- It was super frustrating.
I went with my mom to the
most storied cathedrals
to Western medicine,
and in every instance I experienced
what I've come to call diagnose and adios.
And I have a lot of respect for medicine,
in fact when I started college
I wanted to be a doctor.
I was premed for the first few years.
But truly in none of those doctor offices
was diet or lifestyle
ever really brought up.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dave Rubin,
and this is the "Rubin Report."
As always guys click that
little subscribe button
on YouTube so you might,
just might see our videos.
Now, joining me today is a New York Times
Best Selling of "Genius Food,"
and the new book "The Genius Life,"
Max Lugavere, welcome back
to "The Rubin Report."
- So good to be here,
thank you for having me.
- New York Times Best Selling author.
- Yeah.
- Were you a New York Times
Best Selling Author last time?
- I was not, no.
- Yeah, you were about to become.
- About to become.
I didn't know it at the time.
I had no idea how well "Genius Foods"
would ultimately do,
but I'm super grateful, humble
that it's reached big audiences.
Now published in eight
languages around the world.
It's super cool.
I was in Columbia, I was in Bogota.
And I had like a line
of Spanish-speaking fans lined
up to get their books signed.
And we could barely communicate,
but it was so gratifying to see that.
- How does it change one's life
to become a New York
Times Best Selling Author?
- You know I think it's--
- I mean does it really
level up the amount
of stuff that you suddenly get
'cause people are like
oh this guy actually does
know what he's talking about,
it's not just a book about--
- Yeah, it's a credential.
And I'm very, I never misrepresent myself.
I mean I'm a, I write about health
and science but I do it not from,
not with having a background in academia
or medicine, I'm just
passionately curious,
and it's a topic that I think
is the most important topic there is.
But the fact that the
book continues to be,
it wasn't just sort of a,
there's this metaphor in book sales,
when you launch a book it's like throwing,
you could be throwing
either a feather or a brick.
And a feather is what you want to happen
because a feather it goes up
and then it kind of floats.
The brick just ends up coming right down.
And the fact that "Genius Foods"
has kind of just stayed up,
and it continues to sell well,
to me is a testament to the quality
of the work really, ultimately.
As a writer that's the best form
of flattery that you can get,
that your writing is embraced
and it continues to do well.
So yeah, I'm super thrilled.
It's given me the opportunity to write
this book, "The Genius Life."
I have since launched my own podcast,
which is also called The Genius Life.
So it's allowed me to get to do
what I love to do full time.
And, as you know, it's a great thing
to be, to work for yourself
and to be driven on your own steam.
- Yeah, it's a pretty sweet thing.
And you're building a studio
in your apartment,
which I know a little
something about that.
So we could do a separate show on that.
But for people that didn't see
our first interview,
we'll link too it in this
so they can jump back.
But one of the things I find
most interesting about you,
and you and I now go back
like six, seven years,
so before you wrote "Genius Foods."
Your story on how you came to kind
of care about this stuff is,
well it's deeply personal,
but it's also pretty fascinating actually.
Could you do a quick recap on that?
- Absolutely, yeah.
I started as a journalist.
I was a generalist working
for Al Gore's Current TV,
which is not a, my role there was not as a
flag bearer of his political ideas
and environmental ideas.
I got the job right out of college,
and I got to cover stories
that were important to me.
And they ranged from health
to technology to politics occasionally.
But when I left that job after six years
I started spending more and more time
in New York City, which is where I'm from,
around my mother, and
I'm first born child,
very close to my mom.
She started, at the age of 58,
to display the earliest
symptoms of dementia.
And she had a very strange
confluence of symptoms.
She had symptoms that were more indicative
of a memory disorder,
and then she had movement symptoms,
which would indicate a
more Parkinsonian complex
of Parkinson's disease.
And it was something that
was traumatic to witness.
When we got the initial diagnosis--
- Were you literally the first person
that noticed anything,
or was she noticing that
something was going on?
- She started to complain of
brain fog, memory problems,
but we didn't have the
vernacular in my family,
we had no prior family history
of any kind of neurodegenerative disease.
And interstitialis, my mom's mom,
my maternal grandmother was,
she lived to 96,
and she was cognitively
sharp until the end.
So she was, my grandmother
was not demented.
So the idea that my
grandma's daughter, my mom,
could somehow be succumbing
to this condition
that I think most people assume
to be an old person's disease,
just didn't compute,
didn't make any sense.
And so when my mom was
initially prescribed
the drugs for Alzheimer's disease
and Parkinson's disease,
that was the first time
in my life I had ever had a panic attack.
You know I'm a pretty chill guy,
but it was, I was alone in the hotel room
in Cleveland, Ohio googling
the drug prescriptions,
which I think anybody
would do in that position.
And the severity of the
situation really dawned on me
at that moment.
And from that point on I
decided to dedicate all
of my free time to investigating
why this would happen to my mom,
would could be done to help her,
what could be done to prevent
it from happening to myself.
And that began about eight years ago.
And that was a struggle, obviously,
watching my mom descend
and become more and more handicapped
by the disease.
And that's what motivated
me to write "Genius Foods,"
and to do all the work that I put out.
And what occurred after
"Genius Foods" came out
was equally surprising
and equally heartbreaking.
I was in the middle of writing this book
when my mom turned yellow.
And you could, I mean
usually if you turn yellow
it's either gonna be jaundice,
or you've eaten too much beta-carotene,
you've eaten too many carrots.
But what happens with jaundice,
the whites of your eyes
actually become yellow,
that's kind of what distinguishes it
from eating too many sweet potatoes.
And my family rushed her
to the emergency room,
they did an MRI of her abdomen,
and what they discovered
was not a gallstone,
which is typically what,
it'll cause a blockage in the bile duct,
cause bilirubin, which is a pigment
to back up into your blood.
What they found was much worse,
it was a tumor on the
head of her pancreas.
She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
And 90% of the time when
pancreatic cancer is diagnosed
it's already progressed.
And it was three months and she was,
it was the most, it was
barbaric and brutal,
and that's what she
ultimately passed from.
But the fact that my mom had these two
freak health conditions, two
of the most feared conditions
known to humanity, it
motivates me everyday
to learn more, to teach more,
and to just stay open and curious,
and always be willing to
challenge my assumptions
and my beliefs about what it means
to be healthy in the 21st Century.
- Yeah, well that's why I
think your story is so cool.
Just like you're a good guy,
but also even when I
follow you on Instagram
and you do a lot of don't eat this,
eat this kind of stuff.
It's very human, you're not beating people
over the head with all this.
And I wanna get to some
of those techniques
and little tricks that you use
to make things a little bit healthier.
But when your mom got diagnosed,
and then subsequently when you did all
of the things that you tried to do
over the course of that time,
was anyone else talking about food?
Or was it all just like
this is what you take,
this is what you take,
we'll up it here, if
this happens you do this.
Was there any like eat more avocado?
- No, it was super frustrating.
I went with my mom to the
most storied cathedrals
to Western medicine and in every instance
I experienced what I've come to call
diagnose and adios.
And I have a lot of respect for medicine,
in fact when I started college
I wanted to be a doctor,
I was premed for the first few years.
But truly in none of those doctors offices
was diet or lifestyle
ever really brought up.
And the contrast between
what I was experiencing
in the clinicians offices with my mom,
and what I started to discover
in the medical literature,
there was just this big valley in between
the dearth of information
and the despair that I was
seeing there with my mom,
and the optimism that I was reading about
in the medical literature.
And ultimately what I did was
I realized that I had media credentials,
and I started to reach out to scientists
and researchers who were the authors
of the papers that I was reading.
And they echoed that
sentiment of optimism.
And yet at the point of care with my mom
what I experienced was
anything but optimistic.
So I really had to take it upon myself.
And I think when you're a patient,
my mom was scared, she was confused.
She didn't have a
framework for understanding
health or science or anything like that.
I did because I had a,
I had had a lifelong
passion for the topic.
But really I think there are a lot
of people in her shoes that are met
with the same kind of, I
don't know, hopelessness.
And yeah, you're right,
I mean what every doctor
would ultimately do
would titrate up the dose
of a medication she was already on,
throw something new into the mix,
and by the time my mom passed
she was on 10 different pharmaceuticals.
I'm not even being hyperbolic.
And there's just no way
a physician can have
any idea how each of those pills
are interacting with one another
in a body that's growing
increasingly frail and sick.
And in fact one of the medications
that my mom was prescribed
was actually a drug that's contraindicated
for people with cognitive
decline, with dementia.
It's a drug, it was a drug in a category
of drugs called anticholinergics,
which effect the way the neurotransmitter
acetylcholine operates,
which is involved in learning and memory.
And in fact when you have dementia,
usually they'll prescribe a drug
to boost levels of acetylcholine,
and she was on this drug
that basically was negatively effecting
the way that that drug works.
And so, yeah, it was a big problems.
There was in-fighting in my family.
None of the doctors ever,
I think, de-prescribed.
So she was on all these drugs.
- Did you try to bring up to the doctors
oh maybe, I've seen this study,
she should eat this, this,
or we should move this out of her diet?
Or insert this, et. Cetera?
- I tried.
They, doctors tend to be down
on what they're not up on.
I think that's part of the training,
but they are always hyper skeptical
of anything more on the,
on the more wholistic side of things.
And to be clear, you know, I
didn't change my mom's diet
and see a dramatic
improvement in her cognition.
I think that the science
is really pointing
towards prevention as the key way
in which we're gonna move the needle
on this category of diseases.
There is hope coming out
in the medical literature,
really vigorous lifestyle interventions
can, I think, perhaps slow the progression
of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease,
but for dietary change for
anybody is difficult to do,
let alone somebody with dementia.
- So for most of use then that know
that Alzheimer's and dementia,
these numbers seem to be
increasing and increasing,
and your mom, you said 59?
- [Max] She was 58--
- 58 years old--
- [Max] When it first stated.
- That's increasingly young.
So let's talk about some
of those things that you can do
before you're sitting
at the doctor's office
and they're giving you the 10 medications.
- Yeah I mean the first thing
that you need to realize
is that dementia often begins in the brain
decades before the first symptom.
And I saw that nobody
was talking about this.
And that's why I decided to step up.
It didn't, the fact that
I wasn't a medical doctor
to me didn't seem like a barrier to entry
because I genuinely believe
that people should know
how to care for their bodies
and their brains.
And we're just not taught this.
We're fed misinformation
from every conceivable angle,
whether it's the food industry,
the way that they market their foods,
making health claims on their products,
to the way that the media reports
on health studies and research
and things like that.
So I think, I mean what I've learned
is that you really, the
standard American diet
is toxic essentially.
And anything that you can do to run
in the opposite direction of that.
- So what is the standard American diet,
if you're painting that picture,
what does that really look like?
- There are images that you can,
like you can go to Google Images
and you can search for
the average shopping haul
for your typical American family
over the course of a week,
and essentially it's all processed foods.
Ultra-processed foods to be more clear.
Today, 60% of the calories we're consuming
come from what are called
ultra-processed foods,
which are made in factories.
They usually are the
processed permutations
of wheat, corn and rice, maybe some soy.
And they generally are what
food scientists refer to
as being hyper palatable.
So they are extremely calorie dense,
they're not satiating.
In fact, they actually can
make you hungry later on.
- They often put
additives in there, right,
that actually make you want more,
isn't that the Dorito effect or something?
- Well I thin it's the fac that,
I mean these foods are just,
they've become impossibly delicious
when you combine sugar, fat, salt.
These are, I mean each of these flavors
were relatively scarce in antiquity,
and today they're just
abundantly available.
Like sugar would be available to
a hunter/gatherer once per year
when it was summer and the fruit
became ripe.
And even then the fruits
that would be available
to one of our ancestors
would be a fraction
as sweet as they are today.
- Right, the amount of apples
you would have to eat
to get the sugar levels
that you could get in a bag
of Sour Patch Kids or something.
- Yeah, like the ancestral apple
was like a crab apple essentially.
Today we have these cosmic crisp apples
that are amazing, don't get me wrong,
I'm a huge fan of apples,
but they're bred to contain
more starch and sugar
than ever before in history.
And they're also bred,
a lot of our produce now is being bred
to remove these bitter compounds,
which are actually compounds
that produce the greatest health benefit
when we consume them like polyphenols
and flavinoids and things like that.
So sugar, fat we know
is highly delectable,
I mean it sends off our
brain's reward centers.
It's one of the reasons why we put
half and half in our coffee,
it just allows flavors
to linger on the tongue.
And then salt.
You know the word salary
derives from salt.
It was something that was,
it's super important, we
need it for good health.
Sodium is a macro mineral.
It's also one of these nutrients
that's been demonized over
the past couple of decades.
But you combine them all together
and it's basically like the 4th
of July's fireworks in the brain.
And it makes it impossible
to moderate our consumption
of these foods.
And so one of the ideas
that I've put forth
in "The Genius Life," I tried to really
make dietary recommendations
without further harming
people's relationship with food.
I think people today have this
fractured relationship with food.
- Yeah, I always see
when I'm at Trader Joe's
they have guilt free pita chips.
And I'm always like the fact that
the word guilt is on there,
like the idea that you would be buying
a regular pita chip and
feel guilty about it
is kind of crazy.
Putting aside whether you want carbs
or breads or whatever,
but like the way it's all marketed.
Guilt, these are guilt free so you can
walk out of here and not feel guilty.
Like that's not the stuff
you should feel guilty over.
- No, it's ridiculous.
I mean the truth is these foods
are designed to be over consumed
and without telling consumers
how these foods are gonna
effect their behavior,
when they try to moderate
their consumption
of these pita chips or
the pint of ice cream,
and they end up feeling
like moral failures
'cause they just simply can't.
That I think is where the problem lies.
On the other hand,
if you actually are
aware that these foods,
you know they're so easily over consumed,
then it becomes informed consent.
Then you actually know
what you're opting into
and there shouldn't be any guilt about it
you're just making, you're
an adult making a decision,
which you should be able to do.
You should be able to
eat whatever you want.
But the problems is I
think that most people
don't know that these foods
actually drive over consumption.
There's great study that was published,
and I wrote about what
these hyper-palatable,
over-processed foods do to our behavior
in "Genius Foods,"
but since "Genius Foods" came out
there was a great study
that was published.
It actually was funded by
the National Institutes
of Health, and they found that when people
were given all you can eat access
to an ultras-processed diet,
it's called ad libitum feeding,
that people tend to over consume
about 500 additional calories
to reach the point of satiety.
So just eat to a point of fullness,
people tend to over consume
about 500 calories a day.
- And you're more inclined to do that
by eating processed foods.
- With these ultra-processed foods, yeah.
- Because of the way
they're making you feel.
- Bagels, muffins, pizzas, burritos,
chicken dishes,
potato chips, sandwiches,
things like that.
Foods that are primarily
packaged, shelf stable,
devoid of moisture which
actually can be satiating
when food has water in it,
but water is, it makes food spoil.
You have to remove the water
to make a product shelf stable.
So they're not satiating,
they can often induce what's
called biphasic hunger,
so they can make you hungry later on.
And yeah 500 additional calories a day,
that might not seem like a lot,
but stretched out over a week
that's a pound of fat gain.
And then they, so it
was a cross over study,
and when they put these same people,
when they gave them access to foods
that were minimally processed,
again, ad libitum feeding,
they were able to eat
until they were full,
to the same degree of satiety,
they actually under consumed
about 300 calories a day.
So what that's gonna do is
lead to effortless weight loss.
So that's really kind of like the switch
that I think people need to,
people need to be aware of that.
We tend to think that we have full agency
when it comes to our meal
choices, but we don't.
I mean we're, our actions
are the end result
of an inner play between hormones,
neurotransmitters,
which are ultimately
influenced by the types
of food that we're eating.
- Do you think more than anything else
you're always, as someone
that cares about this
and you're trying to get
people to change their habits,
it's really always about fighting
a marketing machine that
is oddly ahead of you.
So like if you just turn on television,
and every commercial you see
for like a breakfast food,
suddenly they try to
make everything healthy,
but it's like an egg
you crack in this thing,
and then it's got all this other stuff
already in there,
and it sort of seems healthy,
you're kind of like oh I'm eating an egg
in the mornuing and it kinda seems right.
And then I'm sure that when
you look at the instructions,
or the ingredients on the back
it's like sodium and everything else.
But you have to fight that constantly
'cause they're marketing
it all as healthy.
- Yeah I mean food marketing,
they put products at eye level,
they market to children.
You know they get those,
they forge those habits early in life.
They become exponentially
more difficult to break.
But yeah I mean I think,
I'm human so I eat processed foods too.
I'm just as guilty as anybody else.
But I think to be aware,
I mean knowledge is power
at the end of the day,
and to be able to act on that knowledge,
I mean that's the most empowering
aspect of all of this because
like health is something that we do
when we're like pushing the shopping cart
through the aisles of the super market
or actually avoiding the aisles,
'cause that's where all
the ultra-processed foods tend to be.
And when we're debating with ourselves
whether or not to get to the gym,
that's really where healthcare happens.
What I experienced with my mom
was sick care
and the relative lack of options
once you actually have one
of these chronic diseases that has set in.
And so at the end of the day
the food industry doesn't have your back.
I mean the food industry is great
in many, it's not--
- It's an industry, like anything else.
- It's an industry.
It's not all bad,
I mean food is safer.
We're exposed to fewer
pathogens than ever before.
Hunger is less of an issue today
than it is in the past
if you're in the developed world.
But a lot of these conditions
that we're seeing
society now struggle with
are lifestyle mediated.
They're mediated by
being overly sedentary,
by basing our diet around
these ultra-processed foods.
- You know it's funny,
I'm noticing now at Whole Foods,
just because we're in the midst
of this odd thing with coronavirus,
that nobody, at least at my Whole Foods,
nobody's touching the grains
that you can do yourself.
- [Max] The drive-in, yeah.
- You know they've got
that wall of grains.
Nobody's even going over there anymore.
Which is I guess good at the moment.
Who knows.
- Yeah, a lot of people are now
using these hand sanitizers.
If you go on Amazon the markup
has just shot up exponentially.
But something that I think few people
appreciate is that when
you use a hand sanitizer
before you go shopping
and then you touch the
store register receipt,
the store register receipts are actually
coated with bisphenol A,
which is a pretty potential
endocrine disruptor,
that hand sanitizer, when
you use it just before
or even just after you
touch these receipts,
it actually dramatically,
at least in order
of magnitude increases
the permeability of your
skin to these components.
So you wanna be, I don't know--
- That's incredible.
They're literally selling hand
sanitizer at the register,
people are buying it right then and there.
You put it on, you grab the receipt
and now, ugh.
- Yeah, it's not good.
That's actually a big topic
that I cover in the new book
is endocrine disruption
and enviornment toxins
without trying to fear monger,
but just to kind of alert people
and to get people to think
a little bit more critically
about the industrial chemicals to which
they are routinely exposed.
- All right so before we go fully there,
I wanna tell you what my basic diet is
on a day like today,
where I told you right before we sat--
- I feel like we did this last time.
- We did do this last time,
and I think I was doing pretty good.
But on a day like today,
I'm having, I have a crazy day.
I told you I have two shoots,
then I have three other shows
and we're doing a live stream.
And I'm gonna be just crazed all day long.
So this morning, all
I've had so far today,
it's about 10:00 right now.
I had a cup of coffee.
I grind the beans myself, do that.
I put a scoop of collagen protein in there
and a half teaspoon of
Lion's Mane mushroom.
- [Max] Nice.
- Which is good for
the brain, as they say.
I've had that, one cup,
and I've had about 3/4
of a cup of oatmeal with
a little almond milk
and a tiny bit of sugar free syrup.
And that's gonna get me to lunch.
How am I doing in the morning?
- It sounds pretty good.
Wait, what was the protein?
- It's collagen protein, so it's like
maybe 18 grams of protein in a scoop,
something like that.
- Collagen is not a--
- Yeah, talk to me about collagen.
This is LA, everybody's
obsessed with collagen.
You can't go anywhere without it.
- Well I'm actually a fan of collagen.
Collagen's one of the few,
especially today where we tend to eat,
for the omnivores in the audience,
we tend to eat mostly muscle meat,
which is concentrated in an amino acid
called methionine.
It's an essential amino acid,
but there is thinking that by consuming
too much methionine without
adequate glycine,
which is an amino acid that is found
predominately in collagenous tissue
and also in collagen protein.
It's about 1/3,
1/3 of collagen protein is glycine.
That might be to our determent,
especially for an omnivore
I think supplementing with collagen
protein is actually a pretty good idea.
- So coffee with a little collage protein
and some of the mushroom powder,
I'm doing okay in the morning?
- Yeah, I'm a fan of Lion's Mane as well.
I use Lion's Mane powder, I think it's,
the studies on Lion's Mane,
it can potentially boost
nerve growth factor.
And I've seen, there was a
clinical trial performed in Japan
where it's been used to,
what they observed was a
boost in cognitive function
in patients with mild
cognitive impairment.
So you know I'm a fan of these
"medicinal mushrooms."
There's not a ton of research on them,
but--
- And then oatmeal,
little sugar free syrup,
I'm doing okay?
- Yeah, oatmeal's okay.
I mean it's a little,
for me it's a little high glycemic
to have first thing in the morning.
But oatmeal, it's a great source
of soluble fiber, it's satiating.
You've got these beta-glucans in it,
which are immunomodulatory.
So yeah I think oatmeal is,
steel cut is generally the best,
it's gonna have the lowest--
- They're steel cut,
you can confirm when you walk out of here.
Okay so then I'll have two shows,
and then I'm gonna have lunch.
I think they placed the order already.
We're doing like sweet greens
or tender greens.
Getting like a Chipotle chicken salad.
Romaine, there's probably
a little cheese in there.
- Yeah, I'm a big fan of the,
I eat what I call a big
fatty salad every day.
I feel like I might have talked about this
the last time I was here,
but yeah researchers at Rush University,
actually one of the,
the lead author in a lot
of the studies that I use,
that I cite in my books and my talks,
Martha Clare Morris, she just passed away
of esophageal cancer,
she is the originator of the mind diet.
And she also has done a lot
of the epidemiology surrounding
risk factors for cognitive decline.
And what she found,
what her team found is that
the consumption of a big salad
every day, about a cup and a third
of dark, leafy greens,
is associated with brains
that perform up to 11 years younger.
So yeah, I mean there's probably
a strong, healthy user bias there too.
People who eat more
greens, more whole grains,
things like that tend to
be more health conscious.
But you know we know that dark,
leafy greens are good for us.
They contain carotinoids
which are really
beneficial for eye health,
for brain health.
- Also you can eat a lot
of spinach really quick.
You can put a whole handful of it,
and once it cooks down
it's like three bites
and you're good.
- Yeah.
Spinach, I'm a fan of dark, leafy greens.
I mean we live in this
weird contentious time
in nutrition where we've got
these different factions,
like breaking off.
We've got the vegans,
we've got the carnivores,
and so, I actually have a
pretty balanced message I think.
I'm a strong advocate of consumption
of animal foods, grass-fed
beef, fatty fish,
things like that.
But then also yeah dark leafy greens,
kale, spinach, arugula.
- So speaking of the carnivores,
you know I was on tour
with Jordan Peterson
and he became famous,
or infamous for partaking
in the carnivore diet,
which I think his daughter Mikayla
has now called the lion diet.
- [Max] The lion diet.
- Which is quite literally only beef.
And I was on tour with this guy.
He ate rib eyes for breakfast.
He'd often have two rib eyes for lunch,
and sometimes a whole tomahawk at night,
or maybe two more rib eyes, little salt.
He had some club soda, water, that's it.
People kept asking me, this can't be true.
And I was like if he's
secreting eating cookies
in his hotel room I don't know about it,
but from what I know he was keeping to it.
And I did see throughout the year
that we were together on the road
that he actually, his skin
started looking better.
He said it fixed some stuff
related to oral hygiene.
And that I thought his hair looked
even a little thicker or something.
Have you studied this at all?
Do you sense an imbalance there?
Not about him specifically,
but just generally when people do these,
what are seemingly sort
of extreme versions
that you were talking about?
- Yeah, well I think meat is
very nutrient dense.
There's certain, I think
people in the carnivore
community, you know there's some debate
about whether or not they're getting
adequate amounts of vitamin C,
or even optimal amounts of vitamin C,
which is found predominately in,
you can get it in,
you can get small amounts of vitamin C
in fresh liver, raw fresh liver,
but you gotta eat raw
fresh liver to get it
if you're a carnivore.
- By the way, I should mention
that in the midst of all this
he had a physical for
some insurance stuff,
and all his numbers, he told me,
came back fine.
- No, I think that meat is very healthy.
I think that there's a lot of confusion
about the value of meat
in a healthful diet,
in an environmentally friendly diet,
or way of eating I should say.
But yeah, no, I'm a big advocate.
The people that I see tend to do best
on a carnivore diet,
'cause it's a very
extreme elimination diet,
is essentially what it is.
And it's also a very,
it's very hard to over consume meat
because protein is the most
satiating macronutrient.
It's gonna be more satiating than fat,
it's gonna be more satiating than carbs.
So it's very difficult to overeat meat.
So a lot of people, what you'll see
is they're gonna end up losing weight.
And when you lose weight,
a lot of biomarkers that we associate
with ill health tend to get fixed.
You know if you have high blood pressure
it's gonna go down when you lose weight.
Inflammatory markers and things like that.
So just losing weight is gonna help you
if you are overweight.
But also people with
inflammatory conditions<
with autoimmune conditions,
what I've observed and in my conversations
with people who are advocates
of the carnivore diet,
and also medical doctors who are advocates
of the carnivore diet,
that you're removing
problematic compounds,
plant-based compounds that can be
allergenic for some people,
that can induce a form
of molecular mimicry,
which can aggravate an
already confused immune system
and cause an autoimmune
response in some people.
So that being said,
do I think that people need to,
it's a very difficult diet to adhere to,
and if I were suffering from some kind
of autoimmune condition I
would probably give it a shot,
but then I would try to reintegrate,
I mean elimination diets
are not meant to be adhered to long term.
You're supposed to cut everything out
and then reintegrate one
by one these different
food groups so you can
see what the actual source
of problems is.
So yeah I don't know,
I mean I've never tried it personally.
- Yeah, can we talk about
the anti-inflammatory thing
for a little bit?
So I don't remember
last time I had you on,
which I think maybe is like
a year and a half ago or so.
I don't even know if I had
talked about it publicly yet.
But a couple years back,
about five years ago,
I was getting my hair cut,
and my girl, she told me that
I was missing some chunks of hair.
And then it started spreading
basically all over my head.
And at one point I had
lost literally like 40%
of my hair and I was doing like,
have I told you about this,
even privately?
- I think you mentioned it.
- I don't even remember if it
was private or on the show.
But anyway I was doing
crazy spray on stuff
to be on camera,
and all this other stuff.
And I was doing steroids,
and then I went on some
experimental stuff.
And I had a really
horrible reaction to that.
The one thing that started
turning it around for me
was when I started doing
more of a Paleo diet,
which I'm still doing,
not fully, I'm doing more
of a slow carb thing,
but really just to do the
anti-inflammatory thing.
And I've seen a change,
I mean I've lost weight,
I'm feeling better.
Even little things,
old basketball injuries
that don't hurt as much.
Can you just talk about
the inflammatory situation?
Why you don't wanna be
inflamed all the time.
- I liken chronic low-grade inflammation
to a forest fire occurring in the body.
And I mean focus, the brain,
sits directly downwind of
that fire unfortunately.
And inflammation is not a bad thing,
it's a life saving function
of our immune system.
And it's really designed
by nature to spot clean,
cuts, wounds, scrapes, bruises,
and you can feel it
if you've ever sprained an ankle.
The area gets, you know it gets hot,
it starts swelling.
It will engorge with blood.
And the same thing happens when you,
you know, if you have an
infection in your body,
you become inflamed.
And the problem today I think is that
our immune systems are responding
not to what they would
have for our ancestors,
but they're responding more to our diets
and our lifestyles.
- Meaning in the old days it would respond
'cause you were wounded.
- 'cause you were wounded.
- 'Cause you stepped on something
or you got bit by an animal,
or something like that.
- Yeah.
It was the--
- Now it's just the
constant intake of crap.
- Yeah, it's essentially there
as a defense mechanism,
but unfortunately today
it's sort of, it's over
active as a response to
pro-inflammatory diets,
being overly sedentary, chronic stress.
Chronic stress is inflammatory.
So I mean there's this whole milieu
that our immune systems
now have to contend with.
And it's a problem because inflammation,
it's not like a free ride.
There's collateral damage
that occurs when the body essentially
is putting out a fire essentially.
And when that's occurring
all over the body
it creates this collateral damage.
It can damage brain tissue.
It could negatively
effect your immune system,
leave you prone to infection.
So I think for a lot of people,
I mean we're seeing epidemic rates
of obesity and metabolic syndrome.
Today about 12% of people are
in what researchers would call
good metabolic health.
And so--
- Man that is a depressingly low number.
- Super depressing, yeah.
So yeah today, I mean a lot
of people are struggling
with chronic low-grade inflammation,
and that really is the
cornerstone it seems
to a lot of these kinds of lifestyle
mediating conditions that
we're seeing skyrocket.
And inflammation, it can,
the role that it plays in
the onset of these conditions
is still being explored,
but it can exacerbate problems.
I mean the role that inflammation plays
in mental health and behavior,
and risk for neurodegenerative disease
is really kind of like my focus.
But inflammation can also damage your DNA,
which is at the root cause of cancer,
maybe in aging itself.
But when an animal's inflamed,
animals display what are
called sickness behaviors.
They retract from the herd,
they lose interest in grooming
and food and sex.
So I mean inflammation,
which is a biochemical
process in the body,
can actually have an effect
on the way that we think
and the way that we feel.
- Yeah, it's so interesting because
you know we just lost
our 16-year-od dog, Emma,
and in the last year
she had bladder cancer.
And they told use two
weeks to five months.
And really all we did was change her diet.
We changed her diet from the
usual processed dog food,
you know she was eating
something pretty decent,
but it was dog food,
and we changed it into human food.
She was eating organic chicken
and sweet potato mostly.
And then at the end she
was eating rib eyes.
She had a great last week.
- I saw that.
- Yeah, the girl was doing all right.
But that was further evidence,
I know it's a dog, not a human,
of just what a diet change will do.
Because I had the doctor who literally
wanted us to do chemo on her
and go in for surgeries and all that
for a 15-year-old dog at the time.
And I was just like we're not doing that.
And what we did was just a diet change.
And not only, I mean our
vet started telling us
well not only because
you've changed her diet
and gotten her off some of those foods,
it's not just in and of itself good,
but now she's lost some weight
so her arthritis is better
and a series of other things.
So it's like there are
just these obvious things
that I guess we just don't think about.
- Yeah, I mean the role that food plays
in helping us to prevent these kinds
of conditions I think is profound.
I don't think that food
can cure everything,
it certainly didn't cure my mom.
But that being said, neither
did Western medicine.
You know like my mom was
not really offered anything
that actually helped her,
either for her dementia or for her cancer.
But I think that's why I'm so passionate
about this idea of prevention
and doing what you can
while you're healthy.
One of my favorite
quotes, John F. Kennedy,
the time to fix the roof is
when the sun is shinning.
And dementia, Alzheimer's disease,
even Parkinson's disease,
by the time you show
your first symptom of Parkinson's disease,
half of the dopaminergic neurons involved
in movement and the region of the brain
associated with the
condition are already dead.
So cancer, heart disease, none
of these conditions develop over night.
- So I wanna come back to that.
So let's pin that for just a sec.
Let's get through my daily diet
so we can get that out of the way.
So then I have a bunch
of shows this afternoon,
then tonight we have
the whole crew is here
working late so I think we're bringing in
from this Israeli Mediterranean place,
do some Shawarma, some
salads, blah, blah, blah.
I know you're good with that.
Talk to me about the pita and the fries.
- [Max] The pita and the fries.
- I'm gonna try to avoid it.
I usually try to avoid it.
- Yeah, I think--
- So I know you're happy
if I just do the chicken
and the salads and all
that stuff, we're good.
- French fries are the, it's
the number one vegetable.
Potatoes are the number
one vegetable consumed
in this nation.
And usually they're in
the form of french fries
and potato chips.
I'm not a, I mean here, I'll
eat them occasionally as well,
but it's very hard for me to moderate
my consumption of french fries.
- You think it's
particularly hard for you now
because it's also like
you're doing something
so counter to everything
else you believe in?
It's like ah I'm doing it.
- And so I just end up binging.
- So you just like go crazy, yeah.
- No, I've always struggled,
and I realized from a very young age
that the way for me to control
my health and to like moderate
my consumption of those foods
is to not try them.
Because I think once,
once I open up those flood gates,
they're like trigger foods.
They're triggers.
We live in a world where
everybody's being triggered.
I think a lot of people
are triggered by foods
and they end up over consuming them.
So once, if I'm able to not break the seal
on those foods it becomes very,
it's just so much more effortless
for me to manage my health.
If I were to give in to every craving,
I feel Like I would, I mean I don't know,
but I would probably--
- Well you'd definitely be
in a different kind of work,
I know that much.
- Yeah for sure.
But yeah french fries.
I mean potatoes can be,
you know by themselves can be
a nutrient dense food.
But the minute you throw them in the oil
and you throw salt on them,
I mean the problem,
another major problem is that fried foods,
usually when you get fried
foods in a restaurant
they're made, they're being fried in oil
that's just been sitting out all day.
And these oils are toxic.
I mean the production process alone
creates a small, but meaningful
amount of trans fats,
which are, there's no safe level
of manmade trans fat consumption.
They're, you know they
inflame your arteries,
they're associated with increased risk
for Alzheimer's disease,
for worse brain function
even if you're young and healthy,
heart disease, cancer, things like that.
They're aggressively pro-inflammatory.
And then the heating
and the, just the constant heating
and reheating of these oils
creates other dangerous compounds
like aldehydes, which we know are damaging
to our brain cells.
So I mean if you can just cut out
fried foods or at least
dramatically minimize your consumption
of these foods, super,
super important stuff.
- So speaking of oils,
I know I asked you this last time,
but it's a year and a half, things change.
You're cooking with oil,
what oil you going to?
What is the go to oil?
Everyone talks about smoke point
and when it becomes acidic
and all this other stuff.
- I think, I mean it's a myth
that you can't cook with
extra virgin olive oil.
Generally you wanna use it
for low to medium temperatures.
For higher heat cooking I'll use
avocado oil or even a more saturated fat
like butter or ghee,
'cause the more saturated a fat is
the more, the more
stability it's gonna have
at higher temperatures.
And what you really don't
wanna do is damage the oil,
'cause damaged oil damages you.
And that's one of the problems
with eating fired foods
and eating processed foods
that are made with these oils.
And even buying the oils
and having them sit in a plastic tub
in your warm kitchen for months on end.
It damages the oils,
and these cooking oils
that we've been told
for decades are good for us,
like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil,
they're the most
damage-prone of these oils.
- So you're cooking a steak,
you're searing a steak,
you're doing it in butter?
- Yeah.
- Butter or ghee.
- Butter or ghee, yeah, generally.
- Interesting.
So my diet sounds pretty--
- It sounds pretty good.
- Pretty decent.
- But the thing is--
- Not to say I don't deviate from that.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause maybe once every two weeks
I'll have some pizza--
- That's great.
- And I'll do In and Out every and again,
although I'm trying to
do the lettuce wraps
instead of the--
- That's cool, yeah.
Here's the thing.
I mean I think, I don't actually like
to use the term cheat meal.
I think the way that
I've seen it described
is a way more empowering
and it's a way healthier
way to look at these,
when you choose to have the pizza,
which we all know
pizza's delicious, right?
If we consider them planned indulgences,
where you know that you're
gonna loosen the belt
and you're just gonna go all in,
I think that offer tremendous value
for our psyches,
and it's part of the human experience,
being able to indulge when we choose to.
And that can also help us adhere
to whatever diet plan we choose to be on.
'Cause the number one predictor
of success is adherence to a diet.
I mean you can go to a,
as the author of health books,
I'll tell you, you can go to a book store
and you can pick up any
health book off the shelf,
and as long as you adhere to it
it's probably gonna do good
things for your health.
You just have to find the one
that's gonna be the most
sustainable for you.
- Yeah.
Have you ever done any research
or I'm sure there's research on this,
on just geographically,
looking at the United States alone,
how people eat so differently
depending on where they are.
So when I go back to New York,
where you're from New York CIty
and most of my life was
spent in New York CIty,
it's so focused on pizza and bagels there
that when I go I'm always like
yeah I'll have one bagel,
I'll have one slice of pizza.
But then you do it once,
and it's sort of what
you're talking about,
you start losing control
'cause it's everywhere all the time,
versus out here in California,
you often can't even find a piece
of bread or they'll shoot you I think.
I think they just passed a law
they're allowed to shoot you
if they see you eating
bread on the street.
(laughing)
But just geographically,
and how middle America obviously
is so different from
that and everything else.
- Yeah, I mean food
deserts actually exist.
Access, I think, is still an issue
for many people.
And I mean the mere,
food proximity is a predictor
to our consumption of that food.
I mean just being close to food
and having food always available
is a major reason why I think
so many people are overweight these days.
I mean I was reading coverage
of a study that came out
in the New York Times
that estimated that by the year 2030
one in two adults in the U.S.
are gonna be obese.
Not just overweight, but obese.
And one in four are
gonna be severely obese.
- Man we're going to Wally.
Remember the Disney--
- Of course.
- We're going there.
- We are.
We totally are.
And--
- Maybe half Wally, half idiocrasy.
That's pretty much where we're going.
- Exactly.
It's so unfortunate.
But yeah I think the proximity
of just the ever present proximity
that we have to these
ultra-processed foods
just begging us,
like every moment of the day
to not just eat but overeat.
I think it's a big problem.
- All right, so if we wanna live
the genius life,
we've obviously spent most
of this time talking about food,
but one of the other things
you talk about in this book
is something that I care a lot about,
I'm writing about and I
talk about constantly,
sort of the digital version
of why you might need a detox every
now and again,
Or how to control the
amount of information
we're slammed with, or their estimate,
which I always find for people
in our positions is particularly odd
thing to talk about because
we're on YouTube,
we're doing podcasts.
You have to be on Instagram
to promote your stuff.
You're on Twitter, blah, blah, blah.
And yet that actually
can effect your health
and well being and everything else.
- Yeah in a big way.
And I really value what you do,
every August you take off?
- Yeah, every August.
- Yeah, it's awesome.
- No nothing.
- No nothing.
- No news, no,
you know how hard it is
to just avoid news?
I mean forget phone,
I literally lock my phone in a safe,
but just to avoid,
'cause everywhere you go
CNN is on everywhere, airports,
you go to a burger joint.
You go to the gym.
I actually, most of the month
I didn't even go to the gym
because TVs are on everywhere.
Or I did and I'd wear a really low hat
and have to kind
of just stare down the entire time.
But we're slammed with
information constantly,
that's the point.
- Yeah it is.
And it's overwhelming.
And it's junk food
information, most of it.
- Right.
It's not information, information.
- Yeah well the same way that junk food
is what's responsible
for our ever growing waist lines,
and the fact that only
88% of us are in good metabolic health
because it's this chronic
omnipresent exposure to junk food.
We are getting information
that is essentially just junk food.
And obviously there are
exceptions to the rule,
people like you, what I try to do,
put out good quality
information for people.
But yeah I think social media is a source
of malaise for many people.
And we're seeing record rates
of anxiety, depression.
I mean in 2018 alone sales of books
related to how to improve symptoms
of anxiety shot up by 25%
at one major retailer alone.
So it's a big topic for people.
And I think social media,
one researcher in a study
that I cite in the book
put it so eloquently.
The problem with our devices
is that they reorient
the gravitational pull.
They have a really strong gravitational
pull of our attention.
So when they're around
it's like it's hard to focus on
anything put the phone
or the social media feed,
or what have you.
And it stresses us out
when we're not checking our phones,
but then unlike a drug of abuse,
so like when you are in withdrawal
for a given compound there
is a reduction in stress
once you actually get the compound,
whatever that drug happens to be.
- Ah this is interesting,
I see where you're going.
- The difference with our smart phones
is that actually it increases the stress.
So we're stressed out
when we're not checking our phones,
and then when we do check our phones
it adds even more stress
into the equation.
And so it's a bit of a leap
to connect social media
and smart phone use with the
chronic disease epidemic,
but we know that chronic
stress is not good for us,
it's an indiscriminate killer,
it effects digestion in many ways,
in negative ways.
It effects our immune system negatively.
- Have they done many studies,
I know there have been some
just about attention spans
and ability to think,
which sort of relates everything
back to dementia
and Alzheimer's and everything else
because I notice now,
one of the real things that I notice
is people never have just time to sit
and kind of do nothing.
You never, you know it's
like remember the old days
when we were in high school,
and it's like if you
were meeting your friend
on the corner you were like all right
I'll be there at 3:30.
And if 3:30 rolled around he wasn't there,
you just had to stand there.
You would stand and wait.
Where now we have no kind
of just stand and wait time
or sit in a waiting room.
A waiting room, you're supposed to wait
in a waiting room,
but instead you're working.
We're all guilty of this, right?
So I'm no better than anyone.
But like that we don't give our brains
just a rest really.
Maybe when we're sleeping,
but often the last thing
we're doing at night is this,
and the first thing we're
doing in the morning is this.
I don't bring my phone
in the bedroom anymore,
at least most of the time.
And that I found to be
really positive actually.
- Yeah, I mean if you think about it,
just as you were saying that,
it made me realize that contemplation
and introspection have become
like (mumbles).
They've become these obsolete artifacts
of time passed.
- What?
'Cause it's almost like if you saw someone
just standing on a corner
you'd be like he's up to no
good, you know what I mean?
Why would you just be
standing on a corner?
What are you just standing there?
You can't be doing nothing.
- Yeah, it's a problem.
I'm definitely, I use social media a lot,
but even, I could see there are times
even when my own mental health,
when I need to put the phone away
and take a break.
I get commenters,
and a lot of it,
I mean often the comments that I get
on my social media feeds are positive,
but then you'll get some commenters
that are really negative.
Somebody the other day
called me a literal cancer.
A literal cancer.
Not just a metaphorical cancer,
like a literal--
- That's even a step up from Nazi,
so geez.
(laughing)
- So yeah it could be hard to take.
But I think you have
to develop a thick skin
and building in to our schedule
reprieves from technology.
For me, when I go to the gym
I'll lock my phone
occasionally in the locker,
or I'll do cardio and it's just,
cardio is one of those things
where you can listen to your music,
but it becomes a lot more difficult
to use your phone.
- You wanna join me for
off the grid August?
- I'm down.
- Yeah, you're down?
- Yeah.
- I think maybe what I'll do this year
is I'm gonna select,
like hand select 10 or 20 public people
and be like I challenge you to join me.
- That's cool.
- And let's see what happens
if a whole bunch of us check out.
I suspect everyone will have a very
similar situation to me,
which is damn good.
- Now does David do it as well?
- He doesn't go off the grid
because we still have businesses to run
and there's also,
but he does try to limit the checking,
like quick in the morning,
make sure there's no major fires.
And once at night.
- Smart.
- But that's the limit of it.
And also we don't really talk about news
or any of that kind of that kind of stuff.
'Cause it's like when you're in something
that the level that I'm in it,
I feel like you do have
to have that reprieve.
- Yeah.
I think--
- That's it, I'm challenging you.
- I mean, okay I'm definitely
down for the challenge.
We'll see how I feel come August.
- Yeah we'll talk on July 31st.
- But I think this is gonna be one
of the major, like I don't
have all the answers.
I think this is gonna be one
of the major challenges
of our generation, trying to figure out
where that balance lies
between this embracing of technology,
which I think is done so much
good for the world, obviously.
I mean I get to do what I do
thanks to technology, so do you.
- Right, that's the thing.
- But it definitely has led to challenges
in the way of mental health.
- Do you think it's on us,
meaning like us old timers,
are you a gen X'er too?
Or you consider--
- [Max] Gen Y.
- You're a gen Y'er, oh excuse me.
So for, but even for an old
timer gen Y guy like you--
- I'm not letting go of that millennial--
- Or an old ass gen X guy like me,
do you kind of think it's on us
to fix this because it's
like the baby boomers
are slightly aging out now,
and it's like we all focused
on the millennials forever,
and the millennials,
they're still super young,
they're not ready,
they have no real power yet.
They scream a lot,
but they have no real power.
And that we, the gen Y, gen X people,
we're the last ones
to remember the world before the phone.
There was a time, I didn't
have a cell phone in college,
you probably had one in college, right?
- I had a cell phone in college, yeah.
- All right but that shows you.
We're the last ones to remember that.
And there's something
valuable in that knowledge.
- Oh absolutely.
I mean the cell phone
that I had in college
was a flip phone
and it emitted two colors
that were, it was as
bright as the dimmest bulb.
Today our smart phones
emit millions of colors
and can light up an entire room.
So this is another topic
that I cover in "The Genius Life"
is circadian disruption
and circadian biology,
and how disruptive that, our
smart phones have been to that,
which is a whole other area
that we could talk about.
- Yeah, let's do that a little bit
'cause just the light that you,
well you talk about on the phone,
but also just lights that
we're around all the time.
And it throws your sleep out of whack.
And watching TV right before
bed and all this stuff.
- Yeah we're just, we're all living
in a constant state of jet lag
due to artificial lighting.
We're not getting enough
light early in the day,
which we need to anchor our
body's circadian rhythm,
which is the timer basically
that dictates when we're gonna be
at our most energetic,
at our most coordinated,
at our most focused,
when we're gonna have the best digestion,
the best metabolisms
to partition and utilize energy.
And also when we're gonna get the most,
when we're gonna begin to
wind down for the evening
and get those rejuvenating
and restorative aspects of sleep.
- What's the phrase when they found this
with older people that as dusk
comes around they usually,
that's where you start
seeing some memory stuff.
Do you know about this?
- Well there's this concept
of afternoon diabetes,
where your metabolism,
you become less insulin
sensitive later in the day.
One of the, one of the mechanisms
by which that occurs is
the hormone melatonin
starts to be release by the pineale gland.
And melatonin, it's an amazing hormone,
it's involved in this process
called autophagy, which is sort
of like the KonMari method
that biology uses to clean up our cells,
to tidy up, get rid of old worn
out proteins and organelles.
And it's involved in DNA repair,
which is amazing.
It's one of the reasons
that's been proposed
why you'll see an increased risk
of certain cancers in night shift workers,
which make up something like 20%
of the global workforce.
So yeah I mean you tend to
become less insulin sensitive.
Because insulin sensitivity
and energy metabolism,
it's really,
our hormones are oriented in a way
to support daylight associated activity
when the light is out,
when it's light out.
And we're just, you know,
evolution has anticipated
that we're gonna be less active at night
as diurnal creatures.
So we become less insulin
sensitive at night.
I'm not sure the cognitive link.
But there is certain, you know,
we tend to be more alert
earlier in the day than
we are later in the day.
That makes total sense.
- Yeah, I know there's no
scientific anything to this,
but one of the things that I noticed
with our dog Emma was
that around 5:00 or so,
when it was, 'cause we're just getting out
of the winter now,
so they sun would go do earlier,
and it seemed like that was when
she would be the most restless
or the most sort of exhibiting
more signs of being in pain or something.
I have no idea if it has anything to do
with circadian rhythm
or just maybe it had something
to do with later dinner,
I don't know, something,
but it just seemed like
you just start seeing odd things.
- Yeah I mean our circadian clocks
dictate the way that our
neurotransmitters work,
the way that our hormones work.
I mean cortisol, which
is an energizing hormone,
is highest in the day,
and then it begins a long, gradual decline
to the end of the day.
So there is aspects of
our cognitive function,
how energetic we feel are
related to our circadian rhythms.
There's no doubt about that.
And so I talk about ways
of anchoring that function.
One of the, I think most important things
that a person can do is make sure
that you get bright light
in through your eyes
first thing in the morning,
or sometime before noon.
There are these proteins in the eyes
called melanopsin proteins,
discovered by one of the guys on the team,
Satchin Panda, brilliant researcher
at the Sulk Institute,
who I had the pleasure of interviewing
for my podcast.
And these proteins are,
they're fairly insensitive,
but they respond to about 1,000 lux
of light or higher.
You can actually download an app,
I believe it's actually
called Lux, on your iPhone,
to get a sense of your
ambien light intensity.
And 1,000 Lux basically,
which you can easily get
from standing by an open window,
even on an overcast day,
flips a switch on those proteins,
which then activates a
small region in the brain
called the super chiasmatic nucleus.
Sort of the brains master clock,
which then sets off
this 24-hour Cascade
of hormone fluctuations
and the like throughout your body.
And so that's, I think,
the most important
thing that you could do.
Food also acts like time setter.
So I think it's important to be mindful
of when we're eating.
I think our bodies are best at utilizing
and partitioning energy during the day.
So, you know, this whole
intermittent fasting
concept that's been popularized
lately by the media,
I think intermittent
fasting can be useful,
but I think that the most,
the greatest health benefit that I've seen
kind of orients the food
consumption to earlier in the day,
eating like an hour or
two after you wake up,
and then stopping eating
two to three to four
maybe hours before you go to sleep.
That's been called early
time restricted feeding
in the literature I think
can be super helpful,
independent of weight loss,
seems to improve people's blood pressure,
blood sugar and things like that.
- All right so for
everybody that wants to live
the genius life,
and become extraordinary,
and that is what it says
on the title of the book--
- Yeah.
- What else should we be thinking about
in these last couple minutes?
What else should people be trying to do?
- Well the book is like a
360 degree lifestyle approach
and every topic that I cover in the book
could easily warrant its own volume.
But I tried to make things
actionable, approachable
and achievable for people
using only the most relevant science
and making it really digestible.
But essentially moving the body
I think is crucially important.
I talk all about exercise
and the value of resistance training.
We know that resistance training,
building stronger muscle,
it becomes increasingly difficult to do
as we get older,
but all the more valuable.
It's one of the best ways
to actually improve your metabolic health,
which we know that most people are not
in ideal metabolic health.
Being mindful or your circadian rhythm.
As easy as it is
to anchor your body's circadian rhythm
first thing in the morning,
it's one of,
another one of the central challenges
of modern life has become to maintain
that circadian rhythm.
And so kind of guarding your eyes
from bright light in the evening.
I'm a big fan of blue
light blocking glasses.
- Do you do that iPhone setting,
like the night setting.
- Yeah, the night shift.
- Shuts down some of the light, right?
- Yeah, super important.
There's a lot of gimmicks in the health
and wellness world
to buy a (mumbles) space,
but amber-colored glasses I think
are actually pretty useful.
And yeah I talk all about
environmental toxins.
So just being more,
just being more sort of
aware of what's in the environment.
Yeah knowledge is power,
but if you're just gonna
let that knowledge sit
on the bookshelf in
the back of your psyche
and gather dust,
then it's not gonna serve you.
I think you gotta act on this,
on that knowledge.
And yeah there's no time
like the present to start.
- Good finish my man.
- Yeah, thanks.
- All right people, if you
wanna become extraordinary,
go to geniuslifebook.com.
If you're looking for more honest
and thoughtful conversations
about lifestyles instead of
nonstop yelling, check out
our lifestyle playlist.
And if you wanna watch full interviews
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check out our full episode playlist.
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