The No.1 Health Expert: The One Food (WE ALL EAT) That's Slowly Hurting Us!: Max Lugavere

Max Lugavere is a foremost expert on the brain and how we can get the best out of it. A New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, his books 'Genius Foods', 'Genius Life' and 'Genius Kitchen' have ushered in a new way of seeing how what we eat effects how effective our brain is. What few know about Max is that his best-selling books come from deeply heartfelt motivation, as he saw his mother lost to dementia. Ever since that terrible day he's had one focus and one focus only - what can people do to protect and enable their brain and mental capacity. In a conversation packed with takeaway, practical insights, he takes us through how you can take your brain from ordinary to extraordinary. One of the foremost experts on nutrition to ever appear on DOAC, Max has an ability to take the latest scientific concepts and translate it into human like few we've ever seen before. Max Lugavere: Instagram: http://bit.ly/3Z4gIQQ Twitter: http://bit.ly/3IdkuAy Website: http://bit.ly/3xyCBf8 Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know that as your waist expands, your brain shrinks. What? Yeah, it's related to... Max Vugavir. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book Genius Food. A brain food expert. He's just the best in the world at what he does. There's a lot of misinformation out there. And so my passion is to know what's true. So when it comes to sugar, your average adult today is consuming 77 grams of added sugar every single day. That's almost 20 teaspoons. Jesus Christ. But the issue is, we're designed to overconsume those foods. So you're fighting against millions of years of evolution. How do we solve that? I haven't gotten asked that anywhere else.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Controversial new research surrounding meat in our diet.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Red meat is not associated with the health problems. We've been told for decades. People will try to censor you in talking about it. But we know that animal products in particular contain nutrients that are very supportive of good mental health. And there have been a number of studies that have shown that particularly vegan diets put people at increased risk for depression, at least a doubling of risk. I mean, food is so powerful. It's medicine. I get passionate about this because my mom was a vegetarian. It's clear that her low meat diet didn't protect her. There was a period where she got really bad, really fast. And then she passed away. It was just so incredibly hard. There were times I thought about suicide. It really showed me how fragile life is.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  We have incredible agency to change our destiny and to change the way, really ultimately, most of us are aging today. So how do we change that?

• 1:39Steven Bartlett?

  Max, why do you do what you do? And what do you do?

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Oh, man, what a place to start. I, um, well, I do what I do because the most important person in my life, my mother.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Was very ill from a very young age. And that was the most traumatic. Seeing her go through what she went through was the most traumatic thing I've ever had to endure in my life. And ultimately, it led to me losing her. And when a loved one gets sick, you know, had I struggled with any kind of like health condition, it probably wouldn't have been the motivating force in my life that my mom was for me. But because it was my mom, because it was somebody who really was such a beautiful person and who aspired her whole life to be healthy, seeing her succumb to illness,

• 2:41Speaker 00

  it was a call to action to me to learn as much as I possibly could about health and nutrition and to share that knowledge as I was acquiring it with ultimately anybody who would listen. And so what I do is I consider myself a health and science journalist with a point of view, I suppose. I'm a filmmaker, I'm a podcaster, I'm an author. But ultimately, my mission in life, I think my purpose in life is to is to help people, is to help people feel better, live longer, live healthier, and

• 3:21Speaker 00

  to avert ultimately the kinds of conditions that my mom struggled with for so many years.

• 3:30Steven Bartlett?

  Summing in on that then, can you take me to the day that you found out your mom was sick? And was there a phone call? Was there, were you at the doctors with her? And what was the diagnosis?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  It was around the year 2011. She was 58 roughly at the time. And I was, I had been living in Los Angeles and my mother was home in New York City. And I would routinely check in with my mom on the phone. And at a certain point, she started to complain to me about brain fog. And I thought, you know, that that was just, was par for the course of getting older. It's not a term that was in my lexicon, but you know, brain fog, you kind of have a sense of what someone's talking about when they, when they say that.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  I started to spend more and more time in New York. I was actually in between jobs at the time. And because of that, and because my mom's symptoms seemed to be a little bit worse than just like, you know, some, some passing phase, I started going with her to doctor's appointments. And nobody could give us answers. And I'm from, as I mentioned, New York City. And so we have access in New York to cathedrals, to academic medical insight, right? And so in all of those, in all of those instances, I was just met with a total lack of clarity. And, and it was really frustrating for me and my family. You know, one physician would think that it was depression, for example, and prescribed

• 5:01Speaker 00

  my mom a, a non, you know, like an SSRI drug, which are so commonly taken these days. But her symptoms continued to get worse. And ultimately, we had to take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic. So in the United States, the two, I guess, highest regarded hospitals in the country are the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. I mean, there are probably others in that tier as well. But the reason why we felt the need to travel to the Cleveland Clinic was because they're known for taking on very complex medical cases. And so we had a, we took out a couple nights at a Holiday Inn across the street from a hotel. And we show up at the hospital, they assemble a team around the patient. And it was there

• 5:44Speaker 00

  that week that my mom was diagnosed for the first time with a neurodegenerative condition. The diagnosis was unclear, but she was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. And so not knowing anything about either of those conditions, I mean, I, what I did know about those conditions were misconceptions. And, you know, some of them were, for example, that they're old person's conditions, that they are, you know, some, somehow genetically predetermined. But doing what any millennial with a data plan would do, I went home and I sat on the, or I went back to the hotel and I sat on the couch in the suite. And I started Googling Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, because those were the indications for the drugs that my mom was given.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  And that was the first time in my life that I'd ever had a panic attack. Like I, you know, I felt short of breath. I felt the room starting to close in on me. And it was, uh, that was a real turning point in my life. Learning that my mom had an incurable progressive condition.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  And, uh, and that was the point at which I, I really out of, I mean, it wasn't even a, it wasn't even a choice. I just, I, you know, I couldn't focus on anything else, anything but trying to understand to the best of my ability, why this happened to my mom. And I'm not a medical doctor. I didn't take an academic route. I didn't, you know, get a PhD, but I had always been passionate about health and nutrition and fitness and exercise science. I actually started college on a pre-med track. And I, I'm not saying that that is a, you know, could ever be a replacement for the rigors of, you know, going through the academic channels, but I knew where to find research because I had worked as a journalist after college.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  And so what I did was I, I just immediately dove into the medical literature and it was really difficult to understand at first. But it's something that like you read and you read and you read and you cross-reference and you watch, you know, you read books, you watch TED Talks, like I left no stone unturned. I was like, you know, I didn't, I didn't like a year, that first year, I wasn't even sleeping. I was just trying to like read anything I could get my hands on. And, um, and then ultimately that search broadened out where I, I started reaching out to experts, like actual scientists who are now ushering, ushering in the concept of dementia as a preventable condition. And I started asking them questions. And so, yeah, that was a journey that began about 10 years ago.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  But it was really motivated by, by that, that sort of initial incident where my mom was first diagnosed. And, uh, and it continued to, you know, watching my mom decline over the following years was really, I mean, it was just so incredibly hard that, um, that it just further cemented my, my, my mission, you know, to try to understand all that I could about these conditions. Cause by the time you show up to your doctor's office, you know, a lot of people ask, why me? Right? It seems like, it seems like these diagnoses are something that like, you know, that the, that the condition that we're being diagnosed for. Happened overnight, right? But it's not like most of these conditions, the kinds of conditions that are now saddling

• 8:57Speaker 00

  modern society, take years, if not decades, to develop. And so to me, what that suggests is we have incredible agency to change our destiny and to change the way really ultimately, most of us are aging today. And so, yeah, so I just, I became obsessed and I still am, so.

• 9:21Steven Bartlett?

  So let's talk about genius foods then.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:25Steven Bartlett?

  Chapter three of this book, you talk about sugar.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:30Steven Bartlett?

  Sugar is something I've thought a lot about recently. I'm on a bit of a food journey myself, trying to correct a lot of things in my diet. And to be honest, I find it all absolutely intimidating, contradictory, to the point that I'm not sure like where I'm, I feel like I'm being pulled and pushed from pillar to post. So I'm very keen to try and simplify my understanding of some of these sort of basic nutritional concepts. Sugar.

• 9:55Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to ask you if it's good or bad, and I'm asking that because I'm a Neanderthal and I just want things, you know, a lot of my questions on this subject matter will be very simplified and hopefully whoever's listening to this at home shares an equally primitive brain, so I can be a bridge to them. But sugar, good or bad?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  It depends.

• 10:15Steven Bartlett?

  I knew you were going to say that, and I know it was a stupid question.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Well, that's the kind of, that's the kind of answer that you should expect from somebody who really knows what they're talking about. The biggest problem, I think, today with regard to sugar is added sugar. So it's not sugar that's naturally found in food. All plant foods have some quantity of sugar, even kale has a tiny amount of sugar. Mostly you'll find it, you'll find it most concentrated in fruit, obviously, which is like the primary source of naturally occurring sugar in the produce section of the supermarket in whole fruit. But the most pernicious source of sugar today is the added sugar. The sugar that is added by food manufacturers to ultra-processed foods, usually with the intent of making those foods hyper-palatable.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Basically, these foods, one of the major problems with most ultra-processed foods is that they push your brain to a bliss point beyond which self-control becomes really difficult, if not altogether impossible.

• 11:14Steven Bartlett?

  I can relate.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like the pint of ice cream, right? We've all had that experience of going over to the freezer. Breaking out the pint of ice cream, flipping the top, taking a spoonful, only intending on having that spoonful. And then before you know it, you're looking at the bottom of the pint, right? I've been there, everybody I know has been there. It's just, uh, the problem is that people tend to think that it's a moral failure, right? That they screwed up when they're unable to moderate their consumption of those kinds of foods, whether it's ice cream, or cupcakes, or cookies, or what have you. But the issue is, the real understanding here is that it's not a moral failure. We're designed to overconsume those foods because they light up fireworks in our brains' reward centers because they're so calorie dense.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  And now we live in a time where we've solved for the food scarcity problem, right? We have food overabundance. This is the first time in human history where there are more overweight people walking the planet than underweight people. So we've solved that issue. But our brains, I mean, they're still operating on version 1.0 of the operating system that told them that when we encountered sweet foods, or even savory foods for that matter, because salt is actually a very valuable nutrient as well, that we shouldn't stop consuming them because we don't know when the next feast is gonna be, right? It was like there were periods of feast and famine. And so our brains and our, ultimately, our palates and our, our willpower are doing exactly what they're programmed to do. So you're fighting against millennia, you're fighting against millions of years of evolution

• 12:44Speaker 00

  when you try to moderate your consumption of those foods. And I think that's the real problem with added sugar. We tend to overconsume it. We don't tire of eating it. It gives foods these, this quality of being hyperpalatable. And it also has a number of, um, you know, inconvenient, let's just say hormonal effects that when we really go overboard, um, you know, aren't doing our health any favors. But for your average person today, I mean, we live in a world where, at least here in the United States, one in two people is trending towards obesity. Not just being overweight, but like obese, one in two. So out of every other person, you know, that person has clinical obesity. And one in two people also have some degree of glucose dysregulation.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  And glucose is essentially sugar. So for that, for your average person, more than, for most people. Most people today have some degree of metabolic dysfunction, the vast majority in fact do. And so for that person, sugar really is something, added sugar in particular, is something that really ought to be minimized, if not altogether avoided. Now, a little bit here and there, it's not going to be a problem. No single food can sway your health in any one direction, both, you know, either towards health or towards disease. But it's really, I think, important to be mindful of all of the many different places of added sugar in the, in the modern food supply. The other problem, which isn't necessarily a health problem, but it's a, it's a, it's

• 14:10Speaker 00

  a problem with regard to dose, because as I mentioned, dose makes the poison. One of the biggest issues with added sugar is that it's, our consumption of it is insidious, meaning it's just hidden everywhere. Whether it's commercial bread products, or sauces, or sugar sweetened coffee drinks. We tend to just consume a ton of it. Our average adult today is consuming something like 77 grams of added sugar every single day. If you want to just like visualize that, that's almost 20 teaspoons of pure sugar.

• 14:41Steven Bartlett?

  Jesus Christ.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Teaspoon, 20 teaspoons of pure sugar, this is sugar extracted from the food matrix. So this isn't sugar in fruit. This is just the added sugar that we're consuming by way of these food-like products that Americans and Brits and people, you know, increasingly around the world in, in developed societies are over-consuming today.

• 15:05Steven Bartlett?

  When I see, you know, fizzy drinks that say they don't have sugar in them.

• 15:13Steven Bartlett?

  Or other things that say they're sugar free. Should I be skeptical? Because some of these things I'm like, I'm eating this this chocolate bar and I'm thinking this is too good. It says sugar free or like really low sugar, but it just tastes like heaven.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. And I haven't gotten asked that anywhere else. It's definitely worth talking about. So a lot of like sugar free products today will use. There's a number of ways to make a product palatable and still say that you have, that there's no added sugar. So one way is manufacturers will use a compound called maltodextrin, which is essentially sugar. It's very sweet. It's technically a complex carbohydrate, so they don't have to list it as as sugar. But it breaks down almost immediately into pure glucose. So it's actually a glucose polymer.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  So it's like molecules of glucose bound together in a way that's very easy for the body to break down. Other ways they'll add fake fibers like chicory root fiber or tapioca starch fiber. The FDA is currently investigating whether or not these fibers, because the whole point of fiber is that we don't digest it. It's something that passes through us, maybe gets fermented by gut microbiota in our large intestine. But it's unclear as to whether or not these purported fibers actually act like fiber once in our bodies. And so overconsumption of those fibers can cause all kinds of digestive upset.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  A lot of people will get like incredibly bloated, like all kinds of inconvenient digestive issues when they overconsume them. And you'll see those a lot in like sugar free products. Then you've got artificial sweeteners. You've got other non caloric sweeteners like stevia, monk fruit. There are sugar alcohols, which sugar alcohols are an umbrella category. And underneath that umbrella, you've got sugar alcohols that I think are pretty good, actually, like erythritol and xylitol. And then you have others like maltitol and sorbitol, where if you overconsume those, again, more digestive upset. So you just really want to be careful with the the non caloric sweeteners that you're ingesting,

• 17:26Speaker 00

  making sure ultimately that you're not ingesting too much, particularly of like these fake fibers and some of the artificial or some of the, you know, the sugar alcohols, because they can really wreck your wreck your gut.

• 17:40Steven Bartlett?

  What's your personal sort of diet regime as it relates to sugar? Do you have sugar in your diet?

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Um, not a ton, to be honest. I try to minimize my consumption of ultra-processed foods, which are, I can define that if you want, because it's a term that I feel like I use a lot these days. And, you know, people, I tend to use it as if everybody knows what I'm talking about. But essentially, you have unprocessed food, which is like what you'll find around the perimeter of your supermarket, right? Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit. Then you have minimally processed food. So, uh, ground beef, for example, has been minimally processed, right?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  When you, uh, cook that beef, you're essentially processing beef, right? You're processing food when you cook it. A fruit smoothie is essentially processed fruit, because you're taking some of the steps away

• 18:42Speaker 00

  with regard to the assimilation process, right? With a fruit smoothie, you no longer have to chew fruit. You now suddenly get to drink your fruit.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Ultra-processed foods, and you could do all of those, by the way, in your kitchen. So that's the distinction. Ultra-processed foods are foods that you couldn't possibly make in your own kitchen. They tend to be shelf-stable. They tend to, so you tend to find them in the aisles of our supermarkets. They have long shelf lives. They come in packages. They tend to have long ingredients lists, oftentimes with ingredients that you don't recognize. So that right there is a key. You know, some people listening to this might say, oh, well, that's a naturalistic fallacy. Not everything that we can pronounce is good for us, and not everything that we can't pronounce is bad for us, right? I think that's a pretty poor argument.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  I actually think that, um, it's reasonable in a time where 60% of the calories a person, your average person is consuming. Is coming from these ultra-processed foods and we know that people are metabolically unwell. And we know also that like the food industry has lied to us so many times in the past as they continue to put profit over, you know, consumer health and wellbeing. I think it's totally reasonable to want to know what's in your food. And, uh, and so, yeah, so if you can't identify and therefore recreate the product in question, chances are it's an ultra-processed food product.

• 20:14Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna ask the question then, are all ultra-processed foods bad?

• 20:19Speaker 00

  Great question.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  So I would say that as a, as a screening tool, ultra-processed foods, you generally want to avoid them. As a diagnostic tool, you know, are individual food products that happen to be ultra-processed necessarily bad by virtue of their processing? Not all the time. And some examples of some ultra-processed foods that I think are actually quite good, although again, they are in the minority, would be for example, like whey protein. You couldn't make whey protein, or most of us couldn't make whey protein in our kitchens, right?

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Fat-free Greek, plain Greek yogurt, I think is a great, high-protein, low-cost, low-calorie food, you know? You couldn't, generally you couldn't make that in your kitchen. Like you would, you know, you could if you really like wanted to put in the, the time and effort. Dark chocolate is something that, you know, tends to be made in a, in a plant, right? But, um, we know that there are significant benefits to the consumption of dark chocolate. I think food manufacturers are becoming wise to, uh, to this. And so now you'll find like various high-protein options that, that are shelf-stable and the like. And, you know, it really has to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  But just in general, ultra-processed foods are a big problem because they tend to be not the best for us. Like, the majority of ultra-processed foods that people are consuming are refined grain products packed with added sugar, excess sodium. Sodium's not bad, but like, you know, we tend to overconsume it today because of its presence in, you know, in these ultra-processed products, as used as a flavor enhancer. So yeah, so most ultra-processed products are bad. And it's sort of like the analogy that I'll draw. It's sort of like the BMI. I don't know if you're familiar with the BMI, but BMI is a way that it's a screening tool for obesity. So when you look at the population level, most people

• 22:27Speaker 00

  with a certain BMI, past a certain level, are either obese or severely obese. And it's a screening tool. It's not a tool that any physician would use to diagnose obesity because you have to look specifically at a person's body composition. You hear stories all the time, like The Rock being technically obese, right? That's why BMI is not a good diagnostic tool, but it is a fairly trustworthy screening tool. So similarly, ultra-processed foods, yeah, there are definitely some exceptions, but in general, they're a food category to be minimized.

• 22:59Steven Bartlett?

  I've been, I'm just off the back of trying to have a ketogenic diet. I tried for about two months.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:09Steven Bartlett?

  Went well in terms of the superficial results I think I was seeking. Felt great as well in terms of my focus, my performance. I just felt really good. I felt lighter. The digestive challenges I was having and the pains and the bloating had completely vanished for those two months. But I couldn't stick at it. Maybe I have fragile willpower or something. But, and then I had two guests come on my podcast who talked about the ketogenic diet, and they both alluded to the fact that the issue with it is your human's ability to like stick to the thing.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:45Steven Bartlett?

  What's your position on the ketogenic diet? And I know in your, in your book, I think, chapter 11. We talk a little bit about, you seem very pro ketogenic diet.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm pro, I'm pro the ketogenic diet in certain contexts.

• 24:00Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  I'm not pro, I'm not necessarily pro the ketogenic diet in every context. You don't need to be on a ketogenic diet for weight loss. I think that's a big misconception. But the reason why I talk about it, I mean, you have to understand the context of the ketogenic diet within Genius Foods, which is that from the standpoint of the brain, it's a very important diet. It's an important diet to study. It's an important diet to talk about. As I've mentioned, we've been using it to treat certain types of epilepsy for 100 years at this point.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  And that's because it's the only diet that changes the, the biochemistry of the brain. Like it does that in a very significant way. It provides an alternate fuel substrate to the brain, which normally relies on glucose. But in certain, in certain situations, the brain can't rely on glucose. For example, with traumatic brain injury. Or certainly in the setting of Alzheimer's disease, where the brain's ability to generate ATP from glucose, ATP is the brain's primary energetic currency, is diminished by about 50%. And so, you know, if you're able to essentially keep the lights on, so to speak,

• 25:25Speaker 00

  by providing the brain with this alternate fuel source, then that's a really powerful idea and needs to be studied. And there have been a number of studies

• 25:37Speaker 00

  on, you know, in the setting of Alzheimer's disease that have shown that, at least in the short term, the ketogenic diet seems to provide some degree of symptom improvement, which I think is, is, is really important. Now, does that mean that the ketogenic diet is going to be right for every dementia, dementia patient? Certainly not, because, you know, it's a, it's an, it is an incredibly hard diet to adhere to. And particularly for somebody with dementia. I mean, putting somebody with dementia on any kind of diet outside of the diet that they're used to is virtually impossible, right? But in Alzheimer's disease specifically.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Patients with Alzheimer's disease will actually start to develop a sweet tooth. And it's thought that that's in part the brain, a response to the brain crying out for energy because its ability to create energy again from sugar is diminished by 50%. And so getting somebody with dementia to adhere to that diet is just really difficult to do, but if we can, if, for example, the reader of my book were to one day have some kind of neurological condition and want to experiment with that, then that's a great thing. We also have various ketogenic therapies, like whether it's MCT oil or powder or these exogenous ketone supplements. I know people tend to roll their eyes and think that these

• 27:00Speaker 00

  are like a fad now, but there's actually an FDA approved medical food on the market for the treatment of dementia called Axona, which is basically based on these medium chain triglycerides. So this is like real science. There's now lots of evidence suggesting that ketogenic diets can be useful in the setting of various types of mental illness. So, yeah, so I just think it's so crucially important to talk about. Now, does your average person need to be on a ketogenic diet for good health? No. Does the average person need to be on a ketogenic diet to prevent dementia? No. Similarly, it's the same thing with like for type 2 diabetes, which is now super common. It's not that sugar in the

• 27:45Speaker 00

  diet caused type 2 diabetes. It's the overconsumption of calories and the like, and it's the overfilling. That's a whole different rabbit hole, but the overfilling of a person's fat silos that then causes fat to accumulate in other organ tissues. And so carbohydrates are part of that problem, but does that mean that carbohydrates caused the issue? Not necessarily. However, for somebody with type 2 diabetes who essentially has gotten to a point of glucose intolerance, yeah, being on a low carb diet might actually be a good therapeutic option. It's not fixing the issue, so to speak, but I would say that's the analogy that I would draw to the ketogenic diet. It's a powerful therapeutic diet. And yeah, and we have to keep talking about

• 28:28Speaker 00

  it. There's a lot of people that will like...

• 28:33Speaker 00

  You know, that will try to censor you in talking about it now from the vegan camp, like the, you know, people who, who advocate for these plant-based diets because the ketogenic diet tends to be a diet that is inclusive of animal products, you know, in some iterations of it, it might even be a high animal product diet, right? But they're, they're just like against it because it includes animal products. But if you're talking about neurology and you're not also talking about the ketogenic diet, then you're doing a massive disservice to, to patients, I think, around the world.

• 29:11Steven Bartlett?

  On that point of vegans, vegetarians, vegans, one of the things you've said is that you think they're putting themselves at increased risk of mental health problems and dementia because some of the important chemicals to avert those diseases are found in animal products like fish and eggs and meat and stuff like that. Is that, is that accurate?

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, certainly, certainly eating fish is associated with reduced risk.

• 29:38Steven Bartlett?

  Dementia?

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Yes. But also now we're starting to see other forms of animal products like beef, chicken, dairy are associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline. We know that animal products are the richest source of choline and we've seen that higher consumption of choline is associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline. There were, just over the past year, there have been a number of really important studies, generally observational in nature. That's kind of one of the issues with nutrition science. It's really, we, we have very few long-term, you know, randomized controlled trials to, to show us with certainty that these connections are causal.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  But the UK Biobank study, which is a very large population, 500,000 people, observational study found that. A dose response, meaning the more, I believe, animal products were consumed, the lower the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a pretty significant margin. We see that red meat is not associated with the kinds of health problems that, you know, we've been told for decades.

• 30:52Steven Bartlett?

  Cancer and stuff and...

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's dietary quality as a whole. There is a great study people can look up. Maximova is the first author, I believe, the year it was published was 2017 or 2018. They looked at all-cause cancer and they found that when people were eating meat on a low-quality diet, meaning meat in the context of fast food, right, that, yeah, there was an increased risk for cancer. But once diet quality was high, meaning that people were eating meat with fresh fruits and vegetables, clearly a dietary pattern indicative of health consciousness, that that risk of cancer was completely abolished.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  So, yeah, like, you know, early on in nutrition, I think it was, you know, with poor-quality studies.

• 31:39Steven Bartlett?

  Sponsored by people that have a dog in the fight.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's very easy to zoom out at the population level and to see links drawn between meat consumption and anything bad imaginable, right? Because most of the time, first of all, most people who consume more meat, especially in this country, tend to be more sedentary and they tend to smoke more. They tend to... This is the whole concept of healthy user bias, which is so crucially important. You have to know, if you intend to know anything about nutrition, you have to know about healthy user bias. People who eat more red meat, they tend to smoke more, they tend to be more sedentary, you know, they tend to eat more fast food. Like, most meat products consumed in this country are hamburgers. They're chicken nuggets.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  You know, like, they're, like, they're those kinds of foods, ultra-processed meat products. Conversely, if you look at the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, you see healthy user bias there too, favoring fresh fruits and vegetables. And that's, you know, it's pretty obvious to understand why. Most people today are like obese. They're consuming ultra-processed foods day and night. Fast food, shelf-stable convenience foods, the kinds of foods that you, foods in quotes, that you would get from like a vending machine, for example. Those are like, that's, those are the foods that are like the base of most people's food pyramids, so to speak. And so if you were to take a food like quinoa, for example, which, first of all, if you know

• 33:08Speaker 00

  how to pronounce quinoa, you're probably reading health blogs, right? You've probably listened to a health podcast or two, right? Consumption of quinoa is probably associated, I don't, I don't know if this study has been done, but I would bet, I would bet $500 today that consumption of quinoa is associated with robust health. Is it because the quinoa is so healthy? Or is it because the person that's eating quinoa on a regular basis, that person's probably a pretty health-conscious person? That person probably shops at Whole Foods, that person is probably, has a gym membership, you know? So that's healthy user bias, right there. And so it works in the inverse sort of way with red meat. There are very few health-conscious like red meat eaters.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  I mean, there are more now, but we're like, sort of a niche, you know? Like, we're people on the paleo diet, so to speak. Most people who consume red meat, yeah, they're eating it in the form of hot dogs and hamburgers and subway sandwiches with the fries, with the large Coke. So all that is to say is that it's very easy to find like links. And that's why there's this funny truism in like nutrition science, is that if you look in the nutrition literature, you can find a study to back up anything that you want to say. I'm always hyper-conscious of that. But that's certainly the case with meat, because, you know, these observational studies, they just, they, they're so difficult to do. But now newer studies are showing us that when you control for these kinds of things, like diet quality, that there's no association.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  You know, that there's, that, that meat actually is a very nutritious food. And with the small slew of randomized control trials that we have with regard to red meat... We see no negative impact with regard to an actual, like, real clinical outcome. And oftentimes, we see benefit because it's a pristine, wonderful source of protein. It's a wonderful source of many micronutrients that we know are, people tend to underconsume today. Nutrients of concern, so to speak, like zinc, vitamin B12, nutrients that we know that people direly need, iron. Iron deficiency anemia is a real global problem. One in four people globally are anemic, and half of those cases are due to iron deficiency.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  And red meat is like the ultimate iron supplement, you know? So, yeah, so I get passionate about this, I think in part because my mom was a vegetarian. And there were many times, as I was, you know, reading about all this stuff, that I wanted to, like, shake my mom and be like, you know, "Mom, you're letting your ideology impact your biology, you know? That's like, not something that you want to happen." And, you know, I would never go so far as to say that I know what caused my mom's illness, like, you know, I don't even know if it was her lack of consuming meat, I don't know.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  But it's clear that her, you know, low-meat diet didn't protect her, you know? And I'm pretty convinced at this point that some is certainly better than none. You know, I don't advocate, I think some people think that I advocate for a high-meat diet, or even like a carnivore diet. I don't, I just, I really think it's an important part of a balanced diet, and a highly nutritious part of a diet. It's actually like, red meat and animal products in general, they tend to be our most nutrient-dense foods. There was a paper by Ty Beal, who's a nutrition researcher, whose work I follow, that found that if you looked at the top six or so... Most nutrient-dense foods available to us, they're all animal products with the

• 36:48Speaker 00

  exception of maybe dark leafy greens, which are also very nutrient-dense. So yeah, I'm pretty unapologetic in my endorsement of animal products, yeah.

• 37:01Steven Bartlett?

  In, speaking of dark leafy greens and animal products and such, in your book, on page 301, you talk about clearing out your kitchen. Now, I'm well aware when I ask this question that if you were clearing out my kitchen, you'd first throw out all of the ultra-processed foods.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Probably, maybe.

• 37:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I mean, I'd want you to do whatever's in my best interest.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  I'd be, yeah, I'd be gentle.

• 37:26Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, next. All sources of wheat and gluten is point number two.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:31Steven Bartlett?

  All sources of gluten?

• 37:35Steven Bartlett?

  That's all my bread gone.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, well.

• 37:38Steven Bartlett?

  My noodles are gonna go as well.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  I think that my stance has softened a little bit since I wrote that.

• 37:45Steven Bartlett?

  I like the savage. Let's keep it moving. Sources of industrial-grade emulsifiers. What is an industrial-grade emulsifier and why has it got to go?

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, so specifically in the book, we call out polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose, which are synthetic emulsifiers that are used to create pleasing mouth feels in foods, usually that combine hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances, so oil and water, or fatty substances and a more aqueous solution. And so the, you know, the archetypes of those foods would be nut milks and ice creams. And what they've shown in animal models, to be clear.

• 38:32Steven Bartlett?

  Salad dressings and stuff as well?

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, salad dressings. What they've shown in animal models is that those substances degrade the mucosa, this like really important lining that separates the inner contents of our GI tract from the, from our gut epithelial cells, which, you know, there's a chapter in Genius Foods that I'm very proud of on the gut microbiome, all the new science surrounding the gut microbiome and how, you know, the gut-brain axis really in many ways influences not just brain function, but might have an effect on our predilection to disease. And so, anything that inflames the gut, the gut isn't like Vegas. Like what happens in the gut doesn't necessarily stay in the gut.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  And so, these two compounds were shown in animal models to have a profound inflammatory effect on the gut. And so, I recommend looking out for them and avoiding them. Now, they're also a sort of a proxy, or surrogate, if you will, for ultra-processed foods. Like, ultra-processed foods are gonna have those two compounds in them, as opposed to fresh foods. So, the dose makes the poison, but yeah, I would recommend avoiding them. Because that study was like, pretty, pretty eye-opening.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  And the chronic, the consumption of those two compounds, I would say, probably worth, you know, avoiding.

• 40:10Steven Bartlett?

  I'm looking at this list of stuff that you, you've asked me to chuck out in my kitchen, and there's a lot of things here that are currently in my kitchen. Beverages, fruit juice, been a big fruit juice drinker my whole life. When I was younger, they told me that fucking, they told me that orange juice was healthy. I was guzzling orange juice, thinking I was doing my body a huge service in doing so. And then, over time, I've come to learn from having conversations like this, that these fruit juices, I thought when I had a fruit, when I had like a fruit smoothie, I thought I was like, you know, I was paying homage to my body. But I've come to learn that I was probably doing my body a disservice in many respects because of the, the sugar, the available sugar content.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you can squeeze the fruit sugar from five, six oranges in one glass of orange juice. I mean, think about it, the last time you, like, ate a whole apple, did you feel afterwards that you wanted to go and eat another apple?

• 41:05Steven Bartlett?

  No, I mean, I only ever eat one apple at a time.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 41:08Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think the reason for that is probably... That whole fruit is self limiting because

• 41:14Steven Bartlett?

  Fills you a bit more than

• 41:15Speaker 00

  It fills you a bit more, yeah. First of all, you're eating it. There's a speed at which you're eating it that's a lot slower than when you drink the fruit juice. So it takes a lot, you know, it it allows your body or stomach to realize that it's it now has food in it to turn off some of those hunger signals like the hormone growing. You also, when you chew it, you know, you leave large particles of the apple that might take, you know, an hour to to fully digest. The food matrix has fiber in it, like the fiber from that apple, so it slows the the transit of that sugar. It slows the it it blunts basically the the blood sugar spike. You're also getting lots of water along with the, you know, the the sugar that you're consuming when you consume that apple.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  It's a lot different when you're just drinking juice, you know, it's a lot easier to like to get the fruit sugar from. You know, if you're drinking apple juice, for example, you can easily drink the ju- the sugar of five, six apples in one glass. But, you know, after eating a delicious, even the most delicious Honeycrisp apple, which I love, it's like one of my favorite foods. I've never felt the need to go and

• 42:22Steven Bartlett?

  Grab another one.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Another one, the way that when I'm eating tortilla chips, you know, while I'm chewing on one tortilla chip, I'm already, you know, lusting after the one that's in my hands. Right? I'm not even like focused on the one that's in my mouth. And so

• 42:36Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that? I'm like that with so many foods, like if I have one Pringle, I there's it's gonna take a lot to stop me getting to the bottom.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:44Steven Bartlett?

  And I don't know why. It's like suddenly I become a Pringle addict. And I've always wondered why that is because, you know, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, you know. I have one, I have two, I have three. Okay, we're done.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:55Steven Bartlett?

  But the Pringles, I can, I'll get to the bottom unless I'm in a social situation where I feel slightly embarrassed by eating an entire like tube of Pringles.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Well, there, I mean, it's Pringles. Once you pop, you can't stop. That is a that is a truism with scientific backing. Like that, we know that Pringles are ultra processed. We know that they're minimally satiating. There are three characteristics that make a food satiating and Pringles lack all of them. So one is protein. Protein is the most satiating of the macronutrients. So for anybody struggling with hunger, pangs or whatever, prioritize protein in your diet, increase the amount of protein that you're consuming. For a person with healthy kidneys, there is absolutely nothing to worry about with regard to high protein consumption.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  It's the most satiating macronutrient and it is a really important macronutrient for nourishing our musculature and ultimately assuaging our hunger. When you eat more protein, you eat less carbs and fat. And carbs and fat are energy. Protein is, it's very difficult for your body to store protein. Your body doesn't, your body doesn't want to store. There's so many uses for protein in your body, whether it's to create neurotransmitters or to rebuild your muscle tissue or your bones or ligaments, like to create enzymes. I mean, protein, like there's, protein has so many roles in the body. Carbs and fat, for the most part, are just energy. I mean, there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. That's not to say that carbohydrates are bad, by the way, because a lot of people will

• 44:22Speaker 00

  hear that and say, oh, I don't, I could, you know, get by on zero carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are important for optimizing hormones, for optimizing exercise performance, but there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. It's essentially energy. And so too is fat. I mean, fat is energy as well. We have a minimal daily requirement for essential fats and we see that higher fat can support energy. You know, as I mentioned, you don't want to go low fat because fat supports hormone production. We see that people on low-fat diets tend to have lower testosterone. It also facilitates the absorption of very important fat soluble nutrients like vitamins A, E, D, and K and various fat soluble plant compounds.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  But it's carbohydrates and fat that are energy, very easily stored by the body. You know, if we, we can easily store carbohydrates in our liver as sugar, glycogen, and in our musculature, and we can easily store fat in fat. So protein, very difficult to store. So that's the other, that's, that's the first factor that makes a food satiating. Pringles are a low protein food. The second factor is fiber. Pringles are devoid of, largely devoid of fiber. Fiber slows, you know, like we saw in the, in the apple example, it slows the transit of food in the stomach. It makes us feel more satiated. It also absorbs water and it mechanically stretches out the stomach, which turns off

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Certain hunger hormones like ghrelin, for example.

• 45:53Steven Bartlett?

  So good for weight loss.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's good for weight loss to prioritize protein and fiber, dietary fiber. And then water. So water is the number one enemy of shelf stability. And so ultra-processed foods, they want long shelf lives. That's like key to a profitable ultra-processed food product, right? It can be shipped overseas, it can stay for months on the shelf. Very little waste. And, uh, and so products like Pringles devoid of water, they're completely dehydrated, right? And water, sometimes when we're hungry, we're actually thirsty. It's just that those wires are getting sort of crossed and miscommunicated. Um, but your average hunter gatherer didn't have access to, you know, running water.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  They couldn't just pop into their local like gas station and buy bottled water. You know, where did a hunter gatherer find water when it wasn't readily available?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  They would get it from food, they would get it from fruits and vegetables and even animal products are a good source of, of hydration. So oftentimes when we're, um, when we think that we're hungry, we just need a little bit of, of hydration. So all those three factors, the protein, the fiber and the, and the hydration are all severely lacking in Pringles and other ultra-processed foods, not to call it specifically.

• 47:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. Yeah, we'll see.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, uh, these kinds of foods that we now consume to our detriment today in the 21st century would have potentially saved the life of a hunter gatherer, one of our ancestors back prior to the ubiquity of food stability.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  So, yeah, not to hate on your, on your Pringles addiction.

• 47:27Steven Bartlett?

  No, it's fine. They're out. Ladies and gentlemen, I am so excited, um, to introduce and to announce that we have a brand new sponsor on this podcast. And it's a brand that I've used for the last decade, um, across business, across personal life. When I'm holidaying, when I'm traveling for works, even at times when I haven't had somewhere to live, and that is Airbnb. The thing with Airbnb is most people, when they think about Airbnb, they think about the guest side of the, the product. They think about staying somewhere and scrolling through all of the incredible homes that you can stay in. But the entrepreneur in me has always thought about the other side, which is what space do I have? What space am I living in that I could add from a supply side and to create a revenue stream from?

• 48:09Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I'm fascinated by and I'll be sharing details about that side of Airbnb in the coming episodes. Thank you Airbnb for supporting us on this show. It means a lot. Reading through your work was the first time I encountered this distinction between health span and lifespan. In your own assessment, like, what is the difference between someone's health span and their lifespan?

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Great question. So we're, I mean, today, we are living longer, right? Thanks to modern medical advances. Not all of us, my mom, you know, my mom didn't have a lengthy lifespan, but generally, we're living longer, but we are also dying longer. And what I mean by that is that we're spending, our health spans are shrinking, so our lifespans are expanding. But we're actually spending more of our life, especially particularly in our latter years, sick, burdened with chronic disease and disability. And so I think it's really important that we

• 49:08Speaker 00

  not just have a lengthening of lifespan in our crosshairs, but that we also aspire to lengthen our health span. So we wanna, we wanna prevent chronic disease and disability to the best of our ability. And I think that's, that's just crucially important. So what that implies is as we age, you know, that we, we continue to be mobile and to move about the world and to be free of depression and we stay connected in our, in our communities. And I think, you know, eating a healthy diet, exercising, staying socially connected, I mean, you know, averting loneliness, these are all crucially, crucially important. And, and yeah, unfortunately, today,

• 49:50Speaker 00

  I think we tend to think only in terms of lifespan. I just wanna live as long as possible. But, you know, today, for many people, particularly in the Western world, it's, you know, it's like, it's a double edged sword, because yeah, you're living longer, but you're, you know, most, most people in elder age today are frail, you know, they have chronic, chronic health conditions, and, and it's a big problem.

• 50:20Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned depression there. I've, I've been learning a little bit lately about the role that our diet plays in our mental health. You, you referenced earlier that your mother was given antidepressants, SSRIs, when she was going through her, her period of ill health.

• 50:37Steven Bartlett?

  What's your, what's your assessment on the role that food plays in mental health? What, what foods are typically, in your view, good for our mental health? Helping us to avoid depression, anxiety, whatever else? And what, what foods are typically bad for our mental health?

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Yeah, mental health is so, I, I learned this recently, which is just shocking, that the number two cause of death for people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, in that sort of ballpark demographic, the second cause of death is suicide. And that's just shocking to me. The first is unintentional injury. So it's like drunk driving and just, you know, doing stupid things. But yeah, when it comes to mental health, I mean, our, our mental status is highly responsive to the outside, to our, to our environment. And our environment includes how we're living our lives,

• 51:36Speaker 00

  the people that we surround ourselves with on a daily basis, and indeed, the foods that we're eating. So, you know, I think when it comes to mental health, there are a number of really interesting observational studies that show us that vegan and vegetarian diets, but I think particularly vegan diets are, put people at increased risk for depression. By the latest data that I've seen, at least a doubling of risk. And the question that always arises there is, is the vegan dietary pattern causing the depression? Or are people who are more prone to depression gravitating to the vegan diet? I think it's probably bidirectional, because we know that animal products in particular

• 52:21Speaker 00

  contain nutrients that are, that seem to be very supportive of good mental health.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  There was one study out of Deakin University's Food and Mood Center that found that women who didn't consume the nationally recommended three to four servings of red meat per week were at twice the risk of developing major depression. And they didn't see that association for other animal proteins. So they didn't see it for chicken, pork. And they also saw an increased risk when people, when women ate much more than the, than that three to four serving recommendation. And when you actually look into what red meat contains in it, it contains a lot of nutrients that we know directly support the brain, whether it's zinc or vitamin B12. You could look at a food like beef liver, which is one of the best sources of folate.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  We know that low folate consumption is associated with depression. So I think that's, you know, I think animal products, super important. Eggs, you know, a rich source of choline, fatty fish, but generally like whole foods. I think whole foods, a whole food dietary pattern, so, you know, minimally processed, again, like the foods that you find around the perimeter of the supermarket that you cook for yourself.

• 53:33Steven Bartlett?

  Mediterranean diets.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Mediterranean style, yeah. I don't care what proportion of animal products or plant products, you know, you have, although I think including both to some degree is probably better than not, provided you're not allergic or have any specific sensitivity. But they're now using diet as an intervention to improve symptoms. So the same Food and Mood Center, which is actually one of the institutions that's really, that's really kind of championing this field of nutritional psychiatry, published the first ever randomized controlled trial where they used a dietary intervention to treat depression, major depression. So it was called the Smiles Trial.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  And anybody can look this up, but they used a, a whole foods diet, Mediterranean-style diet that was inclusive of red meat, fish, dark leafy greens, berries, olive oil, eggs, things like that. And they found that in the patients with major depression compared to controls that were treated with the standard of care. They saw they saw something like a threefold increase in remission from the dietary intervention. Now, these were patients, obviously, that or I guess not obviously, but they were patients that were on a junk food diet.

• 54:50Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  So if you're on a junk food diet, which most people are, and you're seeing, you know, and your mood is not where you think it ought to be. I absolutely think a first line of defense should be, you know, adopting more of these or integrating rather more of these these these whole foods and cutting out the ultra-processed foods. And then, of course, I mean, like, sort of, you can't really talk about lifestyle and mental health without mentioning exercise. Exercise is, you know, I mean, there's like a bounty of evidence at this point showing us that exercise is like literally medicine for the brain.

• 55:22Steven Bartlett?

  Saunas, something you talked about as well. Saunas being having a positive impact on cognitive function via, I believe that the chemical is called norepinephrine.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Norepinephrine, yeah.

• 55:33Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I said.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Or I believe on your side of the pond, it's called noradrenaline. It's the same thing.

• 55:38Steven Bartlett?

  Noradrenaline, okay.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the same same compound.

• 55:40Steven Bartlett?

  And that has a cognitive relationship that has a relationship with cognitive performance?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, so norepinephrine is actually produced in a part of the brain called the locus cerullus, which is like one of the first structures to become damaged in Alzheimer's disease. And so that's sort of like the hub of norepinephrine release. And we see that when we apply physical stress to the body, of which saunas are one type, that there is a an upregulation of norepinephrine release. And and yeah, so that might, in a way, sort of help, you know, prime the body to to adapt and become more resilient, because that's essentially what stressors do to the body. That's the whole concept underlying hormesis.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  That hormesis, which is like low doses of low to moderate doses of a stressor. Actually are, as opposed to being, rather than being harmful to the body, actually elicit an adaptive response that makes the body come out on the other side stronger and more resilient. And so that is the, that's essentially the mechanism, the proposed mechanism underlying why it seems that saunas are beneficial to our health. And, but also exercise and also cold water immersion and also intermittent fasting and also even some of these like plant compounds.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  You know, like we, we consume myriad compounds and plants that if we were to consume big doses might actually have a toxic effect, but in small doses actually are thought to benefit our health via this same hormetic pathway. But yeah, sauna use, a lot of the research is coming out of the University of Eastern Finland, which is a great place for this research to be done because saunas in Finland are like taking a shower. So you could say, if that study were done, if those studies were being done here in the United States, you could easily write them off to healthy user bias. Cause somebody who's regularly saunaying is, or taking a sauna, as the Finns say, is probably has access to a gym, probably, you know, is going to the spa regularly,

• 57:56Speaker 00

  probably is like putting a great deal of attention on their own physical health, right? But in Finland, that's not the case. People aren't doing saunas as like a health modality. They do it because they love it, because it's a self to the, you know, to the cold temperatures there. And it's just a part of like the normal like routine. And so what they're finding is that you, just using a sauna two to three times a week is associated with a 22% risk reduction for dementia. And using it four to seven times per week is associated with a 65% reduced risk for the development of dementia. So that's like a dose response. The more you use it, the more robust the health effect seems to be. And it's not just for dementia. They've seen a reduced risk for hypertension, which we know is really important. We know that the brain, that blood pressure is really important from the standpoint of brain health.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  So you want to make sure that your blood pressure is healthy. Also all cause mortality. Now, just to be clear, these are, these are still correlational studies, but mechanistically there's plausibility there. And that is, you know, we know that. When you use a sauna, it does have a positive impact on your blood pressure. We know that it can reduce inflammation. We know that it gets your heart rate up. I mean, I know this. Whenever I use a sauna, I put my finger on the artery in my wrist and I can see that I'm getting like, almost like a mild aerobic workout. And so we know that that's like, that's, saunas are essentially like the best workout that you can have while sitting absolutely still. You're also purging toxins through your, through your sweat,

• 59:23Speaker 00

  compounds that aren't as, as effectively excreted via stool and urine. So it's like, you know, there's, there's a lot of good stuff going for saunas. And of course, more research needs to be done. But all indicators seem to point towards a, a positive health effect.

• 59:41Steven Bartlett?

  It's really interesting that, you know, our ancestors probably had natural stresses on them at all times. And we've kind of built a life around mitigating stresses. So, you know, living in very warm, like room temperature, houses, sat on sofas, use this piece of glass to order my food, my date, to talk to my friends. It's almost like we're optimizing our lives away from stresses. And these stresses seem to be so critical to the natural hormone and physiological responses that make us healthy human beings.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Totally, yeah. It's like, I've heard it referred to as like the comfort crisis.

• 1:00:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a big problem, whether it's like constant, you know, constant climate control. So, I mean, just like so few of us are willing at any point to venture out of our comfort zone and to be uncomfortable. And I think our biology suffers as a result. This isn't just, you know, this is like, there's actual now basic science underpinning this concept that when we apply stress to the body, or even via the foods that we consume, this like mild hormetic stress that we get, that we get from certain compounds, whether those compounds are in turmeric or kale or broccoli or what have you, that.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And it fosters a degree of antifragility, which I love, you know, I think it's like, I think it's so important. I mean, if you think about it, we didn't evolve over millennia to arrive here and be taken down by a peanut, you know, or like, or all of these, like, you know, we're seeing this, this crazy

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  like spike in, in autoimmunity, in incidence of autoimmune conditions and allergies and the like. And, you know, I think it's a, it's a testament to how dysregulated our lifestyles have become, how removed our lifestyles have become from the kinds, from, from the world in which we evolved. And, um, and part of what's been lost is the stress, is the beneficial stress, as you've mentioned.

• 1:01:52Steven Bartlett?

  What is the unbeneficial stress and the impact it has? I, you know, chapter 10, you talk a lot about, about chronic stress. One of the, one of the things you said was,

• 1:02:02Steven Bartlett?

  ever see a person with a bulging midsection, but surprisingly skinny arms and legs? This is the picture of chronic stress.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, chronic stress is a killer. It, I mean, we evolved to see a threat, have a stress response, respond to that threat, and then go back to our baseline level of functioning, right? Today, our stressors come not from physical threat, right? From the lion on the savanna that's running towards us or towards our progeny. Where the, the, the stress that we, that most of us experience today, it's a new breed of stress. It's from, you know, it's from work. It's from, it's from chronic consumption of the news media.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  It's from being stuck in relationships that have gone sour, working jobs that we hate, financial stress. I mean, there's all different kinds of stress. And not all of that stress is avoidable, just to be clear. I mean, when I was going through what I went through with my mom, I couldn't avoid that stress. But what did I do? As a way to cope, because I couldn't avoid it, I built up my own resilience. And we see that, you know, whether it's exercise or these hormetic stressors that we were talking about, that you actually can, by exposing your body to physical stress, you can bolster a degree of psychological stress. There's what's called a spillover effect and a cross-adaptation effect that occurs.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  But chronic stress, I mean, one of the problems is that it's like, it's sustained and it causes a change in our hormonal milieu that suppresses immune function. It causes our adipocytes, so our fat cells, to release pro-inflammatory compounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines. It causes this, you know, chronic release of the hormone cortisol, which is not a bad hormone by any means, but, you know, that can, over time, have a negative effect on brain function, on memory function. It impairs digestion when we're chronically stressed. And we know that, you know, the gut is crucially important when it comes to modulating inflammation

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  in our bodies, helping us to assimilate nutrients from the foods that we're consuming. And if you're chronically stressed, you're just not doing that as well. Also, people who are chronically stressed, I mean, they have digestive symptoms, right? As a result, whether it's like diarrhea, bloating, like, I mean, this is people, like, before public speaking, they often see, they often have like digestive symptoms, right? That just goes to show you how intricately connected, like, our perception of, of, of, like, you know, stress and how that can affect our biology. And so that example that I gave in the book about that apple-shaped torso, one of the most harmful places to store fat in the body is in our midsection.

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  So that apple-shaped body, that is attributable to an excess of visceral fat. And this is fat that essentially hugs our internal organs and is particularly pro-inflammatory. So it secretes, as I mentioned, we know that our fat is an endocrine organ, which is essentially an organ that secretes hormones. It's not just an inert storage site. And those fat cells have, I believe, four times the cortisol receptors as compared to regular, run-of-the-mill, subcutaneous fat that you store in your, like, you know, underneath your arms and, you know, on your thighs. And we know that visceral fat is

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Associated with dramatically, you know, worse cardiovascular health, increased risk of cardiovascular events. We know that as your waist expands, your brain shrinks.

• 1:05:49Steven Bartlett?

  What's?

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's, it's probably related to cortisol, because we know that cortisol causes that when cortisol is chronically elevated, and particularly when we're, we then self-medicate with these ultra-processed foods, foods that are high in sugar, right, which we all reach for when we're stressed out, right, to emotional, like to soothe ourselves, right, with food.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  We tend to store fat there, like in the midsection. So it's not that stress causes us to store more fat necessarily. I mean, fat storage is largely regulated by energy balance, but what it can do is dictate where we store that fat. And as I've mentioned, it's the storage of fat in our midsection that's particularly dangerous. And so, and so, yeah, so that, the effect that cortisol can have there, it also, it has a negative effect on other tissues. It can have a negative effect on our total brain volume, as we've seen in some studies.

• 1:06:53Steven Bartlett?

  Just to be clear, where does cortisol come from?

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  Our adrenal glands.

• 1:06:56Steven Bartlett?

  Adrenal glands?

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Steven Bartlett?

  And there's certain foods that stimulate the production of cortisol more than others?

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Not foods. It's just, it's stress, you know, and there are certain conditions that are associated with hypercortisolemia. But, but no, food, it's not food that I would, it's not the foods. Foods actually can, like, bring down cortisol, you know, so some people, like, like sugar, like sugary foods, like, you know, like, a lot of people, anecdotally at least, will see an improvement in their sleep when they consume a little bit of, like, honey before bed, for example, because that can sort of bring down cortisol.

• 1:07:33Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  If they hadn't, if they, you know, for example, skipped dinner, or had they, they had an earlier dinner, or they had a particularly, like, low-carb dinner, or maybe they're in, like, a calorie deficit. So that can all cause cortisol to kind of inch its way up. And, and carbohydrates are good at sort of like... Pumping the brake on cortisol release. That's one of the reasons why we tend to reach for sugary foods when we experience chronic stress. So it's like this vicious cycle, right? But the way to pump the brakes on cortisol release is not to like just keep eating sugary foods. It's to find and uproot the cause of the stress. You know, get out of the job that you hate.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Break up with the person who's driving you crazy on a chronic basis.

• 1:08:19Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned honey there and sleep.

• 1:08:23Steven Bartlett?

  Something again, I've been thinking a lot about ever since I bought myself a whoop, which tracks my sleep and gives me some data in the morning about how I slept is how to improve my sleep via my diet. What advice would you give me there? If I wanted to have deeper, deeper, more quality sleep, what should I be eating, not eating, avoiding, what times, et cetera?

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, generally you just, you wanna not eat too close to bedtime.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  There's sort of like a Goldilocks zone where, you know, I think we're meant as diurnal creatures, meaning creatures that are, that typically eat during the day. You wanna eat your last meal about two to three hours before you go to sleep. You don't wanna go to bed hungry. I mean, people, people obviously have different, you know, different preferences. And I think preference in many ways reigns supreme. But what we know from circadian biology is that we're meant to eat about two to three hours before we go to sleep. And, and you don't, you know, like, that's to give space between your last meal and sleep. Because sleep is a time for rebuilding and restoring.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  We see this like interesting hormonal shift in the body that is really like, it's why sleep is, you know, we rejuvenate in many ways, like our bodies, our cells, our tissues when sleeping.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  Part of like how we get there is a change in body temperature. And you know, we see this like this dip in body temperature right before we go to sleep. Or just after, actually, we go to sleep. If you eat a like a really like meat heavy meal right before you go to sleep. A lot of people notice that doing that can negatively impair sleep. And I think one of the one of the proposed mechanisms why that happens is that we have the thermic effect of protein is quite high.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Particularly compared to fat and carbohydrates. And so you've got this like internal furnace like burning in your gut like to try to break down and assimilate all of the precious amino acids that you've just ingested. And so I think that can sometimes be at odds with with like that wind down process, that circadian, you know, wind down process. So yeah, just I would try not to eat too close to bedtime. Many people feel like eating carbs before bed does help them sleep for that same reason. Like maybe they have cortisol, you know, still like,

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  you know, a bit of cortisol dysregulation and carbs before bed seems to seems to be able to help with that.

• 1:11:00Steven Bartlett?

  What do you, when do you eat? If if not before bed, like, you know, sometimes I've been guilty of eating while I'm falling asleep. This is old Steve, not new Steve. But when do you eat? You talked about intermittent fasting. I read some things that said you start eating roughly at like 11 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Steven Bartlett?

  What's the window in which you you eat?

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  I generally will, yeah, I don't, I generally won't have my first like food until.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  These days is about 10:30, 10:30, 11 in the morning. I've been experimenting with carbohydrates before exercise. For a long time I was, I really enjoyed fasted workouts. And

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  and lately I've been experimenting to see what a little bit of peri workout carbohydrate does for my for my lifts. Cause I'm really into, I love fitness, so. So I've been kind of experimenting a bit with that. But the general rule of thumb that I practice is that I don't eat for an hour to an hour and a half after I wake up. Part of the reason for that. Is, and again, just to like preference, you know, personal preference is, uh, is really like key here. So, you know, a lot of the like recommendations that I'll make, like, you might see a smidgen of benefit, but at the end of the day, like, if you can't, you know, work out at the optimal time, or, you know, eat in the optimal windows, like, you

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  know, still what you eat and making sure that you are getting exercise is better than like not because of like a fear that you're not doing it, you know, optimally. Like, work, exercise is crucially important. Eating a whole foods, you know, animal inclusive, plant inclusive diet, I think optimal. But, you know, what circadian biology is, is showing us is that when you eat immediately after waking up, um, you know, you might not have had your melatonin, for example, uh, fully subside, which is a sleep hormone. Um, when melatonin is elevated, as it starts to, um, you know, it starts to rise, once the sun, um, begins to set, that sends the signal to our bodies essentially that the kitchen

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  is closing, that the kitchen is closing and that, you know, we're, we're now approaching the time where, you know, we're gonna change the guard. It's like a changing of the guard, essentially, where we're gonna focus on rejuvenation and repair. Um, when people wake up in the morning, that hormone hasn't fully necessarily subsided yet. And that can have the, um, consequence of making us not as insulin sensitive. So it might impair glucose regulation, um, while it's still elevated. And, um, and so like eating carbohydrates in that window, particularly like as they typically appear in the standard American

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  diet, the bran muffin, the glass of orange juice, like, that's, I don't think, uh, you know, like an appropriate breakfast for that time of day. You know, I mean, you might be able to get by with something like that later on. But generally, like, after you wake up, you want your melatonin to fully subside. And also cortisol, which is your body's, you know, we talked about that as a stress hormone. Cortisol is not bad. It's also your body's chief waking hormone. That's the highest that it's going to be throughout the day in the morning. And I mentioned that cortisol is catabolic. Well, one of the reasons why cortisol, like, one of the effects that cortisol has is it helps to liberate stored fuels in the body, whether it's, you know, sugar stored in your liver or even fat, you know, people tend to wake up

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  in a fat burning state. And so I like to just give my body like an hour and a half to like, let the, my hormonal milieu adapt and get ready for like, for food. Do you go outside? Yeah, as, almost immediately after I wake up, I like open my blinds. So I have like a really big window. It allows like light to come in. You really want that morning light. It's crucially important. I, I've been a fan of Sachin Panda, his work for a long time. He's a circadian biologist down at Salk, the Salk Institute. And, and he's published a lot of great research. Actually, I think he, he helped to discover the melanopsin proteins in the eye that interface directly

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  with this region in the brain. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. So it's, it's like, it's like a switch gets set when we expose our eyes to bright morning light that essentially starts a 24 hour timer that influences our energy levels, our alertness, our coordination, our body temperature. And then at the end of the day, when we are, you know, like when we start to feel sleepy and when that sort of diurnal or nocturnal, rather melatonin curve begins to pick up. So yeah, like setting, setting your circadian rhythm first thing in the morning with, with bright light exposure is super important. Even on a, on an overcast day, the ambient light

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  is more than enough to, to flip that switch. So yeah, that's a, that's crucially, crucially important. My morning routine is essentially, like I wake up, I open my blinds, I get like, I make sure that I'm, whether it's like, you know, checking my phone or whatever it is, emails, like by the window so that I get that nice ambient bright light to anchor my body's circadian clock. And then generally like I wait an hour. And I'll have like morning coffee and then that's, you know, when I'll like eat something. These days, you know, it'll be a mixed meal with like protein and carbohydrates. And that's when I I will typically hit the hit the gym soon after that.

• 1:16:37Steven Bartlett?

  I've been asking everybody, you just mentioned coffee there. I've been asking everybody this question to try and figure out someone can give me a

• 1:16:44Steven Bartlett?

  a new answer. But, you know, coffee seems like this kind of miracle drug because everybody can point to the upsides of having coffee in the morning, whatever. But nobody has been able to really articulate to me the cost. And all these things in life have a cost, right? We we live in a society now where many people will have multiple cups of coffee before 12 o'clock, before midday. And nobody seems to be able to tell me what the cost of that is. But there must be one because nothing in life is free.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Steven Bartlett?

  So so what is the cost?

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  Well, everybody's different. So, you know, people metabolize, some people are slow caffeine metabolizers, others are are not. And so, you know, you have to, you really have to like determine for yourself whether or not coffee is something that works well for your body. It is a type of stress. I will say that. So for people who are chronically stressed, adding coffee to the mix is probably, you know, just adding fuel to that fire. And it's not that I want you to get rid of the coffee. I'd rather see you get to the root cause of where that stress is coming from. But, you know, it can stimulate cortisol release and it's it is it is a powerful stimulant. We know that.

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  It can also negatively impact sleep. It it actually affects your brain similarly to bright light. So that's why, you know, I mean, for many reasons, you want to make sure that you're you you are consuming it, you know, far, far away from your from bedtime. But it it it honestly is hard to find. A downside to coffee, I mean, there really is good, there is good research on it. Recently, it was discovered that the caffeine in coffee acts like a natural PCSK9 inhibitor. So I know that's like an unfamiliar, it's like a mouthful, but there's a new class of,

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  I think relatively benign cholesterol lowering drugs on the market called PCSK9 inhibitors. Now, I'm not anti cholesterol or anything like this. Some of our most healthful foods actually act like natural PCSK9 inhibitors. Dietary fiber, in a way, is like a PCSK9 inhibitor. But they found that high dose caffeine actually, at about a dose of about 400 milligrams, can actually act like this drug where it makes your liver more effective at recycling cholesterol carrying lipoproteins like LDL. And so that, that kind of like adds a mechanism to the observation that we've seen that people

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  who regularly drink coffee seem to be protected against cardiovascular disease and even neurologic conditions like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's and MS. So there seems to be this protective effect of coffee, but it's always important to caveat these findings with the fact that these are averages. So on average, coffee seems protective, but certainly within those cohorts that are being studied, some people are doing really poorly with coffee as well. So you just, you know, it's something that you really have to like regularly take inventory and ask yourself like, is this working, you know, for me? I think one of the healthier ways to ingest coffee is to not consume it immediately after waking up, which, you know, I'm guilty of doing many days, but like, you know, it's

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  generally something that's like you're better off consuming like an hour or two after you wake up. And again, not, you know, not too late into the afternoon. Either and like also, you know, the dose, I think is really important. People that develop caffeine dependency, you know, they think that they're they're improving their performance with caffeine, but what they're really doing is they're treating their withdrawal from caffeine. So another way that I like to kind of make sure that I'm consuming it in the most mindful way possible is I'll take like occasional weeks off from caffeinated coffee and I'll switch to decaf. Yeah. And so I feel like it sort of helps like resensitize my brain, breaks the dependency

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  a little bit, and then I bring it back. And when you bring it back, man, you see what a drug, you know, what a potent drug coffee really is, you know? But in general, I'm a fan. I'm a fan of of coffee.

• 1:20:56Steven Bartlett?

  Everything is.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  In polyphenols, it it's a natural activator of our body's N R F two pathway, which is like a detoxifying pathway in the body. That's also stimulated by cruciferous vegetables.

• 1:21:08Steven Bartlett?

  Nobody can say anything bad about coffee. It's like everybody's part of the conglomerate and everyone's got like an affiliate link or they're on payroll or something.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 1:21:15Steven Bartlett?

  So it's actually it's actually changed my perspective because I just assumed that anything that was such a such a powerful stimulant must have a real significant downside. But I've asked a million people this question, not a million, but maybe six people this question, some of which have written books about coffee. And I'm still yet to hear a compelling argument against having coffee in and amongst your diet, as you say, a few hours after you wake up. So one of the things that really did catch me off guard was it was in your your book, The Genius Life, where you talk about this study with the mice and you make the case that travel is a has positive relationships with health. It has health benefits. Not something I've ever heard anybody say before, that travel is good for our health.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Wow. I'm glad you brought that up. Because this this that also kind of parlay is into another concept that I've been lately thinking about a lot for the first time. Well, first of all, so the study that I talk about in. The second book, The Genius Life, is the fact that they, you know, just how important novel experiences are for the brain. They will take mice and keep them confined to, you know, like a very, a limited area. And they see that they're, they suffer. They suffer in terms of their bodies and their brains. And then they let that mouse, or they let, you know, intervention mice go and explore what they call enriched environments. And they see something like fourfold, you know, like,

• 1:22:43Speaker 00

  they, they see like an upregulation in various indicators of neurogenesis, which is really important. It's like the creation of new brain cells. So all that is to say, like, you know, it's important to do novel things. And as I say this, you know, this is something that I struggle with in my, in my, in my own life, because I am a creature of habit. And I would routinely get the sense, this gnawing sense, that I'm living Groundhog Day over and over and over again, where I, I wake up and I do a few things, like work-related, I work out. But ultimately, like, I've got like this routine that I love, and I tend to do that on script every day. But I started to get this feeling like, I'm just like waking up, doing a few things, going back to bed. Waking up, doing a few things, going back to bed.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Like, before I know it, like, um, my head is just like on my pillow again. And it's, it, it started to get like really frustrating to me until I discovered that Groundhog Day syndrome is actually a thing. And essentially what it is, is, you know, our brains are, and this ties back to the mouse study. Our brains are efficiency machines, right? It's conservation of energy. Our brains and bodies don't want to do any more work than they absolutely have to. Right? Because, I mean, now we know that food is like ever-present, always at arm's reach. But for the longest time, that wasn't the case. And our brains are massive energy consumers. Our brains speak for 25% of our basal metabolic rate, despite accounting for only 2% to 3% of our body's mass.

• 1:24:09Speaker 00

  So anything that the brain can do to make its functioning more efficient, it'll do. So when you do the same things every single day. What does your brain do? It prunes away excitement, joy, happiness. Like, the dopamine response is just completely blunted. And that's why, as you get older, people universally, right? It's like a human universal. People report that time just accelerates, right? Like, where did the last decade of my life go? It's not that time accelerated, right? It's just that your life has become so routine.

• 1:24:46Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting you say that because there's also the other stereotype that you get grumpy.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Steven Bartlett?

  The word, yeah. It's quite typical in the stereotype that people will get older and a little bit more grumpy.

• 1:24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they get grumpy, they get stuck in their ways, they get, I mean, yeah, that's, that's definitely the case. But they probably are getting grumpy because their lives lack the joy and excitement that they once felt, right? Time is just like accelerating, that moving walkway that we are all on towards the inevitable decrepitude of old age, right? Like, seems to go faster and faster and faster the older we get. But it's not because time actually is moving any faster. It's because we get so stuck in our ways. Like, we get so, our routines become so cemented. And what we fail to realize, and hopefully this, you know, me saying this, like, shakes people out of their, out of their comfort zones, you know? And inspires people to shake things up a little bit.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  This Groundhog Day syndrome, it causes our brains to just, like, sheer away for the sake of efficiency. I mean, it's got, it's got good intentions, right? But it shears away, like, all the joy. So you just become like this rote automaton. And, and the joy, the excitement, it just, you know, it's something that, like, you cease to experience, you know? You cease to experience it. Whereas when you look back at, like, your youth, for example, it's not that, like, time actually moved slower. It's that every day was different. And so that I think is really important. And yeah, we should challenge ourselves, whether it's to travel. I mean, travel is like, to me, the epitome of exposing oneself to an enriched environment, because everything is new.

• 1:26:25Speaker 00

  But if you can't travel, you know, like, go to a different gym every once in a while. Look, you know, try shopping in news, in different supermarkets, or change up your wardrobe, or take on a new creative project, like, start a new hobby. There are all kinds of things that you can do to shake yourself out of this like perpetual routine that I think has a real cognitive and health cost.

• 1:26:48Steven Bartlett?

  So I was looking at a study they did on rats and habits. You probably know the study with the rats, the chocolate and the maze?

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 1:26:57Steven Bartlett?

  Where they get the rats to run through a maze to a piece of chocolate. But the first time the rat runs through the maze to the chocolate, they monitor the rat's brain and there's a ton of cognitive activity, right? You see the rat observationally scratching around, sniffing around. Eventually, it finds the chocolate, it gets the reward. When they put the rat back into the maze for the second time, cognitive activity is gone because a habit has been formed. So that as they, as I looked at the brain scans of those rats, it was just completely flat because they were on autopilot. Again, the brain is conserving its need to function so that it can focus on other things, other threats, it can conserve energy, as you say. And that's what our lives become like we don't, when we get out of bed in the morning,

• 1:27:42Steven Bartlett?

  our route from the bed to the kitchen is not one that requires me to have any sort of cognitive activation. I fly and therefore also I don't remember the journey.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Steven Bartlett?

  I just, I just fly down there.

• 1:27:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're on autopilot.

• 1:27:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And our lives become autopilot. And it's interesting, I'm trying to figure out as you were talking there, like. You said shearing away the, like, the happiness. Why does being on autopilot cost me happiness? And why does it make my, did you say it made my brain smaller?

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  Not smaller.

• 1:28:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:28:11Speaker 00

  Well, it probably, I mean, you know, if that mouse study holds true in humans, it probably doesn't, it doesn't support neuroplasticity.

• 1:28:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, there's no need for my brain to.

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's an efficiency machine after all, so.

• 1:28:27Steven Bartlett?

  The happiness point, now, why does that, why does living a life on autopilot have an impact on my, on my happiness?

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  Well, there are probably, I mean, there are definitely benefits to routine, right? Like, there are not to like, some of the benefits to routine is, are, can be that you, you know, you have your, for example, your diet dialed in, or you have a, you know, you have great connections in your community, you know? So I'm not telling everybody to, like, throw their lives into upheaval. But, but, you know, it's just like when we start to do the same things every day, we, it's, the scientific term is habituation.

• 1:29:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:05Speaker 00

  We habituate, right? It becomes habit, right? And we feel this way, like, we see this with that car that we've pined for, and suddenly it's sitting in our driveway. And yeah, it's exciting for the first month, or two months, or three months. But after a certain point, you know, that, that level of excitement that we once felt towards that car, or maybe even if it's, maybe sometimes it's the person that we're sharing our beds with, you know? Like, this is just an inevitability, an unfortunate inevitability of the human condition. And so I think there are ways to hack it. I think there are ways to, you know, travel with your significant other, or break the routine with your significant other.

• 1:29:43Speaker 00

  Or, you know, invest in things that have emotional value for you, for example. So, I mean, the car might have not been the best example, because like, some people do have emotional connections with cars. Like, I bought a guitar, you know, recently that I love, and I have an emotional connection to it because it was played by one of my favorite artists, you know?

• 1:30:04Steven Bartlett?

  So you're talking about that really, it's the decline of meaning that is associated with habituation?

• 1:30:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Steven Bartlett?

  So, and that makes us unhappy, because as, you know, creatures of meaning, we do need things to remain meaningful in our lives.

• 1:30:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's like, it's these like rote routine behaviors that are not all that productive or meaningful.

• 1:30:29Speaker 00

  Those are, you know, it's like driving the same route to work every day, shopping in the same supermarket every day, eating the same foods every day. Like, challenge your, your preferences, you know, like there are foods today that I enjoy that I didn't like 15 years ago. And I'm always willing to challenge like my own preferences about things. But it's like when you do the same things every day, you tend to start to overlook them. It's, it's, it's difficult, if not impossible, to maintain an appreciative relationship with something that's always there.

• 1:31:00Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny, it reminded me of a study I am, I was reading about regarding music and how there's almost an optimal point with a song that we love, where it can be repeated over and over again. So say if we're listening to a hit on the radio, it's repeated, say, we listen to it 50 times. There's a point where we've heard it so many times and it's become habituated that we love it at optimal level. And then it declines when we, we've heard it too much because it loses that sense of meaning. And I just remember reflecting on that, how the record industry want to put things in our lives that have a certain level of familiarity, but not too much familiarity, because then we'll dislike it. This is why they do remixes, because there's a level of familiarity there.

• 1:31:40Steven Bartlett?

  So we like it, but it has that novel nature, which we also really value to, to make us interested.

• 1:31:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Steven Bartlett?

  Which habituation obviously kills, like habituation and noveliness are inversely, you know.

• 1:31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, it's true. It's, um, there's this quote that I love. I'm a huge James Bond fan. We were talking a little bit about like, you know, before, before we started rolling. But like in the latest film, there's this wonderful Jack London quote at the end of the film that they, that they use to, to kind of commemorate Bond. And the quote is something like, "I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." And I, I love that line so much. And I think it's such a, it's such a good.

• 1:32:29Speaker 00

  You know, like, it's so emblematic for, I think, the life that we all deserve, you know, that we all ought to be living. I think like occasionally in this conversation about how do we live longer? Like, that's a nuance that gets lost, you know? It's not just about living longer. It's about living more fully. And, um, and so, yeah, I think that that's like, that's part of it, you know? It's like breaking the routine and, and like getting back some of that joy and excitement that we have about life, you know? Maybe after listening to this, it'll be, you know, going to the supermarket and loading up on healthful food, you know, blueberries and avocado and dark leafy greens and grass-fed beef, um, things like that. Or maybe signing up for a new gym membership and sustaining that because of what you now know it does for mental health, exercise, so.

• 1:33:12Steven Bartlett?

  It's a balancing act, as you, as you kind of alluded to earlier on, between familiarity, community, comforts and those kinds of things, but keeping your foot one, one step outside of your zone of comfort. So you have the like stimulation and the joy and the spontaneity of life at the same time. And that's like a constant subjective balancing act that we're all trying to, you know, like where I like my comforts, but there is, you know, as you say, the comfort crisis. I can get a little bit too comfort and that will have adverse effects on a lot of things.

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's one of the things that I challenge with in this life is like, I love my routine and I love comfort and I, you know, but I also, um, I love travel. I just don't, I'm not good at planning travel and I, you know, have all these like hangups in my not, what if I'm not able to like find a gym that I want to go to in this new place or find a healthy, you know, supermarket or something to shop at? Like, these are all the things that I, my neurotic brain is like, okay, we, maybe we should just stay put, you know? But, um, but whenever I do, whenever I get like pushed to, to do those kinds of things, like to, to travel, I, I never regret it, you know?

• 1:34:24Steven Bartlett?

  You said something earlier when you were talking about habituation, about the person lying next to you in bed.

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Steven Bartlett?

  That was a brave thing to say.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I'm, uh, I'm, you know, maybe that's why I'm single, I don't know. I, uh, I think that that's a common human, um, struggle, you know? And I've struggled that with, I've struggled with that in relationships, um, in the past and it's a, it's a.

• 1:34:49Steven Bartlett?

  Getting bored of someone?

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, just like, not necessarily getting bored, but like, taking what's always around for granted. I think that happens to all of us. It's a big problem. We, it's a big, sad, unfortunate, awful thing that our brains do, you know, like, it's, there's an evolutionary reason for it. And again, it's, it's conservation of energy.

• 1:35:18Speaker 00

  So, you know, like, it's not, um, I think, like, it, it occurs for a, for an adaptive purpose, but I think it's, it's one of these things that can become malignant if we're not like, aware of, of it. And, um, and we don't actually take, uh, like, make an effort in our lives to, to challenge it, to challenge that tendency that we all have, you know? So I'm not, I'm not, I didn't, like, I'm not endorsing that. I'm not saying that there is any, um, you know, reduction in value for somebody, for somebody or something that we're, that, you know, that we are, like, that's, that's always around. That's not, that's certainly not the case.

• 1:36:03Speaker 00

  But yeah, it's, it's, it's a constant fight. It's a constant battle. You know, I think everybody, everybody experiences this.

• 1:36:08Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, um, hoping to find one person and settle down with them for the rest of your life?

• 1:36:13Speaker 00

  I am, yeah. I don't, I mean, I-

• 1:36:16Steven Bartlett?

  Crossed your arms there.

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  What did my body language just say?

• 1:36:21Steven Bartlett?

  Looked like a shield.

• 1:36:22Speaker 00

  Oh, man, yeah. Well, I've been in, I've had a therapist, like, for the past year and a half, and I'm trying to like,

• 1:36:30Speaker 00

  yeah, like, you know, kind of like unravel some of my own, like, you know, early childhood, like, drama that, you know, that like, I think has led to a more avoidant attachment style and has, you know, given me challenges with like, with regard to commitment and things like that in relationships.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  And, uh, and yeah, but I'm also very lucky in the sense that like, I feel like I have a very rich life. Like, I have a very close family. I've got a great community of friends. I, I love what I do for work. Thankfully, I feel very fulfilled by, um, by my work. And so it's not like, it's not like a major priority for me, but I, yeah, I would like to like, you know, like, be in a, I do want to call that in. Like, that is like something that is a, is a goal for me, but, um- But yeah, we all have like our, our, our stuff, you know, and I feel like for me, it's like one of the, I was incredibly close to my mom. Like that was like a, you know, we talked about that. I was incredibly close to my mom.

• 1:37:36Speaker 00

  I loved my mom. It was so hard to see what she went through and, and that was an incredibly traumatic

• 1:37:43Speaker 00

  experience, you know, but, uh, but that kind of like attachment that I have had from childhood to my mom, you know, it's made it like difficult. And, you know, some of the things that I witnessed in their relationship, my mom's relationship with my dad and their marriage and how, how bad that was at times. Some of the things that I saw, um, it didn't really set me up, uh, you know, to like have the easiest time, um, in relationships, but, uh, but yeah, I'm like working through it. I think therapy is wonderful. I mean, you know, I've had a great therapist. I'm doing all the work. I'm like reading all the books and things like that.

• 1:38:20Steven Bartlett?

  Have you been able to identify, cause I can relate to many things you said about like learning the model of love as being a imprisoning one or a toxic one or a, an unsafe thing, like learning from, from our parents at a young age that like love is unsafe. It is violent or it is this or whatever. Have you been able to identify through therapy what your sort of limiting beliefs are as it relates to like love and relationships? Have you gotten there?

• 1:38:45Speaker 00

  Oh, man, um.

• 1:38:52Speaker 00

  I,

• 1:38:55Speaker 00

  yeah, I mean, that I'm,

• 1:39:01Speaker 00

  I think the limiting, yeah, the limiting beliefs that like, you know,

• 1:39:07Speaker 00

  that you can't have the kind of relationship that you want, that you don't, you know, maybe deserve the relationship that you want.

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  I mean, this is a totally different like rabbit hole, but for me, you know, like, one of the, one of the things that I learned about in therapy is that when you're really, my mom divulged things about my parents' relationship to me that she, you know, probably shouldn't have at a, at a young age. My mom was the best mom, just to be clear, but nobody's perfect. And we all make mistakes. And I think that like, she probably shared some stuff with me about her relationship that, that she shouldn't have at the age that I was, essentially making her, making

• 1:39:56Speaker 00

  me a surrogate partner, back when she didn't have the emotional shoulder of my dad, you know, when my dad was not being the best partner to my mom. And there's a term for it. The term sounds worse than it is, but the term is covert incest. So it's not, it's not sexual, but it's like, they make you their emotional partner in a way, when, when they shouldn't. And that's something that like, at the time, you feel like you're getting, you're receiving really privileged information. You're like, your mom's confiding in you, you know? And that's how I felt when I was like, growing up.

• 1:40:38Speaker 00

  And yeah, she was emotionally, she didn't really have support from my dad. And it was, it was sad looking back, you know, I'm not blaming her or anything. Her, her mother was kind of a cold woman also. So she, you know, she like unloaded some stuff on me when I was a child, frequently, actually. And, and so that like, you know, it created like a very strong attachment to her, but it has kind of like disallowed me, at least this is like, and I don't want this to become a limiting belief for me, but like the insight. That I think has been like helpful to just like kind of understand where my patterns come from is that that's created a difficulty for me attaching emotionally to like other,

• 1:41:20Speaker 00

  you know, other like women and I've I've I'm getting like better, I've gotten better, you know, but it's a it's just a very fascinating thing because we tend to think about like childhood trauma as being like big T trauma, like I was sexually abused or something like that, which, you know, I had a wonderful childhood. I never would have used the T word to describe anything that happened to me in my childhood. But then there's like, nobody escapes childhood social injury free. We all have trauma, whether it's like we're not picked up at the right time, or we're, you know, ignored at the wrong time, or or what have you. And so we all, we, you know, nobody escapes childhood trauma free is what

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  I've learned. And so those traumas, they have, it's like a butterfly effect. They have a way of creeping out, you know, in in ways that are not often obvious when we're adults and affect and they affect our relationships in sometimes profound ways. And so, you know, for me, like, why, you know, I'm, I feel like in many ways, I'm a very sensitive guy. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I relate to women. I love, you know, women. I've had relationships with women. Where is this like this this disconnect? And I also had a relationship with one woman for a very long time. It was an on and off again relationship and I loved her. And the feeling was mutual, but I wasn't able to commit to her. And so, you know, it's,

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  it kind of inspired this like journey of investigation, like where, you know, if I've got like everything seemingly so figured out, how come I don't have that figured out? Like, where's the where's the deficit coming from? You know, like, what's the where's the nutrient like deficit, you know, with regard to like my relationships? And, um, and yeah, so maybe, I mean, that's it, you know, I saw a really brilliant therapist and I highly recommend for men, you know, and women for everybody, everybody should like go see therapy. It's been really helpful. The key, I guess, is to not let that become like this perpetual like limiting thing and to continue to do the work and to like unravel and to keep peeling back the layers of the onion. All super helpful.

• 1:43:24Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're asking it for. And the question that has been left for you is, this is quite an interesting one. I actually really like this question because it's. It's very interesting and slightly bizarre, but I love it. If you could summarize your journey so far in life into one I am affirmation, what would it be and why?

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  Whoa, so a previous guest came up with that question for me.

• 1:43:57Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred. They didn't know that it was for you.

• 1:43:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Steven Bartlett?

  But they left it knowing that it was for the next guest.

• 1:44:01Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:44:10Speaker 00

  I am love. How hippie is that? I feel like everything I do is really out of love. And so that is how

• 1:44:25Speaker 00

  I would answer that, even though it sounds so hippie that it also kind of makes me throw up a little inside.

• 1:44:32Steven Bartlett?

  Where does that come from?

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  It's, I don't know. It's a little too, like, that sensation, it's, it feels so,

• 1:44:45Speaker 00

  it feels too self-aggrandizing. And I'm not that way, you know, like, I'm, I, I feel like I'm, you know, I can be self-deprecating, like, to a fault, you know, like, I, I, like,

• 1:45:03Speaker 00

  the fact that, like, anybody pays attention to my work, you know, it's like, it's such a gift to me. I'm so grateful for it, you know?

• 1:45:12Speaker 00

  But everything I do, like, out of, out of love, like, you know, I started doing this out of the love that I had for my mom. It continues both for the love that I have for her, but also for the love for what I'm doing and for the research and how much I love nutrition science, as well as for how much I love generally people and how much I want to see people thrive. And, and so, yeah, it really has been a powerful compass for me, you know, as I navigate this crazy thing called life. Love really has been a, you know, it's been a, it's been a really,

• 1:45:56Speaker 00

  it's been a really reliable north star, you know, for me.

• 1:46:04Steven Bartlett?

  Max, thank you. Thank you so much. You've taught me so much, but your story is incredible. And, you know, I have absolutely no doubt, not only that, you know, your mom got to see you on that show, but also that she is just fucking insanely proud of you, insanely proud of you for everything you've done, for all the people you've helped with these New York Times bestselling books. But it's not just, it's not just, it's not just the information you're sharing, it's how you share it. Not, at least in an engaging way, not least because you're so, you seem to be so incredibly humble. But there's a real sincerity behind your message that I, having sat here a lot, you know, a long time, having spoken to a lot of people, don't always see,

• 1:46:47Steven Bartlett?

  but I see that at the very heart of you. And to be fair, someone that didn't qualify in terms of getting like a medical degree or whatever, would have to be driven by a pretty deep, sincere sense of curiosity and mission to go as far as you have and to sound way more articulate and educated on the subject matter that people with great academic backgrounds in the field have. So, thank you. And, you know, I, I have a real sense that you're just at the start of your journey.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:47:18Steven Bartlett?

  I really do mean that. I really feel like you're just at the start.

• 1:47:21Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:47:21Steven Bartlett?

  And that's just a testament of how far you're clearly going to go. So, yeah, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here and thank you for the generosity of everything you've shared.

• 1:47:29Speaker 00

  Thank you, Stephen. I feel like you're a brother at this point.

• 1:47:32Steven Bartlett?

  It tends to happen when I have conversations with people.

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  Thank you, brother.

• 1:47:35Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Max.

• 1:47:39Steven Bartlett?

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• 1:48:24Steven Bartlett?

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• 1:49:07Steven Bartlett?

  role that Huel plays in my life is it means that in those moments where sometimes I might reach for, you know, junk foods, having an option that is nutritionally complete, that is high in fibre, that is incredibly high in protein, that has all the vitamins and minerals that my body needs, within arm's reach, that I can consume on the go, is where Huel has been a game changer for me.

• 1:49:52Steven Bartlett?

  You got to the end of this podcast. Whenever someone gets to the end of this podcast, I feel like I owe them a greater debt of gratitude, because that means you listened to the whole thing. And hopefully that suggests that you enjoyed it. If you are at the end and you enjoyed this podcast, could you do me a little bit of a favour and hit that subscribe button? That's one of the clearest indicators we have that this episode was a good episode, and we look at that on all of the episodes to see which episodes generated the most subscribers. Thank you so much, and I'll see you again next time.