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  • Dr. David LeMay is a sports medicine and rehabilitation physician who is a consultant for the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NFL’s Oakland Raiders and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals, which won the Stanley Cup this year, their first in the franchise history.

    Dave is also a neighbor of ours in Pensacola who has a practice called Lifestyle and Performance Medicine that is located just a few blocks from IHMC.

    Dave and his practice partner provide personalized preventative care that helps people reduce the effects of stress on the body and mind to maximize function and health. In his practice, Dave works with a lot of athletes as well as retired and active military members, particularly people in special-ops, who have inflammation as a result of persistent injuries and traumas.

    Dave often recommends specialized pro-resolving mediators, also known as SPMs, which help promote the natural termination of the inflammation process and allow a person to avoid anti-inflammatory drugs. We will especially be talking with Dave about this rather new way of treatment in today’s interview.

    Some other topics we cover in Dave’s interview:

    Neuroendocrine dysfunction, especially among military veterans.
    The role of inflammation in concussions and traumatic brain injuries.
    Dave’s work with the NFL Players Association Trust.
    The role of specialized pro-resolving mediators in an aging population.
    The proper dosage of SPMs for subacute inflammation.
    Dave’s efforts to improve the diets of former NFL players.
    The key components of keeping athletes healthy through an entire season.
    The correlation between heath-rate variability and athletic performance.
    Proper sideline protocols for players who sustain head injuries.
    Optimal treatment for people who suffer TBI and concussions.
    Establishing baselines for a person’s neuroendocrine function.
    The role of DHA and EPA consumption for maintaining optimal brain health.
    And much, much more.

    Show notes:

    [00:04:18] Dave begins the interview talking about growing up in Reno, Nevada, and playing sports non-stop as a kid.

    [00:4:35] Dawn comments on how Dave’s love of sports lead to some injuries, including a few broken fingers and torn ligaments, and says she understands that this is how Dave first became interested in science.

    [00:05:31] Dawn asks Dave about his decision to head to California after high school to attend Azusa Pacific University.

    [00:06:37] Dawn asks what lead Dave back home to attend med school at the University of Reno.

    [00:07:13] Ken asks Dave at what point he decided to specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation.

    [00:08:33] Dawn mentions that the University of Texas Health Science Center has one of the best physical medicine and rehab programs in the country. She asks Dave if this was the reason he decided to go there for his residency.

    [00:09:21] Ken comments on how after Dave’s residency, he stayed in Austin for almost a year. But then Dave moved Pensacola and Ken asks how that came about.

    [00:11:04] Dawn asks about Dave’s private practice, called Lifestyle and Performance Medicine, which he and his partner opened in 2013 after their time at the Andrews Institute.

    [00:11:27] Ken points out that veterans, and some active-duty folks, particularly those with special operations backgrounds, comprise about half of Dave’s practice. Ken says he understands Dave has seen a great deal of neuroendocrine dysfunction in this group, and asks Dave for his observations.

    [00:12:56] Ken mentions that Dave is the medical director for a program that is run through the NFL Players Association Trust. He asks Dave to describe the type of rehab that this program provides the former NFL players.

    [00:14:54] Dawn comments on the concept of inflammation being a unifying component of many diseases that afflict Western Civilization, and how it is also a major contributor to the magnitude and persistence of diff...

  • Nearly five million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease. In 30 years, that number is estimated to be 16 millionIn today’s episode, Ken and Dawn interview Dr. Stephen Cunnane, a Canadian physiologist whose extensive research into Alzheimer’s disease is showing how ketones can be used as part of a prevention approach that helps delay or slow down the onset of Alzheimer’s.Cunnane is a metabolic physiologist at the University of Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He is the author of five books, including” Survival of the Fattest: The Key to Human Brain Evolution,” which was published in 2005, and “Human Brain Evolution: Influence of Fresh and Coastal Food Resources,” which was published in 2010.He earned his Ph.D. in Physiology at McGill University in 1980 and did post-doctoral research on nutrition and brain development in Aberdeen, Scotland, London, and Nova Scotia. From 1986 to 2003, he was a faculty member in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto where his research focused on the role of omega-3 fatty acids in brain development and human health. He also did research on the relation between ketones and a high-fat ketogenic diet on brain development.In 2003, Dr. Cunnane was awarded a senior Canada Research Chair at the Research Center on Aging and became a full professor at the University of Sherbrooke. He has published more than 280 peer-reviewed research papers and was elected to the French National Academy of Medicine in 2009.Links:Lower Brain 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Uptake:Castellano et al AD dPET J Alz Dis 2015Brain glucose and acetoacetate metabolism:Nugent et al dPET YE Neurobiol Aging 2014Energetic and nutritional constraints on infant brain development:Cunnane & Crawford J Human Evol 2014Inverse relationship between brain glucose and ketone metabolism in adults:Courchesne-Loyer et al PET KD JCBFM 2016A cross-sectional comparison of brain glucose and ketone metabolism in cognitively healthy older adults:Croteau et al. AD MCI CMR Exper Gerontol 2017A 3-Month Aerobic Training Program Improves Brain Energy Metabolism in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease:Castellano et al. exercise ketones JAD 2017Show notes:3:33: Dawn mentions that Stephen was born in London but that his family emigrated to Canada when he was an infant. She asks him about growing up in a suburb of Montreal.4:02: Ken mentions that he has been told by a reliable source that as soon as Stephen got into high school he spent a lot of time in the chemistry lab, where sometimes created mischief.4:58: Dawn asks if it is true that Stephen nearly flunked out of college when he first started.5:16: Dawn comments that Stephen got his PHD in physiology at McGill University which is when his interest in science really caught on and asks how that came about.5:55: Stephen talks about communicating with Desmond Morris while Stephen was working on his post-doc.8:03: Dawn asks about Stephen’s post-doctoral research, for which he traveled to Aberdeen London and Nova Scotia; as well as what prompted his interest in nutrition in the brain.9:01: Dawn mentions that in 1986 Stephen became a faculty member in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto. She asks how he ended up teaching nutrition when he didn’t have a degree in nutrition.10:33: Stephen talks about accepting a senior Canada Research Chair at the Research Center of Aging and a full professorship at the University of Sherbrooke.11:57: Ken talks about Stephen’s interest in human evolution how it eventually led him to research the nutritional importance of shore-based foods and omega-3 fatty acid in particular in the development of human’s brains. He asks Stephen to talk about his work leading up to the hypothesis that humans evolved near the water.

  • What’s the best way to eat and the right way to exercise to ensure a healthy lifespan? Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Anton, a psychologist who has spent his career researching how lifestyle factors can influence not only obesity, but also cardiovascular disease and other metabolic conditions.

    Steve is an associate professor and the chief of the Clinical Research Division in the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida. In today’s episode, we talk to Steve about his work in developing lifestyle interventions designed to modify people’s eating and exercise behaviors in an effort to improve their healthspan and lifespan.

    One of Steve’s best-known papers appeared in the Obesity Journal titled “Flipping the Metabolic Switch.” The study looked at intermittent fasting and suggested that the metabolic switch into ketosis represents an evolutionary conserved trigger point that has the potential to improve body composition in overweight individuals.

    Topics we cover in today’s interview include:

    The increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome associated with aging.
    Why so many hospital health and wellness programs fail.
    How fasting and intermittent energy restriction promote autophagy.
    The relationship between muscle quality, body fat and health.
    How age-related loss of muscle function and mass leads to sarcopenia.
    Effects, risks and benefits of testosterone supplementation in older men.
    Optimal exercise methods for long-term health.
    Therapeutic approaches that potentially can help avert systemic inflammation associated with aging.
    Steve’s study that looked at the effects of popular diets on weight loss.
    Controversies surrounded calorie restriction as a strategy to enhance longevity.

    Show notes:

    2:30: Steve talks about growing up in Tampa and playing sports as a kid.

    3:53: Dawn asks Steve about his decision to attend Florida State after high school.

    4:17: Dawn comments on how Steve bounced between medicine, business, and psychology before finally deciding to major in psychology. She asks if having two parents who were also psychologists played a role in his decision.

    5:24: Ken asks about Steven’s experience pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Florida.

    6:28: Dawn brings up that Steve became a fellow of behavioral medicine at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. She mentions that Pennington has one of the nation’s premier programs in obesity metabolism and diabetes. She asks if that was the reason he decided on Pennington.

    9:33: Dawn asks what prompted Steve to return to the University of Florida.

    10:08: Ken asks what is driving the increased prevalence of metabolic syndrome that’s associated with advanced age.

    11:19: Dawn brings up how hospitals have tried to promote health and wellness programs for decades, but notes how hospitals are designed to treat people who are sick and injured rather than delivering lifestyle interventions. She asks if Steve can give a summary of what he has learned in looking at ways to deliver interventions.

    13:23: Dawn mentions that the traditional treatment and management approaches for type 2 diabetes are relatively ineffective and only reverse the disease in about one percent of the cases.

    15:02: Ken mentions that Jeff Volek, STEM-Talk Guest on episode 43, has been a pioneer in researching type 2 diabetes.

    16:49: Dawn points out that she and Ken had an in-depth conversation with Dr. Mark Matson about autophagy on episode seven of STEM-Talk. Matson also discussed fasting, and intermittent energy restriction and how it promotes autophagy, which is often described as the body’s innate recycling system. Dawn asks if Steve can elaborate a little on this process.

    18:02: Dawn mentions that Steve has written about muscle quality and body composition and the risk of metabolic diseases and functional decline. She asks about the relationship between muscle quality,

  • Today’s episode features the second of our two-part interview with Dr. Tommy Wood, a U.K. trained MD/PhD who now lives in the U.S.

    Part one covered Tommy’ background and education and what led him spend most of his academic career studying multiple sclerosis and ways to treat babies with brain injuries.

    Part two of our interview focuses on Tommy’s other passions: nutritional approaches to sports performance and metabolic disease.

    But before we get into Tommy’s background, we want to take a moment to thank our listeners for helping STEM-Talk win first place in the science category of the 12th Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards.

    The international competition featured more than 2,000 nominees in 20 categories. STEM-Talk also was a runner-up in the People’s Choice Award, the grand prize of the competition.

    As we mentioned earlier, Tommy is U.K. trained MD/PhD who received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge before attending medical school at the University of Oxford. He recently completed a PhD in physiology and neonatal brain metabolism at the University of Washington. He is now a senior fellow at the university researching neonatal brain injury.

    In part one of his STEM-Talk interview, Tommy also talked about how he is the incoming president of the Physicians for Ancestral Health, an international organization of physicians, healthcare professionals and medical students that specializes in ancestral health principles for the prevention and treatment of illness.

    Tommy’s interest sports performance stems from his background as an experienced rowing, endurance, and strength coach who combines evolutionary principles with modern biochemical techniques to optimize performance. He primarily performs this work with Nourish Balance Thrive, a functional medicine clinic based in California that works largely with athletes, where he is the chief medical officer.

    Links:

    Physicians for Ancestral Health - http://ancestraldoctors.org

    Physicians for Ancestral Health – http://ancestraldoctors.org

    Nourish Balance Thrive – http://www.nourishbalancethrive.com

    NBT automated performance analysis: http://nbt.ai

    Primal Endurance podcast (ketogenic diets, athletic longevity, etc.): http://primalendurance.libsyn.com/101-dr-tommy-wood

    2) High Intensity Health podcast (ketogenic diets and gut health): http://highintensityhealth.com/tommy-wood-keto-diet-endotoxin-gut-health-bacterial-diversity/

    Show notes:

    3:37: The interview resumes.

    3:43: Ken discusses how many, perhaps even most, adults are now insulin resistant to some degree, which negatively impacts many aspects of both health and performance, and is associated with most modern chronic diseases. Ken then asks Tommy if there are any underlying processes that he can see that tie these diseases together.

    7:27: Ken comments on how in 1927 they had the sensible practice of starting a diabetic patient on a low-carb diet, which is still not current practice now in many places.

    8:04: Tommy discusses how it is good to have symptom control with diabetes. Ken and Tommy discuss the many advantages of donating blood.

    10:16: Ken asks Tommy if he has any issues giving blood in the United States given that he is from the UK which experienced mad-cow disease.

    11:40: Ken asks Tommy if he checks his athletes’ ferritin levels and tries and keep them in a certain range, and if so, if he has a preferred range.

    12:17: Dawn discusses how in addition to Tommy’s academic work at the University of Washington, he is also very active as the Chief Scientific Officer of Nourish Balance Thrive (NBT), an online company using advanced biochemical testing to optimize performance in athletes. Dawn asks Tommy to discuss Nourish Balance Thrive, and how the company works to optimize the health and performance of athletes.

    14:41: Ken comments on how Tommy has a relatively homogeneous population if he is focused on endurance athlete...

  • Today’s episode features one of the nation’s leading physicians and researchers who has spent years studying and treating traumatic brain injuries.

    Dr. Flora Hammond is a professor and chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Indiana University School of Medicine. She also is the Chief of Medical Affairs and Medical Director at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana. She has been a project director for the Traumatic Brain Injury Model System since 1998.

    Shortly before we conducted this interview with Dr. Hammond, she and a team of physicians and scientists at Indiana University received a $2.1 million grant to continue research into people who suffer traumatic brain injuries and how these injuries affect the lives of patients as well as their families.

    Dr. Hammond is a Pensacola, Florida, native who graduated from the Tulane University School of Medicine in 1990 and completed her residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She also completed a brain injury medicine fellowship at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. Her research in the area of brain injury includes studying the prediction of outcome, aging with brain injury, causes of and treatments for irritability, and quality of relationships.

    In 2016 she received the Robert L. Moody Prize, which is the nation’s highest honor reserved for individuals who had made exceptional and sustained contributions to the lives of individuals with brain injuries.

    Prior to the 2016 Robert L. Moody Prize, Dr. Hammond received local and national awards for her teaching, clinical care and research, including the 2001 Association of Academic Physiatrists Young Academician Award, the 2011 Brain Injury Association of America William Caveness Award, and the 2013 Baylor College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award.

    In 2011, 2012, and 2013, Dr. Hammond led the Galveston Brain Injury Conferences which focused on changing the view of brain injury as an incident with limited short-term treatment to a chronic condition that must be proactively managed over the course of life.

    She co-chairs the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Chronic Brain Injury Task Force, and serves on Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation editorial board. She has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications.

    Links:

    Flora Hamond faculty profile:
    https://medicine.iu.edu/faculty/20302/hammond-flora/

    "Potential Impact of Amantadine on Aggression" study
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28891908

    Show notes:

    4:08: Interview begins.

    4:38: Dawn says it’s her understanding that Flora dreamed of becoming a physician ever since middle school. Dawn asks what inspired her at such an early age to become a doctor.

    5:02: Flora talks about also wanting to become a teacher, but worried that she would have to give up teaching to become a doctor.

    5:40: Continuing with Flora’s history, Dawn mentions that after high school Flora traveled to New Orleans to attend Tulane University. Dawn asks if it’s true that Flora’s grandmother was her landlord while she was in college and med school.

    6:20: Ken mentions that Flora’s mother was a dietician and that her father was a pathologist. He asks Flora what specifically inspired her to specialize in brain injury rehabilitation and research.

    8:36: Dawn comments on how before Flora accepted a positon at Indiana, she was in the Carolinas, and asks about her work there.

    9:30: Dawn asks how Flora ended up at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

    10:23: Ken mentions that Flora’s lecture at IHMC attracted a lot of interest and a full-house. He follows up by asking Flora what she thinks is driving the interest in brain injuries.

    11:34: Dawn talks about how Flora and a team of physicians and scientists at Indiana have spent years studying and treating TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and the effects of TBI on the lives of patients and their fa...

  • Investigative journalist Nina Teicholz joined Ken and Dawn remotely from a studio in New York City in mid-September for a fascinating discussion about the history and pitfalls of nutrition science.

    Teicholz is the author of the international bestseller, “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.”

    The Economist named it the number one science book of 2014 and the Journal of Clinical Nutrition wrote, “This book should be read by every scientist and every nutritional science professional.”

    Nina began her journalism career as a reporter for National Public Radio. She went on to write for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Economist. She attended Yale University and Stanford University where she studied biology and majored in American Studies. She has a master’s degree from Oxford University and served as associate director of the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

    “The Big Fat Surprise” is credited with upending the conventional wisdom on dietary fat. It challenged the very core of America’s nutrition policy by explaining the politics, personalities, and history of how we came to believe that dietary fat is bad for health.  Her book was the first mainstream publication to make the full argument for why saturated fats – the kind found in dairy, meat and eggs – belong in a healthy diet.

    The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Mother Jones, the Library Journal and Kirkus Review named “The Big Fat Surprise” one of the best books of 2014. The Economist described Nina’s book as a “nutrition thriller.”

    Links:

    -- Nina Teicholz blog

    -- Amazon: “Big Fat Surprise” http://amzn.to/2iQemXc

    -- BMJ: “The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?”

    -- “A Review of the Dietary Guidelines by the National Academy of Medicine”

    -- STEM-Talk with Gary Taubes

    -- “Statistical Review of US Macronutrient Consumption date, 1965-2011”

    -- “What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?”

    Show notes:

    4:10: Interview begins with Nina talking about how her father, an engineer who also enjoyed computer science, sparked her interest in science.

    5:41: Dawn asks Nina if she would share the story about her failed fruit-fly experiment in high school.

    8:07: Nina talks about how an assignment to do a story on trans fats led her to become friends with journalist Gary Taubes, the author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” whom Dawn and Ken interviewed on episode 37 of STEM-Talk.

    11:40: Dawn talks about an article Nina wrote for Men’s Health Magazine titled, “What If Bad Fat Is Actually Good for You?” It’s the article where Nina first laid out her case that saturated fats may not be bad for people’s health and might actually be good for people. Dawn asks Nina if she got pushback on that article.

    14:07: Dawn asks about a paper Nina published in BMJ titled, “The Scientific Report Guiding the US Dietary Guidelines: Is It Scientific?”  Dawn asks Nina to describe what happened when 180 scientists wrote a letter asking BMJ to retract the paper.

    19:52: Dawn comments about how the pushback to the article seemed to violate the very process that science is supposed to follow.

    21:30: Ken comments about the orchestrated effort to make Nina look bad, which leads Nina to highlight the support she received from BMJ and its editor Fiona Godlee.

    22:55: Nina talks about the difficulty a journalist faces when challenging the work of scientists from institutions like Harvard and Yale.

    24:16: Ken mentions how we’re seeing more and more dogma dressed up as science, which that leads to a discussion between Ken, Dawn and Nina about the shortcomings of nutrition science.

    30:32: Dawn comments that Nina has been quoted as saying that institutionalized science is an oxymoron, and once institutions started adopting the principle that saturated fat caused heart disease,...