Sep14
Why Our Brains Are Shrinking, with Dr. Michael Crawford
Are our brains shrinking? According to my guest this week, the answer is a resounding yes… and he's been warning us about it since 1972.
In this episode of the ReThink Health Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Michael Crawford, a pioneering nutritional scientist and one of the first researchers in the world to identify DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) as essential to brain development and function.
Nearly 40 years ago, his lab discovered that primates deprived of omega-3 fatty acids developed severe self-harming behavior, hair loss, and psychological distress that reversed once DHA was restored to their diet.
Since then, the evidence has only grown. Dr. Crawford walks us through the astonishing story of how the human brain evolved in the sea over 500 million years, why larger-bodied animals are actually worse at making their own DHA, and why average human brain capacity is rapidly shrinking.
We also get into the controversial and often misunderstood topic of mercury in seafood, why pregnant women may be doing more harm than good by avoiding fish, and what groundbreaking new research is revealing about DHA's role in brain development before birth.
You’ll learn:
- Why brain tissue is fundamentally different from the rest of the body, and why government nutrition guidelines miss this entirely
- The staggering economic cost of brain disorders, and why it now outpaces heart disease and cancer combined
- The real reason ultra-processed foods are stripped of omega-3s, and why that matters more than you might think
- The truth about mercury in seafood, and why its "danger" is far less significant than we've been told
- What Japan's coastal restoration projects can teach us about rebuilding our own fisheries and food systems
- The best food sources of DHA, including surprising picks for people who don't eat fish
If you're not eating seafood on a regular basis, this episode makes a compelling case for why that one change could matter more than almost anything else you do for your brain.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
Prefer audio? Listen below or on Spotify & Apple iTunes Podcasts.
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About Dr. Michael Crawford
Dr. Michael Crawford is a pioneering nutritional scientist whose research has established the critical role of DHA in brain evolution, development, and function. He co-authored the landmark 1972 book What We Eat Today, in which he first warned that neglecting brain-specific nutrients would have serious consequences for human cognition.
Over the course of five decades, Dr. Crawford's work has spanned comparative studies across dozens of mammalian species, primate research on omega-3 deprivation, population studies in Indonesia and the UK, and ongoing collaborative research into maternal DHA supplementation and fetal brain development.
Thanks so much for spending time with us this week! Have a question or feedback? Email us at [email protected]—we would genuinely love to hear from you.
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