The Joe Rogan Experience - #1054 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a Ph.D. in biomedical science and expert on nutritional health. Her podcasts and other videos can be found at http://FoundMyFitness.com

My boy woke me up at like every hour. I'm hoping I don't have mommy brain. Boom and we're live. The newly mommy Dr. Rhonda Patrick. First of all congratulations on making people. Thank you. You made your first person. Yeah the cloning project was a success. We were talking before the show about what a strange biological shift happens in your mind. And isn't it? It's amazing isn't it? And not just your mind right? Like your mind. And isn't it, it's amazing, isn't it? And not just your mind, right? Like your person. Absolutely. Yeah. It's completely amazing. And I had no idea that I would love being a mom so much. You know, I kind of waited till later in life to have a child. And, you know, that was for a reason because I was, you know, really driven and loved what I was doing in

science. And I felt, you know, I didn't feel that calling to like, I've, you know, really driven and loved what I was doing in science. And I felt, you know, I didn't feel that calling to like, I've got to reproduce, I've got to reproduce. And then finally, I was like, well, if I don't reproduce now, I might not get a chance. So, you know, I that sort of pressure kind of nudged me a little bit, I think. But yeah, the whole like, process of getting pregnant and having this like, you know, person growing inside of me. Just the whole thing was amazing. And then after having the baby and he's like a person now and he's four months old and developing this little personality. I'm like so amazed by how in love I am with him and how like how much I would do anything for him and how almost nothing really

affects me as much like stress of various things in life you know I just look at him and you know see him smile at me and do some little things that are like you know uniquely him and the wonder and awe in his eyes and it's just like gone like it's really amazing so yeah that's crazy it changes your life it changes who you are as a human being, you know, and it changes it in a way that you did. You know, I have a lot of friends that are like, I don't want kids. I never want kids. I'm like, well, I kind of didn't really want kids either. You know, when I was 30, like I was like, I don't want kids. But then once you have them, you, you realize like, oh, like I was just sort of attached to this idea of living my life the way I was living it.

And then I'm like, this is the way I like to live life. And then you have a kid. You're like, oh, no, I love this kid more than anything. Like so now my whole idea of what life is shifts into this new paradigm. And also the thing like reproduce always weirds me out because you're not you're making people you're not reproducing anything you know I mean you're making people it's a whole new person you're not reproducing you true I mean you obviously it is it is in a way I mean there's it's definitely

reproductions right yeah I mean you're passing on a lot of the same you know variations in genes that you have and And, you know, you're obviously, you know, there's similarities in the way they look to both you and your spouse. But, yeah, it is a completely new person with a new personality. But, of course, all that is shaped a lot by your diet and exercise and all those things that you do. Even, you know, aside from your actual genetics and passing on the sequence of DNA, like just, you know, things that you do in your lifestyle actually can affect, you know, the child's neurocognitive development and, you know, metabolism. Now, were you cognizant of that or were you, obviously, you were very aware of that,

but did you, what did you do to act on that, I should ask? Yeah, so, I mean, I did, I definitely became obsessed with trying to optimize everything I could. You know, because I'm a scientist and I can sort of sift through the literature, I think you can kind of get stuck in this loop where you want to, like, optimize everything and you kind of have to make sure, you know, all the micronutrients I was getting, you know, because they're so important for brain development and like folate, magnesium, iron, you know, zinc, and then DHA, vitamin D, all these things were super important. Actually, with the DHA, I found out that taking, so DHA is the marine omega-3 fatty acid that's predominantly found in like microalgae for vegetarians versus but in fish, fatty fish. Well, it turns out that the DHA that's in what's called phospholipid form, which is something that's found in the row of fish. So like fish eggs. It's also found in krill as well. And fish only have like a small percentage.

So fish have DHA, like 1% of their DHA is in phospholipid form. Whereas the row of the fish, anywhere between 40 to 70% is in phospholipid form. Wow. And the thing that's really cool about this is that the phospholipid form, it's been shown when you take that orally, it stays, more of it ends up in a certain type of phospholipid form in the blood. That has been shown to get into the developing fetal brain 10 times better than DHA and non-phospholipid form, free fatty acid form. So is this something that should be consumed for regular people as well or primarily mothers? So, yeah, I think both. But the fact that it gets taken up into the developing fetal brain

10 times better was enough ammunition for me to be like, I'm eating this Aminro. But, yeah, so there have also been studies on preclinical studies on taking DHA up in phospholipid form in mice. It's taken up better than non-phospholipid. And then there's been some clinical studies where they like radiolabel and follow it in humans. And again, it's taken up better in the brain by humans as well. And actually, what's really interesting is I just submitted a paper for publication on Alzheimer's disease and a certain variation in a gene called APOE4, which I think you and I talked a lot about traumatic brain injury and susceptibility to

Alzheimer's disease and basically a bunch of, you know, dementia type of problems. Well, APOE4 sort of helps increase that risk. So I've, you know, turns out there's because there's different transport mechanisms to get DHA into the brain, the phospholipid form appears to be better for APOE4. And that's sort of my finding. I'm not going to get all into the mechanism, but that's hopefully fingers crossed going to be accepted for peer from peer review within the next couple of months. That's fascinating. So were you eating salmon roe? That's what you were saying you were getting your source from? I was, yeah.

I was eating salmon roe. I was ordering it from a company that has wild Alaskan salmon roe, and you can buy it in bulk. The company was called Vital Choice. Does it taste nasty? It tasted nasty during my first trimester. I was like, oh, maybe I should wait. But, you know, the texture, a lot of people don't like, like Dan doesn't like the texture because like the salmon roe is like bigger.

The fish eggs are bigger. And so it can kind of pop and like you get like little fish oil. We used to use those to fish for trout. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Trout would eat salmon roe. So we would fish for trout using salmon eggs.

Well, I mean, the salmon eggs are like... They're quite a bit larger, right? Yeah, they're quite a bit larger. There's other ones like, I think it's the flying fish that are really small. The DHA and phospholipid form varies from species, different types of fish and things like that. But generally speaking, it's a good thing to eat and especially during pregnancy. So how did you consume it? On avocados. I put it on top of avocados with some lemon juice and like, like hot sauce.

Like, so. Okay. Just juiced it up. It's kind of like a paleo drink. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a lot of fat. So avocados have like potassium, they have monounsaturated fat and vitamin E, all the different forms, you know, so. Avocados have monounsaturated fat, and vitamin E, all the different forms. Avocados have monounsaturated fat and saturated fat, right? They have a small amount of saturated fat.

Probably a small amount, yeah. When I say they have, typically when I talk about foods, I'll talk about what's concentrated. So it's really concentrated and monounsaturated fat. Whereas if you say butter or cheese, then it's concentrated and saturated fat. Right, right. But typically you'll find monopolyunsaturated fat in all different forms of fat. Just varying amounts, right? And to some degree it's like, well, is that even really significant? It's such a small amount.

I don't know. Now, how much of the salmon roe were you consuming? It really depends like i started to really start to ramp up my consumption um in like the third trimester when brain development was like really gearing up crazy you're thinking about this like as a scientist it's so interesting yeah so every day i was putting a big old tablespoon full on top of my avocado uh really third trimester was like i was like almost every day trying to consume it wow but it was hard for me the first trimester i was i started to try a little

bit and it made me a little nauseous like what if your kid can read minds what if like it comes out and he's like super brain you know everyone probably is super biased about their own children yeah but i'm like he's got great verbal skills and well your husband's super smart you're super smart like this and you're eating all these fish eggs this kid's this kid's set well thank you it'll be interesting it can't talk to him yeah one day he's gonna be four sit right there what's funny is he was like early on when he was like six weeks old, he was he went through a really short stage of he was making sounds that sounded like hello. And so my mom would come over and she would in his face, she'd go, hello, hello. And he would and we have a video of it.

Like, I could send it to you. I'll send it to you. He'd go, I don't know. And it like literally seems like he's saying it. But clearly he's not. I mean, he's six weeks old, you know. saying it, but clearly he's not. I mean, he's six weeks old, you know, but he was able to like sort of mimic the sound because I think it was easier for him since he was already sort of making those sounds.

So, of course, Dan and I were all super pumped. We're like, he's going to be a genius. We're sending the video to all the family members. You should really listen to what we say. See? Oh, that's hilarious. Of course, you know, he's not really saying hello. Right.

He's making noises. Yeah, he's making noises that sound like it. And it's just totally coincidental. Well, there's just a difference between a kid making a noise and a kid knowing what that noise means. Like when they're actually talking. Yeah. Like my young, well, my seven-year-old, the seven-year-old, she didn't really start talking in full sense until she was like a year and a half. in full sense until she was like a year and a half but my my nine-year-old like when she was like nine ten months old she was talking it was weird like she's really smart like she was talking

like right away like and she stood up quicker too she's she was standing at like nine months old which i found pretty shocking yeah well yeah like an unassisted standing yeah like that's when she wanted to stand. Wow. Nine months old. She was like getting her stand on and trying to take some steps. And I was like, this is crazy. Like she's just, and she's like, that's how she is.

Like as a little person too. She's a little go getter. Uh huh. I often wonder, you know, the, the earlier, the firstborns and the ones that are born earlier, like if they get more attention to, because it's novel, you're a first-time parent. And then as more children come, it's like you're spread a little more thin. It's not necessarily the case, but it's certainly something I've often wondered. If I want to have another child, will I be able to do it?

There's so much work that goes into it. You know, if I if we if I want to have another child, will I be able to do it? You know, it's because I really just want to. There's so much work that goes into, you know, not just, you know, the nutrition part. And I was talking about you asked me about, you know, things during pregnancy and something I think people don't realize is that, you know, epigenetics, which is basically the transference of it it's heritable, like you can transfer things that happen to you in your lifestyle without actually altering the sequence of DNA. And you can do that by changing how much a gene is activated or not activated. And there's been studies, lots and lots of studies in animals showing this to be the case. Of course, that's animals and how much of that actually translates to humans. But there was a really interesting study a couple of years ago. I think it was like 2015 that was published that looked at the effect of obesity and obesity was actually looked at not in the mothers,

but the fathers. And so sperm DNA was collected from, from males that were obese and males that were lean. And there's a variety of different genes, like hundreds of different genes that were looked at. And about 300 different genes were different in how they were activated or not activated in the sperm DNA of the obese men. And a lot of those genes had to do with cognition, learning memory, and metabolism. So that's very interesting.

But what was super interesting was that these men, they were morbidly obese or very obese. They underwent bariatric surgery and their sperm DNA was then collected, you know, a couple of months after and then like close to a year after. And as time went on, their sperm DNA looked like the lean people. So basically losing the weight, just losing the weight had an effect on these genes that are involved in cognition and metabolism. And like I said, you know, lots of animal studies have shown obesity has a negative effect on like, you know, causing type one diabetes later in life and different, you know, cognitive disabilities and things like that. So, you know, it is something like people that are wanting to

conceive might consider their health before trying to procreate. I'm not saying that you shouldn't procreate if you're not healthy, but it's just something, another thing to think about. And also I think it's a motivating factor for people because sometimes you don't care as much about yourself. I mean, some people don't. They're just kind of like, but their child or their unborn child, that's probably, you know, a driver for people to make a change like that. I would certainly hope it would be. I mean, you have this opportunity to really literally change the way your child develops.

And it's just by your discipline. Right. Just by whether or not you're taking care of your own body. You can literally change the future of your child. Because you're saying that these genes that are in this obese man's sperm, the way they're represented, that's going to be passed on to the kid. Yeah. Versus the lean version of him. Those genes will be passed on to the kid. The kid literally will have a different starting point in life.

Which is crazy. It's totally crazy. Yeah. a different starting point in life. Which is crazy. It's totally crazy. Yeah. And I mean, of course, the child itself can change things through epigenetics, through their diet and lifestyle, but you're giving them a baseline here, right?

I mean, so it's definitely a very, it's a growing field. A lot of the research is done in animals because it's really difficult to to do that sort of these sorts of experiments in humans but i think that this is sort of a proof of principle at the very least looking at the the sperm dna um you know so it's it's something to consider and i've had like like friends of friends that have you know that are that are overweight or obese and wanting to like have children and so it's like i try to talk to them about that in a way that's not, like, condescending. Yeah. You know, some people do have a hard time.

They try to lose weight and, you know, they have to find the right combination of things that works for them. But I do think that people would get more motivated if they're like, wow, I can, you know, affect my future child's risk for type 1 diabetes or for, you know, like how well what their IQ is, how well they're performing on learning and memory tests. So and also avoid the horrific guilt that you would feel if you didn't do that and you started to see these things manifesting in your child. You realize, oh, my God, I set this kid up in a shitty way because I'm lazy which is essentially what a lot of the problem is with people it's just they they don't have what whatever the mental you know and people get angry if you say they're they're lazy because they don't diet forget that word forget take take away the word lazy you're unmotivated let's say that but for whatever reason if you choose not to take care of your health and you see that transfer into your child and you know that you're unhappy with your existence.

You know you're unhappy with your physical body and you refuse to do or for whatever reason don't do enough. And then you see these same problems manifesting in your own baby and you realize like, oh, my God, I started this kid off in a shitty way. Like you're going to be riddled with guilt. Totally. I mean, the thing is, most people don't know about avigenetics, and they don't know that they're able to do that. So the more people are educated, I think the better the outcome will be. But like you said, the people that do know and then still do it, it's like, yeah, the

guilt. I mean, that's like unbelievable. Well, it's like people who smoke when they have a kid. You know, that's so insane. You see people that are pregnant smoking. I was in, I forget what state it was in, but we were outside this convenience store and there was a lady who was clearly pregnant and she clearly was smoking cigarettes. And I was like, fuck, man. That's just, it was Canada.

I was like, this hurts my feelings just watching that. It just hurts my feelings. Doesn't it just make you sick? Yeah, that's like, you know, and there's all sorts of, you know, studies that have shown, you know, of course, smoking during pregnancy causes or not causes, but have been associated with like ADHD and what's it called? Like, like the movement, just like a, like a dyskinesia thing, you know, all sorts of problems so yeah it's certainly like i having the knowledge you know and continuing to read throughout pregnancy and then once you know having the baby like one thing that i knew that i really really wanted to do was i wanted to breastfeed like that was you know like they're the benefits of breastfeeding are just amazing and and this is something that like

my like my stepmother for example her generation also my grandmother, they didn't know about this. Like so they weren't recommended to breastfeed, you know, back in like the 50s. Like it just wasn't, you know, the benefits weren't known. But now we know like breastfeeding, it's kind of amazing. There are something, there's something in breast milk called human milk oligosaccharides. Have you heard of these HMOs? No. There's like 200 different human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk.

In fact, it's like the third most common factor in breast milk behind lactose and fat. 200 different ones. And they cannot be digested at all by the infant's digestive system. It's like they co-evolved specifically to feed the microbiome in the gut of these infants. And they're specifically increasing the species of bacteria. Bifidobacteria infantis is one really, really important one. But it's amazing that they're – it's really – that's the only purpose that they serve is to feed and basically populate the infant gut with this beneficial bacteria. And this bacteria has been shown to, one, set up the immune system because they digest these oligosaccharides and they produce other molecules called short-chain fatty acids. called short-chain fatty acids.

Those short-chain fatty acids like lactate, butyrate, acetate, things that you've heard of, those act as what are called signaling molecules to basically determine what kind of immune cells you're going to make. So a big one that they do is they make T-regulatory cells, which are a kind of immune cells that prevents autoimmunity, autoimmune responses. So like children that are not breastfed, they lack like four different species of gut bacteria, and they have like a threefold increased risk of allergies and autoimmune related diseases. So it's like it's doing that. And also it's like preventing pathogenic bacteria from like taking residence there. Because these human milk oligosaccharides,

not only are they feeding the beneficial bacteria, well, recently it's been found that they, like, break down biofilms that bacteria create to, like, you know, basically escape antimicrobial activity. So there's a lot of antimicrobial things in breast milk, like lauric acid, which is also found in coconut oil. But the human milk oligosaccharides basically break down the biofilm so that the lauric acid can work better so it's like you know and there's stem cells there's stem cells in breast milk mammary stem cells like that blew my mind i think like it's been like 10 years since the discovery of that but like it's been so it's it the the studies have been mostly done in mice but they have measured humans you know have uh the same mammary type of stem cells in their breast milk

but in animals in preclinical studies it's been shown that those that those breast stem cells they get digested they go into the bloodstream and they go to various organs they go to the kidney the liver the brain and they start to like in the pancreas, they start to make like insulin producing cells. Like it's crazy. Wow. So that's amazing that only 10 years ago they didn't know this. Yeah, I know. It's all happening so fast when it comes to knowledge of nutrition and the effect on the body and especially developing children. Well, the breast milk thing is really what's interesting because once I like, you know, I had my son and you immediately, you know, start breastfeeding. Like I had no idea it was going to be so difficult. Like I thought it was just and maybe it's not difficult for everyone, but I think it's difficult for a lot of women.

And a lot of women give up after like the first two weeks. They give up because, you know, it's just for various reasons. It can be extremely frustrating. You're a new parent. You're getting no sleep. And, you know, so like I, my son had a little bit of a tongue tie where like the little thing underneath his tongue kind of prevented his tongue from moving like as much as it's supposed to.

So like he, when he opened his mouth and he'd latch on, there was a little bit of problem. So the first two weeks were really hard for me, but that sort of resolved. But I really had to try, like Dan and I were taking, I was pumping some milk and we were putting it in a syringe with a little tube and like putting it on the breast, you know, because I didn't want to introduce the bottle so early. So, I mean, and that was hard. I mean, I was getting no sleep. I mean, I could totally see if you didn't know all the benefits of breastfeeding that I could see how new mothers would, you know, give up because it's extremely difficult. So that's something, you know, that I completely understand. I understand now. Like, I think previously I was like, how can anyone not breastfeed?

You know, but it really it's not easy for everyone. There's all sorts of problems that women have. I understand now. I think previously I was like, how can anyone not breastfeed? But really, it's not easy for everyone. There's all sorts of problems that women have. But there are actually breast milk banks so women can donate their breast milk and people can buy the breast milk instead of getting formula. Of course, there's all sorts of other problems. It's like, well, are they getting enough vitamin D and omega-3? And what else are they taking? There's so many different things that happen once you have children.

Breast milk being breastfeeding, I'm sure, being one of them. But the lack of sleep thing, I think most people just really don't have any idea what is happening. And then they also don't understand how difficult it is to watch a child. And right now it's difficult. Wait until the kid starts walking. They start walking around. You have to follow them around. You're literally like walking around with them everywhere they go.

Like, don't put that in your mouth. Don't touch that. Lick that. You'll get electrocuted. It's like everywhere you go. It's such a, I don't want to say a project. It's just way more difficult and consuming. And also your protective instincts are ramped up so high. Like my friend Eddie had cats and rabbits.

He was talking about how much he loves his rabbits. And I'm like, dude, just wait until you have your kid. You're going to want to kill those fucking rabbits. He's like, no way, man. I love the cats. I love his rabbits. And I'm like, dude, just wait until you have your kid. You're going to want to kill those fucking rabbits. He's like, no way, man. I love the cats. I love the rabbits. And as soon as he had the kid, he's like, fuck, you're right. The cat's annoying.

He goes, my cat wakes up my kid. I want to kill those fucking cats. It's true. Your protective mechanisms. I know. It changes you. It changes you so much. And people that don't have children who complain about kids that are crying, it used to bother me.

Like if I was on a plane and babies were crying, I used to be like, God, this baby won't shut up. But now I'm like, oh, poor baby. Like literally it doesn't bother me. Like someone could be right next to me with a crying baby and I feel bad for the baby. It doesn't bother me like, damn, this baby won't shut up it's like a different feeling totally I I've started to experience that to some degree in various ways as well where it's like you just the poor baby you become a different person yeah yeah you do you really did it's amazing yeah it's it's it's the best thing ever well I mean it

creates so much empathy I mean it just my whole perspective of what a person is is different. My idea of a person used to be a static form, like Jamie's 35. What are you, 35? Almost. 34. I would say, oh, that's 34-year-old Jamie. That's who he is. I never thought, oh, Jamie was a baby.

Jamie used to be a four-year-old. Jamie went to preschool. Jamie went to kindergarten. I never thought about it that way. I'd be like, oh, there's Jamie. Hey hey what's up jamie jamie's always been jamie you know that's like how i used to look at people now i look at everybody as a baby like oh that's a baby that became a grown man like that's how i look at everyone now it's so it's it's weird it's like a paradigm shift happened in my brain that is that's that's, that's definitely weird. It made me way more compassionate, way,

way nicer to people. Just way. I just, I think I don't want anybody's life to fall apart anymore. I used to like, I hope that guy gets hit by a truck, you know, now I'm like,

man, I hope that little baby figures out why he's such an asshole. I would be interesting to kind of see the brain activation pathways that change. Like, you know, if you're talking about being more compassionate, that's almost like, I mean, It would be interesting to kind of see the brain activation pathways that change. Like, you know, if you're talking about being more compassionate, that's almost like, I mean, there's a certain type of meditation that's like compassion meditation that people do that changes like certain parts of the brain. It'd be kind of interesting to see. Like Dan thinks that I've gotten more creative, you know, because I make up all these like mommy games and mommy songs just like I never was really a super super creative person I'm more analytical. You know, I've got I definitely have some creativity but like

He's kind of like I wonder if just like becoming a mommy like you just all of a sudden more creative, you know I don't know. I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff going on. I mean your brain just gets activated I Do stuff with my seven-year-old sometimes, and half the time we're doing stuff, I'm like, I can't even believe you're real. Like, I'm having these little conversations with her. We're playing little games. And, you know, like, we play this really stupid game.

It's so dumb. You spin this thing, and it's like, it corresponds to different color acorns, and, you know. And she wins, and she jumps up. She's like, ooh, I beat you. And she's doing her little dance and she's throwing her arms in the air. And I'm like, half of me is laughing

because she's funny, but half of me is going, this is so strange that you're a little person that I'm talking to. Like you were a baby and now you're this little seven-year-old playing this game with me. It's like, it's so odd.

I feel that way with my four-month-old. I game with me it's like it's so odd i feel that way with my four-month-old i see little personality things already kind of creeping up and it's like it's amazing yeah so i can only imagine like as he continues to develop that's why it's very i think it's very difficult for people that don't have children to sort of develop that same level of compassion it sounds like a cop-out it sounds like it sounds weird, but I really do. I think there's something, there's actually something to be gained. And as far as like everyone reproducing, well, obviously we have too many people. So that's not, I don't know if that's the best thing. And I certainly think that you could be a fully formed, healthy, wonderful person who contributes an amazing thing to the world. If you don't have children, I don't think you have

to have children. But I think for me, it was, it was very much, there was a, there was a giant learning experience along with, there was a giant evolving experience along with just being a parent. It was something happened to me. Yeah. It's, it's, it's absolutely life changing. And, um, it's, I had no idea. Like I've always people say, it's the best thing that happened to me. And it truly is. I mean, it truly is the best thing. And so, you know, I'm, I just, I'm excited to continue to see how it changes me. And it just unfortunately corresponds with a lot of financial stress with a lot of people.

Time stress, financial stress, lack of sleep. And sometimes they just don't appreciate it. You know, it's just, you're so overwhelmed by the burden of just trying to get by that sometimes you can't appreciate this amazing moment that happened in front of you. And, you know, it's hard. It's hard to have a good perspective, and it's hard to, like, be able to see things from above, like to sort of rise above and look at the big picture of this thing. Totally.

And that's, for me, something that really helps me that is exercise. Sure. And I think that also, you know, I didn't have any postpartum depression, at least I think I didn't. I mean, I felt. What do you think causes that? I think there's a variety of factors. I mean, so for one, you know, you're during pregnancy, your estrogen levels, estrogen levels, they go through the roof.

I mean, it's like a hundredfold higher. A hundredfold? Something like that. Wow. It's really high compared to your baseline. And don't quote me. I mean, something like that, just orders and orders of magnitude higher. just orders and orders of magnitude higher.

And estrogen has been shown to increase the expression of a gene called tryptophan hydroxylase 2 in the brain that produces serotonin from tryptophan. So you're constantly making serotonin, constantly, constantly, constantly. And then, you know, after you have the baby, that goes away. So it's kind of like a withdrawal. So that's sort of one biochemical explanation. But there are many others. One, I think their circadian rhythm is off. You're not getting enough light because you're like nesting.

You're like, I don't think we left. I mean, I don't remember going outside for like two weeks. Really? Yeah. It was like, you know, especially with the difficult breastfeeding part. So it was like you're constantly inside. You're not getting that bright light exposure. Your sleep is completely disrupted.

So your circadian rhythm, which is, you know, extremely, extremely important for mood, for the way you feel, that is completely disrupted because you're waking up, you know, multiple times a night and that's completely gone. And it's stressful. It's like, completely new experience, you have this, like, very fragile baby, you know, that you're responsible for. And so I think that combination of all these things really can can play a role in that. And for me, I really tried to make sure I was getting exercise as soon as I could. You know, so that is something because exercise for a variety of reasons. One, it's been shown to increase the production of serotonin by getting transport of tryptophan into the brain. So branched chain amino acids, which are found in a variety of proteins, they can out-compete tryptophan to get into the brain. And so if you're not exercising, you're constantly getting the branched-chain amino acids in the brain,

which are serving other important roles, but you're not getting that tryptophan. So you're not getting the precursor to make serotonin. And so the exercise alleviates that competition. Branched-chain amino acids get taken up into your muscle where they're used to help build muscle, which is good. And the triptan gets into the brain. So you're making serotonin. That's one. Two, you're making endorphins, beta-endorphins help.

So that's another thing. And then you're increasing the production of new neurons through serotonin, also through brain-derived neurotrophic factor. That also has been shown to help alleviate depression and prevent depression. The actual neurogenesis, the thing that helps you stave off brain aging, which by the way, there's been like, there was like 14 clinical trials that have been analyzed looking at humans that undergo like aerobic exercise and how they have like their left part of their hippocampus doesn't like atrophy like people who do not exercise you know so that's like because the neurogenesis but that that's another reason you know so you can visually see it atrophy the some sort of an MRI yeah have you ever looked if you like google like Alzheimer's disease brain

like there's there's images all over the place where they show like before and after and there's just like big holes in the brain. Well, I did because someone was comparing it to a football player. What's the guy's name who fell off the car? The guy was Henry? Chris Henry. Chris Henry. He was, I think he was only 28, right?

Maybe 26. He was a young man who was an NFL football football player no one had any idea he had cte this is like uh earlier understanding i believe this is like seven years ago somewhere around there um much less understanding about the the effects of cte and he had some sort of an altercation with his girlfriend chased after her she was she jumped in a car and he didn't want her to leave so he jumped on top of the truck to try to hang on and fell off the truck and killed himself uh yeah so they do an autopsy on him and they find out that he has a brain of a 70 year old man with alzheimer's

whoa he's 28 some 26 28 whatever he was he was under 30, and super athlete. And they were stunned. And they looked at his brain and they're like, well, this doesn't even make sense. And now they're finding that this is the case with so many football players. You, when you went to see the UFC, when you and Dan went to see the UFC, and I talked to you afterwards, we all went to dinner afterwards, and your eyes were as big as dinner plates and you were like, this is so bad. So many bad things are happening.

And then you started going into detail about the various things that were happening. It was so fascinating to watch you, a scientist, watch people get head kicked and punched in the face and watch MMA take place. Yeah. get head kicked and punched in the face and watch watch MMA tag plays yeah I mean it's it's kind of crazy to think about how people like as a profession go and get like they're getting TBI like constantly getting their head bashed in and you know there there are there's definitely like if you look at the non you know fighting form so it's like a martial arts where they're like it seems a lot more beautiful like cool like moves and stuff you know but like form. So it's like a martial arts where they're like, it seems a lot more beautiful, like cool, like moves and stuff, you know,

but like the actual, like getting your head bashed and stuff, like that's crazy. It's so crazy, you know? And I understand money is a big driving factor because they probably make a lot of money, but you know, what's it worth when you're not able to enjoy it when you're older and you just lose your brain?

It's not just money. It's the excitement of it. The way I describe it is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. High-level problem-solving? Yeah, that's what fighting is. You have a skill set. I have a skill set. We're playing a game.

And the game is I want to try to hit you with my bones. And you're trying to hit me with your bones. And we're trying to figure out who's better at it. And I know that you know what I know. If you get to a certain level, that's one of the things that I love about jiu-jitsu. Is that jiu-jitsu sort of solves this, but it does so without hitting each other. Jiu-jitsu is all grappling. And there's obviously a lot of injuries that come from jiu-jitsu.

I think that's what I meant when I was saying something that looks kind of cool. Yeah, like the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships just happened this past weekend. I was watching some of the videos online. And you watch these really high-level guys going after it. And it's amazing. It's beautiful. They're attacking and counterattacking. And me, in my mind, I'm thinking of the countless hours of dedication and focus it's required to reach this level of proficiency where they know what to do and when to do it.

They're trying to counter, and they're both black belts at a very high level. So it's like you're examining this game, and it doesn't have the same feeling when someone loses that an MMA fight has. Like I watched the UFC this past weekend and there's some brutal knockouts. And when you watch someone get KO'd and you see their brain shut off and their legs stiffen up and they go flat. I saw someone get knocked out. I forgot who it was. But it was like one of the last like most exciting fights. And it was like he, I mean, it was crazy.

Yeah. For sure. last like most exciting fights and it was like he i mean it was it was crazy yeah for sure and and i think i we talked about this you know last time you know a couple years ago but the apo e4 gene i think really is something that would at least give some insight because i mean it's known that people that have at least one allele of those of that gene they can can have really, really bad consequence if they get TBI. I mean, we're talking 10 to 20-fold more risk for CTE, for other- 10 to 20-fold more? Yeah, if they have two copies of it, so they're like homozygous, which is a lot less common. One copy is more common. That would be anywhere like a two to five-fold.

But when you have two copies, it can be up 10 to 20 fold higher. So that's something that's like, with the MMA or the UFC kind of fighting, I mean, or football or boxing or fill in the blank sports that has a high risk for TBI. I think that's something that athletes should consider.

And you probably would find ones that would say, hey, maybe I shouldn't do this, especially if they had two. Well, you see that with football players now. Quite a few football players who are aware of this are actually backing out of the NFL at a very young age. They have headaches. There was a guy recently who was 24 years old, just retired. He's like, I'm done.

Yeah. You know, and he has a bright future apparently. Well, let's look, we got sidetracked. So you were talking about exercise and the, what, the hippocampus? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the benefits of exercise on the brain, which I know that I constantly talk about this to you, but it's

just so, you know, it's so damn important. It's so important. It's so important. And it is, it's one of those things that like, it helps me with everything with, you know, and the brain aging is like, it's like, it's the long-term effect. So it helps me with the short-term, which is like handling life and handling stress. You were talking about how people have a hard time, you know, seeing things from a higher level. And, and it's so true, you know, because life is hard, you know, you have to like make it,

you have to survive. And if you don't have a starting place, a starting, if your baseline is, is kind of like, you don't have a lot to start with and it's, you have to work all, you know, all the more work you have to put in. So I think that, you know, getting distracted with trying to make money trying to like, survive and try to, you know, try to like, live a good life and get married and have kids and all this, it can be really stressful. So, you know, I have, of course, my own stresses. But I think that the exercises, the short the short term effects I get from that, you know, are helping with clarity, helping me with being able to kind of take a step back and not be so anxious. And there's controlled trials showing this as well with exercise.

You know, I, for the longest time, have been a runner. And running is like, for me, you know, I love the frame of mind I'm in when I'm running. Like, it's kind of like this reflective daydreaming, which some people in some studies say, well, daydreaming is not good because you're ruminating when you're daydreaming. But I think the daydreaming that you do when you're like running is a lot different from like if you were you and I were having this conversation right now, but I wasn't present. Oh, right. Right. So that's called rumination. And that's a stressful kind of daydreaming. Spacing out. Yeah.

Where you're not present because you're worried about this other thing you have to do. Right. But the daydreaming effect when I'm running is a little bit more of a reflective, it's a good, it's like a cleansing for me. Yeah, I feel the same way. When you run? Yeah. Yeah, I saw that you've recently gotten into that, which is- Yeah, over the past year but literally last january i started because uh a friend of

mine had a run uh in in vegas uh 5k i jumped in it with zero running at all and i was like god this is fucking hard i was like i'm in shape i'll just go run but i never ran like literally never now i run every week and it was hard for you, right? Yeah, it was hard. But what's interesting is my cardio for everything else has gone through the roof. It's wet because I'm running like brutal trails, like really steep mountain trails. And I'm doing, the most I do is four miles. The least I do is one mile. Sometimes I do two.

But it's essentially hill sprints. Okay, so you're getting some high intensity in there, you're sprinting. It's very high intensity and it's all's essentially hill sprints okay so you're doing some you're getting some high intensity in there you're sprinting it's very high intensity and it's all it's all like really extensive cardio it's like it's heavy duty stuff right i run it with my dog now dude that's awesome so what's interesting is for me um after pregnancy like i couldn't wait to go out running and so i think it was four weeks in four weeks four weeks postpartum i went out for a run i saw your instagram post yeah okay so i went out for a run. I saw your Instagram post. Yeah. Okay. So I went out for a run.

I was super excited. That's probably the only post I did because what I found out as I was running is I didn't feel so great. Like I felt like my bladder felt full, even though it wasn't like, and so I would, I would stop and go to the bathroom, like on my run. And then I would, I was like, okay. And then run again, it still felt full. And I was like, okay, and then run again. It still felt full. And I was like, this is not normal.

Like, there's, you know, so I went to my OBGYN, talked to him. And apparently your pelvic floor, like, changes after having a baby and can, like, you know, fall down and kind of hit your bladder a little. And so it feels, some women actually, like, pee and urinate when they're running. Like, I never had it like that. Well, he looked at my pelvic floor. It was like on a scale from zero to 10, zero being the best, you're a one. And I'm like, really? Because I feel like a seven, you know?

And so he was like, well, you probably shouldn't have started running so soon. So don't do that. Why don't you start doing some low impact exercise and start doing these like strength, like strengthening your pelvic floor with like kegels and like some core strengths, which I've been doing. So I so I was like, crap, what am I going to do like running, I would just walk out the door and go, you know, run. And that was like my escape. So I started doing this, the cycling class high intensity interval cycling class, which is, it's an hour long, and it's a spin class, but it's not like the dancey spin. cycling class, which is, it's an hour long and it's a spin class, but it's not like the dancey spin.

So it's the, it's a, it's a spin class where, um, you do hills and sprints and it's, it's an hour long, but you're mixing it with just aerobic. And so you're, you'll, you get these sprints and these hills. And I mean, I really, really, really like it for multiple reasons. You know, one is, um, the group setting where I feel like the people around me, I'm like, they're still going at it, you know? So it's like motivating. So I keep going too. There's something about that group that really like I push.

If it were just me on that bike for an hour, there's no way I would be pushing it like I do. Like I am pushing it. It's like amazing pushing it. Yeah. I feel that way about yoga class. Same thing. Yeah.

Or the group. Everyone's sort of feeding off each other. Right. Right. And then also having the instructor. Like there's a couple instructors that I really, really like. And, you know, because they like their style and they're kind of more like coaches than the kind of instructor that kind of makes you want to feel. There's the instructor that's like they their cheerleader kind of want to make you feel good.

And then there's the instructor where they're like a coach where they're like they're trying to help you get better so um so i got into this high intensity high intensity interval training and i've never really been into it that much like i was you know i would do some um like jump squats and things like that like at home but this is the first time i'm like really a structured environment and really doing it so i started reading about it like wanting to know because that's how i am if i If I do something, I'm like, well, I'm going to look into it and either it'll motivate me to like really keep it up and do it more. Or I'll be like, nah, this isn't good. You know? So I started reading more and more about it and it's amazing the benefits of the high intensity. So you were talking about how, how like your, your, I think what you were

describing was your aerobic capacity changed. It's changed for the big one is kickboxing. Like when I hit the bag, it used to be that I would struggle to do a three-minute round of high intensity, like hitting the bag, kickboxing. But now I get through it, the bell goes off, and I'm like, really? Okay. Like the bell just went off. All right, that's three minutes. And then I'll have the 30-second rest. By the time the 30-second rest is up, I'm fully recovered and I'm back in again. I mean, I have more than double the endurance I used to have.

So what you're experiencing has been studied in clinical studies. Basically, this aerobic capacity, also people call it VO2 max, which is basically the ability of your lungs and your blood and your heart to carry oxygen to your muscles or places that are, you know, during that intense push. So the capacity to do that. Right. Well, as we age over the age of 25, once we hit 25 and we continue on, our aerobic capacity decreases by 10 percent per decade. So like one percent per year, right? So you're basically, you know, 25, you're 35, your VO2 max is like 10% less than you were when you were 25. Well, it turns out doing these high intensity interval classes, doing 24 of them,

which in this study, it was like they were 40 minutes long and there was four minute pushes. And then there's, you know, recoveries in between and all that blah blah blah stuff they were able to improve and after eight weeks of doing 24 high intensity classes improve their vo2 max by like 12 so you're basically adding a decade you know back so how many weeks well they did it they did 24 classes of this in eight weeks wow so what the interesting thing about that study was they were also testing whether or not like doing it, I think it was like four weeks or something really like short, just packing them all in. That actually didn't increase the VO2 max as much because the recovery time was actually

important. It's actually changed the way I think about when it comes to training and my advice that I give to people for training. Because I used to think that it was adequate to just do the sport-specific workouts. Like, say, if you wanted to get better at jiu-jitsu, just do your jiu-jitsu. If you want to get better at kickboxing, just do your kickboxing. The cardio you get from that will be enough. I don't think that's the case anymore because I'm stunned at how much of an increase in cardio

that I've gotten from these hill sprints. And now I realize, like, okay, what you can do is that you can do it independently of that work. And it doesn't really mess with that work. Like say, if I run in the morning and I get a good two mile run, I can still hit the bag at three in the afternoon. But the difference will be is that like my legs will be tired from running, but they're not the same muscles that I use when I kick box. But it's similar in a lot of ways.

But what's really changing for sure is that my aerobic capacity is just way bigger. That's awesome. It's just different. That's actually a marker of aging, aerobic capacity, VO2 max. I've never actually measured my own VO2 max. That's when you have to put that hose thing in your mouth and run that treadmill. I kind of want to do it because now that I'm doing all this high intensity work and I'm totally going to stick with it.

Like, I love it. I definitely want to get back to the running and I've been sort of worried about, I can only do so much as a new mom and working and all. Would you be interested in a treadmill or no? You know, I love running outside, like in nature, whether it's in the beach or like in the hills, rolling hills and stuff. But, you know, for the longest time, I lived in Tennessee and the weather there is not great. And so I did do treadmill running. And so, yeah, I mean, I've definitely I don't I don't have the same daydreaming like effect. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. But I do definitely.

I mean, it's definitely good. And I get a lot from it from a treadmill. But there's something about. In fact, there was some interesting study that I don't know how long ago, maybe a year ago or two, that looked at people that exercise. I think they went for like walks or something in nature versus like in the metropolitan area. And the benefits there was there was more benefits in going for the walks in nature um in terms of like you know psychological benefits but also some of the variety of like biomarkers that were measured so it's kind of interesting you know it is interesting i think we like to think of ourselves

as being detached from what we experience just in terms of even just visually. But I think that those things have an effect on like not just how you think, like how you feel, but who you are. I mean, I think we are we have some sort of a symbiotic relationship with our environment. And when your environment is cement and glass and concrete and rubber and all the things that we've created in cities, that there's a dull feeling that you get from those things. And then when you can go and see a green meadow and birds flying around and the wind whistling through the leaves, like you, you just, it does something to your body, like does something, not just your mind.

There's something going on. Like you, you're, you have like this feeling of, ah, this is medicine. Like this is, I'm getting something out of this. Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's, you know, the noise pollution, the sound, you know, like the scars and all that, that's been shown to have a negative effect on people's like emotions. And, you know, of course there's the environmental things,

you're breathing in pollution and that has been shown to increase inflammatory biomarkers and all that. But there's certainly, I think, just going out into nature and you feel better. You do. You definitely feel better. It's not, you know, I live in the city and I live off of a busy place. And thankfully, we're going to be moving. But that's something I'm considering where it's just like are you moving specifically for that reason no we're just in a small apartment right now and it's like I have a baby now and it's fine for two

people yeah it was fun it was close to the beach and yeah you know it was it's fun like but just it's not something that that you know I could, I could do with, with, with a baby, especially in such a small space. And there's motorcycles that go by and it's like, it's crazy. Like the motorcycles, they rev up. Oh, if you're by the beach, yeah. Yeah. Cause they're riding by.

Those Harley Davidson guys. Exactly. They're riding by and it's like. That's a bummer. It's, it's, yeah. If it wakes you up too. Now, so, um, also like a yard is good for a kid, right? Exactly.

But it's hard. It's hard in California. You know, I mean, like we were saying, you know, it's not easy. So there's things you, there's just all this stuff you have to consider when your, your priorities change. Now that you, when you have a child, it's like, you got to think of all the things, schools and this and that and neighbors and who are they going to be friends with? And like, oh my God. this and that and neighbors and who are they going to be friends with? And like, oh my God. Before I forget, I wanted to tell people, go to Chris Kresser's Twitter page and there's an article on acetaminophen and women who are pregnant consuming acetaminophen and the negative consequences it has for your children.

See more evidence. It says here that the exposure to acetaminophen may be a part of ADHD puzzle. A Norwegian study, pregnant women took acetaminophen for 29 days or more, had a more than twofold risk of having children with ADHD. Yeah. Wow. I think I've seen, I think I even tweeted something like this, a couple of years ago where this isn't the first study. Yeah. It's in the New York Times right now apparently and that's what people are prescribed right during pregnancy right scary shit there's I mean it's how many things we

find out from like the 1960s were terribly detrimental to children and doctors were telling you this is way the way you should go I mean there's right yeah and and that's the you know, with when I was pregnant, there was there were certainly some things that I opted out of that were probably more standard of care, you know, so just because of concern and not that I knew for a fact that something was going to happen, but I had doubt. And that was enough for me to sort of weigh, you know, the benefits and the risks. And I was like, well, you know, so. Well, there's even talk about vaccination protocols, like not whether or not I mean, I'm not an anti-vaccination person. I think vaccinations are important, but I think that there's there's a lot of merit in the idea of that. You shoot a kid up with 36 different shots when they're six weeks old or whatever age they start them at.

I mean, right out of the box, a lot of doctors want to give your kid a series of shots. And there's some concern that the actual consequences of all these different vaccines being put into your child's body very early, and a large number of them have some sort of negative consequences. You know, I'm with you, like, I'm also not an anti-vaxxer. I think vaccines are important. I'm going to vaccinate my son. But, and I've already given, I'm a little behind on the schedule. I've given him one. But so what you're saying is true. There is like, even on the CDC website, it says that, you know, some of these vaccines can cause fevers and epileptic seizures, seizures, seizures in infants. And but that there's no long term consequence of that.

And and that's kind of like, you know, if you look if you look at the literature and and how the immune the immune system responds to some of these vaccines especially if you're giving like five at once i mean the the first round of vaccines that i'm supposed to do it was like it was like five different vaccines and so what i'm opting to do is actually do them in singles where you so that's what we did yeah yeah because it's like why the the immune response is you know kind of the thing that's scary and you don't really know how a child's immune system is going to react. And there are studies. I was particularly worried about it during pregnancy. And that's when one of the things I opted out of was getting the Tdap vaccine, which is they want to give it to you when you're, I forgot how many weeks pregnant, 30 something, I think. And to protect, basically pass on antibodies for whooping cough, you know, to the baby. And so I opted out and I said I would do it post, basically postpartum, like one day postpartum, because it takes about four weeks to transfer the antibodies in breast milk. So I still was going to, you know, get the vaccine, but I was going to do it after I had the baby. And the reason I made that decision is because there have been multiple

studies now in non-human primates that have looked, and these studies came out of UC Davis, looked at pregnant female monkeys when they have a really strong immune response. So like a strong infection or, you know, who knows a vaccine? The study didn't use vaccines, but I'm sort of, you know, drawing a parallel here, where it's just the immune response, having a very strong immune response. There was an autoimmune response that ended up having antibodies that attacked the developing brain. And the monkeys that were born from those mothers had autistic-like behaviors. It's been shown in humans that mothers of autistic children

are five times more likely to have antibodies floating around in their blood against fetal brain proteins. Like, they're not supposed to have antibodies against fetal brain proteins in their blood. So there's definitely been some link with the immune system, autoimmunity, particularly during pregnancy, and autism risk. Now, in terms of like the young baby, you know, I'm scared too. And I do worry that, you know, my son's developing so great and like, I don't want to do something wrong. It's scary. It really is. And, you know, I definitely, like I said, I'm going to vaccinate my son and I have been doing singles and that you have to like,

it's a little more inconvenient because you have to go to the doctor like so many times to do it. But the thing is, is that when you're not when you're not giving so many different vaccines at once, the immune response isn't going to be as strong. And there's a problem with this conversation. As soon as you talk about vaccines, you immediately get lumped into a bunch of fucking crazy people that think that vaccines are some sort of a conspiracy and the government's trying to make money from you and you're an anti-vaxxer. And they immediately box you in and start getting angry at you. I mean, it's almost it's a weird thing because you're talking about chemicals that you're injecting into a child. Right. Yeah. But still, people are very hesitant to even look at that. You want to automatically just go with whatever the doctor says when it comes to vaccines.

But the real problem is until you look at how much work has been done determining what the consequences are and how can you find out? How can you even know no right you really can't unless you have two of the exact you have a bunch of copies you make a bunch of clones of a baby and you you expose them to the exact same environment exact same epigenetics exact same environmental factors and then one of you and inject a bunch of chemicals into and one you don't i mean we know that vaccines are amazing. They have prevented polio. They have prevented a host of different diseases from becoming real issues.

And we know that people who don't vaccinate their kids, they're the reason why measles are coming back. There's real concerns. Absolutely. I think vaccines are amazing. I'm so happy they exist. But I also think that we have to be very careful with just jumping into things, just like we were talking before about things that they did as standard care during the 1960s are now prohibited. Like, we know they're dangerous for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I completely 100 percent agree. And I think that there are now it's a growing field, at least in science, where there are there are scientists that are trying to understand the the gene interaction, the gene interaction with the immune system. Because, you know, obviously, almost everyone gets vaccinated, right? I mean, and you don't have everyone walking around with all these, with autism and all these. But there is something that is, you know, going on. And, you know, a lot of parents have noticed changes, of course, after the vaccinations. And so there is a new field of inquiry. I do know that's ongoing where scientists are beginning to now look at, in addition to how the immune system is reacting to some of these vaccines, how specific genes, you know, regulating certain immune functions, may differences in those genes called polymorphisms

may, you know, predispose a child. Now, how are you going to know that, like without doing a DNA test before you do the vaccine? I mean, it's a risk, like you said, how do you know it definitely is a risk. And that's, that's what's the scary thing, you know, and it's like, you know, it's a dilemma that I've been facing. And, and, you know, I'm currently the reason I even delayed. I've only given my son two vaccines so far, but just because I'm trying to like exhaustively read the literature as much as I can. Well, good for you. I'm glad that you're looking at it this way because it's something that there's a lot of pressure on people to not look at it that way. Like just having this conversation, Joe Rogan and Rhonda Patrick are anti-vaxxers. it's something that there's a lot of pressure on people to not look at it that way.

Just having this conversation, Joe Rogan and Rhonda Patrick are anti-vaxxers. That could be the title of some bullshit article that someone writes about this. I mean, and I've seen it time and time again, where someone will write a clickbait title to an article, and then someone will just read that and go, oh, you're an anti-vaxxer? Of course you are, you loser. And they'll get angry at you and throw some Twitter message your way that it's not representative of your actual thoughts on this at all. This is a very complex, very nuanced issue. It is. And like I said, I do think people should vaccinate their children. I do as well. And my children have been all vaccinated. But I agree. It's a nuanced topic that we don't know the answer to. I mean, I think that this guy, what was his name?

The thimerosal guy, the doctor that got disbarred because he falsified some data on thimerosal, the mercury, causing autism. Yeah. He falsified some data or something what was the story behind that i don't know the whole story data that was published that that linked um thimerosal which is the adjuvant that was that's found in a lot of vaccines in california they don't use that as far as i know as far as like it's not used anymore was that the needle measles mumps rebellion mmr yeah yeah and so what did he do like what was i don't you know it's not like i haven't done a super super in-depth like analysis of what he did

to my understanding was that he just pulled it up here journal retracts 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines a prominent british medical journal journal Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline of vaccinations in Britain after the paper's lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism, the retraction, blah, blah, blah. Reassessment that has lasted for years

in the scientific methods and financial conflicts. Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combined measles, mumps, and rubella, rubella, how do you say it? Rubella, yeah. Rubella. Vaccine may be unsafe, but the retraction may do little to tarnish Dr. Wakefield's reputation

among parents groups in the United States. Despite a wealth of scientific studies that have failed to find any link between vaccines and autisms, the parents fervently, I love that word, believe that their children's medical problems resulted from vaccines. I know a lot of people that think their kids' medical issues came from vaccines. I know some too. Yeah, and I'm not one to tell them they're wrong. And I don't know who's right or who's wrong,

but I know there's a massive amount of money to discourage any sort of talk and thinking. No one wants you to think there's anything wrong with vaccines. Vaccines can do no harm. But millions of dollars have been given out by the vaccine courts. It's not like there's vaccine courts that take care of cases where people have been damaged by vaccines. It's not... There's no...

We were talking about this before the podcast started that we were going to discuss. People vary biologically so much that one person can eat a, my friend Brian, his mom, if she eats a Brazil nut, she will die. I could eat a whole bowl of those boring fucking nuts. They don't do anything to me. I think they're boring. They increase your selenium. Oh, that's nice. It's good to have.

But I mean, they don't do anything negative to me. But his mom will eat them and she dies. Now that you can, I believe that you can extrapolate that and you can look at all sorts of different things that you take into your body. There are some people that are allergic to a host of different things that don't do a damn thing to me. And there's going to be people that are going to have reactions to vaccines. It's a chemical.

There's going to be something that happens in your body. So the idea that there's no link whatsoever to a chemical causing an adverse reaction, that doesn't jive. It doesn't make sense to say that it's impossible. You could say it's extremely rare. That makes more sense right but when they say there's no link when you say no link i have to go what's motivating this what's motivating you to say no link because with when you're dealing with chemicals there's always going

to be a small percentage of a chance that your body has an adverse reaction those chemicals and it's not just chemicals i mean mean, these are, you know... Live bacteria. Live bacteria. And you're listening in immune response. And immune responses vary as well, you know, dramatically. I mean, some people have autoimmune diseases because their immune system gets so ramped up.

I mean, you know, some people have, you know, type 1 diabetes because their immune system is destroying their pancreatic beta islet cells that produce insulin. People are different, like you said. And it's funny because when that when Jamie pulled that up, my mind went to the same place where it's just it's the perfect example of how, you know, people respond differently to to different things. And, you know, it's not it's not just a chemical, but food. And this is a big, big field of inquiry is like the food, because you've got people battling just like with the people that are anti-vaxxers versus people that want to vaccinate. You've got people that are saying saturated fat is bad. It's good.

Protein's bad. No, it's good. You've got, you know, all these camps of people that all, you know, are just basically like, it's almost like a religion where they just, they know what the best diet is and everyone should do it. And the reality is, is that it may not be the best diet for everyone, you know, and that's something that we all vary. Yeah. I mean, that's something, you know, so, so before the industrialized, you know, civilization occurred, like occurred, food was like the food you would eat was, you know, according to where you live geographically, right? Because you weren't getting food from all parts of the world, like you were basically were at whatever you could grow in that part of the world is what you would eat, right? And so like people would eat carbohydrates or fat, saturated fats, or,

you know, various foods, you know, different at different rates, because they were, you know, foods, you know, different at different rates because they were, you know, that's what they had, right? And it's thought that, you know, over time that humans adapted to the region and they adapted so that they could, you know, basically process that food better. And at least that's the theory. The reality is, it doesn't matter how it happened. We know that it's true. And people have different variations in genes that are involved in nutrition and also in everything else. So regardless of whether or not that's how it actually occurred, it happens. And I think one of the best examples of that is a study that was published in 2015 in Journal of Cell from the Weissman Institute. 800 different people were given a continuous glucose monitor where their blood glucose levels

were measured every five minutes. And these people were then they submitted samples for their for their DNA to be analyzed and also their microbiome, which is the bacteria that live in the gut. And so scientists then gave these groups of people various food types, either refined carbohydrate like white bread, complex carbohydrates like, you carbohydrates, like a banana, and then saturated fat, like cheese. And they measured people's glucose response to these various foods. 800 different people. And what was found was that the glucose response varied vastly according to a person's genetic and also microbiome makeup. vastly according to a person's genetic and also microbiome makeup.

So people, you would think, well, people are going to have a high blood glucose response to white bread, maybe somewhat to the banana, but there's fiber in there and that sort of changes the way the glucose levels reach the blood. But the reality was that some people had high blood glucose to the saturated fat, which is sort of, you know, not people don't think about that. So that this is this was sort of like one of the first proof of principle studies showing in 800 different people that people are different. And they measured the various genes to show it. And also their microbiota, their gut bacteria varied as well, because that changes the way you're metabolizing foods. So some of these genes, like, we know like we know, for example, PPR-alpha, PPR-gamma, FTO, ApoE4, which is what I have, all change the way your body metabolizes fats and also the way your body transports like fatty acids and cholesterol throughout the body. And people with some of these polymorphisms in these genes, if they eat a high, you know, saturated to low poly or monounsaturated fat ratio, they can actually have more adverse

effects. They can have a higher blood glucose, they can have higher LDL cholesterol, they can have higher obesity risk, higher type two diabetes risk, you know, so and that's like I said, that's something that most people that would eat a high saturated fat diet wouldn't have. And so I've actually been able to look at some of my genes because there's companies now that allow you to do that. And so I know that I have an APOE4. So that changes my diet in a way. the APOE4 not only predisposes you to Alzheimer's disease and also from adverse effects to TBI, but it also affects the way cholesterol is transported in your body and it doesn't get recycled very well. So I have more cholesterol circulating my body at any given point

compared to my husband, Dan, who doesn't have an APOE4 allele and we eat the exact same diet. Like my LDL will be like 20 and we eat the exact same diet, like my LDL will be like 20 points higher than his, you know, like. Is there a negative health effect to that? So, well, it gets a little more complicated, but so that the LDL cholesterol, by the way, for a long time, it's been thought to be a predictor of heart disease. Because with nutrition, and here's the thing with nutrition, is that a lot of our studies are what's called observational studies, where we look at this population, and we look at a disease risk, and we say,

oh, this person eats that, and they have a higher risk of that or a lower risk of that, right? So it's a correlation. You're not showing it's a causal factor, right? It's a correlation. And it's notoriously like, actually my mentor from my postdoc, Dr. Bruce Ames, he has this joke, the analogy, but it's a joke that he tells that really illustrates this type of study, epidemiology. He says that people that are born in Miami are born Hispanic, but they die Jewish. So you're born Hispanic. And if you don't know the rich cultural history of Miami, where there's a lot of big Latino community, people come there from, you know, Cuba and various places, but then old people go there to retire because they hate the cold and they want to like, you know, you know, move and move to Florida. So you just look at the data.

If you just look at the birth records and the death records, you'll be like, oh know, you know, move and move to Florida. So you just look at the data, if you just look at the birth records, and the death records, you'll be like, oh, people are born Hispanic, and they die Jewish. Wow. Like, right. That is epidemiology. That's like, it's very funny. It is. And it's, it's a great, like analogy, because it really does highlight the complexity of doing these types of studies. There's all sorts of other factors that play a role, right? I mean, so the thing is, is that with nutrition in particular, you have to look at not just the epidemiological study, but you have to look at randomized controlled trials where they use biomarkers as predictors of certain diseases. You have to look at animal studies where mechanism is done to understand how things are working. You know, you have to look at the whole picture. Because if you just use these studies where, oh, you eat a low protein diet, it's you have a lower

all cause mortality, boom, I'm going to be a vegan. Well, guess what, lots of other things are complicated. You know, there's there's lots of other factors or the saturated fat one. So you asked me, does LDL, like, does that predict your heart disease risk? Well, on a population level, Like, does that predict your heart disease risk? Well, on a population level, for a long time, it can because LDL is, you know, one thing that transports cholesterol and higher levels of it have been associated and we're able to look more at mechanism. Scientists have now started to uncover, oh, there's multiple types of LDL. It's not just one type. There's different sizes of it that are circulating in the blood. And one size is really good, the large size. The large buoyant size is really good because it's delivering cholesterol to your cells and delivering fatty acids to your cells where you need it.

Every time you make a new cell in your body, guess what? It needs cholesterol. It needs fatty acids. That's great. But there's also smaller sizes that are more dense. And basically, they can't get recycled back to the liver. There's basically a life cycle of the cholesterol. It's made in the liver, goes out in the bloodstream, donates all this stuff to your various cells, and it goes back to the liver. And it's, you know, it's sort of like recycled. Well, if you can't recycle it, then it stays in your bloodstream sort of indefinitely. And then it can undergo inflammatory transformations there and all sorts of things, you know, bad

things happen. And so the longer you have something in your bloodstream, if it's there for like decades, chances are some shit's going to go wrong, right? And is this a dietary issue or a hereditary issue in terms of like the size of the LDL? So I don't know how much is known about the hereditary aspect of it. It's known that ApoE4 can increase the risk of just having more LDL total there, right? But what type of LDL? It's not known, just like type of LDL? Healthy men given almost like something that was like a soda, you know. They were given a big drink of just sugar, sugary drink for three weeks every day.

And it completely increased their inflammatory biomarkers by like 100%. But it also ramped up their small LDL particle size. Now, let me stop right here because this is a really important point. For people that think that drinking a large glass of orange juice is different than drinking a glass of soda, it's really not. No, it's not because you don't have the fiber. Crazy. I mean, that's crazy. If you say that to most people, they're like, what are you talking about? You're talking nonsense. No. If you have a 24-ounce glass of orange juice, you're getting a giant dump of sugar in your system.

Right. And there's many people that think that that's a healthy thing to drink. Right. And that's what complicates all these studies is that you then have people eating, for example, saturated fat, which is known to increase the large LDL. The healthy LDL. It's known to increase that. Healthy LDL. It's known to increase that.

And in combination, you have people that are drinking orange juice or even worse, eating cookies and cake and drinking soda and bread. All that refined carbohydrate stuff. Now, those two in combination together, you've got the LDL. And then what happens is with the refined sugars, inflammatory transformations happen and you get the small dense. So this is why it's a problem when people try to look at diet in very simplistic ways, right? When people will try to say, if you eat saturated fat and if you eat cholesterol, you're going to have high cholesterol in your body and you're going to have heart attacks. You're going to have a stroke. I mean, this is a very simplistic thing that people will often say. Yeah. It really truly is, like I said, you have to look at mechanism-controlled trials.

You have to look at observational studies are also important. We also have controlled trials where people that are put on a high-fat and low-refined carbohydrate diet for, I don't know, a month or something like that. I don't remember the exact time, had all biomarkers lowered for heart disease risk. Is there something that people can do to take on that diet? How do you do that if you want to go vegan? Because I know a lot of people like to be vegan, but in order to get all those fats, especially low carbohydrate. Well, so I think that, first of all, for anyone doing any diet, like whether it's a vegan diet or a ketogenic high-fat diet or a low-carb high-fat diet, whatever diet they're doing, first thing you should do is definitely measure these biomarkers. LDL particle size can be measured.

Triglycerides, inflammatory biomarkers like high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. Where would someone go to do that? Like what's a good place to go? True health diagnostics. I mean, you can ask your primary care doctor. I know true health diagnostics is one that does a whole panel of really good ones, including the small, dense LDL particle size. A growing number of physicians do measure LDL particle size. Wellness FX is something if you don't want your physician

to know what your LDL is because you don't want them to have some opinion about it, Wellness FX is a company that will also measure your LDL and particle size and a variety of other biomarkers as well. And what you're saying about refined carbohydrates or refined sugars and LDL and small LDL and large LDL. Is this common knowledge amongst primary care providers? I mean, is this something your doctor's going to understand or are they going to try to put you on statins? It is not ubiquitous. It's not standard of care and it's not ubiquitous in the medical profession yet because it's just within the past decade been starting to, scientists and researchers

have been starting to uncover these mechanisms and it usually takes a long time to translate this knowledge because now large scale clinical trials have to be done and X number of them have to be done. A lot of, I don't know everything that goes into how regulations are made,

but it's a lot of clinical trials and a lot of things before any sort of regulations are changed. So that's something that is not standard yet. You can always print out papers and give them to your physician. I interviewed a guy on my podcast. He's a cardiologist, an MD. His name is Dr. Ronald Krauss. He's actually the guy who pioneered the test to measure small, dense LDL particle size. And he's really been a leader in the field for understanding the role of small, dense LDL particles in cardiovascular disease risk and how basically a person with high LDL total cholesterol may not actually be at risk for heart disease unless you look at the actual particle size. And things like this is what confound the literature. And this is what people often refer to as cherry picking. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people say

that because it's like anyone could do that. I feel like really the response that someone should say is look at the totality of the data. at the clinical trials look at the observational studies look at mechanism look at everything and get the picture like that's that's that's the way you should you know approach nutrition science so um you know he's really been a leader in looking at all that but i kind of didn't answer your question about the people that are vegan want to go yeah eat more of a um-fat, low-carb sort of diet or even a ketogenic diet, right? You know, so that's something that their vegans are interested in doing as well. And, you know, I've never – I personally, because of my APOE background – and by the way, that's kind of what motivated me to get – I got super into this field called nutrigenomics, the interaction between genes and diet,

because I found out I had this allele and I knew there were sorts of risk. And I'm like, there's absolutely things you can do in your diet and your lifestyle to modify that disease risk. And so that's something that I'm really interested in. And people can actually, you can measure your DNA, but the DNA doesn't tell you everything. You have to measure blood biomarkers. Like the blood biomarkers are really key to know if a diet's working for you or not. And if it's not working for you, like I've had people emailing me, they've used, I have a genetic tool that people can use. And if they want to look at APOE4, PPR gamma, those are like free reports. They've tried a ketogenic diet and it was like awful for

them. Their inflammatory biomarkers went up, their small dense LDL particle went up, all this stuff, bad happened. And then they'd use the tool and found out they had, for example, the PPAR alpha gene, which is a gene that's key for the process of ketogenesis, producing ketone bodies from oxidizing fatty acids. And people that have a certain one don't do it very well. And the diet can be detrimental. It can do more harm. That's critical.

Because, you know know first of all i've been uh irresponsibly telling people to do that too like i think ketogenic diet i responded very well to it so i've been telling people to get on that or at least try it so for what is exactly the gene what is the issue so there so ppar alpha um it changes it's it's a gene that's involved in it's involved in fatty acid metabolism, absorption of fatty acids. It's in the liver involved in producing ketone bodies from the fatty acid. So that specific gene is essential for the process of ketogenesis during a fasted state and also if you're doing a ketogenic type of diet. And so there's certain

variations in that gene that don't do it very well. And so the high-fat diet, what ends up happening is you're not metabolizing the fatty acids and producing the ketone bodies quite as well. And so you end up having more free fatty acids floating around in your bloodstream, which can antagonize insulin receptor and make you more insulin insensitive, which is exactly the opposite of what ketogenic diets usually do. You know, so there's this varied response. You can also have more inflammatory biomarkers for various reasons as well, because you're not oxidizing the fatty acids and producing the ketone bodies as well. So there's lots of things that change. But like, you know, knowing the genes is one component. I think that you have to measure

the biomarkers first. And if you're doing something like a ketogenic diet, for example, then you would measure all your lipid particle sizes, your triglycerides, inflammatory biomarkers. You want to measure HbA1c, which is your glycated hemoglobin, which is a marker of sort of your long-term blood glucose levels. So should you have one test initially, like a baseline test before you enter into the diet and then have a second one? Exactly. That's really key. Do you think that the origins of this is your ancestral origins, like what your ancestors' diet consisted of?

Low fat, high carbohydrate diet. That's what I was kind of getting at first. I mean, that's the theory at least, right? Like we can't prove that, but there are scientists looking at like different regions, like people that live, for example, in northern Europe, how they eat more fat and they're able to do that better. And so there are scientists that are investigating that because it's interesting to know why, why that is. But, yeah, that's that's the thing that's it's and I think it really explains a lot like with the ketogenic diet. There's it's something that I've become really interested in recently because I've been following you know, following the field and it appears, you know, as though there is a really, there's something about it that is really important for

the way your mitochondria age. Like it really seems to help your mitochondria age better. And I think that there's, you know, there's multiple, I talked to a sort of an expert, he's the president of the buck institute for research on aging and he his name is eric burden and he just recently published a really big paper showing that in animals cyclic ketogenic diets could extend their health span so they are basically healthy part of the life they were living they were living longer and they were living better and and also their memory was like dramatically improved. And when you say cyclic, is there a specific range that you're cycling? Yeah.

So that and this is like all these questions for him that I asked him about. And the cyclic, so it was every other week. So one week they were ketogenic. The next week they were just getting normal chow diet and then ketogenic. So they were cycling every other week. normal chow diet and then ketogenic. So they're recycling every other week. And the reason for that is because for whatever reason, animals, when they just, when you just give them food to eat, like, like ad libitum, like whenever they want,

even if it's ketogenic, they'll just, they'll keep eating. Like they'll just keep eating it. Like, and, and they can become, it can become an obesogenic diet where they're, where they become fat and it can actually decrease their lifespan, even though it's ketogenic. And I think that's partly because fatty acids, in order to use them, they have to get inside the mitochondria to be used as energy. And if they don't get inside the mitochondria, then they just get taken up into adipose tissue and stored as fat. And fatty acids themselves will, when the levels are high enough shut that transport system that does that off so it's like a negative regulator so if you just keep on bombarding the body with fat fat fat fat fat like non-stop without a rest then you start to like not be able to use those fatty acids because that inhibits the transport system it's called the

carnitine palmitole transferase for those nerd nerdy biologist geeks out there. That, you know, so anyways, I totally digress there. But it's, yeah, the cyclic ketogenic diet. So that that was something that extended their health span, and it became very interested in that. And so the thing that's super interesting, and as I was talking to Dr. Burden about this, is that, you know, there's a couple of things. One, obviously, you're not getting a lot of blood glucose hits all the time, right? When for the most part, if you don't have gene polymorphisms that are changing the way you process saturated fat, right? So you're not your your your insulin response is not happening quite as often, that's lowered. And there's there's there's benefits with from that alone, right? But for someone like me that doesn't eat refined sugar, doesn't eat any refined carbohydrates, I mean, all of my carbohydrates come from leafy greens or vegetables and berries and some other fruits.

And my blood glucose levels have always been pretty good, like fasting blood glucose and all that, with the exception of my lack of sleep recently. So the question I wanted to know was like, okay, well, what else is going on? And it seems as though the production of the major circulating ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate really is having an anti-aging role. And Dr. Verdun's work showed that it's changing the expression of genes and it's like activating longevity genes and all this. But the thing that's super, super interesting to me is that the way it's metabolized by mitochondria is different than other energy sources. And without getting too much into chemistry, it's not, in order to produce energy, you have to use

something called electron reducing equivalence, and they can be in the form of NADH ratio or FAD2H. So it's not going through one of those pathways that generates more free radicals and more basically leaky electrons that can damage mitochondria. It doesn't go through that pathway like other energy sources. So it's like you end up net, not, you know, basically having lower inflammatory and lower oxidative damage to your mitochondria. It also doesn't have what's called protonophoric activity. So it's almost like the way your body, your mitochondria is metabolizing it is better. Because metabolism, you're constantly generating damage, like damage constantly right now, all the time.

You're just from normal metabolism. And it seems as though there's something about that beta hydroxybutyrate that's superior. And it's, it's, it's definitely gotten me super interested in it. And, you know, for, for like the longest time I was thinking, well, I'll get my beta hydroxybutyrate by doing, um, time restricted eating, right? Where I'm eating all my food within like 10 hours and then I'm fasting for 14 hours. And I'm, you know, depending on what your activity levels are and all that, how quickly you deplete your liver glycogen, you can start to make beta-hydroxybutyrate even within like seven hours if you're really active. You know, so I was like, well, I'm getting my beta-hydroxybutyrate

from the fasting part of the time-rest time restricted eating, right. But I've become super interested in, in this possible even because there's other reasons I don't eat a ketogenic diet. I like to get all the micronutrients. I like to get prebiotic fiber. You know, that's really good for the gut microbiome. But then again, I don't, we don't know exactly how ketogenic diets even affecting the microbiome. So that's sort of still't we don't know exactly how ketogenic diets even affecting the microbiome. So that's sort of still an open, you know, open field. So I I'm sort of thinking, can I do some sort of cyclic, you know, ketogenic diet? And also for me, because I have APOE4, I do eat saturated fat, but I eat it from like whole foods. I don't like I used to do a lot of

cooking with coconut oil, which is high in saturated fat. And I'm like, what do I need to do that for? I don't really need to cook with coconut oil. I can use avocado oil, you know. And so I changed that and my LDL just dropped 20 points from just that alone. You know, so it's like and. But LDL overall, not large versus small. Yeah, my LDL overall the first time. So my baseline, I didn't measure small then.

So I don't know what my baseline was, but I did measure the large. So the large, and like I said, the large can transform into the small dense. And so. With refined sugars? With refined sugars, that's what's known. But like you mentioned genetics, there may be something that we don't know. What is the mechanism for the transference of the sugar with the LDL? What causes it to become small dense?

I'm not sure we entirely understand that yet. But we know there's a correlation. There's definitely a correlation, and it has been showed in clinical studies to not just be correlation but causal, where you give people refined sugar and they're small dense. Causal. Yeah. So same diet. Same diet, adding refined sugar, you see a radical difference. You measure their small dense LDL before giving them the refined sugar, same diet, same diet, adding refined sugar, you see a radical difference.

You measure their small dense LDL before giving them the refined sugar, same diet. And then you measure after this, the soda, you know, blast of refined sugar for three weeks, and their small dense LDL particles going through the roof. So that's causal because you're giving them something, you're measuring it before and after effect. And if there's anything that we can conclusively point to, it's that refined sugar is absolutely bad for you. There's no doubt about that, right? I think so. I think that, you know, there's so many studies that have shown, you know, the inflammatory biomarkers go up, your small dense LDL biomarkers go up. There's correlation studies showing that people that eat refined

sugar have like telomeres, which are a biomarker for aging that look 10 years older, you know, even though people, they're the same chronological age as other people that don't eat the refined sugar. There's studies in men where like they give men 75 grams of refined sugar and their testosterone drops by 25%. I mean, it's changing a lot of things, you know, in the body in a negative way. Well, my testosterone doubled when I changed my diet. When I cut out the pasta, when I cut out the bread, and I started eating more saturated fat, more protein, and I went to the ketogenic diet, literally it doubled. Wow. Doing everything exactly the same. It was stunning. And I felt different. Like I could feel the difference. Feel the difference in my energy

levels, feel the difference cognitively. The cognitive thing was a big thing. And I attributed it to cutting out refined sugars and refined carbohydrates. I think that stuff's poison. Well, there's been studies showing it also affects your brain in a negative way as well. And people that eat refined sugar, there's more brain atrophy. I mean, there's lots of correlations. The one thing I will say is that there are people that are super physically active and they're like working out two hours a day. And, you know, those guys, they'll use refined sugar.

Different requirement. Yeah. You know, their increased transport, you know, glucose transport in their muscles and are using it as an anabolic way to like get bigger muscle. Yeah. I know guys who do that after they work out, they eat candy. Yeah. And it's not like it's you can't compare like people that aren't working out like two hours a day or, you know, like that to normal people or even sedentary people.

Weightlifters. Yeah. Weightlifters. People that are just ripping their body apart. I mean, there's a lot of savages out there that are doing crazy powerlifting workouts and benching and squatting. And I know a lot of guys who like to eat candy afterwards. Right. Yeah. No, it's, it's certainly, you know, I think that those people, you know, they're, they're not, it's not, it's not acting the same way. It's a radically different requirement that their body needs in terms of glucose.

Right. And, and the thing is, I mean, still, it's like the way I think about it is it's not really nutrient dense. You know, I like to like, I'm like, well, there's lots of, there's reasons. Yeah. There's a reason why I like to like take it. If you the sugar then you know i would eat an orange right or an apple or something like that you should you know it's probably the better move than eating candy but i think they just want a ton of it and what is the what's the anabolic factor like if you were going to eat candy or something like that has a bunch of refined sugar after like an intense workout what would be the anabolic factor well the glucose so the the workout causes um glucose transporters that transport glucose to like go

through the roof and so you start the glucose from your your bloodstream gets like sucked into the muscle and then in the muscle you know you're you're basically you can you can use that as as as a way to to have insulin and it can be anabolic, right? Whereas if you weren't doing that, then the glucose is in your bloodstream and it can all sorts of small dense LDL particles can start to form because the inflammatory transformations that happen and things like that. That's at least my understanding. That's in combination, of course, with amino acids, which are also important for the growth of the protein muscle. But that's my understanding of it i think so like in general though if someone could cut one thing out of their diet refined carbohydrates and refined sugars would be a

great way to go i think the one if you were to think about the one easiest thing that you could do that would have the biggest impact on your health and if you're talking if we're talking about we're not talking about someone who's already paleo or someone like you, right? We're talking about like standard American person. Yes. The one thing that they could do to have the biggest impact on their health, I would say, is to cut out refined sugar.

Like that's probably the biggest thing, the easiest thing. I mean, I don't know how easy it is. You know, it can be addicting. Very, very addicting. Yeah. And that's been shown. easy it is it you know it can be addicting very yeah and that's been shown dopamine levels you know can get activated and also your gut biome correct right your your gut biome literally has an impact on what you desire right yeah it does so you're you're the the thing about your microbiome and your gut is that like you know the the the microbiome eats it's at the distal part of your gut. So it's in the colon, right? The large intestine, the very end of the large intestine is where most of the trillions

of bacteria are. And those bacteria actually eat the fermentable fiber that we don't digest, we don't process. And the fermentable fiber comes from a variety of plants, from plants and from seeds and nuts and, you know, legumes as well, oats. You know, so there's different types of fermentable fiber that are found in different types of foods and they feed different species of bacteria. Well, when you don't get enough of that fermentable fiber, what ends up happening, in fact, there's been studies showing that like 75% of the microbiome population changes and like, when you don't get at all any fiber. And what happens a couple of things. One is those bacteria species, they start to eat the carbohydrate that's lining your gut called mucin, which is what makes up the gut barrier that separates the immune cells in your gut from the bacteria, they start to eat it because it's carbohydrate. And so you actually start to break down your gut barrier just from that.

The second thing that happens is what you mentioned, is that a lot of the pathogenic bacteria will swim up to the small intestine, where they're usually not supposed to be. Small intestine is where you absorb sugar, protein, fats. They swim up there, and guess what? Sugar! So they start to eat eat the sugar and they start to multiply. And the thing about having bacteria in the small intestine where it's not supposed to

be is that it causes the same response that eating gluten causes, where it basically, it's called small bacteria intestinal overgrowth. And what happens is that the tight junctions that make up the gut barrier start to open up and open up. And that allows the inflammatory immune cells to be in contact with bacteria. And of course, the immune cells go, oh, bacteria, and they start to like try to kill it because they think that's not supposed to be there. It could be potentially harmful pathogenic bacteria. And so that starts to set off an immune response, inflammatory immune response. And the more you have, the more sugar you eat, the more your this population of bacteria is flourishing. So so that's like, that's another thing that's, that's, that's changing that. But

it's also the one of the reasons like I was saying, you know, with, and I've never actually tried a ketogenic diet. But because, you know, for various reasons, but I'm not sure how much plants you eat. Can you eat a good amount? It really depends on the individual. On a very small scale, Rob Wolf and his wife have done some pretty interesting tests where they'll both eat the same thing and they'll both test themselves. He'll test the both of them X amount of minutes later, and they have a radically different response between the two of them. It's really interesting.

His wife is much more resilient, and he has much more of a difficult time getting back into ketosis. He's documented a lot of it on his Instagram page, but I think it speaks to what you were talking about before, that it really depends on where your ancestors evolved and it really has there's different we we vary biologically so much right we do and and that's that that you know affects how we respond to these foods and all that you know but um anyways uh what was the other thing i wanted to ask you about oh the nad do you remember the nad i was talking about like the nad and nadh ratio and

nad so this is something um what does nad stand for again nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and it's something it's something that um it's kind of in a way similar to atp where it's like used as an energetic currency throughout the body for for for various things but it's like used as an energetic currency throughout the body for various things. But it's actually like required to like for your metabolism. Like you need it to metabolize, you know, fatty acids and glucose and, you know, amino acids. But you also you need it to repair damage. You need it, you know, for a variety of other things that are happening. And the thing is, is that these NAD levels in tissues that are very energetically demanding, they deplete. So, for example, if you have chronic inflammation and your immune system is chronically being activated, the NAD levels are going to that.

And it's kind of like triaging. And so what happens is your metabolism suffers. kind of like triaging. And so what happens is your metabolism suffers. And it's been shown now that NAD levels in like, you know, multiple tissues with age, they deplete. Lots of preclinical studies have shown that, you know, plays a role in the aging process. And if you, for example, take like a mouse that has progeria, this pro-aging phenotype, and then you give them the NAD, it like can like basically kind of rescue that in a way, and they live a more normal health span and more normal lifespan. And there's lots of studies showing that in various ways. There's recently been a lot of interest in it because the NAD,

there's a way to replenish it through supplemental form called nicotinamide riboside. So NAD is actually formed from vitamin B3, like nicotinic acid or nicotinamide, oride. So NAD is actually formed from vitamin B3, like nicotinic acid or nicotinamide, or from tryptophan. But nicotinamide riboside is another precursor that you can take in supplemental form. And there's been, you know, studies over the past few years looking at how in animals, it's been able to increase NAD levels, it's able to like, basically improve physical performance, cognitive performance, it's able to like basically improve physical performance, cognitive performance. It's able to, you know, make your tissues age better, your organs age better in animals. So now there's like been preclinical trials that are, sorry, clinical trials that have been

undergoing one showing that you actually can take the supplemental form of NAD, nicotinamide riboside, and you can increase your NAD levels in a dose-dependent manner. So it's a study that just came out recently. And there's now like 10 clinical trials that are undergoing right now looking at the role of supplemental nicotinamide riboside in dementia, in obesity, traumatic brain injuries, another one, and then some other type of metabolic dysfunction. So that these are currently, you know, being investigated in humans. So the NAD thing is another real big interest of mine. I did buy the supplement, but I'm not taking it right now because I'm breastfeeding and I'm just not sure how that, you know, how that goes. But you were asking me about the IV stuff.

I think that's something that is now popular everywhere. I've looked it up. It's like it's becoming really popular. But the thing is, is that there's really no clinical evidence of it. You know, of like if you intravenously take NAD, like is that going to have the same effect that, you know, taking nicotinamide riboside does? Does it get into your cells? So it's an open question, but it seems like people are getting results. You know, obviously it's all anecdotal.

Have you done anything IV? Have you ever done like IV vitamin infusions or anything like that? No. No, I haven't. I haven't either. I haven't done anything that. It's always, I look at it, I go, ooh, what if that's good? Right.

I mean. I don't want to sit there and have vitamins pumped into my veins for nothing. I've had people tell me the great things about doing the NAD, NAD Plus is what it's actually called. But I've never actually, I've never tried that. And I think before I would do something like that, I would probably try the nicotinamide riboside, which we know for a fact does increase, you know, NAD levels in multiple tissues. And it would be nice to have some of these clinics that are doing it, like, aggregate the data and publish it because no one's going to fund this study. Like, people aren't studying that, you know. So there's no way to really know if it's placebo or, you know, because there's no data.

know if it's placebo or really you know because there's no data yeah so it'd be it'd be kind of nice if like people would start to aggregate data on that but well you know it's it's really interesting when it comes to data when it comes to diet because you know the the whole throw the baby out with the bath water thing one of the the studies that I read pretty recently was about the amount of people that suffered ill health consequences that ate red meat five days per week versus people who didn't. But what they didn't take into account was what the people ate with the red meat. They drank soda. How did you get your form of red meat? Was it grass fed beef? Was it bison or wild game? Or was it a burger from Wendy's with fries and a sugar bun and all the bullshit that people eat along with the food and that you literally and people would cite these things as being evidence that something is negative for you,

that red meat is negative for you. But you're not taking into consideration all the things that were eaten with that red meat. So these studies that come out like that, they're so – they're really annoying. Because it's like you have to – you talk to people about it and you have to like sit down with them. Okay, sit down. Okay. This is a long process to try to figure out what is the cause of these issues. You're talking about a lifetime of abuse. You're talking about all sorts of different health consequences

of a variety of different foods, and you're attributing it all to one part of your diet. And that's very difficult to do, unless you've isolated everything else and done a bunch of different studies where, okay, I ate nothing but fruits and vegetables, and I ate really healthy, and I ate red meat five days a week. nothing but fruits and vegetables and I eat really healthy and I eat red meat five days a week. Or I eat nothing but shit and fries and buns and pasta and I didn't eat red meat at all. And now here's

the results. Right. You're making a really good point. And that is the combination of how these different foods are interacting in our bodies, extremely important. Like we talked about the refined sugar and saturated fat combo. Well, you know, the red meat and even just, you know, protein like itself, like, you know, essential amino acids that are coming from animal protein itself, and how that is interacting with, you know, eating a terrible diet like refined sugar, which is causing damage to our cells, you know, also exercise. And this is something really, the protein exercise thing seems to be really key. But there was a recent study that was published that was the largest study, observational study done so far looking at

protein intake and all-cause mortality and cancer mortality. And it found, like a lot of other studies, that higher protein consumption, higher meat, protein consumption from meat was associated with a higher all-cause mortality and a higher cancer mortality. But then when the data was sub-analyzed and other unhealthy style factors were looked at, so if someone had one other unhealthy lifestyle factor being either obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, or being sedentary, then they had a higher all-cause mortality and a higher cancer mortality if they ate meat. But guess what? If they had zero, none of those other unhealthy lifestyle factors, they had the same all-cause mortality and cancer cancer related mortality that the non-meat eaters had. So I think that really highlights the importance of other lifestyle factors, other

foods, you know, that's really important when we're, when we're looking at these observational studies. When you were talking about saturated fat and the negative consequences of eating refined sugar with saturated fat, is there a corresponding negative consequence? Like if you had negative or if you had a diet that didn't have any saturated fat in it, but you ate refined sugar, like say if you eat a vegan diet,

does refined sugar have less of an impact? Of eating, so the refined sugar – Because the LDL, it's an issue with fat. Yeah. I think – yes. So the LDL will go down if you're eating a vegan diet and even though you're still eating cookies or some whatever vegan stuff. So refined sugar is probably like less dangerous to someone on a vegan diet? Is that –

Yes. I think so. And the thing with that is, is that if you look at, but if you look at refined sugar, also refined sugar is associated with heart disease risk. In fact, it's like one of the, you know, there was a big, big study, like 400,000 different individuals looked at refined sugar, people that had the highest refined sugar intake. But again, saturated fats, a confounding factor there. Had like a four times higher risk of having a heart attack. But it's perfect.

You illustrated it perfectly. And that's where I think a lot of these guidelines like the American Heart Association come from. If you, on a population level, if you say to someone, reduce your saturated fat intake, you're going to lower the LDL risk. And regardless of all the other stuff they're doing, you know, it probably will on a population level, lower their heart disease risk. But on an individual level, like someone like you and I, we don't eat all that other stuff. You know, we were very health conscious and do all these things. You and I, if we stopped our saturated fat intake, likely, you know, well, for me, I guess my genes are a little different, but likely wouldn't have the same effect.

So if you were to take that same population of people and say, okay, eat your saturated fat, but take out the refined sugar, we may see the same thing where the heart disease risk goes down just like it does with saturated fat. In fact, there have been studies where replacement foods have looked at replacement foods for saturated fat. And if you replace saturated fat with refined sugar, it does not lower the risk of heart disease. So basically, that's kind of a proof of principle there. But I do think that it's an important point. And it's something that the American Heart Association, they're now starting to at least mention the small dense LDL particles. So I think that moving in that direction is good because it means that possibly then, you know, over the next decade, we're going to start to see, okay, now we got to start. It's not just the LDL.

I'm confused about something you just said. You said if you replace saturated fat with refined sugar? If you replace the saturated fat with refined sugar, if you, sorry, refined carbohydrates, which I usually think of as refined sugar if you replace the saturated fat with refined sugar if you sorry refined carbohydrates which i usually think of as refined sugar refined carbohydrates um it does not so the idea is if saturated fat was so bad if you replaced if you took the saturated fat and replaced it with a refined carbohydrate it would lower the risk of heart disease and it doesn't it doesn't lower the risk all right so so basically so it's not the saturated fat it's a saturated fat along with refined sugar that has some sort

of a negative synergistic effect that's what that's what the data in aggregation looking at the clinical trials looking at the mechanism looking at the observational studies and understanding the interaction of all these foods together and the problem is when the american heart association puts out sort of a blanket statement like that, a lot of people take it as fact. And then what my research has shown, my reading rather, I shouldn't say research, I'm a dummy, but the people that I've read who have criticized this that are actually scientists and researchers, they have a huge issue with that statement.

They think that this is just too simplistic. It's not taking into account all the various nuances in genetics, diet, ancestry, all the different factors. But people read that and it's sort of like this cookie cutter approach, and then they parrot it out to everybody else. Yeah, it's true. I mean, that's that's exactly what happens. And the same thing goes with with the protein and it being bad as well. And there's all sorts of nuances in the combination of the protein with the bad diet and also the exercise, which is one of the things with the protein is that it increases IGF-1. And IGF-1 is a growth factor and it can allow cells that are damaged that should otherwise die, not die. And so it can allow precancerous cells to form a tumor. And that's,

we know that from mechanistic studies. And, you know, that's kind of a big part of the eating protein, essential amino acids specifically, what does do this, and they're found in animal protein. And that's sort of the big argument there. But there's also this whole argument where, if you are one exercising, the IGF-1 goes into your brain it's been shown across the blood-brain barrier it goes into your brain and also in your muscle where it grows new neurons in the brain and actually repairs damaged muscle tissue and helps grow muscle tissue which is also a predictor of all-cause mortality so you know the again the exercise comes in there and then also the fact that if you're eating a good diet and you're not causing as much damage to happen in the first place, then those growth factors being there aren't as big of

a deal because you don't have all these damaged cells from all this refined sugar you're eating that can basically become cancerous cells. So that's kind of, you know, with that study, the observational study that looked at people that were eating meat, if they didn't have any of those unhealthy lifestyle factors, guess what? They're all cause mortality and cancer mortality was the same as the vegetarians. And I think that's kind of highlighting that, that, that issue, you know? Well, I have a friend who's a scientist who was talking to me about meat. He goes, meat is essentially amino acids, protein, and water. He's like, it's not going to cause you cancer.

It's like, this is not what the problem is. He goes, you, you have some issues with the way it's cooked. So for sure, like things that are charred are not good for you. There's carcinogens, right? It's like this is not what the problem is. He goes, you have some issues with the way it's cooked. For sure, like things that are charred are not good for you. There's carcinogens, right, and the blackened, charred. Yeah, I mean, there's heterocyclic amines that can form when you cook meat at a really high temperature, and those are carcinogens. But our bodies have genes that are able to inactivate those. Some bodies, but some not.

People can do it to various levels. There are certain polymorphisms in genes that basically some people can detoxify it really well, and they're called detoxification enzymes, and some people don't do it quite as well, and the people that don't do it quite as well probably shouldn't char their meat as much. You shouldn't eat it every day charred. But that's not the big issue,

isn't so much that as the IGF-1, which doesn't cause cancer, but it allows cancer cells to grow. See the difference? It's like one is like, oh, you eat meat, it causes cancer. Well, no, that's not necessarily true. You eat a lot of meat and you don't exercise and you keep having IGF-1 around and you have all these other damaged cells because you're eating all this other crap, which is causing damage.

Then you're allowing the IGF-1 to allow those damaged cells because you're eating all this other crap, which is causing damage, then you're allowing the IGF-1, you know, to allow those damaged cells to grow. So one is like a promoting where it's promoting the growth of cancer and the other one saying it causes. So it doesn't cause in that sense. Now, in the carcinogen, you know, if you're getting a ton of carcinogens and plus there's studies showing that eating cruciferous vegetables, the isothiocyanates, and people that have that gene polymorphism that don't detoxify the heterocyclic amines as well, if they eat a diet high in cruciferous vegetables and they have isothiocyanates,

they also inactivate those pro-carcinogens. And what are those vegetables? Broccoli sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. You alone jacked up the broccoli sprouts industry the last time you were on. It's amazing. I've had people emailing me that like they're either them themselves or their father or someone they're taking care of their prostate cancer biomarker, the prostate stimulating antigen has like gone gone down twofold after doing the broccoli sprouts every day for X amount of time, which is something we talked about

because clinical trials have shown that. It's very powerful. Now, when you look at animal protein, and I'm including fish in this for this, is there any benefit to a specific type? Someone was telling me that red meat is better for you than chicken. And I was like, well, how do you know? And they're like, well, it's how it makes me feel. I said, okay, well, that doesn't seem to make much sense.

Like what is, but is there a difference? I mean, obviously there's a difference in the protein content. Like of some meats, like wild game has a much higher protein content than, say, domestic beef. um, like wild game has a much higher protein content than say domestic beef. But when you think like fish, like, is there, is, is our living animals all created equal? That's the question. Well, of course there's lots of differences. I mean, if you, you know, the, the, the protein, the amino acid makeup are different and I'm not an expert on that. So I can't tell you all the differences there, but there's differences in, in the micronutrient concentrations. I mean,

omega-3 fatty acids are in fish are a lot of irons and in red meat. So there's differences in the micronutrient concentrations. I mean, omega-3 fatty acids are in fish, a lot of irons in red meat. So there's different zinc, iron, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids. All these different things are found in different concentrations in different types of meat. And so for that reason, it's kind of good to eat a diverse array of different types because you're getting 22% of all your enzymes in your body require micronutrient as a cofactor to work, you know, and the omega-3 fatty acids are important, you know, really important for the brain, hugely important, you know, for the brain. So I think that in that respect, you know, there are obviously differences in terms of the different types of meat that you're eating, right? I mean, so yeah.

And then the ratio of the proteins are different. I don't know exactly what those differences are, but, you know, that affects things as well. So do you think like a healthy approach if someone does eat meat is to eat a little bit of everything, like a little bit of salmon, maybe a little bit of red meat, a little bit of bison, a little bit of chicken? little bit of salmon, maybe a little bit of red meat, a little bit of bison, a little bit of chicken. I think that's the approach I like to take because I like to look at things in terms of nutrient quality and why am I eating this food? Oh, I'm eating this food because I want this type of amino acid profile.

I want these micronutrients. You know, I want either this type of prebiotic fiber or not. And, you know, so I kind of look at it as these like nutrient delivery vesicles that I'm like taking in. And that's the approach I like. I, you know, I'm a little biased because I've been doing a lot of research on micronutrients. And so I, you know, I know how important they are. And I've studied even in people, things like biomarkers of aging, like DNA damage and seeing how they change with different micronutrient intakes or different types of fiber intakes or, you know, things like that. So, you know, for me, I kind of I'm a little biased in that sense, but, you know, it's the approach that I like to take. For example, this is a really good story.

My mentor, Bruce Ames, who I talk about a lot, he was the inventor of the Ames test, which is a test, a really cheap test that you can do to determine whether or not something's a carcinogen. In fact, I'm sure the heterocyclic amines were determined from his test because you can dump something on and it basically can tell you in a matter of minutes. So he pioneered that back in the late 70s, early 80s, and he was responsible for getting carcinogens out of women's hair dyes, out of children's pajamas, lots of really big health impacts that he had. What's in pajamas? There was some kind of polyurethane-ish thing. I don't remember exactly. It's not there anymore, but it was.

It was to prevent them from – it was a flame retardant. It was a flame retardant it was a flame retardant and it was it was completely a carcinogen and it was ending up in children's urine and stuff they were measuring it yeah so anyways my point is is that he used to be this whole like cancer chemical carcinogen field and then one day like you know someone in his lab did an experiment where they like left folate out of the sample. And there was like massive amounts of DNA damage happening. He's like, what's going on here? And they started to do this in mice and found that like a low folate diet caused damage to DNA the same as being irradiated by an x-ray machine. The exact same.

And then he went into people and found, you know, there was like a really small pilot experiment, but similar, that caused DNA damage on people that had a low folate diet. And he said that one experiment right there changed the whole course of his field of study, where he all of a sudden went into nutrition and micronutrients.

And that became his thing from the 80s on. And kind of from an accident. Yeah, from an accident. Doesn't that happen all the time in labs? All the time. It's the best stuff. It was funny because the guy in his lab was like calling, he was trying to figure out what is going on here. And then he looked, his assistant had ordered this media that you put on cells and he looked at the media, tried to figure out what was in it. And they saw it was a specific type of media that the assistant had ordered incorrectly that lacked folate. And so this whole thing was all started from that.

And so- Yeah. So he published that seminal paper where literally he compared mice being irradiated under an x-ray machine to low folate, and it was identical. Now, would that be something that people should take into their diet of, say, if they are flight attendants or pilots? Because isn't flying a form of radiation? You do get some radiation that's similar to an X-ray, right?

Yeah. I mean, the folate, it's a different mechanism by how it's preventing. Basically, folate is needed to make an actual precursor to DNA. And without that precursor, you don't make the DNA right, and you incorporate a nucleotide from RNA into it. And so you basically make a break in your DNA strand. But DNA damage is, yeah, is something that happens with, you know, pilots and astronauts and things like that. And that's been measured? Yeah, it's been measured. In fact, there was a really weird study that came out recently that astronauts, they had like exceptionally longer telomeres. Oh.

Yeah, where it's like it was totally counterintuitive where DNA damage usually causes telomeres to get shorter. And so like if you were to have asked me, I would have predicted that the astronauts would have had shorter telomeres. There's definitely some weird stuff going on we don't understand. And there's obviously a variety of other things you can do to protect yourself from that. But I forgot why. The whole point is that the micronutrients were important. mentor and friend for many years. And I've sort of been in this field of study for a while. And so it's how I think about food. And it doesn't mean it's the best way, but it's the way that I've convinced myself so far with the tools that I have available to me that that's how I like to eat. And again, anyone that's doing any sort of diet should always measure biomarkers and things like that to know if it's working for them. And what's a good source of folate? Leafy greens. In fact, Bruce's mentor, when he was a graduate student, is the guy who identified.

He actually discovered folate by isolating it from spinach. So spinach, yeah, leafy greens are a great source of folate. But the leafy greens, like the other thing that gets me on this, and I know I talked about this last time, was like other compounds that are in the plants. We're sort of just scratching the surface on understanding them. What they're doing in our bodies. One, for example, is lutein. It's present in leafy greens.

Kale is a really, really great source of it. Lutein is found in the – first of all, it was known that lutein is important for the rods and cones in your eye. And so people, they'll take supplements with lutein to help with their vision. But all this recent research over the last few years has found is like accumulating in large amounts in the brain. Like what is lutein doing in the human brain? Well, it turns out it's like there's been clinical studies now, controlled trials, like giving people lutein and it plays a role in cognition. Like people have better learning and memory scores after taking lutein. It's involved in crystallized intelligence, which decreases with age.

So there's things like that. Another one is this one that I'm really interested in now. I'm actually supplementing it with PQQ. And that one is it's made by bacteria and bacteria in the soil so it's made by bacteria because it's important for um it's a cofactor for enzymes for their metabolic enzymes to work well plants take it up from soil and then we take eat the plants and get in our diet and um it's it's been shown now in like in a few studies lots and lots of preclinical studies it's been shown to like regulate mitochondrial function improve mitochondrial function clinical a couple of clinical trials now have been done looking at how it affects humans. If

you supplement with like 20 mg a day, improves cognition. It also improves markers of mitochondrial function, lowers markers of inflammation. Well, it turns out PQQ has like 20,000 times the catalytic activity than something like ascorbic acid. So it's a really powerful antioxidant. And what I mean by that is, so ascorbic acid goes through cycles of vitamin C. It's either oxidized or reduced. And when it does its antioxidant thing, it becomes oxidized. And it can do that four times where it goes it donates you know it donates this this hydrogen and you know help it helps you know basically um combat oxidative stress

but then it gets oxidized again and it can do it again four times pqq does it 20 000 times like isn't that mind-blowing 20 000 times and it's really concentrated in breast milk so i'm actually taking it right now it's it's super interesting it seems like something that everyone should supplement i think maybe so yeah because you know i you know you never really know but i i'm i'm supplementing with it and and uh i certainly don't notice anything because like sometimes those those sorts of changes are really hard to measure. And especially you have to wait until who knows, like later on in life. But I think it may be something that's important that maybe has beneficial effects in humans as well.

So and like, again, you can, you get it from plants, but 20 milligrams a day is what I'm taking. Cause that's what the two different clinical trials have shown. What's the best plant source of it? I don't know what the best, I'm sure you could find that on Google, but because various, various plants take it up from the soil. So probably things that are growing in the soil, right. That would be the best. But yeah, it's like, it's found like five or six fold higher and higher levels that it is in our tissues and plants of course because the plants are the source of it um but but yeah taking a supplemental form you'll be getting orders of magnitude more

do you have a supplement company that you rely on the most i do so the thing with supplements is that there's they're really risky uh There's lots of studies that have been published showing that a lot of supplements don't contain what they say they contain or they contain a fraction of it. And they got a bunch of other filler like clover leaf and stuff. So one of the supplement companies, and there's a scientist friend of mine, his name is Dr. Jed Fahey. He's a guy who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulforaphane. He's a guy who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulforaphane. He measured a variety of supplements, and he was looking specifically at precursors to sulforaphane. And he looked at a variety of different companies.

And one of the companies that was just really, really, really good and reliable was Thorne. Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E. And that's something I don't have any affiliation with them or anything, but I always, they're my go-to brand whenever I'm looking for a supplement. Like I took their prenatal from throughout pregnancy. Actually, I'm still taking the prenatal while I'm breastfeeding. I take their vitamin D and vitamin K2. I take pretty much a lot of my stuff comes from them. And the PQQ, however, that I've only been able to find from Life Extension. And I think Life Extension is pretty okay so far as I can tell. But Thorne is like my favorite company so far just because I've got data from a scientist that I trust.

Yeah, it's a difficult issue. And tainted supplements are a huge problem with athletes, a lot of false positives, or not even false positives, a lot of athletes will take supplements, like if they go to like some just generic vitamin store, you know, whatever, name the name, and they pick up some sort of creatine or muscle enhancer or this or that, and a lot of them are tainted with steroids, or they're used in the same labs, or created rather in the same labs, and they don't clean the bins. And so like the vats that they use to mix up one supplement, whatever was in residual traces of it will wind up in some other stuff.

Wow. It's a real issue. I think there's, what you were referring to there, a lot of supplement companies that have a stamp on it called NSF, which is the National Sanitary Foundation, I believe, they go and they investigate where the supplements manufactured, and they look at the quality. And they also, I think, even look at some of the what's in the supplements, if they contain what they're supposed to contain, to some degree. But I know they definitely look at the manufacturing place to see if things like that were, you

know, things aren't being cleaned right and there's contamination and all that. So supplements that have that stamp are probably a little more reliable than ones that don't. But it's still not like a sure thing. Right. Yeah. It's not like just because it has that stamp, it's going to be the best supplement. I think a lot of people listening to this, they're going to probably have to listen three or four times and take notes and go over this and try to figure out if they're going to do something, how to act.

A lot of people have a hard time digesting all of this data and trying to figure out what is the best way to proceed in terms of investigating their own health and monitoring their blood levels and trying to find a primary care doctor that will kind of understand what they're trying to do. Yeah. I mean, the primary care doctor thing, finding one, I certainly can't help with that because, I mean, that's the struggle that you and I have. But, you know, in terms of taking your own health into your own hands and monitoring

blood biomarkers, I mean, there's a few that are really, really key, I think, for anyone doing any type of experimentation that they should do. And we've talked about them already, you know, the small dense LDL, the total LDL. You also want to measure triglycerides, high sensitive C-reactive protein, HbA1c, which is your marker of long-term fasting blood glucose. But also there's another test that you can do that actually is a really comprehensive metabolic test to measure how your body is metabolizing carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids. It's called the Organic Acid Test, and Genova Diagnostics offers it. And unfortunately, you do have to get your primary care physician to prescribe or to like order that because that's not something that's available to people.

It seems like there's room for a company to do this, like a one-stop shop company that sort of analyzes your health and prescribes to you, you know, explains to you what's lacking in your diet and what you could benefit from and what you can't. It seems like there's a big opening for some sort of a business like that. Yeah. I mean, I think some people are actually doing it. Like, Genova Diagnostics, I think, is one. They do sort of do that. Like, they'll tell you what's missing or, like, they'll help interpret your data. Genova Diagnostics?

And is it a nationwide company? Nationwide, yeah, but I don't know about worldwide. Yeah, right. So if you're in Europe. nationwide, yeah, but I don't know about worldwide. So if you're in Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there's other companies that are kind of, you know, like Wellness FX kind of is doing that a little bit as well. They give you a consult with someone after you get a variety of blood markers measured and, you know, try to help you figure out that as well. And, you know, so it's certainly, I think, and other people, it's just a matter of finding a good one.

That's always the catch, right? Yeah, it seems like with this kind of stuff, for the average consumer, the average person that's listening to this, it seems very daunting. It's like, boy, there's so much to think about. I mean, and a lot of times when people get inundated with that much data, they sort of shut down. Right. They go, this is just too much.

I can't do this. This is too much. And I really wish there was like a nationwide network of places like this where you could just go to. Sort of like you can go to a dentist. It should be like a place where you could go to to get this kind of comprehensive information about your diet and the effects on your body and what genes you have. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the problem is we're still figuring out all those nuances. And so, you know, even getting the data, having the person interpret it, it's, you know, it's constantly evolving. Right. And you would have to have someone who's completely on top of it all the time. So we'd have to be like sending them new literature. Yes. Like constantly.

Yeah. Because we're constantly changing the way we think about a variety of things and it would seem like some billionaire dude would like want to hire you up and have them like have you watch over them all the time and monitor their blood and try to figure out what they're doing wrong and prescribe things to them yeah monitor their blood give them young blood yeah some george soros type character hey is that real, that young blood thing? Because I know that's a real thing with mice. But are they really doing that with people?

Because I had heard that Peter Thiel had done it. But then he says it's bullshit. He's never done it. Oh, really? He did say it was. Yes. Oh, OK. I'm trying to find that, Jamie.

Peter Thiel denies ever getting injected with young blood. OK, good to know. Yeah, it is. I know the clinical trials that were done at Stanford. I don't know if they've been published yet. Fuck. No, Peter Thiel is not harvesting the blood of the young. I like how they have a picture of him with fangs.

Okay. It says stories of countesses bathing in virgin blood. Vampiric nobles sucking the juice out of the young have captured our attention for centuries. But the story's coming out that tech billionaire Peter Thiel was interested in transfusing teen blood into his own body. It sent Silicon Valley into a fever dream. But there is something. Yeah. There's a company that does this.

Oh, is there? I didn't know that. There's a Northern California company, a startup, that does this. That gives you young blood? Yeah. See if you can find that. So that is a real thing. Parabiosis is what it's called.

And they're definitely- Here it is. This anti-aging startup is charging thousands of dollars for teen blood. Look at this kid. This kid's probably high on ecstasy right there, always giving up his blood. So they take this young person's blood. It says like plot points from an HBO Silicon Valley. They say just ask Peter Thiel. Yeah.

So is this really credible? Well it says, no, he's saying I'm looking into parabiosis stuff. Ah, okay. Which I think is really interesting. See, he probably is looking into it. He just hasn't done it because he's probably waiting to see if someone starts growing a foot on their head.

Jazzy Karmazin agrees his startup Ambrosia is charging about $8,000 a pop, expensive, for blood transfusions from people under 25. He said at Code Conference on Wednesday, Ambrosia, which buys its blood from blood banks, now has about 100, okay, buying its blood, so they must specify who the people are. Now, when you go to a blood bank, do they even know,

like, what the fuck you've been doing with your body? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, it's, I know they monitor for certain disease, like, diseases and stuff that are,

like, well-known, but it's like, all the other nuances, all the other stuff, I don't, I don't. Like sugar and candy. Right.

Bullshit. Yeah. Cigarettes. Right. And small dense LDL. Is that, is that represented in your blood? I mean, there's certain biomarkers that you can absolutely measure. And you can certainly look at telomere length, DNA damage, things like that.

I used to have a joke about Dick Cheney. That Dick Cheney had an extra secret service agent that they put on this super healthy diet. And he couldn't figure it out. And he would have to run when everybody else did. And he was just really there in case Dick had a heart attack. They're going to cut this guy open like a fish and pull his organs out. Give Dick his heart. But this is I mean, this is what you would want.

Sort of. You would want someone like, OK, I want your blood. I'm going to pay you for your blood. But look, you can't be drinking. Right. No smoking. No sugar. No bullshit.

You'd have to monitor them like you would someone like the surrogate moms. Yeah, exactly. You'd want fresh blood. They'd have to live with me. I'd have to know exactly what they were doing. They'd feed them and suck the blood out of them. You know what else? And this will be up and coming.

It's not just fresh blood. So for people listening that don't know, transplanting blood from young animals into old animals, like, rejuvenates their brain. It makes them live longer, rejuvenates all their organs so, like, they're healthier. And conversely. And conversely, putting the old blood into young animals messes them up. It makes them age. Basically, it makes them worse cognitively and all that. Jamie's got something he's going to pull up here.

What does it say? It's saying they found it in one test that it might have worked, but it hasn't been replicated. And these two paragraphs say that it might not even be true. Which one? Interesting. It says some aspects of aging. The 2013 study found could be reversed when older mice get blood from younger ones, but other researchers haven't been able to replicate these results. And the benefits of parabiosis in humans remains unclear. Yeah. I remember that what happened was they couldn't replicate the mechanism. They thought it was this growth factor called GDNF.

And they're like, oh, that's not replicatable. Like, that's not what's doing it. And then this other study came out showing that you could transplant the old blood into the young, and it would reverse the effects. And so now scientists are going, oh, is it that the young blood is rejuvenating or is that the old blood is accelerating the aging, right? See the difference though? So that's kind of like, I think where it's possibly at now.

But I was gonna just mention to you that microbiome that's heading there as well. Like there was a preliminary study that was published not long ago in Killfish where the microbiome from young fish was transplanted in the old fish and it like extended their lifespan by like 40 percent whoa so like you take the microbiome from a young person like my son yeah freeze it down yeah so well it's funny because um they think the mechanism has to do with immune system remember

i was telling you your microbiome makes these short chain fatty acids and it totally regulates your immune system it you know you it regulates the amount of um you know a variety of different immune cells that you're making and so like hematopoiesis is one which is making new blood cells and um there's been studies that have looked at the microbiome of like really healthy 90 year olds and they look like the microbiome looks like like 30-year-old, even though these are 90-year-old people. So usually the microbiome is vastly different in older people. But these healthy 90-year-olds, obviously they're healthy if they make it to 90.

That's not an average age that most people make it to. Their microbiomes look like a 30-year-old, which is super interesting. So it's a whole new, I think we're going to start to see kind of like the parabiosis that's like the microbiome microbiome transplant that's it yeah yeah young poo make aged fish live longer i love headlines how they break headlines down and just just get you to click on it well poop's the easiest right because now it's like you know and they're doing these these these capsules now or they're taking poop pills. Freezing poop, right? Yeah. And it's like helping people with their IBS. Yeah.

Of course, like, I think the problem was like making sure it doesn't taste like shit when it's going down. Because like the capsule can open up. You have to just mix it with sugar and then you got other problems. Right. A spoonful of sugar makes the poop go down. I know. It's crazy. What do you think about Stevia?

So the Stevia, it's a non-nutritive sweetener. So it's not like aspartame or saccharin or what's the other one? Sucralose. Yeah. Which, by the way, those have all been shown to screw up the microbiome. Yeah. Those are really bad. Yeah.

They change the bacteria. By the way, Diet Coke is what the president drinks 12 cans a day of. What? Yes. No wonder why he's making shit decisions. 12? Are you serious? Yes.

New York Times story. They said that he drinks 12 cans of Diet Coke a day and watches as much as eight hours of television a day. So he's literally like a test monkey. Is that really true? Yes. That's crazy. Is that really true? Yes. That's crazy. It's really true. See if you can find that article.

12 cans of Diet Coke. There it is. Trump reportedly drinks 12 cans of Diet Coke. It looks like you're using an ad blocker. What's the main sweetener in Diet Coke? Aspartame, I think. Is it aspartame? Yeah.

Trump drinks 12 Diet Cokes per day what can that do to a person's body then they have a scientist on we're fucked i'll tell you what it does to the microbiome it like changes the composition so that you're like you're you're getting the kind of bacteria that are really good at harvesting the glucose from from like the small intestine area and it makes people like become obese like That's the associative studies in people. They've shown that in people, and then, of course, they've done causal studies in animals showing that. But stevia is interesting because I've seen positive studies with that

where it seems to improve insulin sensitivity, which is kind of weird. That is weird. I personally am always – I'll use Stevia like if I'm like going to let's make some hot cocoa with 100% cocoa and it just tastes like ass. I'm like, I need some Stevia here. It's like, otherwise you're just doing a shot of it like whiskey style. Yeah, that stuff's nasty. Hot cocoa with no sugar. Yeah, 100% cocoa.

Cacao. Yeah, cacao. There's all sorts of benefits with that too. But yeah, I don't really use a lot of stevia like my my in-laws they they like to put it in their smoothies because i've gotten so used to my smoothies tasting kaylee that i guess you know and and plus i don't eat any anything sweet so i don't really need it but they like to put it in their smoothies and right you know i don't i don't know if it has any we haven't really seen negative health consequences. With the exception, I think there was one study in rats where they gave them exceptional amounts and it changed the hormonal profile or something.

So I didn't consume any during pregnancy because I was worried about that. Well, don't be a rat. You'd be fine. Study, study. But I think that's probably my choice. If I were to sweeten something like my put in my coffee or something i'd put stevia trump is grossly overweight you know yeah that's so the microbiome what's funny is that people taking diet coke are trying are trying to like

improve they don't they you know they don't want the refined sugar yeah they don't want to have the the constant insulin response and so they're drinking the diet coke it's kind of ironic that it's like it's like making them more obese by changing the gut microbiome now is is it safe to drink just one can every now and again or is just something you sure one can every now and then it's okay you know it's not i mean it's not gonna like completely not 12 cans a day or even one can a day you're constantly gonna to start your microbiome you're constantly going to keep shifting it and towards you know really even one can a day probably yeah because it's the microbiome is yeah i like the way it tastes though diet coke i do enjoy diet coke i haven't had diet coke since like 2006 i had one yesterday in a hotel cracked it open really i haven't i really haven't had one since 2006.

It's cold. Yeah. I used to drink them. I used to drink them when, for like in college and stuff, to stay awake and study for exams and all that. But if you're taking something like that, should you take a corresponding, like some sort of a probiotic to try to combat that? I mean, the problem with that is, you know, the probiotics, which, by the way, there's

all sorts of interesting studies that have shown effectiveness of certain probiotics that are, you know, have a lot of, that have live bacteria in a lot of them. But, you know, in order for the probiotics to work, you either have to constantly take them, or there needs to be space in your gut for them to take residents in. Right. So if you're like filling your body with all sorts of sugar or Diet Coke and all this, then where where's the probiotic that you're taking in going to attach? Right. So it's kind of flow through and the flow through that has benefits, but you have to keep taking it, you know, for that for that to happen.

So the so really a healthy diet is the way it's not you can't just counteract with supplementation, healthy, healthy diets, the way meaning, you know, the the fermentable fiber, which is what helps grow helps the the commensal and good bacteria basically grow and thrive. But probiotics helped me a lot, like after I had some I had some gut issues from from stress with graduate graduate school. And so that definitely helped me. And I don't, I take them once in a while now, like, you know, but I don't take them every day like I did, you know, when I was like trying to like heal myself. And the one I was taking, I think we've talked about was 450 billion. It's called VSL number three. But now there's another company called VizBiome that is like the guy who made VSL number three is doing this VizBiome, make the same formulation. I've tried it out as well,

but it's like a little cheaper and I don't have any affiliation with either of those companies, but there's been clinical studies with both of them showing effectiveness. And so it's certainly an interesting field, growing field. And there have been some clinical studies in humans where, for example, the one that's super interesting, the brain stuff, the way it's affecting the brain is interesting. And there's clinical studies. There was one recent one, I think I tweeted, where there was like 10 randomized controlled trials. They weren't really high quality, but it's a start. And it improved measures of anxiety in people. Other studies have shown randomized controlled trials have been a couple others showing it improves depression scores and also in cognition.

So there's, you know, again, the immune system, modulation of the immune system will affect the brain. Immune system definitely is, you know, basically inflammatory factors and things like that can cross over to the blood-brain barrier and get in the brain and disrupt neurotransmitter production and all sorts of stuff. But also the gut-brain access, the vagal nerve, where you can make certain things that are like if you have certain bacteria in the gut that are making, for example, GABA, that can stimulate the nerve in an inhibitory way that calms and does something calming to the to the to the brain part we don't really understand all the mechanisms it's just fascinating field that i'm like trying to follow and keep up on you know but i mean the question is do do normal healthy people need to take probiotics all the time and i don't know the answer but i do think that we need to to eat the

right foods to to get our microbiome healthy and avoid things like, what's it called? Aspartame. Yeah. Aspartame, NutraSweet. That's the same stuff, right? That's NutraSweet is Aspartame. Yeah, I think it is. The blue packet. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, getting back to developing fetuses and infant developing in the womb, when you were talking about foods that cause inflammation and autoimmune diseases, there this can trigger many autoimmune diseases that people have, has there been studies done trying to understand what happens when you consume a lot of pro-inflammatory foods, foods that cause inflammation, and what kind of a reaction that has to the developing child? Well, studies have been done to establish causation in animals and looking at correlation. There have been correlative studies in humans. So, for example, most of the time, though, people, the correlative studies aren't looking at whether or not they're consuming the quote-unquote inflammatory foods that cause inflammatory

types of reactions like refined sugar. They're just looking at obese mothers. And usually someone who's obese, typically is not eating a healthy diet. So I think that more times than not can say, well, they're probably eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and things like that. But you know, and so that, you know, the correlation between that and looking at, you know, negative health consequences and offspring, like type one diabetes, even poor, doing poorly on cognition tests and things like that, that's been looked at. Animal studies, there have been studies that have shown, you know, causally that you can do that by feeding a mouse a high-fat, high-sugar diet. And then, you know, making the female mouse obese and, you know, changing basically the way their offspring metabolism and their immune cells are reacting.

So things like that definitely have been shown in animal studies. But it's really almost impossible to show a causal study like that in humans. So it's like you kind of have to like you've got these. Like you were showing with the acetaminophen and ADHD risk. acetaminophen and ADHD risk. Like you're not going to have a controlled trial where they're going to give women acetaminophen during pregnancy and see if it causes ADHD. Like that's never going to happen. Like you can't, it's not, it's, it's, it's unethical.

Right. You know, so then the next best thing would be to like then go to animal studies and show it, you know, the problem, the problem with the animal studies, and this is, this is always the problem is, you know, you never know how much of it translates. You know, things are different, like the way the livers of mice metabolize xenobiotics can be a little different than humans. And so things like, you know, these mice can be a little more susceptible to things like BPA and, you know, things that are damaging than humans, which contain certain enzymes that some of these mice lack that can basically alter their metabolism and make it not so harmful, so to speak.

But still, I think it's good if you've got the prospective studies in humans that's correlating and then you've got the mechanistic studies in animals. It's a stronger argument than if you just looked at one or the other you know and there have been studies that show there's a correlation between my gut microbiome and uh children with autism and asperger's and several other diseases right yeah yeah there have been the gut microbiome seems to play a major role in um there's definitely some changes with autistic children and in Asperger's, like being on the autistic spectrum. So, and that's something that's like, I'm not sure it's entirely understood, but there's

a connection there. There's a connection with the gut microbiome and Parkinson's disease with multiple sclerosis. I mean, these are lots of studies are coming out showing these connection with brain, you know, problems, not, not just, you know, autoimmune type of, of, of diseases like multiple sclerosis, but neurodegenerative diseases and just even behavioral diseases. So, you know, there's, it's a whole, it's a, it's a, we're kind of just starting to scratch the surface of this field with the microbiome and even cancer. It's known that some of the short-chain fatty acids that microbiome certain species make increase the production of something called natural killer T cells.

And there's been animal studies where you inject them with human tumors. And literally, it can, you know, if you give these animals a big dose of probiotics, which help create the species that make these short-chain fatty acids that make T-regulatory cells, they can kill cancer cells almost as good as the chemo control that they're giving these animals. And then if you look at, there's some preliminary human trials, like, for example, humans that had colorectal cancer, and they're given a high dose of probiotic, like close to 400 billion probiotic products a day, it like lowered their cancer recurrence. Of course, they had the colon surgically removed, but, you know, still it's lowering their cancer recurrence. And I think that's interesting along with knowing what we know about animal studies

and natural killer T cells and all that. So, you know, it's not just brain, but it's also a lot of diseases, cancer, you know, um, autoimmune diseases, lots of things. And gut is so important. It really is. It's the, it's the major source of inflammation in the body. It's the major source. Like people are so worried about taking this X thing exogenously from some chemical. And it's like, yeah, you should be worried about that, but you should be worried about your gut health. Like, really.

And probably one of the least understood in terms of the general public. Yeah. I mean, and even scientists like we're just now really diving into that. And I think that I should say least aware. Right. Yeah, exactly. Most people have no idea that it's even an issue. Now, when you consider the fact that the rise in children on the spectrum

corresponds with the rise of refined carbohydrates and refined sugars in our diet, do you think that there's some sort of a connection there? It has a negative effect. Refined sugars have a negative effect on your microbiome. Certainly. I mean, I think there's lots of contributing factors to autism. I published a paper on this with vitamin D deficiency being one. I think that diet, you know, diet, a lot of other factors play a role. Paternal age actually plays a role. Smoking has also been shown, like maternal smoking. Paternal age, apparently, particularly for the father. The father, paternal age. Yeah. Yeah. So that seems to, and that's something that's,

a couple of studies have published, I think even recently, it just kind of a big one came out that was confirming. Because most people think it's maternal. Yeah. So that, that seems to, and that's something that's a couple of studies have published. I think even recently it just kind of a big one came out that was confirming. Because most people think it's maternal. Right. But it's, it's actually both. Maternal plays a role in Down syndrome. So, but I'm not aware of maternal age being linked to autism, although I wouldn't, you know, be surprised. There's probably an interaction with all these things, an interaction with, you know, be surprised. There's probably an interaction with all these things, an interaction

with, you know, the quality of the DNA in a woman's egg or man's sperm and the type of diet they have and whether they're taking, you know, acetaminophen or whatever, fill in the blank, pharmaceutical or... And the diet of the father. And the diet of the father. Sure, like you were talking about before with obese people. Yeah. And what's interesting with that, now in that diet, I mean, in that study, that was totally a pilot experiment just looking at how it altered gene expression. But if you look in the animal studies, paternal diet, so males, male mice that were given a high-fat, high-sugar diet, most of the time, by the way, when you see headlines and it says high-fat diet causes blank, high- fat diet in animal studies is always high fat high sugar and they always oh it's all it's almost always almost always high high sucrose and high high fat but why don't they say that i don't i don't know because i guess you know they're they're

they're so so drastically changing the fat composition that they just kind of always say the high fat and the interaction between these two things just really is now starting to be understood. But it really is. High fat is almost always – so I always call it high inflammatory diet because it's a combination of the two. But anyways, if you feed male mice this diet of high fat and high sucrose, they become obese. And then they have offspring. If you feed their offspring normal diet, so not the high fat, so they just fed a normal child diet, those offspring, female offspring, don't become obese, but they get type 1 diabetes. Wow.

So it's because, and what was found is that the obesity was changing genes that regulate pancreatic beta cell insulin production in their sperm DNA. And that was passed on to the offspring. Wow. So that's kind of, again, looking at it. It's all so complex. I know. It is. It's complex.

It's interesting. I certainly am constantly trying to optimize everything I can to the best of my ability, and things are always changing. That's the thing with science, and that's also the thing with following someone or following a certain dogma. Things change, and you have to be able to accept that things change the more data we have, the more tools that we have at our disposable to at our, you know, to investigate things, you know, our paradigm shifts like saturated fat. I mean, that's, it's a huge paradigm shift, you know, people in my parents generation, like my dad, and he's just convinced that like, saturated fat is like going to kill you. Right. You know, it's, it's parroted by people every day. And, you know, we've talked about this before, I believe on the podcast, you and I, about that study.

The studies, rather, with the scientists were paid off by the sugar industry. Right. And the sugar industry is probably one of the worst examples. Like, it's not always the case, you know. Like, if you have someone funding your research that is involved in whatever you're investigating. The sugar industry is particularly bad, but it's not always the case. Like I was involved in research with blueberries and the research was funded by the high Bush Blueberry Council. And so we did this placebo controlled trial where we were looking at, you know, there's a whole panel of scientists involved and I was just one of the scientists involved. And I was looking specifically at DNA damage and, you know, how blueberries modulated that DNA damage, which can lead to aging and cancer and stem cell dysfunction, all sorts of things. And there was a placebo group. So it was an enormous amount of work. You know, we had to isolate blood from patients. They were given this blueberry powder. They were taking twice a day for eight weeks or placebo powder. And then we had to look at their DNA damage.

And what my work found was that, to my surprise, so blueberries lowered DNA damage, which is what I thought, because they have a variety of compounds in them that are known to be antioxidants. But what was really surprising to me was that the placebo actually lowered DNA damage just as well, if not better, than the blueberry powder. And the placebo powder had a little bit of refined sugar in it and some like coloring, food coloring and stuff. And so I was like, oh my God, what's going on here? How is the sugar lowering DNA damage? Well, it turns out I had looked at gene expression data as well. All these genes that are involved in stress response and in hormesis. The reason I was looking at that is because there are certain compounds in the blueberries that can have a hormetic response. And I wanted to see if that

was being activated. Well, it wasn't really robustly being activated in the blueberries, but in placebo, some of these pathways, the same pathways that like sulforaphane can activate really well, to some degree was being activated because we think it was slightly stressful. Of course, it was a very small amount of sugar and also the dyes that were used have been shown to cause a little bit of a hormetic response. But, you know, we're going to publish that data. It's not like because the Blueberry Foundation funded this study, you know, the data is still, this data is the data. We didn't, you know, change anything.

So it's not always the case. And again, there's something very interesting here. And like you said, science always surprises you. And always the things that you, like, it's something to predict. It's completely the opposite. And there's something always interesting there. Always, you know. Because like as humans, we think we know biology. And we're like, oh, this is going to be predicted to be that.

And all of a sudden, it's the complete opposite. And you're like, what's going on? Every time you come on the podcast, though, I'm reminded of the fact there's so much data, it is impossible to keep it all in your head. And especially for one person. When you're dealing with all these different fields, all these different scientists working on all these different studies, and it's almost impossible for one person to have all this data in their head. Yeah, it is. But it's interesting to me. Yeah.

Oh, it's fascinating. It's unbelievably fascinating. But it's one of the reasons why boiling something down to a clickbait title of an article is so it's so enticing because it's like oh tell me high fat diet kills the mice fuck that all right i'm i'm i'm going back to low fat vitamins give you cancer oh vitamins give you cancer that's gonna make a headline yeah yeah when you think those are hilarious yeah then you have to dig into them and you're like wait a minute yeah yeah the the sugar industry study was from the 1950s and 1960s. It would probably be pretty difficult to have something that biased and fraudulent today. There was even another one that just came out recently.

Like we talked about one last year, but there was another one that came out, another study. I think it was published in like PNAS or PLOS, one of those two, showing that they suppressed data that refined sugar played a role in cancer and in heart disease. And this was the 70s, I believe. So there's more than one study that have now linked them to basically holding back data from being published. So they're one that's definitely, I would say, pretty bad. I had someone send me some review articles that were basically stating that refined sugar was not bad. And the review articles were, were funded by the sugar foundation. And I was like, Oh, this is the

one. I usually don't say this. Like, I usually don't say like, you know, based on who funds the study, like just the conflicts of interest, you know, disclosures, but this is the one time where it's like, you know, the sugar foundation, they're just notoriously bad. Well, it's also contrary to everything else that's been established, right? Yeah. When you understand, it's like when you look at, like I said, all those things, the mechanism and you look at the interaction between foods and how the body's,

you know, processing these things. And you look at the observational data and controlled trials. I mean, you know, how many things can you say, you know, no to? I mean, you just, you know, just looking at one thing there, you know, that's not as strong. But, you know, looking at all of it is the big picture. But there's just so much money and sugar. So many things have sugar in them. I mean, what we've allowed to have done in this country is literally allowed this one thing, this one substance to be in.

I mean, what percentage of our food do you think has sugar in it? Well, I mean, if you go to a restaurant or you go to get some condiments or fast food. Yeah. I mean, those things, it's slipped in everywhere, like Thai food. Or, you know, it's like you go and it's like well it's got sugar right yeah it's got sugar in it you know so it's certainly but that's almost acceptable it's like i get what you're doing trying to make something taste delicious because you're an artist right you're you're cooking a meal and this meal is not just nutritious it's also supposed to be a uh a delight to the senses.

That I kind of get. But what I don't get is that it's permeated our entire diet. The average American diet, it's in everything. It's in the drinks we drink. It's in the foods we eat. It's in the bread that you consume. It's in the pasta. It's in the spaghetti sauce.

It's in the bread that you consume it's in the pasta it's in the spaghetti sauce it's in i mean it's in everything it's if you go down the the aisle at a supermarket and just grab a random can thing grab it turn it you're gonna read sugar it's just it's you're gonna see it much more often than you're not going to see it right stunning yeah i know that happened to me not long ago when i like sent dan to the store to get some like some kind of like i was wanting some worcestershire sauce like for my steak for some reason i was like having a nostalgic thing i was like wait a minute oh i can't eat this is it sugar in it yeah yeah worcestershire sauce tastes like shit why does it have sugar in it because it take more tastes more like shit if it didn't? It, for whatever, you know, it's something

I ate as like a girl and I had this craving for it and... I used to eat that as a kid too. Maybe it was like more common when we were young. I think so, because it's really it's not as common anymore. No, you never even hear about it. Like my kids don't even know what it is. What it is, yeah. My kid loves Cholula. It's probably got sugar

in it, right? I don't know if that one does actually. I think that might be one of the better ones. I bet it does. My seven-year-old fucking loves Cholula. It's probably got sugar in it, right? I don't know if that one does, actually. I think that might be one of the better ones. I bet it does. My seven-year-old fucking loves Cholula. She puts it in everything. She put it in milk. We had to tell her to stop doing that. Oh, that's gross.

She's so gross. She thinks it's hilarious. She'll squirt it right out of her tongue. She'll shake it right out of her tongue. She loves it. Doesn't? No sugar? Beautiful.

Great. Yeah. It's probably got something else bad in it. Probably got some weird red dye. It's probably. Great. Yeah. It's probably got something else bad in it. Probably got some weird red dye. It's probably not even really red. It's probably brown. I think if people are going to eat sugar, though, the one thing they should do is eat it within a certain time window.

What's in there? Nothing. Sodium. There it goes. Water, peppers, salt, vinegar, and xanthan. That's like a gum? Oh, yeah. Xanthan gum.

Spices. Eh, this doesn't seem that bad. Yeah, I don't think xanthan gum that's like a gum oh yeah xantham gum spices ah this doesn't seem that bad but yeah i don't think xantham gum's that bad but some of the other emulsifiers have been shown to also disrupt gut microbiome of course of course yeah um bio k that stuff those little yogurt things that kids drink you know those things i don't know but it sounds familiar like yogurty thing that a kid would drink. It's got a ton of sugar probably. I'm sure it does. It tastes sweet, but it's got some sort of probiotic in it for kids.

Do you limit the... Yeah, there it is, BioKids. They take regular BioK. They take that stuff. 100% probiotic, 0% yogurt. Okay, so it doesn't have any lactose. But what's in there? Does it have an ingredients thing?

More. Where's the sugar, bitch? I'm constantly like, Apple F, ingredients on every page. 100% probiotic. Come on. What's in there? What's in there, you fuckers? Doesn't say.

Does it say ingredients oh they're hiding it from you it's sweet man i'm telling you it's i i have a hard time believing there's no sugar in there well the other thing with those probiotic supplemented things is that like the amount of probiotics in them are like minimal. Right. Like, yeah, I mean, my kid likes kimchi. Really? The one that puts the pillow on her tongue? She's a freak. Sugar.

Nine grams. Is she more like you? Nine grams in those little things. You know, my, um, both of my youngest kids are a combination of me. It's,

it's very weird. You know, like there's traits like the, the seven year old is way funnier. She's hilarious. Really? She's like purposely funny.-year-old is way funnier. She's hilarious. She's like purposely funny. That's so cool.

Yeah, but the nine-year-old is just psychotic. She's like, she'll do things. Like we went to a resort once on vacation and she does cheerleading and gymnastics. She's really into gymnastics. She did cartwheels a half a mile home. We had a walk like a half a mile. She did cartwheels the entire way back. That's crazy. She's a psycho.

Yeah, she's straight up psycho. She's really driven. Oh, she's crazy. She's got a six pack. She's nine. But you're really driven. Yeah, it's sad seeing a nine year old. I'm like, you're fucked, kid.

She has a six pack? You're going to be nuts. I'll show you later. Wow. Yeah, it's disturbing. Yeah. Like, I mean, like ripped. Like I would get dizzy. But she eats everything. It's not like she yeah like i mean like ripped like i would get dizzy

she eats everything it's not like she's like uh you know like anorexic or anything she just exercises constantly that early life exercise is important too yeah oh yeah yeah they do mma they do uh karate both of them do yeah they're into martial arts i got one of them in jujitsu i'm trying did you expose them to like different like different things to see what they like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems like gymnastics is her big one. They kids,

little girls love other things where other little girls are also being active. You know, so gymnastics is a good one. Cause you know, they're all doing their tumbling and they're, I did that one. I was, I think it's really good for body control too.

And I, and I was like talking to her, like she likes jujitsu and she likes, um, uh, gymnastics too. And I was talking to her. She likes jiu-jitsu and she likes gymnastics, too. And I said, well, they really help each other because your jiu-jitsu will benefit greatly from your body control that you get from gymnastics. Like the ability to move your body, like do back flips and do handstands. It's also just the balance and the ability, just the dexterity that you get. I totally agree. I started ice skating when I was really young, two and a half.

My mom says I started when I was two and a half. Yeah. So I started ice skating when I was two and a half. And that also is like a lot of balance and very, you know, similar to like ballet too, or just graceful sort of things. And it really, I think, helped me with a variety of other sports I did later. You know, surfing, my surfing was, you know with a variety of other sports I did later. You know, surfing. My surfing was, you know, a lot more graceful, dance-like.

Do you still surf? I haven't surfed since pre-pregnancy. Yeah, I would worry about sharks. You're a mommy now. I am getting more concerned about sharks. I forgot what the... Fuck those things. The last thing, there was something...

I am, yeah, I'm getting a lot more worried about the sharks. Did you see that video of the guy who was swimming, who was underwater scuba diving, and the shark came from behind him and bumped him in the head? This enormous shark. No, but you showed me the surfer one, and that freaked me out. Oh, the one where the guy was surfing, and the shark was right next to him? They're so big.

And all it takes is, I mean, they're eating machines. All it takes is one. Look at this. This guy's underwater. Check this out. Boom. Play that again. Is that a great white? That thing's huge. mean, they're eating machines. Yeah. All it takes is one. Look at this. This guy's underwater. Check this out. Boom. Play that again. Because it didn't.

Is that a great white? That thing's huge. It is. Look. Oh, he opens his mouth. It hit him in the head. I mean, that thing easily could have bit him. Where is he at?

Where is this? I don't know. Somewhere he shouldn't go. That's scary. Fuck that. So do you do like snorkeling or anything? No, I have. I did when I was in Hawaii. I was terrified. that's scary fuck that so do you do like snorkeling or anything no i have i didn't

like in hawaii i was terrified we did this one cool thing where uh we were on the big island last year and they take you out to where the dolphins are they like find schools of dolphins and they uh when the dolphins are in the area they'll take you out on the boat they find out where the dolphins are they spot them and then you jump in the water and you snorkel with the dolphins yeah it was amazing did they were they like friendly they come up to you don't give a fuck about you that's aren't their dolphins are like really smart yeah well they're they're wild dolphins they're not like seaworld yeah yeah yeah they're like why do i care about you man i don't even know what you're saying i don't know what you're doing why are you wearing a watch

like this they don't have anything to do with you. Why are you monitoring your heart rate? Yeah, they just avoid you. But it's just a crazy feeling just to be in literally the middle of the ocean miles from the water or miles from the shore, rather. And you're just looking down and you see the vastness of it all. I think it's in a lot of ways there's a reason why beach communities are kind of cool. They're, like, peaceful. They're like peaceful. They're very mellow. I think part of it is because you're humbled by this gigantic body of water

that's in your face every day. I think it's akin to staring up at the stars. There's just something about the vastness of the ocean that's so undeniable. Your insignificance in the greater scheme of things is so undeniable that i think it chills people out whereas i think cities make people like more like i gotta fucking get over there these cars are in my way get out of my way bitch it's like yeah you're you're too much of an important factor in your immediate world i think that's why i was really drawn to surfing in the first place

is because I'm a really go, go, go, go kind of go-getter, constantly, constantly next, what's next? And being out in the water was the one place that I would put all that behind and I would chill, you know, and I felt really good just sitting on my board and having the water. Of course, I wasn't thinking about the sharks, but just having the water, you know, on me and just sitting out there and watching the waves. And, you know, it's certainly there is definitely a very chilling factor to it and for sure humbling. Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Like, I still am, like, terrified, like, on a big day going out because the oceans are really scary. Like, aside from the sharks, like waves are freaking scary. Just the power of them can move you around. Oh, yeah. I've had them. I mean, I've had some scary. It's kind of amazing I get back in after that.

But where it's just so powerful. I mean, you know, where it's just slamming you down. You're doing donuts and you're like, which way is up? Oh, my God. You know? Yeah. Oh, my God. I can't even imagine and some of those crazy people that get um they get dragged

out on a boat all the way out until near mexico yeah they get towed in and then they just jump on those waves that are 100 feet high like i like my i get sweaty hands when i watch videos of that because i know the power of the wave and I'm like, they're insane. How can they, it's like huge. Like just because some of them do, you know, end up in the whitewash and it's like how powerful that must be.

I'm friends with Shane Dorian. He's one of those world record holder champion type, big wave surfer dudes. And I've seen some videos of him doing it. And it's just, it's, I don't understand. He's he's laughing. He laughs about it when you bring it up. It's just what he doing it. It's just, it's, I don't understand. He's,

he's, he laughs about it when you bring it up. It's just what he does. But it's, I've seen videos of him doing it. What is this? Is this him? Yeah,

here it goes. Jesus Christ. Jaws 2. Look at him. Like, come on. I go bow hunting with that dude. Oh,

really? Yeah, in Hawaii. Went to Lanai. We bow hunted. But look at this. Look how, how big those waves are. And he's right. So he came up out We bow hunted. But look at this. Look how big those waves are.

And he's right. So he came up out of that. Look at the drop. That's so crazy. If that came down on you, you're dealing with, what, a million pounds of water hitting you in the face? I want to know how they survived that stuff. Because it does come down on them. Well, I just think this is how he lives this

is his life he loves it i mean i think he's been doing this for a long time it's just a natural part of life to him and he lives on the big island how big that wave is this is insane that's totally insane see this he's clapping too he's clapping in the middle of it it's like he's obviously having a great old time. Fuck that. For sure. I mean, I like surfing, but I wouldn't do that. Yeah, and the sharks, too.

I mean, the Big Island, like, you always hear about people getting bit by sharks, especially tiger sharks. Is that where Bethany Hamilton, the girl that, like, lost her arm, was she in Hawaii? Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. Yeah, how about that? That little kid loses her arm. She's like, well, I got another one. She's still surfing. Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. Yeah. How about that? That little kid loses her arm. She's like, well, I got another one. She's still surfing. Yeah.

It's crazy. It just shows you how awesome surfing must be, but not for me. I wouldn't be that awesome for me either. And I haven't gone back out. I mean, I'm just, I can only like, I've got so much time in the day to like work out. Yeah. I need to like, I need to get the biggest bang for my buck. Yeah. So you're back running now. I'm actually haven't, I haven't gone back running.

I'm planning on it. Like what are you doing for exercise? I'm doing the high intensity. Oh, those spin stuff. So you continued that. How many months? Your son, you said is five. He's four months old.

Four months old. Yeah. So yeah. So how long are you going to give yourself before you try to start running again? I think after the holidays I'm going to do it. Yeah. What about things like CrossFit or something like that? Well, I only have so much

time. I think the organized I like the spin. And like I said, it's not like your dancey spin. I tried that. I didn't like that. Do you do a lot of weightlifting type exercises? I need to do more. I have like, I do it, I don't have a gym membership anymore.

So I have like weights and i'll do it like you know at my place but i haven't been um doing as much of the strength training as i should because that's also extremely beneficial and you know bone density it's a big one yeah bone density also just muscle mass i mean like there's been studies showing that people that do strength training like they have a 23 percent% lower all cause mortality and like a 30% lower cancer related mortality independent of any other like, you know, health factors like obesity and all that stuff.

So, you know, the muscle mass is another thing that's really important. In fact, there was also another interesting study showing that like people that had leg strength, like their leg strength was correlated to like massive improvements in cognitive function um legs were not arms but only the legs so they

you know various various different exercises were done like hand grip strength and all that but it was leg strength specifically i don't know if it's like something blood flow something about your how strong your legs are is somehow somehow indicative of blood flow to the brain or that's i don't know so dudes who do squats are geniuses if you know anybody who does a lot of squats go to them so i do i do air squats like the body weight squats yeah yeah do those and like you know do you do the hindi style ones where you come up on the ball your foot um do you know what those are do you kind of jump as well like no no those like burpees hindu squats you um you you i could do it for you real quick essentially you start off like this

and then as you go down your heels come up off the ground like this and then your hand touches the floor and then you come up and what it really does is it works the quadriceps really well around the knees and a lot of people find it to be uh an excellent stability exercise and they're called what are they called hindu squats here this guy's gonna do it this one see how he's going up on his heels this is like part of it you drop down your heels come up and then as you press up well he's not he's not dropping his heels as he comes up, which I think is weird. I think he's doing kind of a variation on Hindu squats because his heels are never coming down. He's also wearing raised heel shoes, which I don't agree with.

So your heels come all the way down when you come up? Yeah. Yeah. Once you go up, my heels go all the way down. See if you can find someone who's like, I just don't, those shoes are not, those aren't wise. Those shoes were invented, those kind of shoes, those are running shoes that are invented back when Nike came up with them where you land on the heel instead of landing on the ball of the foot, which is the way your foot is naturally supposed to absorb shock.

You know, I'm sure you know about all that, where Nike sort of changed the gait. No? No. Nike literally changed the way people run. They put this big fat heel on the back of your sneaker and people started running on the heel instead of running on the ball of the foot. When you land on the ball of your foot, your foot is a natural shock absorber. Right. And what they did was made people run with their heel first.

Which is not good. It's not good. It's terrible for your knees. It's terrible for a lot of things. And people develop all sorts of issues from running that way. I wonder if that's the correlation with running long distances and knee problems. I'm sure. Yeah.

I used to be a jump roper. I was a professional jump roper when I was- You were a professional jump roper? I was. How much did you get paid? Well, we were sponsored by the American Heart Association. Really? So we had donations and stuff.

But yeah, so I started jumping rope it was called the international rope skipping organization at that time that's hilarious i think it's called like the universal universal rope skipping organization now but i was i would compete so we'd go you know every year and compete with other teams from around the world i would travel to other you know places other parts of the u.s and set up do demonstrations in schools and set up teams anyways i was really good and i i can still jump rope like i could do if you if you have next like next time i see you like jump like if you have a jump rope or if i remember to bring one like i'll bring one for you next time next time you got to do two things you got to try out the tank

come here early we'll set you up with the isolation tank we'll do a sauna we should do a podcast we should do oh that would be awesome we're gonna start doing that because we have the sauna here we're gonna do little podcasts now how are you gonna last the heat yeah the heat with the recording equipment and stuff but see if it breaks i just i just like there's more new interesting stuff on the sauna like that i would love to talk to you about like new studies coming out and so next one next all right we'll schedule a couple months from now and then the jump rope yeah so jump rope but jumping on the balls of your feet that was the point i was gonna say if you jumped on the heels it was awful it was like so i would imagine it'd be terrible but when you look

at a running shoe you think of an average running shoe the average running shoe has a lifted heel now people are understanding that this is negative and this is bad for you so you you see what are called zero drop shoes like the the Vibrams? Yes. Okay, yeah. Those or minimalist shoes. That's what I run in. I run in either Vibrams.

I run in those. I have some Merrells that I run into. And what they're essentially is they have a wide toe box so your toes splay out and there's almost no padding. There's very little padding. I've tried Vibrams before. It's just enough of a hard cover to keep you from getting cut from rocks and stuff. So the problem for me is when I tried them out, I was running on hard concrete. It was like I was running around this lake because I lived in Oakland at the time.

And so I didn't really like it. Were you running on the heels of your feet or the ball of your feet? No, balls. Yeah. Yeah. It just was too much, huh? It was too much because of the concrete. Yeah. So. But I think even that is okay if you build up to of your feet? No, balls. Yeah. Yeah. It just was too much, huh? It was too much because of the concrete. Yeah.

So. But I think even that is okay if you build up to it. You build up. Yeah. But you develop. Your foot strength changes radically. So maybe I'll get some again and try. You got to go slow though.

Because beach running is probably a lot easier too. Oh, yeah. I run to the beach on those. Yeah. When I'm on vacation, I'll run with minimal shoes. But when you are doing it, you have to build up to it because you can get plantar fasciitis where you start really destroying the bottom of your feet. Very common. So what do you mean?

Like just don't run as long distance or something? Take your time. Yeah. Like the Vibrams, they got in trouble because they were telling people that their shoes can prevent injury and strengthen your feet, which they can. But it takes a long time. So what would happen is people would say, oh, I'm going to use these shoes. It's going to prevent injury. Fuck, I'm injured.

Because your feet are weak. The idea is that your feet in regular shoes are essentially like in a cast. This is what your feet are like. You're relying on the structure of the shoe. It's tightening up around your foot. You have a nice fat cushion at the bottom of it, and you're using minimal musculature of your toes and all of the different feet. You're not articulating everything as individual joints and pushing with all the muscles. So when you switch from a thick, fat running shoe to like a Vibram's five finger, there's definitely an adaptation curve.

And you have to be careful with it. I certainly think because when I was doing it, I was running long distances. Like I just, I didn't ease into it at all either. And I was doing it on concrete. My friend Neil Brennan got plantar fasciitis from running on a treadmill. In Vibram's? With Vibrams, yeah. Wow.

I think I was running on treadmills as well, too. I'm just kidding. I'd say that to him. But, yeah, he just got too crazy with it. He's kind of an obsessive person. He got into it, and he's like, oh, this is the thing. I'm going to do this now. I ran a few miles, and he blew himself out, like, right away.

He fucked up his feet. Can you reverse that? Yes. Yeah. It takes a while to heal though. It's very painful. I know quite a few people that have gotten plantar fasciitis and you get out of bed, you can barely walk.

I think my mother-in-law had it. Yeah. It's rough. Yeah. It's rough. So luckily I've done martial arts my whole life. So my feet are pretty strong. But I noticed a big difference between running with minimalistic shoes.

I mean, just my feet just feel stronger. They feel different. They feel different when I'm walking around. My arch is raised up. I've always had flat feet. My arches have actually gotten higher. And, like, just the overall dexterity of my feet. One place where I really feel it is in yoga.

I noticed a big difference in yoga. I have just more foot strength. I'm going to try out the Vibrams again. I threw out my other ones, but my feet are like bigger now after pregnancy. That's funny. Like it stretches your feet out. Did mine.

Maybe it's like, you know what? Maybe it's akin to a weightlifting, right? Cause you're thinking about it. You have all this extra weight in your body. You're carrying around your feet and your hips and right? Yeah, you definitely have a lot of extra weight. I mean, it seems like it like if you have a 40 pound vest on your back and you

did a lot of exercises with that 40 pound vest, your bones are going to get more dense, right? Yeah, I would like to know. I mean, I know, I know certainly my feet were bigger during pregnancy because of the swelling and stuff, but, But I'm four months out and my feet are definitely bigger. Are they longer? Are they wider? They're wider. They're wider. I bet you have more meat in your foot.

Yeah, they're wider. I was shocked. I couldn't like this. A pair of shoes that I'm supposed to fit didn't fit. And it was I was like, you know, it was too narrow. I bet that totally makes sense. I mean, think about how much weight did you gain? Are you allowed to ask gals that?

So I actually gained. You've lost all the weight, so I'm allowed to ask you. I've lost a lot, most of it, but I still, you know, there's a little more to me. But my God, was I big. It's crazy. It's amazing that we bounce back. I gained probably more. They say like 30 pounds. I gained close to 50.

I know I'm going to gain 80. But I was eating all healthy foods. I started out very thin. So I was talking to my OBGYN about that and he was telling me that really, because I didn't look obese or anything. It was just when you start off at the starting point, your body wants you to gain a certain amount of weight. Sure. It wasn't, it was just, I start, when you start off at the starting point, your body wants you to gain a certain amount of weight. And so my body wanted me to gain 50 pounds and I had an eight pound, 10 ounce boy. Well, just think about 50 pounds on your back for nine months. Of course, your feet are going to get bigger.

They're going to be stronger. Yeah. It was, you know, there was an interesting study showing that Vmax actually improved, VO2max improves after pregnancy. Sure. Makes sense. You're carrying around a baby. It's kind of like training in- I have a pack that I wear.

I have this thing. It's a company called Outdoorsmans. They make a pack that's designed to condition people for backpack hunting. When you go, you carry everything. You carry your entire camp on your back. So you carry your, you know, sleeping bag, um, a jet boil, one of those tanks that you, you cook on, you carry all of your equipment, you carry everything, all your food. I mean, you, you could carry as much when you, when you're

wearing a backpack and you're going into camp, you could carry as much as 70, 80 pounds on your back. So what they do, this company called outdoorsdoorsmans, they make a pack frame that has an Olympic plate bolt on the back of it where you slide Olympic plates on it and you clamp them down. So you have like literally an Olympic weight on your back. You could put a 45-pound plate or a 90-pound plate, and you do hike to condition yourself. So that you have the right posture and you're building the right muscles. Exactly, exactly. hike to condition yourself so that you have the right posture and you're building the right muscles exactly exactly it's it's one of the best ways like weighted pack exercises is one of the best

ways to prepare yourself for that it's really one of the only ways because you're dealing with many many miles of hiking yeah that's kind of cool because i've i've often like i haven't really ever done any like big camping like that you know i'm I'm always like go for a hike of the day, come back, go to the cabin, you know. It's rough. But it'd be kind of fun to do that, like where you hike many miles in and you stick up a camp and, you know, so. But I've thought like how am I going to carry all that stuff? It's grueling. I can imagine.

Like there's no way I could do that much. Well, when some people do it, if they're only going to go for a few days, they can get it down to as little as 40 pounds you know some people are super minimalist like my friend adam he does it for many stretches at a time and he'll do like 28 days in the bush by himself he lives in australia he's done it in montana too and he um he did it and documented it all on his instagram story but he's so extreme he cuts his toothbrush in half. He cuts weight in so many different places that the handle of his toothbrush, he cuts off. So he's brushing his teeth with the end part of a toothbrush, which I think is just stupid. Like how much weight are you saving?

Come on, man. It's ridiculous. Give yourself a real toothbrush, you psycho. But these people really concentrate on making things as minimal as possible, bringing as little gear as possible and just getting all dialed in. You have to kind of figure out how much water you need, how much food you need. Most of the time they map out. They'll use like Google Earth and map out where the natural springs are and try to figure out how much water they have to bring with them and how much they can get from these sources. And so then they have to have either a SteriPEN or some sort of filtration

system to clean out the water to make sure that they don't get, you know. Parasites. Yeah. Yeah. What's the longest amount of time that you've done like one of these campings? I've never done it where they did it like that, where I carried my camp on my back and lived out there for the only time I've ever done it is with a group of guys and we've camped for a week in Montana but we brought everything in on canoes so we had all these supplies we brought them in on boats we got out we staked our tents and we had food with us just you know but I know a lot of guys do it and they don't bring much food. They just try to live off the land. They just try to get successful quick with the hunting and then eat. That's scary. It's crazy. Yeah. But it's the added challenge of it.

But the point being that weighted backpacks are an excellent cardiovascular exercise. So it just makes sense that being pregnant would make your feet stronger and increase your VO2 max. I did a lot of walking, like four miles a day, you know, and I thought I was doing a great thing, but there's this girl, there's this woman in my spin class and she's like kicking ass and she's about to have this baby like any day and she's there biking away. And I'm like, geez, she's tiny though. She's real tiny. Like I i i look back at pictures of me and i'm like i can't believe i like bounced back from that because it's just like i'm just so enormous you know it's it's crazy it's just it's incredible the whole thing is incredible do you think you're

gonna do it again or are you one and done i think i might be one and done um i don't know for sure but you know it's it's you got some time to think you only four months old. I got a little bit of time to think, right? I mean, like, I've got pressure, like, my half sister and, like, other people are like, okay, you got to wait a year. You got to get pregnant again. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Slow down. You don't have to do anything crazy.

It's okay to have one kid. I kind of, I'm kind of just so in love with him that I'm like, I don't want to share my love, you know? But you know what? Having kids like my kids are two years apart, the youngest ones. And when they hang out together, it's just amazing. You watch them hug each other and they play games together. And, you know, there's like little sibling rivalries.

There's always going to be. But there's something magical about having a sibling. You know, I grew up with a sister who's one year younger than me. Yeah, I have a brother who's four years younger than me. Yeah, I don't know. There's something to it. But, you know, it's also something to have one kid and giving them a lot of attention. I don't know.

And being able to do other things too, like science. So speaking of science, tell people where they can listen to your podcast and contribute to your research. Because you have, you were saying you have – what is the page where people can – Yeah, there's a Patreon and also we have a direct subscribership where people can – if they want me to continue to do the podcast, put out articles. So my podcast is on iTunes. It's called FoundMyFitness. But you can go to my website called FoundMyFitness.com and there's now episode pages we have where I'm starting to now put a lot of information. And found my fitness on Instagram, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook episodes. Yeah. So here's

the episodes. And if you click on one, there's like a summary and sometimes we're getting transcripts now. So I'm going to put a lot more information um there as well and so yeah people are are contributing money whatever they can they can do at one time or like a one five ten dollar a month um some people do more than that and um it's it's really cool uh it really has been a lot of fun and i enjoy it like like it's just i love it well you're awesome at it and you're, you're awesome at this too. I mean, it's ridiculous.

You haven't looked at notes once. All this shit is all from the top of your head for people that are listening to this. She's not reading off of anything. She's just rattling this off. It's very humbling. Thank you. So thanks for doing this.

And next time we'll do the tank, do the sauna. We'll try to do a podcast. I'm totally going to hold you to that. Okay, let's do it. We'll do it. Jump rope.

You've got to see the jump rope. I'll get a jump rope. We'll do it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks. let's do it. We'll do it. Jump rope. You've got to see the jump rope. I'll get a jump rope. We'll do it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks, Chad. Rhonda Patrick, ladies and gentlemen.