Modern Wisdom - #750 - Dr Rhonda Patrick - The Most Important Daily Habits For Health & Longevity

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Dr Rhonda Patrick is an biomedical scientist, researcher and a podcaster. Determining the best actions to take for enhancing our health and extending our lives has grown more challenging. There are an unlimited number of wellness approaches at our disposal, thankfully Dr Patrick has dedicated her professional life to identifying the most evidence-based strategies for improving our health and longevity. Expect to learn if low omega 3s are worse for you than smoking cigarettes, what Rhonda's thoughts are on vaping and nicotine, the best foods to boost your metabolism, the once a week workout that can de-age your heart by 20 years, how to get the benefits of heat exposure if you don't have a sauna, the terrifying health risks of being too sedentary and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 30% off your first subscription order at https://HVMN.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 20% discount on all supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr Ronda Patrick. She's a biomedical scientist, researcher and a podcaster. Determining the best actions to take for enhancing our health and extending our lives has grown more challenging. There are an unlimited number of wellness approaches at our disposal. Thankfully, Dr Patrick has dedicated her entire professional life to identifying the most evidence-based strategies for improving our health and longevity. Expect to learn if low omega-3s are worse for you than smoking cigarettes, what Ronda's thoughts are on vaping and nicotine, the best foods to boost your metabolism, the once-a-week workout that can de-age your heart by 20 years, how to get the benefits of heat exposure

if you don't have a sauna, the terrifying health risks of being too sedentary, and much more. This was a lot of fun. I've been a massive fan of Ronda's for a long time, and it's nice to see someone who's focusing on the exercise side as well as the diet side. There seems to be this obsession with diet as the only thing that you can manipulate. Meanwhile, all of the exercise protocols kind of get forgotten about and Ronda is definitely in both camps. So I think there is tons and tons to take away from this. Plus, I've actually started incorporating some of the training protocols into my weekly routine, which is both painful, savage and hopefully going to make me die later. So I'll report back in 80 years. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Ronda Patrick. Are low omega-3s worse than smoking cigarettes? I don't know that they're worse.

So omega-3 fatty acids are essential for many things. And I think you're referring to one specific study that came out of Dr. Bill Harris' group. He's the head of the Fatty Acid Research Institute, and he's actually the pioneer of the Omega 3 index test, which is how you should measure your Omega 3 levels. They're measured in our red blood cells rather than what you'll 99% of the time find if you get an Omega 3 test, it's plasma levels. So red blood cells take about 120 days to turn over, so it's a long-term marker of your Omega 3. Whereas if you go and get an Omega 3 plasma test, it's kind of like, what did I eat for

dinner in the last week? So you may have had a bunch of salmon, but maybe you don't usually eat salmon. So anyways, the Omega 3 index is a way to measure Omega 3 levels. And he had done a study looking at Omega 3 levels and what's called all-cause mortality. So people dying from all sorts of non-accidental causes. Cardiovascular disease is always at the top of the list because that's pretty much what everyone's dying of. That's like the number one cause of death in most developed countries.

And so he was looking at all-cause mortality and correlating that with the omega-3 index, which essentially is measuring fatty acid levels. And what he found was that, so people that have a low omega-3 index, so that would be 4% or less, and then comparing it to people that had a high omega-3 index, so that would be 8% or higher. So people that had the high omega-3. So that would be 8% or higher. So people that had the high Omega 3 index had a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with the low.

Now people in the United States on average have about a four to five percent Omega 3 index. So it's pretty standard, I would say, in terms of what people in the US have in terms of their Omega 3 versus Japan where they eat a lot of seafood, their Omega 3 index is like 10%. And they have a five-year increased life expectancy, by the way, compared to people in the United

States. So what he also did, him and his colleagues looked at, they stratified the data and looked at other factors, physical activity, you know, BMI, smoking. And this is where it got super interesting because, and I just, the graph of this data does it like more justice, you know, because you can visually see it. But he looked at all cause mortality and people that like lived the longest were of course the high omega three index with no smoking, right? So like non smokers, they had the longest life expectancy. And then people with the longest life expectancy. And then

people with the lowest life expectancy were smokers with a low omega-3 index. But then when you looked at people that smoked but had a high omega-3 index, either they're eating a lot of fish or supplementing, they had the same life expectancy as people with low omega-3 but didn't smoke. So in other words, having a low omega-3 index was like smoking with respect to all cos mortality. And that's, you know, and of course I get all the smokers that they're going, oh, so all I have to do is supplement omega-3.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's the wrong way to think about it. You know, I think most people now know smoking is terrible for your health. And it goes back to this idea, this framework that I like to think about nutrition, which is what do we need, right, instead of like always focusing on what to avoid. Because if you focus on what to avoid, you still may not be getting what you need to run your metabolism to run, you know, neurotransmitter synthesis and all of that. So omega-3 fatty

acids are hugely important for many things, and we could talk hours for that. So omega-3 fatty acids are hugely important for many things and we could talk hours for that. But with respect to smoking, it's really quite, it's kind of astounding when you just look at that graph and they're like overlaid where you're like, oh wow, non-smokers are with omega-3 are living as long as smokers with high omega-3. Do you think that this is a direct cause of the omega-3s

or is there some healthy user bias that's upstream from the kinds of people who are the kinds of people that are like people that will have Omega-3s in their diet? Great question. So with this type of data, which is observational data, it's always a correlation. So you can never definitively say it's cause, right, a causation. So yes, it could be a healthy user bias. There were other factors that were accounted for, but I will say this. Smoking, everyone thinks about smoking and lung cancer,

or like cancer risk, right? Actually, the biggest problem with smoking is heart disease. It is a huge, so here's the thing that I like to think about, like with respect to smoking and disease risk. Smoking in a dose dependent manner will increase your risk for lung cancer. So in other words, the more cigarettes that you smoke, the higher the risk of cancer. But it's not a linear increase with respect to cardiovascular disease and heart attack risk.

So you can just have a little bit of cigarettes and your heart disease risks skyrockets. Omega-3 is one of the biggest things that it protects against is heart disease, right? Doctors prescribe it. So there's been randomized controlled trials where people are given high dose omega-3, purified omega-3, in the form of either EPA, which is one of the marine sources or a combination of DHA and EPA. And a variety of studies have shown that like heart attack risk, risk of dying from cardiovascular disease is dramatically lower in people that are given omega-3s compared to a placebo. So the fact that the non-smokers with a low omega-3 index are probably affecting their cardiovascular health.

Inflammation is a big, also a big driver of cardiovascular disease and omega-3s are really good at lowering inflammation in many different ways. So yeah, to sort of the long-winded answer to your question is, no, you can't definitively say that healthy user bias isn't involved. But there's a mechanism that we could see how it would work. There is. And again, there is adjustment for other health factors.

So you would think that that would show up. Let's say that someone goes, I hadn't even thought about Omega-3s. I should probably optimize those. What's the 80-20 of getting good Omega-3s in your diet? Someone might struggle with seafood, it's kind of hard or expensive to cook at home. Where would you send them for getting it from diet, getting it from supplementation?

What do they need to know? So I think I talked about the Omega-3 index, and again, you wanna get 8% or higher. It's always good to measure things, but there's been studies done where people with a low Omega-3 index, so the standard American basically, 4%, if you give them about two grams a day of omega-3, they can raise their omega-3 index from 4% to 8%.

So that would be a supplemental form. Pretty two grams, so I'll just give you some perspective. Physicians prescribe what's Levesa, which is a DHA and EPA ethyl ester form. We can talk about different forms of omega-3 of omega-3. And they also prescribe the SIPA, which is a highly pure EPA form. And they prescribe them in the gram dose of four grams per day. So that's twice as much as two grams a day,

which is what I'm getting at, it's a fairly safe dose. And so two grams a day can raise people from 4% to 8%. I think that's a really good sort of just starting point or the average person. Now, I take experimentally higher doses, but I think generally speaking, it's pretty safe for most people to take two grams a day and you're going to get that high omega-3 index at 8%. Where are they going to go? How are they going to assess without getting some Norwegian farmer that's squeezing fish into a barrel and doing it holistically himself.

What can you say about assessing the quality of. I even remember cod liver oil tablets back in the day there's all sorts of opera before there was even a podcasting universe to kind of scrutinize it. What do people need to know if they're choosing their omega three supplement. I think choosing omega three supplement is we actually have a lot of data now a days. We have access to that data quite easily because there's a lot of third-party testing sites that go out and they just randomly get fish oil supplements off the grocery store shelves and they say I'm gonna take this supplement and I'm gonna measure important things. I'm gonna measure the concentration of the Omega-3s, EPA and DHA. Is the concentration in there what is stated on the bottle?

I'm going to measure, you know, so fish, it's being isolated for, it's an oil, it's in the fat, right? So fish also have contaminants. They have PCBs, they have mercury, among others. And so measuring those contaminants is important because fish oil is generally purified, but you want to make sure a good job was done. So those contaminants are measured. And then oxidation, so omega-3s are a polyunsaturated fatty acid prone to oxidation. And so you don't want to get something that has an oxidation greater than 10.

So anything greater than 10 of total oxidation you want to avoid because it's like consuming rancid fat, right? Rancid lipids. Like you don't want to do that. So those things are all measured and there's sources out there. So Consumer Lab is a third party testing site that, you know, there's a lot of affordable brands that you can find because some supplements are just very expensive.

So I do like to kind of send people there because I have no affiliation with Consumer Lab, by the way. I just like that, like I use them. So I like that you can go and find a pretty decent quality fish oil supplement. If you're a data nerd like me, you can take this up a level and you can go to the International Fish Oil Standard site, I-F-O-S. They just, I mean, it's like data party. Like they give you so much data, but like you have to like know what to do with it.

So they measure all these things, but like at everything else, right? Um, and they also tell you the form it's in. So I mentioned at the Lester for the prescription form, there's also triglyceride form. Those are the two main forms that you can find. Fish oil supplements or omega three supplements in. And, um, generally speaking, triglyceride form is the most bioavailable. Triglyceride form is what is the form that if you're eating fish, the omega-3s are in triglyceride form. When the omega-3s are purified, they take it out of the triglyceride form

and they purify it and it's in an ethyl ester form. Some companies then re-esterify it back into that form to make it supreme and more bioavailable. Both pure and bioavailable. Exactly, but not everyone does that. And so if you get an ethyl ester form, which is what is prescribed, most people that are getting prescription form of omega-3 to help prevent cardiovascular disease,

they're taking ethyl ester form. That's what I've got. The thing to know is you have to take it with a meal and preferably with a higher fat meal because it is absorbed. It, you will absorb so little if you're taking it on empty stomach. It's very important. And I didn't want to get into all the new ones, but I mentioned two grams a day of Omega

3 will raise your Omega 3 index from low to high, right? 4% to 8%. Well, if you really kind of look at the form people were taking, triglyceride versus ethylester, you know, they had to take, you know, less of the triglyceride form to get there. But so I like to just average it out and say two. But so if you can get triglyceride form, it's a great form to get. How much salmon or cod or halibut do I need to eat per week

if I was going to try and get this through my diet? Right, I mean, that's a question that I don't have empirical data to back up. But also, so here's my sort of thoughts on that. I do think that while the Laskin salmon is one of the best words of Omega 3, because that is a fish that has a very low level of contaminants, like mercury, PCBs per gram or per ounce, I guess is usually measured per ounce of the fish, right?

So salmon would be a great source. Now, how much of that you have to eat? It's really, you know, depends on the cooking method, like how cooked was it because you can degrade some of the omega-3s that are somewhat heat sensitive. So I don't know how much you would have to do a test, right? So you'd have to say, okay, I typically eat salmon two nights a week or three nights a week. And then you want to wait 120 days, right? Because it takes that long for your red blood cells

to turn over. I know, here's the protocol. Rhonda, just tell me how much salmon I need to eat. Come on, please. I don't know, I can't eat it. At least, at least. I would say you probably have to supplement on top of that. I don't know that twice a week is necessarily gonna go

from 4% to 8%. Got you. But if you were to do, you know, I would imagine a lot of the people that care about this listening to this protocol will think, right, I'm going to find a good quality, low oxidation triglyceride version of Omega 3s that are responsibly sourced that I like to look of. I'm going to take two grams of that per day. And I'm probably going to try and have some sort of grams of that per day and I'm probably gonna try and have some sort of fish meal twice per week. Does that seem realistic?

That's absolutely, that's what I do. I mean, I mean, that's what I do. I do up the dose a little bit more, but like I said, you know, I like eat it, like I take it throughout the day, the omega threes. You mentioned about smoking there. Did you see that the UK is thinking about introducing, it looks like it's going to introduce

a disposable vape ban country-wide. Electric camera. Disposable vape ban. Is there a non-disposable vapes that will still be allowed? Yeah, so you know the kind of liquid that people, the e-liquid that people put into these huge things that look like knuckle dusters. So those will still be allowed.

So people can still get the non-disposable vape liquid plus the contraptions you need to make it work. But the Elf bar, the Escobar, that stuff. What are teenagers getting their hands on? What are junior high school? Are they getting them on the disposal? It's the disposables. Is that the driving force? It's just way more arduous to be, you go and buy this thing and then you get the liquid and then you fill it with the liquid and all the rest of it. And the flavours are a little bit more tough to balance. But yeah, it's the disposable stuff.

There's a couple of comments about an environmental impact because they do, you know, the batteries, you're basically throwing away a battery with some residual nicotine in it. Not good. but more not good is the fact that teachers in the UK have found that like a non-insignificant percentage of school children are dependent on disposable vapes. Okay, so I was gonna say, I don't, there's like, I can see arguments either way. I'm personally as a parent and I have talked to teachers. I mean, it's insane huge a huge problem in many schools where- In the US?

Yes, in the US. Vaping? Vaping in class, in the bathrooms. Yeah, they've installed a special- And these are like 12, 13 year olds. Vapet detectors in the bathrooms of British schools. Yeah, no, it's a problem here too, especially in public schools.

And so I personally like I'm bias and I'm like, good, like I don't want these like it's so easy and it's like bubble gum flavored. It's like, it's like geared towards I almost feel like was there a push to like get them earlier? But you know, so in that regard, I'm on I'm on board to be honest. Have you looked into the dangers of vaping much at all? What do you think about that? I have, you know, I've tweeted a couple of studies.

I haven't done a deep dive on it. I mean, I know there's some studies about it's like lung issues, but I don't know if it was like contaminants that are hitchhiking in with the vape. So no, I haven't done a deep dive, but I do plan on doing a deeper dive into like that world of like nicotine and vaping. Now's the time with this UK ban.

So yeah, it's, um, I've been thinking about it for a while. Has the introduction of fruity flavored vapes, like sparkle, rainbow, unicorn dust flavored vapes and stuff, which are easily accessible, pretty cheap. 4,000 puffs or 2,000 puffs or whatever. So like they last for quite a while. Has that been a net positive or negative? Because it's certainly allowed a lot of people who were previously smokers and cigarettes are,

no matter how bad you think the vapes are, cigarettes are so much worse, like 20 times worse based on the stuff that I've seen as an educated reader of non-scientific journals. But how many more people have been thin end of the wedged into a nicotine dependency because it's more convenient, because of smoking bands, you can now do it inside, tastes better. It's just a more enjoyable experience. The hit is very, very high and fast. So I wonder whether the introduction of the vape world has been a net positive or

negative against cigarettes, because to me, cigarette scene, Mark Norman's got this great joke where he says that smoking an actual cigarette now is so socially like pushed back against that if someone saw you in an alleyway and you were secretly trying to smoke a cigarette and they asked what you were doing, you'd say that you were killing a hooker. Because like that's more socially acceptable. Wait, is it still like that? So I haven't been like, the last time I went to, I was in like Amsterdam, 2015, I was shocked by how many people were just smoking. Mainland Europe's different.

They're a different breed. Italians, the Spanish, the French, you know, they're eating croissants at 10pm at night, just chain smoking with a glass of red wine. They're going to live to 105. It doesn't matter, right? They're different. They're built different over there. I don't know what's going on with them. But you know what? This just kind of brings back to your first point was the smoking and Omega-3. And don't Japanese men smoke pretty? I'm pretty sure that Japan's going. And they're living on average longer and they eat a lot of fish, right? Smokers high omega-3 index.

Smokers as much as possible eat enough fish. So here's another thing. Max Lugavier, you know Max? No, I don't. Great guy. He's very much in your world, a genius foods guy, real cool dude. He introduced me to these things called knickknacks. So they are like very carefully sourced like nicotine mints, I guess. And just nicotine is a new tropic. Nicotine is an improve focus, attention seems to be like that's big at the moment. But then the pouches, zins and snus and stuff like that,

there's a lot of questions about what's that doing to your gums, what's actually in that, there's flavorings in them now, where the flavoring's coming from. So it's like, there's this permanent sort of cycle of something new comes in and oh, that might be really great. And then it comes out the bottom end and you're like, oh, we don't know what's in it. And it might actually be really dangerous for everyone. So someone that's in their 30s and in that world that I'm not in is who mentioned to me like, have you looked into nicotine? Because I use these zin, is it zin? Yeah. And I'm just like, what is this? Like this is like- It's an entire new universe of stimulants.

And I'm like, I have got to look into all this because like, eventually my son will be, I've got to look into all this because like, eventually my son will be, you know, of the age. And so that's kind of what started my interest in doing a deep dive on actine is like, okay, well, is there a negative effect? Like maybe there's a trade off. There's always a trade off. There's always a trade off.

So what is it? What is it, right? Very interesting. Yeah, I'm fascinated by what's going to, what's downstream from new technologies, whether it be legitimate technology like typical sort of screen, social media, virtual reality, Apple's new headset just came out recently, or it's health technologies or it's delivery mechanisms for things that we used to have. But this is in a new way. And what does that actually mean? So, yeah. We'll get back to talking to Rondra in one minute, but first I need to tell you about

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all of this now? So time restricted feeding or time restricted eating, you know, it's a form of intermittent fasting, right? And I think that many people, when they think about intermittent fasting, they think, okay, well, I just need to skip a meal. I need to like have a period of, I need to extend my period of time where I'm not eating and the easiest way to do that is skip a skip a meal and that's kind of

What happened? So, you know, Dr. Satchin Panda a good friend of mine big, you know circadian biologist researcher does a lot of research on timership defeating and You know, we talked about this like almost 10 years ago Essentially there's a circadian reason to 10 years ago, essentially there's a circadian reason to eat your food within a certain time window and then have a period of rest and fasting, right? So everything on our body runs on a clock and including our metabolism. And so we're most insulin sensitive in the morning, least insulin sensitive in the evening, right? So your blood glucose levels will go much higher

with the same carbohydrate intake in the evening versus the morning, even, you know, just calories are same, everything's the same. There's also some argument to be made by you just need a period of rest, like your gut digestion, all that, like energy is being diverted to do that when you're digesting food.

Like that's a big thing. And there's also a lot of responses that happen after you eat a meal, causing inflammation and things like that that divert energy there. So it's taking energy away from other things like repair. So repairing processes usually happen when you're in a fasted state. So just like when you're sleeping, your brain shuts down, right? Like your brain, if you didn't sleep, your brain's not going to repair. It's not going to stop. Like you need that rest period. Well, the same goes for like other organs, like a neat, they need a rest period.

And, and so it's really important to have that rest period, right? So the longer the rest, the longer the rest period is, the better in terms of like having enough energy to like do those repair processes, things like that require energy and there's also other reasons as well. But generally speaking, there's an argument why it's good to have a rest period, a fasting period. And is that, does it need to be 16 hours? Does it need to be 20? Does it need to be 12?

I don't really know that we know the exact time to that. But what we do know is that talking about this to the public was translated to, I need to skip breakfast. That was like the take home was, okay, I need to do a 16 hour, I need to do eat my food within eight hours and do a 16 hour fast.

And the way I'm gonna do that is I'm gonna skip breakfast and keep, extend my factory. Lunch at 12, have dinner at eight, graze between then and hands off. And that was exactly, and that was kind of the take home, the practical implication there that everyone started doing. The problem with that is that, you know, so our muscle is the biggest reservoir for amino acids. Just like, you know, we store glucose as glycogen in our liver, in our muscle, we store triglycerides as, you know, you know, we, fat as triglycerides in our adipose tissue. We don't really store mus, I mean, we don't really store amino acids, but you can kind

of think of the muscle as a reservoir for it. Because when we have a period of basically we're not getting an intake of amino acids, we need it. We need amino acids of amino acids, we need it. We need amino acids to survive, like we need them. And so our body pulls from our muscle. So in the morning, if you think about it, what's the longest period you go without having amino acids? Well, it's when you're sleeping.

So breakfast is actually really important. It's important to get protein amino acids in that first meal. Because if you extend that fasting period by skipping breakfast, your body's going to be like, I need protein. I got to make a bunch of proteins to like have my heartbeat and my kidneys function, right? So it's going to pull amino acids out of your muscle. And so that can cause muscle atrophy, particularly if you're not doing resistance training. So amino acid is one way to stimulate muscle, protein synthesis.

The other way to do it would be resistance training. So there have been studies done, like for example, women that are doing time restricted feeding, they will not lose muscle mass if they're doing resistance training. So- Does it mitigate the gains of resistance training by doing that?

It mitigates the atrophy. So it's mitigating- No, sorry. Does time-restricted feeding, i.e. skipping breakfast, limit the gains made from resistance training if both of those things are done together? Not if you're getting enough protein. I mean, not in that study, at least.

I think if you're not getting enough protein within 24-hour period, yes. But like if you're getting, so to get your gains in, and I'm sure you've had people on talking about this, but like the RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. And that was determined like forever ago. When we were using older techniques, we as scientists,

not me, because I haven't personally done this experiment, but the scientific community was using techniques that underestimated amino acid losses. So these committees were set up to determine, okay, how much amino acids, what quantity of amino acids do we lose every day? And how much do we make sure we have to get each day to replenish that, right? And so those losses were underestimated. In other words, we're losing more than they thought.

And so what does that mean? That means, oh, maybe the RDA for protein is too low. So people like Dr. Stuart Phillips and others have now redone these experiments with newer, more sensitive technologies, because that's what happens with time, right? We get better technologies, more sensitivity. And they've now determined that it's actually 1.2 grams per kilogram to just bare minimum,

prevent losses. Another 50% on top of what was originally. 50% originally. And if you're actually doing, if you're physically active, if you're doing resistance training, that goes up to 1.6 grams per figure. That's the minimum. And well, 1.2 was the minimum, but like to like build muscle to get the gains you're talking about.

And there's actually been studies done in older adults. This is a big problem. Older adults are, they're not as sensitive to amino acids. It's called anabolic resistance. So with the same protein intake, they won't build as much muscle if they're 65 versus when they were 30. So granddad needs to be cooking twice as many steaks. He needs twice as many steaks.

And there's been studies looking at the actual RDA of older adults get 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. And then the other group gets 1.2 grams per kilogram body weight. The group that got 1.2 has much higher muscle mass gains. And just actually prevents the atrophy that is happening just with age. Okay. So getting back to the time restricted eating thing. Yes. How should someone incorporate this into their lifestyle? What it sounds like you're saying is have a high protein meal at some point early in the day. But if you're also saying that it's important for us to have a period of rest and

digest so that it's digest, rest and repair can actually happen. How should people think about about doing that, especially given the fact that sorry, later in the day, insulin sensitivity is skewed. Anyone that did carb night or carb back loading 15 years ago because they read a bodybuilding.com forum like me knows that. So you've kind of got this, oh, it's good to eat some things later in the day. There's this skew down that way, but there's also we can't miss breakfast. So it's like, that just sounds like eating all day to me. When do we stop? Right. Yeah, sorry, I went off on a tangent there, but yeah. So the time restricted eating, okay,

there's a couple of good ways to think about it. You want to stop eating about three hours before you go to bed, if possible, okay? That's last bit of food in mouth. Yes, yes, because you got to add another five minutes. So last bit of food in mouth doesn't mean, I'm now on a fasted state, you gotta calculate five hours after that.

It takes about five hours to digest, okay? So after the five hours after your last bit of food in the mouth, now you're in a fasted state, right? So that's gonna be when you're sleeping, most likely. You don't have to skip a meal. You can eat your food within an eight hour period and fast for 16 hours without having to skip a meal most of the time unless I guess unless you're an entertainer and your meals do come later

then but still you can still like everything should shift it over and Yes, you'll be you know less incident insulin sensitive later in the day But you can like do some air squats for two minutes. Like you could, there are things you can do to improve insulin sensitivity and also to improve glucose, blood glucose levels, like later in the evening, if you're having a meal and we can talk more about that later. But anyway, so there are things you can do.

I think that the way to think about it is, the easy way is to stop eating about three hours before bed. That's a really easy. And also your sleep improves because when you're digesting, if you eat like right before you get a bed, your body's like awake. It's a really easy. And also your sleep improves because when you're digesting, if you eat like right before you get a bed, your body's like awake.

It's like awake, right? It's like digesting and using energy. It's not... Even beyond what's happening physiologically, just the sense of being full. So that was a club promoter for 15 years, which meant that we would work from... We'd set the club up at 9 p.m. and we'd finish at two in the morning and I'd get back in the food that I prepped that morning, the day before this morning, would be there waiting for me.

Oh, well, you know, I haven't eaten in six hours, seven hours, something like that. Okay, so I'll get in and I'll eat. But just the discomfort of having a lot of food in you. Like even that sucks, right? You know, the other thing is with thinking about it, I think a lot of people got all? And you know, the other thing is with thinking about it, I think a lot of people got all like, you know,

in a tizzy over the fact that like, if you looked at the time of sugar feeding and the weight loss, a lot of the weight loss was due to caloric restriction because people were just actually eating less, they were skipping meals. And it's like, yeah, so a lot of weight loss, I mean, when it comes to weight loss,

like calories in, calories out matter, like energy balance, so a lot of weight loss, I mean, when it comes to weight loss, like calories in, calories out, matter, like energy balance, right? So that's important. I think that's where a lot of people will like, oh, time restriction doesn't matter because it's all about caloric restriction. And it's like, well, yeah, if you're looking at what endpoint are you looking at?

Are you trying to lose weight? Then you get caloric restriction. Like you should be not eating that. However you want. Right, and most people that are like obese, even overweight, they can actually fast and not lose as much muscle. Like some people will go on a fast

or do limit their, they'll skip meals basically. And they can lose like up to 30% of their weight will come from muscle. So, you know, it's crazy, unless you do resistance training, or resistance training is important. Which will mitigate that. Which will mitigate that. Which will mitigate that.

But presumably only if you're having sufficient protein outside of that intermittent fasting window. Not necessarily. That will help you gain more, but like mitigating the atrophy because. You've got the stimulus. You've got the stimulus. Okay.

What would you suggest as a good selection of breakfasts that people could have that kind of meet the criteria that you're talking about here. What would be some of the things right eggs be like like for depending on your body weight you know some if you're if you're a dude you're probably gonna have like five eggs scrambled eggs are great. You got I mean it's got the protein and eggs are really high and they have like a routine andin and choline in them. I mean, choline's important for brain function. Lutein is much higher in greens like kale, but there's some in at least pasture raised eggs, the non-conventional eggs or whatever they're called, those are terrible.

But what is that, just to interject that, what is that to know about eggs? How do you select your eggs? Pasture raised because you want them to eat like grass and stuff, the chickens, because they're getting like, lutein from the greens and lutein is really important for brain function and eye function. I would love to talk about that more when we talk about cognitive function because it actually, there's like, there's not enough lutein in an egg to substitute what's done in clinical studies, but there is in kale.

So, but still it's good to get a source of it. So I think eggs is a really good source of protein for breakfast because it's very nutrient dense with the choline as well. Choline's really high in egg yolk. Bacon and eggs, steak and eggs. Yeah. I mean, whatever your jam is for the protein, bacon and eggs, that's taken eggs, you know. I like to also have some smoked salmon and eggs,

so like my omega-3s. What about the people who are training first thing in the morning? Let's say that they've got to get to work, they're part of the, you know, they're the six AM CrossFit crowds, they're not gonna be up at 4.30 doing the scrambled eggs so that they can digest it in time to go do Fran.

They're gonna probably do a protein shake, like whey protein. So you would still, even for the people that are up early and then go to go and train, it's such a high priority that you would still suggest consuming some protein prior to working out. It's hard to get 1.6 and then like, you know, so Stuart Phillips likes to use this analogy, I'll give him credit for it,

like where you're squeezing the last drops out of the cloth. Like for people that are like really trying to gain muscle mass, like it's like really their thing, you can go like up to like two, you're getting like two grams per kilogram body weight. And so, I mean, there are some people that like, so if you're really trying to like gain that muscle, you do need-

Pretty much one gram per pound. You do, yeah, you do need, unless, unless you're just gonna eat eat like, you know, a lunch and dinner and lots and lots of protein, but it's really not that it's hard to get that much protein. We had this, uh, like rule at uni, which was no one flukes one gram per pound of body weight. No one accidentally goes through their day and looks back at the macros they've

eaten and goes, I hit 180 grams of protein without thinking. Like it has to be conscious. There's no casual diet unless you went to an all you can eat buffet. And even if you do that, it seems like the upper bound for protein absorption within one meal is kind of like 50 grams in any case. Or less, yeah. So 30 to 40, 40, yeah. Yeah.

So you're like, okay, well, well done. You managed to get through four steaks there, but how much of that is actually going to be used by your body? So yeah, that's an interesting one. I found it fascinating kind of observing this intermittent fasting to, we still need to do this, but we need to integrate it, but we need to frontload the protein earlier in the day. And also to just alleviate the protein debt that your 1.6 per kilo of body weight needs to hit by the end of the day. Yeah, I think that it makes sense when you just think about it, like if you're skipping a meal,

you're going to be losing muscle mass, like especially if you're not doing any resistance training. And that's like, okay, well, then I probably shouldn't be skipping a meal, but I can still do time-assurged eating by just stopping my meals before, three hours before bed. And then, you know, you're going to get a period of fasting. Really, you just want that repair mode. You know, you want that repair mode. And there's been clinical studies that have

looked at other endpoints besides weight loss. And it does make a difference that there's improvements in things like blood pressure, for example, things like that. But I don't know that you're going to get the repair. Like there's animal studies mechanistically looking at that. You're not, I don't know that we're going to get that in human data on that. It's going to be hard to do. Um, not impossible, but it's, it's definitely going to cost money to get a clinical trial doing that sort of work. Talk to me about the rest of your framework for approaching nutrition and

making decisions about food. Um, I, like I said, I really like to make decisions about, so I did my post-doctoral research with Dr. Bruce Ames and he's sort of a legend and he's 96 now and that. But he specialized for some towards the mid to end of his career on micronutrients, right? These are important minerals and vitamins and amino acids and fatty acids that you need to get from your diet to run your metabolism. And when I say your metabolism, I don't just mean fat burning. I mean, DNA repair, I mean, you know,

making energy, I mean, making dopamine and serotonin and everything, right? So, a lot of minerals are cofactors for the enzymes that are doing that. In other words, if you don't get those minerals, then the enzymes aren't going to be working optimally. And so things aren't going to be working optimally. And if you're talking about things like repair, what happens is you get this insidious damage. So magnesium is a perfect example. Half the country doesn't get enough magnesium, which is about 320 milligrams for women and

420 for men. And so what happens when you're not getting enough magnesium, which is about 320 milligrams for women and 420 for men. And so what happens when you're not getting enough magnesium? Well, nothing as far as you know, you look in the mirror and you're fine, right? You're not like, oh, damage is happening. You can't see it on a daily basis. If you could, it would be so much more apparent to us. But it's insidious. It's occurring a little bit each day.

And as decades build up, you're not going to be repairing damage to your DNA. And DNA damage is a major, major cause of oncogenic mutations. These are mutations that lead to cancer. So then you get into your fifth, sixth, seventh decade of life, and you got pancreatic cancer, or you got fill-in-the-blank cancer. And there are, of course, studies associating magnesium intake with cancer, and, you know, studies looking at DNA repair as well. So the way I like to think about nutrition is what do I need to get for my diet that is essential for me to be functioning optimally, for me to prevent the damage that can lead to neurodegenerative disease, to cancer.

That's kind of the way. And then also, what do I need to get in terms of my macro nutrients? Like, proteins are really important. I need to think about how much protein you get, right? Because atrophy happens, you start to, you know, you peak muscle mass, 20 to 30s, I guess, and then as you get into your 40s, you start to lose a lot more, like 8% per decade,

and then you get into your 70s, it goes up to 12%. That makes me so sad. Yeah, so that's how I like to think about it where it's like, okay, I need to get magnesium, I need to get omega-3, I need to get vitamin K, I need to get, so what foods are rich in those? And a lot of minerals and some vitamins, it's spread out amongst different food groups.

So vegetables, particularly reliefy greens, are really high in magnesium, they're high in calcium, they're high in vitamin K, they're high in folate. Like we need folate. This is like amazing to talk about this experiment that my mentor did back in like, it was like the 80s, but essentially like he took animals and gave them a full, full--weight deficient diet in one group.

Then the other group, he irradiated the mice, like ionizing radiation, like the stuff that gives you cancer. He looked at double-stranded breaks to your DNA, and that's the start of DNA damage that can lead to cancer. Ionizing radiation causes double-stranded breaks in your DNA. He compared the two groups and they were identical. So not having folate in your diet was like being ionized, getting ionizing radiation.

Or you can get yourself ionized as much as you want as long as you eat spinach. I mean, no, because it's going to do the same thing as not eating spinach. But the point is that people know to avoid going in a machine that's going to be ionized, right? But they don't think about, do I need folate? So it's like that, again, it's that, what do I need to avoid mentality? Which isn't, it's not that you shouldn't think about, like, you do need to think about things to avoid. But we need, I think the priority and the focus first is what do I need to get from my diet? That's so interesting. The tend toward demonization of certain food groups and

awareness and concern about this is poisoning you, this is bad for you, this is something that you need to avoid. Absolutely. But if you just avoided a ton of stuff, you still haven't got what you actually need. Exactly. And if you focus on what you actually need, guess what you avoid? A ton of stuff. And so, I also think it sort of has to do with this like It's this learned helplessness mentality where it's like Someone else's fault. They're poisoning me. It's like, you know what I mean rather than what am I not? What am I not taking initiative to like know that I need to get into my body? Yeah, right versus they're poisoning me It's the pesticides. It's the this it's the that it's the and

They are kind of to some degree, but. How worried are you about oxalates in leafy greens? Yeah, so oxalates mostly high in spinach, not kale. And if you're juicing spinach every day and you have like kidney problems, that's probably a bad idea. So oxalates, if you're cooking this spinach, that basically causes enzymes to degrade these oxalates and it's not as much of a problem.

But I think there's been, again, a demonization of it. It's like this anti-nutrient. It's like, oh, this is a reason I shouldn't eat leafy greens because it oxalates and it's gonna give me kidney stone. And the reality is that oxalates are like, you only absorb so much, particularly like if there's magnesium present, and there's so much magnesium in these greens, that's mostly not the problem. And the problem with oxalates, again, you'll get like that one case study with the woman with failed kidney syndrome that was juicing every day for like years. And it's like, don't give me that example. Like that, you know, unless you're a power user of spinach,

it's, it's really spinach. And some people have been saying, I love spinach. So good though. Spinach is good. I love spinach too. Spinach salads are not gonna like don't, it's not, you're getting good stuff from spinach. It's really high in magnesium. It's really high. Follate was first isolated from my mentor's mentor, Peter Mitchell, from spinach. That's, he discovered that vitamin. He discovered it from, he isolated it from spinach. So it's really high in spinach.

Okay. So leafy greens, important. Yes. Okay. Then you want to get B vitamins. Again, folate is a B vitamin, but getting, getting B vitamins, zinc. Also, you want to get iron. These are also important micronutrients, minerals. That's where you get the meat, right? So red meat

for the iron and protein, B vitamins, it's got zinc as well. Poultry is another option, right? So these are good sources of protein and other micronutrients that you're not gonna get as much from plants. What are you thinking about when it comes to sourcing and choosing your meats? Yeah, so there's been some studies that have compared like grass fed cows versus like meat from grass fed cows versus like conventionally raised cows.

And I would say the biggest difference is, at least from the data that's been published is, you know, for one, the Omega three and Omega six fatty acid profile. So which makes sense. If you're, if you're feeding a cow, a bunch of corn, and I think they also have like, it's like corn oil, like pellets and, you know, it's like, they're going to have a higher Omega 6 profile, right? They're going to have more Omega 6 because that's corn versus if you're going to give them like plants, they're going to eat plants, they're going to have a better Omega 3 to Omega 6 profile.

And so, and that's exactly what you'll find. So like, even though meat isn't like the best source of Omega 3, if you get, if you're, if you3. If you're eating ground beef or a steak from a cow that was pasture raised, it's going to have a higher Omega-3 profile than the conventional meat. There's some argument to be made for that. It's like, well, then there's also things like, well, what you have to think about, what food is there is it like are they given food? That's that's doused in glyphosate like I don't know like what's you know how the cork the corn crop is like that's how they're Growing lots of corn right so you know there's you can sort of Obsess over everything you have to like I think you have to sort of Choose your battles. Otherwise you can just go insane. So you So, do you have to eat pastures to meet?

I don't know that you do. If you can, it's better. Like not everyone can afford. I like food is so expensive now too, right? So at the end of the day, our bodies can handle a lot of damage. They really can. But that is only if you give them the things they need

to repair that damage and be able to like be, you know, more optimally functional. So that's kind of my take on the, you know, pasture rays versus conventional. I personally do get pasture rays, I prefer it. Also the hormones. If they're not, I think generally speaking, they go hand in hand.

They like, you know, give hormones and antibiotics to cows and stuff. And it's like, oh, do I want a bunch of antibiotics in my meat that I'm eating? Right? Like that's another thing to consider. What do people mean when they talk about prioritizing energy balance? I hear this. Yeah. I have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, I think ultimately they're calories in, calories out kind of thing. Like, you know,

if you're consuming like a ton of calories and you're not physically active, like that's, you're gonna start storing more fat. Like it's, you know, just simple math. Yep, yep. So that's, I would say the easiest way to think about it is really just calories and calories that really does matter.

Like it really does. Like you're gonna, you know, so you don't wanna just eat tons and tons of food. Like you don't wanna eat a bag of potato chips like after you do your Peloton. Yeah, and I guess going back to one of the reasons why intermittent fasting was so popular was that it's, you don't really need to be as obsessive with your My Fitness Pal

if you only have a six hour eating window because for lots of people, it's tough to get over surplus during just six hours, as long as you're eating whole foods, mostly blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's what it comes down to. I think exactly that is that if like the people, the, their, their caloric are restricting naturally

when they're doing intermittent fasting, right? And so that's why it was, it all comes down to calories and calories out. That's what caloric restriction is. You're restricting, you're not eating as many calories and you end up losing weight. But if you eat whole foods, and I really do think like the paleo movement back in when,

I mean, it was like 15, 20 years, I don't even know how long ago it was, but they were on to something. I think that's a really good way to eat because you're not just only eating meat, you're not just only eating plants, you're getting the broad spectrum of micronutrients. And there's other things in plants

that are like phytochemicals that are beneficial as well, right? So it's not just getting the micronutrients, it's also getting these other chemicals that are like doing beneficial things in us that we know for sure, from randomized controlled trials are doing beneficial things. us that we know for sure from randomized control trials are doing beneficial things.

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That's live, m-o-m-e-n-t-o-u-s dot com slash modernwisdom. What are the most important things to consider when it comes to improving cognitive function? A lot of people want better focus, they want to be more productive, they want to improve their mood, they want to do all of those things. What are the big movers when we think cognitive function? So there's what I like to think of as there's definitely big movers. There's things that require effort and there's like lower hanging fruit. So this is things that you could take a supplement perhaps. And I would say the big movers are the ones that of course are going to require more effort. Like that's always how

it is, right? And it's pretty clear now. I don't think, I think it's pretty scientific consensus that exercise and particularly vigorous exercise is one of the best ways that you can get a cognitive enhancement, you know, memory, executive function, processing speed. So there've been studies that have been done in older adults, in middle-aged adults, in children, like across the lifespan, and it's just undeniable that getting your heart rate up, getting your heart rate up and blood flow up and sweating

is going to make you smarter and feel better. It's going to make you both. So, um, like there was, there was even one study that was done in older adults. And this was like a classic study that I just remember, I talked about it for years, but other studies have like repeated it since then, but it was like 2011 or 2012 published in PNAS. And, um, this, this researchers took these older adults and they put them on a year-long intervention exercise program. And there was a lot of more vigorous intensity, so they're getting up to about 80% max heart rate, 75, 80% max heart rate. And for one year, they did this intervention.

And after that year, they had a 2% increase in their hippocampal volume. So hippocampus is a part of your brain that's highly involved in learning and memory, and they increased it by like 2%. So people in that age group lose between 1% to 2% of their hippocampal volume per year. So they essentially countered that loss, that attribute that they're age-related, you know, experiencing each year.

And so part of the reason that happens is when you're doing a vigorous type of exercise, you are increasing brain-driven or trophic factor BDNF. And that is responsible for growing new neurons in the hippocampus. It's responsible for neuroplasticity. So that's the ability of your brain to like adapt and change to the changing environment,

which is what older adults don't do very well. Your brain is much more plastic when it's younger, like you can adapt to things. That's why that's saying it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. That's where it comes from. So BDNF plays a role in that. So you want more BDNF, like an exercise and particularly vigorous exercise.

If you're working your muscles so hard that they can't get oxygen to them fast enough, and that's why I say vigorous. Then they're forced to basically make energy without oxygen. And that happens by just using glucose. And then you make lactate as a byproduct and lactate is what is signaling and increasing that BDNF and lactates really, I mean, you can measure it. There's, you know, things that that you can buy and measure it. But I don't think you need to, I think you can just measure your heart rate. And if you're getting,

if you're doing a vigorous intensity exercise, 10 minutes, that's all it took was 10 minutes to have improvements in cognition, executive function, processing speed. So even just a 10 minute workout. And like I did one before I was came here, like that's like, that's my thing I do, you know, it's like, I want to be on top of my game. So you just can do a 10 minute, you know, workout, like, I want to be on top of my game. So you just can do a 10 minute, you know, workout. I could be high intensity interval training where you're shifting between periods of vigorous exercise and then kind of resting a little bit. And then so you do these intervals or it could just be like, I'm going to do a 20 minute

like and run and then I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to do it. So, um, exercise, exercise is the number one. I would say big mover. As you said, it's also the Exercise is the number one, I would say big mover, as you said. It's also the most, requires the most effort. The other things, and this is where I kind of like, I'm smiling because there was very recently a new study, one out of three, very large randomized placebo-controlled trials where they're giving one group a placebo and another group a multivitamin.

Okay, this is a multivitamin, which is the micronutrients I've been talking about. Magnesium, B vitamins, folate, vitamin K, it's just stuff people aren't getting enough of. They're not getting enough from their diets. And they gave older adults, so these are people that were 65 and older. And there was three different trials of this study. It was called the COSMO trial, and there's about 5,000 participants in total. And the evidence was clear that just giving them a multivitamin improved cognition. And it slowed brain aging, which was estimated to slow brain aging by about two years.

And this is like, it's so, it's funny because 10 years ago, I was like doing, I was out there talking on podcast about huge studies that were coming out saying, enough is enough, multivitamins are a waste of money, don't buy them. And they were saying the exact opposite. And they were terrible studies and I like tore them apart. But here we are 10 years later, complete opposite.

Full circle baby. Full circle, what's the easiest thing you can do? Like, does that mean a young person can take a multivitamin and it's gonna immediately make them, you know, probably not. At 20 IP points. But it's insurance. Yeah, it's something that you can start now and certainly older adults, it made a difference. So that's one.

Another one is, again, I mentioned that there's other, these phytochemicals in plants that are beneficial, they're in vegetables and they're in fruits. So blueberries, blueberry extract or even the equivalent of one cup of blueberries, this has been done, like the equivalent of one cup of blueberries, improves cognition, executive function, it improves memory, also processing speed. So that's something like if you're like, you know, fast reaction time, I guess it's more relevant for like,

maybe someone who's athletic, but, you know, fine motor coordination, things like that. Multiple studies showing this. I mean, there's been meta-analyses showing it. This is across the lifespan. There's been studies in kids. There's been studies in middle-aged adults and there's been studies in older adults and it's clear.

Blueberries make you smarter and they make you feel better, at least they make me feel better. Blueberries are the king of fruits. I think, I mean, it's between blueberries, raspberries and pineapple, I think, for like the top spot in my world of fruits. Blueberries, yeah. No, blueberries are, so they have something in them called anthocyanins and it's what gives the blueberries their like pigmentation raspberries have them too.

Blueberries are very concentrated in them. They also have, so anthocyanins are a type of polyphenol, they're actually a flavonoid, they're type of polyphenol. Polyphenols are a sort of wide class of phytochemicals. In phytochemicals, there's a lot of them, a lot of different types of them, and they really are beneficial in humans. And like I said, there's randomized controlled trials

comparing giving this to a placebo. And if it was bad for you, then it would be clear, right? It's good for you. So blueberries are at the top of the list for that, for improving cognitive function, low hanging fruit. How easy is it to eat a cup of blueberries a day? I eat two. It's literally hard to not eat a cup of blueberries a day.

It's hard not to, yeah. So that would be another one. I think another one on my list would be similar to that would be cocoa polyphenol. So like from like dark chocolate, they have another type of polyphenol called catechins. And the best one, so there've been studies, lots of studies on this and it's mixed on this. So some studies have shown benefits. They increase blood flow to the brain.

They increase, you know, vascular flow so you can get an immediate effect where, you know, if you increase blood flow to the brain, which is what exercise does, right? But we're talking low hanging fruits, easy to do, take a pill. That would be something to do. It's improved cognition, executive function, and there's a type called Cocovilla, and I have no affiliation with them. But they have studies published with their proprietary blend, which is, again, one of the highest concentrated, I would say, Cocoa Flonols out there, the catechins. Consumer labs tested them, and then I've seen the data.

It's very clear they're very high, and they just out-compete all the other brands out there, and they also have the lowest contaminants. So they're really a good but expensive way to get those cocoa flavonols, which are really good. And then the other one would be, for cognition, would be lutein, which I mentioned earlier. It's in egg yolks, not very concentrated. It's in kale, very highly concentrated in kale, almost 24 milligrams in three kale leaves. And I say three kale leaves because that's what I put in my smoothie. So I've calculated it. But so there's 24 milligrams of lutein. So lutein is a type of carotenoid like beta carotene,

like lycopene and tomatoes. You've heard of those things before. Well, Lutein is in that same category. It is a carotenoid. It accumulates in the rods and the cones of your eye. It protects against singlet oxygen from blue light, like this light looking at, and also the sunshine when you go outside.

That damages our eyes. It causes macular degeneration. And so Lutein and Zezanthin is another carotenoid. They're in greens and they protect against that, but they also accumulate in the brain. And there have been a variety of studies. So, there's been observational studies correlating plasma levels of Lutein and Zezanthin with certain cognitive scores. So So like crystallized intelligence, older adults that have Lutein and Ziaxanthin higher levels have more crystallized intelligence.

So that's the ability to use all the information you learned over a lifetime and like use it. There's been randomized controlled trials looking at giving eight milligrams of Lutein. Now I said 24 is in three kale. So they give eight milligrams of Lutein and something like said 24 is in three kale. So they give eight milligrams of lutein and something like 23 milligrams of xanthan to older adults and it improves neural efficiency.

So this is the ability to basically your neurons can function with less energy, which is nice. So that obviously improves cognitive function because it's a very energy demanding process. So lutein is another one. Yeah, I know it's an egg. Colene, yeah.

You know, colonergic's generally very important for brain function. It is, yeah. It's an important, it's important for brain. And there's been studies actually with pregnant women about 500 milligrams of choline per day, their children score better on the intelligence test. Yes. So I learned about this, of course, when I was pregnant and I was like, well, it was actually before I was pregnant, but I was like figuring out like what I'm gonna do,

like what do I need? And that's why I ate so many eggs during pregnancy because they also supplemented. But now you've got like mastermind babies. I do. Yeah. Wow. But so choline is also important. Yeah, for sure. Brain function. But that comes down to again, getting, trying to get everything you need from your food. And then omega three. So there's been so many randomized control trials on omega threes improving cognition, especially when there it's,

it has to be two grams or more. That's where you'll get the mixed data. If it's like, oh, we gave them 500 milligrams, it wasn't enough. So the studies that are consistently showing improvements in cognitive function are at least two grams a day of the Omega-3. So that's my sort of, I think, low-hanging fruit for cognitive function, things you can do. Is that the same strategy for battling neurodegeneration over time as well?

The things that improve cognitive function now, it's just the same, it's one and the same? It's very similar because I mentioned brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. That plays a huge role in battling neurodegenerative disease risk. A lot of the anthocyanins, the catechins that are in things like blueberries and dark chocolate, especially when you concentrate the powder town, those are, they have anti-inflammatory properties, they have antioxidant properties

and they're increasing blood flow to the brain as well. So they're getting more oxygen to the brain, they're getting more nutrients to the brain, all those things play a role in both short-term health, but also long-term brain health as well. So it's both, for sure. They're very much connected. What happens when people get brain fog? Like what is brain fog? I know what it feels like, but like what's going on? Yeah, so brain fog, or as I like to call it, a reduction in mental clarity. And I say that-

Such a doctor way of regaining like- I've just heard too many like people say like brain fog, brain fog like, and I got like this, like I was telling you, I got this new jerk reaction to like- You've got brain fog, ick. I do, when people like say brain fog, I'm like, oh no, what are you gonna say? But yes, it is a thing.

So it's, you know, when you have a reduction in a mental clarity, it feels like this brain fog. And I personally think it all comes down to food. I think it really comes down to food. I mean, when you're sick, you have brain fog, but we can talk about how it overlaps with that. So I think there's really too big, it all has to do with meals and eating. So the first thing I think that's really too big, it all has to do with meals and eating.

So the first thing I think that's highly involved in this reduction in mental clarity or brain fog as people like to call it is what's called the post-prandial glucose response. So that means blood glucose levels going up after a meal. And what happens is this, if you have a really high And what happens is this, if you have a really high post-prandial glucose response, you're eating a high glycemic index food, something that's definitely like a refined carbohydrate, for example, that'll really smash you. You're going to get this really sharp peak in glucose and then like a drop and or a sugar crash, as people like to call it.

And so it's really hard for your brain to be functioning properly with that post-prandial glucose response. And that's partly why you'll hear a lot of anecdotes and myself included, people that have tried a ketogenic diet or I used to always like to do podcasts on a fast in a fasted state because you're not getting that post-prandial glucose response is one thing. It really sort of, it's- Evens it out. Evens it out.

Yep. Not everyone responds well to a ketogenic diet. And I certainly don't think it's easy to continue on forever. So there are other things. Obviously avoiding refined carbohydrates is an easy no-brainer, right? There's nothing in there anyways. What do you need from there? Nothing. No micronutri no-brainer, right? There's nothing in there anyways. What do you need from there? Nothing.

No micronutrients, no protein, right? Like you're not getting any from that. So that would be one thing to avoid because that'll make sure you're not going super, super high, but you can still have it from a meal. And some of the things that you can do to mitigate that, one would be exercise snacks. So this is like doing a really short burst of

intense like vigorous exercise 80% max heart rate for like one to three minutes and you do it 30 minutes or up 30 minutes up to an hour either before after a meal. So you kind of do it within this hour before or after a meal and what happens is that vigorous intensity exercise, while you're shooting your heart rate up, you know, and it's hard to do, you're increasing lactate and it doesn't take much. It gets soaked up by the muscle and this is then causing transporters, glucose transporters

to come up to the muscle and opening the gates basically. So that when you eat that meal, the glucose goes into your muscle, it's more anabolic, you want it to go there. And it's not, you're not getting that like huge rise and then drop in the post, with the postprandial glucose response. So that would be the one thing, exercise snacks.

Lots of studies out there, especially with people with type two diabetes have a problem, you know, maintaining their blood glucose levels. The second thing would be food order. Like the order you eat your macronutrients. On the plate? Kind of, so I would say about 10 minutes.

It can be on the plate depending on how slow you eat. So if food order, there's been studies again, largely in people with type 2 diabetes who have issues regulating their blood glucose. If you eat protein or fat 10 to 30 minutes before carbohydrates, it can very much blunt and slow the post-prandial glucose response. So if you have like, let's say you eat a can of sardines before you're going to go to a restaurant, you're going to eat out, you're presumably going to eat more terribly than you would if you're cooking at home, right? Or you do a little protein shake 20 minutes before you're going to go to a restaurant or whatever.

And that'll, or before, like even just if you're going to do a podcast and you need mental clarity, you want to make sure that let's say is just eat the protein and not have the carbohydrates, right? let's say just eat the protein and not have the carbohydrates, right? So what that does is, I mean, it's doing essentially like increasing insulin so that when you do have that glucose, it's going. It's correct. I mean, if you were going out for dinner, presumably something else you could do is try and have the starter be steak tartare, tuna tartare, oysters, something like that. And just be like, can we just wait an extra 10 minutes on mains? Like however long you think that we need, just give us another 10. And then you've encapsulated it within the entire meal.

I guess as long as everybody else is on board with that, otherwise someone's had a bunch of bread and they're just, they want the, whatever, main course to come out. See that they should, that's like the worst thing is having the bread on the table first, right? It should be, it is good, but like eat the steak tartare first and then go for the bread, right?

You'll slow the glucose response. There's a place in Austin called Dean's Italian. It's just down the street from you. You should go. Dean's Italian, yeah. I'm looking for restaurant recommendations, please. I'll send you some. Send me some more.

So Dean's three forks and the somewhere else that I went the other evening that was phenomenal. But Deans and Three Forks and the two steak restaurants I go to the most. But Deans do this, they call it a bread crown. So it's like a literally looks like a little crown that comes out kind of about that size. And there's a pot of whip butter in the middle of this thing. And it's glazed on top. It's got like a salt glaze. This thing is like crack. It's so good. And it's just there. You arrive, you sit down, you've got the drinks or whatever. And then this thing arrives and you just can't,

it's impossible to not eat. So yeah, almost getting, is there something that we can do with this like pre appetizer appetizer to come after the appetizers around about 15 minutes if that's okay? Because Dr. Rhonda said so. Yeah. So food order is something legitimately that's been studied, empirical data showing it does blunt the glucose, post-prandial glucose response. And so that is another thing that can really, I think, affect mental clarity or brain fog. So, just like I said, like the protein or fat, like an avocado, sometimes an avocado.

And that kind of just delays the emptying of your stomach into your intestines, and it kind of slows it even keel rather than real high spike and then lower. In other news, this episode is brought to you by AG1. Nutrition doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to work. And that's why I've used AG1 every single day for over three years now. AG1 is literally the best in the world at providing you with a scientifically backblend of ingredients that helps to fuel your body. You might have heard Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and Peter Atier and Andrew Huberman and myself talk about this product, and that's because it is the best daily foundational nutrition supplement on the planet.

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end. You're going to think, look, I'm not as bothered because I've just put more in me that's been skewed and discriminated in the direction of what you should be prioritizing anyway. Absolutely. You get more satiety plays a role. I mean, if you're eating something before like protein, you're just not gonna eat as much, you know, you're not gonna eat as much.

But that kind of leads into the second, that's not the only part of the meal or food or eating that I think plays a role in this reduction in mental clarity and brain fog. The other thing is the post-prandial inflammatory response. So eating a meal causes inflammation. It happens in everyone, every meal. There's no avoiding it. To some degree, it happens. But you can minimize how much of an inflammatory response you're having. So people eating a very high sugar

and high fat meal, it really, those are the two real big movers of it. But even if you're just doing a ton of fat without like fiber or protein, fat is harsh on the gut. And so what ends up happening is your gut epithelial cells, there's like things holding them together, tight junctions, they open up and they let little pieces of bacteria, so our microbiome, I mean, we got trillions. Is this leaky gut?

Is exactly what it is. It's intestinal permeability and it allows pieces of bacteria to get into your sugar. For every like, bro science term I've got, you've got the specific term that comes out of medicine. Does it brain fight? It's a reduction in mental clarity. Is it leaky gut? It's the wall lining of the intestine has opened up to a...

Yeah, intestinal permeability or leaky gut as it's called. That's what you're doing. So, meals cause that to happen transiently. Some people have a very big problem with leaky gut, but so transiently, you're letting bacteria get into your bloodstream. And this is what happens is, it's pieces of bacteria. They're called endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide, the same thing. But they're getting into your circulation because they're opening up, right? Getting from the gut into it. Not supposed to be there, right? And your immune system gets activated.

So your immune system's like, it knows those pieces of the bacterial membrane. It recognizes it. That's how it recognizes a bacterial and pathogen. And so it gets activated. And what ends up happening there is one, your immune system's activated. Okay? That requires a ton of energy. So energy is shunted away from your brain and it goes to the immune system because your body goes triage It goes I need to survive. There's a bacteria. There's a bacterial invader in my system right now I'm gonna take all my energy and I'm gonna make sure that I get rid of this invader so I don't die, right? So that's that's the first thing that's happening in terms of like energy is being diverted from the brain From neurotransmission from thinking everything and it's going to the immune system to activate it.

Okay, it doesn't you know happen for that long a period, but it's happening after a meal. The second thing that's happening is that your immune system itself is creating cytokines that are activating other immune cells. That's how they like talk to each other. And these things are, they're essentially can be somnogenic, so they can make you sleepy. So when you're sick, what happens when you're sick, you're, you have no energy, right? Cause all the energy is going in your immune system. And you're sleepy.

So that's exactly what's happening after a meal. What's happening when you're sick to a smaller degree is happening after a meal. The post-prandial inflammatory response. And then the other thing that's happening is those cytokines also are crossing into your brain and disrupting neurotransmission, disrupting connections. We now know that the blood brain barrier does not keep immune molecules out. They get in there and they're wreaking havoc. So it's another reason why you don't

want to have a lot of inflammation. So then the question is, okay, what do I do? So that's the question. How don't want to have a lot of inflammation. But so then the question is, okay, what do I do? So that's the question. How do I not get such a big post-perennial inflammatory response? And it's also, again, why a lot of people, myself included, always feel like more mentally clear when I'm fasted. But I'm like, I don't want to lose the protein. The muscle mass, I need to get some food.

The question is, what do you do? One, obviously avoid the sugar, high sugar, high fat. Okay, that's clear. Two, smaller meals have less of a post-perennial inflammatory response. So the bigger the meal, the bigger the response. Spike. Spike and then down. Yeah, but it's like, now we're talking,

you're getting both, you're getting the glucose and you're getting the inflammatory response. That's another thing. So actually, smaller meals does help that. So if you need mental clarity and stuff, don't have a big meal. And the other thing that actually makes an effect on that is, believe it or not, we're going full circle, omega-3. Omega-3 has been shown in clinical studies to blunt the post-praindial inflammatory response. With the meal or at any point throughout the day?

So that's why I take my omega-3s throughout the day with meals. And it's doing it, it's time to rebote. It's time to rebote. There's something systemic, but there's also something acute. Exactly. There's something systemic, the inflammation process, but there's something acute in the gut

that it's also playing a role in preventing the life of polycyclerite from getting the circulation. Is this dose dependent? If I have one gram with each meal, you say two grams of triglycerides, responsibly sourced, blah, blah, blah, from a Norwegian guy that's doing it like this with fish. Can I have one gram with each meal? Would that be sufficient? I think the studies, and I can't remember, I think it was like, they were lower dose, like 500 milligrams. I think it wasn't even that high. So I typically do the one gram with each meal. I think that's a safe-

It's a nice way to remember to do it throughout the day. Yeah, it's a nice way. And that's so, so I like to do, the reason I like to have omega-3 throughout the day is for one, that reason, blunting the post-perandual inflammatory response. Two, I want these like specialized resolving, like these specialized resolving molecules

that they produce when you're metabolizing in my blood constant, resolving inflammation. It's working. Very interesting. So throughout my 20s, I said I was a club promoter. And I thought I had depression or like acute depression that would come on every so often, like intermittently throughout the year.

I think looking back, it was just low mood and burnout. I think that's what was going on. But the way that it would manifest for me is I wouldn't get out of bed, I wouldn't want to go to work and see people. And I was in charge of this company, so I could do whatever I wanted, no one could tell me otherwise. But one of the things that I would do is I would order pizza or like high sugar foods and sweets and stuff like that.

And it would come for me, right? Like I'd come for me and that would be something I'd do. But I'd notice, especially if you have, you know, a big dominoes in front of you and you've got some sweet stuff to have after that, the sense that you get in your body, especially if you haven't been outside, if you basically not moved because you're feeling a little bit miserable and the curtains are drawn and you've just laid in bed and the Uber driver or whatever's coming, you've taken the food off him. The inflammation, like the throbbing that you feel in your body, it's almost like your heartbeat feels like, or your blood pressure feels like it's gone up. And then almost all of the time after that, and I think this is very common for people that

deal with the low mood, if they do come for eat like that, they'll then fall asleep. So shortly after that, and then that dysregulation of your sleep pattern also makes you feel even more like shit. And then you come out of this sleep, your emotions are all over the place. You've still got tons of like either blood sugar rushing around you or you don't know, you've got digestive discomfort because you've just eaten all of this food. And, um, yeah, just seeing that as like a little, uh, petri dish microcosm for what happens if the least amount of movement possible. Like you've gone from bed to door, back to bed, and that's it.

Nothing in terms of any kind of stimulation, already in low mood, and then you go to sleep, the most sedentary of all of the positions. Yeah, you can feel that inflammation, that cytokine response, and your thoughts, again, super, super muddy, which more so feeds back into that low mood. It's a vicious cycle, right? Exactly. No, and you mentioned, it's funny how you mentioned, people get, when you get sleepy after a meal, it's like, that's the cytokines that are somnogenic, it's a post-inflammatory response.

And again, it happens with the bigger meal too. You'll notice that the bigger the meal, if you overeat the sleepy you are, right? And so it's more of an inflammatory response. So now you can think about it as, oh, I'm not sleepy. It's, oh, I've got some inflammation going on after that meal. Interesting.

What about improving mood? What do people get wrong when thinking about that? I mean, so improving mood is, you know, we were talking about exercise and that would be the most effortful way that you can improve mood and there's studies that have compared it to like running to essentially to standard SSRI treatments, which are pretty classic antidepressant that are used and it's performed as good as an SSRI with added health benefits, of course, right? So but you said something interesting when you were talking about when you were feeling

depressed and that was that you couldn't even get out of bed, right? So it's clear that exercise will help mitigate depression. It'll improve your mood, very clear. But not everyone is going to go for a run. Not everyone that is depressed will get on Peloton or fill in the blink type of exercise, right? There are some people that like it's hard to get out of bed. So what could be a non-pharmacological treatment to help improve mood, right?

Um, and I think that this is what is super exciting. And this comes into to heat, deliberate heat exposure in sauna. And it's something I personally experienced firsthand when I was in graduate school. I was extremely stressed out, which can manifest with depression, anxiety, right? Like you, those all come connected. And this was like 2009. I started using the sauna every day before I would go into the lab. And I all of a sudden was handling my failed experiments better. I was like handling the stress from my advisor and just all the things I had to do so much

better. I mean, it was so noticeable that I initially went, oh my gosh, there's something going on here. Like I need to figure this out. And so that's what initially even got me interested in the sauna was the effect on my mood. And at the time I like, I've published on this sense, I published on this back in 2022, but I had come up with some theories about, there's lots of reasons why.

I had come up with the theory on it affecting the opioid system or natural and dodgenous opioid system. So when you get in the sauna or when you're under deliberate heat exposure, say a hot bath, something similar, you release endorphins. And that's the feel-good opioid that you're running, same thing. But you also release something that's the opposite of that. It's called dinorphin, and that is the opioid that's responsible for that discomfort feeling, that dysphoric feeling, like it's hot.

This is miserable. I hate it. It's why am I doing this to myself? Yes, exactly. And that's when you're running, what happens during physical activity as well. And so what it does, it actually cools down your core body temperature somewhat,

and that's why it's like a natural response. But when you release that discomfort feeling, there's a feedback loop. It actually tell, you actually make more receptors and you make them more sensitive to the feel-good endorphins, so that you feel better later. And so now there's been some scientific research first from Charles Raison, back in, I think it was like 2016. He had done a study where people were, they basically like, it was a type of sauna, more like an infrared sauna.

It was elevating their core body temperature to about feverish state, like a 101.3. And there was a sham control, which was the placebo. They were getting hot enough to think they were getting the treatment, but it wasn't raising them, it wasn't giving them a fever. And so that was done just one time, and this was in people with major depressive disorder, like this, like legit depression. And the people that got the act of, you know, sauna treatment had an antidepressant effect that lasted six weeks after one time, right?

No way. So, yeah, one time. Right? No way. Yeah, one time. So now Dr. Ashley Mason at UCSF, she's running the Osher Center, which is they do a lot of non-pharmacological treatments for a lot of stuff. And I've been lucky enough to collaborate with her on some of these studies where she now, right now has a paper in press, which I'm sorry, in peer review. right now has a paper in press, which I'm sorry, in peer review, but she basically trained with Chuck Raison and carried on the torch and now has done either four treatments or eight treatments and some people and looked and these are people again with depression and did a battery of scores, you know, that these people do

when they're measuring depression and it's just off the charts, unreal, like so damn exciting. Like I can't tell you how exciting it is. The people that got this sauna treatment, I mean, I think it's something like the Hamilton score where you need like a three or four point change for it to be significant. I mean, these people are changing like 16 points. And SSRIs I think are only two, two or three.

I don't know what they are, but it's not loads. All I can say is she's doing an infrared sauna. And hers is, it's a head out infrared sauna. So it's like a dome. I've seen those people look so funny. And yes, but they're in there for a very long time. Have you considered that it's just them overcoming the discomfort of looking so stupid while being

in one of those tents that has your head sticking out the top. There's probably so many mechanisms that play. But there's some argument to be made for head out. We could get into that. But I do think that inflammation, so sauna does what exercise is doing and to some degree with respect to causing both acute inflammation but having a strong anti-inflammatory response. But then I think the opioids could be involved. There's so many things. It's not known what's happening. Exercise, get hot if you can get hot while you exercise probably also. If you can do both. But getting hot, like some people like again,

getting into a sauna is like getting into a spa. It's a lot easier to go from your bed into this other little chamber where you're just lying down. There's no effort. There's no effort. The heat's doing it for you. The heat's doing it for you. We'll get back to talking to Rondra in one minute, but first I need to tell you about element. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning. Your adenosine system that caffeine act on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system. Each grab-and-go stick contains a science-backed

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the way that I feel throughout the day. I just don't feel that sort of excited or fired up about that. Obviously there's like what are your relationships like? What's the job that you do? Do you have meaning and purpose in your life? It's all of those sorts of things. But are there any interventions from a physiological perspective where you think this is something that you should prioritize? Right. So I think that it comes down to obviously like doing an exercise snack. We talked about exercise, just doing like a two-minute, you know, high knees or squats or something. It makes a difference. It really does. You're getting that oxygen to your brain, exercise, just doing like a two minute, you know, high knees or squats or something, it makes a difference. It really does. You're getting that oxygen to your brain, you're

getting more nutrients, and BDNF plays a role in depression. So that stuff, I think immediately improves mood. But there's also, you know, so what neurotransmitters are involved in mood or, you know, mood. Yeah, what is mood when we talk about it? Well, I mean, it's complicated. Like, I don't even know that we can define it exactly, right? I mean, there's, there's, you have things like serotonin, it's involved in mood, motivation, that you have to be in a good mood to be motivated, right?

They're really hand in hand. Same with dopamine, norepinephrine is another one that's involved, focus, attention, mood, you know, things like that, they're all sort of, you know, involved in the mood, motivation, that sort of pathways. So there's like a, there are behaviors that you can engage in to sort of optimize for those neurotransmitters. So neurotransmitter optimization is, is sort of like trying to engage in behaviors that

can optimize for those neurotransmitters. So one, high intensity exercise, does it? It's been shown. Serotonin goes up, it goes up because, again, your lactate is increasing the serotonin, but it also goes up because branch chain amino acids, which you're getting when you're eating protein, they compete with tryptophan. Tryptophan is a precursor. It has to get into the brain, and they compete for transport into the brain with those branch chain amino acids.

And triptophan is a precursor for serotonin. So if you're eating a bunch of protein, which have branched chain amino acids like leucine, isoleucine, things that are building muscle basically, and you're not exercising, then your triptophan can be outcompeted. And there's been studies doing this. They've given people a big like shake, like a protein shake essentially, that does not have any, it has no tryptophan in it.

So they're essentially just dosing them with branched shanamino acids. And their tryptophan levels fall by like 90% in the brain. And subsequently their serotonin levels plummet. And people get in a terrible mood. Their long-term planning shuts down so serotonin plays a role in impulse control, like being able to like control your impulses and not engage in behaviors that are just very impulsive. And so that, that goes down and these, it's just normal people that, you know, are drinking

this shake of branched genital amino acids. So what makes the branched genital am the branched amino acids go into muscle exercise? So if you wanna do that, then you're gonna get more tryptophan in the brain to make serotonin. What is the adaptive justification or the adaptive mechanism for this? Is it that if human was doing relatively high intensity,

extended exercise, that would often be some sort of pursuit hunting type thing. Therefore, you need a natural painkiller to encourage said human to keep chasing said wildebeest, because if they feel better, they will keep chasing it, which means they're more likely to catch it, which means they won't starve and die. That sounds like a great explanation. Yeah, I mean, we used to move around, like you said, it doesn't necessarily have to be high intensity. It could be just lifting weights too.

It causes branched amino acids to be taking up to muscle, but you're moving, yeah. So there's a, you know, I think there's, could be an evolutionary reason why. There is for every, in my world, there is an evolutionary reason for absolutely everything. Not because it's the only thing I've got any expertise in. But yeah, that's interesting to think about.

I mean, I wrote this like 10 years ago when I was still suffering with a little mood and stuff like that, that if you gave me the choice between a good night's sleep of nine hours or a hard training session of one hour, my mood reset before and after training is greater than before and after sleep. I found more bleed from pre-to-post sleep than pre-to-post training. And it's so ruthless that if you are suffering with low mood or if you're under a period of high stress or whatever it is, one of the things that you go to first is sleep, even though in my experience, the higher ROI thing is the thing that's hardest to do when you're mood's the lowest because your motivation to do difficult things is moved to the lowest because your motivation to do difficult things

is also at its lowest. Totally, absolutely. It's funny that you mentioned the sleep thing too, because I do think sleep is important, but nowadays I'm like, it's exercise. I don't know that anything matters as much if you are putting in that effort to exercise. And that could be shown in data.

If you look at studies that have looked at all-cause mortality and people that don't sleep as much, like they're getting six hours or less, they have a higher all-cause mortality than people that are not sleep, but only in people that are not physically active. So people that are physically active and sleep terribly had the same all-cause mortality as people

that slept fine without. So in other words, exercise can negate the bad effects of lack of sleep on all-cause mortality. And I also, glucose response goes up with lack of sleep. Like you're basically gonna have a higher post-prandial glucose response to food. You're going to have a higher fasting blood glucose level when you don't get enough sleep. Well, you're also going to select four foods that are more salty, more sweet. I mean, I found this as well that for the first time in my entire life, when I had a stable sleep and wake pattern was COVID. That was the first time that I'd ever gone to bed as an adult, the same time most nights out of two weeks, because I was always running our events, you know, which would

mean I'd be up until two, three, five in the morning, catching up until driving back from one of the club nights in a different city, doing something like that. And I remember thinking that I always thought that I had low mood and was a bad sleeper. And I just realized I was doing shift work. The shift work is considered, I think the world health organization literally considered shift work a health risk. So this is firefighters, this is nurses, this is anybody that's got an irregular pattern.

And I thought that was me. I was like, oh, this is, it was so formative and such a foundation to the way that my lifestyle and the texture of my mind existed, I couldn't imagine what life would be like different and then COVID comes in and obviously nightclubs sort of immediately all get shut down. And I'm like, I guess I'll try this, go into bed at 11 o'clock every night thing.

And then mood started to just like linearly get better throughout all of 2020. And yeah, that was wild. To see that, that case study of someone who basically had no theory of mind for what it would be like to not be like that, to then actually get stable sleep and wake was crazy. It was a really big change. Yeah, that's it. It really is, like you said, the shift work. I mean, I'm so respectful for people that are doing it.

And Satchin Panda has actually done work with firefighters and stuff and shown that if the shift workers do time restricted feeding and eating, like if they're doing that while they're doing their shift work, they actually do have better, at least like metabolic outcomes and stuff, like not biocomps, but biomarkers.

So there is somewhat, so it helps because, you know, they're obviously their body is completely out of cycle and whack, but if they can at least keep that food intake clock on the right, you know, path and right clock, it does make a difference. So they're not eating all around the clock basically. Presumably, if they were also doing training, if they were exercising, that would help to mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. I think the exercise would be the most important thing

that they could do. And firefighters, I mean, they are, they do have to be physically fit, right? I mean, I think that's part of like the requirements. So. I think the firefight is basically like being a halfway house into the armed forces. Like a lot of my friends that are there, that have PT, they have yard time, they have kit

inspections, they have all this sort of stuff. I don't know whether it's the same. I don't think it's the same for people that are accident and emergency nurses and doctors and stuff like that. I don't know if it's the same for the police. I guess if you're part of a SWAT team and stuff, that would be very heavily prioritized. But I don't know if the classic Bobby on the beat

with a big gut, and I'm thinking British here, and like one of the silly hats that our British police officers wear. I don't know whether they're put through the same kind of fitness. I suppose their job sometimes is less physically demanding than a firefighters, but then if you're chasing some Scali down

An alleyway and chasing after some person that's just committed a crime you need to be pretty fit for that. Yeah, it's super super interesting When we're talking about cold and heat exposure, which is something that you've spent an awful lot of time thinking about What's the best way to utilize cold and heat routine throughout a week? Like what's just the simplest way to do an evidence-based cold and heat protocol? I think one of the best ways would be if you, so most people should be training, right?

They should be doing some sort of resistance training or endurance training, vigorous exercise. Doing the heat after that, I think would be one of the best because you're extending your workout to some degree. So there's been studies looking at the, on the endurance side, like if you're intervention studies that have taken people that have done exercise on a stationary bike, or they've done the same exercise on the stationary bike and then done 15 minutes

of a hot sauna, like right after that. And basically no break with no break. They just go into the sauna after. And then VO two max was measured. So VO two max is like your best way to measure cardio respiratory fitness, right? So the maximum amount of oxygen you're taking in a maximal, you know, exercise. right? So the maximum amount of oxygen you're taking in a maximal exercise. So their VO2 max was better in people that did that exercise, the stationary bike, plus the sauna versus just the stationary bike, right? And that is a lot because sauna to some degrees mimicking

moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise. It's doing a lot of the same things, a lot of the same physiological responses happening. So I would say doing the sauna right after the workout, but also there's a new thing that came out showing people that did resistance training and then got into a sauna had like better muscle gains. And... It just makes your workout more of whatever you did. It makes sure, you know,

but I think some of that has to do with the heat shock proteins too. And also, yeah, there's been studies showing that if you increase blood flow, like if you do resistance training, it used to be like this thing where it's like, oh, don't do any endurance training like on the same day that you're doing resistance training because you're going to blunt your gains or something. I don't remember what it exactly was called, but that's kind of been put to rest. It's not true. So,

to, I guess, there's always extreme, there's always outlier, I should say, ways you could do it. But generally speaking, like getting some blood flow to your muscles after you've done training actually improves hypertrophy, right? Because you're getting some growth factors and things there and immune cells, things that are like playing a role in the hypertrophy. Is there a window post training that you need to get into the heat within? Not necessarily. No. Within the same day? No, I think you should do it if you, okay, you asked me about the optimal protocol.

I would say optimally it would be after training. It doesn't have to be because also heat plays a role in sleep. So some people choose to do their heat at night, like a couple hours before they're going to go to bed. You can go, I actually have been kind of obsessive about this of late and I do both. So I do, again, the sauna after I work out and then I do the jacuzzi at night with my husband, which is another form of heat stress. You're in, you know in 104 degree Fahrenheit water.

You can be in there for 20 minutes and get similar responses in terms of biomarkers as a sauna. So I do think if you're only gonna do one, you can kind of choose. Like, do you have a hard time sleeping? Do you wanna, or do you wanna kind of extend your workout? And now I don't know that you have to do it. Like, I think there's also been observational data.

By the way, the study with the cyclists and the sauna that was in untrained people. So you might go, oh, what about trained people? New gains. Yeah, but then there's observational data showing that people that do exercise or people that exercise and sauna. So this is all sorts of people.

This is, these are people that are exercising. These aren't newbies, right? The people that do exercise in sauna have a higher VO2 max compared to people that only exercise. So there's evidence, I think, that kind of makes it a little stronger, that it's not just a newbie gain, right? Like that it's probably something going, and I think it's because it's mimicking cardiovascular

exercise. So do you have to do it after a workout? No, you don't have to. But I do think it's, I you have to do it after a workout? No, you don't have to. But I do think it's, I personally like to do it after a workout. It's like, I've already got my heart rate up. So it's really just like extending my workout. So the two windows that seem to be at least interesting

to use would be two hours-ish, finishing two hours before bed? I say that, yeah, because some people take longer to cool down. Yeah, me too, I do. Exactly, so yeah, two hours to get out before, because then you don't wanna be trying to go to sleep, but then you'll have the opposite effect, right?

You're too hot, you can't fall asleep. And then post-workout. To post-workout and a couple of hours before sleep. What temperature, how long per week? What else? Yeah, so temperature, duration, frequency, like how many times, you know, so there's all sorts of studies coming out of Finland where saunas are ubiquitous and everyone's using one looking at, you know, sauna use and all cause mortality, cardiovascular rate of mortality, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, all those things, right? And what's clear is that there is a dose-dependent effect with frequency

and duration in the sauna. So in other words, the more frequent the sauna use, the more robust of the effect. So I'll give you an example. All-cause mortality is 40% lower in people that use the sauna four to seven times a week. So four times would be minimum, right? Versus people that use it two to three times a week, they have a 24% lower all-cause mortality, right? So the bare minimum would be two if you want something. This is compared to people who use it one time a week. But if you want the most robust effects,

the bare minimum would be four up to seven, right, every day. So that would be frequency. Now, temperature and duration, most of those studies in Finland, the average temperature in the publications is about 174, 175 degree Fahrenheit. And the duration in that sauna is also important. So if people only stayed in for 11 minutes,

they weren't getting a very robust effect. They had to stay in for at least 20 minutes. So 20 minutes at 174 degree Fahrenheit, four times a week is the recipe for, I would say, the best effects for cardiovascular brain all-cause mortality. What about if you increase temperature and reduce duration? Yeah. So this question, usually I get at the opposite because people are interested in infrared zonas and infrared zonas go only to like 145 degree Fahrenheit. They kind of heat you up a little differently. They're not, the ambient air is not as high.

It's like, you know, electrons that are like moving your molecules in your body up. But, um, and so in that case, you would want to stay in a much longer duration. And that's what's used in like Ashley Mason study. But the opposite, so like if you're going to, you know, what, 180 or how, how hot are we talking? Mine was 230 today. Okay. So heat is, so heat is a stress, it's a stress on the body, right? And you have this stress response to the heat, right? So your body makes heat shock proteins, for example.

You get dark thoughts. Yeah, you get dark thoughts, yeah, exactly. And then you get out and you feel great. But you also get chatty in there. So it's important to keep in mind that you don't want to go too extreme on heat because it is a stress. Just like you don't want to exercise all day, like you need recovery, right? You don't want to fast forever, like you need food. These things are stressors on the body and our body has a stress response to them. So this is kind of like hormesis. We talk about hormesis a lot, right?

Heat is the same thing. Um, heat can permeabilize the blood brain barrier when you start to go to extreme temperatures. I'm saying that melting my brain. I'm concerned that that 230 is too high. Yeah. So there was one study that came, um, that was published, was it 2022? It was kind of recent-ish. And it wasn't from Dr. Yari Laukenin's group who is the main researcher who does a lot of studies out of Finland looking at sauna use and dementia, for example. He found sauna use is associated with like a 66% reduction in Alzheimer's disease and dementia if they're using it four to seven times

a week. Well, another study came out and this they're using it four to seven times a week. Well, another study came out and this was in, gosh, it was quite a few. I don't remember it was two or 5,000 adults. It was a lot, or maybe it was more actually. Well, anyways, they looked at temperature and they looked at duration and they looked at Alzheimer's disease risk.

And it was clear that if you use the sauna, you had a lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease risk. And it was clear that if you use the sauna, you had a lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. But there was a subset of group where people were using it at 200 degrees Fahrenheit or more that had the opposite effect. Wow, so you shaped curve to temperature. I think so. I don't want people to get freaked out

because it's like, but not everyone's doing 200. I think there's always this extreme push where I'm gonna go hard to get freaked out because it's like, but not everyone's doing 200. I think there's the extreme, there's always this extreme push where I'm gonna go hard. And if you're that personality type, you're gonna be that person that goes all the way because that's what you do on everything you do. Turn the dial up, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do think with sauna though,

it's important to keep in mind that it is a pretty strong stress on the body, particularly if you're not head out, right? But if you're getting your head in there and warming it up to 230 degrees. Yeah. This plunge thing is really, really intense. I mean, there's a couple of things when you think about like, where's the thermometer actually located? Right. Highest point. It's at the top. Unless you're stood on your tiptoes on the bench, you're not actually

going to get your head to that point. And the difference between this one that I've got is two benches. And the lower bench is way cooler. Half is hard as sitting on the upper bench. And the upper bench isn't at the all the way at the top. And if you're at the other side to where the rock heater thing is, if you're over there, then it's easier. And if you're at the front, then it's a bit hard. So you can kind of mitigate within that, I suppose. One consideration, like four times a week can be quite intrusive for somebody to get that heat exposure, especially if they don't,

even if you do have a sauna at home, it's still pretty intrusive, like I gotta go back and forth to the thing and preheat it and all the rest of the stuff. Is there a, if you were to do 20 minutes in at 180, 190, something like that to make sure that it's 174. And then take a little break and then go back in. Is that a way that you could maybe get away with doing three times a week or two times a week and still try and capture some of those

really good gains? I don't know that that data is there to make that statement, but I do know that there have been studies looking at going repeatedly and taking a few minutes break and going back into the sauna. And what is clear is that you do get big major boost in growth hormone. Is this the thing that 16X increased? Yes. Tell us that.

Yeah, so what they were doing is they were going, so they're going, I don't remember how many times, but it was quite- Four times 30 minutes with a break. Yeah, with a break, something like that. Yeah, so it's been- Four times 30 minutes with a break. Yeah, with break, something like that. Yeah, so it's been years since I've talked about that study. But yeah, so that could give 16-fold increase in growth hormone, which it's transient,

it doesn't last forever, but also growth hormones involved with sleep and in deep sleep. And so it's another reason why doing that, timing your sauna around bedtime could be highly beneficial for a lot of people. Like a lot of people really do benefit. So I personally, like I said, I do, I kind of do both. I did like the, I do the hot tub, um, which is 104 degrees and I'm in there for like 30 minutes. But the difference being that it's 104 degrees of liquid touching your skin.

Exactly. Now, and there's been studies that have looked at, so there's heat shock proteins that are activated in the sauna and they're also activated in the hot tub and brain-driven neurotrophic factor, which is from exercise, also is activated when you get in the hot tub. So and the sauna. So it's like, when you start to see the biomarkers that are similar between the different heat modalities, you kind of go, well, at the end of the day, is your heart rate going up in the hot tub? Yes, I've been, I've done the sauna for like,

years and years and years and years. I like, I know how I feel. I feel the exact same way in the sauna. I like the sauna better because I'm less likely to cheat. Like I will cheat in the hot tub. I will get my arms out. Like you have to have your shoulders down for 20 minutes. So you have to really like-

Didn't you, I saw you on Twitter get into a... You got in trouble with big steam, like the steam room versus sauna versus jacuzzi thing. I think there's a lot of people that are like evangelists for the sauna being the only way to get hot. And I think that you'd mentioned there's quite a lot of different ways that you can get hot. There's a lot of different ways you can get hot.

And I think, I mean, I've done a lot of steam showers. Again, you're getting your heart rate up. You're increasing your cardiac output. You're getting blood flow increases. You're sweating. Like all these things are happening. It's the heat shock response. You're, you know, there's a lot of ways.

What is it that a lot of roams do? A lot of rows to roam, right? I mean, it's not Would if somebody doesn't have access to Easy easy access to a sauna or doesn't have one in the house What about just running a hot bath and then continuing to like I mean, how much is a thermometer that you put in the bath? It's probably five dollars. Maybe ten dollars or something throw that in get it at What temperature and stay in for 20 minutes?

Exactly. I do this a lot when I'm traveling, by the way. Like I get, I do the- The portable sauna. I do, I do it. But so what I like to recommend is like, so go and get one of those pool thermometers, right? I mean, they're like you said, they're like anywhere between $5 to $15.

The little floaty ones. The little floaty ones. You put that in your bathtub and you get it up to 104, set your timer for 20 minutes, make sure your shoulders are down, like submerged below. And if the temperature starts to go down, just add some more hot water. And that's it. Most people have a bathtub. And so I like that it can be accessible because that's another thing I get a lot of, oh, well,

I don't have a sauna. Religious position. Yeah, you know, and yeah, there's a lot of gyms, but this isn't Finland. Like we're, you know, everyone has a sauna. Yeah, so, so I do realize that there's a limitation on the saunas and you might go, well, then why do I need this? Like, do I need it? You know, like I said, so there's the VO2 max, you know, that you're getting, you're getting even better than just exercise. Now, there's people out there that are endurance athletes, like they're, I don't know, do they need it? Like the VO2 max, you know, that you're getting even better than just exercise. Now there's people out there that are endurance athletes, like they're, I don't know, do they need it like for VO2 max?

Probably not. But it also helps with the disuse atrophy, muscle atrophy. And those studies have been done. So they've done studies where they do like this. They immobilize a limb in people for like a period of weeks. And they did local heating in one study, but there's been a lot of animal studies doing sort of whole body heating.

And it'll prevent disuse atrophy by like 40%. I snapped my Achilles three years ago, full detachment, playing cricket. And it was 13 days from when that happened until when I got my surgery. So I'm waiting for, I wanted a very particular surgeon in the UK 13 days from when that happened until when I got my surgery. So I'm waiting for... I wanted a very particular surgeon in the UK to come and do it.

One of the guys had been highly recommended to me, which meant I had to wait a little bit longer. 13 days of not stepping on my right leg and it was gone. It was so alarming to look down and see, especially because you've got the other leg to fucking compare it to. So you're laid in the bath or whatever, looking down and thinking, like, this is wild. It's so crazy. And obviously, you see people that are in wheelchairs who maybe don't use their lower limbs all that much and they've got very thin legs.

And yeah, it was crazy to see that in 13 days. Well, you were young when this happened. and they've got very thin legs. And yeah, it was crazy to see that in 13 days. Well, you were young when this happened. And so you can recover, you can bounce back quite quickly. But people that are older, like they go in, they get influenza and they're like convalescing for like weeks, right? They're not moving, they're not using their muscles.

They can't recover. Like they'll never get back to that pre-state. So scary. And this is where I think the heat comes in and also omega-3s. So I know it's like- Oh, I'm on omega-3s. It's like, I can't like,

there's like a few low hanging fruit, right? This episode is brought to you by omega-3s. But it's been shown to cut disuse atrophy by like 50%. So, and this, but this is something that's not gonna happen like you have to preload it. So you have to, the Omega-3 is accumulate in the muscle membranes, and it takes about four weeks for that to happen. So you have to plan ahead or just be the person that's already taking him.

That way it's already there, right? And so then you're ready. Talk to me about cold. We've got hot cold exposure. Yeah. So deliberate cold exposure is another type of hormetic stress and there's some overlap, but there's different, like you can increase heat shock proteins

from cold exposure. Heat shock, these stress response pathways, there's a lot of overlap where you can like, because it's just, it's an adaptation, right? We were meant to move, we were meant adaptation, right? We were meant to move, we were meant to be hot, we were meant to be cold, we were meant to get plant phytochemicals. They're, you know, our bodies respond and we activate all these really beneficial genetic pathways. So they all kind of overlap. Some do it better than others. Like, heat shock proteins

are more robustly activated by heat, but cold also activates them. Just an interesting thing to think about. So cold exposure, one of the most robust physiological responses to cold exposure would be norapinephrine release. And we were talking earlier about mood and neurotransmitter optimization, things to do, like behaviors you can engage in and timing of those behaviors around things that are, you know, perhaps going to require a better mood or more motivation or something like that. Right. So,

Nicole, Nora Pneffin does play a role in, in motivation and mood and those things. And like I got in the cold shower before I came here and I usually do that before like a talk or, you know, something like that as well. But, um, so Nora Pneffin release is one of the most consistent physiological responses. You can get that from 20 seconds at like 40 degree Fahrenheit water or two

minutes, excuse me, two minutes at 49 or 50 degree Fahrenheit water will release norepinephrine twofold over baseline. Or you can be crazy and stay in like 50 degree water for an hour. Who does that? And you'll get a five-fold increase. So why would you want norepinephrine? Well, it is a neurotransmitter. It does play a role in focus, attention. It regulates mood. It helps with anxiety, all those things are important. So it's kind of, I personally like to time it around things like cold exposure. Also sort of benefits with respect to mitochondrial biogenesis, you can get in cold plunge and stay in there for 15 minutes and increase mitochondrial biogenesis markers and muscle tissue. So that's the growth of new mitochondria in your muscle tissue. That's great.

Mitochondria are producing more energy, so it's associated with less muscle atrophy. But you can get that from a high-intensity workout too, so you don't have to necessarily do cold. When should you do the cold? So I can tell you when not to do it. When not to do it would be after sort of a strength training or resistance training workout. How long is the window? So that's the good question. So I've come up with my own sort of window on this, and I can tell you the rationale behind that. But so here's the thing, there's been a couple of studies, and it's actually not all consistent. The first study that came out that was like the big, made the big deal, it was like, I don't know, 2015 or so when it came out or something like that.

And the study did, it was a cold ice bath and it was five minutes after a strength training workout where the men went in and like put their leg or something like that in the ice bath for 15 minutes. And this was right after the workout, okay? Or they did passive recovery where they were actually on a stationary bike. So the control group wasn't just sitting around,

they were actually, in my opinion, increasing hypertrophy by movement. Okay, that's clear. I think that's a flaw of the study. And so the people that did the ice bath right after their resistance training work at Haud still had hypertrophy, but they had less than the control group. And so that was like, oh, it's blunting gains. And so I was like, back then I would dive into, I was trying to dive into understanding. Leg or legs? I don't remember. Right. I was just wondering,

because it would be interesting if they compared the leg. To the other leg. Yeah. I don't remember. It's been so long since I've read that study, but, so when you're doing exercise, when you're doing resistance training, you're obviously causing an inflammatory response, right? That's part of the stress.

And there's a counter to that. There's a very potent anti-inflammatory response. With the resistance training, you're actually damaging muscle, right? You're damaging the muscle. It's like a mechanical force activating all sorts of pathways. Well, it turns out that immune cells have to get to that muscle and that plays a role in the hypertrophy. But like this whole response, if you look at like some of the cytokines and IGF1 that's

involved in signaling and all that, it happens like it peaks like an hour after resistance training. And then after that, it kind of goes back down. And so the question is, when you're getting in the cold, you're causing vasoconstilation. So norepinephrine, I mentioned, is a neurotransmitter. It's also a hormone. It's made in the periphery as well, and it's evolved in vasoconstriction, which is the opposite of what he does, vasodilation. So when you're vasoconstricting, you're cutting off the roads to get to your muscle, right? Like the growth factors, the immune cells, all those things can't get there, right?

You're stopping that. I think this is what's happening. And so, you know, it's like, well, what if I just wait like an hour to, would I be safe? Possibly, or maybe just, you know, do it at a few hours, like five hours. What's the rule you use? Five? So I personally don't do as much cold exposure as I should do because I talk about it. I do it a lot more in the summer when it's hot and but when I do do it most of the time it's before something I know it's like it's ridiculous but it's the truth or I'll do it in the morning. Like so I personally don't like to time it right after my heat exposure, mostly

because blood pressure changes for me that are just freaky, that I don't like. It's wild. Doing contrast therapy is very, very weird. It is. Yeah. I mean, some people like that, right? I enjoy it, but it's like a dizzy feeling. It's a dizzy, and I've had like even more extreme where it was like vertigo and I had like it was. I've had to sit on the side and just. Yeah, exactly. Stare at the floor and hope that it goes away.

Yeah. So I'm not too like fond of that feeling. So I like to separate them, you know, a little bit. Although I think if I wait like five to 10 minutes after I get out of the sauna, like in just kind of room temperature, just chill out for a minute, let my heart rate come down, then I get in the cold. I don't have that response.

So like waiting a little bit. So I think the rule of thumb for cold exposure is I think that neurotransmitter optimization, like when do you want to use it to get that norepinephrine hit? Because it does help with focus and tension. It helps with mood, anxiety. And so like, you know, if you wanna like, if you wake up in the morning, first thing and do it, that's a great way to start the day.

I like to wake up and get on my Peloton or do my workout, but also just timing it around things. Like I said, I did a cold shower before I came here. From at home, I'll get into the cold plunge before something that, you know, is gonna cause me more anxiety or just I need more focus and attention. So you mentioned 20 seconds at 40 degrees is enough for the norepinephrine,

but what about if we're looking for the full cascade, we're going to capture as much as we can most that is realistic for people to do how long, how frequently, how cold per week. So we talked about the norepinephrine and we talked a little bit about mitochondrial biogenesis, the growth of new mitochondria in skeletal muscle, and that was 15 minutes at 50 degrees, which if you can get to the three minute, three and a half minute mark at 50 degrees, you can get to 50. The rest of it's fine. Yeah. But there's another benefit we didn't talk about, which is actually making more mitochondria in your adipose tissue. And that's an adaptation that is a response to cold exposure because

when you have more mitochondria in your fat, you're basically making more energy, burn more energy, but you also release heat as a byproduct. And so it's an adaptation. The more you use the cold, it's called browning of fat. And the reason for that is because when you look at a fat droplet under a microscope and there's more mitochondria in it, it looks brown compared to white. So that's also something that happens. And most of the studies looking at browning of fat in humans have not been done in getting into a cold water. They've been done in like humans walking around at 50 degree Fahrenheit or putting on a cold

suit that's 50 degree Fahrenheit. I know it's like one of those things you like walk around with the air. Yeah. And so again, for those, I mean, it's anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, you start to get that. So 15 minutes, I think is a good marker for a session for you, the whole shebang, right? Like not just the norepinephrine, but the mitochondrial benefits. If you're also looking for browning of the fat and you know, the muscle. At what temperature? And so that would be like 50 degrees, 49 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're, if you can, and which is, it's, I mean, that's cold. Some people go, that's pretty miserable. I mean, we're used to, again, it's so funny, like the bro version of me and my friends that do this in Austin, if we go to Cuyah, where I've said that you should

go if you're coming through. Um, it's. Two 20 in the sauna. It's 37 degrees in the ice bath. And we're doing 20 and three, three times. But it seems like dialing that back in terms of intensity and increasing it in terms of frequency and duration is where we're actually gonna maybe not even capture more gains,

but reduce some of the negative effects of us going hell for leather on. Yeah, I mean, you gotta think about the like, you know, the fact that this, you are stressing your body, right? Like you want, you want the stress to be good and great enough and robust enough, but you don't like, there's a window, right? Like you don't want to go outside that window where it's like, damage. Yeah. But what all one rep max pililled on everything. So all of the bros that go and do it go, well, look, like when I went into the gym, going to failure or doing drop sets or, you know, pushing myself until I want to throw up, that worked.

That has to be the universal rule for all modalities of stimulus. Therefore, I'll just do the sauna till I want to pass out and I'll crawl out and that's got to be the best. How long are you? Do you stay in that 230? And do you get down, do you keep going down to each level? I step up and down.

It depends on whether my housemates there and we also watch stuff. So we'll put a speaker in there and like watch a little bit of like an interview or YouTube or whatever. Usually about 15 to 20 minutes is like my real upper bound for that 231. That's a lot for that hot.

It was rough. It burns the inside of your nose. Like if you try and breathe in through your nose, it hurts. It hurts my nostrils to do that. Anyway, 15 minutes, 50 degrees, not done within five hours of hypertrophy training. Let's just say it to be safe. Also probably not done within a couple of hours of going to sleep, because that's maybe going to cause some complications when it comes to getting your body cold temperature right? You talking about cold? Yes.

I don't know. I think it's like, like it can help with sleep too, actually. Okay. So both hot and cold can. Both hot and cold can help with sleep. Because if you go hot, then it's going to bounce back and pull you into cold. It, it, yeah, your body does go. Like if you notice when you get out of the sauna, like, doesn't take, I don't know how,

it varies on each person, but after a little bit of time, all of a sudden you're really cold, right? Yes. You're like, yeah. So I don't know that, you know, I think people even do like hot and, I've done this hot and cold and it does really help with sleep doing both as well. Okay. But it's also kind of an exhausting thing with your body,

which makes sense, right? I went to this place in Toronto called Other Ship. You heard of this? It sounds, yes, yeah, half, yeah. So they're called similar to Cuyah in Austin. Other Ship do classes for heat and cold. So they've got this 90-person sauna, which is like a coliseum, and it's this raked sort of seating and benches,

and it's huge. This sauna thing at the front looks like a massive barbecue grill for the biggest party that you've ever seen. And then they have coaches that guide you through the cold exposure as well. So there's kind of like PTs stood at the end of each of the cold tubs,

and they say, what are you wanting to get out of the session today? And they'll take you through different modalities. One of the ones that they did with us, which I really loved was 30 seconds in, 30 seconds out, three rounds of the cold. And while you were in there, you were moving both arms and legs

and doing a little bit of toning, like vocal, like toning stuff. And that was wild. I'd never done that before. We tend to just get in, sit in for two to three minutes, get out, go back in the sauna. But that was really interesting. The effect of doing that was pretty cool.

Yeah, doing a workout in there, because again, it's like making your workout harder, right? It's like, because they're both sort of, to some degree, doing at least physiological responses, kind of similar with respect to cardiovascular action. Well, there's also something about if you don't have an agitator in the cold tub, everyone's done this. Everyone knows that you get in and you sit and you're like, I'm just going to wait for the film of warm water to kind of get around me. And if I really, really

don't move, it'll be less painful. But doing this is just, it's so miserable. It's like so miserable. It's a frequency, 15 minutes, 50 degrees. How often? I don't know that there's an established frequency like there is with the sauna, right? This isn't, like there's not large observational studies looking at people that are co-plengy. But I will tell you, so I talked to Dr. Lachlan about this this, he said, what percentage of people in Finland because the Saunas studies are coming out of Finland? Finland's ground zero. Yeah, like are doing our,

cause a lot of people will just, they'll do that, they have like these public saunas as it's called and the community will get in there and then they go in like in the wintertime they just go into the Baltic and jump in and it's cold. And I've been there, I've experienced it, I've seen it. So he was saying about 10% of people. I actually thought it was going to be more than that, but it's not. About 10% of people are doing contrast therapy, so they're going from hot to cold. So then you go, oh, well, because I wanted

to know, are some of these benefits from the contrast, and there's not a lot of research on it, you know? So the question is like, I don't think that you can give a frequency like with absolute confidence. Four to seven times per week. Exactly, yeah. So it's more of a, okay, well, are you looking for these browning of fat? Is that because it'll go away when you stop doing it.

So you have to keep it up. And the more you do it, it is kind of dose dependent. So what are you trying to, I told you that I don't do enough cold exposure. And once it's the summer, would you try and do? Um, yeah. I mean, so I look, I feel great.

I felt great this morning when I was doing my cold shower, right? Like I like to use it for that like mood booster. Cute. So it's an acute performance enhancer, that neuro transmitter optimizationter optimization thing. That's why I like to use it. And every time I do it, I'm like, why don't I do this more? I know why, because I'm doing the hit and the muscles and then I'm the mom and I got the podcast.

So it's like, it's almost like, I think it's almost easier to just, at least if it's winter, to just get into the cold shower because it's like less of like, something about the cold plunge, you gotta like lift the lid, you gotta think about it, you gotta think about it, you gotta think about it, you're like, oh, it's the cold plunge and I gotta get past that three, three and a half minute mark where you know, you're burning and then you're not burning. So I think that I just would like to start using it on a more of a daily basis

for the way it makes me feel. And that's why I like it mostly. It seems to me based on what you're saying here that although there is definitely a place for cold exposure and deliberate cold exposure has some effect that you don't capture with the sauna. If you were to make a pie chart of what's happening with heat and cold, a lot of it is coming from heat and only a little bit of it is coming from cold. Yeah.

When we're talking about a lot of these health outcomes with respect to cardiovascular disease and dementia and all-cause mortality, all it is, it's all, but again, the hot is mimicking modern intensity exercise. So yeah, that makes sense. The cold, I really just, all comes back again to that makes you feel so good, you're getting that norepinephrine. It does brown your fat and like, look, browning of fat is a therapeutic target for many researchers that have been researching this now and for over a decade where it's being looked at to help as a treatment for type 2 diabetes because you do improve metabolic health from browning of fat. But compare that to like exercise, diet,

what you're eating, I don't know that it matters. I don't know that the cold even compares. Like I don't even know that we should have been talking about the metabolic benefits of it when there's like so much more bang for your buck. That's sprinkling on the top of the icing on the top of the cake. Yeah, exactly.

And it's like, okay, I'm making more mitochondria in my muscles, but I wanna be doing HIIT and vigorous exercise for all the other benefits. And guess what? I get making more mitochondria in my muscles, but I want to be doing HIIT and vigorous exercise for all the other benefits. And guess what? I get mitochondrial biogenesis from that, like pretty robustly. So-

Is that with the browning of the fat, is that wrists in and clavicle in? Is that one of the cues that I've heard about this? Have you seen this stuff? No, I don't know. That's interesting. So there'll be people screaming at us in the comments,

but when I was at other ship, when I've been to Cuyah, when I've been with Heberman, there's something to do with the wrist area kind of up to the bottom of the palm and something about the clavicle as well, being an area which is particularly susceptible to benefiting from cold exposure for this brown adipose tissue thing. I heard this story that sounded true, which was during World War II, the Germans were trying to work out why their fighter pilots were dying so quickly when they were ejecting over the British Channel.

Let's say that they'd run out of fuel or they'd been shot down or that the engine had failed for some reason or another. And the pilots were ejecting and they were finding them dying very shortly after the plane had gone down. So they had a lot of prisoners in one form or another that they were able to do these tests on. And what they found was that if the life jackets lifted the clavicle up out of the water, the survival time went through the roof. So there's something very important about this area of the body

being under the water. And that is the converse reason, apparently, which is why your clavicle should be under when you're doing deliberate cold exposure. That's interesting. I know there's a, you know, when you get into cold water, particularly if you're not adapted, like you're not deliberately doing it, there's a cold shock response, right? And so I wonder, you know, and some of that plays a role in like people actually having, you know,

dying from getting in really cold water. I don't, I wonder if there's a connection there between the cold shock response and- Ah, yes, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, because less of them is under cold water. I wonder if there's a connection there between the cold shock response. Yes, very interesting. Yeah. Because less of them is under the water. When it comes to exercise, what is your framework for designing an exercise routine? Well, so for me, I personally get very motivated when I understand how things work and look

at data and see outcomes. And I think, okay, well, I need to get my routine around this, whatever is the data. And so I have been pretty convinced that I've always been like a runner. I've always been more of an endurance junkie. I'm not an athlete. I've done like one marathon in my entire life. I'm not out there clocking those kinds of miles,

but I do enjoy going for runs and I enjoy that sort of endurance exercise. So for me, that was always what I might go to and less focusing on resistance training as we've talked about it's hugely important for muscle mass. But the question is, well, how hard do I need to go on the, you know, on the endurance?

So does it need to be more of a vigorous exercise workout or moderate intensity, lower intensity? Is anything better than nothing? Yes. I think at the end of the day, like the most important thing is habit. Like what are you going to consistently do, right? Like you're going to consistently do some sort of physical activity and it needs to be that, like whatever it is that you will do. Otherwise, you can talk about what's the best, but if you won't do it, it doesn't matter, right? So, I try to get a lot of vigorous intensity exercise in,

so that would be 80% max heart rate. And the reason for that is because I've been pretty convinced that if you are not an athlete doing more than 10 hours a week or 10 or more of endurance training, so if you're not that person, I think that it's more beneficial, the data suggests it's more beneficial to engage the majority of the time in more vigorous intensity exercise versus what's zone two training, right? So like a lower intensity or I guess it's more moderate intensity, the talk test kind of exercise, right? Where you're breathy, but you can still have a conversation, which I do like doing those

as well, particularly when I'm having a conversation with someone on a run. It's nice. I enjoy it. But I do also go harder, I do a lot of high intensity interval training and I think that there's evidence for that. If you are going harder and you're getting that heart rate up to 80% max heart rate,

you're increasing that lactate. And we've talked about this, that in itself is beneficial. It's beneficial for the brain and I think that's one reason I'm particularly motivated because I'm very interested in brain health. And so lactate's been shown. Lactate is consumed by the brain during physical activity. This has been shown in humans and it fuels basically your normal function while you're exercising. Your brain is working harder while you're exercising just like your heart and your muscles

your brain is working harder to and lactate is feeling that and you're you're you're basically increasing norepinephrine and serotonin from that lactate so lactate itself is actually It can be used as an energy source a very Utilizable energy source much like beta hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone body that you make when you're either fasting or on a ketogenic diet. It's very similar. And so lactate increases those neurotransmitters. It also increases that brain-drive neurotrophic factor, which is beneficial for growing new neurons. It's beneficial for neuroplasticity for basically making you feel better, making you smarter,

staving off neurodegenerative disease. You want BDNF. That's what you want. And so, and again, this is all evidence-egenerative disease. Like there's, you want BDNF, like that's what you want. And so, and again, this is all evidence-based studies that have been shown in human showing that the higher intensity, the more intense the workout, the more vigorous, the more lactate and lactate is signaling to increase that. It's the way that your muscles communicate

with other organs, like it's increasing lactate and lactate is going to other, it's being shuttled to other organs and it's signaling to them to do these beneficial things. It's called the lactate and lactate is going to other, it's being shuttled to other organs and it's signaling to them to do these beneficial things. It's called the lactate shuttle. It's also being shuttled back into your muscle and doing things like increasing glucose uptake. We talked about that as well. So the lactate itself is only gonna come

when you're cranking up the intensity, when you're working hard enough that you can't get enough oxygen to your muscles, you know, to basically produce energy. So that's sort of the, the, I'm actually trying to make more lactate. And the lactate increase doesn't last long. It's pretty transient, like 20 minutes or so, you'll be back to your baseline after a pretty intense workout. So there's data not only showing that it's beneficial for the brain and brain drive neurotrophic factor and these neurotransmitters I was talking about, but also lactate itself is used by

neurons. So the lactate that's going into your brain, it's transported across the blood brain barrier, it's used by neurons as an energy source. And in fact, our neurons prefer lactate. So our astrocytes, which is a supporting cell in our brain, they make a lot of lactate because they actually are, what's called glycolytic, they use glucose without their mitochondria as energy,

and they shuttle the lactate out and neurons take it up. And so neurons like to use lactate because they can use lactate as an energy source without using as much energy as they do with glucose. So it takes more energy to use glucose to make energy than it does lactate, if that makes sense. It's so funny, you know, even when you were in school, people would learn about the lactate threshold and they'd know that that was the reason that your muscles burn when you're doing cross country running and you're 13 years old or whatever. And it's almost like the enemy in

some ways. It's the thing that hurts. I don't want it. I don't like that. And now you're telling me that it might actually be super useful. Super. It's definitely the thing that you want. It's hugely beneficial for the brain. You know, again, it's also beneficial for the blood-brain barrier. It's increasing VEGF, which is a growth factor that helps you grow new blood vessels and like repair blood vessels at your blood brain barrier so it doesn't break down, which happens with age. So it is, and I was talking about the neurons using it, there's evidence that when, so when your neurons use lactate, they spare glucose.

They don't need glucose because they're using lactate for energy, right? And what happens is called the glucose sparing effect. And what that means is glucose can be used for other things. And what it's used for is producing, it makes a precursor for glutathione, which is the major antioxidant in the brain. And so there's research out there looking at giving people lactate infusions that have TBI. What does that feel like? Well, it's like sodium lactate. So it feels like, you know, saline, but yeah. Oh, okay.

So people that have a TBI, traumatic brain injury, they have massive like injury in their brain, right? And they need glutathione. It's a very potent antioxidant, but their glucose is being used up to make energy. I mean, it's not, there's nothing there to make the glutathione. It's a very potent antioxidant, but their glucose is being used up to make energy. I mean, it's not, there's nothing there to make the glutathione. And so there's these studies that have shown that the sodium lactate infusions has a beneficial effect with TBI because it, again, I think this is the mechanism

that's happening. One of many is it's helping with the glucose sparing. So glucose is used to make more antioxidant in your brain. So that on top of it's also making BDNF, brain growth, no triplic factor. Okay. So I think that there'll be a lot of people listening who fall into one of two camps. Almost everyone listening will be training in some way or another, right? This is an audience of Jack people. But one will skew towards the bodybuilding style training. It'll probably be a three to five day split, like push-pull legs or maybe a body part split or something like that.

And those people will likely be trying to hit, you know, the six to 10,000 steps per day. So they'll be focused very much on the resistance training. There'll be another camp of people who are like heavy on zone two. There'll be the runners, there'll be the cyclists. Maybe there'll be some hybrid training people that are in there, but even the hybrid training guys are going to just be doing like either camp on a camp too. What you're saying is that there is third

camp, which is this high intensity vigorous exercise, and that that may be the most important one of all. So I think that if we're talking about the camp with the zone two, and if we're talking about athletes more, I mean, these are people that are clocking a lot of miles, right? They're just normal people. Oh, okay. So these are like committed exercisers doing maybe, you know,

four, two to four hours a week of exercise. They'll do a park run and they'll like, you know, they'll keep on top of that runs throughout the week or whatever. Yeah, I think that if that's, so again, going back to like, if that's what they're going to do, running is beneficial. You're also going to get a lot of benefits from just doing Zoom too. But I think that if you can step it up to being a little bit more vigorous, if you can still do that and habitually do it,

incorporate some high-intensity training in there as well. I do think it's very beneficial. And, you know, it's also beneficial for the VO2 max improvements. Like there's been studies that have been done looking at people that are actually meeting the requirements for aerobic exercise per week. So it's like two and a half hours a week.

And even if they're meeting those, like doing moderate intensity exercise, there's like 40% of those people will not improve their VO2 max, like they're called non-responders. It's not really know why they don't respond, but it's thought because you know, improvements in your cardiorespiratory fitness as measured by VO2 max, it's an adaptation. And in order to have that adaptation, like a stronger stressor will produce a little bit more of a robust adaptation. And so there are studies that have identified

like people that don't respond, if they then engage in more high intensity training, they can get those VO2max improvements. That's 40% of people that would be doing your zone two plus resistance training style stuff that doesn't pick up. I mean, Petra Tia told me that VO2 max is the single most important metric when looking at someone's longevity. How much truth do you think's in that? I think that absolutely he's right. I think VO2 max is one of the single. And the thing I love about it is that it's something that you can measure. It's a biomarker. I think it's one of the most important things, absolutely. And there's

some evidence that doing this vigorous exercise is important, but it has to be like a longer interval type of exercise. So at least one minute, that would be sort of the minimum, but better if you can get to four minutes. So there's something called the Norwegian four by four protocol. And that's four minutes at the highest intensity that you can maintain for the entire four minutes, followed by three minute recovery of like light, light exercise. I mean, you want your heart rate to come down so that you could do it again, four times, right?

So the Norwegian, it's absolutely miserable. The Norwegian four Sounds miserable. Absolutely miserable. The Norwegian 4x4. And, you know, there was a study, and I like, I like, this is one of the studies that inspired me. And this is, this was a study out of UT Southwest in Dallas. And the study took 50 year olds that were healthy, but they were not physically active. So they didn't have like type two diabetes and all that,

but they weren't active. They were also detrained. Exactly, they're detrained. And they put them on a pretty intensive training protocol for two years, okay, two years. It was a two year intervention. And it was a progressive protocol. So obviously when you have an untrained person,

you don't just write out the baton. Norwegian four by four day one, no, that's not gonna happen. So it took them six months to kind of work up their training, right, their endurance. And by the time they got to their six month mark, they were doing about, you know, four hours a week of what's called

maximal intensity exercise. So this is vigorous. This is- Four hours a week of maximal intensity. Yeah. Wow. So they were doing, so they were basically doing, it was like, it's high as you can maintain, you know,

vigorous intensity workout for 30 minutes, basically. So they're doing these 30 minute workouts. We're doing like 75, 80% max heart rate for 30 minutes, basically. So they're doing these 30 minute workouts, where you're doing like 75, 80% max heart rate for 30 minutes. Okay, but they're doing that eight times a week. Yeah, I mean, so no, they're also doing, they're doing other things as well. So they're doing, it's not, when I say four hours a week,

they're exercising four hours a week. Oh, right, I thought you meant they were doing four hours of this Norwegian four by four thing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They were doing exercise four hours a week. But they were doing, hours of this Norwegian four by four. No, no, no, no, no, no. They were doing exercise four hours a week. But they were doing, a majority of that was maximal intensity exercise. So a lot of that was, they were doing like 30 minute sessions of this. Okay.

And I think they were probably doing like one and a half to two hours of that. Yep. And then they were also doing some strength training. And then they were doing the Norwegian four by four. So there was kind of a nice sort of balanced. And then the control group was doing this sort of, I say strength training, but it was more, I guess body weight, you know, kind of stuff.

The control group was doing that. So it was a type of sort of body weight training, but it wasn't high intensity. Like it wasn't like the crossfit kind of stuff that you could do. It was more like the lower stretching kind of stuff, maybe yoga-ish kind of thing. And so after two years, these people like the cardiac structure, so as we age, our heart gets smaller and it gets

stiffer. And this happens, it's like part of aging, that results in a lot of things. So cardiovascular disease risk goes up, but also like your exercise performance and capacity goes down. So after that two years of doing this, pretty vigorous intensity exercise protocol, the people, the 50 year olds, they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. So their hearts were looking more like 30 year old hearts

versus 50 year old hearts. And this is after two years of doing this. And to me, it was so motivating to go, wow, these 50 year olds can do this. Like these were untrained people who don't usually work out. And by the end of these two years, I mean, they were like getting at it. And so I've, you know, kind of stepped up my game a bit. Also, like I've got a coach coming and I'm working with two days a week. And to do, I'm doing a lot of,

it's like a resistance training, but like kind of interval as well. So I'm getting the high heart rate and that interval training. So funny to see Peter Ateer and yourself kind of converge on this new, it's not as if it's new, but it was definitely something that I wasn't hearing about four years ago.

I wasn't hearing people talk about this. Everything was zoned to. It was like, go slow to go fast or whatever the tagline is. One of the problems with the zone two is that you need quite a high duration by design, because 45 minutes or an hour, multiple times per week, she's actually difficult. So lots of benefits of improving VO2 Max. Take us through the Norwegian 4x4 again and then what else is in there? If there was a protocol or a number of protocols you were going to design, here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your VO2 Max. What would you

tell people? I would say the Norwegian 4x4 is by far the best and you're going to get the, for the people that are really determined and committed, that would be it. That would be the four minutes of the exercise intensity as hard as you can go and maintain it for that entire four minutes. So obviously- Just dig into that. What do you mean? As hard as you can go and maintain it, what does that mean? It means you don't want to go like all out, like 95% of your max heart rate, because then you can only last for like a minute. You know, and so then you're going to go down.

You're going to slow down, right? So what it means is like you want to go, you know, for some people it might be like 75% max heart rate, right? So some people might be 80%, but you want to go as hard as you can for the four minutes without like really slowing down. So you kind of have to pace yourself a little bit, but you don't want to go too slow, right? Like you definitely can't be talking, like you should not be able to talk for sure when you're doing it. So it's hard enough that you just absolutely can't talk, but it's not all out.

So four minutes and then three minutes of totally light. Like you're going all the way. This is like, you know, you're like back to like zone one if you want to call it something. If your heart can come down. If your heart can come down. Yeah. And you're doing that for three minutes because you want to give your, you want to recover so that you can do it again.

And it, and you repeat it. It's a four, it's a four time protocol. So you do it once and then you repeat it three times or you just call the four by four. I think that's probably one of the, the best protocols to improve VO2 max. Now, Dr. Martin Gavala, I've had him on my podcast. He's a real expert on these high intensity interval training protocols. He does a lot of research on it at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. And he also says there's evidence

that a one minute protocol, so like just even doing like an interval, like one minute interval and then doing that, like a few times also can improve VO2 max. So that's a little easier and it's easier. Like I do one minute intervals. I'm trying to now incorporate the four by four into my routine, which is coaches help with that. Imagine it's a motivation thing, which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over that just

if you've got any program in front of you that isn't the Norwegian four by four for the day, you go, maybe it's back in bicep. So maybe I Norwegian four by four for the day. You go, maybe it's back in bicep. Maybe I'll just go for a little jog. It's like manana, manana, manana. Yeah, it is. But again, like I said, you do have to do, you try to make it consistent. So frequency per week. Well, the Norwegian four by four would be like one time a week. Oh, okay. And that's the hard day. That's less, that's the dose. That's the hard day. That's less miserable. That's the hard day. It is.

Okay. Is there any benefit to going twice per week? Probably, yeah. But- It'd have been so much better if you'd said- But these 50 year olds- Oh, no, no, actually, yeah. Yeah, these 50 year olds did one time a week for two years

and they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. Of course, they were also doing other vigorous intensity exercise. It wasn't the torturous Norwegian 4x4. Yep. You know, like... So, if Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving VO2 max,

what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise workouts? What else is in that bucket? Well, people can do what they enjoy doing. So you can go for a run, like I often go for a run and I'm doing 75, 80% my max heart rate. Usually it's like a 20 minute run that I do that. So like as intense as you can maintain for 20 minutes.

Like that's what you wanna do. You wanna kind of get that, you get a feeling for that. So if you like runs, because there's a lot of benefits to running, you're out in nature. Well, I guess some people do it on treadmill. I'm not so big on treadmills. Like I'll do them, like when I go to a gym or something traveling. But I like running out in nature. I think there's just, there's lots of benefits to doing that.

Some people like to get on their bike and cycle. So like you can just get on your bike and do a 20 to 30 minute, 75, 80% max heart rate cycle, right? So what we're aiming for here is 75 to 80% max heart rate for around about 20 minute exposure? You can, or you can do like a high intensity interval training. So high intensity interval training would be you're gonna go more than 80%, right? You might go, you're gonna do like more of like a submaximal perhaps, perhaps even a maximal interval.

So you can go up to 90, 95% max heart rate. So that would be, I mean, obviously you can only maintain that for like so long, right? Some people might be 30 second pushes. Or like a Tabata style thing. I do a lot of Tabatas as well. Oftentimes I like to do something every day, most days of the week.

And it's funny, I kind of adopted this routine when I was kind of trying to do a little bit like Joe Rogan's Sober October, but it was like every day October, I was trying to work out every day. And I noticed, I was like, I could do this. I'm doing it for like one month. And I don't, it wasn't going as hard as like,

this guy's doing the sober October, where they were like competition. It was like, they were just- At bike in the solar. If you do something every day, so sometimes I'll do like a 10 minute Tabata, where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes. It's 20, you know, it's,

most of the time I'll do a 45 second on 15 second off. So it's a three to one ratio. I really like that one, but sometimes I'll do 20 second on 10, take it off. So it's like, I do both, but like even just 10 minutes, again, I time it around like, like I got, I'm going to go do work.

I'm going to, I want to feel motivated. I want to feel better. I want to be more focused in all my game. And I just get on there for the bike for 10 minutes and do it You know, there's there's studies out there These sort of exercise snacks now 10 minutes is longer than an exercise snack but there's studies out there where people are wearing these like wearable devices, right and So you can track their their heart rate and you can track how how the heart rate is going up

and so there's large large studies, they're called the vigorous intensity lifestyle activity. And most people are taking advantage of everyday life. Like they have stairs every day to work. They sprint up them. They don't walk up them, they sprint. They get their heart rate up to like 75% max heart rate, 80% max heart rate. They're getting intense.

And people that do this anywhere between one to three minutes a day, I mean, these guys have like a 50% lower cancer-related mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality. And this was even true for people that identified themselves as non-exercisors. So they aren't, these are people that are not going to the gym or doing other like tennis or whatever. They don't have leisure time, physical activity. So the benefits were also in people

that identified as non-exercisers. So my point is that the vigorous intensity, these like even short bursts of it just consistently, like every day a little bit, like they do add up. There's additive effects and they make a difference. So that's also I think really something that's very encouraging because some people, oh, I gotta go and work out for 30 minutes.

It's like, you need that motivation, right? Like some people don't have that motivation. And so it's a lot easier to just get up and do something for two minutes. It's hard, but you can do it and you can do it at your house, right? What, apart from running up and down the stairs, what are some other ways that people can incorporate exercise snacks to take advantage of this? Body weight squats are a great one. So you're just doing your squats and you do it for a minute and then rest for whatever 15 seconds and then do another minute.

I mean, those are hard and they get your heart rate up. So you can do that for like three minutes. That's a really good one and then you're going to be really sore if you're not used to it. But and then there's the high really sore if you're not used to it. And then there's the high knees. So you do high knees. I mean, you could do chair squats. You could do plank, the burpees, those burpees.

So you do like the plank thing and then you come up and jump. Like those are all, I think, really great examples of just like easy ways to do exercise snacks, like even at your desk. Just even breaking up, we're talking about improving cognition, improving mood, breaking up your workday with those, it makes a difference on your mood, on your cognition. It helps. You're getting blood flow immediately to your brain. Yeah, you were talking, you were telling me about the need for people to break up their

sedentary time, that there's some very specific risks that people can encounter if they're too sedentary, for too long too frequently. What's happening there? Yeah, it's interesting. So I never identified myself as sedentary because I've always done something like running or jumping rope or something like going to the gym, something where I'm physically active. So it's like, oh, I'm in the physically active group. I'm not sedentary. Well, it turns out being sedentary is like what we've been for the past couple of hours. We've been sitting here. That is sedentary. So even when

you're even if you, you know, go to the gym or you go for runs, when you are sitting at your desk for a period of hours, you are sedentary. And sedentary itself is an independent risk factor for disease like cancer. Do I think the marathon runner that also has a desk job where they sit at their desk for eight hours is going to come down with cancer? Probably not because they're really putting a lot of effort in and they're physically active. But I certainly am not the athlete and I am a committed exerciser, right?

So I'm putting in anywhere between two to five hours of exercise in a week, depending on the week, right? So for me, I spent a lot of time, like I spent a lot of time sitting. I spent a lot of time sitting. And so that to me was like a big thing where it's like, oh, that's an independent risk factor for breast cancer, which, you know, a woman's breast cancer risk and just lifetime risk is one in eight.

It's incredibly high. And of course there's lifestyle factors that can sort of increase or decrease that. And just sedentaryism is a independent risk factor for that. So again, it's, it's really, and so easy. So I've, I have started incorporating exercise snacks. Um, I'll get up and I'll start doing some, some body weight squats. I think that's my, my go to, I also like doing, um, burpees.

I've been doing some burpees and high knees. I'll do, um, every hour. Um, I think every couple of hours, I've also been starting to time them around my meals. So that's another thing I think, being aware of the postprandial glucose response and how it affects my cognitive function, my mood, and also just knowing that it's healthier.

And it's so easy to do, like just do like two or three minutes of- Pre-food? You can do it pre or post-food, both. Trying to do minutes of pre-food. You can do it pre or post-food, both. Trying to do burpees post-food might be difficult. You can do it up to like an hour after. Right, okay. So one of the things that Dr. Stue McGill,

number one back pain specialist on the planet taught me about forever ago. And then Mark Bell also popularized this 10 minute walk, 50 minute walk post- post eating because insulin sensitivity, because of helping to readjust glucose levels within the blood. Also the muscles of the hips and the arms cross across the stomach. So actually helps with digestion of food a little bit as well. Like if you've had a really big meal and all you want to do is lie down, actually probably

one of the best things that you can do to make yourself feel better, is to maybe go for a walk. What would you say here? We've got the post meal walking crowd and the post meal burpees crowd. Like is there something that you're missing from one of those or are you happy with either? Well, I don't know about the whole arms movement, aiding and digestion thing, all of that. I do know that the more vigorous intensity when you're actually gonna start feeling that burn, right? When you start to get up to that, okay,

I'm making some lactate, that's what's actually increasing the transporters, glucose transporters, they're called glute four. They're in your muscle and they have to like move their way up to the top. And lactate is what signals them to do that. So when I'm just thinking about the glucose and improving blood glucose levels, vigorous is better.

You're actually chasing that burn. Chasing the burn and there's been studies that have compared walkers to interval walkers. So these are people that are just walking versus walk. Pick up the pace while they're walking, walk slower, pick up are people that are just walking versus walk. Pick up the pace while they're walking, walk slower, pick up the pace while they're walking. Now they're not running, but they're just interval walking. And it's been shown that interval walking improves a variety of metabolic parameters more than just walking. And again, it makes sense because when you're picking up the pace, you're working harder,

you're making lactate, and that's one of the big signals for these glucose transporters to come up to the top of the muscle and let the glucose in. So I do think from a mechanistic understanding that also data showing walking versus interval walking, interval walking is better when you can pick up the pace, when you can go a little bit more intense, it's better. All right. What about becoming muscled for longevity? So that's what I'm working on. You probably don't. I'm not all jacked up, but that's been my new goal, particularly of late, but for like the past year, I've become more aware of it. I've

spent more time focusing on it. I now have a coach who's great and coming to work with me to focus on that because I feel, you know, I'll tell you when it really hit me. I had someone on the podcast, Dr. Mark Madsen and I have admired his work for years. He's like the intermittent fasting king. Like I've known of his research since it was in my 20s, right? Like he's also done a lot of work on Hormesis.

And, you know, I've just, I followed his work for so much of my scientific career. So, it was very cool to have him on the podcast and talk to him. And we were talking all about everything under the sun with respect to fasting and Hormesis. And we started talking about training and he has been a track runner forever, big, big endurance athlete, mountain biking, everything. And he told me, he said, the one thing that I really regret in my life is that I didn't spend more time building muscle mass because he had an accident. He had a mountain biking accident and basically couldn't walk around and use his muscles for quite a period of time.

And he said it really hit him hard. And so that was my first kind of like, oh, wow, like that's like, I'm and I've always focused on endurance. I never thought I really needed to focus much on muscle. I'm not a bro. Like I didn't have that incentive to like, you know, build the muscle and I knew it was important, but I didn't really, I didn't dive in deep enough and convince myself that it was as important. So that was the first sort of eye opener for me. And then I had Stuart Phillips on who does a lot of research

on resistance training. He's the one And then I had Stuart Phillips on, who does a lot of research on resistance training. He's the one that like I helped identify that the RDA for protein intake is likely too low. And he has a really good way of explaining muscle mass and this what's called a disability threshold, which is what I think everyone that has an older parent or grandparent has seen in action, where they get older and they experience that take

where they're out for whatever a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden, of course, they can't gain their muscle back. And then it happens again and then again and then all of a sudden it's just downhill and they can't walk and the trajectory just plummets. And it's just not good. So in order to sort of not let that disability threshold

be so devastating, you really have to build up your muscle mass earlier in life. It actually, it's never too late, but if you can do it earlier in life, it's better. So training-wise, I used to just do, I mean, really it was like 30 minutes a week or so of resistance training, where I'm just doing dumbbells or something,

and now I'm doing two hours a week, maybe a little bit more. So that is a new focus and I'm working with the coach because I've noticed I'm much more likely to injure myself when I'm just doing it myself and I don't really know what I'm working with the coach because I've noticed I do I'm much more likely to injure myself when I'm just like Doing it myself and I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm following like a Peloton class or something So now I'm working with the coach who's really great and I just I'm I was so sore just after the first training session I was like I thought I was fit, you know, and here I am like just little Tendons and muscle like I just didn't even know we're there

So now I'm really trying to get, I think minimum like two hours a week of some sort of resistance training where I'm working a lot of my muscles, not just my biceps or my triceps. So if investing in muscle mass is like contributing to a retirement fund that you can then withdraw from in later life, what is the age where it starts to become more difficult and then after what age is it basically impossible to gain muscle mass?

So there's muscle mass and there's muscle strength. And everything that I know, I've learned from the experts like Dr. Stuart Phillips, like Dr. Brad Schoenfeld and reading their work and their publications. So, muscle mass peak around 20 to 30. And then after that, you start to lose about 8% per decade until you get to 70, it's 12% per decade. But strength decreases are even greater than that. So, we talk a lot about muscle mass and that's important, but strength is important, right?

Like you wanna be able to get up and out of a chair. Like it makes a difference on your quality of life, like being able to be independent and function independently. And so that's where there's hope especially because so we're talking about muscle mass gains. Well, it's like, so what happens when you reach the age of 50? It's, you know, you're not,

your, your anabolic resistance is starting to kick in, right? You're not being as sensitive to the protein intake. You really have to rely more on, on the mechanical force, you know, of, of stimulating muscle protein synthesis as the form of increasing muscle mass and hypertrophy. So, is there a time when you won't gain any of us? I think you'll continue to gain it. It just won't be as much, right? You're really battling atrophy at that point too. So, you know, the more you can contribute earlier, the more you'll have to pull from.

But I do think the strengths, the gains in strength are what is really good because at least there's studies showing in older adults, even ones that haven't really worked out much. If they start a resistance training program, they can counter the atrophy losses and they can regain strength like years that they've lost. So you can really gain,

your strength gains can be really good even in old age. And I think that's important. Yeah, that's obviously one of the things that people might be thinking, I'm 42, like, does that mean that it's too late basically for me to start gaining muscle or gaining strength or am I a lost cause at this age? No, not at all. No, not 42. I mean, it's going to get more challenging when you're 72. But even then, you're going to gain strength. I mean, there's studies showing that for sure. But even then, you're going to gain strength. I mean, there's studies showing that for sure.

You know, muscle mass gains won't be as good, but you will be countering that atrophy. You know, it's not like it's not beneficial. Do people need to lift heavy? Well, that's the golden question that first two Phillips, he showed that years ago that people, he didn't untrain people first. So he showed that untrained men could gain just as much muscle mass and strength, lifting lighter weights as people, as the men gain lifting heavy weights, as long as they put in the effort. So the volume and effort has to be high. So you have to. So you'll probably do a longer duration. It'll be more, you'll be doing more effort,

but you can gain as much muscle mass and strength if you're doing lighter weights as long as you're putting in that effort. And then Brad Schoenfeld came in after because he was like, ah, Stu, that was untrained men. Come on. And he then did it and trained men. And lo and behold, guess what?

Same data, same results. So the trained men also could gain as much muscle mass and strength by lifting lower, doing lower weights, as long as the effort, that's the key, effort, right? You have to put in enough, you have to be fatigued. You know who Dr. Mike Isretel is? No, I don't.

Professor of exercise science at Lehman College. Probably I think the best guy for evidence-based hypertrophy training on the internet at all at the moment. I had him on the show last week. And he's just so far, you really, really need to connect with him because the guy's so phenomenal. He's also jacked out you really, really need to connect with him because the guy's so phenomenal. He's also jacked out of his mind, right? So he walks the talk.

But he came on and he was explaining about the typical sort of bro science rep range, which was 8 to 14, any more than 14, and it's completely pointless. His rule, or at least what the evidence seems to show is that anything over six and below 30. As long as when you finish you are looking at one to two, one to three RIR reps in reserve. So that's what you're talking about here. He's Brad Schoenfeld is one of the guys that he respects the most in the industry as well. And the point is that you can get yourself to 28. And if you're like, I could do three more, maybe. That's good. Now, one of the disadvantages that you have of doing that is obviously

your session length is going to be longer. But one of the advantages that you have is that your injury risk is going to be lower. So I think, I mean, that was fascinating to me as someone who spent his entire life like allergic to going over 16 reps, like, no, no, no, that's just cardio. Like, that was fascinating to me as someone who spent his entire life like allergic to going over 16 reps. No, no, no, no, that's just cardio. That's just lame. That was really interesting.

A couple of the other things that he taught me that I thought were fascinating, he's a huge proponent of tempo. So it seems like the tempo of the movement is super crucial. The entire duration of the rep should not be less than two seconds. So you could get away with one second up and one second down. But it's very important to control the eccentric portion of the movement. Most of the muscle growth comes in the eccentric portion of the movement. The long stretch that you get at the very end range of the movement as well seems to be particularly where muscle growth is discriminated toward. So what you want to try and do is do exercises which incorporate that stretch.

For instance, if you see people that do wide grip lat pull downs, you get to this position and you're like, well, my lats aren't actually all that stretched. Whereas if you go a little bit more narrow, you go overhand pull-ups, or one of his favorites, which is this like a single arm wrap around a lat pull across. So if you can imagine that you've got a cable machine over there, and you're actually getting into this really super stretch position, and you're pulling right back around and you're feeling that that. But yeah, for him, the key things that I took away from that was

one to three reps and reserve. tempo seems to be just a great way again to reduce down the load, because you could still get to three reps in reserve on 10 reps, but because you've been doing tempo, it's so much harder. So again, you have all of these different things that you can use to manipulate the difficulty in the amount of reps that you need to go through, and just a little pause at extension in whatever it is. The bottom of the squat, it is going to mean, again, that you don't need to use quite so much weight.

It's going to put you into that, the muscles stretched position, which is where most of the hypertrophy occurs. And just, I think a two count down on whatever it is that you're doing, just seems to be the smartest way to do it. It's going to reduce injury risk. It's going to mean you don't need to use as much weight.

It's going to maximize that time and attention that we're talking about. And it's going to mean that if you do do a little pause at the bottom and then get it back up, it's fine. So that's now for me, all of my training, my entire training protocol is built around that type of tempo, rep range, and loading with the stretch at the bottom. So it was so simple. It was great to hear. Really, really good. Yeah, that's really great. I mean, easy to follow kind of protocol. I mean, for sure. And I do remember Dr. Bradshaw talking about some of the same things with the eccentric movement and stretching of it and all that like being really important for hypertrophy.

And of course, my new coach who knows everything, she's like on top of all of it. So pointing at you telling me, what about training when you're tired? A lot of the time people don't get as much sleep as they want, or they're a little bit more stressed or whatever, and they think, I'm tired, should I train? If I train, I make myself more tired. That might be dangerous or whatever. What do you think? Well, yeah, absolutely.

That's the time where you should train most. We were kind of talking about this, right? So, there's studies showing that if you don't get enough sleep, you can have a higher all-cause mortality than someone who gets enough sleep unless you're physically active. Physical activity blunts some of those negative effects of not getting enough sleep. So you're tired, you should go get at it. And also, guess what happens? You don't feel more tired. You feel like, especially if you're gonna go do like a hit, workout, you feel invigorated, you feel better. You're increasing blood flow to the brain.

That's what you need, right? You're lowering inflammation. Inflammation's what's making you tired. Inflammation's what's giving you that tired feeling. And so exercise is the counter to that, right? Exercise is one of the most robust ways you can have an anti-inflammatory response because your body is naturally, you know, there's one thing,

I mean, we talked about taking omega-3s. I mean, there's ways to reduce inflammation by taking certain phytochemicals or omega-3s, but exercise is forcing your body to use all of its genetic pathways to counter that inflammation. And it does it for a long time. It's not just as quick as you metabolize it, how long is it in your what's the half-life of the compound deal? This is like days after, right? So the little bit of stress that you're putting on your body, that anti-inflammatory effect is so much greater

that it counters the stresses of life of everything, a metabolism of just thinking and breathing. So I think that exercising when you're tired, you should be motivated and know that you're actually, you're going to feel better. You're going to be less tired after, like you really are, especially if you don't go for like a five hour run. I mean, like let's like, you know. There's an upper bound.

Yeah. I suppose as well, one of the things when you're tired, for like a five hour run. I mean, like let's like, you know. There's an upper bound. Yeah. I suppose as well, you know, one of the things when you're tired, your injury risk does go up. Your ability to do fine control motor movement and stuff like that. So if you're going to go and get that session, but you've only had five hours sleep

because the kids woke up at 4 a.m. this morning and it's been a nightmare or you just got back from a flight or whatever. Like don't try max out today, right? It's not, it's not three RM deadlift day. It's I go in and I try and work hard, but not kill myself day. Right. You either, I mean, if it's, you know, it's always easier to like, like I said,

if you could just do like a hit session, that's great. Or just do, you know, do a high intensity sort of body weight exercise workout, right? You do some pushups, you do some pull ups and then some squats or whatever, you know, or lift lighter like you were saying, where you're not gonna... The other thing is like the story that you tell yourself about being the sort of person that maybe didn't have an ideal night's sleep but still went and got after it. And this is totally separate to the physiological effect.

Yeah, I suppose the endorphins of the actual session will help with this, but like, I overcame a difficult thing today. Like that story that you tell yourself is so powerful and it helps to kind of reinforce this positive self-image of being someone who happens to life as opposed to life happens to them. Yeah, I mean, this is like,

this is something that I think about a lot as a parent. Like the little wins are such confidence boosters. You know, like it doesn't have to be like the big thing that you're going for, but like just a little win. Like I went and I did 10 minute workout. You know, it's like a little win, like good. Fuck you, world. Yeah, I mean, it makes a difference.

And I think you said it like beautifully, like it's a confidence booster. And I mean, those things do sort of, I think they add up and make a big difference. What else haven't we said about exercise? Is there anything else lurking in there that people need to be aware of? I think, you know, the big thing was covered

with respect to vigorous intensity, really focusing on getting that vigorous intensity, really focusing on getting that vigorous intensity every week, focusing on the VO2 max training, knowing the brain benefits, and then any kind of resistance training, obviously, is important. Those are the really, I think, big main things. What would be, if someone isn't going to go and get their lactate tested or do a VO2 max test with a mask on and all of this stuff. What is a rough benchmark that people can use to check?

I am making progress. This awful Norwegian four by four torture device that I've been doing every Sunday for the last six months has helped like what can people do the like home version of the test. So obviously a lot of people use their Apple watch, which does measure VO2 max. But I would say if you want an evidence-based way to measure VO2 max and the reason why the Apple watch isn't necessarily accurate is because so the thing that's really been shown to be a good way of estimating VO2 max is what's called the 12 minute run test

or 12 minute walk test, depending on your fitness level, right? But you need to have access to like a flat either track or something, some sort of, you know, thing that's flat, right? You could also, I mean, no, it's gotta be distance. So if you can somehow, yeah, clock that in on your watch

as well as you're on a bike, I think the best thing would be a track field or something like that. And what you do is you, in 12 minutes, you run as fast as you can to maintain that pace for 12 minutes. And then you have to have that distance measured, right? So that distance is measured.

And then that there's this calculation that it's done considering, you know, the distance that you're whatever you've run and everything. And that turns out your VO2 max. And that's kind of what the Apple Watch uses, but the Apple Watch doesn't know when you're like running hills and stuff. So it's kind of because that takes it into account.

So if you're running hills and stuff, it's more challenging. You're not gonna go as far, right? And so that's kind of where I go, oh, well, the Apple Watch is only so good. So. I wonder whether I'd be interested to know if there's people who can cheat this test in some way.

Let's say that one person builds a VO2 max. What I'm thinking with this Norwegian four by four. I probably do need to start doing it. Airbike to me seems to be the best thing that I could think of. It's the easiest machine for me to get my heart rate very high on. It's both arms and legs. It's stationary. There's no picking it up, putting it down, resetting it.

And it also means that during those three minutes, you can kind of just push away like this. But I would imagine that the person who does running intervals for their Norwegian four by four will develop a number of efficiencies that are disproportionately advantageous for this 12 minute run test. Right. My, someone does it in the pool, right? Someone does swimming intervals, four minutes, three minutes, whatever. How much that will cross over? So there's

definitely going to be ways like high rocks, hybrid training, this whole thing at the moment is a huge, huge burgeoning. It's basically filled the hole that CrossFit used to have, I think. And I think a lot of people are going to have that, but I wonder how many people have disproportionately good 12-minute run tests that may actually overclock the VO2 max because of their efficiency that they've developed from using running as their modality for building that VO2 max. Right. No, I mean, it's a good point, I think, for sure. Most of the Norwegian 4x4 protocols are done on a stationary bike most of the time. That's the king. Yeah. Dr. Ronda Patrick, ladies and gentlemen. Ronda, it's been really great to meet you. I love your work. I love the fact that you've just got this broad evidence base that you can

tap into and teach us mere mortals about what's going on in the world of fitness and such. You've got this bdnfprotocalls.com thing, which is a free guide that people can take in order to maximize different ways to get BDNF. What's in that? It's a bunch of protocols that have been evidence-based that are how to increase BDNF, exercise protocols, sauna protocols, polyphenols, so we're talking about blueberries, things like that. And then I kind of have my protocol in there interweaved. It's like, well, this is what I do.

Uh, but yeah, so it's, uh, I think some people want to know, well, how much, you know, how hard do I go to get my BDNF from a run or a workout or what do I need to do? So there's, there's, it's like kind of evidence, evidence-based protocols on different things, different lifestyle factors and behaviors you can engage in to improve it. Oh yeah. Where else should people go?

They want to keep up to date with your work. Uh, YouTube channel and it's called Found My Fitness. I have podcasts where I interview experts. Sometimes I do stand-alone videos where I talk about the science of something diving into magnesium next. I also have one on vigorous exercise. And then I'm on podcasts, Apple Podcast Spotify.

Then my website, foundmyfitness.com. That's where you can find me, sign up for my newsletter, but I would go to the BDNF protocols to get all the good protocols on improving brain health, basically. Oh yeah, thank you, Rhonda. Thank you so much, it's been fun. Oh, offense, yeah, oh, offense, yeah, oh, offense.