Transcript
A (0:00)
Welcome to the Kwik Brain Podcast. I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. I'm excited to share a powerful keynote from Limitless Live. This is our recent annual live event where some of the world's top thinkers take the stage to help your brain to upgrade to elevate your health and unlock your full limitless potential. Today's speaker is my friend, Max Lugaver. Now you might know Max. He's a health and science journalist. He's the best selling author of Genius Foods and Genius Life. He's a leading voice in the conversation around early dementia prevention and cognitive performance. If you want to protect your memory, you want to sharpen your focus and extend your brain's health span, this conversation is essential. So here we go. Enjoy.
B (0:46)
Thank you. Thank you, brother. Enjoy, my man. Thank you. What's up, everybody? How you doing? This is awesome. What's going on, guys? Thank you for being here. So special. My name is Max Lugavere and as was referenced, yes. I have a very adorable cat who I love very much named Delilah. Shout out to Delilah, cat owners, cat people in the audience. All right, what up, my people, my people. Okay, so let's see if we can get this thing working. There you go. So my name is Max Lugavere. I. How do I go back? I'm a health and science journalist. I am not a formerly trained academic. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm an autodidact. And I'm gonna get into my why, why it is that I know what I know I'm about to present to you what I'm about to present to you. But here's a little bit of a taste in terms of my body of work. So I've published three books on the topic of nutrition as it intersects with long term brain health and neuroprotection. The Genius trilogy, as I've called it. I host a podcast called the Genius Life. And I also actually, most notably, one of the projects that I'm most proud of is I got to co author a chapter in a clinician's textbook, peer reviewed, published by Springer in 2019 on the clinical practice of dementia prevention. I get to lecture internationally about nutrition. I get to appear on some of the biggest platforms in the world, making nutrition science translatable and actionable and achievable for audiences. And I most recently got to speak at the Senate last year, which was super dope. I also produced and co directed a documentary which came out last year called Little Empty Boxes. It's the world's first ever dementia prevention documentary. It's on Apple TV and Amazon prime. And it's about my why. It documents my why. My why is my mom, who at a very young age was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia called Lewy Body dementia, which is akin to having both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. My mom was the most important person in my life, and what she experienced drove me. It fomented an obsession in me to understand all that I could about the ways in which we're living and how that might predispose many of us to developing these kinds of incurable, neurodegenerative conditions. Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, Parkinson's disease. And when I first began this journey, mentioning dementia and prevention in the same sentence was considered fringe. You'd get fresh produce thrown at you. You'd be called a quack or a charlatan. But now we know, according to the best available evidence, finally, that this is being acknowledged among mainstream medicine, that we have what are called modifiable risk factors, keyword being modifiable, meaning that we can modify them. We have agency. And so the latest evidence and estimate published in The Lancet in 2014 is that we have about 14 of these so called modifiable risk factors that can be used to explain about 45% of Alzheimer's cases. So put another way, about 45% of Alzheimer's cases are preventable if we can only modify these. Again, these modifiable risk factors. Right. And I actually think that's, that's a very conservative estimate, because what that estimate doesn't include is the chronic use of certain kinds of over the counter drugs like anticholinergic drugs, like allergy medications and the like. But we'll take what we can get. And so what I'm going to talk to you today about is the role of diet, specifically to modify the diet. Responsive, modifiable risk factors. Does that make sense? Okay, great. So in early life, we have less education. That's the primary modifiable risk factor when it comes to early life. Here's where things start to get really exciting, though. In midlife, we have 10 modifiable risk factors. So we have hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, hypertension, obesity, and excessive alcohol. Now, notably, as I've alluded to, many of these are diet responsive and eating a neuroprotective dietary pattern. A dietary pattern that I've sort of coined and called the genius dietary pattern attacks multiple of these risk factors at once. In late life, we have social isolation, air pollution and visual loss. And I'm going to talk about the role of diet in preserving vision as well. So when it comes to diet, you look around the aisles of your modern supermarket and what do you notice? The vast majority of products in your average supermarket today are what food scientists are referring to as ultra processed food. Has anybody heard the term ultra processed foods? Yeah, so it's a fairly common term. But to be totally honest, when I wrote my first book, which came out in 2018, the manuscript of which I penned in 2016, that term hadn't even yet gained widespread acceptance. But now we have a clear picture elucidating how these kinds of food like products are affecting our health in many ways, not just our brain health, but, but we're now starting to understand that these types of food like products are really at the foundation of the epidemic of modern non communicable chronic disease. And lo and behold, the proportion that these kinds of foods make up in the modern supermarket are reflected in the dietary patterns of adults today. No surprise, right? So this is actually a fantastic photo project taken by a photojournalist called around the world in 80 diets. And this is a British family and, and this is their weekly shopping hall. You have to take a magnifying glass, right, to find the perishable fresh food. You see a couple of fruits, bananas, apples and whatnot. In the UK, about 50% of the calories that adults consume come from ultra processed foods. Shelf, stable, packaged, processed, essentially vending machine foods. In the United States we're doing even worse. So in the US, 60% of the products of the calories that we ingest come from ultra processed foods and what are sometimes referred to as mixed dishes like pizzas, burritos, chicken nuggets and things like that. Now we have an overwhelming amount of data showing that these kinds of foods really are the problem. So, you know, back when I first got started in this space, the argument was primarily low carb versus low fat, carnivore versus vegan. Right now we're starting to see that really none of those questions fully account for the prevalence, the increasing prevalence of these kinds of conditions. It really comes down to the degree of processing in our food, ultra processed foods, which are not all bad by the way. At this level we have a very low resolution understanding. But nonetheless we see, according to the best available data, this is an updated review and meta analysis showing us that in almost every conceivable negative health outcome you can think of ultra processed foods increase your risk here in this study linked to over 30 damaging health outcomes. There was not one single positive health outcome that was associated with the consumption of of ultra processed foods. Within that meta analysis, we saw increased risk for diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer, all the obvious contenders, right? But also surprisingly, Alzheimer's disease, depression, anxiety, conditions related to the brain. Lo and behold, this study found for every 10% increase in ultra processed foods consumed in one's diet, every 10% increase in ultra processed foods consumed, we see an additional 25% increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. You can see right there the hazard ratio for every 10% increase in ultra processed foods, 1.25. So it's 125% increased risk. This study didn't exist when I wrote my first book, even though my first book clearly describes and elucidates the mechanisms. We had yet to even have this associative data. So what is the antidote? Well, the antidote is, in my view, prioritizing dietary protein. Now, this checks many boxes at once. It hits many targets at the same time. Ultra processed foods tend to be low in protein, although we're seeing now an increase in protein enrichment of ultra processed foods, which I actually think is a positive thing. But the prioritization of protein in one's diet is important because protein is the most satiating macronutrient. It's the most satiating. We all eat to experience a degree of fullness, right? We don't like to leave the dinner table hungry. That's not a pleasurable sensation, right? Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. It fills you up better than carbohydrates, it fills you up better than fats. And we get a bit of a caloric free ride when we consume protein. About 30% of the calories that we ingest via protein are burned off in the digestion and assimilation of protein alone. That's almost six times of a higher thermic effect than you get from carbohydrates and fat. So you get a bit of a caloric free ride. And then finally, and perhaps most notably, protein is the dietary macronutrient that most directly protects your skeletal muscle, which helps you to fight off frailty and maintain mobility and strength and vigor as you get older. And your muscles are important for many reasons, but they also serve as the primary glucose disposal sink in the body. So when you do eat dietary carbohydrates, which are not bad in any sense, but those carbs need a place to go, your muscles are essentially like having extra closet space. So you don't want to be like a New York City apartment with no closet space. You want to have a big walk in closet. And by protecting the musculature on your body by prioritizing dietary protein, that goes a really long way. So here we see a review that was published fairly recently showing that both in the short term and in the long term, that prioritizing dietary protein is one of the best ways to not only lose but body fat, but to prevent the regain of body fat. It's also crucially important now for so many people who are on these GLP1 drugs, which are, I think an amazing boon to public health, Right? But you don't want to lose indiscriminate weight, you want to lose primarily fat. And by prioritizing protein in your diet, it's really important, crucially important as a means to accomplish that. New data is coming out showing us that animal source protein, which is the highest quality protein available with the exception of maybe soy, is actually really helpful and is not associated with the kinds of cardiovascular disease outcomes that are often assumed to be associated with the consumption of red meat. Here we see that the consumption of animal protein might actually be mildly protective when it comes to cancer mortality. This is a study that found that the consumption of animal protein when compared with plant protein, led to a reduced atrophy rate in the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is your brain's memory processing structure. It's a highly vulnerable structure in the brain. It's one of the structures most. It's one of the structures that is earliest affected by in the cascade that ultimately leads to Alzheimer's disease. Again, it's where we process our memories. And what this study found was that a higher intake of animal protein relative to plant protein was linked to a lower atrophy rate in the hippocampus, with seafood playing a particularly protective role in this associational study. Here's another study that found that when substituting 5% of energy from protein, replacing 5% of energy from carbohydrates with protein, we saw a significantly statistically significant reduction in the risk of cognitive decline in US men and women. Where does the rubber meet the road when it comes to Alzheimer's risk? This was a huge study, about 500,000 people in the UK Biobank, which found that every 50 gram per day increment in unprocessed red meat intake was associated with reduced risk of all cause dementia by about 20%, which you can see there with the Hazard ratio. So I've rattled off a bunch of observational studies. Correlation doesn't equal causation. This is crucially important when interpreting scientific literature. So it's important to ask yourself what are the potential mechanisms here that might play a role in a causal effect that meat has and animal source protein has on protecting the brain? Well, red meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods available. We're learning a lot now about the role of creatine in brain health. There was even very recently a pilot study published where they used high dose creatine in a population with Alzheimer's disease. And they found that across every cognitive domain measured, there was an improvement and it was totally safe. There were no adverse effects. It was a pilot study, there was no placebo group and the population was very small. But nonetheless, this is a very cheap and widely available supplement. And red meat and fish are some of the most concentrated sources of dietary creatine, which is naturally found in the food supply, which is super important. It's also one of the top sources of vitamin B12, zinc, calcium, selenium, other nutrients that are crucially important to brain health. And, and importantly, what this study found was that when eating red meat in the context of a diet that was of overall very high quality, that the consumption of red meat didn't even necessarily cause subjects to over consume saturated fat, which is often the argument made against the consumption of red meat. So the American Heart Association's recommendation for Americans is that we consume no more than 10% of our calories from saturated fat fat. What this study found was that the inclusion of red meat was not at odds with that recommendation when overall diet quality was high. Which makes sense when you consider that the vast majority of saturated fat consumed by Americans today come from confectionary products, pizzas, burritos and things like that. So I'm a huge fan of red meat for many reasons, their nutrient density being a major one. So creatine, I mentioned creatine.