PNTV: Brain Maker by David Perlmutter, MD (#211)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome Back to Philosopher's NodeTV. Today, another great book, Brain maker, Brain Maker by David Perlmutter, M.D. we have featured two other books by Perlmutter. He's become one of my favorite teachers. His book grain Brain is fantastic, as is power up your brain. Perlmutter is the only medical doctor in the US who's both a board certified neurologist and a member of the American College of Nutrition. Really inspiring, hard hitting, smart, scientifically rigorous guy. We've got a philosopher's note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas. This book just came out last week, I think, and it's awesome. So, five big ideas. Let's jump in. First one is 100 trillion. 100 trillion what? You have 100 trillion little microbial friends in your gut. This book is all about how your gut is impacting your brain health and your overall health. Hundred trillion little guys in there, micro beings that are hanging out in what's called your microbiome that have way more impact on your health and well being than you may think. Perl Mutter, as he does in all of his books, walks us through the science that proves the power of our microbiome. We're gonna talk about one of those studies in a moment, but for now I wanna highlight a couple other things. Number two, here is the fact that you have a second brain in your gut. I mentioned this in Grain brain, but I'm gonna repeat it. You have a second brain. Neurons. Whenever I think about the fact that we have neurons in our gut, I can't wrap my brain around that. I always thought we only had neurons in our brains. We have neurons in our guts that are producing 80 to 90% of our serotonin in our guts. Every time I think about that, it blows me away. 80 to 90% of our serotonin, the happiness molecule, is being produced in our gut. Do you think that the health of your gut is affects the health of your brain? I hope so, and that's why I keep on emphasizing these ideas. And that's what Perlmutter is all about is look, if you want to heal your brain, and that includes everything from ADHD to anxiety, depression, concern about Alzheimer's in the future, even autism. He talks about some amazing stuff in his research and his own experience to help deal with some of those issues that are related to the gut. Fascinating stuff. There's a huge gut brain connection. We want to become aware of it and then take smart steps to optimize it. That's our second big idea. Remember your second brain Anytime you're eating something, know you're affecting your mood. And do you think the processed foods and the refined sugars are really helping you feel great? You know the answer to that. Therefore, reduce, eliminate and bring in the good stuff, some of which we'll talk about down here. Anyway, he goes off on in the book. We will talk about this more. I'm really excited to synthesize a lot of this stuff in a future class on Energy101 and Nutrition101, etc. But for now, the third big idea to stress further the importance of your gut. Did you know that 70 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut? So we just talked about the fact that 80 to 90% of your serotonin are produced in your gut. Well, guess what? 70 to 80% of your entire immune system is in your gut. Why is that? Because it's incredibly important. In your gut. Outside of your skin is the organ that's dealing with all the foreign substances that come into our bodies and it's communicating with the rest of the immune system about foreign invaders, etc. Now, if you have a compromised gut, you have a compromised immune system, period, and therefore a compromised brain. So again, we want to pay attention. That's our third big idea. Have I convinced you yet? The gut is important. Fourth big idea. Probiotic fmri, otherwise known as yogurt brain. He tells about this study from ucla. Go ucla. Where? Small study but incredible where they brought a few dozen women, 36 women, split them into three groups. Basic deal is 12 of the women got two servings of yogurt with probiotics for four weeks. The second group got two servings of a yogurt without probiotics for four weeks. And the third group had no change in their diet control group. What they did was in the beginning of the study, they measured their brain via an FMRI scan. Now that type of scan measures the activity of the brain and how it responds to certain stimuli. And what they wanted to study was in the beginning and in the end, these four weeks, how the brains of these individuals responded to stressful events. Essentially faces of anger and frustration that creates excitability is what neurologists call it. So they wanted to see if, if by eating probiotic rich foods they can change the way individuals perceive their environment, if they were less excitable to stressful stimuli. Fascinating study, right? Well, as it turns out, as you can imagine, the group that ate the probiotic based yogurt had a reduced, a significantly reduced level of response, excitability. To these stressful stimuli compared to the beginning of the study, in the end, compared to the other two groups. That's nuts. The word or phrase that promoter uses is mind boggling. Mind boggling. That two servings of a probiotic based food over four weeks, two servings a day over four weeks, can impact significantly a neurologically measured response to our environment. That's amazing. We talked about Richie Davidson, who's one of the leading researchers who first started looking at people's brains way back in the day, decades ago, with Matthew Ricard and these other individuals. He wrote a great book that we featured called the emotional life of your brain. And he calls how you respond to things like that the excitability, your emotional style. And he describes how meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy can help adjust that emotional signature in your brain, which is all amazing stuff. But who would have thought that probiotics over such a short period of time can have a similar effect? Mind boggling. Truly astonishing. There you go. Fifth big idea here is how do you impact all of this? Well, he has a short answer, which is your diet. Your diet is the primary vehicle through which you can optimize the your microbiome, get your gut healthy and optimize your brain and your body and your overall health. He's got six key ideas in there. The basic idea, number one, is to eat probiotic rich foods, things fermented foods like sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, yogurt, if you're into that, and do dairy, that sort of thing, fermented foods and basically help you build a healthy army in your gut. They can help you in all the ways we've just discussed. It's incredible. He talks to you about research with mice. They call them germ free mice who have had all of their basically gut bacteria removed, right? Germ free, and they're super anxious. They have higher inflammation than those who have a normal gut bacteria and don't have that part of them removed. Kind of weird, but that anxiety and that inflammation and all the other issues can go away with a simple addition of probiotics. Crazy stuff. So probiotic food. He's also a big advocate of a low carbohydrate, higher fat diet. Higher healthy fats, things like avocados, extra virgin olive oil, coconuts. I eat a ton of coconut fat. I follow basically a similar program and it's been amazing for me and my energy. And then of course he has some recommended supplements, etc. Prebiotics are another one of his six keys. Prebiotics are found in things like garlic, onions, etc. Jicama I think was another one. So there you go. My intention here is to impress upon you the importance of a healthy gut, a healthy microbiome. Let's rock it via our diet. Check out the book for more. Obviously we'll be talking more about this. Remember that study simple addition of fermented foods over a short period of time impacted an FMRI scan in our excitability to stressful stimuli. Again gut's huge 70 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut. Second brain serotonin 80 to 90% and those hundred trillion friends of yours who are driving more of the show than you may have thought before. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed this quick look. Great book brain maker. Highly recommend it and grain brain and power up your brain. All three of them are awesome and I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.