2 Shocking Ingredients Triggering Alzheimer's & Brain Inflammation (You're Eating!) | Max Lugavere

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   I'm actually very sensitive to foods which, you know, you may regard as a curse or potentially a blessing, because I get an immediate reaction to certain foods, and it comes in the way of mucus, or I feel that my sinuses are clogging up. So I rarely get that at home because, you know, I've sorted out my diet, so I know what agrees with me, which is basically a whole food diet. But when I'm out, of course, it's a lot more variable. Even if I feel that I'm ordering something that I think I'm gonna be okay with, you know, it's not like a life-threatening allergy, but I can feel it afterwards. I can feel it when I'm lying in bed at night that there's mucus being produced. And there's a local Thai restaurant that we really like, and over the past two years, if we ever go there, I just take my own oil. It's just down the road. Like, if we ever feel like it, and I know them there. I said, "Hey, guys, can you cook it in this for me?" And they do, and when they cook it in the oil I provide for them, I don't feel a thing. So I get to enjoy it. I'm not kidding myself that it suddenly makes it really, really healthy. But I'm sure that's purely down to the oil, and I think that really speaks to the point you're making, right? Which is these oils can be problematic for us if consumed in large amounts. Now, I don't take that oil with me everywhere I go. This is in the town I live, a local restaurant that we like eating in. If I'm in London or I'm traveling, I don't take my own oil with me. I, you know, I take the hit. And I know to some people it's an extreme thing to do, take oil with you. But for me, like, that works for me. I'm very happy with that. I feel I've got that sort of balance right.

2. MLMax Lugavere1:43

   Yeah. I, I love that. And, um, and I think, you know, you're somebody who's, like, clearly taking, taking his health into his own hands, which I think is really important. You know, wellness and, and healthcare is something that we, we need to realize is something that we institute in ourselves-

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:00

   Yeah

4. MLMax Lugavere2:00

   ... when we are negotiating with ourselves, for example, to get off the couch and go to the gym or when we're pushing our shopping cart, uh, around the supermarket. I think it's, it's super important to be-- to take an active role in this, as you clearly do. But there's one, there's one other aspect of, of seed oils that I think is, like, worth talking about. My passion is, um, food and brain health.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:21

   Yeah.

6. MLMax Lugavere2:21

   And, and specifically dementia prevention. I think this is, like, a really important topic, and we don't know the long-term brain health outcomes of, uh, regularly chronically ingesting these types of fats. These fats are primarily, um, polyunsaturated, so it's some combination of, you know, linoleic acid or, uh, you know, the omega-6 dominant, um, fatty acids and alpha-linolenic acid, which is the, uh, plant-based form of omega-3s, um, which is incidentally, uh, more pr- even more prone to oxidation, more vulnerable than linole- l- linoleic acid. And the brain is primarily composed of these kinds of polyunsaturated fats, and these fats have easy access to the brain because they're what constitute our brains. And we don't have any long-term data on this mass public experiment being played out on a public stage where we're consuming three times more, um, of these kinds of fats than we did at the beginning of, of last century, right? And so we don't know the, the, the implications. And so that right there, that looming question mark, uh, about what these kinds of fats do to the brain, which, by the way, lipid peroxidation is a major... So the, the, the fact that these oils are so prone to damage, um, is a major driver of, um, brain disease.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:42

   Yeah.

8. MLMax Lugavere3:42

   Right? It's, it's contributing, it's a contributing factor to Alzheimer's disease. Um, it's a big problem. So we don't know. However, there was a 2021 randomized control trial in humans led by, the first author was Ramsden, and it looked at people who are prone to, um, migraine, right? So migraine is interesting because there's a neuroinflammatory component to migraine, right? And it's something that you feel. Like, you feel with unmistakable certainty. And I actually personally myself, um, occasionally suffer from migraines, a couple, you know, one, once or twice a month. And what this randomized control trial found was that they took three groups. One group was left to their control diet, you know, their, their, this, whatever diet they were, they had been consuming. The second group was given more omega-3s to consume, so about a gram and a half a day of omega-3s. And we know that omega-3 fatty acids are great because they resolve the inflammatory process, and most people underconsume omega-3 fatty acids. So the thinking was that that would be enough to maybe, um, bring the symptomology down on these, on these migraineurs, people who are suffering from chronic migraine, right? But then the third group, what they did was they gave them also the omega-3s, the one and a half grams of omega-3s to consume daily, and they also told them to reduce their intake of linoleic acid, which is the primary fatty acid found in these grain and seed oils that we're talking about, right? And what they found was that in terms of headache frequency and severity, the group that was told not just to increase their omega-3 intake but to also reduce their consumption of these polyunsaturated fat dominant grain and seed oils, the kinds of oils that we were talking about, right? Canola oil-

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:25

   Mm

10. MLMax Lugavere5:25

    ... corn oil, grapeseed oil, soybean oil. They saw twice the reduction in migraine frequency and severity when they were ingesting more omega-3s and also concurrently reduced their intake of these, uh, grain and seed oils. So very telling.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:42

    Yeah.

12. MLMax Lugavere5:42

    The study involved about 200 participants, you know? Certainly should be replicated, um, you know, to, to confirm those findings, but I think very interesting. And again, there's a neuroinflammatory component here to migraines, and the fact that these oils are, are, according to this study, likely contributing in some way in this 16-week trial-I just think very interesting and, and worth paying attention to

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:05

    Yeah. That is so interesting, Max. It makes me think about my clinical practice, and you know full well that, uh, medical doctors like me are not really given much training in nutrition or lifestyle interventions and how they can help our patients. Um, if anything, we, we may hear a little bit about it for weight loss and type 2 diabetes, but beyond that, you know, depression, anxiety, migraines, all kinds of other conditions, really there's nothing around food, um, and how it can help. Now, what we do get when we get taught about migraines at medical school is we get told there are some foods, red wine and cheese, that may be contributing to migraines. So most doctors, if we have a patient who is struggling with migraines, we may inquire about red wine intake and cheese intake and, you know, potentially recommend our patients reduce them. And sometimes, you know, you get-- you hit the jackpot, and you're like, "Okay, great," and other times it doesn't seem to make a difference. But probably for about 10 years now, with pretty much all of my migraine patients, and frankly [laughs] pretty much all of my chronic disease patients full stop, I will go through a process of helping them completely change their diet, certainly for a two, three-week period, just to see if you go all whole foods, if you cut out all processed foods for two to three weeks, what happens? And more often than not, there is some improvement, but often there is complete reversal, or some of the symptoms just go away. Now, I've seen that in migraines, again, to be really clear, not with every migraine, but with many migraine sufferers, I found that w- after this two, three-week trial onto a whole food diet, their migraine frequency would go right down. Now, I didn't know what exactly it was in the diet that was causing it, and bit by bit, I helped them sort of reintroduce foods to see what it potentially might be. But this trial from 2021 now is making me think, well, maybe for a significant proportion of those patients, it was actually the fact that their oils changed. They weren't eating, you know, those highly processed, refined oils that are in ultra-processed foods. But also, I would always encourage them to cook their food with extra virgin olive oil and pour extra virgin olive oil onto their salad. So that's really, really interesting.

14. MLMax Lugavere8:32

    Absolutely. And, you know, extra virgin olive oil has an anti-inflammatory aspect to it. It's got-- It contains a compound called oleocanthal, which is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen, which is incredible 'cause ibuprofen and all other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, chronic use of those types of drugs, as you know, Rangan, are associated with cardiovascular risks.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:55

    Yeah.

16. MLMax Lugavere8:55

    Right? So with extra virgin olive oil, you get all the upside, um, of taking, like, tiny doses of, of these, of this category of drugs, but none of the downside. And I'll also add that Ramsden 2021 study, the patients who were on this intervention of simultaneously increasing their omega-3 intake and decreasing their intake of industrially refined grain and seed oils, they also, I believe they were able to cut their usage of NSAID drugs in half. So they were, they, they were able to take less drugs.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:27

    Yeah.

18. MLMax Lugavere9:27

    Right? Like, so this clearly proves that, in a way, food is, is a form of medicine, particularly if you're a, a migraine sufferer.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:34

    Yeah, yeah. Really, really powerful. Um, okay, Max. So, so far, ultra-processed foods we wanna reduce as much as we can. People have heard that on the show before. I hope each time they hear it, they just reduce it a little bit more, uh, in the context of their lifestyle, what they feel is achievable for them. You mentioned to really be aware of these refined, uh, seed oils, uh, try and limit them as much as possible. You know, try and introduce more extra virgin olive oil. Any other foods that we should think about sort of reducing and cutting out of our diets?

20. MLMax Lugavere10:08

    I mean, I think it's always important to underscore the insidious nature of added sugar today in Western diets.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:14

    Yeah.

22. MLMax Lugavere10:15

    Um, so I, I would say that added sugar is something that people need to become, uh, as well more mindful of and to do their best to, to minimize. Today, your average, uh, adult consumes about 77 grams of added sugar. So this is sugar, um, removed from the food matrix again and sugar for which we have no biological requirement. 77 grams of added sugar every single day. So just to visualize what that looks like, that's about 19 teaspoons of sugar, um, added sugar that, that adults are ingesting every day. That's way more than, you know, even if you were to look to the dietary guidelines, for example, like, you know, in our country, we have the USDA, um, or the American Heart Association even. This is way more, almost double, um, the, the recommended amount. And when you consume that amount of sugar, first of all, sugar, again, dose makes the poison, as with most things. It's not inherently fattening, but it does contribute empty calories to the diet, and it also contributes to the fact that, um, it contributes to the hyperpalatable characteristic of, of most, uh, ultra-processed foods, you know, the added sugar, um, component. It's insidious, as I mentioned, so you can't, you know, it's just, it's h- it tends to be hidden. Um, whether it's in commercial bread products or sauces, um, added sugar seems to be everywhere. We know that glycemic variability, um, is associated with increased feelings of hunger, so eating a high-sugar, um, snack or meal could actually perpetuate feelings of hunger as opposed to, uh, satiate, um, you know, and then to reduce feelings of hunger-

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:50

    Yeah

24. MLMax Lugavere11:50

    ... which is, you know, kind of ironic and counterproductive. Um, we know that high sugar boluses, meaning, you know, uh, in one single meal, consuming a very high amount of sugar has been associated with, uh, a drop in testosterone by about 25%. Um, we can see that high sugar boluses, uh, increase systolic blood pressure-Um, and this seems to persist for hours after in- ingestion.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:15

    Mm-hmm.

26. MLMax Lugavere12:16

    We know that high blood pressure is a risk factor for not just stroke and cardiovascular disease, but also for dementia. Um, you know, we, we rely on the, on the healthy functioning of the blood vessels that supply fuel and nutrients to the brain. And so they've shown this in, um ... Actually, these are oral glucose tolerance tests where they'll, they'll use 75 gram boluses of, uh, glucose. And they show that when you give this to a patient, you see an elevation in their blood sugar, right? Now, this is just in, in one setting, but we tend to consume, um, that amount of sugar on a daily basis.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:48

    Mm.

28. MLMax Lugavere12:49

    So I don't know if there's a threshold effect that occurs, but it's reasonable, um, to assume that, you know, consuming that level of sugar on a daily basis, uh, isn't good for our blood pressure, isn't good for our hormone health. In fact, we see that added sugar consumption is associated with reduced testosterone in men. Um, and so, yeah, definitely being mindful of the added sugar and, uh, and, and doing your best to minimize that, um, I think crucially important. And, and one of the big problems, I think, in, in contributing to this insidious nature of it, is that sugar tends to go by many different names-

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:23

    Yeah

30. MLMax Lugavere13:23

    ... um, in the food supply.

Episode duration: 17:05