We Are All Suffering From Toxic Exposure | Max Lugavere

Um, but one of the seminal studies in the field of dementia prevention is referred to; it's known as the Sprint Mind Trial, which found that when people with hypertension were aggressively treated via pharmacological means for their hypertension, they saw a dramatic risk reduction for the development of cognitive impairment—mild cognitive impairment, in fact—which is considered like a prodrome of dementia, a form of pre-dementia, if you will. Um, but we know that, you know, lifestyle modification, dietary exercise, for example, all are as effective as drugs.

And, um, when you have hypertension, essentially the blood vessels that are supplying blood, nutrients, oxygen to the brain are essentially damaged. And so, yeah, hypertension is incredibly damaging to the brain.

Okay, you said there were 12. I think we should... can we go through all of them? We can go through. Yeah, I mean, so those are the ones that I think are most relevant to diet, but I think it's important at this juncture to state that diet is not the only variable here. So I'll never know what caused my mom's dementia, unfortunately, although it's an investigation that's going to continue on through the rest of my life. But, you know, nutrition is one slice of the pie.

Among the modifiable risk factors, you have non-nutrition related risk factors, such as exposure to excessive air pollution on a chronic basis, which, as of the 2020 Lancet Commission on dementia, was finally acknowledged as being a risk factor for the development of dementia. Um, we've seen studies run in, for example, Mexico City, where they've seen pathological changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease in the brains of adolescents and children.

You know, people who have died in Mexico City who have been exposed over the course of their lives to, you know, excessive levels of air pollution—like fine particulate matter, PM2.5, for example—have an undue aggregate of, you know, amyloid beta, for example, which is the protein that forms the plaques that, you know, is one of the defining features.

Does anybody know? Yes, it is. Yeah, there's an inflammatory consequence. There's a cardiovascular consequence to being exposed to air pollution. Um, with regard to your cardiovascular system, we know that what's good for the heart is good for the brain, and conversely, what's bad for the heart is bad for the brain.

And so, air pollution, you know, plays a major role. An area that I think is incredibly exciting, um, also very scary but ultimately empowering, is, you know, looking at certain environmental pollutants—like certain industrial solvents, for example. There's a compound that—there's another fantastic neurologist who has become a friend and colleague, and I think his work is incredibly important—his name is Dr. Ray Dorsey. He's a University of Rochester neurologist who has done a lot of work exposing the link between exposure to certain chemical solvents that are still widely being used in the United States, like trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, and the etiology of Parkinson's disease and related conditions, like Lewy body dementia, which is the condition that my mom suffered from.

Um, and so we know that, you know, what we breathe, what we eat—these are all having an impact on our health. But now the evidence is really starting to emerge that, you know, the brain is not, you know, does not sit in this privileged ivory tower where it's immune somehow to, you know, what it is that we're eating and the compounds that we're, you know, inhaling.

The brain sits directly downwind of, you know, a lot of the insults that are being waged by modern life, modern living. You know, the trappings of modern society come at a cost, and we're starting to see that they now are likely having an impingement on our collective brain health.

So, you know, one of these compounds, trichloroethylene, which I just referenced, is still being used to spot clean in dry cleaning applications, and it's an incredibly volatile compound. It readily evaporates; it easily, you know, infiltrates groundwater, and obviously occupational exposure to these compounds is really bad.

Um, but there have been a small handful of epidemiologic studies that show that exposure to a compound like TCE, for example, is associated with a 500% increased risk of the development of Parkinson's disease. Um, this is a compound that was used medically up until the '70s; it was used, you know, to decaffeinate coffee. It was used as an anesthetic for pregnant women.

Um, it's still being used as a metal degreaser, and again, it's used to spot clean in dry cleaning applications. Now, I'm skeptical of all my suits. Yeah, well, you definitely want to not dry clean or at least make sure that the dry cleaner that you're using is a quote-unquote "green" dry cleaner, because, you know, I think they'll be less likely to be using these kinds of compounds.

Um, but it's really scary stuff. My mom was somebody who worked in the garment industry in New York City, and so, you know, she likely was exposed to these kinds of compounds on a regular basis. Um, certain herbicides and pesticides we know are, you know, occupationally linked to these kinds of conditions like Parkinson's disease.

We breathe them in through our nose, right? They don't undergo the same degree of detoxification as an ingested compound. They can very easily bypass the blood-brain barrier. You know, they access the olfactory bulb. Actually, um, a decline in sense of smell is one of the earliest features, a preclinical feature of cognitive decline, dementia, and even parkinsonism.

And so, you know, as far as these conditions are, these compounds are in our environment, I think that's, you know, on the one hand, it's very scary, but it's also empowering. The more awareness that we can have about reducing our exposure to these compounds, I think it's crucially important. So that's, you know, that's another of the modifiable risks, yeah? That's on the toxic exposure side.

Yeah, which I think is incredibly important. My second book, "The Genius Life," really looked at that. Are you— you know, how much of the overlap do you think there is between the dietary risk and the toxic exposure risk? Because obviously— well, and we'll get into this after we're done with this section of the conversation, but obviously, there's the carbohydrate diabetes obesity link, but then there's the food toxicity link too.

Yeah, because lots of things that we think are edible would rather not be eaten, and they have... well, I mean, I've known for years that the typical plant people are worried about the pesticides that are on plants—and fair enough, but they're not nearly as worried about the pesticides that are in plants—and there are plenty of them. Because, well, plants don't like being eaten by bugs, and most of them aren't that happy about being eaten by us either.

And so, they've got very potent chemical defenses, and they're not trivial. And I've wondered, because of my experiences with diet—I mean, I lost a lot of weight because of the diet that I'm on, and I kept it off. And that's quite the bloody miracle, that's for sure. It's really something to—like, I weigh what I weighed when I was in my 20s, you know? That's really something when you're 62. It's like, what the hell? Who knew that was possible?

And I have about the same bodily composition that I did when I was in my 20s. Some of that is obviously from not eating carbohydrates, but there are other improvements that I've experienced that have made me wonder, like... I had psoriasis; it's gone. And some of the psoriasis patches had lasted, well, literally decades, and they're gone.

And I think, oh, well, I was obviously eating something that was causing that. Is that carbohydrate-linked? Who the hell knows? But is it food toxicity-linked? Or, or immunological allergic? I don't know. Well, I think that most people— and this is where the whole, you know, the debate about the carnivore diet and all that I think becomes really interesting.

Um, you know, a robust organism such as yourself should be able to consume some of these plant "defense" compounds and garner a degree of, you know, additional strength in so doing, right? There's this notion of hormesis where, you know, low doses of a certain stressor, you know, or toxicant, if you will, might actually cause a response in the system that actually leads to an upleveling of robustness, of vigor, of strength.

Pharmakon means something like a little bit of the poison that kills you cures you. Yeah, and so that's where I think, if you have a robust, for example, gut microbiome, you know, I think that most people should be able to derive value from these kinds of compounds.

That's the theory. I mean, when you look at the average health state of the typical person, it makes you wonder, right? And I've wondered how far down the rabbit hole you have to go to get to the bottom, given how obese people are, and well, what I've seen as the consequences of a relatively radical dietary shift.

So, well, that's obviously one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today. Let's turn then—we went through quite a few of the modifiable risk factors. Let's turn from that, if that's okay, unless there's any others that you'd like to specifically highlight. We could turn to that—to what you have been—what you've found in relationship to diet and what you've been recommending.

So, are there other modifiable risk factors that you think are worth concentrating on? We went through diet and exposure to pollutants and toxicity—anything else that's directly relevant?

Yeah, well, there's a newly identified risk factor, and that is hearing loss. Um, and that's, you know, again, newly identified. So all the research that we need to make, you know, clear recommendations other than if you have hearing loss, a hearing aid actually is a potentially can be a potential boon to health.

Oh, oh, so it's actually the loss of the auditory input? Yeah, and not a correlation between the degeneration of the ear and the degeneration of the brain? Or may both correlate? No, I mean, I think in so far as we know that social isolation—which is another, yeah, you become more and more isolated, you know, in your own world—and I think that that's probably harmful.

We know that depression, yeah, sure—um, sure, depression is another one. Uhhuh, and, and you know, these estimates are typically conservative. So, I said at the onset about 40%, which was the number that was given, you know, most recently in this 2020 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention.

But I think that— I think it’s very likely that, um, the majority of cases, at least with regard to Alzheimer’s disease, um, and likely also even these parkinsonian conditions—which, you know, it's becoming increasingly clear that there’s an environmental toxicant aspect to them—I think that the majority, um, and this is just my opinion based on my, you know, assessment of the literature, are likely preventable.

We don’t have all the data yet, um, but I think given what we do currently know, we don’t have to sit idly on our hands. You know, for example.