Plant-Based Nutrition, Brain Health, and Burnout Recovery with Dr. John Lewis

In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. John Lewis joins Dr. Supatra Tovar to explore how chronic inflammation, chronic stress, burnout, and modern lifestyle habits may be affecting brain health, cognitive performance, energy, and long-term wellbeing. As more people struggle with brain fog, exhaustion, nervous system dysregulation, and high-performance burnout, this conversation examines how nutrition and sustainable wellness practices may support healthier aging, cognitive resilience, and overall mental and physical health.

Dr. John Lewis is a researcher and educator whose work focuses on plant-based nutrition, inflammation, brain health, healthy aging, and longevity. In this episode, he explains the relationship between food, inflammation, cognitive function, and chronic stress while challenging perfectionistic wellness culture and restrictive approaches to health. This conversation offers a more realistic, science-backed approach to sustainable wellness and long-term health.

Together, Dr. Lewis and Dr. Tovar discuss:
 • chronic inflammation and brain health
 • burnout and nervous system exhaustion
 • brain fog and cognitive performance
 • plant-based nutrition and longevity
 • stress, aging, and inflammation
 • sustainable wellness habits
 • food and mental clarity
 • realistic nutrition without perfectionism
 • healthy aging and cognitive wellbeing
 • how modern high-performance culture impacts physical and mental health

If you are interested in brain health, plant-based nutrition, chronic stress recovery, healthy aging, sustainable wellness, cognitive performance, or reducing inflammation naturally, this episode provides practical insights into how nutrition and lifestyle habits may support long-term wellbeing without extreme dieting or perfectionism.

Subscribe to the ANEW Insight Podcast for conversations on psychology, nutrition, mental health, wellness, stress management, longevity, emotional wellbeing, and sustainable health.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS
 00:00 Introduction
 02:45 Why Chronic Stress Is Affecting Brain Health
 07:30 Brain Fog, Cognitive Function, and Inflammation
 13:20 How Nutrition Impacts the Brain
 19:10 Plant-Based Nutrition and Longevity
 25:40 Burnout and Nervous System Exhaustion
 32:15 Sustainable Wellness Without Perfectionism
 38:50 Healthy Aging and Cognitive Wellbeing
 45:20 Realistic Nutrition Habits for Long-Term Health
 51:10 Final Thoughts

Key Topics Covered:
 • Brain health
 • Chronic inflammation
 • Burnout and stress
 • Cognitive function
 • Plant-based nutrition
 • Food and longevity
 • Nervous system health
 • Healthy aging
 • Sustainable wellness
 • Brain fog and mental clarity

🔗 Connect with Dr. John Lewis

Website:
https://drlewisnutrition.com/?srsltid=AfmBOop9QH2xlvffjEsvxdgvpwKuYoBXOVBp9deEhi8G1jztSvXw6Z_e

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnelewisphd

Faculty Bio:
https://agemed.org/ammg-faculty-members/john-e-lewis-phd/

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 TEDx Talk: Healing Our Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the A New Insight Podcast. Empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Kavar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink your relationship with food, heal your mind, and live a diet-free life. I follow my guests' journey to optimal health, providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path. Tune in and evolve with us. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. We are back for the second half of this incredible interview with clinical nutrition researcher and educator, Dr. John Lewis. Dr. John gave us some really amazing insight into the benefits of a whole food plant-based or plant-forward diet and what certain animal products, namely saturated fat, animal protein, and dairy, might be doing to harm our health. I cannot wait to pick his brain some more. Welcome back, Dr. John.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Thank you, Dr. Dovar. It's great to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yes. Okay. So we are, we've been delving into the new uh dietary pyramid promoted by RFK and how its promotion of animal protein as the kind of top and pillar of the of our nutrition might be doing us some harm. I would love to delve more into some of the research that shows that other countries, other areas of the world might have the key to longevity and health, uh, you know, well into old age. And I'm mainly talking about the blue zones. I would love to hear your take on the dietary patterns of the blue zones and why they're so longevity promoting.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Great, great topic. Well, especially if you look at the area in Okinawa, Japan, you know, Japanese people in general are thought, at least by outside of Japan, to eat a lot of fish and seafood, which is true probably for a lot more of their country. However, when you look at Okinawans, that's not true for them at all. A very little part of their diet is actually fish and seafood. Their most important part of their diet is guess what? Vegetables. So they're eating a lot of vegetables, grains, fruits, and then they have a little bit of fish, a little bit of animal food. But I think consistently, if you look at Okinawa, uh the two places in Europe, Costa Rica, Loma Linda, I mean, these are incredible areas where we can do this observational epidemiological research because we know these people have been living in these areas consistently for generations, and then we can track and see what happens to them with their behaviors and with their patterns in life. And so, for what I've read and what I've looked into, and by the way, I talk a little bit about this in some of my research, is that they very consistently eat a predominantly plant-based diet. They move every day, they have some uh amount of activity every single day. They are definitely spiritually community family oriented. Those are very important principles to them. They definitely do not smoke. Tobacco use is definitely not uh significant in any of these zones, as far as I know. And the one difference, though, that seems to be true for the two areas in Europe is that they do have a bit, excuse me, of a focus on drinking, uh, whereas the other areas don't seem to be uh drinkers that much at all. So that's the one sort of discrepancy if you look at all the blue zones across the board. But it's very consistent again with this notion of eating a plant-based diet. I mean, that's predominantly, they're not all vegan, but again, they're predominantly in a, and I guess, especially in the case of Loma Linda, you have the seven-day Adventist, where their religion uh basically requires them or promotes a plant-based diet or being vegetarian. I don't know to what extent vegan versus vegetarian, but uh it's it's very consistent. I mean, this is not really argumentative. And then when you look at how long those folks live, again, it's across the board. Almost all of them are living quite a bit longer than the average life expectancy, whether you want to pick the United States or other places in Europe or Asia or wherever is a comparison.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

So they're very consistent. Yes, I mean the the blue zones are where they have the largest populations of centenarians, anyone living over the age of 100 in the world. And I agree, they have basically, even though there's the the content of their diet differs across the regions, for the most part, you can generalize and say that the majority of their diet is plant-based, if not a plant forward. And Okinawa having small bits of fish, Sardinia in Ikaria, they'll occasionally have meats and fish and things like that in Costa Rica, very similar. And if you look at that and you look at that from an evolutionary standpoint, most people in these rural regions didn't have access to a lot of animal products and they had to rely on gardening and on produce and on grains for their sustenance. That's really important information. And if you look at that and you go way, way, way back in our evolution, even though a lot of people are promoting the paleo diet, saying that this is how our caveman ancestors used to eat, that's actually not true when you look at the studies done on the contents of their meals. And most people were eating, you know, most days it was plants, as opposed to very occasionally they might have an animal kill. And that animal kill would have to be spread all across the tribe or the family, and so the quantity of animal protein was very small. That's how we evolved essentially, and so people in those regions of them being rural regions, and you can look at T. Colin Campbell's study, uh, the China study, which is really fascinating because he compared rural Chinese to urban Chinese, and urban Chinese were uh adopting more of a Western style diet, but rural Chinese were not, and the rates and incidences, I believe it was liver cancer. He thought it would be reverse. He thought that the rural Chinese would have more rates of liver cancer and that the urban ones would not, but it was actually the opposite, which blew his mind because he, like you, was a farm-raised, you know, American boy who believed in getting his protein. So that to me is fascinating. So let's actually talk about what can people who are eating the traditional Western diet, and if you were to define that, please do, what can they do differently that's going to greatly impact their health in little shifts?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Well, first of all, I would just real quick like to piggyback on that word you mentioned a moment ago, paleo, because that is just like so many other misused words. People think paleo, they think of these cavemen with a spear, you know, killing a woolly mammoth or something. Like it's completely, it's completely misused. To your point, I have read so many archaeological studies where people have looked at the excrement and the teeth of the people who were alive five, 10, 20,000 years ago. And to your exact point, they were not eating all this animal tissue. They were eating grains, they were eating things that they either picked off of trees, picked out of the ground, or then started growing themselves and actually uh producing. And so I forget the guy's name. I was just reading his article a couple weeks ago, but his theory was that our brain did not develop because of all of a sudden eating all this animal food. It developed because of our mastery of fire and being able to cook things that would allow our body to grow much more uh successfully as opposed to just eating everything raw. So that for him was the main switch where humans really took off was when we were able to start actually cooking our food, not just eating everything raw. I just wanted to throw that little point in there.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

But love it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

But I think, you know, one of the simplest things that I've kind of come up with, and I didn't, I can't claim that I created it or thought of it, but it was something that I've read actually from several other people over the years. For the easiest thing that somebody's thinking of making wholesale changes in their diet, or even not wholesale, but maybe just kind of like me 28 years ago thinking, well, wait a minute, what do I do here? Or how do I switch? The easiest thing that I can that I tell people to do is eat the rainbow. Because if you right, like if it's such a simple recommendation, if you just take from your first meal of the day to your last meal of the day, whether that's one or three meals and a couple of snacks or whatever, try to eat as many different colors as you can. Because if you do that, you're going to get the widest variety of all of those 40 or so nutrients that have been deemed essential that we need for our cells to function, combined with lots of other phytonutrients that we need that give us that extra boost to really optimize our health. So just start eating your reds, your purples, your oranges, not, of course, your greens, that goes without saying. But when you combine all those different colors together, that's where you're really going to start making some magic happen.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Absolutely. Let's also talk about how they might reformulate their plate. Uh, based off of uh Campbell's research, he says that anything over 10% of your protein intake or your daily intake, actually, I think it is, being animal protein is then harmful for your health. In America, protein is the the lead player, the celebrity of the plate. And if you look at more places like rural China or in Asia, the the animal protein might be a little bit player, a little extra player. But give us a picture of how people might, if they're just absolutely unwilling to give up meat, there's a lot of people out there completely unwilling to do that, and and we're not, I'm not wanting to promote one way or the other, but I'm wanting to promote their health. Right, what what can they do with their portions?

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Well, you're exactly right. I mean, the biggest thing they can do is cut down, if they just say, I I I'm gonna eat my meat, regardless whether that's beef, chicken, turkey, fish, pork, whatever the type of meat is, I would say, you know, if you're eating more than maybe like four ounces per day, uh, you know, to Campbell's point about the the thresholds that he was looking at that really turn on all those cancer and cardiovascular disease markers, really about four ounces per day is it. I mean, you shouldn't be going over that. And that's across the board of any type of meat. I know that red meat typically or beef typically gets probably the most bad exposure. But when you look at what happens when you cook any type of meat and they all have acids in them and have those fatty acids get transformed into carcinogenic genotoxic material. Let's let's let's remember that because unless you're Lebanese and you're eating kafta, you know, I've got some Lebanese friends and they sometimes like the raw beef. But I mean, most, you know, the average person is cooking uh his or her meat at a really high temperature where you're creating carcinogenic genotoxic material. And that is why this stuff is linked to all these different forms of cancer. So just try to limit that as much as you can and then start incorporating. I mean, again, beans. Like I can imagine you you probably are promoting a lot of beans in your practice, at least as a southerner, even though we ate all of this dairy and we ate all of this red meat, man, we ate beans all the time. And beans are just such an incredible source of not only protein, but fiber, calcium, all kinds of different nutrients that we need to function properly. So when you start replacing some of these animal tissues with your beans, and then maybe add a little bit of brown rice to it, now again, you're you're creating magic for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Oh, absolutely. And let's actually dispel a few myths about one bean in particular, which is the soybean. Yes. There are so I and now I am uh a woman of the later stages and really started to delve into what supports my nutrition as I'm entering into menopause. And I didn't want to have a hot flash. I was like, no, I don't want to have a hot flash. Thank you. That does not sound like money to me. So I was reading about the Okinawans and they don't even have a word for menopause. I was like, wait, what? How do they not have a word? They just transition and it's just poof, like all of a sudden, and they're fine. And you look at how people are suffering. I mean, I have friends, I have family members who've suffered. I don't want to suffer. And so what I did was I just massively upped my intake of organic soy and health products. And I will tell you, that has been the magic sauce for me. I eat a lot of soy. Anytime I recommend it, I hear people being like, oh my God, no. If you eat soy, you're gonna, I don't know, whatever they they say about soy.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

I love soy. I'm like you, I love it. I eat it very, very regularly. And please do not be scared of it and do not think that, oh man, I'm gonna have all of these problems if I eat it. That's absolutely untrue. The research shows, again, total the total opposite of the industry messaging.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yes, and from what I know, and maybe you can back me up on that, kelp, especially, these seaweed products are very helpful for your thyroid health.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yes, correct. Absolutely, very, very, very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

And I mean exactly. We're we're our estrogen and progesterone levels are going down, and both I think soy and iodine help to keep us in balance, and I think that that's the key, is in balance. We see a lot of those more inflammatory processes and difficulties in women who have that standard American diet. So I think inflammation also is really key in managing, you know, your transition into your later years. If you can reduce inflammation and the inflammatory products that we're talking about, the more acidic products, especially, are animal proteins, dairy, um, and and things that are high in that kind of saturated fat content. So if you can start to minimize those, it doesn't mean you have to get rid of them all together and up especially the plant proteins, which are so helpful, not only for giving us the protein that we need, but the fiber that we need as well. And if we could massively up our fiber, there's a whole you know uh movement out there called fiber maxing that I'm totally behind. Not too much, you guys don't go crazy on it, like not too much, but really upping, we just don't get enough fiber in our diets in the United States. So I think that is really helpful. And so if anybody is of like menopause age, really think about the quantity, the quality, and the proportions of animal products that you have in your diet, and if you can up your soy and your kelp, you're gonna be a happy camper who is hot flash free, like this lady over here. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

So let's talk a little bit more about inflammation. And there's a term out there called inflammaging.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Why is having a more inflammatory diet going to make you age faster?

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Great question. Well, first of all, let's let's break down that word because, again, there's a word there that needs proper context, right? Like inflammation is really two different types. You're referring to the chronic type, which is the type that now you can't look at any branch of medical or health literature without recognizing the chronic inflammation role in all the different chronic diseases that are killing us. But when we're involved in an auto accident or we have some kind of trauma, we actually need inflammation, right? We need it because we need that signaling process, all those amazing things that our immune system does to send growth factors and healing factors and repair factors to overcome whatever it is that we were dealing with at that moment. So we're talking about the chronic type, not the acute type, that we actually need to survive and recover from things. But it's incredible what inflammation does to us if it's dysregulated. So, what some of the research we've looked at is directly related to this in my previous full-time academic career. And we've shown that when you utilize certain key nutrients, you can actually control, you can help to bring down that chronic inflammation. But chronic inflammation, you know, is kind of one of these nebulous, it's like a very high-level term for what's happening to our cells. So basically, what we're talking about is the immune system's inability to self-regulate itself. So let's say we have an accident and we're injured, and now we have all of these inflammatory signals at the site of that injury. We're dealing with that trauma, we're recovering from it. What should happen once we've recovered from that is that we have another set of signals that go there and say, okay, guys, we're finished with this work and now we're shutting you down. It's time to go home and you know, you're off your shift. And so that is what should happen. That's like the anti-inflammatory. You had the pro-inflammatory uh first, then you have the healing, and now you should have the anti-inflammatory to cut all that off. If your immune system is not regulated properly, if it's not functioning properly, if it's not surveillant, then unfortunately you're gonna continue having all of this pro-inflammatory cascade. So as you have that over time, you're just basically unleashing all of these different things that are happening because, again, the immune system cannot properly regulate that. So, what does that mean? That means it's not gonna recognize dying cancerous cells as well as it should. It's not gonna recognize atherosclerosis as well as it should. All of these things are gonna continue, not necessarily completely unabated, but they're certainly going to be much more active and much more damaging to us than if our immune system was working properly and knowing how to shut those things off. So, what causes all that? Well, again, we're talking about things that we've, you and I've already addressed in this conversation so far, but we're talking about eating too much animal food, eating way too much protein, eating way too much saturated fat, not exercising. Maybe you, maybe you smoke. I don't know if you're smoking today. I have no idea what's wrong with you. That's probably the worst habit you could have. If you're not drinking enough clean water, um, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not managing your stress, if you have insomnia or interrupted sleep, all of these things ultimately contribute to a dysregulated, dysfunctioning immune system that then really takes all of that inflammation and you end up with things like diabetes and cancer and heart disease that you want to avoid in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for breaking that down. So inflammation is not just one thing that we're doing to our bodies, it's many things, and we're overwhelming our bodies with stress, different kinds of stress. And so, how what would you recommend for anybody who sees themselves in this picture? What are some simple things that they can do right now, today, to reduce their inflammation?

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Well, first of all, I I would do exactly what you and I have been discussing all along. I would think if you're eating a very high animal-based diet, I would seriously start considering, again, you don't necessarily have to go to total vegan like I have, but at least start cutting that down. I mean, somewhere like, you know, maybe 20 to 30% of your diet and keep it at that. You know, keep working, just taking baby steps. I mean, it took me about, I think, roughly a year now. I wish I had documented this. I wish I was keeping like a diary back in those days. So I don't know exactly, I can't tell you precisely how many months that it took me to go from eating animals to basically eating none, but it was probably about a year period. I didn't want to like, you know, just try to do it cold turkey. I didn't want to just flip a switch because I knew that it would take. Metabolically, some time for me to adjust to that. So I would say definitely start making that switch. You know, really think seriously and don't take my word for it. I mean, go to PubMed, go to PubMed.gov. It's the clearinghouse for the entire world's database of scientific information. Any journal worth its weight and salt will be listed on PubMed. Go there and do your own world homework. You don't have to take my word for it. And then start moving every day, right? Like we're so sedentary. I mean, the average person, you know, look at me, look at you and me. We're both sitting here in our offices right now, all dressed up, looking nice, but we're sitting in a built environment. We're not moving. We're basically just sitting here. And if you're doing that day after day after day and never getting 30 to 45 to 60 minutes of movement every day, again, you are killing yourself. Sitting is like smoking. And so you've got to move. And then again, some of these other uh simple changes. I mean, sleep hygiene. I I'm I'm curious how many of your patients have issues with insomnia and uninterrupted sleep.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

So many.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

So I work on it with them all the time.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

I bet. So do sleep hygiene. You know, you've got to have a dark room, it's got to be cool, you've got to be comfortable. I mean, I have very particular things that I like about where I sleep. And so you've got to hit that six to eight hour window of good sleep every night. If you don't, you're not clear, especially for your brain, you're not clearing out all of the metabolic waste that we accumulate throughout the day. If you do not sleep properly, your brain will not do its job or the lymph system, the the uh all the part different parts of our cleaning of our system will not work because you you're not giving your body the time to do it. So, I mean, these to me are just a few of the simple things that people can start doing. And not even talking about, you know, some more complex things like maybe going to the gym. I mean, if if you don't have a gym membership, just start walking. Like get yourself a decent pair of walking shoes. You don't have to have a $200 pair of Nikes. Just get yourself a decent pair of comfortable shoes and start walking for five minutes a day, and then build yourself up to an hour, and then after that, start incorporating some strength training somehow. I mean, you've got to, they're just basics, you know. We can't get away from the basics to be healthy. There's no there's no magic bullet that's ever gonna be created. That's what drives me crazy about some of the headlines I read in the news where, you know, we're always looking for the quick fix or the magic bullet. It doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yes, and I found some really, really painful, scary roads. I just did a TED talk myself on what we're seeing as far as eating disorders uh within the diet industry's GLP one uh medication adoption. And you're right, there's no magic pill, everybody, but it doesn't have to be rocket science and you don't have to make ginormous changes, you just have to make slow, sustainable changes, and that's what you're all about. And I'm so grateful for this interview, Dr. Lewis. You know I'm gonna be asking you back because I didn't even get to like, I don't know, 12 of my questions. There were so many questions that I didn't get to have hardly any of them. And I want you back on. I would love it if you would be a regular guest program and we can talk about you know some of the nutty stuff we're seeing out there in the world and breaking it down for people. I think that'd be awesome. Can you please tell people how they can find you? What's all your information so people can can learn more about you?

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Well, first of all, it's it's uh it's a pleasure to be with you today, and I'm happy to be a regular as much as you want me to. I I love it. Uh, I mean, you and I are very aligned on all of our thoughts, so I would love to be a regular on your show. Uh as you mentioned, I'm the founder and president of Dr. Lewis Nutrition, so our website is drlewisnutrition.com. That's a whole different story about why I like left academics full-time and and started Dr. Lewis Nutrition. It's based on my Alzheimer's research, actually. But uh, if people want to find me, they can find me there. We've got a phone number, email. You can find us under the Dr. Lewis Nutrition handle on all the typical social media channels as well. So I'm I'm all out, I'm everywhere out there. You can I'm pretty easy to find.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Awesome. Well, I'm definitely following you on all those channels. I highly recommend you all do that as well. And all of his information is going to be in the show notes. He's awesome. And he's gonna come back and he's gonna be my my resident expert. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for giving me the time today. You're incredible.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Thank you. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

And thank you everyone for joining the A New Insight Podcast. I cannot wait for the next exciting interview, and I hope you join me next time. Thanks for tuning into the A New Insight Podcast. Please remember the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. You can find us anywhere podcasts are streaming, on YouTube at my dotanew.insight, and at anewinsight.com under the Anu Insight Podcast tab. And follow us on our socials at mydotanew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates. Tune in next time for Evolve With Us.