Hey everybody, I'm Max Lugovier, a filmmaker and health and science journalist.

I've dedicated my life to unraveling the science behind how our choices,

including what we eat and how we live, affect our cognitive and physical performance,

as well as our health span and risk for disease.

I'm super excited for this episode of the show, in which I'm going to interview Dr. Robert

Cricorian PhD. Dr. Cricorian is not only a friend of mine, he's a professor in the Department of

Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and the Director of the Cognitive Aging Program at the

University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center. But aside from his titles and who he works for,

why his work is so interesting to me is that he's one of the lead researchers exploring

a ketogenic diet as an intervention for people with cognitive impairment. He published one of

these seminal studies where it was a trial actually where the ketogenic diet was used in patients

with mild cognitive impairment, which is a critical population to study because mild cognitive

impairment, often abbreviated MCI, is considered pre-dimension. It often, but doesn't always convert

to more severe forms of cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer's disease. So we get into that line

of research, which is fascinating in and of itself and we go into detail on the ketogenic diet

and how to properly get into ketosis. But one of the other areas of focus for Dr. Cricorian

is the impact of blueberries on cognition. Now blueberries are a pretty amazing fruit. They are

packed with multiple types of anthocyanins, which is a powerful class of antioxidant compounds found

in berries and other pigmented fruits and vegetables. They're also what give purple potatoes

their color as well as purple carrots and they're even found in red onions. But these compounds are

kind of miraculous because they've been found to accumulate in the brain where they boost

cognitive function and seemingly guard against the aging process. Dr. Cricorian is one of the foremost

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