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Sept. 14, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:45:07

Joe Rogan Experience #1870 - Max Lugavere

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max lugavere

01:54:28

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's up, Max?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
unidentified		What up?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me.
unidentified		Pleasure to meet you.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Same.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've enjoyed your content online, so it's exciting to meet you in person.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad to hear that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you were telling me before we got rolling, I said, save it.
		Let's just talk about it.
		This Alzheimer's thing that you're doing, what are you doing?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I've been deeply immersed in the Alzheimer's dementia prevention world for the past almost decade at this point.
		I'm not a, just to lay it out up front, I'm not a medical doctor.
		I didn't take the academic route.
		I started college sort of on a pre-med track, but what ended up happening was I ended up going into journalism straight out of college and I ended up working for a TV network in the US that was backed by Al Gore back in the day.
		And so I got to hone my storytelling chops there, but I'd always been really passionate about health.
		Nutrition, medicine, things like that.
		But in 2011, my mother started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a form of dementia called Lewy body dementia, which is a rare form of dementia.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Robin Williams had that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Terrible condition.
		It's described as feeling like you have both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time, and certainly that's what I observed in my mom.
		And so when she started to display those symptoms, It had taken me and my family completely off guard.
		I had no prior family history of any kind of neurodegenerative condition.
		My mom certainly wasn't old at the time.
		She was 58. She was still a spirited, youthful woman in middle age.
		She had all the pigments in her hair.
		For me, I was in between jobs and I really had the opportunity, I was grateful to have had the opportunity to go with her to different doctor's appointments.
		And I grew up in New York City, so we had access to cathedrals, to medical advice and examination.
		And in every instance, we were met with what I've come to call diagnose and adios.
		Basically, a physician would run a battery of esoteric tests on my mom, scribble down a few notes on a prescription pad, and send us on our way.
		But we had to ultimately take a trip to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which is known for taking on really complex medical cases.
		They built a team around the patient.
		And it was there that for the first time, my mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition.
		She was prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
		It wasn't until a few years later that she actually received the Lewy body dementia diagnosis.
		But at that point, I started to dive into the research because I had been trained as a journalist.
		Which, you know, you're not trained as rigorously as a PhD scientist, but you're kind of taught similarly to investigate things, to maintain skepticism, to, you know, ask questions.
		And I started to look into the literature and just generally get a sense of what it was that my mom had been diagnosed with, what this entailed.
		And I realized that in most cases, dementia begins in the brain decades before the first symptom, 10, 20, 30 years even, by some estimates.
		And so for me, this became something really important to explore as a potentially preventable condition, because I realized for the first time that I had a risk factor, that my mom, you know, was my risk factor, essentially.
		I hadn't even yet looked into my genes at that point.
		But so I... I started looking into it and I came across all of these fascinating insights, which we can talk about.
		about.
		But I decided at that point, um, that I, to, to sort of do what I could to help push the, you know, move the needle with this condition, um, that I would use my skills, which at the time were, uh, filmmaking.
		Cause I had just come off, you know, I was like producing content for TV and I was on camera.
		I was a communicator as well.
		And so I decided to do a documentary, um, on the topic of dementia prevention, the first ever, uh, documentary on dementia as a potentially preventable condition.
		We've all seen dementia documentaries on HBO and networks like that, and they always push this very doom and gloom mentality about the condition, which I understand.
		It is a very difficult condition.
		It's America's most feared condition, after all.
		And this is a condition that, you know, 90% of what we know about Alzheimer's disease in particular, which is just one form of dementia, has been discovered only in the past 15 years.
		So it's a very rapidly evolving field of science.
		But I felt like if we know that this is a condition that begins in the brain decades before the presentation of symptoms, then to me what that is, that's a very empowering insight.
		That means that we have agency to change our cognitive destiny.
		So, I started shooting with my mom, which was very hard to do because, you know, I mean, the person who I love most in the world, I was watching decline right in front of the camera.
		But also, I decided to exploit my media credentials at the time to then talk to researchers and scientists around the world.
		And I was doing my own research in the primary literature as well, but I decided to Yeah, to go to these labs and clinics where they're really ushering in dementia as a potentially preventable condition.
		And I actually signed myself up to become a study subject in one, actually, at Weill Cornell in New York.
		And ultimately, I became a collaborator with the principal investigator there, who's become my mentor over the years, Richard Isaacson.
		And I got to co-author a paper in a clinician's textbook on the clinical practice of dementia prevention.
		Because after all this time, I've learned so much about the condition, the etiology, and so forth.
		But this documentary, I'm super excited for it.
		It's called Little Empty Boxes, and we have a trailer up at littleemptyboxes.com.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why little empty boxes?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a nod to something that my mom says in the film, which is actually something, you know, my mom's condition, it seemed like her cognition had just severely downshifted, almost overnight.
		My mom never forgot who I was or anything like that.
		The presentation of Lewy body dementia is different from Alzheimer's disease.
		And once you've seen one case of dementia, just generally speaking, you've seen one case of dementia.
		Every dementia is different.
		But in my mom's case, it led to her often losing her train of thought soon after beginning to express an idea.
		And she would often say things that just didn't make logical sense.
		So it's sort of a nod to something that she says in the film.
		But I'm super excited because we inked a partnership with a wonderful foundation called the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.
		And yeah, I'm just super excited to...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is dementia purely genetic or is it caused by environmental factors or any other things that people consume?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		Though Alzheimer's disease was coined in 1906 by a physician named Alois Alzheimer, the brain has long been thought of to sit in sort of the ivory tower of the brain guarded from what happens down below by what's called the blood-brain barrier.
		But we now know that the brain is influenced by everything that happens down below.
		The dogma, especially with regard to Alzheimer's disease fundraising over the past couple of decades, has really been that this is a condition that you can't treat, prevent, or slow.
		But we now have really solid data to say that it is a potentially preventable condition.
		So when it comes to our risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, there are basically two categories of risk.
		You have your non-modifiable risk factors, of which there are three.
		So you've got your age, your genes, and your gender.
		So your age.
		Age is still the number one risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease, right?
		You can't change your age yet.
		You have your gender.
		If you're a woman, your risk is double that as compared to a male's.
		And you have your genes.
		Now, genes is something that we can actually talk about because you can't change your genes, making them, therefore, a non-modifiable risk factor.
		You can change the expression of your genes, how your genes express themselves moment to moment.
		So, for example, if you live in the United States and you carry a copy or two of what's called the APOE4 allele, so it's basically a polymorphism, meaning it's not a mutation.
		It's actually a very common gene variant.
		About one in four people carry the APOE4 allele.
		In the United States, that increases your risk anywhere between 2 and 14 fold, depending on whether you carry one or two copies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think that's also the same genetic expression that makes you have CTE. CTE, yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It makes everything more, it makes your brain more vulnerable in general to insult, whether that is from TBI, exposure to pollutants, exposure to unhealthy ways of eating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do we know why it does that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So the ApoE4 allele is thought to be the ancestral version.
		So it's the first version.
		All non-human primates are ApoE4-4.
		So they carry the ApoE4 allele.
		Not just one copy, but two copies.
		And yet they don't develop Alzheimer's disease.
		When you look to people...
		We've evolved these different isoforms of the ApoE gene.
		So we have ApoE2, 3, and 4. And just to reiterate, ApoE4 is the ancestral allele.
		So cultures that have longer exposure to modern agriculture Actually, there's lower frequency of the ApoE4 allele.
		The thinking is that agriculture, right?
		Like when we became domesticated, when we started basing our diets around grains, when we became more sedentary, less generalized in terms of our cognitive, the daily cognitive tasks that our ancestors would have undertaken, that it's selected against the ApoE4 allele.
		So it's possible that that allele Which, again, is very common, one in four people carry it, is sort of the canary in the coal mine for the Western way of life.
		That if you adopt a Western way of life and you eat, you know, today, 60% of calories that adults consume come from ultra-processed junk foods, right?
		We're more sedentary than ever before in human history.
		We've got more stress, we're exposed to more environmental pollutants, that that is what dramatically is what pulls the trigger, right?
		Because genes load the gun.
		It's our diets and our lifestyles that pull the trigger.
		But if you were to take somebody with that same genotype, right, and move them to a less industrialized part of the world, like, say, Ibadan, Nigeria, where the frequency of the ApoE4 allele is just as common, it has little to no association with Alzheimer's disease.
		So just to put that another way, what that suggests is if you're genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease in the United States, you might simply move to Ibadan, Nigeria or another less industrialized part of the world and see that risk abolished.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So with this consumption of processed foods that is responsible for a large percentage of the calories that people consume today, is the human body adapting to that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that why this ApoE4 is less prevalent than it is in other cultures?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's possible, although with age being the primary risk factor, it's unlikely that that has put significant selection pressure.
		So I'm not sure, but we do know, you know, there are, I think, gene studies where they've looked at expression of genes that produce enzymes that break down amylase, right, like starch and things like that, and those are increasing, I think, over time.
		It's a little out of my wheelhouse, but generally, I mean, yeah, the standard American diet is completely aberrant from the diet that our ancestors consumed, the diet that really we attribute to the development of the human brain.
		60% of the calories that we consume today come from ultra-processed, packaged convenience foods.
		It's a massive problem.
		I mean, it's driving obesity.
		It's driving type 2 diabetes.
		If you have type 2 diabetes, so going back to Alzheimer's disease and this gene expression, So the ApoE4 allele is, you know, you have it, but it's not necessarily destiny.
		And 90% of Alzheimer's cases, I'm sorry, more, like 99% of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to some interplay between our genes and our environment.
		There's a very small proportion of patients with Alzheimer's disease that have a gene mutation that is a deterministic gene.
		And this is called the early onset familial Alzheimer's gene.
		And that gene basically guarantees that you're going to have Alzheimer's disease.
		But that makes up only 1-2% of cases.
		The vast majority of people who develop Alzheimer's disease, it's the interplay between their genes and their environments.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So excluding environmental factors like pollutants and plastics and all sorts of other things that affect people's bodies, what are the other things that a person can do to make sure that they at least are preventing The possibility this happened.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you're saying that, like, if the symptoms take, if it takes decades to exhibit symptoms, what are they seeing when they say that the people exhibit signs or exhibit some sort of a future of dementia?
		Like, how can you see that?
		What are you seeing?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You can't necessarily look inside the brain.
		There are studies that look at what's called brain glucose metabolism.
		Something that you see in Alzheimer's disease is a reduced ability of the brain to generate energy from glucose.
		It's called glucose hypometabolism.
		This is a defining feature, actually, of Alzheimer's disease.
		And I say Alzheimer's disease, again, my mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease, but it's the most common form of dementia.
		And so all the research on it really looks at mostly Alzheimer's disease.
		And then you get sort of like all-cause dementia in there, but like these more niche variants like Lewy body, like frontotemporal, there's very little research on them.
		So when I say sometimes I use Alzheimer's disease and dementia interchangeably, but with Alzheimer's disease, one of the primary features is called glucose hypometabolism.
		So the brain's inability to create energy from glucose.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you see that decades before you see symptoms of dementia?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, especially with people who are genetically at risk.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		About a 10% reduction And the ability to generate energy out of glucose, which is the primary energy substrate for the brain under fed conditions.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if people see this, if they get a test and they find out that they have this ApoE4, and then they get their glucose checked, how are they checking that, their ability to process glucose?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, they do what are called FTG PET tests, scans.
		So they'll just look to see glucose uptake in the brain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Where does one get, like if someone is saying, oh my god, I have dementia in my family and they're listening to this, how can I find out?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do they do?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's not a test that you can easily get.
		They'll use it for study purposes, like research purposes, but it's not a test being used clinically.
		What correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain is your degree of insulin resistance in the body or sensitivity.
		So if you are insulin sensitive, you've talked many times on the podcast in the past, About metabolic health, insulin sensitivity versus resistance.
		The sort of classic condition that we see here in the U.S. characterized by insulin resistance is type 2 diabetes.
		But what the studies have shown is that insulin resistance correlates very closely with reduced glucose metabolism in the brain.
		So what you really want to do to keep your brain healthy is Is to make sure that you're as insulin sensitive as possible.
		That's one thing that you can do that you know you're checking off that box.
		Because when it comes to...
		So we talked about the...
		And let me know if I should like, you know, kind of double click on any one of these because, you know, I know we're covering a lot.
		But when it comes to the other risk factors, what are called the modifiable risk factors, you have 12 of them.
		And one of them is diabetes.
		So insulin resistance is obviously the hallmark of type 2 diabetes.
		We know that insulin resistance is strongly correlated to reduced glucose utilization in the brain.
		Obesity is another modifiable risk factor.
		Studies show that as your waistline expands, your brain shrinks.
		Total brain volume is actually inversely...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That explains Bert Kreischer.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Call Bert.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He needs to know about this.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So yeah, obesity is no bueno.
		It's not good.
		You know, I mean, there's like this push online now, like the health...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Body positivity.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Body positivity, yeah, I think it's a good problem.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So foolish.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I just, I can't imagine being so sensitive to people's feelings that you ignore a very clear warning sign that they're doing something that's insanely unhealthy.
		And preventable.
		And it's something that should be broadcast to everybody.
		Everybody should know this is a real factor in a host of different problems that are going to happen with your body.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		I mean, you can be more or less healthy at a given size, right?
		But to be not obese is healthier than being obese.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		100%.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And by the year 2030, one in two Americans are going to be not just overweight, but obese.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought it was already there.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		We're close.
		We're 40%, but we're getting there.
		It's insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it's clearly connected to our diet.
		And, you know, that's one of the things that I've enjoyed is a lot of your posts on diet and food, but we'll get to that.
		But before we get into that, when you talk about preventative measures that someone can take, other than decreasing your waistline, losing weight, what are the other factors?
		Does exercise have any factor on dementia?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Exercise is medicine when it comes to the brain.
		And we can tackle this from a number of different angles, but when you exercise, you're literally pushing fresh blood up to the brain, and blood carries oxygen, nutrients, antioxidants, things like that.
		When you exercise, you are increasing the expression of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is sort of considered to be like a miracle-grow protein for the brain.
		You're increasing the expression of BDNF.
		You're changing the neurochemistry of the brain, essentially, with a workout.
		I mean, I'm a different person when I leave the gym than I was walking into it.
		So you can subjectively, you can feel that, that it's doing something to your brain.
		You're reducing inflammation.
		You're reducing blood pressure.
		you're normalizing healthy blood pressure.
		This is something that is, uh, this is, I mean, crucially important, but one of the seminal, uh, trials that I use in my argument, which is now, you know, finally being accepted by, you know, the, the, the medical establishment, but, um, the sprint mind trial found that for people who are aggressively treated for their high the sprint mind trial found that for people who are aggressively treated for their high blood pressure with pharmacologic drugs, but, um, but you know, this ties into exercise because exercise is, uh, just as effective as blood But
		But for these people who were put on aggressive blood pressure normalizing therapy, they reduced the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment.
		And mild cognitive impairment is sort of a prodrome.
		It's considered like pre-dementia.
		You'll often develop mild cognitive impairment before you're diagnosed with...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's also Burt Kreischer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Send him a message.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		This one's for him.
unidentified		Warning sign.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This one's for you, Bert.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So, yeah.
		So, I mean, exercise is like, it helps to normalize blood pressure.
		It reduces insulin sensitivity.
		It helps to, you know, the hormonal milieu.
		We talked about insulin resistance.
		Physical exercise, right?
		Particularly resistance training, which is so important for people to do.
		It is one of the best ways of fostering insulin sensitivity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Resistance training above cardio?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're both beneficial.
		They're both...
		And actually, I... I like to remind myself this because I dislike doing cardio.
		I don't like running on a treadmill.
		I love lifting weights.
		I've been doing that my whole life pretty much.
		But cardio is super important because we have a ton of evidence on cardio as it pertains to BDNF, which is this brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
		And we know this because it's very easy to get a mouse to run on a treadmill and then to sacrifice it and see what's going on in the brain.
		It's a lot harder to get a mouse to do squats and bench presses.
		You know, so from like the basic science standpoint, we have a lot of evidence on specifically what cardio does for the brain, right?
		But resistance training we know in terms of bolstering whole body Resilience, robustness.
		We know that your muscles are a very important glucose disposal sink, right?
		So, I mean, we live in a time where your average American consumes 300 grams of carbohydrates every single day, right?
		Our bodies don't have a way to store carbohydrates beyond the storage capacity of our muscles and our liver tissue, right?
		It's not like fat.
		You can store 3,000 calories of fat in a single pound of fat tissue, right?
		But your muscles, your liver combine only about 400, 500 grams of glucose in a given day or at a time, rather.
		And so, yeah, resistance training, you're building up your musculature, which is going to allow you to continue to exercise and be mobile, which we know is really important for the brain, for glucose disposal.
		It's crucially important.
		So I think both are key.
		You can obviously tweak your resistance training regimen to have a more sort of cardio aspect to it, right?
		Like shortening the time between sets.
		But I do think that there's value in doing both.
		But yeah, exercise, it's just at this point, I think it was two or three years ago that the American Academy of Neurology finally made exercise a...
		Something that physicians could prescribe to treat somebody who's presenting with subjective cognitive impairment in the, you know, as a prophylactic so that they won't go on to develop mild cognitive impairment.
		So it's really important.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's very progressive of them.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad they're doing that now.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, there's a lot of...
		And I've seen this personally, like, in science.
		Like, I'm a huge fan of science.
		My work relies on it.
		And the last thing that I would ever want to do is sort of undermine confidence in science.
		But there's science, and then there's the science, you know?
		And especially in the field of Alzheimer's disease, there was this huge revelation recently that the past 16 years of Alzheimer's research, in many ways, was built on fraud.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I read that.
		That is one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about because it's so crazy.
		Please tell people about this because it's so insane and it's so hard to believe that this could happen in modern medicine, especially with something that affects so many people's Alzheimer's.
		But please tell people about this study.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So basically, the prevailing hypothesis as to what causes Alzheimer's disease over the past century, right, has been what's called the amyloid hypothesis.
		So ever since Alois Alzheimer discovered or named Alzheimer's disease in 1906 and looked into the brain of the cadaver and saw these...
		Plaques aggregating around neurons, right?
		In the extracellular space around neurons.
		The plaques have come to be sort of the force, the focus of Alzheimer's research, really.
		And the idea was that these plaques were the causative force in the condition.
		Much like the plaque on your teeth, right?
		You see these plaques in the brain of a person with Alzheimer's disease.
		And so that's really been the target of drug therapy.
		And the idea was that until we can find a drug that would reduce the plaque burden, reduce the plaque, get rid of the plaque in the brains of a senior person, right?
		Somebody who's at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, that it's a disease that you can't prevent.
		There's nothing to do to treat.
		But the problem was that they can never actually tie the plaque to cognitive decline, right?
		Like the clinically meaningful symptom, the symptomology of Alzheimer's disease, that it messes up your cognition, that it makes you, you know, that it makes you forget your loved ones, ultimately forget who you are, ultimately forgetting how to eat, right?
		And nourish yourself.
		They can never tie those symptoms to the plaque, right?
		Until a paper published in the journal Nature in 2006.
		So what happened was this researcher named Sylvain Lesney at the University of Minnesota basically was looking into these, the brains of mice who are bred to overexpress what's called amyloid precursor protein, which is a protein.
		which is the precursor to amyloid beta, which is the protein that makes up sort of the skeleton of these plaques that we see aggregate, right?
		So what he did was he isolated a subtype that he called A-beta star 56 and injected it into a young and healthy mouse or rat mouse.
		And he saw that that mouse's cognition rapidly declined.
		So that was the missing link, right?
		That he found a subtype of this amyloid beta protein that serves as the backbone of these plaques, which could never be pinned to the cognitive decline itself, right?
		The memory loss itself.
		But he claimed that he found it, and when injected into the body of a healthy mouse, He saw rapid decline in terms of their cognition, right?
		So that was the missing link.
		And so at that point, faith in the so-called amyloid hypothesis was starting to wane because they couldn't find effective drugs.
		Alzheimer's drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate, so worse than for cancer, worse than for any other disease state, really.
		And the drugs that are currently FDA approved on the market, they're biochemical band-aids.
		They're minimally effective.
		I mean, they modulate various neurotransmitters, but, you know, I've heard it described like, you know, expecting to remove amyloid from the brain of a person with Alzheimer's disease and to see their cognition come back is sort of like thinking that if you remove all the headstones from a grave, you know, people will come back to life, right?
		Like there's widespread neuronal dysfunction and death in the brain of somebody with Alzheimer's disease.
		And in tandem with that, scanning technology has allowed us to look into the brains of healthy controls.
		And what we see is that there's amyloid plaque in the brains of healthy controls as well.
		So there's no correlation between amyloid burden in the brain and one's cognitive abilities.
		But nonetheless, when this paper came out in 2006, It renewed fervor in terms of this hypothesis because he found the subtype of amyloid that can be injected into a young and healthy mouse that would then seriously impair their cognition, right?
		And so that renewed interest in this hypothesis and it's what ultimately led to the fact that just a couple years ago, two years ago, There was a highly controversial drug that was approved by the FDA called Aducanumab or Aduhelm.
		And this is a drug that effectively reduced plaque burden in the brain.
		For the first time, they found a drug that could actually reduce plaque burden in the brain.
		But it didn't lead to any improvement in cognitive symptoms.
		Nonetheless, it was given the green light against tons of opposition that the FDA received.
		They put together a panel of 11 people Neuroscientists, neurologists, right?
		Eight of them told the FDA not to approve this drug.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what was the reason for that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		The reason for that was that the drug didn't move the needle on any clinically meaningful symptom, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were there significant side effects for the drug?
unidentified		There were.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So 35% of the people in the trial had significant brain swelling.
		And half of them had bleeding associated with that brain swelling because these are antibodies.
		So aducanumab is an antibody that basically causes your own immune system to target the amyloid plaques, right?
		And so what that's doing is causing an inflammatory response in the brain, right?
		So 35% of the patients in the phase two trials, I believe, had horrible side effects and no clinically meaningful effect on their cognition.
		But nonetheless, because it effectively did reduce the amyloid plaque burden, there was this intense pressure, right, to get it greenlit.
		Because that's like the amyloid hypothesis right there, right?
		So, huge problem.
		One of the big vocal sort of skeptics about this drug, aducanumab, is a guy, a Vanderbilt researcher named Matthew Schragge.
		Matthew Schrag was very vocally against the approval of this drug, which, again, doesn't do anything.
		Horrible risk of side effects, no clinically meaningful effect on the symptoms that we want to improve for a patient with Alzheimer's disease.
		And so he was vocally critical of that.
		And then he also was working on some other drug.
		And what was revealed basically in the science paper that came out was that he was dabbling on a website called PubPeer, which is a site where you can go.
		It's known for post-publication peer review.
		So before paper gets accepted for publication, it undergoes this peer review process, right?
		And so he found that there were a lot of sort of red flags that were being brought up on this message board, essentially, about this nature paper, this like seminal nature paper that was published that found it was like the missing link between the amyloid hypothesis and the clinically meaningful symptoms, meaning memory loss.
		And he did a bit of like image sleuthing, which is not generally part of the peer review process, right?
		And he looked at these, the way data is illustrated in this paper, as it is in research generally, it's called a Western blot, which is like a visual representation of data, the presence of proteins and so forth.
		And he found that they were all, for the most part, fabricated.
		In fact, this A Beta Star 56 wasn't found by any other team.
		Hasn't been found by any other team.
		It basically came to light that it was essentially fake.
		The whole thing was faked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was the motivation for this person to fake all this?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Because the thing, I mean, I think that we like to believe that science is this good faith endeavor towards human flourishing, right?
		But in the industry of science, there are flawed humans, just like there are in every other industry, right?
		And scientists in general, I see this all the time in nutrition, online, on social media, right?
		Social media is a great, like, sort of...
		They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
		Like, social media is a great way to kind of see how this plays out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Because scientists are notoriously territorial, obstinate, they, you know, their reputations...
		Egotistical.
		Egotistical, yeah, their reputations are everything, right?
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's just like I see it every day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's humans.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
		Yeah, so there's bad apples, right?
		I think a lot of people in science...
		I live and breathe nutrition.
		It's the thing that I'm most passionate about in life, right?
		Fitness, nutrition, sleep, disease prevention.
		My mom is what galvanized that passion for me, right?
		And what my mom went through and my desire to prevent it from happening to others that I care about and ultimately people, you know, from all walks of life.
		But, you know, a lot of people go into science, go into medicine because it's a career path, right?
		It's a career path for somebody wanting validation.
		It comes with prestige.
		It comes with money.
		It comes with all the things that, like, make sense that a person would want, right?
		But then ego gets in the way and it becomes really problematic.
		I mean, you see it in nutrition all the time.
		You see it in nutrition...
		All the freaking time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So this person that fabricated this study and fabricated all this data, what consequences are there for that person?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think that the Department of Justice is going to be looking into it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're going to be looking into it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		If they're not already.
		Yeah.
		If they're not already.
		But I personally...
		So one of the worst things about...
		This, right, is it's not just like the lost time and all the money that went to continue looking down this sort of path of the amyloid hypothesis, right?
		Looking in the wrong place, really.
		Because amyloid is there, but it's sort of like what you see in atherosclerosis, right?
		Like cholesterol.
		It's like everybody has pointed at cholesterol as being the bad guy, because cholesterol is clearly there in atherosclerotic plaques, right?
		But what's causing it to be there?
		That's the question that these researchers...
		Should have been asking all along.
		And some have, right?
		Like, there have been other, like, my mentor, as I mentioned, you know, at Cornell, who I've been lucky enough to work with over the years on certain projects, you know, knew that there was another way.
		It's this glucose-hypometabolism, right?
		It's like, but there's no money in that.
		There's no money in saying, like, keep yourself as insulin-sensitive as possible.
		You know, reduce your exposure to environmental pollutants.
		Don't hit your head too hard.
		All these different modifiable risk factors.
		It's not druggable the way that this amyloid beta protein is druggable.
		And so I think the worst thing about it is that anybody who would advance an alternate viewpoint over the past couple of decades would be ridiculed and silenced by the, quote, amyloid mafia.
		And this happened to me.
		When I first started doing my documentary, Little Empty Boxes, which, when I first started doing it, it had a different name.
		It was called Breadhead.
		And I could talk about why I named it that, but that was always sort of a working title for the project.
		But somebody at one of these foundations, right, like...
		There's all these big Alzheimer's foundations.
		I'm lucky to be working on this project with one who really believes in me and the project, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.
		But there are these other non-profits that really what they are is just like a front for perpetuating the status quo and keeping the funding pipeline open for drug discovery.
		And so when I first got started working on my film, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it.
		And one of these quote-unquote non-profits, right?
		Deeply invested in the amyloid hypothesis came out and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal disparaging me and my project and any other alternate sort of viewpoint and talking glowingly about that aducanumab drug, which at the time had yet to be approved, right?
		And it was so painful to me at the time because I was working on this project out of the love and passion that I had for my mom and my desire to get the science out, to catalyze interest in this science.
		It takes 17 years on average for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice.
		So I was like, that's time we don't have to lose when the brains of our loved ones are at stake.
		And so, yeah, I was directly in the crosshairs at the time for this amyloid mafia.
		I was directly affected by it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because this medication is profitable.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because the medication is profitable and that the whole avenue was thought to, you know, if you could find a drug that would reduce amyloid burden in the brain, I mean, that's going to make shareholders really happy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And this drug, is it still being prescribed?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's approved.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's approved.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so there's no real way of telling how many people have died from this drug because most of the people that are taking this drug are already experiencing this neurodegenerative disease and you could easily chalk it off to that being the cause of death.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to, like, you know, people's experiences on it currently, but I do know that the trials were, you know, I mean, if I had a loved one, based on what I know about this drug and those trials, my loved one currently would not be on that drug.
		They would be perhaps experimenting with, you know, and this is a very difficult sort of road to go down.
		I guess it's easier to say if I had dementia, right?
		Yeah.
		If I myself had dementia, I would be experimenting with a ketogenic diet on myself and other ketogenic therapies.
		Because ketogenic diets, what they do...
		So as I mentioned, in the Alzheimer's brain, the ability to generate energy from glucose is reduced by about 50%, 45-50%.
		Its ability to generate energy from ketone bodies is unperturbed.
		So the idea is that a ketogenic diet can essentially keep the lights on in the Alzheimer's brain.
		It's not a cure.
		But there has been research On patients with Alzheimer's disease, mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, that ketogenic diet intervention can actually improve functional capacity in those patients, which is everything, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So that's what I would do for myself.
		For other people, you know, when my mom was starting to show these symptoms, I attempted to put her on some kind of like ketogenic style diet.
		But actually, what's very interesting is that people that develop Alzheimer's disease, they start to develop a sweet tooth.
		And it's thought that that's sort of like the brain crying out for sugar, essentially, because it's just struggling to generate energy.
		And dietary change is difficult for anybody, let alone somebody with dementia.
		So I can only speak for myself.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So even though this study has been shown to be fraudulent, and even though that medication has shown to have some pretty severe side effects, and even though the amyloid plaque hypothesis has kind of been disproven now as being the cause of it, Why are they still prescribing that drug?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a, because it takes 17 years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but once they have access to the fact that that study was flawed, not just flawed, but fraudulent, I mean, it's pretty significant.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		The impact that's had— They should pull it off the market.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, think about the sheer numbers of people that have dementia, Alzheimer's, and these significant, horrific problems, and they're basing the treatment of it on fraud.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the fact that they still do it without having this immediate cease, what could be, other than generating more revenue, what else could possibly be the reason for continuing to prescribe that drug other than ignorance?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I think that it's not that this paper came out and suddenly the amyloid hypothesis has been debunked or whatever.
		You know, like, there is still a ton of money invested in this hypothesis, and there are still a lot of researchers who think whether or not this drug is the, you know, this is like version one.
		So there are still many researchers who think that this is, like, still the target, still the appropriate target.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But once they realized that the study was fraudulent, and that when injected into these mice and it causes significant degeneration, that this is not really accurate, that this is all fake, So then they don't have a mechanism.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So why are they still prescribing a disease to combat the mechanism that's proven to be fraudulent?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it's just because that's where all this...
		What is the term?
		It's like a sunk cost fallacy.
		I think people in many ways are just so...
		Whether it's like academia or pharma, we're just so deeply invested in this hypothesis.
		And it hasn't been debunked.
		And this fraudulent paper...
		Didn't test aducanumab, the drug.
		So, you know, I think that...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the fraudulent paper is the reason why that drug was approved.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is fucking wild.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you're a person right now who's listening to this and they're dealing with, you know, my friend Jessie Mae, her dad had Alzheimer's.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I know her.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it was so hard for her.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it was so terrible to watch her suffer while her father, who she loved dearly, was just deteriorating.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's super hard.
		And you get drugs that, you know, one of them, Namenda, it's like an NMDA receptor modulator.
		And then you get another one, Donapezil, which works to boost, you know, acetylcholine.
		They're biochemical band-aids.
		They do nothing to address the underlying pathology.
		And yeah, I mean, it was literally until, I believe 2020 was the year 2017, I think, was the first time that the Lancet Neurology acknowledged that a significant proportion of dementia cases were attributable to modifiable risk factors.
		So that's sort of their way of saying that, look, there's a significant proportion of these cases that are potentially preventable, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Obesity, type 2 diabetes.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, air pollution, hearing impairment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Air pollution.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Air pollution.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		As of 2020, that has now been acknowledged to be a major contributor.
		Exposure to fine particulate matter like PM2.5 has been shown to pierce the blood-brain barrier.
		Amyloid...
		I mean, the thing about amyloid is that it's like...
		Our brains produce it.
		It's not necessarily bad.
		The same way that cholesterol...
		When you hear the term cholesterol...
		You know, we think of it as this bad, pathologic thing that we want to get out of our bodies, right?
		But cholesterol is vital to life, right?
		Like, we need it.
		Same with amyloid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It helps you formulate hormones.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Hormones, yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, every cell membrane requires cholesterol to stay supple and fluid, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is, vegans don't want to hear that ever.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		They don't want to hear that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They panic.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I butt heads with them all the time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's an ideology, you know, unfortunately.
		It's an ideology based on a really good premise.
		The premise is you want to do less harm.
		You want to be a more ethical, moral, kinder person.
		And I respect their motivation.
		The problem is in practice.
		Both in monocrop agriculture, which is horrific for the environment, and then also in the effects on the human body.
		It's very difficult to do correctly.
		And we've had conversations before, and unfortunately, there's a lot of documentaries and a lot of people that are propagandizing this ideology.
		They're doing it like it's a religion, and that's how they treat it.
		They ignore any evidence to the contrary.
		They won't even look at eggs, which are really kind of – I mean, if you have chickens or if you know someone has chickens or if you can get eggs from a place that has free-range chickens, it's like zero ethical dilemma.
		They lay eggs every day.
		They're not going to be chickens.
		It's just free protein.
		If you let these chickens roam around and eat grass and bugs and do the stuff they're supposed to do, you have literally one of the most healthy sources of food that's available to the human body.
		And it's ethically free.
		Like if you're a person that's a vegan and you're doing it for moral purposes, but you recognize the fact that you're not getting the appropriate amount of nutrition, get chickens.
		If you have a backyard, get some chickens.
		They lay an egg almost every day.
		And they're better for you than any egg that you're going to buy in a store from grain-fed chickens.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you don't have to worry about them being treated horrifically.
		They just, I mean, I used to have chickens before the fucking coyotes got them all.
		But that was back when I lived in California.
		It was a long story.
		But it wasn't just the coyotes got them all.
		It was like the fire burnt the chicken coop down.
		We almost lost the house.
		The fire burnt the chicken coop down.
		Then we had a smaller chicken coop.
		And then that one wasn't as robust.
		I had like a real serious one built by a carpenter.
		And then we bought a store bought one because we had to get a chicken coop quickly.
		And the coyotes figured out a way to get in it.
		And it was a fucking bloodbath.
unidentified		It was horrible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nine chickens destroyed overnight.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god, wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was fucking horrific.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But those little fucks, they had been targeting my chickens for quite a while.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good eating.
		But the eggs themselves are so good for you.
		And again, they're not going to become chickens.
		These are non-fertilized eggs and people need to understand that.
		I didn't know that until I was 40, by the way.
		That's how fucking dumb I am.
		I thought that, like, if you just, like, let the egg go, it would become a chicken.
		And then someone goes, no, they don't even need a rooster to lay that egg.
		I was like, oh, yeah.
		Oh, yeah.
		How could it?
		Yeah, duh.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was before I had chickens.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You're making me want to get chickens.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, it's a great way to have protein, and it's really a great relationship.
		I would feed them worms.
		I would buy these mealworms that come dried, and I would shake the box of mealworms, and the chickens would just run towards me full clip.
		I would dump them out on the ground.
		They would go crazy and eat them all.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's so awesome.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you've never seen savagery like a chicken eating a mouse, though.
		They would occasionally catch a mouse.
		Holy shit!
		You think cats are vicious?
		Cats have nothing on chickens.
		Have you ever seen a chicken kill a mouse?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I've never thought of chickens as predators.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh boy, I'm gonna show you something.
		Jamie, pull up a video of a chicken killing a mouse.
		There's a bunch of great videos online, but I found this out by accident.
		And this is how I found out.
		We had a house when I lived in California that had a glass wall.
		And it used to be like a fence.
		And then my wife was like, wouldn't it be better if it was like a glass wall and you could see the view?
		I was like, yeah, that'd be better.
		So we put this glass wall in it.
		And unfortunately, the hawks couldn't recognize that it was a glass wall.
		So they would fucking dive bomb and bang!
unidentified		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was kind of like karmic justice for whatever mouse they were trying to kill.
		So they would dive bomb and slam into this glass fence and get knocked out or die.
		And a couple of them died in my yard and we were like, fuck.
		So one of them died before you do this.
		So one of them died and then one of them survived.
		And my family, I was out of town for the weekend doing stand-up, and my family went to a local pet store and got what are called pinkies.
		And pinkies are these little infant mice that they serve to snakes and reptiles and things like that.
		So they got a few of them and fed them to this hawk.
		You know, they looked online, what do the hawks eat?
		And so the hawk ate all these pinkies.
		And we had to wait until Monday to get the hawk to this wildlife rescue center that takes care and rehabilitates hawks.
		So one pinky was still alive.
		And my kids were like, we're going to raise it.
		I go, listen, you just fed them to this fucking horrible raptor.
		And now all of a sudden, this one is going to be your friend and how traumatized it's going to be.
		But all those siblings got murdered by this fucking giant dinosaur.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Damn.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I said, it's not going to survive.
		It hasn't been weaned by its mother.
		You know, we can't.
		It's not going to live.
		And it hasn't eaten in days.
		I'm like, this thing, it's not going to live.
		I go, I think I'm going to feed it to the chickens.
		They're like, Don't.
		Don't feed the chickens.
		Anyway, long story short.
		I go out into the chicken coop and I put that pinky down and they dive on that thing like nothing I've ever seen in my life.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One chicken grabs it.
		The other chicken is attacking that chicken, trying to pull it out of their mouth.
		Like they instinctively recognize that that's a food source.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So watch this.
		So this is what happens when chickens see a mouse.
		Like immediately.
		Look, they try to steal it from each other.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Savages.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
		I mean, it's like their favorite food.
		Mice are their favorite food.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Holy cow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you have mice and chickens, the chickens will fuck those mice up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Chickens are, they're creepy little domestic dinosaurs.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You're right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, yeah, when you say that, I'm like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's what they are.
		Look, they're still trying to steal from her.
		And there's another one where a cat is playing with a mouse, and the chicken's like, let me show you how it's done, bitch.
		And the chicken comes running over and steals the mouse from the cat.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Damn.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Did you see, there's this amazing dinosaur miniseries on Apple TV? No.
		It's so good.
		And they actually portray raptors as dinosaurs with feathers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they think that now.
		There's a museum in Montana, in Bozeman, and they show you two options of this raptor.
		They show you one option, like the Jurassic Park version, and then they show you on the other side of this raptor, they have it completely covered in beautiful colored feathers, just like a chicken.
		Which is most likely the case.
		They think that dinosaurs had feathers.
		Which makes sense.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the things we see now, I mean, if you look at an eagle, that's a goddamn dinosaur.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's it right there.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is really cool looking.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's most likely...
		So Jurassic Park and all those films, they're probably incorrect.
		This is probably what it looked like.
		Because they've actually found fossilized imprints of feathers with the fossils of dinosaurs.
		They've had these clear indications that feathers existed on these creatures.
unidentified		Hmm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow, fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if anybody wants...
		Ethical, like, guilt-free, karma-free protein that's as good as your body's ever going to get.
		Eggs.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		From the chicken that you raise.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
		I consider eggs to be a cognitive multivitamin, actually, because if you consider the fact that when an embryo is developing, the central nervous system, and the nervous system in general, is the first structure to coalesce, right?
		So an egg yolk literally has everything in it that nature has deemed important to grow a brain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is so frustrating when people want to eat egg white omelets.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When I go to a store or a restaurant and I see egg white omelet, I'm like, where's the fucking whole egg?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why are you serving egg whites?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's insane.
		It's, I mean, the yolk, it's like, again, a cognitive multivitamin.
		And it's no surprise that egg yolk, people are, you know, like, vegans are, they just see red, right, whenever you say cholesterol, whenever they see that, like, there's cholesterol in a food.
		But it should be no surprise that an egg yolk is rich in cholesterol because the brain is rich in cholesterol.
		Right?
		Like, despite accounting for only 2% of your body's mass, 25% of the cholesterol in your body is located in your brain.
		That doesn't mean that you don't need to eat cholesterol to support brain health.
		Your brain produces all the cholesterol it needs.
		It's called de novo cholesterol synthesis.
		But an egg yolk has a little bit of vitamin B12. It's got choline.
		Choline is one of these crucially important micronutrients.
		Actually, the adequate intake for choline is probably less than what it should be when you account for our brain's needs.
		But 90% of adults don't consume adequate choline.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And acetylcholine is a primary ingredient of many nootropics, which have been shown to improve brain function.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a super important neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory.
		And in fact, one of the drugs that's prescribed for Alzheimer's disease modulates that cholinergic sort of pathway.
		But yeah, choline is crucially important.
		It's found in egg yolks.
		I think egg yolks maybe is second place to like beef liver, which is the top source for dietary choline.
		But again, something that we under-consume.
		And studies show that people who consume more choline have reduced risk for dementia.
		And choline is like one of these foods, one of these nutrients could almost be considered a surrogate marker for animal protein intake because you find it in both plants and animals, but it's much more concentrated in animal protein.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of which, what do you think about these desiccated supplements of heart and liver and testicles and all these things that you see being sold now?
		I have a friend of mine who is in the medical field and he's very concerned about this because he's like, I don't know.
		Whether or not these things could contain prions?
		How are they taking these?
		Are you eating beef liver?
		How is this processed?
		What is the source?
		How do you know what's in these things?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a good question.
		I mean, I think our ancestors probably consumed brain early on as a good source of DHA fat, which is one of the most important structural building blocks of the brain, right?
		Docosahexaenoic acid, DHA fat, and the brain is rich in that.
		But yeah, I mean, I think it's a valid concern, although I haven't, to be honest, I haven't looked into it too deeply.
		I do think that liver is a great food.
		It's one of the most nutrient-dense foods there is.
		And I do think that there is a little bit of truth, at least in the case of liver, where like supports like.
		Like we know that beef liver is a top source of choline, right?
		And we know that choline directly supports liver health.
		Because it helps to export fat.
		So choline is actually a good treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
		Because it helps to get fat out of the liver.
		So in that way, I think eating liver can support liver health.
		And the liver is like a crucially, I mean, it's a vital organ obviously, but it plays hundreds of roles in the body.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It tastes good too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just have to eat, cook it right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, a lot of people don't like the texture.
		They feel weird about eating it.
		But once you realize the nutritional value of liver, you know, liver and onions is delicious.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, super tasty.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think, like, cooking it kind of rare, getting a nice sear on the outside.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I like cooking it in ghee.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I have, uh...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I usually use beef tallow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, beef tallow.
		That's a good option.
		I actually, um...
		My thoughts on dairy have evolved kind of recently.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And, um...
		Yeah, you know, I get, like, on social media especially, like on Instagram, I get a lot of shit from pretty much everybody.
		Like, the vegans don't like me, right, because I promote animal products.
		The carnivores don't like me because I'm a big believer in the value of dietary fiber and plant, you know, phytochemicals and the like.
		The evidence-based, like, credentialist community doesn't like me because I'm not a, you know, I don't have any credentials after my name.
		But yeah, and then the paleo community, because I recently have sort of come out sort of not being a huge fan of like butter and ghee.
		You know, I'm a huge fan of dairy and dairy fat in general, which dairy fat, so all natural fat-containing foods contain some proportion of saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat, right?
		So like any natural fat-containing food is going to contain some saturated fat.
		So demonizing any type of fat, I think, doesn't make any sense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Including avocados.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, avocados are great.
		Avocados are mostly monounsaturated fat.
		I think people should steer clear from, as best they can, the grain and seed oils, like the canola, corn, soybean.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I definitely wanted to talk to you about that because...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Controversial.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've been trying to have this conversation with my family because they'll buy salad dressing and say it's healthy.
		I'm like, do you ever read what's in this shit?
		I'm like, unless it has olive oil in it, It's probably not good for you.
		Like, these shitty seed oils that they put in these salad dressings.
		I eat salad with the salad dressing and I feel like shit.
		I feel like bloated.
		I feel gross.
		Whereas I eat salad and I just put balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil on it.
		And I feel great.
		It feels like, okay, my body likes this.
		And isn't, like, just consuming, like, vegetables by themselves is not as effective as consuming them with some fat.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're absolutely right.
		So, I mean, a lot of the compounds that we want in veggies are fat-soluble.
		So, I talk a lot about the value of carotenoids.
		So, carotenoids are like plant pigments.
		They're responsible generally in the produce section.
		You'll see yellow produce and orange produce rich in these compounds.
		And two in particular, plant-based carotenoids I've become a big fan of called lutein and zeaxanthin.
		And they've shown that people, higher consumers of lutein and zeaxanthin, they seem to be protected against cognitive decline.
unidentified		Vision loss.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Vision loss, certainly, yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		If you look at any eye supplement, they usually will have those two in them because they can help prevent age-related macular degeneration.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Now, what are the criticisms against seed oils specifically?
		Like, I've seen you speak about grapeseed oil, which is a really fascinating one, because it really wasn't something that was in the human diet until, as you were saying, that winemakers realized, hey, we're leaving money on the table with all this grapeseed.
		Turn this shit into oil.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So again, some industrious entrepreneur saw that as a byproduct of winemaking, you're losing out on all these grape seeds, right?
		And grape seeds are rich in oil, like all seeds are, right?
		So if you can extract the oil...
		And get rid of the noxious, like, aromas and flavors, then you've got something that you can sell, right?
		For, I think it's like a $500 or $600 million a year business, if not more, these days.
		So grapeseed oil, like any of these grain and seed oils, like corn oil, canola oil, which comes from the rapeseed plant, soybean oil, they're referred to sometimes within the food industry as RBD oils, refined, bleached, and deodorized.
unidentified		Ugh.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Because they have these harsh, bitter flavors, right?
		Some of them, like the rapeseed, contain toxins like urussic acid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They might want to change the name of that seed.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't it seem like a rude way, you know, you want to murder fruit?
		No.
		You know what I'm saying?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, why is it rapeseed?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so what's the negative effect of things like...
		I would imagine that in the human diet, consuming an exorbitant amount of this kind of grapeseed oil...
		It's really not even possible.
		Like, how many grapes would you have to eat to get with the seeds to get the kind of the amount that you would get from a tablespoon of, like, grapeseed oil?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, humans, we don't even, like, generally, we're averse to seeds for a reason.
		I mean, if you've ever tried to chew into a grapeseed, it's bitter, right?
		You spit it out.
		So that's why these oils didn't exist in the human food supply before 100 years ago.
		We hadn't had the chemistry labs, the erector sets required to extract these oils and then run them through all these myriad processes to make them to some degree palatable and able to be utilized by the food industry.
		They used to be used as engine lubricants and things like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's industrialized seed oils have always been used as lubricants for engines.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So when did they start using them?
		What is this, Jamie?
		What'd you pull up there?
		Okay.
		Produced 237 milliliters, eight ounce fluid bottle of grapeseed oil.
		One ton of grapes is required.
		So 2,000 pounds of grapes to get eight ounces of grapeseed oil.
		The finished oil is light yellowish green in color.
		Holy shit.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well that, there you go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you're cooking in grape seed oil, you're essentially, it's a crime against nature.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's just, yeah, it's the most unnatural thing.
		And, you know, people listening to this might say, oh, you know, appeal to nature fallacy.
		What's natural isn't always, like, arsenic is natural.
		But I think that that, like, a platitude like that isn't very helpful, right, in the modern world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what are the negative effects of things like industrialized seed oils?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So, I mean, for one, they all undergo that step called the deodorization step, which is the step that removes the noxious odors and aromas from these oils, makes them palatable.
		It's basically the food industry's equivalent of the Witness Protection Program, right?
		Because it takes an oil and it makes it so bland and free of any kind of character, right, that it can be used to roast nuts in.
		It can be used to make granola bars.
		It can be used to saute food in a restaurant.
		It could be used to fry food in, for example.
		And the problem is, one of the problems with these seed oils is that that deodorization step creates a small but significant amount of trans fats.
		And we know that there's no safe level of trans fat, artificially man-made trans fat consumption.
		Their most recognizable form was in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which were outlawed, right?
		Five, six years ago, something like that.
		But you can still find man-made trans fats on the market in the form of these grain and seed oils.
		Now, the dose likely makes the poison, as it does with most things.
		But your average American today is over-consuming these oils.
		Well, I mean, they didn't exist, again, in the human food supply prior to a century ago.
		And their use has increased anywhere between 250 and 1,000%.
		1,000% for soybean oil in particular, which is the most commonly used grain and seed oil.
		And so we're over-consuming these fats.
		They harbor these trans fats.
		When we cook with them in particular, when we expose them to high heat, especially for prolonged periods of time, they generate poisons called aldehydes.
		And some of these aldehydes are really toxic.
		I mean, they're neurotoxic, they're mutagenic, meaning they're cancer-causing.
		You know, one such aldehyde is acrolein.
		Acrylene is found in cigarette smoke.
		It's found in all kinds of industrial pollutants.
		And we can see it in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How is it produced in cigarettes?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sorry to interrupt, but how does cigarette smoke produce alkaline?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not 100% sure as to how it's produced in cigarette smoke, but it is a byproduct of the burning of garbage, and it's created in myriad industrial processes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it has something to do with the heat?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Probably the heat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And whatever, the plant compound?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Heat and oxygen.
		Yeah, the coalescing of heat, oxygen...
		Light.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what about if it's not being heated up?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, what about seed oils as they exist in salad dressings and the like?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think one of the big fears, another big fear with regard to these oils is that they might not be acutely inflammatory.
		So I think a lot of people, and this is what tends to get pushback among the evidence-based crowd on social media, you'll hear claims that these oils are inflammatory.
		And I think this is more an issue of semantics.
		They're not acutely inflammatory, but they may be chronically inflammatory because they provide the precursors to our body's inflammation pathways, particularly the omega-6 fats.
		Omega-3 fats are, generally speaking, anti-inflammatory, right?
		They're able to convert to compounds called resolvins, which quite literally resolve the inflammatory cascade.
		But omega-6 fats provide the backbone to these pro-inflammatory signaling molecules in the body, which are responsible for heat, pain, redness, swelling, things like that.
		And inflammation underlie, you know, it's a process that is not bad, but when it's chronic and low grade, it's associated with, you know, all of these chronic conditions that we're talking about.
		Certainly Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, but also cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and the like.
		Now, are they going to actually stimulate an inflammatory response?
		You know, I don't think so, unless maybe the oil is highly damaged, but if it's, we'll just say, like, it's a fresh oil, which none of these oils are fresh, because they've all undergone...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's sitting on the shelf forever, too.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, in plastic, right?
		Yeah, right.
		Which is like, I mean, if you look at extra virgin olive oil, you'll seldom find a good extra virgin olive oil in plastic, because producers know what they've got.
		This is like liquid gold, right?
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But these grain and seed oils, you know, they're sitting on the shelf in plastic.
		They're sitting, you know, with extra virgin olive oil, for example, one of the tips that I offer people when buying extra virgin olive oil, which I think is medicine in many ways to the brain, is you want to buy it in small bottles, right?
		Small glass, opaque bottles, because extra virgin olive oil, unlike wine, only degrades over time.
		So there's no, like, appreciation that occurs with time.
		The same thing is true for these grain and seed oils, but they sell them in these big tubs, right?
		We leave them in our warm kitchen environments.
		And these oils are very prone to a process called oxidation, which is like essentially a damaged oil, right?
		Like you wouldn't see a piece of rotting food on the counter and intuitively think to yourself, that looks good, right?
		You can't necessarily see it happening in these oils.
		But nonetheless, we're told over and over again to integrate them into our diets and our lifestyle.
		So they're easily oxidized.
		They provide the raw materials in abundance to our body's inflammation pathways, right?
		And we likely consume them in a ratio that was maybe around 4 to 1, omega-6 to omega-3s for most of our evolution.
		And today we're consuming them in a way higher ratio, 25 to 40 to 1, omega-6s to omega-3s.
		So I just don't think that this is like – I like to take the precautionary principle approach, right?
		These oils, again, they didn't exist in the human food supply, right?
		I don't have all the data to convince the most ardent evidence-based practitioner.
		I like to say that my approach is evidence-based, but not evidence-bound.
		I think that we need to be highly skeptical of foods, especially foods and supplements and products that haven't been around all that long.
		This is a mass sort of experiment being laid out on a vast stage.
		And I don't think that we have the we don't have good data to say what they are or aren't doing right to us necessarily.
		But I do think that because these oils are so easily oxidized and they're of particular relevance to the brain, right?
		I think that matters.
		We don't yet know what they're doing to our brains.
		Lipid peroxidation is a major feature in the Alzheimer's riddled brain, right?
		We know that as we consume more of these polyunsaturated fats, which again are what predominate these grain and seed oils, these highly easily oxidizable types of fatty acids, right?
		We know that in nature where you see a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fats, you see a higher proportion of vitamin E. Vitamin E literally exists in nature to protect PUFAs, to protect polyunsaturated fats.
		We know that your average American is under-consuming vitamin E. Like 10% of Americans consume adequate vitamin E. So as our intake of these polyunsaturated grain and seed oils increases, our need for vitamin C increases, we're not consuming adequate vitamin E. You mean vitamin E? Vitamin E, yeah.
		Yeah, you said C. Sorry, vitamin E. And so we're under-consuming vitamin E. That's going to have consequences, right?
		Because vitamin E, literally, its role in the body is to protect lipids, right, from oxidizing.
		And you can look to parts of the world, like in Israel.
		Are you familiar with the Israeli paradox?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So the Israeli paradox...
		Israelis do everything right in accordance with what the nutritional and the medical orthodoxy would say to do about nutrition, right?
		They consume more of these omega-6 dominant grain and seed oils than anyone on the planet.
		You think that we consume a lot of grain and seed oils here in the United States?
		They consume 10% more.
		Why is that?
		You know, I don't know.
		It could just be that they're more health conscious.
		So, like, healthy user bias infuses all of these, which we could talk about.
		But, like, this is a big confounding aspect of nutritional epidemiology.
		But in Israel, they consume about 10% more of these types of oils than we do here in the U.S. And their health is horrible.
		They have the same amount of heart disease.
		They have skyrocketing rates of cancer, right?
		Type 2 diabetes and the like.
		But nonetheless, you look at their diets and they're the picture of, like, they would be, like, the prize client of any, you know, of these, like, more orthodox dietitians.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, when, if someone does have some sort of salad dressing, should that salad dressing always be stored in the cold?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so extra virgin olive oil is...
		I like to say that it's...
		Extra virgin olive oil is like the primary oil that I use.
		I generally, you know, I use avocado oil when I'm cooking at very high temperatures, but for the most part, extra virgin olive oil is an oil where you can look at the entirety of the hierarchy of evidence, and we see that it's beneficial.
		It's also the oil used in the Mediterranean dietary pattern, which is to suggest that we use any other oil is not an evidence-based recommendation when the Mediterranean dietary pattern is the dietary pattern that the medical and nutritional orthodoxy is seemingly in love with for every other reason, right?
		So they exclusively will use extra virgin olive oil.
		And we know that extra virgin olive oil, it's very heat stable.
		So it's about 15% saturated fat.
		The rest is monounsaturated fat.
		You get a tiny proportion of polyunsaturated fat.
		But the fats in extra virgin olive oil, they're already chemically stable.
		And the small amount of PUFAs in extra virgin olive oil Are protected by the vast array of antioxidants that extra virgin olive oil contains.
		Extra virgin olive oil actually has a compound in it called oleocanthal, which is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen.
unidentified		Whoa.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
		That chronic use of that drug is associated with cardiovascular events and the like.
		You get all the benefit of like regularly taking an anti-inflammatory drug if you just routinely use extra virgin olive oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One of my wife's friends told her that olive oil is bad for your vision.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does that make any sense?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't make any sense to me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Zero.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was like, what?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Where'd you hear that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's like, that's just what she told me.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm like, okay.
		I'll find out.
		I'll talk to Matt today.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's pretty good.
		I mean, it's like from a cardiovascular standpoint, it's a great source of monounsaturated fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How could it be possibly bad for your vision?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any pathway that makes any sense to you?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think maybe she misread something that was saying that the grain and seed oils are bad for your vision.
		I mean, they're, you know, highly oxidizable, and we know that your eyes are neural tissue, essentially.
		So what's not good for the brain is going to be not good for the eyes and vice versa.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So as far as oils that should be put on, say, like salad dressing, like what oils do you feel like are acceptable?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Extra virgin olive oil is primary.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think avocado oil is good, but you're missing out on the opportunity to get some of those phytochemicals in olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, particularly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is the difference between extra virgin and other olive oils?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So extra virgin olive oil is just like, you crush olives.
		That's how you get extra virgin olive oil, and then you protect that oil.
		The other types are, well, there's filtered and unfiltered extra virgin olive oil, but you generally want to buy filtered.
		I know some people might see unfiltered and think that that's the one to buy because it's more pure, but actually what you end up getting with unfiltered oil Is little olive microparticles and water, which can accelerate the degradation process of the oil.
		So you want it to be filtered.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		And should you store that in the cold?
		Or can it be stored in a closet or a pantry?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think just in a...
		You don't want to keep it away from the stove, but in general you want to keep it in a...
		It doesn't have to be refrigerated.
		But you do want to make sure that you're buying it in glass, darkly colored bottle.
		And the best extra virgin olive oils are going to have a harvest date on the bottle.
		Because again, extra virgin olive oil, it's a fresh fruit juice, right?
		So it only gets worse over time.
		So you want to buy the freshest extra virgin olive oil that you can find.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how long should you keep it for?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You want to consume it as quickly as you can.
		So I like to buy...
		If you're a single person like me, you want to just buy as small of a bottle as you can find, and then use that, and then just keep buying those small bottles.
		If you're a big family and you're using it all the time, a bigger liter bottle, I think, will suffice.
		But we can look to randomized control trials like the PREDIMED study, which is one of these seminal nutrition studies, because it's a huge population, multi-center trial.
		People used a liter of extra virgin olive oil a week in their families.
		They had profoundly improved cardiovascular health, metabolic health, brain health, and even like I believe anthropometric features like their waste.
		Wow.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you're consuming salad dressing, it should just be virgin olive oil.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's my take.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Extra virgin olive oil.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's my hot take.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is there anything negative about balsamic vinaigrette?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No, balsamic vinaigrette I think is great.
		First of all, balsamic vinegar, vinegar in general, acetic acid is the primary ingredient that you'll see across all vinegar variants.
		And it can help to reduce...
		It can induce satiety.
		So actually vinegar is a good...
		One of these foods that's oddly satiating.
		It can reduce postprandial glycemia.
		So like the blood sugar spike after a meal.
		So vinegar is a great, great food.
		The balsamic vinegar does have a little bit of sugar in it, but I don't mind.
		I'm not...
		I think that the benefits outweigh the risks.
		And also, balsamic vinegar has a compound in it.
		I forget what the acronym stands for, but the acronym is DMB, so people can easily find it.
		It's one of these long, complex chemical designations.
		But that's been shown to actually support gut health, like support the microbiome, particularly for people who consume a lot of red meat, which is awesome, which I do.
		I'm a big advocate for the consumption of grass-fed beef and things like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So as far as salad goes, just extra virgin olive oil, either balsamic vinaigrette or regular vinegar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a benefit to having regular vinegar over balsamic vinaigrette?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think only if you're really counting calories, which I don't endorse.
		I think balsamic vinegar is great.
		You also get a little bit of resveratrol in balsamic vinegar.
		I think balsamic vinegar is great.
		I happen to love it.
		And also, people that eat a salad every day, so this is a really cool research from Rush University, found that people who eat a big bowl of dark leafy greens every day have brains that perform up to 11 years younger.
		Wow.
		Yeah.
		So this could be like healthy user bias.
		Like, again, nutrition, even the recommendations that I make, like, you know, a lot of healthy user bias confounds many of these kinds of studies in the world of nutrition because we just don't have many long-term randomized, you know, large population, multicenter randomized control trials, right?
unidentified		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But the research shows that regular consumers of dark leafy greens, so I like to say like a salad a day, that's what this research found, that they have more youthful brains by up to 11 years.
		And when you actually look at what dark leafy greens have in them, first of all, they're one of the most nutrient-dense foods that we have.
		I mean, the most nutrient-dense foods that we have access to are going to be animal products, right?
		But dark leafy greens are up there because they're so calorie sparse, and they are a good source of folate and vitamin C. And we also know that they're one of the best ways to get those carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which is not just associated with better cognitive aging and lower risk for cognitive decline.
		But in young and healthy college students, they've actually shown that when you give...
		People who are already thought to be at their peak of cognitive prowess, supplemental lutein and zeaxanthin, that you see an improvement by about 25% in visual processing speed.
unidentified		Wow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, as a University of Georgia study.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		25%, that's incredible.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, is there any concern about oxalates?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think only if you know that you're sensitive to them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How would one find out?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think if you have like, you know, kidney stones like in your family, things like that, like if you are, generally you would know, you know, I think there are genes that play a role in this or if, you know, somebody in your family or if you yourself have had them before, you know, calcium oxalate is what you want to be careful with.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But I don't think that like eating a salad a day is going to put you at risk.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any benefit of cooking leafy greens versus eating them raw or vice versa?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Certainly, fig greens can definitely be made more digestible when you cook them.
		But, you know, there's always like a give or take when you cook or store vegetables.
		Some micronutrients become more bioavailable, some become less.
		So, I tend to recommend, you know, sort of a mix, like variety.
		You know, some cooked, some raw.
		But in general, with the salad recommendation, you know, with dark leafy greens like arugula, kale, spinach, things like that, I don't think that...
		Spinach is probably the highest with regard to oxalates.
		So, you know, if you're sensitive to oxalates, you know, you might want to cut down on your raw spinach consumption.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I used to drink kale shakes all the time and mix it with coconut butter and a bunch of other stuff in there and fruit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But then I got concerned about oxalates.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I just don't think...
		I think if all you're doing is eating kale day in and day out, like there's a famous case report published in the medical literature of a woman who heard that bok choy could help prevent type 2 diabetes.
		And so she was eating like two kilograms a day of raw bok choy.
		She grew a goiter on her neck.
		But I think most people are not going to, you know, I think the benefits outweigh the risk.
		There are benefits and risks associated with eating anything.
		So I think each person has to look at each food.
		And also, I don't believe that there's a one-size-fits-all diet.
		Like, I think that some people, like, it makes sense to me why some people would do well on carnivore diets, right?
		To me, it's about kind of identifying what foods work best for you, right?
		Right.
		And even things like, you know, dietary fiber.
		A lot of people say that they have difficulty digesting dietary fiber, but it's not necessarily a problem with the fiber.
		You likely haven't cultivated a microbiome to contend with whatever, you know, quality or quantity of fibers that you're consuming.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So is that if, like, you make a shift in your diet and then your microbiome does not have enough time to keep up with or adapt to that shift?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
		So people that from one day to the next will go and just dramatically increase their fiber intake, which I think sometimes you go on some of these vegan-run social media accounts, they make it seem like fiber is the only nutrient that you need, right?
		And so a lot of people will then dramatically increase their fiber intake, and that sets them up right off the bat for bloating, gas, all kinds of digestive problems.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One of the things that carnivore people talk about is plant defense chemicals, right?
		That's a big one.
		Plants don't want to be eaten the way they...
		I mean, that's Paul Saladino's claim, right?
		What do you think about all that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think Paul's very smart.
		We're friends.
		But I disagree with him on that.
		I think that...
		You know, a lot of these plant defense compounds have a beneficial hormetic effect in us.
		The issue is if you don't react to them well, is it a problem with the compounds themselves or is it a problem maybe you've got some degree of gut dysbiosis, right?
		You've lost some degree of gut resilience to be able to reap the full benefit from those types of compounds, right?
		I think that this, I mean, it makes a lot of sense today, right?
		We live in a time where there's widespread gut dysbiosis, gut problems, problems with the microbiome, right?
		Where, you know, many people are born via C-section, for example, which medically certainly indicated in some instances, right?
		They're not being breastfed, overuse of antibiotics.
		And we live in a society, especially over the past two years, that's become overly obsessed with, you know, what I call hygiene theater.
		And so, you know, I think that we've lost a bit of resilience in our gut.
		And so that can sometimes affect how we, you know, whether or not we're able to re-benefit from these compounds that are, to some degree, toxic, right?
		But in a robust system, that...
		Quote, unquote, toxicity fosters anti-fragility, right?
		If your system is already robust, then putting a little bit of stress into the system, that's going to foster anti-fragility, which is a concept that I love, right?
		Making yourself harder to kill, which I think is a great sort of way to frame, you know, your wellness, like, nutritional approach, right?
		But if you have, you know, an impaired microbiome, for example, or if your gut mucosa Has become degraded, which is sort of this like demilitarized zone between your gut lumen and your gut epithelium, right?
		If that's become degraded over time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what would cause that to become degraded?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, generally it's caused by not consuming enough fiber because we see that when you don't consume enough dietary fiber over time, the bacteria, certain species of bacteria in your gut will actually eat the mucin that comprises this gut mucosa that sort of acts, you know, it's like this sort of bacteria-free zone in your large intestine that separates the interior contents of your gut and your gut microbiome from your epithelium.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does that balance out if someone does try to incorporate a carnivore diet or maybe even a version of the ketogenic diet that eschews plant protein or plant matter?
		Does that eventually bounce back?
		I mean, is that like a temporary effect where this bacteria searches for fiber, doesn't find it anymore, and then attacks the mucus membrane?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, it's definitely complicated.
		My understanding is that sometimes the root cause of these problems can be bacterial overgrowth.
		And so when you do an elimination diet like a carnivore diet, for example, you starve out the bad bacteria, right?
		And so you can kind of create like a milieu that ultimately then becomes more friendly to the reintroduction of these kinds of fibers, at which point you can start to build up that resilience and that mucosa again.
		I think that the carnivore diet is a really great – can be a great short-term therapeutic diet.
		um But again, I think running around being afraid of these plant quote-unquote toxins.
		The evidence on the consumption of fruits...
		If fruits and vegetables were really trying to kill us, they're doing a terrible job.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think anyone's saying fruits are trying to kill us, other than there's arsenic and apple seeds and things like that, right?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Fair, fair, fair.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's really they're talking about plants.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But the research on them suggests that people who consume more tend to live longer.
		Now, I'm not, like, I definitely advocate for, like, both, you know, and I'm a big animal protein, you know, and I think that, like, people have different tolerances to different vegetables, right?
		I know somebody who, if he's in the same room as an allium, which is like garlic, leeks, shallots, onions, and things like that, You know, he's just like, he has to quarantine himself for a different reason, you know?
unidentified		Really?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So everybody's different.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The hormetic effect totally makes sense if you take into consideration other hormetic effects that we accept as being beneficial, like the sauna.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or like a cold plunge, things along those lines, where your body's reacting to this intruder or this invasion of excess heat or cold and producing this beneficial effect to the overall body.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I totally agree with that as well.
		I mean, I'm a huge fan of sauna, especially with regard to dementia prevention.
		If you use a sauna two to three times a week, you slash your risk of developing dementia by 22%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Four to seven times per week, 65%.
unidentified		Wow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		There's not a drug on the market that is going to slash your risk of developing dementia by 65%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what is the protocol?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, they do this research, which is actually really great that they do it in Finland.
		The University of Eastern Finland is where a lot of this good sauna data comes from.
		And they generally do it, yeah, I mean, on a daily basis.
		I think the key is to do it for as long as you can do it to get to that feeling of discomfort.
		You know, you want it to be a stress on the body, and then you leave and then you do it again.
		I think generally that seems to be the traditional protocol there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you say feeling discomfort, how deep into the discomfort?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		What I do is I'll put my fingers on the radial artery in my wrist and sometimes you can get a sense that your body is having a mild aerobic exercise session.
		There's only so much of that that you can take between the sweating and your heart rate is increased.
		You get this feeling of dysphoria that washes over you.
		There's a sauna that I go to sometimes in LA that gets up to 225 degrees.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you go to a Russian bathhouse?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They don't play around.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		They don't play around.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And I literally, sometimes I say to myself, wow, I feel like I'm dying.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And I'm probably in that moment actually dying.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's the whole key.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's the argument against this thing about a hermetic effect of leafy greens.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, the most favorable sauna duration and temperature associated with lower dementia risk were 5 to 14 minutes per session at a temperature of 80 to 99 degrees Celsius.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what is that in Fahrenheit?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fucking high.
		99 degrees Celsius is like 220 degrees, right?
		Higher temperatures over 100 degrees Celsius were in fact associated with an elevated risk for dementia.
		Okay, so if you go too hard...
		Yeah, I took my sauna temperature down a little bit.
		I was at 189 degrees for 25 minutes and I took it down to 189 for 25 minutes and I took it down to 185 for 20. Because I was just, I was so exhausted when I get out of there at 189. I was like, I think I'm fucking myself up.
		And when hanging out with Laird Hamilton, unfortunately, that's psycho.
		He gets it up to 220 degrees and he puts oven mitts on and he gets on an airdyne bike in the sauna.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he goes hard.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Got to hit different at that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I also think you have to take into consideration whether or not he does a cold plunge first.
		Because if you do a cold plunge first, 185 degrees is not just tolerable, it feels great.
		So I go from the Cold Plunge, which at home I have this Morosco Forge, which is 34 degrees, and here I have a blue cube at the studio, which is great.
		And it goes to 37 degrees, so it's just slightly warmer.
		It's freezing as fuck, but it's also circulating.
		So it circulates almost like a river.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That makes it even colder.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's death.
		You sit in that fucking thing.
		It sucks.
		But it's really easy to go from that into the sauna at 185 degrees.
		You go into the sauna at 185, it feels like it's nice.
		So what would be torturing you normally is really easy to tolerate for long periods of time.
		So generally I do a 20-minute session at 185 degrees and it's rough.
		Then I go into the cold plunge for three minutes and it's easy.
		The cold plunge is not easy, but it's easy to go back into the sauna.
		The cold plunge sucks no matter what.
		It's like slightly easier for the first few seconds if you come out of the sauna, but very quickly your body's freezing.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And so then I do three minutes in the cold plunge and then back into the sauna and 20 minutes goes by like nothing.
		I mean, I get to 25, 30 minutes and I still feel fine.
		It's just starting to suck a little bit and then I go into the cold plunge for an additional two minutes and I finish it off cold.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Yeah.
		I mean, the cold plunge is like a state change for me.
		I love it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But you acclimate, you know, over time, especially with Asano.
		He's been doing that, like, whatever, the assault bike.
		Is he doing that in the sauna?
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		The assault bike is like, I mean, that's torture.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's a psycho.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he's also in incredible health for, I mean, how old is Laird?
		I believe he's 56 or 57. He looks fantastic.
		He's surfing every day.
		You know, I mean, he's the pinnacle of health.
		And so, 58 years old.
		I was actually drinking his coffee in here.
		He has turmeric coffee.
		I mean, look at the guy.
		He's a fucking stud!
		And just really well-versed in the benefits of all these different anti-inflammatory compounds.
		Laird Superfood Coffee is what we have in the...
		Did you get one of those?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Is that what I'm drinking here or no?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's just Black Rifle.
		That's Black Coffee.
		We use Black Rifle Coffee in his machine, but his machine combines that with coconut oil and turmeric and all these different compounds, cacao.
		There's all these different things.
		I'll give you one when we leave.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Dude, I'm down.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's great.
		But...
		So Laird, his protocols, I'm not sure if he goes in the cold plunge first.
		If he goes in the cold plunge first, then it kind of makes sense that he can get in that sauna and ride that Airdyne machine at such a high temperature.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Nuts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because I was doing it for a while, but I actually burned my throat.
		My old studio, I was cranking it up to 205. And I was doing like 20 minutes.
		And when I'd get out of there, I mean, I would lie down on my jujitsu mats like I just got shot.
		I was so tired.
		And I was starting to like, my throat was burning.
		And I was like, Jesus Christ, I'm cooking myself like a brisket.
		Like, this is not smart.
		I need to take this down a notch.
		So over time, my experimentation has gotten me to this place of 185 degrees for 20 minutes.
		Seems to be just uncomfortable enough.
		And that's what I did today.
		So I do 185 and then three.
		And if I have to time, I do an additional 20 plus minutes in the sauna after that and then another cold plunge.
		But I always end on cold.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, there's probably an effect where just being in it longer and, like, you're able to be in it longer when it's at a lower temperature is beneficial.
		It's still pretty hot.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		185 is still pretty hot.
		It's, like, when I got up to, like, 190-ish, it's, like, it just was...
		It just felt like I was too tired afterwards.
		Like, this can't be good.
		Like, I'm too worn out.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I'd come in here and I'd be, like, struggling.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I feel that way too.
		Yeah, after repeated bouts of the Russian banya that I do in LA sometimes.
		And the cold plunge, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do they beat you with the leaves?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		What's it called?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Platza or something?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what it's called.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I've never had that done.
		It's a little too intense.
		But I love it.
		I'm obsessed with sauna.
		I think it's great.
		I think the real bang for your buck comes from the fact that it is an aerobic exercise mimetic, right?
		So it's the best workout that you can get while sitting still.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
		I think what it does for your blood pressure is amazing because we already talked about the fact that having normal blood pressure is key to keeping your brain healthy.
		And there was actually also a risk reduction from the same lab at University of Eastern Finland showing you that stroke risk is reduced.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Four times a week, 20 minutes a day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I think their protocol was like, I think they said 175 degrees.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's what they used.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And the thing about, like, Finland is the sauna capital of the world, which is why I love that the research has been done there.
		Because if you were to do that here...
		It would be a perfect illustration of healthy user bias, right?
unidentified		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Because people who have access to saunas here are probably also, well, they're going to the gym regularly, right?
		They're probably mindful of what they put in their bodies.
		There, in Finland, you've got on average one sauna per household.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So it's like taking a shower.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So you kind of like control automatically for all those different, you know, confounding, potentially confounding variables in Finland.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And for them, it's such a smart way to like manage the cold weather.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because it changes what cold is to you.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Have you been to Finland?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I've never been.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you should go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would love to.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		There's a place in Helsinki, I'm going to butcher its pronunciation, but it's called Loyli or something.
		And it's like the most beautiful saunas you've ever seen in your life, right on like this, it's like right on the water.
		So you get out of the sauna and then you go dip into whatever sea that is over there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sounds great.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's so great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I think it's one of the most important things that I do.
		And I do it right after cardio, too, so it maintains my high heart rate.
		So like today, I do a kettlebell workout and then I do the Airdyne bike.
		So I go from the Airdyne bike right into the sauna.
		And I'm already sweating and exhausted, and my heart's already pounding as I get in there, and it's 185 degrees.
		And my heart rate just stays compounding, stays pounding.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You're a beast.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm just trying not to die.
		I'm trying to maintain.
		I'm 55 now, so it's like the one thing that's shown to me to really have a benefit on the way I feel, other than exercise, my overall sense of well-being in my body is sauna and the cold plunge combination.
		It's really had a significant effect.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So great.
		One thing that I think that people...
		I've been talking about this a bit recently on social media that I think is actually pretty important that nobody...
		I haven't seen anybody else talking about this, but how detrimental frequent use of antiseptic mouthwash can be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Particularly post-workout.
		So I go to a gym and there's mouthwash in the cleanup area.
		And I look at all the people swishing with mouthwash after a workout.
		And I'm like, you're hurting your gains by doing that post-workout.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How so?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So, obviously, blood pressure, you know, we've hit on it a few times.
		But when we eat foods that are rich in compounds called nitrates, like beets, arugula.
		Arugula is the top source, calorie for calorie.
		Dark leafy greens in general are a great source of these compounds called nitrates.
		Sometimes you'll see supplements on the market that are like nitrate, beetroot powder to boost nitric oxide in the body.
		We rely on oral bacteria, our oral microbiome, to reduce nitrate from our produce to nitrite.
		Reducing means that these bacteria remove an oxygen molecule.
		And it's that nitrite that enters the nitric oxide pathway to boost nitric oxide, which has the overall effect of reducing blood pressure and increasing blood flow, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, which is why all these post-workout or pre-workout supplements have that in it.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But if you frequently swish with antiseptic mouthwash, so not all mouthwashes, but alcohol-based bactericidal mouthwash, you're nuking indiscriminately the bacteria in your mouth that are pivotal, critical in that pathway.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does that same effect happen from the consumption of alcohol, like consumption of whiskey or tequila or something like that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It definitely changes the microbiome.
		It probably has an effect.
		We know that alcohol is something that does have some degree of benefit, right?
		If it's like a stress-relieving tool for you, if you use it as a social lubricant.
		But in general, we know that ethanol is a neurotoxin and that alcohol inflames the gut.
		It drives the translocation of endotoxin from the gut into circulation.
		People who even moderately consume alcohol have accelerated shrinkage in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.
		So, you know, I think alcohol is one of these things where, like, you know, if you have a healthy relationship with it and you drink infrequently, I think it's fine.
		But, yeah, I don't know exactly, you know, if it's, like, I don't think that research has been done yet.
		Like, what a transient bit of alcohol.
		But we do know that this bacteria is on the tongue.
		So, presumably, if the alcohol is sliding down your tongue, right?
unidentified		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Then it's going to have an effect.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it has to.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And when you're talking about these mouthwashes post-workout, so is it specifically post-workout or is there a time ever where those mouthwashes are not dangerous?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you got there, Jamie?
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So, post-workout...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mouthwash could inhibit the benefit of exercise.
		Results show blood pressure-lowering effect of exercise-wise was diminished by more than 60% over the first hour of recovery.
		That's incredible.
		And absent two hours after exercise when antibacterial mouthwash was used.
		Holy shit!
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		40% of the U.S. population uses antiseptic mouthwash every day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about gum?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Gum?
		It depends.
		If it's not changing the oral microbiome, everything you eat is going to change the microbiome to some degree.
		But we don't want to nuke the good bacteria that we want for this nitric oxide pathway.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But when you have a gum that freshens your breath, or mint, is that what it's doing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it nuking the microbiome of your mouth?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is highly controversial.
		I personally choose to avoid artificial sweeteners, and I know a lot of these gums have artificial sweeteners in them.
		There is some data suggesting that it might change the gut microbiome, right?
		Artificial sweeteners.
		Now, in terms of gum, you're not necessarily consuming the artificial sweetener, but the artificial sweetener is there in your mouth.
		This is just speculation territory here, but I think that it conceivably might have an effect, but I don't think that that research has been done yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when someone uses toothpaste, especially toothpaste with fluoride, does that have a detrimental effect?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I personally avoid fluoride, and fluoride does have antiseptic effect as well.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It has a bactericidal effect as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you rather work out and then brush your teeth with fluoride-based toothpaste afterwards, would that have a similar effect as this mouthwash does?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Conceivably.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Research hasn't been done, but that would be my hypothesis.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about a non-fluoride base, like a Toms of Maine natural type of toothpaste?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's what I use.
		I mean, the toothpaste that I use, I look for nanohydroxyapatite.
		I don't know if you ever talked about that here on the podcast, but that's sort of a fluoride alternative that they've been using in Japan for some time that has shown to have a remineralizing effect on par with fluoride.
		But hydroxyapatite is a fully natural...
		Our bones are made of hydroxyapatite.
		Our teeth are made of hydroxyapatite.
		So it's totally natural.
		It doesn't have any endocrine disrupting potential the way that fluoride does.
		Fluoride is also a suspected endocrine disruptor, which I think is not good.
		But it also has...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What does that mean?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That it can affect your hormones.
		So endocrine disrupting compounds are everywhere.
		We're exposed to 1400 different hormones scrambling compounds on a daily basis.
		And fluoride is one of them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it scrambles your endocrine system?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It could.
		I mean, we ingest fluoride in the drinking water sometimes.
		There's this debate.
		I mean, typically with toxins, you get what's called a dose effect, right?
		The dose makes the poison.
		That's sort of like one of the hallmark platitudes in the field of toxicology.
		But the reason why endocrine disruptors are so treacherous and so difficult to study is they possess what's called a non-monotonic dose response.
		So you might have increasing risk of a certain effect with a higher dose with these endocrine disrupting compounds, but you might have a completely different effect at a low dose.
		So that's what makes them tricky to study and also just treacherous in general in terms of their effects on our health.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I imagine it would be cumulative.
		Like, this is not something you'd see a significant change in your body immediately.
		It'd be like a slow burn.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You never know.
		I mean, the Environmental Working Group found that, you know, umbilical cord has between 200 and 300 different industrial chemicals, like waste products, in a population representative sampling of fetuses.
		That there's like BPA, right?
		Like bisphenol A, which is a known xenoestrogen, right?
		We've known for 100 years at this point that it acts like estrogen in the body.
		And it's everywhere.
		These are like the everywhere chemicals.
		I mean, you had an expert on the show talking about how it's, you know, reducing the anogenital distance in males.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Dr. Shanna Swan, the book is Countdown, and it's all about phthalates.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, these compounds are everywhere.
		Bisphenol A is a super common one.
		Anytime you're drinking out of plastic, if it doesn't have bisphenol A, it's going to have bisphenol S, generally, unless it says no bisphenols, which is rare.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Meanwhile, you have a bottle of water right now.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, you can't...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Unfortunately...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's a metal...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a steel glass of water if you want to drink that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's what I should have been drinking at, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We have a filter machine and we switched out from bottles of water a few years ago to this.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Smart.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it just seems like a smart thing to do.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But going back to the mouthwash, I mean, they've done studies that show that frequent users, so just to be clear, this is two or more times per day, of antiseptic mouthwash have a 50% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and a doubling of risk for the development of hypertension, which is high blood pressure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit!
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		From just using mouthwash.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's insane.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And it's antiseptic.
		That's an observational study.
		So correlation doesn't equal causation.
		Just have to mention that.
		But in this exercise study, they used a prescription antiseptic mouthwash called chlorhexidine.
		And so it's clear that people who are using mouthwash regularly are seeing a health impingement as a result.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, is there a non-antiseptic mouthwash?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there something that makes your breath smell good that's...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think they have xylitol-based mouthwashes that I believe are selectively antiseptic.
		But I believe that good oral health shouldn't require much more than flossing regularly, brushing with something that doesn't have fluoride in it, and also eating a diet, a biologically appropriate diet.
		I mean, grains and grain products are the worst thing for your dental health.
		And if you think about it, an animal in the wild without its teeth is quickly a dead animal.
		So I think that whatever is going to be good for the oral microbiome is going to be good for systemic health and vice versa.
		And so grain products, refined grains, added sugars, I mean these are the worst foods, right?
		Like anything that's gonna cause any kind of like starch-dominant food product that is easily retained in the gum line, major driver of cavities.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk about that, about grains, but I want to also talk about fluoride.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like why is it even in the water?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't the whole idea about it supposed to, like, stop tooth decay?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think there is some...
		Yeah, I think there's some truth to that, but I don't think that...
		Our widespread tooth decay is due to a lack of fluoride.
		I think it's more due to the fact that our diets have become aberrant.
		I mean, I'll tell you, I haven't used fluoride toothpaste in some time, and when I was a kid, I was the kind of kid that every time I would go to a dentist, there would be a new cavity.
		I just would always dread going to the dentist because there would always be something for them to fill.
		And ever since I demoted grains and grain products to the occasional indulgence in my diet, I haven't had a single cavity.
		That's an anecdote, certainly, but I think it's not a mystery why these kinds of things develop, why we have tooth decay.
		It's just that we just eat crap.
		We eat crap all the time.
unidentified		It's shocking how good grains taste.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what sucks.
		What sucks is, like, I am just a gigantic fan of pasta and bread.
		I don't eat it very often.
		But when I do, I fucking love it.
		And it's, you know, it's the occasional thing for me now.
		And after I eat it, I feel like shit.
		But it's amazing how good it feels while you're consuming it.
		Like, what is that pathway?
		Like, what's going on in your brain where like a plate of lasagna is so damn rewarding?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know, I think what it is is that these kinds of foods tend to have that quality known as hyperpalatability.
		They tend to bring together, you know, sugar, whether it's like the sugar in the tomato sauce, wheat flour, fat, copious fat, amounts of fat, salt, right?
		I mean, these foods typify the standard American diet.
		And these are the kinds of foods that now we consume by the majority.
		60% of our calories now come from these kinds of foods, ultra-processed foods or these hyperpalatable mixed foods, mixed dishes, like the lasagnas, the pizzas, the burgers and things like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure you saw that chart that was recently published where they rated the nutritional benefits of food.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I shared it.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Is it the food compass?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Please tell people about this.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it on your Instagram?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's at the top.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I pinned it at the top of my Instagram.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So...
		Tufts University, and I recently had a conversation with a principal investigator, and I believe that our conversation was had out of good faith, and he was interested in hearing my perspective.
		Yeah, so I shared this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Watermelon, good.
		Kale, good.
		I agree with that.
		Watermelon's great, right?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Watermelon is tasty.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about kale being on the same...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is kale and watermelon together?
		Because watermelon has all that sugar in it, and also seeds.
		If you eat the seeds, that's not good, right?
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, basically, this was an attempt by researchers at Tufts University to create a nutrient profiling system.
		This isn't the first, right?
		There's actually a profiling system that was devised in Latin America called the NOVA profiling system, which I actually am a fan of.
		It ranks foods in accordance with how processed they are, which I think is actually quite important, can be quite useful in the context of the standard American diet with an obese population.
		But this is the Tufts attempt.
		And we can clearly see that it underweights protein, and it doesn't properly penalize foods for being ultra-processed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's read it out because there's people that are just listening.
		So Tufts, they made this chart with three different color systems.
		Green to be encouraged, yellow to be moderated, and red to be minimized.
		So frosted mini-wheats, which is sugar on top of grain, is at 87%.
		And it is in the green to be encouraged, whereas ground beef is the lowest at 26, which is to be minimized.
		But ground beef is just protein and fat.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's really generally healthy for you.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 100%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But what studies can they point to that say ground beef is to be minimized?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And look at a boiled egg.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's just egg.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just an egg.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And what comes in higher, right?
		You see egg substitute fried in vegetable oil comes in higher than just a boiled egg.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy.
		It's backwards.
		Egg substitute fried in vegetable oil is 62. Right.
		That's so nuts.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So nuts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because what the fuck is an egg substitute?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Skinless chicken breast, 61. Honey nut Cheerios, 76. How the fuck is that real?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, they basically score it in accordance with this formula that they've developed where, you know, they'll give a certain amount of points for protein, a certain amount of points for fiber, micronutrients, but they clearly don't properly penalize foods for being ultra-processed, right?
		Right.
		Honeynut Cheerios.
		I mean, ultra-processed foods, Joe...
		Are every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption associated with a 14% increased risk of early mortality.
		Every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption associated with a 25% increased risk for dementia, recently published research, right?
		So this chart clearly is, in my view, right?
		And until I'm convinced otherwise, an instrument designed to sell ultra-processed food, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Put it back up, Jamie.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's a...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So look at this.
		There's another thing that I wanted to point out here, because this is so nuts.
		Orange juice with calcium.
		Here's something that people need to understand.
		Orange juice is just sugar water.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's got some vitamins in it, but it's just sugar water.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you want an orange, eat a fucking orange.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		An orange.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's self-limiting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I have a friend, and they ordered fresh-squeezed orange juice.
		Like, oh, as long as it's got the pulp in it.
		I'm like, listen, man...
		That's just, your body is not, doesn't know what the fuck is going on.
		If you're drinking 16 ounces of orange juice, that is a jolt of sugar to your system that's not that different than a glass of Coca-Cola.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		Yeah, I mean, it's mind-boggling.
		Also, it's like that chart doesn't take into account context, right?
		Like, it doesn't take into account the fact that, as we mentioned, 50% of the population, it's almost 50% of the population that's obese, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Half of the population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic.
		So it has some degree of glucose intolerance.
		And you're going to say that that orange juice is a healthy choice for somebody who has essentially glucose intolerance because they're insulin resistant.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's so unnatural to drink a juice like that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's what people need to understand.
		It's like when you're eating a fruit, that's how it's designed by nature to be consumed.
		You're getting all of the fiber.
		You're eating the tissue of the fruit.
		You're eating everything.
		That's like you eat an apple.
		You're supposed to eat an apple.
		Apple juice is so crazy.
		My kids were at Disneyland, and they got an apple juice.
		And I said, can I see that?
		And I looked at it.
		It was like fucking 29 grams of sugar.
		I'm like, that is so crazy.
		You just get this jolt of sugar to your system.
		One thing, if you just did a crazy CrossFit workout, and your fucking legs are buckling, And you want to get a jolt of glucose in your system.
		Okay.
		Have an apple juice.
		But for just a regular person to consume apple juice, you're thinking you're drinking something healthy and it's just a trick.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, it really is absurd.
		And it's like, you know, whether we're talking about the Alzheimer's paper that was fraudulent or this, which, you know, I don't think that there's any malice behind this.
		I really don't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just ignorance.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And also conflicts of interest.
		There was a paper that came out recently.
		That found that among the people called on by the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee, like those committee members, 95% of them had conflicts of interest with pharma, with the food industry, right?
		Like General Mills, Kraft, AstraZeneca, right?
		Those are the people coming up with our dietary guidelines, right?
		So they're not going to say minimize your consumption of ultra-processed foods because the food industry would never let them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, you ever look at those folks?
		That's another part of the problem.
		The people that are recommending health choices, they all look like shit.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like that woman, Barbara Ferrer, the woman who is locking down Los Angeles.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That poor lady.
		Like, go outside.
		I don't know what you're eating, but eat something different.
		Like, that lady looks terrible.
		And to have someone, like the Belgian Minister of Health, have you ever seen that lady?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No, never seen that lady.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, buckle up.
		Buckle up for this one.
		I don't know what the fuck Belgium's up to, but this just, this is like, it's a joke.
		It's like a punchline to a joke.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, this is absolutely the last person you should be taking any health advice from.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Imagine, that's the Belgian health minister.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's morbidly obese.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's mind-boggling.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's crazy.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A vegan diet is unhealthy and dangerous for infants.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, I agree with that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, she's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's like a broken clock.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right twice a day.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not digital clocks, by the way.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're never right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I'm happy that she said that, though.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's a big issue.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is a big issue.
		There was a...
		A woman recently that was jailed because her child died from malnutrition because she was feeding it a vegan diet.
		I mean, I don't know what the fuck she was giving her baby.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No, it's terrible.
		I just actually became an uncle.
		My little brother, we have the first baby in the family, a little girl.
		And I'm learning about breastfeeding and all the things, right?
		But what's interesting is that their pediatrician told us that he'll often see vegan moms come in and they're suffering from crazy osteoporosis and low bone mineral density because the mammary tissue doesn't care The mammary tissue just wants to make the best milk possible.
		It doesn't care if the mother's getting it from her diet.
		If not, it'll take the nutrients from the mom.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it'll take it from the bones and the muscles.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Of the mother, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And the brain.
unidentified		Oof.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		For the DHA, fat, if need be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what they call mommy brain.
		Yeah.
		That and lack of sleep.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is fascinating.
		Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is glyphosate.
		There was a recent study that showed that glyphosate appeared, and see if you can find what the actual numbers were.
		But it was a shocking number of people's bodies containing glyphosate in them, which is Roundup, which is an herbicide.
		That when you talk about people consuming large amounts of vegetables and large amounts of grains, one thing to take into consideration when you're dealing with monocrop agriculture is the use of pesticides.
		Disturbing weed killer ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of U.S. urine samples.
		Now, immediately upon publishing this, I went on to Twitter and I saw this shill for these herbicide companies that was talking about, oh, it's just a minimal amount.
		A tiny amount.
		Parts per million.
		You can't even find it if you're looking for it.
		Nothing to see here.
		Like...
		What the fuck are you talking about?
		It's poison.
		There's zero amount of that that should be in your body.
		When it's in 80% of the US population, like, how bad is that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean you've got these like apologists for whether it's the food industry or the cosmetic industry.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The guy in particular that I'm talking about, he was wildly and just defending this.
		But he's completely connected to these companies and people were pointing it out.
		Like you have been paid by these companies.
		Like you are in the pocket of these companies.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, we know that it's an endocrine disruptor.
		It is bactericidal, right?
		Like, I mean, it's an antibiotic, essentially.
		And, you know, I don't...
		To be honest, like, glyphosate is something that, like...
		You're reducing your risk if you're eating more animal products, right?
		It's abundantly found in grains, GMO products, and things like that.
		GMO products are actually bred to be GMO so that they can withstand heavy spraying.
		Glyphosate is used as a desiccant quite strongly, in fact, on oats and oat products and things like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is there a way to clean these things before you use them to filter out glyphosate?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or is it something that's just a part of the grain?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a good question.
		I mean, I think soaking and rinsing like produce...
		Well, with regard to grain, I'm not sure.
		With regard to produce, I do think that there's both an effect with like rinsing and like soaking in particular, in vinegar and salt, and or salt, vinegar and or salt, and cooking.
		I don't think it's a very heat-stable compound, but I'm not, you know, like I think people should avoid it.
		Like I generally, if I'm eating the skin, this is, I mean personally, There's online, I mean, I'm sure you've seen, but the debate between whether or not organic is better for you than non-organic.
		Nutritionally, in terms of micronutrients, there's no real difference.
		You'll see higher levels of certain micronutrients in organic, and you'll see higher levels of certain, for example, nitrates in non-organic produce.
		So you can't really say that one is more nutritious than the other.
		Studies do show, obviously aside from reducing your exposure to glyphosate and other petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides, you're reducing your exposure potentially to heavy metals.
		There was a meta-analysis that found cadmium levels were reduced by 50% in organic produce as compared to conventional.
		And then you see higher levels of these like plant quote-unquote defense compounds in organic produce.
		Which, depending on, you know, where you stand on these plant defense compounds, I mean, likely, you know, I think provide benefit to human health.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the hormetic effect that we were talking about earlier.
		And so these genetically modified organisms, these GMOs, these plants that are designed to be able to tolerate glyphosate, how are they doing that?
		Like, what is happening to these plants?
		What are they doing to the plant that allows them to spray this toxic shit all over them and they keep growing?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You know, I wish I could give a really buttoned-up, informed answer.
		I'm not 100% sure.
		What I will say is that there's only a small handful of crops that are GMO. There's only 10 crops that are GMO. Sometimes you'll see non-GMO asparagus, but asparagus was never GMO. But generally, I believe, it's soy, it's corn.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like saying gluten-free milk.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Gluten-free milk.
		Yeah, yeah.
		But yeah, they're GMO primarily, I think, to be able to withstand heavy spraying by these chemicals.
		And again, precautionary principle.
		I think the less there is around, the better.
		I mean, people will say that it's like the most heavily studied, you know, herbicide in history, you know, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also causes cancer.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean like I'm yeah, I'm I would rather reduce my exposure to that and you know and yeah, it's just like It's fair that not everything that's natural is good for you not everything that's unnatural is bad for you but like I'm not gonna put like my health in the hands of Monsanto which which is now Bayer I think after yes, they purchased it right but But like, those companies don't give a fuck about your health, right?
		And when you do finally get sick, there's no recourse.
		Like, who's going to be there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And also, correlation does not equal causation.
		You have to prove that this is what caused your illness.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And there's this complex situation that we have here where we have these enormous cities that have millions and millions of people and you have to feed these people.
		And monocrop agriculture is the most efficient way to provide these people with produce.
		And monocrop agriculture with herbicides is the most efficient way to grow agriculture.
		It's so complex and so difficult to get out of.
		Because all these people that are proponents of regenerative farming, whenever I ask them if it's scalable, they always do this, like, Yeah.
		Fucking it's never been done.
		When you're talking about being able to provide grass-fed beef for 330 million people, show me.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Show me how you can provide organic produce to 330 million people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Show me.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No, it's not possible.
		And that's true.
		You know, like, grass-fed...
		Feeding and finishing beef on open pastures, I mean, that takes a ton of land.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		But not everybody...
		First of all, not everybody's going to choose to eat the way that I... Max Lugavere recommends eating, right?
		Like, people have their own preferences, their cultural...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Moors and things like that, right?
		But today, I mean...
		That's where I think it's another area where the argument for veganism falls short, is that if you're partaking in modern society, if you're shopping in a modern supermarket, there's blood on your hands, right?
		There's like, nobody is...
		Inculcated from the fact that today, whether it's modern plant agriculture or modern animal agriculture, animals and people are being exploited.
		It's doing a number on the environment.
		If you really want to live the most sustainable and quote-unquote regenerative lifestyle, you're going to be growing your own Yes, and that really is probably the only option.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Growing your own produce and doing it in the way where you're making your own compost and...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Harvesting your own eggs like you were doing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's probably the best way.
		But, you know, obviously if you live in a city, that's a giant problem.
		And if you don't have the financial resources or the land, that's a giant problem.
		Because if you want to grow a significant amount of fruits and vegetables, you're going to need some land.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but also like sickness is massively environmentally taxing, right?
		It's a massive resource sink.
		And the nutrition and the calories and, you know, what you get from beef is...
		You know, you get a lot more in a much smaller package, right?
		Like one cow can feed a family, and I'm not like an environmental expert or an expert in agriculture, but I know that one cow can feed a family for months, right?
		Two months, something like that.
unidentified		Easily.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And so if you're looking to reduce the area under the curve for suffering, for environmental damage, it makes a lot more sense to me that you would lean into animal agriculture.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, animal agriculture in regards to grass-fed, grass-finished beef, you're talking about an animal that has free range because that's the only way they can consume that much grass.
		They have to be in these open pastures.
		They get to roam around.
		They're not contained in pens because that wouldn't be efficient.
		They move around.
		And the ones that use regenerative agriculture, the benefit to that is they use the manure.
		And the manure helps grow more plants.
		And it helps they use it as fertilizer.
		It also helps the richness of the soil and keeps the soil maintaining.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is so important because topsoil in this country is like really fucked, especially in these monocrop agriculture environments.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're pouring nitrogen on the soil and all sorts of other industrial fertilizers they're trying to use just in order to allow these plants to have the nutrients to grow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But they've determined that this topsoil in these farmlands has been minerally deficient for a long time.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's why our produce is becoming less nutritious over time.
		Our produce is actually developing its own form of plant obesity, if you can imagine that.
		So there's a few potential reasons for this, but it's been referred to as the ionome.
		The sum total nutritional value of our plants has declined over the past 50 years by about 8%.
		On average, some nutrients, you know, we see greater nutrient loss.
		Others, we see less.
		But in general, whether it's increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, right, which is like a plant's food, right?
		It's causing plants to develop more starch, less protein, which is going to have a net effect on the population that eats those plants, right?
		More starch, less protein, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
		So the increased level of carbon in the atmosphere is damaging to plants.
		Because we've always heard that carbon dioxide is what a plant consumes, and they produce oxygen with that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a ratio.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You're increasing the availability of what plants consume.
unidentified		Wow.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I never would have thought about it that way.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I wrote about this in my second book, The Genius Life, but generally, yeah.
		So it's the confluence of factors, right?
		It's like what we're doing to the soil, it's the fact that there's more carbon in the atmosphere.
		So our plants are actually becoming less nutritious in terms of their micronutrients, but also the macronutrients are being depleted as well, right?
		We're diluting protein in the plants.
		And when that happens, when you dilute protein, I mean, you're going to have an effect on I mean, we haven't yet been able to quantify it, but when you dilute protein in an organism, you're reducing the amount of amino acids, you're increasing the amount of energy that you're giving that animal.
		That potentially could be a recipe for obesity or a contributing factor.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The argument that always drives me nuts when people talk about what is and what is not sustainable is You know, this is what people always want to discuss.
		Like, when you discuss, like, you should eat grass-fed beef, you should eat...
		Well, that's not sustainable.
		But I think your argument is best in that most people are not going to listen anyway.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're just not.
		But if you're listening and you're a person who's really taking the...
		You really are taking this information in and you're really trying to make steps to have an overall better metabolic health and overall just you want your body to function better.
		You can't think about sustaining the entire world.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, it sounds fucked, but we're on a sinking ship, kids.
		Okay?
		And you're alive.
		So you have choices to make right now with your life.
		And if you're listening to this, like, this is the argument that people always said to me, like, when I talk about how I hunt.
		And one of the reasons why I hunt is because it's healthier meat and because I just want a more ethical relationship to food.
		And they're like, well, everybody can't hunt.
		Well, guess what?
		They're not gonna.
		Most people are not going to hike miles and miles into the mountains.
		They're not cardiovascularly fit enough to do it.
		They don't have the training to do it.
		They don't have the motivation to do it.
		They wouldn't be able to execute in the actual moment of choice, the difficult moment of truth when you have to pull the trigger or release an arrow.
		They're going to fuck it up.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they're not going to survive.
		So that's not what we're saying.
		But we're saying for the people that do want to take these steps and are motivated to change their life for the better, there are options available that are better for your overall metabolic health, they're better for your mind, they're literally better for the environment, for everything.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
		And I think that it would be immoral for a physician sitting across from a sick person to have their guidance be informed by anything other than what's going to be best for that person.
		If you're a physician and you're considering what's going to be best for the planet, right?
		Well, Max, he's an asshole.
		He doesn't care about the planet.
		I absolutely do care about the planet.
		I absolutely do care about animal welfare.
		But if you're sitting across the table from somebody who's sick or you're broadcasting a message to a sick population, you have a responsibility to that population, to that person.
		And so, for me, my number one priority is to personally eat and to recommend to people what, in my estimation, is going to be the best to avert these kinds of conditions.
		And I'll tell you that my mom, my mom...
		I'll never know what was causal with regard to what she had developed, but she was basically vegetarian.
		She never ate red meat.
		My mom was actually very much attuned to messaging surrounding heart disease.
		She was always afraid of developing heart disease.
		So she ate a very low-saturated-fat diet.
		She also cared about animals, so she never ate red meat.
		She never ate eggs.
		She ate whatever grain product she saw in the supermarket that had the red Heart Healthy logo on it.
		That would end up in the shopping cart.
		We always had the corn oil by the stove, again, with the red Heart Healthy logo on it.
		Always had that.
		Never any butter in my fridge.
		Always margarine in those tubs.
		That's the kind of food that I grew up consuming.
		Because my mom was very much attuned to what the orthodoxy said about heart disease at the time.
		And she didn't have the internet, of course, for exposure to dissenting opinions on that.
		Right.
		But yeah, I mean, I do think that my hypothesis is not to like, you know, blame her in any sense, but I do think that like, you know, had she had integrated some of these more nutrient-dense foods, more minimally processed foods into her diet, that it would have protected her to some degree.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, if your assertion is correct in terms of preventing Alzheimer's, it seems like all those things were negative, like all the things she's doing, the margarine, the grains, other than junky fast food.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		My mom wasn't a big fast food consumer.
		And, you know, this is, like, all I have is, like, retrospective, like, looking back and kind of trying to ascertain, you know, how she lived, you know, while I was exposed to it.
		It's not that my, you know, she had it like she was following any particular diet or anything like that, but...
		But yeah, she was a big animal rights advocate.
		Lots of grain products.
		Not a ton of protein.
		Occasionally she would eat lean, skinless chicken breast or a piece of fish, but was always very, very concerned about cholesterol and things like that.
		So I do think that that's a dietary...
		That is the standard American diet.
		That is, to me...
		What, you know, how not to eat if you want to protect your brain over time based on like all the research that I've done since then.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it sucks because so many people think it's the way to eat to be healthy.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's such an uphill battle to try to convince those people or to try to have a conversation with them.
		When someone says, what about cholesterol?
		You're not worried about your cholesterol?
		I just always like...
		Where do I go with this?
		This is such a long conversation to have with a person that has this orthodox opinion that's been kind of drilled in their head by the food pyramid and by all the scare tactics that people have heard about.
		Well, we've talked about this before in the podcast but it bears repeating.
		How saturated fat was the whole more fraud by the sugar companies and that the sugar companies literally bribed scientists to lie about what was causing heart disease and they started blaming it on saturated fat and tried to try to take the blame off of sugar.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yeah.
		You're referring to the 1967 JAMA paper, right?
		That was seemingly the nail in the coffin on the issue as to whether or not it was sugar or saturated fat that drove the epidemic of heart disease that we were seeing in the mid-century.
		And the Sugar Research Foundation paid each of those scientists $48,000.
		Equivalent of today's money to basically say that it wasn't sugar.
		That was the problem.
		It was saturated fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's such a small number and it fucked millions of people.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So many.
		But it's like, you know, money, these personalities, right?
		These like the obstinate territorialism.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And Ansel Keys, who really is like thought to be the father of the diet heart hypothesis, was like this very, you see this all the time, like this very overbearing personality, right?
		That's like, that's the way that they, the same way that they described in the science article, Sylvain Lesney, the guy who, you know, who renewed vigor for the amyloid hypothesis.
		It's like, you know, they have this celebrity and charisma.
		First of all, having any charisma as a scientist, you're going to go places, right?
		Like, because so many of them- Have zero.
		Have zero, you know?
		So, yeah, so it's a big problem.
		And saturated fat, I think, is like- The plant-based community and still much of the medical orthodoxy are myopically focused on LDL cholesterol.
		Specifically now, I think it's pivoting a little bit to ApoB, so all ApoB-containing lipoproteins.
		But when you take out...
		Red meat from your diet, for example.
		Yeah, your ApoB or your LDL cholesterol might be a little bit lower, right?
		But that's not a risk-free swap, right?
		You're removing from your diet a rich source of highly bioavailable micronutrients like vitamin B12, like zinc, like creatine, which supports brain energy metabolism, like carnosine, which helps to support healthy blood sugar regulation in the body.
		And, of course, protein.
		An amazing, pristine source of highly bioavailable, highly digestible protein.
		So, like, to be myopically focused on these single marker indicators of, you know, related to cardiovascular risk, I think, doesn't make any sense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it doesn't make any sense, but people don't know that information.
		And when they hear about LDL cholesterol or HDL cholesterol, they don't know what's good and what's bad and why is one bad and why is one good.
		And that's a misnomer, isn't it?
		That like one is good cholesterol and one is bad cholesterol?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So, I mean, neither are good or bad.
		HDL has long been considered the good cholesterol because when it's elevated, it's associated with better health, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is that?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's probably reflective of good health.
		It's not necessarily causal because they've actually engineered drugs to raise HDL and it does nothing in terms of reducing cardiovascular disease risk.
		I think the current thinking is that HDL is more reflective of good health.
		So if it's high, it shows that you're doing something right.
		So you want it to be high.
		LDL is a little more complicated.
		There are many different things that it's responsive to, but primarily certain types of saturated fatty acids.
		So when you hear on social media, for example, that saturated fat is bad, that's pseudoscience because a fat isn't a fat.
		It's the same way that protein isn't protein.
		Carbs aren't necessarily carbs.
		They're all underneath those umbrella terms.
		There are different types that determine how we respond biologically to them.
		So when it comes to saturated fat, I mean, you've got different kinds of saturated fatty acids.
		One type of saturated fatty acid that's actually elevated in grass-fed, grass-finished beef is stearic acid.
		Stear, named for cows, actually has a neutral effect, doesn't increase levels of LDL cholesterol, and actually might improve functioning of the mitochondria.
		So we can't just say that saturated fat is bad.
		Dairy is one of these things where when you look observationally, people who consume full fat dairy, not even low fat or reduced fat dairy, have better cardiovascular health, better metabolic health.
		And dairy proportionally has more saturated fat than any other fat source, right?
		Because as I mentioned, all natural fat containing foods have some proportion of saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat.
		If you look at beef fat, Tallow.
		It's about 50% monounsaturated fat, some small proportion of polyunsaturated fat, and then some, again, minority proportion of saturated fat.
		But dairy is actually mostly saturated fat.
		So you'd think that if saturated fat was this dietary boogeyman, that regular consumers of dairy, people who consume a lot of dairy fat, would have the worst cardiovascular health.
		And that's not what we see.
		We see the exact opposite.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, how do you feel about...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Raw dairy versus homogenized or pasteurized dairy?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		So raw...
		I'm not actually...
		To me, the dairy doesn't necessarily have to be raw.
		And when we look observationally, you know, raw is not something that's factored in because the vast majority of people are not consuming raw dairy.
		But we do see that full-fat dairy is quite healthful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, low-fat dairy is pretty nasty.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think that low-fat...
		So here's the deal with dairy.
		I think that low-fat is often confounded by the fact that low-fat dairy products are often ultra-processed dairy products that have added sugar in it.
		I don't think it's necessarily the removal of dairy fat that make it healthier.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They add sugar just to make it palatable.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fucking nasty.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like dirty water.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I regularly consume...
		I mean, I consume full-fat dairy products.
		I put heavy cream in my coffee every day, which I think is...
		I love heavy cream.
		It's fat-soluble, or it's fat, so it helps to make the fat-soluble polyphenols in coffee more bioavailable.
		It doesn't have any proteins.
		It's not going to bind those polyphenols.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, it's better for you to have full-fat dairy?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Full-fat heavy cream.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I love full-fat heavy cream.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any benefit to raw dairy?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		They say that there are enzymes in it that are supportive.
		I don't know how much science there is on that recommendation.
		If it's available to me, I buy raw dairy, but it's not something that I necessarily go out of my way to find.
		I think it's probably better to consume it raw.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's natural.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Because the opposite of that is like it's exposed to heat and dairy has fat in it.
		It's got some component of or some proportion of polyunsaturated fats which are heat sensitive.
		So, you know, you want to protect those fats generally.
		And a baby consuming breast milk, I mean, that breast milk is raw milk, right?
		But the one thing about dairy that I think is worth talking about is that it's thought that the reason why we don't necessarily exhibit the predicted effect that you would expect based on the high proportion of saturated fat in dairy is attributed to the fact that dairy contains something called milk fat globule membrane.
		So, I know it's kind of a mouthful, but milk fat globule membrane is basically the lipoprotein in dairy that keeps the dairy fats perfectly suspended.
		It's like an emulsifier.
		So that dairy, which is mostly water, milk is mostly water, right?
		The fats don't actually float to the top.
		The fats are perfectly dispersed throughout.
		So the triglycerides in dairy fat are wrapped up in a bubble.
		And this bubble is called milk fat globule membrane.
		And it's made up of actually some really healthy compounds, like phosphatidylcholine, which choline we talked about, you know, and its benefit to the brain.
		There's also a little bit of sphingomyelin in dairy, in full-fat dairy, which is a core component to myelin, the myelin sheath in our brains that help insulate neurons.
		And if you think about, like, the purpose that dairy serves for a neonate, it's to help grow a brain.
		I mean, it's like the whole body's growing, but primarily the brain is the organ that's under, like, the most rapid growth in organization.
		And so it makes perfect sense that dairy would have components in it that are, like, really beneficial when it comes to brain health.
		And so, yeah, so I think that full-fat dairy is really quite beneficial.
		But when you look at a dairy product like butter, interestingly, when you feed a person, if you were to feed a person both heavy cream and Followed by butter.
		You'd see that butter actually leads to an adverse effect on blood lipids.
		Whereas heavy cream doesn't.
		And butter is just made from heavy cream, right?
		It's like churned cream.
		But the churning disrupts this membrane, this lipoprotein called milk fat globule membrane.
		And I think that's why butter can have this negative effect on blood lipids.
		So actually when I discovered this, when I realized this, It caused me to actually demote butter to be more of like a YOLO food, more of like an indulgence food.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So explain this adverse effect and how is it measured?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So butter and heavy cream are both the same foundational ingredient, right?
		And actually, if you were to put heavy cream in coffee, the cream would easily just disperse throughout the coffee, right?
		Butter sits at the top.
		So you can clearly see that chemically something has changed after it gets churned and becomes the food product that we know and love and call butter.
		So the milk fat globule membrane, which is present in full fat heavy cream and other dairy products...
		It's thought that that actually is quite beneficial from the standpoint of brain health, but also affects how we metabolize the fats in dairy.
		So in clinical trials, what they've shown is that you can feed somebody this controlled for fat calories, right?
		You can feed somebody...
		Dairy cream, and it won't have any effect on their LDL cholesterol, right?
		If you feed somebody butter, it will.
		You'll see an elevation of LDL cholesterol.
		And I'm not, you know, I don't believe that we should do everything we can to get our LDL as low as possible.
		Because again, like foods that are generally very beneficial and healthful, like, you know, grass-fed red meat and things like that, eggs, the benefits outweigh the risk.
		But with butter, I think potentially you're causing an elevation of your So, yeah, so butter can have this negative effect that you don't see in other dairy products.
		So, for me, dairy is great.
		It's just that butter is one of these dairy products that I think, you know, especially if you're prone to hypercholesterolemia, if you're prone to elevated levels of like LDL, ApoB, It might serve you to reduce your consumption of butter.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any benefit to, or have there been a study comparing grass-fed butter to butter from cows that eat grains?
andy stumpf ▲ ● ▼		Because it looks very different.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Grass-fed butter is a rich, much more yellow butter.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whereas like milk or grain-fed butter is like, it's almost white.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, probably because there's a higher proportion of carotenoids in the butter.
		But in general, I think that butter can be great.
		There's, again, vitamin A, there's these carotenoids, there's CLA, there's butyrate, there's all these interesting vitamin K2 in butter, which are...
		You know, which are significant.
		And, you know, that's great.
		But if you are, you know, for example, if you have familial hypercholesterolemia, which many people do, or if, you know, it's just one of these foods that, like, I would not consume as liberally as, say, I'm consuming, like, the heavy cream or full-fat Greek yogurt or even fat-free Greek yogurt, which is a great, like, high-protein food.
		Yeah.
		But yeah, always, I mean, you're always going to get higher nutrient density when a cow eats its biologically appropriate diet.
		Also, you know, when a cow is grass finished versus grain finished, it's a leaner animal.
		Like, I know you love to, like, hunt, right?
		Like, wild game is way leaner than a modern cow, particularly a grain finished cow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a completely different thing.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Completely different thing.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		So to me, that says something about the relative proportion of fatty acids that we're meant to consume, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's one of the weird things is that we've become accustomed to the taste of a sick cow.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because that's what grass-fed versus grain-fed is.
		When you see a grain-fed cow and it's heavily marbled, like, I don't like wagyu.
		People offer, "Ooh, we have Kobe beef." That thing's dead.
		That's not just dead now, but I mean, while it was alive, it's fucked.
		You look at all that fat in the tissue, that's not normal.
		You get a grain-fed steak and compare it to a grass-fed steak.
		First of all, the grass-fed steak is a darker color.
		It's a richer, darker color.
		There's far less fat on it.
		And it tastes different.
		It's like a healthier animal, too, because they're wandering around in these pastures, so they're using their muscle tissue.
		And so that muscle tissue is more dense.
		It's chewier.
		But, you know, people like it tender.
		But that's not normal.
		Like, if you eat an elk steak, that fucker is, that's dense, you know?
		And you have to cook it appropriately.
		Like, you have to cook it at a low temperature.
		Until it reaches an internal temperature and then you sear it on the outside.
		That's the best way to cook it.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		These are like grain-finished cows.
		I mean, they're loaded.
		Or the Wagyus, specifically.
		That's called intramyocellular lipid.
		Like, you only get that if you're diabetes, right?
		If you've got type 2 diabetes and obesity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do they do grass-fed Wagyu?
		Because I've seen that, too.
		And it looks good.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How are you doing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it like a specific breed of cow that they're doing that just generally retains more fat?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I mean sometimes don't they put like ports into the cow's, like one of the cow's stomachs?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's from that, was that Food Inc?
		where they talked about that?
		That's from animals that are eating grains and they develop like abscesses and real problems and they have to ventilate their stomachs because of all the gases.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh god.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Yeah.
		I mean, I'm definitely, definitely a huge fan of, like, you know, the grass finish.
		But also I think it's important, and this is something that, like, that I, you know, I think one of the reasons why people gravitate to my content is that, like, I try to be as non-dogmatic as possible.
		And even for somebody who doesn't have access to the most pristine beef that I have access to living in Los Angeles, you know?
		And I hate to promote the factory farm system because it's terrible.
		It's like an animal holocaust every day.
		It's like worse.
		But still, for somebody living in a quote-unquote food desert that doesn't have access to the kind of beef that I have access to, That's still gonna be a better option for dinner than boxed mac and cheese.
		And what a cow eats determines mainly the content, the nutritional value of its fat.
		So if you don't have access to the most pristine beef, grass-fed, grass-finished beef, you can go slightly leaner because that's generally a way to circumvent that.
		It doesn't make any sense to eat grass-fed, grass-finished filet mignon because a filet mignon is a lean piece of meat.
		But if we're talking about a ribeye or ground beef, yeah, it does make sense to buy leaner beef because you're just skimming off what is ultimately determined by what a cow eats.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Even if grass-fed filet mignon, wouldn't you be getting a healthier piece of meat?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Probably, but I'm not sure how I would quantify that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're both lean, grass-fed and grain-fed.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		And the protein is still pristine, and it's really just the fat.
		Like, for example, the difference between grass-finished and grain-finished, you get about five times the omega-3s in grass-finished.
		Beef, in general, is not a great omega-3 source, so just to put that out there, you're getting, in absolute terms, a much smaller amount of omega-3 fatty acids as you would get from a piece of salmon, for example.
		Still, five times the omega-3s as compared to grain finished.
		You're getting three times the vitamin E, which we know is super important to help protect the fats that are already in your body.
		We need vitamin E. Vitamin E is crucially important.
		You get much less, fewer fat calories overall.
		And of the saturated fat, you're getting a higher proportion of stearic acid, which we know is actually quite beneficial.
		So I do think that it's probably healthier to consume, you know.
		But none of those features are really going to matter if the meat is super lean, right?
		Because we're talking primarily about, like, it's fat.
		It's fat content.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		We certainly covered a lot.
		Is there anything else do you like to bring up?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Anything else you think needs to be discussed?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know, I love educating people and helping people sort of separate fact from fiction.
		I think it's my life's purpose.
		I really feel aligned with what I'm supposed to be doing.
		I'm super excited for the documentary, Little Empty Boxes.
		Again, littleemptyboxes.com.
		I host my own podcast called The Genius Life, which I love to do.
		I love to bring on dissenting opinions and expose my audience to as broad array of perspectives as possible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have you had debates with vegans?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		You know, I haven't primarily because I don't think that debates are a good platform.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think that they- Or discussions, I should say.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I do sometimes, yeah.
		Like, but not on the- some on the podcast, yeah.
		As long as they're not annoying, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But no, I've definitely had experts on the show who lean more plant-based.
		I just, you know, after doing all the interviews that I've done, what I've seen is that, you know, you bring on somebody who's like a medical doctor and you ask them about nutrition, and they start opining as if they're authorities on nutrition because they're medical doctors.
		And most of them are unaware even of their own biases, which I think is a big problem.
		You know, I had somebody on the podcast who, she's a lovely woman, purports to be like a nutrition expert from like an Indian background, right?
		And like generally I know like if you're from an Indian background, like you're not going to be super pro beef, you know?
		It's just like not in the culture.
		And that came out in the interview that she was anti-meat and leans more plant-based.
		And so I see the podcast not as a platform for me to debate people.
		I'm not one of those.
		Because at the end of the day, I think something that I'm really passionate about, or I know that I'm really passionate about, is fostering scientific literacy.
		Yeah.
		I don't really call myself an expert.
		Other people have called me that, and I'll take it if that's what you perceive from me.
		But really, I hope to be, I think, for people, a role model.
		Because at the end of the day, I was just a guy who stood up because his mom was sick, and I think this is something that we all experience, right?
		But I, whether it's my upbringing or the...
		sort of first job that I had in college, you know, I felt out of college, I felt entitled to answers and to like reaching out to people.
		And of course, along the journey, I realized I had an aptitude for aggregating and assimilating and communicating science.
		But I want people to, like, do the research for themselves.
		And, like, you know, to always be willing to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs about things.
		Right?
		Because, you know, people these days, they watch a Netflix documentary and they throw their whole diet into upheaval.
		And it's, like, a huge problem.
		I think it does harm.
		Like, it does harm.
		And nobody's talking about this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, not only that, there's quite a few Netflix documentaries.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One that gets brought up all the time that's full of shit.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's like most of what they talk about is just factually inaccurate and they don't take into account bioavailability.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They don't take into account many factors that contribute to poor health from these diets that they're promoting, particularly vegan diets.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what percentage of people that start vegan diets wind up eating meat at some point in time?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's something like 84%.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, it's huge.
		I think, you know, there's like this...
		I think, you know, like, I probably agree...
		There's more that we agree on than what we disagree on.
		And I think primarily people, you know...
		One of the things that I really hope people take away from this is to reduce their consumption of these ultra-processed foods that, for some reason or another, made it to the top of the Food Compass nutrient profiling system.
		But essentially, ultra-processed foods, we know that when you make them the bulk of your diet, they drive their own overconsumption.
		We tend to overconsume them because they have this quality of being hyperpalatable and hyposatiating.
		And what makes a food satiating, there are three factors that make a food satiating.
		One, it's protein content.
		Protein is the most satiating macronutrient.
		So a lot of people that are struggling with being overweight, they go to their doctors and they get told this cookie-cutter advice to just eat less and move more, right?
		So they focus on the quantity of what they're eating, right?
		Like how much they're eating.
		But what so few people understand, unfortunately today, is that what you eat determines how much you eat.
		And so by focusing on protein, right?
		Protein is the most satiating macronutrient.
		We know we need it.
		It fosters resilience and robustness.
		Frailty.
		There was a study that came out recently that found that among people who are genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, it was the frailty that determined by threefold Who was going to develop it or not, basically.
		So you were protected the stronger, the more robust and resilient you were.
		Resistance training, all that stuff obviously plays a role, but protein.
		You know, regularly reaching for high quality protein, I think, is crucially important.
		And the best, you know, the highest quality protein comes from animal products.
		If you're eating enough protein, you know, quality becomes less of an issue.
		So, you know, if you're on a plant-based diet, vegan diet, just make sure that you're getting enough protein.
		But that's hard to do without protein supplements.
		And we know that plant-based protein powders harbor heavy metals.
		So there's all these factors that come into play that I think about, you know, day to day.
		The second factor that makes a food satiating is fiber.
		It's fiber content.
		And that's not because we have some innate need for fiber, but because it mechanically stretches out the stomach.
		And we do see, thanks to meta-analyses and such, that fiber consumption is associated with longevity, reduced inflammation, and things like that.
		But you want to, you know, make sure that you're reaching for foods that contain fiber, fibrous vegetables, right?
		And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is its water content.
		Water, you know, before we had access to running water, right, like we would either look for water on the savannah or whatever, or we would eat food because food, by and large, provides water, right, like produce.
		Even animal products are a good source of hydration.
		I have a cat.
		My cat gets its hydration primarily from the meat that it eats.
		And so when you look at ultra-processed foods, they're depleted of all three of those features.
		They're dehydrated because water impedes shelf stability.
		They lack fiber.
		They lack protein.
		They lack protein primarily because protein is expensive, right?
		Protein has high margins.
		So it actually, from a bottom line perspective, it makes sense why the powers that be would want to deplete our food environment of protein, right?
		I mean, some people will say, oh, they're making us weak.
		I think it's just like bottom line, right?
		Like it's like rapidly digested carbohydrates are just cheap to produce, right?
		Now we're seeing this flood on the market of all these like It's fake meat products, which is another thing that I talk about all the time on my podcast.
		It's like the food equivalent of...
		It's human pet food is how I refer to it.
		Basically, it's no different than kibble made for humans, right?
		And these are the kinds of foods that yield big exits because they're proprietary formulas.
		There's obviously profit to be made in meat and dairy and things like that, but you don't get the kinds of...
		You know proprietary formulations that you get with these like plant-based products that then like go public and have these like huge company valuations.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well the good news is they're sinking because people aren't buying them because they're disgusting and also people have seen the studies you know there was the one study about plant-based meat and with rats so I'm sure you saw that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That what rat like?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Rats develop liver damage.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oof.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's see if we can find that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like these things are, they're filled with seed oils.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what these plant-based, that's like, what they're trying to do is they're trying to emulate what a burger looks and tastes like, which is so strange.
		It's like, are you opposed to burgers or not?
		Because why do you have a fake one?
		Yeah.
		Never understood fake chicken and now fake beef.
		If you want to eat vegetables, eat fucking vegetables.
		Don't do that.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		Or eat meat.
		They're not nutritional equivalent.
		The carbon footprint of producing these things is massive.
		We don't even know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Here it is.
		Rat feeding studies suggest the impossible burger may not be safe to eat.
		Yeah.
		Of course it's fucking impossible.
		So...
		Soy, say that word?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Where is it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A protein, a plant-based Impossible Burger contains a protein called soy...
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Leg hemoglobin?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Leg hemoglobin, derived from genetically modified yeast.
		The company recently added another GMO ingredient, soy protein from genetically modified soybeans.
		Tests conducted by Moms Across America found the Impossible Burger tests positive for residues of glyphosate.
unidentified		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Shocker!
		The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute laboratories were 11 times higher than the non-GMO project verified Beyond Burger.
		In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration denied the product GRAS status, which is generally recognized as safe.
		But in 2017, it issued a no-questions letter not assuring safety but protecting the FDA from liability if adverse effects are found.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fuck off.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		But you see how it works is that, like, for this to be good for you, beef has to be bad for you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Regular milk, real milk has to be bad for you.
		They have to create this divide, essentially.
		For sunblock to be good for you, the sun has to be bad for you.
		And it's a big problem.
		It's why people are so sick.
		It's why people are so sick.
		That's the thing.
		The problem with following the science is that the science follows the money.
unidentified		Yes.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		It's a massive scam.
		And that's why I think like, yeah, you can show me all the data you want, but like the longer a food or product has been around, I think the safer we can assume that it is and the less time it's been around, right?
		I think the greater scrutiny, I'm not saying that they're all bad, right?
		Like if I need medical assistance, I'm going to a hospital, right?
		If I'm in like crazy pain for whatever reason- You're not going to go to a witch doctor?
		I'm not going to go to a witch doctor, no.
		So I'm not anti-medicine or anything like that.
		If I had that blockbuster drug or whatever to give my mom, I would have given to her in a heartbeat.
		But it's just like these kinds of conditions take years if not decades to manifest, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what's important to note.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like you're not dealing with something that's going to show an adverse effect instantaneously.
		You're going to deal with an accumulative effect over time that's going to be detrimental to people that take this thing that has been approved because of money, not because it's effective or generally beneficial to your health.
		But because a bunch of people have been paid off.
		And there's so much of that.
		There's so much of that where these people that give their opinions on these things have been bought and paid for.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's why it's so important to have people like you out there.
		And I'm very happy that you're doing what you're doing.
		And I'm very happy that you get that message out there so people understand.
		Like, there's a lot of factors involved in what's recommended and what people consume and that stupid food compass.
		All this nonsense.
		It's like there's so much of that that is absolutely provably not beneficial to your health.
		These things are being recommended, and it's nuts.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		100%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So thank you, Max.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Matt.
		You're a very important person.
		I think your podcast is great.
		Your videos that you put out are great.
		And I think it's so nice how well-informed you are and reasonable in the way you distribute the information.
		It's excellent.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		That means a lot coming from you.
		As I said, walking in here, there's nobody that's more the man than you.
		I love the courage that you exude on every topic, and I've been such a big fan of yours.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm a big fan of yours, too.
		So I'm glad we did this, and let's do it again.
		Oh, tell everybody one more time the name of your podcast, your Instagram, all that jazz.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so my podcast is called The Genius Life, available on all podcast platforms.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		My Instagram is at MaxLugavere, M-A-X-L-U-G-A-V-E-R-E. And then check out the trailer to Little Empty Boxes, which is the first ever dementia prevention documentary, which I hope to have out soon at littleemptyboxes.com.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how do you...
		The Genius Life...
		You have a book, too?
		What is the book?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, oh my god, I forgot.
		I'm not like money, whatever, selling products.
		It's not my thing.
		I'm like just really passionate about, you know, helping like educate people.
		But yeah, I've written three books.
		The first book was called Genius Foods.
		And it really is a nutritional care manual for the human brain.
		So anybody...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Genius Foods?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Genius Foods.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you do an audio of that as well?
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		I think I bought it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hold on a second.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Genius Foods is being used around the world.
		Clinicians will use it to recommend to their patients.
		You'll get PhD-level knowledge when you read Genius Foods.
		If you're at risk for dementia, or if you have a loved one, or if you just want to know how to better fuel the brain, because we also talk about this new field, which is being called nutritional psychiatry, so how to get your brain to work better in the here and now.
		It really is everything you need to know about food and the brain.
		The second book...
		It was called The Genius Life.
		And in that, I do a deep dive in terms of endocrine disruptors and, you know, nature immersion, all this sort of more lifestyle stuff.
		And then my third book just came out.
		It was called Genius Kitchen.
		And it's a two-in-one sort of like wellness guide and cookbook.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I just bought it now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought I'd bought it, but I bought it now.
max lugavere ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
unidentified		All right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Max, you're the fucking man.
		Thank you very much.
		Appreciate you very much.

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