Stu:  This week welcome to the show Max Lugavere. He is a filmmaker, TV personality, health and science journalist and brain food expert. He is also the director of the upcoming film Bread Head, the first-ever documentary about dementia prevention through diet and lifestyle and author of the soon-to-be released, Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain For Life (Harper Wave, March 2018). Lugavere has contributed to Medscape, Vice, Fast Company, and the Daily Beast and has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Dr. Oz Show, and in The Wall Street Journal. He is a sought-after speaker, invited to lecture at esteemed academic institutions such as the New York Academy of Sciences and Weill Cornell Medicine, has given keynotes at such events as the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm, Sweden. From 2005-2011, Lugavere was a journalist for Al Gore’s Current TV. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles.

Questions we ask in this episode:

• Can Alzheimer’s be prevented, or even reversed?
• What ‘everyday foods’ contribute to cognitive decline?
• Are ancient or pseudo grains a healthier option?
• How can we best exercise for brain health?

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. This week, I am super excited to welcome, Max Lugavere to the show. Max is a filmmaker, TV personality, health and science journalist and brain food expert. It's that brain food that really got me excited to be able to talk to Max today. It's Max's passion and obsession to discover how we can safeguard ourselves against dementia, Alzheimer's and the growing number of neurodegenerative diseases that are prevalent today. This was a personal topic for me as well because my parents had suffered, are suffering the very things that we get deep down and discover today as well with Max. In this episode, we talk about his discoveries during the making of the movie, "Bread Head," and we also chat about his new book, "Genius Foods," that help us gain back our mental clarity amongst many other things. So, without further ado, let's get into the show. Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted this morning to welcome Max Lugavere to the show. Good morning Max.

Max

Good morning Stu. How are you?

Stu

Yeah, very well. Thank you. We're super excited again today to have you on the show because you're a true pioneer in your specified topic, which for me, is neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's, optimizing the brain specifically as part of the pillars of health. It's a topic personally as well that is really close to home because we've got family issues as well in that area, which I'll talk to you a little bit later on the show. But first up, before we really get into the good stuff, I just wondered if you could tell our audience who might not have been exposed to your work, a little bit about yourself please.

Max

Absolutely. Again, my name is Max Lugavere. I'm 35 years old. I split my time between New York City and Los Angeles. My background is in media. I'm not a medical doctor. I was a health and science journalist for many years. That sort of began with a five-year tenure working for a TV network in the United States, that was founded by former US Vice President, Al Gore. I worked with him and his team for five years, cutting my teeth with the best of the best in Hollywood, learning how to tell a story, learning how to communicate fairly hot button topics with responsibility and grace. I left current TV to try to figure out where I was going to go with my career. I was in my mid-20s and it was around that time that my, back home in New York City, that my mother started to display strange symptoms of what would ultimately be determined to be a neurodegenerative disease. Basically, for me, I'm my mother's oldest son. My family's very tight-knit. I became, basically, obsessed with learning everything I could about what was robbing my Mom of her brain function such a young age. She was 58 when she first began showing symptoms. In tandem with that, with trying to do everything I could for my mother, my mission became bifurcated, essentially, because on the one hand, I was trying to learn why this happened to her, but on the other hand, it became very much about myself and how I can protect myself from ever having to experience cognitive decline and also to protect those that I care about, which is in a way, a sort of selfish thing. The people that I love, I want them to continue to be around me, in good health. I started learning about all of the mechanisms and associations that play when it comes to preserving and ultimately enhancing the way that our brains work. I just decided at a certain point that I couldn't stay quiet.