Show Notes

• Patrick Holford website
• Institute for Optimal Nutrition Website
• Food for the Brain website 
• Food for the Brain Test
• Upgrade your Brain book
• Other Patrick Holford books
• Ortho Molecular News Service website

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 – Introduction and acknowledgment of the traditional custodians of the land.
• 00:02:14 – Introduction of guest Patrick Holford.
• 00:02:49 – Discussion on the global impact of neurological disorders.
• 00:06:52 – The normalization of neurodivergence and obesity.
• 00:07:24 – Genetics vs. lifestyle and environmental factors in brain health.
• 00:11:38 – Overview of eight components affecting cognitive function.
• 00:15:37 – The relationship between diet and cognitive decline.
• 00:21:26 – Importance of omega-3 fatty acids and diet for brain development.
• 00:27:16 – Discussion on the evolution of the human brain and dietary impacts.
• 00:35:03 – Importance of seafood and discussion on sustainable aquaculture.
• 00:43:02 – Benefits of omega-3 fatty acids on mood and mental health.
• 00:53:30 – The inefficacy of NHS policies on dementia prevention.
• 01:00:01 – Conclusion and encouragement to participate in Food for the Brain.
• 01:04:56 – Outro and final thoughts on personal health empowerment.

Patrick Holford: Defying Dementia – Four Keys to Prevention

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress, my name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. Now, before I start, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I’m recording this podcast the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. Well, today we are looking at food for the brain to say that mental health is a problem. To say that neurodegenerative diseases is a problem in the world is an understatement. Neurodegenerative diseases, of course, involve a whole range of issues through childhood, from ADHD to autism. And as we get older into dementia, Alzheimer’s. And, the statistics are rather sobering and affecting people at a ever younger age. And we are told, well, that’s genetic, you know, not much you can do about it. But don’t worry, modern medicine is there to catch you when you fall. Fortunately, rather, genetics don’t play quite the role you may have been told they do. In fact, you have a great deal more control. And that is an empowering message that I’m wanting to share with you today. My guest is Patrick Holford. Patrick is the founder of both the Institute for Optimal Nutrition and the food for Brain Foundation. He’s the author of 46 books translated in over 30 languages, including the Optimal Nutritional Nutrition Bible and his latest book, which we are really talking a lot about today is Upgrade Your Brain. He’s a retired visiting professor at the University of Teesside and is in the Ortho Molecular Medicine Hall of Fame. I’m also honoured to be on the same editorial board for the Ortho Molecular News Service, Medicine News Service, that I have had the honour and pleasure of interviewing many of those board members. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Patrick Holford. Welcome to the show, Patrick.

Patrick Holford [00:02:14] A pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:17] Patrick. I have, as I’ve mentioned, been on the board with you of the Ortho Molecular Medical News Service, but have been watching your food for the brain, initiative, and I’m absolutely so excited about it. Absolutely blown away by it. And I’m very keen to share that with, my listeners. We hear a lot about mental health problems and, and obviously that is centred on the brain and, and more specifically on the nervous system. How big a problem globally, how nervous system problems?

Patrick Holford [00:02:49] Well, there was a big global study in the Lancet Neurology journal just in April. And, it showed that brain disorders, neurological disorders, mental health disorders, that 43% of the world’s population, that’s 3.4 billion people right now have disability due to a brain or neurological disorder and the cost in the UK. And I’m sure it’s no different Australia of, neurological and brain disorders. We’re talking here from autism to Alzheimer’s is more than all of cancer and all of heart disease and some combined. So massive problem, massive cost, very much on the increase and a real concern.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:34] I mean we often hear, well, we’re getting older. You know, this is why we’re seeing so many problems. But, kids aren’t getting older either. And kids are very much part of this problem. I mean, we’ve done programs on ADHD, autism. So it’s it’s affecting young and old. It’s not.

Patrick Holford [00:03:52] Well, yeah. I mean, you know, we got a sort of whatever it is, a four fold increase in autism. And of course, some say it’s being diagnosed more, but, you know, it doesn’t explain the increase. I mean, here in the UK, the Children Society reported a tripling in referrals for mental health in children just in the last year. And the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies says that is a global mental health emergency. There is a global mental health emergency. So it doesn’t I mean, funnily enough, here in the UK, there have been five reports over the years looking at the scale of the problem and what it costs. And every single time the billions just goes up and up and up and up and up. So yeah, it’s we cannot pretend that there isn’t a mental health meltdown. IQ, according to the, Scandinavian studies, is falling about 7% a generation. We have every three seconds someone is diagnosed with dementia. And I think the really important point, to make is that Alzheimer’s, which is two thirds of dementia, is a disease of a central part of the brain. You do not need to get it is not the natural consequence of the ageing process in just the way that, you know, diabetes is a disease, you don’t have to get it. And what I find, you know, worst of all is with sort of normalising, these breakdowns. Both ends. You know, it’s like it’s almost sort of cool to be neurodivergent. You know, one end and dementia. It’s just what happens. We had a big campaign in the UK, which was to make, Britain dementia friendly. I want to make it dementia unfriendly. You know, I want to stop this disease that really doesn’t need to happen. You and I know many people are, fantastic teacher Doctor Hoffer, who died in his mid 90s. I mean, he was seeing patients up to the last two weeks of his life. He checked into hospital two days before his death. Having said, I’m not feeling very well, and, you know, his organs packed up and he died at peace with no pain and no drugs. Two weeks of work. So, I mean, the crazy thing is, it’s like the statistic in the EU is that the average woman is going to spend 14 years of their life unable to climb ten steps, and you go, shocker. I better keep my legs strong because that’s what it is. You know, in Japan, in Okinawa, we see these 100 and something year olds leaping around doing, you know, doing tai chi and exercises. So you think, you know, I better keep my legs strong. You don’t think it’s a disease? You don’t think that, you know, loss of muscle function is a disease, and the brain is exactly the same. We are the architects of our brains, future health and destiny. And we now know an awful lot about what keeps your brain healthy. And that’s the purpose of our charity. Food for the brain.org is to help people have healthy brains.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:52] Yes. It’s this normalisation of things like, like obesity that’s normal, a neurodiversity. That’s normal. We should accept that. And I and I find that, often doctors who know very little, if anything about, nutritional and environmental issues and when it comes to lifestyle, just kind of dismiss it and go, yeah, look, it’s a great idea, but no one’s going to do it. So here’s a prescription and the patient will be asked, why does this occur? And the answer is often, well, it’s just genetics. What’s your response to that.

Patrick Holford [00:07:24] Well yeah it’s it’s an excuse. It’s a bit like I mean that’s the reason why hypocrisy is the founder of medicine. Because up until hypocrisies they said, you know, if you’ve got asthma or allergies, whatever it is, it’s you’ve offended a god and you need to slaughter some chickens. So I sort of blame the gods and now we blame the genes. The reality in relation to Alzheimer’s is a very clear example is that less than 1%, about 1 in 150 cases of Alzheimer’s are actually caused by genes. We know what these genes are. They’re called Apple app and present Lin set that. So less than 1% is caused by genes. And by the way, if you’re unlucky enough to have those genes in your family, your family members will have got Alzheimer’s in their 50s or 60s in their 80s, 90s. So there is this very big confusion to say, oh, it’s in the family. Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s genetic. I mean, you probably eat the same food, have the same lifestyle habits and so on. So hereditary does not mean genetic. So this is very much a diet and lifestyle disease. So I mean, if less than 1% is in the genes, then it means the rest sickly, and 99% of people could possibly prevent this disease. And to make that sort of number of it more real, a whole. I mean, I have an amazing team of scientists from all over the world, from America to China. And actually, I mean, I this is my book upgrade brain. I’m not sure if it’s physically in Australia yet. You know, it takes a while to get there, but is there on Kindle and Audible? But what was amazing was I studied with all these genius scientists like Professor John Syou at Fudan University in China. He’s the absolute top. And Professor David Smith of Oxford University and, associate Professor Tommy Woodard at Washington. And Robert Lustig is our sugar daddy. You’ve probably heard of him. I have, and yes, you know, and many others. And and, it’s it’s putting all the, you know, the pieces together. But anyway, David Smith and Gentile, you were part of a group who got hold of the largest database of information, which is the UK Biobank and analysed it. You know, this is just pure mathematics and said that right now, if we targeted what we know from that, that set of questions asked in 2006, I was one of those people. We could prevent 73% of dementia right now. But, as I’m sure we will unpick probably one of the Sims, the biggest and most evidence based and causal aspects is to do with b-vitamins the raise something called homocysteine. And that was that’s in America at the National Institute of Health. They attributed 22% of the risk of Alzheimer’s to a raised blood level of homocysteine lowered by basement 22%. So you can almost add the 22% to the 73%. You start to realise, you know, 80 to 90%, of of what’s driving this disease is preventable in 99% of people. So genes really play such a small part.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:43] Yes. Well, you know, I’ve observed whether I’ve attended conferences on cognitive decline or cardiovascular disease or diabetes, there are common threads which run through them all. And perhaps how they manifest themselves has a genetic component. But but, the ultimate, cause is really nutrition and environmental issues. I know in your, side food for the brain. And we’ll talk about the cognitive function tests that you’ve been doing and have done on over almost 500,000 people. Incredible. Talk about, a biobank. But you talk about eight different components of, of of this. I wonder if we might touch on. Well, I mean, I know we’re going to touch on four of them, and the others, we, we will touch on as well. But let’s, let’s talk about those eight components and, and what people can be or should be focussed on.

Patrick Holford [00:11:38] Well, yeah. And just to sort of give those a context, I’ll tell you a story. You may not remember a guy called Fridtjof Casper, a brilliant physicist, and he wrote a book called The Dao of Physics back in the 70s. And, yeah, systems based thinker. And I was lucky when he was writing the seminal book. He’s from Berkeley, California. I was playing tennis with him. I was like 14. And, he said to me, Patrick, he was always challenging, you know, we questions. He says, what’s the difference between you, an animal object and an inanimate object, like a bicycle? And, you know, he said both have parts. The parts relate, you know, like the wheel to the chain and the handlebars and so on. But the difference in an animal object is there’s this life flowing through it. So when you understand that there is the structure of the brain, I mean, a simple example of that is when you take the water out, 60% of the brain is fat. And we’ll talk about omega three DHEA in those very important fats. So there’s the structure of the brain. If you don’t have the right building materials you can’t have a healthy brain. Then there’s the function of it, which in a sense is fuel. And, you know, we’ll talk about sugar and its detrimental effects. Ketones really interesting, derive from fats. And then whenever you make the energy, you have, antioxidants, or you need antioxidants to put out the exhaust fumes. So already we’ve got b-vitamins. I’m not running through the eight. We got b-vitamins, which is to do with homocysteine, B12, folate, B6, the most important. We then got brain fats. I mentioned omega three, but it’s also vitamin D and something called phospholipids, very rich in eggs and fish. And then we got antioxidants. So we’ve mentioned that sugar or we call it low carb and. Always stands for glycemic load. And by the way, hidden in things like antioxidants is also oxidants, like smoking and toxins. And then we have, healthy gut and gut includes the gums. You know, it’s from it’s all the way. So dental health is really, really important. And that’s part of that. And then and then we come on to the sort of utilisation which is active mind, active body, good social life, good physical, you know, social intellectual activity. And then also what the brain has to do is to recover and sleep is recovery. So sleep is vital. So the last of the eight is called sleep and calm, which is really about stress and reducing it. And sleep, you know, having enough of it. And that’s how we’ve organised this information. And it’s very easy because, you know, when you do the test as you have, which actually measures your cognitive function. And I’d love to tell you about how we develop that and where that comes from. Then you do a questionnaire which works at your risk and the school, the dementia risk index. But the essence is if you’re doing everything wrong, you will score 100% on your future risk. And if you’re doing everything right, you score 0%. And every single question is something that you can change. Now you and I know actually all these other diseases diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc., largely driven by those eight factors. So that’s kind of like the the side effects. You know, you do this thing to to make sure you never get dementia and to improve your mental health. And you find, you know, you’re losing weight and you diabetes gets better and your blood pressure comes down and all the rest of it. So, not surprisingly, you know, we are human beings. Our body obeys fundamental laws. And, we’ve far ignored the most fundamental thing, which is that you are literally made from what you eat because it’s there’s no way, you know, that’s how it is from the, you know, shocker. Yes, yes. Change what.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:37] You eat. So it’s so interesting too, that we’ve done lots of programs on on low carb approach to health. And, and I’ve interviewed so many doctors who up until their own diagnosis, yes, had spent their entire professional career telling their patients that type two diabetes was irreversible. Yeah, they would need to be on medication. And then they had an epiphany. Maybe there was an alternative. And there is. And when they followed that alternative, they reversed what previously had been irreversible. I mean, this is such a common story in healthcare today, isn’t it?

Patrick Holford [00:16:16] Well, it is, and I mean, I’m really excited about the origin of where we went really wrong and actually goes back to Darwin because Darwin was super bright and he, you know, he observed life and he said that there are two drivers of evolution and one is what he called the conditions of existence, and the other was natural selection. Now, I was in London last week watching a fox in the garden, having a very nice time. I’m now in the country where we have badgers. Now Badgers are not in London. So in other words, when the conditions of existence change, urbanisation the fox through natural selection, you know, they can really work in the cities. So the point is, natural selection does not happen until the conditions of existence change. And then literally every single thing that Darwin wrote, he said conditions of existence is the most important. And what happened historically is the aristocrats, the imperialists. They loved the idea of natural selection, that they were part of the bloodline, you know, the royals or whatever it happened to be. Hitler went, you know, crazy for it with the Aryan race. The whites loved it because they could claim, you know, superior over the blacks and all the rest of it. And then genes kick in. And that just reinforces this whole idea of sort of natural selection that you’ve got good genes or bad genes. Ironically, we actually have less genes in the grain of rice. I mean, you know, it’s not quite how you think. And this whole idea of, of, the conditions of existence was written out in what’s called neo Darwinism, literally written now. And what you and I do, which we call ortho molecular medicine, the right molecules, or Jeff Bland, my friend, who was also studying with Linus Pauling, he called it functional medicine. I called it optimum nutrition just because I thought the molecular was a big mouthful. But it’s all the same thing. It’s changing the conditions of existence, and that’s. And. And I was recently told by the genius Michael Crawford, Professor Michael Crawford, who actually discovered omega three in the brain. Two sort of astonishing things. I mean, he always asked the question of how did we become human? That’s why you got to start. Because we basically split from the chimps and the gorillas and the bonobos six and a half a million years ago. Their brain size as to exactly the same. And as grow, up to from literally three 50g all the way up to 1700 grams, at about 20, 30,000 years ago. And it wasn’t genes because we’re like 1% difference in our genes. So had to be the conditions of existence. And it it actually had to be we had to be the water side that we had to we became upright wading in water. We were eating very high marine food diet not just to make a three, but also phospholipids, B-12, minerals, selenium, zinc, iodine. You know, it had to be these conditions that would allow the brain to develop. And actually our brain size has shrunk by 20%, because of the conditions of existence. And the last part of this extraordinary story. And by the way, just to sort of, you know, put a clincher on that, it was, David Attenborough who said, I have, you know, when the human baby is born, there’s this waxy, waterproof, Wernicke’s. The, you know, that you wash up. You said. I’ve never seen that on the Lambaste memo. Never, ever. It does not exist. He said he said on television. I wonder if it exists in the marine mammals and marine biologists in, in Connect Canada picked up on that. And sure enough, the marine mammals have exactly this Wernicke’s. And then the last part of this story, which kind of puts it together, is, in 1901, if you wanted to, join the Army and fight in the Boer War, you had to be five foot. And, I’m sure you’ve, you know, come to England and sometimes state in some old 18th century cottage. Do you think they were really small and men were actually five foot and we hadn’t discovered protein. And it was the industrial age diet where they’ve learned to refine flour so you could store it so it no longer could feed the life of an insect. And we’ve learned how to refine sugar, but we hadn’t discovered protein. And, and in the early 1900s, when protein was discovered in go to work on an egg and the Good British Breakfast and so on. I mean, basically, within 50 years, men have gone from 5 foot to 6 foot. That is how fast a change in the conditions of existence occurs. And right now we have exactly the reverse happening. We have so many kids who it may not be the same in Australia, I don’t know, but who never eat fish?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:24] No, I think that’s very, very true here. You know.

Patrick Holford [00:21:26] Don’t supplement omega three and you literally cannot build a brain without the building materials. And and that’s where we went wrong. Conditions of existence. Nutrition should be on the top of the health agenda.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:40] Now Patrick, it’s so interesting to hear you reference brain size. And and it is interesting and sobering to know that our brain size has reduced in the last few thousand years. But something did change. And you’ve alluded to it and I’ve asked I’ve had also various programs on vegan with vegans. And the thing that and the question I ask vegans is this we split off from the chimps, 6 million years ago with the brain size, as you point out of 350 or whatever, CC’s. And then we got to the point where we were today, or we were 10,000 years ago, 1700. How did that happen? And was vegan Dodd included in that process? What what’s your response?

Patrick Holford [00:22:30] Well, I mean, the the thing that is, you know, with the extraordinary research which was done in the 70s by Professor Michael Crawford, he wanted to see what kind of fats or fatty acids there were in animals and their organs. So he looked at many, many, many species of animal and the liver, the lung, the heart, the brain, and so on. And as you probably imagine, the types of fatty acids varied enormously depending on what they were. They lived. So liver fatty acids are all over the place, but every single brain of every single animal, from a mouse to hippopotamus to a lion to a tiger to a, you know, elephant, to a dolphin, to a human, to a whale, without exception, has two fatty acids, two fats, one. And it’s the most predominant is omega three DHEA, which is a marine fat and the other is actually a plant fats and omega six, plant derived fat, which is called arachidonic acid. And what that actually suggests is that we couldn’t have developed our brain without a diet that was both rich in marine food and rich in plant food. We had to have both. And and that’s kind of, you know, where it’s at. And the problem with, you know, a vegan diet. I wrote a book called Optimum Nutrition for vegans. You can be a healthy vegan, but you got to supplement and people don’t realise. There have been 12 infant deaths now. Vegan infant deaths. So B12 is, you know, sacrosanct. It’s only in animal food. It’s not in vegetable food if it’s in you know, sometimes there are claims that it’s in leaner or something, but it’s always as a contaminant, from bacteria or something. So you need to eat something living to get B12 and then, and then of course omega three DHEA, there’s, there’s a big problem at the moment that, I mean, you know, you’ve been around for a while and things go through fans. And right now the fad is that omega six is bad, all of Mega six is bad, and the omega three is good. And everyone talks about the omega three six ratio. But actually. You start on the omega three side with alpha linolenic acid. Ala alpha linolenic acid. It’s generally rich in leaves, generally rich in cold climate leaves, so a winter cabbage, kale, would be richer. It’s happens to also be rich in colder climate. Nuts like walnuts and chia and flax. And it is good for you in and of itself. But very, very little of that, will turn into omega three. I mean, probably three, 4%. Very, very little. So again, we have this problem is a bit like saying B vitamins when actually each individual vitamin does something. So the other sort of myth in a sense is I can get my omega three by eating chia seeds, which I love and I have for breakfast. But you will not get omega three vhi. So a vegan either. Has to supplement a vegan omega three DHEA. And what’s happening there is there are certain algae. Which, fixed and these have been grown commercially in giant vats to produce vegan DHEA so you can buy in the health food shop. Vegan omega three. Just as good. It’s exactly the same thing, but you cannot eat anything vegan. That will really give you DHEA. And the point is that, you know, one of the tests we run, the omega three index of pinprick blood test, which is the percentage of red blood cells that is EPA and DHA. EPA turns into DHEA that the two most powerful in fish actually tells you how much brain you’ve got, the density of your brain. So I mean, Michael Crawford, who’s, by the way, just about to turn 94, and he works at the Chelsea Westminster Hospital. He’s the director of the Institute of, of Brain Chemistry. And they can predict from a blood sample from a woman recently pregnant whether that woman is going to have a child with neurodevelopmental problems. It’s it’s that serious. You cannot build a brain without omega three.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:16] But listen, I a part of and now we’re going to dive into these four things. But but one of the things and having listened to you and gone on and done the cognitive function test, which we will have links to in our show notes, I’d encourage everybody to do that test. You don’t put a lot of emphasis on meat and, and, and I mean, we’ve done a lot of programs on the difference between factory farmed meat, which I find unconscionable and, and pasture raised, meat. And I know the work of, Western. I price who I’m sure you’re very familiar with, talked about about that kind of nutrient dense foods, you know, and, and in traditional cultures, organ meats were very greatly prized. We we focus a lot on muscle meats. What place to, ethically raised, pasture fed and finished meats and their, internal organs have to play in this form in this process?

Patrick Holford [00:28:17] Well, there’s a couple of ways of looking at this. I mean, basically, if an animal’s energy goes towards size, they will have a small brain. And an example of that is the hippopotamus. It makes a ton of muscle mass just from eating grass. You know, which is 7% protein. There’s not a lot of protein, but but all its energy goes towards size. And it has a brain about the size of a pea. So, you know, that’s just something to consider. Now of course, an animal will contain to some extent what it eats. And you’re quite right. You know, the organs are very rich in phospholipids and so on. And what happens if you look at the food chain is that. I mean, a cat, for example, has outsourced this, this conversion from alpha linolenic acid down to DHEA. And, in order to have more DHEA, which takes time and it takes energy. So a cat has basically outsourced the first step to, herbivores. So cats eat rabbits. Rabbits have done half the work. And that’s how the cat ends up with more DHEA in the eye and can see better, which gives them their hunting, you know, imperative. Now, lions cannot convert, for the analytic acids through to DHEA. They cannot do it. It’s is not possible. So they that carnivore has got to eat a herbivore. Who’s done a chunk of the work? Now, the thing is, I hear you know, and I know Aussies love meat, so, you know, it’s kind of a hot spot. But I’ve been on lots of these debates last year at medical conferences. It was always debates about, you know, plant or meat carnivorous. I met all these carnivores and I said, why carnivore? Why not be a passive or a fish? You know, I mean, the point the point is, if you think about evolution, there was a time when the population was tiny and the coasts and the estuaries and the rivers were packed with mussels and cockles and shellfish and the rock pools and the tides would catch little fish. I mean, it’s really easy food. I mean, people didn’t realise that, like, New York was the whole of, you know, what is now the metropolitan area of New York was the oyster beds in London in the 1990s. You got free oysters in the pub in the East End. You had to pay for your beer. We got free oysters. So this is easy. So even to I mean, I happened to spend time in Kenya and, so I run safaris and, you know, we know that it’s hard. I mean, number one, you never stand up. You know, all the animals that good hunters crawl, and then they sprint. So they they’re four legged, they crawl, and they spread them with two legged. And we can’t run very fast. So it’s hard work to catch an animal, but it’s very easy to have this thing. So I remember I was on this debate with this, used to be a surgeon in the American army who needs me. That’s all he does. And, you know, and I said, why are there no big brained animals, you know, carnivorous animals? Because even a tiger and a lion and a leopard, they have small brains. I mean, they’re under 400g of one, you see. And he said, well, what about a whale or a dolphin? I said, that’s my point. That’s my point. You know, they it’s only the marine mammals who actually have a big brain. And I’ll tell you something that people don’t realise, which is that a dolphin, which is the last mammal to fully commit to the sea, has every single bone we have in our hands and arms, in its flippers and in foetal evolution. It’s got legs and arms and all that stuff. And so and and he was a freaky thing because, I was talking to a lovely man. You probably know, Doctor Joe Giblin. He was in charge of the US Navy. His health. He’s a brilliant psychiatrist. And I said to him, how much omega three do you give to your depressed patients? Because it’s really good for depression. And he said four grams, which is like four capsules. And I said, how does that work? He said, really well. And, they report a real sense of contentment. And the women report, that is sex. It seems to make their orgasms better. And I thought that was really interesting because what was it that made the dolphin fully commit to the ocean? And it must have been something to do with the diet and the brain. And they probably happier and having better sex. And I thought, right, I’m out of here. And then one of the freaky things which if you think about it is, now you’ve got whales and dolphins who are permanent building. And they say, by the way, a dolphin appears to have a bigger brain than us, but it actually doubles up. It’s going to go two brains because, your brain has to recover with sleep. And if a dolphin only had one brain, it went to sleep, would drown. So it’s got one brain this which is on and the other one’s which is off. But, one of the things is so. Now they’re in the sea all the time. Has that balance of omega three D and the omega six changed. Now that they’re fully in the ocean and the answer is no, it hasn’t changed at all in whales or dolphins. And what we start to realise is they’re migratory routes from cold waters to hot waters. Getting into those hot waters, where the algae have got the omega six fats that builds this, you know, arachidonic acid, omega six, and then back to the cold waters. So, you know, when you realise it’s below, you know, Morse code or computers are programmed in ones and zeros. Brains have to have omega three DHEA and omega six arachidonic acid. And you know, when you start to put that logic together, it becomes so important that we eat the right food. So I mean, you can do it. You know, you can do it. You can do it. But it’s it’s harder. You won’t get the density of nutrients that you’re going to get in marine foods. I’m not saying never eat meat. And if you do eat the organs, that’s what animals do. So a carnivorous animals can eat the organs first. Eat the brain. Yeah. You know where I live in Kenya. You know, if we catch a fish. My guys who run the house, they want the head. You know, it’s one eye each. You know, the eyes are packed with DHEA.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:03] Yeah. And we are so preoccupied with muscle meat, the bait fish or animals. It’s interesting because, to your point about abundance. Well, firstly, when I hear someone talk about. I’m a carnivore, this is kind of a first world indulgence. Which. And an upper class first world indulgence, which I don’t think is sustainable across the population. When I look at seafood, I read the book on cod and I in the history of cod. And I know that between England and North America, you could practically just reach down in the water and pick out a cod. You didn’t have to go fishing, you know, they were that abundant. But that raises two issues, which I do have, and I don’t doubt that seafood is good for you. I don’t doubt that at all. But it raises two issues with seafood that I always, I’m aware of. One is sustainability. We have raped and pillaged the sea of 90% of its life. And the other one is toxicity, which I’ve always thought was just an issue of heavy metals. And, and I’ve always, gone towards the smaller fish. But now with the ubiquity ubiquitous, presence of microplastics. How do we respond to that sustainability and toxic toxicity?

Patrick Holford [00:36:25] When Michael Crawford, Professor Michael Gove was invited to Japan, and I want to say, if every disease that exists as a country that doesn’t have. So, right, so Japan has a very low rates of dementia. Why? So anyway, when he was invited there, the government had him lecture in every major university. They broadcast the lecture on national television to the entire Japanese population. And at the end of his tour, they called him to the ministry to tell his story again, and at the end of which the health minister said. We must. Agricultural lies. The ocean. And what they have done is pure conditions of existence. They’ve taken areas between islands in Japan. They’ve stopped all trawling because as you say, we’ve just been hunter gatherer in the ocean, just grabbing as many fish as possible. So they’ve stopped all trawling. They’ve planted seagrasses and seaweeds. They’ve studied the, the fish, the keystone species of fish, one of them, for example, ice tubes. They’ve created artificial reefs that create the conditions of existence for the fish to come back, and the mussels on the crabs and the snappers and in, in no time at all. I mean, literally within a couple of years they had increased, you know, seafood production massively, but in an intelligent way that regenerates the marine food web. Now we’ve got tons of coast, you know, and in Great Britain we’ve got islands and all sorts of stuff. And, you know, the idea of sticking salmon in a cage and then stretching it out and crowding it out and then having them antibiotics is that’s just prehistoric thinking. So the conditions of existence, you can recreate the marine food web. Now when you start to think like this, you also realise we cannot be putting plastics and sewage and heavy metals and things into the ocean. The ocean is really important. And the truth is, we have very little land upon which we can grow, you know, grow food. We’ve got a lot of ocean. And, what’s amazing is if you I mean, they’re doing this now in a month, they completely regenerated their coast in the same way of thinking. You end up with lots of you capture carbon. You get tons of kelp. And you can use that. Kelp is, fertiliser on the land. It brings the minerals from the ocean onto the land. So you regenerate soil and you start growing better vegetables, and it’s completely sustainable. And the thing is on the I mean, I, I’m obviously, you know, concerned as well about things like plastics. I was looking recently at a report on macro and it wasn’t in the flesh, you know, it’s in the liver, it’s in the kidneys, but it’s not in the flesh. So I was pleased about that because I would prefer to have a wild fish. So something like, I mean, we say smashed salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, herring. Kipper, you may have different fish in Australia. I’m not sure, but they.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:39] All sound very familiar.

Patrick Holford [00:39:40] You know, the ones that you can’t farm, you know, is part of it. And then the Mercury thing. I mean, I know you’re a dentist, so my family go all the way back to barbers in a long line of dentists, and I didn’t have a filling.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:55] I, you know, I’m impressive for a 60 plus year old. That’s actually.

Patrick Holford [00:40:00] Yeah. My, my dad, you know, he said, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s really good for your teeth, you know? And but the thing is, you probably know this, that, you know, most of the mercury in the ocean actually comes from fishes in the ocean floor. In other words, volcanoes, you know, on ocean, oceanic volcanoes, you know, that’s where you get mercury. So there is mercury in the sea, there’s no question. And the larger the fish, the more mercury. Also the more selenium. And selenium binds to mercury and makes it less toxic. And in every study that I’ve seen, it’s it’s it’s not such a big problem. Now, I tend to be perhaps like you, I sort of say salmon or smaller. And I noticed because in Kenya we have yellowfin tuna, which is much smaller than the bluefin, and it has virtually no mercury in. So an older, larger fish will accumulate mercury. But I think you have to be really eating a lot. And if you’re getting good nutrition and good methylation, which is the B vitamins B12 in K, you know, this is how the body detoxifies. So I think, you know, it’s generally when you go towards Whole Foods and it could be marine food and so on, the system in a balances it out. And I must admit, in the, in the crazy days of Covid, one of the best comments I saw on one of my posts, someone said, shame there isn’t a vaccine against stupidity. And I replied, the queue would be too long and and you know, it’s just so stupid to be doing what we’re doing with plastic and do what we’re doing with the ocean, because I don’t I think that the problems that we have can be solved, but they’re actually solved by intelligence. And that is why, I don’t know if there was a Netflix thing called Seaspiracy where the idea was we all totally shun any seafood to put pressure on these terrible major trawling companies that just ripping all the you know, but but our our IQ will go down and down. So there are ways to solve the sustainability and the pollution and all that. And we just need we need to encourage in that direction and be a bit smarter really.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:21] Well I’m really I was really I heard you talk about this Japanese model and I was so excited to hear that, it’s almost like the regenerative agriculture. Yeah. So of, of seafood of, of aquaculture, which is great. And I’m also really pleased to hear you say that, most of the Mercury’s in the liver and the kidneys. That that is also encouraging. The other thing, well, you’ve kind of touched on the brain fats as being, important. I know that. I also thought that was interesting. Omega three improves depression and anxiety, but also orgasms in in women.

Patrick Holford [00:43:02] It’s good. Less. It’s very good. More and better orgasms.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:06] Yes. And it’s effect. And I heard you talk about the effect of that and Colin, which a lot of people don’t hear about, on kids and pregnant women. Could you just share that with us?

Patrick Holford [00:43:18] Yeah. So, just to explain that the membrane of your brain cells is made of a zigzagging thing, which is DHEA, mega three, and, a little bit of cholesterol in that it keeps the thing in place. And that is, by the way, if you drive your cholesterol too low, it increases risk of dementia. So cholesterol is a nutrient for the brain. It’s a nutrient.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:42] We’ve we’ve done quite a few programs on that. But that that’s a whole other story.

Patrick Holford [00:43:47] So that’s exactly DHEA attaches to a thing called phospholipid. And one of the most important is gold phosphate tidal coli. And it’s very rich in eggs, and it’s rich in organ meats, and it’s rich in seafood, tiny bit in broccoli and almonds if you’re vegan and. It really should be classified as an essential nutrient, because if you feed pregnant women supplements of colour, you can measure from the age of four months. Faster speed of processing information, better memory. So really, in a sense, you need the omega three. You can think of that like the timber, and you need the phospholipids, like the colon. And you think of that like the nails. But those two are put together, by a process which is called methylation, which is dependent on b-vitamins. So that’s the hammer. Now, the b-vitamins is the hammer that attaches the nail, which is the phospholipids to the DHEA. And if you lack any one of those pieces, you cannot have a healthy brain.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:56] Hmhm another one that you that we’ve done a program and we had William Grant on talking about vitamin D, but just, you know, in its infinite wisdom, the Australian government has decided to save money by stopping testing of vitamin D in blood tests. You know, people have to pay for it themselves. Yeah. Just quickly give us, you know what the vitamin D story and what people should be looking at and how they can.

Patrick Holford [00:45:25] Yeah. Well, I mean, the vitamin D story is if you have a low level of vitamin D, then you have 19 times more risk of cognitive decline. If you have a high level, you’ve got five times less risk of Alzheimer’s. And if you supplement vitamin D, you’ve cut your risk by a third. That’s what studies show. So it’s it’s, something that is well worth spending 50 bucks on or whatever it is to know your level. I’m not sure in Australia if it’s the US or the American figures.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:56] It’s the minimal. I think it’s the likely. It’s the minimal.

Patrick Holford [00:46:01] So I think we can say certainly above 75, probably 100. But in that zone of vitamin D is just that alone is going to reduce your risk. I actually have struggled with vitamin D because I don’t. Fully know how it’s working in the brain. It affects. You know, it’s very multifactorial effects, all sorts of genetic expressions and all the rest of it. But it’s not building material like the phospholipids and the Amigas and the B-vitamins. But it definitely, you know, the evidence is really good. So I want that. And what happens and I mean, actually, you know, if you read through the book, what happens is you go, oh, if I do that, I’ll have my risk and I do that, I’ll have my risk. And if I do that, I’ll. And you soon realise that you know that you have no risk. But I’ll tell, you know, the thing I really want to just sort of emphasise, because it’s the B-vitamins story. I really want to I really want to go there and. Yeah, for a couple of reasons and a little bit of history here. So, Professor David Smith, who was the second in charge of the Oxford Medical School, who pretty much made the pharmacology department one of the best in the world. And his team had found what Alzheimer’s was in terms of the shrinkage of a central part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe or the hippocampus. And they had developed the test that measures that. So today, if you, if you do a cognitive function test, if you’re sent to a memory clinic, if things are going wrong, the centre of memory, like they will run a cognitive function test. And if you don’t do well, it’s called pre dementia or mild cognitive impairment. And if you really don’t do well school dementia they cannot diagnose Alzheimer’s with a cognitive function test. You then have to have a brain scan. Which looks at the central error of the brain, which is where the shrinkage begins. And that was developed by David Smith’s team at Oxford, who found a high level of a toxic amino acid called homocysteine in the brain. Then, this is one of the, you know, world class top scientists devised a randomised, placebo controlled, double blind trial with people with dementia half given B12, B6, folate, half given placebo. The B12 was 500 micrograms. The RDA, which stands for the ridiculous dietary arbitrary, is 2.5 micrograms. So we’re looking at 200 times the RDA. That’s what you need if you’ve got a raised homocysteine. And they got 53% less shrinkage, of the total brain, which is amazing in a year. And the higher the homocysteine was to start with, the greater was the rate of brain shrinkage, nine times less shrinkage in the Alzheimer’s areas of the brain. And you know that that was astonishing. And at that time, this was 2010. I was with Professor David Smith and, when he broke the code in the study to find out the results, you know, I said, now what? And he said, well, I hope within five years it will be standard NHS policy. Standard health policy. And I said, what would the policy be? He said, well, you’ve got to test everyone’s cognitive function from the age of 50 because you can start to see changes 40 years before a diagnosis. If not good, measure the homocysteine. If above 10 or 11, give the B vitamins. They cost nothing in the scheme of things. So I didn’t believe it would happen like that because I’ve been around for a long time and I know that, you know, it’s about drugs. Really? It’s the truth. And so I said, okay, I got permission with this help to digitise, to make a digital version of the cognitive function test and make it freely available to people. And as you say, we’re sort of cruising, hopefully by the end of this year towards having tested half a million people. And that is a validated test. It’s the same that’s done in the memory time. Now, the next piece of this story was a few years later. They thought, you know, what about a mega strike? We didn’t give a mega three in our study, but we’ve got the blood sample, so let’s, let’s, you know, let’s measure omega three in the blood samples of the people in the study and split them into the third, who have the lowest omega three in their blood and the third who have the highest. And what they found was the b-vitamins didn’t work at all in those with low omega three, but in those with higher omega three or the top third still may not be optimal, but we’ll we’ll call it sufficient. It didn’t have 53% less shrinkage. They had 73% less shrinkage, which brought the shrinkage down to the normal shrinkage. You see in people who do not develop any cognitive growth. So in other words, you’ve solved you can tick the box and say the brain shrinkage, which is the diagnostic right here. Got 30% of people also had no clinical dementia racing at all. In other words, no doctor could diagnose them anymore with any level of dementia. And to contextualise this, these drugs that they’ve been, you know, trying to push and get licenses for recently with crazy headlines, the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for whatever the last one and an enema, it actually increased the rate of brain shrinkage by 20% compared to placebo. So we’re talking about reducing the rate of brain shrinkage by 73% versus increasing by 20%. And so we learned here spent like, you know, you need the hammer and you need the wood and you need the nail. You can’t you know, and that’s a very important discovery because then what happened? I won’t run through all the studies, but studies giving a mega three that failed went back and looked at the homocysteine level, which is the measure of B vitamins, and they found the same thing. You know, if a person was sufficient and B vitamins, the Omegas were B vitamins, studies which had had modest effects. They went back and looked at omega three level. And this has happened now in China, in Holland, in, Sweden. And every study when they’ve gone. Now I know B vitamins don’t work without omegas, megas don’t work without B vitamins. And what that means is that we’ve vastly underestimated the effects of these because we didn’t realise they’re co-dependent. You got to have the hammer, the nail and the wood, you know, to build your brain. And that is probably 40% of the whole risk for Alzheimer’s. Just B vitamins and omegas. And of course, if you eat seafood you’re getting the phospholipids anyway.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:14] That’s okay. And you know I mean g you mentioned you you you with David Smith in 2010 and your hope was that in five years the NHS this would be common knowledge. Here we are almost 15 years later. Is that a standard part of the NHS.

Patrick Holford [00:53:30] Nothing change.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:31] We we laugh, we laugh.

Patrick Holford [00:53:33] Well, the thing is, I think that’s sort of, you know, kind of be positive about this in a sense. So. And David Smith’s a wonderful example. I mean, him and Professor Linus Pauling, you know, was help me start Institute of Transition, 48 PhDs, two Nobel Prizes. You know, these these are the best scientists I know. David Smith has published hundreds of papers. We’re looking at brain scans you cannot ignore. Nothing he has done has been criticised in the science is impeccable. And, you know, now he’s he’s in his sort of late 80s, probably feeling rather despondent. Because the reason why humanitarian, bright, intelligent scientist goes down the rabbit hole they go down to is to prove something which then can be used to change policy. You know, it’s made people fed up. And you just gotta realise the system is rigged and that hasn’t happened. So my guess is you’d actually did purposefully pick Alzheimer’s, because when you’ve got holes in your brain, it’s not reversible. I mean, we do get some very good improvements, but it’s not reversible. And it’s the biggest cost. It’s the biggest fear. It’s the biggest killer has been since 2022 in the UK. So you know it’s where the stakes of prevention are highest. So I figure let’s actually go for this as an arrow. Because until we think prevention nothing really is going to happen. So why don’t we just go straight to the public?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:55:06] You out the middle. What I love about this is what I love about the food for the brain movement. I mean, the citizen scientists. The only way to the future.

Patrick Holford [00:55:15] Yeah. Because basically, for those who are listening, you go to the Brenda or you do the you did the test, which is free. No go. I don’t want to know cuz you want to know because you’ll fill in the questionnaire, which will then tell you exactly what you need to do to reduce your risk. And it’s not in the genes. So you want to know because you are in control. You are the architect of your brain’s future. If you wish. And we’ll we hope to launch this in the next month in Australia. You can buy a kit, for a couple hundred bucks. You prick your finger and it measures everything so you can actually see where you are at biologically. The minute you do any of these tests. The information is anonymous, and it pours into our database. And, in November, December, we go to Japan and China. We’re translating it. I mean, it’s not unrealistic. And certainly my goal that we will have tested a million people by the end of 2025. And then what happens is it’s the biggest database. So anyone wanting to do research, you know, what’s the effect of exercise or smoking or seafood or meat or, you know, whisky or whatever it is? Every university is going to have to, you know. Come to our data base to do that research, which we built on a platform which is shared by 7000 universities. So, you know, yeah, we’ll publish papers and, you know, all sorts of stuff will happen. But the point is, yes, citizen science, you are the citizen. Obviously, you’ll get information that will help you, but also your information is helping everybody else. It’s science for the people, funded by the people. Because here’s the other amazing thing. We grew ten fold last year. We’re doubling every month at the moment. We have no investment. It’s pure charity. It’s not for profit. People chip in 50 bucks a year or £50, whatever that is, for about 100 bucks. And not quite sure what the Australian dollar is. You know, and get all sorts of benefits and, but it’s funded by the people. Science for the people. We’ve got an incredible team of researchers, all the scientists I’ve mentioned, all these professors. They’re working for nothing. And they’ve joined us, because they know the this problem of dementia. But, you know, it could be true with other mental health problems, too. Will not be so bad drug because not caused by a deficiency of drug. It will only be solved by a systems based approach. And my dream, is that this? You know, if a government wants to do prevention, how do they do it? And I think it has to be personalised. Individual digital health behaviour change, educate. It’s the only way. And I hope that cancer charities and diabetes charities and heart disease charities will jump on this and go, this is really good because if we all start doing the same thing, we will reach millions. And and then you’re doing what science is all about. And and what I love about this approach as well is, you know, when you do a randomised, placebo controlled trial, you pick people between the age of 60 and 70 who do or don’t have diabetes. This, you know, it’s very, very limited. And then you have to put it across the population, which is the great unwashed. So those people who make no changes are almost as important as those who make changes. Because we can, you know, we can see all the patterns and we have brilliant scientists and behaviour change experts, and, it’s not in our business. There’s no point where this gets sold and someone gets money for their shares. It’s completely transparent. International. So. And we have a lot of fun. So, I encourage everyone who’s watching to do the test route for the brand and.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:59:07] And focussed on individual and public health. What are unique, you know, addressing the causes of those diseases. I mean, I think we can say that these epidemic of preventable chronic diseases and all the information that we know that will overcome them. The question and I think a lot of doctors are a bit sceptical about this is, well, what why don’t we do it? Well, I think if you overlay business would business model to health care in our society, then it all makes sense. But in a similar way to the way the tobacco industry. We knew tobacco was bad in 1940 1950, but it took 5060 years for us to make public health changes. I think this is a similar story where when you’re making a change at a level that is going to make a difference, and I’m really excited about it. Patrick, I congratulate you and your team on it.

Patrick Holford [01:00:01] Yeah, I mean, we had a guy I mean, I’ll tell you the story because it kind of makes it real. And anyway, yes, his name is Alan or nudges his nickname and, Dorothy, his wife kept finding him, in different rooms at night because he couldn’t find a bathroom in his own house. He was a computer programmer. He couldn’t turn his computer on or off. He was an avid gardener. He couldn’t even think of tomorrow. He really had lost the sense of time he couldn’t eat. And so. And so he was diagnosed with mixed dementia, which is Alzheimer’s and vascular, which have the same causes and the same prevention things. And Dorothy, so what can we do in this? Nothing. And six months later, they’re trying to enrol him in a drug trial, which is just unethical. And they found our website, went on, did the test and, found out exactly what was driving the risk and really went for it. And he was his cognitive function test score was in the dementia is up, down at 30 and six months later it’s over 30. So he’s. Actually improved his condition. He, went to bed an hour earlier to get more sleep. He took the B-vitamins and the Omegas. He cut right back on sugar and carbs. Five days a month, he actually goes ketogenic. And, he has this stuff called C8 oil, which is a type of medium chain triglyceride, ketones, which are your like a hybrid car. You can run on sugar or ketones. The brain can run on glucose or ketones. And the ironies if you’ve eaten too much sugar in your life, you have what we call insulin resistance, which means there’s insulin drives the glucose into the brain cells. The brain cells are starved of sugar because you’ve eaten too much. It’s an irony, but it’s the way it is. And then you have rainfall. And not only do you have brain fog, but your brain tells you I need fuel. So that means I want to eat something sweet. So the addiction to sweet food is a function of insulin resistance. So he has two tablespoons of what’s called coil. It’s, C8. It’s a subtraction of coconut oil, which the liver turns into ketones. And he’s planted his whole spring garden. He’s back on the computer. We have some wonderful conversations. His wife says I’ve got my husband back from dementia. Now. I wish I’d met him three years ago. You know, because this is very, very late in the day, and he probably will decline, but much, much more slowly. So if you go for it and you do what you can and they’re all just simple steps, it can be phenomenal. Most people experience within a month an improvement in their energy, their mental alertness, their mood and so on. And the honest truth is, and I know this in my book, Upgrade Your brain kind of really puts it all together is when you get the right nutrition for your brain, your brain starts to sing. It’s it’s lovely. You. You fall asleep faster at night. You wake up alert. Your mood is naturally better. There’s a sense of contentment. You can roll with the punches. You know, in life, so much more, more easily. And, you know, you don’t have those off days. And, of course, most people have not, experienced this. So get in there because you’re missing, you know, it makes sense. How was it for you, Ron? I know you did the test. I mean.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:03:35] Yes, I got a score of 66, which I was really pleased with. Yeah, and I’ve got two of the eight spokes, if you like the wheel. Three of them, need some work. I was low risk for low carb sleep and calm, active brain back to body.

Patrick Holford [01:03:52] So they were. Yeah, but they were they yellow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:03:54] Yellow is yellow. I was in the small risk zone for healthy. Got antioxidants and brain fats. Yeah. And so I’ve got a bit of work.

Patrick Holford [01:04:02] To do, a little bit of work. And did you find that it, you know, did you get was that helpful. Did it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:04:07] Oh focus. Oh my goodness. Well well I will put my I will put my score on our outro to this episode for people to have a look at it. I won’t put it up now. It’s just we’re almost finished. But but I thought it was brilliant. I would encourage everybody to do this test. It’s. And what’s lovely about it is you can click on a particular component and pursue that until you get that right and click on another component. I love the structure of it. It’s great. Listen, you’ve you’ve talked about I think it’s true that lowering sugar, lowering insulin is the common denominator. Improving improving all health measures. Cancer, heart disease obviously diabetes cognitive function. Another aspect of the spoke of the wheel is oxidation antioxidants. And you you’ve mentioned getting rid of the exhaust fumes. Yeah. Just talk to us a little bit about the antioxidants.

Patrick Holford [01:05:04] Yeah I mean in a sense we think fruit and veg, herbs and spices and all those foods which are, you know, technically do reduce your risk. Vitamin C is incredible. And the oxygen and I think people don’t realise that every single animal makes it, every single animal makes it. And, with a few exceptions, primates and guinea pigs and, that’s why the guinea pig is the experimental animal of choice and bats. And somebody asked me a very good question. Which is it? Bats? I mean, the point is that only animals that don’t make vitamin C can sort of die from Covid. So that’s the interesting.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:05:40] Really interesting. That is a very interesting study.

Patrick Holford [01:05:43] And someone said, well, if bats don’t make vitamin C, why didn’t they die from Covid? And I researched and the answer is interval training. They’re the only flying mammal, when they fly, their heart rate goes up to a thousand beats a minute. And the temperature can go up by 1 or 2 degrees. And they’ve got such a strong respiratory cardiovascular system that they, you know, they can’t die of a respiratory infection, but they can carry it, which I thought was very interesting. And then what I thought was fascinating was this, a study recently in Newcastle, UK, because I know there’s a Newcastle computer. I nearly got a speeding ticket there. The, the, they found that cats got the same variants of Covid as their owners. Right. It didn’t die because know that will make vitamin C. And that’s what my teacher Linus Pauling, he looked at animals and they found that when they get, exposed to a virus they will produce so much vitamin C that it’s equivalent of a gram an hour, 1000mg now, which is like 20 oranges an hour sort of thing. So the golden rule, you know, with any infection, including Covid, is three grams the minute you have symptoms and then a gram, an hour or two grams every two hours. And it’s fantastic. And I thought this, I thought this cat study deserved a little kitty. See? It goes like this. Okay. Excuse me. Has a little rodent placed there? Once was a cat who got Corona from Corona, she said, then stroked my pussy. She’s trying to self-isolate. The pussy got in such a state. No strokes, no treats. So just ate mice, which was nice. But she didn’t wear a mask or bend the knee. Just took extra zinc and made more vitamin C, which just goes to show that if you’re a smart cat, sanitise your tongue and lick your coat and go easy on your felicitations, especially from strangers with a cough or a sore throat, and stay away from vets offering untested vaccinations.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:07:58] Yes. Wow. Yes. Well, you know, Patrick, if we had if I had shared that story, we would have been deplatformed, a year ago or two years ago. That’s that’s the system we live in. It’s not just online. Yeah, thanks for that. I’m going to play that back subject because there’s a lot to unpack in that story. The vitamin C, of course, is water based, but it’s not just vitamin C’s and it’s E and include it. Well, yeah. That’s yeah, 20 iron.

Patrick Holford [01:08:26] Because vitamin C, you know, is water based and it disarms water based oxidants like smoking vitamin C, vitamin C is fat based. And so French fries, you know, it would deal with that. And they recycle each other. But then inside cells is the master antioxidant which is called glue to fire. And some people supplement and acetylcysteine or NEC, which is a precursor to the sun. Some people say that design doesn’t work if you supplement it because it oxidises so fast. It’s so reactive, but actually it’s recycled by anthocyanins, the blue red foods. So, you know, if you had some blueberries with your clothes on, it would work much better. So the synergy again and, yeah. And then there’s selenium, you know, which we mentioned, which is very important in zinc is important and B vitamins and, you know, there’s a whole sort of team in there. And what I’m very, very excited about because we literally launch it, in just a few weeks, is that you can measure glutathione and practitioners measure what we call red cell is fine, but it it’s very hard to measure because glutathione is so reactive. The minute you, you know, pierce someone’s skin and you damage some red blood cells that are stressed and that they’re oxidising, they’re turning the glutathione into oxidised goods. That one’s called JSX. The other is GSG loaded and spent. And, anyway, we have worked out that a method which is brilliant from a pinprick, that instantly fixes. So you can it’s called the glutathione index, is the ratio between the fully loaded and the spent through the fine. And what we found is people cognitive problems. They have less. If you like water in the fire truck, more steam from trying to put out of these fires. And I think it’s going to be an exquisite measure because because something else that people don’t realise. And in fact, we’ve just been running a research project this week in my farm in Wales. Is that, our friend who, who’s director of the Bio Nutrient Research Institute has has measured antioxidants in carrots, and it’s a 40 fold variation of 40 fold variation.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:10:52] In different carrots from different shops. Different.

Patrick Holford [01:10:56] And you cannot predict it on organic zero dig biodynamic put it in the shop. The the fascinating thing as a concept, you only measure so far that, the researchers has found, predicts the nutrient density of what you’re eating is a measure of the respiration of the soil. Now, if the soil is full of, we could call it microbiome fungi, bacteria, these things called mycorrhizae that attached to the roots of plants. It’s alive. And if it’s alive, it’s breathing. And you can measure the breathing. And then you realise that the plant’s job is really to turn sunlight into sugar to feed the microbiome, which then captures all the minerals if they’re there. You need the right minerals in the soil, and then creates the vitamins and pushes them back into the plant. So it’s it’s a it’s it’s it’s the conditions of existence. And no one is trying to sell carrots on the basis of nutrient density. They just want to sell you the biggest, fattest carrot to grow in the shortest amount of time, to make the most money. And we think we the carrot be the county. I met a doctor the other day, says I don’t take supplements. I have a Brazilian every day. Gives me all the selenium I need. And I looked that up and I found that the difference in selenium and Brazil nuts was, was a 35 fold difference. So how do you know now? I’m a I’m, I’m optimum nutrition is my life’s research. So I cannot rely on food only to guarantee me the level of these nutrients. So I both supplement and I eat the best food. And I’m trying to study how to fix these nutrients in plants. But I guarantee you, I mean, if you eat a lettuce that’s not organic, it hasn’t have soil. We have no idea how undernourished our apparently healthy food is. So what we’re trying to do individually is create the conditions of existence, give ourselves this fantastic, rich nutrition, and environment, and, and your body, if you like nature, will pay you back 100 fold. Remarkably quickly. I have seen people, as you have with rheumatoid arthritis get out of their armchair and cancer, you know, terminal reversal and so on. When you right, make the right conditions of existence and it’s all under your control. There are only two causes of disease. One is ignorance and the other is addiction. So, you know, the purpose of books like this is to deal with the ignorance side. And, and then reality is, we do have to deal with some of these addictions. Cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, you know, etc.. But, you know, there are ways and I always think when you’re dealing with an addiction like it’s a brain is demanding sugar, which is what you get in people with dementia. And you could have like the coil, the, you know, the ketone, then you stop craving the sugar. So it’s a bit like if you want to lose weight, the only way to lose weight is to not be hungry. You. And so you have to get under, you know, the thing, and then your sugar cravings can go away. That’s how it works.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:14:28] Patrick, what a note to finish on. And I want to thank you not only for all the wonderful work you you are doing and have done, but for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with, my listeners. Thank you so much.

Patrick Holford [01:14:41] Thanks for spreading the word in Australia.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:14:45] Well, I would certainly encourage you to go onto the site. Food for the brain.org, food for the brain.org, and do register and do as almost 500,000 people have done globally the cognitive function test. And this is the, digitised version of a test that you would do if you were testing for dementia. But it also includes quite a bit of, of other, things that involve your diet and lifestyle. And it then gives you a score, your dementia index score, and assessing your relative risk. And it also gives you eight parameters by which to, to, to work on to, to actually target. And we discussed four of them in this podcast. The the effect of sugar low carb and glycemic index being one of those things. Brain fats is another part that we’ve talked about in this podcast. The omega three and omega six, the methylation and the importance of B group vitamins and also antioxidants. And these are things like vitamin C and vitamin A and, and Co, Q10 and selenium, but it also includes four other parameters. And they are parameters that we have focussed on in this podcast. And I do in my book Sleep and Calm, being one of those keeping an active mind, an active body, and also the importance of a healthy gut. It’s a wonderful test, and I would encourage you to become one of those hundreds of thousands of people globally and to take control, to get some kind of control and advice, that is so powerful and so empowering. So I would also encourage you to join our unstressed health community. And, it is there that you will explore the daily challenges that we face, the mindset with which you, face those challenges and the recovery each and every day that we need to focus on, and also the recovery if you’ve been diagnosed with the disease. Our unstressed health community. Unstressed health outcome. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This is doctor Ronaldo Lake. Hey! Well. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.