Avoid These DAILY RISK FACTORS To Prevent BRAIN INFLAMMATION! | Datis Kharrazian

So, we're we're all at risk of developing an autoimmune disease and the rates of autoimmune disease now exceed cancer and cardiovascular disease combined. But but stress, when it's uncontrolled and it's past a person's abilities, can be devastating for the brain. And Why? Well, cortisol causes atrophy of the brain. So, it actually shrinks the brain. Dr. Datis Kharrazian, welcome to the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Dude, I'm so excited to have you on. I'm obsessed with the brain and what we can do to make sure that it stays in high functioning for a long time. So, let's talk about leaky brain. Okay. What What is the most horrendous thing that people do that causes leaky brain? And what is leaky brain? So, we have a blood brain barrier just like we have a gut barrier and the blood brain barrier can become permeable and then particles can go through, pathogens can go through. Um some of the people that probably developed viral infections like long COVID probably had some viral particles go through from blood brain barrier permeability. That is really interesting. Okay, so uh tight junctions can break down Well, so the epithelial lining of the gut is a single cell thick and so that breaking down because you're eating bad foods or whatever, that I get. Is it equally sort of de minimis in the brain? Like is it a really thin layer that stops particles from getting in there? The blood brain barrier is basically just some endothelial blood vessels and some astroglial cells. And we've actually published research showing uh there's a high correlation between gut permeability and blood brain permeability. Meaning it's the same thing that causes both? get one, you get the other. Okay. And uh zonulin will open up the tight junctions of the gut, but also doubles up the What on earth is zonulin? sorry. Uh zonulin is a protein that it's released when people, for example, have gluten sensitivity or Is that a protective mechanism from the body? Or is that actually in the wheat? No, it's a protective mechanism of the body. It's when you get an infection, your body releases zonulin to get rid of the pathogens, opens up the tight junctions so you get rid of it. And they actually discovered that with cholera, the cholera infections, and they found something called zonulin occluding toxin, ZOT. And then they found that that opened up the gut barrier. But basically, the mechanisms, like one of the most common mechanisms for people that are gluten sensitive, as an example, they have a zonulin release, and that opens up their tight junctions of their gut, they get leaky gut. But also, zonulin opens up the tight junctions of the brain. And the same inflammatory ox state of stress mechanisms that break down the gut barrier can also break down barrier. So, if your antioxidant levels are low and you're around a lot of environmental pollutants, if you have an inflammatory condition, those all make you susceptible to having these barriers break down. And barriers break down pretty quickly. And they regrow they regenerate quickly, too. But they can definitely break down. And when the blood-brain barrier is permeable, then what happens is these immune cells in the brain called glial cells, they get a they get exposed to environmental pathogens and different proteins, and they can create an inflammatory cascade. And when people get an inflammatory cascade in the brain, the most common symptom they'll get is something like brain fog, because inflammation slows down nerve conductance. So, all of a sudden, they have brain fog. And some people will notice that they eat certain foods, they get brain fog. They get around certain environments, they get brain fog. And some people had a traumatic brain injury and had brain fog for for for that period of time. Some people get an infection and have ongoing brain fog for a period of time. But even traumatic brain injuries break down the blood-brain barrier as a way to get T cells and B cells in there to clean up some of the debris. So, you know, breaking down our gut opening up our gut barrier and blood-brain barrier is a normal physiological function. Sometimes, we get infections that do that. Sometimes, we get traumatic brain injury that does that. But also, it's a very thin membrane. So, when you have lots of free radicals and lots of ox like free oxidative stress inflammation, they they break down. So, the goal would be from an evolutionary standpoint, you want to be able to open and close it. Yep. But modern lifestyle is causing it to be open all the time. And so, while it's opened from an evolutionary standpoint to get things out, we're now just letting a ton of things in. Yep. Okay, so in the book, Why Doesn't My Brain Work?, you list a lot of things. But if I were to point to there's one thing that really stood out to me above everything else, but there's two things that come up in the book a lot. So, environmental toxins, I'm going to set that to the side for a second and talk about gluten, which intentional or not, to me reading the book really came across as a villain in the book. Um does that feel right? Like if you were going to tell people, "Hey, if you're only going to make a single change, would it be to cut out gluten?" Or are there so many problems in food that we really have to address food more holistically? Um gluten's only a problem for people that are sensitive to gluten. Not everyone's sensitive to gluten. So, some people can eat the out of gluten and it's going to be fine. Yeah. Interesting. And then some people have full-blown celiac disease, which means they have a a T-cell exaggerated response to gluten. So, they have severe inflammatory reaction to They have a HLA-DQ genotype of gene type that makes them extremely sensitive to the protein. What is your body mistaking it as? A foreign invader? No, it's it's just it's just uh basically, I guess you could think of it that way as a foreign invader, is an antibody system produced against gluten. The problem with gluten in the brain is the antibodies produced against gluten uh have cross-reactivity. So, they can actually bind to the brain. So, um you know, normally when you get an infection, like a pathogen comes in, you produce an antibody. The antibody can then attach to the pathogen. And then once the antibody attaches to the pathogen, then the soldiers of the immune system, like T-cells and natural killer cells, they come in and destroy the pathogen, right? So, if someone's sensitive to gluten, they're making antibodies as if it was a pathogen. And then those gluten antibodies bind to wheat, so they can destroy the protein and break down quickly, right? But those gluten antibodies can also bind to different tissues of the brain, specifically area of the brain called the cerebellum. And this is a condition called gluten ataxia in the medical literature as a disease, but gluten actually does cross react with the brain. So, wait. Is it the antibody that's attacking the cerebellum, or is it the gluten that's attacking the cerebellum? So, So, when you look at antibodies, antibodies bind to proteins, but they actually bind to amino acid sequences. So, each protein has an amino acid sequence, right? Mhm. And if there were eight or more amino acid sequence in identical identical chain together, then the antibody produced one protein can bind to another protein. The reason gluten can be so devastating for some people is because they have especially if the blood brain barrier is permeable, the gluten antibodies can then cross into the brain, and then bind to tissues of the brain. And then the immune system will then assume those are foreign foreign invaders and start to destroy them. So, like the gluten is directly binding to the cerebellum? Mhm. As if it was going to directly bind to gluten cuz that amino acid similarity is so alike between cerebellar amino acid sequences and gluten gluten gluten amino acid sequences. So, once that antibody attaches then T cells go in there and destroy whatever's being attached to it. So, wait a second. So, basically the because the God, I hope I'm getting this right cuz the audience is like, "Come on, you dumbass." Uh the the gluten molecule creates an antibody. Yeah. But the gluten happens to look just like uh cerebellum mole protein protein. Perfect. Thank you. And so, once you make an antibody for the gluten, you have accidentally made an antibody that can't tell the difference between the wheat gluten protein and the in this case cerebellum protein. Ho! That's called molecular mimicry. And it's scary. Woah! So, this is interesting. So, here's here's why I drag people into the weeds, and I I have no idea if my audience loves us or hates us, but when I can picture it, it's way easier for me to conform to behaviors that I don't want to give up. So, for instance, I want to eat bread. Right. But, when I understand what's actually going on, Yeah. then it gets a lot less appealing. But, when it's this vague notion of like, "Oh, gluten's only a problem for some people." Like, then But, there's some truth to that. I mean, if you don't have gluten antibodies, then you don't have the chance for foster activity. Right. And if you have gluten antibodies, but your blood brain barrier is not impermeable, it's intact, then you don't have to worry about that mechanism. In the brain though, right? Wouldn't I still like Well, I guess if my gut never becomes permeable, I don't have to worry about it. Right. So, if your gut and blood brain barrier permeable, and then you have gluten sensitivity, and you eat gluten, and you make antibodies, and that blood brain barrier is permeable, are there some people though who that have a permeable gut, gluten is crossing it, and no antibodies formed? Or, does the antibody form 100% of the time if you have leaky gut and gluten crosses? It's not 100% of the time, but over time, if you have intestinal permeability, and proteins that are undigested cross, then the immune system starts to react against them. And this is why a lot of people develop gluten sensitivity over time. Mhm. So, there's a phenomenon in immunology called immune tolerance or oral tolerance, which is why we develop food sensitivities. So, there's a There's many mechanisms like abnormal dendritic cells, overactive Kupffer cells, um intestinal permeability, um And this is because so, the gut becomes permeable, Yeah. random ass proteins are crossing over, Yeah. the body's like, "This is really annoying, Yeah. but I'm not going to get up in arms yet." Yeah. But, you keep doing it, and then the body finally is like, "All right, I've had enough of this I'm making antibodies, and we're going ham." Yeah. Is that more or less how this Yep. And actually, in the neurological scientific literature, they consider gluten sensitivity a neurological disease. It just happened to be gastroenterologist found it first. And 2/3 of people that have gluten sensitivity never have gastrointestinal symptoms. Mhm. They just have cognitive decline. And then in the brain, there are no pain fibers. Uh okay, well, let me ask. Is there a way for gluten to get to the brain without first breaking down the junctions in the gut? As long as a person makes antibodies, then this whole cross-reactive mechanism is possible. If the protein is undigested Well, let me explain If the protein is undigested, Mhm. then that's when this immune response really triggers. If the protein is broken down So, when you have a protein, protein is a bunch of uh amino acids stuck together, right? Uh and then as your body digests is the does those enzymes, they become individual amino acids. Individual amino acids are so small that antibodies can't bind to them. So, there's no immune reaction. So, the situation where someone digests gluten, doesn't have a gluten sensitivity, breaks down gluten to a small particle amino acids, they cross through, there's no problem. If someone has a intestinal barrier that's open, and then the gluten is undigested, and that crosses, Mhm. now there's all these immune reactions that take place, then they start to develop gluten antibodies, develop gluten sensitivity. And if their blood brain barrier's breached, now these gluten antibodies can get into the brain, and then start to cross-react with brain tissue, and then they get subtle brain inflammation. And inflammation in the brain doesn't cause pain, cuz there's no pain fibers in the brain. There's no nociceptors in the brain. So, as their inflammation in the brain continues, that shuts down nerve conductance. And then now they just feel like they can't get through the thought, they can't focus, they can't concentrate. And these responses can happen 2 or 3 days later. So, they get exposed to gluten, and then it may not even be that same day. Like the next day, their brain's not working. And then over a period of time, they get degeneration in these pathways, and then they just see their function go downhill. All right, my friend, I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife, Lisa, is about to launch her new book, Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear, sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me, but when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big, exciting dreams as a kid to then as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch, or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams, it was brutal for me. 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But what Lisa shows people in Radical Confidence is that the radical part is that you can accomplish extraordinary things even when you feel fear. That's what Radical Confidence is, being afraid and unsure and having a tool kit that allows you to still make massive progress. Pre-order your copy today because if you act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at radicalconfidence.com. They're only available if you pre-order, so act now. Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys, read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. This is so interesting. Okay, so the vast majority of our immune system is in our gut. Yeah. But is it behind the epithelial lining or is is it going in and out actually into the the gut where the food particles are being digested? I mean there's immune function on the barrier of the gut with cells called dendritic cells, but the majority of the immune response is once it gets through the gut. That's where we have these really reactive T cells that that play a role. Okay, and if somebody had leaky gut and I tested their blood, would I find gluten protein in the bloodstream? I would have to, right? Yeah, and you can actually measure leaky gut by looking at something called zonulin, that's the marker. Uh there's also zonulin and occludin marker protein, and you can actually measure Is zonulin only produced when it's gluten? Uh once once the tight junctions break down, those little particles break down also, and then you can make antibodies against them. So you can have zonulin levels uh show up even if it's unrelated to gluten. And then for the blood brain barrier, there's a protein specifically called S100B. And you can do a blood test and measure if someone has blood brain barrier permeability. So like the worst scenario would be someone has gluten antibodies, zonulin, occludin, leaky gut antibodies, and then S100B, blood brain barrier antibodies. Now they have chronic condition and symptoms no one can figure out, and they maybe go off gluten maybe not 100%, and they think they don't have a gluten reaction, then they finally go off 100% gluten-free, and then within like two or three weeks their brain function improves, and they can see that connection. So you can actually in a clinical setting see it all in the laboratory test. Just no one no one tests it. Well, zonulin though you said can be a response to other things. Yeah, so once the tight junctions, the zonulin and occludin are are both proteins that control the the tight junctions. Once the tight junction starts to get inflamed and have things destroyed and break it down, those tight junction proteins break into the into the bloodstream, and then immune system cells in the gut, immune cells in the gut react against them, and there's some antibody production. So we can measure those with a blood test. Got you. So, zonulin just says I have leaky gut. I don't necessarily know that it's gluten, but I can check for other things that are only gluten. Yep. And I can tell you we just I'm just finishing up a manuscript in a publication with 200 patients where we looked at zonulin antibodies and their predictive risk for getting autoimmune disease. And it's sometimes 200% increased risk. It's depending on which I I checked uh 24 different autoimmune diseases, but there's a significant risk for half of them. Well, if I'd had a larger sample size, I'm sure I could have found more, but I only had 200. But, it's it's it's high risk. Once your gut barrier starts to break down, you can develop autoimmunity. The problem is gluten is a very inflammatory protein. And the gluten we're eating now is like a new protein. It's not the same protein. And there's about 10% new proteins in gluten. So, when people start to get intestinal barrier breakdown just from modern lifestyle, modern diet, and balanced microbiomes, um people start to make antibodies against gluten. But, the problem with gluten is it cross- reacts with the brain. It also cross-reacts with other tissues, not just cerebellum tissue of the brain, but it there's some studies that show that it cross-reacts with the proteins in joint joint tissue. So, it can lead to inflammatory autoimmune diseases. Um And then milk is very similar to the gluten structure. So, when people develop gluten sensitivity, they get they get milk intolerances. What? Yeah. So, this is why like with autistic uh communities, they have to go gluten dairy free to get some change because they can't just do a gluten gluten alone. Wow. Okay, so obviously I've heard people say to avoid dairy, but I've never really understood why if I'm completely honest. Yeah. So, it's the same biomimicry that's going on? Yeah. And it matches gluten specifically. Yes. And are there more? Yes, there are. Okay, so we have gluten, we have um dairy that have this biomimicry, gets in the brain, immune system's going to go ham Yep. because it's actually binding to the protein. Yep. Uh And by the way, casein has a cross-reactive pattern with myelin basic protein. It's a little bit different than than than the cerebellum, but they're very similar. Most neurological tissue proteins are very similar. So So for people that don't know, the myelin sheath is like a fatty covering that allows the neurons to fire more efficiently, basically. Exactly. So is this attacking the myelin sheath? Yeah. So just like you make antibodies if you make antibodies specifically against the casein protein of milk. Milk has multiple proteins. But it makes antibodies against casein. Casein cross-reacts with its molecular mimicry with myelin. And we actually published a paper we when years ago, we took 400 healthy blood donors and we checked how many of them had gluten antibodies, how many had myelin antibodies and we looked for correlations between neurological autoimmune markers. So the ones that had milk antibodies had a very high degree of correlation with having myelin basic protein autoimmunity and cerebellum. There's a lot of people walking around that actually have neurological antibodies to the brain that they don't have MS yet. But they can't yet. Or they may never develop what? Because if you destroy the myelin sheath, that is MS, right? Yeah, but the problem is with with MS you have to have the diagnosis criteria of having multiple lesions on MRI that that show you have a that you have MS, right? So you have to you have to in order to get MRI signal, what they call hyperintensity signal white matter signal, you have to you have to lose 60% of your myelin sheath Wow. or more. So if you have someone who's lost 40%, 50% of the myelin sheath and they have neurological antibodies, their MRI still looks normal. But they may have physical examination findings, they may have weird neurological symptoms no one understands and testing for neurological antibodies aren't part of a routine you know, health insurance model. It's done in research settings, but it hasn't been accepted as a routine part of that model. But clinically, if you have neurological antibodies, you have immune system attacking the brain. There's a lot of people that have chronic undiagnosed neurological symptoms that have these antibodies against the brain. Some of them are triggered by gluten, some of some are triggered by dairy. There's the two most common ones. Pathogens. We published a paper and showed that different proteins of SARS-CoV-2, COVID, can cross-react with the brain. They have molecular mimicry with the brain. Um some people have long COVID are probably getting neurological autoimmunity developed. They get a pathogen, they get the infection, they make antibodies against their spike proteins, nuclear proteins, membrane proteins, envelope proteins of SARS-CoV-2. There's actually 24 different proteins. We mapped those all out in a publication published in Frontiers in Immunology, and we found there's direct cross molecular mimicry cross-reactivity with that pathogen and brain. So, I think a lot of people that are getting these diverse neurological symptoms from long COVID are actually having the onset of neurological autoimmune disease develop. Because, just to go back to that core idea, there's in those 24 different proteins, some number of them match a normal protein that should be in our body. And so, as the immune system creates the antibodies to slap around COVID, it ends up slapping itself around, and now we have a problem. Yeah, and we mapped this all We mapped those all out in a paper and published you stop that then? Well, this all comes back to how do you not lose your immune tolerance as a human being? So, we're we're all at risk for developing autoimmune disease. And the rates of autoimmune disease now exceed cancer and cardiovascular diseases combined. So, some Yes. So, some of the current statistics show that 1 in 12 women have autoimmune disease, 1 in 25 men have autoimmune disease. Why so much more for women? There's some theories between how estrogen may make T cells more responsive. No one really knows. There's just a bunch of theories, but there isn't a concrete answer, but it is more common in women. Uh okay, this is really terrifying. So, we have somebody in our company that has long COVID. Yep. And I hadn't really stopped to try to formulate a hypothesis on how it would shake down, but this is like you through it. Well, I think I understand how it starts, but now what's distressing is if you stop eating gluten to get rid of may not be gluten. So, here's the thing, for them the pathogen was the trigger. Right? So, then they got SARS-CoV-2 infection. isn't it going away then? Because once autoimmunity turns on, it doesn't turn off. That's what's freaking me out. It's an incurable disease. There are incurable diseases. So, now it's all about can you put it in remission and relapse. So, let me give you this scenario. Say someone developed long COVID, right? Yeah. The next question is what kind of symptoms do you have? Mhm. They say I get vertigo and dizziness, then you know the cerebellum had cross-reactivity. They say that um you know, now they they can't control their blood pressure and they they're dropping. There's a marker called 21-hydroxylase that we found cross-reactivity with. This is an adrenal antibody. You can have autoimmunity anywhere. So, the patient's clinical symptoms after they get the infection can give you a clue where those where those autoimmune reactions are. And then you can measure specific antibodies for those specific symptoms. And then if you see the antibody high, then you know that now they have autoimmune reactivity. Now, in in the world of immunology, they use the word autoimmune reactivity, which is different than autoimmune disease. Autoimmune reactivity means you have the antibodies there, but you don't have full destruction of the tissue to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Like someone who has myelin antibodies against their brain has neurological uh autoimmune reactivity, but until they have enough lesions to show up on an MRI, Mhm. they won't fit the criteria of MS. So, now they walk into the health care system for decades and even their whole life never really diagnosed with what's happening cuz the health care system is so focused on autoimmune disease and not autoimmune reactivity. For sure, there's a lot of patients that develop long COVID that now have autoimmunity. It may not always be the brain. In our paper, we found multiple tissue tissues that can cross-react with it, but that's the concept of molecular mimicry. And that's what's scary cuz you could be doing everything right and be super healthy and all of a sudden your immune system dis-regulates. Maybe you get the perfect storm. Maybe you get the infection while you are under stress and had free radical exposure and your gene type at that time period with the host viral gene turn that turn that mechanism on and now you have autoimmunity. And now you have an uncurable disease and now you become the mystery weird patient that no one can figure out and now as your immune system starts to dis-regulate you start to react to foods, you start to react to chemicals, those then trigger the vicious cycle and there's Because they at a a protein level look the same. Well, some of that some of that is molecular mimicry. But once you start to develop an autoimmune disease, your whole immune system starts to become rubbed up and the inflammatory response in autoimmunity itself will break down the intestinal tight junctions. Here we go. And then starts to break down the blood brain barrier and then you get a person who's got leaky gut, leaky brain, multiple food sensitivities, they start to react to chemicals, they lose something called immune tolerance. Now there's this vicious cycle and they're confused. Immune tolerance? Yeah. What's that? So immune tolerance is this concept in immunology where you should tolerate your environment and there's there's dietary protein tolerance which is like food sensitivities, there's chemical tolerance whether you react to chemicals or not and there's self tissue tolerance which is autoimmune disease. So once you lose one, you lose them all. Okay? So once someone loses self tolerance, develops autoimmune disease, their immune system dis-regulates. So now they have dietary protein intolerance. So now they start to react against a bunch of foods that they may not even know that they have reactions to. It's not And you think the thing that unites all of these is just you've you've revved revved up the immune system and now they're looking for any excuse to fight. Yeah, and it's more of like an immune system dis-regulated response. They just dis-regulate. It can't figure out what to do anymore. The cells are confused. And then wherever you have antibodies produced is where the immune system is going to react against and then the whole molecular mimicry pattern comes in. So, you make antibodies that think of antibodies like to a pathogen just binding to the pathogen. They don't. They bind to any every other protein that's similar to it in the body. And that can happen with food protein like gluten and celiac disease. It can happen with someone who gets long COVID. It's a it's very scary. Yeah. And it's very common. And it's clearly easy to identify and diagnose cuz you just do a simple blood test. And you identify this. It's just not part of a routine health care system yet. Yet. It's in the research. It's in the journals. It's in the publications. But there's, you know, application to those takes a long time. Yeah. Okay, so man, now that we've got that bit of bad news. Uh But you can't do things for autoimmunity. That's where we're heading. So, now I want to know I really want to put a fine point on things that we can avoid doing and then we're going to layer that with things that we can add on top of that. So, the avoid. Doesn't seem wise to play with gluten. If you may have a tolerance, you may not, but you might. And given that that mimics the cerebellum, which does not strike me as a good thing that you want your immune system attacking. Right. Uh I wouldn't play around with that. But you seem like you want to say no, it's fine. Tell me more. It's not just gluten. I mean it's just It's not just gluten, but is it gluten? It can It can be gluten. Gluten is the most very common one cuz it's such a new protein. The gluten proteome is is new. It's It's not the same protein we used like when you were kids and we had wheat. It was not the same protein. Right. It wasn't genetically modified though. It was hybridized. Right. So, gluten has been hybridized and also Basically crossbred it. And also a lot of the pesticides that are being used bind to gluten and they change the structure of the molecule. And when they change the structure of the molecule, it becomes more antigenic. This is called haptenation. Uh more immune reactive. So, there's a concept of There's a concept of haptenation. When a chemical binds to a protein, it makes it change the structure. Uh-huh. And then when it becomes more antigenic, meaning more immune reactive, Yep. then Because the body's like, "This is weird. I don't know what the heck this is." We never seen this protein before. So, so now you have chemicals and different pesticides that are being used that are now showing to change great gluten. They change the molecular structure of the protein. So, now it becomes like a new protein that your immune system has not seen before, then it triggers the immune response. Hello, my friend. You know that I believe success requires you to see failure as the ultimate learning tool. Success requires you to be disciplined and gritty and to never, ever quit on your dreams. I say all of that because one thing is certain, the road to achieving your goal is not smooth or linear. I wish it was, but it's not. It's going to be bumpy, sometimes scary. Some days you'll take two steps forward and slide 10 steps back. And that's why success also requires you to know how to pull yourself out of a rut and get unstuck fast. Life is short. You can't be messing around with your goals. You've got to make progress every single day. So, I've pulled a class from Impact Theory University called how to get unstuck, which you can watch for free with the link on your screen or by clicking below. When you join me for that free preview of that workshop from Impact Theory University, I'm going to teach you my strategy for how to understand exactly where you need to be going, how to identify the obstacle that's blocking you, and the best way to make the most progress towards that goal and keep your momentum. All right, click that link and let's get to work. All right, I'll see you on the inside. So, we crossbred it, Uh-huh. changed it, Yep. new protein, Yep. and then slathered on Yep. pesticides, which mutate I don't know if mutate is the right word, but they bend it, Yep. mishape it Yep. to where the body's like, "Oh, this is really new." Exactly. now the immune system goes ham. Yep. Bad news is that it's still similar enough to to cerebellum Yep. that we're tearing that apart as well. Yeah, and so the most common proteins that do that will be like GMOs, also like corn, soy, egg protein out Because in the GMOing of it Yeah, it's we create new proteins. Yes. And then also what's very reactive with people uh is egg protein albumin and milk and wheat. So What other And by the way, this is you know, what people call the autoimmune paleo diet. And you know, long before they used the term autoimmune paleo diet, when I work I work with autoimmune disease patients all the time, they would come and go and they would bring in their own food and Tupperware cuz they couldn't eat out, they couldn't eat anything, they always get sick, and they had to basically get off, you know, all these inflammatory foods. It depends on the extent of the immune response. So, it's not like just a cluster of foods, but when people have autoimmunity and you just don't know where to start, like if you're like don't know where to start, you don't have access to lab testing and so on to work with, autoimmune paleo diet, which gets rid of gluten, dairy, you know, eggs, nightshades, lectins, these foods is the is the place to go. Because they're all antigenic? Exactly. Exactly. He learns fast. antigenic. Okay. And and when people have a disregulated immune system, anything that's highly antigenic tends to be a trigger. And then if some of these proteins that they make antibodies to can cross-react with their own tissue, that's where you have molecular mimicry. That's why there's such a different uniquenesses of people have autoimmune diseases with certain reactions. Everyone's different. You're never going to have two rheumatoid arthritis patients or lupus patients that are exactly the same cuz they have different proteins they're reacting to, but they have the thing in common is they've lost their immune tolerance. Okay, so anything else that we don't eat in the autoimmune paleo diet? Well, it's basically gluten, dairy, nightshades, grains also. Grains are very similar. Some grains That's a whole class. The whole class. No more quinoa for you. Exactly. Uh rice is grains, right? Yeah, but but again, there's individual uniqueness. Some people have autoimmune disease they can't handle those, some cannot. Yeah, yeah. So, that's You can be the nuanced one. I'm going to be over here over simplifying things. Okay, well, autoimmune paleo. Yep. Okay, so well, in asking that question again, we just lost grains. If I ask it a third time, I'm going to Well, this is So, this is So, this is where you get a problem. The problem is there's this concept called immune tolerance we talked about, right? Yep. And when your diet isn't diversified, like with lots of different food proteins, different then you lose uh your gut diversity. Because all of a sudden you can be 27 and encounter rice for the first time and now your body's freaking out and in reality, Well, if if it encountered it earlier, it wouldn't if you ate the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, Yep. You had me at hello. I tried to do that. Okay. Even though I know that sounds like it's the punchline is don't. Don't. You You not The fibers you eat are going to going to cause different mic- bacteria in the microbiome to populate. Yep. The more diverse your plant fiber diet, the more diverse your diet is, the more microbiome bacterial species you produce. So, it's a direct relationship between the diversity of your diet, especially different plant fibers, and the diversity of your microbiome. So, what happens with some of these people is they go, "Well, I got to I can't eat grains. I can't nitrates. I can't eat anything. I'm just going to have chicken breast every morning and broccoli cuz I can just tolerate that. I don't care about food anymore." And then they're they they narrow their diet so much, now they've lost their microbiome diversity and now their immune tolerance is much worse than before cuz the more diverse your gut bacteria microbiome is, the more immune regulation you have, the greater tolerance you have. And things like like exercise improves microbiome diversity. Eating a diverse diet improves microbiome diversity. Yeah. How would exercise You get blood flow to your gut. You activate vagal pathways. You turn on gene expressions in the gut microbiome. It actually makes the microbiome more diverse. Really fast. So, you have a whole section in the book about vagal nerve and what you have to do and I'd never heard anybody talk about how I could exercise my vagal nerve by gagging myself, PS, and gargling. Um but one, tell people what the the vagus nerve is and then why does vagal conditioning matter? Okay, well so so for that that specific relationship between the vagus well you really worry about head injury patients who have traumatic brain injuries and how they lose their brain gut access. So there's a brain gut access and there's a gut to brain access. The brain gut access meaning downward the brain fires down to the brain stem and in the lower areas of the brain stem you have a group of nuclei called the vagal nuclei and the vagal nuclei help get blood flow to the gut. They activate autonomics to get blood flow to the gut. They release enzymes. They impact immune function in the gut. So if your brain's healthy you get that nice brain to gut response. So sometimes people get traumatic brain injuries or develop neurological autoimmunity of the brain. Their brain becomes less efficient. There's less activation to their vagal centers. And then clinically we see that they they don't have a gag reflex. They they have abnormal gag reflex. Their palate doesn't move. They don't have intestinal motility issues. They're constipated all the time. And you said the constipation is like an early sign of several neurological diseases. Right. So that's that brain vagal pathway and this vagus nerve from the brain stem goes all the way to the gut. And then like in Parkinson's disease the Parkinson's disease is really what's called the alpha-synucleinopathy where these alpha-synuclein Just going to say that. These these alpha-synuclein proteins build up and they get in the way of normal normal synaptic activity and it starts in the gut. So most people that Parkinson's disease will have constipation 20 years before they have tremor. Wow. And they'll have loss of smell cuz it also impacts the olfactory bulbs so they lose smell and gut function. And you said there are three particular scents. Let's see if I can remember them. you are sharp. Peppermint? Yes. Anise? Yes. Oh god, the third one. Coffee? Coffee. Oh, come on. That's pretty good. So those are researchers have found those three are the the three earliest findings of loss of smell with early Parkinson's disease. I was literally going to order like those three things so I can just make sure every day that I'm doing okay. Well, that's just specific for Parkinson Parkinson's build up of alpha-synuclein. Anything I can test at home, I'll take. Yeah. So, that's that's the So, that's the intimate relationship between the gut is you have this gut that has this pathway from the brain to the gut and then the gut bacteria produces polysaccharides and different peptides and has inputs from the vagus and also through cytokines and growth factors in the bloodstream that impact the brain and the brain gets always working together. But, once you start to, for example, lose brain have a brain injury, you lose that vagal input, then your gut starts to disrupt. Now, you have like a chronic gut issue that becomes hard to diagnose. Or, you can have a chronic gut issue that causes inflammation, breaks down the blood-brain barrier, and then now the blood-brain barrier's permeable and then you start this cascade of brain inflammation, brain starts to degenerate, now you get less vagal activity, and get these brain-gut gut-brain disorders. And this is why a lot of people have bad brains and bad guts, and they go to one part of health care and they go, "Oh, everything's about the gut." They go to another part and well, the brain usually gets ignored, but these these intimate relationships are there. And these brain-gut gut-brain relationships are really reason for lots of chronic health problems today. Mhm. For sure. Having been through this myself and my wife had just unbelievable problems. Oh. Okay, so really fast, just to capstone the vagal nerve. So, there are things that you can do to condition it. So, you said gag reflex, take a tongue depressor, press down on your tongue, don't jab the back of your throat. Great. So, the type of thing like there's got to be like the right person candidate for it, right? So, you you really didn't want to do vagal activities unless you have a vagal disorder. Your biggest clue that you have a vagal disorder is number one, you can't swallow very well. You notice, "Hey, I can't take as many supplements." So, as a clinician, I'll hear a patient say, you know, "Don't give me a lot of supplements. I can't swallow them. Can you give me powders?" That's a major red flag that the vagus isn't working cuz the vagus nerve activates what we call glossopharyngeal muscles in the back of the throat that allow you to swallow. So, that swallowing response is all vagal, which then impacts your gut motility and gut function everything. So if someone has difficulty swallowing, somebody has constant gags to food, someone who has chronic constipation all the time, they don't have they have to use like magnesium as a stool softener to have regular bowel movements, there's some kind of laxative on a daily basis. Those are all signs that the vagus nerve could be in trouble. And sometimes people get a brain injury and then 5 or 10 years later they start to get these vagal impacts and then the brain and gut axis starts to become dysfunctional. Now like their vagal system isn't working and if you don't get blood flow to your gut and have motility happening, you start to get dysbiosis, you start to get leaky gut. Now you react to food proteins. Let's say the most common food protein is gluten cuz it's a new protein, modern wheat. And modern wheat then makes antibodies, then those antibodies cross react with other tissue in the brain and now you have a cascade of brain and gut axis autoimmune disease that's really common. Which is like and this is also part child developmental disorders, it's part of chronic depression, it's part of chronic anxiety disorders. And gluten also binds to enzyme called glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 GAD65, which is the pro the enzyme that makes GABA. So you get chronic anxiety disorders with people and they have these reactions and you can measure these. You can just measure GAD65 antibodies and see if that's that's there or not. Part that I wanted to get to is in the book you for people that are struggling with the vagal nerve that coffee enemas right are like the go-to strategy. I was like, what? What's funny is people always fixate on coffee enemas. I just can't like imagine like is it just the caffeine or is it is it some other property of coffee? And by the way, I feel like it's worth saying cool the coffee down. Body temperature. Yeah, I was going to say we don't want uh Okay, so when people have brain-gut axis storage and the vagus isn't working, the goal is to how do you activate the vagus, right? So, if neurons get injured, neurons aren't firing, then the goal is to develop neuroplasticity. So, neuroplasticity is where you get a neuron to branch over it. So, someone has a traumatic brain injury, they can activate activity to the vagus, that vagus starts to degenerate. Then you go, how do you how do you get that vagal activity going? You activate and as you activate pathways, right? Specifically the active vagal pathways, you develop mitochondrial biogenesis, you get synaptogenic activity, neurons start to grow, neurons start to branch. So, when someone has a vagus problem, you want to get that vagus apparatus working. So, coffee enemas, the way they work, is when someone uh isn't People use coffee enemas for like detox reasons, that's not the purpose here. The way you use a coffee enema for a brain-gut axis disorder is you use coffee and then you would hold the bowel hold the coffee as long as you can. And caffeine activates what are called acetylcholine nicotinic receptors. And acetylcholine nicotinic receptors fire smooth muscle pathways that directly fire into the vagus. So, now if someone is doing coffee enema and they're holding their their bowel with coffee as long as they can, they're actually activating that acetylcholine pathway and developing vagal responses. Hold on, they hold as long as they can and then they you have to, you know, eliminate and do a normal response. But that holding of the coffee in their bowel is something that activates the vagus. Sa- same as gargling. Gargling will activate the glossopharyngeal muscles in the back of the throat. That supports mitochondrial biogenesis of the vagus. So, is like doing a gag reflex on your tongue. It's just the neurological pathways to it. All right, so we've got a good list of things not to do. Now, let's start layering on. We'll start with something I've heard you say, which to me just seems like the default answer in everyone's life, which is eat whole food only. Um that's interesting. I've heard you say that before, but uh you disagree with that? Well, I mean, again, it's it's not so much the food, it's the protein, right? So, it's whole food, but if you're immune reactive to it, then you got a problem, right? So, let's say you have lectin sensitivity and you eat whole foods, Eating whole lectins still going to be a problem. be a problem for you. And then you can have significant immune reactions. Though, lectin binds specifically to something called wheat germ lectin wheat germ agglutinin and wheat germ agglutinin binds to uh nerve growth factors on nerves. So, if you have that specific reaction, it's a problem. So, that's that's the thing. I mean, for the most people, it's great. But, then when you're talking about the subset of people that have chronic disease and have autoimmunity, the immune system is different. Like simple things such as like whole food, yes, it would be great, but as long as they don't have individual immune reactivity to it. still try to bucket them into whole food, but whole food that they respond well to? Or for some people is processed food still a better choice? processed food is terrible. Got lots of inflammatory prostaglandins in there, partially hydrogenated fats, lots of sugar, lots of salt, those uh lots of uh processed proteins. I mean, you definitely want yeah, real food. When someone's sick, when they actually just try to figure out how they get through the day, they'll end up on real food and they'll end up on limited amounts of what they can tolerate. You know, for me when I was younger out of my 20s, I'd see people with autoimmune disease come in like I was saying with their Tupperware of food, just a few things they could eat and they couldn't eat anything else. Like, what's happening? And then now we understand that there's all these immune reactions and protein reactions that are happening and it's it's that's why there's that uniqueness. That's why general principles are sometimes hard when you become chronically ill. And this is why chronic disease patients are frustrated cuz they go from reading one person, right? Oh, I can I have lectins are dangerous. I got to avoid all lectins. Now they've totally lost their microbiome diversity cuz now they're not eating any lectins. And maybe they didn't have any reactions to it. And then someone else is, you know, totally avoiding milk, but they don't have reaction to it and milk can help their SI GA levels in their gut and stop their immune system. So, it's very frustrating. that you walk people through? Or it's all blood test blood test blood test? I don't But protocols are inefficient. I think Interesting. Okay, so protocols are inefficient. What is efficient? I had to tell workup. I had to tell workup. Blood panel. Blood panel, imaging, physical exam. The whole routine. That's why it's it's hard. You know, like this is uh It's it's challenging when people get chronically sick. You went through the experience with your wife. Lisa, she went through whole series. That wasn't one test, right? It was this this journey through it. And this is what's so frustrating is that so many people, especially people that do all the right thing and eat well and exercise and do everything all sudden get sick. You're like, what happened? Something impacted the body. Something In many cases, it's an immune-related issue. And uh The good news is she was doing everything wrong. Oh, well, that's good. So, yeah. I mean, so she had taken so many antibiotics it was crazy. Okay. Um her diet was ultra limited. So, she was in amazing shape. Yep. Amazing. Yeah. But her diet was just that exact kind of narrow diet you were saying to avoid. So, you put antibiotics together with a hyper-limited diet, and oh, by the way, she loves to work out. Loves it. But definitely, I would say has a tendency to overdo it. Um so, in fact, that's something that we should talk about as another don't, which is stress. In fact, in the book you say, this is a paraphrase, it was pretty close, the worst thing that you can do for your brain is stress. And I was like, ah, man, it's my only vice. My only vice is stress. Well, there's good stress and bad stress, right? I probably spill into the bad. I'm sure I'm completely honest. you're highly accomplished person. I'm sure you're inclined in that way. But it's But if you if you People like you that are highly successful, they've learned how to adapt with stress. So, I'm sure you have a very good schedule that allows you to adapt to stress and be highly efficient. Yes. Yes. But I would say that especially now, I'm in a period in my life where I recognize I'm shortening my life. Right. I'm now doing I'm like so 93 hours for me is like it's perfect. I could do that forever. I don't feel stressed. It's amazing. I don't have kids, so that's a huge part. But now I'm doing 120 hours a week and that I can tell is problematic. Yeah. So So everyone has their own level of stress tolerance. Usually And by the way, if you I mean, stress is good. If you don't have stress, you actually you get massive depression. So you have to have some degree of stress. Your brain has to have that activity. Your frontal lobe has to fire. You have to have that activity. There has to be some limbic response. necessarily stress, though? It's It Well, we I don't know how you define stress, but in general like if if we put you on an island and just gave you whatever you wanted and you had you would you would find stress into how your drink isn't the right level or you don't have the right umbrella. When do you leave? Or why is the sun in my face? Just you're going to fixate on something stressful. That's a normal physiological survival response. We have to have to have stress. Like stress gets nailed as a bad guy. It's just a matter of does it overwhelm your capacity to respond to it? But the problem with stress is that releases cortisol, especially when it's non-adaptive stress. So there's adaptive stress and non-adaptive stress. But non-adaptive stress will break down the blood-brain barrier, will break down the gut barrier, will cause loss of blood flow to the brain. One of the key findings to be your cortisol levels are high. If your cortisol levels are outside of physiological levels then stress my cortisol levels won't be that high. Yeah. Let's say we take someone into your schedule, right? And they can't handle it. They can't get to 93 hours. They get to 40 hours and the cortisol's are off the chart. And then you're fine with it. So you can handle that degree of stress. And you've built your own adaptation process and your own physiology to deal with that stress, right? Just like someone who can run long distance. You take someone who's never run long distance, they they can't do it. They'll get into a metabolic overtraining syndrome every time. So our body has adaptation stress ability. So stress is not necessarily the bad guy cuz you have to have it to turn on actually antioxidant systems and to turn on brain activity and physiological systems. It's just when it exceeds your abilities to to modulate it, right? So, you don't have the adaptive skills for it. So, but it's easy to, you know, overdo it. And then but you have to kind of overdo it here every now and then to then build your skills, right? So, just like someone who runs like 25 miles a day or something, um they had to get into a stress response and then recover and then get through it. So, some people are extremely um highly efficient with with is would be devastating for someone else and their their stress hormones are not high. So, it's all specific to that pattern. But but stress when it's uncontrolled and it's past a person's abilities can be devastating for the brain. And Why? Well, cortisol causes atrophy of the brain. So, it actually shrinks the brain. Cortisol breaks down the barriers. And the area of the brain called the medial temporal of the hippocampus is where you control your cortisol rhythm, but it's also the area of your brain which controls your declarative long-term memory. It's where Alzheimer's disease hits first. And when you have too much cortisol for extended periods of brain, actually what they find in imaging studies is that the hippocampus starts to atrophy and degenerate. So, then long-term memory becomes impaired. And that starts sets up the stage for neurodegenerative changes for Alzheimer's disease in that specific location. So, again, it's a it's about like amounts. So, you have a 93-hour work week, let's say. You measure cortisol levels, you might be just perfect. You're like, great. You're killing it. And someone else can't do that. So, so the stress is, you know, one of those things. It's like dietary proteins. They're not all they're not all bad. It all depends what your immune responsive is. And stress is going to depend upon your adaptive abilities to what those levels are. What about exercise? So, exercise, um the same thing. And for the brain, it's phenomenal, right? Exercise is going to release brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's going to support mitochondrial biogenesis, so you have more endurance cells built in. It's going to release opioids. It's going to have adipocytes release things like adiponectin, all these things have anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body. Um they help set up stage for neuroplasticity. They slow down the mechanisms for neurodegeneration. They get blood flow to the brain. They activate neurotransmitter activity. Uh you produce free radicals during exercise, but afterwards you have hours and hours of making antioxidants. But with exercise, you could overtrain. So if at least say you're saying was overtraining, then you get into this phenomenon called metabolic overtraining syndrome, where you now you have these inflammatory cytokine responses and you get breakdown of tissue and everything goes the wrong way. And the biggest clue someone's getting to metabolic overtraining syndrome is that they don't recover from the workouts. And they start to get depression. The performance goes down over time. So, you know, like everything you you want to look and listen to to these things cuz everyone needs a little bit of stress. Everyone needs physical activity. The higher they can go without overtraining, the better. The highest level stress you can get without overdoing it, the better. So it's this this constant being being aware of what those things are. And and what I've noticed highly efficient people, that's what they figure out. It's interesting that you've zoned in on efficiency. Yep. That to me feels like the secret that people don't really understand is that to be successful, one you have to be really good at problem-solving, but two you have to have an obsession with efficiency. Yep. And then it goes back to brain function. Listen, everything that requires success requires healthy brain function. As a matter of fact, some people have desire and motivation to take it to the next level, can't because their brain's not healthy enough. They don't have brain endurance, so what's the other key thing? Um when the brain starts to become unhealthy, the first thing you start to see is low endurance. You don't just see like MS develop. Mental endurance. Well, it depends on what part of your brain you're using, right? So we talked about the cerebellum a lot. If the cerebellum is starting to degenerate, it's not going to maybe impact cognition as much, but now their muscle tone is off cuz the cerebellum controls muscle tone. So now they don't have good posture and now they can't stand without getting neck and back pain all the time. Now they get vertigo and dizziness. Now they get car sickness and sea sickness all the time. Those are specific for that area of the brain. If the parietal lobe starts to degenerate, then they start to bump into things and and start to sprain the same ankle over and over again cuz the brain can't perceive where their part of the limb is to the brain cuz that's what that function of the brain is. If the frontal lobe starts to degenerate, that's when you would start to lose executive function, focus, attention, and concentration, planning, following through with tasks. So what people will will start to have unhealthy brains like let's say they get brain inflammation, neuroinflammation. Maybe they get a brain-gut axis disorder, gut-brain axis disorder. Maybe they get gluten sensitivity. Who knows? Maybe they get this inflammatory response. This inflammatory response to the brain is going to then shut down nerve conductance. And if it impacts the frontal lobe, then their executive function is going to go down. So now they want to build their business. They want to improve their life. They want to do whatever they want to do. But now they can only do it for 2 hours a day and then they're done. Then some days it's more than other days. That has a lot to do with their inflammatory state, their mitochondrial function, and those factors as well, which you know, is important. But then you're you're you're a lot about efficiency and and having people reach the next level. Um but but the brain is a part of that. How do we like push our limits with this stuff? So one, okay, I get my diet right. I know sleep is a big part of what you prescribe to people. But if somebody is noticing like I'm declining here, whether it's um like I never used to get car sick. And now in rare, admittedly, but in certain circumstances I will. My wife's car sickness is definitely getting worse. She's always gotten car sick. Her whole family has. But like if we start noticing signs that in the book you say stop chalking things up to aging. Like a lot of this stuff that people are just like, "Oh, well." Uh you really can do something. Yeah, like if you're getting carsick and seasick, then what's happening is the rate of this visual and vestibular input is exceeding your rate of dampening it in your cerebellar perkinje inhibition system pathways. It's like the neurology is there. Not to get into neurology, but the neurology is there. Like that's a mechanism. It's not a personality trait. It's not cuz other people in the family had it. It's like other people in the family having the same area of the brain degenerate. It's a degenerate process. We tend to like call it, "Oh, I've always been bad with numbers." Or "I've always had carsickness." No, you've been bad with numbers cuz your inferior parietal lobe isn't developed or is degenerated. So, how do we build that stuff? Cuz I'm terrible with numbers. Whatever you can't do, you do. That's the simple concept of neurological rehab. So, you have to have neuroplasticity exceed neurodegeneration to get function, right? So, if your neurodegeneration is more than your neuroplasticity, then you then you can't gain function and then it starts over time to degenerate, right? So, let's say you are bad with numbers or someone's bad with numbers and maybe they were bad with numbers as a kid and they hated math. I literally I feel like my entire life it's made no sense. Okay. So, what happens your entire life, the area of your brain, let's just call it the math area, which is the inferior parietal lobe, the inferior parietal lobe hasn't developed as much as your other areas because you haven't used it, right? You've kind of avoided math, let's say, your whole life. Or let's say someone has a difference there. They were uncoordinated, no one picked them in sports, they never played sports cuz they were always clumsy, so they never developed their motor skills. So, those motor pathways over their lifespan has less connectivity to each other, right? And maybe in your in your case or someone who isn't good at math, maybe the infra- inferior parietal lobe or lobule with math is doesn't have enough connectivity, right? So, now you get things that start to degenerate the brain, right? Over time and just aging itself is going to turn on some of these processes more than before. More free radicals, less into oxygen production, all those things. The areas where you don't have as much connectivity and plasticity developed is where you're going to have symptoms first. Right? So, if your brain starts to go the wrong way, you're not going to have areas develop, show up signs where you had lots of connectivity and plasticity. You're going to have areas show up where you had the least amount of connectivity and plasticity. So, people will say, "Well, I was always bad at math, but then I got over it, and now it's really coming back." It's like, "Yeah, you never really developed it. You just you you typically compensate. Now as your brain's degenerating, those are coming back more." So, same with this car sickness. I used to have this car sickness when I was a kid. I don't have it didn't have it to my whole adulthood. Now as I'm getting older, it's coming back. Yeah, cuz you're degenerating. And the areas where you had the least amount of the What I you said, do the things that you can't do. So, exposing myself to things that make me carsick will actually help me avoid that degeneration? Technically, yes, but if you Yeah, you can't exceed the rate of what your neurons can handle, right? So, visual tracking could be helpful. This gets in the world of like neurological rehabilitation and things like that. But, for example, if this math is an issue, that's easy. You can get an app. You can get like a child's child's easy math math app and start doing those. Um same people that play video games. So, then they do lots of motion and movement. That helps them rebuild. But, if they play too long, then they get dizzy. And they get symptoms that develop. So, every neuron every neurological pathway has endurance based on how much mitochondria are there. So, when you don't use certain neurons, then you have less mitochondria there. So, like if you use muscles, you have less muscle mitochondria. So, then they have less endurance. Then as people get unheal- as people start to degeneration, the there's that they have less neuron activity, less mitochondria, so they show up, and that's where their endurance in those areas are going to show up first. So, um if you activate those pathways without passing how much mitochondria activity you have, then you don't get symptoms, and you can start to develop. Just like if you are out of shape and you try to run, you can only run so far, and then you have to back off, and then run to your capacity, and then over time you can build run more and more. That's actually my muscle mitochondria developing that's allowing you to do that. Neurons work the same way. So, whatever you can't do is you do what you want to do. So, if driving for 3 hours makes you have car sickness or driving on a really windy road makes you have car sickness, then you want to drive in a less theoretically and less windy road over and over again and then kind of build up. Or if or going to a really windy road but for not as long and then do that repetitively. Do that repetitively, you're then building mitochondria in those pathways and you're building nerve growth factor release. I mean cause nerve growth factor is neuro branching and then you start to get plasticity there and then you have recovery. It's very useful. Now, if somebody wanted to supplement their way to success Sure. are there things that we can do to protect our brains or Yeah, you know these I'm sure you're pro at these. Uh I actually avoid supplements. You do? Yeah. So, I'm super leery of anything that I'm taking from the outside, but I'm open. That's more a general rule than a hard and fast rule. Um obviously I've read the book, so I know some of these punchlines, but I'd be very curious to hear what your take is on supplementation. Well, it all depends on what your goals are. Living forever at Einsteinian levels of Well, specific genius. So, there's no magic supplement. What the brain needs more than anything is it needs activation specific to the area that you want function in. It needs to have reduced inflammation for whatever can reduce inflammation and it needs physical exercise to help readapt to to release things like nitric oxide, nerve growth factor, brain derived neurotrophic factor. That's what the brain needs to have. The brain needs stimulation, the brain needs glucose. The brain needs oxygen. That's what it has to have to thrive, right? So, if you get someone who has lots of inflammation, that's going to be a problem. So, maybe anti-inflammatory supplements could be a strategy. You have someone who is chronically hypoglycemic. The blood sugar they play roller coaster with the blood sugar all day. The brain is not going to function well there. Maybe for them stabilizing the blood sugar or taking nutraceuticals that help their blood sugar stability may be important for them, right? You have another person who is fat phobic, doesn't eat any fats cuz they think fats are bad, and they're worried about calories. So now they don't have healthy amounts of essential fatty acids. that for years. Right, so made such a difference, man, to add fat in my diet. It's crazy. Right. So there isn't a magic supplement, but depends like is it in a clinical world like you what is the clinical strategy? What am I trying to accomplish? Like if you have someone who's got Alzheimer's disease and they have B12 anemia contributing to it, then for sure supplementing B12 is going to have a huge impact on them, right? Or if someone has high homocysteine and that's a that's a inflammatory metabolite that really requires B vitamins and some people have what are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or genetically they can't process B12 as much as other people can. They may not get enough in their diet and their homocysteine is high and they have Alzheimer's in their whole family and they don't know why and then someone measures the homocysteine and go, "Hey, you have to take a type of folate that that goes over your genetic uniqueness so you don't have this high elevation of this inflammatory degenerating marker." So maybe for them supplementation can be very useful. Crazy. So there's all these different variables and uh I'm not trying to not answer you. I'm just trying to No, no, no, I get it, man. It's as complex as it is. Dude, this is so interesting. The book is absolutely fantastic. Where can people follow along with you? You put out a lot of dope content. Thank you. Uh Dr. K News drknews.com. That's where all my stuff's at. You didn't make them spell out your whole last name. I can't imagine why. Yeah, right. That's awesome. And where can they get the book? Amazon. Yeah. Nice and easy. All right, guys. As somebody who's read the book, I'm telling you, check it out. Your brain is the thing that you literally are a brain in a vat. It just so happens that your skull is the vat. So taking care of your brain is critical and the book lays out a lot more detail than what we were able to get to today. It's amazing. He's also got a lot of killer YouTube content. So, be sure to check it out. And speaking of things that you should check out, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If I'm able to make my skin temperature not going down while being exposed to ice cold water, skin temperature, that's power. And that power is the same power we can learn to embrace and awaken.