Max Lugavere || Genius Foods

into the mind of brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott Barrkaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse of the human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today, I'm really excited to have Max Lugevira on the podcast. Max the filmmaker, health and science journalist, and brain food expert.

He's also the director of the upcoming film Bredhead, the first ever documentary about dementia prevention through diet and lifestyle, and he's co author with doctor Paul Gruhle of the just released book Genius Foods. Hey, man, thanks so much for being on the Psychology Podcast. Dude, thank you for having me. This is a long time in the making because I've been obviously a friend and fan of yours for such a long time. Actually, before we were friends,

I was a fan of yours. I'm saying that, yeah, because I read an article that you wrote on the many facets of the performing mind, and I was just obsessed with your work. And then you and Jason Silva. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it's been quite a road and I couldn't be more proud of you. You know, your book is coming out, probably your book will be out by the time that this podcast is released. And man, you really deserve this.

You know, you've put so much like blood, sweat and tears out of this thing, right Like, man, yeah, if anyone deserves this moment, it's going to be like wow, like you really care about the science, you care about getting the details right. But I'd like to just start off with we won't, by the way, do it? I said we could, we could. You know, I'm going to try to focus. I'm going to try to focus, but I want to start off, you know what got you

interested in this project. I know that you know a lot of it has to do with what you're seeing with your mother, and I thought you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Absolutely. So my background, you know, I was a more generalist journalist for about five years. I was living in Los Angeles working for Al Gore. He had a TV network called Current TV. So you know, my tools were very much mass media. I wasn't so much.

I wouldn't have considered myself a writer back then, but I was given this incredible opportunity to use traditional media in the form of television as a means of talking about things that I was interested in, and my passions really always kind of were pulled in the direction of social impact, health technology, things like that, and that lasted for about five six years. I got to sort of hone my journalistic skills with some of the best of

the best in the business Peabody Award winning journalists. And then when I left Current TV to try to figure out where I was going to go with my career, I dabbled in different creative mediums, but I ultimately began spending more and more time in New York City around my mother and I noticed that she started to display symptoms of memory loss. It seemed as if her brain's processing speed had sort of downshifted, and for somebody like my mom, who was a high performer her entire life,

it was very noticeable to me and my brothers. We also noticed a change in her gait, which is the way that she walked. She's a New Yorker born and bred, and you know, and anybody that's ever spent time in

New York knows that New Yorkers walk pretty fast. While my mom suddenly her stride had shortened to almost like a shuffle, and it was very subtle, but nonetheless it led to me really trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my mom, and that led to me going with my mom to various neurology departments around the country, and in every instance what I experienced

I've come to call diagnose and audios. Essentially, a physician would spend about fifteen minutes with my mom run a battery of strange cognitive tests and physical tests, and ultimately, in the end at the Cleveland clinic, she was prescribed to drugs which I only later found out were for Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, and I became essentially after I habituated to the initial trauma that I experienced when

I first googled those drugs. It sent me down a rabbit hole to try to figure out anything I possibly could through the lens of diet and lifestyle that might be useful in terms of helping my mom. But also I stumbled upon the fact that was very shocking to me that dementia most often begins in the brain decades before the first symptom, thirty to forty year and maybe even earlier according to some research, before the first symptom.

And so it became a very strong call to action to me to do what I could to prevent this from ever happening to myself. And ultimately it became about communication to try to get this information out there to others. I mean, as you mentioned, science, communication is difficult, and not everybody who's in the health and fitness space really

tries to communicate science responsibly and accurately. And so having this unique background in journalism and communication and really getting to work with the best of the best communicators in the world, it was almost like a perfect storm for me to really get out there and to stand up and to try to do what I can to help change the cognitive health destiny for other people. That's wonderful. Were you able to help your mom at all? Like

how she doing now? Not great? You know, Initially when I first started reading about this topic, I tried to do everything I could to teach my mom and to

ultimately influence her diet. But as anybody who has spent any time around a person with cognitive impairment knows, especially for any caregivers out there, they know that, you know, at an older age, it's just very difficult to really kind of cause a dramatic change in that person's diet and lifestyle, and especially you know, as rigorously as one would need to in order to have any measurable impact

on the disease. There's pilot level evidence now that you know, for people at various stages of cognitive impairment, if you take a sort of all hands on deck approach, you might be able to improve symptoms. Certainly, there is some research involving ketogenic diets, which is basically a diet that allows an alternate fuel to enter the brain so that it may sort of circumvent the metabolic shortcomings that occur in Alzheimer's disease, But a ketogenic diet is a very

hard diet to adhere to. So I tried to teach, and at a certain point I decided that I really needed to step back because I didn't want it to interfere with the time that I spend with my mom, and I certainly didn't want it to emotionally make me upset whenever I would go to my mom's house and notice an open bag of chips or snacks, for example. So she's changed a little bit, and her trajectory I believe has stabilized to some degree. But yeah, I uh, you know, I stepped back, and I try to kind

of teach more gently these days, fair enough. And also, you know, a big part of what you're doing now is you want to help a lot of people before it reaches that stage, Like you really you want to go as young as possible and have people you know, read your book and read learn all the latest principles and start making changes in their lives you know, today, and hopefully it'll influence and forestall kind of inevitable in

all of us. I mean, if you don't live long enough, like you know, like if you're going to live like one hundred, even if you lived one hundred and fifty, like, there's going to be a point where it's going to happen, you know. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, definitely. I mean a you know, ingenious foods and and my work. I think it's about really kind of bringing this issue, you know,

down to a much younger audience. And you know, I think that I have an advantage because I'm not a medical doctor necessarily, because I think that young people generally speaking don't care about dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and they certainly aren't about to go and get cognitive baselines that

they're neurologists, you know, when they're young. So for me, it's really about using the language of performance about mental health, which so many people obviously suffer with, and trying to make it something that is trying to really bring prevention

into the fold. You know, when people actually, again Alzheimer's disease develops in the brain far earlier than the presentation of symptoms, and when a person is already symptomatic, what happens in Alzheimer's disease is that there's a shift in food preference, so it becomes even more difficult for a person with Alzheimer's disease to actually change their diets. Whereas when you're young and healthy and your fitness focused, that's when I think we really can have the largest impact

on our brain health. And that's you know, all of those Yeah, principles are outlined in my book. Yeah, and you're doing a lot yourself. You do some self experimentation, and you do a lot of you try to walk the talk, right. Yeah, So I saw one blog post where you had your telomeres telemeres test, that's right, and it said that your actual age is like, is like four years old? Four years old? Yeah, exactly. Actually you're

actually you're actually just four. Yeah. Well emotionally that's definitely true. When you freak out if like you got your teles tested and it's like you are pre needle development, you geus, that would be shocking to say the least. Yeah, no, but you're like ten years younger than you really are, right or something like that. Right, Yeah, according to my average telomere length, and this is not something that's you know, been clinically validated but there's a company out there that

measures telemeres. Yeah, and they compare it to you know, their data set. And I'm chronologically thirty five years old, but my telomere were more akin to those of a twenty seven year old. And yeah, well you're doing something right, You're doing something right. Yeah, I mean I think you know, we have a say in the rate at which we age. I mean, you know, this is a There are very few bio markers associated with aging, but telomeres are one

of the few proposed biomarkers. And I had mind tested too, by the way, you know, we have a say over the rate at which we age, and telomeres are one of the few proposed bio markers of aging. So how old are you? Biological? So I had mind tested because I was inspired by your post and I was curious, and so tell me, I'll tell you the result. To me, honestly, it might is good. You know, it is a good. So I'm thirty eight according to my birth certificate, but

according to my telomeres, I'm thirty two. That's very good. Is that good? It's not as good as you're not, like ten years younger, but it's something, right, Yeah, that's very good. Okay, Cool, it's had like ninety ninth percentime thing like you said, I was like seven or something like that. But that's still good, right, that's very good. That's very good. Cool. Yeah, I do you know, I

think that we have a say telomeres. We can look at longitudinal studies and look at what are called super agers. You know, aging doesn't necessarily need to coincide with disease. Today, we're seeing people live longer thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, but they're living sicker. So you know, what I think is most important is extending one's health span. And having shorter telomeres seems to be related to a longer health span. Yeah, and related to the diet, exercise,

you know, absolutely. So these are real changes that you can make in your life. Like maybe if I work out even more, like maybe my next result, I'll even go farther back in time. I don't know, I feel like it's kind of like a time machine or something. Yeah, well, there's things that we know that are associated with longer telomeres. And just to define telomeres for your audience, for people that don't know, they're considered to be like the shoelace

caps at the end of your chromosomes. So a shoelace cap protects your shoelace from coming on done and fraying, but the shoelace cap actually keeps it all together. So too, in your you know, for your chromosomes, these telomeres seem to be the end tips, and they're just a repeating sequence of genes that seems to shorten with age. But longer telomeres is associated with, you know, more positive aging.

And there are various lifestyle factors that we know are also associated with healthy aging that are associated with longer telomeres. And then finally, there's an enzyme called telomerase which has been shown to actually lengthen telomeres, and we can actually boost telomerase with things like meditation, and so when it comes to having longer, healthier telomeres, coffee consumption has been related to longer telomeres, Consuming a multi vitamin longer telomeres,

exercise can lengthen telomeres, things like that. So these are all things that we know are part of a healthy diet and life. See that's so interesting because you read conflicting things about coffee, right you read you know that it's bad and then it's good. There's so tell me things that confuse the heck out of me. You know, if you just read the internet, you know, like what is really Let's really dive in for the rest of

our chat today. I want to pick specific topics that tell me what is the real truth of the matter, what is the weight of the evidence? Say about these things because sometimes if you google it's coffee bad for you, you you get a million articles coffee bad for you? If you google is coffee good for you? You You get a million Say, but there is a truth out there, right, So you know, let's talk about fats. Yes, okay, I'd love for you to tell the audience a difference between

poly unsaturated and mono unsaturated fats. Just describe the difference between the two and why that matters. Yeah, absolutely so. Poly unsaturated fats are predominantly found in well, in nature, they're found in the fat of animals, so they're found in trace amounts in or actually I would say not so trace amounts in the fat of fetty fish, so wild salmon, some deans harrying, things like that, and poly unsaturated fats really constitute in very large part our brains.

The problem is these fats are highly delicate and prone to oxidation, which is one of the reasons why the human brain is so delicate and prone to excessive amounts of oxidative stress. Today. In the modern food supply, polyon saturated fats are also they make up a huge percentage of our chloric intake because they're found in grain and seed oils that are used to create processed packaged foods, so oils like canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, things

like that. These oils, as I mentioned, are very delicate and when they're processed and extracted from their whole food sources and used to create these oils, usually they're damaged by the time that we consume them, and this makes them actually one of the worst offenders in the modern food supply. They're also very high in Omega six fatty acids, which provide the precursors to our body's inflammation pathways, and the deodorization process, which is essential to help make these

oils tasteless and scentless, actually creates trans fats. So that's why in my book I highlight these oils again, corn, canola, soybean oil, grape seed, oil as some of the most vile health offenders in the modern food supply. On the other hand, monoensaturated fat, which is found in extra virgin olive oil. It makes up about eighty five percent of

the fatty acid content of extra virgin olive oil. Fifty percent of the fat found in grass fed beef and wild salmon is monoensaturated fat, and unlike saturated fat and polyunsaturated fat, it seems that monoensaturated fat is the healthiest type of fat for an animal to consume in high quantities.

There's really interesting animal research and then also randomized control trials in humans that have been pretty successful in terms of preserving brain function longitudinally and also improving cardiometabolic risk factors when subjects are given high amounts of extra virgin olive oil to consume. So the main oil that I use in my diet and large is extravergent olive oil, which is predominantly monol and saturated fat. Monol and saturated

fat is also much more resistant to oxidation. So it's the safest oil to buy, certainly, and it's the safest oil to consume, and it seems to have a number of health benefits. As well, good, good, good. So the general blanket statement fat is bad for you is not a very telling statement, is what you're saying, Like, we have to look at the nuance of this situation. You

absolutely do. Yeah, it's definitely not useful as a term when studying diet at the population level, because you know, this is why relating fat to health outcomes makes no sense, because there's so many different types of fats, and each one has a different impact on your body. And the impact that certain that various fats have on you is likely different from the impact that those same fats will have on your neighbor, because everybody's different. There's no such

thing as a one size fits all diet. So yeah, so I would say, by and large, fat is not bad for you. And then when you get more granular, it's really important to look at the types of fats. So I don't think that consuming excessive polyunsaturated well it's not even opinion, but consuming excessive polyunsaturated fats is not

good for you. I don't think that consuming excessive saturated fat is good for you either, So in my recommendations are to consume saturated fats when they're and polyunsaturated fats when they're contained in whole foods, not isolated extracted oils. The only oil that you should use is extra virgin olive oil, and then perhaps saturated fats when you're cooking at high temperatures, because actually saturated fats are the most stable and particularly at high temperatures. Isn't avocado oil a

good thing too. Avocado oil is a good thing. It's predominantly monohnsaturated. But I don't recommend trading extra virgin olive oil for avocado oil because actually the most valuable compounds in extra virgin olive oil have nothing to do with its fatty acids, but instead plant compounds called polyphenol. An extra virgin olive oils, that is, the oil with the most abundant polyphenols in it, and these plant chemicals seem to have a broad range of very positive effects on

the body. They're anti inflammatory on par with like low dose ibuprofen, without any of the potential negative side effects. And this is not actually due to the fat in extra virgin oil, but the polyphenols. You know, a lot of people are proponents of a vegetarian diet. You know polyphenols, but you know there's a kind of a skull goan to like just eat plants, you know, is you know

they're sorted. That's the answer. That's the best diet. The thing that I find frustrating is that there are so many different Okay, so we got the Mediterranean, we got the key tone body diets, we got the Paleo, we got the vegetarian, the vegan. I don't know if I dare say Mediterranean. I think I probably did. Okay, so that's just okay, let's just deal with all those. Yeah, one of the situations like there's like there's no one

size fits all. You get to find the one that's But what does the science say if you want to live a healthy, long life, Like, is there an optimal thing? Is there a truth? Well, most researchers and doctors will cite the Mediterranean dietary pattern as having the most evidence. But this is a dietary pattern that really has been pinpointed via like population level evidence. So I think we can do better than that, because population level evidence can

only tease out correlations. You can't make the causal assumption when you're looking at a dietary pattern at the population level. So it seems that people that live in the Mediterranean, they have reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, of neurological disease and things like that. But that doesn't mean that everything that they're eating and every you know, all of their

lifestyle patterns in the Mediterranean are necessarily helpful. So to me, it's more important to look at a broad range of research, ranging from you know, animal studies to trials and even spanning disciplines. So, I mean, when it comes to the brain, brain health is reliant on the metabolic health of the body, and so to me, that's where research into type two

diabetes and obesity comes into play. Even though you know, medicine is such a vast field and there's so many silos, I think really to get a good sense of a proper human diet, you really have to look at the breadth of all of the evidence. And so yeah, so I think that there are aspects of the Mediterranean diet that are certainly you know, beneficial. The reliance and the sort of the favoritism of extra virgin olive oil. I

think that's great. But you know, most researchers will say that the Mediterranean diet includes grains and so therefore grains have to be a healthy part of the diet. Well, actually, when you look at randomized control trials, there's no good evidence that grains improve health. And this was according to Cochrane, which is an organization that is known for their systematic and unbiased reviews of medical literature. They found no evidence

when looking at randomized control trials that grains improve health. So, I mean that's where I would argue that the Mediterranean day it is healthy in spite of grains, not because of them. Es. Yeah, at the end of the day, you know, nutrition science is very difficult to do. But unfortunately, our nutritional guidelines are based on population level evidence, which is really unfortunate because they're making the causal assumption, which

you know, any scientist knows. You know, they're making that fatal flaw of attributing causality when only correlation can be teased out for sure. And then then some people, the vegetarians are very adamant that if you want to have a long life, like a food I have a longevity, reduce your consumption of animal foods. Yeah right, well, I think I think many people, especially today, consume not only too much meat relative to other things that they're eating,

but they eat very low quality meat. So I actually argue that grass fed beef is actually a health food, even though red meat sort of gets not talked about

very kindly, especially obviously by vegetarians and especially vegans. But from an evolutionary standpoint, we absolutely consumed animal products during the time in which our brains evolved, and you know, at a certain point in our evolutionary past, about ten thousand years ago, we turned our backs on that diet and became slaves to the few crops that we could domesticate, and actually, over time that contributed to the fact that our brains shrank since then. So to me, it doesn't

there's no good evidence that meat is unhealthy. There's links that can be drawn, but again, most people consume very unhealthy meat and are not consuming the other things that they need to consume to be healthy. And I think, yeah, so I think, you know, when looking at a plate, half to three quarters should be dedicated to vegetables like dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, things like that. But then I absolutely think that there's a place for grass fed meat.

It contains you know, it's the most bioavailable source of many very important nutrients that people are not consuming adequate amounts of, including vitamin B twelve, an underappreciated nutrient called creatine, which is very important for proper brain health and brain function. Coline. Yeah, well creatine is is I take that in my pre workout supplement. Oh nice, you were looking kind of like

a little bit more jacked blood. Yeah, No one else can see that, but you I know they'll have to, you know, but no, no, but I use I have in my pre workout stack. It involves creatine. Is that cretines? I mean, if your brain became suddenly deficient in creatine,

you would not be able to think properly. Creatinees vitally important for brain energy, metabolism, and in studies involving vegans and vegetarians that don't consume creatine because it's found predominantly in meat, by supplementing with creatine actually showed a significant

improvement in their cognitive function. And this wasn't the case with omnivores, which suggests that there's a saturation point in the brain, but that just by simply eating some meat you are able to hit that point and supply your brain with the creating it needs. To function at its best. Cool. Yeah, so very important. Well, this is good. So your book is not like this is the logo of your diet. Instead you have a list of genius foods that are

backed by science. I mean, that's a very rare to see. Again, it's rare to see that kind of book right in this market because people are obsessed with marketing. Yeah, it's more about marketing in your field, I think, on the whole than you're right about getting the science right. So can you go through the rest of am and name some of these genius foods that, like, there's no doubt no matter what your diet is, like, this is going to be a good thing for you to have more

of in your diet. Absolutely well, I mean in the book there is a plan. There is, you know, a way to make it really sort of digestible, denended for people to put, you know, these ideas and foods into practice in their own lives. But yeah, I mean I think you know, avocados are a perfect genius food. They are rich in healthy fats, They've got an abundance of carotenoids, which have been shown by University of Georgia researchers to really boost the speed at which your brain is able

to process information. I talk about dark leafy greens. A Rush University study has shown that people that consume one and a third cups of darklyafed greens every single day have brains that look on scans about eleven years younger. Does that called string beans? String beans are not a dark leafig ground string beans, but stringale kale yes, kale kalees, the crucifer's vegetable. But you're about to say string beans

aren't bad though, No, they're not bad. They're good. They're good, they're good, They're just not I mean, I can't think of any research on string beans and brain function, but that would be an interesting study to do. Wait, okay, so so tell me some more of these darkly that follow in that categor So, kale, spinach, spinach, Yeah, pop Eye was onto something. Spinach source. Beats are not a dark la too green. No, it's like it's totally different,

even greed. But beats are great though. They're a top source of dietary nitrate, which is very important. Yes, and arugola too. So arugula is actually a great source of dietary nitrate as well. And this is really important for the healthy functioning of your blood vessels, so super key. What is your vitamin supplementation regime. I'm not a you know, I definitely take a few supplements, but I'm mostly a

fan of getting my nutrients from food. You know, we've co evolved with our food, and I think a lot of the way. One of the major mistakes that many nutrition scientists make is that they try to break food apart into single nutrients. Michael Pollen called this nutritionism, and there's a lot of compounds in foods that really work

synergistically to boost our health. And so that's why even for vegans, when I say things like, you know, you should get more creatine, I'm more trying to promote the consumption of foods that contain creatine rather than the supplementation of creatine, because, for example, creatine just happens to be one of the nutrients that some research or somewhere was able to find the money to study. You know what

I'm saying, I do so, but yeah, I do. You know, I'm a big fan of taking a fish oil supplement. To a high quality fish oil supplement for vegans and vegetarians, algae oils is sufficient. I also supplement with vitamin D three on days that I'm not in the sun. I'm a big fan of vitamin K two. I don't always have access to the foods that contain high amounts of vitamin K two, and so you know, I'll usually supplement

with that. I take a collagen protein supplement. Collagen contains amino acids that are relatively rare in the modern diet, and that seem to be important for a myriad of function. Do you take collagen? Nice? Oh, look at that collagen peptides. Wow, dude, I'm very good. I'm very impressed. Well, look, here's a little admission. I was diagnosed with celiac disease two years ago. Since like the last time we hung out, and so I've had I've completely changed my whole diet and exercise routine.

So yeah, wow. I talk about that quite a bit in the book. I talk about autoimmunity, the gut brain axis. Coeliac disease seems to be this mediator of a broad range of autoimmune conditions that on the surface don't seem to have much in common with one another, but seem to be mediated by gut health. Talk a little bit

more about gut health. It's such a hot topic these days. Yeah, there are various microbial signatures that researchers can study and relate to various phenotypes, you know, people that are these people that are tempty diabetic. But it's unclear at this point as too, if these microbial communities are influencing the health of the hoe or merely reflective of the health of the host. But nonetheless, it's a very exciting area

of research. And the gut seems to play a major role in our predilection for autoimmune conditions, proper brain function and things like that. And this is actually, I think in part because the gut serves as the sort of boot camp for our bodies immune systems. I mean, most the vast majority of our immune systems are trained to

focus on what's happening in the gut. So by keeping your gut healthy, by keeping a diverse gut bacterial community, by you know, eating a diverse array of dietary fibers, not using antibiotic drugs unless absolutely necessary, or if they are trying to go for narrow spectrum as opposed to

broad spectrum, not taking PPI drugs for sid reflux. You know, things like that not being overly sterile, especially when bogun earlier in life, can really help to promote seem to be able to promote a better gut health piotic and again eating a diverse array of plant fibers can also help.

What do you mean by being overly sterile? Yeah, so, I mean this is like the hygiene hypothesis, which basically argues that as we've become more sterile as a society, you know, we wash our produce to the point that there, you know, there's no bacteria on it. In fact, unattractive produce gets thrown out in supermarkets these days. We love to use things like hand sanitizers, we are rinsing with anti bacterial mouth washes, We you know, use antibacterial soaps.

We've basically eliminated some of the more beneficial interactions that we might have had with bacteria that seem to have promoted a more for the majority of our of our evolution, a more robust immune system that today in a way has become sort of anemic because of because of the fact that we've become so sterile, and many of these

more beneficial interactions have been essentially lost. Yeah, and just to close the loop, the hygien hypothesis stipulates that this is why we're seeing such an such an increase in rates of autoimmunity, celiac disease and things like that. That is super interesting. So I'll try to get my OCD under control. Then my bigest thing. I mean, yeah, there's a it's very interesting. I talk about it a little bit in the book, but it's you know, it's out

there for anybody to research. It's a hypothesis. You know, we'll never know for sure, but I definitely think what that implies is that just being a little bit less sterile in your life, and it's a safe recommendation. It might help, can't hurt, and so cool, Thank you. Let's move on to sugar. Yeah, another hot topic. Now, I have protein, I have shakes. I have I put lots of fruit and fruit you know, in a blender. It's

called a shake. I can't talk all of a sudden, but should I be worried concerned about that because that's a lot of sugar content or you're talking about processed sugar. I'd be more concerned if you re juicing the fruit, basically extracting the fiber from that fruit. I'm not a big fan of eating an excessive amount of sweet fruit because our fruit today is cultivated to contain more sugar

than ever before in human history. So for most people that are either diabetic or pre diabetic, eating a modern banana is the equivalent of sending off a glucose bomb into one system. So that's not you know, especially in today's world where people are more sedentary than ever before. I don't think that's a good strategy for health. On the other hand, low sugar fruits are among the most nutrient dense, and these include cacao, avocado, coconuts, berries, things

like that, And those are the only fruits that I recommend. Blueberries, you like blue blueberries? I love blueberries. Yeah. What about assails Asaii bowls? You know, I was in Brazil recently and I fell in love with a good asai e bowl. You got to say sem shut ope and sem azukar, which means no syrup, no sugar. If you're ever if you ever happen to find yourself in Brazil, you want to get an si e bowl because they add lots of sugar to their sae. Good good. Yeah, I'm going

to remember that. Okay, heart, let's talk about the heart, healthy heart, healthy brain. This is a quote from Max Hugevier. Yeah, healthy heart, healthy brain. So what is the diet heart debacle? The diet heart debacle, oh man, So that began about fifty sixty years ago, now, when our nation was looking for a solution to what seemed to be an epidemic

of heart disease. And the diet heart hypothesis basically states that cholesterol in and of itself causes heart disease, and that by having high cholesterol levels, you're putting yourself at risk for heart disease because cholesterol clogs your arteries. Saturated fat, because saturated fat raises levels of cholesterol in the blood,

that also increases your risk for heart disease. But what the latest research really seems to Sugg is that cholesterol isn't necessarily a causative player in heart disease, but more sort of an innocent bystander there at the scene of the crime when heart attacks occur, but not the bad guy itself. Yeah. So, you know, for decades we were told not to eat dietary cholesterol, not to you know, to limit consumption. Yeah, which is I mean, cholesterol is

no longer on the FDA's Nutrients of Concern lists for Americans. So, I mean it's been debunked for most people. You know, in biology, there are always exceptions to rule. Dietary cholesterol, you know, which is found in things like foods like eggs and shellfish, does not increase levels of blood cholesterol. In fact, your liver, on average, creates about four egg yolks worth of cholesterol daily, So most of the circulating cholesterol that you have in your body is created by

your liver. Interesting, I didn't know it was that much. Yeah, it's quite a bit, because cholesterol is vital to the health of the brain and body. Without cholesterol, you would die. So that's why it's kind of strange that for so

long we have demonized this important nutrient. So I don't need to freak out if I have, like I order some meals sometimes and it says one hundred and eighty miligrams of cholesterol on the nutritional label, Like, I don't need to immediately freak out, right, No, no, no no, no, you definitely there's no need to chase it as a nutrient. But you should feel free to eat cholesterol, Yeah, especially when it's found in foods like eggs. Which are by and large very very healthy. Cool. So what is the

rise of the cycle biotic? What is that the rise of the psycho biotic. Well, it's essentially, you know, as we go further down the rabbit hole of the gut brain axis, it's become clear that gut bacteria can influence our thoughts and our mental states. We can't make any recommendations yet based on this insight, but it seems pretty clear that the gut communicates with the brain in a

pretty profound way via the vegus mirth. And so so what I talk about is that in the future we might have probiotic cocktails to treat things like depression, anxiety, OCD and stuff like that. I mean, it's it's almost a given that we will eventually get to that point, but it's very premature and there's really nothing, you know, prescriptive that we can say about it today. But I just kind of talk about it in the book because

I think it's very interesting. It's super interesting, and I'm going to keep my eye on that science for sure. You know. Lastly, I would like, you know, to talk about ways of optimizing stress sleep. Well, you don't optimize stress, you want to reducing stress, optimizing sleep, and getting the most out of your exercise. You know, the kind of the things that really interact with diet. Yeah, definitely. Well, actually, stress you bring up. I mean, it's an important distinction

that there are two kinds of stress. One is the sort of you know, chronic psychological stress that we're seeing so many people coping with today, and that's bad. That's the kind of stress that you experience when you're stuck in a job that you don't lie, you're in a relationship that's gone sour, the military duty, medical school. I mean, these are all things that are extremely stressful PhD student stuff. But actually the brain benefits from acute bouts of intermittent stress.

So when we go to a gym and we have a good workout, those workouts are beneficial in part because they're stressors on the body. And so in the book, actually I talk about the various types of stress that you actually should have more of in your life, everything from thermal stress to the physical stress that you endure

when you do high intensity exercise. This seems to have a number of wide ranging benefits on the body, everything from promoting metabolic health to burning more calories to increasing insulin sensitivity, which is very important for your overall metabolic health. When it comes to sleep, sleep is also a very important part of the equation because it's now been demonstrated that when we sleep, our brains clear themselves of toxic proteins that build up over the course of the day.

This is a newly discovered system called glymphatic system that when we sleep switches on and basically swooshes cerebrospinal fluid around our brains to clear out amyloid precursor protein, which is what it's the protein that aggregates and misfolds and clumps and forms the plaques that characterize Alzheimer's disease. So by sleeping more and also sleeping better seems to you know, one of the more important recommendations when it comes to

brain health. And it's been shown actually that even low so when I talk about optimizing sleep, we want to sleep in a room that's cooler. The body likes to sleep in cooler temperatures, the body temperature. Body temperature actually drops when we sleep and begins to raise when we're about to wake. And also even low level light seems

to be to the detriment of our cognitive function. And a recent study was just published showing a pretty strong association in older adults between exposure to very low level light like even can't like you know, the amount of light that would be produced by a candle, and depression. So we're meant to sleep in the dark, and I think today with our smartphones being by our beds, alarm clocks and are just overexposure to blue light at night

really seems to influence our cognition. I'm also a big fan of wearing blue light blocking glasses before bed because again just going back to blue light that seems to send a signal to our brains that is daytime which might interfere or which actually does interfere with the brains winding down. Well, if people go to my website and join my newsletter, one of the first things that I give you in the welcoming newsletter is a link to

the blue light blocking glasses that I wear. They're very helpful. They're actually one of the top sleep packs that I've discovered just in terms of improving the way that I sleep, in the way that I feel the next morning cool. So do you start that like an hour before we go to bed, when does your winding down routine start? I try two to three hours before I go to bed, when I want to watch TV, or if I'm at

my computer doing work. Cool last question, I found it fascinating you said that you like to view Alzheimer's as a metabolic disorder in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So. I mean, nobody knows what causes Alzheimer's disease, but there are a few prevailing hypotheses. But the central guiding hypothesis over the past couple of decades was called the amyloid hypothesis. And this is because for a long time, the only way that Alzheimer's disease could be diagnosed was on death.

They would open up the brain of a dementia sufferer and notice the plaques that aggregate and cause Alzheimer's disease. So it was believed that these plaques almost like cholesterol actually very similar story, was the causative force in the disease. But actually, now with new scanning technologies, we can, and especially in an effort to try to come to some sort of consensus as to how we might prevent the disease, researchers have been looking at earlier developments in the cascade

that ultimately will lead to Alzheimer's disease. And it seems that from very early on, the first measurable feature that we can see in the brains of people that are at risk for Alzheimer's disease is an impairedive ability to create atp out of glucose in the brain. So what this suggests, I think pretty strongly, is that Alzheimer's disease might actually begin as a metabolic problem in the brain. And metabolism is essentially the cell's ability to create energy

out of raw materials. And so yeah, and so that's why some researchers have actually begun calling Alzheimer's disease type three diabetes. And this is all that's clever. Clever, Yeah, it's very clever, but also scary, but also empowering because yeah, but also very empowering because you know, type two diabetes, which we're seeing skyrocket in you know, in the Western world, is essentially a lifestyle disease brought about by a myriad

of factors. But what this suggests is that we might have agency when it comes to preventing Alzheimer's disease through that lens yeah, so I go into detail on this in the book, but essentially what it is, you know, is about really facilitating metabolic health in the body, which

is related to brain metabolism. And you know, all of the many ways that you can do that from eating healthier fats, cutting out the unhealthy fats, eating a lower carbohydrate diet, reducing consumption of processed foods, destressing, exercising more. I mean, these are all the ways that we can really promote metabolic health in the body, which is strongly

related to the brain's metabolic health as well. Cool man, Well, thanks so much for chatting with me today, Max, I don't know was there anything else you wanted to cover today, just that you know, you're the man, and I'm super excited to have gotten to chat with you and I appreciate it. And oh and also that you know, in many ways my journey was kicked off by you and

you got me that Psychology Today blog. How's that doing? Yeah, I don't really blog on there very often, but it was a really great platform for me very early on to get to interview some of the researchers that I was interested in reaching out to over the course of my you know, my journey and my research in writing this book. Good I'm so quite here that well. It's a phenomenal book and you deserve the successes that come

to you. So good luck. Thank you so much. As now now the media blitz starts, right I got in early, early adopter, but yeah, good luck Max, and thanks again for being on the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a rating and review of

the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time for more on the mind of brain, behavior and creativity.