Doctor John E. Lewis is an expert in nutrition and dietary supplements

Dr. John Lewis: Hey, everyone.

Wendy Valentine: Welcome back to the midlife makeover show. Today we have a guest who is about to blow your mind with some groundbreaking information about health and nutrition. Meet Doctor John E. Lewis, the founder and president of Doctor Lewis Nutrition and a past associate professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. With over 30 studies under his belt and more than 180 peer reviewed publications. Wowza. Doctor Lewis is a true expert in the world of nutrition and dietary supplements. In today’s episode, Doctor Lewis is going to teach us about the power of special polysaccharides. I’m so proud of myself that I said that properly from aloe Vera and Rice Bran that have shown incredible life changing effects and clinical trial trials for conditions like Alzheimer’s. He’ll share how these natural compounds have demonstrated improvements in cognitive function, inflammation and immune health. This is truly cutting edge research that most people haven’t heard of, myself included. And I’m excited for you all to learn how these discoveries could change the way we approach health and healing. Let’s give a warm welcome to doctor John Lewis.

Dr. John Lewis: Thank you, Wendy. It’s great, to be here with you and I appreciate the kind introduction and it’s nice to meet another fellow native Tennessean.

Wendy Valentine: So I know. That’s right. I know. Love my Tennessee. Shout out to all my cousins in Tennessee right now.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: So, you know, it’s funny, I’ve always been fascinated with health and nutrition, and I shared with you, I owned, a practice, a few practices over the years, and I’ve always was fascinated with the supplements, kid you not? And I was always the guinea pig for before. Like, before we would even sell it to the patients. I’m like, I’ll take it first.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: But I do know the importance of them because I know that our body can’t always get everything that it needs from food and especially with being in toxic environments at times. so I do know the importance of that.

Brain health affects every segment of society today, Mannon says

My first question for you is, what inspired you to go into brain health?

Dr. John Lewis: That’s a great question. Excuse me, if you’ll bear with me today, I have a little bit of a sinus issue, but, brain health obviously affects every segment of society today. Whether you’re talking about young children with, God forbid, autism, that’s obviously the worst case scenario. But a lot of kids with ADD, ADHD, then you have older folks at the end of life with neurodegeneration, whether it’s dementia, Parkinson’s, something like that. That’s just horrible. And then you have all of us in between, and you have all of these people today running around with mood disorder. It’s just crazy how many people have depression, anxiety, bipolarism, all these things, and then you’ve got all these people that have played sports or been in the military with concussion syndrome. I mean, it’s just mind boggling the spectrum of brain health issues that affect society today, literally from cradle to grave. It’s incredible. And so the reason I got into brain health, though, was because of actually meeting, a gentleman by the name of doctor Reg McDaniel, a pathologist by training in the Dallas area, who he and I met about 20 years ago. And doctor Reg is just a fascinating man. I mean, talk about a wonderful. This guy has such a wonderful heart and spirit. He’s 80. I shouldn’t even say his name. Let’s say he’s late eighties age, not name. I don’t like outing people on their age, but still goes to his office every day, still fighting the good fight, still trying to help people. I mean, bless this man’s heart. As my grandmother used to say, you know, what an amazing human, this guy is. But he and I met about 20 years ago through a mutual friend at the University of Miami. And he was talking to me about, you already mentioned the buzzword polysaccharides from aloe Vera. And his story was just so fascinating and inspiring to me in terms of leaving, basically leaving the practice of pathology, running a, pathology unit at a hospital in Dallas to practicing nutrition. I mean, how many times do you hear, certainly maybe an internist or a cardiologist, but a pathologist, like a very hardcore, lab oriented field in medicine who had no interest in nutrition. That’s the other interesting thing about him as a physician. He had no interest in nutrition. He wasn’t recognizing its importance. But he had a. Back in 19, 85, 86 going on 40 years ago, he had ten guys with HIV come to him at that time. They were taking this aloe vera product. Now, you know, back in those days, this is before antiretroviral medication. So if you had HIV, it was basically a death sentence because it would go ahead and progress to AIDS and then you would die of some secondary infection. These guys had no viral load and their cd four cells were normal. M total medical heresy. Like there was no medical explanation why an aloe vera product could knock out the virus like that and boost the cd four cell level to normal.

Wendy Valentine: Hm.

Dr. John Lewis: So doctor Reg was initially like, ah, this is nonsense. This is, you know, you’re pulling my leg, whatever. Like, he kept, you know, shooing them out of his office. And thankfully for all of us, those guys did not take no for an answer. And eventually, Doctor Reg said, okay, let me take a look at this. He could not get any of his physician friends to have any interest. Again, much like him, they didn’t have any interest in nutrition. But guess who did? Veterinarians. M. Yes, exactly. The average veterinarian compared to the average physician, is far more interested in nutrition, because when you look at animals as livestock, those are commodities. Those are things that you attach value to for that farmer or that person raising those animals. So nutrition is very important in the role of keeping those animals healthy and ultimately becoming food on the table, I guess. But, anyway, he was able to get his buddies at Texas A and m at the veterinary school to start working with him on why these polysaccharides from aloe Vera. Actually, they didn’t even know it was the polysaccharides at that moment. It was just this, basically, this aloe vera, product. But they discovered eventually that the polysaccharides, this ace Mannon, acetylated poly mannose, there were several different synonyms for it.

Wendy Valentine: Hm.

Dr. John Lewis: That eventually that was the real bioactive material. And that’s the reason why humans have been using aloe vera for thousands of years, since recorded time. Humans, obviously, a long time ago, figured out this was an incredible plant that mother Nature bestows on us for health. So, fast forward 20 years, and then when he and I met, and he’s telling me about all of this. And Wendy, quite frankly, anything that I learned about saccharides in general, let alone polysaccharides, was probably a lecture or two in biochemistry. And all I knew about them at that time was that they were a source of fuel for our cells. On that, I had no clue. Literally no clue. And so, you know, here I am at the university, I’m running my studies, I’m doing my thing. I’m, very much already into nutrition and supplements and exercise, but I didn’t have a clue until meeting this man. What polysaccharides, not what they were, but what they could actually do for us. And particularly the ones from aloe Vera. And then another lady who introduced me to her story about rice brain. I’ll tell. Tell you about her later. But, doctor Reg was working with several people that had, you know, all sorts of conditions. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, I mean, you name it, just a huge list. And so he was giving a lecture one day talking about his successes with some of these different folks, you know, again, anecdotes, cases, not results of studies, a lady happened to hear him in the audience and felt very inspired. And she and her husband ended up forming a relationship with Doctor Reg, and they had money that they wanted to devote to research, and they were looking for a good home for it. And they felt so inspired by his message that they said, we would love to help you advance the research and nutrition on these polysaccharides. but you have to do it in Alzheimer’s disease, because we’ve lost four family members to this tragic disease, and we feel very inspired to help the science in this area where if you’ve had any family members or anybody, you know, in your circle that has had this horrific disease, you know how bad it is. And so, as he and I were getting to know each other, and again, he didn’t have any position at a university, he calls me up and he says, hey, John, we’ve got an opportunity to run this clinical trial on the polysaccharides, but it has to be done in Alzheimer’s disease. So that’s a very, very long winded anecdote to tell you that I didn’t have a sort of a personal interest from a, you know, a family member dying. I mean, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles and dad, they died of everything else but Alzheimer’s or dementia. I mean, they had all the other typical things, like different forms of heart disease, cancer, whatever. But when I met doctor Reg and got, you know, again, so inspired by his story, and then we had this opportunity, thanks to the generosity of this one family, to do a study in Alzheimer’s. I mean, man, I was on it, like, you know, like that. And so that was ultimately the thing nearly 20 years ago that got me into this whole brain health area. And then, of course, running that study and just, you know, seeing for yourself firsthand the devastation. And it’s not just the person, right? It’s the primary caregiver, too. Yeah, the primary caregiver, actually, of, ah, people that caregive for Alzheimer’s patients have the worst health outcomes of any other type of caregiver.

Wendy Valentine: Interesting. Yeah, it’s frustrating. My, my. You can appreciate this name, ma’am. All my ma’am, all Bassey from Tennessee. Poor, thing, God rest her soul. bless her little heart. But, yeah, she had, she had. I know, really, those are like the same Tennessee, but poor mama vessi. Like, she.

Evan says his grandmother had Alzheimer’s for 10 years

She lived until she was 98. I believe 98, 99, which is great. But the last ten years of her life, she had Alzheimer’s.

Dr. John Lewis: Oh, boy.

Wendy Valentine: And so she didn’t know anybody for the last decade of her life. And, so, yeah, it is. It’s horrible to see. And same thing, like, to see your family, see the other family members go through it. And. And I’ve had some other family members that have had some memory loss, and I think about those things. I mean, especially now I’m in my fifties, I think about, I can. I want to do whatever I can to take care of this vehicle that carries the soul, my soul, through this lifetime. Right?

Dr. John Lewis: That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: But brain health is one of those things. It’s not like I can go to the gym and, work out my brain, right? You know? And I do my best through food and nutrition, but, again, I do believe in supplements that can help with stuff like this. And it is because of cutting edge things like this that can really help with that. And, I mean, and, my gosh, if it can help Alzheimer’s, then God only knows what else it can help with, too. Evan.

Wendy: I grew up thinking I had a genetic predisposition to heart disease

Dr. John Lewis: Well, the thing is, Wendy, these polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran are utilized by every single cell in the body. And let me go down this path just a little bit so you and your listeners will have a better appreciation for what I’m about to tell you. And that is, we. Obviously, oxygen is our first nutrient, right? I mean, we can’t go very long without breathing. We’re dead from suffocation. But after. After oxygen, we need vitamins, we need minerals, we need these polysaccharides, fatty acids, amino acids. We need a whole host of different things for ourselves to function properly. Now, one thing I want everybody to understand is that, you know, unfortunately, as you know, I’m sure you had the same experience growing up that most people do is. And maybe in the case with your grandmother having Alzheimer’s. I know in my case, I grew up thinking I had a genetic predisposition to heart disease because so many of my elders had died of either heart attack, stroke, or even in my grandfather’s case, he had both. So I grew up with this idea. Oh, my gosh, like, I have this genetic thing about heart disease. But, as I got older and became educated about these things and learned more about how this vehicle, as you said, works, we’re not born with bad genes. We are born adopting bad behaviors from the people around us who influence us. I don’t know about you, but I bet, as a fellow tennessean, I bet you grew up in the same type of family I did. We didn’t eat for health. We ate for taste.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, heck, yeah. Chicken fried steak.

Dr. John Lewis: Exactly. Nobody cared about eating for health in my family. I didn’t have any, you know, health coach or any nutritionist or exercise scientist. I didn’t have anything like that in my family. We just ate because that’s what we wanted to eat, and that was what tasted good. My dad thought there were three requirements for any given meal. A glass of milk, some piece of bread, and some kind of meat. you could give him any other sort of vegetables, grains, beans, fruits, whatever. But if he didn’t have those three things as the component of his meal, especially dinner, man, he didn’t think that was a meal. So that was the kind of family I grew up in. But I’m, saying all that to say that everything that we do, especially when we bend our elbow and open our mouth and stick something in it, those are the behaviors that determine ultimately where we’re going to be on the spectrum of health. Especially. I’m in my fifties, too, especially as we go through the lifespan and once we hit middle age and beyond. Man, those behaviors that you did as a child, teen, early twenties, thirties, and now you’re getting into your middle aged years, that’s really where you can look back on it and say, oh, wow, I really screwed up. However, the body is very resilient. So there’s a principle called the adaptation principle. It’s mostly, geared toward exercise, but it works for nutrition, too. And that says if you feed or if you do certain things over and over again, the body will adapt to that. It’s very resilient. So you don’t have to feel like, oh, well, I was an alcoholic when I was a college student, and I smoked all this pot and I did all these other things, and now I’m do. No, you can actually repair that damage if you start today with, you know, protecting yourself and making changes. But don’t, think that you’re genetically predisposed to neurodegeneration or cancer or heart disease. You can do lots of things for yourself, for your health, to prevent that stuff. So, again, I think it’s very important.

Nobody can leave our conversation today and now say that all sugar is bad for you

And where polysaccharides fit into all of this. And again, I’m sorry for being so long winded about my.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, no, it’s great. I’m learning so much. This is awesome. And, yeah, but, you know, before you continue, what? And I know maybe this is where you were going, but what are polysaccharides?

Dr. John Lewis: That’s exactly, that’s what you’re gonna, that’s where I’m going.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Dr. John Lewis: So these polysaccharides are. Look at the, look at the two roots of that word, polysaccharide. Poly means many. Saccharide means sugar. You don’t live in the United States anymore, but you are a Native American. What have we heard for the last, at least half century? When you hear the word sugar as an american, what do you immediately think? Bad.

Wendy Valentine: Like, that’s like, it’s bad.

Dr. John Lewis: Bad?

Wendy Valentine: Yes. There’s no other equals bad, right?

Dr. John Lewis: Your mind doesn’t even allow you to think, oh, wait a minute. There are hundreds of sugars in mother nature. Are they all bad? M. So let’s break this down for a little bit. You have three basic types of sugars. You have the monosaccharide. That’s the simplest sugar. That’s basically one molecule of sugar. So that’s something like high fructose corn syrup. Okay, I think we can all agree if you’re taking high fructose corn syrup every day, you’re spiking your glucose, you’re spiking your insulin, you’re creating all of these metabolic effects that are going to be bad for you, probably not in that long of a time, but certainly over a few years and decades. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease. I mean, it’s just going to be. Forget it. That’s going to be your fate. The next sugar, in complexity, is a disaccharide, two molecules, something like sucrose, white table sugar. Again, if you’re eating sucrose every day, day after day, that’s probably not the best thing for you. And then finally, you have the third most complex types of sugars, polysaccharides. Wendy these things are hundred, literally hundreds of glucose units attached together by these very complex and sophisticated glycosidic bonds. M. And what that means is that they are so complex, you cannot even draw them on a piece of paper. They’re like 5d models, basically. They are so complex to look at, you cannot even draw them on a piece of paper. And so these things that come from aloe vera and rice Bran that my colleagues and I have studied for now, the last almost 20 years, we have shown time and time again how beneficial they are to human health. And I’ll go into that research a little bit more. But basically, the point of all of this is to say that, number one, if you just blanket, if you just make the blanket statement, that all sugar is bad for you.

Wendy Valentine: Right?

Dr. John Lewis: Number one, it’s not true.

Dr. John Lewis: Number two, it’s coming from a place of ignorance. So nobody can leave our conversation today and now say that all sugar is bad for you. It depends on the type and the source of the sugar, and that’s a very important distinction and to be able to put it in proper context. And so again, these complex sugars are actually very beneficial for us and for those folks who are caught up in the, you know, this keto paleo carnivore wave about shoveling all of this meat and protein in your system, folks, you still, even if that’s your preferred dietary strategy, philosophy, belief, behavior, whatever, you can still benefit greatly from a few hundred milligrams to maybe a couple of grams per day of these polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran. And that’s not going to disrupt your dietary philosophy whatsoever. In fact, I have yet to see one study published showing that red meat or some other kind of animal tissue has the same immune enhancing effects. And we’ll talk about this a little bit more as these polysaccharides do. There’s not one study even just in our group from our work at the University of Miami, not even counting all the rest of the work that’s been done around the world on these polysaccharides, but just from our laboratory alone, there’s not. I mean, I can, and I’ll share this information with you guys in just a moment, but we’ve published so many exciting effects of how these polysaccharides work, and I haven’t seen one study of one clinical trial of eating red meat or chicken or dairy or eggs or anything else that will show the same effects on our immune systems functioning like these polysaccharides do. So, go ahead and keep shoveling all that meat down your throat. You know, that’s your thing. But if you’re ignoring the potential for these polysaccharides to help you on so many different levels, well, you’re just missing out. You’re point blank. You’re missing out on an opportunity to help boost your health.

Wendy Valentine: So these polysaccharides, they come, I’m guessing then, from m, the aloe plant and from rice.

Dr. John Lewis: Yes, correct. So, interestingly, when the average person hears aloe vera, what does he or she think? I think put it on a sunburn. Right?

Wendy Valentine: I was like, I think about lotion.

Dr. John Lewis: Right? Exactly. It’s something, topical, right? You think of it?

Wendy Valentine: Yes, it’s true. Yes.

Dr. John Lewis: Something topical you think of. Oh, I’ve got a sunburn. I’ve got a little cut, a wound, whatever. Let me put some aloe vera gel on that area, and. And it will help to heal it. Have you ever considered why aloe vera heals?

Wendy Valentine: No.

Dr. John Lewis: It’s the polysaccharides in that gel. The gel is 98 and a half, 99% water. That water does nothing for you. In terms of healing benefit, we obviously need to be hydrated and drink our water every day, but that’s. You don’t get your water from drinking aloe vera gel. do you know anybody who drinks or eats aloe vera gel? I don’t know one person.

Wendy Valentine: I mean, after all this conversation, I feel like going to find an aloe plant and just chewing on it.

Dr. John Lewis: Here in Miami, we have aloe vera growing in our backyard. But I’m not out there every day snipping leaves and, you know, sucking the gel down. I mean, that, to me, that’s a waste of time. There’s no reason for that. Yep. So the gel is 98 and a half, 99% water.

Every time I give this, you know, I’m interviewed or

Every time I give this, you know, I’m interviewed or I give a lecture or whatever, almost invariably at least one person in the audience says, oh, this guy’s talking about aloe vera. I’ll just start, you know, drinking bobs of aloe vera gel. No, doesn’t work that way. The polysaccharide content in any volume of that gel is so diluted by all of that water, you cannot possibly get enough polysaccharide material or content or volume to have a therapeutic benefit. So you really need to, first of all, strip all of that water out, and then, oh, by the way, the gel is not just polysaccharide. I mean, really, aloe vera truly is one of Mother Nature’s gifts to humanity. It contains amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, elements, cofactors, metabolites. I mean, the list goes on and on. This truly is a plant of healing. And there’s no reason, I mean, it’s. It’s not a misunderstanding to me why humans have been using it for so long, because obviously humans, thousands of years ago, figured out, wow, that little cactus looking thing, the gel inside of that thing will help you heal, you know, for whatever reason. And so you concentrate that powder into, again, a few hundred milligrams, maybe a gram or two, depending on your I. Your health condition or whatever you’re dealing with. And now that’s where you get that material into the taking. It orally is so much more effective than, you know, rubbing it on your skin when you have a sunburn. And I’m not saying stop doing that. It’s a fine application. It’s just a limited application.

Wendy Valentine: Right.

Dr. John Lewis: But, yes, aloe vera. I, would put up against maybe anything else that Mother Nature provides for us in terms of its incredible, amazing healing, health promoting benefits. It’s just an amazing plan. But you have to. You have to get the polysaccharides out of it in the proper way. You know, you have to extract them out, forget all that water, and then again concentrate them into a dose where you can really gain the therapeutic benefit, especially if you have some sort of a health condition.

Wendy Valentine: And then I’m. Oh, go ahead.

Dr. John Lewis: No, I’m sorry. I was just going to say, but my family and I, we use them preventatively. I mean, I’ve been on this formula for a decade. I’ve had my mother on it for 1213 years. My wife started taking it over five years ago when she was pregnant. Our daughter turned six months. When she turned six months old, and we started introducing solid food to her, I started her on the product. She’s now four. So I say all that to say that, you know, number one, I’d be a hypocrite if I was selling something that I didn’t take myself and give to my own family. But number two, my goodness, prevention is just as important as treatment. Why in the world would you want to allow yourself to get cancer or neurodegeneration or heart disease when you can use a tool in your toolbox to help you prevent that stuff in the first place?

Wendy Valentine: I always say, like, it’s better to prevent than to repair, or it’s better to be proactive than to be reactive. And I’ll, have to say, I know that aloe works. I’m excited to actually try your supplement. Can you ship some to Portugal, please? Definitely. Absolutely. But I actually. When I. I had black mold toxicity and Lyme disease all at the same time, it was just a blast, and I was going through perimenopause. I mean, I was just amazing. I know. God.

Wendy Valentine: But aloe was one of the things that was prescribed from a doctor that I saw his integrative medicine, and I was taking aloe during that whole time to help detoxify my body of the black mold and then of the Lyme disease. And, I mean, needless to say, I’m completely better. But I know that the aloe did something I don’t even remember where I got it from? It doesn’t matter because I’m getting yours now. But, But besides.

Polysaccharides can combat and help you counteract virus, bacteria

And then I’m excited to learn about the rice bran.

Dr. John Lewis: And so rice. Yes, well, ah, so the reason why that helped you so much is, among other mechanisms of action, the polysaccharides are very anti infectious, meaning that they can combat and help you counteract virus, bacteria, fungus, basically any kind of pathogen. We know this to be true. We’ve actually published some of that in our own research, but that’s been widely determined by other labs. But rice bran is a very interesting material as well. So unfortunately, about 70% to 80%, this is what I’ve read, the statistics are, I’m assuming this to be true, 70% to 80% of the rice sold in the world is white rice. So rice has basically three major components to it. You have the outer husk or the hull.

Dr. John Lewis: That would be like eating a, you know, a piece of hay or something like you can’t, you can’t even let alone digest it. So the husk gets thrown off, ah, you know, taken off first, then m the next layer is the rice bran. And so again, most of the world prefers to eat white rice. The white is that big endosperm in the center. That’s basically just digestible starch. But, the rice bran is either thrown away or, how about this for irony? Fed to livestock animals. So actually, the animals are eating the more beneficial nutritious of rice than most humans are. But the rice bran is just such an incredibly nutrient. It’s a nutritional powerhouse, again, like aloe vera. not only does it have these polysaccharides, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, elements, all these other amazing things, but this particular rice bran polysaccharide that my colleagues and I have studied, again in several different clinical trials, combined with some of the other research that’s been done primarily in Asia, there’s been some other work in the US as well. But again, time and time has shown all these consistent effects, primarily related to immune function. But one of the things I think it’s important to point out at this moment is that a lot of times, most people, when they hear about the immune system, they think of it just like I mentioned a moment ago, as your first line of defense against infection. But that’s really only one primary role of our immune system. The other very important primary role among others, is that if you think of the analogy of a symphony orchestra, you have the conductor up in the front and he’s. Or she’s waving hands and, okay, strings, do this. Bass, do the bass, do whatever. I’m not a musician, I know nothing about it. But the immune system is the parallel to the. To the conductor, and the immune system is talking to all of our other major organ systems, and it’s basically helping to keep everything else in balance. So think about that for a moment. Balance, homeostasis is the key to our existence. Every day we have to be in homeostasis, or we’re always trying to get back to it based on stress and exposure and all this other stuff. But, if the immune system is not functioning properly, you cannot possibly expect all of your other organ systems to be doing the same, because, again, you’re basically out of balance. So that’s a very important role that people need to understand what the immune system does. And of course, that’s very tied to chronic inflammation and how inflammation gets dysregulated. But again, if you look at the summary of all of the research that we’ve published just from our lab, forget everything else from around the world. We show time and time again all of these incredible enhancements to immune system functioning. We show reduction in chronic inflammation. We show the ability of, these polysaccharides to boost adult stem cell production. Think about that for a second. Again, we showed the ability to lower infections. I mean, just literally on and on. Natural killer cell cytotoxicity increase, which is our natural killer cells are our first line of defense against virus and transforming cells that are dying and potentially could clump together and then create something that we call cancer down the road. So they’re just amazing, incredible benefits that essentially what these polysaccharides are is that they are signaling mechanisms for the immune system. M so again, when you think about the immune system’s role in everything that we do, every single moment of our lives, and being able to help regulate all those different components of the immune system and keeping all of that action, in balance, it’s just so incredibly important to us being healthy or keeping.

Wendy Valentine: With the music theme, keeping our bodies in harmony.

Dr. John Lewis: Exactly. Yes, exactly. A great way to say it. Exactly.

How quickly do people start to see results after they start taking supplements

Wendy Valentine: I don’t know if you had any studies on this. How quickly do people start to see results after they start taking them?

Dr. John Lewis: So I have unsigned, unscientifically lumped people into three categories at this point. You have a first group, is what I refer to as super responders. These are people literally within a couple of days, maybe even up to a couple of weeks, boom, they’ll start sleeping better, they’ll even better. They’ll feel more focused, more energy, not even stuff necessarily related to cognition, but just all these sort of heightened awareness. And again, those people respond very quickly. I had a guy tell me who had a brain injury, actually. He’s now feeling more focused. His girlfriend said she was sleeping better, having more vivid dreams, and that all happened within two or three days for both of them. So that’s the super sponder regroup, probably 2020, 5% of people, the majority of people, 50% to 60%, they’ll take 30, maybe even up to 60 days. They’ll have the same kinds of effects, but it’ll just take a bit longer. And then you have the last group, sort of the delayed responders, if you will. That’s probably another 20% or so. They. They may take 90 days or even longer. Just, you know, everyone’s unique, biochemically, genetically, from your exposures, from, you know, all different things. And so it just really, there’s no great answer for, you know, any individual. But, again, unscientifically, that’s how I’ve categorized people, basically, in those three groups.

Wendy Valentine: That’s pretty fast, though. I mean, and you know what? There are. There are some supplements I have taken, again, since I was like the guinea pig at the practices all the time. But there were some supplements I’d take, and I’d be like, eh, you know, and there’s some of them literally within hours, I would take something and I would feel either healthier or like my brain was functioning better or whatever the case was. Yeah.

Dr. John Lewis: And, by the way, I should mention in our formula, and I’m sorry to interrupt you, but.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, no, it’s okay.

Dr. John Lewis: There is no caffeine. So I don’t want people to think, oh, he’s just, he’s putting some caffeine in his formula, and that’s the reason why people are. No, no, there’s no, there’s no chocolate, there’s no any type of xanthine, nothing caffeine related. So this is not stimulation like drinking a cup of coffee or having a cup of tea or something. It’s nothing has.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. It would be interesting to see, like, even you were starting out the interview, talking about. About mental health issues and things that people, you know, we struggle with, depression, anxiety, and I had all of that at the same time. I was going through the lyme, you know, and the black mold. That was a blast. But, you know, even if I didn’t have that, if I had you know, depression or anxiety or panic attacks. It would be interesting to see how that would help with that. And because obviously it’s your, I mean, your brain. obviously we need our brains, and they’re so incredibly powerful. Sometimes I need mine more than others. I’m like, come on, I wake up. But I mean, we need to feed our brains good nutrition. We kind of forget about it. We’re always so worried about just feeding our tummies, you know, but, like, trying to look good, but it’s like, feed your brain good quality nutrition.

Dr. John Lewis: Well, isn’t it fascinating how the brain is kind of, even though it is, obviously it is what organ defines us? But yet so many people think about the heart, the liver, the lung, kidney, the pancreas, the gut, you know, even the muscles, the bones. You think about all these other organs, but yet you don’t think about how, I mean, you mentioned earlier about not exercising your brain. Like, you’re putting your, you’re taking your brain and you’re, you know, putting it on cycle or a treadmill or something. But, yeah, it’s incredible how the brain actually responds to all of these behaviors, just like every other organ system does. It’s just that it was not properly recognized or properly,

Wendy Valentine: Isn’t that fascinating, though? I mean, I think it’s even crazy, and I could be wrong on this. I think it’s only been about 35 years or so that they discovered with neuroplasticity, which is that, yes. We can actually rewire our brains. Like, that’s right.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s a relatively new.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Like, I mean, isn’t that nuts? Like, we.

Dr. John Lewis: It is.

Wendy Valentine: I mean, we should have, like, learned that before we designed cars and spaceships. And I’m like, we just now figured that out, you know?

Dr. John Lewis: I know it’s incredible. Neuroplasticity. If you’d mentioned that word 40 years ago, you’d have been laughed out of the room. You just said, oh, that’s nonsense. You only have the number of neurons you were born with. That’s it. That’s all you have your whole life, and that’s now been disproven.

Wendy Valentine: So, you know, and going back to, I can’t recall the doctor’s name. The one that originally introduced you to Alo and doctor McDaniel. Yeah, I mean, he said 80 something years old. I mean, who knows? I mean, hopefully we’re all healthy and walking around and healthy brains and everything else until we’re 100 years old. But even if you’re not able to physically get up and walk around. At least if you have a healthy brain that you can sit with your family or enjoy time reading books to your grandkids or whatever it is, because your brain, like, I mean, look at my. Look at Mamo, look at Mama Bessie.

Dr. John Lewis: Yes.

Wendy Valentine: I mean, and actually, that’s what was crazy with her is that she was so healthy, her body incredibly healthy, and it was just her brain that stopped after the last ten years. So she was able to move around, Cook, do everything that she wanted to do, but her brain just was like, eh, I’m checking out. So, yeah, I mean, I think about it again. I would love for it to be 100% healthy until the day I die, like in 111 I’m shooting for. But at least if I have my brain that I can, maybe I’ll still be doing this. I don’t know.

Dr. John Lewis: Absolutely. Well, I completely agree with you. I mean, think of all of the diseases that you could die from. There’s, in my opinion, nothing worse than Alzheimer’s. I mean, your grandmother’s the perfect example of living ten years of her life and not even really knowing, you know, who she was or who you guys were or. I mean, that’s horrible. That is awesome.

Wendy Valentine: I know, I know, I know. Exactly.

Your grandmother was among those diagnosed with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s

Yeah.

Dr. John Lewis: I can’t tell you now. It’s been many years since we ran that clinical trial. We had people that were diagnosed with moderate to severe severity. It sounds like your grandmother was certainly in that category. And to be enrolled in the study, they had to been diagnosed at least for one year. So these were not mildly, impaired people who were newly diagnosed. These were people at least for one year had been diagnosed and the severity of, you know, again, moderate to severe. And so these people, I mean, when you think about what their existence was, and again, I don’t remember. It seemed like most of them, much like your grandmother, were physically okay, like they could move around. There was only one lady I remember for sure. I’ll tell you this little anecdote. When we enrolled her in the study, she was, I’m, pretty sure the oldest subject in the study. I believe she was 93, 94, had had the disease like your grandmother, about 1112 years, was sitting in a wheelchair and did not talk. I mean, she was really at that level, you know, like, at the most severe level of severity. Wendy, we put her in the study, and of course, you know, her caregiver. I mean, I remember that family was very desperate to try to find something to help this poor soul because, again, she was just like a piece of furniture. I mean, she literally just sat all day and did nothing. And so doctor McDaniel and I, when we decided to run the study, we wanted to study those people primarily because we wanted to help people, but also because those are the people. That’s the, that’s the population of people with Alzheimer’s that big pharma cares nothing about. they don’t want to study those people. They look at them as basically a lost cause.

Wendy Valentine: Yes.

Dr. John Lewis: And so we put her on the formula, we enrolled her in the study, put her on the Formula one day prior and we had, it was a twelve month intervention. I didn’t really talk about the design much, but it was a twelve month intervention. We did cognitive assessment at baseline three, six, nine and twelve months. And then due to limited, limited budget, we only had the money to draw blood at baseline in twelve months. But, we enroll her in the study and then one day prior to the three month assessment, she came into the center one day walking.

Dr. John Lewis: And she called one of the coordinators by his first name. Wow. And that guy started crying like a baby. So emotionally powerful and moving for him that he started crying. And you know, to me like I’m getting chill bumps every time I tell this story, I get chill bumps. Because the science that we conducted is, you know, it’s one thing to be an ethical, good, effective scientist, but when you can actually do things that improve and help people, to me that’s really where the rubber hits the road and that’s all. With all due respect to people doing research on cells or tissues or animals, and unfortunately a lot of that research never sees the light of day because it just ultimately, doesn’t go anywhere. But when you can actually do research on people who are dealing with such a terrible, horrific disease and you can actually show their lives, their quality of their life improving, man, that, I mean, to me that was the most rewarding.

Wendy Valentine: That’s fascinating. And think how much that helped even the people around her just to,

Dr. John Lewis: Exactly, exactly.

Lewis: We showed clinically and statistically significant improvement in cognitive functioning

But what maybe some of your listeners are already, would already be thinking by this point. Well, h***, Lewis, tell us what you showed in this study. We, at nine and twelve months we showed clinically and statistically significant improvement in cognitive functioning. Wendy, that’s never been showed before in any other study, whether it’s the five FDA approved drugs for dementia, any kind of diet, any other dietary supplement, exercise, hyperbaric oxygen, red light therapy, music therapy, sound therapy. I mean, I don’t care what the therapy is. no one has showed any other type of result like that than what our first paper showed that we published in 2013. That was according to the ADAs Cog, which is widely considered to be the gold standard for assessing cognitive function, especially in people with dementia. That, assessment has been published, for, gosh, in thousands of papers for, I think it was created in like the late 1970s. But I mean, when we were looking after running that study for like two and a half years, I mean, you can imagine an intervention for twelve months in very sick people. That took us a long time to run that study. And we were getting anecdotes like the older lady that I just mentioned that made me feel very optimistic. We really didn’t have any idea at the end of the day what the data would show, but as you’re running the study and you’re hearing all these positive responses, it certainly makes you feel good and you think, wow, you know, we’re really onto something here. And so at the end of the study, after we’ve, you know, concluded all the data assessments, we’ve entered all the data into the database, we’ve cleaned it, we’ve paired it for statistical analysis, and now Doctor Reg and I mean, we have this just ton of data at the cellular level, but we were so excited about the cognitive function that was really, you know, the data we wanted to look at the most. And when we found this finding, clinically and statistically significant improvement in cognitive function, I mean, literally, like, I wanted to like run out of my house and run around the block.

Wendy Valentine: Like, what?

Dr. John Lewis: I’m like, wow. You know, like, hallelujah. Like, we’ve shown something that nobody else has showed. I mean, it truly for me was like one of those moments. I’ll never forget that day. Like, it just was an incredibly powerful, emotionally, rewarding moment for me. And so we, we published that information. We also showed, and I’d mentioned some of these kind of generically, but specifically to that first paper, we showed an improvement in overall immune function according to the cd four, cd eight ratio. Our cd four cells, which I mentioned earlier in the HIV story about doctor Reg, those are our helper cells, and then our CDH cells are our cytotoxic cells. So we want that ratio to be optimal, not just for people with Alzheimer’s, but for all of us. That’s a very important ratio to look at for overall immune function and overall immune health. So we showed an improvement there. By the way, I didn’t mention these people were on average, 79.9 years of age.

Wendy Valentine: Wow.

Dr. John Lewis: Yes, these were very old, very sick folks, they didn’t just have Alzheimer’s, they had diabetes, depression, forms of different forms of heart disease. I mean, these were very old, very sick folks. We show reductions in chronic inflammation according to tnf alpha and vegf. These are proteins commonly looked at in heart disease and cancer. We showed that. Our paper was probably the first paper ever published that showed that in people with Alzheimer’s disease. And then we showed an increase of just under 300% of adult stem cell production. So cd 14s are a marker of adult stem cells. We know from other research that those adult stem cells can actually turn into neurons. You mentioned neuroplasticity. So our working theory is that the body knew the brain was damaged, it needed to repair damage there, and it sends those cd 14 cells that the immune system creates, sends them out to the brain to make new neurons repair damage, whatever the case may be. So you put all of that together. I mean, it was just an incredible picture for us. In fact, I. You mentioned the number of papers I published in my career. That first paper, in 2013 was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Wendy. That was the only paper. And still to this day, and I’m still occasionally publishing, even though that type of publishing is not really probably in my top ten priority list of running a business. But the journal of the journal’s editor, we submitted the paper for publication. For those of you who don’t know, that can take sometimes years, actually. But the editor, called me, like, probably, I think it was about 30 days after we’d submitted the paper. The editor of the journal called me and he’s like, doctor Lewis, this paper is so exciting. As soon as I get the reviews back from the reviewers, I’m going to publish your paper immediately. That never happens like that. And that, again, was the only time.

Wendy Valentine: Sorry.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s okay.

Wendy Valentine: We lost connection for a second there.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s okay, we’re back.

Wendy Valentine: We’ll have, I’m gonna make note of the time so I can have my editor fix it. Okay. Sorry, we’re back.

Dr. John Lewis: Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Anyways, you’re on a roll too.

The whole experience from getting the money to running the study to seeing results was amazing

Dr. John Lewis: Okay, go ahead. Again, I’m, you know, you know, we Tennesseans, we can be long winded, but that was the only time in my career that that ever happened. Like, it just. The whole experience from, you know, getting this family to donate the money to running the study, to seeing the results, to feeling all of this incredible pride and what we had done and what we had showed, I mean, the entire experience was just amazing. And so I was you know, as they say on cloud nine, on top of the mountain, whatever. In my academic career, I thought, wow, this is going to be the thing that, you know, just propels me for the rest of my life, basically. But there’s a downside to this story. There’s a. There’s a black. Yeah, there’s a black side to the story. It actually turned out to be the beginning of the end for me in academics, and I’ll tell you why. Because again, at my point or my peak of excitement, I thought, okay, we got this money. We got, I think it was almost $200,000, which is a lot of money, but I. In running research, it’s really not a lot of money. And so I thought, okay, nih, Alzheimer’s association, these people are just going to bang down my door saying, here, let me write you a check. Keep doing this research. This is very exciting. I tried twice with NIH. I tried twice with the Alzheimer’s association. Here. Look, folks, here is an idea. Please help us extend this research. It’s not just an idea. We actually have data. We’ve got a paper we’ve already published. Please help us. Help us extend this line of research to help people with this horrible disease. M Wendy, do you know what I got in response?

Wendy Valentine: No.

Dr. John Lewis: I got the big goose egg all four times.

Wendy Valentine: Wow.

Dr. John Lewis: That first paper, we published, four. We’ve now published four papers from that study. That first one was published in 2013. I left academics, full time academics, in 2017, about a four year period. I needed to. I had all these studies running. I needed to wrap up all of my commitments to my other funders. And, you know, really, I had a lot of things that I had to tie up. But I knew after that, or as I was going through that, I knew I was not going to spend the rest of my life in academics, banging my head against the wall, making it bleed, trying to get these so called public health experts to acknowledge what we had showed and to make nutrition and in this case, dietary supplementation a key cornerstone, potentially, to helping people with this horrible disease. And regardless of what people say publicly, you know, these. Especially these people in Alzheimer’s disease, they. They actually anger me the most because they do. Running around the. They do run around the world talking about lifestyle and this and that nutrition, whatever. It really aggravates the heck out of me that I could not get these people to. To acknowledge what we had done and to, continue helping us with this research, or not even continue, just to help us continue our work. And now here it’s a decade later that we actually, it’s eleven years that we, you know, published that first paper going on twelve years. And one hole in my heart is that we only were able to run that study and the study in people with Ms. I didn’t even talk about that yet. But you, know, it’s such a shame that we basically lost a decade where if we had had more money to continue that research, not that we can’t still continue it, it’s just that we lost a ten year window that we could have continued going down this road answering more questions about why these polysaccharides are so important. But we still have published, as I mentioned, four papers from the Alzheimer’s study, three papers from the MS study, and those seven papers are very supportive of this product we call daily brain care. That, again, in my opinion, really doesn’t have much competition in terms of its benefit to health. And so I decided, I made the decision to move away from academics. I just, I mean, I was killing myself anyway, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, not even making, you know, personally, a lot of money. I mean, if, if anybody thinks that I’m just now in business to make money, well, I spent 20 years in academics. If all I was doing is trying to make money, I’m not very smart at it. Like, yeah, you don’t spend 20 years running research studies at a university to become wealthy. Nobody does that.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. John Lewis: Yeah. Unless you’re a paid hack for big pharma.

Wendy Valentine: Yes, it’s true.

You’re one of only a few people doing research on nutrition, dietary supplements

I was going to say that. I was like, it’s all about big pharma.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s right. Those are the people that make a ton of money, people like me, especially at a very conventional, conservative institution like the University of Miami, where they get all of this pharmaceutical funding and they’re dependent on that. And here I am, one of only a handful of people doing research on nutrition, dietary supplements and exercise. I mean, the only way I was able to keep that going as long as I did was because I’m a networker in the sense of talking to people and, ah, making connections where I can create a niche. And then ultimately people respected me and put their trust in me, like other companies that said, well, we don’t have Pfizer’s budget, but we’ve got 50,000, 100,000 whatever, to run this little trial. And so I did that for many years. But I, you know, after a while, I mean, you just, you get tired of rubbing nickels and dimes and pennies.

Wendy Valentine: Together and you say, why yes, exactly.

Dr. John Lewis: For what? Like, I’m basically ruining my own quality of life to be a workaholic. And then at the end of the day, I’m barely getting any real acknowledgement from it anyway, so why. And so I was lucky enough to meet Doctor McDaniel. I didn’t mention the lady, Barbara Kimley, that introduced me to the Rice grand story, but I. Barbara was actually a patient at the cancer center at the University of Miami, and she was taking this rice brand product that she went from, given a six month prognosis after having metastatic thyroid disease, surgery, radiation, chemo, the whole nine yards. And they still told her, Barbara, sorry, you probably only going to live for six months. She found this rice brand product, and then she lived nine years.

Wendy Valentine: Wow.

Dr. John Lewis: Yeah. And at the point that I met her, she sent a letter to my office one day. And the cancer center used to do this quarterly publication in print before the Internet destroyed print. And so it was a very nice, you know, touchy feely story about her. And. And she attributed her survival to this rice bran. And so that ultimately took me down that road of research. So at the same time, I had these parallel paths of research going on one side, the aloe vera, and on the other side, the rice bran. But. But after especially my story about not getting more funding for Alzheimer’s, I just decided ultimately, I needed to go in business. And at least in business, I was no longer constrained by this gigantic bureaucratic system that just kind of controls you and pushes you down. And especially if you’re not playing in the niche of pharmaceuticals. I mean, basically everybody at the medical school there, if you’re not doing pharmaceuticals or genetics, you’re doing some sort of behavioral stuff, that, you know. But again, I would put it up against anything that we’ve showed in terms of actual efficacy and actual ability to help people, like nutrition and these polysaccharides, can it blows anything else away?

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. And really, I mean, the key is, is just getting the product out into the world so it can heal more people. Right. I mean, I was just thinking, I was like, I want to send some to my parents, you know?

Dr. John Lewis: So that’s why, you know, basically every day of my life now consists of talking to folks like yourself and spreading the word or doing, you know, whatever else you do as an entrepreneur. And, yeah, running, you know, running the whole kitchen. You’re not just the chef, you’re everything, right?

Wendy Valentine: Oh, yeah, I know.

Dr. John Lewis: You’re doing it all.

Wendy Valentine: Well, for everyone that’s listening, I’m going to be the guinea pig. And I’m definitely going to try your product because old. Yeah, it’s, and, you know, there’s certain products that I feel I’m starting to learn too. And I think, you know, the products that you need or supplements that you need, they change, like, depending on your age and what you’re going through, perimenopause or whether, you know, having children, not having children, male, female, 50, 60, whatever, right? But I’m learning, like, some of the products, again, like, brain health is really important to me. And then I just had, the CEO of Keon on like key on a couple of weeks ago, talking about essential amino acids. And I’m like, okay, that’s definitely another really good supplement that I need to be taken on a regular basis. But again, brain health is so important that I’m finding myself, like, I mean, we’ve all had those moments where we’re like, wait, what was I doing? you have a few of them. You’re like, my God, is there something wrong with me? So it’s like, it’s scary though. Like if you, you kind of like, oh, my gosh, what was I saying? What was I talking about?

Dr. John Lewis: I don’t know.

Wendy Valentine: Why am I in this room? And so, yes, it’s, brain health is so important.

Lewis Lewis says daily brain care is his flagship product

So, so how can we find your product? How do we get some and tell us all the goodies?

Dr. John Lewis: So the best source for me for the most comprehensive amount of information would be to go to our main website, drleuisnutrition.com. that’s doctor no, period, Lewis Lewis nutrition.com dot. you can find me on all the typical social media channels under that handle, Doctor Lewis nutrition. And if you, you know, people are interested, go to the main website. There are all kinds of articles there, videos, even, recorded podcasts like I’m doing with you today. Testimonial videos, product reviews, I mean, you name it, there’s a ton of information there. Daily brain care is the flagship product that was created and is basically founded. It’s my inanimate baby, you might say. But as I mentioned, you know, my entire family takes daily brain care every day. I mean, yeah, we look at prevention as just as important as, as treatment. And, so I would encourage anybody, regardless of your age, health status, whatever your situation is in life, to consider it. And we have a phone number, email address. I’m always happy to answer anyone’s questions. I’m an open, like you, I’m an open book. I mean, I don’t have, there’s nothing to hide here. I’m not a guy who pretends to be some scientist that’s a great marketer. I’m the exact opposite of guy who was a scientist doing all the grunt work in the trenches. Got fed up with all that and said, wait a minute. Maybe business is the way to get this message.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Dr. John Lewis: And, so now I’m essentially a marketer with a scientific base. But if anybody questions my credibility or my validity, my goodness, I put my own name on the label.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Yeah. Really? You’re, ah, like, my name’s on it, dang it.

Dr. John Lewis: Yeah, exactly. I’m nothing. I’m not trying to hide anything. I, you know, this is me. This is basically my entire adult career here at stake of, you know, trying to help people, so.

Wendy Valentine: Well, I think, you know, I went to. When I was, back in Malibu, California, I went to a cacao ceremony. Apparently. I was like, oh, they have cacao ceremonies. Maybe we should start doing aloe ceremonies. Like, absolutely. Celebrate the aloe plant.

Dr. John Lewis: Absolutely.

Wendy Valentine: Fascinated. I actually. I mean, I’ve learned so much just in the last, you know, hour that we’ve been talking. Like, it’s. It’s fascinating. And the more and more things like research or not, it’s like, oh, my gosh. It’s like, it’s obvious. Like, it helps so many people. So thank you so much. I mean, I’m grateful for all the work that you’ve put in in the last 20 plus years. And I always believe the stars align exactly the way they’re supposed to. You’re exactly where you should be, and. And I can’t wait to get some. So.

Dr. John Lewis: Absolutely, I’m happy to send you some. And thank you, for the opportunity to be here.

Lewis says nutrition provides the raw materials that the genes interpret

If I may just one, make just one other little point, and that is, please don’t anyone leave our conversation today and say that Lewis said that we use nutrition to treat disease. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that nutrition provides the raw materials that the genes interpreted to then guide the cells and how to function properly to allow the body to repair, restore, and heal itself to return to homeostasis. That’s a completely different paradigm than what big pharma uses to take one chemical, alter a metabolic pathway to treat a symptom of a disease. Totally different paradigm. So please don’t anyone ever misquote me or misstate me to say that. Oh, Louis said you can use nutrition to treat disease. I don’t say that. I never say that.

Wendy Valentine: Yes. Yeah, I do. Use nutrition though. I think. Just like you were saying earlier, it’s like what you put into your mouth, you know, it’s like. And be more mindful of that. And be careful about what you’re consuming, no matter what it is.

Dr. John Lewis: Exactly.

Wendy Valentine: Thoughts, feelings, food, everything.

Dr. John Lewis: That’s right, yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Thank you so much doctor Lewis.

Dr. John Lewis: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’m happy to come back anytime. You’d have me again.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Thank you everyone. Have a great day and get your daily brain care.

Dr. John Lewis: Yes.

Wendy Valentine: Bye.