PBD Podcast - Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Longevity Science, Anti-Aging Hacks & AI Gene Editing | PBD #740

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Patrick Bet-David sits down with Dr. Rhonda Patrick to break down biological vs. chronological aging, AI-driven gene therapy and stem-cell breakthroughs, creatine and fasting for brain performance, exercise’s role in reversing heart aging and lowering cancer risk, GLP-1 weight-loss debates, anxiety hacks, and the science behind longevity, family, and happiness.------👞 THE FLB 1'S: https://bit.ly/4mXV9gdⓂ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!ABOUT US:Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

I'm 47 years old. I want to feel 30 by the time I'm done talking to you. The cells in our body have a biological age. And that biological age can be younger if you're leading a really healthy lifestyle. Or they can be older. Give me three things you'll say. These are three crazy wild things we may see. Yeah. So this is where you can basically take this old skin cell and make the cell young. So essentially reversing the aging. But also we can grow organs. Like that's a new thing. So you can basically take someone who has a disease and completely white. that disease out. It's really kind of cool. It is tuning up you can get. But we get to a point

that people would choose what their kids are going to look like because that's pretty scary if you can get to that point. I mean, that's the ethical question. I mean, what does the world look like in 50, 100 years if we're able to do that? We're living in the shortcut era. Serena Williams. She did a GLP one commercial. The average woman looks at that and says, if she couldn't do it naturally, why should I try to do it naturally with exercise? Doing intermittent fasting or counting calories does require effort, whereas taking a pill does not. The pill does it for you. Exercise is the key, and not just any type of exercise. You have to get your heart rate up.

You have to move faster. Being sedentary is a disease, and when you start thinking about it as a disease. At the end of the day, I'm excited about healthier living. I'm excited about, you know, yeah. So it's not often I do an interview, and I take six pages of notes while the guest is speaking, but that's what happened today with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Fascinating. We talked about chemotherapy, the effects of it.

We talked about GLP once. She reacted to what Oprah Winfrey said a few weeks. weeks ago that being fat is a gene that she has. It's not her fault. And her reaction to it was very detailed, very thorough. We talk about diet, exercise, what causes 13 different types of cancer that you have control over, which when you're not going through it, you don't think about it, but if you can prevent it, you may as well.

Talk to a lot of different things. What's healthier for you? Being married with kids, being married or staying single. Simply, what is healthier for you to do? So the tie between being a bilingual and a... and reducing Alzheimer's, why would be in bilingual, lower Alzheimer's, some of the effects of your gut has with inflammation? Just a very fascinating conversation.

It's going to feel like a five, ten minute conversation when you listen to it, because by the time you're done to listen to Dr. Rhonda Patrick, you're going to be making a few different lifestyle changes that is going to positively impact you probably the same way it's doing it with me. So having said that, enjoy this interview with Dr. Ronda Patrick. I feel I'm supposed like it tastes sweetly I know this life man for me

Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signs, right here. You are a one of one? My son's dry, I don't think I've ever said this before. You can be pushed out of California.

Maybe that's something we'll talk about. Okay, so I got a couple of goals today. I'm 47 years old. I want to feel 30 by the 10. time I'm done talking to you. Specifically, what things I can do to feel 30. Number two is I have a four-year-old daughter who loves candy, and I have my 84-year-old dad, 83-year-old dad that lives with us, that is our dealer, him and our nanny, Malva. And so maybe we'll talk about that as well, candy, kids, cereal, I know we talked about cereal a minute ago. But for the people that don't know

you, I've seen you, you've been on Rogan 10-plus times. You've been all over the place. We've and consuming you for many years. My wife, the family, we watch your content with the things you've talked about, creetin, you know, a bunch of different things that you discuss. But if the audience doesn't know if you don't mind taking a minute to introduce yourself, that'd be great. Well, first of all, thank you, Patrick, for inviting me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here.

For those people who are wondering who I am, my name is Rhonda Patrick. I have a PhD in biomedical science. And classically, you know, I trained as a lab scientist doing research in the field of aging, cancer, metabolism, nutrition. So I've really got a broad range of different types of research I've done over the years. But my true passion is public health and trying to educate people using science and evidence-based science in terms of like what they can do with their lifestyle, their diet to really, as you said, improve the way you age.

So, you know, there's our chronological age and number. You're 47. I'm also 47. But what's different here is that even though we have this chronological age number, depending on how we live our life, the cells in our body have a biological age. And that biological age can be younger if you're leading a really healthy lifestyle or they can be older, accelerated if you don't lead a healthy lifestyle. So if you're overweight and you smoke, you drink, things like that. So you really want to have a younger biological age relative to your chronological age. So there are a few things that we can talk about that really do help people get there.

But I will say that, so you ask me who I am. So I love public health. And I decided to start a podcast about 10 years ago. So I have a podcast called Found My Fitness where I interviewed guests that are MDs, PhDs, all about, you know, how what kind of research you are doing and how it's basically showing how people can live a healthier life by doing a variety of different lifestyle changes and dietary changes to improve the way they age. I love it because I left science. You know, I left science.

I left doing research in the lab. And the thing that I missed most were the conversations I would have with other scientists because you learn so much. It's so intellectually stimulating much more than reading a scientific publication. I, in fact, that's one of the reasons why I started the podcast is because it was like, well, I learned so much from, you know, these little conversations I have, you know, in the coffee room or at my cubicle or in, you know, some professor's office. and it's like, why not record these conversations for the public so that they can learn. And it's really been great ever since. I love it. By the way, for people that are not in it, I think the movement of, you know, the health

podcasts that are, there's a lot of them. But there's good 5, 10 of them that you'll consistently keep hearing about that they're fair, you being one of them that are being interviewed. But it's good for the average person. Instead of going to the doctor, sometimes you're driving, listen to a two, three-hour podcast. You know what, let me change my lifestyle and this and that. I got a question for you I wanted to open up with. This just came to my mind.

It wasn't on the plan. The day Chad GBT came out was revolutionary to everything. Everybody looked at, we used to Google. Then, you know, I think it was first week of Chad GBT. Hey, do me a favor and create a song in Tupac's voice, but the way that the president speaks. And then you saw that one clip came out. Wait a minute.

That's amazing. Chad GBT, I want you to take this research and then all this data started coming out. And like this, things have changed. Two, three years, however long it's been. How quickly do you think we're going to have new advancement, the next five, ten, twenty years, that will be just as shocking as Open AI?

I'm super excited about how, you know, these language models, these basically like LLMs, and how AI is going to help really advance science, and particularly science in the field of aging, you know, because at the end of the day, you can do everything in your capacity with your diet and your lifestyle to really give yourself that, you know, edge in terms of like aging better and living longer. But at the end of the day, you do have a certain genetic potential. Like you could eat, you know, healthy and exercise and still not live to be 120, right?

There is a genetic component to living to be a hundred. Eat healthy and exercise and still not live to 100. Living to 100, believe it or not, is largely genetic. But it doesn't mean that, you know, diet and life said don't matter. They matter a great deal. It's a matter of, you know, basically your quality of life and not having Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease and type of diabetes and things like that later in life, really degrading the quality of your life and perhaps giving you an extra five years, right?

But you're not going to live 25, 30 years more by just being healthy, right? So this is where gene engineering comes in. And that's where I think the AI also comes in because it's really going to, I think, exponentially move that field forward. Whereas it's been kind of like, you know, it's been progressing but at a pretty slow rate. What do you think we'll see? Give me three things you'll say. These are three crazy wild things we may see. Yeah.

So there's this, you've heard of stem cells, right? Of course. And have you heard of, do you know who Shinya Yamanaka is, the Japanese scientist? He won the Nobel Prize in 2006 for basically discovering. that you could take any cell from a person, an 80-year-old person, an old cell, you know, we're constantly getting, skin cells are falling off our body constantly. You can take some of those old skin cells from an 80-year-old woman, for example, and you could put four different, what are called transcription factors. It's basically just, you know, a gene that basically is a master

regulator of many, many different genes. So it activates genes or it, you know, silences them, so they're not active. And you could put four of them on this skin cell, okay, and you could revert that skin cell into what's called a pluripotent stem cell. So that would be a cell that could become pretty much any type of cell in the body. And so this is induced pluripotent stem cells. And this is what Dr. Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for because it's really the ultimate reversal of aging. If you take an old cell and turn it into a stem cell that can become any type of cell or neuron and eye cell, you know, a heart cell, right? But so this is where it gets really exciting. want to basically you don't want if you want to reverse aging you don't want the cell to lose

its identity right you want to take a cell and reverse its aging but keep it that same cell right so i just told you the skin cell becomes a stem cell and then it can become any type of cell so now we have some new data this is all animal data where you can basically take this old skin cell and just kind of pulse those four different you know those big genes those transcription factors on this skin cell and you can epigenetically wipe out so epigenetics is like those factors that are sitting on top of our DNA, like, you know, methyl groups and they're activating genes or deactivating them, you can wipe them out and make the cell young, but still keep its identity.

And this has been done in animals, so essentially reversing the aging. No one's been able to, I mean, there's a lot of hurdles to overcome in terms of like, how do we get this into humans? You know, the delivery system is kind of questionable because what they're doing in animals is giving it this virus. and it's like, well, the virus could potentially integrate into the genome and maybe be oncogenic. So there's a lot of things to overcome before it goes to humans. And I think that's where AI is going to come in and help us figure out how we can translate this data into humans.

And I don't know if that made sense to you, but it's kind of this futurism type of stuff, but it's very exciting. It is. But I guess what I want to go more to is I watch a movie yesterday, Saturday, called Mercy, just came out with Chris Pratt. And it's like, it's one of these movies. What was that movie back in the days where it could predict somebody committing a future crime minority report? And Chris Pratt, who's a cop, comes in, and this software, this judge is AI.

Her name is Mercy. And he comes in, and all of a sudden, he wakes up, he does know what's going on, and Mercy says, you just killed your wife, and you stabbed your wife X, Y, Z times. Like, wait, what? I would never do this. And the AI convinces him that he did. And then eventually you have 90 minutes to make the argument that you didn't do this.

So pull up this file and put up that file and pull up, you become the lawyer for yourself. Very interesting, futuristic. And the way it ended, the story, I'm not going to tell you what it ended, but the line that he says, he says, here's what we learn, that both humans and AI can make mistakes. But when you watch it, it was kind of like, man, this is very realistic. We can get here very soon. for the average individual, if you say, okay, what are somethings people want to do? We want to live a healthy life, enjoy it, live long, pain free, right?

Enjoy ourselves to the point where, you know, I can still move my body in my 90s, in my 80s, maybe make it to 100s. What massive, resounding, you know, innovation could happen that'll shock everybody. Is there anything? Because we've heard about stem cells, right? We've heard about stem cells. I went to Beverly Hills. One of our clients invited me. I got 80 million stem cells in my back.

They said, this is going to fix your lower back problem. Nothing happened. Is there anything that you think could happen that's revolutionary? Well, I think that stem cells could be part of that, I would say, equation. So we can have, you know, stem cells then that are tuning up every organ in our body, right? And not just for regeneration or recovery. But also we can grow organs. Like, that's a new thing where people, scientists are now,

growing like even 3D printing human organs. And so it's like, oh, your heart's giving out. We're going to grow a new organ. It's from your own cells. So you're not going to have that rejection, you know, that rejection type of phenotype that happens. So this organ regrowing thing is really cool where you're basically going to get a tuna. Oh, I need a new liver.

You know, it's not working at the end of the day. I need to inject some neural stem cells in my brain because I'm losing, you know, my brain's atrophying. I'm losing cells in my brain. So I do think that's all on the horizon. Can that be measurable? Like can it be done in a way where I instantly can see results? Like let you say, you know, systems attached to my brain and it says, okay, what we just did,

it took you from this number to this number. Look where are you at now just by doing this test. Instead of it could work 52% of the time it works, like will there be things that I know for a fact will work? Well, if you're looking at, for example, brain mass, yes. I mean, if you see that you're injecting stem cells and now you're growing new neurons in the hippocampus, part of your brain, which is involved with learning and memory, then that would be something that you can measure. By the way, exercise can regrow brain cells and your hippocampus as well. So that's one of the things that we do have control over right now. Yeah.

We can talk about that. And then gene therapy. So, like, we do know there are a variety of what are called longevity genes. Like, these are genes that are found in people that live to be 100. so these are centenarians, or semi-super centenarians, so these are people that live to be 105, or the super-sentenarians, so these are people that live to be 110 and older. There's a common denominator of really highly active genes that are found in these individuals, and these genes happen to be genes that are involved in basically the cellular stress response,

which is essentially when you stress your body, your body adapts and responds and goes, there's stress going on. I need to respond to this so that I can stay alive. And it does things like increases antioxidant genes or anti-inflammatory genes or genes involved in making stem cells. All kinds of these like stress response genes are really highly active in people that actually do live to be 100 plus. And so gene therapy can then deliver those genes to the right organs in humans. And then again, you'll be able to, you know, now deal with. the stresses of aging better. And I think that's another thing on the horizon. So for example,

Dr. George Church, he's really the godfather of gene engineering, played a role in discovering the human genome. He's done studies in rodents and mice where they took, you know, three or four genes and made them, you know, soluble, injected them in mice and it extended their life expectancy. It reversed aging of their organs. He's now doing clinical studies in dogs. It's much easier to get FDA approval to do these sort of things in dogs not humans. But it's like, you know, once you get to the dogs, you have humans that are like, of course, I want my dog to live longer. And so they're going to, you know, start to approve those sort of therapies for dogs and then it's easier to then start them in humans. So I think, again, AI is going to play a role in getting some of

these gene therapies, you know, from bench side, from, you know, this preclinical data into humans. And all this is super exciting. Oh, I'm excited. And my optimism is the fact that you guys are going to figure things out. That's what I'm relying on. I think the speed of using AI and gene, what was that one company video that we saw? Was it CRISPR? Was it called CRISPR? Was it called CRISPR? Yes, CRISPR. So is that kind of what you're talking about, that's the direction we could be going? CRISPR is one of the direction. So gene therapy versus gene editing. So gene editing would be CRISPR. That's a technology that's used to change just like a single nucleotide of DNA, which can change the function of a gene. So for example, some people have, you know, these, these variations

in our genes that make us not have them work as good. Some people have diseases because of it, right? Cystic fibrosis being one, right? Muscular dystrophy, right? Things like that where you have just a little one nucleotide or two nucleotide change in a gene and it completely alters the function. So CRISPR can come in and actually change that gene. So you can basically take someone who has a disease and completely wipe that disease out and reverse it so they don't have it anymore. or perhaps you can alter the DNA of a gene and make it work better. Gene therapy is where you're basically just putting more of a gene there. So let's say we have these longevity genes, for example, FOXO 3 being one.

This is a major transcription factor. Again, it's regulating multiple genes involved in everything I just said, antioxidant production, anti-inflammatory production, you know, stem cell production, all these things, the response to all kinds of different stressors that happens throughout our life as we age, and you're basically able to handle that stress better. So what you do with gene therapy is just give your boost. You get a boost more of that gene that's going to make everything else work better, kind of like a genetic tune-up.

So there's a little bit of difference between gene therapy and gene editing, and I think they can both work, and it really depends. It'll be more of an individual sort of personalized type approach, because everyone, we have different genetic makeups, and we have different benefits, and there's things that we aren't as good at, depending on our genetic makeup, right? And so it's really kind of cool. It is.

It is. And I think I saw an article a few months ago where it said, you know, there's going to be a time we can go in and say, you know, I'd want my daughter to be 5-11. I want her to have blonde hair. I want her to have blue eyes. Will we get to a point that people would choose what their kids are going to look like? Because that's pretty scary if you can get to that point. Well, I mean, that's the ethical question because, yes, you could potentially do that with the gene editing technology and CRISPR and some of the, you know, some of the other types of technology that they're, you know, some of the other types of technology that they're. to come out and a little bit more precise,

that are part of CRISPR. I think that, you know, right now, I mean, think about IVF, right? You go and people, they're getting screening. You're screening for genetic diseases if the embryo has a disease, you don't do it. So at a certain point, like, where do you draw the line? Okay, well, I don't want my child to have cystic fibrosis.

Okay, that's acceptable, right? Because that's like, obviously. But that's the risk versus this is exactly what I want him to look like, right? Right. I mean, that's where it's like, well, what if you want to make, What if you want to make an embryo that is smarter, that is more resilient to disease?

You know, these things are probably going to be more acceptable in the community than than phenotypes, than looks, right? So it's like, it's hard. It's like this blurry line and where, what's, what's ethical, what's not, and how do you define that? And it's going to be hard. There's going to be all sorts of questions and, I would say, problems that are going to arise as this technology advances. And it is very exciting, right? I mean, you're talking about what if we could tune up humans where we're smarter, we're more disease resistant, we live longer.

I mean, who doesn't want that? What would you take? What would you do? You're in this world. Like, what would you want to see? Because for me, when I think about, you know, kids, what you would want it to look like, how smart you would want them to be, then it gets me to go think about, you know, the whole, I don't know if you saw the article came out last week about Chinese billionaires doing birth to tourism.

and dropping off surrogates with hundreds of girls and, hey, I want you to go to U.S., become a citizen, then come back in. Okay, so now let's take it even further. And then now we're making superhumans, 150 IQ, strong. They can jump 48 inches. And, I mean, what does the world look like in 50, 100 years if we're able to do that? Right. I mean, it's a really good question.

Not to mention the fact that, you know, if you start to screen for intelligence and, like, how do you define intelligent, right? because we have this like neurodivergence. You know, people are so different, and some people are very analytical. You have that engineering type of brain, and then you have the more conspiracy type and maybe a little more paranoid,

but those people also play a role in society. They can connect the dots real easy, and maybe sometimes they're making conclusions that might be not correct, but sometimes they find things that people that are really super, super analytical don't. And so it's a good question because, like, then you have to ask yourself, like,

well, am I screening for a certain personality type? And how is that going to change society? Right? I mean, because it's hard to draw that line. And I know we're getting into these crazy ethical questions. At the end of the day, I'm excited about healthier living. I'm excited about, you know, yeah, like intelligence. Again, how do you define intelligence?

Like, that's a whole other question. We do know some genes that are involved in intelligence. One actually is called Clotho. And that gene is also involved in living longer and protecting. against Alzheimer's disease. It's very interesting. Some people have different variations of that gene that makes it more active, and those individuals don't get Alzheimer's disease. They do have a higher IQ. They are smarter and they live longer. And so, you know, there is an initiative now for some researchers that are really trying to make a type of clotho that people can sort of inject and take and get to the

brain and help protect them from Alzheimer's disease, help, you know, make them live longer, perhaps be a little smarter and that's actually research that's going on right now so you know it's not like this stuff is like totally futurism stuff this is this is research that's happening now and I do think that with the help of AI it will advance it with that said you said something that I think is key and that is AI makes mistakes and I can't emphasize that enough and certainly with each model that has come out you know over over the past couple of years it's gotten better especially for talking about the science the field of science and research. But I will say this. It depends a lot on your prompt, what your input you're putting in, because what I've noticed about AI is it also likes to kind of appease you. And so if you're

biased it. Yeah, you bias it a certain way with the way you're asking a question, you might get a very different answer. And I've tested this. It also depends on the model that you're using. I think that the free models don't ask science or research questions. It's not going to be accurate. If you're wanting to actually get a science, really evidence-based, you know, answer, you have to have the paid version for one, and really a deep research. And that's something that's able to go out and look at the scientific literature. And that is something that I would trust much more than just using like a GPT 5.2 free, you know, version of it. So I'll say that. I'll leave it at that because you can definitely get wrong answers when it comes to asking a science-based or medicine-based

Yesterday my CTO came to me. He says, hey, look, they measure every month which language learning model is the most accurate. And right now, for the last month, it was showing me that Gemini is at the top at 38.5% accuracy versus a lot of other things. So even until today, it's still making mistakes. And they're openly saying, we don't know it all. We are making mistakes. But, you know, in regards to brain, right, the way we think, back in a day, so maybe even still today, we would say, oh, my God, He's got a photographic memory.

He just remember. How do you remember that? You know, how do you read a book and you retain so much of it, right? How impressive will that be in 10 years, 20 years, where we can all, you know, people choose to put a Wikipedia in here, all the facts that are in the world, the facts, like the day you were born, the day I was born, the day, you know, World War II or such and such and such person died or this happened? Once that's in there, what do you think will be impressive in two, 20, 30 years with human beings?

What would we look at and say, man, she's pretty impressive? He's impressive. What will impress us? I know. It's an interesting thought experiment because it might be something that is unexpected and surprising, like more just empathy or human qualities or arts or being able to make something really creative that you're not really going to be able to do with AI, right? I don't know.

Or like being able to sing a beautiful song. Like AI can make that music. You're talking about Tupac. And I mean, my husband and I make AI music for my son to help him. He's been learning Mandarin. And it's like amazing. Like the music that AI can make, it's almost frightening because you might go, wow, like, you know, what's going to happen to the music industry?

Yes. But I do think that at the end of the day, what's going to happen is as we get more, you know, advanced with AI. And as you mentioned, perhaps we do become smarter, maybe through gene engineering and all sorts of other techniques and advancements. I think it's going to go back to the human condition. And that's going to be more impressive. I think that's, I don't know, that's just a guess. What do you mean by human condition?

I mean, you know, the arts and empathy and just, you know, being creative and creating something that you're not going to be able to get with just facts. Right. Yeah, I guess in bodybuilding, they'll say, you know, this is the natural Mr. Olympia competition, right? They put nothing in their body. And this is open. You know, this guy is, you know, you can use anything and everything, and he's the Mr. Olympia champion.

I wonder if we're going to get to the, even today. I think we have an Olympic games today that they're talking about called the enhanced games or something. I don't know. Have you heard about the enhanced games? It's literally called enhanced games. and in this enhanced games, they encourage you to do PED,

everybody's on PED, and just let's find out what does it look like if we're freely able to use everything, right? So I wonder, I wonder if it's going to be like, you know, he naturally looks like that. That's natural beauty, you know. She's done no surgeries.

He's done no surgeries. He hasn't put the stuff in his brain to be interested in what he has to say. Or else podcasts are going to be what? Then are we going to watch AI podcasts? Is there going to be two personalities like Gemini's, Mary is doing a podcast with Open AIs Bobby, and they're debating politics. And we can program one to be a leftist, want to be a conservative, and go ahead and debate this issue and state the facts.

Will we be going there? Are we going to be like, man, I would much rather talk to listen to these guys because they're regular human beings making mistakes. And is it going to be attractive to be dumb? Is it going to be attractive to make, you know, dumb comments? I really wonder what's going to happen in 20, 30 years. Because it's going to be a commodity if you're smart. So what?

I can have the same thing you have. I just put a chip in my head. You're no longer competitive to me. So why go study? Like, you know, we would hear people say, I knew how to study for two days, memorize everything, go ace the test, and forgot all of it, right?

And that's what college is really all about. I really wonder what's going to happen and what will be turned, what will we be turned on to? Mistakes. I love it. We all make them. I think so as well.

I think so as well. Yesterday I'm talking to a guy. who's a very successful business guy. He's telling me he's got a $100 million EB on all this other stuff. And he said, hey, come my content is not doing better. How come my podcast is not doing better? And I watch him. I'm like, okay, he's a billionaire.

He's done this. He's done that. He's done this. So on everything, it looks good, bodybuilding, physique. I see you're too perfect. I think the audience likes them perfection. The audience likes to see flaws in people, passion, realness, vulnerability, sincerity.

I think, again, we don't know. I think in 20 years, as this advances, we're going to want to see human error. We're going to want to see that again. Just like today, you see a lot of companies rely on AI on customer service. Some companies are like, clients are like, I don't want to talk to a machine. I want to talk to a human being.

I want to talk to somebody with service. So anyways, we'll see what to happen with this. I'm just wondering sometimes where you're at with it. Yeah, I don't, I feel the same way when I get an email in, and it's so obvious when it's AI generated. I crave the real authentic email. It's not AI generated, right? Yeah. So Brian Johnson, have you heard about Brian Johnson who says he wants to live forever?

He says he's 47 years old. He looks good. He says he's got a body of an 18-year-old when he does his tests. Do you follow what he talks about, Brian Johnson? I don't know. Maybe you've not heard of him. I've heard of him. Okay.

He's R.A. I think he's a year older than us and his claims are his entire idea is anti-aging. I think he wants to live forever and he sets his body's an 18-year-old body. What do you say about that? I say that right now the tests that are done to measure biological age, and I did talk about this a little bit without going into detail, they're done on a population level. So it's a very biostatistical test that's done that really, really reliance. lies on large, large sample numbers. And so there's these tests that are done.

They're measuring epigenetic changes, and they can basically measure your biological age. But the standard of deviation is about four to five years. So when you have hundreds of thousands of different people coming into that sample size, it's a lot more accurate. You can actually do a large study and figure out what someone's biological age is, what different lifestyle factors can regulate that. When you go down to these consumer available tests at the individual level,

it's a lot of noise because, again, the standard of deviation is four to five years on average. And so the test isn't really that accurate on the individual level. So you could do that test and then do it again in two weeks and have five years difference, right? So my take home from that is you can claim all these things being biologically 18. I don't think that's accurate. I think that Brian Johnson's doing a lot of things right with his diet and lifestyle and he is improving the way he ages. It's a lot easier to reverse accelerated aging.

So in other words, if you were doing things bad in your diets, if you're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, if you're overweight, if you smoke, if you drink a lot, if you're sedentary and don't exercise, you're kind of accelerating the way you age. And it's a lot easier to slow that acceleration, which makes it look like reverse aging. But if you're already doing everything really that you can to live as healthy as you can, it's really hard to reverse that biological age by 20 years because you're already doing sort of everything, right? And that's where these new technologies come into play.

So I would say I don't believe that Brian Johnson's 18, you know. You don't believe he's 18. His biological age is aging. No, not at all. I do believe that he is healthier because he does a lot of things right. He exercises a lot, which is the number one thing you can do. He eats very clean. You know, he's dialed in a lot of really important metrics in terms of like aging healthy.

But I think it's a very sensational statement to say that I'm biologically 18, even though I'm 47. I don't think that's accurate at all. It's attractive to men as age, right? People here and they're like, wait a minute, I'd like to be 18 again. You know, what does it take for me to be 18 again? Is there anything men can do today to get their body to be that much younger? So I'll tell you about a study that was done from Dr. Ben Levine. He's probably one of the world leading experts in exercise physiology.

Ben Levine. Ben Levine, Dr. Ben Levine, he's out of UT Southwest in Dallas. He's got a big research lab there. And he did a study on middle-aged adults. So these are adults that are age 50 years old. They had no diagnosable diseases, so they didn't have type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. But they were sedentary, so they were not exercising. And I would argue that is a disease, being sedentary is a disease.

But what I'm saying is they didn't have any of these other classical diseases. And he took these individuals and asked a question, can I put them on a pretty regimented exercise program for two years and reverse the aging of their hearts? Now, your heart aging does, you can accelerate it if you are smoking, if you are sedentary, if you eat a lot of added sugar, all these things accelerate the aging of your heart. So as we age, our hearts get stiffer and our hearts shrink. And that really predisposes us to cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in United States, as well as many other developed, you know, countries. So he took these individuals and put them in two groups. One group was going to get the exercise treatment and the other group was a sham control,

sort of a placebo and they were doing sort of stretching yoga-ish type of exercises, enough to make them think they were getting the intervention, right? So the individuals that got the treatment, the exercise treatment, I mean, this is a progressive program. It's two years long. You can't just take someone who's never really exercised and just immediately make them start doing five hours a week of exercise, right? It's too much. So it was a progressive loading, these individuals over the course of six months, sort of work their way up to actually doing five hours of exercise a week. A large amount of that exercise

was cardiovascular exercise where they were jogging, they were on a stationary cycle, getting their heart rate up to the point where they could have a conversation, but it was very, very breathy. And then they also incorporated what's called high intensity interval training. Have you heard of this? This is where you're getting, you know, you're doing, you're pushing yourself a little bit harder where you can't have that breathy conversation because you're working so hard, you're getting your heart rate up to 80% max heart rate or more, and then you recover for a period of time, and then you do it again.

And there's a lot of different types of protocols out there. They were doing one called the Norwegian 4x4 protocol. This is where you are for four minutes going as hard as you can and maintaining that effort for four minutes. So you're not going all out. It's a four-minute interval. So you're going hard, but you're pacing yourself. It's still a hit workout.

It's a hit workout. And then you have a three-minute recovery where you're going very light. you're really wanting your heart rate to come down. And then you do that again four times. So it's four by four. And that workout they were doing twice a week, then went down to once a week. Okay.

So after two years of this five hours a week, and I would say they also did some resistance training, they added some of that in there as well. The aging of their hearts was reversed by about 20 years, 20 years. So their hearts, these were 50-year-olds, 52 at the end of the trial, their hearts looked like a 32-year-old in terms of the structure. From 52 to 30-3.

Yes. And this is the structure. So I'm talking about the hearts grew. Remember I told you it shrinks with age. They grew. And the hearts became more flexible, right? You said something. Every year at certain point, your organs, what did you say, decreased by percent to 2 percent?

Or was that the heart you were talking about? So that's the brain. We can talk about that because exercise also affects that. But the heart, you know, it does get stiffer and it shrinks over time. and depending on how much you exercise, the percentage can change. And one of the biggest reasons for the stiffening of the heart is actually taking in a lot of refined, added sugar. So sugar, if it's not immediately taken up into your muscles,

which is what exercise does, it really opens the gates and allows glucose to come into your muscles. If you're not exercising, even after you make insulin, and of course you're going to take some into adipose tissue, some into muscle, you're going to have a lot of glucose around in your vascular system. And what happens is there's a reaction that happens on the molecular level where the glucose interacts with collagen that lines the myocardium and the pericardium

around your heart, and that collagen becomes stiffer when it reacts with glucose. And that collagen is there forever. This is something that's around forever. And so that's why exercise is so, so important for increasing the flexibility of your heart because it's getting that glucose out of your vascular system. out of reacting with the collagen surrounding not only your blood vessels that causes hypertension, but your heart, right? And so I just think that's the most compelling and just really encouraging study for individuals that are middle age and really have never exercised,

that they can actually reverse the aging of their, aging of their heart by 20 years. And so, and this is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about doing the DNA tests, the epigenetic test that has all the statistical noise. I'm talking about actual structural changes in the heart, right? So that, to me, would be the best thing that you can do. And I said five hours a week. Now, for someone that doesn't exercise at all, that probably sounds like crazy amounts of exercise. And it is. I mean, I do about six hours a week of exercise. But, you know. Cardio or no? Cardio and resistance training. I do both. I do both. But I think that you, what's really important here is that people need to think about exercise as part of their personal hygiene.

Something you have to, like, can you imagine, do you wake up every morning and brush your teeth? Do you brush your teeth before you go to bed? Why? It's a routine now for me. It's a routine. Right. And you do it because you don't want cavities, right? I don't want cavities, breath, cavities.

You don't want to go to the dentist, a bunch of different thing. Right. It's part of your personal hygiene. Sure. Exercise should be thought of as in the same way, where it's like I exercise because I don't want to get cardiovascular disease because I want to reverse brain aging and we can talk about studies showing that as well. It's something that you really need to think about as part of your personal hygiene. And as you start to develop a routine, guess what? It is a routine. You just start to do it.

It's not, there's no question about it. It's not an add-on. It's not if I have time. You're right. But then if you think about today's era we're living in, somebody will listen to this. Okay. And they'll say, give me a break. I know I need to exercise. Tell me what the shortcut because we're living in the shortcut era. If you think about Serena Williams, I think she did a GLP1 commercial for OZMPIC. It wasn't OZMPIC. It's a different company she did, even for Super Bowl.

You see her when she played tennis. You see what she looks like today. The average woman looks at that and says, if she couldn't do it naturally, why should I try to do it naturally with exercise? Oprah Winfrey, don't know if you saw this clip on the view. Rob, can you pull this clip up on the view of what she said? she's on the view and she says it took me this many years to realize that being fat is not my fault.

It's my genetics or it's my DNA. And by the way, you may agree with her. Go ahead and play this clip, Rob. Go forward. All these years, I thought I was overeating. I was standing there with all the food noise, what I ate, what I should eat, how many calories was that? How long was it going to take? I thought that that was because of me and my fault.

Now I understand that if you carry the. obesity gene. If that is what you have, that is what makes you overeat. You don't overeat and become obese. Obesity causes you to overeat. Obesity causes you to have all of that food noise. And what the GLP-1s have done for me, and I know a number of other people, is to quiet that noise. Do you agree with her? No. Okay, tell me why. Okay. So this is going to be a very long-winded answer. Please. Because there's a lot of components there to unpack.

Because the average person watches this. She's 72, 72 years old looking like that. They're going to say, why wouldn't I do it? Right. So there's a lot of things to unpack here. Okay, first of all, there's no just obesity gene. Okay, there are genes that are associated with predisposing someone to gaining fat easier and affecting satiation and things like that easier, right?

But it's not like there's just one obesity gene that makes you obese. With that said, okay, what she's talking about here with, it wasn't my fault. You have to realize that we have studies now where you can take there's healthy men. Okay. They're not overweight. They're not obese. And you can put them on a high caloric ultra-process food diet for five days. And what I mean by that is they're consuming 1,200 to 1,500.

more calories per day, predominantly from processed foods, the cereal you were talking about. This is the food that's high in added sugar and saturated fat. And what happens is it causes their brain to become insulin resistant. Yes, you can cause your brain also to become insulin resistant. We usually think about, you know, our cells and our body becoming insulin resistant. What happens when your brain becomes insulin resistant is the following. For one, insulin in the brain plays a very important role. And that role is to basically tell the body how to store fat and how to use energy and whether or not you're satiated after eating a meal. And what happens is when you're insulin resistant in the brain, it all gets messed up. And so your body starts to store fat,

not as what's called subcutaneous fat, that kind of fat that you can pinch and see. It's visceral fat. This is the belly fat. This is the fat that's deeply surrounding your organs. This is the very dangerous type of fat. Because this fat is metabolically active. It is generating inflammation. It is constantly being metabolized in what's called free fatty acids, which then cause insulin resistance, right?

And so what happens is that you can, these individuals, these healthy young men, all of a sudden, even though they didn't really gain much weight on the scale, they gained visceral fat and they were no longer, you know, satiated. So what happens is when you become insulin resistant, both in the brain and in the body. So visceral fat gaining, they were gaining fat around their liver. I mean, they were gaining fat, this visceral fat that is really, really dangerous. That visceral fat, what happens is every time you eat, you know, a meal that's got a lot of glucose, for example, refined ultra-processed meal, your body makes insulin, but your insulin resistant. So you're not able to respond to that insulin.

And so what happens is your body overcompensates and produces your pancreas causes more insulin to be released as an overcompensation to help your body bring that glucose into your muscle or into your adipose tissue. And then what happens is your blood sugar crashes. And so that tells the brain, oh, I'm in a crisis. I need energy right now. And you crave these high energy, you know, high calorically dense foods. And it's a vicious cycle where you start to overeat more. you can you can totally reset that system by decreasing your calorie intake and there's a variety of ways of doing that and also by including high intensity interval training any type of aerobic

exercise is good it causes you to lose visceral fat even if you don't shed the pounds on the scale the losing of the visceral fat is the key because that's the whole cycle of basically disrupting your satiety hormones how you feel you know satiated after you eat or like hungry you know, all of a sudden you're hungry, even though you just ate a meal, right? That's all part of insulin resistance and visceral fat. And so if you reduce your calorie intake, and there's ways you can do that, counting calories is one. A lot of people like intermittent fasting. Intermitt fasting is something that I do.

And it's really, you know, I'm middle age, right? I told you I'm 47. And I've realized that everything that I do, even though I've been doing it for years, all of a sudden, as your hormones start to change, you know, you do start to kind of get more. visceral fat and that's something that's known to happen with women as they're aging, right? I had to cut calories. That was the main thing I had to do even though I was doing high-intensity exercise, all that stuff. Calorie cutting is the number one way that you can actually lose visceral fat and ultimately lose weight. And essentially the GLP1, you know, receptor agonist,

these drugs that are Ozambic and all the other next generation ones are essentially doing that. you're causing yourself to be satiated, right? So it's essentially doing what intermittent fasting is doing, but it's also doing other things. It's slowing gastric emptying, right? So you're basically the food's sitting around and your intestines longer, which... It sits there longer.

Yes. It's not, it's not, it doesn't accelerate the immune system. So the GLP1 receptor agonist, like of Zembek, so, you know, semi-glutide, they're slowing what's called gastric emptying, so the food takes long, it stays in your intestines longer, which is part of why you're satiated. There's a lot of, of course, side effects. But intermittent fasting, basically you can also lose weight and also reset your hormones. You can lose visceral fat.

You can, when I say reset your hormones, I mean so that you're satiated after a meal, so that you're not feeling hungry immediately after you ate because the visceral fat does start to lose. That's the first thing that's lost. In fact, many studies have shown that. if you calorie restrict, that's the first thing that goes. And it really does help reset the system. When people first start an intermittent fasting protocol, if they've never done it, it can be challenging because they're not what's called metabolically flexible.

So that means that essentially your body is really capable of using fatty acids as energy to make ketone bodies. This is something that's a very sort of clean sorts of energy that's used. It's great for the brain. but if you're never if you've never really fasted if you're constantly grazing you're eating and you don't exercise because exercise also can make you metabolically flexible then your body isn't used to it and it's a little bit of an activation energy you have to kind of push past it it's a little bit more challenging but your body adapts and so after a couple of weeks guess what like if you're if you're in a minute fasting and there's a lot of ways to do that so you know let's say you skip a meal then you're not you're not like i haven't eaten anything today you know yet And I usually eat my first meal around noon. Do you do this every day, seven days or week? Even Sundays.

I do mostly every day a week, yeah. But I'm not hungry until noon because your body adapts. And ketone bodies, which are what are made when you're basically metabolizing fatty acids for fuel rather than glucose, is those ketones like beta-hydroxybutyrate, they're satiating. You're satiated. And so it takes a person, we can store gluten. in our liver as glycogen. And you have to be fasted for anywhere between 12 to 36 hours for your liver to deplete

all their glycogen levels. And that all depends on... 12 to 36. It all depends on your diet. If you're eating a lot of carbs, refined carbs, it's going to be more like 36 hours. If you're eating more of a whole foods type of diets, like protein, lean meats, you know, poultry, fish, vegetables, that's, glycogen is going to be depleted after like 12 hours. And then, you know, anything beyond that.

that you're going to be in what's called like ketosis. So for me, I usually stop eating dinner 6 p.m. usually sometimes, you know, social obligations push that a little bit later. And I don't eat my first meal until around noon. So for me, I'm fasting for about, you know, 18 hours, right? Now there's the 16-8 where you basically stop eating your meal around 8 p.m. And don't eat your first meal until noon. Or no, I mean, 8 p.m. Or you could start if you stop at 6 p.m. It depends, right?

So like whatever works for you. Some people like they have to wake up in the morning and eat breakfast. Like I said, there is an adjustment period. For me, it works really well. Other people like to do, you know, they're going to skip lunch or something. And that's a way of reducing your calorie intake. And at the end of the day, calorie intake is what, causes weight loss. And that is something, again, that you can, you're not going to lose

the weight as rapid as you would on a GLP1 because it really causes you to not get. So why would she, 72 years old, access to all the money in the world, you know, one of the most famous people in the world, she can call any doctor she wants, who convinced her that she was right about the statement that she made? She knows millions of people are going to see it. Yeah. Well, I think for one, it's easier to take. a pill to help you lose weight. And that's something that people like her know. How am I going to affect the masses? You know, because not everyone's going to do intermittent fasting, right? Exercise, you can exercise your way out of obesity. You have to change your diet because

imagine how much, do you know how hard it is to burn, you know, 1,500 calories by exercise, right? It's incredibly hard. You exercise because of the anti-aging effects. Like there's a lot of different things happening with exercise that are good for the heart. the brain. But to lose weight, you have to stop eating. You have to, you have to reduce your calorie intake. And that does require effort. And so I think that it's easier to say, oh, it's not my fault. There's these genes. And yeah, genes can make it where it is harder for a person who has certain variations in the gene to lose as much weight as someone who doesn't. But that doesn't make it impossible. It just means you have to put in more effort. And, you know, doing intermittent fasting or

or counting calories does require effort on your part, whereas taking a pill does not. The pill does it for you, right? And so, you know, it all comes down to risk versus benefit, right? Like if you have someone who's obese, obesity itself accelerates the aging process. It increases the risk of 13 different types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease. If you are obese, you are on a bad trajectory. And anything that's going to help you lose that weight is going to be beneficial for both. Including GLP1?

Including GLP1? Really? Yes. So you're more for, so if I'm 320 pounds, 5-8, okay? And if I exercise and keep a decent diet, it'll take me a while to get to 180 where I need to be, let's just say, right? But if I get on GLP1 and if I can get there faster in three months and six months, whatever the timeline may be, you're supportive for me doing GLP 1. No, no, no, no, absolutely not. That's not what I'm saying at all.

I think it's better if you can do it yourself. I think that you're going to avoid any adverse side effects. When you lose a lot of weight really rapidly, you can increase the risk of gallbladder stones. GLP1 receptor agonists are associated with theoretically an increased risk of thyroid cancer. All that's preclinical data, though, so there's not really human studies showing that. But it's still a thing to think about, right? If it's causing it in animals, like we just may not have that longitudinal longitudinal data yet. I don't know. There are pancreatitis risk. I mean, there are risks associated with it, right? With losing weight. Too much weight loss too fast. Now, if you can, if you're someone that's willing to calorie restrict either through intermittent fasting, which is a great tool or by counting calories. And, you know, at that point, you know, people on average can lose. If you're doing a really strict calorie restriction, like 800, you know, or fewer calories per day, people lose on average between like two to five pounds.

per, is it, per week. So, you know, you really could get- 800. Yeah. Two to five a week. So if I'm 320, 800. If I'm 320, what do you think my intake is? It depends.

I mean, probably, I mean, you just, you have to cut out a lot of calories, right? So that's why people turn to these, these, that's it. Yes. So the control, the discipline to control and say, I'm not going to eat it versus, you know what, give it to me, I'm going to take the shot, and I'm going to go the faster way, instead of doing it the old-fashioned exercise way, the good diet way. Yeah, I don't know. By the way, you also speak a lot about creatine.

I remember back in the days when I was 14 years old, 15 years old, we're all bodybuilding, lifting weights, and EAS came up with, you know, creatine. Everybody was using creatine back in the days. And then it kind of went away for 15 years. It looks like creatin is making a comeback. Tell me why you're so pro-creatin. Well, I started taking creatine. I got really serious about resistance training a couple of years ago after having a lot of experts on my podcast that really was compelling to me that muscle mass is very important to maintain as you age, right?

And being someone that was so cardio focused, it was like, okay, I got to start really focusing also on resistance training. And so creatine came. Were you an athlete back in a day? Like, did you compete? I did. I was like interesting athlete. So I was a competitive jump roper and ice skater. I know not like the most common thing.

Jump roper. Yeah, I was, I started a jump rope team with my best friend when I was in second grade. And we're part of- Second grade? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So San Diego Sandskippers was the name of the jump rope team. And it was part of the international rope skipping organization at the time. They have a different name now.

But essentially we, there's teams that were all around, not only just the U.S., but it was global. It still is. And we would jump rope and we would compete. So we would go. and compete every year. There was a camp in Boulder, Colorado, everyone would come from around the world,

and we would compete. Wow. Yeah. And listen, it's hard exercise. It's real cardio. Shoulders, it's arms, it's forearms. It's a full body exercise. And weight bearing, so you're getting the bone density benefits,

which, thank goodness. So I was a competitive jump roper from the age of about 8 to 16, and that was a big part of my life. And not only just a competitive jump roper, but also like I would, a very leadership role because I would travel around and start teams at different schools. So I was going to schools, doing demonstrations with my team and then starting teams for them. And so you get this very leadership role. You get to.

Early on. You get to confidence building early on. So it was really great experience. This is in San Diego, in California. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The team was right.

Anyways, that was a complete, I wasn't taking creativity then. But fast forward, you know, a couple of years ago, I was, you know, probably about 45, 44 when I really started getting serious. about resistance training, and creatine came into that equation for me. And why is that? Well, when you take supplemental creatine in the form of creatine monohydrate, it's the most well-studied form, creatine then in the body, it gets converted into creatine phosphate, and it's basically stored that way in your muscles, for example, and it's the major source of energy.

So you need creatine phosphate, the phosphate is used to make energy. And so what happens is that when you take in creatine and you're just, you're just, you're, doing training, like anything that's resistance training, any kind of explosive training, any kind of high-intrifice, you know, high-intensity interval training, even aerobic exercise, the creatine allows you to make energy faster. And so it basically affects your training volume. You're able to do one to two more reps per set because you're recovering faster. You're making energy faster.

And so it plays a role in that, you know, exercise volume. And that's why if you look at many, many different studies of people doing, you know, you know, resistance training versus resistance training with creatine, they'll gain more muscle mass, or lean body mass, including muscle. They'll gain strength benefits if they're also adding creatine, not because creatine itself is anabolic. It's not. It's because you're able to do more work, right?

So it's allowing you to do more work, therefore you're getting the muscle adaptations, right? So I became very interested in creatine because of that. And it was very clear to me, after looking at the scientific literature, after talking to experts like Dr. Karen Dandau, he's out of the University of Regina. He does a lot of creatine research. That if you do five grams a day, that's about what it takes to saturate your muscle tissue. It takes about three weeks to get there where five grams, okay, muscles are ready. And so that was that I was doing initially.

And then I started really getting deeper into the creatine research. And I was like, wow, from the neck up is where it's really interesting. the effects on the brain. So. Cretin? Yes. Yes. So we make creatine. We can make it from our liver.

Stake and. Yeah. So we can make it without any steak, without any meat. Our liver can make it one to three grams. And our brain can make it again. And then we can have a dietary source of it. And as you mentioned, the major dietary source is meat. Muscle meat being, of course, the highest because it's stored in muscle, right?

Poultry fish also has higher amounts of creatine. So as you can imagine, vegetarians and vegans really. in trouble if they're not supplementing because they're only relying what their body can produce. With that said, you know, studies started coming out looking at the effects of creatine on the brain. And it's really, to me, very exciting. This area of research is new. I think it's the new, new part of creatine research that's kind of exploding now. A lot of creatine researchers were previously only looking at muscle. Now they're also looking at the brain. So the brain, as I mentioned, also makes its own creatine.

But obviously, the brain's using a lot of energy as well. And so creatine being stored as creatine phosphate is a great source of energy. The problem is if you're only taking in five grams a day, your muscles are consuming all of it. It's saturating them. And so research out of Germany has shown that if you take 10 grams a day, you can actually increase the creatine levels in certain brain regions by twofold. Okay, that was the first study that, to me, that was convinced. Interesting.

10 grams a day, right? Because you have to go above that five to get spill over to the brain. Again, these are preliminary studies, a lot more to do, but I'm just telling you, you know, why I now. You're going to get everybody using cretan now. And now I take, this is why I take 10 grams a day. You take 10 a day. So, so creatine, let me just tell you. So creatine for the brain, now the question is, well, if it's getting into the brain, what is it doing there?

And so there are studies showing that really creatine in the brain shines under a stressful condition. Okay. So that could be psychological stress. That could be sleep deprivation. That could be brain aging, neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's disease. Anything that's stressing the brain, that's where creatine shines because stress is an energy consumer. It is taking energy away from normal brain function. And so when you give yourself more energy, you know, in the form of creatine, you're now allowing that energy to go to cognition, right? So there have studies showing, for example, sleep deprivation being the classic way to stress your brain that if you take take someone who's healthy and you sleep deprived them for 21 hours, but you give them 20 to 25 grams of creatine, their cognitive function is not only not compromised like it would be if you didn't sleep for 21 hours and then did a battery of brain test, right? It was better than their baseline cognitive function. So it improved their cognitive function even more than their baseline, which is before they were sleep deprived. There's also studies showing that Alzheimer's disease, people with, you know, mild cognitive decline early Alzheimer's disease, if they're given 10 or 20

grams of creatine, it can improve cognitive function as well. So, do you drink it just with water? Do you mix it with grape juice? I don't know if you've seen the studies. It's better if it's with grape juice. What do you mix it with? I'm not a big fan of juice because it's really high in sugar without the fiber matrix. So fiber matrix, like if it was a fruit, slows the glucose response. Juice, no bueno. I would say don't mix it with juice. I actually. I actually, put my creatine in, first of all, I do 10 grams a day, and I usually split it up between five grams and five grams. And I usually do the first one in, like, my cup of coffee. Don't be worried about coffee negating the effects. I talk to the expert, Dr. Daron Kando.

Unless you're consuming massive, massive amounts of caffeine, like if you were doing, like, caffeine pills or something, then maybe I would be worried, but not with a normal, like. So you mix it with coffee? I mix it with coffee and in tea. I do it all in the morning. you know, that's when I want my brain to function optimally. So today, for example, I came from the West Coast and now on the East Coast. So I am completely in a different time zone, three hours behind. I had to wake up three hours earlier than normal.

My brain wasn't working as, you know, it was sleep deprivation. So I actually took 20 grams this morning. And I do that when I travel, when I'm sleep deprived, I up my usual 10 grams to 20 grams a day because I have noticed it's not like a stimulant, like caffeine, but I, and better cognitively if I have that 20 grams after being sleep deprived. And, you know, again, maybe it's placebo because I know about the studies, but you know what, placebo works, so I don't care. And there's not a real downside.

That's funny. That's where I'm out with creatine. I get my mom to take it. I think, you know, aging itself is a stress on the brain. And like I said, it's the same thing as training. Creatine, if you're not training, isn't going to make you gain muscle mass or strength. It carries water weight sometimes. It can sometimes cause you to carry water weight.

Like I said, Creighton was something that EAS brought to the market in 1992. Bill Phillips, I don't know if you're familiar with this guy named Bill Phillips or not. You ever heard of Muscle Media 2000? This guy had like the number one magazine and bodybuilding that every bodybuilder would read because they had Muscle magazine, they had Flex, which was all the pictures and you would see the people. muscle media was the science. So anybody that wanted the science of bodybuilding, this was the guy. He wrote a book called Body for Life.

Yeah, that guy right there. He was one of the first guys that openly came out and talked about, you know, I do steroids. This is what I use. And he went through the whole thing. And creatine monohydrate was introduced. And then they brought out vanadol sulfate. And then he brought out HMB. HMB was massive in the early 90s.

mid-90s, but it's interesting to see Creighton making a comeback. Makes me want to think about getting back on Creighton. I haven't been on Creighton for 20-plus years. Oh, really? Do you exercise? I do, yes, I do. 20-plus years. Oh, you should be doing 10 grams a day.

Yeah, well. Try it out and let me know. I'm going to. For one, your training volume and recovery, you should notice an effect there where it's like you'll, like I said, one to two more reps per set. Recovery is easier, but I'm really interested in the brimmy. brain. Because.

In the brain on what it does? I'll tell you for me. And again, I am totally like could be placebo. If I don't get my 10 grams in the day, I will have an afternoon slump. If I get my 10 grams, I am good. I am good. This is what makes you likable. You said even if it's placebo.

Because your space, the health space is filled with a lot of overly confident people that speak in, this is it, guaranteed, you know, and it makes the audience. but what makes you attractive is you'll say test it for yourself see what happens we'll see let's look at the both research when we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort function and luxury we had the choice to make it fast we had the choice to make it cheap we chose neither instead we chose Tuscaneer we chose true Italian craftsmanship each pair touched by 50 skilled hands we chose patience spending two years perfecting every detail

And we chose the finest quality at every step, introducing the Future Looks Bright Collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary. Rather, intentional, luxurious, timeless. By the way, do you follow a doctor, is it Dr. Patrick Sunshiong? Do you follow him? No.

Okay, so Dr. Patrick Sunshiong, he bought the L.A. Times, I don't know how many years ago, many, many years. ago, that's him right there. Eight billion auto guy. He came out and he's been talking a lot about, okay, I'm sorry, I was off by $4 billion, $12 billion dollar guy, very successful. South Africa, first 24 years, never once watched TV. He was all about reading and learning. And he's been critical about chemotherapy. He doesn't say it's not good to never use it. He says there's places for it, but he calls it, it's like a nuclear bomb when you do chemotherapy in your body, right? And, and And sometimes it also kills off the good things that you need that are fighting.

What is your position with chemotherapy, cancer, and the progress we're making with cancer? So I, by the way, I did my Ph.D. at St. Jude Trulence Research Hospital, which is the leading research center for pediatric cancer. And, you know, they've done phenomenal work in lowering, you know, the death rate of pediatric cancers, which are predominantly leukemia, is, lymphomas. glioblastomas. And I would tend to agree, depending on the cancer type, you know, different chemotherapies are more effective. Now, and I would say for leukemia, lymphomas, things that are blood cancers, that's where it's effective because it's easy for the chemotherapy to reach those cells, right? In the blood, it's easy for it to reach the cells. When you're talking about a solid tumor in the liver, in the pancreas, you know, in the breast, it's a different story.

story because tumor cells become hypoxic, so they cut off the circulation to get to them. And so chemotherapy, it has to be delivered through the blood in circulation to get to the tumor site, right? And so that is probably what Dr. Sun Chong is referring to to some degree. It is a blunt, you know, tool in terms of cancer treatment. but it's been very effective, for example, with pediatric cancers and leukemias and lymphomas. In terms of what we can do to lower our cancer risk and also improve effectiveness of cancer treatment, there's, I think, a lot of evidence out there showing exercise really the key. I mean, exercise, for example, and not just any type of exercise, but more of that vigorous intensity exercise.

In fact, there was a recent study in nature, communications that came out. And this study was a very, and we're talking like over 100,000. I think it was close to 200,000 participants that were wearing what are called accelerometers. So these little devices on their wrist, they're not measuring heart rate, but they're measuring like how fast you're moving. It's an accelerometer, right? And so it's empirical data where you can actually measure people's physical activity based on their movement. And then you can, and then you can look at outcomes, for example. Almost like a fit bit, but except it measures.

Movement. Electro-mechanical sensor that measures proper acceleration, the range of change in velocity. That's right. So, for example, you're working out, you're running, you're moving your arms. It's measuring the movement. So the faster the movement is sort of considered to be more moderate to vigorous intensity exercise depending on how fast the movement is. So if I'm walking versus running versus sprinting. Right. So if you're very, very light walking like walking around the house, that would be considered light exercise. If you are, I would say, fast walking, that would be more moderate intensity exercise. If you're jogging, that would be vigorous intensity in this study that I'm referring to. The key here is that we have empirical data that was calculating, and I am going to bring this back to cancer, I promise, that was calculating how, you know, the types of intensity of exercise, vigorous versus moderate versus light and outcomes. So all-cause mortality, cancer-related mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality, type 2 diabetes.

And what was found was completely astounding, okay? Very much different than what the normal current exercise guidelines are. So, for example, you may have heard, well, the guidelines say that we should do 150 minutes to 300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week to be, quote-unquote, healthy. Or 75 minutes to 150 minutes of vigorous type of exercise to be healthy, right? So you basically cut it in half, one-to-two ratio. By the way, that was all based on caloric expenditure, right? Okay, we're not talking about losing fat. We're talking about wanting to prevent cancer, cardiovascular disease, dying from all causes,

including respiratory causes, right, of illness. So that number is out the window. This new data shows that if you're doing vigorous intensity exercise, the type of, like, jogging, for example, swimming, tennis, like, that's all vigorous intensity. That for every one minute you do of that, if you're doing, you're doing, you're, you're you're wanting to lower all cause mortality, you have to do four minutes of moderate intensity or an hour and a half of light. So talk about efficiency. One to four, for every one minute is four or hour and a half of light? So for every one minute of vigorous intensity is four

minutes of moderate intensity. You have to do four minutes to get all cause mortality. Light is an hour and a half. Stop it. That's for all cause mortality, dying from all non-accidental causes. It gets better. If you're wanting to prevent cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular related mortality. For every one minute of vigorous, okay, this is cycling, this is jogging, swimming, you have to do eight minutes of moderate intensity, okay, moderate. So that would be like, you know, speed, like walking with more intent, right? So you're more speedwalking.

So eight minutes of that. Or, again, you're getting into like the hour to two hour range of light exercise. So that would be just walking around the house, basically. For cancer, if you wanted to prevent basically cancer mortality for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do almost four minutes, so three and a half to four minutes of moderate intensity, or two and a half hours of light walking. And so the point here being is we have a lot of control over our disease risk, including cancer. Exercise is the key, and not just any type of exercise, you have to get your heart rate

up. You have to move, right? Faster. You have to have this, you know, more intent type of exercise. And this kind of goes, I would say, along those lines, we have what are called the Vilpa studies, the vigorous, intermittent lifestyle, physical activity studies. And these are studies also with accelerometers where people are doing vigorous intensity exercise, but they're not, it's not a structured type of exercise. So they're not just getting up and doing one minute of body weight squats or, you know, a minute of high knees or jumping jacks, all these things I did this morning, by the way. What time?

They're doing, they're taking. What time did you say this morning? Right after I woke up. Here? No, yeah, here in Fort Lauderdalea. So, so basically, they're doing, you know, they're sprinting up the stairs to get to work. They don't take elevators. You know, they're doing that sort of everyday situation, right?

individuals that do, let's say they do three minutes of that just brief burst of getting their heart right up, moving, you know, walking really like faster, you know, sprinting up the stairs and they do that three times a day. Okay. So it's a total of nine minutes of vigorous exercise a day. That's associated with a 40% lower all-cause mortality and a 40% lower cancer-related mortality compared to not doing it. And a 50% percent lower cardiovascular related mortality. Okay, this is phenomenal because it really shows that you don't have to go to the gym and spend an hour at the, you know, at the very least, if you're, you can accumulate these short bursts of exercise, they have to be at least a minute long to have an effect. Three minutes, if you're really going for that robust effect. If you're only doing

three to four minutes a day, it's still associated with a 30% lower cancer-related mortality. Again, to bring it back to the cancer. You know, there are things that you can do to lower your cancer mortality risk and to lower your cancer incidents as well. Diet, obesity, obesity accelerates 13 different types of cancer. So weight loss is also something that's critical and really does lower your cancer risk, okay? But let's say there's this scenario where you get cancer and you, there's a genetic component. Let's say you just, you know, the genetic jackpot, you unfortunately got it, right? have cancer. There are now studies, and I had a researcher on my podcast. It's a new field that's

called exercise oncology. So Dr. Kerry Kernier, he's also from Canada, he's one of the leaders in this field of exercise oncology. And what he does is he does studies with individuals that already have cancer, a lot of prostate cancer he looks at also colon cancer and breast cancer. And these individuals that are undergoing perhaps a classical type of standard of care treatment like chemo or radiation or the combination of the two. But he adds on exercise to that therapy. And those individuals, it's dramatic how much they respond to the cancer treatment much, much better, where they're killing the cancer cells. The tumor is shrinking. They're dramatically improving their cancer survival, so their mortality goes down and their recurrence goes down. So every possible

metric is improving if you're adding the exercise onto a classical cancer, you know, treatment therapy. So again, I think exercises that toggle and it's so, so important. And I know I talked about a lot of things and it's a lot of unpack here. No, I mean, it's interesting. Again, for you, it goes back to a process of something I can't control, right? In a society of living in short term, you know, when you're talking about obesity, all the obesity stuff that we talked about earlier with G.

I can take GLP1 and be out of body weight that I'm okay with, right? Let's you say I'm 5,6, 135, and I'm a female, 45 years old. But if I don't exercise, that doesn't prevent me from the risks I have of here. I still have to exercise to prevent this from happening. 40% lower cancer, 50% lower cardio if I'm doing three minutes, three intervals of three minutes of hit throughout the day. That's insane to look at how simple that is. Because we have that time. We can do that.

Totally. You have that time in here, and the reverse is also true, Patrick. So, for example, a really good biomarker of whether or not you do cardiovascular exercise is something called cardiorespiratory fitness. It's often measured as V-O-2 max. Have you heard of this? Of course. It's maximal oxygen uptake during maximal exercise.

All you have to know is that cardio-respatory fitness is a biomarker of your health and longevity. So, for example, there have been studies showing that people with a high cardio-respatory fitness are 80% less likely to die from all cause, you know, early, whatever that is filling in the blank cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, right, than someone with a low cardio-respatory fitness. But what's even more compelling than that, well, that's not surprising. We just talked about that. If you're physically active, you're going to be healthy. You're going to lower your risk of, you know, dying early from any of those diseases. what's interesting is that people that have a low cardio respiratory fitness, that predicted their early mortality the same or even like more than smoking than type 2 diabetes than cardiovascular

disease. So in other words, having a low cardiorespiratory fitness was like having those diseases in terms of early mortality risk, showing you, and this goes back to what I said earlier, being sedentary is a disease. And when you start thinking about it as a disease, it's a disease. you need to be physically active. And to avoid that disease, you have to get up and move. And it doesn't have to be an hour in the gym.

It can be these short, brief bursts of what are called exercise snacks. Now, this is the more, you know, I would say structured type, like I did this morning, you get up and you do, you know, three minutes of bodyweight squats. You do three minutes of jumping jacks. You do high knees, something that gets your heart right up, something that makes it where after you're done, your breath, you know, you're sweating. You get sweat on your brow. Like that stuff you can do and make it part of your personal hygiene.

Do you still jump rope? I do. It's part of my routine. Every day. I don't do it every day. I do a lot of what's called CrossFit types of exercising. So I do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. I do an hour-long sort of cross-fit type of workout.

What includes oftentimes jumping rope. It includes a lot of explosive types of working out. By yourself or with? I have a trainer that comes to my house twice a week and that the other two times I do it at my friend's house with my friends. And so, you know, it all, whatever works for you, you know, if you don't have access to, trainers help because there's accountability and they're really like helping you just kind of get that structure and that routine.

But I think, you know, in addition to the reason I work out is actually for my brain, to be honest. Like I know all these other benefits. That's like the positive side effects, you know, in terms of like lowering cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, like cancer, all that is this. I do it for my brain. my brain. Like I absolutely need to work out to function and to feel happy. So, you know, and this kind of goes down, this, I don't want to go down this whole, like, rabbit hole of happiness, but that is a component of longevity. And some people, if you're like me, and you're more prone to

anxiety, you're more prone to obsessing over things, that can, that can, that can, what is your birthday? What month? June. June what? 26. So cancer. June 26. We got married on June 26th. Our youngest daughter is born June 26th. And one of our good friends is born on June 26th, their daughter. So June 26 for us is a big day. Oh, that's hilarious.

So anxiety. So you're saying prone to anxiety, why? Because you're competitive, prone to anxiety because of your own personal standards and expectation of yourself. Why prone to anxiety? I think all of the above. Yeah, I'm definitely very competitive. I also, you know, it's, you think about a lot of things.

a little bit like you kind of obsess about a lot of things in details and you kind of go down that rabbit hole. And when you start to like go too deeply about too many things, it can make you start to see things and then worry about them. Are you more the engineer brain or the conspiracy brain? Engineer. You're more the engineer brain. Yeah. Logic, systematic, step by step. Why do we do it this way?

Definitely. Got it. So predictable. Are you like data driven type of decisions being made? Yes. That's why evidence base. Let's talk about the anxiety and panic. and all of that, right?

For people who are in high intense environments, like you're debating, you know, you hit the stage. Like, I remember the debate stage. First time Trump went on, I'm like, I wonder how he's going to be the first time he gets on with Hillary. And if you pay attention in the first seven minutes, you can hear him breathing. Even Trump, he's breathing hard.

It's like, wow, he's breathing hard. And you watch some of these guys get on debate stage, they get fully nervous and the arguments going back and forth. Or you're doing a show. Cameras are all on you. they're an audience, live audience you're speaking. How do you manage your imagination from not going wild so you can stay stable? There's a lot of different, I would say, little hacks that can be done that I use

and I can tell you about them and why I do them in terms of the evidence. I'm curious. So first and foremost would be the exercise, and that's why I did 10 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise before I came here. For one, it's been showed to improve cognition, which I want. You're going to want that in a debate. You're going to want that in any type of public speaking sort of engagement, right? You're going to want to be cognitively sharp.

And study after study have shown that just 10 minutes of that, especially the vigorous intensity exercise, does improve reaction time by, you know, a few milliseconds, which translate to about 14% improved cognition, right? And that's a big change. So that is one reason. The other thing is with the anxiety and, you know, the basically like filtering out a lot of the sensory information that can help you focus more. That's also been shown to be improved after, again,

just even 10 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise. The other thing is that what happens is, you know, public speaking, whether it's debate, which is another level, it's challenging, right? It is challenging, it's taxing. Exercise, if you engage in exercise, it's also hard, and that's why the hardness comes into play. You're doing something really hard at the start of your day. It takes mental effort to do something hard.

It's not just working your muscles. It's also working your brain. Your brain is working hard. And what I have noticed from my own experience is that when I do hard exercise, whether that's high-intensity exercise or, for me, just resistance training, weightlifting, that is hard for me. Everything else is easier. Everything else is easier. And so it makes it easier to handle other types of stress mentally. Okay.

So one is exercise. What's that? One is exercise. One is exercise. And not just any. of the hard, hard type. Yeah. Two, and this is why I'm fasted right now, is the ketones that are produced during ketosis. So again, you have to be fasted for anywhere between 12 or more hours to start to really use fatty acids as energy and that energy you're making ketones and the ketones

is actually what's used as energy. Well, the ketones are not just a clean energy source. they're also a signaling molecule. It's a mode of communication between your body and other parts of the body like the brain. So it's basically your body's way of telling your brain, hey, this is a stressful situation. I don't have any food. By the way, humans throughout, you know, like however, you know, many thousands or millions, whatever you believe, however the old, the earth is, you know, we were always, you know, we were subject to periods of no food, right?

We didn't always just have Instacard and postmates and things that were easily available to just get food. So it's an adaptation that's in our genes. And what happens is these ketones that are produced signal to the brain. It's a stressful time. You know, I need to, for one, make more brain-driven neurotrophic factor. You know, this is a neurotrophic factor that's involved in learning, in memory, and producing more neurons, but also in what's called neuroplasticity. The ability of your brain to change and adapt to a, you know, a changing environment. very, very important. It also is anxiolytic. Ketones are anxiolytic, meaning they help lower anxiety.

They help increase something called GABA. That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So for me, what the ketones do is they sort of calm the extra noise in the back of my brain and help me just focus on what the task is. And that's really important for that situation. I'm talking about like a debate is you want to be able to like calm down the, the extra noise in the back where you're thinking about all the little things, that can be distracting and so you're not like on your game. For that reason, I also take exogenous ketones. Now, exogenous ketones are something that you can ingest.

Get those ketones in your bloodstream to have similar effects, but not have to be fasting to get them. And that is something else I do use. BHPs? Yes. Okay. And it's something that I used before, like I had some this morning before I came here. I do that usually in situations where I'm on a podcast, I'm doing a presentation, anything public speaking where, like you said, the anxiety does go up.

And even if you've done it a lot, I mean, it's still part of human nature, right? I mean, the stress response happens. And so that's something else I do. By the way, I want to tell you that taking exogenous ketones, if you are fasting, it's going to stop you from actually using more fat and basically losing that fat. because exogenous ketones are a signal to your liver that there's enough energy there. You flood your system with this, you know, BHB, this beta-hydroxybutyrate. And so if you're wanting to lose weight, if you're fasting to lose weight, the exogenous ketones are not going to help you, but they will help you be more cognitively aware.

So that's another thing to do, I would say, another little protocol or hack that I use to lower my anxiety in high-stress situations. Another one would be cold exposure. So deliberate cold exposure is also something that, for one, it's hard. Like no one wants to go sit in a 49 degree Fahrenheit cold water bath for two minutes. I mean, it's very hard. It's uncomfortable. So you're getting that same effect that you get from doing hard exercise where you're

getting the hard thing done. That way, everything else is easier. But the other thing that it does is it increases norepinephrine and to some degree dopamine, but particularly norepinephrine. That is both a hormone and the hormone. a neurotransmitter that helps with focus and attention. It helps kind of lower some of that background anxiety. And so that's another thing that people can use.

And I used to do a lot of cold showers before I would go like on a podcast or something. I haven't been doing that lately. Now I go to the beta hydroxybutyrate because it really kind of checks the box for me. You do the cold plunger now. I do have a cold plunge at home and I am embarrassed to say that I very rarely use it. I'm a summertime cold plunger, I would say, more seasonal than, for example, my husband, who really likes doing the cold plunge every day. What does he do?

He likes to do it interestingly at night. Before he goes to sleep. Before he goes to sleep because it cools his body down. Which is funny because sauna or deliberate heat exposure is something that I use to improve my sleep. And, you know, I've talked about this. I did a little short video on it. There are mechanisms there that explain why heat exposure would help improve sleep and deep sleep, that kind of restorative sleep.

that you want because when you're exposing yourself to heat, you're making somnogenic cytokines. These are, you know, when you get sick, you're tired, right? You're tired. Part of that is, one, because the activation of the immune system sucking all your energy away. You don't want that. Two, is because activation of the immune system, they're releasing cytokines that are called somnogenic. They induce sleepiness. And so the sauna can also do that where you're, or sauna or I would say hot bath, deliberate heat exposure, whatever modality you're choosing to use, also can increase.

Extreme heat or extreme cold? But extreme, I wouldn't go up to the 200 degree Fahrenheit. I'm talking more like 180 degrees Fahrenheit heat, but yes, exactly. So although some people feel like the cold, it wakes them up, you know, and so my husband, I don't know if he's an outlier, but he likes to cool his body. Before you go to sleep. Not like right before. I mean, we're talking like a couple of hours.

Okay. Right. But then it'll settle down and you're okay. Yes. And the same goes with the sauna. You want to do it a couple of hours before your bedtime because you want to cool down first. And so what I like to do is I'll do a hot tub or a sauna a couple hours before bed and then I hit the cold shower to cool myself down. And that's something that's really helped. Sona cold shower. That's interesting. Yes.

Okay. All right. So we got anxiety. We got exercise, proper fasting, ketones, right? BHP ketones, cold exposure. Now what if I'm an athlete? What if I play high-level sports? I already exercise. I got a good diet. But, you know, I know if I'm a quarterback, I want to be able to make that pass.

I want to find a way to lower my anxiety as an athlete. How do I do it? Well, I think, for example, the beta-hydroxy butyrate might come into play there and also, again, the cold exposure. So for athletes that are like high-level elite, there's studies showing that cold exposure even done before, for example, like tennis players or kayaks, another one. If they do cold exposure before like a race, it actually improves performance as well. And that probably because it's lowering inflammation.

There's an acute response of lowering inflammation. Inflammation can also play a role in cognitive function, anxiety, in focus and attention, you know, all these things. but I would say the beta-hydroxybutyrate is sort of the health hack that I would go to because, again, it's being used as a really clean source of energy. You also want to be able to make fast decisions, right? Whether you're a football player or a tennis player or whatever, you want your brain to be able to make those decisions quickly, that's something that's going to happen and then lowering the anxiety as well.

So I think all those sort of point to why, you know, take anything so just he told me help. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm curious what you'll say about this. You're married and you have kids? Yes. How many kids do you guys? I have one. Okay.

So what is healthier? Being married with kids, married no kids, or staying single? I would say. Is there any ties to health? Absolutely being married with kids. I think that's like unanimously like clear. Why is that? Because happiness is really linked to longevity and health.

And happiness, I can very, very, very. big component as Dr. Arthur Brooks, who does research out of Harvard. I recently had in my podcast. Arthur C. Brooks? He's amazing. He's phenomenal. He's amazing. He's phenomenal. Yeah. I mean, glasses. He wears glasses. Yeah. He's amazing. But his, you know, he's done research. He's written two New York Times best-selling books, and he's got a third one on the way coming in March. He's amazing. What he calls the macronutrients of happiness. One of that is enjoyment, right? And enjoyment is something that you get by experiencing something with another person. It's not something that you're doing alone.

It's experiences with people that you love, right? And if you're not married and you have no kids, I mean, you really have to really put in a lot of effort to try to have that enjoyment, right? Married with kids, you've got your spouse, you've got your kids. I mean, anyone that's a parent knows the love you feel for them is unmeasurable. I mean, it's just, and the joy you get from being their parents, sure, there's like hard times, but the joy is also, I mean, it's, you can't describe it, you can't measure it. It's amazing. And there's also studies showing that, right?

That, you know, married couples and having children is associated with a longer life. Like, having that family tie, having those relationships are so important. Now, I'm not just saying, I'm not saying all those single people out there. I know it's like a thing now. There's like younger people. They're like, oh, I'm never going to get married. I'm not going to have a couple. kids, I'm going to live for me. I don't want to ruin my body and, you know, I don't want to lose

my time, my freedom and all this stuff. You hear a lot of that. And by the way, the U.S. is at the lowest birth rate in the history of America. I think we're at 1.58 right now. And you know this, the replacement rate needs to be at 2.1. We're at 1.58. So it is a trend that people go in that direction. It is. It is. And, you know, I waited until later in life to have my son. And that's, you know, because I was pursuing academic pursuits in my academic career. And it is something that, I mean, I don't regret. I have like an amazing son. I love him more than life itself.

But, and it gives me a sense of purpose, right? But I will say I wish I'd started earlier and had more children. And all I can say to people out there that are in that mentality is that as you get older, things change. And it's harder to have relationships if you don't establish. them early and a spouse and the love that you have for your spouse is so incredible. And then when you bring a child into this world, sure there's layers of complexity, sure there's going to be times, you know, that are more challenging and you, and it takes work. Every relationship takes

work. But it's, it's really, these relationships are really important for mental health, long-term health, disease risk. I mean, there's all this, the Harvard, you know, longitudinal aging study showed that, you know, these individuals with, with relationships, spouses, children, you know, family, friends, like those individuals not only were happier, they lived longer. You know, it's very important. Loneliness is a thing, you know, as you get older. I mean, if you're someone that's single, never married, don't know kids, and then you retire and you haven't really put a lot of effort into maintaining friendships, it comes harder and harder,

and you really do have to put effort in. Loneliness is independently associated with early mortality, and it's just not fun. And people that are lonely, then oftentimes will seek out that kind of pleasure and reward by themselves. and they'll turn to like alcohol, or their turn to gambling or things like that where it's like the short-term, you know, pleasure you get, but it's really not, it's trying to feel the void of that enjoyment

that you get from the relationships that are meaningful in your life. I saw a clip the other day. Rob, can you ask Alicia and Humberto about the clip of two women were debating, I said, where is this interview from? If they can find that clip and send it to you, one lady is like,

who wants to have a kid and be an underpaid Uber driver for, your son that wants to go to to taekwondo, a sport that he hates, and the other lady just flat out, I mean, if you got this clip, I'll give you a second for you to find it. It's a fascinating clip.

But it is becoming common of people not wanting to have kids, not wanting to have families. Did you find it? It is becoming an unpaid Uber driver for someone who doesn't want to go to karate and hates you anyway. And it's hard, hard work.

That is a narrative that I'm going to push back on, which is part of the problem. which is that it's the narrative of misery, which has been promoted. And it's not miserable to have children. It's joyful. It's the most incredible love you'll ever experience in your life, but it's also really hard. And I think we have a bunch of pussies, actually.

We are producing women and men who are pussies, and I'll tell you what I mean by that. They cannot deal with discomfort. They cannot deal with frustration. They cannot deal with sacrifice or hardship or responsibility. They want it to be easy. Who said raising children was easy? You don't get the good stuff unless you put in the work.

And it's the same if you're out in the world. Of course it's easier to go to a job than it is to stay home with a child because a child demands more of you, but it also gives back more. What do you think about what you said? Well, I definitely agree with the second woman in terms of it being incredibly rewarding but also challenging. But I think it comes down to, you know, not everyone has that. that negative outlook on the world, the pessimistic look.

It's hard. You know, I'm taking my child to jiu-jitsu and they hate it. I mean, you can focus on negative things in life and not have a child. Like that same person with that sort of mentality, guess what? Take the child out of the equation. Take the spouse out of the equation. They're going to focus on the negative things in their life as a single individual. What a great point.

Right? What a great point. So it doesn't matter. That's how they are, period. It doesn't. It's the way they're, it's their personality type. right and if you're that person that's focusing on negative all the time you're going to be miserable you're going to be unhappy and you have to find a way to change your thinking i do think again exercise

is part of that because it does help you do that hard thing and things everything else becomes easier but also do there's other things like being grateful like think about what you're grateful for in life right like what are what what what do you have that you know you can be thankful for because everyone has something, even if you're the Uber driver that doesn't get paid a lot. You have your health. You know, until your health goes bad, until you get a cancer diagnosis at the age of 40, until you have, you know, a heart attack at 55, until you get type 2 diabetes at the age of, you know, I don't know, perhaps 39, you don't realize how important your health is or your parents come down with the cancer diagnosis or your sibling. Let's say you don't have kids. You know, you have

something to be thankful for. And when you start to focus, have a daily practice of that, what to be thankful for, it does help train your brain. And their study is showing that. It helps train your brain to not be so pessimistic. And so that's one thing to do. In addition to the exercise, it's like the best thing that you can do, I think, is really daily exercise, physical activity, because it is hard. It is something that trains your brain to do hard things and other things become easier, but also there's a lot of endorphins that are released that make you feel better. And there's also some evidence that like doing that hard thing when you're uncomfortable,

when you're exercising hard or working out hard, or even doing a sauna. When you're sitting in the sauna, it's hot and you're uncomfortable because sauna does mimic moderate intensity exercise. Those things are that uncomfortableness is your brain's endogenous opioid system that is being activated and you're making something called dinorphin. This is the opposite of endorphin. Endorphins the feel good opioid. Dynorphin is the thing that's uncomfortable. We're like, oh, this sucks. I hate it, right? There's a neuropeptod being made called dinorphin. And guess what? When you make that dinorphin, there's an adaptation that happens. That adaptation is your brain going-

Commonly known as heroin? Not dimorphine. D-R-Morphine. D-I-A-A-N-R-FIN. D. I-A-A-N. O-R-P-H-I-N, di-Norphin. So. You were about to confuse people, but... Yes. So what happens is it's binding to a capo opioid. And when that happens, it's basically telling the brain, oh, I'm uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable, whether that's from exercise or deliberate heat exposure from a sauna or a hot tub. That uncomfortable feeling... But it's good for you.

...is good for you. You have to experience that uncomfortableness, because what happens is then the brain adapts, and the receptors that bind to endorphins, the feel-good opioids, they're called meo-opiode receptors, they become more sensitive to the endorphin. So after that uncomfortableness of exercise or deliberate a heat exposure, every endorphin that you make is going to feel better, whether that's a kiss or a hug from a loved one or a joke that you're laughing at, whatever it is that's causing you to feel good for the moment,

that endorphin, you're going to feel it more and you're going to feel it for longer. So there are things that you can do and exercise being really a key, but also deliberate heat exposure from like hot tub or saunas is another one that really can help with your state of mind, your mentality, your mood. In fact, there's actually studies by Dr. Charles Rezaan, Dr. Ashley Mason, some pioneering studies showing that if you do deliberate heat exposure, and this was a very tricky machine that they used, which is essentially raising people's core body temperature to a feverish state, where it's essentially like. going in the sauna, they're raising people's core body temperature at 1.5 to 2 degrees, or they're doing a sham control, so they're getting people hot enough to think it's a placebo, like a treatment, right? But it's a real placebo. And they took these people with major depressive disorder, gave them this treatment one time, this was the pioneering study, one time, and they had an antidepressant effect that lasted six to eight weeks after that, just from one

sauna exposure. Now, Dr. Ashley Mason, she's at UCSF, she's now done follow-up studies using infrared saunas that are sort of like these heat beds where people are laying in them, their head is out, but she's also raising their core body temperature to 1.5 to 2 degrees. And they're doing it multiple times, four to eight times. These guys? That's right. And she's also shown that it really, in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy, dramatically improves a battery of tests for major depressive disorder. I mean, these people, like, just to give you a sense of how potent this effect was. If you, there's a Hamilton scale that like this battery of test that's done to measure, to basically assess people's mood, their depressive symptoms, if you have like a three point change

that's considered clinically relevant, these people were having a 16 point change after doing cognitive behavioral therapy, which is talk therapy with the heatbed, so with the sauna exposure. All this is to say to get back to the clip of the person, the mom saying, why do I want to be a mom when it's like so hard, basically, you're dealing with these hard moments, is that, you know what, life is full of hard moments, whether or not you have children, it's going to be full of different kinds of hard moments, right? And so the reality is, is you're missing out on that joy and the relationship that, who's going to take care of you when you're older too, right? I mean, there's all sorts of reasons to have a family. It's, I promise you. If I had my way,

I'd have 20 kids. I'll never forget. We had a private. equity guy in Santa Monica, his name was John Morris. And we were part of this Vistage group, and once a month, you would meet with them. I said, John, how many kids do you have? He says, two. I said, why two? You're smart. Guy, why do you have two kids? He says, biggest mistake of my life. I said, mistake of your life. Why? He says, tell me what we do in life, that the moment we get good at it, we stop doing it. He says, I barely learn how to parent after two. I wish we would add four. So really? Yeah. You know, my wife and I, when we first started dating, we, I had to read a book called 101 questions to ask before you get engaged.

And in the book, one of the questions is how many kids do you want to have? I wanted five. She wanted three. We ended up with four. Okay. So we got four kids now, two boys, two girls. Life changing. I would do 20 if I could, like I said earlier.

Patrick, it's my biggest regret in life is not having at least another child, you know. And again, I try not to focus on that regret because that's the wrong mindset, right? You don't want to be focusing on the negative because it's something. Same thing. Is it too late? I mean, it's not too late. It's not too late, and I may be trying to explore opportunities,

but, you know, is sort of a personal question. No, I get it. But what I will, you know, say is that for people out there that are younger and they have that mentality where they're like, I don't want kids, I don't feel like I want to be a mom or a dad, mostly moms because they're the ones that expire earlier in terms of being able to have kids later in life.

I mean, there's options out there now, like freezing down your eggs, you know. very important, I think. I think that's like, if you're, if you're one of those women right now that are like, I'm pretty sure, I'm never going to want to have kids. I would say to you, like, you may change your mind in 10 years. And it will be very heartbreaking if you don't take steps right now to make sure that you can have children later in life, you know, because you might not be able to.

So, but there's always adoption and stuff. And that's, of course, another option as well. But being pregnant and experiencing the whole process, it's amazing. It's just, I loved being pregnant. I loved it. Love being pregnant. I do. Oh, yeah.

I mean, you get. You hear that sometimes. I'm like, tell me why. Well, sure, there's like hard times. I mean, like you gain 50 pounds and, you know, you can't sleep well sometimes. And there's all sorts of like you're feeling aches and pains because all the relaxins that your body's making to help prepare for childbirth. But you're also like the oxytocin and the bonding and knowing that you are preparing, you know, everything that you're doing. what you're eating and you're preparing this child and you're trying to give this child the best

you know opportunity that you can to to set them up right right like there's it's all it's all like i guess a matter of like how you your outlook right it's better to try to focus on positive yeah no listen my respect for my wife went uh you know of course i love my wife but when you watch her have the baby and you're sitting there like once twice you know this is this is incredible what the women's body does you know god's creation to be able to do that and go through the pain and it's amazing it's amazing but i appreciate you for being a vulnerable here and talking about wanted to have more kids okay question in regards to i don't know if you've seen this uh story story came out about the 49ers okay and how they have a field that's their field and their field is right next to a electrical

station on the bottom left. If you go to the bottom left, right there to the left, and they're showing numbers that came out that Achilles and ruptures of about 0.75% tears per season for the 49ers since 2014 compared to 0.08 per season for the average NFL team. Rob, if you want to play this clip by Paul Saladino, you know which one I'm talking about, I send it to you, if you don't have it, I can send that to you as well. I wonder what you think is the impact of this, if you have anything to say on this. Go ahead, Rob. 49ers are the best real-world example of how EMFs can be harmful to humans. Since moving to Levi's Stadium in 2014, they become the most injured team in professional football. For 10 out of the last

11 seasons, they've been in the top five for games lost due to injury. Since 2014, the 49ers have had seven full Achilles and Patelor tendon ruptures. The most recent example, George Kiddles, Achilles tendon rupture on January 11th, 2026. The NFL average is two to three for the entire league per year. 49ers have had over 40 hamstring and calf tears in this time, while the NFL average is 12 to 15 per decade. What's going on here? The players joke about the electrical substation curse, but in 2014, the 49ers moved their practice field to Levi Stadium, which is right next to a huge electrical substation. The levels of magnetic fields where the 49ers practice have been measured to be over a hundred times higher than,

in background levels, where the 49ers are spending 20 to 30 hours a week. Can EMFs like this from magnetic fields be harmful for humans? There are medical studies which show these fields can potentially damage collagen structural integrity. Collagen is what makes up, your tendons and ligaments. You've been told that EMFs are benign. You talked earlier about collagen, right? Do you see a correlation here?

I have a question. This field, what was it called? The name of the field? Electric magnetic field. No, no, no, no. I know what those EMFs are. Levi, electric magnetic thing. Has anyone trained at Levi Field before the 14th?

It was just as an empty field. This is the practice facility that they used. Right. But did anyone practice there? That's a great question because I think one of the article says that can you pull up to see if the 49ers trained at the Levi practice facility at all? Previous to that. Or any other team. Like whoever.

Yeah, exactly. So what the article also says is no other NFL team is next to a major electric substation or utility grid. No other. Yeah. So here's the thing. Okay. As an analytical person, as an evidence-paced person, like this is an observational data where you're looking at correlation. Sure. And so I want to, I'm asking the question whether or not, you know, because it could be something about the way the field, like, is designed, the way they're running on it. Like how, like I don't, I don't know or did any other team there also have this problem.

So, okay, before 49ers, the 49ers trained at the summer camp, not at the Levi because it hadn't been built. historically their camps were hosted at different places, different colleges that they had the 49ers from 1988 onward, had their headquarters and practice facility in Santa Clara already well before Levi Stadium was constructed. But this was separate from Levi Stadium and his practice fields. July 2014 is when they opened up Levi Stadium and the 49ers had began using the stadium and adjacent practice fields for training camp practices this summer. So you're saying there may be no correlation.

Well, what I'm saying is it's hard to identify the cause of what's causing their Achilles tears, right? It could be the fact that they're next to this station that's emitting a lot of EMFs, or it could be that there's something about the way the field is designed that makes them move. Like when they're using it, it's causing weird movements. I would assume they would probably, a team that big would probably build the field flawless to claim there. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars. So here's my analysis of the EMF literature. Okay.

I think that people that are occupationally exposed, so that would be maybe perhaps being that close to this sort of, you know, place where you're getting 100 times more background level, that's where you do have more concern is those occupational types of exposures, you know, people working in them, where you'll see like cancer rates, for example, going up. Or the other thing that I'm worried about is, for example, like a cell phone in your pocket if you're a male

and it affecting like sperm for example or perhaps something in your ear all the time AirPods constantly infecting brain it's like the closeness of it is another thing so it's exposure concentration and also location right so in this case they're not really close to the person's you know Achilles tendon right

it's not like they're wearing something on their ankle it's the volume of exposure seems to be high is there a potential there for inflammatory oxidative processes like yes but why would it be you know perhaps it's because they're exercising and they're putting a lot of wear and tear on you know that specific tendon and the background inflammation is high that it's basically pushing them over the edge so i do think the possibility is there can we conclusively say it no but i think it's definitely something that should you know alarm us you know why why are these people getting these Achilles tendon tears at a rate

that's what did you say how much higher it was pretty significant significant yeah on the amount of cares they're having and 49ers that's a very big team this you know they were locked in to potentially go to super bowl way too many injuries Brock Purdy kiddle and the super bowl this year was in san francisco so you know a lot of the fans wanted to see the 49ers go to the super bowl because it's a local favorite right it would have been San Francisco so it is a topic of discussion that a lot of fans are talking about right and you know the other thing to keep in mind is with these like correlations is did something else happen where they had some their, their trainer is changing their diet.

They're changing something else. Like we don't know at the same time, you know, as they move fields. I'm not saying that that's the case. I'm just pointing out the flaws of this type of, you know, correlation where it's like, well, there could be other things that wouldn't even know about that's happening. With that said, I will say the occupational types of exposure are like, who's working in that facility? Like, what are they experiencing?

Right. That would be another question. Right question. Because you would imagine they're in that facility, individuals working there. Are they having sorts of problems? Obviously, they may not be working their... Running like the way they've got to run it. They follow something.

They get 20% of employees have Achilles' Terrap. That would be a terrible situation on the field. But maybe something else. Yeah, maybe they're getting cancer. We're asking the right question. And by the way, it's not like this article was written by some blog or something. NBC published this. This was a few days ago by NBC.

So it is a story that's getting, you know, the right kind of criticism to see because these owners are spending, God knows how much money. Yeah, so Dr. Allen Seals, the NFL's chief medical officer, directly addressed the theory that the team's injuries are linked to nearby electric substation and rejected it as unsupported by evidence. He said there's no data on the sports medicine literature that backs the claim that electric fields cause injuries. also specifically refuted the idea that the 49ers lead the league in certain injury, calling the claim simply not true. Okay, so there you have it. That's the chief medical officer that responded to this. I don't know that anyone in the sports literature is looking at that correlation.

So he said that there's no literature to support it, but that may be because no one's actually looked at it. Like, why would- You're pushing back on what he's saying as well. Yeah. I look, I'm saying I don't think I would go out. make the video that Paul Saladino made because I don't think it's strong enough evidence. I wouldn't say it conclusively.

I'd maybe be a little more cautioned, but I think it's something to absolutely consider. And certainly, like, if I was, you know, the owner of the 49ers, I would either move them back to another training facility and see how that affects their injury risk, or I don't know if this station can be turned off. I guess not. If it's making electricity, then I probably can't do that. But I certainly would move them to their old training facility to see if. that changed things because then you'd have it, you know, well, we're moving them back to the other

training facility. I would change him in a heartbeat. Yeah. I mean, even if there's a sports is very superstitious as well, let me tell you, because what did you say? Placebo, right? I don't get for works or not. Even if it's placebo, I like it, have to take it. Even if the athlete is thinking about it, it's in their mind, I don't even want you to be thinking about it. So if I'm the owner of the 49ers, I'm moving them to whatever other place I'm going to, and I don't want my at least to think about that because they spent a lot of money on these guys. You just brought up such a good point, Patrick, because there's something called the nocebo effect,

which is the opposite of the placebo effect. And that is if you think something bad is going to happen to you, if you're a 49er and you're like, this story comes out, my teammates are getting these Achilles tendon tears, oh my gosh, it's this facility, and you think it's going to happen, you can actually cause bad things to happen. And there are trials showing about this. like this is a real thing.

And again, it goes back to that personality type. There's actually genes that are linked to a placebo effect and genes that are linked to a nocebo effect. It's the pessimistic view point versus the optimistic viewpoint, right? And that's really a phenotype. It's a personality trait. And so you're absolutely right. If these football players are thinking perhaps that this is going to negatively affect them, your body makes inflammatory things.

You make oxidative stuff. Like your brain controls that. And so you can make yourself more free to be. to tears and stuff because of the inflammation generated from the nocebo effect. Do you ever read the book psychosibernetics? No. Never? Never.

Okay, so this is an old book. It's a psychiatrist who decides to become a cosmetic surgeon because he wants to make people feel better. By the way, this book, Rob, can you type up how many copies that psychosyberetics sell? Psycho-cybernetics. Cybernet. Right there. How many copies did it sell? No, no, go back and just ask

because it's not going to tell you on Amazon. It's been around since the 30s. Oh, really? No, no, you will love this book. I think it sold 35 million copies. It's like one of those, there you go. Yeah, 35 million copies. 1960, okay.

1960, yeah. It's one of those books, a cosmetic surgeon who observed how self-image affected patient success, and eventually he realized even all the cosmetic surgery didn't fix the issue. that was internally and whatever the mind believes, you know, you can kind of convince yourself,

it can become a reality. Anyways, I think you would enjoy the books. You can always find something negative to focus on, and that's the bottom line. How do you manage that? So how do you control that? So, you know, for me, I came from a very low income. Nobody was winning family, divorce, finances. We had nothing, you know, food stamps.

My dad was a cashier at a 99-cent store, and I read a book called The Genius in All of Us that said, you know, the average low-income, kid is raised in a family that is rejected 600,000 times from zero to 18 years old, more negative affirming than positive affirming. Then it was middle class was 100,000 more negative than positive, and an upper class was 100,000 more positive than negative, right? So you have to reaffirm yourself to beliefs of power of positive thinking and you read these types of books to kind of elevate yourself and read the right affirmations.

How does one go if you're raised in an environment that there's, so much negativity. Oh, that'll never happen to us. Oh, we don't have a chance there. And you want to make it out of that environment. How does one do it? Yeah. So, I mean, that, obviously, I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't say that I'm the, pretty positive. The right person to really answer this question. You would probably talk to someone like Dr. Arthur books. By the way, you should. He's amazing. Yeah, I read his book, The Road to Freedom. I don't know if you've read it on, 2012. I haven't. I skimmed both of the book. I couldn't put it down, Road to Freedom. When he came out, I told everybody in my office, you guys got to read it.

Phenomenal book. Right. Please continue. You know, so, I mean, I think there's, there's, people respond differently to that type of negative, like you're talking about negative background where you're, you're never, you're never going to be able to achieve something or like it's a very, what's the, the term for it, where you basically you're, it's like a, you're defeated, you know, where you're just constantly defeated and it's like almost like this self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

I think that it depends on, you know, you have to kind of like train yourself to like realize that you actually can do things. And it's, I don't know if it's an affirmation you do every day. Exercise is something that also helps with that. I think positive thinking where it helps you kind of just get out of that negative thinking where it's not going to work out. But you also have to realize that worshiping things like power or money or fame, I mean, these things are also. trying to fulfill a void, that happiness void, right? So like, there's plenty of people that are very successful, very wealthy, very powerful that are not happy. You're right. Why is that, right? Because it doesn't bring happiness. It doesn't bring happiness. And I think that's that

most of us out there that do know people like this or we see like, look at Hollywood actors. I mean, their marriages are constantly breaking apart, right? I mean, they're wealthy, they're famous. They have what by anyone standards would think, oh, they have everything. But there's always this treadmill of it's not good enough. It's not good enough. I need more. need more. And it's a very, it's a slippery slope to get on that, you know, that, that treadmill of, let's say you start to get some success, but then you're comparing yourself to everyone else, then you need more. And so you're not happy because you're not getting those things. And I think that's what comes back to, you know, those macronutrients of happiness that Dr. Arthur books

talk about where it's, it's the enjoyment and the relationships. It's the sense of purpose. Like, what is it, what you have to have that sense of purpose. Are you, are you a mother? are you someone like me who I love helping and educating people to live healthier. I feel like that's a purpose, my sense of purpose. And you have to have satisfaction, right? Satisfaction of doing something, accomplishing it. Whether it's a 10-minute workout in the morning, you know, whether it's reading a book, you know, finishing reading it, whatever it is, you have to have the satisfaction

of doing that challenging thing. And all these things help you maintain happiness and have happiness. And I think that's... I love it. Yeah, you know, in 2008, when the market crash happened, the next year in 0809, I don't know what the study was, there was more books. They measured what word it was. There was more books, 2,000 plus copies, I believe, where the word happy or happiness was in it, because everybody wanted to find out how to be happy. So think about this, run that we have, man, I just want to be happy.

And then you realize, you know, even happiness is temporary. It's fulfillment. It's what am I doing that there's a deeper purpose. purpose to what I'm doing. The deeper part, you know, you go through the survival phase. I'm just trying to pay my bills. Then maybe you get some status or look at me. I'm a doctor. I'm a professor. I'm a entrepreneur. I'm making six figures. I got an MBA. I got a master's. I'm a, you know, and I got 100,000 followers on Twitter. I'm somebody. Then you go to, you know what? I want to be free. Then you're free. You have some money in the bank. Then you're like,

now what do I want to do? And then eventually comes back to what you're talking about, the purpose. And you feel it when somebody is in pursuit of something bigger than just money. And somehow, someone when you're in the pursuit of purpose, money shows up. I don't know why. Money tends to show. You know what? You know what was something that I did. And it was funny because after I talked to Dr. Brooks about this, I realized it's something that like the Tibetan monks and people like Buddhists do. I was dwelling on more mortality, my mortality. Like if I know it sounds morbid, but I think it's actually a good practice and experiment for people to try. Because when you think about life being, you know, It's finite, right? You are, you are going to die someday. And when you are in that phase of,

of, you know, the end of your life, what is it that's going to be important to you at that moment? Is it going to be another 100,000 followers? Can't take those with you. Is it going to be another, you know, million dollars? Can't take that with you. No. Is it going to be another podcast? No. What is it going to be that's meaningful to you? And for me, it was the time I, was with my family, the experiences that, you know, there, you can't put any value to them. And it's something that if you, again, if you, it's called mortality dwelling. But I mean, if you think about it, because for me, as a high achiever, being a parent, I mean, my productivity went down. And I struggle with that for a while. And it wasn't until I really started thinking

about what was the most important to me. And again, I think people can really tap. to that by thinking about their death. And when you think about it, you'll find what's important to you. And it's not going to be the money. It's not going to be the fame. It's not going to be the followers. It's going to be the memories and the experiences

and those treasure moments with your people that you love, your family, your kids, your friends, your parents. Those are the moments that are so precious. And that also brings me back to like a lot of people like they're searching for this higher power, right? Like there's like God or something, you know, spiritual, right? And, you know, for me, I was raised Catholic. So I had a baseline to go back to.

And as I got older, I kind of drifted and became a little bit too analytical. And it wasn't until I became a mother that I found God again. Why? Because the love I experienced becoming a mother and the love, I had for my son. Not that I didn't love my husband as much because it definitely loved my husband too. But there's something about having a child that this, your overwhelming sense of love. And I, and I would go on these long runs and think about it and think about my mortality and never seeing my son again after I die. And I think it just can't be possible. You can't experience

the bonding and the closeness and the love that you do as a parent. and then it just go away. And for me, I found God again. And, and, you know, for other people, it might be something that's very traumatic. Sometimes there's, you get to your lowest point, and that's how you basically can find God or whatever your spirituality is. But for me, it was becoming a mom and the love that I had for my son and thinking that it can't just be gone. Like, it's too powerful. It's too powerful.

So I'm all getting at, you know, happiness and I think part of that component is finding, you know, finding your spirituality, you know, whatever your religion is. Some people find that through meditation and eventually find God. But, you know, I think it's all part of happiness and people do sort of seek that out. Did that also get you closer to mom and dad? Everyone. It got me closer to everyone that I love, everyone that I love. everyone that I love. And it also helped me prioritize those relationships because it's so easy for

people that are high achievers to get caught up in the productivity loop. I have to work. I have to do a podcast. I have to go give a presentation. I have to do this work and get that satisfaction of achieving and accomplishing those things. And there's a little bit of ego there and you have to separate that. And I realize that no, I'm going to take time to do the family vacation. I'm going to take time to spend, you know, a few hours with friends that I care about. I mean, you have to put in that work and that effort, but it's so rewarding. And this is the year, like, as I was doing a podcast prep for Arthur, Dr. Arthur books, I know, and I've come to some of this realization on my own, but reading some of his books, like skimming some of his books and his material,

everything was like, it was like this moment where it was like, this is so true. And I really need to focus on it, you know, you need to make the effort to really be, happiness doesn't just come to you. I think a lot of people are sort of, it's like they have this misconception that happiness is something that you just experience. It just happens to you. No, it's just like a good diet. You have to like give yourself the right components. You have to work at it. You know, it's work. Have you read Outwitting the devil? No, I need, I need your book list. It sounds like there's. Yeah, no, I, but the more you're talking, it's just, it's prompting books in my mind. Outwitting the devil. There's a book Napoleon wrote in the late 30s, early 40s, and they kind of, he said, 1938, there you go.

And it was set aside, and then eventually it came out. I read this book at a P.F. Chang's in Woodland Hills, California. And I sat there. My sister recommended it. I'm like, oh, my God, what a powerful book, how so many different institutions when we're kids used the concept of fear to scare the crap out of us. and were raised in such a confined, you know, no, I can't do it, no, I can't. And then you finally realize, no, no, that's a business model.

And you have to kind of let it go. Anyways, I just think you would enjoy this book as well, outputting the devil. Two other things before we wrap up. I got questions for you. One is, do you see a correlation between being bilingual and delaying Alzheimer's? Because I see people saying the benefit of speaking multiple languages.

What is the benefit of speaking multiple languages? Yes, there is a correlation between delaying brain aging and, Because, you know, when you are experiencing, when you're basically doing novel, having novel experiences, novel being things that are different. So learning a different language, something that you're not used to, right? That takes a lot of work, a lot of cognitive power. And it's also novelty as well. I mean, that is absolutely stimulating a variety of pathways in the brain that are protective from brain aging. So, for example, brain drive neurotrophic factor is increased, and that's been shown in people that do learn other languages.

And it's not just languages. It's even like, for example, like taxi drivers in London, you know, where they have to use their before GPS. I mean, these people like use their brain to have mental maps of the city. And their studies showing that even that is correlated with reducing the risk for Alzheimer's. I can see that. It's like a workout, right? It's a workout. You're working your brain out.

It's very important. And again, it comes down to like when you stimulate your brain, you are increasing dopamine, you're increasing trophic factors in their brain that are causing, you know, strengthening synapses, the connection between neurons. They are growing new neurons. It's doing a lot of stuff that even exercise can do. So there's other roads to improving brain aging besides exercise. And one of them is really mental stimulation.

And that can be in the form of learning a new language. It can be in the form of, I mean, I am constantly analyzing. science. I am using my brain all the time. But that's for sure. That's for sure. Because you have to break that down. But the idea of language, you know, is it how to communicate? Is it

different dialect? What is it that delays Alzheimer's? You know, that correlation is very interesting to me. It is. But it's again, not just language, right? So that's the other thing that's interesting. But yeah, is there something unique about language? There might be.

Yeah. Yeah, to me, I play game. So let's just say we're done with our conversation today. I'll get in the car and I'm going to the other property. I'm going to play the game of how many facts I can restate from the conversation we had together. And I'm trying to see if I can remember how many. I'm going to go, okay, she said this, she said this, she said this, she said this, she said this. This is a form of an exercise to see if the memory is getting stronger. Instead, oh, okay, I just talk to this person, you walk away. And, you know, some of these exercises can help you up, but the language is definitely one that's interesting to me. Last one here. Gut microbiome.

Okay. What do we, what does the gut tie to? Is there stress? Is it aging? What does the gut tie to? It ties to everything. I mean, so the gut is the first organ that sees the food that you take in, right? So it's really prone to inflammation because of that food is inflammatory. Even if you're eating a healthy diet, when you put food in your gut, it is forcing the gut to work. you do cause some amount of inflammation in the gut no matter what. If you're eating an unhealthy diet and you're overweight or obese, that inflammation gets worse. And what I mean by inflammation is your gut epithelial cells open up and they release something that's in the gut because you have trillions of bacteria in there, the gut microbiome, as you mentioned. Well, the gut microbiome, those bacteria aren't always living. Some of them are dying off constantly. You're making new ones. You're having them dying off. Well, bacteria have something on their outer

cell membrane called lipopolysaccharide or LPS for short. And that gets released in the blood system when you eat a meal. And when that meal is really, really big, more of it gets released. When that meal is high inflammatory, if it's refined sugar, saturated fat, more of that gets released. When that LPS gets into circulation, it activates your immune system and it causes inflammation. That affects the brain. There's studies showing that if you inject LPS into a normal, healthy person or a placebo-salin control, they get inflammation in their their brain, they get depressive symptoms, they get, you know, cognitive functions depressed, all coming from the gut, right? LPS is coming from the gut. So it does affect, you know, inflammation in the brain,

which then leads to Alzheimer's disease. And then the gut microbiome itself, which was specifically what you're asking about, is also there's a direct line, you know, there's like neurons actually in the gut. And so there's like this vagal nerve that's connected, you know, from the brain all the way to the gut. And the bacteria in your gut communicate with that, with the brain through the this vagus nerve. And so the different types of bacteria also seem to play a role. Like certain types of bacteria in the gut can cause more anxiety. And there's all these studies that have been done in animals where you can take a mouse that's more of anxious phenotype mouse and take their gut bacteria and transplanted into a mouse that doesn't have anxiety. And you

can cause them to have anxiety, right? And then vice versa, you can take bacteria from a really robust stealth. Like they're, you know, they don't have that anxiety and put it into a mouse with anxiety and lower than anxiety. And that all comes down to, you know, there's neurotransmitters that are being stimulated with respect to the types of bacteria in your gut. How does one find out what they have? That's an emerging field. So there are a variety of tests that are consumer available out there.

I would say that those tests are, it's hard to know what to do with that data. So you can get a test done and get some data back and then some, you know, you might think you need to eat a certain diet or whatever. I would say we're in our infancy of really truly accurately being able to do a test at home on the individual level and figure out like what to do with that data. What I will say is that what we do know is that there are certain foods that you can eat that are known to be beneficial to promote the growth of healthy probiotic types of bacteria and decrease the growth of more of the pathogenic type of nature. I know you're a broccoli person, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, broccoli is great. I would say fermentable types of fiber are really good.

So those are the types of fiber that are found in mushrooms like beta glucans, oats, berries. The skins of fruits are really, really, these are the fermentable, soluble type of fiber. Skin of fruits? Yeah, so like you eat like a blueberry. And it's like in the fiber, the fermentable fibers in the skin of the fruit. Believe it or not, vegetables are mostly the insoluble type of fiber. That's the kind of fiber that's important for moving stuff through the system. You want to get stuff, you know, out, which is also important.

But the fermentable type of fiber is the stuff that's actually viscous, and it's fermented by bacteria. And this actually allows the beneficial type of bacteria, the probiotic type of bacteria, to outcompete some of the pathogenic type of bacteria. So you're having, you know, a better gut microbiome, which is going to basically help you lower inflammation when you eat food because it helps lower that, you know, the gut from opening up and releasing lipopolysacrate into your blood system. It's called the post-pranthial inflammatory response. It's after you eat a meal inflammation. That's why people feel sleepy after a meal. Inflammation is generated. Inflammation makes you feel sleepy because it's taking energy away from your brain,

and it's also increasing these cytokines that make you sleepy. So you want to lower that post-inflammatory response after a meal. So that would be, again, you want to basically have the right types of foods. Exercise also, by the way, help strengthen the gut so that it's less likely to be what's called leaky gut, right? That permeability of the gut is another thing to do. Some people can supplement with probiotics. I would say that's, it's kind of flow through. If you supplement with healthy probiotics, the minute you stop supplementing with them, you're going to be back. It doesn't take residence there. It's a flow through effect. So it is having a beneficial

effect, but it's a flow through effect because there's really no residential space to occupy. It's kind of like California. There's nowhere to build, right? The bacteria are all there. Just like California, there's nowhere to build. Well, I mean, there's places to build. San Diego, there's nowhere to build. Yes, yes, yes, in the cities, yes. That makes sense. But what I'm saying is that the real estate is, it's limited, right?

And so there's not a lot of places for that probiotic bacteria. You can always move to Florida, by the way. It's a beautiful place here. We love it in Florida. But Dallas is great. Where do you go in the summer? Here? York, Hamptons.

Okay, yeah. You go up, you have so many options. And it's easy, three hours. So I live 24 in L.A. Five years in Dallas, and officially I've lived more in Florida than Dallas. We love it in Dallas. And when I was building a national business, what I liked about Dallas was I was a three-hour flight from anywhere. L.A., it's six, New York, you know, so it's a mess.

And in Florida, it's also easy. And in L.A., there's nothing to do to go west. It's just Hawaii. But here, if I go east, the world is east. If I'm going to go to Europe, if I'm going to go to Germany, Italy, it's this way. There's nothing this way. Okay, so that was a little plug for Florida. If you guys ever think about moving, we love it here.

My daughter's four years old, Brooklyn. She's the best in the family. She is a fireball, nonstop. But when it comes down to kids, we got rid of cereal for the kids, life changing for us. We haven't had cereal for three years. The kids are now eating better. Their exercise, and they're all in shape physically. They do well.

but at four years old, you know, it's something, just eat a little cookie. Give a little candy. It's okay. It's sugar-free. It's this. How do you manage candy cookie with kids at that age, four years old? You'd be surprised. So when my son was four, I mean, I was explaining to him the negative effects of added sugar on the brain, on the body, how it makes you die sooner than you would.

And you'd be surprised how much these children can actually understand. Right. In kindergarten, you know, he was reading nutrition labels of his friends' lunches and telling them, that's too much sugar. You shouldn't have that because it's going to, I mean, he did say make you die sooner. But I mean, I mean, but now he's got his friends that are cutting the sugar out. The point is that like education, I mean, obviously they're going to love the sweetness and there's a dopamine response and it is addictive.

However, education and explaining things to them like you were. what an adult really does help because kids can understand a lot. And I think that people, you know, parents underestimate that, that education, like knowing, like, don't just say no, it's bad for you. Like, what does that mean? Like, they want to know. They want to know why. And when you can say, hey, do you want mommy and daddy to live longer?

They're going to say yes. Well, if we eat this, you know, added sugar in the cakes and the candy and the cookies, that's going to make us, like, die sooner. And guess what? When you start earlier in life, it's going to affect you, too. and they get it. You know, and so that's been my trick. Now, of course, they're going to want some sweets.

We haven't figured out with the three. The other three, they're all in top-not shape. You see them, they're very athletic. With the fourth one, she is a very good negotiator. She's, like, Daddy, this is low-sugar, Daddy. This is low-sugar. It's okay. I'm just going to take a little bite.

No, baby. Here's why. But she's a great salesperson. Maybe she's going to do very well in business later on. Who knows? She knows how to close her grandpa and, The nanny and mommy, not mommy as much, but grandpa and nanny definitely. By the way, anxious generation, Jonathan Haidt.

I'm sure you've read it. Have you had him on in your podcast? No, I need to. That would be a good conversation with the two of you. That's another one of those good ones. This has been a blast talking to you. Thank you for this. It was awesome.

How can people find you? Well, as I mentioned, I have a podcast. It's called Found My Fitness. It's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast. My website, foundmyfitness.com. I have a great newsletter every week. I send out a really good email on the latest science behind health, nutrition, aging, with actionable takeaways.

So that's free. You can sign up for that on my website, foundmyfitness.com. Beautiful. Flash newsletter. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm on social media. Dr. Rhonda Patrick found my fitness. You can find me everywhere. Is there anywhere people can ask you questions or no?

I do have, um, so I don't have sponsors on my podcast. I don't, you know, have any ads. I'm sponsored by listeners. So it's kind of a crowd. funding kind of, I would say, way that we're supported. And part of the membership that people get for $15 a month, if they do want to join the membership and support everything I'm doing, they get extra perks where every month I do a live Q&A and they submit questions and I answer, you know, the questions based on top voted, based on interest, based on what I want to know,

what I think other people want to know. And it's recorded and they have a private podcast that it's put out on. They also get a private podcast that only is special for members. But So that's where I really answer questions a lot is through my membership in Q&A. But I do sometimes try to get on social media. I would say less now than before because I actually don't think it's good to consume social media. As much as that hurts my business to say because I am on social media and I post on it. I don't consume it. I just think it's become unhealthy.

So anyways, that's a whole other conversation. Maybe another time we'll do that. Gang, if you want to learn more, click on a link below. We'll put it below for the web. website, the channels, everything. Thank you so much for coming up. This was a great. Really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it as well. Take care. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast, we had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead,

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