Kind: captions
Language: en
on this episode with New York Times
bestselling author max of the veer we
talked about his mom's dementia
diagnosis how he became a citizen
scientist why Alzheimer's is now being
called type 3 diabetes the importance of
distressing and what exactly you should
be eating to optimize your brain
everybody welcome to another episode of
health theory I am here today with a
very special guest
max Lugo vir he is a citizen scientist
whose new book genius food is literally
a user's manual for the brain and he has
an amazing ability to take really
complex ideas about diet and lifestyle
and make them accessible so that
everyone can upgrade themselves live
higher-quality lives and avoid
humanity's most dreaded diseases max
what I want to know and the thing that I
found so interesting and the reason that
I'm wearing this shirt today how did
this all start for you how does one
become a citizen scientist and maybe
more importantly why yeah it's a great
question um you know I I had this
amazing dream job when I graduated
college I began as a TV host and
producer and journalist for a TV network
that Al Gore founded back in 2005 and so
anyway when I left Current TV to try to
try to figure out where I was gonna go
with my career I started spending more
and more time in New York City and I was
you know I for the past five years I was
sort of beholden to the rigorous TV
production schedule of having a nightly
show on on national TV so I took this
opportunity to spend more and more time
with my mom and my two younger brothers
and it was at that time that me and my
brother started to notice that you know
my mom had always been a very spirited
person fast walking fast talking New
Yorker but it had seemed almost as if
her her cognitive power her brainpower
had downshifted and you know we started
to notice this when for example I would
be in the kitchen cooking with my mom
which was always one of my favorite
things to do with her I would ask her to
pass the salt or a spice that you know
was perhaps closer to her than it was to
me and would take her an extra beat to
register it would almost be quicker for
me to
to traverse the kitchen and grab it for
myself then to wait for her to process
the command and then act on it I think
we all intuitively when we're talking to
a much older person we know that they're
not gonna respond as quickly as a
younger person but my mom was still
young she was blonde she was 58 at the
time it suddenly had seemed as though my
mom had the brain of an elderly elderly
person and I had no prior family history
of dementia or any kind of
neurodegenerative disease so I was
completely at a loss I was totally
ignorant and it culminated for me you
know we my family had taken a trip to
Miami and it was one of the few times
where my my mom and my dad were together
under the same roof because they'd been
divorced since I was 18 and my mom was
standing behind the the breakfast
counter and she announced to the whole
family that she'd been having memory
problems and that she had also recently
sought the help of a neurologist and it
was something that you know was we were
I mean mystified to say the least but my
dad actually chimed in and he said you
know come on Kathy which is her name if
you're having memory problems what year
is it and my mom couldn't immediately
respond and me and my brothers to break
the silence chimed in I mean we were
completely in the dark and we almost you
know mocking the difficulty that she
seemed to be having we're like come on
mom how can you not know the year and
she started to cry and in that moment
for me I mean that's when everything
changed that's when this became
something that I was sort of curious
about on the periphery - something that
I realized I needed to step in and try
to figure out what was going on with her
and I started to go with her to doctors
appointments and in every single
instance I experienced what I've come to
call diagnosed and audio's a physician
would spend about 15 minutes if we were
lucky with my mom were on a battery of
strange tests not once taking the time
to explain to me what was going on
because I was my mom's patient wing
person it was there at the Cleveland
Clinic for the first time that my mom
was
with a neurodegenerative disease who's
prescribed drugs for both Parkinson's
disease and alzheimerís disease and I
didn't know it at the time because
actually the doctor didn't explain to me
what the drugs were for but later on in
the hospital or in the in the in the
hotel room in Ohio where we were staying
I started googling the drugs and I
learned that they're essentially
band-aids I mean they have no disease
modifying ability and they're barely
effective and it was there that for the
first time I had a panic attack I mean I
thought you know I was I didn't know I
was scared that my mom would die I was
scared that she would ultimately become
decrepid and you know I mean I just
didn't I didn't know what to expect my
own helplessness and ignorance really
seemed to it was sort of like the walls
of a room that we're just starting to
like close in on me and I'm a pretty
chill guy I'd never had a panic attack
but you know that was one of I think one
of the darkest moments in my life and as
soon as that cleared I basically became
obsessed I mean from one from it was
sort of like a line being drawn in the
sand I mean I just became unable to
focus on my career and I just all I
wanted to do is learn everything I
possibly could about how diet and
lifestyle affect affect brain function
and ultimately brain health and mediate
one's predilection for these diseases
one of the most shocking things that I
learned was that oftentimes like many
chronic diseases now burdening burdening
society they begin far earlier than the
presentation of symptoms and it became
this major call to action for me not
only to try to see if there was anything
that I could do to help my mom but also
to prevent it from ever happening to
myself and yeah that's what really began
this journey and you know just to go
back to go back to your first question
how does one become a citizen scientist
you know we live in such an incredible
time where all of the world's knowledge
is at your fingertips 24 hours a day I
mean if you have a if you have a
smartphone right
I mean we have PubMed you know the
primary literature that that is that is
what science it's our it's our method as
a species of asking questions and
seeking truth and finding answers R is
at our fingertips so it didn't it didn't
seem a barrier to entry for me that I
wasn't a medical doctor you know I felt
entitled to answers as a human being and
I just set out to learn everything I
could literally of it now that that
response to what happened to your mom is
so powerful and so unlike what other
people do and I really want to dive into
that so how did you the walls feel like
they're closing in how do you reget your
wits about you what I assumed at that
point then you start thinking like a
journalist but how does a journalist
think my mom had symptoms that were more
akin to a movement disorder the most
well-known of which is Parkinson's
disease which you know Michael J Fox has
Parkinson's disease many people many
people know about it but they weren't
typical symptoms and my mom also had
these memory problems that she had
developed and she was prescribed a drug
for Alzheimer's disease so I think the
fact that regardless of the type of
dementia a person develops they they
give you these these biochemical
band-aids the fact that it seems so
nonspecific to me made me just
intuitively think you know I had this I
had a theory that there that there had
to be a better way and having a lifelong
passion for nutrition and health just in
you know general in the sense of general
fitness my hunch was that diet and
lifestyle may have had something to do
with this did you start pushing back on
the doctors and saying that to them when
they're prescribing the drugs not not at
first certainly because you know in that
in those moments of fear you want to do
anything that you can do to help your
mom and I think that we all tend to
really put a lot of faith in the medical
establishment I don't know a single
doctor that would give me their email
address so I could follow up with them
you know when something like your health
is on the line where
of a loved one is on the line I didn't
want to wait three months to get another
appointment to ask my follow-up
questions I just think that it's so
important to become an expert in your
own health and you know my mom's
generation previous generations only the
doctor can know about health only the
nutritionist could know about nutrition
we're of a generation Millennials you
know that we want answers you know where
we feel empowered we feel entitled to
them so if somebody right now just
walked into that either they're being
diagnosed with something that they find
terrifying or someone they love is how
like what give me like just a couple
steps so is going to PubMed calm it's
just up number one like what are a few
things that people can do to really
begin that process that's a good
question
so yes I do think that going I think
using PubMed as a resource is very
powerful I think you know you can most a
lot of studies are available for free in
open access journals but I've actually
written a a what I call a citizen
scientist handbook because I think it's
really important to know how to
interpret research I think that I think
knowing how to interpret research is you
know science literacy is as important as
financial literacy we there's a lack of
both I think among younger people today
and that's problematic all right so as
you start diving into figuring this out
you're going after this stuff you're
building the science literacy if you
didn't already have it you're reading
the studies what do you begin to learn
that you think is like revolutionary
knowledge well I used to think that
dementia was an old person's disease
right i I like many people didn't didn't
care about it alzheimerís disease was
something that I thought was decades
into the future something only old
people get a natural part of aging you
know age-related senility was something
that was considered in par for the
course of just getting older but what I
learned is that Alzheimer's disease
begins in the brain 30 to 40 years if
not longer before the first symptom yeah
there are biomarkers evident on brain
scans now with you know the hyper
advanced scanning technology that we now
have access to that have shown signs
related to Alzheimer's disease
in the brains of 20 year-olds so whoa
yeah so I mean this is something that
might be a lifelong cascade by the time
you there's something I could get
checked for right now well there are
genetic risk factors for developing
Alzheimer's disease so the most well
defined of them is the apoe4 allele
which is a variant of the apoE gene that
you inherit one copy from your mom one
copy for me but your thesis if I have it
right is basically okay you may have the
allele the gene but that doesn't mean
that it's inevitable 100% what could I
do to my brain to see if I have any of
the precursors of Alzheimer's well one
of the top things that you can do is
make sure that you are insulin sensitive
because peripheral insulin resistance
which is insulin resistance is the
hallmark of type-2 diabetes pre-diabetes
it can proceed actually the the
appearance of chronically elevated blood
sugar and so it's been shown that that
is actually very closely related to your
brain's ability to create energy so this
is actually one of the defining features
of Alzheimer's disease and it might be
the one of the earliest things to go
awry in the brain metabolic dysfunction
in the brain and it seems to be very
closely tied to the body's metabolism so
I would go to the doctor and have them
run what test your fasting blood sugar
and your fasting glucose very important
and with those two biomarkers that any
physician can check they can determine
your level of insulin sensitivity okay
one thing you've talked a lot about in
the book and in your talks and I love
this is so I hear Alzheimer's I think I
know all about this amyloid plaques
image that's the problem I just recently
had my cholesterol taken I like to think
I am healthy and my doctor literally
wanted to put me on a statin yeah and I
was like whoa whoa whoa I know enough to
be dangerous when it comes to
cholesterol walk us through the the
relationship that you've talked about
that exists between potentially what
amyloid plaques are and potentially what
cholesterol really is yeah really
interesting Alzheimer's disease was
first named in 1906 by a German
physician in
alois alzheimer but 90% of what we know
about the disease has been discovered
only in the past 15 years the only way
up until very recently that it could be
diagnosed with black and white certainty
was on death they would open up the
brain of a cadaver and they would
examine the brain they would notice a
dramatic brain shrinkage and they would
notice hallmark plaques and tangles in
the brains of these patients the plaques
were an aggregation of misfolded
proteins the protein is called amyloid
beta and so the amyloid hypothesis that
these plaques build up in the brain of a
person with Alzheimer's disease has been
the guiding path what it now turns out
thanks to you know advanced scanning
technology that amyloid might actually
be there at the scene of the crime but
in fact at least initially an innocent
bystander because you know we now have
scanning technology that allows us to
see things that are happening in the
brain well before the presentation of
symptoms that might actually be more
initial factors in the Cascade that will
ultimately create Alzheimer's disease
it's led researchers and scientists to
take a step back and ask what is causing
our brains to become landfills for this
amyloid plaque and so as I mentioned
earlier one of the burgeoning theories
that now seems to be displacing at least
from my perspective this amyloid
hypothesis because you know drug trials
that have sought to cure the disease
have a 99% 99.6% fail rate yeah so the
question is what starts first you know
is there's is there something that we
can measure in the body or brain that
begins before this build-up of amyloid
plaque that we can intervene and say you
know by taking these steps you might
prevent this disease from happening well
one of the if not the earliest
measurable thing to happen in the brain
is a reduced ability by the brain to
create ATP out of glucose so the brain
has a few fuels substrates that it can
use to create ATP which is the energy
etic currency of the cell and energy for
the brain is really important in fact
25%
your metabolic rate is used to satiate
the energy requirements of the brain so
20 you know every one out of every four
breaths that you take a fourth of all
the calories you eat is going for your
is being used by your brain to create
energy so any sort of outage in the
brain in terms of its its ability to
create energy is gonna create problems
just as a as an anecdote you know a
newborn human their brains require 90%
of their base metabolic rate oh yeah so
that a newborn human baby 90% of its
oxygen all the calories that it's that
it's using is going to help its brain
develop because actually human babies
are born half-baked we continue our
develop actually in the real world this
is one of the reasons why humans are so
smart and we've been able to build what
we've been able to build because we
complete our cognitive development in
the presence of of you know other other
people it's called the fourth trimester
right that's one of the reasons why a
baby a newborn human baby is so fat
because the fat that a newborn baby
comes packaged with is actually an
energy reservoir for the developing
brain I've heard you call it a Mophie
it's a mower your brand I love that it's
a Mophie for the brain it's been shown
that the brain's ability to use glucose
is diminished by about 50% in the brains
of patients with Alzheimer's disease so
there's this this really stark metabolic
problem that's occurring in the brain
and thanks to functional MRI scans and
PET scans we've been able to see that
there's a deficit and energetic deficit
in the brain that's evident from very
early in life and it's related to the
this gene that seems to put people at
higher risk for the disease in the
Western sort of environment food
environment so you see that deficit in
people that have that allele yeah not
necessarily across the board there's
about a 10% reduction in the brain's
ability to generate ATP out of glucose
from very early on and you've
interviewed the woman that coined the
phrase diabetes type 3 yes what
Alzheimer's is often referred to as a
want to walk through this process
because oftentimes people talk about it
at a really high level and I want to
drill down so why is it called we'll
start with why is it called diabetes
type three well if you have type 2
diabetes
which 50% of the u.s. population is now
either diabetic or pre-diabetic your
cells have an inability to respond to
insulin which is the hormone that allows
glucose entry into those cells where the
cells loses fuel to be used as fuel yeah
so basically you have despite an
abundance of fuel in circulation because
blood sugar you know is chronically high
in a person with type 2 diabetes your
cells essentially starve because they
have an inability to respond to insulin
and therefore glucose has a much more
difficult time getting into the cell
where it can be used to create ATP which
again is the energetic currency of cells
so in the brain a researcher out of
Brown University who have interviewed
Suzanne de la montagne has coined the
term type 3 diabetes to describe
Alzheimer's disease because there's a
similar inability of the brain to create
energy even though and oftentimes this
is the case there's an abundance of fuel
in the body and you know and people that
are overweight you know people that are
carrying fat around their midsections
your average pound of fat has about
3,000 backup calories of the brain will
happily use for fuel but the brain is
unable to because most people on the
western you know diet plan are eating
about 300 grams of carbohydrates per day
carbohydrates cause insulin to become
chronically elevated and insulin acts
like a one-way valve on your fat cells
so fat is we you know we're really good
at storing fat but in an overweight
person in the modern food environment
that the ability of fat to be burned is
basically blocked sugar is one of those
things that like oxygen
you know oxygen oxidizes things it ages
you slice an apple leave it you know
they're on the counter you'll notice it
starts to turn brown the same way that
we need oxygen it also is what's killing
us and the same thing goes for sugar we
need a certain amount of sugar I mean
the brain still has about a forty
percent energy requirement for glucose
but sugar is also very damaging it's
glyco toxic you know I'm in a diet
damage
your proteins this is one of the reasons
why type 2 diabetes is so damaging
because at that point your blood sugar
has become chronically elevated glycated
all of the proteins that make you you
and we tend to think about protein as a
nutrient in terms of its ability to help
us grow bigger muscles but we are made
of protein actually the protein that
that aggregates and forms the plaques
that characterize Alzheimer's disease
that's another protein that can become
glycated and when this happens when it
when it gets bound to sugar in the
molecular sense it becomes less easily
able to be flushed away which is
something that our brains actually do
when we sleep our brains actually clean
themselves of these of these proteins
that can aggregate over the course of
the day so one of our best performing
episodes of hell theory ever was on
sleep which I was totally surprised by I
did not think people really cared that
much about sleep nor did I honestly know
how detailed an important sleep is why
is it that you think sleep is important
it's so important I mean there's a newly
discovered system in our brains called
the glymphatic system which when we're
sleeping actually swooshes cerebrospinal
fluid all throughout essentially
cleansing it of these proteins that
aggregate over the course of the day
they've shown that on one night of bad
sleep there's an increased level of
amyloid measurable in CSF cerebrospinal
fluid but then also you know I think
dietary change for most people is one of
the most difficult things to do and it's
particularly difficult when we have our
hormones working against us so sleep I
think is so profoundly important because
it acts like a master regulator of our
hormones it helps to you know make sure
that we don't need to use our willpower
very often because you know willpower
sort of like this muscle that we need to
use in order to fight off cravings and
things like that
but with good sleep our cravings
diminish I mean they've shown that even
on one night of poor sleep you consume
an excess of calories the following day
anywhere between three and five hundred
calories I've actually noticed it's a
little off topic but I once one of the
major breakups I had in my life
I
that I would feel way more sensitive to
it when I was underslept
you know you become less able to
contextualize emotions when when your
underslept
on just one night of bad sleep a
metabolically healthy person will be
essentially pre-diabetic the next day
temporarily
well yeah you become more insulin
resistant so yeah
sleep sleep I think is one of those
things that today we romanticize being
busy but it's sort of like the one thing
that lifts all the boats in your Harbor
you know and yet we tend to undervalue
it you talked on your Instagram about
you want to live for a really long time
or since your life forget exactly how
you worded it which got my attention and
then you said prioritize distressing
yeah is that tied to sleep like what
what do you mean by that well stress is
an indiscriminate killer and today you
know so many of us are losing sleep due
to stress it's one of the reasons why
one in six adults and I was on some kind
of psychiatric drug one in six yeah yeah
is on or has used well we're definitely
self-medicating and and it's not good I
mean chronic stress is a major major
problem yeah
give me some tactics how does one
de-stress you know I think meditation is
really important you know I'm one of
those people that I was trained to
meditate I think this is really
important I think you know being being
taught how to meditate is as important
as being taught how to do yoga you know
we don't come out of the womb knowing
how to do a downward dog and to hit you
know any of the number of yoga poses
that were taught to do with a good yoga
teacher having a good meditation teacher
is very I think is critical to knowing
how to de-stress I also think you know
knowing knowing what chronic stress is
and knowing what it isn't is really
important you know so in my book I'd
differentiate between chronic stress and
acute stress which acute stress is very
beneficial
you know what we do in the
we stress our bodies chronic
psychological stress is really toxic
it's working under a boss that you hate
it's being stuck in a relationship
that's gone sour by distressing and by
you know doing physical exercise and
things like that you actually increase
your resilience to stress cortisol sort
of gets a bad rap because it's related
to stress but it's actually a really
important hormone it's the body's chief
waking hormone so for about 45 minutes
after you wake up cortisol is the
highest that it's really meant to be
throughout the day it's part of the
body's natural circadian a hormonal Evan
flow and in that in that window for
about 45 minutes after you wake up
that's a great fat-burning window you've
got that cortisol spike which is really
working to liberate stored fat stored
sugars for use by your body as fuel it
cement as a way of you know allowing
fuels to become accessible so that you
can use them and carpe diem right seize
the day within that window it's
particularly dangerous to consume
breakfast in its most standard American
form which is usually rapidly digesting
carbohydrates from oatmeal granola bars
things like that because that causes a
spike in insulin but going back to
stress this is why consuming carbs in
the context of chronic stress is so bad
because you've got cortisol chronically
elevated due to chronic stress and then
we're continuing to keep our insulin
elevated with the carbohydrates that
we're consuming so this not only helps
to redistribute our weight from muscle
to fat but also our visceral fat which
is the most inflammatory kind of fat
that wraps around our internal organs
actually has about four times the
cortisol receptors on it so this is
actually why when you look at people
that are chronically stressed out they
their bodies take on a very particular
shape it's totally different from
run-of-the-mill obesity where people are
just eating lots and lots of calories
and not necessarily chronically stressed
out somebody who's chronically stressed
and eating lots of carbs in particular
they usually have skinny arms and skinny
legs but a bulging midsection because
their visceral fat is just soaking up
all the excess carbs that they're eating
because of
the presence of chronically elevated
cortisol that's so weird it's no idea I
always thought that was just like Oh
some people that's how they put on fat I
like to think of stresses and it's sort
of invisible and it doesn't really have
any lingering effects but when you see
that it can play out into an actual body
type yeah that's when it gets really
crazy yeah now one type of stress you've
talked about that is really useful when
I go a little bit deeper thermal stress
I'd never heard of that before
what is it exactly and how do we
leverage it so you know we our bodies
were you know we're the ultimate
performance machines right we all
evolved chasing our food and and really
being honed to perform physical bouts of
exercise but thermal exercise is another
form of exercise that we also had for
the vast majority of our evolution and I
think chronic climate control you know
something that we've developed you know
with air conditioning and heat and
things like that really has been to the
detriment in many ways of our of our
health so we can look at research that
was performed recently out of Finland
that I think is very compelling they
found that people who used saunas four
to seven times per week had a dramatic
risk reduction for Alzheimer's disease
about 65 percent risk reduction for
people that you saw enough four to seven
times per week really I mean there's no
drug on the market that will cut your
risk of developing Alzheimer's disease
by 65 percent Finland is the sauna
capital of the world so in Finland
there's on average one sauna per
household in Finland it's like taking a
shower in Finland it's so embedded into
the culture in fact there's a great
documentary called steam of life which
documents all of the weird ways in which
people in Finland will you know create
like phone booths abandoned phone booths
into saunas things like that it's very
strange yeah so they found that in this
population that saunas really seem to
play a protective role in terms of
vascular function it also was related to
a dramatic risk reduction for high blood
pressure but then also for for dementia
seems to really help promote what's
called vascular compliance and reduce
high blood pressure so what coincides
with Alzheimer's disease is all
a vascular dysfunction of all of the
micro capillaries that provide you know
blood fuel nutrients to the brain and so
anything that's good for the heart is
gonna be good for the brain and so on I
seem to really be good for the heart as
well what about like cold showers and
stuff yeah those are all great you know
they are really good in terms of really
dialing mental acuity I mean you can
feel it instantly take a cold shower
there was a really great study performed
where people with type 2 diabetes were
told to basically turn the air
conditioning down on low to about I
believe it was 60 or 66 degrees
Fahrenheit for six hours a day so I mean
that's not freezing it's cold but it's
not freezing and there was about a 25%
increase in their insulin sensitivity
not changing their diet at all or doing
any additional physical exercise just
exposing themselves to colder
temperatures
they showed a dramatic increase in their
metabolic health again insulin
resistance is the hallmark of type 2
diabetes I'm so surprised yeah
cold stress heat stress all very
beneficial so I try to compel people to
get out of their comfort zones in in the
thermal sense you know it's really good
for creativity getting out of your
comfort zone but it seems to be the case
as well in terms of temperature that is
really interesting and I hate you for it
because I hate being cold so much so why
I begin to tell you yeah so do I
actually but but you know I think it's
one of those things that seems to be
really beneficial you know I I go to my
mom's house occasionally and the heat is
always blasting it's like always like
super warm in that apartment not like
sauna level temperature but just always
you know my mom doesn't like to be cold
she doesn't like to be hot she likes to
live only within that narrow range of
her comfort glad you brought your mom
back up I wanted to talk a little bit
more about something you said that I
thought was so beautiful so I grew up in
a morbidly obese family and it really
struggled with well I know what they
need to do but that's very stressful for
them emotionally and I don't want to
stress that relationship out and you
said something similar about your mom
and you said I don't ever want
her food choice to damage the
relationship that I have with her yeah
how do you deal with that what advice
you have for caregivers loved ones of
somebody that's going through dementia
it sounds cliche to say you can lead a
horse to water but you can't make it
drink so I think at a certain point
you've you should teach you know I think
that's one of our missions here on earth
as empathetic and compassionate beings
is to lead you know lead your neighbor
lead your loved one to a greater vision
of life you know that's what you're
doing with the show I think you can't do
it with force you can do it with
aggression you've got a you've got to be
I think a bit more gentle and when it
comes to loved ones and especially
people that are suffering with chronic
diseases and that you know you don't
know what they're going through
psychologically I think it's really
important to to provide the information
but then to to step back and detach at a
certain point at a certain point with my
mom I would get very emotionally wound
up in what my mom was eating and I would
become upset if I went to her house and
I saw that she had an open bag of chips
or you know she cookies or what you know
whatever and I didn't want that to
interfere with the time that I was
spending with my mom you know I would
never want to do that and I value so
much the time that I spend with my mom
and I know that I'm really neurotic when
it comes to nutrition and health but I
don't you know I don't judge other
people in your book you do a great job
of not spending a lot of time demonizing
anything but instead really being quite
prescriptive about okay if you want to
upgrade yourself which is like the big
tag and your website which I absolutely
love so if somebody wants to upgrade
themselves knowing that every word
that's about to come out of your mouth
comes with compassion and knowing that
there's a lot of individual variability
you know you get all of that but like in
a nutshell for somebody that wants to
upgrade themselves what should they eat
and not eat yeah so you know opt for
foods that are nutrient dense one of the
easiest things that I recommend that
people can do every single day is to
come
what I call a large fatty salad I think
it's one of the best ways to really
check off so many of your nutritional
boxes to get an abundance of dietary
fiber that the microbes that live in
your large intestine love to consume and
when I say fatty I don't mean you know
throwing on tortilla strips and cheese
and ranch dressing I mean you know
taking a bowl of dark leafy greens kale
spinach which are you know top sources
of magnesium which 50% of people do not
consume adequate amounts of folate
arugula arugula is a top source of
nitrates dietary nitrate really
important in terms of increasing blood
flow to the brain one single high
nitrate meal might actually improve
cognitive function it's that powerful
dousing those dark leafy greens with
extra-virgin olive oil which research
has shown out of Barcelona Spain a
pretty med study you can consume about a
liter a week to better our cognitive
function cognitive health cardiovascular
health and it might even help you lose
weight because it's so anti-inflammatory
actually there's a compound in
extra-virgin olive oil that is as
anti-inflammatory as low-dose advil but
without any of the potential for
negative side effects and importantly
you need to have fat in that salad
because fat allows many of the most
important nutrients in the cell to
become bioavailable so I talked a lot
about in this book which I think is
bringing you know especially you know
there's a lot I think actually that
there's a lot of new information that I
bring to the conversation but I talk
particularly about carotenoids and how
research has shown out of University of
Georgia that by eating lutein and
zeaxanthin by by supplementing with
these carotenoids you can actually boost
visual processing speed by 20% even if
you're you're young and healthy so I
mean these are young and healthy people
that are already considered to be at the
peak of their cognitive prowess visual
processing speed is so important I mean
think about in terms of responding to
visual stimuli you know driving athletic
performance sports performance things
like video games video games yeah yeah
absolutely so dark leafy greens are
abundant in these two carotenoids and
they're only absorbed through the
digestive tract when in the presence of
fat you don't absorb any of them unless
you're consuming them
with fatso like that fat-free dressing
throw that in the trash extra-virgin
olive oil you know is super key eating a
large fatty salad I think it's just
really key people tend to think about
salads in terms of like weight loss I
want to lose weight I'm going to eat
more salad but really in terms of the
brain it's powerful you also get the
benefit of I mentioned dietary fiber we
now know that you have microbes that
live in your large intestine that when
you consume fermentable soluble
prebiotic fiber which is found in
abundance in that in that bowl of greens
the microbes turn out a compound called
butyrate which is profoundly
anti-inflammatory it is really you know
beneficial in terms of the gut ecosystem
it's been shown to boost levels of
growth factors in the brain which
promote neuroplasticity which is your
brain's ability to change over time very
important stuff in terms of lifestyle
you know I advise as I mentioned not
eating for an hour or two after you wake
up people today are really obsessed with
intermittent fasting which i think is
you know really great at the very least
it it I think has awakened people to the
necessity to bring back balance in terms
of being fed and being fasted but I
don't get hung up over the hours I think
it's just really important to honor the
body's natural circadian inclinations
you really want to like after that 1 2
or 3 hour window eat your food and then
stop eating for 2 or 3 hours before bed
again you know we talked about the
glymphatic system it's a
newly-discovered system but you know
it's been theorized that eating soon
before bed might interfere with that
that that clean up process and then you
know I try to eat a low-carb diet I try
to avoid dense sources of carbohydrate
with the exception of occasionally
eating them in the post-workout window
if you're gonna eat carbs throughout the
day you really want to concentrate them
into one meal it seems that when you
consume your carbs concentrated into one
meal less insulin is required to clear
those carbs from circulation that
glucose from circulation as opposed to
if you were to spread them out over the
course of the day which makes that that
old
to eat six small meals throughout the
day particularly bad because insulin
seems to be able to compound on itself
so rather than eating you know 30 grams
of carbs at launch 30 grams of carbs at
dinner 30 grams of carbs at breakfast
concentrate them into one meal and
there's less of an you know insulin AUC
so less less insulin being stimulated to
clear that glucose which is important
because as we talked about earlier
glucose is very damaging when it's in
the blood it glides those proteins is
really interesting everything you've
said is really interesting I mean yeah
I'm a major nerd for this kind of stuff
whether or not you're concerned about
your risk for disease in the long term
you know the all these things actually
help you feel great in the here and now
you know we talked about visual
processing speed just in terms of your
overall energy levels feeling less
beholden to your hormones into your you
know food cravings I think is really
important and these are all ways of
really kind of I think helping stack the
odds in our favor you know because when
it comes to nutrition what I've found is
that the mainstream medical system has
very little to offer and nutrition
really is so important when it comes to
preventing you know all of the diseases
that I think we're seeing skyrocket
today I mean 60 according to the World
Health Organization chronic diseases now
account for 60% of deaths worldwide all
right before I asked my last question
what's the best place for people to find
you online
definitely Instagram I'm pretty active
on Instagram people can go to my website
and join my newsletter which you know I
put a lot of time into and yeah I mean
genius foods really is I think I've been
able to synthesize you know much of if
not all of what I've learned into the
book amazing so my final question if
people are only going to make one single
change in their life to have the biggest
impact what change do they make
that's a good question you know we've
already talked about nutrition so I'm
gonna throw you a curveball and I'm
gonna say I think that people really
should be kind to one another you know I
think that's so important
teach one another to help you know be a
shoulder for for others especially that
are less fortunate to to give back
whether it's charity whether it's just
to be more diligent and and deliberate
about your social media use by posting
things that are less inflammatory more
helpful when I see suffering I'm
profoundly affected by it and there's a
lot of suffering going on in the world
both in terms of health food scarcity
things like that so just you know to
your to your part what an unexpected and
beautiful answer thank you so much for
coming on the show man that was
absolutely incredible thanks for having
me my pleasure guys this is somebody I'm
telling you right now the deeper into
their world you go the more you're gonna
get surprises like that not just
nutritionally but somebody that's
looking at the world in a new way I am
fascinated by this notion of being a
citizen scientist that he had this
moment in his real life and instead of
being a victim instead of letting the
walls close in on him he really did
something about it and went out and
learned and leveraged his ability to
think like a journalist to question
things to go out to research to figure
things out to find that intuitive
through a line where things actually
made sense and instead of saying oh it's
confusing because I don't understand it
he said maybe what's being proposed
doesn't make sense and so that to me
that is this new wave this new world
that we all live in where we have access
to things where we can go read the
studies we can look at the press
releases and do the fairly
straightforward simple things that he
laid out that he did that
utterly change the course of his life
and I hope will change the course of
some of your lives as you dive in and
see that and then you're gonna see that
layer of humanity to what he does where
his
- what the one thing people should
change is is the be kind which he posted
in his Instagram feed by the way another
place I recommend that you guys go check
out max thank you so much for coming on
man true honor to be here thank you guys
if you haven't already be sure to
subscribe since I know it's over here
and until next time my friends be
legendary take care thank you guys so
much for watching and being a part of
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