Barbell Shrugged - 119- Biomedical Research, Nutrition, and Supplements w/ Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Episode Date: May 21, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we geek out on science with Dr. Ron DePatrick, biomedical researcher and nutritional expert. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson. We have traveled to Austin, Texas for the Paleo FX Conference. And we have snagged Dr. Rhonda Patrick, scientist. We're going to be talking about vitamins and minerals and studies and... And science. And science and poor journalism and all sorts of stuff.

I think it's going to be really entertaining. She's full of knowledge, from what I understand. You've been studying for a while, haven't you? The more I know, the more I don't know, actually. Yeah. I think that's common. The people that are the most educated started to learn, like, oh, we don't know shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty common. So I'm really excited to be here. This is, I'm sort of new to the paleo community, and so I'm pretty pumped to be here giving a talk on how vitamins, certain things that you eat in your diet, how exercise and how something called hyperthermic conditioning can change the expression of your genes. So most people think, well, your genes are set in stone. I was born with them, so I'm sort of doomed.

I'm predisposed to type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer's disease, so what can I do? And that's just not the case. People forget about the expression of genes. You have genes, but the things, the environment, the activities, the things you eat, those help certain genes express and certain genes not express. Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm basically going to throw some knowledge bombs today and tell you exactly what helps you express the good ones and what helps you turn down the bad ones.

Express is kind of like turning on and off. Express is turning on and off. Yeah. You can turn on a gene. When it's turned on, it's active. It's doing what it's supposed to do. And you can turn off a gene. And even's turned on, it's active. It's doing what it's supposed to do. And you can turn off a gene. And even though the gene's there, it's silent.

So it's almost like it's not there. Can I just think about a gene and turn it on and off? Actually, meditation does change the expression of genes. So if you really sit there and meditate on a gene, you might actually be able to. Do you have to do it by name? Or does the gene know its name? I'm pretty sure the gene uh has no idea what his name is yeah so i know i'm it's it's pretty cool so um you know

in a couple hours i'm about to talk about how uh you know vitamin d can change the expression of genes that affect the way you behave so it actually i just published a paper on this um a couple of months ago where I found a mechanism by which vitamin D, which actually gets converted into a steroid hormone. It's really kind of important. It regulates over 900 genes

in your body, which is pretty much like 1 24th of the human genome. It turns on the synthesis of serotonin in your brain and serotonin regulates the way you behave. Pro-social behavior

makes you happy makes you feel good regulates you know lowering aggression also regulates cognitive function so i'm going to talk about that and also going to talk about something really cool that i'm really excited about that was just posted on tim ferris's four-hour work week blog two days ago and that's sort of introducing this concept of using heat stress through using a sauna, a term I call hyperthermic conditioning, which can help kick on physiological adaptations that can help you deal with heat stress later on. Heat stress in the form of elevating core body temperature, which you obviously do when you're working out, when you're exercising. So I did a ton of research on how using heat stress from the sauna can actually help you

with your endurance and also help with the acquisition of lean muscle mass and has positive benefits. So that's part of the benefit of exercise is the fact that you get really hot. Yes. And you're trying to mimic that in a sauna. Exactly. And that actually helps you build muscle mass. Is that what you're suggesting?

So we can get fit without training. You can get fit without. We don't have to do anything. That's what you're telling us. We can sit in a sauna and get buff. That's what I heard. You can sit in a sauna and not lose your muscle mass. I mean, you obviously have to train to get the hypertrophy effect.

I mean, that's pretty clear. But, you know, I've got some, I did some serious experimentation in the sauna back when I was in grad school living in Memphis. I lived across the street from the YMCA. And so I was like always going to work out and using the sauna and I'd injured myself. And so I was in the sauna like four times a week and I'd sit in there for like 30 minutes each time and I absolutely did not lose my muscle mass like I would have you know for not working out for a month plus I didn't lose my mind which is most important because I feel like you're doing something though like getting in the sauna is better than like sitting on the couch and eating potato chips well what happens

is when you get in the sauna you you express something called heat shock proteins, HSPs. And so they're sensitive to heat stress. So when you, you know, under normal temperatures, the genes for the heat shock proteins are kind of just normal activity. But when you get in some heat, so when you exercise or when you get into the sauna, you have a massive induction of that gene expression. And you turn on heat shock proteins, which basically prevent proteins from being degraded. They prevent oxidative stress, so they scavenge free radicals. They also help proteins in your body keep their three-dimensional structure. So when you have a damage to a protein, it gets degraded.

And so studies have shown in mice with heat shock proteins that you can basically induce hyperthermia for 30 minutes in these mice. And they'll express a robust amount of heat shock proteins in their soleus muscle, and this prevents them from losing muscle mass when they're immobilized, and also it helps them grow more muscle after they are immobilized and start to exercise again. So they have a regrowth. So if I'm trying to get lean, I could just sit in a sauna and take BCAAs and that'd probably do pretty well. Maintaining muscle mass?

I think you probably also have to apply a workload. I mean, maintaining muscle mass. Just to maintain. Say if I'm trying to get lean and just maintain it. Say I'm a bodybuilder. If you're trying to maintain, yes. And I'm getting ready for the beach, you know? Right.

You know how it goes. Right. Yeah, no, it prevents muscle atrophy i think that's that's probably the main thing that hsp does also it does it induces that growth hormone so uh pretty massive so we jumped right into gene expression and heat shock proteins before we go any further into that awesome stuff uh can you tell us a little bit about like why people should pay attention to you obviously they know you're smart at this point but give it a little bit of your background on kind of like how you got to where you are today yeah so i have a phd in

biomedical science and i've done extensive research on aging i used to study insulin signaling and how insulin affects things like neurodegenerative disease. And then I went on to grad school and I studied mitochondrial metabolism, metabolism in cancer. And now I'm doing a postdoctoral fellowship in Oakland at Children's Hospital. And I study nutrition and metabolism and how particular micronutrients like vitamin and mineral deficiencies can accelerate diseases of aging. And I also look at how we can reverse that by giving people adequate levels of certain vitamins and minerals. So I do clinical research now.

So I've literally, I did aging research on worms and then I did cancer research on mice and now I'm doing nutrition research on humans. So I've gone from worms to mice to humans. That's how you gotta do it. You gotta start small. Let me tell you, worms are so much easier to study. Humans, humans, way less of a pain in the ass than humans. So much variation. Yeah. So do you get mostly college students as your, as your lab rats? I have a bunch of UC Berkeley students. Um, not a bunch. I mean, I have a handful that are, are they worse than that for

students? They're actually really good and they are doing work for me and it's all about comparison. No, it's a, I really, I really am having a blast over there. Um, so yeah, so that's sort of my training background. And in addition to that, I started this platform, found my fitness, um, where I'm trying to convey, um, health and nutrition information to the audience and breaking down science in a way that's digestible basically because the press cannot do that um and case in point this recent uh headline grabbing editorial that stated multivitamins are bad for you oh yeah you guys are familiar with that that was on my facebook wall for sure. Yeah. It was on mine for like months. People asking questions. Right.

And so you've got certain headlines that are really attention grabbing. Particularly when it's something that's negative. Sure. You know the media loves that. Negative headlines are the best. Fear sells way better than positive stuff. Absolutely. Twice as much.

And then you have people that listen to what the press says. And so, you know, they take it as, as truth. So I'm trying to come in and say, look, this is a, this is actually not true. And here's why. So try to explain it to people. And so I do some like videos and podcast.

I think, I think anytime a journalist, I think if you want to get some perspective on what happens in journalism is whatever you're an expert in so if you're an expert in like financial industry or you're an expert in the oil industry or an expert in fitness or nutrition or something like that go look at what's being written about newspapers and you go and you're always mad about when they write about your industry because you know what's going on yeah and then extrapolate that to everything else because they don't know shit about anything like just like grab like things that sound good and they're gonna sell papers well here's here's the thing like one of the studies they said okay well if you take multivitamins not only do they not do anything

for you but they're gonna give you cancer and it was like wait a minute so let me let me read the study here because i mean obviously there's there's some science going on that these people don't understand. So as I read these studies, I realized, oh, so you have someone who's a smoker or who has been exposed to asbestos, which obviously affects the lungs. That's bad for you. It is bad for you. Really bad. So bad that you can't use it in construction anymore, right? Right.

Yeah. But these are the people that were part of the it in construction anymore, right? Right. Yeah. But these are the people that were part of the study trial. Right, right. Very unhealthy people. They have a lot of oxidative damage in their lungs. And then they gave them high doses of beta carotene. And beta carotene, in the presence of a lot of oxidative damage, can get broken down into these cleavage products, which cause more damage. And so it's like this vicious cycle.

But this only happens in lungs of people that smoke or are exposed to something really toxic like asbestos. Then they blame the vitamins. And then they blame the vitamins. And then they generalize it. And they're like, okay, to all people, it's going to give you cancer. And that's not the case.

And they did the same thing with giving people that had already had cancer folic acid. And folic acid is really important to make thiamine, which is a nucleotide in your DNA. Well, cancer cells, they like to proliferate really freaking fast. Yeah. So they want anything that'll build more DNA. So you don't give someone cancer, you know, tons of folic acid because it's like crack for cancer cells. It's like fuel for the fire.

Good to know. You know, so and actually one of the very, very potent chemotherapeutic agent is targets folic acid, stops your body from actually being able to use folic acid. It's called methotrexate. So when you're doing a clinical trial and you're giving someone folic acid that's already had cancer and you find out that it accelerates the cancer you can't make a generalization and say vitamins are going to give you cancer. No, you need to explain the mechanism. First of all, people need to understand if you don't

have folic acid and you're healthy, it can also cause cancer because it can damage your DNA. But if you already have cancer, it's not good. So here's a point where you've got an opportunity to educate the public and say, look, prevention, okay, you need folic acid for

cancer prevention, but if you already have cancer, you can't dump a bunch of folic acid on the cancer cells. It's this kind of crap that just irritates me. Well, the interesting thing with that piece is, and this happens a lot in journalism, is they write all this stuff and they cite the research,

right? And people, this is what people do is they go, wow, they cited research. I'm impressed. Yeah. But the problem is

is either the journalist just doesn't know how to read research or they don't care. And, you know, it's intentional, which is even worse. And then one of the best

classes I ever had was research methods and basically learn how to, like now I learn like anytime anyone cites a study, you go to that study and you look at the methods. Right.

Because the conclusions that scientists come up with in their own research, sometimes when you look at the methods, you go, oh, this is not really applicable to my situation or to this specific situation.

So like as a scientist, you see this and you go, all right, let's go see what they referenced. And you go and look at those studies and you look at the methods. I remember talking to you and you said the methods of these, these studies that they're, they're referencing are like, like you're talking about the smokers, you know, they're, they're only using people who already have cancer. And then they're like extrapolating all that data to write this, this journalist piece that's very misleading. Right. it's called critical analysis yes and it's very important

um with this with this it was important yeah a meta and now i literally read through over 30 different studies i was really angry that i had to do this because it's like a waste of my time so to speak um and when you're doing clinical trials and nutrition research, where you're looking at vitamins and minerals, particularly if you're giving someone a vitamin or mineral supplement, you have to measure something in the blood. You can't just give them a vitamin and assume they're going to be compliant, assume they're going to take it, or assume that your vitamin has a high enough dose to change anything. And more than 50% of those studies did not measure anything at baseline

or during the follow-up. I mean, you have to quantify something, right? I mean, this is, even you guys are getting your lipid panel test, measuring your vitamin D, your C-reactive, even you guys are quantifying your own health. So the fact that some of these researchers

that are doing clinical trials are not doing that, and then they're publishing studies, and then the media gets a hold of it and they just start to generalize. It's like someone has to come in and go, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay.

This is not how it's done. And this is why. So let's, let's try to get any good information out of this that we can. Like I said, you know, it's important to realize between prevention and people that already have cancer,

but it's also important to realize that a lot of these studies, even though they're published and peer-reviewed, doesn't mean they're accurate or done correctly. Yeah, that's what I'm really... You would think that the researchers would be the ones that would come in and put a stop to this because they're the experts in research. Like, the general population that reads a newspaper,

they don't know any better. The journalists, they don't know any better. But you think the researchers would know not to do that. And so why are so many studies so bad in your opinion? Why are the methods so flawed if professional researchers are the ones doing the studies? How's that happen? So there's, there's, there's a couple of tiers to that. So the first is there's a, something called an impact factor that the journal has. So studies that have a really high impact journal, they won't, you know, if you're going to get like a New England Journal of Medicine, which is like

standard for clinical research, it's like really high impact. You have to measure some, something, you have to quantify something if you're going to make a claim. But you can go to some, one of these like low, low, low tier journals that, you know, doesn't require that. And it'll get through. I mean, you'll have, and they'll also have people reviewing it that may not be experts in that because it's a really, really low tier journal. So there's ways to get through it. Plus if they have, if they have, you know, make some conclusion, if they measure some outcome, which is not quantifiable, like for example, you know, cardiac, you know, coronary, you know, cardiac problems or something.

It's like they're measuring some kind of outcome, but nothing quantifiable in the blood to say, oh, this is related to low C-active, high C-reactive protein, or this is related to low vitamin D. Okay, fine, you have an outcome measure, you're measuring cognitive function or whatever it is. Okay, well, you have to then,

is there something biochemically you can quantify that to? And that's just, in nutrition research, they don't do that so often. So I know another problem with research is that if you're trying to get published in a journal, still the point of the journal, just like the point of a newspaper is to, you still have to sell something. And so what you're selling has to be interesting. And so when you're submitting your research, if it's not interesting, then you're, you're likely to get denied or maybe not likely, but it's very possible you could get denied if it's not something very novel. So if you publish a paper that says vitamins help with something that's very well known, everyone goes, well, we already knew that. So you don't need to.

We don't need that in our in our journal. So we're not going to accept you. So if you publish something that says vitamins give you cancer, they go, oh, OK, well, that's novel and new. We'll publish that. and new we'll publish that and so they'll publish things that are uh attention grabbing yeah attention grabbing countercultural counterintuitive or whatever you want to say and then because they're published more often that's what gets cited because that's what made it out into the world exactly you are so head on and you know i'll give you a example. I think recently a couple of studies have come out talking about how omega-3 fish oil is bad for you. It's going to give me ball cancer.

Oh, yeah. Every time there's a bad fish oil is bad for you, we get flooded with questions. I heard it's bad for you because there was one study that measured some very specific population, kind of like you were just saying. It's a very specific situation for a very specific set of people that never makes it into the article itself. It never says who it's for, what the situation is. It just says it's bad for you. People read the headline. They don makes it into the article itself. It never says who is for what the situation is. It just says it's bad for you. People read the headline. They don't even read the article, let alone the study.

And then all of a sudden it's bad for you. Okay. So here's my, here's my little two cents on the fish oil is bad for you. Okay. So I heard that came out of the UK. So, you know, can't trust those guys. Right. They are all vitamin D deficient.

Okay. We're talking about 900 genes not being regulated correctly everyone in the uk no sunlight it's that latitude it's cloudy it's cloudy there yeah so um you know fish oil consists of omega-3 you have three you know dha epa and ala so dha and epa are mainly in the fish oil and epa is an anti-inflammatory. You know, it inhibits, you know, the production of arachnidic acid, prostaglandins, that whole pathway. DHA is a very important component of your brain. In fact, 30% of your brain is over 30% is made up of DHA. And you have to get it from your diet.

So obviously you need DHA. So if you're a vegetarian child, this is probably not a good scenario. Vegetarians. Oh, you just had to get me on is probably not a good scenario. Vegetarians, oh, you just had to get me on the topic. Let's get on this track for a minute. I'm going to bring up vegetarians. Tell me all your opinions. I'm going to bring up vegetarians and every person we interview at Paleo FX. Right. Oh, I hate them.

No, it's not that I hate vegetarians. It's that, look, people, you can't, flaxseed oil cannot be your vegetarian source of Omega-3 because flaxseed oil is ALA. It's not EPA and DHA. And less than 5% can get converted into DHA. If you're a vegetarian, get microalgae oil. I mean, phytoplankton, do they really count as, I mean, you know.

You'd have to ask them. I have no idea. I think it counts. Yeah, those phytoplanktons, they don't talk much. They don't. So, you know, vegetarians, they're really deficient in omega-3s, and they all think they're getting it from their flaxseed oil. So, please, vegetarian people, take microalgae oil for your brain.

Okay. Anyway, back to the fish oil. Yeah, so the thing about fish oil is it's polyunsaturated fatty acids. Okay. We're going to get a little biochemical here, but I'm going to try to be real. We weren't already. We haven't been talking science before. No.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids are, you know, they're good for you, but the problem is, is that they're really, really, really reactive. So they're really prone to oxidation. And so rancid fat basically. That means they go bad fast. really, really, really reactive. So they're really prone to oxidation. And so rancid fat basically. That means they go bad fast. They go bad really, really fucking fast. Fats going bad is not good, right? Fats going bad is not only good, it is awful.

So consuming rancid fat is like, it's a mutagen. So if you're taking olive oil and you're heating it up big time and eating it, how bad is that? I'm curious on that. The thing about olive oil, it's actually mostly monounsaturated fatty acid. It does have poly. The smoking point, I think, may be a problem with that. But it's not as bad as cooking with something like safflower oil or that's like super polyunsaturated or vegetable oil. So to quantify this a little bit, saturated fats have zero degrees of unsaturation.

Saturated fats have zero polyunsaturated. In fact, I cooked- Olive oil has one. Olive oil, yeah. Olive oil is a little, you know, it's not as good as like coconut oil, for example. I cook with coconut oil. But yeah, so and then olive oil has mono unsaturated, but it also has poly. Right.

It's like 67%. And then vegetable oil is like- It's two times unsaturated but it also mostly right and then 67 vegetable oil is like it's two two times unsaturated for the most part and then fish oil is like five and six times unsaturated or four and five i don't remember the exact difference but but well anyway like to quantify that studies on fish right oh that's right i remember that's how we met actually i did my master's degree on on fish oil that's right so you you know quite a bit about this polyunsaturated fat. So yeah, the thing about consuming fish oil is that because it's very prone to oxidation, you have to make sure it's fresh.

I keep mine in the refrigerator and taking it with vitamin E. So there's been studies that have shown that if you take fish oil, people that take it, obviously they leave it in their cabinet and it's at room temperature for months and it's getting oxidized. And that's just a fact. So taking it with vitamin E, vitamin E actually can reverse the oxidation. And studies have shown that people that are taking fish oil, the amount of damage to their DNA, which is what consuming oxidized fat does, that amount of damage can be ameliorated or reversed by taking vitamin E with it. So another good thing to do is pop open the pill and smell it.

I mean, rancid fat, you can't miss it. It reeks. So I like to pop open my pill every once in a while and make sure it's still, it hasn't gone rancid. So I think that's a confounding factor. That's my point. Some of these studies that these people are doing, who knows what the fish oil, how long, what kind of fish oil they're getting, how long it's been at room temperature, you know, if it's oxidized, my guess is a lot of it does get oxidized in some of these clinical,

clinical trials they're doing. Even if you get it and you put it in your fridge, it probably wasn't in the fridge for months. Yes, exactly. So sitting on store shelves and in production and yeah, I get a bottle in the mail and it's been in a box out in the heat. And I'm like, and I'm thinking, I'm like, man, because I take it out of this hot box and I stick it in my fridge. I'm like, am I even, is it even worth me sticking it in my fridge at this point? So actually I have a question for you. So we were talking to Udo Urasmus, you know, have you met him before? I was about to bring that up. He wrote Fast to Heal, Fast to Kill. Actually, I have a question for you. We were talking to Udo Urasmus. Have you met him before? I was about to bring that up. He wrote Heal Fast the Kill. No, I haven't.

Read that book at the beginning of graduate school. Great book. We were talking to him at a different conference. Anytime that you're processing an oil, you're probably going to heat treat it and bleach it and deodorize it and do all these things to it that's not good for the oil. That's how we get any distilled, clear oil, basically. You you got to do a bunch of stuff to it that's not

good for it right so fish oil is kind of the same way and a lot of it probably gets damaged in the process of taking it from fish to pure oil and so he was recommending krill oil over fish oil not because of the the phospholipid triglyceride differences and like the differences in how it's delivered but but because of the processing that goes into actually getting it into krill oil in a pill form saying that the extraction process was different i don't know if you have any any insight into that at all is that any of that any of that true or all true or you have any idea i have no idea if any of that is true uh it sounds interesting i don't know anything about the way they extract krill oil versus the way they extract fish oil um So he was saying krill oil was better or worse?

He was saying krill oil was better because I think he just said, if I remember correctly, there was some type of just like an alcohol-based solvent that they diluted it in. I don't know anything about manufacturing. It had more to do with the process than the actual krill. Yeah, well, the krill oil apparently,

and maybe you can answer this too, is absorbed better. And I looked at a few papers on that, that krill oil, because it comes in a phospholipid form, it's more readily absorbed. And so you get a greater percentage of what you eat. Anything in a phospholipid form is definitely going to be absorbed better. We're not going to go into that too much. But for the most part, the processing or the creation of the krill oil from getting out of krill into a into a pill damages less of it so that's what he was suggesting but i haven't actually looked into it yeah he was

also saying that like the studies that were done 15 years ago on fish oil like the production of that fish oil was potentially much different then than it is now like because it's you know hardly anyone took fish oil 15 years ago, but now everybody's doing it. And so they've got this, you know, high volume production going on. And now maybe the quality is going down. I'm sure it varies, you know, from company to company as well. Like, you know, for example, I like Nordic Naturals for fish oil because they get it from like the smaller fish too. That less mercury, you know, the higher up you go, the more compounding.

I looked at some studies on that a while back. I think they studied 50 different companies, and they were looking for mercury in the actual fish oil. And I think it was like one or two out of like 50, because I think it said mercury isn't fat soluble, and so it just doesn't tend to make it into the products. Not as much. Is that true? Yeah. It might be in the fish, but not the oil.

No, it does actually compound in their fat, though. Mercury does. So you want to get your fish oil from sardines and mackerel and not tuna and salmon or whatever else. Yeah, so anyways, that's my omega-3 story is I like to make sure people realize that it's very prone to oxidation. And for that reason, you know, smell it. And I like to keep mine at four degrees i also take mine with some vitamin e to make sure that i can prevent that oxidation so we were talking about we were talking about that study where they were saying that fish oil could potentially

cause cancer and what you're saying is uh you know there's so many variables there's so many variables and there's been multiple studies for that particular study i think it was prostate cancer they were saying it could accelerate prostate cancer. I just remember it being for dudes, and I was like, shit! So the thing is that there's actually, I have a free report actually on this. I wrote some years ago in grad school on omega-3. There's multiple studies in that that show the opposite, specifically with prostate cancer, very large, even a meta-analysis trials where they've looked at multiple clinical trials looking at how omega-3 or fish oil intake affects prostate cancer and it actually

prevented it. And so, you know, there you go. Two conflicting studies. You have to look at the methods. You have to look. I mean, there's so many different variables at play here. So, you know, and to be honest, I haven't critically analyzed the most recent one on accelerating prostate cancer. So I can't tell you, you know.

That was probably a year ago, though. I mean, the one I'm thinking of. I mean, who knows? Yeah, I think it was a while ago. People have been tweeting it at me. And so it's on my list. I just haven't gotten to it yet, you know. Yeah.

But it just, there's, the point is there's a lot of different factors that play with nutrition particularly with micronutrients you know these vitamin and mineral deficiencies they're precipitating you know diseases of aging that we can't measure right now we can't see right now for example dna damage like that's something that i actually measure in the lab and it's something that you actually measure in the lab. And it's something that, you know, normal metabolism does that, you know, your mitochondrial metabolism generates oxidative damage and that damages your DNA and DNA damage causes mutations. And the more mutations you get, you, it's, you know, causes aging and it also causes cancer. And that's why these, these, you know, diseases are, take so long to happen because it's insidious damage. It happens,

you know, over time it's subtle. You don't really, you can't see it, because it's insidious damage. It happens, you know, over time it's subtle. You don't really, you can't see it, but it's happening. So here I'll throw a big picture question at you. So in the CrossFit community and in the paleo world, people always are trying to eliminate inflammation. But I would imagine if you walked up to any random person in a CrossFit gym and said, what's inflammation? They would say, I don't know. He just, you're not supposed, you just don't want it. It's bad. And they wouldn't be able to explain what inflammation even really is. Do you have like an easy way to conceptualize what inflammation is and why you don't want too much of it?

Some of it's necessary, but why you don't want too much of it? Yeah, I mean, there's a big difference between chronic and acute inflammation. You definitely, so inflammation is when your immune system becomes active because there's, you know, something's going wrong. For example, you're eating rancid fat or you're, you know, something, there's some sort of mutagen, something that's not supposed to be in your body that your body recognizes as foreign. Okay, this is not good. You know, it's the same thing that happens when there's a virus or bacteria.

Well, even exercise is a cause. Oh, absolutely. Inflammation. So what happens is your immune system gets activated and you start to secrete cytokines. Some of these cytokines can be inflammatory, you know, and so they start

this process of arachnidonic acid, prostaglandins. These things, you all want these things to happen, you know, during an immune response if you actually are infected with something bad. You want to have inflammation because it's what gets you know, gets rid of this bad stuff. But when you're having a low level of, you know, bad stuff, always by eating, you know, a bunch of oxidized polyunsaturated fatty acids or by eating McDonald's every day.

Eating McDonald's every day, exactly. That would be chronic. That would be chronic. But if you eat it once a week, would that be considered acute? Once a week? No, that's definitely chronic. But if you eat it once a week, what's going to happen is considered acute once a week. No, that's definitely chronic. Acute means, you know, you get you get the flu. It happens once in a while. So anyways, after this inflammatory process gets activated, the cytokines, they actually start to damage your DNA, damage lipids, damage proteins in your body. And this damage accumulates and causes diseases of aging. But also, what was my point? Anyways, so yes, this damage happens.

And that's pretty much what inflammation is. There was something else I was going to say, but I completely spaced out. So inflammation is tied to oxidative stress, which you said was tied to what something that makes you age. Yes. Like what makes you what makes you age and kind of how can you kind of prolong your life or or maybe just keep from looking older as you get older? Right. OK, so let me quickly go back to what I was going to say before I spaced out. And that is also the inflammation is happening in your gut. And so the immune system is getting activated in your gut. And what happens is you start to screw up your gut.

It becomes leaky. You get holes and all these problems start to happen. And also that. So now you have this constant activation of the immune system in your gut so that when your immune system actually needs to be activated later, it's all there and not going to where it's supposed to. So it kind of screws up everything. But yes, how can you prevent this insidious inflammatory damage, which causes DNA damage, lipid damage, and protein damage, essentially is what the downstream effects are.

And that accelerates aging. So these things can obviously be done by getting rid of things from your diet. So obviously not consuming McDonald's every day, not consuming a bunch of vegetable oils or oxidized fats, not consuming a bunch of processed foods, all this, you know, I'm not going to get into all that. You guys have heard it, you know, millions of times, but that stuff. But in addition to excluding things from your diet, it's very, very important. This is what people don't really focus on enough, in my opinion, is that you need things in your diet. You need vitamins and minerals in your diet because these things are cofactors for enzymes,

biochemical enzymes in your body, antioxidant enzymes in your body, repair enzymes in your body that, you know, your body is very resilient. We have the capacity when there's damage, oxidative damage to our DNA, we can repair that damage. We have enzymes to do that. But those enzymes require magnesium. They require zinc. They require calcium.

And these micronutrients, these trace minerals, people are deficient. 56%, the U.S. population doesn't have adequate levels of magnesium. And magnesium is in every single DNA repair enzyme in your body which means if you don't have enough magnesium you get that damage you're not going to repair it efficiently

so what's going to happen is causes a mutation this happens over the course of 10 20 years you know you get it you get the mutation in the right spot in the right gene

and you get cancer let's take a break real quick we come back we can talk about Dr. Rhonda Patrick's anti-aging formula. It's a secret. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show,

go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. And we're back. Talking Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Did I say your name right? You did. Yeah, and it's not a confusing name. You'd think I could get it right. Two first names. Notonda Patrick. Did I say your name right? You did. Yeah, and it's not a confusing name. You'd think I could get it right. Two first names.

Not be confused. You do have two first names. It's not your fault, though. It's my husband's fault. That's right. Blame him. My maiden last name is Italian, and it's very difficult to say. Let's hear that.

Prachia Valley. Whoa. Oh, man, you should have kept that. It's now my middle name. Oh, there you go. People butchered it all the time. I was going to say, it's probably better that it's Valley. Whoa. Oh, man, you should have kept that. It's now my middle name, so. Oh, there you go. People butchered it all the time. I was going to say, it's probably better that it's Patrick. Right.

It's easier to remember, easier to say. It's easier to say. Rolls off the tongue a little bit better. Right, yeah. So we left off talking about vitamins and minerals and enzymes and DNA. So let's break that down real quick. So basically your DNA, long story short, helps you build proteins in a way. Exactly.

So if you aren't getting the vitamins and minerals you need, you said that since there are cofactors for enzymes that deal with DNA damage, if you're not getting all the vitamins and minerals that you need, then you don't have cofactors, which are basically the things that help the enzymes run faster. Right. And so if you don't have enzymes running really fast, then you're not repairing your DNA as fast as you would otherwise. And so you have damaged DNA making either not making or making screwed up proteins, we'll say. So if you don't have enough vitamins, minerals, you're not making protein very well. It's kind of what you said.

You're not making proteins very well. And not only that, you can essentially, you know, you've got a lot of genes in your body. And once this damage hits a certain gene, that's really important for killing a tumor cell. When a tumor cell, you know, is present, it's called a tumor suppressor gene. When you get hits in that gene, you're screwed. Because now, you know, we're constantly getting precancerous cells and our immune system is taking care of it. And we have these tumor suppressor genes and killing them off. But when that gene doesn't work, it can't make a protein, the tumor suppressor protein,

then there's nothing to stop the cancer cell or the pre-cancer cell from proliferating and making more of itself because that's what they love to do. So in an ideal world, we would get all of our vitamins and minerals from food and our environment and all that kind of stuff. It would just kind of be naturally there. But, you know, we live in a world where we go to the grocery store to get our food and all that mess and we don't spend enough time outside and not enough time doing being active and all that kind of stuff. What are like some vitamins and minerals? Like what are you have like any protocols that you suggest for any of this stuff and which ones are the most important?

Yeah, I have sort of a protocol. So first and foremost, I think it's really important to try to get some of your, particularly your minerals from plants. So things like magnesium. Magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is what makes plants green. So anything dark green is going to have a lot of magnesium. Kale, spinach, chard, Swiss chard, all those things are high in magnesium. They're also high in calcium. So if I juice a lot of vegetables, am I still getting that

or am I losing that? So I like to use the Vitamix where I get both, but you'll still get the minerals. You won't get the fiber. You won't get all the fiber that's in the plants because I think it's the juice.

That's a whole other. Yeah. But I like to try to at least. So for me, every morning for breakfast, what I do is I make a smoothie. And it's kale, spinach, Swiss chard, tomato, carrots, avocado, banana, blueberries, and almond milk. Almond milk. Almonds are high in magnesium as well. And that's my breakfast.

So I get a ton of my micronutrients from that smoothie. And I make that every single morning. I drink 32 ounces of it. So I'm pretty sure in 10 years from now, if you look at me, I'll probably hopefully look the same. You'll look exactly the same. That's my goal. But in addition to that, I also take a multivitamin. I like this multivitamin

that I get called Synergy. And the reason I like it is because I only have to take one of them. And because it has 2000 IUs of vitamin D, it has a decent amount of vitamin K, magnesium, it has a little bit of calcium. It has a lot of these trace minerals, zinc, you know, it doesn't have too much. So that's the thing. You don't want too much of these minerals because that, you know, some of these minerals, they look the same to some enzymes. So if you have too much of one, it might like, for example, magnesium or calcium, they're right next to each other on the periodic table. So if too much magnesium, not enough calcium might be, you know, a problem. Is it safe to say most people shouldn't worry about that? Probably not.

Yeah, probably not. Anyways, I also forget about that. Probably not. Yeah. Probably not. Anyways. Um, I also forget about that. It's like, it's like you exercise too much. Well, I shouldn't get off the couch more than three days a week. Right. Um, I also take a, another vitamin D. So I take a total of 4,000. I use a vitamin D. Um, and then in addition to that, I take omega three. So I take a fish oil. I usually take around, uh, I like to take around two grams of EPA and then I think it's a two to four ratio or one to two ratio of EPA to DHA. And I take some vitamin E with that. And then I also take. What was your EPA, DHA, like the amounts?

Well, I go for two grams of EPA and then, which is, then I get, I guess, four grams of dha about four yeah it's about that uh that's based on some studies where i saw multiple studies actually where two grams of bpa a day um dramatically lowered c-reactive protein my c-reactive protein is like 0.2 i think if you can even when we did uh when i did my master's and we measured c-reactive protein it basically cut everyone's in half wherever they started it cut it like 50 almost right yeah and that makes perfect sense because that's a that's a marker of inflammation in your body chronic inflammation it is and that's predominantly through the action of epa and not dha epa is the more potent anti-inflammatory whereas dha is the one that makes you smarter makes your brain function faster i think i think of one is like

yeah one for your body for anti-inflammation. And then the other is just for growing the brain. Exactly. If you want to be smarter, you got to have that DHEA. DHEA. So you said earlier that your brain's made up of roughly 30% DHEA of that omega-3 and a big percentage of the rest of it is arachidonic acid, omega-6. And so that's usually when you're at a nutrition conference, omega-6 is the bad guy. Right. Right. So how can we get the right types of omega-6 or undamaged omega-6s to help our brains or is that even a problem? What's your opinion on that? To be honest, I haven't done extensive research on that because I think most of us are getting a lot of omega-6. So I've been mostly focusing on getting more of the omega-3. But I'm not going to hand wave on that question just because I haven't done enough research.

But it's a great question. The reason I ask, and most people in conversations like this, they say that you get plenty of omega-6, you shouldn't even worry about it, right? Yeah. Because the ratio of omega-6, omega-3, whatever studies you look at, is usually like 10 or 20 to 1, as opposed to 2 to 1,

like it's supposed to be. Right. Or 1 to 1 even will be cited. But again, when I was talking to Udo Urasmus, he was saying that he sells an oil called Udo's Oil that you can see at things like Whole Foods, and it has omega-9, omega-6, and omega-3 in it. And the omega-3s is mostly ALA.

And then the omega-6s is mostly linoleic acid, kind of the most common form of omega-6. And then there was some oleic acid, the omega-9, that you find in olive oil and whatever. And I was asking him why do I need to buy something that has omega-6s and omega-9s in it like that stuff's pretty easy to come by and the rest of my diet and he was saying that again he was talking about the processing that goes into that and he was saying most people get a lot of omega-6 but it's all damaged but you need omega-6 because it's an essential fatty acid because you need that you want to get it in from a good undamaged source makes sense i wasn't sure i wasn't sure if the process he processing he was

doing for that. And then we kind of already talked about processing and that's not your area, but like, I don't know if you knew anything about getting good Omega sixes versus like the damage of make six of that everyone already gets normally. I mean, I think things like, uh, walnuts and have Omega sixes that are good as well. You know, so there's nuts and things like that are good sources of Omega six, in my opinion like i said i don't know extensive you know information on this topic but so if you eat whole nuts you're probably safe yeah i do i do wonder why he uses ala though and not like epa because ala is it's important oh he has he has various products and he has those too but in his main one i think it's mostly ala interesting yeah i take his stuff i mean it's in

my fridge i take it not every single day but I kind of just change it up. I've got like three different brands of oils that I cycle. Nice. Variety is good, I think. Do you take your vitamin D? I do. Actually, let's talk about that for a second. So are you of the opinion that most people just need to go get their vitamin D levels

checked, find out where they're at, and then supplement for a while, and then go get rechecked? And you don't give people like a specific prescription, like everyone needs 5,000 IUs or whatever. Right. Because I don't, you know, I have a PhD in biomedical science. I'm not a physician. I, you know, I don't like to give medical advice because there's some crazy people out there and they may come back and, you know, do God knows what to me. But I think that quantifying your vitamin D levels is the best thing you can do, like, period. Because it's, first of all, it's cheap. It's an easy test.

It's like 25 bucks. It's super cheap. And if you have health insurance, they pay for it. You know, so, you know, we're living in a modern world here. I mean, we can quantify, you know, things in our body and sort of experiment with, you know, adding certain micronutrients to the right levels and then seeing, you know, quantifying whether or not that was good. So why not do it? Yeah. So I like to recommend people get their vitamin D levels checked. There's a few reasons for that. One is, you know, vitamin D is fat soluble.

It's, you know, it's hard to be toxic at levels less than 10 000 i use a day in most you know normal weight people but people that are morbidly obese because it is fat soluble it's less bioavailable so it's stored in their fat it has so vitamin d3 which you eat is also what's made so you make that in your skin as well from the sun and that then gets thrown into the bloodstream and then goes into your liver, gets converted to the pre-hormone, then goes to your kidney and gets converted to the active hormone. But getting into the bloodstream for really, really fat people is the hard part.

So they often require much higher levels of vitamin D3 than people that are like normal weight. Because their fat will absorb it before the rest of their body can take advantage of the benefits? It just sucks up in their fat and doesn't get released. It's less bioavailable to be released into the bloodstream. In some studies, like morbidly obese people, it's like the bioavailability is reduced by like 50%. So that's something to keep into mind.

But really, what I like to recommend is the target levels that you should have in your blood. So between 40 and 60 nanograms per mil, in my opinion, is the optimal vitamin D range. And that's because a few mortality studies, so long perspective cohort studies, have looked at the optimum levels of vitamin D and lowering all-cause mortality. And it seems to be, it's kind of weird. It's like a U-shaped curve. So the lower levels of vitamin D you have, the more the increased risk of death. But also, if you're really, really high, like, you know, if you're like in the 80, 90, 90 nanogram per mil range, it also increases mortality. I think because if you have too much vitamin D, you're pulling too much calcium into your blood.

And if you're having too much calcium in your bloodstream, you can cause calcification of the arteries, which is bad for the brain, which is bad for the heart. So in my opinion, 40 to 60 nanograms per mil of 25 hydroxy vitamin D, which is the precursor of the hormone, which is what most people measure. It's stable, is the optimal range. So don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. You probably don't need more than 10,000 IUs, which usually is between two and five pills a day.

Yeah. Like I personally take 4,000 IUs a day and I just got my levels measured in February and I'm at 53 nanograms per mil. And I don't get a lot of, I wear sunscreen because I'm worried about wrinkles like most women. So I'm not out in the sun a lot.

I'm trying to get wrinkles as fast as possible because I heard older men look, yeah, distinguishing is easier to pick up on young chicks that way. Is it working? No. No, it's not working at all. Yeah. So I mean, if you're out. You young chicks that way. Is it working? No. No, it's not working at all. Yeah, so I mean if you're out.

You just need more wrinkles. You'll be all right. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not enough. Crow's feet, yeah. She's pointing them out. I'm happy. I mean, on men, it's like, it's kind of a sign of wisdom. It's, you know, you're older, you're more wise, you've got all this experience.

But on women, you look like you smoked and been in the bar too much, you know you're older you're more wise you've got all this experience but on women you just you look like you smoked and been in the bar too much you know so it's a little bit of a double student all right so in the morning you uh you you make a smoothie with all those vegetables you supplement with vitamin d you supplement with fish oil and what else you got um i take another so i take a multivitamin the multivitamin and what's the brand again uh it's called synergy synergy by the cost yeah i i was a big fan of vitacost i'm sort of becoming less of a fan of them now um and i really like swanson swanson's a pretty um pretty solid company to get vitamins from but i don't like their multivitamins. So I still get the one from Vitacost. Um, and let's see, what else do I take? I think my staples are the multivitamin,

the vitamin D, the omega three, um, and, uh, the vitamin E. I think those are my, oh, and B complex. Yeah. B vitamins are very important. There are cofactors for tons of biochemical enzymes in your body. Mitoch mitochondrial enzymes are important for metabolism uh you know so a b complex it seems like b vitamins are kind of in everything either either either added into regular foods but most of those foods are processed foods you should be eating anyway um or does this this is something that you you seem to get enough of in your regular diet and i don't hear that said very often from nutritionists that they take b vitamins these they make fun of it yeah um here's something interesting so as you age um your lipid membranes become less flexible less fluid um and this is something that happens with aging and there's something that we've been working on in our lab and that is like some of

these cofactors some of these b vitamins as you get older you actually require more because because of that getting through the lipid membrane it's just it's more rigid that actually you actually require more of the b vitamins so a lot of for a lot of these lipids, lipid soluble, um, enzymes and stuff, they're just, they're, they're kind of not as functional as they used to be when they were younger. I mean, everything kind of falls apart with aging, including your, uh, cells and enzymes in your body. So, uh, better safe than sorry on the B vitamins or water soluble to get too much. You know, exactly.

Um, honestly, you know, I, and plus a lot of, there's a good percentage of people that have polymorphisms in certain genes like folate. Like I mentioned earlier, it's important to make DNA, but it's also a very important methyl source in your body, which regulates epigenetics. Methylation is one of the major ways our genes are turned on and off. And there's an enzyme you need called methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase the MTHFR I was just about to bring that up. It's the motherfucker gene I mean you'll remember it now The motherfucker gene. I will remember it now

Last hour we'll refer to it That'll be it I think something like 40% of the Canadians have a polymorphism in this gene which requires them to take high high levels of folate. So what's wrong with the Canadians? Why are they so special?

We have this theory that something to do with the fact that they need the other part of the folate to prevent their sperm from getting damaged, that we think that they acquired this polymorphism as a adaptation to help give them the nucleotide they need to prevent their sperm from getting damaged and so as a consequence they kind of short-ended the methyl part but this is important because homocysteine gets methylated back into methionine and if this if you have a polymorphism in this motherfucker gene you basically you're going to have high levels of homocysteine so if you get your homocysteine levels measured and you're pretty healthy otherwise and your homocysteine is very high uh you likely have a polymorphism in that reductase enzyme and 23andme used to

provide that service where they could tell you whether or not i think the fda kind of put them on standstill for now which is really annoying so So if a Canadian moves to the U.S., are they still in danger? What's the deal here? They probably still have the polymorphism. I have a lot of Canadian friends I'm concerned. Yeah, I know. It's a complicated story. I would recommend you have them get their home assisting levels tested because that's

the easiest way to know if their home assisting levels are really high. All right, Canadians. And probably people that live closer to the border, too. You might want to check that out. I mean, does it? So whenever you get your blood tested, they always give you a printout that has where your levels are and then kind of what the accepted range is. Do you usually agree with the accepted range? Because that's kind of like, is that an average or is that

an ideal or how does that work like where can someone go to get not the range that's put on like the labs paper but like the range for an ideal human really is what the rda suggests actually good you mean what science suggests right that's where can we go to get that i don't think there's one place i'm trying to get something aggregated where I can provide that. You know, I used Wellness FX as a service and their ranges are pretty good because they try to use the science more as opposed to, you know, with this RDA. I mean, some of these RDAs were set back in the 60s. Yeah. They haven't been updated.

They haven't been updated. Why change? Why change? um yeah they haven't updated they haven't been why change why change they're trying to they're they're calling it now the dri the dietary recommended dietary intake or something anyway so um yeah it there isn't a one place that i that i know of yet that's like ideal you just you really need to comb the science and try to figure out what the best you know ranges are for certain vitamins and meals because the thing is people, they're trying to prevent acute deficiencies. They're trying to say, okay, well, how much vitamin B do you need to not get beriberi?

Or, you know, how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? And, well. Right. It's like, well. Deficiency diseases. Yeah. Obviously. How not to die.

Not to live optimally. It's that, it's that, I keep going back. It's that insidious damage. It's that insidious damage. It's that insidious damage that's the problem. And micronutrient deficiencies, vitamin K deficiency, magnesium deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, B vitamin, low B vitamins, these things will all cause insidious damage and you won't know it until you start to hit, you know, 50, mid 50s. Then it's too late. You start falling apart and then it's too late.

And then you get precancerous cells and you take a bunch of vitamins and they make it worse. And then you're like, oh, vitamins give me cancer. It's like, no, that's not the way it works. You should have been taking vitamins early on, making sure you had enough of these micronutrients to prevent the insidious damage. That's the way it works, prevention.

So you brought up Wellness FX, which is a super cool company where basically they, they'll draw your blood on, you know, once a quarter, twice a year or yearly or whatever, whatever you sign up for, I think. And then they'll basically plot all of your results with, with super cool software. So you can see over time how your blood levels are changing every time you get a new, new blood draw taken right and so i haven't actually used their service but i really really want to i've talked about it for a long time i just haven't pulled the trigger on it have you used their service i know you're friends with jim yeah i know i have used their service i haven't uh been i should be quantifying it like after making changes more than i have i i sort of got a baseline but uh you know i i think i'll do some experimentation

you know at some point but the cool thing about them is that they're pretty much everywhere in the u.s now they're they're they have yeah when i first found them they weren't in our state right because every state has a different whatever it's a mess we're used to last yeah we're a lot tennessee's the last for everything thanks a lot clowns in office but uh uh yeah it was when we met uh with uh one of the guys that run wellness fx a while back and then jim jim yep he's not with him anymore he sold it yeah yeah so uh the npfl npfl yeah very cool but uh he got it met him he's like oh yeah it's probably in tennessee now and i looked at it sure enough there's like five people I could connect with there.

Yeah, we ordered a test for my mother-in-law who lives in the Memphis area. She lives right next to Collierville. So, you know, I think at the time, yeah, no, they were. So we had gotten it for her right when they had moved into that state. But I do think Wellness FX is a great concept. And it's really great to be able to quantify what you're supplementing to see your progress. If you're getting an adequate dose of vitamin D, for example, most people will take generic 400 IUs a day, which is probably not going to do much, especially if you're not getting a lot of sun. Yeah, when they put in a vitamin.

But when you look at your multivitamins, you're getting 100% of the RDA suggests. But the RDA is wrong. That's the problem. The RDA is totally fucked because it was established in the 1960s. No innovation. If it's associated with the government, it's not going to change. It's just going to stay the same because they don't like that. Very inefficient.

Yeah, they don't like change. And then we're stuck with it. And then people think, oh, 400 I use. I'm good. And you need like 10 times that. It's like, that's a problem. Well, maybe, you know, maybe if you're out in the direct sun between 10 a.m. and, you know, 1 p.m. every day. I do walk around.

And you don't live in the U.K. or, you know, Minnesota or these northern lights. You know, if you live in California, you know, so I think, you know, obviously people immediately think they're getting enough vitamin D because it's something you can make. It's so damn important that you can make it from the sun. I mean, clearly there's a reason why we can make it from the sun. We should be walking around naked. All the time. All the time. So my advisor

likes to tell me this story about anytime he goes to like the Netherlands or Sweden where it's like dark six months out of the year or something or just dark it's like during the winter when there's like a sunny day he said every swede is outside and they're literally down to their speedos i mean they're naked and they're out in the sun like oh yeah and he walked around he's like he asked he's like what is this normal what's going on why is everybody, you know, in the middle of the day?

And, and the Swedes are like, Oh, when the sun's out, we all just like to come out and soak it up. It's like, it's programmed in them. They know they need that vitamin D,

you know? And so, yeah. I mean, if you're healthy and you've, and you desire something, sometimes you just need to listen to what your body says, whether you can make sense of it or not.

Yeah. Sometimes. Some people are like fuck i need that burger king right now it's like no don't listen to that 70 of the u.s population doesn't have adequate levels of vitamin d and 96 of people that do not take a vitamin d supplement do not have adequate levels of vitamin d and this isn't about just not getting sick if you don't have you know this is about 900 genes but if you don. If you don't have, you know, the optimal. This is about 900 genes.

But if you don't have optimal ranges, you're not going to perform as well. No. If you're a performance athlete, like, you need that gene expression. You do. To perform. Yeah. Absolutely. It's not just longevity.

It's performance and longevity. It's absolutely performance as well. Yeah. So all you young dudes that think you're going to live forever, you still need to take your vitamin D so you can lift more weights. Let's wrap this up. We're going to call it a day and I'm sure we'll have you on again because you have

probably like 100 hours of knowledge you could just... I heard cleavage at one point. Notice I'm not showing any. So I just want to give a call to action to you all people. Please go on to iTunes and review Barbell Shrugs podcast and then go on and review Found My Fitness podcast because it's the number one way you can help us have more people see our podcast and get this good information out there. That's how you get to know this. People leave comments. It helps the ratings. It helps move your podcast up.

So check it out. Where should they follow you on Twitter? FoundMyFitness. That's my platform. And the YouTube. If you go on FoundMyFitness.com, you can ski down the social media slops. They're all there. I love your YouTube videos, by the way.

They're very well thought out. They're very very easy to understand yeah basically it's just you stand in front of my in front of the camera excuse me talking head yes yeah just talk talking head but then you've been i like how you have like text that goes next to your head they kind of like yeah the highlights everything's good yeah thank you thank you you know it's uh a lot of work goes into that because i'm not just it's not like i just obtained this knowledge uh i do a lot of research and i and I'm critical and then I try to break it down but I appreciate it. Yeah, my attention span

is like 20 seconds and I'll make it through like a 15 minute video. Nice. I'm like, holy shit, I made it all the way through. This is awesome. Yeah, that's the goal. Try to get that information out there to people. You know, they have short attention spans so that, you know, the 5 to 15 minute videos where I just sort of break it down with the words is, you know, I think

it's informative. So thanks. And you actually had a really good talk with Joe Rogan on his podcast. You know what episode number that was? 459. Yeah. Go listen to episode 459 of the Joe Rogan experience. And then you had the article posted on Tim Ferriss' blog on the 4-Hour Workweek blog.

That's right. Two days ago, the 4-Hour Workweek blog. So go read that too. Now you're on bubble shrug. The triad is complete. The big three. One more thing. I'm not just a nutrition guru. I also have some roots in

fitness. I was in the Guinness Book of World Records three times for jumping rope. I didn't know that. You would never, I can jump rope like I think I got a rope in my bag. 200 double lunges in a row. Yeah, I used to teach jumping rope, actually. I was

a jump rope, I travel around the United States doing demonstrations at schools. How did we not learn this before? We learned it. Thank you. Beer, you see alcohol? The brain cells? I would say nine out of ten times we hung out I was consuming alcohol that's true yeah jumping rope was uh you know my thing I was in commercials for it it was something I did can we find those on YouTube somewhere

yes they are on YouTube actually so what do we need to look up uh skip stick that was me is that the thing you attach to your leg? It's the thing that was a pole that you like. Yeah. And so I was faster, faster. I had like a side ponytail with crimped hair. Oh, dude. Back in the day.

CTP, we need to find this and edit this in. The world needs to see this. Jumping rope run. All your credibility just went out the window. They were like, oh. Good thing you didn't say say at the beginning of the show I waited to the end alright guys

make sure to go to barbellshrug.com sign up for the newsletter and we'll inform you whenever we post these awesome podcasts later I thought that was great

awesome yeah that was awesome good job