Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Power of Food: How Our Diet Plays a Role in Maintaining Optimal Health - With Max Lugavere

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Welcome to episode 163 with guest, Max Lugavere! This episode is all about the power of food: how our diet plays a role in maintaining optimal health.  To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep163/. My guest, Max Lugavere is a top health podcaster, science journalist, filmmaker, and author. He wrote The New York Times bestseller Genius Foods and The Wall Street Journal bestseller Genius Kitchen. From 2005-2011, Lugavere was a journalist for Al Gore's Current TV.   Lugavere appears regularly on The Rachael Ray Show and The Doctors. He has contributed to VICE, Fast Company, CNN, and more. NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, PBS' Brief But Spectacular, The New York Times, and People Magazine have prominently featured Lugavere.   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. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Integrating both plant and animal products is ideal from a cognitive and mental health standpoint. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward on your mental and physical health. So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back,

this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Okay, resetters, let's talk about breaking your. your fast. So as you guys know, I love Organifies products, and I really love them for two reasons, the quality of the ingredients and how incredible these products taste. And each time I try a new product, I literally feel like they have knocked it out of the park in both of those categories. So I have a new one for you to try breaking your fast with, and it's called Pure, and it's for mental clarity and digestion. And check this out. If you haven't heard of the concept of a

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organify.com forward slash pel's. That is Organify. O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I. dot com forward slash pelz pelz and they will give you 20% off so check it out and let me know how smart you get and how low your blood sugar goes i'm so excited to share this product with you okay we're going to just jump right into this so um let me just start off by thanking you for for coming to my podcast i appreciate you having me on yours thank you so much for having me it's an honor yeah and you know it's really funny i i i i'm Since I've been out in the world talking about fasting, whenever I talk about food, people are like, oh, you think of food in this highway.

Like, you actually talk about food. And it's like, I don't think of them as polar opposites. I actually think of them as compliments to each other. So when I dove into your research, which I've been following you for years, and your appreciation of food and the way that you've used food as healing, that is such a beautiful marriage to what I'm trying to educate the world on fasting. So I want to start off with like, how did you even get involved in the art of food and the healing power of food? Yeah, for me, I mean, my why, it all comes back to my mom. And, you know,

I didn't go to medical school. I'm not a medical. I never misrepresent myself. I think that's the most important thing here. It's that I'm, I've always been incredibly transparent and honest. And I aspire to always be that way about my, my intentions and how I landed here on your show. And it, for me, it goes back to the fact that my mom at a young age was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia called Louis body dementia. And I didn't have dementia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, none of those terms in my lexicon at that time. I had always been interested in fitness and nutrition and supplementation from more of a body composition standpoint. And I did start college on a pre-med track. That's just, you know, to indicate how or to illustrate how passionate about

those topics I was. But ultimately, I thought my, you know, that ship had sailed for me. I ended up becoming a journalist and working in the United States on a TV network that was owned by Al Gore for many years. I did that. And then in my personal life in around the year 2011, my mom started to show the earliest symptoms of this niche form of dementia. And I was in between jobs at the moment. And so that gave me the ability to go with her to different doctor's appointments. And I'm also the oldest child in the family. I'm the first born. I'm a always had an incredibly close with a relationship with my mom. And so I started going with her to doctor's visits because, you know, and we talked about this when you were on my show, when you are

sick, you are thrust into a hypervigilant fighter flight state. And for somebody who's like, not really that well versed in health and kind of not, you know, not native to the internet like my mom was, it's a very frustrating and alienated place to live. Yes. And it becomes hard to advocate for yourself and and also people I think of you know I'm I'm a millennial I think I think my generation in particular feels very empowered to question authority and to quote unquote do one's own research but my mom's generation like I don't think that was the case for the average person and so when you when a when a you know a woman of the baby boomer generation presents to a doctor and they get a diagnosis, that's it. I mean, that's like gospel. You know, the advice from the doctor is gospel,

right? As long as they have those credentials after their name. And I'm not, I'm not, you know, writing off doctors or the practice of medicine, nothing like that. But it was a very scary place for her to be. And so I started going with her as her wing person. And we were, we went from doctor's visit to doctor's visit, really not getting any clear sense of a diagnosis. And we actually had to take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic. And that was where for the first time she was prescribed drugs for both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Oh, wow. And that was an incredibly traumatic week. For me, it was the first time in my life I'd ever had a panic attack. And her health continued to decline over the years. And she passed away in 2018. But seeing that, seeing how unwell she was

and really experiencing true sickness. I mean, to me, there's no greater motivating force in the world to try to understand everything you possibly can about the diet and lifestyle factors that might have predisposed her to that. So it was at once to understand to see if there's anything from a therapeutic standpoint that could be done to help her. But then also I realized, and this is of course not something that any doctor brought up, I thankfully had the foresight to recognize that I now for the first time had a risk factor myself. And so it became about prevention. I could very easily develop what it was that my mom developed. And I didn't want that to happen. So I just went down to research rabbit hole.

I started reading anything that I could get my hands on. Research paper after research paper. I was like, you know, losing sleep every night, you know, all-nighters diving into PubMed, going down various rabbit holes, cross-referencing. And I'm, you know, I didn't take the academic route. So at first, it was very difficult. But reading and reading and reading and reading and reading and then ultimately having the ability because of my journalistic background to reach out to scientists all around the world,

I mean, it's given me exposure to this field in a way that very, very few people have. And also the, the ability to see it from a 30,000 foot view because, you know, like medical doctors, they're really these days, like, you know, a lot of their education goes into pharmacology. And PhDs, you know, they study on these really like niche areas of science, which, you know, we need both, right? But for me, I was just coming at this like, okay, well, what do I need to do? Like, what, like, what are the high level, like, clinical pearls that I can integrate into my life that are going to help me, you know, batten down the hatches and improve my odds so as not to develop, potentially not to develop what it is that she developed.

And so that's really what the focus became for me. And then the more I would learn, the more I would feel compelled to share. Yeah. So that's pretty much, I mean, that's the journey. It's funny. You just gave me a new perspective because we were talking on your podcast about, you know, how do you put a health puzzle together? What I just heard is that you approach it like a journalist.

Yeah. And like, okay, and how would a journalist approach a health plan is they got to gather all the facts before they can put a story together? Mm-hmm. 100%. Yeah. It's a really smart way because what, to your mom, you know, what you said about your mom, we definitely have a culture where you go in and then you just dump all your symptoms on your doctor and the almighty doctor tells you the issue. Yeah. And what we need to change to is you solving your own health puzzle, but you just, you just, you just, you just.

gave me some context of let's do it from the journalistic lens. Yeah, 100%, especially for these kinds of chronic, non-communicable conditions. I was going to say lifestyle mediated. I think there is a large proportion of dementia, certainly just generalized cognitive decline, possibly Alzheimer's disease. I'm not going to speak for these more rare forms of dementia because we just have so little research and more research needs to be done. These kinds of conditions need to be approached from that standpoint.

On the other hand, my father just had a total knee replacement on one knee. That's the kind of condition where you go to a doctor, they do an MRI, they do an x-ray, they see what needs to happen. They go in, they perform that kind of miracle surgery for that patient, right? And then it's like, it's like from one day to the next, you know, you have a new knee, you're walking around. That's not the case. And I'm so grateful for that.

Of course. But that's not the case for these kinds of like conditions that take. years, if not decades to foment, you know? So what would you say in all your research is the root of dementia? What did you discover? Well, there are myriad risk factors. These are multifactorial conditions. And, you know, I think that from a dietary standpoint, I think the same, it's really,

not to overly simplify, but the same factors that are driving the epidemic of obesity, of type 2 diabetes, of metabolic dysfunction, maybe even of autoimmunity. of allergies are contributing to, you know, to these conditions. I mean, we know that type 2 diabetes is a well-recognized risk factor. If you're a type 2 diabetic, your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease increases between two and fourfold. Yeah, that's crazy. We know that obesity is a major problem, particularly visceral obesity.

I mean, you came on my show and you were talking so brilliantly about the role of cortisol, you know, in our health, chronically elevated cortisol. And we know that, you know, that the detrimental effect that cortisol can have, when chronically elevated on brain structures like the hippocampus. Yeah, hypertension. That's another huge one. Hypertension is massive. One of the seminal studies we use in the field of dementia prevention is the sprint mind

trial, which has shown that when people are, and this is using a pharmacologic agent, when people are aggressively treated for their hypertension, they see a dramatic risk reduction for mild cognitive impairment. But we know that diet and lifestyle, particularly actually exercise, can meet. mediate blood pressure. We know that exercise is as effective as drugs with regard to reducing high blood pressure. Yeah. So yeah, all suit. I mean, these are all these are all modifiable risk factors. Yes. I just heard, do you know Dr. Annette Baas? She does she has a big YouTube channel and she's an internist. She and I have done a lot of collaboration together on just trying

to get metabolic health to the world. So I was talking to her yesterday and she brought to my attention that they're actually now showing that the hippocampi of our teenage generation is shrinking because of our dietary processed foods. Wow. That it's literally you can think about the brain as being soaked in sugar and soaked in that as the brain is developing, the hippocampi is not developing to the same size as you and I or as our parents because of the processed food world. The ramifications of that, she went on to say that there were three major pieces to that

that when your hippocampi or your hippocampus actually starts to shrink, your reaction to stress changes so you become less resilient. You, of course, your memory as you experienced, you know, with your moms, with dementia is going to be off and your moods are going to be off. So when we look at the extent in which bad food has on our brain, health, whether you're 16 or you're 65, to me, this is what has to end. This has to stop. We have to change that. And so I'm curious as you started to create a new food plan for your mom, what were some of the hallmarks? And then, you know, what did you see in her ability to communicate with you all?

Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that dementia and particularly Alzheimer's disease, just because we have the most research there, these are conditions that don't that don't begin overnight. These take decades to manifest. And so my expectation for changing my mom's diet and then seeing some kind of like dramatic improvement in her symptomology, I had to curb my enthusiasm there. And also, you know, I don't want to say that I know for sure that it was my mom's diet. Like you could do everything right and still develop.

I don't want to like minimize the fact that these are very complicated conditions and, you know, we don't know everything and, and I don't want to like victim blame or anything like that, you know. But I did try to, you know, improve my mom's diet in accordance with what I was learning at the time. So I, you know, I got rid of as best as I could the refined grain products. and, you know, I swapped, you know, some of the more unhealthy oils for, like, healthy fats, which, you know, my mom loved to cook. So having a good extra virgin olive oil, it's like, that's like an easy swap to make. Yes. oils are actually, I always say if you, if I came into your house and I swapped out all your oils, like you wouldn't even know. Yeah, you wouldn't even know. It's so easy

switch. Yeah. But I grew up, you know, I grew up like during that era where fat was demonized and certainly my mom is a product of that generation where in my fridge as a child, we had margarine, we had corn oil by the stove. We had all these fats that we don't, I mean, without, I don't even have to make any kind of crazy claims, which I wouldn't do anyway, but like, we don't know the long-term effect. This is a mass public experiment. Like these oils didn't exist in the human food supply prior to 100 years ago, right? So we don't know the effect of a chronic lifetime exposure to these highly easily oxidizable oils that they have on the brain. We have like, we have a sense of what they due to on one axis of one biomarker, and that's why they seem to get the green light

from the medical establishment, right? Like LDL, cholesterol, apobit, all that stuff. But the brain is made of fat. And so the kinds of fats we eat, I think, are highly relevant to the brain. You don't even have to be a neuroscientist to know that, you know? Right. Yet, the majority of the population doesn't know what you just said. Right. But why? I mean, that's where, you know, I find that we have to scream this from the rooftops because the doctors aren't necessary. Some are, but the system is not necessarily supporting something like, why don't you change your fats? You know, we're not being told what to do. We're being told what we have, but not how do we get out of it.

So I'm curious when you changed like processed foods, like the carbohydrate load, how did you do with that? because that's a tricky one when we look at getting away from the breads and the pastas and the cakes and the cookies. Was that a hard one? Those are all the foods that my mom loved. And, um, and you know, growing up, I love them too. But you have to, you have to lead by example and you, a person lives the way that they want to live. And it became clear to me. I, I became at the very beginning, I will admit, I became a bit of a zealot in my house and, and, uh, and tried to like get rid of all these foods. But I, I realized. very early on. First of all, well, a few things. Dietary change is hard. Dietary change is harder for somebody with dementia. Dietary change for somebody with dementia who is also developing, or at least, you know, is further developing a sweet tooth because that's what they actually, early on in the course of Alzheimer's disease, you actually like, you start to crave sweeter foods. And so that made it even more difficult.

Why do you think that is? Well, because one thing that accompanies Alzheimer's disease is a feature in the brain called hypometabolism, glucose hypometabolism. So the brain basically struggles to generate ATP from glucose. And so it's thought, we don't know, but it's thought that this is sort of like the brain's way of screaming out for sugar. Right. It's become like resistant. Its ability to generate ATP from glucose has been perturbed. most people on the standard American diet are not allowing their bodies in any real capacity to enter ketosis.

Ketones, I mean, the most relevant aspect of the ketogenic diet is that ketones provide an alternate fuel to the brain, that the brain will happily oxidize. That's right. When present, like in circulation, up to 60% of the brain's energy needs can be furnished by ketone bodies. Right. But if you're not in ketosis and your brain is struggling with hypometabolism, then it's like dying for fuel, essentially. That's the story. Yeah, you know, that's the same thing with obesity.

So it's insulin resistance in the brain or the body when we look at those two examples of prevalence of conditions. Like somebody who's obese and is insulin resistant, their cells are actually starving. Yeah. Yet they're eating all day long. Right. And so I'm thinking the same thing with Alzheimer's and dementia is you've got starving. cells that are not, even when you are eating, that nourishment is not getting into the cell. So I look at the ketone as the detour. Is it kind of like around or a roundabout where we can get,

even though the brain needs half of the fuel source to come from ketones, as we're trying to change the brain's addiction to sugar and the situation where it's insulin resistant, can ketones become that go-to source that gets the person starting to make better choices for themselves? Yeah, well, that's the idea. That's the idea. That's the reason why there's a medical food that's been approved by the FDA called Exona, which is essentially a ketone, an exogenous ketone supplement based on medium chain triglyceride fats. The work of Mary Newport is a physician who anybody with Alzheimer's in the family and spends a lot of time on the internet probably has come across her work. She famously started giving her late husband Steve, medium, change triglycerides and saw anecdotally a market improvement in his cognition as he was descending down the Alzheimer's path. And so, yeah, that is the idea that ketones can sort of keep the lights on in the metabolically ailing brain. Because the brain's ability to use ketone bodies is unperturbed, whereas its ability to use glucose is greatly diminished. And so if you're not

providing the brain ketones and your brain is not able to generate the energy that it needs, But the issue is, well, first of all, all the clinical research on this has been short term. And, you know, we see there's some glimmer of hope in the research. I will say that. But, you know, once Alzheimer's, particularly in the advanced stages, has progressed, you've got this amyloid burden in the brain that's contributing to the inflammation. There's the, you know, the rampant oxidative stress. There are all these, like, factors that, like, layer one on top of another that just make it,

you know, it's a really difficult, like, it's not. not a cure, you know, but I think particularly early on in the course, there is a glimmer of hope that ketones can can help, which then, you know, I mean, supports this, the mechanism, like the, like the understanding of like where Alzheimer's disease comes from. And so the latest sort of, or more, more progressive thinking about it outside of the, the predominant amyloid hypothesis that has guided pharmaceutical inquiry for the, for the condition for the past couple of decades, it's that it's a condition that's largely metabolic in origin, which I think checks out with so many aspects, with so many other, you know, of the kinds of conditions that we see now burdening modern society. Do you think that's accepted right now?

That's the way doctors are presenting it to new dementia and Alzheimer's condition. As a metabolic? Yeah, as a metabolic problem. No, no, no, no, it's not. I mean, I think it started as a sort of niche focus for clinicians, and I think it's that's growing. Yeah. Largely because the amyloid hypothesis has been such a failure. Right.

Right. And we've seen that a lot of the data, especially over the last 16 years, that that hypothesis has been built on was, I mean, fraudulent. I don't know if you caught that there was an article. It was an expose in Science Magazine that one of the seminal papers published in nature that further cemented amyloid as like the cause of Alzheimer's disease was built on fraud. It was like this fraudulent. Wow.

But yeah. amyloid, it's like, it's a very drugable concept. It's the same, it's, for the brain, the analogy would be cholesterol, that, like, cholesterol is this evil thing. And we just have to, like, reduce the cholesterol, drug, you know, to, like, take statins and whatever. And, and that cholesterol is the cause of, of atherosclerosis, right? Like, the, the, it's like a perfect analogy, um, this amyloid hypothesis. It's a drugable, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, It's a boogeyman that we can target and say amyloid is the cause and we can create a drug. We can create like these monoclonal antibodies that can reduce amyloid.

But the problem is that what seems to be the case is that amyloid is there. It's at the scene of the crime. We see these plaques in the brains of cadavers that have died from Alzheimer's disease. But what's the question that that has always needed to be asked first is what's causing it to be there. Right. And so maybe it's the hypometabolism. Maybe it's inflammation wrought by chronically high blood pressure and like, you know, like little microstrokes that occur in the vasculature that supplies energy to the brain. There's all these other, you know, maybe it's like viral.

Right. There's work being done out of Rudy Tansy's lab at Harvard that, you know, shows that at least in vitro, amyloid aggregates around the herpes virus. When you expose the herpes virus to the brain's immune cells that they start to upregulate production of this like amyloid. precursor protein. So yeah, there's all these questions, but, but I think because of the object failure that has been this amyloid hypothesis, we've looked, researchers have rightfully looked to set, to ask like, have asked like what's causing amyloid. And so this metabolic theory, some have called it type three diabetes. Right. Yeah. You know, that's been sort of like the, the new growing kind of like cadre of scientists that are now like looking at that, which I think is

very hopeful. And what also is surprising, well, or not, is that it happens to women more than men. Yeah. Did you find anything along your path as to why that is? Well, as you know, I mean, estrogen seems to be protective. And then in the postmenopause setting, it's like the rug gets pulled out from, from, you know, beneath your feet, essentially. And so that change, like, that change seems to be problematic from the standpoint of the brain. Was your mom on HRT? She was not. No, she was actually always afraid of that. Yeah. I don't know much about well that I mean this is like hot topic news that just came out in the last like week or two. The New York Times put out a huge article saying that menopausal women are really struggling

mentally right now and they believe a lot of it is because of the study that came out showing that HRT actually made you more prevalent for breast cancer and ovarian cancer. But now to your point on like how we're revisiting Alzheimer's and dementia, we're unpacking that study and we're seeing, wait a second, that was oral, that was an oral take HRT. But if we put a patch on, now we have a different response when we look at the patch. And then they're also looking at the sample size and saying, wait, we did this on women who were well into their menopausal years looking at this. But if we catch women usually in that transitional year between where they go from having a period to no period or we catch them recently into menopause using HRT as a tool, the outcomes are much

different. So I think what I'm learning from just chatting with you right now is like we're just revisiting all this stuff that we said were absolutes. We're going, wait a second, we need more resources. We have, and mental health coming out of the pandemic has been such a focus, all aspects of it. But now we're zoning in on the menopausal woman and saying, gosh, she's suffering. the most. What do we need to revisit? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. And I don't know if this

connection has been made to dementia yet, but I was recently looking at obesity statistics in this country. I think around the time when that physician made the claim that obesity was largely genetic, because, you know, our genes haven't changed over the past 50 years, but obesity is nonetheless tripled. So that, I mean, that argument that obesity is genetic to me just doesn't hold any water. But what was interesting, and if I recall correctly, I believe this is the case that earlier on in life, men are at higher risk of obesity. But later in life, you see a lot more obesity in women. And so I wonder if it's because, you know, I think there is some evidence that, you know, women tend to eat. Like men's and women's diets tend to be different. And women tend to

eat a lot more like sugary foods and like refined grain products and things like that. Yeah. And so I don't know that in the context of menopause when, you know, estrogen, you know, you're becoming more insulin resistant. Estrogen, what, is normally protective, right? Right, yeah, protects. So you have the most amount of estrogen in your prefrontal cortex receptor sites and your hippocampus and amygdala.

So when that's gone, that's what's protecting those two parts of the brain when it's gone. you're left with like a wide open wound. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm just speculating, but maybe it's like that kind of dietary pattern, that's sort of high sugar dietary pattern, particularly in the context of the postmenopausal woman, you know, might, I don't know, pull the trigger, so to speak, you know. The other interesting part, and I'm sure you've seen this in your research, is what part the microbiome plays in regulating blood sugar?

Yeah, I mean, everybody's different. That's the thing. There was that seminal study that came out a couple years ago that sent shan, shock waves down through the metabolic health community because it seemed to be the case that, you know, like a glucose curve isn't necessarily glucose curve. Like you could, you know, somebody with a different microbial signature in their gut could eat the same high sugar bolus. I forget whether it was like white bread.

They always use the weirdest foods in the studies or like, you know, or like orange juice. They use like orange juice or something like that. Something like that. But like could elicit dramatically different blood sugar curves. you know, person to person, even in the context of metabolic health. And so, yeah, it seems to be the case of the microbiome plays a large role there. Do you believe in the glycemic index? No, I mean, I think, like, you know, in the context of like a mixed meal, it has, you know,

less relevance than when you're eating a food in isolation, which is, which people don't often do. I think the more relevant marker to look at is, like, glycemic load, you know, just the some total amount of, like, glucose. that a food or meal will give you. But I, yeah, I don't know. I have, I have, like, you know, mixed feelings. I think there definitely is value to minimizing glycemic variability. Just for, for no other reason, then it's, we see from the data that, like, your hunger is better.

Like, your subjective feelings of, like, hunger is better when you're, when you minimize glycemic variability. We also see the very high sugar boluses have. blood pressure implications, which we know is not good. Transient, well, you know, they've shown that actually a high sugar bolus can elevate systolic blood pressure for two hours and can reduce testosterone for two hours. Crazy. They use like these oral glucose tolerance tests, which are like, you know, 75 gram glucose boluses, which is not, you know, most people are not going around chugging like 75 grams of glucose in one sitting, but we do tend to consume that amount of added sugar every day, your average adult. It's crazy. So, you know, I do think like from the standpoint of like I'm, I'm, I'm very

interested in like fitness and weightlifting. And I think resistance training is super, super important. And I think that there is value like I'm not anti-glucose. I'm not anti-carbs. I think there's value to. Agreed. To carbohydrates. Agreed. When it comes to like exercise performance, you know. Yeah. I actually, I mean, this is definitely a little off topic. But I recently have begun. I, I don't like, count calories or anything like that, and I eat in accordance with like the parameters of like the foods that I know are most optimal for my, for my brain and body. But I recently like decided to like see what it would take to like lose a little bit of like body fat. Just like cut, you know, six or seven pounds of like pure fat, right? As like an interesting experiment. And one of the ways that I that I found was very effective for me to do it is and this is like controversial because I feel like when most people hear me talk. about this, they're probably like, oh, did you like dramatically cut the carbs? Well, actually, I kept my carbs pretty static and I cut a lot of the added oils and fats in my, in my diet.

I'm not, it's by no means like, did I adopt like a low fat diet? I'm still getting plenty of fat from like animal products and red meat that I think is like super, super nourishing and important. But the thing about fat that's really interesting for, and I'm speaking like temporarily for like a, just like a brief little like, and in the in the bodybuilding fitness world, like we call this a cut. So this is not like meant to necessarily be long term. But like fat is extremely added fat is extremely calorie dense. You know, you get the same amount of calories and a tablespoon of olive oil that you do in a whole apple. And the apple is going to be way more satiated.

Yeah, for sure. You know, than like a tablespoon of oil. It's also like from a satiety standpoint, protein and fiber, you know, if you keep your protein and fiber up, fat doesn't really, you know, lend a ton of satiety benefit. And then also it's like it's carbs not fat that support your exercise. performance, you know, from like the standpoint of the glycogen that you store. And so it was really interesting for me to just like titrate down a little bit the dietary fat that I was eating. And I saw like actually a big like improvement in like my body composition. Do you think we became fat, a little fat obsessed when we became keto obsessed? Like I think you're right. I think we thought the

door into the ketogenic energy system was fat. Yeah. I think you're right. I think like rightfully a lot of us were just like really peoed about the demonization of fat for so many years. Agreed. Um, and then, so what you ended up seeing was like this like the pendulum swinging, swinging in the opposite direction where suddenly like everybody was like eating high fat fat bombs. People were pouring up oil on everything and butter on everything, which like I'm very pro olive oil and I'm even pro butter. I enjoy, I really enjoy butter. But yeah, it's just it, that doesn't make a, a ton of sense either. And I think like what's important about like keto is that what determines whether or not you're in ketosis is not necessarily how much fat you're eating exactly. But like where insulin is.

Yes. Right. It's like it's the lack of exogenous glucose that turns up ketone production in the body. It's not that you're eating so much fat, you know, like you go into ketosis when you're fasted, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not eating any fat. And you're not eating anything. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So, so yeah, it's been really interesting to like kind of even, even, you're challenge my own biases in that regard, you know? Yeah, I think where where fat became this hero is it stabilized blood sugar. So then we were able to move into this ketogenic energy system much easier. So even if we put fat like the zone diet, you remember the zone diet? Yeah. It was like put fat with everything and it stops the glucose spike. And what that allowed us to do, we didn't

realize, is it also allowed us to switch in and out of these two metabolic energy systems. that we have. So, but then everybody was like, oh, I just eat fat all the time. I should just eat that. And then we ended up with a consequence of that to your point. Yeah, 100%. So I got to share with you all something that's been really burning on my heart recently. And that is the mental health of women. Now, we've heard a lot in the news about coming out of the pandemic how so many of us struggled mentally during that process. But the part that's not being highlighted, once again, is the impact it's making that poor mental health is having on women. Now, I recently read a study or an article that said that the most common time for women

to actually commit suicide is the decade between 45 and 55. And when you look at what happens to a woman's brain during that time, it's the depletion of hormones leading to the depletion of neurotransmitters that makes our brain so much more reactive to start. dress, which is why I am always looking for natural products that we can add back in to improve our mental health. And I have found one. And it's put out by cured nutrition. It's called aura, and it is packed with prebiotics, adaptogens, and what they did that's so cool is that not only are those adaptogens there to help your brain, to nourish your brain so it can rebalance itself,

so it can calm itself, but they put those darn prebiotics in there to help support healthy gut health, allowing you to make and grow those bacteria that give you neurotransmitters like GABA that calms the brain and dopamine that makes the brain happy and serotonin that just tells us everything is going to be okay. So aura is very effective when you take it with healthy fats. So for those of you that are fasting with me, if you are breaking your fast with fat, it would be a great time to add in aura at that breakfast meal. And right now, Cured is extending an exclusive offer to you all. And that is 20% off. That rocks.

Thank you so much, Cured. And so you can just go to Curednutrition.com forward slash Pels and use the coupon code. P-E-L-Z at the checkout and they will give you 20% off. Once again, it is cured nutrition. I'll spell that for you. C-U-R-E-D, nutrition, N-U-T-R-I-T-I-O-N.com. And then there's a forward slash, and then there's my name, P-E-L-Z. And if you use the coupon P-L-E-D, you will get 20% off.

So I'm always excited to pass along great products to you, but literally any product that's going to help you with better mental health is a game changer for your life. So I'm so excited to bring ORA to you. And as always, let me know how it works for you. And cheers to happier days and happier women. We all thrive. The planet thrives when women are at their best. Yay. Thank you, Cured Nutrition.

So one thing that's really interesting about your story around your mom is that you turn to food primarily to heal her. Is that correct? Yeah, food. And then you in the Genius Kitchen, which is a great cookbook, by the way. Thank you. I really enjoy the, I love a cookbook that teaches me in the front end of it and then it gives me all the recipes at the back end. So and when I read it, I actually was like, oh my gosh, I didn't, this books need to get to everybody because you lay out like, here's what you need to know about dairy.

Here's what you need to know about the fats. Here's what you need to know about spices and vinegar. It's just so well said. But what you did that shifted my perspective is you had this idea that we are culinary illiterate. We are food illiterate. So when you look at a conversation like we're having right now, my brain goes to, well, how are we going to solve that problem?

Because we can't just stand up and go eat this, not that. We got to get you to understand food. We got to get you to understand the ingredients. And then we got to teach you how to freaking cook it. How are we going to solve that problem? Yeah. Well, I mean, back when I started the journey with my mom, I was really frustrated by the lack of health literacy that I had, that she had.

And over time, as my mom continued to decline, it became clear that one of our favorite pastimes together, one of our favorite ways to bond cooking together, became. difficult to do. And so I had to take the, the, that mantle in my house. I took the reins for, for being the sort of, you know, the head chef of my house, so to speak. And I realized at that point that, that culinary literacy was something that I was lacking as well. And, you know, like, I think it's important for people to realize that our hunter-gather ancestors had to be self-sufficient. At a certain point in our human trajectory, we, this notion of specialization, became the way that, that, you know, society was built, right?

We went from being like, you know, hunter-gatherers to being settlers, and we domesticated, started domesticating animals and crops at that point. But we've lost something in that process. And so, you know, now we outsource, I mean, we outsource our financial literacy, right? Like, I mean, every time tax season comes around, I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, you know, I have to pay somebody to help me, like, get us a handle, you know, on this as a small business owner. And it's just incredibly frustrating and culinary literacy. Like there's so many aspects of like life that we just like outsource and we don't think

anything about it. So true. But just knowing how to cook like even the most basic things, I mean, it's so empowering. First of all, there's something really ancient about knowing how to cook. Right? Like knowing how to cook like a steak or a burger or even a salad or, you know, like really basic things. Like good Mediterranean style cooking, which we know is associated with better health.

I think it's like it doesn't have to be difficult. And yet like the dividends that it pays you to know how to just make simple things in the kitchen. So true. Like it's an expression of love. Like when you were on my show, you were talking about the value of like oxytocin, right? And connections. Like there's no better way than like cooking for loved ones. Yeah.

Then, you know, to boost oxytocin. And it's just like to me like the amount of value that I get from that. First of all, anything that you cook at home is going to be. healthier than anything you get out at a restaurant, even if it's the exact same thing. Explain that for a second because I think people don't understand that. Because even if I go to a high-end Michelin rated restaurant, I'm not guaranteed to get all clean ingredients. Yeah.

Well, this actually ties back into what I was talking about, about fat and like fat loss. Like no matter like what restaurant you go to, the vast majority of dishes that you get in a restaurant are going to be served with innumerable phantom useless calories because restaurants love to soak their food in oil and butter, right? So true. And the bad oils. And the bad oils. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're probably not even getting butter. You're probably getting like, you know, these unhealthy oils. Like, I mean, fried foods are the obvious first worst offender. But like even roasted vegetables are usually covered in these unhealthy oils, right? Sotid spinach, things like that. Like you're in a restaurant, you're just getting a ton of like empty fat calories, essentially.

You can make the same food at home and you're, you know, getting higher quality fats. Yeah. Generally. Like if you're, you know, listening to your show or my podcast or reading my books, like you know to be using extra virgin olive oil, which has a bounty of evidence on it, on it, you know, speaking for its benefits. You're going to get, you know, you have like greater control over the food quality, like eating out in restaurants. You know, it's all going to be farmed salmon. in factory farmed meat for the most part, you know, you can, you can have a little bit of control. Like, and now it's, it's easy and cheaper to, or easier and cheaper to get high quality

meat, you know, like, I know even Walmart now has like grass fed. Right. It's getting there. Yeah. Yeah, I was at Target the other day. Target. I was just going to say, you could find like lean, you know, grass fed, grass finished ground beef, organic too.

Like, it was amazing. Yeah. But to the illiteracy part, and this is again, why I love the cookbook is that you break down. well, what is grass fed? What is, you know, like we don't have enough knowledge on that. So let's use salmon as an example. Every time I go out to eat, I always ask, is this wild or farm raised? Yeah.

And most people aren't doing that. They're like, oh, salmon. If they even got the connection, they'd be like, omega-3s, I need more omega-3s, let me eat salmon. But we aren't asking about the quality of that salmon, which makes going out even more dangerous because we don't know. You have to dig deep to understand. the quality of the ingredient you're getting.

Yeah. I mean, restaurants are no, the margins are paper thin at restaurants. So they cook corners and they use, you know, the quality is not amazing. But I, you know, I eat out. So I don't, I don't want to pretend. As do I. Yeah. Full transparency.

Yeah. But I like my kitchen the best. Yeah, 100%. So that's kind of like a rule that I have for myself that maybe this is useful for your audience. Like I take the pressure off and to not drive myself crazy and to enjoy life, right? Like, because that's, it has to be enjoyable. I don't really, you know, I try to like go, you know, when I'm in restaurants, I'll do the grilled meats and things like that.

But when I'm, the foods that I bring into my kitchen, like generally I have like rules about that. Like I want my beef to be grass fed, grass finished. I want the salmon or whatever fish to be wild. You know, no grain and seed oils in my kitchen, only extra virgin olive oil, butter, maybe some avocado oil, macadamia nut oil. These are all, you know, good options compared to, you know, the industrially refined oils. And I think that's the way to do it. To welcome high-quality ingredients into your kitchen because when you have high-quality ingredients,

you see very, like, you can easily see that it's not about quantity. You know, I think a lot of people, especially novice chefs, get, like, overwhelmed that, like, I'm going to need all of these different, like, ingredients. It's going to cost me an arm and a leg with a good high-quality salt, pepper, garlic powder, extra virgin olive oil. I mean, there's so many things you could do. Right.

You know, like, those are like literally the thing, the staples that I use in my, in my kitchen again and again and again. And then it becomes like, okay, is this going to be, am I going to cook beef tonight? Am I going to be cooking chicken, fish? You know, do I have like a bowl of greens to prepare? That's it. And then you just use the same ingredients like, you know, again and again, you don't have to complicate things. I think that's the problem is that many people like think that cooking has to be this like complicated. Yes. Gastronomic experience. It doesn't like Mediterranean. If you go to Mediterranean kitchens, the great Mediterranean kitchen. of the world, they're using, you know, a tiny quantity of ingredients. It's just that the ingredients that they're using are very high quality. Oh, my gosh. And you don't eat as much when they're that high quality. It reminds me of my husband. I used to own a winery many years ago. And one of the things that we learned in the winemaking process is that really the art is picking the most amazing grape and not messing with it. Like trying to keep it in its full essence. Don't put all the additives and all the things in there. Once you do that, you've changed this incredible thing that nature has provided you and you've manipulated it, which is going to change the taste,

but it's also going to change the way you feel when you're drinking it or how you feel after it. And what I just heard in that is like, let's go back to just, if you were setting up a kitchen today, let's just get high quality ingredients in there that you're going to use over and over again. You're just not going to need a lot of them because they're so high quality. Yeah, that's it. I mean, salt, some of the staples that I think are really important for any chef to have, high quality salt. And actually, I think it's valuable to have, there are three different kinds of salt that I think are very. I was going to say, who knows what high quality salt is? I can't wait to hear what you're going to say. Yeah, I mean, I like sea salt. There's a, you know, some people are probably familiar with the studies that have shown that sea salts contain microplastics. You know, you can go for, I like, I enjoy real salt, which is like, from a company. I have no financial affiliation with them, but it's like from a underground, Utah, dehydrated lake. But Himmeline pink salt, I think is a good option. But I use sea salt too. I think sea salt is, you know, still fine. Why wouldn't you use iodized salt? Like if I'm at

like a restaurant and there's a little salt shaker there. Yeah. Why would I not want to use that salt? Well, you know, I mean, the fact that it's iodized does provide a public health benefit. A lot of people don't consume foods rich in iodine. We don't eat much seaweed anymore. A lot of people are, you know, I mean, seafood can be cost prohibitive for many people. Um, so iodine is really important. And we don't want to, you know, we don't want to foster iodine or encourage iodine deficiency. But iodized salt tends to have a bunch of like anti-caking agents in it, dextrose, things in it that generally like I don't want to, you know, use in my house. You know, it's like, that's not, it's not, um, it's just too processed, right? I, like, would rather eat food.

that are high in iodine, then rely on, like, you know, the, you know, some kind of, like, industrially produced thing. But that's not to say that, like, using a little bit here and there is bad or that, like, it hasn't been a net positive for society. Like, it probably has been. But, you know, like, in my house, I want to use, like, a higher quality salt. And the salts that I really like to use, you're not going to find them iodized. Like, I love having a good flake salt on hand, like Maldon, which is a brand.

But you can find it anywhere. Zero financial affiliation. All the great, like to me, you can't have a steak without meldon salt. It's like that crunchy finishing salt that you throw on. And that's the whole point of it. It's a finishing salt. You don't use it to cook with. It's hard to measure because the granules are so large and, you know, and inconsistently shaped.

That's part of the appeal from a finishing standpoint. Core salt and then fine salt. Those are the two other salt. So you, I didn't check your kitchen out when we came in, but I'm thinking you had a variety of salts going on. Yeah, got a variety of salts. Yeah. It's generally a table. texture thing. Like fine salt is the easiest to measure. So you use that in recipes, right?

Coarse salt, also known as kosher salt, is generally the best kind of salt to use to salt is to salt meat with, to salt like a steak with. It's easy to basically create like an even distribution on the surface of meats with. And then flake salt is like your finishing salt. Ideally, you want to have all three in your kitchen. They're not, I mean, salt is not expensive. No, no. And it changes the whole taste. So it's dramatic. Yeah, that finishing salt is actually one of the least expensive ways to really up-level your cooking because it just like makes anything that you use it on, whether it's eggs or steak or fish or even like salad. It just like up levels like the quality, like the, you know, the sensory perception, the taste, everything. And it's relatively inexpensive.

Where does spices? Because you also have a whole section on spices in there. And when we, we look at the going back to the microbiome conversation and just putting this in the context of helping metabolic health that contributes to all these diseases, spices are a prebiotic. Yeah, they are. They're potent. I mean, spices are, they're some of the most concentrated source of polyphenol compounds. You know, you find them like very concentrated in spices. Polyphenols and these so-called plants defense compounds that actually to us provide a hormetic benefit, they tend to have strong flavors. They tend to be bitter. And they're bitter because, I mean, they're meant to ward off critters, like smaller, you know, prey from gnawing at the leaves of these

plants, you know, that generate these compounds. But from a culinary standpoint, we enjoy that, right? It actually, it adds these very unique flavors. And that's why a little goes a long way with regard to spices. Yeah. And so whether it's oregano, turmeric, garlic, like, they're rich in bioactive compounds and the vast majority of these compounds, in fact, haven't even been studied. You know, we just know that they're beneficial. It's so true. Yeah. We just, we know that they're beneficial. People that eat spicier food tend to have reduced risk of early mortality. We just know that there's all kinds of bioactive compounds. I mean, there's a lot of research on turmeric and how beneficial that is, partly because of the curcumin that it contains, which is anti-inflammatory. We know

ginger is beneficial. We know garlic has been, but, you know, it's like some researcher or some group somewhere has been able to find the money to study these unique compounds, but that's not to say that one is healthier than the other. It's just that, you know, that's where the research goes. So in general, you know, variety is key. Like it's, it's, you can do a lot with a small handful of spices, but generally like spices in general are very beneficial, whether it's like, you know, cinnamon or cardamom. I mean, they all, they are all bioactive and all probably have benefit to some degree, antioxidant and otherwise. The other interesting thing I thought is that you put in there about vinegar.

And I was like, oh, nobody talks about vinegar. Like, you know, there's a whole world of vinegar to understand, just like to understand oil. Where do you use? I mean, I only think of vinegar when I think of a salad dressing. Yeah. I make my own salad dressings. Yeah, no, vinegar's amazing. I love like all kinds of, it's one of my favorite flavors.

So I had to pay homage to it in the book. Yeah, balsamic vinegar is great. It's made from grapes. It's, you know, it's got a little more sugar in it, but I don't mind. I think that there's benefits to the polyphenols that you get in balsamic vinegar that you won't find elsewhere. Apple cider vinegar is great. White vinegar is useful.

Generally, yeah, I mean, you can use it in salad dressings. You can also use vinegar and extra virgin olive oil as a topping for a steak. It's like a Tuscany method of like eating steak, a little bit of balsamic vinegar, a little bit of olive oil. It goes great to top a ribonel. with. Yeah. Or even like a leaner, you know, actually, you probably, you probably want to use that with like a leaner steak too.

You know, the olive oil adds like a really nice, like, unctuous flavor. You can like reduce it and like saute mushrooms in. I love to like make portobello mushrooms with a little bit of balsamic vinegar. Yeah, there's a, there's a ton of uses. So again, when like we look at all of these ingredients, there's like the taste upside. and then there's the health upside. Yeah. So when I look at like, you know, we talked about sodium on your, on your podcast and the need for

adding in sodium and what it can do just for overall, you know, health and muscles specifically, when we look at the spice, when we know we've got to feed these microbiomes. So how are we doing it? Like most of the world has this monoculture of microbes that are adversely affecting them. Then we come over and we look at vinegar, even though everything you're saying is like, oh, incredible taste and how great that's going to be on top of a steak. But we know things like apple cider vinegar are great for regulating blood sugar. And then we come over to the mushroom discussion.

So this is my newest fascination because did you see fantastic fungi? Yeah, so good. It's so good. And the visuals are so good. But what I think of when I'm eating mushrooms is that especially if it's a good high quality, like a lion's mane mushroom, we cook a lot with that, is that it's actually going into the brain and creating neurogenesis. Yeah.

There was a new study. I think it might have been in mice, but I saw it pop up recently that, you know, just further supporting Lionsmane as a neuroprotective compound able to boost like nerve growth factor and things like that. I love Lions mane. It has the texture. If people haven't tried fresh line, I mean, you can get it as a supplement. But if you haven't tried it as a fresh food, it's so good. I mean, a lot of farmers markets now you can find it.

it has the texture and taste almost of crap. And it's big. Well, for starters, it looks like a brain. Yeah. Do you believe in that theory that if a food like broccoli looks like a brain, a walnut looks like a brain, lion's mane looks like a brain? Yeah, it does. So therefore it should be good for our brain.

There was a, man, the name of that theory I forgot. It was super interesting. But yeah, like that things that look like one another benefit one another. I don't know if there's any like scientific merit to that. But I, you know, if it makes you more inclined to reach for these kinds of foods, then like, I'm all about it. You know, like, whatever is going to like help cement those healthy habits. And yeah, Lions Main is like, it's super tasty.

It's easy to integrate. Like people have this like misconception that health food either is boring or is bad. So true. And it's like that's neither, that couldn't be further from the truth. Yeah. You know, like to me, health food is delicious because like there's this innate intelligence in the body. that when you're eating something that's good for your body and brain like your body thanks you it thanks you either with like you know dopamine like reward chemicals in the brain um makes you feel

better yeah after eating you know after eating the food it's like to me it's like yeah it's like some of the that's like the best aspect of like being a a health aware eater yeah well i like the way you said that i never thought of that is health aware eater because as you and i've talked about today we all like to pick sides. I'm a vegan. I'm a carnivore. I'm this. I'm that. What's your stance on variety of foods? Like, do you feel like there's one food style that's best for the brain? Or is there certain ingredients you want to make sure you do every day for the brain and certain ingredients you don't and whatever style that fits into, go for it? Yeah. I would say that I definitely think that omnivory is best for the brain. I think that integrating both plants,

and animal products is ideal from a cognitive and mental health standpoint. I mean, people have different preferences about what animal products, for example, they like. Some people have ethical reasons to avoid certain animal products. But for me, I think it's optimal to include a range of animal products and plant products. People are going to have differing sensitivities, allergies, and things like that. And so this is not a one-size-fits-all recommendation. but just some foods that I think are really beneficial from the standpoint of the brain. I mean, fatty fish, you can't get around that.

The fact that like salmon, wild salmon has, you know, an abundance of omega-3s, probably the most concentrated source of omega-3s, you know, in the modern supermarket that your average person is going to have access to. I mean, that is a non-trivial, like, data point. So salmon... There's a lot of research on that one. Yeah, a lot of research on that. I think the research now on the potential cognitive benefits of

grass-fed, grass-finished beef, or just beef in general, are starting to come out. I mean, for many decades, we've been told that beef is just bad, you know, that it's associated with every negative health outcome. But newer research is challenging that dogma. I mean, there was the Neutorex consortium came out a couple years ago that, you know, these experts, this international panel of experts found that there's no solid evidence to say, like, there's no convincing evidence to say that we should be reducing our red meat consumption. It didn't consider the environment. It didn't consider all of these external variables.

All it did was look at the data on red meat and health. And it's from a health standpoint, there's no convincing data to say that we need to reduce our red meat consumption, right? And so what do you say about something like the China study? Well, there was the book, The China Study, and then there was a study that the China study was based on. But both, well, the book was written by a well-known person with a bias towards. veganism from the standpoint of activism. And then the study was observational in nature. And so I wouldn't hang my hat on that. First of all, A, it's old. Like study, I mean, the timeline in which a study is performed, I think, still has, especially if it's observational in nature, has some bearing on the...

But it's the lowest. I mean, if we say on studies, observational is of the lowest validity. Yeah, because it's not, it can't, it can't determine cause and effect. Right. Right. So, there's that and we have lots of other I mean if there's anything that you that that like nutrition research has shown us is that like there's the the controversy tends to stem from the fact that all of these studies are equivocal you can find a study to validate any perspective that you want to have you can find studies that link red meat to cancer and heart disease you can find studies that studies of studies that show that there's no consistent yeah relationship that red meat has with heart disease or cancer, right? And so how do you make sense of that? Well, you defer to reason.

You know, these are the kinds of foods that are, you know, they're not the identical kinds of foods that our ancestors ate, but they're as close as we can reasonably get in the context of the standard food environment to the kind of diet our ancestors likely consumed during the vast majority of our evolution prior to the appearance of, you know, all of the kinds of chronic non-communicable conditions that people are now struggling from. What do you say to the person who wants to be vegan or plant base for ethical reasons? Is there anything nutritionally they're missing out on if they're taking meat out of their diet? Well, yeah, I mean, vitamin B12 is certainly, you know, a concern.

And most vegans, vegetarians will end up supplementing with vitamin B12. But, you know, this is a conversation that I think, like, it illustrates this concept. of nutritionism where it's like we try to break down as humans. I mean, we try to like break down everything into its constituent part so that we can better understand. Right. And I think that's like one of the most amazing things about human ingenuity. But I think it does us a disservice, particularly in the field of nutrition, because food is so, there are so many compounds in food that we've co-evolved with. And so trying to break food down to its constituent parts, and say, okay, if I cut out this entire food group,

what are the nutrients that I'm going to need to replicate, you know, like that food group? What you end up getting are products like Soylent, which is like, I don't know if you've seen that, but it's like this like protein shake where these tech Silicon Valley types decided to see if they could recreate the perfect human food with just a couple of vitamins and minerals and protein and like recreating this completely synthetic thing

that they purport that, you know, have all of the, But to me, that's like that you're setting yourself up for failure. Right. We've evolved with food and we don't know. There's no way to know. Right. Like all of the many compounds in those foods that we are handicapping our bodies by suddenly removing from our diet completely, you know?

So you're not going to be 3D printing any food anytime. No, I don't think so. I mean, like from an essential nutrient standpoint, it's vitamin B12, right? And probably omega-3s. We know that pre-formed omega-3s, which you find only an animal. products are the most ideal, right? And so vegans and vegetarians are probably well suited to supplement with algae oil, which is preformed DHA fat primarily. But there are all kinds of nutrients in animal products that are conditionally essential that we don't know. You know, like we

don't know. Maybe it's maybe creatine, which is found in red meat and fish, is beneficial to an aging population, particularly from the standpoint of brain health. Okay, so creatine is interesting because I feel like creatine's making a comeback. Yeah. Like everybody's talking about creatine lately, at least maybe on my social feeds, but I'm like, why is everybody talking about this? And now you've got me thinking that is it because we are in a bit of a protein deficit world?

I think protein's making a comeback too. Yeah. But what do we need to know about creatine? And why is everybody highlighting it, especially for brain health? So creatine is a, we synthesize creatine endogenously. we make creatine in our own bodies. Like red meat is rich in creatine. We are red meat.

So our meat is rich. Are we dark or we light meat? Yeah. We're red. I mean, yeah, we're like, if you were to like, you know, open up the human body, like, we look like, I mean, mammalian meat. Like, it's red, you know. Yeah. And so our muscle tissue is rich in creatine, which helps to support energy synthesis,

particularly during high intensity bouts of exercise or activity. but creatine is also a really important nutrient in the brain where it supports brain energy metabolism. And we see that people who are on vegan and vegetarian diets from, you know, granted, there's not a ton of research on this. And the research that's there is, you know, the studies are kind of small, but that when vegans and vegetarians who, you know, don't ingest a lot of exogenous creatine supplement with creatine, they see an improvement in their cognitive function. Oh, wow. So, yeah. So it seems to be the case that it's a conditionally essential nutrient, that we don't, we're not going to develop a deficiency disease by not eating it, but that, you know, there are some aspects of our biology that are optimized. Yeah.

It seems to be the case when we ingest creatine from our food. Yeah. We know that there's a, we know that there's a performance, that there's like a, you know, an ergogenic effect, meaning like creatine augments exercise performance. That's well established. Yeah. We know that it's good for both men and women, you know, provided you're healthy, you know, like if, if you're healthy and you ingest creatine, you can expect to see an improvement in gym performance. Right. You know, various indices of gym performance.

It will, it usually coincides with a little bit of weight gain, but it's, it's drawn into the muscle. It doesn't make you look buffy. It's like, literally like, yeah. Yeah. Do you think that there's a difference the way the human body takes in the actual food itself and something like, like if you, if you. took in, well, back to the lion's main conversation, if you took in the lion's main mushroom by itself in comparison to a supplement, does the human, and maybe it's a microbiome issue, does it take that in differently, even though the chemical components of those are technically the same?

Yeah. I would surmise that the answer is yes. I mean, we have some data on various food compounds, but the food matrix, the food matrix matters. It's one of the problems with ultra-processed foods is that these food, you know, food, you know, these components of food are extracted from the food matrix recombined. And we see that ultra-processed foods are, you know, one of the foundational aspects of the standard American diet that promotes obesity and type 2 diabetes, metabolic dysfunction, and the like. And so, you know, what is what is so damaging about these ultra-processed foods it's that it's that it's like you know it takes our body zero effort to assimilate you've got all these like different food compounds that are

extracted from the original matrix and you know in that food matrix you get good stuff you get fiber you get water yeah like hydration yeah you get you know protein you get there's so many there's so many aspects of it i mean just the fiber alone like you can eat like the you can like a honey crisp apple which has I don't know 20 to 30 grams of of sugar in it right the fact that it comes with the fiber and the water that just slows the absorption rate of the sugar that's in the apple if you extract apple sugar you know for example in the in the case of apple juice you've extracted the apple sugar from the food matrix and you see you're going to see a much more dramatic you know blood sugar spike it's fructose that the rate at which it hits the liver

much more accelerated. So we can't isolate nutrients, is what I'm thinking is what, you know, we can't, the more man manipulates it, the more we risk not having the upside of the benefit of that food. Yeah. So you might potentially get a consequence and then you might potentially miss out on the benefit. Right. And the benefit sometimes is referred to as like the entourage effect, the entourage effect of these other aspects of food, right, of the food matrix.

Right. that like there's some benefit of consuming like all of these different, you know, compounds alongside the compound in question that have like a synergistic effect. It's not necessarily one plus one equals two anymore. It's one plus one equals three. Yeah. And so when we look at putting together the optimal brain health diet, we've got, we've talked about the oils, we've talked about the protein.

What if I'm, what if I am a vegan? What if I am not having this protein? I mean, you know, what do I need to know outside of some of the things we've talked about that I can lean into? Let me give an example. I interviewed a guy, Doug Evans. Do you know Doug Evans? I do. Yes.

He's actually a friend of mine. Yeah. Okay. So he talked about the protein component of a sprout. We have, we definitely have divergent nutrition philosophies. Yeah. But I love Doug. No shade to Doug.

He's a great man, great person. And I'm a huge fan of sprouts. but I do wonder where he's getting all of his protein from. I actually tasked because I just brought him on the podcast and I said, I can go for everything that you're saying right now, but I want you to show me how you can build muscle with this. And he goes, oh, just watch me. This is my year.

This is my year. I'm going to build muscle. And I'm like, okay, Doug, I'll come back to you in like six months. You do your sprouts. You try to build muscle because that's one of the things when we start to look at the differences in diet is that we start to see the breakdown of muscle. when you're not having that animal protein. Yeah, no.

I mean, I'm trying to get the data says that if you're on a weight training regimen, well, it says that regardless, the RDA for protein is insufficient for good health, that you should be aiming for at least 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight. If you're just like, just to like optimize your body if you're sedentary. But if your weight training, which everybody should be resistance training, it should be more like 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, which is double the RDA. Which is really hard to get in. Yeah, it's not easy.

It's not easy. But, you know, we're talking about like optimizing the effect, the, you know, the effort that you're putting into your workouts, right? And so, you know, you have to be like, you have to increase your protein. You look at anybody like online with any kind of physique of note, like they're, you know, vegan or not. Right. Or omnivore, they're slamming. protein shakes and things like that. You don't necessarily need protein shakes. But high protein food, protein tends to be the most valuable of the macronutrients. And it's especially valuable today.

Ultra-processed foods are highly protein depleted. It's one of the reasons why their margins are so high because protein is expensive. It's valuable for that reason, you know. But it's the best way to maintain mass as we get older, especially in the context of anabolic resistance. As people get older, it becomes harder to maintain muscle. Yes. So, you know, women, men past, you know, midlife, you definitely want to optimize for protein. And I think protein shakes can be incredibly valuable. And I just don't think that your average person, I mean, to me, basing your protein on sprouts

is like a recipe for sarcopenia, you know, especially when you're in like, you know, when you're when you're in midlife or beyond. Yeah. You know, but. Well, let's see. Let's see what he does this year. That's, I'm like, great, Doug. Let's go for it.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, you know, and I love him as a person. He's very smart. Yeah. And I love sprouts. And, you know, I had him on the podcast, on my podcast recently. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So if somebody, you know, we talked about a lot.

So if somebody wants to like dive into really understanding food and how it relates to brain health, um, you got a lot of resources. You got a lot of books. You've got a lot of social media channels. Where do, where's the door in in understanding what you're teaching the world? Great question. I think a great Doran would be my cookbook Genius Kitchen, which is both a cookbook and a resource for people to understand the sort of top-level clinical pearls as far as

like my recommendations go. And then for anybody wanting to do a really deep dive, but still in an easy to assimilate, easy to digest, no pun intended way, my first book, Genius Foods is a New York Times bestseller and it's a nutritional care manual for the brain. I wrote it with a medical doctor who specializes in. in obesity medicine. So you get like the metabolic health aspect of things, but it's a really thorough odyssey

into the role that nutrition can have in brain health. And also we go into therapeutics. And like if you're, you know, if you are struggling from, you know, whether it's issues related to mental health or cognitive decline, it presents like the latest lay of the land in terms of what the evidence says about, like how to tweak your diet for better,

for better cognitive decline. health. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, I'm going to finish up on my question that we ask every guest. Every year I theme my podcast. So this is actually our fourth season. And what I really wanted to emphasize this year was this idea of self-love and us all really accentuating our strengths. So my question to you is two-fold. Do you have a self-love practice? If so, what does that look like? And what is like your superpower that you bring to this world? Oh, man. My self-love practice, I would say I love going to the gym. Not everybody loves going to the gym. I love going to the gym. And, you know, even if it's a 20 minute workout, I know it's better than no workout. And I just

love to have that like me time. It's been there for me since I'm 16 years old. I just love, you know, going and zoning out headphones or no headphones and just, you know, celebrating what my body can do. I'm not an athlete. I don't have any kind of crazy genetics or anything like that. I'm not even, you know, I've never even been like all that strong. But I, just love going to the gym and like practicing exercise you know it's like people talk about yoga as a practice i think like weight training is just as much a practice you know you get better you dial in your form over time and and i just i love it so that that that that's it for me for sure and then my superpower i'm i'm passionately curious and i i love to learn and i love to share and so

you know as i as i learn um i've been lucky to be able to, you know, know how to present information. And, you know, that's a skill that I've honed over time. But I feel grateful to anybody that listens and pays attention to my work. And, yeah, so that to me is like. I love that. Passionately curious. That's good.

I'm going to start using that. I think that's a great way to look at. Yeah. Because I always say I have an obsessive brain, but I'm now going to refrace it as. I'm just passionately curious. I don't, I got to be honest. I don't think that I'm the first person to say it. I think there was like an Einstein quote or something.

I think Einstein once said that about himself. I've no, I think I'm paraphrasing it probably, but it's like I have no special talents. I'm just passionately curious. I think that's what Einstein said about himself, you know. Yeah, amazing. Well, I can't wait to see where your passionate curiosity takes your information and we all get to benefit from it. So this is awesome. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

Thank you for this time. And where do people find you best? We've talked about your books. but where's your go-to spot? Yeah, so I'm pretty active on Instagram at Max Lugavir, and I host my own podcast called The Genius Life, which you are on, so I'm super excited to premiere that. But yeah, The Genius Life podcast and then on Instagram.

Beautiful. Thank you, Max. Appreciate you. Yep, likewise. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know. about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your

biggest takeaway is.