Encore: The Root Causes and Fixes for Brain Fog

A declining mind is one of the scariest things we can imagine. Yet, many of us walk around every day with brain fog, which is a clue that our brains (and our bodies) need some support. Left unchecked, there can be long-term consequences, and not just for your brain. The good news is that changes to diet, reducing toxic burden and stress, improving sleep and gut health, and getting good movement can work wonders to clear up any fogginess. In this episode, Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Todd LePine and Max Lugavere about the Functional Medicine approach to reducing brain fog. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal Full-length episodes of these interviews can be found here: Dr. Todd LePine Dr. Mark Hyman Max Lugavere This episode is brought to you by Big Bold Health, Mitopure, and AG1. Big Bold Health is offering my listeners 30% off their first order of HTB Rejuvenate Superfood. Head to Bigboldhealth.com and use code DrHyman30. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit TimelineNutrition.com/Drhyman and use code DRHYMAN10. AG1 is offering new subscribers a FREE $76 gift when you sign up. You’ll get a Welcome Kit, a bottle of D3K2, AND 5 free travel packs in your first box. Just go to DrinkAG1.com/hyman

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Thank you so much for being a loyal listener to The Doctor's Pharmacy. For the holidays, I've decided to give my team a little break to rest up and prepare for more content and the new year ahead. So The Doctor's Pharmacy will be replaying some older episodes for the next two weeks. But don't worry, we'll be back with more content and brand new episodes starting Tuesday, December 31st. So for now, here are some of my favorite past episodes of The Doctor's Pharmacy and see you next year. Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Often people going on elimination diet will have an immediate release of brain fog, which is something that you don't know you have until you don't have it anymore. Sometimes people just think of this sort of slow decline of their cognitive function. They're not realizing that it's actually something that can be reversed.

• 0:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, so many of us are living day to day in a fog. We're not able to think clearly or sustain our thoughts. And maybe we can't recall why we walked into a room and maybe we get agitated because of it. But brain fog, one of the most common complaints I hear about is not just a problem with your brain. To fix your brain, you need to fix your body. And in today's episode, we feature three clips from The Doctor's Pharmacy about the functional medicine approach to eradicating brain fog by removing what's harming us and adding in what supports us to heal the body and the brain. I talk with Dr. Todd Lepine about the connection between brain fog and the gut microbiome. And I talk about daily lifestyle habits that support a healthy brain. And finally, Max Lugavere and I discuss the best foods for brain and overall optimal health. So let's jump in.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Brain fog is really a symptom sort of like cough. So cough can be caused by a cold, bronchitis, pneumonia, postnasal drip, asthma, a whole bunch of things. So you've got to figure out, okay, what's driving it? And there is no ICD-10 code for brain fog. You know, you might call it, you know, altered mental status, but oftentimes it's transitory. And that's the really interesting thing. And I've seen patients where they'll, you know, get brain fog when they're in a certain building. They'll get brain fog after they've had a certain meal, you know, though certain foods may trigger brain fog.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And it is something that I think is intimately connected to the gut. The uh, and we'll talk about that at this particular case is gut fermentation is oftentimes a cause for brain fog.

• 2:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it's like bugs fermenting the food you're eating, creating all this nasty byproducts.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I, I don't know, I don't know, Mark, if you've had patients who've had, this is a really interesting thing because I have patients come in, they say, I feel like my gut is just like bloating and I'm fermenting and that's exactly what's happening. So there's, there is a condition. I just recently had a patient who had auto brewery syndrome.

• 2:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  And I, I've seen that.

• 2:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You have your own like beer factory.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. So when, when you want to make beer, what, what do you do? You take sugar and you add yeast to it and you can actually produce alcohol. And I've had a couple of cases where it was missed and it's actually not just, the recent findings is not just yeast in the gut that do this, but also klebschella bacteria. So both bacteria and yeast can actually produce these compounds which are toxins. Alcohol is a toxin. That's why when you get drunk, you're intoxicated. And you, you'll actually produce alcohol and other toxins which affect your brain.

• 3:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Interesting. I never really had that insight before. You said that word intoxicated. You're.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Toxic.

• 3:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Toxic.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, toxic. Exactly.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  That's how I, that's how I explain it to patients.

• 3:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Six years to figure that out.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  That one out. Exactly. Exactly.

• 3:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I think that you're, what you're saying is very true. I mean, I've had two times in my life when I've had severe brain fog. One was when I had mercury poisoning thirty, twenty five years ago. And my gut was a mess then because the mercury poisoned my gut. I had terrible bloating, distension, diarrhea. And the second time was more recently when I had mold toxicity and I had C. diff. And I also had colitis and gastritis and my whole gut was a mess. And I had severe brain fog and it was pretty debilitating. You could barely focus, answer an email, talk to somebody.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You can't concentrate.

• 3:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Can't concentrate at all. And people think, oh, that's just sort of in your head. It's not in your head, maybe in your stomach.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's manifesting in the head. That's the whole thing. It's, it's, it's, and, and we, you know, we have these artificial boundaries between the, the, the brain and the body and the mind. And they're all interconnected and, and, and brain fog is a real, uh, it's a real phenomenon. And then you have to sort of figure out what is, what's doing it. The other thing that's, uh, is, is, uh, interesting that I see with some people with brain fog is, uh, just gluten and dairy.

• 4:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  And I, I tell patients that, you know, the most, one of the most addictive foods is pizza. And the reason for that is that pizza has gluten in it.

• 4:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's true. You can eat a whole pie, right?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's one of, it's one of the foods that I, I'll occasionally indulge in, but uh, it's, I don't have it that often because it's not, not the best food for you.

• 4:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But you get, you have my cauliflower pizza with goat cheese.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can, you can make a healthy pizza. Exactly. Yeah. But, but I, the, the two foods which are interesting is that gluten and dairy both get broken down. The proteins in those uh, get broken down into caseomorphins and glutamorphins. And caseomorphins are the ones from dairy and glutamorphins are from gluten. And those have morphine-like effects. So you literally become a little.

• 5:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  High.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. You get a little, yeah, you get a little high. You get a little foggy in the brain. Uh, and it also can cause cravings and, and um, it can sort of make you sleepy. You know, you eat it and then you get a little, little, little sleepy uh, from it also. Uh, and that's, you know, when, when, when children uh, drink breast milk, they go to sleep after they, they, you know, they, they conk out. I mean, that's because of the morphine-like action uh, in milk.

• 5:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So that's true. I think, you know, it's, it can be our diet. It can be uh, food sensitivities like gluten and dairy, which are really common. And often people going on elimination diet will have an immediate relief of brain fog, which is something that you don't know you have until you don't have it anymore. Sometimes people just think this sort of slow decline of their cognitive function. They're not realizing that it's actually uh, something that can be reversed and it can be reversed very quickly. So yeah, uh, the second thing is, you know, the, the factors that, that are in the gut. Right? Bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth, we call dysbiosis. That can also lead to a lot of cognitive issues because your gut's connected to your brain. And that causes this, this effect when the bugs are out of balance and it drives inflammation.

• 6:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then you get inflammation in the brain, essentially is what causes brain fog.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Well, and the other, the other important thing, I think I talked uh, this last time is that the blood flow from the gut has to go through the liver. And the reason for that is, is to filter all of the toxins that are there. So there's a, there's a lot of immune cells, the kupffer cells in the liver and a lot of filtering processes. And detoxification takes place in the liver prior to the blood from the gut uh, then go. Going into the systemic circulation. So sometimes you'll have in addition to a leaky gut, you'll have problems with detoxification in the liver itself. And that's, you know, an example of that is the condition of hepatic encephalopathy, which is brain fog. That's, that's essentially.

• 6:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, talk about that. What is that for people who don't know what that sounds like a big word?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I learned, I learned, and I think I mentioned this before, and it was one of the things that really stuck with me is, when I worked at the VA hospital, there were a lot of alcoholics. And when you're an alcoholic, you basically turn your liver into a pickle, pickle liver.

• 7:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You trash your liver.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  You trash your liver and then you're not able to detoxify. And I would typically see this over and over where patients had cirrhosis of liver and their liver was not able to detoxify. And then when they would eat foods, especially high protein type meals, they would get hepatic encephalopathy and literally go into a coma.

• 7:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So they would literally get delirium, confusion.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 7:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Brain fog.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Brain fog. That's, that's, that's like the brain fog on steroids.

• 7:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the reason is it was coming from their gut. And what I found so striking when I started learning about functional medicine was that here was a condition in medicine that we knew how to treat.

• 7:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  By fixing the gut, we gave people antibiotics.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To sterilize their gut, to kill the bacteria that caused all these byproducts that made people have, you know, basically delirium or encephalopathy and.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Brain fog.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it was like, wow, the gut is connected to the brain.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Totally, totally connected to the brain. Absolutely. And in some cases, you know, there have been cases of, of people actually having psychosis from gut dysfunction.

• 8:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. You mentioned auto brewery syndrome. I remember reading a case of a woman who was arrested for driving under the influence and it turned out she wasn't drinking, but she had a high blood alcohol level that was coming from her gut.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's, it's a very real phenomenon. You have to think about it. And the way that you actually test for that is you, you can, it's actually quite simple. You just have somebody do what I call a pancake challenge. You basically some pancakes full of carbs, but throw some maple syrup on it, eat it and get a blood draw at point zero. You have, you know, eat the, eat the meal and then half an hour, hour later, check your alcohol level.

• 8:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That sounds, that sounds like a fun medical test, the pancake challenge.

• 8:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so, so we talked about the gut. We talked about gluten, dairy, food sensitivities. Uh, there are other reasons too. Uh, so infections.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Infections can can uh do that. Uh, another one that is.

• 9:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Tick infections.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, absolutely. Uh, tick infections. Yeah. Oh, that those are. Yeah, those. I would say that that that's in addition to brain fog, you get a lot of cognitive dysfunction too.

• 9:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Memory issues. It's more severe.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  It's much more severe. The the one thing that I see a lot is allergies. I call it the allergic brain. Uh, and you can have food allergies um that can potentially do that, or even environmental allergies or mold. Um, and the high levels of histamine, because histamine is actually acts as a neurotransmitter. And I've seen this in a number of patients. Um, I've had some patients with um another condition which we're seeing more and more of is mast cell activation syndrome. It's sort of a buzz, you know, buzz diagnosis now. But it's a very real phenomenon. And yeah, is related to the mast cells, which are the types of immune cells in the body and the interstitial, the sort of the spaces between the cells uh where they reside. And they release lots of histamine.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  And if any, if anyone's ever had hay fever, you see that the typical picture of hay fever. You're like, you're like this, like half asleep and like they're walking through a fog. It's hay fever is an example of a of a brain fog.

• 10:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Uh, and yeah, antihistamines can actually have a benefit with that. Um, naturally, uh, things like quercetin and nettles can uh can also be very helpful. And you've probably have used it. This is something that I use. Um, I've been using more is the the drug chromo and sodium.

• 10:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Which is, I've had some amazing uh success with that in more difficult cases. I wouldn't necessarily go to the the that for my first choice.

• 10:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What Todd's talking about is this is this drug that's used for asthma and allergies that is usually inhaled.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, usually inhaled.

• 10:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But there's a version you can take orally that before you eat inhibits your white blood cells from releasing histamine and creating an allergic response. And I often found it extremely effective for some patients.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So Todd, uh, talk about this patient that you had that had really bad brain fog. This is a a guy come to see you, worked a lot, it was a lot of stress, and that could be, you know, easily dismissed as though you're just stressed and tired. But you you went deeper. What did you find?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Well, he actually came into me and he had already seen a variety of different doctors. And the background is that the gentleman, as a child, had lots of allergies and asthma. So he had, you know, ear infections, bronchitis, also developed some sinusitis type symptoms. So he had multiple rounds of antibiotics. And I always emphasize to patients that when you have an immune dysfunction, look for the gut because sixty to seventy percent of your immune system is in the gut. And just like, you know, with what's going on with the COVID virus and the COVID nineteen syndrome that we're seeing by coronavirus is it's not the virus or the bacteria itself that causes the problem. It's our immune system's response to it.

• 11:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And in general, we want to have a, I call it a balanced immune system. So we want our immune system to be idling.

• 12:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  So basically just sort of sitting there and okay, we're enjoying planet Earth. We're going out for a walk. We're not reacting to this.

• 12:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Underreacting or overreacting?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, underreacting or overreacting. And when you overreact, that we call that an autoimmune disease. When you underreact, we call that AIDS.

• 12:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. So AIDS or cancer?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  AIDS or cancer.

• 12:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or overreaction is allergies or autoimmune?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  And then, and I think, you know, we talk about like, you know, a weak immune system or a strong immune system. It's really, I think, an intelligent and a balanced immune system. That's how I like to think about it. And that's, you know, related to immunotolerance, which is what the gut does. So when we have a healthy gut, we have an immune system that is tolerant to lots of things. And you can eat certain things. You can go out in the environment. You're not going to react to dog dander and all these other things. There are some genetic, some people have genetic predispositions towards being more atopic or allergic. But having a healthy gut, especially early on, the priming of the gut is so critical. You know, having a vaginal birth, being breastfed, not introducing certain foods like gluten

• 13:10Speaker 01

  early on in.

• 13:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Living on a farm.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Living on a farm, exactly, being exposed.

• 13:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exposed a lot of.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  And crawling around in the dirt and literally putting dirt in, you know, I call it, you know, your, your body's immune system. Samples planet Earth. Planet Earth is a very dirty place. There's lots of bugs and all kinds of things. And your body learns to be immunotolerant. And, and, and one of the things that is really, I'd also focus on is part of this immune system is called the T reg cells. The, the T reg cells are like the conductor in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So you've got, you know, the wind section over here and the horns over here and they keep everything in balance.

• 13:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And the T regs are really, really critical. And what we're finding.

• 13:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Regulatory cells.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  They regulate, they regulate the whole, you know, the whole balance of the immune system. And the T regs that we find out, um, the two things that are really simple that people can use to upregulate your T regs to keep things in balance. Our fibers, fibers in the diet, fibers are the key things that help with regulation of that. And then also, uh, which I use quite a bit in my, in the, in the patients that I see is vitamin A. Vitamin A helps to down regulate, uh, the immune system and helps to keep the, the T reg cells, uh, uh, in, in, uh, in place.

• 14:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you are eating a crappy diet, if you're drinking too much, if you're smoking, if you're not exercising, if you have mercury poisoning, if your vitamin B is low, if you're B12 deficient, if you're, um, thyroid's not working, your brain's not going to work. So you've just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, uh, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. Uh, the brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal given the right conditions. And I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression.

• 15:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Things that bipolar disease, schizophrenia, I mean, just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. It's, uh, in fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on the podcast, talked about how he used a ketogenic diet to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard. So we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago. By the way, was way ahead of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're gonna fix our brains. About thirty years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome. And it felt like I had dementia, depression, and ADD all at once. My brain was broken.

• 15:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I really couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see thirty patients a day, remember all their medical history, nick Cadev at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't at, like, remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started. I couldn't read a kid, my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time. My brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep, I was exhausted. And I learned that I had mercury poisoning, and that broke my brain. Um, my brain was just a mess. Uh, I had terrible brain fog, I couldn't focus for much time. I was a physician trying to like, practice medicine, it was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names. Uh, and I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional

• 16:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  medicine, uh, almost thirty years ago. And when I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detoxed from mercury, when I fixed all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic fatigue syndrome, and my brain got better. And since then, I've written eighteen books in twenty years. My brain is great, I feel good, and I'm sharper, faster, and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, we have too much sugar and fine starch, uh, carbs, and not enough good fats, and not enough intake of the right nutrients. A lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega threes, vitamin D, magnesium, to name a few, that are critical for brain health. And may affect over fifty to ninety percent

• 17:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also, we're exposed to all kinds of weird things in our diet, that are chemicals, like artificial sweeteners, like MSG, um, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain. Heavy metals, all these things damage our brain. So, uh, a lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or, or other drugs. Now, I, I found over the years, really fascinating to me, it's really quite amazing, that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat, or how much they rest, or sleep. You know, how much they exercise, or how much time they take for friends and community and connection,

• 18:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, geez, doctor, I'm so tired. I don't know what to do. I'm always tired. My brain's not working. I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, get eight hours sleep and try to see what happens, right? So you don't connect the dots. Now, once you make those connections, you can start to change those simple habits. It can have profound effects on your health long term. And, and, and, you know, make a lot of little small changes that can make profound impact.

• 18:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health. It requires really following the principles of functional medicine, which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, micro stress, adding in the good stuff. The right whole foods, nutrients, bouncing hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose. All these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the good stuff. We don't get whole, real food. We often are deficient in nutrients. We're not exposed to enough natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't drink clean water because most of it's polluted. We don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation. We don't sleep enough. We don't live in rhythm. We don't exercise.

• 19:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We're too focused on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love. And, and so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy. One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain. And we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet from treating depression to Alzheimer's to everything from ADD to, to even schizophrenia, as I mentioned. So eating real food is so important. When I say real food, I mean real food, not processed food or ultra-processed food. Whole, organic, fresh, local, unprocessed food. Basically, it has a barcode or a label you might want to get rid of. If your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Does she know what a Lunchable is or a Pop-Tart? Probably not.

• 20:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Junk food is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra-processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can. It's got salt, maybe oil. A can of tomatoes is processed. It's tomatoes, water and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a Pop-Tart, you probably don't want to eat it.

• 20:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And something that seem like real food are really not like yogurt. Uh, yogurt is often filled with hydrochloric acid, corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners. All these things are pretty, pretty nasty for us. Also, you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you say this all the time, but these are full of phytochemicals. These are packed brain, they're deep, dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues. Are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are. It's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds or detoxifying compounds, antioxidants, they're mitochondrial boosting, energy producing compounds, brain powering molecules. We need to eat that. So get lots of colorful plant foods, blueberries, dark green vegetables.

• 21:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Also go for the slow carbs, not the fast carbs, right? I'm not saying no carbs. I mean, basically broccoli is a carb, right? Uh, but it's quite different than white bread or from sugar. Cauliflower and ice cream and, uh, are all carbs, right? But it, you know cauliflower is good for you, but an ice cream sundae is probably not, right? So eating whole plant foods also will have lots of fiber. Helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type three diabetes. It's like diabetes of the brain from too much sugar. So, uh, eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar. Nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful.

• 21:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need, you need to maintain your healthy microbiome to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat, the brain is made up of sixty percent omega three fat. It's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fat head, uh, and going to low fat diets are pretty bad for the brain.

• 22:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, I talk about fats a lot and what are good fats, what are the bad fats? And how to get the omega three fats from your diet, from algae or fish. Um, my brain were pretty good before, but, um, I actually have gotten on a better fat diet, including some things like MCQ, which is really powerful for the brain. And my, my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof.

• 22:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Also you want to optimize protein. We need protein because if you lose muscle, because you don't eat enough protein, it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass. That fatty deposits in your muscle leads to prediabetes, lowers your testosterone, which you need for brain function, lowers growth hormone, which you need for brain repair, increases cortisol, which causes brain damage, literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. So you want to make sure that you're having enough protein, ideally animal protein, which is better able to build muscle. And when you age faster, your brain takes a hit, it shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega three eggs, protein shakes. I like regenerably made goat way for a protein shake in the morning,

• 23:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  nut butters, fish for breakfast. All that is great. Also, stop poisoning your brain. Get rid of all the bad stuff. Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives, and environmental chemicals, all which really are a problem. Supplements also very important for the brain. A good quality multi magnesium is important for the brain, calms the brain. It reduces the stimulation of the N D M A receptors, which is actually producing Alzheimer's risk. Vitamin D is important for the brain. Omega three fats, probiotics, all the B vitamins, folate, B six, B twelve are critical for your brain and your neurotransmitter function. And you can find all these versions, the best versions, the cleanest versions

• 24:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  at my online store, at store dot doctor Hyman dot com, along with other brain boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health, but you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain. But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease, prevents cancer, prevents diabetes and everything else. So now you can do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health. Now, if you've tried all these things and you're still struggling, you got to dig a little deeper. For me, it was mercury poisoning. I was exercising, I was trying to eat well, doing all the right things, taking my vitamins, but it still wasn't better. So sometimes you got to figure things out. It might be Lyme disease, it might be mold, it might be food sensitivities. It might be some gut issues.

• 24:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You need to probably work with a functional medicine doctor to figure it out. And you can go to ifm.org and you can find a practitioner certified in your area.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  I looked through the medical literature and I determined the foods that were going to be the most accessible, the most available to people that are listening to this and watching this, that are going to serve a neuroprotective effect. Foods that are literally superfoods for the brain. And I coined the term genius foods, which is not a scientific term, but I love it. It's the term that I've applied to the foods that are gonna give your brain the most bang for its buck with regard to neuroprotection, with regard to promoting neuroplasticity by providing important builder block molecules like nicotarhexaenoic acid or DHA fat, which we know is one of the most important and yet under consumed structural building blocks of the brain. And so we can look to certain foods like avocados, for example. Avocados

• 25:45Speaker 02

  at this point are pretty widely available. And avocados are a fruit that provide the highest concentration of fat protecting antioxidants of any other fruit or vegetable. Wow. Yeah. Why? This, this is of relevance to the brain because the brain is made of fat, right, Dr. Hyman? The brain is made of fat, but not just any fat. It's, it's made of a type of fat that is most prone to oxidation, most vulnerable to what's called oxidative stress. And so when you eat an avocado, which is rich in vitamin E, a fat soluble antioxidant, it literally is one of the most powerful brain anti-aging foods that you can consume. It's also loaded with fiber, which makes it satiating and it helps support gut bacteria, which is a motivator of a healthy gut microbiome. It contains potassium, which we know is

• 26:30Speaker 02

  really important for helping maintain a healthy level of blood pressure. And it also contains compounds called carotenoids, which we know protect neural tissue, both in our eyes and in our brains. One of the reasons why avocados and dark leafy greens are protective against age-related macular degeneration, they contain these carotenoids, which we now know also protect brain. So that's one of my favorite foods, avocados. Yeah, the thing, my problem with that is it often comes in the form of guacamole. Unless you order the vegetable sticks instead of

• 27:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The chips, it's a danger zone for me because I can, I just kind of like those chips are, I don't like crack. I don't know why, but if anybody has had those corn chip thing, it's like, I can't eat them because I just can't stop.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm the same way. I think it's, it's, it's better to, for me, well, it's, it's that slogan, once you pop, you can't stop. We know now, thanks to scientific research, that, that, that's a slogan with scientific backing.

• 27:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Point. That is, that is a truism at this point, right? Because foods like tortilla trip, chips are hyper palatable. They combine salt, fat, flour.

• 27:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  And they're, they're so calorie dense that it would have actually been a life-saving food potentially for a hunter gatherer, right?

• 27:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, that's why, that's why I actually am afraid of Mexican restaurants now. I'm like, I'm gonna, and then someone orders, I don't order the, I usually don't order the chips and guacamole. Then someone's like, bring the chips. I'm like, oh no.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm the same way. I'm the same way.

• 27:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's like giving a crack addict some crack.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the thing is, we feel as though we, I, I feel like there's this innate sense that we should be able to moderate our consumption of those foods, right? That's part of having a healthy relationship with food. However, I think what most people fail to realize and what's certainly not acknowledged by even our most esteemed healthcare professionals and, and, and those in the nutritional orthodoxy. It's that these foods are not designed to be consumed in moderation. They're hyper palatable. And by the time you've filled yourself up on them, you've already over consumed them. Unfortunately, people tend to experience a sense of moral failure when they're not able to stop eating the chips, right?

• 28:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  At a, at a, at a reasonable level of consult, consumption, but that's because your brain has been honed by millennia. Where the, where food scarcity was a real problem, right? We didn't have food security the way that we have now for the vast majority of our evolution. So.

• 28:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  As I mentioned, those chips, as calorie dense as they are, would have been an amazing food for a hunter gatherer who didn't have uh, access to Grubhub on their phones or, or a supermarket on every corner.

• 29:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and that's why it's easy to eat an entire bag of. Corn chips, but no one's going to be binging on 12 avocados, right?

• 29:17Speaker 02

  There you go. Because avocados are, they're satiating in a way that, in a way that ultra-processed foods simply aren't. Another example of a, of a brain food.

• 29:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before, before you jump on the next example, I just want to highlight what you just said because there's been an elegant study done by Dave, by Kevin Hall, looking at feeding people an unlimited amount of ultra-processed food or nourishing whole foods. And they let them eat whatever they want and they tracked over a few weeks, they tracked their, their consumption and their, and their actual uh, weight gain. And they found that the ultra-processed food group essentially ate about 500 calories more a day than the people eating whole foods and they gained obviously more weight. So, you know, it really speaks to this whole idea that, that there's some nutritional intelligence that we have

• 30:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that causes to seek nutrients in our diet. The problem is we don't find them, we keep eating more. Like looking for love in all the wrong places, you know? And we, we end up just over consuming because we're not getting the nutrients we need. And we see this like with kids, for example, we've talked about this in the podcast, uh, who are iron deficient, they'll eat dirt. They'll eat dirt because dirt has iron. So in animal studies, and we've had Fred Prvenza on the podcast, there's an innate initial nutritional wisdom where they're sampling maybe up to 50 to 100 different plants to get the medicinal properties of each of these plants to heal their body, to make it work properly, and they know when to stop. Uh, we don't, we don't have that nutritional intelligence anymore. And there was a study done

• 30:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  decades ago, I think in the twenties maybe of orphans. And I've talked about this in the podcast too, but the orphans were led to eat whatever they want, brain, kidney, liver, weird vegetables.

• 31:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kind of they give them an array of foods that were nutritionally dense, that you think kids wouldn't eat, right? What kid's gonna eat liver? On their own or kidney. Uh, and then they, then they, then they kind of track what they did. And these kids were far at the end of the study were far more healthy. And far more robust because they chose all this variety of weird foods that actually their body's own intellectual intelligence told them to eat. But we lose that as we get older because our brain chemistry, metabolism, immune system, microbiome, all of its been high hormones have been hijacked by the food industry deliberately. Um, so when we, when you have that deliberate usurping of your own, a kind of got internal guidance system and wisdom of what to eat.

• 31:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We end up in this chaotic state of constantly searching for ingredients and nutrients and compounds that we're needing to survive. We can't get from the foods. We just keep eating more and more and more. That's, that's really the problem.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the, the movement to, um, towards in what's been called intuitive eating. That's why I think that that's such a short sighted. Um, and, and not very evidence based, um, uh, initiative because when I sample the pint of ice cream that's sitting in my freezer right now intuitively, what my body wants is to eat the whole pint.

• 32:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  So, um, so I, I agree with you that we need to get back to, um, we need to get back to foods that are, that are, uh, less industrially processed. And you bring up an interesting point. I mean, the, the, the, the over, the, the tendency to over consume ultra processed foods. I think it's really important for people to know the three things that make a food satiating.

• 32:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Because then they can use this as a tool in their own lives. The first thing that makes a food satiating is protein cut. So there's actually the protein leverage hypothesis, which stipulates that our hunger mechanisms are driven in large part by our necessity for protein. It's an essential nutrient, right? And not just any, any type of protein, high quality protein. And the protein leverage hypothesis, I mean, people should remember that protein can be used powerfully to leverage um, as a way to kill hunger. And unfortunately, ultra processed foods are depleted of, of protein. In part because protein is the most expensive macronutrient. So typically with ultra processed foods, what you get is just carbs and fat, some combination of energy rich carbs and fat, right?

• 33:25Speaker 02

  And so protein, protein is crucially important. One of the major factors that makes a food satiating. The second aspect would be its fiber content. Because fiber mechanically stretches out the stomach. It's not an essential nutrient, but it does uh draw water, it does absorb water. And so it stretches out the stomach, which turns off the release of the hormone ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone. Um, usually ultra-processed foods are depleted of fiber, right? It's one of the reasons why your average American today consumes between six to 10 grams of fiber every day. Whereas one of our hunter-gather ancestors probably consumed about 150 grams a day.

• 34:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that that that reminds me of that study by Dennis Burke where he looked at hunter-gatherers who'd moved to the city. It became urbanized in Africa compared to their hunter-gatherer neighbors. And the hunter-gatherers had stool weights of four, of two pounds. And the city dwellers had stool weights of four ounces. So their poop was just a little hard poop. And the reason is all the fiber and the tubers and the nutrient-dense food. So you said fiber is not an essential nutrient. It it isn't for us, but it's essential for the microbiome. Our microbiome is essential for us to stay healthy. So in a sense, it is really an essential nutrient.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  It is, yeah, through through the through the lens of of the microbiome, absolutely. It is, and it it certainly makes a lot better. Studies show that people who consume more fiber um have reduced uh inflammation, they live longer. Um, so it's it's definitely, I would call it a conditionally essential nutrient.

• 34:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  That we that we definitely want to look to consume um more of. And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is its water content. Because when water ceased to be available for hunter-gatherers, the second best place that they would look to to get their to meet their requirements for hydration would be food, right? Food is actually a viable source of water. And shelf-stable ultra-processed foods are are depleted of water. Because water impedes a food's shelf stability because it allows mold to grow. Um, and so these are the three factors that are that are all but missing in ultra-processed foods and and all always very present in um minimally processed whole foods. So definitely worth uh worth seeking out, you know, any of those nutrients.

• 35:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Didn't you miss the most satiating? Nutrient of all.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  And our favorite.

• 35:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Fat.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Fat is satiating. Yeah, it slows. It slows the absorption of food. It slows gastric emptying. Um, so that's why, well, most, most high protein foods are going to come with, are gonna have a fat source, right? Grass fed beef, for example, is a good source of helpful fat. Um, wild fatty fish, great source of fat. And so fat is fat. Basically, here's the, here's what fat does. Fat prolongs the satiety effect. The protein fiber very, very satiating, but fat prolongs that effect so that you're not hungry 30 minutes later. So it's definitely good to, um, to look and find helpful sources of fat.

• 36:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And by the way, the thing that makes you hungry is sugar is, is basically. When you, when you eat a lot of carbs and sugar, you just get hungrier and hungrier. Cause you produce more insulin, which triggers all these secondary downstream biochemical challenges, changes that actually lead to increased hunger. So the more you carbs you eat, the more you want to eat. And the less you eat, the less you want to eat. I mean, you know that from your own experience. So do I. It's like, wow. God, that bagel doesn't look like food to me anymore, or that muffin doesn't look like food or cookie. Why would I ever eat a cookie? It's not that you're depriving yourself. It just stops looking appealing.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're absolutely right. Dr. Hyman, there was this really fascinating study that I'm sure you're familiar with, but. They basically took scientists took two porages. They were controlled for carbohydrate content. Um, and calorie content. It was just two wheat porages that were identical in terms of their overall nutrition facts. But the difference was the degree of process. So one was a more coarsely ground porridge. And the other was a more finely ground pork. And it's the finely ground porridge that sent subject blood sugar through the roof and led to a higher release of insulin. But, um, what was most interesting about that study was that in the post absorptive state, so after they consumed the more finely ground porridge. The finely ground porridge sent their blood sugar below baseline,

• 37:39Speaker 02

  which the more coarsely ground porridge didn't do. And when your blood sugar goes below baseline, what that, what that is, is reactive hypoglycemia. And that can trigger in people that are susceptible to anxiety, can trigger anxiety. It can increase hunger, that sensation of hanger. And that was, uh, that, um, the, the capacity for the food to do that was driven purely by the degree of process that the food had undergone. The more finely ground porridge was more akin to a sugar, right? Because it was just so easy for the subject bodies to assimilate. Whereas the more coarsely ground, the less processed, um, version of the porridge actually sent, um, brought, uh, subjects' blood sugar back down to baseline. Really smoothly and evenly. So that's why you definitely want to avoid added sugar to the best of your ability.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Um, and also reach for foods that are, that are less processed because this is not about calories. This is not about carbohydrate content. This was purely about the, the degree of processing that that food has undergone.

• 38:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  So it's a great point.

• 38:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, you, yeah, I mean, it goes without saying, people listening to the podcast understand by now that, you know, the ultra-processed food is the number one killer on the planet. Like, if you want to do one thing to improve the quality of your health, is never eat ultra-processed food. And what is ultra-processed food is basically anything that comes from a factory, unless you recognize the ingredients. And then, and I always, the rule is if you, if you can basically cover the front of the package and just read the ingredient list and know what it is, it's probably okay to eat, right? If it says tomatoes, water and salt, or sardines, olive oil and salt, you know what's in the can. But if it's got forty-five ingredients, most of which you can't pronounce or in Latin, and you have no idea what, what it is, you can't tell if it's a corn dog or a pop tart from the label, then you shouldn't eat it.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Real, real foods don't have extensive ingredients lists. They are the ingredients. They are the ingredients.

• 39:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. Exactly. Like an avocado doesn't have a nutrition facts label or an ingredient list. It's an avocado.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It should have, it should have an ingredient list of phytochemicals so people can see what they're actually getting.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  It should. You're right. But I mean, the, the, and the biggest irony is that they don't make health claims either. Like avocados, grass-fed beef, wild salmon, eggs, the, you know, they don't, they don't make health claims. It's the, it's the ultra-processed foods, the kinds of foods that have ads on TV, right? Those are the ones that, that are making all the health claims, and yet those are the worst foods for you.

• 39:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's generally true.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So we've got, we've got a really beautiful insight here, which is, one, that we should be eating phyto-nutrients. And that's food. We're going to talk about some more genius foods, but two, the quality of our food and the ability to understand what makes us feel satisfied really are key principles. So protein, fiber, water, fat are kind of the secrets to keeping your metabolism healthy. And you said that, you know, there's, there's no biological requirement for grains. It's even a step further. I would say there's no actual biological requirement for carbohydrates. There's no, there's no essential carbohydrates. So there's essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, but there's no essential carbohydrates. So you literally

• 40:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  don't have to eat any carbohydrates. But with that said, I often also say that carbohydrates are the single most important food for long-term health and longevity. And what I mean by that is that vegetables are carbohydrates. And they, they do contain some protein and sometimes fat, depending on the vegetable, but essentially they're phytochemically rich foods. So phytochemical richness is such a key principle that most of us don't pay attention to. And, and when you talk about genius foods, you're often talking about the phytochemical richness of the food. So tell us some more about other genius foods that we should be focused on, particularly in terms of the brain.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean phytochemicals are abundant in avocados, dark leafy greens, but because we already talked about avocados, I feel like it's, we should ping pong and talk about a good protein source, like a grass finished beef, I think is a powerful brain food for people. It's, it's actually one of the more controversial recommendations, but when you look at, at grass fed and finished beef, it's a, it's a great source of vitamin E, which I talked about as being a powerful fat protecting antioxidant. You find three times the vitamin E in grass finished beef as you find in brain finished beef. It's also a great source of a compound called creatine, which supports brain energy metabolism. So people who don't regularly consume creatine, which is found naturally in beef and fish,

• 42:01Speaker 02

  and you give them supplemental creatine, you see an improvement in their cognitive function. So we know that dietary creatine plays an important role in good brain health and good brain function. We, our brains level of creatine tends to decline with age and is also apparently depleted in carriers of the APOE4 allele, which is the

• 42:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  most well-defined Alzheimer's risk gene. So I'm a, I'm a big advocate of, in general, foods that contain, that contain creatine naturally. And grass fed beef is a viable source.

• 42:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Today, if you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. And we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at drhyman.com/marks picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are things that have helped me on my health journey and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com/marks picks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy.

• 43:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorse the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultra wellness center.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search Find a Practitioner Database.

• 44:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Keeping this podcast free is part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to express gratitude to the sponsors that made today's podcast possible.

• 44:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients. They're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com has the world's best selection of top quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D R H Y M A N dot com.