Genes Unplugged: To what extent is your health destiny pre-determined?

To what extent is your health destiny pre-determined? Is it nature or nurture – what you eat and how you live that determines your health history? My guest in this podcast is a specialist in nutrigenomics. That is the field of rich interactions between your genes and your environment. Emma Beswick is not only a nutrigenomic expert but also a graduate from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition so she knows her stuff about nutrition too and is very much hands on, running one of the best gene testing companies in this field: LifecodeGX. In this podcast she demystifies genes and explains how they work, how we can identify our genetic uniqueness and the direct knock on effect that has on your personal optimum nutrition.  Go to my website for more information on nutrition. Sign up to my E-News on the home page of my website at www.patrickholford.com to receive news updates. Do follow my podcast channel to be informed of new podcast as they are released. Share with friends and family to help them achieve optimum health. 

Dr Christopher Palmer is a Harvard psychiatrist and researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. He is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Founder and Director of the Metabolic and Mental Health Program and Director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education, both at Harvard and at the McLean Hospital. He is author of the best-selling book, Brain Energy, in which he argues that mental disorders are metabolic disorders impacting the brain, and is leading the way to a paradigm shift in psychiatry towards new ways of understanding and treating mental health. Go to my website for more information on nutrition and mental health as well as the ketogenic diet. See also my book Upgrade Your Brain. Sign up to my E-News at www.patrickholford.com to receive news updates.

The latest iteration of the highly influential Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, authored by numerous professors from around the world, led by University College London’s psychiatry Professor Gill Livingston has, for the third time, ignored the hardest hitting evidence for homocysteine lowering B vitamins, misrepresented the science on omega-3 and concluded that the evidence for ‘unhealthy diet’ didn’t meet their high bar for inclusion as a modifiable risk factor. Several eminent professors are up in arms and have written to the Lancet. In this podcast I interview three of them – Professor Joshua Miller, Professor of Nutritional Science at Rutgers University; omega-3 expert Professor William Harris from the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) and Professor Richard Johnson from Colorado University’s School of Medicine - to explore how the establishment continue to side-line nutrition. Read more on Alzheimer's, Dementia and brain health on my website.  Read the Lancet report.  More about Food for the Brain.

I’m talking to Steve Bennett, author of The Fibre First Diet, a book which proposes that simply re-ordering the foods you eat can trim your waistline and prevent diseases. We get under the hood of what’s really going on and how to gain control of your weight and health without feeling deprived. We will explore insulin resistance and how to reverse it, what really drives hunger, quick solutions to cut your cravings and why not all fibres are created equal. Also, the Japanese fibre that doctors prescribe to help reverse diabetes. Find out about his book The Fibre First Diet.  Find out more on weight-loss and blood sugar balance on my website.

Keeping your brain young is a science. Ageing happens because of oxidation (think wrinkly skin). Nowhere is there more oxidation activity than the brain because your brain uses more energy than any other organ and generates more oxidants. There are 7 key antioxidants which, together recycle each other. These are vitamin C, E, glutathione, anthocyanins, co-enzymeQ10 and alpha lipoic acid. There’s a second line of defence involving B vitamins and minerals such as selenium and zinc. In this podcast I’ll be talking with the antioxidant expert Associate Professor David Vauzour, Dr Filip Van Hulle, a leading expert in CoQ10 and brilliant analytical chemist Dr Konrad Kowalski who has developed a simple test to find out how your brain is ageing and what to do about it. What anti-ages your brain also anti-ages your body. Listen to this podcast to add years to your life and life to your years. Find out more about how to Upgrade Your Brain.

In this podcast, I bring the three top scientists who know more about fats and the brain than any others - Professor Michael Crawford, visiting Professor at Imperial College London and head of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, Professor William Harris from the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) and neuroscientist Dr Simon Dyall, a director of of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids -  to get inside our brains. I’m most interested in the point of disagreement, the contradictions, the evidence that doesn’t fit the model. So often, by stirring things up we learn something new. Is it all about omega DHA? So why is evidence for EPA sometimes working even better for mental health? What about phospholipids? Is it all about choline, which is just one of five phospholipids. Where does vitamin D, a fat based hormone fit in? These are some of the topics we explore. Find out more about the Upgrade Your Brain campaign on my website.

My guest today is Dan Kittredge, who knows more about what makes food nutritious than anyone I know.  Dan Kittredge has been an organic farmer for more than 30 years and is the founder and executive director of the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA), a non-profit whose mission is to “increase quality in the food supply.”  Known as one of the leading proponents of “nutrient density,” Dan works to demonstrate the connections between soil health, plant health, and human health. Out of these efforts was born the Bionutrient Institute, which has engineered a prototype of a hand-held consumer spectrometer, designed to test nutrient density at point of picking or purchase.  He has decades of experience literally testing growing methods and measuring the nutrient density both in plants and livestock. As people extol the benefits of organic, zero-dig, regenerative farming and the harms of our herbicide and pesticides laden food supply, Dan has actually been measuring and working out what farmers and growers have to do to get the healthiest soil for the healthiest plants. Not only am I honoured to have Dan as my podcast guest but also he’s coming to our farm in the Black Mountains in June to teach us, and others, how to grow super-nutritious food. See foodforthebrain.org/kittredge-workshop

Ask the man in the street what’s driving Alzheimer’s and they’ll probably say a third is in the genes. Or that it’s just what happens when you age. Neither of these statements are true. Alzheimer’s is a largely preventable disease and my guests today are tackling the two fundamental questions. Firstly, what are the positive and negative behaviours – diet, lifestyle, environment – that prevent and drive dementia? And secondly, how do you change those behaviours. In today’s podcast I talk with Assistant Professor Tommy Wood, from the University of Washington about the what, then Dr Kristina Curtis, a behavioural scientist and honorary lecturer at the University College London who heads the Applied Behaviour Change team, about the how of behaviour change. Go to my website for more information on nutrition and mental health See also my book Optimum Nutrition for the Mind. In April I'll be publishing my new book Upgrade Your Brain - sign up to my E-News at www.patrickholford.com to receive news updates and book availability. 

My podcast guest is Dr Georgia Ede, MD, a Harvard-trained, board-certified psychiatrist based in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. Her interest in nutrition arose after discovering a new way of low carb ketogenic eating that reversed several bewildering health problems. Her speciality is nutritional and metabolic psychiatry and ketogenic diets. Her passion is empowering people with psychiatric conditions to reduce or eliminate the need for medications by changing how they eat. But which changes are worth making, and why? That’s both the subject of her new book Change Your Diet Change Your Mind, just out, and this podcast. Go to my website for more information on ketogenic dieting in the Go Hybrid section and for nutrition and mental health See also my book Optimum Nutrition for the Mind. In April I'll be publishing my new book Upgrade Your Brain - sign up to my E-News at www.patrickholford.com to receive news updates and book availability. 

My guest today is Uma Naiidoo who founded and directed the first and only hospital-based program in Nutritional, Lifestyle and Metabolic Psychiatry and is Director of Nutritional and Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical school. Her books Your Brain on Food and The Food Mood Connection are bestsellers in the US. Here we focus on anxiety and her new book How to Calm Your Mind with Food - out yesterday. For more on nutrition and anxiety see the Anxiety topic on my website. Also see my book The Stress Cure.