The Brain Doctor: #1 Dementia Treatment (EAT THIS)

If you live long enough, you will get Alzheimer's. It doesn't matter what your genetics are. It's a 100% chance you'll get dementia.

It is Dr. Anthony Chaffey, the number one carnivore doctor and neurosurgeon, an international speaker, and the creator of the Plant-Free MD podcast. Heart disease is not a Statin deficiency, and Alzheimer's is not some other deficiency.

This is a very new disease, but it is gaining in prevalence and incidence. Alzheimer's is now called type 3 diabetes, and eventually, that kills most people. The high-fat, meat-based ketogenic diet was a better treatment for Alzheimer's than every medication ever tried for Alzheimer's, ever.

A gentleman I had on my podcast, H. Cranmer, who has a number of elderly care facilities. I have a lady that came to us with very advanced dementia. We put her on a mostly meat, carnivore diet. She went out with her daughters, and her daughters said, "Mom didn't forget anything." This is really preventable, even reversible.

20% of your brain is cholesterol, yet we're doing our damnedest to lower our cholesterol. They had people that were on statins that had Alzheimer's, and then they were taken off these statins. They all of a sudden didn't have Alzheimer's anymore.

I mean, you actually get actual brain damage. You know, doing squats does, in fact, make your brain work better. And if you really can't do a bodyweight squat, then you had better damn well start doing bodyweight squats because you're going to lose the ability to get out of chairs. You're going to lose your ability to walk, and that is generally the end of the road.

You hear about this in your 30s. You start in your 30s. And if you're 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 when you hear about it, get on it and get going with it. Your life will improve.

I think this is really cool. The world's first carnivore app. Go Carnivore. Dr. Chaffey, welcome. Thank you very much for having me. Good to see you.

Now, when people hear death, they usually think about heart attack, stroke, and even cancer. And the last thing that we think about is death from Alzheimer's or dementia. And that was me until it happened to my dad 3 years ago. He was able to get up, sit, talk, and drive like many of us can. And now he can't even sit up, and he can't swallow. So my first question is, how likely is it that we're going to get dementia as we get older?

Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm very sorry to hear that, and I hope your dad is doing well and hopefully he can recover. So that's a very, very hard thing to go through. As far as getting dementia of any form, there are different kinds of dementia. There are different kinds of neurodegenerative processes that can happen. Some are less likely than others.

But what I was told by my professor in medical school was that if you live long enough, everyone will get Alzheimer's disease. Which is funny to me, because Alzheimer's disease was first described in the early 1900s, and it did not exist before that. And there was no disease in the literature by any other name that described that. So this is a new disease. It's very, very new.

And people say, "Well, people were just dying in their 30s in the 1800s and before that." That's actually not true. That's average life expectancy from birth. But if you look at the statistics, which I have, for the US in 1850, it goes, or actually for every decade, it goes by decade. So at zero, then average life expectancy is 36 or 38 years on average. But if you make it to 10 years old, then on average, you'll make it to 60 years old. And as you get older, you live longer and longer and longer and longer. So actually, people lived a very, very normal lifespan as we would consider it now.

Now, maybe not everybody got to that stage because infant mortality rate was very high, and there were a lot of wars, and there weren't antibiotics, all these sorts of things. But people who weren't killed by something generally lived quite a long time. My great-grandfather was born in 1875, he died in 1975 at home with full faculties. And so this is, this is a very new disease, but it is gaining in prevalence and incidence. So it's going up and up and up, especially since the 1970s, I believe, because of all the dietary changes and recommendations that were made then. But it is going up for whatever reason.

So now it is taught that if you live long enough, you will get Alzheimer's. So according to that, according to those people, it's a 100% chance you'll get dementia if you live long enough.

I think this is really cool. The world's first carnivore app. Go Carnivore. Go Carnivore is like no other. It has free 90-day carnivore challenges, customized recipes, live meetings with carnivore doctors, including Dr. Anthony Chaffey, Dr. Bride, Professor BK, and Dr. Kilts. So many courses and so many more carnivore tools to help you get the best results. For more information, go to the URL shown on the screen, go carnivore.com, or there is a clickable link in the description of this video.

What is the difference between, you say, dementia and Alzheimer's? And what are the other types of different dementias or brain diseases that people can experience?

Well, I mean, there's a number. But dementia is more of a general term for neurocognitive decline. Alzheimer's is a specific form of that, which sees a specific pattern of degradation on MRI and also on autopsy. So when we look at actual brain slices, it was normally seen with these beta-amyloid plaques. And it was said in the literature, there was actually this, these plaques actually caused the Alzheimer's. These neurofibrillary tangles that sort of tangled up the neurons and sort of messed up the connections and how they interacted with other cells. That has actually been thrown out because there was a paper that came out last year that showed that the original papers that basically showed this relationship and basically tried to make the argument this was a causative relationship, they actually fudged their numbers. And so they actually doctored their evidence to make it look as if these beta-amyloid plaques or these neural tangles actually were the cause. And they were not. And so they just wanted to make a landmark paper and get their tenure positions and things like that, or maybe they already had them. But that's been thrown out.

And so now, and actually for several years now, Alzheimer's has been called type 3 diabetes. And it's thought more to be from a metabolic, biochemical sort of process. Which is, you get insulin resistance through type 2 diabetes. That's the hallmark of type 2 diabetes. Your brain is part of your body, and of course, you're going to get insulin resistance in your brain as well. And that's a very important structure. And so when you get insulin resistance, you're not going to get enough blood sugar into that tissue. And so that tissue is going to decline. And so it could very well be that this is just not getting enough energy, and the brain is atrophying.

There could be other causes of that general atrophy as well, which is what you see on Alzheimer's on MRI, that the brain just shrinking, shrinking, shrinking globally. And so when you put people on a ketogenic diet, this bypasses that insulin resistance, and then the brain just runs on ketones. And then people's brain just, it's like flicking a switch. They, in a couple of days, they are noticeably better.

And, you know, I have a gentleman, I had on my podcast, H. Cranmer, who has a number of elderly care facilities and nursing homes in the Phoenix area. And he started looking at the literature. And there is literature showing this. There were thousands of studies on ketogenic diets, how beneficial they are to various medical issues. And one of them is Alzheimer's. So they showed that a ketogenic diet, a high-fat, meat-based ketogenic diet, was a better treatment for Alzheimer's than every medication ever tried for Alzheimer's, ever.

And so he's looking at that and he's trying different diets for his patients. He tried a vegetarian diet. That was awful. It didn't work well. His patients were not getting better, they're actually getting worse. He's like, "Okay, well, this isn't working." And he came across the ketogenic sort of approach and carnivore diets. He started saying, "Okay, well, what about more meat?" And his patients started doing a lot better. And in fact, he was able to rehab some of these people and get them home again. They didn't need to be in a nursing home anymore. He reversed their Alzheimer's.

So he's doing this on a commercial scale. He's got, I think, like at least four nursing homes, and he's getting these people improving. He has one lady who has improved so much, she just goes around and doing gardening and all these sorts of things. And before that, she was basically an invalid. So there is definitely an underlying process here which we're not addressing.

I said this before, but diabetes is not a metformin deficiency. Heart disease is not a Statin deficiency. And Alzheimer's is not some other deficiency. There's something in our environment that's damaging us. There's something that we're eating or exposing ourselves to that is damaging us, damaging our biological processes. Or we're not getting something vital and necessary to our brain and our body, and we're losing function because of that. And so I think that's what the underlying process is, which is why you change someone's diet, and you change their biochemistry, and all of a sudden, when you change the direction of their disease, I think that's clear that there must be a cause and effect relationship there that you're addressing an underlying cause.

There are other causes of dementia, like Prion disease. We sort of mentioned off there, that's frontal temporal dementia and degradation. So that gets a specific picture of dementia because it's those specific parts of the brain are being affected. And for whatever reason, and we don't really know. And there are other causes as well. So all these different causes are generally termed dementia. You mean, you get Parkinson's dementia, you get vascular dementia, where the different vessels get clogged off because you're a vascular path and you have a lot of inflammation and damage in your arteries, and you're building up plaques and damage, and that's sort of blocking off these little vessels, and you just get little mini strokes, just these parts of your brain die off because they don't have a blood supply. And so there are a lot of different causes, but the general effect is that you get neurocognitive decline, and eventually to the point that you can't really care for yourself. And eventually, that kills most people who have that and have to go to a nursing home.

It's exactly what's happening to my dad. And it's so interesting because you mentioned ketogenic diet, and I try to talk to my dad about that, but it's just not something that he can do when he's so advanced in that stage. And I want to talk more about the solutions for people that if they have dementia, or they know somebody that has dementia, we can talk about that a little bit later. But circling back to the causes of dementia, you mentioned insulin resistance. And that is at the heart of so many different diseases, like heart disease, dementia, diabetes, all these different things. Getting back to dementia, is that a genetic component, or is it lifestyle, or a bit of both?

I think it's going to be a combination. A lot of most diseases are going to be a combination of a genetic predisposition and an environmental trigger. So you may have, you may be genetically predisposed to getting a disease, but if you don't get the environmental trigger, be it some sort of chemical agent that's damaging to you, or some sort of food stuff that's not really doing well for you, causing carbohydrates causing insulin resistance, things like that, or a lack of appropriate nutrition and some sort of nutrient like DHA. You know, the omega-3. 20% of your brain is made out of DHA. And so, you know, that's very obviously a very important molecule that you need to have. This is why they call fish brain food. There's a lot of DHA in brain food. There's also a lot of DHA in cow, you know, so especially grass-fed cow. And so if you're lacking those, if you're lacking cholesterol, 20% of your brain is cholesterol. And yet we're doing our damnedest to lower our cholesterol by any hook or crook. And there are consequences of this.

And one of those consequences is that you stop your brain from making the requisite cholesterol to build and repair your brain. The axons of your brain, the cords coming down from your neurons that go and connect to everything, those are called your axons. And they're myelinated. They're aligned with sort of these different cells or sort of fatty and structure. About 50% of that is cholesterol. And so if you don't have enough cholesterol, you don't get proper myelination, you don't get proper conductivity of those cords and connections. So your brain is not firing as fast, right? So your brain slows down, so your cognition goes down. Also, a lot of the mass of the brain is this myelination of the axons. And so that starts shrinking and starts going down, your brain starts shrinking.

And so, I mean, B12 is another important component of that as well. Most people are deficient in B12. And so if you're not eating enough meat, if you're not getting, you only get B12 from food unless you're supplementing. And so if you're not doing that, you're not getting enough B12, then you're going to decline in that regard as well. You know, it's funny, more and more people are having less and less B12, are getting more and more deficient. And so the reference ranges are just going down as well, because the reference ranges are the average for the community. So the first few thousand people that come into a lab that year, that is a reference range because that's normal, right? Because a lot of people have that. That's not necessarily normal. If you have a population of sick people, that's not who you want to compare yourself to.

So now, because most people are deficient in B12, that reference range is just going down and down and down. And so now fully half of the reference range in Australia and America and Europe is actually in what I would call a truly deficient state. In Australia, the range in my area is below 400 has actually been shown that that can cause nerve damage and you can get demyelination of your axons below 400. So that's fully half the range is in the state that you can get demyelination. And we see this in, you know, my field of neurosurgery, where we see the spinal cord in people thinning.

There was a study out of Oxford in 2008 when they looked at different people, different diets, and they had a vegan cohort and they followed them for five years. People went vegan and followed them for five years. After five years on MRI, they showed that their brains had shrunk by 5% of their volume. Right? So you're not getting all these DHA, EPA, and cholesterol that you need for your brain. Your brain is made out of. Probably not getting enough B12. They considered this likely due to how low they were in B12. And remember I said that reference range was about 140, 150 up to 650. The levels of these people, the vegans that had their brains shrink by 5%, their levels, which Oxford thought was shockingly low, was in the 180s. Right? So that's still within the range. And so if you have a doctor that doesn't know better and they're looking at that, "Oh, you're 180. I mean, yeah, it's low normal, but it's still in the range, so you're okay." I mean, you can actually get actual brain damage from that and brain degradation. Now, that is likely recoverable, but not after a certain point, and not if you don't do something about it.

So there are a lot of causes, but I think that's a major one. We're not eating the right thing. We're not getting the right things that our brain needs. You know, another one that I mentioned before is that there are cases in the literature of reversible cases of Alzheimer's due to medications. So specifically statins. We're trying to lower cholesterol, fine. If that's what you want to do, I don't. Especially because cholesterol was just never a problem. It was a scapegoat used by the sugar companies. And when you know that, you just sort of say, "Okay, I'm going to look elsewhere now." Because that was based on a false premise. You have to throw that out.

Unfortunately, they haven't thrown that out. And of course, because statins are the largest grossing medication that have ever been put on the market, so of course they're not going to give that up. They're trying to get more people on it. They're trying to say everybody over 40, just because of your age, should be on a statin. And they're going to try to keep pushing that line down more and more. But you know, there are cases in the literature where people have been on statins, and some of these can cross the blood-brain barrier. And you see mixed reports on which ones can do it. But you see things saying that Lipitor can, you see ones that Lipitor can't. But there's some saying they can and saying here's the evidence for that.

So either way, it's likely that at least some of these can cross the blood-brain barrier. And what they do is they stop your body from making cholesterol. That's how statins work. They stop your body from making the large LDL molecules, which you actually need to have. And your body makes these things. And so that happens in your brain. And now your brain doesn't have enough cholesterol. And that could potentially cause harm because your brain is cholesterol.

And so in these reports, they had people that were on statins that had Alzheimer's or been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And then they were taken off these statins. Several weeks later, they all of a sudden didn't have Alzheimer's anymore. Wouldn't you know? And then they were put back on the statins, and a few weeks later, they had Alzheimer's again. Which is just a really unlucky coincidence, right? So is that going to work for everybody? No way to tell. But it seemed to have a reversible mechanism in those people, which seemed to display a cause and effect relationship, at least in those cases.

And so I think that is exactly what to expect. Especially because this is not a normal phenomenon. This is brand new. This was not described before the 1900s. We do not see this in the animal kingdom at all. We don't see this in native populations of humans eating a natural meat-based diet. And so, certainly not in the numbers that we're seeing now. Some people will say, "Oh, well, look at this study about the Inuit or whatever." Is that isolating the Inuit who are only eating what they traditionally ate? No, it's not. So that's useless. That's a waste of time. You're wasting everyone's time.

But we don't see this in other animals. That people may say, "Well, it's because animals get killed before they develop it." Fine. What about animals in the zoo that die of old age? They don't really get this if they are eating what they're supposed to eat. Now, there are dishonest actors that will pull out studies to say, "Oh, well, look, these are the disease rates of animals in the zoo." Are they isolating for animals that don't eat what they're supposed to eat? Well, I expect so. Does it say that in the study? Well, then stop wasting everyone's time.

So you don't see this. You see animals in the zoo get older, live their life, and eventually just curl up, go to sleep, and not wake up. You know, they're not getting debilitated and mentally disabled because of this neurodegenerative process, generally. So this is something peculiar to humans. And this is something peculiar to the last century. And this is getting more and more common.

If this were just genetic, if this were just how we're supposed to live, well, you know, the life expectancy of humans in America and elsewhere went up dramatically once we started getting potable water. That was a main killer, especially of children. And as well as penicillin, things like that. But when we eliminated out those major, major causes of infant mortality, then life expectancy went up dramatically on average. And that was in the 20th century. So we've had nearly 80 years or so of longevity near what it is today, average life expectancy from birth. And yet, no, we didn't see these rates of Alzheimer's. And then in the 1980s, it started going up. In the 90s, it started going up from there. In the 2000s, it went up more. 2010s, it's gone up more. 2020, it's going up still. So something is happening, right? Something's happening to our environment, right? So that can't be genetic. Genetics don't work like that. And anybody who's taking population genetics will know that you cannot change the population genetics to that degree that quickly without a major, massive extinction and then major, massive immigration flux. Right? But again, this is happening all over the world. Right? So if this were just Americans that were getting had this genetic propensity for Alzheimer's, why would this be affecting people everywhere in the world?

So there's definitely something environmental. And so you can have a genetic predisposition, environmental trigger. What some people say is, genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger. And so that's the way I expect what's going on here. But I think the vast majority of it is the environment. Right? Because it doesn't matter what your genetics are, if the environment doesn't pull the trigger, the gun doesn't go off, right? So that's the major causative mechanism there. And so regardless of what your predisposition is, if you just don't expose yourself to these things, and you provide yourself with all of the requisite materials and nutrition that your brain requires, which come from animal-based nutrition with a high animal fat component of that, then you really shouldn't develop this at all.

So talking about the environment that we're in and all the toxins and all the crap that we're having to go through, what is the role of seed oils and plant toxins making our brain worse? Why does that happen?

Well, I mean, look, plants make about a million different chemicals that are defensive in nature, either directly toxic or to be indirectly toxic, or indirectly harmful, causing you not to be able to absorb certain materials and nutrients. And so you end up declining because of this, or messing with your hormones, and this has other knock-on effects as well. There are many that have neurotoxicity. Caffeine, for instance. This is an insecticide. This is a neurotoxin to insects. This was developed millions and millions of years ago to fry the brains of insects trying to eat these plants. And we have sort of a crossover mechanism, and it does something to us. And we like it, and it gives us a bit of a buzz, and it's addictive. But that's what it was developed for. It was not developed to wake people up in the morning. Millions of years after this came into being, the plant wasn't thinking, "I'm just really going to help Josh start his day."

So a lot of these things are, I mean, you think about hemlock, how that works. It blocks GABA receptors in the brain. GABA is the sort of, there's excitatory molecules and there's calming molecules. GABA is a calming molecule. And so if you don't have this counterbalance of excitation and calming, you get over-excitation, and the neurons just start firing all at the same time. And that's called a seizure. And everything just locks up. Every cell in your brain is firing. This is sort of why I laugh at these movies, they're like, "Limitless," and "This only 10% of your brain is being used at any time." And just turns on 100%. That's called a seizure. You turn on 100% of your brain at the same time, it's called a seizure. Right? So that's not what you want. You don't want that.

And so that can happen when you suppress GABA or block the GABA receptors. And so what if you even eat half a leaf of North American water hemlock, that's enough of this that it will kill you with intractable seizures in one to two minutes. So we would be quite foolish to think that there aren't other molecules and chemicals in plants that don't attack the brain as well, and the nerve system as well. And obviously, those are an extreme example. But caffeine is much lighter, obviously not killing us. But what is it doing to our brain? It's not designed to help us, right? So it's doing something. And maybe that something isn't positive.

Now, there's other things as well that maybe we have more defenses to, or maybe they were designed to affect the neurological function of other animals or insects. So maybe there's just a bit of an effect on, but not as much as they would on their target animal. But I think you'd be a bit foolhardy to just run in there and just think that none of these things are going to harm you. Of course, they're going to be things that give a neurodegenerative process.

I mean, just carbohydrates in general raise your insulin, you get insulin resistance, and your brain stops getting its proper energy. You don't want to be running on glucose anyway. Your brain doesn't want to be running on glucose anyway. Why do I say that? Because everyone says that your brain runs on glucose primarily. Now, it doesn't. We only say that because what we consider our primary metabolic state, the so-called fed state, as opposed to the fasting state, is misnamed. That is not our primary metabolic state. Our so-called fasting state is our primary metabolic state, I believe. And that's the primary metabolic state of nearly all animals in the wild. Then, you know, if I eat 4,000 calories in ribeye, I'm not fasting. Whatever else you can say about my metabolism, you cannot say it's a fasting metabolism. And so that's our primary metabolic state. And actually, when we eat carbohydrates, that's a dysfunctional, pathological metabolic state. You know, that's being put in that condition by our body's defenses towards hypoglycemia.

So whenever your brain has ketones, it runs on ketones. When your insulin goes up, it suppresses your body's production of ketones. But if there are any there, your brain will run on ketones. It has. And then it fills the gap with glucose. So when we're in a fed state, we suppress our ketones. We have to run on glucose because your brain's got to do something, right? It needs energy. Rest of your body needs energy. But when you get more and more ketones, you start running on less and less glucose. There's some cells in your brain that still run on glucose, but the rest of it just runs on ketones. And so when you get to a certain threshold of ketones, your brain stops running on glucose even when glucose is present and abundant. So what does that mean? That means the brain prefers ketones. That's its preferred energy source. So of course, that's its primary preferred energy source. And so when you're eating carbohydrates and things like that in abundance, you're actually shutting down your brain's ability to provide your brain with its preferred energy source. Same with your heart. Your heart prefers to run on ketones. It can run on glucose, but when your heart muscle actually turns and can't run on ketones when they're available, that is a serious pathological metabolic state.

There are a lot of things that can cause damage to your mitochondria and damage your metabolism. Damaged mitochondria, past a certain point, can't really run on ketones. They need glucose and glutamine at that point. This is seen in cancer biology. But seed oils in particular directly damage the mitochondria. Great talks on this by my friend Dr. Chris Knobbe, who has literally wrote the book on seed oils and how toxic and harmful they are. But he talks about how they directly harm the mitochondria. And this is just coming up more and more and more, that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root of many, many chronic diseases. And seed oils, omega-6s in particular, will directly harm the mitochondria.

Then there's other things in seed oils, these polyunsaturated fats that get oxidized and they damage. They turn into very inflammatory factors. These have the double bonds. That's what makes them unsaturated. So it's either one double bond, it's monounsaturated, or multiple double bonds, it's polyunsaturated. Those double bonds are a weak point. That's energy that other molecules want to tap into. So they want to bang that bond. And it forms a different molecule, it damages, oxidizes, and this becomes very inflammatory. And so when you're eating these things, especially when you're cooking with these things, they become very, very inflammatory and oxidized very quickly. And this causes harm, this causes damage. And certainly, there are a plethora of toxins in plants that can damage your brain as well and damage the central functioning of your brain in various means.

So it's not to say that everybody should just go zero carb and take out all the plants. Not trying to say that. But just talking about the big picture, which is carbohydrates, sugars, seed oils. Whether you want to have some vegetables or not, that's your choice. But eat a lot of fatty meat.

So I think that is the big consensus in terms of the next topic, which is how to have a healthy brain. Because you've talked about some different pieces when we're talking about the progression of dementia, why that's happening in Alzheimer's. If somebody is like, "Right, I want a healthy brain. I want a thriving brain. If I'm 40, 50, 60, going into my 90s, what is the first thing they need to do to have the best brain and healthy brain possible?"

Well, you have to provide the core central nutrients that your brain requires. So DHA and EPA are required. These are essential fatty acids that you don't really make, and you cannot get from plants. So you have to get that from animal sources. Now, people will say, "Well, there are omega-3s in other plant oils like flaxseed oil." That's ALA, alpha-linolenic acid. That's not the right kind. That's good for your heart, does nothing for your brain. And there are many sources that say you cannot convert. There are other people that say that it can convert, but it's minuscule, like a percent or so gets converted into DHA. And there are other sources that say absolutely not, none gets converted. So the jury's out on what's happening there. But if it is converted at all, it's a very minimal amount.

So you need to get that. And you need the cholesterol for your brain. You need the fat-soluble nutrients for the brain. You need different essential nutrients, just B12, for instance. All of these things, you just need the requisite materials for your brain. It was funny, I remember reading an article when I was a kid that said, "Well, you know, early man, they must have traveled all over the place and really just migrated everywhere to get all these things to get all these nutrients for their brain. They'd have to eat this plant and that thing and this thing over here and go get some fish for DHA." Like, I think you guys are missing something here.

You know what is one food source that you can think of that by definition has every nutrient that you need to grow a healthy brain? And in fact, I learned much more recently that for millions of years before the first edged stone tool about 3.3 million years ago, for several million years before that, there was evidence of protohumans using rocks as pound stones to crack open the skulls of dead animals that had been picked clean by other predators that had taken them down, crack open the skull so they could get at the brain. And this provided them with a very, very rich nutrient source that allowed them to continue to develop their brain and prosper and thrive and continue that evolution.

So you need to get the requisite nutrients. And you have to stop taking in things that can cause neurodegenerative processes. Okay? I mean, very simple ones. Smoking, drinking. This causes problems. This causes vascular dementia, closes down the small vessels, damages them, and you just get parts of your brain dying off because the small vessels get clogged up, and you can't use that part of your brain anymore. You don't want that. You want all of your brain accessible.

And then, you know, other sorts of things as well. I mean, we talked about carbohydrates. This is type 3 diabetes, right? So if this is type 3 diabetes, and now we know that you can reverse type 2 diabetes in humans by putting them on a ketogenic diet, well, then the same thing that's going to help reverse a problem will likely help prevent the problem, because you're talking about underlying causes. And so if you don't want to get type 3 diabetes, do the things that help prevent diabetes, which is don't eat carbohydrates, or certainly don't eat them in abundance, certainly don't eat them to such a degree that you get insulin resistant and you can't go into ketosis where your brain runs on ketones. Your brain wants to run on ketones. And when you eat sugar, your insulin goes up, and it stops your body's ability to make ketones in any great number. And so your brain has to rely on glucose, and that's just a suboptimal energy source for your brain.

So I think those would be the main things. You want to avoid things that are bad for your brain. You want to give your brain things that you need. It's pretty simple. It's very simple.

But we hear about saturated fat, and I think many people are talking about saturated fat that it doesn't cause heart disease. Why is saturated fat so important for the brain?

Well, I mean, your brain is saturated fat. And unsaturated. I mean, because omega-3s like DHA are monounsaturated fats. But that's what your brain is made of. So you need this. This is part of the essential structural components of the brain. And it's actually another reason why ketones are so important as well, because they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier, reconstitute into fatty acids, and actually be used as physical structures in building your brain. This is why infants and children in utero are in ketosis. They're in a state of ketosis at all times. So if a child is nursing, even though there's lactose in there, they're in ketosis. And infants are very, it's very easy for them to go into ketosis. So as long as they're not just being stuffed full of sugar, they can bounce into ketosis very easily because they have to, because you need those ketones for a growing brain, for the energy, but also for the building materials and the building blocks. You're growing and building your brain. So you need fat. You have to have fat because we are fat. Our bodies are made out of fat. Our brain is made out of fat.

And so, I mean, even in the 1980s, when I was growing up, this was recommended. Oh, fat's bad, it's horrible. But give your kids full-fat milk when they're developing, when they're growing their brain, because they need the fat for their brain. Right? So and this was something that we'd known for a very long time. And yet, you know, we've driven that away. And we have like baby formula that replaces the fat with sugars and carbs and things like that. And it's just like, how is that a good idea? You do that to the brain? Well, it's not.

And you can see very clearly in the fossil record and in the literature that since going to agriculture, our brains have suffered and our development has suffered. So there is a clear line in the fossil record about 10,000 years ago, wherever that is, that you see a clear demarcation in the size of the skeletons. So you see the average height going down by five inches. You see size of poor wound healing, infectious disease, crooked teeth, crowded jaw, smaller jaw, the wisdom teeth not coming in, they have all this dental caries and cavities, and their brains are smaller. So the average brain size actually reduced by 11% for adult males immediately after the introduction of cultivated foods and crops. And actually dropped 17% in adult women. So the brain immediately drops.

So you're eating the wrong things, your brain can't develop properly. You're kicking your kids out of ketosis because you're giving them carbs and sugar and garbage like that. And then it's forcing them out of ketosis. They need to be in ketosis. Their brain grows better in ketosis. And so that's obviously going to have massive ramifications. There was a picture from a textbook from a professor at Cambridge in archaeology and paleoanthropology. And he shows that these two skeletons are very different. Shows all the massive differences in pre-agricultural and post-agricultural humans. And at the bottom, it said, "Everywhere that agriculture was introduced, about 10,000 years ago, regardless of the time, regardless of location, regardless of the types of crops that they went to, a similar pattern occurred where you saw degradation of the health of these people." And they said that this was a product of poor nutrition and now infectious disease, which had started plaguing these people, which was not seen in the skeletal remains of people pre-agriculture. So it does seriously damage you. You're not getting what you need.

So, you know, just that simple fact that you're not in ketosis, you're not getting ketones to the brain is a problem. This is just a simple demonstration that if you're not getting enough fat, if you're not in ketosis, if you're not getting these requisite nutrients, your brain won't develop properly. We're already stuffed. You know, we already did our developing. Our brains aren't going to get any bigger than they are now. But all we can do is improve and optimize our body where they are. But we can help the next generation and the generations after that. And we can get them bigger, stronger, healthier, and bigger brains. And to do that, you need fat. Absolutely.

So let's talk about the fix. And I know people love to talk about foods and diet. So you mentioned ketogenic diet as a main treatment for Alzheimer's and a promising treatment, better than any drugs that people have ever tried. Is there evidence, like clinical evidence, showing that ketogenic diets reduce Alzheimer's or other dementias?

Just those studies that show that there's a reversible nature there. There are studies showing from a preventative point of view. There are studies showing that higher LDL cholesterol is protective against developing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And so, you know, that goes against the idea that cholesterol and LDL are solely bad for you. So that's pretty much, those are sort of the main ones. You're showing that there's a reversible nature to this. You put someone on a ketogenic diet and you start giving them more fat and meat. Because what do you replace carbohydrates with? You have to replace it with fat and protein. Most abundant source of that, most bioavailable source of that, is meat. And so that's, you're providing these requisite materials for the brain and you're changing the biochemistry of your body so that now you can produce ketones, and they get into the brain and they can help rebuild the brain.

And so, ostensibly, you can actually start regrowing and reversing that atrophy, not just improving the functionality at that level. You might be able to gain some ground back. That remains to be seen, but I would expect it to be so. And then just the prevention side of things, you have studies showing that more cholesterol is actually protective against things like Alzheimer's. And more saturated fat is even protective against stroke. So that's obviously very significant. As far as being in keto long-term, I don't know of any studies that show that particularly. But if you can show this prevents it, this can actually help someone who has Alzheimer's, full-blown Alzheimer's, already gone through the disease process, and this is reversing that and gaining ground, you can only assume that that's going to help from the preventative side of things as well.

Okay, so I want to talk about foods because people are like, "Okay, do a ketogenic diet, eat meat. What foods? Is it lamb, beef? I know I want to get these questions, chicken. Like, what is it? What's the best?"

Oh, well, that definitely, you know, wild game eating what it's supposed to eat. And then, you know, regeneratively raised beef and lamb that are grass-fed and finished are right there on par with that wild game. And then below that, you get the organically raised, regeneratively raised, pasture-raised chicken and pork, wild-caught fish, and things like that. The monogastrics that don't have this very complex rumen, and the ruminant animals that we generally refer to as red meat, that can better clear out and detoxify and filter out the plant toxins.

Now, people are talking about, "Well, you need all these phytonutrients from plants." Well, there are things in plants that are quite helpful to you. They're actually in beef. They're actually in meat because the animals are eating that. They're filtering out the toxins. They're filtering out the harmful things. And then they concentrate and build up the nutrients because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to get nutrients. And there are nutrients in these plants. They are protected with chemical defenses. So you get the bad with the good. We don't have a good means of filtering those out ourselves. A cow is a perfect filter. It does the job for us. It filters out those problems. It takes in the nutrients so it can be healthy. And then we eat the cow, and we get all those nutrients and we get none of the problems that come along with it. So there's actually more of these plant nutrients, phytonutrients, in grass-fed red meat than in the plants themselves. And you don't have to have any of the problems.

So that's the pasture-raised sort of pigs, chicken, wild-caught fish. Those would be next down the rung. And then you would start getting into the monogastrics like the chickens and pork, and farmed fish. I would say far away from farmed fish. These are fed things that they're not designed to eat. And so they're not going to be able to filter out these toxins as well. And they're not going to be as healthy as they should be. Things get their omega-3s from the things that they're eating, basically, plants and plant oils and things like that. They have a lot of omega-6 linoleic acid, which can be harmful. It's required. It's an essential nutrient. You need some of it. But past a certain point, it causes a lot of inflammation, causes a lot of damage, mitochondrial damage, and metabolic stress. And it

Also, blocks out the omega-3. So, if you have an abundance of omega-6s, it's the same enzymes that process both. And so, even if you have enough omega-3s, but you have too much omega-6s, it actually drowns those out, and you actually don't process the omega-3s, and so they, they go to waste.

So, factory farms, pigs, chicken, and farmed fish, they have an abundance of omega-6s and very little omega-3s. So, have very high linoleic acid content. And so, if we're talking about growing our brain, if we're talking about being as healthy as we can, they're, they're not as good. They, they have fats that are good for you. They have a lot of nutrients that are good for you, but it's not ideal.

And, you know, above that would be, obviously, you know, grain-finished beef because, again, the, the ruminant animals are able to detoxify and clear out things better that they're not even designed to eat. They're better able to do that. Now, it depends on how intensely the, the feedlot is, how intensely they feed the, the grain to these things. There's different sorts of things. Some people will just sort of, you know, bulk up the, the feed by adding in some grains, adding, you know, 40% barley or something like that. Maybe they'll use that to get them through a winter if it's especially harsh conditions up in, you know, the northern latitudes. Or they might just sort of bolster things up with, you know, 40% you know, barley or something like that. They're still eating grass. They're still getting omega-3s. They're still getting a lot of good nutrients. That's still good for you.

When you get up to sort of the 90, 95% grain, you know, if, if I'm not mistaken, you have feed, feed a cow 100% grain. After a while, it's going to die. It's not that it can't sustain that. So, it has to have some sort of grass. But, um, if you're doing that really intensive, just maximal, you know, grain feed, then there are studies that I'm aware of that show that after about three months, you, you lose all omega-3s, and it's all, it's just omega-6s at that point. So, it, it is definitely best to get from that point of view to get, uh, grass-finished beef if you can. And, and certainly some wild-caught fatty fish as well.

The fish oil supplements aren't good enough because, again, they, they are monounsaturated. So, they have that that double bond that can oxidize. And so, you know, various companies have tested, independent, you know, testing companies have tested like the fish oil supplements, the omega-3 supplements, and found that they are wanting. About 70% of them were oxidized, you know, on, on delivery to the shelf. And, you know, how, how long does it take you to get through a bottle of that? You like a year or half a year or something like that? So, that's just sitting on your shelf oxidizing. So, likely by the time, you know, you get halfway through that bottle, if it wasn't, if it wasn't all oxidized and damaged, it, it is now. And so, you really want to get this from whole foods, from whole meats as well. And the best way to do that is, is wild-caught fatty fish and grass-fed beef.

Okay, I was going to ask, people are obsessed with this thing, like high-fat carnivore, high-fat ketogenic diet. Do you think that you have to add extra butter and extra fat to your meat to get all the benefits and the nutrients that you need to protect your brain, your heart, or in everything?

Well, I think you certainly need enough. But I mean, you need enough protein, you need enough fat. But I, I don't, I don't consider fat as a calorie source. I, fat is an essential nutrient. It's actually a conglomeration of essential nutrients. There are essential fatty acids that you have to have that you cannot make yourself, so you have to eat them. And there are essential fat-soluble nutrients as well that, that you have to have, and then you can't get from anywhere else. So, it is essential. It is essential that we eat animal fats. And so, and, and to get the nutrients contained therein.

So, how much do you need? Well, maybe a little bit. You don't want to eat too much. I, it's very difficult to overeat fat because our body has a limited capacity to absorb fat. We have bile, and that is the main way that your body can absorb fat. The bile emulsifies the fat, binds that into little micelles, and it gets taken into your body that way. You, you can't, it's really hard for your body to absorb fat without bile. So, you have a limited capacity and, and just this overflow valve. So, you run out of bile, and then you have all this fat there, but it can't really get in your body. It's, it's a very small percentage. It's, you know, it's, depends on the fat, but in general, it's maybe around 10, 15%, you know, if that. It's a very small percentage, and most of it will go out after that. So, it's very difficult. I mean, if you really, really tried, you know, maybe that 10% would start becoming something significant. But I mean, you, you would have torrential diarrhea if, if that were the case, because you, most of it would be coming out, and it would just be coming out and coming out and coming out.

Now, if you were one of these people that wanted to take ox bile, felt that that was a good idea, which I don't know who started that. I, I've never actually heard someone say, "Hey, maybe you should take ox bile." But there's a lot of people saying, "Hey, you should take ox bile." Like, just in the comments, I've been taking ox bile. Should I take ox bile? Where are you guys hearing this stuff from? I, I don't actually know where that that came from. But I don't think that most people need to do that. And I think that that, in that case, yes, you can, you can over-absorb fat because I don't think your body makes, does anything on accident. I don't think it made that amount of bile on accident. It just made a random amount of bile so that you would get a random amount of fat. And the, you have to figure out how much you actually should have. If, if it doesn't actually work naturally, it's not, it's not natural. It didn't happen. So, if you have to figure out your macros, you're doing something wrong. Calculators don't exist in the wild. And, and, you know, koalas don't use them. Even if they did, so they don't try to figure out their macros. They just eat and they let things happen. You know, there's no lion going like, "Oh, I better, I better avoid that. It's a little, it's a little fatty." You know, that's not what they do. They eat by taste. "That tastes good, I'm going to eat that. That does not taste good, I'm not going to eat that." And then eventually their body tells them when to stop. And again, they have a limited capacity to to absorb this stuff as well. So, if you're taking ox bile, you're going to be forcing your body to absorb fat when it, when it may not actually want to.

Bile is an expensive resource. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of of resources to make. And so, your body's not going to waste that just making a random amount. So, I think it's very specific. So, I think you allow your, your body to get on with it, really. But, but other than that, you want to get enough fat. You want to get enough of these nutrients. And I think your body tells you exactly how much that is, which is, it only absorbs as much as it wants, and then the rest of it goes out.

Absolutely. I had to ask that question because you see people like, "Well, how much fat? How much protein should I do? High fat?" And all the latest trends that they hear about. So, we have to get your take on it, you know, you being a brain doctor and a doctor and an amazing doctor. Um, I wanted to, let me ask you a question about water fasting. Because I did an interview with Professor Thomas C. Freed, and you've interviewed him as well, for cancer. Water fasting, along with a ketogenic diet, is extremely effective, along with metabolic therapy. Is it the same thing with a brain disease or Alzheimer's? Water fasting with a ketogenic diet? Any evidence with that?

Well, on top of a ketogenic diet, I don't think we have any any evidence for that one way or the other, although I'm not aware of any anyway. The reason that this is this is a benefit in cancer is because you, it's very important to keep your GKI, or glucose ketone index, as low as possible. And sometimes that's not possible just by eating. Sometimes you have to abstain from eating to get your glucose down enough and your ketones up high enough that your GKI goes down below two, and hopefully below one. And, uh, C. Freed has showed that in a number of of trials, preclinical trials, and, uh, there's a number of case studies. People who live the longest with with very aggressive brain tumors, um, that that are considered ultimately fatal and, and invariably fatal, um, like glioblastoma, that the ones who have done best and lived the longest and, and are still alive, some of them are the ones who have been able to keep that GKI down low with a combination of fasting and, and diet, generally ketogenic, carnivore diets. And so, that's, that's a main reason.

Also, there's another reason as well, is because cancer, so cancers run on glucose. So, you really need to just keep that those glucose levels down. And they don't run on on ketones. And so, that's very important to starve out the cancer cells. But they, they can also run on glutamine, which is an amino acid, which we make. You know, like we make, you know, glucose, uh, but it comes in our food too. It's ubiquitous. It's, it's in all, you know, it's in all protein. So, it's an animal source protein, it's a plant source protein. So, you're not going to dodge this by going vegan. And so, but it also does cook out. It denatures when you heat it. Denatures when you cook it. So, if you're really worried about it, you just sort of, you know, overdo your steak, like a, like a, like a criminal, and, um, you know, denature all the glutamine. Or you can just fast. And I think that's probably another, another reason why fasting, uh, can potentially benefit in cancer, is that you're also limiting, now you're limiting the glutamine as well. So, you're definitely not getting that in. You're not getting in carbohydrates. You're not getting in the glutamine. Your, your cancer cells can only run on the glutamine and the glucose that you're producing. You can take medications such as, you know, metformin or berberine, that that can lower your blood sugar even more. You can take other sorts of medications, you know, like ones in preclinical trials that, that Thomas C. Freed uses, Dawn, and other, and other things that disrupt glutamine metabolism. I mean, there are different things, uh, that, you know, people can sort of, you know, look up that do this. And so, used in different trials. And, and so, you do this sort of press-pulse dynamic that Professor C. Freed has has, um, you know, uh, know spearheaded, as I'm getting this out there, as a counter-treatment model. You have this constant pressure of this ketogenic diet and fasting that that really limits the energy available and the nutrients available to the cancer cells. And then you, going in a pulse, in a pulsatile fashion, you attack it with medications that can further lower, uh, glutamine in particular, and, and further, uh, damage the life cycle of these cancer cells.

In, in the brain, I think the majority of the benefit that you're getting is, is, is being in the proper metabolic state where you're making ketones, and your brain can run on ketones. So, I don't think you necessarily need to fast unless you find that you're not really producing enough ketones. Maybe some people may may fast, and the ketones go up, and their brain works a bit better. You know, that might be a benefit. You know, if you're finding that you fast for a c, for, you know, a day or two, or even intermittent fast, you know, just eating once a day, and you find that that helps get your ketones up and you feel cognitively improved, well, then keep doing that. You know, I think that, I don't know of any study that shows that, but you can just think about this mechanistically. You know, if there, if, if you're getting a bit more ketones, and that is giving you an effect, great. You know, take that, run with it. You need to refeed. You don't want to undereat because, you know, just with cancer, as anything, you know, you don't want to lose too much weight. You don't want to be unhealthy. So, if you are going to fast for a number of days, you need to refeed after that. You need to get enough meat after that. And, and a major thing too, is that a lot of our brains in dementia, I think, are starved for nutrition. And so, I think it is important to eat during that as well. So, um, I think that's, that's sort of a time for self-experiment. Have people find that getting into a deeper state of ketosis and producing more ketones from fasting improves their cognition? Fine. I think eventually you're going to be able to repair, rebuild, uh, much of the physical structures of your brain just being at any level of ketosis. But if that sort of speeds a process, then, then go for it. But just make sure you're eating at other times because you do need those nutrients. Your brain needs those nutrients, and you don't want to lose too much weight. I mean, especially in the elderly population, sarcopenia is a major, major, major problem. That's, that's the atrophy of muscles. You're just getting these skinny little wizened people with very little muscle mass. That's, that's a major problem. That's a major killer. I remember seeing a study in medical school that showed a direct correlation between leg strength and cognition in the elderly. So, basically, the stronger your legs were, the more muscular they were, you know, the, that was correlated with people that, that kept their, their mental health. And so, I don't think that's, you know, just squats is going to make your brain work better. However, um, exercise and resistance exercise in particular, and sprinting, those sorts of high-intensity, uh, interval activities can actually increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And so, so BDNF. And so, this actually does turn on your brain and help your brain work better. And so, it actually could very well be that, you know, doing squats and things like that does, in fact, make your brain work better, which is, is very important for people to know. But, you know, if you're thinking about fasting and all these sorts of things, and you're already a bit skinny, you know, you need to make sure that you're getting enough food at other times because you, you want to regain muscle. And you can re, you can put on muscle at 80 or 100 just like you can at 20. You have, I've seen it happen. You, as long as you are eating a proper diet and you are stimulating your muscles positively, you can absolutely put on muscle at any age.

It's interesting that you said about the sprinting because I did an interview with Dr. Shara, and he was talking about sprinting. It sounds so simple. The comments I got from you guys out there, "I can't sprint. I can't do this. It's too hard." And it, it makes sense. You know, if people are older, maybe they're overweight, they can't go sprint. Let's talk about, and that leads so nicely to, we spoke about the diet to reduce dementia and feed our brain. So, let's talk about other tips. You mentioned the exercise and other things. Let's say people can't sprint, they can't do HIIT, it's too hard. What can they do for exercise to help them?

So, the thing is, well, first of all, walking. If, if all you can do is walk, then walk. Whatever you can do, do it. But do it maximally. So, sprinting doesn't have to be, you know, Olympic pace. You don't have to compete with anybody. You don't have to, it doesn't have to be me, you know, to be a sprint. It is, it is running as hard as you can. That's what a sprint is. It doesn't matter if that's fast or slow. It's as hard as you can do it. You are working maximally. And then you, you wear yourself out. So, it's a short period of maximal, of maximal exertion, right? So, you maximally exert yourself for a short period, and then you rest. And, and if you're going very, very slow, but you wear yourself out in 20 seconds of that, that was a sprint. And that's fine. If you're unstable on your feet and it's dangerous, you can do this on an, on an exercise bike, on a stationary bike, and you can just go as hard as you can. Or the assault bike, that gets the arms into it as well. Those are hard. Those are very hard. And the harder you go on those things, the more resistance you get from the fans. And so, it's difficult for everyone at, at any level. And so, you just go as hard as you can for as long as you can, and you just wear yourself out. And then you rest. You catch your breath, and you do it again. But you do whatever you can.

So, you know, I mentioned just the squats. Those don't have to be with the, you know, 300-pound, you know, barbell on your back. That can just be your body weight. That can be assisted body weight. If you are having difficulty getting out of a chair, then you are the exact person who needs this more than anyone. And if you really can't do a bodyweight squat, then you had better damn well start doing bodyweight squats because you are going to lose the ability to get out of chairs. You're going to lose your ability to walk, and you're going to lose your independence, likely forever. And that is generally the end of the road for people. And so, that is, that is a terrible precipice to be standing on. And so, if you are finding yourself in that position, you need to start working as hard as you can to start doing just bodyweight squats. You sit in a chair, you stand up from the chair, you sit down on the chair, you stand up from the chair, and you just do that. And you keep doing that as many times as you can. If you have a frame in front of you, you have handles around you, do this safely as you hold yourself, you help yourself up, but you let your legs do as much work as they're able to do. And you do as many as you can until you just have to sit down and rest. Even just one set to failure, three days a week, is going to make a huge difference in your life.

You can even get a little simpler than that. You can, um, sit against the wall, do a wall sit. You're not, you're not even going up and down. You just sit against the wall. Everybody who's, who's taken gym class, you know, has has done a wall sit at some point, and they know that very quickly they start to really suck. And so, you're just sitting there, but you're holding yourself up against the, the wall, and you just hold there, and, and eventually your legs are starting to shake, and you just do that until you can't anymore, and then you slide down to the ground and you take a break, and you, and you get up, and hopefully can get off the ground, but, or, you know, stand up, stand yourself up, and go sit down safely. But, you know, even little things like that. I mean, anybody who can walk can do a wall sit. Most people who can walk can get out of a chair, or at least if they're having trouble getting out of chair, then they really need to to work on it, right? So, those sorts of things, those sorts of simple things are a place to start, and then you just work your way up from there. You don't have to use weights. You don't ever have to use weights. You can just use body, bodyweight exercises. Bodyweight squats, up and down out of a chair. So, if you fall back, you're falling into a chair, so make sure it's a stable one. And do wall sits. Those sorts of things. So, that's where you start, and you build up from there. And then you start doing, you know, unassisted bodyweight squats, not where you're sitting into a chair, trying to get all the way down. You get a full flexion of the knee, where your, your butt is sort of hitting your ankles, and you come back up. That's, that's the goal. You know, the idea that, you know, you can't bend your knee more than 90 degrees is quite foolish. Has caused a lot of, you know, knee degeneration in, in the last few generations, because your knee is designed to go all the way. It's a hinge. It goes, it folds all the way down, so, you know, like a clasp knife. So, it's, why would it just be that you're not supposed to use your joint for what it's designed for? That doesn't make any sense. And people should have figured that out, you know. And so, uh, of course, that's, that's wrong. You, the entire continent of Asia has people just squatting down like that all the time in their 80s and, you know, you know, cooking from the fire, and then just stand right up, and they have great knee health. And that's why they have great knee health. And so, you want to work your way up to that, just doing bodyweight exercises.

If you can do push-ups, do push-ups. Add those in. Just bodyweight. Even if you need to be on your knees, fine. Do that. One set to failure. You keep going until you cannot do another push-up. Do it to failure, three times a week, right? And so, you start there, and then you keep going. And, and you maybe even just stay there, right? You start doing more and more. You'll get more and more able. You get more and more active. Maybe you, you know, you can't really do much on the bike, but now you can do stuff on the bike. And maybe you now you're getting a bit better. So, now you can do, uh, sprints. And maybe you're not going very fast, but, you know, maybe you can. I mean, there's my friend Sean White, who, uh, goes by Intentional Carnivore on YouTube. And I mean, the man lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds. He was essentially bedridden. He was very close to being bedridden. He would go from his bed to the couch, and that he was basically lived on the couch for like three years because he was so heavy. He really couldn't go anywhere else. And just the act of standing on his own two legs was agony for him. If he was standing for more than 20, 30 seconds, his legs would go numb. And so, he couldn't, he couldn't do anything. So, he addressed this with the diet. And this is the thing that, you know, Dr. Baker, I have a lot of respect for, said that, you know, that I, I thought was was missing a large cohort of people who I believe you're, you're talking about here, where he said, you know, "If you're talking about the, the fine-tuning, the idiosyncrasies of of a carnivore diet, like that doesn't matter. You know, you need to start doing some damn pull-ups. You need to start running. You need to start working out. Like, that's the most important thing is working out." Well, working out is very important. But if someone's 600 pounds in a bed, they're not doing any pull-ups, right? And they're not doing any sprints. Like, you, you need to get to a point of of health that will allow you to do that. And so, that's fine. You, you do a carnivore diet until you can get to that point. And then when you can start adding in exercise, you do. If all you can do is walk, you walk. And that's what Sean did. He he found that he could just, you know, eventually he could walk down to his daughter's bedroom and back to the couch and sit down before his legs went numb. And that's what he started doing. He lost, you know, 100 pounds, and he started being able to do more, and he started going on walks outside, and started doing a little more, a little more. Now he's going to the gym. He's posting, you know, you know, gym videos where he's working out because you can work up to that. You know, and so, you, wherever you start from, you know, there is something you can do. And even if you're in bed, you can do leg lifts, or you can try anyway, you know. So, whatever, whatever you can do, you just do that. And you keep doing that. And you work maximally. You work to muscle fatigue. You do high-intensity exercise until you can't go anymore. It's the same principle. It doesn't matter if you can sprint. But you'll be able to do more. You'll be able to do more squats. You'll be able to do more push-ups. So, I still, I could still do the same thing. I could have that same exact training program and get a lot of benefit out of it. You know, Dr. Amaro, that's basically what he does. He does bodyweight squats, he does push-ups to failure, and I think might do pull-ups as well, and he does sprints. And that's it. That's what he does. You know, and then he sort of adds a bit to it. He is this like, the, the blood flow restriction bands and things like that, which have been shown in clinical trials and athletes to actually help grow muscle faster. And so, maybe that's a, that's a cheat that people can use. I mean, to cheat, it's just a technique that you can do. Uh, someone's older, and they have, you know, shrunken muscles in their legs. You put these blood flow restriction bands, safely, you know, do you know how to use these things and take them off after? And, um, you know, because you can actually store, you can actually break your femur, you can actually bleed out in your leg, you know, so it can hold a lot of blood in your legs. And so, if, if you're trapping that in, you know, you can start getting a little lightheaded and dizzy and things like that. So, you know, you need to know how to use these things. But, you know, that, that may be able to help stimulate muscle growth as well, especially early on, someone who's very sarcopenic. But it, it works in everybody. It works in, in, in top athletes, which is what he was tested on. And so, you know, that's what he does. He just does push-ups and just sprints, and he does it with the, with the blood flow restriction bands. Guy's 60 years old, and he's jacked, you know. And so, it, it works. And these things do carry serious metabolic and hormonal health benefits. They will raise your, your, your, your human growth hormone in both males and females. It raises testosterone in males. It lowers cortisol, both males and females. And growth hormone is, is very, very important, especially for aging. Graceful aging, and sort of reversing aging. And we're sort of in a state of breakdown and repair. But when breakdown starts to exceed the repair, that's when our, our tissues start to decline, and we start to age. And so, that has a large, you know, growth has a large role to play in that. And so, you start getting that up by other, by various means, with your diet, with exercise, with other sorts of tactics and techniques. And some people eat a supplement. This is a staple. This is a staple, um, technique in, in anti-aging clinics and things like that, where you're trying to have people sort of age gracefully. They will prescribe this. And so, you, I see people just losing a lot of weight. Their, their insulin-like growth factor, which is a marker of your, of your growth hormone function, goes up dramatically. Getting on a carnivore diet goes up even more. You start working out, you start exercising, you start, you, you start sprinting, it goes up even more. So, this is something that can actually counteract the, the processes of aging and metabolism of your body. So, it's very, very powerful. So, wherever you are, start there and build up.

I love that you said that, "Start where you are and build up." So, do the easiest thing that you can do, because this is about consistency. This is not about perfection. So, even when we circle back to the ketogenic diet, it is just being consistent. Eating meat, it is just being consistent. Doing it day in and day out. And then not having the seed oils, the sugars, and the carbs. If it's exercise, it is just being consistent with getting up and walking. If you can't sprint, that's fine. If you can get there, fabulous. And that's why I just like to talk about the basics, because people can talk about, "This is the best thing, this 1%," but they don't do like the foundation work, the basics. And I wanted to talk about other things that are great for our brain and our overall health. So, we have the diet, we have the exercise. What are other things that we can do, especially if you're in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, that we can do to help with our brain? What we can do?

Well, what we can do then is, is, is really optimize our health. You don't, don't wait for the wheels to fall off before you take your car in, right? So, you know, we, you don't want to wait until you have Alzheimer's to start addressing it, right? You want to do all the things now that will improve your health and, and maintain and sustain our health long term. So, you want to do the exercise. You want to do the diets. Dr. Baker has been working out out since he was full, probably. And so, and he's just not stopping. And you, "Oh, you better slow down because you're in your 40s. Oh, you better slow down because you're in your 50s." The reason he's not slowing down is because he didn't slow down. And this is something that we see in the elderly. It's, it's actually a, it's not a kindness to help people, um, pass a certain point. You know, just being nice or helping with something is one thing, but if you start doing things for them that they can do, that actually makes it so they can't do it anymore, and they can lose the ability to do it anymore. You know, if you start driving for someone, just because, "Oh, well, it's nice when I drive for them," they all lose the ability to drive safely anymore, and now they have to be driven around. Um, and so, that, that is what happens in, in the elderly. So, it's actually not doing them a kindness to do that. So, before you get to that point, before you get to any, any sort of problematic point, you want to, you want to do all these sorts of things. So, you want to be exercising. You want to be working out. You want to keep working out. You want to be consistent. You want to be a lifelong exerciser. You want to be working out lifelong. You know, Dr. Omar sort of came to this in his 50s, and he was able to reverse quite a lot of medical issues and, and become much more physically fit and healthy. His hair got thicker, and, you know, he got, you know, healthier in all these other sorts of ways, and, and is doing much, much better. So, he was able to catch it, before you really started having a problem. But when you're in your 30s and your 40s, exactly when you want to start this stuff. You know, I mean, it's, it's like, you know, it's the old adage, you know, "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now." Right? So, the best time to start working out and eating properly was when you were born, and the next best time is right now. So, get on it. You know, start eating properly. Don't, don't leave it until your body is so degraded that you just go, "Okay, I need to change something. This is not working. I'm dying. I'm not, I'm not going to live like this anymore." Don't let yourself get to that. You know, start now and just optimize your health. You will look back on where you were right then when you felt good, and you realize, "I had no idea what good felt like, and I'm so glad that I feel better now." You start exercising, you start eating right, you're going to be better.

Um, think about it this way. We are designed. We know as geneticists, I was taught this in genetics 23 years ago, that that the average life expectancy for humans, based on the length of our telomeres, is 120 years, right? So, what does that mean? That means if you just stay out of your own way and don't mess up, you should make it to 120 without doing anything special. And yet, we're dying in our 50s, 60s, or 60s and 70s, which is literally middle-aged. And so, we have a good 60 years of of life to make up in good health. So, if you start doing that now, if you start eating well now, your body's not going to degenerate and die by the time you're in your 70s, because that's what it is. You, you start a disease process, and the process of degradation that lasts decades until finally you just die of some horrible something in your 70s or 80s. And, you know, I, I sit on panels and things like that in, you know, in countries with public health, and they get, you know, you talk about these death panels and deciding who lives or all that. That doesn't happen. That happens. That absolutely happens. And I saw this in medical school, all the way up through, people just decided who got to live and die. And there was, I remember this one lady, and, uh, she had bowel cancer. I don't think it was, um, very progressed, and it was very treatable. And they're, "Well, yeah, you know, we can, we can, you know, cut this out and do this and the other, you know, it's very treatable, blah, blah, blah." And the guy who's in charge just asks, he's like, "Well, how old is she again?" Like, "Oh, she's 72." "Well, she's had a good life anyway. What's the next one?" Just like that. She doesn't get treatment. She dies. Right? And it was, it was just, it was so casual. And I was, I was quite shocked by that. So, don't leave, leave your, your situation up to to people like that. Don't live up to anyone for any reason. But, you know, don't let yourself be in a position and situation where you're 70, and, and there is a life and death decision that has to be made. I don't know, barring an accident or something like that. But because that, that was decades of buildup to get there, right? And so, you have decades of degradation. You have decades of poor health until finally something gets you in your 70s. That doesn't need to happen, right? You should make it to 120, just like those animals in the zoo that just sort of live their life and everything's great, and then they just lay down and don't wake up. That, that's how we're supposed to die as well. So, address it now. When you're in your 30s and 40s, and 20s and teens, and it's even better for for kids because they're, they're, they're not developed yet. They still have a chance to grow. They will get taller. They will get, they will get stronger. They will get more athletic. They will have more developed and comprehensive nervous system. It'll have larger, more complex, and capable brains. And they will have much better athletic, uh, growth and recovery. And, and it's just like, I mean, it's, it's, it's like legal cheating, because you know, it's, it, there's nothing criminal about it. You're not cheating, but it is a massive, massive, massive advantage that you're going to have over everybody else. And so, it's like, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do that? And then it just sets the stage for the rest of your life being extraordinarily healthy. So, all the things we talked about as far as prevention, as far as, you know, getting people out of this situation, that's what you need to be doing as soon as you possibly can. You hear about this in your 30s, you start in your 30s. You start, you hear about this when you're in your teens, and you know, what good for you, you started in your teens. And if you're 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80, when you hear about it, well, whatever, that's when you heard heard about it. So, you know, just get on it and get going with it. Your life will improve.

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Dr. Anthony Chaffey. You need to watch this video next by Professor Thomas C. Freed, all about the worst food that feeds cancer cells. I'll see you guys next week.