Transcription
All right, next.
Okay, so um, yeah, another thing that I've changed my mind on, and this is actually very, very recent, is it's kind of interesting, but it's it's adding bananas to my smoothie.
And well, I did stop adding bananas a long time ago, but like I've now really like now have to avoid it. And um, I know you're looking at me like, please do tell.
This is interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so smoothies, um, there's actually one of the reasons I like to make smoothies. Well, there's a couple of real important ones. So, I most of my smoothies I get greens. So, a big dose of like greens, you know, a lot of times it's kale ends up being kale. And then a lot of berries like blueberries. And blueberries have polyphenols in them. They have flavonoids. They have anthocyanins. All of these things have been shown to improve blood flow. This is in human studies. Berries, giving people like even just berries, frozen extract of blueberries. Um, it increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Actually, these flavonoids, brain-derived neurotrophic factor is essential for growing new neurons. Um, that's, you know, called neurogenesis. That's very important for cognition. It's important for staving off brain aging. And, um, and so, uh, I always feel really good after doing the berries. And so, I love doing this in my smoothies. And so it used to be I would add a banana kind of like I'd also get some potassium from that, but also um just kind of make it a little creamier and stuff.
Well, it turns out bananas have an enzyme in it um called polyphenol oxidase. As the name implies, it actually degrades polyphenols. So it's counter. And and this was a human study that came out recently adding bananas to the to the berry smoothies, blueberries and stuff. Metabolites of polyphenols were significantly lower in in um plasma from people that had the smoothie that with the banana added versus not with the banana. I know it was kind of like, oh my goodness. So this is like the one thing I'm trying to get the polyphenols. Like that's the whole goal of why I'm I'm, you know, partly partly the goal of why I'm drinking the smoothie is for those polyphenols, like a high concentration of blueberries.
So, um, the other foods that are high in it are are uh collard greens and also um like chard. And I used to add chard to my smoothies cuz Swiss chard is like a great source of magnesium. It's a great source of potassium, of lutein. Like so I no longer add chard to my smoothies.
And then beets are also high. So, I don't add beets. I never really added I I didn't really ever add beets to my smoothie in the first place, but I did do bananas and chard.
Interesting. Nothing none of the other foods that I've looked at have quantities that have been shown to even be relevant at all. So we're talking like these foods are like exceedingly high. And so like I said again, you know, the anthocyanins, the polyphenols, the flavonoids. Flavonoid is a type of polyphenol that are in for example berries, blueberries, strawberries. These are they are beneficial. They've been shown to be beneficial in a variety of, you know, human studies, randomized control trials, beneficial for cognition, um, for improving cardiovascular health, for improving blood flow to the brain in both young and older individuals, for increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor, um, which of course exercise can do, omega-3 can do, other things. But like this is, you know, this is something that you want from the berries.
And if you go to any smoothie place, literally every smoothie place, if you want to get a smoothie, there's like a banana in it. And I think that that needs to change. Like that needs to be the banana needs to be taken out. And if you want a creamy sort of consistency to your smoothie, the avocado is the way to go because the avocado gives it to you. Its polyphenol oxidized is negligible.
Yeah.
Um, and it also has high in potassium, so then you're getting like what you wanted from the banana, but and then it has less sugar. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just win-win. And it's got a little bit of fat, so it makes some of the carotenoids in the smoothie like lutein and zeaxanthin um it increases their bioavailability up to four-fold. And these are things that are actually not just good for eye health, but they've been found to accumulate in the brain and they're they're associated with improved cognition. So there have been like studies where supplementation with it improves cognition. So that's cause and effect, right? But also there's been observational data. People that have higher circulating levels of these what are called carotenoids. They're lutein and zeaxanthin. They're really high in leafy greens. So um so adding again, adding the avocado, they're fat-soluble. So adding the avocado increases their bioavailability. Well, people that have higher circulating levels of them have higher crystallized intelligence, like so when they're older. So again, coming back to cognition as well. So it's really um, you know, I think adding the avocado is a really good substitute for a banana. It might be a little bit more expensive. Maybe that's why smoothie places don't do it. But I do think that it's something important to keep in mind because a lot of people that are getting smoothies now, you still look, look, you go get a green smoothie, it has a little bit of banana. Like you're still going to be getting magnesium, you're going to be getting some lutein and zeaxanthin, you're going to be getting calcium, you're going to be getting important micronutrients. But if you have berries in there, the polyphenols, or if you're mixing a cacao smoothie with a banana, people do that. Like the cocoa has high amount of flavonoids as well, which again improve blood flow to the brain. They increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor. That again should be avoid. Like do not add the banana to that because it degrades those polyphenols and that's like I know it's like not having any.
So um that's another thing that I've really changed my mind on. I've mentioned BDNF a lot. So, I did just come out with a free BDNF guide. Um, people can learn a variety of protocols that can increase BDNF, including what I just mentioned, some of the the berry um drinks and the cocoa doses and stuff as well as exercise protocols, intensities and stuff. Um, so I have a free guide. You can find that at bdnfprotocols.com for anyone interested in like learning more about protocols for BDNF and increasing it as well.
Sweet. Yeah, I'll link that down below as well. So, do do you happen to know if uh like does does like with chard for instance, like does heating it possibly break down this enzyme? Cuz I mean I don't know a lot of people that would eat like Swiss chard raw. I mean maybe put it in a smoothie, which would be practical for this conversation, but like if I ever had it, it was usually like sauteed or something with a little bit of, you know, olive oil or something.
I think it does. Uh it is a heat-sensitive enzyme as far as I remember. Um I don't know to what degree, but I mean no one's cooking their banana. The banana is the major smoothie source. No one. Yeah. No one's cooking the banana. Um the chard again. Yeah. Most people that are eating chard and it's it's it's it's only a problem if you're like cooking if you're eating your chard and then drinking your cocoa flavonol drink or you're eating your blueberry and you're trying to get the flavonol. They're trying to get those.
It's just inhibiting the absorption. It's not like a lasting effect.
It's degrading them. So, it's like essentially not it's like you have a big cup of blueberries that's high in polyphenols and then you mix in the banana and it just chops up. It degrades the polyphenols as if they're not there.
Yeah. Cuz the polyphenols, I mean, in essence, they also act similarly to a prebiotic. They kind of are a prebiotic. So, I'd imagine when you also degrade them, you're not getting any of the gut flora effect either, short-chain fatty acid benefits or anything like that.
Um, not necessarily. There's other components in berries like skin and stuff that are also fermented by the gut. But a large part of the health benefits of berries are from polyphenols for sure. So it's it's definitely like for me it was like, you know, and it really like it's just one study that just this is like a new a very like five months ago. It was so recent, you know, that it's like I don't there needs to be follow-up studies but I mean it was pretty compelling.
And it was humans too.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's awesome. It's just like, I mean I don't know that it's awesome but it's like, you know, to I mean because usually when you have these like kind of like almost esoteric seeming things like, oh okay, this enzyme, you know, people might sensationalize online but like this is actually out of a human study that's like legit. It's not like saying like, oh don't eat apples because pectin is going to make your hair fall, you know, or something. It's no, it's not connecting the dots. But I'll do I will say they didn't like so there have been studies looking at, you know, giving humans either like a big, you know, fresh berry, you know, mix or freeze-dried blueberries like where the the polyphenol content is very high and it improves x, y, or z. So for example, x being cognition, right? The study didn't look at the end points that were like functional like to say that, oh, if you give them the blueberries plus the banana, the cognition benefits they usually get from the blueberries was gone. It didn't show that. It just showed the polyphenol levels. So there's certain metabolites that are measured in plasma after drinking a high like for example, berry mix because there's a lot of polyphenols in berries and that you can measure that in your plasma. Those metabolites were like dramatically reduced.
Dang.
So biomarkers speaking like look speaking about biomarkers. Yeah. The biomarkers of polyphenols that you would normally see in plasma were like really, really, really low.
All right. Drew potassium from an avocado.