How to Feed a Brain: Nutrition for Optimal Brain Function and Repair

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

So I try to get these nutrients in food, so I get supplements that are as close to food as I can find. So desiccated organ meats and then kelp and adults, so sea vegetables. Because you're reducing the communication to the digestive system or you're disturbing it for sure. And when communication from your brain to your digestion is impaired, your gut becomes more permeable. He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, Ben Greenfield didn't even have a chance to eat breakfast this morning. Such a busy, busy morning. I had to choose between breakfast and hitting my sauna. So if you hear me sipping, I'm actually going to open my little nutribullet here. I'm sipping decaffeinated coffee blended with a bunch of mushroom extracts, a little bit of almond butter, a little bit of MCT oil, some cacao, some stevia, some cinnamon, and it's goodness. But I digress, because today's podcast guest is also goodness. You see what I did there? I actually met him. I met him at an event called Paleo fx. That was about a little less than a year ago. He introduced himself to me at a dinner function, a very bright young man who informed me that he had suffered a severe, severe traumatic brain injury that left him in a complete coma with less than a 10% chance of ever regaining consciousness beyond a persistent vegetative state. And he, I mean, I'm going to have him tell you more of his story, but he was basically tube fed with a tube literally like, like, stuck into his belly. And that was about, I believe, five or six years ago. I'll let him tell you the story again. But he has devoted his entire life since then to studying what he calls neurometabolism, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, nutrition that feeds the brain. He just finished a book called how to Feed a Brain. Appropriately enough, this episode, actually, even if you're, you know, if you don't have a TBI or concussion or haven't suffered from a severe traumatic brain injury, but you Just want to learn how to get smart. This is going to be a good podcast for you. Now, I don't need that because of course I'm drinking this coffee, which I hear just makes you smart automatically, so I might tune out, but the rest of you, listen in. No, I'm just kidding. Cavin. You spell your name C, A, V, I, N, but you pronounce it Cavin or Cavan.

Gavin.

Okay, Cavin. When I first met you, I thought it was Gavin, because I'm familiar with Gavin.

Everybody does that. Totally cool.

Yeah, yeah. Everything we talk about today, by the way, if you guys listen in, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Feed a Brain. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com feedback. Feed a Brain and it'll all be there. So, Kevin, welcome to the show, man.

Man, it's great to be here, Ben. Yeah, it is awesome to be on here. And yeah, I've seen you at Paleofex a couple times and been checking out your work. Got a couple friends that are huge fans of yours. One of them's a triathlete. Like, marathon runner.

Yeah, Got a lot of fans who are triathletes and marathoners, oddly enough.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, that was my fault for doing too many triathlons and marathons. I want to talk about you, man. So, five, six years ago. How long. How long ago did did this happen and what exactly happened?

It was six and a half years ago in May of 2011. I be a traumatic brain injury. I. I fell from a rooftop water tower, hit the front of my head on the seal scaffolding, back in the concrete rooftop.

What were you doing in a water tower?

You ever seen the Manhattan city skyline from Brooklyn rooftop?

You know what? I have been over to Brooklyn a few months ago to look at the amazing Christmas lights in Diker Heights over there, but I don't think I climbed on top of any roofs or water towers.

Well, we're gonna have to do that sometime.

Well, not with you, apparently. Sorry, go ahead.

So, yeah, I sustained severe traumatic brain injury, was insulin, comatose, rushed to the hospital, put on life support, and while I was in a coma, I was diagnosed with a diffuse axonal injury. A severe diffuse axonal injury. And if you go on Google and you and you search diffuse axonal injury, you're going to get a bunch of of websites that say the same thing. 90% of patients never regain consciousness. And of the 10% that do, most are in a vegetative state.

Right.

So I am crazy lucky, really. Really lucky. I. I didn't eat, walk, or talk for months. My left hand was totally flexed inward. I was breathing through to my neck, receiving nutrition through to my belly, quite literally, like you said. And I, long story short, went through all sorts of therapies. The standard ones are physical and occupational therapy and speech therapy and swallow therapy. Did a lot of that to regain my normal function. And long story short, 10 months post injury, I was introduced to a nutritional protocol, and I began to regain some clarity. And I was like, whoa, there's something to this.

Who introduced you to this nutritional protocol? And, like, fill me in on what it. On what exactly it was. I'm curious about specifics.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So my aunt was getting into functional medicine, and she asked one of her functional medicine colleagues. She was like, my, you know, my nephew just had this traumatic brain injury.

What'd you call it? A diffuse axonal injury.

Diffuse axonal injury. Right.

Okay.

And she's like, you know, who should I bring him to? And her colleague was like, well, I. I know exactly who I would bring him to if it was my. My son or loved one. But he lives all the way in Austin, and she lived in Houston at the time, and I was moving to Austin. Little did she know. So it was just kind of perfect. Like, stars aligned. And I went and saw Dr. Thomas Culliton, who's a functional neurologist.

And where's he at?

He practices in Cedar park, which is just north of Austin. And I began working with him, and the first. The first thing he did was a blood test, right? And this blood test showed that I had low amino acids. Like, certain amino acids were low. And I was like, doc, I eat meat with every meal. I have a protein shake every morning. Are you saying I should eat more meat? And he's like, no, no, no. You're not absorbing the nutrients you're ingesting. And he gave me a brief overview of, like. Of leaky gut, which I'm sure you've talked about. And. And I, like, honestly, I kind of looked at him sideways, and I was like, I never heard any of this stuff. You know, this is back in, like, 2012.

Right? But this dude's a functional medicine doc.

Yeah.

So he knows what's up.

He knows.

Okay.

Yeah.

So.

And. And also, you know, I'm. I'm in a place where I'm relearning how to walk. And, like, my life as I knew it was gone. Like, it was. It was over. I was rebuilding everything. I was like, you know, he knows more about this than I do. And basically that was part of my thing. Like, whatever it is, I'm not going to look back at this. This period when I have the opportunity to really recover and look back with regrets. So I was. I was. I was all in. Right. And so I started this, you know, just a leaky gut protocol, introducing some nutrients to heal the digestion while removing potential inflammatory foods. And I began regaining clarity because suddenly I was getting nutrition from my digestion to my brain. And I began. And I didn't know why I was regaining clarity, but I began to study why I was regaining clarity. So I started listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading, which was difficult. And we'll probably talk about the vision aspect and how vision relates to the.

Brain before we dive into some of the things you started to research and find out. I want to know what it was. What kind of diet did this guy put you on? What kind of things were you doing? Like, were you taking supplements? Was it a, you know, some kind of a special carnivorous diet or vegan diet? Like, what. What exactly were you eating?

Well, it was. It was essentially. I mean, he never called it by name. He was just like, remove these foods, include these foods. Like. Like, it was more a diet of exclusion, actually. And then what to include. He was like. He had a marshmallow root extract. L. Glutamine.

Okay. So it was really like, a lot of the things, you know, like, did he do bone broth and colostrum, too? Those are two of my favorites.

He didn't. Yeah, I'm a big fan as well. In fact, how to Feed a Brain talks about bone broth. And I believe you introduced me to colostrum. Oh, I did. Yeah. I'm a fan of that, too.

You're welcome. No, seriously, like, colostrum is pretty amazing because obviously you find it in breast milk because it's used to tighten the junctions in the guts of small mammals. But they've done really compelling studies, like, in athletes who notoriously get leaky gut, like increased gut permeability and gut issues and passage of undigested proteins and other materials through the leaky gut wall because it gets leaky during heat and during exercise. Colostrum fixes all that. I load with colostrum myself for a couple weeks before I go do something hot and heavy. But it sounds like he had. John, what'd you say? Marshmallow, glutamine, Some of these other things that heal up the gut.

Yeah, yeah.

But did he do stuff for the brain, too? Because, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff like lion's mane and Huperzine and all sorts of other compounds folks talk about now for the brain too.

Yes. Yeah, he did have me. And some, some brain supported nutrients as well. I don't think there was lion's mane in anything that I was taking at that point, but definitely alpha gpc, choline compounds like that that really like supported brain metabolism.

Right.

And then lots of B vitamins as well.

Okay.

Yeah. So working with him, I began regaining clarity and I'm like, oh man, there's a lot to nutrition. I began looking into all these different dietary protocols and whatnot. But I realized like what he had me on was essentially autoimmune paleo. Right. And that helped me to heal my digestion. Then I began to research, like what I could do to feed my brain, like what my brain really wanted.

Hey, could I interrupt you for a second?

Yeah.

The autoimmune paleo diet, that's like, it's got a lot of protein in it. Right? You have like breakfast sausages and stuff like that for, for breakfast. And it's got a lot of. I believe there's a lot of organ meats in that. And I'm, I'm curious, if you go back again, if you would do like a more ketogenic diet because of the advantages that have been shown for a ketogenic diet when it comes to neural healing and neural performance.

Absolutely. I actually was recently on keto effects and, and before that I was, I spoke for ketocon, essentially. I was, I was, I looked for. I found a practitioner named Dr. Alex Vasquez who's just amazing. Are you familiar with Dr. Vasquez?

I think I've met Dr. Vasquez before, maybe even at PaleoFX. But fill me in.

He's got three doctorates. Doctor of osteopathic, naturopathic and chiropractic medicine. He's on the board of the Institute of Functional medicine. Written over 120 articles in peer reviewed journals. 20 textbooks ranging from chronic. Yeah, like textbooks ranging from chronic inflammation to.

Sounds like a real dummy.

Yeah, I wouldn't listen. It's just he's, he's by far the like most accomplished guy I've ever. I've ever met or heard of. At the time he was an adjunct professor for Bastyer University. And, and he made online courses, like adjunct or not online course. He made adjunct materials for his students available on YouTube. Right. So I could watch these materials and like learn from Dr. Razquez. A lot of stuff that would really Help me to heal my brain. And at one point, I reached out to him to thank him for the online resources. He ends up inviting me to the International Conference on Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine. And I end up getting on the plane for the first time and going over to. To Portland. And he said, there's an entire day dedicated to the brain. And I. On the brain day, he says, he's like, hey, I'm going to grab a cup of coffee. You want to come and look? He's looking at me and I look over my shoulder and I'm like, talking to me. And so. So we went and had coffee.

The super, super smart, well published doctor who you've been following for a while invites you out to coffee, right?

Exactly, exactly. So I'm like, of course, man. We're having coffee. And he's like, hey, what was the number one most effective therapy you did for your brain after your injury? And I'm like, honestly, healing my gut is what made all the other therapies effective. And he says, and that we start talking about the gut brain axis. And he says, he says, you know, wow, man, you know, we need you on stage. How do you feel about being on stage in about 20 minutes? And so the next thing I knew, I was on stage talking about brain building, nutrition to this room of like, of medical doctors and medical practitioners, you know, and medical students and looking over their crowd, I was like, man, I can influence the change. Later on, Dr. Vasquez and I were talking, I was like, so what, what, what do you think is the best nutrition for the brain? He's like, honestly, I think ketogenic diet is pretty awesome. And that, that was the first time I really, like, heard about a ketogenic diet. And then I also met Norga Goudis at that conference. She's great. Yeah. And she talked about a ketogenic diet as well. And so then I really began to dive into the research on that, you know, and see the power of ketogenic metabolism for the brain.

Now, one of the things I'm curious about with this whole leaky gut thing is do you think you had a leaky gut when you got the injury, or do you think. Because I've talked to a lot of people who have developed gut issues after they've been, like, hit in the face, you know, during MMA or sparring, and they've developed gut issues after that or after a car accident. I'm just curious, when it comes to this gut thing, how much of it do you think preceded the event or even like made you more susceptible to the injury or if you looked into that at all and how much of it was caused by you getting the injury.

You know, I, I've, I've been, I, I've actually studied show that that brain injury, leaky gut is far more prevalent in brain injury because you're reducing the communication to the digestive system or you're, you're disturbing it for sure. And when communication from your brain to digestion is impaired, your gut becomes more permeable and it becomes this vicious cycle because your gut becomes more permeable which, which causes inflammation, sends inflammatory cytokines which are small enough to cross the blood brain barrier and inflame the brain and reduce communication with the gut. And so the gut becomes more permeable and it gets worse and worse.

I got a pretty bad concussion when I was a kid. Really bad. And I've seen some of the things you're talking about, how TBI can cause an increase in intestinal permeability. And they've actually shown that that can cause like bacterial translocation and sibo, like small intestine bacterial overgrowth and sepsis and even multi system organ failure that doesn't arise from the brain injury, but actually arises from the loss of that tight junction barrier integrity in the gut. And I still have gut issues that I sometimes wonder, you know. Yeah, I've also, you know, freaking gotten parasites in Thailand and you know, horrible food poisoning in other areas of Asia and swam in nasty water and all my years of triathlon racing. But I also think I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't discount the idea that I, that a head injury would also make me more susceptible to that kind of stuff. So that's very interesting. And you, you after that, when you were talking with his doctor, that's when you got put on a ketogenic diet?

No, I went on a ketogenic diet on my own.

But I thought you're saying this doctor told you about it?

Yeah, so Dr. Vasquez told me about it. Nora. God has told me about it. And I did my own research on it and I pretty much, I tiptoed into it because you know, what we'd been told for years was like saturated fats terrible for you and like, you know, you gotta eat mostly grains and then veggies and fruit next and then a little bit of dairy and meat and then, you know, very little fats as essentially flipping upside down and taking out the dairy, you know.

Right.

So I, I tiptoed into it and kind of, kind of Went bit by bit and reading the research and seeing what. What was safe and what would work, because it was kind of like, all right, so this is terrible for my heart health and my body health according to everything that's conventionally being. Being touted, you know, so I'm gonna be real careful with it. But I ended up being like, no. Like, first of all, cholesterol is, like, dietary cholesterol does not increase serum cholesterol in healthy individuals. And. And of course, like, the whole cholesterol scare is really rooted in financial interests.

Right.

And so there's very little to worry about here as long as I do it right.

Okay, so then you went on this ketogenic diet after that.

Somewhat. Somewhat. I mean, and that's. That's kind of like the way, like, feed the brain isn't necessarily keto, because keto isn't necessarily healthy for everybody. Right. It makes room for keto for sure. But. But I. I always kind of followed paleo keto framework and then. And then kind of experimented with what. What ratios were working for me at that time, and it changed throughout time.

Okay, got it. How about, like, you know, biohacks? And, you know, a lot of folks will use hyperbaric oxygen therapy, for example, for brain issues. Some people will use photobiomodulation, you know, a device like the violite on their head. You know, a lot of people do things in addition to just like a ketogenic or a gut healing diet. Did you do any of those type of things?

You know, not at first, no. It was. It was pretty. Pretty much like an office with a really smart dude telling me to do these functional neurology exercises and vision therapy that brought me to a lot of places.

Vision therapy?

Yes.

Okay, we'll keep going, but. But definitely come back to vision therapy. I want to know about this.

Yeah. So functional neurology is amazing stuff, essentially taking what we know about the brain. You know, the brain is crazy complex. We have 86 billion neurons making thousands of connections. So we have trillions of connections in the brain. It's like, you know, you get people that are like, the brain's too complex to understand. My. It's really complex. I'm with you. But there is so much we know, and there so many pathways we can draw and so many correlations we can make in the brain. So with functional neurology, a lot of it is using cortical activation or, you know, stimulation of certain areas of the brain to create plasticity. Right. Neurons that fire together, wire together. So if we can get these neurons to fire together, we can get them to wire together, and we can make new connections or repair old connections.

Okay, so how exactly do you do that then?

It depends. I mean, really, it's so individual for each person. You know, you asked about vision therapy, and the thing is, we have 12 cranial nerves in our brain. Six of them directly innervate the visual system. So one half of them directly innervate the visual system, and one third of them are dedicated to the visual system. Four out of 12 are dedicated. That's all they do, is the visual system. So the eyes are an extremely powerful window to the brain. Like, we can see how the brain's functioning by doing visual tests. And we can also. We can also do therapeutic things to. To affect the brain with visual stimuli and visual exercises. So when I said that, that we had that, it was basically an office with a really smart dude. He had a VNG or video nystagmography, which essentially you put these goggles on and they videotape your eyes.

Yeah, I've done this before. They, like, track the. The way that your eyes move, right, left, forward, backward. I interviewed a guy named Stephen Giannopoulos in New York City and his. His colleague Ben Velasquez about this. I actually went to New York and tried this out. And fill me on what exactly they're looking at and how this works and. And what they do afterwards to kind of fix it for me.

What he did, he threw this on and he was tested. He. He did a couple, like, you know, office tests with his finger and with, like, a. A tie that was. That was striped, you know, so. So it would make, like, a barbershop effect, and your eye, like, tracks it. It's called saccades and pursuits. So saccades is when your. Your eye switches between what it's looking at, and so your eyes kind of flutter back and forth. And pursuits is when you follow something so he can. He can see a lot. And then. And then he's like, all right, what we're going to do is we're going to test your vestibular ocular reflex. So what this is, it's vor. And basically, if you look at something and you jerk your head one way but keep your eye on that thing, that happens because your vestibular system is super connected to your visual system. And there's a reflex that happens. When your vestibular system notices motion in one direction, your eyes move in the opposite direction. So this happens in all mammals. Totally normal reflex. Right. And so he put me In a chair. He put this. These goggles on me, and he spun me in the chair. And my eyes didn't do it the way it was supposed to. Usually it'll. It'll shoot the other way and. And mine slowly moved over there. And then. And then it shoots the other way. And then as you spin, it kind of like shuffles back and forth because you have two conflicting reflexes. One wants to look straight, and the VOR wants to, like, Wants to look the opposite direction, so they kind of bounce back and forth. And then when you stop, you have that dizziness where your eyes kind of, like, wobble a bit. Right. And for me, none of that happened. So we saw that my VOR wasn't working.

How long after your injury was this?

This was about a year after my injury.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

What'd they have you do for the eyes to fix that? I mean, because I know there's like, diversions, conversions, training. I've interviewed the folks at Z Health before about something they have called the Vision Gym. There's like, the Bates Method, which you could find an entire Wikipedia page on. I'm curious if you did stuff to actually rehab the eyes based on this connection between the eyes and tbi.

Was that the Bates what?

The Bates Method.

Method. I'm gonna check that out. Yeah, yeah, we. I. I did a lot of. Of saccades, looking from one side to the other to the other, and then I would spin around and. And do a nose to finger touch. There were all sorts of different exercises that we were doing, but they were very specific to my case. So I recommend with anybody, after brain injuries, go see a neuro optometrist and go see a functional neurologist. And we have lots of functional neurologists on the Adventures in Brain Injury podcast interview. Lots of those guys. I'm a huge fan of functional neurology, and I think it's. It's. It's this unsung hero in neurorehabilitation that can really change the game and get people back to, like, optimal functioning after. After concussion or even, like, really bringing people to the next level. Like, some people, some athletes are working with care doctors to just optimize their performance, because hand, eye coordination, all of that, if we can get that working really well through functional neurology, these guys are much better athletes.

Okay, got it. Now, one of the things that you talk about in addition to the brain and the eye is this. This concept of neurometabolism. What is neurometabolism? What does that mean Exactly.

Neurometabolism. It's basically how the brain, how the brain metabolizes like what the metabolic effect is on the neuros nervous system. So how are neurons metabolized things? And that's, that's what we're talking about with, with ketones versus glucose. Like the neuro metabolism would be how the, how the neurons and glia are taking up the, the substrate. You know. And interestingly read this paper that, that showed that when both glucose and, and ketones are available, your brain prefers ketones. It'll take up the ketones before it'll take up the glucose. I thought that was awesome. But also we're talking about a lot of the, the other aspects of this. Like, like the other nutrients involved, B vitamins, magnesium, like different, different compounds that come in. Now all this stuff is again it's deep and complex. So with, like, with, with, with the book Feed a Brain I wanted to break it down in a really easy to use simple step by step method. Right. So that's where I, I began to be like all right, so all this to supply the brain with what it needs in order to function, in order for these cells to get what they really want. Right. Okay. Where are the foods that have these ingredients?

Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. How'd you write this book? Like lay out the diet for me. Lay out for, for me and for the listeners like how, how you feed the brain.

So, so a lot of it was Dr. Walls research.

Dr. Terry Walls.

Dr. Terry Walls, yeah. I mean and your listeners probably know her story, you know, bedridden with multiple sclerosis and actually she was in toe recline wheelchair for years, a MD and she began to, she began with the drug treatment, you know, with drug therapy, disease modifying drug she calls them. And she kept on getting, she kept on declining. So she went on the Internet and she found the Institute of Functional Medicine and she, she got this whole other way of thinking about health and disease. I was like okay. Began doing a lot more research and she basically she saw that there were, there were. Well she, she went to the Institute of Functional Medicine, one of the classes on, on brain nutrition. I forget what the question course was called. But essentially got a list of supplements to take, began taking them, got a little better and it was like okay. But humans didn't evolve eating isolated nutrients in pill form. Where is this in the food supply? Right. So she, she did even more research and found where she could get these nutrients in the food she was eating. And that was. That was a huge. That was just amazing. You know, she basically did a lot of the research that I needed to do. She did it all, and I was like, beautiful. And she wrote a book about it.

Yeah, I interviewed her several years ago. It's a great book. It's like one of the few kind of like, ketogenic type of diets that I like and I endorse because it's high in plant matter, which a lot of these other diets aren't.

There you go. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Like, that's the thing with the ketogenic diet and why I tiptoed into it and why the book is not about ketogenic. Like, keto. Totally. Like, it's not one. It doesn't need to be keto to really support brain function, you know, but it can be. And that's awesome. When you're ready, you know, when. When somebody's metabolism is working efficiently in that way, and. And if they're, you know, not. Not burning the candle at both ends all the time, they have the space to do keto. I'm a fan of it.

Okay, got it. So we've got. The ketogenic diet is definitely a part of the how to feed your brain. But what else do you have? I mean, because obviously the ketogenic diet is something that there are hosts of resources on the Internet about. For example, what else is in the book that you think is. Are the type of things that you wish you'd known?

Yeah, absolutely. Nutrients for synaptogenesis. So synaptogenesis is when we are. When our neurons and axons make connections with others. And so when we support that process, there's a couple ingredients that we can add to support that. You know much about synaptogenesis.

A little bit about it. That's what I take magic mushrooms for. No, I'm just kidding. They actually have been shown for that. But yeah, the, you know, new synapses between neurons in the nervous system. And I know a lot of it happens, you know, in babies, but synaptogenesis, how can we achieve that with our food as adults?

So some of the ingredients on that is going to be choline, which is, you know, it's found in organ meats, found in egg yolks, and that's. That's a really great. That's a really great addition to our diets.

Choline.

Choline. The other is. Is dha.

Right.

Which is found in fish oil and. Yeah. And that's one of the most powerful supplements for your brain health. Okay, Lots of fish oil.

Like how much is lots?

Well, you had JJ Virgin on the podcast, right?

Huh? That's right. Her son had a. Had a traumatic brain injury.

Yes. Yes. And yeah, we recently had her on or we're about to release one with her soon. So yeah, her son had a brain injury and she got him high dose omega threes, which in the research there's a lot of information about this. In fact, I work with clients who often have a loved one in a situation, like in acute situation, and I wrote an article about that that helps to alleviate fears of using high dose omega 3s. So if you go to feed a brain.com forward slash omega. If you have a loved one in this situation, you go to feed a brain.com omega. And I have a lot of research, peer reviewed research backing up why this is effective and alleviating the concern that it has blood thinning effects. Because that's the biggest issue that, that medical professionals bring up.

Right.

So. So we go like in acute settings we go like 20 grams. And I've been trying.

20 grams is a lot.

That's a lot. Yeah, yeah. You know, Keith Norris recently did a 14 gram a day experiment of fish oils.

14, 14. Disaster pants.

No, he's fine. He's like, he's like, I was fine. I don't know. But it's also Keith Norris who's, who's pretty damn healthy back there.

He's a healthy guy. He'd be on the. He was on my podcast called how to make people Harder to Kill. So there you go.

Nice, Nice. Yep, yep. I was actually on that one too.

You were on that one?

You were really To Kill Radio? Yeah.

And I love oh, Harder to Kill Ray. I didn't know there was a harder to kill radio. I just had a podcast like that I produced myself and the title of that podcast was Harder to kill. Now I got to look up Harder to kill Radio.

Now you got it.

Yeah. Okay, so, so, so basically high dose fish oil, choline, dha, which is obviously high dose fish oil, ketogenic diet, like a plant rich ketogenic diet. What are, what are some of the other things?

Uridine. Uridine's fantastic.

What is uridine and why is that fantastic?

Well, you're. There are studies that show that choline and DHA together are pretty. For promoting synaptogenesis. When we add in uridine, it's even more effective. Right. Like we get a much better effect. So with you and your magic mushrooms, do that with a little choline and uridine and dha. There you go, man.

Wow. Okay, cool. That's a good stack. So one more time, the stack is choline, DHA, 15 to 20 grams for that fish oil.

And. But no, that's. That's that. The 15 to 20 grams, that would be an acute setting.

Okay.

All right. I. I do not recommend that high. Just like, if you're fine. If you're just like a maintenance dose.

So we got fish oil, choline. What were the other ones for that stack for?

Uridine.

Okay. Uridine. Okay. Yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, I'm writing that down. So I'm gonna put this in the show notes for you guys@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Feedabrain Very interesting. Anything else from a supplementation or a dietary standpoint that especially stands out for you?

So I have a supplement guide on my website, feederbrain.com and if you go over to the blog and then click on freebies, it's under there. But yeah, there's. There's some. Actually, no, it's just right@feedybrain.com scroll down, there's a spot where you can get the supplement guide. So on that supplement guide, we have things like organ meats. Organ meat. Desiccated organ meat. Because, you know, most people don't like eating organ meats or don't have access to good organ meats, you know.

So what is desiccated for people?

Desiccated basically means that we removed the moisture and made a powder out of it.

Okay, got it. Okay, cool. What else?

And the deal with supplements, again, it's all about food. Getting these nutrients from food is way more important than just. It just gives you the whole package. So I try to get them. Get these nutrients in food. So I get supplements that are as close to food as I can find. So desiccated, the organ meats, and then kelp and dulce. So sea vegetables.

Yeah, okay.

Are great. Yeah.

Okay. Got it. Got it. Organ meats, kelp, dolts, choline, uridine, fish oil. I like it. And these are all things that people who just want to support normal brain function could use, right?

Totally. That's the thing. So the book is called how to Feed a Brain Nutrition for Optimal Brain Function and Repair. So this is not just for brain injury. This is for nutrients for your brain to function optimally. And basically, I wanted to create resources that I would, you know, that I wish I had. So. So I wanted to make it easy for people to follow as well. So there's. There's 12 handouts in there that you can, you know, put on your phone so you can take them with you wherever when you're at the store or whatever. You can print them out, put them on your fridge or in your kitchen somewhere that's easier reference. And it makes it really easy to just be like, okay, these are the foods. This is how much I want. Here we go. And, and you can just grab it and go. So it's not a bunch, a bunch, bunch of science that you need to learn or wrap your head around. I try to make it as clear in life and understandable as possible.

Okay, got it, got it. Interesting. All right, so one other question I have for you is in terms of resources, books, aside from yours, of course, that you found to be helpful people, you've obviously mentioned a few of them. But what about books, people, websites, resources? Some of the better ones for folks.

Well, Dr. Dati Skrazian. So we recently did the interview series where I got to interview some really amazing people in brain and nutrition experts out there. We had Dr. Terry Walls, we had Dr. Daniel Engel, Dr. David Perlmutter, Norga Gaddis. We had a bunch of these people on the interview series. And Dr. Kharazian is a huge. Was also interviewed and he's. His book why Isn't My Brain Working? Was definitely a huge resource. My story's actually in it. They called me Colin in there. But yeah, let's see what else we have. You know, we recently had Dr. Brehen who wrote the Eight Hour Sleep Paradox. And that is an excellent book to kind of put your head in a place or, you know, get your sleep together because sleep is so important. Right.

What is the eight hour sleep like? He's saying, like eight hours of sleep a night is not recommended.

And now he's saying, he's saying, you know, we talk about eight hours sleep. It's actually more about breathing and sleep and sleep apnea. So having, making sure you're, you're breathing well while you're sleeping.

So this idea would be then that if you're, if you're in bed for eight hours, that doesn't necessarily mean you're getting quality sleep because of sleep apnea.

Issues if you're not breathing. Yeah, not that good.

That's why I track my sleep with a ring because I can be in bed for, you know, eight hours and I'll check my ring and I've got like, you know, I was awake for 50 minutes and got almost zero deep sleep in some cases. Right. So yeah. And that would be a day I'd definitely take a nap even though I was in bed eight hours.

Right, right. So that's super important. Does that ring measure your blood ox as well?

No. Why do you measure pulse oxygenation?

You know. All right, so I had a sleep study done while I was in Pittsburgh. So the University of Pittsburgh contacted me and asked me to. Because they, they are doing, they are developing this new technology called high definition fiber tracking, which is really amazing neuroimaging that. Basically it's like dti. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but diffuse something imaging. And what it, what it does, what this one does is it breaks down your neurons and axons, like groupings of neurons and axon fibers into 2.4 millimeter cubed voxels or three dimensional pixels, which is super high definition. I mean, granted we have 86 billion neurons, so each one of those voxels has thousands of neurons in it. But they run in groups, they get damaged in groups. So it makes for really good imaging of our brains. So I went out there to have, have that done. And they also did a sleep study while I was out there. And this sleep study is in the hotel room. It was a take home unit with a chest strap and a nose, I don't know, tubes up your nose, whatever you call that. And I would wear it in the hotel room. So it wasn't like in a sleep study because that's kind of what screws things up there. Like you're sleeping in an uncomfortable environment with all these tubes and whatnot and.

Right.

Yeah. So it was, it was cool in that regard. But the, you know, I went and saw the, the what would see your nose? Throat doctor. And he was like, yeah, you're fine, you have mild sleep apnea, but you're all right. And I was like, can I see that report? And I took a look and it was like, I'm like, it says here my blood ox desaturated to the 80s for five minutes. Yep, that's mild. I'm like, that's mild.

Wow.

I don't want my blood ox desaturating to the 80s ever. Right. So I've been kind of trying to troubleshoot my sleep and we'll see what happens there because it's so important.

This is all fascinating stuff. And the name of this book again is how to Feed a Nutrition for Optimal Brain Function and Repair. And I'm going to put notes for everything Kevin and I talked about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com feed a brain, feed a brain. And are you gonna be over at PaleoFX again this year, Kevin?

You know it. I'll be there, man.

All right. Well, cool, man. I'll see you there. And thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us.

Rock and roll. My pleasure, man.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Kevin Ballister signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice. Sa.