Upgrade Your Brain with Julia Rucklidge

Julia, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

My pleasure. I thought you were going to keep going.

So great to connect with you. Yes, I'm excited to talk about your zone of genius, the area that you're passionate about, and also about Better Brain. It's a book that by the end of this conversation, I know every listener will want to pick up a copy. And I just want to thank you for taking the time out on your Monday morning, bright and early to share your goal.

Yeah, no, my pleasure.

Now, let's start with leadership. What would you define leadership as?

Leadership. It's not a question I'm actually asked a lot about is what do I. How do I define leadership? I suppose it would be. How would I think about it, be such a lay perspective on this. Although I suppose in a way I probably would be seen as a leader in some respects around the academic world. I think it's, it's. Well, for me it would be about that, the. Well, that honesty, that taking the. Taking risks on challenging the status quo. That's definitely where I would see myself as having grown a lot, is that I saw how things were when it comes to mental health. I'm incredibly well versed in our current treatments that are on offer in New Zealand. Around the world they are. It's a medical model where we give mostly medications, even to young people. Even though the data are not impressive with young people particularly, we still do seem to do that as a frontline form of treatment. We have counseling, but it is rare to get hold of it. You generally have to pay. And even if you can afford to pay, you tend to end up on a very, very long waiting list.

Observing that as a recent graduate. So I did my training at University of Calgary as a clinical psychologist, finished up as an intern at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and then did a postdoc and then came here, was doing research on ADHD and noticing that in our own data that despite receiving the best standard of care, these kids would still be viewed as symptomatic, meeting criteria for adhd. And you kind of think, but that's wrong. I mean, that isn't. If you're going to get a treatment, you expect to go into remission. I mean, you'd expect that if you got a cancer treatment. You'd expect that if you went to the doctor with a broken leg, you wouldn't expect to continue to have that broken leg a year, two years later, despite receiving the best care. So I think from my, from, from where I come from, speaking out about that and, and saying this isn't actually good enough is what I think exemplifies for me leadership, is that you're being a critic and conscience of society, using science to back you up, and then not being fearful of the consequences of speaking out about the current state of mental health in New Zealand and the world. So maybe that's. I don't know if that's a leadership style or not. Not sure.

Oh, that's incredible. You're putting yourself on the line.

That's me, definitely have been on the line many, many times and I've been in the firing line as a consequence of being so outspoken.

Well, I think it's so vitally important, particularly, you know, we're both here in New Zealand and over the last decade or so, the OECD have reported findings that are quite alarming around our mental health and domestic violence. So when it comes to mental health and the treatments that we do have, clearly they're not optimal. What's your thoughts on other forms of prevention and also treatment of mental health challenges? Because it's all members, right from our very young kids right through to our seniors, that we have mental health challenges or what's your suggested approach?

Yeah, well, at the moment, our approach is that we are the, you know, that terrible saying of ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, but it's very true. So we wait until symptoms present, we then let them just sort of get worse and worse and worse because there's nothing that's really available when they're in that early stages and when it's just so absolutely crisis point, then they might get into services and even then it can be difficult. I mean, you read about stories about kids who are suicidal but they're not suicidal enough, and so they still don't get access to our current funded treatments. So that's kind of the current model. And that to me makes absolutely no sense. I mean, if you think about physical health, again, I think we could do a lot better. But there is an acknowledgment that we want to prevent the heart attack from occurring as opposed to waiting for the heart attack to occur and then doing something about it. So we do have, albeit in some cases probably not that sophisticated biomarkers, but blood tests to check out certain measures in your blood of cholesterol, or you get measures of blood pressure, et cetera, that can be indicators of whether or not you have an increased risk of getting a heart attack. So when it comes to mental health, though, I'm not convinced that we're doing Anything at all around prevention or not much. I mean, there's definitely more talk now than there was and particularly I think since the earthquakes there's been more of that. What are those small little things that we can do in communities to improve our well being? So you've seen the five ways of well being, about getting out and connecting and savoring your environment. And those are all actually very well researched methods to increase our well being and hopefully at the same time reduce our chances of going on and developing some serious psychiatric problems. So you ask a complex question because just as I'm speaking about it, I also think, well, we've had years and years of trying to convince the public that you have a biochemical imbalance. And so it's something that's, you know, is it preventable? You almost. That sounds like it's a kind of an inevitable thing that's going to happen to me if my genetics are wrong and that this is going to, you know, that I'm destined for these, you know, to develop serious psychiatric conditions. But we know that actually that's not the case. And there's been a lot of pushback now against some of those biological models. It's not to say biology isn't relevant to when it comes to mental health. Of course it is. We are chemical soups and we're, you know, we're, we're making neurotransmitters all the time as we're, you and I are speaking, they're firing, you know, we, we.

We, you know, we use molecules from our food in order to support making hormones and enzymes and, and other things that are, are necessary for those chemical reactions. So I don't abide that. There's no biology, there's biology happening. And so I don't like that full pushback. But we do need to acknowledge that some of these messages of death, you know, that it's, it's in your genes and so therefore it's not changeable, really have been, I think, detrimental to people's understanding of mental health and also their ability to do something about it. Because that kind of puts you in this kind of helpless position of there's nothing I can do, it's my genes. And so therefore I need to take one of these drugs that's supposed to correct whatever it is that's gone wrong. I feel like I've diverted off of your question a little bit.

You've given us some gold. And so if people do have that belief system that hey, it's genetic, like I just have it and I've got to take the drugs. What's the potential consequences and negative effects of just using that as an option? That's our only option is drugs.

It is pretty much our option. Well, it ends up with these situations where that we have right now, which is that, you know, I. That you, you are the disorder, rather than it just being a piece of you and that there's other parts of you that can overcome some of the challenges. I feel like, you know, I keep reading about, you know, particularly adhd, for example. I. I've been studying ADHD since my master's degree, so that's back in the early 1990s. And so I've. I've observed this disorder and its evolution over time. And I'm not here to say that it doesn't exist. Those symptoms do exist. I mean, people do struggle with concentration, but we haven't done a very good job overall. And actually, maybe it's not that, you know, I'll start again. We haven't found the candidate genes that have been suggested to exist to support the development of adhd. We talk about it as running in families. And so therefore, again, the sense that this is something, you know, my father has heart, and so therefore I will have heart disease, my father has adhd, then therefore I'll have adhd. So we have this sort of belief system in our society that these things are inevitable if we see them in our families. But we forget that so much of what happens in families has gotten a massive environmental component to it. And so the environment and those could be modeling, modeling. How do we deal with disorganization? How do we deal with just how to get started in the day? All of that gets modeled and we kind of under.

We. We. We don't give that as much credence as we do to the genetic story sometimes, I think. So it's not to say the genetics aren't real. Of course they are. I mean, our genetics do make, you know, they, they make proteins or they, they support making different chemicals that are important for, you know, the, the. The metabolic reactions, et cetera. So they are relevant. But what is remarkable is that we can turn them up and down. And the way that they can get turned up and down is by the environment. The environment plays a really important role. Smoking would be an example of something that can turn genes up and down or on and off. But another environmental component that I obviously am spending all my time talking about is the food environment. So the food environment is massive around turning those, you know, either having certain genes get Expressed or not expressed. So when we talk about adhd, for example, as being this thing that it's your destiny, if it's in your genes, then you're likely you're going to increase massively your risk of developing yourself. We need to kind of put that in the context of well, what mom eats during pregnancy influences, increases or decreases the risk that her child is going to have adhd. So that, and so if she eats a lot of western style foods that you know, the, the high in sugary drinks and high in your takeaways and your fine sugars in your grains and you're high in carbohydrates and those, not those, you know, some carbohydrates are fine, but those, you know, your, your baked goods and those, you know, things you get in plastic and packages in the supermarket and then low in fruits and vegetables, then the greater the risk that her child will have ADHD and if she eats a more whole food diet, then that decreases the risk. And this is after we control for all kinds of other things that we know increase and decrease risk of mental health issues like socioeconomic status and mother's educational status and smoking status, et cetera. So a whole bunch of other variables that we know can also influence the expression of adhd. So when we look at it that way, you kind of go, well actually this is something that's malleable that if we can change the food environment that that child is exposed to during in utero, that's going to influence the development of mental health problems. Again, not everything, it's not the whole story, but it's a significant part of the story that at the moment in society in 2022, we are virtually ignoring, and we're virtually ignoring it when it comes to the mental health space. So we're not, there's, there's now so much research on that food environment as being a, what I would call a mismatch for our brain's needs that we, we really should like. It's, I find it, it's devastating for me to continue to read about this research and see nothing happening publicly in our public health care system. You know, in Christchurch we have, I think it's something like maybe three full time equivalent dietitians for mental health. Wow. Yeah. So that tells you how, how little we, we value the importance of what you eat. And most of them are going to be artwork and eating disorders. So there, and that's where you need dietitians to make sure when the refeeding happens that it's done properly. With a good balance of different food groups. So they're not. Yeah, they're not.

A few years back, I sat down with Hector Matthews, who is the executive minister for Mallory and Pacific Health at the Canterbury District Health Board, and he just reiterated exactly what you said. And particularly he felt for those in the lower socioeconomic arena, when you go to the supermarket and you look around that supermarket and you look in the baskets, you're seeing lots of white bread, you're seeing lots of fizzy drinks, lots of chocolate and very little fruit. And then he says, when you look at the pricing, he's like, the fruit is so expensive, and yet all this other stuff that's fizzy and all this crap really is so cheap. And his feelings were like, wouldn't it be amazing if we could put this incredible friction for people and such? So we subsidize the vegetables, we get all the fruits subsidized, and we tax.

Exactly. I mean, that. Yeah. Or we start to have the conversation that that's not food. Because food is supposed to be nourishing and it's supposed to be about, you know, supporting life. Those foods don't support life. We have this and we have so much data we know from the physical health. And I don't think if you stop somebody on the street and you said, well, do you think the food environment is contributing to obesity? I really hope that most people would go, probably plays a role. Yeah. What do you think?

Hell, yes.

Yeah. So we recognize that these foods, these sugary drinks are all contributing to current physical health issues. So we can acknowledge that they have something to do with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular. But if you were to stop people and say, do you think it has anything to do with mental health? You might have people kind of go, oh, I don't know. I mean, I was taught that nutrition was irrelevant to the brain. I mean, that's a clinical psychologist. Right.

And that's all your psychologists all around the world learning that nutrition was irrelevant to sorting out mental health issues. So when you have an entire profession that is not. That has been educated that way, and then let's just be reminded that physicians are also taught that. That you haven't got a hope of really turning this around until you change the education of professionals, because that the mo they continue to kind of. Sometimes they might. Might say something about food. They might ask about coffee as being relevant perhaps to anxiety or alcohol. Might, but might come into a conversation. But asking patients about the food that. What they generally eat for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, how many Serves of fruits and vegetables, do they eat? That kind of conversation just doesn't happen. And there's a lot of reasons why I think that doesn't happen is that we have this kind of. Overall.

It'S not even a kiwi thing of yeah, everybody's eating a healthy diet. As long as you eat a healthy diet then you're fine. And in fact I'd say, well, no, because first of all, nobody knows what a healthy diet is because they're surrounded by this crap food that's in the supermarket. 69% of food sold in New Zealand would be identified as ultra processed products. So we are accustomed to seeing these foods believing that they're part of a healthy diet because why would we think any differently? It's surrounds us. If it was that bad for us, well then for sure we would, we just, it just wouldn't be sold to us, would it?

Yeah.

So is this sort of belief that dietitians have played a role in all of this? I don't know. But the healthy diet concept is, is. Is. I don't, is. Is talked about a lot, but we don't actually ask people what they're eating. And so there was a survey that was done in just. And published just earlier this year and it was a survey of primary and secondary students in Hawke's Bay or in the Napier area. And what they found was that not only were they not sort of meeting the, you know, just the daily quota of two fruits and three veg a day. And I think there were, it was less than 20% were reporting that, but 20% of them said no, no, they weren't eating any. So that, so then, yeah, they might be eating one or two, but some of them are just eating no fruit and vegetables. And, and for, for that to come from the area of New Zealand that is the biggest food producer of the most tastiest fruit and vegetables that are exported all over the world. You've got to think we are doing something wrong. How can it be? I mean, it just makes me so upset and angry to see those types of data and say we are surrounded by fruits and vegetables that are absolutely of the best standard produce and yet we think that it's better to export it out of the country rather than to make sure that we have enough for ourselves and for our children in particular. And that's what really is gutting to here, is that we just don't prioritize it. So if the government wanted to prioritize it, then they would, and that's the bottom line.

Is that problem, right?

It's absolutely a systemic problem. And so it is solvable. Everything is solvable. I always think, you know, oh, it's too hard. It's too hard to put gst, take GST off of fruits and vegetables and you kind of go, well, actually, you guys took the tax off of fuel within about two days when we had a fuel crisis, didn't we?

Yeah.

So it can't really be that hard. I mean, it must be possible. It can't, you know, but you always hear, oh, it's just too complicated, too complicated for our tax system. Well, no, actually you can do it when you, you're forced to or you hear, oh, it's just too difficult to sort of talk about the food environment. You kind of go, or even do something about. And you go, well, actually, labor got rid of guns within four weeks after the mass, the massacre in Christchurch. So I don't think things are too hard. If there is a will, then there is a way. And if there is this sort of that sort of that, the backing of communities, of governments, of everybody behind it, then it can change. But I just don't think people see it as being important enough to put that.

I would always say your actions reflect your priorities. And in this case it would say that the government's priorities are not our health and access for everybody to get access to good food.

That's right, exactly. They don't. It's because it could change. It could change within whatever. It's just whether I've spoken to so many politicians over the years and I've told them about this, the work that I've done and I've talked about the food environment and they just say it's, you know, it's just very difficult. And you don't understand how powerful these food industries are. And I'm like.

Gun seems like pretty much at the top of the, of the powerful industries. And from, from my lay perspective, so you did that. It's kind of, it is achievable. And I mean, we'd all benefit from it. So it's, I, I think we could, we could do it if we wanted to. So meanwhile, I think, though, meanwhile, we put it onto the individual and we place the blame on the individual of not having enough willpower to resist all of these things that we flood. So we flood them with these foods that we know aren't good for their health and then we say, okay, but you can stop eating them. It's up to you to stop eating them. And you kind of go, well, Actually, that seems like what a toxic environment. So we're going to just flood the environment with these toxic foods and, and then we're going to put it on the onus of the individual to sort it out. I guess I just think, why are we in this position? Why is it that my role at the moment is simply to try to educate one person at a time to just recognize that most of the foods that are sold in a supermarket are things that you just don't want to put in your mouth. How did that happen? How is it, why is it like.

A three year old sitting at the table and an adult coming up, the parent going, hey, here's a plate of marshmallows and here's some apples. Don't touch the marshmallows. Just don't touch them. It's like, well, of course you are. The way we're wired. The way we're biologically wired, neurologically wired. Of course we want the good experience of the marshmallow.

Exactly. And they feel good for a short period of time. So you get a good hit of endorphins or dopamine or whatever, so you feel a little bit of that immediate reinforcement. But long term you crash and everybody can talk about that. But it's just we, we, we know that those that immediate experiences are so, so powerful influencing our behavior. And so I, it, yeah, you, I mean we are putting all these things in front of people and then saying, but don't eat them. It's up to you to not eat them. It's not our fault that we put them in front of you. But we can, I mean all of that can be changed. All of that absolutely can be changed. But I think it takes more than the individual. It's just, to me, it just, it doesn't make sense that we, we think that it's okay to have a toxic environment. It's like, okay, okay. Instead of doing anything about air pollution, we just give everybody a bunch of gas masks so that you can go around and just, you know, protect yourself from, from the toxicity in your environment.

And what's interesting on that front is I don't think even IQ helps because often if I'm doing a corporate training with, you know, maybe a billion dollar company who has a lot of smart individuals in that company, and at the leadership level we come to afternoon tea.

Yes.

Or in the morning tea and it's chocolate slices and it's just sugary crap. And I'm like, where's the fruit? Where's the vegetables? Where's the Water.

Exactly. And that is something that I say to a lot of when I do speak to different organizations. I say, what's in your morning tea? Because that tells us how much you care about your employees. That is like, are you going to give them something that's nourishing for their brain or are you going to give them crap? And so. And that's the same with conferences that I go to. And just whether or not they give you the. You look at their morning tea and the morning tea is telling me everything about how much they care about me.

Yeah. Right. Now I want you to, like, check in on that. You know, is it the Dunkin Donuts that are coming at morning tea or is it an amazing vegetable platter with hummus?

Right. I'm actually offended when somebody takes out a, you know, a packet and just, you know, opens up the plastic and. And then offers that around. I find that offensive. If I were to. If I do morning tea, it. It's baked from scratch. It start, you know, it starts in my kitchen. So it. I would never, I would, I would just cringe at myself if I were in that situation, doing that, because I know so much about what it means and I know how, how food. We've lost touch of our food environment, of knowing how to cook. I mean, I think that's one of the big things that I've learned from doing what I do is that I recognize that people don't really know what to do in the kitchen. They don't know. And they also don't know about how to grow their own produce, how to grow fruits and vegetables. So one sort of thing that I've been doing now is around education. And it's not that I know because I'm an urban, like, inner city Toronto girl. You know, didn't. I mean, my mom, my parents were British. They immigrated to Canada. My mom did her best to try to grow those, you know, fruit and vegetables that would have been absolutely easy to grow in the uk and every year you'd get these tiny little crops of raspberries in Toronto because of the cold winters. So that was my observation of trying to grow produce in the backyard was. And the only thing that actually survived were gooseberries. And I can say that was my favorite as a kid. Gooseberry, Gooseberry jam, gooseberry pie.

So I am absolutely sympathetic and acknowledge that.

We have lost generations who have lost that ability to grow, to know where the food comes from. And also that I am of that generation where the time when all the ready meals were coming on board and all the things to make life simple for my mom, single mother feeding four kids and that saved her life. Right. So I'm not going to be critical of it because the food industry saw an opportunity to supposedly help people who are working full time and make their lives easier around how to cook a meal and make sure that you had something for your family that didn't take an enormous amount of time. So that convenience was stunningly useful to change the work environment. So I get why it happened and now we've kind of got to go. Yeah. And that experiment didn't work out very well for us, did it? So we need to be reconnecting with the land, we need to reconnect with the soil, we need to reconnect with the kitchen. So we need to relearn things that our ancestors knew. And so that, and that is, you know, and also I think for indigenous communities it's about reconnecting with what happened before the Europeans came. How, what were, what were mori eating in New Zealand before Europeans came along. Because that needs to, that has to happen too. And yeah, so. And we know that they've been that probably the biggest victims of all of this.

And I'll put my hand up and admit, you know, as a person who's busy and running a business, I have a young child and you know, a partner and life gets busy. Right. I've got into the habit where cooking at 5:30 or 6:00', clock, I'm like, I don't even know where to start. What's the quickest, easiest thing. And so in the last year or so I've been really fortunate. So Green Dinner Table, it's actually a Christchurch based company but they do are all over New Zealand. Green Dinner Table, what they do is on a Sunday a box arrives and in that box is hand selected fresh veg and all that kind of stuff. It's all plant based. But the great thing about it is they're like, okay James, Monday night, here's what you do, here's how you cut it, here's how you cook it. I just follow it and I love it because my mind is just fried. And so for a busy person, I think there are still options rather than excuses.

Exactly. And so, and Nadia Lim, I think was the one who started all the food. What was it she. Hers was. What did she call hers? Food. But it wasn't the food box, was it? I'm not sure, I don't want to misattribute it to her, but what a great concept because you're right. It is good food, it's healthy food, it's the types of foods that you should be eating. But what they, what those different companies are doing for you is taking away that, that.

That requirement to kind of know what to do when you get in at 5:30 when you're exhausted and you're depleted. So absolutely fantastic. Brilliant. And I'm very excited and encouraged about those kinds of initiatives. The downside of it, I suppose is that it's reaching your middle class, higher economic status families and not really, it's too, it's unaffordable for your lower socioeconomic status communities. So that's, that's, you know, we've got to figure out how to be able to make sure that we support everybody. And I suppose with some things like initiatives like that, I'm guessing they give away boxes to so lower socioeconomic status families for if you know that every time you purchase one you, you buy it for someone who may not be able to afford it. So assuming that that's within their model of how they are doing their business, then that's sort of a way that we can make sure that everybody gets access to it rather than just a select few. And that's what I'm always thinking of is just that, you know, the making sure that every, you know, every community, every member of our community is supported because you don't have a thriving community if you've got people who are not able to feed themselves. And that's gotta be part of the picture.

I think that's such a good opportunity and that's going to be a combined opportunity between private enterprise and government and local organizations. I think that there's such an opportunity to make a difference.

Exactly.

For the person who's busy and wants to try and get some nutrient dense foods into them, but they just don't have time. Do you have any supplements? Like New Zealand has so many different supplements and little powders you can mix in. Is that a way to get it in or do you think. No, we've got to actually, actually have proper food.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm very familiar with that whole side of the world because of what I do. So I don't know if you want me to tell your listeners what I actually do most of the time. Yeah, so. So as a clinical psychologist, when I was training and doing my PhD under Bonnie Kaplan, who I co wrote the Better Brain with, she got approached by some families from Southern Alberta, Canada who were using nutrients, vitamins and minerals in pill form to help treat Very serious psychiatric disorders like bipolar disorder, psychosis, depression. At the time she was, you know, she was like, just take your snake oil and go somewhere else. We would have solved this by now if you, if it was that simple. And. But they were pretty persistent and they shared data. I mean, they aren't scientists, but they kind of knew how to engage with the scientific community. And they showed her people getting well and staying well. So she did some preliminary trials and published those in the early part of the century, and showing people with bipolar disorder, not only that their symptoms going down with the use of vitamins and minerals, but also using lower doses of medications, which is always a good thing because you reduce the likelihood of side effects. So I was just finishing up going, what the is Bonnie doing with these vitamins and minerals? And of course, with that training that nutrition was irrelevant to the brain, I was definitely kind of skeptical about what was happening. But then I, I, you know, I told you earlier about how it wasn't long before I'd finished that I realized that we're not doing enough for helping people. I, I do these, I ask big, you know, I speak to lots really large audiences and I ask them to put up their hand. How many people know of somebody with a mental health issue, friend or family you use? Inevitably, I'm sure, you know, everybody puts their hand up. How many people here would say that they've been that that mental health problem has resolved with our current conventional treatments. And inevitably I see three or four hands go up in hundreds every single time. I have never seen like everybody put up their hand. And you just think this isn't good enough. At what point can we get some politicians seeing this? Because then it would really hit them going we are just more of the same is just not going to work. And that's kind of our. At the moment, what we're doing with mental health crisis is that we're training more psychologists and we're getting more frontline workers and we're doing all of, all of those things and making sure that we have enough sufficient number of people to meet that 20% of the population who are struggling with a mental health issue in any one given year. And you can crunch the numbers and realize that that's not achievable way of going to it. So sorry, I feel like I diverted on that in answering your question.

Where was in terms of those powders and those different nutrients that you add in to make sure that you're at your optimal.

Okay, sorry. I was telling you about why what I do that's it. So, so I, so I realized myself that we weren't doing enough. So I heard about this and I thought, why don't I study it? Why don't I do some clinical trials here in New Zealand and see if these vitamins and minerals that point I didn't know what they did. Like, I was honestly just absolutely naive to understanding what nutrition does to the brain. But I thought, no, I'm a scientist, I can do this. I'm part of the critic and conscience of society. This is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to challenge current conventional ways of thinking and see if there's other ways forward because otherwise we just don't move as a society. So we, I started doing clinical trials and lo and behold, we saw exactly what Bonnie had observed. And these people getting well and staying well, not everybody. This doesn't work for everybody. But definitely a high percentage of people were reporting feeling a lot better. So I've just kept doing these clinical trials over the last 15 years and we've done randomized controlled trials where we use placebos. And so you can be confident that these active ingredients are doing something to the brain. So that then led me to think about why is it that these extra nutrients are having such a powerful effect? Because as I said before, we have this mantra that as long as you eat a healthy diet, you're fine. And I would have dietitians saying to me, why are you giving supplements? People don't need supplements if they eat a healthy diet. So I was kind of like having to be forced to think about why is it that when everyone is eating this healthy diet that I keep being told about, that giving extra people nutrients makes such a powerful difference in their mental health. So that's, so that has led me down this route of what we've been talking about, which is our food environment. And then I'm recognizing that, well, half of the research shows that half of the calories that the population consumes comes from ultra processed products. So when you hear that statistic you go, I can't. We shouldn't be supplementing the world. We have to change the food environment. This is the low hanging fruit is that we've got to address the food environment. I can't supplement the world. That's not that, that shouldn't be. The, the, the outcome of my research is that we just say everybody should supplement to improve their mental health. We need to improve what we're eating. So that's the first thing. And, and that to me is the low that low hanging fruit around things that we, our communities can do. But I've also learned a lot about the soil environment and I've learned a lot that even if you're eating well, our foods are not as nourishing as they were 100 years ago. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. And I'll just name a few of those. One of them is that we select foods that grow quickly and they store well and they transport well and they look pretty. We're not selecting our foods based on how nourishing they are. So I don't know if you've ever eaten a peach from a supermarket and then you eat a peach from an organic farmer and the taste is so different and that taste is partially a reflection of how nourishing that food is. So, so that kind of difference in how it's grown can influence how nourishing it is. But even organic doesn't mean that the soil isn't depleted of nutrients. And so that can happen regardless of whether or not the food is grown in an organic farm or not. We use pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate on our, on our produce. We do that in New Zealand as well. Often they're used as desiccant. And that means that glyphosate is, does. I mean it's, it's not something I wish we could move away from using those products, but we've kind of gotten ourselves in the situation of well, you can't grow produce unless you use them. Although there's a lot of wonderful movements that are happening around regenerative agriculture and farming that can support farmers to grow produce without those products. But what glyphosate is, is it's a chelator. And so it just takes the nutrients out of the, either the plant or it's a mineral chelator in the soil. So that when you use a desiccant and if it rains then you end up with the glyphosate in the soil and that can, and that can then attach itself to the minerals that the plant needs. So you, you know, minerals, we don't can make minerals. We get minerals out of the soil and the plants bring it up through the roots and system and then they use the minerals to make vitamins. And then you either get those vitamins and minerals by eating the plants or you eat an animal that's eating those plants. And so that's the main way of us getting our vitamins and minerals. We make a few in our microbiome but for the most part you have to get out of your food. So if your food isn't nourishing then that means that you're not going to get a sufficient amount. You add in then the complexity of having mental health issues. Your nutritional needs are higher at that stage. If you're sick, your nutritional needs are higher. If your immune system is shot, your, your nutritional needs are higher. If you're stressed, your initial nutritional needs are higher. So there's if you've got what we might call inborn errors of metabolism. I was talking about these metabolic reactions that are happening all the time that are entirely dependent on the existence of vitamins and minerals through your diet. If you have inborn errors of metabolism, your needs are higher. So that just, just means that your, some of your metabolic reactions are a bit slug. More sluggish and slow and slow and so but you can correct that by just giving more, taking in more vitamins and minerals. So there's a whole host of individual environmental factors that can influence, I don't know if you wanted me to go down this far at all but that, that can influence how nourishing your food is. So that's where we get to the question around.

What do we do around supplements? Which was your, which was what you asked me. And so I think in some situations supplements are then required to try to up that nutritional intake because we're not necessarily going to get it out of our diet, even if it's a good diet. So there's some amazing products out there. Well, I think they, they look amazing. I mean these powders that you mix with water and you take those, I like the concept but, but they're not studied in the sense of randomized control trials and the way we think about a drug and making sure that it does work and it makes a difference to your well being or not. There's not a lot of that out there. There are some exceptions of some products in New Zealand that have been through that, that rigor but there's not the regulations.

For, for supplements is that they're regulated as foods, not medicines and they can't be medicines. So, and that's because the medicines are reserved for basically your drugs. And so they, they, you can't put a therapeutic purpose on a food. So you never even see, you know that oranges will prevent you from getting scurvy which is a therapeutic purpose. But you're not allowed, you know, the orange growers aren't allowed to do that because of the regulations that are exist in New Zealand. So There are a lot of things that are stopping us from knowing how good some of these things are and how good our food is because we're not even allowed, the companies aren't allowed to promote them that way. But that also means what's the benefit to them to prove that they have therapeutic value when they can't then put it on their label. So there, you know, if you have got listeners out there who are involved in regulations which is currently happening right now in the Ministry of Health, this is the kind of thing that, I mean, this is hard. I get this is hard because Big Pharma is so powerful. So I get how hard it is to open up the opportunity of therapeutic purpose, go beyond medicines and go into the supplement area. It is complicated, it's difficult. We've got the patent laws that are cause problems and make it, you know, that you can't patent vitamin C. So there's not a lot of incentive for companies to do the kind of work that could say, answer definitively is it going to help my well being? Am I going to be stronger, exercise better, all of those things if I take these supplements? Because the research is, is well, who's going to do it? Who's going to do that?

This great challenge, which is a huge challenge, requires great leadership and that's what we need. We need great leaders to step forward.

Exactly. And see the value of this. Because one of the things that I didn't answer very well earlier when you asked me how should we change the mental health environment and I talked about how it is right now and how bad it is right now, but what I didn't speak to was that really where we need to. And you said where should be the focus and the focus really should be on the prevention. So we need to stop people from ending up at the bottom of that cliff. So we need to be ensuring that people are resilient.

To the things that happen in life because stuff happens in life. We can't stop the earthquakes, we can't stop the shootings, we can't stop. Well, I mean, I think there are some things with the shootings we probably could stop, but we can't stop some of the, just the ongoing stressors that happen to all of us. You know, the pandemic. There's a lot of things that are in our environment that are really outside of our control. But what we can control is making sure that we're really resilient. And one of the things that isn't on the conversation right now is the food environment is contributing to resilience. And it absolutely can. And we've got research that, that I did after the Christchurch earthquakes where we showed that people who happen to be taking.

Vitamins and minerals just because of where they were in one of my research studies that those who were taking them before that earthquake recovered more quickly from the stress associated with that earthquake than people who happened to not be taking vitamins and minerals. So having a well nourished body and brain supported them in being able to overcome the stressors associated with those earthquakes relative to people who hadn't been taking the, who didn't have such a well nourished brain. So.

That research that I did around the time of the earthquakes to me really hit home around the importance of being resilient and nutritionally resilient. So you have the nutrients available to you when you need them to support the fight flight response because that's dependent on the vitamins and minerals. You need them to regulate your emotions, you need vitamins and minerals, you need them to regulate your sleep, your anxiety. All of these things that we know are mental part of the mental health arena. They are entirely, the regulation of all of those emotions is entirely dependent on an availability of nutrients. When you think about it that way, you go, goodness, we need to make sure that everyone is really well nourished so that they are more capable of dealing with the stressors that come their way.

In that case, supplements was useful. And in some situations if you're so stressed, then absolutely supplements has a place. But I just am always really hesitant about just saying take my research and go, okay, we should just supplement people. What I would like people to take away from it is that we need to make sure that we've got an adequate food environment available that's not a mismatch to our brain's needs. And then I think we would go a long way towards making us all more resilient.

That's so wonderful. And what I really love about that, my big, big takeaway so far is that if we have some mental health challenges, so say our dad, our granddad or aunties or uncles actually we can up regulate or downregulate our genetics through food, through nutrition.

Absolutely, yeah.

How exciting is that? Because that puts the control back.

Exactly. That's right. And we've known this since the, you know, we've known about the importance of the nutritional environment at least as far back as World War II where there were, there was research done on those, the moms who were exposed to famine during World War II and what happened to their Infants. And we know tons about what happened to those infants. But one of the things that we know is that increased the risk of schizophrenia in those kids. So this isn't new. This isn't. I wasn't born then, so I'm not saying something that's new. I just kind of feel like my role is to just keep putting, keep saying it, keep saying it until people really get irritated by me and maybe do something like it. I don't know. Well, actually, I don't know if being irritated, that just means they tune you out.

Your work is so vitally important. And the listener that's listening right now, they really are leaders in all different ways. They could be mums, dads, they could be leaders of companies, athletes. They really care about their brains. They know that their brain is one of their greatest assets. So I guess before we wrap up, another couple of questions is the whole idea of nootropics for our nootropics. So these brain.

Nootropics.

Yeah, sorry, my Irish accent gets me in trouble a lot.

Yeah, yeah, nootropics. Those company.

Certainly have a lot of time for those companies that are coming on board, I think of Nutrient Rescue. That's, you know, that's what a great concept. There's also another one, the, the greens, athletic greens. I've come, become familiar with their products over the last little bit of last few months, I think, and, and see again, you look at the package and you go, yeah, I see what they're doing here. They're taking real foods and they're, they're turning them into a form that you can then consume quickly and get, and get a lot of superfoods into you very quickly. So, but the issue is around the research and then. Or is it necessary, do you have to do the research to convince a bunch of CEOs to take those kinds of products? I don't have no idea.

For the listener that wants to grab your book, the Better Brain, what's the best place for them to get?

Oh, it's available everywhere. I mean, it is available in Christchurch at Scorpio and ubs and it's available. I've, I've, I do go into bookstores whenever I travel around New Zealand. And it's available in your main, all of your main. One paper plus what's the other one for international listeners? Can they also order Amazon? It's actually, it was, it was originally. It's a HarperCollins book that. So we have an American agent and an American publisher, and then that got sold to Penguin. The International rights were sold to Penguin Random House. So that's. It's sold in New Zealand through Penguin Random House, but it's actually originally an American publisher. So it's available everywhere. Yeah.

Fantastic. Well, I'll make sure in the show notes to get the links in there so that people can get the book ordered and get their hands on it.

Yeah. Thank you. Much appreciated.

I've got one last question to wrap up.

Yes.

So if we fast forward many, many, many years into the future.

Oh, no.

Yeah, we're going there. It's your last day.

My last day. Oh, on earth. Good grief.

On earth. And you have a very young person in your life. It could be a grandchild. It could be just someone that's close to your family. It's very young. And they say and ask you, hey, if I want to live my life on purpose, how do I lead a life of purpose?

A life of purpose. Wow. I think you need to find. I mean, for me.

Having found this area of research and it really did kind of fall on me, and in a way I feel like it did, but maybe it didn't. There was. I'm sure there were a whole bunch of variables there, but what I feel it's given me is that purpose. And it's because I'm so passionate about it. And being able to wake up and be able to talk about this work at 7:45 in the morning and be able to give you a level of energy, I hope. Talking about this work.

That fuels me. I mean that, like, I love talking about what I do and because I can see the value of it. And I know how many people we've been able to reach. I know that this message has gotten out to thousands and thousands of people all around the world. And so to be able to make that level of difference for many people.

Has been just as transforming for me as a researcher. And so that young person needs to find something that they're going to be really passionate about that they can, that will get them up every day, even when it's hard, even when people are challenging you left, right and center, or they ignore you, or worse.

They make up stories about you that you can keep going because it's something that you believe in.

So powerful. So, so powerful. And I'm very excited and I know that the listener right now is probably feeling a little bit like me. I'm very excited to upgrade my brain. I'm going to be getting the book and going through it and taking notes. I probably will come back to you with lots of questions. So I don't think this is the last time we'll talk. I think we'll have to get you on again in the future. I just want to say just a heartfelt thank you for the work that you do. It's very important work and I really appreciate your time and your wisdom.

Yeah, no, well, thank you for inviting me on. As you can tell, it's not hard to get me talking.

I love it. You have a wonderful day.

Okay, you too.

Hey guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.