#2170 - Max Lugavere

And it's a project that means the world to me. I think it's the most important thing I've ever done. And it's the first ever dementia prevention documentary about the science of dementia prevention. But it focuses. It's a very emotional and personal film for me because it follows my mom, who for many years suffered from a rare form of dementia called lewy body dementia. Which is akin to having both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease at the same time.

And there's a lot of controversy within the field. The last time I was here, we talked about, you know, fraud in the in the research space. With regard to the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia? And actually, finally, over the past month, that paper was finally retracted. It took two years, but.

This was ultimately this amyloid beta protein, which forms the plaque, and.

Trial after trial has been a dismal, had been a dismal failure, and it wasn't looking good. Until in 2006, a paper was published in Nature, which for any scientist publishing in Nature, it's like winning an academy award, and that paper, essentially what that did, was it? It allegedly identified this variant of amyloid beta that connected the plaque to the cognitive dysfunction, so the most important clinical feature of Alzheimer's disease. Because for a long time, it was known that cognitively healthy people accumulate plaque in their brains, and that plaque doesn't seem to correlate with cognitive impairment or anything like that. And so that was very deflating for researchers in the field until this 2006 paper came out. And what it did was it renewed faith in this, in this hypothesis, which was always a hypothesis. And continued to send billions and billions of dollars worth of funding down this path.

And what turned out to be the case just two years ago was that that paper was essentially fraudulent. And it represented about 16 years worth of wasted time, wasted money. Which was hugely deflating for not just the research community, but also for any patient who's ever suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

And you know, the way that the field is now slowly starting to turn. But this is a drum that I've been beating for the past 10 years. Is that we really need to start talking about these conditions in terms of prevention? And that's what inspired me to set down this path of creating this documentary. Little empty boxes.

In the paper, they identify these proteins that they isolated in rat models of the condition mouse models of the condition called A-beta-Star-56.

Again, Amyloid is there at the scene of the crime, so to speak. So when you have Alzheimer's disease, somebody who's died of Alzheimer's disease. What they find, inevitably in the brains of cadavers who've died from Alzheimer's disease are two features. They see this aggregation of these plaques, amyloid beta plaques and tangled proteins called TAU. And so it was a very seductive narrative that this plaque causes the condition, right? For years. The problem is, they've succeeded at reducing the plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. But that hasn't led to any improvement in the clinically meaningful features of the disease that we aspire to improve for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease.

The cognitive function.

And in tandem with that, we see that amyloid is produced naturally in all brains, and people who are cognitively healthy have amyloid in their brains. There's a degree of amyloid burden that seems to be inevitable as a general phenomena due to aging. And so it was becoming very clear that amyloid is not the causative feature here, that there is some other factor or factors at play which lead to cognitive degeneration. Until 2006 and in 2006, what happened? This paper basically found this subtype that, when injected into a mouse, caused profound cognitive dysfunction.

And what they did was they illustrated these proteins in what's called a Western blot analysis, which is basically a graphical depiction of proteins.

And the peer review process for papers? I mean, people go in and they crunch the numbers and stuff. But they don't look at like imagery, and they don't go through the imagery. With a fine tooth comb to make sure that it hasn't been photoshopped essentially, but one sleuth, who is a scientist himself? This researcher from Vanderbilt, named Matthew Schrag, actually identified that a lot of these images had artifacts that made it very clear that they were faked.

But no, I don't think that there's.

As far as I know.

God, yeah.

I mean, like countless papers that have been since published that have referenced that paper in 2006, that Nature paper that was finally retracted. I mean, think about the lost time, think about the needless suffering. Yeah, and it's my view that dementia, essentially, by the time you are diagnosed with dementia, we'll say Alzheimer's disease, you are in late stage Alzheimer's disease.

Whether it's mild, whether you were just diagnosed yesterday, it's this is a disease of midlife, with symptoms that appear in late life. And so that's why the field is now slowly, hopefully, I hope, pivoting more towards prevention.

And where the money I think needs to go is into identifying that golden biomarker that's associated with the onset of the condition, so that clinicians can intervene earlier. Because right now, when you catch it, it's sort of like pancreatic cancer, which incidentally, my mom passed from in 2018. But it's, you know, pancreatic cancer. Most of the time it's diagnosed and it's too late. The tumor is already metastasized, and so this is kind of similar with Alzheimer's disease.

By the time it's diagnosed, it's already. You're already very late in the game. There's widespread neuronal dysfunction. Glucose metabolism in the brain is diminished by 50. So it's again you're catching it in its latest stages, ultimately.

And that's why I think Alzheimer's drug trials have a 99 99.

6. Fail rate. Because by the time you catch it, I think reversing it is, you know, impossible. It's slowed with exercise, with a multimodal dietary and lifestyle intervention. But yeah, it's really sad. And so that's why. 10 years ago, when I saw this developing in my mom and I stumbled upon all this research and I began really diving in. It became very clear to me that this is something that anybody with a brain needs to be aware of and talking about.

Like, what is it?

But that affects that makes up a very tiny proportion of overall Alzheimer's incidence, and similarly with Parkinson's disease, the heritability of Parkinson's disease is very low. I mean, and I definitely want to talk about Parkinson's disease because there's a lot of really interesting new research in that field.

But by and large, with regard to Alzheimer's disease, you have what are called your non-modifiable risk factors, which are your age. You can't change your age, your gender, you can't change your gender and your genes. You can't change your genes, although you can affect how your genes express themselves, which is known as epigenetics. But then you have your modifiable risk factors, which I think is so exciting, because these are the risk factors that you have agency over. You can control obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes.

I mean, these are all nutritionally mediated, obviously, which I love talking about nutrition and nutrition insofar as it can prevent or reverse obesity. I think that's incredibly empowering. Type 2 diabetes If you have Type 2 diabetes, your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease increases between two and fourfold. They're actually now we interviewed in my documentary, the researcher who coined the term type 3 diabetes.

Have you heard that? Are you familiar with that concept? No, I haven't, so it's looking a lot like. Alzheimer's disease might in fact be a form of diabetes of the brain, which is a mind-blowing way to think about this condition.

And in fact, we see that peripheral insulin resistance, so the hallmark of type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance. And we see that. The more insulin resistant a person is, the more difficulty their brains seem to have with regard to creating ATP, which is the primary energy currency of our cells. And the researcher who coined Type 3 diabetes? Her name is Suzanne Delamonte. She's a Brown University researcher, and she is in no way in the public sphere. She's a, you know, purely a bench researcher.

She's actually in my documentary, it was like, incredible to get to interview her and speak to her. But it seems that insulin resistance causes the brain to suffer in many ways. It damages the blood vessels. Ultimately, when you have type 2 diabetes, it damages the blood vessels that supply the brain with oxygen, nutrients, energy.

But it also seems to impair. There also seems to be an aspect of insulin resistance that reduces the brain's ability to generate energy.

But ultimately, she revealed to me and the rest of my family that she had sought the help of a neurologist. And that seemed odd. You know, why would my mom? I hadn't had any prior family incidents of dementia, anything like that. Why was my mom suddenly going to see a neurologist?

And but, you know, like I was still in L..A. living my life. I was in my late 20s at the time, but it wasn't until a trip to Miami....

My family went down to Miami to hang out with my dad because my parents had been separated and my mom was in the kitchen. And she confessed to the family that she'd been having memory problems at this point, so it had been described as brain fog, but she revealed that she had sought the help of a neurologist. And, you know, me and my brothers and my dad. We were in total disbelief. That my mom was having anything outside of the could possibly be having anything outside of the realm of ordinary. And so we were kind of mocking her in a way.

And we said, Well, if you're really having such profound problems, what month is it? Or I think it was like, what year is it? or something like that? And she couldn't recall. she couldn't recall what the month was.

And she started to cry. And at that point, for me, that's when I knew that something was really wrong, that I needed to step in. Because, you know, when you're sick, it is a really, that's a really scary place to be.

It could be frustrating, it could be confusing. And you know, when you're in these doctor's offices and they're, you know, oftentimes they don't have the best bedside manner, and they run a battery of esoteric tests.

It can be incredibly overwhelming and it becomes really hard to advocate for yourself. I've learned as somebody with a chronic illness, not least of which a chronic illness that's affecting your cognition. And so I decided at that point....

Essentially that I had to pack up my l.

A life. I moved back to New York, and I started going with my mom from doctor's visit to doctor's visit. And again, you know, I'm pretty privileged. Grew up in New York City.

My mom had health insurance resources. We started going, you know, to all of these different cathedrals, to Western medicine, academic medical insight. And in every instance, I experienced what I've come to call over time. Adios diagnose and Adios. A physician, would, you know, run. These tests titrate up the dose of a medication that she was already on.

One physician actually thought that all of her symptoms were due to depression. There's this idea of the hysterical woman. Today. One in four women over the age of 40 are on an antidepressant drug, you know, one in four, yeah, over the age of 40..

Jesus Christ, yeah.

I mean, I'm not saying there's no use for them, those kinds of drugs, but they're very over-prescribed. I don't think that's controversial. And so my mom was given one of these drugs without full informed consent. I don't think I mean. Ultimately, we tried to get her off of them, which we found out was incredibly difficult to do. Titrating off one of these SSris is really, really hard, actually.

And it turned out obviously to be the case that my mom that these symptoms were not due to depression, they were due to degeneration in her brain. And we went from doctor's office to doctor's office, ultimately culminating in a trip to the Cleveland clinic. So just imagine like, we're in New York City, right? We have, like, multiple hospitals at our disposal.

We had to book a trip to the Cleveland Clinic and it was there that, for the first time. My mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition. So she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at that time. And that, to me, was I'd never. I've always been a pretty chill guy, but that was the first time in my life I'd ever....

I've ever had a panic attack just googling the drugs, you know, like a scared, like any scared kid would do when their mom receives a life-changing diagnosis. And that was the moment for me that I realized that my life had to pivot. And I had no choice but to dedicate myself to learning all that I could about these conditions.

You know, trying to acting in a reactionary way to something that had taken decades to manifest to me just seemed wrong.

And I stumbled upon the work of a neurologist at Weill Cornell, New York Presbyterian, who was talking about Alzheimer's disease as a preventable condition. Which is not something that I'd heard prior to coming across his work. And I realized at that time that this was like, considered 10 years ago a fringe idea, dementia prevention was like a fringe idea. Except for through the lens of this neurologist who was working within the confines of, you know, rigorous randomized research, and, you know, and checking all the boxes for scientific credibility.

And so, to me, it became really clear that this is a topic that I needed to help amplify. Using my skill set as a non-medical doctor, as a non-academic scientist. And I also learned really early on that it's not a genetic condition, that we have genetic risk factors, but that we have a say when it comes to our cognitive destiny. That this is not a natural part of aging. I mean, you know, everything in the body as you get older tends to falter in its functionality, you know, like our joints don't work as well. And you know, there is a degree of forgetfulness that I think is in a way a natural aspect of getting older. But cognitive impairment, that's not natural degeneration of our neurons, of, you know of, for example, the portion of the brain that drives movement, the substantia nigra, which occurs in Parkinson's disease. That's not normal.

And so it began this investigation. For me, trying to understand, because I was seeing the person who meant the most to me of anybody in life. You know, degenerating every day in front of my face, getting worse and worse and worse. It instilled this burning desire in me to understand all that I could, and to share. In the hopes that it might prevent it from happening to others.

And yeah, it was also very odd because my maternal grandmother did not have dementia, so it was really sad and surreal. In fact, that my mom was increasingly requiring around-the-clock care. While her mother, who lived in the same home and was 30 years older, was cognitively totally healthy, it was just the oddest thing. My grandmother, my mom's mom, was in her 90s and totally cognitively healthy, able to form cogent senses. And my mom was struggling to express an idea to get out of a bathroom.

And it just to me, it was so shocking that I, you know, it was traumatic. I mean, I still have PTSD, I think from those days, but it's, yeah. It's motivated me to do what I can to help. And I saw all in every, you know, by the end of my mom's life, she was on 14 different pharmaceuticals. And I'm not anti-pharma. Like, if there was a drug that would have actually helped my mom, I would have been first in line at the pharmacy to fill that prescription for her.

But the drugs don't work at all, and physicians are very quick to, you know, to write a prescription to, like, add a new drug to the arsenal. They're very reluctant to deprescribe. I have never seen a prescription deprescribe to my mom. And by the end of her life, she was on 14 different pharmaceuticals.

And there's nobody on earth that understands how all of those different drugs are interacting in a system that's growing increasingly frail. It was just really sad.

And, you know, so I started to investigate these modifiable risk factors, you know whether it's dietary, diet related, which it, you know, in my mom's case. It may have had something to do with her diet over the years, it might have had nothing to do with her diet over the years. I'll never know. But also now we're starting to see that air pollution is a major contributor to neurodegeneration. We're starting to see now that well. As of 2020, it was acknowledged that exposure to air pollution is actually one of these newly identified model modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.

So, exposure to fine particulate matter PM 2.

5 actually might cause Alzheimer's disease for some patients. And then, most interestingly, and this is one of the things that I want to talk about with you, which I came across. The work of a neurologist named Dr. Ray Dorsey, who's over at University of Rochester, who's done a lot of work. Publishing. On the link between environmental toxicants and Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease is now the fastest growing brain disease, and my mom's condition actually had more in common with Parkinson's disease than it did Alzheimer's disease.

She had lewy body dementia, which has more in common with Parkinson's, even though they're both dementia, Lewy body and Alzheimer's. But there's data now linking exposure to certain herbicides and pesticides to Parkinson's disease. Dramatically increased risk, anywhere between two and a half to six fold increased risk.

Yeah, it's crazy.

We use it here. And occupational exposure to this compound is associated with between two and a half to three times a risk for the development of Parkinson's disease. Related compounds are literally used in mouse models to create Parkinson's disease.

And the company that creates it has been under investigation for years. And what has now come to light is that they knew about the fact that. These chemicals accumulate in the brain, in brain tissue, and they seem to selectively target the region of the brain associated with Parkinson's disease, the substantia nigra.

So I know some people listening might say, Oh, here we go with the appeal to nature fallacy. But it's very clear that occupational exposure is very hazardous. You have to be licensed, you have to use this stuff very carefully. But some people actually use it to off themselves.

I mean, it's a really toxic compound. And we now have data suggesting that it creates this condition, that it selectively targets and destroys dopamine, producing neurons that mediate movement. And it's used in cereal grains, things like that.

And I know a lot of people love nicotine, obviously for its cognitive boosting effects. I'm not going to say that it's a healthy compound. I mean, I think that it has cardiovascular repercussions and the like, but there seems to be a. And, of course, smoking is terrible for you.

I will occasionally use nicotine as a cognitive enhancer, but I also have chronic low back issues. And I think that, you know, for people with disc issues, this is just a speculation. But I think that it's probably not a good idea to chronically use nicotine. If you have disc issues, which are already, your discs in your back are already poorly vascularized.

And nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, and smoking, you know, increases your risk for Alzheimer's disease. I don't think that we've identified a relationship between pure nicotine and, well, pretty much anything. The research on pure nicotine, by itself, is pretty sparse. Most of the research on the health effects of nicotine is confounded by smoking, which is obviously not good for you.

But interestingly, there does seem to be an inverse relationship between nicotine use, even via smoking, and parkinsonism. So people who smoke cigarettes seem to be protected to some degree against Parkinson's disease. Which is very odd. And they've shown in mouse models that nicotine actually when they use some of these mitochondrial toxins, some of these poisons, like paraquat, right? Or another one called MPTP, which has been used as a street party drug, but it's actually profoundly neurotoxic.

It's been shown to create chronic parkinsonism with just acute use. Nicotine actually prevents that in those models, so it's been shown to somehow protect the brain from, in some regards, against Parkinson's disease. So I wouldn't recommend using nicotine unless somebody. And this is again a speculation. But my hypothesis is that if you were exposed occupationally to some of these compounds, like paraquat or rodanone. Or there are other compounds that are being directly connected to Parkinson's disease, too, like trichloroethylene, I would say, maybe nicotine is a potentially disease-modifying intervention in those contexts.

It's terrible for you, yeah, but that's the interesting thing is that nicotine. It's thought that nicotine protects this one region of the brain in a significant way.

But it is, I mean, it does seem to do if you set the vascular effects aside, which might play a role in neurodegeneration. Because, you know, the brain relies on its vascular network, the brain, you know, is a very hungry organ. And vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia, actually. But nicotine does seem to have some really protective effects on the brain. It seems to reduce neuroinflammation.

It might act in a way as an antioxidant in the brain. I'm not recommending it because there are risks, of course, but they've shown that. It seems to be protective in these animal models against these poisons that would otherwise cause parkinsonism.

And some other cool facts about nicotine. Actually, because I did do a little bit of a deep dive recently into it because I do notice a cognitive benefit when I use it. How do you use it? I just use it, I use it like before.

And I don't have an addictive personality, so for me, I'm not like, you know, it's not something that I feel compelled to do every day, but I do it before. Like, I have to go on like a TV show or do a big podcast or something. And and I do see, you know, I do definitely see, like a cognitive like, you know, it's a stimulant, that's that's pretty well known.

But um, but yeah, nicotine also. It has a very short half-life, so it's half-life is only about two hours. I mean, you compare that to coffee, coffee is like eight hours, so it's it's relatively transient in your system.

But then I think the more interesting compound is is its primary metabolite, which is called cotinine, which it's. Cotinine's half-life is 20 hours long. And it seems to also boost cognitive function, mental health, insofar as animal models can show us that these compounds boost mental health. Might even enhance what's called fear extinction. So for people with PTSD, it might play a role. So it's a it's a really interesting compound, but you know again, it's it's highly addictive.

And um, what is cotinine? It's nicotine's primary metabolite in the body, so when you ingest nicotine, nicotine lasts in the body. Only about the half-life is two hours, so it lasts presumably about four hours, um, but it converts to this compound called called cotinine in the body.

And the half-life of that compound is about 20 hours, so it's in your system for a long time. And that compound doesn't have any of the negative side effects of nicotine. It just seems to do all these interesting, cool.

That's in cough syrup.

It can be detected in urine. Cotinine can remain in the body a day or more, nicotine disappears within a few hours.

What are other than the environmental factors, what dietary factors contribute? Except obviously pesticides and herbicides that are unfortunately a part of our food system now.

S Environmental Protection Agency certified Lab, The lab found that 65 of the bandages contained detectable levels of synthetic forever chemicals, or PFAS.

We know this is a real thing. Why wouldn't corporations use that, too, especially if they could farm that off and be removed from it? As far as like being able to trace back the paperwork?

I mean, these companies, they, they pay, these people that are body positive influencers as well, you know, so they're, they're basically paying people that are ill. Because of eating these things, to tell other people it's okay to eat these things. And that it's somehow or another phobic, whether it's fat phobic or whatever it is, to not encourage body positivity, and it's stupid, it's just stupid.

It's stupid for the people that are getting it, it's stupid for the people that are promoting it. It's stupid for our culture to be inundated with this nonsense and misinformation. Where we have to sort through it and try to do deeper research and conduct, you know, consult people who actually understand what's going on. It's so disheartening that we live in this world. It's so compromised by money that information about key things like your own health is so distorted that it's hard.

Like, you know, you talk to people and so many people have like a basic misunderstanding of what is good and not good for you. And all of it is because of this kind of thing that it's just so prevalent and it's so confusing. And you're getting expert advice from people, which is one of the wildest ones for me when you look at.

And they end up failing at that. Because it's really hard to moderate your consumption of these foods, which have been engineered to be consumed quickly and regularly.

And then they feel as though they're, you know, they feel, they feel moral failure. And and then it just creates this vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting. We're not being honest about the way that these foods impact behavior. And today, 60 of the calories that your average person consumes comes from ultra processed foods, which are foods that are highly calorie dense. They are nutrient poor.

They are minimally satiating, they're uber delicious. I mean, they push your brain to a bliss point beyond which self controls is seemingly impossible. And by the way, it's these ultra processed foods that are a major route of ingestion for these kinds of chemicals that we're talking about. These industrial chemicals, forever chemicals. You know, ultra processed foods are, you know? If you want more phthalates in your body, consume more ultra processed foods. There was a study that recently was published that found that for every 10 increment in ultra processed food consumption, pregnant women were ingesting about 14 higher levels of these phthalates. Right?

I mean, you had, you did such an amazing episode with Shauna Swan a couple years ago. Talking about the fact that our exposure to these chemicals are reducing the anal genital distance in boys, right? Which is a very easy, I don't know if easy is the right term. But it's a very simple proxy to use to identify how these compounds might be affecting us, right? But that's only what you can observe, like, how are these chemicals affecting us in other ways?

And um, and so it's crazy. And and these are the kinds of, these are the kinds of foods that we're just eating and mass, day in and day out. And 60 is the average. Children consume about 70 ultra processed foods today. On average, Black Americans, unfortunately, consume 80 ultra processed foods.

And there's obviously this. This is not all choice, there are systemic issues. Many people today still live in food deserts. Accessibility is an issue, cost is an issue.

I know all that, but the messaging that we're getting from our most trusted sources is essentially that everything's fine. Just eat less, move more.

And you have people expressing that. How could someone say that when there's so much data on the efficacy of vitamins and the benefit of vitamin supplementation?

And not Strawman, the opposing viewpoint, but actually Steelman the opposing viewpoint like to actually make clear what the opposing viewpoint is, and then to refute that viewpoint.

I hope I don't. I had a health scare in 2022. That, um, you know, just proved to me that. You know, there is a lot of like luck that goes into this, you know, into this equation as well. My back hurts, I don't know how to fix that.

Like, you know.

And then, um, so it's like, basically a dehydrated disc. And uh, which I got from just squatting improperly 10 years ago and my back's like never been the same since.

Hmm, and it's phenomenal.

Yeah, we have the rogue version of it out there in the studio. I could show it to you after we're done here, but I love it. It's phenomenal and it's. It's great for developing leg strength and hamstring strength and glute strength, but really, I use it for lower back, for decompression. Show a video, Jamie, if you would, so you could, we could see how it worked.

This is Louie, Uh, he was on the podcast back in the day. He was an amazing guy and very innovative, so he was a power lifter and developed some back problems himself. But you see how on the downswing, it's it's actually pulling your back and you can feel it pull your back.

So you can feel it like separate everything, you feel like little things pop in there and it provides relief. And for him, they were telling them he had to get his disc fused because he had too much compression. He said. Well, what about decompression? And they were reluctant to consider that.

Have you done any decompression stuff? I bought this thing that you like, hang upside down on it that, uh, you know, I mean, this was like a couple of years ago. Um, I don't know if it helped that much, you know, it actually has helped me a lot.

What I took up, uh, during the pandemic, boxing, really, yeah.

You need to strengthen it, for sure, this is better. Um, another thing, when you're talking about the hanging, you're talking about a teeter, right? Which teeter? I'd like, that, that unit, but Teeter makes what I think is a far better unit, which is the decks whoa.

And so we have that outside, too. And what that does is instead of hanging from your ankles, so your legs tense up and your legs resist the weight of your body. Instead of that, everything hinges down from your hips, and you will like and immediately feel. When you get on there, you're back popping and decompressing. I use that every day.

It's called the Decks D e X Two, and, uh, you know, just buy it off Amazon, it's not expensive. You also could do back extension exercises on it. It's very versatile machine, but, man, for decompressing the back, I've never found anything better.

That's awesome, and I also use those kinds of things with weight. So, uh, what I'll do is I'll hold a two 20 pound dumbbells in my hands and I'll do back extensions. So I'm developing strength around all those lower back issues, I've had a lot of back issues from distant generation, from jujitsu, you know, 20 years of wrestling with men and getting your neck strangled.

And it's like, it does a lot of stuff to your, to your back, that's not good.

Once they cut my back open, it was never the same. There's ways to also deal with it with stem cells, and one of the things they're doing now, because the F.D.A. has such restrictive rules on stem cells. People are going overseas and other countries to do it. And, uh, I have some friends that run a clinic down in Tijuana, the Cellular Performance Institute. And I know many people, including a good friend of mine, my friend Shane Dorian, who is a world champion surfer who's had pretty severe back problems.

He went there and they they're injecting directly into the discs, and there's a very strict protocol of recovery. You're not doing anything physical for, like, a couple of months, after that, you can walk. Essentially, they don't want any stress on the back, anything that's going to impede the healing process.

He said Within six months after that, all of the issues that he had went away. Wow, getting up in the morning, it was always like, Oh, just stiff, no stiff. Like a new back now.

So they do that, the discectomy, they'll take a chunk of your disc out, that's pressing against the nerve. But now, guess what? Now you have less disc tissue, you have less cushioning in between your spinal column, which is not good. And this is a way that they're doing.

Now that seems to work, and it's certainly at least worth a try, you know, for people that are considering something that can have life changing effects.

I mean, you know, good shape, but it is my, it is sort of my Achilles heel.

You press this up, you sit up, you get to one knee, you post the other knee, you get up, you stand up straight, and then you lower yourself back the same way. Damn, very, very difficult exercise, difficult to do, but phenomenal for the whole thing. Wow.

And I think one of the problems that people have when it comes to weightlifting and developing problems, and you know, I've, I've certainly had plenty is that you're overloading certain muscle groups. And then all the stuff that connects things together, the lower back, the neck, all these different issues, they they happen. Because your whole system is not strong uniformly like you're, you're developing strong muscle groups like quads, you know, but you know how, what? How are the hamstrings? how are the things behind your calves? how are you know? How are your TIB muscles? how was? how's your lower back?

Like, what's what's going on? What exercises have you done to make sure that your spine is protected?

Like, I can't, I can't barbell squat, I can't even really, cause my range of motion is now so limited. Do like leg presses, like on the machine.

So your toes are pointing down, your heels are pointing up. And what this allows you to do is get a very deep bend of the knees. And you get your knees that push out over your toes and you really lower, you know, ass to heels. And what I do with those, that's it right there, that's I have that one at home. He made me one of those.

So you can do this. He's. They're doing it with different exercises here. These are just calf strengthening exercises. I do them with a body weight, squats, and one of the things I do them with is goblet squats.

Um, I have very strong legs, but I never do deadlifts and I never do. Like regular squats, the heaviest thing I squat with is a 100 pound kettlebell, so I hold a 100 pound kettlebell in front of me and then I do goblet squats on that. And what that does is it strengthens. When you have a heavy weight, like a hundred pound kettlebell and you're holding it in this position just to hold it there.

Your whole body wants to go forward, right? Cause it's like, it's all this weight out in front of you. So you're stabilizing it with your lower back, you're stabilizing with your abs. And then you're dropping down very deep into this body weight. Squat and then up for this goblet squat, and I do it on that, on the slant board.

Phenomenal, and it doesn't put a lot of strain on your back.

So he's doing a bunch of different variations of it, so he's doing, you know, oh, look, yeah, oh, he's going side lunges, so the goblet squat is there, so he's got this is a pro.

Who's this guy right here?

Oh, it's on the Slant Board Guys channel, so Slant Board guy, like I said, he sent me that and he's he's been doing this. He made these quite a while, a long time ago. And I think it's just a phenomenal piece of exercise equipment that I don't. I have in every gym I have here, I have at my house.

It's like we, our bodies are resilient, but they can only contend with so much. So you, you throw all these exposures against the backdrop of widespread nutrient deficiencies, you know, unprecedented sedentary behavior, chronic stress, poor sleep. And it's a it's a recipe for chronic disease. I mean, it's not to me, it's. It's very clear as to why so many of us seem to be suffering.

I'm, I'm. I'm a big advocate of consuming grass-fed, grass-finished meat. I'm a, you know, huge protein guy. But I do think dietary fiber plays an important role in terms of helping us. You know, detoxify, release some of these compounds when we go to the.

That's one of the reasons, that's. That's actually the mechanism by which soluble fiber reduces can reduce LDL cholesterol APOB, because it sequesters bile acids which your liver creates using cholesterol. And um, so you, you essentially like, poop out lipids, toxins. I mean, if you're not pooping on a regular basis, you're harboring, you know, toxins. That's why I think that that's probably one of the mechanisms by which fiber seems to be so consistently associated with healthspan lifespan. Um, you know. And those observations are not necessarily causal, like there's healthy user bias there.

I think, you know, obviously, people who eat more fruits and vegetables today, they likely have other healthy dietary and lifestyle habits. Like that's, that's clear, right? But I do think there's a mechanism for fiber to help, um, remove some of these toxins and and the like.

So fiber is is fiber containing foods are satiating because it's, you know, are beneficial because they're satiating. Two for this lipid regulation, hormone regulation, toxin removal function that fiber plays, but then three, fiber seems to promote.

Gut bacterial diversity There are some studies that suggest otherwise, that it's not necessarily the fiber, it's fermented foods that play a larger role in promoting gut bacterial diversity. Um, but we know that fiber feeds gut bacteria, and as a result, we get beneficial. Postbiotic compounds like sodium butyrate, which is anti-inflammatory, feeds cells in the gut. Um, that use it as a as a fuel source.

So I think there, I think there are a few benefits to fiber consumption.

Um, you know, I, I, I'm not like one of these. Like, you know, I don't think that fiber is the primary thing that we should be looking for in the diet. Necessarily. I'm, I'm. I prioritize protein. I think eating, you know, a protein rich diet. There seems to be many benefits of that. Um, and fiber is not a it's not an essential nutrient, um, but it does. It does seem to do good things in the body.

So I mean, I'm, I'm not anti-fiber.

For a year, he couldn't eat red meat, He was allergic to red meat.

So he's eating chicken.

There's widespread gut dysbiosis, so people have problems with their guts, they have immune systems that are not fully competent. As evidenced by the the soaring prevalence of autoimmune conditions and allergies and the like today, which I think is attributed to, there are many factors that that play a role. You know, it could be over use of antibiotics, it could be the hygiene hypothesis.

We've just become so sterile as a culture. Fewer people today are being our kids are being breastfed or being born via C-section. Travel can play a role, you know, you travel to some foreign country, you get an infection that changes the microbiome. Um, and so I think, like, we have these sensitivities that are not. That are not surprising, but I think, by and large, for most people, these plant plant foods have a lot of good to offer. You know that the benefits, generally speaking, outweigh, outweigh risks.

And he's hasn't been beaten in, like forever. And it's not whether or not he beats people, it's how he beats them. It's he's that good, he's that he's one of the most dominant athletes of any sport of all time.

But he had staph infection, which is very common amongst grapplers. It's very common people get a lot of staph infections. Well, he was getting it so often that he was essentially on antibiotics for a whole year. And his gut is fucked up. Real bad, to the point where he's, like, constantly nauseous.

He's seen a bunch of different doctors, they've tried to fix it in a bunch of different ways, and no one can really figure it out. Like, when someone has developed a really destroyed gut biome because of antibiotics, and long-term, like, really irresponsible long-term use of antibiotics, what can someone do to try to come back from that?

Um, there's a people can google like, there's a whole list of like, it's, it's a low FODMAP diet.

Okay, so all sorts of different things that you can eat that can potentially help you.

So I would say, maybe try something like that, um, if that is too restrictive, then I would try maybe a low FODMAP diet, um, but.

I think there's benefit in them. Um, but just to see how I felt on it, I would.

I like to eat kimchi and steak together, that's like a nice combination.

Um, that's not the case anymore. Like, I'm wide awake all day long, it's very different, it's very different. And when you eliminate, uh, essentially most carbohydrates from your diet, and then your body starts to produce glucose via gluconeogenesis, through absorption of protein and meat, the whole thing changes.

Like, you have, like a steady, manageable level of energy throughout the entire day. And cognitively, it's been one of the best things I've ever done. When I first started doing it again, I'd gotten off of it for a while, and I first started doing it again. All of a sudden, I was like, Jesus Christ. I have like a extra gear in my brain because it's like conversationally, it's like for podcasting.

For me, I found it very beneficial.

It, obviously, your body is made of protein, it supports muscle protein synthesis. it halts muscle protein. There's so many benefits to prioritizing protein, which I do, um, but I do think that, you know? Like, dark leafy greens, for example, is known to be one of the most nutrient dense forms of produce because of its low calorie density.

And it's a great source of vitamin C, folate. But also, I think dark, leafy greens, I mean, take kale. Kale is the top source of these carotenoids, called lutein and zeaxanthin, which we know directly support eye health and brain health. And so I don't see a reason to to deprive myself of these greens that I know have. These compounds that literally migrate up to the brain, where they help to reduce oxidative stress. They might even improve, the way, you know, cognitive function and the like.

And again, there's no one size fits all diet, but the people that I know that have gone into a vegan diet. Almost all of them get bad blood work and they try to figure out what's wrong, and then many of them try to supplement. And then one day they'll have a piece of salmon and feel like their body just returned on. Then they go, Oh, okay, I got to stop doing this.

If you were just to accept that saturated fat is the worst dietary nutrient one might ingest.

Right, but 3 comes from red meat. Excluding mixed dishes, the vast majority of saturated fat that your average American ingests comes from. Desserts comes from mixed dishes like pizza, lasagna, egg rolls, things like that. That's good stuff, dairy.

Yeah, dairy makes me hungry, but it's like we've demonized steak, right? Which is like one of the most nutrient dense things a person can eat, right?

It's like to try to walk them down the rabbit hole of good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, the balance of cholesterol. Cholesterol as it relates to plaque in the artery in your arteries. Like, what's really wrong and is it actual food that most people eat? Is that really what the problem is cause?

I doubt that it is, I doubt that it's meat, I doubt that it's eggs, I doubt that that's the problem. And when people are willing to readily consume this process bullshit on a daily basis, but then demonize steak. I'm like, that is one of the dumbest things that we have become accustomed to.

This idea that a steak is delicious, but it's ultimately bad for you.

And by the year 2030, half are going to be not just overweight, but clinically obese. Okay, half of adults today are have some degree of insulin resistance, right? We know that 90 of adults have some degree of metabolic dysregulation. If you, if you factor in things like wastes or circumference, low HDL, triglycerides and things like that.

And so for for a health expert today, to demonize any whole food, any whole food to me is just absurd and and actually really unethical. And red meat is is, you know, again and again. It comes up on these lists, on, you know, in the data as one of the most nutrient dense foods. I mean, it's the most. It provides the most bio available source of iron Heme iron, right? I mean, iron deficiency. Anemia is still a major global health problem. Last I checked and red meat is the ultimate iron supplement.

It's highly bioavailable, it provides zinc, it provides creatine, it provides carnitine, carnitine, all these really incredible and valuable micronutrients. And again, when talking about steak, that's where 3 of the saturated fat.

So what's wrong with steak? What's the big problem with it? From a health standpoint, I don't think there is any.

Where today, your average American is largely on a plant-based diet. It's a plant-based diet of ultra, it's not a whole foods plant-based diet. I'll concede that it's a it's a largely ultra processed plant.

Fish is actually associated with better health outcomes, so let's like, eat more fish. And then the data came out showing us that, oh, wait a minute. Cholesterol, this nutrient that we've demonized for decades, actually has no negative downside, no downside. With regard to cardiovascular risk. For the vast majority of people consuming dietary cholesterol, very little impact on serum cholesterol, right? And then dairy turns out that, oh my God, wait a minute, it's not low fat and reduced fat dairy that seems to be associated with better health.

It's full fat dairy that seems to be associated with better health. What the hell, right?

I mean, how many people for dinner in this country are eating box mac and cheese for dinner? Noodles with butter, you know, or margarine? Worse? And um, and I just think it's a it's a huge shame. And I grew up in a household that was largely, um, you know, we my. My mother had a bias towards vegetarianism. she wasn't a vegetarian, she ate chicken.

She ate occasionally fish, but she was very concerned about heart disease, and so she, you know, growing up we were like, she never ate. I never saw her eat red meat and she never had any eggs. And when she served me my first egg when I was a child, she served me it. With a warning to to not eat these with any significant frequency because they they have the potential to clog your arteries. Wow, yeah.

She was psyoped, she bought into, you know, the advice at the time, she didn't have the internet, she wasn't, you know, online, but she. Whatever the magazines or the TV, you know, the the nightly news would share about healthy eating, and certainly whatever the marketing you know. In the supermarket, as she was pushing her shopping cart around the supermarket aisle, anything with a red Heart Healthy logo on it would end up in my shopping cart at some point. Make its way through my kitchen. And so I grew up on a diet that was largely ultra-processed. And mainly, uh, you know, I was encouraged to eat, um, low, a low cholesterol, low saturated fat diet. I mean, I grew up eating, consuming margarine.

And I remember the big tub, the big plastic tub of corn oil that we always had out by the stove. Yep, crazy, crazy, yeah.

You see an uptick in Alzheimer's.

It was all bad. And um. And again, I think it goes back to the fact that these foods are, you know, we. We tend to over consume them, and they're a route of of ingestion for these, you know, for these forever chemicals and the like.

Um, they, yeah, they, they, they. yeah, it's just not. It's not good. They drive obesity, they drive insulin resistance. When consumed in mass, I'm not saying that you can't consume any. I think, you know, like, I think it's important to be a pragmatist. And and it's not like my diet is a hundred percent free of of ultra processed foods, but we consume too many today. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that we're not adequately taught.

It's never informed consent. We're not adequately, um, taught how these foods influence behavior, and, uh, yeah, it's very unfortunate.

Like, what?

And and I think that, really, you know, like I used to be more interested in what's the appropriate, for example, ratio of carbs and fats to one's diet for optimal health? And I really do think it's, you know, for most people, the big lever dietary, dietarily speaking, is to is to reduce your consumption of of these kinds of foods. He's like, what are essentially vending machine foods? um, things that you just sit on?

I mean, I think that's a that's a great, that's a great thing, you know, the more awareness we have, the better.

You know, we, we, we need those around us, and so I think that's. It's just hardwired into who we are as a species, that we are social beings. And today, whether it's attributed to, you know, living in cities and remote work or social media. It's taking a huge toll on us from a from the standpoint of of mental health. And that creates downstream biochemical consequences. I mean, this is not just a, you know, an emotional phenomenon, is something that actually has real life, a real life health, health impact.

So midlife obesity is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease down the line. Um, being actually heavier in late life is associated with lower risk because people tend to become less well nourished as they get older. So the obesity and Alzheimer's disease connection is actually quite interesting, so midlife obesity is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. But people who are of heavier weight as opposed to more frail in late life, seem to be protected. Yeah.

455.

Easy, right? Maybe 500 pounds.

Whoa, what Ralphie may used to weigh over 800 pounds. I don't know if that's true. Ralphie might've exaggerated that.

He was a little bit of a.

Interesting, he had a couple of gastric bypasses, he ate through them.

Um, but that's because frailty is like the worst thing.

So, but the key is to make sure in mid life that you're that you're healthy.

And we also know that your muscles are the primary site of glucose disposal. um, you store sugar in your muscles. your muscles are obviously for for mobility. Super important. Improving insulin sensitivity There's no better way to to cultivate insulin sensitivity than to resistance. Train regularly.

And we see again that insulin resistance is related to glucose hypometabolism in the brain, which is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.

Like, I just feel gross, feel anxious, anxieties coming on, like, just don't feel good, and then I work out and I'm like, huh, I'm okay?

You're not going to be strong unless you work out, it's just, I mean, you have. There's certain genetic factors or people that have, like, really great genes and they, they, they're strong and they don't do fucking anything. It's crazy, yeah, but they would be better off if they worked out, they would be healthier.

Right, right, and then, and they were the ones they were the targets of, like they were the they were the bullseye of that of precisely that messaging. Avoid cholesterol, avoid saturated fat. You know, low fat this, low fat that. And they weren't working out. And it's. It's really sad when you, when you look around and you see that generation, you know, and their health.

And I think that's it's just incredible.

Ray Dorsey, from University of Rochester, has published on Um. It's called trichloroethylene, and it's still being used in dry cleaning today, but it has been used. It was used since, until the Seventies in, for certain medical applications. It was used as as an anesthetic for pregnant women. It was used to decaffeinate coffee, it was used to extract UH oil, vegetable oils. Readily infiltrates groundwater, and about 30, I believe, of groundwater in the United States is still contaminated with this compound, trichloroethylene.

And um, we know that there are traces of pharmaceuticals and various, you know, compounds in tap water that, I think, you know, the dose makes the poison to some degree. Um, so now and then I think it's probably fine, but I do think, you know, filtering your water, running it through a charcoal filter, um, maybe even a reverse osmosis purifier, is probably beneficial.