TNZ – Jason & -MAUI MEMORY CLINIC’s – Dr. Steve Blake -FACTS for Alzheimers & Parkinson sufferers 10–6-2025- Jason Schwartz with Dr. Steve Blake at Akaku Studio Center Simulcast Radio & “TV”. GO TO: MauiNeutralZone.com to see FULL Timestamped Transcript PLUS an AI summary! SLOW & STOP many Dis-Eases through Nutrition. Dr. STEVE BLAKE, World-reknowned Bio-Nutrition Expert/Scientist & his wife Catherine, also a world-class TV chef with HEALTHY Choices!!! Maui Memory Clinic in Wailuku can assist Alzheimers & Parkinson Disease sufferers and their support team in slow and in many cases HALTING life debilitating disease. Steve Blake, ScD Director of Nutritional Neuroscience, Maui Memory Clinic Clinical Research Scientist, MH, RH (AHG) Lead Advisor, Author Macmillan Reference, 2019 Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine Research Director, Neuroscience Nutrition Foundation drsteveblake.com (https://drsteveblake.com/index.html) neurosciencenutrition.org (http://neurosciencenutrition.org/) My YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiA-ySI6BlOSDyKo9aYpORQ/videos)
Summary & Transcript
Summary
In this insightful October 2025 interview on Maui Neutral Zone, host Jason sits down with nutritional biochemist Dr. Steve Blake to explore brain health, nutrition, and the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Dr. Blake, with decades of experience and numerous publications, shares his expertise on how diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors impact brain function and overall health. He emphasizes that obesity and cognitive decline are more related to diet than exercise, highlighting the detrimental effects of high saturated fats, processed foods, and addictive substances like dairy. Dr. Blake discusses his groundbreaking Hawaii Dementia Prevention Trial, which demonstrated that specific dietary changes and supplements can reverse early-stage Alzheimer’s symptoms. He also addresses the challenges of misinformation, corporate influence on nutritional science, and the limitations of conventional medical education in nutrition. Practical advice includes increasing whole plant foods, reducing saturated fat intake, incorporating brain-boosting foods such as berries and nuts, and engaging in physical and social activities. The conversation concludes with an invitation to learn more through Dr. Blake’s work and an upcoming episode featuring his wife Cat Blake, who will offer practical, tasty ways to adopt healthier eating habits.
Highlights
- [03:15] Diet over exercise: Excess calories, especially from dense, fatty foods, are the primary cause of obesity, not lack of exercise.
- [07:21] Dairy addiction: Dairy contains opiate-like substances that can be addictive and harmful to digestion and brain function.
- [11:08] Immune system & COVID: Proper nutrition can reverse age-related immune decline and help mitigate long COVID brain fog symptoms.
- [16:03] Saturated fats & brain health: High saturated fat intake clogs arteries, reducing blood flow to the brain and increasing risk of dementia.
- [25:15] Hawaii Dementia Prevention Trial: A dietary intervention involving berries, nuts, seed supplements, and reduced saturated fat reversed early Alzheimer’s symptoms.
- [31:30] Plant-based meat alternatives: These offer a less damaging alternative to traditional meat, reducing brain inflammation while still satisfying taste preferences.
- [42:13] Quality matters: Most multivitamins contain ineffective or fake forms of vitamins, especially vitamin E, which is crucial for brain protection.
Key Insights
- [03:50] ⚖️ Caloric intake vs. exercise in obesity: Dr. Blake debunks the common myth that obesity is primarily caused by a sedentary lifestyle. He explains that regardless of exercise levels, consuming excessive calories, particularly from high-density fats and processed foods, leads to weight gain. This shifts the focus from exercise alone to a more critical examination of dietary choices, underscoring the importance of food quality and quantity in managing body weight and metabolic health.
- [07:21] Addictiveness of dairy and its impact on health: The discussion reveals how dairy products contain natural opiates, such as beta-casomorphin 7, which evolved to keep calves attached to their mothers but can have addictive effects on humans. This explains why dairy, especially cheese, can be challenging to give up and contributes to constipation and impaired digestion. This insight highlights the biochemical mechanisms behind food addiction and the understated harms of common dietary staples.
- [11:08] Nutrition’s role in immune resilience and long COVID: Dr. Blake emphasizes that immune system decline with age can be reversed through proper nutrition, enhancing the adaptive immune response. This is particularly relevant in the context of COVID-19, where nutrition can help reduce the severity of symptoms and cognitive impairments like brain fog. This insight connects diet not only to chronic disease prevention but also acute immune challenges, advocating nutrition as a frontline defense.
- [16:03] Saturated fats, vascular health, and cognitive decline: The interview underscores the role of saturated fat in promoting atherosclerosis, which impairs cerebral blood flow and contributes to both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Blake points out that reducing saturated fat intake to about 12 grams per day can improve brain perfusion, resulting in noticeable cognitive improvement within weeks. This links cardiovascular and neurological health, emphasizing diet as a modifiable risk factor for dementia.
- [25:15] Hawaii Dementia Prevention Trial: proof of concept for dietary intervention: The trial combined four dietary changes—daily intake of blueberries/strawberries/grapes, walnuts and sunflower seeds, avoidance of fried or grilled meats, and reduction of saturated fat—with 12 supplements, resulting in significant cognitive improvements from early-stage Alzheimer’s to near-normal functioning. This study provides concrete evidence that diet and targeted supplementation can alter the course of neurodegenerative disease, challenging the notion that such conditions are inevitably progressive and untreatable.
- [31:30] Plant-based meat alternatives as a pragmatic step: Recognizing the difficulty many have in eliminating meat, Dr. Blake advocates for the use of high-quality plant-based meat substitutes which mimic taste and texture while avoiding harmful inflammatory compounds in animal products. Although some alternatives have high sodium and saturated fat, they lack the neurotoxic elements found in meat, making them a sensible transitional or long-term choice to reduce brain and heart disease risk.
- [42:13] The importance of supplement quality and form: Dr. Blake reveals that many commercial multivitamins contain synthetic or “fake” forms of vitamins, notably vitamin E, which do not provide the intended health benefits and can even be detrimental by occupying receptor sites without function. His emphasis on science-based formulation and appropriate dosages highlights the need for consumers to critically evaluate supplements rather than assuming all are beneficial, especially for brain health.
Additional Observations
Dr. Blake also touches on the influence of corporate lobbying on nutritional guidelines and public health policies, noting that subsidies favor meat and dairy over fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, which hinders progress in improving national health. He stresses the importance of social engagement, aerobic exercise, and mental stimulation through brain games as complementary strategies to nutrition for maintaining cognitive function. His holistic approach is grounded in decades of scientific research and clinical experience, offering hope and practical steps for individuals seeking to protect and improve their brain health in the face of aging and disease.
Transcript
00:12
Wow, I can feel Halloween coming on. Welcome to our show everyone. It’s October 2025. You’re in the neutral zone. Maui neutralzone.com. We are sitting in the studios of our host K Aku 88.5 FM the voice of Maui and we’re simalcast on Akaku Maui Community Media channel 55. We’re up on the web mauy neutralzone.com. In fact, if you go up there you can see a word forword transcript of this interview and all our interviews and a summary. It’s really interesting in this day and age, but
00:52
we’ll talk about that. I have a terrific guest today. I don’t know if many of the people out there who can see this on screen. If you’re on radio, you can’t see it, but I’m in the studio with two wonderful people, uh, Steve and Cat Blake. Stephen and Catherine Blake. Now, it depends where you may have seen them. If you’re on Maui, you may know them because they’ve been here a lot of years, but around the world, they know them for other reasons. Steve, welcome to our show. Aloha. Thank you, Jason.
01:24
Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate you coming and being on our show. Let me take these headphones off. Easier for me. Um, I was sitting at Unity Church and I was looking around and thinking, you know, I’ve interviewed all kinds of people. Look at the wealth of interesting people here. And I know these guys for a number of years, really nice. And I said, “Your Maui Memory Clinic, would you like to be on my show?” And Steve said, “Well, I’ve been all over the world
01:57
talking and flying around. I don’t know if I would have a subject for you.” You do. Welcome, Steve. I’m going to read you his his official oneline bio, although it’s not enough because he is an amazing man with an amazing long track record for how long you been doing this stuff? Many years. Many decades. Decades. Well, he is a nutritional biochemist. He’s written many books, including books on both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. He worked at the Maui Memory Clinic in Wuku
02:35
helping people people what’s a people improve their memory and maybe sometimes their speech if they stop drve.com you know I’m happy to have you here I have been living in this world for a long time and we have seen the world the Americans grow. I remember there was a period maybe you and I were little kids where they were sort of turning okay president’s plan to have physical fitness and here’s Kennedy and now they’re all getting fig America’s opening up gyms and all kinds of things
03:15
to get us fit. How are we doing Steve? Not too good. Not too good. Where did we go left where we should have gone right? What do you think? Well, one of the ways that the food industry tries to manipul manipulate us into eating a lot of junky fatty foods to make us fat is to convince us that it’s our fault for not getting enough exercise that we’re all obese. But that’s really not the case. No matter how much you exercise, if you eat a lot of high density caloric foods, you’re going to get too many calories
03:50
and you’re going to keep getting bigger. So, it’s really not the exercise so much. It’s really the food. So that thing about garbage in, garbage out and volume. I mean, I always thought even if I was eating good things, if you eat too much of a good thing, you’ll still gain weight. There are diets, for instance, the if you eat whole plant foods, you can’t really get enough to gain weight. It’s a perfect weight loss diet because you can stuff yourself all day and the fiber in the food makes you feel
04:19
full and then you stop eating before you get too many calories. And you can do this and also have meat, right? I like to think used to be I’d have I remember the dietary plan three of these, two of these and mostly was meat and dairy. Where is the chart these days? It’s like more over to vegetables. You can have a little bit of meat, dairy, I don’t even I think dairy is even still more questionable. What’s What’s your Well, as far as weight loss goes, um I did a talk for Seabberry on school kids
04:54
and how they could keep their brain sharp and do well in school. And one of it was on one of the slides was on weight gain for children. And the top thing that made children gain weight was not processed food or junk food or sweets. Can you guess what it was? Meat. Meat. Yeah. It has a lot of calories, you know, and the calories are as fat, which are really dense. I assume. So, I don’t know. Do you eat any meat at all? Rarely. Oh, yeah. I had a juicy steak back in um let’s see. I guess that was 1969.
05:30
Okay, that answers that pretty good. So, yeah, I’ve been eating plants since 1970 for 55 years. And uh that old myth about you can’t find protein in anything but meat. That’s also out the window because well it’s uh yeah it’s an old myth. Um heard it a few times. Uh I have a dietary analysis program called the diet doctor. It’s based on the United States Department of Agriculture food composition database where they take 292,000 foods and test them and line up all their nutrients. So including protein
06:06
and each amino acid that’s essential. So uh I I wrote this diet doctor software so I can quickly access that and look at it. And my need for calories being an adult man over 50 is uh 46 grams a day and my normal intake is 73 to 84 grams per day. So I get more protein than I need eating just plants. And if I look at the amino acid balance, which I do to see if I’m limited in lysine or any of the other amino acids, I’m not. I get plenty of all of the amino acids that are essential for adults.
06:43
Well, so all of you out there who are gaining weight and you haven’t been eating any candy or cookies or all that stuff, now you now you’re going to get rid of meat. But there are so many incredible vegetables. I mean, there’s no lack of variety. 292,000 different things we put in our mouth. Yeah. That’s our choices in America. And Wow. I’m sure well over 200,000 of them are really bad for you. That’s right. And they put things in them to make you want more of them, don’t they?
07:21
Oh, of course. Yeah. Addictiveness is part of the junk food system. And it’s not just junk food. that’s addictive. For example, dairy products, you know, eons ago, cows put this opiate substance, beta quesomorphine 7, morphine, morphine, and this opiate addicts the cow, the baby cow, to come back and suck on the tit. Well, the cows that didn’t do that, some of their calves wandered off and they were just weeded out over the ages. So now we when we eat dairy products, we get this morphine substance
07:53
which is really quite addictive. People try and give up cheese and oh, it’s really hard because they’re really addicted to it. And um it also, if you’ve ever taken opiate painkillers, you know how they plug up your intestines, slow you down, make you constipated. Yeah. Well, so does dairy products. And they do it not just because they’re zero fiber. Of course, that doesn’t help, but because the opiates actually interact with the mucus goblet cells that produce mucus in our intestine and uh make it so
08:24
we can’t digest properly. Wow. So, are a medical establishment uh is not only part of it. I mean, once they come into a doctor’s office, you can tell me probably more specifically, doctors aren’t really wellversed on nutrition. They’re really not too much interested in what you put in your mouth, unless you put a scissor in your mouth, then they’re ready to get you. But, um, have you spoken to many doctors over time and seen that they’re getting it? Are we seeing any change in
09:05
the in the way doctors think? I have spoken to many doctors. I’ve given grand rounds which is uh to doctors only in hospitals. It’s in Boston Medical and the John Aurn School of Medicine and the University of Hawaii and Alohu and many others. And I’ve tried to teach doctors about nutrition but typically doctors get only 3 to five hours of nutrition in med school. And it’s they’re not really taught which are the essential vitamins and minerals, which are the two essential fatty acids.
09:37
Um they don’t really know the names of the saturated fatty acids. So they’re they’re not really wellversed. Doctors are great at drugs, surgery, uh scanning and diagnosis. They they’re trained in certain things and not in others. But because of our society and the reverence we have for our medical doctors and that they save us when we need saving. A lot of people will believe them about food even though they not are not all wellversed in food. A few are. I’ve talked to some who are very well verssed
10:06
in food. But I’d say it’s the exception rather than the rule. You know I since the co thing we’re now what at least a few years out of the I guess co’s still sort of around but it’s changed. It’s not quite as frightening as March of 2020 when everyone closed their doors and went inside for a year or two and here we are coming out again. We hear the word co. There’s still people that are really just You say the word co, they have mask on. You say, “Wait, that mask is not going to stop
10:39
the Oh, I don’t The information out there about what to do to protect yourself against things is I actually wrote a book on that.” You did? Yeah. Yeah. It’s called Beyond the Mask. And um so it it’s how to boost your immune system. One thing that happens, especially with us older folks, is that there’s something called the decline of the immune system as you get older. It’s not as strong, especially the adaptive immune system that can identify a target like the CO and and make antibodies
11:08
against specifically that. And with proper nutrition, we can actually erase that age- related loss of immune power. And so I wrote a book about that. And um and now you’re right, CO is now down. It’s still in the top 10 causes of death in the US, but it’s moved down. Yes, it’s moved down uh down. Last I looked it was eight or nine uh most common cause of death in the US. But the thing about CO that’s really scary is when we see people at the Maui Memory Clinic who are not the usual demographic of 70s,
11:42
80s, 90s, but they’re younger, 40s, 50s, but they had COVID and they have brain fog and they have tremendous difficulty in doing the tasks of life. They can’t work. They can’t shop. They can’t balance their checkbook. They’re in big trouble from this continuing brain fog that can linger and linger. Wow. Very scary stuff. H how does someone that has COVID and brain fog even know to find you? I mean, I’m glad that we’re talking about it here. Well, if people have trouble with their
12:11
memory, then they, you know, one of their friends at least can look up the Maui memory clinic and then they can come see us. And our neurosychologist is excellent at analyzing people and finding out the strong and weak parts of their brain. And then us as a team we come together to help people to uh think more clearly help their memory and uh for instance we can design brain games specifically if you’re slow in execution. If your brain is slow at doing things you can have card games and brain games that will speed that up. Uh
12:46
if your memory is hard then there are other brain games that can be done. I work more on the nutrition side to make sure that the brain is both supplied with the nutrients it needs and not damaged by things that damage it that come in food. Wow. So I imagine you do an intake session that’s pretty extensive. Well the neurosychological tests are quite extensive. can last two or three hours and um you know we want people to be well nourished and well rested before that. Um for us yeah we do generally ask
13:26
people about their diet and my wife is wonderful at finding ways to just adapt their recipes that they’re already eating so that they can be a little bit healthier. Great. So we really try not to say don’t eat this. We try to say well why don’t you try this instead of that and see if that has an impact. The way it works is as we age and as we move toward Alzheimer’s disease, if that’s the way we’re going, principally, it’s inflammation and oxidation that kill off the brain cells. With Alzheimer’s
13:56
disease full-blown, you may have half of your brain cells already killed off. At that point, it’s really too late to help a lot. But earlier in the game with mild cognitive impairment where people can still think but they’re not as sharp as they were then maybe only a quarter of the brain cells are killed off or less. Well, we can stop killing off those brain cells. That’s terrific. Yeah, it is terrific. And I think it’s a really good idea when we ask people who are already having a hard time thinking
14:27
if what if you didn’t get worse? What if you stayed the same and didn’t get worse? Because the rule is you get worse every year. If you eat the same things that you’re eating, you’re just going to get worse. And the drugs are not that helpful. Uh there may be a temporary reprieve in some people with some side effects uh that might be very bothersome, but they’re not stopping the progression of the disease. The drugs do not stop the brain cells from dying. You have to actually stop eating the things
14:58
that are killing your brain cells. How about that? How about that? What about you? Well, we just had an offer, for example, of something that might tickle our taste buds, but also tickle us in the wrong place inside. So, is it mostly what you eat? Would you say? I mean, I always wonder when I see such dramatic increases in in different diseases if it isn’t just the diet and that we’re eating. There are certainly other causes. Um environmental pollution is definitely related to Alzheimer’s disease and
15:31
Parkinson’s disease most assuredly. Uh so people live in polluted cities then they have there’s higher incidence of Alzheimer’s disease that’s hard to change but we can change their diet and there are certain foods that are highly inflammatory that inflame our brain and that inflammation kills off brain cells to put it succinctly. So, we avoid those foods, then we don’t have an inflamed brain. Our brain cells don’t go away. But I think more important are the foods that clog up the
16:03
arteries that feed our brain. Our brains really need blood sugar and oxygen. And if the arteries can’t supply that, it’s called perfusion into the brain. If our arteries can’t supply that oxygen and the nutrients to the brain, then we don’t think so clearly. And that of course is because of the usual clogging of the arteries, atheroscllerotic plaque, the same stuff that breaks off and causes a heart attack or a stroke. Now on a smaller level, we have vascular dementia, which is very common, I’d say, incident with
16:36
Alzheimer’s disease almost every time. And that is where little tiny bits of this plaque break off, plug up an artery in the brain, and you’ve lost a little area of thinking ability. perhaps some memories, perhaps the ability to do some math or whatever area of the brain it affects. This vascular dementia goes on and on. All of this is due to high saturated fatty acids in the diet. So if you lower the saturated fats in the diet to the correct amount, which is on many caloric diets is about 12 grams per day
17:09
of saturated fat. You can read your package and see what it says. If you do that, then within a few weeks, you may get better blood flow to your brain and start being able to think more clearly and remember better. So, that’s nice because you get results soon. And there are side effects. You’re less prone to heart attacks, less prone to strokes, less prone to diabetes. Those are Yeah, those are good side effects, but you know, I have to disclose them. Isn’t it funny how we talk about this
17:40
stuff? Are you guys listening to how funny this is? We pollute ourselves and create all these things that create all these problems and we hear about it and we say, “Oh, yeah. Well, the little bit won’t make any difference.” It’s funny, you know, one study was called a monk study and there’s been a few of them, but uh what’s interesting is they had these monks and they’re in very controlled diet and lots of monks all eating pure plant foods, but some of the monks ate meat once a week.
18:10
One meal a week they eat meat and then they looked at the health of the monks and that was enough to severely damage their brains. How do you like that? Wow. And their arteries of course. Wow. You hear that? All those that stop at Mickey De’s for a burger and any of that stuff or now chicken. Even chicken’s on the list, right? Fish, all of them. Well, I’ve written several scholarly papers. Um the latest one just a couple months ago was published in the journal of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. A
19:17
cells toll-like receptor 4 that see this going by and say, “Hey, we’re infected. We have a blood infection.” And they don’t know that this bacteria is dead. So, they make this huge cytoine storm much like the cytoine storm of CO. And so all these cytoines, inflammatory cytoines run around through our bodies. They go up into our brain. They activate the microgle and kill off the brain cells. So this is one way that it works. And yes, these are in all of the foods you just mentioned. Yeah.
19:50
Wow. Well, I’m I’d say what can we eat? Vegetables, plants, and how about fruit? fruit is how more sweet but I guess that’s you got to not do too much of that right oh I think we can eat a lot of fruit uh fruit we look at the glycemic load to find out if fruit is too sugary and that is a index of how fast it raises our blood sugar and things like apples and pears don’t raise your blood sugar quickly at all and all of the berries are very slow grapes are very slow at raising your blood sugar moderate would
20:25
be bananas and mangoes So if you have diabetes, you should moderate those. But in general, whole intact fruit, if you’re chewing it, it’s slowing down the absorption of the sugars and all those wonderful factors in fruit that protect the exact things that diabetes attacks. Your brain, your arteries, your kidneys, but they protect that. So fruit’s wonderful food to include. All the vegetables are great. No problem there. Beans are underrated. All the traditional cultures eat beans in
20:54
various ways. hummus and reffried beans and all those ways and they’re really good. And grains, I know there’s a kind of a huge attack on carbs these days. And carbs is kind of a vague word. A Twinkiey’s a carb and a purple sweet potatoes a carb. And Twinkies aren’t too healthy, but purple sweet potatoes are really healthy. I’ve seen Twinkies that have been sitting there for years and you’d swear that’s a new Twinkie. No, I’m sorry. That’s a brick now. It’s been here a
21:24
while. So that’s really So when I hear all this stuff, I keep my brain just keeps going back to look at how sick we are. Um, and we’re not as a country, we’re not going in the right direction. Is it strictly education? It’s No, no, not at all. It’s it’s it’s not education. If for instance there was a political will uh if for instance our government wasn’t controlled by the money of giant corporations and food food advertising is second only to car advertising. Okay. So a lot of billions
21:57
get spent on that and some of it goes into lobbying. So we don’t have for instance would be great what if they actually subsidize fruits and vegetables and whole grains and beans and nuts and seeds instead of meat and dairy. that would really change the American health because of course we’re sensitive to price increases. I don’t know how political this is, but Robert Kennedy I know who just became our uh health guy right with uh Trump and there’s been amazing number of people trying to say
22:34
that all his science isn’t based on truth and yet when I’ve looked at that science in my experience there’s lots of truth. What is that just lobbies again people that are well I’m a scientist so if I write a scientific paper and and I say you know lipopolysaccharides are absorbed into the bloodstream in this amount I have to provide a reference that proves that and then people are free to go ahead and read that reference and find out that it really does prove it or it really doesn’t in my case hopefully it does but
23:11
so that’s what science is science means that you know where your information came from each little bit. You have to know that. And then you see if there’s a concurrence and sometimes there’s some side people who do an experiment, it comes out the other way. Um, sometimes those outliers are actually sponsored studies. And in the reading food studies, I see sometimes that they’ll say, “Well, you know, butter really isn’t that bad for you after all.” And I say, “Okay,
23:43
sponsored by the dairy industry.” and they’re comparing it to coconut oil instead of something perhaps a little healthier. So, you do have to be careful with your science. What by example, you just said coconut oil and something healthier. Coconut oil has issues, too. See, there we go. Sure. I mean, if anyone ever analyzed a food like I do all the time, they’d know that there’s only two nuts and seeds that don’t have vitamin E, a crucial nutrient to protect our brain and our
24:13
arteries and hearts. Um, and those two nuts are unfortunately macadamia nuts and coconuts. Oh, macnuts are great, but they don’t have any vitamin E. The other problem is that coconuts have a ton of saturated fat, more than lard, more than butter, more than meat. Coconut oil is a good way to clog up your arteries and your brain. It’s not oil anyway. It’s fat. I see. Oh, that that’s interesting. It’s really coconut fat. Not really coconut oil. Not good for advertising, though. Say,
24:46
I’m selling you a gallon jar of coconut fat. That doesn’t sound as appealing. You’re right. Yeah. Oils that are liquid at room temperature are called oils. And if they’re solid at room temperature, they’re called fat. The more saturated fatty acids, the more solid they are at room temperature. I see. See, aren’t we loving this? This is like you guys are getting educated. Let’s see how much it’s going to change your diet. That reminds me, you really are also involved just like you’re talking in
25:15
different studies. You have ongoing studies with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and things. Um, I’d love to explore, you know, I mean, you’re talking from a so much knowledge and experience. I’d like to tell you about the Hawaii Dementia Prevention Trial. Please. This was done at the Hawaii Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Aahu. I designed the trial. I had a huge team working with me and we ran the trial for nine months, although it took about two years to put it all together and wrap it all up. And
25:49
uh we took people in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease and then we actually changed their diet in four ways and we gave them 12 different supplements and at the end of the nine months they went from beginning stage Alzheimer’s to quite normal. Wow. How do you get your patients? Well, in this case, we recruited them in Hawaii. I actually was on KITV on Aahu recruiting patients and um and from the the people who came in there Hawaii Pacific Neuroscience were I was working they have 24,000 patient visits a year.
26:26
So we have a large base of people to choose from. There were strict guidelines on who could enter the study. They had to be over 65 and not taking this drug and you know a lot of conditions to get in. A lot of people wanted to get in. And so is you I imagine you’re keeping it going, right? You want to keep on testing it. I’d like to, but uh unlike a drug study, there’s no sponsoring for this. So I work for two years without pay and that’s about all I could do. Um with the drug studies also performed in in the
26:58
same areas are well funded so that they can continue on and on. But in these two I mean nine months is a lot of study and a couple years of analysis and your results how do do they get presented to any official bodies that make policy change or how does that work? Well if you know you wanted to give me say maybe a hund00 million um I could present them to some legislative bodies. Yeah. Yeah. Bond what I don’t think a single million is going to impress a legislature. these days. Come on. Well, you know, you say that, but I’m
27:39
wondering. I mean, I keep thinking there’s got to be people around that aren’t influenced by money. Really? You said we are not influenced by money. No, no, not at all. Which is why I ran the study. People hear us, right? That that’s that’s why I did it because I wanted to see if the four food changes were pretty basic. Okay. So, we had people eat a cup of either blueberries or strawberries or red grapes every day. That’s not too hard. If they ran out, they could drink grape juice out of the
28:11
bottle. Uh, so it’s not so hard, but that provides anthocyanins that go up into the brain and protect it from brain cell death. Exactly what we want. Another thing we did was we had people eat uh 1 oz of groundup walnuts and 1 oz of groundup sunflower seeds. So they’d get especially the two types of vitamin E that are in those two to protect their brain. Crucial. Another one we did is have people try, you know, we couldn’t change everybody’s diet, but we tried to have people not
28:42
eat uh fried barbecued or grilled meats, chicken or fish because that creates these advanced glycation end products that inflame the brain and kill off brain cells. We had moderate success with that. We had a team of dieticians who would train people and work with them every week and that was tough. And the hardest one was to lower saturated fat, but that also was probably the biggest reason why the study was so successful is to lower saturated fat down to just 12 grams a day. And so those were the four food changes we
29:14
made. And then we had a a bunch of supplements that um were very specially created. I wrote a college textbook for McGraill on vitamins and minerals and so I know about vitamins and minerals and what forms and quantities are necessary in order to keep the body going optimum level. Well, you wrote a college textbook. You know a lot of stuff and you still need more than a million to I mean you’d think that someone would listen Journal of Brain Science. Ahu. Oh yeah. Well, I did publish a study of
29:49
course in the Journal of Brain Science and um you can look up the Hawaii Dementia Prevention Trial and there’s nothing secret in there and you can do it all yourself. Uh no big deal. There’s no prescription medications involved, hence no sponsors. But I think that the way laws are made now are you give them money and then they make the law. So we don’t have that option. I’m sorry. I wish I could. Well, you know, I I worry about our world because of that change. I I don’t know if it’s a change.
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I just been that way most of my life. I think well, I imagine it’s like that a lot. I just um I guess half of my life I would been sitting here in Maui thinking I could make a difference here. still trying and I still hope that uh people are listening like you guys because we are the world in our world. I at least I know in my world now that I’m hearing this it’s like how am I going to figure out how to get my partner to not think meat. I already told her that I want to do three vegetables to one meat
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like change the ratios but no meat at all is best. Well, I tell you, there are now uh some really tasty things out there that look and taste and chew like meat, but they don’t damage your brain. How about that? So, if somebody’s eating burgers, uh and they’re going to fast food and having a burger every day, um we can uplevel them one step by going to Burger King and getting a burger that is not made of meat, but it tastes delicious. It’s loaded with uh sat fat saturated fats and sodium just like a
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real burger. So, it’s not that healthy, but it doesn’t have those inflammatory things that destroy brain cells. So, it’s one step better. And it’s no suffering because the Impossible Whopper is really people don’t even notice when we when they eat them. They they go, “Oh, this is good hamburger.” Uh, in fact, we had uh my wife, we went to a a potluck and she brought spaghetti and meatballs and one of our local friends was eating the meatball and saying, “Oh, you just
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can’t get good beef like this anymore.” Beyond Yeah, it was a beyond meatball. And it is made of pea protein. And you’d never know it though. I mean, the chew, the flavor, the taste, everything completely delicious. So, there are ways that you can eat meat but not eat meat. And in fact, there’s a zillion substitutes now. Chicken, fish. No, but what you said, you know, but we always hear in the in the news cycle is, “Oh, but it has other problems that those kind of fake meats have all kinds
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of.” Do they have anything that’s accelerated in the negative direction or not really? Do I have Well, some of them are as high in saturated fat and sodium as are the regular meats, but they don’t have a hundred other things in the regular meats that that are damaging to your body, you know, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, etc., uh, and of course, dementia. So, they’re they’re a step better. You and some of them are low in saturated fat and some are fairly moderate in sodium, too. So you can
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choose between these alternative meats and find ones that are more healthy or less healthy. Ultrarocessed. Yeah. The key word here that people throw around is ultrarocessed. And yes, you might call, for example, um almond milk. Ultrarocessed food. Well, really your cow milk’s ultrarocessed too. Um, but the almond milk has vitamin E and calcium and is really good for you and there’s no downsides at all. It’s just plain good for you. It’s not high in sodium or saturated fat. So, there
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are there are good things there. There are there are good ultrarocessed foods out there. You have to look for beyond just the label processed or not processed and actually look at the food and see if it’s good for you or not, which is what I do. You know, I’ve been talking so much and kind of directing questions and I can still do that. But when I have a guest on, especially someone as knowledgeable and gifted at you at having all kinds of subjects to pull from, what are important things that you want to talk
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about or you think are important to deliver to our audience? Well, if you’re trying to keep your brain sharp and your memory is fading a little bit and you you really want to keep that brain sharp, there is of course the food changes you can do. The more whole plant foods you eat, the better. And also exercise is good. Physical exercise. U studies are showing that if you can get into your aerobic level, not over your level, that could be dangerous, but just into your aerobic level for for guys
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like us, that’s only about 120 beats per minute of our heart. um but for for maybe 30 or 40 minutes three times a week makes a tremendous difference in your brain power. So that stress is a big problem with thinking. When people have anxiety that’s often coexistence with thinking problems and the beginning of dementia sometimes if they can conquer that anxiety then they also can feel a lot sharper in their brain. So that’s another thing you can do. Social activity is really good for the brain.
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So if you get together with other people, you notice how when you get in a crowd of people, you get tired afterwards because your brain’s really working keeping track of names and people and smiling and all that. So it’s another way to keep your brain sharp. So we also have brain games. There are apps these days so you can uh find ways you could play maong or chess or various games that keep your brain sharp. Unfortunately, just watching the boob tube as a passive listener does not really keep your brain too sharp. In
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fact, I think it tends to dull it with what I see. Uh, so those are some ideas on how to keep your brain sharp. Uh, nutrition’s not the only way, but I think it’s the most powerful. I how I’m keep thinking I think I’m sharp, but I have others. You know, I I told you this and you didn’t remember. How do you really know where you are on all these scales? I mean, there’s probably a lot more people that aren’t as sharp as they could be. Anything’s Do you rely on others to tell
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you? Usually, yes. Yes. Um, most of the time when people come in, there’s either the man or the woman. the couple is is not thinking very clearly and we can ask the person with a problem, but often it’s more accurate to ask their spouse and say, you know, how’s he doing? Is he better? Is he worse? And if they starting to think better and more clearly, then that’s really good. In one case with a lady named Core, I was giving us permission to talk about her. She came in with diagnosis of
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Alzheimer’s at 2:00, couldn’t remember what she had for lunch, where she was, anything. Wow. But her daughter is fantastic. And she said, “What can I do? I want mom to get better.” So slowly over the course of two years, every month we’d meet and we work with her. And she her ging her daughter would change her diet and she got better and better. Interestingly, she got out of her wheelchair into a walker onto a cane and forgot her cane over the course of two years because her
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knee pain and inflammation went away because of her dietary changes. Just a side effect. That’s one of those side effects you have to watch out for. and and of course she did take the um we made a supplement specially for our Hawaii dementia prevention trial but only trial participants could take that. So I made this brain and body food which is basically just vitamins and minerals that are just carefully chosen so that they’re really helpful for your brain. You can’t see it from s this kind of stuff is the do you have a
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website and things that yeah Dr. steveblake.com you can not only see this but I have about 25 books I’ve written I’ve written books on for instance uh migraines, autism, diabetes, arthritis. Uh the list goes on and on. I hope you don’t mind. I’m going to put some of the you’ll give me some addresses. I’ll put them on the screen so people can find you. And you on radio? drstevelake.com. That’s a good start, right? Yeah. www.drsteveblake drsteveblake.com you can see all of my books and uh at
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the top there’s a recent papers that I’ve written. If you’re of a more intellectual bent of mind, you can bend your mind around the papers I’ve written. Sorry, they’re a bit technical, but the abstract might be intelligible. Well, when I looked at your website, I I saw clearly if you once you look there, you’ll say, “Wow, how did Jason get that guy on his show?” Well, I’ve just fortunately met you. That was my blessing. But we’re friends. Tremendous experience. And I mean, when
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I looked at all the papers and I saw how many years you’ve been doing this and talking at different conferences all over the world and and really putting out your expertise so broadly. I just was really impressed. We’re very fortunate to have him have we love having you here on the island. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate you having me here. My goal is service. Uh neither of us are really that interested in money here. Um but service is can’t hurt. That’s I guess it can, you know, just like you said, isn’t it’s
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a side effect. That’s what happened. That’s how we’re changing the laws. So we need a little money because we’re going to I wouldn’t say even pay off. It’s like open the eyes. it. I can’t imagine anyone looking at this information from doing anything but wanting to share it so that we all get healthy and all I happen to my books are under $10 on the website. So you can download an ebook for under 10 bucks. I make it accessible to all. Sometimes people write me and tell me
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I’m in India $10 is too much and I just send it to them. Right. So this is really a global you have really global reach. I I do send vitamins and books all over the world. Yeah. Happens all the time. So a supplement like this when I can’t even with my glasses I can’t. Yeah. No, they’re small. Well, that’s okay. But it’s not as small as the writing on u I don’t know. There should be a law that says you cannot have text on something that is smaller than so many points of size because man
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it is labels are getting really hard for me to read. Vitamins are typically very small. I have trouble with that too. Sometimes there are two pairs of glasses to There we go. Oh, that’ll be fun. Stack them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What’s in it? What’s in it? That’s what he said. Oh, what’s in it? the essential vitamins and minerals all in the right form and and quality. Uh for example, um okay, with our brain, you’ve heard of Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s plaque, that amoid, beta amoid plaque
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that builds up in our brain. Well, in order to form these genes have to make these enzymes, but there’s two things in here that quench those genes that put them to sleep. They don’t make the enzyme, so we don’t make the amoid plaque. And during the formation of the plaque, there’s a lot of toxicity and damage to the brain. So that’s an immediate relief to your brain not to have the amoid beta 42 which turns into fibrals and aggregates. And these are very toxic to the brain and then it
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doesn’t become the permanent amoid plaque in the brain, the Alzheimer’s plaque, the scenile plaque as it’s called. And so this is good for everybody. This is not just for people with a problem, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a multiple vitamin but written by somebody who cares more about quality and quantity than about uh profit. Unfortunately, the multivitamins I see on the store shelves are real junk and they they put in a token amount of the worst form of the things and and people think, “Oh, look, it has
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everything.” But it really doesn’t. And for example, the vitamin E in every supplement I see in every store, health food or not, Costco or wherever, it’s fake. It’s a mix of eight different isomers, only one of which is real vitamin E. The other seven are fake. Four of them don’t do anything at all. But it it’s not just that that it’s worthless. It’s worse than worthless because our bodies are going to take that fake vitamin E, implant it into a brain cell for protection. It is like a a rena cop with
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with no bullets who can’t walk. That’s an interesting. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t protect the brain cells. Wow. So you get your brain cells being protected by fake vitamin E. Not a good idea. But I know why they do it. Because the real vitamin E is really expensive. It costs as much as everything else in the bottle. We are being hoodwinkedked. But yeah, these are those laws we go back to, right? They allow you to do and use fake this and simulated that. And it it does bother me that they allow
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this to be called vitamin E when it’s 1/8 of it is one form of vitamin E. That Yeah, that does bother me. But that’s the situation. And the FDA has rules for labels and uh you have to follow all the rules and they have plenty of room to not so follow it seems. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and not so follow what should be. Wow. Who knows? Maybe RFK Jr. will fix all that. Maybe we’ll see how that go. I hope that would be a really good thing and not not pick on him. Look at the science. So, I
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really appreciate those words. I just wish he was a scientist. Yeah. Well, that would be nice. The head of health and human services normally is a scientist. U and that would be probably a good thing. So, he could understand uh you know, science. Yeah, it would help. Yeah, it would be good. But he does have some good ideas and some ideas I think are off base and uh we’ll see if if what happens. Yeah, changing the FDA is going to be a big problem because they are, how do you say, in the pockets of pharmaceutical
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companies and there’s some powerful money interest not wanting them to change. So, I think that if RFK or anybody wants to change how drugs are regulated, that’s going to be tough. Yeah. But that doesn’t stop us from hearing it and saying, “Let me look at this. Let me try some of these things. We can create our own study. We can do it one on one person study. I’m going to listen to something that I heard and make a change. I’m going to make a change here like immediately. I am not
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going to take some of these supplements that I’ve I’m going to figure out how to find like when I’m taking something from you. Is there a way that people come to you and can compare what they’re doing with what they could do? I imagine you do that kind of work, too. Oh, yeah. In fact, a lot of times people will bring a box of supplements or a bag of supplements into the clinic, and my wife and I have a lot of fun with two pairs of glasses on, reading through them, and, you know, saying, you know,
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this one is worthless, this one is damaging, this one’s pretty good. uh you know and and looking through the supplements and uh just teaching people about you know which are helpful and which are hurtful and which are worthless and there’s a lot of that out there. Well, that that is a really to me that’s a really important one actually. You know, understanding all of the aspects of a multivitamin mineral supplement, there’s a lot there. There’s a lot to know about it. Um, for
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instance, that one of those things that protects your brain from building up Alzheimer’s plaque is folate. Now, folate is how it’s found, a B vitamin, one of the eight B vitamins found in the body, in the food. But what you get in most supplements is folic acid, a synthetic thing that’s something like folate, but not folate. Now, the real folate will never increase cancer odds, but the folic acid does increase cancer odds. Oh, if you get enough from different sources, it can increase your risk of
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cancer. And it’s not real folate. But if you look at vitamin bottles, you they’ll either say folic acid or they’ll say folate as folic acid, but they’re not going to put in the real folate because it costs a little more. And they are making the vitamins for profit and only profit. And this is how corporations occi this is Dr. X and I have found this and I have this. Um, how do how do you really know who’s out there? It’s a I look this stuff up on Google Scholar and read some papers on the thing that
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they’re selling and see if you know they they came up with this jellyfish goo is supposed to help your brain. So I researched it and looked at it and um one lady at a lecture only spoke Spanish and she said, you know, is this good? And I was able to reply in Spanish. Toto basura, which means complete garbage. See, we teach languages here. Complete garbage, huh? Well, sorry. That one just didn’t really seem to have an effect. But there’s a lot of charlatans and snake oil salesmen out there uh trying to push things on
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desperate people with relatives who are going down with their brain. And it is a desperate situation when your wife or husband or father or mother is having these problems and people take advantage of those people and and um well I don’t like that. Here in Hawaii, we have lots of people that are obese or whatever the new categories are. We have high incidence of diabetes. There anything about the the local Hawaiian diet that you’ve seen or anything? You mean a bento box with big chunk of
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meat, white rice, and and maybe a token sprig of vegetables? Yeah. Yeah. Spam. Yeah. Oh, spam. I know. So, they take everything in the kitchen and the shed and the garage and put them all together and put some kind of glue. Hey, that’s a fifth food group in Hawaii. Spam. And then they make flavors, flavored spam. I’ve never seen anything like it. One guy, an obese Hawaiian man in Walmart was looking at a can of spam and kind of squinting at said, “Can you read this? I’m not supposed to eat too much
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saturated fat.” So I said, “Yeah, okay. I can I can read it. It’s uh eight grams of saturated fat per serving.” And I said, “And there’s three servings in this little can.” He says, “How much in two cans? That’s what I eat.” So let’s see. That would be 6* 8. 48 grams of saturated fats. What he’s eating at one meal, and 12 is your maximum per day. Ouch. No wonder he’s challenged. Yeah. Wow. And that that can be tough for, you know, heart disease and strokes, too.
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Have you dealt with people with um I’m going to bring up one just because it’s been interest candida. I’ve seen candida to me which many people think of as a female problem yeast in oh it can be intestinal or I know people with systemic candida one my ex-wife for many many many years and if not they try to do antifungals that are very hard to get and the doctors don’t really understand enough even to know how to prescribe it or treat it. What do you do with some of these things? Are there natural things to eat?
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Well, it depends. Um, some people are willing to change their diet and some people aren’t. But, uh, I would suggest to people they eat a really healthy diet. And one of the things missing in most diets is fiber. I analyze the Atkins diet and we’re supposed to get a minimum of 20 grams of fiber a day. I think 40 is 40 or more is much healthier. His diet had under one gram per day. And that’s typical of paleo and keto diets. They have very little fiber. U you know they say carbos are bad. There’s a lot of good fiber in
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a lot of those carbos. That purple sweet potato or the whole grains have a lot of nice fiber. So and that helps our digestion dramatically. Um there you know candida is can come from multiple sources. Often times after a run of antibiotics you can get a a problem with candida. Well, she’s had this I mean, we’re divorced since 1984. So, well, I go back for years and years and years. She’s restricted her diet to the point where it’s hard to buy food. I don’t know how to address it and can’t
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find doctors that know how to address these situations. What does someone like that do? I would say start eating a really good diet my definition which would be a lot of whole foods, whole plant foods and then most digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome and so many others just go away. Well, she’s been wrestling this like that’s the reason I’m bringing it up is because nutritious has been candida seems to be at least in her case very hard to figure out. It feeds off sugar. So sugar could be a
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problem. She’s super as so careful that you know I mean you want to get turkey. I mean obviously she shouldn’t need be eating meat but what do you find for an alternative? She is restricted on on vegetables. So restricted I keep wondering how to get is there a way to like look at someone’s chemistry look at food and see which things are going to match. That’s not what you do exactly right. No that’s not what I do. that’s outside my lane as we say. Yeah. Um that would be a a
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gastroenterenterologist who’d probably be looking at that and could do that kind of testing and find out what she’s sensitive to. But again, for most things, uh I look at what humans are genetically adapted to eat. Okay, animals that are genetically adapted to eat meat have these dagger-like canines that stick down over their lip. And they have retractable conical fingernails that can actually grab an animal. They’re fast enough to catch an animal, which we really aren’t. Uh, and their digestive system is
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different. Okay, they have very, very different stomach acid, for example, and the length of the digestion is very short to get rid of the rapidly putrifying meat products. Ours is very long. It’s, you know, 30 foot digestive. So, if you look at the eyes, the ears, the trachea, most people who choke to death do it on meat. If you look at all the different parts of the body, you see that we’re really not designed to eat some foods. And you look at other animals. If you look at an alligator and you think,
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well, is he designed to eat fruit? And you think of this alligator with his little stubby legs trying to climb up a tree, you think, well, maybe not. Wow. Well, you are just such a wealth of information. I almost don’t know which area and which direction to be going in. You do we counsel people? Yeah. Oh, that that was a good We have about three minutes left. So, those are the kind of things I need. You do counsel people, right? Right. If you’d like to get help with your memory, you can have your primary
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care doctor give you a referral to the Maui Memory Clinic and then u Dr. Harding will probably evaluate um where you’re strong and where you’re weak in the brain areas and then he can if you want to change your diet or work with nutrition then we can help with that too. Uh but if you don’t then there’s other ways to help yourself. Is it when getting a referral from your primary is it covered under some insurance? Sure. It is. Okay. Yeah. Most insuranceances do cover it. Terrific.
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Yeah. Sure. Well, we don’t have enough time to to bring our guest, but next week if you guys will come back next week, not only we’re going to talk about the theory, but we’re going to talk about practical diet things, and we’re going to have someone who’s going to I hope she brings samples that I I tell you why you want to change things and she tells you how to change the thing. Her advice is much more practical and delicious than mine. Oh, well, but you like you said you’re no
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fun because you tell the truth. That’s true. That’s true. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I I agree. And and you’re right. It is true that a lot of people don’t want to change their favorite foods, and I’m sympathetic with that. But my wife can tell you how to still eat food that looks just like that, but is much healthier. Yeah. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Yeah. So you guys that are excited by today are going to be excited by next week. Also, we’re going to have Cat
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Blake here, Catherine Blake, and she is going to serve up for your pleasure choices and give you a little bit of a taste of ways that you can get healthy and still enjoy it. How’s that? Isn’t that the most important thing? That’s her specialty. And I’m happy to live with a televised chef as a wife. That’s the way to go. Yeah. Well, we have only 30 seconds. Who could believe we ran through that? Steve, thank you for being here with us. My pleasure. I hope everyone will come back next week
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and keep coming back. Go to mauyneutralzone.com. You can see these shows and more. I am going to play our music and get us out of here. We will see you again next week. Thank you all. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, J. Aloha, everyone.
