#191 Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Diet Essentials For Healthy Living

0:00:00 I did my post-doc training in nutrition and specifically looking at micronutrients.
0:00:05 So these are about 40 or so essential vitamins and minerals. And these micronutrients are running
0:00:12 our metabolism, they’re running everything, our neurotransmitters that we’re producing,
0:00:18 so our cognition, just absolutely everything that is going on in our bodies. So when you think about
0:00:24 the micronutrients that you need in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier to think about what
0:00:29 you should be eating.
0:00:34 Welcome to The Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have
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0:01:14 Today my guest is Rhonda Patrick, a research scientist with expertise in the areas of aging,
0:01:22 cancer, and nutrition. I first came across her work years ago and a friend of mine sent me this
0:01:28 mammoth article she posted online on the benefits of Asana. In fact, this is the reason I started
0:01:35 Asana. Our main focus in this conversation is lifestyle habits that reduce biological aging,
0:01:41 improve health span, and improve our cognition. We cover a framework for approaching nutrition
0:01:46 and decisions about food, as well as a deep dive into vitamin D, sun, sunscreen, and hot exposure.
0:01:55 It’s time to listen and learn!
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0:03:02 McDonald’s restaurants in Canada. When I was thinking about where to start, I think the best
0:03:07 place to start is to give people practical frameworks for approaching topics that we come
0:03:13 across every day. So why don’t we start with a practical framework for approaching nutrition
0:03:19 and decisions about the food that we consume? I kind of have my own framework for approaching
0:03:26 nutrition in it. It has a lot to do with, I did my postdoc training in nutrition and specifically
0:03:35 looking at micronutrients. So these are about 40 or so essential vitamins and minerals that
0:03:42 fatty acids also and amino acids that we have to get from our diet. Those are in a variety of foods
0:03:48 and different foods have different levels and quantities of them. And these micronutrients
0:03:52 are running our metabolism, they’re running everything, our neurotransmitters that we’re
0:03:58 producing, so our cognition, just absolutely everything that is going on in our bodies. So
0:04:04 it’s important to get them because if we don’t get them, we can have deficiencies or insufficiencies,
0:04:10 which is quite worse because insufficiencies are kind of something that you don’t notice every day,
0:04:16 but there’s like insidious types of damage just happening each and every day. And it accumulates
0:04:23 over time and plays a role in age-related diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative disease. So
0:04:28 these micronutrients are things like calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin D, which I’m
0:04:37 sure we’ll talk about is actually something you can mostly get from the sun, omega 3. And so when
0:04:43 you think about the micronutrients that you need in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier to
0:04:48 think about what you should be eating. Well, let’s start with some of the most common deficiencies
0:04:54 in micronutrients. We have magnesium, so almost half of the US population, they get insufficient
0:05:01 magnesium intake. Magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule, so chlorophyll gives plants
0:05:08 their green color. So it’s really easy to think about foods you should eat to get magnesium. You
0:05:13 should be eating greens, particularly dark, leafy greens. Well, greens are also very high in vitamin
0:05:19 K. And vitamin K1, there’s two forms, vitamin K1, vitamin K1 is essential for all your blood
0:05:27 clotting processes. So you’re like, in order to like have your blood clotting, which is important,
0:05:31 you know, if you have a cut or something, you know, an injury, you want that clotting to happen
0:05:36 so that you don’t have like a hemorrhage, right? So vitamin K is also, you know, high in leafy greens.
0:05:42 You can also get calcium as well from greens. So that’s really an easy way to kind of think about
0:05:47 greens. The other way, the other thing is omega 3s, right? So omega 3s are very high in
0:05:54 fatty fish. So this would be wild Alaskan salmon or cod or mackerel sardines, like these are good
0:06:01 forms of fish that have the marine types of omega 3. So that would be DHA and EPA.
0:06:07 Those are very important for a lot of functions, including brain health and cardiovascular health.
0:06:12 And a lot of work has been done by Bill Harris and his group at the Fatty Acid Research Institute.
0:06:20 And they look at the omega 3 index, which is a way you can actually quantify your omega 3 levels.
0:06:27 And that’s really good to be able to quantify something, because if you don’t quantify it,
0:06:31 you don’t really know if you are getting enough of it, right? So the omega 3 index is they’re
0:06:36 characterizing it from red blood cells, which is different than a lot of other ways of measuring
0:06:41 omega 3, like for example, plasma omega 3, which is basically kind of reflective of your dietary
0:06:47 intake the last week or so. The red blood cell or the omega 3 index is more of a long term status.
0:06:53 So it’s like 120 days for a red blood cell to turn over. So the omega 3 index is a good marker
0:06:59 of your omega 3 status. People that have a high omega 3 index, and that would be 8% or more,
0:07:06 have a five year increased life expectancy compared to people with a lower omega 3 index,
0:07:14 which is more like 4%. Now people in the United States on average have about an omega 3 index
0:07:20 of about 5%. And you compare that to, for example, countries like Japan, where they eat a lot of
0:07:25 seafood, their omega 3 index is around 10%. There’s been tons of studies looking at omega 3 index
0:07:31 and life expectancy. And there’s been also like data where they stratify like looking at, you know,
0:07:38 for example, and this I like talking about this, because I think it really puts in perspective
0:07:42 the framework of nutrition and thinking about instead of focusing on what to avoid,
0:07:47 focusing on what you need, because if you focus on what you need, then it’s obvious what you don’t
0:07:52 need, right? There’s no nutritional value in processed foods. You’re not getting micronutrients,
0:07:57 you’re getting calories, you’re not getting protein, you’re not getting things that you need.
0:08:01 So smoking is something that everyone knows is bad. You should avoid smoking, right? It’s,
0:08:07 you know, heart disease, cancer, you’re going to have a decreased life expectancy,
0:08:11 emphysema, all kinds of problems, right? What Bill Harris’s group had done has,
0:08:16 they looked at life expectancy of smokers and non-smokers, and then they categorized
0:08:22 their omega 3 index. And if you look at this data, it’s just mind-blowing. So obviously,
0:08:30 non-smokers that have a high omega 3 index of 8% or more have the highest life expectancy.
0:08:37 And the lowest life expectancy is smokers with a low omega 3 index. So that’s the worst of the
0:08:44 worst. But when you look at smokers with a high omega 3 index, they have the same life expectancy
0:08:53 as non-smokers with a low omega 3 index. In other words, having a low omega 3 index was
0:09:00 like smoking. And when I say the life expectancy, if you look at the graph in the publication,
0:09:06 the curves like overlay perfectly. It’s kind of freakish where you’re like, whoa, like the people
0:09:12 that are smoking, but they’re getting a lot of omega 3 have the same life expectancy of these
0:09:17 people that don’t smoke, but have very low omega 3. And that’s kind of like, I like talking about
0:09:22 that because I feel like it puts it in perspective for people because like I said, no one’s really
0:09:27 thinking about, I’m not eating my fish today. I’m not supplementing with an omega 3 supplement
0:09:32 to get those omega 3s. But people are thinking about, oh, I shouldn’t smoke because it’s bad,
0:09:38 right? So again, it goes back to that framework of thinking about what you need. And starting there,
0:09:45 as opposed to just like, okay, what should I avoid? Because when you think about what should I avoid,
0:09:51 then people aren’t thinking about magnesium. They’re not thinking about the vitamin K. They’re
0:09:56 not thinking about omega 3. And by the way, magnesium, I said about half the population
0:10:03 in the United States doesn’t get enough. They’re not eating enough greens. And unfortunately,
0:10:07 there’s not a great test for magnesium because our body stores magnesium in our bones. And so
0:10:12 anytime we’re not getting enough in our diet, our body pulls it out of our bones to like,
0:10:16 because we need it. It’s so important. You need it to make energy. Like without magnesium,
0:10:20 you can’t make energy. So nothing’s going to function. You also, it’s needed to repair damage.
0:10:25 Like every time you have, you know, like right now, you and I, we’re having a conversation,
0:10:30 you know, we’re, you know, neurotransmitters are firing, we’re thinking about things like that’s
0:10:35 causing damage, metabolism, all that stuff causes damage on a daily basis. But our body repairs
0:10:40 that damage. But magnesium is a cofactor for these enzymes. These are proteins that are doing
0:10:44 everything for that to function properly. And so if you don’t get enough of that magnesium to do
0:10:49 that, what happens is you don’t repair that damage properly. And that can increase the risk
0:10:54 of getting a mutation that can lead to cancer. You know, it’s been found that for example,
0:10:58 for every 100, you know, milligram increase in magnesium intake, there’s something like a 20%
0:11:05 decrease in pancreatic cancer risk. And there’s been lots of studies like this looking at
0:11:10 magnesium intake and cancer risk. And so the higher the magnesium intake, the lower the cancer risk.
0:11:14 So again, it’s one of those things where it’s, you can’t look in the mirror and go,
0:11:18 as you’re brushing your teeth, Oh, I don’t have enough magnesium today, right? Like nothing’s like
0:11:22 showing you that, but it’s happening. That damage is insidious. And I mentioned you pull it out of
0:11:27 your bone, like it’s pulled out of your bones. And that’s another thing it leads to osteoporosis
0:11:32 over time. So remembering to eat your leafy greens is getting your magnesium. So you,
0:11:37 so women need about, I’d say about 320 milligrams a day adult women need about 320 milligrams a day
0:11:44 of magnesium. Men need around 420 milligrams a day. You know, this can change based on your,
0:11:50 your physical activity level as well. So like if you’re physically active, if you’re sweating,
0:11:54 you sweat out magnesium, you also use it up for energy. So you might actually require anywhere
0:11:58 between 10% to 20% more than that level. So what’s called the recommended daily allowance
0:12:05 in the United States. So, you know, again, and people aren’t even meeting that.
0:12:08 So there’s lots of reasons to invest in, you know, these micronutrients and to think about
0:12:15 the foods that you need to eat. I have so many questions. One is, is there a difference between
0:12:21 consuming magnesium and omega three through food, like leafy greens or fish and supplementation?
0:12:29 Yes, let’s start with magnesium. So magnesium, if you’re consuming it in the form of leafy greens,
0:12:35 it is, it is bound to a, it’s the fiber matrix. It’s called phytate. And that does decrease the
0:12:44 bioavailability of it. You can do raw, but also cooking them will increase the bioavailability
0:12:50 of minerals like magnesium. And it is good. You want to kind of get a variety of things. You
0:12:54 want to have some raw veggies, but you also want to have cooked. And when you cook, it does actually
0:13:00 increase the bioavailability of not just magnesium, other minerals as well that are bound to that,
0:13:05 that fiber matrix that, which has phytate there. Supplementation is also kind of tricky with respect
0:13:10 to magnesium because you don’t really absorb more. I mean, it’s about a hundred, I would say
0:13:16 anywhere between 120 to 150 milligrams per dose. Like once you get above that, you’re not really
0:13:24 absorbing more. You’re just kind of causing more GI distress. And it’s a little bit of like a laxative
0:13:30 effect. So some people actually use it specifically for that reason. So they do hire doses. Generally
0:13:36 speaking, if you are supplementing with magnesium, you want to make sure you’re going at a lower dose
0:13:43 because you’re not really going to absorb more. And it’s just going to cause like gut issues.
0:13:47 If you want to supplement with more than just 150, you have to spread your doses out,
0:13:51 you know, take it earlier with the meal and then take it later in the day as well.
0:13:56 But the other thing is that when you’re getting it from food, it is packaged in with other minerals.
0:14:01 And there are, there’s some argument to be made that having, for example, there’s like,
0:14:07 you know, twice as much calcium as magnesium in a lot of the foods. And so you’re getting this
0:14:13 two to one ratio. And so, you know, there’s kind of a reason for that. I wouldn’t say that it’s
0:14:18 been heavily studied, but it’s thought that you kind of want to keep that ratio correct, like two
0:14:24 to one calcium to magnesium ratio. So if you’re just like supplementing with lots of magnesium,
0:14:28 and let’s say you don’t get enough, maybe you don’t eat dairy, or maybe you’re lactose intolerant,
0:14:32 or, you know, maybe you’re just not getting enough calcium, you can kind of have mineral
0:14:36 imbalances as well. And then there’s the form that you’re going to supplement with, right? So
0:14:40 there’s a lot of different magnesium supplements out there. The most important difference when
0:14:47 you’re looking for a magnesium supplement is to avoid the, what’s called the inorganic forms.
0:14:54 And this isn’t like organic pesticide. What we’re talking about is so like magnesium oxide or
0:15:00 magnesium sulfate, like they’re just not very bioavailable. Like you’re not going to absorb
0:15:05 as much from those. But if you get like the organic form, so this would be something that has like
0:15:10 an organic molecule. So magnesium citrate, magnesium malate, magnesium glycinate, magnesium
0:15:19 torate, these are all forms of magnesium that are relatively the same in terms of their bioavailability.
0:15:26 I personally like taking magnesium glycinate, because glycinate is like a form of glycine,
0:15:32 which is a inhibitory neurotransmitter. And so I like getting a little bit extra glycine. There’s
0:15:38 like, there’s some science behind, you know, glycine, perhaps being beneficial and supplementing
0:15:44 with it. Just I think that’s the main thing with respect to magnesium supplementation is that
0:15:50 the forms do kind of matter and the dose. And what about the omega-3s? Is it, can I just go to the
0:15:57 store if I’m not going to eat a lot of fish and buy an omega-3 supplement? Or is fish the primary
0:16:03 way that we actually get bioavailability from this? Yeah, that’s also a great question. It
0:16:09 really does obviously depend on quite a few factors. So with respect to the seafood and fish,
0:16:15 the type of fish does matter, right? So like you need, like there’s some fish, like that’s just
0:16:21 not that fatty. The omega-3s EPA and DHA are the marine forms of the omega-3. And those are the
0:16:29 ones I was talking about with the omega-3 index and life expectancy. Those are the forms that have
0:16:33 been used in randomized controlled trials with supplementation that have decreased
0:16:37 cardiovascular events by like 25% compared to placebo. Those are the ones that are important.
0:16:43 They’re only in the really oily fatty fish. So one of the best forms is salmon. And wild salmon
0:16:52 has higher levels than farmed. For example, wild Alaskan salmon is probably one of the best
0:16:57 salmons to consume for omega-3. It also has astaxanthin. It’s what gives the fish that pink
0:17:04 color. If you are eating quite a lot of fish, you’d have to really get an omega-3 index test to
0:17:11 know for sure how much you require. But you know, I would say probably like at least, you know,
0:17:16 you’re eating it four times a week, something like that, which most people do not do. In Japan,
0:17:22 they do. And their omega-3 index is very high. Like I don’t even know if many Japanese supplement,
0:17:26 they’re just, they eat seafood like every day. The other thing to consider is, well,
0:17:30 what type of fish? So we talked about oily and fatty fish, but also you want to look at
0:17:34 contaminants. Like larger fish have things like PCBs and mercury because they’re eating smaller
0:17:40 fish. So those things accumulate in their fat. So like you don’t want to eat swordfish, for example.
0:17:45 It’s just there. The mercury in swordfish is just through the roof, right? So it’s really like the
0:17:50 trade-off there isn’t very good. So again, that’s where salmon comes into the picture because it’s
0:17:56 very low in mercury. It’s high in omega-3 smaller fish. So sardines would be another one. Again,
0:18:01 there’s a lot of data out there that you can look up like USDA has all this like
0:18:05 contamination mercury levels versus omega-3. So that stuff is easy for people to find.
0:18:11 I would say by and large, the easiest way to get a high omega-3 index and these studies have been
0:18:17 done, randomized controlled trials, people giving supplement, supplement forms of omega-3 is definitely
0:18:22 to supplement. And fish oil supplements, generally speaking, if you’re taking around two grams a day
0:18:29 of a fish oil supplement, that is enough to raise someone from a 4% omega-3 index, which is the low
0:18:35 end, to a 8% omega-3 index, which is the high end. You obviously want to make sure you’re getting
0:18:41 enough of the EPA and DHA, those two important omega-3s. And you want to make sure you’re not
0:18:47 getting a high contaminant level like mercury, PCBs. But the other thing to keep in mind is you
0:18:52 want a low oxidation level. So omega-3 fatty acids are prone to oxidation just because their
0:18:58 molecular structure is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. And so the way people, companies, you know,
0:19:05 are manufacturing this fish oil matters. So some good third-party testing sites to look at.
0:19:12 I would say consumer lab is one that’s really, they go and just go to grocery stores and where
0:19:19 people are generally going and buying their supplements. And they just measure and test
0:19:23 all this stuff. And there, there’s some really affordable brands that have decent omega-3 levels,
0:19:30 DHA and EPA levels, and low oxidation, low contaminant levels. And consumer lab, you know,
0:19:36 test all those. So that would be a good site to go to to find a good omega-3 supplement.
0:19:41 Another one is the International Fish Oil Standard Site, I-F-O-S. Those are for the data
0:19:46 nerds, to be honest, because there’s like a lot more data there. And if you’re like into this stuff
0:19:52 and you want to like really dig, because they just give you everything, like all the data,
0:19:57 like you could imagine, that’s a great site for people that are sort of nerd, want to nerd out
0:20:01 on that. But for some people, they’re like, I just want to know my grocery store, what do I get?
0:20:05 Then consumer lab is a great option. It’s like, it’s broken down in a way that like a child could
0:20:09 even understand. It’s okay, this is the one I want to buy. Is there a difference between wild and
0:20:15 non-wild, I guess, or captive or factory farmed, whatever you want to call it, farmed fish,
0:20:21 in terms of the nutrient density that we’re pulling out of them?
0:20:26 You know, there is a difference. I mean, the wild salmon, they’re out there in the ocean,
0:20:30 and they’re eating fish and like, you know, crustaceans and all the things that they’re
0:20:34 supposed to eat, like that’s what they eat, right? In the farmed salmon, I’m pretty sure there’s
0:20:41 some feeding of stuff that’s like not even, I mean, we’re talking like corn and stuff too.
0:20:46 Yeah, if you were to look at the fish before, in the factories before they inject it with
0:20:53 astaxanthin, they look albino because they don’t eat all the right things, so they’re not naturally
0:20:59 pink. I said inject, but I’m not sure, maybe they actually just give it astaxanthin, they eat it.
0:21:04 I forgot, but they’re giving it exogenous astaxanthin so that it does have the pink color.
0:21:10 The Omega-3 content was also higher in the wild salmon. So again, to your question, yes,
0:21:17 there is a difference between the farmed salmon and the wild salmon, but you know,
0:21:24 sometimes when you’re out at a restaurant, like you’re not going to get the wild salmon.
0:21:28 Is it the end of the world? In my opinion, no. Like I said, choose your battles. I still think,
0:21:32 you still are getting Omega-3s. You’re still getting DHA and EPA. It’s not like it’s terrible,
0:21:37 but I do think it’s preferable if you are getting the wild salmon.
0:21:42 You mentioned organic. Is there a difference between organic and inorganic, I guess,
0:21:51 but inorganic in the sense of being non-organic produce? Why would we choose one over another,
0:21:56 and what difference does it make from a composition or bioavailability point of view?
0:22:01 So pesticides are obviously something that are used now in agriculture because these farms are
0:22:08 huge and we’re growing mass quantities of foods, and so they’re spraying things that will ward off
0:22:14 insects. So insecticides or pesticides, as is known, and also fungicides and other things
0:22:19 to prevent fungus and anything that’s going to destroy the crop. A lot of these types of
0:22:24 pesticides are obviously damaging to the insects, but to humans, the question is, well, are they
0:22:31 damaging to humans? There were a lot, especially things like rotonone, perquate. These were used
0:22:37 for a long time, and those are chemicals that actually cause… We use them. Scientists use
0:22:44 them. I’ve used it myself in the lab to induce Parkinson-like symptoms in animals because it
0:22:51 disrupts your mitochondria, which are little organelles inside of almost all of your cells
0:22:57 and that are producing energy. Super important. In Parkinson’s disease, the mitochondria and
0:23:04 your neurons become dysfunctional. You can cause this by just giving them this pesticide,
0:23:10 perquate, or rotonone. It’s funny. I remember the first time I was learning about this in…
0:23:15 This was actually even before I was in graduate school, but also in graduate school, I was like,
0:23:20 “Oh, I’m putting this stuff to give it to a mouse to study Parkinson’s or to induce a Parkinson,
0:23:29 like human model of Parkinson’s.” This was put on our produce, and I was like,
0:23:33 “That was really upsetting to think about.” There’s been studies even on the newer types
0:23:39 of pesticides that are used on produce. There have been studies that have shown they’re
0:23:44 probably not good to have on a daily basis because of that insidious damage that they’re
0:23:49 causing. People are probably thinking of glyphosate. Roundup is a big one as well.
0:23:55 When it comes to those pesticides that are used, there are certain vegetables and fruits that
0:24:02 are very thin skin that absorb it. Even if you washed the vegetable off, it’s already been absorbed
0:24:07 through the skin. Let’s talk about an avocado versus a strawberry. Is it so important to eat
0:24:15 organic for avocados? Not really. It’s got a really thick skin. Strawberries, on the other hand,
0:24:21 have a very thin skin. That would be something that you want to choose organic.
0:24:24 I would say that, yes, organic would be the best choice. If you can’t always afford organic,
0:24:30 then choose. Bananas, is that so important? Probably not. Avocado is probably not.
0:24:34 Oranges probably not. Apples, yes. Thin skin. Again, there’s lists out there that will list the
0:24:40 things that are like, okay, if you’re going to not do organic, here’s the vegetables and fruits
0:24:45 that are the safest to not. I love the dirty dozen list, but it’s actually more practical to
0:24:51 remember the thickness of the skin as the barrier, the membrane between pesticides. How do you wash
0:24:59 your produce? I say this having seen, I think last night on Instagram, some guy putting baking soda
0:25:07 and vinegar and soaking it for 20 minutes and like, is that how we wash produce? How do you wash
0:25:12 produce to get stuff off of it? What do you do? I just use water. I just use water and wash it,
0:25:18 because I do buy organic as well. You’re thinking about pesticides. You’re like, oh,
0:25:22 well, I don’t want to get Parkinson’s disease or cancer. It’s causing damage. My mentor, Bruce
0:25:28 Ames, he’s now 96 years old. I don’t know how many years ago it was. It must have been back in
0:25:35 the 80s. He had done some experiments with hematologists from his lab, and they were looking
0:25:41 at what happens if you don’t get enough folate. So that’s another one of those essential micronutrients
0:25:47 that you have to get from your diet. Guess what? Leafy greens are one of the best sorts of folate.
0:25:51 So leafy greens are just, they’re packed with certain micronutrients, but they don’t have a
0:25:56 lot of protein, right? So folate, again, we have to get from our diet. And if we don’t get enough
0:26:02 folate, it actually causes damage to our DNA much more than eating a pesticide wood,
0:26:07 because folate is required to make new DNA. We’re constantly making new cells in our body.
0:26:14 And if you don’t have that folate, the precursor to make one of the nucleotides of DNA isn’t going
0:26:20 to be there. And so your body substitutes something else in there that’s from RNA. That’s not supposed
0:26:25 to be there, and it causes DNA damage. And he had done these studies where it was like,
0:26:29 he took animals, put them on a low folate diet similar to what some people in the United States
0:26:34 get. And then he took the other group of animals and he irradiated them with ionizing radiation.
0:26:40 Okay, this is like, yeah, you’re going to want to avoid this, right? And the folate deficiency
0:26:48 was like ionizing radiation. It did the exact same thing. It caused double strand breaks in DNA,
0:26:53 exactly like the ionizing radiation. So not getting that important micronutrient from
0:26:58 your leafy greens, folate, was like getting ionizing radiation. So again, back to that
0:27:05 theme that we started with, thinking about what you need is so important. And we’re sitting here
0:27:11 talking about pesticides. Oh, we should avoid them. Yes, but guess what’s worse? If you don’t
0:27:16 eat the greens, you’re not going to get enough folate. Folate is so important. It’s in every
0:27:22 processed food. They put the oxidized form of it, folic acid. It’s kind of one of those things where
0:27:27 it’s like, oh, it’s another form of folate and it is more stable, which is why it’s used in
0:27:36 processed foods rather than folate. But it is not the exact same as folate. It’s preferable if
0:27:43 you’re going to get the folate from your diet, from leafy greens. Yeah, let’s come back to
0:27:48 sort of the framework for approaching this. And so we’ve talked about micronutrients a little bit.
0:27:53 Let’s talk about macro. So, I mean, so I’m sitting here talking about all these micronutrients and
0:27:58 it was like vegetables was a big thing we’re talking about, right? But we also hit on omega
0:28:01 3s and that was fish. Protein is amino acids or something that we need to get from our diet every
0:28:08 day. Much like we store glucose as glycogen in our liver and our muscles, we store fat, like
0:28:15 triglycerides, right, adipose tissue. We don’t really store amino acids, although our muscle
0:28:23 skeletal muscle is kind of a reservoir for them. And during periods of fasting or
0:28:30 low protein intake, we pull from our muscle to get amino acids because they’re essential to
0:28:35 survive. And what does that mean? That means you’re pulling important protein from your muscle and
0:28:42 that does cause muscle atrophy. So you want to avoid that, right? And so in order to help avoid that,
0:28:49 all these, you know, regulatory committees had come up with, let’s figure out how much protein
0:28:54 people need to take in every single day to avoid those losses, right? And so studies were done
0:29:00 many, many years ago and that number came up to be 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight
0:29:09 is what was the recommended daily allowance for protein intake. Fast forward decades, you know,
0:29:18 you’ve got all this new science and new technology that’s come out and new ways of measuring things.
0:29:23 And, you know, any scientist will tell you that your data is only as sensitive as the tools that
0:29:29 you’re using, okay? Data from experts like Dr. Stuart Phillips and others, they started to,
0:29:36 you know, look into how you measure protein losses and amino acid losses. And it turns out that
0:29:44 those studies that were done decades ago were using tools that were, oh, they were basically
0:29:51 underestimating the losses of amino acids. It turns out using new techniques that are more sensitive
0:29:57 that in order to just prevent your body from like pulling from, you know, your skeletal muscle to
0:30:04 get amino acids, the minimum amount of protein you need to take in is actually 1.2 grams per
0:30:11 kilogram body weight, which is higher than the 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight, right?
0:30:16 And they also did some studies looking at, well, what if you’re physically active, right? You’re
0:30:21 causing damage to your muscle. You’re using a lot of energy. I mean, lots of things going on.
0:30:26 That number goes up to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram body weight. This was a big eye
0:30:34 opener for me a couple of years ago when I talked to Dr. Phillips and started looking
0:30:39 and reading his research because I always thought people were getting enough protein.
0:30:42 And turns out a lot of people are not getting enough protein because they’re not getting at
0:30:49 least that 1.2 grams per kilogram body weight, bare minimum. That, I think, is you have to think
0:30:57 about, okay, well, where do I get my protein meat? Is animal meat? It’s probably one of the best
0:31:00 sources because essential amino acids are very highly concentrated in poultry and meat and fish.
0:31:06 If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan, you just have to really work really hard and supplement with
0:31:10 protein powders and stuff to get that amino acid composition up.
0:31:16 Is all animal protein the same? I would imagine you need the complete set of amino
0:31:24 acids for it to be the most bioavailable in your body. I don’t know what I’m talking about here,
0:31:28 obviously. But is there a big difference between steak and chicken and other sources of protein
0:31:35 that we typically think of? There are differences with respect to their
0:31:38 micronutrient profiles. Steak has a lot more iron, for example. There’s a lot of zinc in
0:31:45 shellfish, oysters. With respect to just the essential amino acids, getting them from any
0:31:53 of those sources is pretty good with respect to protein. You will find that per ounce of food
0:32:03 that you’re eating, maybe there’s a little bit more denser in meat than fish or something like
0:32:08 that. But there are subtle differences between them, but also just in the whole micronutrient
0:32:13 profile itself. But with respect to the essential amino acids, if you’re really trying to hit that
0:32:18 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight, that’s very important.
0:32:25 That’s a lot of protein. It’s really a lot of protein, especially for people that are physically
0:32:29 active. Why is that so important? Well, if you’re constantly pulling amino acids from your muscle,
0:32:36 it’s like pulling from your retirement fund early. Because our muscle mass peak is probably,
0:32:44 I would say, anywhere between 20 to 30 years old is when we peak muscle mass.
0:32:48 After 30, as you get into 40, you start going down. You want to try to build up that muscle mass
0:32:58 reservoir earlier in life, like you do what your retirement fund. You want to build it up
0:33:02 because you’re going to be pulling from it no matter what. Even if you’re working out later
0:33:06 in life, you’re still going to be pulling from it because you just lose more muscle mass and
0:33:10 strength as you age. It’s just part of the aging process. The more you can counter that with
0:33:16 resistance training, with making sure you’re getting enough protein, then the better off
0:33:20 you’re going to be. If you didn’t do it earlier in life, it’s never too late. That’s something
0:33:25 also to keep in mind. Don’t give up. I’m already 50. It’s too late for me. No, because you can get
0:33:31 gains in muscle mass and really actually great gains in strength, particularly with resistance
0:33:36 training. Protein intake is one easy thing. A lot of people, like our parents, not everyone’s
0:33:43 exercising. They’re not doing resistance training. Get that protein intake becomes even more important
0:33:49 at that point. Something also that you might find interesting, Shane, is that we’re talking about
0:33:53 Omega-3s. There’s some work from Chris McGlory. He had basically done some research that have found
0:34:00 high-dose Omega-3s could prevent disuse atrophy. When people are older, they’re not using their
0:34:09 muscles a lot. When you’re not using your muscles a lot and you’re certainly not getting enough protein,
0:34:14 you start to atrophy even more. If you gave them a high-dose Omega-3, so this was like
0:34:20 four to five grams a day, it totally prevented disuse atrophy. They did the study in younger
0:34:27 adults and younger females, but it was 50% less. He’s done some other studies and mechanism and
0:34:33 looking into it. He thinks that what’s happening is Omega-3s are sensitizing your skeletal muscle
0:34:39 to amino acids. In other words, you’re getting more amino acids into the muscle. You’re getting
0:34:44 more bang for your buck. More amino acids are getting in when you have the Omega-3s there,
0:34:50 because Omega-3s are really important for the skeletal muscle membrane and stuff. It might
0:34:56 be easier just to get the nutrients in. I want to start using this in a practical way. If I
0:35:03 were to make a smoothie in the morning, what is the best thing to put in my body at the start
0:35:11 of the day after having slept, which means I’ve been fasting? What is the most incredible smoothie
0:35:18 you can think of that would just be full of health benefits for the day? It would have a
0:35:22 Omega-3, it would have protein powder, it would have leafy. You’d walk me through this. Do you do
0:35:27 this? I do a smoothie. It doesn’t have Omega-3, but I’ll walk you through my smoothie that I do.
0:35:32 I probably about four to five days a week have this smoothie. Typically, this smoothie is about,
0:35:40 I don’t know, four or so kale leaves. That’s usually my green source that I use.
0:35:45 I’m getting the magnesium, I’m getting the vitamin K, I’m getting the folate, but I’m also getting
0:35:53 something in there called Lutein and zeaxanthin, which is, these are carotenoids much like beta
0:35:58 carotene or astaxanthin, like we were talking about. It’s another one that accumulates in
0:36:03 the eye, rods and cones of the eye, so it helps prevent macular degeneration,
0:36:07 but it accumulates in the brain as well. It’s so interesting because there’s been studies that
0:36:12 have shown that giving older adults supplementing with something like 20 megs, which is what three
0:36:17 kale leaves has of Lutein, it improves neural efficiency. Basically, your brain works better
0:36:26 with less energy. There’s been other studies in older adults where giving them Lutein and zeaxanthin
0:36:32 will improve crystallized intelligence. That’s basically, as you get older, it’s the ability
0:36:37 to still use all the information that you’ve learned throughout your life and still use it.
0:36:43 That’s the kale. It also has fiber, right? Fiber is great for your gut. I also add an avocado,
0:36:51 and avocado also increases the bioavailability of those carotenoids, the Lutein and zeaxanthin,
0:36:58 by up to six-fold, anywhere between three to six-fold. You’re getting more of the Lutein and
0:37:05 zeaxanthin. You’re basically making them more bioavailable by adding the avocado. Also, it’s a
0:37:10 great source of mono-insaturated fat. Avocados are high in potassium. Something like 96% of the
0:37:17 US population doesn’t get enough potassium. Then I add a ton of frozen blueberries.
0:37:23 Blueberries, yes, you’re getting your vitamin C, and you’re getting some fermentable fiber for the
0:37:31 gut, but they’re also high in those phytochemicals. They have polyphenols in them, and they have
0:37:38 anthocyanins. They’re like superpowers for the brain. There’s been so many studies that have
0:37:44 been done, randomized control trials either with freeze-dried blueberry extract or actually just
0:37:49 blueberries, showing it improves cognition, it improves mood. When I was a postdoc, I did some
0:37:57 studies in people. We were looking at freeze-dried blueberry powder. I was looking at DNA damage
0:38:02 in their blood cells. Markers of those double-stranded breaks I talked about, like if you don’t get
0:38:08 enough folate, it causes double-stranded breaks. People that are people that are eating terrible
0:38:12 diets and that are overweight and obese have more double-stranded breaks in their blood cells.
0:38:18 That’s something that I’ve measured. We were getting a population of people that were overweight
0:38:22 and obese, and then giving them this freeze-dried blueberry extract. Over the course of four,
0:38:27 eight weeks, it lowered their DNA damage. Personally, what I notice is the mood enhancer.
0:38:34 It’s like I get that blueberry, and it’s like, whoa. I used to add bananas to my smoothie years
0:38:41 and years ago. It’s not that bananas are bad for you, but they have this enzyme in them called
0:38:46 polyphenol oxidase, PPO. Well, as the name implies, it breaks down polyphenols,
0:38:53 which is what you want from the blueberries to get the benefits in the brain and the benefits.
0:38:57 Yeah, exactly. There was a very, very recent study in 2023 that came out,
0:39:01 and this was a controlled trial where people were given a smoothie with blueberries,
0:39:07 either with and without the banana, and then metabolites of polyphenols were measured
0:39:11 in their urine and blood. If they had the banana, their polyphenol levels were just plummeted,
0:39:18 like they weren’t getting them from the blueberries. I’ll tell you what’s enraging about it.
0:39:23 Is anywhere you go, if you want to buy a smoothie when you’re out and about,
0:39:27 everything has a banana in it. I’m a parent, and so I’m out and about,
0:39:34 and I have my kid with me, and it’s like, I want to get a smoothie, and it has blueberries in it,
0:39:39 and I’m like, but it also has a banana. There’s been studies on children as well,
0:39:44 and giving children blueberries improves their cognition. They perform better on tests. It’s
0:39:50 not just good for adults, it’s throughout the lifespan. Now I have to tell them, okay,
0:39:55 don’t put the banana, but everywhere you go, there’s a banana in the smoothie.
0:39:59 That’s interesting. I’m going to give you my smoothie recipe after, and you can create it,
0:40:02 but I’m going to switch out the banana starting tomorrow. Okay, so we have kale leaves, avocado,
0:40:08 frozen blueberries, and protein powder. Protein powder. Especially if I’m doing it,
0:40:14 like you said, first thing in the morning, and sometimes I’ll have my smoothie in the afternoon,
0:40:18 in which case, if I didn’t work out and I’ve already gotten my protein, I won’t put the protein
0:40:23 powder, but these days, I’m mostly always putting them to be honest. I’m doing something every day,
0:40:27 and it’s hard to get the protein requirement for me. I usually do some whey protein,
0:40:33 and then I also add a little bit of hydrolyzed collagen powder as well.
0:40:37 If you’re getting the protein, you probably don’t need the hydrolyzed collagen powder,
0:40:41 but I personally, there’s studies showing that randomized control trial is showing that it improves
0:40:45 like skin elasticity, and things that I’m also interested in addition with respect to skin.
0:40:51 I mean, there’s all sorts of studies also showing it helps with joint health and this and that,
0:40:54 and then the other thing I add is I do a little bit of moringa powder.
0:40:58 So, moringa, it’s high in some micronutrients, like it has things like zinc and iron and magnesium,
0:41:06 but it also has something in it that is called moringogen, and it is a phytochemical that is very
0:41:18 similar to sulforaphane, which is found in like broccoli, broccoli sprouts. It’s really high in
0:41:23 broccoli sprouts, and it activates genetic pathways in our body, the same ones that sulforaphane
0:41:28 activates that have been shown to increase antioxidants in the brain, like glutathione,
0:41:34 that have been shown to lower DNA damage in our cells, all sorts of benefits,
0:41:38 but the other thing that it does, and I’ve noticed this, so I used to wear a continuous glucose
0:41:43 monitor like for years. It blunts the postprandial glucose rise from a smoothie when I put moringa
0:41:50 powder in it, and so I put that in my smoothie as well. Now, that’s a little spicy tasting. I
0:41:55 would say if you’re like in one of those moods where you don’t want the like not so great tasting
0:42:01 smoothie, you know, you can skip the moringa or go for a smaller amount, but I do like a big
0:42:07 keeping tablespoon of it. Do you use like a liquid and ice? Oh, and then I add some water, yeah.
0:42:12 Water, okay. Water to kind of mix it up. That’s pretty cool. I’m going to give you my smoothie.
0:42:16 You can give me a grade on this, and keep in mind, I’m a parent of two boys who devour food,
0:42:22 so we came up with this, and I’ve never told anybody the exact recipe before, but here’s
0:42:27 basically what it is. And we call it the Tom Brady. It’s got protein powder in it. It’s got AG1.
0:42:34 It’s got walnuts. It’s got blueberries, yogurt, almond milk, but like real almond milk, no other
0:42:41 additives or anything. Banana, chia seeds, and hemp seeds. Yes, you’re going for the kind of
0:42:48 omega-3 that’s in those plant sources like walnuts and chia seeds is ALA. And we were talking a lot
0:42:57 about the EPA and DHA, which are from the marine sources. ALA, I mean, now walnuts are great.
0:43:03 There’s like studies showing like if you eat a handful of walnuts a day, you’re, you know, you
0:43:07 have lower cancer risk and cardiovascular disease risk, they’re clearly good for you. They’re not
0:43:12 the same as the EPA and DHA, so don’t substitute. I’ll tell you, you can, so your body does convert
0:43:19 ALA from plant sources of omega-3 into EPA and DHA, which is essentially what the final
0:43:25 products that you need are, but everybody does it differently. And the conversion efficiency is
0:43:31 about 5%. Now women, when they’re making, when they’re high in estrogen, that can go up really,
0:43:38 that can go up much higher. And I think that’s because, because during pregnancy and child
0:43:44 development in utero, the DHA is so important that your body makes sure you’re just turning all
0:43:51 that ALA into that DHA, because when you’re pregnant, your estrogen level goes, it’s like
0:43:56 100-fold higher, it’s like super high. If there are people that are relying on just plant sources,
0:44:02 of omega-3, that is a mistake. And if you do an omega-3 index test, and there’s, you know,
0:44:09 omega-quant is probably one of the best places to do that, then you’ll figure, you’ll figure that
0:44:16 out really quick that year. Okay, well, yeah, well, this is great, right? So like, what would we
0:44:20 supplement here? We take out the bananas and, because they’re counteracting the blueberries,
0:44:25 we’d add avocado, that’s a lot of fat in there. What else would we like take out or add or
0:44:31 switch? What would you say? So you’re doing the AG greens as your source of green?
0:44:35 I’m doing that as sort of like the base vitamin, because they have a daily multivitamin, and I
0:44:41 just count that as their daily multivitamin. That’s their daily multivitamin. Okay, but what,
0:44:44 did you add any greens in there? I didn’t. No, there’s no greens in there. So that would be,
0:44:48 that would be something that I would add some, sneak some kale leaves in. Oh my god, if they saw
0:44:53 that, they wouldn’t drink it. No, don’t let them see. Do they have to make it to be part of it? So I
0:44:58 put kale leaves in my sons or even romaine lettuce. Here’s the other thing. So there’s really not a
0:45:03 lot of foods that can go into a smoothie that would degrade the polyphenols, because they’re high in
0:45:09 that enzyme polyphenol oxidase. But the ones that are are bananas and beets and anything in that
0:45:15 family. So like chard, I used to put chard in my smoothie, like like Swiss chard, you know, like
0:45:21 they’re so, it’s so good. And look, these are great foods to eat. Like just don’t put them in your
0:45:25 smoothie with blueberries. It’s exactly. So I mean, I used to put chard in my smoothie and
0:45:33 like this, this like changed my world. I was like, this is unbelievable. I can’t, you know,
0:45:36 thankfully I stopped doing the banana in my smoothie. In fact, I just kind of just got lazy
0:45:41 and it was like, okay, kale, I just need like a base of greens, you know what I mean? Thankfully,
0:45:45 like years ago. So even though this study just kind of came out last year, I’ve, I’ve been ahead
0:45:51 again. I wish I knew that they’re going to blame me for their poor test results. Now they’re going
0:45:55 to be like, you know, you sent us to school with blueberries and bananas. Dad, like,
0:46:00 what were you thinking? Are they, are they physically active? Cardio respiratory fitness
0:46:04 is another thing that’s like, it correlates with academic performance. So like the better fit the
0:46:08 child is, like they score better on a lot of academic tests as well. Okay. I want to get to
0:46:14 fitness and say, I want to cover a sort of grass fed and then heat and cold exposure. And then we
0:46:19 we can dive into fitness grass fed, non grass fed. Is there a difference? I see this everywhere
0:46:24 between grass fed butter, non grass fed butter, grass fed beef, non grass fed beef. Is there a
0:46:29 difference from a consumer point of view in terms of what I’m ingesting? There’s slight
0:46:34 differences there. Definitely. So we were just talking about the omega three profile. So I would
0:46:40 say one of the biggest differences is the omega three and then the omega six profile in let’s talk
0:46:47 about meat, like grass fed, you know, cows that are grass fed versus not. So what I mean by that
0:46:53 is like, they’re getting that plant source of omega that ALA that that plant source of omega three,
0:46:59 they’re getting if they’re, they’re eating like grass, right? They’re getting it from from the
0:47:04 plants that they’re eating. And they’re also not getting as much of what would be a type of food
0:47:12 that is higher in omega six. So this would be like if they’re being fed corn, for example,
0:47:18 a corn, you know, oil-ish processed kind of like pellets or whatever, you know, if you’re eating,
0:47:24 you know, for example, ground beef from a just conventional cow, then you’re going to have a
0:47:29 lot more of the omega six and less of the omega three. I never thought about this before, but
0:47:35 like you just said, like we’re not supposed to eat processed foods, but then we’re eating animals
0:47:38 that are eating processed foods. Yeah. Again, this goes back to my take on nutrition and how to
0:47:43 and thinking about the framework of how to eat. First and foremost, I think the most important
0:47:48 thing is how do I get these important vitamins and minerals and fatty acids and amino acids like
0:47:54 protein? How do I get all those right? Okay, I’m getting I’m getting an idea of how I should be
0:48:00 eating. Then it comes the next layer. Do I need to have organic or, you know, is a little bit of
0:48:06 pesticides okay? Do I need to eat grass-fed or, you know, because at the end of the day, food’s
0:48:11 expensive, right? Yeah, totally. Way more expensive now than years ago. Exactly. It’s even worse now.
0:48:18 And so I do think it is better if you can afford it. If you can afford it, great. If not, don’t
0:48:25 worry about it. If not, like the most important thing is what if you’re eating conventional meat
0:48:32 and you’re getting a little bit higher omega six? Well, if you’re supplementing with fish oil over
0:48:35 a day, who cares? You’re getting that getting the omega three is what is most important. It’s
0:48:40 and people are so focused on, oh, but the omega six is so high when your body actually needs omega
0:48:45 six. So if you’re getting it from like, you know, dietary sources versus like oils, process cooking
0:48:53 oils and stuff. And even that, look, I don’t cook with vegetable oil. I don’t use vegetable oil at all.
0:48:58 However, I’m going to be frank. Okay, when you look at the data, taking people that are eating
0:49:05 like a high saturated fat diet. So they’re eating more like butter, you know, saturated fat like
0:49:10 coconut oil and substituting that with vegetable oil. There’s no effect in their cardiovascular
0:49:14 disease risk, or they do better. You can look at this two ways. You can say, oh, well, if it’s the
0:49:20 same saturated fat versus vegetable oil, then clearly saturated fats, not as bad as we thought it
0:49:25 was. That’s true. But the second way you can look at it is, oh, they substituted the saturated fat
0:49:31 with the vegetable oil, and it wasn’t any worse. So maybe the vegetable oil isn’t killing us as
0:49:35 bad as we thought. And this is the one thing I like to point out, because I still don’t use them,
0:49:41 because when I think about it from like my mechanistic brain point of view, it’s like,
0:49:46 well, vegetable oil is very high in polyunsaturated fat, like we talked about omega threes being
0:49:51 a type of poly, they’re prone to oxidation. And when you add heat into the picture,
0:49:56 boom, that’s like tons of oxidation. Perhaps in those studies where they’re substituting
0:50:00 saturated fat for vegetable, were they putting vegetable oil on salads, or were they frying it,
0:50:06 deep frying, and consuming oxidized lipids? We don’t really know. You’re still better off avoiding
0:50:13 the vegetable oil, particularly for cooking, in anything that’s with heat. And then obviously,
0:50:18 processed foods have tons of vegetable oil that have been cooked at a high heat. When you go out
0:50:23 to eat, I mean, like those restaurants are using vegetable oil, it’s cheaper, they’re probably
0:50:27 reusing it, which is even more oxidized, right? I mean, these are things like you don’t want to
0:50:31 think about it, you’ll just never go out. I mean, like you have to like enjoy life, right?
0:50:34 Be practical, totally. Yeah, like you can’t obsess over everything or like you become like a maniac.
0:50:40 One thing we can all afford is vitamin D, and we’re all sort of lacking in that.
0:50:46 Walk me through sort of how we can get that, the difference between sunlight
0:50:52 and supplementation, as well as the effect of sunscreen on our absorption of vitamin D, and
0:51:02 is sunscreen actually killing us more than just being in the sun?
0:51:06 So vitamin D, food is not a great source of it. Like you can find, like it is fortified in some
0:51:12 fatty foods, unfortunately, it’s fortified with the wrong form, it’s fortified with D2 rather
0:51:17 than D3, which is what we make in our skin from the sun. The primary source of it is, as you
0:51:23 mentioned, it’s from the sun, and specifically it’s UVB radiation from the sun. That is really
0:51:29 important because UVB radiation only occurs during certain times of the year. In regions where you’re
0:51:35 more northern, so for example in Canada, you’re not making vitamin D a good four or five months
0:51:43 out of the year. It’s very challenging to make a lot of vitamin D from being out in the sun.
0:51:48 Summertime, different, lots of UVB radiation, right? So you need to be in the sun and you
0:51:55 need to be at a certain time of year, depending on where you live, there’s lots of things.
0:52:00 You mentioned sunscreen as well. There’s a lot of factors that are involved in
0:52:04 the ability to produce vitamin D3 in the skin from the UVB radiation, and that has to do with
0:52:11 sunscreen. So anything that blocks out UVB radiation is going to block out the ability to
0:52:17 make vitamin D. Melanin, the pigmentation that is like a sunscreen, it’s natural sunscreen and
0:52:23 people that some people have, like in some regions of the world that are certainly more equatorial,
0:52:29 that is also a natural sunscreen. It blocks out UVB radiation, which is why your body responds
0:52:34 when you’re in the sun, your body tans because it’s like, “Oh, next time I’m in the sun,
0:52:38 I need to protect myself.” It’s an adaptation. The other thing that regulates the production
0:52:44 of vitamin D3 from the sun is age. The older you get, the less, I would say, efficient your body
0:52:53 is it making vitamin D3 from the sun. For example, a 70-year-old makes four times less than their
0:53:00 20-year-old former self. Bioavailability of vitamin D3 is important as well, and that’s
0:53:05 regulated by body mass and weight. You make vitamin D3 in your skin, but it gets released into your
0:53:11 bloodstream, then it’s converted into another form that is actually not a vitamin, it’s a steroid
0:53:19 hormone. Vitamin D is actually much more important. It’s not just a vitamin, it’s actually a hormone
0:53:24 that our body needs. Basically, the more body fat you have, the less bioavailable vitamin D3 is,
0:53:31 and so you actually need more vitamin D3, the more body fat that you have. This hormone
0:53:38 is extremely important because it is regulating about 5% of the human genome, the protein encoding
0:53:47 human genome. It’s doing a lot of things, and you can imagine, so what it does, there’s actually
0:53:53 a little sequence inside of our DNA. It’s a little repeat sequence that vitamin D recognizes,
0:54:01 and this whole complex of vitamin D in a receptor goes down and binds to that little
0:54:06 sequence of DNA, and it turns on a gene or it turns off a gene, and it does it in a very coordinated
0:54:12 manner. When you don’t have enough vitamin D, that stuff all goes wrong, and so lots of things can
0:54:20 happen. Because of sunscreen, because of our modern-day lifestyles, we’re inside technology,
0:54:27 we’re on our computers, less farming, less agricultural work out in the sun, majority of
0:54:33 people are not getting enough vitamin D3. Something around 70% of the US population
0:54:40 is insufficient in vitamin D3, so that is defined as having blood levels of vitamin D
0:54:46 less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. Another percentage of the population is
0:54:53 deficient, so there’d be less than 20 nanograms per milliliter.
0:54:57 But we’ve been told not to go outside. We’ve been told to layer up the sunscreen.
0:55:02 Are these things getting in the way of vitamin D? Are they helping us? How do we make sense of all
0:55:09 this? Let’s be clear. If you have fair skin and you’re going out in the sun a lot, then you can
0:55:19 increase your risk for DNA damage, and skin cancer is one. For example, Australia. Australia is like
0:55:27 the melanoma cancer is through the roof in Australia, and melanoma is the worst type of
0:55:32 skin cancer to get. There’s a lot of fair skin people living there, and Australia is very close
0:55:36 to the equator. There’s definitely many months out of the year where you’re just
0:55:41 lots and lots of UVB radiation, but people that were sort of native to that region had darker
0:55:47 skin. They had more melanin, and so the solution to people that are more fair skin living in
0:55:53 Australia is actually sunscreen and a hat and a vitamin D3 supplement. Yeah. The question is,
0:56:01 where do you find the balance? How much sun exposure is enough? Do I need to supplement,
0:56:07 and do I have to wear sunscreen? I think that all depends on a variety of factors. It isn’t
0:56:12 like a one-size-fits-all. It’s like, okay, well, where do you live? Do you live in Southern California,
0:56:17 like where I do? Do you live in Australia? Do you live in Canada? Those are all factors to
0:56:23 keep in mind. Then just measuring vitamin D levels. Where am I at? Then you can go, okay, well,
0:56:29 clearly, I don’t wear sunscreen. I don’t go out in the sun a lot because I work inside a lot.
0:56:35 Even without the sunscreen, I’m still not getting enough vitamin D3. You have to
0:56:41 measure something. Is there a difference? If I go out and buy a vitamin D3 supplement,
0:56:48 is there a difference between that and the sun? Then do I want to take that with anything I notice?
0:56:55 I think athletic greens includes vitamin K with that. Is that for the bioavailability?
0:57:00 No, it’s not for the bioavailability. Let’s address your questions because they’re really
0:57:04 great questions. Differences between sun exposure and supplemental form. Again, vitamin D3 supplemental
0:57:13 form, which is key. The differences between vitamin D3 from the sun versus supplemental,
0:57:19 yes, there’s differences. Let’s say you’re in sub-Saharan Africa where you’re so close to the
0:57:28 equator and you can make vitamin D3 from the sun and you’re out in the sun. Let’s say you’re a
0:57:33 Bushman or something out there all the time. There’s been studies that have measured the
0:57:37 levels of people that are aboriginal to these equatorial regions like Bushman in sub-Saharan
0:57:42 Africa. Their natural vitamin D levels are something like anywhere between 80 to 100
0:57:47 nanograms per mil. They don’t really go above that. The reason is because your body senses
0:57:53 like the vitamin D levels. When you’re still being exposed to the sun, instead of converting it
0:58:00 into vitamin D3, it converts it into this other metabolite. It’s like, okay, we’re putting the
0:58:06 brakes on this. We’re not going to do anymore. If you’re taking a supplement and you don’t measure
0:58:10 anything, let’s say you’re taking an insane number. There’s upper limits that have been
0:58:17 sort of identified as the safe amount to supplement with vitamin D3 every day. The Institute of
0:58:23 Medicine in the United States has set that as 4,000 IUs a day. That doesn’t mean you can’t go
0:58:27 above that. That’s just the safe upper limit where you’re not going to have any toxicity effects.
0:58:32 Let’s say you’re taking 100,000 IUs a day, way over 4,000. Those natural mechanisms aren’t going
0:58:40 to kick in in the skin that they do when you’re being exposed to a lot of UV radiation and your
0:58:46 body’s like, oh, I have enough vitamin D3, so I’m going to stop. You can over-supplement with
0:58:53 vitamin D3. It is fat-soluble and it can be toxic. It’s challenging to do. You would have to take
0:58:59 something like 100,000 IUs or something a day for a year. The biggest effect is vitamin D3 can
0:59:07 you can make your calcium more bioavailable. We’re talking about bioavailability of other
0:59:12 minerals. Calcium is much more bioavailable in the presence of vitamin D, so you absorb about
0:59:18 40% more calcium from your diet if you have adequate levels of vitamin D. One concern is,
0:59:24 well, if I have a lot of vitamin D and I’m taking calcium, then maybe I’m going to get hypercalcemia,
0:59:30 right? Too much calcium in the bloodstream. There are studies that have shown it’s exceedingly
0:59:35 high doses that you have to do for a long time to get that, but that is the concern with taking
0:59:41 too much vitamin D3 is that you’re going to get too much calcium in your blood, which can have
0:59:46 acute toxicity effects, but also long-term effects with calcification of your arteries and your
0:59:53 vascular system because calcium can form a precipitate really easy. That’s the concern.
0:59:59 Then you mentioned your athletic greens. They put vitamin K2 in there. I mentioned vitamin K1,
1:00:08 which is found in leafy greens. It’s involved in blood coagulation, so clotting. When you
1:00:13 take in your greens, you’re getting the vitamin K1. It goes to the liver, and it activates all
1:00:19 those coagulation proteins, blood for blood clotting. When you get enough of that from the
1:00:23 greens, it stays in circulation, and it does exactly what vitamin K2 does, which is activates
1:00:29 proteins that are involved in shuttling calcium out of your vascular system and bringing it to
1:00:34 your bones, bringing it to your muscle where you want calcium to be, and not in your vascular system
1:00:39 where it can form a precipitate and then a plaque. I want to mention one other thing because you did
1:00:43 say bioavailability. It’s related, and it has to do with magnesium. We were talking about it’s
1:00:48 a cofactor for enzymes like DNA repair. I didn’t talk about a really important one. It’s actually
1:00:53 a cofactor for both enzymes that convert vitamin D3 into the circulating form of vitamin D that we
1:01:01 go and we measure. It’s called 25-hydroxy-vitamin D, and then eventually into the act of steroid
1:01:05 hormone. There’s been studies showing that people that don’t get enough magnesium, even if they’re
1:01:11 getting enough vitamin D, even if they’re supplementing with it, they won’t convert it into the
1:01:15 steroid hormone. It’s a hormone that we need. As I mentioned, half of the US population doesn’t
1:01:21 get enough magnesium. If you’re not getting that magnesium, that’s a problem. Something
1:01:27 like athletic greens does have magnesium in it, I think. But also, if you’re doing greens,
1:01:32 that’s a really good source of magnesium as well. You want to make sure you have your magnesium
1:01:36 covered, especially for the vitamin D as well because they work together. You need them both.
1:01:40 Let’s switch gears and talk about a framework for approaching
1:01:44 deliberate heat and possibly deliberate cold exposure.
1:01:49 Deliberate heat exposure. When we say deliberate heat, you’re going into a hot environment.
1:01:56 You’re going to do something like a hot sauna, a steam room, a hot bath, something that is
1:02:03 either the ambient temperature of the room is elevated or the water and your body is submerged
1:02:10 in the water. What is that doing? Well, that is actually kicking on a physiological response
1:02:17 that is in many ways very similar to moderate intensity aerobic exercise because when you are
1:02:26 exposed to this deliberate heat exposure, when you’re exposed to the ambient increases in
1:02:32 temperature, you’re elevating your core body temperature, which is what’s happening with
1:02:37 physical activity. Your heart rate increases. Your plasma flow increases. Your stroke volume
1:02:44 increases. All these things that are happening during physical exercise are happening during
1:02:49 this deliberate heat exposure. There’s a somewhat of a, I would say,
1:02:54 mimicking effect of moderate intensity aerobic exercise. There’s actually been studies that
1:02:59 have compared that head to head. They’ve looked at being on a stationary cycle, doing not anything
1:03:06 crazy, but 120 watts and then comparing that to sitting in a sauna for 20 minutes, doing each of
1:03:12 those for 20 minutes. They were comparable in terms of heart rate elevation during the physical
1:03:18 activity or during the heat exposure, the changes in blood pressure during the activity,
1:03:24 and then the improvements after. Blood pressure improved after the stationary cycling. Blood
1:03:31 pressure improved after the deliberate heat exposure. Resting heart rate improved after
1:03:38 the stationary cycling and resting heart rate improved after the deliberate heat exposure.
1:03:42 Certainly, it’s important for people that are disabled, people that can’t go for a run or a jog,
1:03:48 or even get on a bike, but it’s also important for the population, I think, of people that
1:03:53 won’t get on a bike or go for a run or they would rather just feel like they’re sitting in a spa
1:04:01 and at the very least, or maybe people that are just so adverse, there are people that are so
1:04:07 adverse to cardiovascular exercise that if you can just get them into a sauna and we can talk
1:04:12 about parameters in a minute, but if you can get them into something that’s at least mimicking
1:04:17 the moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise and they’re getting those adaptations, those
1:04:23 cardiovascular adaptations that they would get with at least a little mild to moderate intensity
1:04:28 exercise, that’s going to be beneficial in the long run as well. Then it’s also beneficial for
1:04:34 people that are physically active. You might go, “Well, why is that?” Being physically active,
1:04:39 like being aerobically active, doing aerobic exercise, one of the best benefits is it improves
1:04:44 what’s called cardiorespiratory fitness. That’s probably one of the, I would say,
1:04:48 one of the best biomarkers of longevity, like concrete things that you can measure.
1:04:52 It’s measured by measuring something called VO2 max. It’s the maximum amount of oxygen you can
1:04:57 take in during maximal exercise. Cardiovascular exercise improves that, particularly if you’re
1:05:02 doing a high-intensity exercise training, things that are high-intensity interval training, for
1:05:08 example, is one of the best ways to improve it, especially if you’re doing longer intervals of
1:05:12 like at least a minute. There’s been two types of studies, observational data looking at people
1:05:16 that just routinely exercise or people that routinely exercise and do the sauna. Then there
1:05:24 was measurements of cardiorespiratory fitness. It was pretty clear that people that routinely
1:05:29 exercised and routinely did the sauna had a better cardiorespiratory fitness than people
1:05:34 that only routinely exercised. In other words, there was a benefit to do sauna on top of the
1:05:39 exercise. Then there’s been intervention studies where it’s like, “Okay, we’re going to take people,
1:05:44 give them an exercise workout. I think it was a stationary bike.” Then right after that exercise
1:05:50 workout, they’re either going to just do passive recovery or they’re going to go into a sauna and
1:05:53 recover for 15 minutes. I forgot how many weeks it was, something like on the order of four weeks
1:05:59 or something like that. They measured cardiorespiratory fitness in a variety of other biomarkers,
1:06:03 like lipids, like LDL, total cholesterol, blood pressure, things like that. While there was
1:06:09 improvements, obviously with exercise, the ones that did exercise plus the sauna had an even
1:06:16 greater improvement in their cardiorespiratory fitness. Their VO2 max was improved even more
1:06:20 than exercise alone. They also had greater improvements in blood pressure and greater
1:06:24 improvements in their lipid numbers and things like that. There was every reason to
1:06:30 add a deliberate heat exposure on top of exercise as well.
1:06:34 You’re the reason I have a sauna. I think I first came across your work and you had this 70-page
1:06:39 website on the benefits of a sauna. I remember skimming the first three pages of it going,
1:06:47 “I really need a sauna.” You’re the reason I have a sauna. When we say “doing the sauna,”
1:06:53 what does that mean in terms of temperature, in terms of duration? Is a hot tub the same as the
1:07:00 sauna? Talk to me about that. A lot of the studies that have been done on sauna have come out of
1:07:09 Finland where they’re using Finnish sonnas, which are generally speaking, it would be what I would
1:07:15 call a regular sauna where you have an electric heater with some rocks that are hot. In Finland,
1:07:23 they often use water and they pour it on the hot rocks. There’s a humidity aspect there anywhere
1:07:29 between 10 to 20 percent humidity. A lot of the observational studies and intervention studies
1:07:35 showing, like I just mentioned one about VO2 max improvements, blood pressure improvements,
1:07:41 they’re done in Finland and a lot of those parameters used. Generally speaking, our regular
1:07:47 sauna is about 175 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 to 20 percent humidity. The average time spent in this
1:07:55 sauna is about 20 minutes for the benefits to really be, I would say, robust. Then there’s
1:08:04 frequency. How often do you do it? There have been a variety of studies that have looked at
1:08:10 all-cause mortality, so dying early from all causes that are non-accidental and then looking at
1:08:18 cardiovascular-related mortality like dying from a heart attack, for example. People that are more
1:08:25 frequently using the sauna, that’s a dose-dependent effect. People that use the sauna, for example,
1:08:29 two to three times a week have a 24 percent lower all-cause mortality compared to people that only
1:08:36 use it one time a week, but people that use it four to seven times a week have a 40 percent lower
1:08:42 all-cause mortality compared to people that only use it one time a week. In other words, it seems
1:08:47 like the minimal effect of dose to get the most robust effect would be four times a week. The
1:08:53 same goes for other parameters. Dying from cardiovascular-related mortality, it’s 50 percent
1:09:00 lower in people that use the sauna four to seven times a week compared to one time a week, whereas
1:09:06 if you’re only doing it two to three times a week, it’s something like 27 percent lower.
1:09:09 When I said duration in the sauna, it’s really important so those studies were also done looking
1:09:14 at, okay, let’s say people are only staying in the sauna for 11 minutes versus greater than 19
1:09:20 minutes, so 20 minutes. They didn’t have that robust 50 percent reduction in cardiovascular
1:09:26 related mortality if they only stayed in for 11 minutes. It was much less. It was a little bit
1:09:30 like it was improved, but it was not 50 percent. The temperature and the duration and the frequency,
1:09:35 those are three parameters that are important with respect to using a regular hot sauna.
1:09:41 The reason I say regular hot saunas is because another type of sauna that’s very popular are
1:09:47 infrared saunas. Infrared saunas do not get as hot, so they’re not warming the ambient air around you.
1:09:56 They’re working through another mechanism and they’re moving molecules inside your body around
1:10:02 and heating you up in a different way. You do sweat a lot and you can get your core body temperature
1:10:09 elevated, particularly if you stay in quite a long time. You do have to keep in mind that you
1:10:14 can’t take those parameters and go, “I’m going to stay in a 145-degree infrared sauna for only 20
1:10:20 minutes,” because that’s what those Finnish studies have shown because they’re completely
1:10:24 different. If you’re just staying in for 20 minutes, like the same amount of time in each,
1:10:28 you’re not going to get those blood pressure improvements from an infrared sauna, which makes
1:10:33 sense. It’s not as hot. It takes longer to elevate that core body to get your heart rate elevated.
1:10:38 Anyone that’s done, like, I’ve done a lot of infrared sauna and I’ve done a lot of regular hot
1:10:42 sauna and I know, and also wearing a heart rate monitor, you can wear your Fitbit or your Woop
1:10:49 or whatever into the sauna and you’ll know when your heart rate starts to get elevated and it’s
1:10:55 not going to be after 20 minutes in an infrared sauna. For me, I’d say 16 minutes is more like the
1:11:02 duration that I would have to stay in to start to get more elevations in my heart rate. Again,
1:11:08 that’s that mimicking of the modern intensity exercise, but there’s also biomarkers that
1:11:13 have been measured. For example, we haven’t gone into this yet, but heat shock proteins.
1:11:19 These are one of the adaptations that happen when your body is forced to increase its core
1:11:26 body temperature, whether that’s through physical activity, which is making you hot,
1:11:29 making you sweat or a deliberate heat exposure. Studies have been done looking at people that
1:11:34 go into a relatively hot sauna. This would be 163-degree Fahrenheit sauna. If they stay in for
1:11:41 30 minutes, they can raise their heat shock proteins about 50% over their baseline levels.
1:11:47 Heat shock proteins have a lot of beneficial effects. They’re involved with preventing proteins
1:11:53 from aggregating and forming plaques in the brain, in the vascular system. They also are very
1:11:58 important for preventing muscle atrophy. There have now been studies that have been done showing
1:12:02 that just even locally heating, the studies that have been done have been called immobilization
1:12:08 studies where they’re mimicking an injury or an event. Let’s say you go and an older person
1:12:14 goes into the hospital. They have the flu, whatever. They’re basically immobilized for a
1:12:18 period of weeks. They’re not using their muscles. Their muscles were atrophying at a rapid rate.
1:12:24 Studies have been done where if you apply even just local heat, you can cut that disuse atrophy
1:12:30 by as much as 40%. Heat shock proteins are a good biomarker for heat stress. So is increased
1:12:37 heart rate. We talked about you’re getting up to 110, 120. You can get up to 120 beats per minute
1:12:42 sitting in the hot sauna. That’s really an indication that your core body temperature is
1:12:46 being elevated. Your body is doing that work. You can elevate your heat shock proteins by
1:12:51 being submerged from the shoulders down for about 20 minutes in about 104 degree Fahrenheit water,
1:12:58 which is the standard hot tub level. I do think there are comparable effects with respect to the
1:13:05 modality of heat exposure. Whether we’re talking about a hot sauna or a hot bath, perhaps an infrared
1:13:11 sauna, again, the duration, the parameters will change. The parameters will change. But I do think
1:13:16 that you can find comparable effects. There are personal preferences at play. I like both hot
1:13:24 tub and hot sauna. I find that I cheat more with a hot tub. I’m more prone to put my arms out when
1:13:29 I get really hot. When I’m in the sauna, there’s nowhere to go. If I’m getting hot, then I have
1:13:35 to get out and then I’m like, “Oh, I’m giving up mentally.” I’m like, “No, I’m not going to give
1:13:39 up.” But if I’m in the hot tub, I don’t feel like I’m giving up when I’m just getting my arms out.
1:13:43 There’s an immune benefit too. Your immune system, isn’t there?
1:13:46 There is. There have been some observational studies as well looking at pneumonia risk.
1:13:53 I think it was something like 40% lower in people that use the sauna four to seven times a week.
1:13:59 There have been a lot of really early studies on, again, these are coming out of Finland where
1:14:04 there’s humidity. There’s steam involved as well. You’re working your cardiovascular system.
1:14:12 The lungs are affected. I don’t know all the mechanisms. I don’t know that they’ve all been
1:14:18 worked out, but there is some sort of benefit on the lugs and also just the immune system as well.
1:14:24 It seems like immune changes happen as well. It’s funny. I do get into the sauna when I’m feeling
1:14:30 a little under the weather or even if I am sick because I find it’s easier than getting on my
1:14:36 Peloton. I get in there and I’ll do the steam and I feel so much better. I feel so much better.
1:14:41 There’s my grandmother or grandfather used to tell me, “Sweat it out.” There’s almost
1:14:47 like something true to that when you are feeling sick. Absolutely. When you are sick, you get a
1:14:52 fever. The fever response, your core body temperature is elevated and heat shock proteins are
1:14:57 activated. Heat shock proteins do play a role in what is called the innate immune response.
1:15:03 That’s the immune response that you have when you’ve never seen a virus or a bacterial
1:15:08 pathogen before. It’s not the antibody response. It’s that, “Okay, let’s fire away and get,”
1:15:14 so heat shock proteins do play a role in that. When you are getting in the sauna, when you’re
1:15:19 doing some form of deliberate heat exposure, you are elevating your core body temperature.
1:15:24 The fever response is a very important part of our immune system’s way of
1:15:29 dealing with the pathogen. It’s important. We get a fever for a reason. The reason I actually
1:15:35 got into the sauna way back in 2009 had nothing to do with cardiovascular effects or even the
1:15:42 effects on muscle mass, but it was the effects on my mood. I was very stressed out in graduate
1:15:49 school. This was 2009. I was using the sauna every morning before I would go into the lab
1:15:55 and do my experiments. That would often fail. It was very stressful. I started to notice quite
1:16:01 quickly that I was able to handle that stress a lot better. I wasn’t getting so depressed after,
1:16:08 and so down and anxious. That’s when I was like, “Something is going on here.” It was very noticeable
1:16:14 for me. Then I started to look into the literature and come up with my own theories, which I,
1:16:21 connecting the dots, where I actually did publish on this back in 2022. It’s in my huge review article
1:16:27 on the sauna. It’s called, “How sauna use can increase health span?” I think it has to do with,
1:16:33 when you get into the sauna, again, you’re mimicking a lot of the same effects that
1:16:37 cardiovascular exercise. You’re releasing a lot of endorphins as well. Those are the
1:16:42 feel-good opioids that we release in our brain. What’s really interesting is that also the opposite
1:16:48 of endorphin is called dinorphin. It’s also an opioid that we release in our body. It’s that
1:16:56 opioid that’s involved in the discomfort feeling. When you’re working out, when you’re getting
1:17:01 hot, you’re feeling uncomfortable. Your body’s making dinorphin. Dinorphin is part of what it
1:17:08 does is it cools down your body. It’s playing a role in, okay, you’re elevating your core body
1:17:15 temperature. The adaptive response is, “Okay, we need to cool down somewhat.” Dinorphin plays a
1:17:19 role in that, but it also is what’s responsible for that uncomfortable feeling when you’re like,
1:17:24 “Oh, I’m so hot. I want to get out.” When you release dinorphin, you have a response, a feedback
1:17:28 loop in your brain, where dinorphin causes your body to make more receptors to the feel-good
1:17:35 endorphin, and it sensitizes those receptors. It makes sense if you think about it. When your
1:17:40 body’s not feeling good and you’re getting that uncomfortable feeling, it wants to make sure that
1:17:44 it’s going to counter that with feeling-good. The next time you make endorphins from a hug,
1:17:50 from your child, or a joke, you laugh at whatever, you’re going to feel even better because you’re
1:17:55 going to be more sensitive to those endorphins. It’s called mu-opioid receptors, and that’s
1:18:01 what you make when you increase endorphin. Anyways, but now there’s lots more research coming out,
1:18:06 so work from Dr. Charles Raison, and now his protege, Dr. Ashley Mason. It’s a type of sauna
1:18:12 that’s like a bed, and it’s a chamber with a head out, and so your whole body is in it.
1:18:18 They are elevating your core body temperature to about 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit, so you’re
1:18:23 getting a fever. They’re inducing a feverish response. Now, many people have to be in this
1:18:28 sauna, and an infrared gets up to about 145-ish or something like that, and they’re in there for
1:18:33 60 minutes, 50 minutes to 60 minutes, and they’re getting a feverish response. It’s a
1:18:40 very intense procedure, but they induce this feverish response 101.3 Fahrenheit just one time
1:18:47 in people with major depressive disorder, or they did a sham control where they made them
1:18:53 feel like they were getting hot, but it wasn’t hot enough. The people that got the active treatment
1:18:58 had an antidepressant effect that lasted six weeks after. It was enormous and crazy. Placebo
1:19:04 group didn’t get it at all. It’s amazing what our body can do to heal itself when we’re not always
1:19:11 injecting it with stuff, too. There’s all these other ways to go about healing it. It’s almost
1:19:15 like it knows what it’s doing sometimes. It does. I agree with you. I mean, it’s so exciting to
1:19:20 potentially have a non-pharmacological treatment for depression, because it’s undeniable that
1:19:27 doing aerobic exercise, like they have compared running to classical antidepressants like SSRI,
1:19:33 so serotonin, reuptake inhibitors. In terms of the antidepressant effects, it’s the same.
1:19:39 Only the running has all the other benefits. There are people that are really severely depressed
1:19:44 that just can’t even get out of bed. They’re not going to go for a run. It’s true. There are people
1:19:50 that will not get out of bed, but will they get into a sauna? It’s a lot easier. It really
1:19:57 opens up doors. It’s just so exciting. Super promising as we age, too, for the aging population.
1:20:04 A lot of people who don’t want to exercise when they get a lot older, or the aches and pains,
1:20:08 and maybe it’s a low-intensity way to do that. I can say for myself, during COVID,
1:20:13 it was probably one of the most stressful periods of my life. The sauna, I think it saved my life
1:20:20 a lot. I was using the sauna five, six times a week, and it was just sort of like, A, it was
1:20:27 mentally grounding. It was something I look forward to. It was a great ritual, but it sort of kept
1:20:32 me out of trouble for some reason. I could never explain it. I’m an N of one, and I’m not super
1:20:37 scientific and all that, but I was like, “This is working. This is keeping me happy, and going,
1:20:42 and motivated, and I got to keep doing more of this,” because yeah, it was really crazy.
1:20:48 I want to talk about exercise. Maybe we’ll do that in part two, because I don’t think we’re
1:20:51 going to do it justice here in the next 10 minutes. Maybe we can end with the top three
1:20:58 interventions you can think of from a diet perspective, and then the top three interventions
1:21:04 you can think of from a behavioral perspective that would have the biggest bang on people’s lives.
1:21:10 Diet-wise, the top three things that people can think about would be to make sure they’re getting
1:21:18 enough of their marine source of omega-3, so supplementing with two grams of a pretty decent
1:21:25 quality fish oil brand per day. It’s like low-hanging fruit. Then I would say vitamin D3.
1:21:33 Most people, 4,000 I use is a pretty safe bet. At the very least, doing 4,000 I use a day of
1:21:41 vitamin D3, as you mentioned, it’s the cheapest supplement. It’s something like a penny a pill.
1:21:46 It’s the most affordable thing to do. Then making sure you’re eating your greens and
1:21:54 getting your protein, so thinking about the magnesium and then the 1.2 grams per kilogram
1:22:01 body weight a day are the biggest bang for your buck, I think. Then with respect to behavioral
1:22:08 exercise, and particularly doing a good amount of high-intensity exercise, and we didn’t get so
1:22:13 much into it, but it really is one of the most important things that you can do. There’s studies
1:22:18 showing that people just doing one to three minutes of getting their heart rate up to 80%
1:22:22 max heart rate for one to three minutes three times a week is associated with a 50% reduction
1:22:29 in all cause mortality and cancer related mortality. It’s easy to do. You can do that.
1:22:34 You can just get up and do three minutes. It’s not that challenging. Also, resistance training
1:22:41 and muscle mass, super important. You need to be building that muscle mass and maintaining it,
1:22:47 because frailty, you get to a point when you start to get older and all of a sudden you have an event
1:22:54 where you’ve got influenza or whatever and then you start to not working out. You lose so much
1:23:00 muscle and you get a couple of those stacked on over a couple of years and then all of a sudden you
1:23:04 can’t walk. Your mobility goes down and then the curve just drops. Resistance training is extremely
1:23:12 important. If you’re doing those two things, you’re probably going to be maintaining a healthy
1:23:17 body weight because at the end of the day calories in, calories out, doesn’t matter. If you’re doing
1:23:22 the exercise and the resistance training and you’re focusing on getting the proper micronutrients
1:23:29 from your veggies and protein intake, you’re probably not going to be eating all the junk.
1:23:33 The last thing I would say, behavioral wise, I would add sauna or deliberate heat exposure.
1:23:40 I think that’s huge for a lot of reasons. For the cardiovascular reasons, there’s mental health
1:23:47 effects as we talked about. There’s also other brain effects. Dementia risk is lower as well.
1:23:52 Then muscle atrophy, you can do the deliberate heat exposure to help prevent muscle atrophy
1:23:57 as well. I think those are the three behavioral changes. By the way, exercise can forgive a lot
1:24:04 of sins, including lack of sleep. That’s why I start with that. I don’t make the sleep the most
1:24:10 important. I actually think it’s exercise. We’re going to have to have you on for part two because
1:24:14 I really want to dive into both resistance training and cardiovascular exercise with you.
1:24:19 This has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time.
1:24:23 Well, I look forward to your round two, Shane. Thank you for all the great questions. It’s been
1:24:27 a lot of fun. Wow. What a fun conversation that was with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I just want to go
1:24:34 through some of my takeaways and notes from this one. I think the big overarching message that we
1:24:43 got across today is that a lot of people focus on the micro. If you notice,
1:24:51 Rhonda kept bringing it back to the macro. I don’t mean in terms of nutrients. I mean,
1:24:55 in terms of what we focus on, we’re overly focused on these little minute things because
1:24:59 they’re really within our control. We want to feel like we’re doing something when in reality,
1:25:05 there’s these big things that we’re not focused on that nobody’s really arguing about. You might
1:25:11 argue whether seed oil is bad for you. I think it is or not. At the end of the day, are we getting
1:25:17 the right magnesium? Are we getting folate? Are we getting omega-3s? How are we positioning
1:25:23 ourselves? This is how I think about food personally. This is one of the reasons I’m
1:25:28 exploring this with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and some other guests is the food that you put into your
1:25:35 body is sort of a lead domino for a whole bunch of other things. It affects your mood.
1:25:40 It affects your energy. It affects how you handle stress. It affects how you handle your
1:25:45 emotions. It really dictates a lot of what comes downstream. Paying attention to the food in your
1:25:51 body is a really good way to take control of your life. It’s a really small thing you can do to put
1:25:56 yourself on easy mode every day. We didn’t get into talking about sugars. We didn’t talk about
1:26:01 oils too much. I really wanted to get into that. I also really wanted to get into exercise routines
1:26:07 and talk about that. But I think we’ll try to do that in the next episode. We’ll definitely do a
1:26:12 part two of this. I did take away sort of like grass-fed was better. If you can afford it,
1:26:19 if not, don’t stress over it. Same as organic. If you can afford it, great. If you can’t,
1:26:25 don’t stress over it. Again, if you had to pick and choose, I loved her heuristic for using thin
1:26:33 and thick skin as the way to pick and choose. If you’re sort of like, “Oh, I want to do some
1:26:39 organic,” and not all, I liked her approach to sort of washing veggies. It’s very practical and
1:26:45 pragmatic. It doesn’t have to be sort of the Instagram that you see of the vinegar and the
1:26:52 baking soda and the water and soaking it for 15 minutes. I liked the very end when we talked
1:26:59 about sort of like here are three behavioral interventions that you can do that really make a
1:27:03 difference. Here are three sort of supplement dietary things. Again, they were fish oil,
1:27:09 vitamin D3, greens and protein, and then high intensity exercise, resistance training, and
1:27:20 sauna, which I really like in part because I’m biased to have a sauna. I think that that makes
1:27:25 a big difference. It made a big difference for me during COVID. I think it’s made a big difference
1:27:30 for other people that I’ve talked to. One thing we didn’t talk about was sleep. I know a friend
1:27:35 of mine, Andrew Worgensen, has one and he says it really, really drives his sleep. I don’t know if
1:27:41 it helps me sleep. Sometimes I get in there and I nap to be honest with you. I like talking about
1:27:47 this smoothie. If you remember, she had a smoothie recipe and it was sort of like four kale leaves,
1:27:52 avocado, frozen blueberries, which she actually went out of the way to say a ton of frozen blueberries,
1:27:58 protein powder, collagen powder, and there was that meringue of powder water. Then we talked
1:28:05 about my smoothie, the one that I make with the kids and how I was unintentionally adding bananas
1:28:11 and blueberries together and sort of undoing the amazing effect of blueberries. I’m going to switch.
1:28:18 I’m going to try to switch it out and see what the kids think or even if they notice,
1:28:22 switch out the banana, put in avocado. Again, in mine, we call it the Tom Brady. It was protein,
1:28:28 A.G.1, walnuts, blueberries, yogurt, almond milk. I’m going to switch out the banana, chia seeds,
1:28:34 and hemp seeds if you want to. Hemp seeds are a really good sort of source of extra calories and
1:28:41 fat for the kids. If you are trying to get them to eat more, which I have one kid who eats a
1:28:48 lot, one kid who doesn’t eat a lot, I’m always trying to get more nutrient dense food into both
1:28:54 of them. What else do we talk about? We sort of talked about the sun and sunscreen and so
1:28:59 circumstantial. There’s not a lot to take away from that other than when you’re out in the sun,
1:29:04 be careful about what you’re sort of putting on your skin and also be careful about how much
1:29:11 sun you are getting. You don’t want to get sunburned. Yeah, I just really thank you guys for
1:29:18 listening. If you have any questions or follow-ups, just send me an email, Shane@fs.blog. What I’ll do
1:29:26 is I’ll sort of create a little sheet and we can make questions for follow-up for round two. We’re
1:29:33 definitely going to do this again. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and
1:29:42 learn with me. As you can see, this is my journey and I’m learning along with you, so I really
1:29:48 appreciate it. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes,
1:30:00 show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast or just Google the Knowledge Project.
1:30:07 The Furnham Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book,
1:30:12 Clear Thinking, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results. It’s a transformative
1:30:17 guide that hands you the tools to master your fate, sharpen your decision-making,
1:30:22 and set yourself up for unparalleled success. Learn more at fs.blog/clear.
1:30:29 Until next time.
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