The Ed Mylett Show
Hosted by Ed Mylett
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This is the Ed Mylett Show.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. We're gonna talk about eating today, and Max Lugavere is gonna be here for the second time. I'm talking about nutrition, your body, cooking your food correctly, and it's incredible, and he's one of a kind. He's just the best in the world at what he does. So, Max, welcome back, brother.
Ed, so good to be here, my man.
I'm really excited to share all this stuff. Really stupid thing to start out with. My stomach's growling. You're like, I'm gonna tell you why your stomach's growling. There's a mechanism in there, so.
There is.
So, why is my stomach growling?
There is. It's super interesting. You know, oftentimes when our stomach growls, we think it's because we're hungry, right? And in part, we, it's probably time for us to eat when our stomach gives us that indication. But the reason why the stomach is growling, it's owed to a system in our GI tract called the migrating motor complex.
Okay.
And the migrating motor complex, it's like this completely underappreciated mechanism that gets going after about 90 minutes of not eating. So after about 90 minutes of not eating, we feel like we're giving our digestive system a rest, but actually, that's when this process kicks up. And what it does is it sweeps debris, dead bacteria, food particles that haven't been fully digested. It sloughs off dead epithelial cells from the stomach down all the way past the small intestine to the large intestine. So it's essentially called a housekeeping wave.
It can help prevent SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which a lot of people suffer from. So people that have like GI issues when they eat, they, you know, they'll have like from otherwise benign foods, feelings like indigestion, gas, bloating, stuff like that. It's because we are constantly subverting this housekeeping wave, which is so essential to our digestive well-being by eating constantly throughout the day. So the fact that your stomach is growling means that your housekeeping wave is functioning, cleaning the small intestine, and keeping your digestive system healthy, essentially.
Eating throughout the day. So, before we get into the book, by the way, what's great about the book is that it's not only the nutritional guy, but you also like rank things too on like, the terminology that you use is like, like. Like, okay, good, best, better, right, better, right? Like, and I like that as well, because it kind of gives a rank. I love to rank things. I always go with my friends like, one to 10, how much do you like this guy?
Yeah.
One to 10, how good was that song? So you rank things in the book, but I want to ask you first, like a really basic thing overall. If you walked into my kitchen or an average person's kitchen right now, before we get into detailed stuff, what would you tell them to throw? What would you probably go look for and throw out of their kitchen immediately? Is there something in there?
Good, good question. Um, I, you know, what I find to be, I used to be a lot more dogmatic about, um, like macros and, and, you know, carbs, fats and things like that. I think that my perspective, especially with Genius Kitchen, I'm, I, I really think that the major problem with the standard American diet and that the root cause of all of the modern ills that we're seeing burdening society from obesity, overweight, cardio, the increasing rates of cardiovascular disease, autoimmunity, really stem back to our overconsumption of ultra-processed foods.
These are the foods that are packaged, they're shelf-stable, minimally satiating and highly calorie-dense. These are the foods that, that under, really underlie the obesity epidemic. Now, you can take the most obvious offenders like sugar-sweetened beverages, which are purported to be the cause of about 200,000 deaths annually worldwide, just from sugar-sweetened beverages alone. That's how toxic they are. I mean, once, one or, you know, occasion, the occasional indulgence in your favorite sugar-sweetened soda, not the end of the world. But the problem with foods that contain added sugar and sugar-sweetened beverages are really at the epicenter of this problem because they're so easily consumed, is that we have no biological requirement for sugar and it's not satiating at all and provides no nutritional value.
So you could basically eat all of the calories that you require in a day, get all of the nutritional, um, uh, you know, all of the nutrients that you need, and then throw 200 calories of high-fructose corn syrup soft drink on top of that. And that really is what people are doing. And that's why we're seeing, you know, this, this, just... Crazy rates of ever of our expanding waistlines and the like.
Well, the thing about not being full, you and I talked about last time a lot. That's my layman's version of it, right? Is something I had not really thought about before that when I'm eating these processed foods that although I've intake the same amount of calories, say, as a handful of nuts or something like that, I'm not satiated. I'm still hungry when I'm done, right? So when you say, just curious, when you say sugar sweetened drinks like that, you talking about all of them, even the artificially flavored ones, anything at all that's any kind of basic carbonated drink that we're finding in any grocery store?
Well, you don't want to, you definitely don't want to drink your calories, but the sugar sweetened beverages, I think, are the worst. And that's because there's zero, there's, it has zero capacity to satiate your hunger. So you could drink, I mean, look at the size of soda of like beverages at fast food joints these days. I mean, they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's because we just don't tire of drinking these, drinking these products. I'm not that worried about artificial sweeteners, although my personal preference is to go for more natural sweeteners. You know, erythritol, stevia, monk fruit, and things like that.
You do like stevia?
Yeah, stevia, I'm okay with. I mean, it has an aftertaste, which isn't ideal. But you mentioned satiety, which is really important, I think, to unpack for people. The three characteristics of a food that make a food satiating, that make it fill you up so that you get that gratifying feeling of fullness after eating it, is water, protein, and fiber. So those are the three things that you want to look out for in any food. If you want to avoid over consuming that food, water makes a food satiating because if you think about it, for hunter gather, one of our hunter gather ancestors, when water ceased to be available, where were the next best place that a hunter gather would look for for hydration? Food. Food is full of water, right? Fresh produce, even meat is a good source of water. So if you're dehydrated,
you're likely going to eat more. So that's why water should be one of the first places that you look to. The second thing is fiber. Fiber, we have no biological necessity for it. It does make life better. Fiber consumption is associated with longevity.
Task one thing on that?
Don't you talk about in the book, though, that it actually has some LDL particle removal capacity?
It does. Yeah, especially viscous gel-forming fibers, in particular, psyllium husk. So a lot of people take psyllium husk. For regularity, but there's like this amazing side benefit of psyllium husk. And that is that it traps LDL particles in the form of bile acids in the gut. And it's one of these like really easy interventions that can have a small but significant effect on your lipid, on your lipid profile.
Very good.
It can also trap excess levels of hormones like estrogen, which is one of the reasons why fiber consumption seems to be associated with reduced risk of breast cancer, which is one of these hormone sensitive cancers. So fiber is really incredible. It seems to do all these amazing things. We don't, it's not an essential nutrient, you know, you see a lot of these like people on the carnivore diet thriving with seemingly zero fiber intake. And fiber, of course, it's also a surrogate, you know, dietary fiber intake is probably also like a surrogate marker for just an overall healthy dietary pattern. Now, if you're eating a lot of fiber, you're not the typical person consuming the standard American diet, right? You're eating probably more salads, more veggies and things like that.
But fiber is satiating because it mechanically absorbs water and stretches out the stomach, turning off the hunger hormone ghrelin. So that's the second, that's the second aspect of food that you want to make sure that you're seeking out in order to be satiated.
That's big.
And then the third thing I would say is protein. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, more so than carbs, more so than fat. And if you look at ultra-processed foods, they tend to be deficient in all three of those things.
Right? Ultra-processed foods tend to be some combination of carbs and fat or both. Usually sodium, wheat flour, stuff like that. Tend to be very protein deficient. Also, protein is the most expensive macronutrient. So it's another reason why these high margin junk foods, right? They all tend to be.
They lack it because it's too much to put in there.
Yeah, it's too, it's inexpensive.
Are we too, so protein, stay on that topic for a minute. You're going right down all my questions I wanted to ask you. By the way, here's, it's one of one of these interviews, everybody, that where you get to listen in on stuff I want to know and it's to your benefit too, right? So, because you don't get a lot of guys like Max in front of you very often. So protein is like, obviously, you know, you know that I have lifted weights all my life and everyone knows. Protein, protein, protein. Are we overly obsessed? So are we overly obsessed with protein intake? In other words, have we gone so far like I try to eat my body weight in protein every single day? So I weigh a couple hundred pounds. I'm trying to get about 200. For me, though, I do supplement different things to get to that 200. So what? You said protein is so critical.
But is it, is there, is there a tendency to be overly obsessed with getting so much protein? Or you can't get enough of it?
Yeah, I mean, I think that you can get enough of it, but that, that is, it's actually self-regulated. So you really don't have to think about getting too much of it because it's so satiating. I mean, nobody has ever gorged on lean chicken breast, which is one of the most protein dense foods there is.
Because it's so satiating. We have these innate hunger mechanisms in our mouths, in our, on our tongues, in our digestive tracts that know once we've had enough protein. But we do know that the RDA for protein is insufficient for good health, especially for people like you and like me, who, who are active and who exercise regularly. In fact, the research suggests that we need to consume about double what the RDA is. So the RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight every day of protein. We don't use kilograms here in.
But everywhere else does though.
But everywhere else, yeah. So I mean, I'll break it down in terms of pounds, but essentially, um, we need double that. So the, the research suggests that if we want to optimize our time spent in the gym, which we all should, right? We work hard for, for the gains, right? You should be striving for, for 1.6 grams per kilogram of lean mass or goal weight. And so that's an important distinction. And that breaks down to, in terms of pounds, point, about 0.7 grams per pound of lean mass or goal weight.
And the idea there is you're lean. So for you, 0.7 to a whole gram per pound of your body weight, that's sufficient. You're like, you're definitely doing the right thing there. But if you had, say, You know, if you had 50 pounds of fat mass on you that you wanted to lose, then I would do 0.7 to 1 times what your weight would be minus 50.
Okay. Do you consider protein supplements as processed foods? Are those all processed?
That's a really good question. I actually don't. I think protein, protein supplements are great. I personally take them.
Good.
I think it's, yeah, it's, it's easy to meet your protein goals with protein shakes. And also whey protein in particular has been shown to support immune function.
Which I think is like this nice, happy added side benefit.
It's interesting because when you read Max's book, you would think, because we're talking a lot about plants here in a minute. But there's a lot of meat in there too, and, and the way to prepare it. And by the way, he actually has a void all the way up to best in, in terms of foods or ways to prepare them as well in the book. The rankings are, there's some avoid in there. So I'm learning about sulforaphane. Did I say that correctly?
Yeah, sulforaphane.
Okay, so talk to us about like having these defense mechanisms in our bodies that we need as well. So go plants and sulforaphane a little bit. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, absolutely. So plants, like animals, they don't, they don't appreciate necessarily being eaten, right? Plants have a, have an innate drive to survive as well, but plants can't fight off predators. So what they do is they become chemists and they create compounds.
This is fascinating right here.
Yeah, they create antifedant compounds, basically, that would make smaller animals, mice, insects, even fungus, um, that, that serve as toxins to those smaller organisms.
This is fascinating.
Yeah. And, and we can see this actually by sulforaphane is a perfect illustration of this because sulforaphane, even though it's one of the most powerful, um, putative cancer fighters, neuroprotectant, cardioprotective compounds in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, sulforaphane isn't actually in those plants until the cells of the plants get crushed and chewed up.
You're kidding me.
You won't find, if you take a raw piece of broccoli, there's no sulforaphane in it. There are two compounds.
Wow.
One is called glucoraphanin and the other is called myrosin. You don't have to remember this, but they're basically, these are two compounds held in completely different cellular compartments. And when they unite, which only happens when you chew on the plant.
That's incredible.
When a critter chews on the plant, you create this sulforaphane compound, which is essentially a pesticide.
It's a toxin.
It's a toxin. It's a toxic pesticide that the plant creates itself.
Gosh, that's amazing.
Yeah, to protect itself from predation. But the, the reason why these compounds are beneficial in us, we're obviously, we're much more robust than a mouse or an insect, right? And for many toxins, it's like the dose makes the poison. For an insect, the dose of sulforaphane that they may be getting is going to be a much higher and more toxic dose relative to its body size. In us, eating sulforaphane, especially at the dose contained when we, at the dose ingested when we chew first of first vegetables, is so small, but it still has a protective effect. And this protective effect is owed to a mechanism called hormesis.
Yep.
And hormesis is basically the term given to when small doses of a certain stress or even a certain toxin actually helps to facilitate robustness in the organism. And it's the mechanism by which exercise works.
Humans in general.
Yeah, humans in general, the way we develop grit, like, I mean, you talk about this on your podcast all the time.
And so we essentially get this form of, we ingest and we derive this form of chemical stress from compounds like sulforaphane, polyphenols. The plant kingdom is just like loaded with these compounds.
Bro, that blows my way. So you've all know, you should eat more plants, right? Or veggies rather, but in this case, are you hearing this? How much nature has constructed this to our benefit? That's mind blowing that it only materializes when chewed, when they, or they're combined. And then they have this benefit. By the way, hormesis, I had David Sinclair on the show, who's like, I think you know Dr. Sinclair from Harvard, but he's like, the number one longevity dude in the world. And the whole philosophy of his work is based on the concept of hormesis.
When you do cold plunges or exercise or things like that in the body, you're saying there's a mechanism. That strives inside our own bodies when these toxins kick in.
Absolutely.
That's a mind blowing.
It beautifully illustrates, I think, the symbiosis of of all living things in the sense that you take a plant that's been stressed.
Unreal.
Right? And it imparts, it develops a vigor, right? Like a stressed plant, a wild plant. It's gotta be scrappy, right? Like out there in the world. And when you eat it, it imparts that vigor unto you. It's like this beautiful circle of life.
That's bananas to me. No pun intended. Um, you said fungus earlier. There's this big thing in the book on fungi, right? Like.
So I don't like the taste of like mushrooms and stuff like that.
That's okay.
So talk to us a little bit about fungi and why it's good stuff.
Yeah, well, there, first of all, there, have you, I mean, there are lots of different mushrooms. They all have different flavors.
I probably haven't sampled.
There is, um, have you tried lion's mane? Have you ever had fresh lion's mane?
No.
So a lot of people are talking about lion's mane these days because you can find it in various supplements, but now you're starting to see fresh lion's mane pop up at different supermarkets.
And it has the taste and texture of fresh crap. I'm not even kidding. It's like, it's really delicious.
Okay, I will try that then.
Yeah, you saute it in a little olive oil, maybe some grass fed butter, salt, pepper. It is so damn good. And the beautiful thing about mushrooms is that very nutrient dense and low calorie. So you're not getting a lot of calories from mushrooms, but you're getting a lot of really interesting compounds like beta glucans, which can support immune function. Certain mushrooms have different, uh, you know, different micronutrient profiles. Some have vitamin D, depending on where they grow. Some mushrooms actually create really powerful detoxifying compounds like glutathione. Glutathione is considered the mother of all antioxidants and certain mushrooms, like the porcini mushroom in particular, very concentrated in glutathione, which is great.
And one tip, so as you've mentioned, the genius kitchen, which is one of the reasons why I'm so proud of it. It's not just a cookbook. It's for people to learn actually how to cook.
Yes.
Which I thought was so important. And one of the, I think, biggest mistakes that people make. If they, if they're listening to this and they say, well, I don't like mushrooms. I've never had mushrooms that I've liked. One of the biggest, most common mistakes that people make when cooking mushrooms is they rinse them. You never want to add water to mushrooms because mushrooms are already packed with water. All you want to do when you buy mushrooms is brush off any visible dirt that you see. But you never want to rinse them, unlike other produce. You just want to throw them in a hot pan with some like cooking oil, some great oil, like extra virgin olive oil butter.
Is it because once you're cooking them, whatever the gnarly stuff that could be potentially on there by washing is gone by cooking it? Or there's nothing on there?
Yeah, I mean, you you neutralize, you know, any, any potential harm that would come from eating something raw. But it's also that mushrooms are like sponges for water. And what you're, what you're, the aim when you cook a mushroom is to get the water out of it. So that mushrooms natural flavor comes through.
Do you, do you look at food like it's actually medicine?
I do, you know, I think that I like to say there's a lot of, there are a lot of people in the functional medicine community that like to say that food is medicine. I like to refine that a little bit and add a little bit of nuance. I think that food is definitely a form of medicine. I think it's certainly a form of preventative medicine. It can be used to help prevent conditions like obesity, overweight, type two diabetes. That's uncontrovert, uncontrovertible fact at this point. Do I think that it can treat every disease? Not necessarily. I'm not, I'm not anti medicine or anything like that. I think that actual medicine has a place, but I think that food also has a place. And I think that we need to not be so dichotomous in our thinking, you know? I think that there's a place for both. So I think that food is medicine. I think exercise is medicine, medicine. I think sleep is medicine. I think hydration is medicine.
Yeah, I don't understand why more people aren't conscious of this topic. So there's all this stuff now on supplementation. Everyone's on different supplements, right? And this is why I'm so excited about your book and you working out. Everyone kind of knows you're supposed to do it now. Everyone's heard a podcast on meditation. I think most people know they should drink more water. But for some reason, food itself is really still an under discussed topic, like in, in general. And for me, one of the things from your work, like I already ate a lot of meat. Like I've added so much more, so many more vegetables, green vegetables to my diet than I had before, after you and I talked for the first time. And one of the things that's really improved for me is my digestion.
What don't most people know or understand about digestion that they should in their lives?
Such a good question. Well, I think people don't realize, most people don't realize that digestion begins before you take your first bite. It begins, actually, there's called the cephalic phase of digestion. So digestion begins when you're observing the food that you're about to eat and smelling the food. One of the reasons why I think it's so important for people to be seated and to relax and to take a deep breath and to just calm their nervous systems before they begin their meal. Because our stomachs begin to pop out, pump out hydrochloric acid, protein digesting enzymes, enzymes like Pepsin, all before we even take that first bite. I didn't know that. By biting and chewing slowly, chewing slowly is crucially important.
So we already talked about sulforaphane. If you're rapidly chewing your cruciferous vegetables, you need time for those enzymatic reactions to occur so that the creation of that of that compound sulforaphane, which activates detox pathways in the body, it's a cardio protective, neuroprotective compound. But it needs time to be created. The same thing with alliums like garlic and onions, there's a compound created when we crush garlic, fresh garlic in particular, called allison. It's an antimicrobial compound, anti-inflammatory. We need to chew slowly because that's where that's where the digestion and the synthesis of many of the most valuable compounds in our food. Wow. Begin to be created in our mouths.
Also, this is one of the things that I talk a lot about in Genius Kitchen as well. Some of our most beneficial produce like beets and arugula are very high in compounds called nitrates. Nitrates are really good for our cardiovascular health because the end product nitric oxide in our in our cardiovascular system basically brings down blood pressure, it supports blood flow, it's a vasodilator, vasodilating gas that we all create in our in our. Blood vessels also really important for sexual function.
I was gonna say, guys.
Yeah, guys, yeah. Nitric oxide is super, super important. And the nitrates that are found in foods like beets, a lot of people will take like beetroot supplement, right, to boost blood flow. But we, humans, don't actually have the enzyme to convert nitrates in food to nitrite, which then gets funneled into that nitric oxide pathway. It's the oral bacteria in our mouths.
Crazy.
That reduce nitrate to nitrite, which then can boost nitric oxide in our blood vessels. So for your oral bacteria to have the time to be able to do that.
You need to chew your food slowly.
Man.
So if you're wolfing down a salad that has arugula in it, that has beets, and you're not taking the time to chew what it is that you're eating more slowly.
Shoot.
You're undermining the capacity of your food to be cardio protective. And in tandem with that, it's another, it's another reason, and I don't know why I felt the need to mention this in the book, but, um, but I felt it was like really apropos. It's one of the reasons why people should definitely not use antiseptic mouthwash every day. Because what you're doing with antiseptic mouthwash is you're nuking the bacteria in your mouth that, that basically reduce nitrate to nitrite, which then can actually, they've, even an acute swishing of antiseptic mouthwash, antiseptic being the key here, can increase your blood pressure because it, it basically messes up that nitric oxide pathway. They've also shown that.
Rinse with mouthwash after exercise can reduce the blood pressure lowering effects of exercise. And people who regularly use mouthwash two times or more per day, and this is about 40% of the population, have 50% increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes because nitric oxide is also involved in insulin signaling, and they have double the risk of developing hypertension.
Okay, brother. Okay, I gotta start chewing my food slower.
Chew your food.
And I do you antiseptic mouthwash. So is there any, um, I have so many things I can ask you. By the way, I told you guys, you never heard a show like this before. So you're gonna write down stuff down and learn stuff. Is there any downside, because we're going to talk about some other stuff here in a minute, and then some of the stuff in the book on preparation is just awesome. However, is there any downside to eating a plant-based or too many plants or anything like that that we, can you overdo that, or is there no downside?
Yeah, I love this question. Um, I think there is. I don't, I don't prescribe a one-size-fits-all diet.
That's right.
People, people have different tolerances for fiber quantity, for various compounds in food. You know, I have a friend who, if he goes within six feet of an allium, which is like garlic, onions, leeks, he gets the worst digestive discomfort ever. So, everybody's different. And I also think that there's this push, especially from the vegan community, to just eat as much fiber as possible.
We know that fiber is beneficial, but if you, from one day to the next, start eating, if you go from what is typical, which is 15 grams of fiber per day, which is pretty low, I'll admit, to the, the goal that some people espouse of being 150 grams a day of dietary fiber, you're just setting yourself up for constipation, for all kinds of digestive
I was gonna ask you, do you need to drink more water if you're gonna take in that kind of fiber?
You just need to, you need to go slowly, and you need, because essentially what it is, is you're, you need to cultivate the, the microbiome, essentially, the gut microbiome, the gut flora, to be able to assimilate all of that fiber.
This fiber, I mean, the thing about fiber, we don't absorb it. Fiber is fiber because it passes through the small intestine undigested, and it becomes a fermentable substrate for the 30 trillion bacteria that live in the colon, in the large intestine. But you need to cultivate that bacterial community first. The bacteria of the person listening to this compared to somebody in, you know, in the Hasda tribe, for example, or in Inuit, we all have these different, you know, microbial constitutions, and, um...
Some of that's like cultural and, and, but it's over time, it's materialized. It's, this may seem basic, but this is true, correct? That's why some guy from America goes to Mexico on vacation for a long time, the, the foods or the waters there affect their digestion differently than somebody who grew up there, correctly?
Yeah, right, because you don't have the same immune system, you don't have the same antibodies, you don't have the same gut flora.
I mean, the gut is where the majority of our immune system is, is stationed. So, I mean, the gut plays a huge role in, in immune function.
What about fish? So, you say in the book, know your fish.
Know your fish.
Yeah, what's the deal with that? Why?
Well, fish is, is really important, especially from the standpoint of brain health, which is, you know, my, my...
It's your go-zone.
Yeah, my number-one passion.
Fish is medicine when it comes to the brain. We have the most robust body of evidence that the compounds in fish, whether it's the omega-3 fatty acids, preformed, plug and play, ready to go for your brain, or protective antioxidants like astaxanthin, all really, really beneficial from a brain health standpoint. There have been studies that have shown us that one to two servings of fish per week can help prevent dementia in people genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease.
Prevent dementia one to two times a week. Is there a particular type of fish that you would recommend over another one?
Yeah, I would definitely recommend the wild fatty fish. So salmon is a great option. Sardine is also a good option. I mean, whenever they look at, this is how epidemiology works. They look at the population level and they say, who's eating fish? Who isn't? And the people who eat fish, regardless of what kind of fish it is, tend to do better.
Right.
You know, so we can't be snobs about this, right? That's why in my book, actually, that's why I have good, better, best. Because to me, like, if all you're able to access is canned tuna, right? If like that's all, if you live in a food desert and that's the only kind of fish that you have access to, that's still better than not eating fish.
Ideally, you want, you know, to opt more frequently for a fatty fish like salmon because it's going to be higher in those omega-3 fatty acids. And wild is preferred over farmed, but any, any kind of fish is, is beneficial from the standpoint of the brain. Fish is also great in minerals like selenium, like vitamin D.
See, guys, I gotta tell you, like, I did not eat almost any. And then, and actually, when you and I talked the first time, but then reading the book, I'm like, I gotta, I gotta eat more salmon. I just don't make these choices. The other thing about the book, I think it separates it from anything else too, is actually the preparation parts of it. So you talk in the book, I want to go through some things about just stuff that's got flavor that you recommend. And I want to give the whole book away because I want everybody to go get the book, which you need to go get the book. Here's why you should go get the book. There's not another one in its category like it. In other words, if you want to go get a book on intermittent fasting, there are multiple books on that topic you could go get, all of which are probably pretty good, right? But this topic of the preparation of the food and the way that he talks about eating like a genius, I just don't think there's another one like it.
So that's my endorsement, number one.
Thank you.
But the idea of like, so extra, extra virgin olive oil is in the book.
Talk about it like one, it's tastes good, but number one, why is that something that we should be considering using and you give recipes and stuff in there in preparation of our food?
Oh, I even have an extra virgin olive oil cake, a grain free, gluten free, extra virgin olive oil cake in the book with no sugar added, by the way. I love extra virgin olive oil. It's a it's one of these foods that just for years I've been obsessed with and humans have been pressing olives to make extra virgin olive oil for thousands of years at this point. It's it's it almost is a perfect food and especially when you compare it to these these grain and seed cooking oils that are so heavily marketed, dirt cheap to produce, high profit margins, toxic to the bodies in the in the in to our bodies and the quantity that we're consuming them today. Extra virgin olive oil has super heart healthy monounsaturated fat, which is the best fat to consume liberally. It's actually a kind of fat called oleic acid, which is the most abundant fat found in nature.
Breast milk is rich in oleic acid. Beef has very high in oleic acid, so is wild salmon, but oleic acid, olea is actually, it means olive. So we discovered this fat in olive oil.
Hmm.
Centuries ago.
And and now we know how beneficial it is. It actually it helps prevent inflammation. It helps make our LDL lipoprotein particles more resistant to oxidation and more resistant to adhesion to macrophages, which is where this sort of like atherosclerotic process begins. So it's a really healthy fat from the cardiovascular standpoint and brain health relies on cardiovascular health. So it's the primary oil that I use in my cooking and that I recommend using as a sauce and you can cook with it. A lot of people don't don't realize that there's a lot of misconceptions about that. But the other thing about extra virgin olive oil is aside from the fact that it's a very healthy fat, it's got a superpower that no other fat has and it's that it contains a compound called oleocanthol, which is
Essentially, an anti-inflammatory compound that is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen.
Whoa.
Yeah. So, over-the-counter, pain-relieving medications that are anti-inflammatory, they have side effects. Actually, chronic use of ibuprofen is associated with cardiovascular events. But extra virgin olive oil, you're getting all of the benefit, all of the anti-inflammatory effect, essentially, of a low dose of that, but without any of the negative side effects.
You're kidding me. And by the way, none of the taxing on your kidneys or liver.
There you go.
Either, right?
Exactly.
There's all these little things in the book, like, I'll mispronounce stuff, but it doesn't matter, because, you know, I understand the concepts of things. So, you're talking about cooking with butter.
And then there's like, you're like, ghee. Like, there's this thing, ghee, that you talk about in the book, right? So, and everyone else is listening, probably going, "You don't know what ghee is?" No, I didn't know what ghee was.
Oh, wow.
So, what is ghee, and why are you so high on it?
So, ghee is a great fat. So is butter. And we can talk about the differences in the two. They're similar. Ghee is derived from butter. It's clarified butter, essentially. So, you take butter, you boil it gently, and then you skim off the milk solids. And what you're left with is this pure fat that's very well tolerated for people that are even the most dairy-sensitive, because it's free of lactose and it's free of casein.
That's big for a lot of people.
Yeah. It's great for high heat cooking. It's a staple in Indian cuisine. That's probably the type of cuisine most known for utilizing ghee. But actually, butter and ghee, while I use it, and I love it, and I, you know, it's definitely a part of my diet. I talk in the book about how, for certain people, butter actually can raise levels of LDL, which is the lipoprotein associated with cardiovascular disease, right? And this is actually kind of interesting, and it's distinct from cream. Now, this is kind of mind-blowing. A lot of people don't realize this, but butter is made from cream. And you take cream, you churn it, you get butter.
That churning process disrupts a compound in the cream called milk fat globule membrane, and it makes the butter more prone to driving up levels of LDL. Whereas no other dairy product has that problem. So you can consume all the dairy fat you want from cream, from hard cheeses and things like that. The consumption of full fat dairy is actually associated with better cardiovascular health, with the exception of butter, because it lacks this milk fat globule membrane. So for people that are worried about, you know, have risk of cardiovascular disease, butter is one of those foods that I'm like, yeah, enjoy it sometimes, you know, I guess it's a, it tastes great, it's fairly nutrient dense for a fat, but it's not one of these fats that I, that I'll go overboard with.
Unlike extra virgin olive.
What about salt? What's our, what's our, do we have misconceptions about salt in general? I know the answer because I'm reading stuff, but I want to talk about that. So what, let's talk about salt.
I love talking about salt. Salt is one of the easiest ways to elevate your cooking. I mean, salt, salt is the one ingredient that takes a single ingredient food, right? Like a piece of meat and turns it into a steak.
Sure does.
Right? You need salt. It's all you need. So I'm a huge fan of salt and I think that we're-
That blows my mind, hearing you say that. Okay.
Well, not anymore, but without reading, I would have blown my mind.
It's, I mean, a piece of meat by itself is a missed opportunity, right? You gotta add salt. And, um, yeah, I, I think that we've been misguided when it comes to salt. A lot of, you know, the nutrition orthodoxy will say, you gotta limit your salt, cut out salt, stop adding salt to your food. But actually only 11% of the salt that Americans ingest every day comes from home cooking and the salt that they add with their salt shakers. The vast majority of sodium that your average American ingests every single day comes from fast food, restaurant food and ultra-processed foods, canned, canned foods and things like that.
So it's not the salt doing the damage? It's the fact that it's associated with those foods or is it a different type of salt?
No, it's the, it's the, it's the foods that, that-
It's the associated food attached to salt.
Associated foods, yeah. About 25% of the population are sensitive to sodium. So they're what is, they're what are called, um, salt sensitive hypertensives. And so that's still a minority, right? But about 25% of the population, if they eat a lot of salt, they'll see their, uh, blood pressure go up by 5% or more and that, um- That statistic or that proportion is higher among people who have hypertension already. But for the vast majority of people, they can eat all the salt that they want and not see that their and not see their blood pressure go up. If sodium is an issue, though, and you are a salt sensitive, if you if you do find yourself sensitive to salt, I still wouldn't say, don't
salt your food. I would say, cut out the packaged processed foods, the fast food, and you can continue, of course, to add salt to your food to make it palatable, because even the healthiest foods in the supermarket aren't going to be tasty unless you add salt to them. So by us telling people to stop adding salt to their foods, and by the way, the number one source of salt in the American diet, the number one, isn't canned food, it isn't processed meats, it's bread and rolls. That's the number one source of sodium in the American diet. Breads, commercial breads. Yeah.
Do you eat bread?
You know, I really don't. I
Your face just said you didn't.
No, yeah, I don't eat bread. I eat bread. I'll eat bread, like, you know, like, like an almond flour based bread, because for me, you know, nut consumption is associated with good health, and nuts are very, very nutrient dense. So if I can find like a good like quote unquote paleo bread.
You know, I'll go to town on that.
You will.
And look, if I'm traveling and there's a really good like sourdough put in front of me, like, I'll try that occasionally. But bread is not a staple in my diet.
That was my next question. So obviously, I want people to get the book because they, and by the way, you should be cooking more. You should be home cooking more. And but let's say you're not tonight. So to your point, I was gonna ask you that. So I'm going out to order. I'm in a restaurant, because a lot of people eat out or are going to eat out inevitably. What's just a good guide when eating out, to eat for our brains, to eat for our heart, to eat for our longevity, but yet still enjoy the meal? Is there, do you have a guide you kind of give yourself when you do that?
Yeah, I mean, and I want people to eat out, like, eating out is one of the great aspects of modern life, eating out with friends. I love, I love to eat out. Now, you can't control every single variable when you're eating out, and you shouldn't try to, right? You don't know what kinds of oils they're gonna use in the restaurant. And so I think you need to give yourself a break and you need to um not try to control every variable, control the controllables. And I think when going out to a restaurant, the things that I look for, I base my meal around a protein. So whether that's a piece of steak. Now, I try to eat when I'm home, 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef. When I'm out at a restaurant, yeah, I'll, I really appreciate if a restaurant offers that, but most restaurants don't. And
so I don't drive myself crazy. I know that even a piece of grain-fed or grain-finished beef, which is the most commonly available kind of beef, like in a restaurant, is gonna be a pristine source of protein. And if you order something like a filet mignon, right? It's gonna be pricey, but a filet mignon is actually a lean piece of meat anyway. And so lean meat, lean beef, it doesn't really matter what the cow's fed, to be honest, from a nutrition standpoint, because it's lean. What the cow eats dictates the nutritional quality of its fat. So if you're eating a lean piece of meat, like a filet, it actually doesn't matter what the cow's eaten, from a nutritional standpoint. So I'll try to get a piece of beef. If, you know, if not that, I'll reach for some grilled salmon, which I know is probably gonna be farmed, but it's all good. It's still a great source
of omega-3s, still a pristine source of protein. Chicken, chicken is great. White meat, dark meat, I mean, it doesn't really matter. White meat is gonna be just leaner, and so it's gonna contain less calories, more protein. And then I try to get vegetables. So sauteed vegetables, usually I steer away from because the veggies in restaurants, when they're sauteed, they tend to be sauteed in cheap oils, restaurant oil, you know, like the vegetable oil, or the canola oil, or soybean, or worse, or corn oil. So I'll try to get grilled veggies or steamed veggies, if that's an option in the restaurant. And then you could always like sprinkle some salt or some lemon, extra, you can ask for extra virgin
olive oil. I love going to restaurants and asking if they can bring out flake salt, which is way better than the table shaker salt. Yes. I've done that, too. Yeah. So I mean, I think it's really easy to like, to manipulate those variables in the restaurant. Focus on protein, order a piece of meat, or fish, or chicken, or what have you. And then veggies, a side of veggies, a salad. That's, I mean, those are the meals that I get generally, and I find it pretty easy to do so.
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That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow The Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. So I'm eating, I'm gonna ask you a heart and brain. I'm eating for my brain. Give me one or two foods. Eat for your brain. Do this, people. And then here's one or two foods to avoid for your brain.
All right. Love this. So I would say avocados are an amazing brain food. They have the highest concentration of fat protecting antioxidants of any fruit or vegetable. And this is of particular relevance to the brain because the brain is made of fat. And not just any kind of fat, but like a really delicate, damage prone category of fats called polyunsaturated fats. The brain is constructed of these fats. And so fat soluble antioxidants are crucial to aging well, cognitively speaking. Avocado is a great source of potassium, which we know helps balance out the effect of sodium on our blood pressure. They're a rich source of carotenoids, which can boost visual processing speed, even in people who are young and healthy. A great source of fiber, very satiating. So avocados are an amazing brain food.
I'd say the second food, we've already talked about about beef a little bit. We haven't yet really talked about eggs. I'm a huge fan of eggs.
Good, I eat a lot of eggs.
I'd hear that.
Eggs are great. Eggs, you know, when you consider the fact that an egg yolk is packaged with everything that nature has deemed important to grow a brain, it literally is the ultimate cognitive multivitamin, an egg yolk. Yeah, so I love egg yolks and also there was a study in older people that found that choline consumption was associated with slashed risk of developing dementia by thirty percent, which is, you know, there's no drug on the market that we could say, here, take this.
Thirty percent, yeah.
Slash risk of dementia by thirty percent, but choline is a really important molecule. It serves as the backbone to acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that's important for learning and memory. Eggs are the number one source of dietary choline. You get, I think, like one hundred and fifty milligrams in just one single egg yolk, which is amazing.
Okay, avoid food for the brain. Processed food, anything beyond that?
I would say definitely the grain and seed oils, canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil. We know that these fats integrate themselves into our into our adipose tissue. We've actually seen an increase by about one hundred and thirty six percent of the appearance of these fats, linoleic acid in particular, in adipose tissue over the past hundred years, which is just, which is owed to the fact that we're just chronically consuming these cheap oils. Something like soybean oil by itself is our consumption of it has gone up two thousand percent.
Just in the past hundred years alone.
That's a big part of the book, by the way, is the preparation part, and I want them to get the preparation part, but that's a big deal is if it's got corn oil preparation, that's just a big no-no, huh?
Yeah, you want to get rid of that stuff. I mean, a little bit here and there certainly won't kill you, but the production of these oils creates trans fats. There's no safe level of trans fat consumption, we know, at this point. They're also full, especially when we cook with them under real world conditions, the appearance of oxidative byproducts, certain aldehydes and things like that, which we know are damaging to our mitochondria, which is, you know, the organelles in our cells that create energy. And these oxidative products are found. Under and they're found in oils that are available commercially and created under just everyday use. So.
And what about heart? Anything you say this heart eat this for your heart?
From a cardiovascular standpoint?
Yeah, I mean, extra virgin olive oil, I think, really important. Fish, wild fatty fish is great from a cardiovascular standpoint. Exercise is important. It's not food, but you know, it's.
And I think the fiber part is heart related, too.
If you are really, truly, you know, if it does have some LDL reduction capacity in any way.
It does.
Particles, then fiber's a big deal.
Yeah, it does. I mean, basically what happens is you you release bile acids to help break down fats in the gut. And bile acids, we we use LDL particles to make bile acids. And those part of that LDL is basically taken back up in the ileum, which is the latter end of the digestive tract. But when you consume fiber with your food, and especially this this gel forming viscous fiber, psyllium husk, and other fibers naturally found in foods, it traps the LDL particles that and so they're not able to be taken back up in the ileum in time. So you basically pass them.
That's why fiber, I think, is is so great from a.
It yanks it and you pass it.
You're brilliant, by the way.
Dude, thank you. I feel the same way about you.
Thank you. I told you this like five times last time that we talked, but I just when I'm talking with you, and thank you, I appreciate that. Fruit. So here we go.
So, you know, I get my info from different people. And so I'm curious, because I have some friends of mine that say, listen, fruit's like ingesting sugar in the body. The body doesn't know the difference. I'm going to ask you whether this is true or not. Body doesn't know the difference. So you're going to get some sort of insulin reaction to it. Then you're going to get more inflammation. And so fruit equals yeast and equals inflammation. I have other friends who say, no, fruit's got all this nutritional benefit to it. It's also got some water benefit to it in many cases. And so I eat a ton of fruit. So where do you stand on those two ends of the spectrum?
I think fruit is great, especially whole fruit. But I do think it's important to make to bring nuance to the table and to acknowledge that there are different kinds of fruits. You know, we have low sugar fruits like avocados, berries.
All berries are great, cucumbers, citrus, things like that. And then we have high sugar tropical fruits like, you know, bananas, for example, or pineapple, mangoes. If you are, if you have problems with your glucose tolerance and you're sedentary all day, do I think gorging on grapes and bananas, for example, is a very, is a very smart idea? No, I mean, it's, it's probably, it's, it's better than gorging on, on junk food, but I think we could do even better than that. Okay. I think we can inject, you know, look to foods that have less, to have a lower glycemic load. Okay. But at the end of the day, fruit is beneficial. And so I don't wanna, I don't wanna scare anybody away from, from eating more whole fruit. I personally, you know, my fruit, my daily fruit consumption ranges from zero to two
servings a day. Okay. And again, all fruits are different. So berries, you know, there's a lot of evidence now showing how berries, how supportive berries are to brain health. Right. You know, bananas are a great source of potassium, which can boost cardiovascular health, but are bananas the only source of potassium? No, actually, an avocado has twice the potassium of a banana. Okay. With, with all those other benefits, you know, to it that I, that I mentioned. And as you mentioned, fruit, it's self-limiting. So again, this is why I don't really, you know, place a limit on, on fruit consumption. It is self-limiting because of the fiber, because of the water. And the fact that fruit comes with that, the fiber and the water, that is important from the standpoint of how the sugar in the fruit affects us physiologically.
Hmm. So there was actually a really interesting study where, um, this wasn't a fruit per se, but they compared the same amount of carbohydrates from wheat. So they, they took 50 grams, we'll just say 50 grams of wheat, um, and they turned it into a porridge. And one porridge, the wheat, in one part, one version of the porridge, the wheat was coarsely ground. And in the other, it was much more finely ground. And the finely ground porridge, again, carbohydrate, carbohydrates were controlled for, so the calories were controlled for, right? So same amount of carbohydrates in each bolus, the finely ground wheat porridge and the coarsely ground wheat porridge. And what they found in the finely ground wheat porridge was that
It sent blood sugar, the, the amount, the, the glycemic impact was way higher, which led to a way higher release of insulin. And afterwards, so it sent the blood, it sent the blood sugar way higher in the subjects. But then what was really interesting was that it dropped it below baseline. Um, afterwards, whereas the, yeah, so it led to, it led to a blood sugar crash. That blood sugar crash that we all try to avoid, right? Because that can create feelings of anxiety and people prone to anxiety and create fatigue, hunger, irritability, right? But the coarsely ground porridge is harder for our bodies to digest, right? Um, and, and it digests more slowly. Returned blood sugar right back to baseline, right?
So going back to the fruit conversation, this is why I think fruit is so great and not something that we ultimately need to worry about, right? Because, because our, because it's not like we're just juicing the fruit and consuming that sugar. It has this whole food matrix of fiber and water. And it really, and it leads to a very slow infusion of sugar. Whereas, you know, you can take the same amount of sugar found in an apple and drink it and you're not going to have the same effect. You're probably going to see a, a blood sugar crash.
That's one of my favorite things we've talked about so far right there. Because that's a definitive example of the difference of that and just ingesting typical sugar on its own.
Which is sort of one of the arguments against fruit. I'm not advocating fruit anymore or less than you are. I wouldn't advocate anything because it's not my background, but what about just eating less? So I'm talking, I want you to address a couple of different things. By the way, I really appreciate you going so deep because, you know, this is really valuable to me as I care about the, these folks that are my family, listening to this and watching this and their wellbeing. I want them to live happier, stronger, more energized lives. And you really help people do that, bro. So what about less? And when I say less is I mean less often, meaning how do you feel about, you know, um, feeding windows? Um, my, my cardiologist doesn't like to call it intermittent fasting. She likes to call them feeding windows. Actually David Sinclair did as well. And then just portion size in general.
Is that something you're cognizant of, like how much food you're putting in your body? Actually, not just calories, but just amount of food and portion size and how often you do or don't eat? Are those things that you think about or focus on?
Yeah, I mean, I try not to eat for two to three hours before I go to sleep every night.
That's my primary, um, primary concern is not eating too close to bedtime. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I like to eat. You know, an hour after I wake up, sometimes I'm not hungry at all and I can go two, three hours after waking up before taking my first bite. But this all comes back to circadian biology and, you know, we're seeing now that, especially with research on time restricted eating, a lot of this research is being done by down over at the Salk Institute with Sachin Panda. He's done a lot of, a lot of, published a lot of really interesting papers on time restricted eating. But that when we simply honor our body's natural inclination to eat during the day and not eat too much late at night, we see cardiometabolic benefits
to our blood pressure, to our blood glucose control. And this is independent of weight. So some will argue that time restricted eating merely just a way of controlling calories. And it is that. It can be, it can be a very effective way of controlling calories. It's not, you know, time restricted eating doesn't give you a free ride to eat whatever it is that you want. You can still gain weight while time restricted eating. You know, I think a lot of, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that time restricted eating or intermittent fasting is this hall pass to, you know, to eat whatever it is that you want and that somehow calories don't matter if you're time restricted eating. That's false, right? But independent of calories, it does seem to be the case that there is a cardiometabolic benefit to not eating too late at night. And so that's what I try
to do. You know, we, we see that people who eat late at night, their hunger patterns are, you know, miswired the next day. And I've seen, I've anecdotally experienced this myself. When I eat really late at night, my digestion isn't, isn't great the next day and I tend to feel more hungry when I wake up the following day.
Well, for me, I sleep a lot better. Yeah. Because digest, my body's working to digest food that I ate later at night. And so when I'm not necessarily in full digestion mode, so to speak, I just sleep deeper. But the reason I ask you about portion size, I want to talk about this, maybe one of the last two things here, is that, as you talked earlier about how big these sodas are now, so are portions. Like you go to, when you do eat out, the portions seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You go to an average restaurant now, you're like, my gosh, the amount of food in some places. That they're bringing me and there's been this thing like I grew up with this like clean your plate. Yeah, it was a big thing. I I'm here. I'm 50 years old, but I would sit at a lot of us grew up like this. I wasn't even allowed to leave the table if I didn't eat
all the food. Mom, I know you're listening to this. I love you, but like, but like there is a portion issue in our culture. And I do think people think, well, I haven't eaten in eight hours. So I'm gonna eat three sizes fistfuls of steak because I haven't eaten any in 10 hours. So what about portion size? Do you focus on that?
Yeah, I mean, I see I I personally am a volume eater. I like to eat a lot.
You told me that last time.
Yeah, I like to eat a lot. And and I think that the way that that has become something sustainable for me. And, you know, and I'm able to do that without having to think about calories and to and to portion control all that much is to focus really on the foods that I know are going to be satiating so that I can feel full, but still not have overconsumed my my uh, daily calorie needs. And the way to do that is to focus really on on whole minimally processed food. So you can eat a lot. You need a huge volume of food and and not consume at the end of the day, all that many calories in doing so. I mean, that's the problem with ultra processed foods is that by the time you've eaten those kinds of foods to satiety, you've already over consumed them.
These are the foods like pastas and rolls and breads and cakes and fried foods and um, chicken dishes like, you know, lasagnas and things like that. But it's the it's the minimally processed foods that allow you to feel like you're eating a lot. When in reality, you're actually not eating that much because they're just they're just that satiating.
And so, yeah, I mean, I I've done on my Instagram too, like side by side depictions where, you know, if you look at the calorie density of your average fast food.
This is really good right here, you guys. I've seen you do this. Go ahead.
Yeah, like the the French fries and the soda and the Big Mac. It fits within like, I mean, you can, you could basically in two handfuls, hold all of that food in, in two hands. And that's for the most part, it's like 1,500 calories worth of food right there. And just you're holding it in two hands, right? But if you look at foods like, you know, wild salmon, uh, fresh vegetables, dark leafy greens, whole fruits, um, eggs and stuff like that, the calorie density is way lower for those.
Calorie density, there you go.
Yeah, the calorie density is lower. Um, but the, the volume is way higher.
And so volume is one of those things that like, you know, it's really hard from the standpoint, like, look at, look at like any animal, like when left to their own devices, when allowed to eat ad libitum, which, which is a scientific way of saying to, to allow an animal to eat all that, you know, everything that they want. They don't stop, they don't pump the brakes. They have no self, they have no reason to self-regulate the way that we do, right? But when an animal is eating its biologically appropriate diet, it knows when to stop naturally, right? And animals, an animal's MO isn't to eat itself to a state of, of type two diabetes and obesity, right?
Very true.
So I think that the reason why so many of us struggle with overeating is because of the, it's the food environment. It's not that there's anything wrong with us. I think a lot of people feel like there's like a moral failure, right? When they can't regulate their appetites, when they just find themselves eating too much chronically. But it's the foods, it's the ultra-processed junk foods. And it's not even junk foods. It's the, it's food, it's fast food, it's sugar sweetened beverages. And it's not even just food, to be honest. It's, it's our lifestyles. You know, when you are underslept, the next day you're inclined to eat 400 more calories than if you were well-slept. So it's, it's all these factors.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah. All these factors come into play. And, um, and so, yeah, I think that like moderating and trying to like shrink your portion size is one of the reasons why diets fail again and again, because you can't just shrink your portion size and expect that to be a sustainable thing for you. People want to be able to eat and feel full.
By the way, that, what you just said, but for those of you that have some guilt about not eating healthy, ask yourself about your satiation level when you're eating, right? You're, I'm just going through things you've said today. Amount of fiber intakes that you're feeling more full also your water intake so that you're feeling more full. And just give yourself some a break about that. Maybe it's not the amount of food you're eating, but the types of foods you're eating so that you feel fuller sooner. The other little thing I thought about, I'd eat fast. I eat too fast. You said this earlier. It's one of my takeaways for our conversation today. So one, I'm losing the benefit of some of that combination of circumstances that causes these healthy toxins in my body when I'm eating, but also the fact that it's not even giving myself time to signal the fact that I'm full.
Oftentimes I'm just, I'm, I do everything fast. I talk fast. I drive fast. I walk fast. And I think sometimes our personality dictates even the way we eat. And I think it's smart to step back and go, let me enjoy the flavor of the food. Let me enjoy the meal to some extent. Let me enjoy the conversation. It's not a, I think sometimes I'm always in the contest to be first. I don't know if anybody can relate to that. I gotta be the first one finished, first one to order, first one finished, which is not, it's just insanely stupid thing. But yet I do it when I eat. And I think when I overeat or when I have digestion issues or fatigue after a meal. Oftentimes it's not the food I ate. Sometimes for me, it's just how fast I ate it. Yeah. In some cases. And so I really appreciate you saying, okay, last question.
Oh, man.
Well, there's so many more. I've got 3,000 more questions I wanted to get to, but you know, the depth of your answers are so awesome, bro.
I love talking to you.
I love talking to you and I want to keep doing it. By the way, guys, I just say this about Max. There's not someone else like him. So follow his stuff. Check out his YouTube, listen to his podcast, get genius food, get the book, you know, get it. So just an in general question, we've covered a whole bunch of stuff today. I just want to, we missed something. We missed a lot of things. But if someone's listening, they go, you know what, man, I'm gonna start to pay more attention to how I'm eating. What I'm eating, how I'm eating. Other than what we've covered here today, what would be one more layered thing you'd say, and by the way, don't forget this, either in preparation or the type of food or anything like that, that you would throw in that I didn't ask you that they should just know before I, I let you go.
Oh, man. Well, I, a topic that I, that I'm really passionate about is, um, are, are almost constant exposure to environmental toxins. So industrially created compounds that have saturated the food supply that we are unwittingly ingesting on a day to day basis that are, that's compromising our health. So compounds like bisphenol A or BPA endocrine disruptors, like thalates in our food supply or PFAS chemicals. I would say that. You know, getting your food right is super important and probably going to be the lowest hanging fruit for most people, but I also think that people should start to at least gain a sense of awareness about where their food is coming from and to reduce their reliance on foods that come in plastic packages.
And to minimize their storing of food in plastic packages and certainly the reheating of food in plastic packages. So this is a big problem, like the microwaving of food in plastics. Purchasing of sandwiches and other food products in oilproof paper, wrapped in oilproof paper. All of these situations increase our exposure to compounds that mess with our hormones, the system of chemicals in our body that guide everything from neurodevelopment to sexual function to, you know, where we store our body fat. So being, becoming aware of where your food is coming from. I mean, there's a study that came out just, I think it was late 2021, that found that fast food was just rife with phthalates.
Phthalates are known endocrine disruptors. And so if you're eating a food product that, just try to visualize where, you know, how it arrived in your hands. If it had to flow through a Byzantine network of plastic tubing, right, to make it into your food supply, to make it into, onto your plate, then it's probably something that you should minimize your consumption of. If it's a piece of, you know, and just compare it to a sliced piece of fresh meat or a whole chicken that you roast yourself, for example, it's a lot different. Or, you know, produce that you grab from the supermarket and put in a bag yourself. I mean, that's, that's completely different. But, you know, so many of us today, we're consuming foods in packaging and we think that the packaging is inert, but it's actually not.
Under certain circumstances, the chemical constituents of the packaging are able to leach into the food that we're eating. And it screws with us. It affects everything from insulin sensitivity to our predilection for weight gain. So I think, yeah. And I, and I offer some tips in Genius Kitchen to help minimize one's exposure to these kinds of toxic chemicals, which I think is a, is a really important layer that we need to be talking about more.
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This is Paige Hathaway. First things first. Mike and Nico, I know, want to know this. They want to know, what is the best exercise to build your butt?
So, what, like, and I know a lot of the ladies are like, watching this too, like, give me one exercise, one tip from watching this that builds your booty the best. What would it, if you had to give me one, what would it be?
One, only one.
Okay, you can give me three if you want, but just throw me some.
I mean, if I had to do one, it'd probably be something that targets the glutes more like a hip thrust or something like that.
Okay, what about squats, are they good for that, or do you not do squats?
I do do squats.
You do?
I do do squats. Um, yes, I do do squats, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it's not the best to target your glutes, but it's, it's a great lower body exercise, I mean, actually all over, but...
So give me one more. What's one more great booty building exercise?
Um, I mean, I don't want to say like, stuff that's gonna like, for guys, because like...
I was kidding for that. It's really a question for the ladies.
I was gonna say, they look like they have good glutes, so, I don't know.
I'm not going there and I totally disagree.
Probably, um, something like the Bulgarian split squat would be a really good one. So if you're gonna want to build your glutes, the hip thrusters and the Bulgarian split squat.
And they can, they can Google what that is if they don't know what that is right now.
Yeah, or you can show them after this.
We'll show them, I'll give you some Bulgarian split squats. Those are a major part of my routine, as you can all tell from looking at me. So, okay, so, in all, in all seriousness though, about your fitness routine, you can look like this and not be a complete crazy person about your diet. So, I was watching something where you were talking about, there was a stage of your life where like, your diet and your cardio was just cray cray, right?
So, talk about what that was like, because if you're really gonna compete in a show, there is this level, people ask me, like, at my age, like, why don't you try to go, you know, I don't want a diet like that, I just don't, like, I like wine and... Things other than chicken, you know, like sometimes. So, so like you, you recommend what diet wise for people? And even in your own case, you're shredded, you're very, I mean, obviously crazy fit. But you also kind of, you don't do cardio nine days a week and for three hours. And so take them a little bit through what you do and what you would recommend or you think is at least passable.
Of course, so I used to be super 100, like I said, I'm a 100% in and 100% out type of person. So I used to not, like I used to eat like 10 foods. I used to cardio every single day, workout every single day for at least like two hours. Like I was just, I mean, when you hit, when you get competing, I feel like you get in this competing mode. Where you're just like, I don't know, it's, it's, it's something that now that I look back and I'm like, how did I do that?
But now, I mean, I, I believe in more of like an 80/20. So 80% clean, 20% live your life. Like when I was competing and 100% in, like that type of mentality, I didn't go to family functions. I didn't go to birthdays. I didn't like, I secluded myself. So it wasn't even good for me like mentally because I wasn't around people. I was like, oh, I can't go that, to that because I might, you know, cheat or I might, then I'm going to feel bad. And then I'm going to have to do cardio. It's just like a downward spiral. And you can't live your life like that. So I mean, I just, I eat clean 80% of the time, 20%. I'm, if I, if I'm going somewhere, if I want something, I'm going to have it. I'm just not going to like overly indulge in it, you know, moderation is key.
Don't beat yourself up about it. Don't go on the Sire Master for an extra hour.
But now I'm actually a pescatarian. I don't know if you know that. But I get my protein from fish and like plant based stuff. And I just do that for my own health reasons that I've had. And it's worked for me, but.
Can I ask you, do you mean by your own health reasons, I mean, your body didn't respond well to eating other meats?
Yeah, yeah. So for as long as I can remember, I just had a digestion issue. And so I was just researching how to naturally help this. And a lot of it came back to red meat.
For you.
So for me, yeah, for me. So, you know, I was like, I'm just going to try cutting meat out altogether and see if I can do that. I can't be vegan. I've learned this. I just can't do it. So I did that for a month and I was like, okay, this isn't working for me. So then I went pescatarian and it works well for me and all my digestion issues that I was having completely went away.
That's wonderful.
Yeah. So you know what? I feel like, you know, I'm not one to preach about one diet works better than the other. There's so many diets out there and so many of them work wonderfully. I just think that you need to find something that works best for you.
And that you can sustain, right?
That you can sustain.
Yeah, because one thing it is, it's a lifestyle and if you want to be fit and you want to be healthy for, because so many people yo-yo, right? They gain weight, they lose weight, they gain weight, they lose it. Because to lose weight, they're not doing something that's sustainable.
So you've just got to find something that you can do long-term and that works for you.
I'm huge on that too Paige. Like I love meeting super fit people who go, hey, I'm also like not a robot.
You know, like I eat a cake once a year. You know, I do something. I eat a little spaghetti, right?
Definitely.
Because I want people that, you know, some of you listening to this are competing and want to compete and that's different. Now you're asparagus, chicken and some tilapia and like, that's it, right? That's going to be your deal.
That's, that's great. You know, I was telling him when we were off camera that like, um, it's, competing is one of the, I'm so glad I did that. You know what I mean? Really, it's, it's, you know, I, everyone should do a show. You know, you've just got to kind of like test your like inner, you know what I mean?
I agree with you.
Like strength that you have. Um, so I'm not saying anything bad about competing because I competed and I, I like, I mean,
Me too.
You guys are amazing.
Same here.
But yeah, for me, it's just, it's not a sustainable lifestyle for me.
Isn't it cool though for people watching this that one of the fittest women that is on the circling planet right now is telling you, hey, I have some fun with my food too, right? Like what a great thing to know. Now for an average person watching this, what would you tell them about doing their cardio?
You know, um, I like HIIT cardio best if you're trying to really tone up.
What does that mean?
Just high intense interval training. But so you're not doing this like rigorous one hour of cardio. You're doing you know 20 to 30 minutes HIIT cardio.
Yeah, me too. By the way, so if you don't know that, you can Google interval training. Because for me, cardio is something I want to get over with. Unfortunately, that's just me, it's not for all of you. And so if I can get the best bang for my buck, so to speak, it's interval training. So I'm exactly the same way. And for me, I heard you talk about one time before this change, you had moved from doing cardio like two hours, six days a week, to like a couple of days a week is what you were basically doing, right?
Yeah, and I was doing that. And you know what? If I need to like dial in for something like a shoot or something, I'll hop on there and do some HIIT training. Or on my leg days, even some upper body days, I'll put in those like plyos to make my rest more minimal to you know up that high intense training in between my lifts. So I'll do stuff like that.
One of the things I like that you do on your website too, I want to talk about this for a minute too, is that there's different ways to do your contest or your training for a show. Meaning, there's all kinds of, and you do this on your site, but you could just do your own contest with you and a transformation for 90 days or 30 days too, right? It doesn't have to be some bikini show or bodybuilding show. But you could say, look, I'm starting to train right now. I'm six feet tall, 240, and I want to transform my body over the next 90 days. You do some stuff through your site, I noticed, like that too, where you kind of mentor people where they can send you. We'll talk about that a little bit for the average person listening to this too. They could do their own contest, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I do that online. It's just that, you know, I know that like a lot of people, you know, going to a trainer can be expensive. You know, you're paying 40, 50, 60, 80, 100 dollars a session. And that can be expensive. So I just do something where it holds more accountability online, where you can like check in and I give out, I even give out prize money just because...
I know.
Yeah, because 10,000 bucks. Because you know, online training can be super, it's hard to stay accountable, you know? It's so hard, you don't go into a trainer, you don't check in, you don't like here, see me. So I wanted to keep people accountable, and that's...
They could do that literally through you if they chose to.
You also talk about on your site, real quick, different body types too. Like not everybody trains the same way. So can they get some access to help from you on that through your site?
Yeah, my site's just pageathaway.com and you can email me there.
You respond to everybody, right?
It just blows my mind. So they can do that through your site, right? They can go to your site and get that kind of information too.
Yeah, they can email me directly.
Okay, and you told me you respond to a lot of this stuff yourself too, right?
Yes, even with Instagram, you know, a lot of people are like, "Do you comment back to people yourself?" I'm like, "Yes, I comment back to people, I reply to people's DMs, I try to."
Unbelievable that you do that. Okay, so a few more things, we don't have too much time left. So overall, if someone was to ask you for just, in general, "I want to get more fit", what would you say to somebody like, "Here's where I'd start, this is my general advice to you about getting fit," what would you tell them?
You know, if someone's not, like, they don't have a healthy lifestyle, or they, you know, they're trying their best to get into it, I would just ease into it, you know? I'm a 100% and 100% out kind of person, but a lot of people don't have that mentality. So my best piece of advice is, is take a day at a time. I would, honestly, I would just take, you know, half the week, eat healthy, then, and then half the week, live your, what you're doing. And just every day, take a day out and start implementing that healthy lifestyle. I would just do it like a day at a time.
Because a lot of people, it is really hard for them.
So you want to make it a routine, right?
Because a routine is what's going to help you stay on track. And a lot of people can't do the cold turkey, you know, type of thing. So, I would just take it a day at a time. Start with one day, start with two days, start with three days, and then make it a lifestyle.
Well, I agree a million percent. I'm not as fit as you, but like, I, no, I mean, like, I 100% agree that it has to be something you're going to maintain. It's so sad for me, when I'm in the gym in January and it's packed with all these people with their hopes and ambitions and New Year's resolutions, and then by like, February 1st, it's back to the same people again.
Where's everyone?
Everyone's gone, because what they started to do wasn't sustainable.
So I 100,000% agree. I have a very special man with me here today, Max Lugavere. Welcome to the Max Out Show with Ed Mylett. Great to have you.
Great to be here, and what an appropriate name. I mean, I'm, I feel like we're really going to max out today.
We are, we're going to max. My family's prone to both, so there's dementia in my family. And there's heart disease in my family. And so, you know, these things matter to me. But when it comes to the, I cut you off there. I apologize. I didn't know you were gonna keep going. But I, is that also true in the brain where plaques accumulate in the brain as well? In the vascular areas of the brain or is that the neck or how do we, how's it impact the brain?
Well, so the same kinds of vascular problems that you can have anywhere in the body, you can have in the, the microvasculature that feeds blood and nutrients to the brain. So that's where you can start to have a problem from the, from a vascular standpoint. The amyloid plaques and tau tangles that you're referring to, it's sort of a different, different, different machinery there, different mechanism.
But, but nonetheless, the, the same problems that are gonna cause this backup of LDL particles in the blood, that's gonna cause inflammation in your blood vessels, chronically elevated blood sugar, all incredibly damaging to the brain. There's no question about it. It can create inflammation in the brain, can damage the blood vessels going up to the brain. And inflammation in the brain is really what is responsible, I think, for this increase in amyloid beta and the tau tangles that we see. So when we talk about amyloid beta and tau, these are the sort of hallmark proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. There are other forms of dementia. You have vascular dementia, as I mentioned. You have Parkinson's disease dementia. You have Lewy body dementia. So dementia is an umbrella category. And Alzheimer's disease is simply the most common form of dementia.
And so because it's the most common form of dementia, that's why there's all this research money that goes into it. And, and so amyloid is most closely associated with Alzheimer's disease. But we all generate amyloid in our brains. It all, it tends to increase as we get older. And for a long time, amyloid was thought of as sort of the, you know, the, the analogy that, you know, what, what cholesterol is to heart disease, amyloid was to Alzheimer's disease. So that analogy works really well. But the same way that we now know that cholesterol is not necessarily the villain in cardiovascular disease, it's sort of like, you know, it's this molecule that's there at the scene of the crime, certainly, but it's not necessarily the causal player.
At least in the in the early stages, the same thing we're now seeing with amyloid. So amyloid for the longest time, because you could easily open up the brain of a deceased person who had died from Alzheimer's disease, and you see these plaques and tangles in the brain. It was thought that amyloid beta was the cause of Alzheimer's disease. So what do we have to do to get this amyloid out of the brain? But, you know, many, many drug trials later, what we've seen is that drugs that are actually effective at reducing amyloid burden in the brain don't cure the disease. So the question has then become, what is the, what are the earliest things that, what are the earliest problems, you know, or the earliest biomarkers that are associated with Alzheimer's disease that we can intervene on earlier to prevent this amyloid buildup
in the first place? And we know that, you know, inflammation in the brain, because the brain doesn't really have an immune system the way that the body does, amyloid seems to be responding to neuroinflammation. We also see that sleep is incredibly important when it comes to keeping the brain clean of these plaques. We know over this, just since, just as of a couple of years ago, there's a newly discovered system in the brain called the glymphatic system, which I think many people are starting to become familiar with, that when you sleep, your brain actually flushes cerebrospinal fluid throughout your brain and cleanses it of these proteins that build up over the course of the day. And the thinking is, the more of the protein that there is lingering in your brain, the
higher the odds that it can basically clump and form the plaques and tangles that we associated with, that we associate with Alzheimer's disease. So that's why, that's where sleep really comes into play as well.
Okay, I'm glad you went there. So now we're going to shift into some, thank you, by the way, I'm glad we're going to shift into some practical stuff. So practical thing, number one, you need to sleep a bunch. It's healthy for your brain. You don't even understand why, it just is. That's number one. Number two, I want to talk, I want to talk at length, well, in some detail, about, you went there earlier, and I'm glad we're going to go there. We're going to talk about what we put in our mouths now. And you said processed foods versus, you know, really healthy, raw, real foods, real meats, real greens, what have you. I eat, like a lot of people, I bet, that listen to the show, if I started to add up how much processed food that I eat in a given day or week, it's pretty scary. I'm talking about protein bars, protein chips, things that I, at least in my mind, I think
are healthy because they're getting me protein, low calorie, really quick, tastes pretty good, it's a snack, but I mean, I- I eat a ton of processed food. Why is that bad compared to eating what you, I don't know what you would call it, real food every single day?
Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I think it's important to make the distinction, right? Like, processed food sort of has this really negative connotation associated with it, especially these days, but when you cook your food, you're processing it. So it's not, it's not necessarily that processing is like this, this evil, this evil thing. It's, it's the ultra, it's when food has just become so pulverized and removed from its natural form that it's hardly recognizable from its original form. You know, when you take a steak or something, or a piece of like raw meat and you cook it in your pan, you're processing it. When you put, you know, whole foods in a blender, you're processing that food. The problem with ultra-processing, which is what, you know, the food industry does, is it creates foods that are what are called, what food scientists refer to as hyper-palatable.
It becomes really difficult to moderate your consumption of those foods. These foods are designed to be overconsumed, and by the time you've reached satiety when eating these foods, you've already overconsumed them. You've already, yeah. They've shown this actually, recently, there was a National Institutes of Health study led by an obesity researcher named Kevin Hall, you can look up the study, that found that when people were given an ultra-processed diet to consume ad libitum, meaning like you were able to eat whatever you wanted until you reached a point of satiety, they ended up eating a 500 calorie surplus every single day.
When, you know, when just eating to feel full, which is something that every human being wants to feel, right? When, when eating food, I mean, it's like, it's a privilege and great thing to be able to feel full, and it's something that we all want when we're, when we're eating. They, in the crossover trial, what they then did was that they gave the same subjects access to a minimally-processed diet, and to the same degree of satiety, so, so eating also until they were full and satiated, they ended up eating at a calorie deficit of 300, you know, 300 something calories, yeah. So I mean, that ultra-processed food diet, which, by the way, today is how most people are eating most of the time, 60% of the calories that we consume today come from ultra-processed foods, that right there explains the obesity epidemic.
You know, because because we're just constantly in proximity to these ultra-processed foods, where it's really difficult to pump the brakes on them. We end up over-consuming them. And and the other problem with these foods is that they're minimally nutritious. So not only are we walking around, you know, with ever-expanding waistlines, one in two people by the year 2030 are going to be not just overweight, but obese. And half of us are either type 2 diabetic or prediabetic. Ninety percent of us are deficient in at least one essential nutrient. So we're overfed and we're undernourished. And when you put those two features together, that's why you're seeing accelerated aging. You're seeing, you know, I think, uh, you know, just, just, you know,
just unprecedented rates of cardiovascular disease, of, you know, certain cancers and of dementia. I mean, because the brain partakes in, you know, whatever's going awry in the body. The brain suffers the consequences of that as well.
And these ultra-processed foods, is there an ingredient or two that must be avoided? Like, hey, this is really toxic and bad for your body when we're looking at the the list of ingredients in something, chemicals in there? Is there one or two that are just no-no's?
Well, I love that you asked that question, really, really getting practical, practical. I think that the, that the, that the kinds of ingredients you really want to watch out for are refined grains. So that's one, and refined grain and seed oils. So refined grains, you know, the wheat flour, the rice flour,
the, you know, the corn flour. I mean, I'm not dogmatic in my approach. Eating a, uh, eating a piece of, uh, uh, whole corn on the cob is one of my favorite things to eat in the summer. You know, I eat white rice on my sushi. Like, I'm not dogmatic about, like, you know, grains are the devil or anything like that. But in these ultra-processed foods, I think refined grains really are problematic.
I'll give you another reason why, actually, just because it's, because it's interesting. When you eat, uh, say you eat a handful of whole nuts, right? And you look at the calories in, you know, on the back of the nut package or whatever, and you see whatever, how, we'll just say it's 500 calories of worth of nut, whole nuts. You're actually only absorbing about 70% of those calories.
Because, you know, when you chew whole nuts, the particles are too big to be fully digested. It's a whole food. You actually end up pooping out a significant amount of those calories.
Yeah. When you eat pulverized wheat, corn, rice flour in these ultra-processed foods, you're absorbing 100% of those calories. Not only that, not only that, so I mean, a calorie is not really a calorie when it comes to nutrition facts labels. Not only that, but those calories get absorbed really rapidly and really high up in the small intestine. So it basically sends your blood sugar through the roof before your body really even has an ability to, you know, you're still eating while your body is like, you know, what do we do with this sudden, you know, influx of, of, of sugar, essentially. So I think it's, it's important to avoid foods that are based predominantly on those, on those kinds of grains.
Very, very interesting. So, couple of things on going in our mouths again. I've heard you talk about baby broccoli or broccoli sprouts. And this is like, some people think this is splitting hairs, but it's not. I don't understand, like, is it like sulfatine or the N R F two pathways, whatever the heck it is. But I know a little bit, right? Why is baby broccoli or broccoli sprouts way better than like broccoli in particular? Why eat that?
That's a good question. So when you chew broccoli sprouts or any cruciferous vegetable, you basically break apart the cell walls where two chemicals that are kept in isolation in the, in the plants, unite in your mouth to create a new compound. And that compound, in the case of cruciferous vegetables, uh, is called sulforaphane. And sulforaphane.
Sulforaphane, okay.
Yeah, it's considered an insect, uh, like an insecticide, a natural insecticide that plants create, right? Because plants can't, you know, tooth and nail their way out of, you know, out of being eaten, right? So what they do is they practice chemical warfare. And so they create these compounds that if you are a smaller critter, maybe an insect, a mouse, a mold. The the compound would make you sick. And so, you know, when a mouse gnaws on these plants, it creates it creates these compounds, you know, sulforaphane is just one of them. But there's, you know, I mean, the plant kingdom is just full of these like natural defense, defense chemicals. What we see is that sulforaphane in somebody like you or me, you know, a big, robust organism,
actually has a number of beneficial and protective effects via a mechanism called hormesis. So hormesis is when you consume a plant compound. And, you know, if you were to consume a lot of it, it would be toxic. But in small doses, it actually has a beneficial effect, sort of like a counterintuitive beneficial effect, because here we have this toxic chemical. But in small doses, it's actually good for you. The same thing actually applies to exercise. You know, you could exercise enough where it would kill you, right? It's a stressor on the body. But in small doses, exercise actually makes you more robust, more resilient. We can, you know, sing the praises about exercise, you know, for hours. But sulforaphane is great because it's been shown to increase levels of a compound in
the body called glutathione, which is the, yeah, it's the body's master detoxifier, master antioxidant. It's being studied now as a means of, you know, it's it's cancer protective effects. It's also been suggested in a small clinical trial, I believe, to reduce symptoms of autism. So for anybody that has that in the family, I think it's worth looking into, you know? It's just one of the, one of the many benefits of eating a varied diet that includes cruciferous vegetables.
Okay, glutathione. I love glutathione. So I can't explain this. I'd like you to explain it to me. So I do some, I haven't done it in a while just because of COVID. But with all my traveling and I get depleted, I do IV therapy, even just sometime to get hydrated. I'll take IV hydration. One, I'd like your opinion on that. Actually, two, what's your opinion on that? Am I just peeing it all out or does it help? But here's what I know. When they put glutathione in my IV, something amazing happens to my body. There's a calming effect. I can feel that, I feel B12 when they put it in, you know, you get all wired. The other stuff I don't really feel. For some reason, glutathione, I can feel better actually when it's in my body.
So do you recommend someone supplements with it? Why is that happening or am I crazy? And what do you feel about IV therapy?
Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't really recommend, I don't make the recommendation that people supplement with glutathione. I mean, I have glut, I take sometimes liposomal glutathione supplements, but I, you know, I'm not, I really am, I'm pretty convinced that, uh, you know, supplements should be used very diligently and deliberately, based on your diet and, uh, and your specific, you know, deficiencies and, you know, even in some cases genes. But no, I don't, I generally don't recommend that people, um, supplement with it. I just don't think that you need to if you're eating a diet that is, is supplying the raw materials for your own, your body's own glutathione synthesis. So sulfur containing amino acids is very important.
Grass fed beef, eggs, things like that, you know, anything with sulfur in it is actually going to be really good for you. Sulfur is a rate limiting, um, uh, you know, element in the synthesis of, of glutathione. And so when you consume, for example, uh, cysteine rich, you know, foods, you're going to basically be supplying that. Also glycine, glycine is really important. So it's one of the reasons why I think collagen is worth consuming. And collagen is actually a supplement that I think is worth looking into because we don't tend to eat a lot of collagenous tissues at this point, you know.
Can you stay on that? You don't, you don't think that you break down those supplements in your stomach and you're never getting any benefit to taking something like, I've had other people tell me, hey, you're taking a collagen supplement, you're not getting any of it. It's, it's destroyed before it gets to you.
Yeah, you do break it down. So it's not a one to one, um, you know, it's not like you consume collagen and it becomes collagen in your joints.
But you are increasing your supply of glycine, which we don't consume enough of.
Your average person consumes about two grams of glycine every single day. And, uh, you create in your body another two grams of glycine. And, and that is why glycine is actually not considered an essential amino acid because we, we create it to some degree. But, um, I don't think that we create enough for optimal health, especially today when we consume lots of muscle meat. And the reason for that is, uh, so there have been research calculations that, that speculate that we need about 15 grams of, it depends on, you know, your weight and what, what you're eating, but about 15 grams of glycine a day. Um, and that our needs for glycine increase with higher, uh, consumption of another amino acid, methionine,
which is more present in muscle meat.
And we use, uh, we use glycine to create collagen. So by not, by not consuming adequate glycine, again, we only ingest about two grams of every single day, um, you might be actually limiting your body's ability to create, to create collagen. And collagen is super important. I mean, it's important for, um, I mean, it's, it's like the most abundant protein in the body and it, and production of it declines as we get older. It's important for the health of your, you know, your veins, your arteries. Um, so, uh, so yeah, it's one of those things that I think if you're not eating collagenous tissue, um, in, and in animal products, I think it's worth supplementing with.
Okay. By the way, thank you. I told everybody at the beginning, I'd be like feverishly writing notes. The cool thing about this show is they're listening to it in their car like, all right, well, I'm going to listen to, I gotta go all the way back and get a notepad out and start writing all this stuff down. So I really appreciate it. Um, and, and for me, you know, I'm a, I'd say I'm borderline obsessed with my own health just because there is dementia in my family.
Uh, I, the diff, I don't know that frankly, it's so long back. I don't know if it was dementia, you know, a particular form of dementia, Alzheimer's specifically, but it's there and certainly heart disease as well. And I like that you're telling us some of these markers that we can test for.
Page updated October 25, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
