Unlock Your Brain’s Power: Optimal Nutrition Guide

Introduction to Diet and Alzheimeru2019s 0:00

Welcome back, everyone, to The Reverse Alzheimer's 4.0 Summit. We've had some wonderful Summits here and we're very excited today to be here with Jennifer Maynard and with Julie Gregory talking about what is an optimal diet, what is optimal nutrition. And this is a huge issue because when we did our 30 years of research in the lab, what we understood is that when you develop cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's disease, which is by far the most common cause, it really is a result of three different things working together.

One is reduced energetics, one is inflammation and one is toxicity. And what's really interesting is that nutrition addresses all three of these. So it is arguably the most powerful tool we have in the toolkit. And yet what happens frequently is people say, Well, I don't know where to get these various things. I don't know exactly what to get. I don't want to I want to know how to cook these things. And there's so many things that are not known. And Julie has done a fabulous job writing up and doing this herself.

But people still say, I'd like to have something. Can I order something? Can I do something? So let me first talk because people have talked about Mediterranean diets and other things and they don't provide the same level of energetics, of detox and of reduced inflammation as the N4L diet does. So let me let me hand this off to Julie for a minute. Julie, could you just talk a little bit about how you came over time to the key? What's really been the KetoFLEX 12/3 approach? Right. That's a great question.

So about 11 years ago, I learned I was genetically blessed. I have two copies of the apiary for a little bit, puts me at a very high genetic risk of developing Alzheimer's. At that time, my overall health was not good, but I wasn't focused on my cognition too much until I learned about that. And then I started to realize, Wow, I'm really struggling. I did cognitive testing. I was in the mid 30 percentile for my age group. So I'm a wonderful example of how slowly and insidiously this can come on and you accept it as normal.

Of course, I applied all the strategies in the Bredesen protocol. A year later I repeated the same cognitive testing and I was in the mid 90 percentile all that and said

Julieu2019s Cognitive Recovery and KetoFLEX 2:50

the most important strategy for me is nutrition. I was insulin resistant at the time and I didn't even know to test my blood sugar. But I started testing it not because I was worried about high, but because I was hypoglycemic. Yeah, we're imagining that this was preceded by spikes and then drops and I was on this rollercoaster all day long. Being a poet for homeless, I go, We know my brain is already struggling for fuel. And here with the insulin resistance, it was just so much worse. So for me, once I learned to give up the inflammatory foods, which, as you know, are sugar, simple carbs of most grains and conventional dairy.

And then I started eating this plant rich, mildly ketogenic diet. I got the blood sugar stabilized and it was a huge part of my coming back. And so I've been thrilled to work with you and your wonderful wife. Doctor I eat a lot. Dr. Bredesen I created KetoFLEX 12/3. Yeah, it's I really appreciate that. And of course the response that we get and after you wrote a you and I eat a wrote the handbook for the second book, The End of Alzheimer's Program. Of course, a lot of people said, okay, where do I get this stuff?

How do I do it? And so we have been really we've been really excited to work with Jennifer Maynard and her group from Nutrition for Longevity. And of course, Valter Longo is is a colleague of mine from many, many years ago. We actually published papers together many, many years ago. So really excited to be working with this group that is really focused on how do you get optimal nutrition for optimal health outcomes. So Jennifer, could you tell us a little bit about the birth of N4L and how things are going and how you have built something that's really a nutrition as medicine program?

Absolutely. So I spent 20 plus years in the pharmaceutical and biotech arena, so a lot of people are surprised when they hear my background. I spent a lot of time in the specialty medicine space, loved what I did was an executive in that space, but just felt like as an industry and through personal experience with family members, there just were not enough solutions that were validated by science for food as medicine. And I always kind of tell my team, I tell people that listen to our story. You know, 2400 plus years ago, we were actually presented with this incredible secret to health, and that came from Hippocrates is, you know, his famous quote, Let food be they medicine and medicine be they food.

And we actually took that as the premise of our kind of our mission to say, how do we bring this to life and not just have food as kind of pushed to the side? This is only for prevention. This is only for, you know, the wealthy class. This is something that should be part of our health care system. It should be in our toolbox and it should be at the forefront, not kind of pushed to the side. And so I love working with research about companies. Dr. Bredesen The research is absolutely incredible. If you haven't reviewed it, you've got to look at his papers, his book, because it really validates what people actually knew 2400 years ago.

But now we're proving it with science and we're actually showing it through studies and efficacy. And that's what I wanted to be a part of, is legitimizing that space and really bringing solutions to the market that are easy for people to adopt help with compliance and really have phenomenal results behind them. So nutrition for longevity is a medically tailored meal company. We focus on tailored nutrition that impacts specific chronic illnesses, and it's very much focused on low inflammation ingredients, high phytonutrient foods.

The things that Dr. Longo's research, Dr. Bredesen's research really shows should be the foundation of our diet. And with that, we can combat a lot of inflammation based diseases. And that's really the core of also Hippocrates is a philosophy is let's bring in nutrition and food as that first line of defense

Nutrition for Longevity and Food as Medicine 7:10

and then, you know, complement it with other things as needed. So that's what we really focus on. We also this last year pivoted into medical insurance coverage. So a lot of states across the country, we have Medicaid, Medicare coverage. We're working on some incredible projects with Dr. Bredesen and his team to bring KetoFLEX to life, also in the peer coverage space. So there's a lot of exciting movement in the food as medicine space and a lot of fuel behind everything that we're doing. Yeah, great point.

And could you tell us a little bit about your sourcing? Because of course, one of the things that comes up a lot is people say, well, you know, I want to make sure that these ingredients are nontoxic. We keep hearing you know, we keep hearing about issues with various exposures we have. And of course, the latest is a such a surprising result that people who had carotid plaques removed, these are of the plaques look the same, except if they had microplastics in them, you had a much higher incidence of vascular problems down the road than if the same looking plaque had no microplastics in it.

So a really striking result that just, again, shows our environment, what we're putting in our mouths, what's going on with our gut microbiome, what's going on with our systemic toxicity and exposure is huge. So how do you ensure that your sourcing is going to be the best for people who are eating that the N4L’s versions of KetoFLEX 12/3? Absolutely. So our again, our philosophy is do no harm. So we want to make sure that the foods that we're putting in the body are not adding toxins to this toxin buildup that happens to a lot of people.

So we start with ingredients that are farm fresh and from growers that are using organic practices. So they don't have the synthetic pesticides, herbicides. And just I mean, I am a farmer. I also come from that industry because I have a passion for farming and the amount of chemicals that are sprayed, unconventional produce can be. I mean, I think that the average what they call the the highly pesticide sprayed vegetables can have up to 13 different pesticides sprayed on them in one season. So this is a pretty high toxin load that you can put in your body.

So really, we want to start with the the clean ingredients that don't have those. Also our meals, in addition to not having those toxins, they don't have any synthetic additives, preservatives, fillers, sweeteners, things like that, because all of those can have an impact on your digestion or on your gut microbiome. So that's the first and foremost is let's not introduce those toxins to the body because we already have a lot of things around us that we can't control environmental toxins, things like that.

So let's not have the food, be a source of that. The second is just low inflammation ingredients in general. You know, Julie mentioned some of the things you start to take out of your diet, the dairy, some of the grains. There's also a lot of connection to GMO products, which we don't use any GMO products because they can have also a lot of chemicals sprayed. Usually the affiliation with the GMOs is is glyphosate and things like that. So we again try to make sure none of that is introduced. And since a lot of chronic illnesses, you know, Julie mentioned insulin resistance, things like that can be heavily impacted, but they're heavily impacted by inflammation.

We try to also make sure we're not introducing that to the body. So we also focus on keeping a lot of the major food allergens out of the diet so people can really eat this clean nutrition, knowing exactly what is in their diet. It's very minimally processed as well. So the body still has a lot of fiber and roughage and things that are feeding your gut microbiome. Those prebiotic fibers like that, which are great for stabilizing blood sugar, they're great for feeding the gut microbiome. So those are kind of the core behind the diet.

We also bring in a lot of colorful vegetables. So of that broad spectrum of phytonutrients. And those are some of the things that research has shown. Phytonutrients, fiber are really key to the health of the gut microbiome. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And you know, Professor Steven Kidane, of course, showed several years ago that even ketones alone can be helpful for bridging that energetic gap. So we want to get people to be insulin sensitive and we want to get people to be able to get into ketosis.

And so this is one of the, I think, big advantages to keto flex 12 three unlike a number of these other diets that really aren't so good at getting you into ketosis, although they may make you insulin sensitive. So Julie, could you then talk a little bit about how do you translate this now you've got all this wonderful food that can be delivered and typically is you're delivering it once a week, correct? Jennifer So how do you now translate this into what am I doing? How do I order this? And I saw it.

Could you talk to us a little bit about that? Yes. So you have two options. Now you can do what we call our Keto Flex 12 three bundle, which is our best value. You get ten of these fully prepared meals and they're absolutely delicious. I think what I love so much about these, when you're eating a whole food diet, it's the sauces and the salad dressings that make all the difference. And when you're not using dairy, it can be tricky. But your chef is amazing.

Sourcing Clean, Low-Inflammation Ingredients 12:40

She is nuts and make it taste like an Alfredo sauce or something. So the food is delicious. So if you get the bundle package, you get ten meals, you get two bottles of this high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil. I think this comes from Dr. Valter Longo's hometown. Is that is that right, Jennifer. That we sourced from Sardinia? So it is one of the blue zones of the world. It has some of the highest polyphenol content and we buy it direct from the farms. So I've seen these olive orchards. They're absolutely incredible. Are groves never touched with pesticide?

We actually call them centenarian olive groves because they're they're quite old themselves. And these this olive oil has five times the polyphenol content of an average olive oil on the market. So we do test the polyphenol. We get the first press. These are hand-picked olives, so they're not bruised by mechanical production. So it's really, really a premium, very high quality olive oil. And that's what we try to do with all of our sourced ingredients is, whenever possible, going direct to the source, bringing those pure and healthy ingredients.

So even the fats that you're bringing into your diet that are helping you get into ketosis are very high quality, very healthy fats for the body. And I would just like to add that, you know, the study was published showing that extra virgin olive oil alone actually had a better outcome than Latina. Mab, which has been approved, came about, has been approved by the FDA, but didn't have as positive an effect on cognition as easy oh alone so great that you've got a high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil.

Yeah, I think this is around 6600 for the polyphenol count, which is very high, but it doesn't have that bitter taste. So we encourage folks to put up to four tablespoons and each of the meals, all the sources, all the salad dressings are designed to complement the olive oil. In that value bundle, you also get two clamshells of cruciferous vegetables, very seasonal offering, sometimes shredded red cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower or whatever cruciferous vegetables are so important they're full of fiber and new nutrients, but they're also high in an antioxidant called sulfur sulforaphane.

And it helps us detoxify and attack reticence. And we're constantly being exposed to micro-plastics and herbicides and pesticides and BPA and beeps. The best we can do is eat our cruciferous veggies, drink clean filtered water and sweat every day. Also included in that value bundle is six pastured hard boiled eggs. We love the eggs because they're high in coli, the precursor to acetylcholine, which is necessary for memory formation. There's other ways to get choline, of course, through liver and organ meats, but it's wonderful just to throw an egg on a salad or eat it as a snack.

There's two things that are included in the bundle that I want to mention leafy greens. We ask everyone to get a big pack of organic, leafy greens. Research shows people that eat leafy greens have a slower rate of cognitive decline. They're high in folate and they upregulate nitric oxide. So they're lowering blood pressure and they're also increasing the blood circulation throughout your body and to your brain. And the other thing we ask for everyone to include at least once a day is fermented food.

And I've got some sauerkraut here, so please, everyone, add these two extra ingredients to your diet. This bundle value with the two bottles of olive oil and all these ingredients is one 6950 a week. And we also have a meals only deal. That's one 3750 and it just comes with the ten meals, but that's why I wanted to show you all these other things that we want you to include in your diet, to eat alongside the meals. And if you don't mind, I want to share my screen and I'll show folks how to order ketone flex 1 to 3 dot com.

You can choose the keto flex 12 three bundle for one 6950 or the meals only for one 3750. We have a discount for new customers. Only 15% off Apollo 15 is the code, so please check it out. It's so wonderful that you've made this easy for us, Jennifer. I can't tell you. At the end of a long day of work, it's a delight to open the refrigerator, not worry about sourcing our cooking, and just have a fully prepared meal and all the extras ready. So we are thrilled with this and I'm so happy to be sharing it.

Thank you very much, Julia. I've definitely enjoyed the meals and I would say meal. My favorite is the bowl. And as I really like to bowl and as that was a great one as well as some of the chicken, some of the chicken dishes, some of the broccoli dishes I really enjoyed. And I would mention I think it's important to point out these are not the typical inflammatory eggs that you will buy at a typical grocery store. These are pastured eggs. So they are high in omega threes. They are high in Colleen.

These are the eggs that are actually healthful instead of anti-health. So I think that, again, that's another very, very important distinction here.

Meal Bundles, Olive Oil, and Add-Ons 18:30

And so, Julie, thank you very much for showing us. I think this has really made a difference. One of the things that we found in our first trial is that when people started doing the right things, changed their diet, got it, got on to a plant rich, mildly ketogenic diet. They started showing improvements within the first month. They were see, even though that we know now that the changes that lead to Alzheimer's go on for decades before you get a diagnosis. These people are noticing differences very, very quickly.

And so, Jennifer, I know that you've been very interested in aging. You've been very interested in cognition. If you any other things that you'd like to say about this, I think that we've really gotten a great idea from you and from Julie about what can be done. We've seen it ourselves. I've tasted it myself and really enjoyed it. So thank you very much for that. But other things that we should say before finishing up here. I just you mentioned it a little bit, the high quality proteins that we use because we do focus on a on a plant forward diet, but there's very high quality protein sources and people get to pick their meals every week.

We're actually adding another five SKUs each week and we rotate the menu. And I think that's really important to avoid flavor fatigue and really allow you to enjoy the dishes. I also have some favorites. Like some people are like, Well, where's my pasta? We have this incredible artichoke heart pasta that's actually strained artichoke hearts and it's delicious. It gives you that feeling of of eating pasta, but but without the grains. So we have some very clever ways that we still bring people's dishes, that they're looking for, that they might eat at a restaurant or might be a favorite dish.

And then those proteins, we have sustainably caught wild caught fish. So and we focus on fishes that don't have high heavy metals. Again, not bringing that into the body. Incredible salmon from Alaska really sourced carefully. I'm from Alaska. So I'm I think I've mentioned before I'm a little bit of a fish snob, but we make sure we bring in really high quality fish, poultry and beef. And those are coming from sustainable sources and as well clean sources in the way that those animals are raised.

So I think that's a really important thing to a lot of our clients and just really making sure I think people are also surprised how filling the dishes are. It's a lot of food, it's a lot of vegetables. Only one in ten Americans is eating enough vegetables. And we know that that's linked to a lot of our chronic illness. And so having this really fulfilling meal that you feel really full when you're finished, it's it's good quality food, but it's also a good amount of food. So you're not, you know, feeling like you're you're hungry after your dish.

So I absolutely love it. We'd love for people to to try it, give us feedback. We also are constantly listening to feedback and making sure that we address that on the market. And I would tell people to keep your eyes open. We are working on coverage through insurance with with this program, then adding it to all of the other programs that we offer for Medicaid, Medicare. Fantastic. Julie, could you go ahead and show show everyone a dish there that looks fantastic. I'm coming to your place for lunch.

So, so good. This is the wild salmon that you were talking about. This is a sweet potato curry with a miso salmon. And look at all the broccoli that that comes with this. Serving sizes are huge. We want everyone to eat 6 to 9 cups of non-starchy veggies a day. And between these two meals and your extra leafy greens and cruciferous, you're easily getting there. Of course, we want you to eat veggies from every color of the rainbow, and you guys do a wonderful job of, you know, having a huge variety.

The meals are so easy to make, too, you know, there they are, always fresh, never frozen. And you just warm them up. Never use the microwave because we don't want you to microwave plastic, but you can satay them or put them in the oven five or 10 minutes. It's really, really quick and tastic. You know, more and more literature has been coming out even recently on ultra processed food. Eating the wrong things really does make an impact on your longevity. It really does make an impact on your cognition, on your heart disease, on your cancer risk.

It's remarkable how damaging ultra processed food has turned out to be. So, you know, this is not get this is not gas station sushi. This is a very, very high quality, you know, appropriately sourced food that actually does make a big impact on your health. So there are some excellent questions that people have brought up and we thought it would be a good idea to address those things. And maybe we start with you, Julie. Tell us a little bit about the term ketone flex 12 three. What does that mean and what's looking at this together?

Protein Quality, Fasting, and Safety 23:30

What is why do you call it Keto Flex 12 three? That is a great question and it it's a mouthful. So keto refers to the fact that the diet is mildly ketogenic and that's to help fuel the brain flex refers to the fact that it promotes metabolic flexibility. We want people to be able to burn both fat and glucose as fuel to optimize fuel to the brain. And 1203 refers to the minimum amount of time that we want people to be fasting every day. So a minimum of 12 hours with at least 3 hours before bed. And so we like to say it's a diet that becomes a lifestyle.

Yeah, absolutely. And as we and you've talked about this before, that when we think about the place of nutrition, we're really talking about it as part of the seven basics, what I think of as basic seven things. So, you know, diet, plant, rich, mildly ketogenic diet, exercise, sleep stress, brain training, detox. And you talked a little bit before about that. And again, the diet helps with that. And then some targeted supplements depending on whether you have insufficiencies deficiencies, that sort of thing.

So I think that's an important thing to broach. And then, Jennifer, maybe you could talk a little bit about the you talked before about your about the fish, talk about how you how you chose where you get the chicken, the beef. I mean, the good news, I happened to like some meat in my diet. We've as we've said from the very beginning, you don't have to do that. You can you can do ketone flex 12 three as a vegan if you want to. But I like to have some chicken. I like to have some some pastured chicken.

I like to have some some grass fed beef. I like to have some fish. And you've got all of those in your diet. Yeah. So again, we focus on a lot of sustainable proteins and I know a lot of people are looking at that from an environmental standpoint. But the benefit of the way we source our proteins is, it's, it's also good for the environment. So your wild caught fishes. We also follow essentially the Monterey Bay Aquarium standards, which are some of the the strongest standards on sustainable fish.

They make sure they're not over harvested. They really monitor it very closely. So we're working on that environmental side, but we're also making sure it's single line wild caught for our poultry one. If you want to think about it as what are the clean sources of food that those animals or fish are consuming, that's kind of the way you should look at it as well. Cut salmon, as an example, is eating the natural food that it would normally eat in its environment. So if you look at poultry, it's pasture raised, so it's out in a field, it's eating the bugs and if if it's eating grain, it's those natural grains.

It's it's really, you know, I have chickens myself. So they're naturally scratching and they're getting that that natural diet. They eat a lot of vegetables. A lot of people don't realize they're eating a lot of grasses and different things in their environment. Same with the beef. You know, a lot of people, there's been kind of ups and downs of what are the health benefits of beef. But a lot of beef is heavily grain finished. It's it's fed a lot of other ingredients. So we focus on that grass fed beef that is out in a pasture eating what its natural diet would be.

So I think that's what's different about those sourced proteins is we're trying to get them eating their diet that they would eat if they're a grazing animal or a forager, like a chicken or a turkey. So that's, I think, the most important thing. And then of course, they're hormone antibiotic free. So we're making sure that those toxins aren't introduced through the proteins either. Yeah, it's a great point. And I think it's important to to talk for a minute about fasting because there are so many issues surrounding fasting.

There's no question fasting can be very helpful. But we have to remember there's a little bit of a paradox here, which is that when you develop cognitive decline, you are sacrificing synaptic connections because you don't have enough energy to support them through blood flow, oxygenation, nutrition, all of that. Because you have an increased requirement, a drag due to the inflammation, you're literally having to move your resources from supporting connections to fighting various insults or and or because you have toxins that interfere with these pathways.

So anything that's breaking down the optimal utilization chain in your brain is going to give you a problem. Therefore, when you now start to have a big fast without supporting the brain, you can get into problems. So please be careful. For those of you who start with a BMI of 20 or lower, please be very careful. Start with a shorter, fast and certainly Julie has written about this, how to do this, how to get into it. This is why I tend to like some exogenous ketones at the beginning because of Stephen Cunnane,'s work just to bridge that gap.

And then slowly over a month or two, you can get into some endogenous ketosis. There's no question that the the fasting part helps your insulin sensitivity. It helps with your inflammation, it helps with your detox. There are a lot of things that help. It helps with your blood pressure on and on, but we have seen people who are frail who start with too long of a fast actually go backwards because again, this is about what you can support in your brain.

Closing Thoughts on Nutrition and Cognition 29:20

So that's the tricky part. And again, having the meals with the appropriate fasting time. So if you're a APOE4 negative, we typically recommend 12 to 14 hours. And again, if you're frail, you can work up to that. If you're APOE E4 positive, we typically recommend 14 to 16 hours and Julie, I know you've really become an expert on fasting over the years and you've interacted with many people on your website, ApoE4.Info. If you could talk a little bit about what you've learned from your years of working with with these many people, about the pros and cons of fasting.

Yeah, you brought up some really good points. Fasting is actually most dangerous for people with insulin resistance because they can't get into ketosis when a rescue of the brain in the blood. And for that reason we asked them to extend the fast by three for 5 minutes a day. We don't want them to develop hypoglycemia, right. So by switching to this low carb diet, extending their fasts slowly and carefully, they can do it safely. Also, if you're taking medication for diabetes, you cannot do this without speaking with your physician.

You need to be taught how to tie, trade the medication down as you heal so you won't develop hypoglycemia. Yeah. And you mentioned the most important thing. People that are too thin, being too thin actually puts you at risk for cognitive decline. So we don't want people doing that long daily fasts unless they're at an optimal way with strong muscles and they're healthy. And we ask them not to even fast until they they actually achieve a healthy weight. Yeah, it is interesting to me as someone who is trained in medical school to say, well, you know, diet's really not that important kind of get out there and and eat what you want to eat, but make sure to take your medicine.

The reality is that diet plays a huge role. And it's tricky because it's about sourcing. It's about, you know, you can eat good chicken or bad chicken. You know, you can eat the right beef or the wrong beef. You can eat the right eggs or the wrong eggs. And you can eat the right greens or the wrong greens. So there are a lot of things to get it right to have optimal benefit from you. And that's where I think that that N4L plays a huge role because they've done all the work ahead of time. So thanks again to nutrition for longevity will be happy to answer further questions if there are other ones.

But again, thank you to Julie and thank you to Jennifer. I look forward to seeing you next time. All right. Thank you. Bye.