The One You Feed - Max Lugavere on Genius Foods to Protect Your Brain

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Max Lugavere is a filmmaker, health and science journalist and the author of the New York Times best-seller Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life, published in 8 languages around the globe. He is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast The Genius Life. Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. He has contributed to Medscape, Vice, Fast Company, CNN, and the Daily Beast, has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show,and in The New York Times and People Magazine. He is an internationally sought-after speaker and has given talks at South by Southwest, TEDx, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, and many others. In this episode, Eric, Ginny, and Max discuss his book, Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for LifeBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Max Lugavere, Ginny, and I Discuss Genius Food to Protect the Brain and…His book, Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for LifeHis mom’s diagnosis of dementia in her late fiftiesHis focus on learning and discovery of “genius foods” that help to protect the brain The health benefits he experienced after eliminating grains from his dietHow evidence shows that “genius foods” are crucial for brain healthGenius foods include extra virgin olive oil, fatty fish, berries, grass-fed beef, and dark leafy greensThis healthy diet leads to improvement in cognitive processing speed and executive functionThe common overconsumption of sugar and its negative health effects How fiber isn’t an essential nutrient but still offers health benefits like satiation and reduction of inflammationUnderstanding the gut microbiomeHow eating the right foods helps to protect our delicate brains against oxidative stress The dangers of consuming highly processed oils and transfatsHow the human body can’t properly digest gluten The increased health risks associated with chronically elevated blood sugarMax Lugavere Links:Max’s WebsiteMax’s Podcast: The Genius LifeTwitterInstagramFacebookWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Max Lugavere you might also enjoy these other episodes:Eating for Brain Health with Lisa MosconiLessons About the Brain with Lisa Feldman BarrettSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

25% of every breath you take is going to create energy in your brain, which is this delicate, fatty, damage-prone organ squeezed into a container the size of a grapefruit. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together our mission on the really no really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Max Lugavere, or wherever you get your podcasts. author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller, Genius Foods. Become smarter,

happier, and more productive while protecting your brain for life. Hi, Max. Welcome to the show. Eric, Ginny, so good to be here. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. Yes. As you just said, we have Ginny with us. So this is one of the episodes where Ginny joins us. And I asked Ginny to join us because she is very connected, Max, to your work, and it's been an important part of our lives the last few years. So we'll get into that in a minute, but let's start like we always do with the parable. Do you want to do it? Sure, sure. I'll read it to you. All right, Max. So here goes. There's a grandparent talking with their grandchild, and they say,

In life, there are two wolves at battle within us. One's a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And one's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd love to know how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work that you do. Oh my God. I wish I could sit with that for an hour just to think about. I got goosebumps as you were reciting it. What immediately came to mind, and I don't know if this is necessarily the answer that I would give

an hour from now or tomorrow after I sleep on it. But, you know, I think in life we all endure certain stresses. And I know this firsthand in a profound way because I had a sick loved one, my mother. Ginny, what I'm getting from you is that you can relate to that. But in life, wherever those stresses come from, whether it's work stress, whether it's marital stress, relationship stress, identity stress, whatever, whatever it happens to be. I mean, some of these stresses are unavoidable, right? Like we, you just can't get around them as much as we like to live in this fairy tale land where there is no stress to some degree, life stress is inevitable. And I think in those moments, of course you have to do what it takes to tend to those stresses and to show up for them and for the people in your life that may be involved. But you also have to take care of yourself.

And I guess that the analogy with that parable is the bad stresses are, I guess, the bad wolf. are, I guess, the bad wolf. But you've got to really be able to carve out time regardless for yourself, for self-care. Use kind words to speak to yourself in those moments because sometimes I think we can be very harsh self-critics. When my mother was sick, and I guess we'll get into it, but when my mom was sick with dementia, especially in the later stages when she had developed another horrible chronic disease in which ultimately took her life. That was the most stressful period of my life, period. The end. I mean, I can't believe that I made it to the other side in one piece. And looking back, the way that I think that I was able to do that and come out relatively unscathed was the fact that I still prioritized exercise. I still made a point to nourish my body with my dietary choices. I made

a point to do things that I really love doing like sauna, sitting in a sauna, cold water immersion. I kept up my guitar playing, which is something that's very personal, something that I'm very passionate about. Even though somebody looking from the outside who's never experienced something like that might say, well, wouldn't you want to spend every second with your mother in those moments? And my answer to that would be, well, I want to spend as much time as I can with my mom, but I also need to feed the good wolf, right? I need to continue doing the things that I know bring me happiness and bring health and well-being to me so that I could then be most adequately prepared to show up and be my best self for my mother, if that makes sense. It makes total sense. It makes really deep sense to me as I listen. Gosh, I just have so much I want to ask and say. You've been really important

to me these last four years. So four years ago, my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Really, her symptoms started when she was in her late 60s, as we look back on it now. But as so many families can probably relate, when you first start seeing signs and symptoms, especially if they're kind of on the earlier side of life, as I consider that to be, you don't explain it right away as dementia. You start thinking it could be other things. My mom and dad had just gotten a divorce, so we thought, well, this is stress, you know, it's explicable. Like she's, she's trying to learn how to live life again in her late 60s on her own. And she's never done that before. Of course, she's falling apart. You know, it wasn't until I was sitting with her one

day, and she went every month, I guess, as long as I can remember to see her parents grave, which is not far from where we live. And she started telling me one day that Mimi and Pop Pop's grave, that the cemetery had moved their grave without telling her. And I was like, what? You know, I mean, I'm pretty sure they would never do that. Anyway, it wasn't until something like that happened and then a couple other things that we ended up going to the doctor and getting that diagnosis. But the last four years have unequivocally been the hardest of my life, the most stressful. And that disease would have ravaged me like it has ravaged my mother had I not found your work and begun to really learn how and then dedicate myself to caring for my own well-being in the way I ate, my exercise, my sleep, the way I fed myself

spiritually and took care of myself mentally and had support around me like with Eric. And, you know, as a result, I feel like I'm coming out of the other side of this, at least as she's on the tail end of this disease, really a lot stronger and healthier, amazingly. But I can relate to you. It's incredibly hard to go through this with a loved one. When did you first see signs of this in your mom? Is it in her 50s? Is that right? Yeah, it was in her late 50s. And like you, I had no mental framework for understanding what I was observing in my mom. I didn't have dementia in my lineage. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, my mom's mom was actually in her nineties at that point and cognitively sharp as a tack. So the notion that my mom, that her daughter could somehow be developing

dementia in her late fifties was, I mean the term mind-blowing concept doesn't even cover it. It was just not on my radar in any sense. So the complaints that she was exhibiting were just a natural part of getting older perhaps, but ultimately I had no framework to explain it. I mean, she complained of brain fog. In tandem with that, there was also a change to her gait. So Alzheimer's disease is a memory disorder. And usually it's, it just involves memory. Whereas there's a category of neurodegenerative conditions called movement disorders. Parkinson's disease is the most well-known of which, and Parkinson's disease usually presents with a change to one's gait. There's a bit of a shuffle, there's rigidity,

there's balance issues that present with Parkinson's disease. So my mom kind of had both sets of symptoms come on at the same time, which was very unusual. And I grew up in New York City, which is where my mom lived at the time. And in New York, you know, you have access to incredible hospitals, cathedrals to Western medicine. We in fact lived across the street from NYU Langone Medical Center, which is a wonderful medical institution. But it wasn't until we decided to pack up and take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where my mom was diagnosed for the first time with a neurodegenerative condition. Because in every doctor's office prior to that trip, we had experienced essentially diagnose and adios, with the caveat being we still hadn't had a diagnosis. One doctor thought that

all of my mom's symptoms were due to depression, which is actually quite interesting when you consider that one in four women over the age of 40 are on some kind of antidepressant drug. So this psychiatrist that my mom saw thought that all of her symptoms were just a pseudo dementia as a result of depression, which is a thing. I mean that, you know, some people do develop symptoms that look like dementia that once you treat the depression, those symptoms go away. But in my mom's case, it was much more severe. And it wasn't until that trip where she was diagnosed with some kind of Parkinson's like condition that she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's

at the same time. And for me, that was a point of no return in my life where I became obsessed with trying to understand everything I could about the etiology of these kinds of conditions, like what might contribute to a person's predisposition toward developing them, both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. What, if anything, might be done to help her from the standpoint of diet and lifestyle? Because I learned right away that these drugs are nothing more than biochemical band-aids, right? They just attempt to treat the symptoms, but they're minimally effective, particularly with rare forms of dementia, which my mom had. My mom didn't have Alzheimer's. She had some more niche form called Lewy body dementia. And in tandem with that, I was really interested to see if there was any insight that I might be

able to glean from the medical literature that might provide a roadmap for me so as not to develop what it was that my mom had developed. And so that journey began about 10 years ago. And it's just, for me, been a relentless pursuit of truth since then. And it's led to the books and the podcast and all that stuff. Well, it's interesting you say Lewy body. So my mom was initially diagnosed with Alzheimer's. But not long after, did we start seeing other symptoms that were really just textbook Lewy body. start seeing other symptoms that were really just textbook Louie body. I mean, she had all the hallucinations, the paranoia, the personality changes, the aggression. She has now like the

rigidity and the kind of jerky movements in her muscles. And we're quite certain that that's really what's going on. Of course, we won't really know definitively, I guess, till an autopsy postmortem. At this point, I don't see much reason to go in and do any kind of invasive diagnostic testing in her current condition, but it's important to me to know, you know, for my own health. Yeah. What separates Lewy body dementia is Lewy body has more in common with Parkinson's disease than it does with Alzheimer's disease. And one in five dementia patients have Lewy body dementia. With Alzheimer's disease, especially in the later stages, you'll see dramatic shrinkage of the total brain volume because on a global scale, the brain is just atrophying. So you'll see shrinkage, which they can show on an MRI.

In my mom's case, as her dementia advanced, there was no marked shrinkage to her brain. Her brain volume was relatively healthy. The problem with Leuby-Biden-Menschen-Parkinson's disease is that there's a region of the brain called the substantia nigra, where dopamine-producing neurons, which are important for movement, begin to die. And in fact, by the time you show up to your neurologist with your first Parkinson's disease symptom, half of those neurons are already dead. So this is a disease like many of the chronic non-communicable diseases that are now burdening modern society, this is a condition that begins in the brain years, if not decades, before the presentation of symptoms. This is certainly true for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease.

So my focus really turned to prevention once I realized that. To me, it was very much something that younger people needed to be talking about, but also older people as well. It wasn't until I feel the past couple of years where you really could mention conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease and prevention in the same sentence. So I feel like I was in many ways prescient in terms of getting this research out to people because it was just not something that people were talking about. And to me, prevention really is how we're going to be able to move the needle on these conditions. Because as we mentioned, the drugs are minimally effective. They're biochemical band-aids. And when you take Alzheimer's disease, for example, 99.6%

of Alzheimer's drug trials fail. So the idea that we're going to come up with some magic pill while I prayed when my mom was alive, and I'm not a religious person, that some kind of blockbuster drug would come around the corner, I think it's very unlikely in light of the revelation that these conditions begin far earlier than the presentation of symptoms. Yeah, when my mom was diagnosed, you know, it really shook my world like you, and we didn't know of a family history of any kind of dementia, and my mom and I were very similar, always have been very similar in a lot of ways. And I identify with her so much and we're very

close in a lot of ways. So it really kind of rattled me to the core. Like my own mortality just came rushing into the forefront of my mind. And I realized that I could be looking at a preview of coming attractions. And I would really like that not to be the case. And so when that realization came to me, I just started looking for information on how can I decrease my risk that this is the end of the road for me, you know. And in so doing, I came across your work. And so Genius Foods was the book that you wrote that landed in front of me, thank goodness. And you changed the way I ate completely. Changed the way I ate, changed my focus on different lifestyle factors. For decades, I've struggled with my weight and always had pursued weight loss from a vanity standpoint without much success in any

sustainable way. But when I read your book and now having this motivator of my long-term brain health as like the most important motivator, I mean, I lost 40 pounds. It just fell off my body because I started eating in this very Mediterranean diet is the easiest way to say it, but there's a lot more to it than that, which we'll get into. I'm in the best shape of my life. And I feel like, I mean, four years later, it's not only sustainable, but it's just the way we eat, the way we operate, the way we live now. I'm always on the hunt for the like frankenfats, all the oils that are like rancid and everything and are pro-inflammatory.

I mean, you've changed the way I look at food, Max, for the better. And I'm really grateful. Oh, I'm so glad and humbled really to hear that. And it's remarkable. And the credit goes to you because knowledge without action is fairly useless. But it was you that put the knowledge gleaned from a book, Genius Foods. You instituted it in your life and you've seen remarkable progress. And that's on you. So thank you for doing that. And I love hearing both how those changes have made you feel and also that they're reflected in the mirror as well. Because today, I mean, obesity and overweight are major public health problems. By the year 2030, one in two people are going to be not just overweight, but obese. And so I've actually described Genius Foods as being the only book out there that'll simultaneously shrink your belly and grow your brain. That's a great way to put it. Such a great way to say it. You're exactly right. Which is, I guess, a really enticing proposition. Yeah. What were you eating like before your mom's diagnosis and you really dove deep into this work?

Did you have a pretty good diet? I mean, I would say we had an okay diet by the average American standard. It wasn't the standard American diet. We were better than that, but we've come a long way. I'm curious, what was it like for you? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. I guess I have to give a little bit of a backstory before I describe my diet prior to writing Genius Foods, because I grew up in a family that was, as I mentioned, I grew up in New York City. So textbook definition of privilege, right? Like I grew up in New York City, my parents were affluent, I had access to all the best supermarkets and foods. And my mom was indeed health conscious. I mean, she had your coloring, and probably had a similar body type. She was never overweight,

she was mindful of what she put into her body, because she was concerned for the majority of her life with developing heart disease. So my earliest recollections of the dietary pattern that my family embraced was probably similar to a lot of families in the 80s and 90s. We ate a fairly low fat diet. In particular, my mom was largely vegetarian. She was always afraid of eating saturated fats, you know, so there was never any butter in the house. We always had margarine in those pale yellow plastic tubs. We didn't use animal fats or anything like that to cook with. By the stove, I remember with vivid clarity, always there being this large, I guess it was like a gallon plastic tub of corn oil, which my mom would saute chicken tenders for us. That was many, many a meal that we

had. She avoided dietary cholesterol. I don't remember ever seeing my mom until her later years because I finally was able to get her to eat them. But I never saw her eating eggs growing up. And when she prepared for me my first omelet, which wasn't until I was probably around 12 years old, she gave me the warning, the disclaimer that you only want to eat these in strict moderation because the cholesterol contained in the yolks will ultimately clog your arteries. So my mom instilled in us this dietary dogma that she had gleaned, right, passively from mainstream media and from whatever celebrity doctors ended up making it on TV at the time because there was no internet, that we should ultimately eat a diet that's low in animal products, low in saturated fat, low in dietary cholesterol. She also never ate any red

meat. So growing up, I ate a lot of whole grain products and refined grain products. I ate both. If there was a red heart healthy logo on it in the supermarket, chances are it was going to end up in my house at some point. Never any butter, lots and lots of margarine. All of the food in my house that was sauteed generally was sauteed using corn oil and the like. And that's pretty much it. As I got older, my radar started to galvanize and I started to become interested in nutrition myself. I started to eat more salads, but generally, I still continued to eat a lot of whole grains. I kept my consumption of eggs and red meat and stuff like that to a minimum, although I definitely always enjoyed steak, unlike my mom.

But as I began to research and dive into the medical literature, it really challenged a lot of preconceptions that I had about what it meant to eat healthily. For example, the Mediterranean dietary pattern for some reason is defined in the literature as being a grain-heavy diet, when in reality it's not. And in fact, though they do eat whole grains and refined grains in the Mediterranean parts of the world, it really is a fallacy to assume that the health and the protection from conditions like cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's disease that we see among populations who adhere to the Mediterranean dietary pattern are because of grains. It's in spite of grains. I've found in my research that these people have the health that they have because grains at the end of the day are nutrient poor. They are highly energy dense. So they provide a source of cheap calories, right? In fact, that's why we use grains to fatten up cattle in this country. The form that most

grains take in the standard American diet without question are processed refined grains. Even whole wheat bread is a refined grain. Commercial whole wheat bread is a refined grain product. It masquerades as a health food, but if you look at most packages of whole wheat bread in the supermarket, there's added sugar. You'll find added sugar, usually high fructose corn syrup. You'll find added oils. So the first thing that I did was I removed most grains from my diet. I wasn't dogmatic about it. There's nothing overtly toxic about grains, certainly not. It's just not a quality food. And once you remove grains and the added sugar and the unhealthy oils, which we could talk about, what do you replace those foods with?

Well, you end up replacing them with foods that are actually nutrient dense. They're the kinds of foods that our ancestors ate during the time in which our brains evolved, right? They're eggs, animal protein, which is not controversially the highest quality protein found in nature, right? That also provide a bevy of important micronutrients, which are important for supporting brain health and brain function. So as soon as I made that switch in my diet, I noticed that my mental energy improved. My energy levels throughout the day were much more stable. I was feeling fatigue in the afternoon with a lot less frequency. I was sleeping better. My body composition improved. So many good things. And so I was like, I have to write about this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not only, you know, is this likely beneficial for reducing risk of cognitive

decline as we age, but you just live and feel better in the meantime. You know, I mean, you just have a life you can enjoy a little more fully if your body is well cared for. So you have a new book out, Genius Kitchen, which I'm so excited about. I feel like every time I scour recipes, in the back of my mind, what I'm looking for is like, is this Max Lugavere approved? You know, like, would this check all your boxes? You and Lisa Moscone is another, like her books really have informed how I eat. But anyway, that being said, you write in your book, Genius Kitchen, at the beginning, like me, you say, when my mom first became sick, I set out to learn as much as I could about the role that food plays in the health of the body and brain. So I'd love to know as you have as a

scientific journalist, and as somebody who I believe really vets and looks at the science behind nutrition in a way that is really thorough and balanced, and you really scrutinize it, and you come out the other side with a very reliable summary and position on things. You know, what evidence have you found that food can really contribute to not only our short term, but our longer term cognitive health? Such a good question. There's so much evidence now. And just to be clear, I don't think it's grains that led to my mom's condition. So my stance really has always been, let's talk about what we can include in the diet that is going to give the brain what it requires to be healthy and to better contend with the inevitable stresses that it will have to contend

with as it ages, right? So there's ample evidence now that wild fatty fish is protective when it comes to the brain. This is due to probably many mechanisms, the fact that it's a great source of protein, the fact that it provides preformed omega-3 fats, which provide one of the most important structural building blocks to the human brain, docosahexaenoic acid, in particular DHA. building blocks to the human brain. Dacosahexaenoic acid in particular, DHA, that's DHA fat is found most abundantly in foods like wild salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, things like that. And research shows that even people who are genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, if they eat one to two servings a week, a fish seem to have a robust risk reduction

for developing Alzheimer's disease. Foods like extra virgin olive oil. So one of the key recommendations that I make is get rid of the grain and seed oils like the corn oil, the canola oil, and the soybean oil, and embrace extra virgin olive oil. We can see there's such a wide body of literature now and ever-growing, showing us that extra virgin olive oil really is medicine for the brain and body. We can see animal studies. We can look to in vitro studies and cell culture. We can see epidemiologically population studies, but there are also randomized control trials like the seminal PREDIMED study that has shown us that when people consume extra virgin olive oil up to a liter a week, they see improvement in their cardiometabolic health, their neurometabolic

health, their body composition. This was a really important study because it was a randomized control trial, which is the kind of trial, of course, required to prove cause and effect. So I'm a huge advocate of the consumption of extra virgin olive oil. It's got a very heart healthy ratio of fatty acids. It's primarily monounsaturated fat, which is the most abundant fat found in nature. And the brain relies on cardiovascular health. So what's good for the heart is going to be good for the brain. And extra virgin olive oil, I mean, it's just a powerful food. Berries, we know from the nurse's health study that people who regularly consume berries, and I'm not talking a huge amount, one to two servings a week,

have brains that appear about two and a half years younger than age-matched controls. So berry consumption is something that it's a staple for me. It's one of the reasons why I call blueberries a genius food. I take a pretty strong position on grass-finished red meat beef. This is a topic where we can actually have a bit of a debate about this because not everybody, I think, agrees with me. But to me, it's very clear that red meat provides a bevy of important nutrients, especially nutrients that tend to be under-consumed these days. It provides a bevy of important nutrients, especially nutrients that tend to be under-consumed these days. It provides a compound called creatine, which we know supports brain energy metabolism. It's a great source of dietary choline, which according to the Institute of Medicine, 90% of people do not consume the adequate intake of, and choline provides the precursor molecule

choline for acetylcholine, which is an important neurotransmitter for learning and memory. Research shows that older adults who consume the most choline have about a 30% risk reduction for dementia. So I'm a big advocate of the consumption of beef. Dark leafy greens, I think, are wonderful. Rush University researchers found that people who eat a large bowl of dark leafy greens, about a cup and a half every day, have brains that perform about 11 years younger than age-matched controls. That's one of the rules actually that I set forth in Genius Foods is just eat a big salad every day. A salad is like the perfect vehicle to combine a great protein source, whether it's eggs, grass-fed beef, chicken, extra virgin olive oil. And then in your dark leafy greens,

you're getting important compounds like lutein and zeaxanthin, which are carotenoids that we know protect neural tissue. So we've known for decades at this point that lutein and zeaxanthin are important for eye health. So anybody listening might be familiar if say they have like an eye health vitamin in their medicine cabinet, usually they'll contain lutein and zeaxanthin because they can help prevent age-related macular degeneration. But we now know that these same compounds accumulate in the brain where they protect against age-related memory loss. And they can also, thanks to randomized control trials, we know can also improve the way that your brain functions in the here and now. So these are just some of the staples of the diet that I tend to recommend.

It's sort of a modified Mediterranean diet. And when it comes to the evidence, we know thanks to studies like the finger study, which is being run out of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, a seminal study showing us that our actions really do have an impact when it comes to our cognitive health. We can see that even in older adults with at least one risk factor for cognitive decline, that adopting a diet very similar to the diet that I recommend leads to 150% improvement in their processing speed. So processing speed is one of the first domains to falter as we get older. And an 83% improvement in executive function. Executive function is your ability to get things done, to plan, to make decisions, to tune out

distractions, impulse control, all rely on executive function and food we can see now, thanks to these RCTs, can have a major impact on the way that our brains work. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm about to jump out of my skin. I'm so excited at this exact moment. This information just sparks such a flame of passion and excitement in me. I think it's because of a couple things. First, I mean, kind of back to the parable, we can actually have a real impact on our health, our brain health, the way we experience our life by the foods we choose and that we put in our body, right? Like we can choose to feed whichever wolf through these choices about what's on our plate. You know, there is a real empowerment there. I think the other thing that's so great is, as we've dug further into it, right? It's good for your brain, for cognitive protection. We also

know it's good for helping with things like depression, with anxiety. It's good for your heart. I mean, it's this one thing that if you can kind of do and get right, the benefits cascade in so many directions. So many different directions. I mean, I recently recorded for my podcast, an episode all about sugar. You know, sugar is a big topic these days, like your average American consumes 77 grams of added sugar every single day. That's 20 teaspoons a day, 77 grams. That's almost 20 teaspoons of pure sugar, added sugar for which we have no biological requirement every single day. What's interesting, the reason why I bring it up is because there was another really important trial that gave people with hypertension, so high blood pressure, drugs to normalize their blood

pressure. And what they found in that population was that they experienced when they normalized their blood pressure, they saw a dramatic risk reduction for mild cognitive impairment. So mild cognitive impairment is often considered pre-dementia, right? People will develop MCI, mild cognitive impairment. Oftentimes it'll convert to a more severe form of cognitive decline. And what they found was that for people who are pharmaceutically treated for their hypertension, there was this dramatic risk reduction, right, for developing mild cognitive impairment. Because we know that the brain relies on vascular health, right? The second most common form of dementia is actually vascular dementia. Stroke is very common today. Stroke is when you

have a major occlusion in an artery supplying blood to the brain, right? But vascular dementia is like a lot of more subtle occlusions that lead to this just overall cognitive deficit. And we know that maintaining a healthy blood pressure is crucially important. Well, the reason why I brought up sugar is that studies show that one single high sugar beverage can elevate your blood pressure for two hours. Leads to an elevation of blood pressure for two hours because it stimulates our body's fight or flight response, our body's sympathetic nervous system. And the dose that they used in this study was 75 grams of sugar, which is what your average person is consuming every single day.

Now, I don't know if there's a threshold effect, but what I do know is that research shows that sugar consumption is associated with hypertension, particularly added sugar. And so it's no surprise that so many of us are experiencing problems with our memory, that incidents of these kinds of conditions, Alzheimer's disease seem to be accelerating. It's because of our diet. I mean, our diet definitely plays a major role. It's not the only aspect of the modern life that I think is harming our brains, but it's a major one. It's a major one. And so the new book, Genius Kitchen, I love so much about it just from the bit I've got to read through here. But a very practical, cool thing is at the beginning, you give kind of a crash course in some really important pillars of nutrition when you talk about how to stock a genius kitchen.

You know, you go through powerful plants and you talk about mighty meats and animal protein. And I'd love to just kind of walk through a couple of those just to orient people a little bit with some very practical ways to approach these different kind of macro groups of food. I recommend everybody reading Genius Foods because it not only does it give an in-depth look at this and more, but the other thing you do, Max, is you educate in such a way that I am in awe of what my brain does every day and what's in there and how powerful it is and how, I mean, it trumps, you know, modern technology and then some. And it's just right there between our ears and we just need to support it. Our bodies are amazing and you really help us stand in awe and fall in love with kind of the miracle that our bodies are. But

that being said, if you don't have time and you want kind of a crash course, but let's talk about first the importance of fiber. Can you talk a little bit about the role of fiber in our health? Yeah, absolutely. Fiber is interesting because it's not an essential nutrient. We don't need fiber to survive, but it seems to make life better. There seems to be an association with fiber consumption and reduced levels of inflammation. It's a fairly consistent link that we see in the literature. Long-lived people tend to eat a pretty high amount of fiber, particularly in relation to the quantity that we tend to consume in the United States. It's very satiating because it absorbs water. So fiber is one of the

two things that I recommend that people look for in their foods if they're especially on a weight loss plan because it's so satiating, right? You want to increase your fiber consumption slowly though because you have to cultivate the microbiome, the gut flora to be able to metabolize the fiber that you're consuming. So you can't do this overnight. You have to gradually titrate your fiber consumption up. But fiber is a food source for the 30 trillion microbes that live at the lower end of your gastrointestinal tract, your large intestine, the colonic microbiome is what it's called. And we know that when you feed the bacteria that live in that part of your body, we have bacteria actually all over our body. So it's called the, it's the gut microbiome in particular that we want to strive to feed.

They release chemicals. It's like having a drug factory in your own body. You feed these, these bacteria fiber and they end up churning out powerful chemicals that seem to play a really important role in the body with regard to mitigating inflammation, for one, which we know is at the cornerstone of chronic disease. Inflammation is like having a forest fire in your body, and the brain sits directly downwind of that fire. And it seems that fiber is able to turn the dial down on inflammation, in part by supporting beneficial gut bacteria. And one of the ways that it does this is it helps create a more robust, what's called the mucosa. So we have this bacteria in our large intestine and those bacteria are foreign organisms, right? But we don't have an inflammatory response to them. Our immune system doesn't see them and

freak out, right? Because there's this demilitarized zone that lies in between our gut epithelial layer, which is the one cell layer thick portion of our gut wall through which we absorb nutrients, and water, particularly in the large intestine. Because the gut bacteria are kept in a safe zone thanks to this demilitarized zone that we call the gut mucosa. And we know that fiber can help create a more robust gut mucosa, which again, helps minimize inflammation in the body. So I think that fiber plays a really important role through the lens of the gut microbiome, keeping the gut microbiome happy. And it also plays a satiating role. And I would say those are the two primary reasons why fiber is something that we should seek to get more of in our diet. The average American today

consumes about 15 grams of fiber at most, thanks to diets that have become largely ultra-processed. But our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably consumed somewhere in the ballpark of 150 grams a day, so an order of magnitude higher. So fiber, I'm a huge fan of fiber. And you find it, of course, in produce, in fresh vegetables and fruits. Yeah. The other amazing thing I think about plants is the polyphenols and the pigments that are so incredibly nutritious and help us in so many ways. Yeah. Polyphenols are amazing. They're another component of vegetables. Research tends to show a remarkable health protective effect from fruit and vegetable consumption. And when researchers try to break fruits and veggies down into their constituent nutrients the essential nutrients that they contain and then they give those nutrients to

subjects in the clinical setting to try to supplement what they're seeing in fruits and vegetables and they try to distill it down and reduce it to a supplement they don't see the benefit they don't see the health benefit and so it's gotten nutrition researchers to think about vegetables in a new way fruits and vegetables in a new way. What if it's not necessarily the essential nutrients that are leading to these health benefits that we see in people who eat fresh fruits and veggies more frequently, but these other more inexplicable compounds that are contained by the fruits and vegetables. And the reason why compounds like polyphenols, which you'll find in any number of veggies in the supermarket, also tea, coffee and tea tend to be great sources of these polyphenol compounds, is that plants develop them as a way of dealing with their own stressors, right?

Because plants can't run away from predators. They can't fight their way out of being eaten by a rodent, right, or a field mouse. So what they do is they become chemists. They develop these compounds that essentially serve as their own innate anti-feedants, their own innate sort of herbicides and pesticides to make a mouse or squirrel sick. Once that mouse or squirrel comes gnawing at its leaves, you know, if a fungi starts to grow. And so we see that stressed plants generate more of these compounds. Fungi starts to grow.

And so we see that stressed plants generate more of these compounds. And when we eat those plants, they pass that vigor that they've developed onto you. It's this really beautiful illustration of the symbiosis of all living things. And usually fruits and vegetables that have more bitter flavors tend to be higher in these beneficial compounds, which is why turmeric has been so well studied and seems to possess such powerful health boosting effects, right? Compounds like cinnamon, herbs and spices actually are very concentrated sources of these polyphenol compounds. And then you mentioned plant pigments. That's why we say eat the rainbow, right? You're looking at dark leafy greens or bell peppers or roots, tubers, cruciferous vegetables. They all have these

beautiful combinations of reds and yellows and greens all mixed in. Whether or not you can see the yellow pigment, it's in there in a plant like kale, for example. Oh, we also have to mention the blues that we see in blueberries and red onions and purple potatoes, right? Anthocyanins for brain health. Yeah. So those pigments all play a different role in strengthening the brain, it seems, which is super interesting. And I think why we see the people who eat salads on a daily basis or consume berries, they all seem to have brains that perform better thanks to these pigments that play a role in protecting fatty structures in the brain, like our brain cell membranes. Our brain cell membranes are very delicate and damage prone.

And we know that these plant pigments like lutein and zeaxanthin actually accumulate in the brain where they help protect against lipid peroxidation, which is when the chemical damage that we call oxidation occurs in the extracellular environment. And so, yeah, tons of good stuff in plants. Yeah. I mean, that's one thing that blew me away is that our brains are so delicate and are with us our whole life. I mean, you know, it is something that can be easily damaged and is prone to oxidation and oxidative stress. And yeah, I mean, it's just this kind of floaty jelly like thing that is just so delicate,

yet so incredibly important to the way we live and experience our life. Yeah. I mean, what drives oxidation? It's oxygen, right? And you've got this organ that is utilizing 25% of the energy metabolism of your body, right? 25% of every breath you take is going to create energy in your brain, which is this delicate, fatty, damage-prone organ squeezed into a container the size of a grapefruit, right? So it's a crucible for oxidative stress. And the brain isn't just made of fat, right? It's made of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are the most delicate and damage-prone. So when I say

that the brain is the most delicate organ, I'm not using hyperbole. It's like, it's very prone to oxidation. And that's precisely why fat-soluble antioxidants like vitamin E or like these plant pigments that we talked about, lutein and zeaxanthin, play such an important protective role for the brain. They have easy access into the brain. They easily bypass the blood-brain barrier and they help to protect against oxidation, which is the defining feature when left unchecked and when occurring to a degree that our bodies can no longer handle. We call it oxidative stress, right? And oxidative stress underlies all of these conditions that we're talking about, whether it's Alzheimer's

disease, Parkinson's disease, it can exacerbate other conditions in the brain like autism. Oxidative stress is a major problem. It's either at the etiology of these conditions or plays a contributing role in driving them, which is why we need to be concerned in our diets with ingesting adequate fat-soluble antioxidants. I'm curious about wild-caught fish versus farm-raised fish. I'd always sort of heard wild-caught is best, farm-raised is not so good. I think that might be changing in some ways. We've talked to a couple sustainability experts on oceans who are saying, look, there's a lot of stuff in the ocean that's not good for you anymore. The proper farm raised fish is going to be better. So kind of where is your

thinking on that now? And how has that evolved? Yeah, great question. So fish is medicine. I mean, as I mentioned, people consume fish regularly seem to be protected against Alzheimer's disease. And when you look at the population level, people are not consuming fish from pristine waters in their ancestral state, right? Like people are eating for the most part canned tuna, canned albacore, they're eating farm salmon. So that's where the value of observational evidence comes into play. We see that people who eat fish seem to be protected, right? It's very easy to say stick with wild salmon, make sure that your fish comes from pristine sources. But that's not going to be effective advice for many people, right, who either can't afford or don't have access to wild fish. So for me, I just like to tell people to eat fish in whatever form it takes.

And aquaculture is improving over time. So we've had to scale up aquaculture over the past 50 years to feed a growing population quite dramatically and mistakes have been made. But you're right, Eric, in that the farming of fish is continually improving. And if you get fish from Alaska, Norway, I mean, these are all areas that are really leading the charge in terms of improving the conditions for farmed fish. But yeah, fish is a wonderful food. It's a great source of protein. And it's not just fish like salmon, right? It's like mollusks, crustaceans, all great sources of really important nutrients that play a particularly beneficial role with regard to brain health.

So I love to eat wild salmon. And also wild salmon is now more accessible. There are lots of big supermarket chains, especially these wholesale places. You can find it frozen. Eating frozen is totally fine. Great way to save money and economize um but just eat fish that that would be my advice people that eat fish their brains seem to work better their offspring seem to have better performing brains so it's great for pregnant women it really is a wonderful food I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there any particular type of fish that you don't want to eat too much of? I've certainly heard about tuna and mercury. Do you want to limit your exposure there? Yeah, I'm not that concerned about mercury from fish. Obviously, mercury, if you work with it, it's an obvious occupational hazard. But from fish, I'm not all that concerned. It's probably wise to hedge your bets if you're pregnant, if you're young, if you're breastfeeding, and stick to the lower mercury fish. But with regard to the lower mercury fish, there should be no concern. So I know some people are concerned

with just eating any fish because of our polluted oceans, but benefits of fish consumption, just to be very clear, still outweigh the risks. That's really good to know, because I think that I've been limiting my fish consumption, just making sure I'm eating like the right kind of fish that's coming from the right kind of place. But what I hear you saying is like eating fish is better than not eating fish, period. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I think is really important to point out is that there are risks and benefits associated with every single food. Sure. You can take kale or any dark leafy green, and depending on where it grows, it's going

to absorb heavy metals from the ground, right? Kale has been shown in some studies to harbor heavy metals like thallium. Dark chocolate, which is a genius food, right? Dark chocolate, studies show. Closing, right? Dark chocolate studies show- Closing my ears to this. I don't want to hear- Every day we eat dark chocolate. I don't want to hear anything bad about dark chocolate. No, we have to know. We have to know.

Well, I'm going to tell you, I love dark chocolate. I eat it regularly. The benefits outweigh the risks, but some dark chocolates have shown to carry heavy metals like lead and cadmium, right? But still, the benefits seemingly at this juncture, right, outweigh the risks. Red meat, a total health food. When you cook red meat, you create certain compounds that in vitro, like in a Petri dish, might elicit an inflammatory response from a cell in a Petri dish, right? How to recycle like amines are created, AGEs are created. But in the context of a diet that contains antioxidants, plus with all the nutritional benefits that you get from eating red meat,

benefits outweigh the risks. Same with fish. With really any food group with regard to whole foods, there's a risk associated with eating anything. I mean, you could drink enough water fast enough that water will kill you. So it's all about the dose, making sure that your diet has a good amount of diversity and variety in it, like a good stock portfolio, right? Diversity is key. Same with the diet, right? Yeah. After I read your book, Genius Foods, I mean, the changes that I made were, broadly speaking,

to eliminate processed foods when at all possible, when it's pretty much always possible for where we live. And subsequently, that will kind of take care of a lot right there, the main problematic things that go in our body. Subsequently, that will kind of take care of a lot right there, the main problematic things that go in our body. But, you know, also looking at starchy carbs and sugar intake and getting that down to bare minimum. But then the other biggie was looking at the oils that we consume. Thus began my love affair with the extra virgin olive oil. I mean, we subscribe to Grove and Vine thanks to listening to your podcast.

I love that. Oh, my God. We obsess. I mean, when that box comes of olive oil, I mean, I'm way too excited. We put it on everything. I love olive oil. Shout out to Grove and Vine. I'm going to text Nicholas after this and say that he just got a major shout out. Oh, yeah. Major shout out. That's awesome.

It's so great. Eric got that for me for Christmas, two Christmases ago after hearing about it. I think it was on your podcast. And yeah, it's the best gift. I mean, the fact that I could get this excited about olive oil is something that we kind of like chuckle about. But anyway, talk us through what is the deal with the oils that are good to consume and those that we want to avoid and why? Yeah, I love this topic. It's so controversial too. Is it? Well, it is because grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, there's a ton of money that goes into the production of these oils, right? These are fats that have ads on television, right?

Generally, if you're having to advertise on TV your food product, it's, for all intents and purposes, very likely not food. But these oils haven't been in the human food supply until just about 100 years ago, because prior to that, we hadn't had the chemistry labs to extract these kinds of fats from the foods from whence they came and to make them tasteless and bland. So that food manufacturers could then squeeze them into myriad ultra processed food products. Right. myriad ultra-processed food products, right? It's the reason why food manufacturers will use the same oils in a granola bar, in cereal for children, used to coat roasted nuts with. And then restaurateurs use the same oil to fry food in, right? So these oils have no distinct characteristic because they've gone through the ringer. It's the food industry's equivalent of the witness protection program, whereby you can take corn oil, soybean oil, grapeseed oil, and you make them bland and tasteless as can be. But that processing

damages those oils. So anytime you see corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil, they've all gone through a production process called deodorization to get rid of all the bitter flavors that would normally accompany these oils. And the problem is that process creates a small but significant amount of trans fats in the oils, which we know there's no safe level of trans fat consumption. Now, a little bit here and there isn't going to kill you, but at the level that your average American is consuming these oils at because of their presence in everything from ultra processed foods to restaurant food, to fast food, to commercial salad dressings, they're in everything. Yeah. We're consuming a

lot of them, which leads to a significant intake of trans fats, which we know is associated with cardiovascular disease, which we know is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and also worse memory function, even among the young and healthy, right? But the reason why I say this is controversial is because still those oils, when compared to saturated fats, which are what you'll primarily find in animal fats, they lead to a reduction in LDL cholesterol, which is this sort of sacred cow in Western medicine in terms of what we need to be cognizant of when reducing cardiovascular disease risk, right? We want to get our LDL as low as possible, which is what the medical and nutritional orthodoxy really, that's sort of one of their

MOs, right? Is to get your LDL as low as possible. First of all, those kinds of oils are not the only fats that can do this, right? So monounsaturated fat, which is what's primarily found in extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil also have the same LDL lowering effect, right? So, and they're also the fats. This is where it's so ironic and so hypocritical even that extra virgin olive oil is the fat used in the Mediterranean region of the world. And somehow we have this false notion that the Mediterranean region somehow is inclusive of corn oil and canola oil and soybean oil. You won't find kitchens in the Mediterranean cooking with those crappy oils, right? They use extra virgin olive oil. So extra

virgin olive oil should be the primary oil. The other thing is that even though those fats do reduce your LDL cholesterol when compared to animal fats, because they're unsaturated, they are very easily oxidized. In fact, by the time we buy them, right, these oils, they've been sitting in these plastic tubs in the supermarket for who knows how long, who knows how they've been stored. Studies show that they already have oxidative byproducts in them that exceed appropriate levels of safety. And then we cook with them. Restaurants will keep them in the fryers and use them to fry foods with and then heat them and then reheat them. Those oils are not changed on a daily basis. They're certainly not changed in between meals. And so it allows cancer causing

compounds to enter our foods. It's just a nightmare. And there was actually a study, it came out in the late nineties that found that, first of all, we know that we are what we eat, and these fats, what's so critical to know about them is that fats, more so than carbs really, make you who you are because the fats that you eat get ingrained in your fat tissue. They get charted around your body on lipoproteins of which LDL is one of the more well-known lipoproteins that circulates. They get embedded into our brains and these fats are damaged and a damaged fat damages you. So studies show that these fats actually, they're more prone to taking on an inflammatory phenotype. They're more likely

to get oxidized when they are embedded in our LDL lipoproteins. And it makes those LDL particles more easily able to adhere to immune cells, which is what basically creates atherosclerosis. So yeah, it drives your LDL down when you consume them, but at what cost? And that's what nobody's talking about. And we don't have the long-term population randomized control trials to say with certainty that they're safe. We simply don't. So that's why for me, it's a no brainer, no pun intended to get rid of those oils at the very least to play it safe, right? Precautionary principle. And to integrate primarily extra virgin olive oil, which has such a robust body of evidence

to say, this isn't just like benign, but this is actually great for you. Yeah. You have a recipe in your new book for, I think it's like olive oil poached salmon. I was like, I mean, could there be a better brain food dish than that? I mean, I can't wait. I can't wait to cook out of this book. I'm really excited about it. Another kind of controversial topic, I think, that I'd really love to hear your latest sort of take on is gluten. I know that in your cookbook, they're all gluten-free recipes, right? Why is that? And do you have kind of a take on gluten, good or bad? Yeah. I mean, I just don't think that wheat is a health food.

It's been a staple in human diets for eons at this point, but that doesn't indemnify it, especially when wheat and its most common appearance in the standard American diet is a refined product, right, like bread. In fact, I just posted this on Instagram today. 60% of the calories that your average American consumes comes from grains, including wheat, corn, and rice, vegetable oils, canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, sugar and sugar sweetened beverages, and fruit juice. So that right there, those foods that I just listed make up 60% of the calories that your average American consumes. And you wonder why we're overweight, why we're sick, right? And people like to pin the blame on animal products. It just

doesn't make any sense. 60% of the calories that we consume come from abject junk. But getting back to your question. So I just don't think that wheat is a health food and gluten. No human can properly digest gluten. One to 2% of the population is celiac disease. So they know that they can't consume gluten. Otherwise they have a violent reaction in the gut. 6%, if 2% of the population is celiac disease, so they know that they can't consume gluten. Otherwise, they have a violent reaction in the gut. 6%, if not more, of the population is non-celiac gluten sensitive, so they'll experience symptoms either in the GI tract or purely extra-intestinally. And this is a pretty underdiagnosed condition that doesn't really have a clear definition. So that right there, that's almost 10% of the population that doesn't do well with gluten. a clearer definition. So that right there, that's almost 10% of the population that doesn't do well with gluten. And we also live in a time where people have widespread gut dysbiosis, whether

it's due to overuse of antibiotics, overuse of C-sections. Obviously, in some cases, it's medically warranted, but in some cases, it's not. We have this obsession, especially these days with sterility and hygiene. And so it's led to, I think, a microbiome that is not as robust as it has been for the majority of our evolution. And because no person can properly digest gluten, I think it leads to problems for a lot of people. That's why we see increasing rates of autoimmunity, celiac disease, of course, but then there's also non-celiac autoimmune conditions that we see increasing in prevalence. My hypothesis is that there's probably a dose effect with gluten. And today we're eating more of it than ever before in human history. We're eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and all the snacks in between as some kind of wheat

based snack. And of course, gluten is not only found in wheat, it's found in rye, barley, farro. So we're just eating more of it than ever before in human history. And our guts are not in good shape. They're not in fighting ability to withstand the onslaught of this protein that no human can properly break down. So, you know, I'm not saying that gluten is the smoking gun for conditions like Alzheimer's disease or anything like that. But in my view, it's just not a health food. It's not essential. It's not something that we need to have in our diets. I personally, I eat a gluten-free diet, but maybe, you know, once or twice a year, if I'm, if I'm somewhere

and they have like a great sourdough bread, I'll indulge a little bit. But for the most part, I choose to avoid it for those reasons. We, was it last year? Yeah. Spent some time wearing continuous glucose monitors. And I would love to just hear your thoughts on the role, you know, how important is blood sugar in our overall health? And, you know, one of the things we saw was the dramatic difference between her and I with different foods for how one would spike one of our blood sugar and the other not so much. And, you know, how really personalized that was. Oh, yeah. It's so personalized. There was a study a couple of years ago that was published that really blew minds, even amongst scientists, that showed that people would have, as you mentioned,

dramatically different blood sugar responses to the same food. And it was really dependent on the microbiome, the microbial composition. And also we have different enzymes in our saliva that are responsible for breaking down starches and sugars and things like that. So everybody's different. And that certainly includes how our blood sugar responds to a given food. It's certainly true that chronically elevated blood sugar is a major problem. It's what underlies type two diabetes, for example, which is a condition that affects many, many people. Actually one in two adults in the United States are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. But what precedes chronically elevated blood sugar, sometimes by decades, are chronically elevated levels of insulin, which is the hormone whose job it is to get sugar out of the blood and shuttle that sugar into our

muscles and liver, where it can actually play a functional role in our health, right? Studies have shown that chronically elevated blood sugar, but even levels of blood sugar below the level at which point a type 2 diabetes diagnosis would be made is associated with worse brain function, lower volume in terms of the memory center of the brain. So for me, I think it's important to minimize blood sugar excursions as best as one is able to and to really prioritize foods that are lower on the glycemic spectrum to avoid added sugar as much as one can. And to really use foods that are going to lead to a dramatic excursion of blood sugar more as a performance enhancing tool. So, you know, I don't like to demonize carbohydrates, but carbs are essential for people who are exercising. They're really important as a fuel substrate, especially when we're performing high intensity work, like in the gym, which we know is really important modality

that helps to boost cardiorespiratory fitness, for example. So yeah, I mean, I'm not that concerned with daily spikes, just so long as you're cognizant of how you feel after the spike, because sometimes insulin, our pancreas releases insulin, not in a way that's as precise as we would like. It's more of a sort of blunt tool. And sometimes when we eat really rapidly, digesting sources of sugar or carbohydrates, it can send our blood sugar really high and then drop it below baseline. And that's where people tend to feel that sensation of hanger. People who are prone to anxiety also feel triggered in those moments. They sometimes feel a little bit more anxious.

And so for that reason, I think it's important to minimize glycemic variability in one's day. And also I think CGMs are useful just in terms of getting an overall sense of like how food affects your blood sugar. But it really is the chronic elevation of blood sugar that is particularly harmful. And the major cause of that in Western diets is overly sedentary lifestyles, eating a diet that predisposes you to weight gain. So eating more calories and you're burning every single day and also eating lots and lots and lots of

added sugar and refined grain products. Yeah. It was really interesting and informational for me to see over the course of a couple of weeks at a time, like what foods did what to my blood sugar and also the role of like, time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting, whatever you want to call it, how beneficial that can be for just having kind of a prolonged period where I'm at a lower sustained blood sugar. One of the podcast episodes that you did that I found so interesting was your interview early on with Sasha and Panda. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And how, you know, just our circadian rhythms and how important it is just even for health and gut repair to have like a time where you're not eating. Like, I think he likened it to

a highway. You don't do road work when there's traffic going, you know, all around the road. You need a time to shut things down so that repair can be made so that everything functions normally. And I find that to be helpful. Like, I don't want to go to bed with my blood sugar really high because I'd like my body to be rest and repair. I'd like it to be sleeping. I need my brain to like go through the wash cycle that it does with its, you know, glymphatic system. And so I just thought that like seeing that in a quantifiable way from a, from a blood sugar standpoint was really supportive of reinforcing the good habits that, you know, I know are good for me anyway. It is super interesting.

But the only caveat that I would add is that sometimes we do things that are actually quite good for us that will lead to an elevation of blood sugar that you'll see with a CGM that you wouldn't otherwise see that have nothing at all to do with what you're eating. So I actually wore one of those CGMs for a while and I was kind of mind blown when I actually saw I kind of knew this would happen because it makes sense from a physiologic standpoint, but I was sitting in a sauna and I saw my blood sugar spike and I hadn't eaten anything, but it's because you're experiencing a physical stressor, a stress on the body, which we know is good for you. Right. And, but what happens is it leads to an increase in cortisol levels. And what cortisol does is it helps to

liberate stored fuels, right? Because it's a stress, your body's having a stress response. And typically throughout human history, a stress response would be a response to physical danger, right? And so your cortisol elevates when we're stressed out in part to liberate these fuels so that we'll have the energy to like get out of harm's way, right? One of my few concerns with, with CGMs is that people will see that and they'll be like, oh man, I can man, I shouldn't use saunas anymore because it's causing a rise in my blood sugar. So that would be the one caveat. But with regard to what you were talking about, circadian biology, there is research showing that when we simply eat earlier dinners, that our bodies are better able to regulate levels of sugar in the blood, which as we talked about, higher levels is

associated with worse brain health. So for that reason, I think it's worthwhile to curtail your consumption of food to two to three hours before bed, which is what I aim to do and which is what Sachin Panda at the Salk Institute, what his research is beginning to show, which is very exciting stuff. It's really exciting. I can't say enough how much I appreciate the work that you put out into the world, how much it's changed my life and Eric's life subsequently for the better. Yeah. I mean, I think we both live better lives because of knowing what we know. And a lot of what we know is thanks to you and your work, your books, your podcast. And so it feels really meaningful for me to get to connect with you today and to get to tell you that and also introduce our audience if they don't know you already to

you and your work. Oh my God. I mean, it means so much. And I wish I could express in words how much it truly means because you do all this work in isolation and it's the result of something that you experience is very personal. and you really seldom feel that others can relate to what you're going through in those moments because it's just so mind-bogglingly stressful and barbaric. And you're like, is this really what being human involves? You know, like in those moments, it's just like, it's really hard to believe. And so to hear that, that it's somehow made it across the ether of the universe and into your hands and it's affected you, you know, it means a lot. My work really

has been to learn as much as I possibly can and to share with the hopes that my readers, my followers, whatever, will take to heart what it is that I'm talking about. They'll be interested maybe in boosting the way that their brain works today, losing weight here and there maybe, but ultimately that I'll be able to move the needle on these conditions, that they'll be able to prevent their own dementia, which would really be amazing. I mean, if I'm able to impact just one person with regard to dementia prevention, I mean, that to me would make it all worth it. Well, thank you so much, Max. It has been such a pleasure to have you on. Like Ginny said, your work's been very valuable to us and we're really happy to have had you. Absolutely. Well, thank you guys so much. It's been an honor connecting

with both of you and I'm grateful that you've introduced me to your audience and I'm hopeful that people pick up Genius Kitchen and that it helps them. And we'll have links in the show notes to where people can get Genius Kitchen and all your other stuff. Yep. You guys are awesome. please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.

To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

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