Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dan Gubler on the Power of Phytonutrients

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

If you listen to this podcast, you probably have some idea what macronutrients are, as well as micronutrients, like vitamin C or B12. What you may not know is plant foods contain even smaller organic compounds called phytonutrients. What are phytonutrients and why do they matter? Can you still thrive without eating them? What are the benefits of including more of them in your diet and which ones should you focus on? In this podcast interview, Dr. Dan Gubler answers those questions and a lot more. He gives a primer on phytonutrients, explains why you should care about them, and gives practical tips for incorporating more of the most important ones into your diet. If you’re not familiar with Dan, he’s a phytonutrient chemist and researcher whose work has been recognized with the DSA Visionary Award, the Schering-Plough Science and Innovation Award, the American Cancer Society Fellowship, the Eli Lilly Fellowship, and the Best Educator Award from Brigham Young University–Hawaii. He’s also the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Brilliant, a supplement company that focuses on formulating products with bioactive plant compounds that can proactively help human health. In this interview, we discuss . . . What phytonutrients are and how they benefit our health Supplementation of phytonutrients versus getting them from food The relevance of phytonutrients to carnivore diet followers and plant-avoiders His favorite phytonutrient-rich foods The importance of standardization in supplements And more . . . So, if you want to learn what the research says about phytonutrients and what role these plant molecules play in our health, listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - New Pulse flavor Blood Orange is out now! Try Pulse risk-free today! Go to buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points 4:58 - What is a phytonutrient? 5:17 - How much does supplementation matter 10:06 - Cannabinoids 10:40 - Phytonutrients in food versus supplements 11:43 - Benzoxazinoids 15:25 - What benefits are clearly supported by the research and what is speculative? 18:59 - What does this mean for followers of the carnivore diet? 22:25 - Why you can't just supplement instead of eating fruits and vegetables 25:50 - Favorite phytonutrient-rich foods 29:46 - What is the proper dose of saffron? 30:43 - What phytonutrients are worth supplementing? 33:13 - The importance of standardization 37:40 - Rhodiola 38:36 - The future of phytonutrients 40:16 - How would you apply the 80/20 principle to phytonutrient intake? 44:13 - How to get foods that have sufficient nutrition 48:04 - What are the phytonutrient building blocks of a nutritious diet? 50:53 - Chloraphyl supplements 56:49 - Spices 59:20 - Where can people find you and your work? Mentioned on the Show: New Pulse flavor Blood Orange is out now! Try Pulse risk-free today! Go to https://buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Dan Gubler’s Website: https://feelbrilliant.com/ Dr. Dan’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discover-with-dr-dan-proactive-health/id1547289874 Dr. Dan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdangubler/?hl=en Dr. Dan’s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drdangubler

Hey, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. And if you are a regular around these parts, you know what macronutrients are. You probably do. You probably also know what micronutrients are. You probably can define the word

and you could point to things like vitamin C or vitamin B12. But what you might not know is that there are many other important compounds in food called phytonutrients. Now, what are phytonutrients? Why do they matter? Can you thrive without eating a lot of them? What are the benefits of including more phytonutrients in your diet? And which ones in particular should you focus on? Well, in this interview, Dr. Dan Gubler answers those questions and a lot more. He gives a great primer on phytonutrients. He explains why you should care about them, why you should include them in your diet.

And he gives some great practical tips for including more of them, or at least more of the most important ones in your diet. And in case you are not familiar with Dan, he is a phytonutrient chemist and a researcher whose work has been recognized with a number of awards and fellowships, including the DSA Visionary Award, the American Cancer Society Fellowship, the Eli Lilly Fellowship, the Best Educator Award from Brigham Young University, Hawaii. And Dan is also the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Brilliant, which is a supplement company that focuses on formulating products with bioactive plant compounds, with many of the things that he's going to talk about in

this interview, that can proactively help human health. Before we get started, if you like new stuff, I have exciting news because I just released a new flavor of my pre-workout pulse, Blood Orange. Now, what is pulse and why should you care? It is a 100% natural supplement that increases energy, improves mood and sharpens mental focus, increases strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue. And the reason it's so effective is simple. Every ingredient in Pulse is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research and is included at clinically effective levels, the exact amounts used in the studies that found benefits. Pulse is also naturally sweetened and flavored, and it contains no artificial food dyes or other chemical junk. And all that is why I've

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try Pulse risk-free and see what you think. Hey, Dan, welcome to my podcast and thank you for taking the time to do this. It's a pleasure to be with you, Mike. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to get you on the show to talk about your area of expertise, what you really specialize in, which is phytonutrients. And this is something that I've talked about. I've talked about specific phytonutrients. Usually it's the stuff that is in my supplements. Why is spirulina cool? Why is reishi? There we go. Mushroom cool. What's one of those words when I first saw it, I thought reishi, and then it just stuck in my mind as reishi. And then I learned, oh, it's reishi. And now I conflict whenever I go.

It's hard. All these names, it's a new jargon of its own. I know. And sometimes I actually cannot find obviously correct or consistent pronunciations for some of these things. Right. So I just go with the one that seems to make sense based on my understanding, my implicit understanding of the English language, basically. But some of these things are not obvious. But anyway, so I've spoken about individual molecules and a lot of them have made their way into my into my supplements but i haven't done a deep dive just on the topic uh generally and so that's why i wanted to get you on the show and i thought a good place to start would be um why don't why don't you share with

listeners what what is a phytonutrient what does that word even mean and then i would like to hear your thoughts on on a question that i get asked and I've gotten asked it so many times that now I lead with it on Legion's homepage. And basically what people, what they ask me is, how much does supplementation matter? You have all these products and they sound great, but does it really matter? products and they sound great, but does it really matter? And privately, what I've been telling people for a long time, really since the beginning, is you don't need supplements to build muscle, to lose fat, to get healthy. They are supplementary by definition. If you don't want to take any pills and powders, if you don't have the budget, don't worry about it. You can stick to eating good food, training properly, getting enough sleep, and you are going to do great. You are going to achieve all your fitness goals.

But if you have the budget and the inclination, then supplements, certain supplements, the right ones can help. And that message is true. And it has always resonated with people. And I eventually, it occurred to me in CRO testing to put that just front-facing right on the homepage, which is not something that you would expect really from a sports nutrition company saying, hey, you actually don't need to buy our stuff, just so you know, you don't need any of it. But let me explain why you might want to consider it, might want to consider it. And so I would

like to hear your thoughts around that as it applies to some of these phytonutrients that you could even pick ones that you like the most. I know people like you are really into this stuff. You have your darlings, so to speak. And yeah, so why don't we start there? And now I'm just going to shut up and listen. Great. Well, thanks again for having me, Mike. So when it comes to phytonutrients, and that's what I do, I trained at Caltech and I go around the world studying phytonutrients in medicinal plants and also in food. So in plants, you have three basic components. You have macronutrients. Those are protein, fat, and carbs. We all know that. We have micronutrients, which we also know, vitamins and minerals. And then the third class, which is kind of brushed aside, are phytonutrients. Phyto meaning plant and nutrient, obviously.

And these are organic compounds. They're small molecular weight, between 150 to 500. A lot of people, so a classic example of a phytonutrient, which people have probably heard is resveratrol, that comes from the articles that say drinking a glass of red wine might be good for you each day. And it's this small molecule resveratrol. We've probably heard of chlorogenic acids in our coffee and tea.

There's rosmarinic acids. There's a bunch of others that we've heard of a little bit, but really, phytonutrients are the medicinal component of plant. When people say good food is medicine and let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, we're implying, we're talking about phytonutrients. One interesting tidbit about phytonutrients is that 60% of all pharma drugs are from plants, from phytonutrients actually. So when I want to develop a pharma drug, and I was in the pharma industry for a while, what they would do is they would screen these huge libraries. So they would have an enzyme, an active site where they want to target, you know, this is our medicinal

target, and they would map it all out 3d so they know the shape and then they would actually screen libraries of hundreds of thousands of natural compounds phytonutrients from plants to find one that has the best closest fit and then they would take it and synthetically modify it to give it the right properties and and do their magic and then voila we have a pharmaceutical drug and that that um is is why some phytonutrients, right, are actually considered medicinal substances. I know that that's probably, from what I understand, more of a thing in, so these would be, I guess the term is, would it be a phytonutraceutical? Is that the technical term? And I know that in Europe, I think that in Europe,

I think that's more of a thing here, but. Yeah, yeah, phytoceratocl is what they call them. But I would venture to say actually that all phytonutrients are medicinal, that they have a unique purpose in the body, that they help to regulate the millions of chemical reactions that go on in the body every single second.

And it's really interesting how phytonutrients come about, right? Plants make them. Plants use these phytonutrients for their own benefit. They use them for defense. They use them for communication. They use them for a bunch of other reasons that we don't really know. This whole field of chemical ecology, of how plants and organisms interact with each other is a new field.

It's a growing field. And plants have been with humans for as long as time. And so we have this unique relationship with plants. And we're not really sure, but it looks like over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, these molecules in plants have evolved in humans to have an inherent need state. One example, kind of going on a tangent here a little bit, but CBD, we have cannabinoids that are in CBD and whatever you think about CBD and cannabinoids, whatever. But what's really interesting is we actually have a receptor in the body that's called the cannabinoid receptor that's made for cannabinoids to target in the

brain. Now, the body makes natural cannabinoids, but it's really interesting to think that there is at least a couple cases in the body where we have receptors that are designed for phytonutrients. And as far as phytonutrients in foods versus supplements goes, what are your thoughts on that? How and the question really I'm getting at, again, is kind of what I mentioned previously is where people they'll ask me, this is this is usually maybe they'll term it superfoods. Right. So are there which is a term that is most obviously, as you know, it's mostly marketing, but are there foods that contain special molecules, maybe foods that you could talk about some more common foods that we eat or foods that are not commonly eaten, but you think are worth including in your diet to get at some of these specific molecules. And then when we talk about supplementation, then of course that gives us access to even more of these molecules, right?

That are hard or basically impossible to get from food. I mean, you could, but you're probably not going to want to eat the stuff. Right, exactly. Yeah. So when it comes to phytonutrients from food, a class of phytonutrients that I really like are called benzoxazinoids. And they're from grains, from rye, barley, and wheat. And I realize not everybody can eat grains, and there's some thoughts there. But benzoxazinoids have really, really good literature behind them on their ability to help people lose weight. So they actually helped to regulate thermogenesis and different genes in the body that help with, uh, with, with fat burning, with fat loss. And, um, and, and they're really cool. Um, there's been a lot of clinical studies showing that rye bread, uh, especially in Scandinavian Europe, where they eat a lot of

rye bread, that rye bread is correlated with weight loss. And actually they've done clinical studies where they've extracted out these benzoxazinoids in rye and done kind of a rye bread with and without these benzoxazinoids. And they found that actually these benzoxazinoids seem to be the weight loss inducing compounds. And you mentioned thermogenesis. And, and you mentioned, uh, thermogenesis,

that'd be obviously, uh, for, for people listening, that's the energy, think of it as the energy cost of, of digesting the food. Right. And, uh, so is that the mechanism that was, was hypothesized or do they, did the researchers feel pretty confident about that? Or was it, do you think it was more related to appetite control? Yeah, it looks like both. It looks like there's a thermogenic component to it and then there's an appetite via leptin, a hormone called leptin component,

which leptin regulates appetite. And I would suspect that the appetite effects would be greater for looking at a significant effect on weight loss. Yeah. Because, you know, the calorie cost of the additional calorie cost, is that the effect? Or did it have some other effect on thermogenesis? I'm curious. Yeah, so it increased the rate of thermogenesis.

In general? It did, yeah. Yeah, so it increased the rate of thermogenesis. In general? It did, yeah. Oh, interesting. So not just with the meal of the bread, just by having more of these in your diet, you generally burned more calories processing the food that you ate. Yeah, that's right.

The furnace of the body, the off gases and gives off calories was upregulated. And one thing that I think that's really interesting with phytonutrients and one of the trends that we're seeing, and this is actually a really nascent field as well. There's still a lot that we have to develop and figure out here, but it seems like phytonutrients help with proper utilization of macronutrients. So getting the macros and whatnot, that's great and that's really important. But if we don't have the right phytos, the optimization can suffer a little bit

of optimizing and utilizing those macros to their fullest benefit when it comes to breaking them down, when it comes to using the different smaller components of macromolecules once they're broken down into their building blocks to use them for the different processes in the body for metabolism in general. I'd like to hear more about that. So can you be a little bit more specific? Like take, I mean, whichever you want to look at first or whichever is most

researched in terms of people thinking are going to be thinking with the primary, they're thinking with protein, carbs, and fat. And then, and then, uh, what do you mean by being able to, to, to process these things better? And what do you think, even though, and this is, it's fun when, when I have someone like you on the show, I always like to ask what is, would you say is, uh, is clearly supported by the research and what is kind of speculative, but if you had to make a bet, you'd be willing to put some money on it. You know what I mean? In terms of bottom line results here. Um, and, and we can even look over the longterm where of course you can't tell people, all right, if you really optimize your diet within two weeks, you are going to have bigger biceps. Like, no, that's not going to happen.

But maybe over the course of two years, you know, then there could be a cumulative effect of doing something like, I mean, you think of like taking creatine, for example. Is it going to make a difference over two weeks or two months? No. Is it going to make a difference over two years? Yeah, it might make a, it might make a slight difference. Yeah. So, um, we'll do some broad strokes here first and then we'll get into, um, the, the nitty gritty. So when we look at the scientific research about what these phytonutrients do, uh, when we look at resveratrol and some of the, you know, in, uh, catechins, some of these ones that we know, the classic thing is to say that these are antioxidants, that they help to maintain the

antioxidant status in the body, that the body is under attack with free radicals, free radicals are forming. And so you want to quench and destroy those free radicals the minute they form. So they don't, so they don't interact with DNA and other parts of the body and cause it to unravel and program cell death and all that stuff that goes on with that. When we look, though, at the scientific literature, it looks like these phytonutrients in general are regulators of biosignaling mechanisms. And now, quick definition ofignaling. So, and we're gonna start from the macro level. So the body performs millions of chemical reactions every single second, you know,

heart health, bone health, joint health. You know, when we're lifting something, all the reactions that go on in sheer muscle stress and mitochondrial function, there's tons of reactions that go on. And those reactions are controlled by enzymes. These are the molecular machines that help to catalyze these reactions. If we take a step back, enzymes are proteins that are made by genes. And genes are chemical switches or pieces of DNA that make a protein, that make an enzyme. And these genes are turned

on and off. Well, the question is, what's controlling these genes, these chemical switches? Do they just randomly turn on and off like light switches on the fritz? Well, when we look and we take a step back from there, it's actually these biosignaling mechanisms. Scientifically, we call them signal transduction cascades. They're like domino cascades where we push over one domino

and it causes a bunch of other dominoes to follow and to cascade to turn on a switch, kind of like these world's largest domino things where they have these domino sets that they push over a domino and it causes crazy things to happen, lights to turn on, waterfalls, whatever. That's how these signaling processes in the body happen. And for the longest time, the question was, well, what is regulating these biosignaling mechanisms? What pushes the first domino? Exactly. And recent research has come out in the last 10 years or so in this area of signal transduction chemistry is actually these phytonutrients from plants are responsible. They're either the first domino that helps to initiate it, or at some point there's a checkpoint where we need one of these dominoes from plants, these phytonutrients that help to catalyze and optimize these reactions. And so what do you think that, how do you think that bodes for the carnivore crowd, for people who avoid plants completely.

Exactly. And I knew you were going to ask that question. And it's a fantastic question that we're still actually unraveling because when you look at the scientific literature, vital nutrients from plants are needed. The classic story that we all learned when we were yay high was scurvy and vitamin C, right? You know, that the sailors got scurvy and then they ate these citrus fruits and voila, they were better. And it was because of vitamin C. Well, we were actually lied to.

That story is half correct. They, in the 1940s, it was actually the 1920s, the 1920s, when they were starting to do this research and really dive in to why this is happening, the phenomenon behind it, they did isolate vitamin C and found that that had anti-scurvy properties, but they also isolated a compound that they called vitamin P. And it turned out that vitamin P, actually, the anti-scurvy properties were as good as vitamin C. In doing more research, vitamin P was actually, the anti-scurvy properties were as good as vitamin C. In doing more research, vitamin P was actually found to not be just one molecule, but a class of molecules called bioflavonoids. And bioflavonoids like hesperidin and collagen. And collagen is the most abundant protein in the body. When we think collagen, especially now the rage, we think of beautiful skin, but collagen's essential for muscles, for bones. It's the most abundant protein in the body. For joints, if you want bones that can move correctly.

Exactly, exactly. And you need both vitamin C and these bioflavonoids in order for collagen production and collagen assembly polymerization to happen properly. And so to your question. And that, just to interject quickly, is a good example of why eating nutritional foods is so important as opposed to just thinking, oh, well, I'll just supplement with some vitamin C and I'll be fine. Exactly. Exactly. Because there are these additional compounds. And as you've mentioned several times, there's still so much we don't know. And just wait 10 years from now, researchers are going to be surprised at, I'm guessing at, at

even further layers of complexity that they've unraveled of what is in foods versus what is in a supplement that has one molecule or a handful of molecules isolated. Not that the supplement isn't useful, but we have to understand there is a big difference, right? No, that's right. Exactly. You know, and I do supplements as well, and I'm a big fan of supplements. But like you, we have to put it, we have to have some caveats there. And really, it all starts with good food, because good food is full of these phytonutrients. And as you mentioned, food is a mixture of complex phytonutrients that a lot of them

were still unraveling their chemical structure and what they do. And so it's super important where we say, well, I'm just not going to eat an orange. I'll just take a vitamin C. Exactly. Well, we're missing the bioflavonoids. Or I mean, I'll hear from people, yeah, I don't, I don't eat vegetables. I don't like them. I just take a multivitamin or I don't eat even fruit and vegetables. Maybe I'll have a piece of fruit here and there, but I mostly don't eat fruits and vegetables, but I take a multivitamin and maybe

even a fiber supplement. So I'm fine. Right. And the travesty of that is again, we're missing these medicinal phytonutrients, these drug-like compounds. Going back to how pharma, pharma uses these modified phytonutrients as drugs, right? As reactive wellness targets that when the body's in a death spiral, they use these really tight binding drugs to pull it back. Well, phytonutrients, they don't bind to the body as tight as these synthetically designed drugs. They pop on and they pop off, but they're part of the body's proactive wellness response. We need to take phytonutrients every single day for proactive wellness, for maintenance. Now, with your question though, about the carnivore crowd, right? You know, that I don't

really want to eat plants and I don't, and I, you know, and I'm, I'm still strong and amazing. I love steak and I love bacon. Yeah. I just want a T-bone steak and a dozen eggs and some bacon. And that's my jam. When I was Oregon, Oregon meats, I think I'm going to have to do a monologue on that. Cause there are some people on social media, some good, I'd say good entertainers who that they've made that really like the crux of their whole shtick is if you just eat the raw bull balls, you don't have to ever, you know, eat a green bean again. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I lived in Colorado, Rocky mountain oysters, same sort of thing, both testicles. But the, the answer to that,

thing, both testicles. But the answer to that, the short answer is, I don't know. I mean, maybe in meat and in animal products, we have exosomes. And exosomes are little pockets that exist in dairy products. And in these exosomes, we have found different molecules, RNA. We have found some small molecules, some phytonutrients potentially. And again, I don't know for sure, but maybe the reason why grass-fed beef tastes so different from not is because we have these phytonutrients from the grass, from the actual plants that these animals are consuming. And that, leeches isn't the right word, but that gets through, through the exosomes into our body. And potentially when we're eating high quality

grass-fed beef and stuff like that, potentially we are getting some phytonutrients that come from the animal eating the plant, the phytonutrients from the plant being stored in exosomes. And then we eat the meat with exosomes and then we eat the the meat with exosomes and potentially that's how we get some of these i don't know for sure but that would be ironic though wouldn't it if that's how the carnivore crowd how they're staying alive even after doing it for a period of time is because because really what you're saying then is if that

were the case it's just kind of a shittier way to get stuff from plants. It's getting stuff from plants that had to go through a cow first when you could just eat the plant and get more of it. Well, exactly. And when you talk about concentration, I mean, obviously it's just going to be a speck of nothing. You're going to have a nothing burger of phytonutrients in those exosomes compared to eating a good mixture of meat and plants. And as far as phytonutrient-rich foods go, or even if they're just some of your favorites that you think people should consider including in their diets, what is maybe the top three or five? Or as far as you want to go what does that look like you mentioned grains um like i i for example i eat oatmeal every day that's that's my uh grain my go-to grain i'm not sure how rich it is um in because because the

molecule i i i'm gonna i'm gonna butcher it but that you mentioned, I actually hadn't heard of that before. I knew some of the more basic benefits of oatmeal, and I've chosen that specifically. I mean, I like it, but I also know beta-glucan and some other things. Yeah. Oats are primarily rich in beta-glucans and a class of compounds called ferulic acids. Right. primarily rich in beta-glucans, and a class of compounds called ferulic acids. And not really any benzoxazinoids in oats, per se, from what I've seen in the literature. It's primarily rye, barley, wheat, and corn,

not so much oats. Other phytonutrients that I like, I really like a class of compounds called the polyacetylenes. And these are found in, there's a phytonutrient called falcaranol that's found in celery and carrots and turnips. And, you know, this, the whole celery juice craze and whatnot, you know, I'm not a huge advocate of that.

You know, I'm not a fan of taking great fiber from celery and just shearing it down into nothingness. And then just starving yourself to lose weight. It's just not the best way of going about it. Yeah. And then just starving yourself to lose weight. It looks like these phytonutrients, a lot of them are really important to make sure that the cell goes through its life cycle. A cell divides, it grows, it goes through a maturation process, and then it dies. It should die, just like humans. We all live and we all die. Problems happen, though, when cells escape that cell cycle. And that's when they actually become cancerous and become immortal, is they find ways to get out of that cycle.

They cheat death. And most of these phytonutrients actually help to make sure that the cells go through this natural process without cheating the system. this natural process without cheating the system. And what are a couple of others that you like in particular and that people could easily incorporate into their diet? Like I eat, for what it's worth, people listening, I eat celery and carrot every day. I make a stir fry for dinner and it includes celery and carrot. Yeah. Apigenin is another phytonutrient. It's found in bell pepper, celery, cabbage. Quercetin is the main one.

I think most of us, we get a lot of quercetin because quercetin is found in apples. It's found in citrus fruits. It's found in onions, parsley, sage, tea. Lots of berries have quercetin. And so when you look at it, if you were to kind of do a phytonutrient analysis of what I ate during the day and what was the ratio of phytonutrients,

I would say the majority, a large amount would be quercetin. Allicin is another really good phytonutrient that comes from garlic and onions. It's what gives garlic and onions its flavor, its aroma. Saffron, saffron's really expensive, but saffron has some really cool phytonutrients called crocin and crocitin that help with appetite suppression. It helps with depression, helps with mood, helps with skin health.

If beauty from within is your jam and really wanting to make sure your skin is beautiful, saffron's a really good one. Interesting, I didn't know that. It is, it is very expensive. What, what for, for people whose ears have, have perked up, what does the dose look like? Like, how would you go about that? If somebody is listening saying, I want to take saffron now, I want to eat it or supplement it or something. I want to see it. Does it make me look prettier? Yeah. One thing that's really cool that's been used in Asia for a long, long time is to actually make saffron tea. So you take a teaspoon or two, you usually start with a teaspoon of saffron threads and you steep it in hot water for about five minutes and then you drain off the

threads and you, and you drink that. Um, that is a traditional medicine remedy actually for people with severe PMS, actually bordering on PMDD. That's actually one of the classic treatments in India for people with really bad menstrual cycles and the depression that comes with PMDD. Interesting. And switching gears now to supplementation, what are some phytonutrients that you personally supplement with that you like and you recommend that are difficult or maybe essentially impossible to get from food? Yeah. Starting a little less exotic, you have pomegranate. I love pomegranate.

It's really important. In pomegranate, you have a class of compounds called ellagic acids. And ellagic acids are really important for cell cycle, but they're also really important for a signaling pathway that's basically responsible for all things cognition and all things inflammation. So there's two master regulators of inflammation. There's an NF-kappa B cycle, which a lot of science nerds have heard about. There's a TNF-alpha cycle, which a lot of us have heard about as well. And then there's the JAK-STAT signal transduction cascade, the biosignaling cascade. And ellagic acids and pomegranate hit that. And like I said, it's really good for mood, cognition, and just reducing global inflammation.

And as medical doctors will tell you, and as you know, inflammation is one of the root causes of all, not just disease, but just progress. If we want to recover quickly, we want to remove and reduce inflammation. The body- Yeah, it needs to be cyclical, right? It does.

You can't just be stuck in a gear, high or low. Yeah, that's right. The body needs to produce inflammation and it produces small molecules, high or low. Yeah, that's right. You know, the body needs to produce inflammation and it produces small molecules, protectins, excuse me, prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and thromboxanes that induce inflammation. And then the body actually has small molecules called protectins, resolvins, and mericins

that, as the name implies, resolves inflammation. And so phytonutrients are important in this resolution process, as is omega-3. Omega-3 isn't a phytonutrients are important in this resolution process, as is omega-3. Omega-3 isn't a phytonutrient per se, but EPA and DHA from omega-3 are converted into these pro-resolving small molecules. And so we have pomegranate, we have this ellagic acid molecule. What else is on your list? And by the way, actually actually before we move on to that when when we're talking about supplementation how do you go about supplementing with this if

you're not going to eat enough pomegranate to make a difference yeah so what you would want to do is you want you would want to find a pomegranate supplement a powder um that is standardized to ellagic acid and and you want to get about 100 milligrams of ellagic acids is is really what you're looking for yeah and that standardized point is is important for people listening yeah because uh you you could i have not looked into pomegranate powder but i guarantee you there are inexpensive powders out there that are not standardized to contain anything, meaning that they're not ensuring that it is X percent ellagic acid by weight, for example. And it could have very little. you might think that you're doing yourself a favor by supplementing with 500 milligrams of pomegranate powder, but it might contain very little

in the way of ellagic acids. And many supplement companies, they will not use standardized ingredients because they're more expensive. They're more difficult to produce. That's right. Yeah, you can have powders that are really standardized, like you said,

and then you can have powders that are just like sawdust. There's nothing really in there that in the extraction process, the harsh conditions that are used a lot of times, the phytonutrients decompose. They're baked out of it, so to speak. And a lot of times with pomegranate, when you find a pomegranate extract, a lot of times they're standardized to polyphenols. And polyphenols is just a broad class of phytonutrients, whereas ellagic acids are a more specific class of molecules. And so ellagic acids are in the polyphenol umbrella, but if I'm just taking something standardized to polyphenols, it's going to have some ellagic acid, maybe, we'd hope, but it's going to have other polyphenols. But if it says it's standardized to a lactic acid, then by definition, it has to have at least, you know, the 20, 30, 40,

50% a lactic acid. Yeah. That's a good point because that that's another bit of, uh, of, of Lager domain of, of, uh, of fancy, fancy footwork that, that marketers will, will use. Oh, it's standardized polyphenphenols, as a consumer, they might not know what that means, but it sounds good. But it's not the standardization that really matters. And that's not to say everybody does that. But a lot of supplements, again, use non-standardized ingredients or ingredients that are standardized in ways that are not meaningful. Right. Because again, that standardization is cheaper than the next level, which is standardized

to the exact thing that you want, you know, and you might pay depending on the ingredient and you know this, but, um, people listening might be surprised. You might pay anywhere from two to five times to, to get the proper standardized ingredient compared to just some run of the mill junk that is from China, for example. Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's a big deal. So you wanna make sure that you find ingredients

that are standardized and from reputable companies. And there's a whole lot that goes into there. Some other really cool phytonutrients, I really like ginkgo. Ginkgolides are the phytonutrients in ginkgo. You have these saponins that are called ginkgolides, and they're really, really good at regulating cognitive function in the body.

They're also really good at regulating cognitive function in the body um they're also really good at cell cycle and um they're they're also really good at um programmed cell death to make sure that the cells die that's called apoptosis is a scientific name but to make sure that the cells die in a programmed way you know where we gently lay the cell to rest and the components of the cell are recycled and they go back. Nice little send-off for its cellular afterlife, wherever it goes. Yeah, that's right. There's apoptosis and then there's necrosis, which is not programmed cell death.

And that's just a cell that goes splat on the highway and causes a lot of inflammation. And it snarls traffic because the incident management team has to sit there and clean up the mess while you're sitting there for hours on the highway and work's not getting done. That's a good analogy. check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Are there any other specific supplements you wanted to mention that you really like that you think people should consider? Yeah, I, rhodiola is really good. Um, rhodiola is a class of, uh, botanicals called adaptogens, which helped to maintain the body's homeostasis. The body is all about homeostasis. You know, I think if you walked into the cell, it'd have a big sign across the door saying,

keep the status quo stupid. The, the cell likes balance. It likes homeostasis and adaptogens are good at doing that. And Rosevins from rhodiola uh that's the phytonutrient rosevin really good at doing that um berberine is another one um resveratrol is a classic one uh curcuminoids are also really good it seems like turmeric does everything um yeah and and they are really they keep on finding more and more things that it does they do yeah and i think i think the future of phytonutrients we're going to get to the point where we're going to realize that curcuminoids and quercetin and maybe some of these other phytonutrients are just as important as vitamin b12 or magnesium And we're going to get to the point that a percent daily value is going to be needed. You know, just as we know,

we need to get X milligrams of magnesium a day. I firmly believe that as this research evolves, we're also going to have on the nutritional facts panel, well, yeah, you need to get, I don't know, 100 milligrams of quercetin today, each day, and 50 milligrams of curcuminoids each day. Or maybe even it's a week,'t know, 100 milligrams of quercetin today, each day, and 50 milligrams of curcuminoids each day. Or maybe even it's a week, you know, when it looks at the cycle process and how these phytonutrients distribute and go throughout the body with pharmacokinetics. But in my opinion,

in the research that I've done in my own lab and the research that I'm reading, phytonutrients are that critical to human health that I believe they should and will have a vitamin like status. That's actually, that answers one of the questions I wanted to ask you, which is, it's always fun, again, when I have somebody who is a deep subject matter expert to make predictions like that. Where do you see what might currently be speculation? What do you think might, where do you think the future of the state of the research, so to speak, or the weight of the evidence in wherever you like to focus, where do you see that going? And that's a perfect answer to that. I want to quickly swing back to the food point.

And I want to hear your thoughts in terms of, and this is something that I've thought about and I've written about, so that's why I wanted to get your take on it because you know a lot more about this stuff than I do. As far as there are different maybe levels of attention you can put in terms of the specific foods that you're eating and why you're eating them. And what, what would you say, where do we start accomplishing what you would say is a good diet, a nutrition, a nutritious diet, a well-balanced diet, specifically in the context, we can leave protein. We're looking again at phytonutrients. And then that probably, I'm guessing your answer is going to be like, all right, here's the 20% that gives you the 80%, basically. If you focus on eating these types of foods and you get all of that in together, you're going to get a lot of the benefits that plants have to offer, basically. basically. And then if you want to take it further, if you really want to try to stretch for that, that remaining 20%, here's where I would take it from there. Again, you mentioned some specific foods that you like, but I just want to get your take on diet as a whole. And if that,

um, if that template doesn't fit, no problem, but I'm just, uh, guessing. No, that's great. Yeah. So,, so polyphenols are critical for human health. And these are one of the most abundant classes of phytonutrients. And we get polyphenols primarily from our berries. So eating different types of berries, that would satisfy the polyphenol requirement. And so blueberries, raspberries, black currants, et cetera, those have really good amounts.

Strawberries. Yeah. Those are my go-tos, strawberries and blueberries. And those are great because those are abundant. They're able to be farmed. Another really interesting point that I'll just, a tangent, and I'll throw it out there and then go back to your question, is some really interesting research has come online actually showing that the foods that we eat today are not as rich in phytonutrients as the foods our grandparents ate.

So for instance, my relatives are all from Germany and Switzerland. And I remember going back to my little village where my great-grandparents came from, where they immigrated from, and they were apple farmers. And they farmed apples. When they came over here to the States, they figured out how to grow apples

in the middle of the desert here in Utah, which was unorganized Indian territory in 1840. But going back there and looking at their apples, their apples are really small. And now we look at the apples today that have been bred for moisture content. And they're like cantaloupes and they don't taste like anything. Yeah, they're as big as your head, right? And they're really sweet and they're juicy and whatnot. But when you analyze it, the amount of phytonutrients in these huge apples today

are actually four or five fold less than the little scraggly apples that, you know, our grandparents ate. They were really super tart and bitter almost. Bitter is actually good. That actually means that you're getting some tannins and some other phytonutrients. And that would be, is that part of the defense system, so to speak, that plants have? It is. Because of course, then it would discourage animals from eating their fruit. That's right. Yeah.

Phytonutrients. What we know when we look at the scientific literature of why plants make phytonutrients, another word for phytonutrients in plants are secondary metabolites because plants first make primary metabolites. That's fats, proteins, and carbs. Cellulose, you know, the plant first makes its structure. It's like building its home. And then after it builds its home,

it now starts to put in security cameras and barbed wire and all that. And those are the secondary metabolites. And so, yeah, these secondary metabolites, these phytonutrients are primarily used for defense, natural insecticides. And so in organic farming, that's what you want to do

is you want to do things to stimulate the plant's natural ability to produce these secondary metabolites rather than putting on, you know, classic organosulfur pesticides or whatnot. to try to get foods that have, let's say, sufficient nutrition, because I'm sure, and that might segue right into something on organic, because those are, again, two things I get asked a fair amount about. There is this point once, and I've written and spoken a little bit about, I've more just summarized some research showing that, yes, in in general if you look across the spectrum of fruits and vegetables that we eat the nutritional quality seems to have been declining steadily for some time now many many years and and the soil as well is not what it once was and so when people hear that they wonder well if if i eat my call it a couple of servings let's say three fruit three servings of fruit per day and i get my four to six servings of vegetables per day is that

enough and should i be should i be buying as much organic produce as i can does that matter does it make a difference in terms of getting enough of these key molecules? Yeah, when you look at the scientific literature, it matters for some things, like strawberries is an example where it matters. But in most cases, the phytonutrient ratios aren't that different. And so really, if we're looking at phytonutrients, and it's hard to know because it's not, when we talk about organic, it's not just what's sprayed, the pesticides that are used.

The major thing is the quality of the soil. Right. And because in the soil you have humic and fulvic acid, which are basically like huge Lego ships of phytonutrient building blocks. You know, that's what the plants use. They take these humic and fulvic acid molecules, which are just kind of a, you know, like when you see your kids play with Legos or the leftover Legos, it's just this random stack of Legos that are, that are built together and whatnot. You know, just kind of haphazardly. That's what cubist, uh, cubist art. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cubist or abstract art. You're like, what is this? Someone's bored with their leftover Legos, but that's what humic and fulvic acids are. And the plants take these Lego,

these big mothership Lego type structures, and they break them down into the individual building blocks and build phytonutrients. And so really it's more about humic and fulvic acid quality than it is the entire. So you can have non-organically grown produce where the soil still has some pretty good amounts of humic and fulvic acid. And so the phytonutrients therefore are going to be good. You know, in general, if you want to go, if you want to be sure, I would say organic in general is better but um you know if we're all buying local what about yeah yeah local produce super good yeah that that um again what what i do is i just stick to organic produce in just just in the hopes that it's reducing my exposure to some of these

chemicals um and that are that are are not used. And also in hopes that I'm getting a bit more nutrition, but especially now that I don't live in the suburbs of DC anymore, I live in the middle of Florida in a horse country. I actually should look into, I'm sure there are some good co-ops and-ops and I I'm willing to eat what's what's whatever's in season. I like most everything. So, yeah. You know, and if you can't afford organic to the listeners, that that's okay. You know, just, and I say that as well, you know, any way you can get them, you know, get them, you know, it's not like, well, I can't do this. So I'm not going to do, so I'm going to do nothing. Right? Right. Yeah, so coming back to just diet kind of zoomed out.

So you mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned, okay, it's important that let's eat some berries. And what else are kind of the building blocks that form the foundation of what you would say is a good quote unquote diet, a nutritious diet, a well-balanced diet. Yeah. So I would say you would need to eat some nuts. Nuts are actually phytonutrient dense. So there are certain foods that are phytonutrient dense and nuts are certainly there. They contain still beans and polyphenols and alkaloids and a lot of really other interesting compounds. So definitely eat nuts.

The Brazil nut is one that's really fun. One Brazil nut actually contains between 90 to 100 micrograms of selenium. And so eating two or three Brazil nuts a day, you don't want to eat a ton, but eating a couple of Brazil nuts a day can actually get you your selenium daily value. And selenium deficiency is a big deal in the US. Selenium is important for immune health. It's important for mood. So depression and other psychotic disorders, a lot of times when they analyze brain chemistry, they see that selenium levels are quite low. they see that selenium levels are quite low. So the Brazil nut is a really good go-to. Just greens in general. So we've talked specifically about these geeky phytonutrient molecules, but the blasé one is chlorophyll. And chlorophyll, plants use chlorophyll for

photosynthesis, but chlorophyll is amazing at purifying the blood. So in our bloodstream from breathing in pollution, um, and it doesn't matter where you live, pollution inversions and stuff can be a problem at certain times of the year. Um, we breathe in pollution and it contains these, uh, these chemicals that can slide into our DNA. DNA is kind of like ladder rungs, rungs of a ladder. They could slide into in between those rungs of the ladder and cause damage to the DNA and prevent it from actually replicating. And so chlorophyll is actually really good at binding and annealing to these pollutants

and pulling them out and keeping them circulating in the bloodstream. So the body then excretes them out and keeping them circulating in the bloodstream so the body then excretes them out naturally and so so a lot of people when um when they if they pay attention to to the marketing of some of these chlorophyll products it's there's the word detox that's thrown around right which which generally is a red flag but but uh there is there is some some validity to that in that it helps your body detox itself better. Now, of course, your body's doing the work, but it's getting assistance from. Right. Well, in going to chlorophyll supplements, you know, while we're there, usually these

chlorophyll supplements contain 10 milligrams, just 10 milligrams, like, you know, four or five little- Just enough to make it green, right? Yeah. You know, and it's not actually chlorophyll, it's a derivative, it's called sodium copper chlorophyllin or sodium magnesium chlorophyllin. But, but yeah, it's just a really teeny amount. Whereas obviously when you eat a good salad or different greens, you know, all veggies contain chlorophyll, obviously they're green. And so it's really, that's a really underutilized and underappreciated aspect of, um, of greens. It's just the chlorophyll

itself. And as far as an amount, do you have a general recommendation? Like, would you say everybody just, just get in your one to two servings of spinach per day. For example, if you, if you like the spinach or some other green leafy green. Yeah. A couple, couple servings of leafy greens, you know, a couple of cups, if you can, that is, that is a good amount of chlorophyll. And there's also some really good phytonutrients in leafy greens and in like kale and cabbage, you have, and broccoli and Brussels sprouts, you have a class of compounds called sulforaphanes, which are actually really good for maintaining redox status in the body, just making sure everything's balanced so that these biosignaling reactions can go. And is that shifting to another recommendation to cruciferous, get in something cruciferous? Would you say it's that? Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So a cup or two of just straight greens and then a cup or so, more if you can, of cruciferous veggies would be good. And then obviously when it comes to fruits, apples are great, stone fruits. I want to talk about bananas because bananas are fun. They're vilified, you know, as though they're just terrible.

It's mother nature's dessert and, you know, it spikes your blood sugar and whatnot. We need to realize- Some people, they'll say that it's as bad as just eating a Snickers bar. Exactly. Yeah. You might as well eat a Snickers or something than eat a banana, right? They're vilified. It's really interesting.

And, you know, there's food intolerances and stuff like that. People with diabetes, whatever, you know, when we say these generalizations about what foods to eat, invariably I get a question on social media or whatnot, someone saying, well, I can't eat that. Well, okay. Well, that's, you know, I mean, just for whatever reason, we have food intolerances, but bananas are actually really good in, they have good amounts of L-dopa, which is the precursor molecule to dopamine. And they have good amounts of GABA.

And GABA is one of the primary neurotransmitters in the body. And so bananas are actually really good. Now, yeah, they do have sugar. Okay, great. Well, we need to balance macros out, you know, across our meal throughout the day. But bananas actually do have sugar. Okay, great. Well, we need to balance macros out, you know, across our meal throughout the day. But bananas actually do have some fiber to balance out. Like, you know, again, like you said, unless there's a health condition that specifically precludes the banana.

Okay, fine. But for most people listening, the banana poses no risk. You're not going to like go hyper and have a sugar crash because you ate a banana. It's not you're not gonna you're not gonna like go hyper and have a sugar crash because you ate a banana it's not gonna you're not it's not gonna it's not gonna kill you and go evil on you because you ate a banana even bananas right this vilified fruit does have really cool phytonutrients that are essential for human health and it's funny you're just going down the list of essentially my diet, but I can't take credit for it because you're going down the list of, his name is Curtis.

I'm sure you're familiar with Curtis Frank and his work over at examine.com. And I mean, he is the guy who did all the initial research and writing all the technical research and writing at that website. And he still is associated with it loosely. I don't think he works on it actively anymore, but he, like you, I mean, these are the types of conversations that I would have with Curtis. And I've asked him a lot of these questions in the past and his answers are, it's like I'm listening to Curtis again, and specifically on the dice of the exact same things again, which, which doesn't surprise me because Curtis has always impressed me with how much he knows about biology and, and phytonutrients in particular and you as well.

But you know, so, so people, if anybody, anybody's still listening, I would recommend that you seriously consider just working some of these foods into your diet. Because like Dan mentioned, these contain molecules that are fundamental in helping your body work the way that it's supposed to work right and these are things that what what is what's also interesting about uh even even some of the mechanisms you've been talking about again these are things that they have cumulative effects over time they don't necessarily have major acute effects where you start eating the blueberries and you notice something major has happened. That's not how it works, right? Right. Yeah. It's more about over the next three, five, 20, 30, 40 years, if we eat enough of these foods, we have dramatically improved our chances of not just being alive, but thriving, like living well. Right, exactly. The anti-aging industry, which is huge and it's burgeoning right now, and that's

great. They talk a lot about health span, right? About living a high quality of life. And really, these phytonutrients are really important to help us do that, to just make sure the tickers, you know, the heart, but obviously these biosignaling reactions are happening all the time. While I'm thinking about it, spices are actually really good. They're dense in phytonutrients. And so, you know, as often as you can cook with spices, that's an important thing. We talked about garlic and a lot lot of people instead of garlic they'll use garlic powder and garlic powder actually is devoid of of phytonutrients it's devoid of allicin it really doesn't have any because what they do is they take garlic they do an extraction

and then they take this extract and they spray dry it onto a carrier material you know like like maltodextrin or acacia. And so garlic powder, onion powder, and these sorts of things. I mean, if you have nothing else, then great, you know, but if you can use- That's more just about the taste. It's not the- Right. Yeah, it's more about the taste. There's not much nutritional value there, right? Yeah. And so I think we need to look at food in a new light that we need to recognize that these phytonutrients exist and that we need to make smart food choices. You know, with the modern processed diet that's going on, it is possible to go an entire day without eating a

single phytonutrient, right? You know, you look at some of the foods that are popular that you could eat at fast food chains or whatnot. You really could go an entire day without eating a single phytonutrient. Which means you could go an entire week, month, year. I mean, you eat enough of that stuff. Right, which in my mind, which is no wonder why, along with a lot of other things, which is no wonder why one in three Americans have metabolic syndrome.

And metabolic syndrome, by criteria, is that the metabolism, and we're not just talking fat burning or digestion, we're talking the sum total of reactions the body's performing every single second is fundamentally broken. And you can get there, like you said, through eating a lot of nutritionally bankrupt. And it's not only nutritionally bankrupt, but in many cases, if you're eating the wrong stuff, right, it also now contains stuff that is actively harmful. And so you're eating a bunch of that food and not exercising. And then that of course leads to weight gain and that makes everything worse. And

yeah, it quickly becomes a dwindling spiral, right? Right. Yeah. And in the case of phytonutrients, these are these critical molecular checkpoints that make sure everything is happening properly. And when those checkpoints are missing, when our diet is devoid of those, then, you know, that's, it just snowballs. Well, this was a, this was a great discussion, Dan. I really appreciate you taking the time. Why don't we wrap up with where people can find you and your work and if there's anything in particular you want them to know about for people again who who are still listening and really liked this discussion if um if you have any any sort of product or service you want them to know about

let's let them know yeah so on the educational side i have a podcast uh it's called discover dr dan the product of health podcast mike you were on there a little bit ago we talked about So on the educational side, I have a podcast. It's called Discover with Dr. Dan, the Productive Health Podcast. Mike, you were on there a little bit ago. We talked about the supplement industry. It was amazing. And so I talk about my own research, phytonutrients and other things. And then I have amazing guests like you, Mike,

on the show that talk about the cutting edge in different areas. I'm on social media, drdangubler, that's G-U-B-L-E-R. I'm on Instagram. I'm trying the TikTok thing. I don G-U-B-L-E-R. I'm on Instagram. I'm trying the TikTok thing. I don't know my- I haven't gotten there. I should do that.

So I'm giving that a shot. So if you want to have a laugh of me doing some stupid things, then you can go there. That seems to be the key to TikTok is just doing stupid things. It does, yeah. And for me, that just happens naturally. thing. It does. Yeah. And for me, that just happens naturally. So, you know, and then I do, I use phytonutrients in the plant discoveries that I've done and I incorporate them into supplements. And so I have two supplement lines. One is called Brilliant and the URL for that is feel, F-E-E-L, brilliant.com. And then I have a women's wellness brand that we launched with

the collagen product. In the Brilliant line, actually, we talked about biosignaling, and I do have a product called Connect, which is basically the multivitamin of biosignaling, where I basically went back and said, okay, suppose we're not getting these biosignaling molecules from our diet, and we were making a supplement form of a multi a multivitamin of biosignaling what would it look like that's what this product is it's called connect um and then we have a women's wellness brand called clea and the url for that is hello clea c-l-e-a.com awesome well thanks again dan i really appreciate the time and we should do another one. I really enjoyed this. We should. This was a blast. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like

it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscle for life.com muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.