5 Most Harmful Foods Causing Brain Disease (Depression, Anxiety, Alzheimer’s) - Dr. Georgia Ede

If you are struggling with some levels of anxiety, depression, or some type of mental illness, or if you have family members, or you are slowly starting to have mental decline or cognitive decline, and you have family members that have struggled with Dementia or Alzheimer's, and you're afraid that that's going to be your story, or that you are slowly progressing that way, in this conversation, we talk about what to do with any of those diagnoses and any of those symptoms, and how to improve your brain.

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Hey guys, my name is Judy Cho, and I'm board-certified in holistic nutrition, and I have a private practice where we have served over 2,000 carnivore clients and patients get to root cause healing, and that often starts with the carnivore K's all-meat Elimination Diet. Today, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Georgia Eids. Her new book has come out, so I highly recommend reading it, as it's such a great book to talk about how metabolic health affects your brain health. But in this conversation, we talk about how glucose, how your energy stores, and how your overall health is actually affecting your brain health. She talks about how high blood glucose is also reflective of high blood glucose in your brain. She also talks about the importance of insulin, and how if you're insulin resistant, there is a high chance that your brain is not getting the energy and fuel it needs to survive and thrive. In this conversation, we talk about what to do if you have a history or family history of Alzheimer's and Dementia, and if the likelihood of you getting it is also inevitable. We talk about if diet can support these things, and if beyond diet, what are other factors that can support brain function. Finally, we also talk about the importance of certain foods that no one should really be consuming, especially for good brain health, and then certain tools that everyone should try to be a motivating factor for healing.

Let's get right into the interview. Hi Dr. Eid, first of all, congratulations again on the success of your book. I knew it would do so well, and I'm so happy for you. For the people that may not have read your book yet, or that have seen our first interview, if you can introduce yourself.

Thanks for having me on, Judy. Yes, so my name is Dr. Georgia Eid. I'm a psychiatrist. I specialize in nutritional and metabolic Psychiatry, and uh, I am the author of a book called "Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind," which helps people improve their mental health by using dietary changes.

As part of your book, you share, uh, that the single most important change for your brain health is to reduce inflammation from carbs and seed oils. Can you explain how those foods, um, affect your brain health?

Yes, so refined carbohydrates and refined vegetable oils. Both of these ingredients come from whole foods, but then are factory processed, uh, into these very refined products that do damage our health. They no longer behave like foods in the body. So sugars, flours, cereals, fruit juices, and vegetable oils such as soybean oil, sunflower oil, canola oil. Both of these ultra-processed ingredients, which are really the signature ingredients of, uh, of the standard American diet, the so-called standard American diet, or the ultra-processed, uh, industrialized diet. Both of these ingredients directly contribute, uh, to inflammation throughout the brain and body, and something called oxidative stress, which is why we are always told that we are supposed to eat more foods with antioxidants, which is a strategy that doesn't really work very well. But these are the ingredients that can directly cause some of these brain-damaging forces. These are, you know, when I was trained to become a psychiatrist back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was trained to think of mental health problems as chemical imbalances in the brain to be addressed with medication. But we never really stopped to think about what's causing those chemical imbalances in the first place. And we now understand that inflammation and oxidative stress are two of these really powerful deeper forces that underlie those chemical imbalances.

So the refined carbohydrates, for example, which are essentially naked carbohydrates that turn instantly into glucose in the bloodstream and can cause exaggerated spikes and, and glucose in the bloodstream, these also cause exaggerated spikes of glucose in the brain. So the higher the blood sugar, the higher the brain sugar. And whenever you're getting these these excessive waves of glucose in the brain, you are setting off waves of inflammation and oxidative stress throughout the brain, which is very damaging, physically damaging to the delicate architecture of the brain, but also destabilizes brain chemistry. Those neurotransmitters that we always told are the root causes of psychiatric conditions, things like imbalances in serotonin and dopamine and melatonin, and these two very important neurotransmitters in the brain that we don't hear as much about, glutamate and Gaba. So all of these brain chemicals can be thrown, uh, significantly off balance by these waves of inflammation and oxidative stress that can come from eating refined carbohydrates and, and, and seed oils as well.

The way the seed oils do this is that when linoleic acid, which is the omega-6 fatty acid that's that's high in a lot of the vegetable oils, the brain absorbs that that linoleic acid, uh, and then tries to burn it for energy. The brain isn't supposed to be burning these long fatty acids for energy. It's supposed to be burning small molecules like glucose and ketones, because when you burn small molecules, you get a lot less inflammation and oxidative stress. So these two signature ingredients of the modern diet, it, uh, these are directly contributing not just to the physical damage of brain architecture, but also to the, uh, the stability of our brain chemistry.

Thank you, that was so helpful and so succinct. I don't have a follow-up question per se with what you just shared, but my thought is, well, then I'll just become plant-based, right? So if I don't eat the highly refined carbohydrates, I don't eat a ton of the refined sugar, well, then wouldn't a plant-based diet, so I eat mostly vegetables and the plant kingdom, could I be healthy off eating that way?

Well, I like this question because there are really two answers to this question. In order to make your diet a brain-healthy diet, you need to do three things. So what we just talked about, you and I just talked about, was the protect piece. You want to protect your brain from inflammation and oxidative stress. But there are two other things you also need to do. So if you follow whole foods principles and you don't eat any junk, you don't eat refined carbohydrates, you don't eat sugars or cereals or products made with flour, and you don't eat any vegetable oil, and you stick just to whole foods, that is one, that is a very important principle to follow, and that will protect you to a large extent against the most common causes of inflammation and oxidative stress that come from the diet. But there are two other things you also have to do.

One is you have to nourish the brain, and that means you have to eat foods that are capable of delivering all of the essential nutrients that you need to the brain cells. And if you are eating no animal foods at all, then you will not be capable of delivering to the brain all of the essential nutrients it needs. The only way you can try to remedy the serious nutritional holes that are in even even the healthiest sort of whole foods, uh, vegan diet, even the healthiest version of that, which would be based primarily on whole foods, would be by including a significant amount of fortified processed foods, because you can't fortify a whole food, and, uh, lots of supplements, uh, which not everybody can access or afford in the world, and which also are not the ideal way for us to obtain our nutrients. We process, we absorb and process, uh, and regulate nutrients differently when we, when we extract them from whole foods versus when we take them in the concentrated form of a supplement. So there are some, some challenges, uh, to, uh, to eating a brain-healthy diet if, if you're not including any animal foods at all. Um, but I do like to say that I am nutritionally pro-choice, meaning I want to help everybody, regardless of their dietary preferences, have access to better brain health, improve their brain health. Now, ideally, when I follow the biology and the logic of nutrition, what I arrive at is a food that, that is, uh, where the core is animal foods. But you can still, there's a lot you can do if you prefer not to eat animals. There's still some important things you can do that will improve the brain healthiness of your diet, if you will, um, if you have the right information.

And then the third piece of the, the third piece, the third pillar of a brain-healthy diet, we've got nourish, we have protect, is also energize. And, and this is the other piece of the puzzle that people, regardless of plant, whether they're eating plants, animals, or both, can pay attention to, which is your glucose and insulin levels. Because if your glucose and insulin levels are not kept in a healthy range, your brain energy supply will be compromised over time, and you will gradually lose some of your ability to, to, uh, to turn glucose, use carbohydrate for energy. And so if you're eating a so-called plant-based diet, if you're eating a vegan, uh, diet, for example, even if it's a whole foods diet, if there's too much carbohydrate in it for your personal metabolism, your glucose and insulin levels will run too high, and that will be, uh, problematic for you. So regardless of, you know, whether you're eating all plants or a mixture of plants and animals, you still need to pay attention to those glucose and insulin levels. Because simply eating whole foods, plant-based, or even, or even whole foods, paleo diet, may not go far enough to normalize and stabilize your glucose and insulin levels.

And would you say that the best way to track your glucose is maybe getting a monitor like the CGMs, or getting blood work done?

The absolute best way, if you, if you can afford it, uh, is with a continuous glucose monitor. Um, actually, even wearing one right now. So here in the United States, uh, just until last week, we used to require a prescription to, uh, obtain a, a continuous glucose monitor. People needed to get a prescription, uh, from a prescriber to, uh, access continuous glucose monitors, and even with a prescription, they can be expensive because they're only covered by insurance under certain circumstances, such as insulin-dependent diabetes. But, uh, but now, here in the United States, anyway, we now have access to, uh, at least one brand of a continuous glucose monitor without a prescription. And so the things are changing really rapidly on that front. But, and then many other countries, they've been available without a prescription for a long time. So most European countries and Canada, they've been available without a prescription for a long time. But yes, ideally, if you can afford one, um, uh, using a continuous glucose monitor, which is simply a painless patch that attaches to the skin and lasts for about two weeks, and that's measuring your glucose pretty much, uh, around the clock for about two weeks in a row, that will give you really valuable personalized information about how your food choices and other aspects of your lifestyle, like exercise and sleep and stress and alcohol, affect your personal metabolism. And anything that's raising your glucose too high, uh, should be avoided if you want to really protect, protect your brain and, and body health.

There's a whole chapter in the book about exactly how, uh, to, exactly what your goals, what you want your glucose goals to be. And although I can, I can certainly summarize them here if you wish me to, that, that's, I'm happy to do that. But, but the goal is to keep your glucose and insulin levels in a healthy range. The CGM will tell you, just give you volumes of wonderful, empowering information about, uh, how the carbohydrates in your diet are affecting your personal metabolism. And that's a, a big part of the story. But the, the part of the story it won't tell you is about your insulin levels. Because you can have beautiful glucose levels 24/7, and you can still, depending what you're eating, have high insulin levels. That's much harder to, to, uh, to assess at home. There are ways you can do it, but, uh, one test that I recommend in the book that people get is to not just get a fasting glucose level, which, you know, most doctors do order when you go in for your physical, but to also ask for a fasting insulin level. It's a very inexpensive test, even just, you know, 10 or $15, even without insurance coverage. And that will tell you not just what your glucose level is at that point that you're fasting glucose, but how much insulin is your body needing to produce to manage the amount of carbohydrate and in your diet. Because, uh, if you're, what's happening over long periods of time, if you're eating too much carbohydrate for your metabolism, is your glucose may be perfectly normal because you're pumping out so much insulin to keep that glucose in a normal range. So you don't just want to know what your glucose level is, you also want to know about your insulin status. Because if your insulin is working hard to keep that glucose in a normal range, that high insulin level over time is going to damage your brain metabolism. So that is another piece of the puzzle that's harder, it's, it's harder to assess that piece.

Are there other instances from, um, other than just eating a lot of carbohydrate-rich foods, that then, uh, your glucose may be higher, so then insulin works enough to manage that level, so then your glucose looks within range, but your insulin's out of range? Is there other scenarios where your insulin, where glucose may look okay, say that you're not eating a ton of carbohydrates, but your insulin is still imbalanced?

Yes, particularly protein powders. Most importantly, dairy protein powders, and the worst offender is whey protein powder. So whey protein powder, um, raises not glucose levels. Your glucose will not rise. There's no carbohydrate in whey protein, it's protein, it's pure protein, uh, but it's dairy protein. And dairy proteins are different. And so casein, uh, and whey are both isolated dairy proteins, and they're in all kinds of so-called keto-friendly snacks and bars and shakes and cereals and cookies and other kinds of really popular keto-friendly foods because they don't contain any carbohydrate. But these, but whey protein in particular, casein to a lesser extent, they don't raise glucose levels, but they raise insulin levels substantially. Whey protein raises insulin almost as much as pure glucose does. And therefore, whey protein is a, will give you a, a really decent insulin spike. And this is, you know, this is not something that I recommend to my patients. I advise all of my patients to avoid, uh, dairy protein powders, uh, for, for best results when they're trying to get their insulin levels under control.

Are you able to release ketones? So a lot of the people in the keto space may use whey protein and they're still producing ketones, but could their insulin still be high because they're using the whey protein?

Yeah, so we were just talking a few minutes ago about how it can be harder to assess. It's easier to assess your glucose levels at home than it is to assess your insulin levels at home. We don't have yet, um, any direct way of measuring insulin levels at home. This is why, you know, you'd really need to get this fasting insulin level, which is something that you can order yourself through, through a laboratory such as onyoulabs.com, which I do recommend, or ask your doctor or nurse practitioner to order, uh, an a fasting insulin level for you. But there is kind of a backdoor way to assess your insulin levels at home, and that's using a keto meter. Because, uh, as many of your viewers may know, um, insulin and ketones have a reciprocal relationship. Meaning, uh, you cannot produce ketones unless your insulin levels are low. So in order to produce ketones, what needs to happen is you need to turn your insulin levels down enough to the point that fat burning switches on. And when fat burning is switched on vigorously enough, then the liver will turn some of that fat that you're burning, whether it's coming from your plate or, or from, or from your body fat, if you're burning fat vigorously enough, the liver will turn some of that fat into ketones. It'll chop it up into these very small pieces of fat, these fragments of fat called ketones, that are, that dissolve easily in the bloodstream, circulate throughout the brain and body, and can cross the blood-brain barrier and, and bridge any energy gaps that might be there and help the brain, uh, uh, restore the brain to full energy capacity. So ketones are wonderful, um, but, uh, but, but they can only be produced when your insulin level is nice and low. So when your insulin is low, your ketones will be high, and vice versa. If your insulin levels are high, you won't be able to burn fat. Fat burning will switch off, and you will be in fat storage mode, and you won't be able to produce, you will be able to produce virtually no ketones. Your ketone levels will be very low, usually well below 0.5 mmol on a blood ketone meter. So when you're looking at your ketone level, you're in essence looking at a mirror image of your insulin level. So if you, if you have, if your ketones are very low, let's say they're undetectable up to maybe 0.4 millimol, your insulin levels are, are, you can, you can guarantee your insulin levels are high. If your ketone levels are 0.5 or higher, the higher your ketone level is, the lower your insulin level is. So it's, it's sort of a way to look at a mirror image of your, of your insulin levels.

For some of the keto carnivore people that eat this way for a long time, we do see a subset where their insulin gets too low. Do you ever think there's a too low definition? So meaning that maybe their insulin when they measured it's like 1.5 fasting, um, and I know so that's on the lower end. Is there ever a point where you think it might be too low?

This is such a good question. It comes up a lot in my clinical training program. So I've been teaching, uh, for, for more than four years now, a clinician training program in ketogenic diets for mental health. One of the questions I get all the time is, is there an ideal ketone level to treat mental health conditions? Another condition, another, uh, question I get is, can your ketones be too high or too low? And they can absolutely be too high. So for most people, um, uh, I would consider a ketone level, uh, that's, you know, if you're spending too much time at four mmol or higher, I mean, it's, it's okay to float up there from time to time, but if you're spending a lot of time up in that higher range, you're kind of entering into starvation range ketosis, where you don't want to spend a lot of time up there, um, because you, you'll be risking malnourishment. But then the other question is, could your insulin be too low? So if your ketones are very high, that means your insulin is very low. So how high is too high ketone-wise? How low is too low insulin-wise? So we, we know from people with type 1 diabetes that yes, insulin can absolutely be too low. So people with type 1 diabetes, they have an autoimmune condition that, that damages and destroys the, uh, cells in the pancreas that are producing insulin. So people with type 1 diabetes, which is not the same as type 2 diabetes, uh, people with type 1 diabetes, this is an autoimmune condition where there is, there is virtually no insulin being produced, uh, by the body anymore, and that is a very dangerous and deadly situation. We do need a certain amount of insulin. It's called basal insulin. We need a certain amount of baseline insulin being released into the bloodstream at all times in order for our cells to function properly. Cells do require a small amount of insulin at all times. And so, uh, can you, with diet alone, drive your insulin levels down so low that that it's metabolically unhealthy for you? Theoretically, you could, um, but this would, this would again sort of reflect a starvation state. So if you're not eating, if you're not eating enough food for your personal needs, your insulin level will be too low, your ketone levels will be too high, and that will be suboptimal for your health. Um, for example, uh, to be very concrete, women of reproductive age can lose their periods if their insulin levels go too low, if their nutritional status goes too low, if their ketones are too high. Um, you can see in certain cases, for example, in, uh, women who are breastfeeding, if they follow a very strict ketogenic diet, there have been published case reports of women ending up in hospital because of ketoacidosis. This is not something you'll see in most adults who do not have type 1 diabetes or who are not taking certain medications. These are special states. Pregnancy and breastfeeding are special metabolic states where you need more insulin, uh, in pregnancy and breastfeeding, because pregnancy and breastfeeding are special states of growth and production, cell division. So you, insulin is a growth hormone. If you don't have enough insulin, you will not be able to support a healthy pregnancy. You will not be able to feed two people. You need more food, you need more calories, you need more protein, you need more nutrients, you need higher insulin levels. So, um, there's a lot of nuance in this answer, but the, the bottom line is, yes, it is possible for your insulin levels to be too low, just as it is possible for your insulin levels to be too high.

Yeah, and I could just totally attest to what you said in our small clinical practice, or we have seen people with super low insulin and they've been on a carnivore keto diet, and we over time working with them, we find out that they're under eating a lot or they're overly fasting. And then in terms of the pregnancy, most people we've ever worked with that have been carnivore prior to become pregnant and then they were following a carnivore diet, we find that they have a really hard time staying strict carnivore for the first two trimesters because I do think their insulin is lower than the body demands. And so a lot of people start getting meat aversions and, and just have a hard time being strict ketogenic. So I, I have also seen that in our practice as well. So unless they are able to eat a lot more meat, which a lot of people aren't, then they have to add in some amount of carbs to have a healthier pregnancy, at least in the beginning.

Yeah, that's very interesting clinical experience. I don't work, I don't work with pregnant, uh, women or breastfeeding women, uh, in my practice, so that's really interesting, uh, uh, feedback that you're, that you're offering.

Yeah, so, um, I think in your book, you mentioned that there's like five toxic foods. So if everyone, you know, being food agnostic in a sense, what would be the five foods that you are saying no one should really be eating?

This is in an ideal state, ideally optimally, uh, the five foods that you want to avoid are the refined carbohydrates, the refined vegetable oils, grains, legumes, and alcohol.

Why specifically alcohol? Because I know that in the, um, I think in, it's, what, what I find interesting is that in every diet, for some reason, alcohol gets a pass. And so I'm curious why is it that alcohol is a, you know, it's a, a food that you don't recommend?

Well, it gets a pass because people like to drink. No, I know, I know, but it's, it's funny because in the carnivore space, they'll say you can't have tea or coffee because it's from a plant, but alcohol is from, uh, well, I mean, certain alcohols are from grains or grapes, and yet it gets a pass. So just, I would love to hear your reasoning.

Yeah, there is, there's not a shred of evidence that alcohol is good for us or required in the human diet. So this is just wishful thinking. And, and it is, alcohol is a toxin, full stop. And of course, uh, quite addictive for a lot of people. Not everybody, every, you know, some people are more vulnerable to this than others, but you know who you are. So, but alcohol is a toxin, full stop. So when, when alcohol, when the liver sees alcohol coming in, it stops everything else it's doing to metabolize that alcohol and get rid of it. That's its top priority. It's called oxidative priority. So, uh, it will stop, for example, making glucose molecules and putting them into the bloodstream. So gluconeogenesis stops. It will also stop burning fat until it metabolizes all of the alcohol first. So, uh, that's how important it is that the liver, the liver is really the command and control center for, for, for metabolism below the neck, uh, is the liver, and the liver knows, the liver knows best. And it sees that alcohol and says, okay, this is the top priority for me right now. Doesn't matter what else, uh, is going on. I'm going to drop everything else I'm doing and get rid of this alcohol.

Wow. And I, I know it's also the, um, downstream in the digestive area, it's also a toxin, the way that it breaks down to aldehyde, and then it causes a lot more toxin. So I'm right there with you, um, in terms of that. I'm curious why legumes are so, um, not ideal.

So legumes, they do contain, uh, more amino acids than most other plant foods do. And this is why they are often recommended, not just in plant-based diets, but they're recommended in by, by many of the nutrition experts who believe that we should base our diets on on starchy staples. So they're, they're popular because they are, they do provide more amino acids than most other plant foods do. Most plant foods are relatively low in amino acids, so they're kind of precious small molecules in the plant world. So, so legumes, if you're eating a vegan diet, you must include legumes, particularly tofu, if you can tolerate soy, um, in order to, tofu is a really good example of a plant food that contains all of the amino acids that we need. So, so, so legumes, that's why there's, that's why they're so popular and often recommended in most dietary, uh, guidelines. However, there are much safer ways to obtain your amino acids and much more reliable ways to obtain, uh, to obtain your amino acids with a lot less risk to your metabolic health, to your gut health, your thyroid health, your immune health, your nervous central nervous system health. And that's because legumes, they are, they're not just sources of amino acids, they're also, uh, primarily starch. And many of us do not have the metabolic flexibility anymore. We have a lot of insulin resistance in our society. The majority of us now have insulin resistance, and we don't do well with high carbohydrate diets. And so, uh, we need to reduce the amount of starch in our diet. So, uh, a much, a much more metabolically safer way to obtain the amino acids that we need is to make the core of our diet animal foods, as opposed to, uh, uh, plant protein sources.

So, and but then the other thing about legumes is because they are seeds, because they're technically seeds, if you cut them open, you'll see a little tiny embryo inside, just like you would if you cut a, a grain like corn in half, or you cut a nut in half, you'll, or any seed, you'll see a little embryo inside. So, and, and that's important because in the plant world, um, you can imagine if you're a plant, your most important instinct, uh, as a mother plant would be to protect, protect your offspring. And these seeds are the most heavily defended. Seeds are the most heavily defended of the plant parts. So they contain naturally contain a lot of, not just anti, what are called anti-nutrients, which kind of selfishly guard the nutrients inside that bean, uh, for the future sprouting plant, that makes sense. But they also contain a lot of natural defensive chemicals, molecules, which are intended to protect that seed, uh, against potential predators in the environment. These can be microscopic predators, or they can be larger predators. These can be anything from, you know, fungi and bacteria and viruses to, to, you know, worms and insects, uh, and, and, and even larger animals. So these toxins are specifically engineered, uh, over, you know, hundreds of millions of years by the very clever plant kingdom to protect that embryo for as long as it may take for that legume seed to sprout. And it might be sitting there for years, waiting for the right conditions, uh, in the environment to, to, to, to germinate. And so it needs to survive, you know, you know, uh, rain and drought and, you know, and any kind of physical pressures that might exist in the environment, you know, animals stomping on it, whatever the case may be. It's really designed to be tough and rigid and, and not just physically tough, which makes it difficult to digest, to break down, but also chemically tough, you know, really intelligently armed with these very intelligent chemical weapons. So they're, are much safer, much safer ways to obtain your amino acids, much more reliable ways to obtain your amino acids, and much more highly digestible ways to obtain your amino acids with a lot less risk to your gut health, uh, to your nervous system health, to your, and to your metabolic health.

So if we were to remove all the foods that you mentioned, we balanced our glucose and managed our insulin, and then we nourished our brain with all the fuel that you mentioned, do you think that the billion amounts of people that have been diagnosed with some type of mental health would all go away, or do you think a substantial amount would go away?

There's no good way to answer, there's no way for for me to reliably answer that question, obviously. But, um, I can certainly speculate based on biology, uh, based on what I know about the brain, what I know about, uh, about food, what I know about the body, and, and my speculation would be that I think a, a decent percentage of the mental health problems that we see in, in, in, in the world, uh, could be, could be prevented, and in the existing mental health problems that can be, can be managed. And we know this because the growing, very exciting, rapidly advancing science of nutritional and metabolic psychiatry, these brand new subspecialties of psychiatry are demonstrating this in clinical trials. And we know that we can, in some cases, put completely into remission even very serious, long-standing mental illnesses, mental illnesses that, you know, have, you know, uh, not responded to, uh, you know, every medication under the sun, multiple hospitalizations, many years of psychotherapy. We have seen, in some cases, even very serious mental illnesses go into complete remission simply by changing diet in a matter of, uh, uh, weeks to months.

No, I believe it. I mean, that's my story. So I won't get into that too much, but I, I am, I'm a firm believer because I was on the antidepressants, max dose, then I got on the antipsychotics, and it didn't do enough until I changed my diet fully. So I'm totally right there with you. Um, in terms of Alzheimer's and Dementia, you know, a lot of people say, I'm scared because it runs in my family. There's a genetics with it. There's a gene that I tested for, and I'm, you know, the APOE4, and, you know, there's all this stuff about, I'm scared because it's in my family line. Can the lifestyle help that not happen to you?

Absolutely. Uh, your DNA in most cases is not your destiny. Your DNA influences what you are vulnerable to, like what runs in your family, what might go wrong if your lifestyle is out of sorts. But it, in most cases, it is not, it, it is not writing the final chapters of your life. It's not in charge. It's not in the driver's seat. What's in the driver's seat in, in most cases, is not your DNA. It's, it's your, it's your diet and lifestyle. So it is the, it is the toxins you expose yourself to. It is, you know, how much sunlight are you getting? How much exercise are you getting? How much sleep are you getting? How much alcohol are you drinking? How, how much junk food are you eating? Um, and, you know, these are aspects of our everyday life that have powerful influence over our intellectual future. And we, we, we've known now for for almost 20 years that, uh, Alzheimer's disease, for example, is, uh, not just associated with, not just correlated with, not, and it's not just a coincidence that 80% of people with Alzheimer's disease have insulin resistance. We know from, you know, multiple lines of high-quality evidence, all kinds of different types of scientific evidence accumulated over decades, that insulin resistance is a key driving force, a causal factor, a powerful causal factor in Alzheimer's disease. Because insulin resistance slowly chokes off the brain's energy supply. And when the brain doesn't have enough energy, cells begin to die. And Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease, that simply means nerve cells are dying. Why, why are they dying? Well, there are many different causes. Diet is not the only cause. Diet is not the only cause of Alzheimer's. Diet is not the only cause of all mental health problems. And that's why I say, you know, I think we could prevent a, a good deal of what we see in mental health, but certainly not all, simply by changing diet. But, uh, but Alzheimer's disease is driven to a large extent by insulin resistance. And, uh, the good news of, so that's horrifying, but the good news is that you can, you have tremendous control over your insulin levels. You can turn your insulin levels down to a healthy range within a matter of days if you have the right information about diet. And that is going to be the most powerful lever that you can pull, not just in terms of dramatically reducing your risk for dementia, but dramatically reducing your risk for all kinds of other physical and mental health diseases, uh, especially the, the common, so-called, you know, uh, lifestyle diseases, or the sort of diseases of, of, uh, civilization that are now running rampant throughout society. We, we are, we deserve, and we, you know, we, we deserve to expect more of our mental health and our physical health. We were not designed to fall apart in spectacular fashion like this. If you feed yourself properly, your brain and your body will work well. They, and, and so, uh, it's just that people have had, you know, we've unfortunately been fed the wrong information about food for generations.

If, say, someone watching, or maybe their parents are starting to show signs of early onset, could the diet, reducing that insulin load, help? Maybe, maybe it's reverse? And then secondly, if not reverse, at least stop or mitigate some of the continuous degeneration?

Absolutely. So if, if an energy, uh, uh, shortage is causing your brain cells to die, bridging that energy gap with ketones is really, that is the magic of the ketogenic diet. That's where the ketogenic diet really shines. Because there is no other source of energy that you're, that is going to work. You putting more glucose into the system, eating more sugar, is not going to solve this problem. Because the more sugar you eat, the, the higher your insulin levels will be. And the higher your insulin levels are, paradoxically, the harder it's going to be for insulin to cross into the brain as the brain becomes more and more insulin resistant. So you can have a brain swimming in a sea of glucose, the sugar, the glucose, is in no questions asked. That's not the problem. It's not a lack of glucose. It's a lack of insulin. So you can have a brain swimming in a sea of glucose and still be slowly starving to death because the insulin is having a harder and harder time getting in. So as upside down as it sounds, as counterintuitive as it sounds, the, the sugier your diet is, the harder it's going to be for your brain to turn that sugar into energy. You need an alternative. You need a, you need a supplemental fuel source that, uh, can cross into the brain easily and that doesn't require insulin for, a lot of insulin for processing. And that's ketones. So when ketones cross into the brain, they burn beautifully in a low insulin environment. So now you can bridge that energy gap, and whatever cells may have been struggling to get by on not quite enough energy can come back online. And I think this is why we see, uh, not only multiple case reports now, some published in, in, in, in books and in, and in journals, and, uh, case reports in our own clinical practices. I've included one in the book and can tell you about more if you like, uh, there that we now see in clinical practice that it is possible for people within a matter of days to weeks to start to feel clearer, clearer in their minds, to, to improve their cognitive testing, to reverse years of memory decline, even in some very severe cases. And this is not just my work, it's also, uh, the work of Dr. Annette Bosworth, who, who published a beautifully documented case report of, um, Alzheimer's reversal using a ketogenic diet. It's the work of Dr. Dale Bredesen, who has published a number of books on this topic. He uses very complicated protocols for Alzheimer's disease, but the, the cornerstone of all of those protocols is the ketogenic diet. In Alzheimer's disease, you have an energy deficit in most cases, and really the only, uh, fuel source that is going to rescue those brain cells, uh, is, is ketones.

What about exogenous ketones? So let's say you're trying to work on your diet, but it's still not super perfect, where probably if you tested your insulin levels, they're still a little bit higher, and you know, in the market now, there's so many exogenous ketones you could take. So then when you test your blood ketones, it is high temporarily. Is that a benefit? Have, have you seen with the exogenous ketones?

Yes, so exogenous ketones are really interesting because, uh, yes, they do, depending on the type you're using, yes, they do raise, they can raise ketone levels substantially, particularly the esters. So there are salts, esters, and then there's pure Dbhb, purified, uh, ketone supplements. And, you know, these are quite expensive, and they only last in the bloodstream a maximum of two hours. So they're certainly a lot of, you know, limitations to these exogenous ketones, and some of them taste absolutely atrocious. But in any case, they, they can, uh, help bridge that energy gap because they are ketones and they cross the blood-brain barrier and they can serve as a source of energy for brain cells. So it makes sense that they're being explored. They have been explored for, uh, cognitive impairment and for dementia, and there are some glimmers of hope there in terms of exogenous ketones. Again, lots of limitations there. But, but a couple of cautions I would say, you know, really for people who have no other choice, or they're in a, they're in a situation, say they're in a living situation, they're they're living in assisted living or in a, or in a, a long-term care facility where they don't have a lot of control over their diet, or their cognitive impairment is already so far along that they really can't manage a dietary change, remember, or learn new rules for how to eat, or let's say they can't, um, uh, or let's say they don't want to change their diet, uh, exogenous ketones would definitely then be your best option. But again, they're going to be expensive, they, they work for a couple of hours, that sort of thing. But the real problem, the biggest limitation with exogenous ketones is that they can't normalize your glucose and insulin levels, okay? So if you are, and that's what's causing the damage in the first place, right? So what you're doing is kind of, you know, adding a kind of expensive Band-Aid to a situation where, where the damage is still ongoing underneath. The high glucose and insulin levels are still damaging the brain. It's just that the exogenous ketones are, uh, giving you a little bit of symptom relief, uh, while that process is marching forward underneath.

Okay, so maybe temporary as a bridge while you're trying to improve your diet. But ultimately, you have to, or ideally should be getting natural ketones because that can be an inverse relationship to the reflection of how your insulin is ideally working?

Yes. You know, what I tell, what I tell my patients, and I, and what I tell my clinician trainees, what you ideally want is you want to be generating ketones from inside the body around the clock for free, because it's only with a ketogenic diet, uh, that you are going to be able to normalize your glucose levels, normalize your insulin levels, and generate ketones around the clock for free. And that, that's, that's really the goal. Now, I realize that not everybody can do that, and I also realize that not everybody is going to be able, is going to want to do that. But that is the Holy Grail of, of, of a good metabolic treatment plan for, for, uh, dementia, uh, where there, where insulin resistance is playing a role.

And then in terms of ketogenic, just to clarify for definition, some people believe that ketogenic diets is as long as you remove carbohydrates and you're not really eating carbohydrates, that's ketogenic. Other people define it as, no, you need to eat higher fat to basically stimulate the ketones. Do you measure it based on whatever your ketone reading is? What do you define as ketogenic?

Great. So a ketogenic diet is any way of eating that lowers insulin levels enough to turn on fat burning and generate clinically meaningful levels of ketones in the blood, which most experts would would say begins at 0.5 mmol on a blood ketone meter of beta-hydroxybutyrate. So that doesn't mean that 0.5 is enough for, for, for everybody, but that's where the magic, the metabolic magic begins. Okay? That's where you have potential for therapeutic, uh, results. Now, notice that definition there does not say anything about carbohydrates. It doesn't say anything about how much carbohydrate there should be in the diet. It doesn't say anything about how much fat there should be in the diet. It says any diet that lowers insulin to the fat burning point. So that could be, there are many different ways to get into ketosis. Fasting will get you into ketosis because nothing drops insulin faster than not eating anything at all. So will get you into ketosis. You don't need to eat any fat. If no fat required, right? A, a, a calorie-restricted diet, a diet that restricts calories to 725 calories per day or lower, even if it contains carbohydrate, a lot of carbohydrate, even if it's a high carbohydrate diet, if it's calorie-restricted and it's formulated in the right way, that can get you into ketosis too, even, even though it's a high carbohydrate diet. And so, uh, exogenous ketones can get you into into ketosis as well, but, but it's not going to lower your insulin level. So it doesn't meet the definition. So the beauty of a, of a sort of, uh, ketogenic diet, as it's, as it's, uh, generally constructed, is that a ketogenic diet is very low in carbohydrate because carbohydrate raises insulin the most. It's moderate, adequate in protein, because you must have protein, you must have protein to, to meet your cellular, uh, nutritional requirements. Um, and, but it's not extra high in protein. It's not excessive in protein, because protein also stimulates an insulin response. And so you don't want to go overboard on protein. Uh, and, and the rest of the calories are from fat. How many of those calories, how much fat, how many calories, really from the point of view of the ketometer, doesn't really matter because that barely raises insulin at all. So you can eat a low-fat keto, you can eat a low-fat ketogenic diet, you can eat a high-fat ketogenic diet, you can eat a medium-fat ketogenic diet. Um, it's not really about how much fat is in the diet, it's about the insulin level. And so, uh, a keto, the, the ketogenic diet is the only way to safely maintain ketosis long-term. You can't fast forever. You can't calorie restrict forever, okay? The only way you can safely maintain ketosis without starving, uh, and, uh, uh, and without significant hunger and nutritional deficits, is a well-formulated ketogenic diet.

Okay. Okay. I was going to ask you, are you okay with the 700 calorie? Because I haven't seen that in my practice, but I'm glad you just gave that at the very end. No, um, I want to talk about one question about.

Mental health, um, aside from diet, how much is social media and the isolation stuff happening in the last several years, how much of that impacts our mental wellness?

Well, you know, we're social creatures, right? So we need connection, and not just visual connection or auditory. We need physical connection. We need to be in, you know, we need to be in contact with each other, uh, or in close proximity to each other to really get all the benefits of social connection. So, uh, I do worry about, um, many of us spending most of our time on, on connecting with people on screens.

But I would also say that there, there is a silver lining to this, where, you know, people who live in, uh, isolated situations, um, or like during COVID lockdowns and things like that, or people, people who live in areas of the world where there just aren't a lot of people, um, or where they're not going to meet people that they have a lot in common with. So they're going to, that, that can also be very dangerous for mental health, you know, people feeling, feeling isolated and that they, they don't, they're not meeting people that they really have a lot in common with or can feel connected to.

I think in, in those ways, um, social media can be actually very, very useful because you can find people that you have things in common with and feel connected to and feel less isolated, less alone. Now, now the other really wonderful thing, I think, about social media, uh, and the internet, um, is, is to help. I mean, as we all know, that it, it can be a way for, for ideas to go viral, bad and good ideas, both. It's kind of an equal opportunity, um, contag, you know, contagion. Uh, so, but, but, but, you know, I personally am very grateful for the internet because I can research things much more quickly and learn about ideas much, learn science and, uh, gain benefit of other people's perspectives much more quickly and easily than back in the '70s when I was, you know, in school and in, in grade school and high school when I had to go to the library and hopefully there was a book there about what I wanted to learn about. You know, we had very limited access to, uh, information.

We are so much better informed and so much more empowered. And so ideas like carnivore diets, ketogenic diets, paleo diets, metabolic health, all of these really wonderful ideas, which are not coming from mainstream nutrition sources, and not coming from our most prestigious institutions, not coming from our most influential, uh, scholars on this topic, not coming from our dietary guidelines. These excellent ideas, which are grounded in, in biology and logic and, and, and anthropology and common sense. The, this dietary information can spread to people who need it, and that they can compare these ideas to these ideas that they've heard about for so many years and judge for themselves what makes the most sense to them. And they, and they've got a real choice, whereas before, uh, it was very hard for, for most of us to, to access other, other types of ideas.

No, I think that's great. Um, I agree with you. Information, letting good information win sometimes, and getting stuff that's not mainstream be shared. It's so powerful having the internet. And even when I was writing my book, just doing the research was so much easier using PubMed than going to the library and looking at the catalogs and all that. As long as people don't use just the social media aspect and comparing and everyone else's life is better than mine. I think if, as long as we remember to think of it as a highlight reel and then, and then find the people that you can connect with genuinely, it actually can do a lot of good. So I, I totally agree with you. I have some friends that I have met on the internet.

Why do you think the medical establishment, you know, you just mentioned that, uh, the keto, carnivore diets, it's not just from standard care. What is it about the medical establishments, um, especially in psychiatry, that they're not embracing diet? And I can give you, in my world of things, of what happened to me personally. I asked my psychiatrist, who I was working with by that time, two years, just for some reason, asked him, "Do you think diet has anything to do with why I'm sick?" And he looked up and said, "No." And so I said, "Okay," and I just sort of moved on. But why, why is diet not even a focus? When, if we were to go to the vet, the first thing they ask when the dog or cat is not well is, "What have they been eating or what have they been exposed to?"

Well, you know, I, in four years of medical school, we didn't talk about brain and, uh, nutrition and the brain once. In four years of psychia, of, of medical school, four years of college biology degree, four years of college, medical school, four, and then four years of medical school, four years of psychia residency, we didn't ever talk about the importance of nutrition to brain health, not once. And all of that specialized education. So, of course, psychiatrists come out of their training thinking it doesn't matter because we're not taught that it matters. And the little, little bit that we do learn about nutrition, which is not about brain health, is about, you know, weight management and cholesterol levels and heart disease, right? And all, almost all of that information is incorrect. So the very little morsels of nutrition education that we get is misguided. So it makes sense to me that psychiatrists, most psychiatrists are not, not do not understand how powerful this connection is.

But I think the good news is that, uh, the science in this field is rapidly exploding, uh, and there is, uh, word is getting out. And so I think there are some chinks in that armor, um, and that people are starting to, uh, see and hear about, on, you know, uh, uh, not just social media, but actually in, in reputable scientific journals and in reputable media outlets, that, and from reputable sources, that these interventions are really revolutionizing. They have the potential to revolutionize mental health care. And that it makes sense, and the biology of it makes sense. And I know this because I've been teaching this CME course in, in ketogenic diets for mental health for practitioners for more than four years now. And we are seeing a really, a really dramatic rise in the interest in this course. People, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, social workers, psychologists, the interest in this field is really growing rapidly, faster than we can keep up with it.

And so there's a lot of curiosity, a lot of interest, at least among a subset of practitioners. There will always be, with any new idea, you're going to see a bell curve, right? So you're going to see the early adopters who are really excited about it, and those are obviously the people who are, who are contacting me about the course. And you're going to see the very conservative folks who are really resistant to any new idea of any kind, even if it makes a lot of sense. They did not, their minds are closed. This is a natural human bell curve. And then, but most people are in the middle somewhere, where they, oh, if they, if they saw enough information, they'd be open to it. We're starting to move past this early adopter side of the, of the bell curve. We're starting to see that more and more people in, through the middle of this bell curve are, are thinking, "Wait a minute, what, what, what is this metabolic psychiatry? What ketogenic diets for serious mental illness?" That's interesting. So we're starting to see more interest in it.

And this is really wonderful because mental health practitioners know better than anybody else, we need new interventions. We have run out of ideas, uh, for how to help, uh, many of our patients. Most of us, I mean, and for myself, I know this is true, and for almost all my colleagues, our practices were filling up with people who just weren't getting that much better, better. And, you know, medicine after medicine after medicine, years of psychotherapy, in and out of the hospital, with with no real tests or explanations or understanding of what was wrong, and how to help. And we now have, really, just in the past 10 years, these powerful principles, science-based, evidence-based principles, uh, that go back over a century now, helping us understand that if you can improve brain metabolism by changing your diet and lifestyle, you can really fundamentally change your brain's operating system. And that gives everybody a tremendous amount of hope because up until recently, we didn't know what else to do. And now we have these beautiful, empowering, relatively simple, non-toxic, natural, uh, interventions that can be life-changing and life-saving in so many cases. So why not explore those?

That's so reassuring. I'm so glad to hear that there's more interest in, in your, um, in your program, and also just, um, in the medical field in terms of psychiatry. I've seen and heard oftentimes where some people will take the prescription medications for depression or bipolar, and it was then in that medication, or maybe it isn't in the medication, but something then taking the medication altered their chemistry. And then once they try to get off the medication, they're actually far worse. So for those people, would it have been better that they just, and I know we're talking in, just like figuratively, right? We're not talking about a specific person. So I know it's a little bit nuanced. But are there some cases where it's just better not to try to get on the medication? Because for some people, they truly believe that, "I felt kind of depressed. I was told to get on this medication. I was willing to do it because I felt sort of depressed. And now that I've taken it, my life is completely adversely changed, and now I feel worse than ever, and now I can't get off it, but I'm not any better."

It's a very common scenario for people to take psychiatric medications in hopes of feeling better. And in some cases, they will feel a little bit better, but the price they pay long-term is a lot of metabolic dysfunction, weight gain, high glucose and insulin levels, type two diabetes, obesity, um, and, and a lot, lot of dulling of their natural emotions, creativity, um, and sedation, you know, feeling drowsy, all kinds of quality of life issues and, and physical health side effects. That's many of them are paying a really big price for whatever relief they are getting from those psychiatric medicines. We, we know from this, from the studies and years and years of, of clinical practice, that these medicines, while in some cases they can be very important and useful tools in some situations, I still use in my practice, um, I use less and less of it all the time. But we know that they do fail most people. They do not bring enough meaningful relief to enough people. And they, they are their effectiveness rates are well below 50% for most psychiatric conditions. And so, and, and with lots and lots of side effects, very, very common. So, so we do need new strategies.

So now, what is going on when someone says, "Well, this psychiatric medicine is actually making me, my mental health worse?" You can absolutely see that. I've seen it more times than I can count. Psychiatric medications can have side effects that can worsen depression. They can worsen anxiety. They can worsen sleep patterns. Uh, they can worse, you know, they, they can, they can really just have just about any kind of mental health side effect you can imagine, depending on the person and the medicine. And then they say, "Okay, well, I'd like to come off this medicine." And they try to come off the medicine, and lo and behold, things get even worse. And so they go back on the medicine, or they raise the dose back up again because they feel like they can't get off of it, feel like they are stuck, uh, because when they try to reduce the medicine, they feel worse. Nine times out of 10, that is a withdrawal issue, not an issue of needing the medicine to be well.

And the problem is, this is a very common, widespread problem in psychiatric, uh, practice, is that most psychiatrists, well, all psychiatrists, none of us were trained in deprescribing. None of us were trained in how to safely, uh, taper off psychiatric medications. None of us were trained about what happens, what, what happens in the brain when you lower a psychiatric medication, what's going on there, why do people sometimes get withdrawal symptoms? We were not, we didn't have any classes on that. We were taught how to prescribe medicines. We were taught how to add medicines together. We were taught how to adjust doses of medicines. Uh, we were taught about side effects of medicines. We were taught what lab tests to order when you're prescribing medicines. We were taught about all this interesting chemistry about how the medications work. We were not taught how to safely deprescribe medicines.

So what's true about this is that psychiatric deprescribing is a very, uh, complex art and requires a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge and, uh, and a lot of patience, a lot of skill. But it is possible. I, in 25 years of prescribing medicine, and I have never not been able to get somebody off of a psychiatric medication. It's just that you have to know how to do it, and you must be extremely patient. It must be personalized. Everyone's different. Uh, and you have to go very, very slowly. In some cases, it can take months to years in some cases to come off certain medications. And I'm not saying that everyone will be able to come completely off their psychiatric medicines and, and feel better. Some people will continue to benefit to some extent from certain medicines. Everyone's different. But most people, uh, will be able to safely and comfortably taper off their medicines if they have good clinical guidance to see how they feel without them.

Okay. Oh, no, that's a really good explanation. And I have seen that some of it is the, the weaning off of the medication is the hard part, and people have trouble with that. And you're right, when I wanted to get off the medication, my psychiatrist didn't really give me a response. Instead, it was, "Well, let's try a different antipsychotic instead of you just getting off antidepressants." That was his thing. And we were just playing with all of these different, um, antipsychotics to see what will make you feel better, and nothing really was working long term.

Do you think at all that we are moving the needle for anxiety and depression, where we are diagnosing more people than ever before with, like, maybe, maybe you're just feeling a little sad today, but we're, we're now labeling that as mild depression and getting people on something like Zoloft?

Well, I think what's happening is that most of us are just not mentally well. Because most of us are not, I mean, again, diet is not the only cause, but if you look at what most people are eating, you need to look no further for all of the root causes of mental health conditions in the standard American diet. You have ingredients, you need to disrupt brain chemistry. You have every ingredient you need to create insulin resistance and a shortage of, of, of energy to the brain. You have every ingredient you need to cause damaging inflammation and oxidative stress. Every, and, and you don't have the ingredients that you need to, to thoroughly nourish the brain. Of course, our brains are not functioning properly. How could they? Right? So people are really suffering with anxiety. They are really suffering with depression. They are really suffering with sleep. Sleep. They are really suffering with attention problems. The question is, why? You know, is it overdiagnosed? I don't know, maybe. But my guess is that most people, and my experience tells me that most people are truly suffering. It's just a matter of degree. And it's also a matter of, okay, why? And why should medicines be our first instinct? Shouldn't our first instinct be a food-first, lifestyle-first, natural, let's see if we can optimize brain health in all of these ways? Simple, not easy, but all of these simple, use these simple principles to, uh, shore up brain health before we start to think about medicines. Medicines are great for emergency situations. They're great for certain very special and complex situations. Um, they have their place. But for, for most people who are suffering with, um, low-risk symptoms of depression, anxiety, irritability, moodiness, um, uh, eating concerns, um, sleep disorders, attention problems, memory issues, for most people who have low-risk conditions, why not a food-first approach? Why not start there?

No, I love it. And if we think about one sign of insulin resistance is obesity. I mean, 70% of America now is overweight. So it sort of makes sense that if you're overweight and insulin resistant, the likelihood of having mental illness is higher. So, and that makes sense in terms of sleep. So a lot of people are very sleep-deprived nowadays. You know, melatonin is something that people often recommend when, um, they're sleep-deprived. Is diet affecting the sleep and the neurotransmitters for people to then get proper sleep?

100%. So, so, uh, there, there are a variety of different factors involved in, in supporting good sleep architecture and good, good, good sleep quality, um, so this includes circadian rhythm factors, making sure you're getting sunlight every day, uh, making sure you're prioritizing sleep time, making sure the environment in your room, all these sleep hygiene things that we always hear about, you know, relaxing, uh, not, not spending time on screens at night, not eating too close to bedtime, making sure your room is cool and comfortable, all those things are, are very important. But, but what if you're already doing all those things, and you're still not able to sleep? Because this is, this is what I heard in my practice for years. Is my patients will say, "I'm already doing all of those things," and that's when they would come to me and say, "I need a sleep medication." Right? And I would, of course, prescribe it for them. Uh, now, what I think about is the profound influence of food choices and met, and especially the metabolic, um, influence, the nutritional metabolic influence of the diet on, uh, brain chemistry, which can disrupt sleep.

So what are the things that disrupt sleep? Caffeine disrupts sleep. Alcohol disrupts sleep. Uh, blood sugar and insulin, uh, roller coaster affects sleep. Cortisol levels affect sleep. So stress, uh, and, um, and your food choices are, are, are playing a direct role. How much melatonin your brain actually makes. So that's just, this is just one example. So there's a, there's a chemical pathway in the brain, which is, I go through in the book, uh, in more detail, but there's a, there's a chemical pathway in the brain called the kynurenine pathway, that is responsible for regulating, um, the activity of a variety of different neurotransmitters in the brain. And one of them is melatonin. And, so if you have too much oxidative stress or inflammation, which you can, things that cause oxidative stress and inflammation are things like refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils, but also smoking and alcohol and, uh, pollution, you know, exposure to to environmental toxins. All it takes is some oxidation, inflammation, stress, a little bit more than, than you should have, to trigger this phenomenon called the tryptophan steal, where tryptophan, which is an essential amino acid that's used to, uh, that we need for to build dietary protein, that that comes from dietary protein, is used to build, uh, a lot of different neurotransmitters, including melatonin. And if you are under the influence of inflammation or oxidative stress, you get the tryptophan steal, where less tryptophan is used to build melatonin and serotonin molecules, and more of it goes down this kynurenine pathway, to produce tremendous quantities of glutamate. And glutamate is the brain's gas pedal. It will throw the brain into overdrive and can be not just physically damaging to the brain's architecture, but also, um, very destabilizing for for mood and attention. People can become anxious or irritable, um, moody, um, you, you can even see hypomania and insomnia because the brain is overstimulated by too much glutamate.

So this is just one example of how not having the right information about food, um, can profoundly destabilize brain chemistry to the point that the only thing that that people think is going to help is either having alcohol before they go to sleep to try to relax themselves, or or or taking a melatonin supplement, or taking a sleep medication. And so, yes, people need to sleep more. But if we don't give them the information they need to correct their sleep architecture, they will turn to either alcohol or sleeping pills to try to correct that, that very serious problem. If you're not getting enough sleep, you are not going to do well the next day. So it's important.

Yeah, I understand why people turn to these things. What, what is the risk, though, of taking the melatonin or taking extra tryptophan so that it would convert to some of the serotonin and then the melatonin? Are there risks of not fixing the root cause of the oxidative stress and inflammation and just using sort of the band-aids of melatonin?

I mean, really, first of all, not everybody tolerates melatonin. I, for example, don't tolerate melatonin. The, the brain is not really designed to see these concentrated molecules come in from the outside. It's designed to regulate and understand when, when you need it and how much. It, it, it's a beautifully designed system if we stopped poisoning it with, with, uh, substances in our, in our food, in our environment that, that throw it off balance. The brain knows when and how to make the right amount of melatonin. But, but in a, you know, any port in a storm. So if you, if there's something wrong with your melatonin and you want to take a melatonin supplement, A, how much do you take? B, how long do you take it for? What time do you take it? And is it, and are you going to tolerate it well? So there are a lot of questions wrapped up in that. But if it works well for you, um, uh, you know, it, it may not be a bad, bad solution, but the, you know, short-term. But like any band-aid, it's not correcting the underlying problem.

The other thing that can happen, melatonin is a hormone. The other thing that can happen with, uh, if you're exposing yourself, overexposing yourself to a hormone, so the level in the brain is not what it should be, right? Because you're determining what it should be by this artificial method of taking melatonin, you can develop hormone resistance. So you can develop resistance to any hormone if it's in excess. So again, you really want that, that balance to be determined by your biology. Your biology knows how much you need and, and when, when to turn that system on, whereas if you're taking it in pill form, you're really not, it's really not properly regulated, and it can backfire and actually even cause some, some rebound insomnia over time, just like a lot of sleep medications can.

Yeah, and my concern is nowadays, they sell melatonin now in gummy form for children. That's a separate. And I was shocked to see that they actually sell something like that. And it's, uh, it's over the counter. You could literally buy it in Target, and it's very accessible. And it looks very cute because it's gummies. But, um, it's concerning. I, I know for me, when I was eating a very high-carb diet because I was more plant-based, I would, after having my first son, I would wake up multiple times a night. And I never knew that. I think I was pre-diabetic. After I just thought maybe something was wonky with my hormones from pregnancy. But once I became ketogenic and carnivore, I'm in my early 40s, and I never wake up. I don't wake up a single night unless, you know, there was high stress or something happened that woke me up. So I can attest to that too. I don't use melatonin, and I definitely don't eat a bunch of carbs, but that has helped me so much in regulating my sleep as well. So I, I, I have seen that in my own life as well.

Absolutely. And you, the other piece of the story that we didn't talk about was how if you've got this blood sugar and insulin spike that's happening after, let's say you're eating a typical dinner or or dessert, you know, in the evening, uh, you've then put yourself on a glucose and insulin roller coaster for, you know, at least six hours after that meal, which can eventually, uh, lead to big spikes in, in stress hormone levels, adrenaline and cortisol in particular, which can wake people up in the middle of the night or disrupt normal sleep architecture. People can even wake up feeling hungry. They can wake up feeling shaky. They can just wake up feeling that their brain is, their mind is racing, or they're obsessing about something, and they can't turn their, their brain off and go to sleep. And that is a very natural and predictable result of, of having this, um, exaggerated glucose and insulin spike, because that's followed four to five hours later by an exaggerated spike in, in adrenaline and cortisol. These are stress hormones that that will, uh, that will absolutely, um, uh, cause you to feel, um, overstimulated, and that's not what you want in the middle of the night. So there are some studies in the book where I, I walk people through, uh, some of this science so that they can see, you know, a lot of people don't connect how they feel six hours, five, six hours after a meal to what they ate five or six hours before. They think, "Well, how could that be related to, you know, I, you know, I ate my dinner at, you know, six o'clock. You know, why am I waking up? You know, I went to bed at 10. I fell asleep easily. Why is it that I can't stay asleep through the night? Why is it that I'm having nightmares or disturbing dreams, or that I wake up feeling really, um, OBS, you know, obsessively worried?" And, you know, it's, it's really, it's profoundly biological. The brain is doing what you told it to do, and you just don't realize it.

No, I love it. And, uh, we've seen in our practice where people will have that, "I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't go to bed." They wear a CGM, and maybe they're just newly eating ketogenic. Their blood sugar drops, and then all of a sudden, you see this huge spike, and it's obvious that cortisol came to help it. But that, but it's with the CGM, you see, "Oh, I'm having this blood sugar drop, and cortisol comes." And so there's these really big spikes. And I think that's where, um, I know there's some people that say you shouldn't use a CGM unless you're diabetic. But I really think it shows you what foods do to your blood sugar. And I think it's so important to actually see that.

Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, Judy, because the CGM is really the most empowering, most instructive, most revolutionary tool we have, uh, not just in general health, but in mental health. I have yet to, uh, have a patient use a CGM and not change their diet. They can see, even if they don't share the results with me, if they're, they don't want to, they can see for themselves what's going on. Um, and, and it, it's just, you can't argue with it. You can't argue with it. And, and, and most people are really, really, um, curious about about these patterns, and they get really excited about trying to change them. Right? And, and I love it. It's so much fun to work this way because, you know, I can talk science till I'm blue in the face, but nothing's going to convince somebody like a, "Oh, you know, um, I had that piece of keto-friendly bread, which is to have three net carbs in it, and my blood sugar went up to 160 milligrams per deciliter." You know, it's, it's, you can't argue with, with, uh, with your own body's chemistry. You can see it for yourself what's happening. And then you get to decide for yourself, you know, whether that piece of bread was really worth it to you. And everybody can make a different decision. But I've yet to see a patient not change their diet when they use a CGM.

Agreed. Same with our practice. We've seen it's such a motivating tool because, you know, how your day looks eating mostly meat and fatty meats, and then if you go and add some fruit or add certain carbs, or, you know, the keto, the processed carbs, and then you'll see it go up. And no one needs to explain that because you'll see it. And that's where I think it's so motivating. So I, I think it is incorrect to say that somebody that is not diabetic should never put it on. I actually put it on my oldest child because he has a tendency to like carbs. So I said, "Let's just have," and his blood sugar, because he's young, it's stable, but you see little spikes, even within the normal ranges, when he eats certain foods that are less ideal. And it's such a, and now he forever remembers that data set from that short two weeks he tried it. So I think it's such a powerful tool.

Isn't that something? I mean, any tool can be abused or misused. Yes, but this tool, I mean, this tool is 90% benefit, maybe even 95% chance of benefiting. I mean, there's always going to be a subset of people who who misuse or abuse a tool or a strategy. Any diet can be abused. Any, any, uh, any, uh, uh, test can be abused. That's, but, but that's human nature, right? Most people are going to benefit tremendously by even a single two-week glucose sensor if you can afford one. I mean, they're becoming more affordable, and they're becoming more accessible. You know, this is, if I can only recommend one thing, uh, for people to open their, their minds and get them curious and get them hopeful about their metabolic future and their mental health future, their intellectual future, their mental health, it's a CGM. And so, uh, I highly, highly recommend.

Well, thank you so much. I told you last time, but I'm a huge fan. When I was eating, starting the carnivore diet, I read up all of your blogs and all the science, and you gave me so much hope and the science and the logic. And so I've always been a huge fan. And I'm so happy that you have a book to finally share with the world. And so I hope you continue to have your success because I think you are, uh, so well-written. I think you do such a great job in explaining things and being convincing in your writing, which I think is a skill. So I just want to commend you and everything. And, um, I hope you have a book too and continue to even have your education program be for not just practitioners. Maybe in the future, it's for somebody that just wants to learn for their family.

We are working on that. That's a project because we get a lot of questions from people saying, you know, "Can I take the course? I'm not a clinician." Uh, so we are working on that. It will be some time because it's been very busy. But, uh, my really, education, teaching, empowering people with information, that's my favorite thing. That really is my mission. And so I really appreciate the, you know, your words about the book because I want this information. I want to put this information in the hands of people so that they can use it. And, and really, it is about hope because so many people have given up hope about mental health. They have gotten so confused about nutrition. They don't really know what's true anymore. And so, uh, really, the goal with the book wasn't to say everybody needs to eat this way. It's to say, here's what your favorite foods are about, you know, and walk them through each food, and then they can decide for themselves what makes the most sense for them based on their priorities. So, um, I really appreciate that, that, um, that you find the information useful. And, and thank you for the work that you do to educate people about nutrition, um, and, and all aspects of health, because we need as many people as possible to be sharing useful, um, um, responsible information about nutrition. And most of the information that comes from, as we were saying before, reputable institutions and influential, uh, organizations and, and our guidelines and so forth, is incorrect and is actually very harmful to people. So we do need, um, we do need as many outlets as possible to be sharing the truth about nutrition science.

Yes, yes. Well, thank you. Where can people find your book? Um, if people wanted to take your course as a practitioner, where could they find that?

So all the information about the book and about the course, and also about, um, I have a free clinician directory on my website, an international searchable database, if you're looking for a clinician to work with, especially if you're thinking about using a ketogenic or carnivore diet to treat a mental health condition. It's really important to get good clinical guidance for it to be safe and comfortable, uh, for you. And so, uh, there's a lot of fundamental information in the book, but then if you need clinical guidance, then there is that, that, uh, clinician directory. So the website is where all of that information can be found is called diagnosisdiet.com. So that's got the clinician directory, information about the book, lots of free articles, of course, and information about the training program as well.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm, you know, it's always so fun to talk with you. And, um, I mean, that was my thing. I suffered from mental illness. So it's your blogs were what got me through when I was suffering or struggling to stick to carnivore. And now, seven years later, like I'm able to advocate here because I've had my own healing. And that's brought me passion. So thank you for all the work you do.

Thank you as well, Jordan. Thanks again for having me back. Bye.

Thank you so much. Okay, guys, I hope that this conversation gave you lots to think about. There are over a billion people in the world that have been diagnosed with some type of mental illness. It is so prevalent, and it has become so normal to just pop a pill. Most people now are just getting on antidepressants or anti-anxiety or anti-pain medications or sleep medications for things that seem broken. And now that we've normalized to say, "Just pop a pill." This has helped me even with attention. I'm not saying that none of these need medication, but as Dr. Georgia Ede says, we need to first focus on maybe fixing the root cause issues, which are often systemically because of diet that then cause inflammation and oxidative stress. Diet will not fix everything, but it is absolutely a front runner in what we should try to support our brain health. The truth is, if you have any physical symptoms, if you have pain, if you have joint pain, if you have autoimmune, those are signs that whatever you are eating is likely not supporting you. And then of course, with that thought, then your brain is not going to support you either. The goal should initially be to support the body and the brain with the food that you are eating, and then if those are not enough, then to seek further support. I do not believe in saying that no one should get on prescription medications. I think it really is very personalized, but I absolutely think that the very first thing you should go on is trying a ketogenic diet, as there are so many studies now that show that ketogenic diets can support mental health and healing. This particular topic is so important to me because it is the part that I struggled with and how I found a carnivore diet. And I know the depths of despair you feel when you are depressed, when you feel anxious, when you feel like some days I just don't want to live anymore. But that can all change. If your body is aching, think about how much your brain is aching. And if you can support the brain, then you won't have thoughts like that, or at least many of those thoughts. And from my own journey, I can assure you that a diet can change so much of your trajectory of your brain health. If you have not checked out Dr. Georgia Ede's book, I highly recommend it. You can get a glimmer of it by reading so many of her blogs and articles. They are so good, they're so well-written, and a lot of her lectures are also online. There should be no excuses for why we cannot try eating a ketogenic diet. If you're not sure if your brain needs support, just think about your body. If there's any condition, any symptom that your body needs support, it's likely that your brain does too. Okay guys, make sure to eat a lot of meat. Take care of your bodies and your brains because it's the only place you have to live. I will talk to you later. Bye guys.

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