#709 - Max Lugavere - The Terrifying Link Between Diet & Mental Health
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guess today is max lug via. He's a health and science journalist, filmmaker, pod caster and an author.

To maintain peak health nursing a healthy mind and body is key. Simple daily habits and foods can making massive difference to limiting and even reversing cognitive decline as you age. And today we get to go through some of maxes favorites. Expect to learn why california is banning skittles, how worried you should be about artificial sweeteners, tactics for how to kill your sweet tooth while raising your baby vegan might be child abuse, the biggest issue with the demonization of red meat, the specific ways you can prevent dementia from happening, and much more. But now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome max log via.

Gavin newsome signed bill four one eight, which will prohibit any food containing dominated vegetable loyal patasse, an roma proper paraben and red day three californica becomes the first us state to ban skettles and twelve thousand additional products for cancer causing additives. What's going on?

It's hard to uh, take a firm stance on this because on the one hand, I do think it's largely virtue signaling and perhaps a bit of fear mongers. California is kind of known for doing that. A lot of products that are sold in california, a for example, like coffee and a product as innocuous as instant coffee has to come with the warning label that IT contains a critiqued a compound that in virat least is is a known car senate, right? You can like find this on instant coffee sold in california.

Um it's not uncommon to be in a parking garage, for example see a sign in uh by the elector staircase that the by being in the parking area are going to be exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer and that are to radic birth uh defect causing so california is known for being a bit of hype. Contract state um and uh and so that's what I think a lot of this comes from. On the other hand, I am i'm not a fan of big government. I'm a fan of small government. And less regulation is opposed to more.

But I do kind of think that where regulation is perhaps warranted is in with regard to the food supply, the food system because if you let the market decide, you end up with things like mountain do flavoured hot dogs, which we've got iron or yeah I mean, it's unclear whether not these were real or computer generated but I mean, you see all the time now there is like all kinds of crazy products in the supermarket that are just you know their soul intent seemingly is to hope consumers onto this addictive, hyper palatable, hyper calorie dense product um you see in fast food all the time. I mean, i'm not sure what country I was in, but I was walking around and there was like a glaze donut hamburger that some mega chain was offering somewhere. Um so like if you let the market decide the market is ultimately unica or to what the people want and people don't have, like stop gaps, the roads lead .

back to horrible tanf stic CS or something. Yes.

there you go. Exactly those those kinds of products. So I do think that a little bit of regulation, uh, is important. And I think this this perhaps is this step in the right direction because we know that the food supply is essentially toxic. We live in the world now, or seventy three percent of items in your average supermarket are ultra process.

This is according to a new study that came out that use a machine learning algorithm, looked at all the products available to your average consumer in your average supermarket. And the vast majority of them are ultra process, which we know has been linked to every poor health outcome imaginable these days. So you know when when banning or at least regulating these kinds of products, which at the end of the day, ultimately are proxies for ultra processed foods like you're not going to find red die forty right in something that mom cooks.

I think that's a positive thing. But again, califonia is known for fear mongering. I don't necessarily know how evidence based the the the the fear that a lot of a lot of people have towards these products.

Um are you know the the recent aspire m controversy was a good sort of example of that. Um I don't have a dog in the fight. With regard to ascertain you know there's you can find the equivalent evidence that diet sodas or actually very helpful with regard to weight loss. You can find observational evidence that people who consume more diet sodas have higher risk obesity, higher risk of you know other negative heart health outcomes. But, you know, the world health organization came out and said that there was a possible human car cino en, which the date on that isn't really so black.

And i've had so many conversations about asper time over the last six months since that world health organization here came out.

Some people have said, most people have said at the rest for over blown yeah, the concern doesn't matter unless you're taking eight thousand cokes a day or something that the risk is a small then a lot of people say, well, a small chance of cancer risk increase IT isn't a good thing then other people have said, while the reduction in weight from switching from sugar calories fc drinks to non calorie aspartame drinks, think about the difference that you get now in terms of weight loss and the downstream benefit. Like what's your read overall? How worried should people be about artificial sweeten?

Yeah, I don't I don't think the people should be that worried. I this is where I think the the limitations of data come in and you have to you have to arrive at a set of values about these sorts of products.

And for me personally, I avoid artificial swetnam because I abide by what is sometimes referred to as the precautionary principle, you know and you might say it's sort of like borderline appeal to nature false, but I think that the last time of food or product has been um in the marketplace, the more skepticism, the more cautious we should reserve for that product. And yes, aspirant am is one of the most studied compounds in existence really well, particularly with regard to consumable product, right? But there is also a publication bias.

It's a heavily commercialized product. And so for me, I choose to avoid like artificial sweeteners. I don't think that consuming them, particularly in reasonable doses, is is going to be a health concern.

And certainly for people who are on weight loss diets. And IT is the sort of the one singular vice that allows them to Better adhere to that diet. I think that's a positive thing. Um and ultimately were exposed to car senate gans, innumerable car senates on a daily basis. I think ultimately how to prevent cancer is to to stack the odds in your favor by building your own resilience, your own robustness with exercise, with an anti oxide rich diet um and like so if a little bit of ascertain sneakin here and there, which I personally avoid, but again, if if this is something that happens to be your vice and you're consuming IT in reasonable doses, as I think probably fine.

what is your advice to somebody like me who has quite a strong sweet tooth and has managed to condition myself into eating a savery meal and then looking for something just that's like a little finisher at the end, right? And a lot of the time I can make this work with blue ries or asperse.

Sometimes they're not in the fridge, sometimes it's so a more deliveries and rusper's, what what do you go to? I have a sweet of craving, and I need to sociate that. But I don't kill myself.

Yeah why do you? Why do you go? And what you advise people to go.

you even that he asked me the same question. Di, yeah is like.

so it's it's the british thing oh, maybe it's the fact that were both from like super working class backgrounds and like we've been given this set of zero some scarcity mentality around sweet things. That is a tree, I don't know.

Yeah, I think great. Look, I have a sweet youth too. I think we're programmed for that, right? I mean, sweet is for one of our hundred gather ancestors, the only time they would encounter the sensation of sweet, sweet taste. I would be when fruit was finally ride during the summer season.

And I would signal to your body to store fat, right? To cause an elevation of insurance flood your muscles with stored energy for later use, right? So we're hardwired to enjoy sweet in, particularly today when sweet is combined with salty.

When it's combined with fatty, you get this hyper palatable combination sometimes refer to as the dori to effect, right? IT takes, uh, uh, food that was previously an ingredient, and IT turns IT into this, this concoction that pushes your brain to a bliss point beyond which self control is seemingly impossible. right? Gone through that.

I i've gone to my freezer, taking out the point of ice cream, only aspiring to have a spoon. Ford two. Before, you know, I knew that I was looking at the bottom of the pint. So I mean it's kind of the problem with modern foods um but ultimately I I think you know with sweet there are a number of non cleric readers on the market that I think are relatively safe.

I mean alive is a naturally derived sweetener that I and i've no commercial affiliation with any producer or anything like that, but there seems to be some evidence that you might even be might even actually have health benefits associated with IT. Um I think a river tall is great. A river tall is A A sugar alcohol, but among the sugar, alcohol is a more well tolerated.

Some of them can draw water into the gut and have like a relaxing effect, which you don't want. It's like, here's a chocolate bar sweetened with multiple sorbitol. Oops, are going to get diary a to be more than half the bar but but a rather IT tall is generally very well tolerated.

No one's gna go and buy a dress where tall and like, throw that the thing like what's the food? Give me some food. Say shame.

Well, fruit I think is great. Um look ice cream you know there there's observational evidence it's like mind blowing but that people who consume ice cream fruit ver reason they seem to have Better .

healthy to be a type of ice cream. It's it's not going to be no process yeah get IT from a ice cream trucks thing yeah no. I mean.

if you think about that, humans been making nice room for quite some time and the ingredients, and I am not saying that ice cream is healthy, by the way, just to make that perfectly here clear. And this is a perfect example of work. Correlation doesn't equal causation necessarily. But um but yeah ice cream I mean you can buy like you know ice cream mid in the traditional way and it's eyots right it's it's heavy cream which is actually heavy cream is a great source of vitamin k two like there's nutrient in in ice cream so you can find a low sugar version of IT.

You let's just take that there are nutrient in ice cream. That's all I needed to actually all I want to. But yeah I think IT makes me think reflecting on my own set of dieting habits, that a sweet craving that i've created in myself, sometimes after I have a big meal, unless i'm very disciplined, that can lead me down A A very dangerous path. You mentioned about kind of this unique blend of particular types of ingredients, particular types of flavors. Have you ever seen hunt to gather a tribes trying cheesecake for the first time?

no. Is that a thing?

These videos of IT on the internet wo so they give people who've never had processing oos before. And you think about cheese's cake from a taste design, uh, ora fiction. You familiar with that? no.

So orientation is the way that food textures are designed to make them more palette ble. We don't really think about this. You're right.

Because the obsession is with what's in the food. But the way that IT feels in your mouth is a big determinant of your enjoyment of IT. A necessary IT would have been very, very read to have found something that had both crunchy and fly. And if you think about some of the most pilot able food oros, you know, you've got this sort of crush and then fluff french fries, same thing again, chees cake. You've got that, but really dialed up with this perfect ratio of carbs and fat and sugar yeah, there's tight across the top if you've got like a little fruit compote typing and you just get this like blast of this orchestra right in mouth.

Give you to the time to gather the stripes and the faces just, you know, someone that just childe leads right for the last decade and and didn't meet that's being cked in variable like qualities uh and yet you realize how hyper Normal the stimuli of the foods that we're eating out. And this is the biggest lesson that I took for me. And it's really, really useful for me that one of the main problems with ultra process foods is not just what's in them, but IT is the fact that eating to society is so tough to do because IT is built to push you past society.

Exactly yeah super well said that um you know I used to be more admitted and this is an area where i've evolved. I used to be more interested in what is the what is the more optimal mix of cards and fat for a for example, a weight loss diet or even for long gevalia. I think now where the science sort sort of um evolved and also where my thinking is evolved as well, is that it's really it's about food quality at the end of the day.

And ultimately ultra process this term ultra process which was devised coined by in the the nova neutron profiling system, which was devised in the amErica so people can go look at up. But there's actually a definition around what IT takes to be class is an ultra processed food. Um it's a good screening tool. It's not even necessarily the best diagnostic tool because certainly there are some ultra processor oos which are quite healthy.

You know you can take like a legume based pasta which is uh and certainly a processed food might not necessarily be an ultra processed food, but processing is a continue and certainly there are some ultra cess foods that are healthy and only like a dark chocolate bars is fairly progress at this point and it's and IT can be quite healthy. We know that co ao coco fans are really quite beneficial to you, but by and large, the vast majority of foods that americans today are consuming are ultra processed. And we know that these foods typically are very nutrient poor, so they're depleted of any real nutritional quality other than perhaps energy and and they are incredibly calorie dense and they are hybrid palatable, which makes them really difficult to um to moderate. So this uh seminal study published uh couple years ago now two or three years ago, funded by the n that when people eat to eat ultra process foods to society, they end up consuming a calorie surplus about five hundred additional calories.

And today in the united pound of weight week, thousand five hundred calories a week, a one of way game week.

precisely. So and you know your average american today, that is largely what your average american is doing everyday. They're consuming sixty percent of their calories from these ultra process foods in the U.

K. A little bit lowered, about fifty percent. Yes, you guys are doing a little bit Better than we are over here, but american children are consuming seventy percent ultra proceed foods and it's only trending up.

It's like it's not getting Better. It's getting worse. And we're now seeing connections between ultra process food like dose responses between ultra process food consumption and all cause mortality and risk for cancer and risk for I mean, dementia, even depression.

Depression is link to ultra process foods.

Yeah I mean, we're at the very time of the iceberg with this in in in this field, which is being called nutritional psychiatry, looking at the role that diet plays mental health. But there have been a number of associational studies at this point linking poor diet to worse mental health outcomes like clinker, depression and the like.

The questioned has always been the direction of causality, right? So depressed people, obviously, like when i'm depressed, i'm reaching for comfort foods, right, which tend to be ultra can eating more ultra sess food to actually create symptoms of depression. That's been the sort of looming in question. Well, we now have randomised clinical evidence like imperor clinical data suggesting that when people on junk food diet clean up their diets and adopting more mediterranean style approach, which the mediterranean diet is lotted in the western literature is being the ideal human diet. I think it's one of probably many ideal diet, is just a less process diet at the end of the day.

And a diet that's more palatable to that is palatable to western pilots that when people adopt a more uh meditation in in style diet, they see they see a emission from depression three times the at at three times the rates has compared to standard of care, which was shown in the smile trial, which is sort one of these like IT was the first and still highly regarded, highly cited uh trials in the field of nutritional psychiatry run of the foot moods center at dc university in australia. So yeah, so food, I mean, food is medicine and that and and depression has been linked to inflation tion. We know that inflation tion is we can modulate IT. You view our dies in our lifestyles, not for every this isn't the case for every person, but they're certainly a subset of the depressed population for whom inflation tion is likely playing a role.

And there's a feedback loop going on here, right? Like the fact that you don't know which direction the arrow of casuality is going in means that you could actually be snick yeah that we get depressed so we eat food which wasn't the way we feel, which wasn't the depression, which I remember so I have spoken about this on the show before. Throughly good bit of my twenties.

I thought I had like ambient depression that would creep up, up, and then I would break through the activation energy surface, and then I would go away again. And how depression would manifest for me as I would stay in bed for maybe you know two days at the time and I would refuse to get out of bed but I would eat and one of the things that I would do is I would comfort I get bench ah and they would be very sugary, very sort of just like comfort eating foods. And is the sensation that you get if you really pumped like like a couple of muffins for breakfast and a few slicing of pizer, whatever IT is that you want to order for mobiles or something, and there is a sensation you get, especially if you haven't moved, you haven't got out of bad, you haven't seen any sunlight.

And IT, presumably, is the information response. Why almost feels like your body sort of throbbing, like in a satisfactory, when your joint feel a little bit tight, you your brain feels very foggy. And then presumably of the other side of this absolutely huge glucose Spike, I was able to then, like, fall back asleep.

So I would do that, and i'd wake up, get food eats, feel like I like put netflix, ks, on a whatever cutts would be closed, wouldn't want to see anybody, you know, like meet the guy at the door that sounds like i'm getting my fucking and M D M A to come down here like he also came around, but he came around different times. And that would be, that would be part of my cycle of of of low mood ah and I absolutely facilitated IT and I I used food ultra process is highly palatable able food that Spike my blood sugar as uh uh a comfortable I did absolutely made me and he was the other thing. It's not just about what you eat.

And the way that IT makes you feel IT is the story that you tell yourself about the sort of person that you are having eaten that kind of food are right? And that is that's really the sort of ruminated narrative based I am a kind of person that does the X, Y, Z ad. That's what I think really sort of drove at home for me and made me feel like particularly OK unsatisfied with i'm like like I shouldn't be doing this.

I understand how important health and fantasies I go to the gym. I mean, good shit was a fucking commercial model for fifty years in the U. K. Like you shouldn't be lying in bed eating duffs, which is A A combination donat muffin that was created in the U. K.

There you go. yeah. So let the market decide.

All roads descend into the hell that is duffen. But yeah and you I think that comforting. But I in fact, that's something i'd love to know about from you.

Like what is IT? Have you got any idea why people comfort binge eat? Like what's going on there? Are they reaching for something that's like A A psychological a piece .

of tape to the psychological banded yeah I think no you you eat high sugar foods. There's A I mean can you can depress levels of cortisol which is like the stress warm um we know that people that are like for examples of fasting, you can I mean fasting as stress response, right? So sometimes when we're stressed out, we crave food because it's A A way of signaling to our biology that everything is okay because ultimately, food is a really important.

We've saw for the food scarce city issue but for a long time, I mean food was the primary um variable right that would indicate an like one of our ancestors successes or or ultimate demise right um whether not they they were able to print your food and we've done that. And now that sort of become the oub age sort of modernity is that, like, food is available constantly with the swipe of, you know, your finger on your APP, you can have whatever is your heart desires to arrive at your doorstep within fifteen minutes. So I think that that's certainly part of IT, also the associations that we have with these kinds of foods that maybe they evoke um you know our childhoods in a way like we reach for foods that remind d us of a more peaceful time in our lives when the stakes were perhaps a bit lower.

So I think I think there is a lot of different variables potentially I play, but um I think it's also really important to not to not stigmatize I mean emphatic logic ultimately being depressed because depression and stress are. Part of the course of being human, particularly today, I mean, we're living in to motus times, and inevitably all of us is going to encounter something in life that that service is a depressive stimulus. And i've been depressed in my life and I wasn't attributor to my diet. I been really depressed because of what was going on, for example, in my family life with everything that that my mom went through and you know the the journey that took me that has gotten me to this place. Um and so it's it's important to to not pathologies these kinds of Normal human emotions, which I think is really common and especially in our world where everything has become lately, all about optimization in the fifty hundred steps that you have to do every morning before you're morning morning coffee to optimize your day.

And yeah, I brought this up with with heba and yesterday I called IT the peril of over optimization. Have a friend who is a world class D. J. Who message and said, do love in the show, blah blah.

I have to say i'm starting to fall out of love with deegan because I watch a lot of goods, health, communication, podcasts on the internet, and every time that I D J stay up till four in the morning, I feel guilty about not hitting my morning, waking sacca dian rythm. So his love, his, his main passion in life, he is a feeling that become tonight, ed, because he has guilt around the gap between his potential optimized version and his realized optimised version. Do you do you see this is a trend among people?

Well, yeah I mean, certainly and i'm not an expert in disorder eating or eating, but um that is one of the what i've been able to clean from experts that have interacted with and ultimately people have suffered from disorder eating is that it's important to remove the the the morality from food. Um I think if you have a healthy relationship with food, it's important to have emperor's definitions around food like obviously a four year old might be able to look at you know uh uh a certain food item, a dolphin df in a dolphin yeah and and identify that that maybe not as beneficial as uh you a stock of broccoli or an egg or a piece of you grasped g grass finish b for something like that. So I think it's important to have to maintain definitions around food. We live in a time where seemingly it's impossible to define me anything um and uh and I think that's not helpful um but on the other hand, IT is really important to remove the shame that we feel around food because at the end of the day, one single food one single meal isn't in any way going to sway your biology the towards the direction of health or disease. It's about the dietary pattern is a whole don't .

live in the on average though, right? We don't have the perspective. What we have is what is the lead measure of the thing that i'm doing?

What is the story that I tell myself about that? Oh, my god, i'm such a piece of shit. This is exactly why such as such a person left you. This is exactly why you're not realizing your this is gonna the beginning of the end you know very much a scarcity fear mentality yeah I think .

that plays into IT. Yeah, it's a big problem. I've actually heard this referring to as holistic dragees syndrome, which is, wow w yeah, love that settling that .

is so good. Holistic arrangement syndrome.

Yeah, this sort of obsession with over optimization, with the understanding that where was the is this grass finished or is this grain finished? Can we check with the with that actually button that the chef cocked IT in because if there's a sea oil in this I tell you about that study uh, that I learned in the expectation affect David robbs since thing about glue coast no dude, I gluten sorry, 在 David Robin， the expectation effect, everyone should gone read his, but everyone should go read your book, genius foods, everyone should also going read a the expectation effect by David robs and really great science writer from the U. K.

And they bring people into the lab to try and work out what's going on with gluten intolerance. The gluten intolerance is needed. Ten ex, over the last thirty years.

I think the human biology hasn't changed that much. Maybe the diet, what landscape has changed a lot, but like gluten, gluten, right? And the intolerance shouldn't have changed that much.

They wanted to work out whether IT was due to, in some part, this expectation effect yeah, that people were hearing a lot of demonization about gluten. So they bring people into the lab, set them down. People that are in there do and do not have biological intolerances to group.

They've done the tests. They said everybody down, they give everybody the same meal. They tell everyone that it's got glutenin.

It's got no gluten ent. Within minutes, people are running to the toilet with the area that breaking out in hives. They've got inflamed tion theyve, got tension headings. No one, eight gluten, no one in the entire room, eight gluten, when you had all of the symptoms, well, of glidin tolerance .

manifesting wild.

So I can no sea boo .

effect yeah I mean, I I mean, i'm very much immersed in the wellness world and I the I love the wellness industry, but I will concede I think IT has done some damage um in the sense that there's a lot of this information now about what foods are beneficial, what foods are less so.

Um and and i've i've been i've drank the cooler at certain points my life where there was a time when I thought daily was sort of like an unclean food and uh that I wasn't ideal from a health standpoint. And now I mean, I am the biggest advocate of consuming daily. I think there is a great food if you if you tolerated, for example, you know there's like this I did a clean eating and somehow dairy y free.

It's glue and free. It's free of all the things right. And um and I think it's it's again really important to educate with nuance around these topics, because the the people are the the proportion of our population that is syria. Ac is non trivial.

It's one to two percent and a lot of people with syria um or i'm sorry, silly ac so you know one to two percent is silica and and there is this spectrum of symptoms that people will get that is that is thought to be attributed to uh gluten called non celia gluten sensitivity and that's thought to be, I mean that's a real thing and that's widely underdiagnosed. So a lot of people are do experience symptoms um when they injust gluten. And gluten is something that you know the the dose if you want to consider IT that in speaking in terms of a gluten as something that that is ultimately dose is higher than it's ever been.

I mean, we now we breed White to contain higher level of gluten because IT provides a mouth fuel that we enjoy its that gooey texture um and also we're eating wheat. I mean wheat is one of these like foundational ingredients to the ultra deluge of ultra processed foods that your average person is now consuming and mass it's weed with breakfast, lunch and dinner and wheat snacks all in between. So the dose of glued my image person is ingesting is massive. And i'm not saying that people need to avoid glue if there not explicitly sensitive to IT um but IT is a protein that humans don't properly break down um IT does stimulate a protein, a gut called zonules, which basically leads to uh increased premiership in a sort of increased um in passage of uh ingredients from the compounds from the loon of the god in through circulation, through what are typically tight junctions .

that are closed. All this is like icky yeah right ah yeah i've learned. So I had, I went to found in life in dallas and had a full body M R I brain and geographical T N G gram. A good microbial analysis. Dex ican baLance got everything for fall fall works and they can get back and they said you need to take ama colostrum colosseum yeah ah they said we need to just it's not bad but you you your good could be less leaky and that was the first time I thought I didn't even know what the fucker he got was I didn't know if IT was due to to a good nor anything else but yeah I think this like classroom an product generally gna be more a widely discussed um yeah so IT seems like overall gluten just something to probably keep in the back of your mind regardless of how well you think that .

you tolerate IT. Yeah and also um the is also the context in which in which the glue is being consumed, I think which also plays a role and is not something that's being disgust enough. So we live in a time of widespread, got this BIOS S S right again.

And not to keep harping on this because I don't want to sound like a broken record, but your average americans adult, your average american adults to die IT is by in large ultra process. One of the consequences of this is that most people aren't consuming adequate fiber now. Fiber is not an essential nutrient, but your average american today, I believe, consumed somewhere between five and fifteen grams of fiber a day, right? So fibre is one of these non essential nutrients.

But IT seems to be associated with positive health outcomes. IT seems to be associated with lower levels, inflation, tion, greater longevity and alike. And so there is a degree of resilience that we should all be able to cultivate with regard to our good health that we're simply not because, again, we're just we're eating predicated junk foods in the background with the background of a low fibre diet.

And so whether you know we might we should have the the resilience that IT takes to be able to just a protein like gluten um and and be alright with IT. Well, we're eating more lude than ever before in human history. We're eating less fiber than our ancestors likely ever consumed.

It's estimated there are fibre that are one hundred gather ancestors were consuming upwards of one hundred and fifty grams of fiber a day, which is like, you know, orders of magnitude more than we're consuming today. So it's like it's dose, it's the compound, it's the context. Everything matters. And so can you can .

you explain to me what's going on with these new products that are low net club? Like some cereals have this, some bars have this. What fucker y is happening on the back end? What are net clubs? And is there any is there any sort of wizard y going on which is hiding something in the deep dog animals of the ingredient profile?

Yeah very likely. Um so a lot of these you know net cards really are mainly a concern for people who are on a ei c diet. And um and I think it's really important to lay out up front. A lot of people are on the t genetic died because they think it's the ultimate die for weight loss. And if you preferred if a Kitty chen guy is a die that you are most easily able to adhere to, then by all means have at IT.

And I also think I have to add all these sort of nuances and disclaim ers because because hash tag science yes um and I think it's important um the kid to generic died I think is a really important diet particularly in the context of uh neurological conditions, epilepsy primarily but also I think now we're starting to see no a degenerate aid related conditions like alzheimer's disease in parkin's disease, the very low carbon hydrate diet and so net carbon hydrate come into play because people want to be able to consume processed foods while still allowing key genesis, right, still allowing for key tone generation by eating low cards. But I think the one of the problems with this is that a lot of these low carb foods are so high calories that it's like you might as well eat the original food, like unless you really have a medical reason for being in katou. Um and so a lot of the food manufacturer that produces kito foods, they achieve having loaded at cards despite having a ton of calories um by using either fibers which are inaccessible to us.

We were unable to uh humans unable to break down fiber into its into glue coast. So it's IT passes through the small test and basically a unadulterated orated and then IT becomes food essentially like a food sub straight for the bacteria that live in our large and testers um and this is true for fiber founded whole foods. What remains to be seen as whether or not these extracts that are now being used as sweeteners in these key ogen ic products function the same way? Um I think the jury is still out.

The fda, last I recall, is investigating a ingredients like tap yok fiber syrup and all those kind of chickering root fiber to see if they actually um do pass or the small testing on assisting later undigested, which would allow them to maintain that they are in fact fibers. But i've seen people because now there is this sort of trend of people wearing non diabetics wearing continues glue cos monitors. And i've heard reports from people that follow me that they'll eat a lot of these kedo products that allegedly have very few that carbs and regardless, they still see A A prey significant bike in their blood sugar, which would suggest that these fibers are not up to two fibers yeah um so at the end of the day, I think you know and this is again another area where where i've evolved, I used to buy default up for these fake foods with the fake fibers that have loan.

But now I think you ultimately, like a cookie is a cookie, right? Like ice cream is ice cream. So if you're going to reach for one of these foods and and you don't have a medical necessity for being in theraputics catos, you might as well offer the real thing, you know, and be cognizant of the overall calorie count of these products because at .

the end of the, I mean, their junk foods, what do you think of this trend of Young goals avoiding eating meat and protein in instead replacing IT with salads and smoothies and just ruffed for days? horrible.

Yeah so i'm i'm a huge advocate, an unapologetic advocate for unit. I think you know there's this push at the public health scale to um towards plant based diets and and also online you see obviously a lot of women in particular, I have embraced these diets. I think in part and i'm not obviously i'm not a woman. I don't know what their lived experiences like but what i've been able to clean for my friends and other experts in in this areas that a lot of women avoid meet in protein and they opt instead for salad because they think that it's going to make them smaller to eat that way to eat like a rabbit um and this is a big problem of a lot of women today have body image issues, I think perpetuated at least in part by social media. The fact that E C people, men and women that have phenomenal bodies that are, you know, usually augmented I I.

just to win project, that male body movie will overtake women within the next two decades oh, it's on track to overtake IT.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, the pressure to look a certain way now on social media. I mean, they are augmented. They're augmented like behind the .

camera right then post and then close yeah post .

being posted yeah um so yeah it's it's really problematic. And so the pressures I think women have always faced body pressure right I think is a fairly new arena for the fellows. But um yeah women I think you've always wanted to, particularly since the nineties, like a peer smaller um there is idea that eating meat I think is masculine, that is to make you bigger.

That is harder to digest. I mean, stake should actually be stake is incredibly should be very easy to digest. The problem is a lot of people that are on lonely diet are depriving their bodies of the raw materials required to create stomach acid. So, you know, if you're on, allow me die, and you decide, you know, once in a blue moon, to have a piece of red meat, well, you might be low in the minerals require to generate adequate stomach ache, to allow you to properly digest that food.

And you will stake the discomfort after eating that meat as, oh, this is what meat eating meat is like for all people, right? If condition your stomach to not be able to do the thing. So what is the result for goals in the way that they look and feel by being ruffed pilled?

Well, I mean, refuge is like i'm the bigger advocated eating dark leavey Greens. I think dark leavey Greens are an incredible food. But if that's all you're eating, you know, they are hard to digest. I mean, for example, when you know anybody is who's ever had like eh like a procedure on the large balls, they told you're told prior to the procedure to go on a low residue diet. A low residue diet is a low fibre diet. Red meat is is low residue, basically like the resident are the is the justice material that makes its way down to the large and testing that is then fermented and create can can potentially create, particularly if you're unadapted to its symptoms like gas and bloating and things like that.

Um stake should be one of the one of the easiest foods to digest um and uh and so on the other and you have women and people in general, not just not not to single out women, but people that you know they base their whole dies around celo you know like Greens and an indigestible plant material, and they wonder why they are walking around blow all the time and they're also, you know, studies shows that people who are on vegetarian and vegan dies. They tend to eat less protein. We know that protein is really important for a number of reasons centrating uh at the very least but IT also helps to preserve and grow. You know your muscle tissue is important for providing, you know I know acid ds, which are the backbones to your narrows transmitters. Um see there is I think a consequence to yet to basing your diet and like rabbit food well.

this IT seems to go hand in hand with a trend that, at least as far as I can tell, is kind of falling away now, which is like the side gap obsession yeah a very willowy kind of the london luck model cut super sort of stringy think. But even within that, there's a softness to the body type right of people, both guys and girls that do that because IT again, thankfully falling away and the pivot from thin spoke to fit spoil, I think, has actually largely been really good in that encouraging resistance training, encouraging high calory meals, prioritization of protein, you are more focus on training, even like a bit g flux series thing coming in, like let's trying create a calorie deficit through both calorie restriction but also through training increase.

So you know both sides of the the cao equation um but you see and I see that as well, man like I see a lot of the girls that um we used to work with our events company, eighty one thousand twenty years old in your dancing for our events company and you want to look good in your dances outfit on stage or whatever. And the girls that would push a little bit harder on calories and train would have a different kind of a physic in the way that IT presented like the skin seemed a little bit sort of like a singer, and tighter and more translucent, and you could see the shape of their bodies underneath, as opposed to someone that's just dating themselves into the ground. 3 hundred， eleven hundred calories a day in a desperate to attempt to trying get down. And there's like this soft, like, yeah, this is often ite that not being much there. What is there still feels like .

that yeah yeah. I mean, that is a recipe when you zoom out and you extrapolate out ten, twenty, thirty, forty years down the road. I mean that's a recipe for the opening.

At the very least it's um accelerated muscle wasting um and just a lack of strength uh as one ages, which is fairly common these days. The worst is Sarah panic obesity. So it's like access at opposite along with being under muscle.

Oh yeah, a doctor grish alarm was on the show this week talking about her muscle centage medicine. great. A big, a big movement.

I think this is, again, so much sort of convergent trends. We are happening here. We've got maybe the sign side coming in. We've got that. But yeah did I mean.

it's super yeah to not not even to mention the the important minerals and micro neutrons that women you potentially missing out on that are particularly important to the premium paid woman. So you know, for example, he iron, which is found primarily in red meat. Red meat is the ultimate iron supplement. And women who are premenstrual, I mean, there's like anemia is super common, iron deficiency anemia is super common today and .

women lose quite a bit of iron once every twenty eight days.

There you go. Yeah yeah. So I mean, we're going to get it's we're going to get red flag for man's blinding them. Sure but don't tell me .

how my periods work ah, I don't even like them. No.

no, you one hundred percent right though. I think like you know their women and the football thing I think is great. You know in the sense that it's gotten more women sort of aware to the benefits of resistance training, the you know a lot of us have work really hard to dispell the myth that resistance training is going to lead to a bigger, bulkier body IT.

Dos, you women have test astro, but one tenth the test ostrom of men. And it's really important for no, libido is important for well being, body composition. But it's not going to make you it's not going to lead to you ending up .

looking like Chris bm dad, i'd said this yesterday to do you realize how desperately hard i've tried for a decade in half to become bulky like I work most moments of every day to put things into my body and do stuff to my body to become bulky like you're not accidentally going to do a couple of super native byte calls and then look like sea bump exact, you know, it's not going to creep up on you. And if IT does, please tell me the protocol that you .

were doing same yeah I mean, all this kind of research comes out all the time and it's super interesting. It's not to say that all you need to do is two minutes today of exercise, right? That's not the point of the study.

But what did I think the the drive home message is that we're not um impotent to uh to these kinds of conditions which now seem to be so rampant today. Right like cancer. Um i've had a number of cancer experts on my podcast as of late. Actually Thomas say feed, you know is a wonderful uh expert in this field. Also joan deals a good friend of mine who is another cancer expert.

And the the resounding advice that you get from both of these experts is that, uh exercise really as medicine, I mean, it's super, super important in terms of reducing inflation tion, in terms of building your robustness, your resilience um yeah it's crucial and so I don't know of two minutes today is necessarily going to suffice but um yeah ah I mean I get like today the mile of the western, not just diet but life style. We're largely sedentary, like leisure time, physical activity as is at an all time low, and we're starting to see increased rates of cancer. Now among Younger people, there is another study that made major headlines recently that found that rates of cancer and particularly malignant cancer among uh, cohort that typically you wouldn't see much of this type of cancer in, is now increasing right?

Rates of breast cancer have, I think, like doubled since just fifty years ago. So I mean, there's something in the modern world, you know, one one variable married variables that have become essentially toxic. And I think one of the variables that has that is essentially toxic onic is the fact that we are now so many of us are set I um as a big problem.

And IT doesn't a ton of exercise like you don't have to be like a genera like your I to read the benefits of exercise. But I think IT is super important to have an exercise routine, particularly one that prioritized resistance training. I mean, this idea that you can just be active like a lot of older adults, I think you're told to just be active, right, which I think is typically taken as just walk, you know, just like walk as much as you can.

And walking is great. Walking is great no matter where on the age spectrum you are. But I think resistance training has long been sort of thought to be this past time of brows and a, and I think that's a big problem.

I mean, proudly, proudly. Yeah, past time of brows. There you go. Ten minutes to five minute walk after eating. Europe, for me, is about as close of a like superpower as i've been able to find. And I first got told this from stema gill.

Like four years ago, backend expert flew to canada to see him, and he was doing IT, primarily for a the relieving of low backpack. And what he was doing was you need to walk a small doses frequently. And a good key for that is when you have something to eat, you going to eat at least multiple times today.

Go for the walk afterward. And he mentioned the time to some benefits to downstream and maybe mentioned a couple of bits. And just the last five years, mark belle, and stand affording right with the because that determine at work, but fifteen seems Better. And if you're eating, you know, if you get one in on the morning to get some sunlight, the eyes, because your huber man pilled and then you have three meals a day.

And you do if you can get a nice ten to fifty minute loop from wherever you that also yet ten thousand steps sorted, also going to improve your instance sensitivity that also going to help you to blow up a little bit of that Spike that you get post eating. It's going to the uh muscles like the controller al muscles that run across the stomach. IT actually helps to move food, or at least IT does for me why the big meal.

I actually feel like the food is able to move through my digesting more easily if I go for a walk. After the two nights that we've been here, we've had big dinners both times cheese cake factory in buffalo wild wings because I I am a child, and both times we've been for a walk for fifteen minutes afterward, I can go to sleep. More reason on an evening time.

It's just it's a real phenomenal hack. And I think that strugling to get you walks in. Maybe you concerned about what happening with incident, maybe you want to get a little bit more time outside in nature and be away from your phone.

I love these habits where you can stack a bunny of different things on top. And I get some more time outside. I'm going to get some more sun light.

I'm going to get some more fresh. Are not. It's a real ten minute walk, fifty minute walk after reading, barking, amalon. yeah. I mean.

walking moves. There are so many benefits to walking. But I mean, you have floods in your body that don't have their own heart. And so, for example, emphatic flow, right, like walking, helps to promote that which is involved in which plays a role in digestion.

We know that just a short walk post meal reduced that post prandial blood sugar Spike, which is thought to be beneficial, particularly if you have glue close tolerance issues, right? We know that walking helps to remove fat in the blood. Um super important.

We see that there's an association, particularly um in Younger people between around seven thousand to ten thousand steps a day and lower risk of all cause mortality and then about ten thousand I think to twelve thousand steps among older people. Um the whole ten thousand steps a day thing is a little bit B S. But there actually wasn't meta analysis that came out fairly recently, I think, over the past year that found that there is actually a zone that's not too far off from that ten thousand step mark that seems to be associated .

you need to pick a number ah I mean, exactly yeah that depends on how quickly walk. I suppose there is a new york post article titled i'm raising my child vegan it's not a sympathy think and you replied and said child abuse yes, what's going on?

Yeah I mean, I think you know we are biologically adapted to be omnivores and um we know that the new onate relies on the mother deriving adequate nutrition from her food. And there are the if you look at the most neutral, dense foods available to your average person today, there is literally a paper people can look at up published by bill at al two to three years ago that ranked all the most nutrient dense foods, particularly by neutrons of concerns and neutrons that people tend to under consume today. Zink, I would be twelve.

And things like that, and animal products were took all the top spots, with the exception being dark leafy Greens, which you are thought to be very, very neutral and dense because they're so calories sparse and they can. There are a good source of I and see, and fully and calm and like. But animal products are our most neutral, dense foods.

And when you're a pregnant woman, you are eating for two so you know we already see that pragyan women tend to to under consume protein um you know consumption of coin which is a really important uh neutral for I mean you put Colin right city Colin in your in your neurotrophic verage here like super important for brain development, for cognitive function um vital b twelve crucially important. There's so many D H A fat right like perform D H A fat which is found exclusively and animal products you can consume. Omega is from plants, but humans are very inefficient at converting IT to its usable forms in the body.

And so I think that's from the standpoint of pregNancy. Like if I were a at the stage in my life where I were looking to procreate, I would want to procreate with an a nivron woman. And like saying something like that .

is controversial today, but IT shouldn't lugar a wants to procreate with an omniverous woman? Ladies, you have this is the sign that you have been looking for.

It's about signal. yeah. yes. So I mean, that's that's so important. I think like you with regard to plant based diet, you can cover together a diet that leads to Better biomarkers and and ultimately look a plain paste compared to the standard american diet is going to be a healthier choice right um you can call together diet that you know with the use of protein supplements perhaps uh can afford you a fantastic body composition.

But I think from the standpoint of pregNancy ultimately development and and child who development, I think it's really important to um yeah to allow your child who's inevitably going to be a picky either as IT is because that's inevitable children because they are child yeah I think it's really important to not cross off the list because of some silly ideology. One of the most nutrients, the most neutral dse category foods available to your aver human. What do .

you do? You have any idea what will happen to a child who is lacking in many of the sort of things that a vegan diet would cause that to be .

a bereft yeah I mean look gey of stunted development um failure to thrive. I mean no, I just think it's I think your is essentially .

sometimes .

referred to as nutritionism this idea that humans with all of our hubris, can distill food into its constituent nutrient and replicate food in a way with with progress, alternatives. I mean, if you take something like the product, soil, and is a perfect example of that, right? It's like what happens when silicon valley people try to create food.

They break down the food into its constituent nutrient, right? The data that makes a food, food according to them, this is the code of food. Yeah, this is the code food.

And and we have this ultra process ultimately crapped product. But here IT is right. Like you're not going to develop a deficiency disease if this is all you consume every day.

And so that's like nutritionism. And I think IT fails time and time again because we didn't evolve with these nutrients and isolation. We evolved with food, and we have a handful of neutrons that we know are essential. But that list of what's essential, it's conditionally essential. And what's non essential is changing all the time as IT should.

And foods don't just contain these single nutrients in isolation, right? Like an orange isn't just doesn't just provide vitamin c, right? There are countless other enumerable like neutrino that we have yet to even name, likely compounds in in an orange that might have an ontario's effect that might increase the absorption, the by availability of the vitamin cy, for example.

And the R, D, A for vitamin c is set to avoid scarves y at the population level, right? But that doesn't mean that we're all consuming adequate levels vitam c to promote optimal collagen synthesis. For example, if we know vita cy is involved in so you know, foods, all of these different nutrients. And you take a food like red meat, red meat has, uh, IT contains vitamin twelve, which somebody on a plane base diet might say, well, that's the one essential nutrient you can get on a point based style.

I can just take a vitamin 2 of supplement， but what about the conStellation of nutrition that that vitamin twelve comes with right? Like the him are in the carneta the carnesi e the creatine which we know is really important ing from a standpoint of muscular health right? Um and so you're just depriving A A baby of of all of those different nutrients. And look, the state american night is isn't great either like you have a lot of children these days that have early on that hypertension, early on that type of diabetes. So not saying that the alternative is the is the standard american diet, but I think that you can that yeah that like you can the ultimate optimal diet for certainly for developing human but also foreign ult is a diet that incorporate both animal products and and uh plant products.

It's interesting to think that the child abuse thing is a like a really interesting frame of IT because you are locking in to this neo ate human a kind of development that they didn't choose yeah that they had no voices in saying yes or no to and I guess you largely until the age of probably fourteen or fifteen when they can use the stove themselves and actually fully understand what's going into them, you even throughout the school and you're still largely doing that, when is you have to? What you eat is what your child eats here in summer gard.

It's wild. Every friend alex, who was a vegan philosopher for a goodwill, he was a ethically convinced by Peter singers work, uh, animal liberation, which i'd still think from an ethical perspective, I I think that we're going to look back on what we do now with much of animal farming and think of IT as Aaron. I think you're gonna back and see IT as not quite sort of holocaust, but in that sort of rome, oh my god, we had sentient animals, and we did this to them, right?

He became completely vegan pilled. He became an advocate. He is an unbelievably effective debate at everything, but particularly for veganism.

And he found, after going vegan, that making a commitment, making a sacrifice uh, to the philosophy that he the ethics that he been convinced by, he found that he was suffering a his body and his mental health had both taken up a pretty big like an increasingly big hit from this and he he posted the day that he became unconvinced that he could meet and adequately baLanced vegan diet. He immediately felt like I was his he was compelled to tell his audience because again, he came here. He got here from being ethical and being truthful and and high integrity with his ethics.

And then as soon as those are changed, you decided to put a post out and I said, don't do this. You are opening yourself up to a turn of criticism. Wait until you can do the video and he said, ball, yeah, but what if someone sees me eating salmon on a train or something in the U.

K. Like I am not going to feel in life. So again, he was like, hoist ted by his own ethics. Again, he got absolutely piled by the internet for doing IT.

You know, you were supposed that you said that you understood in a ba and then he did a video talking through how he was struggling to be able to eat a completely baLanced, sufficiently robust plant based diet and game people like massive problems. And now I think he's probably one your hands ish room. Mental health is way Better, is a pursuit that he goes after in life, is flourishing, his energy level of improved, all of this stuff.

Again, this isn't for me to say, like vegans, you're condemn in yourself to a life of low energy misery. But there are people out there for whom the limitations that you place on yourself by going on a vegan diet make getting a baLances diet so much more difficult again. And if you're twenty four year old youtube a and writer who maybe still needs to a bit growing up, you life hard enough is like you just trying to get up before my day yeah you know I mean, like you're trying not to go out and party with your friends too much.

You're trying to like learn what productivity is and how do I do my taxes and like I got a relationship and not whatever. You know, these are additional levels of complexity and difficulty that I don't think you need to add into your life. And yeah you know this is very, very much kind of fAllen, by the way, side now.

And alex is is out on the other side but I really respected him for what for what he decided to do with that that he said, like i've given this a crack. I am still ethically convinced by veganism. But physiologically, I don't think that I can do. I don't think I can commit to this. And yeah at the other side of that he's now just of is is crushing IT yeah just crushing IT.

Also, I mean, as you references, when your Younger, you have more resilience, like a Younger body is a more resilient body. Think about all the late nights, all the I mean for me like I and drink a lot. I have a problem with alcohol bot like I would I would come to alcohol, I would do other things like and your body rebounds really fast when you're Young, right because you .

have a rubber and magic.

Ah we're we're R A highly adaptable species, one of the amazing things about being a human being. But as you get older, I mean, i'm telling you I have a lot of friends that are in middle age and that are still clinging on to this idea of of plant based die being optimal. And again, they they look circle inc.

Now, I mean, you can find vegan body builders like those outliers exist. You know, some of them are augmented. Don't necessary talk to IT all good, not judging or maybe judging a little bit because they attrib. They tend to attribute their gains .

to being vegan, not to the .

extent asa and there ago again, you can cover like we know the plan protein at this point, an animal protein. When you consume enough protein, muscle gains are comparable so that you know there's no issue there. But for most again for most people for most people that are not obsessive fitness junkies, um it's a big problem.

They tend to under consume protein um and as you get older you become anap lic resistant i'm sure Gabrieli and talked about this. You become resistance to Lucy. So the little Lucy that you're getting on a plant based diet is becoming even less effective.

You as you get older and whether it's android pause or mental pause, you're fighting a losing battle with regards to your hormones ultimately, unless you're H R T. And so it's a it's a huge problem. But Younger people, you know, maybe they adopt a vegan die for a few months or years and they feel good, right?

The body has stores of certain vitamins there. Again, more resilient than more adaptable. And so it's fine. But yeah, it's not on common these days to see whether their influencers on youtube or on instagram that are that were previously vegan, either covertly eating animal products, which i've heard happens like they're doing IT covert ally or they they make .

the switch right mean stake wrapped in spinach. No one, no one can see what's inside .

of the IT happens. IT happens. And with regard to mental health specifically, there are so many nutrient ens and animal products that are just required by the human brain.

I mean, we attribute the development of the human brain to access to the neutrals found in animal products, right? So this idea, again, it's just hubris, right? It's hub and I hate the pure, but i'll use a privilege, yes, that we think that we can cover together a diet that myrick are the .

diet that we do Better than nature. Yes, we to use, no, no, no, no. We don't need to grow IT and pull IT out of the ground and know we can do IT from code from first will matrix are way into creating a diet.

And it's wild. Man, talk to me about this new film you just finished. Very kindly send me a link so that I could get first access to IT last night.

Yeah so it's called little empty boxes and um people can watch a trailer at little empty boxes dog com. And it's the first ever dementia prevention film and it's about seventy five percent uh narrative, twenty five percent science. But the narrative follows my mom and why I do anything that IT is that I do is because my mom very sick at a very Young age. He developed a rare form of dementia called li body dementia and um I mean this was ten years ago that I began working on the project and back then I didn't know anything about alzheimer disease or parkinson's disease or anything like that.

I was just a scared sun looking to do whatever was possible to help his mom um in a time of immense trauma and tragedy um and so the film kind of is like a time capsule documents everything that my mom went through the the descent into dementia really, really difficult it's been a labor of love and ultimately the film is a tribute to my mom but it's also attribute to the science so you know as much as I think you know we get into debates on the interpretations of science, particularly in the field of nutrition, which is you know where my passion happens to lie, i'm a huge fan of science and I think it's incredible. So the film I created to be a uh, attribute to this this growing field of acceptance known as dementia prevention, whether ten years prior you couldn't mention dementia and prevention within the same sentence you get like produce thrown at you because dementia for a long time was thought to be an unpreventable condition like even the alzheimer's association was one of the largest nonprofit organza, you know, for years and years and years to me, you know, would drive home this fear based talking point. I think primarily to raise funding.

That dementia, the only alzheimer's disease, the only condition that can be prevented, treated or slowed and we know now, I mean thanks to incredible research that that the potential for prevention is high and um and so yeah so the documentary is like a testiment to that and IT offers some I think really actionable tips and it's very in in many ways the prequel to my work you know because since since embarking on this production process i've writing my books. I've launched my podcast and you know i'm grateful that many people um and and mind blown actually that many people consider any expert in this field because i'm a ultimately a lay person like i'm somebody who really began just to be able to you with the intent of gleaning answers for their mom um but i've learned a ton you know over the course of my journey. But the documentary really is to is to document what it's like being a caregiver um for somebody with dementia and to show people what what IT really is like and how valuable and important prevention is because dementia begins in the brain decades before the first symptom and this is something that is when you look at the science coming out about dementia alzheimer's s um based therapeutic alza merge drug trials have a ninety nine point six percent fell ate they're just dismally effective um if at all.

And this is because this is a condition that manifests in the brain over a span of years, if not decades. So it's really important, I think, for people like Younger people, millennial, you, the oldest money is out in their forties. And so the time is like there's no Better time than right now to start thinking about your brain with your choices because, I mean, once that goes, that goes.

what are the big myths realizations about neurodegeneration dementia, parkinson stuff like that? Like what was the the big unpredicted insights that you ve got on this journey?

Well, I think for one people think that it's genetic um you have genetic risk factors. So the April we four leaves the most well defined of the alzheimer's uh and ultimately general risk factors.

Is that the one that Chris hams wa realized? So he realized .

that he was a homozygous Carrier. He was an apple four four, which increases your risk. Ground four, twelve to fourteen fold. Twelve to fourteen fold?

Yeah, yes.

How long is this?

Could could be twelve to fourteen fold from no point. One two, one two or whatever.

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

IT was going to consider .

the base right yeah like the absolute today about five million people in the U S. Have alzheimer disease so five million out of three hundred million it's fairly know low proportion but um but that number is set to explode in the coming years. Um the rates of alzheimer's are increasing.

And I think it's clear that we have what are called modifiable risk factors and the rates of those modifiable risk factors are also increasing. So for example, if you have obesity, your risk for alzheimer's disease increases. If you have type two diabetes, your risk for alzheimer disease increases between two and four fold.

If you have hypertension today, one and two adults have hypertension, that increases your risk. Stacked on top of each other. Yeah, exactly.

So we're seeing increasing rates of all of those. Those are conditions. And so that's what is that doing. It's not it's not doing our brain health, our collective brain health any favours. And so that's one of them that it's genetic.

You know the vast majority of dementia cases are attributable to an interaction between the genetic risk factors that you may Carry and the environment, but also with regard to genes which are non modifiable risk factor, of course, there is what the concept of polygamic risk. So you might have genes that we have yet to elude a day that are cancelling out the risk of of said risk genes. Two to three percent of alzheimer es are attributable to deterministic gene called early onset, familiar again, tiny minority.

But as recently as twenty, the Lancet commission on dementia pointed out that at least forty percent of alzheimer cases are preventable. And I think it's a growth underestimate because in that paper I didn't even talk about all the IT, didn't even talk about exposure to environmental toxicants or drugs. Um we know that people who routinely take anti Colin, 而且 drugs at high risk developing dimension that wasn't even illustrated in the paper。 So um I think the vast majority of of uh alza merge cases are potentially preventable. I don't claim to have all the answers. We don't um certainly but um but yeah there is a lot that people can do if you .

were to I always like inverting stuff like this, if you were to try and design a lifestyle for someone that would unset the pretty position or lack of neurodegeneration as quickly as possible, what would you prescribe that person if you would like you some demand from hell and you want to try make this person's brain a to generate toward to some dementia parkson's an what what would you get that person to do?

Yeah they I would deprive them of sleep. We know sleep is crucially important. Um sleep as when your brain is actually cleaning itself of proteins that associated with the condition.

So I beta how protein we see increases in three years minal fluid on just one night of short sleep. So I would deprive them of sleep. Sleep is really important with regard to brain health. It's it's important with regard to mental health, but it's very important with with regard to how your brain actually functions. Um so there is that chronic stresses a killer we know that chronically elevated quarters all leads to shrinkage of the hippo campus, which is the most vulnerable structure of the brain.

The first one of the first structures of the brain to be uh to be affected by alzheimer's disease is where you know the memory processing center of the brain we know that chronically elevated court is all which is robb chronically elevated levels of stress um is not good from a brain held standpoint and also create an inflammatory fect in the body um I would from a dietary standpoint, I would give a person exclusively ultra processed foods to consume um we know that these kinds of foods not only create inflation tion in the body but they drive at a posted or obesity. We know that they create uh the phenomenon of insulin resistance and we know that instant resistance is not good. A brain health standpoint um actually in alzheimer's disease you see a reduction in the brain's ability to generate uh energy from glue cos and in the alzheimer affect the brain the variability is diminished about fifty percent and the brain is a ravenous energy consumer.

And so I mean, that's just like lights out for the brain, right? You can imagine how detrimental that might be. Well, we see that the level of glucose meta listed in the alzheimer effective brain is actually very strongly correlated with the degree of insulin resistance in the body. So you want to make sure that you're as influences of as possible. And so one way to do that is by, you know, optimizing for protein in your diet.

We're starting to see all this research now come out about the value of dietary protein, minimizing your consumption of cultural process foods, make sure that you're at a healthy weight and then finally this kind of um funds into the lifestyle recommendation, which would be if you want to develop dementia as soon as possible, make sure that you are highly senti, that you never exercise. The brain thrives the top of body that you know moving and that's exercising. And there's tons of evidence now on this, both as a preventative strategy, also as a way to slow down the progression of neurodegeneration.

So make sure that you're that you're resistance training. And I mean, I can't understand that enough resistance training is super, super important. We're seeing a correlation now andy gala pin is you know he's on his guys who's who's become fairly prominent in our space.

Just publish the paper looking at whole body strength and cg into function. And this this is one of many papers right that has come out showing us the link between uh robustness, strength and it's not even necessarily muscle mass, right. So it's like not we don't all have to look like sea bum right after all or you um to to procure Better brains. It's just about being strong in body and resistance training is the best way to to to do that and optimizing for protein again. And so yeah I mean, okay, if the the demons .

prescription of what you would do if you wanted to unset IT when IT comes to strategies and tactics that people can lean on a food type, any supplementation, any other sort of lifestyle interventions, what is there on the on the .

sort of positive side yeah so the it's it's very um the the diet dementia recommendations are all the evidence is. I don't want to say weak, but we have the the best sort of idea for what a brain healthful diet might look like is referred to as the mine diet, which is the sort of diet that been coupled together by an epidemiologist of observational research that combines the some of the attributes of the mediterranean diet with some of the attributes of the dash diet, which is the dieter approach to stop hyper attention, because, again, hypertension is one of these important modifiable risk, hyper potential hyborian pressure.

So its meta training diet combined with a dash diet, with a sprinkling of, you know, foods that we've found specifically, play a brain beneficial role. For example, blueberries, right? The mind diet only recommends in terms of fruit. The only fruit that the mind diet recommends makes the recommendation for our blueberries, right?

Pretty dial is a fruit. I know that we want to, but it's blueberry. Are blueberry? Pineapples, bananas? Tripoli rated fruits? Yeah.

for me, no, blue ries are great. But I think that's where the limitations of that kind of like dietary recommendation comes in because avocats are a fruit. And if I had to, if I had to pick a fruit that I thought was potentially most beneficial to the brain, I think avocados are actually probably the most beneficial fruit to the brain because they have the highest proportion of fat protecting, specifically fat protecting anti o accidents of any fruit vegetable, which is of particular relevance to the brain, because the brain is made of fat and not just any type of fat, but the brain is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fat acids, which are especially damage prone.

That the most chemically unstable of fatos gy of your polyus ata fati assis, your monster tive fatos in your saturated fat acts, saturated fat assets being the most chemically stable. But your brain is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated facts D H, A fat to coates, a hex no acid and a redon ic acid um and so we need to protect these facts, right? The brain is a crucible for oxidative stress because its meta lizer twenty five percent of every breath you take in a container the size of a grape fruit.

So IT makes up two, three percent of your bodies mass, yet accounts for twenty five percent of your body's oxygen metabolic. So again, crucible for oxidative stress, what can help protect the brain under those circumstances? Anti oxidant.

And so fat, protecting at the accidents really important. I think avocado s are again, one of the best brain foods that you can consume. They're all rich in compounds like routine in the anthem, which we know are really supportive of cognitive function, wonderful source of patsie, which we know is a really important for cardiovascular health.

So, you know, the mind diet is a great starting place, but there is just a round ized control trial that put the mind diet, compared the the mind diet in a at risk population, I believe, and found no benefit over just a calorie deficit in an older adult population. So you do with him. So nutrition sciences is incredibly weak, and that's where you have to.

You can't be you can't be prone to scientism, which is like this, you know IT hearings to scientific data as if IT is religious doctrine. That's just not how IT works, right? Like nutrition science is harder study than drug than drugs, and yet it's much less well funded.

So a whole foods diet is my prescription. It's a diet that incorporates both animal products I think grasped g grass finish red meat is a brain health super food along without aaos and dark leffie Greens and um shellfish. I think you're incredible um like goods I think you're incredible.

But yeah, I think i'm never one hundred percent. And avoiding the ultra process food is process foods as best you can, foods with refined grains, foods with added sugar, foods with refined bleach and deodorized seed oils. I think that's the the way to go.

I noticed that no point in this preventable neurodegeneration conversation have you mentioned doing sudoku or or brain training yeah or uh across word puzzles or anything like that. Is there a is this just so low down on the the sprinkling on the cake and everything else? Is the foundation or is there something in the brain training one?

No, it's that's a good question, I think um keeping keeping active and staying socially engaged and doing things that require that draw on a complex array of cognitive processes, I think that's very helpful. And there is evidence that that can help build what's called the cognitive reserve, which is super important. So the cognitive reserve of basically stipulates that the more you have to lose, the Better off your going to be. It's a form of cognitive resilience that you're building. Um docu things that are like really kind of more like on the simplistic side, like crossword puzzles think .

via self and I can't do saying.

yeah I don't remember the last time I ve attempted but um it's essentially like they're Better than nothing, right Better than nothing. But but they're too simply list c to really have what's sometimes refer to as a spillover effect, where they can actually improve other cognitive domains, whether engaging more in real life is actually the best way to to to build a cognitive reserve like engaging a real life, learning a new instrument, perhaps learning A A language, learning a new skill. Those are all super important because they're more complex than just sitting down .

and you playing a numbers game. Yeah, I had roy bw, mister and Robin dunbar on the show within the last year. And dunbar was talking about how the most computational difficult thing that humans have to do is tracking the social intricate of all of their friend groups, right?

I know max, and I know john, and I know that max and john used to be friends, but they are not anymore. On the reason because of that is because of fred. Uh, and fred is friends with dan, but dan and max, they don't get on because of this thing from before.

Like his argument is that although we look at the brain and we use the brain largely for the sort of beautiful, cerebral, considered the nature of the universe, man and I really enacted my logos forward, like all of that stuff. But what I was therefore was to track between fifty, one hundred and fifty interacting hierarchy based relationships they are. And you know from a computational perspective, I think again, that's one of the reasons why relationships ah it's like the ten minute walk, right? It's not just the walk.

It's not just the interesting the outside being a single biggest determinant of how long you're going to live with the quality of your relationships. It's more than smoking is more than diet is more than your weight, you know. And if you can manage to use a hopefully not a drama riddle set of friendships, but if you can use all of the different friendships that you have as a push, as a ah that is part of your cognitive host power, a backup. I think that that's a .

really good way to do a hundred person yeah lonely ess is a talks in on par with with ali alcoholism these days um is what this what we're starting to see um and that I think you reference to harvard, the harvard studies like the longest running .

study on human happiness .

and there ago yeah um I think crucially important this is something that I struggle. I live in last Angeles, which is A A city that I feel very alienating, isolating. But i'm very grateful that .

I have a comber wason n baby.

Yeah I know i'm thinking about IT, but I I do have have a friend a great friend group um which you are obviously of course a part of but I also have like my family close and I feel super lucky in my heart goes out to people who who don't have that but yeah loneliness ss is and lonely. This is not being alone that I think it's important to make that decision. It's it's good to make friends with your mind to the point that you can actually be comfortably alone. But um but if you're not happy about IT, you know if you you feel like your social life is lacking.

definitely the more tell your self again like we said about about the food, it's not just the food you eat, it's not just the relationships you have. Is the story of a self mean that of the case? What do you think that your mom would think about what you've done to your life now, about your work, about the way that you're influence ing people about this film? What do you think you would, which you would think about that? Man.

well, my mom was my my biggest fan. And my mind .

is to sh'll be listening.

I love you. I love you. I mean, yeah, mom's are the best. And i'm very lucky that I had a great mom and a very, my mom and a mom who raised me with, like, I think, the best values that you could raise a child with um and I think that's why the people that follow me follow me because they know that honesty, integrity is super important to me and those are one hundred percent that I got from my mom you know I grow up in my household to be called a liar was like the worst thing the worst thing and um and so yeah he like he is an incredible, incredible mom not perfect no mom is a no person is but um but yeah he was he was wonderful SHE supporting me from day one SHE was, you know, I mean, I come from a very small jewish family, and my parents grew up very poor and and they made IT for themselves.

They they teamed up and they created a business and IT LED to a really great childhood for me and my brothers. But SHE never pushed me into any one career direction. Like SHE wasn't like I definitely expressed interest early on and wanting to go the medical school out to be a doctor.

But when I pivoted IT out of that, SHE shouldn't give me any any crap for IT, which i'm super grateful for SHE just allowed me to pursue my passions and um so yeah I think that he would be and he was SHE saw my first book come out. He was very, very proud. And you know it's funny like you can never be a profit in your own land. I is a term of heard recently and well, I I would try to tell my mom like, you know, I would as I was learning, I was like trying to like come to my mom with all these like new learnings insight and SHE adopted a lot of them like SHE started exercising more and which I think was helpful and we I I got rid of some of the more processes in her in her in her kitchen cupboard. But um but SHE would he would never listen to me ironically, when I was like me just kind of talking her from across the the dining table IT was only when I got to go on shows like the doctor oz show you know that SHE would then start to actually pay attention to .

what has doctor was a steal of A. Prove I listen to him now yeah, there you go. You like messaging doctor oz being like, I just found something new out and I know that my mom and listen to me. Would you mind if I come back on? Because I need to tell her through the televisions anyway .

that this works yeah. Or even when I like, even if it's something that like I had been telling her for months, somebody else would say, IT on the door like max, I heard this guy talking about the benefits of .

of computers. A mom, that was me yeah you know it's really interesting to me to see this this og for you you know somebody that's now stepping in that's giving people evidence based very apart from the child abuse thing, which I actually think this is accurate but largely on sort of volatile. It's not triable.

It's just like his some he's some evidence do with that as you wish. I know IT seems like a it's like alchemy, right? You take a situation that wasn't very good and then you turn this into something which is like I know it's like the the the pRogeria of this situation.

You know the the epithetic that's being written is the nudging that you have done. You know, think about how many centuries, millennia of human life has been added because of the information that you, in the millions of people that have listened to your podcast, have learned about. Like, I like fucking insane. That's crazy. I want a great tribute to give to someone .

no IT isn't saying and it's I know that our responsibility that I don't take lightly and I I I continually remind my audience that i'm not perfect um I I don't claim to have all of the answers but I do the best that I can and my life circumstance has has and you know my whether you want to call them and or whatever my my skill set and my passion and the circumstances I you know indeed with my mom has LED to you know I guess a certain a knowledge base and I feel like you have to do in life the things that you cannot do.

And as somebody who's really pathetic and compassionate at the end of the day, what I was learning, as I was going through this with my mom, I couldn't keep to myself, I had to share. And I realized, of course, along the way, that I had an aptitude for what I was doing. I realized that I enjoyed IT, and IT started to build a following.

And look, I know that there are some people out there that no matter what I say, we will never listen to me, you know, because I don't have credentials after my name and i'm fine with that. I'm not here for you know, here for the people who now have seen my work, who can feel my integrity and those are the people that I try to reach, you know and like, you can please everybody in life, right? Like you're not pizza.

So.

um yeah so again, I tried to do the best I can and i'm always learning and always chAllenging my biases and my assumptions. And I tried to reline myself with people that I think are you know who are in the space who are also doing IT from a place of beneficence. There are experts in the space who I believe are not doing we are not Operating from a place of the evolves, you know but um but I I am I love what I do and I I aspire to lead my audience ultimately to a great division of life and um and just super grateful that honestly anybody he's paying .

attention tell yeah max, give ladies and gentleman where people get onto the film at what date.

So we're looking for a knock on wood. We're looking for A Q one or q to twenty twenty four release. So at some point in twenty twenty four, we're hoping for a global theatrical release that as much as I can say at this junction, but on people can check out little empty boxes dot com.

We have a trailer and people can join the newsletter there. I don't send out like regular updates, but anything specifically related to the film, people can sign up you for local screenings and what have you to learn how to become an advocate for the film? Um they can sign up for that little lanty boxes dot com.

And then I have my own podcast, which hoping to get you on soon enough. We're going to do guess. We're going to do IT. It's called the genius life on all podcast apps. And then i'm super active on instagram, twitter in all places.

lia. Max, appreciate. Thank you, man. Thanks, Chris.