Patrick Holford: Simple Wisdom for a Healthy Life

Homo sapiens brain size is 20% less than it was 29,000 years ago. IQ is also falling 7% a generation. Mental illness is on the increase. Why?   Why are our brains shrinking?   Today’s guest is Professor Michael Crawford. He discovered that brains are made out of omega-3 DHA in the 1970s. He is the Director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition.   At Chelsea & Westminster he has shown that pregnant women lacking omega-3 make a ‘filler fat’ called oleic acid, blood levels of which predict brain developmental and cognitive problems in their babies. His new book The Shrinking Brain explains why humanity is devolving, with dire consequences, unless we take action now to put nutrition and brain health at the top of the agenda.   Find out more about brain health on my website.

Patrick Holford, nutrition expert and founder of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition and Food for the Brain Foundation. He discusses nutrition’s role in Alzheimer’s prevention. Topics include omega-3s and marine foods, B vitamins and methylation, school trials boosting IQ, sustainable marine farming, ketones and MCT oil, testing for homocysteine and nutrient status, and critiques of anti-amyloid drugs.

We are told serotonin deficiency causes depression; too much cholesterol excess causes heart disease; too much acid causes heartburn. Now we are being told too much amyloid causes Alzheimer’s.  These statements are the key rationale for selling antidepressants, cholesterol lowering drugs, antacids and soon, anti-amyloid antibody injections. But are they true or are they myth stories designed to sell drugs, cloaked in dubious circumstantial evidence, backed up by medical guidelines, but not by the actual science or what actually causes these diseases? Join me in conversation with award-winning medical journalist, Jerome Burne.  Read more in my blogs and reports on my website.

Why does your brain fuel on either glucose or ketones, derived from fat? Why do the brains of babies need ketones for rapid building on their neural network? Can eating fats, such as C8, help prevent or reverse brain ageing? Do you have to go ketogenic to get the benefit? How can a ketogenic diet or supplements help mental health and mental illness? To answer these and other questions and explore the whole role ketones and fat play in your brain health, my podcast guest this month is the leading world expert, Professor Stephen Cunnane, who heads the Brain Research Team at Sherbrooke University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Professor Stephen Cunnane holds the clinical research chair in ketotherapeutics. His research is focused on how ketogenic interventions (supplements, diets) can help prevent Alzheimer’s, slow down cognitive decline and deliver more ‘brain power’. We will also be talking about the latest research showing how ketogenic diets can help Parkinson’s, epilepsy and other mental and neurological conditions including their effects on mood and anxiety. Find out more about Ketogenic dieting and mind health on my website.      

The number of children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders has escalated from 1 in 250 to 1 in 58 last year in the US. Although often described as ‘genetic’ obviously the genes haven’t changed, so what’s going on in the environment that’s driving this rapid breakdown in neurodevelopment? Paul Shattock OBE has spent his life researching autism, and is the Chair of the ESPA (Education and Services for People with Autism) and former director of the Autism Research Unit at the University of Sunderland. There he showed that many autistic children had ‘casomorphins’ and ‘gliadorphins’ – opioids created from wheat and milk when the gut is leaky – in their urine. This is but one of many factors linked to increasing risk for ASD and other neurodevelopmental problems. We’ll be having a frank discussion about everything from vitamins to vaccines, essential fats to environmental toxins - learning from a man whose dedicated decades to finding out what’s going on and how to help children and their families. For more information about nutrition and brain health go to the mind health topic on my website or see Optimum Nutrition for the Mind.

Professor Thomas Seyfried is renowned in the field of cancer for helping keep people with aggressive cancers stay alive by following his science-based protocols. How? That’s what we will find out. Thomas Seyfried is Professor of Biology at Boston College and received his PhD in Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Illinois back in 1976 when genetics was in its infancy. He was Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine. He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Academy of Complimentary and Integrative Medicine among others and the Uncompromising Science Award from the American College of Nutrition for his work on cancer. Tom has over 200 peer-reviewed publications to his name and is author of the book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer. You can read more about cancer and my ketogenic/low carb Hybrid diet on my website. 

In this podcast I interview two pioneers in making food healthy, from the soil up. Bob Quinn is a botanist with a PhD in plant biochemistry, who helped convert thousands of acres across Montana to growing ancient grains (Kamut) organically. He was the first in Montana to mill whole grain, organic flour starting in 1986.  By 1991 he had certified his entire 3 generation family wheat and cattle ranch as organic.  He continues to experiment to improve regenerative organic systems and find better ways to grow dry land vegetables, fruit trees and berries in Montana, not only rebuilding the soil, but also the farming community for the benefit of health for all. Tim Parton is a Farm Manager in South Staffordshire in the UK. Tim farms in a biological way maximizing the value of nutrition to get the best out of the crops. He does not use insecticides, seed treatments, growth regulators or fungicides, as when the plant is balanced the need for synthetic inputs drops away. Tim has won many awards including Soil Farmer of the Year 2017, Arable Innovator of the Year 2019, Sustainable Farmer of the Year 2019 and Innovation Farmer of the Year 2020. Together, we’ll explore the journey between the soil and your health and why soil degeneration, and modern farming practices are partly responsible for declining mental and physical health. We will also explore the fundamental principles of regenerative farming and gardening. See more information on my website and nutrition and the environment. Find more about my rap Fight the Flour.     

In this podcast I’m talking to Dr William Grant, regarding the recent study showing that those who supplement vitamin D have much less risk for Alzheimer’s and dementia. He knows more about vitamin D and the effects of sunlight than anyone I know. He’s not a medical doctor but a  PhD - in physics with an entire career at NASA. After retiring from NASA, he formed the non-profit organisation, "Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center” in San Francisco to continue his work on the roles of diet and UVB/ vitamin D in reducing risk of chronic and infectious diseases. He published a review of the role of vitamin D in risk of dementia in 2009 followed by several additional publications on vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. He has 284 publications regarding vitamin D listed at pubmed.gov. You can read more about Alzheimer's and Dementia on my website.  

Do you even need them? Is a lack of anti-depressants really the cause of our suffering and are they causing their own suffering in withdrawal? One in two who try to come off them have significant withdrawal symptoms, half of which are classified as severe. I interview John Read who is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London. He has published several research papers on anti-depressant medication.  John is Chair of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal.  We will also meet Luke Montagu, who became dependent on antidepressants and sleeping pills, had a horrific withdrawal and successfully sued his doctor.  He then set up the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry to campaign for change and provide support to others. I’ll also be speaking with psychiatrist Dr Hyla Cass MD, previously Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of several books: Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) , on how she helps people get off anti-depressants using an optimum nutrition approach. Her book Supplement Your Prescription was the first to show how prescribed psychiatric drugs deplete nutrients and how to correct this. For more information about the connection between nutrition and depression visit the Depression and Mood topic section on my website.  

Both the UK and US report record-breaking excess deaths mainly from cardiovascular disease. Why? Is this a covid infection or lockdown knock on effect? Should we be concerned about repeated mRNA vaccines? Is it the consequence of health service overload? Are statins the answer, as UK government proposes? What’s going on and what can you do to reduce your risk? I invite back Dr Tess Lawrie from the World Council for Health to enlighten us on all things covid-related and Dr Malcolm Kendrick, expert in all things cardiovascular and cholesterol related, to explore these topics with you and point the way forward. Dr Malcolm Kendrick, a GP who lives and works for the NHS in Cheshire, is author of The Clot Thickens and The Great Cholesterol Con. Dr Tess Lawrie is the Director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd, author of over 80 published research papers and is committed to improving the quality of healthcare globally through rigorous research as a founder member of the World Council for Health. See my website for further information on Heart Health.