 How do we bolster our brain's capacity? We all are born with a beautiful mind, and then we go through childhood, we go through adolescence, we get into adulthood, and then we bombard our mind with electronics, with sometimes maybe useless information or maybe information that's not as useful to us. Maybe we get bombarded with choices. I know a lot of my tiredness and exhaustion comes from having too many choices sometimes. How do we really get our brain humming in the most optimal way that we can? How do we have a peak mind, whether that's through mindfulness practices, maybe it's meditation, whether it's through diet and nutrition? How do we really make sure that our brain is functioning to its full capacity? That's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. And to help you understand your brain and how you can exercise the brain. I've brought in a new friend of mine, a fellow by the name of Michael Trainor. He is the founder of a company called Peek Mind, which launched with his holiness, the Dalai Lama. So we're going to find out a little bit about Peek Mind today. He's also the co-creator of a festival called the Global Citizen Festival, which hosts about 70,000 people on the Great Lawn in Central Park annually. And Michael has a lot of experience with bolstering the brain and brain functionality. His father actually had dementia, and we're going to talk a little bit about that today. So if you're wanting to improve your brain functionality, listen up, because we're going to go through it. With that, it's a big welcome to Michael Trainor. How are you, Michael? Good, James. How are you? I'm very well, mate. Good to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your story and your interest and passion in things to do with the brain's capacity. Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. Second of all, my interest in the brain really was catapulted when my father was diagnosed with dementia. So as you mentioned at the time, I was working with an incredible team to build something called the Global Citizen Festival, which was a concert and a movement to end extreme poverty. It's still going very strong with incredible guests every year and being leveraged to raise significant contributions on behalf of the world's poor. But when my father was diagnosed with dementia, I made the very hard choice to step away and focus on supporting him. And so it's been an incredible three-year journey, but it started off first with meditation. And that had been a long-standing interest. I lived actually with a traditional healer on a Fulbright scholarship in Sri Lanka when I was 19 and started a vipassana meditation then. But Harvard came out with a study several years back which actually demonstrated the ability for mindfulness and meditation to enhance neuroplasticity. And so that led me on a deep dive into meditation and the desire to popularize meditation, because which actually is obviously happening at the moment, especially within some of our circles, but really how can we have a mind and a vision towards seeing meditation become common practice in communities all around the world? And so at that point in time, I had a vision which included utilizing some of the leading meditators I knew and no one in my mind was the embodiment of that more than a loneliness to Dalai Lama. And we decided to host an event around his 80th birthday to bring about greater awareness around the virtues of meditation. And he very gracefully offered to come and share some of his teachings. So my interest in the brain really was catalyzed by my father's diagnosis. And since then, I've been delving deeply into sort of the nutritional lifestyle aspects that can enhance cognitive ability in neurogenesis. And your father was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago. Michael, is that right three years ago? Yeah, that's right. So he was diagnosed about three years ago. While I was working in building global citizen with the team, he actually had been diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, that is knock on wood in remission. But about after he kind of had done two years of chemotherapy, it was discovered that he had dementia. Now, dementia actually onsets in the brain decades before the first symptoms. So his diagnosis came about three years ago, but it's likely that the onset was far earlier. Just for the uninitiated, can you just explain dementia, what it is, and how it shows up in people? Yeah, for sure. So the most common form of dementia that I think is most familiar to people is Alzheimer's, which right now in the United States alone there's over five million people with Alzheimer's. But there are a myriad of different dementias, if you will. My father has frontal lobe dementia. All of them basically are diseases of the brain that cause cognitive impairment and slowly drain people of their memories and ultimately their identities. It's an extraordinarily painful disease, not only for the person who has dementia, which often leads to confusion, but also for the families that love them because your identity obviously, the one organ we can't replace in our body is our brain. And our entire identity and the way that we filter through the world is all processed through our brain. So it's the center for our identity. So if you can think of in many ways, the most dreaded thing you can think of, oftentimes it would be the loss of that identity slowly over time. Knowing at least it was thought that the brain was, many people had this idea that the brain, once you're born with kind of a perfect brain and it slowly degrades over time and there's nothing you can do about it. What's been beautiful though in this search is that actually the leading kind of doctors in the functional medicine field are saying that actually you can enhance your neuroplasticity. In other words, your ability to bolster against dementias throughout your life. And actually the earlier you start, the better. So basically what I'm trying to do is just to raise awareness around the fact that our brains are extraordinarily sensitive. We are, as you mentioned, at the top end of the show encountering an increasing amount of toxins in our environment as well as our food supply and different things which actually, depending on your diet and lifestyle, can degrade your brain. But there is a diet and lifestyle that can actually enhance your cognitive abilities. And so in working to really serve my father and be of service to others as I share this message, I've been, I'm not a doctor myself, let me just qualify that. If you're going to seek medical treatment, I can recommend some wonderful doctors, Dr. Mark Hyman, David Perlmutter is an incredible doctor. But having spent time with them and done deep research through some of the findings I've come across and it's actually very exciting because on the flip side, the positive is we can actually have very, we can have, we can have life enhancing effects on the brain throughout our lives. And it's not a, it's not a fatal calling court, excuse me, calling card as we once thought it was. There's actually ways in which we can encourage neuroplasticity throughout our lives. So just before we get into a few things, like I'll get you to talk about, you know, what we're doing daily that's degrading our brain. And then we'll talk about some ways in which we can strengthen the brain, but just going back to your father, I mean, it must be, it must have been and it must continuously be, you know, a great source of frustration or pain for you to have to go through that process with your father, like for the listener who maybe isn't just aware of the level of care that maybe you have to give to a loved one, could you just clarify like some of those things and what your personal feelings are around your father and his dementia or maybe even things that he shared with you about his dementia. I think that would really help us get an insight into, you know, what the, I guess the patient and the loved ones of the patient, you know, experience. Yeah, I'd be happy to. So my dad, by way of context, is one of the most loving, gracious humans you could ever meet. He's the kind of guy where if I said, Dad, could you, you know, could you pick up my friend James from the airport at two in the morning on, you know, in the middle of the night? He wouldn't even ask who James is. He'd just be there at two in the morning. You know, he's that kind of a guy. If it's important to me, it's important to him. I mean, he didn't miss, he didn't miss a game growing up. He, I'm just painting a little bit of a picture so you can appreciate it. His own father actually was never, came from a very stoked background, was a military, a captain in the military. Never once actually told my father that he loved him because it wasn't within his capacity. But my father, when he revealed himself fully to his dad to declare his love, the only way he knew that his dad, that it meant something to him was he took a napkin from the table and he folded it and he put it in his pocket. And so he grew, my dad grew up basically long and short of it, you know, loved. But he, the degree to which he exemplifies love is truly profound for me. So to give you context, the challenge is that this human who has been there, who's had my back, who has been a source of perpetual support, I now have to watch slowly fade away. So it's, you know, I try to always keep in context the positives, right? So the positives are, some people unfortunately never get to say goodbye to their loved one. And if there's one thing that comes out of this podcast, I hope it's that, you know, your listeners will take a moment to write a letter to say the things that haven't been said to those they love the most. There's actually a study out of Stanford Medical School, which you can research or potentially link up in the show notes where they say there's four questions or four things really that you need to say to a loved one. And it's written by a doctor who focuses on palliative end of life care. And he said, thank you, I love you, forgive me, I forgive you. And so I highly recommend writing a letter sitting down with your loved ones, because what I've discovered, the essence of your question is, you know, the people that we come to love, they're still there in their essence, you know, my dad, I know, I know he loves me. I know that he, the degree of our connection is profound. Yet at the same time, you know, a year ago at our farmhouse, he forgot my name for the first time. You know, at times he doesn't know who my mother is. At times he doesn't know who I am. You know, so if you can imagine the person, the person that you love most in the world starts to slowly lose their sense of who you are, you start to have a sense of the psychological effects. And that's not even taking into consideration, you know, the stress it puts on the family, who's going to take care of whom, the financial consequences, you know, end of life care causes more bankruptcies in the United States of America than anything else. And so, you know, our healthcare system is a whole nother point of conversation. But, you know, you're looking at, there's no good answer, right? How do you care and demonstrate the love for those who you love the most when sort of the best case scenario is a scenario you wouldn't wish for, right? You know, how do you put someone in a potentially in a nursing home in a hospital bed where they're, you know, where they're left to decline? Fortunately, my mother and father are still together. They've been married 47 years and my dad's still in her care in the home that we've been, you know, born and raised in, which is really amazing. But I'm now confronting, you know, this week alone talking about things like power of attorney, power of health. How do you make those, the hardest of decisions with those you love the most? These are the consequences of a disease which impacts not just the 5 million people in the United States, but all of the family members that are left to care for them. And the consequence, I mean, it can derail a caregiver's life, right? It becomes their full focus. So it's really, truly profound. And it takes us a little bit, just for a moment away from me personally, you know, they're now calling dementia type 3 diabetes. Really? Yeah. So if you look at the epidemic of type 2 diabetes, which is now very present, the likelihood of getting dementia if you have type 2 diabetes is exponentially more likely. And if you look at the research, and I've done this, it's insane. I mean, I used to focus on trying to bring about support for diseases affecting extreme poor like polio and malaria. And then I did the research and realized that actually dementia and diabetes are going to be a global pandemic. I mean, if you look right now, there's about 11% of both the population in China, as well as the United States that have dementia. Excuse me, that have diabetes for me. But if you look at pre-diabetes, right now 50% of the Chinese population alone, that's not taking into consideration India, Mexico, countries around the world that have adopted a Western lifestyle are dealing with the toxicities which are now in our environment. Let's talk about 500 million people, which if their lifestyle continues are more likely to have the onset of type 2 diabetes, which means that we could be facing a very significant crisis, both in the form of diet and life, which is diet and lifestyle born, right? Well around the world, right? So that we're talking about something that could affect hundreds of millions of people. First of all, I want to thank you for giving us a glimpse into your life and the life of your family as well. I know it sounds challenging. It sounds really challenging. I really appreciate you, like I said, giving us a glimpse into that. I think that the emotional side of that will certainly makes me feel a great level of support for you, you know? And then it helps me to understand what it is that we're facing here and the road that we might be headed down. So thank you for that. I want to ask you this question. Is your father's dementia, now with all the research that you have done, do you feel like it was something that he was just naturally born to have, naturally born to be afflicted with? Or do you think that it is a direct result of his diet and his lifestyle up until this point? Yeah, wonderful. That is one of the big questions, right? So what I will say is the science shows that there are genetic predispositions that make one more likely to have the onset of certain dementias and Alzheimer's. In those biomarkers you can actually get tests and I encourage that and I'm happy to share some great resources. Dr. Dale Bredesen actually is an incredible researcher and has actually reversed Alzheimer's in a small clinical study, incredible. But to your core question, yes, there are genetic predispositions and factors which make it more likely that you can have neurodegenerative disease. However, those genetic predispositions are not definitive one and two, if caught early enough with, which has been seen. And we're at the, this is the frontier of brain science. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, if you look at David Perlmutter's research, he's actually literally taken two, I don't know if he personally, but he quotes in his book, Grain Brain, which I highly recommend, and Brain Maker. He talks about two twins who are genetically basically identical, one profoundly unhealthy and the other healthy. And this may not be the most palatable, but one of the leading sciences now in terms of interventions is fecal implant. So, you know, our microbiome, our gut health, and the bacteria, the flora, are intricately linked to our brain cells in terms of production or transmitters like serotonin even, right? Like which enhances our happiness. So, I mean, the cascade down is significant. You want to talk about depression, all different kinds of neurological factors. But to the essence of your question, what we're seeing is that your diet and lifestyle can have profound implications on whether or not any preexisting biological markers actually lead to disease. So, what I would say is that, and aside from that, even if you have what I would argue, and again, I'm not speaking as a doctor, but based on my research, if you have no markers necessarily for Alzheimer's, that doesn't mean you won't get dementia. If you eat an entirely, pardon me, crappy diet and live, if you have acute stress, if you're eating tons of processed foods, if you're in an environmentally toxic place, that lifestyle basically causes inflammation. And that chronic inflammation can have a myriad of effects, including autoimmune diseases, but also dementious, right? So, basically, in the context of the brain, when you eat and have a certain lifestyle that enhances inflammation in the brain, the challenge is your brain doesn't have pain receptors, right? So, with the exception of maybe something analogous to a hangover, when you've drank too much alcohol the next day, you can tell the effects in an acute sense. When you're generally speaking, when you're eating grains, when you're eating breads, carbs, we know that that makes us feel better oftentimes, like it's a comfort food. Like, in my past, I loved pizza. Now I try to limit my consumption, but basically, if we have chronic inflammation throughout our lives, that has effects on our brain. So, to answer your question, specifically, there are genetic markers, but also, my friend James Maskler runs a functional forum said this way, even if you have a loaded gun, it doesn't mean that you have to pull the trigger, right? So, even if you have all the genetic markers, there are people who have had miraculous turnarounds in theoretically, you know, inoperable or, you know, theoretically, you know, impossible to cure diseases. I'll give an example. I was with last week, a woman who had progressive MS, Dr. Terry Walls. Now, she basically came up with a protocol and is now working to clinically prove that it works beyond herself. But in the context of her own personal health, and you can Google her TED Talk, it's amazing, she went from progressive MS. In other words, she was bound to a wheelchair with a degenerative disease that's theoretically incurable. She went into an aggressive protocol, which includes a dramatically revised, you know, diet and lifestyle. She went ostensibly to a, almost like a primal, primalithic diet and ate almost all, you know, fruits, vegetables, greens, some meats, some liver meats. You can look up the protocol. I won't go into all the details here. And she, one year later, was walking two years later, was riding a horse. And I was with her last week and you couldn't tell she had any symptoms whatsoever. So, it's actually, when I look at someone like my father, I feel like it's kind of the canary in the coal mine if I remove myself. In terms of saying that we're right now besieged by a type of environment and a whole delugia forces that are encouraging us to eat lots of sugar. It's very hard to actually take on a diet which is actually ideal for your brain based on what you can buy in everyday supermarkets. So, there are ways you can approach it and there's systems that you can, and doctors that are amazing. I'm happy to go into, but in essence to your question, it's not a death sentence. Okay, so let's do this now, Michael. We're talking to Michael Traynor who is the founder of Peek Mind which launched with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. So, let's do five things that we're doing in our everyday life that we know definitively is degrading our brains. So, what are the standard things that you see people doing that is degrading our brain increasing our chances of getting typed through diabetes or getting dementia later on in life? Well, there's a few things and hopefully I'll turn this around with things that you can do to also step up your chances for resilience. But one thing is, and actually I'll start with some of the broader based lifestyle tenants. So, we'll start broad. But I know a lot of your work James, you like to focus on sleep. So, sleep is actually pivotal and quality sleep is pivotal because when you're sleeping, it's actually the time in which your brain ostensibly takes out the trash. So, having a deep quality REM sleep, which I can go into detail but I know this is your specialty so I probably won't in this instance. But turning your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary and getting deep quality rest is hugely influential. So, the epidemic of, and by the way, I'm all for hustling and creating big results, but the epidemic of crush it at all expenses, all nighters, a lot of what is encouraged in our entrepreneurial culture, and I'm an entrepreneur, is antithetical to brain health. That doesn't mean you can't hustle and crush it. But it does mean you should be smart about the foundations you're laying to do so. So, one would be sleep. Another would be diet. So, our diets right now are unfortunately full of processed foods for those really basic, you know, processed foods are generally speaking things that you'll find in a box, you know, that have been, that are not the way sort of, they're not closest to their natural source, right? So, generally speaking, in a supermarket, the outer aisles, oftentimes are like the produce, vegetables, etc. You know, eating, so another thing that's having an effect is based on the interfunctional medicine conference I was just at is pesticides. So, pesticides are unfortunately being sprayed most significantly on conventional produce, but pesticides are now being genetically embedded into many different kinds of products, right? So, you have an almost, you know, you have a widespread use of things like glycophate, which otherwise known as Roundup, which is a pesticide. These kinds of things, you know, let's just say ideally, you're focusing on organic fruits and vegetables and free range, if you do eat meat, free range meats, so as to avoid exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides. The other thing is environment, right? So, one of the things, and I'll add to that more broadly stress, right? So, cortisol levels being in a state of acute stress decreases your immunity, you know? So, the degree to which we are in perpetual stress, and that's not to say stress is bad, actually stress can enhance your resilience. Kind of like, if you're going to the gym, you do, you put your muscles in stress to build them, right? I kind of look at things like meditation as going to the, you know, as my friend Light Watkins calls it, the inner gym, right? So, you're actually, you know, you can actually use stress to enhance and grow, but if you're in a state of acute stress perpetually, which many people are in our 24-7 lives these days in modern society, that's one of the things that also has long-term consequences. You know, diet, generally speaking pro-inflammatory foods, sugar, I'll just say that a few times, sugar, sugar, sugar. Anyone who hasn't watched, watch that sugar movie, really insightful resource. Sugar is in almost everything now, and, you know, it's not to say that I have been able to totally eliminate it from my life by any means, but being mindful of how much sugar you consume and also highly refined carbs, white sugars, white carbs lead to spikes in the glycemic index, and those have long-term consequences. So, and then as an aside, you know, to your point about my father, you know, my dad drank diet soda and took Tums every night. Shouldn't probably name the name brand. Let's just say he took antacids every night, and there is research that suggests the potentiality of things like antacid now given the new research into the gut-brain barrier and, you know, and some of the ingredients you'll find in things like sodas, aspartame and the like to have potentially, you know, potentially harmful consequences. So, and also, we now live in a, this just happened, we now live in a world where there's now more obese people on the planet than non-obese people. So, if you're carrying fat, that's the kind of storehouse where a lot of these toxins can live. And I don't say that in a way to make anyone feel guilty. I think there's far too much shame around weight. So, none of my messages intended to be shame inducing. And I'm, by the way, far from perfect. It's just to say that being cognizant of these factors is very important to taking your life and your health on. And I think one of the main things we need to do is start to take responsibility. I mean, you know, a lot of us take more agency when we take our car into the mechanic or what type of fuel we put into our car, more so even than the degree to which we take our health or even our research when we go into the doctor into, you know, what we put into our own bodies or our own health markers. So, it's just a very important call. Okay, so some of the things here that we're doing to degrade our brain is poor sleep, eating, having a poor diet, so processed foods, like anything in a box, we're eating too much sugar. You talked about grains and breads and carbs and pizza. So, just as a little caveat here, I just completed the whole 30, which is a program where you have to eat kind of flawlessly for 30 days. And you eat kind of like as the cavemen or the cavemen, cavewomen used to eat back in the day. So, that means very lean meats or farm-raised, eggs, pasture-raised eggs, and then fruits and vegetables, no rice, no pasta, no potatoes. You can have sweet potatoes, but kind of like doing like a pretty much like a paleo-ethic kind of diet. And I did it for 30 days, and at the end of 30 days, I felt terrific. And then on the last day, I actually had a pack of Oreos because I love Oreo cookies, and I had some Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and it tasted bloody good, and I went to sleep that night. And I don't want to put anyone off here about what I'm about to explain, but there's no other way to do it. I woke up the next morning, and I'd been farting in the night. And let me tell you, my room stunk like hell. It was awful. Just for 30 days, my farts were practically odourless, right? Odourless farts for 30 days, as I'm eating this food flawlessly. And then as soon as I had Oreos and Haagen-Dazs ice cream, which is jam-packed with sugar, something happened in my system where, when I woke up the next morning, my room just like stank to high hell. So that was a really good indication to me, like how bad eating like huge concentrations of sugar actually is. Something was going on in my system there that was kind of nasty, and it was very noticeable because I'd eaten pretty much fall asleep for 30 days, and then all of a sudden, suddenly, I'm eating crap food. So just a little side caveat there. Just, I'll say one thing about that. So I think what you did in the context of your diet, the 30 days, ostensibly is, and I know Dallas, and I think Kylie of the whole 30 diet, but what I would say is, what you're basically describing is you did an elimination diet, which I think is really wonderful. You know, there's no, I don't think there's any one pill fits all or one diet fits all in healthcare in my experience, right? So I think for people to take on whatever that 30 day is to eliminate the things that, when they find symptoms like that, right, where you don't feel right, you know, you maybe, you know, in your case, you know, you're describing, you saw a clear shift after you ate a certain food. You know, I think listening to your body is crucial to taking ownership of your own health. Yeah. Um, just on that, I don't want to get into a whole, like talking about, you know, paleo versus vegan and vegetarian and everything, but I think it's important to mention grains and breads there because bread is such part of our staple diet, right? And when you explain to people initially and say, you shouldn't be eating bread, or maybe I shouldn't be saying it like that. Maybe I should say, have you ever considered eliminating bread from your diet and seeing, you know, how you feel? People are always like, what? I don't understand, but I have toast for breakfast and I need a sandwich at lunch and what do you mean? I can't have rice. What are you talking about? Like rice is part of my diet. And then people point to like the Asian diet, which is filled with rice and they say that, well, their health seems okay. So, so they've been eating rice their entire life. It's a staple of their diet. So if they're, if everything's okay with them, why does this, why should I give up rice? So can you just maybe just briefly, because I want to move on to a couple of other things, clarify why grains and breads and certain calms can be so damaging to our brain? Yeah. So in essence, you know, I won't go into, I won't go into a huge deep dive here, but in essence, you know, especially processed, you know, processed foods and grains, which are, which are often processed, you know, into the breads that we consume ostensibly, but not below the neck can, you know, convert into sugar, which has a whole myriad of cascading effects on our body. But basically, in essence, promotes inflammation and chronic inflammation is the source of many diseases, inclusive of which is dementia. So, so, you know, I'm not going to go into don't eat, right, you know, you know, I lived in Sri Lanka for a period where I ate extraordinarily fresh, clean food with rice and felt amazing. So I think, you know, I'm not going to be the guy to be prescriptive in terms of saying that, never do that, you know, do that. But what I will say is in terms of gluten, you know, there are a number of people that are highly sensitive to gluten and don't know it. For example, they think that about 1% of the population in the U.S. alone has celiac disease. Celiac is an extreme allergic reaction to wheat. The consequence of which could be the promotion of certain cancers as well as infertility. So I think, you know, one of the things I would argue is to either do an elimination diet and see how you feel when you remove things like wheat or rice is from your diet and or doing tests. There are now a battery of tests you can get for relatively cheap that actually will help you learn what are the ideal foods for your genetic makeup, for your type, you know. So I put that out there. If you want, I have a whole list of things that I recommend as kind of an anti-all-timers diet, which I'm happy to share. But I would say that to your point around. Now, you're talking about pesticides on produce. So if in doubt, try to go organic, I guess is the suggestion there. The other thing is the common bathroom is a chemical disaster in most households in my opinion. In fact, I've gone through an exercise recently where I almost eliminated every single chemical out of my out of my home. In fact, I had a cleaner come over to my home last week. And she criticized me or not criticize me, but she said she claimed that she couldn't clean my place effectively because I didn't have two products which were filled with chemicals because I basically replaced all of the chemical cleaning products with natural cleaning products. And her looking at this thing, she was like, oh, I can't, no puedo. She was speaking Spanish. She's like, I can't fix this. I can't use this. You need to go to the store and buy, I think it was Clorex and Titex or something. I can't remember what it was called. But in any case, it was astounding to me that someone didn't understand that I did not want chemicals in my home, that I wanted purely natural products. So as an example, in my shower, I only use a product called Dr. Bronner's which is all organic coconut oil and butter and things like that that you use to wash your head or wash your body. The hand cleaner that I use, I can't remember the name of it, but it's all natural products. There's a spray that you spray that makes the bathroom smell nice. It's all natural ingredients. There's no parabens. There's no chemicals. There's none of that nonsense. And I use Tom's deodorant. So when I'm putting deodorant underneath my armpits, I'm using Tom's which again is as close to as all natural products you can get. I think there might be something slightly in there, but I'm not using acts and Gillette and all that kind of crap which are filled with stuff. So I've learned to ignore these commercials like television commercials, you see like Neutrogena and face moisturizer and like all these women like Jennifer Aniston and Hollywood movie stars who are peddling these face moisturizers and these shampoos, what they're essentially peddling is put chemicals all over your body. And Ben Greenfield, who's a friend of mine, has a podcast called Ben Greenfield Fitness. He's one of the most knowledgeable health experts I know. He said to me once in a phrase and it really stuck with me. He said, Never put on your skin what you wouldn't put on your mouth or never put on your skin what you wouldn't put in your mouth. So I don't use those mainstream moisturizing companies anymore, you know like Neutrogena and all this kind of stuff because they're filled with chemicals. Now I just put on extra virgin olive oil on my face or I'll use a company called Alatura which is run by a friend of mine, Andy Nylo who I've had on the show. And Alatura has all natural ingredients as well. So I use that as a face moisturizer. So yeah, I mean I guess that plays into what you were talking about. There is like your environment and I would encourage you if you're watching or listening just go and do a stock take of what's in your home. Look underneath the kitchen sink. Look under the bathroom sink. What's the soap that you're putting on your body? If you use dove soap, chances are you're putting chemicals and parabens on your thing. What's the deodorant you use? What's the toothpaste that you use? What are you putting on your body? What's the aftershave that you're putting on your body? You're falling for this Johnny Depp inspired bull crap bullshit marketing where it's like, he's in a desert or whatever and I don't know what the brand is. But you know like then like the... It's really, I think what I hear you saying is it's not necessarily what the importance of the brand is more to say would you make a very important point. The skin is the largest organ on the human body. Correct. And unfortunately we don't pay enough attention to the kinds of inputs that we have in and around on or around our skin and our skin is permeable. So in essence what we put on or have around our skin winds up in our system. So for example around deodorants, there's some research that links aluminum to Alzheimer's as a potential causative. Many, many antiperspirants have that as an ingredient. People sometimes cook with aluminum foil. So it is important to me mindful to your point about what you have in your environment. And there's a whole another kind of load that this generation is subject to in terms of potential toxins. And I'm personally not uber extreme. I do think there's times in which if you have an acute bacteria or virus in the environment like bleach in an isolated area, it can make sense. However, there's fascinating research now which to our to our discussion around Alzheimer's, which actually is a graph I saw that was Dr. Perlmutter showed of the incidence of dimension Alzheimer's. And almost all of the highest incidence countries are the most developed countries. Countries like the United States, Iceland, Australia. Whereas the countries with the lowest incidence are often the developing countries like Sub-Saharan Africa, which isn't necessarily a country but regions, et cetera, certain parts of the Middle East. The lowest incidence of dementia. So there is now research being done on how, for example, our sanitization or oversanitization of our environments and the degree to which we use antibacterials and such and that they may kill a lot of the healthy bacteria and microbes which are fundamental to our overall health and the myriad of consequences that that can have on the body. Our gut, we have trillions of bacteria in our gut. If we were to surround ourselves and kill off all those bacteria, the consequences would be catastrophic. So the essence of what you're saying, which I would just piggyback off of this, we need to be very mindful of who's trying to influence what we put in or around our body and on our body because the skin is actually our largest organ. Yeah. Okay. So let's just move on just as we take this home. I kind of want to, well, actually I got one question to do with the gut. You were talking about the gut. So besides trying to eat organic fruits and vegetables, free-range meats, trying to lower our stress, being mindful of sugar, trying to get deep quality REM sleep, presumably you would also encourage the use of daily meditation, whether that's 10 or 15 minutes. Improving the gut. There's a lot of products on the market there, regarding probiotics, for example. Take probiotic supplements. I take a lot of sauerkraut because as I understand that that can improve your gut health. But given that you said earlier that the gut is super responsible for our brain health, what besides good eating can we do to make sure that our gut is operating the way it should, knowing that ultimately that affects our brain? Yeah, great question. So I would encourage every one of your listeners, if they haven't yet, read the book Brain Maker to read it. Dr. David Poromont is one of the leading doctors in this field. He talks quite a bit about the ways in which you can strengthen your gut health. So like what you mentioned, kimchi, fermented vegetables, kombucha, those are things that actually absolutely have positive effects on the gut. But I would also say that there's other things which were not widely known, which are showing huge consequences on the formation of your microbiota and the floor in your gut, for example. And I was a cesarean birth, but natural birth, for example, they believe effects on the formation of your microbiome as well as breast milk. So for the mothers out there, those, if you can, healthfully deliver, they're now doing swabbing, for example, vaginal swabbing in babies that are born. That actually sets the proper foundation. And then there are a lot of foods that we can consume throughout our lives to enhance the strength of the gut, such as the fermented foods you mentioned. Probiotics, I think it really comes down to absorption. I'm pro, I also take probiotics. I think not all probiotics or all supplements are created equal, but I think that they're very healthy. I put together, overall, I put together a list if you want of, which I'm happy to share with you, of some of the things you can do to really kind of bolster your brain against Alzheimer's. Okay, go for it. Yeah, rattle them through, and then I want to ask you one final question. All right, perfect. So just as a basic premise, you know, you want to avoid eating processed foods as we covered off earlier. Those especially sprayed with pesticides and fertilizer, try to keep as much to organic produce as possible. Read labels, basically, and toss out products that are treated with sodium nitrate. That's not something you want a whole lot of in your body. Severely limit your exposure to white breads, white rices, to basically, you know, refined carbohydrates. In terms of supplements, I like fish oils, Omega-3s are huge for your brain, and getting good quality fish oils that don't have a ton of mercury. If you can do any heavy metal testing, a lot of us are exposed to molds and heavy metals like mercury. If you have those in your system, they can wreak havoc down the line, so highly encourage any form of heavy metal testing and chelation if necessary. Vitamin, high quality, high dose B complex vitamins, vitamin D, CoQ enzyme, Q10, magnesium, all really powerful for the brain. In terms of superfoods for the brain, blueberries are great, nuts, walnuts, high fat foods. Keep in mind, your brain is 70% fat, so you want to be giving really healthy, high burning quality fuel to your brain in the form of great fats. And then there's, you know, neurotropics, ginkgo, there's things like ginkgo below, but other things you can do for enhancing memory. And I'm happy if people want to come to peakmind.org. I can send out. I've got a whole list of things I've put together to augment brain health. But those are just a few recommendations in terms of a generalized approach to augmenting and strengthening the brain. Okay, thank you. Appreciate you sharing that. Now, what I want to read to you here is a quote, famous quote from the Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves. And I have interviewed Keanu Reeves on three occasions for when I was a film journalist. I got to interview him for when he was doing, promoting the Matrix movies. I can't remember what the other movies were. And then I sat next to him, oh, sorry, I sat behind him in Park City, Utah, recently at the Sundance Film Festival. I was at an event called Chef Dance and he was sitting right behind me. And there's a very famous quote, if you Google Keanu Reeves' message on living life to the fullest. And I want to read this to you. I don't know if you're aware of it, but it seems to be a somewhat counter argument to what you and other health experts are proposing here, which is living a life of being very particular about what foods you eat and what you don't eat. So let me read the quote here. This is from the Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves. And it's his message on living life to the fullest. My friend's mom has eaten healthy all her life, never ever consumed alcohol or any bad food, exercised every day, very limber, very active, took all supplements suggested by her doctor, never went in the sun without sunscreen. And when she did, it was for as short a period as possible. So pretty much she protected her health with the utmost that anyone could. She is now 76 and has skin cancer, bone marrow cancer, and extreme osteoporosis. My friend's father eats bacon on top of bacon, butter on top of butter, fat on top of fat, never, and I mean never exercised, was out in the sun, burnt to a crisp every summer. He basically took the approach to live life to his fullest and not as others suggest. He is 81 and the doctors say his health is that of a young person. People, you cannot hide from your poison. It's out there and it will find you. So in the words of my friend's still living mother quote, if I would have known my life would end this way, I would have lived it more to the fullest, enjoying everything I was told not to. None of us are getting out of here alive. So please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food, walk in the sunshine, jump in the ocean, say the truth that you're carrying in your heart like hidden treasure, like hidden treasure. Be silly, be kind, be weird. There's no time for anything else. End quote. So that's a quote from Keanu Reeves. What are your thoughts on that as you, as you heard that? I actually think it's a, I think it's a cool quote. I mean, I think, I think what she's saying at the very end is actually the tenants of health. You know, I mean, in, in my regard, in many regards, I think, you know, at the end of the day, joy. Harvard just did the longest, large attitudinal study of its kind. And the single greatest determinant to long term happiness is the quality of your relationships, you know? So, you know, we chose to do a deep dive because you asked me to focus on that vis-a-vis the brain. But I, I think, I think two things. One, I think, I think what she's saying is, is very powerful. In terms of, I think quality of life, your joy, the amount you're laughing, your connection with other humans, that to me is the best medicine. Now that said, you know, some of the things you mentioned, the other gentleman ate, like butters, fats, et cetera. It's actually what you want to eat. And some of the things you put on their skin, like sunscreens, which were probably chemical sunscreen, probably weren't ideal. That said, look, this isn't, I'm not personally, this is me personally, I'm not personally Uber extremist. But at the same time, I've learned the hard way that I'm going to have as much joy, as much fun, connect to as many people as possible. And yeah, I'll occasionally eat some ice cream. If my dad wants to eat ice cream right now, because it brings him extreme joy, you better believe I'm going to take him for ice cream. Because I, do I think he should be eating ice cream every night? No, you know, so I think it's like, it's again, it's about taking your health on and like empowering yourself. And I feel like, in essence, there's kind of the things that you can do to bolster, to make sure you have as much time on the planet, to enjoy those fun expressive moments with people, with yourself, traveling, doing all the things to light you up. And I can say, and I'll bring you back with a quote, a Buddha said, of all wealth, health is greatest and best. And so if you want to live a truly wealthy life, take the biggest billionaire on the planet. If they were diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, they would give it all up to have their health back. So what brings you health, what brings you wealth in terms of your experience? I'm for. Well said. Michael Traynor from peekmind.org. Is that the best way we can connect with you, Michael? Yeah, you can reach out on peekmind.org, michaeltrainer.com, and then I'm at Michael Traynor across all the social platforms. And Traynor is T-R-A-I-N-E-R. Correct. Michael, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. I'm sure I speak for all of our listeners, when we wish you and your father the best of luck in his dementia journey. And we appreciate you sharing your story with us and expressing vulnerability and talking about that. We really do appreciate it. Thank you, James. It was an honor.