Food & Metabolomics: How Your Diet—Starting in Childhood—Shapes Your Brain | Dr. Alexis Wood

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
Alzheimer's doesn't start with memory loss. It starts silently, decades earlier, in places you'd never expect. Today's guest might completely change how you think about your brain, your food, and your future. Dr. Alexis Wood is a leading researcher at Baylor College of Medicine. She studies how your genetics and your diet interact to shape your brain, from the moment you're born to the moment it starts to fade. We're diving into some big questions today. What is it that we know about childhood nutrition? Can we affect ADHD just by nutrition alone? What role does the current science information landscape have to tell us about how we can feed our children? This conversation doesn't just focus on what's going wrong. It's about what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. What to eat, what to look for, and how to fight back. Because the earlier you understand this, the better the chance you have of changing your brain's future. And it starts with changing our children's present.
Where are we in the landscape of childhood nutrition and genetics? I want to really hear and focus in on the research that you're doing and the questions that you're asking.

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (1:24)
Okay, so I think we have basically nothing in children, in child nutrition and genetics, a tool bringing those together. I would say that even in child nutrition, it has been overlooked. In fact, the history, so, you know, every five years, as you well know, the USDA...

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:45)
Can't wait for some major changes.

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (1:47)
Right, you're lost.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:48)
Just still waiting.

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (1:49)
I'm sure I talked about it.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:50)
Still waiting...

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (1:51)
.produces the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which changes slightly in each iteration, how the purpose is stated, but it's essentially how to make dietary choices that will keep you healthy or reduce your risk of chronic disease. And it was only in the last iteration, they included advice.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:11)
I know.

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (2:11)
For two to three-year-olds, you know? And if you read it, I understand no one wants to read right in the weeds. They're very honest, very transparent, and they spell it out. We had no research on foods and their effects on cognitive and social health. You know, anthropometrics, fat, height, weight, we've got. I mean, we need more, but we're there. This piece, we had nothing. So we're sort of inferring from other populations or kids. And we don't even have great things there. So it's really a black hole, I feel, for children. And I feel confident saying that because when I speak to people at the USDA, they agree. You know, they're very excited by the idea of creating a cohort of children that we can study the effects of diet on more social cognitive developmental outcomes. So that's a black hole. And we're doing everything from what we know in adults. And I think we actually know a lot in the science field as adults. But now as scientists, we're up against the wider world.
And how people interpret it, what they choose to make into a news story and so on. And that's bringing a lot of issues to our door that feels a bit like a step back.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:25)
Do you think that it's always been that way? And when I say always been that way, meaning issues to your door? Because there is more information out there than ever before. I think we are all struggling with what to trust, what not to trust, who to trust, how to understand the science. And then also children, again, there is nothing, I mean, even for protein recommendations, we don't really know for kids. We don't biopsy kids. How do you see your work helping? And what is it that you're working on now specifically?

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (4:00)
So I've started a study. So we won't be analyzing the data, we won't be drawing conclusions, but we are looking at establishing a longitudinal cohort of children from 12 months, assessing their diet, taking blood samples to look at both biomarkers of diagent J, because it's so hard to assess diet in everyone. Children add another layer, right?

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:23)
You mean they don't listen? And they're not going to do food frequency questionnaires?

**Dr. Alexis Wood** (4:26)
Well, they're also not going to tell you what they're eating, and parents may not be with their child all the time. They may be divorced, they may have daycare, they may go to a friend's house. So capturing is challenging. So we're looking at some biomarkers in the blood, but we also want to use the blood to try to capture when that food is being digested and processed and absorbed, how does it change the body?