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Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. - Often people going on elimination diet will have an immediate relief of brain fog, which is something that you don't know you have until you don't have it anymore sometimes. People just think of this sort of slow decline of their cognitive function. They're not realizing that it's actually something that can be reversed.
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And again, the Young Forever Cookbook comes out on Tuesday, June 4th. Pre-order yours today. Now, so many of us are living day to day in a fog. We're not able to think clearly or sustain our thoughts. And maybe we can't recall why we walked into a room and maybe we get agitated because of it.
But brain fog, one of the most common complaints I hear about, is not just a problem with your brain. To fix your brain, you need to fix your body. And in today's episode, we feature three clips from the doctor's pharmacy about the functional medicine approach to eradicating brain fog by removing what's harming us and adding in what supports us to heal the body and the brain.
I talk with Dr. Todd Lapine about the connection between brain fog and the gut microbiome. And I talk about daily lifestyle habits that support a healthy brain. And finally, Max Lugavere and I discuss the best foods for brain and overall optimal health. So let's jump in. Brain fog is really a symptom, sort of like cough. So cough can be caused by a cold, bronchitis, pneumonia, post-nasal drip, asthma, a whole bunch of things. So you've got to figure out, okay, what's driving it?
And there is no ICD-10 code for brain fog. You know, you might call it, you know, altered mental status, but oftentimes it's transitory. And that's the really interesting thing. And I've seen patients where they'll, you know, get brain fog when they're in a certain building. They'll get brain fog after they've had a certain meal. You know, certain foods may trigger brain fog.
And it is something that I think is intimately connected to the gut. I think the, and we'll talk about that in this particular case, is gut fermentation is oftentimes a cause for brain fog. I mean, it's like bugs fermenting the food you're eating, creating all these...
Absolutely. I don't know, Mark, if you've had patients who've had, this is a really interesting thing because I have patients come in and they say, I feel like my gut is just like bloating and I'm fermenting and that's exactly what's happening. So there is a condition. I just recently had a patient who had auto brewery syndrome. Yeah. So you have your own like beer factory. Exactly. So when you want to make beer, what do you do? You take sugar and you add yeast to it.
And you can actually produce alcohol. And I've had a couple of cases where it was missed. And it's actually not just the recent findings. It's not just yeast in the gut that do this, but also Klebsiella bacteria. So both bacteria and yeast can actually produce these compounds, which are toxins. Alcohol is a toxin. That's why when you get drunk, you're intoxicated.
And you actually produce alcohol and other toxins which affect your brain. It's interesting. I never really had that insight before you said that word intoxicated your brain.
Toxic. Toxic. Yeah, toxic. Intoxicated. I was like, wow, okay. That's how I explain it to the patients. It took me 60 years to figure that out. Yeah, figure that one out. Exactly. But I think that what you're saying is very true. I mean, I've had two times in my life when I've had severe brain fog. One was when I had mercury poisoning 30, 25 years ago. And my gut was a mess then because the mercury poisoned my gut. I had terrible bloating, distension, diarrhea, etc.
And the second time was more recently when I had mold toxicity and I had C. diff and I also had colitis and gastritis and my whole gut was a mess and I had severe brain fog and it was pretty debilitating. You could barely focus, answer an email, talk to somebody. You can't concentrate at all.
And people think, oh, that's just sort of in your head. It's not in your head. Maybe in your stomach. Well, it's manifesting in the head. That's the whole thing. And we have these artificial boundaries between the brain and the body and the mind, and they're all interconnected. And brain fog is a real phenomenon. And then you have to sort of figure out what's doing it.
The other thing that is interesting that I see with some people with brain fog is just gluten and dairy. And I tell patients that one of the most addictive foods is pizza.
and the reason for that is that pizza has gluten in it that's true you can eat a whole pie right yeah i tell you it's one of that's one of the foods that i i'll occasionally indulge in but uh it's i don't have it that often because it's not not the best food for you but you get you have my cauliflower pizza with goat cheese yeah you can make a healthy pizza exactly yeah but but i the two foods which are interesting is that gluten and
both get broken down, the proteins in those get broken down into caseomorphins and gluteomorphins. And caseomorphins are the ones from dairy and gluteomorphins are from gluten.
And those have morphine-like effects. So you literally become a little high. You get a little high. You get a little foggy in the brain. And it also can cause cravings. And it can sort of make you sleepy. You eat it, and then you get a little sleepy from it also. And that's when children drink breast milk. They go to sleep after. They conk out. I mean, that's because of the morphine-like action in milk. Yeah. So that's true. I think it can be our diet.
It can be food sensitivities like gluten and dairy, which are really common. And often people going on elimination diet will have an immediate relief of brain fog, which is something that you don't know you have until you don't have it anymore. Sometimes people just think of this sort of slow decline of their cognitive function. They're not realizing that it's actually something that can be reversed and it can be reversed very quickly. So the second thing is, you know,
the factors that are in the gut, bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth, we call it dysbiosis. That can also lead to a lot of cognitive issues because your gut's connected to your brain and that causes
This effect when the bugs are out of balance and it drives inflammation and then you get inflammation in the brain. Essentially, it's what causes brain fog. Absolutely. Well, the other important thing I think I talked about this last time is that the blood flow from the gut has to go through the liver. And the reason for that is to filter all of the toxins that are there. So there's a lot of immune cells, the copper cells in the liver, and a lot of filtering problems.
Detoxification takes place in the liver prior to the blood from the gut then going into the systemic circulation. So sometimes you'll have, in addition to leaky gut, you'll have problems with detoxification in the liver itself. And an example of that is the condition of hepatic encephalopathy.
which is a brain fog. That's essentially- Well, talk about that. What is that? For people who don't know what that sounds like, a big word. I think I mentioned this before, and it was one of the things that really stuck with me is when I worked at the VA hospital, there were a lot of alcoholics. And when you're an alcoholic, you basically turn your liver into a pickled liver. You trash your liver, yeah. You trash your liver, and then you're not able to detoxify it.
And I would typically see this over and over where patients had cirrhosis of the liver and their liver was not able to detoxify. And then when they would eat foods, especially high protein type meals, they would get hepatic encephalopathy and literally go into a coma. So they would literally get delirium, confusion. Absolutely. Brain fog. Brain fog. That's brain fog on steroids. And the reason is it was coming from their gut. And what I found so striking when I started learning about functional medicine was that here was a condition
in medicine that we knew how to treat by fixing the gut. We gave people antibiotics to sterilize their gut, to kill the bacteria that caused all these byproducts that made people have
you know, basically delirium or encephalopathy and brain fog. So it was like, wow, the gut is connected to the brain. Totally, totally connected to the brain. Absolutely. And in some cases, you know, there have been cases of people actually having psychosis from gut dysfunction. Yeah. You mentioned auto brewery syndrome. I remember reading a case of a woman who was arrested for
driving under the influence. And it turned out she wasn't drinking, but she had a high blood alcohol level that was coming from her gut. Yeah, it is. And it's a very real phenomenon. You have to think about it. And the way that you actually test for that is you can, it's actually quite simple is you just have somebody do what I call a pancake challenge. You basically some pancakes full of carbs, but throw some maple syrup on it, eat it.
and get a blood draw at point zero, eat the meal, and then half an hour later, check your alcohol level. - That sounds like a fun medical test, the pancake challenge. - Yeah, I thought the pancake challenge is, yeah. - So we talked about the gut, we talked about gluten, dairy, food sensitivities. There are other reasons too.
So infections. Infections can do that. Another one that is- Tick infections. Oh, absolutely. Tick infections. Yeah. Oh, those are, yeah, those, I would say that that's, in addition to brain fog, you get a lot of cognitive dysfunction too. Memory issues. It's more severe. It's much more severe. The one thing that I see a lot is allergies. I call it the allergic brain. And you can have food allergies that can potentially do that, or even environmental allergies or mold.
And the high levels of histamine, because histamine actually acts as a neurotransmitter. And I've seen this in a number of patients. I've had some patients with another condition, which we're seeing more and more of, is mast cell activation syndrome. It's sort of a buzz diagnosis now. But it's a very real phenomenon. And it's related to the mast cells, which are the types of immune cells in the body, in the interstitial, the sort of the spaces between the cells.
where they reside and they release lots of histamine. And if anybody has ever had hay fever, you see that the typical picture of a person with hay fever, you're like this, like half asleep and like they're walking through a fog. Hay fever is an example of brain fog. And antihistamines can actually have a benefit with that.
Naturally, things like quercetin and nettles can also be very helpful. And you probably have used it. This is something that I use. I've been using more is the drug chromaline sodium, which is, I've had some amazing success with that in more difficult cases. I wouldn't necessarily go to that for my first choice. What Todd's talking about is this drug that's used for asthma and allergies that is usually inhaled. Yeah, usually inhaled. But there's a version you can take orally that...
before you eat inhibits your white blood cells from releasing histamine and creating an allergic response. And I often found it extremely effective for some patients. So Todd, talk about this patient that you had that had really bad brain fog. This is a
A guy had come to see you, worked a lot, was learning a lot of stress. And that could be easily dismissed as, oh, you're just stressed and tired. But you went deeper. What did you find? Well, he actually came into me and he had already seen a variety of different doctors. And the background is that the gentleman, as a child, had lots of allergies and asthma. So he had ear infections, bronchitis, also developed some sinusitis-type symptoms. So he had multiple rounds of antibiotics. And
And I always emphasize to patients that when you have an immune dysfunction, look for the gut because 60 to 70% of your immune system is in the gut. And
Just like, you know, with what's going on with the COVID virus or the COVID-19 syndrome that we're seeing by coronavirus is it's not the virus or the bacteria itself that causes the problem. It's our immune system's response to it. And in general, we want to have a, I call it a balanced immune system. So we want our immune system to be idling.
Yeah. So basically just sort of sitting there and I'll say, we're enjoying planet earth. We're going out for a walk. We're not reacting to the underreacting or overreacting. Exactly. Underreacting or overreacting. And when you overreact that we call that an autoimmune disease. When you underreact, we call it AIDS. Yeah.
Right. So AIDS or cancer. AIDS or cancer. Or overreactions, allergies. Right. And I think, you know, we talk about like, you know, a weak immune system or a strong immune system. It's really, I think, an intelligent and a balanced immune system. That's how I like to think about it. And that's, you know, related to immunotolerance, which is what the gut does.
So when we have a healthy gut, we have an immune system that is tolerant to lots of things. And you can eat certain things. You can go out in the environment. You're not going to react to dog dander and all these other things. There are some genetic... Some people have genetic predispositions towards being more atopic or allergic. But having a healthy...
gut, especially early on, the priming of the gut is so critical. Having a vaginal birth, being breastfed, not introducing certain foods like gluten early on in life. Living on a farm. Living on a farm. Exactly. Being exposed. Being exposed to a lot of acid. And crawling around in the dirt and literally putting dirt in, I call it, your body's immune system samples planet Earth. Planet Earth is a very...
dirty place. There's lots of bugs and all kinds of things. And your body learns to be immunotolerant.
And one of the things that is really, I also focus on is part of this immune system is called the Treg cells. The Treg cells are like the conductor in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So you've got the wind section over here and the horns over here and they keep everything in balance. And the Tregs are really, really critical. And what we're finding- Regulatory cells. They regulate. They regulate the whole balance of the immune system.
And the Tregs that we find out, the two things that are really simple that people can use to upregulate your Tregs to keep things in balance are fibers. Fibers in the diet. Fibers are the key things that help with regulation of that. And then also, which I use quite a bit in the patients that I see, is vitamin A. Vitamin A helps to downregulate the immune system and helps to keep the Treg cells in place. ♪
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If you are eating a crappy diet, if you're drinking too much, if you're smoking, if you're not exercising, if you have mercury poisoning, if your vitamin D is low, if you're B12 deficient, if your thyroid is not working, your brain's not going to work. So you just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress,
Poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. The brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal given the right conditions. And I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression, things like bipolar disease, schizophrenia. I mean, you just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. In fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on the podcast, talked about how he used a ketogenic diet
to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard. So we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago
by the way, was way out of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're going to fix our brains. About 30 years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome and it felt like I had dementia, depression, and ADD all at once. My brain was broken. I really couldn't focus. I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see 30 patients a day, remember all their medical history, Nick Tate at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't at
Like remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started. I couldn't read my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time. My brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. And
I learned that I had mercury poisoning and that broke my brain. My brain was just a mess. I had terrible brain fog. I couldn't focus for much time. I was a physician trying to like practice medicine. It was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names. And I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional medicine almost 30 years ago. And
When I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detoxed from mercury, when I fixed all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic fatigue syndrome and my brain got better. And since then, I've written 18 books in 20 years. My brain is great. I feel good. And I'm sharper, faster, and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, we have too much sugar and fine starch carbs.
And not enough good fats and not enough intake of the right nutrients. A lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium,
They name a few that are critical for brain health and may affect over 50 to 90% of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also, we're exposed to all kinds of weird things in our diet that are chemicals like artificial sweeteners, like MSG, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain, heavy metals, all these things damage our brain.
A lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or other drugs. Now, I found over the years really fascinating to me. It's really quite amazing that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat or how much they rest or sleep.
you know, how much they exercise or how much time they take for friends and community and connection and, or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, geez, doctor, I'm so tired. I don't know what to do. I'm always tired. My brain's not working. I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, get eight hours sleep and try to see what happens, right? So don't connect the dots. Now, once you make
those connections, you can start to change those simple habits. It can have profound effects on your health long-term and make a lot of little small changes that can make profound impact. Now, feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health, it requires really following the principles of functional medicine, which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff.
It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, microbes, stress, adding in the good stuff, the right whole foods, nutrients, bouncing hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose. All these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the
Good stuff. We don't get whole real food. We often are deficient in nutrients. We're not exposed to enough natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't drink clean water because most of it's polluted. We don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation. We don't sleep enough. We don't live in rhythm. We don't exercise. We're too focused on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love. And so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy.
One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain. And we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet from treating depression to Alzheimer's to diabetes.
everything from add to to even schizophrenia as i mentioned so eating real food is so important when i say real food i mean real food not processed food or ultra processed food whole organic fresh local unprocessed food basically it has a barcode or a label you might want to get rid of if your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food don't eat it does she know what a lunchable is or a pop tart probably not uh junk food um
is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra-processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can. It's got salt, maybe oil. A can of tomatoes is processed. It's tomatoes, water, and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a Pop-Tart, you probably don't want to eat it.
And some things that seem like real food are really not, like yogurt. Yogurt is often filled with high fructose corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners. All these things are pretty nasty for us. Also, you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you hear me say this all the time, but these are full of phytochemicals. These impact the brain. They're deep, dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues, etc.
are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are, it's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds or detoxifying compounds, antioxidants, they're mitochondrial boosting, energy producing compounds, brain powering molecules. We need to eat that. So get lots of cultural plant foods, blueberries, dark green leafy vegetables. Also go for the slow carbs, not the fast carbs, right? I'm not saying no carbs. I mean, basically,
Broccoli is a carb, but it's quite different than white bread or from sugar. Cauliflower and ice cream are all carbs, right? But you know cauliflower is good for you, but an ice cream sundae is probably not, right? So eating whole plant foods also will have lots of fiber, right?
helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes. It's like diabetes of the brain from too much sugar. So eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar. Nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful. And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need to maintain your healthy microbiome.
to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat. The brain is made up of 60% omega-3 fat. It's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fathead. And going on low-fat diets are pretty bad for the brain.
In my book, Eat Fat, Get Fit, I talk about fats a lot and when they're good fats, when they're bad fats, and how to get the omega-3 fats from your diet, from algae or fish. My brain worked pretty good before, but I actually have gotten on a better fat diet, including things like MCT oil, which is really powerful for the brain. And my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof. Now, also you want to optimize protein.
We need protein because if you lose muscle because you don't eat enough protein, it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass. Fatty deposits in your muscle leads to prediabetes, lowers your testosterone, which you need for brain function, lowers growth hormone, which you need for brain repair, increases cortisol, which causes brain damage, literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. So you want to make sure that you're having protein.
enough protein ideally animal protein which is better able to build muscle and
When you age faster, your brain takes a hit. It shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega-3 eggs, protein shakes. I like Virginia Bay-based goat whey for a protein shake in the morning, nut butters, fish for breakfast. All that is great. Also, stop poisoning your brain. Get rid of all the bad stuff. Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives, environmental chemicals, all which really are a problem.
Supplements also very important for the brain. A good quality multi magnesium is important for the brain, calms the brain. It reduces the stimulation of the NDMA receptors, which is actually reducing Alzheimer's risk. Vitamin D is important for the brain. Omega-3 fats, probiotics, all the B vitamins, folate, B6, B12 are critical for your brain and your neurotransmitter function. And you can find all these supplements.
versions, the best versions, the cleanest versions at my online store, at store.drhyman.com, along with other brain boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health, but you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain. But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease, prevents cancer, prevents diabetes and everything else. So now I can do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health. Now,
Now, if you've tried all these things and you're still struggling, you got to dig a little deeper. For me, it was mercury poisoning. I was exercising. I was trying to eat well, doing all the right things, taking my vitamins, but it still wasn't better. Sometimes you got to figure things out. It might be Lyme disease. It might be mold. It might be food sensitivities. It might be some gut issues. You need to probably work with a functional medicine doctor to figure it out. And you can go to ifm.org and you can find a practitioner certified in your area.
I look through the medical literature and I determine the foods that are going to be the most accessible, the most available to people that are listening to this and watching this that are going to serve a neuroprotective effect. Foods that are literally superfoods for the brain. And I coined the term genius food, which is not a scientific term, but it's the term that I've applied to the foods that are going to give your brain the most bang for its buck with regard to neuroprotection, with regard to
with regard to promoting neuroplasticity by providing important builder block molecules like mucosahexaenoic acid or DHA fat, which we know is one of the most important and yet under-consumed structural building blocks of the brain. And so we can look to certain foods like avocados, for example.
avocados at this point are pretty widely available. And avocados are a fruit that provide the highest concentration of fat-protecting antioxidants of any other fruit or vegetable. Wow. Yeah. Why? This is of relevance to the brain because the brain is made of fat, right, Dr. Hyman? The brain is made of fat, but not just any fat. It's made of a type of fat that is most prone to oxidation, most vulnerable to what's called oxidative stress. And so you eat an avocado, which is rich in vitamin E, a fat
fat soluble antioxidant it literally is one of the most powerful brain anti-aging foods that you can consume it's also loaded with
Fiber, which makes it satiating and it helps support gut bacteria, which is promotive of a healthy gut microbiome. It contains potassium, which we know is really important for helping maintain a healthy level of blood pressure. And it also contains compounds called carotenoids, which we know protect neural tissue both in our eyes and in our brains. One of the reasons why avocados and dark leafy greens are protective against age-related macular degeneration. They contain these carotenoids.
which we now know also protect brain health. So that's one of my favorite foods, avocados. Yeah, the thing, my problem with that is it often comes in the form of guacamole. Unless you order the vegetable sticks instead of the chips, it's a danger zone for me because I can, I just kind of like those chips or I don't like crack. I don't know why, but if anybody has had those corn chip thing, it's like I can't eat them because I just can't stop. Yeah, I'm the same way. I think it's, it's, it's,
better to for me well it's it's that slogan once you pop you can't stop we know now thanks to scientific research that that that's a slogan with scientific backing at this point that is that is a truism at this point right because foods like tortilla trip chips are hyper palatable they combine salt fat flour yeah and they're they're so calorie dense that
It would have actually been a life-saving food potentially for a hunter-gatherer, right? Well, that's why I actually am afraid of Mexican restaurants now. I'm like, oh, I get it. And then someone orders, I don't order that. I usually don't order the chips and guacamole. Then someone's like, bring the chips. I'm like, oh, no. I'm the same way.
I'm the same way. It's like giving a crack addict some crack. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, we feel as though we feel like there's this innate sense that we should be able to moderate our consumption of those foods. Right. That's part of having a healthy relationship with food. However, I think what most people fail to realize and what's certainly not acknowledged by even our most esteemed health care experts,
professionals and those in the nutritional orthodoxy, it's that these foods are not designed to be consumed in moderation. They're hyperpalatable. And by the time you've filled yourself up on them, you've already over consumed them. Unfortunately, people tend to experience a sense of moral failure when they're not able to stop eating the chips, right? Yeah. At a reasonable level of consumption. But that's because your brain has been honed by millennia.
where the where food scarcity was a real problem right we didn't have food security the way that we have now for the vast majority of our evolution so yeah as i mentioned those chips as calorie dense as they are would have been an amazing food for a hunter gatherer who didn't have uh access to grubhub on their phones or or a supermarket on every corner and that's why it's easy to eat an entire bag of
corn chips, but no one's going to be binging on 12 avocados, right? There you go. Because avocados are, they're satiating in a way that, in a way that ultra processed foods simply aren't. Another example of a brain food. Before you jump on the next example, I just want to highlight what you just said, because there's been an elegant study done by Dave, by Kevin Hall, looking at feeding people an unlimited amount of ultra processed food or nourishing whole foods.
And they let them eat whatever they want. And they tracked over a few weeks, they tracked their consumption and their actual weight gain. And they found that the ultra-processed food group essentially ate about 500 calories more a day than the people eating whole foods. And they gained, obviously, more weight. So it really speaks to this whole idea that there's some nutritional intelligence that we have.
that causes us to seek nutrients in our diet. The problem is when we don't find them, we keep eating more. It's like looking for love in all the wrong places. And we end up just over-consuming because we're not getting the nutrients we need. And we see this with kids, for example. We've talked about this in a podcast. Who are iron deficient, they'll eat dirt.
They'll eat dirt because dirt has iron. So in animal studies, and we've had Fred Provenza on the podcast, there's an innate nutritional wisdom where they're sampling maybe up to 50 to 100 different plants to get the medicinal properties of each of these plants to heal their body, to make it work properly, and they know when to stop. We don't have that nutritional intelligence anymore. And there was a study done decades ago, I think in the 20s maybe, of orphans. I've talked about this in the podcast too, but the orphans
We're led to eat whatever they want, brain, kidney, liver, weird vegetables.
They give them an array of foods that were nutritionally dense that you think kids wouldn't eat, right? What kid's going to eat liver on their own or kidney? Then they track what they did and these kids were far, at the end of the study, were far more healthy and far more robust because they chose all this variety of weird foods that actually their body's own nutritional intelligence told them to eat. But we lose that as we get older because our brain chemistry, metabolism,
immune system, microbiome, all of it's been high. Hormones have been hijacked by the food industry deliberately. So when you have that deliberate usurping of your own internal guidance system and wisdom of what to eat, we end up in this chaotic state of constantly searching for ingredients and nutrients and compounds that we're needing to survive, but we can't get from the food. So we just keep eating more and more and more. That's really the problem.
Yeah, that's the movement to, um, towards what's been called intuitive eating. That's why I think that that's such a short sighted, um, and, and not very evidence-based, um, uh, initiative because when I sample the pint of ice cream that's sitting in my freezer right now, intuitively what my body wants is to eat the whole pint. Oh yeah. So, um, so I, I agree with you that we need to get back to, um,
We need to get back to foods that are less industrially processed. And you bring up an interesting point. I mean, the tendency to overconsume ultra-processed foods. I think it's really important for people to know the three things that make a food satiating. Yeah. Because then they can use this as a tool in their own lives. The first thing that makes a food satiating is protein content.
So there's actually the protein leverage hypothesis, which stipulates that our hunger mechanisms are driven in large part by our necessity for protein. It's an essential nutrient, right? And not just any type of protein, high quality protein. And the protein leverage hypothesis, I mean, people should remember that protein can be used powerfully to leverage as a way to kill hunger. And unfortunately, ultra processed foods are depleted of protein.
In part because protein is the most expensive macronutrient. So typically with ultra-processed foods, what you get is just carbs and fat, some combination of energy, rich carbs and fat, right?
And so protein, protein is crucially important. One of the major factors that makes a food satiating. The second aspect would be its fiber content because fiber mechanically stretches out the stomach. It's not an essential nutrient, but it does draw water. It does absorb water. And so it stretches out the stomach, which turns off the release of the hormone ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone. Usually ultra processed foods are depleted of fiber, right? It's one of the reasons why your average American today consumes
between six to 10 grams of fiber every day. Whereas one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably consumed about 150 grams a day. Yeah, that reminds me of that study by Dennis Berger where he looked at hunter-gatherers who'd moved to the city and became urbanized in Africa compared to their hunter-gatherer neighbors. And the hunter-gatherers had stool weights of two pounds and the city dwellers had stool weights of four ounces. So their poop was just a little hard poop.
And the reason is all the fiber and the tubers and the nutrient dense food. So you said fiber is not an essential nutrient. It isn't for us, but it's essential for the microbiome. Our microbiome is essential for us to stay healthy. So in a sense, it is really an essential nutrient. It is, yeah, through the lens of the microbiome. Absolutely. It is. And it certainly makes life better. Studies show that people who consume more fiber have reduced inflammation. They live longer.
Um, so it's, it's definitely a, I would call it a conditionally essential nutrient. Absolutely. Um, that we, that we definitely want to look to consume, um, more of. And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is water content. Because when water ceased to be available for hunter gather, the second best place that they would look to get their,
to meet their requirements for hydration would be food, right? Food is actually a viable source of water. And shelf-stable, ultra-processed foods are depleted of water because water impedes a food's shelf stability because it allows mold to grow.
And so these are the three factors that are all but missing in ultra-processed foods and always very present in minimally processed whole foods. So definitely worth seeking out any of those nutrients. Didn't you miss the most satiating nutrient of all? Which is? Fat. Fat is satiating, yeah. It slows the absorption of food. It slows gastric emptying.
So that's why, well, most high-protein foods are going to have a fat source, right? Grass-fed beef, for example, is a good source of healthful fat. Wild fatty fish, great source of fat. And so fat is, fat basically, here's what fat does. Fat prolongs the satiety effect. The protein and fiber are very satiating, but fat prolongs that effect so that you're not hungry 30 minutes later.
So it's definitely good to look and find healthful sources of fat. And by the way, the thing that makes you hungry is sugar. It's basically...
When you eat a lot of carbs and sugar, you just get hungrier and hungrier because you produce more insulin, which triggers all these secondary downstream biochemical challenges, changes that actually lead to increased hunger. So the more carbs you eat, the more you want to eat. And the less you eat, the less you want to eat. I mean, you know that from your own experience. So do I. It's like, wow, God, that bagel doesn't look like food to me anymore. Or that muffin doesn't look like food or cookie. Why would I ever eat a cookie? It's not that you're depriving yourself. It just stops looking appealing.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Dr. Hyman, there was this really fascinating study that I'm sure you're familiar with, but they basically took, scientists took two porridges. They were controlled for carbohydrate content and calorie content. It was just two wheat porridges that were identical in terms of their overall nutrition facts. But the difference was the degree of process. So one was a more coarsely ground porridge and the other was a more finely ground porridge. And it's the finely ground porridge that sent subject blood sugar
through the roof and led to a higher release of insulin. But what was most interesting about that study was that in the post-absorptive state, so after they consumed the more finely ground porridge, the finely ground porridge sent their blood sugar below baseline, which the more coarsely ground porridge didn't do.
And when your blood sugar goes below baseline, what that is is reactive hypoglycemia. And that can trigger in people that are susceptible to anxiety, it can trigger anxiety, it can increase hunger, that sensation of hanger. And the capacity for the food to do that was driven purely by the degree of process that the food had undergone. The more finely ground porridge was more akin to a sugar, right? Because it was just so easy for the subject bodies to assimilate.
Whereas the more coarsely ground, the less processed version of the porridge actually brought subjects' blood sugar back down to baseline really smoothly and evenly. So that's why you definitely want to avoid added sugar to the best of your ability and also reach for foods that are less processed because this is not about calories. This is not about carbohydrate content. This was purely about the degree of processing that that food has undergone. Yeah.
So it's a great point. Yeah. I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, it goes without saying people listening to the podcast understand by now that, you know, the ultra processed food is the number one killer on the planet. Like if you want to do one thing to improve the quality of your health is never eat ultra processed food. And what is ultra processed food is basically anything that comes from a factory.
unless you recognize the ingredients. And the rule is, if you can basically cover the front of the package and just read the ingredient list and know what it is, it's probably okay to eat. If it says tomatoes, water, and salt, or sardines, olive oil, and salt, you know what's in the can.
But if it's got 45 ingredients, most of which you can't pronounce or in Latin, and you have no idea what it is, you can't tell if it's a corn dog or a Pop-Tart from the label, then you shouldn't eat it. Absolutely. Real foods don't have extensive ingredients lists. They are the ingredients. They are the ingredients. Exactly. An avocado doesn't have a nutrition facts label or an ingredient list. It's an avocado. No, it shouldn't.
It should have. It should have an ingredient list of phytochemicals so people can see what they're actually getting. It should. You're right. And the biggest irony is that they don't make health claims either, like avocados, grass-fed beef, wild salmon, eggs. They don't make health claims. It's the ultra-processed foods, the kinds of foods that have ads on TV. Those are the ones that are making all the health claims, and yet those are the worst foods for you. It's generally true. So we've got a really beautiful insight here, which is, one,
that we should be eating phytonutrient-dense food. We're going to talk about some more genius foods. But two, the quality of our food and the ability to understand what makes us feel satisfied really are key principles. So protein, fiber, water, fat are kind of the secrets to keeping your metabolism healthy. And you said that, you know, there's no biological requirement for grains. It's even a step further. I would say there's no
actual biological requirements for carbohydrates. There's no essential carbohydrates. So there's essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, but there's no essential carbohydrates. So you literally don't have to eat any carbohydrates. But with that said, I often also say that carbohydrates are the single most important food for long-term health and longevity.
And what I mean by that is that vegetables are carbohydrates. And they do contain some protein and sometimes fat, depending on the vegetable. But essentially, they're phytochemically rich foods. So phytochemical richness is such a key principle that most of us don't pay attention to. And when you talk about a genius food, you're often talking about the phytochemical richness of the food. So tell us some more about other genius foods that we should be focused on, particularly in terms of the brain.
Yeah, so I mean, phytochemicals are abundant in avocados, dark leafy greens. But because we already talked about avocados, I feel like we should ping pong and talk about a good protein source, like a grass-finished beef, I think is a powerful brain food for people. It's actually one of the more controversial recommendations. But when you look at grass-fed and finished beef, it's a great source of vitamin E.
which I talked about as being a powerful fat-protecting antioxidant. You find three times the vitamin E in grass-finished beef as you find in grain-finished beef. It's also a great source of a compound called creatine, which supports brain energy metabolism. So people who don't regularly consume creatine, which is found naturally in beef and fish,
and you give them supplemental creatine, you see an improvement in their cognitive function. So we know that dietary creatine plays an important role in good brain health and good brain function. Our brain's level of creatine tends to decline with age and is also apparently depleted in carriers of the APOE4 allele, which is the most well-defined Alzheimer's risk gene. So I'm a big advocate of, in general, foods that contain creatine naturally.
Grass-fed beef is a viable source. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at DrMarkHyman. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.
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