The Joe Rogan Experience - #1701 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a PhD in biomedical science, and an expert on nutritional health. She's also the host of the "Found My Fitness" podcast.

the Joe Rogan experience all right what's happening Rhonda hey very good to see you good to see you it's been a year it has been it's been quite a while yeah and you were just telling me that you're 13 days into keto? I am. How are you feeling? Well, let's start off with, well, why did I even want to do keto? Why now? I mean, this has been how many years? It's been trendy. It's been lots of benefits. And it's like, why did I start trying it out now? Well, I've noticed that when I am in a fasted state, I've noticed that when I am in a fasted state, so when I'm in ketosis, when I'm, you know,

burning fatty acids and making keto bodies and using them as energy, I'm like on top of my mental game. So I've been doing like when I have any sort of like podcast interviews I'm doing or whatever, you know, I'm always trying to do them fast, like I'm fasted right now. And so I thought to myself, like, is this something that could be mimicked by a ketogenic diet? Like it's very noticeable for me where I can stay focused. I have more endurance. So like, I don't like, you know, crap out like a couple hours. Mental endurance. Mental endurance. Sorry. Yeah. More, more mental endurance. So, yeah more more mental endurance so um so i decided to try it out and i i recently had a neuroscientist on the podcast dr mark

matston have you heard of him no he's like legendary i mean he's probably one of the most cited neuroscientists but he's most well known for his intermittent fasting studies like the 5-2 intermittent fasting stuff came out of his lab. He's also sort of the father of hormesis and like why humans sort of adapted to be in a stressful environment and how all these stress response pathways that happen as a response to that are beneficial. But anyways, so he was talking about like when you're in a fasted state when you haven't eaten how your nervous system has sort of evolved to become like more focused more alert and that's adaptive because if you can't find food you have to be like alert in order to like eat or else

you'll die so um so he's talking about like one of the main things that happens is this metabolic switch, is what he calls. So you do switch from burning glucose, you know, as a source of energy to basically, you know, fatty acids are immobilized from your adipose tissue and go to your liver and you start to like oxidize them and use them from energy. And then you make something called ketone bodies as a byproduct, beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate. And most people think about these, well, this is an alternative source of energy. It crosses the blood-brain barrier. It, you know, is easily used by, you know, neurons and other cells as well. But it's actually an energetically favorable source of energy.

So it actually requires energy to use glucose as energy, to make energy from glucose requires energy. But beta-hydroxybutyrate, that doesn't happen. Like it goes into the mitochondrion and it's used without that energy requirement. So you can imagine- Can you explain how that works? Like you use energy to use glucose? Yeah. So glucose gets broken down into something called pyruvate and pyruvate.

So it takes energy to do that. And then pyruvate has to be transported into the mitochondria through a like active transport mechanism. And that requires energy to do that. Once it gets into the pyruvate, gets into the mitochondria, it's then used through what's called the TCA cycle to make energy. So beta-hydroxybutyrate gets converted into acetyl-CoA, and beta-hydroxybutyrate can just go in without this active transport mechanism. So you're not requiring that energy to transport it in. Does that make sense? So you're making energy, but you're not using as much energy to make that energy. Does that make sense? So you're making energy, but you're not using as much energy to make that energy.

So that's kind of like what most people are thinking about is this sort of metabolic switch that happens. And you can imagine most people never do that. Like I typically, I was, you know, doing, I do a lot of time-restricted eating where I'll eat my food anywhere between 8 to 10 hours. And then I'm fasting anywhere between like 14 to 16 hours a day. And in order to actually go into this metabolic switch, you have to deplete all of your glycogen levels in your liver and muscle. And that usually takes anywhere between 13 to 36 hours, depending on the person's carbohydrate intake on their physical activity. And so, you know, most people never get that metabolic switch. Most people are just constantly burning, using glucose. And then when you're doing that, any fat that you're taking in gets stored as triglycerides and adipose tissue. So they're

always in this like fat storage state instead of a fat burning state, right? And so, because most people are eating three meals a day and plus snacks, you just, you never get there. So with the, you know, my, you know, anywhere between 14 to 16 hours, that's what I typically was doing. I'd noticed that like I was really mentally sharp. And so as I extended that out a little bit, it was like really clear to me that like not eating was like good for my brain in terms of like I felt smarter. I felt like I could focus more. It was noticeable, like a nootropic effect, right? And so one of the other things that's probably less well known about beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is one of the major circulating ketones you do make when you're in ketosis, is that it is actually a signaling molecule. And this was shown by Dr. Eric Verdun. He runs the Buck Institute for Aging in Novato, California. He showed, back when he was at UCSF,

that beta-hydroxybutyrate activates many different genes, one of them including brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, which I know we've talked about before on the podcast. But that's something that is critical for forming new synapses and for learning and memory. I mean, there's all sorts of things that it does. But beta-hydroxybutyrate is activating that. It's not just something that's being used as energy. It's changing gene expression. So that got me really interested. It's like, wow, this is something that like could be possibly also activating BDNF. Maybe that's partly why. I mean,

it's a hypothesis, but, you know, it seems like something that people could test and seems kind of, you know, it makes sense, right? And so that was something that I was like, wow, what if I could do? So I asked Dr. Mattson, I was like, you know, there's lots of differences between being in a fasted induced ketosis and a ketogenic diet, but there's also a lot of similarities. And the similarities are, one, you're making lots of beta-hydroxybutyrate if you do the ketogenic diet right. We can talk about that. And so I was like, wow, well, maybe. And then the other thing that overlaps between the two is that you produce a lot of GABA. GABA is the neurotransmitter that's typically more of an inhibitory type of neurotransmitter. I'm sure

Dr. Dom D'Agostino has talked about this. I think I even remember him talking about it before, that GABA is increased on both, you know, ketogenic diet and when you're in like a fasting-induced ketosis. And GABA is, you know, it kind of has an anxiolytic effect, so like helps calm you a little bit, but also seems to affect, and this is what, you know, some researchers think the reason why a ketogenic diet is so beneficial for like drug resistant epilepsy is through GABA because it quiets down the neurons that have been excited through glutamate. So like right now we're like having an intellectual discussion and

we're like engaged, intellectually engaged. And so glutamate's being fired, right? And it can do a lot of damage. Like glutamate having this like constant electrical activity, like very stimulating. You need something, like if you didn't have GABA, you'd fry your brain, like without it, like with too much glutamate. So it can cause something called excitotoxicity. And so GABA kind of counters that. And so anyways, some of the things that I'm noticing now that I've been on day 12 or 13, for one, it's been incredibly hard. So I've been measuring my ketone, my beta hydroxybutyrate levels daily, sometimes more than, you know, once a day, of course. And to be in like mild ketosis, you know, like, like legitimately mild

ketosis, like, I think, you know, you want to be somewhere between like 0.9 and like 1.2. I mean, that's like mild or moderate, mild to moderate. And I can't tell you how difficult it's been for me to first get to that point. It took several days, and it's like, I think people, probably like 90% to 98% of people that think they're doing a ketogenic diet, they're not. Really? I think so, yes, because it's not just enough to do carb restriction, and you need a lot of fat, like you need, especially in

the beginning, like, if your body like me, so I've always, you know, for the most part, my diet has been what you would call paleo ish, you know, I would, you know, like, I would have my protein and vegetables. And I generally speaking, avoid avoid like the refined stuff, refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, right? But I do eat vegetables, which are carbohydrates, and I also eat some fruits. And so my body's used to like metabolizing the glucose and doing that whole pathway, you know, we were talking about like from carbohydrates. And the fat that I'm getting mostly probably is being stored, honestly, as triglycerides. But it takes a while for your body to switch to that. And I was surprised how long because I thought, well, I don't eat all that refined stuff, so it should be easy.

It's just a little like it has been a huge challenge. And you read about all these foods that are like, OK, vegetables that are keto friendly, you know, like cauliflower or Brussels sprouts or a little bit of spinach or like I will eat like just a little bit of sauteed spinach and it'll take me, I will be in like 1.2 millimolar and it'll take me down to like 0.7, you know, so it'll kick me out just a little bit of something and if i'm not eating enough fat like i can't even like get so i finally was able to now i'm like doing like butter in my coffee and i'm just like trying to get like olive oil on everything and mct oil on my coffee and just like lots and lots of fat when i started doing that i was able to get up to like 2.2 millimolar which is like good ketosis. And then like I came here, traveling is really hard. I ordered some like I had a steak and then it was some kind of cauliflower mash with like cheese and bacon.

And that kicked me down to like 0.4. Like I was so upset. So it's just the cauliflower? Just the carbohydrate and the lack of not having as much oil, I think. So I have the protein. So you can convert. So the thing, there are what's called glucogenic amino acids. And those can be converted into glucose.

Your body has a way. You need glucose. Your red blood cells don't have mitochondria. The only source of energy they can use is from glucose. Your brain, you know, your astrocytes in their supporting cells in your brain are mostly glycolytic. They mostly use glucose. You need glucose. So your body has mechanisms to make it. You can make it from these gluconeogenic amino acids, which are in protein.

Or you can make it from glycerol, which is like the background of a triglyceride. or you can make it from glycerol, which is like the background of a triglyceride. But, you know, I think once you become adapted, and this is something that I know like Dr. D'Agostino has talked about a lot, where he's got more of like a modified ketogenic diet. He's been in it for like years. You know, he's like done a ketogenic diet for like years. And like he can eat something that it's like a lot more like you could have the protein and and the like keto friendly carbohydrates like the leafy greens you know that are not like super carb and it won't kick him out yeah he seems because he's like adapted but you know you read

all these recipes like i'm going online i'm trying to do keto recipes and all this and it's like none of them work none of them work all the stuff that you like find in the store that says keto on it totally not totally not like really oh yeah because they have too much carbohydrates and not enough fat it's like and then they do this thing with this net carb the net carb you know fiber i'm telling you like if people were to measure their blood levels of beta hydroxybutyrate they would they would know like this it's not what is the best way to do that is the best way to do it through ketone strips is the best way to do that? Is the best way to do it through ketone strips? Is the best way to do it through like a breathalyzer type deal? I personally always think blood is the best.

I'm not an expert. I haven't actually done a deep dive on all the different methods. Personally, I like, like if you're measuring glucose, for example, like blood is more accurate than like interstitial fluid area like so i like to use this you know precision precision extra that you can get and you can get these ketone ketone strips um and they're they're actually a lot cheaper than they were like a few years ago they used to be really expensive and i just i do that um and i think that's the way i prefer i mean maybe there's some accuracy in some of the other ones, but I don't really know,

honestly. Is there any benefit to using exogenous ketones? So I'll tell you what I think the benefit is. It's probably not something you're going to expect. So I've tried exogenous ketones many times, beta-hydroxybutyrate ester. The salts are like, the salts, like I'm sure like Dr. Dacostina has talked about that as well. Like they don't really, they don't work as well. Like in terms of like actually raising you up to a millimolar level in terms of. So what is the difference in the actual name of the, like the supplements, like the salts. Salts will be like a salty powder thing that you like add and the ketone ester will be a liquid. Okay. It'll be a liquid. And the liquid is more effective

than the salts. Salts are not very effective at all. It'll be a liquid. So the liquid is more effective than the salt. Oh, yeah. Salts are not very effective at all. Not very much at all. And plus, they can give you GI distress and stuff. And a lot of them have a lot of either sodium or calcium, depending on what it's complex to. So one of the things that's interesting about the beta-hydroxybutyrate exogenous ketone esters, and I've tried a few different brands they all pretty work pretty

well um they'll raise you up like if you do if you for example if you drink like the whole serving most of them are like 30 mils they can take you from zero to like 3.3 millimolar like that i mean like ketosis that i haven't been able to achieve yet from 12 or 13 days of a ketogenic diet. And so you can experience some of the effects, but it also has the effect of lowering your blood glucose at the same time. And it's like this is something that researchers are actually looking into, like, oh, this could potentially help people that can't regulate their blood sugar levels. And this is only through exogenous ketones, esters?

The exogenous ketone esters. Yes. So it lowers your blood glucose. Dramatically. Wow. But the problem with that is they're very short-lived. They're very transient. So like every time I've done it, like they wear off like two hours max.

Two hours max. The problem is your blood glucose is also dramatically lower. And if you don't eat, if you don't like replenish that like you can crash hard but you can crash hard because you have no beta hydroxybutyrate around as the energy source now whereas you're in ketosis actual ketosis your blood sugar levels are lower but you're making beta hydroxybutyrate right would there be a benefit to do that like say if you were going to do something that was like mentally taxing, if you're going to take a test or something like that, would there be a benefit in taking exogenous ketones?

So I have, I used to kind of use them that way. But again, if you don't, it's short-lived. Would you take it with some sort of glucose? I used to take it with carbohydrates, yeah. Like fruits or something? Like oatmeal or fruit, exactly. But even that, like, you know, your blood glucose will peak and then two hours later it's going to go back down. So you still need to like keep that source going.

So and I noticed that like several times. It was like, oh, this is good for a very, really the peak of it was like an hour. And is there, when you take these ketone esters, is there a number of them? Like, is there an amount you can take in a day, the amount of times you can take it in a day? Can you only do it once? People, I mean, some of these companies that make them claim you can do it more than once a day. I know people that do it. Personally, I think the benefit of the ketone ester is, and I'll tell you what I've used it for.

I tried the mental stuff but so um getting someone who you think will benefit from ketosis from a ketogenic diet getting them to do it like this diet is hard it's hard it's hard i can't like like emphasize it like actually doing it like i'm telling you i think people think they're doing it and they're not. What they're doing is just a low, low, low carb diet. It's different. Anyways, so like convincing someone to do it is difficult, like very difficult. And so if you give them the exogenous ketone ester, they can experience, oh, I would feel this way. I would feel this way more often if I could, you know, first of all, initially do the ketogenic diet. So I did this with my mom. So my mom has two types of motor dysfunction tremors. She has essential tremor, which is the kind of tremor where like, you know, you kind of just shake like when you're doing

something or grabbing like a, you know, some spoon or whatever. And then she has orthostatic tremor, which is like tremoring tremors, where she if she stands still like her legs shake really fast. So she can walk fine. But if she's standing, it's really hard. So she has to like not stand just to sit or walk or move. And with all the research on on the effects of ketogenic diets on epilepsy. And then there's also some data. And Dr. Max Mattson talked about this with me because he actually worked with the late Richard Beach on this, who was like the guy who invented the ketone ester. They're showing that it helps

with like Parkinson's disease in animal models, Alzheimer's disease, like that's, you know, something that's a little different than motor dysfunction. But so I was, I gave, you know, I wanted to give her this ketone ester to say, look, the ketogenic diet may be beneficial for you. Let's see. And it absolutely helped, mostly with her essential tremor. But she noticed a little bit of an effect with orthostatic. Now, of course, there's always the placebo. You can't placebo this.

It tastes like shit. Like, you can't. I mean, maybe you could, but it's hard to come up with a placebo. I mean, people drinking this are like, okay, I'm getting a ketone ester. Yeah, I've tasted it. Yeah. It's rough. Yeah.

So, you know, it's kind of like. Gasoline. There's always that, right? Yeah. So she's done this enough times. It also helped with her migraines. And there's like literature, a body of literature out there where it helps. Ketogenic diet's been shown to help with migraines, both prevention and treatment. And then there's like one study showing ketone ester

can help with migraines as well. I mean, they're like not like the best done, you know, I mean, again, there's no placebo and all that. So you have to like take it with a grain of salt. But she's now been on the ketogenic diet with me. And she's having the darndest time getting into ketosis too. Like, and she's not doing the butter and the coffee and like the's having the darndest time getting into ketosis too like and she's not doing the butter and the coffee and like the all the like fat like i'm just really trying to get as much fat as i can how is she doing it well she's eating she's been eating the same meals so like and she's a a person that was like refined carbs you know like i mean she's like someone that i've had to work hard on to um get her to stop drinking sugar sweetened beverages you know like she thinks it fixes her migraine

and coca-cola yeah she would say it fixes her migraines yeah it does like does it according to her i mean is there any reason why it would be that? Maybe some caffeine. The caffeine's been shown to help. Also, potentially, like, if she's having, like, if glucose is having a hard time getting in her brain and being used by her neurons, like, maybe that, you know, huge sugar rush from the Coke is going to help. from the coke is going to help. All the more reason, like there's been, you know, there's been evidence, both animal and some early clinical evidence that basically you can take someone with like early dementia and, and the size, some, one of the earliest signs actually of both Alzheimer's disease. And, and I'm not so sure if it's also dementia, but definitely Alzheimer's disease

is impaired glucose, like brain use of glucose. Like people, like their neurons and stuff are not using glucose well. And so like, naturally, of course, beta-hydroxybutyrate would be an alternative to that, you know? So anyways, what was I getting at? Oh, yeah, basically, there could be some effect with the glucose rush for her headache thing. But, again, the exogenous ketones worked. They did. And so, like, I've given it to her. And she's been wanting to do this.

We've known this for, like, over a year. And she's been wanting to do the ketogenic diet. And I think it just finally took me doing it to, like, get her to start it. Does she live in the same neighborhood as you? No. No, she's close. I like does she live in the same neighborhood as you no no she's close i mean she's in the same city okay she comes and helps out with like my son um so she's at my house like so you can help show her what foods to eat yes yes what are you trying to get her to eat like specifically well right now we've been i've been so busy and so i've been like

doing the lowest hanging fruit in terms of what's like the least amount of work bacon bacon i've got a bunch of bacon in my purse right now because i gotta catch a flight after this and i'm fasted i'm like i gotta eat something before i get on the plane anyways what about beef tallow do you ever just scoop out beef tallow not yet not yet but like so so what i've been doing just these past like you know 12 or 13 days is what I thought was going to really get me in ketosis and be a kinetic diet, which was protein, avocado, olive oil drizzled all over it, some of the high-fat, low-carb nuts like pecans and macadamia nuts. And then I thought, oh, you know, me like micronutrients. I need the magnesium. I need, so avocados are great.

They're giving me a lot of stuff like potassium, but the magnesium, which I'm now supplementing with is something that's been hard to get without my leafy greens and my leafy greens have been like kicking me out of ketosis. So I have to reach. Even if you like drench them in butter and. of ketosis so i have to even if you like drench them in butter and i drenched it in butter and olive oil and i you know i cooked down the spinach when you cook it down like so it's a lot more carb actually when it's cooked and really i should have thought yeah because haven't you ever sauteed spinach i mean you're like right but i never thought it would be more carb because you're

eating more of it you're eating more you don't like if you're eating spinach salad you would stop you're like oh this is a big old bowl like too much right but you eat that sauteed spinach and it's like little piece like a little portion it's kind of crazy how much spinach was in there i don't know yeah so so so of course everything that i was like yes i can't this i can do my leafy greens and i think i will be able to eventually but not initially not initially for sure and so you have to supplement magnesium i am anything else selenium is there any other things that you're supplementing with selenium and meat and stuff um i mean i get it my multivitamin has all that stuff anyways but i'm i'm i usually don't have to take extra magnesium because i usually get so much from eating dark leafy greens and And so that's like the main one that I've, that I've added.

And you're eating meat pretty much every day? Yeah, every day. So what kind of meat, like ribeyes, like something fatty? Ribeyes, I had ribeye. Yeah. Last night I had a ribeye, a stupid cauliflower, cauliflower hash with, with, it was like a keto place. I ordered it from my postmates to my hotel.

And they have a keto place? It's called Keto Kitchen. Oh, but it like a keto place. I ordered it from my postmates to my hotel. They have a keto place? It's called Keto Kitchen. Oh, but it's not keto. The cauliflower kicked me down from 2.1 to like 0.4. Like I was so upset. And then I did bounce back somewhat. I was one millimolar this morning, which was good. But still, I was pissed.

Yeah, so the cauliflower hash. First world problems it's hard to get up to two point like so is it a matter of like doing it for long periods of time where your body becomes fat adapted and understands it and gets accustomed to it is that what it is yeah i think so is there an actual like a mechanism that's causing this process to be like more robust over time? I am. That's a great question that I don't know. And I've been wanting to know the answer to like, what's the actual mechanism? And, you know, all I can come up with is like, you know, it is, you know, you're getting your liver to like, it's always, it's just easier to like use that glucose, you know, so like getting the liver to like, it's, it's always easy. It's just easier to like use that glucose and use it, you know, so like getting the liver to like oxidize the fatty acids and then make the ketones on top of

that. Great question. Maybe Dom D'Agostino knows, maybe I'll figure it out. I don't know. But, um, but there's something like it's, it's real, like it's real. And I think, um, maybe, you know, there's probably some individual variation there too. I mean, there's lots of genes regulating these things. When you're getting your mother to take the ketone esters and, you know, there is that issue that you were talking about. Yeah, glucose drop. So how do you mitigate that with your mom? Well, she usually will like get some orange juice and like eat some oatmeal with fruit in it.

And that's, you know, she's like increasing her carb intake basically so but still you know for someone like me it's like like even like you know a little bit of carbs that i eat with like the vegetables and stuff it's just i will crash like i will crash hard so um so i prefer so that's i started doing this whole like okay fasting in the morning like i've noticed like i'm more mentally on my game and then it was like okay well maybe i could just try the ketogenic diet you know like what have i been so i wanting getting the like micronutrient intake has been very important to me and then of course like i i was pregnant and then i breastfed i did an extended breastfeeding and all this time I didn't want to do any restrictive diets, really, you know. And then the pandemic hit and it was just like all this, you know, excuses.

But I'm finally like I finally got the motivation once it was like very noticeable mental. I know you exercise a lot. Do you notice a difference in your energy levels with keto? Because I found when I tried it that at least the initial part of it was very difficult to work out hard. I did not work out hard. Like, I haven't actually worked out really hard for 12 days. 13 days? Yeah. Because you're giving your body a chance to adapt? 13 days yeah yeah um because you're giving your body a chance to adapt um mostly because i've been so damn busy but but you know i i just haven't been i actually probably should have

been working out more because you can actually kick yourself into ketosis by doing that because you deplete your your glycogen stores any specific type of workout that's better for that? Aerobic, definitely. But on the flip side of that, if you're doing strength training, you're, you remember we talked about the glucogenic amino acids. So gluconeogenesis refers to the process of your body making glucose without having to have a carbohydrate source. Your body can make it from those specific certain amino acids. There's quite a few of them. And also from the glycerol backbone of triglycerides, you have three fatty acids on a glycerol background. When you sort of break that up, that backbone can also do that. So strength training can cause you to take amino acids up into muscle. And some of those

glucogenic amino acids are like some of the branch chain amino acids that you amino acids up into muscle and some of those glucogenic amino acids are like some of the branch chain amino acids that you're taking up into muscle so you're basically if you're strength training i don't know if this has been shown it's like you know a theoretical speculation but like in theory you should be taking up some of those amino acids and not converting as much because that's another thing too much protein if you just without the fat like could potentially kick you out and i'm probably also experiencing that i gotta eat i'm like all i'm eating is avocados they have like avocados in my bag i traveled with them i'm like like what else can you do besides all the oil in like the coffee what do they do when they check at the airport and they find all this food in your bag

they didn't do anything what's wrong with this lady She's got bacon and avocados in her bag. Well, it's a good thing because I mean, it's really like, yeah, it's everything's carbs, the airport. It's all carbs. And I didn't eat anything on the flight. You know, I, it was like, you know, that's the different, the difficult aspect of is the gluconeogenesis, right? So if you just eat meat, your body's going to eventually convert that to glucose and that'll kick you out. Yeah. So you have to have meat with lots of fat. Exactly. And that's the thing that I'm learning is that, I mean, at least initially, like I said, you know, there's, there are people out there that have been doing this for a long time and they like, I'm sure they're like, they're much more of an expert. They can tell you exactly what

you got to eat and when you can switch over to more of that but like i'm learning about this and i'm going holy shit like i thought i could just eat some meat and restrict my carbs and like i'd be in ketosis and dom d'agostino he would travel with oysters and olive oil so i have sardines and olive oil and um they're like my favorite because they really high in omega-3 there's like,000, there's like 800 or something milligrams of EPA and almost like 500 or something, like DHA. There's like literally like a ton of omega-3 in my sardines.

And they're in olive oil. The olive oil tastes a little fishy, but I also have a little chili in it. There's like, so it's like a spicy. So I've got like four or five of those I brought with me. Did I tell you that I used to eat those every day? And then I got my blood work done in it there's like a so it's like a spicy so i i've got like four four or five of those i brought with me did i ever used to did i tell you that i used to eat those every day and then i got my blood work done i had a level of arsenic that was a little disturbing and the the doctor started

asking me questions like what's your diet like we go over that he goes what is there any uh do you need canned fish and i said yeah i eat sardines like every day he goes that's it he goes cut that out let's try it again in a couple of months and okay yeah it was gone it was specifically it was arsenic yeah arsenic really no so that's interesting because dirty little fish they're dirty little fish at the bottom of the sea i'm gonna have to do another i've done an arsenic test before um and how long ago this was it was like maybe two and a half years ago two and a half years ago you weren't eating like you're eating these every day now i mean i was not eating these every day when i did this test no i am now yeah you should so i gotta do it yeah they do they

contain a lot of heavy metals apparently oh my gosh yeah pollution oh no oh no i mean this is my experience. What am I going to eat, Joe? Well, maybe there's cans you can get where they get it from better sources. Yeah. This was quite a few years ago. I don't remember what source I was getting it from. Because they're so tiny little fish, you'd think that-

They're dirty little buggers. You'd think they'd have lower levels of that stuff. They're at the bottom. They're at the bottom. Yeah, but they have lower mercury, much lower than a bigger fish. i guess it's not the same for that with our i don't know i mean again it could have just been the source i was getting from maybe other sources of no arsenic you know i don't i mean you they're a really well-traveled fish right they're available in a lot of different parts of the world i believe well i'm glad i wasn't eating them every day

while i was breastfeeding either because i don't want to transfer that to breast milk but there are warnings where people say you shouldn't particularly like freshwater fish i was reading about this guy no i was listening to a podcast about this guy who got mercury poisoning and he was a a freshwater angler and he would uh compete in a lot of fishing tournaments and he he ate fish pretty much every day, like freshwater fish. And he developed mercury poisoning, like pretty severe mercury poisoning. Yeah. I mean, you definitely can get mercury poisoning from eating certain fish. Dangers of eating anchovies.

Oh, I was eating sardines, but different thing. But let's, a couple of friends. I got some parasite oh that's a different thing that's a whole other never mind associated with eating sushi the ingestive anchovies infected with parasites oh great fun fun fun sushi is like raw fish is also higher in mercury when you cook the mercury, the levels go down. Yeah, I've heard that, that raw fish is very high in it. Higher in it, yeah.

People that eat a lot of sushi, they can get mercury issues, right? Yeah. And is it saltwater versus freshwater? I didn't know about that. What I know about is the size of the fish. So the worst thing you can do is like eat swordfish um but like as you go down like there's certain fish like salmon sardines are really low in mercury salmon sardines some um anchovies as well but other issues but bigger

fish yeah because they eat they eat like smaller fish and it accumulates. Yeah, so it's accumulating in their fat. So I always try to eat fish that are lower. They're high in the omega-3 index. Wild Alaskan salmon is my favorite. It's a fatty fish. It's also great for the ketogenic diet because it's a fatty fish. It's high in the omega-3 levels and lower in like you know things like mercury and stuff like that and so um you know another way obviously to get the omega-3s which I'm like super big on and there's actually a couple of really cool studies you might be interested in that just came out um on longevity

but is to take like a fish oil supplement of course you can't it's not sustainable like if the entire world were taking fish oil. So there's other... We got to figure out other ways to get these omega-3s. That argument is always odd to me because, yeah, the entire world, it's not sustainable,

but is it available to you right now? Yes. So what are you doing? I don't understand those arguments because you can't convince the whole world to do certain things. Now, if the whole world started taking omega supplements and then it became a real issue with, you know, supply and demand, but they're not.

So like I get so confused when people want everything to be sustainable to the whole world. Like when I've told people, like, I think that eating wild game is healthier. They'll go, yeah, but that's not sustainable for the whole world. Like the whole world's not doing a lot of things. The whole world's not exercising. The whole world, like, listen, I'm just talking about what's available for you currently as a human being listening to this. Like, is it available for 8 billion people?

No, it is not. But guess what? You're not going to motivate 8 billion people to do anything anyway. Right. It's funny you mention that. That conversation is bananas to me because people always want to use it as an excuse to not do something healthy. True. Did you know about, you mentioned the wild game and like if we could go back to Mega 3, I'd love to.

But like there have, so I've looked at some studies. So when the pandemic hit, I like bought a bunch of like, you know, elk, wild elk and like claim to be wild, you know. It's definitely not. Okay. It's all from New Zealand. Most of it. Is it?

Yeah. Okay. Well, I was buying that and then I was buying like pasture raised, this and that, of course. And so as we looked into like the differences of like, you know, looking at like vitamin and mineral profiles and, you know, the omega-3 fatty acid profiles and the fat and the macronut protein, all that. And like elk, for example, wild, like wild elk, like wild game, like you're getting, it's interesting. It does have like higher concentrations of some like minerals and micronutrients like zinc. Like, so you're getting

like a much higher level of some of those things. It has higher levels of omega-3, like ALA and some of the omega-3 fatty acids, certainly compared to conventional. But anyways, yeah, I mean, in a way, if you define healthier as more micronutrient-packed, it is. It's healthier, yeah. It's also, it just looks healthier. healthier if you look at it like the other day i cooked a piece of beef and then i cooked a bunch of elk and my family was you know we're eating both and we're looking at the elk versus the beef the elk it's so dark it's so dark and rich and it

just you can't eat as much like you you get full quicker. Like your body just gets satisfied by it quicker. But it's also, there's just the, whatever is causing it to be so dark. It's quite evident when you look at it that one of them is more attractive to you. Right. I don't know if it's as simple as like the stuff that you buy at the supermarkets just oxidizing out in the air. It's just the diet because if you get grass-fed meat, it's a darker meat. Like grass-fed beef is quite a bit darker.

Grass-fed, grass-finished beef is much darker and has much less fat, and it looks much more like – and it tastes much more like game. Some people do not like the taste of grass-fed meat because it actually tastes like meat. When you're getting grain-fed cows which is what most people love you get that juicy like really fatty meat that's a dying animal that's an animal that you know if you just let it eat like that it would just tip over and have a fucking heart attack well they've compared it you're right it is like the conventional fat fattier as well. And before 2017, like that's, for a long time, I was like, the main reason I was avoiding conventional meat was because, you know, these, I don't know what you call them, these farmers,

the ones that are growing, like having the cows all packed in and they're, you know, factory farm. They were feeding them antibiotics, not because they had an infection, but because it made them bigger right like that's why they fed them antibiotics oh yeah so the fda in 2017 you didn't know about this so that i thought it was as a reaction to the issues that they were having by eating corn well some some i'm sure some factory farmers were doing it for that but but by and large, there was a huge effect. If you gave a cattle or one of these animals antibiotics, it made them grow bigger. I wonder why.

I don't know. I honestly don't know. But it was like causing antibiotic resistance was going through the roof because it was leaking into all the water supplies. That is so scary to me antibiotic resistance is so scary to me because i know several friends that have had MRSA infections and they are absolutely terrifying because when you do get MRSA like friends that have had staff infections and it got really bad the doctors tell you like this is touch and go like you have to be in the hospital on an IV drip of antibiotics for weeks. I had a friend who was in there for weeks,

and he is a young, healthy, black belt in jiu-jitsu. He got a MERS infection on his knee. They had to cut his knee open like a fish, like pull it to the side to drain it and, like, to constantly clean it. It was horrific. He almost died. And he was in his 20s. And a really healthy, really active elite athlete.

Yeah, MRSA will take anyone down. I agree. That's scary. And that's a direct result of antibiotics. The use of antibiotics has created this strain of really potent stuff. And believe it or not, a lot of it was coming from this agricultural use of it. Really? And so the FDA shut that down. They said in 2017, because of antibiotic resistance, if you're a factory farmer, whatever,

you can't give your animal antibiotics unless it's prescribed by a veterinarian and they have an infection that you're trying now you might find people still doing it i'll make you can find veterinarians that'll give you anything right so but they they put the kibosh on that so these animals they were feeding them just to get them bigger and it was causing strains of antibiotic resistant the staph or whatever it is. Yeah. Bacteria. Yep. Wow.

Yeah. So that's one good thing that since 2017, which isn't that long ago. How was that making the jump to people? I mean, it was just it was getting into the water supplies. You know, I think it was just causing these strains to become resistant. And then the strains come to people. causing these strains to become resistant. And then the strains come to people.

I mean, you know, so imagine the amount of antibiotics to like just nationwide in the United States alone. Like how many they're using on all these. And it was like chickens. They were doing it for all these animals. And they're only doing it to make them big. Yeah. That is wild. Yeah.

And do we know why it makes them big? I don't remember. I think I looked into this years ago when I was into that whole thing. I think there is a mechanism that's known, but I don't remember exactly what it is. It probably has to do with microbiome composition. I am- Like certain bacteria, yeah. Certain bacteria probably go away and other are like making you get the energy because you can like harvest energy better from certain you know bacteria in your gut so it

probably has to do something with that but like i just don't remember the exact it's crazy though right it's the scariest to me because i've had really healthy friends get taken down by it and you you find out that the doctor says hey we don't know exactly if you're gonna live yeah that's crazy. So like I had a great uncle that, you know, just died of a staph infection. Like he went in for, you know, some kind of type 2 diabetes complication, like kidney or something, and got a staph infection while he was in there. And that's what ultimately took him down.

It's a scary thing. It is. There was a Nature paper published, like literally right around, it was like a year and a half ago. published like literally right around, it was like a year and a half ago. And it was like titled something like some medieval treatment to, you know, antibiotic resistance or something. And it was like all these components used in like chimchurri sauce, you know, where it was like garlic and basil and parsley. And, you know, a lot of these plants do have antimicrobial activity. You talked about it, that the issue that you had with staph that you actually fixed with using garlic on the actual infection. This is a total anecdote.

And I had never tested the actual abscess to know if it was actually MRSA. But my anecdote goes as this. I came down with an abscess. And the first time I had it. Where was was it the first one was like on my butt and that had to be like they like removed it and there was like like a couple of inch hole like it was like necrotic like it was bad and um and so that healed but it is our it's already been on my skin you know it travels around and so then i got it like in my pelvic region is that what happens it just wants it's already been on my skin, you know, it travels around. And so then I got it like in my pelvic region. Is that what happens?

It just wants, it's in your skin. We follow this stuff. Yeah. Once you get one, like even if it's not MRSA, whatever, whatever this,

you know, the staff, you know, the staff caucus or whatever it's called. yeah, it's all on your skin. And, um,

I think it also depends a lot on like your immune system, fighting it off. And this was, I got this in grad school. I was under a tremendous amount of stress. Like I was so stressed out. I wasn't sleeping because I had, you know, I was just working, working, working and like stress big time. Like it was like I was getting sick a lot more often than, you know, it was just a bad IBS bad part.

Anyways, so then I got another abscess in a different region. It was closer to my pelvic region. And they gave me some antibiotics orally and then also some of this stuff called, like, muprosin, a topical antibiotic. And, you know, it would go away and then come back. And it did this. I got antibiotics again. It did this, like, twice. And at that point, I was

like, what the hell? Like, this isn't working. And I started looking into the literature on, okay, is there like a combination of things I can do to potentially help impact this, right? And so, you know, you can find all sorts of things. There's all sorts of compounds and various herbs and essential oils and things like that. And so after doing a lot of reading, I'd come up with some of the major ones were garlic. And this garlic was both topical and oral. I was also taking like oral vitamin C like once an hour to kind of help boost my immune system. I don't know, you know, whether or not that did anything, but that was part of my, you know, protocol. And then on topical I was I put garlic so I would open up one of those garlic pills and then I did tea tree oil that was a big one that

was showing to have like an effect particularly on MRSA and so I was putting tea tree oil and then I was also taking grapefruit seed extract orally because that was shown to have an effect and I was taking EGCG which is like from green tea it also was shown to have an effect. And I was taking EGCG, which is like from green tea. It also was shown to have like, these are all, you know, studies in vitro showing it has an effect on MRSA, you know, grain of salt. It's like, okay, in vitro, you put it on it. It's like, it kills it with a dose of X. Can you explain in vitro to people that it's just cell culture?

Yeah. So you basically put something in cells that are in a petri dish you know so it's it's hard to extrapolate something like that to a human but i was desperate and you know it was like okay well i'm just gonna and i was taking this stuff like the oral stuff like the garlic and the grapefruit seed extract i mean i was taking it like every one to two hours is there any benefit to taking fresh garlic versus taking it in a pill form or even like using it as like you were saying you took the capsules would be there be benefit in taking actual real garlic? Well the garlic real garlic is great too and once this once it like this thing went away for good I was like oh garlic is the bomb you know so I would eat garlic anytime

I would feel any sort of sick or anything like that. But the oil is highly concentrated. You know what I mean? You're like smashing down all the oils from the garlic. So, is there a capsule? It was a capsule with oil, garlic oil. Oh, okay. Yeah, garlic oil. No, it's not powder.

Yeah, it was garlic oil that I was doing at the time. So, you cut open the capsule and just put it on the abscess? I cut it open and I would put it on topically and it didn't smell good along with the tea tree oil. But I was like determined. I was like, I'm going to try this. You know, I kind of am that way. Like when I try something, I'm like, I'm going to try it. Like I'm going to really give it a shot. Like I'm going to do it. And so, so I was like, yeah, I stink, whatever, you know, deal with it. And it worked. How long did it take to clear up? It was really quick.

I mean, I think my memory was something like two days. For me to notice, like two days, it was like it pussed out. So like the abscess, like it like pussed out and like literally within like two days, I think. Something like that where it just, you know, instead of just being this abscess that's not coming to a head and hurts and. I started getting a patch of folliculitis from jujitsu, which a lot of times people associate with staph. When you see those little red bumps like where your hair follicles are, it was on my leg

and I got pretty sketched out by it because I've had staph in the past, but I killed it with topical spray. There's Defense Soap, which is a company that makes products specifically designed to prevent fungus infections for grapplers like ringworm and help prevent staph infection. All their stuff has like tea tree oil, and help prevent staph infection. All their stuff has like tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil. It's all like very healthy. And they make like a spray for specific issues like that when you have like a topical irritation and something that's on the surface of your skin.

I managed to kill it, but I was nervous because I've had staph twice. And I was like, oh, fuck, here it comes. Right. And you know it could be serious. It really could but I jumped on it quick and uh within a few days it was gone I've I've gotten folliculitis once I had when I was in grad school I was trying out that like Indian threading of your eyebrows or whatever and what have you heard of this it's like they do like instead of like plucking them with a tweezer i've got these italian eyebrows and they're like thick how big do they get

um it's been a while no no i don't get the uni part but it's like it's like down on my eyelid so um uh anyway so yeah i was in grad school and there was like an a woman from india um she was in my lab and um she, this is the best thing. It's so much better than plucking them and whatever. She convinced me to try it, right? So I went to some place and they do this thread and they get the hair and do this thing where they put it around the hair for hair and pull it out. And it's supposed to be, I don't know what all that is. How is that better than plucking you're plucking you're supposed to like they get it like at the

root more and they get i don't know whatever i got fucked up from it i got folliculitis and it was like i had a rash on my eyebrows like it was awful and of course me and my tea tree oil like especially at the time after i was like after i had like had that you know staph infection whatever it was go away it was like tea tree oil anything any bump is it whatever tea tree right now i'm actually to be honest and it did help by the way but there's these studies coming out with tea tree oil like like causing you know like changing hormones and like estrogen mimicking and so now i'm kind of like oh not too much tea tree oil estrogen mimicking. And so now I'm kind of like, oh, not too much tea tree oil. Estrogen mimicking, meaning it'll elevate your estrogen? Like mimicking the biological action of estrogen.

Oh, boy. Have you heard of like some of these guys getting like gynomastia? Yeah. What's it called? Gynomastica. Yeah, gynomastica. They got like boobs. They get man boobs.

Yeah. Well, I think there's some preliminary there's some evidence linking like crazy teacher oil use to to that too how much teacher oil these guys i don't know but this stuff i mean it gets it gets into your system too you know so maybe like they're rubbing it all over their body i don't know what they're doing. Fucking hippies. Yeah. They ruin everything. Even good things. Yeah. So I've sort of, now it's like, okay, the tea tree oil comes out. Like if there's some little bump, it's like, okay, I get tea tree oil, but I'm not like, I'm like crazy about it now.

Right, right. Got it. Right. Yeah. Makes sense. So, you know. Yeah. I think gyneomasica though, it's like pretty extreme. I think when guys get it, it's usually, if it's not from some sort of strange hormone imbalance,

it's usually from using steroids because they use steroids, and they take so much testosterone that their body expresses. I don't think it's just estrogen. It's something else, too. There was actually, I was watching a video on it. It is horrific when they remove it. Oh, my God. It looks like the little thing from Alien that comes bursting out of your chest.

I thought it would just be fluid. It's not fluid. It's a mass. It's a big, thick, meaty mass. And there's videos of guys getting their gynomastica removed. It's basically like there's a whole culture on YouTube of these steroid guys that show all the damage that they've done to their body through steroids. And one of them is guys that have had their boobs cut open

to take out this gynomastica. And it's just these big, pulpy-looking... Pull it up, Jamie. I was trying not to, but... Trying not to? How dare you? I don't know if I want to see this. You need to see it. Because it's crazy.

Because people need to see it. Is it fat? I don't know. It's some kind of breast tissue. But it's breast tissue like a boob. I've seen them before. Yeah, they look like it for sure. Yes.

Yeah. There was a guy who fought in the UFC way back in the day who had it, and he had it bad. And then he got it removed, and then he looked normal after it. But, I mean, he had like boobs. That's the only one I could find with the thing. Yeah, but that is nothing. That's just holes. If you could show a video of them

see that stuff in the right hand corner that's it that's what it looks like click on that like that's what it looks like it does look like fat it's like these giant glands yeah right there ginomastica huge glands that fell in the middle oh look at that

I mean these are huge things that they're pulling out of these guys' boobs. Yeah. There's another, it's not just estrogen that's causing this. It's something else. And I don't think, by the way, I don't think tea tree oil is the only thing causing it either, to be clear. Well, especially something like that. I'm pretty sure that is, to be clear. Well, especially something like that. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that is, unless it's like coming from some strange, you know, weird

hormonal imbalance, just a natural irregularity. Right. The regularity of the body, it's coming from steroids. It's very common with guys who've done a lot of steroids. Wow. They have to do a lot, though. You know, you get crazy and then these things grow. Yeah.

They are boobs. Yeah, they definitely are. Yikes. Lavender oil is another one that's been shown to have like the hormone disrupting effects. Yeah. That makes sense because that's like associated with ladies. Like ladies putting the lavender oil on, right? All I know is I've, well, lavender, I mean, it kind of has this calming effect, you know,

like aromatherapy, you you know you breathe it in and it's do you ever do put lab or lavender oil in the sauna when you're in there no i do do eucalyptus yeah well that's like helps you breathe but there's the lavender well i mean it seems like it yeah yeah i'm uh i have become absolutely obsessed with sauna use over the last, like, I guess it started because of you. And then over the last, like, through the pandemic, the last year and a half or so, I'm in every day. Every single day. Like, it's very rare that I take a day off. I mean, I have to be wrecked to take a day off of sauna use.

Damn, you're getting all the benefits. Even when I come home at night, like last night I had a show, and I'm out with all these fucking weirdos with no masks on. So I'm like, as soon as I got home, I cooked myself. I cooked myself like 15, 20 minutes at 185 degrees and just deep breaths. And, you know, there's that paper that I sent you about COVID-19 and, you know, the therapeutic intervention of using sauna and this idea that when your body heats up like that, like you're trying to kill off a virus when you're sick.

If you're sick with a viral infection and your body gets a fever, your body is trying to kill that. And this idea, this paper is exploring you know, exploring the use of sauna to intervene, to stop it from ever getting infecting, from ever infecting your body, both through your nasal passages, through your, through your airway, and also just through the actual heating of the body. Right. Yeah. There's a, there's a fever response that is induced like when you have an infection and, and and and part of that is to help fight off you know the pathogen as well because the pathogen can only exist in a certain temperature

range right partly yeah i mean there's there's multiple mechanisms that also activates heat shock proteins um and heat shock proteins having a a role in in your immune system response and how your immune system responds so it like you So it plays a role, particularly in innate immunity, which is the kind of immunity that is important when you first see a pathogen that you've never seen before. This isn't like an antibody type of response. It's like killing of it before that. But there's interesting evidence, I'm sure we've talked about this,

coming out of Dr. Jari Laukkonen's lab in Finland. This was a few years ago where he looked at sauna use and, like, incidence of pneumonia. And people that, like, so in Finland, saunas are ubiquitous. You know, most people have one at their house. Most people use it at least once, you know, at least once a week. But then you have people that are using it like two to three or four to seven. So he always kind of stratifies the data based on like frequency of use. And he found that people that use the sauna four to seven times a week were 40 percent less likely to get pneumonia.

And this was after like correcting for all sorts of like other lung diseases and other health factors and exercise and all that stuff, you know, at the end of the day, it's a correlative study, right? So, but I thought that was interesting because there's also like all these other studies that have been done in like the 80s, looking at the effects of the sauna on the lung function and like helping with, you know, like a variety of factors of lung function. So it's interesting. There's probably like lots of things going on as well. And as I just gave you my paper today, was published with my co-author, Teresa Johnson, in the journal Experimental Gerontology. We argue that the title is sauna use as a lifestyle to increase health span, which basically refers to the disease free part of your life.

So in other words, you know, like you as you age, you become more susceptible to things like, you know, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, respiratory problems, all that stuff. disease, heart disease, respiratory problems, all that stuff. And so we argue that sauna use should be up there with things like exercise and good sleep and good diet, you know, things that are known to improve your quality of life. And just tons of evidence, things that we've talked about before, but, you know, talking about the cardiovascular disease improvements, how sauna, but one of the things I'm most excited about, like I've been getting my mom in the sauna and she's been sedentary, you know, like her whole life, basically. She's overweight and like there's no getting her on a Peloton. There's no getting her to go for a jog. Like it's just not going to happen. Maybe once, but like it's just not going to happen. And so I'm trying to get her in the sauna because I'm trying to improve her health some way, right?

And, you know, it's a lot easier for people, at least I've noticed with my mom, you know, who views it as like a spa treatment. You know, she goes in there and puts some hot water, I mean, puts some cold water on the hot rocks and it's kind of like a steam room. Like she feels like it's a spa. But she's also getting, you know, also getting the sauna mimicking moderate cardiovascular exercise. That's what it does, and we talk all about that in the paper. So people that are sedentary and have been sedentary their whole life, and also people that are disabled. There are some people that can't go for a run. There are people that can't even get on a Peloton. they're disabled and they can't do aerobic exercise like this to me

is like a no-brainer yeah a no-brainer i mean granted there are some contraindications like certain if you have certain um particularly certain like heart certain heart disease risks um that could be a contraindication meaning you shouldn't do it but by and large it's you know improves a lot of cardiovascular things can you mitigate those risks by having a slightly lower temperature like instead of like going to 185 maybe going to 160 or something like that where it's a more mild form of heat right i don't know i know that like to me that would make sense. And this was, you have to like discuss this with your physician. But like, for example, people that have like

arrhythmias, there could be a very mild contraindication with arrhythmias. And so the question is, you know, would a lower temperature like 165, which is what I've been doing for my mom, like mostly because she's not adapted to the heat at all. And so like, you have to adapt before you can like do 20 minutes at 185. You know, like it takes a while for people that aren't used to even raising their core body temperature when they're exercising, you know. So again, it's mimicking a lot of the physiological aspects, including that core body temperature going up, you know, the blood flow changes going to your skin and sweating, heart rate, you know, your heart rate gets elevated while you're in the sauna, and then blood pressure goes down after.

Like, these things have been compared head to head. So it does mimic moderate aerobic activity. And it's, like, the only way that I'm able to get my mom in there. And then there's, like, the brain benefits, you know, and this is something people, people that are depressed, like my mom actually has, she's been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. And, you know, you look at a, she's got a variety of SNPs, like, probably, like, there are certain SNPs that she has that are, you know, consistent, like in the serotonin transporter and things like that, you can look and see like there, you know, there's evidence that she has things that have been linked to like, you know, major depressive disorder. And also, she's had a lifetime of being inactive. And

there's a lot of environmental factors at play, you know, like drinking Cokes, like refined sugar, you know, I mean, that's inflammation. But there's been some evidence from Dr. Charles Raison, he was the first to show that like a single, what they called whole body hyperthermia, which is basically they were using this really expensive device to elevate people's core body temperature to like 101 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, they were doing a fever. I mean, they were getting hot. And they had a sham control. People that were, they were elevating their core body temperature a little bit. So they thought they were getting the treatment, but they weren't. So it was, it was. How are they elevating the core body temperature? There was, it's, it's kind of like

some, it's, it's called the heckle device. It's like this crazy thing that it's kind of infrared ish, like where it's doing it like through like that, like what an infrared sauna would do basically. And, and so they did this in the this in the people that were in the sham control group, which is kind of like the placebo in a way. And so 70% of those people in that group actually thought they were getting the treatment. So it was a wonderful placebo. Because with anything, depression, like placebo effect is a very real thing. And people know they're getting a treatment.

They're going to feel better. Like, yeah, this works, you know. So it's important to have that control. And they showed just one, like one exposure to this. There was a huge antidepressant effect that lasted six weeks. What? One? One session?

One session. One session. And the mechanism for this is completely unknown. Like Teresa and I talk a little bit about this in our recent publication. But it's also a topic page on my website. It's the sauna, like we have like a 20 something page, you know, article that is a lot of this on the website. But part of it could be like there's a million things. So here's the thing. There's a new – so Dr. Ashley Mason, she is at UCSF. And she specializes in non-pharmacological treatments for depression or sleep. And she actually trained with Dr. Charles Raison.

And she sort of carried on the torch. And I'm collaborating with her now, which is really cool, on a clinical trial where she's basically taken, forget that device. It's like $50,000. It's like all this FDA tape to get it and use it. So she's found a way to basically get an infrared sauna where people are laying in this tent with their head out. And they're in there for a long time.

with her head out and they're in there for a long time and um they're measuring their rectal temperature and making sure they get up to like 101 and it's like a silicone probe it's really easy to you know it's not like uncomfortable but these people are getting hot they're getting so hot that like you know technicians are having to like cool them down with wet towels you know and like while they're in this thing because they have to be in to that degree where they're they're getting like a fever cooling their head they're cooling their head? Is that what they're doing? They're cooling their head. Yeah. But she's done a proof of principle study on people that are not depressed that shows that it's like not dangerous, basically. It's not dangerous. People will do it. And that's kind of like you have to like show that before you can like go on to the next step

and use it as a potential clinical treatment for depression. So now the study that she's going to be starting any day, which I'm collaborating with her on, is she's going to be recruiting clinically depressed patients or participants and giving them this treatment. And it's going to be a dose escalation. In other words, she's going to try to do it at least eight weeks. I mentioned the first one was one time. So once a week for eight weeks. So they're going to be, you know, see if they can even do this, like if they can handle it. Right. And she's going to combine it with cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, because that's a known treatment to help with depression. And you can't start any study without giving like a treatment that's known to work because it's like unethical. And you can't start any study without giving like a treatment that's known to work because it's like unethical. But what I'm excited about is the biomarkers that we're going to measure, like, you know, brain drive neurotrophic factor. That's been shown to play a role in depression. And it's one of the major things like exercise increases it.

And there's been studies showing hot baths increase brain drive neurotrophic factor, BDNF. So, you know, it's like, well, let's see if the sauna is doing that. Like, that would be one potential mechanism. And then there's a variety of other, we'll mention, heat shock proteins. They've been shown to play a role in mood and animal studies and a variety of inflammatory biomarkers. Because what was interesting about that pilot study by Dr. Charles Raison was that he found the people that had the most robust antidepressant effect had higher levels of something called IL-6. IL-6 is a cytokine. It's kind of often referred to as like a Janus cytokine because it's like both pro and anti-inflammatory. It has like both effects. It's something that is, you know, elevated when you exercise. And, you know, there's a robust anti-inflammatory

response in some cases, like IL-10 and things that are anti-inflammatory. Anyways, he found people that had the highest levels of IL-6 tend to have the most robust effects of the sauna. So a variety of interesting things, super exciting, because like, you know, like if this could be a potential treatment getting people and like i know you and i have talked about this like probably a million times but like getting depressed people to go exercise like is not easy right like they don't have that motivation yeah i've experienced that so like imagine if you could just put them in a sauna right and it would have a similar effect in theory we don't know yet. I mean, you know.

How much body temperature, what do you think your body temperature is getting to if you're at like what I do, which is like 185 degrees for 20, 25 minutes? It gets rough. Right. Especially at 25 minutes. The last five minutes are really hard. Yeah. minutes are really hard. Yeah. So I asked Dr. Mason about this because she's like gone around into different like banyas and stuff in San Francisco and like had her friends like trying to like get the rectal thermometer and see like, do this or do that. The problem is like,

people don't trust you with a rectal thermometer. They're like, hey. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. But she said she couldn't get, they didn't, there was nothing out there as intense as that. Like, you know, most of these, like 165. No, as intense as what you're saying. And it's kind of what I do. So I do like 185, like 15 to 20 minutes, depending on if I exercise. You've done it at Laird Hamilton's house, right? I've done it, not yet. We's house, right? I've done it at, not yet. We've been like planning and planning and planning.

I've done it at Rick Rubin's. Oh, okay. But his sauna was like 200 and something. And then he had this like ice bath outside of the sauna. And we were doing back and forth. And like, that's the closest thing you're going to get to a psychedelic experience without doing psychedelics in my opinion it's like crazy it changes your i mean have you done that before back and forth yeah yeah like intent you did

yeah i have an ice bath i have an ice bath right next to the sauna i do it every day what do you think i mean it's it makes your whole head dizzy. It does. You go shaking back and forth. It does. One thing I found is I can't stay in the ice bath as long after I've gotten out of the sauna,

which is really odd because I almost feel like I'm going to pass out. Like, when I get to, like, three minutes in the ice bath after 20-plus minutes in the sauna, like, my vision is shaking okay so here's my anecdotal story um so i was doing for i mean i was scared of ice baths for a long time like for months because of this so back in the winter when um before we had a cold plunge we

were using the pool because the pool was cold right it was like you know not 50 degrees yeah you know which is cold. It's cold. Like, it's not ice bath cold. Like, that's insane, but it's cold. And so I was, so this time I was in the sauna, I mean, I was in the jacuzzi. I was in the jacuzzi for like 20 minutes, maybe 30.

Like, you know, I was getting my heat stress on, right? And then I went into the pool. And, you know, I had my Simon and Garfield cologne. I was like singing. I was trying to stay in there. It was cold. And I was burning. It was burning. But I was in there for just not more than five minutes. Like it was, you know, and all of a sudden, I started to get really blinky and dizzy. And I was like, oh, I don't feel good. get really blinky and dizzy. And I was like, Ooh, I don't feel good. So I got out of the pool and I got some kind of vertigo or something. I couldn't stand. I had to go down to the, I felt like I was dying. Like I had to like go down low to the ground. And, um, like Dan was

like assuring me it's okay. It's okay. And, um, and this lasted a couple of minutes, like a couple of minutes. I mean, I was like terrified. I was really terrified. I guess it was kind of a vertigo. I didn't know what was up or down. I couldn't stand because it was like, you know, and I felt like my blood pressure maybe was really low. I don't know what caused that.

I don't know if I had gotten cold water in my ear. There's some like, you can read some like anecdotal stories about cold water swimmers that like wear some kind of earplugs because it can give them vertigo. I don't know. They develop like bone matter in there. Do you know that? No. Surfer's ear. Yeah.

A lot of them have to get, they have to get operations on it. On their ears. Yeah. There's something that happens to the inner ear. Like find out if you can find what that is it's called surfer's ear a friend of mine got it does that affect the balance and stuff does that give you vertigo so i'm not sure i've never surfed but um i know that there's some sort of like bony thing oh here it goes surfer's ear is a condition where the bone of the ear canal develops multiple bony growths called exostosis.

Over time, this can eventually cause a partial or complete blockage of the ear canal. The condition is primarily caused by prolonged exposure to cold water or wind. Interesting. Yeah. So like you see those little weird bony growths in the inside of the ear. It's almost like your fucking skull is trying to protect you. Oh, that is so nasty. Inside of ears are so gross.

I got a little thing I bought on Amazon. It's a camera that's attached to an ear cleaner. And you have an app on your phone. And you could actually stick this thing in your ear and you could see the inside of your ear it's wild oh it's wild yeah i i wore um earplugs on the plane yesterday and uh when i took them out i was disgusted by the ear i don't know if i want to see more in there you know you can clean it out though yeah i know i i've got really small ear canalsals and I like get problems with that and also like earplugs hurt me because my ear canals are so small I have to like get the like baby ones or like I need to try to get the custom-made ones because like I can't I can't wear that like it

hurts like I can't sleep with them because it hurts I wore ear guards all throughout my years doing jiu-jitsu pretty much every time I trained I have very little cauliflower I have like a tiny couple of little pieces but i have friends whose ears are fucking mangled and they love it because it like makes them look like a badass it's like a it's a jujitsu thing like guy and wrestlers it's a wrestler thing too it's almost like a a badge of honor to have like really fucked up ears but i have friends that can't they can't they don't air pods like air pods like apple ones they don't fit in there they can't even go in their their ear holes so small i'm like what can you really hear with those goofy ass mangled ears because like if you take your ears and you just go like this yeah and then you talk and then you know i'm folding my ear and then go like that

and open it it's very different between what it sounds like like this and what it sounds like like this. So their whole life is like the reason why your ear is shaped like that is so that you can kind of capture sound, right? It's good. It makes your ear work better. Their ear is constantly clogged. On the flip side of that, they're probably less likely to get the noise-induced hearing damage that happens with old age.

But they can't hear anyway, so then, you know. Do you know if any of those guys have tried out the jaw conduction headphones that don't go in your ear? Where do they go? They go around your head sort of. They just don't go in. You've probably seen them but you may never have never tried it it's a very strange feeling when you test it out you use those uh that one ces thing i tried it out there just because it was new at then it was like 2017 did you like it

it was weird so you hear music like clearly that's it just vibrates on your bones instead of into your ear it vibrates on your bone and gets into your head which is like you know when you're if you're in the shower you do exactly what you're just doing you can still hear the rain hitting your skull it's just you're hearing or the water i'm sorry it's just different huh but i'm way curious on to someone who has that ear problem if this creates a better experience or if it's just like yeah i can hear it now finally the smart guys get it operated on like you really should drain it right away. But I know quite a few friends who have had their ears operated on where they literally fillet your ear,

and then they cut out all the calcified blood, which is what it is, right? It's like blood pools up in the tissue of your ear, and it becomes calcified. Wow. And then they have to cut that out i'm learning new things you didn't know about cauliflower not really no i don't want to see it get show her photos of cauliflower ear uh just what it looks like just cauliflower ear because it's nasty like and 80 percent of my friends from juiu-jitsu have it. That's crazy. Yeah, they all have it.

Yeah, that's what it looks like. Look at those ears. Look at his ears. Wow. Yeah. That's Khabib Nurmagomedov, one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all time.

Randy Couture, his ears are mangled. Look at that. Look at his ears. That's so disgusting. Yeah, that's all hard. That's like a rock too the thing about that is it's calcium so the inside how can you hear anything with that you don't hear much

you don't hear much yeah look at that one uh okay yeah is there balance off or anything like that are they like does that like no i don't think so because it's not really an inner ear issue, but the outer ear is just horrific. Yeah. It's pretty gross. And so what you should do, what a lot of guys do is they'll get a syringe and right after it happens, like literally I've seen guys do this at the gym where they have a buddy stick a syringe in their ear and suck the pus and blood out, like, at the gym. You know, they just have this thing and pull it. Like, see if you can find a video of a guy. Yeah.

Because it's amazing how much fluid comes out of a cauliflower ear. This is like the Fear Factor Joe coming out here. So this guy's doing it. He's doing it to himself. So he's pulled out that much blood. Okay. And so he's pulling this. So he sticks it in there.

And once you get it in there, you really should go low. He's going high, but you really should go low. So you get all of it in there. And then see how it sucks it out and drains it now look at all the blood that's in his syringe that is all stuff that would have calcified so most guys like it because it's like let everybody know oh you've been training look his ears is badass you know wow i think it's that's crazy totally crazy. Totally. Yeah. I only have like a couple. I have like a little bit of it here and some other spots where it calcified, but it's very small.

Good thing you were wearing those ear protectors. Yeah. They're annoying. They get in the way. Like these things, they're under your chin, they're on your ears, but it just keeps your ears from getting fucked up. Right. I mean, it's annoying to wear a helmet when you're like riding a bike or, but it's protecting

your head. I mean, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens to me is I can go in the ice bath, and I went in the ice bath once for 20 minutes, and I thought I had fucked myself up. I thought I broke something because I went in afterwards,

and I was at the three-minute mark. My visual field was shaky, almost like I was really drunk. And I was like, this is not good. Let me get out of here. But I realized that that's actually just coming from the sauna. So going from the sauna to the ice bath is very shocking to your system. It's probably good for you overall, but it does this weird thing

where like everything feels like shaky and back and forth and weird um but if i just go straight in there it doesn't do that i can just go straight in there and then i'm fine so you took the words out of my mouth so that was like like i was trying to get to the bottom of this like i had been in the in the jacuzzi for like almost 30 minutes and i was like heat stressing myself but I was still terrified to get anything in any cold because it was like it was so scary um so I didn't do any cold at all and now what I do is um I just do if I'm going to do the cold like I did like a seven day challenge like recently where I just get in Dan does this thing like he gets in we keep it

like 49 degrees Fahrenheit and he gets in for like 12 minutes i mean he's just in there like he loves it he does it like first thing in the morning sometimes he does it before bed helps him sleep um i can't like i'm like in there like one minute and i'm like because i'm just not adapted you know like i'm not i'm not adapted and i don't have as much brown adipose tissue you know which, which, you know, is a good thing if you, but you lose it pretty quick. Like Dan didn't do it for a while. And, and he like, it was harder for him to stay in for that long. But you know, when you are going, and this is something like, I've talked to Yari Laukkanen about this, you know, going from the hot to the cold. So in the hot, you have vasodilation happening, right? So you're relaxing your blood vessels, blood flows increase. When you go into the cold, vasoconstriction happens. Like it's the opposite. So you're going from like dilation to constriction, dilation to constriction. And like, you know, a lot of what

regulates that is, you know, norepinephrine, which is a hormone and also a neurotransmitter, depending on if you're releasing it, you know, if it's being released in the plasma versus in the brain. But part of what it does is cause vasoconstriction. And it's, you know, there's just not enough research that has been done on going from the hot to the cold. And certainly not going back and forth. But in Finland, you know, like at least 10% of the population there of the people that are using saunas do that. Like they do it frequently. Not everyone does it, but like a good percentage of people do it.

You know, like they have gone over to Finland and done it. But, you know, so there's just not a lot of evidence. And, you know, on the one hand, like you can feel really good, but like there's an amount of stress that, I mean, maybe it's just something from going from the hot to the cold and regulates your blood pressure. Right. I mean, I don't, I don't know. Um, but it, so, so now I don't do, I don't do the cold after my, my sauna because of that. Like I was just been scared. I do it, but I just do it for a minute. That's how I do it. I did it for three minutes. Um, yesterday that was a long one for me generally no two days ago yesterday I did a minute I'd like a minute a minute is what I like because I get so

hot in there and a minute cools me off and I get a little weirded out but not crazy but when I did three minutes the other day at the third minute I don't like the way i feel i just feel like i gotta get out of here like it just it just feels like i don't know if i'm gonna black out which sounds crazy no totally but when i did 20 minutes i did 20 minutes at 33 degrees without any hot no hot never felt like i was gonna black out it was just really cold that's interesting my visual my visual field was completely stable. You didn't have that blinky stuff. None of it.

But then coming out of the sauna, it's super shaky. I had the blinky stuff. Yeah, I had that. It's like I'm drunk. Totally. Yeah. In my case, it was pretty severe. I felt like I was dying and it was very scary.

Well, mine was a little weird too. The first time I did three minutes after the sauna, I was like, I feel like I was dying and it was very scary. Well, mine was a little weird too. Like the, the first time I did three minutes after the sauna, I was like, I was thinking, I think I broke myself when I did 20 minutes. I was like, maybe I really fucked myself up. Like maybe that's not good. But then I realized, no, what it was is I did 20 minutes after a workout, but I wasn't that heated up. Like I'm pretty sure that workout was just a weightlifting workout, which is not that bad. You know, I sweat a little bit, but I don't, it's not like the real ones are like kickboxing workouts. When I do a kick, like I'll do 10 rounds on the bag. And then when I'm done, I'm drenched with sweat. I mean, just my, my t-shirt is completely soaked. My underwear is soaked. My shorts are soaked. I'm really heated up and then I'll go in the cold. It's rough. But if I go in there just

right now, like if I just sunk in there right now, my visual field would be fine. Yeah. But coming out of the sauna, it's, it's a weird shock. I don't know if it's good for you. There needs to be research on it. That's really problem. Really, you know, it is. And so hopefully, you know. But everybody tells you you should do it. Right? They're like, oh, yeah, you go back and forth from sauna to cold, sauna to cold. But I think they're doing like 10 minutes and then a minute, 10 minutes. I'm an extremist, right?

So I'm doing 25 minutes and I'm at 190 degrees sometimes. That's intense. it's a lot. So I'm really hot when I get out where I'm like really barely hanging on. And then I go plunge right into 33 degrees. Well, here's the thing. Right after the sauna. So one of the things that the sauna does is it lowers blood pressure. Like, like, so while you're doing it, your heart rate's elevated and your blood pressure goes up while you're doing it. Same thing with exercise. But after, like pretty immediate after,

blood pressure goes down. And this is like one of the reasons why it's so cardioprotective among others is that it really helps regulate blood pressure. But if you think about it, if your blood pressure's already dipped down below baseline, you know, studies showing that's what happens with the sauna. And then you get into something that's vasoconstricting, right? I mean, like, it's gotta be like a crash in blood pressure. That's, I mean, that is something I was thinking. And, you know, it's just, we need evidence to show that we don't know what it is, but something's going on. And it's interesting that you've had the same effect that i did somewhat mine was definitely um scary and maybe mine was a little scary yeah i was like because i'm by myself because i like to work out by myself and when i'm doing this all by

myself i'm like hey don't die stupid i know it's a dumb way to die yeah totally yeah i was like one minute is great one minute feels really good because one minute's easy. I have no weirdness to the visual field. I do one minute. I get out and then I get back in the sauna. And the sauna at 190 degrees or whatever it is, it feels like nothing. Like nothing. It feels great.

And it feels really relaxing. It feels nice. And then I start to sweat again and then I get out. I don't do too many. I don't go. I've done it a couple of times, but I like just one. I just like sauna, ice bath, and then sauna until I heat up again and then back to normal. That sounds a little more doable.

Yeah, reasonable. Exactly. You know, so I personally like doing the cold without anything. And for me, like one minute and I feel good. I feel good after. Could be the norepinephrine's been shown to go twofold over. I mean, I know a lot of people do it. Like Dan does it.

He really is into it, like big time, like just doing it alone. And it's like helps him feel good, helps his mood. I think it's addictive. Yeah? I think there's like a weird uh feeling like a state change like because i feel that with the sauna as well it's very like i feel like when i get in like oh i get my fix i feel that when i climb in there well you make endorphins you're you're you're dumping out endorphins in the sauna yeah so i mean it's it's also like i used to listen

to a lot of books on tape in the sauna, but now primarily I do just nothing. And it gives me a time to think, just to reset time to think and just relax. And I'm enjoying that a lot. I'm just enjoying the opportunity to do nothing and just sit and think. Sometimes I'll do a podcast because I never, ever, ever get to listen to anything if I don't. But the majority of time for me, I sit and like it's like my time. It's like my my time to like reflect. Yeah. Sometimes I'll even like rehearse things like a presentation or something. And like I've done that for a long time. I've

done that since I listen to sets like comedy sets that I've done because it'll help me tune in for the next one. I was doing that a lot in the middle of the pandemic because I wasn't doing much stand-up and then I would have to do a show. And so I would have to listen to old shows and sort of re-remember my material and get the beats and the rhythm. You don't want to just go on stage completely cold you can look at your material that helps a little bit but I felt the best way is actually listening to a few sets not even just one but two or three wow yeah that's got to be I mean you're so experienced now doing that but like I like listening to myself I used to do I don't do it anymore I mean time you know everyone's excuse

but you know when I go on a podcast like when I you know this is my 10th time on this podcast is it really yeah it's my 10th so like I you know I would go back and listen to this was like back when I was you know first coming on I listened to it oh it was so hard it was so hard but like you you learn about like the mistakes, like things you could do better. It's really like a way to improve in this, you know, aspect, your public speaking. Yeah.

And the way you communicate certain things and how you shouldn't communicate them maybe and not talking over someone. Like that's a big one for me. Like, and you really, like, Unless you sit down and listen to yourself, it's not the same. You're just not going to know. That's why I make people wear earphones.

I suggest earphones. You don't realize what it sounds like when you're talking over each other in a recording the way you do when you have earphones on. Like if you have earphones on, you hear it exactly how people are going to hear it recorded. But if you don't have earphones on, it just sounds like a normal conversation and people talk over each other all the time. But you don't know how annoying it is to the person listening unless you have earphones

on because then your volume is the exact same volume as mine. So if you're talking at a certain volume and I start talking too, it's just noise. Whereas if you're over there and I don't have earphones on and you're talking, it's like your voice is lower and my voice is higher. I feel like, well, people can hear me better. No, they can't. You're talking over that person. It sounds like shit. Such a good point point and I probably should start doing that when I interview other people because it's absolutely you're absolutely right I can't tell when I'm when I don't have the earphones on and I get excited about something it's like let me just yeah talk and um yeah hearing it at this level you You notice it. The worst is if you have more than one guest.

So if I have two guests and they don't have headphones on, it's just madness. Madness. I used to do these Fight Companion podcasts and there was four of us. And I would do them. Sometimes guys didn't want to wear headphones. And it was just a talkover thing. We'd just talk over each other. I'd be like, okay, we have to have headphones.

You have to because you have to realize how bad this sounds right totally yeah yeah well so what else have you discovered like what what new information about the sauna or what some new revelations um i think mostly the the new stuff is the, like the actual evidence on depression. But it really, this review article is just a very comprehensive. You can't, like people don't write review articles that are really comprehensive in a field anymore because like there's no money, you know, no grant money in doing that. It's like a lot of work. And so you can't find a good review article that just covers everything, you know, like in a certain field, like with the sauna, like there's review articles

on the sauna and cardiovascular health, a lot of that. But this goes into the all cause mortality, you know, the cardiovascular benefits. It goes into the brain benefits and some mechanisms like, you know, the effects on the opioid system. It goes into all these different mechanisms like heat shock proteins and, you know, how you, there's lots of cool figures in there too, and how you can basically become heat adapted. And some of that has to do with you make heat shock proteins at a lower temperature. You know, it goes into like what special populations should be cautious when they go into the sauna and how long and what temperature and all that you get these benefits that are found in the literature. It's just a really comprehensive

body of literature, I think. And so I'm just pretty excited about that. It's also open access to public, so it's not paywalled. So people can access this article. They can also go to my website where I have the topic page on it gist of it it's it's not necessarily something new so much as like very comprehensive and covering oh the muscle mass effects like there's studies on sauna you know helping preserve muscle mass and that how that we talk we argue how that has effects for you know age-related sarcopeniaia. And that has to do with heat shock proteins as well. So we just go into all of that. I've noticed a benefit to my cardio. I've noticed it in doing it on a regular basis that I just seem to have more gas when I'm working out.

I really think that there's got to be a connection because what I'm doing is I'm doing it after workouts. Like today I did a kickboxing workout and then after the workout, I do the rounds in the bag and then I sit in the sauna for 25 minutes. And it's just, it does seem like it's more work. Like you're, you're, my heart is pounding, right? It's, I get in there, my heart's pounding, I'm sweat, I'm soaked with sweat. And then your heart continues to beat high because you're in this really extreme heat environment. Right. You know, there are studies showing that if you combine exercise

with the sauna, you have even more improvement in your cardiorespiratory fitness than if you exercise alone, which cardiorespiratory fitness is like, you know, it's a, it's a big indicator of your physical fitness and it's also an indicator of your overall health. So, um, there's additive effects happening with, with, you know, doing aerobic exercise plus doing the sauna. I also think there's, you know, potentially additive effects for weight training and doing the sauna as well, where you're basically, you know, you know, you're not only like with weight training, you're increasing your muscle mass, right? There's a growth of muscle hypertrophies happening.

But with the sauna, like it's really good when you're not doing that work, you know, to basically increase your muscle mass. It's preventing it from like degrading, you know, which is like a balance. muscle mass it's preventing it from like degrading you know which is like a balance now there's a time after weight training where you should not get in the ice bath right right so we have we just actually released a 23 page article on cold exposure on our website and it's covers all this covers things that we've been talking about like norepinephrine um but it also covers this exercise training controversy which i know you know i've talked about in the past but yeah there it seems and and i like more of this

needs to be worked out but it seems as though like doing an ice bath immediately after strength training resistance training workout blunts some of the hypertrophy effects and and when i say media it's like you know like five ten minutes um i personally think and I say media, it's like, you know, like five, 10 minutes. I personally think, and this is a theory, it's a hypothesis, this hasn't been shown, but because the cold really blunts inflammation and it causes vasoconstriction, you're like, you're not, you know, your immune molecules aren't traveling to the site like muscle as much as they would be. Or, you know, so it's basically dampening inflammation. You know, part of the resistance training causes an inflammatory response. And this inflammatory response, including like activation of macrophages, which are a type of immune cell, is important for the increase in what's called IGF-1.

It's a growth factor that you make in your muscle in response to exercise. It's important for, you know, protein synthesis and hypertrophy. And so if you look at graphs of, like, the kinetics of IGF-1, it peaks after about an hour after resistance training. And then, you know, starts to go back and normalize. And so I personally think that if you do cold exposure within that hour after your resistance training, you might be blunting that inflammatory effect that's important for IGF-1. Whereas the sauna would actually benefit you. Yeah, the sauna doesn't do that.

The sauna doesn't, the sauna actually, like exercise, it actually increases inflammation. And, you know, in this paper we we argue that there's a hormetic effect. In other words, a little bit of stress is beneficial because then you have this anti-inflammatory effect. It happens with exercise and some preliminary evidence, not super big studies, suggest it also happens with sauna. I said also happens with sauna. So, you know, it's a different thing that's happening in terms of cold versus a sauna. So should you, say if you train weights in the morning, should you wait until the afternoon to do an ice bath if you were going to do it? Or should you do it on different days just to be safer?

I don't know. To be honest, we don't have any evidence to know for sure. I personally think that if you're waiting until later, like several hours later, you're already getting, you know, your anti-inflammatory effect

has already been activated through the inflammation induced by exercise. You know, so I don't, can't see why doing the cold would then blunt that

because you've already gone through it, you know, but without actual data, it's hard to know, right? It would be a hypothesis. I would think that it would be okay, to be honest. So, I mean, that's. Well, through your discussions on this podcast and through many other discussions that have come out of that, I think there's been a giant rush, a giant change in the way people think of sauna and how many more people are using sauna. I can't tell you how many of my friends

who never had any interest in using sauna before are now like complete sauna junkies. It's really interesting. It's awesome. I mean, like I said, I think that paper, I think it's improving health span. And I think it's not just people that don't exercise. I think it's like you're getting a benefit if you also exercise, if you're already physically active, like an additive benefit. So that makes me happy.

Plus, I also think there's lots of effects on mood. also think there's lots of effects on mood and um you know but i also wish everyone could take the fish oil pill that we we we talked about like you know if everyone took it then we might have a crisis with the with the they're not gonna take it you're never gonna get everyone to take it have you ever had your omega-3 index measured i have yes do you know the difference between what the omega-3 index is versus like just measuring your omega-3? So omega-3 index specifically refers to measuring your omega-3 in red blood cells versus what most companies will do. They'll look at like plasma phospholipid. And the omega-3 index is important because it's a long-term marker for blood glucose.

Your red blood cells, you accumulate it in the cell membrane and, cell membrane and your red blood cells take 28 days before they turn over. And so, whereas if you were to have some sardines or whatever, and then go get your omega-3 levels measured, it could skew the data such that you're like, oh, I've got great omega-3 levels, because plasma phospholipids are kind of like the short-term, like they're really responsive to your diet. Whereas the actual, it's kind of like HbA1c long term marker for blood glucose levels versus just measuring your blood glucose levels, like, well, you could have just eaten, that's why they're high. And right, so like your HbA1c is like that long term marker. So omega three index is kind of like that. long-term marker. So omega-3 index is kind of like that. Dr. Bill Harris and he had a collaborator, I forget his name, but they kind of co-invented this back in, gosh, early 2000s or something. But he argues that the omega-3 index is like predictive for cardiovascular disease, like as much, if not better than like cholesterol. And he's had a couple of interesting studies that came out on mortality and looking at the

omega-3 index. So like there's one study that he did was published last April. So a few months ago, and it was like 17 different studies included. And he looked at the omega-3 index and he found that people that had an omega-3 index, like above 7% versus like the low on the low end, which was less than 4%, they were 17% likely to die prematurely of all causes, including accidents. What? Like that's weird, right? It wasn't just like age-related diseases. It was all premature death causes. Like omega-3 is like making people not like take some kind of risk.

I don't know. Anyways, I found that fascinating. That was the first study. Okay, so you're 17% likely. So if you're in that high group versus low, so higher than 7% versus less than 4. You're also 21% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease. So that was the first study that was interesting. And the premature all-cause thing was what got me.

I was like, they're less likely to get in some kind of crazy accident that causes them to die. So as you and I know, omega-3 affects the brain. But the other study he just published last June or something, and it was a Framingham study, which is also a huge cohort. And he looked at the omega-3 index and he found, again, people in the high end, like greater than 7%, they had a life expectancy that was five years longer than people in the lower range, less than 4%. And this was like after adjusting for all kinds of factors. Now, remember, most people, they do these dietary questionnaires when they're looking at omega-3, like how much fish do you eat? Do you take supplements? They're measuring

something. This is measured in your blood. This is a long-term marker. This is real data, right? This is real data, right? So five-year increase in life expectancy, like that's huge compared to people like, you know, on the low end of the range. And in fact, in Japan, you know what the average omega-3 index of people in the United States is like 5%. So you had to be slightly more than that, 7%, greater than 7% to have the longevity benefits. In Japan, their average is like 10% or more omega-3. Mine was 11.7% because I take four grams a day of fish oil, two grams of EPA, two grams of DHA. But anyways, Japan has a five-year life expectancy increase over people in the United States where you're talking an average omega three index of five percent versus like 10. Interesting, right?

Yeah. Is there a plant based version of omega threes? That's that's good. Good ish. Yeah, there is. There's a micro microalgae. So good point. ish yeah there is there's a micro microalgae so good point like the the the plant omega-3 like alpha linoleic acid ala is like in flaxseed and walnuts and i don't know something else soybeans

but you have to convert it into epa and dha and it's like that conversion's not very good it varies a lot from person to person and some of benefits, like getting an omega-3 index of greater than 7%, you're never going to get that from ALA. Never. No. No, no way. But you can take microalgae, and microalgae actually is the source of DHA and EPA in fish.

The fish eat that, and it concentrates in their fat and stuff. But it's still like the microalgae pills are not very concentrated compared to fish oil. What if you get pure microalgae? You can get some of that stuff where you mix it in water. Yeah, you get like the spoonfuls. Yeah, you can take a lot more.

That would be the way to go. That would definitely be the way to go. Get the stuff that you can mix in whatever or just take it like medicine. It has to be refrigerated. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely has to be refrigerated. There's lots of oxidation that's possible from polyunsaturated fatty acids, which EPA and DHA are.

But a lot of the therapeutic studies, like they've done randomized controlled trials showing that you can drop cardiovascular death by like 25% if you give people with a various range of heart diseases four grams of a purified form of EPA. It's called Vesepa. It's a prescription strength. Say it again. Vesepa. Vesepa. It's V-A-S-C-E-P-A. And it is a high EPA. It's pur prescription strength. Say it again. Vesipa. Vesipa. It's V-A-S-C-E-P-A. And it is a high EPA.

It's purified EPA. And you can get it prescribed from your doctor if your triglycerides are over a certain level. I don't know what that level is, but it's something that's like a prescription strength, which I actually want to get my mom taking. But, you know, so what I'm getting at is the therapeutic effects for many of these, you know, cardiovascular-related diseases happen at a high dose, where taking a microalgae, like, I don't know how many spoonfuls, like how many tablespoons or whatever you're going to have to take, but probably quite a bit. That's tough. So nasty, too.

I've never i've never tried i've tried like the carlson's one like a long time ago i used to take that um but you know that was fish oil not microalgae oil so i've never tried that yeah i've tried carlson's fish oil i've had that the spoonful of stuff that they have carlson's has like a bunch of different flavors too they have like an orange flavor and a lemon flavor that's supposed to make it taste a little better. But I'm always a little reluctant because I'm like, what is that lemon flavor? Masking. What's it? Masking, right? Because when you eat rancid fish oil, you know, it tastes like.

It tastes nasty. Gross. It tastes disgusting. It smells gross. But there's a website called the International Fish Oil Standards, IFSO. And they sort of like lots, they rank, I mean, not rank, they analyze data from lots and lots of different companies that make fish oil. And they give you all this data based on like concentration of EPA and DHA that's actually in the supplement. The what's called total oxidation levels, TOTOX, and that's important. You want less than 10. It has the mercury levels, likeOTOX, and that's important. You want less than 10. It has the mercury levels, like PCBs. So they have lots of data. And you can scroll through

their website and look at each product sheet. And you have to kind of do it often because they update this, you know, every so often. But I've put together, like I've gone through them all and made an Excel sheet on like all the different brands and like again like the concentration and the the total oxidation and the mercury and all that and Just I'm actually just getting ready to post a like Screenshot video of me doing that like on YouTube showing people and like what I think some of the top brands are I have no affiliation it's just me Helping people try to analyze this data because they've said it like a million times on social media people still

Don't know how to do it because it's kind of complicated so hopefully that'll help people find some brands that have again you have to like this is you know you never know each batch could be different too right so so um i think that's something useful as well what is the specific brand you use well i use one that's not available like a friend of mine in norway makes it it's called n pure 3 it's not available not commercially available like he like sends it to me like he like you know he hasn't like scaled it you know he's so big on not compromising the like total oxidation all that like sometimes when you scale things up things get compromised and so um i don't you you know, he is trying to figure that out. So he doesn't sell it commercially?

I think he might in Norway, maybe. I think he does do it in Norway. But the pandemic shut stuff down, so I'm not sure if he's back up or not. But he sends it to me. And it's like the highest quality fish oil I've ever, like, I could get you some if you want to try it, but it's really good. So they have high EPA and he has high DHA. And so I take the high EPA, I take two grams in the morning, and then I take the two grams of DHA in the evening. So I separate them. I don't know if it's necessary to separate

them. There was some like, like you know evidence conflicting in the literature like oh maybe maybe dha like if you take it at the same time can compete with the epa or you know something like that it's not really known i'm not sure if that's the case at all what is the sources for the fish like what fish um he uses herring and i think a mixture of another one as well. But his like contaminant level is like bottom out, like things of like arsenic, mercury, all that stuff is like really low. Now, when we were kids, cod liver oil was something that people always recommended. Is there any science to that?

Well, cod liver oil is, you know, the's high, the micronutrient it's most high in is vitamin A. It also has vitamin D and it has omega-3. I personally don't take cod liver oil because I think that omega-3s are like, I think they're good. I think they have a huge anti-aging effect. And this is not like, like look this isn't been shown okay it's just how i it's like my opinion okay it's my opinion so um so i'm trying to get high enough doses if i were to take that from i would overdose on vitamin a like i would it would be like toxic because vitamin a like you there's an upper limit so i couldn't get that from cod liver oil what about in addition to is there a benefit in

taking it if you want to get your vitamin a and vitamin d through cod liver oil you could i don't i don't think it's bad for you like you know what i mean but it's a way to get vitamin d other than the sun it is but you can also take a vitamin d supplement are you getting it in the same sort of like when when you're saying you're getting vitamin D, like are you getting like 5,000 IUs? That's the thing. With the cod liver oil, I don't think the vitamin A concentration in every way always gets in the way for me. Where it's like if I want to take 4,000 to 5,000 IUs of vitamin D,

I'd be ODing on the vitamin A. I'd be like toxic. Got it. So I just can't. So you're better off taking a vitamin D supplement in addition. In my opinion, yes, because I think, you know, having vitamin D levels between like 40 and 60 nanograms per mil is optimal. And for me to get that for myself, I have to take 4,000 to 5,000. Well, depending on how much sun exposure.

Sometimes in the summer I can go with less, but it really depends on the season. That was one of the initial factors that they found with people that were in the ICU with COVID, that a large percentage of them were deficient in vitamin D. Right. Yeah. I mean, so the COVID, you know, there are lifestyle factors, I think, that are important for possibly, you know, helping with severity. And I think vitamin D is one. The problem is like, you know, doing a clinical trial with someone that already has COVID and then like trying to give them vitamin D, like you're not going to fix the severity of COVID like with giving someone a vitamin D3 supplement after they like go into the hospital for COVID. Right.

Like you're not. Like, you know, there's been a couple of studies that's like, oh, if you give them an active form, so you have vitamin D3 gets converted into something called 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the liver, and then the liver converts it into the active steroid hormone, which is 125-hydroxyvitamin D. So you can give them something that makes it so their liver doesn't have to do that work. And there's been a couple of studies showing it helps with people that have already had COVID. But again, there's a large actual clinical study that's ongoing right now being done by Dr. Joanne Manson. She's looking at prophylactic vitamin D and, you know, like severity, incidence of COVID and all that. And so, you know, but omega-3s also.

So Bill Harris, Dr. Bill Harris, he just published a pilot study on the omega-3 index and COVID death. And, of course, this was a small, small pilot study. It was like 100 people. And, you know, people with the highest omega-3 index, again, it was in that 7% range. And this was not statistically significant. It was because there was a small sample size, but there was like a 75% reduction in COVID mortality. No telling. I wouldn't at all tell anyone to take omega-3 to prevent COVID or to not die from it. That would be ridiculous. I mean,

vaccines are probably the best way to prevent yourself from both getting and having a severe COVID. We could talk about it in a minute if you want. I'd like to. But the omega-3 thing is really interesting because there was an in silico study that showed DHA, one of the main marine omega-3 fatty acids, keeps the spike protein. So there's a receptor binding domain on the spike protein. And that receptor binding domain swings around. It goes from open to close, open to close. And there's like, you know, a few of them on a spike protein, like three or something. And when they're closed like this,

they can't bind to the ACE2 receptor. So they can't, you can't even latch on. And there was an interesting study showing that dha was able to keep it in the closed confirmation so this was in silico again grain of salt because it's in silico you can't like say anything but i was like oh that's interesting there might again for me i'm an omega-3 enthusiast in a way i i do think like there's a huge effect on resolving inflammation not just decreasing it but like after your immune system has been activated, there's the protectants, the resolvents, the specialized pro-resolving mediators, the SPMs. These things are resolving the inflammation so that your immune system doesn't go crazy and become in this like hyper-inflammatory mode. I think this potentially could be how it's affecting longevity. I think that inflammation is

a major source of driving the aging process. And there's been studies that have looked at, for example, people that are centenarians, so they live to be 100, people that are elderly, so like 80s, people that are semi-supercentenarians are like 105, and then the supercentenarians, 110. And they've looked at a variety of biomarkers, telomere length, immunosenescence, you know, glucose, HbA1c, cholesterol, blah, blah, like the whole thing, right? Tons of them. And the only thing that could predict a person going to each stage to living to be either then a centenarian and then later a semi-supercentenarian and then later a supercentenarian was decreasing inflammation.

Like none of the other things predicted each, you know, going to the next stage. So that to me is very interesting as well. The inflammation was like a huge predictor of not only like living the longest, but also cognitive function as well. It was like the biggest predictor of cognitive function. but also cognitive function as well. It was like the biggest predictor of cognitive function. So, you know, again, it's like the omega-3s to me, I'm convinced that the data is not quite there yet to actually solidly demonstrate that like high levels of omega, like we're talking above 7% omega-3 index. And I don't know exactly what it takes to get there like i said i have a 11.7 and i take four

grams of fish oil a day and i eat sardines and i you know eat salmon so you know it's kind of i'm like i'm like the japanese cohort so i don't know what it takes to get above seven. But I think that some of the work coming out of Bill Harris's lab is, you know, pretty interesting. And I think laying the foundation for maybe omega-3 is like a therapeutic type of dose. You know, maybe there's again, I'm taking an experimental dose. Like what I'm doing is experimental. Like that's not like this isn't something. Is there any perceived downsides to such high doses? So I asked Dr. Harris about that.

He flew out for a podcast like last week. And this guy, by the way, he started the whole omega-3 thing like back in like the eight. He started studying it after the whole, you know, the Icelandic Greenland, Greenland Inuits and their like lower cardiovascular disease. And so this like he he was like pioneering on the effects of omega-3, particularly in heart health. But so he's been studying it for decades. And so I asked him, like, you know, is there like what's the negative effects? Like he was giving people 25 grams of omega-3 back in the 80s. Whoa.

And, like, doing, like, metabolic ward studies. They must have smelled like fish. Yeah. He said they were giving him three salmon steaks and a big, like, I forgot how much, but, like, a total of 25 grams, but salmon oil, pure salmon oil. Wow. He was 25 grams total. Like, they were just getting massive doses.

So you'd think if anyone knows about negative effects with high dose, it would be him. And he thinks that, you know, so in that particular study, there was one patient, like one participant that had a bleed, like the bleeding thing, you know, where it was like maybe- out of oh i don't remember

i don't remember like we i the podcast is coming out in a couple of weeks okay you know if you want to listen to it but i don't remember but he small study small study exactly but he's gone on you know since then you know so part of the part of the concern and we talked all about this bleeding thing and he really doesn't think it's that big of a concern, to be honest. And he talked about how in Japan, they're basically like they have less than where their omega-3 index is high. They're not like bleeding as much during surgery or some stuff. I don't know. He was giving some evidence of that. But it does.

The omega-3s do affect your leukotrienes and prostaglandins and things that do affect, you know, like platelet aggregation and stuff. But like I don't like maybe it could be bad if you have some kind of disorder or you're, you know, taking some kind of, you know, crazy blood thinning medication. He argues that's really not even that much of a concern. concern. But, you know, the other concern is that people that already have a cardiovascular problem, there's been a small increase in arrhythmias in some of these people, and it's not known why. And in fact, if you look at, for example, AFib, the end result of AFib that's bad is stroke. And omega-3s have been shown to reduce stroke incidence. So it's like, well, if it was like really causing AFib or doing something bad, then like you should see an increased stroke incidence or like no effect. But no, it decreases stroke incidence. But it's not having, it's not fun having AFib. Like, so I don't, and again,

this is super like preliminary. It's not really known. It's like we got to repeat that. But so, you know, it could be that taking very, very high doses. And the studies that that was found, they were taking four grams of pure EPA. So it could be maybe there's something to super high doses we don't know about. But I don't know. Especially over prolonged periods of time, maybe. and these were people with heart conditions as well and yeah so this was like these studies were five years this is so fascinating to me that as long as people have been studying nutrition as long as

people have been studying the human body that there's still so much speculation as to what you should take and when you should take it and how much. And people like you who study it constantly are still learning new things all the time. Like almost every time you come in here, you're like, okay, so there's a new study. And then, you know, you're telling me about this and you're telling me about that. And it's really kind of wild when you think about the average person that I would venture to say, I don't know what percentage of the average population even takes vitamins. What would you estimate? Oh, there was a study back in 2015 that looked at this. It was, gosh, I forgot. I forgot exactly what the percentage was. It wasn't

very high. And the percentage of people that did actually take supplements were the least likely to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Yeah, of course. Big surprise. My friend's doctor literally told him the other day that you don't need to take vitamins. Just eat a balanced diet and you're fine. Vitamins are nonsense. I go, you need a better doctor because that doctor doesn't know jack shit. That is such a crazy thing to say when there is so much data on the actual tangible benefits of vitamin supplementation. There's so much evidence. There's so much work being done on it. And for a guy who I know is an orthopedic surgeon,

they're probably like, how much time do they spend on nutrition in medical school? And the guy's in his 60s. So it was probably, you know, he was doing this shit in the 80s. Like, what the fuck does he know? And why is he saying this? This is so such a crazy, irresponsible thing to say to a person. Well, my doctor said like, and I'm looking at this guy, I'm like, get a better doctor. Right.

Or get a doctor that concentrates on that and go to him when you're dealing with like ankle surgery or something. But don't go to him. He's a technician. You know, he's not a nutrition scientist. It's just like they're completely different fields of study and they're so comprehensive. That's what's crazy about it. Like every time I talk to you, you don't even have any notes in front of you and just rattling off this shit.

And it's like, it's constant and it never ends. There's constantly new studies. There's constantly new benefits that are unearthed. It's like, it's so hard to keep abreast of all this stuff. Absolutely. And not to mention the fact that doing clinical trials in nutrition. So a lot of physicians, they're used to the gold standard, the randomized placebo-controlled trial. And it is a gold standard. It's the best thing you can do

to see if a treatment is working, right? Or if X comes out of, you know, or if Y comes out of X or whichever way it is. But, you know, the problem with nutrition is that everyone has some level of this nutrient X in their body from their diet. And, you know, so you get these studies that people, there's no quantification of anything. You know, there's questionnaires, like, how much did you eat? How much vegetables do you eat, like, per week? And it's like, oh, I eat, you know, X amount. And then it's like, you know, you actually measure something like a biomarker, like,

you know, beta carotene or, you know, something. And you realize, oh, they eat a lot more vegetables than they thought, or they eat a lot less because it's a marker, a biomarker, right? So you have these questionnaires or, you know, the clinical studies are being done poorly. And so not only is it hard to keep up with the data, you have crappy data with salacious headlines like, oh, vitamins do nothing. But, you know, the reality is the study is like, okay, we never measured anything. We didn't measure, you know, vitamin D, which you can make from the sun and everyone has different levels at the start of the study. And we gave them a supplement where it's like, you know, 400 IUs where it doesn't even raise your blood levels, anything. And then

we looked at this X point, end point, X, like cancer incidents. We didn't measure anything after. And it's like, you know, like that's a terrible, that's a terrible study, you know, but, but makes the headlines. And, you know, there are some healthcare practitioners that read those and then they get this idea that, well, they do nothing because I read that, that study they did, you know? Yeah. And in some cases they're randomized placebo controlled studies where they are giving a placebo and they are randomizing it and Yeah. And in some cases, they're randomized placebo-controlled studies, where they are giving a placebo, and they are randomizing it, and they're doing all that, but they're not measuring the blood levels.

They're not measuring anything. So, you know, there's all sorts of problems with that. And I think they're – it's hard to do. It's hard to solve. Clinical trials and nutrition need to be designed better. They do. Like, you need to quantify everything. You need to quantify these nutrients. Like, drugs, people don't have that to start They do. Like you need to quantify everything. You need to quantify these nutrients.

Like drugs, people don't have that to start with. You don't have to quantify anything. You just give them the pill. Yeah, it's going to raise their levels because they don't have any of it, you know. But it also just seems like just staying on top of all the research is so time consuming. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's no doubt.

I can't even stay on top of it. And now that I'm a mother, it's even more difficult, you know, but, you know, there's all my notes and I have flash you can know that amount, it helps. There's just so much data. There's so much information. And then if you think about to have your immune system in check, to have your body functioning in check, to have your muscle repairing correctly, to have all these factors, and to have all your nutrient levels balanced and adjusted accordingly and to make sure that you're getting all your needs as far as your

essential fatty acids and your vitamins and your nutrients and your minerals and all these different things. It's just, it's so complex. There's so much going on and so few people are on top of it. And we don't even know what the optimal levels of these things are, to be honest. Like, we don't even like, you know, maybe getting having a diverse diet where you can get a variety of, you know, micronutrients. You're getting these things from your diet. But like then on top of that, maybe there's benefits. We don't we don't even know.

Right. benefits like we don't we don't even know right i mean so it's kind of a arrogant thing to say oh you don't need to take a vitamin because you all you got to do is you uh you know balanced diet like that's that's pretty pretty arrogant in my in my opinion but in mine as well it's just i know how little most people know about it that's i know so little about and i try to pay attention to as much as possible and when i talk to someone you, I'm aware of how little I really know. And it's so complex and it's so changing and evolving. And there's always new information that's being released. Yeah. And I'm also aware of how little I know every time something new comes out.

Like there's a question and I'm like diving into it. I'm like, oh, I didn't know any of this. So, you know, there's there's always question and I'm like diving into it. I'm like, Oh, I didn't know any of this. So, you know, there's, there's always information coming out. So just overall health is so important and yet there's so little consideration given to it by most people. And it's one of the most confusing things about human beings. Like when people are sick, the thing that they want more than anything is to be healthy. Like, oh my God, I wish I was healthy. But then once they get healthy, they go back to the same eating habits, the same just sedentary lifestyle, drinking alcohol, cigarettes,

all the same shit that got them in the mess in the first place, and they don't change much about their. And they don't change much about their nutrition. They don't change much about their exercise habits when it has such a massive effect on the quality of your life, the longevity of your ability to exercise. Like I'm 54 now, and I really haven't lost any ability to exercise rigorously to do it the same way. And I've done a lot of weird, one of the things that I did is I completed that Israeli protocol for hyperbaric chambers where you did 90 days.

I did 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days with supposed to lengthen your telomeres that's appropriate to or approximate to a 20-year decrease in your biological age. I did that. I just did it. I just finished it. And I feel great. I don't know what it did. I mean, I didn't really measure my telomeres and I probably should now, but there's definitely something that happens when you do something like that. But who the fuck has time for that? Like who's going to do that? How many people many people are gonna be committed like going to some stupid place and lying in a metal chamber for 90 days you're an

outlier that's for sure i think i think there's some you know thoughts that it like helps increase you know blood vessels and growth and i mean like there's all sorts of things going on and i know there's probably studies that actually have proposed mechanisms i just don't know about them i'm definitely an outlier in like what i practice and that i'm dedicated to it but it's also because i don't like being sick i haven't been sick in 11 years plus it's been at least 11 years but i just because of actions because of things I do. And I just don't understand people that don't want to be healthier. And I really wish it was more accessible. I really wish there was it was much more common to get comprehensive blood work and much more common to get nutritional counseling and much more common for people to be rigorously exercising, to do it on a regular basis, and to realize that when your body's more resilient, when your body's fit, when your cardiovascular shape is higher, you're just better off. You're better off. You can think better. You're healthier. You recover from things better. Everything works better.

Right. And now, I think now more ever, like being healthy is even more important. You know, like like getting to a healthy weight, like trying to like not have these comorbidities, like high blood pressure and type two diabetes. And, you know, like these things are there's a huge lifestyle factor involved in obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure. There's definitely things that can be done that help with that, that help when we were talking about sauna and exercise. And there's even other ketogenic diet does help with weight loss, but there's other strategies for that as well. And having the vitamin D, having enough vitamin D and omega-3s like, you know, to me, it seems like, yeah, it should be beneficial. Everyone should want to be like super motivated, you know, to do that. But it's always hard to get people to do it. As you mentioned, it's like extremely difficult. So even with my mom and I constantly am imparting her with information. Isn't it strange though that humans are so reluctant to do things that would benefit them? It's so weird.

I don't think they believe it or they might just, you know, it's just too much work. It's too much work and what little benefit, you know, is it worth it? Like I think that's the kind of stuff like there's lots of excuses. Right. But, you know. But long term clearly there's's lots of excuses. Right. But, you know. But long term, clearly, there's a lot of benefit. Right. It's just you have to put it.

It's like you're building a mountain with a layer of paint at a time. Right. Yeah. You have to put in the effort. I mean, for sure. And I do think even with, you know, COVID-19, there's obviously data showing that, you know, people that are obese or have a comorbidity, they're more likely to have a severe form of it. And it's like twice as much in some cases, you know, it's not like,

it's not like, you know, something like a vaccine would do, but it's, it's definitely plays a role and, you know, it should be a motivating factor. But, you know, the, since we're on this topic, can we talk a little bit about vaccines? Because it's something I have seen a lot of misinformation, like, on everywhere. Facebook, on, you know, different news media outlets. And I think there's really, like, some main ones that I just feel are causing harm. And so there's really eight of them. We don't need to talk about all of them,

but I think the eight really are that, you know, SARS-CoV-2 is not that bad. COVID-19 is not that bad. And, you know, vaccines basically don't prevent transmission. Spike protein from vaccines are cytotoxic, therefore they're really bad. That vaccines are going to cause something called antibody-dependent enhancement, which is going to make you have a more severe disease. There's the vaccines are going to cause infertility. There's the vaccines are going to cause a more virulent strain or variant.

a more virulent strain or variant. And then there's one more that, oh, alternatives to vaccines exist right now that are just as good. And I think that there's a few of those that are really, I mean, just like blatantly, they're wrong. All of them, I think they're, but I mean, you know, there's some that are more important than others. And I think that I would like to talk about them. You know, I think first and foremost like to talk about them. You know, I think first and foremost, there's like two groups of people, mostly. One thinks COVID-19's bad, doesn't want it, wants the vaccine. And the other one that thinks it's not that bad and that the vaccines may be harmful. And there's also people- Do you think the vaccines are harmful to anyone?

Well, of course. I mean- Do you know anyone that's had are harmful to anyone? Well, of course. Do you know anyone that's had bad reactions to vaccines? I personally, interestingly, I know a lot of people that have gotten vaccinated. And the only person that I know that had something was like she had a headache for like a week and a half and then it went away. Oh, no. Another person I knew had like nausea for like a couple of weeks they were like nauseous more more frequently but it went away um you know do you think you would feel differently if you knew someone that had a stroke or someone who's had heart attacks perhaps young people that have well it's hard to say so you know you know, I do. People react differently, obviously, when you're giving, you know, 100 and more than 169 million people are vaccinated. Right. I mean, that's half our adult population is is vaccinated, fully vaccinated with COVID-19. And it's not zero risk. People are some people are going to have an adverse reaction. And they do.

It's a big world out there. If you were to give 169 million people a peanut or a shellfish, some people are going to have very adverse reactions. Some people are going to die. It's a big world. But with the stroke or the heart attack, you have to like... So if you're trying to compare, for example, let's say you're looking at actual COVID-19 deaths from heart attacks and strokes, and you're looking at the vaccine adverse events reporting site VAERS and that as well. You have to realize that basically in the United States, in 2017, there was a publication in the Journal of Circulation. Someone dies from cardiovascular disease every 30 seconds in the United States.

Every 30 seconds. Most of those people are above the age of 50 and certainly most are above 65. But every 30 seconds, someone's dying from cardiovascular disease. Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a stroke. Every four minutes, they die from a stroke. But this is also very, very rare in young people, particularly young healthy people. But one thing that has occurred in young healthy people that have been vaccinated is myocarditis. And some people have had blood clots, like quite a few blood clots.

And there's speculation, right? The Salk Institute released that paper about the spike protein causing some sort of deterioration of the blood vessels. Did you read that? I've been looking at a lot of the spike protein. That's from COVID-19. They're discussing it. They're talking about from the actual disease itself. So, you know, first of all, like there you have to like there's you're you're either going to get infected with SARS-CoV-2. Most people are going to be eventually we're all going to be exposed to it. So you're either going to be vaccinated when you're exposed to it or not. And people are dying from heart attacks and blood clots.

And even people are getting myocarditis like hundredfold times more than vaccines like the myocarditis link from thefold times more than vaccines. Like the, the myocarditis link from the mRNA, specifically the mRNA vaccines is real. And I think the last I saw it was like 50 per million, which it's still rare. And it's, it's happened to people that I know. It, it, so up until then, and actually now that you asked me, I forgot. I had someone who's a supporter. I talked about vaccines in one of my Q&As I do, and they went and got it, and they were younger and ended up having some kind of myocarditis. So I do know someone that had it. I don't know them, but they emailed me. Now, what happens if you have that?

And how do you recover from that? But you realize it's happening to young people. So myocarditis is caused by two things. One, by inflammation. Two, by a direct viral infection. And it's more common in adolescents and young people. And it's an enlargement of the heart? It's inflammation of the heart.

It can lead to that, yeah. But it's happening in young athletes with COVID-19. And it's happening more frequently than people that are getting vaccinated. So it's still like, well, and it's happening, like, more frequently than people that are getting vaccinated. So it's still like, well, if the person that got vaccinated, look, it is a risk, but it's still pretty rare. And it also is treatable. In most cases, they treat it like within a few days, and it's isolated. Why do you think that people like there are people that are completely asymptomatic when they get COVID or if they do get it, it's very mild. Do you think that's because they have a lower viral load that they've been

infected with? Or do you think it's their immune system that fights it off? Like, what do you think is happening? It could be any and all of those things, a combination of them. And, you know, but so like, even if you think, you know, if you're looking at just like the most extreme part of like the deaths, right, you know, you've got like over 624,000 deaths in COVID-19. Most of those deaths are happening in people over the age of 50. And if you look at like- Most of them have four plus comorbidity factors, right? Isn't that the average? I don't know if it's four plus for average for, I think the comorbidities right isn't that the average i don't know if it's four plus i think average for i think the comorbidities increase yeah i think it's fine what what the number of comorbidities are in terms of like uh deaths it used to be 2.6 but i think they raised it to four really the number of them before okay i think so so i might be wrong but i know it was at least 2.6 right so

then there's the argument well i'm healthy i don't have comorbidities, right? I mean, so what should I do? Like, should I, you know, get vaccinated or should I be exposed to the virus? And I think there's a lot of evidence and there's multiple lines of evidence. One, you know, there are people with mild symptoms that are getting post-acute COVID syndrome. They're getting this, what people call long haul COVID. And the majority of people- What do you think that is? What is long haul COVID? I don't know what it is. I think it depends on the symptoms. I think there could be a variety of causes for it. You know, so there are people, and most of it is happening in teenagers to like 50. Most of the people that are older are not getting this long haul COVID. It's like happening in people that are mostly not being hospitalized. People that don't get hospitalized originally, like they have mostly like pretty mild symptoms, in some cases even asymptomatic.

You know, there was a study published in The Lancet like last year showing there was a sevenfold increase in stroke incidents in people under 50 in the United States compared to the year before that, before the pandemic start. And that is probably because the spike protein that causes this deterioration of the blood vessels and blood clots. Is that what it is from the virus? Well, I don't know what it is. I mean, there's lots of things, you know, viral infections themselves can cause hypercoagulation. They can cause blood clots. That's known from other viruses. There's inflammation.

Without the spike protein. Without the spike protein. Okay. I feel like I haven't got to address everything, but let's talk about the spike protein. I think this four points out where I would find this information. I hope that's the spot. Yeah. spot yeah there was an average of 4.0 additional conditions or causes of death for data on deaths involving covid19 by time period jurisdiction and other health conditions

this is only five percent covid was the only cause and then so for only five percent of the covid deaths covid19 was the only cause mentioned so out of those 600,000 people that died, only 5% died just from COVID-19. Well, I mean, so you have people that are, COVID-19 is going to make their comorbidities worse. And that could be the same for a vaccine. It could be the same for anything, right? I mean, so like something that's going to activate the immune system. Yeah, but the concern is with vaccines, the negative effects of what people are worried about, I think, is young people that are healthy

that have negative effects, like that have had strokes or that have had thrombosis or myocarditis and those issues, right? Well, you know, again, if you look at the data, you know, young people are also experiencing those things at a higher rate. And are those all the people with the comorbidities? Like, I don't know. You know, like, I'm not sure. But it seems as though no matter which way you look at it, like, it is worse to be exposed to that virus. And, like, how do you know that person that had that myocarditis wouldn't have had it X-fold worse with the COVID-19? Because it's been shown to happen in young, healthy

athletes, you know, and people are- Has it been shown in large numbers? Like the athletes- More, more so, more so. More so than the vaccines that we were saying? Yes. I'm saying that it's happening, myocarditis is from the vaccines. It's happening in younger people at a higher rate than from the vaccines. Do we have accurate data, do you think, about how many myocarditis instances we have from the vaccine? Well, you could argue there's an under-reporting. I think people, so anyone can submit data to the VAERS. And I think when it comes to someone who's younger, they're more likely. I mean, so healthcare professionals have to submit to the VAERS

if there's like something that's life-threatening, which myocarditis could be, or if it's a death or something that's like, you know, changes their daily functions, like congenital effects. They have to submit it? Yes, if they are. But how do they know

that myocarditis is caused by the vaccine? They don't. But if the person had gotten vaccinated, and by the way, there's no time constraint. It's not like, oh, if they've only been vaccinated within two months. They're supposed to submit to VAERS. If someone was vaccinated. They're supposed to. Yes.

Is there encouragement or discouragement to submit to VAERS? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, you know, if you again, even just looking at the deaths in every age group, even like, you know, people that are in my age group, 40 to 49, you know, there's 20,000 deaths that have been linked to the confirmed COVID-19 cases. Right. Whereas, you know, in VAERS it's 200. And even if you triple that. For people with comorbidities, obviously, it's a real issue. Yeah, I don't know if that's always the case. But yes, definitely with people with comorbidities.

Because according to this, what we pulled up, it's 5% that are dying just of the COVID. 95% have an average of four comorbidities. Okay. Well, if that's true for all ages, then, you know, yes, people with comorbidities. Okay. Well, if that's true for all ages, then, you know, yes, people with comorbidities are more likely to die. But also younger people, like I said, they're more likely to get, you know, these long haul symptoms where I've known so many people, you know, that they've gotten like their loss of smell or taste has been like several months. And there's now studies showing that, you know, if you, there was a huge study out of the biobank, UK biobank data,

where right before the pandemic started, MRIs were done, brain scans, on like almost a thousand people. It was like over 800. And then the pandemic hit. People got COVID. Some people didn't, whatever. So they brought these,

the same cohort of people back in for a brain scan. And, you know, basically they corrected for people. So they had people that they compared people that were the same age, same gender, same sex. And, and then they also timed between scans and they found that both mild and severe COVID-19 cases caused a atrophy in the gray matter region of the brain. It was worse in people that had it more severe. Right. Understandable. But people that had mild cases that didn't go to the hospital had it.

How many people did they study with this? It was over 800. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's you need you need more data to confirm. But I mean. Were these people did they stratify it by age? Did they have it by health? Age, gender, ethnicity, health, I don't know.

Did they have comorbidities? Did they factor that in? They had people that age the same age as the people didn't get COVID. They didn't have it. I mean, this is several months. This is just months after. I don't know about the health. Did they monitor their nutrition or find out what kind of supplements they were on or not?

I don't know if any of that data was in it. Do you think that data would be a factor at all? I don't know because I know people that supplement that exercise that have had – were diagnosed with – they had a mild case and they were diagnosed with POTS, post-posterol orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, where their heart was racing. Like tachycardia was racing just uncontrollably. They were dizzy, had no energy. I mean, this was months and they finally got diagnosed. And it's like a lot of people coming out with this, but you know. Do you know anybody that had COVID and got through it with almost no symptoms at all and was very mild um well yeah no symptoms at all but the people that

i do know most of them had some kind of weird taste issue like or smell thing for like weeks and weeks but um but you don't know anybody that didn't have that um i don't because most of the people i know that had it lost their smell i know people are out out there that don't have any symptoms at all like and you know um i think it was something like 40 were completely asymptomatic well there was a study in israel um kind of going back to the stroke thing that found this was published in um early apr, what was it? Maybe April 2020 or something, maybe July, I don't know. It was still 2020, but they looked at patients that were coming in for stroke and these were younger than 50. And like 30% of them had had COVID, didn't know it because

they were asymptomatic and they were younger people. So it's like, you'd think, well, if they were had four comorbidities and they had COVID, they'd know it, right? So they were coming in for stroke, like, and they had no idea they had COVID until they were tested and they found out. Because they had a stroke. Exactly. So getting back to like, you know, so there's reasons that I personally think that people that are younger and healthy should get vaccinated. And for one is because for most people, the vaccines are safe. And I mean, we just have data to show that, you know, we have hundreds of millions of people that have had the vaccines we're getting in the United States that have been vaccinated worldwide. The second, you know, it's just hundreds of millions of people. But also the fact that, you know, some of this stuff where you're talking about spike protein and you're worried about spike protein.

So this is important because the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a different spike protein than what's in the vaccine. So when the vaccines were made, these what's in the vaccine. So when the vaccines were made, these are ones in the US. So this is both mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer-BioNTech and then the Moderna, as well as Johnson & Johnson. The protein itself is locked in a confirmation. It's called pre-fusion, which is kind of like closed together. And typically what happens when viruses like interact with our cell membrane, they elongate. It's called post-fusion, a post-fusion viral complex and changes structure. And so the actual both the mRNA vaccines and Johnson & Johnson locked the spike protein in the pre-fusion conformation. They inserted two proline amino acids and kept it locked.

It's a different protein. It's a different structure. It can't open up. We don't know. There's no evidence that these studies that have, whether you're talking about the Salk Institute, the other ones that they have injected spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus into tracheas of hamsters and also mice. There's been some in vitro studies showing the

spike protein is harmful in those studies. And it's binding to the ACE2 receptor. And once it binds, it can undergo like fusion and endocytosis. But we don't know if the spike protein from these mRNA vaccines are doing that. Like if you're going to make that claim, it's a different spike protein. You can't make that claim with no evidence. So what do you think is happening to the people that are getting myocarditis or strokes or thrombosis or blood clots from the vaccine? So here's the thing. I think the other part of that is that people are concerned that the mRNA vaccines don't stay in the deltoid tissue and they're somehow getting into circulation and causing havoc. basically encased in this lipid nanoparticle and, you know, there's some other things in there with it. But generally speaking, when they're injected into the muscle tissue, the lipid nanoparticle

has a half-life of a few hours, a few hours, long enough to protect the mRNA from degrading. The mRNA, again, the half-life is, you know, anywhere between some 72 hours or maybe like a little longer. And the spike protein itself that's made in your cells peaks after 24 hours, and then it goes away after 48. The concern from people that the spike protein from the mRNA vaccines, or even just the whole mRNA vaccine itself, the whole lipid nanoparticle with the mRNAs, like going to other tissues, mRNA vaccine itself, the whole lipid nanoparticle with the mRNAs going to other tissues, comes from studies that were done from Pfizer. And it was kind of leaked out. And these studies were called biodistribution studies. And they injected in, they did rats and they did mice. And the rats, they injected 50 micrograms of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. So humans,

of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. So humans, we get 30 micrograms per injection. They gave the rat 50. So how big is a rat? They're getting almost twice as much as a big human's getting. If you look at the rat equivalent dose, 50 micrograms is 10 times the rat equivalent dose. They were doing that intentionally for safety and to see what happens when you give 10 times, like high dose. And what was found is that you could see they radio labeled the lipid nanoparticle and you could see some radio label parts in other organs. Like, you know, you'd see it in the spleen, liver, you know, the bone marrow, a little bit of other organs. you know, the bone marrow, a little bit of other organs. But again, this is 10 times the dose. And this was a radio labeled lipid nanoparticle. And typically, you know, when you inject something into like your muscle, you've got lymphatic system, lymph is like surrounding it, lots of immune cells are there. And so what ends up happening is you have like dendritic cells,

immediately when something foreign like this lipid nanoparticle, they chew it up into pieces. And through phagocytosis, it's like, you know, gets taken to, you know, liver and stuff for like metabolic purposes. Right. So we don't even know what that was, not to mention the fact that it was, you know, 10 times the dose. How is it going to get into this circulation? That's weird. There have been some earlier studies on mRNA vaccines that have shown when you directly inject it, if you do it intravenously, it goes to the liver. The mRNA vaccine goes to the liver, and your liver tries to get rid of it. The same biodistribution study also injected mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech into mice. But this time they did

the animal equivalent dose, which was two micrograms. And there was a little bit found in the liver 24 hours later, but it was gone by 48, nothing. And there was no other organs that, at least that they showed. I mean, presumably if they were showing up in other organs, they would show that, but like in the animal study. So that's one piece of evidence. The other one I've seen going around is like there was a small study, 13 people, and they were looking at the antibody response to vaccines. And within these 13 people, they used a test called the Samoa SIMOA to measure spike protein and the S1 subunit and the spike protein. And they found that three out of 13 people had, they could detect spike protein. And 11 out of 13, they could detect some of the S1 subunit.

But it turns out like this test, the Samoa, is really good for looking at like IgG antibodies. But when it comes to actual spike protein, it's 25% false positivity rate. So another study showed this, that you could take people pre-pandemic, run this test on them, and they'd show like they had spike protein. 25% of the time. So it's just a bad test? It's an inaccurate test for spike protein, definitely for spike protein, but also for the S1 subunit. So I don't think you can make a claim that because, you know, you have 11 out of 13 people showing this using this test, that's the only study that's shown

that. Like that, to me, is like, you can't make any claim from that. There's no way. So what do you think is happening to people that are having bad responses to the vaccine? Like when young people are having myocarditis or heart failure, when they're having strokes, what do you think is happening? Well, it depends also on the vaccine itself. You know, so what we know about the mRNA vaccines is that they are the ones that are associated with myocarditis. But isn't the Johnson & Johnson's also associated with blood clots?

It's different. Right. I'm saying myocarditis. Oh, okay. Just myocarditis. Yeah. blood clots? It's different. Right. I'm saying myocarditis. Oh, okay. Just myocarditis. Yeah. So these are mRNA vaccines and, you know, they do elicit a pretty strong immune response and that's why they've been so effective. You know, I guess I should say the efficacy,

if you're looking at clinical trials in terms of, you know, preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to Johnson & Johnson initially. But Johnson & Johnson uses an adenoviral vaccine. So this is the first time adenoviral vaccines have been used, you know, widespread. Like they've been used in clinical studies dating back to like the 90s or 80s or something like that. But I was looking at some of those research studies, and there seems to be a link between blood clots, thrombosis, and the adenoviral vectors back then, back in those studies. And I don't think they're understanding. It's still kind of rare. I mean, it's still rare. And again, you know, COVID is

causing blood clots in people, even people that are healthy, you know, like people that are, you know, getting a stroke. So, you know, I don't know what it is, but it's still it's still pretty rare with the adenoviral vaccines and the like thrombocytopenia and things like that. The myocarditis, again, still pretty rare. And that's with the mRNA vaccines. I don't I you know, it's inflammation is playing a role in that. And why that is, I don't know. Younger people, children and adolescents are more prone to myocarditis from viral infections. Probably has something to do with their immune system being so much better. And when you activate it, maybe sometimes in some people, you know, there's too much of it going on. I don't know. I don't think this is linked. I don't think that you're going to find, you know, the spike protein from the mRNA vaccines are like floating around in your vascular system and like going to your heart and like finding on- Is that possible at all?

Well, I mean, in theory, yeah, it is. But, you know, again, like we, the spike proteins from the mRNA vaccines are different from SARS-CoV-2. We talked about that pre-fusion, right? Do we know if those spike proteins that are different, do they have the same effect on the body or is it a minimal effect? Well, we know that this work was done by Jason McClellan. He's actually in Austin. He's at the University of Austin.

He's the one that basically did this two-point mutation and kept the spike protein in the pre-fusion complex. And this was work that he had done previously with RSV, respiratory synsectial virus. This is what every kid gets, right? And if you want to hear about a vaccine tragedy story, like that's the poster child. Now, these studies, there were clinical studies done back in the 1960s on RSV vaccines. And I don't remember the number of people in the actual study of infants

and toddlers, but 80% of the infants and toddlers that got the vaccine and then were exposed to the, naturally exposed to the virus, got hospitalized and a couple died versus 5% of the infants that did not get the vaccine and were exposed. So the vaccine, we know now from what was happening in that sense, was that the vaccine was causing something called antibody-dependent enhancement. And what that is, there's two ways that it can happen. But one of the things, and it's induced by vaccines, one of the things that can happen is it can make viruses come into your cells better. So you're like more viral particles, you get infected. The other way is, and this is what was happening with RSV, is it basically causes your immune system to become more dangerous and active and be more harmful after you're exposed to the virus where the

vaccine is supposed to be protecting you from. And for a long time, and I know I think Jason was involved in figuring this out, Dr. McLellan, that it's the post-fusion antibodies that you make from a vaccine that can cause that because the post-fusion, remember those two confirmations of the, a lot of times these viral proteins do that, including the spike. The post-fusion ones are not as, they're not as good at actually protecting you from the actual virus, but they like, they kind of, in some cases can even mask it or like, you know, become harmful. Anyways, they know now that the post-fusion antibodies play a role, a big role in antibody-dependent enhancement. And those are not antibodies that are being made in all the vaccines in the United States. AstraZeneca didn't do this, two-proline mutation change.

But, you know, the vaccines that we're using in the United States are. And so the antibody-dependent enhancement theory that's going to happen, that people that are vaccinated, they're all going to be really sick. They're going to be sicker than people that just get the virus. I haven't heard that. Yeah, it's like a big one.

That misinformation, it's misinformation. That's like, you know, so for one, you'd be seeing the hospitals fill up with vaccine people, not unvaccinated, which is what we see. But in Israel, they are filling up with vaccinated people. Well, in Israel, it's mostly not vaccinated people that are filling the hospitals. I don't think that's true right now.

I think I was reading something today about that, that the majority of the people that are hospitalized in Israel were vaccinated. And they're attributing that to the higher rate of vaccinations in Israel. And that the idea that these vaccines have a waning life of effectiveness, so that after, you know, six to seven months, or however many months it is, that they're not as effective, and then you're seeing people get sicker. Yeah. And that's been shown in Israel. Israel showed this, they had a breakthrough study that was published in New England Journal of Medicine. shown in Israel, Israel showed this, they had a breakthrough study that was published in New England Journal of Medicine. They showed that basically, you could take healthcare workers that were vaccinated and measure their antibody level, neutralizing antibody levels like a week before they became infected, or like you look at you'd look at the antibody levels a week before they came down with a breakthrough infection. And it predicted the breakthrough infection. In other

words, people with lower neutralizing antibodies were more likely to get this breakthrough infection. And it predicted the breakthrough infection. In other words, people with lower neutralizing antibodies were more likely to get this breakthrough infection. And then another study was published by Miles Davenport Group. It was published in Nature Medicine, where he did some kind of modeling and found you had to have six times more neutralizing antibodies to protect from actually getting infection than from like, you know, being hospitalized as well. So and and the Pfizer vaccine. So there was a huge study that came out out of the Mayo Clinic. And this was like recent. It was like multi-states, 25,000 people and one, I think, and there were 25,000 people that were vaccinated. And they looked at whether and 25,000 people that were vaccinated. And they looked at whether, oh, and 25,000 people that were

unvaccinated. And it was looking at, you know, effectivity of the vaccine. So in other words, protecting you from actually getting the infection, and then like protecting from severity, so hospitalizations. And so this is with the Delta variant, because everything's changed now with Delta variant, right? I mean, like, these vaccines were much more effective at preventing infections with the Alpha variant being dominant, which was the dominant one. How do they know when you get infected if you have a Delta variant? Because the friends that I've had that have gotten sick with COVID, particularly ones that are already been vaccinated, they got sick afterwards, they didn't test for what variant. They just tested whether or not they're positive.

Yeah. I mean, some places aren't doing that, but you'd have to do a PCR test. All of my friends. All of my friends that tested positive after they've been vaccinated. Yeah. I think now, because the Delta variant is so much more transmissible, it's taken over. They just assume that it's a Delta variant. Exactly. They just assume because it's pretty much's pretty much taken over, you know, but with that study, they showed the Pfizer vaccine went from like, you know, being 80 to 95 percent effective at preventing infections to 42 percent. So, you know, so, you know, there's a drop in that. The Moderna vaccine was actually much better. It dropped down to like 70, 77 percent effective.

actually much better. It dropped down to like 77% effective. But the side effects of the Moderna were a little stronger as well, right? Because the Moderna conferred more of the spike protein and it made your body more resilient to the virus, but it also gave you harsher side effects. Is that the case? So I don't know if the Moderna, I mean, I don't know why that would be other than that, maybe eliciting a stronger immune response. A Moderna vaccine has three times the amount of mRNA in it than Pfizer. Three times. About so, yeah. About three times. But getting back to that, with the transmission and looking at overall transmission, even aside from something called onward transmission, there's two types of transmission.

Like the vaccines are protecting people from getting this virus because there's still some effectiveness of them. They are. It's reduced. But like when you have, you know, it's still, you know, 40% of the people that have the Pfizer X amount of months later. Again, neutralizing antibodies probably play a role in that. You know, if you have more, if you're younger. So there's all sorts of studies showing that older people make less neutralizing antibodies with vaccines and also time. Of course, they wane over time.

But there's lots of studies showing the people in the hospitals are older, of course, the ones getting the breakthrough infections. of studies showing the people in the hospitals are older, of course, the ones getting the breakthrough infections. And so these vaccines are still preventing, they're preventing overall transmission. They're preventing overall transmission. Well, if everyone's, if people are getting sick while they're vaccinated, and if the vaccinated people can still spread the virus, how are they preventing? So there's overall transmission. They're reducing? Are you saying the reducing transmission? I'm saying it's still for the overall transmission. Yes, it's reducing.

Okay, so it's not preventing. Sorry. No, it is not preventing. It is reducing overall transmission. There's also onward transmission. And that's where a lot of this new stuff has come with Delta, where there's been some, you know, the CDC put out some data. And then there was a study, a big study out of the UK where they measured peak viral levels in vaccinated people and compared it to unvaccinated. And peak viral levels were the same in terms of, you know, how much virus they were shedding. terms of, you know, how much virus they were shedding. But the virus basically, you know, it's replicating for a number of days, and you're shedding for a number of days. It's not just peak. It's not just the first, you know, few days, it continues on. And so a Singapore study looked at that they looked at this was, you know, not a huge study. But this was with the Delta variant. And

they saw that while the initial levels of virus were the same in both vaccinated and unvaccinated, vaccinated people cleared it quicker. They cleared it faster. So they weren't shedding for as long of a time, which would also suggest that if you were to take a random sampling of the population, not people that are going in and seeking healthcare, in which case people that are going in seeking healthcare, they're like getting their peak viral infection, right? In which case people that are going in seeking health care, they're like getting their peak viral infection, right? There's a REACT study.

It's a real-time study that's going on in the UK where they get all this data real-time. They also found if you take a random sampling of people, vaccinated people have less viral. This is with Delta. They have less viral load than unvaccinated, which is what you expect if vaccinated people are clearing it quicker. So there is even some evidence to suggest that even with Delta variant, vaccinated people are somewhat still even affecting onward transmission as well. In other words, you know, preventing the transmission through just your infectiousness, making other people sick. But if there's these issues that you were talking about with people that even have very mild cases that are developing these problems with brain matter and all these different issues,

these are still happening to people who are vaccinated who get COVID, right? I don't know. I don't know. But this is one of the main reasons why it's a good idea to get vaccinated. Wasn't that what you were reasons why it's a good idea to get vaccinated. Wasn't that what you were saying? It's a reason. To prevent infection. But if.

It's a reason on the individual level to. It's like, OK, well, do you want to be exposed to the virus without being vaccinated? Or do you want to be exposed to being vaccinated and maybe not even get it? It's a gamble, right? I mean, like you're going to be exposed. So, either you're going to be vaccinated and not get it or you might get it with Delta and, you know, there's no telling. Or you can be unvaccinated and not get it too. That's not going to be the case for, like, unless you're a hermit

and never, you know, it's eventually going to. But I've been exposed to it many times and I haven't gotten it. You don't have any antibodies against any? No, no, I never got antibodies. I did have a higher level of monocytes. I got tested. My blood tested and showed that I had gotten over some sort of a viral infection. I'd beaten it off. Well, I don't know. It sounds like you're either an outlier or maybe you did have it and you just, it hasn't been detected yet. Well, there was a couple of days where everybody around me got it. And a couple of days of my workouts felt really shitty. And I just took it real easy. And I continued the same

stuff that I always do in terms of my protocol, like with the sauna and all the other stuff that I do and vitamins and supplementation. And my whole family got it. I never got it. Well, you know, obviously there's people that are going to get this that are going to have hardly anything and maybe not even know it. I mean, that's happened. But I got my antibodies tested and had all those things done. I don't know. I got tested every day for COVID. I have no idea. I mean, you know, go for the nucleocapsid protein. Get that tested because that would be more, I think, indicative. And that is a blood test? You can get that from Quest, I believe.

It's either Quest or LabCorp. I think it's Quest. It's nucleocapsid. But I mean, even aside from that, you know, like, if you have something that can, like, you know, you don't want the hospitals to fill, the ICUs to fill up. Of course. You don't, you know. No, no, no, of course.

Here's another question. If the effectiveness wanes of the vaccine over six months or however much time it is, and you need a booster, do we have any information or any data as to what the effects of the booster is? If we have the information about the second dose of the mRNA vaccine being more difficult for some people to tolerate? They have more difficult side effects. Do we have any data about what a third shot is going to be like or possibly a fourth or ongoing? And is there a point in time where it's going to be detrimental to your health to continue getting booster shots? I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't think there's data.

Is that the road that we're getting on? the four comorbidities or two or whatever it is, any comorbidities probably, those people are, you know, what we're seeing in hospitals right now, most of them are people that are immunocompromised or older. And they might benefit because they have a lot to lose if they get COVID. They have a lot to lose. They have their life potentially, right? So there may be an argument for people to get a booster at that age um i'm not sure there's an argument for people like myself to get a booster now but what about in 10 months what about in a year or you know or even in a year like i at some point like i you know the vaccine well i don't know it depends is there a lot of i don't know going on here with this stuff for the boosters for all of it no well for for the i mean the original data we've got the original clinical trial with 75 000 people with both mrna vaccines right but it will have

for like four months right like and there's phase one phase two phase three right but initially the thought was you are never going to get covid if you've been vaccinated and you're not going to spread it. I mean, this is what Fauci had constantly espoused. This was the thing that they were saying. Now they've changed it. Yes, because we have a new variant. I mean, is it only because of the new variant or is it because of the waning of the original vaccine's effectiveness? Maybe both. Right. Probably both. To be honest. I do think that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that neutralizing antibody levels can predict whether or not you get the SARS-CoV-2 infection. In fact, if you look and compare it, people that have had natural immunity to people that have just

been fully vaccinated, they're pretty equal in terms of as likely to get a breakthrough infection or reinfection. But if you take a person that has natural immunity and likely to get a breakthrough infection or reinfection. But if you take a person that has natural immunity and then they get a vaccine, they have something that is referred to as hybrid immunity and they're like 2.3 times, three, four times less likely to get it. Like they're like superhuman in a way, having natural immunity plus the vaccine. But also people that have had natural infections and then have the vaccine have a much higher likelihood of getting an adverse side effect. Do they? Yes. I don't know.

A good friend of mine who's an elite athlete got infected with COVID. It was nothing. He breezed through it and then he got vaccinated and he was wrecked for 11 days. I personally don't, and this is probably controversial, but I don't, I think, you know, an individual has to decide and, you know, the CDC saying people that have had natural immunity should get vaccinated, but I don't see any reason why they have to, to be honest, unless they are just terrified and don't want to get it. And there may be, maybe they have that four times comorbidity or something like that. In all fairness, he's the only one that I know that had an adverse side effect that was also vaccinated and had COVID.

All the other friends that I've had that were vaccinated after they had COVID had no problems. But he had a bad one. He had like massive fluid buildup in his body. Again, it's not zero risk. People are having adverse effects. But like there's so many hundreds of millions of people that have had it. We know about myocarditis from mRNA vaccines. We know about that because of the VAERS data.

We know about the blood clotting from the adenoviral vector vaccines, including Johnson & Johnson. And I mean, AstraZeneca is not used here. But this is stuff like we know about these side effects. They're still rare. What do you think about prophylactic use of certain medications? Like the big and the most controversial one is ivermectin, of course. They use it in Argentina with critical care workers and they use it prophylactically and they had a very high success rate with using it prophylactically. And there's some real controversy because there's no real studies. There was something that just came out recently out of India and India's use of

ivermectin, but it's not, there's not something that there's like real rock hard data that you can show that points to the effectiveness of it. But you have like the frontline critical COVID care workers who, you know, like Pierre Corey, Dr. Pierre Corey, who's promoting the use of ivermectin and many other people that also have shown they've had good use of it, but it's very controversial, right? Like a lot of people don't even want to prescribe it. A lot of doctors, they don't even want to hear about it. So I have done a lot of sort of trying to read the, like, I don't have the anecdotal evidence that Dr. Pierre Corey has in treating frontline COVID patients. I don't have any of that anecdotal evidence, none of it. So all I can do is look at data and data that's, you know, either preprint or data that actually has been peer reviewed and published.

And what I see and I mostly see that a lot of people doing this in on websites, they're like aggregating all this data and putting it together. But there's like some major, major problems with the way they're showing the data. That is like it's a big concern. The one is that, you know, people are using different, obviously doses, but there are different co-interventions with both the treatment group and the control group. So you have people getting ivermectin, or you have people getting ivermectin and azithromycin, or you have people getting ivermectin doxycycline, or you have people getting ivermectin, you know, azithromycin, they're getting like anticoagulants in some cases, they're getting vitamin C, they're getting the kitchen sink,

okay? And then you have the control groups vary considerably. They're getting, you know, maybe in some cases, in the best case, a placebo, or they're getting, you know, the standard of care treatment, or they're getting hydroxychloroquine, or they're getting hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Okay, so you have a bunch of different treatments and co-treatments happening with each group. And you have people aggregating all those together and making, and that's just part A. Part B is you have different endpoints being measured. You have like time till negative real time, like real time PCR. So like basically viral clearance, right?

When you get negative, you have people looking at hospitalizations. You have people looking at mortality. You have people looking at, what's another one? Okay, the prophylactic like use endpoints. And then people just like aggregating stuff together. Oh, there's an improvement. And they're aggregating all these studies together. And then the other problem is that you have, and it's kind of something you alluded to, is that you have small, small sample

sizes in such case that the incidence of something is going to be so small because the sample population is so small. So I'll give you an example. Like you have 50 people in one group and you have 64 in another group. And, you know, two out of the, you know, 50 people were hospitalized in the control group, but zero were hospitalized in the ivermectin group. Like that is such a low incidence of events that you can't be certain, but they take that and aggregate it with all this stuff. And then it becomes a massive lack of studies. Not only that, and I think this is what's putting people off. You said doctors and stuff there.

There is a huge overstatement for whatever reason. Maybe it's because people have anecdotal. Maybe they're treating patients like I know this works. Maybe they're passionate about it because of that. Right. Or maybe there's also people that are pretty much just not wanting they they think the vaccines are harmful and they want to find something else they can champion so i think they're doing harm to the ivermectin world by by sensationalizing it and making it like this miracle right because

it is doing harm and i had a knee- jerk reaction at first. It was like, oh, oh no. I like, I know this is like, you can't say something's 99% effect. Like no clinical trial and known to human history has ever shown something 99% effective. Right. Like, so that was like a red flag, but you know, so there's, there's a couple of things here. There's therapeutic treatment with ivermectin and then there's prophylactic, right. Taking it if you know, you've been exposed in, in which case I think is a little more reasonable than like, I'm going to take it instead of a vaccine, in which case there is no evidence that ivermectin is going to protect you from getting it like a vaccine or prevent you from

being hospitalized by vaccine. There's certainly, I don't even know if there's any evidence on Delta variant. This is a different variant. This is different. We don't even know, what is ivermectin doing now? We've had to change the whole game with vaccines. So that's another issue. But my opinion is that when I look at all the data, I see like, you know, you'll see like, again, it's like all over the place. They're using this and that, but just forget all that. And, you know, it seems to me like there's huge variation in things like mortality, which makes sense. I would think something like this would be more effective if you give it earlier on and you're preventing from a severe hospitalization or something like that. I think that's the idea behind it, along with monoclonal antibodies, which also work with Regeneron. Now Regeneron's not even working as well against the Delta.

So these treatments, yeah. But here's the thing that I noticed that was consistent with ivermectin. It did seem to be in almost every clinical trial, it seemed to shorten the time to a negative PCR rate. In other words, help clear the virus. Like that was the one thing, the one end point. Now, again, some of these were ivermectin plus blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. But aside from that, that was the one consistent thing I saw and i was like oh instead of seeing you know like zero studies showing that and three that or this like it was the one thing i was like wow everything's really pointing to possibility of it clearing the virus faster which could affect transmission but there's really just a lack of studies really a lot and a problem of just like piling on piling it all on and making these large

these these you know grandiose statements and and to be honest the prophylactic data like there was a huge there was one study that got me excited it was in like 600 health care workers in argentina no this was the one in egypt um and and that one got withdrawn because it was like there was like um falsification of data. They're like enrolling patients, but like the patients had died and they were enrolling them like after they had died. It's like, okay, that was not right. You know?

So I do think, you know, it is my opinion that like, I've known people, not known them personally. My family has friends that were taking ivermectin that was prescribed by a doctor, by the way, taking animal grade ivermectin is a huge like that could be bad because the dose is way off way way off and people are doing that and they're getting harmed but yeah that's a strange thing isn't it that they did it with hydroxychloroquine too like people were doing that taking fish people are yeah exactly they were doing that but again i know people that were anti-vax and they were taking ivermectin and they were ended up in the icu and you know what could have ended up in the

icu with the husband no with covid they got covid and then it was like bad and they were taking animal grade no they were taking ivermectin they had gotten ivermectin were they taking the the i don't know i mean so you know there's there's the dose and, you know, but here's also, it is a safe drug. Right. But, you know, most of the times that it's used with our whole safety history is one to two days. So that's what it's prescribed for, for all those things. For river blindness and things along those lines. And scabies.

And yeah, so it's like, what effect is having it once a week have for multiple weeks i don't know i don't know honestly but you know we don't know we don't i i personally think people should get get vaccinated i think it's safe i think people should make that decision i mean based on information i i hope they choose to i don't telling someone to do something but i hope they choose to you know it is the safest way to protect yourself from this and also to help us get our society back to normal and also help not overwhelm ICUs because you don't want to get in a car accident or have a heart attack

if the ICU is full. It's bad, right? We're at three hours. Unfortunately, I've got a tight day today. I've got to bail out of here. There you have it. Is there anything else? Do you have any final thoughts on this?

I've got a lot of thoughts on it. But I think we talked about some good. We didn't talk about the fertility, but there's many studies that have come out showing it doesn't affect fertility. What do you think about pregnant women getting it? Well, there have been studies, large studies that have now been done with pregnant women getting it. yet? Well, there've been studies, large studies that have now been done with pregnant women getting it. And, you know, I think it's bad to get SARS-CoV-2 if you're pregnant. So I think a woman has to make the decision whether or not they're going to be exposed to it if they're working a job and have to be out. Do you think there's any additional concerns about getting

vaccinated while you're pregnant? I think the data so far has suggested it's, it seems to be okay, particularly when you compare it to getting SARS-CoV-2 while pregnant, you know, and that's, and that's pretty much the bottom line. I am always with pregnancy in me, it's always kind of like the most conservative you could ever do. And so like that, that's, that's my nature. And I, I, you know, again,

I'm, I have that luxury because I don't have to go out and talk to people. I can stay home and work and not interact with anyone. Right. Um, if I were like a, you know, a grocery store worker,

someone that's like, you know, in, in the service industry or someone that's going to be exposed, like I wouldn't want to get the SARS-CoV-2. I wouldn't like, and there's been studies that it is harmful, like during pregnancy.

So, yeah. That's a wrap. Rhonda, you're awesome. Thank you very much. Let everybody know where they can get a hold of your podcast, find you on social media, all that good stuff. Yeah. My podcast is on Spotify.

It's on Apple Podcasts. Found My Fitness, all one word is the name. I'm also on social media with all that stuff. And my website, I have a JRE page. It's called foundmyfitness.com forward slash JRE. It has timelines and notes to every podcast we did with references to a lot of the stuff talked about for all other nine of them and soon to be this one as well. That's an insane amount of work to do all that. Yeah. But it's nice to have references.

People want to dive deeper. It's amazing to have references. So thank you very much for doing that because that's really cool of you. And look at all those times we've talked. Wow, way back to 459. That's crazy. That is crazy.

Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. I always appreciate your perspective and your information and all your research and everything. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I always appreciate your perspective and your information and all your research and everything. Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody.