How To Fix Your Brain And Biology With Plants: An Interview With Neurodietetics Author Richard Aiken On The Best Diet For The Brain.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, it's Ben Greenfield. I'm still in the Bahamas, and I decided to bring to you a interview with a guy who I've interviewed before, came back on the show, this guy interviewed about how to biohack your smoothie. He knows a lot more than that. You're gonna dig today's episode. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And a couple years ago, I actually released a podcast episode with a fellow named Dr. Richard Aiken. And the name of that podcast was how blenders can destroy food. Why I eat 20 to 25 servings of vegetables each day. The vegan paleo debate, and much more. And during that show, Dr. Aiken explained, among many other things, the potentially damaging effects of high speed blending, which many of us do, including myself, on food, and even talked about an experiment he did on bananas to figure out how to create less diet damage to food when you blend it. And later on, I actually published an article kind of based off this banana experiment that Dr. Akin did. And I'll link to that in the show notes for this episode. It's called how to biohack your green smoothie and can high speed blenders really damage your food? And I'm gonna link to all this for you if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com braindiet that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com BrainDiet Anyways, though, now a coup years later, Dr. Akin is back. He just wrote a new book. It's called Neurodietetics. The Dietary Science of Human Flourishing. And Dr. Akin is an MD, he's a PhD, he's a chemical engineer, he's a physician, obviously a pretty smart cookie. And this particular book kind of goes into how diet has a pretty profound influence on our minds and our brains and how using food we can relieve suffering and reverse pathology. Because he actually works with a lot of issues related to the brain and the mind and figured out how to use food to kind of like hack your head. That didn't quite come out sounding right. Hack your head is probably not quite as. As elegant a way to put it, as much as hacking your mind, hacking your brain, hacking your head. Sounds like something they would have done back in the medieval days anyways, though. Dr. Akin, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks very much. It's great to be back again. Ben.

Yeah. Are you ready to talk some head hacking?

Yeah, yeah. Head, mind, body, soul hacking. Let's do it.

All right, cool. So first of all, you call this book neurodietetics. Did you make that word up or is that a known term in the realm of psychiatry or psychology?

It's not a known term. I made it up. Now that doesn't mean I made the rest of the book up, though. I have over 600 references, most from peer reviewed individuals. And I wanted this to be a book that is kind of on the frontier of psychiatry, that is based upon, not my opinion, but upon the very latest research in psychiatry and food and how to be all you can be from an epic behavioral standpoint.

Yeah. And you get into a lot of things in this book, a lot of things that we haven't even discussed on the show before. Like one concept I came across in the book in reading it. And of course, as with many of the books I read, we've got a bunch of pages full folded over in this thing, but one particular page I folded over that I found fascinating was the section that you have on xenohormesis as in X, E, N O hormesis. And I've talked about hormesis before. You know, it's why I go and jump out in a cold pool in the morning buck naked or shine infrared light on my genitals or do any other manner of things that cause slight damage but result in long term positive results. You get into xenohormesis, though. What is xenohormesis exactly?

Well, I think the definition would be any kind of a phenomenon where a foreign organism, that is an organism foreign to yourself, in this case a human, that when that organism experiences this stress that it can yield some hormonal or some kind of chemical effect that can benefit other different organisms. In this case, I'm speaking of plants being stressed and as a result producing compounds that are useful to humans. Ben, this actually is kind of the origin of. Of why I got into nutrition as a psychiatrist and a physician and a scientist about six to eight years ago. I wanted to answer the question, why is it that it seems that all human nutrition originates from plants? Of course, you can eat animals and eat plants, but it comes down to all nutrition comes from plants. And what the heck, why is that? Are they, like, altruists or something? You know, like plants just exist for our health and pleasure. And really, I tried to understand this. I asked many different individuals, read different sources of information, and I came up with an answer. I have an answer for you. Would you like to hear?

So the answer to the question of why plants are altruistic, is that what you're saying? Because I thought xenohormesis was kind of based on this concept that plants are kind of trying to kill us and that actually helps us out long term, as long as we consume them in an intelligent way, you know, like soaking or sprouting or fermenting and things along those lines.

That was the answer to my quest. Altruistics. They would like to, generally, plants would like to kill us. Now, there's some, you know, some exceptions of, okay, sure, we eat seeds and we disperse them and so on, but I think they could do without that. At least it probably wouldn't be evolving in that direction had it not been for the existence of some animals. So I don't think it's a big issue. For example, I mean, this is a crazy example, but there are some plants that don't really, that have seeds that don't disperse with animals involved. And I just don't think that that's a major aspect to what they do.

Okay, so backing it up here, what you're saying is that we've been taught in many cases to believe that one of the reasons that plants can damage the digestive tract, let's say, like quinoa and the saponins that cover quinoa, like that, so, like, irritant, is that it would allow a mammal to eat quinoa and then poop out the quinoa seeds somewhere, because it wouldn't be digested. The seed wouldn't be digested. What you're saying is that plants have the ability to propagate without the necessity of being pooped out by a mammal. And so that there are other reasons in addition to just passing unscathed through the digestive tract, that a plant would have defense mechanisms that could potentially harm or kill a mammal that eats it or an animal that eats it.

Yeah, absolutely. But I think it's not appreciated that much of the phytochemical production that plants make is to defend against pathogens. And I mean, they make fantastic pesticides for bacteria, viruses, funguses, insects, obviously, and for animals. The bitterness, I think, turns a lot of animals off. I mean, a carnivore cannot eat a plant because of bitterness, for example. But those, fortunately, those phytochemicals that are kind of pesticides don't usually kill larger animals, although they can make you sick. And then there's some exceptions. You don't know if you can die. That's balanced by some phytochemicals that are produced by plants that have health benefits to humans. These are called phytonutrients, and there are tens of thousands of them. Two big classes are carotenoids. They're fat soluble, and polyphenols are water soluble. Most of these, or many of these are used in xenohormosis for plants, signaling some kind of stress. So they're like hormones for plants. An example, big example, interesting example. Salicylates or salicylates, they fight fungus, viruses, and insect invasion in most all plants. I mean, almost all plants produce an.

Amount, large amount, as in like salicylic acid. Like what we'd find in, for example, aspirin.

Yeah, yeah, that would be a little bit modified version, but absolutely. It's an inflammatory in humans that doesn't work that way in the, in the plants. So that's an example that we're all familiar with is, you know, hormesis.

Yeah. And I think. I think that it's really interesting you talk about, specifically in the book, when it comes to salicylate production, cucumbers. How cucumbers, when they get stressed by fungus or they get stressed by viruses, they produce salicylate. And so then when humans consume the cucumber, we actually get benefits, in this case against vascular disease. One of the reasons that people might be advised by their physician to say, pop an aspirin. And willow is another thing. You bring up willow seedlings, like the seedlings of. Of a willow plant, or I suppose it'd be a willow tree, those can get stressed by beetles that would eat the tree. And you talk about how in response to that, they produce salicylate. And so if we eat Something related to the willow plant or willow seedlings. We would also get benefit for a heart, for vascular disease. And so I love those examples that you give of xenohormesis. You also talk about a little bit about things that go beyond salicylate that a plant would produce. Like you were talking just now, was it carotenoids that you said, or another stressor or another bioactive product released in response to a stressor?

Yeah, the carotenoids are very common in most all plants, as well as polyphenols. And these are. And these are, I think, the carotenoids and polyphenols, the phytonutrients are generally plant hormones that signal there's something going on that we need to, as a plant, respond to. But the salvosilates, for example, are present in every plant. Every plant has this. Now, the willow, the inside of the bark of a willow tree has a very high concentration. That was the original extract that then was produced into aspirin by Behrer in Germany. They had to give up the name aspirin, though that was their brand name, but now it's a generic name, so it actually had to make their brand name generic. I think it was a World War II thing. I'm not sure. But. But there are other compounds, like cumin that has so much salicylates in it that it's almost equivalent to a baby aspirin. 81 milligrams, 1 teaspoon. And then you don't have the side effects of GI bleeding and in some cases, death on just a baby aspirin a day.

And it would be. When you look at turmeric in the book, you talk about how heat stress, for example, is what would cause turmeric to actually have inflammatory. Increased concentration of curcuminoids, which you talk about in the book, can help out with things like mood disorders. I've talked on previous podcasts about how curcumin can be really good for helping with brain inflammation or helping with blood, brain barrier leakage, and some other components that are related to mental health, of course, too. But it's interesting how when you stress the plant, in this case turmeric with heat, or you stress it. Another example you bring up in the book is nutrient deprivation. You know, ironically, by not taking care of a plant or by, you know, by. By almost like abusing a plant or exposing it to environmental stress, it turns around and creates something, you know, in this case, like curcumin, that winds up being a mild hormetic stress to the human body that actually gives us some benefit. You know what's really interesting about this, Dr. Akin, that I think is kind of cool is it's really kind of related to the wine industry too. You know, you even bring up like grapes, you know, how, how heat or water deprivation can increase concentration of phenolic compounds. And when you go and visit many vineyards these days, a lot of them have these big, luscious, large grapes that actually produce really kind of like sugary wine, low in phenolic compounds. I had a podcast a while ago with the folks from, from Fitvine Wine and we talk about how they just like beat the hell out of their plants and they water deprive them and they get exposed to heat and they're grown in rocky soil and the result is a grape that's actually very high in antioxidants and low in sugar and very high in these phenolic compounds. All based on this concept of how when you expose a plant to environmental stress and then eat it, it turns out to be pretty dang good for the human body.

Yeah, there's no question that agriculture these days is more centered on flavor, which commonly is associated with sweetness. Like corn. It's going through a terrible evolution and the way that they look, the production, how much you can make in a square foot of land and so on. But there's not as much of an interest in the phytonutrient aspect because it's not usually a taste factor and it doesn't help the economics so much. But I mean, even like the hydroponics, for example, plants hate it, hate to be grown in this water environment, but it's very nutritious because they hate it. It used to be, you know, that go in your garden and you, you love your plants and say nice things to them and I don't know, play Mozart or something. No, the way to do it is to, I don't know, go out and scream at them or and, you know, not give them as much water as they like and that kind of thing if you want to maximize their utility to you.

Yeah, it's a really fascinating concept that you get into in the book. And I like the table that you have in the book where you go over other things like dandelion and how when you expose it to abuse, it can create more phenolic compounds and how oregano, when it gets infected by bacteria, produces more of the active anti inflammatory ingredient carvacrol. And how like St. John's Wort, when it gets exposed to water, deficits it creates more hyperforin, which is an antidepressant. It's really kind of an interesting table that you have in there. But then you talk about a few other things in this book that I think are interesting. For example, lithium. You know, when I interviewed Kevin Rose on a podcast a few weeks ago, we talked about lithium as kind of like being one of the new darlings of the nootropic industry or the smart drug industry is like something that they'd combine, like lithium combined or bound to a mineral or a salt. I think in this case it was orethate that we were talking about how it was bound with or how they used to use it in 7Up as a nootropic. But you also discuss lithium in your book as one of the things that you consider to be an essential component of plant foods. Can you talk a little bit about lithium and why it is that you like it so much and how we can get more of it in our diet?

You bet. So I did listen to that podcast, as I do most of your podcasts, and he discusses Dr. Greenblatt's book on nutritional lithium. I forgot the title, but it's something like the Cinderella drug, meaning that it's really important, but nobody likes it or nobody gives it attention. There's a lot of such compounds. But his first chapter in Dr. Greenblatt's book is Nutritional Psychiatry, which is sort of like what I call neurodietetics. And wow, lithium is crazy stuff. I mean, I remember playing with them in the chemical lab when I was in college. Is a metal and man, you put this in the air, it starts on fire. You put it into water, it explodes small amounts. It's, of course, the problem behind Samsung's Note 7 that you can't take on board aircraft. And I'm surprised there's not more difficulties with lithium ion batteries generally. But just an aside, lithium chloride used to be used as a substitute for sodium chloride. So you would take home a salt shaker full of lithium chloride because it doesn't increase your blood pressure, unfortunately, it would become toxic and sick and has a very narrow therapeutic index, so you can be nauseated, vomiting, has tremors, dizzy, diarrhea. In psychiatry, we use concentrations between 618 milligrams per day. It's a fantastic medication. It actually was first used in the United States at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Washington University, where I did my training in residency and fellowship and child fellowship, and it's for mania. It was a miracle.

It's all for me now. Now what is mania exactly?

Yeah, mania is. You've heard of manic depression or bipolar disorder in the throes of mania, in which you're making decisions that are not in your best interest and kind of acting pretty crazy. There's degrees of it. But bipolar type one is just a wildly terrible state of being and you'd hear and see things and give all your money away.

In, in a situation like that, what would be a typical pharmacologic dose of lithium? I'm just trying to wrap my head around like what they'd use in psychiatry versus what we'd find in plants, right?

Between something between 600 and 1800 milligrams in a day. And so compare that with what you find commonly in Lithia waters. Like in some communities they have, their water supply is tied into kind of some deep spring runoff and that's about 2 milligrams per liter. So if you drink a couple liters of water, you get 4 or 5 milligrams a day of lithium. And that I speculate was very common thousands of years ago in which lithium was more available. It wasn't buried so deeply or washed into our oceans. So in fact, if you looked in deep, deep waters of the ocean, mineral contents are way beyond the surface, including lithium. But it's a fantastic medication in psychiatry. It's the only psychotropic or one of the only psychotropic medications used in psychiatry that doesn't have what's called a black box warning, which is kind of synonymous with danger of death. And the issue of death is typically for secondary to suicide or suicidal thinking. This is anti suicidal. So oftentimes it's used together with antidepressants as an adjunctive medication to kind of reduce the likelihood of suicidal thinking.

Gotcha. But it has more of a nootropic or a neuroprotective effect when used in, in smaller quantities. Right. I mean like for example, I am, I had a, I had a night of, well, let me put it this way, I stayed up late reading. That's my son and I are very much alike. When I was a kid I used to stay up till about 2 or 3am reading books. And last night my 8 year old son Taryn read until about midnight. And I also was up also just reading underneath the red lamp with my blue light blocking glasses on, but nonetheless up reading last night. And so this morning, because I only slept about five or six hours, I took what I call the God pill, which is like this smart drug that I use called Qualia. And it has about 50 milligrams of lithium orotate in it. And that's to help with cognitive function when I'm a little bit low on sleep. And so in this case, from what I understand, there's some neuroprotective abilities and improvements in mood and also cognitive function. And what you're saying is that we actually find lithium as well in plant derived foods and drinking water?

Yeah, it depends on your community and your soil. I mean, the mineral content, particularly these trace minerals, just vary tremendously from location to location in the soil and in drinking water. Same deal. Some communities that have, I think this was mentioned on your other podcast that some communities that have on the order of a daily intake of 3 milligrams a day of lithium, those populations tend to have less suicide and violent crimes and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I'm totally interested also as a psychiatrist in these trace levels of lithium. And I'm trying to understand it. Apparently it's neuroprotective or cognitive decline, like Alzheimer's and improvements in mood, cognitive function, irritability, kind of minor tendencies toward mood disorders, not major. And I would say also I'm familiar a little bit with the God pill. I may have some things to say. I have a God smoothie.

Really? Is this kind of like your super smoothie? Because I want to ask you about your super smoothie that you go into in the book. Okay, I'm going to save that question for a little bit later, but just really quickly, correct me if I'm wrong, but because we find lithium in many cases in mineral rich water. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of shellfish. I know you eat more of a plant based diet, but I know lithium can be concentrated in things like shrimp and lobster and crustaceans and mollusks and things like that. But can you also find it in sea vegetables like kelp or phytoplankton or algae or things of that nature?

You know, I can't tell you numbers, but I would speculate, yes, because in the, in the sea, particularly the deep sea, there's a higher concentration of lithium. And all, as I understand it, all animals require lithium. It's not like we used to joke that a patient is lithium deficient or thorazine deficient, but it's actually true that you must have a certain amount of lithium. I don't believe it's clear exactly why and how it's used. And in plants it's even more misunderstood of why in the heck plants need lithium. But they tend to, if it's available. They tend to bring it up into the plant.

Interesting. Now, are there any other compounds that you derive from plants that you eat or supplements that you take that you would recommend, while we're on this topic of nootropics or mental performance, that you would recommend specifically for the brain, for the mind, or to improve mood?

Yeah. And to kind of tie in and complete a conversation about lithium, there are lots. I have a theory, I have the theory that I haven't really verified in the literature, but I think that there are a lot of mineral insufficiencies. I'm not a supplement guy so much, nor am I. I like to think of whole foods and not extracts, but I think something has happened over the millennia of glacier movements and soil erosion. And so a lot of minerals like lithium, but also zinc, which is very much important in brain health. Selenium, important in immune function. You just can't get selenium very easily. It's in Brazil nuts, garlic, onions and things. Iodine. Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable brain damage in the world. And there's a problem with it. Putting iodine in salt is a great idea, but people who don't want to use additional salt for blood pressure reasons, it's a problem. But. And in talking about foods that I recommend for mental performance. Mental performance, like, by the way, I was listening to the intro to your show and you mentioned that your podcast is to help to increase physical and mental health performance of your listeners. And I'm totally there. I mean that. That's what this book is all about. Flourishing from a cognitive, emotional, behavioral standpoint. And you don't have to be depressed or mentally ill. I mean, there's a whole spectrum of degrees of cognitive, emotional and behavioral excellence related to this concept of eudaimonia. But anyway, getting back to specifics on foods, gotta make as a physician, gotta make a statement. Talk with your physician before self treating and testing this stuff.

Yeah, but before taking in boatloads of lithium, talk to your doc. So you mentioned selenium, iodine. I know a lot of those are also important for the thyroid as well. Well, you also, you talk about L Theanine quite a bit in the book as one of the things that one can use to say increase alpha brainwave production. And it also has some pretty cool neuroprotective properties. And I noted that you have this little kind of, I guess you could call it a biohack in a way. This green tea workout drink that you make. You call it your hibiscus and green tea workout drink. I know it's got, because of the green tea, some pretty concentrated sources of L Theanine. But can you walk me through the recipe for your hibiscus and green tea workout drink and why you chose the specific ingredients that you did and you even get into in the book how you soften the cell walls and increase the solubility of the cellular content. So I was wondering if you could get into the nitty gritty details of your hibiscus and green tea workout drink, because I find this one fascinating.

Yes, I surely will. I hope I can get to my favorite number one food, whole food performance. And that's flaxseed and omega 3. But this drink I use all the time, I really like it and I recommend it. First of all, of course, it's based on two main ingredients. Well, three water, green tea and hibiscus flowers. The green tea. Green tea is the most consumed beverage in the world because it's psychoactive. I mean, it's a, you know, it's legal, but wow, it has some great stuff in it. Green tea is a natural state of the plant. Black tea is more oxidized and less useful. It's the popular one in the United States. It's got caffeine, obviously, but that stimulating effect of caffeine is modulated by this L Theanine. And so the idea is to be kind of focused but without being, you know, nervous and anxious.

Right. And it can take some of these, some of the edge off of the caffeine.

Bruce Lee the less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. That's kind of the idea behind this. But theanine, theanine, it crosses the blood brain barrier, which is tremendous. Not all compounds do that. It's anxiolytic, has calming effect, increases neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine. It increases alpha ways, being fully present, being in the moment, power of now, meditation. And it's great for depression and mood too. So it has those features. Also in green tea is polyphenols, rich in polyphenols that in fact it's got like 30% of the dry weight is polyphenols. So it's really high in polyphenols. So for intense physical exercise that produces oxidative stress, it's really fantastic. Now, this effect may not happen during the time in which you're exercising, depending upon the length of the exercise, if it's up to hours and hours long, that it may, but certainly afterward, hibiscus, again, loaded with Polyphenols, significant flavonoids, antioxidant effects. But the reason I use it is that there's an endothelium dependent relaxation effect that I think is from nitric oxide production, decrease of blood viscosity. So you make tea the old way. You put some water on the stove, take some tea bags out, and you dump the tea bags into the cup and you solubilize the polyphenols, which are water soluble. And the temperature helps to soften the cell walls and increase the solubility and bring out the. That takes about five minutes.

Okay, so basically the first thing that you're doing is you're taking your hibiscus flowers and then your green tea leaves. Or can you just use hibiscus tea bags and green tea tea bags and steep those and prepare them as you would normally prepare tea? Is that like the first step?

You certainly could. You certainly could. But I don't do that. I'm a blender guy. So I biohack this idea of making tea. And so what I do don't use bags, tea bags, I get in bulk, much, much cheaper. I buy like a pound or two of green tea leaves and a pound or two hibiscus leaves and put, okay, put a couple of teaspoons of both right into the blender. And what happens is I can make this very quickly because at high speeds you can break down the size of the particles of the T below 100 microns, actually blasting the cell walls as well as the organelles.

And that will assist with the actual absorption to get the size of these particles below 100 microns.

Right. So you can, it's more easily to transport, it's faster to transfer the polyshenols into solution because of the agitation effect and the fact that you have blasted their, the cell walls apart.

And so, okay, so, so you're not, you're not even making them into tea. You're not even seeping them in hot water. You found that you can reduce that. So instead of steeping for five minutes, you're just taking, taking the bulk raw dried hibiscus flowers and then your green tea leaves, and you're simply blending those like 30 seconds using like a high speed blender.

Right. Okay. The thing is kind of the negative is that you do get a kind of a slush. So you do need to take the. I put this into about a, you know, in my blender, maybe 50 ounces capacity of the solution. So it's about three of these typical size workout drink bottles. And then, so, but you have to strain it. You have to strain it because I don't want it to be sucking on these bottles with particulates in it. I want it to be like tea. I mean, just kind of clear. So you have to strain it. You know, Big deal. Does it take long? I usually make three of these for three different workout days.

Okay, now, now you're. You're obviously, you're not just blending this into some powder. You. You add liquids after you blend the tea leaves and the hibiscus leaves, don't you?

Yeah. Yeah. You have tea as a result, but you do throw out some of the goodies. I mean, there's still some fiber and probably not 100% polyphenol extraction, but I mean, a whole lot more than a tea bag in hot water.

Okay, gotcha. Now, in the article that you wrote that I featured on the site a couple years ago, you talked about how you found, when you did that banana experiment, that you could help to protect the antioxidants in some of these compounds when you blend them. And one of the things you talked about was the addition of, like, citric acid, like something that was rich in vitamin C, like lemon juice or lime juice. Are you using that in your smoothie as well? And the main reason I ask is, ever since I interviewed you and you talked about that, the first thing that I do when I'm making my green smoothie in the morning is I add ice to reduce the temperature. So that goes in the bottom of the blender. And then I squeeze half a lemon over the ice so I get the citric acid in the antioxidants to protect some of the components from getting oxidized when I blend at those high speeds. Are you doing that when you make this workout drink?

Absolutely. Every time I blend anything, I begin that way. And I usually just put the. Either the whole lemon or the whole lime. Into the blender with water or ice. And then I blend that at high speed. Before I start anything, just to review what that does is this ascorbic acid decreases the reaction between polyphenol oxidase and polyphenol, so it doesn't allow the oxygen, which is coming in at tornado speeds, to oxidize the antioxidants, which would be a pretty bad thing. So if you do that step first, you can reduce tremendously that reaction. It still happens, but at a lower rate. And you got a few hours before there's significant oxidation, depending upon how much citric acid, ascorbic acid, you put in there.

Okay, cool. Well, I know, you've got the whole recipe in your book, but it's just basically the hibiscus, the green tea, and then you blend that up with some kind of ascorbic acid like lemon or lime juice. You add ice. And after you've blended that, then you just basically strain it to get all the grit from the leaves and stuff out. And you fill water bottles with that.

Yeah. And it's one of the few cases in which I will remove any of the whole food. But again, it's for, you know, you're on your bike and you don't want to be choking on fibrous material or just clogging your, you know, your water bottle, so. Right. And this kind of a, a technique really gets into solution. I don't know the percentage, but I'm betting a large percentage of the polyphenols are available for you there.

Okay, cool. I like it. Now, one of the other things that you mentioned that I want to make sure I give you a chance to talk about before we delve into your super smoothie recipe, or I think what you called your God smoothie recipe. You mentioned one other specific whole food food that you like for mental performance that I didn't give you a chance to talk about much. And that was, I believe you said, like a flaxseed or was it a flaxseed powder or flaxseed oil or flaxseeds or what was it about flaxseeds that you mentioned?

Right, yeah. I appreciate. Because this is my, this is definitely my kind of go to food. If I had to recommend, you know, go to a desert island, take one food, I guess it probably would be actually green leaves, plants, but it's pretty fantastic. In fact, I gave a presentation at the Southern California Veg Fest in November in which I handed out flaxseeds to everyone. You can get the flaxseeds in little packets of 2 tablespoons worth that are already ground and protected from oxygen. And it's pretty cool. Well, so here's my thoughts on flaxseeds. First of all, it's got so many goodies in it. Obviously it's got the Omega 3s, which I want to mention a few things about, which is so important. Omega 3 is pretty close to an antidepressant, but flaxseeds also are anti inflammatory and antioxidant, which is related to their effect on depression. Soluble fiber, it's antihypertensive. But this is Omega 3 that, that I'm so interested in, of course, powder.

A quick question about Omega 3 is because I know that DHA is of course the long chain fatty acid that can be made from ALA which you find in flaxseed and that's manufactured by all plants. It's a short chain omega 3 fatty acid that eventually winds up becoming a long chain fatty acid in the body. But is DHA synthesis from an alpha linoleic acid like an ALA source such as flaxseed, compared to a direct or more concentrated DHA source like let's say fish, Is that sufficient or have they shown that there is a sufficient supply in that to supply the adult brain with DHA or I suppose a children's brand dha? That's one thing that I've found kind of the research seems to go back and forth on. I'm curious to hear your perspective on that ALA conversion to DHA and the amount to which that occurs and whether we get enough from something like you know, say flaxseed or a plant based source.

Yeah, well this was, has been very confusing to me. And just a couple of years ago there were, there were some studies that sort of summarized some other studies and contributed additional information about this. And it looks to me like the research would indicate there's no question that you can make sufficient EPA and DHA from ALA in a certain diet that has enough of the ala, which I think is about this data comes from the Academy of Sciences, but I'm not sure it's correct. 1.6 grams per day for men, 1.1 grams per day for women of ALA is the essential omega 3 that then can make the EPA and DHA. The DHA is made in the liver. DHA is then transported across the blood brain barrier and it is the major polyunsaturated fatty acid that the brain uses. But if you get your ala, your home goods. But why do that? Why not just eat fish? Well, here's the problem as I see it. First of all, wild caught fish, you have the toxic tops, persistent organic pollutants, dioxins, pesticides, BCDs, heavy metals, mercury, lead, cadmium, farm raised, it's low in omega 3s. You don't usually have algae which the omega 3s come from. Fish don't eat that. So you don't have it in farmed rays. A lot of times most of you are eating farmed, raised or wild caught. And research, at least my standpoint for cognitive emotional health does not indicate that increasing your fish in your diet has a very strong relation to improvement in mood. These were studies done in Japan where the highest Consumption of certain type of fish. Okay, then what about fish oil supplements? Well, my understanding is that the omega 3s in fish oil supplements are rather unstable and they decompose and they actually unleash free radicals. So it's a little problematic getting omega 3 from fish sources. Wild caught, farm raised or fish oil. What about flaxseeds then? 1 tablespoon and you're good to go. But this brings up a bigger question, Ben.

By the way, is that 1 tablespoon ground or is that 1 tablespoon whole?

It's ground and that's a problem because you can't eat whole flax seeds. They just kind of go through. They're really hard and you can chew some. But I put them either in my coffee grinder or I just throw in my high speed Vitamix every morning and I use these little packets. I can put it on salads and oatmeal in the morning and it's kind of nutty, it doesn't taste bad.

And I think it's interesting because this debate does go back and forth. I delved into the research a little bit and some of the more relevant and recent research you highlight in the book. A particularly interesting study called is dosahexaenoic acid synthesis from alpha linoleic acid Acid linolenic acid sufficient to supply the adult brain. This appeared in the Progress in Lipid Research Journal. I actually went through and I read that entire study and I found it pretty interesting in that they found that concentrations of DHA in the human adult brain were similar. When you compared DHA intake and ALA intake. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the total quantity that they used in this study of alpha linoleic acid. But you're saying it's close to the equivalent of about one to two tablespoons of like a ground flaxseed source?

Yes.

Okay. What I'm gonna do if people wanna delve into that study. Cause I know plenty of folks wanna kinda, kinda read the research. I know we have lots of nerdy listeners. I'll link to that study in the show notes if you want to dive in and take a look at that. Because I found it fascinating. And one thing I should throw out there is that, and I don't know how you feel about this, Dr. Aiken, but in the same way that fish oil, you know, if you consume like, like rancid heated oxidized fish oil, which much of it is, you could, you could also, you, you can make the same error with, with seed oils too. You Know, like heated seed oils, oxidized seed oils. So you'd want to be careful with your. With your flax in the same way that you'd want to be careful with your fish oil. I actually threw out an entire bottle about. I think it was about a $60 bottle of fish oil last night because it was a fermented cod liver oil. And it was in the refrigerator on the lower shelf, which is where my children's supplements are, and they've been taking a fermented cod liver oil. But I noted that the cap had come off, and it had been for the few days I was out of town, getting exposed to light and heat and oxidation. And as much as it pained me to do it, I threw it out because I know taking a bad, rancid, oxidized fish oil is worse for you than not taking fish oil at all. So I tossed it and told my kids, next time, make sure you keep the fish oil cold and keep the lid on it. But I'll link to this article in the show notes. I know we've been going for a little while, and I really, really want to make sure that we get a chance to talk about your super smoothie recipe, because I know you're a real stuff smoothie guy, man after my own heart. And so I know we've had a little bit of a buildup to this, but can you go into your super smoothie recipe?

Yeah, yeah. I'll kind of make some highlights on this. Yeah, you're right. I'm a smoothie guy. And when I make smoothies, first of all, I'm making them for maximum health. Like, I don't call them God's movies, but it's kind of like that. I mean, a qualia qualia pill or set of pills have so much stuff in them. It's kind of like shotgun. Maybe some of them will hit, you know, and do something good. And there's some danger in that, too, because, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, we didn't, like, have, you know, 25 different ingredients in one swallow. But nevertheless, I agree with the experimentation as long as you're not obviously putting any toxic food in as one of the elements. But so what I do on my smoothies most every morning, not every morning, but most every morning is, first of all, I get stuff from the fridge that is beginning to get old and doesn't look good and maybe doesn't taste quite as good because I can put them in my smoothie and it's. I can kind of camouflage it.

But you're not talking about fungus and mold. You're just talking about maybe the parsley that might be close to getting, to getting to turn, but is not yet smelly.

Yeah. The tomatoes that are kind of mealy.

I'm kind of the same way. I'm really, I'm almost like the garbage compactor when it comes to the smoothies. I rummage through the fridge for all the stuff that probably isn't going to last much longer.

Yeah. Now actually, I Prepare sometimes about 12 of these in advance. 12 of these smoothies and put them in a evacuated bag and then put them in the freezer. But typically I'll begin with the, of course, the lemon or lime. A quartered, usually quartered, but put the whole thing, rind and everything in with ice and start that and get that all ready. And then I put in my green leafy vegetables, one of the most important ingredients. For me, it's hard to get down leafy vegetables, they're just bitter. I don't like them personally. In fact, my smoothie, I don't really care what it tastes like. I'm just going to. I mean, if it tastes bad, it's like, wow, this must be good for me. You know, like medicine.

You know what, that's why I keep a tiny little bottle of organic butterscotch stevia and organic vanilla stevia in my fridge. I use this company called Omica Organics. And I've found that with a little bit of sea salt and a little bit of stevia, I can turn just about any failed smoothie experiment into a tasty little surprise. That's my hack.

Well, I know if my wife or someone else is going to want to sample this or have it for breakfast, then, yeah, I'll pay more attention to that. Usually adding dates. Dates are fantastic, but very high in sugar.

Yeah, that's why I use the stevia.

Yep. So I think that's fair enough. And then I usually have as backup, I've got bags of organic broccoli, cruciferous vegetables, carrots, zucchini, and always berries of various types. Red, dark, dark colored and various colored berries. Always put that in to the mixture. Always. My little heaping tablespoon of flaxseed, maybe two. I put usually turmeric and a couple pinches of the ground ground pepper to make the bioavailability better.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that. And you'd be surprised when you add turmeric and black seed pepper, not only are you making anything that you've added to that smoothie, More bioavailable. But you'd be surprised. Turmeric and black pepper don't taste that bad even in like a morning. You'd think it'd almost be too savory. Too much like visiting an Indian or a Thai restaurant for a morning smoothie. But I find I barely taste. You know, I've been adding both turmeric and black pepper to a morning smoothie just to get the most out of all those goodies I'm putting into the, the smoothie jar and it doesn't really seem to affect the flavor deleteriously at all.

Yeah, well you know, this is where actual I think recipes can come in handy. If you go over the line a little bit too much with one or two ingredients then it can affect the flavor adversely or positively.

But.

I don't care. I'm just, I just want to make this thing like a, you know, God's movie. And this is where the gods movie comes in. I have, I have in the glass jars lined up, I don't know, a dozen glass jars full of stuff. I know that's good. I have some reason for it and I've written each one in the book somewhere. Are recovery type of antioxidants? Some are, some are good from various standpoints. I mean I do this, I try to work out every morning and this is my post workout drink too. But then I, I have this bio hack that I do all day of you know, rather than flooding yourself with goodness I will, you know, I'll take some pretty good swallows and then during the day I will take a swallow between patients and just kind of like have a long acting nutritious meal throughout the day. So my system can know that is.

Actually something that I don't do. And the reason for that is and there's actually a pretty recent article about this, how circadian rhythms tend to be optimized and I'll put a link to this one in the show notes by the way the shownotes Everybody. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com BrainDiet that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Braindiet this study that recently came out in 2017 actually about time restricted feeding and about eliminating frequent fluctuations in blood sugar or constantly getting little snacks in here and there it goes into how that tends to sustain what they call in the study a robust circadian clock which may prevent chronic disease and some characteristics of aging. Basically what they found was a better timed circadian rhythm in people who ate right around in the range of two to three meals per day versus like erratic eating patterns or grazing or snacking. And what I've tended to do based on that research is I have all my smoothie at once in the morning. The morning is like this big cue to my body, this big circadian rhythm cue to my body in the morning. And then mostly I've just been sipping teas and non calorie based foods where I'm still getting antioxidants and some other components into my body, but not actual calories. Based on this research and some previous research I've seen in terms of time restricted feeding and avoiding specifically fluctuations in, in blood sugar. So I get where you're coming from with that, kind of like sipping it throughout the day, especially when you're busy and you have patience, et cetera. But I've adopted an opposite approach. I've actually gotten on this bandwagon where I'm just eating anywhere from two to three times a day and spending very long periods of time in between meals.

Well, I want to read that. It's something that I really haven't put into the equation and it would be nice to not have to drag around a baby bottle cooler all day, which I do with my smoothie. But, but the other thing that to take into consideration though is I used to kind of like these, particularly the bad tasting smoothies, you know, bitter and what have you. I'd slam them. I mean, I just like chuck them and I got to understand that no, you kind of want to sip and swirl.

Oh yeah, I eat mine with a spoon. I eat my smoothie with a spoon and kind of chew it. You know, I chew my liquid. So I typically take for that for like that morning smoothie, I take about a half hour and typically for me I'm kind of going through some articles and catching up on reading and stuff while I'm. I try to avoid stressful activities like email when I'm eating my foods. But I'll read and things like that when I'm doing the morning smoothie. But you reveal in the book, you reveal not only your full smoothie recipe that you just went into, including of course, the addition of probably the two most important things I learned from you when I interviewed you earlier was the addition of ascorbic acid and the addition of ice to reduce the oxidation and the increased temperature that can occur when you blend. So all my smoothies now there's always at least a handful of ice in there. There's always lemon, and that's always at the bottom of the smoothie. People will have to, of course, get your book to see this part, because I don't think we have a ton of time to go into it. But you have a really cool recipe for your Buddha bowl in there, too. And I have a giant mortar and pestle on my kitchen counter and love your concept of crushing plants with the mortar and pestle. If anybody has not experienced, experimented with taking a bunch of seeds and things like onions and garlic and even grains, especially grains that you've soaked or grains that you've sprouted and then just pounding it to heck in a mortar and pestle, you're missing out on some pretty cool recipes that you can make. And I love some of the ingredients that you're adding to yours, like the flaxseeds and the turmeric and the black pepper. So for those of you listening, check that out in the book. But there was one other thing that I wanted to, if you have the time, Dr. Akin, I wanted to squeeze in. And you were telling me right before we started recording about sleep and this new kind of, like, sleep, I suppose you could call it a hack not to overuse this word on today's show that you were experimenting with. Can you tell me what you've been doing in terms of sleep?

Yeah. So I went out to a floating conference, a conference, continuing medical education conference on women's health, and a bunch of physicians were there. And between the break, we're talking about what's the most, I don't know, kind of difficult to handle, question that your patients give you. And across the board, no matter what your specialty was in medicine, it was patients saying they can't sleep. And I certainly have experienced that. I mean, it seems like nobody can sleep. And so one of the individuals, one of the physicians there, gynecologists, said, well, have you heard of Alteril? Like Alteril, A L T E R I L Alteril? And I had not. And this is over the counter, but.

I.

Got some of this alter. It's kind of expensive and it's kind of stinky, the pills kind of large. But if you can get past that, then. Wow. I tried this myself personally, before I would give it to patients, and I've since given it to patients, and they've had quite some success. But here's what happens. First of all, it's kind of a mixture, too, of nothing like Godspeed, but it has the usual L, tryptophan, glycine and melatonin. But it's got, like, skull cap herb and chamomile herb and passion flower herb and some kind of hop extract.

It sounds like lots of inhibitory neurotransmitter precursors.

Yes. And of course it has my favorite L Tnine. So this, this is my own experience. You take this and you know, hour before lights out and then if I try to kind of get out of my head and meditate and get into the moment and that kind of thing. But what happens is, is that I start. Thoughts come into your head. But rather than thoughts that are, you know, like associated with what you did that day or what you should be doing the next day or something, they're, they're arbitrary thoughts that have nothing to do with anything. They could be shapes and, and almost visions. And so it's, you're sort of in this hypnagogic state of hallucinations that kind of like a dream wake state to which is really fascinating. And your drift, you actually, it's what a lot of us experience just before sleep, but it's more prolonged and you can kind of play with a little bit, but you know you're going to sleep. So it's, it's a sleep hack. It's kind of a mind hack. It's legal. And I mean, I have no reason to believe that this has any negative effect.

But first, yeah, I'm looking at the ingredient label. You know, there's only a couple concerns I have. It's got a huge number of like magnesium stearate and stearic acid and silicone dioxide and FD and C yellow number five and some things that would give me like, I like the basic ingredients, but all the fillers are kind of, you know, what I need to do is I need to send you some of this sleep remedy. It's got a lot of similar things that Dr. Kirk Parsley sleep remedy. It's basically vitamin D3 and magnesium, tryptophan 5 HTP and some pH, GABA and microdoses of melatonin. I swear by mixing that with just a couple capsules of, of CBD or even like a couple polls on like a CBD vape pen. And it doesn't have some of these, some of these binders and fillers that have to be added to these capsules. I'm looking at the ingredients and I like the ingredient list, this altarail stuff. But I don't know if you've taken a look at the fillers. That's, that's my concern is like anytime I see the yellows and the blues, I'm just like, you know what? I don't care if the tablet looks pretty. You didn't have to add that into it. Like, you know, that's some of my concern. But I tell you what, after the call, I'll get your address, I'll drop a few packets of this sleep remedy in the mail over to you so you can try it out. It's called Dr. Kirk Parsley Sleep Remedy. And man, I freaking swear by that stuff. Even if you wake up at like 3 or 4am, you know, you can take it and, you know, sleep till six and wake up and not be too drowsy. So this Alteril stuff though, is interesting. I wish they'd. I'd wish they'd produce it with, with a little bit less of the fillers. But obviously when you look at the ingredients like L tryptophan and gaba and valerian and melatonin, you could pretty easily kind of hack together your own version of this, I guess using some more raw organic ingredients. But that's interesting that you found it to be so effective. It's good to know some of the ingredients actually work.

Maybe we can add these ingredients to your ingredients and make God's sleep hack.

Yeah, you know, I'm working quite a bit on some custom supplement formulations, new formulations for everything from testosterone to sleep to some really unique mixes that I haven't been able to find out there in the supplement industry that I've always wanted to make. And I'm finally pulling on my big boy pants from a business standpoint, so to speak, and going out to raw ingredient manufacturers and actually getting some of this stuff put together rather than, I guess, heavily promoting other people's products. Kind of trying to design my own spin on things. And so, yeah, that might very well be the case that quite soon there'll be something coming down the line for sleep. Anyways, though, in the meantime, I think we've given people plenty of brain food or in this case, a brain diet. And also a little bit of info on this book, Neurodietetics, which is fantastic. So if you're listening in, I am going to link to this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com BrainDiet I've taken copious notes. I'll link to Dr. Akin's book, some of the previous episodes that we've done and articles from Dr. Akin that have appeared on my site. Some links to studies that we talked about such as circadian rhythms and time restricted feeding and DHA synthesis from alpha linoleic acid. Plenty more in there that you can go and have fun with if you're listening in. So again, that's all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com BrainDiet and in the meantime, Dr. Akin, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. Man. You're a wealth of information and I love your passion for using food to heal the body and the brain.

Well, you know, I think I can ditto that. I mean, that's what you do. And I think there's something to be said for mental performance as well. Sports psychology is important, but sports ecology, not just for energy but for mind, body synergism is another aspect of sports performance and mental performance. So absolutely really appreciate being being on your podcast. I'm a regular listener and talk with you again soon.

Cool, cool. I hope so as well. Keep doing what you're doing, man. And for those of you listening in, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Richard Aiken, the author of Neurodietetics Food for Flourishing. Signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

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