← Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
The Surprising TRUTH about Anti-Aging, Food as Medicine & What They’re Hiding About Alzheimer’s with Max Lugavere
01:11:13
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- [00:02]
A
Max Lugavir joins me today. Max is a New York Times best selling author, health journalist and filmmaker. Now you might know him from his groundbreaking books, Genius Foods and the Genius Life, where he combines cutting edge science with practical advice to help people optimize their health and live longer, better lives. He's also the host of the Genius Life podcast where he dives deep into nutrition and brain health and everything in between. Max is here with me today to shine a light on something many of us don't think about enough. The conflicts of interest between our government, health agencies and private industry. We're going to explore how entanglements like the revolving door, employment policy lobbyists and research grants affect public health and what we can do to make informed choices in a system that's designed. Designed to prioritize profit over people. Let's get into it. Keeping it real with Jillian Michael. So I have a. My nicotine. You've. You're addicting me to nicotine here.
- [01:07]
B
Oh, no.
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A
I got like a big chunk of nicotine in the side of my face.
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B
Oh, man. Well, yeah, I'm.
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A
This is your fault.
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B
Oh, no. Oh, no.
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A
Yeah. Are you sure about this?
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B
Can I indemnify myself somehow?
- [01:19]
A
No, I just, you know, it's like I'm here.
- [01:23]
B
How do you feel? That's the most important thing.
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A
I don't actually notice it because it's only like 1 milligram.
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B
Because, I mean, initially when people first try it, they get like, really lightheaded. Are you okay? We good?
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A
Okay. No, I'm good. But you did this to me like a month ago at the Senate hearing. So then I was like, okay, so now just like. But then I don't think it's very classy. I'm sitting, I'm like doing interviews with a giant wad of frigging gum in my face.
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B
It's, you know, it's okay. It's. Here's the thing I found. I found nicotine to be a really powerful, powerful nootropic. It's not without its potential downsides, but there's also not a lot of, you know, there's not a lot of research on its long term health effects isolated from the typical routes of administration, like smoking, which are obviously very bad for you.
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A
Got it.
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B
Yeah. But the.
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A
With the thing, the gum thing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Max.
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B
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's. Well, I'm not endorsing it. I'm not endorsing. You can take it out.
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A
Have a little patch thing.
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B
You could take it out. I don't use it all the time.
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A
Give me a 3 milligram. The senating arena is like gonna show off to Mars. Okay, well.
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B
Well, here's what I found. I found that for me.
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A
Am I spitting this out or not?
- [02:29]
B
Spit it out. Spit it out. Yes, please. Yeah, there's no. I'm not forcing you.
- [02:32]
A
Yeah, no, but like, I believe I'm like, into it.
- [02:35]
B
Well, it's a.
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A
You and huberman.
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B
It's got well documented nootropic effects. So it's.
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A
Am I living if I keep this in here? Makes me smarter, but I'll live.
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B
Yes, it's perfect.
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A
I'll take smarter then.
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B
Yeah. It's what I found personally, subjectively, and this is echoed by, I think, other people who have experimented with it responsibly. Of course, it is an addictive ch. I have no affiliation with any nicotine producer, but I found for me that it's a powerful cognitive enhancer. It dials in my focus. I feel it makes me. It enhances my verbal fluency, which is as a podcaster, I mean, of course, you know, that's an important characteristic of being able to hold a good conversation. I think you and myself are naturally.
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A
Done that for me too.
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B
Very good at that. But caffeine also has some potential negative effects in the sense that it can disrupt sleep if you don't curtail your consumption to noon. Right, right. Nicotine doesn't have. It has a much shorter half life. It's about a fourth of the. A quarter of the half life. And there are some potential negative effects that acutely raises blood pressure and heart rate. We don't know long term. You know what it does from a. From a health standpoint because again, most of the research is on combustible routes of administration.
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A
You can take it long term.
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B
It may be.
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A
Actually I'm only doing that seriously because in case. When it crosses my teeth, that will not sexy at all. However, I have begun using it. I follow you and I listen to you and I do notice the difference.
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B
Wow.
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A
And the reason I have this computer out, which I do very rarely, is because I noticed that you have been targeted by the Wikipedia gods. And that must mean that you are really upsetting the status quo. So let's look at some of the things. This is my absolute favorite. Okay.
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B
Oh my God, I love where you're going with this.
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A
Lou Gewehr promotes a low carbohydrate diet of grass fed beef, free range chicken and pasture raised or omega 3 enriched eggs with low carbohydrate Fibrous vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, and salt. And then they go on to talk about how none of your claims are proven by science. It's fantastic. It's like, none of these are unfounded. Lou Geware is, like, just in the.
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B
Info box, it says, I'm known for fringe diet.
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A
Yes. That was my favorite. You know, these bastards have been done this to me for years.
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B
Wow.
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A
They delete my certifications. I'm a black belt. They're like, there's no proof of that. I'm like, what? How do you get proof of a black. Here's a photo.
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B
Wow.
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A
Like, I mean, they have gone on here and targeted me politically, put in, like, fake stuff about all kinds of. It's wild what goes on with this.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And the reason that I really want to address it is because there's actually more to this. And now I. I mean, it's just. It's fun. If you want to laugh. Google.
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B
I'm curious to know what you found, because, I mean, this is fairly new territory for me. This has all kind of gone down over the past six months, and it's been, you know, I guess initially it was to some degree upsetting, but then I realized that Wikipedia has no credibility anyway. Unless you're trying to learn about, like, cloud formations or rocks, you know, for. For anything even remotely controversial on Wikipedia, it has zero credibility. And if you were to cite Wikipedia as part of a college essay, for example, I mean, it's not. Nobody considers it to be a credible source. Right. And so certain people are targeted.
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A
And hear me out on this. I would say, while I agree with you in theory, I would say, if that's the case, why are certain people targeted?
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B
Yeah.
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A
And who's involved in targeting them? Years ago, and I mean, years ago, when I was working with the Clinton administration and like, the Clinton Globe, the Clinton Global Initiative, and they had, like, health matters with the Clinton alliance or foundation or whatever it was. There was a guy that worked with the Clintons who told my business partner, I can get this fixed for you. And he, in fact, did get it fixed for quite some time overnight. And I didn't really question it. And then it started falling apart again in the last year or so, and we had to be super aggressive about managing it. And you might say, well, why? And it's. If you notice, anytime you do media, the clicks to that page go through the roof and they'll send you a little email. You've had unusual traffic. Well, people are going to it. So the question is, if they're Going to it. They're going to it for a reason. And if the first thing they see is like, oh, crazy science claims those are people that are new to Max, that's on purpose. And I was recently at a dinner at Dave Rubin's house and he had this coterie of malcontents like ourselves. And it was not that any of these people said this specifically, but it was Weinstein and Michael Shellenberger and this Winston Marshall and somebody there. And they were all talking about whistleblowing on this or the field that they work in and what they're trying to expose. And it so helped me. God, I wish I had been paying closer attention because there was so many people. But one was saying that he's doing a complete expose on the corruption with Wikipedia.
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B
Good.
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A
And I was like, I gotta talk to. And I never made my way over. But there is something so nefarious going on there. And I notice you get targeted when you are effectively making a difference. And of course everybody knows you in this space and. But you're saying this is new and I'm telling you, like, you must have hit a different level of impact than, yeah, pierced a deeper level of culture.
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B
Well, I think, I mean, it's a, it's a sign that you're making an impact and you know, to make an omelette, you've got to break a few eggs. People are going to be angered by that. I can back every single claim I've ever made. I know that I don't promote low carbohydrate diets, although I do promote them, I guess, in certain circuit, certain contexts. I've written books about brain health. And within that context, for example, a ketogenic diet is very relevant and needs to continue to be studied. And you know, that's kind of, that's the population that my, my initial work at least targeted people who were concerned about, you know, brain health, maybe had neurodegeneration in their family, because that's what I had in my family. My mom had dementia. And so early on in my journey, when I realized that the pharmacologic interventions were of no utility, I started looking into the research surrounding ketogenic diets, which have been gold standard treatment for certain forms of epilepsy for a century. But of course, certain, you know, certain dietary tribalists will say, like those in the vegan camp, take strong issue with anybody who's promoting animal source foods as a healthful, you know, thing to eat and particularly low carb ketogenic diets, because that directly confronts Their bias, which is for higher carbohydrate, lower fat approaches to diet. And so what's happened with my Wikipedia page is that it has seemingly been taken hostage by a cabal of woke vegan. Actually, one of the woke vegans. One of the primary.
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A
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
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B
Yeah. One of the primary.
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A
They're taking on a much bigger thing than woke vegans.
- [09:47]
B
I don't even care. I mean, to be honest, when I'm vetting somebody for my podcast, you know, just as an example, I never look at their Wikipedia page. I find them on Instagram, I see what they're posting about, what their latest. You know, I maybe see what books they have out.
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A
Like defer to your common sense. Maybe that grass fed beef.
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B
Exactly.
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A
And like, totally great for you.
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B
Yeah. And the way that you know me, you know, and you went to my Wikipedia page and you right away saw through the charade of propaganda that's on there. I mean, it really, I would say.
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A
Though, it's not woke vegans, which, which is really the point I'm trying to make. You recently exposed. And I didn't do a deeper dive on what you were saying. Cause it's a pretty big revelation. And it had to do with all the Alzheimer's research that turned out to be. I, I, I, I don't really get it. So I'm gonna. Not that I don't get it. I didn't explore it. Cause I was like, you know what? I'm gonna be talking to Max and I'm gonna let him talk about it. And this is obviously indicative of other very, very nefarious things going on in health, in particular with the research. Can you. What is this? I saw you do this whole expose on this online and I waited to talk to you in person. What the hell happened with this Alzheimer's research?
- [11:01]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. So in 2006, a paper came out, it was published in Nature, and the lead author was a scientist named Sylvain Lesney. He was a University of Minnesota researcher who published a paper seemingly linking a subtype of amyloid beta to cognitive decline.
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A
Right. The Alzheimer's plaques.
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B
Right. So everybody knows, or many people know at this point that Alzheimer's disease is characterized in part by the presence of two features. Amyloid plaque in the brain. So kind of like the plaque on your teeth, they see it in the extracellular space around neurons in the brain of a cadaver who's died, a person who's died due to Alzheimer's. Disease and then tangles of these. Neurofibril fibritor. I can never pronounce this word. Fibritory proteins and tau and, you know, you read these words all the time, and then the minute you try to get them out of your.
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A
I still can't say ghrelin. Ghrelin.
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B
Basically, they're. They're proteinopathies. So misfolded proteins and then this aggregation of this plaque that's become insoluble. The protein is called amyloid beta precursor protein, and it becomes this, like, essentially what's on the plaque of your teeth and in the brains of somebody who's died with Alzheimer's. And so, since the disease was first named in 1906 by physician Alois Alzheimer, the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes the disease has been the amyloid plaque. We've got to get the plaque out of the brain.
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A
Right.
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B
Nonetheless, you know, research has been a dismal failure into the, you know, a pharmacologic treatment for the condition, Alzheimer's disease. Disease trials have a 99.6% fail rate. It's worse than for cancer. It's worse than for heart disease. It's really, really bad. Yeah.
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A
Okay.
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B
And it's just been really upsetting and heartbreaking for not just the research community, of course, but for patients, families like mine, who have been touched by dementia. And so the field was starting to, particularly as it pertained to this hypothesis, dubbed the amyloid hypothesis, in terms of the causal factors of Alzheimer's disease had really been losing steam up until 2006, because. Well, there are a few key reasons why it was beginning to lose steam. One, they've succeeded, actually, at reducing amyloid plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. And yet that hadn't coincided with an impact on the clinically meaningful symptoms of the disease, meaning the cognitive dysfunction.
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A
So you're saying they were successful in getting some of the plaque out, but people didn't improve?
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B
Correct.
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A
Oh, I didn't know that.
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B
Yes, that. And also, healthy brains produce amyloid beta, and there's a degree of amyloid burden in the brains of people who are cognitively healthy. So there doesn't seem to be a strong correlation between the amyloid burden and a person's cognitive abilities. So.
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A
Oh, my gosh, Max. I had, like, a expert brain researcher on. Okay, go. Right.
- [13:52]
B
Yeah. Well, and this is. And this is illustrated most clearly by the recent accelerated approval by the FDA of monoclonal antibodies that are very successful in terms of reducing the amyloid in the brain. But it Nominally improves cognitive function and in fact, increases risk for brain atrophy. It accelerates. Meta analyses have actually shown that these drugs accelerate brain atrophy, which is no bueno, can potentially lead to brain swelling, brain bleeds, and even death. So the amyloid is not the full picture, but nonetheless, this 2006 paper seemed to really renew fervor with regards to this path to developing a drug to, quote, unquote, cure or at the very least, treat Alzheimer's disease. And it had subsequently been cited thousands of times in the medical literature.
- [14:42]
A
I mean, I've. I've definitely had people talking about it on the podcast over the years.
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B
Yeah, well, it's there at the scene of the crime, so it makes logical sense. Right. And before, we had, you know, all sorts of biomarker testing and the degree of imaging capability that we have today. I mean, it's. It was a hypothesis that, you know, that, at least logically, was very easy to buy into. Similar to cholesterol in our arteries. Right. Atherosclerosis, like cholesterol, is always there, so it must be cholesterol. That's the source of the problem, that's the causal factor. Right. But that's mistaken correlation for causation. Right. If you were to look at a house on fire and notice the smoke. I mean, smoke is always there when there's a fire. You might be inclined to think that the smoke caused the fire. Right. But no, it's the fire that's causing the smoke. If there were firefighters on site, you might think to yourself, hey, maybe the firefighters caused the fire. So we can't mistake correlation for causation. And nonetheless, that's what's occurred seemingly over the past hundred or so years since these plaques were initially discovered in the brains of cadavers who've died with Alzheimer's disease.
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A
Wow.
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B
And so it's a huge problem. Essentially, the fraud is that another researcher, a Vanderbilt University researcher named Matthew Schrag, recently, about two years ago, discovered that a lot of the data that was published in that early paper was completely fraudulent. It was basically like Photoshop copy, cheap Photoshop copy and paste jobs that pass through somehow the peer review process because they don't look at imagery. And these were. This was data that was presented in a format called a Western blot analysis, which is visual, as opposed to just, you know, numbers in a spreadsheet. And. And he noticed that it was essentially a cut and paste job, that it was completely fraudulent. And actually, over the past six months, the paper was finally retracted, which represents billions of Dollars of misplaced research funding, misplaced hope and what have you. And it's really sad. It's a big problem. And it's. And this actually just happened again. It was published in Science, so Science magazine did the first expose. So the story was broken by Science magazine.
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A
It's kind of surprising, to be honest, but at least there's. You can have some faith in something. Maybe he doesn't even know who to trust anymore.
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B
Well, exactly. And that's why people that, you know, uphold science is an. It's a method, Right. It's a method of asking questions and investigating in hopes of finding answers to this human endeavor. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
But it's also an industry. It's also something that is, you know, carried forth by fallible humans, humans who have egos, who have reputations to uphold. And I think, you know, it is a big sort of question like how, you know, who. Who you can trust. Right. And I'm a big advocate of science. I think science is really important. But there is a lot of fraud within the industry. There's a lot of conflicts of interest, which we've all been talking about lately with regards to the dietary guidelines.
- [17:44]
A
Elaborate on that, actually. But we'll. This was my perfect segue, because it's a perfect example. You know, it's one thing to talk about corruption and a revolving door, but without anything tangible to say, no, no, here's what we're talking about. See, this. This was bull. And it begot billions of dollars to a certain group of people. So the incentive was there on top of ego for the following reasons. And it's not just here. It's here, here, here, here, and here. And to try to explain to people that's one of the things that people like yourself and myself are trying to accomplish or have high hopes for should Kennedy be confirmed, it's like he's not going to fix everything. It's not even possible. But is there a down? So let's look a little bit about. Let's look a little bit at what this revolving door policy of employment means, because it's a phrase that's been going around a lot, right? Kennedy's talk, I'm rooting out corruption. And then Dr. Casey means goes on Bill Maher and the revolving door of industry and government agencies. Can you give people an idea of what this looks like, what this means? God help us, because anytime I do this, the algorithm is like.
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B
So.
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A
Maybe we'll save this part for substack. But nevertheless, can you talk a little bit about that?
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B
Yeah, I mean this information is out there. It's not controversial. Over the past 20 years, 11 of 12 FDA commissioners have gone on to take cushy jobs within the pharmaceutical industry. About half of the FDA's budget comes from the industries that it is tasked to regulate, the food or drug industry. And this revolving door, what that implies is essentially you'll see high level officers at the FDA one year and then the next year they're taking these lofty positions, making lots of money within the pharmaceutical industry. And what that is is just a very obvious conflict of interest. I don't think there's anything conspiratorial about that. It's just that there's a, you know, how can you be objective when the, when the, when the companies that you're tasked with regulating, you know that a year from now you're going to be submitting your job application too, Right? Right.
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A
Yep. Of course. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make just about everyone vulnerable. Brokers make a profit off of your data, right? Your data is a commodity and anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment. But now you can protect your privacy with Delete Me. What do data brokers do? Your name, contact info, Social Security number, home address, even information about your family members can all be compiled by data brokers and sold online. This is why I use Delete Me myself. It is an invaluable tool, not just as a public figure, but as a regular person. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my personal information is isn't just floating around for anyone to buy. And honestly, in today's world, that peace of mind is priceless. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, you can get 20% off your delete me plan by texting Jillian to 64,000. That's Jillian to 64000. The only way to get 20% off is to text Jillian to 64,000. That's Jillian to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. Let's talk about bras and underwear for a second because for years I honestly dreaded putting them on tight. And they're itchy and they're visible under my clothes. They ride up your rear end crack. I can't stand it. They dig in. It's just they were never fun until I tried skims and then everything changed. I reach for Skims intimates because they're the first that actually disappear under anything I wear and feel like they're made for real bodies. No digging, no adjusting. Their soft fabric moves with you. My go to is the fits everybody T shirt bra and the boy short. That combo is a game changer for me. The bra gives me perfect shape without poking or squeezing or gapping. And the boy short is so smooth and comfortable it's like wearing nothing except you feel completely supported. Skims has nailed it. Comfort, confidence, and pieces that make you feel put together without even trying. I recommend them to every friend who's still stuck in their good enough underwear drawer. So if you're tired of settling, it's time to try Skims. Trust me, once you do, there's no going back. Shop my favorite bras and underwear@skims.com after you place your order. Be sure to let them know I sent you select podcast in the survey and select my show in the drop down menu that follows. And that that playbook, no matter who comes on to talk to me in, in any industry. So it could be Brigham Bueller coming on to talk about the Department of Justice going after doctors who potentially. There's nominal, there's nominal healthcare fraud like charging for things you didn't do and what have you, charging too much for certain procedures, but at the same time being weaponized to go after these guys and then being given a job working for that insurance company for three times the salary. Or it's same story. Like I could have somebody come on and talk about how they lost their home in a natural disaster and the insurance company doesn't cover their homeowner's policy and there's fraud and then the same like adjusters go work for the insurance company. It's just this constant. The guy at the State department goes and works for Raytheon or Boeing like it's bananas.
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B
Yeah. And you also got to think about like how they, who these people are hanging out with and canoodling with after hours. I mean it's, it's their whole social network, you know, so they're doing favors. There's, there's corruption and cronyism and, and that shouldn't be surprising to anybody. It's just we've got to root that out because the American public is paying the price with regards to their health, with regards to the market that's allowing untested chemicals now satur permeate the food supply. There's an issue with regards to, I mean Brigham Talks about this all the time. Medical devices and I mean, this is outside of my wheelhouse, but, I mean, I can tell you that the USDA, you know, for example, in 2020, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee, 95% of the people on that panel had conflicts of industry with the food industry or the pharmaceutical industry. I think it's gotten somewhat better with the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. But nonetheless, we still have people who are helping to determine how Americans should eat that are, you know, being paid by Novo, who produces, you know, these weight. These. These weight loss drugs and now advocate.
- [24:48]
A
For six kids as young as six. Yeah, kids as young as six. And max. You know, one of the things that I notice, because it's like we all live in our little silos in our kind of Maha group. And obviously, weight loss is something that I deal with and deal in. So these trials, these studies done by Novo, it's fascinating how they've been manipulated to make it look like these drugs are the second coming and will cure everything. Oh, my gosh. Cure addiction. Yes. Kidney disease. Oh, slow the progression. Oh, my gosh. We think that there's some sort of benefit to heart health, even though we can't point to a mechanism specifically outside of weight loss. And when you look at how that study was done. Cause I had Casey break it down for me. She's like, well, hold on. The absolute risk is not 20%. That's relative risk. Who knows what that means? He can't even find that. And then it's. The absolute risk was one and a half percent. And then when you look a little bit further, it was so nuts. It was like the people that exercised and didn't take the drug. So the ones that exercised and lost a little more weight were the ones at the higher risk of a heart attack. So not the placebo group who had the same results as the people on the drug. I think this was the select trial. The ones who exercised were the ones that were at higher risk. And I was like, well, what would be the argument here? And if you were to. Again, this is. This is completely. I'm hypothesizing. But if you were trying to prove that point, which nobody ever tells you that, they're just, oh, it's a 20% relative risk that you're gonna have a reduction in major cardiac events, the argument would be, it's safer to lose weight on these drugs than it is to exercise and eat right. That's the only thing I can think of. That's the only thing it ended up proving. But nevertheless, when you look at the research that's being done in Canada or the French database, Max, like verbatim, we found contrary results with pancreatitis, intestinal blockage, stomach paralysis. Hmm. How can you have these completely conflicting studies, some that are funded by the drug companies and then some that are, like one out of the University of British Columbia that obviously independently funded, found that people had a 900% increased risk of pancreatitis on the drugs.
- [27:13]
B
Wow. Yeah. I mean, the question is, to me, it's like, what population is being studied? Right. Because these were, these drugs were originally greenlit and studied in the context of type 2 diabetes. They were originally. They're a type 2 diabetes drug. Right.
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A
So population.
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B
Right.
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A
On numerous drugs. I forgot to mention that in the select trial, they run numerous other medications for their heart.
- [27:34]
B
Yeah. So I mean, if you get your blood sugar under control and you lose weight, I mean, obviously that's going to be better than sustained type 2 diabetes.
- [27:42]
A
Right.
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B
And sustained obesity. Right, right. But now these drugs are being recommended for people who don't necessarily have type 2 diabetes. They've just got some weight to lose.
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A
At a higher dose.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Crazy.
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B
Yeah.
- [27:55]
A
It's insane.
- [27:56]
B
I mean, look, I'm, you know, I try to take a rational, compassionate, middle of the road stance as, as, as best I can.
- [28:05]
A
Very reasonable.
- [28:06]
B
Yeah. And I'm glad that we have these drugs because for people who have, you know, their whole lives been yo, yo.
- [28:13]
A
Dieting and what have you sick and I'm there. Yeah, I've been brought there.
- [28:19]
B
But I mean, look, we live in Los Angeles. People are taking it now to get ready for their, like, week in the Caribbean, you know.
- [28:26]
A
Yeah.
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B
Which is, which is not good. I think we still need to be a little bit cautious of, you know, laissez faire use of these drugs because we just don't have long term data, particularly in healthy populations, people who don't have type 2 diabetes. Right, right.
- [28:39]
A
So you have this, this personal connection to the mission of improving people's cognitive health and that gets you into the industry. That's how you got into this field.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well, I began as a journalist, so actually similar to Sebastian Younger. Yeah, I was more of a generalist. He's thrown himself into some really dangerous situations. I've never been that type of journalist. I was a generalist, though. And my first job out of college was working for a TV network called Current TV, which was in the United States in 100 million homes. And I was like, fresh out of college, just wanting to improve the world in whichever way that I could, using my skills, which is storytelling and being a good communicator, somebody who's good, thinking on their feet. I'd always been passionate about health and nutrition, but, again, I was pretty unfocused in that position, just telling stories that I felt needed to be told that could potentially make the world a better place. And. And about six years into that position, I left the job, and I was kind of exploring greener pastures. And in my personal life, my mother, who's the most important person in my life. I've always been incredibly close to my mom. I come from a very small family. She started to show the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare form of dementia called Lewy Body dementia, which is like.
- [30:08]
A
But that. It's.
- [30:10]
B
Yeah, it's like having Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. Oh, God. So one is bad enough. But for my mom, she had a confluence of symptoms. She had cognitive disorder, and she was very young. She was 58 when she first started to show these symptoms, and then her movement was affected. And so it actually wasn't until a trip to the Cleveland Clinic, where she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease disease simultaneously. And we had gotten back to the. I mean, I remember that night clear as day. We had gotten back to the Holiday Inn or whatever it is, the Hampton Inn that we were staying in in Cleveland, and I started Googling the drugs. I mean, I didn't know anything about Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease. And my mom was certainly. You know, the fact that she could have had conditions that, in my head, were, you know, something that grandparents get.
- [31:03]
A
How old was she at this time? I'm so sorry.
- [31:04]
B
She was 58. Yeah. So she was. She was pretty young. Yeah.
- [31:08]
A
Yeah.
- [31:09]
B
It was the first time in my life I'd ever had a panic attack. I mean, I was just Googling the. The drugs. I was, like, actually reading Wikipedia articles about these drugs.
- [31:16]
A
You know what I'm saying?
- [31:17]
B
You know, anyway, keep going. And. And, yeah. And I just. No disease modifying effect that these conditions are incurable and that they're ultimately terminal. I. It was like, you know, in a movie when, like, the retro. The record stops abruptly at the party. Well, that's kind of what it was in my. Like, in my life. And I. From that point forward, I ceased to be able to really think about anything else other than, like, why this would have happened to the most important person in my life. And I became Obsessed with trying to understand why and what I could do from the standpoint of prevention to prevent it or at least lower my. The risk of it happening to me, because now I recognize for the first time that I had a risk factor.
- [32:05]
A
Do you have One of the APOE4 genes?
- [32:07]
B
Yeah. So I'm a 3, 4.
- [32:08]
A
I'm a 3, 4, too.
- [32:09]
B
Yeah. But it doesn't make me afraid. You know, the heritability of these conditions is very low. These are genetic risk factors, but they're highly modulated by the environment in which they're exposed to.
- [32:21]
A
Okay, and that's encouraging. Yes, I've been quite unhappy about it. Not gonna lie.
- [32:25]
B
No, I mean, you know, are.
- [32:27]
A
You seem to be doing really well, so that's. You're 10 years younger than me. But that's. That's encouraging because it's. It's scary as hell.
- [32:34]
B
It can be. I mean, certainly dementia is awful, and I've seen it up close and personal, and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy, even my Wikipedia editors, but honestly, it's. I mean, it's. It's really bad. And so my mission really has been to help educate the public on how to avert risk, how to minimize risk for these conditions, and. I don't know, everything. This is a rapidly evolving field of science. In fact, when I first started talking about this topic, the topic itself was actually considered fringe because it's, you know, Alzheimer's disease. It's. Though it was discovered in 1906, it was coined by this physician whose last name was Alzheimer. 90% of what we know about the condition has been discovered only in the past 20 or so years.
- [33:17]
A
Wow.
- [33:18]
B
And now, for the first time since I've actually been doing this, since I've been evangelizing this research on major platforms like, you know, TV shows like the Dr. Oz Show, I was one of the first people to talk about it on a public stage. Dementia through the lens of prevention. And I've actually helped to educate doctors in the field on this as well, which has been really, you know, a humbling and, you know, just an incredible experience. It's now gained wider acceptance, and we now have papers coming out seemingly every couple of years, you know, elucidating new what are called modifiable risk factors, risk factors that fall within our control. And so that really has become my. I think one of the defining, you know, aspects of what I do. It's helping people to prevent the kind of condition that stole my mom from me and. And. Yeah. And everything that I do Goes back to my why, which is, you know, my mom, that I've seen, I think, unlike a lot of people in our space, I've seen really profound suffering for, you know, many, many, many years. And, yeah, and I saw the dearth of treatment options that were available to my mom. So the focus really for me has been on prevention. It's about how to get younger people talking and thinking about this and how to get the conflicts of interest out and how to get, you know, how to combat nutrition misinformation, for example. Because my mom was in many ways victim to nutrition misinformation. You know, she didn't have access to the Internet. My mom wasn't. She didn't have a smartphone. She wasn't on the Internet. And all of the information that she got about how to eat well was. She was delivered on the primetime news or via magazines like Cosmopolitan or Vogue. And there's a lot of bad information that is out there. And so for me, part of what I think is my purpose to do is to help combat, to push back on some of these tropes, whether it's that eggs are unhealthy or veganism is the way to go. I mean, my mom, I'll never know what caused my mom's dementia. It might have had nothing to do with diet. But I will say that my mom, you know, she had a diet that largely leaned vegetarian for much of her life because she was a big animal rights activist and she kind of swallowed a lot of the dogma that particularly her generation had been fed about. You know, you want to avoid dietary cholesterol, you want to avoid saturated fat and foods that contain saturated fat, you want to push those off the plate in favor of, you know, cholesterol free, low fat foods. And lo and behold, my diet growing up, and I would imagine that it's the diet that it was a diet mirrored by what my mom consumed was, you know, one where we had corn oil constantly by the stove in that big plastic yellow tub. Instead of butter, we. I ate margarine. You know, I buttered my bread with margarine growing up, and oh, my God.
- [36:02]
A
I can't believe it's not butter.
- [36:04]
B
Yeah.
- [36:05]
A
And the best part, again, from the weight loss perspective, is it said zero calories. And then one day when I finally woke up, I was like, how is it, Boston possible that there's zero calories in this bottle of sludge? Until I realize it's per serving. And cumulatively, the bottle had like 11 calories of pure trans fat. That was a Rough day for me, Max. Anyway, I'm sorry. I digress. Please, please, keep going.
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, so it's that whole bottom slab of the food pyramid is like, what, pretty much what I grew up on and what, you know, my mom likely adhered to. I mean, from my vantage point, it was, you know, great grain products, mostly refined grains. I mean, I know that 100, up to half, it's recommended to be whole, but I mean, even whole wheat bread today is a refined source of grain. Like, yeah, very refined. And. And that's it. And so, you know, now the data is coming out. We didn't even have access to this data when I wrote my first book, Genius Foods, with a. In collaboration with a medical doctor. But now we're starting to see that ultra processed foods really are at the foundation of the epidemic of modern chronic disease. So for me, it's not even about, like, low carb versus low fat, animal sourced foods versus plant based foods. Like, I can get on board with all of it, provided you're primarily basing your diet around minimally processed foods. I think that's. I mean, that. That really is it. And there's issues related to access and food equity. I understand all of that, and I know that it doesn't all come down to choice today, unfortunately, but 60% of your average adult's diet today comes from ultra processed foods. These are the high margin darlings of the food industry, and we need to push back. Like, these foods are highly calorie dense. They're engineered to be addictive. There was a paper that came out that I cited in my Senate speech.
- [37:54]
A
I was gonna bring that up, that.
- [37:56]
B
Found that ultra processed foods, I mean, meet all the same criteria for an addictive substance as tobacco products. They might not be as addictive, but they meet the same criteria. And, and that's just a. We've got to come to terms with that, I think. And. And we're not. We're sweeping under the rug because I think these foods are so. They make so much money for so many people.
- [38:18]
A
You, you know, you said something in that Senate hearing that struck such a chord. And I saw it echoed throughout the Internet. And it was the line where you go, listen, if we have a health food section at the supermarket, what does that say about every other part of the supermarket? And I'm thinking to myself, sitting down, and I'm like, I've been doing this 30 years. And you just put it so succinctly, you know, I'm like, well, there's this ingredient here, you know, what There's a study and it's like in a second you were able to clarify and crystallize what's going on with our food. If you had to speak to, God willing, let's go generation by generation here you've got the gen zers. I find that they're not listening and maybe it's me, maybe they'll listen to you. Maybe it's because I represent their mom or what. I don't know. If you could give those guys like a wake up call and a handful of things, what would it be? Top concern for you guys, this handle it that way.
- [39:28]
B
Well, I mean I was, when I was younger, I certainly felt the, the vibe of like immortality which I think is common for younger people. And now I, you know, I don't, I've seen death and sickness and you know, I'm now at the older end of the millennial spectrum and you know, I'm trying to do what I can to in terms of self preservation. But, but you know, when speaking to younger people, I think, you know, younger people aren't necessarily as concerned about long term health and I get it. But you know, the food that you're, the foods that you're eating do have an impact on skin health. I mean that's obvious. Skin conditions, risk for autoimmunity or the symptomology of autoimmunity is responsive in many instances to food. Food affects how you feel, it affects your cognitive function, it even affects your mood. I mean there's a lot more research that needs to be done. But we now starting to understand the role that food plays in mental health and depression, in anxiety. There's a burgeoning field of research known as nutritional psychiatry which looks directly at that, the way that food can modulate, focus, attention, risk for mood disorders. And we need, there's a lot more research that needs to be done. I mean the, you know, the orthodoxy with regards to, you know, the field of psychology and psychiatry, I mean there's been some pushback. But you know, we do have now a few randomized control trials and even meta analyses of those randomized controlled trials that show that food does have an impact, particularly for people who are on these ultra processed food diets and younger people today. I mean on average, 60% of the calories that your average adult consumes comes from ultra processed foods. But for young adults, I mean that number can be even higher. For children it can be between 70 and 80%.
- [41:22]
A
It's terrifying.
- [41:24]
B
And so food does affect your brain. I mean your brain is literally comprised of the raw materials that you. You ingest by way of the foods that you eat. And so your brain, like, your brain needs those raw materials and the cofactors and the enzymes and the. You know, the. The vitamins and minerals required for proper functioning of your neurotransmitters. Acetylcholine, for example. It's a neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. And we get it primarily from eating foods that are rich in choline. And eggs are one of the primary. Eggs are actually the primary source of choline in the American diet. The top source is beef liver. But I get it. Very few people are eating beef liver.
- [42:06]
A
I know. I get it. Just. Oof.
- [42:10]
B
Yeah.
- [42:10]
A
Oh, but that is a. Listen, I. Personally, this is where I also have some empathy and understanding of, you know, your mom loved animals. I've tried because of my love of animals, knowing how bad being vegan is a few times, because I just was like, I can't. I don't want to be behind this. And I would be anemic like that instantaneously within, like, two months. But anyway, it's. It's these things that I get it, you know, oh, organ meat. I'm like, ugh. Like. Which is so stupid and so elitist. I get it. But I know I won't eat it. So this is where I. I kind of. I mean, I don't kind of. I fully agree with you. It's like, if you want to be. Be vegan or you want to be carnivore, you want to be this, you want to be that. Just try to make sure the foods are whole and clean and properly raised.
- [43:01]
B
And vote with your wallet. I think for a system that treats the animals and the environment in a. In a kinder way. I mean, I love animals, too. I. You know, I. I have a. I have a cat shout out to my cat Delilah, who I love. She's amazing. I'm. She's like my daughter. I love her. We have such a bond.
- [43:19]
A
This cat, how old is Delilah?
- [43:21]
B
She's about nine. So she's in midlife.
- [43:23]
A
How'd you find her?
- [43:24]
B
I rescued her. She is.
- [43:25]
A
There's always one of those. Tell me the story.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, I was just a sidebar. I was walking around in New York. I was in Union Square, and there was a woman, Jamaican woman, I believe, who had these crates, and she was adopting cats. And I saw her, and she was just the cutest little thing. She was a little kitten. And I decided to foster her. Me and my brother Ben we took her home, and just like, after one night, I knew that this was like. That she was such a special cat. Because a lot of cats, they're. They're aloof and they're like. I mean, this is kind of what cats are known for. They're, like, ambiguous about whether or not they really actually like you. You know, my cat, Delilah, there's no ambiguity. I mean, she. She makes it so clear how much she loves me. Yeah, I post her on my Instagram all the time. People love her.
- [44:07]
A
Does she go up all night long?
- [44:08]
B
Well, I actually.
- [44:10]
A
I'm still dealing with that.
- [44:11]
B
Yeah. I actually lock her out of my room when I go to sleep.
- [44:14]
A
She doesn't scream.
- [44:15]
B
She doesn't scream. But when I wake up, does she?
- [44:19]
A
It's a little boy. His name's Gato. He's Cuban. My wife found him on the 5 in Miami. And I mean, literally, I tell the kids, I'm like, I think I may love the cat more than both of you put together. And he sleeps in the room, and I swear to God, in the middle of the night, I have to feed him. He'll start screaming. And then at 6:15 every morning, he starts screaming again. And he doesn't even eat. He just holds everybody up.
- [44:46]
B
Wow.
- [44:48]
A
It's unbelievable. And then he'll headbutt me, get up and like, God, wow. Cause any other critter, which is one of these at 6:15 in the morning, let me tell you. Wow. So you're not dealing. You lock her out.
- [45:00]
B
Okay. No.
- [45:00]
A
Yeah, she's tolerating that. Interesting.
- [45:03]
B
Yeah. Because, you know, I think, like, sleep is important. I need my sleep. Cats are nocturnal. She'll get over it. But every morning I wake up and I go over to my door and I open the door, and she's always there waiting for me. Yeah, she's always there waiting for me. She leaps into bed, and for at least a half an hour to sometimes an hour every morning, we're just like, cuddling in bed. And she's so grateful to see me, and. And it's worth it, so I don't feel bad about that.
- [45:26]
A
So you don't eat cats, but you have a different appreciation when you eat animals because of Delilah.
- [45:30]
B
Well, but I get that animals have these rich emotional lives. Right?
- [45:34]
A
So.
- [45:35]
B
Yeah. And that. And so I have empathy, and I get it from my mom, and I have rules around what I will and won't eat. You know, I will never eat foie gras. I will never eat veal. That was a. A big rule. In my house, like never. I've, maybe in my life, I've tasted it twice. Like, I can count on one hand, I refuse to eat it because it's not, it's produced very cruelly. So I try to spend my money that I'm grateful. I can afford to use my dollars to vote for, you know, small farms, producers who take a regenerative approach, who treat the animals, you know, somewhat better. But I do also, there is a degree of it that feels like I also have to do what I know is gonna be best for my biology.
- [46:21]
A
Like a spiritual component of, you know, when I look at Native Americans or indigenous people and the way they treat the meat that they eat, that has always made sense to me. It's like they pray over the animal. They use every part of the animal. The animal has lived naturally, and there's a humane death to the animal that I can get behind. It's just, you know, you drive down the freeway, whatever, you know, down Central California and the factory farms, and you could smell it. And it's, I mean, we've all seen the documentaries, which is not where I intended to go with this. But point being is I, I, I can identify with why people make certain dietary decisions based on their, their ethics, their spirituality, their personality. But if we can kind of calm down to what you're saying, the common sense, rooting out the ultra processed foods, minimizing them to an extreme is ideal, you know, Question one more sidebar. I didn't, again, I haven't done a ton. I didn't even have a chance to really look into this. But I saw Rhonda Patrick come up on my feed and she was talking about a new study that showed people who were eating good quality protein and fiber predominantly didn't have to count calories and all these things, and lost more weight and lost less muscle with regard to that percentage of weight, which of course would go without saying for two reasons. Satiety. So kind of inherently managing your hormones and you, you have a better thermic effect eating protein and fiber. So it's kind of more calories out just inherently from the food for the, for the, the, for the layman out there. But it's kind of exactly what you recommend. I was like, I gotta bring this up with Max because I just found out how anti science you were. So I wanted to tell you that we can maybe submit that study to your Wikipedia page.
- [48:17]
B
Yeah.
- [48:18]
A
Do you ever, do you feel vindicated? Like you couldn't have a more common sense approach with your nutrition advice? And your do these things like frustrate the shit out of you.
- [48:30]
B
Yeah, I mean my, my approach has always been science backed. It's just that I've, I've, I've drawn a really hard line advocating against very restrictive diets like you know, vegan veganism and, and even carnivore diet. I'm, I'm not a, I'm not an advocate of carnivory. Pure carnivory. Right.
- [48:50]
A
Either.
- [48:51]
B
But it's just that V. Vegans tend to get like whatever haters I have on social media. They're a very, they're, it's a tiny but very vocal group.
- [48:58]
A
Yes.
- [48:59]
B
You know, and we all have interacted with vegans on social media. They can be really vitriolic and that's putting it nicely. Yeah. So I actually, you know, I'm actually.
- [49:10]
A
You be violent.
- [49:11]
B
Yeah. My work has actually been embraced by. I mean I can't tell you how many dietitians, scientists, medical doctors follow me. My work is actually embraced by far, a far greater proportion of people than.
- [49:25]
A
It is crazy to see people's response to you.
- [49:28]
B
Yeah.
- [49:28]
A
I mean, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but no matter where we are, it could be a senator. It could be. I just had Sebastian Younger here. He's like bags. I was like, are you kidding?
- [49:37]
B
Yeah.
- [49:39]
A
Rogan. Hell yeah. What? You, you speak to so many people. Why do you think. I mean, not that I don't think you're fantastic. Clearly I do. But it's, it's not easy to avoid alienating. You're talking about this tiny community of vegans.
- [49:59]
B
Very small. Well, and not just them. There are some credentialed scientists who take issue with the fact that I could say anything, but the fact that I'm speaking on these topics as a non academic scientist, they're implicitly offended that I'm here and I'm successful and I've got a loud voice and platform so they're like, I don't even have to say anything. And they're. I anger them.
- [50:26]
A
You know, that's new. Yeah. Michael Pollan, this was highly respected as a. Yeah. Incredible journalist and covered many things like a best, best, best selling book called Omnivore's Dilemma.
- [50:40]
B
A lot of your haters on social media, you have to remember this, that they are especially people in the academic community. There's a lot of. And this is not, they're not always forthcoming with, this is not always immediately obvious, but there's a lot of. And this is not a judgment, but there's a lot of neurodivergence. There's a lot of mental health stuff going on. And so some of the vitriol, the hate, the trolling that you see on social media are from people that aren't necessarily approaching life from the same mental framework as you. And you kind of have to remember that. You know, I think that's really important. Like, if somebody starts screaming at you on social media, like they're not. Not you, they're not coming at. You know, we see the world not as, as it is, but as we are.
- [51:21]
A
Yeah.
- [51:22]
B
And, and so I don't take, like, offense anymore. You know, at a certain point you get, and you know this way better than me. You get big enough and people are gonna just hate you. They're just gonna hate you based on the way you communicate, the way you look like. And you don't have to try to appease everybody. You know, there are people who are gonna hate anything, no matter how good and pure and well intentioned it is. I mean, there are people that you hate, hate pizza. There are people that hate Disney World. You can put some people into, you can pick them up, put them, drop them off in Disney World and they'll be having the worst day of their life. Right. And that is.
- [51:57]
A
Who are those people?
- [51:58]
B
They're out there.
- [51:59]
A
Are they?
- [51:59]
B
Yeah, they're just some. And people are broken today.
- [52:02]
A
If we give them a fast pass, I don't think they'd feel that way.
- [52:06]
B
Fast pass. Drop me in front of the line at Space Mountain.
- [52:08]
A
Get out of here. Heaven.
- [52:10]
B
Yeah. So I don't know. I actually, I mean, you know, I get to reach. And I'm very grateful. I get to go on mainstream TV shows. I've done the Today show a million times, the Dr. Oz Show, Rachael Ray, and then I get to do podcasts where I reach a different audience. And then. So books, documentary. I'm grateful. Yeah. My work has reached a pretty wide audience of laypeople and academics and whatever. And I get to teach doctors. I mean, I actually got to co author a chapter in a textbook published by Springer in 2019, literally educating medical doctors about the clinical practice of dementia prevention. So, yeah, I feel very comfortable and confident in my work. And yeah, not everybody's gonna agree with it, but I can't, you know, given.
- [52:54]
A
The breadth of your knowledge, if you had to give. I know. I hate this and I apologize. They do it to me all the time. Like, if I could only pick three exercises for the rest of my life. And it's like oh my God. How would you tell somebody to perform an open heart surgery with like one tool? That person would die. Nevertheless, Max, I'm going to do it to you. If you had to pick three top things, could be a food, could be a supplement, could be, I don't know, an activity, whatever, sleep, stress, you, you pick. You get three, and then three, like worst mistakes, according to the studies that you've read, that you've vetted thoroughly disseminate.
- [53:36]
B
That for me for health and longevity. Man. Well, I would say. Where to even begin with this?
- [53:46]
A
I know, I know, it's vicious. It's a trick. I'm sorry. Well, that's what I do to you, though. It happens to me all the time.
- [53:53]
B
No, I get it.
- [53:54]
A
I want to see how you handle this.
- [53:55]
B
I think from a food standpoint, I mean, you want to, you want to reduce your consumption of ultra processed foods. I think that's important.
- [54:02]
A
One.
- [54:04]
B
You want to integrate foods of both plant and animal origin. I think that's important.
- [54:08]
A
Fair. Agree.
- [54:10]
B
Now, I don't care about the relative proportions. And here's another thing I think worth stating. I ultimately don't care about what people choose to eat. I want people to be able to make choices with full informed consent.
- [54:24]
A
Great.
- [54:25]
B
That's my mission.
- [54:26]
A
Yes.
- [54:26]
B
You know, a lot of people in these so called diet tribes, they get very emotionally worked up about what others choose to eat, right? I don't really care. I think ultimately we should have individual freedom, the freedom to choose whatever it is that we want to eat. And I don't make any judgments on people when they choose, for example, confectionary foods. And I say this because my mom had dementia. And when a person has dementia, their quality of life becomes so constrained that, you know, I think initially when I first started down this journey, my intent was to go and completely revamp my mom's kitchen and to take out the foods that I didn't agree with. But then I realized very early on, thankfully, I'm thankful that I did, that people are going to live the way that they want to live, and that's okay. And particularly for, for somebody who is struggling. I mean, we don't want to become zealots, right? We just don't. And I think the best way to teach, actually is to lead by example, is to be an example for the people in your life and to let them make their own choices. And so I don't care what people choose to eat. I just want them to be able to make informed consent and not have their choices be Steered by what I call covert activism or nutrition misinformation. Avoiding. Yeah. If you're avoiding eggs because you don't like them or because you've seen the way that the chickens are treated sometimes and, you know, and that's turned you off for eggs forever. Like, who am I to argue against that? Right. But if you're avoiding eggs because you believe that the cholesterol contained in their yolks are going to clog your arteries, well, that's probably not going to happen.
- [56:11]
A
Yes.
- [56:11]
B
You know, you're avoiding one of the most nutrient dense foods available to you for, you know, for something that's not accurate.
- [56:21]
A
Yeah. Well, so somebody can exploit you for profit.
- [56:24]
B
I mean, that's the bottom line to sell just egg. Right. A high margin fake egg. Right, right. And so avoid the ultra processed food to the best of your ability. A little bit can sneak in here and there. It's fine. I eat them. Like, I'd be lying if I said that I never consumed any ultra processed foods. I do sometimes. But you, which ones? Have you ever had, like the Quest chips, the protein protein chips?
- [56:43]
A
No, but I have seen those bars.
- [56:45]
B
The Quest bars are a little bit more sus. Like they can mess up. Yeah, they don't sit super, but they're like tortilla chips. They're bomb. But they're ultra processed. They're an ultra processed food, but they're high in protein and they're better than Doritos. Right, true.
- [56:58]
A
Agree. Yeah, I will go late July on those, but.
- [57:01]
B
All right, those are good.
- [57:02]
A
Check out the requests.
- [57:03]
B
Those are good too. And then I would say, finally, for the third dietary tip, prioritize protein. There's no downside to basing your diet around protein. And especially as you get older, it becomes even more important to hit those protein targets. Because of this phenomena known as anabolic resistance, we become less sensitive to leucine. We don't digest protein as well. So there are myriad variables that fall underneath the bucket of anabolic resistance. But all that is to say is you want to preserve your skeletal muscle and I'm sure you've done a bajillion episodes on it.
- [57:40]
A
I actually was down the road of, I don't think we need that much protein. Just before you jumped on my throat. I've, I've, I, I've, I've subsequently turned a corner. Um, but it's because, you know, you'd speak to. I have a. Now I have another PhD, but there was a PhD in nutrition science that I would always go to. And I Had to question. And I was like, I should make sure I get this right. You know, how much protein do people need? And she referred me to the AMA's guidelines, which was like, nothing, Max. I can't even remember what it was. It's nominal, like a few hundred grams of protein a day, like a few hundred calories. But it was not a few hundred grams. I'm sorry, a few hundred calories was.
- [58:17]
B
The RDA like.08 grams?
- [58:19]
A
It was yes, yes, yes, yes. It was nothing. It ended up being nothing. And then I was not to name any names, but There was a PhD whose work I was following. And it was like, well, is this making your MTOR pathway overactive and you're not getting into, you know, autophagies effectively and is this hurt on your kidneys? Is it this? Is it that? And Lane Norton for whatever, for whatever the little MAHA group thinks of Lane. He bashed the out of me online. And I was like, well, hold on a second. You're going after David Sabatini, David Sinclair, you know, my personal PhD, the American Medical association, like I didn't make this up in a vacuum. So if you're pissed, you're. It's not actually me. So if you have a different point of view, come on my podcast and. And he very effectively, along with Peter Attia and watching also like Wanda, Patrick and people like yourself. I was like, I was drinking the. From the wrong fricking fountain over here.
- [59:13]
B
Yeah, there's a lot of, you know.
- [59:15]
A
And I have come full 180. But there was a lot of conflicting information from a lot of credible people. And I took debate on it for a while.
- [59:24]
B
Well, just think about it. There's just a, there's a lot more clinical data, like human randomized data utilizing high protein interventions than the speculative chance that, you know, due to some mechanistic again speculation that eating protein is going to upregulate mtor. We actually want to keep MTOR up regulated partic like when we're older.
- [59:46]
A
Yes.
- [59:47]
B
You're maintaining muscle so that you're maintaining your, your musculature because those signals get blunted. Right. Gabrielle Lyon talks about that all the time. But yeah, I mean there's, there's now we have long term studies, short term studies, meta analyses that show that protein, you know, both in the short and long term is the most satiating macronutrient. I mean you get some high carb foods that, that have high satiety index as well, such as like baked and boiled potatoes. Like for some reason are are oddly satiating. Maybe because they're just not that good without the butter and the sour cream, you know. But.
- [60:22]
A
They'Re not that exciting.
- [60:23]
B
Yeah, they're not that exciting.
- [60:25]
A
So, you know, they just kind of.
- [60:26]
B
Turn you off to food. But no pro. It's, it's satiating. I mean we have like metabolic studies that, you know, even now people with chronic kidney disease, I mean the consensus, I don't believe the consensus has changed on this, but there are now studies coming out looking at people, you know, with chronic kidney disease.
- [60:44]
A
I've seen them.
- [60:45]
B
Because we. The, the whole idea that high protein.
- [60:47]
A
Diets, it's crazy, right? It's better for people with ckd.
- [60:52]
B
Seems, seems. Check with your doctor.
- [60:55]
A
But like it's wild and better for anti aging and all the things you're.
- [61:00]
B
Saying, which is there's a reason why jacked people tend to focus on protein and success. Leaves clues, you know.
- [61:07]
A
Yes. Well said. Okay, I know I have four minutes because I know you have a heart out.
- [61:12]
B
Oh man. Use it wisely. No, I, I'm. I'm here for you and you and you. All you guys. This is so fun.
- [61:21]
A
Let's see. Look, you're coming out longer. This is my fault. We, Mags and I have been getting thrust into the media to make sure that sanity gets confirmed. So I had to push because I had to follow you. I had to follow up on your interview this morning, so pushed my day down a little bit. Anyway, that said. Okay, your top three bull meters, like red light, cold plunge, blue blocker.
- [61:48]
B
Yeah.
- [61:48]
A
Or not. You know, top three health foods that aren't health foods, kombucha, whatever the.
- [61:53]
B
Yeah. No, I like this question. I think. Well, for one, I would, I think it's important to, to seek out and follow people who are focused primarily on the foundational aspects of health which are sleep, regular exercise, activity, stress mitigation and eating a whole food centric diet. Right. Which is not to say that supplements aren't good. I definitely, you know, I enjoy supplementing and trying out new supplements and I think there's certainly a lot of people in the so called evidence based community will say that supplements are completely unregulated and unproven. That's not true. There are certain supplements that have merit. I don't take a one size fits all approach, but I think fish oil, there's good evidence that fish oil is a healthful supplement. A high quality fish oil. Magnesium can be useful. I take magnesium. It helps prevent migraines. Take L Threonate magnesium. L Threonate there's not enough research on it, but I take glycinate generally. Okay.
- [62:53]
A
I just said blend the two. I don't go back and forth.
- [62:56]
B
Well, magnesium glycinate is magnesium bound to glycine, and both are really beneficial. So glycine is an important amino acid. It makes up one third of collagen, and we tend to under consume glycine. So, yeah, I love magnesium glycinate. I'm a huge fan of astaxanthin, which is a marine carotenoid, which is really good for skin.
- [63:14]
A
Eyes, too.
- [63:15]
B
Eyes, Joints. Yeah. Wow. But again, you want to kind of focus primarily on the big rocks. You know, you don't want to major in the minors. You want to major in the majors, which is, again, the free stuff. Sleep, stress mitigation, you know, nutritious whole foods diet. I think that's. That's really important. And to, you know, be leery of anybody who's just. Who's spending too much time distracting from that, I generally think it's smart to avoid or to at least reduce your consumption of, like, added sugars. I think that's wise. Avoiding refined grain products. You know, I certainly eat grains now and then, but this whole idea that we should base our diets around it or that we need to have grains.
- [63:58]
A
At every meal, but that's gamed research. Like, you're talking about. Like, I didn't even have time. I wanted to ask about the food compass, but. Oh, my God, I do.
- [64:07]
B
Round two.
- [64:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah. That's all gamed research. I have to tell you one anecdote for everybody watching. I was at some symposium, some health thing with Callie, and we were on a panel with a doctor who shall remain nameless but was behind the food compass. So correct me if I'm wrong, but he's like, this is the guy that said breakfast cereal is better than beef. He's like, there is no forgiveness. And Mark Hyman was trying to broker a peace deal behind the scenes, and Callie was like, nuclear. Like, this is the root of the problem, this guy. And I literally was like, I'm sorry we can't be friends. Holy mother of God. So, yeah, anyway, point being, he was saying that it all came out of, like, you know, it was funded and the research and the food compass and whatever. Yeah, I mean, cereal over beef. And he was super duper pissed about it, as you can imagine.
- [65:02]
B
Grains can be okay. Like, I think, you know, I. I eat them. You know, you look at any bodybuilder, they're eating White rice, regularly, like, it's fine. But for your average person today who's struggling with their weight, who's metabolically impaired, maybe glucose intolerant, there's no essential need for grains. I would rather somebody, you know, first of all, if they're going to eat them, they should be whole, unadulterated. But I would rather see people focus on nutrient dense foods like animal source protein and foods with low calorie plant foods with low calorie density that also happen to be very nutrient dense, like dark leafy greens.
- [65:38]
A
Yeah.
- [65:40]
B
So there's that. And then, yeah, just spend more time in nature. I think that's really important.
- [65:48]
A
That's a great one. Yeah, I don't hear that one enough.
- [65:51]
B
Was I supposed to mention things that we should steer away from or.
- [65:55]
A
Yeah, kind of. But it's fine.
- [65:56]
B
Early.
- [65:56]
A
Yeah, great. You say grains.
- [65:59]
B
Yeah.
- [65:59]
A
And like, and, and as snake oil salesman.
- [66:02]
B
Yeah, stay away from snake oil salesman. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think there's something to be said for, I think this whole debate about seed oils. I think it's a debate worth having.
- [66:12]
A
Okay, I was gonna ask you that, but how much time do you have? Cause here's my question. I've stayed out of this one. You know, I've been unusually quiet because you've got all these people that PhD. You know, we don't have any data that says these are bad for you. However, when you look at how they're processed, that's like a host of chemicals. I don't even understand how these things are allowed to be in organic food. Yeah, it's really confusing to me.
- [66:41]
B
Just bringing them up is kind of funny because if you're primarily, if you're focused primarily on whole foods, like, you don't. It's not anything that you need to worry about. And there's a lot of, there's a. There are a lot of radical claims made on both sides of the debate. You know, some will say that seed oils are the sole smoking gun responsible for the, for the global obesity and epidemic of type 2 diabetes.
- [67:01]
A
Right.
- [67:02]
B
That's not. No, I don't think that's true. But then there are others who are like, they're. They're not just, are they benign, but they're actually good for you and we should be consuming more of them. The truth, I think, is like, as it is, most of the time, it's likely in the middle. But I was just, I just shared data today on my Instagram page based on per capita data of soybean oil consumption in The United States from 2023, which is just one of these oils in question. Your average American today, if you do a per capita, so it's a kind of a rough and dirty estimate, but your average American today consumes 3 cups of soybean oil every single week. That's a lot. So I mean, from a calorie standpoint.
- [67:46]
A
Alone, I think, what do you think about that? The imbalance of omega six versus omega three? Because then it's like, well, it's just too much omega six. I, I, you know, I've seen that data change so many times. It's inflammatory. It's not inflammatory. It's good for you. It's not good for you. And that's where I just kind of like sit this one out, man. Because I'm like, oh, I don't know how it's gonna, oh. But the processing of it, I can't get around bleaching aid and all the crap. It's like, Google it. It's disgusting. That's where I kind of wonder. Common sense on that one.
- [68:20]
B
I'm like, well, there's no reason to consume that. There's way more evidence in favor of extra virgin olive oil for health.
- [68:26]
A
Right.
- [68:27]
B
Of course, if a little bit sneaks in here and there in, you know, when you're eating out at a restaurant or if you do choose to indulge, I wouldn't worry about it. But the problem is that it's the dose like Americans are just consuming. I mean, that's an average and it's an estimate.
- [68:42]
A
It's insane.
- [68:43]
B
But I mean, that's seven tablespoons of soybean oil every single day. Right. So if we're consuming that quantity of a food, you would expect that we would have some really rigorous evidence to validate its safety. Right. And we just don't have that. Yeah, we have observational studies that are confounded by healthy user bias because we've been told that these oils are a heart healthy alternative to their plant based to their animal source counterparts. Right. The randomized control trials are kind of all over the place. And so I think that we do need, I think that the debate's a positive thing. Thing, so long as there's not the name calling and the mudslinging. But PhD in nutrition, he's a nutrition scientist. He's published a lot. He's an expert in biochemistry and micronutrients. Chris Masterjohn. I don't know if you're familiar with his work.
- [69:32]
A
No, I'm not.
- [69:32]
B
He's great. He's New York based nutrition scientist and he published recently a really, really thorough X thread on why we should continue to remain, you know, skeptical of the chronic over consumption of these fats. They do have unique biochemical properties that might warrant, you know, a bit of caution, especially when over consuming them.
- [69:59]
A
Like a rancidity piece too. Like they can get rancid and they're always all in plastic. Like all these different components.
- [70:07]
B
We don't know how they affect brain health long term. There's a paper published by Taha Single author paper, he's a UC Davis researcher. The title of the paper, anybody can go look it up. Which kind of elucidates some of these lingering questions with regards to how these fats affect our brain health over the long term, which is a huge question mark. The paper is called linoleic acid good or bad for the brain. And it just, you know, it just asks questions like we've been told that these oils are a heart healthy alternative because in the short term they reduce LDL cholesterol. Right. But what are they doing to our fat based brains over the long term? Right. Like we don't actually know. So, so that's where I think it's worth having these conversations, but not at the expense of the bigger picture stuff. Right. Like focus on whole foods and sleep and all that stuff. But I, you know, for anybody who's like saying or suggesting that we're not even allowed to ask like, which is common now on social media. Right, right. I want to ask like the questions that we're not supposed to be asking are the ones that we should be asking.
- [71:08]
A
You know, it's funny and I know I've kept you six minutes over, but last thing, last thought, I had Michael Shellenberger on a little while back and he was talking about the Twitter files and the Facebook files and how Facebook had actually pushed back initially on the Biden administration saying, you know, you want us to censor all these people questioning the vaccine and talking about COVID But we found in our research if you do that, it makes them far more skeptical and suspicious. And of course they made him do it anyway. And it made people far more skeptical and suspicious, probably for good reason. But you make a great point. It's that it's like the more there's that sort of. But that's okay. And this is my wrap up message. That's what I'm talking about with your Wikipedia page. Like you're being, you're being targeted for a reason that's skeptical right there. Which means you're onto something. And you're making a far bigger difference than I think anybody had ever hoped. And I, for one, am a massive fan and follower.
- [72:09]
B
Oh, thanks, Jillian.
- [72:10]
A
Max, where can everybody find you? I mean, this is so stupid. I always have these huge guests. I'm like, where can they find you? Bookstores, everywhere, all day. I'm the number one podcast cat. Where can everyone find you? Max?
- [72:23]
B
Yeah, thank you for asking. I'm super active on all the social media platforms x Instagram. I host my own podcast called the Genius Life, which hopefully you'll get to come on soon when your schedule allows. But open invite. So that's called the Genius Life. I've got books out. My first book, Genius Foods, is really like a nutritional care manual for the brain. So if you want to do a.
- [72:44]
A
Deep dive, it is fantastic.
- [72:45]
B
Genius Foods. And then I have to mention that I just put out my first documentary on the topic of dementia prevention, and it's called Little Empty Boxes, and it's available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and@LittleEmptyBoxes.com.
- [73:00]
A
It'S also on your Wikipedia page.
- [73:02]
B
Yeah, that actually upset me because the documentary, really, it's about my mom, and it's.
- [73:08]
A
I know. Yeah. This is why I think it's really important to call out this kind of evil for all of those reasons. And I just. I think you're fantastic. I will link to all of it. And I know your time is precious, so I look forward to continuing the conversation for a second installment and following you in the media.
- [73:31]
B
Aw, you're so sweet. You're amazing.
- [73:32]
A
It's a tough act to follow, kid.
- [73:34]
B
Thank you, Jillian.
- [73:35]
A
Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe, and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.