The Terrifying Link Between Diet & Mental Health - Max Lugavere (4K)

Gavin Nome signed Bill 418 which will prohibit any food containing brominated vegetable oil potassium bromate propil paraben and red Die 3 California becomes the first US state to ban Skittles and 12,000 additional products for cancer causing additives what's going on it's hard to uh take a Firm Stance on this because on the one hand I do think it's largely virtue signaling and perhaps a bit of fear ing you know California is kind of known for doing that a lot of products that are sold in California for example like coffee and a product as innocuous as instant coffee has to come with the warning label that it contains acrylamide a compound that in vitro at least is a is a known carcinogen right you can like find this on instant coffee sold in California um it's not uncommon to be in a parking garage for example and see a sign in uh you know by the elevator or staircase that the by being in the parking garage you're going to be exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer and that are you know teratogenic birth uh defect causing so California is known for being a bit of a hypochondriac State um and uh and so that's where I think a lot of this comes from on the other hand I am I'm not a fan of big government I'm a fan of small government and less regulation as opposed to more but I do kind of think that where regulation is perhaps warranted is in with regard to the food supply the food system system because if you let the market decide you end up with things like Mountain Dew flavored hot dogs which we've seen go viral on social media or yeah I mean these are it's unclear whether or not these were real or computer generated but I mean you see all the time you you know there's like all kinds of crazy products in the supermarket that are just you know their sole intent seemingly is to hook consumers onto this addictive hyper palatable hyper calorie dense product um you feed in fast food all the time I mean I'm not sure what country I was in but I was walking around and there was like a glazed dut hamburger that some Mega chain was offering somewhere um so like if you let the market decide the market is ultimately going to cater to what the people want and people don't have like stop gaps you know old roads lead back to Haribo tangfastics or something yes there you go exactly those those kinds of products so I do think that a little bit of Regulation uh is important and I think you know this this perhaps is a step in the right direction because we know that the food supply is essentially toxic we live in a world now where 73% of items in your average Supermarket are Ultra process this is according to a new study that came out that used a machine learning algorithm that looked at all the products available to your average consumer in your average supermarket and the vast majority of them are ultr processed which we know has been linked to every poor health outcome imaginable these days so you know when when Banning or at least regulating these kinds of products which at the end of the day ultimately are proxies for Ultra processed foods like you're not going to find red Dy 40 right in something that mom cooks I think that's a positive thing but again California is known for fearmongering I don't necessarily know how evidence-based the the the the fear that a lot of the a lot of people have towards these products um are you know the the reason the reason aspartame controversy was a good sort of example of that um I don't have a dog in the fight with regard to aspartame you know there's you can find equivocal evidence that diet sodas are you know actually very helpful with regard to weight loss you can find observational evidence that people who consume more diet sodas have higher risk of obesity higher risk of you know other negative he Health outcomes but you know the World Health Organization came out and said that it was a possible human carcinogen which the data on that isn't really so black and white give me the yeah I've had so many conversations about aspartame over the last six months since that World Health Organization thing came out uh some people have said most people have said uh the risks are overblown yeah the concern doesn't matter unless you're taking 8,000 Cokes a day or something that the risk is so small then a lot of people say well a small chance of cancer risk increase isn't a good thing then other people have said well the reduction in weight from switching from sugar calor drinks to nonc calorie aspartame drinks think about the difference that you get now in terms of weight loss and the downstream benefit like what's your read overall how worried should people be about artificial sweetness yeah I don't I don't think that people should be that worried I this is where I think the the limitations of data come in and you have to you have to arrive at a set of values about these sorts of products and for me personally I avoid artificial sweeteners because I abide by what is sometimes referred to as the precautionary principle you know and you might say oh it's sort of like borderline appeal to Nature fallacy but I think that the less time a food or product has been um in the marketplace the more skepticism the more caution we should reserve for that product and yes Aspartame is one of the most studied compounds in existence really well particularly with regard to a consumable product right but there's also publication bias it's a heavily commercialized product and so for me I choose to avoid like artificial sweeteners I don't think that consuming them particularly in reasonable doses is is going to be a health concern and certainly for people who are on weight loss diets and it is the sort of the One Singular Vice that allows them to better adhere to that diet I think that's a positive thing um and ultimately we're exposed to carcinogens innumerable carcinogens on a daily basis I think ultimately how to prevent cancer is to you know to stack the odds in your favor by building your own resilience your own robustness with exercise with an antioxidant-rich diet um and the like so if a little bit of aspartame sneaks in here and there which I personally avoid but again if if if this is something that happens to be your Vice and you're consuming it in reasonable doses I think it's probably fine what is your advice to somebody like me who has quite a strong Sweet Tooth and has managed to condition myself into eating a Savory meal and then looking for something just that's like a little finisher at the end right and a lot of the time I can make this work with blueberries or raspberries sometimes they're not in the fridge sometimes it's like GH more blueberries and raspberries what what are your go-to I have a sweet tooth craving and I need to satiate that but I don't want to kill myself yeah where do you where do you go and where do you advise people to go you and Steven Bartlett he asked me the same question did he yeah he was like so it's a Brit it's the British thing in us or maybe it's the fact that we're both from like super workingclass backgrounds and we're like we've been given this sort of zero some scarcity mentality around sweet things that it's a treat I don't know yeah it's I mean it's great I look I have a sweet tooth too I think we're programmed for that right I mean sweet is for one of our hunter gather ancestors the only time they would encounter the sensation of sweet sweet taste right would be when fruit was finally ripe during the summer season and it would signal to your body to store fat right it causes an elevation of insulin it floods your muscles with stored energy for later use right so we're hardwired to enjoy sweet and particularly today when sweet is combined with salty when it's combined with fatty you get this hyper palatable combination sometimes referred to as the Dorito effect right it takes uh uh food that was previously an ingredient and it turns it into this this concoction that pushes your brain to a bliss Point Beyond which self-control is seemingly impossible right I've gone through it I've you know went I've gone to my freezer taken out the pine of ice cream only aspiring to have a spoonful or two before you know I knew it I was looking at the bottom of the Pint so I mean that's kind of the problem with modern Foods um but ultimately I think you know with sweet there are a number of non-caloric sweeteners on the market that I think are relatively safe I mean alos is a naturally derived sweetener that I have no and I have no commercial affiliation with any alos producer or anything like that but there seems to be some evidence that it might even be might even actually uh have health benefits associated with it I think arrol is great arrol is a sugar alcohol but among the sugar alcohols it's the more well tolerated one some of them can draw water into the gut and have like a laxative effect which you don't want it's like here's a chocolate bar sweetened with malol and sorbitol oops you're going to get diarrhea if you eat more than half the bar but um but arol is generally very well tolerated like no one's going to go and buy arrol and like throw it at a thing like what's the food give me some foods that are going to saate me well fruit I think is great yep um look ice cream you know there there's observational evidence it's like mind-blowing but that people who consume ice cream for whatever reason they seem to have better health you know I think this is presumably that's going to be a type of ice cream it's got It's not going to be you know your Ultra processed get it from an ice cream truck thing yeah no I mean if you think about it humans have been making ice cream for quite some time and the ingredients and I I'm not saying that ice cream is a health food by the way just to make that perfectly clear and this is a perfect example of where cor correlation doesn't equal causation necessarily but um but yeah ice cream I mean if you can buy like uh you know ice cream made in the traditional way I mean it's egg yolks right it's it's heavy cream which is actually heavy cream is a great source of vitamin K2 like there's nutrients in in ice cream so if you could find a low sugar version of it you know let's just take that there are nutrients in ice cream that's all I needed to hear are actually that was all I wanted but yeah I think um it makes me think reflecting on my own sort of dietary habits that uh Sweet Craving that I've created in myself sometimes after I have a big meal and uh unless I'm very disciplined that can lead me down a a very dangerous path you mentioned about kind of this uh unique blend of particular types of ingredients particular types of flavors have you ever seen hunter gatherer tribes trying cheesecake for the first time no is that a thing there's videos of it on the internet W so they give people who've never had processed foods before and you think about cheesecake from a taste design uh orifices are designed to make them more palatable don't really think about this right because the obsession is with what's in the food but the way that it feels in your mouth is a big determinant of your enjoyment of it uh ancestrally it would have been very very rare to have found something that had both crunchy and fluffy uh and if you think about some of the most palatable Foods Oreos you know you've got this sort of crunch and then fluff french fries same thing again cheesecake you've got that but really dialed up with this perfect ratio of carbs and fat and sugar yeah there's tart across the top if you've got like a little fruit compt type thing and you just get this like blast of this Orchestra right in your mouth they give it to these under gatherer tribes and their faces are just someone that's just chewed leaves right for the last decade and and eaten meat that's been cooked in variable like qualities uh and yeah you realize how hypernormal the stimuli of the foods that we're eating are and this is the biggest lesson that I took from you and it's been really really useful for me that one of the main problems with ultr processed foods is not just what's in them but it is the fact that eating to sa satiety is so tough to do because it is built to push you past satiety exactly yeah super well said that's um you know I used to be more admittedly and this is an area where I've evolved I used to be more interested in what is the what is the more optimal mix of carbs and fat for a for example a weight loss diet or even for longevity and I think now where the science is sort of has has sort of um evolved and also where my think has evolved as well is that it's really it's about food quality at the end of the day and ultimately Ultra process this term Ultra process which was devised coined by in the the Nova nutrient profiling system which was devised in Latin America so people can go look it up it's there's actually a definition around what it takes to be classed as an ultra processed food um it's a good screening tool it's not even necessarily the best diagnostic tool because certainly there are some Ultra processed foods which are quite healthy you know you could take like a legume based pasta which is uh you know an certainly a processed food might not necessarily be an ultr processed food but processing is a Continuum and certainly there are some ultr processed foods that are healthy you know like a dark chocolate bar is is you know fairly processed at this point and it's uh and it can be quite healthy we know that cacao cocoa flavanols are really quite beneficial to you but by and large the vast majority of foods that Americans today are consuming are Ultra processed and we know that these Foods typically are very nutrient poor so they're depleted of any real nutritional quality other than perhaps energy and and they are incredibly calorie dense and they're hyper palatable which makes them really difficult to um to moderate so this uh seminal study published a couple years ago now two or three years ago funded by the NIH found that when people eat to eat Ultra processed foods to satiety they end up consuming a calorie surplus of about 00 additional calories and today in the united a pound of weight per week right 3,500 calories a week is a pound of weight gain per week precisely yeah so and you know your average American today that is largely what your average American is doing every day they're consuming 60% of their calories from these Ultra processed foods in the UK it's a little bit lower it's about 50% yeah yeah so you guys are doing a little bit better than we are over here but American children are consuming 70% Ultra processed foods and it's only trending up it's like it's not getting better it's getting worse and and we're now seeing connections between Ultra processed food like dose responses between ultr processed food consumption and all cause mortality and risk for cancer and risk for I mean dementia even depression depression is linked with ultra processed foods yeah I mean we're at the very tip of the iceberg with this in in in this field which is being called nutritional Psychiatry looking at the role that diet plays in mental health but there have been a number of associational studies at this point linking poor diet to worse mental health outcomes like clinical depression and the like the question has always been the direction of causality right so depressed people obviously like when I'm depressed I'm reaching for Comfort Foods right ult which tend to be ultra processed can eating more ultr processed foods actually create symptoms of depression that's been the sort of looming question well we now have randomized clinical evidence like empirical clinical data suggesting that when people on junk food diets clean up their diets and adopt a more Mediterranean style approach which the Mediterranean diet is lauded in the western literature as being the ideal human diet I think it's it's one of probably many ideal diets it's just a a less processed diet at the end of the day and a Diet that's more palatable to that is palatable to Western pallets that when people adopt a more uh Mediterranean style diet they see some they see remission from depression three times the at at three times the rates as compared to standard of care which was shown in the smiles tribe which is sort of one of these like it was the first and still highly regarded highly cited uh trials in this field of nutritional Psychiatry run at the food and mood Center at Deacon University in Australia so yeah so food I mean food is medicine and that and and depression has been linked to inflammation we know that inflammation is we can modulate it you know via our diets and our lifestyles not for every this isn't the case for every person but there's certainly a subset of the depressed population for whom inflammation is likely playing a role and there's a feedback loop going on here right like the fact that you don't know which direction the arrow of causality is going in means that it could actually be cyclical that we get depressed so we eat food which worsens the way we feel which worsens the depression which dude I I remember so I I've spoken about this on the show before throughout a good bit of my 20s I thought I had like ambient depression that would creep up and then it would break through the activation energy surface and then it would go away again and how depression would manifest for me is I would stay in bed for maybe you know 2 days at a time and I would refuse to get out of bed but I would eat and one of the things that I would do is I would comfort I guess binge uh and it would be very sugary very sort of just like Comfort eating foods and there's a sensation that you get if you really pump your like you know like a couple of muffins for breakfast and a few slices of pizza or whatever it is that you want to order from uberit or something and there is a sensation you get especially if you haven't moved you haven't got out of bed you haven't seen sunlight and it presumably is the inflammation response where it almost feels like your body's sort of throbbing like in a satisfactory way and your joints feel a little bit tight and your brain feels very foggy and then presumably off the other side of this absolutely huge glucose Spike I was able to then like fall back asleep so I would do that you know I'd wake up get food eat feel like [ __ ] like put Netflix on or whatever curtains would be closed wouldn't want to see anybody you know like meet the guy at the door it sounds like I'm getting my [ __ ] MDMA dealer to come around here like he also came around but he came around at different times and that would be that would be part of my cycle of of of low mood uh and it absolutely facilitated it and I I used food Ultra processed highly palatable foods that spiked my blood sugar as a a a comfort tool and it absolutely made me and here was the other thing it's not just about what you eat and the way that it makes you feel it is the story that you tell yourself about the sort of person that you are for having eaten that kind of food yeah right and that is that's really the sort of ruminative narrative based I am a kind of person that does the XYZ that's what I think really sort of drove it home for me and made me feel like particularly like unsatisfied with myself I'm like look I shouldn't be doing this like I understand how important health and fitness is I go to the gym I'm in good [ __ ] I was a [ __ ] commercial model for 15 years in the UK like you shouldn't be lying in bed eating duffins which is a a combination dut muffin that was created in the UK there you go yeah don't let the market decide all roads descend into the hell that is duffins uh but yeah and you know I think that Comfort eating but in fact that's something I'd love to know about from you like what is it have you got any idea why people Comfort binge eat like what's going on there are they reaching for something that's like a psychological uh piece of tape to like a psychological bandid of ss yeah I think you know when you when you eat high sugar foods there's a I mean it can it can depress levels of cortisol which is like the stress hormone um we know that people that are like for example fasting you can I mean fasting is a stress response right so sometimes when we're stressed out We crave food cuz it's a a way of signaling to our biology that everything's okay because ultimately food is a really important we've solved for the food scarcity issue but for a long time I mean food was the primary um variable right that would indicate an like one of our ancestors successes or or ultimate demises right um whether or not they they were able to procure food and we've done that and now that's sort of become the double-edged sort of modernity is that like food is available const stly with a swipe of you know your finger on your app you can have whatever it is your heart desires to arrive at your doorstep within 15 minutes so I think that's that's certainly part of it also the associations that we have with these kinds of foods that maybe they evoke um you know our childhoods in a way like we reach for foods that remind us of a more peaceful time in our lives when the stakes were perhaps a bit lower um so I think I think there's a lot of different variables potentially at play but um I think I think it's also really important to not to not stigmatize I mean and and pathologize ultimately being depressed cuz depression and stress are part for the course of Being Human particularly today I mean we're living in tumultuous times and inevitably all of us is going to encounter something in life that that serves as a depressive stimulus I mean I've been depressed in my life and it wasn't attributable to my diet I've been really depressed because of what was going on for example in my family life um with everything that that my mom went through and and you know the the journey that took me that has gotten me to this place um and so it's it's important to to not pathologize these kinds of normal human emotions which I think is really common in especially in our world where everything has become lately all about optimization and the 1500 steps that you have to do every morning before your morning morning coffee to optimize your day and to yeah we'll get back to talking to Max in one minute but first I need to tell you about mudwater mudwater is a coffee alternative which T like cacao and chai had a beautiful baby together it is nearly winter time which means you might want to hold on to your hot drink but not have the caffeine crash and Jitters that comes along with coffee and mudwater is the alternative it's got four functional mushrooms Each of which was chosen for a specific purpose it's got cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine and chocolate likee taste lines man for Focus ceps to promote Natural Energy and both Chara and reishi to help support a healthy immune system plus it's Whole 30 approved 100% USDA organic Cod vegan and gluten-free so if you are looking for a delicious alternative to your morning coffee this is where to start right now you can save $20 plus get a free sample of Crea and a free froth by going to the link in the description below or heading to mudw tr.com slod wisdom that's mud wt.com slod wisdom I brought this up with with huberman yesterday I called it the Peril of over optimization I have a friend who is a world last DJ uh who messaged and said dude loving the show blah blah blah uh I have to say I'm starting to fall out of love with DJing because I watch a lot of good health communication podcasts on the internet and every time that I DJ and stay up till 4 in the morning I feel guilt about not hitting my morning waking Cadian Rhythm so his love his his main passion in life he is uh feeling that become tarnished because he has guilt around the gap between his potential optimized version and his realized optimized version do you do you see this as a trend among people well yeah I mean certainly and I'm not an expert in in disordered eating or eating disorders but um that is one of the what I've been able to glean from experts that I've interacted with and and ultimately PE people who've suffered from disordered eating is that it's important to remove the the moral the morality from food um I think if you have a healthy relationship with food food it's important to have empirical definitions around food like obviously you know a 4-year-old might be able to look at you know a a certain food item a Bluffin Duffin A Duffin yeah and um and identify that that's maybe not as beneficial as uh you know a stock of broccoli or an egg or a piece of you know grass-fed grassfish beef or something like that so you know I think it's important to have to to to maintain definition around food we live in a time where seemingly it's impossible to Define anything um and uh and I think that's not helpful um but on the other hand it is really important to remove the shame that we feel around food because at the end of the day one single food one single meal isn't in any way going to sway your biology in the towards the direction of health or disease it's about the dietary pattern as a whole it's about we don't live in the on average though right if we don't have the perspective what we have is what is the lead measure of the thing that I'm doing what is the story that I tell myself about that oh my God I'm such a piece of [ __ ] this is exactly why such and such a person left you this is exactly why you're not realizing your this is going to be the beginning of the end you know it's very much a scarcity fear mentality yeah I think it plays into it yeah it's a big problem I've actually heard this it referred to as holistic derangement syndrome which is a wow yeah let that settle in that is so good holistic derangement syndrome yeah this sort of obsession with over optimization with understanding that where was the is this grass finished or is this grain finished can we check with the was that actually butter that the chef cooked it in because that if there's a seed oil in this um did I tell you about that study uh that I learned in the expectation effect David robson's thing about glucose no dude uh gluten sorry so David Robson the expectation effect everyone should go and read his book everyone should go and read your book genius foods but everyone should also go and read uh the expectation effect by David Robson really great science writer from the UK and um they bring people into the lab to try and work out what's going on with gluten intolerance that gluten intolerance has nearly 10 xed over the last 30 years I think human biology hasn't changed that much maybe the diet landscape has changed a lot but like gluten gluten right and the intolerance shouldn't have changed that much they wanted to work out whether it was due to in some part this expectation effect that people were hearing a lot of demonization about gluten uh so they bring people into the lab set them down people that are in there do and do not have biological intolerances to gluten they've done the tests they set everybody down they give everybody the same meal they tell everyone that it's got gluten in it's got no gluten in within minute people are running to the toilet with diarrhea they're breaking out in hives they've got inflammation they've got tension headaches no one ate gluten no one in the entire room ate gluten and you had all of the symptoms wow of gluten intolerance manifesting it's wild it's like a no sibo effect yep correct yep yeah I mean Adit and I'm very much immersed in the wellness world and I the I Love The Wellness industry but I will concede that you know it's it I think it has done some damage um in the sense that there's a lot of misinformation now about what foods are beneficial what foods are less so um and and I've I've been I've drank the Kool-Aid at certain points in my life where there was a time when I thought Dairy was sort of like an unclean food and uh that it wasn't ideal from a health standpoint and now I mean I'm I'm the biggest advocate of consuming Dairy I think Dairy is a great food if you if you tolerate for example you know there's like this idea that clean eating is somehow dairy free it's gluten- free it's free of all the things right and um and I think it's it's again really important to educate with Nuance around these topics because the the people the the proportion of our population that is celiac is non-trivial it's 1 to 2% and a lot of people with Celiac um or I'm sorry Celiac so you know 1 to 2% is celiac and then there's this spectrum of symptoms that people will get that is attri that is thought to be attributed to uh gluten called non Celiac gluten sensitivity and that's thought to be I mean that's a real thing and that's widely underdiagnosed um so a lot of people are do experience symptoms um when they ingest gluten and gluten is something that you know the the dose if you want to consider it that and speak in terms of uh gluten as something that that is ultimately dosed is higher than it's ever been I mean we now we breed wheat to contain higher levels of gluten because it provides a mouth feel that we enjoy it's that gooey texture um and also we're eating wheat I mean wheat is one of these like foundational ingredients to the ultra the the Deluge of ultra process foods that your average person is now consuming and mass it's wheat with breakfast lunch and dinner and wheat snacks all in between so the dose of gluten that your average person is ingesting is massive and I'm not saying that people need to avoid gluten if they're not explicitly sensitive to it um but it is a protein that humans don't properly break down um it does stimulate a protein in the gut called zulin which basically leads to uh increased permeability in sort of increased um in passage of uh ingredients from the compounds from the Lumin of the gut in through circulation through what are typically tight junctions that are closed oh this is like leaky gut yeah right yeah I've learned so I had um I went to Fountain life in Dallas and had a full body MRI brain angiogram heart angiogram uh a gut microbiome analysis dexa scan balance SC Everything full full full full full works and uh they came back and they said you need to to take amra colostrum colostrum yeah uh they said we need to just it's not bad but you you could your gut could be less leaky and uh that was the first time I thought I didn't even know what the [ __ ] leaky gut was I didn't know if it was due to to uh gluten or anything else but uh yeah I think this like colostrum products generally are going to be more uh widely discussed um yeah so it seems like overall gluten just something to probably keep in the back of your mind regardless of how well you think that you tolerate it yeah and also um the it's also the context in which in which the gluten is being consumed I think which also plays a role and is not something that's being discussed enough so we live in a time of widespread gut dpos right again and not to keep harping on this because I don't want to sound like a broken record but your average American's adult your average American adult's diet is by and large Ultra processed one of the consequences of this is that most people aren't consuming adequate fiber now fiber is not an essential nutrient but your average American today I believe consume somewhere between 5 and 15 grams of fiber a day right so fiber is one of these non-essential nutrients but it seems to be associated with positive Health outcomes it seems to be associated with lower levels of inflammation greater longevity and the like and so there is a degree of resilience that we should all be able to cultivate with regard to our gut health that we're simply not because again we're just we're eating predominantly junk Foods in the background with the background of a low fiber diet and so whereas you know we might we should have the the resilience that it takes to be able to ingest a protein like gluten um and and be all right with it well we're eating more gluten than ever before in human history we're eating less fiber than our ancestors likely ever consumed it's estimated that our fiber that our hunter gather ancestors were consuming upwards of 150 grams of fiber a day which is like you know orders of magnitude more than we're consuming today so it's like it's all it's the it's the it's the dose it's it's the compound it's the context everything matters and so um can you exp can you explain to me what's going on with these new products that are low net carb like some cereals have this some bars have this what [ __ ] is happening on the back end what are net Cobbs and is there any is there any sort of Wizardry going on which is hiding something in a in the deep dark annals of the ingredient profile yeah very likely um so a lot of these you know net carbs really are mainly a concern for people who are on a ketogenic diet and um and I think it's really important to lay out upfront a lot of people are on the ketogenic diet because they think it's the ultimate diet for weight loss and if if you prefer if a ketogenic diet is a diet that you are most easily able to adhere to then by all means have at it and I also think I have to add all these sort of nuances and disclaimers because because # science yes um and I think it's important um the ketogenic diet I think is a really important important diet particularly in the context of uh neurological conditions epilepsy primarily but also I think now we're starting to see neurodegenerative age related conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease it's a very low carbohydrate diet and so net carbohydrates come into play because people want to be able to consume processed foods um while still allowing ketogenesis right still allowing for Ketone Generation by eating low carbs but I think one of the problems with this is that a lot of the low carb foods are so high in calories that it's like you might as well eat the original food like unless you really have a medical reason for being in ketosis um and so a lot of the food manufacturers that produce these keto Foods they achieve having lown net carbs despite having a ton of calories um by using either fibers which are inaccessible to us we we're unable to uh humans unable to break down fiber into its into glucose so it's it passes through the small intestine basically uh unadulterated and then it becomes food essentially like a food substrate for the bacteria that live in our large intestines um and this is true for fibers found in Whole Foods what remains to be seen is whether or not these extracts that are now being used as sweeteners in these ketogenic products function the same way um I think the jury is still out the FDA last I recall is investigating uh ingredients like tapioca fiber syrup and all those kind chory root fiber to see if they actually um do pass through the small intestine unassimilated undigested which would allow them to maintain that they are in fact fibers but I've seen people cuz now there is this sort of trend of people wearing non diabetics wearing continuous glucose monitors and I've heard reports from people that follow me that they'll eat a lot of these keto products that allegedly have very few net carbs and regardless they still see a pretty sign ific spike in their blood sugar which would suggest that these fibers are not acting like true fibers yeah um so at the end of the day I think you know and this is again another area where where I've evolved I used to by default opt for these fake foods with the fake fibers that have low nut carbs but now I think you know ultimately like a cookie is a cookie right like ice cream is ice cream so if you're going to reach for one of these foods and and you don't have a medical necessity for being in therapeutic ketosis you might as well offer the real thing you know and and be cognizant of the overall calorie count of these products because at the end of the day I mean they're junk Foods what do you think of this trend of young girls avoiding eating meat and protein and instead replacing it with salads and smoothies and just roughage for days horrible yeah so I'm a I'm a huge advocate an Unapologetic advocate for omnivory I think it's you know there's this push at the public health scale to um towards plant-based diets and and also so online you see obviously you know a lot of women in particular uh have embraced these diets I think in part and I'm not obviously I'm not a woman I don't know what their lived experience is like but what I've been able to glean from my friends and other experts in this in this areas that a lot of women avoid meat and protein and they opt instead for salads because they think that it's going to make them smaller to eat that way to eat like a rabbit um and this is a big problem you know a lot of women today have body image issues I think perpetuated at least in part by social media the fact that you see people men and women that have phenomenal bodies that are you know usually augmented m i i just to interject that male body DM morphia will overtake women's within the next two decades wow it's onrack to overtake it yeah it's crazy it's crazy I mean the pressure to look a certain way now on social media I mean they're augmented they're augmented like behind the camera right they're and then post andot and then post being posted yeah um so it's yeah it's really problematic and so you know the the pressures I mean women have always faced body pressure right I think this is fair a fairly new arena for the fellas but um yeah women I think have always wanted to particularly since the 90s like appear smaller um there's this idea that eating meat I think is masculine that it's going to make that it's going to make you bigger that it's harder to digest I mean steak should actually be steak is is incredibly should be very easy to digest the problem is a lot of people that are on low meat diets they're depriving their bodies of the raw materials required to create stomach acid so you know if you're on a low meat diet then you decide you know once in a blue moon to have a piece of red meat well you might be low in the minerals required to generate adequate stomach acid to allow you to properly digest that food and you will mistake the discomfort after eating that meat as oh this is what meat eating meat is like for all people right you've conditioned your stomach to not be able to do the thing so what is the result for girls in the way that they look and feel by being ruffage Pelt well I mean ruffage is like I'm the biggest advocate of eating dark leafy greens I think dark leafy greens are an incredible food but if that's all you're eating you know they are hard to digest I mean for example when you know anybody's who's ever had like a uh like a procedure on the large bowel they're told you're told prior to the procedure to go on a low residue diet a low residue diet is a low fiber diet red meat is is is low residue basically like the residue are the is the indigestible material that makes its way down to the large intestine that gets then fermented and create can can potentially create particularly if you're unadapted to it symptoms like gas and bloating and things like that um steak should be one of the one of the easiest foods to digest um and uh and so on the other hand you have women and people in general not just not not to single out women but people that you know they base their whole diet around cellulose you know like greens and and indigestible plant material and they wonder why they're walking around bloated all the time and they're also you know studies show that people who are on vegetarian and vegan diets they tend to eat less protein we know that protein is really important for a number of reasons it's satiating uh at the very least but it also helps to preserve and grow you know your muscle tissue it's important for providing you know amino acids which are the backbones to your neurotransmitters um so yeah there is I think a consequence to yeah to basing your diet around just like rabbit food well this it seems to go hand inand with a trend that at least as far as I can tell is kind of falling away now which is like the thigh gap Obsession uh very willowy kind of the you know the London Look model kind super sort of stringy thing but even within that there's a softness to the body type right of people both guys and girls that do that because it again thankfully it's falling away and the pivot from thin SPO to fit SPO I think has actually largely been really good in that encouraging uh resistance training encouraging high calorie meals prioritization of protein more focus on training uh even like a bit of g-lux theor thing coming in like let's try and create a calorie deficit through both calorie restriction but also through training increase so you know both sides of the the Kao equation um but you see and I see it as well man like I see a lot of the girls that um we used to work with at our events company you're 18 19 20 years old and you're dancing for our events company and you want to look good in your dancers outfit on stage or whatever and the girls that would push a little bit harder on calories and train would have a different kind of uh Physique in the way that it presented like the skin seemed a little bit sort of like uh thinner and Tighter and more translucent and you could see the shape of their bodies underneath it as opposed to someone that's just dieting themselves into their ground 1,300 1100 calories a day in a desperate attempt to try and get down and there's like a there's like softness there's like there's a yeah there's a softness despite there not being much there what is there still feels like that yeah yeah I mean that is a recipe when you zoom out and you extrapolate out 10 20 30 40 years down the road I mean that's a recipe for sarcopenia at the very least what's that it's um accelerated muscle wasting um and just a lack of strength as one Ages which is fairly common these days the worst is sarcopenic obesity so it's like excess osity along with being under mused oh yeah uh Dr Gabrielle lion was on the show this week talking about her muscle centered medicine great and uh yeah this is a big a big movement I think this is again so much sort of convergent Trends yeah happening here we've got maybe the sign side coming in we've got that but yeah dude I mean it's super yeah it's and and to not not even to mention the the important minerals and micronutrients that women are you know potentially missing out on that are particularly important to the premenopausal woman so you know for example heem iron which is found primarily in red meat you know red meat is the ultimate iron supplement and women who are premenstrual I mean there's like anemia is super common iron deficiency anemia is super common today and well women lose quite a bit of iron once every 28 days there you go yeah yeah so I mean we're going to get it's we're going to get red flag for mansplaining I'm sure by somebody don't tell me how my periods work I don't even like them no um no you're 100% right though I think like you know they women and the fitbo thing I think is great you know in the sense that it's gotten more women sort of aware to the benefit of resistance training the and and you know a lot of us have worked really hard to dispel the myth that resistance training is going to lead to a bigger bulkier body it doesn't you know women have testosterone but on Tenth of testosterone of men and it's really important for you know for libido it's important for well-being body composition but it's not going to make you it's not going to lead to you ending up looking like Chris Bumstead right I said this yesterday to hberman do you realize how desperately hard I've tried for a decade and a half to become bulky like I work most moments of every day to put things into my body and do stuff to my body to become bulky like you're not accidentally going to do a couple of supered bicep curls and then look like SE buum exactly you know it's not going to creep up on you and if it does please tell me the protocol that you were doing same we'll get back to talking to Max in one minute but first I need to tell you about element thank you element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and mag magnesium with no junk no coloring no artificial ingredients or any other BS it's how I've started my morning for over 3 years now and it helps to regulate my appetite curb cravings and optimize my brain health first thing in the morning you don't need to have coffee your caffeine receptors the adenosine system isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system this orange flavor is the best way that you could start your morning it's why I continue to go on about it because I use it and I love it for myself best of all there is a no BS no questions ask refund policy where you can buy it 100% risk-free And if you do not love it for any reason they will give you your money back you don't even need to return the box right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom that's drink LM nt.com slod wisdom you posted a study talking about 2 minutes of exercise a day reduces can a risk by up to 20% yeah I mean all this kind of research comes out all the time and it's super interesting and it's not to say that all you need to do is 2 minutes a day of exercise right that's not the point of the study but what it I think the the drive home message is that we're not um impotent to uh to these kinds of conditions which now seem to be so rampant today right like cancer um I've had a number of cancer experts on my podcast uh as of late actually Thomas sa freed you know is a wonderful uh expert in this field also Joe zundell is a good friend of mine who is another cancer expert and the the resounding advice that you get from both of these experts is that uh exercise really is medicine I mean it's super super important in terms of reducing inflammation in terms of building your robustness your resilience um yeah it's crucial and so I don't know if two minutes a day is necessarily going to suffice but um but yeah I mean again like today the millu of the western not just diet but lifestyle were largely sedentary like Leisure Time physical activity is is at an all-time low and we're starting to see increased rates of cancer now among younger people there was another study that made major headlines recently that found that rates of cancer and particularly malignant cancer among uh cohort that typically you wouldn't see much of this type of cancer in is now increasing right rates of breast cancer have I think like doubled since just 50 years ago so I mean there's something in the modern world you know one one variable Myriad variables that have become essentially toxic and I think one of the variables that has that is essentially toxygene bro like you or I to reap the benefits of exercise but I think it is super important to have an exercise routine and particularly one that prioritizes resistance training I mean this idea that you can just be active like a lot of older adults I think are told to just be active right which I think is typically um taken as just walk you know just like walk as much as you can and walking is great walking is great no matter where on the age Spectrum you are but I think resistance training has long been sort of thought to be this pastime of Bros and and I think that's a big problem I mean proudly proudly a pastime of bros there you go dude the uh 10 minute to 15 minute walk after eating yeah for me is about as close of a like super power as I've been able to find and I first got taught this from Stu Mill like four years ago back pain expert flew up to Canada to see him and he was doing it primarily for um the relieving of lower back pain and what he was doing was you need to walk um small doses frequently and a good cue for that is when you have something to eat you're going to eat at least multiple times per day go for the walk afterward and he mentioned at the time there's some benefits too Downstream and maybe mentioned a couple of bits and just The Last Five Years Mark Bell and Stan eing right with the I think he calls it the 10-minute walk but 15 seems better and if you're eating you know if you get one in on a morning to get some sunlight in the eyes cuz you're huberman pilled and then you have three meals a day and you do if you can get a nice 10 to 15 minute loop from wherever you are that's also your 10,000 steps sorted that's also going to improve your insulin sensitivity that's also going to help you to blow off a little bit of that Spike that you get post eating it's going to the U muscles like the Contra lateral muscles that run across the stomach it actually helps to move food at least it does for me if I have a big meal I actually feel like the food is able to move through my digestion more easily if I go for a walk afterward the two nights that we've been here we've had big dinners both times Cheesecake Factory and Buffalo Wild Wings because because I I I am a child um and both times we've been for a walk for 15 minutes afterward and I can go to sleep more easily on an evening time it's just it's a a real phenomenal hack and I think that struggling to get your walks in maybe you're concerned about what's happening with insulin maybe you want to get a little bit more time outside in nature and be away from your phone it's I love these habits where you can stack a bunch of different things on top of them I get some more time outside I'm going to get some more sunlight I'm going to get some more fresh air I'm not going to be on my phont blah blah blah I it's a real 10minute walk 15 minute walk after eating fing I'm all in yeah I mean walking moves there are so many benefits to walking but I mean you have fluids in your body that don't have their own heart and so for example lymphatic flow right like walking helps to promote that which is involved in which plays a role in digestion we know that just a short walk post meal reduces that post Ral blood sugar Spike which is thought to be beneficial particularly if you have glucose tolerance issues right we know that walking helps to remove fat in the blood um super important we see that there's an association particularly um in younger people between around 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day and lower risk of all cause mortality and then about 10,000 I think to 12,000 steps among older people um that 10 the whole 10,000 steps a day thing is a little bit BS but there actually was a meta analysis that came out Fair recently I think over the past year that found that it it there is actually a Zone that's not too far off from that 10,000 step Mark that seems to be associated with you need to pick a number you know what I mean exactly yeah it depends on how quickly you walk I suppose there was a New York Post article titled I'm raising my child vegan it's not as simple as you think and you replied and said child abuse yes what's going on yeah I mean I think you know you know we are biologically adapted to be omnivores and um we know that the neonate relies on the mother deriving adequate nutrition from her food and there are the if you look at the most nutrient-dense Foods available to your average person today there's literally a paper people can look it up published by Beal et al two to three years ago that ranked all the most nutrient-dense Foods particularly by nutrients of concern so nutrients that people tend to underc consume today zinc vitamin B12 and things like that and animal products were took all the top spots with the exception being uh dark leafy greens which are thought to be very very nutrient-dense because they're so calor sparse and they can they're a good source of vitamin C and folate and calcium and the like but animal products are our most nutrient-dense foods and when you're a pregnant woman you are eating for two so you know we already see that pregnant women tend to consumed protein um you know consumption of choline which is a really important uh nutrient for I mean you put choline right City choline in your in your neurotropic beverage right here like super important for brain development for cognitive function um vitamin B12 crucially important there's so many DHA fat right like pre-formed DHA fat which is found exclusively in animal products you can consume Omega-3s from Plants but humans are very inefficient at converting it to usable forms in the body and so I mean that's from the standpoint of pregnancy like if I were in at the stage in my life where I were looking to procreate I would want to procreate with an omnivorous woman and it's like saying something like that is controversial today but it should Max lug wants to procreate with an omnivorous woman ladies you have this is the sign that you have been looking for it's the bad signal yeah um yeah so I mean that's that's super important I think like you with regard to plant-based diets you can Cobble together a diet that leads to better biomarkers and and ultimately look a plant-based diet compared to the standard American diet is going to be a healthier choice right um You can Cobble together a diet that you know with the use of protein supplements perhaps uh can can can afford you a fantastic body composition but I think from the standpoint of pregnancy and ultimately development and and childhood development I think it's really important to um yeah to allow your child who's inevitably going to be a picky eater as it is because that's inevitably children because they're a child yeah I think it's really important to not cross off the list because of some silly ideology one of the most nutrient-dense the most nutrient-dense category of foods available to your average human what do you do you have any idea what will happen to a child who is lacking in many of the sort of things that a vegan diet would cause there to be a bereft uh yeah I mean look stunted development um failure to thrive I mean I you know I just think it's I think you're it's essentially sometimes referred to as nutritionism this idea that humans with all of our hubris can distill food into its constituent nutrients and then replicate food in a way with with processed Alternatives I mean if you take something like the product soilent it's a perfect example of that right it's like what happens when Silicon Valley people try to create food they break down a food into its constituent nutrients right the data that makes a food food according to them this is the code of food yeah this is the code of food and and we have this Ultra processed ultimately crap product but here it is right like you're not going to develop a deficiency disease if this is all you consume every day and so that's like nutritionism and I think it fails time and time again because we didn't evolve with these nutrients in isolation we've evolved with food and we have a handful of nutrients that we know are essential but that list of what's essential what's conditionally essential and what's non-essential is changing all the time as it should and Foods don't just contain these single nutrients in isolation right like an orange isn't just doesn't just provide vitamin C right there are countless other innumerable like nutrients that we have yet to even name likely compounds in you know in an orange that might have an Entourage effect that might increase the absorption the bioavailability of the vitamin C for example and the RDA for vitamin C is set to avoid scurvy at the population level right but that doesn't mean that we're all consuming adequate levels of vitamin C to promote optimal collagen synthesis for example which we know vitamin C is involved in so you know foods have all of these different nutrients and you take a food like red meat right like red meat has uh it contains vitamin B12 which somebody on a plant-based diet might say well that's the one essential nutrient you can't get on a plant-based diet I can just take a vitamin B12 supplement but what about the stellation of nutrients that that vitamin B12 comes with right like the heem iron the carnitine the carnosine the creatine which we know is really important from a standpoint of muscular Health right um and so you're just depriving uh a baby of you know of all of those different nutrients and look the standard American diet isn't isn't great either like you have a lot of children these days that have early onset hypertension early onset type two diabetes so I'm not saying that the alternative is St is the standard American diet but I think that you can that yeah that like you can the ultimate optimal diet for certainly for a developing human but also for an adult is a diet that incorporates both animal products and and uh plant products it's interesting to think that the child abuse thing is uh like a really interesting frame of it because you are locking in to this neonatal human a kind of development that they didn't choose yeah that they had no Val in saying yes or no to and I guess you know largely until the age of probably 14 or 15 when they can use the stove themselves and actually fully understand what's going into them you know even throughout preschool so on and so forth you're still largely doing that but when it's you have to what you eat is what your child eats in some regard uh it's wild I have a friend Alex who was a uh vegan uh philosopher for a good while he was uh ethically convinced by Peter singer's work uh animal Liberation which I still think from an ethical perspective I I think that we're going to look back on what we do now with much of animal farming and think of it as abhorent I think you're going to look back and see it as not quite sort of Holocaust but in that sort of Realm oh my God we had sentient animals and we did this to them right he became completely vegan pilled he became advocate he is an unbelievably effective debater at everything uh but particularly for veganism and he found after going vegan that making a commitment making a sacrifice uh to the philosophy that he the ethics that he been convinced by he found that he was suffering uh his body and his mental health had both taken a a pretty big like an increasingly big hit from this and he he posted the day that he became unconvinced that he could meet an adequately balanced vegan diet he immediately felt like it was his um he was compelled to tell his audience because again he came here he got here from being ethical and being truthful and high integrity with his ethics and then as soon as those had changed he decided to put a post out and I said don't do this you are opening yourself up to a tone of criticism wait until you can do the video and he said well yeah but what if someone sees me eating salmon on a train or something in the UK like I'm not going to feel in line so again he was like hoisted by his own ethics again he got absolutely pillared by the internet for doing it we you know you were supposed to you said that you understood and a blah blah blah and then he did a video talking through how he was struggling to be able to eat a completely balanced uh sufficiently robust plant-based diet and again people had massive problems and now I think he's probably one year hence it wow mental health is way better his uh Pursuit that he goes after in life is flourishing his energy levels have improved all of this stuff again this isn't for me to say look vegans you're condemning yourself to a life of low energy misery but there are people out there for whom the limitations that you place on yourself by going on a vegan diet make getting a balanced diet so much more difficult again and if you're a 24 year-old YouTuber and writer who maybe still needs to do a bit of growing up you life's hard enough as it like you you're just trying to get up before midday do you know what I mean like you're trying not to go out and party with your friends too much you're trying to like learn what productivity is and how do I do my taxes and like the I've got a relationship or I'm not in whatever you know these are additional uh levels of complexity and difficulty that I don't think you need to add into your life uh and yeah you know this is very very much kind of by the way side now and Alex is is out on the other side but uh I really respected him for what for what he decided to do with that that he said look I've given this a crack I'm still ethically convinced by veganism but physiologically I don't think that I can do I don't think I can commit to this and yeah out the other side of that he's now just he's he's crushing it he's absolutely crushing it also I mean as you referenced when you're younger you have more resilience like a younger body is a more resilient body I mean think about all the late nights all the I mean for me like when I was in college I used to drink a lot I don't have a problem with alcohol but like I would I would consume alcohol I would do other things like and your body rebounds really fast when you're young right because you made of rubber and Magic yeah we're High we're a highly adaptable species that's one of the the amazing things about being a human being right but as you get older I mean I'm telling you I have a lot of friends that are in middle age and that are still Clinging On to this idea of a of a plant-based diet being optimal and again they they look sarcopenic you know I mean you can find vegan bodybuilders like those outliers exist you know some of them are augmented don't necessarily cop to it all good not judging or maybe judging a little bit because they attribute they tend to attribute their gains to being vegan not to the exogenous testosterone there you go again you can Cobble like we know that plant protein at this point and animal protein when you consume enough protein the muscle gains are comparable so that you know there's no issue there but for most again for most people for most people that are not obsessive Fitness junkies um it's a big problem they tend to underc consume protein and um and as you get older you become anabolic resistant I'm sure Gabrielle lion talked about this you become resistant to Lucine so the little Lucine that you're getting on a plant-based diet is becoming even less effective you know as you get older and whether it's andropause or menopause you're fighting a losing battle with regard to your hormones ultimately unless you're on you know HRT and so it's it's uh it's a huge problem but younger people you know maybe they adopt a vegan diet for a few months or years and they feel good right the body has stores of certain vitamins they're again more resilient they're more adaptable and so it's fine but yeah it's not uncommon these days to see whether they're influencers on YouTube or on Instagram that are that were previously vegan either covertly eating animal products which I've heard happens like they're doing it covertly or they they make the switch right I'm meeting steak wrapped in spinach and no one no one can see what's inside of this dude it happens it happens and with regard to mental health specifically there are so many nutrients and animal products that are just required by the human brain I mean we attribute the development of the human brain to access to the nutrients found in animal products right so this idea again it's just hubris right it's hubris and I hate the p word but I'll use it privilege that we think that we can Cobble together a diet that mimics are the diet the kind of diet that we Evol we know better than nature we don't need to use no no no we don't need to grow it and pull it out of the ground no no we can do it from code from first we'll Matrix our way into creating a diet yeah it's it's it's wild man talk to me about this new film that you just finished you very kindly sent me a link so that I could get first access to it last night yeah so it's called Little empty boxes and um people can watch a trailer at lmty boxes.com and it's the first ever dementia prevention film and it's about 75% uh narrative 25 % science but the narrative follows my mom and why I do anything that it is that I do is because my mom got very sick at a very young age she developed a rare form of dementia called Louis body dementia and um I mean this was 10 years ago that I began working on the project and back then I didn't know anything about Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease or anything like that I was just a scared son looking to do whatever was possible to help his mom um in a time of immense trauma and tragedy um and so the film kind of is like a time capsule it documents everything that my mom went through the The Descent into dementia it's really really difficult um and it's been a labor of love and ultimately the film is is a tribute to my mom but it's also a tribute to the science so you know as much as I think you know we get in into debates on the inter interpretations of science particularly in the field of nutrition which is you know where my passion happens to lie I'm a huge fan of Science and I think it's incredible and so the film I created to be a tribute to this this growing field of acceptance known as dementia prevention whereas 10 years prior you couldn't mention dementia and prevention within the same sentence you'd get like produce thrown at you because dementia for a long time was thought to be an unpreventable condition like even the Alzheimer's Association was one of the largest nonprofit organizations you know for years and years and years de you know would drive home this fear-based talking point I think primarily to raise funding that dementia is the only Alzheimer's disease is the only condition that can't be prevented treated or slowed and we know now I mean thanks to incredible research that that the potential for prevention is High and um and so yeah so the documentary is like a a testament to that and it offers some I think really actionable tips and it's in very it's in in many ways the prequel to my work you know because since since embarking on this production process I've written my books I've launched my podcast and you know I'm grateful that many people um and and mind blown actually that many people consider me an expert in this field um because I'm ultimately a lay person like I'm somebody who really began just to be able to you know with the intent of gleaning answers for their mom um but I've learned a ton uh you know over the course of my journey but the documentary really is to is to document what it's like being a caregiver um for somebody with dementia and to show people what it what it really is like and how valuable and important prevention is because dementia begins in the brain decades before the first symptom and this is something that is when you look at the science coming out about dementia Alzheimer's um based Therapeutics Alzheimer's drug trials have a 9.6% fail rate they're just dismally effective um if at all and this is because this is a condition that manifests in the brain over a span of years if not decades so it's really important I think for people like younger people Millennials you know you're you're the oldest Millennial is now in their 40s and so the time is like there's no better time then right now to start thinking about your brain with your choices because I mean once it goes It goes what are the the big myths and realizations about neuro degeneration dementia Parkinson stuff like that like what were the the big unpredicted insights that you got on this journey well I think for one people think that it's genetic um you have genetic risk factors so the apoe4 alil is the most well-defined of the Alzheimer's uh and ultimately neurodegenerative risk factors is that the one that uh Chris Hemsworth yeah realized that he had yeah so he realized that he was a homozygous carrier he was an apoe 44 which increases your risk around 12 to 14 fold um 12 to 14 fold yeah wow how low is this cuz it could be 12 to 14 fold from 0.1 to 0 one two or whatever yeah that's an interesting question um we always got to consider the base right now yeah like the absolute risk today about 5 million people in the US have Alzheimer's disease so 5 million out of 300 million it's a fairly you know low proportion but um but that number is set to explode in the coming years um the rates of Alzheimer's are increasing and I think it's clear that we have what are called modifiable risk factors and the rates of those modifiable risk factors are also increasing so for example if you have obesity your risk for Alzheimer's disease increases if you have type 2 diabetes your risk for Alzheimer's disease increases between two and fourfold if you have hypertension today one and two adults have hypertension that increases stacked on top of each other yeah exactly so we're seeing increasing rates of all of those um those uh conditions and so that's what is that doing it's not it's not doing our brain health our Collective brain health any favors and so that's one of them that it's genetic you know the vast majority of of dementia cases are attributable to an interaction between the genetic risk factors that you may carry and the environment but also with regard to genes which are a non-modifiable risk factor of course there's what the concept of polygenic risk so you might have genes that we have yet to elucidate that are canceling out the risk of of said risk genes 2 to 3% of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to a a deterministic gene called early onset familial again tiny minority but as recently as 2020 the lanet Comm Commission on dementia pointed out that at least 40% of Alzheimer's cases are preventable and I think that's a gross underestimate because in that paper it didn't even talk about all the it didn't even talk about exposure to environmental toxicants or drugs um we know that people who routinely take anti-cholinergic drugs are at higher risk of developing dementia and that wasn't even elucidated in the paper so um I think the vast majority of of uh Alzheimer's cases are potentially preventable and I don't claim to have all the answers we we don't um certainly but uh but yeah there is a lot that people can do if you were to I always like inverting stuff like this if you were to try and design a lifestyle for some someone that would onset their predisposition or lack of neurod degeneration as quickly as possible what would you prescribe that person if you were like you're some Demon from hell and you want to try and make this person's brain uh degenerate toward some dementia parkinsonian style thing what would what would you get that person to do yeah they I would uh deprive them of sleep we know sleep is crucially important um sleep is when your brain is actually cleaning itself of proteins that are associated with the condition so amalo beta to protein we see increases in cerebral spinal fluid on just one night of shortened sleep so I would deprive them of sleep sleep is really important with regard to brain health it's it's important with regard to mental health but it's very important with with regard to how your brain actually functions um so there's that chronic stress is a killer we know that chronically elevated cortisol leads to shrinkage of the hippocampus which is the most vulnerable structure of the brain the first one of the first structures of the brain to be uh to be affected by Alzheimer's disease it's where you know it's the memory processing center of the brain we know that chronically elevated cortisol which is wrought by chronically elevated levels of stress um is not good from a brain health standpoint it also creates an inflammatory effect in the body um I would from a dietary standpoint I would give a person exclusively ultr processed foods to consume um we know that these kinds of foods not only create inflammation in the body but they drive atopos or obesity we know that they create uh the phenomena of insulin resistance and we know that insulin resistance is not good from a brain health standpoint um actually in Alzheimer's disease you see a reduction in the brain's ability to generate uh energy from glucose and in the Alzheimer's affected brain the that ability is diminished by about 50% and the brain is a ravenous energy consumer and so I mean that's just like lights out for the brain right you can imagine um how detrimental that might be well we see that the level of glucose metabolism in the Alzheimer's affected brain is actually very strongly correlated with the degree of insulin resistance in the body so you want to make sure that you're as insulin sensitive as possible and so one way to do that is by you know optimizing for protein in your diet we're starting to see all this Research Now come out about the value of of dietary protein minimizing your consumption of ultra processed foods make sure that you're at a healthy weight and then finally this kind of um funnels into the lifestyle recommendation which would be if you want to develop dementia as soon as possible make sure that you are highly sedentary and that you never exercise the brain thrives at top of body that's you know moving and that's exercising and there's tons of evidence now on this both as a preventative strategy and also as a way to slow down the progression of neurod degeneration so making sure that you're that your resistance training and I mean I can't underscore that enough resistance training is super super important we're seeing a correl now Andy Galpin is uh you know he's one of these guys who's who's become fairly prominent in our space just published a paper looking at whole body strength and cognitive function and this is just this is one of many papers right that has come out showing us the link between uh robustness strength and it's not even necessarily muscle mass right so it's like not we don't all have to look like SE buum right after all or you um to to procure better Brains it's just about being strong in body and resistance training is the best way to to to do that and optimizing for protein again and so yeah I mean right there okay so if that if that's the the the Demon's prescription of what you would do if you wanted to Onset it when it comes to strategies and tactics that people can lean on um a food type any supplementation any other sort of Lifestyle interventions what is there on the on the sort of positive side yeah so the it's it's very um the the diet dementia recommendations are all the evidence is I don't want to say weak but we have the the best sort of idea for what a brain healthful diet might look like is referred to as the Mind diet which is the sort of diet that's been cobbled together by an epidemiologist of observational research that combines the some of the attributes of the Mediterranean diet with some of the attributes of the DASH diet which is the dietary approach to stop hypertension because again hypertension is one of these important modifiable risk factors hypertension is high blood pressure so it's a Mediterranean diet combined with the DASH diet with a sprinkling of you know foods that we've found specifically play a brain beneficial role for example blueberries right the Mind diet only recommends uh in terms of fruit the only fruit that the Mind diet recommends makes recommend for are blueberries right pretty dialed as a fruit I know that we want but it's blueberries are blueberries pineapples bananas AAA rated fruits for me no blueberries are great but I think that's where the limitations of that kind of like dietary recommendation comes in because avocados are a fruit and if I had to if I had to pick a fruit that I thought was potentially most beneficial to the brain I think avocados are actually probably the most benef IAL fruit to the brain because they have the highest proportion of fat protecting specifically fat protecting antioxidants of any fruit or vegetable which is of particular relevance to the brain because the brain is made of fat and not just any type of fat but the brain is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fatty acids which are especially damage prone they're the most chemically unstable of fatty acids you have your polyunsaturated fatty acids your monounsaturated fatty acids and your saturated fatty acids saturated fatty acids being the most chemically stable but your brain is is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fats DHA fat doosa hexenoic acid and arachadonic acid um and so we need to protect these fats right the brain is a crucible for oxidative stress because it's metabolizing 25% of Every Breath You Take in a container the size of a grapefruit so it makes up 2 to 3% of your body's Mass yet accounts for 25% of your body's oxygen metabolism so again Crucible for oxidative stress what can help protect the brain under those circumstances antioxidants and so fat protecting antioxidants really important I think avocados are again one of the best brain foods that you can consume they're also rich in compounds like lutein and zanthin which we know are really supportive of cognitive function wonderful source of potassium which we know is uh really important for cardiovascular health so you know the Mind diet is a great starting place but there was just a randomized control trial that put the Mind diet compared the the the Mind diet in a risk population I believe um and found no benefit over just a calorie deficit in an older adult population so you see what I'm saying so nutrition science is incredibly weak and that's where you have to you can't be you can't be prone to scientism which is like this you know adherence to Scientific data as if it is religious Doctrine that's just not not how it works right like nutrition science is harder to study than drug than drugs and yet it's much less well funded so a Whole Food's diet is my prescription it's a diet that incorporates both animal products I think grass-fed grassfish red meat is a brain health superfood along with avocados and dark leafy greens and um shellfish I think are incredible um legumes I think are incredible but yeah I I think omn 100% And avoiding the ultr processed food as processed foods as best as best you can foods with refined grains foods with added sugar foods with refined bleach and deodorized Seed oils I think that's the the way to go I know that at no point in this preventable neurod degeneration conversation have you mentioned doing sodoku yeah or or brain training or uh crossword puzzles or or anything like that is there a is this just so low down on the the sprinkling on the cake and everything else is the foundation or is there something in the brain training wise no it's a that's a good question I think um keeping keeping active and staying socially engaged and doing things that require that draw on a complex array of cognitive processes I think that's very helpful and there is evidence that that can help build What's called the cognitive Reserve which is super important so the cognitive Reserve basically stipulates that the more you have to lose the better off you're going to be it's a form of cognitive resilience that you're building um sodoku things that are like really kind of more like on the simplistic side like crossw word puzzles and S a self man I can't do so yeah I mean I don't remember the last time I've even attempted but um it's essentially like they're better than nothing right better than nothing but uh but they're too simplistic to really have what's sometimes referred to as a spillover effect where they can actually improve other cognitive domains whereas engaging more in real life is actually the best way to to to build that cognitive Reserve like engaging in real life learning a new instrument perhaps learning a language learning a new skill those are all super important because they're more complex than just sitting down and you know playing a numbers game yeah I uh I had Roy bow Meister uh and Robin Dunbar on the show uh within the last year and Dunbar was talking about how the most computationally difficult thing that humans have to do is tracking the social intricacies of all of their friend groups right I know Max and I know John and I know that Max and John used to be friends but they're not anymore and the reason because of that is because of Fred uh and Fred is friends with Dan but Dan and Max they don't get on because of this thing from before like his argument is that although we look at the brain and we use the brain largely for this sort of beautiful cerebral consider the nature of the universe man am I really enacting my Logos forward like all of that stuff but what it was there for was to track between 50 and 150 intersecting hierarchy based relationships and you know from a computational perspective I think again that's one of the reasons why Rel relationships are it's like the 10-minute walk right it's not just the walk it's not just the insulin it's the outside being single biggest determinant of how long you're going to live is the quality of your your relationships it's more than smoking it's more than diet it's more than your weight you know and if you can manage to use uh hopefully not a drama ridden set of friendships but if you can use all of the different friendships that you have as a push as a a uh that is part of your um cognitive horsepower uh backup I think that that's a really good way to do it 100% yeah loneliness is a toxin on par with with alcoh alcoholism these days um is what this what we're starting to see um and that I think you referenced to Harvard the Harvard study it's like the longest running study on human happiness 8 years longitudinal yeah there you go yeah um I think it's crucially important this is something that I struggle with I live in Los Angeles which is a city that can at times feel very alienating and and isolating but I'm very grateful that I have a come to Austin baby yeah I know I'm thinking about it but I I do have a I have a friend a great friend group um which you're obviously of course a part of but I also have like my family close and I feel super lucky and my heart goes out to people who who don't have that but yeah loneliness is and loneliness is not being alone that's I think it's important to make that decision it's it's good to make friends with your mind to the point that you can actually be comfortably alone yeah but um but but if you're not happy about it you know if you if uh you feel like your social life is lacking it's definitely somewhere a story that you tell yourself again right you like we said about about the food it's not just the food that you eat it's not just the relationships you have it's the story that you tell yourself what does it mean that this is the case what do you think that your mom would think about what you've done to your life now about your work about the way that you're influencing people about this film what do you think she would she would think about it oh man well my mom was my my biggest fan and and uh yeah mine mine is too she'll be listening I love it I love it I mean yeah moms are the best and I'm very lucky that I had a great mom and a very kind mom and a mom who raised me with like I think the best values that you could raise a child with um and I think that's why the people that follow me follow me because they know that Honesty Integrity is super important to me and those are 100% values that I got from my mom you know like growing up in my household to be called a liar was like the worst thing the worst thing and um and so yeah she like she was an incredible incredible mom not perfect no Mom is uh no person is but um but yeah she was she was wonderful and she supported me from day one she was you know I mean I come from a very small Jewish family and my parents grew up very poor and uh and they made it for themselves they they teamed up and they created a business and it led to a really great childhood for me and my brothers but she never pushed me into anyone career Direction like she wasn't like I I definitely expressed interest early on in wanting to go the medical school route to be a doctor but when I pivoted out of that she she didn't give me any any crap for it um which I'm super grateful for she just allowed me to pursue my passions and um so yeah I think that she would be and she was she saw my first book come out she was very very proud of me and and you know it's funny like you can never be a prophet in your own land is a term I've heard recently well I I would try to tell my mom like you know I would as I was learning I was like trying to like come to my mom with all these like new learnings and insights and she adopted a lot of them like you know she started exercising more and you know which I think was helpful and we you know I I got rid of some of the more processed things in her in her in her kitchen cupboards but um but she would she would never listen to me ironically when it was like me just kind of talking to her from across the K the dining room table it was only when I got to go on shows like The Dr Oz Show you know that she would then start to actually pay attention to what it was Dr Oz's steal of approval I'd better listen to him now yeah there you go um you're like messaging Dr Oz being like yo uh I've just found something new out and I know that my mom won't listen to me would you mind if I come back on CU I need to tell her through the television this is the only way that this works yeah or even when it like even if it's something that like I had been telling her for months somebody else would say it on the dross show be like Max I heard this guy talking about the benefits of of Kombucha mom that was me yeah yeah yeah uh yeah and you know it's really interesting to me to see this this Arc for you you know as somebody that's now stepping in that's giving people evidence-based very apart from the child abuse thing which I actually think is accurate but largely un sort of volatile it's not tribal it's just like here's here's some evidence do with it as you wish I know it seems like a it's like Alchemy right you take a situation that wasn't very good and then you turn it into something which is like I don't know it's like the the the progeny of this situation you know the the the the Epitaph that's been written is the nudging that you have done and you know think about how many centuries Millennia of human life has been added because of the information that you and the millions of people that have listened to your podcast have learned about like that's that's like [ __ ] insane that's crazy what a great tribute to give to someone no it is it is insane and it's and it's a I know that I have a responsibility that I don't take lightly and I I I continually remind my audience that I'm not perfect um I don't I don't claim to have all of the answers but I do the best that I can and my life circumstance has has and you know my whether you want to call them innate or whatever my my skill set and my passion and the circumstance that I you know endured with my mom has led to you know I guess a certain uh knowledge base and I feel like you have to do in life the things that you can't not do and as somebody who's really empathetic and compassionate at the end of the day what I was learning as I was going through this with my mom I couldn't keep to myself I had to share and I realized of course along the way that I had an aptitude for what I was doing I realized that I enjoyed it and it started to build a following and look I know that there are some people out there that no matter what I say will never listen to me you know because I'm I don't have credentials after my name and I'm fine with that I'm not here for you you know I'm here for the people who you know have have seen my work who can feel my integrity and those are the people that I try to reach you know and like you can't please everybody in life right like you're not pizza so um so yeah so again I I try to do the best that I can and I'm always learning I'm always challenging my biases and my assumptions and I try to align myself with people that I think are are you know who are in the space who are also doing it from a place of benevolence there are experts in the space who I believe are not doing who are not operating from a place of benevolence you know but um but I I am I love what I do and I I aspire to lead my audience ultimately to a greater vision of life and um and just just super grateful that honestly anybody's paying attention hell yeah Max Lugia ladies and gentlemen where should people go when's the film out what date so we're looking for a knock on wood we're looking for a q1 or Q2 2024 release so at some point in 2024 we're hoping for a global theatrical release that's as much as I can say at this juncture but um people can check out little empty boxes.com we have a trailer and people can join the newsletter there I don't send out like regular updates but anything specifically related to the film people can sign up you know for local screenings and what have you to learn how to become an advocate for the film um they can sign up for that little empty boxes.com and then I have my own podcast which hoping to get you on soon enough we're going to do it I promise we're going to do it it's called the Genius life on all podcast apps and then I'm super active on Instagram and Twitter and all the places hell yeah Max I appreciate you thank you man thanks Chris thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Max you will love my three-hour brand new conversation with Dr Andrew huberman go on tap it