Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Re-Air: Missing Micronutrients, Necessary Supplements & The Science Behind Why They Work | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

This week we’re revisiting an episode from last year with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. in biomedical science, expert in nutritional biochemistry and aging, and founder of FoundMyFitness. She takes us through the cutting-edge science behind living longer, feeling sharper, and preventing disease with evidence-based lifestyle changes.In this powerful conversation, Dr. Patrick uncovers the hidden nutrient deficiencies that may be driving depression and anxiety, and how your daily habits could be quietly accelerating inflammation, cognitive decline, and chronic illness. Learn why creatine may be the brain-boosting supplement you’re missing, the 2-minute “exercise snack” can rewire your brain and boost metabolic health, how running may outperform antidepressants for mood regulation, why living near a golf course might increase your toxic exposure and how alcohol affects women’s brains more severely than men’s. She also breaks down how much protein you really need (especially for vegans), coffee’s health benefits and how to brew it for maximum antioxidants, the role of nutrigenomics in disease prevention and personalized nutrition. If you’re curious about longevity science, biohacking, or how to boost your brain and body without overhauling your life, this Dr. Rhonda Patrick interview is packed with practical, science-backed tools to upgrade your healthspan and feel better starting today.Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Maya Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to revisit an episode with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She's a doctor of biomedical science, an expert in nutritional biochemistry and aging, and the founder of Found My Fitness. She's going to take us through the cutting edge science behind living longer while also feeling sharper and preventing disease.

There is so much information in this episode. But one of the things that she helps us understand is creatine, one of the most researched supplements out there. Is it the brain boosting supplement that you're missing? She also covers the two-minute exercise hack and how that can rewire your brain and boost your metabolic health. Also, how much protein do you actually need? Dr. Rhonda is going to break it all down. So many science-back tools to help you upgrade your health span. Check us out on Substack, biolicbreakdown.substack.com. And now we hope you enjoy taking a look back at our episode with Dr. Rhonda Patrick.

Miami-Bialx breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep. We can't tell you how excited we were to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix for over five years now, and it helps me sleep great. Jonathan loves his helix. Our kids love their helix mattresses. All of those issues, like night sweats and back pain and motion transfer issues, all of that is significantly better. Helix sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that are customized to fit your personal needs,

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Go to helixleep.com slash breakdown for 20% off sitewide. That's helixleep.com slash breakdown for 20% off sitewide. Helixleep.com slash breakdown. Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like, we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong. You can be lonely at a party. I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude.

Loneliness is about something much bigger. For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts. Break it down. Thank you. We're excited to talk to you about all of the things. There's so much health information, there's so much health misinformation out there.

I wonder if you can tell us as we get started, what's your particular mission? Like, why do you do what you do and what is it? So my mission is to age the best way that I can, you know, basically delay aging as much as possible, delay age-related disease as much as possible in using science to understand how to do that, evidence-based research. And to share that with people that I love, my family, my friends, and the world. because, I mean, why wouldn't I want everyone to age better and be happier and healthier? And so my mission is kind of twofold, right?

Personal, I want to, you know, age better, but I also want people to understand how they can age better. What do you think people are getting wrong about our understanding of the aging process? I think understanding that the way we age isn't just about genetics. I think a lot of people think that genetics play a big role. And genetics does play somewhat of a role. but it's a small role. I mean, it plays more of a role in whether or not you're going to live to be 115. And when I say age better, I don't mean I want to live to be 100. Well, that'd be cool. But what I mean is I want to be healthy and active when I'm 70, 80, you know, 85, maybe 90 years old. So genetics doesn't

play as big of a role in the way you're aging with respect to your health span and your disease risk as much. It does play somewhat of a role. But your diet and your lifestyle play a really big role in that. And I think something that people aren't really understanding is it's not just about macronutrients, our fat intake and our carbohydrate intake and our protein intake, right? We're so focused on that, right? It's a big focus on nutrition. It's also about the things that are called micronutrients that we're not getting from our diet. And that, I think, is a big, for me, I think people are just ignoring that and overlooking it. And it's so, so important. I think a lot of people sort of go through life, like, I'm going to eat the things that my parents feed me. Then I'm going to eat the things

that I find at college. And like, maybe I'll be someone who works out, but maybe I won't be. And then at some point, you try to look your best for your wedding and you have children. And then at some point, your skin start sagging, your hearing goes and your vision goes, and then you get sick and die. I think for a lot of people, that feels like the trajectory, where am I getting it wrong? Because that's what it feels like to me. Well, you're right. It's basically like, I think people aren't thinking about, when they think about disease risk, they think about like what's happening right now, right? Like, so I talked about micronutrients and these are, you know, 30 to 40 essential vitamins and minerals that we have to get from our diet. We can't make them. We need to get them. And when you think about a deficiency in one of

them, for example, you know, vitamin C comes to mind because this is one people think about scurvy, right? You don't look in the mirror and say, well, I don't have scurvy, therefore I'm getting enough vitamin C. That's exactly what I do, actually. Right? I mean, every morning I'm like, scurvy? No, good. But what you don't realize is, is that, well, there's subclinical deficiencies. In fact, like 40% of people aren't getting enough vitamin C, believe it or not. And the requirements aren't even that high. And so what happens is wound healing is not as well. So you're not going to like your wounds aren't going to heal as good. Your immune system isn't going to be quite up to stuff. So you're going to be getting sick more. You know, so things like that collagen

production is going to affect your blood vessels. They're going to be stiffer and weaker. And that sort of insidious type of damage accumulates with age and leads to age-related diseases. So you're exactly right. And I gave vitamin C, but that's not the best example because there's another one. Yeah, there's examples where people are not, I mean, 90% of people aren't getting enough coline from their diet. What's coline? Colleen is a really important nutrient that is abundant in egg yolk. It's abundant in egg yolk.

It's also in vegetables. You have to eat. You need soybeans or chickpeas as well, but you have to get a lot of them or you have to supplement. And chlorine, the reason it's so important, and I said 90% of the population is not getting an adequate intake of it. The reason for that is because they're not really eating enough eggs or, you know, the vegetables that have coline in it. And coline is, first of all, it's a precursor for acetylcholine, which is an important neurotransmitter. It's also important to make phosphatil colon, which is important for all our cells, including neurons and neurotransmission. But maybe even

more important, it plays a very important role in what's called this methyl metabolism in our body and methylation, you hear a lot about that. Well, I'll just save going into the weeds for another episode, but essentially what happens is something called homocysteine in our body doesn't get reconverted into methionine. And so we end up having high homocysteine. You may have heard of this. High homocystine dramatically increases atherosclerosis risk, cardiovascular disease risk, also dementia and Alzheimer's disease. And that's just if you have a little bit less chlorine that you're supposed to have. This isn't like a clinical deficiency. When you start to have clinical deficiency, you start to get fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver. So 90% of people are

walking around and they probably have high homocysteine. And it's not something that's routinely measured. You go to your physician and you get like a, you know, a standard test. They're not measuring for homocysteine usually. You have to like ask for it or you have to have a really good doctor that's looking into that. And it's really important because it does biomark your cardiovascular disease risk and your Alzheimer's disease risk. And there's a simple solution. You can, you know, eat your eggs. About three eggs a day is enough to get women, women, to their coline. There's a shortage, you know.

There's a shortage in eggs. Or you can supplement is the other option as well. So phosphatidylcholine from lethecin is another option. So colon is very important also for, you know, the way our brain is functioning and brain development even. In fact, there's been studies showing that pregnant women, there was a randomized controlled trial showing pregnant women, even those meaning the RDA, which is around five, they were giving a little over that, so about 500 milligrams a day. They, their children did good, but when they doubled that to about 900 a day, those women had children that had dramatically better IQ tests. They scored better on cognitive function.

So, Coaline plays a very important role in brain development and brain function as well. And that's just one example. There's also another one that's very common is vitamin E, believe it or not. And you might be going vitamin E. It's the one you put on scars to make scars go away. Right. Vitamin E, that's like, you know, why is seriously like 87% of the population's not getting enough vitamin E from their diet? If you consider supplementation, 60% is not getting enough. So even after supplementation, people are not getting enough vitamin E. What's with vitamin E? So there's different forms of vitamin E. There's the tocotrienols and the tecoferols. We're just going to focus on one. And that is the essential one that you need. That's alpha tecoferol. That's the main form of vitamin E. And we're Why do you need vitamin E? Well, if you don't get vitamin E, what ends up happening is a disease that's acute. And that's the kind of stuff you're talking about. You don't really see every day. So you don't really, you think you're fine until you keep going along and all of a sudden, boom, you have it, you have, you know, atherosclerosis or whatever. So with vitamin E, the disease is you get, it's called hemeletic anemia. So your red blood cells start to just burst because of oxidative stress. Vitamin E is a very potent antioxidant. It's found in, it's able to go. It's, it's able to go. It's, it's. fat soluble so it's able to go into the membranes of cells and do its antioxidant thing. But most people are not walking around with that severe form. Some people are. But the subclinical

deficiency of it is you end up you end up having oxidized LDL cholesterol. A lot of people have heard of LDL cholesterol. Oh, that increases my cardiovascular disease risk. But what people don't understand is the oxidized form of it is really bad. And so a lot of people are walking around with oxidized LDL because they're not meaning their vitamin E requirement. And what that does is essentially tells your immune system inflammation, inflammation, immune system comes and tries to attack the oxidized LDL, and then you have a formation of a foam cell. So you're getting the beginnings of atherosclerosis, essentially.

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to get four extra months of Surfshark. That's surfshark.com slash mime. Codemime at checkout for four extra months of surf shark. Pay for one tool, protect all aspects of your online life. What's the kind of metaphor for the human body, right? Meaning there are so many different components and there's so many different chemical reactions. And it's not until you sort of look at this level or visit a functional medicine doctor where they literally will show you the pathways, right, of any particular cell process.

and show you like, oh, you're having this problem, it's because you're not converting this thing, right? And I think a lot of women are maybe diving into this in hormone conversations. They're finally learning about kind of the precursors and all these things. Can you give us a general framework of how we should be looking at

and thinking about the human body as, you know, kind of a mechanistic conglomeration? Gosh, if I could just pull up this one figure, if you Google biochemical pathways, and you look at image, there's like this image of it's just, it's overwhelming how many pathways are in this image. And it's true. I mean, it's just thousands and thousands of reactions going on. And these reactions require not only energy, we think about getting energy in the form of glucose or fatty acids, they require these vitamins and minerals as cofactors to do things

so that they're able to do them. And so, you know, if you don't have those cofactors, it's like you have this orchestra ready to play, but there's no conductor there, like, telling you, like, how to play or when to, this, you know, instrument's going to play that piece and this one's going to play that, right? So it's kind of all out of sync. And with the micronutrients, I mean, it's so easy to forget about them because we're so focused on, oh, I shouldn't eat processed foods. Oh, I'm so worried about my glucose spiking. How much protein did I get today? And, you know, protein is important. But if you think about food, looking at your plate and going, okay, what is in this food? Okay, I talked about, you know, eggs having coline and then, you know, broccoli, soybeans, chickpeas also having coling. Vitamin E, why aren't people getting vitamin E? Well, the main source of it is nuts and seeds, and people aren't eating nuts and seeds. It's just not part of our diet anymore. And if you're not eating nuts and seeds, you're not going to be getting enough vitamin E. And so what do you have to do? Okay, well, eat an ounce or two of almonds. You eat an ounce of almonds. That's like 25 almonds.

or so. That's half of the RDA, half right there. So you're, you know, you're good, because then you can get the rest from maybe a multivitamin supplement. Vitamin K is another one. I mean, this one is also 50% of the population, even after supplementation. What is vitamin K? Vitamin K is interesting because it's actually required by plants to undergo photosynthesis. So plants are a really good source of vitamin K. And there's two types of vitamin K, K1 and K2. The plant source is, is the vitamin K1. It's called phyloquinone. And that is the actual form of vitamin K that is required that you need. Vitamin K2 is found in some fermented foods.

Natto, like fermented soybeans, are a really good source of it. You can also find it in some dairy as well. But vitamin K2 isn't as essential because vitamin K1 can do all the functions that K2 does. And the reason people aren't meeting their vitamin K requirements is because they're not eating enough greens. They're not eating enough plants. And vitamin K is a co-factor. I was talking about a co-factor.

You know, it's required for an enzyme to work properly. And it does three really important functions. One, it goes to the liver and it regulates blood clotting. So coagulation. And that's the most essential one. When your vitamin K is really, really low, you have blood clotting problems where you're not able to clot. Very, very important.

Number two, it also activates proteins that are not in your liver, but they're sort of in the periphery that shuttle calcium out of your blood vessels and bring it to your muscle and your bones. And that's really important because calcium precipitates easily, very easily. And so you want to get the calcium out of your vascular system and bring them to other tissues where it's required and needed. That's number two. And number three, it also activates another protein called osteocalcin, which is important for bone rebuilding your bone and making sure bone mineral density doesn't drop too low. And so vitamin K does all those things. And if you think about it, back to this, I keep going back to this, you know, this image that you gave of yourself going through life and like not realizing

anything's wrong until you have the heart attack or whatever, you know, something happens. And it's so true because we think about these vitamins and minerals, it's like, well, if something isn't going wrong, then I must be fine, right? Oh, my blood's clotting. I've got enough vitamin K. Well, this is something that was proposed by my mentor, Dr. Bruce Ames, and he basically proposed that, these vitamins and minerals are essentially longevity vitamins. They're not just required for the short-term prevention of death, which is essentially what all the RDAs are established for. RDAs are established for, okay, what happens?

Oh, there's this disease that causes death. Let's go a little couple standard deviations above that, and that's the RDA, right? Well, what he proposes, actually, there's all these other functions of these vitamins and minerals that are involved in this insidious type of damage that accumulates over time year after year, decade after decade. You don't see it. You don't look in the mirror. I mean, your gums aren't bleeding and falling off like scurvy, right?

You can't see the oxidation of your LDL. You can't see that. You flatter me. Right? You're not visually seeing it. So it's not happening. Therefore, it's not happening, right? But it is happening silently and insidiously.

And so what happens when you're with the vitamin K, well, if you, you know, year after year keep not getting enough vitamin K, you're going to have calcium build up in your arteries. That's a known thing that is involved in atherosclerosis, right? I'm going to ask a really simple question. What's wrong with just getting old and dying? Well, I mean, essentially, you know what I mean? Like, I'm being really honest. Like, you look amazing. And I'm sure you'll look amazing until you're 95. But for many of us, it's kind of like, I'm going to do the best I can. Like, I think a lot of us feel like I'm balancing so many things. Like, I'm juggling kids and this, that. And like, now I'm supposed to deal with my mental health.

And I barely have time to exercise. And now am I doing the right kind of exercise? And I think a lot of us feel like, yeah, how do you fit it all in, like, I criticize a lot of the people that Jonathan wants me to listen to because I'm like, I don't want to like spend my whole day trying to live forever. I want to live my life. Where is that balance and what is the goal? Let me take this one and then I'm going to pass it back to you. What frustrates me the most is that there are preventable things that we're getting sick with. And the system has not been designed to have preventative health or well-being, which is my frustration. It's like, you hear this, oh, I should be getting.

getting these basic micronutrients, and then I would avoid a lot of these problems that are building up slowly over time. And then you go to your regular GP, and they're like, you don't have a chronic condition that I can fix right now, so you're fine and in the clear as you continue towards this cliff. Yeah. So I agree with you on that. But I also think to sort of speak to your question directly, you know, the low-hanging fruit, and this is, you know, I'm talking about getting your foods from diet, and there's other, there's magnesium, there's so many other of these that are important as well. But multivitamins and supplementation are the low-hanging fruit because they have been shown to help fill the gaps in many of those places. And that is something

that you try your best, you eat as healthy as you can, but you try to fill the gaps as well. And this is something that's been shown with, for example, a multivitamin. So multivitamins, oh, I remember 10 years ago, all the rage, multivitamins are not only useless, they're harmful. Right. Enough is enough, was the name of the article. And now here we are, 10 years later, full circle, three large randomized controlled trials later where we're really testing supplementation against a placebo. And we now know that even just supplementing with a standard cheap centrum silver run in the middle of multivitamin that's affordable prevents cognitive aging. In fact, older adults that took it for a couple of years, it reversed their episodic aging of their brain

by five years. And basically they're cognitive aging by three years. So their improvements in executive function, learning, memory, episodic memory. I mean, as simple as a centrum silver a day. And by the way, I have no affiliation with them. But the point is, is that, you know, there is a low-hanging fruit. And yes, you should try to get as much as you can from your diet. But it is really hard. And as you mentioned, you're juggling all these things. So what can I do? Well, I mean, the easiest thing is take a supplement, right? Like, that's one. You mentioned exercise. I mean, that's another one we should definitely get into. But, I mean, before, before you going into that because there's also, I think, simple solutions there. You know, it's not just about

living forever, you know, it's about feeling good. It's about being independent. It's about it's about not making your kids rely, having your kids to like take care of you. You don't want to be the burden, right? Like, you're not independent. You can't walk on your own. You can't feed yourself. Like, this is, this is the quality of life. We want a better quality of life. We want to be happy, right? Nutrition also plays a role in our mental health as well. You know, so this is all feeding into the way we and how happy we are. And also just how you are, you mentioned, I got, I got kids, I got to do this and that. And like, it's the same thing. Like, you're overwhelmed and you're stressed. But, like, if you have the right, you know, components that you're feeding your body and your brain, all those things do get easier. And the stress is less. And then you're happier. And, like, who doesn't want that, right? Can you talk a little bit about the connection? You know, we're so used to kind of siloing different aspects of our health, right? And there's been so much emphasis, and it was the impetus for us, you know, starting this podcast, right, to talk about mental health and mental well-being. And it's a huge conversation.

Can you discuss the intersectionality between getting the right nutrients and how that impacts our mental health? Absolutely. You know, so mental health is this kind of broad term that, you know, encompasses a lot of things. But for this discussion, we'll talk about it as, you know, mood, improved mood, less to Impressive symptoms. Depression anxiety. Right, depression anxiety. So, and there's a lot of different lifestyle factors that do affect this. I think first and foremost, it's important to establish the role that chronic inflammation plays in depression, chronic depressive symptoms, anxiety. And this has actually been shown in multiple, multiple observational studies, right? High inflammation,

increased risk of depressive disorders, you know, major depressive disorder and other ones as well. And you might go, well, at the end of the day, there's a lot of other things going on. here? How do we know it's the inflammation, right? So there've been some studies that have actually tested that directly, and they've injected something called lipopolysaccharide, which is essentially the cell membrane of a bacterial cell wall, and we make a lot of it in our gut and it gets into our bloodstream. It's inflammation. And so basically, it generates inflammation and inflammatory response. If you inject LPS, that, you know, in generating inflammatory response in people, they get depressive symptoms. If you inject a placebo control, salient solution, they do not.

And even moreover, if you give people a omega-3 supplement like EPA that is blunting that inflammation, the depressive symptoms don't happen. So as much as you want to wring your hands about, it's my mom, it's my alcoholic boyfriend, it's my kids making me crazy. Guess what? There are actually things going on chemically in your body that we have control over that can change the degree to which those depressive symptoms. impact or damage your functioning? Well, there's no doubt all of those things that you mentioned do cause inflammation. Sure. You know, there's cortisol. It's been shown that cortisol actually releases LPS.

You're actually dumping that very stuff that people were injected with into your bloodstream. So all the psychological stress, all that psychological social stress, financial stress, all of that causes inflammation. And so it's definitely, if you can do other things that can help blunt that inflammation, Obviously, you only have so much control over what other people are doing, right? I mean, that's out of your control sometimes. I mean, you can only control so much. But I do think that if you can really elicit this anti-inflammatory response with your diet and lifestyle.

And I think, you know, when I say diet, I should also mention that obesity is another, you know, a thing that causes inflammation and that's also associated with depression. But the omega-3 fatty acids are something that I think are really important because, you know, because it's not only important for mental health, but also overall, the way you're aging. And it is a low-hanging fruit, you know, so people can take a omega-3 supplement, either fish oil supplement or microalgae oil. You want to make sure you're getting not the plant source, the alpha linoleic acid, because it's just, it's not being converted into the stuff that you really want, the DHA and EPA very good.

And so you want to get a high-quality fish oil supplement. And again, there's studies showing it. does help with depression, but now it's only going to do it to some degree. I think the bigger lever to pull here would be physical activity. And again, that's another thing you mentioned. Well, there's time, right? Well, who has time to go and do a, you know, two-hour run every day or whatever? I mean, I don't. So there's other ways that you can actually be more efficient about the way you exercise, high-intensity interval training being one. And that is something that has been shown to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Now, that's a lot of the

That is something that is very important with depression because it plays a role in neuroplasticity, something I'm sure you know more about than I do. And that really essentially is allowing our brain to adapt and change to a changing environment. And that's something that people with depression and when you're really stressed out, like your brain isn't doing that correctly. It's not plastic enough. It's not able to adapt to the changing environment. And so what happens when you can't adapt is you feel depressed, right? You feel anxious. I can't deal with this.

so much going on. It's like, you know, so brain-derived neurotrophic factor is key for that very thing, that neuroplasticity. And you can actually increase that dramatically with a six-minute workout. Six minutes. Who has six minutes? We all do. Yes, we all do. And so I think that's important to keep in mind. Now, you have to have the motivation to do that, right? And that's a whole other factor. And some people are really, I mean, there are some people that is really clinically depressed, right? And that's a whole other sort of ballgame here. But if we're just talking about like the stress of life, which we all experience, I think that, I mean, before I came on this podcast, what did I do? I did a, you know, 20 minute high intensity workout. Oftentimes I'll do 10 minutes. Sometimes I'll do exercise snacks. You know, these are, so these are, these are very interesting because it's essentially two to three minutes of vigorous intensity exercise. So you're getting your heart rate above, you know, 75% max heart rate. You can do burpee. you can do, you know, air squats, you can do high knees, whatever.

You get up from your desk and you do it for a couple of minutes. You get your heart rate up high. And they're actually hard. Try it. You know, like we could get up into a break now. But like essentially what's been shown at there's these large studies that have measured, not the structured type that I'm talking about. There's unstructured type where you're using everyday life scenarios to get your heart rate up, right?

I don't take the elevator. I take the stairs. Not only do I take the stairs. I go briskly up the stairs, right? You kind of use, I don't, you know, I'm walking to my office. I'm not taking the car because I live, you know, four blocks away. So I'm going to walk there and I'm going to walk briskly, like that type of scenario. And there have been these large studies that are called the vigorous, intermittent lifestyle

activity studies, VILPA for short. And so people have worn these accelerometers on their wrist, which essentially measure their heart rate. And scientists have been able to measure when their heart rates are spiking and how long that spike lasted. And these studies have found that just anywhere between. like starting at two minutes, doing two minutes of vigorous intensity exercise to three minutes, and then doing that like two to, you know, anywhere between two to six times a day. The more you're doing it, so if you're doing that like six times a day, studies have found that you have like a 50% lower cardiovascular related mortality, a 50% lower cancer-related

mortality, and you're going to feel better. And these are in people that don't identify as exercisers. And those benefits were even if it was like three times a day. So they were doing two minutes, three times a day. they have like a 30% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality. That's really significant, you know. And I think that everyone has time to get up and do something for two minutes, three times a day. It's really not that hard.

And it makes you feel good. Like I do exercise snacks when I'm sitting and working because I need like a pump to my brain. You're getting oxygen flow. You're bringing oxygen to your brain. Nutrients are being delivered to your brain. So it's doing something that's beneficial for your mental health as well. You know, and there have been studies that have actually compared classic, you know, standard SSRI treatments to actually running.

And running performs as good, if not even better in some studies, than classical, you know, antidepressant treatment. And that's not to say that those don't work for people, but a lot of people they don't work for, a lot of people they don't work for. Particularly people that have a high inflammation. In fact, there was a study that was really interesting that found people that aren't responding to the SSRIs typically have high biomarkers of inflammation to see reactivity. protein. But back to the running, I mean, here you have something that's, you know, at our disposable. I mean, you don't need a gym membership to run. I mean, you just go outside and do it. It's free, right? Something that we can do, it's the only side effects are going to be reduce Alzheimer's disease risk, reduce cardiovascular disease risk. You're going to have a longer life. You're going to be,

you're going to be more functional, right? Everything's beneficial, right? I mean, and it's helping with the depression as good as the pill you'd be taking with all the other negative side effects. And some people who can't run for whatever reason, whether it's soreness, they can't go very far, like just getting your heart rate up in whatever capacity you can, it may be like a brisk walk to sort of that leads to a slow jog that leads to your running. It sounds like consistency and just getting your heart rate up is the key. Getting your heart rate up is the key. There's stationary cycling as well. There's a lot of ways to do that, right? And you have to find the way that you like, that you enjoy. I mean, I think that's the most important. You know,

I would say briskly walking is you'd have to do a lot of it. So you're trading volume for intensity, right? But, I mean, if that's what you love to do and you don't mind doing more of it, then perhaps that's something that you should be doing. But, you know, then there's the other, you know, flip with the coin and it's like, okay, let's do something intense and sure. And that's what I like. I like to be efficient. And I like to, the harder you work, it's actually more. more beneficial for your brain. The BDNF, like you have to make something called lactate. And that only happens when you're really working hard. Your muscles are working hard. You have to get up past that, like, 75% max heart rate range. And that's when you start to get the lactate.

And it's the lactate that's signaling to your brain. I'm stressed. This is a stressful situation I'm in. And so it's like an adaptation. Your brain starts to make brain-driven neurotrophic factor. Because when you're working out, it's not just your muscles that are working hard, your heart that's working hard, your lungs, your brain is also working hard when you're exercising. So it's this, you know, the lactate that you're generating from the exercise is like this signaling molecule to the rest of your body. I like to think about it that way because I'm making it my lactate up, right? That's, that's, that's one way I like to think about it. One of the things that strikes me in all of the avenues that you talk about, whether it's nutrition

or like macro versus micronutrients or whether it's exercise. It seems like, it seems like you have an in to a secret that is kept from most people. And what that is is that, you know, the cure for what ails us, either physically or psychologically, is a lot more in our control than we've been taught to believe. And in many cases, the most efficient way for the medical system as it is now to treat us is to give us a pill and send us on our way. Or give us a diagnosis and say, here's the pill you take. And when you have side effects from that, when you have side effects from that, take this other pill. I mean, you just have to watch, you know, any late night television to see the number of drugs they're trying to give you to cure the thing from the pill, from the pill, from the pill.

But what you're saying is there's a not very well kept secret, meaning it's open knowledge, right? that we have the key to many aspects of our mental health, our physical health, our longevity. It doesn't have to be something that's just for people who go to fancy functional medicine doctors or people who are given, you know, SSRIs and anti-anxiety meds and told this is what's going to cure you. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really, that's kind of part of my big message that I want to get across is that, look, there are simple solutions out there that will, improve the way you feel right now and the way you feel later, 10 years later, 20 years later.

And it's so easy, you know, I mean, a vitamin D supplement, omega-3, making sure you're getting magnesium, exercise snacks at the very least, you know, exercise. But, you know, polypharmacy is a big issue, as you mentioned. I mean, people, the old, the average older adult is on like six or something medications. I mean, it's outrageous. It's outrageous. And the reality is, is that, like there are things that they can do that may not, you know, you, there's things that you can do that require a lot more effort that you could really do the, go the whole shebang, right? But we're talking about just little low-hanging fruit things that people can do right now to pluck that fruit off the tree and improve their lives, improve the way they feel, improve the where they're aging.

And that's, and I think that's the most important thing. So how do you pick? I think that's sort of my question. I mean, I'm on like a Huberman diet. I take like 20 million pills a day. I take literally three full handfuls of pills. Like, that's my life. What do people choose? And I know you have kind of a select amount that if people wanted to sort of like hone in, I'd like to know what are your top three and then what are your top five, meaning three and then two more? So I think, you know, the top three supplements. And again, the reason the supplements are important is to really fill a nutritional gap. But not only nutritional gap, just our micronutriotriot gap. And I'd say like the top of that list would be vitamin D. And that's really important because it's not something

that you're going to get from your diet, less than 10% of vitamin D that we get in our bodies comes from our diet, right? We're making it from UVB radiation from the sun. And the problem is, is that 70% of us are not making enough because we're not going in the sun. Well, that's problem number one. We're not going in the sun anymore like we used to. We're inside. It gives you cancer. I don't want to go. It gives, yeah, there's skin cancer, right? I mean, So when you are in the sun, you have sunscreen, right? You're blocking out the very thing that can make vitamin D. There's a simple solution. That solution is a vitamin D supplement. Why is it my top of the list? Because vitamin D is actually a hormone. It's a steroid hormone. It is controlling over 5% of our protein encoding human genome. And essentially what that means is that's getting into the nucleus of your cell where all your DNA is, binding DNA, turning genes on, turning them off, and the way they're supposed to be. I mentioned that orchestra, you know, analogy at the a few minutes ago. It's essentially like if all your genes are not being turned on and off at the right moment, then things are out of whack. Like you don't want all your neurotransmitters on when

you're sleeping at night, right? Like you want them on in the day when you're awake and alert. So there's a lot of, you know, coordination there. And vitamin D plays a role in that. And so, you know, not being, not having enough vitamin D isn't just not having enough vitamin. It's not having a hormone, right? That's controlling a lot in our bodies. And so the solution is, and there's all these studies that have shown it accelerates the way you age, dementia risk goes up, all this stuff, right? So the solution is a vitamin D supplement, which really is one of the cheapest supplements you can buy. It's like 10 cents a pill for a vitamin D supplement. I mean, back 10 years ago when I was saying this, it was one seven of a pill. So it is going up in price.

But so most people want to have blood levels around 40 to 60 nanograms per mill. That's the sweet spot. But really you just want to be above 30 nanograms per mil. And if you're like below 20, then you're deficient. Like, that's pretty bad. So typically around 2,000 to 4,000 I use a day, depending on the season, can get you to that good range. You have to get a blood test. That would be the top supplement.

The next one would be an omega-3 supplement. And I think, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the U.S. population is not meeting the omega-3 requirements in terms of EPA and DHA. That's about 250 milligrams a day. And the reason they're not meeting those requirements is because, one, they're not eating fish, and if they're vegetarian, they're not supplementing with the right things like microalgae. So the EPA and DHA are hugely important for, I mean, brain function, mental health, you know, cognitive aging, but cardiovascular health as well. And there's been a lot of work by

my colleague, Dr. Bill Harris, showing that people that have a high omega-3 index, so you can measure that and red blood cells. If you have a high omega-3 index of 8%, you have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low omega-3 index of 4%. People in the U.S. have an average of about 5%. So they're about on the low range. Five-year increased life expectancy. Now, the thing that's really mind-blowing, this is from the Framingham cohort, and what was really mind-blowing about this study was that Bill and his colleagues then sort of took that data and said, okay, let's look at smokers versus non-smokers with the omega-3 index. And what they found was that, having a low omega-3 index was like smoking in terms of mortality risk. Yeah, so people with a

low omega-3 index but did not smoke had the same mortality risk as smokers with a high omega-3 index. I mean, when I say same, I mean, if you're to look at this paper at the graph of their life expectancy, they're perfectly overlaid. Perfectly overlaid. And so all the smokers out there are like, yes, I'm going to take omega-3. But like, that's not the point I'm making here, right? The point I'm making here is that not getting that those important nutrients I talked about. As deleterious. As smoking. Right.

Right. And everyone knows to avoid smoking, but nobody's thinking about avoiding omega-3. You know, there was a study out of Harvard. I always talked about this study. It was published forever ago, like 2010 or something. And it identified omega, not getting the marine sources of omega-3, so DHA and EPA, as one of the top six preventable causes of death. Wow. Up there with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, smoking.

there you go. And, you know, consuming trans fats were up there. But, you know, so no one's thinking about not getting enough omega-3. And again, there's a solution. Not everyone's going to be eating fish. There are fish oil supplements, omega-3, you know, high-quality supplements out there. But there's also algae oil as well. That's the vegan alternative. Right. I have a free guide that I put together on how to choose that. It's called, it's basically like all the top, you know, omega-3 supplements that are not oxidized and have the right amount of concentrate. of the stuff that's in there that they should. People can find that at FMF omega-3dide.com. But essentially, you can go and analyze all the data yourself. You can go to these third-party testing sites, like the International Fish Oil Standard Site, which is what we did. They have tons and tons of data on there,

and you can kind of go through it and look for the quality supplements that have a low oxidation and a high concentration. And so I think that's essentially, like, I've got like eight or so that I've listed that are really good quality for both vegan and, you know, people that are taking fish oil as well. This is a little bit in the weeds, but what's happening in the oxidation? Like, people are like, a supplement is a supplement, but clearly not. So polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is what omega-3s are.

It's also what omega-6s are. And they oxidize at lightning speed. I mean, it's, so in fact, that's one of the reasons why you need so much vitamin E. The more polyunsaturated fatty acid, you take in the more your vitamin E requirement goes up as well. But when you eat oxidized fat, it's basically like, genera-reservation. an inflammatory signal in your body is what it's doing. It's, it's an inflammatory signal because it's not right. It's like an oxidite, your immune system recognizes it as like a foreign object. So it activates inflammation. So you want to avoid, if you can, you know, eating and

consuming oxidized fat. And so that's what with fish oil, you have to be very fastidious about the way you isolated and stuff. And so. So it's in the manufacturing process. Yeah, manufacturing. But also when you get it, you should store it in the refrigerator. If you buy it and bulk. I store mine in the freezer. Doesn't harm it at all. It's actually great. So you store it in the freezer. And then when I'm ready to get in my new bottle, I thawed out and take it. Because cold stops oxidation, right? That's essentially what's happening. So that would be number two. And then I would say the third supplement that's at the top of my list would, it's a race between a multivitamin and magnesium. And so I think I'll defer to the multivitamin on this one because it is covering.

covering the vitamin K base, the vitamin E base, the calcium, the vitamin C, all those other ones that are also important. So I think that would be my top three. Okay. And then the top five after the multivitam would be magnesium. And that is also something that half the U.S. population is not getting enough of. It's essentially it's at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. So anything green is high in magnesium.

People aren't eating their greens. We've already established that with vitamin K. They're not eating their greens, right? What happens when you're deficient in magnesium? Well, it depends on what kind of deficiency we're talking. If you're severely deficient, you start to get muscle spasms. Like, that's one of the, you know, I would say more like clinical symptoms. But when you're just kind of suboptimal, like half the U.S. population is, when you're just not getting that RDA requirement, which for women is about 320 milligrams a day.

For men, it's 420. If you're physically active, that requirement goes up even more because you're sweating and losing magnesium, but you're sweat. But for those people, I mean, maybe you're getting some muscle cramps. If that's something that's happening, then you really probably should be taking in more magnesium. But insidious damage, that insidious damage is happening. Magnesium is a co-factor for many important enzymes, 300 different enzymes. DNA repair is one of them. And if you can't repair damage to your DNA, then you increase the risk of eating cancer.

And so what happens is DNA damage isn't a problem for five years. it's not a problem for 10 years. It's not a problem for 15 or 20 or 30. It starts to become a problem 40, 50, 60 years later, right? Then cancer rears its ugly head. And so it's not something that you're really going to pay attention to until it's too late. And so magnesium is, it's, and there are studies that have looked at this. So people that take, you know, for every 100 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, they have a 24% increased pancreatic cancer risk. And then people, with the highest quartile of magnesium have a 50% lower cancer-related mortality compared to people in the lowest. Yeah, 50%. And then there's studies showing supplementation is beneficial as well.

And with respect to the supplementation, I tend to think you really should try to get as much magnesium from your diet as you can because leafy greens are so good and there's so many different micronutrients that are in them that you're getting, like the vitamin K and the calcium and the vitamin C. But if you are going to supplement, then you want to probably take smaller doses of it. It can be an irritate on the gut. So you don't take a big bolus of magnesium. It can cause like muscle spasm, like your muscles and your intestinal system to kind of spasm and can cause diarrhea and things like that. So you want to take lower doses, maybe like 150 milligram, 300 milligram doses.

And you want to take a salt form. So I would say magnesium malate, magnesium. magnesium citrate are good forms, but also magnesium glycinate, which is what I take is a good form. People like these for sleep, also magnesium. Yeah. For sleep as well and stress. I mean, when you're stressed, your body pulls on magnesium as well. There are so many different forms of magnesium.

How do you decide what to prioritize? Do you take all of them? Like, how do people approach it? I like the magnesium glycinate because you're also getting glycine in there, glycinate. So magnesium is bound with glycine. It's very bioavailable, which is what you want. And it does sort of help with calmness. Glycines, like an inhibitory neurotransmitter, right?

So I take it before bed as well. And it could be the placebo effect, which is a very valid real thing. And I love it. But, you know, it does seem to help with sleep as well. And are you missing if you're not taking the other ones? Like, do we need all of them or does glycinate works? Glycinate works. If you're taking magnesium threonate, that's kind of a brain-specific.

form of magnesium, and I would say in that regard, then you definitely want to make sure you're getting other forms of magnesium for the DNA repair aspect that I was talking about. Also, magnesium is important for bone health, like 60% of magnesium stored in bone. And it, you know, it's one of those things that if you're having inadequate levels of magnesium as 50% of the U.S. population, your body will pull from your bones because it has to really maintain very tight levels of magnesium the plasma. Very important. And so you'll pull from your bones. And by the time you're older, you know, an older adult, you've lost half your magnesium stores, which affects your bone mineral density and bone health, right? So those things all sort of converge together as well. So, yeah,

I mean, I think magnesium 3 and 8, which is something people do like for their brain. It's like a, it's, it's, there's some evidence showing that it can cross the blood brain barrier better and get into the brain better. And therefore, it has beneficial effects in the brain, like energy, production and it seems to be, you know, important for preventing perhaps cognitive decline as well. So if you're taking that form, I would say that you want to make sure you're also getting enough magnesium for the DNA repair and other enzymes as well that are not in the brain. Number five, coline. Because it's, it's, I used to supplement with it more and I think I'm going to bring it back after like

kind of diving into it recently again because it really, it really is important. for brain health, you know, for preventing the oxidized, I mean, not oxidized, that's vitamin E, for preventing the homocysteine. The homocysteine is really important. I mean, that's another thing that a lot of people aren't measuring. So I think that would be my number five. Where does vitamin E fall in? Because of the importance of it? The vitamin E, RDA, is in the multivitamin. Okay. And I do eat a lot of almonds. Like, I'm, that's my, that's my go-to. Like, it's not time for dinner yet. But I've, you know, it's been. in many hours, it's almonds.

Raw. It's almonds. Not to get two in the weeds here in our own way. You mentioned nuts and seeds. So I'm a vegan person. He's a vegan-friendly health nut biohacker. We eat so many nuts and seeds. Like, I'm a walnut person. I prefer walnuts, but we put

cashews in our smoothies. I'm trying to get all branches of the vitamins through all the different nuts. But it's work. It's like if you're on the go, it's like you have to pack. You know, I have a question. I have a question as someone who happens to be vegan, but I think it's a question that everybody wants to have your answer on.

What's up with protein? Like, are we getting too much, which is what many of us have been told? Like, chill out, don't worry. Like, you're getting protein. There's protein in pasta. There's protein in rice and don't freak out. Then we went through a phase of, like, Jonathan eating his body weight and protein twice a day. There was a huge emphasis, especially among, I heard it, among, like, men.

of like all the protein, all the meat, also add creatine, like eat collagen, like be a hunk of protein. What's the story with protein? And what is the perspective for women versus men? Is it a similar conversation? I need to know. Yeah. No, it's funny. There's been, you know, in the aging field, which is where I'm sort of in, it's also been this thing where for the longest time, well, you don't want too much protein because that's going to accelerate aging. It's going to increase cancer. risk. And this is largely done in animal studies, like rodents. And so, and there's lots of mechanism work there. And so, you know, you're kind of thinking, oh, well, protein's aging you. That's because it's activating growth pathways and that's involved in cancer. And, you know, so you want to,

you want to kind of dial back on the protein. This is also animal-based protein, correct? A lot of these studies were animal-based protein because most countries that, you know, get enough protein are actually not getting it from animal sources. Yes. So. Except the United States. Animal-based protein has a high concentration of essential amino acids, particularly leucine. And that is the sort of switch for some of these growth pathways like the mTOR pathway, but also IGF-1. These are both two pathways that are sort of involved in the aging process. So yes, to some degree, that was kind of like animal protein. And then there's like all this human data that was observational data that came out that was looking at all-cause mortality, cancer-related mortality.

and it looked like, oh, if you ate protein from plants, you had a lower all-cause mortality. You had lower cancer-related mortality compared to the meat eaters. Well, it turns out, like after then adjusting and looking at all these other healthier, unhealthy lifestyle factors, the meat eaters, if they had no unhealthy lifestyle factors, so they weren't overweight, they weren't sedentary, they weren't excessively drinking or smoking. They had the same mortality as the vegan. Right. So what it comes down to, and when you ask me, what about protein?

So look, protein is essential, right? We need protein to make proteins in our body. Everything that we're doing, everything that's going on our body is from proteins. And proteins require amino acids to be made. Our muscle also requires protein as well. And that's probably what most people are thinking about when they think about protein. They think about their muscle. And the RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. And that is probably where you're hearing a lot of people say we're not getting enough protein. And the reason for that is because when that RDA was set, gosh, how many decades ago, I don't remember, quite a few. Yeah. When that was set, the studies that were done... It has to be close to a century ago. I mean, no, I think it was like... Oh, gosh. Was it the 60s?

40s? Oh, okay. Yeah. I think. I don't know. Well, someone can look that up. Yes, go ahead. But the point is that the studies that were done to basically the way that RDA was determined

was, okay, how much amino acids can we lose in a day without going into a negative balance, right? Because we don't actually store amino acids like we store triglycerides. We store fat in the form of triglycerides or we store glucose in the form of glycogen, right? We don't store amino acids. Well, our muscles actually are the biggest storage of them, right? But you don't want to be breaking down your muscle tissue to get amino acids. And so that was determined based off- 1941.

All right. 1941. Because the middle of World War II, they were like, let's work on this. So basically, the studies that were done were to determine whether or not that was, you know, enough, how much protein you needed to take in to prevent, like, basically your body from losing more protein. And it turns out that the studies were kind of flawed and the guesses were sort of overestimated. And so more studies have been done recently with newer technologies that have determined, actually, it's more like 1.2. grams of protein per kilogram body weight is what we actually need. That's more.

It's more than 0.8, right. Yes. And so that's kind of like the, I would say, the minimal amount of protein. Now, depending on how active you are, those requirements go up. If you are physically active... Don't eat the dog's protein. He's leaning into his body. He's like, I'm already not getting enough today.

Yeah, that's where it goes up. If you're physically active, you want to get about between 1.2 to 1.6. It's more like 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight. of protein. And that's largely based on studies looking at gaining muscle mass and strength as well. So they've been randomized controlled trials giving people either 1.2, 1.6, kilograms per kilogram body weight of protein, and then looking at muscle mass gains and muscle strength gains. And giving them more protein, along with working out and exercising, it seems like the 1.6 is better. And also, I just want to reiterate, when you say protein,

because of the society we live and I automatically think of like meat, meat, meat, meat. And I think of all the things that are in meat that a lot of people don't want. But you're not just talking about meat. You're talking about for people who want to eat fish, it could be fish. And there are other ways to get protein

and like there are protein powders and things. So it doesn't just have, because like the notion of like eating meat five times a day, right? Like doesn't sound attractive for many reasons, right? But that's not the only way that we're talking about getting protein. No, absolutely not. And yeah. And that's another sort of, I would say,

shift in the way of thinking in terms of protein. It used to be like, oh, you have to get all this protein from like, you know, a meat source or an animal source of protein and, you know, vegans and vegetarians, oh, they're just so protein deficient. Well, it turns out, you know, people that are that are paying attention and eating multiple different types of protein and or supplementing can actually gain as much muscle from the same amount of protein as people that are doing eating meat. And so that's not, again, that was a big. change a pretty recent, actually, I would say. The caveat to that is you can't really get it from vegetables and beans alone.

You need some form of tofu, tempe, protein powder. It's very difficult to only get that level of protein from vegetables and legumes. Well, you have to, you have to, like, there's different types of plants that are. It's say grains. Yeah, quinoa. Yeah. You know, there's different types of plants that have different amino acid composition. But I don't rely on vegetables for my protein.

Not at all. It's got to be beans. It's got to be beans. Nuts. It's got to be things like that. And yeah, there's some in like rice and pasta and things like that. But no, it doesn't come from vegetables. But the fact is, as we talk about, it's very carb-heavy.

Like my protein intake is so carb-heavy. Like, you know, my friend Denise, who helped me kind of completely become vegan, she was like when she became vegan, she gained 20 pounds in like two months. Because she was eating nuts and seeds all day. And she's like, I'm so healthy. And she looked down and she was like, what just happened? So, yeah, the notion is like, depending on where this protein source is coming, it can be very high in fat. It can be very high in carbs.

So it's definitely a balance. I think the other conversation that's happening alongside the protein conversation is, should everyone be on creatine? I know, right? I mean, like, I sprinkled it all around the room. I mean, I did. I was, I was, I dozed up today because I wanted my brain to be working. But yeah. What is creatine?

Tell us what creatine is. Yeah. I mean, so creatine, you probably think of the bodybuilder muscle guys. 100%. It's in a big white plastic tub, whatever it is. And then I always think about the water rate I'm going to gain. Like those are the images that I think about when I think of creatine. Well, creatine is, it's really important for energy production.

And I don't want to get like too much into that mechanism. But essentially what you need to know is that it is important for energy production. And so. But is it a thing? thing that's in our body already? It is something that's in our muscles. It's in our body. Yes. It's in our brain. We make it in our brain. We make it in our brain. We make it in our brain. Not in our muscles. Our muscles take it up from what's made in our liver. Our muscles are what crave it the most, right? Especially because when we're working out and working our muscles,

then the creatine's really coming from either what we're making in our liver to our muscles or from what we're supplementing. So we're not, essentially, creatine is, especially vegan. Vegans are not getting enough of it because creatine is found in muscle meat. So people that are eating meat are getting a dietary source of creatine. Right. But vegans and vegetarians are not getting that creatine. So it's vegan to take it. It's an organic compound.

Yes. It's synthesized. Right. Yeah. It's not like being isolated from like cow muscle. Right. Right. Yeah. But so what is it doing?

You know, it's really, so the muscles are really greedy and your muscles take it up because it's, you know, helps with energy production, right? But aside from that, other organs in the body also need it, like the brain. And that's why the brain also makes its own creatine pool. And when you get like a higher amount of creatine, if you dose, if you're taking a higher amount of creatine, whatever your muscles don't take up, your muscles get the first pick because they're very, very greedy, then creatine's left over to kind of get into the brain. And so people that are taking about five grams of creatine a day, which is what I used to take,

it's enough for your muscles. That's pretty much what your muscles are happy with. And when I say your muscles, like, why do your muscles want it? It's not necessarily going to bulk you up. It's not like protein. It doesn't – creatine doesn't increase muscle protein synthesis. You're not going to, you know, get bigger muscles unless you work out. What it does do is helps you work out harder because you have – like you're

able to basically get more energy and more power. So the volume of your workouts are better. No, it feels like you're giving me a steroid. But it's not. It's not a steroid. I'm going to be like grunting. It's all the effort, right? Yeah.

I definitely was grunting yesterday morning. I had my strength rating. So you said that you used to take five milligrams. Five milligrams. I used to take five grams because I wanted it for my workouts. And now you take. And now I take 10. Every day all the time, no matter what?

Every day all the time, no matter what. Baseline is 10. And I do that because of the brain effects. So there's been studies now coming out that it improves cognitive function. It might be important for brain aging. Depression is another one that's coming out. Again, energy production in the brain, very important. But you have to get above that five grams to like have spillover, right, to the brain.

But there's an even bigger, you know, I would say dose that I take. On days when I don't sleep well. So if I'm traveling, I'm jet lagged, I'm in like the other part of the country. And I have to give a talk at like 8 a.m., which is, you know, 5 a.m. My biological time. In those sorts of scenarios, I actually take 15 to 20 grams. And it's amazing what it does to me. No, it's like speed.

It's like speed without the speed. It's like speed without the speed. You're like it's like caffeine without the caffeine. Can you abuse it? I mean, I wouldn't take much more than that. So it's not like addictive. I don't feel like I don't wake up in the morning. Yes, but you know it is addictive.

Being alert and like on target. In the context, it only really works in the context of a background deprivation. Got it. Something stressful like sleep deprivation. Right. And this has been shown life. I mean, yeah, right? Well, no, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of curious. Like, yeah. It's been shown in studies. And so what it's, what I guess, you know, the question is, okay, well, how much stress in your life? A lot of us do have a lot of stress. So I do think it makes, it does make a difference, right? But it helps, it helps, you don't need as much sleep even. So this has been shown in studies. And in fact, one of my vegan friends was like, she messaged me back. She's like, this is, I don't need as much sleep. And I have all this energy. What's going on.

I'm like, well, you weren't getting any dietary creatine because, you know, you don't eat any meat and you weren't supplementing with it. So you were only relying and you work out. I'm like, you're only relying on what your liver can make, which is not that much. So it really kind of changed your life. She was Bruce Banner. Now she's Hulk. What happens is creatine. I'm talking about the role it plays in energy production, but it also plays another role.

Interestingly, it plays a role in that whole methylation process as well that we think about folate, coline, And creatine does it too. So creatine can also help turn homocysteine back into methyanine. It can help with gene expression. So methylations are like carbon with three hydrogens. They can basically change the way our genes are activated. You need methylation groups to have that happen. And creatine helps with that.

So I think when you free up creatine, when it's like, okay, the muscles aren't using every last bit of it because now you're giving it an exogenous source through supplementation, then other things can happen, right? Other things like the methylation process can happen, right? So changing the way genes are activated in the brain. But in the context of stress, stress requires a lot of energy. It depletes your creatine. And so in that background, giving your body the extra creatine will give you more energy because that energy that you would have had otherwise was taken because the stress is very energy consuming. Well, also, I'm thinking just in terms of the creatine conversation, how many of those things diagnostically would earn you a prescription for an

SSRI, right? I can't sleep. I don't have energy, which means I'm not working out, so then you're not generating any positive feel-good chemicals, right? You're not going to feel good about yourself. You don't have the kind of like, umph to get up and go. Many doctors would see that and be like, you're, for me, you know, you're a woman of a certain age, like take an SSRI and you'll feel better, right? Right. And how many people are disappointed by that because there's other biochemical things going on that we don't even know about? Right. It's fascinating. Jonathan had a list of rapid fire things, and I just want to mention that the first three items are this. Alcohol, coffee, golf course. Go. Yeah, don't don't, don't live on a golf course and sip your wine. Yeah. No, there was there's a really interesting study that came out recently that living near a golf course dramatically increases the risk of Parkinson's disease because golf courses are notoriously sprayed with Roundup.

I have to say, I mean, they're, I mean, that's like, you look at a golf course. Like, I don't know that I can find a weed like any golf course I've ever, you know, been to. So the pesticide exposure is, I would say, the most classical way of inducing Parkinson's-like symptoms in animals. I mean, that's like what researchers do to induce Parkinson's is they give like paraquot, rote, right? These things cause mitochondrial toxicity. Your mitochondria are the energy-producing organelles in your cells. they cause it in the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia negra, right, part of the brain. So what's what the prevailing theory with the golf course is that these pesticides are getting into the water shores.

And people that live near the golf course are drinking water that has this, you know, the pesticides in it, roundup, glyphosate, whatever they're using. So golfers don't have to be terrified necessarily. Like if you're spending a lot of time on golf courses versus living next to it? No, exactly. That's a great question. I mean, unless they're like spraying, like you're inhaling it. Like, I mean, if they're spraying the course, I run sometimes along a golf course. And there are times when they're spraying and I'm like trying to get ahead of the spraying machine thing.

And I'm like, I just have to like figure out when they're spraying and not run of those days. Well, I think the issue also is not so much like don't live on a golf course. The issue is a larger one that the things that give us so much luxury, joy and pleasure, like having a weed-free garden, which is something that's very important. We now know things, and the future of food and Food Inc are two wonderful documentaries that I highly recommend that discuss in particular Roundup and Monsanto. And, you know, these used to be things that were on the fringes of conversations and people used to kind of roll their eyes and say, like, that's ridiculous. You're worried about hippie things. But what we know now is that the things that give us a lot

of conveniences do come with a very high price. And once that information is out there, we are so grateful to people like you for spreading this information because it's not something we can ignore. If you're living somewhere where pesticides are being sprayed and if there are no weeds, which is a naturally occurring thing to have when there's grass, chances are there's a downside to that luxury, as it were. And, you know, these pesticides and a lot of other forever chemicals, these things are contaminating or water sources or soil. Like, I mean, it's ending up in the sludge that's, that's given, you know, in the conventional farming that's used, not organic. But it's actually ended up in organic farming, too. But it's like, everything's contaminated. We got microplastics.

We got the forever chemicals. We have, you know, now this, the roundup and the pesticides. Water filters do help. I mean, they help filter out a lot of these chemicals and, like, small, small particles and stuff. But, but, yeah, it's a big problem, like how the damage is done already. So, like, now it's like, okay, do we keep doing more damage? Can we somehow stop that damage? At what point is enough enough, right?

I mean, at what point can we say, okay? Are you sure you want to lift a 115? I mean, you know, it's the microplastics and the forever chemicals. That's the thing that also gets me, right? I mean, it's in everything. It's in our fruits and vegetables. You think you're eating healthy, and then you're like, oh, everything's coated in forever chemicals now because it's in our soil.

We did an episode on this, and then the doctor we had on was like, oh, yeah, it's in the ocean and in the rainwater. so it's in the air. Yeah, it's in the air. It's in, I mean, it's everywhere. So you need air filter, water filter, right? Yeah, so that's the golf course. New product idea.

We live in a bubble. It's filtered. Be totally safe. The other conversation that's happening a lot is about alcohol. It feels like the tide has turned on alcohol. It used to be a little bit as good. It used to be red wine is good. Now none of it is good.

Well, you know, alcohol is a toxin. It is. I mean, I think a lot of the studies that have been sort of reanalyzed that came out claiming that, oh, moderation, actually not only is it not harmful, it's beneficial, compared to not drinking alcohol, right? Especially for women. Let's market it to women. It's delicious for women. Which is actually the worst. Women are most susceptible to the damage related to alcohol. Yeah. We can talk about that in a minute. But like, so. We're also susceptible to the damage created when I don't drink alcohol. Sorry.

That's hilarious. And so true. But yeah. So you don't want me sober all that time. They'll tear shit down. All those studies were actually like comparing non-drinkers to people that are doing moderate alcohol consumption. It turns out there was this whole sick user bias where the non-drinkers were like former drinkers. And so they were comparing them.

to people that had done so much damage that they had quit drinking, right? And this was not just one study. This is many studies. And so now it's kind of like, oh, I don't know that we can use that data, right? I mean. Well, it's cumulative. So, yeah. Right.

And so, and there's just, there's a big spectrum here. And I think at the end of the day, my biggest concern, particularly for women, is breast cancer risk. Because alcohol, one of the, one of the, I would say one of the biggest risk factors for alcohol consumption is increasing cancer risk. And, and when you. you think about a person's when your lifetime risk for, you know, esophageal cancer, which is one that alcohol increases. And I'm like, I don't know. Our lifetime risk is one in 500. It's not that

big, right? Like, so a little modest half a percent increase isn't really concerning to me. But what is concerning is my lifetime risk of one and eight for breast cancer. Like every woman has a one in eight lifetime risk of getting breast cancer. That's pretty low. I mean, you get in a in a room with eight women, one of those women in that room will be diagnosed with breast cancer, right? There's a lot of lifestyle factors that can affect that risk. So obesity can increase the risk. Alcohol definitely increases the risk. Smoking increases the risk as well. And then there's, you know, some other things as well. But those are the main ones. Alcohol really has a dose-dependent effect. And there's no amount, even light drinking increases the risk. What is alcohol doing?

Oh, gosh. I mean, it's getting metabolized into toxic things that. are that are causing cell death, that are damaging DNA. That's what's essentially causing the cancer, right? You're damaging your DNA. And that's what it's doing. It's creating these aldehydes and things that are reacting with your DNA. It's bad, you know, it's a toxin. Yeah, it does kind of lower your inhibitions and, you know, maybe affecting serotonin and stuff like that. And it can be fun to do once in a while, but like it's certainly not something that you want to do every day for sure. And And that was like the message, you know, years ago. One drink a day.

Yeah. It's good. I mean, glass of wine a day for a woman is very bad, very bad, because breast cancer risk. I don't know that I've heard that. And it's so funny because it's such a huge marketing, you know, like, is it wine a clock? Like, how many dish towels do you see sold with that? And women are actually more susceptible to the toxic metabolites because we have a lower body mass. So we actually, that's why it takes less alcohol for us to feel the effects.

Sorry, I'm just thinking about, like, we're also, like, more susceptible to, like, the marketing, and the marketing is so geared at that. I'm thinking about the, what was it, the skinny cigarettes marketing of my childhood. It was like, this is the sexy cigarette for you. And I feel like, in so many ways, that's what wine has become, right? It's this culture of, like, oh, here's a little wine charm set. Like, everything's, like, wine goodies, right? I do you feel like it's changing somewhat? I mean, you see a lot of these, like, you know, mock tales.

I mean, they're really showing up everywhere now. There's a huge industry of non-alcoholic fancy drinks. Whenever there's money to be made, that explodes, right? Like, there are people like, oh, this is like, this is a great business, which is good. But cancer is my main concern with alcohol consumption is, is the breast cancer risk. Now, if you have like a family history, then it's like, you know, I don't have a family history. Or if you're Ashkenazi Jew, yeah. If you're Ashkenazi Zhu, yeah, for sure.

We should not be drinking. That's like, yeah, breast cancer. I mean, that's a big one, right? be doing the mammograms every year. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Talk to us about coffee. Coffee.

I know. I mean, should you drink it? Should you not drink it? Everyone drinks it, right? Who doesn't drink coffee? I don't drink coffee? It's probably the, well, you drink a little bit of tea through your boba, but probably not enough caffeine.

Oh my gosh. Do you know how much microplastic is in boba? I know. He always tells me. Thank you. There's a girl on Instagram and her stomach was full of boba. It was like all just like a big plastic mess. I mean, is the top.

Those things are, plastic. They're plastic. Honey, it's the only fun thing left. It's the only fun thing. You're just putting Lego pieces. Eat it with fiber. It stops the absorption of microplastics. Yeah. It stops the absorption of microplastics. Put chia seeds in my boba? Yes, that's right. Cheea seeds in the boba. Yeah. The benefits of coffee, I want to sort of reconcile that. I drink a good amount of coffee. He gets weird if he drinks too much and he gets weird if he drinks too little. That is correct. Add some L-thenene. So I've tried that. But Dr. Aymann is like, Like, no caffeine is good for your brain.

It restricts blood flow. He's like totally against caffeine. Help me reconcile the difference. Oh my gosh, really? Yeah. That's so interesting because, okay, so let's, we'll get to the brain in a minute. But yeah, coffee, I did a deep dive on it. And it's, it's got so many health benefits that are undeniable, undeniable.

I mean, the polyphenol content in coffee is extremely high. And we're talking about coffee itself, not if you add a shit ton of sugar and milk. Oh, definitely. I drink my coffee black. Yeah, the additive stuff negates everything. Right, because a lot of people are like, I go to Starbucks. It's great. No, it's the coffee itself.

Okay. Polyphenols, like the chlorogenic acids are really, really powerful polyphenols that are doing anti-inflammatory, antioxidant. They're very beneficial. And so there have been studies showing that people that drink coffee, one to three cups a day, have a lower all-cause mortality. So like 30% lower than people who don't drink coffee. And there's been a lot of studies now looking at like biological aging. So, you know, they're looking at these, like, epigenetic signatures, these methylation groups that change with age. And you can look at these groups and, like, you can determine someone's age based on that, like, characterization of it.

And it's delaying biological aging by, like, one year. So pretty, pretty, yeah, that's pretty, it's pretty profound with when you're talking about at least that type of, you know, data set when you're looking at, like, biological aging. It's been associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk, type two diabetes. I mean, just everything, everything. And when it comes to dementia and Alzheimer's disease, I should caveat that decaffeinated coffee is also beneficial, again, because of the polyphenols. It's not the caffeine unless we're talking about the brain. So the dementia risk and Alzheimer's disease risk seems to be dependent on having caffeine there.

Decaf didn't have that effect. So I don't know why someone would think that the caffeine causing baser constriction, the amount of visa constrictions not that high and there's also a, I think, maybe the polyphenols are countering that, but you'd think the decaf coffee would have the same effect. It doesn't. It doesn't. Caffeine is required

for, which is, you know, it's so interesting, and I was thinking about this, is that nicotine, which is all the rage, and I would stay away from that, but is kind of structurally... I'm sorry, it's all the rage? Yeah, people are... She doesn't go on the internet. She doesn't know. Also, the Dr. Eamon's study was people who drink like six

cups or more a day. It was with like High, high volume. Okay, let me explain this. Okay. So here's what it comes down to. People that drink like eight cups or more a day have an increased risk. Right. But it was only at eight cups or more.

When they were doing one, two, three, four cups, they had a 50% lower risk. So there's something about the excessive. Yeah. Like eight cups of cost. Like I don't know who's doing that. That's a lot. No, and that's going to disrupt sleep. It's going to, yeah, you're going to be a wreck.

You're going to disrupt sleep, which is a dementia of risk. Yeah. But it's also the brewing, the way you brew it that matter. So filtering it filters out these diterpenes, which increase LDL cholesterol. So that's also important because you can you can increase your LDL cholesterol, especially for adding like cream to your coffee. You know, 30, 30 units, like just from. Wait, you were going to talk about nicotine. Nicotine's all the raids. Oh, yeah. So what I was getting at was that nicotine is used as a neutropic. People are like using these, you know, little mints or the Zen pack, like the Zen bag. and stuff. I've never tried it, but Nicorette, like the gum, for a neotropic effect. It improves their cognitive performance. You focus. You're like in the zone. You're productive. I'm terrified that I'll love it, so I'm definitely not trying it. That's delightful. Yeah, it's a great drug.

And some people claim that it has anti-Alzheimer's properties. Exactly. That's what I was getting at. So there are a few studies looking at nicotine. And nicotine also causes vaso constriction, though. Yeah. But it's doing it like, I would say, there's a little bit of similarity between nicotine and caffeine very like structurally both diuretics right uh is nicotine a diuretic too yeah because they used to recommend it for digestion yeah oh i didn't know that yeah okay yeah but i think there's some overlap yeah the fact of the matter that the the the coffee required the caffeine to be protective against parkinson's yeah they're both it's like they're both doing something similar where there is a protective effect against neurodegener of diseases for whatever reason there's all kinds of

speculation i don't just don't smoke it put it in your gum i don't know no no i don't think that's good. No. No, because it causes cardiovascular disease, hypertension. It's constricting your blood vessels. Got it. So that's just that. That's not a mechanism of the smoke. That's the nicotine. Yeah. And that's not a mechanism of caffeine. Caffeine's not doing that. Correct. It's nicotine. But people are doing it because they want to like be productive. They want to like be smarter. Can't they just microdose like all the guys in Silicon Valley? I, that's what that, yeah, if you're going to do it definitely microdose, but people are not. People are like, I've had people come up to me after talks and they're like, oh, I take, you know, I go through like, you know, I'm going through like,

six of these a day and I'm like six of these like closing the loop on coffee though just on the on on the decaf I've heard that that's washed with chemicals when you do a decaf and so you should avoid decaf because of the chemical process well yeah so it depends on what decaf you know coffee you're buying so yes it is kind of like a paint thinner like is what method that's used to decaffinate coffee However, by the time, you know, whatever's ending up in your cup of coffee is so insignificant. I don't know. All these studies on all the benefits of deep-caf, people are drinking just decaf coffee. Like they're not buying.

There's other methods like you can use this Swiss water method or the carbon dioxide method. Don't tell him. He'll start doing it. But, no, I mean, I buy that because, like, you know, you kind of obsess over the little things. But I think at the end of the day, you have to choose your battles. I don't think that's a battle to choose. I think that all these studies are showing people drinking decathes. have coffee have so many benefits, and most of them are just drinking.

Tell me your coffee protocol. What filter system are you using? What are you doing? I have the, I like the pourover and the Kemex filter, which is not the bleached one, but it's like the, you know, the brown paper filter one. Are there coatings of microplastic in those? That's what I use and I'm wondering. Not supposed to be, but I'm sure a study will come out in a month or two saying yes,

because that seems to be where we're going. The ceramic filter clogs, though. and it's very hard, and then you spend like 25 minutes making your... You won't die or don't you? That's the best way. I also do instant coffee, which has benefits as well. Interesting. And so, but yeah.

But like I said... Didn't picture you a Folgers girl, but I mean, not Folgers, but like, you know, sometimes I'm like, I just don't have time and I'm traveling or whatever. I'll do... Instant has some of the same benefits. I've had one can for 20 years in the freezer because I use it when I make my honey cake.

There's a brand like Hagen's Instant Coffee, which is pretty good. What's the difference between... Instant coffee benefit and like pourover benefit? So the instant coffee, you're getting a lot of the same polyphenols. And with the pour over, what you're doing is you're filtering out those diterpenes, which can raise LDL. But the amount in instant is so small that it's really not a big factor. Yeah. So with everything that we've talked about and especially as we've gotten pretty detailed with coffee,

what's the most, you know, kind of unusual thing you've tried for your own health? the most unusual thing that I've tried. Yes. What would we consider unusual? You don't have to limit it to one. We're fascinating. I mean, you know, I don't know that there's such an unusual thing. I mean, I've broccoli sprouts. I was like doing a lot of broccoli sprouts. Were you doing them?

I was doing. You eating them? Bags and I was like so much broccoli sprouts. You're off that now? No, now I supplement. Yeah. But I was like. But you're just eating them raw?

Yeah. Bags of broccoli sprouts. I was making smoothies with them. It was disgusting. And I was like drinking them. And you're just more efficient to supplement. Yeah. Now it's less work.

I mean, it was cheap. Like, growing your own sprouts is much cheaper than supplementing. Supplementing is expensive. But it was cheaper. And, you know, I was doing this when I really couldn't afford supplementing. And I was making smoothies with them. I was getting a neutropic effect, too. Like, I was feeling something in my brain.

But I think that's probably one of the weirder things that I've done that, you know, I've done like exogenous ketones and all that stuff. But, like, everyone does that. I don't think people are... What's an exogenous ketone? This whole episode is my experiences, trends on the internet for the first time. What's exogenous ketone? I mean, I know what the words mean and I could draw a ketone.

It's all those jars in the cupboard, in the corner that we never go to. Which cupboard? In the kitchen that you never look at. I was saying which cupboard, because half of the kitchen is all these things that you tell him about. What's exogenous ketones? Exogenous ketones. So ketones are something that our bodies make when we're using fatty acids for energy. So it could be during a fast or if we're on a ketogenic diet or we're exercising really hard, right, and haven't had enough calories.

And so you make something called ketones, the major circling one is beta hydroxybutyrate. And beta hydroxybutyrate is interesting not because it's a source of energy, so it can be used as a source of energy. And that's really cool. Why it's interesting is because it's a signaling molecule. So it's like it's acting like lactate in that it's increasing brain-driven neurotrophic factor. It's like it's a way of increasing, it's like a stress response because your body's like, oh, I'm in this ketosis. I need to activate all these other beneficial genes that are involved in dealing with stress, right? So exogenous ketones are a way of taking that supplementally, exogenously, right?

And so there have been, you know, a variety of different types of this on the market. And I've, you know, people like taking beta hydroxybutyrate because it does help with focus and attention. It seems to really kind of get you into that. I mean, maybe it's something like the nicotine. I don't know. I've never done the nicotine. But it does kind of like help you hone in and kind of like focus and be more alert and just like on your game a little bit better. Are you on it now or off it now?

I just ordered some actually. It's funny you're asking. I haven't done exogenous ketones in years. I don't know how you've gotten anything done. I'm amazed you can have a P. I've just worked really hard. But what drew you back to them? What drew you back to them was a conversation I had with.

a friend whose mother is kind of dealing with mild Alzheimer's disease. And I was kind of, and he was asking me about ketosis. And I was kind of getting back into that world that I had, you know, kind of was in a few years ago. And so I started kind of like researching it again. And I was like, gosh, this is like so beneficial. I personally don't like being on a ketogenic diet. There's so many plants I like to eat and it just kicks me out of ketosis. And, but I do think there's benefits and maybe I can cycle it in. But, you know, so I've done ketogenic diet. I really loved the way I felt when I was on it. Never had that energy crash in the middle of the day, you know, like that mid-afternoon energy crash where you're like, some people go for their diet Coke.

Some people go for their nicotine or whatever. I'm just drinking like blueberry smoothies because that polyphenols help me or I'll do my exercise snacks. But the exogenous ketones are kind of a nice compromise for me because I can get some of those ketones for like three hours or so without having to like the work of like doing nutritional ketosis which is hard work now also I do practice time restricted eating so when you're in a fasted state for you know 16 hours you're really it depends on when do you stop eating well it depends on what's going on like I have a family and it's children yes yeah yeah my son is seven well he'll be eight in a couple of months Got it.

Okay. Okay. So, okay, but like on an average day, like, I'm trying to think which 16 hours. Like, if you were to stop eating at seven. Yeah. It's usually I have dinner at six. Yeah. So I'll be done before seven.

And then no snacky poo. No snacks. No late time eating. That's a no-no. That's not really good at all. Actually, it disrupts your sleep. Yeah. Big time.

You don't want to be digesting while you're sleeping. Says you. Right? So, yeah. You start. That would be like seven to noon. Am I doing the math right? Something like that.

Yeah, so you don't have breakfast. I mean, what I was raised was the most important meal of the day, but that's why. I don't always do 16 hours. I mean, most, I would say most times I'm more like, I was saying 16 because that's like. Are you about to brag that you don't eat a midnight snack? This lady, that's not that in breakfast. No, no, I think what I'm saying is I think you kind of misunderstood when I was talking about 16. It wasn't necessarily me.

I do eat breakfast after my workout. My breakfast is usually like 10, 10.30. Okay, got it. But when I hear like fasting, like I get really scared. That sounds like kind of reasonable, meaning like eat at an early time. Like, don't have three snacks before bed. No wine. No wine. No midnight snack.

Yes. And then wake up, get your kid to school, do a workout, then start the party. I mean, it depends on the type of workout. Sure. I have to have like a banana or something before the workout. Right. Okay. So when are you using ketones?

Are you using them in the morning while in a fasted state or are using them in the afternoon? Like, because you're supposed to use them without food. Is that accurate? You don't have to use them without food. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, no. It raises your ketone levels. Now, if you use them without food, you'll, if you're extending your fast, you'll probably

get a bump even more. But, yeah, I haven't, I just ordered them again. When I was experimenting with them, I was doing both. Either way was good for me. I mean, even, like, being in a fed state, taking the ketones. A fed state. There's Dr. Becking in a fat state. Head state.

So you would use them in the afternoon, and that would give you a bit of a bump as well. I haven't tried that yet. Yes. Yeah. And that's essentially what I ordered them for, to be honest. I was like, I'm not, because I don't drink coffee in the afternoon. But you have been drinking beet powder, which I got very excited about when I saw, because I have. Name a powder he's not excited about.

Tell us a little bit about beet root powder. Yeah. Yeah, I have been drinking beetroot powder. Is that like from the beat? Yeah. It's extract. Yeah. So beets are really high in nitrace.

Sugar. Well, that's all I think of. They are high in sugar. Yeah. I'm getting extract that's like low sugar. Okay. But beets are also, besides sugar, high in nitrates. Yeah.

And nitrates are found in a lot of different plants. But beats have a lot of them. And when you eat them, nitrates get converted into nitric oxide, right, which is vasodilator, which increases blood flow. And there have been a host of studies looking at this, like human. taking beetroot extract, it increases blood flow to the brain. It increases blood flow to the muscle. Muscles as well. People like endurance athletes like to use it before their endurance run or whatever. It increases blood foot of the brain. And that's been showed to improve cognition, activate parts of the brain that's involved in like whatever tasks that you're doing kind of helps activate that machinery. So you just put it in a smoothie? So what I do is I just put like a big heaping scoop and water. I just take a shot of it. It doesn't taste really great. Sure.

But the other thing that... Nothing you eat tastes great. Well, I'm sure the high sugar one probably tastes good, but I don't get the high sugar one. Okay. And so I take that and it gives me a little pump, like a little, almost kind of like what a, you know, little Peloton, 10-minute Peloton would do. Where I get that like... Kill you? That's what it would do to me.

It would kill me. Wait, I'm going to ask a question that I don't think any fancy doctor has ever asked you. What does your son eat? He's such a picky eater. Does he eat chicken food? No. Does he eat pizza? He likes pizza and hot sauce. How about a hot dog? Just tushies and snouts.

You know, the vegetables that I can get him to eat are spinach in his smoothie. Oh, that's good. Carrots. He likes carrots. He likes carrots. He's in a smoothie phase. He likes smoothies. My kids used to do smoothies, and now I can't, I don't know what happened. Okay, but go ahead. Well, he's in a smoothie phase. Okay, good. So I put the spinach in the smoothie.

Enjoy it. But, you know, we're working on, like, a little bit of broccoli. Like, let's just eat this one, you know, broccoli florette. But does he like meat, meat, fish? Will he eat fish? He likes meat. He used to eat fish. Not anymore. I don't know what's happened. Deep fry it. Then he'll eat it. Deep fry it, right. Okay. Okay. What snacks do you let him have? I mean, gosh. Does he eat yogurt in a squeezy pouch? No. He does eat yogurt and granola. Okay. He does eat yogurt and granola. He does eat sun chips. That's like his favorite snack. Which what am I going to do? I'm like, I know. I loved those two. You know, he eats like the typical. He eats like the typical. He eats like the typical. He eats like the typical. He eats like the typical. He's like the typical. He eats like the typical. He is like, he snacks that kids will eat. Okay. So like when you send him to school, would people know that this is Dr. Rhonda Patrick's kid? A funny story. He does read the nutrition facts on things and he'll point out to his friends about the sugar and he's like he shouldn't eat that because he's going to get him. He's going to get him. Well, what's funny was one of his friends was like, no, I like candy. But another friend of his, Annie was like telling his friends not to drink out of plastic bottles because of the microplastics.

Oh, no. Your child is a riot. But he did get one friend. One of his friends, the mother was telling me that he basically doesn't want plastic bottles anymore. She, like, had to stop. He, like, came home one day, was like, you know, no, I can't get a plastic bottle because it's bad for you. And sugar, sugar, sugar, and so, I guess he was drinking. You're going to get punched in the face milk or something. Yeah. He's the littlest influencer.

He's recruiting. He is. He does. You know, he tells me, do a podcast on Coke and why it's bad for you. Don't drink soda. But he does. He's still a picky eater. I mean, his favorite food is bacon.

And I'm like, oh, great. I just sent my oldest to college. He just finished his first year in college. And that's what I was most curious about. Like, how is he going to eat? Like, once he's out of my, you know, purview. And I remember we had foreign exchange students staying with us. And at the end of the two weeks that they were staying with us, the head of their program,

we had like a going away party. And she said, you sent the most interesting lunches with these children. because it was like raw vegetables, you know, cut up and like, here's a little bean salad. And every other kid had like a sandwich or like a schnitzel. And I was like, here's your bell pepper color of the day. Anyway, yes, they will all rebel in their own way, I'm afraid. But yeah. What do you want people to remember take away as they're exploring their health journey?

Trying to balance it all, trying to get the misinformation that's online. We recently actually just heard that like a third. of health information online is potentially inaccurate on TikTok. Oh, on TikTok? Yeah. Well, on a lot of probably platforms, yeah, there is, there is I mean, there's lots of

stuff out there that's not accurate, right? I think the main takeaway that I want people to realize is they should be thinking about the way they're eating, they should be thinking about food about like, instead of what should I avoid, they should be

thinking about what do I need. And I think, that makes it so much easier because when you start to realize all these vitamins and minerals you need essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, then you start to realize, okay, I need to eat my leafy greens, I need to eat, you know, my carrots for the beta carotene, I need to eat my seeds and nuts for the vitamin E. You start to coordinate like each food, coline, I got my eggs, you know, or my soybeans if you're vegan or chickpea, right? You start to coordinate like what foods are high each nutrient protein. I need my protein. Okay, well, where am I going to get my protein? But when you

think about your meals like that, there's no room. You'll be full. There's no room for some chips. There's no room for like the processed food stuff, right? Because you've already gotten full of what you actually need to fuel your body, to fuel everything. And I think that's a really good way to think about eating. And nobody ever thinks about it that way. It's always avoid glucose, avoid processed food. Saturate as fat. Fat is bad. Whatever. It's always this avoid like what not to eat. But like what about thinking about what we actually should be eating? What do we need? And that makes it so much easier because you won't eat the other stuff. You don't need it, you know? So that's one thing. Two, I do think it's important to supplement to fill your

micronutrient gaps. I think it's a low-hanging fruit. It makes a difference in the way you age and the way you feel. And it's super easy to do. It does make a difference. I think that's another one to take away. And the third one is, I think, exercise is the most important thing you can do for mental health and physical health and for your health span, improving the way you age, you know, is exercise. Nothing's better than that. I also want to direct people to, you have a cognitive enhancement blueprint at BDNFProtocals.com. You have, as we mentioned, the omega-3 supplementation guide.

That's fMF omega-3 guide.com. And also how to train, according to the experts, which is something we didn't get to get into a lot. but that is at how to train guide.com. Tell people where they can find everything else about you. Well, thank you. Yeah, those free guys are wonderful. Start. I've got a podcast. I'm on all platforms. It's called Found My Fitness. You can look my name up, Dr. Ron Patrick. I'm on social media. I'm on X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all of it. You can find me again. Found My Fitness is my handle. Or you can just look up Dr. Rhonda Patrick and you'll find me as well. And then I have a website where you can find me as well. And that's foundmyfitness.com.

Good, brilliant. Thank you so much. Really so much fun to get to talk to you. Thanks so much. Okay. What I was, what I'm taking away here is that my coffee consumption is actually okay. I was worried that I was overdoing it for a while. Everyone was worried. Everyone listening to this episode was like, what's Jonathan going to do about his coffee? What I have noticed, though, is that it's, I feel like it's impacting my voice a little bit. I heard that singers don't consume coffee because it impacts their vocal cords.

Yeah, it does. What does it do to the vocal cords? I mean, I'm basically singing while talking. This is what I try to do for everyone. I only hear singing when you open your, when you open your mouth. That's with my intention. Hold on. It's a, well, it, so coffee is dehydrating.

I know that, and it is a diuretic as we talked about. It dehydrates the vocal cords. One of the things that happens, you know, when you have a weak voice or losing your voice, is actually that you're dehydrated, just like water. So, yeah, anything that's a diuretic, soda, those are things that make the body, you know, kind of lose water. Coffee contributes to acid reflux, which can irritate the vocal cords. And that is something that might happen in shorter time. And a lot of people may not realize that they're having acid reflux because it,

may not feel like acid reflux, like on the commercials, but one of the symptoms is an irritation of vocal cords because it's literally coming back up. That I don't feel. Maybe, yeah, I don't think that's my thing. But interesting to know, and like so many of these other micronutrients that we're talking about, there's a cause and effect that we're not really aware of. And what I love about these types of conversations and the work that she does, as well as so many others in the space and some of that we've, some that we've had on, it's looking at, oh, wait a second, that health

issue that you're having may be related to something way upstream. Fascinating. I've caught myself in some podcasts being like clearing my throat and like having it catchy. And I'm like, oh, I wonder if my coffee consumption beforehand had an impact. Should I be adding water to the mix? No, no. Meaning not in the coffee, but beforehand. I think that it doesn't, it's not like that.

It's not like I drink my coffee, my cord just get affected. It's more about the whole body. You know, a lot of people use, like, we can talk about it here. We talk about everything. A lot of people use coffee to poop. So when you poop, you're losing water. Like, it's a diuretic. But you're not suggesting not to poop because that would be very bad for you.

No, but same thing with cigarette smoke. It's going to be a diuretic. That's going to irritate your vocal cords in a way that caffeine will not. But she was saying, too, like the other thing that is, I think, important to differentiate is two to three to four cups is not necessarily like a cup like this that we're holding up. Like three of these are, that's not a cup. Most coffees are like 12 to 16 ounces. Well, most of that's milk and whipped cream.

No, but I'm saying just if you're having, if you're going to get like a black coffee. I can't even have that kind of dairy, but that's, if I were drinking coffee, that's what I would want. I would make it taste like so much like caramel and I'd want so much. I'd be like double whipped cream. I'll pay an extra $2. That's why they don't let you in Starbucks. That's why I don't drink coffee. Did you ever drink coffee?

Yeah, like in my, you know, in my coffee house days, like in the, you know, early 90s. When you were reading Sartre with your French hat. Yeah, I mean, I graduated high school in 93. It was like the height of like, you know, Seattle culture, grunge culture. You're wearing your Doc Martins and your plaid shirt around your waist with your dark makeup. Yes. It was definitely, it was definitely an era of hanging out of coffee shops. And what would you do? You would just like sip it, not really drink it? Or did you like it at that? Even at that time, I think I was eating dairy, but it never occurred to me. My parents would drink

coffee and my mom would put a lot of like milk in it. Like I knew how to, someone said to me it's not a normal thing. I knew how to make each of my parents favorite ice coffee. Like that was a thing. Like in the afternoon, in the summer, I would be like, okay, he wants this much. milk, so it's this color and she wants this. It was like preparing their martini, but it was their iced coffee. So I had tasted it and it just tasted like sugar. So I drank it black, but like it never tasted great. I never really felt the effect, but I know that if I drink too much caffeine, I just get shaky and jittery. Also, when I speak, you animate like you're my stage mom. And I think it's an act of devotion. But a lot of times I'll be talking to you and it's like we're on dance moms.

I'm your favorite dance job. What do I do? Oh, well, say a sentence and I'll show you what you do. So when you were drinking... It's, I think we're in meshed, and are you codependent? It would be an episode that Jonathan should review. Interesting.

I don't have a good listening face. You did very well today. You were very engaged with Dr. Rhonda. You clearly have been up on all of these topics. One of the things that I appreciate, that echoed another episode of ours that people liked a lot. Dr. William Lee, the way that he helps you design your eating, really reminded me of the way that Dr. Patrick talks about it. The notion of what if instead of being like, what's available or like what's convenient, you were like, I need to plan meals that check these boxes off so that I'm getting all the proper categories of nutrients and food, how do I plan my meal?

and then, lo and behold, there wouldn't be a lot of room for, you know, kind of the filler that a lot of us want because it tastes so good. I was taking notes during this podcast like I do sometimes. And what I was kind of shocked about, and this is not even a, you know, detailed list fully, 90% of people are missing this, 87% of people are deficient in this. 50 to 60 percent don't have enough of this. Like there's an epidemic of pre-clinical health issues that are happening that are just waiting below the surface. Well, I mean, in many cases, they're not below the surface. The general, like, the message that I got is we're not generally eating an appropriate amount of different nutrients.

We're not living in an environment, both like literally the environment in terms of sun exposure and all these things. and also the sort of social environment to support the systems that our body naturally is made, you know, to operate with. So when we think about, you know, what what the human experience was like a thousand years ago, what it was like 10,000 years ago and what it was like 100,000 years ago, right? We're in a very different state of nature right now. And the things that have changed in our culture and in our way of living, they're cumulative and they are cumulatively deleterious in many cases. Also, people used to live until they were 30, maybe 40. So what is... We've been out of that for a little bit now. We've been out of that for a little bit, but if you look at the length of time

that Homo sapiens sapiens have existed, it's not, I mean, I know it's not as important to you to think about those people, but, you know, there was a lot of time when, you know, people were, and granted, they were likely deficient in things, and we know that from a lot of the really interesting, you know, physical anthropology studies and things like that. But, um, you know, you know, But yeah, in the sort of state that we're living in now, you know, it's been, it's been a rough go. It's really been a rough go. And it's been a rough century in many ways. And there have been so many advances.

But as we talked about, a lot of those advances have turned out to be, you know, not necessarily in our best interest, right? Microwaving plastic to heat things up is very, very efficient. And it's a fast way to do things. But we now know that, like, if we can use glass, we really should be, right? Like, for real. there's also a lot of positive and very practical steps that people can take. Like, it's not that difficult to get a multivitamin. It's not cost prohibitive getting the right multivitamin, making sure that you have a fish oil.

Just how... Or an algae oil. Or an algae oil. Just how impactful that can be as an antioxidant to help us repair some of that oxidative stress that's coming into our body. Because we're getting exposed all the time. And the other thing I thought was really interesting is the idea of an anti-inflammatory response. We talk about it physically here, but also emotionally, like there's a parallel, meaning you can't eliminate all the stress that you're going to experience, both on a physical level and on a psychological level. So how on a psychological level do we use some of the tools that we talk about on this podcast, framing, regulation, knowing what's in our control, what isn't?

And then also how do we make sure that on a physiological level, we're getting the support we need so that when the stress does arise, our body's able to metabolize it. Talk a little bit more about the mind-body connection that was unpacked here. Yeah, I mean, that's like it's something I feel like I've heard before, but the way that she talked about it made so much sense to me. And I just couldn't help but thinking like all the things that we go to the doctor for and they don't know to look for these things or there's not money to look for these things or there's not time for look for these things. So I really appreciate her kind of like filling us in on like here are some things you can try before you have to try fill in the blank, right? Before you are put on a medication that you actually may not need. And I don't want to say that people shouldn't go on antidepressants. Like if you need an antidepressant by all means, if you want to go on an antidepressant.

But what if what you're dealing with is actually inflammation and you've been given a diagnosis that's constitutional, right? Your body doesn't produce enough serotonin, right? Like, that's a very different story. And, you know, then you're dealing with, like, side effects of those medications or you just end up on an SSRI and you're like, I'm just going to be on this forever. When maybe what's going on is, like, A, some of the foods you're eating may be causing inflammation, like gut, brain connection. You may be, like, having a brain on fire is what I call it. Or what if some supplements could fill in some of those gaps to help reduce inflammation, which is a normal thing that happens, like there's inflammation. But what if you just don't have enough stuff?

Like what if you're literally going on a diagnosis that might not even be appropriate for what you're experiencing? You may be going to the doctor thinking that you have depression with all the clinical symptoms of depression. But really what might be happening is you may not have enough fish oils. You may not have enough vitamin E in order to have an anti-inflammatory response. So your body is having a physiological response. And sure, you could go back and do psychotherapy. and we're a big proponents of therapy here to understand your patterns.

No, but you might just need a supplement of some stuff that you can get at the supermarket. You may have had a nutrient deficiency, a micronutrient deficiency that is preventing your body from being able to regulate itself. Well, and I'm really, you know, grateful for people like Dr. Rhonda

and, you know, and the Hubermans and the Ateas and Dr. Lee, like the people who are bringing this more into our consciousness is because there is more of it that's in our control, you know, and it can be very disempowering, you know, to be put on a medication and think that there's something wrong with you when there actually may be more to the story. So, again, we're not advocating for people throwing out your SSRIs, but also finding out more information or trying things in addition to what you're doing

because maybe it's not just about you're not meditating, right? You're not exercising enough. You're not, you know, in a job that brings you the ultimate joy that it could. It's top-down bottom-up. Jonathan. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. But if we had to summarize, it's top-down, bottom-up, right? Top-down being, let's analyze how you think, what your thought process is, how you're making meaning of the world, what your past history is, your emotional complexity, your upbringing, bottom-up. Do you have the basic physiological building blocks? And that's actually a nice parallel. You know, on the podcast, we talk a lot about emotional health. We look at extrasensory ability. We explore the edges of what's possible. We're science. and spirituality meet.

And then we have a podcast like this because we're all in physical form. We have these bodies. We can't have spiritual experience without still being alive in the vessels that we have come here in. And so how do we take care of these bodies that we have in order to continue the human experience that we're all having? Bottom up, how do we make sure that we're getting what we need? One of the articles that she published with Dr. Ames, who she mentioned, was an article about vitamin D, hormone regulation and serotonin synthesis and the high rates of autism in boys and a differential distribution of vitamin D and serotonin in boys that might account for the increased diagnosis

in autism for boys. Very interesting paper. So she does so much like deep, deep work, but we're so grateful that she talked to us about all these things and also some fun stuff today. So yeah, check out her website. Check out, yeah, especially those guides that she talked about. out there really, really cool. Maim, if people don't know what Substack is, tell them what Substack is. Well, Substack is a platform that our podcast exists on where we have more in-depth conversations in many cases about the things that we talk about on the podcast. And Substack is also a place where we can communicate directly with our breakers and also

share content that we've never shared anywhere else, that we've been kind of saving up. to share with a more select audience of people that we know want that content. And so it exists over on Substack. That is very well explained. A lot of people ask, what is Substack? It is a platform. They have an app. They have a website.

You create an account. You join and you follow us there. And not look at what you want. And yeah. There's a lot of things on Substack, but you can follow us, the podcast, the Breakdown community, the breaker community. We have exclusive content there, never before.

least not seen anywhere else. Miami and I do lives. If you love what you're hearing here, please come over. Join us. Considered becoming a paid member, but there's also a free membership. And also, I've gotten back to writing. So I do writing that is on Miami-Belix breakdown

substack. And Jonathan does writing on his substack page, which is Jonathan Cohen. I do have a substack, but I write from the Miami-Bi-Lex breakdown podcast. So you can also see writing, which is usually things elaborating on things we've talked about here. And also just general writing that otherwise I'd be blogging about or submitting to other publications,

we now have a place where all of that lives. So head on over. The larger takeaway is Google Substack. Put it into Google. Go to subsdack.com. Search for My and Beallex Breakdown. And follow us there. We are so excited to continue to build the breakdown community. We'll see you over there. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's Myambiolics Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a Neuroscience Ph.D. or two. One fix you.

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