Sanjay Gupta was on “The View” promoting this book and the fact that it’s all about how we can protect our brains from decline no matter how long we live, and who doesn’t want that? So I promptly requested the audiobook from my library and it didn’t take long for it to become available.
For the most part, I think this book was full of helpful information, but he left some things out and I’m not sure why. For example, he spends a whole chapter talking about nutrition as it relates to mental health, but he never mentions Dr. Terry Wahls putting her MS in remission by changing her diet. He even mentions Alzheimer’s/dementia being so related to metabolism it’s known as diabetes of the brain. So how could you not talk about Dr. Terry Wahls’s protocol, since it’s all about paying attention to your cells’ energy centers?
Gupta also talks about the importance of managing your inflammation to do right by your brain, but doesn’t talk about the inflammatory nature of grains, especially wheat and dairy. For that matter, he doesn’t discuss the inflammatory nature of any food, although he recommends limiting sugar and alcohol (both of which are also inflammatory).
At one point he talks about some indigenous tribe he hung out with who tend to be healthy until the day they die. He talks about their macronutrients, but not their micronutrients. A westerner could easily eat a diet consisting of 50% carbs made entirely of processed wheat and they won’t do as well as any indigenous tribe member because those carbs wouldn’t be as rich in micronutrients as the fruits, veggies, and tubers the indigenous people are eating.
My final complaint (I promise) is his claim that the Standard American diet is not nutrient deficient, even though it totally is. If we were all getting all our nutrients, we wouldn’t have the high levels of chronic disease (including Alzheimer’s/dementia) that we have.
Don’t let all these complaints give the impression I didn’t like this book or that it has nothing of value to offer. On the contrary, I appreciated that he took a holistic approach to preventing mental decline: from diet, to exercise, to meditation. Despite my issues with some of his cherry-picking data, I appreciated how many studies he references in this book, and he recognizes the problems with survey-based studies, which, unfortunately, is what most nutritional studies rely on.
I also appreciated that he approaches this book with the aim to inspire hope rather than fear. I think his assertion that fear mongering doesn’t work is on point, and I’m glad he didn’t try to go that route.