FoundMyFitness - #083 How Vitamin D, Omega-3s, & Exercise May Increase Longevity | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

This episode features Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., and was originally recorded for the Institute for Functional Medicine's podcast, 'Pathways to Wellbeing.' This episode outlines a series of fundamental tactics you can start applying immediately to enhance cellular health, protect the nervous system, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, promote muscle and bone function, and help prevent chronic disease. In this episode, I discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:04) Vitamin D deficiency — risks, why it's so common, & correcting with supplementation (08:20) Magnesium's critical role in DNA repair & synthesis (11:49) The best dietary sources of magnesium (13:05) Magnesium supplements: Glycinate, malate, dioxide, & citrate (14:14) Exercise staves off age-related disease (14:52) How genetic SNPs can affect vitamin D deficiency risk (20:09) Low omega-3 intake from seafood is a top-6 preventable cause of death (22:22) Why ALA's conversion into EPA & DHA is inefficient (25:15) Omega-3 index: Optimal levels & ties to increased life expectancy (28:27) How omega-3s reduce inflammation, a key driver of aging (30:39) Omega-3s protect against muscle disuse atrophy (31:38) Why avoiding fish during pregnancy is a huge mistake (34:02) Omega-3s are a low-hanging fruit for improving cardiovascular & brain health (35:46) What to look for when choosing an omega-3 supplement (39:57) Hormesis: Why intermittent stressors are beneficial (46:14) How to choose an exercise regimen (47:09) "Exercise snacks" reduce all-cause & cancer-related mortality (49:24) Brain benefits of lactate from vigorous exercise (52:23) How blood flow generated from aerobic exercise kills circulating tumor cells (54:30) Rhonda's workout regimen  (55:38) HIIT ameliorates adverse effects of sleep deprivation  (58:32) Exercise is the best longevity "drug" Watch this episode on YouTube Show notes are available by clicking here Get the latest distilled information straight to your inbox several times per month: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premium member to get access to exclusive episodes, emails, live Q+A's with Rhonda and more: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/premium Learn more about the premium podcast The Aliquot: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/aliquot

What are the low-hanging fruits that you can do right now to instantly reduce your risk of age-related disease? I'm Rhonda Patrick, and that's the topic of today's podcast. Originally recorded for the Institute for Functional Medicine, today's episode outlines a series of fundamental tactics. You can start applying immediately. These straightforward strategies can have a powerful impact on nearly every tissue in the body. Enjoy this podcast episode previously recorded from the Institute for Functional medicines podcast, Pathways to Well-Being. If you'd like more great tips, you can join my free email newsletter. If you have a question, consider joining my membership.

We release great member-only series episodes, and I do Q&A's every month. You can find those on my website at foundmyfitness.com. Welcome to the show, Dr. Patrick. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here today and discuss all the very important topics that you just basically mentioned. Well, I think this is really exciting and there's a lot to unpack. So we'll just get right into it.

And I thought it would be great for us to start with kind of a general contextual overview of how lifestyle changes can impact healthy aging. Because I think it's so powerful that even bite-sized, approachable lifestyle changes can potentially improve our health span and our well-being and even our cognitive and physical performance. So let's just dive right in. And in general, will you tell us some of your favorite go-to? lifestyle-based longevity tips? Well, I think there's, you know, it's important to consider low-hanging fruit, so things that people, there's not a lot of resistance and barriers for people to start applying in their daily lives.

And I think when it comes to some of the easiest things that people can do, it usually comes down to, unfortunately, taking a pill. And so I know you might be going, what does she tell? talking about? Well, you know, the micronutrient inadequacies is, it's a widespread problem in the United States and other developed countries as well, where, you know, there's about 30 to 40 essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, that we have to get from our diet. And if we don't get them from our diet, we are going to be inadequate in them. And these essential micronutrients are doing very important things in our body from running our metabolism

to making sure our enzymes, which are proteins inside of our cells that are basically doing all the work responsible for everything from pumping our blood to our immune function to neurotransmitter function. So basically everything. They require these, you know, micronutrients as cofactors. And it's definitely, I think, safe to say that diet, food, first approach and getting getting all your micronutrients from whole foods, eating diverse foods is paramount. However, many people, for whatever reason, they will not do that. They're, you know, busy or they have a habit or there's, you know, other sorts of dysregulation,

perhaps in satiety mechanisms. And, you know, so getting, getting some micronutrition. micronutrients, like some of the important ones from a supplement. And these are these are easy ones, vitamin D. Vitamin D is an easy one. You know, that's something that we usually make in our skin from the sun. And about 70% of the U.S. population has inadequate vitamin D. And that's kind of defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. If you're in the United States, if you're in Europe, that would, you'd have to multiply that by 2.5. But 70% of the U.S. population, has levels below that. And there have been many different meta-analyses, you know, over the

decades, you know, dating back all the way to the 1960s, looking at vitamin D levels and all-cause mortality. And it's, it's, you know, pretty clear that having levels above 30 is associated with a lower all-cause mortality, all-cause mortality. Other words, people are less likely to die from non-accidental causes of death, whether that's cardiovascular disease. Although I would say cardiovascular is probably the weakest with respect to vitamin D. Cancer mortality is down, respiratory diseases down. Those are two of the really big ones, the big drivers with respect to lowering all-cause mortality.

But so taking a vitamin D supplement is one of the easiest things to do. Why is widespread deficiency, you know, so common? Well, because we're inside in our cubicles, in our offices, at our, you know, with our technological advances, computers, everything. We don't spend as much time outside. side, you know, doing agriculture, doing, you know, the sort of outdoors kind of jobs that, you know, that were common 100 years ago. So, so people are not making vitamin D from their skin. And on top of that, there are very, there are variety of factors that actually regulate

whether or not we can make enough vitamin D in our skin. And that, you know, from everything from age, so a 70 year old person makes 20, like literally 25% of what they made as their 20 year old itself. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin, that pigment that basically acts as a natural sunscreen also is a, you know, filter for UVB radiation, which is actually what needs to basically penetrate through the skin to start vitamin D3 synthesis in the skin. So because melanin is a, you know, is a natural sunscreen. Sunscreen also does that. People wear a lot of sunscreen nowadays. So there's many different reasons why people are not getting as much vitamin D in our modern day world. And vitamin D is one of the cheapest and easiest supplements to take. There have been

studies that have basically tried to figure out like, how can you take a person who is deficient? So deficiency would be 20 nanograms per mill or less. And when you start to get less than 20 nanograms per millimeter, you start to run the risk of, you know, bone problems and severe, other types of severe problems, immune dysfunction, for example. People that are deficient and supplement with about 4,000 IUs per day can bring themselves up to a sufficient level, closer, you know, above 30 nanograms per mill, perhaps even closer to 40. And 4,000 IUs per day is actually the tolerable upper intake. set by the Institute of Medicine for vitamin D3. And I just want to mention, you know, vitamin D is unique among the vitamins because

it's actually, it gets converted into a steroid hormone. So vitamin D3 goes to the liver. It's converted to another metabolite called 25 hydroxy vitamin D. That's the major circulating metabolite of vitamin D. That's usually measured if you get a blood test. and then it goes to the kidneys where it's then converted into the steroid hormone. That's 125 hydroxy vitamin D. And what I mean by a steroid hormone, most people think about estrogen, testosterone,

those are steroid hormones. Like, imagine if 70% of men in the United States were deficient in testosterone. Like, they would be terrible. So, you know, vitamin D is basically very different because it basically can enter what's called the nucleus of a cell. and that is where all your DNA is. And it can basically recognize this little sequence of DNA. And it basically, you know, binds to a receptor and, you know, it binds to your DNA and turns

genes on, activates them and turns other genes off and deactivates them in this, like, coordinated fashion. And these are genes that are important from everything from brain function. So serotonin is one. It's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's why vitamin D plays such a critical. role in helping prevent respiratory diseases. And so low-hanging fruit there, vitamin D, easy one. Another one that's pretty, I think, common in the United States, at least, for example,

is magnesium. And magnesium is an essential mineral. About 50% of the U.S. population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium. And the RDA for adequate intake of magnesium. And the RDA for adequate intake was set at around, I would say on average, it's a little different for males and females, but on average about 400 milligrams per day for an adult. And if you are a physically active adult, so let's say you exercise frequently, you are, you know, maybe using the sauna, you can excrete magnesium through sweat. And so physically active adults actually require anywhere between 10 to 20% more than the RDA. So you can imagine if people are already not even getting the RDA, the physically active

people are even, you know, in worse shape in some respects. And magnesium is an essential co-factor. It's a mineral that is important for the function of over 300 different enzymes in our body. Everything from enzymes that are important for repairing damage to our DNA. So DNA damage is something that's happening every day. It's happening right now as we're having this conversation. It's not something that you can look in the mirror and see, but it is insidious with respect to basically it causes this low level type of damage that accumulates over time.

And as we age, it can lead to dysfunctional cells. It can lead to potentially what are called oncogenic mutations that can lead to cancer. So repair enzymes do not work properly without magnesium. Also DNA synthesis. So we're making new cells. We're making new blood cells. We're making new immune cells. We're making new skin cells.

Every time we make a new cell, we have to replicate all the DNA inside of those cells. And that requires enzymes called DNA polymerases. Those are required. You basically need magnesium for those to work properly. So again, it's a very important process for our DNA and repairing the DNA and making sure it doesn't get mutations from the get-go with DNA replication. And it's probably why there's a variety of studies that have found these are observational studies. Of course, all the caveats that come with observational studies, like there's potentially other confounding factors. But with that

in mind, people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all-cause mortality and a 50% lower cancer mortality compared to people with the lowest magnesium levels. There's another study that I think was specific to pancreatic cancer. So for every 100 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidence. So again, you know, sort of highlighting the important role magnesium plays, particularly with our DNA and, you know, with respect to making sure the integrity of our DNA, the genomic stability of our DNA is good. And that's very important for preventing cancer,

which is an age-related disease. It's something that you want to try to do everything you can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control. However, there are things that are in our control, and I think, you know, an easy thing would be magnesium. So why is widespread deficiency common? Magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is the molecule that gives plants their green color. So magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. Most people are not eating multiple servings of dark leafy greens daily. It's also pretty high in legumes. Almonds are another great source of magnesium. Oats are great source of magnesium. So the bottom line is people aren't eating enough of their leafy greens. Supplemental magnesium is another possibility,

but the dose of that needs to be considered because magnesium at higher doses can cause adverse effects like GI problems. So what I like to do is try to get my magnesium from dietary sources. Like this morning, I had a smoothie with some cooked kale. I had some charred in it. I had a couple of frozen strawberries and blueberries and avocado. So it was getting a magnesium dose with my breakfast, right, which was scrambled eggs. So, you know, trying to find any way you can to get multiple servings of greens or almonds,

you know, oats are another great, great dietary source. But I also do a supplement of about 125 milligrams of magnesium. And I do magnesium glycinate. Most of the magnesium supplements are, with respect, I would say the one that's not very bioavailable is magnesium dioxide. But, you know, magnesium glycinate is a really good bioavailability, has very good bioavailability, so does magnesium malate or magnesium citrate. So with respect to supplementation with magnesium, it can be a way to kind of at least get you up to more of an RDA adequate level.

Also, when I sauna, when I'm physically active, I also drink electrolytes after that. And that's another so you can have an electrolyte drink that replaces some of the lost sodium and magnesium, potassium, for example. So that's also another option when you're physically active. So that would be another example, low hanging fruit, you know, with respect to important micronutrients. So there's another one omega-3 we can get into, but I probably will speak a lot about that. So maybe I'll skip to the exercise as well. Maybe we can go into into depth about those. But exercise is probably the biggest and most important thing, irrespective of anything else. I think being physically active, very clear is the most important thing for healthy aging, for staving off dementia, for staving off

cancer, for staving off cardiovascular disease, all the age-related diseases. You know, it does require a little bit more effort. And I would love to dive more into specifics on that. But I do feel like I need to give you a chance to talk because I've already kind of gone on for a while. I would like to dive into the omega-3 and some exercise more as well, though. If you had any questions that you wanted to kind of ask me about that. Yeah, that's awesome. I just so appreciate you centering this on these low-hanging fruits that are so accessible, really approachable. And this is one of the ways that we can really support longevity is by optimizing our micronutrient status because of all of the relationships with all-cause mortality that you talked about, chronic infection, cardiovascular disease, cancer. So I think that that's a super important place to start. As we're on the topic of, personalized functional nutrition. Will you talk to us a little bit?

And this will probably lead into a discussion on omega-3s. But first, I'm hoping we can take some time and look at the food genetics relationship and talk about how that might play into healthy aging for any individual. Yeah, I think the, you know, so there are a variety of we all have differences in our genes. And, you know, they're oftentimes just a change in one, what's called nucleotide, you know, a nucleotide change in the sequence of DNA. And it's often referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism. So a snip, we call it for short.

But it's kind of what's, you know, differentiating between why some people have brown eyes or blue eyes or blonde hair or red hair. But in addition to those phenotypes and characteristics, there's also a variety of snips in genes that are involved in metabolizing micronutrients, like magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3. But, you know, in addition to micronutrients, macronutrients as well. So people are very different in the way they respond to foods. I think we, in general, when I say we, the scientific community is really in its infancy

in understanding the interaction between our genes and our genes. our environment. And, you know, so there are things that we can, that there are certain, there are more, I think certain snips we know a little bit more about than others. But it's hard, you know, again, we're really at the infancy in understanding that interaction. It's a very complex interaction. But generally speaking, because I mentioned vitamin D, that is, you know, one that is, there's a variety of very common snips that people do not convert the vitamin D3 into the 25 hydroxy vitamin D very well, or they do not convert the 25 hydroxy vitamin D into the steroid hormone very well. And I've actually seen blood work data from people that, friends even, that

had to supplement with a much, much higher dose. So I mentioned 4,000 I use being the tolerable upper intake that the RDA, or sorry, that the Institute of Medicine set. Well, I've seen people have take, you know, between 20 to 30,000 IUs a day to even just get a normal like 30 or 40 nanogram per milliliter blood concentration of 25 hydroxy vitamin D because they're, they have a genetic polymorphism that makes them so inefficient at doing that. In fact, there's been what are called Mendelian randomization studies. And these are studies where people where scientists look at these snips, these genetics, these genetic variations that are typically involved in nutrition.

They're involved in the metabolism of some, you know, vitamin D or they're involved in some kind of environmental factor. And they, and what scientists do is they say, look, we have all these people, we know some of these people are low in vitamin D because of a gene, not because they're not outside and physically active or not because they're not health, you know, conscientious, conscientious and supplementing, but it's, it's their genes. And so it's kind of a way of randomizing people in a very, you know, unbiased way that's random and just based on their genes, right? So these Mendelian randomization studies have found that people with genetically low

vitamin D levels, you know, have a higher all-cause mortality. They're like, you know, 25, They've got like a 25% higher mortality from respiratory disease. So it's really kind of, I would say, supporting and reinforcing the observational data showing that when you actually measure someone's low vitamin D levels, irrespective of their genetics, you see the same thing. So it's, again, the genetics, the interaction between our genes and our diet in its infancy. but really, I think the important thing here also is getting some blood work done. Like, unless you go and measure your vitamin D levels, you're not going to know how deficient

or if you're deficient or insufficient you are. You're not going to know how well a supplement is raising your levels. Like, is it even doing anything? So measuring vitamin D levels before and after are very important. And the same goes for omega-3. You know, there's omega-3 is, it's probably, I think, one of the most important, you know, nutrients that is, it's really overlooked. People just don't even really think about it. So omega-3, there's three types of these fatty acids.

There's the type that you can find in plant sources. So that's alpha-linolaic acid, ALA. And then there's the EPA, which is icosopentinoic acid, and then DHA. And those are the two marine sources that you'll find in fish, but also you can find them in microalgae, which is more of a plant-based source. There was a study that came out of Harvard, I think it was 2009, which identified the marine sources of omega-3 as basically one of the top six preventable causes of death. In other words, people are not eating enough seafood and fish.

and because of that, it was calculated that about, I think it was something like 84,000 deaths per year were attributed to not getting enough EPA and DHA from the diet. And this was really comparable to people that were eating trans fats. Everybody knows trans fats are bad. You walk into any grocery store. It's zero trans fats on every packaging thing you can see. It's very much in the public awareness that trans fats are bad. Well, trans fats were responsible for the same number of deaths as not getting EPA and DHA.

So it was responsible for 82,000 deaths per year. Before I kind of go deeper into that, I mean, it's kind of just, but that makes you think about it. It's like, oh, wow. So the same number of deaths were attributable to eating trans fats as not eating enough EPA and DHA from marine sources, you know, fish, for example. And it kind of really makes you think about things because you don't walk into a supermarket and nothing says, oh, this isn't seafood, this isn't getting your EPA and DHA, this is processed, you know, but yet everything tells you about trans fats. And it was, you know, just as important to get those, you know, omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources. Now, I say marine sources because ALA, which is the common source of omega-3 found in plants like black seeds, walnuts, for example, That is actually considered the essential fatty acid because we can convert ALA into EPA and DHA.

And so, you know, all the government agencies that comes up with these RDAs and, you know, all those standards that are set, basically it goes down to, oh, well, because we can make EPA and DHA from ALA, that's going to be the one that we focus on. The problem with that is that the conversion of ALA into EPA and then subsequently DHA is it's very inefficient and there's widespread genetic differences with respect to that conversion. So people, some people are great. They have a, they have an alteration in the desaturized gene that does the conversion of ALA into EPA and they do it quite well. I would say the majority of people have another version that are not so great at it. And to kind of add fuel to the fire, having too much of vegetable oils, omega-6 fatty acids, I don't want to demonize them so much because like you can get, you need linoleic acid.

You need arachnidonic acid. It's part of your cell membrane. It's important functions. Getting them from whole food sources like walnuts is great. You know, but the vegetable oils are very, very concentrated and a lot of cooking. If you eat out, if you buy processed foods, they're usually cooked and processed with vegetable oils. That omega-6, when it's too high, can compete with that enzyme that's required to convert

ALA into EPA. And so you may be getting enough ALA. By the way, that's the other problem. People aren't even eating flaxseed and walnuts. They're not even getting enough AOLA. So there's so many layers to this. There's so many layers. But that conversion is very inefficient when there's a lot of omega-6.

And on top of that, you know, I would say the one saving grace there is that estrogen does dramatically increase that conversion. It makes it, well, I mean, it's like up to 20% better. And so this is probably because DHA is so important for brain development. And when you, when a woman becomes pregnant, estrogen skyrocketed. I mean, it's like 100 times higher than what it normally is. It's, it's, it's pretty, pretty apparent that that nature has figured out a way to at least convert all that ALA is possible into EPA and DHA.

Anyway, so that's where the genetics comes in. You know, there's, there's definitely a regulation there. But on top of that, I think the best way, you know, to get the EPA and DHA is from eating, you know, a dietary source. and measuring what's called the omega-3 index. So the omega-3 index is measuring omega-3 fatty acid levels, the EPA and DHA, and there's other fatty acids as well, but in red blood cell membranes. And it's really important because most of the time when you go and get an omega-3 blood test, the plasma phospholipids are measured, which is better than not nothing.

But you're really looking more at your dietary intake in the last week or two. two versus red blood cells, which are 120 days before they turn over, it's a long-term status of your omega-3, kind of like the difference between looking at fasting blood glucose and your HBA1C, right? Like fasting blood, you could have had, you know, you've been intermittent fasting for that day, and your fasting blood glucose looks great, but is that a snapshot of what your daily, like, blood glucose levels always look like might not be, right? So long-term status, omega-3 index, and there's been a variety of studies from Bill Harris.

Bill Harris, he's the co-inventor of the omega-3 fatty acid test. I had him on my podcast about a year ago. I've actually joined the fatty acid research institute, which is a nonprofit institute studying a variety of the roles of fatty acids in human health. I've joined as an associate researcher, and so I'm doing some studies on omega-3 and brain health. But Bill has published a variety of studies looking at omega-3 index and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality. So I would say when you get the omega-3 index measured, most people in the United States have an omega-3 index of less than 5%.

And what Bill has shown from multiple studies is that, People that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of 4%. So 4% versus 8%. There's also evidence that it's related to cardiovascular-related mortality as well. But also a very interesting piece of data that Bill published was looking at smokers. And everybody knows smoking is terrible for your health. Like, what can you do to accelerate the aging process? Like smoking, right?

Smoking cigarettes, tobacco is just, it's terrible. And this was so interesting. The omega three in smokers that had a high omega-3 index. So they were smoking, but they were also eating a lot of fish, supplementing with fish oil. They had an 8% omega-3 index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega-3 index. In other words, smoking was like being deficient in omega-3. I was just like I was blown away by that.

Like there's a beautiful graph in the paper. I forgot what journal was published in. It was a couple years ago. But, I mean, it's just kind of mind-blowing. So omega-3 is, you know, there's so many different roles that it plays in the body. It accumulates in cell membranes plays an important role in the way transporters and receptors function because all those things are embedded in the cell membrane. And so, you know, for example, glucose transporters at the blood brain barrier are altered.

They're not functioning well when DHA is deficient. And that can cause, you know, less glucose to get into the brain. That obviously leads to many problems. It's also the metabolites of EPA and DHA. They resolve inflammation in a very efficient and timely manner. These are the maracens, the protectins, you know, they're the SPMs, the resolvins. These are playing a very important role in inflammation. And I think there has been now enough evidence that inflammation,

chronic low-level inflammation, is a driver of the aging process itself. In other words, not just driving, you know, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and cancer, which it does, but just the process of aging. And so it's affecting all those things. And, you know, inflammaging is a term that's used, which is kind of like it's the activation of the immune system is accelerating the aging process. And it's known as inflammation. There's neuroinflammation. And there's been like these seven pillars of aging where you look at all these like physiological processes that are happening like genomic instability is one, you know,

protein misfolding is another. And there's also this like neuroinflammation. The only thing that was really overlapping between brain aging and just aging itself was the inflammation. That was the most important thing that was accelerating, you know, everything in the brain and also aging, you know, in the body. So having omega-3 is, I think, one of the easiest things that someone can do to improve their inflammatory process to improve the structure and function of their transporters and receptors. And, um, I, I know you're going to ask me some research I'm most excited about. I'll give you a preview of that.

I'm also excited about a new role of omega-3 in muscle mass and also sensitizing amino acids in skeletal muscle. So there's been some work from Chris McGlory, who I had on my podcast just yesterday. He's actually shown that omega-3 is playing a role in disuse atrophy. and through a mechanism where it's actually, it's not inflammatory. It's not the anti-inflammatory effect of omega-3. It's actually doing something anabolic. It's somehow affecting muscle protein synthesis.

And he thinks it's actually sensitizing muscle to amino acids through some unknown mechanism they're trying to figure out. So I think I'm pretty excited about that new research coming out. Muscle mass obviously is an important factor in aging as well. But I do think that, you know, so when it comes to omega-3, what do you do? I mean, obviously, you know, if you can eat fatty fish, that's high in omega-3, salmon, mackerel, sardines, these are all pretty good sources of omega-3 that are also low in contaminants like mercury PCBs.

By the way, there have been now studies that have come out showing that even though fish have, you know, these contaminants, that the omega-3 fatty acids protect. against them and even during pregnancy. So there was this big push, you know, decades ago about pregnant women should avoid eating fish because of the mercury. I think that was a huge mistake, huge mistake. And I'm actually involved in a study looking at omega-3 index in cord blood and neurodevelopmental outcomes. But there's been a couple of studies, you know, one, I think big one was in 2015 American Journal Pediatric published that

that basically the omega-3 fatty acids, women eating fish, the omega-3 fatty acids protected against any neurotoxicity. And in fact, you know, this children had, you know, better neural outcomes than women that avoided fish.

There's also been studies looking at omega-3, like fish intake and intelligence in, so fish intake during pregnancy and intelligence, you know, at one year, seven years of life. I forgot all the, you know, the follow-up times. But it was shown that, you know, omega-3 was correlated with improved intelligence, if the mothers were eating fish. And they were actually using mercury as a biomarker to basically validate their dietary recall

because the women that were taking in more omega-3 had higher mercury. And guess what? The higher mercury was correlated with higher intelligence in the children, not because mercury is improving intelligence, but because the omega-3 is. And the omega-3, you know, the mercury doesn't even matter if you have the omega-3 there. It's really protecting against any potential toxic effects of mercury. So I know that was a bit of a tangent, but it's important because people are kind of scared of eating fish. And, you know, there are some fish that you should be scared of, like swordfish, which is terribly high in mercury and not so high in omega-3. But things like salmon, wild-caught salmon, is low in mercury, high in omega-3.

Also, supplementing is, I think, a really important option. So looking at the 4% omega-3 index, comparing it to the 8%, I mentioned the 5-year increased life expectancy, I think that there's been some studies showing that 1.5 to 2 grams a day supplemental omega-3 can bring people from a 4% omega-3 index to an 8% omega-3 index. Now, to keep in mind, you know, the FDA, people are prescribed 4 grams a day, of either LaVesa or Vesape, which is the purified EPA. And that's very safe. So, you know, this is, this is a, this is a omega three, the way I like to think of it is it's got the new,

it's got the safety profile of a nutrient, but it is pharmacologically active. And, you know, and so many people are not getting enough of it. I think something like 80% globally do not get enough EPA and DHA and like 95% of people in the US do not get enough. So very important in respect to the way we're aging. You know, I think it's important for cardiovascular health. I think it's important for brain health and throughout the lifespan from infancy to old age, important.

So that's sort of my spiel on omega-3. I think it's a very low-hanging fruit and important thing that people can take in. Well, thank you for doing some nutritional myth-busting. I think you've made a compelling case that we should all be aware of our vitamin D status and our omega index. I think our audience will not forgive me if I don't dive into the supplement piece for just a minute. I saw a debate raging on a functional medicine group yesterday about whether or not Omega-Seption. supplements are contaminated with things like PCBs to the same degree that the whole fish would be. And if we need to be concerned about environmental toxicity in supplements, I would just love to

hear your perspective. Yeah. My perspective, again, is it is, there are, it's nice to get a quality supplement. And I think there's a few things that are important. One, I think triglyceride form. Yeah, Lavaza and Vesa and Vespa are. in ethylester form. Ethelester is not incorporated into cell membranes quite as readily. It's not as bioavailable. It absolutely has to be taken with food, preferably with a higher fat meal.

But, you know, some people, if their doctor prescribes it, they're going to take it. And that's compliance is an issue. So triglyceride form is more bioavailable. It does incorporate into cell membranes much better. And I think that's important. Two, I think oxidation status. So fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. So it is prone to oxidation. There are isolation protocols that can be done that can minimize that that oxidation, such as doing it under liquid nitrogen, for example. And there are third-party testing sites that will test omega-3 oxidation status,

and they also test PCBs, mercury, and everything. I think the best one that I use is called the International Fish Oil Standards website. it's IFOS. And there's a ton of different brands on there. If you go to their products sheet, you can click on the product and then they have batch numbers for all the different types of omega-3 supplements that are out there. And then you can then look at the raw data. You can look at their oxidation status.

You can look at how high the mercury and PCBs are, all those things. I would say the most important thing is concentration of EPA and DHA triglyceride form. and then, you know, perhaps the oxidation status. I don't, I think because most of these fish oil supplements are purified, they're run through a column. You are, they are purifying away a lot of these, you know, toxins and stuff that it's not as big of an issue. The most important thing, though, is the omega-3 fatty acids protect against the potential

negative effects. Like I said, in the developing fetus where they're so much more sensitive, so much more sensitive to the mercury, the PCBs and everything. The omega-3 fatty acids are protecting. And that's the study I like to cite whenever I get that question about, but what about the toxins? But what about the toxins? It's like, you know, here's the thing. Focus on what we need to be getting. Like, what are we, you know, if you focus on the toxins, the toxins, like you're not going to get any omega-3 or you're not going to be getting enough of it, you know. And so, and I think that is way more detrimental than any little amount of, you know, murder.

mercury or PCBs that are going to hitchhike in because the omega-3s are so good at lowering inflammation. And that's kind of one of the major things that you're worried about with those things. I mean, it's, to me, it's kind of like a levels thing, right? Where it's like, yeah, but you're getting so much more of that other thing that's going to negate, you know, the potential negative effects of the PCBs in mercury. So IFOS, good, good source. Labdor's another one. They don't real they kind of have a different um they like rank things and so most of the time they're sold out of the most top top ranked supplement but you can go on iFOS and find tons of other supplement brands you know and and regionally so like canada if you live in canada you'll find some

that are canadian found in canada or europe or u.s and so i think that um go out there and find a supplement that makes you feel good it's got a high level of EPA and DHA it's got you know low oxidation, perhaps lower mercury, and, you know, and don't sweat the small stuff. Very practical advice to help us choose a supplement. I think with your insights and the resources that you've shared, we have a good idea of what micronutrients we should focus on. So I'd like to shift our attention to exercise. I know you're interested in talking about that as well. Before we do that, in your work, you explore the benefits of certain types of stress that might include exercise or fasting or hot and cold therapies. And I thought it would be a good time to

introduce this concept of hormesis. And I was hoping you could give us a little bit of a primer. What do you, what are we talking about when we were referred to hormesis? Yeah, it's a really, you know, it's a term, I think it might have originated from some of the plant phytochemicals. There was a book, boy, I forgot the author of the book. But it refers to, you. It refers to, to exposure to a low level of something that at a very, very, very high level could be, you know, I don't want to necessarily say toxic, but toxic. It could be bad for you. You're exposing yourself to an, so for example, exercise. Like everyone knows exercise is very beneficial. But if you were to just nonstop exercise 24 hours a day and keep doing that,

like you would collapse. It would be bad, right? Um, so. So exposing yourself to a little bit of stress, basically we have all these genes in our bodies that are activated in response to that stress. And these are antioxidant genes. They're genes involved in inflammation, so anti-inflammatory genes. They're genes that are involved in clearing out damaged things. So this is autophagy. They're genes in repairing DNA.

So all these things get activated. And the activation of these genes out. shines the little bit of stress that you sort of applied to activate them. And so the net effect is beneficial. And throughout, you know, throughout our human evolution, I guess, we have been exposed to these intermittent types of stress, whether it is periods of food scarcity because we didn't have Instacart and couldn't just order our food and have it delivered to us. We had to go out and hunt it and, you know, find it, gather, buying berries and, you know, vegetables and things. And so food scarcity, there were periods of times that we were fasting.

We were not getting food. And that activates a variety of stress response genes. A lot of times these are called stress response genes, such as autophagy genes, which are clearing out a lot of damage stuff within a cell, inside of a cell. And they're very robustly activated by fasting, but they're also activated by other things. like heat stress. So that's one form. Then there's the physical activity, right? That also, I mean, again, we humans used to be a lot more physically active when that was our life, right? And we had to go and hunt and gather and we worked in the field, agriculture farming. I mean, just many,

much more stuff that we were doing by moving around. That is another form of intermittent stress. Lots of stress response genes are activated. When you, when you, you know, engage in physical activity, you do activate inflammatory cytokines, IL-6 being one of the big ones. But the response to IL-6 is the anti-inflammatory response. So IL-10 gets activated and it's more powerful. So it stays active for longer. And so the net effect is anti-inflammatory from the little bit of inflammation that you've generated by exercising.

The other example is these plant phytochemicals. So these are compounds that are found in a variety of plants, sulfurophane, and, and, you being one in cruciferous plants. There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the skin of some fruits like grapes and blueberries, tarotil bean, another one found in the skin of blueberries. There's the turmeric that the curcumin found in that. And so these are all phytochemicals that also activate stress response genes. They also activate genes that are active from things like physical activity or heat stress like heat shock proteins. So a lot of overlap between it's the intermittent stress can activate a whole host of these

things. Some of these stress response genes are more active by different types of it. So like thermal stress more robustly activates heat shock proteins than eating some broccoli does. But sulfur fane does activate heat shock proteins. So sulfur ferns found in broccoli, broccoli sprouts. So you'll get a lot of overlap between them, but the bottom line is that our genes were meant to be pushed by intermittent types of stress. And we've lost that.

We've lost that ability to push them. I'm not the ability, but we've stopped doing it. And I think that it's had a detrimental effect on the way that we're aging, our predisposition to age-related diseases as well. because you want to clean up stuff. You want to keep pushing the antioxidant, the anti-inflammatory, you know, the preventing the protein aggregation, the repairing the damage DNA. Like that stuff is important because all that stuff is happening every day just from normal metabolism, normal immune activation, normal going out in the sun and getting,

you know, ionizing radiation. And then you add on top of that modern day, you know, living air pollution, you know, chemicals were exposed to, like, it's compounding. And we have to turn those stress response genes on to not only age better, but to like just even age normally. So it's very important to engage in, you know, these intermittent types of stress, whether that's, you know, exercising, cardiovascular exercise, resistance training, going into hot tubs in the sauna, you know, not eating around the clock, you know, having periods of a break.

and also eating, eating phytochemicals from plants. I think these are all very important. Well, I think, as you said, we all know exercise is important, but when we look to healthy aging and longevity, are there types of exercise we should be focusing on? I heard you mentioned resistance training, but there's so many options, resistance training and high intensity interval training and aerobic training. Where should we focus our efforts? it's a good question and I think that you know with respect to people like the people need to be physically active like whatever it is they're going to do and do it regularly routinely establish a routine is in my opinion the most important thing so not concerning yourself

so much with oh I need to be doing this zone two or I need to be doing high intensity interval training, like, what you need to do is do what you know you will do. Like, that's the most important thing. But let's say you want to step up a level and you're already like, I'm committed. I, you know, absolutely like love the way I feel after I exercise. But I want to be doing the best things in, you know, and trying to do everything I can to maximize every type of benefit for my brain and for my muscle and for my heart that I can. Right. So is my. I'll say this. There's been these interesting studies that are called the vigorous intensity lifestyle,

what vigorous intensity lifestyle physical activity. So Vilpa. And there's these large studies where people have worn like these accelerometers, you know, some sort of smart Fitbit or fill in the blank type of, you know, device that'll measure their movement. And it's been shown from these studies. So the vigorous intensity, this is basically like, you know, not just walking. Okay, this is like you're going, you're going to more of a, you know, maximum, like a maximal heart rate or close to it.

So you're more like, you know, maybe 80, 80 percent, you know, estimated max heart rate. and doing something for anywhere like one minute to three minutes, three times a day. Okay. So this is like the quote unquote exercise snacks. This is like, okay, I'm at my desk. I'm working at my computer. I'm going to get up and I'm going to do one minute of burpees. Or I'm going to get up and I'm going to go sprint down the street and back or I'm

going to do a hill sprint, something that is so short but intense and then you just get back into whatever you're doing. So it's not so disruptive. You don't have to have a gym membership. You don't have to go, you know, and get in your car and drive somewhere. You don't have to like think about it and carve out time in your day. You just do it. You just get up from your desk and you do it.

So this is one minute to three minutes, three times a day, have shown that people that do this, again, this is measured by actual data, empirical data, have anywhere between a 30 to 40% lower all cause mortality and cancer related mortality. The vigorous intensity is a little bit different than, you know, some people like to go for long runs. They like to go for long bite rides. They're more of that, you know, moderate intensity type of exercise. And that's great, too. If that's what you're doing and that's what you love doing, there's tons of studies showing that being, you know, physically active, particularly if you're going on a longer run and you're, you know, engaging in 150 minutes of that normal, moderate type of aerobic exercise. week that you're doing really good, right? So it's not that you have to go and do the vigorous

intensity, although I do think there are added benefits on top of that. And those largely have to do with the brain because when you are vigor, when you're going, when you start to reach, you know, above when you're getting to the 80%, you know, maximum heart rate, estimated maximum heart rate. And you start to get a high. You can't generate. You can't generate. energy from the, you know, the oxygen that you breathe in quick enough. And so your mitochondria, which are the major source of energy generating organelles inside of your cells, can't, they require oxygen to make ATP, which is the energy I'm talking about. So, so you can't get that oxygen quick enough for the mitochondria to do it. And so you're forced to make energy outside of the

mitochondria, and you make it by using, using up glucose. And so, um, The glucose then gets metabolized into lactate. And lactate is not a waste metabolite, like it was widely believed for many years. Like, it's just waste metabolite. It's not only a waste metabolite. It could potentially be harmful because it was thought to be, you know, causing muscle soreness. Complete and other not true.

Nonsense. Not true. So lactate actually is a signaling molecule. It has been shown to activate brain. drive neurotrophic factor at the blood brain barrier. It activates it. It also gets into other tissues, including the brain, through this MCT transporter. And it's used for neurotransmitter synthesis, norophenephyne, you know, uses lactate, serotonin, dopamine. It's used for energy instead of neurons. It's used is a very efficient source of energy. So lactate can be used to make, you know,

energy, it's converted, you know, inside the mitochondria and used as energy. And this is, this is in the brain. This is in other tissues as well, like the gut, lactate's really important for the gut. So I think that there's a, there's a role of high intensity interval training or high, vigorous types of exercise. I say high intensity interval training because it's hard to keep that level of, of activity up for more than an interval. I mean, it's extremely, you're, I mean, you're pushing it all the way and then you like, you taper down, right? So I do think the vigorous type of exercise has a special role in, I think, brain health as well. But also, I think cancer prevention is a big one too.

I mean, aerobic exercise is very important for cancer prevention. And specifically, I think there's some interesting mechanisms where the intensity of exercise actually also seems to be important. So there's a big, there's a circulating tumor cells. So these circulating tumor cells most of the time are when someone has a primary, you know, tumor. So they basically have been diagnosed with cancer. And so at that point, the goal is, okay, well, how do we, you know, get rid of the cancer and prevent metastasis, right?

We don't want the cancer to spread. Well, these circulating tumor cells escape the primary tumor site. they get into circulation and then they go elsewhere and and then establish camp there right so the metastasis process well exercise itself there's something called sheer force the sheer force of blood flow going through the circulatory system um itself kills these circulating tumor cells and it does it because these these tumor cells have these mechano receptors on the their cell surface and they're so sensitive to like movement. It's almost like a hurricane.

It's like a her tank king just coming through and just wiping it out. And so there's been studies showing that, you know, the people that have been diagnosed with either colon cancer or breast cancer, when they engage in intense, in physical activity, aerobic exercise, they are less likely to have, like they're circulating tumor cells drop down. They're less likely to have cancer recurrence. I mean, dramatically in some cases. you're like, you're talking like 40% and they're less likely to die from their cancer.

So cancer prevention, but also important role for, you know, cancer recurrence and cancer mortality for people that have already been diagnosed with cancer. I think that the big thing here, you know, there's been a lot of, oh, what type of extra should I do? I think you should probably just, you know, do what you can, do what you're going to do. Probably good to do both. Like I do a lot of tabatas. and so I go between my all-outs and also like, you know, I'm in, I'm in like a zone three,

sometimes a zone two when I'm sort of tapering it down and like before I'm about to go back all out again. And I do that 10 or 15 minutes a day, five days a week. And then I also like to do resistance training. And that's another, you know, muscle mass and maintaining muscle mass so important. And, you know, building up that muscle reserve earlier in life because, you know, know, you got to build it up. You've got to build it up.

And once you start to reach a certain age, it becomes very hard to gain muscle mass, although you can still gain strength. And so, you know, you have a harder time gaining that mass, but you're losing it. And so it's kind of like the more you start with, the losses aren't quite as big, right? So I think resistance training is very important for that as well. All those things are important. And I think that you have to find something that you can. can incorporate into your your daily routine and that you will you will do and you know you want your

heart rate to get up you want to sweat you want to be tired like you want like you want to feel tired afterwards and i think exercise um whatever whatever way you can do it where you are at least getting your heart rate up and you are flush in the face and you are like you know when you're working out you don't you can't talk right to some degree i think that's good and um there's been studies that have looked at, you know, I think exercise can forgive a lot of sins. And I'll say this, you know, I during, when I was a young, you know, a new mother, my son was a newborn and all the way up and through the first year. I mean, there was, there was just so much disruption to my sleep that, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, like, we all know how important sleep is for

health, for brain function, for blood pressure, everything, right? But when you're a young, I can only speak as a mother. Like I can't speak for being a father, but I think the father's sleep is also disrupted somewhat too. Mothers, though, have to, they're breastfeeding. There's no, there's, you have to feed your baby. There's nothing you can do. And in a way, if you think about all the detrimental effects, it can be very discouraging. You're like, I am, I'm doing terrible things to myself and there's nothing I can do about it. Well, I, I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor at the time and my fasting blood glucose levels were just through the roof. And it was crazy. You know, I was eating the same diet. And it wasn't until I got back into my, I was doing a lot of

spin classes back then. And it wasn't until I got like on on the Peloton or the exercise bike doing high intensity interval training that all of a sudden it normalized my, my blood glucose levels even with the interrupted sleep. And then I went into the literature and found, you know, Studies showing high intensity interval training can basically ameliorate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on blood glucose regulation. So clearly scientific evidence of it, I had anecdotal evidence as well. But there's also was a pretty recent study looking at sleep and all cause mortality. There's lots of those out there.

You'll find, of course, people with disrupted sleep, shorter, you know, much, much shorter sleep, have a higher all cause mortality. However, this recent study also looked at physical activity. And it was interesting because sleep, you know, quality and quantity, again, was associated. So lower quantity was associated with higher all cause mortality, but only in people that were not physically active. In other words, physical activity forgave the sleep disruption, the poor sleep. I think that if there's a message here, it is that the most important thing.

that you can do in your life is to sweat and get physically active. Like there's nothing that is going to be better for you. No aging drug, nothing. Nothing's going to be better than what exercise can do at the moment. And I think that's that is, is the main message that like you just need to be like if you care about aging, everything from skin is skin aging. Like there was a study showing that people that are physically active are 20 to 50%

less likely to have collagen breakdown. And I mean, it was just amazing. Everything. Brain health. Cardiovascular health. You know, it's just, it's the most powerful, I would say, longevity drug you're going to get, in my opinion. Rhonda, I so admire your passion for this topic.

And this conversation today has made me feel so excited to see you present at our annual international conference. I wanted to thank you so much for sharing these real practical takeaways. combined with the research briefs, we can't wait to see more, and we really look forward to seeing you in Orlando in June. I look forward to it as well. It's going to be a fun time. A big thank you to the Institute for Functional Medicine for inviting me to be a keynote speaker at their 2023 annual conference. For any of you interested in functional medicine, they have a great annual conference every year. You can learn more about what the Institute for Functional Medicine is on their website at IFM.

And as always, make sure you are on my free email newsletter to get more valuable insights and tips. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, consider joining my membership. Not only do we release exclusive episodes for members, but I also host a monthly Q&A where many of our community members get their questions addressed directly. It's a fantastic community we've built together. Find out more on my website at foundmyfitness.com.