EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,044 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast.…
- MLMax Lugavere
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) What's up, Max? How are you? What up? Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you. Same. I've enjoyed your content online, so it's exciting to meet you in person. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. So, you were telling me, before we got rolling, I said save it, let's just talk about it. What, uh, this Alzheimer's- Yes. ... thing that you're doing? What are you doing? Yeah, so I've been deeply immersed in the, in the Alzheimer's dementia prevention world for the past almost, almost decade at this point. Um, I'm not a ... just to lay it out up front, I'm not a medical doctor. I didn't take the academic route. Um, I started college sort of on a, on a pre-med track, but what ended up happening was, uh, I ended up going into journalism straight out of college, and I ended up working for a TV network in the US, um, that was backed by Al Gore back in the day. And so I, I got to hone my storytelling chops there, but I'd always been really passionate about health, nutrition, medicine, things like that. But in 2011, my, my mother started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, which is like a rare- Mm-hmm. ... form of dementia. One in f- Robin Williams had that. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible condition. It's, uh, it's described as, as feeling like having, like you have both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time, and certainly that's what I, what I observed in, in my mom. And so, when she started to display those symptoms, um, it had taken me and my family completely off guard. I, I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative condition. Um, my mom certainly wasn't old at the time. She was 58. She was still, you know, a spirited, youthful woman in, in middle age. Um, she had all the pigment in her hair. And, um, for me, I was in between jobs and I, I really had the opportunity ... I was grateful to have had the opportunity to, to, to go with her to different doctor's appointments. And I grew up in New York City, so we had access to, you know, cathedrals, to medical, um, advice and, and, uh, and, and examination. And in every instance, we were met with what I've come to call diagnose and adios. Basically, a physician would run a battery of esoteric tests on my mom, scribble down a few notes on a prescription pad, and, and send us on our way. But we had to ultimately take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which is known for taking on really complex medical cases. They build a team around the patient. And it was there that for the first time my mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition. She was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. It wasn't, um, until a few years later that she actually received the Lewy body dementia diagnosis. But at that point, um, I started to dive into the research, because I had been trained as a journalist, which, you know, you're not trained as rigorously as a, as a PhD scientist, but you're kind of taught similar- similarly to investigate things, to maintain skepticism, to, you know, ask questions. And I started to look into the literature and, and just generally get a sense of what it was that my mom had been diagnosed with, what, what this, what this, you know, what this entailed. And I realized that in most cases, dementia begins in the brain decades before the first symptom. 10, 20, 30 years even, um, by some estimates. And so for me, this became something really important, uh, to explore as a potentially preventable condition, because I realized for the first time that I had a risk factor, that my mom, you know, was my risk factor essentially. I didn't ... I hadn't even yet looked into my genes at that point. But, um, but so I, uh, I started looking into it and I came across all of these like fascinating insights which, which we can talk about, but I decided at that point, um, that I ... to, to sort of do what I could to help push the, you know, move the needle with this condition, um, that I would use my skills which at the time were, uh, filmmaking, 'cause I had just come off, you know, I was like producing content for TV and I was on camera. I was a communicator as well. And so I decided to do a documentary, um, on the topic of dementia prevention. The first ever, uh, documentary on dementia as a potentially preventable condition. We've all seen dementia documentaries on, you know, HBO and networks like that, and they're always, they always push this, this very like doom and gloom, um, mentality about the condition, which I, which I understand. It is a very difficult condition. It's America's most feared condition after all. Um, and this is a condition that, you know, 90% of what we know about Alzheimer's disease in particular, which is just one form of dementia, has been discovered only in the past 15 years. So it's a very rapidly evolving field of science. But I felt like if we know that this is a condition that begins in the brain decades before the presentation of symptoms, then to me what that is, that's a very empowering insight. That means that we have agency to change our cognitive destiny. So I started shooting with my mom, which was very hard to do, um, because, you know, I mean, my, the person who I love most in the world I was watching, um, decline right in front of the camera. But also, um, I decided to exploit my media credentials at the time to then talk to researchers and scientists around the world. Um, and I was doing my own research in the primary literature as well. But I decided to, um, to yeah, to go to these labs and clinics where they're really ushering in dementia as a potentially preventable condition, and I actually signed myself up to become a, a, a, a s- a study subject in one actually, at Weill Cornell in New York. Right. And, um, and I actually became, ultimately I became, um, a collaborator with the, uh, principal investigator there, who's become my mentor over the years, Richard Isaacson, um, and I got to, uh, co-author a paper in a clinician's textbook, uh, on the clinical practice of, of dementia prevention, 'cause, you know, uh, uh, after all this time, I've learned so much about, um, about the condition, the etiology and, and so forth. Uh, but this documentary, I'm super excited for it. It's, um, it's called Little Empty Boxes, and we have a trailer up at littleemptyboxes.com. Why Little Empty Boxes? Well, it's a, it's a nod to something that my mom says in the film, which is actually something that d- ... You know, w-... my mom's condition, it seemed like her cognition had just severely downshifted, almost, almost overnight. Um, and so my mom never, my mom never, like, forgot who I was or anything like that. The, the presentation of Lewy body dementia is different from Alzheimer's disease. And once you've seen one case of dementia, just generally speaking, you've seen one case of dementia. Every, every dementia is, is different. But in my mom's case, it led to her often losing her train of thought soon after, uh, beginning to express an idea. Um, and she would often say things that just, you know, didn't, didn't make logical sense. So it's sort of a nod to what, um, to something that she, you know, that she says in the film. But, uh, I'm super excited because we, we inked a partnership with a, uh, a wonderful foundation called the Alz- Alzheimer's Foundation of America. And, um, and, um, yeah, I'm just super excited to, uh ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Is dementia purely genetic or is it caused by environmental factors or any other things that people consume?
- MLMax Lugavere
Great question. Um, so though dementia ... Though Alzheimer's disease was coined in 1906 by a physician named Alois Alzheimer, the brain has long been thought of to sit in sort of the ivory tower of the brain, guarded from what happens down below by what's called the blood-brain barrier. But we now know that the brain is influenced by everything that happens down below. And the, the dogma, especially with regard to Alzheimer's disease fundraising over the past couple of decades, has really been that this is the on- this is a condition that you, you can't treat, prevent, or slow. But we now have really solid data to say that we actually, that it is a, it is a potentially preventable condition. So when it comes to, uh, our risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, there are basically two categories of risk. You have your non-modifiable risk factors, of which there are three. So you've got your age, your genes, and your gender. So your age: age is still the number one risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease, right? You can't change your age, yet. You, um, you have your gender. If you're a woman, your risk is double that as compared to a male's. And you have your genes. Now, genes is something that we can actually talk about, because though you can't change your genes, making them therefore a non-modifiable risk factor, you can change y- the expression of your genes, how your genes express themselves moment to moment. So for example, if you live in the United States and you carry a copy or two of what's called the ApoE4 allele ... So it's basically a polymorph- polymorphism, meaning it's not a mutation. It's actually a very common g- gene variant. About one in four people carry the ApoE4 allele. In the United States, that increases your risk anywhere between two and four, fourteen-fold, depending on whether you carry one or two copies.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's also the same genetic expression that makes you have CTE.
- MLMax Lugavere
CTE, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
It, it, it, it makes everything more ... It makes your brain more vulnerable, in general, to insult, whether that is from TBI, uh, exposure to pollutants, exposure to unhealthy ways of eating.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do we know why it does that?
- MLMax Lugavere
Well, it's interesting. Yeah, so the ApoE4 allele is thought to be the ancestral version. So it's the first version. All, all non-human primates are ApoE4. So they carry the ApoE4 allele, not just one copy but two copies, and yet they don't develop Alzheimer's disease. When you look to people, we've evolved, uh, these different isoforms of, um, the ApoE gene. So we have ApoE2, 3, and 4. And just to reiterate, ApoE4 is the ancestral allele. So cultures that have, um, longer exposure to modern agriculture, actually, there's lower frequency of the ApoE4 allele. The thinking is that, that agriculture, right, like when we became domesticated, when we started basing our diets around grains, when we became more sedentary, less, uh, generalized in terms of our, um, cognitive, the, the, the daily cognitive tasks that our ancestors would have undertaken, that it's selected against the ApoE4 allele. So it's possible that that allele, which again is very common, one in four people carry it, carry it, is sort of the canary in the coal mine for the, for the Western way of life. That if you adopt a Western way of life and you eat ... You know, today, 60% of calories that adults consume come from ultra-processed junk foods, right? We're more sedentary than ever before in human history. We've got more stress. We're exposed to more environmental pollutants. That that is what dramatically, is what pulls the trigger, right? Because genes load the gun. It's our diets and our lifestyles that pull the trigger. But if you were to take somebody with that same genotype, right, and move them to a less industrial, a less industrialized part of the world, like say, Ibadan, Nigeria, where the frequency of the ApoE4 allele is just as common, it has no assoc- it has little to no association with Alzheimer's disease. So just to put that another way, what that suggests is if you're genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease in the United States, you might simply move to Ibadan, Nigeria or another less industrialized part of the world and see that risk abolished.
- JRJoe Rogan
So with this consumption of, uh, processed foods that p- is responsible for a large percentage of the calories that people consume today, is the human body adapting to that? Is that why this ApoE4 is less prevalent than it is in other cultures?
- MLMax Lugavere
You know, it's possible, although with, with age being the primary risk factor, it's unlikely that, um, that that has put significant selection pressure. Um, so I'm not, I'm not act- I'm not sure. But we do know, you know, there are, I think, gene studies where they've looked at, um, expression of, uh, genes that produce enzymes that break down amylase, right, like starch and things like that, and those are increasing, I think, over time. It's a little, little out of my wheelhouse, but, um...... but generally, I mean, yeah, the standard American diet is completely aberrant from the diet, you know, that our ancestors consumed, the diet that, that, really, we attribute to the development of the human brain. 60% of the calories that we consume today come from ultra-processed, packaged convenience, convenience foods. Um, it's a massive problem. I mean, it's driving obesity, it's driving Type 2 diabetes. If you have Type 2 diabetes... So, going back to Alzheimer's disease and, and this, this gene expression. So, the APOE e4 allele is, you know, you have it, but it's not necessarily destiny. And 90% of Alzheimer's cases... I'm sorry, more. Nine, like 99% of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to some interplay between our genes and our environment. There's a very small proportion of patients with Alzheimer's disease that have a gene mutation that is a deterministic gene, um, and this is called the early-onset familial Alzheimer's gene, and that gene basically guarantees that you're gonna have Alzheimer's disease. But that makes up only 1 to 2% of cases. The vast majority of people who develop Alzheimer's disease, um, it's the interplay between their genes and their, and their environment.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, excluding environmental factors like pollutants and plastics and all sorts of other things that affect people's bodies, what, what are the other things that a person can do to make sure that they, uh, at least are preventing the, the possibility of this happening?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, so, if you're saying that, like, if the, if the symptoms take, if it takes decades to, to exhibit symptoms, what are they seeing when they say that the, the people exhibit signs or exhibit some sort of a, a, a future of dementia? Like, how, how can you see that? What are you seeing?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah, I mean, so there, there, you can't necessarily look inside the brain. Um, I mean, you can. There are, uh, studies that look at what's called brain glucose metabolism. So, something that you see in Alzheimer's disease is a redu- a reduced ability of the brain to generate energy from glucose. This is called glucose hypometabolism. This is a very, uh, this is a, a defining feature, actually, of Alzheimer's disease. And I say Alzheimer's disease... Again, my mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease, but it's the most common form of dementia, and so all the research on it really looks at j- m- mostly Alzheimer's disease. And then you get s- sort of, like, all-caused dementia in there, but, like, these, these more niche variants, like Lewy body, like frontotemporal, there's very little research on them. So, when I say, sometimes I use Alzheimer's disease and, and dementia interchangeably, but, um, but with Alzheimer's disease, one of the primary features is called glucose hypometabolism. So, the brain's inability to create, uh, energy from glucose.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you see that decades before you see symptoms of dementia?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah, especially with people who are genetically
- 15:00 – 30:00
S- so if people…
- MLMax Lugavere
at risk. About 10 p- a 10% reduction in the ability to generate energy with, out of glucose, which is the primary energy substrate for the brain under fed conditions.
- JRJoe Rogan
S- so if people see this if they, uh, uh, get a test and they ru- they find out that they have this APOE e4-
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then they, um, get their glucose che- how are they checking that, their, their ability to process glucose?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. I mean, they do what are called FTG pet tests scans. Um, so they'll just look to see glucose uptake in the brain. But, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Where does one get... Like, if someone is saying, "Oh, my God, I have dementia in my family-"
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and they're listening to this. What can, how can I find out?" What do they do?
- MLMax Lugavere
You know, it's, that's not a test that you can easily get. Um, they'll use it for, uh, study purposes, like research purposes, but it's not a test being used clinically. Um, the, the, what correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain is your degree of insulin, uh, resistance in the body, or sensitivity. So, if you are insulin sensitive, you've talked many times on the podcast in the past about metabolic health, insulin sensitivity versus resistance. The sort of classic condition that we see here in the US characterized by insulin resistance is Type 2 diabetes. But what the studies have shown is that insulin resistance correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain. So, what you really wanna do to keep your brain healthy is to make sure that you're as insulin sensitive as possible. That's one thing that you can do that, um, you know you're checking off that box, 'cause when it comes to... So, we talked about the, the... And let me know if I should, like, you know, kind of double-click on any one of these, because, you know, I know we're covering a lot. But when it comes to the, the other, uh, risk factors, the, what are called the modifiable risk factors, you have 12 of them, and one of them is diabetes. So, insulin resistance, obviously the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes. We know that insulin resistance is strongly correlated to reduced glucose, um, utilization in the brain. Um, obesity is another modifiable risk factor. Studies show that as your waistline expands, your brain shrinks. Total brain volume is actually inversely-
- JRJoe Rogan
That explains Bert Kreischer.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Call Bert. He needs to know about this.
- MLMax Lugavere
Um, so yeah, obesity is no bueno. It's not good. You know, I mean, there's like this push online now of like, the healthy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Body positivity.
- MLMax Lugavere
Body positivity, yeah. I think it's big problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
So foolish.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I just, I, I can't imagine being so sensitive to people's feelings that you ignore a very clear warning sign that they're doing something that's insanely unhealthy and preventable, and it's something that should be broadcast to everybody. Everybody should know this is, this is a real factor in a host of different b- uh, problems that are gonna happen with your body.
- MLMax Lugavere
100%. I mean, you can be more or less healthy at a given size, right? But to be not obese is healthier than being obese.
- JRJoe Rogan
100%.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
And by the year 2030, one in two Americans are gonna be not just overweight, but-... obese.
- JRJoe Rogan
I thought it was already there.
- MLMax Lugavere
We're close, we're 40%, but we're getting there. It's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Yeah. It's, and it's clearly connected to our diet.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, you know, that's one of the things that I have enjoyed, uh, is a lot of your posts on diet and food, uh, but, n- we, we should, we'll get to that. But, let's, before we get into that, t- when you talk about preventative measures that someone can take, other than decreasing your waistline, losing weight, what do, what are the other factors? Does exercise have any factor on, uh, dementia?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. Exercise is medicine when it comes to the brain. So, and we can tackle this from a number of different angles. But, when you exercise, you're literally pushing fresh blood up to the brain, and blood carries oxygen, nutrients, antioxidants, things like that. Um, when you exercise, you are increasing the expression of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is sort of considered to be like a Miracle-Gro protein for the brain. Uh, you're increasing blood flow, you're increasing the expression of BDNF. You're changing the, the neuro-chemistry of the brain, essentially, with a workout. I mean, I'm a, I'm a different person when I leave the gym than I was walking into it. So you can subjectively, you can feel that, that it's doing something to your brain.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
What was the motivation…
- MLMax Lugavere
this drug, which again, doesn't do anything, right? Like, horrible risk of side effects, no clinically meaningful effect on, on, on s- the, on the symptoms that we want to improve, right? Um, for a patient with Alzheimer's disease. And, um, and so he was vocally critical of that, and then he also was working on some other, some other drug, and he, uh, so, uh, what was revealed basically in the science paper that came out was that he was, um, dabbling in, uh, on a website called PubPeer, which is, um, a site where you can go-It's known for post-publication peer review. So, before a paper gets, uh, accepted for publication, it undergoes this peer review process, right? And so, he found that there were a lot of sort of red flags that were being brought up on this message board, essentially, about this Nature paper. This like seminal Nature paper that was published that found to, it was like the missing link, right? Between like, the amyloid hypothesis and like, the clinically meaningful, meaningful, um, symptoms, meaning memory loss. And he did a bit of like, image sleuthing, which is not generally part of the peer review process, right? And he looked at these, um ... the way data is illustrated in this, in this paper, as it is in- in research generally, it's called a Western blot, which is like a visual representation of, of data, the presence of proteins and so forth. And he found that they were all, for the most part, fabricated. In fact, this A beta star 56 wasn't found by any other team. Hasn't been found by any other team. It, it- it basically came to light that it was essentially faked. The whole thing was faked.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the motivation for this person to fake all this?
- MLMax Lugavere
Because the thing, I mean, I think that we, we like to believe that science is this good faith endeavor towards human flourishing, right? But in the industry of science, there are flawed humans, just like there are in every other industry, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
And scientists in general, I see this all the time in nutrition, online on social media, right? Social media is a great like, sort of, they say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Like social media is a great way to kinda see how this plays out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMax Lugavere
Because scientists are notoriously territorial, obstinate. They, you know, their, their-
- JRJoe Rogan
Egotistical.
- MLMax Lugavere
... reputations. Egotistical, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
Their reputations are everything, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
And, um, I mean, it's just like, I see it, I see it every day. I see it-
- JRJoe Rogan
They're humans.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
So, yeah, so there's bad apples, right? Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
I think a lot of people in science, um, like I'm, I'm, I live and breathe nutrition. I'm, it's the thing that I'm most passionate about, like in life, right? Like fitness, nutrition, sleep, disease prevention. My mom is what galvanized that, that passion for me, right? And what, what my mom, my mom went through and my desire to prevent it from happening to others that I care about, and ultimately people, you know, from all walks of life. But a lot, you know, a lot of people go into science, go into medicine because it's just a, it's a career path.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMax Lugavere
Right? It's a career path for somebody wanting validation. It comes with prestige, it comes with money, it comes with all the things that, that like, make sense that a person would want, right? But then ego gets in the way and it, and it becomes really problematic. I mean, you see it in nutrition all the time. You see it in nutrition like, all the freaking time.
- JRJoe Rogan
So this person that fabricated this study and fabricated all this data, what consequences are there for that person?
- MLMax Lugavere
I mean, I think that the, the Department of Justice is, is gonna be looking into it. But, but, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Gonna be looking into it. I mean, this is-
- MLMax Lugavere
If they're not already. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
If they're not already. But I personally ... So, one of the worst things about this, right? Is it's not just like the lost time and all the money that went to continue looking down this sort of path of the amyloid hypothesis, right? Looking in the wrong place, really. 'Cause amyloid is there, but it's sort of like what you see in cholest- in like, atherosclerosis, right? Like cholesterol. It's like everybody like has pointed at cholesterol as being the bad guy, 'cause cholesterol's clearly there in atherosclerotic plaques, right? But what's causing it to be there? That's the question that these researchers should've been asking all along. And some have, right? Like there, there have been other like, my mentor, as I mentioned, you know, at Cornell, who I've been lucky to, lucky enough to work with over the years on certain projects, um, you know, knew that, that there was another way. It's this glucose hypometabolism, right? It's like, but there's no money in that. There's no money in saying like, "Make your, keep yourself as insulin-sensitive as possible. You know, reduce your exposure to environmental pollutants. Don't hit your head too hard." You know, all these different modifiable risk factors, it's not as, it's not, you, it's not druggable the way that this like amyloid beta pla- protein, um, is, is druggable. And so, I think the worst thing about it is that anybody who would advance an alternate viewpoint over the past couple of decades would be ridiculed and silenced by the, quote, "amyloid mafia." And I was the, I, I, this happened to me. When I first started doing my documentary, um, Little Empty Boxes, which when I first started doing it, uh, it had a different name. I called it, it was called Bread Head. And I could talk about why I named it that, but that was always a, sort of a working title, uh, for the project. But somebody at one of these foundations, right? Like, um, there's all these like big like Alzheimer's foundations. Uh, I'm lucky to be working on this project with one who really believes in me and the project, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, but there are these other nonprofits that really what they are is just like a front for, you know, perpetuating the status quo and, and keeping the sort of the funding pipeline open for drug discovery. And so when I first got started doing, working on this, on my film, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it. And one of these nonprof- quote unquote "nonprofits," right? Deeply invested in the amyloid hypothesis, came out and wrote an, uh, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal disparaging me and my project and any other alternate sort of viewpoint, and talking glowingly about that Aducanumab drug, which at the time had yet to be approved, right? And it was so like painful to me at the time, because I was like working on this project out of the love and passion that I had for my mom and my desire to get the science out, to catalyze, you know, interest in this science. It takes 17 years on average for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice. So I was like, that's, that's time we don't have to lose when the brains of our loved ones are at stake. And so, yeah, I was like directly sort of in the crosshairs at the time for this like, this amyloid mafia. I was like directly affected by it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because this medication is profitable.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah, because the medication's profitable and that the whole avenue was thought to, you know, if you could find a drug that would reduce amyloid burden in the brain, I mean that makes, that's gonna make shareholders-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Wow. …
- JRJoe Rogan
just the coyotes got them all. It was like, the fire burnt the chicken coop down. Our ... We almost lost the house. The fire burnt the chicken coop down. Then we had a smaller chicken coop, and then that one wasn't as robust. I had, like, a real serious one built by a carpenter.
- MLMax Lugavere
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then we bought a store-bought one, 'cause we had to get a chicken coop quickly and the coyotes figured out a way to get into it.
- MLMax Lugavere
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was a fucking bloodbath. It was horrible.
- MLMax Lugavere
Damn.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nine chickens destroyed overnight.
- MLMax Lugavere
Oh my god. Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it was, it was fucking horrific. Um, but those little fucks, they had been-
- MLMax Lugavere
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... targeting my chickens for quite a while.
- MLMax Lugavere
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the-
- MLMax Lugavere
Good eating.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the, the eggs themselves are so good for you. And again, they're not going to become chickens. These are non-fertilized eggs, and people need to understand that. I didn't know that until I was 40, by the way.
- MLMax Lugavere
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
How s- how fucking dumb I am. I thought that, like, if you just, like, let the, the egg go, it would become a chicken. And then, and then someone goes, "No. You, they don't even need a rooster-"
- MLMax Lugavere
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"... to lay that egg." I was like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah."
- MLMax Lugavere
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
How could it? Yeah, duh. (laughs)
- MLMax Lugavere
Fascinating.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that was before I had chickens.
- MLMax Lugavere
You're making me wanna get chickens.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, listen, it's a great way to have protein, and it's really a great relationship. You know, you, uh, I would feed them worms. Uh, I would buy these mealworms. The, you know, that you would, uh, s- the e- they, they come, come dried. And I would, like, shake the box of mealworms and the chickens would just run towards me, full clip.
- MLMax Lugavere
Oh my god.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I would dump them out on the ground. They would go crazy and eat them all.
- MLMax Lugavere
That's so awesome.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, they, i- d- you've never seen, um, savagery like a chicken eating a mouse, though. They would occasionally catch a mouse. Holy shit. You think cats are vicious? Cats have nothing on chickens.
- MLMax Lugavere
Wow.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
So when did they…
- JRJoe Rogan
So when did they start using them ... What is this, Jamie? What'd you pull up there? Okay.
- MLMax Lugavere
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
To produce 237 milliliters, eight-ounce fluid bottle of grape seed oil, one ton of grapes is required. So, 2,000 pounds of grapes to get eight ounces of grape seed oil. The finished oil is light yellowish-green in color. Holy shit.
- MLMax Lugavere
That's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well that ... There you go.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if you're cooking in grape seed oil, you're- you're essentially ... It's a crime against nature. (laughs)
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.... it's, it's just, yeah. It's the most unnatural thing. And, uh, you know, people listening to this might, might say, "Oh, you know, appeal to nature fallacy. What's natural isn't always..." Like arsenic is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, true.
- MLMax Lugavere
... but I think that, that, like a platitude like that, isn't very helpful, right? In the modern world.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, what are the negative effects of things like industrialized seed oils?
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. So, um, I mean, for one, they all undergo that step called the deodorization step, which is the step that removes the noxious odors and aromas from these oils, makes them palatable, gives the oil... It's basically the food industry's equivalent of a witness protection program, right? 'Cause it takes an oil and it makes it so bland and, and free of any kind of character, right, that it can be used to roast nuts in, it can be used to make granola bars, it can be used to sauté food in in a restaurant. It c- c- c- can be used to fry food in, for example. And the problem is... One, one of the problems with these seed oils is that that deodorization step creates a small but significant amount of trans fats. And we know that there's no safe level of trans fat, artificially m- you know, man-made trans fat consumption. Their most, uh, recognizable form was in, uh, poly, uh, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which were outlawed, right? Five, six years ago. Something like that. Um, but you can still find man-made trans fats on the market in the form of these grain and seed oils. Now, the dose likely makes the poison, as it does with most things, but your average, um, American today is over-consuming these oils. I mean, they didn't exist, again, in the few- human food supply prior to a century ago, and their use has increased anywhere between, uh, 250 and 1,000%. 1,000% for soybean oil, in particular, which is the most commonly used, um, grain and seed oil. And so, we're over-consuming these fats. They harbor these trans fats. When we cook with them, in particular, when we expose them to high heat, especially for prolonged periods of time, they generate poisons called aldehydes. And some of these aldehydes are really toxic. I mean, they're neurotoxic, they're mutagenic, meaning they're cancer causing. Um, you know, one such aldehyde is acrolein. Acrolein is found in cina- in, uh, cigarette smoke, um, it's found in all kinds of industrial pollutants, and we can see it in the brains of people with, with Alzheimer's disease. Like it actually accumulates-
- JRJoe Rogan
How is it produced in cigarettes? Sorry to interrupt, but how is, how does cigarette smoke produce acrolein?
- MLMax Lugavere
Well, I'm not 100% sure as to how it's produced in cigarette smoke, but it is a byproduct of like the burning of garbage, and you know, it's created in, in myriad industrial processes. Um, likely-
- JRJoe Rogan
So it has something to do with the heat?
- MLMax Lugavere
Probably the heat.
- JRJoe Rogan
And-
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... whatever the plant compound.
- MLMax Lugavere
Heat and oxygen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. The coalesce, you know, the, the coalescing of heat, oxygen, light.
- JRJoe Rogan
So what about if it's not being heated up? Like, what about seed oils as they exist in salad dressings and the like?
- MLMax Lugavere
Well, I think one of the big fears, um, another big fear with regard to these oils is that they might not be acutely inflammatory, so I think a lot of people, um, and this get, this is what tends to get pushback among the evidenced-based crowd on social media, you'll hear claims that these oils are inflammatory. And I think this is more an issue of semantics. They're not acutely inflammatory, but they may be chronically inflammatory because they provide the precursors to our body's inflammation pathways, particularly the omega-6 fats. Omega-3 fats are, generally speaking, anti-inflammatory, right? They're able to convert to compounds called resolvins, which quite literally resolve the inflammatory cascade. But omega-6 fats provide the backbone to these pro-inflammatory signaling molecules in the body, which are responsible for heat, pain, redness, swelling, things like that. And inflammation underlie, you know, it's a process that is not bad, but when it's chronic and low-grade, it's associated with, um, you know, all of these chronic conditions that we're talking about. Certainly Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, but also cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and the like. Now, are they gonna actually stimulate an inflammatory response? You know, I don't think so, unless maybe the oil is, is highly damaged. But if it's, we'll just say like it's a fresh oil, which none of these oils are fresh, 'cause they've all undergone-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, they've been sitting on the self- shelf forever too.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah, in plastic.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MLMax Lugavere
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMax Lugavere
Which is like... I mean, if you look at extra virgin olive oil, you'll, you'll seldom find a good extra virgin olive oil in plastic-
- 1:15:00 – 1:18:28
I think only if…
- JRJoe Rogan
um, as far as salad goes, um, just extra virgin olive oil, uh, either balsamic vinaigrette or regular vinegar? Is, is there a benefit to having regular vinegar over balsamic vinaigrette?
- MLMax Lugavere
I think only if you're, like, really counting, like, counting calories, which I don't endorse. Like, that's not, you know ... I, I, I think balsamic vinegar is great. You also get a little bit of resveratrol-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MLMax Lugavere
... in balsamic vinegar because of the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. So, I think that the, the, I think balsamic vinegar is great. I happen to love it. And also, people that eat a salad every day, so this is a really cool research from Rush University. Found that people who eat a big bowl of dark leafy greens every day have brains that perform up to 11 years younger.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. So, this could be, like, healthy user bias. Like, n- again, nutrition, even my own, the o- recommendations that I make, like, you know, a lot of ... Healthy user bias confounds many, um, of these kinds of studies in the world of nutrition because we just don't have many long-term randomized, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MLMax Lugavere
... large population, multi-center randomized control trials, right? But the research shows that, that, that regular consumers of dark leafy greens, so I like to say, like, a salad a day, that's what this research found, that, um, they have more youthful brains by up to 11 years. And when you actually look at what dark leafy greens have in them, first of all, they're one of the most nutrient dense foods that we have. I mean, most mo- the most nutrient dense foods that we have access to are gonna be animal products, right? But dark leafy greens are up there because they're so calorie sparse, and they are a good source of folate and vitamin C. And we also know that they're one of the best ways to get those carotenoids, like lutein and zeaxanthin, which is not just associated with, um, better cognitive aging and lower risk for cognitive decline. But, um, in young and healthy college students, they've actually shown that when you give people who are already thought to be at their peak of cognitive prowess supplemental lutein and zeaxanthin, that you see a, a, an improvement by about 25% in visual processing speed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. It was a University of Georgia study.
- JRJoe Rogan
25%? That's incredible.
- MLMax Lugavere
Yeah. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, is there any concern about oxalates?
- MLMax Lugavere
I think only if you know that you're sensitive to them. I'm not a-
- JRJoe Rogan
How would one find out?
- MLMax Lugavere
I think if you have, like, you know, kidney stones, like, in your family, things like that. Like, if you are ... Generally, you would know, you know, I think there are genes that play a role in this, or if you know somebody in your family, or if you yourself have had them before. You know, calcium oxalate is what you wanna be careful with, but I don't think that, like, eating a salad a day is gonna put you at risk.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there any benefit of cooking leafy greens versus eating them raw, or vice versa?
- MLMax Lugavere
Certain leafy greens can definitely be made more digestible when, um, when you cook them. Uh, but, but, you know, there's always, like, a give or take when you cook or store vegetables. Some micronutrients become more viole- bioavailable, some become less. So, um, I tend to recommend, uh, you know, sort of a mix, like, a, like a, like, variety, you know? Some cooked, some raw. But in general, with the salad recommendation, you know, with dark leafy greens like arugula, kale, spinach, things like that, I, I don't think that ... Spinach is probably the highest with regard to oxalates. So, you know, if you're sensitive to oxalates, um, you know, you might wanna cut down on your raw spinach consumption.
- JRJoe Rogan
I used to drink, uh-
- MLMax Lugavere
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
... kale shakes all the time, and, uh, I would mix it with coconut butter and a bunch of other stuff in there and fruit. But then I got concerned about oxalates.
Episode duration: 2:45:22
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