can feel that, that it's doing something to your brain. You're reducing inflammation.

You're reducing blood pressure. You're normalizing healthy blood pressure. This is something that is, this is, I mean, crucially important, but one of the seminal trials that I use in my argument, I mean, crucially important, but one of the seminal trials that I use in my argument, which is now, you know, finally being accepted by, you know, the medical establishment, but the Sprint Mind Trial found that for people who are aggressively treated for their high blood pressure with pharmacologic drugs, but, you know, this ties into exercise because exercise is just as effective as blood pressure lowering medication, meta-analyses show. But for these people who were put on aggressive blood pressure normalizing therapy, they reduced the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment.

And mild cognitive impairment is sort of a prodrome. It's considered like pre-dementia. You'll often develop mild cognitive impairment before you're diagnosed with- That's also Bert Kreischer. Send him a message. This one's for you, Bert. So yeah. So I mean, so exercise is like, it helps to normalize blood pressure. It reduces insulin sensitivity. It helps to, you know, the hormonal milieu. We talked about insulin resistance at physical exercise, right? Particularly resistance training, which is so important for people to do. It is one of the best ways of fostering insulin sensitivity. Resistance training above cardio? remind myself this because I dislike doing cardio. Like I don't like running on a treadmill. I love lifting weights. I've been doing that my whole life pretty much, but cardio is super important because we, we have a ton of evidence on cardio as it pertains to BDN, BDNF, which is this brain

derived neurotrophic factor. And we know this because it's very easy to get a mouse to run on a treadmill and then to sacrifice it and see what's going on in the brain. It's a lot harder to get a mouse to do squats and bench presses, you know? So from, from like the basic science standpoint, we have a lot of evidence on specifically what cardio does for the brain, right? But resistance training, we know in terms of bolstering whole body resilience, robustness, we know that your muscles are a very important glucose disposal sink, right? So, I mean, we live in a time where your average American consumes 300 grams of carbohydrates every single day, right? Our bodies don't have, uh, uh, a way to store carbohydrates beyond what, you know, the storage capacity of our muscles and our liver tissue, right? It's not like fat. You can store 3000 calories of, of fat in a single pound of fat tissue. Right. But you know, your muscles, your liver combined only about four, 500 grams of, of glucose, you know, in a, in a given day or, or at a, at a time rather. And so, um, so yeah, resistance training, you're building your,

you're building up your musculature, which is going to allow you to continue to exercise and be mobile, which we know is really important for the brain, um, for glucose disposal, it's crucially important. So I think, I think both are key. You can obviously tweak your resistance training regimen to have a more sort of cardio aspect to it, right? Like shortening the time between sets. But I do think that there's value in doing, in doing both, you know? Um, but yeah, exercise, it's just at this point, like, I think it was, uh, two or three years ago that the American Academy of Neurology finally made exercise a, uh, something that physicians could prescribe to treat somebody who's presenting with subjective cognitive, cognitive impairment in the, you know, as a, as a prophylactic so that they won't go on

to develop mild cognitive impairment. So it's really progressive of them. Yeah. I'm glad they're doing that now. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, um, and I, and I've seen this personally, like in, in science, like I'm a, I'm a huge fan of science. I, my work relies on it. And, and the last thing that I would ever want to do is sort of undermine confidence in science, but there's science and then there's the science, you know? And, um, especially in the field of Alzheimer's disease, there was this huge revelation recently that the past 16 years of Alzheimer's research in many ways was built on fraud. Yeah, I read that. That is one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about because it's so crazy. Please tell people about this because it's so insane and it's so hard to believe that this

could happen in modern medicine, especially with something that affects so many people's Alzheimer's. But please tell people about this study. Yeah. So basically the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes Alzheimer's disease over the past century, right, has been what's called the amyloid hypothesis. So ever since Alois Alzheimer discovered or named Alzheimer's disease in 1906 and looked into the brain of the cadaver and saw these plaques aggregating around neurons, right, in the extracellular space around neurons, the plaques have come to be sort of the force, the focus of Alzheimer's research, really. And the idea was that these plaques were the causative force in the condition. Much like the plaque on your teeth, right? You see these plaques in the brain of a person with

Alzheimer's disease. And so that's really been the target of drug therapy. And the idea was that until we can find a drug that would reduce the plaque burden, reduce the plaque, get rid of the plaque in the brains of a senior person, right? Somebody who's at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, that it's a disease that you can't prevent. There's nothing to do to treat.

But the problem was that they can never actually tie the plaque to cognitive decline, right? Like the clinically meaningful symptom, the symptomology of Alzheimer's disease, that it messes up your cognition, that it makes you, you know, that it makes you forget your loved ones, ultimately forget who you are, ultimately forgetting how to eat, right? And nourish yourself. They can never tie those symptoms to the eat, right? And, and, and, and nourish yourself. They could never tie those symptoms to, to the plaque, right? Until a paper published in the journal Nature in 2006. So what happened was this researcher named Sylvain Lesney at the University of Minnesota, basically was looking into these, the brains of mice who are bred to overexpress what's called amyloid precursor protein, which is the precursor to amyloid beta,

which is the protein that makes up sort of the skeleton of these plaques that we see aggregate, right? So what he did was he isolated a subtype that he called A-beta-star-56 and injected it into a young and healthy mouse or rat, mouse. And he saw that that mouse's cognition rapidly declined. So that was the missing link, right? That he found a subtype of this amyloid beta protein that serves as the backbone of these plaques, which could never be pinned to the cognitive decline itself, the memory loss itself. But he claimed that he found it, and when injected into the body of a healthy mouse, he saw a rapid decline in terms of their cognition.

So that was the missing link. And so at that point, faith in the so-called amyloid hypothesis was starting to wane because they couldn't find effective drugs. Alzheimer's drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate. So worse than for cancer, worse than for any other disease state, really. And the drugs that are currently FDA approved on the market, they're biochemical band-aids. They're minimally effective. I mean, they modulate various neurotransmitters, but you know, I've, I've heard it described like, uh, you know, trying, uh, expecting to remove amyloid from the brain, uh, of a person with Alzheimer's disease

and to see their cognition come back is sort of like thinking that if you remove all the headstones from a grave, you know, the people will come back to life, right? Like there's widespread neuronal dysfunction and death in the brain of somebody with Alzheimer's disease. And in tandem with that, scanning technology has allowed us to look into the brains of healthy controls. And what we see is that there's amyloid plaque in the brains of healthy controls as well. So there's no correlation between amyloid burden in the brain and one's cognitive abilities. But nonetheless, when this paper came out in 2006,

it renewed fervor in terms of this hypothesis because he found the subtype of amyloid that could be injected into a young and healthy mouse that would then seriously impair their cognition, right? and healthy mouse that would then seriously impair their cognition, right? And so that renewed interest in this hypothesis, and it's what ultimately led to the fact that just a couple years ago, two years ago, there was a highly controversial drug that was approved by the FDA called aducanumab or adjuhelm and this is a drug that effectively reduced plaque burden in the brain for the first time they found a drug that could actually reduce plaque burden in the brain

but it didn't lead to any improvement in cognitive symptoms nonetheless it was given the green light against uh against tons of opposition that the fda received They put together a panel of 11 people, neuroscientists, neurologists, right? Eight of them told the FDA not to approve this drug. And what was the reason for that? The reason for that, it was that the drug didn't move the needle on any clinically meaningful symptom. Were there significant side effects for the drug? There were.

So 35% of the people in the trial had significant brain swelling, and half of them had bleeding associated with that brain swelling because these are antibodies. So aducanumab is an antibody that basically targets, causes your own immune system to target the amyloid plaques, right? And so what that's doing is causing an inflammatory response in the brain, right? So 35% of the patients in that, in the phase two trials, I believe, had horrible side effects and no clinically meaningful effect on their cognition.

But nonetheless, because it effectively did reduce the amyloid plaque burden, there was this intense pressure, right, to get it greenlit because that's like the amyloid hypothesis right there, right? So huge problem. One of the big vocal sort of skeptics about this drug, aducanumab, is a guy, a Vanderbilt researcher named Matthew Schrag. And so Matthew Schrag was like very vocal, vocally against the approval of this drug, which again doesn't do anything, right?

Like horrible risk of side effects, no clinically meaningful effect on, on, on the, on the symptoms that we want to improve, right. For a patient with Alzheimer's disease. And, and so he was vocally critical of that. And then he also was working on some other, some other drug. And he, so what was revealed basically in the science paper that came out was that he was dabbling in a, on a website called PubPeer, which is a site where you can go, it's known for post-publication peer review. So before paper gets accepted for publication, it undergoes this peer review process, right? He found that there were a lot of sort of red flags that were being brought up on this message board, essentially, about this nature paper, this like seminal nature paper that was published that found it was like the missing link right between like the amyloid hypothesis and like the clinically meaningful, meaningful symptoms, meaning memory loss. And he did a bit of like image sleuthing, which is not generally part of the peer review process. Right. image sleuthing, which is not generally part of the peer review process, right? And he looked at the way data is illustrated in this paper, as it is in research generally, it's called a Western

blot, which is like a visual representation of data, the presence of proteins and so forth. And he found that they were all, for the most part, fabricated. In fact, this A beta star 56 wasn't found by any other team, hasn't been found by any other team. It basically came to light that it was essentially fake. The whole thing was faked. What was the motivation for this person to fake all this? is this good faith endeavor towards human flourishing, right? But in the industry of science, there are flawed humans, just like there are in every other industry, right? And scientists in general, I see this all the time in nutrition,

online, on social media, right? Social media is a great, like, sort of, they say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Like, social media is a great way to kind of see how this plays out. Because scientists are notoriously territorial, obstinate. They, you know, their, their reputations, egotistical, yeah. Their reputations are everything. Right. Yeah. And, um, I mean, it's just like, I see it, I see it every day. I see humans. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, so there's bad apples, right? Like, I think a lot of people in science, like I'm, I live and breathe nutrition. I'm it's the thing that I'm most passionate about, like in life, right? Like fitness, nutrition, sleep, disease prevention. My mom is what galvanized that that passion for me, right? And what my mom, my mom went through and my desire to prevent it from happening to others that I care about and ultimately people, you know, from all walks of life. But a lot, you know, a lot of people go into science, go into medicine because it's a career path, right? It's a career

path for somebody wanting validation. It comes with prestige. It comes with money, comes with all the things that like make sense that a person would want, right? But then ego gets in the way and it becomes really problematic. I mean, you see it in nutrition all the time. You see it in nutrition, like all the freaking time. So this person that fabricated the study and fabricated all this data, what consequences are there for that person? I mean, I think that the, the department of justice is, is going to be looking into it, but, but, um, going to be looking into it. I mean, this is if I'm going to be looking into it. I mean, this is, if they're not already. Yeah. Yeah.

If they're not already, but I personally, so one of the worst things about this, right, is it's not just like the lost time and all the money that went to continue looking down this sort of path

of the amyloid hypothesis, right? Looking in the wrong place, really, because amyloid is there, but it's sort of like what you see in cholesterol, in like atherosclerosis right like cholesterol it's like everybody like has pointed at cholesterol as being the bad guy because cholesterol is clearly there in atherosclerotic plaques right but what's causing it to be there that's the question

that these researchers should have been asking all along and some have right like there there have been other like my mentor as i mentioned you, at Cornell, who I've been lucky to lucky enough to work with over the years on certain projects, you know, knew that, that there was another way it's this glucose hypometabolism, right? It's like, but there's no money in that. There's no money in saying like, make your, keep yourself as insulin sensitive as possible. You know, reduce your exposure to environmental pollutants. Don't hit your head too hard. You know, all these different modifiable risk factors. It's not as it's not it's not druggable the way that this like amyloid beta protein is is druggable. alternate viewpoint over the past couple of decades would be ridiculed and silenced by the quote amyloid mafia and i was the i i this happened to me when i first started doing my documentary um little empty boxes which when i first started doing it uh it had a different name i called it

it was called breadhead and i could talk about why i named it that but that was always a sort of a working title uh for the project but somebody at one of these foundations, right? Like there's all these like big, like Alzheimer's foundations. I'm lucky to be working on this project with one who really believes in me and the project, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America. But there are these other nonprofits that really what they are is just like a front for, you know, perpetuating the status quo and keeping the sort of the funding pipeline open for drug discovery. And so when I first got started doing, working on this on my film, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it. And one of these non-profit, quote unquote, non-profits,

right? Deeply invested in the amyloid hypothesis, came out and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, disparaging me and my project and any other alternate sort of viewpoint and talking glowingly about that aducanumab drug, which at the time had yet to be approved, right? And it was so painful to me at the time because I was working on this project out of the love and passion that I had for my mom and my desire to get the science out, to catalyze interest in this science. It takes 17 years on average for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice. So I was like, that's time we don't have to lose when the brains of our loved ones are at stake. And so, yeah, I was directly in the crosshairs at the time for this amyloid mafia. I was directly affected by it. Because this medication is profitable.

Yeah, because the medication is profitable and that the whole avenue was thought to, you know, if you could find a drug that would reduce amyloid burden in the brain, I mean, that's going to make shareholders really happy. And this drug, is it still being prescribed? Yeah, it's approved. It's approved. There's no real way of telling how many people have died from this drug because most of the people that are taking this drug already Experiencing this neurodegenerative disease and you could easily chalk it off to that being the cause of death Yeah, I mean I I can't speak to like, you know people's experiences on it currently, but I do know that That the trials were you know I mean if I had a loved one based on what I know about this drug and those trials, my loved one currently would not be on that drug. They would be perhaps

experimenting with, you know, and this is a very difficult sort of road to go down. I guess it's easier to say if I had dementia, right? If I myself had dementia, I would be experimenting with a ketogenic diet on myself and other ketogenic therapies. Because ketogenic diets, what they do, so as I mentioned in the Alzheimer's brain, the ability to generate energy from glucose is reduced by about 50%, 45-50%. Its ability to generate energy from ketone bodies is unperturbed. So the idea is that a ketogenic diet can essentially keep the lights on in the Alzheimer's brain. It's not a cure, but, um, but there has been, uh, research, um, on patients with Alzheimer's disease, mild to moderate Alzheimer's

disease, that ketogenic, a ketogenic diet intervention can actually improve functional capacity in those patients, which is everything. Right. Yeah. So that's what I would do for myself. For other people, you know, when my mom was starting to show these symptoms, I attempted to put her on some kind of like ketogenic style diet. But actually, what's very interesting is that people that develop Alzheimer's disease, they start to develop a sweet tooth. And it's thought that that's sort of like the brain crying out for sugar, essentially, because it's just that that's sort of like the brain crying out for sugar, essentially, because it's just, it's struggling to generate energy, you know, and dietary change is difficult

for anybody, let alone somebody with dementia. So I can only, yeah, I can only speak for myself. So even though this study has been shown to be fraudulent, and even though that medication has shown to have some pretty severe side effects. And even though the amyloid plaque hypothesis has kind of been disproven now as being the cause of it, why are they still prescribing that drug? Yeah, it's, you know, it's because it takes 17 years. Right. But once they have access to the fact that that study was flawed, not just flawed, but fraudulent. I mean, it's pretty significant. The impact that's had.

They should pull it off the market. I mean, think about the sheer numbers of people that have dementia, Alzheimer's, and these significant horrific problems. And they're basing the treatment of it on fraud yeah and the fact that they still do it without like having this immediate cease like what could be other than generating more revenue other than generating more revenue like what what else could possibly be the reason for continuing to prescribe that drug other than ignorance. Yeah. Well, I think that it's not that this paper came out and suddenly the amyloid hypothesis is, you know, has been debunked or whatever, you know, like there, there is still a ton of money invested in this hypothesis. And there are still a lot of researchers who think whether or not

this drug is, is the, is the, you know, this is like version one. Right. So there are still many researchers who think that this is like still the target, still the appropriate target. But once they realized that the study was fraudulent. Yeah. And that when injected into these mice and it causes significant degeneration, that this is not really accurate.

Yeah. This is all fake. Yeah. So then they don't have a mechanism. So why are they still prescribing a disease to combat the mechanism that's proven to be fraudulent? Yeah. I think it's just because that's where all this... What is the term? It's like a sunk cost fallacy. I think people in many ways are just so... Whether it's like a sunk cost fallacy you know i think people in in many ways are just so the you know whether it's like academia or pharma there we're just so deeply invested in this

hypothesis and it hasn't been debunked and this fraudulent paper didn't test aducanumab the drug so you know i think that the fraudulent paper is the reason why that drug was approved. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, that is fucking wild. If you're a person listening to this and they're dealing with, you know, my friend, Jesse May, uh, her, her dad had Alzheimer's. Yeah. And it was so hard for her. I mean, it was, it was so terrible to watch her suffer while her father, who she loved dearly, was just deteriorating. Oh, it's super hard. And you get drugs that, you know, one of them, Namenda, it's like an NMDA receptor modulator. And then you get another one, Donapezel, which works to boost, you know, acetylcholine.

They're biochemical band-aids. They do nothing to address the underlying pathology. And yeah, I mean, it was literally until it, I believe 2020 was the year, or 2017, I think, was the first time that the Lancet Neurology acknowledged that a significant proportion of dementia cases were attributable to modifiable risk factors. So that's sort of their way of saying that, look, there's a significant proportion of these cases that are potentially preventable, right? Obesity, type 2 diabetes.

Yeah. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, air pollution, hearing impairment. Air pollution. Air pollution. Really? As of 2020, that has now been acknowledged to be a major contributor, you know, exposure to fine particulate matter, like PM 2.5 has been shown to pierce the blood brain barrier and amyloid. I mean, the thing about amyloid is that it's like our body, our brains produce it. It's not necessarily bad the same

way that like cholesterol, you know, we, when you hear the term cholesterol, like, you know, we think of it as this bad pathologic thing that we want to get out of our bodies, right? But cholesterol is vital to life, right? Like we need it. Same with amyloid. It helps you formulate hormones. Hormones. Yeah. I mean, every cell membrane like requires cholesterol to stay supple and fluid, right?

Which is vegans don't want to hear that ever. They don't want to hear that. They panic. Well, I, yeah, I butt heads with them all the time. Of course. Yeah. Well, it's an ideology, you know, unfortunately. It's an ideology based on a really good premise.

The premise is you want to do less harm. You want to be a more ethical, moral, kinder person. And I respect their motivation. ethical, moral, kinder person. And I respect their motivation. The problem is in practice, both in monocrop agriculture, which is horrific for the environment, and then also in the effects on the human body. It's very difficult to do correctly. And we've had conversations before, and unfortunately, there's a lot of documentaries and a lot of people that are propagandizing this ideology. They're doing it like it's a religion, and that's how they treat it. They ignore any evidence to the contrary.

They won't even look at eggs, which are really kind of – I mean, if you have chickens or if you know someone has chickens or if you can get eggs from a place that has free range chickens, it's like zero ethical dilemma. They lay eggs every day. They're not going to be chickens. It's just free protein. If you let these chickens roam around and eat grass and bugs and do the stuff they're supposed to do, you have literally one of the most healthy sources of food that's available to the human body. And it's ethically free. Like if you're a person that's a vegan and you're doing it for moral purposes, but you recognize the fact that you're not getting the appropriate amount of nutrition,

get chickens. If you have a backyard, get some chickens. They lay an egg almost every day. And they're better for you than any egg that you're gonna buy in a store from grain fed chickens 100% and you don't have to worry about them being treated horrifically They just I mean I used to have chickens for the fucking coyotes got them all but those back when I lived in, California It's a long story

But it wasn't just the coyotes got them all it was like the fire burnt the chicken coop down or we almost lost the house just the coyotes got them all it was like the fire burnt the chicken coop down or we almost lost the house the fire burnt the chicken coop down then we had a smaller chicken coop and then that one wasn't as robust i had like a real serious one built by a carpenter wow and then we bought a store bought one because we had to get a chicken coop quickly and the coyotes figured out a way to get in it and it was a fucking bloodbath it was nine chickens destroyed overnight oh my god yeah it was it was fucking Um, but those little fucks, they had been targeting my chickens for quite a while. Wow. But the, but the, the eggs themselves are so good for you. And again, they're not going to become chickens. These are non-fertilized eggs and people need to understand

that. And I didn't know that until I was 40, by the way. That's how fucking dumb I am. I thought that if you just let the egg go, it would become a chicken. And then someone goes, no, they don't even need a rooster to lay that egg. I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How could it? Yeah, duh.

Fascinating. That was before I had chickens. You're making me want to get chickens. Well, listen, it's a great way to have protein, and it's really a great relationship. You know, I would feed them worms. I would buy these mealworms, you know, that you would – they come dried. And I would, like, shake the box of mealworms, and the chickens would just run towards me full clip. Oh, my God.

And I would dump them out on the ground. They would go crazy and eat them all. That's so awesome. Yeah, I mean, you've never seen savagery like a chicken eating a mouse, though. They would occasionally catch a mouse. Holy shit. You think cats are vicious?

Cats have nothing on chickens. Have you ever seen a chicken kill a mouse? I've never thought of chickens as, like, predators. Oh, boy. I'm going to show you something. Jamie, pull up a video of a chicken killing a mouse? I've never thought of chickens as like predators. Oh boy. I mean, I'm going to show you something. Jamie, uh, pull up a video of a chicken killing a mouse. There's a, there's a bunch of great videos online, but I found this out by accident and this is how I found out my, my, um, we had a house when I lived in California that had a glass, uh, wall and it used to be like a fence. And then my wife was like, wouldn't it be better if it was like a glass wall and it used to be like a fence and then my wife was like wouldn't be better if it

was like a glass wall then you could see the view it was like yeah that'd be better so we put this glass wall in it and unfortunately the hawks couldn't recognize that it was a glass wall so they would fucking dive bomb and bang so it was kind of like karmic justice for whatever mouse they were trying to kill so they would dive bomb and slam into this glass fence and get knocked out or die. And a couple of them died in my yard and we were like, fuck. So one of them died before you, before you do this. So one of them died. Um, and then one of them survived. And my family, I was out of town for the weekend doing stand-up, and my family went to a local pet store and got what are called pinkies. And pinkies are these little infant mice that they serve to snakes and reptiles and things like that.

So they got a few of them and fed them to this hawk. You know, they looked online, what do the hawks eat? And so the hawk ate all these pinkies. And so the hawk ate all these pinkies. And we had to wait until Monday to get the hawk to this wildlife rescue center that takes care and rehabilitates hawks. So one pinky was still alive. And my kids were like, we're going to raise it. I go, listen, you just fed them to this fucking horrible raptor.

And now all of a sudden this one is going to be your friend. And how traumatized it's going to be. But all his siblings got murdered by this fucking giant dinosaur. Damn. And I said, it's not going to survive. It hasn't been weaned by its mother. We can't. It's not going to live. And it hasn't eaten in days.

I'm like, this thing, it's not going to live. I go, I think I'm going to feed it to the chickens. They're like, don't. Don't feed it to the chickens. Anyway, long story short, I go out into the chicken coop, and I put that pinky down, and they dive on that thing like nothing I've ever seen in my life. Oh, my God. One chicken grabs it.

The other chicken is attacking that chicken, trying to pull it out of their mouth. Like they instinctively recognize that that's a food source. Wow. So watch this. So this is what happens when chickens see a mouse. Like immediately. Look, they try to steal it from each other. Savages.

Oh, my God. I mean, it's like their favorite food. Mice are their favorite food. Holy cow. If you have mice and chickens, the chickens will fuck those mice up. Chickens are creepy little domestic dinosaurs. You're right. I mean, yeah, when you say that, I'm like... I mean, that's what they are.

They're still trying to steal from her. And there's another one where a cat is playing with a mouse, and the chicken's like, let me show you how it's done, bitch. And the chicken comes running over and, like, steals the mouse from the cat. Damn. Yeah. Did you see, uh,

there's this amazing dinosaur miniseries on Apple TV. No, it's, um, it's so good. And they actually portray raptors as dinosaurs with feathers. Yeah. They think that now there's a museum in Montana in Bozeman and they show you two options of this raptor.

They show you one option, like the Jurassic park version. And then they show you on the other side of this raptor. They show you one option, like the Jurassic Park version, and then they show you on the other side of this raptor, they have it completely covered in like beautiful colored feathers, just like a chicken, which is most likely the case. They think that dinosaurs had feathers, which makes sense. Fascinating. I mean, the things we see now, I mean, if you look at an eagle, that's a goddamn dinosaur. Yeah, that's it right there, which is really cool looking. Wow. I mean, if you look at an eagle, that's a goddamn dinosaur. Yeah. That's it right there, which is really cool looking. Wow. I mean, that's most likely.

So Jurassic Park and all those films, they're probably incorrect. This is probably what it looked like. Because they've actually found- Still terrifying. Fossilized imprints of feathers with the fossils of dinosaurs. Wow. They've had these clear indications that feathers existed on these creatures. Yeah. Wow. Fascinating.

So if anybody wants ethical, guilt-free, karma-free protein that's as good as your body's ever going to get, eggs. Yeah. From the chicken that you raise. Totally. I actually, totally. I consider eggs to be a cognitive multivitamin, actually, because if you consider the fact that when an embryo is developing, the central nervous system and the nervous system in general is the first structure to coalesce, right? So an egg yolk literally has everything in it that nature has deemed important to grow a brain. Which is so frustrating when people want to eat egg white omelets. When I go to a store or a restaurant, I see egg white omelet. I'm like, where's the fucking whole egg? Oh, yeah. Why are you serving egg whites? It's insane.

It's, I mean, the yolk, it's like, again, a cognitive multivitamin. And it's no surprise that egg yolk, people are, you know, like vegans are, they just see red, right? Whenever you say cholesterol, whenever they see that, like, there's cholesterol in a food. But it should be no surprise that an egg yolk is rich in cholesterol because the brain is rich in cholesterol. Right? Like despite accounting for only 2% of your body's mass, 25% of the cholesterol in your body is located in your brain. That doesn't mean that you don't need to eat cholesterol to support brain health. Your brain produces all the cholesterol it needs.

It's called de novo cholesterol synthesis. But an egg yolk has a little bit of vitamin B12. It's got choline. Choline is one of these like crucially important micronutrients that 90% actually the adequate intake for choline is probably less than what it should be for when you account for our brain's needs. But 90% of adults don't consume adequate choline. Acetylcholine is a primary ingredient of many nootropics, which have been shown to improve brain function. Yeah. It's a super important neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. And in fact, one of the drugs that's prescribed for Alzheimer's disease modulates that

cholinergic sort of pathway. But yeah, choline is crucially important. It's found in egg yolks. I think egg yolks maybe is second place to beef liver, which is the top source for dietary choline. But again, something that we under consume. And studies show that people who consume more choline have reduced risk for dementia. And choline is like one of these foods, one of these nutrients could almost be considered a surrogate marker for animal protein intake because you find it in both plants and animals, but it's much more concentrated in animal protein. But speaking of which, what do you think about these desiccated supplements of heart and liver and testicles and all these things that you see being sold now? I have a friend of mine who is in the medical field and he's very concerned about this because

he's like, I don't know whether or not these things could contain prions. How are they taking these? You're eating beef liver. How is this processed? What is the source? How do you know what's in these things? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think our ancestors probably consumed brain early on as a good source of DHA fat, which is one of the most important structural building blocks of the brain, right? Dacosahexaenoic acid, DHA fat. And the brain is rich in that. But yeah, I mean, I think it's a valid concern, although, you know, I haven't, to be honest, I haven't like looked into it too deeply. I do think that liver is a great food.

It's one of the most nutrient-dense foods there is. I do think that liver is a great food. It's one of the most nutrient dense foods there is. And I do think that there is a little bit of truth, at least in the case of liver, where like supports like. Like we know that beef liver is a top source of choline, right? And we know that choline directly supports liver health because it helps to export fat. So choline is actually a good treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because it helps to get fat out of the liver So in that way, I think eating liver can support liver health and the liver is like a crucially I mean, it's a vital organ obviously, but it plays hundreds of roles in the body. It tastes good, too You just have to eat cook it, right? Yeah, you know a lot of people don't like the texture They feel weird about eating it. But once you realize the nutritional value of liver, you know, liver and onions is delicious. Yeah. Super tasty. I think like cooking it kind of rare, getting a nice sear on the outside.

Yeah. Yeah. I like cooking it in ghee. Oh, okay. Yeah. I have a. I usually use beef tallow. Oh, beef tallow.

That's a good option. I actually, um, my thoughts on dairy have evolved kind of recently. Yeah. And, um, yeah, you know, I, I get like on social media, especially like on Instagram, I get a lot of shit from pretty much everybody. Like the vegans don't like me, right? Because I promote animal products. The carnivores don't like me because I'm a big believer in the value of dietary fiber and plant, you know, phytochemicals and the like. The evidence-based like credentialist community doesn't like me because I'm not a, you know, I don't have any credentials after my name.

Um, but, uh, but yeah. And then the paleo community, because I recently have sort of come out sort of not being a huge fan of like butter and, and ghee, you know, I'm a huge fan of dairy and dairy fat in general, which dairy fat, so all natural fat containing foods contain some proportion of saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat, right? So like any natural fat containing food is going to contain some saturated fat. So demonizing any type of fat, I think doesn't make any sense. Including avocados. Yeah. Avocados are great. Like avocados are mostly monounsaturated fat. I think people should steer clear from as as best they can,

the grain and seed oils like the canola, corn, soybean. I definitely wanted to talk to you about that because- Controversial. This is, I've been trying to have this conversation with my family because they'll buy salad dressing and say it's healthy. I'm like, do you ever read what's in this shit? I'm like, unless it has olive oil in it, it's probably not good for you. Like these shitty seed oils that they put in these salad dressings. I eat salad with the salad dressing on. I feel like shit.

I feel like bloated. I feel gross. Whereas I eat salad and I just put balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil on it and I feel great. It feels like, okay, my body likes this. And isn't like just consuming like vegetables by themselves is not as effective as consuming them with some fat. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So I mean, a lot of the compounds that we want in veggies are fat soluble. So I talk a lot about the value

of carotenoids. So carotenoids are like plant pigments. They're responsible generally in the produce section. You'll see yellow produce and orange produce rich in these compounds. And two in particular, plant-based carotenoids I've become a big fan of called lutein and zeaxanthin. And they've shown that people, higher consumers of lutein and zeaxanthin, they seem to be protected against cognitive decline. Vision loss, certainly, yeah. If you look at any eye supplement, they usually will have those two in them because they can help prevent age-related macular degeneration. Yeah.

Now, what are the criticisms against seed oils specifically? Like, I've seen you speak about grape seed oil, which is a really fascinating one, because it really wasn't something that was in the human diet until, as you were saying, that winemakers realized, hey, we're leaving money on the table. We don't want grapeseed. Turn this shit into oil. Yeah. So, again, some industrious entrepreneur saw that as a byproduct of winemaking, you're losing out on all these grapeseeds, right? And grapeseeds are rich in oil, like all seeds are, right? And so if you can extract the oil and get rid of the noxious aromas

and flavors, then you've got something that you can sell, right? For, I think it's like a 500 or $600 million a year business, if not more these days. So grape seed oil, like any of these grain and seed oils, like corn oil, canola oil, which comes from the rapeseed oil, like any of these grain and seed oils, like corn oil, uh, canola oil, which comes from the rapeseed plant, soybean oil, they're referred to sometimes within the food industry as RBD oils, refined, bleached, and deodorized oils. Yeah. Um, because they're, they have like these, like, again, these harsh, bitter flavors, right?

Some of them like, uh, like the raped, contain toxins like urussic acid. They might want to change the name of that seed. Yeah, right? Doesn't it seem like a rude way? Yeah. You know, you want a murder fruit? No. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Like, why is it rapeseed? Exactly. Okay, so what's the negative effect of things like, I would imagine that in the human diet, consuming an exorbitant amount of this kind of grapeseed oil, it's really not even possible. How many grapes would you have to eat with the seeds to get the amount that you would get from a tablespoon of grapeseed oil? Yeah. I mean, humans, we don't even generally, we're averse to seeds for a reason. I mean, if you've ever tried to chew into a grapeseed, it's bitter, right? You spit it out. So that's

why these oils didn't, they didn't exist in the human food supply before a hundred years ago. We hadn't had the chemistry labs, the erector sets required to extract these oils and then run them through all these myriad processes to make them to some degree palatable and able to be utilized by the food industry. They used to be used as engine lubricants and things like that. That's industrialized seed oils have always been used as lubricants for engines. Yeah. So when did they start using them? What is this, Jamie? What did you pull up there?

Okay. So when did they start using them? What is this, Jamie? What did you pull up there? Okay. To produce 237 milliliters, 8-ounce fluid bottle of grape seed oil, one ton of grapes is required. So 2,000 pounds of grapes to get 8 ounces of grape seed oil.

The finished oil is light yellowish green in color. Holy shit. That's insane. Well, there you go. So if you're cooking in grapeseed oil, you're essentially, it's a crime against nature. Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's the most unnatural thing. And, you know, people listening to this might say, oh, you know, appeal to nature fallacy. What's natural isn't always, like arsenic is natural. But I think that a platitude like that isn't very helpful,

right, in the modern world. So what are the negative effects of things like industrialized seed oils? Yeah. So, I mean, for one, they all undergo that step called the deodorization step, which is the step that removes the noxious odors and aromas from these oils, makes them palatable, gives the oil, it's basically the food industry's equivalent of the witness protection program, right? Because it takes an oil and it makes it so bland and free of any kind of character, right? That it can be used to roast nuts in, it could be used to make granola bars, it can be used to saute food in a restaurant, it could be used to fry food in, for example. And the problem is, one of the problems with these seed oils is that that deodorization step creates a small but significant amount of trans fats. And we know that there's no safe level of trans fat, artificially

man-made trans fat consumption. Their most recognizable form was in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which were outlawed, right? Five, six years ago, something like that. But you can still find man-made trans fats on the market in the form of these grain and seed oils. Now, the dose likely makes the poison as it does with most things. But your average American today is over-consuming these oils. Well, I mean, The average American today is over-consuming these oils. Well, I mean, they didn't exist, again, in the human food supply prior to a century ago. And their use has increased anywhere between 250 and 1,000 percent, 1,000 percent for soybean oil in particular, which is the most commonly used grain and seed oil.

And so we're over-consuming these fats. They harbor these trans fats. When we cook with them in particular, when we expose them to high heat, especially for prolonged periods of time, they generate poisons called aldehydes. And some of these aldehydes are really toxic. I mean, they're neurotoxic, they're mutagenic, meaning they're cancer causing. You know, one such aldehyde is acrolein acrolein is found in cigarette smoke it's found in all kinds of industrial pollutants and we can see it in the brains of people with with alzheimer's disease like it actually accumulates in cigarettes sorry to interrupt but how is how does cigarette smoke produce alkaline well i'm not 100 sure as to how it's produced in cigarette smoke, but it is a byproduct of the burning of garbage.

And it's created in myriad industrial processes. So it has something to do with the heat? Probably the heat. And whatever the plant compound? Heat and oxygen. Yeah, the coalescing of heat, oxygen, light. So what about if it's not being heated up? the coalescing of heat, oxygen, light. So what about if it's not being heated up?

Like what about seed oils as they exist in salad dressings and the like? Well, I think one of the big fears, another big fear with regard to these oils is that they might not be acutely inflammatory. So I think a lot of people, and this is what tends to get pushback among the evidence-based crowd on social media, you'll hear claims that these oils are inflammatory. And I think this is more an issue of semantics. They're not acutely inflammatory, but they may be chronically inflammatory because they provide the precursors to our body's inflammation pathways, particularly the omega-6 fats. Omega-3 fats are, generally speaking, anti-inflammatory, right? They're able to convert to compounds called resolvins, which quite literally resolve the inflammatory cascade. But omega-6 fats provide the backbone to these

pro-inflammatory signaling molecules in the body, which are responsible for heat, pain, redness, swelling, things like that. And inflammation underlie, you know, it's a process that is not bad, but when it's chronic and low grade, it's associated with, you know, all of these chronic conditions that we're talking about. Certainly Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, but also cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes and the like. Now, are they going to actually stimulate an inflammatory response? You know, I don't think so, unless they going to actually stimulate an inflammatory response? You know, I don't think so, unless maybe the oil is highly damaged. But if it's, we'll just say like it's a fresh oil, which none of these oils are fresh,

because they've all undergone- They've been sitting on the shelf forever too. Yeah, in plastic, right? Right. Which is like, I mean, if you look at extra virgin olive oil, you'll seldom find a good extra virgin olive oil in plastic, because producers know what they've got. This is like liquid gold, right? But these grain and seed oils, you know, they're extra virgin olive oil in plastic because producers know what they've got. This is like liquid gold, right? But these grain and seed oils, you know, they're sitting on the shelf in plastic.

They're sitting, you know, with extra virgin olive oil, for example, one of the tips that I offer people when buying extra virgin olive oil, which I think is medicine in many ways to the brain, is you want to buy it in small bottles, right? Small glass opaque bottles because extra virgin olive oil, unlike wine, only degrades over time. So there's no like appreciation that occurs with time. The same thing is true for these grain and seed oils, but they sell them in these big tubs, right? We leave them in our warm kitchen environments. And these oils are very prone to a process called oxidation, which is like essentially a damaged oil, right? Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't see a piece of

rotting food on the counter and intuitively think to yourself, that looks good, right? You can't necessarily see it happening in these oils, but nonetheless, we're told over and over again to integrate them into our diets and our, and our lifestyle. So they're easily oxidized. They, um, they provide the raw materials in abundance to our bodies and inflammation pathways, right? And we likely consume them in a ratio that was, you know, maybe around 4 to 1 omega-6 to omega-3s, you know, for most of our evolution. And today we're consuming them, you know, in a way higher ratio, 25 to 40 to 1 omega-6s to omega-3s. So I just don't think that this is like,

I like to take the precautionary principle approach, right? These oils, again, they didn't exist in the human food supply, right? I don't have all the data to convince the most ardent evidence-based practitioner. I like to say that my approach is evidence-based, but not evidence-bound. I think that we need to be highly skeptical of foods, especially foods and supplements and products that haven't been around all that long, right? It's just a mass sort of experiment being laid out on a vast stage. And I don't think that we have the, we don't have good data to say what they are or aren't doing right to us necessarily. But I do think that because these oils are so easily oxidized and they're of particular relevance to the brain, right, I think that matters. We don't yet know what they're doing to our brains. Lipid peroxidation is a major feature in the Alzheimer's riddled brain, right? We know that

as we consume more of these polyunsaturated fats, which again are what predominate these grain and seed oils, these highly easily oxidizable types of fatty acids, right? We know that in nature where you see a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fats, you see a higher proportion of vitamin E. Vitamin E literally exists in nature to protect PUFAs, to protect polyunsaturated fats. We know that your average American is under consuming vitamin E, like 10% of Americans consume adequate vitamin E. So as our intake of these polyunsaturated grain and seed oils increases, our need for vitamin C increases, we're not consuming adequate vitamin E. You mean vitamin E?

Vitamin E, yeah. Yeah, you said C. Sorry, vitamin E. And so we're under-consuming vitamin E. That's going to have consequences, right? Because vitamin E, literally its role in the body is to protect lipids, right, from oxidizing. And you can look to parts of the world, like in is to protect lipids, right. From oxidizing. And, um, and you can look to parts of the world, like in Israel, are you familiar with the Israeli paradox? No. So the Israeli paradox, Israelis do everything right in accordance with what the nutritional and the medical orthodoxy would say to do about nutrition, right? They consume more of these omega-6 dominant

grain and seed oils than anywhere, anyone on the planet. You think that we consume a lot of grain and seed oils here in the United States? They consume 10% more. And they have, you know, I don't know. It could just be that they're, they're more health conscious. So like healthy user bias infuses all of these, which, which we could talk about, but like, this is a big confounding aspect of, of, uh, nutritional epidemiology. But in Israel, they consume about 10% more of these types of oils than we do here in the US. And their health is horrible. They have the same amount of heart disease. They have skyrocketing rates of cancer, right? Type 2 diabetes and the like. But nonetheless, you look at their diets and they're the picture of like, they would be

like the prize client of any, you know, these like more orthodox dietitians. So when if someone does have some sort of salad dressing, should that salad dressing always be stored in the cold? Yeah. So extra virgin olive oil is I like to say that it's extra virgin olive oil is like the primary oil that I use. I generally, you know, I use avocado oil when I'm cooking at very high temperatures. But for the most part, extra virgin olive oil is an oil where you can look at the entirety of the hierarchy of evidence and we see that it's beneficial. It's also the oil used in the Mediterranean dietary pattern, which is to suggest that we use any other oil, is not an evidence-based recommendation. When the Mediterranean dietary pattern is the dietary pattern that the medical and nutritional orthodoxy is seemingly in love with for every other reason, right?

So they exclusively will use extra virgin olive oil. And we know that extra virgin olive oil, it's very heat stable. So it's about 15% saturated fat. The rest is monounsaturated fat. You get a tiny proportion of polyunsaturated fat. But the fats in extra virgin olive oil, they're already chemically stable. And the small amount of PUFAs in extra virgin olive oil are protected by the vast array of antioxidants that extra virgin olive oil contains. Extra virgin olive oil are protected by the vast array of antioxidants that extra virgin olive oil contains. Extra virgin olive oil actually has a compound in it called oleocanthal, which is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen.

Whoa. Yeah, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. That chronic use of that drug is associated with cardiovascular events and the like. You get all the benefit of regularly taking an anti-inflammatory drug if you just routinely use extra virgin olive oil. One of my wife's friends told her that olive oil is bad for your vision. Does that make any sense? Doesn't make any sense to me. No.

Zero. I was like, what? Yeah. How, where'd you hear that? She's like, that's just what she told me. No. I'm like, okay, I'll find out. I'll talk to Matt today.

Yeah. It's, um, I'll find out. I'll talk to Matt today. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's like from a cardiovascular standpoint, it's a great source of monounsaturated fat. How could it be possibly bad for your vision? Is there any pathway that makes any sense to you? I think maybe she misread something that was saying that the grain and seed oils are bad for your vision. I mean, they're highly oxidizable, and we know that your eyes are neural tissue, essentially. So what's not good for the brain is going to be not good for the eyes and vice versa.

So as far as oils that should be put on, say, like salad dressing, like what oils do you feel like are acceptable? Extra virgin olive oils, primary. Yeah. I think like avocado oil is good, but you're missing out on the opportunity to get some of those phytochemicals in olive oil, extra virgin olive oil particularly. What is the difference between extra virgin and other olive oils? So extra virgin olive oil is just like you crush olives. That's how you get extra virgin olive oil. And then you protect that oil. The other types are, well, there's filtered and unfiltered

extra virgin olive oil, but you generally want to buy filtered. I know some people might see unfiltered and think that that's the one to buy because it's more pure, but actually what you end up getting with unfiltered oil is little olive microparticles and water, which can accelerate the degradation process of the oil. So you want it to be filtered. Okay. And should you store that in the cold, or can it be stored in a closet or a pantry?

I think just in a, you want to keep it away from the stove, but in general you want to keep it in a, it doesn't have to be refrigerated. But you do want to make sure that you're buying it in glass, darkly colored bottle. And the best extra virgin olive oils are going to have a harvest by, or sorry, a harvest date on the bottle. Because, again, extra virgin olive oil, it's a fresh fruit juice, right? So it only gets worse over time.

So you want to buy the freshest extra virgin olive oil that you can find. And how long should you keep it for? You want to consume it as quickly that you can find. And how long should you keep it for? You want to consume it like as quickly as you can. So I like to buy, if you're like a single person like me, you want to just buy like a small, like as small of a bottle as you can find and then use that and then just keep buying those small bottles, right? If you're a big family and you're using it all the time, like a bigger liter bottle, I think will suffice. But we can look to like, you know, randomized control trials, like the PREDIMED study, which is one of these like seminal nutrition studies because it's a huge population, multi-center trial, RCT, that found that when people used a liter of extra virgin olive oil a week in their families, they had profoundly improved cardiovascular health, metabolic health, brain health, and even like I believe anthropometric features like their waist. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. So if you're consuming salad dressing, it should just be virgin olive oil. Yeah. That's my take. Extra virgin olive oil. That's my hot take. And is there anything negative about balsamic vinaigrette? No.

Balsamic vinaigrette I think is great. First of all, balsamic vinegar, vinegar in general is acetic acid is the primary ingredient that you'll see across all vinegar variants. And it can help to reduce, it can induce satiety. So actually vinegar is a good, like one of these like foods that's like oddly satiating. It can reduce postprandial glycemia. So like the blood sugar spike after a meal. So vinegar is a great, great food. The balsamic vinegar does have a little bit of sugar in it, but I don't mind. Like I'm not, you know, like I think that the benefits outweigh the risks and also vinegar,

balsamic vinegar has a compound in it. I forget what the acronym stands for, but the acronym is DMB. So people can easily find it. It's one of these long, complex chemical designations. But that's been shown to actually support gut health, like support the microbiome, particularly for people who consume a lot of red meat, which is awesome, which I do. I'm a big advocate for the consumption of grass-fed beef and things like that. So as far as salad goes, just extra virgin olive oil, either balsamic vinaigrette or regular vinegar. Is there a benefit to having regular vinegar over balsamic vinaigrette? I think only if you're like really counting like counting calories, which I don't endorse.

Like that's not, you know, I think balsamic vinegar is great. You also get a little bit of resveratrol in balsamic vinegar because of the, yeah. So I think that the, the, I think balsamic vinegar is great. I happen to love it. And also people that eat a salad every day. So this is a really cool research from Rush University found that people who eat a big bowl of dark leafy greens every day have brains that perform up to 11 years younger. Wow. Yeah. So this could be like healthy user bias. Like again, nutrition, even my, the recommendations that I make, like, you know, a lot of healthy user bias confounds many of these kinds of studies in the world of nutrition, because we just don't have many long term randomized, you know, large population,

multicenter randomized control trials. Right. But the research shows that regular consumers of dark leafy greens, so I like to say like a salad a day, that's what this research found, that they have more youthful brains by up to 11 years. And when you actually look at what dark leafy greens have in them, first of all, they're one of the most nutrient-dense foods that we have. I mean, the most nutrient-dense foods that we have access to are going to be animal products, right? But dark leafy greens are up there because they're so calorie sparse and they are a good source of folate and vitamin C. And we also know that they're one of the best ways to get those carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which is not just associated with better cognitive aging and lower risk for

cognitive decline. But in young and healthy college students, they've actually shown that when you give people who are already thought to be at their peak of cognitive prowess, supplemental lutein and zeaxanthin, that you see an improvement by about 25% in visual processing speed. Wow. Yeah. As a University of Georgia study. 25%. That's incredible. Yeah. Now, is there any concern about oxalates? Yeah. Now, is there any concern about oxalates? I think only if you know that you're sensitive to them. I'm not a... How would one find out? I think if you have like, you know, kidney stones, like in your family, things like that. Like if you are generally, you would know, you know,

I think there are genes that play a role in this, or if, you know, somebody in your family, or if you yourself have had them before, you know, calcium oxalate is what you want to be careful with. But I don't think that like eating a salad a day is going to put you at risk. Is there any benefit of cooking leafy greens versus eating them raw or vice versa? Certainly if the greens can definitely be made more digestible when, um, when you cook them. Uh, but But, you know, there's always like a give or take when you cook or store vegetables. Some micronutrients become more bioavailable, some become less. So I tend to recommend, you know, sort of a mix, like variety, you know, some cooked, some raw. But in general, with the salad recommendation, you know, with dark, some raw, but in general with the salad recommendation, you know,

with dark leafy greens, like arugula, kale, spinach, things like that. I don't think that spinach is probably the highest with regard to oxalates. So, you know, if you're sensitive to oxalates, um, you know, you might want to cut down on your raw spinach consumption. I used to drink, uh, kale shakes all the time and, uh, I would mix it with coconut butter and a bunch of other stuff in there and fruit. But then I got concerned about oxalates. Yeah. I just don't think, you know, I think if all you're doing is eating kale day in and day out, like there's a famous case report published in the medical literature of a woman who heard that bok choy could help prevent type two diabetes.

And so she ate, she was eating like two kilograms a day of raw bok choy. She grew a goiter on her neck. But I think most people are not gonna, you know, I think the benefits outweigh the risk. There are benefits and risks associated with eating anything. So I think each person has to look at each food. And also I don't believe that there's a one size fits all diet. Like I think that some people like, it makes sense to me why some people would do well on carnivore diets, right? To me, it's about kind of identifying what foods work best for you, right? And even things like, you know, dietary fiber. A lot of people say that they have difficulty digesting dietary fiber, but it's not necessarily a problem with the fiber. You likely haven't cultivated a microbiome to contend with whatever quality or quantity of fibers that you're consuming. So is that if you make a shift in your diet and then your microbiome does not have enough

time to keep up with or adapt to that shift? Yeah, exactly. So people that from one day to the next will go and just dramatically increase their fiber intake, which I think sometimes you go on some of these like vegan run social media accounts. They make it seem like fiber is like the only nutrient that like that you need. Right. And so a lot of people will then like dramatically increase their fiber intake. And that sets them up right off the bat for bloating, gas, like, you know, all kinds of digestive problems. One of the things that carnivore people talk about is plant defense chemicals right they're those that's a that's a big one plants don't want to be eaten the way they i mean that's uh paul saladino's claim yeah right what do you

think about all that i mean i think paul's very smart he's a we're friends um but i disagree with him on uh on you know on that i think you know, a lot of these plant defense compounds have a beneficial hormetic effect in us. The issue is if you're, if you don't react to them well, is it a problem with the compounds themselves or is it a problem? Maybe you've got some degree of gut dysbiosis, right? You've lost some degree of gut resilience to be able to to be able to reap the full benefit from those types of compounds. Right. I think that this I mean, it makes a lot of sense today. Right. We live in a time where there's widespread gut dysbiosis, gut problems, problems with the microbiome. Right. via C-section, for example, which medically is certainly indicated in some instances, right? But they're not being breastfed, overuse of antibiotics. And we live in a society, especially over the past two years, that's become overly obsessed with what I call hygiene theater. And so I think that we've lost a bit of resilience in our gut. And so that can sometimes affect how

we, whether or not we're able to re- reap benefit from these compounds that are to some degree toxic, right? But in a robust system, that quote-unquote toxicity fosters anti-fragility, right? If your system is already robust, then putting a little bit of stress into the system, that's going to foster anti-fragility, which is a concept that I love, right? Making yourself harder to kill, which I think is a great sort of way to frame your wellness, like nutritional approach, right? But if you have an impaired microbiome, for example, or if your gut mucosa has become degraded, which is the sort of this like demilitarized zone between your gut lumen and your gut epithelium, right? If that's become degraded over time. And what would cause that to become degraded?

Well, generally it's caused by not consuming enough fiber because we see that when you don't consume enough dietary fiber over time, the bacteria, certain species of bacteria in your gut will actually eat the mucin that comprises this gut mucosa that sort of acts, you know, it's like this sort of bacteria-free zone in your large intestine that separates the interior contents of your gut and your gut microbiome from your epithelium. Does that balance out? Say if someone does try to incorporate a carnivore diet or maybe even a version of the ketogenic diet that eschews plant protein or plant matter, does that eventually bounce back? I mean, is that like a temporary effect where this bacteria searches for fiber, doesn't find it anymore, and then attacks the mucous membrane? Yeah, you know, it's definitely complicated. And I'm, you know,

my understanding is that sometimes the root cause of these problems can be bacterial overgrowth. And so when you do an elimination diet like a carnivore diet, for example, you starve out the bad bacteria. a milieu that ultimately then becomes more friendly to the reintroduction of these kinds of fibers, at which point you can start to build up that resilience and that mucosa again. I think that the carnivore diet can be a great short-term therapeutic diet. But again, I think running around being afraid of these plant, quote unquote, toxins. The evidence on the consumption of fruits. If fruits and vegetables were really trying to kill us, they're doing a terrible job. I don't think anyone's saying fruits are trying to kill us.

Other than there's arsenic and apple seeds and things like that. Fair, fair, fair. It's really they're talking about plants. Yeah. Yeah. But the research on them suggests that people who consume more tend to live longer. Now, I'm not, like, I definitely advocate for, like, both, you know, and I'm a big animal protein, you know. And I think that, like, people have different tolerances to different vegetables.

Right. I know somebody who, if he's in the same room as an allium, which is like garlic, leeks, shallots, onions, and things like that. You know, he's just like, he has to quarantine himself for a different reason, you know? Really? So it's, everybody's different. The hormetic effect totally makes sense if you take into consideration other hormetic effects that we accept as being beneficial, like the sauna. Yeah. Or like a cold plunge, things along those lines, where your body's reacting to this intruder or this

invasion of excess heat or cold and producing this beneficial effect to the overall body. Yeah, I totally agree with that as well. I mean, I'm a huge fan of sauna, especially with regard to dementia prevention. If you use a sauna two to three times a week, you slash your risk of developing dementia by 22%. Wow. Four to seven times per week, 65%. Wow. There is not a drug on the market that is going to slash your risk of developing dementia by 65%.

That's incredible. Yeah. That's incredible. And what is the protocol? Well, they do this research, which is actually really great that they do it in Finland. The University of Eastern Finland is where a lot of this good sauna data comes from. And they generally do it, yeah, I mean, on a daily basis. I think the key is to do it for as long as you can do it to get to that feeling of discomfort.

You know, you want it to be a stress on the body. And then you leave and, you want it to be a stress on the body and then, and then you leave and then you do it again. I think generally that's the, the, that seems to be like the traditional protocol there. When you say feeling discomfort, like how deep into the discomfort? Well, what I do is I actually, I'll put my fingers on my, on the radial artery in my wrist. And, um, and you know, sometimes you can get a sense that like your body is having a mild aerobic exercise session. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, there's only so much of that that you can take with the, between the sweating and, um, your

heart rate is increased. Uh, you get to, you get, you get this like feeling of, um, dysphoria that, that like washes over you. And I mean, mean sometimes i there's a sauna that i go to sometimes in la gets up to like 225 degrees oh you go to a russian bathhouse yeah yeah they they don't they don't play around they don't play around yeah and i literally sometimes i say to myself wow i feel like i'm dying and i'm probably in that moment actually dying yeah you know yeah that's the whole key yeah yeah i mean that's that's the whole key. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the argument against this thing about a hormetic effect of leafy greens. So the most favorable sauna duration and temperature associated with lower dementia risk were 5 to 14 minutes per session at a temperature of 80 to 99 degrees Celsius. Yeah, what is that in Fahrenheit?

That's fucking high. 99 degrees Celsius is like 220 degrees, right? Yeah. That's fucking high. 99 degrees Celsius is like 220 degrees, right? Higher temperatures over 100 degrees Celsius were in fact associated with an elevated risk for dementia. Okay, so if you go too hard. Yeah, I took my sauna temperature down a little bit. I was at 189 degrees for 25 minutes, and I took it down to 185.

Well, I was at 189 for 25 minutes, and I took it down to 185 or was it 189 for 25 minutes and I took it down to 185 for 20 because I was just I was so exhausted when I get out of there at 189 I was like I think I'm fucking myself up and Ed when hanging out with Laird Hamilton unfortunately that psycho he uh he gets it up to 220 degrees and he puts oven mitts on and he gets on an airdyne bike in the sauna. Wow. Yeah, he goes hard. Got to hit different at that. Well, I also think you have to take into consideration whether or not he does a cold plunge first. Because if you do a cold plunge first, 185 degrees is not just tolerable, it feels great. So I go from the cold plunge which at home I

have this morosco forge which is 34 degrees and here I have a blue cube at the studio which is great and it is it goes to 37 degrees so just slightly warmer it's freezing as fuck but it's also circulating so it circulates almost like a river that makes even colder oh Oh, it's death. You sit in that fucking thing. It sucks But it's really easy to go from that into the sauna at 185 degrees You go into the sauna at 185. It feels like it's nice. Yeah So what would be torturing you normally is like really easy to tolerate for long periods of time So generally I do a 20-minute session at 185 degrees and it's rough.

Then I go into the cold plunge for three minutes and it's easy. The cold plunge is not easy, but it's easy to go back into the sauna. The cold plunge sucks no matter what. It's like slightly easier for the first few seconds if you come out of the sauna, but very quickly your body's freezing. Oh, man. Yeah. And so then I do three minutes in the cold plunge and then back into the sauna and 20 minutes goes by like nothing.

I mean, I get to 25, 30 minutes and I still feel fine. It's just starting to suck a little bit. And then I go into the cold plunge for an additional two minutes and I finish it off cold. Wow. Yeah. I mean, the cold plunge is like additional two minutes and I finish it off cold. Wow. Yeah. I mean, the cold plunge is like a state change for me. I love it. Yeah.

But you acclimate, you know, over time, especially with Asano. Like he's been doing that, like the, whatever, the assault bike. Is he doing that in the sauna? Yeah. The assault bike is like, I mean, that's torture. He's a psycho. Yeah. But he's also in incredible health for, I mean, how old is Laird?

I believe he's 56 or 57. He looks fantastic. He's surfing every day. You know, I mean, he's the pinnacle of health. And so 58 years old. Wow. I was actually drinking his coffee in here. He has a turmeric coffee.

I mean, look at the guy. Yeah, he's in great shape. He's fucking stud. Yeah. And just really well-versed in the benefits of all these different anti-inflammatory compounds. His Laird Superfood Coffee is what we have in the, I don't know, did you get one of those? Is that what I'm drinking here or no? That's just Black Rifle.

That's Black Coffee. We use Black Rifle Coffee in his machine, but his machine combines that with coconut oil and turmeric and all these different compounds, cacao. There's all these different things. I'll give you one. Yeah, dude, I'm down. It's great. But so Laird, his protocols, I'm not sure if he goes in the cold plunge first.

If he goes in the cold plunge first, then it kind of makes sense that he can get in that sauna and ride that Airdyne that's such a high temperature nuts because i was doing it for a while but i i actually burned my throat i was uh my old studio i had i was cranking it up to 205 and i was doing like 20 minutes and when i'd get out of there i mean i would lie down on my jiu-jitsu mats like I just got shot I was so tired and I was starting to like like my throat was burning and I was like Jesus Christ I'm cooking myself like a brisket like this is not smart like I need to take this down a notch so over time my experimentation has gotten me to this place of 185 degrees

for 20 minutes seems to be just uncomfortable enough. And that's what I did today. So I do 185 and then three. And if I have to time, I do an additional 20 plus minutes in the sauna after that. And then another cold plunge, but I always end on cold. Yeah. I mean, there's probably an effect where just being in it longer and like you're able to be in it longer when it's at a lower temperature is beneficial um it's still pretty hot yeah 185 still pretty hot it's like when i got up to like 190 ish it's like it just was it just felt like i was too tired afterwards like this can't be good like i'm too worn out yeah and i'd come in here and i'd be like struggling i feel that way too yeah after like uh repeated bouts of like the, the Russian,

like Banya that I do in LA sometimes and the cold plunge. Yeah. Do they beat you with the leaves? What's it called? Plaza or something. I've never, I've never had that done. It's a little too intense, but I love it. I'm obsessed with sauna. I think it's great. I think that, I think the real bang for your buck comes from like the fact that it is a, an aerobic exercise mimetic, right? So it's like the best workout that you can get while sitting still. Yes. That's amazing. I think what it does for your blood pressure is amazing

because we already talked about the fact that having normal blood pressure is key to keeping your brain healthy. And there was actually also a risk reduction from the same lab at University of Eastern Finland showing you that stroke risk is reduced. Well, it was a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality for four times a week, 20 minutes a day. And I think their protocol was like, I think they said 175 degrees. Yeah. And that's what they used. And the thing about, like Finland is the sauna capital of the world, which is why I love that the research has been done there. Because if you were to do that here, it would be a perfect illustration of healthy user bias, right? Because

people who have access to saunas here are probably also, well, they're going to the gym regularly, right? They're probably mindful of what they put in their bodies. There in Finland, you've got on average one sauna per household. So it's like taking a shower. So you kind of like control automatically for all those different, you know, confounding, potentially confounding variables in Finland. And for them, it's such a smart way to like manage the cold weather. Yeah, that too. Because it changes what like what cold is to you. Have you been to Finland?

No, I've never been. Oh, you should go. I would love to. There's a place in Helsinki. I'm going to butcher its pronunciation, but it's called Loyli or something. And it's like the most beautiful saunas you've ever seen in your life right on like this. It's like right on the water. So you get out of the sauna and then you go dip into whatever sea that is over there. Yeah. Sounds great. It's so great.

It's, I think it's one of the most important things that I do. And I do it right after cardio too, so it maintains my high heart rate. So like today I did, I do a kettlebell workout and then I do the airdyne bike. So I go from the airdyne bike right into the sauna. And I'm already sweating and exhausted and my heart's already pounding as I get in there. And it's 185 degrees. Wow. And my heart rate just stays compounding. It stays pounding.

You're a beast. Well, it's just, I'm just trying not to die. Yeah. I'm trying to maintain. I'm 55 now. So it's like, the one thing that's shown to me to really have a benefit on the way I feel, other than exercise, the way I've just,

my overall like sense of wellbeing in my body is sauna and the cold plunge combination. It's really had a significant effect. So great. One thing that I think that people, I've been talking about this a bit recently on social media that, uh, I think is actually pretty important that, um, that nobody I've haven't seen anybody else talking about this, but how detrimental frequent use of antiseptic mouthwash can be. Really? Particularly post-workout. So I go to a gym and there's mouthwash, like in the cleanup area.

And I look at all the people swishing with mouthwash after a workout. And I'm like, you're hurting your gains by doing that post-workout. Really? How so? So obviously blood pressure, we've hit on it a few times, but when we eat foods that are rich in compounds called nitrates, like beets, arugula, arugula is the top source, calorie for calorie, dark leafy greens in general,

great source of these compounds called nitrates, right? Sometimes you'll see supplements like on the market that are like nitrate, like beetroot powder, right, to boost nitric oxide in the body. We rely on oral bacteria, our oral microbiome, to reduce nitrate from our produce to nitrite. Reducing means that it removes, these bacteria remove an oxygen molecule. And it's that nitrite that enters the nitric oxide pathway to boost nitric oxide, which has this, the overall effect of reducing blood pressure and increasing blood flow. Right. Right. Which is why all these post-workout or pre-workout supplements have that in it. Yeah, exactly. But if you frequently swish with antiseptic mouthwash. So not all mouthwashes, but alcohol-based bactericidal

mouthwash. You're nuking indiscriminately the bacteria in your mouth that are pivotal, critical in that pathway. Does that same effect happen from the consumption of alcohol, like consumption of whiskey or tequila or something like that? It definitely changes the microbiome. It probably has an effect. We know that, I mean, alcohol is something that does have some degree of benefit, right? If it's like a stress relieving tool for you, if you use it as a social lubricant, but in general, we know that ethanol is a neurotoxin and that alcohol inflames the gut. It drives the translocation of endotoxin from the gut into circulation. People who even moderately consume alcohol have accelerated shrinkage in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.

So, you know, I think alcohol is one of these things where, like, you know, if you have a healthy relationship with it and you drink infrequently, I think it's fine. But, yeah, it's – I don't, I don't know exactly if it's like, I don't think that research has been done yet. Like what a transient bit of alcohol. But we do know that this bacteria is on the tongue. So presumably, if the alcohol is sliding down your tongue, right? Right. Then it's going to have an effect.

Yeah, it has to. Yeah. And when you're talking about these mouthwashes post-workout, so is it specifically post-workout or is there a time ever where those mouthwashes are not dangerous? What do you got there, Jamie? results show blood pressure lowering effect of exercise wise was diminished by more than 60%. Yeah. Over the first hour of recovery. That's incredible. Yeah. And absent two hours after exercise when antibacterial mouthwash was used. Holy shit. Yeah. 40% of the US population uses antiseptic mouthwash every day.

What about gum? Gum? It depends. If it's not changing the oral microbiome significantly, everything you eat is going to change the microbiome to some degree. But we don't want to nuke the good bacteria that we want for this nitric oxide pathway. But when you have a gum that freshens your breath or mint, is that what it's doing? Is it nuking the microbiome of your mouth? I mean, this is highly controversial. I personally choose to avoid artificial sweeteners, and I know a lot of these gums have artificial sweeteners in them. There is some data suggesting that it might change the gut microbiome, artificial sweeteners.

Now, in terms of gum, you're not necessarily consuming the artificial sweetener, but the artificial sweetener is there in your mouth. I have no—this is just—I'm in speculation territory here, but, you know, I think that it conceivably might have an effect, but I don't think that that research has been done yet. Now, when someone uses toothpaste, especially toothpaste with fluoride, does that have a detrimental effect? I mean, I personally avoid fluoride, and fluoride does have an antiseptic effect as well, as a bactericidal effect as well. So if you rather work out and then brush your teeth with fluoride-based toothpaste afterwards, would that have a similar effect as this mouthwash? Conceivably. Research hasn't been done, but that would be my hypothesis. No, but what about a non-fluoride, like a Toms of Maine natural type of toothpaste?

That's what I use. I mean, the toothpaste that I use, I look for nano hydroxyapatite. I don't know if you ever talked about that here on the podcast, but that's sort of a fluoride alternative that they've been using in Japan for some time that has shown to have a remineralizing effect on par with fluoride. But hydroxyapatite is a fully natural, our bones are made of hydroxyapatite, our teeth are made of hydroxyapatite. So it's totally natural. It doesn't have any endocrine disrupting potential the way that fluoride does. Fluoride is also a suspected endocrine disruptor, which I think is not good, but it also has- What does that mean? That it can affect your hormones. So endocrine, I mean, endocrine disrupting compounds are everywhere. We're exposed to 1400 different hormone scrambling compounds on a daily basis.

And fluoride is one of them. So it scrambles your endocrine system? It could. I mean, we ingest fluoride in the drinking water sometimes. There's this debate. I mean, typically with toxins, you get what's called a dose effect, right? The dose makes the poison. That's sort of like one of the hallmark platitudes in the field of toxicology. But the reason why endocrine disruptors are so treacherous and so difficult to study is they possess what's called a non-monotonic dose response. So you might have increasing risk of a certain effect with a higher dose with these endocrine disrupting compounds, but you might have a completely different effect at a low dose. So that's what makes them tricky to study, and also just treacherous in general in terms of their effects on our health.

And I imagine it would be cumulative. And also, you know, just treacherous in general in terms of their, you know, their effects on our health. And I imagine it would be cumulative. Like this is not something you'd see a significant change in your body immediately. It'd be like a slow burn. Yeah. You never know. I mean, the Environmental Working Group found that, you know, umbilical cord has between 200 and 300 different industrial chemicals like waste products in umbilical, in a, in a population representative sampling of, of, of, of fetuses, um, that there's like BPA, right. In umbilical, like bisphenol A, which is a known xenoestrogen, right. We've known for a hundred years at this point that it acts

like estrogen in the body and it's everywhere. These are like the, the everywhere chemicals. I mean, you had an expert on the show talking about how it's, you know, reducing the anogenital distance in males. Yeah. Dr. Shanna Swan, the book is Countdown and it's all about phthalates. Yeah. These compounds are everywhere. Bisphenol A is a super common one. Anytime you're drinking out of plastic, if it doesn't have bisphenol A, it's going to have bisphenol S generally, unless it says no bisphenols, which is rare. Meanwhile, you have a bottle of water right there. Yeah. Well, you know, you can't, unfortunately, well, unfortunately.

A metal, that's a steel glass of water if you want to drink that. That's what I should have been drinking it. Yeah. We have a filter machine and we switched out from bottles of water a few years ago to this. Smart. Yeah. It just seems like a smart thing to do. Yeah. But,

um, but going back to the mouthwash, I mean, they've done studies that show that frequent users. So just to be clear, this is two or more times per day of antiseptic mouthwash have a 50% increased risk of developing type two diabetes and a doubling of risk for the development of hypertension, which is high blood pressure from just using mouthwash. That's insane. Yeah. And it's antiseptic. The that's an observational study. So correlation doesn just using mouthwash. That's insane. Yeah. And it's antiseptic. That's an observational study. So correlation doesn't equal causation. Just have to mention that. But in this exercise study, they used a prescription antiseptic mouthwash called chlorhexidine. And so it's clear that people who are using mouthwash regularly are seeing a health impingement as a result.

Now, is there a non-antiseptic mouthwash? Is there something that makes your breath smell good that's beneficial or not negative? I think, you know, they have like xylitol-based mouthwashes that I believe are selectively, you know, antiseptic. But, you know, I believe that good oral health, like, shouldn't require, but I, you know, I believe that, um, good oral health like shouldn't require much more than flossing regularly brushing, you know, with, with something that like doesn't have like, you know, fluoride in it and also eating a diet, like a biologically appropriate diet. Right. I mean, grains and grain products are the worst thing for your dental health. Right. Like, and if you think about it, an animal in the wild without its teeth is quickly a dead animal, right? So I think that whatever's going to be good for the oral microbiome is going to be good for systemic health and vice versa. And so grain products, refined

grains, added sugars, I mean, these are the worst foods, right? Like anything that's going to cause any kind of like starch dominant food product that is easily retained in our in the gum line major driver of cavities i want to talk about that but i or about grains but i want to also talk about fluoride like why is it even in the water yeah i mean that's uh that's a that's a good question i don't know but isn't the whole idea about it supposed to stop tooth decay? I think there is some truth to that, but I don't think that our widespread tooth decay is due to a lack of fluoride. I think it's more due to the fact that our diets have become aberrant. I'll tell you,

I haven't used a fluoride toothpaste in some time. And I, when I was a kid, I was the kind of kid that every time I would, every time I would go to a dentist, there would be a new cavity. I just like would always dread going to the dentist because like there would always be something for them to fill. And ever since I demoted grains and grain products, you know, to the occasional indulgence in my diet, right. I haven't had't had like a single cow cavity. That's a anecdote certainly. But, um, but I think it's, it's not like a mystery why these kinds of things develop, why we, why we have tooth decay. It's just that we just eat crap. You know, we eat crap all the time. It's shocking how good grains Yeah. That's what sucks.

What sucks is like I am just a gigantic fan of pasta and bread. I don't eat it very often. But when I do, I fucking love it. And it's the occasional thing for me now. And after I eat it, I feel like shit. But it's amazing how good it feels while you're consuming it. Like what is that pathway? Like what's going on in your brain where like a plate of lasagna is so damn rewarding? You know, I think what it is is that these kinds of foods tend to have that quality known

as hyper palatability. They tend to bring together, you know, sugar, whether it's like the sugar in the tomato sauce, wheat flour, fat, copious fat, amounts of fat, salt, right? I mean, these foods typify the standard American diet. And these are the kinds of foods that now we consume by the majority. 60% of our calories now come from these kinds of foods, ultra-processed foods or these hyper-palatable mixed foods, mixed dishes like the lasagnas, the the burgers and things like that i'm sure you saw that chart that was recently published where they rated the nutritional benefits of food i shared it it's the food compass please tell people about this oh my god so great is it on

your instagram yeah it's at the top i pinned it at the top of my instagram it's so crazy yeah so Instagram. It's so crazy. Yeah. So Tufts university. And I recently had a conversation with the principal investigator and I believe that our conversation was had out of good faith and he was interested in hearing my perspective. Yeah. So I shared this watermelon. Good kale. Good. I agree with that. Watermelon's great, right? Watermelon is tasty. I don't know about kale being on the same. Why is kale and watermelon together? Because watermelon has all that sugar in it and also seeds. If you eat the seeds, that's not good, right? This, I mean, basically what this-

This was an attempt by researchers at Tufts University to create a food, a nutrient profiling system. This isn't the first, right? There's actually a profiling system that was devised in Latin America called the NOVA profiling system, which I actually am a fan of. It ranks foods in accordance with how processed they are, which I think is actually quite important, can be quite useful in the context of the standard American diet with an obese population. But this is the Tufts attempt. And we can clearly see that it underweights protein, and it doesn't properly penalize foods for being ultra processed. Let's read it out because there's people that are just

listening. So Tufts, they made this chart with three different color systems, green to be encouraged, yellow to be moderated and red to be minimized. So frosted mini-wheats, which is sugar on top of grain, is at 87, and it is in the green to be encouraged, whereas ground beef is the lowest at 26, which is to be minimized. But ground beef is just protein and fat. Yeah. It's really generally healthy for you. Yeah, 100%. But what studies can they point to that say ground beef is to be minimized? Look at a boiled egg.

That's just egg. Just an egg. Right. And what comes in higher, right? You see egg substitute fried in vegetable oil comes in higher than just a boiled egg. It's so crazy. It's backwards.

Egg substitute fried in vegetable oil comes in higher than just a boiled egg. It's so crazy. It's backwards. Egg substitute fried in vegetable oil is 62. Right. That's so nuts. So nuts. Because what the fuck is an egg substitute? Skinless chicken breast, 61. Honey nut Cheerios, 76. How the fuck is that real?

Yeah. I mean, they basically, they score it in accordance with this this formula that they've developed where you know they'll give a certain amount of points for protein certain amount of points for fiber micronutrients but they clearly they clearly don't properly penalize foods for being ultra processed right right um honey nut cheerios i mean ultra processed foods joe are every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption associated with a 14% increased risk of early mortality. Every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption associated with a 25% increased risk for dementia, recently published research, right? So this chart clearly is, in my view, right?

And until I'm convinced otherwise, an instrument designed to sell ultra processed food, right? Put it back up, Jamie. It's a, yeah, it's a... So look at this. There's another thing that I wanted to point out here, because this is so nuts. Orange juice with calcium. Here's something that people need to understand. Orange juice is just sugar water. Yeah. It's got some vitamins in it, but it's just sugar water. If you want an orange, eat a fucking orange. An orange. It's self-limiting.

Yeah. I have a friend and they ordered fresh squeezed orange juice. Like, oh, as long as it's got the pulp in it. I'm like, listen, man, that's just, your body is not, doesn't know what the fuck is going on. If you're drinking 16 ounces of orange juice, that is a jolt of sugar to your system that's not that different than a glass of Coca-Cola. 100%. Yeah. I mean, it's mind boggling. Also, it's like that chart doesn't take into account context, right? It doesn't take into account the fact that, as we mentioned, 50% of the population, it doesn't take into account the fact that as we mentioned 50 of the population it's almost 50 percent of the population that's obese right yeah half of the population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic so it has some degree of glucose intolerance and you're going to say that that's

like that orange juice is a healthy choice for somebody who has essentially glucose intolerance right because they're insulin resistant but it's so unnatural to drink a juice like that yeah and that's what people need to understand it's like when you're eating a fruit, that's how it's designed by nature to be consumed. You're getting all of the fiber. You're eating the tissue of the fruit. You're eating everything. That's like you eat an apple. You're supposed to eat an apple.

Apple juice is so crazy. Like my kids were at Disneyland and they got an apple juice. And I said, can I see that? And I looked at it. It was like fucking 29 grams of sugar. I'm like, that is so crazy. You just get this jolt of sugar to your system. I mean, one thing, if you just did a crazy CrossFit workout and your fucking legs are buckling and you want to get a jolt of glucose in your system, okay, have an apple juice. But for just a regular person to consume apple juice, you're thinking you're drinking something healthy and it's just a trick. Yeah. It's, I mean, it really is absurd. And it's like, you know,

whether we're talking about the, you know, the Alzheimer's paper that was fraudulent or this, which, you know, I don't think that there's any malice like behind this. I really don't. Just ignorance. Yeah. And also conflicts of interest. Like there was a paper that came out recently that found that among the people called on by the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee, like those committee members, 95% of them had conflicts of interest with pharma, with the food industry, right? Like General Mills, Kraft, AstraZeneca, right? Those are the people coming up with our dietary guidelines, right?

So they're not going to say minimize your consumption of ultra-processed foods because the food industry would never let them. Not only that, you ever look at those folks? That's another part of the problem. The people that are recommending health choices, they all look like shit. Yeah. Like that woman, Barbara Ferrer, the woman who is locking down Los Angeles. Oh, my God. That poor lady.

Yeah. Like, go outside. I don't know what you're eating, but eat something different. Like, that lady looks terrible. And to have someone like the Belgian minister of health, have you ever seen that lady? No, never seen that lady. Oh, buckle up. Buckle up for this

one i don't know what the fuck belgium's up to but this just this is like it's a joke it's like a punchline to a joke oh my god like this is absolutely the last person you should be taking any health advice from oh god imagine yeah that's That's the Belgian health minister. She's morbidly obese. Yeah. I mean, it's mind-boggling. I mean, yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah. A vegan diet is unhealthy and dangerous for infants. Well, I agree with that. Oh, she's right. She's like a broken clock. Yeah. Right twice a day. Yeah.

Exactly. Not digital clocks, by the way. No. They're's right. She's like a broken clock. Yeah. Right twice a day. Yeah. Exactly. Not digital clocks, by the way. No. They're never right. I'm happy that she said that, though. Yeah. That's a big issue. Well, that is a big issue.

There was a woman recently that was jailed because her child died from malnutrition because she was eating a vegan diet. I mean, I don't know what the fuck she was feeding it a vegan diet. I mean, I don't know what the fuck she was giving her baby. No, it's terrible. I just actually became an uncle. My little brother, we have the first baby in the family, a little girl. And I'm learning about breastfeeding and all the things, right? But what's interesting is that their pediatrician told us that like he he'll often see vegan moms come in and they they're suffering from

crazy like osteoporosis and like you know low bone mineral density because like the mammary tissue doesn't care what the mom like the mammary tissue just wants to make the best milk possible it doesn't care if the woman if the mother's getting it from her diet. If not, it'll take the nutrients from the mom. Right. Right? So it'll take it from the bones and the muscle. Of the mother, yeah.

Yeah. And the brain, right? For the DHA, fat, if need be. That's what they call mommy brain. Yeah. That and lack of sleep. Oh, man. Yeah. It's fascinating. call mommy brain. Yeah. That and lack of sleep. Oh, man. Yeah.

It's fascinating. It is fascinating. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is glyphosate. There was a recent study that showed that glyphosate appeared. And see if you can find what the actual numbers were. But it was a shocking number of people's bodies containing glyphosate in them, which is Roundup, which is an herbicide. That when you talk about people consuming large amounts of vegetables and large amounts of grains, one thing to take into consideration when you're dealing with monocrop agriculture is the use of pesticides. Yikes. agriculture is the use of pesticides.

Yikes. Disturbing weed killer ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples. Now, immediately upon publishing this, I went on to Twitter and I saw this shill for these herbicide companies that was talking about, it's just a minimal amount, a tiny amount, a parts per million you can't even find it if you're looking for it nothing to see here like what the fuck are you talking about it's poison there's zero amount of that that should be in your body when it's in 80 percent of the u.s population like how bad is that yeah i mean you've got these like apologists for the right whether it's the food industry or the cosmetic industry the guy in particular that i'm talking about has he was

wildly and just defending this but he's completely connected to these companies and and people were pointing it out like you have been paid for these companies. Like, you are in the pocket of these companies. Um, and you know, I don't, to be honest, like glyphosate is something that like you're reducing your risk if you're eating more animal products, right? Like it's very, it's, it's abundantly found in grains, GMO products and things like that. GMO products are actually bred to be GMO so that they can withstand heavy spraying. It's used as a, glyphosate is used as a desiccant, um, quite strongly in fact on like oats and oat products and things like that and is there a way to clean these things before you use them to filter out glyphosate or is it something that's just a part of the the grain yeah it's a good question i mean i think soaking and rinsing like produce well with regard to grain to grain, I'm not sure. Um, with regard to produce, I do

think that there's a, there's both an effect with like rinsing and like soaking in particular, um, in vinegar and salt and or salt vinegar and or salt. Um, and, uh, and cooking. I think it, I don't think it's a very heat stable compound, but I'm not, you know, like I think people should, should avoid it. Like, like I generally, if I'm eating the skin, this is, I mean, personally there's online, I mean, I'm sure you've seen, but the debate between like whether or not organic is, is better for you than non-organic nutritionally, like in terms of micronutrients, there's no real difference. You'll see higher levels of certain micronutrients, um, in organic and You'll see higher levels of certain micronutrients in organic, and you'll see higher levels of certain, like for example, nitrates in non-organic produce, right? So you

can't really say that one is more nutritious than the other. Studies do show, obviously aside from reducing your exposure to glyphosate and other petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides, you're reducing your exposure potentially to heavy metals. There was a meta-analysis that found 50, uh, cadmium levels were reduced by 50% in organic produce as compared to, um, conventional. And then you see higher levels of these like plant quote unquote defense compounds in organic, um, produce, which, uh, depending on, you know, where you stand on these plant defense compounds, I mean, likely, you know, I think provide benefit to human health. That's the hormetic effect. That's like the hormetic effect, yeah.

And so these genetically modified organisms, these GMOs, these plants that are designed to be able to tolerate glyphosate, how are they doing that? Like what is happening to these plants? What are they doing to the plant that allows them to spray this toxic shit all over them and they keep growing? Yeah. You know, I, I wish I can give like a, I could give like a really sort of like buttoned up informed answer. I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure. What I will say is that there's only a small handful of crops that are GMO. Like it's, there's only like 10 crops that are GMO. You know, sometimes you'll see like non-GMO asparagus, but asparagus was like never GMO,

you know, but it's the, it's, it's generally, I believe it's, it's soy, it's corn. It's like saying gluten-free milk. Gluten-free milk. Yeah, yeah. It's soy, it's corn. It's like saying gluten-free milk. Gluten-free milk, yeah, yeah. But yeah, they're GMO primarily, I think,

to be able to withstand heavy spraying by these chemicals. And again, precautionary principle. I think the less there is around, the better. I mean, people will say that it's like the most heavily studied herbicide in history. Also causes cancer. Yeah. I mean, like I'm, yeah, I'm, I would rather reduce my exposure to that. And, uh, you know, and, and yeah, it's just like, it's fair that not everything that's natural is good for you. Not everything that's unnatural is bad for you, but like, I'm not going to put like my health in the hands of Monsanto,

which is now Bayer, I think, after they purchased it. Right. But like those companies don't give a fuck about your health. Right. And when you do finally get sick, there's no recourse. Like who's going to be there? Right. And also correlation does not equal causation.

You have to prove that this is what caused your illness. Yeah. And there's this complex situation that we have here where we have these enormous cities that have millions and millions of people, and you have to feed these people. And monocrop agriculture is the most efficient way to provide these people with produce. And monocrop agriculture with herbicides is the most efficient way to provide these people with produce and monocrop agriculture with herbicides is the most efficient way to grow agriculture and it's like it's so complex and so difficult to get out of because all these people that are proponents of regenerative farming whenever i ask them if it's scalable they always do this like Like, fucking it's never been done.

Like, when you're talking about being able to provide grass-fed beef for 330 million people, show me. Right. Show me how you can provide organic produce to 330 million people. Show me. No, it's not possible. Right. And that's true. people. Show me. No, it's not possible. And that's true. You know, like grass fed, grass finishing and feeding and finishing beef on open pastures. I mean, that takes a ton of land.

Yeah. Right. But not everybody, first of all, not everybody's going to choose to eat the way that I, Max Lugavere recommends eating, right? Like people have their own preferences, their cultural mores and things like that. Right. But today, I mean, that's why that's where I think it's another another area where they're like the argument for veganism like falls short is that if you're partaking in in modern society, if you're shopping in a modern supermarket, there's blood on your hands. Right. There's like nobody is inculcated from the fact that today, like modern plant, whether it's modern plant agriculture or modern animal agriculture, like animals and people are being exploited. Right. It's doing a number on the environment. And I mean, if you really want to be like live the most sustainable and quote unquote regenerative lifestyle. I mean,

you're going to be growing your own produce. And that really is probably the only option. Growing your own produce and doing it in the way where you're making your own compost and- Harvesting your own eggs like you were doing. Yeah. That's probably the best way. But obviously if you live in a city, that's a giant problem. Yeah. And if you don't have the financial resources or the land, that's a giant problem. Because if you want to grow a significant amount of fruits and vegetables, you're going to need some land. Yeah.

But also, like, sickness is massively environmentally taxing, right? It's a massive resource sink. And the nutrition and the calories and, you know, what you get from beef is, you know is you get a lot more in a much smaller package. Like one cow can feed a family. And I'm not like environmental expert or an expert in agriculture, but I know that one cow can feed a family for months. Two months, something like that. Easily. And so if you're looking to reduce the area under the curve for suffering, for environmental damage, it makes a lot more sense to me that you would lean into animal agriculture. Also, animal agriculture in regards to grass-fed, grass-finished beef,

you're talking about an animal that has free range because that's the only way they can consume that much grass. They have to be in these open pastures. They get to roam around. They're not contained in pens because that wouldn't be efficient. They move around. And the ones that use regenerative agriculture, the benefit to that is they use the manure, and the manure helps grow more plants, and it helps they use it as fertilizer. It also helps the richness of the soil and keeps the soil maintaining.

Yeah. Which is so important because topsoil in this country is like really fucked, especially in these monocrop agriculture environments. They're pouring nitrogen on the soil and all sorts of other industrial fertilizers. They're trying to use just in order to allow these plants to have the nutrients to grow. But they've determined that this topsoil in these farmlands has been minerally deficient for a long time. Well, that's why our produce is becoming less nutritious over time. Our produce is actually developing its own form of plant obesity, if you can imagine that.

So there's a few potential reasons for this, but it's been referred to as the ionome. The sum total nutritional value of our plants has declined over the past 50 years by about 8% on average. Some nutrients, we see greater nutrient loss, others we see less. But in general, whether it's increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is like a plant's food, it's causing plants to develop more starch, less protein, which is going to have a net effect on the population that eats those plants, right? More starch, less protein. That's fascinating. So it's the increased level of carbon in the atmosphere is damaging to plants because we've always heard that carbon dioxide is what a plant consumes, and they produce oxygen with that.

Yeah. Well, it's like— It's a ratio. Yeah. You're increasing the availability of what plants consume. Wow. Yeah. I never would have thought about it that way.

I wrote about this in my second book, The Genius Life. But generally, yeah. So it's the confluence of factors, right? It's like what we're doing to the soil. It's the fact that there's more carbon in the atmosphere. So the, our plants are actually becoming less nutritious in terms of their micronutrients, but also the macronutrients are, are being depleted as well, right? We're diluting protein in the plants. And when that happens, when you dilute protein, I mean, you're going to have an effect on,

I mean, we don't, we don't, we haven't yet been able to quantify it, but when you dilute protein, right, in an organism, you're reducing the amount of amino acids. You're increasing the amount of energy that you're giving that animal. That potentially could be a recipe for, you know, for obesity or a contributing factor. The argument that always drives me nuts when people talk about like what is and what is not sustainable. You know, this is what people always want to discuss. Like when you discuss, like you should eat grass-fed beef, you should eat, well, that's not sustainable. But I think your argument is best in that most people are not going to listen anyway. Yeah. They're just not. But if you're listening and you're a person who's really taking the, you really are taking this information in and you're really trying to make steps to have an overall better metabolic health and overall, just, you want your body to function better.

You can't think about sustaining the entire world. Right. Like, it sounds fucked, but we're on a sinking ship, kids. Okay? And you're alive. So you have choices to make right now with your life. And if you're listening to this,

like, this is the argument that people always said to me, like, when I talk about how I hunt, and one of the reasons why I hunt is because it's healthier meat and because I just want, I want a more ethical relationship to food. And they're like,

well, everybody can't hunt. Well, guess what? They're not gonna. You know, most people are not going to hike miles and miles into the mountains and not cardiovascularly fit enough to do it. They don't have the training to do it. They don't have the motivation to do it. They wouldn't be able to, they wouldn't be able to execute in the, in the actual moment of choice. You know, the difficult moment of truth when you have to pull the trigger or release an arrow, they're going to fuck it up. So they're not going to survive. So that's not what we're saying. But we're saying for the people that do want to take these steps and are motivated

to change their life for the better, there are options available that are better for your overall metabolic health. They're better for your mind. They're better for literally better for the environment for everything. Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I think that, um, it would be immoral for a physician, right? Sitting across from a sick person to have their guidance be informed by anything other than what's going to be best for that person, right? If you're a physician and you're considering what's going to be best for the planet, right? Now you could say, well, Max, he's an asshole. He doesn't care about the planet. I absolutely do care about the planet. I absolutely do care about animal welfare. But when, if you're sitting across the table from somebody who's sick or you're broadcasting

a message to a sick population, right? You have a responsibility to that population, right? To that person. And so for me, my number one priority is to personally eat and to recommend to people what in my estimation is going to be the best to avert these kinds of conditions, right? And I'll tell you that my mom, my mom, I'll never know what was causal with regard to what she had developed, but she was basically vegetarian. She never ate red meat. My mom was actually very much attuned to messaging surrounding heart disease. She was always afraid of developing heart disease. So she ate a very low saturated fat diet. She also cared about animals. So she never ate red meat. She never ate eggs. She ate whatever grain product she saw in the supermarket

that had the red heart healthy logo on it. That you know, that would end up in this, in the, in the shopping cart. We always had the corn oil by the stove again with the red heart healthy logo on it. Always had that never any butter in my fridge, always margarine in those, in those tub. That's the kind of food that I grew up consuming because my mom was very much attuned to like what the orthodoxy said about heart disease at the time. And she didn't have the internet of course to, like what the orthodoxy said about heart disease at the time. And she didn't have the internet, of course, to, you know, to, for exposure to like dissenting opinions on that. But yeah, I mean, I do think that my hypothesis and not to, not to like, you know, blame her in any sense,

but I do think that like, you know, had she had integrated some of these more nutrient dense foods, more minimally processed foods into her diet, that it would have protected her to some degree. Well, if, if your assertion is correct in terms of like preventing alzheimer's it seems like all those things were negative like all the things she's doing the margarine the grains the you know other than junky fast food yeah my mom wasn't a big my mom wasn't a big fast food consumer fast food. Yeah. My mom wasn't a big, my mom wasn't a big fast food consumer. Um, and you know, this is like, all I have is like retrospective, like looking back and, and, and kind of trying to ascertain, you know, how she lived, you know, while I was exposed to it. It's not that my, you know, she had it, like she was following any particular diet or anything like that. But, um, but yeah, she was a big animal, animal rights advocate, lots of grain products.

Um, but yeah, she was a big animal, animal rights advocate, lots of grain products. Um, not a ton of protein, like, you know, occasionally she would eat like lean skinless chicken breast, you know, or a piece of fish. But, um, but was always like very, very concerned about like cholesterol and things like that. So I do think that like, that's a dietary, that's, that is like the standard American diet. You know, that is to me, um, what, you know, how not to eat if you want to protect your brain over time based on like all the research that I've done since then. And it sucks because so many people think it's the way to eat to be healthy. Yeah. And it's such an uphill battle to try to convince those people and or to try to have a conversation with them. When someone says, what about cholesterol? You're not worried about your cholesterol? I just always like, oh, where do I go with this? This is such a long conversation to have with a person that has this orthodox opinion that's been kind of drilled in their head by the food pyramid and by all the scare tactics that people have heard about. Well, we've talked about this before in the podcast, but it bears repeating how saturated fat was the whole more fraud by the sugar

companies and that the sugar companies literally bribed scientists to lie about what was causing heart disease. And they started blaming it on saturated fat and tried to try to take the blame off of sugar. Absolutely. Yeah. There was that, you're referring to the 1967 JAMA paper, right? That was seemingly the nail in the coffin on the issue as to whether or not it was sugar or saturated fat that drove the epidemic of heart disease that we were seeing in the mid-century. And the Sugar Research Foundation paid each of those scientists $48,000, equivalent of today's money,

to basically say that it wasn't sugar that was the problem it was saturated fat it's such a small number and it fucked millions of people so many but it's like you know money these these personalities right these like the the the obstinate territorialism yeah um and ansel keys who really is like thought to be the father of the diet heart hypothesis was like this very you see this all the time, like this very overbearing personality, right? That's like, that's the way that they, the same way that they described in the science article, Sylvain Lesney, the guy who, you know, who renewed vigor for the amyloid hypothesis. It's like, you know, they have these like, they have like this celebrity and charisma. First of all, any, having any charisma as a scientist, you're going to go places, right?

Because so many of them have zero. Right. So, yeah, so it's a big problem. And saturated fat, I think, is like the plant-based community and still much of the medical orthodoxy are myopically focused on LDL cholesterol. Specifically now, I think it's pivoting a little bit to ApoB, so all ApoB-containing lipoproteins. But when you take out red meat from your diet, for example, yeah, your ApoB or your LDL cholesterol might be a little bit lower, right? But that's not a risk-free swap, right? You're removing from your diet, a rich source of

highly bioavailable micronutrients like vitamin B12, like zinc, like creatine, which supports brain energy metabolism, like carnosine, which helps to support healthy, you know, blood sugar regulation in the body. And of course, protein, like an amazing pristine source of highly bioavailable, highly digestible protein. So to be myopically focused on these single marker indicators related to cardiovascular risk, I think doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense, but people don't know that information. And when they hear about LDL cholesterol or HDL cholesterol, they don't know what's good and what's bad and why is one bad and why is one good. And that's a misnomer, isn't it? That like one is good cholesterol and

one is bad cholesterol. Yeah. So, I mean, neither are good or bad. HDL has long been considered the good cholesterol because when it's elevated, it's associated with better health, right? Why is that? Well, it's probably reflective of good health. It's not necessarily causal because they've actually engineered drugs to raise HDL and it does nothing in terms of reducing cardiovascular disease risk. So usually what I think that the current thinking is that HDL is more reflective of good health. So if it's high, you know, it shows that you're doing something right. So you want it to be high. LDL is a little more complicated. It's responsive to, there are many different things that it's responsive to, but primarily certain types of saturated fatty acids. So when you hear on social

media, for example, that saturated fat is bad, that's pseudoscience because a fat isn't a fat. The same way that protein isn't protein, carbs aren't necessarily carbs. You know, like they're all like underneath those umbrella terms, there are different types that determine how we respond biologically to them. So when it comes to saturated fat, I mean, you've got different kinds of saturated fatty acids. One type of saturated fatty acid that's actually elevated in grass-fed, grass-finished beef is stearic acid. Stear, named for cows, actually has a neutral effect, doesn't increase levels of LDL cholesterol, and actually might improve functioning of the mitochondria. So we can't just say that saturated fat is bad. Also in dairy, dairy is one of these things where when you look

observationally, people who consume full-fat dairy, even low fat or reduced fat dairy, have better cardiovascular health, better metabolic health. And dairy proportionally has more saturated fat than any other fat source, right? Because as I mentioned, all natural fat containing foods have some proportion of saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat. If you look at beef fat, tallow, it's about 50% monounsaturated fat, some small proportion of polyunsaturated fat, and then some, again, minority proportion of saturated fat. But dairy is actually mostly saturated fat. So you'd think that if saturated fat was this dietary boogeyman, that regular consumers of dairy, people consume a lot of dairy fat, would have

the worst cardiovascular health. And that's not what we see. We see the exact opposite. Now, how do you feel about raw dairy versus homogenized or pasteurized dairy? Great question. So raw, I'm not actually, I'm not actually, to me, the dairy doesn't necessarily have to be raw. And when we look observationally, you know, raw is not something that's factored in because the vast majority of people are not consuming raw dairy. Right. But we do see that full fat dairy is quite healthful. Well, low fat dairy is pretty nasty.

I think that low fat. So here's the deal with dairy. I think that low fat is often confounded by the fact that low fat dairy products are often ultra processed dairy products that have added sugar in it. I don't think it's necessarily the removal of dairy fat that make it healthier. They add sugar just to make it palatable. Exactly. Fucking nasty. Yeah. It's weird.

It's like dirty water. Yeah. I regularly consume, I mean, I consume full fat dairy products. I put heavy cream in my coffee every day, which I think is, I love heavy cream. It's fat soluble, or it's fat, so it helps to make the fat soluble polyphenols in coffee more bioavailable. It doesn't have any proteins. It's not going to bind those polyphenols. Also, it's better for you to have full fat dairy?

Full fat heavy cream. Yeah, I love full fat heavy cream. Is there any benefit to raw dairy? heavy cream. Yeah. I love full fat heavy cream. Um, is there any benefit to raw dairy? I think, I mean, they say that the, there are enzymes in it that are supportive. Um, I don't know how, like, you know, how much science there is on that, on that recommendation. Um, you know, I will, if, if it's, if it's available to me, I buy raw dairy, but it's not something that I necessarily go out of my way to find. I do, you know, I think it's probably better to consume it raw, right?

It's natural. Yeah. Because the opposite of that is like it's exposed to heat and dairy has fat in it. It's got some component of or some proportion of polyunsaturated fats, which are heat sensitive. So, you know, you want to protect those fats generally. And a baby consuming breast milk, I mean, that breast milk is raw milk, right? Right. So, but the one thing about dairy that I think is worth talking about is that it's thought that the reason why we don't there, that we don't necessarily exhibit the predicted effect that you would expect based on the high proportion of saturated fat in dairy.

It's thought to the fact that dairy is attributed to the fact that dairy contains something called milk fat globule membrane. So I know it's like kind of a mouthful, but milk fat globule membrane is basically the lipoprotein in dairy that keeps the dairy fats perfectly suspended. It's like an emulsifier. So that dairy, which is mostly water, milk is mostly water, right? The fats don't actually float to the top. It's like perfectly, the fats are perfectly dispersed throughout. So the triglycerides in dairy fat are wrapped up in a bubble. And this bubble is called milk fat globule membrane. And it's made up of actually some really healthy compounds like phosphatidylcholine, which choline we talked about, you know, and its benefit to the brain. There's also a little bit of sphingomyelin in dairy and full fat dairy, which is a core component to myelin, the myelin sheath in our brains that

help insulate neurons. And if you think about like the purpose that dairy serves for a neonate, it's to help grow a brain. I mean, it's like the whole body is growing, but primarily the brain is the organ that's under like the most rapid growth in organization. And so it makes perfect sense that dairy would have components in it that are like really beneficial when it comes to brain health. And so, yeah, so I think that full fat dairy is really quite beneficial. But when you look at a dairy product like butter, interestingly, when you feed a person, if you were to feed a person both heavy cream followed by butter, you'd see that butter actually leads to an adverse effect on blood lipids, whereas heavy cream doesn't. And butter is just made from heavy cream, right? It's like churned cream. But the churning disrupts this membrane, this lipoprotein called milk fat globule membrane. And I think that's why butter can have this negative effect on blood lipids. So actually, when I discovered this, when I realized this, it, uh, caused me to actually demote butter

to be more of like a YOLO food, more of like an indulgence food. Interesting. Um, yeah. So explain this adverse effect and like how is it measured? Yeah. So butter and heavy cream are both the same foundational ingredient. Right. But when you, and, if you were to put heavy cream in coffee, the cream would easily like, would just disperse throughout the coffee, right? Butter sits at the top, right? So you can clearly see

that chemically something has changed after it gets churned and becomes the food product that we know and love and call butter. So the milk fat globule membrane, which is present in full fat heavy cream and other dairy products, it's thought to that that actually is like quite beneficial from the standpoint of brain health, but also affects how we metabolize the fats in dairy. So in clinical trials, what they've shown is that you can feed somebody this controlled for fat calories, right? You can feed somebody dairy cream and it won't

have any effect on their LDL cholesterol, right? If you feed somebody butter, it will, you'll see an elevation of LDL cholesterol. And I'm not, you know, I don't believe that we should do everything we can to get our LDL as low as possible. Because again, like foods that are generally very beneficial and healthful, like, you know, grass-fed red meat and things like that, eggs, the benefits outweigh the risk. But with butter, I think potentially you're causing an elevation of your LDL cholesterol and ultimately your ApoB for no real reason. Butter is not a very nutrient dense food. You know, you get a little bit of vitamin A in it, retinol, which is, you know, not bad, but, but, but yeah, so butter can have this negative effect that, that you don't see

in other dairy products. So for me, dairy is great. It's just that butter is one of these dairy products that I think, you know, especially if you're prone to hypercholesterolemia, if you're prone to elevated levels of like LDL, ApoB, it might serve you to reduce your consumption of butter. Is there any benefit to or have there been a study comparing grass-fed butter to butter from cows that eat grains? Because it looks very different. Yeah. Grass-fed butter is a rich, much more yellow butter. Yeah. Whereas, like, milk or grain-fed butter is, like, it's almost white.

Yeah, probably because there's a higher proportion of carotenoids in the butter. But in general, I wouldn't, you know, I think that butter can be great. Like, there's, again, like, vitamin A, there's these carotenoids, there's CLA, there's butyrate, there's all these like interesting vitamin K2 in butter, which are, you know, which are significant. And, you know, that's great. you know, for example, if you have hyper, if you have familial hypercholesterolemia, which many people do, um, or if, you know, it's just, it's just one of these foods that like, I would not consume as liberally as say, I'm consuming like the heavy cream or, or full fat Greek yogurt, or even fat free Greek yogurt, which is a great like high protein food. Um, but yeah, always, I mean, you're always going to get higher nutrient density when a cow eats its biologically appropriate diet.

Um, also, you know, when a cow is grass finished versus grain finished, it's a leaner animal. Like I know you love to like hunt, right? Like wild game is way leaner than a modern cow, particularly a grain finished cow. Yeah. It's a completely different thing. Completely different thing. So to me, that says something about the relative like proportion of fatty acids that we're meant to consume. Right. Like, it's a completely different thing. Completely different thing. So to me, that says something about the relative proportion of fatty acids that we're meant to consume, right? Sure.

Well, that's one of the weird things is that we've become accustomed to the taste of a sick cow. Yeah. Because that's what grass-fed versus grain-fed is. When you see a grain-fed cow and it's heavily marbled, I don't like Wagyu or Kobe beef. When people people offer Kobe, we have Kobe beef. Like that thing's dead. That's not just dead now, but I mean, while it was alive, it's fucked. Yeah. Like you look at all that fat in the tissue, that's not normal. What you get a grain fed steak and compare it to a grass fed steak. First of all, the grass fed steak is a darker color. It's a richer, darker color. There's far

less fat on it and it tastes different. It's like a healthier animal too, because they're wandering around in these, these pastures. So they're using their muscle tissue. And so that muscle tissue is more dense. It's chewier, but you know, and people like it tender, but that's, that's not normal. Like if you eat an elk steak, that fucker is, that's dense, you know, and you have to cook it appropriately. Like you have to cook it at a low temperature until it reaches an internal temperature and then you sear it on the outside. That's the best way to cook it. Oh yeah. These like grain finished cows. I mean, they're loaded or the, what the Wagyu's specifically it's that's, that's called intramyocellular lipid.

Like you only get that if you're diabetes, right? If you've got type two diabetes and obesity. Or the Wagyu specifically. That's called intramyocellular lipid. Like you only get that if you're diabetes, right? If you've got type 2 diabetes and obesity. How do they do grass-fed Wagyu? Because I've seen that too. And it looks good. That's a good question. How are you doing? Is it like a specific breed of cow that they're doing that just generally retains more fat?

Yeah. I mean, sometimes don't they put like ports into the cows, like one of the cow's stomachs? That's from that, was that Food Inc? Where they talked about that. That's from animals that are eating grains and they develop like abscesses and real problems and they have to ventilate their stomachs because of all the gases. Oh God. Yeah.

That's good. No. Oh, God. Yeah. Not good. No. Not good. No. Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely, definitely huge fan of, like, you know, the grass finish. But also I think it's important, and this is something that, like, that I, you know, I think one of the reasons why people gravitate to my content is that, like, I try to be as non-dogmatic as possible. to my content is that like, I'm, I try to be as non-dogmatic as possible. And, um, and even for somebody who doesn't have access to the most pristine beef that I have access to living in

Los Angeles, you know, like even, and I, and I, I hate to promote the factory farm system because it's terrible. And I, you know, it's like an animal Holocaust every day. It's like worse, but still for somebody like living in a quote unquote food desert that doesn't have access to the kind of beef that I have access to. Um, that's, you know, still going to be a better option for dinner than boxed Mac and cheese. Yeah. You know, and what a cow eats determines mainly the content, the nutritional value of its fat. If you don't have access to the most pristine beef, grass-fed, grass-finished beef, you can go slightly leaner because that's generally a way to circumvent that.

It doesn't make any sense to eat grass-fed, grass-finished filet mignon because a filet mignon is a lean piece of meat. But if we're talking about a ribeye or ground beef, yeah, it does make sense to buy leaner beef because you're just skimming off what is ultimately determined by what a cow eats. Even if grass-fed filet mignon, wouldn't you be getting a healthier piece of meat? Probably, but I'm not sure how I would quantify that. They're both lean, grass-fed and grain-fed. And the protein is still pristine, and it's really just the fat. Like, for example, the difference between grass-finished and grain-finished, you get about five times the omega-3s in grass-finished. Beef in general is not a great omega-3 source, so just to put that out there. You're getting, in absolute terms, a much smaller amount of omega-3 fatty acids as you would get

from a piece of salmon, for example, but still five times the omega-3s as compared to grain finished. You're getting three times the vitamin E, which we know is super important to help protect the fats that are already in your body. We need vitamin E. Vitamin E is crucially important. that are already in your body. We need vitamin E. Vitamin E is crucially important. You get much less, fewer fat calories overall. And of the saturated fat,

you're getting a higher proportion of stearic acid, which we know is actually quite beneficial. So I do think that it's probably healthier to consume, you know, but none of those features are really gonna matter if the meat is super lean, right? Because we're talking primarily about like it's fat. It's fat content. Wow. We certainly covered a lot.

Is there anything else you'd like to bring up? Oh, man. Anything else you think needs to be discussed? You know, I just, I love educating people and helping people sort of clearly separate. Yeah. Fact from fiction. It's, I think it's my life's purpose. You know, like, I really feel like aligned with what I'm, with what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm super excited for, uh, the documentary, um, little empty boxes again, little empty boxes.com. I host my own podcast called the genius life, which I love to do.

I love to bring on like, you know, dissenting opinions and kind of like expose my audience to as broad array of perspectives as possible. Have you had debates with vegans? You know, I haven't primarily because I don't think that debates are a good platform. I don't think that they- Or discussions, I should say. Yeah. I do sometimes, yeah. But not on think that they discussions, I should say. Yeah, I do sometimes. Yeah.

Like, but not not on the some on the podcast. Yeah. As long as they're not annoying, you know. Yeah. But no, I've I've definitely had experts on the show who lean more lean more plant based. I just, you know, after doing all the interviews that I've done, what I, what I've seen is that, you know, you bring on somebody who's like a medical doctor and you ask them about nutrition and they start opining as if their authority is on nutrition

because they're medical doctors. And most of them are unaware even of their own biases, which I think is a big problem. You know, I had somebody on the podcast who, uh, she's lovely woman, um, purports to be like a nutrition expert, um, from, uh, from like Indian, an Indian background. Right. And like, generally I know, like if you're from an Indian background, like you're not going to be super pro beef, you know, it's just like not in the culture. And that came out like in the, in the interview that, that she was like antiat and like leans more plant-based. And so, you know, I see the podcast not as a platform for me to like debate people. I'm not like one of those.

Because at the end of the day, like I think something that I'm really passionate about or I know that I'm really passionate about is fostering scientific literacy. Like, you know, I don't really call myself like an expert. Other people have called me that. And I'll, you know, like I'll take it if that's if that's what you perceive from me. But really, I mean, I hope in college, you know, I felt out of college, I felt, uh, entitled to, to answers and to like reaching out to people. And, um, of course, along the journey, I realized I had an aptitude for aggregating and assimilating and communicating science. But, um, but I want people to like do the research for themselves and like, you know, to, to always be willing to challenge do the research for themselves and like, you know, to, to

always be willing to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs about things. Right. Cause you, you know, people these days, they watch a Netflix documentary and they, they, their whole, they throw their whole diet into upheaval. And it's like a huge, I think it does harm. Like it does harm and nobody's talking about this. Well, not only that, there's quite a few Netflix documentaries. One that gets brought up all the time that's full of shit.

You know, it's like most of what they talk about is just factually inaccurate and they don't take into account bioavailability. They don't take into account many factors that contribute to poor health from these diets that they're promoting, particularly vegan diets. Yeah. I mean, what percentage of people that start vegan diets wind up eating meat at some point in time? I think it's something like 84%. Oh yeah. It's huge. I think, you know, there's like this, I think, you know, like I probably agree. There's more that we agree on than what we disagree on. And, and I think primarily people, you know, like one of the things that I, that I really hope people take away from this is to reduce their consumption of these ultra processed foods, you know, that for some reason or another made it to the top of the food

compass, um, nutrient profiling system, but essentially like, you know, ultra processed foods. We know that when you tend to, uh, make them what you, you know, ultra processed foods, we know that when you tend to make them what you, you know, when you make them the bulk of your diet, they drive their own overconsumption. Like we tend to overconsume them because they have this quality of being hyper palatable and hyposatiating. And what makes a food satiating? There are three factors that make a food satiating. One, it's protein content. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. So like a lot of people that are struggling with being overweight, they go to their doctors and they get, you know, told this like advice, this like

cookie cutter advice to just eat less and move more. Right. So they focus on the quantity of what they're eating, right? Like how much they're eating. But what so few people understand, unfortunately today is that what you eat determines how much you eat. And so by focusing on protein, right? Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. We know we need it. It fosters resilience and robustness. Frailty. There was a study that came out recently that found that among people who are genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, it was the frailty that determined by threefold who was going to develop it or not, basically. So you were protected the stronger, the more robust

and resilient you were. Resistance training, all that stuff obviously plays a role, but protein, you know, regularly reaching for high quality protein, I think is crucially, crucially important. And the best, you know, the highest quality protein comes from animal products. If you're eating enough protein, you know, quality becomes less of an issue. So, you know, if you're on a plant-based diet, vegan diet, just make sure that you're getting enough protein, but that's hard to do without protein supplements. And we know that plant-based protein powders harbor heavy metals. So there's all these factors that like, that come into play that I think about, you know, day to day. The second factor that makes a food satiating is fiber.

It's fiber content. And that's not because we have some innate need for fiber, but because it mechanically stretches out the stomach. And we do see, thanks to meta-analyses and such, that fiber consumption is associated with longevity, reduced inflammation, and things like that. But you want to make sure that you're reaching for foods that contain fiber. Fiber is vegetables, right? And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is its water content. But you want to make sure that you're reaching for foods that contain fiber, fibrous vegetables.

And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is its water content. Before we had access to running water, we would either look for water on the savannah or whatever, or we would eat food because food, by and large, provides water. Like produce, even animal products are a good source of hydration. I have a cat, my cat gets its hydration primarily from the meat that it eats, you know? And so when you look at ultra processed foods, they're depleted of all three of those features, right? They're dehydrated because water impedes shelf stability. They lack fiber. They lack protein. They lack protein primarily because protein is expensive, right? Protein has high margins. So it actually, from a bottom line perspective, it makes sense why the powers that

be would want to deplete our food environment of protein, right? I mean, some people will say, oh, they're making us weak. I think it's just like bottom line, right? Like rapidly digested carbohydrates are just cheap to produce, right right now we're seeing this flood on the market of all these like fake meat products which is another thing that i talk about all the time like on my podcast like it's the the it's like the the food equivalent of it's uh it's human pet food is what i is how i refer to it basically it's no different than like kibble made for humans right and um and these are the kinds of foods that like yield big exits because they're proprietary formulas like there's obviously profit to be made in meat and dairy and

things like that but you don't get the kinds of like you know proprietary formulations that you get with these like plant-based products that then like go public and have these like huge company valuations well the good news is they're sinking because people aren't buying them because they're disgusting. And also people have seen the studies. There was the one study about plant-based meat with rats. I'm sure you saw that. That what? Rats develop liver damage.

Oof. See if you can find that. It's like these things are filled with seed oils. Yeah. you'll find that it's like these things are they're filled with seed oils yeah that's what these plant-based that's what like what they're trying to do is they're trying to emulate what a burger looks and tastes like which is so strange it's like are you opposed to burgers or not because why you have why do you have a fake one like i never understood like fake chicken and now fake beef just if you want to eat vegetables, eat fucking vegetables.

Don't do that. A hundred percent. Or eat meat. Like they're not nutritionally equivalent. The carbon footprint of producing these things is massive. Like, I mean, we don't even know. But here it is. Rat feeding studies suggest the impossible burger may not be safe to eat.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course it's fucking impossible. So soy, say that word? Where is it? A protein, a plant-based Impossible Burger contains a protein called soy. Leg hemoglobin? Leg hemoglobin, derived from genetically modified yeast.

The company recently added another GMO ingredient, soy protein, from genetically modified yeast. The company recently added another GMO ingredient, soy protein from genetically modified soybeans. Tests conducted by Moms Across America found the Impossible Burger tests positive for residues of glyphosate. Yeah, there you go. Shocker! The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute laboratories

were 11 times higher than the non-GMO project verified beyond Burger. In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration denied the product GRAS status, which is generally recognized as safe. But in 2017, it issued a no-questions letter not assuring safety, but protecting the FDA from liability if adverse effects are found.

Oh, God. Fuck off. But you see how it works is that, like, for this to be good for you, beef has to be bad for you. Right. Right? For oatly to be good for you, regular milk, real milk has to be bad for you.

Right. Right? They have to create this divide, essentially. Like, for sunblock to be good for you, right? The sun has to be bad for you. Right. Right? And it's a big problem. It's why people are so sick. It's why people are so sick. That's the thing I've said. You know, the problem with following the science is that the science follows the money. You can show me all the data you want, but like the longer a food or product has been around, I think the safer we can assume that it is and the less time it's been around, right? I think the greater scrutiny, I'm not saying that they're all bad, right?

Like if I need medical assistance, I'm going to a hospital, right? If I'm in like crazy pain for whatever reason. You're not going to go to a witch doctor? I'm not going to go to a witch doctor, no. So I'm not anti-medicine or anything like that. If I had that blockbuster drug or whatever to give my mom, I would have given to her in a heartbeat. Right. But it's just like these kinds of conditions take years, if not decades, to manifest, right?

Right. That's what's important to note. Yeah. Like you're not dealing with something that's going to show an adverse effect instantaneously. Like you're not dealing with something that's going to show an adverse effect instantaneously. You're going to deal with an accumulative effect over time that's going to be detrimental to people that take this thing that has been approved because of money. Not because it's effective or generally beneficial to your health, but because a bunch of people have been paid off. And there's so much of that.

There's so much of that where these people that give their opinions on these things have been bought and paid for. 100%. And that's why it's so important to have people like you out there. And I'm very happy that you're doing what you're doing. And I'm very happy that you get that message out there so people understand. Like there's a lot of factors involved in what's recommended and what people consume and that stupid food compass, all this nonsense. It's like there's so much of that that is absolutely provable, provably not beneficial to your health. These things are being recommended and it's nuts. 100%.

So thank you, Max. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Matt. You're a very important person. I you, Joe. Thank you, Matt. You're a very important person. I really, I think your podcast is great. Your videos that you put out are great. And, you know, I think it's so nice how well informed you are and reasonable and the way you distribute the information. It's excellent. That means a lot coming from you. As I said, walking in here, there's nobody that's more the man than you. Like love the courage that you exude on every topic. And I've been such a big fan of yours.

Well, I'm a big fan of yours too. So I'm glad we did this and let's do it again. And tell everybody one more time the name of your podcast, your Instagram, all that jazz. Yeah. So my podcast is called The Genius Life, available on all podcast platforms. My Instagram is at Max Lugavere, M-A-X-L-U-G-A-V-E-R-E. And then check out the trailer to Little Empty Boxes, which is the first ever dementia prevention documentary, which I hope to have out soon at littleemptyboxes.com. And how do you, soon at littleemptyboxes.com. And how do you, um, this, the genius, like you have a book too. What is the book? Yeah. Oh my God. I forgot. I'm not, I'm not like money, whatever, selling products. It's not my thing. I'm like just really passionate about, you know, helping like educate people. But yeah, I've written three books. The first book was called a genius foods and it really is a nutritional care manual for the human brain. So anybody genius foods, genius foods. Did you do an audio of that as well? Yeah. It's um, I bought it. Hold on. Genius foods is it's being used around the

world. Like clinicians will use it, um, to recommend to their patients. It's a, it really is like, you'll get like PhD level knowledge when you read genius foods and anybody, you know, if you're at risk for, you know, dementia, or if you have a loved one, or if you just want to know how to better fuel the brain, because we also talk about this new field, which is being called nutritional psychiatry. So how to get your brain to work better in the here and now it really is everything you need to know about, about food and the brain. The second book was called the genius life and in that i do a deep dive in terms of um endocrine disruptors and um you know nature immersion

all the sort of more lifestyle stuff and then my third book just came out it was called genius kitchen and it's a two-in-one sort of like wellness guide and cookbook but um i just bought it now i thought i'd bought it but i bought it now amazing alright Max you're the fucking man thank you very much appreciate you very much bye everybody