Transcription
Oatmeal. Is that good for the brain or bad for the brain? I cannot think of a worse food group to base the human diet on. Oats, wheat, rice, etc.
You could eat six dozen eggs right now and not a single molecule of the cholesterol that you consumed would make it into your brain. Dr. Georgia Eid is a Harvard trained psychiatrist and best-selling author. She just published the first ever guidelines for treating mental illness through diet.
The more insulin you have in your bloodstream, the more insulin resistant your brain can become. And by the time you notice, you can already have lost up to 25% of your brain's glucose processing capacity. Your only hope in that situation is ketones.
There are three things that need to happen to get into ketosis. Do you think butter is good for the brain? Oh, you would have to start with dairy, wouldn't you? Do you think cinnamon is good for your body and your brain? Just because a food ingredient behaves as an antioxidant in a plant does not mean that it behaves as an antioxidant in the human body.
This episode is personal for me. For over 20 years, I struggled with a mental health disorder that no pill could fix. But this information you're about to hear did. And after losing my father to dementia last year, I made it my mission to find the root cause of brain disease.
Now joining me today is Dr. Georgia Eid. She's a Harvard trained psychiatrist and she has just published a groundbreaking 2026 study establishing the first ever clinical guidelines for metabolic brain healing. Today she explains the three worst foods destroying your brain, including a common food that is actually worse than sugar. And she's also going to explain why high-fat is actually the secret to fix a starving brain.
Now, if you want to take control of your health, you need to do it yourself. Because most likely your doctor won't and an easy way to do that is to hit the subscribe button because this is the platform where you'll get natural solutions and not pills.
So Dr. Eid, my first question as a Harvard trained psychiatrist, you understand the brain in a way that no doctor understands it so well. So if somebody's coming to this and they feel down, they feel anxious, they feel irritated, they can't sleep, do you think that's normal?
Absolutely not. Um, and you know, so many people have depression. Depression is a it's the number one cause of disability in the world. And it's not normal. It's not normal to feel this way. And so, and even more fascinating thing about depression is that if somebody comes to me with symptoms of depression, and I run through my checklist, this is what I was trained to do as a psychiatrist. Run through my checklist of symptoms and see if you have enough symptoms for me to call this major depression. If you've had this many symptoms for this long, then I can say, "Oh, you have major depression." That actually doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you just tells me that you have these symptoms. It doesn't tell me why. It doesn't tell me anything about what's causing it. And it doesn't tell me anything about what to do about it. So, um, it's really just the beginning of the conversation, not the end. But what normally happens when you go to see a psychiatrist is you are asked these questions, you are diagnosed with major depression and then you are given a treatment plan um often without any further investigation into what might be causing those symptoms.
Absolutely. And it's not just people just feeling down, you know, it's also feeling down but then feeling really nervous and anxious all the time. I know I faced this uh before I started a higher-fat carnivore diet. So if somebody's feeling like that, they just feel nervous every day. Um everything is just like a big deal. They feel worried. Is that a normal pattern of behavior to feel?
Well, I mean anxiety is an important uh biological function. So, for example, if you have a 2-year-old and your your and they run into the street, your your system is supposed to be activated. You're supposed to be worried. You're supposed to be paying attention. You're supposed to be vigilant about certain situations in your life so that you can respond. You're supposed to be thinking ahead about things that might go wrong. But at to a certain extent. So, so without anxiety we a lot of our motivations to do things would be lost. So, it's an important part of of our ability to function normally. But then just like everything in mental health and psychiatry, it exists on a spectrum from normal to abnormal. Uh so if you don't have any anxiety at all, then you don't do anything. You don't take care of anything. You don't you don't function. If you have too much anxiety, you are paralyzed and you also don't do anything because you're so anxiety is about worrying about things that haven't happened yet. And so, um, if you worry about every single thing that hasn't happened yet, you are going to be paralyzed with anxiety. Um because you'll be flooded with and overwhelmed with images and ideas and uh thoughts about all of the possible things that could go wrong in your day and they're really countless. So um and this is debilitating and there are people who live this way and so this is this is not normal. So like everything it exists on a spectrum from useful and functional degree of anxiety, healthy anxiety to paralyzing uh excess of anxiety and even the complete lack of anxiety. If you are overmedicated for an anxiety disorder, um you can you you won't function at all. Uh you won't feel anxiety, but you also won't be able to function.
I didn't know that cuz we always think about anxiety being like worrying too much and overthinking and feeling nervous and stressed. But it's plausible that there is the opposite effect of just not feeling anything at all because you're overmedicated.
I want to turn our attention to your work which is your book Change Your Diet Change Your Mind. Um and that goes into the uh topic of foods. I want to ask how bad is too many carbohydrates for the brain?
So uh it depends on what types of carbohydrates and how much and who we're talking about. So many of our ancestors for many hundreds of thousands of years uh many many of them consumed high carbohydrate diets but they were not the kinds of carbohydrates that we eat today. And so there were many cultures which subsisted on relatively high carbohydrate diets but those carbohydrates came from things like starchy root vegetables and fruits and things like that. Um, and those cultures, those people were much healthier um than we are today. So, I'm not I I I don't necessarily believe that simply eating too much carbohydrate can damage the brain in the ways that we see our mental health deteriorating today. Um, but what I would say is that if you eat too many of the wrong carbohydrates too often and your blood glucose and insulin levels are running too high too often, then your brain could be in serious trouble because high blood glucose and high blood insulin are really a deadly one-two punch for the brain. High blood glucose means high brain glucose. The higher your blood sugar, the higher your brain sugar. And the brain, yes, it does need a little bit of glucose, but it doesn't need very much. And if it gets too much, that extra glucose will literally stick. It will stick to important components of the brain, lipids and proteins and DNA and everything else, and kind of caramelize them into these crippled clusters called advanced glycation end products. These are affectionately known as AGEs, which is a good name for them because they're also responsible uh to a large degree for premature aging of the brain. AGEs. And so too much glucose is you can have too much of a good thing. Too much glucose is bad for the brain, but too much insulin is also bad for the brain because the more insulin you have in your bloodstream, the more insulin resistant your brain can become and that becomes harder and harder for insulin to cross into the brain. So then what you've got is a situation where your brain can be swimming in a sea of glucose and still be slowly starving to death because there isn't enough insulin that's able to come in. So, you've got this high brain glucose, low brain insulin situation. This is not normal. This is not healthy. And this chokes off slowly over time the brain's energy supply.
So, if somebody has elevated blood glucose levels, you're saying that can also show up in the brain? So, you have high glucose in the body, high glucose in the brain. If you have high glucose for a long period of time in the brain, could that lead to serious brain conditions like Alzheimer's?
Absolutely. So, in fact, Alzheimer's for almost 20 years now has been referred to by many scientists as type three diabetes. And and the reason why it's called that is because the glucose and insulin signaling systems in the brain are not functioning properly. Uh and and if if your if your glucose metabolism and insulin signaling aren't functioning properly in your brain, that is all you need to lay the groundwork for all of the problems that we see in the Alzheimer's brain. That doesn't mean that it's the only thing that can cause or or lead to Alzheimer's disease, but it is a major contributing factor, a major major risk factor for for Alzheimer's disease and one that we know that that we have tremendous control over. All you have to do to get your glucose and insulin levels under control is control your carbohydrate intake and eat a healthy diet and and not eat too much and eat at the right times and so forth. We know how to change your lifestyle to get your glucose and insulin levels under control within a matter of days. And so, uh, most people think of Alzheimer's as, you know, related to how old you are, what your what does it run in your family, how old are you, what genes do you have? You can't do anything about those aren't things you can do anything about. So, you can't do anything about how old you are. You can't do anything about, you know, the genes that you inherited or what runs in your family. But you can do a tremendous amount about your glucose and insulin levels. And so and and and this is really important to start early as it it's never too early to start preventing Alzheimer's disease because what's actually going on and we've known this for a long time is that Alzheimer's disease doesn't happen overnight. It it Alzheimer's disease is preceded by decades of gradually slowing brain glucose metabolism and it's a silent process that's happening in the background for many years and by the time you notice even the subtle early signs of what's called mild cognitive impairment very mild subtle memory problems you can already have lost up to 25% of your brain's glucose processing capacity. So, you want to start now to to get to get those levels under control and protect your brain.
That is mind-blowing. I don't think people understand, you know, just having elevated blood glucose, it is not just catastrophic for your brain, but it's catastrophic for your whole body. So by the time that you get diagnosed with Alzheimer's, you've lost already 25% of your brain and therefore it becomes harder to prevent it or reverse the um damage that has been done.
I want to turn our attention now to a new paper that has just been published in 2026. It's just a few weeks ago and this is a landmark consensus paper. I know why this is important, but can you explain to my audience in regards to mental health, serious mental health, why is this so pivotal for them to understand?
Right. So, my colleagues and I recently published this this first ever expert consensus on how to safely use ketogenic diets to help treat major mental illnesses, major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. So this was an eight-member expert steering group that included uh dieticians, psychiatrists, therapists, scientists, um eight of us who have many many years of collective experience, decades of collective clinical experience, but we also have research experience and and all of us have studied and and most of us have published in the in the field of of metabolic psychiatry. So we got together and wrote this paper to uh help clinicians around the world understand how to safely use ketogenic diets um in the care of mental health disorders. And this is very important because it's the first it's the first document of its kind. Um, it's open access. That's free to everybody for for everybody to download. And it really consolidates our many years of study and clinical research um into practical evidence-based recommendations to support clinicians and patients who are interested in exploring the potential mental health benefits of ketosis. And it includes things like, you know, how to decide who's a good candidate for the ketogenic diet. Um, it includes tables of of medical conditions where you need to be more careful. It includes laboratory tests that you want to uh obtain prior to initiating a ketogenic diet. How best to measure ketones and what do we consider the potentially therapeutic range of ketones to be for mental health conditions and and how to navigate that early keto adaptation period um which for some people can um can be can be more challenging to get through if they start if if they have a mental health condition to begin with. So, it's very practical and very evidence-based. And this we kind of put our heads together to to give people guidance, both clinicians and patients, uh give guidance about uh uh how to plan for safely plan for ketogenic therapy, what to expect, and how to monitor uh along the way. So, it's very it's very practical information that um that we hope will help a lot of people.
And who were the top eight experts that were in the paper? Because you're a Harvard trained doctor. I think there was another Harvard trained doctor. Just to show our audience that this is by top experts. It's not just something that's a quick paper. It's big guidelines that can change the mental health of so many people.
Yes. So serving with me on this eight-member expert steering group were registered dietitian nutritionist Beth Zupcania who has more than 30 years of experience um treating patients of all ages down to babies in the hospital uh with with ketogenic diets. She's really one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on ketogenic therapy and clinical care. Um psychiatrist Dr. Matt Bernstein, who's a Harvard affiliated psychiatrist, um licensed mental health counselor Nicole Laurent, who's published extensively um in this field, metabolic psychiatry research scientist Dr. Ian Campbell from the University of Edinburgh, who put his own bipolar disorder into full sustained remission eight years ago using a ketogenic diet. Um and who is now uh uh launching one of the largest randomized control trials in the world on bipolar disorder um ketogenic diets for bipolar disorder um and uh psychiatrist Dr. Shabbani Sethis from Stanford University um who coined the term metabolic psychiatry um and uh Harvard affiliated psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer and psychiatrist Dr. Lorie Calibracy. Um, and all of those re those psychiatrists I just listed have published extensively um in this field. And so, um, we we we hope that people can benefit from our many years of clinical experience and our many years of study uh knowledge and and our publications in this area.
That's fantastic. Um, so I want to talk about the specifics of the paper. So there was a um explanation of what's actually happening in the brain when you have mental health issues, schizophrenia, bipolar, all these different serious problems. But if somebody's coming to this and they feel like I just feel down, I can't focus. I have no energy. You know how we spoke about the elevated insulin? How does elevated insulin therefore glucose starve the brain of energy so that the person cannot think clearly and have energy?
Exactly. So, so the brain uh the brain can run on a a mixture of fuels. Um, it can use it it uses some glucose for energy but can also use ketones and uh and and so what happens if you're if you have a mental health condition let's say you have for example depression as you were just talking about now there are many different causes of depression um uh but one of the the theory in metabolic psychiatry in the field of metabolic psychiatry which is the field that that that I practice in and what this paper is focused on the hypothesis is that many people with depression um the reason why they have the depression is that their brain isn't able to generate energy smoothly and reliably as it should. And uh whether it comes from glucose or somewhere else, it's it's having trouble generating energy reliably. And the the brain must be able to access smooth uh source of energy reliably and steadily 24/7. It's a very energy-hungry organ. Despite being only 2% of the body's weight, it it demands 20% of the body's energy supply. That's because it's an electrical organ. It needs a lot of energy. And so if it can't access energy reliably, many different things can and will go wrong. And so for some people that will be depression. And if you think about the symptoms of depression, um low energy is one of them. Um difficulty concentrating, feeling very tired, um and uh sometimes irritability. Um and uh lack of appetite often um lack of motivation, lack of interest, these are all signs of of a low energy brain. Now, um if your brain is not able to utilize glucose properly, if your brain has lost some of its ability to turn glucose into energy, um then you may experience symptoms of depression. It really depends on your vulnerabilities. So for some people if the brain is is um has an energy deficit they may get depressed. For other people um they may develop memory problems. For other people um it may be that they develop bipolar disorder. For other people it may be schizophrenia. For other people it may be an anxiety disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder. It depends on what you're vulnerable to. And this is where your genetics and your family history and your lived experience to that point come into play. But um it's going to look different for different people. But one of the theories about depression and metabolic psychiatry is that it is an energy shortage. And so, um, if your brain has lost some of its ability to turn glucose into energy, then your only hope really in that situation is ketones because ketones cross the brain easily. Um, and they can bridge that energy gap. If you give the brain more glucose, we might think, well, my brain is having trouble burning glucose for energy, so why don't I just give it more glucose? Why don't I just eat more sugar? Why don't I eat more carbohydrate? More rice, more more beans, uh more pasta, um more potatoes. The problem with that is that the more sugary your diet is, sugary and starchy your diet is, the harder it becomes for your brain to use glucose for energy. Because when you flood your system with too much carbohydrate, you're also flooding your bloodstream with too much insulin. And so the glucose is still going to waltz into the brain, no questions asked. Yes, you have given the brain more glucose, but the brain can't turn that glucose into energy um at to full capacity or properly without adequate insulin. So the more insulin you you flood your system with, the more you bombard the surface of your brain with insulin, the more insulin resistant the brain becomes. And the brain and then the brain will then have plenty of glucose but not enough insulin to be able to process that glucose. So the beautiful thing about ketones and the ketogenic diet is that ketones will will cross into the brain beautifully but they don't they they burn beautifully in a low insulin environment. They burn best in a low insulin environment. And so ketones are uh if if you if they can then bridge that energy gap. So most of the brain's operations about 70% of the uh functions of the brain uh can run on ketones. The rest still need to be ideally fueled by glucose. But now you can rely a lot less on glucose and you can let the ketones do most of the heavy lifting because they don't need that that constant supply of insulin coming through. Um, so ketones are really the ideal supplemental fuel source for the insulin resistant insulin deficient brain.
Brilliant. So if every doctor would just say hey you're not feeling well you have low energy you have anxiety depression etc etc. How about we boost your ketones as opposed to just prescribing a pill? That might be a better viable option. Not saying that pills or the um medicine that doctors are prescribing is not correct. It's just the diet adjunct approach, which is what your book talks about is so important.
I want to ask about the worst foods that people are eating that's destroying their brain cuz you mentioned them earlier, rice, potatoes. Um, but people still think that these healthy foods are great for their brain, but it's slowly destroying them. How bad is oatmeal if you eat that every day and other sugar? Is that good for the brain or bad for the brain?
Honestly, the grains, if you had to pick one food group to remove from your diet, if you ask me, it would be grains of all kinds. Oats, wheat, corn, rice, etc. And I mean, I know that we're told that, you know, grains are the holy grail of health, that you are supposed to base your diet on whole grains and legumes. Um, but honestly, I cannot think of a worse food group to base the human diet on. There is absolutely no biological reason to consume a grain. These are the least nutritious and riskiest foods you can turn to. Um, they they're extremely poor in nutrients. They're extremely high in what are called anti-nutrients. So they they make it very difficult to uh for us to um to absorb and utilize a variety of different nutrients particularly minerals which the brain requires to function properly. Um, so and and they're largely carbohydrate. They're mostly carbohydrate and not that carbohydrate in and of itself is necessarily bad. It's just that uh you can if you really want to get carbohydrate in your diet, there are much safer places for it to come from than from grains. Grains are really not um uh not uh suitable for human consumption. They they really are almost all risk and very little benefit unless you have no other choice. And there are places in the world where people do not have another choice. Unless you have no other choice. These are the this is the I would avoid grains entirely. Um, they are because they are members of the seed because they are seeds of plants. They are very heavily defended. They contain embryos, plant embryos. They're very heavily defended. So there that's where all of the plant toxins and defensive molecules and anti-nutrients are. Um, and and and so these these are the most heavily defended of all of the parts of a plant that a person can eat. So and there really there really is nothing in a grain that that some people think there are healthy things inside grains. If if that's what you believe, then there are plenty of other places where you can get those same things uh without all the risk. There's nothing that you need to get from a grain that you can't get elsewhere. There's no reason to eat them unless you have no other choice.
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Very definitive from a Harvard trained psychiatrist and very opposite to what every other doctor would say. But I think it's really important to understand that high blood glucose and high insulin is not absent from the body and the brain in terms of health outcomes. So if you want a good body and a brain, you need to lower the insulin. We've been told that whole grain bread, oatmeal, brown rice has fiber. It's very important for us. Um, but obviously if we have the elevated insulin, which most people do have, we need to drop it.
Next category and keen to hear your thoughts. High sugar fruits and fruit juices. Do you think that's good for the brain?
Uh, no. Anything any food or beverage that raises your glucose to an unhealthy level um is going to be unhealthy for your brain. And so what is an unhealthy level? So um anything that raises this is my take on it. Anything that raises your blood glucose to above 125 milligrams per deciliter um is is is risky and should be avoided. Uh any food or beverage that raises your blood glucose to above 140 milligrams per deciliter is dangerous. And so really ideally you want to keep your blood glucose at about 110 or below even after meals. And in order to do that, you really do need to rein in the amount of carbohydrate we need. We eat substantially. Uh now people who are very athletic or young or metabolically healthy and flexible, they may be able to get away with more, but most of us have so much metabolic damage that we've accumulated over the years, we need to bring our carbohydrates down considerably and often to a ketogenic level. And so uh what your personal carbohydrate tolerance is for optimal health um is going it's going to vary from one person to another. But I will say this that there is no biological requirement for carbohydrate for any human being. And so you can't go too low. Um, the but you can go too high and so we do need all of our cells uh our bodies do need glucose but that glucose does not the the brain in particular the brain does need some glucose at all times to function at its best and so people would always would say to me well, you know, Dr. Eid. I need I need glucose. You know, how's my brain going to operate without glucose? And so, yeah, you you know, you don't have to worry about that because mother nature's taken care of that for you. And so, you can there are two places you can get glucose. One is from outside the body from the foods from foods you eat. This could be, you know, fruits and vegetables and so forth, but the other place is from inside the body. Your body has the ability to generate glucose from scratch uh from protein and fat. And that's called gluconeogenesis, making glucose from scratch. And so, and I would actually argue that it's safer and that it's preferable to make your glucose yourself rather than chance it by taking it in from outside your body because it's hard to know exactly how much is safe um without going over your limit. So, if you make it from inside your body, it's a demand-driven system. You're not going to make more than you need. If you take it in from outside your body, you might overconsume it. And every extra gram of carbohydrate you eat that you can't use or store right away is going to be turned into saturated fat on purpose. Your liver is going to take every excess molecule of carbohydrate you consume and it's going to turn it into saturated fat. And therefore, if your diet is too high in carbohydrate for your personal metabolism, you're actually eating a high-fat diet in disguise. A high carbohydrate diet is a high-fat diet in disguise because it we have very limited space to store carbohydrate in our bodies. We just have little pockets. We have pockets in our muscles for carbohydrate and then we have a storage tank in our liver for carbohydrate and we store it in a form of starch called glycogen. But we can store only less than a day's worth of of energy as starch in our bodies. We are designed to store energy for better or for worse limitless amounts of energy as fat on our bodies. Right? That's how we are designed because it's flexible. It's lightweight because we're animals. We're not plants. If we were plants, uh, you know, if we stored all of our excess energy as starch, we'd have to be dragging around these gigantic lumps of starch with us everywhere we went. They're heavy. They're unsightly. So we store it as fat which is lightweight and flexible and and so if you t take in more carbohydrate in a particular meal than you can store right away as glycogen which again we have very limited space for or that you can burn right away through exercise. Every excess molecule of carbohydrate that goes beyond that limit is going to be turned into saturated fat by your body on purpose. So you are eating a high-fat diet in disguise. And this is something I think a lot of people don't realize. Our bodies can turn carbohydrate into fat. And so it's really important to understand that because so many people think it's it's eating fat that makes us fat. But what makes us fat is is insulin. High insulin levels. And carbohydrate raises insulin the most of all of the macronutrients.
I think people would know that. Okay. I shouldn't eat so many carbs going to raise my insulin. But I don't think they'd understand that high carbs inadvertently causes a high fat inside approach because I'm assuming that that fat it gets stored in the liver and it gets stored in your fat stores. So carbohydrates turn into fat in your fat stores if it's not used for energy as opposed to eating butter or saturated fat which we'll talk about. That is a clean fuel for your body and for your brain and then you don't necessarily get fat eating saturated fat although people try to eat low fat.
Um, the next food I want to ask you about is plant superfoods. I know your take on vegetables and plant seed oils and all these different things but people still eat these superfoods like cinnamon. They think it's really healthy. Do you think cinnamon is good for your body and your brain?
Well, you know, cinnamon comes from bark and you know, bark is there to protect the tree and it's and if you, you know, you can taste you, it has a bitter taste, a very sharp taste. It also tastes slightly sweet, interestingly, but um which I think is another thing people like about it. But it is a it's a very um pungent substance. Most spices that come from bark or seeds or roots can be very strong tasting. And so these very strong that's a chemical clue an evolutionary chemical clue that this is something that could be dangerous for us. So it whenever something tastes very sharp or bitter or strong or pungent um then that's a chemical clue from nature that um it could that we need to be careful not to not to consume it. So um it's it people don't most people don't use cinnamon by itself. They mix it with sugar. You know, it's usually cinnamon and sugar on toast or cinnamon and sugar on cereal is cinnamon and sugar in in in candies and so forth. Um, plain cinnamon by itself people don't tend to consume. And that's because on its own it's not particularly pleasant to consume. So uh so so this is it's just one example of um of a spice that people enjoy consuming that uh that that you know in larger doses can be problematic.
Do you think that if somebody wants to fix their brain they should avoid spices just generally?
So I mean theoretically um uh we we don't there's no clinical trial that has showed this. We don't have solid evidence of this, but when you look at the biology of food and the biology of the brain and you look at which compounds the brain and body need, what which compounds do our cells require? Um, there are all of these um uh there are all of these what are called phytochemicals or phytonutrients in the world which we are told we're supposed to consume an abundance a rainbow of plant of of plant foods so that we get a wide variety of phytonutrients or phytochemicals in our diet and these are just plant compounds that are there for the plant's own purposes. Um, they really have no purpose in the human body. So, you know, the reason why we're told we're supposed to eat this variety of, you know, plants and fruits and vegetables and spices and all these superfoods and things like that is because there have been there's been study after study, these kind of survey-based studies, nutrition epidemiology studies that show that, you know, people who report eating higher plant diets seem to be a little bit healthier. But that's that doesn't that doesn't mean that we understand anything about why that is. It could be that they're eating more plants, but it also be that they're eating less junk. We just don't know. It's just a guess, right? So, there are countless studies that have reported that the healthiest dietary patterns in the world are the ones that contain the greatest quantity and diversity of plant foods. So, but now rather than questioning or testing or testing the validity of that claim, um, most scientists just simply accept that at face value and they skip ahead and they ask, "Oh, I wonder how plant foods are working this magic in the human body." Um, and it's really just a belief. Um, and so what happens is that phytochemicals have become the most popular theoretical answer to the question of why high plant diets appear to be healthier in these very flawed um questionnaire-based studies. So now that it's often because we're told, well, these have, you know, we're we're told that spices, for example, things like um turmeric is a good example, you know, that that's an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds. Just because a food ingredient behaves as an antioxidant in a plant or in a test tube does not mean that it behaves as an antioxidant in the human body. And you know nutrients, vitamins and minerals, they are welcomed into our body as honored guests and invited to stay. We have receptors to welcome them in and we have special pathways where we hold on to them and store them and we utilize them and we can see exactly what they're doing for us. All of these phytochemicals, they're treated as unwelcome intruders and they are forcibly removed from the premises as fast as we can possibly remove them. Essential nutrients are absorbed and ushered into our cells and and we have no such receptors for these phytochemicals. Most of them are very poorly bioavailable. We we don't absorb them well and or they're treated as toxins by the liver which immediately neutralizes them and ships them off to the kidneys for rapid disposal. So if we look at what's happening inside our bodies are very wise. They've evolved over millions of years to understand friend from foe to be able to tell the difference. And so it's not that if you take in some of these spices or um certain plant foods which you know may not be ideal for us. It's not it's not as though they necessarily are going to harm you immediately, but they're trying to and your body knows that and your body is is eliminating them as fast as it can. But yet we're told that we need to consume these on purpose in high quantities, often as extracts or supplements or concentrates, often um that have been manipulated to improve their bioavailability so they can actually sneak through, get past our defenses and be absorbed when they really shouldn't be. And uh because we're trying to fight inflammation and oxidative stress with these anti-inflammatory and antioxidant superpowers that the plant supposedly possess. But but the problem is we have our own antioxidant and anti-inflammatory defense systems in our own bodies and they don't need any help from from these plant molecules. And if and the and the less we interfere with those pathways, the better off we are. Our body is designed to heal. It's designed to fight inflammation. It's designed to keep oxidative stress in balance. We have our own antioxidants. Our cells make their own antioxidants. And so we have to trust that if we eat the foods that actually nourish us and let our body take care of the rest, that we can trust our bodies to heal. We don't need to try to manipulate and interfere with these pathways that evolutionarily have protected us for for millennia.
I think that would be the most important thing for somebody to take away from this episode which is don't put the crap in. You can fix your body inside by doing the natural way which we're going to talk about right now.
So referencing that study in 2026 few weeks ago it talks about ketones as the rescue fuel. So if somebody wants to boost ketones, do you think eating more fat and doing high fat is good?
Yes. So, so ketones are what they are is okay. If you So ketones are ready to burn fragments of fat. So and you can only make them if your insulin levels are nice and low. So if you lower your insulin to the fat burning point, so when insulin is high, um fat burning turns off. When insulin is low, fat burning turns on. And for anybody listening to this who's never heard that before, that's like the most important thing you can know, especially especially if you're And so, so, uh, insulin t insulin really is the gatekeeper of fat burning. So, if you're eating a diet that's keeping your insulin levels too high, which means that you're eating uh far too much carbohydrate, perhaps even overeating protein or just eating too much in general, your insulin or too frequently, your insulin levels are going to be high. Everything we eat raises insulin to a certain extent except pure fat. So, pure fat, which people don't really eat, most people don't anyway, but pure fat doesn't raise insulin. And so from a metabolic perspective, fat is the safest macronutrient you can eat. So I if you want ketones to help support your brain energy production, if you want that and if you want to burn fat, you have to lower your insulin level. You lower your insulin level by reducing the carbohydrates down to the fat burning point. And you have to you you might need to make a few other adjustments to your diet, which we can talk about if you want. But the biggest step and the most important one is lowering your carbohydrate as much as you can. Usually to for most people it's going to be to about 20 g per day um will will usually do the trick. Um, some people can get away with a little bit more and some people have to actually do even less. But lower your carbohydrate and that because carbohydrate raises insulin more than any other macronutrient does. And so get the insulin levels down. And then what happens is when insulin comes down, your fat burning will turn on. And and when fat is being burned vigorously enough, your liver will turn some of that fat, chop some of that fat into ketones, which are little just ready to burn fragments of fat that dissolve in the bloodstream. They don't need any special carriers. They're just water-soluble and they travel to the brain. They cross the blood-brain barrier easily and they set to work helping to energize your brain cells. So um this is because fat molecules larger fat molecules themselves the the brain isn't really equipped to burn those. There are other cells in the body that can do that but not the brain. The brain needs the the brain needs the fat to be in the form of ketones. And you can only make ketones if your insulin levels are low. So there are three things that need to happen to get into ketosis. So the first thing is your glucose levels have to come down and that's not going to happen if you're eating too much carbohydrate. The second thing is your insulin levels have to come down and that's not going to happen if you're eating too much or too frequently. Um, too much carbohydrate, too many processed protein powders also raise insulin quite substantially. Um, and and the third thing that needs to happen is you have to burn off a certain amount of that stored starch in your liver that we talked about before because if you don't, the body will still think, "Oh, I'm okay for a while. I don't need to burn fat because I still have some starch here that I can use." So, you and you have to burn off a little bit of some of that uh starch that's stored away. And when that starch level starts to come down, the body thinks, uhoh, we're running out of fast energy. I better turn on the fat burning machinery. So that's when things really start to shift. And so it can take 2 or 3 days to make that shift. But once that happens, really all of those systems come online and start humming away and fat burning really starts to get going and ketone production really gets um really becomes more robust and people start to feel better. So your your body and your brain switch from burning mostly carbohydrate to burning mostly fat. It's still a mixture. The glucose doesn't go away, but it's it's it's uh the ratio flips. And it really is a different operating system that comes online that is much healthier, smoother, more efficient and cleaner because burning mostly glucose is um it comes with a lot of extra inflammation and oxidative stress which is uh quite damaging for cells.
Now as Dr. Eid mentions dropping the carbohydrates and getting into ketosis is the most powerful tool for your brain. But there is one pillar of health that we haven't spoken about yet and it is actually the foundation of everything. It is sleep. Now I previously did an episode with Dr. Gobinyak who mentioned that if you aren't sleeping properly that is a massive risk factor for serious brain issues, things like chronic migraine and even dementia. And that's why I pay close attention to my sleep environment, a cool room, a dark room, and yes, even my mattress. And honestly, I never really thought much about my mattress, but if it's too soft or you sink in, it can completely ruin your sleep. And I struggle with this until I came across Helix Sleep, who are today's paid partner. Now Helix isn't like your average mattress brand. They actually personalize your sleep surface for your body and your sleep style. This is how it works. You take a quick sleep quiz about your height, weight, and how you like to sleep, whether you like soft or firm. And Helix matches you with a mattress that is built for you, not something that is off the rack. And I did the quiz, and my result was the Helix Twilight, their firmest memory foam mattress. And since I've switched, my deep sleep has improved significantly. I not only wake up feeling fresh, but I've even noticed more energy during the day. And my sleep score has actually improved. And the results are backed by data. In a Helix Westper sleep study, 82% of people experience more deep sleep. But here's the best part. You don't have to worry if it's not the perfect fit immediately because Helix offers a 129 risk-free trial. So you can try it at home and if it's not the right fit, you can return it, no questions asked. So, if you've been thinking about upgrading your sleep, especially if you share a bed or you know exactly how you don't want your mattress to feel like, Helix makes it simple, visit helixsleep.com/primal to take advantage of their weekend flash sale exclusive partner offer and get 27% off storewide. And thanks to Helixsleep for sponsoring this episode because sleep is the foundation of great health.
Let's play a game. I'll give you some foods and you tell me is this good or bad for the brain and your energy. Just yes or no. And they're basic. And it's so that people can understand what less than 20 grams of carbs a day is cuz it's not much. So, you ready for my first food?
I'm ready.
Do you think butter is good for the brain?
Oh, you would have to start with dairy, wouldn't you?
What's wrong with dairy?
It's complicated. Dairy is complicated. Um, so so I have m I have I have complicated thoughts on dairy. So but I um dairy fat is different from other types of animal fat just as dairy proteins are different than other animal proteins and uh dairy carbohydrates. Dairy macronutrients are unique to dairy. And so I know some people do very well with them, but many people do not, in my experience.
do well with dairy fat as opposed to other types of animal fat. So I know you wanted a yes no answer, but I can't give you one. Doesn't matter. But do you think that generally out of all the dairy that people tolerate butter better? Because I've seen that a lot. 100% is absolutely. This is absolutely true. Butter and ghee are the best tolerated dairy products on the planet.
So, do you think that if people eat more butter and ghee, that's really good for brain health and their energy? Potentially, depending on who you are. Dr. E, just like Sorry, I just No, that's okay. Let's let's let's go to a green food. How about fatty meat like beef? Is it good? Uh, yes, absolutely. Okay. Lamb? Yes. Okay, blueberries. If you don't overeat them and your blood sugar doesn't go up, they're fine. They don't have any special brain healing power, but they're they're fine. No antioxidants in blueberries that we have to have. No, no, those are for the blueberries on selfish purposes. Oh, bastards.
Okay, what about what about like a green apple? Because doctors say to eat an apple a day. Is that really good for us? It depends on who you are and what's your carbohydrate tolerance. What's happening to your blood sugar after you eat that apple? Because an apple has about 20 grams of carbs. So, it's it's a lot. It is a lot, but it depends on who you are. Again, um, wear a glucose monitor. If you want to know whether a food is bad or good for your brain from a metabolic perspective, wear a continuous glucose monitor and see what's going on after you eat that apple. Because if you've just gone for a run, if you just lifted some weights, your glucose might not budge. But if you if if you're older, have pre-diabetes or metab metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance or um sedentary, that your glucose could go up to 180 after eating an apple. So, and that's not good. So, it really depends on what's going on with your blood glucose level. Okay. Not quite yes or no, but it depends.
What about bacon? Is that fantastic for the brain? Well, it's better than an awful lot of other things. Uh, the the only reason that I I know the only reason that I would that I hesitate around the processed meats is because some people have um issues with um cured meats um histamine intolerance um and can feel kind of low or even anxious after they consume processed meats. So there's that caveat. Okay. So, so far you like butter and ghee, but you don't like other dairy. You like fatty meat, including beef and lamb. Bacon is an iffy. Fruit is if you can tolerate it. If people exercise, they probably don't exercise. Um, what about sardines and eggs? Uh, sure. Again, if you tolerate them. So, some people have they're both extremely they've extraordinarily nutritious and and safe and wonderful and lovely for most people. But then there are some people who have egg intolerances or or seafood intolerances. But those people aside, they are fantastic, extremely nutritious and healthy foods.
Okay. So, if we eat more of this uh fatty beef, lamb, eggs, you know, that's a lot of saturated fat and people get concerned with LDL cholesterol. Do you think that cholesterol is needed or harmful for the brain? The brain needs cholesterol so much that it makes every single molecule of cholesterol itself on site from scratch. So the the cholesterol is too big and bulky to cross the blood brain barrier. So you could eat um six dozen eggs right now and not a single molecule of the cholesterol that you consumed would make it into your brain. And yet the brain um contains 20% of the body's cholesterol, which is a about 10 times more than you would expect for an organ of its size. It is loaded with cholesterol on purpose. So the brain needs to have cholesterol. Why? Because cholesterol is an integral component of every membrane in our bodies. And our brains are packed with membranes, especially these very special uh membranes uh that make the form myelin. Myelin is the um substance that that insulates our brain circuits. It's just very tightly coiled uh membranes uh wound around all of our circuitry and that substance is called myelin and is very high in cholesterol. So cholesterol also um is in the membranes the double membrane wrapping of mitochondria. Mitochondria these very they do many many things but the thing they're most famous for is generating energy which again the brain must have. um access to smooth reliable sources of energy 24/7. Mitochondria are made of membranes and membranes are made with cholesterol. So cholesterol also um is critical to the developing brain um and critical to brain cell signaling. So, neurotransmitters. People often think, "Oh, you know, I'm depressed because I don't have enough serotonin or I'm I'm unmotivated and have ADHD because my dopamine isn't working." Well, it's not just the brain isn't just a bag of chem of neurochemicals of neurotransmitters. Those neurotransmitters are being passed back and forth uh via these membranes which need to be flexible in the right places and firm in the right places. And all of that has to do with the the the architecture of the membrane which relies on cholesterol for firmness and and integrity. So the synapse where neurochemicals are being passed back and forth like serotonin and dopamine. If you don't have enough cholesterol, those will not function properly. Even if you could have all the dopamine and serotonin in the world, but you wouldn't be able to to pass them back and forth between between brain cells. So, the brain makes all of its own cholesterol on site from scratch. And you know, why would the brain go out of its way to make something that's bad for you? It wouldn't. It's really smart. It's a brain.
If somebody does a ketogenic diet and they eat the foods that we've been talking about, the LDL increases. Let's just say 300. So, somebody's watching, they can reference their LDL. the doctor says you have to lower it or be on a statin. Um, my question for you is, do you think that this push for lower LDL has contributed towards more poor memory, focus, concentration, and brain problems? I can tell you for a fact that it has because I've had so many patients um who have, you know, come to me taking a statin. Statins are extremely popular medications. Lots and lots of people have high cholesterol and they're uh often prescribed statins to lower that cholesterol. And so I've worked with many many many patients who've taken statins and I I have countless stories of people who uh have brain fog, difficulty concentrating, poor memory um and a lot of other side effects that um that statins can cause. One of the big ones, of course, a lot of people know about this is muscle pain. And so you know statins are like all drugs statins are designed to interfere with normal human biology. They are toxins that we exploit for their side effects. Right? So so these the statins are interfering with a pathway inside cells that builds many important molecules not just cholesterol. So um when you take a statin you are causing all kinds of problems including in your mitochondria. So um the reason why people are told to take statin medications with a CoQ10 supplement is that statins interfere with the pathway that builds CoQ10 molecules. And CoQ10 is a mitochondrial it's a mitochondrial component. Your mitochondria can't function without CoQ10. And so you essentially statins are a form of mitochondrial poison and therefore um they are interfering with all kinds of uh healthy functions of mitochondria which are critical to to to normal cell function and brain energy production. So they also increase your risk for type 2 diabetes. They can cause muscle pain. Um they can and they can cause uh problems concentrating and with memory. So, I've had patients who have um stopped their statin and within days they feel clearer. They're able to, you know, their word finding improves. Their vocabulary expands. You know, they feel that they're sharper. And so, this wasn't dementia. This was this dementia doesn't go away in a few days. This is a drug side effect. And so, um, now the problem with statins is that the the minuscule, questionable, potential benefit that they may offer for small numbers of people in very specific circumstances who have already had heart attacks. I think that that is dwarfed by all of the very real, very well-established risks associated with these with these drugs. And so I, you know, we shouldn't be interfering with the body's ability to make cholesterol. It doesn't make any sense. You know, the body makes cholesterol for a reason. And so we want to understand uh if if if you have high chole high cholesterol you want you don't want to stop and say okay let's let's bludgeon it into submission with the medication that's where you want the thinking to begin okay why is your cholesterol high what does it mean what what are the other what what does the rest of the picture look like when people think about LDL cholesterol they're thinking about cardiovascular risk when they see high LDL they think oh no person's at higher risk for a heart attack. Okay. Well, let's look at all of the other clues uh about your cardiovascular health. What is your blood sugar? What what are your triglycerides? What is your HDL cholesterol? What is your blood pressure? Do you smoke? Are you overweight? Are you sedentary? Let's look at all of these other things that impact heart health to a much greater degree than LDL ever thought of being able to do. LDL is a very minor weak risk factor for cardiovascular disease and taken in isolation in my opinion tells you virtually nothing about cardiovascular risk. There was a study with uh about 140,000 patients who had just been um admitted to a hospital with their first heart attack. Almost half of them had a very low LDL cholesterol level lower than what was recommended at the time. And so therefore, it was essentially a 50/50. It was essentially a coin toss whether you're going to have a heart attack. You could have a high LDL or low LDL. You really, it really didn't make a difference. Half about half of those people had a nice low LDL level and they still had a heart attack. So it really doesn't protect lowering LDL doesn't protect people. What and in the in the ways that we are told that it does. It's not the it's not the most powerful lever you can pull when you're talking about cardiovascular risk.
Very well answered. And I'm sure that if people were to take that clip and present it to their doctor if they had like 10 minutes to listen to it, um it would really be provoking for that doctor to think about, okay, well, you know, what does that mean if your LDL cholesterol is high? Um so getting back to the 2026 paper, one pivotal part of it was to say that you need to measure your blood ketones as opposed to just the scale because a lot of people lose weight on a ketogenic diet. um how high do your ketones need to be to see those brain benefits? Right? And so this uh there is not enough clinical research yet to answer this question. We're going on our clinical experience, right? and and what the studies are starting to show, there are some clues coming out of this, some trends that have come out of some of the early uh clinical trials that that suggest that at least if you have certain types of mental health disorders like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, um Alzheimer's disease, certain types of conditions, it appears that um the degree of ketosis, the level of ketones in the blood may make a difference. That people whose ketone levels were higher tended on average to do better than people whose ketone levels were lower. That doesn't mean that everybody needs to be in robust ketosis to see benefits. I've certainly had patients who have not needed higher blood ketone levels, but by and large when we talked about this um in our in our consensus meetings, um most of us agreed that you want to see well they have to they have to at least be 0.5 mill per liter on a blood ketone meter because that's that's the metabolic um shifting that that's where the metabolic shift begins to take place. Um that's a metabolic turning point is 0.5 mill mole per liter on a blood meter of beta hydroxybutyrate. Um but that may not be enough that may not be robust enough ketosis high enough ketone levels to really um to to really see the benefits the mental health benefits that most people are looking for. Many people need to be higher. And most of us in this doing this work have noticed that it's you know it's really nice in a lot of cases to see the ketones be at least 1.0 mill mole per liter. Um, it's I like to see them between 1.0 and 3.0 as consistently as possible. I mean, ketones fluctuate. It's normal for them to fluctuate. They're not going to stay exactly in the same spot all the time. That's fine and it's normal. But, you know, you want to see them um if you're trying a ketogenic diet and you're and you're trying to use it to treat a mental health condition that I recommend to my patients that they aim for that range and and and stay there for 6 to 12 weeks as consistently as they can so that that shift that metabolic shift will take place and some healing can begin. They may find later that they don't need to be that high or they may find they need to be even higher because everyone's a little different but most people I in in our experience do well when they're somewhere in that range most of the time.
Okay. So roughly about one and if it's higher it's better. Um, when people do a ketogenic diet they tend to lose weight if they do it the right way the foods that we spoke about. Why do you think that happens? It's very simple for people just to do ketogenic diet. Why is it easy to lose weight on a ketogenic diet? Is that is that Yeah. So, most people do lose weight on a ketogenic diet. Not everybody, but most people do lose weight on a ketogenic diet. A ketogenic diet can be constructed for weight maintenance and even for weight gain. Um, but in most cases, uh, people are coming onto a ketogenic diet with some fat to lose and and they tend to lose that fat more easily than they do, uh, compared to other diets they've tried. And the reason for that is that you can't be in ketosis unless you're burning fat. Um, you so you your insulin levels have to be low to get into ketosis. And low insulin levels turn on fat burning. If you're eating a standard weight loss diet, let's say you're eating a low-fat diet or you're eating a low calorie diet, you are most likely eating a relatively high carbohydrate diet. You're most likely eating 40 to 60% of your calories as carbohydrates, which is what we're advised to do. And that amount of carbohydrate is going to keep your insulin levels too high to keep fat burning on consistently. So, uh, you are you're not going to be burning fat as as vigorously or as consistently. And, um, you're going to be hungrier because the other thing ketones do is is when you're in ketosis, your appetite is so much better regulated because you're fueling your cells in between meals. You're not getting these, oh, I've eaten and now I'm I'm not hungry. And then between meals, you get very hungry because your glucose and insulin levels are so unstable. On a ketogenic diet, your insulin and glucose levels smooth out and you feel satiated in between meals and your cells are energized because they are drawing from your fat stores in between meals rather than looking for more carbohydrate in between meals.
Amazing. So, the brain benefits you can lose weight and feel better. Um, you also co-authored another paper which is called the ketogenic diet is not for everyone in 2025. Who is the ketogenic diet not good for? Well, the reason why uh so so the lead author on this paper was Dr. Damien Dinka. Um and uh he's a a Polish scientist. Um and I I've done some collaborative work with with him and uh and and other Polish scientists and physicians. Uh recently it's been a really nice collaboration um with um Dr. Lucash and Dr. Matteos Rodson for example who are metabolic health advocates and physicians in Poland. And so um this paper uh uh was the the first author's Dr. Damian Dinka. And this paper the reason why it was important to write this paper is because the ketogenic diet is a powerful biochemical intervention. It's a powerful metabolic intervention. And that's what you want. You don't want you don't want an intervention that's not going to work. you want something that's actually going to work and but but because it's a powerful intervention. So what it does is it can lower glucose levels very effectively and very quickly. It can lower blood pressure very effectively and very quickly. And those are very healthy changes. It it can help you uh lose um it can help you lose some retained fluid. High high carbohydrate, high insulin diets, people tend to retain fluid because high insulin diets cause that cause us to retain extra water. So it can help you can feel you you can lose blood pressure, blood sugar, um electrolyte and and fluid balances will change when you start a ketogenic diet. Many physiological changes happen quickly and these are healthy changes. But if you have a pre-existing health condition or you're taking certain medications, that transition period can be dangerous because so let's say for example, you're taking a a a medication that lowers blood sugar. Let's say you have type 2 diabetes and you're taking a medication that lowers blood sugar. Uh then and now you've just added a diet that also very effectively lowers blood sugar. Now, what you've done is you've got two interventions that are trying to lower your blood sugar and you could very quickly within 24 hours end up in dangerous hypoglycemic territory. And the same thing is true with blood pressure. If you're taking a blood pressure lowering medication, um, which many people do, um, and you start the ketogenic diet, which in many cases, but not all, will lower blood pressure, which is a good and healthy change. you could very quickly again within 24 hours in some cases see blood pressure become dangerously low. So those are just two very common examples of why ketogenic diets need to be medically supervised in in many cases because the medications that people are taking and the pre-existing health conditions that people are dealing with um it's not the diet itself. It's not the ketogenic diet that's potentially dangerous. It's it's the the diet in combination. It's the medications and the pre-existing health conditions which need to be carefully monitored um so that you can navigate the keto adaptation period safely and comfortably.
Okay. Um, final questions for you. How does fasting affect the brain? Oh uh so fasting is uh the most ketogenic intervention of all. So yes, so fasting there are many ways to get into ketosis and lower your insulin levels. So anything that lowers your insulin levels is going to be good for the brain. So uh this is um uh fasting. Let me put it this way. Every food we eat raises insulin to some extent as we talked about before with the exception of pure fat which people don't tend to eat for a meal but um every food we eat raises insulin to some extent. So nothing drops insulin more efficiently more quickly than fasting than not eating anything at all. So fasting drops insulin like a stone. So, if you're trying to get into ketosis, fasting is one of the fastest ways to do that. Now, that also means that it can be the most dangerous way to start a ketogenic diet if you're taking certain medications or have certain health issues. And you're and you're likely to get a lot more keto flu symptoms if you plunge yourself into ketosis using an extended fast. Um but uh but yes, so when you fast, you you will eventually go into ketosis. And when you go into ketosis, lots of healing pathways and repair pathways and recycling pathways and maintenance pathways turn on in the brain that otherwise don't get a chance to operate. So, it's as if you've um got a manufacturing plant and you're you've been building cars 24/7 and nobody ever has time to clean up the plant or replace the parts in the machinery or or or do do any maintenance work in the plant because people are constantly building cars. They're never taking a break. That's just what it's like inside our cells. We have to take breaks from food processing in order to recover and heal and maintain and recycle and and do all the cleanup work in between food processing and but most people are not doing that. Most people are eating six times a day and so the brain never gets a chance to heal. Uh those pathways need to quiet down. um and insulin levels come down when we're not eating and all of those healing pathways turn on. And that's that's exactly what you want to happen. And you want that to happen on a regular basis. And for most people, it's happening very infrequently, if at all.
If somebody is just doing a carnivore diet, but they have dairy, they have some snacks, they try to do like fasting, but they don't do it that often, do you think that's enough? Is carnivore enough to fix the brain? Um, it certainly can be. Uh, so I I mean it depends on what's wrong with the brain to begin with, right? But I find, you know, so I use ketogenic diets in my work uh quite extensively and carnivore diets are are the ace up my sleeve. So the carnivore diets are the ace up my sleeve because many many many people have tried a ketogenic diet and they've only gotten so far with their brain health. It's made a big difference in many cases, not all, but in many cases going on to sort of a standard ketogenic diet, a lot of people feel a lot better and some people feel all the way better and that's amazing. But in one of the one of the main parts of my work is consulting with and troubleshooting tougher cases. And a lot of people who come to me have they've already tried a standard ketogenic diet and that's how they found me in the first place and they say, "Well, you know, I've tried a ketogenic diet. I I'm, you know, I'm just not that much better." And, you know, that's one of my aces up my sleeve is have you tried a carnivore ketogenic diet? Because there are so many potentially problematic foods in a standard diet, whether it's ketogenic or not, that can interfere with optimal brain function or that can cause inflammation, that can interfere with thyroid health, that can have neurotoxicities, um interfere with mitochondrial health there and gut health. There are so many culprits in in the plant world um and in dairy uh that can cause problems for people. And so ketosis is a really powerful lever you can pull cuz that's going to change the way your brain produces energy and that's going to be amazing but it often or sometimes doesn't go far enough. So um that's where a lot of tweaking and troubleshooting comes in. And the most efficient troubleshooting strategy I have at my disposal is a carnivore ketogenic diet.
Very, very good. Um, if somebody wants to do this today and they're like, "Oh, I eat so much crap. You have no idea, Dr. Eid." What is the one thing like the one thing that they should avoid right now? Stop right now to really fix their brain. If they just pick one food to stop wheat. Wheat. Oh, worse than sugar. Oh yes. Oh yes. Because wheat is sugar plus lectins plus anti-nutrients plus I mean it it's it's just it's just it's just the perfect storm of everything that you can that can go wrong in a food. It it's just really um so many people are sensitive to wheat without realizing it. And it's one of those staple ingredients that most people have been eating multiple times per day since they were very small. And most people do not realize how much harm it is it it's causing. People often feel so much better when they remove it. If you only had to pick I would I would choose wheat over sugar any day if I had to pick one thing to remove from the diet because wheat contains sugar but that's not all it contains. It contains lots of other problematic things. um you know gluten and and wheat germaglutin and lectins and anti-nutrients and fitates and just all kinds of other things. Glyphosate often a pesticide that's used to grow wheat. There are just it's it's it's hugely problematic and there's no biological requirement. There's nothing in wheat that you can't get somewhere else. I was really thinking that you'd say sugar cuz every person says sugar. But that's interesting cuz people probably eat more hidden wheat than they do cuz they know about sugar.
Dr. Eid, thank you so much for your time. I'm going to leave your book in the description. Change your diet, change your mind. Um, how else can we support you in your work? Uh, you know, I think I think the best way is to let people know about the book bec and and this is because um, uh, the book I really wrote the book to walk people through brain food so that because people always have these questions. What about dairy? And what about eggs? And what about grains? And what about and what about fat? And and uh what about paleo diets? What about carnivore diets? What about keto ketogenic diets? So, I've put as much information as I can possibly fit into that book for you, the people who are trying to improve your brain health. Because, you know, you really have so much more control over your mental health than you realize. And you changing your diet can be a really powerful mental health intervention, but you have to know which changes to make and they're not the ones you're used to hearing about. So tell people about the book. Um, that is really the best the the the thing that I would that I would ask if anybody is is trying to help me get the word out. That's what I would ask for. Brilliant. Wheat in the bin getting your book today, Dr. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much and it's always a real pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for watching. You will also love this episode next with Dr. Louisa Nicola. It's everything about the brain, creatine, and how to exercise to improve your performance. I'll see you next week.