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

Chris Williamson 0:00 Gavin Newsom signed Bill 418, which will prohibit any food containing brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propyl paraben, and red dye three. California becomes the first US state to ban Skittles and 12,000 additional products for cancer-causing additives. What's going on?

Max Lugavere 0:21 It's hard to, uh, take a firm stance on this because on the one hand, I do think it's largely virtue signaling and perhaps a bit of fearmongering. You know, California is kind of known for doing that. A lot of products that are sold in California, for example, like coffee, and- and a product as innocuous as instant coffee has to come with the warning label that it contains acrylamide, a compound that, in vitro at least, is a, is a known carcinogen, right? You can like find this on instant coffee sold in California, um, it's not uncommon to be in a parking garage, for example, and see a sign in, uh, li- eh, you know, by the elevator or staircase that the, by being in the parking garage, you're gonna be exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer and that are, you know, teratogenic, birth, uh, defect causing. So California is known for being a bit of a hypochondriac state, um, and, uh, and so that's where I think a lot of this comes from. On the other hand, I am... I'm not a fan of big government, I'm a fan of small government and less regulation as opposed to more, but I do kind of think that where regulation is perhaps warranted is in with regard to the food supply, the food system, because if you let the market decide, you end up with things like Mountain Dew flavored hot dogs, which we've seen go viral on social media-

Chris Williamson 1:36 You're kidding me.

Max Lugavere 1:37 ... or yeah, I mean, these are (laughs) it's unclear whether or not these were real or computer generated, but I mean, you see all the time, you, you know, there's like all kinds of crazy products in the supermarket that are just, you know, their sole intent seemingly is to hook consumers onto this addictive, hyper-palatable, hyper calorie-dense product. Um, you see it in fast food all the time. I mean, uh, I'm not sure what country I was in, but I was walking around and there was like a glazed doughnut hamburger that some mega chain was offering somewhere. Um, so like if you let the market decide, the market is ultimately gonna cater to what the people want and people don't have like stop gaps, you know, they just...

Chris Williamson 2:17 All roads lead back to Haribo Tangfastics or something.

Max Lugavere 2:20 Yes. There you go. Exactly. Those, those kinds of products. So I do think that a little bit of regulation, uh, is important and I think, you know, this, this perhaps is a step in the right direction because we know that the food supply is e- essentially toxic. We live in a world now where 73% of items in your average supermarket are ultra-processed. This is according to a new study that came out that used a machine learning algorithm that looked at all the products available to your average consumer in your average supermarket, and the vast majority of them are ultra-processed, which we know has been linked to every poor health outcome imaginable these days. So, you know, when, when banning or at least regulating these kinds of products, which at the end of the day ultimately are proxies for ultra-processed foods, like you're not gonna find red dye 40, right, in something that mom cooks.

Chris Williamson 3:08 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 3:09 I think that's a positive thing. But again, California is known for fearmongering. I don't necessarily know how evidence-based the, the, the, the fear that a lot of the, a lot of people have towards these products, um, are. You know, the a- the reason, the recent aspartame controversy was a good sort of example of that. Um, I don't have a dog in the fight with regard to aspartame. You know, there's... you can find equivocal evidence that diet sodas are, you know, actually very helpful with regard to weight loss, you can find observational evidence that people who consume more diet sodas have higher risk of obesity, higher risk of, you know, other negative he- health outcomes. But, you know, the World Health Organization came out and said that it was a possible human carcinogen, which the data on that isn't really so black and white.

Chris Williamson 3:55 Give me the... yeah, I've had so many conversations about aspartame over the last six months since that World Health Organization thing came out.

Max Lugavere 4:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:05 Uh, some people have said, most people have said, uh, the risks are overblown.

Max Lugavere 4:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:10 The concern doesn't matter unless you're taking 8,000 Cokes a day or something, that the risk is so small. Then a lot of people say, well, a small chance of cancer risk increase i- isn't a good thing. Then other people have said, well, the reduction in weight from switching from sugar calorific drinks to non-calorie aspartame drinks, think about the difference that you get now in terms of weight loss and the downstream benefits. Like, what's your read overall?

Chris Williamson 4:40 How worried should people be about artificial sweeteners?

Max Lugavere 4:43 Yeah, I don't thi- I don't think that people should be that worried. I... this is where I think the, the limitations of data come in and you have to, you have to arrive at a set of values about these sorts of products. And for me personally, I avoid artificial sweeteners because I abide by what is sometimes referred to as the precautionary principle. You know, and you might say, oh, it's sort of like borderline appeal to nature fallacy, but I think that the less time a food or product has been, um, in the marketplace, the more skepticism, the more caution we should reserve for that product. And yes, aspartame is one of the most studied compounds in existence really, well, particularly with regard to a consumable product, right? But there's also publication bias. It's a heavily commercialized product, and so for me, I choose to avoid like artificial sweeteners. I don't think that consuming them, eh, eh, particularly in reasonable doses is, is gonna be a health concern, and certainly for people who are on weight loss diets and it is the sort of the one singular vice that allows them to better adhere to that diet, I think that's a positive thing. Um-And ultimately, we're exposed to carcinogens, innumerable carcinogens on a daily basis. I think ultimately, how to prevent cancer is to, you know, to stack the odds in your favor by building your own resilience, your own robustness with exercise, with an antioxidant-rich diet, um, and the like. So if a little bit of aspartame sneaks in here and there, which I personally avoid, but again, if- if- if this is something that happens to be your vice, and you're consuming it in reasonable doses, I think it's probably fine.

Chris Williamson 6:17 What is your advice to somebody like me who has quite a strong sweet tooth, and has managed to condition myself into eating a savory meal and then looking for something just that's like a little finisher-

Max Lugavere 6:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:33 ... at the end, right? And a lot of the time, I can make this work with blueberries or raspberries. Sometimes they're not in the fridge, sometimes it's like, ugh, more blueberries and raspberries. What- what are your go-to, "I have a sweet tooth craving and I need to satiate that, but I don't want to kill myself"?

Max Lugavere 6:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:49 Where do you- where do you go and where do you advise people to go?

Max Lugavere 6:52 You and Steven Bartlett, he asked me the same question.

Chris Williamson 6:54 Did he?

Max Lugavere 6:55 Yeah. He was like, "I was..." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:56 So it's a Brit- it's the British thing-

Max Lugavere 6:58 It is. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:58 ... in us, or maybe it's the fact that we're both from, like, super working-class backgrounds-

Max Lugavere 7:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:01 ... and we're like, (clears throat) we've been given this sort of zero some scarcity mentality around sweet things-

Max Lugavere 7:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:06 ... that it's a treat. I don't know.

Max Lugavere 7:07 Yeah, it's- I mean, it's great. I- look, I have a sweet tooth too. I think we're programmed for that, right? I mean, sweet is... For one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the only time they would encounter the sensation of sweet, sweet taste, right, would be when fruit was finally ripe during the summer season, and it would signal to your body to store fat, right? It causes a- a- an elevation of insulin, it floods your muscles with stored energy for later use, right? So we're hardwired to enjoy sweet. And particularly today, when sweet is combined with salty, when it's combined with fatty, you get this hyper-palatable combination, sometimes referred to as the Dorito effect, right? It takes a- a food that was previously an ingredient, and it turns it into this- this concoction that pushes your brain to a bliss point beyond which self-control is seemingly impossible, right? I've gone through it, I've, you know, went- I've gone to my freezer, taken out the pint of ice cream, only aspiring to have a spoonful or two. Before, you know, I knew it, I was looking at the bottom of the pint. So I mean, that's kind of the problem with modern foods. Um, but ultimately, I think, you know, with sweet, there are a number of non-caloric sweeteners on the market that I think are relatively safe. I mean, allulose is a naturally derived sweetener that I've no- and I have no commercial affiliation with any allulose producer or anything like that, but there seems to be some evidence that it might even be- might even actually, uh, have health benefits associated with it. Um, I think erythritol is great. Erythritol is a- a sugar alcohol, but among the sugar alcohols, it's the more well-tolerated one. Some of them can draw water into the gut and have like a laxative effect, which you don't want. It's like, "Here's a chocolate bar sweetened with maltitol and sorbitol." Oops, you're gonna get diarrhea-

Chris Williamson 8:46 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 8:47 ... if you eat more than half the bar. But um, but erythritol is generally very well-tolerated.

Chris Williamson 8:52 But like, no one's gonna go and buy erythritol and like throw it at a thing. Like what's the food?

Max Lugavere 8:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:57 Give me some foods that are gonna satiate me.

Max Lugavere 8:59 What's the food? Well, fruit I think is great.

Chris Williamson 9:01 Yep.

Max Lugavere 9:02 Um, look, ice cream, you know, there- there's observational evidence, it's like mind-blowing, but that people who consume ice cream for whatever reason, they seem to have better health. You know, I think this is one of those-

Chris Williamson 9:13 Presumably, that's got to be a type of ice cream. It's go- it's not gonna be, you know, your ultra-processed-

Max Lugavere 9:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:20 ... get it from an ice cream truck thing.

Max Lugavere 9:22 Yeah. No. I mean, if you think about it, humans have been making ice cream for quite some time, and the ingredients, and I- I'm not saying that ice cream is a health food, by the way, just to make that perfectly clear-

Chris Williamson 9:31 Mm-hmm.

Max Lugavere 9:31 ... and this is a perfect example of where cor- correlation doesn't equal causation necessarily. But um, but yeah, ice cream, I mean, if you can buy like, uh, you know, uh, ice cream made in the traditional way, I mean, it's egg yolks, right? It's- it's heavy cream, which is actually, heavy cream is a great source of vitamin K2. Like there's nutrients in- in ice cream. So if you can find a low sugar version of it, you know-

Chris Williamson 9:53 Let's just take that.

Max Lugavere 9:54 ... have at it.

Chris Williamson 9:54 There are nutrients in ice cream. That's all I needed to hear-

Max Lugavere 9:57 There are, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:58 ... actually. That was- that was all I wanted. But yeah, I think, um, it makes me think, reflecting on my own sort of dietary habits, that, uh, sweet craving that I've created in myself sometimes after I have a big meal, and, uh, unless I'm very disciplined, that can lead me down a- a very dangerous path. You mentioned about kind of this, uh, unique blend of particular types of ingredients, particular types of flavors. Have you ever seen hunter-gatherer tribes trying cheesecake for the first time?

Max Lugavere 10:28 No. Is that a thing?

Chris Williamson 10:30 There's videos of it on the internet.

Max Lugavere 10:31 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 10:32 So they give people who've never had processed foods before, and you think about cheesecake from a taste design, uh, aurification, you familiar with that?

Max Lugavere 10:41 No.

Chris Williamson 10:41 So aurification is the way that food textures are designed-

Max Lugavere 10:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:46 ... to make them more palatable. We don't really think about this, right?

Max Lugavere 10:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:49 Because the obsession is with what's in the food, but the way that it feels in your mouth is a big determinant of your enjoyment of it. Uh, ancestrally, it would have been very, very rare to have found something that had both crunchy and fluffy.

Max Lugavere 11:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:02 Uh, and if you think about some of the most palatable foods, Oreos, you know, you've got this sort of crunch and then fluff. French fries, same thing again. Cheesecake, you've got that, but really dialed up with this perfect ratio of carbs and fat and sugar.

Max Lugavere 11:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:17 There's tart across the top, if you've got like a little fruit compote type thing-

Max Lugavere 11:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:20 ... and you just get this like blast of this orchestra-

Max Lugavere 11:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:23 ... right, in your mouth. Give it to these hunter-gatherer tribes, and their faces are just, you know, someone that's just chewed leaves-

Max Lugavere 11:31 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:31 ... right, for the last decade, and- and eaten meat that's been cooked in variable like qualities.

Max Lugavere 11:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:40 Uh, and yeah, you realize how hyper-normal the stimuli of the foods that we're eating are.

Max Lugavere 11:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:47 And this is the biggest lesson that I took from you, and it's been really, really useful for me, that...One

Chris Williamson 11:52 of the main problems with ultra-processed foods is not just what's in them, but it is the fact that eating to so- satiety is so tough to do, because it is built to push you past satiety.

Max Lugavere 12:06 Exactly. Yeah. Super well said. That's, um... You know, I used to be more... Admittedly, and this is an area where I've evolved, I used to be more interested in, what is the, what is the more optimal mix of carbs and fat for a, for example, a weight loss diet, or even for longevity? And I think now, where the science has sort of, has- has sort of, um, evolved, and also where my thinking has evolved as well, is that it's really, it's about food quality at the end of the day. And ultimately, ultra-processed, this term ultra-processed which was devised, coined by... in the NOVA nutrient profiling system, which was devised in Latin America, so people can go look it up, it's... there's actually a definition around what it takes to be classed as an ultra-processed food. Um, it's a good screening tool. It's not even necessarily the best diagnostic tool, because certainly there are some ultra-processed foods which are quite healthy. You know, you could take like a legume-based pasta, which is, uh, you know, an, uh, certainly a processed food, might not necessarily be an ultra-processed food, but processing is a continuum, and certainly there are some ultra-processed foods that are healthy. You know, like a dark chocolate bar is- is, you know, fairly processed at this point, and it's, uh... and it can be quite healthy. We know that cacao, cocoa flavanols are really quite beneficial to you. But, by and large, the vast majority of foods that Americans today are consuming are ultra-processed, and we know that these foods typically are very nutrient-poor, so they're depleted of any real nutritional quality other than perhaps energy, and- and they are incredibly calorie-dense, and they're hyper-palatable, which makes them really difficult to, um, to moderate. So this, uh, seminal study published, uh, a couple of years ago now, two or three years ago, funded by the NIH, found that when people eat to... eat ultra-processed foods to satiety, they end up consuming a calorie surplus of about 500 additional calories. And today in the United States-

Chris Williamson 14:01 Which is, that's a pound of weight per week, right?

Max Lugavere 14:03 That's a pou-

Chris Williamson 14:03 3,500 calories a week is a pound of weight gain per week.

Max Lugavere 14:06 Precisely, yeah. So... And you know, your average American today, that is largely what your average American is doing. Every day, they're consuming 60% of their calories from these ultra-processed foods. In the UK it's a little bit lower, it's about 50%. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, so you guys are doing a little bit better than we are over here. But American children are consuming 70% ultra-processed foods. And it's only trending up. It's like, it's not getting better, it's getting worse.

Chris Williamson 14:28 Mm.

Max Lugavere 14:29 And we're now seeing connections between ultra-processed food... like dose responses between ultra-processed food consumption and all cause mortality, and risk for cancer, and risk for, I mean, dementia. Even depression. So-

Chris Williamson 14:42 Depression is linked with ultra-processed foods?

Max Lugavere 14:44 Yeah. I mean, we're at the very tip of the iceberg with this in- in- in this field, which is being called nutritional psychiatry, looking at the role that diet plays in mental health, but there have been a number of associational studies at this point linking poor diet to worse mental health outcomes, like clinical depression and the like. The question then has always been the direction of causality, right? So depressed people obviously... Like when I'm depressed, I'm reaching for comfort foods, right? Ultra- which tend to be ultra-processed. Can eating more ultra-processed foods actually create symptoms of depression? That's been the sort of looming question. Well, we now have randomized clinical evidence, like empirical clinical data, suggesting that when people on junk food diets clean up their diets and adopt a more Mediterranean-style approach, which the Mediterranean diet is lauded in the Western literature as being the ideal human diet. I think it's- it's one of probably many ideal diets, it's just, um, a less processed diet at the end of the day, and a diet that's more palatable to We- that is palatable to Western palates. That when people adopt a more, uh, Mediterranean-style diet, they see sim- they see remission from depression. Three times the... at- at three times the rates as compared to standard of care. Which was shown in the SMILES trial, which is sort of one of these like... It was the first, and still highly regarded, highly cited, uh, trials in this field of nutritional psychiatry run at the Food and Mood Center at Deakin University in Australia. So yeah, so food, I mean, food is medicine in tha- and- and depression has been linked to inflammation. We know that inflammation is... we can modulate it, you know, via our diets and our lifestyles. Not for every... This isn't the case for every person, but there's certainly a subset of the depressed population for whom inflammation is likely playing a role.

Chris Williamson 16:27 And there's a feedback loop going on here, right? Like, the fact that you don't know which direction the arrow of causality is going in means that it could actually be cyclical, right?

Max Lugavere 16:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:36 That we get depressed, so we eat food, which worsens the way we feel, which worsens the depression, which... Dude, I- I- I remember, so I- I've spoken about this on this show before. Throughout a good bit of my 20s, I thought I had like ambient depression-

Max Lugavere 16:50 Hm.

Chris Williamson 16:50 ... that would creep up and then it would break through the activation energy surface and then it would go away again. And how depression would manifest for me is I would stay in bed for maybe, you know, two days at a time and I would refuse to get out of bed, but I would eat. And one of the things that I would do is I- I would comfort, I guess binge, uh, and it would be very sugary, very sort of just like comfort eating foods. And there's a sensation that you get if you really pump your... Like, you know, like a couple of muffins for breakfast and a few slices of pizza or whatever it is that you wanna order from Uber Eats or something, and there is a sensation you get, especially if you haven't moved, you haven't got out of bed, you haven't seen any sunlight, and it presumably is the inflammation response where it almost feels like your body's sort of throbbing-

Max Lugavere 17:35 Hm.

Chris Williamson 17:35 ... like s- in a satisfactory way and your joints feel a little bit tight and your brain feels very foggy. And then presumably, off the other side of this absolutely huge glucose spike, I was able to then like fall back asleep.

Max Lugavere 17:49 Wow.

Chris Williamson 17:49 So I would do that. You know, I'd wake up, get food, eat-... feel like shi- like, put Netflix on or whatever. C- curtains would be closed. Wouldn't wanna see anybody, you know, like meet the guy at the door. The, uh, like, it sounds like I'm getting my fucking MDMA dealer to come-

Max Lugavere 18:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:02 ... round here. Like, he also came round, but he came-

Max Lugavere 18:03 Uh.

Chris Williamson 18:03 ... round at different times. And that would be, that would be part of my cycle of, of, of low mood. Uh, and it absolutely facilitated it, and I, I used food, ultra-processed, highly palatable foods that spiked my blood sugar as a, a, a c- comfort tool.

Max Lugavere 18:23 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:24 And it absolutely made me ... And here was the other thing. It's not just about what you eat and the way that it makes you feel. It is the story that you tell yourself about the sort of person that you are for having eaten that kind of food.

Max Lugavere 18:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:37 Right? And that is, that's really the sort of ruminative, narrative-based, "I am a kind of person that does the X, Y, Z." That's what I think really sort of drove it home for me and made me feel like particularly, like unsatisfied-

Max Lugavere 18:54 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:54 ... with mys- I'm like, "Look, I shouldn't be doing this." Like, I understand how important health and fitness is. I go to the gym. I'm in good shape. I was a fucking commercial model for 15 years in the UK. Like, you shouldn't be lying in bed eating Duffins-

Max Lugavere 19:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:06 ... which is a, a combination donut muffin that was created in the UK.

Max Lugavere 19:10 There you go.

Chris Williamson 19:11 Yeah. Uh-

Max Lugavere 19:11 (laughs) Don't let the market decide. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:13 All roads descend into the hell that is Duffins.

Max Lugavere 19:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:17 Uh, but yeah, and you know, I think that comfort eating ... But I, in fact, that's something I'd love to know about from you. Like, what is it ...

Chris Williamson 19:25 Uh, have you got any idea why people comfort binge eat? Like, what's going on there? Are they reaching for something that's like a psychological, uh, piece of, uh, tape to, to-

Max Lugavere 19:36 Like the psychological Band-Aid of sorts?

Chris Williamson 19:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Max Lugavere 19:39 Yeah, I think, you know, when you, when you eat high-sugar foods, there's a ... I mean, it can, it can depress levels of cortisol, which is like the stress hormone. Um, we know that people that are, like for example, fasting, you can ... I mean, fasting is a stress response, right? So sometimes when we're stressed out, we crave food 'cause it's a w- a way of signaling to our biology that everything's okay. 'Cause ultimately food is a really important ... We've solved for the food scarcity issue, but for a long time, I mean, food was the primary, um, variable, right? That would indicate an, like w- one of our ancestors successes or, or ultimate demises, right? Um, whether or not they c- they were able to procure food. And we've done that, and now that's sort of become the double-edged sword of modernity is that, like, food is available constantly with a swipe of, you know, your finger on your app. You can have whatever it is your heart desires del- arrive at your doorstep within 15 minutes. So I think that's, that's certainly part of it. Also, the associations that we have with these kinds of foods that maybe they evoke, um, you know, our childhoods in a way.

Chris Williamson 20:46 Hmm.

Max Lugavere 20:46 Like, we reach for foods that remind us of a more peaceful time in our lives when the stakes were perhaps a bit lower.

Chris Williamson 20:53 Mm.

Max Lugavere 20:53 Um, so I think, I think there's a lot of different variables potentially at play, but, um, I think it's also really important to not, to not stigmatize, I mean, and, and pathologize ultimately being depressed 'cause depression and stress are par for the course of being human, particularly today. I mean, we're living in tumultuous times, and inevitably all of us is gonna encounter something in life that, that serves as a depressive stimulus. I mean, I've been depressed in my life, and it wasn't attributable to my diet. Uh, I've been really depressed because of what was going on, for example, in my family life, um, with everything that, that my mom went through and, and, you know, the, the journey that took me that has gotten me to this place. Um, and so, it's imp- it's important to, to not pathologize these kinds of normal human emotions, which I think is really common in, especially in our world where everything has become lately all about optimization and the 1,500 steps that you have to do every morning before your morn- morning coffee to optimize your day and to-

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Max Lugavere 22:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:56 I have a friend who is a world-class DJ, uh, who messaged and said, "Dude, loving the show, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I have to say, I'm starting to fall out of love with DJing because I watch a lot of good health communication podcasts on the internet, and every time that I DJ and stay up till 4:00 in the morning, I feel guilt about not hitting my morning waking circadian rhythm." So his love, his, his main passion in life, he is, uh, feeling that become tarnished because he has guilt around the gap between his potential optimized version and his realized-

Max Lugavere 23:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:31 ... optimized version. Do you, do you see this as a trend among people?

Max Lugavere 23:35 Well, yeah. I mean, certainly, and I'm not an expert in, in disordered eating or eating disorders, but, um, that is one of the, what I've been able to glean from experts that I've interacted with and, and ultimately pe- people who've suffered from disordered eating is that it's important to remove the m- the moral, the morality from food, um...I think if you have a healthy relationship with food, it's important to have empirical definitions around food, like, obviously, you know, a four-year-old might be able to look at, you know, a- a- a certain food item, a bluffin?

Chris Williamson 24:11 Duffin.

Max Lugavere 24:11 A duffin.

Chris Williamson 24:12 Yeah.

Max Lugavere 24:13 And, um, and identify that that's maybe not as beneficial-

Chris Williamson 24:16 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 24:17 ... as, uh, you know, a stalk of broccoli, or an egg, or a piece of, you know, grass-fed, grass-finished beef, or something like that. So, you know, I think it's important to have de- to- to- to maintain definitions around food. We live in a time where seemingly it's impossible to define anything, um, and, uh, and I think that's not helpful. Um, but on the other hand, it is really important to remove the shame that we feel around food, because at the end of the day, one single food, one single meal isn't, in any way, going to sway your biology in the dir- towards the direction of health or disease. It's about the dietary pattern as a whole. It's about-

Chris Williamson 24:51 We don't live in the on average though, right?

Max Lugavere 24:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:53 Like, we don't have the perspective.

Max Lugavere 24:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 24:55 What we have is, what is the lead measure of the thing that I'm doing? What is the story that I tell myself about that? "Oh my God, I'm such a piece of shit. This is exactly why such and such a person left you. This is exactly why you're not realizing your dr- this is gonna be the beginning of the end." You know, it's very much a scarcity fear mentality.

Max Lugavere 25:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:12 And I think it plays into it.

Max Lugavere 25:13 Yeah, it's a big problem. I've actually heard this, it referred to as holistic derangement syndrome, which is a term-

Chris Williamson 25:19 Wow.

Max Lugavere 25:20 Yeah. Let that settle in.

Chris Williamson 25:23 That is so good. Holistic derangement syndrome. Yeah, this sort of obsession with over-optimization-

Max Lugavere 25:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:30 ... with understanding that w- uh, wh- where was the... Is this grass finished or is this grain finished? Can we check with the... Was that actually butter that the chef cooked it in? Because the, if there's a seed oil in this... Uh, did I tell you about that study, uh, that I learned in The Expectation Effect, David Robson's thing about glucose?

Max Lugavere 25:49 No.

Chris Williamson 25:50 Dude, uh, gluten, sorry. So,

Chris Williamson 25:53 David Robson, The Expectation Effect. Everyone should go and read his bo- everyone should go and read your book, Genius Foods, but everyone should also go and read, uh, The Expectation Effect by David Robson. Really great science writer from the UK. And, um, they bring people into the lab to try and work out what's going on with gluten intolerance.

Max Lugavere 26:07 Hm.

Chris Williamson 26:07 That gluten intolerance has nearly 10Xed over the last 30 years, I think.

Max Lugavere 26:13 Wow.

Chris Williamson 26:13 Human biology hasn't changed that much. Maybe the diet w- landscape has changed a lot, but like, gluten's gluten, right?

Max Lugavere 26:18 Hm.

Chris Williamson 26:18 And the intolerance shouldn't have changed that much. They wanted to work out whether it was due to, in some part, this expectation effect-

Max Lugavere 26:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:27 ... that people were hearing a lot of demonization about gluten, uh, so they bring people into the lab, sit them down. People that are in there do and do not have biological intolerances to gluten. They've done the tests. They sit everybody down, they give everybody the same meal. They tell everyone that it's got gluten in. It's got no gluten in it. Within minutes, people are running to the toilet with diarrhea-

Max Lugavere 26:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:47 ... they're breaking out in hives, they've got inflammation, they've got tension headaches. No one ate gluten. No one in the entire room ate gluten-

Max Lugavere 26:55 Wow.

Chris Williamson 26:55 ... and you had all of the symptoms-

Max Lugavere 26:58 Wow.

Chris Williamson 26:58 ... of gluten intolerance manifesting.

Max Lugavere 27:00 It's wild. It's like a nocebo effect.

Chris Williamson 27:03 Yep. Correct.

Max Lugavere 27:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:04 Yep.

Max Lugavere 27:05 Yeah, I mean, I- uh, ad- uh, ad- I'm very much immersed in the wellness world and I, the, I love the wellness industry, but I will concede that, you know, it's, it, I think it has done some damage, um, in the sense that there's a lot of misinformation now about what foods are beneficial, what foods are less so. Um, and, and I've, I've been, I've drank the Kool-Aid at certain points in my life, where there was a time when I thought dairy was sort of like an unclean food, and, uh, that it wasn't ideal from a health standpoint. And now, I mean, I'm- I'm the biggest advocate of consuming dairy. I think dairy is a great food if you, if you tolerate it, for example. You know, there's like this idea that clean eating is somehow dairy-free, it's gluten-free, it's free of all the things, right? And, um, and I think it's- it's, again, really important to educate with nuance around these topics, because the- the people, uh, the- the proportion of our population that is celiac is non-trivial, it's 1 to 2%, and a lot of people with celiac, um, or I'm sorry, celiac, so, you know, 1 to 2% is celiac, and then there's this spectrum of symptoms that people will get that is attri- that is thought to be attributed to, uh, gluten, called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and that's thought to be... I mean, that's a real thing, and that's widely underdiagnosed. Um, so a lot of people are, do experience symptoms, um, when they ingest gluten. And gluten is something that, you know, the- the dose, if you wanna consider it that, and- and- and speak in terms of, uh, gluten as something that- that is ultimately dosed, is higher than it's ever been. I mean, we-

Chris Williamson 28:41 Mm.

Max Lugavere 28:41 ... now we breed wheat to contain higher levels of gluten because it provides a mouthfeel that we enjoy, it's that gooey texture, um, and also, we're eating wheat... I mean, wheat is one of these, like, foundational ingredients to the ultra, the- the deluge of ultra-processed foods that your average person is now consuming en masse. It's wheat with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and wheat snacks all in between. So the dose of gluten that your average person is ingesting is massive. And I'm not saying that people need to avoid gluten if they're not explicitly sensitive to it. Um, but it is a protein that humans don't properly break down. Um, it does stimulate a protein in the gut called zonulin, which basically leads to, uh, increased permeability, in- uh, sort of increased, um, in- passage of, uh, ingredients from the, compounds from the lumen of the gut in through circulation, through what are typically tight junctions that are closed.

Chris Williamson 29:38 Oh, this is like leaky gut.

Max Lugavere 29:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:39 Right. Uh, yeah.

Max Lugavere 29:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:40 I've learned... So I- I had, um, I went to Fountain Life in Dallas, and had a full body MRI, brain angiogram, heart angiogram, uh, uh, gut microbiome analysis, DEXA scan, balance sca- everything. Full, full, full, full, full works. And, uh, they came back and they said, "You need to take AMRA..."Colostrum?

Max Lugavere 30:00 Colostrum.

Chris Williamson 30:01 Yeah. Uh, they said, "We need to just- it's not bad-"

Max Lugavere 30:04 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:04 "... but you, you could- your gut could be less leaky." And, uh, that was the first time I thought- I didn't even know what the fuck leaky gut was. I didn't know if it was due to, to, uh, gluten or anything else. But, uh, yeah, I think this, like colostrum product generally are gonna be more, uh, widely discussed. Um, yeah, so it seems like overall gluten just something to probably keep in the back of your mind regardless of how well you think that you tolerate it?

Max Lugavere 30:29 Yeah. And also, um, the- it's also the context in which, in which the gluten is being consumed, I think, which also plays a role and is not something that's being discussed enough. So we live in a time of widespread gut dysbiosis, right? Again, and not to keep harping on this because I don't want to sound like a broken record, but your average American's adult- your average American adult's diet is by and large ultra-processed. One of the consequences of this is that most people aren't consuming adequate fiber. Now fiber is not an essential nutrient, but your average American today I believe consumes somewhere between 5 and 15 grams of fiber a day, right? So fiber is one of these non-essential nutrients, but it seems to be associated with positive health outcomes, it seems to be associated with lower levels of inflammation, greater longevity, and the like. And so there is a degree of resilience that we should all be able to cultivate with regard to our gut health that we're simply not because again we're just- we're eating predominantly junk foods in the background, with a background of a low fiber diet. And so whereas, you know, we might- we should have the, the resilience that it takes to be able to ingest a protein like gluten, um, and, and be all right with it, well, we're eating more gluten than ever before in human history, we're eating less fiber than our ancestors likely ever consumed. It's estimated that our fiber- that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were consuming upwards of 150 grams of fiber a day, which is like-

Chris Williamson 31:51 Hmm.

Max Lugavere 31:51 ... you know, orders of magnitude more than we're consuming today. So it's like- it's all- it's the co- it's the, it's the dose, it's the compound, it's the context, everything matters. And so, um-

Chris Williamson 32:03 Can you expl- can you explain to me what's going

Chris Williamson 32:05 on with these new products that are low net carb, like some cereals have this, some bars have this. What fuckery is happening on the back end? What are net carbs, and is there any- is there any sort of wizardry going on which is hiding something in a- in the deep dark annals of the ingredient profile?

Max Lugavere 32:27 Yeah, very likely. Um, so a lot of these, you know, n- net carbs really are, are mainly a concern for people who are on a ketogenic diet. And, um, and I think it's really important to lay out upfront, a lot of people are on the ketogenic diet because they think it's the ultimate diet for weight loss, and if, if you prefer- if a ketogenic diet is a diet that you are most easily able to adhere to, then by all means have at it. And I also think- I have to add all these sort of nuances and disclaimers because, because hashtag science.

Chris Williamson 32:53 Yeah.

Max Lugavere 32:54 Um, and I think it's important. Um, the ketogenic diet I think is a really important diet, particularly in the context of, uh, neurological conditions. Epilepsy primarily, but also I think now we're starting to see neurodegenerative age-related conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. It's a very low carbohydrate diet, and so net carbohydrates come into play because people want to be able to consume processed foods, um, while still allowing ketogenesis, right? Still allowing for ketone generation by eating low carbs. But I think one of the problems with this is that a lot of these low carb foods are so high in calories that it's like you might as well eat the original food. Like unless you really have a medical reason for being in ketosis. Um, and so a lot of the food manufacturers that produce these keto foods, they achieve having low net carbs despite having a ton of calories, um, by using either fibers which are inaccessible to us, we- we're unable to, uh- humans unable to break down fiber into its- into glucose, so it's- it passes through the small intestine basically, uh, unadulterated and then it becomes food essentially, like a food substrate for the bacteria that live in our large intestines. Um, and this is true for fibers found in whole foods. What remains to be seen is whether or not these extracts that are now being used as sweeteners in these ketogenic products function the same way. Um, I think the jury is still out. The FDA last I recall is investigating, uh, ingredients like tapioca fiber syrup and all those kind of- chicory root fiber, to see if they actually, um, do pass through the small intestine unassimilated, undigested, which would allow them to maintain that they are in fact fibers. But I've seen people- because now there is this sort of trend of people wearing- non, uh, diabetics wearing continuous glucose monitors.

Chris Williamson 34:48 Mm.

Max Lugavere 34:49 And I've heard reports from people that follow me that they'll eat a lot of these keto products that allegedly have very few net carbs, and regardless they still see a, a pretty significant spike in their blood sugar, which would suggest that they- these fibers are not acting like-

Chris Williamson 35:01 Something's going on.

Max Lugavere 35:01 ... true fibers. Yeah. Um, so at the end of the day I think, you know, and this is again another area where, where I've evolved, I used to by default opt for these fake foods with the fake fibers that have low net carbs, but now I think, you know, ultimately like a cookie is a cookie, right? Like ice cream is ice cream. So if you're gonna reach for one of these foods and, and you don't have a medical necessity for being in therapeutic ketosis, you might as well offer the real thing, you know? And, and be cognizant of the overall calorie count of these products, because at the end of the day, I mean they're junk foods.

Chris Williamson 35:32 What do you think of this trend of young girls

Chris Williamson 35:36 avoiding eating meat and protein and instead replacing it with salads and smoothies and just roughage for days?

Max Lugavere 35:43 Horrible. Yeah. So I'm a- I'm a huge advocate- an unapologetic advocate for omnivory. I think it's-You know, there's this push at the public health scale to, um, towards plant-based diets and, and also online you see obviously, you know, a lot of women in particular, uh, have embraced these diets. I think in part, and I'm not, obviously I'm not a, a woman, I don't know what their lived experience is like, but what I've been able to glean from my friends and other experts in this, in this area is that a lot of women avoid meat and protein, and they opt instead for salads because they think that it's gonna make them smaller to eat that way, to eat like a rabbit, um, and this is a big problem. You know, a lot of women today have body image issues, I think perpetuated in, at least in part by social media. The fact that you see people, men and women, that have phenomenal bodies that are, you know, usually augmented, either-

Chris Williamson 36:34 The male... I- I... Just to interject there, male body dysmorph- morphia will overtake women's within the next two decades.

Max Lugavere 36:40 Wow.

Chris Williamson 36:41 It's on track to overtake it.

Max Lugavere 36:42 Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, the pressure to look a certain way now on social media.

Chris Williamson 36:46 Mm-hmm.

Max Lugavere 36:46 I mean, they're augmented, they're augmented (laughs) like, behind the camera, right? They're aug-

Chris Williamson 36:51 And then postphoto.

Max Lugavere 36:52 And then post, yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Max Lugavere 36:53 Yeah, and then post being posted, yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:55 Yep, yep.

Max Lugavere 36:55 Um, so it's, yeah, it's, it's really problematic, and so, you know, the, the pressures... I mean, women have always faced body pressure, right? I think this is fair- a fairly new arena for the fellas, but, um, yeah, women, I think, have always wanted to, particularly since the '90s, like, appear smaller, um, there's this idea that eating meat, I think, is masculine, that it's gonna make, that it's gonna make you bigger, that it's harder to digest. I mean, steak should actually be... Steak is, is incredibly, should be very easy to digest. The problem is a lot of people that are on low-meat diets, they're depriving their bodies of the raw materials required to create stomach acid, so, you know, if you're on a low-meat diet and then you decide, you know, once in a blue moon to have a piece of red meat, well, you might be low in the minerals required to generate adequate stomach acid to allow you to properly digest that food.

Chris Williamson 37:46 And you will mistake the discomfort after eating that meat as, "Oh, this is what meat, eating meat is like for all people."

Max Lugavere 37:53 (laughs) Exactly.

Chris Williamson 37:53 Right? You've conditioned your stomach to not be able to do the thing. So, what is the result for girls in the way that they look and feel by being roughage-pilled?

Max Lugavere 38:06 Well, I mean, roughage is... Like, I'm the biggest advocate of eating dark leafy greens, I think dark leafy greens are an incredible food, but if that's all you're eating, you know, they are hard to digest. I mean, for example, when, you know, anybody who's, who's ever had, like, a, uh, like, a procedure on the large bowel, they're told, you're told prior to the procedure to go on a low-residue diet. A low-residue diet is a low-fiber diet, red meat is, is, is low residue, basically, like, the residue are the, is the indigestible material that makes its way down to the large intestine that gets then fermented and create, can, can potentially create, particularly if you're un-adapted to it, symptoms like gas and bloating and things like that. Um, steak should be one of the, one of the easiest foods to digest, um, and, uh, and so on the other hand, you have women, and people in general, not just, not, not to single out women, but people that, you know, they base their whole diets around cellulose, you know, like greens and, and indigestible plant material, and they wonder why they're walking around bloated all the time, and they're also... You know, studies show that people who are on vegetarian and vegan diets, they tend to eat less protein, we know that protein is really important for a number of reasons, it's satiating, uh, at the very least, but it also helps to preserve and grow, you know, your muscle tissue, it's important for providing, you know, amino acids, which are the backbones to your neurotransmitters, um, so yeah, there is a, I think, a consequence to, yeah, to basing your diet around just, like, rabbit food.

Chris Williamson 39:33 Well, this... I- i- it seems to go hand-in-hand with a trend that, at least as far as I can tell, is kind of falling away now, which is, like, the thigh gap obsession.

Max Lugavere 39:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:44 Uh, very willowy...

Max Lugavere 39:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:46 ... kind of, e- uh, you know, the London Look model kind- super sort of stringy thing, but even within that, there's a softness to the body type, right, of people, both guys and girls, that do that because it, again, thankfully is falling away and the pivot from thin spo to fit spo-

Max Lugavere 40:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:06 ... I think has actually largely been really good in that encouraging, uh, resistance training, encouraging high-calorie meals, prioritization of protein-

Max Lugavere 40:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:15 ... more focus on training, uh, even like a bit of Gflux Theory thing coming in, like, let's try and create a calorie deficit through both calorie restriction, but also through training increase, so-

Max Lugavere 40:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:26 ... you know, both sides of the, the Keiko equation, um, but you see, and I see it as well, man, like I see a lot of the girls that, um, we used to work with at, at our events company, you're 18, 19, 20 years old and you're dancing for our events company, and you want to look good in your dancer's outfit on stage or whatever, and the girls that would push a little bit harder on calories and train would have a different kind of-

Max Lugavere 40:52 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:53 ... uh, physique in the way that it presented, like the skin seemed a little bit sort of, like, uh, thinner and tighter and more translucent and you could see the shape of their bodies underneath it, as opposed to someone that's just dieting themselves into the ground, 1,300, 1,100 calories a day in a desperate attempt to try and get down, and there's like a, there's like-

Max Lugavere 41:11 Softness.

Chris Williamson 41:12 There's like, there's a, yeah, there's a softness despite-

Max Lugavere 41:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:14 ... there not being much there, what is there still feels like that.

Max Lugavere 41:19 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that is a recipe, when you zoom out and you extrapolate out 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the road, I mean, that, that's a recipe for sarcopenia at the very least.

Chris Williamson 41:29 What's that?

Max Lugavere 41:30 It's, um, accelerated muscle wasting, um, and just a, a lack of strength, uh, as one ages, which is fairly common these days. The worst is sarcopenic obesity, so it's like excess adiposity along with being under muscled.

Chris Williamson 41:45 Oh yeah. Uh, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon was on the show this week talking about her muscle-centered medicine.

Max Lugavere 41:50 Great. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:50 And, uh, yeah, this is a big, a big movement, I think this is, again-So much, sort of, convergent trends-

Max Lugavere 41:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:56 ... happening here. We've got maybe the science side coming in, we've got that. But yeah, dude, I mean...

Max Lugavere 42:02 It's super, yeah. It's, and, and, to, not, not even to mention the, the important minerals and micronutrients that women are, you know, potentially missing out on that are particularly important to the pre-menopausal woman. So, you know, for example, heme iron, which is found pr-primarily in red meat. You know, red meat is the ultimate iron supplement and women who are pre-menstrual, I mean, there's... Like, anemia is super common. Iron deficiency anemia is super common today and-

Chris Williamson 42:30 Well, women lose quite a bit of iron once every 28 days.

Max Lugavere 42:33 There you go, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we're gonna get, it's, we're gonna get red flagged for mansplaining, I'm sure, by somebody.

Chris Williamson 42:39 Ah.

Max Lugavere 42:40 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:42 Don't tell me how my periods work.

Max Lugavere 42:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:45 Ah. I don't even like them.

Max Lugavere 42:46 No, but... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:47 Um...

Max Lugavere 42:47 Uh, no, you're 100% right, though. I think, like, wh- you know, there, women... And the FITSPO thing I think is great, you know, in the sense that it's gotten more women sort of aware to the benefits of resistance training. The, and, and, you know, a lot of us have worked really hard to dispel the myth that resistance training is gonna lead to a bigger, bulkier body. It doesn't. You know, women have testosterone, but one-tenth the testosterone of men, and it's really important for, you know, for libido, it's important for wellbeing, body composition. But it's not gonna make you, it's not gonna lead to you ending up looking like Chris Bumstead, right?

Chris Williamson 43:20 Bro, I said this yesterday to Huberman. Do you realize how desperately hard I've tried for a decade and a half to become bulky?

Max Lugavere 43:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 43:30 Like, I work most moments of every day to put things into my body and do stuff to my body to become bulky.

Max Lugavere 43:36 Yep.

Chris Williamson 43:37 Like, you're not accidentally going to do a couple of supinated bicep curls and then look like Cbum.

Max Lugavere 43:42 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 43:42 You know? It's not gonna creep up on you, and if it does, please tell me the protocol that you were doing.

Max Lugavere 43:46 Same.

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Chris Williamson 44:53 uh, talking about two minutes of exercise a day reduces cancer risk by up to 20%.

Max Lugavere 45:00 Yeah. I mean, all, this r- kind of research comes out all the time and it's super interesting, and it's not to say that all you need to do is two minutes a day of exercise, right? That's not the point of the study, but what it, I think the, the drive home message is that we're not, um, impotent to, uh, to these kinds of conditions, which now seem to be so rampant today, right? Like cancer. Um, I've had a number of cancer experts on my podcast. Um, as of late, actually, Thomas Seyfried, you know, is a wonderful, uh, expert in this field. Also, Joe Zundell is a good friend of mine who is a- another cancer expert. And the, the resounding advice that you get from both of these experts is that, uh, exercise really is medicine. I mean, it's super, super important in terms of reducing inflammation, in terms of building your robustness, your resilience. Um, yeah, it's crucial. And so, I don't know if two minutes a day is necessarily-

Chris Williamson 45:55 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 45:55 ... gonna suffice, but, um, but yeah. I mean, again, like, today, the milieu of the Western die- not just diet, but lifestyle, we're largely sedentary. Like, leisure time physical activity is a- is at an all-time low, and we're starting to see increased rates of cancer now among younger people. There was another study that made major headlines recently that found that rates of cancer, and particularly malignant cancer, among a cohort that typically you wouldn't see much of this type of cancer in is now increasing, right? Rates of breast cancer have, I think, like, doubled since just 50 years ago. So, I mean, there's something in the modern world, you know, one, one variable, myriad variables that have become essentially toxic, and I think one of the variables that has, that is essentially toxigenic is the fact that we are now... that so many of us are sedentary. Um, that's a big problem. And it doesn't take a ton of exercise. Like, you don't have to be, like, a gym bro, like you or I, to reap the benefits of exercise. But I think it is super important to have an exercise routine, and particularly one that prioritizes resistance training. I mean, this idea that you can just be active. Like, a lot of older adults, I think, are told to just be active, right? Which I think is typically, um, taken as just walk, you know? Just like walk as much as you can, and walking is great. Walking is great no matter where on the age spectrum you are, but I think resistance training has long been sort of thought to be this pastime of bros and, uh, and I think that's a big problem. I mean, we're-

Chris Williamson 47:28 Proudly.

Max Lugavere 47:29 Proudly.

Chris Williamson 47:29 Proud- proudly a-

Max Lugavere 47:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:31 ... pastime of bros.

Max Lugavere 47:32 There you go.

Chris Williamson 47:33 Dude, the, uh, 10-minute to 15-minute walk after eating-

Max Lugavere 47:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:37 ... for me, is about as close of a, like, superpower as I've been able to find. And I first got taught this from Stu Magill, like four years ago. Back pain expert.

Max Lugavere 47:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:49 I flew up to Canada to see him and he was doing it primarily for a, the relieving of lower back pain, and what he was doing was, "You need to walk, um..."... small doses frequently. And a good cue for that is when you have something to eat, you're gonna eat at least multiple times per day, go for the walk afterward. And he mentioned at the time, there's some benefits too, downstream. Maybe mentioned a couple of bits. And just the last five years, Mark Bell and Stan Efferding, right, with the-

Max Lugavere 48:21 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:21 ... I think he calls it the 10-minute walk, but fif- fifteen seems better. And (clears throat) if you're eating, you know, if you get one in on a morning to get some sunlight in the eyes 'cause you're Huberman pilled-

Max Lugavere 48:29 Okay.

Chris Williamson 48:29 ... and then you have three meals a day and you do, if you can get a nice 10 to 15-minute loop from wherever you are, that's also your 10,000 steps sorted.

Max Lugavere 48:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:38 That's also going to improve your insulin sensitivity. That's also going to help you to blow off a little bit of that spike that you get post-eating. It's going to the, uh, muscles, like the contralateral muscles that run across the stomach, it actually helps to move food, or at least it does for me.

Max Lugavere 48:51 Whoa.

Chris Williamson 48:51 If I have a big meal, I actually feel like the food is able to move through my digestion more easily if I go for a walk afterward. The two nights that we've been here, we've had big dinners both times (laughs) , Cheesecake Factory and Buffalo Wild Wings-

Max Lugavere 49:05 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 49:06 ... because, because I, I, I am a child. Um, and both times, we've been for a walk for 15 minutes afterward-

Max Lugavere 49:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:11 ... and I can go to sleep more easily on an evening time. It's just, it's a, a real phenomenal hack. And I think that struggling to get your walks in, maybe you're concerned about what's happening with insulin, maybe you want to get a little bit more time outside in nature and s- be away from your phone. It's, I love these habits where you can stack a bunch of different things on top of that, "I'll get some more time outside, I'm gonna get some more sunlight, I'm gonna get some more fresh air, I'm not gonna be on my phone, blah, blah, blah." I, it's a real 10-minute walk, 15-minute walk after eating, ******* I'm all in.

Max Lugavere 49:40 Yeah, I mean, walking moves w- uh, there are so many benefits to walking, but I mean, you have fluids in your body that don't have their own heart. And so, for example, lymphatic flow, right, like walking helps to promote that, which is involved in, which plays a role in digestion. We know that just a short walk post-meal reduces that postprandial blood sugar spike, which is thought to be beneficial, particularly if you have glucose tolerance issues, right? We know that walking helps to remove fat in the blood. Um, super important. We see that there's an association, particularly, um, in younger people between around 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day and lower risk of all-cause mortality. And then, uh, about 10,000, I think, to 12,000 steps among older people. Um, that 10, the whole 10,000-steps-a-day thing is a little bit BS, but there actually was a meta-analysis that came out fairly recently, I think over the past year, that found that it da- it- it- it- there is actually a zone that's not too far off from that 10,000-step mark-

Chris Williamson 50:35 Hmm.

Max Lugavere 50:35 ... that seems to be associated with-

Chris Williamson 50:36 You need to pick a number.

Max Lugavere 50:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:37 You know what I mean?

Max Lugavere 50:38 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 50:39 Yeah, it depends on how quickly you walk-

Max Lugavere 50:41 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 50:41 ... I suppose. There was

Chris Williamson 50:43 a New York Post article titled, "I'm Raising My Child Vegan. It's Not As Simple As You Think." And you replied, and said, "Child abuse."

Max Lugavere 50:52 Yes (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 50:53 What's going on?

Max Lugavere 50:54 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we are biologically adapted to be omnivores. And, um, we know that the neonate relies on the mother deriving adequate nutrition from her food. And there are, the, if you look at the most nutrient-dense foods available to your average person today, there's literally a paper, people can look it up, published by Beil et al. two to three years ago, that ranked all the most nutrient-dense foods, particularly by nutrients of concern. So, nutrients that people tend to under-consume today, zinc, vitamin B12, and things like that. And animal products were, took all the top spots, with e- the exception being, uh, dark leafy greens, which are thought to be very ca- uh, very nutrient-dense because they're so calorie-sparse, and they can, they're a good source of vitamin C and folate, and calcium and the like. But animal products are our most nutrient-dense foods. And when you're a pregnant woman, you are eating for two. So, you know, we already see that pregnant women tend to under-consume protein, um, you know, uh, consumption of choline, which is a really important, uh, nutrient for... I mean, you put choline, right, acetylcholine in your-

Chris Williamson 52:06 Yep.

Max Lugavere 52:06 ... in your neurotropic beverage right here.

Chris Williamson 52:09 Yeah.

Max Lugavere 52:09 We're like, super important for brain development, for cognitive function. Um, vitamin B12, crucially important. There's so many... DHA fat, right? Like pre-formed DHA fat, which is found exclusively in animal products. You can consume omega-3s from plants, but humans are very inefficient at converting it to its usable forms in the body. And so, I mean, that's from the standpoint of pregnancy. Like if I were, uh, in, uh, th- at the stage in my life where I were looking to procreate, I would want to (laughs) procreate with an omnivorous woman. And it's like, saying something like that is controversial today, but it shouldn't be.

Chris Williamson 52:42 (laughs) Max Lugavere wants to procreate-

Max Lugavere 52:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:44 ... with an omnivorous woman. Ladies, you have, this is the sign that you have been looking for.

Max Lugavere 52:50 It's the bat signal.

Chris Williamson 52:51 Yeah.

Max Lugavere 52:52 Um, yeah, so I mean, that's- that's super important. I think, like, you c- with regard to plant-based diets, you can cobble together a diet that leads to better biomarkers. And- and ultimately, look, a plant-based diet compared to the standard American diet is gonna be a healthier choice, right?

Chris Williamson 53:06 Mm-hmm.

Max Lugavere 53:07 Um, you can cobble together a diet that, you know, with the use of protein supplements perhaps, uh, can- can- uh, can afford you a fantastic body composition. But I think from the standpoint of pregnancy and ultimately development and- and childhood development, I think it's really important to, um, yeah, to allow your child, who's inevitably gonna be a picky eater as it is, because that's inevitable-

Chris Williamson 53:31 They're a child.

Max Lugavere 53:31 ... to have children, because they're a child, yeah. I think it's really important to not cross off the list because of some silly ideology, one of the most nutrient-dense, the most nutrient-dense category of foods available to your average human.

Chris Williamson 53:43 What do you... Uh, do you have any idea what will happen to a child who is lacking in many of the sort of things that a vegan diet would cause there to be a bereft, uh-

Max Lugavere 53:56 Yeah, I mean, look-

Chris Williamson 53:57 ... scarcity of.

Max Lugavere 53:57 ... stunted development, um, failure to thrive. I mean, I, you know, I just think it's, I- I think you're...It's essentially sometimes referred to as nutritionism, this idea that humans, with all of our hubris, can distill food into its constituent nutrients and then replicate food, in a way, with- with processed alternatives. I mean, if you take something like the product Soylent, it's a perfect example of that, right? It's like what happens when Silicon Valley people try to create food. They break down a food into its constituent nutrients, right? The data that makes a food food, according to them.

Chris Williamson 54:32 This is the code of food.

Max Lugavere 54:34 Yeah, this is the code of food, and- and we have this ultra-processed, ultimately crap product, but here it is, right? Like, you're not gonna develop a deficiency disease if this is all you consume every day. And so that's like nutritionism. And I think it fails time and time again because we didn't evolve with these nutrients in isolation. We've evolved with food. And we have a handful of nutrients that we know are essential, but that list of what's essential, what's conditionally essential, and what's non-essential is changing all the time, as it should. And foods don't just contain these single nutrients in isolation, right? Like, an orange isn't just- doesn't just provide vitamin C, right? There are countless other innumerable, like nutrients that we have yet to even name likely, compounds in, you know, in an orange that might have an entourage effect, that might increase the absorption, the bioavailability of the vitamin C, for example. And the RDA for vitamin C is set to avoid scurvy at the population level, right? But that doesn't mean that we're all consuming adequate levels of vitamin C to promote optimal collagen synthesis, for example, which we know vitamin C is involved in. So, you know, foods have all of these different nutrients, and you take a food like red meat, right? Like, red meat has, uh, it contains vitamin B12, which somebody on a plant-based diet might say, "Well, that's the one essential nutrient you can't get on a plant-based diet, I can just take a vitamin B12 supplement." But what about the constellation of nutrients that that vitamin B12 comes with, right? Like the heme iron, the carnitine, the carnosine, the creatine, which we know is really important from the standpoint of muscular health, right? Um, and so you're just depriving a- a baby of, you know, of all of those different nutrients. And look, the standard American diet isn't- isn't great either. Like, you have a lot of children these days that have early onset hypertension, early onset type 2 diabetes. So I'm not saying that the alternative is the st- is the standard American diet.

Chris Williamson 56:23 Mm.

Max Lugavere 56:23 But I think that you can, that ... Yeah, that, like, you can ... The ultimate optimal diet for, certainly for a developing human, but also for an adult, is a diet that incorporates both animal products and- and, uh, plant products.

Chris Williamson 56:39 It's interesting to think that the chi- (laughs) child abuse thing is, uh, like a really interesting frame of it, because you are locking into this neonatal human a kind of development that they didn't choose.

Max Lugavere 56:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:57 That they had no volition in saying yes or no to. And I guess, you know, largely until the age of probably 14 or 15 when they can use the stove themselves and actually fully understand what's going into them, you know, even throughout preschool, so on and so forth, you're still largely doing that. But when it's you have to, what you eat is what your child eats-

Max Lugavere 57:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:18 ... in some regard, uh, it- it's wild. I have a friend, Alex, who was a, uh, vegan, uh, philosopher for a good while. He was, uh, ethically convinced by Peter Singer's work, uh, animal liberation, which I still think from an ethical perspective, I- I think that we're going to look back on what we do now with much of animal farming and think of it as abhorrent. I think you're gonna look back and see it as not quite sort of Holocaust-y, but i- in that sort of realm, "Oh my God, we had sentient animals and we did this to them." Right? He became completely vegan-pilled, he became an advocate, he is an unbelievably effective debater at everything-

Max Lugavere 58:00 Mm.

Chris Williamson 58:00 ... uh, but particularly for veganism. And he found, after going vegan, that making a commitment, making a sacrifice, uh, to the philosophy that he, the ethics that he'd been convinced by, he found that he was suffering. Uh, his body and his mental health had both taken a-

Max Lugavere 58:18 Hm.

Chris Williamson 58:19 ... a- a pretty big, like an increasingly big hit from this. And he, (laughs) he posted the day that he became unconvinced that he could meet an adequately balanced vegan diet. He immediately felt like it was his, um, he was compelled to tell his audience, because again-

Max Lugavere 58:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:39 ... he came here, he got here from being ethical and being truthful and- and high integrity with his ethics, and then as soon as those had changed, he decided to put a post out. And I said, "Don't do this, you are opening yourself up to a ton of criticism. Wait until you can do the video." And he said, "Well, yeah, but what if someone sees me eating salmon on a train or something in the UK? Like I'd- I'm not gonna feel in line." So again, he was like hoisted by his own ethics. Again, he got absolutely pilloried by the internet for doing it, "You know, you were supposed to, you said that you understood," and blah, blah, blah, and then he did a video talking through how he was struggling to be able to eat a completely balanced, uh, sufficiently robust plant-based diet, and again, people had massive problems. And now, I think he's probably one year hence-ish?

Max Lugavere 59:26 Wow.

Chris Williamson 59:28 Mental health is way better, his, uh, pursuit that he goes after in life is flourishing, his energy levels have improved, all of this stuff. Again, this isn't for me to say, "Look, vegans, you're condemning yourself to a life of low energy misery." But there are people out there for whom the limitations that you place on yourself by going on a vegan diet make getting a balanced diet so much more difficult again. And if you're a 24-year-old YouTuber and writer who maybe still needs to do a bit of growing up, life's hard enough as it ... Like you- you're just trying to get up before midday.

Max Lugavere 1:00:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:04 Do you know what I mean? Like, you're trying not to go out and party with your friends too much, you're trying to like, learn what productivity is, and how do I do my taxes, and like, I've got a relationship or I'm not, whatever. You know-These are additional, uh, levels of complexity and difficulty that I don't think you need to add into your life. Uh, and yeah, you know, th- uh, this is very, very much kind of fallen by the wayside now, and Alex is out, uh, is out on the other side. But, uh, I really respected him for what, for what he decided to do with that. That he said, "Look, I've given this a crack. I'm still ethically convinced by veganism, but physiologically, I don't think that I can do... I, I, I don't think I can commit to this." And yeah, uh, out the other side of that, he's now just a... He's, he's crushing it.

Max Lugavere 1:00:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:47 He's absolutely crushing it.

Max Lugavere 1:00:48 Also, I mean, uh, as you referenced, when you're younger, you have more resilience. Like, a younger body is a more resilient body. I mean, think about all the late nights, all the... I mean, for me, like, when I was in college, I used to drink a lot. I don't have a problem with alcohol, but like, I would, I would consume alcohol, I would do other things, like... And your body rebounds really fast when you're young, right? 'Cause you have-

Chris Williamson 1:01:10 Made of rubber and magic.

Max Lugavere 1:01:11 Yeah, we're high, we're a highly adaptable species. That's one of the am- the amazing things about being a human being, right? But as you get older, I mean, I'm telling you, I have a lot of friends that are in middle age and that are still clinging onto this idea of, of a v- of a plant-based diet being optimal, and again, they, they look sarcopenic, you know? I mean, uh, you can find vegan bodybuilders. Like, those outliers exist, you know? Some of them are augmented, don't necessarily cop to it. All good. Not judging. Or maybe judging a little bit because they attribute, they tend to tr- attribute their gains to being vegan. Um, but-

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 Not to the exogenous testosterone (laughs) .

Max Lugavere 1:01:44 There you go. Again, you can cobble... Like, we know that plant protein at this point and animal protein, when you consume enough protein, the muscle gains are comparable. So that, you know, there's no issue there, but for most, again, for most people, for most people that are not obsessive fitness junkies, um, it's a big problem. They tend to under-consume protein. And, um, and as you get older, you become anabolic-resistant. I'm sure Gabrielle Lyon talked about this. You become resistant to leucine, so the little leucine that you're getting on a plant-based diet is becoming even less effective, you know, as you get older, and whether it's andropause or menopause, you're fighting a losing battle with regard to your hormones ultimately, unless you're on, you know, HRT. And so it's a, it's a huge problem, but younger people, you know, maybe they adopt a vegan diet for a few months or years and they feel good, right? The body has stores of certain vitamins. They're, again, more resilient, they're more adaptable, and so it's fine. But yeah, it's not uncommon these days to see whether they're influencers on YouTube or on Instagram that are, that were previously vegan either covertly eating animal products-

Chris Williamson 1:02:46 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 1:02:46 ... which I've heard happens. Like, they're doing it covertly, or they, they make the switch, right? 'Cause-

Chris Williamson 1:02:51 I'm, I'm eating steak wrapped in spinach-

Max Lugavere 1:02:53 Yeah (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:02:53 ... and no one, no one can see what's inside of this.

Max Lugavere 1:02:56 Dude, it happens. It happens. And with regard to mental health specifically, there are so many nutrients in animal products that are just required by the human brain. I mean, we attribute the development of the human brain to access to the nutrients found in animal products, right? So this idea, again, it's just hubris, right? It's hubris, and I hate the P word, but I'll use it, privilege-

Chris Williamson 1:03:17 Yep.

Max Lugavere 1:03:17 ... that we think that we can cobble together a diet that mimics our, the diet, the kind of diet that we evolved-

Chris Williamson 1:03:22 We know better than nature.

Max Lugavere 1:03:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 We don't need to use... No, no, no, no. We don't need to grow it and, you know, you pull it out of the ground. No, no, we can do it from code.

Max Lugavere 1:03:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 From first. We'll matrix our way into creating a diet. Yeah. It's, it's, it's wild, man. Talk to me about this new film

Chris Williamson 1:03:38 that you just finished. You very kindly sent me a link so that I could get first access to it last night.

Max Lugavere 1:03:43 Yeah. Yeah, so it's called Little Empty Boxes, and, um, people can watch a trailer at littleemptyboxes.com, and it's the first ever dementia prevention film. And it's about 75%, uh, narrative, 25% science, but the narrative follows my mom. And why I do anything that it is that I do is because my mom got very sick at a very young age. She developed a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, and, um, I mean, this was 10 years ago that I began working on the project. And back then, I didn't know anything about Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease or anything like that. I was just a scared son looking to do whatever was possible to help his mom, um, in a time of immense trauma and tragedy, um, and so the film kind of is like a time capsule. It documents everything that my mom went through, the, the descent into dementia. It's really, really difficult, um, and it's been a labor of love, and ultimately, the film is a, is a tribute to my mom, but it's also a tribute to the science. So, you know, as much as I think, you know, we get in- into debates on the inter- eh- interpretations of science, particularly in the field of nutrition, which is, you know, where my passion happens to lie, I'm a huge fan of science and I think it's incredible. And so the film, I created to be a, a, a tribute to this, this growing field of acceptance known as dementia prevention, whereas 10 years prior, you couldn't mention dementia and prevention within the same sentence. You'd get, like, produce thrown at you, because dementia for a long time was thought to be an unpreventable condition.

Chris Williamson 1:05:23 Mm.

Max Lugavere 1:05:23 Like, even the Alzheimer's Association, which is w- one of the largest nonprofit organizations, you know, for years and years and years, demen- you know, would drive home this fear-based talking point, I think primarily to raise funding, that dementia is the only... Alzheimer's disease is the only condition that can't be prevented, treated or slowed. And we know now, I mean, thanks to incredible research that, that the potential for prevention is high, and, um... And so yeah, so the documentary is like a, a testament to that and it offers some, I think, really actionable tips, and it's in very m- me- it's in, in many ways the prequel to my work, you know? 'Cause since, since embarking on this production process, I've written my books, I've launched my podcast, and, uh, you know, I'm grateful that many people, um, and, and mind blown actually that many people consider me an expert in this field, um, because I'm a l- ultimately a layperson. Like, I'm somebody who really began just to-... be able to, you know, with the intent of gleaning answers for their mom. Um, but I've learned a ton, uh, you know, over the course of my journey. But the documentary really is to, is to document what it's like being a caregiver, um, for somebody with dementia and to show people what it, what it really is like and how valuable and important prevention is. Because dementia begins in the brain decades before the first symptom. And this is something that is when you look at the science coming out about dementia, Alzheimer's, um, based therapeutics, Alzheimer's drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate. They're just dismally effective, um, if at all. And this is because this is a condition that manifests in the brain over a span of years, if not decades. So it's really important, I think, for people, like younger people, millennials, you know. Uh, you're, uh, you're... The oldest millennial is now in their 40s, and so the time is like... there's no better time than right now to start thinking about your brain with your choices, because I mean once it goes, it goes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:25 What are the big myths and realizations about neurodegeneration, dementia, Parkinson's, stuff like that? Like what were the, the big unpredicted insights that you got on this journey?

Max Lugavere 1:07:41 Well, I think for one, people think that it's genetic. Um, you have genetic risk factors. So the ApoE e4 allele is the most well-defined of the Alzheimer's, uh, and ultimately neurodegenerative risk factors.

Chris Williamson 1:07:53 Is that the one that, uh, Chris Hemsworth-

Max Lugavere 1:07:55 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:55 ... realized-

Max Lugavere 1:07:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:56 ... that he had?

Max Lugavere 1:07:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:56 Yeah.

Max Lugavere 1:07:57 So he realized that he was a homozygous carrier. He was an ApoE e4, which increases your risk around four, 12 to 14-fold. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:08:05 12 to 14-fold?

Max Lugavere 1:08:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:06 Wow.

Max Lugavere 1:08:07 Yeah, so that's-

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 How low is this? Because it could be 12 to 14-fold from 0.1 to 0.12 or whatever.

Max Lugavere 1:08:12 Yeah, that's an interesting question. Um...

Chris Williamson 1:08:14 We also got to consider the base rate, eh?

Max Lugavere 1:08:16 Yeah, like the absolute risk. Today about 5 million people in the US have Alzheimer's disease. So 5 million out of 300 million. It's just fairly, you know, low proportion, but, um, but that number is set to explode in the coming years. Um, the rates of Alzheimer's are increasing, and I think it's clear that we have what are called modifiable risk factors, and the rates of those modifiable risk factors are also increasing. So for example, if you have obesity, your risk for Alzheimer's disease increases. If you have type 2 diabetes, your risk for Alzheimer's disease increases between two and four-fold. If you have hypertension... Today, one in two adults have hypertension. That increases your risk-

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 And these are all stacked on top of each other.

Max Lugavere 1:08:57 Yeah, exactly. So we're seeing increasing rates of all of those, um, those, uh, conditions. And so that's... What is that doing? It's not, it's not doing our brain health, our collective brain health any favors. And so that's one of them, that it's genetic, you know. The vast majority of, of dementia cases are attributable to an interaction between the genetic risk factors that you may carry and the environment. But also with regard to genes, which are a non-modifiable risk factor of course, there's what the concept of polygenic risk. So you might have genes that we have yet to elucidate that are canceling out the risk of, of said risk genes. 2 to 3% of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to a, a deterministic gene called early onset familial. Again, tiny minority. But as recently as 2020, the Lancet commit- Commission on Dementia pointed out that at least 40% of Alzheimer's cases are preventable. And I think that's a gross underestimate because in that paper it didn't even talk about all the... it didn't even talk about exposure to environmental toxicants or drugs. Um, we know that people who routinely take anticholinergic drugs are at higher risk of developing dementia, and that wasn't even elucidated in the paper. So, um, I think the vast majority of, of, uh, Alzheimer's cases are po- potentially preventable, and I don't claim to have all the answers. We, we don't, um, certainly, but, uh, but yeah, there is a lot that people can do.

Chris Williamson 1:10:18 If you were to... I, I always like

Chris Williamson 1:10:20 inverting stuff like this. If you were to try and design a lifestyle for someone that would onset their predisposition or lack of neurodegeneration as quickly as possible, what would you prescribe-

Max Lugavere 1:10:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:10:36 ... that person? If you were like, you know, some demon from hell and you want to try and make this person's brain, uh, degenerate toward some dementia Parkinsonian style thing, what would, what would you get that person to do?

Max Lugavere 1:10:46 Hmm. Yeah, they... I would, uh, deprive them of sleep. We know sleep is crucially important. Um, sleep is when your brain is actually cleaning itself of proteins that are associated with the condition. So amyloid beta, tau protein, we see increases in cerebral spinal fluid on just one night of shortened sleep. So I would deprive them of sleep. Sleep is really important with regard to brain health. It's re- it's imp- it's important reg- with regard to mental health, but it's very important with reg- with regard to how your brain actually functions. Um, so there's that. Chronic stress is a killer. We know that chronically elevated cortisol leads to shrinkage of the hippocampus, which is the most vulnerable structure of the brain. The first stru- one of the first structures of the brain to be, uh, to be affected by Alzheimer's disease. It's where, you know, it's the memory processing center of the brain. We know that chronically elevated cortisol, which is wrought by chronically elevated levels of stress, um, is not good from a brain health standpoint. It also creates an inflammatory effect in the body. Um, I would, from a dietary standpoint, I would give a person exclusively ultra-processed foods to consume. Um, we know that these kinds of foods not only create inflammation in the body but they drive adiposity or obesity. We know that they create, uh, the phenomena of insulin resistance, and we know that insulin resistance is not good from a brain health standpoint. Um, actually in Alzheimer's disease you see a reduction in the brain's ability to generate, uh-... energy from glucose. And in the Alzheimer's-affected brain, the- that ability is diminished by about 50%. And the brain is a ravenous energy consumer, and so, I mean, that's just like lights out for the brain, right? You can imagine, um, how detrimental that might be. Well, we see that the level of glucose metabolism in the Alzheimer's-affected brain is actually very strongly correlated with the degree of insulin resistance in the body, so you wanna make sure that you're as insulin-sensitive as possible. (smacks lips) And so one way to do that is by, you know, optimizing for protein in your diet, we're starting to see all this research now come out about the value of- of dietary protein, minimizing your consumption of ultra-processed foods, make sure that you're at a healthy weight, and then finally, this kind of, um, funnels into the lifestyle recommendation, which would be if you want to develop dementia, as soon as possible, make sure that you are highly sedentary and that you never exercise. The brain thrives atop a body that's, you know, moving, and that's exercising. And there's tons of evidence now on this, both as a preventative strategy and also as a way to slow down the progression of neurodegeneration. So make sure that you're- that you're resistance training, and I mean, I can't underscore that enough, resistance training is super, super important, we're seeing a correlation now, Andy Galpin is, uh, you know, he's one of these guys who's- who's become fairly prominent in our space, just published a paper looking at whole body strength and cognitive function. And this is just- this is one of many papers, right, that has come out showing us the link between, uh, robustness, strength, and it's not even necessarily muscle mass, right? So it's like not- we don't all have to look like CBUM, right, after all, or you, um, to- to procure better brains. It's just about being strong in body and resistance training is the best way to- to- to do that and optimizing for protein again. And so yeah. I mean, right there...

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 Okay, so if that- if that's the- the- the demon's prescription of what you would do if you wanted to unset it, when it comes to strategies and tactics that people can lean on, um, uh, a food type, any supplementation, any other sort of lifestyle interventions, what is there on the- on the sort of positive side?

Max Lugavere 1:14:17 Yeah. So, the- (sighs) it's- it's very, um, the- the diet dementia recommendations are- (clears throat) All the evidence is- I don't wanna say weak, but we have- the- the best sort of idea for what a brain-healthful diet might look like is referred to as the MIND diet, which is this sort of diet that's been cobbled together by an epidemiologist of observational research that combines the- some of the attributes of the Mediterranean diet with some of the attributes of the DASH diet, which is the dietary approach to stop hypertension, because again, hypertension is one of these important modifiable risk factors. Hypertension is high blood pressure. So it's the Mediterranean diet combined with the DASH diet, with a sprinkling of, you know, foods that we've found specifically play a brain-beneficial role. For example, blueberries, right? The MIND diet only recommends, uh, in terms of fruit, the only fruit that the MIND diet recommends- makes a recommendation for are blueberries, right?

Chris Williamson 1:15:27 Pretty dialed as a fruit. I know that we want more, but it's- blueberries are elite. Blueberries, pineapples, bananas, triple A rated fruits for me.

Max Lugavere 1:15:37 Yeah. No, blueberries are great. But I think that's where the limitations of that kind of, like, dietary recommendation comes in, because avocados are a fruit, and if I had to- if I had to pick a fruit that I thought was potentially most beneficial to the brain, I think avocados are actually probably the most beneficial fruit to the brain, because they have the highest proportion of fat protecting, specifically fat-protecting antioxidants of any fruit or vegetable, which is of particular relevance to the brain, because the brain is made of fat, and not just any type of fat, but the brain is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are especially damage prone. They're the most chemically unstable of fatty acids. You have your polyunsaturated fatty acids, your monounsaturated fatty acids, and your saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids being the most chemically stable, but your brain is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fats. DHA fat, docosahexaenoic acid, and arachidonic acid. Um, and so we need to protect these fats, right? The brain is a crucible for oxidative stress because it's metabolizing 25% of every breath you take in a container the size of a grapefruit, so it makes up 2 to 3% of your body's mass yet accounts for 25% of your body's oxygen metabolism. So again, crucible for oxidative stress. What can help protect the brain under those circumstances? Antioxidants. And so fat-protecting antioxidants are really important. I think avocados are, again, one of the best brain foods that you can consume. They're also rich in compounds like lutein and zeaxanthin which we know are really supportive of cognitive function, wonderful source of potassium, which we know is, uh, really important for cardiovascular health. So, you know, the MIND diet is a great starting place, but there was just a randomized control trial that put the MIND diet, compared the- the- the MIND diet in a at-risk population, I believe, um, and found no benefit over just a calorie deficit in an older adult population.

Chris Williamson 1:17:31 (laughs)

Max Lugavere 1:17:31 So you see what I'm saying? So nutrition science is incredibly weak and that's where you have to- you can't be- you can't be prone to scientism, which is like this, you know, adherence to scientific data as if it is religious doctrine. That's just not- not how it works, right? Like nutrition science is harder to study than drug- than drugs, and yet it's much less well-funded. So a whole foods diet is my prescription. It's a diet that incorporates both animal products, I think grass-fed, grass-finished red meat is a brain health superfood, along with avocados and dark leafy greens and, um, shellfish I think