Name: Dr. David Perlmutter | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #187
Uploaded: 2019-04-04T13:00:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. David Perlmutter | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #187' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-04-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. David Perlmutter | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #187' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-04-04. Transcript available.

Dr. David Perlmutter | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #187

Today's episode is brought to you by Gray Block Pizza in Los Angeles.
Sometimes you open your mouth and there's nothing in there.
Yeah, well what's that all about?
Change it up.
Gray Block Pizza.
1811 Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Get that hitter.
You know, every now and then an older man will come into your life and
kind of teach you a little bit about yourself.
You know, teach you a little bit of something.
Teach you how your skin feels a little bit.
You know what I'm talking about?
Teach you what's going on inside of your body, deep in there.
And that's what I'm talking about today.
A lot of times, if you think about your stomach,
what the fuck is going on with it?
So here today, we have a beautiful man.
And he's the author of the book, Grain Brain.
Now he's a scientific kind of guy.
So, you know, he ain't gonna juggle for us, bro.
But he'll definitely, he has more knowledge than I do.
And so that's why I'm excited that he is here today.
He's the author of Grain Brain, which has more than one million copies in print.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Perlmutter.
So what is gluten, Dr. Perlmutter?
What is it?
So gluten is a protein.
It's found in wheat, barley, and rye.
Okay.
And it's the rage right now.
And gosh, we wrote about it five years ago in Grain Brain.
And at that point, that was pretty darn disruptive.
I want to tell you that people suddenly, you know, you threaten,
give us this day our daily bread and people have a conniption.
People trip out.
They do.
All my Jewish buddies first started tripping.
They were like the first friends that I had.
They make gluten-free matzo.
Well, they started, like, they were, like, losing it.
And so then I was like, what's going on here, you know?
And, I mean, I've read more about it in your book,
but I just wanted to hear, like, for a layman's, like, you know,
like, if I saw gluten somewhere, would I know it's gluten?
No, that's the thing.
It's hidden in foods.
You know, you find it in condiments, in ketchup.
You find it all over the place.
It's tricky.
It's like almost like a, who's that serial killer that they just had
that documentary come out about?
I don't know, but it's stealthy.
It's that Ted Bundy of the bread program, really.
I'm going to have to let you own that one.
I'm not going to go there.
But that said, I wouldn't say as aggressive as Ted Bundy.
But having said that, it's sinister.
It lurks in the background.
And, you know, when you face all of the chronic degenerative conditions
that we face now in this world,
the World Health Organization tells us that chronic degenerative conditions
are the number one cause of death on planet Earth.
We have to ask ourselves, what's the mechanism there?
And the mechanism is inflammation.
Okay, what's causing inflammation?
High sugar diet, not enough fat, things like gluten, food allergies.
Those things literally have to come off the table.
Now, I was reading in your book that, and this blew me away,
that people who have diabetes are twice as likely to have Alzheimer's.
Let's contextualize that.
Okay.
We live in a country where 5.4 million of us have already been diagnosed with
Alzheimer's.
Yeah.
Number one.
Number two, there's no treatment.
None whatsoever.
And matter of fact, in November of 18, a study came out in JAMA,
the Journal of the American Medical Association,
showing that the drugs that doctors are using to treat Alzheimer's
are actually making them worse.
Wow.
As opposed to neutral.
They're actually declining more quickly.
So how is that even a thing?
Anybody could make up that drug.
I'm telling you, I would say what you just said, that's the whole show.
How is that a thing?
Think about it.
I mean, yet, you know, it's proved by the FDA.
It's useless and, in fact, making people worse.
And people are spending a billion dollars in America to buy these drugs,
putting their faith into these drugs to help mom or dad or husband or wife.
And I've been there.
I've been there with my dad who died of Alzheimer's.
Yeah, I read that in your book.
So I know what it's like.
Yeah, my stepfather has it and my mother has too.
And it's horrible.
And it's mostly preventable.
Right.
And that's what we shout about.
We shout about what you said is that diabetes is related.
Okay, you know, when 80 million Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic,
it's not a genetic issue.
All of a sudden, that's just happened the past 50 years.
It's because we've changed our diet.
Now we're eating more sugar.
And this is a disease of sugar and refined carbohydrates and less fat.
And all of a sudden, everybody becomes diabetic.
That may increase your risk for an untreatable illness, Alzheimer's, two to
fourfold.
Wow.
Then you're really screwed.
So that's really, so if you have that in your family, I mean, these are really
things you
need to look out for because Alzheimer's can take, when does it usually kind of
strike people,
Alzheimer's?
The beginning stages of Alzheimer's, what sets the stage for when you can't
figure out what's
going on around you, happens in your 20s and 30s.
Jesus.
That's your audience.
And that's a very important concept.
Yeah.
That it's not when you're my age and you suddenly can't remember the
grandchildren's names and
you name it.
Because that's what we think it is.
You bet.
That's this idea.
By then, you're already down the road.
Yeah.
We, you know, a lot of literature shows that if you look at markers of
inflammation in
the blood, they predict Alzheimer's 30 years ahead of time.
Wow.
And how do you get inflammation markers in your blood?
You eat the wrong diet.
Okay.
So, it's not like, you know, people say, oh, I had a heart attack.
Well, it's not like you're walking down the street, minding your own business,
and then
all of a sudden this thing attacks you out of the...
That's lightning.
Yeah.
That's it.
That's lightning.
Right.
Heart attack happens because you ate the wrong food.
You didn't exercise.
You have some genetic issues, et cetera.
You set the stage for a heart attack.
You set the stage for Alzheimer's.
And I'm here to tell your audience that there are changes to make today to
lower your risk.
Because when you get there, when you get to a place where the doctor finally
says, you've
got this, there's nothing you can do.
So, yeah.
So, it's one of those things you have to start early.
Yep.
And I said 20s and 30s.
Well, when do you start setting the stage for diabetes?
Adolescence?
Childhood?
You set it when you're born?
Actually, the changes begin before you're even born.
When you're in utero, depending on mother's lifestyle choices, has a huge role
to play on whether
you're going to be diabetic, whether you're going to be overweight, which is a
risk factor as well.
Wow.
So, I'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, if I'm just hearing this, you
know, like a lot,
because a lot of our listeners are 20 in their 20s and 30s.
And, you know, some of them may be diabetic, may not.
But there are usually a lot of good people, a lot of active people that want to
make their lives better.
Overall, that seems to be our audience.
So, what are, like, some easy ways out of the gate that you think, you know, is
it just a rich thing?
Sometimes I feel like just the rich can be able to, you know, really have a
nice thing.
It's just the rich, because you have to buy something.
Right.
You've got to go out and buy a new pair of sneakers.
Really?
Now, I don't know how rich you have to be, or you get them out of a bin,
whatever you need to do,
or you go barefoot.
The bottom line is, step one is you've got to exercise.
You've got to get moving.
You've got to get your butt off the couch, and you've got to get at least 20 to
30 minutes a day of aerobics.
Add some resistance exercise to that, fine.
But you've got to get your heart rate up.
And to what number?
I don't know.
I usually tell people, 180 minus your age.
Do the math.
Right.
And if you can't do the math, then you really need to exercise.
You've got to be really cruising.
You bet you do.
And why do you want to exercise?
Well, the relationship between exercise, if you look at the epidemiology of it,
shows those people who have higher rates of exercise have lower rates of
Alzheimer's.
But beyond that, exercise changes gene expression and codes for the body to
produce a chemical called BDNF
that tells your brain to grow new brain cells.
Who knew?
You know, when I was, I hate to say when I was your age,
but when I was your age, we were told that we were given a certain number of
brain cells.
And then as we, every beer we drank, we lost 30,000, whatever it was, you'd
lose X number of brain cells.
Coke.
Because we didn't know that you grow new brain cells.
And how do you grow new brain cells?
By exercising, by taking a fish oil supplement, by using turmeric in your
cooking.
This turns on the gene pathway.
You can change your gene expression, grow new brain cells, and stave off
Alzheimer's.
What's so hard about what I'm saying here?
Right.
It's really basic.
And so do you think there's like a psychology to, like sometimes whenever you
get into a path in life,
whether it's an eating pattern or a, and you know it's detrimental,
you know that the end is, doesn't end well.
Is there some term for a psychology that makes you stay in that path almost out
of spite or something?
There are a lot of terms.
One is mindset.
Okay.
That your mind is set.
In fact, I had, oddly enough, at the interview this morning,
and the question was, how does mindset come into play for health decisions?
Your mind isn't set.
You can change your mind.
And the more you change your mind and then do the right thing,
the better that pathway becomes, the more reinforcing it will be.
The other thing I talk about is inconvenient truth.
You know, Al Gore talked about the inconvenient truth of climate change.
Yeah, the documentary, yeah.
I did a CBS This Morning program a couple of months ago,
and they said, now Dr. Perlmutt has a new book.
There's a new book talking about gluten and carbs and all that.
But we reached out to the sugar industry,
and they told us we should eat more sugar because decades of research.
And in my mind, it was hashtag, why that's fantastic.
Hashtag WTF, right?
Isn't that what it stands for?
Why that's fantastic.
Yeah, okay, good.
So in my mind, and then the lady gets on, she said,
and this morning I had, well, last night I had truffles
because they're in season, truffle pasta with a jelly-filled donut or something.
And again, it's an inconvenient truth.
What I'm saying to your audience today is an inconvenient truth.
Why? Because we all have a sweet tooth.
Oh, yeah.
We all would love to eat sweet and pasta and bread.
Oh, Don, I love gifts, dude, Don.
It's comfort food because it stimulates the part of the brain
for instant reward, dopamine surge, and you're momentarily content.
But oddly enough, that diet distances you from the executive center of the
brain
that lets you make better decisions, plan for the future,
be more compassionate and empathetic for yourself,
for the next person, and for the planet.
So the more we distance ourselves from impulsivity,
the better decisions we'll make.
We'll get on an exercise regimen, we'll stay on it,
and we'll choose to eat better foods that will enhance that.
It's feed forward.
That's really interesting because impulse is that,
it's almost just like that dirty magnet that's in us,
and it just wants whatever the easiest, quickest hit is.
Done.
And then you need more of it.
You need more of it.
Right.
Because it's a dopamine surge, stimulates the opiate receptors in your brain.
Done.
You've done your thing, and now you need more.
And the more you do it, the more that receptor needs to be stimulated.
And so choice is almost behind impulse a little bit.
I mean, it's right there with it, but it's almost a gift to outride the impulse,
I feel like.
Exactly right.
And then for a second, and then be able to, that's what I feel for me.
It's like, okay, I just need a second and make a choice.
The moment you just did that.
Yeah.
What you