- Dr. Austin Perlmutter is a board-certified internal medicine MD, a New York Times Bestselling co-author of Brain Wash, a researcher, educator and podcast host, wellness investor, host of the Better Brain Blueprint series, and Managing Director at Big Bold Health.
- Meditation Benefits
- Mindfulness Practice
- Stress Management
- Mind-Body Connection
- Mindful Eating
- Mediterranean and Mind Diets
- Dietary Fiber Importance
- Ketogenic Diets for Brain Health
- Recommended Brain Supplements
- Caffeine
- Psychedelics and Brain Health
Referenced in the episode:
The Lindsey Elmore Show Ep 210 | Rewiring an Addicted Brain | Deborah Mash
The Lindsey Elmore Show Ep 219 | Shifting Your Mindset to Make The Change Happen | Kelsey Koehler
The Lindsey Elmore Show Ep 232 | Finding Balance in an Overstimulated World | Katerina Lengold
To learn more about Dr. Austin Perlmutter and his work, head over to https://www.austinperlmutter.com/
__________________________________________________________
We hope you enjoyed this episode. Come check us out at https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-lindsey-elmore-show
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-lindsey-elmore-show--5952903/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back everybody to The Lindsay Elmore Show. If you
have ever felt drained or anxious, or unable to focus,
or like you're struggling to think clearly, today is the
show for you. We're gonna be talking about how our
brains are constantly under attack from stress and poor nutrition
and lack of sleep and exposure to environmental toxins both
(00:22):
outside and inside of our homes. We have billions of
people around the world who have some sort of brain
health problem, whether it's just having a low mood to
outright depression and anxiety and dementia is on the rise globally.
(00:45):
What we're gonna talk about today is simple tools and
tactics that you can use to help protect, heal, and
keep your brain sharp across your lifespan. We're gonna be
talking about how we can build a better brain blueprint.
This is the Lindsay Elmore Show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Welcome to The Lindsay Elmore Show, a podcast for people
who deserve to be healthy. With honest, open and enlightening
conversations with doctors, thought leaders, creatives and spiritual gurus, you'll
walk away with simple and tangible tips and tricks that
allow you to live your healthiest life so you can
(01:27):
pursue your dreams, overcome obstacles, and leave your mark.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Doctor Austin Pearl Mutter is a Board certified Internal medicine MD,
a New York Times best selling co author of Brainwash,
a researcher, educator, and podcast host, wellness investor, and is
the host of the Better Brain Blueprint series and the
managing director at Big Bold Health. Doctor Austin Pearl Mutter,
(02:00):
Welcome to the Lindsay Olmore Show.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Lindsay, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I am so excited to talk to you today about
brain health and your Better Brain Blueprint series that you
are going to be You're gonna be launching soon, and
so I am very excited to talk about the brain inflammation,
what we get wrong about it, all the foods that
are affecting our brain health. So let's dive right in
(02:25):
and just talk to us first about your background and
tell us why you got interested in brain health to
begin with.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Sure, so I have, I guess a little bit of
a family background in brain health. My grandfather was a
neurosurgeon and my father is a neurologist. So I guess
you could say there was always some sort of interest
in the brain, and so growing up in that environment,
obviously I overheard conversations. It was a focal point when
I would interact with my grandfather to hear his stories
(02:55):
about being in the hospital, being in the operating.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Room, and with my father.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
He was really focused on, I guess what we would
call functional or integrated neurology, this idea that there is
more to what we can be doing for people than
simple conventional pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures. He was seeing a
lot of cases of people coming in with strokes, people
with dementia, and while the therapeutics that were available were
(03:23):
meaningful in certain cases, he wasn't seeing much as far
as any sort of preventive strategies. So that led him
into kind of a multi decade campaign, especially around Alzheimer's disease,
to help to provide solutions for preventing Alzheimer's disease. So
that was I guess the domain the place in which
(03:43):
I grew up. My path was a little bit different
in that I wasn't sure I wanted to do medicine
at the start. I really enjoyed writing, I really enjoyed
the idea of working with concepts and trying to make
them more available to people. And so it was only
later in my college career that I decided that medicine
would be right for me. Went to medical school for
four years, and then I decided to do internal medicine.
(04:05):
And the reason for that is when I was looking
at the needs for people who were experiencing medical conditions,
internal medicine seem to fit because that's really where you
work with people with chronic diseases. So we're talking about hypertension,
we're talking about diabetes, we're talking about obesity related complications,
some cancer, some heart disease, and these were conditions in
(04:29):
which I believe, then still do believe that the most
powerful thing we can do is prevent because these are
preventable diseases by definition.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So in my training and my.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Residency, I managed a whole lot of people with these conditions,
both in the hospital and in the clinic. But what
became very apparent, and what listeners will probably say, of
course this is the case, is that most of the
modalities I was using and most of my time was
spent not actually reversing or preventing these conditions, but rather
slowing the slope of decline, meaning people had these conditions
(05:01):
and I helped them to feel a little bit better
with the condition. I helped them to maybe bring their
A one CE down a little bit, but not get
rid of the diabetes, bring their blood pressure down a
little bit, but not actually address why their blood pressure
was raised. And so that left me with a very
challenging question, which is am I ready to dedicate the
rest of my life to not really fixing or preventing
(05:24):
these conditions, but rather helping people to feel better to
slow the rate of decline. And the answer I came
up with was no, I needed to do something more.
So I went back to the drawing board a little
bit in the second half of my residency and I
started asking patients these questions about, well, what really matters
to you, What is it that motivates you to decide
(05:46):
to make these changes or not? And what I realized, again,
something that many people will already understand, is that the
things that motivate human behavior are really not the things
that we doctors think should matter. So it's not bringing
down the blood pressure because they just care about their
blood pressure. It's not bringing down the hemoglobin A one
C because of course that's a good idea. It's not
(06:06):
losing weight because I told them that was important. It's
really mental health. It's the things that matter to them,
that make their lives meaningful, that motivate people to change
their behavior, to do things differently. And then taking that
one step further, I had this appreciation that mental health
is really a reflection of brain health. And so to
(06:28):
get to the core of what is driving human behavior,
what is making people do one thing or another, you
have to be talking about the brain. So that brought
me full circle because, as I've said, I've had this
very strong family history of people talking about the brain
and being interested in the brain. And what's really relevant
to this conversation is, while I was in my training,
(06:50):
I experienced two major kind of family events related to
brain health. One was my first grandfather developed Alzheimer's disease
and then died from Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And then more recently, my other.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Grandfather developed Alzheimer's disease and died from Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So to kind of tie together.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
All the dots, not only did I have the realization
that brain health is what mattered, because that's what mattered
to patient care. That's what mattered to improving health for
other people. But I also had the stark kind of
realization in my own family as to what Alzheimer's looks like,
what it represents. And when you couple those things with
the understanding both of we know what we need to
(07:31):
do to prevent brain disease from happening, and most people
were not getting that information. It sent me down a
path of having to better understand this and having to
do everything I could to educate people.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
On these topics.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So for the last i'd say seven or so years,
that's really been my slant, trying to educate people on
the fact that their brain health is the most important thing,
not just because you want to prevent your chances of
getting dementia, but.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Because brain health today is the most important thing.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
And also that we haven't been given the strategies that
are really science backed, that are very simple, that can
help us to achieve better brain health today and for
the rest.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Of our lives.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Well, let's talk about some of those simple strategies that
are science backed, have great evidence. And again to your point,
I love what you said about what matters to you.
That's such an important question. And it's a question that
is used a lot in any kind of models of change.
(08:36):
For me, I've counseled a lot of patients to help
them quit smoking, and that is one of the very
most important questions because, as you mentioned, as clinicians, we think, oh,
they just care about their lung health. No, they want
to be able to go and ride a bike outside
with their children or be present at some critical moment
(08:58):
in the future that they envision in their lives. So
what a powerful transformation you went through at such a
critical point in your training to go from Okay, I
can merely improve this situation, or I can find out
what is in the heart of hearts of my patience
(09:21):
that's going to make them want to make these changes themselves.
And so as people are searching their hearts, going like God,
what does matter to me? And what are some of
the simple steps that I can take along the way
that are going to help my overall brain health and
move me closer to these goals that are purpose driven.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
That's right and mean. I can't say this point enough.
We have created this stark divide between the things that
really matter most to us and the things that we
do on a given day. Most of what P people
do on a given day feels like the right thing
in the moment, but it is primarily driven by short
term goals. And you know, not to get to some
(10:09):
sort of deeper kind of government or societal conspiracy here,
because I don't think it is that. But we've set
up a society in which the majority of the goals
of commerce, of really government and trickling down and into
the individual are predicated on doing the things that feel
good in the moment that increase GDP, but have very
(10:30):
little to do with long term wellness and very little
to do with long term brain health. And that's so
important because if we were to look at and just
sit here and maybe everyone listening and watching, take a
moment and think about this. What are the things that
really matter to you? What are your major drivers of life?
Some of the things I heard from my patients with
things I hear from friends and family members. I want
(10:52):
to be able to enjoy time with the people I
care about. I want to be able to be present
for my son wedding. I want to be healthy so
I can play with my children. I want to be
able to think clearly so.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That I can do a good job at work.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I want to be able to enjoy my life moving
into retirement, be able to walk and use my knees
so that I can go on hikes. All of these
things are really a question of saying, are you feeling
good in your head? That's what we're talking about. Everything
else is a surrogate. Blood pressure matters, yes, heart disease matters, yes.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Why do they matter?
Speaker 4 (11:30):
They matter because they take you away from being able
to enjoy your life. And so there's a very simple question,
which is if we can agree that what matters most
is our brain state, is our mental health, are we
doing the things each day that get us closer to
or further away from that good brain health? And if
you were to take a moment and go through your
(11:50):
day and kind of write down how you spend your time,
I would argue most people are doing things that are
directly counter to what we know is going to lead
to life long.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Term brain health.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
And maybe even more pervasive is that in the modern day,
we are spending the majority of our time not necessarily
doing something that is bad for our long term brain health,
but just neutral, meaning we are spending our time on
our screens. We're watching TV, social media. We're listening to
radio stations and a lot of that may just not
(12:23):
matter that much. Right, Scrolling on your social media feed
may not completely destroy your brain. It certainly can cause stress,
and we know that our younger female generation is experiencing
some mental health issues, perhaps in part due to social
media use. But the opportunity cost is the real problem,
because the things that are linked to long term brain
(12:44):
health are doing the basics, and doing the basics well.
What I'm talking about is eating real food, which usually
requires some investment in food preparation, cooking in your home,
we're watching TV all day, We're not.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Cooking real food.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Similarly, your body exercising. One of the strongest things that
predicts long term brain health is do you move your
body regularly, For on the couch watching TV, we're not exercising.
And then sleep, getting good sleep again one of the
strongest predictors of long term brain health. People who don't
(13:19):
get good sleep, we're at higher risk for depression, for
Alzheimer's disease, and generally worse brain health. But if we're
upscrolling on social media, we're not getting that good sleep.
And then one more I'll just bring up here is
the social connection. Research shows coming out of Harvard that
the strongest predictor of happiness as we age is the
strength of our social connections. That is a brain health outcome.
(13:44):
And we've kind of created this scenario in which we've
replaced the true and meaningful connections with other people with
these very superficial interactions that tend to occur online. So really,
what I'm saying here is it's not this one thing
that you're going to point two. I mean, I do
think we could point to the rise of sugar sweetened
beverages and added sugar, social media, our sedentary behavior, but
(14:09):
really it's the sum total of our actions that are
at the moment seemingly bringing us closer to short term happiness,
but in the aggregate are actually taking us away from
our best chances at enjoying life for all it is worth.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
You know, it is so real to me and hitting
me the quick dopamine hit of the short term you know,
immediate goals right there before us. That dopamine hit is
(14:46):
not leading to the overarching goal of having a healthy
life span and having a really extended health span at
the end of life. And so you know, it's really
difficult because you are correct that instant gratification is the
(15:09):
way that our lives are run these days. And how
do you train your patience to find I've heard it
explained on the podcast Katerina Lengold, who also studies brain health.
She calls it we have to get comfortable with being bored.
We also have people who are long term meditators who
(15:32):
you know, you have to get you have to become
butted up against that uncomfortableness that is stillness. How do
you teach people to move away from these quick dopamine
hits into more stillness and calmness that leads to the
(15:53):
end result that they're ultimately seeking.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
I think you bring up a really good question, and
I wish through a simple fix here. But the truth
of the matter is the reason that what we do
in a given day is what we do in a
given day is because it is directly going to play
on our ancient circuitry in our brains. So, whether it's
swiping on social media, which activates the dopamine loops that
get us excited about the potential, you know, for something
(16:19):
exciting to happen. This is why slot machines.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Are so popular.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
This is why we always want to open our email
to see if there's something new or interesting there. Our
brains belove that novelty, or the ancient mechanism in our
brain that makes it really nice to eat foods that
are exceptionally sweet, even though they are destructive to our health.
I think we have to acknowledge in the first place
that the reason we do these things is not because
(16:44):
we're being silly. It's not because you know, we know
the better thing and we choose the unhealthy thing because
they're equal. It's because the unhealthy thing is actually preferable
to our brain circuitry. So I think there are a
numbernumber of ways that you can go about countering this.
The strategy that I tend to use most for myself
(17:06):
and that I tend to recommend people put into play,
is to start with trying to understand what you really
care about. Because you need to draw energy to fight
against a system in which the easy thing to do
is the unhealthy thing. You need to find some sort
of energy within yourself that is going to allow you
(17:28):
to stand up to these things that are going to
be easier and in many cases more pleasurable. So you
can do that in a number of different ways. And
one of the things that I find a lot, and
I think Lindsay you've probably seen a lot as well,
is when a person has an experience that is not
a good experience, either because they become unhealthy and are
(17:48):
starting to experience pain either psychologically or physically, or a
family member has that experience. So for me, watching my
grandparents my grand fathers on both sides have Alzheimer's disease,
very painful experience, and so I can draw from that
to help to push myself to make healthier choices in
(18:09):
my day to day because that pain is something that
is real and can motivate me to do things that
are a little bit more difficult. I think we need
to find that energy within ourselves that often comes from pain,
sometimes comes from the excitement of being able to do
something differently, because the core of the whole thing is
(18:29):
you need to embrace the philosophy in which you are
deviating from the status quo consistently, where you take on
a little bit of I guess we could call it
a weirdo persona meaning that when you go out into
the day, you're going to choose to do things differently
than most people.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Around you. Why is that so essential?
Speaker 4 (18:48):
The average American adult has at least one chronic and
largely preventable disease, is on at least one pharmaceutical. We
know that upward of ninety ish percent of people have
at least one marker of metabolic dysfunction. We know that
mental health conditions have really become the norm, not necessarily
things like generalized anxiety and depression, but rather chronic stress.
(19:11):
And I'm not saying you can take that away from everyone,
but I am saying that we can make choices each
day to depart from the preventable risk factors for many
of these conditions. But it necessitates us being comfortable with
and being excited about departing from this status quo. I
(19:32):
think that is the fundamental part of this full equation,
which is saying if I do nothing, meaning if I
do what other people do, I will experience the same diseases,
the same or mental state that most people experience. That
is always going to have an incredible gravity, because if
you go out and you exist in the world, you
(19:53):
don't decide to move to the middle of nowhere to
spend the rest of your life in an ashrung, you
will experience. It's that potent gravity for ultra processed food,
to binge watch Netflix, to become stressed about every little thing.
These are the drivers of modern day behavior. So you've
(20:13):
got to go out there and have almost a force
field around you. And as you start to see people
making the typical decisions which are unhealthy, be willing to
stand up for something that matters, and so it's really
finding that power source that will enable you to do that.
Having a network of other people who are in this
vein is very helpful. They don't have to be necessarily
(20:35):
people where you live. They don't have to be even
close connections. I find listening to other people on podcasts,
even going to conferences and talking to other people and
seeing how they're putting these strategies into practice can be
incredibly helpful.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
But at the end of the.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Day, and I know I've reiterated this a few times,
your goal is to develop an internal power which enables
you to depart from the status quo consistently, so that
you are prioritizing long term health as opposed to short
term pleasure, because that is going to determine to a
large part whether or not you develop these preventable conditions
(21:12):
and preventable issues, specifically as it relates to your brain
moving forward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
You are so on point with so many of the
guests that we've had in the past. I think of
Kelsey Kohler's words about how when you're finding that, as
you call it, the internal power source, it really comes
down to do you have self worth that makes you
want to deviate from the status quo. We've heard it
(21:41):
over and over and over again. Doctor Will Cole says,
you can't heal a body that you hate, and so
if you are constantly driven by chronic stress of you've
got to get after that next caret over and over
and over again, is an intrinsic something in you that
(22:04):
on some level doesn't think that you're worth it. And
that's one of my main missions on this show is
to help people understand that everyone deserves to be healthy.
Everyone deserves it, even you, even me like and I
want people to understand that what you're saying about finding
(22:25):
what you really care about so that you can fight
off the constant drive to get that quick reward and
continue to create that force field that deviates you from
the status quo. It is very, very difficult to do
on a daily basis. We all struggle with it because,
(22:49):
as you mentioned, it's our just it's the way that
we're wired.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
If you have ever felt drained, anxious, unable to focus,
or like you're struggling to think, clearly, it's not your fault.
We are living in an age of information overload and
your brain is under constant attack. Poor nutrition, stress, and
lack of sleep are taking their toll on you and
(23:23):
your health, as well as your most precious asset, your brain.
The truth is you're not alone. Billions of people around
the world are suffering from all kinds of brain health issues,
including low mood, anxiety, depression, and dementia. From February the
(23:46):
seventh until February the eighteenth, you have an opportunity to
tune in to the world premiere of the Better Brain
Blueprint Summit. It's hosted by our guest, Austin Pearl Mutter,
and you will walk away with the power to improve
(24:07):
your brain function by incorporating information that you have learned
in the series. There are more than twenty interviews from
experts including doctor Mark Hyman, doctor Dale Brecetton, doctor Sarah Gottfried,
doctor Drew Ramsey, and doctor Jereffrey Bland, and so so
many more. Your brain is the most important thing that
(24:32):
you own. It helps to set your mood, your energy,
and your motivation. This summit, available online to you from
February the seventh to Sunday, February the eighteenth, will help
you to prioritize your brain health and unlock your brain's
(24:54):
true potential. Head to lindsaylmore dot com slash Better Brain
blue Print to sign up today for the summit. That's
lindsayelmar dot com slash Better Brain Blueprint to unlock the
science of mental and cognitive wellness.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And now let's get back to the show.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
What do you think that you know, I want to
talk a little bit more about food. You mentioned cooking,
and you know, I think of people out there saying,
you know, walnuts are good for brain health and and
omega three fatty acids are good for brain health. What
do you think the research shows are truly the best
(25:44):
and the worst foods for brain health.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
So I think now we're getting to some tactical strategies
beyond just the psychological bubble that you do need to create,
but it's saying, how can you set up your brain
so that it is best situated for you to feel good,
to think clearly, and be able to go out into
the world and interact with it in a way that
is positive for you. And I really think about this
as kind of a feed forward cycle in that if
(26:09):
there are things that you can do to enhance your
brain's plasticity, to enhance your brain's resilience, then it's going
to make it easier for you to make healthy decisions
moving forward. That's where we want to get to, to
a place where your brain is set up to make
it easier rather than harder, to do the healthy things.
And so food is a big part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I'll say the obvious.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
We live in a world in which most food is
actually just junk food dessert in disguise. And so this
is a great example of what I've already described, which
is we live in a society in which the default
is unhealthy. Seventy plus percent of foods in the grocery
store that includes beverages and foods are going to contain
(26:53):
added sugars. Nobody needs added sugars.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It serves no.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Value to most people most of the time.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
But it's added to.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Food because people who create food know that we gravitate
towards a source of readily available, kind of empty calories
because historically, meaning many many many years ago, our brains
knew that that was a great way to get additional
sources of calories to keep us alive, and historically sweet
foods were safe foods. So this question of what should
(27:23):
we be eating for brain health is a really interesting one,
and we now exist in this world in which these
diet wars are constant, meaning that people have incredibly strong opinions,
sometimes based in some science and sometimes based in personal
philosophy and other incentives, as to what a person should
(27:44):
be eating each day. And so listeners will have heard
of a whole lot of different ideas as to the
best diet, everything from eating only plants celery juice, to
the carnivore diet keto paleo, fasting every other day, everything
in between. As it relates to brain health, I would
(28:05):
say that the bass preponderance of the data supports basically
two very similar diets. These are the Mediterranean and the
variant of the Mediterranean called the mind diet.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
What you need to know is not.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Necessarily the specifics of how these were created, or rather
that each of these diets has been shown to be
the strongest potential benefit to conditions like Alzheimer's and depression,
and that both of these diets idly prioritize real, minimally
process foods, primarily plants, and the goal here is basically
(28:42):
to eat real foods, that's fruits and vegetables. There is
some conversation around grains, seafood, and a bit of poultry.
It deprioritizes red meat. It definitely deprioritizes anything with added sugar.
There is some building into these diets for red wine.
We can talk about whether that is or isn't a
(29:03):
good plan. Olive oil is popular here, nuts, seeds, spices.
As far as core components of the diet, it tends
to be foods that are rich in plant nutrients called polyphenols,
as well as these omega three fatty acids, which are
really found and concentrated for more in seafood sources, but
(29:23):
you can get their precursors from things like nuts and seeds.
And these are also all foods that are rich in
dietary fiber. So for people who are interested. You can
google Mediterranean diet or mind diet and find what foods
are or are not part of those. But I would
say the core to this whole thing is eating real,
minimally processed foods. So it's not as important that you
(29:47):
get the exact vegetable that is on the Mediterranean diet.
It is more important that you're actually buying a vegetable
and not a ultra processed vegetable product. So I'd say
that is from what I have seen, absolutely the best
data we have as far as which diets are best
for short and long term brain health. With one caveat,
(30:09):
as we're looking at conditions like Alzheimer's disease and to
some extent, some mental health issues, there is some data
building up around ketogenic diets low carb diets. My personal
preference is not to recommend this generically because it is
a restrictive diet, and kind of by definition restrictive diets
have not been as well substantiated and can have more
(30:31):
potential risks. But I do think as we get further
into the spectrum, specifically in Alzheimer's disease, there is some
data to suggest that more of a ketogenic style diet
might be of interest. I just don't think that's what
we should be recommending for the average person because we
need to move away from this idea of a short
term diet and rather towards a long term lifestyle, because
(30:54):
our risk for developing brain issues is not going to
go away in a month after we finish xyz fad diet.
It's something that builds over decades. So the very long
version of this story, which I'll try to then make sure,
is the Mediterranean and Mind diets are the best studying
diets for short and long term brain health.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
And both of.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
These are diets that highly prioritize real, minimally processed and
mostly plant based foods and deprioritize anything with an ingredient
list that we would call an ultra processed food.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I mean, the best news ever, is that eating the
Mediterranean diet or the Mind diet and focusing only minimally
processed foods is not just good for brain health, it's
good for all health. It is very very clear. We
have heard this listeners from guest after guest after guest.
(31:49):
It doesn't really matter what we're trying to avoid. It's
all the same stuff. It's sleep and stress, and what
we eat and how you know what toxins we're exposed to,
and it all simply comes back to these absolute basics.
I want to ask at least a couple more questions,
(32:11):
and I first want to know we have had a big,
you know, splashy explosion of supplements that are noetropics or nootropics,
and people are using them, and they're they're trying to
figure out, how do we use this to get better
brain function, better cognition, better neuroplasticity. What do you think
(32:35):
the most well validated noetropics are and what do you
think are some that we can kind of leave behind.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
So as we're looking at supplements for the brain, I
would say the first point is you should always try
to get the nutrients your brain needs through food when possible.
I think food is the best plan instead of supplements. However,
when I look at what the reality of our lives
look like for most people, including myself, we don't always
(33:06):
have time and we don't always have the availability of
the real healthy brain foods. Right, So, depending on where
you live, you may not have access to consistent sources
of healthy food. It's wonderful to tell people go to
your farmer's market, shop organic only. Where I live and
where many people live, farmers markets aren't really a thing
(33:26):
in the winter months, and so getting access consistently in
the course of our busy days to these nutrients may
benefit certain people for supplementation. There's also certain subgroups of
people who may be at risk for deficiency in certain
supplements or in certain nutrients, which can be supplemented. My
(33:46):
kind of go tos are going to be as follows.
One is, I think we've seen enough literature to support
omega threes for brain health. Now, the best literature supports
the idea that we eat fatty fish that are rich
in omega three, so macrol sardines, harring, salmon, But many
people are not eating enough of these fatty fish or
(34:07):
seafood based sources. So I do think that somewhere around
two grams of combined EPA and DHA, those are two
omega three fatty acids, probably makes sense for people to
try to shoot for you don't have to get it
from a fish based source, which is really important for vegans,
or algae derived supplements, which I think are equal impotency.
(34:27):
So if you're not getting enough omega three is through
your diet.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
That's something to consider.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Some other ones to consider might be a B complex
or a B vitamin. We know that B vitamins, in
particular B twelve B one are highly correlated with brain state,
so people with deficiencies in these B vitamins can have
pretty objectively or brain health. We tend to have lower
levels of certain B vitamins as we age certain drugs
(34:55):
like proton pump inhibitors. People who have had gastric bypass
surgeries and other GI issues maybe at higher risk for
developing vitamin B deficiency. We also know that certain people
aren't as able to use kind of the standard forms
of vitamin B, and so for certain people, having kind
of a more bioactive form or a methylated form of
vitamin B might be important. So that's Mega three's vitamin B.
(35:19):
There's some data on the multi vitamin. I think that's,
you know, again a question of how are you doing
from a dietary perspective. If you're eating a diet that's
mostly you know, rich and minimally processed foods, and you're
getting diversity there, the multivitamin may not make as much
sense if it's an elderly person who's maybe not getting
much kind of dietary variety that may may make more sense.
(35:41):
Other things would be vitamin D. So where I live,
I'm in a more northern latitude of the United States,
it's tough to get enough kind of vitamin D through sunshine.
So supplementation there after checking levels, I think is a
practical step, and then one supplement kind of more in
the new trop bit camp. So there are many neotropics.
(36:02):
People hear about things that are going to boost your
brain function.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
By and large, I don't think most of those are substantiated.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
But one that I'm getting into a bit more now
is creatine monohydrate. So creatine is derived from amino acids
in the body. It's something that occurs naturally, primarily in
animal based products, but it's also something that we can supplement,
and so looking at the research here, it's been pretty
interesting to see that in healthy, cognitively intact adults. And
(36:31):
this is really important because most of the research on
these things are looking at people with a pre existing issue,
But in healthy cognitively intact adults, creatine monohydrate supplementation has
actually been shown to enhance aspects of cognition and memory,
which to me, is kind of exactly what I'm looking for.
I mean, personally, I take creatine monohydrate five grams a
day for this exact reason. It doesn't hurt that it's
(36:54):
also associated with better exercise performance. But I would say
that that's kind of the core set of supplements and
neotropics that I think have the best evidence.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I mean, there's data.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
For a number of other products, but it's a little
bit less consistent. So I'd say that's really where I
would start looking if you're somebody who's doing your due
diligence to try to look at which supplements might be
good for brain health. In a perfect world, you'd work
with a practitioner and actually get your levels of these
things tested, and you wouldn't just be taking them.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Because you heard something.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
You'd be doing it for a specific reason. I think
that's especially important as it relates to, for example, vitamin
D levels, B levels, because these are things that can
be easily tested, and you really should be supplementing to
a goal rather than just taking them indefinitely. But I'd
say that's kind of the core stack. Now, I will
just say, kind of as a corollary to this, there
(37:48):
is so much marketing now as it relates to brain supplements,
brain products, and it doesn't mean that every product you
see online is not going to work, but I would
say the majority of them don't have much evidence to
support their use. And why that's important is to understand
that at the you know, best case scenario, are just
throwing away money. Worst case scenario, these supplements are a
(38:10):
very unregulated market. They can contain things that are really
not very beneficial to your health and sometimes can be
actually unhealthy to take. So I think simultaneously you want
to make sure you're actually taking what you think you
are and that you're getting it from a reputable company.
You know, this is certainly not the case for most
people and most of the time, but there are cases
of acute liver toxicity that come from taking supplements. I
(38:33):
think that's especially the case when we're looking at herbals
like mushroom products. I'll just say on this line, I
love mushrooms, I love foraging mushrooms. I'm a really big
proponent of understanding psilocybin. There's not as much evidence for
a mushroom supplementation as people think. Lion's Main is a
really cool mushroom. I think it tastes great, but the
data for that as a brain booster is very limited.
(38:56):
So I think this is an area in which you know,
certainly there's more exploitation happening, but by and large be
careful when you're going towards the herbal and mushroom type products.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Where do you stand with caffeine?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah, what a good question. So I personally am a
huge proponent of caffeine in my own life. Is it
something that I recommend to everyone?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Of course not.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And so I think the data are a little bit
mixed on coffee consumption and brain health. And there's certainly
some great studies that will show that coffee trinkers have
protection against conditions like Alzheimer's. There's a little bit of
data on the flip side of that as well. I
think that again, personally, drinking a copo coffee is about
(39:46):
the strongest mood booster that I'm aware of. It has
an obvious and direct effect on my brain state. We
know that caffeine can improve focus and alertness. It doesn't
necessarily improve other markers and brain states. You're not necessarily
going to have a better memory, You're not necessarily going
to perform better on a cognitive task. I think for
people who are fatigued slash tired, that caffeine can actually
(40:10):
bring people back up.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
To a certain level of alerness.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
I mean, this is what it does, right, So I
think in that state it is a relatively powerful and
helpful product. But what I would always caution people on
is one of the biggest issues with caffeine with coffee drinks,
beyond just the fact that most of them, if you
buy them in the store or buy them in Starbucks
or whatever, are going to be packed with junk, sugar
(40:35):
and other things you don't want to consume, is that
we use it when we are not kind of focusing
in on the big thing, which is are we getting
quality sleep? And so the cycle that so many people
get into that we really don't want to be in
is one in which we get poor sleep because we're
not doing what we need to to get high quality
shut eye, so we're staying up late on our phones,
(40:58):
and then we are basically getting into bed and getting
I don't know, let's say, four or five hours of sleep,
waking up in the morning because it's time for work
and feeling really groggy, feeling really sleepy, and then we're
using caffeine throughout the day and into the evening to
just keep ourselves at a semi normal state of function,
(41:19):
and that caffeine, especially in the afternoon, directly cuts into
our quality of sleep that night. So it is really
important if you're somebody who's out there using caffeine laid
into the afternoon in order to stay awake and stay focused,
that you work on this because that is going to
absolutely disrupt the quality of your sleep. We know caffeine
(41:39):
has about a six hour half life, which means that
if you have a cup of coffee at six pm,
that you have half of that caffeine still floating around
in your bloodstream at midnight.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
That's going to absolutely disrupt your quality sleep.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
So in this conversation, I started with saying, I actually
love coffee. Have a couple of cups a day. One
of the top sources of polyphenols in the human diet,
which is a great thing. Polyphenols have been linked to
a host of health including brain health outcomes. If you're
going to drink coffee, try to limit your window to
(42:12):
something before two pm. I think that's an important point
to start. If you're feeling anxious symptoms, if you're feeling
your blood pressure issues, I guess wouldn't feel blood pssure.
But let's say you're feeling your heart race, you're feeling
your heart rate's going up. These are probably people for
whom caffeine is not necessarily a good fit. And if
you're struggling with your sleep and you're using caffeine to
(42:34):
try to fix that, these are indicators that you need
to work on something before you just go and fix
it with the caffeine. So, in aggregate, I'm a big
fan of coffee. I love it so much in my life.
It's not necessarily right for everyone. It does have some
data supporting it as a healthful intervention, but it is
caffeine the most commonly used brain drug on Earth, and
(42:59):
I think people need to understand this. For one reason
or another, we have normalized the use of certain chemicals.
Caffeine is one example, which it just seems normal to
go drink some sort of psychoactive beverage each morning that
is going to directly change how you think and how
you act. Alcoholis the other one. We have normalized this
(43:19):
beverage that is arguably one of the most important brain toxins.
So I'd just say, putting it into that context, don't
take it lightly. Caffeine is a real brain active drug.
It for most people is buying. But I think that
we just need to be cautious.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Of how we use it.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that another thing we have
to consider when we're talking that caffeine conversation is everyone's
metabolism of caffeine is a little bit different, and young
children tend to have much much slower metabolism of caffeine
than do adults, and so there is some evidence in
(44:00):
young children that caffeine can last days in their systems.
And so we're rapidly running out of time. But I
really want to talk about psychedelics. You mentioned psilocybin. We've
talked about ketamine on the show, and you know, we're
seeing just psychedelics are having a moment of a comeback,
(44:22):
and they are in some ways getting normalized. We're seeing
veterans who are establishing foundations that push for the use
of psychedelics to help with PTSD. We also see even
there's a Christian Psychedelic Association. There are tons of conferences
out there that explore the use of psychedelics. How do
(44:43):
you think that they influence brain pathways and mood and cognition.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
I think of all the conversations happening right now around
brain health psychedelics, it's probably the most interesting of these.
And the reason for this is there is nothing else
right now that I have seen, or is that is
on the short term horizon, that is as remarkable as
far as the short term and enduring brain benefits of
(45:10):
these chemicals, And that is really exciting in a world
in which mental health disorders are affecting hundreds of millions,
if not billions of people, and where the standard of
care for conditions like depression PTSD is nowhere near good
enough for the people who are suffering from these conditions.
(45:31):
So psychedelics, as listeners and viewers may know, have been
around for thousands of years, probably been around for millions
of years, but have been used by humans for thousands
of years around the world for various ceremonies, largely in rituals,
and in the last one hundred or so years, have
(45:54):
been studied and have been used by humans for a
variety of purposes. We went through these different phases of
kind of psychedelic explosion and then a incredible clamp down
by the government in the United States that generalized around
the world.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
That really put a.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Cabash on the research that was being done on these molecules.
And then in the last couple of decades we've seen
a resurgence in both research and public interest in these molecules.
The reason these molecules are so interesting is because they
have a very intense, objectively observable effect on our brain state,
(46:33):
and that effect seems to induce in many people lasting
benefits to their mental health. Now, what that mental health
means we've primarily looked at in the research to date.
It's been things like depression, specifically end of life depression
for psilocybin PTSD, as you mentioned in veterans with MDMA.
(46:54):
We've also seen now anxiety, addiction, and where the research
is going, which is fascinating, is looking at how psychedelics
may help to prevent or even treat conditions like Alzheimer's disease,
which sounds a little bit crazy because these are mental
health drugs that are now being used for a neurodegenerative disease.
(47:16):
But when we understand that mental health conditions and cognitive
health conditions are both brain health issues and that they
work on the same pathways, things like brain metabolism, things
like brain inflammation or brain immunity, things like neuroplasticity, And
then we ask what is it that psychedelics do. So
we'll get into the science here for just a moment,
(47:37):
because it is really fascinating, But psychedelic molecules, specifically classic
psychedelic molecules, So we're talking about things like psilocybin and
dmt LSD. They act on the serotonin two A receptor,
and so it has been described by many people that
the primary effects are on the serotonergic system.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Now, importantly, in.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
The field of mental health, specifically in depression, the primary
drug of choice is the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and
for many decades, the belief has been that in depression
there is something wrong with serotonin system and that these drugs,
by basically increasing available serotonin, work to improve mental health.
(48:20):
A big study came out just in the last couple
of years showing that this is probably not what's going wrong,
meaning it's not a serotonin issue. So now there's a
question of how SSRIs work, But there's also the question
of what else is going wrong in depression, and that
gets us directly to psychedelics because even though they do
act on this two A receptor, psychedelics have now been
(48:43):
shown to work on neuroplasticity, meaning they rewire the brain,
which makes sense there's more going on than just short
term changes in serotonin if people are getting benefits for
years after a single dose. We also know that psychedelics
may act on metabolism. So there's a specific pathway called
the Sigma one receptor that exists within the cell, and
(49:05):
DMT and associated molecules appear to act on this and
doing so change metabolic state. In addition, that sigma receptor
seems to also work on the immune system and through
other pathways, psychedelics appear to work on the immune system,
influencing things like inflammation, which we know is a core
driver of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease. The last one
(49:27):
all through out here, which is absolutely fascinating stuff, is
there is an indication that psychedelics may work on what
is called epigenetic machinery, meaning psychedelics may change the way
our DNA is being used in the brain and outside
of the brain, and in doing so really gets to
changing the operating system at a basic level, because it
(49:49):
is changing the way our core DNA is expressing itself,
and in doing so, it is operating really at the
root cause of some of our conditions.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
This has been.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
Hypothesized to potentially explain why a molecule like MDMA can
work on a condition like PTSD, because we may be
actually unraveling some of that epigenetic machinery, changing the way
the DNA is being used. Similarly, we look at the
research I indicated in the PTS or in the end
of life depression with psilocybin work that was done at
(50:20):
NYU and Johns Hopkins. These are some people who benefited
for years after a single dose of psilocybin, indicating there
is some sort of an enduring process happening in the brain.
Epigenetics may help to explain this. So in some what
we're talking about here is these are molecules that have
been around for a long long time. People have been
(50:43):
consuming these molecules for a long long time.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
In the context of.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Likely billions of people experiencing poor mental health and our
current therapies not really doing as good of a job
as what we need, both because our conventional drugs have
high rates of side effects, relatively low rates of efficacy,
high rates of withdrawal effects, and because psychotherapy, while excellent,
it's not available to everybody. It's kind of a hard
(51:11):
thing to get access to in many places around the world.
We have to be looking at other potential solutions, and
psychedelics have filled in much of that void, both with
powerful evidence published in some of the leading journals around
the world, and now with some mechanistic understanding of how
these molecules can act on these core pathways in the
(51:32):
brain that are involved in mental state, that are involved
in cognitive states. So it's very exciting stuff and I'm
very happy that, you know, more and more people are
getting access to these potentially life saving molecules.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
We interview doctor Deborah Mash, who is one of the
leading researchers in I Begain therapy as well. So this
is coming up again and again and again for you know,
you mentioned Alzheimer's depression, anxiety, also addiction. I'll throw in
there as part of the research as well. And so
(52:08):
listeners go back and check out doctor Deborah Mash's episode
if you want to hear more about psychedelics and how
they work in the brain. And then even though ketamine
is truly a desociative, it's kind of in that same
research vein. And so you can go and check out
my interviews with Austin about the use of ketamine in
(52:30):
depression and anxiety as well. Listeners, I want to invite
you to doctor Pearl Mutter's Better Brain Blueprint Summit. It
is going to be online February the seventh to the eighteenth.
It's available at no cost to you. Head to Lindsaylmore
dot com slash Better Brain Blueprint to get signed up,
(52:51):
and we are going to be talking all about how
we are in an age of information overload and your
brain is under constant attack from stress and poor nutrition
and lack of sleep and environmental toxins. So we're going
to be talking with loads of experts giving you simple
tools and tactics that you can use everyday, clear recommendations
(53:12):
on diet and lifestyle changes, and specific ways that you
can support your brain so that it doesn't just function
well today but throughout your entire life. Doctor Austin Peerlmutter,
thank you so much for coming in today and being
a guest on the Lindsay Olmore Show.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Lindsay what a great conversation. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
The Lindsaylmore Show is written and produced by me. Lindsay
Elmore Show segments are produced by Sueproco and Derek Lugo.
Sound design and editing is by Jive Media. Support The
Lindsay Olmore Show by heading to Lindsaylmore dot com slash podcast.
Your contribution, no matter how big or how small, helps
(53:55):
us to bring the best guests to the interview chair.
Thank you so much for listening, Subscribe, rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts. Share this and all of
your favorite episodes with a friend, and on social media,
be sure to tag at Lindsay Elmore Show and help
us bring the pod to more people.
Welcome back everybody to The Lindsay Elmore Show. If you
have ever felt drained or anxious, or unable to focus,
or like you're struggling to think clearly, today is the
show for you. We're gonna be talking about how our
brains are constantly under attack from stress and poor nutrition
and lack of sleep and exposure to environmental toxins both
(00:22):
outside and inside of our homes. We have billions of
people around the world who have some sort of brain
health problem, whether it's just having a low mood to
outright depression and anxiety and dementia is on the rise globally.
(00:45):
What we're gonna talk about today is simple tools and
tactics that you can use to help protect, heal, and
keep your brain sharp across your lifespan. We're gonna be
talking about how we can build a better brain blueprint.
This is the Lindsay Elmore Show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Welcome to The Lindsay Elmore Show, a podcast for people
who deserve to be healthy. With honest, open and enlightening
conversations with doctors, thought leaders, creatives and spiritual gurus, you'll
walk away with simple and tangible tips and tricks that
allow you to live your healthiest life so you can
(01:27):
pursue your dreams, overcome obstacles, and leave your mark.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Doctor Austin Pearl Mutter is a Board certified Internal medicine MD,
a New York Times best selling co author of Brainwash,
a researcher, educator, and podcast host, wellness investor, and is
the host of the Better Brain Blueprint series and the
managing director at Big Bold Health. Doctor Austin Pearl Mutter,
(02:00):
Welcome to the Lindsay Olmore Show.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Lindsay, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I am so excited to talk to you today about
brain health and your Better Brain Blueprint series that you
are going to be You're gonna be launching soon, and
so I am very excited to talk about the brain inflammation,
what we get wrong about it, all the foods that
are affecting our brain health. So let's dive right in
(02:25):
and just talk to us first about your background and
tell us why you got interested in brain health to
begin with.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Sure, so I have, I guess a little bit of
a family background in brain health. My grandfather was a
neurosurgeon and my father is a neurologist. So I guess
you could say there was always some sort of interest
in the brain, and so growing up in that environment,
obviously I overheard conversations. It was a focal point when
I would interact with my grandfather to hear his stories
(02:55):
about being in the hospital, being in the operating.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Room, and with my father.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
He was really focused on, I guess what we would
call functional or integrated neurology, this idea that there is
more to what we can be doing for people than
simple conventional pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures. He was seeing a
lot of cases of people coming in with strokes, people
with dementia, and while the therapeutics that were available were
(03:23):
meaningful in certain cases, he wasn't seeing much as far
as any sort of preventive strategies. So that led him
into kind of a multi decade campaign, especially around Alzheimer's disease,
to help to provide solutions for preventing Alzheimer's disease. So
that was I guess the domain the place in which
(03:43):
I grew up. My path was a little bit different
in that I wasn't sure I wanted to do medicine
at the start. I really enjoyed writing, I really enjoyed
the idea of working with concepts and trying to make
them more available to people. And so it was only
later in my college career that I decided that medicine
would be right for me. Went to medical school for
four years, and then I decided to do internal medicine.
(04:05):
And the reason for that is when I was looking
at the needs for people who were experiencing medical conditions,
internal medicine seem to fit because that's really where you
work with people with chronic diseases. So we're talking about hypertension,
we're talking about diabetes, we're talking about obesity related complications,
some cancer, some heart disease, and these were conditions in
(04:29):
which I believe, then still do believe that the most
powerful thing we can do is prevent because these are
preventable diseases by definition.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So in my training and my.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Residency, I managed a whole lot of people with these conditions,
both in the hospital and in the clinic. But what
became very apparent, and what listeners will probably say, of
course this is the case, is that most of the
modalities I was using and most of my time was
spent not actually reversing or preventing these conditions, but rather
slowing the slope of decline, meaning people had these conditions
(05:01):
and I helped them to feel a little bit better
with the condition. I helped them to maybe bring their
A one CE down a little bit, but not get
rid of the diabetes, bring their blood pressure down a
little bit, but not actually address why their blood pressure
was raised. And so that left me with a very
challenging question, which is am I ready to dedicate the
rest of my life to not really fixing or preventing
(05:24):
these conditions, but rather helping people to feel better to
slow the rate of decline. And the answer I came
up with was no, I needed to do something more.
So I went back to the drawing board a little
bit in the second half of my residency and I
started asking patients these questions about, well, what really matters
to you, What is it that motivates you to decide
(05:46):
to make these changes or not? And what I realized, again,
something that many people will already understand, is that the
things that motivate human behavior are really not the things
that we doctors think should matter. So it's not bringing
down the blood pressure because they just care about their
blood pressure. It's not bringing down the hemoglobin A one
C because of course that's a good idea. It's not
(06:06):
losing weight because I told them that was important. It's
really mental health. It's the things that matter to them,
that make their lives meaningful, that motivate people to change
their behavior, to do things differently. And then taking that
one step further, I had this appreciation that mental health
is really a reflection of brain health. And so to
(06:28):
get to the core of what is driving human behavior,
what is making people do one thing or another, you
have to be talking about the brain. So that brought
me full circle because, as I've said, I've had this
very strong family history of people talking about the brain
and being interested in the brain. And what's really relevant
to this conversation is, while I was in my training,
(06:50):
I experienced two major kind of family events related to
brain health. One was my first grandfather developed Alzheimer's disease
and then died from Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And then more recently, my other.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Grandfather developed Alzheimer's disease and died from Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So to kind of tie together.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
All the dots, not only did I have the realization
that brain health is what mattered, because that's what mattered
to patient care. That's what mattered to improving health for
other people. But I also had the stark kind of
realization in my own family as to what Alzheimer's looks like,
what it represents. And when you couple those things with
the understanding both of we know what we need to
(07:31):
do to prevent brain disease from happening, and most people
were not getting that information. It sent me down a
path of having to better understand this and having to
do everything I could to educate people.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
On these topics.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So for the last i'd say seven or so years,
that's really been my slant, trying to educate people on
the fact that their brain health is the most important thing,
not just because you want to prevent your chances of
getting dementia, but.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Because brain health today is the most important thing.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
And also that we haven't been given the strategies that
are really science backed, that are very simple, that can
help us to achieve better brain health today and for
the rest.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Of our lives.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Well, let's talk about some of those simple strategies that
are science backed, have great evidence. And again to your point,
I love what you said about what matters to you.
That's such an important question. And it's a question that
is used a lot in any kind of models of change.
(08:36):
For me, I've counseled a lot of patients to help
them quit smoking, and that is one of the very
most important questions because, as you mentioned, as clinicians, we think, oh,
they just care about their lung health. No, they want
to be able to go and ride a bike outside
with their children or be present at some critical moment
(08:58):
in the future that they envision in their lives. So
what a powerful transformation you went through at such a
critical point in your training to go from Okay, I
can merely improve this situation, or I can find out
what is in the heart of hearts of my patience
(09:21):
that's going to make them want to make these changes themselves.
And so as people are searching their hearts, going like God,
what does matter to me? And what are some of
the simple steps that I can take along the way
that are going to help my overall brain health and
move me closer to these goals that are purpose driven.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
That's right and mean. I can't say this point enough.
We have created this stark divide between the things that
really matter most to us and the things that we
do on a given day. Most of what P people
do on a given day feels like the right thing
in the moment, but it is primarily driven by short
term goals. And you know, not to get to some
(10:09):
sort of deeper kind of government or societal conspiracy here,
because I don't think it is that. But we've set
up a society in which the majority of the goals
of commerce, of really government and trickling down and into
the individual are predicated on doing the things that feel
good in the moment that increase GDP, but have very
(10:30):
little to do with long term wellness and very little
to do with long term brain health. And that's so
important because if we were to look at and just
sit here and maybe everyone listening and watching, take a
moment and think about this. What are the things that
really matter to you? What are your major drivers of life?
Some of the things I heard from my patients with
things I hear from friends and family members. I want
(10:52):
to be able to enjoy time with the people I
care about. I want to be able to be present
for my son wedding. I want to be healthy so
I can play with my children. I want to be
able to think clearly so.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
That I can do a good job at work.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I want to be able to enjoy my life moving
into retirement, be able to walk and use my knees
so that I can go on hikes. All of these
things are really a question of saying, are you feeling
good in your head? That's what we're talking about. Everything
else is a surrogate. Blood pressure matters, yes, heart disease matters, yes.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Why do they matter?
Speaker 4 (11:30):
They matter because they take you away from being able
to enjoy your life. And so there's a very simple question,
which is if we can agree that what matters most
is our brain state, is our mental health, are we
doing the things each day that get us closer to
or further away from that good brain health? And if
you were to take a moment and go through your
(11:50):
day and kind of write down how you spend your time,
I would argue most people are doing things that are
directly counter to what we know is going to lead
to life long.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Term brain health.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
And maybe even more pervasive is that in the modern day,
we are spending the majority of our time not necessarily
doing something that is bad for our long term brain health,
but just neutral, meaning we are spending our time on
our screens. We're watching TV, social media. We're listening to
radio stations and a lot of that may just not
(12:23):
matter that much. Right, Scrolling on your social media feed
may not completely destroy your brain. It certainly can cause stress,
and we know that our younger female generation is experiencing
some mental health issues, perhaps in part due to social
media use. But the opportunity cost is the real problem,
because the things that are linked to long term brain
(12:44):
health are doing the basics, and doing the basics well.
What I'm talking about is eating real food, which usually
requires some investment in food preparation, cooking in your home,
we're watching TV all day, We're not.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Cooking real food.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Similarly, your body exercising. One of the strongest things that
predicts long term brain health is do you move your
body regularly, For on the couch watching TV, we're not exercising.
And then sleep, getting good sleep again one of the
strongest predictors of long term brain health. People who don't
(13:19):
get good sleep, we're at higher risk for depression, for
Alzheimer's disease, and generally worse brain health. But if we're
upscrolling on social media, we're not getting that good sleep.
And then one more I'll just bring up here is
the social connection. Research shows coming out of Harvard that
the strongest predictor of happiness as we age is the
strength of our social connections. That is a brain health outcome.
(13:44):
And we've kind of created this scenario in which we've
replaced the true and meaningful connections with other people with
these very superficial interactions that tend to occur online. So really,
what I'm saying here is it's not this one thing
that you're going to point two. I mean, I do
think we could point to the rise of sugar sweetened
beverages and added sugar, social media, our sedentary behavior, but
(14:09):
really it's the sum total of our actions that are
at the moment seemingly bringing us closer to short term happiness,
but in the aggregate are actually taking us away from
our best chances at enjoying life for all it is worth.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
You know, it is so real to me and hitting
me the quick dopamine hit of the short term you know,
immediate goals right there before us. That dopamine hit is
(14:46):
not leading to the overarching goal of having a healthy
life span and having a really extended health span at
the end of life. And so you know, it's really
difficult because you are correct that instant gratification is the
(15:09):
way that our lives are run these days. And how
do you train your patience to find I've heard it
explained on the podcast Katerina Lengold, who also studies brain health.
She calls it we have to get comfortable with being bored.
We also have people who are long term meditators who
(15:32):
you know, you have to get you have to become
butted up against that uncomfortableness that is stillness. How do
you teach people to move away from these quick dopamine
hits into more stillness and calmness that leads to the
(15:53):
end result that they're ultimately seeking.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
I think you bring up a really good question, and
I wish through a simple fix here. But the truth
of the matter is the reason that what we do
in a given day is what we do in a
given day is because it is directly going to play
on our ancient circuitry in our brains. So, whether it's
swiping on social media, which activates the dopamine loops that
get us excited about the potential, you know, for something
(16:19):
exciting to happen. This is why slot machines.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Are so popular.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
This is why we always want to open our email
to see if there's something new or interesting there. Our
brains belove that novelty, or the ancient mechanism in our
brain that makes it really nice to eat foods that
are exceptionally sweet, even though they are destructive to our health.
I think we have to acknowledge in the first place
that the reason we do these things is not because
(16:44):
we're being silly. It's not because you know, we know
the better thing and we choose the unhealthy thing because
they're equal. It's because the unhealthy thing is actually preferable
to our brain circuitry. So I think there are a
numbernumber of ways that you can go about countering this.
The strategy that I tend to use most for myself
(17:06):
and that I tend to recommend people put into play,
is to start with trying to understand what you really
care about. Because you need to draw energy to fight
against a system in which the easy thing to do
is the unhealthy thing. You need to find some sort
of energy within yourself that is going to allow you
(17:28):
to stand up to these things that are going to
be easier and in many cases more pleasurable. So you
can do that in a number of different ways. And
one of the things that I find a lot, and
I think Lindsay you've probably seen a lot as well,
is when a person has an experience that is not
a good experience, either because they become unhealthy and are
(17:48):
starting to experience pain either psychologically or physically, or a
family member has that experience. So for me, watching my
grandparents my grand fathers on both sides have Alzheimer's disease,
very painful experience, and so I can draw from that
to help to push myself to make healthier choices in
(18:09):
my day to day because that pain is something that
is real and can motivate me to do things that
are a little bit more difficult. I think we need
to find that energy within ourselves that often comes from pain,
sometimes comes from the excitement of being able to do
something differently, because the core of the whole thing is
(18:29):
you need to embrace the philosophy in which you are
deviating from the status quo consistently, where you take on
a little bit of I guess we could call it
a weirdo persona meaning that when you go out into
the day, you're going to choose to do things differently
than most people.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Around you. Why is that so essential?
Speaker 4 (18:48):
The average American adult has at least one chronic and
largely preventable disease, is on at least one pharmaceutical. We
know that upward of ninety ish percent of people have
at least one marker of metabolic dysfunction. We know that
mental health conditions have really become the norm, not necessarily
things like generalized anxiety and depression, but rather chronic stress.
(19:11):
And I'm not saying you can take that away from everyone,
but I am saying that we can make choices each
day to depart from the preventable risk factors for many
of these conditions. But it necessitates us being comfortable with
and being excited about departing from this status quo. I
(19:32):
think that is the fundamental part of this full equation,
which is saying if I do nothing, meaning if I
do what other people do, I will experience the same diseases,
the same or mental state that most people experience. That
is always going to have an incredible gravity, because if
you go out and you exist in the world, you
(19:53):
don't decide to move to the middle of nowhere to
spend the rest of your life in an ashrung, you
will experience. It's that potent gravity for ultra processed food,
to binge watch Netflix, to become stressed about every little thing.
These are the drivers of modern day behavior. So you've
(20:13):
got to go out there and have almost a force
field around you. And as you start to see people
making the typical decisions which are unhealthy, be willing to
stand up for something that matters, and so it's really
finding that power source that will enable you to do that.
Having a network of other people who are in this
vein is very helpful. They don't have to be necessarily
(20:35):
people where you live. They don't have to be even
close connections. I find listening to other people on podcasts,
even going to conferences and talking to other people and
seeing how they're putting these strategies into practice can be
incredibly helpful.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
But at the end of the.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Day, and I know I've reiterated this a few times,
your goal is to develop an internal power which enables
you to depart from the status quo consistently, so that
you are prioritizing long term health as opposed to short
term pleasure, because that is going to determine to a
large part whether or not you develop these preventable conditions
(21:12):
and preventable issues, specifically as it relates to your brain
moving forward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
You are so on point with so many of the
guests that we've had in the past. I think of
Kelsey Kohler's words about how when you're finding that, as
you call it, the internal power source, it really comes
down to do you have self worth that makes you
want to deviate from the status quo. We've heard it
(21:41):
over and over and over again. Doctor Will Cole says,
you can't heal a body that you hate, and so
if you are constantly driven by chronic stress of you've
got to get after that next caret over and over
and over again, is an intrinsic something in you that
(22:04):
on some level doesn't think that you're worth it. And
that's one of my main missions on this show is
to help people understand that everyone deserves to be healthy.
Everyone deserves it, even you, even me like and I
want people to understand that what you're saying about finding
(22:25):
what you really care about so that you can fight
off the constant drive to get that quick reward and
continue to create that force field that deviates you from
the status quo. It is very, very difficult to do
on a daily basis. We all struggle with it because,
(22:49):
as you mentioned, it's our just it's the way that
we're wired.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
If you have ever felt drained, anxious, unable to focus,
or like you're struggling to think, clearly, it's not your fault.
We are living in an age of information overload and
your brain is under constant attack. Poor nutrition, stress, and
lack of sleep are taking their toll on you and
(23:23):
your health, as well as your most precious asset, your brain.
The truth is you're not alone. Billions of people around
the world are suffering from all kinds of brain health issues,
including low mood, anxiety, depression, and dementia. From February the
(23:46):
seventh until February the eighteenth, you have an opportunity to
tune in to the world premiere of the Better Brain
Blueprint Summit. It's hosted by our guest, Austin Pearl Mutter,
and you will walk away with the power to improve
(24:07):
your brain function by incorporating information that you have learned
in the series. There are more than twenty interviews from
experts including doctor Mark Hyman, doctor Dale Brecetton, doctor Sarah Gottfried,
doctor Drew Ramsey, and doctor Jereffrey Bland, and so so
many more. Your brain is the most important thing that
(24:32):
you own. It helps to set your mood, your energy,
and your motivation. This summit, available online to you from
February the seventh to Sunday, February the eighteenth, will help
you to prioritize your brain health and unlock your brain's
(24:54):
true potential. Head to lindsaylmore dot com slash Better Brain
blue Print to sign up today for the summit. That's
lindsayelmar dot com slash Better Brain Blueprint to unlock the
science of mental and cognitive wellness.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And now let's get back to the show.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
What do you think that you know, I want to
talk a little bit more about food. You mentioned cooking,
and you know, I think of people out there saying,
you know, walnuts are good for brain health and and
omega three fatty acids are good for brain health. What
do you think the research shows are truly the best
(25:44):
and the worst foods for brain health.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
So I think now we're getting to some tactical strategies
beyond just the psychological bubble that you do need to create,
but it's saying, how can you set up your brain
so that it is best situated for you to feel good,
to think clearly, and be able to go out into
the world and interact with it in a way that
is positive for you. And I really think about this
as kind of a feed forward cycle in that if
(26:09):
there are things that you can do to enhance your
brain's plasticity, to enhance your brain's resilience, then it's going
to make it easier for you to make healthy decisions
moving forward. That's where we want to get to, to
a place where your brain is set up to make
it easier rather than harder, to do the healthy things.
And so food is a big part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I'll say the obvious.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
We live in a world in which most food is
actually just junk food dessert in disguise. And so this
is a great example of what I've already described, which
is we live in a society in which the default
is unhealthy. Seventy plus percent of foods in the grocery
store that includes beverages and foods are going to contain
(26:53):
added sugars. Nobody needs added sugars.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It serves no.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Value to most people most of the time.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
But it's added to.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Food because people who create food know that we gravitate
towards a source of readily available, kind of empty calories
because historically, meaning many many many years ago, our brains
knew that that was a great way to get additional
sources of calories to keep us alive, and historically sweet
foods were safe foods. So this question of what should
(27:23):
we be eating for brain health is a really interesting one,
and we now exist in this world in which these
diet wars are constant, meaning that people have incredibly strong opinions,
sometimes based in some science and sometimes based in personal
philosophy and other incentives, as to what a person should
(27:44):
be eating each day. And so listeners will have heard
of a whole lot of different ideas as to the
best diet, everything from eating only plants celery juice, to
the carnivore diet keto paleo, fasting every other day, everything
in between. As it relates to brain health, I would
(28:05):
say that the bass preponderance of the data supports basically
two very similar diets. These are the Mediterranean and the
variant of the Mediterranean called the mind diet.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
What you need to know is not.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Necessarily the specifics of how these were created, or rather
that each of these diets has been shown to be
the strongest potential benefit to conditions like Alzheimer's and depression,
and that both of these diets idly prioritize real, minimally
process foods, primarily plants, and the goal here is basically
(28:42):
to eat real foods, that's fruits and vegetables. There is
some conversation around grains, seafood, and a bit of poultry.
It deprioritizes red meat. It definitely deprioritizes anything with added sugar.
There is some building into these diets for red wine.
We can talk about whether that is or isn't a
(29:03):
good plan. Olive oil is popular here, nuts, seeds, spices.
As far as core components of the diet, it tends
to be foods that are rich in plant nutrients called polyphenols,
as well as these omega three fatty acids, which are
really found and concentrated for more in seafood sources, but
(29:23):
you can get their precursors from things like nuts and seeds.
And these are also all foods that are rich in
dietary fiber. So for people who are interested. You can
google Mediterranean diet or mind diet and find what foods
are or are not part of those. But I would
say the core to this whole thing is eating real,
minimally processed foods. So it's not as important that you
(29:47):
get the exact vegetable that is on the Mediterranean diet.
It is more important that you're actually buying a vegetable
and not a ultra processed vegetable product. So I'd say
that is from what I have seen, absolutely the best
data we have as far as which diets are best
for short and long term brain health. With one caveat,
(30:09):
as we're looking at conditions like Alzheimer's disease and to
some extent, some mental health issues, there is some data
building up around ketogenic diets low carb diets. My personal
preference is not to recommend this generically because it is
a restrictive diet, and kind of by definition restrictive diets
have not been as well substantiated and can have more
(30:31):
potential risks. But I do think as we get further
into the spectrum, specifically in Alzheimer's disease, there is some
data to suggest that more of a ketogenic style diet
might be of interest. I just don't think that's what
we should be recommending for the average person because we
need to move away from this idea of a short
term diet and rather towards a long term lifestyle, because
(30:54):
our risk for developing brain issues is not going to
go away in a month after we finish xyz fad diet.
It's something that builds over decades. So the very long
version of this story, which I'll try to then make sure,
is the Mediterranean and Mind diets are the best studying
diets for short and long term brain health.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
And both of.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
These are diets that highly prioritize real, minimally processed and
mostly plant based foods and deprioritize anything with an ingredient
list that we would call an ultra processed food.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I mean, the best news ever, is that eating the
Mediterranean diet or the Mind diet and focusing only minimally
processed foods is not just good for brain health, it's
good for all health. It is very very clear. We
have heard this listeners from guest after guest after guest.
(31:49):
It doesn't really matter what we're trying to avoid. It's
all the same stuff. It's sleep and stress, and what
we eat and how you know what toxins we're exposed to,
and it all simply comes back to these absolute basics.
I want to ask at least a couple more questions,
(32:11):
and I first want to know we have had a big,
you know, splashy explosion of supplements that are noetropics or nootropics,
and people are using them, and they're they're trying to
figure out, how do we use this to get better
brain function, better cognition, better neuroplasticity. What do you think
(32:35):
the most well validated noetropics are and what do you
think are some that we can kind of leave behind.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
So as we're looking at supplements for the brain, I
would say the first point is you should always try
to get the nutrients your brain needs through food when possible.
I think food is the best plan instead of supplements. However,
when I look at what the reality of our lives
look like for most people, including myself, we don't always
(33:06):
have time and we don't always have the availability of
the real healthy brain foods. Right, So, depending on where
you live, you may not have access to consistent sources
of healthy food. It's wonderful to tell people go to
your farmer's market, shop organic only. Where I live and
where many people live, farmers markets aren't really a thing
(33:26):
in the winter months, and so getting access consistently in
the course of our busy days to these nutrients may
benefit certain people for supplementation. There's also certain subgroups of
people who may be at risk for deficiency in certain
supplements or in certain nutrients, which can be supplemented. My
(33:46):
kind of go tos are going to be as follows.
One is, I think we've seen enough literature to support
omega threes for brain health. Now, the best literature supports
the idea that we eat fatty fish that are rich
in omega three, so macrol sardines, harring, salmon, But many
people are not eating enough of these fatty fish or
(34:07):
seafood based sources. So I do think that somewhere around
two grams of combined EPA and DHA, those are two
omega three fatty acids, probably makes sense for people to
try to shoot for you don't have to get it
from a fish based source, which is really important for vegans,
or algae derived supplements, which I think are equal impotency.
(34:27):
So if you're not getting enough omega three is through
your diet.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
That's something to consider.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Some other ones to consider might be a B complex
or a B vitamin. We know that B vitamins, in
particular B twelve B one are highly correlated with brain state,
so people with deficiencies in these B vitamins can have
pretty objectively or brain health. We tend to have lower
levels of certain B vitamins as we age certain drugs
(34:55):
like proton pump inhibitors. People who have had gastric bypass
surgeries and other GI issues maybe at higher risk for
developing vitamin B deficiency. We also know that certain people
aren't as able to use kind of the standard forms
of vitamin B, and so for certain people, having kind
of a more bioactive form or a methylated form of
vitamin B might be important. So that's Mega three's vitamin B.
(35:19):
There's some data on the multi vitamin. I think that's,
you know, again a question of how are you doing
from a dietary perspective. If you're eating a diet that's
mostly you know, rich and minimally processed foods, and you're
getting diversity there, the multivitamin may not make as much
sense if it's an elderly person who's maybe not getting
much kind of dietary variety that may may make more sense.
(35:41):
Other things would be vitamin D. So where I live,
I'm in a more northern latitude of the United States,
it's tough to get enough kind of vitamin D through sunshine.
So supplementation there after checking levels, I think is a
practical step, and then one supplement kind of more in
the new trop bit camp. So there are many neotropics.
(36:02):
People hear about things that are going to boost your
brain function.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
By and large, I don't think most of those are substantiated.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
But one that I'm getting into a bit more now
is creatine monohydrate. So creatine is derived from amino acids
in the body. It's something that occurs naturally, primarily in
animal based products, but it's also something that we can supplement,
and so looking at the research here, it's been pretty
interesting to see that in healthy, cognitively intact adults. And
(36:31):
this is really important because most of the research on
these things are looking at people with a pre existing issue,
But in healthy cognitively intact adults, creatine monohydrate supplementation has
actually been shown to enhance aspects of cognition and memory,
which to me, is kind of exactly what I'm looking for.
I mean, personally, I take creatine monohydrate five grams a
day for this exact reason. It doesn't hurt that it's
(36:54):
also associated with better exercise performance. But I would say
that that's kind of the core set of supplements and
neotropics that I think have the best evidence.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I mean, there's data.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
For a number of other products, but it's a little
bit less consistent. So I'd say that's really where I
would start looking if you're somebody who's doing your due
diligence to try to look at which supplements might be
good for brain health. In a perfect world, you'd work
with a practitioner and actually get your levels of these
things tested, and you wouldn't just be taking them.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Because you heard something.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
You'd be doing it for a specific reason. I think
that's especially important as it relates to, for example, vitamin
D levels, B levels, because these are things that can
be easily tested, and you really should be supplementing to
a goal rather than just taking them indefinitely. But I'd
say that's kind of the core stack. Now, I will
just say, kind of as a corollary to this, there
(37:48):
is so much marketing now as it relates to brain supplements,
brain products, and it doesn't mean that every product you
see online is not going to work, but I would
say the majority of them don't have much evidence to
support their use. And why that's important is to understand
that at the you know, best case scenario, are just
throwing away money. Worst case scenario, these supplements are a
(38:10):
very unregulated market. They can contain things that are really
not very beneficial to your health and sometimes can be
actually unhealthy to take. So I think simultaneously you want
to make sure you're actually taking what you think you
are and that you're getting it from a reputable company.
You know, this is certainly not the case for most
people and most of the time, but there are cases
of acute liver toxicity that come from taking supplements. I
(38:33):
think that's especially the case when we're looking at herbals
like mushroom products. I'll just say on this line, I
love mushrooms, I love foraging mushrooms. I'm a really big
proponent of understanding psilocybin. There's not as much evidence for
a mushroom supplementation as people think. Lion's Main is a
really cool mushroom. I think it tastes great, but the
data for that as a brain booster is very limited.
(38:56):
So I think this is an area in which you know,
certainly there's more exploitation happening, but by and large be
careful when you're going towards the herbal and mushroom type products.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Where do you stand with caffeine?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah, what a good question. So I personally am a
huge proponent of caffeine in my own life. Is it
something that I recommend to everyone?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Of course not.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And so I think the data are a little bit
mixed on coffee consumption and brain health. And there's certainly
some great studies that will show that coffee trinkers have
protection against conditions like Alzheimer's. There's a little bit of
data on the flip side of that as well. I
think that again, personally, drinking a copo coffee is about
(39:46):
the strongest mood booster that I'm aware of. It has
an obvious and direct effect on my brain state. We
know that caffeine can improve focus and alertness. It doesn't
necessarily improve other markers and brain states. You're not necessarily
going to have a better memory, You're not necessarily going
to perform better on a cognitive task. I think for
people who are fatigued slash tired, that caffeine can actually
(40:10):
bring people back up.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
To a certain level of alerness.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
I mean, this is what it does, right, So I
think in that state it is a relatively powerful and
helpful product. But what I would always caution people on
is one of the biggest issues with caffeine with coffee drinks,
beyond just the fact that most of them, if you
buy them in the store or buy them in Starbucks
or whatever, are going to be packed with junk, sugar
(40:35):
and other things you don't want to consume, is that
we use it when we are not kind of focusing
in on the big thing, which is are we getting
quality sleep? And so the cycle that so many people
get into that we really don't want to be in
is one in which we get poor sleep because we're
not doing what we need to to get high quality
shut eye, so we're staying up late on our phones,
(40:58):
and then we are basically getting into bed and getting
I don't know, let's say, four or five hours of sleep,
waking up in the morning because it's time for work
and feeling really groggy, feeling really sleepy, and then we're
using caffeine throughout the day and into the evening to
just keep ourselves at a semi normal state of function,
(41:19):
and that caffeine, especially in the afternoon, directly cuts into
our quality of sleep that night. So it is really
important if you're somebody who's out there using caffeine laid
into the afternoon in order to stay awake and stay focused,
that you work on this because that is going to
absolutely disrupt the quality of your sleep. We know caffeine
(41:39):
has about a six hour half life, which means that
if you have a cup of coffee at six pm,
that you have half of that caffeine still floating around
in your bloodstream at midnight.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
That's going to absolutely disrupt your quality sleep.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
So in this conversation, I started with saying, I actually
love coffee. Have a couple of cups a day. One
of the top sources of polyphenols in the human diet,
which is a great thing. Polyphenols have been linked to
a host of health including brain health outcomes. If you're
going to drink coffee, try to limit your window to
(42:12):
something before two pm. I think that's an important point
to start. If you're feeling anxious symptoms, if you're feeling
your blood pressure issues, I guess wouldn't feel blood pssure.
But let's say you're feeling your heart race, you're feeling
your heart rate's going up. These are probably people for
whom caffeine is not necessarily a good fit. And if
you're struggling with your sleep and you're using caffeine to
(42:34):
try to fix that, these are indicators that you need
to work on something before you just go and fix
it with the caffeine. So, in aggregate, I'm a big
fan of coffee. I love it so much in my life.
It's not necessarily right for everyone. It does have some
data supporting it as a healthful intervention, but it is
caffeine the most commonly used brain drug on Earth, and
(42:59):
I think people need to understand this. For one reason
or another, we have normalized the use of certain chemicals.
Caffeine is one example, which it just seems normal to
go drink some sort of psychoactive beverage each morning that
is going to directly change how you think and how
you act. Alcoholis the other one. We have normalized this
(43:19):
beverage that is arguably one of the most important brain toxins.
So I'd just say, putting it into that context, don't
take it lightly. Caffeine is a real brain active drug.
It for most people is buying. But I think that
we just need to be cautious.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Of how we use it.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that another thing we have
to consider when we're talking that caffeine conversation is everyone's
metabolism of caffeine is a little bit different, and young
children tend to have much much slower metabolism of caffeine
than do adults, and so there is some evidence in
(44:00):
young children that caffeine can last days in their systems.
And so we're rapidly running out of time. But I
really want to talk about psychedelics. You mentioned psilocybin. We've
talked about ketamine on the show, and you know, we're
seeing just psychedelics are having a moment of a comeback,
(44:22):
and they are in some ways getting normalized. We're seeing
veterans who are establishing foundations that push for the use
of psychedelics to help with PTSD. We also see even
there's a Christian Psychedelic Association. There are tons of conferences
out there that explore the use of psychedelics. How do
(44:43):
you think that they influence brain pathways and mood and cognition.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
I think of all the conversations happening right now around
brain health psychedelics, it's probably the most interesting of these.
And the reason for this is there is nothing else
right now that I have seen, or is that is
on the short term horizon, that is as remarkable as
far as the short term and enduring brain benefits of
(45:10):
these chemicals, And that is really exciting in a world
in which mental health disorders are affecting hundreds of millions,
if not billions of people, and where the standard of
care for conditions like depression PTSD is nowhere near good
enough for the people who are suffering from these conditions.
(45:31):
So psychedelics, as listeners and viewers may know, have been
around for thousands of years, probably been around for millions
of years, but have been used by humans for thousands
of years around the world for various ceremonies, largely in rituals,
and in the last one hundred or so years, have
(45:54):
been studied and have been used by humans for a
variety of purposes. We went through these different phases of
kind of psychedelic explosion and then a incredible clamp down
by the government in the United States that generalized around
the world.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
That really put a.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Cabash on the research that was being done on these molecules.
And then in the last couple of decades we've seen
a resurgence in both research and public interest in these molecules.
The reason these molecules are so interesting is because they
have a very intense, objectively observable effect on our brain state,
(46:33):
and that effect seems to induce in many people lasting
benefits to their mental health. Now, what that mental health
means we've primarily looked at in the research to date.
It's been things like depression, specifically end of life depression
for psilocybin PTSD, as you mentioned in veterans with MDMA.
(46:54):
We've also seen now anxiety, addiction, and where the research
is going, which is fascinating, is looking at how psychedelics
may help to prevent or even treat conditions like Alzheimer's disease,
which sounds a little bit crazy because these are mental
health drugs that are now being used for a neurodegenerative disease.
(47:16):
But when we understand that mental health conditions and cognitive
health conditions are both brain health issues and that they
work on the same pathways, things like brain metabolism, things
like brain inflammation or brain immunity, things like neuroplasticity, And
then we ask what is it that psychedelics do. So
we'll get into the science here for just a moment,
(47:37):
because it is really fascinating, But psychedelic molecules, specifically classic
psychedelic molecules, So we're talking about things like psilocybin and
dmt LSD. They act on the serotonin two A receptor,
and so it has been described by many people that
the primary effects are on the serotonergic system.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Now, importantly, in.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
The field of mental health, specifically in depression, the primary
drug of choice is the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and
for many decades, the belief has been that in depression
there is something wrong with serotonin system and that these drugs,
by basically increasing available serotonin, work to improve mental health.
(48:20):
A big study came out just in the last couple
of years showing that this is probably not what's going wrong,
meaning it's not a serotonin issue. So now there's a
question of how SSRIs work, But there's also the question
of what else is going wrong in depression, and that
gets us directly to psychedelics because even though they do
act on this two A receptor, psychedelics have now been
(48:43):
shown to work on neuroplasticity, meaning they rewire the brain,
which makes sense there's more going on than just short
term changes in serotonin if people are getting benefits for
years after a single dose. We also know that psychedelics
may act on metabolism. So there's a specific pathway called
the Sigma one receptor that exists within the cell, and
(49:05):
DMT and associated molecules appear to act on this and
doing so change metabolic state. In addition, that sigma receptor
seems to also work on the immune system and through
other pathways, psychedelics appear to work on the immune system,
influencing things like inflammation, which we know is a core
driver of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease. The last one
(49:27):
all through out here, which is absolutely fascinating stuff, is
there is an indication that psychedelics may work on what
is called epigenetic machinery, meaning psychedelics may change the way
our DNA is being used in the brain and outside
of the brain, and in doing so really gets to
changing the operating system at a basic level, because it
(49:49):
is changing the way our core DNA is expressing itself,
and in doing so, it is operating really at the
root cause of some of our conditions.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
This has been.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
Hypothesized to potentially explain why a molecule like MDMA can
work on a condition like PTSD, because we may be
actually unraveling some of that epigenetic machinery, changing the way
the DNA is being used. Similarly, we look at the
research I indicated in the PTS or in the end
of life depression with psilocybin work that was done at
(50:20):
NYU and Johns Hopkins. These are some people who benefited
for years after a single dose of psilocybin, indicating there
is some sort of an enduring process happening in the brain.
Epigenetics may help to explain this. So in some what
we're talking about here is these are molecules that have
been around for a long long time. People have been
(50:43):
consuming these molecules for a long long time.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
In the context of.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Likely billions of people experiencing poor mental health and our
current therapies not really doing as good of a job
as what we need, both because our conventional drugs have
high rates of side effects, relatively low rates of efficacy,
high rates of withdrawal effects, and because psychotherapy, while excellent,
it's not available to everybody. It's kind of a hard
(51:11):
thing to get access to in many places around the world.
We have to be looking at other potential solutions, and
psychedelics have filled in much of that void, both with
powerful evidence published in some of the leading journals around
the world, and now with some mechanistic understanding of how
these molecules can act on these core pathways in the
(51:32):
brain that are involved in mental state, that are involved
in cognitive states. So it's very exciting stuff and I'm
very happy that, you know, more and more people are
getting access to these potentially life saving molecules.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
We interview doctor Deborah Mash, who is one of the
leading researchers in I Begain therapy as well. So this
is coming up again and again and again for you know,
you mentioned Alzheimer's depression, anxiety, also addiction. I'll throw in
there as part of the research as well. And so
(52:08):
listeners go back and check out doctor Deborah Mash's episode
if you want to hear more about psychedelics and how
they work in the brain. And then even though ketamine
is truly a desociative, it's kind of in that same
research vein. And so you can go and check out
my interviews with Austin about the use of ketamine in
(52:30):
depression and anxiety as well. Listeners, I want to invite
you to doctor Pearl Mutter's Better Brain Blueprint Summit. It
is going to be online February the seventh to the eighteenth.
It's available at no cost to you. Head to Lindsaylmore
dot com slash Better Brain Blueprint to get signed up,
(52:51):
and we are going to be talking all about how
we are in an age of information overload and your
brain is under constant attack from stress and poor nutrition
and lack of sleep and environmental toxins. So we're going
to be talking with loads of experts giving you simple
tools and tactics that you can use everyday, clear recommendations
(53:12):
on diet and lifestyle changes, and specific ways that you
can support your brain so that it doesn't just function
well today but throughout your entire life. Doctor Austin Peerlmutter,
thank you so much for coming in today and being
a guest on the Lindsay Olmore Show.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Lindsay what a great conversation. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
The Lindsaylmore Show is written and produced by me. Lindsay
Elmore Show segments are produced by Sueproco and Derek Lugo.
Sound design and editing is by Jive Media. Support The
Lindsay Olmore Show by heading to Lindsaylmore dot com slash podcast.
Your contribution, no matter how big or how small, helps
(53:55):
us to bring the best guests to the interview chair.
Thank you so much for listening, Subscribe, rate and review
the show on Apple Podcasts. Share this and all of
your favorite episodes with a friend, and on social media,
be sure to tag at Lindsay Elmore Show and help
us bring the pod to more people.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.