Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Sauna Benefits, Micronutrients and Performance, and More...

Episode Date: December 23, 2014

In this podcast, I interview Dr. Rhonda Patrick and we talk about some of the many (and surprising!) benefits of the sauna (1:55), how micronutrient intake affects performance (macros aren't EVERYTHING when it comes to getting fit and health) (33:25), how to use cardio to recover faster from your workouts (28:45), and more... DR. PATRICK'S WEBSITE: http://www.foundmyfitness.com/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/  

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In this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who has a PhD in biomedical science from the University of Tennessee. She's done extensive research on aging, cancer, and nutrition. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about some interesting research related to saunas. I actually get asked about it fairly often, if they're good, if they're bad, when you should use them, how often you should use them, and so forth. And she has done some interesting research on this. And also, we're going to be talking kind of on the flip side of clean eating, which I talked about in the previous podcast.

And why, yes, it's important to eat nutritious foods. But when we're talking body composition, how many calories you eat is more important. And where those calories come from in terms of protein, carbs, and fat is more important than the specific foods that you're eating. And in this podcast with Dr. Patrick, we're going to be talking a bit more about the different nutrients that your body needs and why they are important just to kind of balance out. Because some people mistook what I was talking about and thought that I was kind of just saying you can eat junk and whatever and who cares about micronutrients and that's not the case. So we're going to be talking about that and a few other things as well. So I hope you enjoy the podcast and I apologize for the poor quality of my audio. I'm not sure what happened. It looks

like Skype somehow switched from my good microphone to my webcam microphone, and I didn't realize it when I made the call. It does that sometimes, so I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. All right. Enjoy the podcast. All right. So thanks, Rhonda, for being here. I appreciate you taking the time. Oh, my pleasure. So the first thing I thought we should talk about, because I thought it was pretty interesting, is how, and you were saying you've done some research on this, the benefits of going in the sauna, of raising your body temperature.

I get asked about this fairly often. People ask if they should or shouldn't go in the sauna after working out, and I haven't really looked into it. So I was just like, well, I know it's not going to hurt not gonna hurt anything so sure why not but apparently there are actually quite a few benefits right you know I think that you know for for the most part some cultures you know particularly in Finland and Russia the sauna has been a large part of their culture you know people don't really know the science behind why they like to go into the sauna, but they know they like to go into the sauna and that it does something beneficial for them. They just didn't know how to pinpoint exactly what that was.

And so I actually have been doing quite a bit of research, not my primary focus of research. I'm not doing any experiments, but I've been reading the literature and reading a bunch of different papers that have been published on the various benefits of the sauna. So let me start by saying, what are the benefits of using the sauna? Or to put it in another term, what are the benefits of what I call hyperthermic conditioning? So hyperthermia is the opposite of hypothermia. Hyper means elevating your core body temperature. And so there's actually quite a bit of benefits that can be reaped from elevating your core body temperature. And if you've ever gotten in the sauna, you'll notice that if you sit in a hot sauna for like 30 or 40 minutes,

what will start to happen after about 15 minutes or so of being in an already hot sauna is that you'll notice your heart rate starts to decrease. And a lot of the same sort of cardiovascular mechanisms kick into play as if you were doing cardiovascular exercise. So it's like I noticed, you know, this straight off when I started using the sauna is that after sitting in there for about, you know, 15 minutes, it was like I was running. I felt the same events in terms of the sweat rate, in terms of the heart rate increase. And so I started to get really interested in what was going on in my body and that's sort of what instigated me to do this research. Probably about four years ago, I started doing research on this. So, you know, lo and behold, there's a huge literature on, you know, heat acclimation

and the various mechanisms, biological mechanisms that come into play in terms of elevating your core body temperature and how certain adaptations can occur when you repeatedly elevate your core body temperature, such that once again when you elevate your core body body temperature such as, you know, endurance training or even heavy lifting, weight lifting can do that as well if you're really pushing it. You're elevating your core body temperature, and so those mechanisms, you know, kick on, and so you start to get these benefits. And so in terms of the endurance benefits, there's, you know, what happens is you have, when you use this sauna regularly, you train your body to, when the core body temperature gets elevated, what happens is

you have increased blood flow to your heart, to your muscle tissue, to your skin, and in terms of, you know, to your muscle tissue, what happens when you have increased blood flow? Well, you're going to have, you know, more nutrients being delivered delivered more esterified fatty acids and glucose and oxygen going to your muscles and i mean that's great because for people that are endurance athletes well you know they often hit a wall at a certain point and they start to rely on their local muscle glycogen stores and so this what this does is when you're when you're heat adapted when you hyperthermically condition yourself by using something like the sauna, you actually have increased delivery of these different nutrients

there and you rely less on those local glycogen stores and so your endurance training is sort of better. And also the cardiovascular mechanisms kick into play so you basically have, like I said, your body starts to, for the same given workload... Is it stimulating

adrenaline andine production? Is that what you're feeling? That's what it feels like. It activates the sympathetic nervous system. So you actually are increasing norepinephrine, or also known as noradrenaline. Right. And so, yeah, noradrenaline,

it's interesting because noradrenaline also is involved in cooling down the body, which is why I think you actually activate it in the sauna, because your body's trying to cool itself at the same time, right? So, yeah, but that also has different benefits on the brain, which I'll probably talk about in a minute. And then you start to sweat at a lower core body temperature and you sweat for a longer time. So it basically cools your core body temperature because you're sweating longer. So those sort of things help with endurance. But in terms of, you know, muscle, so you ask, you know, can you lose fat, right?

And I'll give you sort of an indirect answer to that. And that is that, yes, you can lose fat, and that's by increasing lean muscle mass. can lose fat, and that's by increasing lean muscle mass. So there's three really interesting mechanisms that heat stress is able to increase lean muscle mass. And when you increase lean muscle mass, I mean, what does that mean? Sure. You're losing body fat, right? Yeah, I mean, your body's going to burn more energy, which, I mean, obviously it depends

on how you're eating. If you're going to, you can have plenty of muscle and you can be pretty overweight if you can eat enough food to do it. But it becomes harder. It becomes harder. It's much easier to be, to stay lean, you know, the more muscle you have. Yes, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's, and we can go, you can go on and on for, you know, a bunch of different mechanisms by what that occurs. But the bottom line is that, you know, hyperthermic conditioning through using the sauna, what it does is when you're in the sauna, one mechanism by which it increases lean muscle mass is by increasing the production of growth hormone. So heat stress, you know, can increase the production of growth hormone by, you know, as much, ranging anywhere from two-fold to like 16-fold,

depending on the frequency and how hot the sauna is and how long you stay in there. For the most part, the 16-fold is quite excessive. And in fact, I pointed this out in my article just as a proof of principle, but most people that stay in the sauna for about 20 or 30 minutes can increase their growth hormone levels by twofold over baseline. And those, you know, that lasts for about two hours. Okay.

You know, the role of growth hormone in preventing degradation of muscle proteins is pretty well known. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, strongly, I mean, I guess its anabolic properties are kind of argued, but it's definitely an anti-catabolic, no question. Yeah, no question. Right, exactly. You know, and the growth hormone increases IGF-1 in muscle tissue specifically.

Right. And IGF-1, you know, I've done a lot of research on IGF-1. IGF-1 activates this whole signaling pathway, specifically, you were talking about in your muscle tissue, that activates AKT, which then activates mTOR, which is a critical pathway for protein synthesis. Right. You know, in that sense, growth hormone can be anabolic, you know, by increasing protein synthesis. But I think, like you mentioned, in humans, how robust that effect is is sort of, you know, questionable. Yeah, I mean, anecdotally speaking, like if you look to the bodybuilding world where they're messing with all kinds of crazy drugs, it's kind of a known thing that like, if you, that growth

hormone will, it takes on, it increases the anabolism when it's in the presence of high dosages of testosterone as well. But if you were just to take, like if you were just to, you know, straight inject growth hormone every day, you wouldn't probably notice much of an increase, or you wouldn't notice nearly as much of an anabolic boost as you would with just like, you know, shooting tests. Right. Yeah. So regardless, you know. But as you said, though, if you're like, if you are using, net protein synthesis is really what determines it.

So you're synthesizing so many proteins, then you have a breakdown rate. So you can help either side of that equation in the end come out with more protein synthesis. Exactly, and that's the bottom line. The bottom line is if you're decreasing the amount of proteins you're degrading in your muscle tissue, then you're having a net increase. And so that's kind of cool. Yeah, and we see that. There's research on carbohydrate intake and how it relates to muscle growth over time.

And from what I've read and I've experienced it myself, and now I'm just working with a lot of people, when you're eating, the more carbs you're eating, the higher your insulin levels are just kind of at any given point because you've got to fit them in somehow during the day. And while insulin is not anabolic, it does have that anti-catabolic property. Exactly. So, you know, basically the more carbs you eat, the more muscle you build over time basically. Right.

As long as you're sensitive to insulin. Sure. You don't want to eat a bunch of carbs and become insulin resistant because then it's not going to work. Yeah, yeah. to insulin. You don't eat a bunch of carbs and become insulin resistant because then it's not going to work. A really interesting thing about the heat stress and particularly the sauna, there's a few studies on this where they've shown that what happens is that if you go in the sauna, it actually increases the expression of glucose transporters in your muscle tissue, specifically GLUT4. In mice, it sensitized diabetic, type 2 diabetic

mice to insulin because they increased the expression of glucose transporters and they therefore became sensitive to insulin, took up the glucose into their muscle cells and they actually produced 32% less insulin. I think that the sauna in general...

It's like your post-workout sauna and then you eat your food exactly i mean i think it's a it's just a really interesting tool that i think people um well i hope start you know experience experimenting with themselves and also i hope that more research will be done in this area yeah because there's just so many interesting benefits to heat stressing your body. And this is really like... How does a sauna compare to a steam room? Just in experience, the steam room is like unbearable. Like I have a steam room in the condo where I live and I'll go into it sometimes, but it gets so hot.

I actually almost feel like my body is like panicking after like 10 minutes. Right, right. So that's a great question. See, the steam room, one of the main differences between like going into having a dry sauna and going into the steam room is that, you know, steam is like wet and it's contacting your skin. And when your skin is burning, it becomes unbearable. Like you can't stay in for as long of a time as you can in something like a dry sauna where it's not burning your skin. like a dry sauna where it's not burning your skin.

So I think the idea is heat stress, whether it's doing a steam room for an amount of time or the sauna, most of the studies were done using the sauna. What happens is it activates a variety of mechanisms in your body, which I call the heat stress response mechanisms. And what this does is that now the next thing I was going to talk about was heat shock proteins. So, you know, growth hormone, heat shock proteins, you know, this increase in glucose transporters, all these things are mechanisms that kick into play when your body has a little bit of heat stress. And so, you know, regardless of whether or not it's the sauna or, you know, a jacuzzi, I don't know if the effects will be as robust, but I do think to some degree, if you're heat stressing your body, those mechanisms are going to kick into play and

you will reap some of the benefits. Right. So, but... But if you want to stay, I mean, yeah, for the sake of just being able to be in there longer and then just being more in line with the research and the address on it. Right. Exactly. And how long? Like if people were like, okay, would 15 minutes be enough, 20 minutes? Right. I mean, look, you have to use your judgment.

So if you just killed it lifting weights or went for a really long run, and then you go and stay in the sauna for an hour, you're going to look ridiculous. You can't do that. I would have to take breaks probably. 10 or 15 minutes, I have to go out and at least cool off for a minute. Exactly, yeah. So, I mean, if you kill it in the gym and then do a 20-minute heat stress, we're talking about 20 minutes of it already being hot, not waiting for it to warm up.

But I think that's something that's a significant heat stress after you've already heat stressed yourself. So exercising is also heat stress. So that's the whole point I'm trying to make is that, you know, we're talking about reaping some of these benefits that exercise gives you through elevating core body temperature, you know, heat stressing by using the sauna and also conditioning your body to this heat stress so that when you exercise, you're more adapted to it and you have these heat stress response mechanisms that are able to cope with it. Right.

So it's... Or I guess you could go later. Like, you don't have to go to the gym for it if you have access to one at home or nearby or something. Yeah, exactly. Like, I used to, you know, when I was in grad school, I lived across the street from a YMCA and so, you know, I would go to the sauna just to go to the sauna and I'd stay in for like, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, depending on, you know, if I didn't work out beforehand

then I would stay much longer. I'd bring a bunch of water, and sometimes I'd go out and cool off for five minutes because it's pretty intense, and you really have to be careful. You can't just go in there. First of all, you've got to stay hydrated. That's probably one of the number one risks, and drinking alcohol is the best way you can assure you will injure yourself. Drinking alcohol before you go in the sauna or while you're in the sauna,

I mean, that's like the number one cause of death, like that's been associated with sauna is people. Just the dehydration aspect. Yes, dehydration and also, you know, the alcohol change. It just, there's a bunch of things that can happen. Coagulation things change, you know. Alcohol does a lot of things, you know, and heat stress on top of that. When you have stress plus stress, it'sagulation, things change. Alcohol does a lot of things. Heat stress on top of that. When you have stress plus stress, it's not good.

Right. But it's really interesting because they also – there's these heat shock proteins that get activated when you're heat stressed. And these HSPs are like so awesome because not only can they like prevent protein degradation you know like you know different mechanisms but very similar to what the way igf-1 does it um but they can also they've also been associated with longevity um so you can like in worms and flies they've heat shocked them and it extends their lifespan this was something that i had done some research on like before i went to graduate school so i had sort of been familiar with the literature, and I became really interested in it.

So I started looking up if there's anything in humans that could show that this could apply. And what I found was really interesting is that humans that have a polymorphism in one of their heat shock protein 70 genes that is associated with increased expression of it. So pretend it does the same thing that heat does. So increasing the expression of it is associated with, like, longevity in humans. So I think that's really interesting that, you know, you have this heat shock protein, which is essentially a hormetic response. So hormesis, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but... I've heard the word, but I couldn't get it.

All right, So let me, let me sort of just explain this really briefly. Cause I think it's a very interesting concept that most people are not familiar with. And that is, um, hormesis is just referring to like a small amount of stress. When I say small amount, what I mean is not additive stress. So small, like exercise is stress. Heat is stress. Um, you know, things like EGCGs and green tea, polyphenols, these things are all slightly toxic to the body and they add a little bit of stress. And what happens when you stress the body like that is that all these genes, you increase the expression of all these genes that we have in our body that are called stress response

genes, whether they're antioxidant genes, anti-detoxification genes, or heat shock protein genes, these genes are activatedification genes, or heat shock protein genes. These genes are activated to help you deal with stress. And when you activate them, it's really healthy because you start to, you know, reap all these benefits that you get by having higher antioxidant activity, by having the expression of these genes that help proteins fold properly like heat shock proteins, you know. And so it's actually a really cool response mechanism, and that's what hormesis basically is.

It's like applying a small amount of stress or something that's a little bit toxic, like polyphenols and these things, to activate your body's own stress response mechanisms. So it's a little different than taking something like vitamin C or E, which are also antioxidants. But, see, our bodies have genes that are antioxidant genes that do the same thing that these antioxidants do and so much more. Right.

So, yeah. Which makes sense and like why you see a lot of the benefits of exercise that you can just exercise alone gives you a ton of benefits that you could, you know, if you compare benefits to dietary changes or even intermittent fasting-type benefits and things, then you could get a lot of the same stuff just from exercising alone. Right. Intermittent fasting is also a type of hormetic stress. That makes sense. Yeah. So now you understand sort of the mechanism.

It's basically an activation of stress response genes, and they've shown this in a variety of different organisms so I think it's really cool and with the HSPs are really cool also because they've been shown to prevent muscle atrophy and there's been a lot of studies doing this in mice and rats where they'll heat shock them

for 30 minutes and they'll do this a couple times a week and then they put a little cast on the mouse around the soleus muscle, around the calf, and so that the mouse can't use this muscle, and they'll do it for, like, seven days. And then what happens is when they take the cast off, the mice start to exercise and move around, and there's, like, a huge burst of, like, oxidative stress, which obviously degrades proteins. And so what happens is that it takes longer for mice that are immobilized

to rebuild their muscle after being forced to be immobilized for a certain time period. What they found was that when they heat shocked these mice, what's called whole body hyperthermia, it's essentially the same thing as a human sitting in the sauna, but they put this little mouse in a chamber that's like heated. Yeah. And they found that it like, like dramatically reduced the degradation of the soleus muscle proteins. And it was, it corresponded to an increase in heat shock proteins. And also they, they were able to regrow their muscle like 32% faster than the mice that

didn't have the heat shock. Wow. So I thought this was very relevant to, preventing atrophy and being able to regrow your muscle without having all that oxidative stress because what happens is you're increasing the expression of your heat shock proteins. When you sit in the sauna, just under normal temperatures, you'll have a higher expression of that heat shock protein because you've like induced these adaptations. But when you exercise later and elevate your core body temperature, those HSPs, they're

primed, they're primed and they boost the expression. And so you have basically you're having more of this endogenous antioxidant activity in your own body that's happening just because you've induced these physiological adaptations from heat stress in your body. So it's really cool. That's awesome. And do you think that then it would be better to separate? Like if you could, if you have your, I mean, there's obviously some heat stress from the exercise,

and then if later, I mean, maybe this is just irrelevant. It doesn't really matter either way. But, you know, if then later your body has come, you know, five hours later or whatever, you go into the sauna and you do it over again, do you think that would over time be more effective than working out and then going straight in, which is just kind of continuing what you started with the workout or really just total time is what matters? I don't know. That's a good question.

I think in some instances they've shown that, like, exercise and heat stress together can synergize. And, you know. Obviously, it comes with it to some degree. Although a lot of us, like, it depends how you train. I mean, when I'm doing, when I'm lifting, I'm in an air-conditioned gym. Like, yeah, my temperature, my core temperature is raising, but I'm not, like, I focus more on heavy weight lifting. So my rest times are longer. I'm not going, like, you know, I'm not doing circuits. I'm not jumping. I'm not, uh, like I, I am, I focus more on heavy weightlifting. So my rest times are longer. I'm not going like, you know, I'm not doing circuits. I'm not jumping. I'm not

doing CrossFit. I'm kind of like doing some heavy weightlifting and sitting around for two minutes and doing, you know what I mean? Right. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it all depends on people's personal routines. Um, and, and people will start to self experiment and see what works best for them. I don't know if there's a magic bullet one answer where it's like, this is the best for everyone. Probably not. Probably not.

It usually varies. But, I mean, the point is that using the sauna in general, most people think about using the sauna as a term for muscle relaxation or toxins, sweating out toxins. And to be honest, I haven't, there's some literature on that, but really not a lot of scientific evidence. I think a lot of it's been people just sort of making it popular. Right, yeah, like detox diets, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's like, you know, it makes sense, but honestly, there's not a lot of science showing that it does, you know, you detox all these heavy metals. There's been some recent literature showing, like, bisphenol A, you seem to sweat out, which is kind of cool because, you know, bisphenol A is not a great thing to have in your system. Yeah. So, but, you know, it's nice to have some science behind why the sauna is beneficial. Because, like I said, it's been a cultural thing for, you know, for decades. People have been using it.

They just, they don't know why, you know. Well, I mean, I guess sauna use cultural thing for decades. People have been using it. They don't know why. Well, I mean, I guess sauna use goes back millennia, really, right? I mean, going back into the Greek times where they'd sit around in the baths and they're a version of the sauna. Yeah, I mean, people cling to and aggregate around things that are beneficial, and they don't necessarily have to understand why they're beneficial. They just know it. around things that are beneficial, and they don't necessarily have to understand why they're beneficial. They just know it, you know, and eventually science catches up and we figure out why. But, you know, it's interesting that you see some of these cultural, you know.

Just traditions, yeah. Traditions, yeah. And you find out, you know, like there's Eastern medicine, there's a lot of that where science kind of catches up and finds some things don't work so well, but some things work great and finally figure out why. Right. You know, something else very interesting about this heat stress is the benefits on the brain. And I think people are starting to, the benefits on the brain in terms of exercise, like people are starting to become more informed and aware of how exercise can benefit the brain. And a lot of those benefits actually have to do with elevating the core body temperature. So, you know, in part of this article that I wrote, I talk about some of these benefits on the brain.

I personally experienced, when I was doing some experimentation with the sauna, some very potent antidepressant benefits. And so, you know, I started to look and investigate the biological mechanisms for this, and it was really interesting because the sauna increases the expression of some very interesting neurobrain chemicals. For one, I mentioned norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is important for focus and attention. I mean, people like ADHD have problems with making, you know, norepinephrine. So or neural adrenaline, you know, right? Yeah. So I that's

really interesting that, you know, it helps it helps with focus and attention. Also, what's really interesting is this this effect on brain drive neurotrophic factor, which is also something that exercise induces and brain drive neurotrophic factor increases the growth of new brain cells, so it's, like, important for neurogenesis, which is cool. But it also has been shown to ameliorate some of the effects of, like, trauma and stress, and so it has this, like, anti-anxiety type of effect. Yeah, which, I mean, I guess that's one of those anecdotal things that people, whenever

you talk to somebody that's into the sauna, that's usually the first thing they mention is that it helps them relax, helps them just kind of, you know, whatever, forget about the events of the day or whatever. Well, the funny thing is, is it doesn't help you relax while you're in there because heat is stressful. And if you're sitting in a sauna. Yeah, you feel good after. Yeah, if you do it right, you're like, I talk about this mechanism.

It's painful. It's almost like just like when you're working out real hard. It's like it's dysphoric when you're doing it. But the afterward feeling is very euphoric. And I explain this mechanism, and it's really interesting because most people are familiar with, like, endorphins, right? Sure. Like, that's a pretty common, I think, word, you know, to the general public. It's like, oh, yeah, endorphins, they make you feel good.

Well, so endorphins bind to something called, it's part of your body's natural opioid system, and they bind to something called the mu opioid receptor, which is the same, like, receptor that things like morphine target, and it's, you know, it's this feel good um neurochemical that also has anti you know pain effects so it's like you know it alleviates pain but what's really interesting is that there's there's also something called dynorphin which is also part of the mu the body's natural opioid system and it is responsible it's that dysphoric feeling and it binds to a receptor called kappa opioid.

And when you're exercising really hard, when you're working out, or when you're in this, you know, severe heat, or when you're eating something spicy, that dysphoric feeling, that's what you're feeling. And here's the interesting thing. When you produce that dynorphin, and it binds to its receptor in your brain, what happens is these new opioid receptors, which actually bind the endorphins, they get upregulated. What that means is you make more of them, and they become sensitized to endorphins. So what happens is the more pain you experience, the better the euphoric feeling is because you're making more of those receptors to bind endorphin, and the receptors become sensitized.

So it's like you don't even need to. That's your body. It's a payoff. It's a payoff. And, you know, I think, like you said, anecdotally, if you think about it, like when you have a really good workout and when you feel that pain of a really good workout, the benefits afterwards, that high you feel, that endorphin high is much better. Yes. Endorphins are also antidepressants. endorphins are also antidepressants.

So I think that's part of the reason why this, like, hyperthermic conditioning through using the sauna can have antidepressant effects. And actually, dynorphin modulates the body temperature much like norepinephrine does. If you inject dynorphin into our rat brain, it cools the body temperature. So I think part of the reason why you express dynorphin when you're working out really hard or when you're in the sauna is because your body is trying to cool itself down. So it all makes sense. There's all these mechanisms that explain it. It's just a matter of people getting it out to the public and people understanding that

there really is some science behind using heat stress to have a variety of different benefits on not only endurance but on lean muscle mass and as well muscle mass, and as well as on, you know, the benefits on the brain. Yeah, that's awesome. And I guess, I mean, I guess the increased blood flow would also just improve recovery, I would assume, right? Like muscle recovery is repairing the damage or I would think, right? I would think as well. You know, it's, it's, it's something I know, I know, like, just, I don't, I've never seen any research on it. but it's one of those things that's also just kind of known in the world of weightlifting. Like if you, let's say you train your legs very hard, they're sore. Obviously, the muscles are damaged, which doesn't always relate necessarily to the, it's not directly correlated to soreness, but they kind of just go together. And then if you're doing, you know, if you do some light cardio over the next couple of days,

you'll find that you just recover quite a bit faster, and that soreness goes away quite a bit quicker, and you can train your legs again just really from the increased blood flow. Absolutely. See, that makes sense. And bringing things like nutrients, things like that to your muscle. Yeah, it's taking waste away. Yeah, like the anti-inflammatory, pro-inflammatory,

all these things that are important for wound healing. They need to get to where they need to be, and having increased blood flow absolutely helps with that. So, yeah, I would agree with you on that for sure. So, yeah, it's really exciting, this hyperthermic conditioning, I call it, because it's really you're conditioning your body to heat stress. Yeah, that's awesome. And most gyms these days, I mean, if it's like, you know, I go to an LA Fitness, that type of where it's just your standard type of gym club, they most have a sauna that everyone

can go use. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm really glad to hear that. Like my gym here, I go to a gym in Emeryville in the Bay Area, and they have a steam room and I tried it and I hated it. It sucks, right? And they have a steam room, and I tried it, and I hated it. It sucks, right?

Well, yeah, it's smell. The mildew, you know, when you're like water, you know, you need to keep those things immaculate. And I'll just be honest with you, not a lot of gyms are really good at that. So, you know, I just, I'm not using a sauna right now, and I really miss it, really, really miss it. So I'm probably going to change gyms soon um but you know it's because i this i had so many positive benefits from it you know i noticed it i would have you know running prs when i was using the sauna frequently where it was just like my endurance i definitely noticed a difference you know in my in my personal time yeah and also have you looked into the infrared

saunas at all do you know any i've only you know, I don't know if they have anything special. I just heard about it. I haven't seen any studies directly comparing, you know, infrared, far infrared, infrared versus dry sauna on the specific benefits that I'm, you know, that I've pointed out in my article in terms of endurance, muscle mass, and length on the brain. But, you know, it's something that I'm looking into to see. There's not a lot of research in general. The reality is that in our times, money dictates a lot, and you can't patent a sauna, so the volume of research on the benefits of the sauna

is not even anything in comparison to cancer drugs. I'm hoping that I can help instigate more research on the benefits of the sauna, but really this, it was hard for me to find, honestly. You know, it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't readily available at my fingertips.

So the reality is, as infrared does, you know, obviously elevates core body temperature. Now exactly the specific differences between doing like a dry sauna and that you know and I can't tell you yeah I've only heard things but I've never been able to find any good

research on it so I just kind of chalked it up to who knows some people like to make you know claims that are unsupportive tissue healing and stuff until I see some science I can say something makes sense but I can can't say definitely, yes, it's better. Yeah, absolutely.

But I've been getting that question a lot, so I am going to try to see if I can find any research that shows any differences between the two, but I just don't know yet. Okay, cool. Well, let me know if you find something. I'm interested. Yeah, I will do. you find something i'm interested yeah we'll do because i think you can get like even for a pretty good price you could get even for your home uh like a one person they could get set up uh not not just even infrared but i think even just a dry sauna one person it's not even that expensive if you have the space for it you know like putting your garage actually um my my uh in-laws my

husband's parents they have they actually have an infrared sauna in their garage. Oh, cool. It's a two-person one. And I think it costs them like a couple of thousand dollars. Yeah. But, yeah, and you can get one-person saunas or you can get dry saunas, infrared. You can, I mean, there's a variety of companies that sell them. If you have space for it, I mean. Yeah. If I had space for it, you know.

If I had a house, I'm going to call them. If I had a house, I'd do it. I'd put it in the garage. Yeah. Same for me. You know, like if I had a house, I'd be on that, you know. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so.

Cool. All right, so let's now switch over to the subject of micronutrients and how they relate to performance. And it's timely because the last podcast that I recorded and I just recently wrote an article on it, something I just kind of talk about a lot, was on the subject of clean eating, right? And in the bodybuilding world, of course, clean eating is, you know, a lot of people equate that to like you're just eating lean protein and vegetables all day long. You know, maybe like you're going to eat tilapia and asparagus seven times a day or something like that. Or you're just very restricted. That sounds pretty bad. Yeah, it's some of the diets that people go through. I don't know how they do it. seven times a day or something like that. Or you're just very restricted. Some of the diets that people go through,

I don't know how they do it. Basically, my position on it has always been there are a ton of vitamins and minerals, essential type of nutrients your body needs for all different types of things. You need to give your body that. And, you know, getting all those from food is hard enough, even if you stick to, you know, organic fruits and vegetables, which, you know, there is some research out there showing, I think I've seen with different

berries and stuff where like certain organic fruits and vegetables do have more nutrients in them. It's not that the unorganic are going to like kill you or something like that, but you can get more nutrients, I guess, out of certain organic fruits and vegetables. Um, and, but you'd have to be like pretty, uh, you have to micromanage your diet a lot more than people would probably want to, to make sure they get everything they need just from food alone. Um, which is why, of course I recommend, you know, a good multivitamin, um, on top of whatever it is that you're eating, but at the same of course, I recommend, you know, a good multivitamin on top of whatever it is that you're eating. But at the same time, so eating clean, a lot of people, they don't

understand that it doesn't mean that you're automatically going to get in shape. It doesn't mean that you're automatically going to lose fat or build muscle because, you know, there's energy balance where you can eat, you know, if you're burning 2,200 calories a day worth of energy and you ate 2,500 calories a day of the cleanest possible foods, you're going to gain weight slowly, but surely it's going to happen. And then on the flip side of that, of course, is now like, well, if it fits your macros crowd, where if you're familiar with that in the in the bodybuilding

world it's like it's kind of a thing these days where it's like this great revelation that you could eat doritos and pop tarts every day and still lose weight um with no thought yeah with no thought as to you know nutrients that your body needs it's just macros macros macros like i you know gotta hit that i have uh i have 100, so, and 50 fat, so I'm going to eat this pint of ice cream or something stupid like that, right? Interesting. No, I wasn't familiar with that. Oh yeah, that's a whole, that's a whole thing. There's like, Pop-Tarts in particular, for some reason, are really popular with them. Like, like the, it's the ultimate post-workout. I'll have people email me, like, should I eat a box of Pop-Tarts after my workouts? Why? What do you, so, so yeah,

and I know this is an area that you're very well educated in and I'm very curious on just what do you, what do you think are the big, like, correlations between the foods you eat and actually how well you can perform um and then I guess also like for me personally I definitely notice a difference in how I feel when I'm eating healthy foods as I mean I haven't really I've been eating focusing on eating healthy foods for so long I honestly don't remember what it's like to eat a bunch of junk food but if I think back I can still remember right yeah so, I mean, I've done a lot of the focus, a lot of my research, my postdoctoral research has been on the role of micronutrients,

which are about 40 or so essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, that you need to provide, basically. For your diet, like the things that your body can't use. Yes. Something that your body is not making, you need to provide them through your diet. And the reality is that the majority of the U.S. population does not provide them in their diet. And it's really difficult to get a broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals and essential

fatty acids just through your diet every single day. I eat a very comprehensive – I try to get as many micronutrients as I can for my diet but the reality is that I also supplement in addition to that because I know that I'm not getting all of it. So in terms of – I think most people are familiar with, well, you need a lot of vitamins and minerals and micronutrients for health reasons, for longevity, to age better. But I don't think people realize that, yes, these things are also important for your performance. So you've got – your body is made up of proteins, and I'm not talking about the proteins you eat.

I'm talking about you have genes in your body. Genes make proteins, enzymes in your body, and these proteins are what are doing everything that they're doing. I mean, there's proteins in your mitochondria that are important for metabolism. There's proteins in your kidney cells that are important for detoxification. There's proteins in your liver, you know, proteins in your heart. Like, this is your body. This is how you are alive. And there's, alive. And these proteins

need... They regulate a whole bunch of physiological processes. Exactly. That's exactly what they're doing. Ranging from your brain to your heart function to detoxification to your freaking metabolism. And these proteins,

they require what's called cofactors. And these cofactors are minerals and they're vitamins, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron. These are all cofactors. B vitamins, you know, these are all cofactors for proteins and enzymes in your body. Vitamin D. Vitamin D is something that, you know, I've done extensive research on. Yeah. Vitamin D is something that I've done extensive research on. It gets converted into a steroid hormone that regulates the expression of over 900 different genes in your body.

We're talking about 900 different physiological processes in your body that depend on enough vitamin D presence. Out of what, like 25,000 or something, right? It's 1 in 24 of your human genes. I mean, that's crazy, you know, and 70% of the U.S. population doesn't meet the requirements for adequate levels of vitamin D, which is considered to be 30 nanograms per milliliter, you know, in serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is actually the precursor to the hormone, but it's what people measure. It's the staple form of vitamin D. So if you're not getting enough vitamin D and you don't think your performance is being

affected by that, just think of, so you're saying that out of 900 different genes this steroid hormone regulates, you don't think one of them is important for your performance. I mean, really? That seems kind of far-fetched. So that's just something to think about. We're talking about, I can't even talk about 900 different genes. I mean, do I have to say any more about vitamin D? Another one that's really widespread deficiency. I recommend vitamin D supplement. I take 10,000 IUs a day, probably more than I need, whatever, don't care. But I think probably for the average person, like if

you wanted to be safe, maybe 3,000, 4,000 a day would probably just be a good baseline. Yeah, I personally take 4,000 IUs a day, and my levels are about 53 nanograms per milliliter. I recommend getting your levels tested. It's such a cheap test. I mean, anyone that has health insurance, your health insurance pays for it. But if you don't have health insurance, it's less than $50. I mean, I've seen them for like $25. I should just go get tested.

I know I'm higher than I need to be. I mean, to reach toxicity, I think you have to take like 50,000 IUs a day for like two months or something like that. So I'm not worried about that. Well, they've shown you can have toxicity. It depends on body weight first of all like but 10 000 i use a day can can show some toxicity in terms of hypercalcemia this is this is the my main concern with vitamin d so obviously if you're if you're lean uh the toxicity levels you can reach them at a lower because you know it's it's fat soluble yeah so it doesn't get sucked up by body fat right it doesn't

get you know it's it's getting if it's if you. If you have a lot more body fat, then it's not being released into your bloodstream as readily, so it's less bioavailable. But the problem is that if you have too much vitamin D, you can absorb. So vitamin D helps you absorb calcium, and you can absorb like you're basically become very efficient at absorbing calcium, which means you have higher levels of calcium in your bloodstream. basically become very efficient at absorbing calcium, but which, which means you have higher levels of calcium in your bloodstream. Now,

if you're doing this for years, it's just going to be the case also with someone like me eating a lot of protein. I mean, like, like it doesn't, I think a scoop away protein is like 50% of the, the RDI of calcium alone. Wow.

Yeah. So see that. So maybe, you know, someone like you, I'm going down to 5,000. You've convinced me. Yeah.

Because here's the thing. If you have too much calcium in your blood, over time you get calcification of arteries, vascular system, which can cause neurodegenerative disease, heart disease. So you don't want a bunch of calcium in your bloodstream. If you look at some of the like, they've done longevity studies

and there's a couple of prospective studies they've done where they've looked at vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, and all cause mortality. And what they find is that those with the've looked at vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, and all-cause mortality. And what they find is that those with the lowest levels of vitamin D are the most likely to die early. Of like all kinds of diseases and stuff. All kinds, a wide spread of diseases. But also what's interesting is that it's a U-shaped curve.

Those with the highest levels of vitamin D were also most likely got from all causes. And I think that's because of the people that are taking way, way, way, way too much vitamin D are getting calcification in their arteries. And so what they found is that people that had levels between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter, which I call the vitamin D sweet spot, had the lowest all-cause mortality.

And I think it's because you don't want too much vitamin D. Yeah because you don't want too much vitamin D. Yeah, you don't want too much of any. I mean, drink too much water and you die. Right. So, you know, anyway, so getting your levels tested is a good thing. Yeah, that's good advice. And I'm going down to 5,000.

Nice. Okay. But, you know, this gets back to… I live in Florida. If I were in Sunwater, I'm just always in sight, type, and on a computer. So a lot of people are like, why do you even take it? You're in Florida. I were in the sun more I'm just always inside typing on a computer so a lot of people are like why do you even take it you're in Florida I'm like no I'm actually in an office I could be in Siberia there's no difference

yeah me too I'm in California and it's like but see the thing is first of all I'm a woman which means I'm like concerned about skin aging so when I do go out in the sun I am slathered up in sunscreen like I wear sunscreen every day when I go out and I'm only out all the chemicals? All the bad stuff in that shit?

Oh, titanium dioxide is what I use. It's not... Oh, do you do your own? I don't do my... I do make my own skin cream, but I do not make my own sunscreen. Oh, okay. Actually, I wrote an article on that. I've done some research.

There's some interesting natural solutions. Because some of the stuff you buy in the stores, I mean... Yes. Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah. Titanium dioxide is a mineral and really all it does is reflect the light. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was recommended if you were going to make your own. It was like, I don't remember now,

it was titanium dioxide and I think there was like coconut oil also helped a little bit and a couple other things you can mix together and make your own. Yeah. So anyways, but I'm with you. I never go out. I'm always at my computer or in the lab. You know, it's like, even though I'm in California, I'm not out in the sun.

And even if you do live in a place where you get sunshine, it also depends on the latitude. Yeah. And how much skin you have exposed and for how long. Exactly. If you have melanin, which is a natural sunscreen you know there's a lot there's a variety of factors that regulate you know how how much vitamin d you can make definitely so it's just it's easy to supplement now your body making it your skin is more efficient um you actually uh do absorb more 100 of it as opposed to like 60 yeah but still you know

supplementing you're still you're able to get your levels up to an adequate status. Yeah, and I guess the same thing goes right for various vitamins and minerals, where some vitamins and minerals in their natural forms are better absorbed by the body, probably because of cofactors like vitamin C and bioflavonoids, whereas other synthetic vitamins like folic acid tends to work better than the natural form. Yeah, folic acid is definitely an example, one that seems to be really efficient. But, you know, I like to get,

I try to get as many vitamins and minerals from my diet as I can. Yeah, me too. Yeah, one way I do that is by, like, I have a Vitamix. Yeah, those things are awesome. You can mix soups in them. Every morning I do, like, I do kale, spinach, chard, two carrots, a tomato, avocado, frozen berries, an apple, almond milk, and then I'll do a banana too for consistency. Every single morning I make 64 ounces of it.

I get 32 and my husband gets 32. So now I have a huge, I've got a broad range of colors and different micronutrients that are present in those vegetables. So, for example, magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. So that means any plant, chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color. So any plant that's green is going to be high in magnesium. Kale, zinc, all those dark green leafy vegetables, they have a lot of magnesium in them. Vitamin K is part

of the phosphorus source of plants. So green plants have vitamin K. Vitamin K is really important. Which is, yeah, another one like D where it's like you look at the research coming in probably the last decade on K that a lot of people, like, yeah, to meet the RDI is fine, but there are benefits to going above it. Right. So some of our research is that what happens is most people, there's different proteins in your body that are required to function for short-term survival, like clotting. You need to have your clotting working properly.

If you don't have your clotting working properly, which vitamin K is important for, you're going to hemorrhage out and bleed out. You can die of a hemorrhage. I mean, that's something that you need to have working. So any proteins that, you know, vitamin K is a cofactor for a lot of clotting factors. So any vitamin K you get from your diet is going to go to those proteins because your body knows that it needs it to survive. However, there's other proteins in your body which are essential to prevent calcification of your arteries. And matrix glob protein is one good example.

It requires vitamin K2. But the thing is that preventing calcification of your arteries is a long-term health consequence. It's not something that you're going to worry about until you're in your fifth or sixth decade of life. So your body says, you know what? I only get so much vitamin K a day. Where am I going to put it? I only get so much vitamin K a day. Where am I going to put it? I'm going to give it to those proteins that I need to not bleed

out. And that makes sense. So what happens is if you're, even though you're, you're getting vitamin K, you may not be getting enough vitamin K because. And what's even like, I guess it's K is if we're, that's kind of, that's a little bit harder to get in terms of a diet, right? Like, I know K, like you said, but isn't, that's one that. Right, so K1, vitamin K1 is found in green plants. And K1 gets converted into K2 in the liver. And K2 is what's important for those proteins I was talking about there.

For the bone health. It's also related to bone health, right? Exactly, also related to bone health, right? Exactly. Also related to bone health. Exactly. And the thing is, is that you can get like fermented, some fermented foods have K2. I think natto is like a Japanese. Oh, yeah.

I've heard of that. Yeah. But it's really, getting vitamin K2 is not easy. Yeah. It's a very source. Yeah. So, you know, but eating a lot of green dark green vegetables you will get k1 k1 gets converted into k2 uh you can also you know get take a nato supplement they have like

these k2 supplements that you can take yeah or you could supplement with k1 i guess right exactly you know so cool so what would you say like for uh what are a couple micronutrients that are directly going to impact performance, whether it be endurance or weightlifting? We talked a little bit about vitamin D and that it affects all kinds of things. Right. So I think one micronutrient that would directly relate to performance is magnesium. nutrient that would directly relate to performance is magnesium. And the reason for that is so magnesium is an essential cofactor for repair enzymes, DNA repair enzymes.

And this is important for your mitochondria. It's important to prevent cancer, but we're not talking about cancer. We're talking about performance. Mitochondria. Because of all the mutations. Like if you have mutations that occur like in the wrong places, then you're screwed, right? Right, yeah, and that's a different topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I know, I know. Yeah, but in terms of like performance, they've shown that like high-intensity training, when you're lifting weights, you know, when you're doing this high-intensity training, what happens is you increase the biogenesis of new mitochondria in your muscle cells. And in order to increase the biogenesis of new mitochondria, your mitochondria has its own genome and it has to replicate its DNA. And these DNA enzymes that replicate the DNA require magnesium as a cofactor. So really, while you're working out to make more mitochondria, which is the reason why you're making more mitochondria is your mitochondria are what's producing ATP. So as you're working out, you're breathing in more oxygen. The oxygen then gets coupled to metabolism.

So, you know, things like when you eat glucose, it gets converted into pyruvate, goes into the mitochondria and is used through the Krebs cycle to make energy. This energy is coupled to the mitochondria, like the little energy generators. Exactly. So this is all happening when you're working out, and magnesium is important to actually make new mitochondria, which are important for your performance. In addition to that, when you're working out, because your mitochondria are working harder during a workout,

mitochondria are the source, a big, big source of oxidative stress, meaning they're leaking out free oxygen radicals. They're leaking out all kinds of oxidative products, which damage not only your mitochondria, but they damage other proteins. And so magnesium is required to repair that damage to the mitochondrial genome to make sure that your mitochondria… That would be muscle damage as well, obviously. Exactly. Yeah, to the fibers themselves.

It directly correlates to your muscle damage, the amount, you know, mitochondria are in your muscle cells, and they're really important for muscle function. So they're important to build muscle, they're important to prepare muscle, and these things all require magnesium. And, you know, 56% of the U.S. population is not getting adequate levels of magnesium, and athletes are particularly susceptible to low magnesium because it's also something that you do sweat out. So I think that's one micronutrient that directly relates to performance

that most people don't realize, and most people don't realize that they're actually not getting enough of. What are some good sources of magnesium? You mentioned dark green veggies. Yes, good dietary sources. Now this is another layer of complication that scientists are looking at. And that's because magnesium is bound – a lot of minerals, magnesium, zinc, these things are bound to something called phytates, which is part of the –

Which they block absorption or am I thinking of something else? Yeah, you pretty much got it. So phytates, we can't absorb phytates. We can't digest them. And so things that have the minerals complex to the phytates, we don't absorb them as well because we can't digest the phytates. And so there's the minerals and complex with it. Boom, there goes the minerals.

Right. But the thing is, is that things like oats or rice, these things are really high in magnesium and zinc, but they have a really high... Almonds have a bit too, isn't it? Almonds have good... Yeah, I like almonds for magnesium as well. All the almond butter.

Yes, me too. Almond butter, almond milk, and just raw almonds, you know, in general. Yeah. I like rice milk as well just because it's easy carbs and, you know, like, you know, I do like a smoothie after I work out and use rice milk. It's like 25 grams carbs per cup. Oh, cool. Yeah, I usually use almond smoothie after I work out and use rice milk. It's like 25 grams carbs per cup. Oh, cool. Yeah, I usually use almond milk.

I haven't looked into what's… Almond milk's great because there's just not much in terms of like calories. It gives you some taste and you don't have to, you know, it just adds maybe, what, 20 calories per cup or something. Oh, I see, I see. So you're looking for more of the balance between calories and some micronutrients. Yeah. You know, especially when you're working with certain numbers, you're like,'re like, how do I want to spend? It's like a bank account. How do I want to spend these

calories? Right. I think the magnesium, the almonds and the greens are my favorite way to get the magnesium. Spinach too, right? Obviously, that's one of the greens, but that's a commonly eaten and it has a lot. Spinach too, right? Spinach, obviously that's one of the green, but that's like a common meat that has a lot.

Yeah, spinach and kale, you know, Swiss chard, all those green leafy vegetables, definitely. And B vitamins. B vitamins are also really important for performance. And I know most people aren't deficient in B vitamins, but the thing is, is that, you know, sometimes you can have polymorphisms. I think a large percentage of Canadians have a polymorphism in the methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase gene, which prevents your body from using B vitamins as a source of methylation, which is a really important epigenetic regulator in your body.

And actually what happens is these people with this mutation have high homocysteine levels, which is bad. But, you know, B vitamins are also cofactors for mitochondria to work properly. So, you know, getting your B vitamins is good. I personally take a B complex. Also, as you age, your body can't use B vitamins as efficiently, and you actually require more of them.

So there's so many complications. But, you know, essentially, you may not be deficient in B vitamins, but it doesn't hurt to make sure you're getting… Yeah, I mean, you're a water solvist, so you'll just pee out the excess, right? You do. It's water soluble, so you do pee out the excess. But the idea is thinking about micronutrients. If you think about your body as a system and, you know, you've got all these different enzymes and proteins in your body that are important for performance, they're important for longevity, then you start to think about micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals in a different way because you're thinking about these things are important.

They're cofactors for these proteins and enzymes in your body. And if you don't give them their cofactors, they're not working optimally yeah that's the key is optimally like a lot of people they realize yeah sure you can go in and you can work at your gym and work out and if you're maybe your diet isn't that great but if you at least are getting enough protein and you're eating a bare minimum of fats that your body needs to kind of do what it needs to do in terms of cellular health cellular health and whatever like yeah, yeah, sure. You can, you can make progress, but, uh, optimal is really the word. And actually, you know, and then the long-term health where that's you, that's not, like you said, it's not at the top of most people's minds, but it will be,

you know, when you're 50 and if you're having serious health problems, it will be at the top of your mind. Yeah. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. There is nothing better than cancer prevention. And, you know, the best way you can do that is by providing yourself with all the micronutrients you need for these repair systems in your body to work properly. You know, you don't want to get cancer is ultimately. And that's not something that we generally think about as we're younger, but as we start to get into the fifth decade, it's something you will think about,

and you just don't want it. It's just not something you want. Totally. Yeah, I think it's unfortunate. There was a recent – it comes around. It seems to come around every couple of years. There's this big sensationalist headline about how multivitamins don't work or multivitamins don't work or multivitamins kill

people or whatever. And which then it, you know, I, of course it was that, you know, was it the select study one that just came out recently and I got emailed a hundred thousand times about it. And, you know, those types of things are, and if you look at the research of what they were basing that on, you start really digging into it and then it becomes, it's really just a joke. And it's almost like, I just wonder, it just seems so biased. It seems like there's such an agenda with things like that because you can find, and I've kind of like actually, I have a little copy paste file of all kinds of replies and I've, you can find, I think I have, I don't know.

Have you seen my rebuttal to that campaign? No, no, I didn't know you had one. Oh, goodness. I did a rebuttal to this whole multivitamins are not only useless, but they're bad. And it's on my YouTube. I'll check it out. I'll link it in this. I'm going to make a blog post for this.

I'll link that video, too, just so people can watch it. I basically ripped them a new one. I analyzed, personally read over 30 studies that were involved in that, and I identified a variety of common methodological errors in the study, and I point them out. Is this bullshit compliant? Like, oh, you can take your multivitamin over the phone. Yeah, sure.

How do you feel? Oh, I feel like shit. Okay, good. Exactly. If you're giving someone a vitamin or mineral supplement and you're trying to look at an end point to see if anything changes you have to measure something like a biochemical biomarker in the blood yes oh yeah that they're even elevating isn't even doing anything are you giving them an adequate dose i mean if you're still not elevating their levels to above what's considered adequate,

then how can you say it has an effect? It's that you designed a crap, your multivitamin didn't have a high enough dose of these vitamins and minerals. Which is very common. I mean, you go look at that. That is the supplement game. I mean, it's kind of ironic for me to say that because I have a line of supplements, but the supplement game is to underdose the shit out of everything and be as exaggerated in your marketing as possible. So, and that applies to really every kind of supplement that's out there, but with multivitamins, that's the standard thing is like overplay the value of the vitamins and minerals. Like, over, overplay the, the, the value of the vitamins and minerals.

Like, yes, they're valuable, but I mean, like some of these companies, they just, they really are grasping at straws with the kind of claims they make. And then anything else that's added is the, the just includes so little of something that is just not even going to do anything, but refer to research, you know, showing all these great benefits if you had 20 times the dosage. Yeah. showing all these great benefits if you had 20 times the dosage. Yeah, I mean, some of these multivitamins, they require you to take six pills to get what they have on the back. They provide this much, and it's like,

who's going to take six pills of just a multivitamin a day? I take a lot of vitamins, but I get a multivitamin that is pretty, it's a one a day where it's got pretty adequate levels of various vitamins and minerals yeah i do it two a day yeah because it's like you know i'm already taking you know fish oil omega-3s a b complex vitamin d yes spirulina i like spirulina oh do you yeah spirulina is a good source of microalgae oil but yeah so you know check out my rebuttal to the multivitamin i'll check it out i'll link it too i'll link it in the in the blog post yeah it's uh it's pretty good i also i also educate people on why if they have cancer you know for example you shouldn't take high doses of folic acid because folic acid if folate in your body um is required to make one of your dna nucleotides called thymine

and cancer cells are rapidly proliferating, and they need to make new DNA to make new cells. So you're basically just feeding. Yeah, you're feeding. It's like fuel to the fire. So, you know, in fact, it's like methotrexate is a folic acid inhibitor, and it's a very potent chemotherapeutic agent. So it's like you don't give someone cancer, who has cancer,

high doses of folic acid because you're going to accelerate the cancer growth. But the converse is true. If you have people that are healthy that don't have adequate levels of folic acid or folate because what happens is that you need folate to make thiamine. If you don't have enough of it, you'll start to get breaks in your DNA, which will cause DNA damage, which will cause mutations. That goes down that cancer. Right, so it's like, you can get cancer if you don't have enough of it, or

if you have cancer, you shouldn't be taking high doses of it. So basically, I feel like they did a really terrible job at educating the public, and so I tried to set things straight. Yeah, that's great. I'm going to check it out. I'll link it as well. Because that's like I look at taking the multivitamin as, I guess,

kind of an insurance policy just for the future. I mean, if I were to deplete my – if I were to become, you know, noticeably deficient in vitamins and minerals, I definitely would feel that, you know, in performance for sure. But then, you know, it's also I think there are – at least this is my experience just kind of working with various people, especially people that go from eating a lot of junk food, which more of the problem, like you have chemical additives and things, but then you also have like, for instance, if you're eating a lot of sugar, well, sucrose is

not as evil as you like, you know, it's not like, oh, eat sugar and then you get fat and die. More of the problem is that if you're eating a lot of sugar in your diet, a lot of those foods are not going to have nutrition because what type of foods have a lot of added sugar? Just crap. So, you know, when people switch from eating like that to eating nutritious foods, in all cases, I mean, I get emails all the time where people are amazed at how much better they feel, how much better their workouts are. And that's what they're feeling. That's from the micronutrients. You know, the thing is, I feel like a huge part of the health and fitness community, I mean, probably the majority of it, focuses on macronutrients, what you should not be eating, what, you know, don't eat sugar,

don't eat these processed foods, make sure you eat lots of protein. Or even just ridiculous things like don't eat potatoes because they're starchy carbs. Potatoes are the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat. Like, potatoes are awesome. What are you talking about? See, the thing is that people don't focus on these micronutrients that you're not getting. Like you said, these are important for a wide variety of physiological processes in your body. Your mitochondria are the center stage of all things. Everything in your body needs ATP to work, every single thing in your body.

Vitamins and minerals, there are so many different vitamins and minerals that are required for mitochondrial function, bottom line. If you want to work out better, if you want your performance better, make sure you're getting your micronutrients. Yeah, totally. I know you guys are already focused on the protein. Obviously, you need protein. Yeah.

I don't think I need to talk about that. Yeah. In the competitive world of bodybuilding, I know that that whole little trend right now of like eating crappy food and, you know, getting lean or whatever. Like, yeah, that works for getting to a certain point. Short term too. Yeah. Yeah. Short term as well.

It's short term thinking. It is totally. And it's immediate gratification. It's like, oh, I can eat this Ben and Jerry's and this Klondike bar tonight because it fits my macros. Like, yeah, okay, keep on doing that for a year and let's see how your body's doing. Which, you know, I guess you can counterbalance some of the unhealthy things. Like, I always try to, I don't, my version of junk food is like going to a restaurant and just kind of ordering the foods I want to eat. Like, I don't do junk food. I'm not into, like, fast food or anything. So it's not even really junk food is like going to a restaurant and just kind of ordering the foods I want to eat like I don't do junk food I'm not into like fast food or anything so it's not even really junk food

but uh you know if somebody does want to okay if you want to go eat some ice cream once a week there's nothing wrong with that you're not going to mess up your health especially if you know you have your routine in of where the vast majority of your calories come from healthy, nutrient dense sources. And you know, if you're exercising and you're exercising, you're doing so much for your body, it can deal with a little bit of crap here and there. A little bit of crap here and there is good.

It's a hormetic response also. I mean, well, you know, it goes back to that hormesis where you're a little bit, a little bit of crap, a little bit toxic, a little bit of stress,

stress response. You know, I've actually noticed from people like i always kind of have that where i would just every now and then i'll go um it's usually once a week i'll go and i'll eat you know uh my dinner's going to include a dessert and if i'm gonna eat a dessert it's probably gonna be a pretty big dessert so it's gonna be like a lot of sugar um or or you know every once in a while i'll go i haven't it recently, but like there's like go get a Five Guys burger or something like that. But by doing that, it's never really bothered me. Like I can go do that and then, you know, feel fine. I don't feel any different.

But I've spoken to people that have gone really, really strict, like no sugar for extended periods of time, you know, for months where they didn't touch anything that would be considered a dirty or not good food. And then when they do go have it again, it like wrecks them. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of that also has to do with your gut microbial because when you change your diet extensively like that, where you're eating, you know, vegetable or meats and you have different, you know, microbiota and, you know, bacteria that are in your gut. And then when you start to like eat something else, your gut, your gut's not used to digesting

it. It's not, you know, so it's like it literally causes inflammation, you know, at the level of your gut. Yeah. So it's like that's the first place, you know, the food you eat, the first thing it sees is your gut, right? So, you know, I think some of that has to do with the level of your blood. That would make sense, yeah, for sure.

But, yeah, I haven't done a lot of reading on this eating unhealthy. Just Google if it fits your macros and then you can get aware. I'm not sure I agree with it all, but I don't really know what they're stating yet to say. It's basically what it is. It's flexible dieting. It's like, okay, so you want to lose fat. Cool. That means that we're going to look at how much energy you're burning,

and we're going to put you in a slight calorie deficit, let's say a 20% deficit. Therefore, that is going to equal X number of calories a day. We're going to break that down into 40% of those calories are going to equal x cal x x number of calories a day we're going to break that down into 40 of those calories going to come from protein 40 are going to come from carbs and 20 and come from fats there you go so let's say let's just like randomly say it's 150 protein 150 carb and 40 fat let's just say um grams per day there and then you just you go figure out what those foods are where do you want to get you want to get those carbs from pringles go for it you want to get that fat from you know ice cream go for it you want to get some of your protein from ice cream go for it so it's

it's like that's the that's the concept um and yeah i don't know if i agree with that i i think you're gonna be and you're gonna end up deficient in a lot of micronutrients. Definitely. No question. Absolutely. So were they initially, like if somebody comes from the camp of like, it's almost like the cult of cleaning where they think that, you know, you can't ever like, oh, you want to lose some fat, you better never eat ice cream ever. Because if you do, it's going to mess a lot. Like, you know, there's a lot of bad information out there in terms of, you know, that losing fat or building muscle is all about what foods you eat, not how much.

Like, they come from that camp to like, wait a minute, are you serious? It's about getting your body, your metabolism, getting it as efficient as possible. I mean, this all comes down to losing fat, gaining muscle mass. This is happening through physiological properties and processes in your body. So to me, I look at it on, I think, a deeper level where it's like a molecular understanding of things that are going on. And like I said, to me, it comes down to absolutely making all these things work the best they can work. And in order to do that, you need to give them the fuel they need to do it. Definitely, yeah.

And the metabolic, I mean, I guess metabolic adaptation would be the word, whether, I mean, that's where you want your, I guess technically you want your metabolism to be running as inefficiently as possible. I mean, you want it to burn as much energy as possible in the fitness world. I mean, because you want to be able to eat, like ideally for most people that are working out, they would be able to eat a lot of food every day and stay lean. Whereas I guess an efficient metabolism would be the opposite, right? It'd be like the metabolism that could keep you alive on the smallest amount of energy possible. Because you can slow your metabolism down quite a bit. If you just, you know, systematically reduce your calories over time, you could go from,

and I've run into this, it goes both ways, where like there was a guy, he came, I've been working with him, he was at like 210 pounds, give or take. He was eating like 1,300 calories a day, working out five times, five days a week, lifting weights. That's nothing. 1,300 calories a day working out five times in five days a week lifting weights that's nothing 1300 calories a day i was like what are you doing dude so we had him slowly increase his calories over the course of like two months because he had been stuck at that 1300 so long to where he got up to being able to eat like 2700 a day and he was two pounds lighter in the end yeah i i when i when you said inefficient and, so like in science, the way we think about it, I guess maybe it's a little different than what the fitness community is.

I'm probably saying it wrong. I'm just a what-o-nother. I just wind up. You know, like for us, you know, I've done a lot of, I did six years of research on mitochondria. Yeah. So when I say efficiently, what I mean is like, so people that are, when your mitochondria are inefficient, this is people that are like metabolically, you know, they're not responsive. They're usually overweight, obese. Like metabolic syndrome type stuff.

Yeah. So what happens is their mitochondria, even though they have a bunch of energy and they keep eating and they keep giving their mitochondria more and more and more energy, their mitochondria cannot use that energy. And that's what we call inefficient. Oh, okay. Right. So when I say efficient, what I mean is you can keep giving it its substrates, keep giving it. Yeah, yeah.

And it's just, boom, it's using it. Like, you know, so that's, so, you know. I like that better then. That's, that's, that's what, that's what I want. That's good. Right, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, some of that, sometimes these terms get popularized and they're kind of switched a little bit.

Totally. But in science, when we say an efficient mitochondria, what we mean is, you know, your mitochondria burned some shit, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we're talking about, so. Cool. Okay, great. Well, this was awesome. This was very informative.

I think everyone's going to really like what we went over because, well, like I said, it's just very it's a hot topic right now. The sauna stuff is great. I want to start I mean, like I said, the steam room is like it is tougher, but I'm going to start doing it some more. Great. Yeah, the microteaching stuff is awesome just because it's something that I constantly am kind of harping on

because I don't like the whole eat junk and get shredded. And you'll have, it also, also has kind of pushed a lot in – you have a lot of these guys that are popular on social media networks like Instagram or whatever that are also on drugs, and they don't talk about that. So you have guys on anabolics. You have guys on cutting drugs and stuff that, yeah, they're getting shredded, and they're posting their meals of all this shit that they're getting shredded and they're, you know, posting their meals of like all this shit that they're eating.

Yeah. And in some cases, the drugs that when you take, when you are, know what you're doing with drugs, it's not safe, but if you're doing it right, you almost can't out eat your body. Like you need to eat 6,000 calories a day just to not lose weight. Like if you're a big muscular guy, I mean, it's outrageous what some of these guys do. to not lose weight. Like, if you're a big, muscular guy, I mean, it's outrageous what some of these guys do.

So, it's kind of pushed a lot by that crowd, too, where it's, you know, the people don't realize, like, what is actually going on behind the scenes. Right. No, of course.

Yeah. And then, so then, clean eating kind of gets demonized a little bit, or eating healthy foods gets demonized a little bit. Like, it's this thing of the past,

and now, you know, the new thing is, like, all you've got to do is hit macros. I think, you know, instead of thinking about all you got to do is hit macros i think you know instead of thinking about it like clean eating and what does that mean that's a big broad sweeping term you got to talk about it's like you want to get your micronutrients which is i mean bottom line and if you're going to you know get your micronutrients you're going to have to get

them from i guess i guess from a lot of clean sources but yeah foods that would be typically you know considered clean but that here's the that would be typically, you know, considered clean. But here's the good thing about it, though, is when you start looking at it that way and you start looking at, okay, well, here, you know, I need to get this, here are the key, the essential vitamins and minerals and fatty acids, things that I need. What kind of foods can I get those from? And you start looking at that list and it's a lot of, there's a lot of great stuff in there.

It's not like a three, you know, three foods that you have to eat every day. Right. No, it's just eating, in some cases, like the Mediterranean diet in a sense where you're just getting a lot of healthy fats, healthy proteins and vegetables. So, yeah, it's all really interesting. And the hyperthermic conditioning is a new fitness hack that I'm really excited that is out in the public now. And I hope to see people using it. And I'd love to hear anecdotes from people's personal experiences with it as well.

Yeah, me too. Yeah. So if people are interested in listening to me, I also have a podcast. Yeah, I was going to say, how do people find you? Yeah, so I foundmyfitness.com. I'm on iTunes, so you can find my podcast. It would really help me if you like what I have to say and you want to help me spread my word. It would help if you give me an iTunes review.

It helps to spread. Yeah, I forget to ask that too. Yeah, me too, me too. First, what you need to do is you need to give Mike a review, and then you need to go and give FoundMyFitness a review. Muscle for Life, I guess, is your iTunes, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll link to all your stuff in the blog post too,

but just so people listening know where to go. Great, yeah. And also, if you want to go to FoundMyFitness.com, and you can sign up for my newsletter, and that's where you'll get my articles and my references. And also, if you'd like to like me on Facebook, and you can sign up for my newsletter, and that's where you'll get my articles and my references. And also, if you'd like to like me on Facebook, I really only have, I don't know, 1,300 Facebook fans. So, Facebook.com forward slash foundmyfitness if you want to listen to some of my stuff I'm saying on Facebook as well.

Cool. It'd be awesome. Yeah, yeah, definitely. All right, well, thanks a lot for taking the time. And I'd love to have you on again sometime. It's nice to speak to someone that knows what they're talking about. Oh, I try. You know, there's a lot I don't know. So, yeah, my pleasure.

It was fun, Mike. So look forward to keeping in touch. Yeah, sure thing. All right, take care. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and

general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at MuscleForLife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye. you