The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 101. Max Lugavere: The 16 Year Alzheimer's Research Scandal Exposed

Starting point is 00:00:00 My mom got sick and she started to display the earliest symptoms of Lewy body dementia, which is akin to having both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease at the same time. So this really honed your interest. The most important person in my life I was seeing cognitively decay right before my very eyes. And that was the call for me to learn everything that I possibly could about these conditions so that I could help her. My mom, in many ways, was victimized by a lot of the misinformation that continues to be perpetuated. One of the comments that I've heard you say is that 99.6% of the Alzheimer's research was actually fraudulent. A paper was published in 2006.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Thousands of papers have referenced this one 2006 paper. 16 years worth of research was built on this fraudulent paper. They fail because Alzheimer's disease research is looking in the wrong place. You're into the brain-boosting foods. What is an Alzheimer's preventative diet? I like to focus on what I call the genius foods. These are foods that provide the brain the nutrients that we know help the brain not just survive, but thrive.

Starting point is 00:00:53 Were there any takeaways for you from the documentary that you did that we didn't cover? One thing that really shocked me was the risk that... Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's guest, I'm a huge fan of today's guest, Max Lugavere. I've been on Max's podcast, so it's high time that he came and was on my podcast. We see eye to eye on so many things. We're actually talking about the corruption of food supply right before we started filming this podcast. So I can't get in. I can't wait to just get into this and let it roll. Max,

Starting point is 00:01:45 welcome to the podcast, brother. Thanks so much, Gary, for having me. It's an honor. It's good to see you again. I actually got three boxes of really good, healthy cereal out of the last podcast. His house is like my house. When I walked in, it was just like stacks of all these sponsors. He's like, you want some protein powder? You want an electrolyte? Dude, I love it. I mean, you could pretty much build sebum from the ground up. You've tried. The amount of protein that's in my house.

Starting point is 00:02:10 It's amazing. That is so true. But we had a great podcast. And I love the journey that you've been on because your background's in journalism, right? I mean, you didn't really have a health and wellness, you know, formal training background, but really I've had so many influential, impactful guests on my podcast. And I find there's like a common theme to all of them. And I think it's common to you too, which are main to you too is, and that's that

Starting point is 00:02:41 at some point in their life, they solved the problem and, or they were presented with a problem and in solving it, this became a part of their purpose and passion. And for the, that, you know, for you, I know it was your, your mom's journey with, with, with Alzheimer's. And I don't know that a lot of people know about that journey. So I'd love if you would share that and maybe even talk about how that led to your documentary, you actually using your journalism skills and self funding and eventually crowdfunding and, and, and bringing documentary to, to light. I, I had the fortune of watching the, uh, July 8th podcast you did with Dr. Perlmutter. And man, it just really opened my eyes, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:29 to the paucity of understanding of the mental health crisis that we're in, and how research maybe even has gone in the wrong direction. Yeah, totally. Well, yeah. So I mean, I love to be hyper transparent about my background. I never want to misrepresent myself. I started my career as a generalist journalist, I got really lucky, I had a dream job out of college that I landed as a host producer, and ultimately a journalist for a TV network in the United States called Current TV. So in LA, it was based in LA, it was a national TV network and 100 million homes. So from jump, like as soon as I graduated college, I rolled into this dream job on television, where I got to talk about, you know, really interesting stories, stories that I thought

Starting point is 00:04:12 were being under discussed in the culture at large. And it was a really amazing platform. And I got to work with actually some of the best journalists in the field, like in the field of journalism, which, you know, has, I think, today take on a bit of a different hue that, that, you know, that career path, because mainstream media has become so polarized. Right. But, but back when I started, you know, at a naive 22, 23 years old, it was an incredible job opportunity. And there I got to kind of feel out my passions and explore the topics that I thought were interesting and, and, and important and communicate those topics to a massive audience. It was just an incredible, incredible gift. And I did that for six years.

Starting point is 00:04:49 And prior to that, in college, I actually began college on a pre-med track. So I'd always been Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I was super passionate about health and nutrition and fitness, but it was a private passion. It was something that I was, you know, growing up, I think I was, you know, a lot of people will relate to I felt really kind of introverted and out of place and insecure as a as a high schooler. And I discovered bodybuilding and fitness and I just became fascinated by that world and the science underpinning muscle hypertrophy and all that stuff. Dude, I'm going to dig up some of your old bodybuilding videos and roll them over this. Well, no, I was I was never I was never a bodybuilder. Like, I don't think I ever had the genes for it. I was never an athlete, but I was just fascinated by the applied science of, you know, you eat a certain way, you take a few potions, powders, supplements, whatever, and it manifests in terms of like a bigger, stronger, better body.

Starting point is 00:05:37 And I just thought that was like the coolest thing ever, particularly for somebody that was like kind of shy growing up, you know? Yeah. But ultimately I realized that I was a storyteller and I had certain talents in that regard. And that led to me, you know, becoming a journalist. And so I did that for six years, learning from the best of the best in the industry. And then in my late 20s, after that job had kind of run its course, my mom got sick and she started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, which is akin to having both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Right. But it's not either.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Yeah. It's not either of those conditions. Although it actually has more in common with Parkinson's disease than it does Alzheimer's disease um it's a it's a condition that unlike Alzheimer's disease which is primarily a neurocognitive disorder and Parkinson's disease which is a movement disorder somebody with Lewy body dementia typically presents with both movement symptoms and cognitive symptoms oh wow yeah so that's why they say it's like having Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. Yikes. But from, you know, the pathophysiology of it is actually more similar to Parkinson's disease in that there's dysfunction

Starting point is 00:06:56 in what's called the substantia nigra region of the brain, which is, you know, becomes dysfunctional in Parkinson's disease, the dopamine producing neurons in that part of the brain start to die. And there's misfolding of a protein called alpha-synuclein. And so unlike, it's unlike Alzheimer's disease where, you know, Alzheimer's disease is, it's a related condition, but it has more to do with amyloid beta and reduced glucose metabolism in the brain. And all of these conditions have overlapping. Yeah, type three diabetes. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:07:23 So, but you know, I'm not, I didn't, I didn't go to medical school and become a neurologist. Like I learned everything that I now know and I've written books about and, um, even academic literature about on the job because I, the most important person in my life, I was seeing cognitively decay right before my very eyes. Yeah. And I think sadly, you know, a lot of times by the time the diagnosis is made, it's because of the expression of the disease, it's already really set in, you know, you, you, it's hard to go back in time, maybe, maybe too slow or stop the progression, but very often, especially dopaminergic conditions, it's, it's, it's very hard to go backwards. Yeah. I mean, these are, these are essentially diseases of midlife with symptoms

Starting point is 00:08:03 that appear in late life. But by the time you catch it, it's already a condition that's decades, you know, set into motion by decades. Similar to so many other conditions that are now saddling society, whether we're talking cardiovascular disease, cancer. For example, pancreatic cancer is a great analogy. You know, most of the time, the vast majority of the time pancreatic cancer is diagnosed, it's already too late because there are no routine screening processes for pancreatic cancer. So by the time it's caught, so to speak, and I can somewhat speak to this because my mom actually passed due to pancreatic cancer. Wow. By the time it's diagnosed, it's already, you know, typically metastasized and, you know, inoperable. Right. And similarly with Alzheimer's disease,

Starting point is 00:08:43 Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, by the time you're diagnosed, this is a 30, 40 year disease process that you're now starting to see. I totally agree with you. And I mean, that's why the genesis of, of type three diabetes, you know, insulin resistance in the brain, you know, I believe blood sugar is a root of all evil. You know, maybe we have a pandemic of, of overeating and processed foods and high glycemic diets. And we are not genetically predisposed to consume those forms of calories and to filter out the cellular waste that comes and the metabolic insult that comes from having a diet rich in highly processed foods and very, very, very high glycemic profiles. I think one of the worst things that ever happened to mental health crisis was the big war on fat.

Starting point is 00:09:31 I think it's a big problem. Yeah, I think that was a massive public health mistake because, I mean, you demonize natural fat-containing foods like red meat, eggs, dairy fat. What do you replace those foods with on the plate? All that did was serve to open the door for red dye number 40 yeah the proliferation of like yeah red dye number 40 um the proliferation of these ultra processed foods which now dominate our diets depending on which demographic you look at our diets are consumed by either 60 percent

Starting point is 00:10:00 ultra processed foods or up to 80 percent right more, you know, depending on which age bracket you look at. And so and I think that is largely the result of the fact that we've demonized for so many years these otherwise perfectly health foods, right, you know, and but going back to your mom's condition, she wasn't, you know, I think I think very often we think of Alzheimer's and dementia as diseases on the very elderly, we think it's a condition that you catch later in life, you know, in your very advanced years. And much to your point, I happen to very much agree with you. These are diseases of midlife that progress to later in life. So this really honed your interest in this condition. Yeah. Well, I think most of it, as you so eloquently

Starting point is 00:10:47 said, you know, most people, most people's interaction with, with these conditions are through a grandparent, but my mom was young. My mom was in her mid fifties and she still had all the pigments in her hair. And she was very much somebody who anybody would describe as being in the prime of her life. And so I couldn't write off what I was seeing to old age. I couldn't. It was a massive who's ever suffered from a chronic condition knows that, you know, it's a scary and frustrating and confusing place to be. And so I started accompanying my mom to doctor's appointments. And I experienced in every situation, in every instance, what I've come to call diagnose and adios. Yeah. And that was the call for me to learn everything that I possibly could about these conditions. Not even to, I mean, not, not to write books or to, to do all the things that I now I'm, I think known for it was, it was initially so that I could help her. Right. Of course. I mean, that was it. And over the course of that journey, I've learned all of these, like,

Starting point is 00:12:00 I think really important, um, principles about how to protect our brains at this age. Yeah. And one of those core principles, well, first of all, you know, one of the things that you highlighted, and I would encourage everybody to check out the documentary, Little Empty Boxes. You can just go to littleemptyboxes.com and actually see the documentary you put together. But I think, you know, your message, very similar to my message, is actually a message of hope. And by that, I mean that I think very often people think that disease and pathology is something that happens to us rather than something that happens within us. And we don't really think that there's much that we can do to prevent disease. We're predisposed to the notion that disease is genetically inherited. And while I do believe that some diseases have a genetic predisposed to the notion that disease is genetically inherited. And while I do believe

Starting point is 00:12:45 that some diseases, you know, have a genetic predisposition, it's not, it's not your destiny, your epigenetic factors make a huge difference in the progression of that disease. And listening to you talk about the journey that you went on with your mother was very inspiring to me. And I think it's inspiring to other people, because you talk about the basics, you know, the, the, the absolute basics that people need to be doing like whole food diets and avoiding processed foods. And, and, and you even highlight some of the corruption, um, in our institutions of research that are funded by the companies that have outcomes, you know, the predetermined outcomes. And I'm very much on the same page with that too.

Starting point is 00:13:29 I don't think that, you know, everybody in big pharma is out to kill us, but I do think that, you know, a lot of these corporations are out to make a profit. And the way that you make a profit is you script the narrative to lead you to your pharmaceutical, your synthetic, your chemical, or what have you

Starting point is 00:13:44 that you have to have a patent on. Yeah. And one of the one of the comments that I've heard you say is that 99.6% of the Alzheimer's research was actually fraudulent. Well, the drugs, yeah, they, the those, the or failures, I'm sorry, there was, sorry, there was a big research study that was fraught with fraud. Oh, yeah, 16 years worth of research was built on this fraudulent paper. But that is, yeah. So, I mean, what you said is not inaccurate in the sense that it's part of the milieu that has led to this figure that 99.6% of Alzheimer's drug trials fail. They fail because we've been, particularly for the past 16 years of Alzheimer's disease research, looking in the wrong place.

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Starting point is 00:15:01 Baja Gold sea salt all over the top. Try it. It'll be your new favorite for cooking too. It's the cheapest and one of my favorite biohacks. I don't know, a $15 or $20 bag of this will probably last you five years. And it's literally the world's best biohacking secret. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. And what do you attribute that to? If you go back to the paper for the people that are not familiar with that go back to that paper and how did it come out that it was you know i i even took a deep dive and and and you know they they found out that even some of the images were photoshopped i mean it was it was a pretty cognizant yeah like it wasn't like we just took the data and sort of omitted a few things. So it leaned in this direction. But this was like a cognizant, you know, attempt or success. Yeah. In covering up the truth. Yeah. In maligning the research. So basically, the way that this all happened, and you know, for anybody who's unfamiliar with the

Starting point is 00:16:02 story, I mean, it's a fairly complicated story, but I'll try to do my best to synthesize it. So since Alzheimer's disease was first coined in 1906 by Austrian physician Alois Alzheimer, the guiding premise for what the pathophysiology of the disease is that it's a condition caused by an aggregation of certain proteins in the brain that misfold. The neurofibrillary tangles, right? Yes, those tau, this protein called tau, and the aggregation of another protein called amyloid beta into these plaques that accumulate in the extracellular space around neurons. And, you know, you have to imagine that in 1906, our tools were fairly rudimentary in terms of

Starting point is 00:16:44 medicine, imaging, things like that, right? So when somebody passed from Alzheimer's, back then, what they would do, and this is makes intuitive sense, right, you would open up the brain of the cadaver cadaver that had passed from it to observe what's different. Well, in the brain of somebody who's passed from Alzheimer's disease, you see global shrinkage, so the brain neurons die at an accelerated pace, you see global, you know, shrinkage in terms of the total brain volume, as well as, you know, more intricate structures like the hippocampus, and then you see these plaques, these hallmark characteristics of the disease. And so essentially, since then, the the guiding sort of pharma pharmaceutical approach is how, you know, can we develop a drug that can essentially remove these plaques and in so doing will have cured the condition, Alzheimer's disease. And that makes logical sense, right?

Starting point is 00:17:33 Right. But the issue is, is that, you know, drugs have actually succeeded at reducing the plaque in the brain. There are a few reasons why it actually doesn't hold up to biological scrutiny. One is that we've engineered drugs that have succeeded at reducing the plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, and that hasn't actually improved cognition. Yeah. I've heard you talk about that. Right. So that's great if we can remove the plaque, I think, but if it's not actually improving the clinical features, the symptomology of the disease, who cares? Particularly when those drugs are associated with horrible side effects.

Starting point is 00:18:10 So if you're not actually improving the cognition of a patient with one of these drugs, and you're putting them at risk for brain swelling, brain bleeding, and even possibly accelerated death, accelerated brain atrophy, which actually meta-analyses have shown that a lot of these drugs actually cause. Wow. Accelerated brain atrophy. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:30 There was a meta-analysis that found that- Which would actually make cognition worse. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. You don't want your brain to atrophy. That doesn't sound good. You want it to grow.

Starting point is 00:18:40 I mean, exercise causes your brain to grow. Eating DHA fat from wild salmon causes your brain, is associated with brain growth. So yeah, that's a really bad thing. And then the second feature is that cognitively healthy people do have amyloid in their brains. So it's not, you know, there doesn't seem to be, and there hasn't seemed to be a very clear correlation between amyloid, this protein, which for decades we've thought to be causal with regards to Alzheimer's disease, and the condition. And that is until a paper was published in 2006 that seemed to renew faith in this so-called amyloid hypothesis, that amyloid, again,

Starting point is 00:19:19 is the defining and causal feature of the disease. What they were able to do was isolate a subtype of amyloid beta, inject it into the body of a cognitively healthy rat. And what they saw was that rat then exhibited profound cognitive dysfunction. So that basically renewed faith down this drug pipeline because this paper seemed to assert, like, look, this is the missing link. Here's how amyloid directly

Starting point is 00:19:45 causes cognitive dysfunction in this amyloid model right and that was what was published in nature which is like if you're a scientist and you get to publish in nature it's like winning an academy award right for scientists right so it's published the lead author was this guy sylvain lesney at uh university of minnesota and um and that you know, continued to foment this like amyloid hypothesis as the sole guiding, you know, mission for pharmaceutical research for, for Alzheimer's disease. And subsequently, thousands of papers have referenced this one 2006 paper. Wow. And what came to light just two years ago was that that paper was essentially completely fraudulent. No. Yeah. And when was essentially completely fraudulent no yeah and

Starting point is 00:20:26 when you say completely fraudulent like it's a pretty big statement that means it was cognitively designed to mislead so what what portions of it were fraudulent how did they how do you create a fraudulent study like that for for the people listening to the podcast yeah right there's like peer review right exactly like you made it to nature i mean somebody looked at this yeah well so the way that they um the way that they presented this data was via what's called a western blot analysis um and you know without getting into the weeds essentially it's a way of visually representing the concentration of certain proteins um and, observable phenomena, not with numbers, like on a spreadsheet, but visually. And the paper nonetheless was published.

Starting point is 00:21:13 But there's a researcher at Vanderbilt University named Matthew Schrag, who's kind of like a sleuth. I mean, he are like scientists. So that's what they enjoy doing. You know't relate. But there are people that are deep in the trenches and for good reason. Because there is evidence showing that a lot of our publications are actually fraudulent. No question. There's a very significant proportion of research that gets published in our most trusted peer reviewed journals that are fraudulent. And so, and again, continually, I think part of the reason for, you know, this paper being flagged specifically, one was that it was very influential. And two, that very recently, certain monoclonal antibody drugs like aducanumab and licanumab were both given accelerated approval by the FDA, despite experts essentially speaking against this approval for

Starting point is 00:22:41 these drugs, because they didn't work from a cognitive standpoint. They again were very successful at reducing plaque in the brains of patients, but they coincided with really dramatic and scary side effects. Again, like accelerated brain atrophy and brain bleeds and swelling. And there was actually a panel of 11 experts, including neurologists, who pushed back against the FDA's decision to green light this drug aducanumab um I believe it was wow specifically and and nonetheless the FDA green lit it it's an incredibly expensive injectable drug that basically turns your your brain's immune system you know on itself to to to essentially dissolve um and make soluble these proteins so that they can be flushed away.

Starting point is 00:23:26 But they didn't actually succeed. They very, very modestly improved cognition in certain patients. Wow. But essentially, the benefits weren't worth the risks. This was very clear to see. And so the fact that this all happened within a really short timeline, My speculation is that it tipped this researcher, Matthew Schrag off to go and investigate this seminal 2006 Nature paper, which he did. And he went in and as part of the peer review process, they don't look at images like these Western blot images and look for artifacts, you know, to see if they were perhaps Photoshopped. That's not part of the peer review process. I mean, it might be now, I don't know. But essentially what he found was that it was

Starting point is 00:24:09 very clear that these were just cheap cut and paste jobs. And that entire paper was basically built on nothing, air. And that was the paper, again, that seemed to connect amyloid with the cognitive dysfunction that we see in patients. And who was behind the paper? I mean, what's the rationale? Because I think if somebody has a predetermined destination they're trying to get to, there's got to be some benefit for them down the road. Was there a pharmaceutical or chemical company behind it? Was there? Well, I think it's probably the pressure, you know, from patients and their families and, and also these advocacy organizations that, that that continue to foment this funding pipeline and have a lot to gain from a drug getting approved.

Starting point is 00:24:49 Like some of these, I'm not even going to name them, but some of the biggest like Alzheimer's organizations, for example. Wow. Like their funding pipeline is, you know, all about like we need to find a drug to, you know, it's basically like a fear-based narrative. Like Alzheimer's, you know, there's not much that we can do to prevent or slow the condition. We've got to continue to find, you know, pharmaceutical, pharmacologic solutions to the, you know, to the condition. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:12 The fact that these drugs, you know, the drug trials have been such a failure. And I think like there's, it's big money. I mean, aducanumab and lacanumab, despite the fact that they, you know, don't work. And in fact, they're extremely expensive. So you can imagine that if you're a desperate patient and you have the means to afford it. I mean, this is the same thing that's happening with, I'm not saying the GLP-1s are as dangerous as something like that, but you know, we, we have a tendency. I think we, you know, we have such a disease based society. We have a, we have an industry that is built upon symptom maintenance and disease management. And like any other industry, I mean, if you're an airline, you got to fill seats. If you're a hotel,

Starting point is 00:25:52 you got to fill rooms. If you're in the chemical pharmaceutical, the synthetic industry, you have to sell product. And the best way to sell product is, well, number one, don't kill the host, just manage the host's condition. And number two, don't cure the host because they're no longer a client. So, you know, it'd be like if, you know, every car buyer only bought one car in their lifetime, you know, the car dealerships would be out of business, right? And so I think that I'm certainly of the mindset that there's not one big, bad, nasty, sinister plan going on at the top to keep us all sick. But what's happened is we just become such an industry of disease. and, you know, including the lowest life expectancy of birth, maternal mortality, infant mortality, you know, type 2 diabetes, morbid obesity, multiple chronic diseases in the same single biome.

Starting point is 00:26:50 You would think as medical advancement progressed that disease incidence would be going down, but it's actually not. It's getting worse. Life expectancy is going backwards. And I think the same thing is happening with like these GLPs. It's like, well, everybody's fat. So what do we do? Give them something to make them skinny.

Starting point is 00:27:07 But maybe it was the toxic soup they've been bathing their cellular biology in for the last 25 years that actually led to this pandemic. a very good grasp of this industry and some of the malfeasance that went on um you've you've really um sort of championed the narrative surrounding whole food diets um brain healthy foods um i think you you you partnered with um is it solace health Solus? Not a partnership. Okay. But yeah, that's just an emergent care, like concierge practice. Oh, okay. That profiled me, yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:54 Oh, they profiled you. Well, I mean, you're into the brain boosting foods. Yeah. And so talk a little bit about that, because I think when people think of brain boosting things, they think they go right to neurotropics or, you know, other chemicals and synthetics like they would think of brain boosting supplement is Adderall. Not really a brain booster, it's amphetamine. in that narrative? And how does that relate back to your mother's condition? I mean, what, you know, after producing this documentary and seeing some of the corruption

Starting point is 00:28:31 in our research institutions, what is the next wave? What is the solution? Yeah, well, I mean, I've definitely, you know, I feel really humbled in the sense that I do feel that I've played a part over the past decade to help usher in the conversation around prevention, which, you know, again, if this is a condition. You definitely have, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I got started really early. I mean, as soon as my mom started to

Starting point is 00:28:54 develop these symptoms, and I would start learning, you know, all these things that I've subsequently learned, I felt compelled to share. And, and, you know, I've seen, I've seen the tide turn in the sense that, you know, back when I started, you couldn't mention Alzheimer's disease or dementia in the same sentence as prevention, without being called a charlatan or quack, you know, and, and now I feel like it's gained much broader acceptance. We even now have, it seems every four years, the Lancet Commission now meeting on dementia prevention and the- Dementia prevention, wow. Yeah, all the so-called modifiable risk factors. And so it really is kind of a whole new world.

Starting point is 00:29:38 And we're still, there's still, you know, so many unanswered questions. But, you know, as somebody who's long loved nutrition, I definitely take a food forward approach, although I'll concede that food is not the only thing that matters. I mean, there are a lot actually, in fact, of so-called modifiable risk factors for these conditions that range from hearing loss to vision loss to air pollution to social isolation. Social isolation is a big one that's a big one yeah but um but you know i love talking about food because we all eat and um and there certainly is a ton of corruption you know very observable clearly clearly apparent corruption within you know the food industry and the food industry's relationship with yeah you know the um i said podcast with ke means, and he,

Starting point is 00:30:26 he lays it out better than anyone I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. He's great. I mean, so without stepping on his toes, I mean, you know, everything that he says is dead on. And, um, and, and this is something that I try in my work to also, you know, do my part to expose as well, because it really is, I mean, in, in so many ways, a scam. And, uh, and I, and I feel that like my mom in many ways ways was was victimized by a lot of the misinformation that continues to be perpetuated. But certainly, you know, she was of a generation that, you know, didn't really have access to the internet. And so and she was unique in the sense that, you know, even once the internet came about, she just wasn't on

Starting point is 00:31:00 it. And so she was very much in the dark, like so many people today continue to be about what it actually means to eat healthily. She was fed a narrative about, you know, for example, animal products, animal source foods being really bad for you, bad for the cardiovascular system and all this stuff. And the alternative grain based products being something that you have to base your diet around. I mean, it literally was the base of the food pyramid. It still is. I mean, it needs to be flipped on the tip. Yeah. And, and, you know, to be fair, the food pyramid has been retired. We now we've replaced it with the MyPlate. And there's debate whether or not Americans have ever fully followed the dietary guidelines that have been put out. But nonetheless, they're not, you know, dietary guidelines, in my view,

Starting point is 00:31:48 are an economic instrument to sell commodity food products, subsidized grains and things like that. There's no such thing as an essential grain. Right. Or an essential carbohydrate. As an essential carbohydrate, which is not to say that we shouldn't eat them. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:02 No, I agree with you. But we've just gotten it backwards for so many years about what it looks like to eat a nutrient-dense diet. What's odd is the things that are essential, like essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, those are what get attacked, right? It's the proteins and the fats, and those are what are truly essential to life,

Starting point is 00:32:21 minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. But in any case, getting back to life, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. But in any case, getting back to that, there's certainly a narrative that is a big industry narrative that benefits the food industry, the chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, which are the most well-funded institutions in the world. And they also have the greatest amount of pressure they can apply to our congressmen and policymakers. They can really shape public policy because they have that much of an influence. And, you know, I often use the term,

Starting point is 00:32:58 I believe more in what God gave us than what man makes us. And I say that not as a religious statement, but, you know, I feel like optimal health is found in the world all makes us. And I say that not as a religious statement, but, you know, I feel like optimal health is found in the world all around us. Sunlight, grounding, breathwork, you know, exercise, you know, the things that you can't supplement your way out of. Even looking at the Blue Zone research, you know, there wasn't continuity in diets, but there was continuity in a sense of purpose. There was continuity in the sense of community. There was continuity in mobility into later in

Starting point is 00:33:25 life you know and you know i talk about it all the time sardinia the life expectancy was directly related to the slope of the hill they walked up and down right and and you don't want it to be that simple but but it is um that simple and the further we've gotten away from mother nature and the further we've gotten away from the basics, the sicker we become. Yeah. And so on your journey, um, you know, um, what are, what do you consider a whole food diet and what are some of the, let's call them brain boosting foods, um, that you're a big advocate of? Yeah. Well, I like, I think it's really important to, to not major in the minors. And so I I've sort of hierarch, hierarchicized. I don't know if that's a word. We'll make it a word. Can we make it a word? Yeah. Um, just voted in as a word. I've created a bit of a food pyramid of, of my own. And I think the base of that is just prioritize

Starting point is 00:34:19 whole foods. We live in a time today. Yeah. Where so on board with you for that. Yeah. I mean, that's really it. I mean, you know, anybody who's spent any time on Nutrition X or Instagram can attest to the fact that, well, everything societally has become so polarized and the diet wars in particular can be particularly egregious in that sense. But you just want to prioritize whole foods. If you do that, I mean, you're way ahead of the game in terms of your average. And there's a study out there to prove both sides. I mean, I could argue carnivore, keto, paleo, pescetarian, whole food, vegan, vegetarian, I mean, you name it, and I could get dogmatic

Starting point is 00:34:56 by about it. And I could find my little narrow sliver of research to support it, I could ignore the other research that is out there. And I can put forward that, that that very dogmatic, you know, position. Yeah. And but also, that is the commonality among the world's, you know, top lived populations is that they're eating whole foods. But if you actually get granular, I mean, that's, that's a very low resolution sort of dietary framework, right? But once you get once you start to get granular, you realize that people actually have adopted and can adhere successfully to, you know, all different kinds of dietary patterns, some that are more animal based, some that are more plant based. But I think, you know, if you're primarily like the big rocks are focusing on on whole foods, right? Again,

Starting point is 00:35:39 60% of the calories, if not more. Today, most people are consuming from package process vending machine foods, essentially, unbelievable food like consuming from package process vending machine foods, essentially. Unbelievable. Food-like products. And so the more you call food-like products, they're not actually food. No, they're food-like. They provide energy. But you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who's energy deficient today, particularly in the Western world. Overeating issue. Yeah, this is the first time in human history where we have more overweight people walking the earth than underweight. For the vast majority of our history,

Starting point is 00:36:10 it was more underweight. You know, food scarcity was a real problem, right? You had a greater risk of starving to death than dying from any of one of these non, you know, four or five non-communicable conditions that seem to be, you know, outweighing everything else today. But today, actually, obesity is the major. chronic disease. Yeah. And chronic disease. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And so moving up the up the up my so called food pyramid, so to speak, I think you really want to prioritize both animal source and plant based foods. I think it's really important to have both. I butt heads with carnivores, I butt heads heads with vegans because my i think that there's value from both sides of the aisle yeah so to speak it's actually like politics these days right right right um but it's sad that you gotta be so dogmatic i've never been dogmatic about a diet and i'm a human biologist and and i was a mortality researcher for for a living and and the truth, you used the term modifiable risk factors earlier in the podcast. And the truth is, most of the reason why people are not living healthier, happier, longer lives are modifiable risk factors. And one of them is a whole food diet.

Starting point is 00:37:17 Yeah. Most of the conditions that people are suffering from today are the heritability is very low. The heritability for obesity, for cancer, for cardiovascular disease, very low. I mean, it's primarily an epigenetic phenomena. It's an interaction between your genes and your environment or your exposome, which is another term that I love. And your exposome or your environment encapsulates all of your very many exposures

Starting point is 00:37:40 from what it is that you're eating day to day. Exposome, I like that one too. Yeah. I've learned two words today, hierarchalizeize which is the jury's still out on that one expose them's a great one dude i'm gonna make sure i weave that in babe yeah okay and so and that's it you know that for i mean in my world like i'm you know obviously super passionate about helping people prevent conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Most of the money goes actually into studying the genetics, the heritability of the disease, but they're very seldomly inherited.

Starting point is 00:38:15 You know, Parkinson's disease heritability is incredibly low. For Alzheimer's disease, it's somewhat higher, but it's still the vast majority of cases are due to a- Non-heritable, yeah. Non-heritable. They don't have the Alzheimer's gene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what is an Alzheimer's preventative diet? What does that look like?

Starting point is 00:38:33 So generally, I like to focus on what I call the genius foods. That's the title of my first book, actually, which is essentially an unofficial owner's manual to the human brain. And these are foods that provide the brain the nutrients that we know help the brain not just survive but thrive. Nutrients like creatine, carnitine, carnosine, protein. I mean, proteins, dietary proteins get broken down into their constituent amino acids, which serve as the backbone precursors to your neurotransmitters, like serotonin, like dopamine. Yeah, your natural killer cells. I mean, I don't think people realize how, you know, they think protein muscle, right, which is also true.

Starting point is 00:39:17 But we don't think protein nervous system, protein, you know, essentially amino acids, protein, red blood cells, protein, natural killer cells, white blood cells, the nervous system, protein, you know, essentially amino acids, protein, red blood cells, protein, natural killer cells, white blood cells, the immune system, the immune defense, you know, connective tissue, collagen, elastin, fibrin, you know, it's just so critical. Yeah. And I think protein is really valuable for myriad reasons. I mean, it's important for so many reasons. But I think with regards to the brain, I think it's very important in terms of, I mean, you alluded to this earlier, but, you know, in terms of fostering metabolic health, which we're seeing now is intricately related to body increases, the brain's ability to generate energy from glucose decreases. So increased insulin resistance in the body, insulin resistance essentially causes your cells to starve because they can't get access to the fuel that they need to generate ATP, which is the energetic currency of cells. And we see that essentially as insulin resistance in the body increases, it also correlates very strongly

Starting point is 00:40:25 with a brain that is essentially starving. So you want to make sure that you're as insulin sensitive as possible. And there's a bounty of evidence showing us that higher protein diets seems to relate to increased, to better metabolic health because it's the most satiating micronutrient. So when you prioritize protein in your diet, you tend to consume less energy from carbohydrates and fat. So I think it's really important from that standpoint. And it's also the macronutrient that is most supportive of your musculature, of your skeletal muscle, which is really important from a metabolic health

Starting point is 00:41:00 standpoint. So I think that's really important from a brain health perspective is making sure that you're in the best metabolic health standpoint. So I think that's really important from a brain health perspective is making sure that you're in the best metabolic health possible. And what do you prefer as protein sources? I mean, obvious sources, grass fed meats, pasture raised eggs, free range chicken. Yeah. So the evidence, obviously wild fatty fish, oily fish, that's the least controversial protein from a brain health standpoint like wild salmon sardines herring mackerel anchovies those are all great but you know I've I've certainly planted a

Starting point is 00:41:34 flag because I believe that red meat is a is a very healthful food from the standpoint of the brain as well totally and it doesn't need you know know, I think there's this, you know, with the rise and the proliferation of popularity of keto diets, a lot of people, you know, will take that to meet to, we'll, we'll take that to represent fatty meat. I actually think there's an argument to be made for opting for leaner meat. Um, you know, first of all, to me, it's very obvious when you feed a cow, it's biologically appropriate diet. It's a leaner animal

Starting point is 00:42:05 so to me you know these these these ultra fattened um products of the the factory farm system a modern cow to me that's a biologically they're they're fed biologically aberrant diets which give them a biologically aberrant fatty acid profile they're f fattier. Their fat isn't as healthy. And so for me, I- Higher omega-6 to omega-3, you mean those ratios? Yeah. A grass-fed, grass-finished cut of red meat is higher levels of omega-3s, higher levels of certain tocopherol, tocopherols, which is a form of vitamin E. There's actually a much higher level of antioxidant phytochemicals and grass-fed grass

Starting point is 00:42:47 finished beef wow um which is super interesting we don't think about phytochemicals and and meats i think i think mainly we think about yeah phytonutrients being plant-based yeah but cows that that that are fattened up on grass you know they accumulate um and store more of these antioxidant phytochemicals wow and And as well as carotenoids, which are really beneficial to eye health and brain health, like lutein and zeaxanthin and beta carotene. And there are all these other nutrients like iron that are in their most bioavailable form in red meat. So I see no argument, no valid, no scientifically valid argument to avoid lean red meat. I think certain people with certain genetic backgrounds might,

Starting point is 00:43:30 you know, might see an exaggerated response to saturated, certain saturated fatty acids. And so I think the, the, the safest recommendation to make is, is for lean meat. And I think like from, from that standpoint, it's a total health food. And there's actually, there was a study that was recently published that found that, you know, just sort of putting a bow on the value of animal protein that found that animal protein compared to plant protein actually led to a slower rate of hippocampal atrophy. So shrinkage of the brain's memory center. And the effect's memory center. Okay. And the effect was particularly strong for seafood.

Starting point is 00:44:09 Meaning in favor of seafood. In favor of seafood, yeah. But I think there could be some healthy user bias there because fish eaters tend to be more health conscious. Like pescatarians are very health conscious typically. So they do other things. It's called healthy user bias. But it did find a reduced rate of shrinkage of the memory center

Starting point is 00:44:26 for all animal proteins. Wow. Yeah. Beef, poultry. We got to dig that up and throw that study on that. I'll figure out what it is after the podcast and I'll throw it into the show notes. Yeah. So I'm a big advocate of grass-fed, grass-finished beef, fish. Poultry, I think, is great. Free range, ideally range ideally eggs an egg is a cognitive multivitamin oh my gosh i know man i say this all the time i'm so happy you're here because we're we're so on the same page with that i mean i think because it has you know a little bit of cholesterol in it of which only 15 you know here blood cholesterol even comes from your diet the majority is manufactured by the liver i think that um and i i think that a lot of people don't realize that the influence on the liver's

Starting point is 00:45:10 production of cholesterol is way more important than the dietary cholesterol that you eat they think well i'll just get my dietary cholesterol to zero um because i know that cholesterol is bad and if my cholesterol is high, I have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, which I would also argue is not necessarily the case. And so there's a war on cholesterol too, that's still, I think, sticking around from even the nineties. My parents are that way. Still to this day, the, is to be avoided at all costs. Yeah. But I think I totally agree with you.

Starting point is 00:45:48 I think eggs are nature's multivitamin. They have perfect protein. Want direct access to me so I can personally answer your most pressing health questions? Then I'm excited to offer you free access to my premium membership, the Rule Brekkas. As a Rule Brekka, you'll be able to join me for monthly Q&A sessions, VIP access to all the challenges I host, and advanced access to my most exclusive content. To get your free 30-day trial of Rule Brekkas, head over to joinrulebrekkas.com. That's joinrulebrekkas.com right now. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Yeah, you absorb minimal, I mean, dietary cholesterol is actually not all that bioavailable.

Starting point is 00:46:31 And as you mentioned, yeah, most of the cholesterol in your body is produced by the liver, but every cell produces cholesterol. It's a vitally important nutrient. And from a blood lipid standpoint, for most people, it's of minimal concern. And you can actually, I mean, there are tests that you can do because phytosterols and cholesterol compete for the same absorption in the gut. And so you can actually, there are certain tests that you can do that can look at the presence of certain phytosterols in your blood, which are xenobiotic for us humans. Like we don't produce them. We only get them from our diet. And so that can be used as an indicator of cholesterol absorption. So some people are hyper absorbers, but it's a

Starting point is 00:47:09 minority. Right. Dietary certain dietary saturated fatty acids do raise cholesterol, the degree to which they do, you know, it's genetically mediated. And, and, you know, I think this whole idea of demonizing nutrients and isolation is nonsensical. Right. I do too. Yeah. I think if, you know, when we're talking about whole foods, and particularly foods that are properly grown or raised, I think that there, they shouldn't, there shouldn't be a concern. Yeah, I agree with you. And, and, you know, remember to the cholesterol, which is not really not a fuel source, you know, it's more of a construction material, if you will, like building cell walls and cell membranes and hormones and vitamin D3, we'll call it cholesterol. But it doesn't show up to cause the damage, it shows up because of the damage, right? I mean, it's called to the site, right, of damage. And I think, much like the Alzheimer's analogy, you know, these amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are the byproducts of the process, not the cause of the process. And I think, you know,

Starting point is 00:48:18 cholesterol is very often at the scene of the crime, but it's not who pulled the trigger, right? I mean, it's like, you know, if this house caught on fire, the firemen would show up. But they were called to this location to put the fire out, you know, sort of look at cholesterol in the same light, you know, gets called to a lot of locations in the body to help heal and repair actually, you know, damage. And then we blame it for the atherosclerotic conditions that a lot of, you know, the narrowing of the arteries. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's debate as I think there should be like is it does cholesterol accumulate and form these fatty streaks as a result purely of just the concentration of cholesterol in the blood? Or is it a result of, you know, oxidation, you know, the oxidation of these lipoproteins or inflammation or heightened blood sugar metabolic distress endothelial injury i think you know these are all this is an this is an important conversation to have and you know all

Starting point is 00:49:12 all i know is um you know if you take a food focused approach and you avoid you know ultra processed foods this idea that lipoproteins are inherently atherogenic to me, doesn't really stand to reason in the sense that our bodies produce it. You know, similar to like blood glucose, like we do need a certain amount of sugar in our blood. And it's okay for your sugar to rise and fall. Yeah, sure. Yeah. At what point does that become pathologic? You know, it's like our brains produce amyloid beta you know is there what's the reason for it well it turns out if if you if you have a certain viruses in your brain you know we can actually see amyloid beta accumulate around these viruses which you know are doing so to perform a protective response so everything in the body i think is has probably you know past millennia of

Starting point is 00:50:04 natural selection for a reason. I don't think our livers are necessarily trying to kill us. Right. And, you know, that would be weird. Yeah, that would be a bad design by our creator. Yeah, yeah. So so I, you know, I don't know. On the other hand, you know, you do get, to be fair, you do get people in the carnivore community that are walking around with extremely high levels of, you know, you do get, to be fair, you do get people in the carnivore community that are walking around with extremely high levels of, you know, total cholesterol, ApoB, LDL. And we don't have the data to say that that's safe. I know that there are certain people in that community who are also scientists who are looking to confirm, you know, this notion of the lean mass hyper responder and all that stuff. And I think that that's all really important research.

Starting point is 00:50:42 And I'm happy to see it, you know. But everybody today on, of course, on social media is very polarized. It's like either, you know, it's like either our cholesterol needs to be like, it's something that we shouldn't think about at all. And it's fine if it's like up in the 500s, right, or that we should be like vegans, you know, and aspire to have the the total cholesterol of a newborn, which I think is BS as well, right, you know, so the truth is obviously as it, as it usually is somewhere in the middle, I'm sure. And, um, and I hope that, that within my lifetime we could, we could finally settle the score.

Starting point is 00:51:12 Yeah. Where do you fall on things like, um, fasting for brain health? I think there was a lot of excitement about that. Um, you know, 10,15 years ago and I think a lot of that interest was spurred by Mark Mattson at the NIH or yeah he's at the NIH who did a lot of these early basic science studies with mice and he found that fasting led to increased neurogenesis and and BDNF expression. And, but I think, I think, um, newer studies in humans have, have kind of shown that, well, there are no really long-term studies. So it's, it's a lot of, it's like mechanistic speculation. So I don't think that, you know, if you, if you enjoy fasting, I think

Starting point is 00:51:57 there are certain benefits to it. I think there are definitely benefits to heating our own natural circadian rhythms with regards to food you know meal timing and the like so i think there's there's certainly value there um but i don't necessarily think it's like the silver bullet against brain aging that a lot of people right make it out to be you know um yeah there there was a study that actually i don't know i didn't i don't remember the details of the study but, but I don't think that it found as strong of an upregulation of BDNF as a response to fasting in humans that most would have expected based on the kind of pop. Yeah. In intermittent fasting and fasting in general.

Starting point is 00:52:39 Yeah. I think fasting is good in the sense that when you're fasting, you're not eating. And so many of us today struggle with weight. I think eating earlier meals, time-restricted eating, I think makes sense from a circadian standpoint. I agree with that. There's cardiometabolic benefits to that. Better blood pressure management, blood sugar management, all that stuff. But if you don't enjoy it, if it's not feasible to your lifestyle, I don't think it's something that you have to feel like you're missing out on.

Starting point is 00:53:07 So whole foods diet, which I wholly agree with you, not particularly avoiding grass-fed, grass-finished meats and pasture-raised eggs, fatty fish, free-range chicken. I often say it's not the food, it's the distance from the food to the table. So I'm curious where you fall on the, you know, the seed oil debate. And then I want to get into some supplementation with you as well. Yeah. Oh, man, you really want to go there? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 00:53:42 Well, yeah, so I don't bring them into my house. I think that there is a reasonable cause for concern around their consumption. Much of the conversation seems to focus on these proximal biomarkers that are related to chronic disease. But the evidence is kind of all over the place. You mean pro-inflammatory markers? Yeah, like how they affect blood lipids, for example, like LDL cholesterol. They're sort of given this universal green light because relative to saturated fats, seed oils tend to lower LDL cholesterol.

Starting point is 00:54:17 So the medical and nutritional orthodoxy basically gives them a green light for that reason. They seem to be perfectly healthy because they lower LDL. But I think questions still remain about what do they do to the quality of the LDL? You know, an LDL particle isn't an LDL particle. You have small dense, you have big and fluffy, you've got, you know, LDL particles that are tugging around these, you know, oxidized fatty acids. Does that make them more atherogenic?

Starting point is 00:54:42 I mean, there's some evidence that suggests that they might be. The observational data on seed oils is confounded i think i agree you know but i think a lot of that is biased too i mean probably very much like these alzheimer's yeah like funded by the industry yeah well you know and i i think that i think a lot of um influencers and whatever on social media today will will make them out to be the sole smoking gun and do everything from like, you know, I don't think that they drive obesity independent of the calories that they offer, for example. their their vulnerability to oxidation and the generation of these ox byproducts of of oxidation like certain aldehydes and things like that when they're heated and reheated um and i also think from a long-term like brain health standpoint from tissues and and organs outside of of of the field of lipidology like from a brain health Right. There's still lots of questions about how the overconsumption of these oils over a lifetime, what those, you know, those oils are doing to our brain health.

Starting point is 00:55:54 And there was a paper published by Taha. He's a UC Davis researcher, single author paper, but it presented some, the title of the paper is linoleic acid, good or bad for the brain. And it presents, I think, some really important questions about what the chronic overconsumption of these fats is doing from a brain health standpoint. There was one randomized control trial that found that when people reduce their consumption of these oils, they saw reduced migraine frequency, which is a neurovascular neuroinflammatory event. And, and and you know so uh like do i do i freak out when i consume them when i'm eating out at restaurants yeah because they are everywhere they are everywhere yeah but i just i make an

Starting point is 00:56:33 effort not to bring them into my house yeah and i do the same yeah and so yeah i do think that it's it's reasonable to to be skeptical about them. They're highly marketed. They have only been in the human food supply for the past 50 or so years. They've been heavily marketed as healthy. So there's healthy user bias. The observational research tends to show that people who consume them have better health, counterintuitively, right?

Starting point is 00:57:03 But polyunsaturated fats and even linoleic acid are present in some of the healthiest foods that we have access to, nuts and seeds and things like that, fish. I don't think polyunsaturated fats are bad. I think they're great. It's when extracted from the food matrix that normally protects those fats, those vulnerable fatty acids from oxidation and damage, that then those oils, I think, those fats become a concern. But observational research, I mean, even grain and seed oils, they're marketed as healthy. You go to the supermarket, they have the red heart healthy- They're not baby formulas. I think it's actually a requirement, if I'm not mistaken, in the United States to actually have seed oils in baby formula. Right. So people who use them and who avoid meat, they might be more likely to take a multivitamin. They might be eating fish and nuts and seeds more regularly. So I think the observational

Starting point is 00:57:57 data is confounded. I think the randomized control trials are typically too short term and they're a little all over the place. I mean, there's debate about, you know, for example, this the Minnesota coronary survey, and that's the big one. Yeah, that's a big one, people will say that while they were consuming seed oils, and they had a higher incidence of mortality, but back then the seed oils, you know, they would use trans, they had trans fats in the mix as well. And we know that those are now poisonous. Yeah. But I just think from a precautionary standpoint principle, you're better off reducing your consumption. And there's way more evidence anyway, for extra virgin olive oil. Yeah, like the Mediterranean dietary pattern.

Starting point is 00:58:33 It's extra virgin. Oh, yeah, primary fat, the mind diet only makes a recommendation for extra virgin olive oil. So this idea that seed oils are beneficial, I just think it doesn't make any sense. Now, there's like certain seed oils I think are healthy, like sesame seed oil, which are basically the result of pressed sesame seeds. They don't go through the refining, the bleaching, the deodorization, all these steps. Hexane, sodium hydroxide all all of those steps and what about um you know where do you fall on the supplementation um bandwagon is there any in your opinion um must-haves i mean what do you supplement with if anything i i believe that people should supplement for deficiency not just sort of the sake of supplementing throwing in you know a lot of great named things yeah um

Starting point is 00:59:25 but i've become a believer in nmn and resveratrol and you know and other supplements over the years because in our clinic system we've been able to see the impact that those have had directly on certain markers in the blood um and for me even though that in is that is a large data set, you know, some could argue it's anecdotal. We've still seen enough of it that, you know, I'm a fan of certain supplementation, but I'm curious where you fall on the supplementation bandwagon. If there's any like must-haves for the brain. For sure. I mean, I, you know, I supplement regularly with protein powder. I love creatine.

Starting point is 01:00:02 I think, you know, there's a lot of evidence now creatine from a, from both a physical performance standpoint, metabolic health standpoint, cognitive health. Uh, it's very much worth your while. I think generally to supplement with creatine. I mean, if you have a medical condition, check with your doctor, but it's, it's very safe. Um, and not inexpensive. I mean, it's not like one of those things that's going to break your budget. I'm a huge fan of astaxanthin, which is a marine carotenoid, which is actually one of the few compounds that showed efficacy in the National Institutes of Health's interventions testing program. So it actually led to an increase in lifespan for mice, but it's a mammalian aging model and a very heterogeneous

Starting point is 01:00:47 group of mice by about 10 percent um really great for brain health uh cardiovascular health joint health so i'm a huge fan of astaxanthin i've been taking that for the past 15 years um magnesium i think is great most of us are that too yeah magnesium deficient yeah it's like d3 deficiency it's it's a i mean we're talking about a pandemic i mean those are yeah those are two that we are pandemically low end yeah um exactly trying to think i'm not like i'm not i don't like over supplement but i but those are kind of like the basics um fish oil i'm a big believer in fish oil yeah not taking too high a dose but taking you know i take about a gram to a gram and a half a day good epa dha fish oil um you know i'm a huge fan of that too i mean again if you get back to the essentials essential amino acids essential fatty

Starting point is 01:01:36 acids there are certain ones if you don't get you a die the problem is most of us are not getting enough of the right ones and then we're getting them out of ratio and i completely agree with you that nature has a way of presenting foods in the community in which they should exist you know um like fructose gets a really really bad rap and people are like well there's fructose and blueberries you should need blueberries um but there's glucose there's glucose but you know there seems to be some evidence when they they're consumed together, they have a different impact on the insulinogenic response than just if you were to take fructose or high fructose corn syrup, which is a non-naturally highly concentrated product. And we know what happens when you have high amounts of high fructose corn syrup. And so I'm in full agreement with you on the,

Starting point is 01:02:26 on that diet. And then what is, what is a day in the life of you look like, like a, you know, diet exercise? Are you, do you use any modalities? Are you, would you consider yourself a biohacker using any red lights or i mean i guess kind of but uh maybe a more low-tech biohacker um yeah i like that yeah i'm a bit lower mini biohacker yeah yeah i'll tell you actually i've actually become a lot more low-tech as time's gone on that's how you say that just like i mean like when i say low-tech sunlight grounding breathwork you know we don't have a cold punch here. I jumped in the pool out there. I'll give you my top three biohacking tools that I have in my house.

Starting point is 01:03:08 Here we go. Here they come, guys. Top three biohackers. Yeah. So number one is a mattress cooling pad. That actually has dramatically improved my sleep. I'm a huge fan of having a mattress cooling pad. Eight sleep. I use an eight sleep.

Starting point is 01:03:19 That's what I have. Yes. I'm a huge fan of that too. I wake up sweaty without one typically. And it's just great. I find that both my deep end REM is elongated. Like the amount of time that I spend in bed. And I post my sleep scores all the time and just wanted to park on that subject for a second.

Starting point is 01:03:41 Because there's so many sleep hacks, right? That one has seemed to really work for me too. It also reduces your like air conditioning costs. So there's an ancillary benefit. Yeah. Mine are bigger in Miami than yours are in LA. So I have a little less sympathy for you. The second would be that I got recently

Starting point is 01:04:01 an under desk treadmill. So like an under desk, like a standing desk treadmill. Really? Yeah. That's a Ben Greenfield move right there. $300 on Amazon. That thing will get you shredded. I mean, because, you know, walking on a treadmill, first of all, walking is the ultimate fat burning exercise.

Starting point is 01:04:16 It doesn't increase hunger. Very low impact. Torches calories and easy to walk while doing other things. Right. Unlike other cardio i think it's the most underrated exercise in the world i totally agree yeah it's incredible um and so but you know like walking on a treadmill at the gym or even walking around like outside first of all in la it's kind of hard to do but um it's it can be boring but when i'm work sitting working

Starting point is 01:04:41 at my standing desk or even you know know, watching a podcast or what have you, I can pass 30 minutes easy on it with, with the under desk treadmill. It's such a small monetary investment for what I think is a really big win. Um, I've, I've like been shocked to look down at my walking treadmill and see that 45 minutes has passed because 45 minutes in in the gym environment which is which is prior to owning oh it's you feel every minute of it you feel every minute yeah yeah yeah everyone is gonna be over yeah um so i think that's great and then my third top biohacking tool this is really low tech is a digital kitchen food scale. I think that is everybody should have a digital kitchen food scale. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:28 It's the best way to audit like portion sizes, both in terms of like making sure that you're getting the amount of protein you're hitting your protein target every day. I think it's incredible. So you throw a little cellophane on it, pop your meats, whatever on there. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:41 Or, or, or anything, just making sure it's a way of um establishing portion control where that might otherwise be difficult it just provides a little bit of a mental barrier for for example i'll give you like a perfect like real world practical application i went to costco the other day and i bought one of my favorite indulgences a huge bag because you know at costco everything's like massive oversized right huge bag of dried mango

Starting point is 01:06:02 okay right yeah you're i could after my wife's heart. She loves it. I could eat that entire bag. I could sit in one sitting 5000 calories of dried mango. If I pulled out all the stops and just let myself go. But, but you know, there are no they're not they're not portioned out. Right. So for me, and it's shocking, actually, when you realize when you do an audit when you and you can only do this with a digital food scale is way more accurate than measuring, you know, portions by volume. A 40 gram serving of dried mango is 140 calories. I can eat a 40 gram serving of dried mango in one mouthful. Right. So it just it kind of opens your eyes to the fact that like, you know, how, how rapidly and how calorie dense certain foods can be and it's just it's just one it's just a little bit more friction sometimes to going back for that second portion you know so i'll portion it out 40 grams of dried mango and that's that actually seems pretty it's low tech but i mean it's it's pretty quick too right um you know this isn't like super advanced meal prep and planning this is like hey i'm you

Starting point is 01:07:07 know as i pull it out of the fridge i just can it can tap the scale and i get an idea of my portion size okay i kind of like that guardrail yeah if you want to indulge in like you know the occasional ice cream here and there you want to measure it by the it's the it's the most accurate way of um measuring your portion size, but I'll even do it with protein powder. If I know that I, if I have a bit, if I buy protein powder in bulk, which I do to economize, you know, and I want to get ingest 25 grams of protein, well, 25 grams of protein is 30 grams of this protein powder.

Starting point is 01:07:36 So it's great to be able to have a way to just measure that out. And, you know, I would have scoffed prior to actually owning one, right? It's such a simple, stupid little tool, you know, it's $10 on Amazon, but it's actually, I use it multiple times a day, every single day. Yeah. It's funny. I mean, I have some really low tech devices that I use for sleep that I can't live without now, you know, just a soft sleep mask.

Starting point is 01:07:57 And I don't know if it's that sort of cocoon feeling that I have like, but, you know, blocking the light out and my sleep scores are demonstratively better when I block all the light you know because sometimes we're at Airbnb and the curtains don't close all the way you know in a hotel and the the light comes in and how photosensitive we are to light you know and in the mornings when it you know it hits your lids it's starting it's starting to wake you up I find that I sleep a lot better with some of these those are great yeah yeah low low tech devices um you know even when i remember we'll do mouth tape i notice my hrv does improve when i use when i when i do mouth tape but i also don't have any breathing issues if you got nasal issues it's

Starting point is 01:08:39 to be the worst thing but um but if you have clear nasal passages i do notice a little uptick in my above my baseline my hrv does improve when i when i mouth tape so i'm i'm with you on a lot of these lower tech devices i also have like the big fancy red light beds and everything and i and i sort of sabotaged myself the other day because i you know we have a little spot out in colorado very very humble one bedroom log cabin and And it's completely off the grid, you know, like solar fed electricity, glacier fed spring water. And when I go out there, I go for these ruck walks in the morning and I get back. And every single time I get back to the house, it's, it strikes me how amazing I feel. I'm like, I feel like I, like I took a limitless

Starting point is 01:09:23 bill or like I just won the lottery. And so I'm like, I like this I took a limitless bill. Like I just won the lottery. And so I'm like, I like this more than any of the fancy stuff I have in Miami. You know, I just sort of blew up my line of business. But, you know, I feel better doing that than I do, you know, the daily red light beds and, you know, even the cold plunging and all that, which I'm a huge fan of. You know, just like a ruck walk in the woods. Oh, yeah. At 10,000 feet on a cool day. And I'm a huge fan of, um, you know, just like a ruck walk in the woods at 10,000 feet on a cool day. Um, and I'm a little uncomfortable on the walk and I'm a little bit cold and, and I'm winded cause I'm at 10,500 feet, but I get back and I'm like,

Starting point is 01:09:56 I feel amazing. You know? Um, so I, I, I think, you know, I, I really identify with your message because a lot of it is getting us back to the basics, you know, and not chasing the so exotic things. And were there any takeaways for you from the documentary that you did on the journey with your mom that we didn't cover? What were some of the big takeaways for you besides corruption in our food supply and our research? Yeah, there's, I mean, you know, for one, one thing that really shocked me was the risk that excessive surgeries actually can have on brain health. My co-director in the project, Chris Newhard, who was the editor of the film, he actually, his mother-in-law was cognitively

Starting point is 01:10:53 normal and went into a surgery to fix something with her hip, I think, and came out essentially with dementia requiring around the clock care. Wow. So you just want to be careful with... Unnecessary surgeries. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So you just want to be careful with unnecessary surgeries. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And anything that really think that's anesthesia related? I think possibly. Yeah. I'm not 100% sure. You know, it's also interesting. And this is this is another thing that that is surprising is that there's still a lot, there are a lot of aspects of modern life that threaten the brain that have not yet been acknowledged. EMFs? Yeah, I mean, possibly, you know, I don't, I don't know. But I know that, for example, the latest Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention

Starting point is 01:11:38 identified 14 modifiable risk factors, right? And that's up from 12 in 2020. And so, you know, you just have to think about the fact that four years from now, we might have 16. Eight years from now, we might have 20, you know, so there's still and just because something is has been identified as a modifiable risk factor today doesn't mean that it wasn't putting your brain at risk yesterday. So that's why I think it's always smart to practice the precautionary principle, which they've adopted in Europe. You know, they'll put a product on the market and consider it essentially guilty or they'll consider a new chemical or a new fangled product guilty until proven innocent. Got to go through way more hoops than it does here in the United States, or have ingredients here in the United States, where you'll find the exact same product over in Europe, that has a much cleaner, seemingly a much cleaner

Starting point is 01:12:29 ingredients. Yeah, yeah. Because they practice their what's called a precautionary principle, their their regulatory bodies don't seem to be as in bed as ours do with, you know, the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry. And so I think it's always smart to, you know, you have to, we have to get back to trusting our instincts and practicing this precautionary principle and using common sense, you know, because science doesn't have all the answers. It's really important to, yeah, to just, I think, be mindful of that. Like there's still, there's a huge category of drugs called anticholinergics, which we know increase risk for dementia, like a lot of these antihistamine drugs over the counter. Well, they speed cognitive decline.

Starting point is 01:13:12 They speed. Yes. Yeah. I mean, and how oxymoronic is it that Alzheimer's patients on anticholinergic drugs are having accelerated cognitive decline. I mean, that seems like the most oxymoronic outcome of a drug choice. It's like the SSRI's link to increased suicidal ideation. Ideation? Ideation, yeah. Ideation, yeah. You made up two words during the podcast, so I deserve one. I'll give you license you know but but um and you know a lot of a lot of very heinous crimes even violent crimes are done

Starting point is 01:13:53 you know on uh by people are on ssri's because it sort of takes away their their ability to feel empathy and um um you know even there's recent school shooting in Atlanta, they said this kid, 14-year-old kid was, you know, a pump full of SSRIs. But, you know, here we are with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to try to manage a depressive state and you get an outcome of, you know, a side effect of crushing depression and increased suicidal ideation. I mean, that, that seems of all of the drugs to have that side effect, it would be a different drug with that side effect, but not the drug that's actually targeting depression. You know, it's like obesity being caused by ozempic, you know, it's kind of so oxymoronic. Obesity being caused by ozempic deficiency. Yeah, ozempic deficiency. You know, that's one that I use a lot. I'm like, you know, listen, if you have ADHD, you're not deficient in Adderall.

Starting point is 01:14:50 You know, if you're obese, you weren't deficient in Ozempic. No, I think it's a very fair way of looking about these kinds of conditions. I mean, I'm not anti-drugs. Like I think, you know, I have a family member who takes Ozempic because his, you know. We use it in our clinical practice. We have had thousands of patients successfully on it i'm not i'm not anti but they they should always be a last line of defense you know like i i'm very drug uh like conservative like conservative when it comes to drugs but like i i have like low back issues you know and i'll occasionally take like yeah i'm grateful that i

Starting point is 01:15:20 have a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory as a get out of jail free card. Yeah. When I need it, you know, like the turmeric and curcumin can only take me so far sometimes, you know, but, but they should be a last line of defense. I agree with you. Um, well, Max, this has been amazing. Um, you know, I, I'm, I'm definitely going to continue to follow your journey. I, I would encourage everybody to, um, to, to check out your, your documentary, um, for my audience that wants to know more about you or get a hold of your book, I mean, how did they find you? Your podcast? Yeah, thank you, Gary. So I host a podcast called The Genius Life. Which I've been on. Yeah. Great episode. We put up episodes twice a week. And I've written three books. Genius Foods

Starting point is 01:16:02 is my first one. It's really like a care manual for the human brain. So if you want to do a deep dive into any of these topics, grab that. And then Little Empty Boxes at littleemptyboxes.com. It's my why. So anybody who's ever had a loved one with dementia will find, I think, incredible solace in the film. They'll find some answers. They'll feel less alone. And we've got incredible reviews for it.

Starting point is 01:16:27 I'm very grateful. And it's a very personal film. So make sure you have your tissue box close by. You know, I end every podcast by asking all my guests the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to this question. And that is, you know, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Well, I like that. Yeah. It's similar on my podcast. I ask, what does living a genius it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Well, I like that. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:16:45 It's similar on my podcast. I ask, what does living a genius life mean to you? I remember when you asked me that and I was like, damn it, why didn't I actually prepare for this? So you didn't prepare either. So here we go. No. What is living being an ultimate human?

Starting point is 01:16:59 I think it's somebody who lives with integrity and open mind curiosity who does the best they can to um use their tools their skills their gifts because everybody has gifts everybody was given you know was given a handful of gifts um to reduce suffering in the world i think that's um i think that's important i think life is suffering in many ways nobody escapes it and um and yeah i think doing your part to you know that doesn't mean that you're not going to piss some people off along the way because sometimes you have to make difficult decisions but um but to do your best to reduce suffering in the world you know wow to do your best to reduce suffering well that's amazing max we're definitely going to have you back thank you for coming on the ltv thank you i appreciate you so much and as always

Starting point is 01:17:48 guys that's just science

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 101. Max Lugavere: The 16 Year Alzheimer's Research Scandal Exposed

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